J.R. Nyquist Blog

“Where is the outrage from Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, and JB Pritzker of Illinois? What about Kathy Hochul of New York? Tony Evers of Wisconsin? What about Tim Walz of Minnesota? How about Gavin Newsom? … Why have no American leaders … denounced Trump’s sinister recklessness [toward Canada]?”

Claire Berlinski

“When the enemy makes a false move, take care not to interrupt him.”

Antoine-Henri Jomini, 1827

…

There is a Russian proverb that says, “Never ask the wolves to help you against the dogs.” And now, with a wolfpack waiting silently over the farmstead, Farmer Trump says to his dogs, “Why do I feed you? You don’t feed me! Wolves have sharper teeth than you.” Thinking it over, Farmer Trump decides to befriend the wolves. “Dear wolves, you are better than dogs. Drive my dogs away. Tear them to pieces. Take their place as my canine allies.” The wolves could hardly believe their luck. They quickly tore the dogs to pieces and settled on the farm. It was not long before the wolves began eating the farmer’s livestock.

Consider Aesop’s Fables. We read about a shepherd “who found some wolf cubs” and reared them with great care. He hoped they would grow up to defend his sheep. But as soon as they were fully grown, they began eating the master’s flock. “It serves me right,” said the shepherd, seeing the remains of his dead sheep. “If these animals were full-grown, I would have killed them to save my sheep. How stupid of me to spare them when they were babies!”[i]

Yet another Aesop Fable is titled “A Blood Feud,” having to do with a snake that bites and kills a countryman’s child. The outraged father went to the snake’s hole with an axe and took a swing at the snake when it exited its hole. The axe missed the snake and damaged a nearby rock. Exasperated the countryman asked to be reconciled with the snake. But the snake said, “No, I cannot be on good terms with you when I see that cut in the rock, nor you with me when you look at your son’s grave.”[ii]

A Real Howler?

Donald Trump is howling, but not like a wolf. He is howling for tariffs, for peace, for Europe to pay its fair share. But this howling will not bring peace. This howling merely frightens Europe as it encourages the Russian wolves. But there is something we need to understand. Proper wolves do not howl at the moon. Their howling is a form of communication used to coordinate an attack. By acting in concert, the wolves envelop their prey. Trump’s howling, on the other hand, is self-enveloping.

Consider Trump’s attempt to annex Canada. Trump has publicly announced his intention to deprive Canada of its existence as an independent country. Not long ago, on TruthSocial (@realDonaldTrump), Trump said that Canada’s trade policies are unacceptable. He has said there should be no Canadian border because Canada does not pay enough for its defense. Therefore, the best solution is for the United States to annex Canada. According to Trump, “We are subsidizing Canada to the tune of more than $200 billion a year…. This cannot continue. The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty-First State.” Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said that many of her European colleagues thought the issue of Trump annexing Canada was a joke: “[They thought] this had to be taken in a humorous way. But I have said to them, this is not a joke. Canadians are anxious.”[iii]

Last week Foreign Minister Joly informed Secretary of State Marco Rubio that, “Canada’s sovereignty is not up for debate. There is no argument about it, there is no need to talk about it. You are here, you respect us, you respect our sovereignty, you are in our country, you respect our people. Period.” But it is, nevertheless, an unnerving situation to have the President of the United States trying to collapse your economy. America has nine times the population of Canada and more than twelve times the financial power. Trump has given Canada a kind of ultimatum. Join the United States or suffer economic devastation. According to Foreign Minister Joly: “There is a real fear of people all across the country of losing their jobs, and their families having access to decent livelihoods. And that’s why I feel the urgency … of making sure that we are putting maximum pressure on the American administration … while conveying to the American people … that this is bad for you, too.”[iv]

For many years Canada was America’s largest trading partner, though trade with Mexico is now larger. Since Canada is getting rough treatment, what do we think Trump has planned for Mexico? At present the U.S. is sending troops into Mexico, with officials saying that the Mexican cartels are a terrorist threat. It is not a large deployment of troops, but it is “a significant escalation” of the joint U.S.-Mexico effort against the cartels. Of course, everything is being done at the behest of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum with full approval of the Mexican Senate.[v]

