I love this left-wing podcast by Michael Hobbes (the gay guy who sounds like a girl) and Peter Shamshiri (the straight guy) that decodes airport best-sellers.
Peter: “On Reddit, someone was saying that they read this book a few years ago and they thought it was so insightful and it helped them a lot and then they read a few years later and they thought, what the fuck is this? A lot of self-help is like that. It’s getting people when they need advice… The feeling that you are receiving advice is therapeutic. A lot of people are at a crossroads in their life and they read a book like this and it gives a good impression because they needed to be talked to.”
Michael: “I have no contempt for people who read and enjoy these books but bottomless contempt for the authors. They’re fulfilling a real emotional need for people and sometimes you just need a pep talk… I get that they are an individualist frame and they never cover structural solutions. The limitations of the genre are baked in. There are responsible ways for doing this — that you are not a piece of shit and you can do this. The core advice of this book is set a goal and work towards it.”
Posted inPodcasts|Comments Off on If Books Could Kill
I’ve noticed that when I start publicly advocating something, I rarely set off an inevitable chain reaction in furtherance of my stated goals. Instead, I usually force people to react to me, and just as often as not, they’re going to oppose what I’m supporting, and the more I argue for my side, the more they hate what I’m saying.
As often as I turn people’s latent support to explicit support, I turn people’s latent opposition into explicit opposition. Many times I would be better off letting sleeping dogs lie.
For example, the more I talk about the glories of the Dallas Cowboys, the more people around me will feel incentivized to knock the Dallas Cowboys. When I push one type of politics, many people around me will either tune me out or push back. So I’ve learned to minimize my full-steam-ahead in-your-face attempts to change people because these maladaptive habits of mine don’t help me and they don’t help the world.
Usually, I am better suited to the role of observer rather than activist, though I usually feel happier when I’m in the dance as opposed to sitting on the sidelines.
Political thinking tends to conceive of policies, institutions, or programs in terms of their hoped – for results — “drug prevention” programs, “gun control” laws, “environmental protection” policies, “public interest” law firms, “profit – making” businesses, and so forth. But for purposes of economic analysis, what matters is not what goals are being sought but what incentives and constraints are being created in pursuit of those goals…
The point here is not simply that various policies may fail to achieve their purposes. The more fundamental point is that we need to know the actual characteristics of the processes set in motion — and the incentives and constraints inherent in such characteristics — rather than judging these processes by their goals. Many of the much discussed “unintended consequences” of policies and programs would have been foreseeable from the outset if these processes had been analyzed in terms of the incentives and constraints they created, instead of in terms of the desirability of the goals they proclaimed. Once we start thinking in terms of the chain of events set in motion by particular policies — and following the chain of events beyond stage one — the world begins to look very different.
Did a Cafe’s Pro-Israel Stance Cause a Staff Revolt? It’s Complicated.
When the owner of a New York City coffee shop said his workers had quit over his support of Israel, customers and Instagram influencers flocked to it.
For several days this month, New Yorkers stood in a line that snaked down Lexington Avenue and around the corner of East 71st Street, waiting up to 90 minutes to order a drink at Caffè Aronne. Members of the city’s Jewish community, spurred by messages on social media, turned out in droves to support a coffee shop owner who had said that his employees had walked out to protest the company’s support for Israel during the war with Hamas.
The cafe’s owner, Aaron Dahan, 25, stood on the sidewalk on Nov. 7, reflecting on the spectacle that had unfolded. “Our morning shift decided to come in, unlock the store, open up and leave,” he said. “Put us in a bit of a pickle.”
The story was two things at once: a display of solidarity but also an illustration of the current divide in a city that is shaped by both its progressive ideals and its Jewish culture. It was irresistible fodder for Instagram and beyond. The Daily Mail wrote about it, as did The Jerusalem Post. A few days later, a first-person essay under Mr. Dahan’s byline was published in The New York Post with the headline: “All of N.Y.C. helped when my pro-Hamas staff quit Caffe Aronne.”
But the initial accounts of what happened between the staff and the owner of the Upper East Side coffee shop were not the whole story. On the day that the conflict burst into public view, just one of two scheduled morning-shift workers walked out. The other stayed and made espresso drinks for hours. As the situation went viral on social media, other staffers resigned.
