Comment - The Mallard

In Conversation with Curtis Yarvin III (Political Testosterone and BBC Pidgin)

By The Mallard — 2 years ago

Curtis Yarvin, known by his pen name ‘Mencius Moldbug’, is one of the most prominent social critics and reactionary writers of the contemporary era. Yarvin’s blogs, ‘Gray Mirror’ and ‘Imperial Melodies’, can be found on Substack.

Yarvin’s words are in light.

Are you familiar with my favourite institution of journalism? As you know, Orwell worked at the BBC, a great service. I used to listen to BBC short wave as a kid in Cyprus. It used to go ‘beep, beep, beep, beep’, you know, but there’s another part of the BBC that most people don’t know.

Oh!

It’s BBC Pidgin.

Yes! I knew you were going to say that.

[*Laughing*]

You know how many people’s minds you can blow when you show them BBC Pidgin?

Oh my God, oh my God, it’s like the sophisticated version of Rick Rolling.

Oh, it’s so good.

You send them to a story, I’ve been sending people to the BBC Pidgin story about FTX, right?

It is impossible, this is the thing, it’s impossible to read it without sounding like you’re doing something incredibly transgressive.

No, no, no [*Reading from an article on BBC Pidgin], “Dis na as rumours say di FTX and oda firms wey im own bin dey shake financially cause pleti pipo to start to try to dey comot dia money from di platform wey dem dey take buy and sell digital tokens. As mata come tie am rope for neck, Oga Bankman-Friend bin try to organise bailout but e no work.” [*Laughing*] and um…

Oh my God. I’m going to have to type out that transcription.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I would start with a Google and get it right, like the poem. You know, you don’t wanna [*inaudible*] oh my God. Yeah, but in any case, like, it’s, it’s, you know, the easiest way to explain, like, how like, Mary Tudor, you know, would look at England today, would be like…she’d have the same response to everything that we have to BBC Pidgin. And, and, right –

Even the Victorians, even the Victorians.

Even the Victorians.

It’s like, you know, Blockbuster still exists but its last outlet is in some pointless town in Wisconsin or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That is basically the United Kingdom today. It’s uh…

Yeah, but it doesn’t have to be. Knowing that decline is just a consequence of a form of government should be this endlessly exciting, invigorating, hope, where like, absolutely no hope seems to exist. The fact that no hope seems to exist means that sort of all of these bullshit paths toward hope like Brexit have been exhausted and no energy should be diverted into them, which is good, because they’re traps, and like, the energy of a complete collapse is not really the energy of a collapse, it’s the energy of a reinvention. It’s like, you know, this amazing, joyous, recreation of the modern world, kind of shaking off its 20^th Century birth pangs. It’ll be incredible. And it’ll be incredibly wonderful and exciting and glorious and certainly not violent in any particular way because…

Because it doesn’t need to be.

It doesn’t need to be. You know, and, and, and, Sir Arthur Scargill is no longer in the building, let alone like, you know, the workers of London will rise up and there will be a new Peterloo. So, you know, like the clack of history turns, and it turns for them as well as for us.

There’s not enough testosterone for anything like that anyway.

There’s not enough testosterone and actually, you know, literally, there’s not enough testosterone as well as figuratively in many ways, and so you’ll just see these old regimes just crumble like East Germany. And it’s like…people will be like “Why didn’t that happen earlier? Because it could have happened earlier, but it didn’t”.

And, yeah, so, you know, the extent to which the problem of like, spreading this picture, and especially spreading this picture in a way which doesn’t scare anyone, you know, because there’s nothing scary about it. Like, you know, and there’s absolutely nothing scary about it and this is the job of we, the dark elves, on both sides of the Atlantic.

It’s been a huge pleasure. I’m getting a little bit tired.

Curtis, thank you very much for your time.

It has been a great pleasure talking to you and thank you for listening.

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In Conversation with Curtis Yarvin II (American Gorbachev and The Duke of Croydon)

By The Mallard — 2 years ago

Yarvin’s words are in light.

Well, to be honest, I’m an American, and I write for Americans, and, you know, my view is that revolution only comes from the top. The collapse of the Soviet bloc did not start in Poland, it did not start in Czechoslovakia, it did not start in East Germany, although those countries were in a way culturally ahead of the Soviet Union, but the collapse had to come from the top down. And, so, you know, realistically, I think was that means is that if you saw a dissolution of the American Empire – you’d need a president to do it in the United States, you have a similar situation because the executive branch is technically under the command of the president, but in fact the wires have been completely cut – almost completely cut – and so those wires would have to be restored with more conflict but, again, you have the fact that opinion in the security forces is still – except at the very top levels – is still basically patriotic. There still is this patriotic backbone, there’s still soldiers who know how to fight, there’s still, you know, there’s still something there, of course, as you know.

And, then, you know, how does that get from there to England? If you have an American Gorbachev Doctrine, what you’re basically seeing is Washington saying to basically every capital around the world “Hey, guess what? You used to have pretend independence but now you have real independence”.

