For some reason “follow AK” twitter button on top of front page doesn’t work anymore, leads to a message “@akarlin88 This account doesn’t exist Try searching for another” on twitter interface, but the twitter link used in this newest text is good and works as usual.

AK: I changed it to @akarlin0. The “88” has become more trouble than it’s worth.

Congratulations for moving up in life.

AK: Comment included, “Is your new apartment at the Kremlin or Lubyanka?” before the edit. Hence my “LOL”.

I’ve mostly been a lurker here, but I still remember when someone from Reddit of all places put a link to this blog on a thread about Russia, back in 2016, his point being that the media didn’t know the country at all. I’m really glad I clicked that link.

I wish you the best

I’ve enjoyed your posts over the years, AK. Thank you.

Do you think that Russia will buy parts of northern Kazakhstan, like the US bought Alaska?

The current government might like having Russian troops a bit closer to the (relatively) new capital, in case Islamists attempt a coup.

Good luck, and not surprised.

I have for the past few months felt a strange “change in the air” that I couldn’t quite put my finger on – I’ve also felt a strange disinclination to post on Unz lately, and almost did so out of a sense of duty.

I feel like the world is at a turning point. Something is different. It no longer feels so urgent to say what I thought I had to say here.

And Unz seems to be changing too, with the addition of bloggers like Raches (I appreciate you were being polite, but I am sure you are aware as anyone that Ron Unz has very decided editorial stances which he will likely be pushing even more in the future).

In the end, perhaps Unz has played it’s course. It no longer feels so relevant. Many of the best commenters have already left.

Well, everything has it’s natural lifespan, and nothing is as certain as change.

Looking forward to reading the books that you’ll be finishing, AK!

I should probably finish the car safety kit post at some point, no?

I wish you all the best Anatoly, and thank you for the opportunity to spout off here at your blog. You’ve really been a rather hospitable host! I hope that your requirement for more time to your other affairs includes pursuing a PhD degree, that you mentioned a couple of years back.

в�его наилучшего!

F.

Dasvidaniya

Probably for the best, can’t be good for your career respects in Russia to be associated with a site like UR (whose most recent addition to the list of bloggers apparently regards it as his mission to lovingly tend to the memory of Dr Goebbels, lol). Your departure from this site will be another step cementing its irrelevance and descent into lunatic asylum.
I can’t say I’m overly sympathethic to many of your views as they have evolved (or become more clear) over the years, and I’ve never understood exactly what the point of an English-language blog promoting Russian nationalism is supposed to be (apart from getting a presumably generous stipend from Ron Unz), seems bizarrely misdirected. But I will admit that your blog has frequently been interesting and at times even enlightening. So I wish you all the best for your personal life; hopefully at least some remnants of your commenters’ community will make it to Substack, would be sad if it just dispersed.

Video Link

Based and powerful. pic.twitter.com/m2gTOvfqL7

— Anatoly Karlin 🦇🔊 (@akarlin0) June 26, 2019

I still need to post physique (gotta cut :() & bother Karlin about Great Bifurcation. Also,

N

ਵਾਹਿਗ�ਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗ�ਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

I wish you good luck
Your work was and remains wonderful

Well, looks like it’s off to Substack. I’ve just gone and purchased a subscription, and I encourage others here to do the same. Perhaps this isn’t the end, but merely the exchange of one platform for another?

AK,

Your tolerance has been greatly appreciated.

I know that I can be quite strident at times, largely as a consequence of usually being out numbered.

Hopefully Mr. Unz will allow your top line to cycle a few more true “Open Threads” even without significant lead in content. If the right edge real estate is precious he could move you to the center or center archived areas.

There are enough people here throwing in new content it might continue for longer than the closing AE effort.

Losing you so soon after AE is a cruel blow. IMHO the UR is much diminished by the double loss of interesting content and open dialogue.
____

Hopefully there are better times ahead for our nations bilateral relations.

An Orthodox Christian Russia and a Christian MAGA United States would have huge reasons to cooperate. 80-90% of the problem is on this side Atlantic. America has to beat back SJW Globalism if it is not too late.

PEACE 😇
______________________________

P.S. I had this pegged for

� Weekly Open Thread Humor 😂

I will share it here in hope that it will take some of the edge off.

I will save others items for a true Open Thread to keep it separate from goodbyes and condolences.

It sucks how accurate this is.

pic.twitter.com/L2D086PQ9D

— Jack Murphy 🇺🇸 âš”ï¸� (@jackmurphylive) October 3, 2021

Good luck Anatoly!
I enjoyed reading your blogs and I learned a lot from your articles on many topics. I’m a little sad that you are stopping blogging.
I hope your twitter account won’t be banned so I can easily check what’s going on, because you became a sort of a-source-to-go-to when I want to read some interesting stuff and inform myself about relevant topics happening in the world.

Bye

The problem with Substack is that you have to pay per writer and each one is $5+/month. It’s ok if you only follow a few writers but if you want to follow 20+, you have to pay $100+/month. A lot of interesting commenters won’t do that, e.g. grad students, people in poor countries.

try to accurately understand and explain how the world works

Whoa dude!

Don’t limit yourself like that at the outset.

“You win some, you lose some.�

And some get rained out.

Gonna miss this blog since it’s one of the few with interesting takes on Russia/Eastern Europe without the idiocy that dominates American dissident discourse, but I get it. I purged my own online presence late last year to focus exclusively on Terror House Press, both because I have a recession-proof offline career now and because I wanted to get rid of the baggage of a decade-plus of writing (much of which frankly isn’t very good).

Godspeed, Anatoly. I’ll be following your Substack.

I’ve learned quite a bit from your blog and the comment section.

Keep it straight and honest as you have in the past and you will be in a very select group.

Good luck with the non-bloggings! Thanks so much for all the content, and operating all these classic threads and conversation for all these years.

So, from what I understand, we will still have a weekly open thread, but you won’t be updating the blog so often anymore? (Or will everything close, and we have to emigrate to Sailer’s forum? – I’m getting a little worried)

Going forwards, although I can’t commit to a similar amount of blogging – the inability to produce sufficient content to justify my blogging slot at UR played a significant role in my decision to “retire� – I will nonetheless continue to compile weekly Open Threads Takes to maintain the RR community, as well as the occasional “effortpost� (at least to the extent that increased demands on my time from other, non-blogging related projects permit).

So, from what I understand, we will still have a weekly open thread, but you won’t be updating the blog so often anymore?

No, if I understand correctly, this blog will be closed down completely and AK’s open takes transferred to Substack:
https://akarlin.substack.com/
Substack commenting system isn’t great, not conducive to the kind of discussions commenters had on UR. It’s a pity that UR’s superb commenting system hasn’t been imitated elsewhere.

oint of an English-language blog promoting Russian national

AK’s political opinions of the blog are always kind of a pro-government, moderate Russian imperialism, rather than nationalism. He just posts what he was interested or makes him happy, (or what can troll an amusing reaction from certain regular readers, including yourself).

career respects in Russia to be associated with a site like U

Probably I doubt they monitor much in the English language internet, so there’s not likely something to worry about here. Monitoring what some few Russian citizens write in English websites would be surely expensive and not very useful.

Kremlinbots are real, but they receive a low salary, and ones which can write English are a limited resource (likely students), and will be writing comments for websites with the most viewers, like the Guardian or New York Times, as well as probably comments on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

And their commenting is a kind of quota propaganda for the local Western audiences. If you saw any comments saying “I am a patriotic American veteran from Alabama. I was fighting for America in Vietnam and Iraq. But today I prefer Putin. Putin is a Christian patriot, who loves his family, guns, dogs, capitalism, Bible, applepie and [insert other things that are attractive for Americans]. He is not like the atheist Joe Biden. Biden supports the rehabiliation of fascism in the Baltic states, and is making us Americans inject Bill Gate’s vaccine with nanochips and cover our faces with a diaper as a symbol of our slavery.”

Ok that makes sense for AK if he’s not paid, but sad for us, as surely the end of “our Unz community”. Daniel Chieh had always a good point, and we should have donated money to AK afterall.

I would have said we could have immigrated to Sailer’s blog, but he often only approves comments a day after people are posting them.

I’m disappointed to see you go Anatoly. I may have often enough disagreed with you, but I always found your content well put and thought provoking. Your presence will be missed, especially coming so soon after the departure of AE.

I also appreciated the fact that you allowed yourself to be a real person on Unz, which I found rather pleasant. Small things like the venerable AK w/ sword picture or your personal insights and details, as well as the wide ranging subject matter, made your blog a personable corner of Unz. If I had to venture a guess I would imagine that the AK presented on this blog is pretty much the AK one would meet in real life, which is refreshing compared to the coy artifice of someone like Raches (who I’m pretty sure is actually Megatron from the Beast Wars cartoon, but that is a different line of thought) or the politically compartmentalized nature of other writers.

Thanks again, and I wish you all the best in future endeavors.

Immigrating to Sailer’s blog…you have in mind a Great Replacement? Bwah Ha Ha!

Karlin reader since Fall 2014 I think, good time to go, leave on a peak।।
Bakshi kind of pointed out we all started to change from 2019ish, angrier/more closed off. So 🤷�♀�

Definitely had the most accounts & handles by far।।

Давно пора. Б-г в помощь!

I’ve been cheering for Russia since the 1990s, when elites openly gloated about the misery and degradation of the Russian people. I thought about how upset they’d be if Russia got back on her feet, and I haven’t been disappointed.

We’re already a kind of homeless orphans now without AK’s apartment to sit in.

I used to post on Sailer’s blog, but I didn’t follow it much recently. I’m scrolling across Sailer’s blog and can’t find much ways to join his conversation. It reminds me of changing schools as a child – all these strange kids you don’t know.

Well there is a topic about Belarus and at least I know RadicalCenter and Anon 2. Anon 2 used to post here. And RadicalCenter is some kind of “AK fanboy” so we have that connection.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-e-u-accept-your-punishment-by-belarus/#comment-4943416

Well wishes to AK, his readers, commenters and lurkers.

Was going to save this for the next Open Thread, but now seems as good a time as any to ask: was anyone who supports the Intermarium really a crypto Indian? (I only ask because of Parag Khanna, writing recently in the Financial Times.) Or anyone else want to come clean?

I have to say that I have had the same feelings about Unz.

I can’t speak to Mr. Unz’s editorial preferences which you allude to, but I find Unz to be a far less interesting place than it seemed a couple of years ago. I hope the wheel will turn again and better writers will return, but trading AE and AK for Anglin and Raches seems a poor deal to me.

It’s disappointing since there are few corners of the internet like the Unz review.

Bummer. There was a lot of interesting stuff on this channel.

I was lucky as a university undergraduate to have classmates and friends from throughout Eastern Europe. Ideas and loyalties differed; we had a lot of interesting, passionate debates. Everyone has gone their separate ways. By some magic you have managed to, incredibly, host something with some of that spirit here, where one can meet and argue with some brilliant Russians, Germans, Hungarians, Poles of various political views. Thank you! It will be missed! Wish you all the best in your endeavours, will try to see you in Moscow again.

Good luck and thank you, AK.

Well it’s stereotypical. If there’s something good, for free, in the internet? – probably won’t be for much more time.

It would be nice if you could stick around, because you stay involved in the comment threads and produce a quality work product, which is rare enough on this site even among the authors.

Too bad… I was just getting into your columns and learning about Russia and it’s relationship with Ukraine. But such is life. I will check archives…

Theoretically the existence of our gracious patron Mr. Unz should exempt this site from the usual internet downfall of “if it’s free you are the product”, but I suppose their are many forms of entropy active in the world. I haven’t given up on Unz, as I’ll continue to pop in and see what is cooking.

It seems to me that the dynamic which Mr. Unz has created of a moneyed patron creating wrong-think forums is a very worthy one regardless of how long it remains interesting to some of us. I hope that the site will change trajectory yet again, but I’m thankful enough for the real worth that has come out of it in the past few years.

Best of luck in your future endeavors. This was a quality blog.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

I will check archives

Those archives are a goldmine. What you’ll find there are predictions that do a better job of describing what’s going on now than the descriptions written by people living through it.

The only columns on Unz that I regularly read were you and Sailer. I will follow your substack.

I will miss you here on Unz. You are sane and have given me an interest in visiting Russia. My ideal evening would be to get into a drunken discussion about politics with you.

Have been reading you since the first days of Da Russophile. My earliest comment on your blog (under this handle) dates from 2010.

Sorry to see you go. Unz.come will be 28% less interesting without you. But you are not quitting blogging entirely, are you?

Best of luck. This was my favorite blog of all time. Your blogging influenced me in real life to cheer on China and Russia.

I can’t speak to Mr. Unz’s editorial preferences which you allude to, but I find Unz to be a far less interesting place than it seemed a couple of years ago. I hope the wheel will turn again and better writers will return, but trading AE and AK for Anglin and Raches seems a poor deal to me.

I don’t think it’s Unz’s fault. The reality is that blogging is dead, so there’s no new blogging talent to recruit from. All the best and remaining bloggers today are established bloggers who started back in the 2000s when blogging was big and still a thing. And these bloggers can have their own independent Substacks and the like. That’s basically what Substack is for: it’s a platform for older, established bloggers with an audience base already.

The Unz Review was originally great because it brought together a lot of the original and interesting bloggers from the early HBD and right wing blogosphere of the 2000s e.g. Sailer, Razib, Audacious Epigone, Anatoly Karlin, etc.

Nobody blogs anymore, they just tweet. So there’s no new talent to replace the original bloggers. Unz has to scrape the bottom of the barrel for new people like Raches. At least Anglin can write pretty funny stuff.

I will nonetheless continue to compile weekly Open Threads Takes to maintain the RR communit

That’s nice to hear. Strangely, although I’ve saw it a long time coming (the dropping of ‘effortposts’ and content in general seems to have happened sometime ago), I’ve guess I must actually value the commenting section on this blog much more than I realised, after seeing this ‘retirement’ post.

