The Hoover Hog

Interview with a Holocaust Denier

Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of Hoover Hog interviews.

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INTRODUCTION

In Lucifer's Lexicon, L.A. Rollins defines a "Holocaust revisionist"as "one who denies that he is a denier."  I'm sure "Mike Smith" -- aka "Denier," aka "Bud" -- would concur. As the elusive videographer behind the most provocative  underground documentaries to emerge on the web in recent years, Denier (as we'll agree  to call him), has little patience for cloudy euphemisms. He just calls it as he sees it. And in his taboo-flouting web trilogy -- consisting of  OneThird of the Holocaust, Nazi Shrunken Heads, and most recently, Buchenwald: A Dumb Dumb Portrayal of Evil -- he calls it a lie.

As Denier's unexpected John Malkovich monotone narrates over volumes of intriguing exhibits in steadily focused fact-stacking explication of his heretical thesis, intrepid viewers may find themselves clamoring for a careful refutation. Surely The Skeptics Society or the gang at Popular Mechanics can be relied on to provide a point-by-point reality check, as our entrusted skeptics did when the 9-11 Truth Squad went viral with their pyrotechnic fantasies -- no?

Well, no. At least not to date. Oh, you'll find some snarkily pitched counter-arguments percolating amid the obligatory ad hominem attacks over at Holocaust Controversies, but the guardians of historical orthodoxy have been largely content to ignore Denier and his quirky little home movies. The fact that most of his videos have been banned from YouTube and Google Video just makes it easier. The fact that his ads -- ads soliciting rebuttals -- were turned down by the UC Berkeley student newspaper. Just makes it easier. Free speech is easy when it's chained to the margins. That's the American way. 

But you already know the drill. When someone voices doubt about what all good people recognize as the greatest moral catastrophe of the past century, the refrains of suspicion are tightly scripted. Denier is to be cast as an anti-Semite who probably harbors some perverse nostalgia for Hitler's sadly misunderstood regime. Never mind that he regards Der Führer as a stunted power-mad militaristic thug, and says as much, repeatedly, in his movies. Never mind all those anti-war palliatives layered throughout his project -- the calls for "good vibes" and good will and harmony among people everywhere. You can shuck off the pacifist shtick as a long-rehearsed denialist ruse. Because you know better. Don't you?

And if you get stuck on the curious fact that the Bad Man is also an avowed atheist who equally denies the historical existence of Jesus Christ, well, just take a deep breath. Tell yourself such kinks in the profile are but clever face-saving PR distractions. Like those embedded nods to Philip K. Dick and Chomsky. Like the AdBusters-branded riffs on corporate capitalism. You see how it adds up to insidious hipster-baiting mind poison? You see through all of it. Don't you, and very good. The man is seduced by Kevin MacDonald, after all. And we are assured that Kevin MacDonald is wrong about all of it. Dangerously wrong. Because Steven Pinker said so.

"Discredited," as they say. Just keep saying it. You can save yourself a lot of time and trouble that way. Soon, you'll be safely back on track.

But for the time being, if you're feeling adventurous, why not take a peek at what the YouTube brass doesn't want you to see? Why not lend a cautious ear to a man who has come to deny what you have always believed with such peculiar certainty? There's really no danger that you'll learn anything new, is there? If nothing else, it should make for easy sport. Perhaps you can set the record straight, just for fun. Michael Shermer may thank you. Should be good for a laugh, or a sigh. There's no good reason to trust anyone.

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INTERVIEW WITH A HOLOCAUST DENIER

      

THE HOOVER HOG: People who express doubts about various aspects of the standard history of the Holocaust usually refer to themselves as "revisionists" and consider the term "Holocaust denier" to be a smear. But you have embraced the "D" word, stating that you believe the Holocaust to be a "giant myth." Why have you adopted this arguably confrontational approach? And perhaps more importantly, what specifically do you mean when you state that you "deny" the Holocaust?

DENIER: I like the term "denier." The term "revisionist" comes off as a bad euphemism. It is deniers trying to express the sentiment that they believe Jews suffered during WWII but just weren't systematically exterminated. But to the public, it comes off as a bad euphemism. The movie Mr. Death had multiple euphemistic levels, because Fred Leuchter made execution equipment and euphemistically described what he did, and he was also a revisionist!

For me, the term "denier" has parallels to gay people taking the word "queer" for their own self-definition. Turning a derogatory term around for their own power.

I'm sure some people will be amused (or confused) by the idea of applying identity politics to Holocaust denial. But just to clarify, your view is that systematic extermination is the defining element of what has come to be known as the Holocaust?

Exactly.

Are you saying that without genocidal intent, the events that took place no longer signify anything that might be considered historically unique, or uniquely atrocious?

I don't mean that, but at the same time I'm drawing a blank on how to clarify. The Nazis tried to kick the Jews out of Europe. They put them in labor camps.

What do you make of the "functionalist" view, notably of Christopher Browning who deemphasizes the role of gas chambers and argues that the Holocaust was largely carried out by German police reserve units who massacred deportees in the course of carrying out orders. Do such claims fall under the scrutiny of Holocaust denial as well? And do you think the emergence of a functionalist/intentionalist dialectic is (perhaps covertly) influenced by the arguments of Holocaust deniers or revisionists?

Nothing comes to mind on this one.

In your video documentary, One Third of the Holocaust, you focus on Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec, collectively known as the Reinhard death camps. And your latest documentary is devoted to Buchenwald. Why did you choose to focus on these camps, rather than on Auschwitz, which seems to be more synonymous with the Holocaust, at least in the public imagination?

I could have started on Auschwitz, but I saw a lot of focus already on that camp. Plus I knew that if I chose Auschwitz, then people would bring up Treblinka, and if I chose Treblinka, then people would bring up Auschwitz. Which is what happened in the YouTube dialogs before my videos were removed by YouTube staff.

Why were your videos removed from YouTube?

Because they remove holocaust denial content even though in their "Terms of Service" and "Community Guidelines" they don't say they do.

At one point, episode 1 of "One Third" got removed, and I appealed, and I won. So it got put back up, only to get removed 8 months later. I appealed again and no one responded.

I put "One Third" up on Google video and it was removed also.

Jesus, I've seen uncensored GG Allin videos on YouTube. You must be a dangerous man. Of course, it will be argued that YouTube and Google are private companies and can exercise discretion over these things, even if we disagree about their guidelines. But in other Western democracies, the situation for Holocaust skeptics is more serious. Germar Rudolf is currently behind bars in Germany, along with Ernst Zundel (who was previously imprisoned in Canada for distributing pamphlets). Do you think such cases have been fairly reported by Western media? And do you foresee similar penalties ever being imposed in the United States?

I don't think Germar Rudolf's imprisonment was even reported. He was really trying to stay out of prison and the authorities in the USA nabbed him and deported him to Germany. Just days later, David Irving voluntarily goes to Austria and gets arrested, which I hate to say, overshadowed any possibility of Rudolf's imprisonment becoming a media story.

I think it's outrageous these people are in prison, and I frequently thought of Germar Rudolf while working on my videos. Thinking to myself, "they're keeping Rudolf from doing any holocaust denial art, but I'm free, and I'm making some."

When I was a kid, I remember being terrified by the TV miniseries, Holocaust. Later, I read the usual assigned books by Elie Wiesel and Anne Frank. I watched Night and Fog. And I believed all of it, as I suspect most people do. I didn't know there was such a thing as Holocaust revisionism or Holocaust denial until I saw a TV Movie of the Week on the subject (I think it starred Raquel Welch) in the late 80s. I remember thinking that there was something very odd about how the subject was presented, and I became curious.

How did you come to doubt what everyone believes? Surely you weren't born a denier.

I saw that holocaust miniseries too. And it affected me.

I'm not exactly sure how I became a denier. Seeing a 1992 issue of TV Guide with the two words "Fake News" on the front cover and an article on the "Babies Pulled off Life Support" hoax affected me. I never read TV Guide, but there it was on the counter of the convenience store mentioning how hoaxes are used to promote war. That affected me, and yet I wouldn't become a denier until years later.

Seeing how the media in the Bay Area in the late 90's presented, in an emotional way, a position to support the war against Yugoslavia affected me. I saw the propaganda element.

Seeing New York Times front page articles in the late 90's about Iraq and that "no fly zone" and realizing that there was a force trying to convince the masses to go to war and provoke the Iraqis, affected me.

Being in an academic setting and seeing some things reminiscent of what Kevin MacDonald describes in Culture of Critique about his time as a college grad student, effected me. Like MacDonald, I also saw a discourse cultivating a supposed moral high ground and yet I was noticing that there was something else really going on beneath that, that was helping people advance.

These are defining aspects that come to mind, and yet I didn't become a denier till years after they happened.

But was there a particular book or article or event that caused you to question received opinion regarding the Holocaust/genocide story? Or did it simply follow from seeing these contemporary examples of war propaganda playing out?