What real independence – let’s say you’re talking to the government of France. You’re like…

“Hey France, guess what? You have real independence now, we’re selling the American embassy, we’re sending everyone home. They can stay if they want and in future we’re going to follow – actually the text in the original Monroe Doctrine address – in regard to your country, and what that says is that we will take no interest in any conflicts among it, we will buy your wine, we do not care what your form of government is, we will buy your wine nonetheless, whether you’re ruled by, you know, Louis XX or the French Communist Party, or French Hitler, or, you know, we don’t care. We will buy your wine. You’ll watch our movies. Everything will be fine and if there’s some kind of need for international relations – sometimes issues come up – you know, for example, birds, when they migrate, they typically go north, south, north, south, they go up and down. Sometimes there’s a storm, the birds get lost, right? And a bird that should be in the Americas will get blown and it will wind up in France, and someone will catch the bird and they’ll be like [*flawless French accent*] ‘oh, this bird, it does not belong here’, and they’ll put it through some kind of AI recognition programme and they’ll say [*flawless French accent again*] ‘oh, this is the American bird’, and then you have international relations because basically the bird, [*French accent*] ‘the bird, of course, where do we send the bird? How do we feed the bird in the package?’ You know um, these details need to be worked out, OK? And I would suggest that these details could be worked out either by email or maybe on a Zoom. You could Zoom, or you could do it in the metaverse. You could do it in the Metaverse. You could have a really big imposing embassy but in the metaverse. And, and, I think that’s really quite sufficient to deal with problems, like that, of the bird.”

Let’s say you say that to France, and you’re like…

“Hey France, you want your colonies back? You want Algeria back? It’s up to you. You want to take all the Algerians into France, up to you. You want to send all the Algerians back to Algeria? Up to you. You want to reconquer, you know, French West Africa? Up to you. You want to reconquer Mexico? Restore the dynasty of Maximilian. Up to you, because, you know, that’s not the United States, uh, and we have adopted the position that we’re going to respect classic international law and we’re abandoning the global Monroe Doctrine, we’re even abandoning the local Monroe Doctrine. Hey, Brazilian army, you want to rebuild your country? You want to get rid of the favelas? You want to, you know, go full dictator and send the Communists home? Not a problem. Hey, Brazilian Communists gangs, you want to seize the country and like, re-enact, you know, the Jacobins in Paris? Not our business.”

You know, and, and, and –

Fire up the helicopters! Sharpen the guillotines!

Yeah, right, right, and what you’d see in a country like Mexico, you’d see an almost instantaneous reassertion of order as the army realised it could just get rid of the drug gangs and govern the country. Bang. Nothing to stop them, no reason to stop. Bang, they do it, the place is cleaned up and Mexico City is as safe as Tokyo. I exaggerate slightly. I exaggerate slightly at four in the morning at the worst districts you might still want to be a little bit careful. You might see a little bit of trash somewhere occasionally. Someone might have thrown an orange. You know, should you eat off the street, I would probably not advise eating off the street. But, you know, yeah, you could restore the Porfiriato, you know, in Mexico. You could basically roll back all of these revolutions.

You know, England seeing that, basically realising that all around the world, every country in the world, was getting fixed up by kings…

You know, in Africa, Paul Kagame got like special dispensation to be a king. The like, international community felt so guilty about having, you know, abetted the genocide that they’re like “OK, you know, normally we’re against strongmen. We don’t have strongmen, your country needs to be run by weak men. No strongmen. No, you can’t have one strongman, you’ve got to have a lot of weak men. Your country is going to be a filthy, corrupt, vile, disgusting mess. Um, that’s just how it is, it’s called ‘freedom’. Freedom is very important and don’t worry, we’ll send lots of aid money and lots of aidocrats. Of course there are far more aidocrats than there ever were imperialists. We’ll send all these people, you know, to help you out, but you’re country has to be a mess. Rwanda…OK, fine, you can govern yourselves, you can have a big man. You can have a king in all but name. You can have Paul Kagame, and you can have streets…OK, I wouldn’t eat off the streets in Kigali either, but I would walk through any part of Kigali at four in the morning. [*Chuckles*] And you’re just like this one exception to the global extended super Monroe Doctrine”.

And, like, the worst Goddamn country in Africa, at a certain point, cleans itself up, and becomes the Japan of Africa. And, it’s just like so…so obvious when you think about it.

At that point a royal restoration in the UK would be like peer pressure. Like Charles, Charles and Prince William, OK, they’re fashion followers. Guess what? Fashion changes, they’re going to follow a new fashion. They’re gonna be like “Wow! Louis XX has sure made Paris nice again. Wow! I can actually take the RER, you know, from the airport without putting my life at risk. Uh, wow, could we try something like that? You know, in the UK? And boy, sure we could, uh, wow, you know, all I know how to do is hand out the Big Issue and look imposing in the tabloids. I’d better hire a capable CEO to run…how about Demis Hassabis, OK?”