Interviews with five former employees, and a review of text and email messages, indicate that employees were uncomfortable with the way that their boss, who lost a family member in the violent Hamas incursion on Oct. 7, had turned their workplace into what they described as a “political space.” Suddenly, just by showing up for work, they said they were being forced to align with one side of a divisive conflict that some of them knew little about.
They said the owner was insensitive to the safety concerns that followed his displaying fund-raising fliers, Israeli flags and posters of kidnapped Israelis. At least one woman, working alone at night, said she was harassed by customers angered by the display; others reported a variety of uncomfortable interactions with customers about the war.
Now, the cafe’s former employees say they are stunned to be accused of supporting Hamas and terrorism. They said they are worried about being recognized in the neighborhood and are disappointed by their dramatic break from an employer whom most of them had liked and respected.
I would expect that most American Jews felt visceral horror at what Hamas did on Oct. 7 and as a result of the massacre in southern Israel, many increased their in-group identity, including in their work place. This in turn forced non-Jews around them to react and many of them began saying something that would never have previously occurred to them, “Free Palestine!”
If you discover your employer is passionately pro-Israel, and you have some ambivalence or even negative feelings about your employer, you’re likely to oppose Israel. There’s no action without a reaction. Most people go to work to get a pay check. They want to enjoy themselves as much as possible at work and to feel at ease. Pushing hot button issues such as the Middle East conflict that provoke customers is not a way to help your workers have a nice time at work.
When I see posters of Israelis held hostage, they are sacred objects to me because I have a strong in-group Jewish identity. I often touch these posters to connect with their holiness. For someone with different views from me on the Arab-Israeli conflict, however, these posters are likely to be hateful reminders of a vicious Jewish oppressor who bears ultimate responsibility for all lives lost in Gaza.
Different people have different gifts, different interests, and different experiences of the world.
Posted inEconomics, Israel|Comments Off on Behind The Staff Revolt At That Pro-Israel Cafe
I notice that converts (to a religion or to another hero system) often become disillusioned and then describe themselves as sad at discovering the flaws of their compatriots. It seems to rarely occur to converts that their primary source of sadness should be with themselves and their own willful denial of reality.
When I became excited about Judaism in the fall of 1989, it took me a while to meet actual Jews, but when I did, I became sad that they weren’t living up to Judaism. I rarely felt sad, however, at my own inability to live up to Judaism. It took me decades to feel sadness at my own needs to think that I had found a crowd in Orthodox Jews who transcended the human condition.
I was not happy with myself when I began my interest in Judaism. I wanted to throw much of myself away and merge with a greater whole. Over decades, however, I discovered I couldn’t throw myself away. It always went with me.
The morality of your group is going to approximate their average IQ. Empathy is a form of abstract thought and IQ measures your capacity for abstract thought.
Different groups have different gifts. Orthodox Jews, for example, rarely commit violent crime. They tend to have strong family lives, sexual discipline, and strong in-group identity. But these traits don’t automatically flow into one through conversion. There’s no hero system you can join that will automatically transform you.
On Sunday, English fighter Stephen J. James joined my show. His life has been crippled by ADHD but he has always refused to take ADHD medication. His condition has made a normal life impossible but by refusing to take ritalin or adderall as prescribed, he can tell himself, “At least I see through the bullshit. I don’t get to have normal joys, but at least I see through the bullshit.”
Many people in my audience don’t want him to take pills. Sick people will always want you to stay sick. “You’re one of us, don’t go thinking you can change” will be their anthem. The worst thing about being an emotional cripple is that only the crippled will want to hang out with you.
Posted inConversion|Comments Off on Sad Converts Need To Get Reflexive (11-21-23)
In the wake of the October 7th atrocities, the Harvard/Harris Poll asked, “In general in this conflict do you side more with Israel or Hamas?” Among American voters aged 65 years or older, 95 percent sided with Israel over Hamas. But 48 percent of the much less white 18- to 24-year-old cohort backed Hamas.