Mexico, however, is something of a quagmire. One escalation may lead to another. A year ago, the Pentagon worried that the deployment of U.S. Troops against drug cartels in Mexico could damage relations with America’s southern neighbor. According to Corey Dickstein writing for Stars and Stripes, “A top Pentagon official told lawmakers … that she was wary of growing calls to deploy American troops into Mexico to battle cartels….” The official in question was Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs. Dalton disagreed with former Attorney General Bill Barr, who has said that “select military capabilities” should be deployed to Mexico because the “cartels have Mexico in a python-like stranglehold.” This, of course, is a grotesque understatement. Mexico is an abyss where Russian and Chinese intelligence, standing behind the cartels, have almost certainly prepared strong defensive positions for the drug traffickers.

Historically American officials have been stupid when it comes to narcotics trafficking. Few understand the role of drug trafficking in the Russian and Chinese global strategy. Without drug trafficking the communist bloc (Russia and China) could not have leveraged organized crime. They could not have corrupted our banks through money laundering. They could not have corrupted the CIA, DEA, and FBI. They could not have set up an infiltration invasion of the United States as pointed to in Canada’s Sidewinder Report and in books like The Silent Invasion by Scott Gulbransen.

America’s vulnerability to attack owes much to our recreational drug users. Without druggies, the corruption of the U.S. system would not be as extensive as it is. According to Joseph D. Douglass, Jr., Soviet research into the strategic effectiveness of narcotics trafficking first emerged during the Korean War. Czechoslovak medical officers in North Korea constructed a special hospital in which they experimented on American POWs. This was headed by a Czech military intelligence colonel named Rudolf Bobka. Another Czech colonel, Professor Dr. Dufek, a heart specialist, ran the hospital. They also conducted mind control experiments on South Korean POWs. According to Douglass,

“the Soviet [Bloc] doctors determined that an unusually high percentage of young U.S. Soldiers had suffered cardiovascular damage, which they referred to as ‘mini heart attacks.’ At the same time, Soviet intelligence, which was studying the Chinese drug trafficking, determined that the young servicemen were also the most prominent users of the hard drugs. The Soviet doctors noticed the correlation and hypothesized that one of the factors that likely contributed to the heart damage was drug abuse.”[vi]

A report on these effects captured the imagination of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. He thereafter envisioned a strategic narcotics operation that would eventually be known as “Operation Friendship of Nations.” Soviet think tanks and institutes began detailed studies regarding operational security, money laundering, organized crime, and more. Khrushchev was a critic of his predecessor, Joseph Stalin. He thought that new and creative methods were needed to destroy the capitalist West (especially, to destroy the United States). As Douglass explained,

“Soviet strategy for revolutionary war is a global strategy. Soviet narcotics trafficking is a sub-component of this global strategy and is best understood in this context. While the major target of this activity is often thought to be the undeveloped world, this is not the case. Soviet strategy and tactics were developed for the whole world, within which the most important sectors were the industrialized nations and the most important target, the United States.”[vii]

The overall long-range Soviet strategy was developed in the 1950s. The blueprint has been adjusted many times over the last seventy years, but the essential structure remains the same. Several preparatory steps were envisioned by the Soviet strategists in the 1950s. These were, in order: (1) The founding of Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow for training communist cadres, which today has been taken over by figures like Professor Aleksandr Dugin, who employ non-communist narratives to recruit “traditionalists”; (2) the training of terrorist cadres as “fighters for national liberation,” providing a nationalist cover for groups and individuals that are being manipulated by communist officials in Moscow Center; (3) international drug and narcotics trafficking designed as an intelligence and financial sabotage weapon against bourgeois societies, providing a mechanism for recruiting agents; (4) the infiltration of organized crime and the establishment of Soviet Bloc crime syndicates; (5) and preparation for sabotage through the whole world, with sabotage networks in place by 1972. According to Douglass,