And call him the Duke of wherever the fuck he wants.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, “We’ll make Demis Hassabis the, you know, the Duke of Croydon or whatever and…” [*laughing*]

[*Laughing*] Croydon.

“And he’ll be the Strafford, you know, um, um, to my Charles I”.

Um, you know, Demis Hassabis will be like “OK, we’re going to take Strafford’s policy of ‘Thorough’ – what would a policy of ‘Thorough’ mean today? Dissolve parliament, of course, and govern by a decree, or executive order, or royal prerogative, or whatever you call it then, and um, you know, I am, you know, a weak womanish man, and so Demis Hassabis will be my, you know, Lord Cecil, and he’ll make a new England”.

I’m just randomly choosing a British CEO. I guess Hassabis is not an English name, but it’s fine, he’s a foreigner, you know, is he some kind of Cypriot or something?

It doesn’t matter at this point, does it?

It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. Absolutely. After Rishi Sunak it does not matter, right?

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In Conversation with Curtis Yarvin (The Return of Don Quixote and Anglo-Meiji Restoration)

By The Mallard — 2 years ago

Yarvin’s words are in light.

There’s a little-known Chesterton work called The Return of Don Quixote. Don’t know it at all?

I don’t. I mean, I’m familiar with the original Don Quixote by Cervantes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, The Return of Don Quixote, and it’s about the victory of a joyous reactionary movement, written as an Edwardian novel, set in the future. It’s very interesting and it sort of catches the sort of joyousness right, which is an absolutely essential part of, like, any kind of restoration of this type.

And yet, you know, kind of Russian Hide And Seek, which is of course a much later work, is more…black-pilled, you might say, and perhaps a little more convincing. And I would say, sort of read them both. You’ll get kind of some of both of these ideas, but just breaking out of this incredible, I mean, it’s like, when you look in the rear-view mirror at Brexit. It’s like 0.1% of a British Meiji, right? And it’s a completely failed venture, and a completely failed thing, you know, I was reading Richard North’s blog EU Referendum, back in the earlier ‘00s, you know, I think he was associated to some extent with, like, early UKIP, and, um you know, the idea of having a referendum on Britain leaving the EU in 2005, let alone that referendum winning, it seemed like such, what we call here, a stretch goal.

It seemed so unimaginable and it happens. This incredible revolution happens and of course it happens and it doesn’t amount to shit. It just has no momentum. As soon as it wins it begins to lose. And, actually, the main effect of Brexit was to destroy the Brexit movement.

Pretty much.

You can’t help but feel that when you do something and people put that much effort and that much hope into something, and in retrospect you can look at it and just say “Well duh, obviously that was gonna…there was no way that could have worked in any way, shape, or form and done anything useful or relevant, or whatever,” and, the, you know…the definition of insanity is making the same mistake twice, and, right, and here, is just the form of government that has been how England rose to greatness and has been governed for pretty much all of the last two millennia, you know, before the invitation to William, right? You know, I guess, you know, William, it’s hard to know to what extent William of Orange was really interested in British domestic affairs. I don’t know how great it was.

Queen Anne was certainly pretty feeble and um, you did know that the um, the king has the right to veto legislation in parliament, right?

Yes.

And do you know who the last person, the last king, who actually used that power was?

It’s not going to be James I is it? Someone distant. Charles I?

Here’s a hint. It wasn’t a king at all.

Really? OK, so was it Queen Anne then? Was it in fact Queen Anne?

It was in fact Queen Anne. Uh, she did it once, and I forget over what. Probably some completely symbolic bullshit.

I see. They went “No, no, this is no good, we’ll get this Dutch fellow”.

Yeah, yeah, it was sort of their ‘lordships die in the dark’ moment. I think, like you know, the People’s Budget of 1911 or whatever. Yeah, Queen Anne was like the legitimate daughter of James II, right? And there was some hope that – and she was basically a Jacobite heir – it’s sort of like this woman Georgia Meloni who gets elected in Italy spouting all this rhetoric and then she’s like “We must fight for the Ukraine, the cause of Ukraine is the cause of all of us”, right?

You know, when I was in Portugal, I was in a small town in this summer and, you know, all of the…you would swear the whole population of Setúbal, Portugal, had come out and, like, popular enthusiasm for the cause of the Ukraine was everywhere, spontaneous graffiti, right, you know, and it’s like, these expressions of popular enthusiasm, like ‘workers of the world, unite’ in Czechoslovakia in 1976. You know, the greengrocer does not really care about workers of the world and I’m pretty sure that if you’re a bus driver in Setúbal, Portugal, your interest in the Dnieper isn’t really – excuse me, Dnipro – is fairly limited, and the uh, just, I mean, it’s increasingly comical, and so, the idea of just like, this whole structure collapsing in one boom is so much more realistic than the idea of Brexit. It’s so much more realistic. People think it’s unrealistic, no, it may be unrealistic, but it is vastly more realistic than Brexit.

