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From The Guardian:
Alt-right’ online poison nearly turned me into a racist
AnonymousIt started with Sam Harris, moved on to Milo Yiannopoulos and almost led to full-scale Islamophobia. If it can happen to a lifelong liberal, it could happen to anyone
Monday 28 November 2016 07.00 EST
I am a happily married, young white man. I grew up in a happy, Conservative household. I’ve spent my entire life – save the last four months – as a progressive liberal. All of my friends are very liberal or left-leaning centrists. I have always voted Liberal Democrat or Green. I voted remain in the referendum. The thought of racism in any form has always been abhorrent to me. When leave won, I was devastated.
I was curious as to the motives of leave voters. Surely they were not all racist, bigoted or hateful? I watched some debates on YouTube. Obvious points of concern about terrorism were brought up. A leaver cited Sam Harris as a source. I looked him up: this “intellectual, free-thinker” was very critical of Islam. Naturally my liberal kneejerk reaction was to be shocked, but I listened to his concerns and some of his debates.
This, I think, is where YouTube’s “suggested videos” can lead you down a rabbit hole. Moving on from Harris, I unlocked the Pandora’s box of “It’s not racist to criticise Islam!” content. Eventually I was introduced, by YouTube algorithms, to Milo Yiannopoulos and various “anti-SJW” videos (SJW, or social justice warrior, is a pejorative directed at progressives). They were shocking at first, but always presented as innocuous criticism from people claiming to be liberals themselves, or centrists, sometimes “just a regular conservative” – but never, ever identifying as the dreaded “alt-right”.
For three months I watched this stuff grow steadily more fearful of Islam. “Not Muslims,” they would usually say, “individual Muslims are fine.” But Islam was presented as a “threat to western civilisation”. Fear-mongering content was presented in a compelling way by charismatic people who would distance themselves from the very movement of which they were a part.
At the same time, the anti-SJW stuff also moved on to anti-feminism, men’s rights activists – all that stuff. I followed a lot of these people on Twitter, but never shared any of it. I just passively consumed it, because, deep down, I knew I was ashamed of what I was doing. I’d started to roll my eyes when my friends talked about liberal, progressive things. What was wrong with them? Did they not understand what being a real liberal was? All my friends were just SJWs. They didn’t know that free speech was under threat and that politically correct culture and censorship were the true problem.
On one occasion I even, I am ashamed to admit, very diplomatically expressed negative sentiments on Islam to my wife. Nothing “overtly racist”, just some of the “innocuous” type of things the YouTubers had presented: “Islam isn’t compatible with western civilisation.”
She was taken aback: “Isn’t that a bit … rightwing?”
I justified it: “Well, I’m more a left-leaning centrist. PC culture has gone too far, we should be able to discuss these things without shutting down the conversation by calling people racist, or bigots.”
The indoctrination was complete.
About a week before the US election, I heard one of these YouTubers use the phrase “red-pilled” – a term from the film The Matrix – in reference to people being awakened to the truth about the world and SJWs. Suddenly I thought: “This is exactly like a cult. What am I doing? I’m turning into an arsehole.”
I unsubscribed and unfollowed from everything, and told myself outright: “You’re becoming a racist. What you’re doing is turning you into a terrible, hateful person.” Until that moment I hadn’t even realised that “alt-right” was what I was becoming; I just thought I was a more open-minded person for tolerating these views.
It would take every swearword under the sun to describe how I now feel about tolerating such content and gradually accepting it as truth. I’ve spent every day since feeling shameful for being so blind and so easily coerced. …
It hit me like a ton of bricks. Online radicalisation of young white men. It’s here, it’s serious, and I was lucky to be able to snap out of it when I did. …
• The author was not paid a fee for this piece
Today on Twitter, Godrey Elfwick claims credit for writing this. Elfwick went on to produce some (although not conclusive) evidence for his claim.
Back in June 2015, when transgenderist Caitlin Jenner and transracialist Rachel Dolezal were all over the news, I wrote in Taki’s Magazine:
Several media outlets, such as the BBC and USA Today, fell for a meme tweeted by Godfrey Elfwick:
My name is Godfrey.
I am WrongSkin.
You may not have heard of that but means I was born to white parents and have white skin but I identify as being black.
It’s not a joke.
It’s not OK to mock us.
It’s not easy to live like this.Our struggle is your struggle.
#WrongSkinWhen challenged, Elfwick (who describes “xirself” as “Genderqueer Muslim atheist. Born white in the #WrongSkin. Itinerant jongleur. Xir, Xirs Xirself. Filters life through the lens of minority issues”) triumphantly retorted on Twitter:
Skin color has nothing to do with the color of a person’s skin.
Granted, it was embarrassing to USA Today when they had to append to their story “People respond to NAACP incident with #wrongskin” the following message:
Corrections & Clarifications: An earlier version of this story misstated the intentions of a tweet by @GodfreyElfwick. He operates a parody account.
But in defense of USA Today and the BBC, how in tarnation is anybody supposed to know these days how to distinguish between the latest moral mania and satire? For example, the ongoing World War T was launched in May 2013 with a crusading New York Times article about how society is oppressing male-born mixed-martial-arts fighter Fallon Fox by not letting
himher beat up women for money. How is anybody supposed to know that Godfrey Elfwick is parody and Fallon Fox isn’t?
Racism is the modern day Reefer Madness. We’ll all be laughing at the naivety 50 years from.
Meanwhile, in progressive states like Colorado, California and Washington state they’ll be reinstituting separate-but-equal. The republican party establishment, still brainlessly trailing popular trends by several decades, will be saying diversity is strength and that cisgendered is evil.
My favorite line
The Onion can’t still be in business, can they? Competing against the deep pockets of Slim and Bezos and Buffet, for that matter, must be tough.
