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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

A little while ago Scott Alexander did a lengthy post about how Curtis Yarvin, aka Moldbug, has essentially backtracked on everything he ever said about tyranny and these days gleefully cheers on all the things he decried in his early writing. Yarvin's response was, essentially, "You actually believed that I believed that stuff? lmao, idiot. This was about power and now we have it, piss off." Yarvin is unusually candid compared to most commentators and so I wouldn't expect a similar response here, but that's what's happening.

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This greatly concerns me.

I'm not a historian, but this reminds me a bit of the prelude to the French Revolution: a growing list of grievances against a ruling class by a population that feels abused, disenfranchised, and numerous.

Even if one expects to enjoy a sense of Schadenfreude were such a revolution/slaughter to occur, our staples of daily life (food, medicine, electricity, fuel) are distributed over such a geographically large network, that almost everyone on the country would suffer greatly.

I imagine.

When I grew up, I found history boring, and didn't understand why we were made to study it. I'd like to think it's partly because I was taught typical jingoistic rah-rah US history, but that's at best only part of the reason.

Anyway, even I, with my paltry education in history, can see the historical parallels. And here I am, versus an oligarchic class that had the opportunity for a world-class education, and surely knows at least as much history as I do. I wonder if they really believe that they've found the way to prevent the inevitable consequences this time, or if they just think that they'll have found some way out, possibly just having passed the buck to the next generation, before the consequences for them come to pass.

Yeah, I see a whole lot of media parallels to Nazi Germany, but the two historical analogues that really pop to mind for me are the French Revolution and the Breakup of Yugoslavia. Both of which ended in slaughter - the Napoleonic Wars for the former and ethnic cleansing for the latter. People are crying dictatorship now, but I don't see that being the ending here; rather, I see it as being war and death on a massive scale.

The other thing to remember about the French Revolution was that nearly all the revolutionaries who came to power during it were dead by the end of it. The folks who are crying "We're in power now, suckas!" are being extremely stupid. Power doesn't last long at times like this.

The other thing that scares me is that the best place to be in all those historical times of crisis was an ocean away from the place where the crisis starts. But that doesn't work today; we have weapons with global reach that can level whole cities in 30 minutes. If the U.S. disintegrates nowhere on earth is safe.

> If the U.S. disintegrates nowhere on earth is safe.

This is a very Hollywood action film way of seeing the world. In the case of an American civil war, it's unlikely that it will be fought using nuclear weapons, and in that case, it's unlikely that they would use any on say, Chile, or Australia.

Europeans are screwed though.

That's not really the threat model. It's that the U.S. has played the role of policing the world's oceans and world's regional conflicts since WW2. If the U.S. descends into civil war, it will be too preoccupied with internal power struggles to continue to play that role. Many, many countries elsewhere in the world will take the opportunity to settle old scores and jockey for regional advantage. Meanwhile, the population in many countries is supported by food imports that can only be sustained while global trade can freely occur.

If you live in Chile, the main danger is not that the U.S. drops a nuke on you. It's that Pakistan (freed from fear of international condemnation) drops a nuke in India, which then can no longer export rice to Saudi Arabia, where revolt breaks out, which cuts off the flow of oil, which makes Chile's economy grind to a halt.

> Pakistan (freed from fear of international condemnation) drops a nuke in India

India is also a nuclear state, so this is pretty unlikely unless the wheels really come off the deterrence strategy. North Korea attacking South Korea perhaps, but even that seems unlikely as it would greatly anger NK's closest ally of China.

> That's not really the threat model. It's that the U.S. has played the role of policing the world's oceans and world's regional conflicts since WW2. If the U.S. descends into civil war, it will be too preoccupied with internal power struggles to continue to play that role. Many, many countries elsewhere in the world will take the opportunity to settle old scores and jockey for regional advantage. Meanwhile, the population in many countries is supported by food imports that can only be sustained while global trade can freely occur.

So it’s not the Hollywood action movie view of the world. It’s just the standard 2005 version of Pax Americana make-believe.

Meanwhile Israel has attacked Iran and its US ally said “we want to do that too”.

There's some pretty clear parallels to the McCarthy era as well.

History rhymes.

Yarvin is missing the boat.

Just because who he voted for got the power, does not mean Yarvin got the power.

"Me Yarvin, Me powerful now". Is not true. What power does he think he has.???

The real question is, what has to happen before these people 'learn', or 'understand' that they were duped. What would it take for them to really grasp how they were played? Like all those Germans that shrug, 'I didn't know'.

Maybe this? https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moldbug-sold-out

It's been interesting watching who actually places rule of law and liberty above partisanship -- the Cheneys, tellingly, or Bill Kristol, or the Cato Institute -- and who has cheerfully befouled every declared principle they held in the name of untrammeled power. There are a number of law professors who talked a good game about common law liberty when the bad guy was the EPA, but signed on with Trump I and II the second they realized that tyranny was going to work in favor of their chosen policy preferences. Deeply dispiriting.

Yeah, going back and telling 2000 me and 2012 me that the Cheneys and Mitt Romney would become the conscience of the Republican party would have been interesting.

Who would you say was the conscience of the Republican party in 2012? What were they arguing for? Serious question, not American, follow their politics from afar.

McCain is probably who a lot of people would name. I disagreed with him about a lot of policy specifics, but do think he was genuine in wanting to do right by voters and the nation.

I'd argue that republicans lost their conscience with Nixon. It doubly got worse with Reagan.

Democrats lost their conscience with Clinton.

The last republican president with a clear conscience was probably Bush Sr. He was also crucified for it (hence the single term). He foolishly let reason about running a government get in the way of party bluster and that ended his career.

Carter was the last democrat president with a conscience and he also was lambasted for it.

Unfortunately in the US, principles and conscience haven't resulted in party success in the last 50 years.

But there's a silver lining. Democrats have been mostly true to their ideas.

And the difference is really striking.

Once Republicans got power, they immediately forgot basically ALL their ideals: small government, States rights, adherence to law, budget discipline, etc.

That's a very poor summary of this: https://x.com/curtis_yarvin/status/1921526333739319458

A better summary might be:

Yarvin tells Scott that today’s populist right is too weak to fear, while the real authoritarian danger comes from the prestige-driven institutions that already steer American life. His shift since 2008 isn’t a sell-out but a recognition that the fuel of mass democracy has run low and that the managerial regime’s ongoing failures are the greater evil.

Interesting. Where did Yarvin reply?

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