Other than our benevolent overlord himself, I honestly haven’t really found much of interest on this site recently, especially in terms of their comment-sections. Israel Shamir, PC Roberts, Atzmon and Linh Dinh have all unfortunately turned-into crackpots since COVID, Razib and the American statistics guy left, Durocher seems to have hit legal trouble… At least there’s this new Raches fellow, and as incredibly pompous as his writing is, or his tiresome obsession with eviscerating Christianity (what an untouched topic!), right now he’s about the only columnnist other than Unz of any interest. I guess I might finally start looking at substack myself non-MSM current-affairs stuff to read.

Anyway, best of luck to you, Anatoly, obviously I’ve disagreed with you in the past, but what can I say, some topics had me overreact.

Could anyone make some recommendations?

AK: Comment included, “Is your new apartment at the Kremlin or Lubyanka?� before the edit.

Based.

Anyway, whatever people like Bashibazuk will say, I can’t really blame Akarlin (or anyone else, really) for not question total purity of motives for praising the government under which they live, in hope of making a better living. Whatever it’s faults, it’s not as if the government of Russia is totally criminal, traitorous and insane as that of so many countries right now.

AK: But just FTR, unfortunately no, I did not get any free apartment offers in either the Kremlin, or Lubyanka, or anywhere else.

Much to our mutual surprise, Anatoly, I have already subscribed to your new Substack, “Powerful Takes.� You’ve got my sixty bucks for the year, and I’m curious to see the direction in which you are headed. (You’re probably thinking, “yeah man, I’m curious to see it too!�)

https://substack.com/profile/10448667-anatoly-karlin

I really wish that you would reconsider both your support of the “pandemic� police state and your sometimes mocking and dismissive attitude towards people who refuse to accept such loss of liberty and destruction of normal human interaction, commerce, education, worship, travel, and so on.

But talent is talent, and you’ve got it, you covid zealot. You still offer a unique perspective and constellation of interests and studies, and we learn from your analysis. Keep up the statistical analyses.

Hoping to see both tons of politics and foreign policy, Slavic culture, Russian history and society, and the like covered. Especially hope to see more travel columns from Russia and elsewhere — perhaps Russian enclaves in northern Kazakhstan, Latvia, wherever. You could be the sword-wielding intellectual counterpart to nomads like “Bald and Bankrupt� and Johnny FD.

Seriously, good luck in your writing and in reaching personal fulfillment. After everything, I will be rooting for you. And for the Russian people. God Bless —

Dear Sir,

I don’t agree with everything you write, but I always appreciate hearing your point of view. I fervently hope that you don’t plan to leave the Unz Review. If you are considering that possibility, please let us know so that we can attempt to persuade you otherwise.

The loss of alternative points of view online would be … to my mind … devastating to free thinking and free inquiry.

However, whatever you decide … Godspeed! I wish you all the best, and thank you for all that you have written.

Sincerely,

A Reader

@Akarlin @Ron Unz

Off-topic: I think this has been asked before, but could you ask to lengthen the editing time for comments on this website? I frequently end up butchering my own comments (as above), when I read my comment, decide I dislike a phrase, and then the edit-time runs out.

Agree wholeheartedly about Raches — just Dreck for the most part.

The new tiresome uncreatively-rude asshole version of Linh Dinh isn’t like before either. I wonder if he would benefit himself, and us, by introducing videos of his wanderings and interactions with people around the world. Vlogs seem much more popular than blogs now, right? Linh could be the Vietnamese “Bald and Bankrupt.�

As for bloggers, though, I do still enjoy Peak Stupidity.

Yep. But you can subscribe to Karlin’s “Powerful Takes� on Substack.com. I just did.

Sigh …

Come on, Man. Please don’t go. You are posting stuff somewhere, why not copy it here?

It seems that a number of long-time bloggers are departing. Are you experiencing “pressure” from the forces of “Good” and “Democracy”?

(Shaking my Head)

Вы держите�ь там. )

End of an era �

And Unz seems to be changing too, with the addition of bloggers like Raches (I appreciate you were being polite, but I am sure you are aware as anyone that Ron Unz has very decided editorial stances which he will likely be pushing even more in the future).

I really don’t understand the problem with “diverse” points of view. We know that certain people have powerful biases on certain subjects, and we can take that into account when we read certain articles. Speaking as a complete “noob”, Raches sounds like a literal Nazi (as in a member of the American National Socialist Party). That does not mean that his point of view has no value whatsoever. As for Andrew Anglin, I had always dismissed him as a weird sort of fringe maniac. When I read his articles, however, I find myself agreeing with much of what he has to say.

Do you suppose that most of us are children, who must be protected from “dangerous” points of view? Isn’t truth supposed to emerge from weighing opposing arguments? Isn’t that the foundation of the “Scientific Method”?

In my opinion, Raches is an atheist who needs to find God through Jesus Christ. His world view makes some sense if you are a White Nationalist Atheist, but if you are a Christian, then other possibilities appear. I have more sympathy for Andrew Anglin. He has a point when he goes on and on about the influence of Jews on the modern world. Jews who insist on strongly identifying with Judaism have long expressed jealousy and resentment towards Christendom. It must be noted, however, that these people would have no real influence had the majority of Christians grown cold in their love for God.

Rather than focusing on Jews or Blacks or whomever, I believe we should focus on “Christians”. Although, at this point, perhaps we should term them agnostics who would have been Christians 100 years ago (at least nominally).

These could be the “Last Days” potentially, but I believe that also depends on the actions that we take. There is nothing that says that the Antichrist must rise to power in our lifetime. If we stand and resist the evils of the present, all of that could be deferred into the future. Of course, it will all come to pass someday, but it need not happen now.

We need to speak up and speak out.

Mr. Karlin, I hope that you will reconsider your decision to retire this blog. How shall we discern what is happening in the world if we do not have a wide variety of perspectives to sample?

Regardless, I sincerely wish you the best in all your endeavors. Please speak and make your point of view known, wherever you may go.

All the Best

All the best Anatoly!

Your blog was a rare refuge and though the regulars on this blog mostly don’t know each other IRL I think over the years we learnt a lot from each other and on the whole the time spent reading and posting comments was time well spent.

I doubt we’ll ever meet but in case I’m ever in Moscow I’ll reach out to you from my mail ID used to post on this blog..

You are always welcome if you are ever in New Delhi.

Your departure makes UR substantially less interesting. I don’t know what Substack is and don’t have the time to go and check. I barely have time for reading some stuff here. I wish you the best. Good luck Anatoly Karlin.

I first came across you iirc at your Da Russophile blog maybe in 2014 and have followed since then, I have learnt a lot and enjoyed your work. Good luck Anatoly karlin

Could anyone make some recommendations?

There’s Niccolo Soldo (Croatian-Canadian who has gone back to Croatia, has in the past commented on this blog):
https://niccolo.substack.com/
I’m not a fan of all aspects of his writing (don’t like the Catholicism or the exaggerated anti-Anglo stance), but it’s interesting enough, and I like the attention given to European affairs.

The addition of Raches was a real jump-the-shark moment for unz.com . Any dissident group always seems to end up attracting cranks.

Good luck to Anatoly, and to Steve Sailer who I hear is also soon departing.

Come on, Man. Please don’t go.

AK has many virtues, but like most of us he also has a little mean streak.

He’s just doing this to rid the world of Mr. Hack.

Dangit, what is Putin gonna do now?

If he goes full SJW the purple hair will be on your hands!

Jokes aside, full support in your future endeavours. Thank you for shining a light on the Russian perspective. I shared a few of the posts, and the last one on Russia was a masterpiece. Leaving with a bang for sure.

As for Ron Unz, I have a feeling that he will be the most sad to see you leave out of all of us, Unz.com won’t be the same.

All the best,

Love from Serbia #nohomo

Character is destiny while intelligence is the machine that rationalizes the choices. AK will be OK and won’t trespass too much because of fear of losing face so it is not likely he will turn into a war criminal soon.

Anyway, good for him and he will be missed but perhaps him leaving is the sign that TUR is folding. The Raches project by Ron Unz indicates that things are not going to get better here. Grasping at straws? Self sabotage?

Ron Unz was hurt by the pandemic. Not only because he gave platform to floomer and anti-waxxer wackos but also because majority of his commentariat who participated in discussions on conspiracy theories turned out to be floomer and anti-waxxer whackos themselves. The pandemic did a great damage, perhaps irreversible, to all conspiracy theorizing.

The pandemic conspiracy theorizing turned out to be the most successful Cass Sunstein cognitive infiltration operation of recent times that was to large extent conducted by Kremlin and Peking not to compromise and expose American idiocy but to weaken American and Western ability to cary political discourse and thus push it on the authoritarian path which actually will be counterproductive to Kremlin and Peking. Swords are usually double-edged. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

As far as Russia goes Russia is lucky she has smart, ambitious and hungry people like AK who want to work for her. Let’s hope that Russia will appreciate it and remunerate his efforts generously.

The outrageous interviews with Soldo are also delightful. Good bye for now, German_reader. Maybe I’ll try to look you up sometime when I visit Germany. Out mutual friend reiner Tor could be the go between.

Many thanks to Anatoly for years of extraordinary information and entertainment. I’ll be on his substack, one way or another.

It was a pleasure reading and participating, Mr. Karlin!

Good luck with all future ventures and Godspeed!

And Mr. Unz….

…what you do is awesome, awesome, awesome.)

Sailer, Razib, Audacious Epigone, Anatoly Karlin

All the science- and evidence-based writers – Razib Khan, Audacious Epigone, and Anatoly Karlin – have left or are leaving. Unz. The sole remaining blogger of interest is Steve Sailer, but he is more “let’s just throw up an idea or two and see what sticks” type of a writer and is prone to his hobby horses rather than serious “effort-posting.” Meanwhile, Unz is getting “Raches” or whatever his name is, whose writing, from what little I gleaned, is composed of narcissistic, bombastic, and weird German-worship, and is completely devoid of any analytical insight backed by data (he seems like a pagan, Nordicist version of “Intelligent Dasein”).

In any case, best of luck to you, Mr. Karlin, in your future endeavors. I read and enjoyed many of your posts even when I did not comment.

It was never my mission to pursue “activist� goals so much as to try to accurately understand and explain how the world works, and at best, play some modest role in informing the debate in those areas that I hoped could make use of some of my insights.

Yes, it always seemed that way. Thank you. It is a real pleasure for me to read someone’s open and self-examined perspective.

Despite its stellar predictive power, from development economics to the Karabakh War of 2020, the HBD/�cognitive capitalist� worldview is “unhandshakeworthy� as never before,

Just because something reflects well on you, doesn’t mean it is not true.

The vast majority of people do not have the psychological strength to exist in a world-view where HBD is true and they not become a monster; therefore they will do anything to run away from the monster inside of them.

If they had the mental integrity to look at those facts, they would be fine, but they don’t, yet.

with Wokeness – #BLM, CRT, identity politics – having become America’s secular religion. This will probably create a lot of damage before sobriety returns, which will likely take a quite a while, as much of the “Dissident Right� seems to have decided that the correct response to SJW overreach was one upping them with Qanon and other very powerful theories.

Indeed.

When you’re scared of being the monster, you have to really up your game when it comes to imagining your enemies. It is the coward’s path to validation.

This currently applies to all parts of the political spectrum and is a scary looking spiral. Thankfully it is just a bizarre and distorted version of a child playing with toy soldiers. When it is time to pack things away to do something serious, like eat dinner, the vast majority of participants somehow find that they are able.

Assiduously as I tried to “explain� Russia, one blogger was never likely to get very far, given that the underlying dynamics were always driven by the exigencies of American domestic politics (“the game was rigged from the start“). Hence, the sudden disappearance of Russiagate as soon Trump was out of power. Consequently, we have the supreme irony of Russo-American relations being less bad under Biden, under whom strategic priority has shifted to China, than they were under “Putin puppet� Trump.
Conversely, on the “bright� side – at least so far as many Russians are concerned – is that Putin has adopted my own program for Russia, progressively outlined over the past half decade, almost wholesale (hence my recurrent jokes about him reading my blog). My last longread for The Unz Review both marked and celebrated the culmination of that process, and I hope it will serve as a thematically appropriate endpoint to the Russian Reaction blog.
“You win some, you lose some.� :shrug: But I’m satisfied to have been dealt an American Airlines on the particular “debate� that is most germane to my own life choices.

Yes. I particularly admire the way you’ve avoided falling into cynicism, even though you’ve taken the path you’ve taken.

If you’re interesting in following my future adventures in graphomania on topics from Soviet freezers to eschatological musings then do subscribe to Powerful Takes, my newsletter at Substack.

Great news.

Thank you Anatoly!

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.

I find that oddly comforting. Nothing really ends and no one really dies.

Er… does this news mean I should cancel the Patreon thing? You probably have a million dollars from trading crypto now anyways. Is the Substack going to be active and free instead?

“If they do shut down all my normie accounts, I will be on urbit at ~lacrys-halseg”

Yeah, but we already talked about your first Substack post on life extension, I believe at Spandrell’s, where I raised some objections and pinged you, but it looks like you didn’t boot up urbit for quite a while. I highly recommend it as there has been an ota update from hell two weeks ago and you need to install it and see if everything is working fine.

Anyway, good for him and he will be missed but perhaps him leaving is the sign that TUR is folding. The Raches project by Ron Unz indicates that things are not going to get better here. Grasping at straws? Self sabotage?

I suppose this might as well be the thread to bring this up, as honestly upon AK’s (and others) departure, I don’t really have any reason to visit here reguarly anymore, so I should hear out opinions/theories from this blog’s denizens, the one corner of this place where most people aren’t insane or retarded.

Yes, it has to honestly be the most bizzare thing I’ve ever seen published here (which is saying a fair bit), I really have no idea what Unz is thinking with this. I guess, charitably, I could see it in the same context as the old ‘Ask A Mexican!’ column here, seemingly published solely for trolling his readership.
But Unz never went so far to confuse or belittle the commentariat as the remark on how “absolutely remarkable” Pablo Sanchez or whatever his name was, in multiple threads. So, after 2 years or so of our benevolent overlord carefully apologising for Hitler, he has a self-identified “non-vaxxer” (after months of [correctly] belittling anti-vaxxers as morons, in some long overdue damage control) who in the most cartoonish (not to mention excessively prolix) manner (RIP Helmut Goebbels), proudly identifies as a Nazi.