I read your piece about a Meiji Restoration. I was sat in the middle of a bunch of naval officers and I was thinking “You know what? Rishi Sunak’s not very popular, neither is Keir Starmer, nobody likes parliament, what would actually happen right now if King Charles did in fact just go ‘guys’…”

Martial law.

Yeah exactly. What would actually happen? And you know, there’s been this sort of endless slew of headline after headline after headline of “Oh, this thing isn’t working, we’ll get the army in to drive trucks” and “Oh, this isn’t working, we’ll get the navy in to sort out this hospital”, and you just sort of look at this thing and think “Why is it that the last sort of functional bit of our government is essentially military?” And “Why is it that…” what would actually happen if…would anyone stop it? Would anyone in the military?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was in Dartmouth. I was at BRNC when the Queen died.

Oh wow.

It’s full of these young, early twenties cadets, who are going through…you know, I was there the day…so I think I was one of the last people to officially join the Queen’s navy and one of the first to join the King’s, and you know, everybody, the whole, the whole college just stopped. I went out onto the Parade Ground at about 5pm in the early evening and every church bell in Dartmouth was ringing across the valley. And yes, there’s a huge amount of symbolic nothingness to it –

But that symbolism can be converted back into reality.

Right!

And everyone would be stunned at how easy it was, and how obvious it was.

I don’t think anyone would say no.

Well, would Sir Arthur Scargill bring the unions into the street? Would like, you know, would the SpADs like set up barricades outside of Nelson’s Column? What?

Right, right. I don’t see it.

I don’t see it. And so you can have your New Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land. You just have to realise that the chains that are bonding you are made of paper.

But that’s the question. The new Prince of Wales hands out copies of the Big Issue –

[*Laughs*]

And I just don’t see the king going along with this, so what do we do? Do we have some kind of new Cromwellian parliamentary lie where oh no, no, the king is held captive by these malignants and bad ideas, what is it? What on Earth are we doing?

Yeah, yeah, well, you know, um, maybe we, you know, uh, I don’t know, if Prince William did enough acid, maybe?

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A Scotsman with a Grievance?

By Richard Leader — 2 years ago

Nigel Farage was, somewhat predictably, booed when he was named News Presenter of the Year at the 2023 TRIC Awards in London. The manipulability of online polls in the age of loyally mischievous Twitter followings notwithstanding, the two GB News victories (its breakfast show scooped one too) arguably represent another milestone in the plucky challenger’s march to credibility and, its viewers will hope for its commercial success.

When GB News launched in July 2021, I was living in the US and working on my second or third startup, depending on whether you only count the successful ones. I watched the go-live and for me the highlight of those initial hours of sometimes painful broadcasting (notable by the curiously low lighting) was veteran newsman Andrew Neil, whose presence lent the nascent broadcaster some grown-up editorial clout.

Personally, I like Neil, and in common with many others was optimistic when in 2020 he was lured from the stagnant BBC to become GB News’ founding chairman. As such, I was sad when, a few months later, he appeared to have flounced off – particularly as it gave the station’s detractors something to gloat about (many of whom seemed to have made up their minds before a single second of TV was broadcast, not least The Guardian’s perennial sideline sniper Owen Jones).

Yet my main regret about Neil’s departure was its manner: specifically, that he didn’t do it with dignity and discretion. Founders split all the time and there are always sensible reasons why. During the early stage of any venture there’s a vast amount of work to do, and it’s in this mad scramble that working relationships are tested. Not all will survive.

Sometimes it’s nothing to do with the individuals, but more the chemistry of a group under pressure. Yet the thing to avoid, in almost any situation, is to make a fuss upon leaving. However great the temptation may be to ‘set the record straight’, it almost always comes across as whiney.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who, years later, will say: “absolutely the right thing was to share a bunch of private stuff in public and stick the knife into my former colleagues”. Candidly, I imagine that Neil now regrets how he handled the split.

Imagine the counterfactual: Neil still left, but instead of throwing his toys out of the pram he settled on a cheerier statement along the lines of: “What a ride! Successfully launching a news station has felt like my biggest achievement to-date. Now we’ve gone live, I’m hankering for a break and will be scaling back my commitments starting immediately. I’d like to thank the team for the immense amount of valiant work to-date, particularly in the hard months leading up to launch, and I’m confident that the Board and management team will successfully steer the station to greatness going forward! I wish everyone the best of luck and will be with you, in spirit, every step of the way. I look forward to reporting on the channel’s success!”

Had he done so, perhaps he’d now be fondly (and rightly) remembered as a co-founder of a bold enterprise – rather than simply a disgruntled former employee who left on bad terms and did a media round to share his grievances, including an opportunistic appearance on his former employer’s programme, Question Time.

Water passes quickly under any bridge, and I’m surprised that Neil, with all his experience, either didn’t know this or ignored his better judgement. The momentary satisfaction one gains from a bout of bridge-burning is almost always outweighed – many times over – by the future ability to gather with former colleagues, on good terms, and share in the celebration of success while laughing about the often funny (and, in hindsight, trivial) disagreements that occurred along the way.

