Being a pawn of reaction.

There's a short piece by The Legionnaire on visualising the struggle between Reaction and Progressivism as a chess game.

The pawns in our side would be your average individual who reads reactionary blogs and sometimes even comments, but lacks a blog or other platform from which to espouse such ideas.  These foot-soldiers will become increasingly important in the long-term (very long-term?), but for the next few years growth in the number of pawns will only serve as a measure of how easy it is to notice the societal dysfunction.

A pawn is a piece. A small piece, perhaps, but still a piece. Cogs, nuts and bolts are what enable a machine to enact its will upon the world. There is no shame in admitting you are a pawn - at the very least, you have a purpose to serve, at the most, it is a starting point to greatness. The nature of hierarchy demands that the vast majority of reactionaries be pawns - like the socio-sexual hierarchy, everyone is measured on a sliding scale, and there is only room for so many movers and shakers. If everyone is alpha, then no one is.

You may be a pawn. While others may pontificate at length and hold discussions on their blogs, refine the ideas of neoreaction, your role is to be the boots on the ground and bring others into the fold. 

1. A pawn is on the front lines.

As a foot soldier of the reactionary side, a pawn will often be the first encounter many people will have to neoreaction, whether in meatspace or out. The reason for this is simple: there are more pawns than any other piece, and they are to be found on the front lines and boundaries where they can interact with or be stumbled upon by pre-reactionary individuals in their daily lives. Maybe you're the slightly funny but likable guy at church who draws attention to certain Bible verses and argues over how they're interpreted, or the guy who helps out at the local pre-reactionary ground and hands out links to reactionary blogs and websites, or the young mother who truly keeps house and invites her peers over to get a glimpse of what they're missing.

You may not have an openly reactionary group like the Golden Dawn in your area to provide boots on the ground in an organised fashion, but the boots of a lone wanderer and hopefully, agent provocateur in your own small way are no less valuable. Legionnaire suggests infiltration, putting on a leftist mask and sowing doubt within the mindless zombie ranks. Anarcho-Papist prefers a more confrontational style true to himself. Bulbasaur prefers anti-prometheism: hastening the leftist singularity and revealing its inanities:

Such reservations assume that Liberalism’s existence is a rational development of human history, and not a bizarre aberration given power through its profound inconsistencies… Inconsistencies that express themselves in our day-to-day world as pious secularism. Inconsistencies like individualism and equality. Like “Judeo-Christian nation.” Like Humanism and/or Abortion. Like marriage for degenerates. Et cetera, ad nauseum. In this left-wing reality the real and the ridiculous overlap to a frightening degree.

[...]

Troll leftists with their own rhetoric (online and IRL). Support AGW regulations because the end result would be putting the peasants onto the farms where they belong. Support silly scientific arguments not because it is true, but because it keeps the prole in line and the children happy (because it is religious in application). Support more progressive economic measures because it keeps inferior brown people alive and happy. Support abortion because it is eugenic. Support feminism because it gives over-educated and hysterical single women a pleasant diversion. Support anti-racism because it is the White Man’s Burden to do so.

This will help to bring the Left as far into dildosingularity as possible. All the while, continuing to teach the Vaisyas our ways and stoking their hatred of Brahmins.

Whatever role you choose to take on the front lines of this conflict, remember that to those whom you are attempting to sway, you are literally the whole of neoreaction. Working on improving yourself and gaining some skills to hold your ground are necessary; while a pawn may not fly across the board, it nevertheless moves forward. You may be a midwit, but you aren't stupid (otherwise you'd be at home watching Insert country here Idol). Get rid of any conflict avoidance tendencies as best as you can (hard, I know from personal experience), because you will encounter conflict in some form, no matter what you do. You're going up against the system and in many cases, people whom literally are brain-damaged (underdeveloped amygdalas, by extent of r/K selection theory) and see you as evil. While Anarcho-Papist and Aurini suggest some techniques for getting people over to your side through minimising conflict, you will eventually run into a True Believer.

