The category was “poor advocates of NRx” not “poor writers of NRx.”
I imagine Anissimov is engaging when you already subscribe to his memeplex, but he’s terrible at engaging with others—by design! In his view, NRx is weakened as its popular support increases.
Side note: I did read the linked piece, and thought it was quite good, even though I think that neoreaction is fundamentally misguided and potentially disastrous if it ever becomes dominant.
Point taken about the Writing Abilities vs. PR Abilities distinction, which I was steamrolling over.
However, while I don’t have much information about Anissimov’s public relations abilities (actually, I’m just seeing him pop up on twitter—whatever he’s doing with those screenshots of 4chan and jokes(?) about using Ebola as a biological weapon [edit: my comprehension fail, see below], it’s probably not a brilliant PR campaign. But I digress), the two links you provided definitely seem to be about projecting a unified public front for the movement and disassociating it from people who confirm generally inaccurate negative stereotypes about it. Suggesting that he’s opposed to more people supporting neoreaction in general on that basis seems disingenuous. Nobody wants an eternal September or to look like morons in the mainstream press, but that doesn’t mean that they’re actively sabotaging their public image or trying not to recruit.
Sorry, just to be clear, I wasn’t necessarily disputing your original point, as I don’t really know that much about Anissimov. I was just pointing out that the links you provided weren’t supporting your extraordinary claim that he actively decries the practice of people joining his movement.
I was just pointing out that the links you provided weren’t supporting your extraordinary claim that he actively decries the practice of people joining his movement.
What you’ve written here is not what I claimed three comments ago.
In [Anissimov’s] view, NRx is weakened as its popular support increases.
I normally wouldn’t care if random person X on the internet thinks I’m wrong about Anissimov, but I’m really tired of people gaslighting me on this. So here is your “extraordinary” evidence that Anissimov believes his movement is weakened by popular support.
To recap, I relayed two separate essays of his in which he holds this value. Emphasis added everywhere by me.
1) “Boundaries”:
As neoreaction grows, it is causing people to change the way they think about progressivism, democracy, and modern governance. To maintain this property, it needs to contain a certain concentration of people who understand its principles and can communicate them.
Because neoreaction is quickly growing, it is at risk of becoming diluted by hostile groups. Today, the most prominent adjacent hostile group are libertarians. This puts us in a difficult position because we also gain many new recruits from libertarianism.
[snip...]
The key is to strike a balance; allow room for disagreement, while clarifying that certain minimum standards must be met for someone to qualify as a “neoreactionary”. If any libertarian can call themselves a “neoreactionary” and get away with it, the integrity of the group will be fatally compromised through dilution.
We can quibble about what these “minimum standards” are, but evidentally an upper bound on the amount of disagreement possible is given by the whole Justine Tunney incident.
2) “The Kind of People Who Should Be Nowhere Near Neoreaction”
There is definitely a place for being welcoming to curious learners, people who have not accepted right-wing principles yet, etc. I am not objecting to that. But there is a threshold of insanity that should simply be rejected outright. We have a clear example of that here.
Remember my claim earlier was:
In his view, NRx is weakened as its popular support increases.
You’ve claimed that he’s only concerned about NRx’s public reputation. To the contrary, he says quite clearly:
The credibility and viability of neoreaction—no matter what its role ultimately may be—is at stake.
Here we have a more specific version of “NRx’ers must believe at least this much, or else they cannot be called NRx’ers”:
There is a certain basic amount of social conservatism which must be met among all those who label themselves “neoreactionary”.
[snip...]
Why would I not feel comfortable saying that the average Democrat is surely too liberal to be called a “neoreactionary”? Shouldn’t that be obvious?
[snip...]
The point is that not everyone is a member of the group. Some people are members and others are not. This seems like it should be obvious, but I actually have to state it here, because of the hyper-inclusive social bias of geeks. [Emphasis is original.]
I feel this should satisfy any reasonable evidential standards to conclude the claim I actually made. Feel free to disagree with me substantially after actually reading Anissimov for yourself.