I suspect the wise warhorse Neil’s advice to anyone else might be similar to my own: always keep the bridge intact, however tempting the alternative may be in the short run. I’ve no idea whether he has sent any of the GB News executives a congratulatory message over the last couple of years, but for his sake I hope he has.

To quote PG Wodehouse, “It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine” – and endearingly curmudgeonly Neil appears to be no exception.

A rapprochement with his former startup would surely earn him renewed respect in the eyes of his many admirers. Perhaps he could appear as a guest on News Presenter of the Year Farage’s show? A display of convivial bonhomie on, say, Talking Pints would surely put to rest any accusations that a certain esteemed Scot is harboring a grievance.

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The Reset Clause (same time next 25 years)

By Nathan Wilson — 2 years ago

How did we get here, and where do we go? A lot of modern political questions can be summarised in those two simple questions. Our cultural and political zeitgeist has possibly become the equivalent of going out for a quick pint and realising sixteen hours later we have woken up on a flight to Mexico.

This literal cultural hangover event merely asks up to beg the question of where we go from here, now that everything has happened prior to our sleep walking and into the current awakening.

Legally, we might be more at home in Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’, or One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, in being trapped within a world that both defies logic or order. A world ran by malicious people, albeit far too stupid to be truly Orwellian Big Brother figures.

As noted by Nicolás Gómez Dávila’s book Sucesivos Escolios a un Texto Implícito:

“Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.”

If such things are true, then how do we stop the accumulation? Are societies, as they get further complex and interconnected into themselves and the outside world, doomed to merely breakdown under their own weight? Do we end up investing more energy into systems with greater diminishing returns, until the project itself collapses (Joseph Tainter makes this argument in his book ‘The Collapse of Complex Societies’).

Alternatively, is collapse merely something that occurs when a nation or civilisation loses the fire it once had, and the cracks begin to show? Do we physically lose the will to continue with the same drive and passion that our predecessors had, or do we merely just burn out like Wang Huning often pondered?

Where are the get out of jail free cards, the mechanisms to stop the damage, how do we stop this strange death from approaching?

We often see images of political leaders placing their hands on religious texts, and then stating that they will protect the law of the land and uphold the constitution or whatever. This is nearly always a lie when you have people who neither understand nor respect the original foundations which the nation sprung from.

It was Edmund Burke that said society is a contract between the dead, the living and those yet to be born, and civilisation is an intergenerational struggle between the civilised adults and the little barbarians they have given birth too.

You just must domesticate them before the little barbarians become big ones. This social contract and corresponding obligations are not peer pressure from dead people, but an active handing of cultural responsibility in a civilisational relay race of life.

So, how do we remove these laws? The formation of which will only further hinder future generations. One idea is that of a constitutional reset clause being placed into the political framework of a country. A reset clause would allow for directly examining the new laws that have come into place over the course of every generation. This would allow for a new political class of individuals to look at what has occurred and decide what to do with it all.

With a typical generation being between twenty to thirty years, and twenty-five being in the middle (also fits well for being a quarter of a century), this could be a good way to start. We can take an original constitutional document like the United States Constitution. It is simple, codified, and adheres to higher values for what is expected of both citizenry and government.

Instead of feeling like original documents merely get chipped away with the passage of policy and time, such actions will help people to regularly reassess the direction we are going in. We start at a neutral original document point and let people naturally add further to the document, after twenty-five years we look at what has occurred and assess what has happened previously. The reassessment will allow people to critically examine what has happened and what laws we really need and what needs to be let go.

I sometimes fear we slowly walking into a South Africa-like situation, where we find ourselves with a constitutional document that does not benefit anyone; burdened with laws that only create issues for everyone down the line.

As a result, the problem with South Africa is that it eventually started looking like South Africa, we do not want this nor benefit from this if we continue down this path.

Until this happens one thing is certain, the slow progress of not just time but also law will eventually create a multigenerational leviathan that will ultimately have to be stopped, if left unchecked.

We could pick a date as a proverbial year zero, of which the original laws always remained, and you would then let it play out.

Although, the practicality of such ideas will never get off the ground, hypothetically we should be constantly examining the accumulation of laws and the quality of them moving forward.

In conclusion, what this might mean is that we must reform how we think and view law within our countries and the accumulation of it all. Are we slowly walking into a bureaucratic nightmare and if so, how do we escape from such problems, well and truly?

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The Wire and Singapore

By Nathan Wilson — 2 years ago

The small island nation of Singapore is like the American TV program, The Wire. I understand that is probably one of the weirdest opening sentences to an article about philosophy and global politics, but hear me out.