A majority of young people answered the question “Do you think the Hamas killing of 1,200 Israeli civilians in Israel can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians or is it not justified?” that the October 7th slaughter was justified by Palestinian grievances, compared to only 10 percent of voters 55 or over.
Other polls found much the same generation gap: In the NPR/Marist survey, 83 percent of baby boomers (1946–64) said the U.S. should support Israel vs. 48 percent of those born from 1981 to 2005. And,
“An Oct. 17 Generation Lab poll of 978 college students found that 48% of them do not blame the Oct. 7 attacks on Hamas.”
An obvious reason for declining support for Israel among American voters is because the U.S. isn’t as white Christian as it used to be. In 2019, the Pew Research Center reported that “for white Americans, the most common [modal] age was 58.” And, as we see in the polls, white Christians tend to love Jews and Israel. In contrast,
“The most common age was 11 for Hispanics, 27 for blacks and 29 for Asians as of last July, the latest estimates available. Americans of two or more races were by far the youngest racial or ethnic group in the Census Bureau data, with a most common age of just 3 years old. Among all racial and ethnic minorities, the most common age was 27.”
…It’s quite possible, unfortunately, that October 7th will lead to Jews doubling down on wokeness as long as Jews get to be at the top of the totem pole of sacred classes.
On the other hand, it’s also possible that more Jews will recognize that they will never be conceded the top spot and the other contenders for most sacred minority are not their friends. Instead, what’s actually good for the Jews is America’s pre-woke culture of free speech and open debate.
* “Diversity” has always been a code word for affirmative action. Its purpose has always been to benefit the Oppressed at the expense of the Oppressor. The reason the word has been so wildly popular on the left is that it allows you to obscure the fact that you are taking away from one group and giving to another — something the losers might feel they had a right to object to — and frame it instead as everyone winning.
* Who could have foreseen that Muslim immigrants would prioritize Muslim priorities?! This was unforeseeable!
* The Kevin MacDonald-ist idea that “diversity makes it safer for minorities” never made any sense. Liberal Jews and others who supported that idea were basically just rationalizing the Democratic party agenda to themselves. Their enemies on the far right have been confusing these partisan delusions for an ingenious master plan (“evolutionary strategy”).
There is no master plan, no conspiracy. Just a bunch of morons who have made party politics their cult.
* The American public’s reaction to October 7th is a shock to the American Establishment on par with unexpected election of Donald Trump in 2016. I think many Jews over 50 are genuinely perplexed by the open hostility online and on the streets. When did this dramatic policy shift happen? It is like we are now in a different dimension. You would think that there would be more pro-Israel protests, but they have not materialized for some reason. Not even in New York, where Jews have the numbers to put up a street presence. It does not help things that Israel’s rhetoric sounds very foreign to American ears.
* [Paul Kessler’s] obit in the Forward reported that he was very anti-Trump. No doubt he was thrilled that Antifa was hitting Trump supporters over the head with bike locks and getting away with it. Now he got hit over the head.
* It seems he didn’t get hit in the head by the other protestor. It’s not totally clear yet, but it looks like he attacked the pro-Palestinian guy to try to get his megaphone from him, and the guy pushed Kessler off of him, and then Kessler fell back on his head. The Pro-Palestinian protestor was the one who called 911.
* I wonder if sexual liberation has meant that the US is worse at empire-running than previous empires … My vague impression is that a lot of the geniuses of the British Empire were gay: Lawrence of Arabia, Cecil Rhodes, perhaps Chinese Gordon, or raging heterosexuals like Sir Richard Burton. They seemed to want to get abroad for private reasons, then proved impressive there.
* My sense of it is that older* Americans – white or otherwise – tend to view Israel more favorably through the lens of the reportage of the 1960’s and 70’s – that of a heroic Israeli fighter pilot, in the context of the supposed Israeli David versus the Arab Goliath. Outnumbered, but plucky Jews fighting desperately against the masses of Arabs, if you will. Meanwhile those born after that period were raised with images of the regional strong power Israel bombing weaker Arabs, starting with the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the Palestinian uprisings in the 1990’s and so on.