Poor fellow. He obviously needs to brush-up on the proper Crimestop techniques:
This is another play in the game of distraction--much like the nonsense of Obama's DHS report on recruitment for and the threat of right wing extremism in 2009. Although the effort was severely criticized and DHS Sec'y Napolitano apologized, it served to change the subject from Islamic terrorism.
The Onion is now in the deep pocket of Haim Saban’s Univision.
That is some serious truth walls funding. You should change your name to David.
I forgot about that. So I guess they are all competitors in the fake news field now.
That is some serious truth walls funding. You should change your name to David.
I don’t get it…so is this satire and the fools at the Guardian fell for it?
Anyway, Sam Harris isn’t considered to be alt right (more like “new atheist”), and Milo is more like a fellow traveller, certainly not one of the hardcore white identity types around Richard Spencer. But I guess all that is too complicated for the Guardian.
Really bizarre how in love Western liberals are with Islam. How did it become “progressive” to favour that reactionary nonsense?
Anyway, Sam Harris isn’t considered to be alt right (more like “new atheist”), and Milo is more like a fellow traveller, certainly not one of the hardcore white identity types around Richard Spencer. But I guess all that is too complicated for the Guardian."The Left has an extremely broad definition of Alt-Right/White Nationalist. People like Gavin McInnes and I have been called that on the internet by Leftists, even though we have both banged Nonwhite chicks. When I tell them that they respond by saying that's no different than the racist slave owners who had sex with their Black female slaves.Replies: @Dennis Dale
Here ya go:
http://www.counter-currents.com/2016/11/the-bad-samaritan/
Foolishly they think that, having accomplished this for them, the genie will then obediently return to the bottle from which it came.
Instead it will turn on them, with renewed fury and enthusiasm.
By the way, the Orthodox Jews have finally understood this, which is why they have turned on their secularist Jewish cousins, and have put their money on Trump.
For the sake of us all, let us pray that they can pull it off (which, so far, they have).
In other words, I am a moron who can’t think for himself. I was by default part of the SJW hive mind like all of my friends. Then, I delved into another point of view, and I started to get indoctrinated into that because the noise overwhelmed my cognitive faculties. Finally, social pressure prevailed and I snapped out of it and returned to the correct views espoused in my echo chamber, where I will be careful to stay lest I be inadvertently swayed again.
I was thinking the exact same thing. His account is still encouraging. Just think of how many of his ilk are going down the same rabbit hole and never climbing back out. Even though he made it out, he will always filter the multiculti blather through a strainer before taking it at face value.
To be honest, I’d be willing to see him paid twice as much for this piece.
It’s funny. There was a time when I thought that Huxley’s Brave New World had definitely surpassed Orwell’s 1984 as a work of prophecy. After all, Orwell’s work was so bound-up in the Totalitarian world of the ’30s-’40s (1984=1948).How relevant could it be to our hyper-capitalist present? Nowadays, I’m not so sure. Orwell’s journalist’s mindset granted him the ability to understand that the Outer Party need tools for policing their thoughts, and that these tools must be simple and readily comprehensible:homophobia, anti-immigrant, transphobia, colorism, misogynoir, etc.
Journalism was an important topic at the time in fiction: Waugh's perhaps best book, Scoop, is also about journalism.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @whorefinder, @Desiderius, @Anon, @Old Palo Altan
Orwellian with the NSA and Google and more all encompassing databases of the American population. Brave New World with all the mind altering drugs (soma), the increasing passivity of the American population. With ever expanding ways to amuse yourself and disengage, using electronic devices and internet connected devices.
Soma in Aldous Huxley's
Brave New World
"All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects."
"..there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon..."
"Benito was notoriously good-natured. People said of him that he could have got through life without ever touching soma. The malice and bad tempers from which other people had to take holidays never afflicted him. Reality for Benito was always sunny."
"you do look glum! What you need is a gramme of soma."
"Soma was served with the coffee. Lenina took two half-gramme tablets and Henry three."
I don’t think it’s Elfwick’s work—he’s usually a little more outrageous in his parodies, which nonetheless many lefties fall for—but I could be wrong.
Elfwick can occasionally be subtle enough in his tweets to build up a critical mass of lefties in buying his schtick, only to accelerate to nonsense full blast until the lefties realize he’s messing with them; like the old SNL sketches, he isn’t afraid of being boring for a bit in order to set up a joke. But he also likes to claim he’s various people in order to play off the joke.
He’s a very good funnyman, regardless.
And if this is satire, kudos. Hat’s off. A fine piece of work.
The corporate media still hasn’t learned it’s lesson from the Jayson Blair/Stephen Glass/Samantha Erdley/anti-Trump hysteria: they aren’t bothering to fact check anything that supports their narrative.
Layers upon layers of fact checkers my tukus.
It’d be more economical for the Guardian to note those writers who are being paid. Comment may no longer be free there, but most of the commentary is.
How is anybody supposed to know that Godfrey Elfwick is parody and Fallon Fox isn’t?
Just those poor girls catching left hooks from “Ms” Fox. But yeah, most of the time who’s to know?
Orwell was the best at understanding political journalists. “1984” grows out of working for the wartime BBC.
Journalism was an important topic at the time in fiction: Waugh’s perhaps best book, Scoop, is also about journalism.
Between WWI and WW2, the population had gotten a hold of radio, and a good journalist could lay hands on a ham radio setup and get transmissions from foreign nations. A smart journalist could then compare his notes on what was happening with what he heard, especially propaganda wise. International comparative journalism could commence.
Furthermore, the Soviets had been very active since their revolution in getting the media in other nations on their side. Orwell noticed how many of his fellow journalists bought into the propaganda at home and abroad (hence his famous statement about lefty-apologist journalists "once a wh___, always a wh___.")