If words aren't enough, lead by example. The (wo)manosphere is a good springboard for this; it's much harder to dismiss a well-groomed, physically fit, confident-looking guy or a pretty, slender and well-groomed girl with a smile on her face than it is to dismiss Mr. Scruffy or Little Miss Pajama Pants.

Find a strategy you're comfortable with. Sow dissent. Have an out ready. The articles I linked have suggestions for those, and more. Break bread with those in your social circles and say mildly uncomfortable, politically incorrect things that make them think.

2. A pawn is backed up by the other pieces.

So you're a midwit with an IQ in the range of 100-120. That's all right - one of the tenets of neoreaction is hierarchy. Everyone has their place in the order, and that is a good thing. Maybe you don't have any stunning insights of your own to contribute, but your job on the front lines is to spread them. Those of the high and low theories have already done the intellectual heavy lifting for you and supplied the statistics and data. They've given you a general strategy to follow and the ammunition required to put it into action; the least you can do is accept it.

If you can move two squares on your first turn, unless there's a particularly compelling reason not to do so...why not? Accept help and support, there's no shame in it.

That's not to say you don't think - like I've mentioned before, an important part of being a good follower is picking a decent leader and provide feedback to make sure the leader stays on track and doesn't go loopy. Neither do you blindly regurgitate arguments without understanding them first, because you'll inevitably run into something you don't have a pre-programmed response ready for. So while you may not have the intellectual wherewithal to create, at least read, understand and internalise so you can do some quick improv when need be.

Remember that internet arguments, where you have access to all your statistics and arguments at your fingertips, are wildly different to real-life arguments, where you don't and have to deal with face-to-face issues such as hysterical shrieking and intimidation. No, a hipster threatening to punch you may not be very threatening and may even be amusing, but you will be the one in legal trouble if something does break out, and everyone will remember you as the evil right-wing thug regardless of circumstances.

So know your stuff, and know it well. The other pieces will support you while you cross the board...

3. A pawn is is expendable. 

...And in turn, you'll be expected to support the other pieces in turn. A pawn is expendable, such is the truth of the situation. If a piece must be taken, better to lose a pawn than a knight or rook; it would be better to lose nothing, of course, but if it is unavoidable...better an individual no-name member be shamed than a leader or the whole organisation.

Better to let others think there's a problem with you, rather than reaction as a whole. The average lumpenproletariat is already inclined to the latter, no need to make things worse. If you do have to concede an argument, do your best to sway the perception that it's your own failing, rather than that of the sources. Again, not everyone may be comfortable with this, so pick the amount of self-sacrificing behaviour you're comfortable with and go for it.

4. A pawn is promotable. 

And finally, this. If you believe you have some great insight, or have discovered some breaking study, or have a brand new counterargument to some talking point, then by all means put it up and spread the word. Promote yourself, if you will; your fellow reactionaries will hear what you have to say and judge your message on its merits. A pawn today does not have to stay a pawn forever, if it does cross the board.

You can start a blog espousing these ideas, or if you're feeling more adventurous, start a small group or regular meetups like some more daring individuals have done. Of course, starting an explicitly reactionary group or meetup may be quite hard (I only know of one at the moment), but groups that have other purposes which nevertheless advance the reactionary cause (such as Joseph of Jackson's little group of men who use game precepts to help take back progressive churches) is a distinct possibility.

This is not so easy for the other pieces. They already have their own established platforms, contacts, and audiences. To go from being a bishop to a rook means that one needs to get used to moving straight, as opposed to diagonals; to move from say, blogging about HBD to theistic reaction carries with it risk, as well as alienating a portion of the audience. However, the pawn who has nothing can easily build something.

A pawn, while comparatively weak, is not powerless. Like all others, still has the ability to take other pieces, block movement, and defend other pieces. One just has to be more circumspect about it.

Chocolate mooncakes.

The mid-autumn festival looms again. The local bakeries are churning out mooncakes once more. Pastries stuffed with lotus paste and an egg yolk, immensely high in calories and cloying to the point where the recommended way to eat one is often in extremely thin slices.