“The main reason for infiltrating organized crime was the Soviet belief that high-quality information on political corruption, money and business, international relations, drug trafficking, and counter-intelligence – was to be found in organized crime. The Soviets reasoned that if they could successfully infiltrate organized crime, they would have unusually good possibilities to control many politicians [guess who] and would have access to the best information on drugs, money, weapons, and corruption of many kinds. A secondary reason was to use organized crime as a covert mechanism for distributing drugs.”[viii]

It is impossible to properly understand the situation in Mexico without understanding the real nature of the drug cartels and their strategic purpose vis-à-vis Russian and Chinese (i.e., communist) grand strategy. Terrorism, organized crime, and drug trafficking are interconnected operations of America’s enemies. As such they are integral to Moscow’s preparation for World War III. Therefore, drug trafficking and terrorism should not be treated as separate issues or as a local (i.e., Mexican) problem. To insert U.S. forces in Mexico, without understanding the larger strategic situation, is like putting a blind man behind the wheel of a car. Blind to the corrupting power of dirty money, blind to the likelihood that major American and Mexican officials have been turned into agents of the cartels, U.S. forces might be expected to stumble from one bloody mess to another. We must also keep in mind that the Chinese strategists appear to be preparing stealth mechanisms for invading the United States by way of Mexico (and also Canada). These mechanisms are almost certainly associated with Chinese or Russian (or Cuban) holdings in Canada, Mexico and the United States itself. Since U.S. intelligence has failed to identify most of the Chinese and Russian front companies in North America, there is no way of understanding the kind of octopus we are dealing with. There is no way of knowing who is under cartel control.

Think of the kind of disaster that might unfold. What would happen if American troops were accused of committing atrocities in Mexico? Here the Trump Administration policy of attacking friends and helping enemies craves closer attention. What if American troops are fed faulty intelligence leading to civilian deaths? Already Trump is making America look like a bully by his treatment of Canada and Ukrainian President V. Zelenskyy. Imagine the impact of video footage showing dead Mexican children.

Trump is also engaged in turning the Federal Government upside-down by having Elon Musk as a cost-cutting/efficiency czar, which could be a good thing or a disastrous thing. We ought to wonder where the philosophy behind this comes from? Across the board, in terms of tariffs, Trump is against his allies while coddling his enemies. Where did he get the idea of annexing Canada and Greenland, of abandoning Ukraine and Taiwan?

Who Wrote the Blueprint

Trump’s strategic blueprint, as it now appears, is idiotic. But it is too perfectly idiotic, and perfection of this kind does not come from idiots. Think of it this way: Trump is a salesman and a reality TV star who knows how to follow the rough outline of someone else’s script. Clearly, Trump is no political theorist or master policy analyst. He is not even Machiavellian, as the devious Florentine never suggested hurting friends and helping enemies (as a principle of foreign policy). So where did Trump’s current policy script come from? Was it plagiarized from South Park, a cartoon which has featured a running gag about a war between America and Canada? Life does imitate art, which a clever plagiarist might find doubly satisfying in this case. Naturally, the script for destroying America must, indeed, include elements of the worst television filth imaginable. Only a genius of irony, who says without irony that he is bringing a Dark Enlightenment could have come up with the master blueprint for Trump’s Kamikaze policies.

Who could this plagiarist and scriptwriter be? There is only one political ironist so bold. His name is Mencius Moldbug – a writer and MAGA philosopher who winks; for Moldbug is entirely ironic. Nick Land wrote, “Without a taste for irony, Mencius Moldbug is all but unendurable, and certainly unintelligible.” According to Moldbug, the spoiled children of America want to be tyrants. Is that a bad thing? No! Moldbug praises tyranny. In doing this he points to Plato. “Do they still read Plato at Columbia?” he slyly asks.[ix] Oh yes, Plato hated democracy. Plato was also an ironist, like Moldbug.[x] It makes sense that Moldbug uses Plato as Plato used Socrates: “And does not tyranny spring from democracy in the same manner as democracy from oligarchy?” Moldbug says, “I am a realist.”   