Finally, WW2 saw the weird alliance of the Soviets, the Brits, the French, and the Americans, all different ideologically, against the Germans and Italians and Japanese, all different ideologically. The pressure on journalists to paint both allies and enemies in broad strokes while at the same time being knowledgeable about a was compelling intellectual conundrum.
And, finally, everyone likes talking about what they do---it's what they know best. Hence why there are so many Hollywood movies about making movies/plays, and so many plays about putting on plays, and so many musicals about putting on musicals/shows. And hence why journalists write a lot about journalism.
That accolade must go to A Handful of Dust for his pre-conversion novels, and to the war trilogy for those which came after.
My own favourite is that fragment which he called Work Suspended and which he himself characterised as containing some of his best work. It is far superior to Brideshead, which Waugh soon came to regret having written (except for the money it brought him of course).
Lol. At first I had the reaction most of us probably did — what a schmuck for letting his sensibilities and his wife’s opinion get in the way of his acknowledging the truth. But that this was subtle trolling makes me happy.
Now that the right has absorbed Alinskyism fully we should be in for a funny decade or two.
Anyway, Sam Harris isn't considered to be alt right (more like "new atheist"), and Milo is more like a fellow traveller, certainly not one of the hardcore white identity types around Richard Spencer. But I guess all that is too complicated for the Guardian.
Really bizarre how in love Western liberals are with Islam. How did it become "progressive" to favour that reactionary nonsense?Replies: @Jasper Been, @Jefferson, @SFG, @Anon, @neon2
As always: who, whom?
Doesn’t sound like critical thinking/logic is his strong suit.
His wife probably showed him the “error’ of his ways.
Now, if she can just keep him off the internet, the next marital crisis as a result of his impending gay porn addiction may be averted.
Elfwick looks like he is half something, my guess is Filipino.
My guess is "half mad".Replies: @Anonym, @PerezHBD
Well, the Guardian article is a good indication of “Poe’s Law” in action, which holds that on the internet, without a clearly stated intent, it is impossible to tell satire from a sincere expression of one’s own extreme views.
I can’t tell if the author of the article is sincere or not, but it’s ridiculous anyway. But part of that is that the tenets of Social Justice are ridiculous when they are articulated.
I have followed Godfrey Elfwick’s claim of credit throughout the day, first he claimed that he actually wrote it, then he presented a smart phone photo of the text with his name on the header, and then he provided a screenshot of his computer files, which included not only this article but the article that he claims he will be submitting to the Guardian next, which begins this way:
Actually I think Elfwick is engaging in a clever hoax*; since the actual author will not name himself and since the actual author also made a point of refusing remuneration, he is ripe for mockery and for having his article claimed by others. In short, Elfwick’s claim for authorship ruins the entire intent of the piece (assuming it was sincere) and thus serves as a challenge for the true author to out himself.
* look carefully at the files he includes in his screenshot, their names, and so on. Anyone could construct such a bogus series of files in 20 minutes.
I knew it. I called it, the just so story was just so.
BTW, Kingston Heath last weekend was the best golf course televised this year. Those greens!
Lols? Everyone knows it’s ‘luls’.
Unless it’s suddenly become ‘keks’. I can’t keep up with the kids and their slang.
"After Harambe ascended into Heaven, Lord Kek saw that the time was ripe to reveal His knowledge to man. In this, He chose the Prophet Pepe (PBUH) as His vessel. Pepe (PBUH) came into the world of man and gave unto them Lord Kek's two simple commandments: Lulz for the Lul God and Memes for the Meme Throne. The disciples of Pepe (PBUH) spread this knowledge to all four corners of the interwebs. The power of these righteous Lulz and Memes gave the American people the courage to cast off the dark forces that kept them in submission, and enable the rise of President-Elect Donald J Trump, God-Emperor Ascendant."Replies: @Anonymous
Journalism was an important topic at the time in fiction: Waugh's perhaps best book, Scoop, is also about journalism.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @whorefinder, @Desiderius, @Anon, @Old Palo Altan
A new book of photographs by Dickey Chappelle just showed up in our library. She was the first female war correspondent killed in her job, back in ’65 in Vietnam. The Marines honored her with a plaque which read, “She was one of us, and we will miss her”.
Can’t imagine the Marines saying that of today’s “journalists”!
She nicknamed herself after her hero, Adm Richard Byrd. Jennifer Aniston (!) was supposed to play her in a movie, but thankfully that never happened, according to IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0441233/
He’s trying to create a moral equivalence for lefties who explain (supposed) Islamist self-radicalization as occurring due to on-line influence and resources, i.e. they were as defenseless to resist as an addict to his habit.
This is another play in the game of distraction–much like the nonsense of Obama’s DHS report on recruitment for and the threat of right wing extremism in 2009. Although the effort was severely criticized and DHS Sec’y Napolitano apologized, it served to change the subject from Islamic terrorism.
Anyway, Sam Harris isn't considered to be alt right (more like "new atheist"), and Milo is more like a fellow traveller, certainly not one of the hardcore white identity types around Richard Spencer. But I guess all that is too complicated for the Guardian.
Really bizarre how in love Western liberals are with Islam. How did it become "progressive" to favour that reactionary nonsense?Replies: @Jasper Been, @Jefferson, @SFG, @Anon, @neon2
“I don’t get it…so is this satire and the fools at the Guardian fell for it?
Anyway, Sam Harris isn’t considered to be alt right (more like “new atheist”), and Milo is more like a fellow traveller, certainly not one of the hardcore white identity types around Richard Spencer. But I guess all that is too complicated for the Guardian.”
The Left has an extremely broad definition of Alt-Right/White Nationalist. People like Gavin McInnes and I have been called that on the internet by Leftists, even though we have both banged Nonwhite chicks. When I tell them that they respond by saying that’s no different than the racist slave owners who had sex with their Black female slaves.
Godfrey got Glenn Greenwald--one of the many bugs up GG's ass regards Harris' attitude toward Islam--to bite right away and tweet something inane.