* Arabs in Israel are not at all, as you imagine, “obsequious”. (Where did you get that idea anyway?) They drive like maniacs. They’re free with their opinions (just give the slightest hint you’re interested). They confidently go anywhere they please in Jewish areas (knowing they’re perfectly safe where, reversing the situation, a Jew would be torn limb from limb). Their representatives in the Parliament rant and heckle and harass. They flout every law be it about tax, land use, auto registration, waste runoff.
Of course Israel is the Jewish State, and affirming such may be among the least controversial things one could possibly say to a group of American Jews. [And when I say “Jews,” I mean people affiliated, to some degree, with the faith, even if they are not Orthodox.] To these people, Israel being the Jewish State is simply taken for granted. So if one told this same group that the United States ought to support Israel, the Jewish State, and recognize her as such, he would be as equally uncontroversial.
Why is it then that when I raise my voice in support of nationalism and self-determination for the peoples of Europe, I am met with skepticism, if not downright contempt? Why is it that when I praise the nationalist parties of Europe (many of whom are actually Zionistic), I am questioned with unease?
It appears to me that the same people who so vehemently call for Israel to be Jewish lack that same vigor when calling for France to be French, Germany to be German, or Sweden to be Swedish. Indeed, a lack of vigor would actually be satisfactory. In fact, it’s not even that: those same Zionists, by and large, fight against the nationalist sentiments in Europe. The establishment Jewish groups in the US, all of whom lock arms for Israel and lobby the American government to categorically support her at every turn, are the same groups that consistently call for open borders in Europe, increased immigration from the Middle East, a full-out embracing of multiculturalism, a weakened national culture, and a diminished Church. They are the same groups that slander and defame leaders like Le Pen in France and Wilders in the Netherlands. They are the same groups that push for the death of Europe and her people.
Quite plainly, any Jew in the US who calls for American support for the Jewish state but condemns the nationalists in Europe is a hypocrite. He is a hypocrite for the very simple reason that he wants national self-determination for a people in one part of the world but not for another in a different part of the world. He is a hypocrite because he wants his country, the US, to protect the nationalist and ethno-centric aspirations of Israel, his homeland, but not those of Europe.
But it’s even more nuanced than this. The peculiar position of these Jews is not so much in their exclusive nationalist desires for one state. It is in their exclusive denial of such nationalist rights to the peoples of Europe. For some strange reason, there is a hate for the European race, and that hate translates into a desire for its ultimate destruction. After all, what better way to crumble Europe than to replace its volk? As it is said, “demography is destiny.” Every other country on the planet, especially including the Jewish State of Israel, is entitled to national self-determination—to an ethnic nation-state. Why must Europe be left out?
The hypocrisy is glaring, and all those who praise Netanyahu and scorn Le Pen are guilty.
One common response, however, is that the nationalist Right in Europe is “anti-Semitic.” (Of course, this term has lost so much of its substance. As Joseph Sobran, an accused anti-Semite, wrote: “an anti-Semite used to mean a man who hated Jews. Now it means a man who is hated by Jews.”). First off, the Jew should not be all that confused when the European he’s trying to destroy distrusts him. But secondly, the hard truth is that Europe is becoming less safe for Jews, regardless of who is in charge. And in fact, the perpetrators of day-to-day anti-Semitic attacks are Muslims. Leftist rule has only ensured a growth in the Muslim population in Europe, which, as we have seen when Israel conducts operations against the Palestinians, spells doom for Europe’s Jews. The Muslims in Europe are the ones who have brought back the pogroms of old. At least the Right has pledged to stem immigration from the Middle East.
In short, I do not think the “who’s better for the Jews” question is relevant here. The short answer is: probably no one. [However, the majority of the far-Right parties in Europe have rooted out all traces of Nazism and anti-Semitism, and are often vigorously pro-Israel, unlike their Leftist counterparts who criticism Israel at every turn].
That being said, with the Jewish question set aside, why don’t Jews about the European civilization and people as an issue in it of itself? The displacement of a people is no small exploit, especially a people that has played such a critical role in human history in the creation of Western civilization. With Europeans’ dwindling birthrates, the necessity to preserve the national identity of the European peoples becomes ever more important. Jews, whose homeland is the world’s shining example of the ethno-nation state, should be at the forefront of this fight. Jews, who understand better than most people the importance of continuation and preservation, should be at the forefront of the fight for Europe. It is selfish to stay out, and hypocritical to counter.