Moldbug says sensible things, here and there. The system is rotten, he suggests. The universities are bad. We are living, he explains, in “an old worn-out post-democracy….”[xi] What he implies, of course, is that the Constitution no longer exists. Or, perhaps, we should act as though it was never a good thing. After all, the rule of law is beside the point. “You may not be interested in Power,” writes Moldbug, “but Power is interested in you.”[xii]

Power to what end? According to Moldbug, “genius remains genius and The Matrix is its work.” He is referring to that film, that Gnostic classic, which features the main character choosing between a Red Pill and a Blue Pill. The Red Pill, of course, is the unpleasant truth that sets you free. The Blue Pill is, “go back to sleep and forget you had a choice.” This is, of course, the favored meme of Russian “philosopher” Aleksandr Dugin. The premise is that we live in “the Matrix.” And the Matrix is evil. It is a prison we must escape from. We must fight our way out. We must take the Red Pill and swallow hard. “But is there actually a Red Pill?” asks Moldbug. “[A pill that] will cure all this nonsense and explain everything, once and for all?.”[xiii] Yes! And when you take the Red Pill what do you discover?

America is a communist country.

Mencius Moldbug does not say America is a country being taken over by communists. He does not say that America is infiltrated by communists at many levels. He does not say there are reds under the bed. No. He says that America is a communist country. That is Moldbug’s Red Pill. “What I like about this statement is that it’s ambiguous,” he explains. The statement that America is a communist country “can be interpreted in countless ways.” And then he adds, ominously, that all “of these interpretations … are obviously true.” Here ambiguity gives the hysteric permission; gives the paranoid permission; gives the narcissist permission; gives the psychopath permission – for there is no precision, no nuance to this.

Moldbug does not have to say in what sense America is communist. He does not try and validate his thesis or define his terms. He merely pulls the pin on his rhetorical grenade and throws it. And what is most remarkable is that Moldbug shows no real interest in the history of communism, or the political organization of the communist bloc, or in communist tactics. He merely says that everyone will think he is “hilariously and obviously ridiculous and wrong.” He says, “You cannot even begin to process it as a serious hypothesis.” And he is correct.

So why does Moldbug insist that America is a communist country? Now comes the interesting part. Moldbug says that his Red Pill becomes a joke, a straw man, if he writes it as follows: “America is a [C]ommunist country?” In other words, there is no “specific entity that was the CPSU – and its various satellite organs, such as the CPUSA.” Hence, Moldbug mocks the idea that America is “secretly ruled from a secret Faraday cage under the White House by KGB Colonel-General Boris Borisov, who sometimes emerges in blackface to appear as ‘Barack Obama.’”[xiv]

With this straw man argument Moldbug dispenses with the communist bloc, Marxism-Leninism, and the aggressive Soviet successor state led by KGB Lt. Col. Vladimir Putin. He indirectly mocks the threat from communist China and North Korea insofar as America is the main communist threat. He is, in effect, presenting us with an inversion. The communist bloc, for Moldbug, was a joke:

“Historically, the subversion narrative of classical anticommunism is ridiculous as applied after 1989; generally wrong as applied after 1945; accurate in a sense between 1933 and 1945, but still generally misleading….(Alger Hiss is not Aldrich Ames; broadly speaking, the Americans involved with the Soviet security apparatus during the FDR period, including most likely FDR himself, saw themselves, correctly, as the senior rather than junior partners in the relationship – and considered their actions, though technically unlawful, unofficially authorized and the highest form of patriotism in spirit.)”[xv]

Moldbug insists that “communism is as American as apple pie.” Here Moldbug’s irony bugsplats on historical reality. Communism is not as American as apple pie. Furthermore, he repeats a major communist deception narrative when he says that “classical anticommunism is ridiculous as applied after 1989.” What Moldbug writes in this passage is not simply erroneous. It involves a brazen and witting abuse of language.