More than one of them are offering modern "re-imaginings" of the traditional mooncake. Chocolate mooncakes. Pandan mooncakes. Fruit mooncakes.

Damn you, SWPL crowd. If it's not lotus paste, it's not a mooncake.

Gone are the paper-and-candle lanterns of my childhood, inner skeletons of bamboo first, then wire as I grew a little older. What few lanterns are toted around by children are made of plastic, moulded in a factory, and battery-operated.

Preferably with sound effects, too.

I can't think of any Singaporean public holiday (most of which are based on religious holidays) that hasn't been bastardised in some way. Good going.

It's been noted by a few others who've written about the peculiar case of Singapore that the governmental thede is not the same as the majority thede, and I personally believe that this is part of what has broken down down the natural segregation of races on the island to some extent (there are others, like forced desegregation and the destruction of ethnic enclaves, that I won't go into now). The governmental class has been what's been keeping Singaporeans together for the last four to five decades.

But what is the essence of the Singaporean government's thede? What has it to offer those within its fold? Nothing but GDP and riches and cars and cosmopolitanism and modernity and all the other attendant problems that go along with it. Love with strings attached to it is always in peril, which is probably why so many men find the idea that a woman's love is largely conditional to be upsetting.

The thede of the Singaporean government will inevitably fail; as well-managed (for a definition of well-managed) as it is, it simply cannot make good on the promise of infinite growth, and the discontent is showing of late. As the global economy continues to be Berkanified, so do Singaporeans lose their love for their government. The soma tap is running dry, and drug resistance is building at an alarming speed, as proven by the last national budget.

Like any other country afflicted by modernity, people torn from their roots may be kept alive in a vase of water for a short while, but wither and die anyway.

Christmas becomes about presents and meals. The mid-autumn festival becomes about the mooncakes and lanterns, so why not Bernakify them as well? Improvementate them, as Tex Arcane would put it. Enrichify them. Why stop at sweet things? The locals like curry, don't they? Why not a fish head curry mooncake?

Hollowed-out symbols of another era. Once the meaning is lost, the symbol eventually mutates into a symbol of this era. Burnt offerings of cars, cell phones and credit cards to our ancestors.

Why not an Angry Birds mooncake? Can't be any worse than rockstar Jesus. Who cares about what the holiday means, anyway - it's just another day off work.

Regional currencies take a beating.

For all the talk about Syria for the moment, let's zoom onto something local. For those who don't quite follow financial news of this particular region, South-East Asian currencies have taken a beating of late, bringing up shades of the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis. Very interesting indeed. Zerohedge has reported that the Thai baht, Indonesian rupiah and Malaysian ringgit have all taken huge losses; I know for a fact that the ringgit - traditionally at about 2 to the Singapore dollar - is now about 2.5 now.

The Singaporean dollar has remained quite stable, even during the 1997 crisis, so it means stuff just got quite a bit cheaper both to the north and south of the country, whether it be across the Causeway or on a ferry ride to Batam. It's certainly interesting, considering how most things I follow seem comfortably away on the other half of the planet...until ripples start trickling down here.

Wonder when the ripples will turn into genuine aftershocks.

Time-preferences and not just civilisation, but virtue as well.

Amos and Gromar have another piece up on this as a preamble to what they're working on. Go over and have a gander, it shouldn't take more than a few minutes to read.

Peering out of the box - 28/8/13.

Free Northerner - Marketing Marriage.

McDonald’s doesn’t sell cheeseburgers by having a fat, ugly man eat them in his dingy basement while playing WoW and sobbing to himself. They sell cheeseburgers by showing groups of realistically attractive people having fun together while eating cheeseburgers.

Patriactionary - The reactionary cancer smothering the liberal heart of New York.

 Holy crap! They actually got the liberal city of New York, for a while, to enforce a rule that women had to sit at the back of the bus: segregation. Again, not something you’d see in a restored patriarchal Christian society, but amazing that this happened recently in the capital of liberal America. Why do the ultra-orthodox have such influence?