9-11 sent me in the direction of holocaust denial. When 9-11 happened I believed it was a response to unfair US foreign policy in the Mideast. Particularly toward the Palestinians. And in those Bin Laden videos released shortly after 9-11, Bin Laden said as much. Bin Laden mentioned Jenin. So I thought "wow, the media is spinning this in a totally different direction." The "they hate our freedom" direction. All this put me on the path to holocaust denial.

Bradley Smith routinely refers to Nazi gas chambers as the original WMDs. Did it surprise you that the US didn't fabricate evidence of Iraqi WMDs in Iraq? Or is that sort of thing too hard to pull off in the contemporary media environment?

It's a great question. If the holocaust is a fraud, then why couldn't the US plant some WMD evidence in Iraq? I don't know the answer. But maybe it's that Bush is not Eisenhower. And I mean that in a good way, not in a bad way.

I suspect that your reference to Kevin MacDonald will be a show-stopper for some readers. A major part of MacDonald's thesis in The Culture of Critique is that ethno-genetic forces have influenced academic and popular discourse in ways that tend to promote Jewish interests, often to the detriment of other religious and ethnic group interests. This point comes up a few times in your Buchenwald documentary and is humorously made in a segment of Nazi Shrunken Heads. But MacDonald's work has been harshly criticized by evolutionary psychologists such as Steven Pinker (who we might as well note, is Jewish) and by others who see his theory as an academically polished and pseudoscientific expression of anti-Semitism. Do you think MacDonald has gotten a bad rap?

I think MacDonald has gotten a bad rap. Culture of Critique is an amazing book. You read passages, and it's just so true.

Of course, all of this brings up the most common criticism of dissident Holocaust history, which is that it is inherently anti-Semitic. How do you respond to this charge? And should it matter?

Well. I advocate kindness toward all Jewish people. I'd be against selective laws against Jews as much as the ACLU would be. Kevin MacDonald talks about Jewish Group Evolutionary Strategy, but probably every group has evolutionary strategies. The Germans fought the Romans for such a long period of time, long ago: 2,000 years ago, and maybe that gives them some inherent militarism. The holocaust myth as Jewish group evolutionary strategy might even be a response to German militarism.

At the same time, part of me wants to get away from the idea that Jews use the holocaust to their advantage. The Auschwitz part of the holocaust myth, for instance is so wrapped up in paranoia over delousing, that there's a case to be made that the entire Auschwitz death story came out of paranoia of delousing.

Can you explain what you mean by this -- about "paranoia of delousing"?

The entire holocaust myth is one giant mix up with delousing. I mention that in my recent Buchenwald movie where there's a line that says "a tiny bacteria inside the poop of a louse, is key to understanding the world's biggest lie." Because the typhus bacteria is in lice poop, and that's how it's transferred to people. Eventually it kills both the louse and the human.

Back to Kevin MacDonald. I think it's possible to realize he's right and not be anti-semitic. Think of Alex Haley writing Roots in the 1970's. He probably took writing breaks to have a barbecue with his white neighbors. I just made that scenario up, but maybe it happened. It's the kind of thing we're talking about. Research in a scholarly community, and good vibes within that regardless of what conclusions your research comes up with.

Well, I've seen Independence Day, and I don't think I'm paranoid to discern a "Jewish savior" subtext in re-runs of Taxi. But damn if I'm not cautious about who I say this stuff around. I'm all for good vibes and civil debate, but there seems to be a uniquely prohibitive aura around this issue (Kevin MacDonald being a mere footnote). My wife is "sorta Jewish" and when I have dinner with the Jewish half of her family, I am VERY careful to avoid certain controversial topics, and when such topics come up, I tend to nod politely, or abscond from the discussion. I chalk it up to decorum, but the truth is my heart races. It feels like fear.

So I'm curious. What has your experience been in explaining your controversial views to friends, colleagues and family who may harbor the ingrained prejudices about Holocaust denial. Is it all good vibes? Or does it get ugly? Or is this something you pursue privately -- in the basement, as they say?

This is an interesting question, but I can't respond to it.

Beyond the subject you've chosen, I have a hard time pinning down your documentaries. On the one hand, they're structured as straightforward investigative pieces. All these close-ups of passages from books and articles juxtaposed against public access newsreel footage. Charts and graphs and methodical dot-connecting. Yet I find your approach oddly captivating, and at times disarmingly funny. As a documentarian, you seem to have developed a unique style and sensibility. Do you see yourself as working within a tradition as a "filmmaker"? And more generally, how do you approach your work from a creative standpoint?

The phrase "Form Follows Function" comes to mind. Is that Richardson? I don't think it's Frank Lloyd Wright. Anyway, breaking the holocaust myth is so important, from an anti-war perspective. That's an idea I put forth in my Buchenwald movie where I show Ron Paul in an exchange with John McCain. And also where I show Darth Vader in an exchange with Obi Wan Kenobi, LOL.

It could be this is what the form for this function looks like.

You mentioned Errol Morris's film, Mr. Death, about Fred Leuchter. Any thoughts on Morris's work?

Mr. Death is about holocaust denial, and the only way that movie could make it into every video store in the country is to have the proponent (Leuchter) portrayed as a freak. In the 1500's, there was probably some corollary with Atheism. Some book which discussed atheism, but where it was allowed because it was a freak or a Bad Man who was an atheist.

That's an interesting point. Do you think that Mr. Death can be viewed as an esoteric defense of Leuchter -- and of Holocaust denial, even if that wasn't Morris's intention? I read that when an early cut was shown, audiences responded with sympathy toward the Bad Man, and that the film was subsequently re-edited to include the critical segments featuring Robert Jan van Pelt, which really do seem tacked on.

Yes, my video "One Third" mentions that. A preliminary screening of Mr. Death at Harvard University had some students believing Leuchter's theory, so he re-edited the movie.

I almost find it hard to believe some students sided with Leuchter, because I know how hard it is to convince someone the holocaust is a hoax. It's almost impossible.

If the evidence converges the way you say, then why do you think intelligent people seldom reach the conclusion that seems obvious to you? Why should it be "almost impossible" to convince someone? That sounds more like the kind of impasse one finds in a religious dispute.

This sort of is a religious dispute. The holocaust replaced Christianity as the definer of evil. The Good Samaritan becomes the Righteous Gentile. It's nearly impossible to convince really smart people that the holocaust is a myth. Yet these really smart people know little about the holocaust. They usually don't know it supposedly happened largely in the East.

Speaking of really smart people, some intelligent friends assure me that Holocaust denial has about as much intellectual value as Intelligent Design theory or "9-11 Truth" conspiracy mongering. Holocaust skepticism is also popularly associated with those who argue that the Apollo moon landing was a hoax. What's the difference?

The holocaust really is a hoax and the other things you mentioned really are untrue conspiracy theories, including 9-11. I think 9-11 happened just like the media says it did. At the same time there are conspiracies out there which no one talks about. Like Idi Amin as mentioned in my "Nazi Shrunken Heads" video.

I guess the only documentary that might bear obvious comparison to your work is the 1992 Auschwitz expose', David Cole Interviews Dr.Franciszek Piper. Any thoughts on Cole's work, and on his "recantation" under Irv Rubin's death threat?

I like the David Cole video. I think it's good. Cole was onto this way before me.

Cole's recantation to Irv Rubin is once again a Middle Ages comparison. I mean, just the word "recantation." Middle Ages comparisons are always coming up with holocaust denial.

The folks over at Holocaust Controversies have chided you repeatedly for dodging tough questions, for failing to link to their blog, and for ducking their challenges to debate. What say you? Do they present arguments and evidence that threaten the credibility of your views? Are you chicken?

Yes, I remember the "chicken challenge" when Holocaust Controversies displayed a chicken on their main page along with a counter of the days that I STILL hadn't linked to them.

I've never linked to anybody. I don't even link to CODOH.

I think people should watch my videos, and then read their rebuttals, and make their own decision.

I tried to solicit rebuttals to my chapters at UC Berkeley and Harvard University, but they wouldn't let me place a newspaper ad asking for rebuttals.

I read all the Holocaust Controversies rebuttals. Occasionally I find a good point. Often I find a "straw man argument." It's important to know what a straw man argument is. It took me awhile to grasp the concept. I'll give an example: Muehlenkamp wrote in his Stroop Report rebuttal essay that I believe that the famous holocaust photo of the Jewish boy with his hands up, is staged, and then he writes all the reasons why that notion is absurd. I don't think the photo is staged though. I think it's at Hotel Polski. The Stroop Report forger cobbled photos from various places. Muehlenkamp presented my supposed position, and then knocked it down (like a straw man.) I find a lot of that at Holocaust Controversies, and like my writing right here, it's tedious to point it out. A rebuttal to a rebuttal tends to make confusing and non-gripping writing.

In your Buchenwald documentary, you make frequent reference to the role of Allied Psychological Warfare operations in postwar de-Nazification efforts. I'm guessing that most people are not aware that such  operations even existed. Can you briefly discuss the role of "Sykewar" and why it is relevant to the revisionist/denialist critique?

Eisenhower had his very own Psyche Warfare unit, called PWD-SHAEF. During WWII there were lots of different psyche warfare departments, but this was the big one.