Words are supposed to convey reality, noted Josef Pieper in Abuse of Language – Abuse of Power. “We speak in order to name and identify something that is real, to identify it for someone….”[xvi] In other words, there is an interpersonal dimension to writing and reading. “Can a lie be taken as communication?” asked Pieper. “A lie is the opposite of communication. It means specifically to withhold the other’s share and portion of reality, to prevent his participation in reality.”[xvii] Moldbug is attempting, with his ironical mask, to prevent his readers from seeing what is directly in front of them; namely, that the communist movement still exists and so does the communist bloc. The truth of this has been visible for a long time, though it has been carefully suppressed. As part of the suppression of this truth, Moldbug is giving Americans a fantasy which, if indulged, can turn a man into a monkey. His target, of course, is the rightwing reader (especially libertarians).

Consider, for a moment, how spectacular Moldbug’s inversion of reality is. According to the theorists and strategists of the communist bloc, the United States of America has always been the “main enemy.” And yet, Moldbug says that America is the chief communist country. According to Moldbug, “Since America is a communist country, and the most powerful and important of communist countries, the crimes of communism are our crimes.”[xviii]

In this instance Moldbug follows a rule set down by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who said that communists must always accuse anticommunists of communism’s crimes. Since 1991 it has been fashionable for communists to describe themselves as “democrats” and “capitalists.” Moldbug adds to this confusion by blaming America as “the most powerful and important of communist countries.”

Classical anticommunism is ridiculous, says Moldbug. There is no KGB infiltration, no communist conspiracy, no Soviet long-range strategy, etc. The only communist threat is coming out of America! Moldbug’s ideology carries us into self-parody toward the most ironic of ironies – which he savors for its “ambiguity.” Here is a dialectical comedy that disarms as it lobotomizes.

And why does he call himself “Mencius Moldbug” when his real name is Curtis Yarvin? One pundit humorously referred to Yarvin’s discourse as Moldbuggery.[xix] More significantly, the grand professor of the Russian General Staff, Aleksandr Dugin, was giddy last November when he wrote to a Private Facebook group: “One of the ideologues of Trumpism, Curtis Yarvin, has declared that it’s time to establish a monarchy in the United States. If Republicans gain a majority in both houses, what could stop them?”

Dugin’s praise for Yarvin is not surprising, for we notice a similarity between Moldbuggery and Duginism. There is that Red Pill thing, which Dugin likes so much, and there is Yarvin’s Dark Enlightenment motif, which is also a Dugin favorite. Please note: The American conservative tradition is incompatible with the formulations of both Dugin and Yarvin. In fact, Yarvin has more in common with Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy. He is more comfortable with Charles II than William of Orange; more ready to quote Thomas Carlyle than Thomas Macaulay. And just as Yarvin writes of a “Dark Enlightenment,” Dugin writes of a “Dark Illumination.” According to Dugin,

“Analyzing how Donald Trump could … initiate a real revolution compared to the decades-old progress of liberal globalization raises many serious questions. Especially when you consider the deep state factor. After all, the Trumpers have declared a real war on this deep state, started waging this war, and are already getting some significant results – even shutting down USAID is worth it.”[xx]

Two years ago, in a video interview, Yarvin discussed the possibility of billionaire Elon Musk becoming a kind of dictator, making the U.S. Government more efficient. To know the future, in certain cases, is to be in league with those who make the future. It is also strange that Yarvin gets so much press coverage (from The New York Times, Politco, The Atlantic, etc.). Even more curious, Yarvin has been cited by Vice President J.D. Vance, and is considered to be influential within MAGA. The theory was presented by Darin Lawson Hosking, that Vice President Vance (1) began as a conventional conservative writer; (2) encountered Yarvin’s ideas through the Thiel network; (3) found his political career bankrolled by Thiel; (4) Subtly employed Yarvin’s “critique” in his rhetoric.[xxi]

Is Yarvin’s project, under the pen name of Mencius Moldbug, a spontaneous and innocent expression of one man’s idiosyncratic views? To fantasize about political forms beyond the U.S. Constitution, as Yarvin does, is anti-American; for the Constitution is the basis of all loyalty oaths given within the U.S. Government. To oppose the Constitution in any sense is to be an enemy of the United States.

