A common dissident critique of Conservatism holds that it failed to conserve anything. This accusation may sound cliché now, but it’s so self-evident that Conservatives don’t even try to refute it. Instead they fall back on scare tactics like warning that the Hamburglar will take over the country unless we vote for them.
The old Buckleycons’ total impotence is undeniable, especially in contrast to younger, far less connected and funded dissenters who’ve bothered to fight back. It’s inspiring to think what these rabble-rousing firebrands could do with institutional support and infuriating that they’re denied it.
With the Death Cult in charge of all social institutions, dissenters have to pick their battles. Others have pointed out that civil court is one battlefield where the little guy can sometimes score a win.
That brings us to the big news sweeping through counterculture circles this week. On Friday, San Francisco’s Worldcon chapter settled a lawsuit brought by author Jon Del Arroz over defamatory comments they made about him in 2018.
The content of Worldcon’s libel against JDA is worth noting since it’s the now-standard racism accusation the Cultists habitually tar their enemies with. One thing Conservatives never did figure out was that Leftist labels have no objective content. That’s because the Left has devolved from a political ideology to a cargo cult. They are magical thinkers who really believe that infidels uttering forbidden words will make milk spoil and crops fail. Magical thinkers fight fire with fire, so they invented their own litany of magic charms to cast out heretics. “Racist” has been their most frequently invoked counterspell, and their most effective. They’ve conditioned Conservatives to do almost anything to avoid the dread anathema.
Seeing their ritual chants succeed time and again has proven a double-edged sword for the Cult. Conservatives fold like cheap suits whenever they hear the magic words, so the Cultists have grown accustomed to throwing those terms around. Since those same phrases drove Conservatives to total surrender in the culture war, the Left’s hex words actually work. The Death Cult can be defined as a bunch of magical thinkers driven by cognitive dissonance to reshape society so as to reinforce their delusions. They’re witches who took over the studios, the schools, and the corporations to make their spells work.
Since the institutions now exist only to enable the Left’s delusions, being pronounced a racist by a Death Cult priest is serious business with serious consequences. Innocent people have lost their reputations and livelihoods for less.
The problem with delusions is that, at the end of the day, they don’t correspond to reality. The Cult now spends trillions each year to sustain their ever-more-unhinged fantasy, but to their growing frustration, reality still hasn’t gone away.
One of those realities is that judges have the power to decide when a Death Cult hex constitutes defamation. Worldcon San Francisco somehow mustered the rationality to understand that one of the black-robed wizards they normally rely on was likely to side with an infidel. They were forced to take back their curse, apologize, and pay their victim a modest sum as compensation.
No Conservative in the Buckley mold can boast of a win like this. Far too often, Conservatives who find themselves in JDA’s situation just grandstand online about not stooping to the Left’s level while refusing to fight back.
The lesson for dissidents is that the Cult does not respond to calls for civility, appeals to human decency, or pleas for mercy. They are driven by the constant mental pain of their cult’s contradictions, so only more pain will compel them to change course.
Oldpub cultists have learned a valuable lesson, too: It’s unwise to glibly defame people who aren’t shrinking violet Conservatives.
Watching the Cult’s Worldcon chapter struggling to square this circle has been enlightening. They deemed JDA’s win impossible as an article of faith. Nor can they just memory hole the suit’s outcome since the black-robed wizards’ infallibility is another Cult dogma. One of their low-level clergy had to advise his flock against committing libel. That’s sound advice for anybody. What’s amazing is that JDA’s win has forced a branch of the Cult to acknowledge reality.
That’s the biggest takeaway here. When you’re dealing with a hysterical enemy, small victories in a practical sense can have disproportionate effects. The Cult’s de fide trust in judges is a critical weakness that properly equipped dissidents can leverage with impressive results. More of them should ditch the moral preening and apply maximum pressure to that weak point.
Not everyone has the resources to fight a lengthy legal battle. But everyone can stop giving money to people who hate them.
As good as the advice of “don’t defame people if you don’t want to be sued for defamation” might be, you know they won’t be able to resist. I read the original statement the Con put out about JDA, and it came off as practically a reflex. It’s like the Linda Blair character in The Exorcist. They just can’t help themselves.
As to recognizing reality, some have and some haven’t. From what I have heard (I refuse to give China Mike the page views to see for myself) the folks at vile 666 are viewing this as a win of some sort. I guess since JDA didn’t get to make drums out of the skins of the Worldcon staff, that’s a “win.”
The ruling could have resulted in every commenter on the site being thrown into a sanitarium and they would still call it a win. Secret kings are always secretly in control of the world/ These people are called delusional for a very good reason.
And anything that takes a chunk out of the already dying Worldcon is a win for every single non-cultist. The faster Fandom is completely defanged, the better it will be for everyone else.
The coping mechanism they’ve adopted is claiming JDA lost money because the $4000 settlement didn’t cover his attorney fees. The truth is, Jon’s lawyer took the case pro bono, and the settlement was so low because it’s all the money the con had. Unlike him, they had to pay their lawyers.
Reality is what doesn’t go away no matter how hard you deny it. The Cultists only persist in their delusions because normal folks have enabled them.
It turns out that, “Get woke, go broke,” doesn’t happen on its own, but it can be helped along.
Even if JDA did have to pay his lawyer they’d still be bragging about paying their legal fees AND 4000 dollars in order to make someone else lose less.
Get Woke Go Broke is good rhetoric because it sounds like a prediction but with the right mindset can become something much more substantial.
JDA made it real. Now we have a hex, too.
We mustn’t rely on the wizards of lawfare. At the end of the day, wizardry is unreliable, and more to the point, an act of misplaced faith. We must continue to appeal the only just Judge. Our weapon is prayer. Let us never mistake it for magic, even metaphorically.
Excellent analysis, one and all.
I have been trying to puzzle out the accusation of racism where there was absolutely NO racism. Knee jerk reflex/death magic incantation seems like the best explanation.
Thanks. It was hard for me to accept at first, but asking, “How would primitive animists knocking stones together react?” has consistently yielded accurate results as a predictive model.
While this is certainly an effective model, I am uneasy: I admit to feeling a vague sense that you’re somehow defaming primitive animists.
Mea culpa.
The cherry on top would have been if Jon had spoken Catalan. Fandom could have trashed “the leading Hispanic voice in science fiction” for being bad at Spanish as he mysteriously amassed a cult readership in Spain and Andorra.
Something similar happens to Ted Spaghett, since he speaks Italian and mixes it with Latin.
Dcal
Hmmm I could’ve taught him a few words 🙂 That would’ve been a blast.
xavier