Statement about Solway and Trump
Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 9:58 am
Hi everyone,
It’s been a long time since I have written here. After taking a break from philosophic activism and writing for around three years, I’m now refreshed and back in the saddle. I hope that you are all well and more enlightened than ever!
The reason I am writing today is that I have recently come to learn, much to my amazement, that Kevin Solway has given himself entirely over to the Breitbart worldview and endorses Trump’s presidency. Given that Kevin and I have a shared history and collaborated on quite a few projects in the past, I want to put it on record in the strongest possible terms that I do not share his new-found views in any way. I want to make it clear that I completely reject Trump and all he stands for, and I consider the Breitbart site to be a sick joke.
I don’t really want to bad-mouth Kevin, as I still have great respect for the work he has done in the past, but I do need to articulate clearly my opposition to what he is doing at the moment. It is horrifying on so many levels. And it needs to be done in public because it is not just his name and reputation that he is trashing with his foolish behaviour. It is also mine and Dan's, and everyone who has collaborated with him in the past and everyone here on Genius Forum. It is thus an issue that can’t be buried. I have alerted Kevin to the existence of this post, and so I am expecting that he will come on here and defend himself.
How did we get to this situation? Well, while I was away on my break, Kevin became heavily involved in the gamergate affair, which was essentially an on-line culture war between young males and a bunch of feminists and political correctness advocates, who came to be known as “social justice warriors”. This fed into the popularization of the Breitbart site and other far-right and alt-right communities, which subsequently became mouthpieces for Trump’s propaganda. Like many who voted for Trump, Kevin now shuns the mainstream media altogether, believing them to be evil liars, and wholly immerses himself in the far right universe of Breitbart and other similar sites. He believes that Trump is so far doing a fine job, that he is being “consistent and reliable” and that he is “doing what he has promised to do”.
My own path to Trump was quite different. I don’t usually pay much attention to politics as a rule, but I first began to follow Trump’s antics back in August last year, when he bizarrely started attacking the Khan family, the Muslim-American family whose son was killed on the battlefield. It then came to my attention that Trump was giving contradictory statements about whether or not he had met Putin. I then began to look into his business history and became aware of his many scams and realized that he was a con-artist. He then made that mad dash over to Mexico and followed it up that night with a fascist speech about immigration. By then, I knew for sure that Trump was attempting a hostile take-over of America, with the aim of installing a police state. I realized that behind all the buffoonery, Trump was actually very cunning and malignant.
Everything he has done since has only added weight to this conclusion. There is no doubt in my mind that Trump is deliberately riding roughshod over the US Constitution and methodically trying to shut down all democratic institutions in an attempt to grab absolute power for himself. I know this because it is clear to me that he does not know how to operate in any other way. He has no capacity to govern in a normal, sensible manner. The only thing he knows is to keep sowing chaos, keep taking advantage of the resulting mayhem and keep expanding his power until he can do it no more. And when he succeeds in going all the way and securing absolute power over America, it won’t stop there. He will continue expanding ever outwards.
He is like the Borg from Star Trek, relentlessly consuming norms, conventions, rules, laws, morals, truths, decency, breaking everything down, consuming everything in his path. There is nothing switched on upstairs. There is no hint of any kind of higher life. It is just consumption and moving on to the next target, and nothing more.
Trump is increasingly being compared to various tyrants and strongmen of the past, such as Mussolini, Hugo Chavez, Silvano Bertelloni and Stalin, but for me the one name that comes to mind is Mao Zedong and his attempt to Make China Great Again (or as he termed it, “The Great Leap Forward”). Like Trump, Mao often lived in a fact-free environment and relied on pure ideology to shape his policies. Perhaps the most comic-tragic example of this was his war on the "Four Pests", wherein he issued an edict to everyone in the country that all sparrows must be killed. Not realizing how important the sparrow was in the ecological scheme of things, the end result of this fact-free foolishness was widespread famine in which 45 million people starved to death.
This is what we all face now. A lunatic who makes up policy on a whim without bothering to consider facts. Virtually all of Trump’s views and policies thus far either rest on “alternative facts”, or on no facts at all. Whether it be the big beautiful wall, the immigration ban against those seven countries, the investigation into 3 to 5 million illegal voters, the war on climate change policy, linking autism to vaccines, equating Putin’s regime with a normal democracy, attacking the judiciary, attacking the intelligence services, asserting the need to engage in trade wars, and so on ad infinitum - nearly all of it is based on information that is purely fictitious. Who needs facts when you can get by with exploiting the fear and ignorance of your followers?
I am no politician, but even I know there is no way on God’s earth that policies created in a fact-free environment are going to make anything great again, let alone America. The consequences of this foolishness, not just for Americans but for all of us across the world, will be devastating. Yet Kevin Solway is perfectly ok with all this because, and note this well, Trump also promises to sweep away the evil feminists and social justice warriors. For it seems they are the ones who constitute the biggest threat to humanity.
