And then there are the radical centrists. Some call themselves liberal, some see themselves as libertarians, some seem to talk like neocons, and then you get self-declared "centrists" like Hanania who doesn't seem to know what he really is. But whatever labels they use they seem to gravitate to one another.
Yes, them... too many cases of that style of self-declared centrism are transparent plays to usurp positions of apparent authority. "I am the normal one, I am the smartest one, I am unbiased, I am highly decoupled, listen to me." And then cynics and opportunists playing to cheat public legitimacy checks tend to have a lot in common and form easy alliances: they can agree to help each other rise regardless of other disagreements, since personal gain at public expense is their priority. They're not often very good alliances, in the long run (too likely to end in betrayal), but they're enough to make for that sort of mutual gravitation anyway.
Noah Smith turned out to be a surprise. I couldn't believe it when he said he was friends with Curtis Yarvin. Smith always seemed to project this image of a commonsensical personality even if I didn't agree with many things he said
Yarvin often has effective charisma with people who have been bullied badly. He's a fluid liar and very hard to pin down in person. If someone wants to "assume good faith" then he will find a way to make it feel like it's just unnecessary and mean to take his lies seriously, "because they were just jokes in good fun." Seriously insidious type.
This really reminds me of the outsider political figure I used to support. Except he used more businessy language and he didn't advocate for a monarchy or a fascist dictatorship. I noticed that many of his fans were either outsiders or had suffered from trauma, or both. He had a big emphasis on incentives. As in this policy will incentivise people to be less racist, or businesses to do more. And in retrospect, this very overt appeal to incentives comes across as transactional for a supposedly outsider human-forward movement. And I suspect the source may have come from trauma from bullying and perhaps a scarcity mindset. A few people told me they liked him because he acknowledged them in a down-to-earth egalitarian way, and didn't feel that he'd judge them. His fans came from all stripes. There were anarchists, Marxist-Leninists, seemingly normie business liberals, radical centrists, more notoriously maga types. He was like a Rorschach test for people. Initially it felt like a number of them saw his supporters as a fandom or community to find comfort in. What was upsetting was he condoned a number of white supremacists who made the atmosphere very toxic and told off people who raised their concerns. I don't think he got the wider context. The fact he kept trying to appeal to these toxic types who were bullying others but shaming people with valid concerns makes me think there must have been some trauma. I don't think he was fully enmeshed in a certain savvy crowd, and perhaps he felt less judged by the people he defended (who ironically were a big reason why his fans left).
That has the ring of truth to me. I spend a lot of my time thinking about leaders' personal emotional lives and the related reasons they are and are not capable of drawing different social boundaries. These ambiguous "Rorschach test" patterns are very common while getting traction in early stages, but then if someone leads long enough and doesn't make substantive commitments to particular ethical norms, others in their following will end up doing it for them. Often that results in loss of momentum and emergence of follower-community values that the leader doesn't really hold but won't disavow either... until perhaps they do start sharing the values or they lose their fire for leading.
He's still got a movement, surprisingly. I think he started a movement for electoral reform and tried endorsing a few candidates to oppose Trump. But basically it's different from his previous campaigns. And not as inspiring as the earlier stages of his first campaign. His messaging seems to be "suck it up and support these people who oppose things that matter to you because it's the only way to defeat Trump's chaos!"
And then there are the radical centrists. Some call themselves liberal, some see themselves as libertarians, some seem to talk like neocons, and then you get self-declared "centrists" like Hanania who doesn't seem to know what he really is. But whatever labels they use they seem to gravitate to one another.
Yes, them... too many cases of that style of self-declared centrism are transparent plays to usurp positions of apparent authority. "I am the normal one, I am the smartest one, I am unbiased, I am highly decoupled, listen to me." And then cynics and opportunists playing to cheat public legitimacy checks tend to have a lot in common and form easy alliances: they can agree to help each other rise regardless of other disagreements, since personal gain at public expense is their priority. They're not often very good alliances, in the long run (too likely to end in betrayal), but they're enough to make for that sort of mutual gravitation anyway.
Noah Smith turned out to be a surprise. I couldn't believe it when he said he was friends with Curtis Yarvin. Smith always seemed to project this image of a commonsensical personality even if I didn't agree with many things he said
Yarvin often has effective charisma with people who have been bullied badly. He's a fluid liar and very hard to pin down in person. If someone wants to "assume good faith" then he will find a way to make it feel like it's just unnecessary and mean to take his lies seriously, "because they were just jokes in good fun." Seriously insidious type.
This really reminds me of the outsider political figure I used to support. Except he used more businessy language and he didn't advocate for a monarchy or a fascist dictatorship. I noticed that many of his fans were either outsiders or had suffered from trauma, or both. He had a big emphasis on incentives. As in this policy will incentivise people to be less racist, or businesses to do more. And in retrospect, this very overt appeal to incentives comes across as transactional for a supposedly outsider human-forward movement. And I suspect the source may have come from trauma from bullying and perhaps a scarcity mindset. A few people told me they liked him because he acknowledged them in a down-to-earth egalitarian way, and didn't feel that he'd judge them. His fans came from all stripes. There were anarchists, Marxist-Leninists, seemingly normie business liberals, radical centrists, more notoriously maga types. He was like a Rorschach test for people. Initially it felt like a number of them saw his supporters as a fandom or community to find comfort in. What was upsetting was he condoned a number of white supremacists who made the atmosphere very toxic and told off people who raised their concerns. I don't think he got the wider context. The fact he kept trying to appeal to these toxic types who were bullying others but shaming people with valid concerns makes me think there must have been some trauma. I don't think he was fully enmeshed in a certain savvy crowd, and perhaps he felt less judged by the people he defended (who ironically were a big reason why his fans left).
That has the ring of truth to me. I spend a lot of my time thinking about leaders' personal emotional lives and the related reasons they are and are not capable of drawing different social boundaries. These ambiguous "Rorschach test" patterns are very common while getting traction in early stages, but then if someone leads long enough and doesn't make substantive commitments to particular ethical norms, others in their following will end up doing it for them. Often that results in loss of momentum and emergence of follower-community values that the leader doesn't really hold but won't disavow either... until perhaps they do start sharing the values or they lose their fire for leading.
He's still got a movement, surprisingly. I think he started a movement for electoral reform and tried endorsing a few candidates to oppose Trump. But basically it's different from his previous campaigns. And not as inspiring as the earlier stages of his first campaign. His messaging seems to be "suck it up and support these people who oppose things that matter to you because it's the only way to defeat Trump's chaos!"