The OSS was the American equivalent to the KGB and the Gestapo, but it answered to Roosevelt. Psyche Warfare, in contrast, answered directly to Eisenhower. This is relevant because PWD-SHAEF, short circuited the American government system, by hatching a psyche warfare operation at Buchenwald, and then using it to fool members of congress and the American people. It's a piece of the holocaust myth, and the reason Eisenhower became president and, in the larger scheme of the myth, the reason the country of Israel was created.

Who was CD Jackson?

He's the guy down the hall when Roman Polanski was filming Rosemary's Baby in the early 1960's, because the Dakota Apartments is where that film was shot and it's where CD Jackson lived.

He's a guy who made the remarkable career advancement of running his family's New York marble importing company, to suddenly becoming assistant to Henry Luce, owner of Time/Life.

Beyond that, you'll have to watch the movie.

In Buchenwald: A Dumb-Dumb Portrayal of Evil, Eisenhower emerges as a central villain -- a figure who colluded with psychological warfare operatives to control mass media reports of Allied atrocities and to promote a deceptive account of Nazi war crimes in order to advance self-aggrandizing political goals. Of course, this will seem preposterous and offensive to Americans who grew up believing that Eisenhower was great war hero and President. Why are they wrong?

Well, there should have been a little bit of a "heads up" regarding Eisenhower, when Gary Powers' spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Union and Eisenhower went on national TV and said we don't fly spy planes over the Soviet Union, only to have the Soviets shortly after produce Gary Powers.

Things weren't what they seemed in the 1950s, which is a central tenet of Philip K. Dick's book Time Out of Joint.

The American public was being manipulated by a media/government elite, and Eisenhower was central to it.

You've speculated that Senator Joe McCarthy may have been wise to Eisenhower's propaganda campaign and that he was possibly "poised to uncover the holocaust myth." This is a novel thesis, to say the least. Is it a loose thread, or something you are pursuing?

I got that impression from reading The Chairman by Kai Bird, even though Bird, not being a denier, wasn't putting that across. When Bird mentioned that Ed Murrow brought McCarthy down, and I knew Ed Murrow from a radio address from Buchenwald and his connection to Paley, I was like "huh?!?" You read in Bird, how Murrow puts footage on national TV of McCarthy picking his nose. Stuff like that. And in Bird's book you find where Lucius Clay, the first governor of West Germany, asks Eisenhower if there's a way to get McCarthy to stop prying.

It's also odd that so many key people die when they do. McCarthy dies at 49, just years after the McCarthy hearings. Patton dies in a car wreck just after the war. Roosevelt dies the very day Eisenhower's psyche warfare unit begins it's holocaust myth push. Then there's Kennedy. I don't believe they're all conspiracy secret assassinations. But I wonder if maybe one of them is, though I don't know which one.

But doesn't that sort of speculation edge on conspiracy-mongering? Do you worry that your research may lead you to see connections where none exist? It's a natural human tendency, according to psychologists. Apophenia, I think.

You have to know when to stop. It's disappointing to me that so many revisionists are 9-11 conspiracy theorists.

I'm not sure if it began with Jean-Claude Pressac's work, but in recent years a number of books have been published that purport to refute or debunk Holocaust denial. I'm thinking of works by Lipstadt, Vidal Naquet, van Pelt, Shermer & Grobman, and Zimmerman, although I'm sure there are others. Do you keep up with the work of such critics, and do you find any of them to have value?

I don't think in these works you'd find a lot on Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, and Buchenwald because they are probably largely on Auschwitz. I haven't read them nor have they come up in Google searches on topics I've looked up.

I tried to solicit scholars to debunk my videos, but I wasn't allowed to place newspaper ads. "One Third of the Holocaust" has been out for years, and Lipstadt pretends it doesn't exist.

I was allowed to place an ad in the University of Minnesota student paper asking for rebuttals to Nazi Shrunken Heads, but got no takers.

Why weren't you allowed to take out newspaper ads?

You can see the ads I tried to place on my website.

The UC Berkeley student newspaper originally took my $1,000 and accepted the ad, then they went back on that. They started making up all these new rules once I came along. Like that for over 150 dollars, a person had to pay with a personal check and supply ID. No one else had to do that! Then I got Bradley Smith involved and he said he'd pay with a personal check. Then we bent over backwards to be obliging to their requests, like they wanted us to change the ad to say say that anyone could write a rebuttal, not just professors. So we added "open to everyone" to the ad. After no less than 60 emails going back and forth, and them giving us the run around, they finally completely balked and wouldn't place the ad. The money was refunded. So much for the university that started the "Free Speech Movement."

OK. Let's assume you're right -- at least in the broad strokes -- about all of it. The Holocaust is a massive whopper, and life goes on. What I wonder is: is there a point at which the news breaks? Does the academic consensus come around at some point, vindicating the work of these outlaw historians who have been firebombed and pummeled and incarcerated and intimidated and defamed and censored? Or is the taboo against questioning the canonical Holocaust story too deeply entrenched -- like the Christian Gospels?

It could happen like the way Christianity broke: taking hundreds of years in a long convoluted path.

Or it could happen but with a head-spinning media spin. With some guy we've never heard of, being the "head of the revisionists." In other words, the media-created head of the revisionists who comes out of nowhere. And it could be spun as some incredible disservice that's happened to the Jews. And that spin would be partly correct.

I'll keep that second scenario on file. Just out of curiosity, do you have an opinion about the historical existence of Jesus? I know it's a matter of contention in some circles.

I'm atheist. I don't think Jesus even existed historically. There's definitely a connection between atheism and holocaust denial.

One revisionist text that I find interesting is The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes, by Samuel Crowell. Crowell uses intertextual literary analysis to argue that the gas chamber stories arose out of a kind of social panic over the use of poison gas -- a panic that grew out of the First World War and that finds expression in numerous contemporaneous literary works and news reports. The argument is essentially that the Holocaust narrative -- or at least the core element of genocide via gas chambers -- may have found root in an atmosphere of mass delusion that would later be exploited by Allied victors, then historicized by credulous scholars and journalists. But where Crowell focuses mainly on social psychology and the cultural reification of mass hysteria (his monograph has been aptly compared to Elaine Showalter's Hystories), your work seems more concerned with Chomsky-brand media manipulation and top-down machinations. Politically-driven collusion among high-ranking power-brokers, like Ike and his psy-ops agents.

Is the difference between your and Crowell's approach one of method and emphasis? Is his study of socio-cultural semiotics consonant with the arguments you advance in your videos? Or do you think his literary analysis fails to confront the more nefarious role of military propaganda and psychological warfare?

I think that the theory I put forth and Crowell's theory are just two "surfaces of truth" -- a term I remember reading in Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida.

I really liked Crowell's book. It's a paranoia-based theory. And my Buchenwald video has a paranoia aspect when I mention Philip K. Dick.

It's as you said: Eisenhower and his Psyche Warfare team capitalized on paranoia. But when you know about people like CD Jackson, and their connections to the Council of Foreign Relations, as described by Kai Bird, then it's capitalism capitalizing.

Can you explain what you mean by the phrase: "capitalism capitalizing"? It sounds like something out of Baudrillard.

Well, in Kai Bird's book, The Chairman, he describes these New York captains of banking, media, and industry as being members of the Council on Foreign Relations. And what that organization did was try to influence foreign policy to promote U.S business. C.D Jackson, John McCloy, Henry Luce, William Paley I believe, were all in it. And they capitalized on the paranoia, on the confusion with death from typhus, to help put forth the holocaust myth. That's capitalism capitalizing. Paley of CBS, working in Psyche Warfare. Jackson at Life, working in in Psyche Warfare, both CFR members. It's capitalism capitalizing.

To the general public, Holocaust denial is almost exclusively associated, in political terms, with the far right. But your video project is laced with references to the Palestinian cause. You allude at various points to Noam Chomsky and Ron Paul and Phillip K. Dick, and here you've just thrown out a nod to Barthes. At times you seem to buttress your conclusions with critical and arguably sinister interpretation of capitalism (the "invisible brain"; "capitalism capitalizing"), and you conclude your Buchenwald series with a humorously framed indictment of militarism and what I take to be a sincere call for peace, love, and understanding. Can you describe your political point of view? And do you think that Holocaust denial implies or precludes any political worldview or ideology?

I think right now holocaust denial is like atheism at some point in the Middle Ages. At that time an atheist position would have seemed like the opposite of a moralist view, and maybe for some pirate types, it really was.

Even feminism in the early 70's meant one thing and means another now.

Holocaust denial might go through some identity changes too. The idea of what it means to believe in something.

You've completed two feature length Holocaust denial movies and have been blacklisted by YouTube. What's next? Any future projects to plug?

No, no future projects in store.

Thanks for your time.

Thanks for the questions. I really liked the exchange.

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Comments are open.

Memento mori.

Coming Soon...

Armored edentates don't hibernate, but they are sleepy critters. I will return to the polarizing Michel Epstein thread when the work is done.  For now, I want to point up a few morsels in the offing.