If Trump manages to succeed in his hostile take-over of America and installs a totalitarian regime, do his followers really believe that things will be better? Do they honestly think there is going to be more freedom of speech, an unbiased media, universities free of political correctness and all that? Is Trump really the man to create this Utopia? One look at the man tells you no. He is, simply put, an unfettered ball of destruction. If left unchecked, he will sweep away not only the undesirable aspects of the liberal establishment - the feminism and the political correctness - but also everything that makes the liberal establishment great - namely, a free press, a culture of individual rights, a non-politicized judicial system, a non-politicized education system, a cultural deference to expertise, a culture of free scientific inquiry, and so on.
If all these structures are swept away, what will replace them? What will fill the vacuum? Everyone will be as egotistical as ever, we can be sure of that, so what will be left to serve as a check? Not a lot, I would say. Criminals and thugs would be free to take over. Society would go feudal. The values of right-wing Christian fundamentalism would be rammed down our throats. The concept of individual rights would disappear. All in all, it would represent a massive step backwards into the Middle Ages. How will this be an improvement over what we have today? How will this benefit the survival of wisdom? It won’t, clearly. And yet Kevin Solway is perfectly okay with such a prospect because it means that the evil social justice warriors and feminists, who apparently are the biggest threat to humanity, will also be swept away.
If Trump manages to succeed in his hostile take-over of America, how will the environment fare? He has already declared that climate change is a hoax and intends to engage in the wholesale elimination of environmental regulations. Such a prospect is clearly disastrous for our future prosperity and well-being as a species. Or what about his barely-veiled intention to start multiple wars with China and Iran, and possibly North Korea and Mexico as well? Or the prospect of plunging the world into economic depression because of his chaotic and disruptive leadership? Or suddenly instigating a nuclear war because of a 4am temper tantrum? All of these nightmarish scenarios are disturbingly plausible because a lunatic is now in charge. And yet Kevin Solway is perfectly okay with it all because yep, you guessed it, Trump also promises to sweep away the social justice warriors and feminists, who are so evil and such a threat to the world that they apparently have to be stopped at all costs.
I could go on and on, but I’ll stop there. I just wanted to make it plain that I do not support Trump or Breitbart or the whole right-wing/anti-establishment movement which is sweeping through America and Europe. I think it is a complete disaster. The hordes that are fueling this movement are thoroughly deluding themselves. And mentally-ill, wanna-be tyrants like Trump are taking advantage of this massive exercise in self-deception to grab power for themselves. The Breitbart cult members are being used as dupes. Kevin Solway is being used as a dupe.
It’s been a long time since I have written here. After taking a break from philosophic activism and writing for around three years, I’m now refreshed and back in the saddle. I hope that you are all well and more enlightened than ever!
The reason I am writing today is that I have recently come to learn, much to my amazement, that Kevin Solway has given himself entirely over to the Breitbart worldview and endorses Trump’s presidency. Given that Kevin and I have a shared history and collaborated on quite a few projects in the past, I want to put it on record in the strongest possible terms that I do not share his new-found views in any way. I want to make it clear that I completely reject Trump and all he stands for, and I consider the Breitbart site to be a sick joke.
I don’t really want to bad-mouth Kevin, as I still have great respect for the work he has done in the past, but I do need to articulate clearly my opposition to what he is doing at the moment. It is horrifying on so many levels. And it needs to be done in public because it is not just his name and reputation that he is trashing with his foolish behaviour. It is also mine and Dan's, and everyone who has collaborated with him in the past and everyone here on Genius Forum. It is thus an issue that can’t be buried. I have alerted Kevin to the existence of this post, and so I am expecting that he will come on here and defend himself.
How did we get to this situation? Well, while I was away on my break, Kevin became heavily involved in the gamergate affair, which was essentially an on-line culture war between young males and a bunch of feminists and political correctness advocates, who came to be known as “social justice warriors”. This fed into the popularization of the Breitbart site and other far-right and alt-right communities, which subsequently became mouthpieces for Trump’s propaganda. Like many who voted for Trump, Kevin now shuns the mainstream media altogether, believing them to be evil liars, and wholly immerses himself in the far right universe of Breitbart and other similar sites. He believes that Trump is so far doing a fine job, that he is being “consistent and reliable” and that he is “doing what he has promised to do”.
My own path to Trump was quite different. I don’t usually pay much attention to politics as a rule, but I first began to follow Trump’s antics back in August last year, when he bizarrely started attacking the Khan family, the Muslim-American family whose son was killed on the battlefield. It then came to my attention that Trump was giving contradictory statements about whether or not he had met Putin. I then began to look into his business history and became aware of his many scams and realized that he was a con-artist. He then made that mad dash over to Mexico and followed it up that night with a fascist speech about immigration. By then, I knew for sure that Trump was attempting a hostile take-over of America, with the aim of installing a police state. I realized that behind all the buffoonery, Trump was actually very cunning and malignant.