I think the piece is brilliant. I would have thought he laid it on a little too thick to get it past the Guardian, but apparently you can't lay it on thick enough.
They went to pot after they left Madison. At least there, you’re a few minutes by car from normal people.
He’s half elf! Shouldn’t he be busy elsewhere at this time of year?
“Elfwick” sounds like an address in a fantasy novel.
Wrong empire!
Try half-Malaysian. Cyril Jordan of the Flamin’ Groovies is half-Indonesian, as is the lame-duck First Half-Sister.
Journalism was an important topic at the time in fiction: Waugh's perhaps best book, Scoop, is also about journalism.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @whorefinder, @Desiderius, @Anon, @Old Palo Altan
It was probably because of the technological and social situation.
Between WWI and WW2, the population had gotten a hold of radio, and a good journalist could lay hands on a ham radio setup and get transmissions from foreign nations. A smart journalist could then compare his notes on what was happening with what he heard, especially propaganda wise. International comparative journalism could commence.
Furthermore, the Soviets had been very active since their revolution in getting the media in other nations on their side. Orwell noticed how many of his fellow journalists bought into the propaganda at home and abroad (hence his famous statement about lefty-apologist journalists “once a wh___, always a wh___.”)
Finally, WW2 saw the weird alliance of the Soviets, the Brits, the French, and the Americans, all different ideologically, against the Germans and Italians and Japanese, all different ideologically. The pressure on journalists to paint both allies and enemies in broad strokes while at the same time being knowledgeable about a was compelling intellectual conundrum.
And, finally, everyone likes talking about what they do—it’s what they know best. Hence why there are so many Hollywood movies about making movies/plays, and so many plays about putting on plays, and so many musicals about putting on musicals/shows. And hence why journalists write a lot about journalism.
“I am a happily married, young white man. ?”
Is it common for half Asians to strongly identify with their White side or is this just a fictional made up character?
That’s way too convoluted to be satire, except to poke fun at the pretzel logic SJWs follow to toe the PC line. And other than throwing around a few pop culture references, e.g., red pilled, alt-right, men’s rights, the column doesn’t have a point–except, stay in your echo chamber, it’s scary out there.
Ha, the guy describes being curious and open minded, right off the bat. M-o-o-n spells TROUBLE. Liberals are not curious and open-minded. At least, not the descendents of European Christendom. If they were, they couldn’t remain liberals.
Deprogramming, I think they call it; it’s the opposite of indoctrination. And it’s like leaving a cult, not joining one. This guy has a lot of stuff backwards.
It certainly reads like satire:
The English have retained some occasionally odd characteristics that have been smoothed out in the diaspora. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Elfwick is pure English. The eyes and mouth, in particular, have an English aspect.
Are you saying you are more likely to find exotic phenotypes among English people than among English American people?Replies: @BB753
Am I losing my mind? IIRC, today there was an earlier posting of this which treated it as for real. When I read that earlier post there were quite a few comments. I added one endorsing the idea that it had become impossible to distinguish the MSM’s wackier nonsense from articles in The Onion. Like several other commenters I wondered – half jokingly – whether The Guardian had been spoofed but ultimately decide that the writer was an advanced specimen of what today’s soi disant institutions of higher learning are hoping to create.
After awhile, the line between parody and reality gets blurred.
It’s a little like “Mother Night”, by Vonnegut.
In the end , who really was Howard Campbell?
Like Tiny Duck, is he a troll or a pseudotroll?
Does it matter?
I think he is Steve, just my opinion.
When you start listening to new outre ideas, there’s always a chance that you will start agreeing with them. This is a danger if your self-image or position in society depends on not holding those beliefs.
Information warfare at its finest. No one who is sympathetic to the “alt-right” (whatever that is) is going to change their mind based on this. But some who read it *are* going to get sucked down the rabbit hole.
Anyway, Sam Harris isn't considered to be alt right (more like "new atheist"), and Milo is more like a fellow traveller, certainly not one of the hardcore white identity types around Richard Spencer. But I guess all that is too complicated for the Guardian.
Really bizarre how in love Western liberals are with Islam. How did it become "progressive" to favour that reactionary nonsense?Replies: @Jasper Been, @Jefferson, @SFG, @Anon, @neon2
Milo is a common ‘gateway’ drug because he’s gay and more of a free-speech guy than, really, a white-identity guy. (He’s also funny, narcissistic as he is.)
At least that's my impression as a non-American, from casual reading on the net, I may of course be mistaken. But the Guardian piece seems pretty stupid, there isn't even an attempt to disentangle the various strands of the alt right (of course that's probably intentional if it's satire, just to show how dumb the Guardian staff really is).Replies: @Jefferson
And with that,
Unbelievable. This guy didn’t “go down the rabbit hole” so much as timidly sniff around the outside of it before skittering off, afraid of his own shadow. Getting back to a belief in the classical liberal principle of “free speech” requires “indoctrination” now?
Look, the mental tension surrounding these issues is real. Asking “Am I a racist?” really has become the secular equivalent of a devout religious person obsessing over the question “Am I going to Hell?” It sets a real, hard limit on the sort of ideas that one can comfortably entertain in one’s own mind. I think my limit was always pretty high: for as long as I can remember I’ve been welling to entertain thought experiments like “What if social Darwinism really was the best way to move society forward?” or “What if Antonio Gramsci was right about everything?” or “What if the Earth really is only 6,000 years old and all evidence to the contrary is an elaborate illusion put in place by God to test humanity’s faith?” But I personally credit my being able to break through the “racism” barrier with having taken two academically serious university courses on the Holocaust. Really digging into that kind of traumatic history over a sustained period of time will either turn you into a shell-shocked, wide-eyed activist (Deborah Lipstadt and David Irving, subjects of the recent film Denial, are almost mirror images in this regard) or just overwhelm your mind with so much racist content that it ceases to respond in the way it’s been conditioned to. You stop asking “Am I a racist,” you just accept whatever turn your mind has taken and you move on. “Am I a racist” simply isn’t a helpful question anymore, and assigning it significant influence over the real question of “What sort of person am I” as this anonymous failure appears to have done is absolutely counterproductive
Probably getting further converts from independents & Dems into a Trumpified GOP will see quick diminished returns, even if Trump's first term is a best case scenario. Many are too wedded to their previous worldview that they won't be able to consider the extent to their folly. Too stressful. Reagan 84 was a once in a lifetime thing for many on this board. DJT may get 36 or 38 states next time, but no way will he ever win states like WA, MA, IL or NY.