Unfortunately, the Jews seem to be on the wrong side. Again.
Posted inJews|Comments Off on Is Diversity Good For The Jews?
The core problem with discussing solutions to truly momentous problems, at least from the right, is that anything that might work is too fundamental and astounding to gain a fair hearing. What’s more, even stating such possibilities is more likely than not to get the speaker canceled. Whereas anything that can be discussed openly is all but certain not to work…
Not just coming up with solutions, but communicating them in a way your audience understands, without getting yourself killed, calls for the most delicate judgment, a fine literary hand, and prudence that would impress Aristotle himself.
So what are the things that might improve life in the first world that are unsayable?
* We have to recognize harshness of life and people. I’m more of a Hobbesian (who saw the state of nature as brutal) than a Lockean (who saw the state of nature as leading to cooperation). Recognizing the flawed and selfish nature of people means we need ways of disciplining people. We need to give people incentives for good behavior and punishments for bad behavior.
* Recognition of the tribal nature of people.
* Recognition that almost nobody cares about out-groups.
* Recognition that the more people have in common, the more likely they are to feel at ease with each other and to cooperate.
* Recognition of the power of hero systems. Everybody has a hero system. Most people get it from their community, noted Ernest Becker. Liberalism and leftism are the hero systems that thinks they have transcended hero systems. Most people seem unaware that their hero system is a product of contingent circumstances, and it is this subjective hero system that drives liberals to condemn imaginary sins such as racism, bigotry, xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia and the like while people on the right condemn sins that are imaginary from a liberal perspective such as gay sex and trans identity and drug experimentation.
* We live in a post-modern world. There’s no one narrative that adequately explains reality. Still, some narratives are more helpful for group cohesion than others. We should promote those (nationalist narratives).
* We’re all locked in an iron cage together and nobody is coming to save us. To survive, you want to become as strong as possible because you never know what might happen. The most important task for a nation-state is to survive.
* Different people have different gifts. Different plants and animals have different gifts. Different dog breeds have different gifts. When dogs kill people, those dogs are usually rottweilers and pit bulls. When people kill people outside of war, these killers are usually from a group easy to identify — young dumb men with gloomy prospects. We should regularly stop and frisk them as per predictive protocols. We need broken-windows policing.
* The more stable and cohesive you are, the better. The more divided and unstable your competitors, the better for you. We need government and social policy that incentivizes cohesion and social trust. So that means policies that reward hard work and punish slacking, that reward achievement and hurt those who act in an anti-social manner. For example, much of help for the homeless and the poor should be conditioned on regular drug and alcohol testing. For privileges such as drinking alcohol, gun ownership and drivers licenses and some forms of welfare and perhaps even the right to have children, people should need a number of law-abiding citizens vouch for them. Most horrible behavior, such as murder, comes from people who lack bonds. We should incentivize people to form bonds so that they can then enjoy the good things of life. We need to supplement our individualist society with prompts towards forming groups that take care of each other. We should allow churches and synagogues and other groups to offer health insurance and other benefits to its exclusive members. We need to get rid of much of the civil rights legislation passed in the 1960s and beyond and return to the traditional rights of private property and freedom of association.
* For the normal person embedded in a group, his purported racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, prejudice and the like are not the opposite of morality, but the proper foundation for morality. This bloke loves specific people and is loved by them and thus he has an in-group and a hero system and everything he needs for meaning and morality. Such a person is less likely to engage in reckless behaviors than those who are unmoored.
* “Anti-Semitism is as natural to Western civilization as anti-Christianity is to Jewish civilization, Islamic civilization and Japanese civilization.” (Maj. Kong)
* You could do worse than the TV show Yellowstone for wisdom about life:
* “Until they find a cure for human nature, a man must stand with his people.”
* “Mister, I don’t know you, but if you’re wearin’ that brand, you must be a bad man.”
* “Should is a useless word, almost as useless as hope.”