Anyway, I’m sticking with my “Ask A Mexican” theory for now.

Commenting on Sailer’s blog is unrewarding because of Sailer’s boomer insistence on moderating comments. I don’t understand what the point is, even aside from his deviance from the true purpose of the internet, given that he approves almost everything anyway.

Sad news. I have greatly valued your work and frequently used it in Johnson’s Russia List.

A visit to India should leave you with some form of immunity to practically every plague known (and unknown) to man, at least.
India is an enormous place obviously, did you have any particular region in mind? Generally, the further south you go, the closer the place gets to becoming fit for human habitation. Avoid Bombay and Calcutta unless you have a particularly strong taste for the macabre.

V.S. Naipaul’s India Trilogy is a little dated, but still essential reading.

@utu

The pandemic conspiracy theorizing turned out to be the most successful Cass Sunstein cognitive infiltration operation of recent times that was to large extent conducted by Kremlin and Peking not to compromise and expose American idiocy but to weaken American and Western ability to cary political discourse and thus push it on the authoritarian path which actually will be counterproductive to Kremlin and Peking. Swords are usually double-edged. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

I noticed you’ve been darkly hinting at this for several months now, you might as well give your fullest and most powerful take on this, before we all jump ship, because I for one don’t follow you.

I doubt the Kremlins and Pekinese have such a close relationship to collaborate on such a scheme, or have pushing America into authoritarianism would be a net plus for them. From my own perspective it seems an entirely natural reaction of an empire, now used to total hegemony, slowly but now visibly losing it.
Also against this, it’s hard for me to think of any major nation worse at propaganda or public relations than China. And why would Russia desire America to become authoritarian, considering they’re an authoritarian nation themselves (to say nothing of China), and presumably think it’s a good thing.

Thank you for giving a perspective on Russia which isn’t from the Edward Lucas crowd. Good luck!

“The world has changed.
I see it in the water.
I feel it in the Earth.
I smell it in the air.
Much that once was is lost,
For none now live who remember it.”

A few of us are still around who remember “Elder Days before the fall”.

Avoid Bombay and Calcutta unless you have a particularly strong taste for the macabre.

One goes to India to see things you can’t see elsewhere – not just for a tropical vacation. Far from avoiding the craziness, it’s an essential part of an India trip.

Calcutta and Bombay are unique and deeply atmospheric cities, well worth seeing. Bombay will be Karlin’s first Asian-style megalopolis, something that doesn’t exist in the West.

Anyways, nothing can prepare anyone for India – it will be a shock.

I certainly don’t have any problem with “dangerous” points of view and I don’t think the other commenters lamenting the recent changes on Unz do either.

My issue with Raches is more that he seems so pompously self assured of his worldview that I suspect little of interest can penetrate the bubble.
Anglin, as cunninghamsamich pointed out, writes some amusing stuff on occasion but he seems too much of a troll/ opportunist to contribute much in the way of thought provoking content.

Bloggers like AK and AE addressed a wide ranging set of ideas and topics in a way which promoted a variety of intelligent commenters to have a provocative (in the good sense) and cogent discussion.

I don’t feel that this dynamic is remotely possible with someone like Anglin or Raches, who seem to enjoy provoking (in the bad sense), shocking, or domineering.

As a side note, when I speak highly of segments of the Unz commentariat I’m not patting myself on the back. I’m a relatively infrequent commenter because I’ve usually benefited from following the discussions and have felt that I’ve had little to add that was not said better by someone else.

In contrast, on almost all other website commenting sections I would see myself as being one of the smarter and more articulate voices. I’m starting to feel less intellectually challenged on Unz, and I don’t think it’s because I’ve gotten a lot smarter!

I really have no idea what Unz is thinking with this. I guess, charitably, I could see it in the same context as the old ‘Ask A Mexican!’ column here, seemingly published solely for trolling his readership.

“Ask a Mexican” could be genuinely considered as trolling, since it was at odds with all the WN (or at least anti-immigration) content published on Unz Review. By contrast the blog of “Raches” seems to be a logical evolution of the kind of “Hitler did nothing wrong” revisionism that has been a major feature of UR for several years.
As for Unz’s motivations, I can only assume that he thinks there’s some well-known person hiding behind the “Raches” pseudonym. Unz has long claimed after all that many members of America’s elite are reading UR and secretly agreeing with much of it, and maybe “Raches” has managed to play on this belief, flattering Unz’s ego. But I admit that’s just a wild guess on my part (I’ve only skimmed through UR in recent months, only noticed “Raches” when his blog was added and haven’t looked closely at Unz’s interactions with the guy). Doesn’t really matter much anyway, whatever the reasons, this new bizarro blog will accelerate UR’s decline into irrelevance.

Well, it could be more accurately said, you’re ceasing with regular blogging in favor of less common but more “dense” and high quality posts?

You’re a very informed man, and twitter is nowadays sufficient for short posts. Conserving your energy by focusing on K-selected works is a very good idea in that regard.

Sooo… when’s that Great Bifurcation post coming >:^)

Between you and the late Stephen Cohen I’ve gained a basic appreciation of Russia’s place in the world, especially vis-à-vis the United States and its vainglorious/demented foreign misadventures. So heartful thanks!

Surely all these bloggers you read are basically crazy? But the point is not the “writer”, but the platform.

If Shakespeare and Goethe were writing on Twitter, their online activity would still be like an annoying troll, as Twitter is a machine for people to click “like” for disjointed paragraphs that only arrive from people who they already agree with (the follow system means you are selecting a narrow set of producers for the paragraphs, according to what you already agree with).

On the other hand, if there is a good, competently moderated platform, with a correct amount of polite people that know each other, and yet have diverse opinions – then this is party, or “literary salon” (without the aristocratic woman hosting it), or traditional village cafe.

It’s an interactive experience, where you can argue with people, but while feeling something about the people you argued with.

–

These well managed internet forums (which Karlin has been hosting one of the last ones still existing), is like a multinational “global village” 2000s version of those old Mediterranean men.

“A visit to India should leave you with some form of immunity to practically every plague known (and unknown) to man, at least.”

Or extremely ill. I know a couple of people who roughed it round India and came home with ailments that took a long time (months to years) to shake off, including an interesting parasite that burrows under your toenails.

I recommend (had a great time btw, fascinating place though highly polluted)

a) avoiding water that isn’t bottled. I used the drinking fountain at very modern Mumbai Airport, just a couple of mouthfuls, and had the trots for three days

b) not eating meat. There are plenty of good and inexpensive veggie places, even in the heart of New Delhi (where you will also find people sleeping under tarpaulins by the luxury hotels). Street food (veg samosas, veg pakora, veg bhajis etc) is good if you can see it being cooked in front of you. I drank a lot of chai (India’s tea).

c) some hotel restaurants are just tourist traps. I actually had the worst veg curry I’d ever eaten in India. Eat where the locals eat.

d) Indian beer is pretty good, enjoy!

Here’s an interesting photo of him within his own element. But is he actually within the photo?

AK: Considering I took it, no.

It’s interesting to see how most people here seem to share the same opinions about AK’s obvious talent and the rest of the Unz contributors’ merits and demerits. I guess there is a reason why we all became readers of this great blog.

I am not entirely sure but I think that most likely I discovered Unz through one of the links that Ann Coulter periodically posts to Steve Sailer’s blog on this site. Then it took me a while to realize that AK was generating the best comments section on the site by far, the only one where knowledgeable people engaged in in-depth discussions of different topics rather than just piling on on the same one. And it took me even longer to discover that the most juicy discussions actually took place in the open threads. But I have the impression that I became a regular reader of AK at a time when some of the best commenters were leaving or about to leave.

Like everyone here, I’m sad to learn that this source of fun is ending but it is quite understandable why AK has chosen to pursue new endeavors. I guess I’ll stick around to follow Sailer, Reed, and the occasional Derb. Not sure how long that will last.

All the best, AK.

Hey Aaron, As spoken in the past, whenever you decide to move to the West or just to visit the Wasatch area, feel free to drop me a line at mikel underscore ms at yahoo dot com.

I think that we should try to emigrate to Karlin’s website – the “Karlin cult” should not allowed to die so prematurely.

But why should you care where you agree or disagree with this Raches who is replacing Karlin? The more important question, is whether he introduces a topic interesting, where we can feel welcome to disagree, and moderates without authoritarianism.

–

He was like a 2000s internet version, of one of these aristocratic women of the 18th century, who knows how to create the hospitable salon, introduce the topic, provoke the talkative people to respond – and then he sits down relaxing drinking tea (or more appropriately with popcorn).

And the blog is obsessive about particular interests, he can use them with professional expertise to generation discussion that encompasses diverse and multinational possibilities.

He knows if posts something about his love for Indian food, it will likely result in Utu and Beckow arguing about French soup. That soon Melanf will start to post photos of the mushrooms his wife has collected. That photo of a mushroom, will trigger Aaronb’s mind to think about American forests and he will start recommending national parks to Mikel that reminded him of his youth among trees in the Basque Country. Etc

On the other hand, Karlin knows he could write about vegetarian burgers in Moscow, and Bashibuzuk’s mind (sitting in the office thousands of kilometres away in Edmonton) will be triggered about the thought of the mixed nationality Putinist hipsters that have conquered the elite streets of his native city. But after some cathartic comments expounded his anger against the multinational Putinists, the sun comes out and Bashibuzuk will start posting happy thoughts about Buddhism, which in turn will trigger the rage of AltanBakshi viewing how the white man misunderstands his religion, that invites Aaronb – and so on.

There has been immense power of almost infinite regressions and possibilities, that Karlin holds in his hands skillfully and deftly, and you could see him something drunk on anticipation of the possibilities when he phrases like e.g. “So far as I am concerned, Putin has built the perfect state.”

My issue with Raches is more that he seems so pompously self assured of his worldview that I suspect little of interest can penetrate the bubble.

It is much worse than that. When someone presents simple facts that disprove his worldview, Raches The Troll goes unhinged gaga phweet off the rails. I would compare him to a spoiled child, except that would be unfairly insulting to children.

For your reference, I have included a picture of Raches The Troll below the [MORE] tag.

PEACE 😇

The more important question, is whether he introduces a topic interesting, where we can respond, and moderates without authoritarianism.

Just look at his blog, he’s a self-styled authoritarian (who apparently bans commenters when they point out how absurd his martyr cult for the Goebbels family is). I think it’s fair to assume that it would be nothing like AK’s blog and a total waste of time to comment there.
I agree that it would be nice if Karlin’s community could still come together at AK’s Substack or some other venue.

AK: Considering I took it, no.

No doubt Mr. Hack is making a subtle reference to Velazquez’s Las Meninas (where the artist himself appears in the background) — a high compliment indeed!

Sorry you’re leaving, I very much looked forward to the blog and the (for the most part) interesting and informative comments. And I have to admit that your “Piracy Guide” was literally life-changing — living on an island in middle of the Atlantic has its advantages, but also its limitations.

https://www.unz.com/akarlin/piracy-guide-2018/

Off-topic: I think this has been asked before, but could you ask to lengthen the editing time for comments on this website?

Shocking how unobservant some people here can be. Editing time is infinite.

If you’re so stupid that you can’t figure out how it works, why are you here? One dumb bastard after another bitching about a 5-minute grace period. Twitchers.

Free tip: Don’t hit that ‘Publish Comment’ button until you want to, you know, publish your comment.

Unz should probably remove post-send editing altogether. Then the dullards might figure out how writing works.

Anglin, as cunninghamsamich pointed out, writes some amusing stuff on occasion but he seems too much of a troll/ opportunist to contribute much in the way of thought provoking content.

Yeah, if only he’d calm down and recognize that true political insight emanates from pasting outrageous nonsense from the NYT and letting the salivating commentariat exercise their keyboard thwackers while he cashes checks. Say, have you seen the revamped back 9 at Qutab? It’s almost as if they revamped their back 9!

notable drop in effort over the last couple of years and the takes (about western matters at least) seemed to be increasingly ‘shit tier’ often with a disagreeable trollishness about them so I’m not fully surprised,
the Russia takes / news roundups will be missed though.

More importantly, this is the best comment section on this site, and one of the more interesting ones in the web in general, so that’ll be a big loss, unless there’s some way to keep it running (weekly or monthly open threads?).

He was like a 2000s internet version, of one of these aristocratic women of the 18th century, who knows how to create the hospitable salon, introduce the topic, provoke the talkative people to respond

And most importantly who knows whom to forbid to enter. A necessary condition for “hospitable salon” is for it to be” inhospitable”. Look at discussions under Ron Unz articles who subscribes to libertarian laissez faire fantasy of free access. This is what I wrote under his recent article on Covid origins:

https://www.unz.com/runz/is-the-tide-finally-turning-on-covid-as-an-american-biowarfare-attack/#comment-4938860

Seems like Ron Unz was hit by the Foucault pendulum he put in motion (see Umberto Eco). All he wanted was to promote a scenario that would help China to maintain its innocence narrative. He found or rather constructed one and tried to disseminate it. But instead thousands of alternative nihilistic narratives were created and spread among millions of active internet users who now pester Ron Unz publications whenever he tries to talk about the who and why of the pandemic. Were the bots and trolls responsible for the nihilistic narratives activated by people Ron Unz wanted to help? Apparently professionals in Lubyanka and Peking knew better what was good for them and what would work rather than the well-wisher amateurs like Ron Unz or Godfree Roberts. Now the useful idiots exemplified by Paul Craig Roberts and real trolls like Mike Whitney will carry the torch and Ron Unz is left behind with his good intentions and delusion of being influential.

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

Though I did not always agree with what you wrote (usually when I sensed you were trying to épater les commentateurs, like the ‘Russians are POC’), I have found the main content of your work to be informative, engaging, varied and written with flair, even in those areas of discussion which I am less interested in.

Particularly admirable is your belief in basing your arguments on statistics and other ‘hard’ evidence, and having maintained a comment field of a much higher caliber (heated though it often got) than a large majority of the rest of the board (and with so light a degree of moderation and censorship at that).