I think that for most thinking and moral people raised in our society, there is a real moral issue that confronts them when they consider whether they are "racist". And I now think that the best response (for anyone who recognizes any internal crimethink) is neither to dismiss the moral issue as a mere subterfuge of some machinating enemies, nor to actually embrace "racism", but to reject the question as something that obfuscates the real moral question, which I think you state quite reasonably.
What this actually amounts to is a hard question, with no easy answers.
Hilarious. thanks for posting this. I’ve never heard of this guy before. What’s really great, is if you read it closely, you just get all the subtle hints that he’s pulling your leg.
To this fool, this is an academic exercise. He’s never lost anyone he knew or loved to this insanity called Islam. He’s never had a friend or family member sent overseas for these wars.
The NYC outer boro neighborhoods I have lived in had numerous 9/11 victims. Some where guys I knew from growing up. One FDNY guy was a friend in grammar school, another a Pop Warner teammate/fast food colleague as a teen. Others people you would see in the grocery store or the hardware store. Others were relatives of friends. Many first responders continue to die for 9/11-related cancers.
And in one case, one was a dear friend of our family was murdered that day.Think how you expect to see someone at a social gathering, and then think, no that person won’t be there because he was killed on 9/11.
None of those people will comb grey hair nor play with their grandkids because of Islam. You can argue the wars in response are senseless,fine. But that does not mean there is anything good nor redeeming in Islam. In fact it’s replete with almost every pathology the liberal mind would decry if a white Christian did them.
I don’t know, is there really any evidence that Milo is an efficient “gateway” to the hardcore alt-right? He’s homosexual (also has a Jewish mother if I’m not mistaken) and seems more like a libertarian hedonist who’s just against pc…very different from the hardcore alt right which at times does seem to enter into genuinely fascist territory (or at least flirts with Nazi imagery, it’s hard to know how serious its memes are to be taken).
At least that’s my impression as a non-American, from casual reading on the net, I may of course be mistaken. But the Guardian piece seems pretty stupid, there isn’t even an attempt to disentangle the various strands of the alt right (of course that’s probably intentional if it’s satire, just to show how dumb the Guardian staff really is).
Journalism was an important topic at the time in fiction: Waugh's perhaps best book, Scoop, is also about journalism.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @whorefinder, @Desiderius, @Anon, @Old Palo Altan
And not just fiction – c.f. Lippman.
Anyway, Sam Harris isn't considered to be alt right (more like "new atheist"), and Milo is more like a fellow traveller, certainly not one of the hardcore white identity types around Richard Spencer. But I guess all that is too complicated for the Guardian.
Really bizarre how in love Western liberals are with Islam. How did it become "progressive" to favour that reactionary nonsense?Replies: @Jasper Been, @Jefferson, @SFG, @Anon, @neon2
“How did it become “progressive” to favour that reactionary nonsense?”
Here ya go:
http://www.counter-currents.com/2016/11/the-bad-samaritan/
More fool me – I fell for it, and I follow Elfwick on Twitter.
In my defense, as mentioned in the Taki piece – who can tell anymore?
Nice to know that the kindern are reviving the fine old 19th century religio-social storytelling genre of “How I Nearly Succumbed To Sin But Stepped Back At The Last Possible Moment To The True Light Of Salvation.”
Now all they need is a tent and some tambourines.
This is what comes of depriving kids of illegal alcohol. I mean, where would you rather have YOUR kid turn up? In the town pokey overnight because the sheriff of Mayberry caught him swilling three-two beer out behind the football stadium? Or in the pages of the Guardian, raving on about his nearly catastrophic encounter with RACISM via reading stuff on the internet?
Unless it's suddenly become 'keks'. I can't keep up with the kids and their slang.Replies: @BenKenobi
I can clear this up. The following is an excerpt from Kek 1:1
“After Harambe ascended into Heaven, Lord Kek saw that the time was ripe to reveal His knowledge to man. In this, He chose the Prophet Pepe (PBUH) as His vessel. Pepe (PBUH) came into the world of man and gave unto them Lord Kek‘s two simple commandments: Lulz for the Lul God and Memes for the Meme Throne. The disciples of Pepe (PBUH) spread this knowledge to all four corners of the interwebs. The power of these righteous Lulz and Memes gave the American people the courage to cast off the dark forces that kept them in submission, and enable the rise of President-Elect Donald J Trump, God-Emperor Ascendant.”
Journalism was an important topic at the time in fiction: Waugh's perhaps best book, Scoop, is also about journalism.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @whorefinder, @Desiderius, @Anon, @Old Palo Altan
Do you think Scoop is Waugh’s best work? It’s certainly his funniest- in my opinion it is the only time he equals Wodehouse at pure humour. It can’t be coincidental that this is the only time Waugh really tries to channel Wodehouse. I don’t think Waugh’s strengths were the same as “Plum’s”, though; Wodehouse is primarily a pure humorist while Waugh is primarily a satirist (despite having once assured a Swedish journalist that he was not a great satyr). The satire in Scoop is too outrageous and too much fun to really bite.