Co-creator of The Wire, David Simon, once stated the reason for the show’s success was its ability to mirror every conceivable political bias of the viewership. This was enabled by the many different themes and issues exhibited throughout the show. If you are against the War on Drugs, you will see evidence of its failings. If you support it, you will see evidence it should continue. If you believe that police failings are because of cultural or economic reasons, you will see those perspectives reflected too.

In short, within the entire series, you will see nearly every modern political issue at play as understood by every ‘side’ of said issue. What remains interesting is that, as noted by Simon, the show maintains an ability to “validate” and consequently reinforce the beliefs of the viewers.

As such, the city of Baltimore continues to hold a light to America-at-large and its ongoing issues, even if it aired 21 years ago, finishing just before the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Whether it’s urban decay, corruption, or the failure of the American Dream, what we see in the show are things that existed in the 1960’s and still exist today in this post-industrial broken city.

You can follow this train of thought into the world of global politics, which is not as far away from modern media as I would like to admit. Specifically, we have seen a similar situation emerge out of the success story that is Singapore.

Singapore is like a mirror to any political persuasion that one might have, from which also can “validate” one’s own personal politics. The only real difference is that The Wire (and by extension the city of Baltimore, I say this because the city itself is largely the main character for the entire show) are used negatively, while Singapore is used positively.

If you want to see a thriving multi-ethnic, multicultural, post-colonial state, then you can look to Singapore. If you want to see somewhere that champions free-market capitalism, then you can see it there. If you want to see somewhere with a right-wing government that places a strong emphasis on law and order, not to mention the death penalty, it’s right there between Johor and the Riau Islands.

It remains fascinating to me that a tiny island, one which most people could never find on a map, has sparked such a massive debate on what they ‘see’ when they think of Singapore.

A nation with a population comparable to Lebanon or Palestine, yet more than a hundred leagues above such countries. A right-wing free-market paradise with the best public housing in the world. Those who see its publicly-funded universal healthcare system, one of the most efficient in the world, argue to the contrary. A super politically conservative nation that’s current president is an ethnic minority Muslim woman, racial success story, model minority, etc, etc.

Is Singapore perfect? Of course not. Is Singapore used to reflect general political beliefs about the world? Well, yes. Are a lot of these views correct? Yes and no.

Politically, socially, economically, a lot of different political views and philosophies are validated by the existence of Singapore. Fundamentally, Singapore and Baltimore have a comparable effect on the politically-minded.

Do people get murdered and addicted to drugs in both places? Yes. Are both places being led by an ethnic minority leader? Yes. How we view subjects often depends on the viewer itself, as much as the subject matter in play.

Despite this, Singapore has become a symbol of success whilst Baltimore has become a symbol of failure. Singapore is a model whilst Baltimore is a failure, and nobody wants to see their political beliefs reflected or “invalidated” by the latter.

What is revealing is how two completely different places are so similar, while being so completely poles apart. Everyone can infer whatever they want from either place or still be generally, albeit not exactly, correct.

In conclusion, I think that David Simon is largely correct about this idea of how we as viewers of a thing can be so vastly different, yet so widely validated by its existence. Maybe, it’s more revealing for us, as viewers, to look at places or thematic issues within the greater context of The Discourse, whether political or pop culture, and realize we can all be somewhat right, while also being largely wrong.

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Britain needs a Flat Tax

By Macaulay Nichol — 2 years ago

The concept of progressive taxation, once lauded as a pillar of leftist ideology, aimed to embody progressiveness by imposing a heavier tax burden on the wealthy. It was envisioned as a means to uphold public services, with the wealthiest individuals leading the chariot, paying heinous tax rates of up to 45%.

However, this philosophy ignores a critical flaw. As the belief that only the affluent bear this burden is far from reality, as shockingly, a staggering 32.32% of the tax-paying population find themselves trapped in higher tax brackets, far beyond a mere trickle.

With a significant 53.1% of the UK’s tax revenue directly fuelled from just 32.32% of the tax-paying population – or in other words, a mere 18.1% of the UK’s total population -, it becomes clear that we have overlooked the potential to invigorate our financial system, through putting more money in the hands of the people. By doing so, we could meet the demands of the free market and stimulate economic growth, something which UK markets have so greatly been missing out on.

While decreasing the top rates of tax may seem delusional given the economic situation and current governmental regime, there remains a possibility worth exploring—a flat tax system. In a society where absolute fairness is demanded, regardless of common sense, one must question why society would reject such a concept. A flat tax is undeniably the fairest and most equal method of taxation, aligning with the very meaning of the word ‘fair’:

“fair, just, equitable, impartial, unbiased, dispassionate, objective mean free from favor toward either or any side. fair implies a proper balance of conflicting interests. a fair decision. just implies an exact following of a standard of what is right and proper.” [Definition of the word ‘fair’ [Merriam-Webster, 2023]

Therefore I ask, why not give a flat tax a chance? It treats everyone equally, regardless of socioeconomic background, offering an undeniable sense of absolute fairness. However, doubts arise when considering its feasibility, more particularly its success within the UK. While some countries, such as Russia and Ukraine, have implemented a flat tax providing positive outcomes, it is essential to acknowledge that the UK’s financial sector could potentially be destabilized by such a system. The financial sector not only sustains thousands of jobs but also serves as the lifeblood of the nation’s capital. Nonetheless, this does not mean that a flat tax is impossible for the UK.