Though the end of this phase was evident for some time now, I wish you well in your future endeavours, whatever they may be.

Good-bye and good luck from a regular reader.

Any suggestions for a new reliable Russia source?

Unintended consequence, your leaving could make The Saker the resident Russia blooger.

AK: Paul Robinson is probably the best atm.

If you click twice on the photo, you can clearly see a fellow in a short sleeved lime green shirt standing behind a camera. His face is covered by the tri-podded camera, but his shortly cropped forehead is protruding over the top of the camera (to the top right), very reminiscent of Karlin? 🙂 But I have absolutely no reason to doubt Karlin, for over the years that I’ve followed his blog, I have never seen or heard of him practicing in any form of deception. A far as I’m concerned, honesty is the most important attribute that a blogger or reporter can possess.

Why not ride the tiger and set up a substack crypto newsletter?

Anyway, aw man, too bad to see you go. This has been one of my favorite parts of Unz, including the unique comment section. So perhaps the real point was the friends we made along the way? OK, I didn’t exactly make any IRL friends but it’s been fun and informative to nod along to the intense discussions on topics we otherwise seldom hear about.

What Sailer does is honesty. He says what he sees. May we all one day reach the level of intellectual virtue that allows us to live in the world so truly. What Anglin does is pour his neuroses and assorted demons onto the page, while reality continues on, utterly unseen by him.

The people who share Anglin’s mental challenges tend to finally find a voice that affirms their derangement and become fanatical followers.

While the people who appreciate what courage truly is, and Sailer is a model of it, tend to enjoy his blog instead.

Politics as your loose form of therapy is fine, but have you thought of trying the real thing? I know you probably think it is a secret (((conspiracy))) against you, but, go with me here, is that not exactly what a psychological derangement defending itself would push you to think? Your brain parasite will naturally try its hardest to dissuade you from getting healed. Perhaps try doing the opposite of what it ways for a bit? Or have you found that this whole ideological get up has been working out for you and increasing your sense of inner peace and alignment?

Old-time and loyal follower here.

While my commenting on your blog has ground to a halt, thinking myself back to 2014 (I somehow came upon it in the pre-Unz era), it’s now clear what great part it played in making Mother Russia — with all her faults and weaknesses — my future. For that alone, I owe you no end of thanks.

I should also like to thank you for introducing me to the philosophy of Curtis Yarvin, whom I had never heard of before coming across your blog. Indeed, I remember wondering for months whatever “Russian Reaction” meant — and later, being awestruck by the intellectual fecundity of Social Matters (sadly missed).

Anglin’s young for a notable political commenter, and he’s only getting better. Still, your dichotomy is helpful. Anglin readers: demented. Sailer readers: They shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark. Which are you, heathen? I ask you! HEATHEN—WHICH ARE YOU? It’s almost as if™ you’re in need of psychoanalysis.

Best to AK; that’ll be my last OT comment on this thread.

It has always been interesting and fun reading your articles. Also very informative on topics that I really have been needing more exposure too. I wish the Russkiy Mir and you, and us all, well.

I look forward to seeing that Cathedral to the God-Tsar in person, and riding the TSR to the great workings in the Far East.

The world will be a better place when every country, every people, are nationalists, and care about the well being and prosperity of their people and good relations with their neighbors that ensure that prosperity.

Better yet if they can be nationalist together, ha ha.

Many thanks for the mixture of powerful takes and grounded analysis Anatoly.

I didn’t start reading Russian Reaction regularly till around the time of the Belarusian elections last year, but I will miss the content and the comments section. This is one of the best comments communities I have come across in a long time.

Best wishes with what you are planning to do next.

Hey Anatoly, long time lurker here. Really appreciate your work. Your insights on world affairs and Russia have always been a pleasure to read. You’ve also had one of the best comment sections around for a long time, no small feat!

Wish you all the best going forward. Same to all the great commenters who have helped make this blog great.

Mr Karlin, I prize very highly those writers I don’t always agree with, yet enjoy reading, so I’ll miss RR, and I’ll be watching Substack. Also, you’re my top source for general Russiana. Thanks for all the hard work you’ve put in on this over the years.

I also really enjoyed your travel writing. There may not be so much travel to write about these days, but I do hope one day you’ll be able to favor the world with more travel articles.

Substack:
https://akarlin.substack.com/

I just signed for this website, it reminds you of LiveJournal.

Yes for sure.

Although if Sailer likes you then he gives to your account an automatic approval capability.

Originally Sailer had liked me, and my comments were always instantly approved. My account had some special high privilege on his blog. Then I guess I said something (or spammed too much) and I was apparently downgraded to the proletariat status, and my comments on his blog are are sometimes only being only approved a day late.

“I’ve never understood exactly what the point of an English-language blog promoting Russian nationalism is supposed to be”

I assume you agree that Russia matters, and that Russian nationalism is a very important political force in Russia?

Insights from someone like Karlin on that political milieu, and on Russia in general, is invaluable – especially given his backround (having spent much of his youth in the Anglosphere).

You won’t find such a perspective anywhere in the MSM, that’s for sure.

Time marches on, as the old newsreel used to say.

I always find your takes informative – even the relatively trivial ones (eg Svetlana Alexievich’s history of shameless toadying, which I found nowhere else in English).

I do hope you continue writing in English, at least occasionally.

Good luck, and thanks.

thank you for your insightful and honest analysis over the years

Unz should probably remove post-send editing altogether. Then the dullards might figure out how writing works.

So how do authors fix problems that are not apparent until after the post cycle is complete? For example, some sites have “anti-hotlink” (1) features that:
��� • Allow individuals to see graphics.
��� • Block access from site engines, for example UR.

Your irrational “everything must remain broken” standard would prevent even the simplest technical issues from being fixed.
____

Here is something else for you to consider…

Why do you think Mr. Unz included the code if it is “not needed”?

PEACE 😇
__________

(1) https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/10838/how-is-anti-hotlinking-done

https://www.unz.com/akarlin/ask-me/#comment-1157483

I think that we should try to emigrate to Karlin’s website – the “Karlin cult� should not allowed to die so prematurely.

Well, I definitely hope to see many of you over at the Substack comments – I naturally will be there, though hopefully the quality of my comments will also improve accordingly…at least, when the whim strikes me. The commentators here have been an excellent source of information and conversation, and to see such a “coffee salon” maintained would be wonderful.

Mixed bag. It was a reaction all right. It wasn’t always Russian, if that implies the opinions of the majority of Russian citizens. Then again, I am not necessarily qualified to judge: in the last thirty years I spent less than four months in Russia. Although I am in touch with people living there, hearsay is not the same as first-hand experience.

Thanks for years of great content.

Are you still going to cover Russian topics on your substack?

AK: Yes, as time permits.

The based side of the rationalist adjacent community is really lacking an outlet today. A surprising state of affairs for an approach that fits the tagline of the Unz Review perfectly AND has potential to underpin a highly accurate toolkit for describing our world. This was true even before the departure of AE / Karlin, and prior contributors like Razib.

It’s too bad, because there are actually a reasonable amount of outlets for the kinds of things that otherwise dominate UR frontpage these days (US-focused cultural commentary, nationalism, white advocacy, antisemitism, geopolitical punditry etc).

Otoh, the Karlin (and similar) approach to things is in short supply, especially when the few well-known grey tribe HBD-aware bloggers continue to put out sanitised content (Razib is a good example of this). I don’t know what Substack’s censorship policies are, but I suspect that AK will be unable to reveal his true power level there either.

I assume Ron just isn’t all that interested in this stuff and will remain unable to transcend his boomer nature.

AK: Might be “famous last words”… but I think Substack is OK, for now. Early 2010s Twitter vibes, team seems genuinely committed to no censorship beyond what US law requires. The are j*rnos who are demanding otherwise, but these attacks have been ongoing for a year now, and it seems to have held the line to date. If it continues to host people like Alex Berenson, I think it’s rather unlikely to go after me.

Originally Sailer had liked me, and my comments were always instantly approved. My account had some special high privilege on his blog. Then I guess I said something (or spammed too much) and I was apparently downgraded to the proletariat status, and my comments on his blog are are sometimes only being only approved a day late.

Look I don’t get this. Sailer approves comments which say that his belief in vaccination is because he is a coward who survived cancer and so lacks the guts to talk honestly about “the Covid hoax”. He lets through comments that say that he is in the pay of big government/pharma because he recommends wearing masks. I may be biased as I agree with his position, but he seems to have a pretty thick skin when it comes to comments. Are you sure that he is not just overwhelmed with the number of people who are posting ?

I seem to be in the minority, in that I appreciate Anatoly’s sensible transhumanism. Though I do think we’ve run out of time for human genetics to make a difference, and that the future will be decided by AI.

I am really sorry you’re leaving. With the loss of Razib Khan, Audacious Epigone and now you, this site has lost most of its pzazz.

Some of the writers “excluded from the mainstream” are just silly – the worst examples being CCP shill Godfree Roberts and the guy who is trying – and failing – to rewrite the history of Ancient Rome.

This site is my haven from the all pervasive insanity of the modern world. Where else is there to flee to?

Thank you.
I lost my chance to say thanks to AE, so I’m not going to let this chance slip by. There’s a lot more to say, but comments aren’t published to an audience of one.

In the end, Russia’s Nationalist Turn turned out to be a satisfying conclusion to this arc. Just be careful that this light doesn’t get overpowered by the midday sun.

Farewell and Godspeed

Dude, just go to Substack. Anatoly will be there — and Nick Land, Curtis Yarvin, and Razib Khan are already there. (Alongside more mainstream bloggers like Scott Alexander.) Subscriptions might cost you $20/month in total, but this ensures that those writers are paid for their labor, and that they have a reason to keep it up, maintain a community, and produce quality work.

much of the “Dissident Right� seems to have decided that the correct response to SJW overreach was one upping them

How else will things change unless people lose confidence in institutions and decide to replace them?

Where should American peons place their confidence? The U. S. Senate? The MSM? Academia? The Fed? The CIA? The U. N.? Etc.?

Sure, there will be collateral damage in the interim when something like Covid comes along. But what are the alternatives?

Me? I dearly love omelettes.

The provocation to a China-Taiwan war is here:
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/firstnews/202110090099.aspx

總統府：中�民國是主權�立國家 民�拒絕一國兩制
Office of the President, Taiwan: ROC is a sovereign country, popular opinion rejects “One Country, Two Systems”

These well managed internet forums (which Karlin has been hosting one of the last ones still existing), is like a multinational “global village� 2000s version of those old Mediterranean men.

Exactly what prevents the creation/existence of such a forum? Is it a technological impediment and/or lack of a competent moderator/instigator of discussion topics?

If you want to understand “Raches” the man whom Ron thinks is some sort of genius rather than just yet another case of a lunatic engaging in extreme politics as misguided self-therapy, you can see my psychological profile of him linked to here: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-167/#comment-4940464.

I do find it tremendously disappointing that there’s a set of people willing to entertain “controversial� ideas denounced by the Establishment and also a set of people sensible enough to avoid falling for every crazy “conspiracy theory� that comes along, but the Flu Hoax/anti-Vaxx controversies have proven that the intersection of those two sets is much smaller than I’d ever imagined.

You are just like a member of religious/commie/fascist/dogma sect. You despise the competition and work to undermine or eliminate it.

Thanks for your input here, in particular your travel blogs about Russia with the special attention to the interesting historical details.

Wish you the best!

Also, I am not doing anything wrong by using his words. He said:

my writings are common property of Aryan peoples;

But you are not Aryan.

It should be added though that some Russian nationalists are convinced that on the whole entire RF system in fact is working for pro-Covid/antivax stance:

I prefer “Angeln” to “Aryan,” but I believe that technically one is considered a subset of the other.

Also, please be clearer with your accusations and their definitions. I have very limited comments allowed and no reacts, so, as it is hard how to know how to reply to vague innuendo, I will struggle to address your concerns as I cannot spare the replies to ask for clarification.

Too much is changing here…..

vague innuendo.

I think that you are of the Jewish persuasion. If that is true, then technically you shouldn’t claim Aryan rights to his written work.

Despite its stellar predictive power, from development economics to the Karabakh War of 2020, the HBD/�cognitive capitalist� worldview is “unhandshakeworthy� as never before, with Wokeness – #BLM, CRT, identity politics – having become America’s secular religion. This will probably create a lot of damage before sobriety returns, which will likely take a quite a while, as much of the “Dissident Right� seems to have decided that the correct response to SJW overreach was one upping them with Qanon and other very powerful theories.

IMHO, if the Right wanted to take on a major task it could concentrate on the ways in which human evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology and HBD/Intelligence research highlight how powerful many of the takes in the classic Critical Theory derived disciplines are.

This kind of social science research has been part of the background of Western culture for a long time, increasingly serving as its conscience and a replacement for religion. There was probably at least some smoky and semi-conscious awareness among the social scientists that allowing HBD and these evolutionary disciplines to continue to eat into its foundations could result in some sort of major cultural reorientation. Hence the great awokening as a kind of preemptive strike.

2nd generation Critical Theorists like Habermas seem to have been aware of the problems with the power levels of the ideas of figures like Marcuse, so created a more humanistic orientation for CT. CRT, BLM and Trans is all more like the original ‘hard’ stuff though.

I didn’t comment much here, but very sorry to see this blog go. This is especially so if future content will be behind a paywall at Substack. One problem with Substack’s model is that it is too expensive for subscribers who want to read multiple authors.

American biowarfare attack against China (and Iran) by rogue elements of our national security establishment. Absolutely no other logical possibility comes close…

Mr. Unz your accusation is internally self contradictory. Was the release:
��� –A– “American” (e.g. ordered by President Trunp), or
��� –B– “Anti-American” (e.g. not ordered by President Trump)

If you are suggesting Case “B”, you could avoid the internal self contradiction by stating:

Anti-American biowarfare attack against the U.S., China, and everyone else by Establishment Globalist rogue elements. Absolutely no other logical possibility comes close…

The Saker is no longer resident on UR; he has already left. We should take bets who will be the next to leave. Israel Shamir perhaps?

So being prohibited from candidly discussing black or Jewish issues is a serious problem right now.