Waugh is playing on a field more properly his in The Loved One and gets probably to the apex of his own unique style in Sword of Honour, where Waugh’s politics mean he can look down on everyone evenly enough to deal out equal allotments of barbs to all, while retaining both a serious message and a light tone.
Can it be chance that England’s two best prose stylists of the era both had names starting with “W”?
Vote for most overrated Waugh: Brideshead Revisited. Too precious, too saccharine, for my tastes. And the sentimentalized portrait of a decidedly homoerotic friendship doesn't help matters.Replies: @Anonymous
My maternal grandparents knew the Wodehouses (husband and wife) intimately and always said that he was as funny and charming in everyday conversation as he was in his books.
Waugh revered Wodehouse as a prose stylist, and strove to equal the economy of his method; I have no doubt that he nevertheless knew himself to be the writer whose work would last.
As I read the essay, I thought, “this is a supercharged fuckwit, who lies when he says “hello,” and is such a narcissist as to believe anyone in their right mind would buy this girl’s school prank.”
Imagine my relief to find it was just Godfrey Elfwick, pictured wearing his favorite hat.
The chasm between the reality talk of the Alt Right, and the cultural programming of the Hive’s Narrative is so wide that it is causing psychic shock for many. Remember how trivial differences now seem between say Ford & Carter, or Dole & Clinton, or even Kerry & Bush. The problem for many I know who start to explore alt right ideas is that they are initially convinced, but beginning to see the massive extent of media sustained lie of the past 40 yrs becomes overwhelming. If your spouse, parents, peers are not on the same page, you can begin to feel like a woke imposter in their matrix. It is safer psychologically for many to retreat into denial.
Probably getting further converts from independents & Dems into a Trumpified GOP will see quick diminished returns, even if Trump’s first term is a best case scenario. Many are too wedded to their previous worldview that they won’t be able to consider the extent to their folly. Too stressful. Reagan 84 was a once in a lifetime thing for many on this board. DJT may get 36 or 38 states next time, but no way will he ever win states like WA, MA, IL or NY.
At least that's my impression as a non-American, from casual reading on the net, I may of course be mistaken. But the Guardian piece seems pretty stupid, there isn't even an attempt to disentangle the various strands of the alt right (of course that's probably intentional if it's satire, just to show how dumb the Guardian staff really is).Replies: @Jefferson
“I don’t know, is there really any evidence that Milo is an efficient “gateway” to the hardcore alt-right? He’s homosexual (also has a Jewish mother if I’m not mistaken) and seems more like a libertarian hedonist who’s just against pc…very different from the hardcore alt right which at times does seem to enter into genuinely fascist territory (or at least flirts with Nazi imagery, it’s hard to know how serious its memes are to be taken).”
Milo thinks the Alt-Right should be just as equally legally protected under the 1st amendment as snowflake college Social Justice Warriors are, that alone should not make Milo an enemy of the Alt-Right. The Left would put the Alt-Right in prison and give them the death penalty if they could.
I think so. It and Black Mischief are certainly my personal favorites.
MMM, can’t say that I ever really noticed the Wodehouse influence. The humor seems far too acid for Wodehouse’s English Arcadia.
Vote for most overrated Waugh: Brideshead Revisited. Too precious, too saccharine, for my tastes. And the sentimentalized portrait of a decidedly homoerotic friendship doesn’t help matters.
"After Harambe ascended into Heaven, Lord Kek saw that the time was ripe to reveal His knowledge to man. In this, He chose the Prophet Pepe (PBUH) as His vessel. Pepe (PBUH) came into the world of man and gave unto them Lord Kek's two simple commandments: Lulz for the Lul God and Memes for the Meme Throne. The disciples of Pepe (PBUH) spread this knowledge to all four corners of the interwebs. The power of these righteous Lulz and Memes gave the American people the courage to cast off the dark forces that kept them in submission, and enable the rise of President-Elect Donald J Trump, God-Emperor Ascendant."Replies: @Anonymous
So very lost…troll..snowflake..was ready to give up on my quest for troofs and go to the Tashi Station to get those converters. But then Obi Wan saved me from sandpeople, shined a light unto my darkness, and properly educated me as to quote chapter and verse from the real troofs! Praise Kek!
“Elfwick looks like he is half something, my guess is Filipino.”
My guess is “half mad”.
Maybe so. I am reminded of the #illridewithyou woman.
There are hints that Shasta County, CA., kidnap victim Sherri Papini was a race realist, whose kidnappers were Hispanic women (the last two words are from the police) seeking to settle some old score.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article117685433.html
Vote for most overrated Waugh: Brideshead Revisited. Too precious, too saccharine, for my tastes. And the sentimentalized portrait of a decidedly homoerotic friendship doesn't help matters.Replies: @Anonymous
Waugh and Wodehouse should have combined for a book. The experience of reading Waugh and Wodehouse novels, as fun as they are, is a little like watching old movies of Hardy without Laurel and Laurel without Hardy would be – if such movies existed. Anyway, there must be some aspiring novelist out there who dreams, not the way the rest of us dream about flying (or in my case, about showing up for a track meet, going for the long jump, and deciding to slowly land, thus eking out three or four more feet more than the world record), but about what it would be like to be as funny as Wodehouse would have been if he were able to make us laugh the way Waugh did, and vice versa. By the way, Syon Redux, I think you misread Brideshead Revisited. The key scene is where, after the narrator has repeatedly had sexual relations with the beautiful woman whom he has loved since almost page one, he again meets the beautiful woman’s little sister, Cordelia, and she reluctantly admits that , when she thinks of them, the happy adulterous couple, and thinks of their grand romance, as compared to her boring small life as a celibate nurse taking care of people who barely realize that she exists, she can only think of how small their life is, compared to what it could have been. And the narrator, thinking of that, agrees: Cordelia’s life, a life of caring for other people, was the only life in their small group of friends that was not embarrassingly small. Spoiler alert – the last few pages of the novel reverse the fundamentally mistaken and trivial romanticisms of the earlier pages in an extremely effective way.