First off, I am pleased to announce that L.A. Rollins' The Myth of Natural Rights and Other Essays is at long last off the press. The big brown truck will deliver the full run to me later this week and those of you who placed advance orders will have copies in your mitts very soon thereafter. I appreciate your patience and your interest, and I apologize for all of the delays. I still haven't gotten around to completing the Nine-Banded Books site redesign, so  if you want an autographed copy, please email me and I'll provide you with mail order instructions.

Our next book is Considering Suicide, by Andy Nowicki. I don't have a release date set, but it's on a faster track than The Myth, I promise.  After that will be Against Life, Against Death, which is a collection of essays on antinatalism and related ideas. There's one more manuscript in the anteroom, but it would be premature to announce that one just yet.

Recognizing that this space has grown somewhat stagnant, I have decided to liven things up with a series of interviews, the first of which should appear in a couple of weeks. Please keep checking in.

Memento mori.

Michel Epstein, with Proof

For the past several months, my friend Bradley Smith has been stuck on a question. He began by directing the question to Deborah Lipstadt, knowing just how that would go. He has since directed the question to historians and working scholars, some of whom have responded with testy amusement.

Some people find Bradley's question to be impertinent, or even offensive. Others confidently assert that the question  has already  been answered, probably in excruciating detail, by people presumed to who know what they're talking about. There are also those who think Bradley is being an ass.

Bradley's question isn't rhetorical. Nor is it very interesting, as questions go. It is, however, undeniably provocative. It goes like this:

Can you provide the name of one person, with proof, who was killed in a gas chamber at Auschwitz?

Think you can answer it? Think you know someone who can? Perhaps you think it's a trick of some flavor? Or just the sort of irrelevant noise one might expect from a certifiable kook? Those are the usual outs.

Me, I think it's a good question. A reasonable question. A jurisprudential and empirical question. I think it's precisely the sort of question that should be asked of scholars, without courting stigma. I also think there's a real chance someone will be able to answer it, with compelling evidence and due specificity. Trouble is, the historians are disposed to ignore old Bradley. Or to scoff in good form.   

A while back, I stepped into the comments thread appending a post by Michael Blowhard. Michael's volley was devoted primarily to the prickly gender politics of one F. Roger Devlin, but there was also some emphasis on the question of when and whether it may be ill-advised to take impolite ideas for a test-drive. On that tangential point, Michael's hook was phrased in the spirit of thoughtful exchange. He asked:

...what do you think about the idea of reading a piece by someone who has written for The Occidental Quarterly? Am I an irresponsible blogger for having linked to the likes of Devlin? Or are those who won't take a flyer on some far-out reading the real fools?

I chimed in with some thoughts on Devlin's essay, but I was more keyed to the broader question -- the one that rebounds to the loosely defined locus of my nine-banded meanderings. So what I did was, I brought up the Holocaust skeptics. The deniers or revisionists or assholes, or whatever you prefer to name them, who are so quickly dismissed as miscreants and nutjobs. I suggested that reading the work of these intellectual pariahs amounted to a kind of litmus test, one that cuts to the pulsating gristle of the question put. I suggested that the issue assumed arguable urgency because Holocaust dissidents stand virtually alone as victims of real state-sponsored persecution and censorship in most western democracies. I mentioned Bradley, but not his question. I mentioned Arthur Butz, whose "banned book" I read years ago.

It seemed relevant. I didn't mean to derail things, but I should have known better. To his credit, Michael remained gracious as things unfolded, or imploded. Even when Bradley stopped by with his question, which probably was off topic.

But this is perhaps too much in the way of backstory.  The point is that someone took a shot at answering Bradley's question. Credit goes to a commenter writing as "blah," who offered the following account:

Némirovsky, a Kiev-born Jewish woman, had settled in France with her wealthy family after the Russian revolution; become a literary celebrity on a par with Colette in 1930s Paris; was refused French citizenship shortly before the second world war broke out; and, in 1942, was deported to Auschwitz where she died, a stateless Jew, aged 39....

Similarly her husband wrote frantically to the German ambassador in Paris after Irène's arrest, pleading for her to be released: "[E]ven though my wife is of Jewish descent, she does not speak of the Jews with any affection whatsoever in her works." The letter didn't save his wife - she died from typhus in Auschwitz on August 17 1942. Michel was arrested and gassed in Auschwitz on November 6.

Blah backed up his (or her) cut & paste with a link to an article published in The Guardian, which centered on the controversy surrounding Irène Némirovsky following the posthumous publication of her novel, Suite Française.  This was hardly a primary source. The article didn't offer anything in the way of proof, or even evidence, for the claimed fate of Némirovsky's husband. It was just an assertion.

But still, there was a specific date and a specific person -- a man whose full name I soon learned was Michel Epstein. A few rounds of obligatory Googling turned up a number of references to Epstein's death at Auschwitz. Most of these references, like the one in The Guardian, were attached to discussion of Némirovsky's novel and her alleged anti-Semitism. Some confidently repeated the claim that Epstein perished in a gas chamber, perhaps along with his two brothers and a sister. Other accounts ventured that this was "almost certainly" the case.

It may be that there is some compelling reason to believe that  Michel Epstein was murdered in a Nazi gas chamber. The commenter known as "blah" made no effort to provide any such reason, but the fact that the claim is so often repeated would suggest that it has some basis. After all, it is not claimed that Epstein was shot, or that he died of typhus or some other affliction. He is said, in most web-accessible references, to have been murdered in a gas chamber, the Nazi-preferred weapon of mass destruction. Specifically, on November 6, 1942. Someone must know what they're talking about.

And so, just for the hell of it, I've decided to do what our Googling commenter couldn't be troubled to do. I'm going to follow the trail and see where it leads. I will begin by reading the Némirovsky biographies and checking the sources. If necessary, I will contact Yad Vashem and the USHMM, to make use of their registries. I will consult genealogies and archives and whatever other resources are suggested along the way. Perhaps I will hit paydirt in short order. Perhaps I will end up running in circles. All I know is I have a name, a date, and a specific and oft-repeated claim about one man's tragic fate in a gas chamber at Auschwitz.

I don't know if I will be able to provide Bradley with a definitive answer to his question. But I am going to try. I will report back.

Memento mori.   

Antinatalism and the Christina Ricci Button

A reader writes:

I'm a fellow antinatalist and have read a great deal of the material on both your blog and others too. There are, however, many things that concern me about this nascent movement. I would like to give expression to those concerns below:

Firstly, there seems to be an assumption among antinatalists that their arguments are irrefutable and that anybody who questions the assumptions upon which such arguments are based should just be ignored. Many antinatalist blogs which I have read incorporate a very high degree of abstract material, and are liberally strewn with quotations from philosophers, writers and thinkers, both past and present. Showing that you have a wide-ranging knowledge of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kant, Aristotle and Plato is not of any great help to anyone. I view such demonstrations of supposed intellectual prowess as shallow and unconstructive. There is, sadly, very little by way of practical guidance for the "common man" and very little understanding of objections which a "normal" 21^st century heterosexual individual may raise to the issue of remaining childless.

 

Playing devil's advocate, for example, imagine I say the following (and incidentally, almost none of what follows is self-description): I'm a 35 year old heterosexual man, of average intelligence, an atheist, living in a developed country. I've got a lovely wife, and we find each other attractive on all levels, physically, intellectually, etc. I have a great job, at which I meet loads of great people. I have many hobbies which I enjoy, a vibrant social life, and 2 kids. They are both at school, and great fun to be with. They, too, are healthy, happy and, in general, enjoying life. We're going to have a few more children. I don't see why we shouldn't, just because there's a risk that they may suffer. Yeah, OK, there's a small (less than 10% chance) that they may suffer badly, but a far greater chance that most of their lives will be spent in happiness. We will do our best to ensure that they come to no (non-trivial) harm. On the off-chance that something serious does happen to them, well, as you say, death will stop them suffering in the end. Dealing with certain misfortunes is not "suffering" anyway, and neither is being disabled (necessarily). Certain experiences will only serve to mould my children's character and to make them self-reliant, decent citizens. I understand that if we all stopped reproducing, all suffering would end with the present generation (at least until an evolutionary accident throws up something like us again), but that's just boring, life's too much fun to be missed! And yes, I am gambling with someone else's life - I cannot deny that - but the dice are loaded in my favour, and theirs too. With regard to death, yeah, I accept that I've got to die, as does every other human being on the planet, but I don't bother to think about it - just enjoy life now, when death happens, it happens. There's no need to take it so seriously!

 

Convince this hypothetical human being not to have any more children, in simple language that he will understand. Implying that he is either:

 

a) stupid, and/or

b) selfish and/or

c) immoral

 

is clearly not going to do the job, and neither is trying to browbeat him through complex abstraction.

 

Next, there seems to be an assumption on many blogs that it is a pre-requisite to join the atheist fold and give up religion in order to espouse the cause of antinatalism. I see this as a non-sequitur - why does belief in God preclude one from being an antinatalist?

...

 

I don't see antinatalism as fulfulling any purpose whatsoever if it seeks to be an exclusive members only club at the "cerebral edges of blogland" (quote from antinatism.net), populated by pseudo-intellectuals who use it as a marketing tool and to preach to the "very much already converted". Antinatalists should make available succinctly presented information to the general public showing clearly the advantages of their approach and using reason and logic to drive home the central tenets of the doctrine. Simply stating a million times: "Stop having kids because that's the only way humanity can avoid suffering - are you too stupid to see that" is not going to convert even 1 person that's not already converted (independently).