* “A man who puts a hand on a member of my family never puts a hand on anything else.”
* “No one has a right. You have to take a right, or stop it from being taken from you.”
* “Lawyers are the swords of this century. Words are weapons now.”
* “It’s the one constant in life. You build something worth having, someone’s gonna try to take it.”
* “All men are bad, but some of us try really hard to be good.”
* Marginalized movements attract marginalized people. Nothing great can be built by losers.
* There are no solutions. Only tradeoffs. (Tom Sowell)
* There’s no magic key to unlocking how the world works. The closest thing we have to a magic key to reality is the predictive power of IQ for large groups. Goodness, for example, requires empathy, which is a form of abstract thought, and the capacity for abstract thought is measured by IQ. If a thousand 80 IQ people spill a drink on the floor of a public gathering, a thousand 100 IQ people spill the same amount of liquid, and a thousand 120 IQ people spill the same amount, the higher IQ groups will be more diligent about cleaning up the spill.
* If you want to preserve native life, you have to restrict invasive species.
* If it becomes socially acceptable for minority groups to pursue their own interests without regard to the majority’s interests, majorities will start acting in their own interests without regard for minorities (see India under Narendra Modi).
Posted inMichael Anton|Comments Off on Do American Conservatives Want Regime Change? And What Would That Look Like?
Frame Games was a public commentator in 2016-2018. He was alt right adjacent, openly Jewish, but he kept his name and identity and face hidden. Brandy Zadrozny at NBC News finally revealed who he is. He is Mike Benz, former State Department official who advocates for Internet freedom, which was a big crusade of Frame Games back in the day.
It’s kind of amusing that the guy who is Frame Game Radio went on to be a State Department official and then be incredibly influential now. He’s very good at framing and when you watch his videos you see a lot of similarities between what he did as Frame Game and what he’s doing now on behalf of Internet Freedom.
He says that back in the day, he was part of a group deradicalization effort. I am pretty sure he was just one guy. I never had any sense that there was a group behind him. I never saw the slightest bit of evidence that there was any kind of group behind Frame Game. Everything he did, everything he said, everything he produced struck me as a solo effort.
There was a Twitter group that was frequently actively hostile to him. The Twitter group of alt right adjacent Jews thought that he was too unnecessarily critical and over the top critical of Jews. Frame Game did not like this group. Many members of the group did not like him.
They would mock his lack of Jewish education. In his bizarre rejoinder to Brandy’s report, he starts off by saying, I’m a proud Jew and the child of or descendant of Holocaust survivors. I thought it was a very weak response, and that is, it implies that almost anyone who’s actually leading a Jewish life, studying traditional Jewish texts and observing traditional Jewish commandments, rarely bothers if ever to say, yeah, I’m a proud Jew.
It’s something that you say to compensate for something, such as lack of knowledge and lack of practice. So, he did seem extremely ignorant of Judaism, that always shone through, so now in his rejoinder post, he says that I was taught in Hebrew school that the word Moshe means messenger.
No, it doesn’t. The word Moshe means savior. The word Navi means messenger, prophet. So, he just keeps getting elementary Jewish things wrong. Now he houses the head of this electronic foundation, but one gets the sense that this electronic foundation is primarily just him. We get the sense that he didn’t run this by anyone, because if he’d just shared that with some people, they would have helped him avoid the mistakes he made. But there was nothing that was unethical, underhanded, dirty or dastardly about what Brandy Zadrozny did on Mike Benz. It was a legitimate by the numbers work of journalism and reporting.
I had Frame Game on my show probably about five times. He had some smart, interesting and sometimes truthful things to say. Overall, he was hyperbolic, overly dramatic, somewhat conspiratorial. Frame Game Radio is not a scholar and he’s not someone who optimizes for truth. He admittedly is someone who optimizes for making a difference, making a change.
He’s an activist. And so, he believes in saying anything, doing anything to make a change in the world. So, if that requires lying, whatever it takes. He had a more ‘whatever it takes’ attitude than I did. Frame Game is amazing at the way he frames things. He’s incredibly compelling. On the other hand, he does not optimize for truth. That’s a big downside with his type of approach.