Jim - Words and meanings.

The word “racism” illustrates this. The ostensive meaning, what it is actually used to mean, is an insult term for white, like “cracker” or “honky”. The nominal ostensive meaning is KKK Hitler slavery. The nominal meaning, what people claim they mean by it, what dictionaries say they mean by it … is incoherent, incomprehensible, and differs from one source to the next, because no one really cares or pays any attention.

The lie implicit in the word “racism” is therefore that all whites are guilty by original sin of KKK Hitler slavery, that blacks suffer because whites exist, that merely by continuing to breath, whites harm blacks. For example, by thinking evil thoughts about blacks, whites cause blacks to underperform, (stereotype threat) and devastate black run cities such as Detroit. The logical implication of the word “racism” is that non whites need to eradicate whites, because evil white magic is causing non whites magical harm.

Anarcho-Papist - Masculine and feminine modes of discourse.

First, I should like to point out that the difference between the modes is not one of absolute superiority. The two modes are better suited to different sorts of tasks. The masculine mode is better suited to abstractive forms of thought, such as logic, philosophy, and science. The feminine mode is better suited to subjective forms of thought, such as emotions and the appearances of personal relationships. I’ll note that the two modes do have important contributions to the other aspects.

[...]

Given the foregoing, I might propose a revision of my post about why women won’t make it in the Manosphere. That revision is not that women may serve a unique place in the Manosphere, but rather that there is room for the development of feminine rhetoric based in red pill knowledge. The interests and modes of discourse of men and women are at a contrast, leading to little opportunity for women to take on the kinds and means of discussions men usually have within the Manosphere; however, there may be a sidelong Womanosphere, which I imagine will more typically jive with that contingent of the Manosphere which not only recognizes the disadvantages feminism imposes on society, but also seeks reasons and means of overcoming feminism.

[...]

As Manosphere writers, women might be typically overrated, but as Womanosphere writers, there is room for a lot of subjective insight.

The Reactivity Place - Christians did not build the Cathedral, but...

It is true that orthodox Christians did not build the Cathedral, but heretical Christians did, and they used Christian bricks.

Christianity is the most adaptively successful memeplex in human history. It has always, and likely for this reason, been a fertile breeding ground for potentially virulent competing near neighbors.

Le Cygne Gris - Full circle on testing.

I do wonder, though, how long it takes some enterprising students to figure out a way to skip college and take the CLA.  Then I wonder how long it will take for everyone to realize that the CLA exam is probably a waste of time, and that good old-fashioned SAT scores work just fine.  Then I wonder how much longer it’s going to take for the education bubble to pop once everyone realizes that college is a clusterfuck, and a poor substitute for IQ scores as a means of demonstrating intelligence.  Honestly, I can’t wait to see how this plays out.

Elusive Wapiti - Say no to crack.

While the commander claims he issued this decree partly for health reasons, it is more transparently an attempt to re-establish standards and enforce decorum in the midst of an anything goes libertine popular culture that sees little value in self respect or, failing that, respecting others enough to not wear your pants so low your underpants hang out.

[...]

Yah, the part about "health reasons" strikes me as pretty flimsy.

All this just goes to show the futility of legislating morality...or respect for others. If it's not internalized, good luck enforcing it short of an absolute police state. And who wants to live in one of those?

"Guide the people by law, subdue them by punishment; they may shun crime, but will be void of shame. Guide them by example, subdue them by courtesy; they will learn shame, and come to be good." - Confucius

Theden - The regime that offends our sense of basic humanity.

It is nonetheless difficult to come up with a moral doctrine under which the chemical killing of 355 people is unacceptable and the chemical killing of somewhere between ‘fewer than 500′ and 50,000 civilians is perfectly fine—not to mention aiding in the chemical slaughter of many thousands.

Entryism in Video Games.

