Meet the New Boss Same as the Old Boss

Such rules are the rules of power. Some are written. Some are not.

You learned the real rules in elementary school like everyone else—so why would anyone put on a kabuki, writing as if no one had ever heard of any “protected classes” before their employer, after lengthy and expensive philosophical and ethical cogitation, emitted this linked list of victim-sets whom no one may “attack” or be “cruel or unfair” to.

Spare us! We know what a “protected class” is. We know what the list of them is. That list changes day by day and is written nowhere—any copy is a stale cache entry. You don’t actually expect your writers to refer to it. And they won’t. So why such gestures?

The answer is: they are subtle, semi-conscious gestures of loyalty to power. Voluntary obeisance, like scratching a mosquito bite or licking chapped lips, always feels good. And always soon demands more to feel better. Of course the same is true of rebellion, and its gestures of disloyalty—which also work exactly like a little drug….

We now consider it absolutely normal for social-media accounts to be dragged out of their houses at night and given the Genickschuss in the full NKVD, Gestapo or Camorra fashion—with no warning or explanation at all. Next morning, they are hanging from a bridge with “404” sharpied on their chests.

Obviously, this would not have happened to them had they not done something wrong. Doubtless even in the Camorra there is some formal process for when you just have to whack a guy; no doubt within the platforms there is a process too. At least when it’s a big account. But nobody not involved in that process will ever learn anything about it.

It is important to understand why all these very different institutions, not to mention Twitter and Facebook, converged on the same opaque, arbitrary process of execution. It’s not just that barbarous monarchy works. It’s that barbarous monarchy scales….

The right product is the product the customer wants. The marketing strategy behind Hitler’s anti-Semitism was clear enough. Hitler’s customers wanted to fight. So the product they needed was an enemy. Americans do not want to fight. They do not like being in a cold civil war. Very few of them are trench-hardened World War I veterans. The product they need is peace—but, peace without being misgoverned or humiliated.

It is obvious that anyone who is a white nationalist believes that the best life is life in a white-only community. But what the white nationalist really wants is a safe, cohesive and orderly community—such as he would also find in Japan. If Japan wasn’t so racist. “Segregation” is not an end—but a means to this end.

What if there was another means? What if there was a path to safety, cohesion and order that worked well not just for white people, but also for the whole motley crew of genetic mystery-meat which we’ve managed to heap on our long-suffering continent?

White nationalists would probably still be fine with it, if that path just meant “white people run the show.” Which might even work—but what if there was another means? If we white people were well-governed by mutant alien pangolins, what’s the problem? Imperialism works, and what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

From Gray Mirror’s Censorship: a 21st-century approach.