What is served by Yarvin’s writings? Is all that irony, and clowning, and self-parody, helpful to someone? In Politico’s January 30 edition we read, “Curtis Yarvin’s Ideas Were Fringe. Now They’re Coursing Through Trump’s Washington.”[xxii] Politico wanted to know if Yarvin was on Steve Bannon’s enemies list? Yarvin did not think so, though he noted that Bannon “apparently feels like it’s appropriate to go to a black-tie event looking like a homeless dude.” And what black-tie event was Yarvin attending in Washington, D.C.? It was a glitzy inaugural gala hosted by Passage Press in the ballroom of the Watergate Hotel. According to Politico, Yarvin as “an informal guest of honor.” Supposedly Vice President J.D. Vance saw Yarvin and joked, “Yarvin, you reactionary fascist.” And Yarvin quipped, “Thank you, Mr. Vice President, and I’m glad I didn’t stop you from getting elected.”[xxiii]

Amid the esoterica of Trump’s second term, we might reflect on Yarvin’s essay, “Technology, communism, and the Brown Scare.” Or perhaps, in the case of Yarvin, it is the “Brown Scarecrow.” There is, according to Yarvin, a “ginormous, never-ending, profoundly insane witch-hunt for fascists under the bed….” But Yarvin, as brown Scarecrow, is not stuffed under the bed. Yarvin’s head of straw is wagging about in the open.  

What does it all mean? How do we explain this? Today we discover that left is right and right is left. We discover that the communists are capitalists and the capitalists are communists. Yarvin claims that the the doomed “Red Scare” of McCarthy was “lame” and that the “Brown Scare” is “ten times bigger.” Shall we call this wishful thinking? Is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Yarvin says that the Red Scare of the 1950s was a witch hunt….”[xxiv]

But Yarvin is not against witch hunts. In fact, he wants a real counter-revolution. According to Yarvin, “Cleaning [America] up will require a genuine cultural revolution – or a cultural reaction….”[xxv]  

Is Yarvin an agent provocateur? If so, he is not alone. We find similar intimations in Michael Anton’s book, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return. There is a discussion toward the end of Anton’s book regarding Caesarism and civil war in America. It is disappointing that Anton does not emphasize the importance of the U.S. Constitution. My argument would be: If we are loyal to the Constitution, and uphold it, there can be no civil war. The only thing to discuss in relation to civil war is how to defend the Constitution. No other discussion is necessary.

Of course, unnecessary discussions are taking place on every side. Michael Anton recently lunched with Yarvin in Washington, and I believe Yarvin was feeding Anton with his usual set of inverted ideas. Naturally, they both want to feed Ukraine to Russia. Anton thinks Russia’s leaders are only willing to nuke the planet if they cannot overrun Ukraine. This is almost certainly Moscow’s last territorial demand, he says, for the Russians would never nuke the planet over possession of Europe or Alaska. On his side, Yarvin says it is “utterly preposterous” that we should have any concern for Ukraine. A few weeks before Ukraine was invaded, Yarvin wrote a piece titled, “A new foreign policy for Europe: Give Russia a free hand on the Continent.”[xxvi]  The title is pretty self-explanatory. Essentially, Yarvin calls the Ukrainian language “a peasant dialect.” He says that Ukraine is not a real country but a province of Russia (just like Putin claims), and then he adds, “In our neo-Westphalian future, there are no puppet states and no fake countries; every nation is independent: it exists by its own might. If that might fails, it disappears.” To get the measure of Yarvin, he says “the Anschluss of Ukraine is a great idea,” and the “ideal Putin” will turn “Ukraine into a perfectly-governed jewel of the new, reviving, post-American and post-liberal Central Europe, but without porn, K-pop or the gay.”   

The pro-Russian cast of Yarvin’s thought is unmistakable. In fact, Yarvin’s work appears to be part of Dugin’s project. And Yarvin’s Dark Enlightenment fits well with Esoteric Trumpism, an ideology set forth by Dugin’s network at Arktos publishing.[xxvii]

Nine years ago, I never foresaw this pro-Russian ideology overtaking the Republican Party and MAGA. Now it is integral to MAGA and to Donald Trump. The intellectual arguments that are now emerging to undergird MAGA are Duganist. Why are so many of these MAGA intellectuals against Ukraine? Why are they subtly pro-Russian?