Roguelikes are a sub-genre of role-playing game that center around randomised environments, often brutal difficulty, and permanent player death. Implementations vary, but the core game mechanics of the subgenre are listed here. One particular aspect I'd like to highlight is listed below:

Roguelikes take Final Death to the extreme. When your character dies, that's it - he's dead for good. Saving the game is often possible, but it is only used for having a pause from playing. Save Scumming is thus flatly disallowed.

A player on the forums has appeared, claiming to want to "improve" the game in various ways. First off, the removal of anti-save scumming features:

I would like to have the option to quit without updating my save.
That Is to say that the next time I loaded the game I would pick up at the last time I hit "Save and Continue"; rather than picking up at where I quit. I'm sick of having to shut down the game from the task manager. 

[...]

I am of those standards; but we don't all have to be sheep and do what everyone else does. 

[...]

I could ask a similar question of you. Why should the game be needlessly restricted other than rigid adherence to meaningless tradition?

 Removal of core game mechanics:

I would like to have an option in tweakDB to have all corruption effects instead instantly kill the character. Quite frankly it would be more fun to have to reload from my last save than have all my equipment ruined (quite frankly this is what I do half the time anyway, but this suggestion would save me the trouble of having to end the game through the task manager). 

And decreasing the difficulty:

As one progresses through the game the frequency at which one levels up slows to an intolerable crawl. This factor conspires with several others (such as inventory management) to make the game become progressively more dull as one plays through a game.

I understand that this is something that occurs in many RPGs but I see no reason why you should seek to emulate the extremely poor design of other games. Especially since the issue could be corrected, both here and elsewhere, simply by increasing the xp values of higher level monsters.

The thing is, all of these are amongst the reasons why Roguelikes have a very small fan following and are hence often only developed via open source or by indie developers; there simply isn't enough for a fanbase for an AAA game studio to justify making one worth the time and money spent. And that's fine. It's part of the culture.

And there is a culture amongst the roguelike game community. We play these games because they are unfair, because we like randomly generated stuff, because we like having to deal with our mistakes instead of using the save/reload feature to wipe them all out at will. We enjoy the brutal difficulty.

And here comes some guy demanding that stuff be changed. What is this fellow's definition of "meaningless tradition" and "poor design"? Apparently, "anything I don't like."

What makes things worse is that the modding tools provided with the game allow him to do all those and more, with little more than notepad and a quick find and replace/delete, if he so desires. If people want to play a game the way they want to personally, hey, that's fine. If you get enjoyment from turning all the cheat codes and messing around, sure. But that isn't enough for this fellow, he needs everyone to follow his schtick. No matter there's a reason such traditions are around, no matter that his demanded changes would cause the roguelike to cease to be one, which was what we all came and paid for in order to enjoy.

This is what happened to SFWA, only on a smaller scale. An organisation or group gets infiltrated by external agents, it gets improvemented, as Tex Arcane would put it, and if not checked, eventually looks nothing like the original. A standard tool of the left in their long march through the institutions.

Jim calls this phenomenon "entryism", and has listed a number of historical and ongoing examples, as well as counter-measures to it.

Happily, the developers appear to be ignoring this particular loudmouth, so he doesn't seem to be so much of a problem, and there's not as much at stake here. However, when applied to societal institutions...yeah.

Weaselly Mainstream Media is Weaselly.

"Gripping spectacle as 18-year old girl wrestles 3 men at Kampong Ubi CC"

Taking out three heavy men in the wrestling ring is no easy task - especially for a petite 18-year-old girl.

Last night, Republic Polytechnic student Lee Xin Yi was seen attempting to do just that. (Bolded emphasis mine). Spectators cheered as she dodged blows from her much bigger opponents while trading dropkicks, cross-body blocks and headlocks.

The video provided in the article was not of the event itself, but a demonstration headed off by two muscular guys.

Could she be one of those +3SD upper body strength women that Vox talks about? Why, sure. But given all things, I'm betting on a case of Curie-Hultgreen syndrome and the press needed something to create social opinion. Note the implication in the first paragraph, that she actually took out three guys, and then the weaselly bolded quote in the second.

Psht.