That’s very disappointing.

Sailer approves comments which

Yes he seems to still approve even the bad comments, but they are approved many hours later, so that you can miss the conversation.

I remember when I was first posting on Sailer’s blog, my comments were only being approved many hours after I had written them.

Then I wrote some comments he thought were interesting, and he gave to my account the special privileged status where my comments were automatically posted instantly.

At some point I started spamming too much probably (unfortunately this is my natural tendency on forums or blogs is to spam dozens of irrelevant comments or YouTube videos), and now I’m downgraded again and have to wait manually for my comments to be approved.

–B– “Anti-American� (e.g. not ordered by President Trump)

Sure, I’m definitely talking about Case “B�, and I suppose it’s a matter of semantics whether you call it an “American� biowarfare attack or not

The semantics are quite confusing the way you have it structured — The Anti-American virus attack against China and America was “American”.

If you can find any other formulation that works for you, it would improve clarity.

Likelihood of a leaker or whistleblower is too high for this to be realistic IMO. The right answer is probably the most likely: a screw-up at a Chinese lab where Americans and Chinese worked together.

I have not heard of such restrictions on substack- this guy seems to be able to write whatever he wants about vaccines and this guy bashes pro-Israel politicians and other public advocates– but what’s stopping you from creating such a substack alternative? I even suggested a better metered business model to you a couple years ago.

Chop, chop, Ron, get to work, just please don’t build it with PHP or WordPress, which have many security holes.

I would guess the main problem is handling payments/subscriptions (and it’s not a technical problem).

LMAO- so Karlin does this cheap stunt of saying he is leaving Unz……. and not even ONE russian nationalist/patriot is here to offer thanks or regret that he is leaving!!!

That shows all you need to know about Karlin. Not even one. On a supposed “Russian Reaction Blog”

I can just smell it – my (gerard/kazan, kzn and “the comeback kid”) statements to Karlin and lobbying to Unz have lead to Tolya crying away from this blog.
I can smell it in the air.

May I suggest to Ron Unz that he gets Vitaly Milonov to replace the liberastic Karlin’s blog.

1. He speaks English
2. Unlike Karlin, he is an ACTUAL Russian nationalist
3. He’s well known, but not important enough or likely to get an important position in Russian ruling class – so writing on here shouldn’t hinder either side
4. Very eccentric, very fun, very controversial, very well-read … but not a wacko – perfect for unz
5. He’s religious but also a big gamer, has travelled quite alot, adopted an Uzbek child, hates Liberasts – so he mixes the old with the new and should have something of interest to say to many different types of people

All he has to do is write 1 less post on VK, and write it on here instead.

Not just that. Too much & too long moderation.

Awh, I’m getting this wet spot in my panties.

Absolutely. I am very drunk and having fun at a party, because the country I am in is on a holiday, but your reply deserves a far better response than I am currently able. The vast majority of what you are saying is true and I experience it in a very extreme way. Daniel Chieh will have an inkling. Also, as a hint, I didn’t sleuth the information so much as ask an imaginary friend and get told the answer! People’s subjectivity is fascinating, I only care what they are honest about what they experience to themselves. This matters to me more than anything. Drunk posting is always an amusing idea, but the party is fun!

I didn’t consider it from this perspective before, thinking of this blog just in terms of emigres. But I guess I’d meet the definition of TCK, although I’d like to think I haven’t come across quite as unbalanced as Raches or Mr Chieh.

I’m the very picture of balance, or shall be after the Machine God completes its imminent immanence.

Will you be on AK’s new substack?

“Attracting” is the wrong word. Donoghue, Geraldo, Springer, &c invited the costume Nazis onto their shows. They did this for a reason. The reason wasn’t promoting Naziism.

I have to echo Anatoly’s praise for your detective work. It’s unmistakably the same man.

Your sympathy for Raches speaks well of you.
I’ve viewed Raches with more amused derision than anything. Though in all honesty, when he started posting I was fairly convinced that Raches was intentionally trolling with a parody persona, and that we were being had by someone laughing smugly at their own clever creation. I really thought it was too over the top to be in earnest.
I see now that this is not the case and his writings really are some genuine reflection of his state of mind.

As brilliant as it is compassionate.

I think you have very insightfully captured us regulars. Don’t forget the Swedish-American Thorfinnson. So here there is a collection of us. I’ve noticed this, in an interest of small populations such as the Spaniards marooned in northern New Mexico, the semi-assimilated Poles stuck in Haiti, etc. Or even stories of changelings.

In a case of Jungian synchronicity one of my kids just wrote a school essay about the nature of having such an existence.

I do disagree with the term “broken� however. Or rather, it’s use as a universal or permanent characteristic rather than the bad end of a continuum or a temporary state during a rough period of one’s life.

Being a big friggin’ Luddite I just had to read up on what Web 3.0 is. It’s an interesting concept, even if some of the nuance is obscured by my relatively rudimentary understanding of blockchain.

My question is whether you think that this decentralized paradise will be allowed to exist, since the possibilities for centralized control are so hardwired into Web 2.0. This narrative control is a feature, not a bug, at this point and even if it was not intentionally implemented in the beginning is likely too valuable a tool to give up.

What reasons do you see to indicate that Web 3.0 will be allowed to gain traction or if it does won’t be subverted in some more subtle way?
Will instead be some more elaborate version of the deception practiced by social media; the illusion of freedom while in reality being manipulated by the interface, the algorithms, and the gatekeepers. My suspicion with digital reality stems from my feeling that one is always inhabiting someone else’s construct, playing someone else’s game. Can blockchain and Web 3.0 really change that calculus?

Absolutely. I am very drunk and having fun at a party

I am tipsy in Canada also, at the moment, mixing Riesling with sushi.

The English reads like bog-standard one China to me. ROC and PRC agree that there is one China with one legitimate system. They just disagree about where the one legitimate Chinese government is located. No?

A (second) wee dram of Scotch in my case. Sadly, no sushi for me…
It sounds like Triteleia Laxa is probably having the most fun anyhow, as we can likely infer from the lack of posting!

svidomism (cuing AP and Mr. Hack

This seems typical of a 20th century non-WASP, secularizing American immigrant community life.

That is, Jewish Americans were using support of Israel (as well as pre-state Zionism) to maintain a secular community coherence and social activity. Woody Allen’s autobiographical film “Radio Days” portrays about his experience of this Rockaway Beach in 1940s New York, and the children are trying to collect money for the Jewish National Fund

Irish Americans could support Irish Republicanism for Northern Ireland. South Boston had donated a lot of money for the Irish Republican movements of the later 20th century. And events like St Patrick’s day is still important in the culture of South Boston community. ​

Armenian-Americans are common in Los Angeles, and pro-Armenian protesters were closing the roads there last year during the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. So there is a secular alternative for maintaining Armenian communal life in Los Angeles – this is nationalist political activity. Probably you could even attain a lot of friends that way.

Perhaps a surprising aspect of AP’s politics to Ukraine, is that I have received an impression he lives in some ultra-elite area, with the WASP neighbours, who probably prefer he has an LGBT flag, than the UPA flag upon his elegant mansion.

That is, if he was in South Boston, or Rockaway New York, – he would be conforming to the culture his neighbours, which use nationalisms to maintain a possibility secular communal life. For these demographics, such nationalism can seem as American as applepie.

–

This was also one of the psychologically stressful aspects of African American experience in the 20th century, compared to the Irish or Jewish American community. There was lack national symbols or national prestige, to use to structure a secular community life among an African American community.

There really is something in the way that you describe Woody Allen’s “Radio Days”, IMHO one of his best films (and he put out a lot of good ones over the years). I could really relate to some of the Jewish ethnic parties and family get togethers shown in the film. I had an “Uncle Nickles” or two in my childhood too. They would always gift me some unsolicited money at these get togethers. One would often rub his coarse stubble on his face against my smooth childlike one, causing me some minor discomfort. But this is the way that it was. Besides Ukrainian and Polish get togethers, I had the great fortune to see the behind the scenes workings of a very middle class Jewish family in Minneapolis too. Great people who also knew how to party. My parents got know these “Bessarabian Jews” through a small family business that they operated sending parcels to the Soviet Union. “Those were the days my friends, we thought that they’d never end” Manischewits anybody?

Video LinkI knew the Ukrainian version of Joey Nickels in my childhood. 🙂

I had purchased that Austro-Hungarian book that you recommended, should be a good read, thanks.

And it’s easier to count times when you are not drunk in New Orleans so there’s that. Makers Mark and Andygator ftw.

Oops, “Joey Nickels” was from the film “Annie Hall”, another classic from Allen’s earlier films.

This place and Guillaume Durocher’s blog(when it was active) were the only blogs i visited on UR.

Sailer was ok tier but its like a starter pack because it was always essentially complaining about niggers nonstop with him and so he gets old after like 5 blogposts.

You covered everything and had non schizo and interesting commentators like off the top of my head were : German_Reader , reiner tor, Yevardian Daniel Chieh and a couple of others like utu(lol)

I think I learned more about Afghanistan , Iran, ME, China, etc from UR than any other place

Perhaps a surprising aspect of AP’s politics to Ukraine, is that I have received an impression he lives in some ultra-elite area, with the WASP neighbours, who probably prefer he has an LGBT flag, than the UPA flag upon his elegant mansion

There are mansions up the street from me but my house is rather modest. The are Jews in my town. Every spring the local paper publishes what the high school graduates are up to. Every spring, a few go to U Penn or Harvard, the richest ones go to an art or theater school – but a few also go to the IDF. So nationalism isn’t that strange, as long as it isn’t of the American kind.

I am not a Banderist. But lots if Ukrainians, including Banderists, have joined the upper middle class and middle in nice neighborhoods with WASP and Jewish neighbors.

one of his best films (and he put out a lot of good ones over the years)

On letterboxd a lot of the reviewers, are writing they wished such a classic comedy film, wasn’t made by personally dislikeable Woody Allen.

https://letterboxd.com/film/radio-days/reviews/by/entry-rating/page/3/

https://letterboxd.com/film/radio-days/reviews/by/entry-rating/page/5/

Perhaps it’s a less famous comedy than if it was a director with “more normal” personal life.

–

It’s really intelligently and concisely written and edited. It even feels almost like an academic history paper, in focusing on the effect of the radio technology on 1940s peoples’ life and fantasies.

I guess its narration style and nostalgia, had a lot of influence for Scorsese’s “Goodfellas”? With both films a lot influenced by Fellini’s “Amarcord”.

And the actress for his mother (at 4:00) is actually – Marge Simpson.

Video Link

I enjoyed this blog a great deal, and am sad to see it go.

Do you still intend to write a book (or do some more detailed series) regarding Apollo’s Ascent? That was always my favorite of the content you did and seemed like by far the most interesting.

Woody Allen wrote about what he knew – Jewish-American life mostly in New York from the 1950’s- 1970’s. A lot of it looks simplistic, that’s because it was done by a master. Some of it was stupid, but mostly it was just funny. No need to over analyze it – he did that himself within the movies. You mention “Goodfellas” but how about the smash hit series “The Sopranos” where the main protagonist ends up on the shrink’s couch for a good part of the series, right out of Woody Allen? 🙂

Great clip, the nostalgic look back at Jewish life was really well done:

“We don’t have a life, but you can still have one.” 🙂

Clint Watts got it good here:

https://clintwatts.substack.com/p/russias-disinformation-ecosystem/comments

Substack has diversity albeit quite feeble at times:

https://olgac24.substack.com/

I don’t think he says anything you wouldn’t have sometimes found a decade ago in the NYT or half the liberal opinion magazines.

Yes, but do you see that at all in those MSM opinion rags today? So he is still well outside the mainstream now and they haven’t blocked him.

Do you really think that Kevin MacDonald, Jared Taylor, Peter Brimelow, or their associates would be allowed on Substack, or any of the other rightwingers who had comprised the Alt-Right?

Based on their “anti-hate” edict you cited below, I wouldn’t doubt they are blocking the white nationalists but not the rest of the alt-right, unless they adopt the similar Orwellian interpretation of “moderation” that got you banned from social and MSM. I don’t follow substack enough to know where they stand on that spectrum.

Their biggest problem is that they’ve all been deplatformed from payment-processing, so I assume they would have jumped to Substack in an instant if they could.

I’m not familiar with what obstacles they face, but Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies should be a boon to them. Nor would I complain about any person or business refusing to serve them, as I actually believe in freedom of association, ie Mastercard or google should be free to turn them away just as some Alabama diner should be free to only serve whites, though only the latter is currently illegal.

The Substack content restrictions are somewhat vague, but I’m sure it already excludes all the former Alt-Rightists, and perhaps they’ll tighten it in the future.

All the more reason for you to fill that lane, ie build a free speech blogging platform. People are so starved for real discourse that it would do fairly well financially, like substack has. I know I’d pay for it.

I agree with Karlin that this is all moot in the coming years because new decentralized tech is bubbling up, see one example here:

Video Link

However, it will take years for that tech to get properly built out- I have some ideas for a decentralized protocol I plan to work on too- and it would be easy to set up a blogging platform with existing tech in the meantime. Securing it from DDoS and security breaches would be the only hard part technically, but such issues plague most centralized tech today, such as the engineering fuckups that led to the complete outage of facebook and all their apps last week.

I’d fully agree with your observations, but also add it’s not a coincidence that AK and AE were among the most inclined to bring forth interesting data or well-researched talking points. I miss AE and will miss AK too for this reason. You could disagree with the data, or with the conclusions the blogger reached from the data, but either way it opened up opportunities for interesting discussion.

If I were to address a Raches post, I don’t really know what to say. Do I really want to go through every single point he makes and talk about why it’s wrong or misguided? That’s not any more fun than going through an NYT editorial and doing the same thing. Reading screeds from people with whom you disagree on everything doesn’t really inform or challenge your worldview. You actually need some meat to the disagreement for there to be a substantive discussion.