Below is my response, edited from correspondence.

To begin, I'm not much for movements. Nor have I ever sought to fulfill a purpose, at least not in the sense that might matter. This is not some left-handed stab at humility. Truth is, I'm lazy, selfish, and prone to drift. 

For me, the proposition that no one should have children follows from taking seriously any number of ethical precepts that are uncontroversial in other contexts. Regardless of whether people are schooled in the rudiments of philosophy (and I'm a dilettante at best), I find that most people -- including, I suppose, the "common man" -- subscribe to some version of the harm principle, whether it takes the form of "rights" or the Golden Rule or basic decency. Most people believe consent is valuable, unless there is a good reason to trump it. And most people will try like hell to avoid death and misfortune (for themselves and for those they love) when choices are available. These are the sentiments to which I mean to appeal, even when my tone is perhaps a mite strident. Or pretentious, as I am told. I mean to say, simply, that where procreation is at issue, a choice is available, and that caution alone begs that the easily caricatured "other side" be given due consideration, or at least a hearing. For reasons that people already understand. 

While I personally find David Benatar's expression of the pleasure/pain asymmetry to be compelling on a number of levels, I recognize that his formulation proceeds after certain premises and intuitions that not everyone will share. It would be foolish to believe I could change hearts and minds. Yet experience suggests that there are at least a few people  (perhaps those already harboring inchoate doubts and misgivings about this long gathered parade of life) who receive the argument like a flash. For such people, I believe that simply seeing the position articulated can matter. It mattered for me. Without treading into sanctimony, I believe it can save lives.

there seems to be an assumption among antinatalists that their arguments are irrefutable and that anybody who questions the assumptions upon which such arguments are based should just be ignored.

I don't think my arguments -- i.e., the arguments I embrace -- are by any means irrefutable. In fact, I think the position I've triangulated is rather easily refuted from the trench of a certain brand of amoral egoism -- the "tough shit" rejoinder, as it were. That one cuts straight to the core of every moral assumption or premise to which I appeal, and leaves me with nothing to say. Of course, very few people adopt such a position.

The trouble, I find, is that people seldom bother to question the underlying assumptions of the various forms of philanthropic antinatalism with which I have come to be marginally associated. On those occasions when they do,  interlocutors tend to recoil from the logical implications. I've seen it play out too many times.

Take the most conspicuous pillar -- that of the pain/pleasure asymmetry formulated by David Benatar. And just to keep things clean, let's assume that by "pain" we are talking only about unrewarded and nontrivial pain or suffering (of which I contend there is plenty in every life). As you are aware, the core assumption of the second half of the asymmetry distills to the view that where there is no person, the absence of pleasure is neutral whereas the absence of (unrewarded) pain is still good. Some critics question this assumption, either by a.) arguing that the calculus is rendered meaningless by the problem of non-identity, i.e., that non-existent beings are morally irrelevant, or b.) by arguing that the asymmetry is mistaken; to wit, that the absence of pleasure is bad even when no one is deprived by this absence.

The first objection is, I believe, obtuse to the role of human agency in the act of procreation. Once you gut out the nuances, this becomes clearer. Take the case of parents who have a child knowing that there is a 100% chance that their child will be born with a debilitating illness, or the case of a pregnant woman who ingests thalidomide for kicks. When the stakes are sufficiently stark, the intuitive appeal of  non-identity whithers. It makes little sense to argue that the non-identity of the uncreated person negates parental agency in those cases where having a child will certainly result in otherwise avoidable and profound suffering. And if non-identity fails in such instances, well, the problem of risk in less delineative contexts remains to be confronted. We move past non-identity, to a continuum. Or a gambit. And the asymmetry yawns back.

For those who argue that the asymmetry is mistaken, i.e., that the pre-existent are actually deprived of good by not being brought into existence, there are serious implications that almost no one seems willing to indulge, much less embrace. For example, if non-existent beings are subject to deprivation, then moral agents would seem to have a duty to at least try to fulfill their presumptive claims to such unrealized pleasure -- most obviously by having as many children as possible. While this conclusion follows neatly from a denial of the asymmetry, thus articulated, I have encountered very few critics who seem willing to play it as it lays. In short, I have no problem with people questioning antinatalist assumptions or premises (and this would go for other assumptions/premises regarding harm and consent); I just don't think that's where the buck stops. As long as you're resigned to play the moral game, you're left to wrestle with problems. You have some heavy lifting to do. Perhaps there are couunter-arguments which would yet convince me, but I have yet to hear them voiced. And in the absence of a compelling refutation, my view is that prudence -- and the presumption of harm -- should dictate.

Many antinatalist blogs which I have read incorporate a very high degree of abstract material, and are liberally strewn with quotations from philosophers, writers and thinkers, both past and present. Showing that you have a wide-ranging knowledge of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kant, Aristotle and Plato is not of any great help to anyone. I view such demonstrations of supposed intellectual prowess as shallow and unconstructive. There is, sadly, very little by way of practical guidance for the "common man" and very little understanding of objections which a "normal" 21^st century heterosexual individual may raise to the issue of remaining childless.

I don't know which antinatalist forums you are referring to, but I would recommend taking a stroll through Jim Crawford's "Antinatalism:  The Ultimate Taboo" or  the "Don't Have Kids" site. Jim cuts things to the meat and seems positively impatient with the strictures of high end cerebration. Even Sister Y's The View from Hell, while it is  informed by a variety of normative ideas and thought experiments, is written in a clear and engaging style that  would scarcely seem to alienate a reasonably intelligent reader.

Furthermore, I don't see many currents of antinatalist reasoning banking off  the philosophers you mention. The forebears, such as they are, are more neatly grounded in analytical moral philosophy, legal ethics, contract theory, and of course, in various schools of utilitarian thought. And while I'm not sure what you would make of Schopenhauer, he has always struck me as a refreshingly worldly and readable old snot. I imagine that even a "normal" 21st century heterosexual guy might find something of value in his the great pessimist's aphoristic brio.

Finally, although it is  aimed at a philosophically literate audience, I would add that Benatar's book, Better Never to Have Been, is crisp and cogent and consistently resistant to the imputed obscurantism of Continental philosophy. Perhaps such efforts are doomed to be ignored by the unwashed multitudes, but then most people don't read anything. I can't change this.

Playing devil's advocate, for example, imagine I say the following (and incidentally, almost none of what follows is self-description): I'm a 35 year old heterosexual man, of average intelligence, an atheist, living in a developed country. I've got a lovely wife, and we find each other attractive on all levels, physically, intellectually, etc. I have a great job, at which I meet loads of great people. I have many hobbies which I enjoy, a vibrant social life, and 2 kids. They are both at school, and great fun to be with. They, too, are healthy, happy and, in general, enjoying life. We're going to have a few more children. I don't see why we shouldn't, just because there's a risk that they may suffer. Yeah, OK, there's a small (less than 10% chance) that they may suffer badly, but a far greater chance that most of their lives will be spent in happiness. We will do our best to ensure that they come to no (non-trivial) harm. On the off-chance that something serious does happen to them, well, as you say, death will stop them suffering in the end. Dealing with certain misfortunes is not "suffering" anyway, and neither is being disabled (necessarily). Certain experiences will only serve to mould my children's character and to make them self-reliant, decent citizens. I understand that if we all stopped reproducing, all suffering would end with the present generation (at least until an evolutionary accident throws up something like us again), but that's just boring, life's too much fun to be missed! And yes, I am gambling with someone else's life - I cannot deny that - but the dice are loaded in my favour, and theirs too. With regard to death, yeah, I accept that I've got to die, as does every other human being on the planet, but I don't bother to think about it - just enjoy life now, when death happens, it happens. There's no need to take it so seriously!

I'm not sure I ever said "death will stop them suffering in the end." Or anything of the kind. In most circumstances, I consider death to be a grave harm -- both for the victim whose life options are cut short, and for his or her friends and loved ones, who may suffer greatly from grief. But, taking your narrative at face value, I can't shake the suspicion that your hypothetical actor suffers from severe Pollyannaism. In world-historic or terms -- or to up the ante, in sub specie aeternitas terms -- the risks that your actor contemplates, for others, are demonstrably more serious than his optimism allows.

Step in your time machine and set the controls for a random point in history. I promise you will find the average person living under dire conditions. Starving. Or subject to severe climate-borne deprivation. Disease and hardship and warfare and oppression will be common. And even today the risk that an individual life will be fraught with misfortune is far from trivial. Forget for the moment that your would-be procreator has it well. Life changes in an instant, as Joan Didion reminds us. The future is always uncertain, and the cavalier rationalizations offered by your Average-Joe falsely deny or minimize this uncertainty. This man's child may be conscripted into an unjust war. His child may be raped. His child may suffer from excruciating jealousy, or depression, or loneliness. Or -- perish the thought -- his child may grow up to be an antinatalist and rue his very existence. That such prospects remotely occur to your hypothetical actor says more about his lack of imagination than it says about the actual stakes of the game he would play with a life not his own.

