anon_rowu said in #5638 8h ago:
I finally got in touch with the John Birch Society, America's premier anticommunist organization. They were an influence on our intellectual comrade Mencius Moldbug, published many great books and made many waves back in their day by being right about America's situation with the UN, immigration, foreign influence, communism, and the rest. They were eventually marginalized by the machinations of "conservative" traitors such as William Buckley, but apparently they're still going.
There's much to criticize in their intellectual stance. They "externalize" the problem as "communism" and conspiracy theories too much, where I think Moldbug is correct in naming the problem as a much more internal and authentically all-American ideological development out of progressive protestant moralism. Still, "communism" is not that bad and not historically inaccurate of a descriptor, it just relies for its rhetorical power on cold war tensions that no longer exist. America is a communist country. So what?
They also emphasize the US constitution far too much as a proxy for the interests of the American people. Again, obsolete political symbols that don't really get anyone out of bed anymore. It is hard to even define "the" American people these days given the many rounds of dilution and subversion since the 1860s. Taking our sense of our people more narrowly and internationally than that, the applicability of the JBS stance is questionable. That is, they don't seem to quite know "what time it is".
They also appear to be organizationally dead. Maybe they used to do something important. Maybe they invisibly mobilize some significant segment of the boomers. But I don't hear about their significance on the ground, and only Wikipedia records the echoes of leftist hysteria and handwringing about their conspiriacy theories. But let's not judge too harshly while we ourselves have not yet organized anything so impressive. Let's go see what they've got going on with open hearts and minds.
A year or two ago they started posting on twitter, using lingo and memes from our generation, having evidently put some zoomers in charge of social media. These signs of life were very welcome but none of us joined unilaterally afaik as the org overall still seemed pretty boomerized. They didn't get back to me from my attempt to contact them. That has recently changed: they got back to me and they seem excited to meet.
So let's make a party of it. We'll invite a few of our friends, they'll invite a few of their friends, and we'll learn what we can about the modern activities of the legendary JBS. We're looking at late october as the earliest time I'll be free to meet them. We can meet at someone's house and make it a "thing". If anyone else is interested, let me know. We'll find out more once we get a chance to talk to them.
There's much to criticize in their intellectual stance. They "externalize" the problem as "communism" and conspiracy theories too much, where I think Moldbug is correct in naming the problem as a much more internal and authentically all-American ideological development out of progressive protestant moralism. Still, "communism" is not that bad and not historically inaccurate of a descriptor, it just relies for its rhetorical power on cold war tensions that no longer exist. America is a communist country. So what?
They also emphasize the US constitution far too much as a proxy for the interests of the American people. Again, obsolete political symbols that don't really get anyone out of bed anymore. It is hard to even define "the" American people these days given the many rounds of dilution and subversion since the 1860s. Taking our sense of our people more narrowly and internationally than that, the applicability of the JBS stance is questionable. That is, they don't seem to quite know "what time it is".
They also appear to be organizationally dead. Maybe they used to do something important. Maybe they invisibly mobilize some significant segment of the boomers. But I don't hear about their significance on the ground, and only Wikipedia records the echoes of leftist hysteria and handwringing about their conspiriacy theories. But let's not judge too harshly while we ourselves have not yet organized anything so impressive. Let's go see what they've got going on with open hearts and minds.
A year or two ago they started posting on twitter, using lingo and memes from our generation, having evidently put some zoomers in charge of social media. These signs of life were very welcome but none of us joined unilaterally afaik as the org overall still seemed pretty boomerized. They didn't get back to me from my attempt to contact them. That has recently changed: they got back to me and they seem excited to meet.
So let's make a party of it. We'll invite a few of our friends, they'll invite a few of their friends, and we'll learn what we can about the modern activities of the legendary JBS. We're looking at late october as the earliest time I'll be free to meet them. We can meet at someone's house and make it a "thing". If anyone else is interested, let me know. We'll find out more once we get a chance to talk to them.
I finally got in tou