Russia’s flat tax rate of 13%, introduced in 2001, led to an increase in tax revenue, alongside improvements in overall tax compliance and efficiency, supported by OECD. This simplification of the tax system was hailed as a significant success, considering the many complex loopholes which existed before its introduction.

Regrettably so, implementing a 13% tax rate across the UK would not be so easy, especially with the UK public’s insistence on retaining the NHS; therefore, I would propose a higher rate, potentially around 20%, tooling HM Treasury to strike a balance between taxation and state spending.

Through adopting this alternative approach, we would aim to solidify the medium in-between sustaining key public services and ensuring maximum disposable income, which after all, would be better reinvested throughout the UK’s markets, taking away a degree of power from the state. Through this, the basic tax rate would also remain the same (at 20%), effectively eliminating the higher tax bands of 40% and 45%.

The math behind this proposal makes sense, as a flat tax rate of 20% would lead to a decrease of approximately £49 billion in tax revenue compared to our current progressive system, representing a decrease of only 6.26%.

While losing out on £49 billion may seem significant, it would position the UK as one of the most attractive nations for wealthy investors, providing a clear economic incentive as compared to other competing nations. Fostering and enabling a true post-Brexit economic plan, which would provide the investment the UK so desperately needs.

To put this into perspective, HS2 is set to cost between £72-£98 billion, whilst yearly funding for the NHS costs £160 billion; this further solidifies the point that £49 billion is a figure which the government could work with, an amount which would allow the UK economy to grow out of stagnation and thus establish an empire of investment, indeed signalling to the world that we are ‘actually’ open for business.

As Friedman argued and I alike, we should focus first on economic restoration, above all else, and what better way to do so than restimulate our markets with more disposable income to spend across the nation.

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‘The Bad Ethics of the Machine’ (Magazine Excerpt)

By Dinah Kolka — 2 years ago

With the recent debates surrounding AI improvement and the somewhat imminent AI takeover, I thought it would be interesting to return to the 20^th century to analyse the debates on the rise of the machine and what we can learn from it today.

The early 20^th century marked a time when the technological revolution was in full swing. With radio, mechanised factory work, and the First World War marked the new era of mechanised warfare, the intellectuals of the day were trying to make sense of this new modernised society. With the speed at which the changes occurred, people’s conception of reality was lagging.

The machine has narrowed spaces between people – the car allowed people to traverse space faster, and radio and telephone brought closer and practically instantaneous access to one’s family, friends, and acquaintances. The jobs were mechanised and people, as idealised by Marx, had the potential of being the ‘mere minders of the machine’. We are now entering another era. A time when Artificial Intelligence has the potential to replace most jobs. This is what Fisher in Post-Capitalist Desire has considered an opportunity for a post-scarcity society. But is this possible? Or rather should we heed Nick Land’s warning in Machinic Desire where he advised:

“Zaibatsus flip into sentience as the market melts to automatism, politics is cryogenized and dumped into the liquid-helium meatstore, drugs migrate onto neurosoft viruses, and immunity is grated-open against jagged reefs of feral AI explosion, Kali culture, digital dance-dependency, black shamanism epidemic, and schizolupic break-outs from the bin.” (Land, Fanged Noumena, 2011)

But let’s thrust away the shatters of this neo-automation and return to 1912, the time when this has only just begun.

Gilbert Gannan, in an article for Rhythm, wrote:

“Life is far too good and far too precious a thing to be smudged with mechanical morality, and fenced about with mechanical lies, and wasted on mechanical acquaintanceships when there are splendid friendships and lovely loves in which the imagination can find warm comradeship and adventure, lose and find itself, and obtain life, which may or may not be everlasting.” (Gannan, 1912)

In a quasi-perennial argument, he claims that mechanical morality and mechanism, in general, will never replace the real deal – the real concrete friendships and those we love.

This is an excerpt from “Mayday! Mayday!”. To continue reading, visit The Mallard’s Shopify.

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British Conservatism is Ignorant of History and has Forgotten its Past (Magazine Excerpt)

By Henry George — 2 years ago

This dictatorship of the present has been enabled by around thirty years of material abundance and relative peace following the conclusion to the Cold War. As John Keegan, the military historian put it, Britain and American can afford our universalist idealism and our fantasies of a benevolent world united and ameliorated through commerce, given our good geographical fortune of being separated from continents by bodies of water. We can forget that the tides of history have pulled whole cultures under in violence and war, instead indulging in an imagined progressive history, moving ever upwards towards ever greater enlightenment and prosperity.

