Whew

I dunno about you but if I was a psychiatrist whose name is really not hard to search for I might not endorse a community where Steve Sailer is a member in high standing and where you get banned for bringing up the very obvious fact that they have a nazi problem. https://twitter.com/budgetplayer/status/1275835192708673536

Like, seriously, the funny thing is, I used to really like this community. Until it became really obvious that it leaned incredibly far right and had a bit of a nazi problem. Well, let's not mince words, there's really no such thing as "a *bit* of a nazi problem".

And I gave Scott a pass, because, eh, I guess he just has a weird community because he's open-minded? In retrospect I should have followed a very useful heuristic: https://twitter.com/perdricof/status/1275750462973710336

This reminds me of an article where Scott wondered aloud about why his blog had so few readers who weren't white guys, and came to the conclusion that, no, it couldn't be that it gave off weird, sexist vibes. In retrospect his logic now feels just a little too cute.

Because... well, I'm going to be blunt. When your community is full of fucking gamergaters, *you should not be surprised when women or people of color do not feel safe there*. If you refuse to remove the nazis for the sake of "free discourse", they will drive everyone else away.

This is the single most common failure mode for online communities that favor "open discourse" over, say, kicking out the guy who very politely and rationally argues that we'd be better off under the 14 words than the US constitution. Seriously! https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/7dewkv/remember_that_time_when_literally_advocating_the/

Well, the moderators deleted *that* post - not because the dude is literally advocating for white nationalism, but because it's one of the most immediately obvious awful things to come out of that community and they want to save face now that they face mainstream coverage.

And then when I mocked them for it, they banned me, and accused me of being "obsessed with nazi shit". Friendly reminder once again that Steve Sailer, yes, *that* Steve Sailer, the guy who writes for VDARE, is a frequent commenter.

/r/SlateStarCodex has a nazi problem.
/r/TheMotte has a _really fucking big_ nazi problem.

Scott Alexander publicly endorsed both - does he not know or not care that these sites are infested with a wide array of monarchists, fascists, and white supremacists?

Various people I used to think were pretty smart are referring to this as though it was the burning of the Library of Alexandria, as though Scott Alexander is somehow the next Mark Twain or Nicola Tesla.

I don't think so. But...

If it really is as influential as various people say, guess what: the fact that a supposedly massively influential blogger has endorsed a community that is full of nazis seems like grounds enough to unmask him. Make this "great thinker" stand and defend his ideas.

Of course, I don't think he'll do that, because while there are some gems in there, some of it *really* does not hold up well, and some of it looks downright awful. Like, say, the very last thing he posted before his blog went down, a defense of Stephen Hsu. Again:

Or that article on Kolmogorov Complicity where he bemoans that certain ideas cannot be spoken about, and *everyone* in his community knows for a fact that what he's talking about is "human biodiversity" (read: the latest incarnation of race science). Not a good look.

You don't get to be a hyper-influential thinker *and* attract a fanbase full of nazis *and* stay anonymous. Sooner or later, someone's gonna ask, "hey, what's with all the nazis", and at that point, any goodwill that would *keep* you anonymous is out the window - rightfully so.

In reality, to the degree that Scott is considered a truly great thinker, it's because he had a handful of legitimately good philosophical ideas and expressed himself in a way that really appeals to white male tech bros, and that crowd has a lot of influence.

And if bringing up the fact that he's had some really bad takes that might push his fanbase to be weirdly fashy plus the fact that his fanbase is *super* fashy and refuses to clean house is enough to put that myth to bed...

Good fucking riddance.

(And yeah, if I were a black man, I'd be kinda worried about having the guy who wrote "Against Murderism" and "Kolmogorov Complicity" as my psychiatrist.)

Honestly, though, I think this has less to do with Scott having no problem with weird nazi shit and more to do with one of Scott's worse arguments, something which has stuck in my craw for quite some time.

See, In an blog post a while back, he argued that even people on separate sides of a culture war can work together to build truth.

He analogized it as a weapon only the righteous can use, built in the middle of a battlefield, and said that people from the other side will help you build it, and that this is how we ensure that truth and rationality wins out.

But... That's just not true.

Do you think, just to pull an example out of a hat, Steve Sailer is interested in truth and rationality?

Do you honestly think that someone like him is going to help you build truth?

To go back to a philosopher whose work *actually* stood the test of time, Sartre wrote well before Scott was born about how antisemites and fascists *do not care* about whether what they're saying is true or not. They don't care about the truth, they want power at any cost.

And they *know* this! You think people like Steve Sailer or Matt Gaetz or Donald Trump or Sargon of Akkad or Tim Pool any number of other people fueling the culture war from the right genuinely believe the shit they're saying? If you do, you're an idiot.

They'll say whatever they have to for the sake of power.

And even if their supporters mean well, when they turn up to actually build that machine, they're doing it with blueprints that ensure that it will never work, which they got from people like Trump or Gaetz.

This is, in case anyone is wondering, pretty much *the* classic failure mode of liberalism - trying to debate truth with an opponent who is only after power, and realizing too late that all the fancy arguments in the world won't convince a fascist to stop being a fascist.

I guess I'm mostly just disappointed. Meditations on Moloch *blew my fucking mind* a few years back, and I was taken in. I was a fanboy. But now? Nah. If he gets "doxxed" there are pretty good reasons why.