≡ Menu

Excerpt: Enjoying your Russian civil war – by Curtis Yarvin

In fact, it may well be possible that the only thing between you, me, and nuclear war is. . . the notorious “Deep State,” which still holds some ancient 20th-century “realist” silverbacks who on Tuesdays know a hawk from a handsaw. If US foreign policy was set by Twitter poll, as one day it surely will be, the ICBMs would probably already be flying. Wilsonian liberalism is a weapon of media war far older than anyone alive, but it was then guided by canny, pragmatic statesmen—not demented Internet egregores.

So, I’m sorry to say this, kids, but it might not be too early to stock up on canned food. Of course, I said the same thing about covid. But of course, I was right. (Kind of.)

Let’s start by assuming that Putin, this mad brute—whom some are already calling “Putler”—is entirely responsible for all the bloodshed and violence of this war. This is surely the position of our Vice-President and her many Twitter fans. Putler is guilty! We must hang this Putler, and the evil imperial henchmen of his evil Putler empire.

Now, let’s suppose someone replaces Putin with a robot. This machine looks exactly like Putin and behaves exactly like Putin, and has exactly Putin’s job. However, being a machine and not a person, it cannot be guilty of anything. Possibly the person who installed it is bad—but we have no idea who that is. In any case, this Putinbot, this evil AI, is the absolute ruler of Russia and makes all its political decisions.

Under this identical but oddly different scenario, what is the morally proper way for the American people, in our collective democratic capacity as the State Department of our democratically elected, or at least democratically validated, government “USG,” to conduct our foreign policy toward Russia?

See, we are not allowed to ask what the Putinbot should do; it cannot be swayed; it is a robot, a machine, a force of nature. Its acts are acts of God, against which we can only guard ourselves as best we can. As Genghis Khan used to say when he besieged a city: “If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me.” The aggressor is a non-player character; you cannot play him, you cannot blame him. Playing only one player is a basic principle of the statesmanship game.

The purpose of this thought-experiment is to force your mind into the actual position of a statesman, not a six-year-old playing kickball.

A foreign policy conducted solely in the interest of Americans would not involve intervening in a civil war against a nuclear power on the banks of the Dnieper, for the reason that there is absolutely no resource of interest to Americans, on the banks of the Dnieper, which could outweigh the risk of a global thermonuclear war.

For instance, suppose we needed amber to power our fusion reactors, and amber was only found on the Dnieper. Then, NATO control of Ukraine’s rich amber mines would be of course imperative. But this is not the case. Can we find another realist motive?

One reasonable-sounding suggestion is that once the Monster of Moscow takes Kiev, this conquest will only whet his foul appetite. He must eventually want Kuwait, like Saddam; and still later, Kansas. Better to fight on the Dnieper than the Mississippi! The free world is not safe from these vile monsters until, everywhere on the planet, freedom’s peaceful, defensive armies have slain autocracy’s violent, aggressive armies. After all, Hitler.

Ergo, we must support the Ukrainian regime, not at all because we care about the Ukrainians, but to use them as cannon-meat in our own self-defense. Now this is the realism we need!

. . . .

Putting the Ukrainian colors in your Twitter handle, or whatever else you do (usually symbolic, but I think they have a Bitcoin address) to “support” the noble rebels of “Kyiv,” gives you a rush of power. You feel that you have done something good with your time on earth. You have made an impact. You are, in fact, changing the world.

In all theories of classical political science, power is held by the state. The state is defined by its monopoly of power. Politics is the contest to control the state; justice is the legal force of the state. The situation in which not all power flows through a single legitimate state is known, and deprecated. It is the condition of anarchy, even of war.

In democratic and still more in Marxist theories of political science, it is taken for granted that politics cannot be contained with the state. Power is a field that extends across everyone; everyone has power; everyone can act politically. The term “social justice” is apt; social justice is to legal justice, as social media to broadcast media. The cell membrane of the state is pierced; the cytoplasm of power flows out everywhere.

Everyone’s duty is to act with force, to use power directly and personally rather than delegating it through indirect political mechanisms. Everyone is their own judge, jury, and executioner. Everyone is on the jury that convicts Putler of war crimes; everyone is standing on the scaffold as he takes the drop. Even lynching is social justice—just not the kind most people like. You are doing your best to lynch Putler, right now. No one is making you participate; you are doing it of your own free will; you can just stop.

The key to ceasing this awful, destructive behavior is understanding that it is not about them. It is about you. In fact, you do not know them at all. You know no more than a few kindergarten facts about these faraway people whom you love so much that you consider it your moral responsibility to goad them, at no cost or risk to yourself, into the terrordome of war, for their heroism to excite them. If you loved them more, you would think harder about whether or not you were doing them a favor.