Our leaders, if they deserve the name, have forgotten the lessons of history, because they do not know history. They do not know the fate of nations and peoples. They are ignorant of the importance of the landscape of the world and the moral landscape of the heart, and how the interplay between the two shapes the destinies of civilisation. It is not to engage in nostalgia for a vanished age that never existed to reckon with the fact that those who governed us in the past were well aware of life’s tragic nature, of the reality of necessity and the ultimate goal of the avoidance of anarchy, its own form of tyranny. Our leaders in the 19^th and up to the mid-20^th centuries had been baptised in the fires of historical experience and therefore knew that the maintenance of right order, in accordance with the good, true, and beautiful, was the precondition for any liberty. Utopian, romantic ideas of universal rights, spreading democracy and natural freedom were dangerous in their unbounded idealism, leading nations and government astray in the quest for moral perfection.

History never ended, in the sense Francis Fukuyama meant it. Hegel, and his disciple Alexander Kojeve, were both wrong in discerning a direction to human History that would see the creation of the perfect liberal democratic regime and state of being in our world. History is the story of the deeds men and women do and accomplishments achieved together as clans, tribes, cities, empires, and nations. It is a story that will only end at the end of all things. Awareness of the living past reminds us that our lives are part of the weave of time, stretching back across the years, our own lives and the actions we take adding the threads that continue into the future.

This is an excerpt from “Mayday! Mayday!”. To continue reading, visit The Mallard’s Shopify.

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An Opportunity from Nothing – View from the National Conservatism Conference

By The Mallard — 2 years ago

Strolling down Marsham street, past the Itsu and Pret a Manger, a funny looking man in a top hat flanked by grey haired beret wearing old women scream at the top of their lungs whilst recording a group of depressed looking individuals clad in ill-fitting suits who walk past them and into the Emmanuel Centre. Loud renditions of ‘Ode to Joy’ blare from the portable speakers powered from a generator in a white van plastered in EU flags.

You might think, for at least a moment, that I am describing a snapshot from 2017. That these individuals are making plans for Britain’s ‘strategy moving forward as we leave the EU’, and that Mister Bray would at least have a reason to be shouting ‘bollocks to Brexit’ at the passers-by. Instead, the year is 2023, Brexit is barely being mentioned at all inside the walls of the conference room, and no one is quite sure what he – or they – are there for.

That seems to be an outstanding theme of the conference: uncertainty. No one at all seemed to be able to pin down exactly what it was that they stood for. A plethora of rambling speeches about Edmund Burke, multiple references to ‘Le contrat sociale’, continuous struggle sessions against the rotting corpse of Margret Thatcher (who seemingly still operates behind the shadows in every corner of government), and yet nothing new or interesting was being said, just vague topics which they knew everyone would sort of agree with anyway.

Worse still, a lot of the high-profile attendees (especially the MP’s who bothered to turn up) didn’t really seem to know what the event was for. A favourite moment of mine was when, at the very opening of the event, Yoram Hazony and Jacob Rees-Mogg accidentally went ‘head-to-head’ in debating the finer points of the corn laws and the benefits of wheat tariffs in their separate speeches… absolutely thrilling stuff which really tackled… THE ISSUES.

Another devastating moment was when Suella Braverman took the stage to talk about her vision for Britain. In actuality, it was a 25-minute party political broadcast about why you should just ignore the last decade of Tory government and still trust her to ‘stop the boats’. It’s always so upsetting when you listen to actual real politicians – high ranking ministers, no less – who act like opinion piece columnists. The looks on the faces of the attendees during her talk said it all: “YOU ARE A MINISTER OF STATE, YOU HAVE CONTROL OVER THE HOME OFFICE, DO SOMETHING!”

No leadership, no courage, no unified vision. This is what the supposedly ‘Real Right Wing’ looks like for Britain at the moment. No figure appeared to give any sense of direction or policy; they would much rather ‘hash out the arguments’ and ‘make their case’ instead. This is not how you win elections or drive the mechanisms of state, this is how you gain followers on twitter or get a graduate columnist job at [MAGAZINE_NAME.COM].

Despite my negativity, I actually think that this presents a wonderful opportunity for those with more dissenting ideas on what the future of ‘national conservatism’ means in Great Britain. “NatCon” doesn’t really know what it seeks to be and has no defined leadership, so why not show it the way? Instead of feeling like a ‘captured institution’, it felt like a proto-organisation which can’t quite put its finger on what it is yet. Instead of allowing it to lean on the boring and decaying figures of the present, a fascinating vacuum is opening up to swallow anyone with the boldness to make clear cut statements on what they wish to see as the future of National Conservatism. Doing *that* would be a lot easier than any sort of ‘Tory Entryism’ which the generation before us sought to complete.

At the very least, the conference was an excellent opportunity for networking. It was nice to see a format more similar to CPAC than Tory Party Conference, with many MPs, intellectuals, and journalists more than happy to sit and chat with you outside of the main hall instead of listening to the lectures. This was genuinely enjoyable and made the experience a lot more worthwhile. I sincerely hope that more events like that can take place in future.

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