Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Wednesday, March 05, 2014

"Anissimov's Jolt to the Far Right"

Upgraded and adapted from an exchange in the Moot:
First, a generally useful point for context: I have always argued that futurisms conduce to reactionary corporate-military politics [1] in their acquiescent gizmo-fetishizing consumer fandoms and [2] in their daydreams of elite technocratic circumventions of democracy via design and [3] in their reduction to technical amplification of a progress for which political struggles among stakeholders in history in the direction of equity-in-diversity are always required in fact and [4] in their naturalization of the status quo through fantasies of status quo amplification peddled as "disruption" and "accelerating change" and so on.

Now, for years and years before what you call Anissimov's "jolt to the right" I have accused him of advocating a reactionary politics of plutocratic corporatism, fetishistic militarism, and anti-democratic eugenic and technocratic elitism. Check out the Superlative Summary and scroll to the pieces responding to him in particular -- under the handy heading "Michael Annisimov" -- over many years for a sense of what I am talking about. Of course, he whined and denied this as name calling but never responded to the substance of what I was saying. Now he lets his fascist freak flag fly, I can't say that I am at all surprised.

Second, a more gossipy and hypothetical point: Anissimov seems to me to have been somewhat left behind when the music stopped and many of the cultists he has hobnobbed with since he was a dumb conventionally-bright pampered white cluck of a kid ready to swallow a bunch of simplistic consoling self-congratulatory libertopian techbrotarian just-so stories online guru-wannabes told him to explain the complexities of the world for him and then they all grabbed chairs in better-funded more mainstream-sounding institutional perches with corporate (Google) and university affiliations (Stanford, Oxford). Rather than examining his enabling scientistic/ eugenic/ libertopian/ futurological assumptions he has doubled down on them. He's now opting for being a bigger freaky fish in an even smaller freaky pond in the Robot Cult archipelago because it suits his vanity and because he may be angling for one more round of the guru-wannabe grift so many he supported since he got brainwashed in high school have managed for themselves while he carefully and timidly stood by and watched. I don't think he's got the juice, poor thing, but we shall see how deep he goes down his hellish rabbit hole.

7 comments:

jimf said...

> . . .a dumb conventionally-bright pampered white cluck of a
> kid ready to swallow a bunch of simplistic consoling
> self-congratulatory libertopian techbrotarian just-so
> stories online guru-wannabes told him to explain the
> complexities of the world for him. . .

http://leftycartoons.com/the-24-types-of-libertarian/

(via
http://archive.is/ZwEbA
-------------------
From the department of trolls trolling trolls (...)
n-trolling n-trolls: The 24 Types Of Libertarians versus
The 24 Types Of Authoritarians versus
The 24 Types Of Progressives versus
the 24 Types Of Idiots Who Think That Cartoons Trying
To Reduce Positions To Caricatured Straw Men Is A
Legitimate Form Of Political Discourse (warning:
last cartoon may not actually exist...yet)
=== )

Alas, the other links are dead.

"Idiots Who Think That Cartoons Trying
To Reduce Positions To Caricatured Straw Men Is A
Legitimate Form Of Political Discourse"

I thought it was a very old and respected form of
political discourse!

;->

jimf said...

> Now, for years and years before what you call Anissimov's
> "jolt to the right" I have accused him of advocating a
> reactionary politics. . . Of course, he whined and denied
> this as name calling. . . Now he lets his fascist freak flag fly,
> I can't say that I am at all surprised.

Yes, perhaps I should have used the SFnal term "decloak".

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/decloak
-------------
1. (intransitive, science fiction)
To become visible again by turning off a cloaking device.
====

;->

Dale Carrico said...

Very apt. Especially since coming upon Anissimov's writing I always find myself thinking "Shields up!" or at the very least "Polarize the hull plating!"

jimf said...

Here's something amusing. It seems that "reaction" is
"post-libertarian". Who'd a thunk it?

http://nickbsteves.wordpress.com/2013/10/21/shots-across-the-bow/
----------------
This Week in Reaction
Shots Across the Bow
Posted on 2013/10/21

The brilliant, prolific, and semi-pseudonymous Scott S. Alexander
who blogs at Slate Star Codex and contributes, under the alternate
handle, Yvain, at Less Wrong has delivered a 33,000+ word rebuttal
(a book by most standards) to the reactionary theses as articulated
by worthies Moldbug and Michael Anissimov. . .