Substack Master Race

I don’t post on here much–I have no family in Russia and no special connection to the country, so most of the content was out of my sphere of personal interest. (I would like to see better US-Russia relations, as much because it’s a magnificent country with an old culture as out of a desire to avoid nuclear war, but that’s up to our governing elites, and I have little confidence in the people in charge here. Someday I’d like to wander the Hermitage before I die–I grew up in NYC and there are few museums comparable to the Met, so it’d be nice to see one of the few that’s *more* impressive. The righty in me likes these old temples to culture. Russia is an ocean I will never swim in, but I know it exists and is likely to survive the fall of the West, and that is enough for me. Pathetic as it seems one of my hobbyhorses when discussing WW2 is to remind people of the Russian contribution to stopping Hitler–the Russians did all the hard work and the US and UK cleaned up after them. Perhaps you will save the West again someday, who knows? Certainly with climate change your future looks bright over the long term.)

So let me say: you were one of the few bloggers who actually followed the truth where it lay. You were one of the few right-wing bloggers to accept climate change, you picked up on COVID early, and your 6/11 ‘anti-semite’ post was one of the few to look at the data rather than follow preexisting predilections on one side or the other. (Your cartoon about the ‘correct response’ linked up there made me spit out my cornflakes laughing.) I kept promising to myself to read your stuff more often, and now it’s too late.

So: bon voyage, I guess you’re joining AE doing something else. Good luck at Substack. I agree with a lot of the commenters: all the good writers are leaving. But, as an old British fellow said when translating a Persian,

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

Do svidaniya, and good luck!

FFS, what is “wonderful”?

If Karlin was “wonderful” , there would be 500 comments minimum here. His so-called “effort-post” on Russian nationalism has many flaws and is about 4 months after Putin’s (flawless) article about russian/ukrop unity, which Karlin only slightly covers the content of. That is not “wonderful” blogging – its only better than nothing.

It’s a market with a small number of competitors of writing about russia in English language – Karlin is a ruthless opportunist in exploiting this fact

Let’s not forget that knowledge of Russia is still abysmal in the west, maybe getting even worse each year. Karlinstein can’t be blamed for that……. but his near satanism on times on here is symptomatic of that problem.

He’s a big fake, anti-russian, a pseudo-snob with his garbage against the USSR. Even now I notice on his SM he is insulting the Great Patriotic War ( “cult” is Anglo-American Gosdep BS slander he uses against) and our beautiful cathedral of the Armed Forces.

Knowing all that, I will go on record here as saying that Anatoly “lady of the house” Karlin’s ultimate dream is to have Hyacinth Bucket do it to him with a strap on. There is a perfect synthesis between the two.

You see, just like Soviet people made Sherlock Holmes essentially a Russian guy,the average Soviet person is so knowledgeable of the world, so talented and so sophisticated that they can easily pickup the intended humour of this English character as Hyacinth.
It’s why the Soviet world is so appealing that even that jewish-American garbage “Friends” had plenty of excellent Soviet art posters decorating their appartments.

Anyway let’s call this for what I think it is – not “working on other projects”, not ” going to subsack”…… this is simply a deportation.

Zero idea what your job or financial status is, but if you are struggling like some hobo ( and I am “concerned” you say “working on other projects” blablabla instead of saying you are not blogging much more because of something like family or work commitments)….. then why not work for RT? being a blogger who can write about Russia is literally the only requirement the garbage that is RT has for giving jobs to your type. RT is swimming with (wasted) money.

It’s something like 1.5M Rb given to you for very easy work of joirnalism/blogging.

Reading screeds from people with whom you disagree on everything doesn’t really inform or challenge your worldview.

I will disagree to a certain extent here. I also disagree with the idea that every single point he might make will be misguided or wrong.

If one’s worldview includes the premise that there is quite a bit amiss in neo-Nazi dogma in the 21st century then this example will more than inform and confirm that opinion.

An editorial in the Times has an impact. Raches at Unz is of no consequence. But, if a Times editorial holds Raches up as a threat of impending neo-Nazi takeover, it is a different story. Having read Raches and other rambling rantings of neo-Nazis and assorted WNs one would “know� that the Times editorial is propaganda. Maybe this is the reason R. Unz has over the years moved his webzine from the promise in the masthead to the desperate rantings of most of his current writers.

Anyway let’s call this for what I think it is – not “working on other projects�, not � going to subsack�…… this is simply a deportation.

Couldn’t afford the $20/month for Substack?

being a blogger who can write about Russia is literally the only requirement the garbage that is RT has for giving jobs to your type. RT is swimming with (wasted) money.

Lemme guess: You suspect that it was your cover letter which led to the non-interview, but HR won’t take your calls.

You got me. I still am. Every Friday night my buddies and i get together in my garage, where we drink Baltika and sing badly-accented Russian in front of poster-size photos of shirtless Putin and AK wrestling a bear.

But perhaps I’ve shared too much.

An exceptional comment Anatoly!

Absolutely spot on.

And don’t forget the rumors about his Jewish ancestry.

😉

Personally for me it’s not that I disagree with Raches. I read lot’s of material from writers I disagree with quite a bit. AK can sometimes be included in that.

To me, and I suspect for Wency, the issue is that Raches is dogmatic, an ideologue who has obviously has far too much personally invested in his viewpoints to explore them with any flexibility or detachment. It’s like trying to discuss early Christian history or Genesis with a Southern Baptist. Their identities are so wrapped up in a particular viewpoint that any objectivity become nearly impossible.

Difficulty with objectivity is a nearly universal human flaw, but becomes intellectually crippling taken to the extreme.

It’s also not interesting to me to read people who only want to hear themselves echo. Even if I agree with them it’s boring and not worth my time. I’ll head to Breitbart if I want that.

As for Raches, I’m not sure I ever hailed him as a “genius� but he did seem exceptionally erudite in many of his comments, and also astonishingly prolific, producing 100,000(!!!) words per month of very detailed and carefully crafted comments, an output level probably comparable to the combined total of our next eight or ten most prolific commenters.

Its not particularly careful in crafting. There’s a lot of capture, but not so much interesting and unique synthesis imo.

https://subconscious.substack.com/p/unconscious-r-and-d

Reading that comment excerpt I can see why you might be impressed.
Unfortunately, his beginning posts have been little like that. I mean, who starts a hate-mail thread before they have produced any real content?
Are you thinking perhaps he’ll simmer down a little and present some cogent material?

I’m ignorant of Raches wider posting history since it doesn’t seem that he inhabited the same corners of Unz that I read. I took his erudite tone to be more the affectation of it especially once I saw how shallow his straw-man version of Christianity was in his denunciation of it.

I’m certainly willing to give Raches a chance, but unfortunately he’s seemingly made a bad impression on a fair number of folks right out of the gate.

I suppose we shall see.

I’m certainly willing to give Raches a chance, but unfortunately he’s seemingly made a bad impression on a fair number of folks right out of the gate.

Raches may understand Mr. Unz’s motivations well, but he certainly doesn’t share the evidence- and data-based approach Mr. Unz used in articles such as “American Meritocracy� and “Hispanic Crime� to good effect.

And his “erudition� as such does strike me as self-indulgent affectation, and such affectation is counterproductive, because it gets in the way of clear communication.

Agree or no, I don’t come to Unz for declarations and slogans – that’s why the mainstream media is so toxic these days. I come for the evidence-based dialog, and Raches offers none. I have seen enough.

It seems, and correct me if I’m wrong, that Web 3.0 may hold the promise of decentralization but primarily for those who are techie enough to write their own code and have their own “planet”,provided they live in a place whose government doesn’t put up significant roadblocks (like the Chinese).

In a way this seems like Linux and other solutions which indeed provide an out for a small minority but fail to achieve scale (because people are lazy, busy, apathetic etc.) and so are ultimately ineffective at changing the balance of power.

Would it not be most likely that a Web3.0 future would see crimethink not shut down, but just cordoned off where it will suffocate to death. Especially with existing Big Tech looking for entry points into the future of the internet, the current (and ever increasing) strictures on speech, and the development of a doctrinaire reflexive goodthink (Wokeism) it seems like it would be possible to plug the ideological leaks and keep counter-narrative viewpoints out of sight of the masses.

I think it may be fair to say that the battle for the narrative and control of tech platforms today may directly result in what sort of Web3.0 or 2.5 the masses experience, even if a number of ultimately obscure people do have unfettered freedom of speech.

I’m completely shooting from the hip here since I’m no techie. However, I feel a certain skepticism since I’m getting deja vue from the many glorious futures that Web2.0 supposedly had in store for us. As it turned out, instead of the Wild West we eventually got the virtual gulag.

I hope that I’m wrong and you are right, but I am very dubious that any fundamental change in power distribution will result.

but I am very dubious that any fundamental change in power distribution will result.

So, in what way would you like power to be re-distributed? And what do you think would be the “good things” to come from that re-distribution?

I was also impressed that he seemed the first person to ever discover and make extensive use of the almost unique “deep linking� technology that I had originally spent many weeks building into my system.

It is nice that he appreciated your hard work. You do combine sincere intentions with unusually determined and competent focus, but this is how you like to be seen so I am sure you know this.

I wonder if you also appreciate your own kindness and generosity and really understand why you repeatedly prove both these and your astonishing loyalty?

Yes. I will do!

Commoner here.

Are you Jewish or not?

The most valuable piece of insight which was given to me by an man much older and more astute than I was that the human capacity for self-deception is nearly infinite.

We are often enough our own worst enemies; like moths around a flame obsessively circling to see how close we can come to the danger without burning. We all play the game to some degree, but it takes discipline to not succumb to it and maintain some reservoir of skepticism about oneself and one’s own motivations.

Human self deception is a far underutilized explanation in both history or public affairs and everyday interactions.

I don’t know if you are correct in your analysis, but you make a very convincing argument.

Thanks, I’m more of a feral no culture kid, but it amounts to something very similar.

The exultation of the Glorious Proletariat, Comrade!

Nah, just joking!

I see the greatest fundamental issue today being the continual accretion of centralized power, in the west this is held by the somewhat disjointed union of corporate and state structures. The modern age with it’s surveillance, communication, and transportation advances enables this centralized power to become ever more intrusive and totalitarian.

The power of kings in say, the middle ages, is much reviled today. However, the effective reach of their power was greatly limited by the limitations of technology and the other counterweights of power such as the church and the nobility. Totalitarianism was not really made possible until the modern era.

I would prefer to see a much more disparate distribution of power, with local agency given priority rather than all power inflicted from a central source.

The main problem is that our current level of technological and societal complexity may make that unfeasible. I therefore propose a massive solar flare as the most economical and humane method of resetting human affairs. That would disappoint Anatoly and Daniel Chieh greatly, as the Machine God would never complete its imminent immanence, but hey, you can’t make everyone happy!

The main problem is that our current level of technological and societal complexity may make that unfeasible.

No shit, Sherlock.

Totalitarianism is here and likely can’t be defeated.

America’s Decline and Fall is written.

The best that we can hope for is a slow descent.

2. If your historical American Pravda works were true, the world would be a very different place now than it is, especially the West Bank and the Gaza Strip! This shows that although you dig wonderful rabbit holes, you seem allergic to acknowledging where they actually end up. It is fine to dig down deeply, but you need to look above ground to orientate yourself every now and again or else you’ll just get lost.

A tangent here, perhaps not worth pursuing, since you seem to have about as much objectivity on the topic as Raches, but what’s your implication here?

Israel has done about as much as it can possibly do to exterminate the Arabs of the Gaza strip short of actual genocide or deportation (this isn’t a value judgement, merely observation).
On the other hand, the population of the West Bank is much larger, and the land itself there is considered sacrosanct by secular and religious Israelis alike (it is, the heartland of the Biblical Kingdom afterall, Israel ‘proper’ being almost entirely on the old Philistine plain). So instead that place is criss-crossed with innumerable settlements, Jewish-only highways, checkpoints, military bases, all quite deliberately and carefully placed to make ordinary life for the Palestinians there impossible.

Israel can’t simply expell or massacre the Arab population because of intense scrutiny from the world’s media, I doubt it comes from humanitarian inhibitions, that liberal portion of the Israel population is small, shrinking and demoralised.
What specifically are you objecting to in Unz’s Pravda series? I mean, the series is so large, and references so many events, your statement is too vague to have any meaning. And are you referring to the methodology (quite sound, and which I learned quite a lot from), or his conclusions? For me, it was when Unz started praised ‘The Protocols’, I thought he went overboard. The latter have, admittedly, been getting a little too ‘powerful’ for me lately (I don’t refer to COVID-related articles, which I simply don’t care about enough to read thoroughly).

Although, referring to the bulk of your long ‘open letter’ to Unz, there’s much I agree with.

If your historical American Pravda works were true, the world would be a very different place now than it is, especially the West Bank and the Gaza Strip!

Uhhh what? How did you jump to that illiterate conclusion? Projecting much?

Saddam’s WMDs ended up being as fake as lampshades made of human skin. No one cares. Most people still believe Afghanistan was “to fight them over there instead of here” post 9-11 (Saudi Arabia doesn’t exist on maps to send freedom and democracy to).

If anything Palestine is proof the lie must go on. No matter the cost.

Narratives. It’s all that matters.

In case you missed these:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-08/nobel-peace-prize-for-dmitry-muratov-is-a-russian-compromise?sref=3HD2Fyvy

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/muratov-nobel-prize/

Allen wrote about what he knew

More of his films (I torture myself with a DVD boxset of his films) in the 1970-1990s are about an upper class WASP elite.

Some of them are quite good comedies, and others are very weak films. Allen has real problems of quality control.

look back at Jewish life was really well done:

“We don’t have a life, but you

Mother -“Pay more attention to your school work and less to the radio”

Son – “You always listen to the radio”

Mother – “It’s different, our lives are ruined already”.

And the mother is same actress as Marge Simpson.

–

It is much more intelligent than just nostalgia film, as it shows things like how the radio technology is making the Rockaway people become addicted to fantasies of upper class life in Manhattan. And then it shows how the upperclass in Manhattan themselves just standing sadly and lonely on rooftops, pretending to be happy for the radio, and with nowhere further to go.

nationalism isn’t that strange,

And as legacy of those secularizing immigrant communities (at least those from non-Axis countries, whose nationalisms could have resulted in the internment camp in certain years) that were not part of the ruling class.