Your “support” for the Kiev regime is about one thing: love. It is about your love for yourself. Its pathological nature reveals a deeper truth: an unfilled need for love and purpose, for a public and collective life which is not a pornographic charnel-house. It is sad, not just in what it does to the Ukraine, but in what it does to you, me, we, us. So, like… please consider the possibility of changing the way you look at this.

RTWT @ Enjoying your Russian civil war – by Curtis Yarvin

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Yaacov ben Moshe March 10, 2022, 8:54 AM

    There is, absolutely more to it than meets the eye here. Putin is a killer, it is true but then our political class are even more murderous- they just manipulate others into doing the killing for them. Putin is red/Biden is Blue/ neither one of them give a sh*t about you. If our pols and journalists had just listened to Solzhenitsyn instead of pillorying him after the spoke truth at Harvard https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/video-gallery/2018/4/15/harvard-address we might have been reborn as a culture and able to respond.

  • KCK March 10, 2022, 9:33 AM

    Terminator Putin? Seriously??

    After he gets deposed, Putin has arranged a fall-back job for himself. Because of the current need to source everything, I will add the link below. Don’t look at it. This is my last warning, because once you see it, it can never be unseen. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

    Putin’s fallback job:
    https://youtu.be/n7Y5-L8qL98

    • Vanderleun March 10, 2022, 10:12 AM

      Now I hate you with the fury of thousand suns!

      • Casey Klahn March 10, 2022, 12:46 PM

        You’re welcome.

        Hey, I didn’t make the vid. I just report.

  • James ONeil March 10, 2022, 10:34 AM

    Oliver Stone’s Ukraine on Fire presents some interesting historical background on the war to begin a greater war. Yes there’s a bias but please don’t suggest the 24/7 propaganda we’re subjected to doesn’t.
    One good reason to watch it is that Youtube banned it: https://rumble.com/vwxxi8-ukraine-on-fire.html

    • James ONeil March 10, 2022, 10:41 AM

      OOPs, just saw Gerard linked Stone in previous essay. Sorry.

  • Andrew X March 10, 2022, 10:37 AM

    The entire “woke” mentality is about the idea that individuals can collectively “act for justice” against “those” people over there who are obviously about “injustice”, and thus must be “corrected”.

    (Corrected… as in Delbert Grady in The Shining – “My girls, sir, did not care for the Overlook at first. One of them tried to burn it down. So I….. corrected them. And when my wife tried to interfere…. I …. corrected…. her as well”.)

    So now we see our and other governments imposing massive sanctions on Russia (largely appropriate), but we see individuals across the board piling on – Coke, McDonalds, Visa/MC, artists, NGO’s, etc etc. Adding up to a collective devastation of millions of Russians who had nothing to do with this, devastation far beyond what those governments may intend. Devastation of people who simply are not used to believing that they have ever had any role in their governance, which they largely haven’t, but who do know what an enemy looks like as it bulldozes their lives and families. People whom if handled differently (i.e. not by howling bloodthirsty jihadist Internet mobs) could be allies of ours. But boy, don’t it all feel good on the Internet, and aren’t I just the most wonderful person for pushing 145 million nuclear armed people into near-starvation. Serves ’em right!

    (“And when some people expressed a decided nervousness with all this, well, I…. corrected…. them as well. Perhaps you should do the same, Mr. Torrance. You can be… corrected… just as easily, you know.”)

    I read somewhere that the US economic embargo of Japan in 1940 gave the Japanese government some funny ideas, but I forget what. Long time ago, and all.

    I’ve thought for a while that this Internet-based woke fascism would rot and destroy our civilization from within. That it could bring about nuclear war…. well, that one wasn’t on my bingo card.

    • james wilson March 10, 2022, 12:02 PM

      “So now we see our and other governments imposing massive sanctions on Russia (largely appropriate)” No. Largely inappropriate, massively hypocritical, and as will be seen quite soon vis a vis America, extraordinarily counterproductive and self harming. It is said to be difficult to discern malice from incompetence but in this case they are working together.

      • ghostsniper March 11, 2022, 4:42 AM

        True.

        Entities that discriminate among clients-customers for any reason at all are short sighted and suicidal.

        They defy and threaten their very existence.

  • Mike Austin March 11, 2022, 9:50 AM

    This Curtis Yarvin fellow needs an editor. And his “stream of consciousness” writing style is tedious.

  • homer March 11, 2022, 10:35 AM

    Yarvin is a tedious fellow in need of an editor?

    • james wilson March 11, 2022, 10:25 PM

      Ha

  • tallowpot March 12, 2022, 3:26 PM