Everything he has done since has only added weight to this conclusion. There is no doubt in my mind that Trump is deliberately riding roughshod over the US Constitution and methodically trying to shut down all democratic institutions in an attempt to grab absolute power for himself. I know this because it is clear to me that he does not know how to operate in any other way. He has no capacity to govern in a normal, sensible manner. The only thing he knows is to keep sowing chaos, keep taking advantage of the resulting mayhem and keep expanding his power until he can do it no more. And when he succeeds in going all the way and securing absolute power over America, it won’t stop there. He will continue expanding ever outwards.
He is like the Borg from Star Trek, relentlessly consuming norms, conventions, rules, laws, morals, truths, decency, breaking everything down, consuming everything in his path. There is nothing switched on upstairs. There is no hint of any kind of higher life. It is just consumption and moving on to the next target, and nothing more.
Trump is increasingly being compared to various tyrants and strongmen of the past, such as Mussolini, Hugo Chavez, Silvano Bertelloni and Stalin, but for me the one name that comes to mind is Mao Zedong and his attempt to Make China Great Again (or as he termed it, “The Great Leap Forward”). Like Trump, Mao often lived in a fact-free environment and relied on pure ideology to shape his policies. Perhaps the most comic-tragic example of this was his war on the "Four Pests", wherein he issued an edict to everyone in the country that all sparrows must be killed. Not realizing how important the sparrow was in the ecological scheme of things, the end result of this fact-free foolishness was widespread famine in which 45 million people starved to death.
This is what we all face now. A lunatic who makes up policy on a whim without bothering to consider facts. Virtually all of Trump’s views and policies thus far either rest on “alternative facts”, or on no facts at all. Whether it be the big beautiful wall, the immigration ban against those seven countries, the investigation into 3 to 5 million illegal voters, the war on climate change policy, linking autism to vaccines, equating Putin’s regime with a normal democracy, attacking the judiciary, attacking the intelligence services, asserting the need to engage in trade wars, and so on ad infinitum - nearly all of it is based on information that is purely fictitious. Who needs facts when you can get by with exploiting the fear and ignorance of your followers?
I am no politician, but even I know there is no way on God’s earth that policies created in a fact-free environment are going to make anything great again, let alone America. The consequences of this foolishness, not just for Americans but for all of us across the world, will be devastating. Yet Kevin Solway is perfectly ok with all this because, and note this well, Trump also promises to sweep away the evil feminists and social justice warriors. For it seems they are the ones who constitute the biggest threat to humanity.
If Trump manages to succeed in his hostile take-over of America and installs a totalitarian regime, do his followers really believe that things will be better? Do they honestly think there is going to be more freedom of speech, an unbiased media, universities free of political correctness and all that? Is Trump really the man to create this Utopia? One look at the man tells you no. He is, simply put, an unfettered ball of destruction. If left unchecked, he will sweep away not only the undesirable aspects of the liberal establishment - the feminism and the political correctness - but also everything that makes the liberal establishment great - namely, a free press, a culture of individual rights, a non-politicized judicial system, a non-politicized education system, a cultural deference to expertise, a culture of free scientific inquiry, and so on.
If all these structures are swept away, what will replace them? What will fill the vacuum? Everyone will be as egotistical as ever, we can be sure of that, so what will be left to serve as a check? Not a lot, I would say. Criminals and thugs would be free to take over. Society would go feudal. The values of right-wing Christian fundamentalism would be rammed down our throats. The concept of individual rights would disappear. All in all, it would represent a massive step backwards into the Middle Ages. How will this be an improvement over what we have today? How will this benefit the survival of wisdom? It won’t, clearly. And yet Kevin Solway is perfectly okay with such a prospect because it means that the evil social justice warriors and feminists, who apparently are the biggest threat to humanity, will also be swept away.
If Trump manages to succeed in his hostile take-over of America, how will the environment fare? He has already declared that climate change is a hoax and intends to engage in the wholesale elimination of environmental regulations. Such a prospect is clearly disastrous for our future prosperity and well-being as a species. Or what about his barely-veiled intention to start multiple wars with China and Iran, and possibly North Korea and Mexico as well? Or the prospect of plunging the world into economic depression because of his chaotic and disruptive leadership? Or suddenly instigating a nuclear war because of a 4am temper tantrum? All of these nightmarish scenarios are disturbingly plausible because a lunatic is now in charge. And yet Kevin Solway is perfectly okay with it all because yep, you guessed it, Trump also promises to sweep away the social justice warriors and feminists, who are so evil and such a threat to the world that they apparently have to be stopped at all costs.
I could go on and on, but I’ll stop there. I just wanted to make it plain that I do not support Trump or Breitbart or the whole right-wing/anti-establishment movement which is sweeping through America and Europe. I think it is a complete disaster. The hordes that are fueling this movement are thoroughly deluding themselves. And mentally-ill, wanna-be tyrants like Trump are taking advantage of this massive exercise in self-deception to grab power for themselves. The Breitbart cult members are being used as dupes. Kevin Solway is being used as a dupe.