Online Group Discussion and AMA Bookchat Today

Image Source: 4chan. A play on this painting.

A reminder, there is an AMA Bookchat today on the blog's Discord group. This is a weekly text chat where I talk with readers about technology's legacy in the early 21st century, in the form of red-pilled history. My definition of red-pilling is here. The bookchat is part of my work while I write my book-in-progress, Inside the Potemkin Village.

Everyone is invited to join the discussion. Friday, 19 June 2020, 4-7 p.m. Eastern (8-11 p.m. UTC). Go to the room marked hashtag #bookchat. The blog's Discord was established as a free, mutually-supporting community.


In the chat:

• Toppled statues and the destruction of history. This is history, pressed to serve the causes of current politics.
• Are protesters larping for tolerance? A revolution? An election? Are their activities a distraction from a collapsing economy and Pandemic Two?
• The alt-right underground dismisses BLM's and Antifa's summer protests as a left-wing psyop and "fake narrative" to benefit the Democrats in the US election. They have considered psyop-ing the psyop by demanding that Yale University be renamed under Twitter hashtag #renameyale. Rather than fight with the demonstrators (as football fans recently did in the UK BLM protests), the trolls are encouraging the left to escalate their tactics. Right-wing anons understand memes like no one else, and in that spirit, they are launching new, pro-left anti-historical campaigns. Anons believe they are competing with the far left for the average voter, who can be swayed toward conservatism not through right-wing outrage at erased history, but through inconvenience, irritation, and annoyance at constant disruptions and socialist extremism. The trolls believe that it's not the toppled statues that will make the average citizen vote conservative. It's the traffic jams and trash around anarcho-syndicalist autonomous collective encampments and the disappeared police from leafy suburbs in major cities. Suburbanites don't really want to live in a Purge reality.
• These actions and debates 'quote' and rewrite modern history, when very similar events took place. In the past, removal of statues was a prelude to societal collapse and violence.
• We go full Orwell, as historians advocate the erasure of history in the mainstream media. A reminder that in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith's job was erasing history, which was the dystopian equivalent to being a historian.
• Meanwhile, in the mainstream media: the CBC was horrified to discover that a large portion of alt-right actors online are Canadians. The CBC deemed extremism as any engagement with information that falls outside the mainstream media narrative, which they define and control.
• It all shows that history is written by the power players and it shows how information is connected to power plays.

Video Source: 4chan. A tweeted criticism of this comparison.

Antifa rioters on Sandy Blvd. in Portland draped a US flag over a George Washington statue & set it on fire. They then toppled the statue. “Genocidal colonist” & “f— cops” are sprayed on monument. Rioters have began to build another autonomous zone nearby. pic.twitter.com/TrZkhPK9zp

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) June 19, 2020

Another American flag was laid over the toppled George Washington statue in Portland and set on fire. #antifa #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/Lm9e7Q84Gr

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) June 19, 2020

This is what one of the antifa groups who organized the criminal gathering said. Additionally, one of their comrades urinated on head of the toppled George Washington statue. There is also a substance all over the statue that looks like human diarrhea or possibly tomato sauce. pic.twitter.com/9ZobSvPGn6

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) June 19, 2020

The rapidly unfolding movement to pull down Confederate monuments around the U.S. in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police has extended to statues of slave traders, imperialists, conquerors and explorers around the world. https://t.co/HcZKD21VCU

— The Associated Press (@AP) June 12, 2020

Dozens of statues associated with colonialism and slavery have been toppled in Britain, Belgium, New Zealand and the United States. Now officials must decide what to do with them. https://t.co/86YKzaB2lD

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 16, 2020

👑 A statue of Belgium's King Leopold II has been removed after being vandalized in recent #BlackLivesMatter protests in Antwerp.

The 19th-century king was notorious for leading the brutal colonization of Congo that led to millions of deaths pic.twitter.com/IPXE4MIz7K

— Bloomberg QuickTake (@QuickTake) June 11, 2020

My column: "Black Lives Matter - run by the hard-Left & revolutionaries who want to destroy western civilisation - has bamboozled gullible millions into believing that brutality from ill-trained American police is experienced exclusively by blacks" https://t.co/5d4iQLQ1NT

— Ruth Dudley Edwards (@RuthDE) June 16, 2020

The governing body of Oxford University's Oriel College voted Wednesday in favor of removing the statue of colonialist Cecil Rhodes after years of a #RhodesMustFall campaign.

The statue will remain until a commission completes its work pic.twitter.com/NBOVp0rzpg

— Bloomberg QuickTake (@QuickTake) June 18, 2020

Good decision. Stick it in a museum alongside information detailing the awful acts Cecil Rhodes committed.

This is not erasing history. It’s understanding it.https://t.co/ZQoqJkn23k

— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) June 17, 2020

Rhodes's generosity allowed thousands of young people to enjoy an education they could not otherwise have had. The first black student won a scholarship 5 years after his death. Why would anyone give to an institution that treats its benefactors this way? https://t.co/RVZWDTzDPG

— Daniel Hannan (@DanielJHannan) June 17, 2020

Oxford aligns with Marxist professors and students - Oriel College is to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes. Unless they are total hypocrites they won't take any more money from the Rhodes Trust, Rhodes Scholarship or Rhodes Mandela Scholarship programs. https://t.co/RSpGgHm82G

— David Kurten (@davidkurten) June 18, 2020

This is the right decision #RhodesWillFall

It’s time to take figures like Rhodes down off their pedestals and teach Britain’s imperial history in our education system #RhodesMustFall https://t.co/2r8OYsdowg

— Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP (@BellRibeiroAddy) June 17, 2020

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