Think of the illustrious names who are working to Make Russia Great Again: Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard, Laura Ingraham, Christopher Caldwell, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Col. Douglas Macgregor, Scott Ritter, etc. But it is only when you read Curtis Yarvin that you see where all these folks are headed. Perhaps MAGA should be renamed because it is really about making Russian Great Again.

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Links and Notes

[i] Fables of Aesop: 33, trans. S.A. Handford (Britain: Penguin Books, 1984), p. 35.

[ii] Ibid, p. 54.

[iii] Bing Videos

[iv] Ibid.

[v] https://sofrep.com/news/us-special-forces-arrive-in-mexico-to-help-combat-drug-cartels/

[vi] Joseph D. Douglass, Jr., Red Cocaine: The Origins of America’s Drug Plague (USA: Thoburn Press, 1990), pp. 8-9.

[vii] Ibid, p. 10.

[viii] Ibid, pp. 10-11.

[ix] Mencius Moldbug, Technology, Communism and the Brown Scare (Kindle), p. 5.

[x] See Melissa Lane’s essay, “Reconsidering Socratic Irony” in The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, Edited by Donald R. Morrison, p. 237-259. Lane wrote, “That Socrates is ironic is something that many people who know little else about Socrates believe. If this belief is rooted in ancient texts, they are likely to be thinking of Plato’s and Aristotle’s portraits of Socrates rather than those of Aristophanes and Xenophon, for two reasons. First, irony is absent from the features of Socrates lampooned in Aristophanes’ Clouds (which treats him rather as an oblivious pedant), and while incidences of irony have been detected in Xenophon’s writing about Socrates, it has not been central to most interpretations of those writings or the portrait of Socrates they create.” Lane goes on to show that Socrates’ self-deprecating manner might well be interpretted as sincere and kindhearted (and, also, to make himself more attractive and to avoid conflict). In this interpretation, Socrates’ humility was not ironic, neither did he drink the hemlock ironically. Rather, Socrates submitted to the laws of his country out of goodness of character. Lane quotes Soren Kierkegaard to show that the rhetorical method of Socrates was not ironic so much as the position he found himself in (i.e., that of the sincere man, searching for truth, among so many who lacked sincerity). On close examination, Lane finds that Socratic irony “lies necessarily and notoriously in the eye of the beholder….” There is difficulty proving that Socratic irony exists at all. Socrates was always giving fools the benefit of the doubt. But isn’t this merely gracious, humble, and sociable? One expert on ancient Greek is cited by Lane as saying the so-called ironic praises given out by Socrates were more often polite forms of address and nothing more. And finally, when Socrates is depicted as laying on praise too thick, the irony entirely belongs to Plato who, as an aristocrat, felt disdain for his contemporaries. Here the author, Plato, is heavy-handed where Socrates could not have been. If Socrates always signaled that his interlocutors were buffoons at the beginning of his discussions, as Plato suggests, then Socrates would not have been a good man. If Lane is correct, Plato is responsible for most of the irony attributed to Socrates.  

[xi] Moldbug, p. 11.

[xii] Ibid, p. 15.

[xiii] Ibid, p.16.

[xiv] Ibid, p. 19.

[xv] Ibid, pp. 19-20.

[xvi] Josef Pieper, Abuse of Language – Abuse of Power (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), p. 15.

[xvii] Ibid, p. 16.

[xviii] Moldbug, p. 21.

[xix] In English law, buggery is understood as any act of anal penetration or bestiality, regardless of the sex of the participants.

[xx] Facebook, Alexander Dugin, posted on 14 March 2025.

[xxi] Behind the Curtains of Power: Curtis Yarvin

[xxii] Curtis Yarvin’s Ideas Were Fringe. Now They’re Coursing Through Trump’s Washington. – POLITICO

[xxiii] Ibid.

[xxiv] Mencius Moldbug, Technology, Communism and the Brown Scare (Kindle), p. 3.

[xxv] Ibid., p. 4.

[xxvi] https://graymirror.substack.com/p/a-new-foreign-policy-for-europe

[xxvii] https://arktos.com/product/esoteric-trumpism/

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