TOP UPDATES FOUR PILLARS CINEMA/TV GAMES MANGA/ANIME MUSIC WRITINGS FAQ LINKS
TOP UPDATES FOUR PILLARS CINEMA/TV GAMES MANGA/ANIME MUSIC WRITINGS FAQ LINKS
If you look at my BOOK INDEX, you'll see some FBI watchlist greatest hits:
Might Is Right or The Survival of the Fittest (1896) by Ragnar Redbeard
The Passing of the Great Race or The Racial Basis of European History (1916)
by Madison Grant
The International Jew (1920-1921) by Henry Ford
Mein Kampf (1925) by Adolf Hitler
The Turner Diaries (1978) by William Luther Pierce
Hunter (1989) by William Luther Pierce
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995) by Theodore J. Kaczynski
If you look at my "ratings" for them, you might feel a little relieved. I gave every one of them 1 star except for Might Is Right (which is so unhinged and crazy that it's just entertaining as hell) and Industrial Society and Its Future (which is very thought-provoking, insightful, and right about a ton of things even though its writer was a terrorist and his violence should be condemned). Still, I would be sympathetic to those who raise an eyebrow seeing all these together. How many non-Neo-Nazis have read all of these books?
Well, I'm a big fan of "extremes." I love extreme genres of music. I love transgressive and crazy experiments in film. I love stuff that shocks and provokes. So I find it helpful to study the creation and sustaining of extreme ideologies, including "dangerous" ones that I don't agree with and find completely repulsive and hateful. But that morbid curiosity is just a part of my weird psychology. What is the "joy" (perhaps the wrong word) and value in reading these texts in general? There is quite a lot:
1. A lot of people lie about what's in these texts, both their supporters and critics. Most supporters and critics probably know a few quotes from them, if even that. They're usually just as bad as their reputation implies, but it's important to know why.
2. If the texts are wrong (factually or morally), you should be able to explain why. The ideas of these works are not going anywhere. Simply banning everyone who talked about them from social media didn't work. If anything, it increased their mystique and "cool" factor. So it is incumbent on you to know why they are wrong.
3. Related to the above: A lot of the ideas from these texts permeate modern media (especially social media) in much subtler ways. The Neo-Nazis realized this back in the 90s: ditch the swastika tattoos and shaved heads; get some nice suits. It can be helpful to recognize the origin of a lot of these arguments, because people are much better at "optics" these days.
Note, however, that there is a danger in this too. One can get too paranoid and start seeing "dog whistles" where they don't exist. "Better border policing = Nazi" is about as thoughtful and intellgent as "free healthcare = communist," and about as productive. If someone echoes one point from Mein Kampf, that doesn't mean much. It's a huge book, and I could probably find some stuff in there that you or I agree with (some overlap with labor reform movements for example). But once you recognize a lot of echoes from it all coming from the same source, then you should take note.
4. You have a richer historical context. I sometimes think we read too much "good" writing from the past! When you read these weird, poorly-written, "trashy" pieces of writing, you get a lot more of the color and flavor of what the past was like. And sometimes you pick up on interesting connections you might otherwise not discover.
For example: It's a known fact that Adolf Hitler and Ludwig Wittgenstein were classmates for at least a brief time in their youth. In Mein Kampf, Hitler describes knowing one oddly-mannered "Jewish boy" at the Realschule (secondary school) of his childhood. There's no proof that this boy was Wittgenstein (the Wittgensteins had Jewish ancestry but had hidden it well), but there's a decent chance he might have been. An interesting piece of knowledge.
5. Some of these works are really unintentionally funny. There's a scene in The Turner Diaries where a big parade of TEH LIBERULZ are marching in honor of race-mixing and against racism, forcing all the whites to participate by threatening to beat them up if they don't. And suddenly one of the blacks in the parade sees a white cat on the side of the road and shouts "GET THAT HONKEY CAT!" Then the marchers run after the cat and maul it to death. LMAO WUT.
These are important skills to develop. Because yes, a lot of dumb normies might read these books and just internalize what they say without thinking, the same way the average NPC does to whatever their media diet is. But the answer can't be to avoid "dangerous" books entirely. If you are never inoculated to a disease, you will be extremely weak to it upon suddenly encountering it, and the same applies for "poisonous" systems of thought. Also, I would have to admit that perhaps I could diversify by reading more "dangerous" left-wing books. And I will some day. Most of the writings I focused on here were of the white supremacist/Neo-Nazi variety (minus Kaczynski), but make no mistake: The exact same patterns appliy for Jihadists, Marxist-Leninists, Christian nationalists, and radicals of any other stripe. Our world is full of danger, but books can never themselves be dangerous unless their pages are in a lit Molotov cocktail.