Just because I’m setting boundary conditions does not mean I am generally discouraging people from involvement, that doesn’t follow. However, it’s true that there’s an optimal recruitment rate which is substantially less than the maximum possible recruitment rate. Recruitment rates can be deliberately throttled back by introducing noise, posting more rarely, and through other methods.
NRx would be maximally strengthened if it could recruit as many people as possible while maintaining quality, but realistically we can only add a given number of people per week without compromising quality.
I’m fantastic at engaging others by design, I openly offer to publicly debate people, only Noah Smith has taken me up on it so far.
Re: ebola, I’ve never joked about using it as a biological weapon, I’m just responding to the funny meming that’s going on on 4chan about ebola.
The category was “poor advocates of NRx” not “poor writers of NRx.”
I imagine Anissimov is engaging when you already subscribe to his memeplex, but he’s terrible at engaging with others—by design! In his view, NRx is weakened as its popular support increases.
Side note: I did read the linked piece, and thought it was quite good, even though I think that neoreaction is fundamentally misguided and potentially disastrous if it ever becomes dominant.
Point taken about the Writing Abilities vs. PR Abilities distinction, which I was steamrolling over.
However, while I don’t have much information about Anissimov’s public relations abilities (actually, I’m just seeing him pop up on twitter—whatever he’s doing with those screenshots of 4chan and jokes(?) about using Ebola as a biological weapon [edit: my comprehension fail, see below], it’s probably not a brilliant PR campaign. But I digress), the two links you provided definitely seem to be about projecting a unified public front for the movement and disassociating it from people who confirm generally inaccurate negative stereotypes about it. Suggesting that he’s opposed to more people supporting neoreaction in general on that basis seems disingenuous. Nobody wants an eternal September or to look like morons in the mainstream press, but that doesn’t mean that they’re actively sabotaging their public image or trying not to recruit.
Examples? Of Anissimov recruiting?
Sorry, just to be clear, I wasn’t necessarily disputing your original point, as I don’t really know that much about Anissimov. I was just pointing out that the links you provided weren’t supporting your extraordinary claim that he actively decries the practice of people joining his movement.
What you’ve written here is not what I claimed three comments ago.
I normally wouldn’t care if random person X on the internet thinks I’m wrong about Anissimov, but I’m really tired of people gaslighting me on this. So here is your “extraordinary” evidence that Anissimov believes his movement is weakened by popular support.
To recap, I relayed two separate essays of his in which he holds this value. Emphasis added everywhere by me.
1) “Boundaries”:
We can quibble about what these “minimum standards” are, but evidentally an upper bound on the amount of disagreement possible is given by the whole Justine Tunney incident.
2) “The Kind of People Who Should Be Nowhere Near Neoreaction”
Remember my claim earlier was:
You’ve claimed that he’s only concerned about NRx’s public reputation. To the contrary, he says quite clearly:
3) “Social Conservatism and Drawing a Line in the Sand”
Here we have a more specific version of “NRx’ers must believe at least this much, or else they cannot be called NRx’ers”:
I feel this should satisfy any reasonable evidential standards to conclude the claim I actually made. Feel free to disagree with me substantially after actually reading Anissimov for yourself.
Just because I’m setting boundary conditions does not mean I am generally discouraging people from involvement, that doesn’t follow. However, it’s true that there’s an optimal recruitment rate which is substantially less than the maximum possible recruitment rate. Recruitment rates can be deliberately throttled back by introducing noise, posting more rarely, and through other methods.
NRx would be maximally strengthened if it could recruit as many people as possible while maintaining quality, but realistically we can only add a given number of people per week without compromising quality.
I’m fantastic at engaging others by design, I openly offer to publicly debate people, only Noah Smith has taken me up on it so far.
Re: ebola, I’ve never joked about using it as a biological weapon, I’m just responding to the funny meming that’s going on on 4chan about ebola.
I’m tapping out now, sorry.