Category: What He Said

DARVO

Groomers The Tolerant Left What He Said 24 Comments

James Lindsay (9 minutes).

There’s an abusive tactic commonly used by abusers, both intentionally and unintentionally, that goes by the name “DARVO.” DARVO is an acronym that means “Deny, Attack, Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender,” and it is very common with narcissists, psychopaths, and borderline personalities. A huge amount of Woke Marxist activism and Theory is DARVO, hence the solidity of the “Iron Law of Woke Projection.” In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay explains DARVO and its relevance to Woke Marxism. Join him to learn to stop being abused by it.

Crowned Masterpieces of Eloquence

Historical Events Trump What He Said 35 Comments

“Pokemon-Go-to-the-polls”

Oratory is pretty much a dead art. The idea that great speeches could somehow change the world seems laughably quaint now, something adult-cartoons like South Park use as an absurd 4th Wall Break/Dues Ex Machina to wrap up a 20 minute episode.

You’ll read historical accounts of some great speech defining an era, or being recorded by eager hands that it might be printed, purchased, and read across a country or oceans, or actively moving a crowd or parliament such that history is changed by the speech… And it’s almost completely incomprehensible to anyone today.

Sure we’ll read or watch Shakespeare and experience Marc Antony launch a coup by moving the crowds, or we’ll watch a Hollywood movie and see Aragorn, or some lesser character rally an army…

But these are fantastical stories for children. This isn’t Hollywood. Speeches don’t move history. It’s not some impassioned words by whatever State Department asset before congress that determines whether the American military will start a “police action” or whether we’ll have “Diplomacy”… its whether Raytheon and Lockheed Martin donated enough to right politicians last cycle.

And, in the back of our mind, we pretty much believe this is how its always been.

Sure historians might say Marc Antony actually did rally a crowd that was against him, or a a king rally a failing army; But we find it far more plausible to imagine they placed their chosen men and thugs to enforce their will, or that they bribed the right people at the right time.

This is the best thing I’ve read since I don’t know when. Grab a coffee and settle in for some fun.

“Against the dehumanization of art”

The Arts What He Said 70 Comments

“Bumped”, I suppose you could say. Because I was reminded of it.

This post was originally published April 19, 2008. The New Criterion link has expired, but you can still read it here. Take your time. Read the comments, too.

“When I was in the army, many years ago, I was an infantryman, and in the course of what I saw, and did, and came to understand, I was broken. Sometime after I had returned to the United States and my life had resumed, I rounded a corner in the Metropolitan Museum in New York and saw a painting I had known all my life but which I had not until that moment been able to understand. This was Winslow Homer’s masterfully restrained portrait of a veteran returning to his fields. The generation touched by fire in the Civil War understood the great import of this painting, they knew why the veteran had his back turned to the painter, why he was alone, why he worked in utter quiet, why the light was so clear, the scene so tranquil. After years of war and destruction, they understood, and after having passed this painting for the first time as a man, so did I.”

How NATO Lost Its Way

Historical Events Military What He Said 64 Comments

Peter Hitchens;

In the 1980s, I sometimes thought I was the only university-educated person I knew who thought deterrence was a good idea and NATO a good thing. Nowadays, it is all the other way round. I am one of the few educated people I know who thinks that the West bears some blame for the appalling conflict raging in Ukraine, though I can name a string of diplomats and academics, from George Kennan and Henry Kissinger to Yegor Gaidar and Noam Chomsky, who have long warned that NATO expansion was a terrible mistake, certain to strengthen the worst elements in Moscow. I have pursued a lone heresy of wondering why NATO even survived the end of its enemies, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. Do we still maintain alliances against Austria-Hungary or the Ottomans? I can find no trace of them. Perhaps, overlooked in some elegant Paris street and living off ancient funds, elderly, learned men still occupy these joyous sinecures, hoping that they will not be found out.

But the political inheritors of the anti-cruise campaigners are today all hot for NATO, which I am sure they would have despised in the old days when it preserved the freedom of Western Europe through masterly inaction. These enthusiasts, for instance, desire to impose no-fly zones on Ukraine, a policy guaranteed to spread bloody war even further over the continent of Europe. The successors of the left-wing academics who once apologized for the USSR are now severe enemies of non-Communist Russia. The herbivores of 1982 are the warmongers of 2022.

How did this happen?

A Night With The Untouchables

Let Them Eat Taser What He Said 20 Comments


I live in downtown Ottawa, right in the middle of the trucker convoy protest.

They are literally camped out below my bedroom window. My new neighbours moved in on Friday and they seem determined to stay. I have read a lot about what my new neighbours are supposedly like, mostly from reporters and columnists who write from distant vantage points somewhere in the media heartland of Canada. Apparently the people who inhabit the patch of asphalt next to my bedroom are white supremacists, racists, hatemongers, pseudo-Trumpian grifters, and even QAnon-style nutters. I have a perfect view down Kent Street – the absolute ground zero of the convoy. In the morning, I see some protesters emerge from their trucks to stretch their legs, but mostly throughout the day they remain in their cabs honking their horns. At night I see small groups huddled in quiet conversations in their new found companionship. There is no honking at night. What I haven’t noticed, not even once, are reporters from any of Canada’s news agencies walking among the trucks to find out who these people are. So last night, I decided to do just that – I introduced myself to my new neighbours.

Great piece. Share it far and wide.

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