And as to the business of "gambling with someone else's life," I would be interested to know if your guy would retain his air of rose-tinted nonchalance if the life at issue had already begun. To avoid undue abstraction, let's say the risk centers not on the life of his potential offspring, but on the life of Christina Ricci. Here's a button. Push it, and you activate an added 10% chance that Ms. Ricci will be afflicted with cancer, or that she will be tortured, or severely burned. Don't push the button, and Christina's life will go on as it would have, with no additional risk of any of these misfortunes. Assuming your guy doesn't have the opportunity to inform Ms. Ricci of the existence of this button and to solicit her views on the option before him alone, do you think he might hazard a guess as to what she might say? How about: NO!

Of course there's always the chance that she would dig the prospect, for whatever idiosyncratic reason we might imagine. Perhaps she is a  masochist. But when you couple the absence of  consent with the otherwise avoidable possibility of serious harm, caution and decency are sufficient to advise against the gamble.  "Sure, you're taking a risk." Trouble is, you haven't begun to justify it.

Convince this hypothetical human being not to have any more children, in simple language that he will understand. Implying that he is either:

 

a) stupid, and/or

b) selfish and/or

c) immoral

 

is clearly not going to do the job, and neither is trying to browbeat him through complex abstraction.

I don't mean to browbeat anyone. If someone is determined to have children and that person is predisposed to dismiss or ignore antinatalist arguments, there is absolutely nothing I can say or do to change their mind. But again, there are plenty of people who begin with doubts. And for those people -- the ones on the fence, so to speak -- simply hearing the "other side" articulated can be enough.

It would be absurd to suggest that procreators are typically stupid. People are evolved to propagate their genes, and to invent clever rationalizations when things go wrong. I do think that, barring an ethical catastrophe involving twins and blood types or something, having children is inherently selfish. If there's is a  commonplace justification for procreation that isn't selfish, I have yet to encounter it. If pointing this out ruffles people, I can't say that I care.

As to morality, it depends on your default premises. I've already said that the amoralist is exempt from such appeals, but if you don't want to up the negative odds for Christina Ricci, then I believe you have some explaining to do.And while I hope I am not guilty of -- and don't think I am capable of -- much in the way of "complex abstraction," appeals to moral agency and basic foundational ethical premises (regarding, say, the nature of selfishness) are simply unavoidable. Indeed, to the extent that people are rationally governed by moral concerns, they invite as much. People can turn a blind eye to any argument, but burying one's head doesn't change a thing.

Finally, to play by your rules as I understand them, I suppose I -- or some other "movement"-oriented  antinatalist -- might appeal to your potential procreator's sense of rational self-interest. Having kids -- or, in this case, more kids -- is costly. Studies show that having children doesn't typically increase happiness for parents (in fact, it tends to decrease happiness), and the prosaic obligations that attach to children serve as impediments to other pleasurable endeavors and goals, such as reading or recreation or sex tourism. The fact that there are articulable moral reasons to consider refraining from additional childbearing could be viewed as ancillary to such self-interested appeals.

But again, if your guy is determined there is nothing I can say to convince him. If I could, I would offer him money to be sterilized. As Sister Y has observed, "humans have a notoriously high discount rate."

Next, there seems to be an assumption on many blogs that it is a pre-requisite to join the atheist fold and give up religion in order to espouse the cause of antinatalism. I see this as a non-sequitur - why does belief in God preclude one from being an antinatalist?

I can't speak for others, but if I have ever said anything to suggest that atheism is a prerequisite for antinatalism, you'll have to point it out to me. I'll gladly retract it, because this is not my view. To the contrary, my essay on antinatalism and the problem of "belief in belief" sought to take very seriously the stakes contemplated by Andrea Yates when she drowned her children to rescue them from the possibility of eternal damnation. Given the assumptions of her theology, I believe her actions were defensible, if not imperative. And I believe the stakes are generally far more stark for believers -- of whatever faith or denomination -- whose belief includes the possibility of hellfire, i.e., eternal suffering. I can't begin wrap my mind around such a concept. If you believe it, you have a special burden.

While I admit to being an incorrigible atheist, one of the most articulate procreation skeptics I have yet encountered happens to be a Christian.  I agree with you that it's a non-sequitur.  I would add, echoing David Benatar's argument in the March 2008 issue of Think magazine (which is very similar to Jim Crawford's argument here), that secularists are often just as blinded by optimistic bias (delusion A) as theists are by supernatural solace (delusion B). It's worth remembering that the Shakers ran a more successful antinatalist project than any freethinking group I could name.

Incidentally, if you want to see what a sincere antinatalist Christian sounds like, check out Dan's two cents in the Mere Comments blog. I have absolutely no problem with theistic antinatalism.

You conclude:

I don't see antinatalism as fulfulling any purpose whatsoever if it seeks to be an exclusive members only club at the "cerebral edges of blogland" (quote from antinatism.net), populated by pseudo-intellectuals who use it as a marketing tool and to preach to the "very much already converted". Antinatalists should make available succinctly presented information to the general public showing clearly the advantages of their approach and using reason and logic to drive home the central tenets of the doctrine. Simply stating a million times: "Stop having kids because that's the only way humanity can avoid suffering - are you too stupid to see that" is not going to convert even 1 person that's not already converted (independently).

Honestly, I'm not that fucking ambitious. I'm not really seeking converts, either. Antinatalism is an idea that fascinates me, partly because I believe it makes sense and partly because it proceeds from ethical premises that most people find compelling in other contexts. I also think that life is far shittier than most people dare admit. Happiness is a stochastic phenomenon, complicated all the more by innate and adaptive dishonesty. Humans are natural self-deceivers.  I don't trust them. 

I try to present my arguments, derivative as they are, in a way that is consistent with my style and sensibility. Most people will dismiss what I am saying, I am aware. This is fine with me. But a few people may find themselves thinking further, which is the best I should hope for. I happen to think that the antinatalist edges of the web -- at least those of a philanthropic bent -- are more nuanced than you imply, but there's always room for more argument. If you have a more PR-savvy approach, I would encourage you to take the reigns. I'll be the first to notice.

I believe that's all I'm going to say about this subject for a while. The L.A. Rollins book is finally at the printer, and I have other projects on the burner.

Memento mori.

Bejeezus

I don't do much freelance writing these days, but I do have a thing in the Summer issue of Bejeezus, which is available at select newsstands and literary retailers.  It's an essay about book collecting, or serendipity, or knife fighting.

Memento Mori.

An Open Letter to Allah

Here's a sneak peek at one of the "Other Essays" from L.A. Rollins' The Myth of Natural Rights and Other Essays, which will be published next month. It makes me chuckle.

Memento mori.

Other People's Feelings

Recently, I was  lured into a tooth-gnashing comment thread appending a snarkily suicide-baiting post on  "'The Don't Have Children' Movement." The post was written by one Sister Wolf, a bristly golden-hearted rant-artist whose blog, Godammit, I find entertaining.

Things got personal in hurry, and no one seemed much interested in discussing the possible merits of antinatalist ethics. This is par for the course, I've found. The subject brings out the worst in people, for obvious and telling reasons. After all, to argue, on moral grounds, that it is wrong to have children, is to tell parents and would-be parents that, in effect, they have visited harm upon their beloved offspring (or that they are contemplating such harm). I am sensitive to this point. It is, however, unavoidable. And while I am not above clarifying my motives in taking this unconscionably unpopular view, I don't think my motives should matter in the least. If I am correct that forced life entails serious harm, then it rests upon those who persist in defending procreation to tell me why this harm is justified. If I am wrong in the first instance about forced life being harmful, someone should be able to show me just where and how I've gotten it wrong. But for the most part, people don't even try. Instead of fashioning a cogent response, street level opponents of antinatalism  more often implore me to kill myself. When I explain that this is a non-sequitur, the next step is to dismiss my stance as the product of cultivated miserablism, or depressive ideation, or some ostentatious, attention-seeking display of sexually signaled nihilism. Or something else, just as sad or arrogant.

It is true that some people profess to reject the asymmetry at the core of David Benatar's antinatalist ethics, but of those who do, I have encountered only one -- implicitly, RM Hare, in his famous argument against abortion -- who is willing to defend the corollary implication that we have a moral obligation to the virtual infinity of potential people who are yet to be summoned into blessed and bedoomed existence. If the asymmetry is wrong for the reasons typically advanced, this obligation should follow as a simple matter of hedonic score-settling. As just compensation for vast quantities of pleasure withheld from those entitled pre-existent souls in the wings.

I don't think the asymmetry is false, but I'm willing to be convinced that it is. I don't think procreation is harmless, or that the harm it entails is trivial, or that such harm is typically justified by otherwise accepted modes of  moral reasoning. Perhaps you can convince me that I am wrong about all of this. You will, however, need an argument.   

