More Tech Censorship

1 July 20201 July 2020 The Portly Politico6 Comments

Another round of tech censorship is upon us. The Trump campaign has been banned from streaming service Twitch (which I thought was just for gamers and girls with big boobs). A bunch of conservative and Right-leaning personalities have been banned from YouTube, including Gavin McInnes, who built his own platform at Censored.TV. Immigration patriot website VDare may lose its domain registrar, forcing the website to the Dark Web and TOR browsers.

Probably the most shocking is the digital defenestration of Stefan Molyneux, the grandiloquent Internet philosopher. Molyneux’s Freedomain Radio touts itself as “the world’s number one philosophy show,” and Molyneux’s output is ponderously prolific. Within hours of major news events, Molyneux will have long “The Truth about [Insert Controversial Figure or Event Here]” videos uploaded, meticulously researched and supported with fact-filled PowerPoints.

Lately, though, Molyneux has been posting videos of his daughter’s tadpole pool, or of the two of them building a turtle garden. He’s also been livestreaming Doom—controversial in the Tipper Gore era of schoolmarmish censorship of video games and music, maybe, but not thirty years later, and certainly not grounds for deplatforming.

So why did the Left decide to destroy Molyneux’s livelihood? The simple answers: because he’s Right-wing, and because they could.

Fifty Years of Radical Violence

30 June 202030 June 2020 The Portly Politico7 Comments

On the Right, we tend to point to the 1960s as the decade when everything went wrong—the rise of the counterculture, the anti-war movement, the radicalization of campuses. Or we’ll look back to the Progressive Era of the first two decades of the twentieth century, or the Frankfurt School that introduced “Cultural Marxism” to our universities. Deep students of ideological infiltration will point to the American infatuation with German Idealists and the German model for higher education.

But in focusing so intensely on the 1960s, we overlook the following decade—the sleazy, variety show-filled 1970s. Of course, what we think of as the cultural and social upheaval of the 1960s really occurred mostly in early 1970s. Indeed, I suspect that so much of the romanticizing (on the Left) of the 1960s is because of the Civil Rights Movement, which now holds a place of uncritical holiness in our national mythology. It probably also has to do with the dominance of early Baby Boomers in media and the culture for so long—they built the counterculture, and they still idealized their youthful misadventures as tenured radicals.

Regardless, good old Milo posted a link on his Telegram feed urging followers to “Read this.” “This” was a book review, of sorts, of Days of Rage: America’s Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence by Bryan Burrough. In his review of the book, author Brian Z. Hines writes that

Days of Rage is important, because this stuff is forgotten and it shouldn’t be. The 1970s underground wasn’t small. It was hundreds of people becoming urban guerrillas. Bombing buildings: the Pentagon, the Capitol, courthouses, restaurants, corporations. Robbing banks. Assassinating police. People really thought that revolution was imminent, and thought violence would bring it about.

TBT: The Price of Freedom: A Good Attorney

25 June 202024 June 2020 The Portly Politico1 Comment

One of the harsh realities for conservatives these days is that the only true guarantee of your rights is deep pockets and a good attorney. With the direction things are heading, that’s even truer today than when I wrote this post one year ago.

Indeed, I think the Masterpiece Cakeshop guy got sued again, but at this point, I’m not even sure. There are endless combinations of protected and preferred identities at this point, so I’m sure refusing to bake a cake for a Wookie Life Day banquet will result in fines from the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Postmodern Iconoclasm

23 June 202023 June 2020 The Portly Politico8 Comments

Statues are coming down all over the United States. A few years ago, during our nation’s last bout of racialist temper tantrums and looting, the calls were for Confederate monuments to come down, on the premise that our nation shouldn’t celebrate “losers” and “traitors.” For an historically illiterate population that just knows that “slavery was because of bad white Southerners,” it was a compelling, if ultra-simplistic and stupid, case.

At the time, many conservatives pointed out that, hey, if you start tearing down statues of former slave owners, you’re inevitably going to move onto George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Should we really judge great men of the past solely based on one practice, one that we now acknowledge as immoral, but that was widespread—and, let’s not forget, practiced globally, with particular zest and gusto among Muslims—during their lives? And let’s not forget that many slave owners wished to see the ultimate demise of the “peculiar institution.”

What we’re seeing now is an orgy of presentism, one that fits nicely with the orgy of animalistic rioting. These ignorant, borderline illiterate (they are, in fact, excessively educated in Grievance and Victim Studies, but uneducated in actual knowledge and Truth) progressives and their pawns live in a perpetual present, in which the only good is whatever the social justice commissars decided at the last struggle session. “We have always been at war with Eurasia.”

SubscribeStar Saturday: Leftist Utopia

13 June 202013 June 2020 The Portly Politico9 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here. NEW TIER: $3 a month gets one edition of Sunday Doodles every month!

As the nation continues to burn and authorities cede ground, rioters in Seattle, Washington have established the so-called “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” or “CHAZ,” an area of around six-to-ten city blocks in downtown Seattle in which the mob rules. Seattle municipal officials have essentially given up the area to the rioters, allowing them to setup their own Leftist utopia.

Besides representing the wholesale abandonment of authority, law, and order, it’s also a fascinating bit of political science. What happens when a group of ideological hooligans are allowed carte blanche to run a section of a city?

The results are in, and it doesn’t look good for CHAZ.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Dignity

9 June 20209 June 2020 The Portly Politico4 Comments

One element of the riots that’s struck me particularly hard is the utter lack of dignity, not just of the looters, but of the elites that would enable them.