Perhaps in the 19th century there are more anglomania, but WASPs of today are not adding English parades to their areas.

Ukrainians, including Banderists, have joined the upper middle class and middle in nice neighborhoods

So they assimilate with other immigrant communities or more with WASPs?

Wikipedia seems to indicate Pennsylvania as the main Ukrainian-born areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Americans#Ukrainian-born_population I’m surprised to read such a high number as 1 million in the community.

Ever see the 1970s movie The Deer Hunter? The mining/industrial area of western Penn has all sorts of Slavs living there. The best Russian-American football player is originally from Penn:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Biletnikoff

Also reminded what a Serb friend told about about the US – wherever there’s a good concentration of Serbs, there’s also likely a good number of Croats and/or Albanians.

Best scene from The Deer Hunter

Video Link

The comments section is akin to some of the exchanges at these threads.

“Ukrainians, including Banderists, have joined the upper middle class and middle in nice neighborhoods”

So they assimilate with other immigrant communities or more with WASPs?

They didn’t assimilate much (intermarriage rate for Ukrainians is the lowest of non-Jewish ethnic groups, language is retained for generations, kids go to Saturday schools and summer camps, like Jews do), but they became upper middle class and moved into rich neighborhoods by the 1960s. Rather like Jews, except they tend not to become really rich corporate executives (suspicion of traders?) and instead focus on medicine , dentistry, engineering, sometimes law. There are Ukrainian Medical and Engineering Societies in the USA, who sponsor stuff like his:

Which reverts to this:

Pretty much every Ukrainian American kid has participated in these.

Median household income of Ukrainians-American of $81,600 is well above the white median of $65,900. And the $81,6000 is lower than it should be because it includes poor off the boaters. I don’t know of any Ukrainian households other than pensioners, students, or new immigrants who make as little as $81,600.

Growing up, it was bizarre for me when I discovered Ukrainians are among the poorest people of Eastern Europe, it is the opposite in the USA and Canada.

And his “erudition� as such does strike me as self-indulgent affectation, and such affectation is counterproductive, because it gets in the way of clear communication.

To communicate you need something substantive to convey. When you have a lot of time on your hands and nothing to say, you can’t have a communication problem.

After reading some of that “Raches� comments I came to the conclusion that his verbal output is like diarrhea: copious quantity, pathetic quality. When I saw that this personage got a blog here, my opinion of this site went way down. Naturally, I never read anything that person writes. There are many low quality writers on this site, but that “Raches� person certainly takes the cake in that department.

the enormous climate of “hate� in the American media towards foreign rivals, exactly the opposite of our impression.

And that’s the thing, I can actually substantially agree with that thesis, yet I still find the writing or the comment section unreadable on Raches’ blog.

I agree that the image of the U.S. as “the good guys” is a self serving myth belied by actual U.S. disregard for civilian casualties in the bombing of Germany or Japan. Or Korea, or Vietnam, for that matter. This carries right through to the War on Terror and the lies about spreading democracy and “freedom” or the demonization of foreign leaders that behave far more reasonably than we do on the international stage.

I actually made a concerted effort to give Raches another try today and failed miserably. His self serving style makes me want to crack up (at least he hasn’t started using the royal “We” yet) and his heavy (or as he puts it, authoritarian) hand makes the comment section far from a collegial exchange of ideas. I’ll just avoid it all together since he makes me want to be uncharitable.

That is actually part of the problem. His pedantic priggery makes for an attractive target to attempt to puncture, which brings even more trolls than usual. Raches evidently enjoys this quite a bit as it gives him excuse to exercise his “authoritarian” tendencies.

I, and probably a lot of the other folks who have been unimpressed by Raches, would be less despairing up about his addition if it didn’t come on the heels of other voices taking leave. Personally, if AE and AK were still extant I would have just relegated him to the other corners of Unz if don’t find compelling and not thought twice, but as it is there is getting to less and less content around for a certain slice of the commentariat. As it is, poor Raches finds himself to be somewhat symbolic, not least because he certainly aims for some sort of larger than life persona. Sheesh, the guy make Anglin seem downright staid!

I’m not really complaining at you, by any stretch of the imagination. I have thoroughly enjoyed Unz in all her unorthodox glory over the past few years, even if I was not the most prolific commenter. I recognize the vast effort you have expended to make it a reality (especially the superb commenting system, perhaps the best I’ve used!). I’m deeply grateful for what you have gifted us all with, and it’s your site to run as you so desire. All things ebb and flow and lately there seems to be less compelling material for some of us. Even if I check the site less (or perhaps spend time with archives more) I’ll be on the lookout for new talent that catches my eye.

In the meantime, I sincerely thank you for the opportunities you’ve provided us all with, and I raise my nightly dram of scotch to you, Mr. Unz, who kept a corner of the internet as it should be.

2. If your historical American Pravda works were true, the world would be a very different place now than it is, especially the West Bank and the Gaza Strip!

As asked here as well https://www.unz.com/akarlin/last-reaction/#comment-4949198 , what do you mean? How would it be different?

I don’t know if Dmitry is very acquainted with Jewish klezmer music or not, but you can hear a lot of Ukrainian melodies that made it into this canon of Jewish music listening to the kolmejka music, presented in the clip.

https://ukrainianjewishencounter.org/en/klezmer-music-is-part-of-the-great-traditional-culture-of-ukraine/

This is the kind of music that can wake up the dead! 🙂

Jewish/Slavic/Romanian/Turkish/Greek soul music. Pretty good stuff!

The Substack refuses to sign me

AK: Thanks for bringing that to my attention. Please check Reddit DMs.

As some of you probably know, I’ve invested a great deal of time and effort over the last few years producing my American Pravda series. But although the articles have been viewed a total of several million times, the ultra-controversial nature of so much of the material means that very, very few people anywhere have ever been willing to cite my work, even including the writers on my own website. Just linking to my articles is almost beyond the pale.

Well, I know Mr Karlin did mention your series in when it touched on Russia-related topics that made sense in the context of his own blog here, although his opinion wasn’t always favourable. Me, Thorfinnsonn, Akarlin and utu had discussed Rezun (‘Suvurov’, to get an idea of the man’s pomposity, imagine if an Englishman historian chose ‘Kitchener’ as his penname) and Sean Mcmeekin’s “Stalin’s War”, neither of which we found very impressive.
I was particularly dissapointed by Mcmeekin’s latest book, as his book on the Russian Revolution was generally excellent.

And the fact that someone whom I’d been totally unaware of had been quietly reading and digesting all the hundreds of thousands of words in my articles over the last year or two raises my hopes that others out there may be doing the same.

I mean, this isn’t very suprising, I imagine you can see from your own site-analytics that the ratio of commenters to page-views must be absolutely miniscule, and it’s not as if your series has been characterised by short threads.

To take myself as example of someone from (hopefully) a relatively sane, humdrum and boring demographic, who’s been reading your series since the beginning, I don’t have much to substantial to say on them, as I try not to pontificate on topics I know nothing about, and to me at least, there seems no point adding noise merely to say “this was a good/interesting article, thanks.”

Considering that holocaust denial is severely punished by law (not to say career-ruining) in most of the world’s developed countries, are you really surprised by the lack of public discussion? Besides, whether the gas-chambers (cue soap, Eli Wiesel, The Painted Bird, lampshades etc.) were a nonsense is rather beside the point, hasn’t even David Irving even stated (in his work on Himmler) that at the very least, 3 million Jews, overwhelmingly civilians, were shot by the Nazis on the Eastern Front?
Considering 20+ million Soviet citizens died during WWII, that 6 million Jews were killed (as partisans) and/or murdered (as civilians, including the elderly, pregnant women and children) is hardly unbelievable. David Cesarani recently wrote a revisionist work on the holocaust (with the final number virtually unchanged) that was reviewed quite favourably on Kevin Macdonald’s “Occidental Observer” some years ago now.
Even assuming the holocaust was ‘The Greatest Swindle Ever Told” or some such lurid description, and people were convinced of it, what difference would it make? Almost everyone knows the Armenian genocide happened and that didn’t get squat. The remainder of the Armenian state came close to being wiped out, in blatant war of aggression, and not a single country of note did a thing to aid it (not even Iran, which dissapointed many) except Russia.

Another very high-ranking mainstream academic, whose name all of you would certainly know, told me that he read all my articles “religiously� and although very skeptical initially, he seems to have now been coming around to my Covid analysis.

I would love to imagine that academic to be Norman Finkelstein (“I consider myself a holocaust doubter”), though he’s not that well known and I can’t see it. But I can think of one (formerly) prominent academic, who has since gone to the hard-right, Gregory Cochrane, who snarkily wrote “one pictures the doughbury boy leaping into the oven” when referring to your Pravda series in the context of your own Jewish heritage.

Anyway, I’ve always looked forward to new iterations of your series, although recently I’ve found the COVID topic getting very old. After laying the initial argument for it as an ‘American bioweapon’, you can only repeat the same points in so many ways, there isn’t really much ‘meat’ left in it, noting whenever any outlet hints at the thesis doesn’t add much.

Perhaps this is presumptuous of me, but as future topics, I might suggest looking at the background behind the Iranian Revolution (many Iranians, educated ones, still believe that the Americans intended to overthrow the Shah, who had become to uppity, but the operation went horribly wrong). It might also be worth revisiting the failed Turkish coup attempt against Erdogan in 2017, or the European Migrant Crisis. You could also revisit Israel Shahak, he wrote 2 other short books, on Israel’s domestic and foreign policy, which are just as information dense and explosive as his ‘Jewish History, Jewish Religion’. Unfortunately, I don’t know of any dissident Israeli writer today who comes close to him in intellect… Benny Morris might, but he’s certainly no dissident, and Ilan Pape might equal Shahak in bravery but his scholarship can be… sloppy, to put it kindly.

Or something completely off-field, like the rise of mass internet pornography, which as understand it, is something of a Jewish monopoly. Does anybody know the original source for that oft-repeated claim Israel blasted ‘hardcore pornography’ from giant screens somewhere in Palestine to ‘demoralise’ the people there? Or is that just another internet nonsense?
Not to mention that industry might be the most obvious place to look in relation to human sex-trafficking, pizzagate and the like. The thing is, investigating both the topic itself and the people who discuss it (porn moguls, incels, radical feminists) is so toxic to one’s own mental health, so its hardly surprising both the public and the MSM prefer to ignore it.

As for those other writers you mention, I’ll admit I’ve never heard of them, but perhaps if they came here and asked me to publish their material I’d consider it. I do already have republication agreements with more than a dozen writers and websites in the alt-media sphere.

Well, I discovered them via Steve Sailer, who in turn first heard about via Anatoly Karlin, so you’d be better off asking them. But yes, I found that ‘Deconstructing Leftism’ writer particularly excellent.

(Saudi Arabia doesn’t exist on maps to send freedom and democracy to).

That’s because Saudi Arabia already is a Shining City on the Hill.

[MORE]

LOL was for your 1st line not some of the content following the more tab.

I can actually substantially agree with that thesis

“Say it ain’t so, Joe.”

You actually can’t see any moral difference between the U. S. and Nazi Germany, or the U. S. and Imperial Japan, or Stalinist USSR for that matter?

Anomaly
noun 1 . something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected.
Tip of the hat to Oxford.

What is the purpose of a Hitler cult in the current year? Even stranger is a Hitler cult among non-Germans. (There may be some in Germany, but because of their restrictive laws on Nazism we would not be properly informed on the existence of such.)

Are there any Stalin cults? Any non-Russian ones? Anyone touting Foundations of Leninism or Stalin’s Poetry these days? Perhaps I should have read AK’s posts on Russian politics more closely, but I get the impression that the remaining Stalinists are aging out of the population.

Are there any Mao cults among non-Chinese? Anyone pushing The Little Red Book as the key to saving the world?

Who, other than a German here and there, a dedicated SJW, or a member of the Hasbara (paid or not), would expend an un-Godly amount of effort in denouncing a Hitler cult?

I didn’t actually say that there was no moral difference, just that U.S. war conduct is at odds with it’s national “brand”.

Isn’t that the way political identities, myths and history work?

“just that U.S. war conduct is at odds with it’s national “brandâ€�.”

This is only true in relation to one’s understanding of what took place during the war. If you have a superficial understanding of America’s conduct during war then you might be “shocked” to learn about sore of the grimy details.

What aboutism is a fallacy, but it is an informative one (as are many fallacies).

One skull may be ghastly but the Japanese left hundreds of heads on pikes and their military did not discourage such.

The Stalin cultists are not entirely wrong about Stalin, although due to misguided/mistaken reasons. He really was a capable leader who starting from the the late 1920s made logical decisions about running the country, that were not entirely wrong once you think about it. His death toll has definitely been exaggerated probably by an order of magnitude, so that doesn’t help (probably more like a million or less enemies of the people killed through NKVD and gulags). It’s like that Pentagon exercise where they have you wargame the Athens/Sparta war, and those on Athens’ side almost always choose to invade Syracuse despite knowing that it was historically a disaster. The explanations is that it had to be done because it was an important bread basket and it would tie up Sparta far away from the homeland.

After the civil war was over and Lenin was dead and Stalin achieved absolute power, he quickly saw that there were lots of hostile and very powerful nations, and the Soviet Union was not industrialized enough, and behind in technology so that if nothing drastic was done, not to mention there was a fifth column since many justifiably hated Communism, it would lose the next war. He very logically started pursuing alliances with anyone to give SU time, sold wheat for technology even though it caused famines, became a bloody tyrant to subdue the fifth column in advance of the next war he expected, and in the late 30s was basically maneuvered into signing a treaty with Hitler after bad decisions by France and England on Germany, as it was the only logical thing left to do the save the SU.

I came around to the view that he was a logical actor and a capable leader after watching this interview surprisingly, and reading up more on Stalin (I know many people hate Lex Fridman, but he’s great for background listening during Paradox gaming sessions). Would it have been better that he and Lenin never succeeded in their revolution? Yes, most likely. But he succeeded and did okay with the hand he was dealt (or helped create). However, he could not set up the Soviet Union for long term success after the war.