There is an orthogonal anti-antinatalist argument that comes up from time to time that I do find interesting. It has a ticklish,  Straussian flavor, and it hinges on the imputed despair-inducing consequences of the mere public expression of the case against people-making. In the Godammit thread, Alias Clio provides fair iteration of this delectable refuge, which sees antinatalist cogitation, regardless of its claim to soundness, as philosophical poison. Since the aims of antinatalist reasoning are presumed to be doomed by human nature, the story goes, all those who persist in it really do is make people feel bad. Out of some misguided or sinister claim to (or pretense of) philanthropy, we are merely -- and ironically -- adding to the overall share of human despair and suffering.

Of course, the same argument is often made against atheism. Without God, we're told, people are left to flail in nihilistic ennui, or moral vertigo. Studies show that religious people are happier and more civic-minded. The same is probably true of pronatalists. Presented as an empirical question, there are too many chickens and eggs for my inferior brain to contemplate. I may mention that neither my disbelief in God nor my belief that procreation is wrong serves to embitter my experience of life, nor does either default detract from my enjoyment of life's pleasures. But I can't speak for others. Nor could I begin to weigh the hedonic scales that pit the foregone suffering of uncreated people against the possible misery of those who are unhappily persuaded against having children. I think the question is probably unanswerable.  And in the end, I just don't like noble lies, regardless of how they're justified. It's a matter of taste and sensibility. Shutting up for the greater good simply does not compute. I suppose I could be persuaded that I am wrong on this account as well, but you'll have your work cut out for you.

Comments are open, if anyone cares.  I won't be checking in for a while.

Memento mori.

    

Promotional Filler II: The Man Who Saw His Own Liver

_____________________________________________

For the first time in a long while...an anarchist libertarian has sounded out. ...With his love of nature and disgust of bombs and feds, Smith could become a kind of playwright laureate of an American Greens Party. But, then, he'd probably rather go it alone.

            -- Robert Koehler, Los Angeles Times *

                            * Refers to the original play, from which the novel is adapted.

Meet A.K. Swift, a working-class war veteran and family man who is haunted by visions of nuclear apocalypse. When matters of conscience determine that he can no longer support the State-sponsored institutions that create the machines that threaten the living, A.K.decides to stop paying. Trouble is, he’s not a very good tax resister. He forgets to attend the meetings and doesn’t bother to fill out the proper forms. Now he worries there may be consequences.

From the dustbin of Cold War protest  literature, Bradley Smith’s The Man Who Saw His Own Liver emerges as a heartfelt meditation on the timeless problem of the individual against authority. Rooted in libertarian theory and the moribund tradition of American transcendentalism, it is the story of an accidental rebel trembling in comic defiance under the yoke of God and State, and before the faceless Leviathan of modern Bureaucracy.

Smith’s  writing is animated by a crisp and laconic prose-poetic hum. His is  a uniquely personal canvass in which storytelling and gently wrought polemics interweave, seamlessly, with turns of magical realism coming to rest in that  frail, strangely familiar liminal space, where ineffable exaltation and terror transcend the  political.

Originally conceived and performed for the stage in 1983, The Man Who Saw His Own Liver is presented by Nine-Banded books in novelized form. It is appended with Smith’s short story, “Joseph Conrad and the Monster from the Deep.”

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Qualified Praise for The Man Who Saw His Own Liver

...a graceful (if a bit didactic in parts), strange, dream-worldish meditation on the Sword of Damocles anxiety of the nuclear-armed cold war and on personal responsibility.

            -- Dave Gross, The Picket Line

Smith's slim volume, a novelization of his own play The Man Who Stopped Paying, has the feel of Ludwig von Mises passed through the filter of, say, Errol Morris (or, in his artier stages, Roman Polanski); if you're seeing this in your head while you read, this is a book whose internal pictures invite long, slow camera pans over the garage where the entire narrative is set. There's a guy, and he's talking. Reminiscing, mostly, though as I mentioned above he does stop every once in a while and go off on a “and then I realized...” binge. They're small, though, and Smith's narrator does spend most of the novel's length simply relating events from his past. This is often a tough sell where a book is concerned; after all, it's just a guy talking. But it can be done, and done well...

            -- Robert P. Beveridge, Top 100 Amazon Reviewer

The writing style is at the same time sparse, and elegant. This is no dry accounting, but a work of poetic prose, rich in metaphor and emotional content. Each reminiscence stood alone for me; which might be a drawback to the reader expecting a more linearly styled memoir. Doubly so for those who don't like their diatribes leavened with subtlety, or self examination. Being the sort of fellow who likes to bury his head in the cat box at the mere mention of politics, extremist or otherwise, I was fairly taken aback upon delving into the author's 'infamous' political predilections (addressed by Chip Smith in the introduction). It made me glad that I read the book first; I still haven't ever read 'On The Road', and probably never will, because I made the mistake of reading the bios first, and can't get past the fact of Kerouac being a total ass-wipe. Now, instead of picturing Bradley Smith as some cartoonish Art Bell reject with a penchant for paranoid conspiracy theories, I'll always see him as a zen aspirant on his way to cracking that last koan. And how can you be mad at a guy who writes a line like this?...

I've always felt the urge to slip through desire, like an eel passing through nets cast out for bigger fish.

If you like great prose, written by a man just an epiphany or two short of emergence into a new, brilliant sphere, buy this book. There's an innocent clarity here, as well as a surprising sense of humanitarian compassion.

            -- Jim Crawford, The Lawnchair Philosopher               

ORDER NOW

Missing Persons

For various reasons, I'm trying to make contact with some certain particular individuals. If you know how to get in touch with said particular individuals, or if you are one of these particular individuals and you happen upon this page, please consider contacting me.

BILLY SPICER - Billy is/was a first-rate black & white illustrator whose dense and demented draftsmanship added value to the pages of a number of largely forgotten magazines hovering at the unstable fringes of the mid-90s independent publishing scene. I recall his work being a staple of Tom Crites' Malefact, but I believe he also did some stuff for ANSWER Me!, and for a creepy one-shot comic called Disappointing Circus. He also wrote about books and music for Michel Berandi's Panik magazine. Here's the only sample of his work that I've been able to find online.   

MIKE HOY - Mike Hoy, as you well know, was the founder and proprietor of the now defunct mail-order book publishing and distribution catalog known as Loompanics Unlimited. I have a mailing address on file somewhere, but I'd like to contact him through the tubes if possible.

HOLLISTER KOPP -  I  think his real name may be Dave Scott, but I remember him as the editor of Gun Fag Manifesto, my all time hands-down favorite zine.  He was also the frontman for The Legendary Boilermakers.

Memento mori.

Promotional Filler I: The Myth of Natural Rights and Other Essays

______________________________________

L.A. Rollins is an aphorist, or rather, an againstist. He is of the fraternity of those who deny both sides of every question, the refusniks who are always untimely. . . . For him, there isn’t a department of human experience that won’t sell you a bill of goods.

 – Bob Black, Beneath the Underground

 

No, it won’t stop bullets. It won’t keep people from ripping off your property. It won’t even stop the government from putting you in a concentration camp, or executing you. About the only thing a “natural right” will stop is enlightened thinking on the ethics of liberty. Once you’ve read The Myth of Natural Rights and Other Essays, you’ll be able to put those imaginary protectors of freedom back in the museums where they belong.

Libertarian scholars have had a difficult time being taken seriously in intellectual circles. There’s a good reason for this. While they have gained recognition and acclaim for their staunch defense of the free market, compelling advocacy of civil liberties and devastating condemnation of interventionism, their stubborn reliance on the ancient myth of natural rights leaves them in philosophical disrepute. The doctrine of natural rights has persisted among libertarians, because there has never been a systematic and thorough critique of all it implies. Until now.

In one compact work, L.A. Rollins shatters the myth of natural rights, while exposing the “bleeding-heart libertarians” that promote it. With careful research and ample documentation, he shows that thinkers like Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Tibor Machan and Samuel Konkin not only violate reason and logic in their defense of natural rights, but also violate the standards they set for themselves.

Back in print for the first time in years, this newly revised edition features an insightful introduction by the Stirnerite-libertarian upstart,TGGP, along with a new afterword by the author. Bonus material includes an updated selection of splenetic jeu de mots from the underground classic, Lucifer’s Lexicon, as well as Rollins’ never-before-published writings on poetic insurrection, the Holy Qur’an and Holocaust revisionism.

Caveat lector!

_____________________________________________________

Praise for The Myth of Natural Rights (Loompanics edition, 1983)

Rollins has made hash of the logical connections in Rothbard’s argument.

                – Robert Anton Wilson, Natural Law

An important book, which every reader interested in libertarian theory should acquire.

                – Jeff Riggenbach, author of In Praise of Decadence

Rollins does a fabulous job of making fools out of  many a libertarian’s
philosophical heroes.

                – Justin Weinberg, Guillotine

An argument could be made that a book like this is potentially pretty damn
dangerous.

                – Pat Hartman, Salon: A Journal of Aesthetics

Lou Rollins' brief work is packed with enough analytical insight to send proponents of natural law theory into hiding.

                 – Jorge Amador, The Pragmatist

_____________________________________________________

You can place an advance order through Amazon here. I'll be taking PayPal orders as soon as the Nine-Banded Books site redesign is ready for prime time, which shouldn't take much longer. To reserve an autographed copy, contact me.