Frame Game would be much more hostile towards the establishment than I was. He was much more hostile towards the established elites. At the same time, he was more credulous when they would say things that would align with his narratives.
What do you know about Mike Benz’s network of Jews infiltrating the alt right?
I don’t. I strongly do not believe there was any such thing. There’s no evidence of that of trying to steer them away from the JQ. Frame Game did not try to steer people away from the JQ.
Can you remember anything he said, or did, produced, created, or put online that at all struck as having a group component?
I can recall nothing. His work was clearly the work of a solo practitioner. There’s no group behind him, and he generally had a hostile reaction towards the alt right adjacent Jews, he generally had a hostile reaction towards. He was much more friendly with the alt right than he was with the alt right adjacent Jews, who did not go as far as he did in pushing an anti-Jewish power narrative.
Frame Games response to Brandy Zadrozny was particularly weak. He was self-pitying. It was both self-pitying and self-aggrandizing. He was talking about how influential and powerful he was and at the same time, how oppressed and beaten down he was. About Brandy’s supposedly poor journalism and it was just basic reporting.
In his response, Mike Benz said a lot of ridiculous things, which again shows me that his quote unquote foundation is just Mike Benz, because if he’d run his response by anybody, they would have given him some valuable feedback so he wouldn’t have made a fool of himself.
He argues in his response that he was part of a group effort by Jews to deradicalize people. No. I saw absolutely no evidence for that. There was no effort to deradicalize people. He wanted to empower and strengthen people to advocate for their group. One particular group.
You put under Stephen’s stream that Frame Game was a psyop. It was no more a psyop than you or me or anyone else. Every living thing tries to create an environment around it that is most conducive to its thriving.
You would think that any living thing would try to do that. Frame Game tried to create an environment around him that was most conducive to his thriving. I try to create an environment around me that’s most conducive to my thriving. We’re all trying to make real our own hero systems, the way we see the world and what we believe will be most conducive to our own thriving.
There was no psyop going on with Frame Game beyond normal human levels of trying to create a conducive environment. His whole thing is framing and he’s very good at that. He’s very exciting and compelling to listen to. Even now, you watch some of his Electronic Freedom Foundation videos and they’re compelling. But it’s clear he does not optimize for truth.
Sometimes one can get so caught up in one’s own ability to frame things, that you get a little detached from reality, which I think happened to Frame Game.
He developed an exaggerated sense of his own powers, because he had so much success. And people were telling him that he was great and he tried to frame away this Brandy Zadrozny critique. I don’t think he did it effectively. Compare Frame Game’s efforts to what Richard Hanania did.
Richard Hanania just came out and said, yeah, I wrote a lot of things that I regret. I had an attitude towards life back then that I regret and I’d like to think that I’ve grown up and improved. Richard Hanania apparently has taken no significant hit from these revelations. Richard Hanania got the tone and apology apology right. He handled this unpleasant situation with as much grace and realism as possible. I don’t think Mike Benz got it right. You can probably learn from Richard Hanania’s response.
These are the dangers of posting online anonymously. You don’t use the same care and discretion that you would if you were operating under your own real name. If Frame Game Radio wasn’t a psyop, why does he say he was? Because it’s a lot more preferable to portray your work as a Psyop as having a Mossad-like quality than what he was, which was, beyond just a white advocate, close to the alt right nationalist brand. He’s trying to frame himself and position himself as something more socially acceptable.
It’s socially acceptable to run a psyop against the alt right. It’s not socially acceptable to say many of the things that he said. If he’d said them under his real name back then, it would have had to be much more careful, much more nuanced, and it would have had to pay a much heavier price.
Sometimes when you try to avoid paying a price in the present moment, you create a much bigger price for yourself down the road.
Anonymity online does as many good things as it does bad things. Good people can use anonymity online to do good things. People predisposed to the bad will probably use anonymity online to do bad things, but it does create all sorts of dangerous temptations. It can unmoor a person from his foundations. If I say anything wacky, I hear about it from people in my real life.”
Posted inAlt Lite, Alt Right, Mike Benz|Comments Off on Analyzing Internet Freedom Activist Mike Benz aka Frame Game Radio
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