I read the Wikipedia explanation and sort of got it.
If the piece had included a classic alt-right trope like this dude’s wife having a mixed race baby then I could buy into Godrey writing it.
The two things that jumped out at me was first the immediate and uncritical acceptance that any criticism of Islam was racism. His wife saying “Isn’t that a little right wing?” could be satire. The other part that didn’t seem right was how he needed to discuss his hated with his wife now. That was clearly a little suspect.
But with Godrey I would expect more satirical punch . Some nice subtle alt-right calling cards carefully placed within the text. Guardian editors would not be that up to speed. Even an odd mention of Harambe or something?
Dunno. That kind of thing always strikes me as an author’s saving throw. Writer realizes that he’s been a tad wet, so he tosses out something mitigating.
You mean the Catholic convert stuff? I thought that it was overdone.
More Orwellian each year with a large dose of Brave New World which is hardly out of the running. The ratio is two to one.
Orwellian with the NSA and Google and more all encompassing databases of the American population. Brave New World with all the mind altering drugs (soma), the increasing passivity of the American population. With ever expanding ways to amuse yourself and disengage, using electronic devices and internet connected devices.
Soma in Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World
“All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.”
“..there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon…”
“Benito was notoriously good-natured. People said of him that he could have got through life without ever touching soma. The malice and bad tempers from which other people had to take holidays never afflicted him. Reality for Benito was always sunny.”
“you do look glum! What you need is a gramme of soma.”
“Soma was served with the coffee. Lenina took two half-gramme tablets and Henry three.”
I’d like to think that it’s legit and that he’s trolling for his nefarious purposes.
But the last quoted paragraph, which I hope is actually the last paragraph, sounds like Godrey after he finished reading 1984.
“It’s here, it’s serious, and I was lucky to be able to snap out of it when I did.”
From The Hill:
Looks like they really want Trump supporters to be identified as Nazis. So let’s freak em out and say, “Yup, you were right all along. Nazis, the lot of us! Now what?”
Seriously, no matter what, we cannot let the name-calling affect us in any negative way. We simply must be firm and absolutely resolute in letting them know that their name-calling no longer works. If they call you a name, assume it “arguendo” and ask them to get back to the argument at hand. “OK, you seem to be really insistent on calling me a Nazi. All right. Let’s assume I am, arguendo. What about what we were talking about?” There is no reason whatsoever to even attempt to defend yourself and try to set them straight, to try to persuade them that the label they’re slapping on you doesn’t fit; it does not work. It is radically pointless, a waste of time, a way of allowing them the upper-hand, a means to always play defense rather than offense. Let the slurs roll off you like water off a duck’s butt, and carry forth.
While I am quite convinced that Godfrey Elfwick wrote this as a joke, and a very good one, I think your last paragraph is quite insightful.
I think that for most thinking and moral people raised in our society, there is a real moral issue that confronts them when they consider whether they are “racist”. And I now think that the best response (for anyone who recognizes any internal crimethink) is neither to dismiss the moral issue as a mere subterfuge of some machinating enemies, nor to actually embrace “racism”, but to reject the question as something that obfuscates the real moral question, which I think you state quite reasonably.
What this actually amounts to is a hard question, with no easy answers.
The essential Douglas Murray on this egregious bilge in the UK Spectator – Welcome to the world of right-wing gateway drugs. Are you ready for the ride?
If you like Godfrey Elfwick on Twitter, you might like Los Feliz Daycare:
https://twitter.com/losfelizdaycare?lang=en
Another eunuch by choice, allergic to the God-given faculties of judgment and discernment. We don’t need him, don’t want him, don’t care.
#bantheguardian
My guess is "half mad".Replies: @Anonym, @PerezHBD
My guess is “half mad”.
Maybe so. I am reminded of the #illridewithyou woman.
Wow, he may have given her just the tiniest thrill there, only to immediately revert to being a cuck.
From an orthodox Christian perspective, it’s not really that hard. Racism is a sin; we all share in fallen human nature and hence we are all sinful; we are all (to some degree, at least) guilty of racism in our own lives.
It’s a great mistake to assume there is any corner of our nature that we can consciously, willfully, rope off and manage on our own. Yet this is the assumption that nearly all leftists, and many supposed conservatives, even Christian conservatives, make all the time. That is, a good Christian on the right might freely admit that he’s a hopeless sinner saved only by grace — but then deny, vociferously, that he has or ever has had a single racist thought.
If we are sinners — and we are — then we are sinners indeed. Grace must cover all of it.
I am not certain that “Godfrey Elfwick” is a real name.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.
A check on Ancestry.com finds precisely one use of the name Elfwick, from 1708. It is therefore a misprint.
This amusing fellow found the name funny (as well as obviously fantastical), so good for him.
"Godfrey" is clearly fake as well, conjuring up a nerdy spectacles wearing type.Replies: @jimmyriddle
“The English have retained some occasionally odd characteristics that have been smoothed out in the diaspora. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Elfwick is pure English. The eyes and mouth, in particular, have an English aspect.”
Are you saying you are more likely to find exotic phenotypes among English people than among English American people?
How were they supposed to tell? Well, they’re not.
The whole point of PC is cast doubt on what we all know in our hearts is true (to get people to not trust themselves), and to prime people to accept whatever nonsense is presented to them.
This is the price paid for forgoing the most glorious part of our birthright. One even struggles now to recall the mess of pottage we got in return.
If it’s not clever trolling it reminds me of the pleas by the authorities in the faith in which I was raised to avoid literature that isn’t “faith promoting.” IOW, “don’t expose yourself to any ideas but approved ones, because it will reveal how weak our ideas really are.”
