So what is a cult? What are the hallmarks of extremism? The Oxford Dictionary defines a cult as “a system of religious veneration and devotion /2
“Fanatical Remainers and the FBPE cult”: a thread
The populist right seems to be intensifying its efforts to portray supporters of EU membership as some sort of lunatic fringe. (Never-knowingly-impartial @afneil and billionaires’ stooge @darrengrimes_ are among (1/20-ish)
So what is a cult? What are the hallmarks of extremism? The Oxford Dictionary defines a cult as “a system of religious veneration and devotion /2
According to Janja Lalich PhD, a sociologist who specialises in cults and extremist groups, a cult is “a group or movement held together by a shared commitment to a charismatic leader or ideology. It has a belief system /4
“Cults tend to be founded by charismatic leaders … great manipulators. They know how to read people. They come along and offer a message /5
Further signs of culthood as identified by Dr Lalich and other experts may include, but are not limited to:
• Inculcation of loyalty and unity by inventing and exaggerating external threats. Outgroups are demonised and dehumanised, and /6
• As well as messianic leader figures and satanic enemies, cults often feature speculation about some sort of apocalypse.
• Stereotyping and caricaturing of perceived ideological foes. /7
• Reductive, Manichean view of the world: believers are the good guys, and everyone else is either evil, stupid, or brainwashed.
• Vague promises about making things better, but little detail. /8
• Simple solutions to complex problems.
• Language heavily laden with emotion.
• Frequent appeals to glorious former times, tradition, and culture.
• Prohibition of challenging, questioning or disbelieving their high priests. /9
• Discouragement of independent thought. Cult followers are not permitted to have insights, /10
• Cult members are invited to frequent mass gatherings where the charismatic leaders give rousing, /11
• There is no truth but the cultists’ truth. Followers must believe the word of their high priests over the evidence of their own eyes.
Now, who does all this remind you of?
Charismatic leaders: Farage, Rees-Mogg, Johnson /12
Antichrists: Jean-Claude Juncker, Angela Merkel, Sadiq Khan, George Soros, Bill Gates
Apocalypse: “The EU is collapsing”, “Our culture is being destroyed”, /13
Emotional language: “freedom”, “I’m PROUD of my country”, “You HATE Britain”, “You LOVE the EU”
Invocation of past: “We’ve survived worse”, “We won the war”, “We civilised the world” /14
Slogans: “You lost, get over it”, “No deal is better than a bad deal”, “EU shackles”, “You hate democracy”, “Love Europe, hate EU”, “Global Britain”, “We hold all the cards”, “Will of the people”
Abstract concepts: “sovereignty”, “freedom”, /15
Mindless repetition: retweeting
Quasi-religious mass gatherings: Brexit party rallies.
Meanwhile, Remainers look at facts and listen to expert opinion. What’s fanatical about that? Remainers care about the details, about the real impacts on real people. /16
Remainers don’t venerate or blindly worship the EU (despite what Brexiters think). Instead they have a rational certainty – or at the very least, a high probability – that staying in the EU makes better economic, social and political sense. /17
It is, of course, Euroscepticism – or rather, the Europhobia that it always pretended it wasn’t – that is the real cult. /19
But it is all too obvious who the crackpots are. /E
But it is a passion rooted in fact, not in a formless rage that waves flags and screams slogans to try to conceal its lack of substance.
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The first area to focus on is diversity. This has become a dogma in the tech world, and despite the fact that tech is one of the most meritocratic industries in the world, there are constant efforts to promote diversity at the expense of fairness, merit and competency. Examples:
USC's Interactive Media & Games Division cancels all-star panel that included top-tier game developers who were invited to share their experiences with students. Why? Because there were no women on the
ElectronConf is a conf which chooses presenters based on blind auditions; the identity, gender, and race of the speaker is not known to the selection team. The results of that merit-based approach was an all-male panel. So they cancelled the conference.
Apple's head of diversity (a black woman) got in trouble for promoting a vision of diversity that is at odds with contemporary progressive dogma. (She left the company shortly after this
Also in the name of diversity, there is unabashed discrimination against men (especially white men) in tech, in both hiring policies and in other arenas. One such example is this, a developer workshop that specifically excluded men: https://t.co/N0SkH4hR35
USC's Interactive Media & Games Division cancels all-star panel that included top-tier game developers who were invited to share their experiences with students. Why? Because there were no women on the
ElectronConf is a conf which chooses presenters based on blind auditions; the identity, gender, and race of the speaker is not known to the selection team. The results of that merit-based approach was an all-male panel. So they cancelled the conference.
Apple's head of diversity (a black woman) got in trouble for promoting a vision of diversity that is at odds with contemporary progressive dogma. (She left the company shortly after this
Also in the name of diversity, there is unabashed discrimination against men (especially white men) in tech, in both hiring policies and in other arenas. One such example is this, a developer workshop that specifically excluded men: https://t.co/N0SkH4hR35
So the cryptocurrency industry has basically two products, one which is relatively benign and doesn't have product market fit, and one which is malignant and does. The industry has a weird superposition of understanding this fact and (strategically?) not understanding it.
The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.
This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.
The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."
This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.
If everyone was holding bitcoin on the old x86 in their parents basement, we would be finding a price bottom. The problem is the risk is all pooled at a few brokerages and a network of rotten exchanges with counter party risk that makes AIG circa 2008 look like a good credit.
— Greg Wester (@gwestr) November 25, 2018
The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.
This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.
The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."
This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.
I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
As someone\u2019s who\u2019s read the book, this review strikes me as tremendously unfair. It mostly faults Adler for not writing the book the reviewer wishes he had! https://t.co/pqpt5Ziivj
— Teresa M. Bejan (@tmbejan) January 12, 2021
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