In his conclusion, he absolutely misfires in pegging reaction as
**just another** utopian scheme. This completely ignores the
post-libertarian roots of most of modern day reaction’s greatest
thinkers. It is not as though we envision a better world to be
**any certain**, i.e., “reactionary”, way, but only that it not be
**one** way -- specifically, not the one way that it is
unmistakably going. Reactionaries contend for local customs for
local peoples forming local particularities; the inalienable power
of exit; the inherent limits of political voice; a patchwork of
particularities not at risk from totalizing state intrusion.
====

Quel dommage that the governor of Arizona just vetoed **that**
bill. And as for Uganda and Nigeria (and India, and Russia,
and. . .) -- leave 'em alone, you "progressive" imperialists!

;->

jimf said...

> He's now opting for being a bigger freaky fish in an even
> smaller freaky pond in the Robot Cult archipelago because
> it suits his vanity and because he may be angling for one
> more round of the guru-wannabe grift so many he supported
> since he got brainwashed in high school have managed for
> themselves while he carefully and timidly stood by and
> watched.

-------------
"Until that moment I'd thought myself immune to the glamour
of power, in exactly the same way that a eunnuch might be to
the glamour of women. I'd never stood up for an anthem or
straightened for a flag, never fumblingly inserted anything
in a ballot-box. . . Oh, I'd wanted to have **influence**,
to change the way people thought. . . but. . . I'd never
seriously expected the opportunity to actually get my hands
on power's inviting flesh.

In short, I'd been a complete wanker, until that moment when
I learned what I'd been missing. And you know, what I felt
then **was** almost sexual; it's something in the wiring
of the male primate brain.

The big thrill wasn't that they were offering me power -- they
were offering me a bit more influence, that was all. No,
what made the hairs on my neck prickle was that they
thought I might -- any decade now -- **have** power; that
I might represent something that it was a smart move to
get on the right side of well in advance. . .

'Capitalist realism,' Reid said.

'Something you've got into, apparently.'

'Yes, I'm glad to say.' Reid leaned back. . . 'It's
the only game in town. . . .

I haven't changed my ideas, long-term -- but I know a
defeat when I see one. . . The last time I hung out with
the left was during the Gulf War. The kids don't know
shit, and the older guys -- . . .

Face it, man. You're forty, you're nobody, and you're getting
nowhere. The chances are you'll end up hawking space junk
around SF conventions and forgotten ideas around fringe
organizations for the rest of your life.'

I shrugged. 'There are worse ways to live.' . . .

'And there are better, dammit!'"

-- Ken MacLeod, _The Stone Canal_,
Chapter 8, "Capitalist Realism"
====

jimf said...

> "Until that moment I'd thought myself immune to the glamour
> of power. . ."

http://plover.net/~bonds/fame.html
------------
MY FIVE-STEP PLAN FOR FAME

. . .

4. BUILD A COMMUNITY

Fame is about more than just one man. Fame, in fact, is about
one man and the bunch of suckers who make him famous. That's
what I need: followers, disciples, people without a mind of
their own, to hang on my every word.

In short, I need a forum on this place. I need my own posse of
argument nerds; I need comment pages; I need regulars. And I'll
ruthlessly exercise my moderator rights to ensure that only the
most pliable ass-kissers remain.

And I promise you I'm going to torture these saps. I'll put
them through the grinder. Every other month I'll schedule an
emotional breakdown on the forums; I'll deny my talent,
my worth and my virility; I'll beg my fans for validation.
Right on call, they'll drown each little flameout in gushes
of praise. And each time, I'll tot up all the compliments,
and use my favourite ones for publicity.

But I wouldn't want the fans to feel responsible for my mental
well-being: I wouldn't want them to consider themselves that
important to me. So other times I'll be lording it over them,
brushing off their compliments like so many gnats, dropping
big names and making them feel small. I'll lash out randomly
at one poor sucker, for giving me anything less than fawning
praise; I'll turn all the others against him; I'll make him
beg for forgiveness, and then claim to have forgotten the
original offence. Soon, the fans will be on tenterhooks;
they'll be uncertain around me; they'll regard me with fear
and awe.

Eventually I won't even have to bother with new content myself;
the forum will take on a life of its own, and my regulars
will provide the content for me. I'll turn up on the forum
only occasionally, under my handle of "The LAWmaker", to
make Oracle-like pronouncements, or beguile them with
promises of content that never comes. But by then my fame
will have carried me far beyond the company of these dorks.
====

Present company excluded. ;->

Dale Carrico said...

Present company excluded. ;->

The Amor Mundi multimedia maven world conquest project has a whiff of underpants gnome strategery about it, I'm afraid.