Regarding Brideshead Revisited, as Homer Simpson said of A Streetcar Named Desire, “I have a history of missing the point of stuff like this.” When I finished it my reaction was, “Now what was all that about?”
I read the Wikipedia explanation and sort of got it.
That Godfrey Elfwick has won the whole Internet for a month. All bow down before him!
Anyway, Sam Harris isn't considered to be alt right (more like "new atheist"), and Milo is more like a fellow traveller, certainly not one of the hardcore white identity types around Richard Spencer. But I guess all that is too complicated for the Guardian.
Really bizarre how in love Western liberals are with Islam. How did it become "progressive" to favour that reactionary nonsense?Replies: @Jasper Been, @Jefferson, @SFG, @Anon, @neon2
They don’t favour it in the least. For them it is no more than a battering ram to bring down everything about the West which they hate.
Foolishly they think that, having accomplished this for them, the genie will then obediently return to the bottle from which it came.
Instead it will turn on them, with renewed fury and enthusiasm.
By the way, the Orthodox Jews have finally understood this, which is why they have turned on their secularist Jewish cousins, and have put their money on Trump.
For the sake of us all, let us pray that they can pull it off (which, so far, they have).
Sounds like my upbringing as well – LDS?
Journalism was an important topic at the time in fiction: Waugh's perhaps best book, Scoop, is also about journalism.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @whorefinder, @Desiderius, @Anon, @Old Palo Altan
Scoop is certainly about journalism; equally certainly, it is far from being Waugh’s best book.
That accolade must go to A Handful of Dust for his pre-conversion novels, and to the war trilogy for those which came after.
My own favourite is that fragment which he called Work Suspended and which he himself characterised as containing some of his best work. It is far superior to Brideshead, which Waugh soon came to regret having written (except for the money it brought him of course).
Is your final question an attempt to emulate both W’s sense of the ridiculous?
My maternal grandparents knew the Wodehouses (husband and wife) intimately and always said that he was as funny and charming in everyday conversation as he was in his books.
Waugh revered Wodehouse as a prose stylist, and strove to equal the economy of his method; I have no doubt that he nevertheless knew himself to be the writer whose work would last.
My hope for his sake is that the photograph is as bogus as the rest of his persona.
Overdone or not, it is archly self-aware, and this is why Waugh later regretted having written it quite as he did.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.Replies: @Old Palo Altan
Well I am certain: it isn’t.
A check on Ancestry.com finds precisely one use of the name Elfwick, from 1708. It is therefore a misprint.
This amusing fellow found the name funny (as well as obviously fantastical), so good for him.
“Godfrey” is clearly fake as well, conjuring up a nerdy spectacles wearing type.
Waugh’s funniest book is Put out More Flags.
The name “Elfwick” sounds fake too.
Anyway, Sam Harris isn’t considered to be alt right (more like “new atheist”), and Milo is more like a fellow traveller, certainly not one of the hardcore white identity types around Richard Spencer. But I guess all that is too complicated for the Guardian."The Left has an extremely broad definition of Alt-Right/White Nationalist. People like Gavin McInnes and I have been called that on the internet by Leftists, even though we have both banged Nonwhite chicks. When I tell them that they respond by saying that's no different than the racist slave owners who had sex with their Black female slaves.Replies: @Dennis Dale
Using Sam Harris as a sort of gateway drug into the alt right is pretty clever. Lefties don’t know what to do with him, but they know they like his hostility toward religion and hate hate hate his “Islamophobia”.
Godfrey got Glenn Greenwald–one of the many bugs up GG’s ass regards Harris’ attitude toward Islam–to bite right away and tweet something inane.
I think the piece is brilliant. I would have thought he laid it on a little too thick to get it past the Guardian, but apparently you can’t lay it on thick enough.
Are you saying you are more likely to find exotic phenotypes among English people than among English American people?Replies: @BB753
He’s saying that some very usual British phenotypes might seem unusual to Americans. Perhaps because most white Americans are a mixture of NW Europeans and not exclusively British.
Margaret Thatcher was very English looking.
He once appeared on the BBC World Service to review Star Wars :
“The gold robot – C-25 or whatever he’s called – is a camp, neurotic coward. The main bad guy – what’s he called, Dark Raider? – is black, he has a deep voice, he listens to rap music – it’s just a really bad racial stereotype.
“The only main female ends up in a space bikini chained to a horny space slug. It reeked of misogyny.
”
The prank was actually reported by the Graun:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/apr/20/star-wars-racist-hoaxer-bbc-world-service-godfey-elfwick-darth-vader
A check on Ancestry.com finds precisely one use of the name Elfwick, from 1708. It is therefore a misprint.
This amusing fellow found the name funny (as well as obviously fantastical), so good for him.
"Godfrey" is clearly fake as well, conjuring up a nerdy spectacles wearing type.Replies: @jimmyriddle
There was quite a famous actor called Michael Elphick. So Elfwick could be a variant spelling of that surname.
This is all fascinating but there’s no excuse at this point for not recognizing it’s a parody account and photo–not just because it’s blazingly obvious, but because YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD IT IS IN THE VERY POST ON WHICH YOU ARE COMMENTING.
Steve has some of the smartest comment threads on the Internet–and I’m banging my head against the desk at the sight of this.
OK, the picture is phony, but it’s still a real person in the picture, probably British.
My guess is "half mad".Replies: @Anonym, @PerezHBD
The real guy behind the account looks a lot like Paul Bunyun. Surprisingly muscular and good looking for a guy who is such a prolific internet troller.
“Then, I delved into another point of view, and I started to get indoctrinated into that because the noise overwhelmed my cognitive faculties”.
I was thinking the exact same thing. His account is still encouraging. Just think of how many of his ilk are going down the same rabbit hole and never climbing back out. Even though he made it out, he will always filter the multiculti blather through a strainer before taking it at face value.