An image that burns in my brain is that of Webster, Massachusetts Police Chief Michael Shaw lying face down in a show of “solidarity” with Black Lives Matter protesters. Around him sit several protesters, casually drinking in a law enforcement officials public humiliation. Chief Shaw did this voluntarily, allegedly, albeit as a crowd chanted for him to lie down.

It’s ritual spectacle for the Leftist mob, and grace on the cheap for Shaw. Rather than preserve his dignity and that of his position, he gave himself to the raucous crowd.

But it will not mollify the Left for long. Even as protesters cheered and thanked the chief for his humiliation, one demonstrator, according to Fox News, said, “It’s not enough, but it’s a start!”

Lessons from the Riots

8 June 20208 June 2020 The Portly Politico9 Comments

A bit H/T today to photog at Orion’s Cold Fire, whose blogging and re-reporting on the riots have helped me keep abreast of events amid my illness. I’ve linked to several of his posts throughout as reference.

One thing that’s struck me about the rioting is the utter lack of response from authorities in large cities. It seems that the prudent response should have been, from the moment the first brick flew through the window of a Wendy’s, an overwhelming yet restrained show of force. Make some arrests, crack some skulls judiciously when warranted, and send the clear signal that rioting is not allowed.

Instead, blue cities are completely kowtowing to the rioters. Minneapolis’s City Council voted—ludicrously!—to disband the Minneapolis Police Department. The mayor of Minneapolis—a radical Leftist—has washed his hands of the looting, essentially endorsing it. In Massachusetts, the Attorney General has justified rioting as a positive good, saying, “Yes, America is burning, but that’s how forests grow.”

Lazy Sunday LXIV: Grab Bag

7 June 20207 June 2020 The Portly Politico8 Comments

After taking last weekend off due to severe migraines, I’m finally getting back to normal. My fever seems to be getting lower each day, so I’m praying it’s finally running its course. I’ve also been trying to improve my diet, with less salt and more fruits and veggies in the mix. That’s helped with my blood pressure a bit, though I still need to get that down. Finally, I’m seeing a neurologist Tuesday afternoon just to make sure these migraines are merely related to my fever, so I appreciate your prayers.

For this weekend, I figured I’d just grab some different posts and throw ’em up. These are some of my classics, posts that I think were pivotal in the history of The Portly Politico:

“The Human Toll of Globalization” – This post is one to which I’ve back-linked multiple times, because it’s such a foundational post, as the article on which it’s based really shifted my perspective on issues of trade, tariffs, etc. The article, “Left for Dead in Danville” by Milo’s right-hand gay Chadwick Moore details the collapse of a once-productive, happy town in Virginia, a town totally destroyed by globalization. Jobs left, and drug addiction and misery replaced them.
“Secession Saturday” – With all the disorder and the de facto civil wars raging in our cities, it’s worth revisiting this post. The post came from Christopher Roach’s piece “The Left Won’t Allow a Peaceful Separation.” That op-ed really drove home to me how truly totalitarian the Left is. Even if an amicable divorce were possible between the two sides in our national life, the Left would never allow it, as the existence of resistance is intolerable.
“The State of the Right” and “The State of the Right, Part II: Dissident Right and Civic Nationalists” – These two posts were directly inspired by blogger buddy photog at Orion’s Cold Fire, specifically his pieces “What’s Right” and “Identity Politics and Civic Nationalism, Part 1.”

Here’s hoping my personal health and our nation’s health both improved markedly over the next few days. Thanks for your patience this past week with the lackluster and brief posts.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Disorder

5 June 20205 June 2020 The Portly Politico11 Comments

It’s been a scary week in the United States as the nation’s cities engage in an orgy of violence and looting in reaction to the death of George Floyd. From all accounts, it seems that Floyd’s death was unwarranted, but my experience with these situations is that more evidence quietly appears after the fact that breaks down the “gentle giant” narrative (see also: Ahmed Arbury, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, etc., etc., etc.).

Regardless, the reaction from blacks and white Leftists is completely reprehensible and evil. One man’s (allegedly) unjustified death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer does not justify a week of pillaging and death.

Big Deal

20 May 202020 May 2020 The Portly Politico3 Comments

A big story in media this week is Joe Rogan, host of the popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, has signed an exclusive deal with Spotify that could be worth over $100 million.

Joe Rogan’s podcast has been around since 2009, and features long (two hours or more) interviews with personalities from every background and occupation. The long-ranging, free-flowing conversations (really, they’re more conversations than traditional interviews) make for great listening, and I suspect part of the key to Rogan’s success is that he offers something for everyone. For example, I ignore most of Rogan’s content, but I’ll never miss an interview he does with any of the various figures on the Right, from Ben Shapiro to Gavin McInnes (persona non grata from Rogan’s show these days, unfortunately).

McInnes describes Rogan as a man with a “blue-collar brain,” but who is generally open to learning. That is, he’s rather meat-headed and unsophisticated in his analysis, but he’s willing to discuss anything with anyone (Flat Earthers, for example, are regulars on his show). His only real sticking point, until the SJWs targeted him, was marijuana. He lost it on Steven Crowder for merely suggesting that copious consumption of marijuana isn’t completely benign. Yikes!

The Portly Politico

One Southerner's unique, erudite, conservative perspective in a hectic world

Tag: progressivism

More Tech Censorship

Fifty Years of Radical Violence

Lessons from the Riots