Anyways, I’m sure Stalin was covered on this blog, probably before I started reading it. But the Stalin cultists I probably would not mind so much if they were realistic and logical in their admiration. Unfortunately, I doubt they are. And come to think of it, if they were realistic, they would probably have a Stalin historical society and not a cult.

the sheer volume of interest and demands from my readers

I had been debating whether to sign up for your Substack. When mention was made of continuing a commentariat from the blog here that pushed me toward signing up. But then not a single commenter gave me a shout-out. It was very hurtful. My ego has been devastated and will likely take years to mend if ever. Can anyone recommend a nice Jewish psychoanalyst that would be willing to give me a free “reading” and help me through this troubled time?

Yeah, very analogous to Ukraine’s modern Bandera cult.

US of course doesn’t come close to Nazi Germany or Stalin’s USSR. But it has probably passed the threshold of the late stage USSR in terms of aversiveness. More repressive internally, more deadly abroad.

As consolation, still offers a great standard of living for most people unlike the USSR.

Israel has done about as much as it can possibly do to exterminate the Arabs of the Gaza strip short of actual genocide or deportation (this isn’t a value judgement, merely observation).

You mean providing
— Water & sewage services?
— Medical treatment for the sick and injured?

Simple observation shows that Iranian Hamas makes life worse for the Muslim civilian population, and it impedes any hope for progress. They destroyed the aquifer by diverting resources to their failed offensive campaign. If one wants to actually solve problems in Gaza, one has to start with Iran.

On the other hand, the population of the West Bank is much larger, and the land itself there is considered sacrosanct by secular and religious Israelis alike (it is, the heartland of the Biblical Kingdom afterall, Israel ‘proper’ being almost entirely on the old Philistine plain).

It is also critical to note that these Jerusalem is *not* Holy to Islam.

Muhammad died long before his Jihadist Settlers reached & Colonized Jerusalem. Moving al’Aqsa to a historically accurate location (likely modern day Jordan or Syria) would open the door to honorable & compensated relocation.

You should join, of course.

Could you give priss factor a column?

Only in a very superficial way. Both historical figures espoused very dissimilar ideologies. Both are viewed quite differently within both Ukraine and Russia. Bandera was the leader of a political movement, whereas Stalin represented a large state. Although a few new statues of Stalin have been erected in the last 20 years within Russia, I think that it’s fair to say that more of such statues, street names etc; have been changed to reflect Bandera and his upper echelon within Ukraine, not to mention more parades held in his honor in public spaces. I’m not stating these things because I’m an ardent fan of Bandera’s, but because they seem to be factual observations reflecting differences between the two men.

Well yes, the men were very different. Stalin was more murderous in raw numbers and per population (though Bandera’s movement was about as bad as Lenin on the latter measure), Stalin was primarily a cunning pure criminal who took over a criminal revolutionary movement from its more idealistic leaders, Bandera was more of an idealistic revolutionary, etc.

What is similar is that both were monsters, both are widely popular, and in both cases those who idealize them celebrate not their monstrous real selves but rather positive fairytale takes on each man.

Bandera was more of an idealistic revolutionary, etc.

Can you recommend a good (non-Slavic language) book to read on the subject?

“Their monstrous real selves”

If you’re referring to the monstrous deeds that occurred mostly in Volhyn, aren’t you perhaps assigning a sort of collective guilt to Bandera for these crimes, for a far as I know he never sanctioned such atrocities, but they were committed with the initiative of a few of his followers, without his knowledge? In general terms, taking into account the neighborhood within which Bandera operated, what could one really expect from a nationalist leader? Wasn’t it even you (if it wasn’t I apologize, but I don’t have the time to track down the quote) that elevated nationalism as not being outside the parameters of reasonable political expression?

You could try this:

iirc it can be pirated on Library genesis. I haven’t read it myself, so no idea how it is. The author seems to be a Polish-born Holocaust researcher supported by Germany’s liberal establishment, so I suppose the usual biases apply.

There seems to be a glitch, don’t know if the link I posted is correctly displayed.
Title of the book is: Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist.
Can be pirated here:
http://library.lol/main/5E03F212DD2734AF6E353EA2C3766132

I agree with German reader. His source (I have t read it) seems to be really comprehensive. But as a liberal Holocaust-expert Pole he can be expected to be quite biased. His academic placement should at least keep him somewhat in check, so he’s not on the level of Soviet or Polish nationalist propagandists.

Unfortunately I can’t think of any unbiased sources out there. Ukrainian ones are biased in his favor.

It seems, and correct me if I’m wrong, that Web 3.0 may hold the promise of decentralization but primarily for those who are techie enough to write their own code and have their own “planet�,provided they live in a place whose government doesn’t put up significant roadblocks (like the Chinese).

In a way this seems like Linux and other solutions which indeed provide an out for a small minority but fail to achieve scale (because people are lazy, busy, apathetic etc.) and so are ultimately ineffective at changing the balance of power.

You don’t seem to be very familiar with linux, as it is now by far the most popular OS on the planet, since it runs inside every Android phone:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)

Would it not be most likely that a Web3.0 future would see crimethink not shut down, but just cordoned off where it will suffocate to death. Especially with existing Big Tech looking for entry points into the future of the internet, the current (and ever increasing) strictures on speech, and the development of a doctrinaire reflexive goodthink (Wokeism) it seems like it would be possible to plug the ideological leaks and keep counter-narrative viewpoints out of sight of the masses.

I think it may be fair to say that the battle for the narrative and control of tech platforms today may directly result in what sort of Web3.0 or 2.5 the masses experience, even if a number of ultimately obscure people do have unfettered freedom of speech.

You assume that the current Big Tech dominance is stable, many people working on decentralized systems don’t think so.

I’m completely shooting from the hip here since I’m no techie. However, I feel a certain skepticism since I’m getting deja vue from the many glorious futures that Web2.0 supposedly had in store for us. As it turned out, instead of the Wild West we eventually got the virtual gulag.

You’re right that Web 2.0 was fairly overhyped, but that wasn’t really about changing much more than allowing apps to be distributed through your web browser. That vision has failed, but that doesn’t mean other visions will too.

I hope that I’m wrong and you are right, but I am very dubious that any fundamental change in power distribution will result.

You do realize that all these Big Tech companies that you despair of ever beating didn’t exist two to five decades ago, right? Yet they went from nothing to megaliths that you consider indestructible, just as people once thought of AOL or IBM, who are now punchlines.

You are right that the initial vision of the internet as a place where information would flow freely has been hampered, but this very site is proof of what is possible, and much better is coming from the decentralized efforts.

The way I understood it, was 6 million is a poetic device.

Jews were oppressed or are in power, and so challenging that poetic trope is subversive or challenging the prevalent order.

Similar to blacks and the N word, Mohammad sexual escapades, Jesus birth origin.

Man is a mythic creature, and each mythic construct upholds a social order & produces an elite who coordinates via its parameters.

You can’t counter religion with facts, regardless of ethnic background of who’s doing it to whom।।

ਵਾਹਿਗ�ਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗ�ਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

Extrapolating to the population of the USSR, Bandera’s movement was not as murderous as Stalin or Hitler’s governments but was about as murderous as Lenin. Bandera certainly was not directly culpable for the Volhynia massacres, he was imprisoned and couldn’t give the order. But it was his organization and his deputies who did that, in accordance with his strategies. Bandera was directly involved in terroristic killings of civilians in the 1930s and early 1940s for which his organisation was condemned by the head of the Greek Catholic Church. He killed Polish moderates who were friendly towards Ukrainians and provoked harsh anti-Ukrainian responses in order to cynically build up support for his cause. He also murdered various Ukrainian rivals.

Bandera determined that Ukraine failed to achieve independence in 1917-1921 because:

1. It’s cause was divided, there were too many leaders.

2. It was too soft on its enemies.

3. Minorities on Ukrainian territories served as an internal fifth column that served the invaders.

He also observed that the Communists had genocided the Ukrainian people, the liberal democracies were allied to the Polish occupiers and were weak, while the Germans and Ukrainian nationalists had mutual enemies.

So based on these ideas, he and his organization murdered 60,000-100,000 Poles living on Ukrainian territory, 20,000-30,000 Jews on Ukrainian territory, probably around 30,000 Ukrainians who were politically unreliable (unwilling to accept his overlordship of the Ukrainian people). He supported a fascistic fuhrer principle, and sought an alliance with Nazi Germany. He would have very happily been a Ukrainian Ante Pavelic.* All in all, he was just e of several mid 20th century monsters.

* Though he wasn’t some sort of tool of the Nazis, he was not a Quisling. He preemptively declared independence (with German alliance) and was imprisoned rather than recant

Bandera determined that Ukraine failed to achieve independence in 1917-1921 because:

1. It’s cause was divided, there were too many leaders.

2. It was too soft on its enemies.

3. Minorities on Ukrainian territories served as an internal fifth column that served the invaders.

So, in your eyes, was Bandera and his observations very far off the mark?

Ah, shit, Anatoly. Gonna miss your excellent photography, your thoughts and truthfully, enlightenment about what goes on in the Russian Federation. I enjoyed swapping church pics back and forth awhile back. You, along with military affairs specialist Andrei Martyanov (gone two years from here now?) will leave a rather substantial void around here when it comes to East-Of-Germany. I’ve lost track of Andrei again, I hope he’s out there somewhere. And I hope to find you at your new salt mine, as it were.

And listen, kid, stay off the ledges of tall buildings, will ya? Some of your photo shoots in St. Petersburg this or last year scared the hell outta me. Be well, young man. You’ll be missed.

While I’ve got you here, I would be curious about your opinion of a German-Polish historian, Bogdan Musial. I’ve read three of his books (Kampfplatz Deutschland, Stalins Beutezug, Konterrevolutionäre Elemente sind zu erschießen) and while he obviously has his biases (anti-Soviet and, to a perhaps lesser degree, pro-Polish) his books seem to me to offer a very interesting perspective, particularly with regard to his use of resources (German, Russian, Polish, Jewish) that are not often combined in a single author. And the fact that he seems to have consistently antagonized (and out-debated) Germany’s “liberal establishment” presumably must count in his favor.

His observations weren’t far off the mark. The problem was his solutions.

The way I understood it, was 6 million is a poetic device.

It is more of a math thing.

### of Jews in continental Europe ~1930
– # of Jews in continental Europe ~ 1946
= Net Loss

Morally or politically, I am not sure that 5MM vs 6MM leads to any significant change in attitudes or policies.

You’re probably right about this. Even if the number was brought down to 4.5MM, it probably wouldn’t change things.

That’s one of the reasons I find it so odd that people insist on the 6MM figure.

Why not just go where the evidence leads? Even if it were a million or two lower, Nazis would still be bad.

How come Armenians in America are such outstanding citizens while Armenians in Armenia have made it into a basket case? I pose this as a legitimate, respectful query!

From my observations, this typically concerns WN activists (including IIRC Heimbach, funnily enough), who believe in racial differences not because they have read and understood the HBD literature, but because it rationalizes their pre-existing hate for other races. Sometimes things really are as simple as they seem. Many of these WNs are not very stable people.

This is right on the money. I had the misfortune of meeting and knowing some of these characters before they became overt white nationalists, and they were already unstable misfits then. For them, the whole anti-normie “transgressive� milieu of white nationalism became a useful vehicle for camouflaging and leveraging that tendency, which had previously brought them grief in ordinary life and social relationships. Mostly I feel sorry for them, but, at the same time, they aren’t the kind of people I’d want around me or my family… or have any kind of political power and influence. Some of them were intelligent or had interesting ideas, but were, to be uncharitable, bound to be screwups in the end.

Thinking out loud.

R. Unz got canned from the publishing industry in the U. S. because he wanted to publish material that the movers and shakers in the industry (((?))) did not want to publish.

Having the resources, both material and personal, he started his own webzine and published what he chose. Good for him! And us!

Now he repeatedly whines about the fact that that very same MSM will not cite or reference the material that he publishes. The very same material that they would not let him publish when he was on the inside.

It makes no sense whatsoever to expect the MSM to cite and reference material that they initially and persistently reject as publishable material in the first place.

It makes no sense that a smart person would expect otherwise.

His aim seems to be contextualization, certainly not exoneration of WW2 Germany (something Musial as a Polish patriot can hardly have an interest in), a far cry from the rather demented “Hitler did nothing wrong� revisionism one reads on UR.

In 1990’s I was hoping for some degree of revisionism and contextualization that would occur as result of opening Soviet block archives and more historians like Musial would appear. But I was proven to be naive. However Musial is doing a good work. I did like his myth busting book about Soviet partisans in Belarus. However I do not have much hope for contextualization and revisions in the Holocaust area.

AK,

If your deal with Mr. Unz allows it…. Have you considered starting “Open Thread 168”?

Anything too far afield for this goodbye thread could be relocated there.

PEACE 😇

An Armenian can give a better answer. My takes:

1. A lot of Armenians you in America are descended from wealthy merchants, while Armenians in Armenia might be mountain villagers/shepherds. Like comparing Scottish businessmen from Edinburgh to highlanders.

2. Soviets turn things to sh*t. The ones in Armenia have been demoralised. I know that pre-Soviet Ukrainian immigrants and their descendants were sometimes grumbling about new immigrants being more prone to corruption.

It’s the water.

And this applies not just to Armenia.

that is effectively the niche that UR has carved out for itself

That is a niche, but with all the excess baggage, UR is not very effective.

There is no hope, if anything judgements have become more extreme with increasing distance in time from 1945. WW2 is the foundation myth of our world and there are too many interested parties which will continue to prevent it from becoming history (though it will probably be supplemented with an additional focus on the real and imagined crimes of European colonialism).

WW2 is the foundation myth of our world and there are too many interested parties which will continue to prevent it from becoming history (though it will probably be supplemented with an additional focus on the real and imagined crimes of European colonialism).

In the current context when everything is seen through the lens of whiteness there will be issues with trying to work with these two myths. It could be that WW2 will be gradually pushed into the background, because ‘white-on-white’ killings and destruction is no longer considered as culturally important, or is considered as a kind of self inflicted wound by whites on themselves. Discussing it is inconsiderate because it distracts from the trauma of the various populations of colour.