Laden Rumors

• Bradley Smith is banned from HNN. TGGP is banned from Econlog.  And The eXile is banned from Mother Russia.

• Soon-to-be daddy Jim Goad has a "plum-sized" brain tumor carved out of his noggin and spends his recovery time pontificating on the finer points grammatical correctitude.

• A new study breathes new life into the old theory that male homosexuality may be a byproduct of a  genetically-bound female horniness, er, I mean androphilic fecundity, or something. Meanwhile, Jack Malebranche yawns.

• Peter Lamborn Wilson, aka Hakim Bey, the esoteric scholar and word chemist who once exhaled peyote-illuminated,  prose-poetic rhapsodies extolling the virtues of pederasty, temporal autonomy, ontological anarchism, and Islamic heresy . . . turns out to be another crusty old fart.

• Since (almost) no one else seems to have noticed, here is AVN correspondent Mark Kerns' minutely detailed coverage of the obscenity trial and conviction of unrepentant rape artist, Paul Little. First, they came for the throatfuckers . . . 

• As demographic declensionists  trade snarks and stats with birth death skeptics, it is well to recall Matti  Häyry's prudential advice to would-be population-builders.  (Hat tip to Sister Y.) 
  

Mime More Not

Johnny Carson Rapes Child

Gore Vidal's "Departure Lounge of Life"

From Robert Chalmer's interview in The Independent:

"But you're convinced that, to put it crudely, when you die, that's it." "No," Vidal replies. "I wouldn't say: 'When you die, that's it.' I'd say: 'When you're born, that's it.'"

UPDATE: From the 06/15 NYT Magazine:

Are you a supporter of gay marriage? I know nothing about it. I don’t follow that.

Why doesn’t it interest you? The same reason heterosexual marriage doesn’t seem to interest me.

If we look at the situation apart from you — It’s my interview, so we’ve got to stay with me.

Memento mori.

Jim Manzi 2.0

The article itself is only moderately interesting, but over at The American Scene, Jim Manzi's National Review cover story, Undetermined, has generated one of the most scintillating -- and admirably civil, despite Steve Sailer's arguably justified snarking -- discussion threads that I can recall reading in quite some time.  Comments are closed, but it's quite an artifact. (Thanks to TGGP for pointing it out.)

TangoMan provides a parting shot here. 

Memento mori 

Notes from a Short-order Cook

Jim Crawford of the antinatalism blog has added an autobiographical sketch to his right-margin and it's full of crazy surprises: 

I'm a 52 yr. old Caucasion male. I received what passes for a high school diploma in California. Worked full-time through my senior year. My father abandoned me and my four younger brothers right around graduation day, so I never really had much of a chance at procuring any fancy learnin' (not that I ever had much interest, anyhow...pot, hashish and acid were REALLY cheap back then!). Took a life detour through most of my twenties-joined a fundy-Christian cult, and became sort of an itinerant evangelist, before trashing the whole Jesus thang at 28. Married an African American woman (that lasted 25 yrs...about 7 in the middle were primo!) Had two daughters along the way. Did a lot of reading for a couple of decades, though not much from any prescribed or popular reading lists. Zen, quantum mechanics, astrophysics, some history and psych...that sort of thing. Oh, and scads of sci-fi and horror. Got divorced in '02...was actually a kept man up in Spokane, WA for a year and a half. After that fell through, I was homeless for a few months, until some drunk kids hit my truck at the stroke of midnight while I was sleeping in it. Chased them down, got a pittance of an insurance settlement which got me off the streets. Worked some minimum wage construction for a couple years, 'til my truck went south, then landed a gig as a minimum wage short-order cook at a fastfood Mexican restaurant, where I still work today. Renting a room at my ex-wife's to help her pay the mortgage. My current paramour (and hopefully last, for god's sake!) is a German woman living 2000 miles away in Houston. Saved up and bought a laptop last year. Lost my favorite cat of 14 years earlier this year, and it looks like I'll be losing my dearly beloved dog in the next couple of weeks or so (tumours, and after having spent every cent I had on surgery a few days before Xmas. It was totally worth it for the extra few months, but...well, life sucks). I still have two great kids, and a decent low-end bicycle (Trek), though 600 of my books have been sitting in boxes in a garage up in Spokane for the last 5 years...not much hope of ever seeing them again, which pretty much bites. I've come pretty close to dying 2 or 3 times, and have done a fair amount of dangerous work in my time, involving great heights and iffy equipment. Have contemplated suicide on a number of occasions (including most of the '90s, but never had the fortitude, you know?) Oh, and I wish I loved everybody, and sometimes I try to, though less these days. I guess that's about it. Oh yeah! I'm also a self-proclaimed, ersatz poet.

This is the first time I've ever offered a profile on any of my blogs or memberships. I thought I'd offer the lever of an unattractive psychological profile for any challengers to glom onto, since so far they don't seem to have much in the way of substantive disagreement to offer. This is NOT meant as an insult, btw, but please realize...

the subject of antinatalism is NOT a mere philosophical exercise for me. I'm not here to get my rocks off as a controversialist. Life sucks, and then you die, only...considering the risk that any given child might emerge into a world of personal horror, the trite little saying takes on a whole new depth of meaning for me. I hope it does for you, as well.

Sorry about the cat, Jim. I reckon I'll be inconsolable when the first of my seven checks out.

3.2g CARBS, 96 CALORIES, ALL NATURAL...

Due apologies for the less than substantial posting, good readers. I'm slumped over, trying to get the L.A. Rollins book in shape for the printer before the end of the month, struggling with InDesign quirks, smoking my pungent Latakia blend in a filterless bent pipe, and drinking Bukowskian quantities of cheap American beer. The day job is positively oppressive.

The good news is that the book has turned into a sumptuous behemoth; what started out as a moderately supplemented reprint of an obscure libertarian monograph has evolved into a genuine compendium, consisting of four "books" that collectively provide a nearly complete survey of the work of this forgotten zetetic recluse and equal-opportunity iconoclast, -- of this unclassifiable cornball-cum-dissident whose aphoristic spleen (on full display in Lucifer's Lexicon) made me laugh when I was enduring summer and night classes after flunking two years of high school English back whenever that was. Now, it seems hardly a day goes by that I don't receive another hand-addressed envelope in the box, stuffed with more Bierceian bombast from Herr Rollins, usually with a hand-written note politely expressing hope that the latest batch will make it in time. Lou isn't online, so everything he sends comes through the post, every word in longhand. And I'm a piss-poor transcriptionist, alas. Maybe I'm a prisoner to nostalgia, but it feels downright surreal, bringing these books -- this book -- to life, and I promise things haven't yet kicked into gear. You'll see, fuckers. Those of you foolish enough to care. Nine-Banded Books will conquer the universe. Texas is the reason that the president's dead.

I do mean to keep things afloat here, albeit for present purposes with these threadbare link-enhanced fixes. And I try to pay attention to the tubes, especially to those restless Adderall-scented truth-stalking fringes where quasi-kindred spirits take the lead. Jesus, those kids is scary-smart. Some of 'em, anyway. And I've been playing along as time permits -- over at that ever unpredictable stop where the guy whose name is a series of consonant letters keeps channel-surfing; over at that impossible-to-believe forum, where a proud father turned penitent antinatalist  plies his ambidextrous mindmeat to corner and refine the quixotically doomed case against breeding; over at that all-but-hidden nook where a self-described "(currently non-practicing) suicide" deftly connects the dismal dots. It's a strange congregation, says the suds. All this cerebral slumming that from a distance collapses into tristesse, or beerdrunk romance.

Permit me, then, this inelegant segue. To the obligatory filler. Cause baby there's no guide-ance when the random rules.

• Robert Lindsay is probably crazy, probably a semi-closeted Stu Mead fan, but always, always entertaining.

• The great Nicholson Baker -- my favorite unrepentant "white person" -- sings the praises of  Wikipedia. Mark Bauerlein and Agnostic demur.

• Against the fawning tide of gratingly predictable NRO sycophancy, the Derb implores old Tom Wolfe to bone up on his evo-bio. (hat-tip to Razib)

• What the hell, here's one from the Hog vault. Here's another. And another. OK, one more.

• Roy Baumeister wonders "Is There Anything Good About Men?" (hat-tip to Agnostic)

• In a note-perfect distillation of his tormented memoir, Swimming in A Sea of Death, Susan Sontag's good son, David Rieff, explains "Why I Had to Lie to My Dying Mother."

• The inimitable J-Man heaps scorn on a hapless Girl Scout.

• In a welcome respite from his tiresome Obama blogging,  Steve Sailer promises a careful dissection the the latest (conservative) argument against encroaching "geneticism." UPDATE: soup's up.

• Oh yeah, that War Nerd book is out. The Tom Clancy essay is a classic.

• And speaking of books, Katherine Dunn's interminably anticipated fourth novel, The Cut Man, is now slated to be released . . . around the same time as Harlan Ellison's The Last Dangerous Visions.

And finally, to close the circle, I want to point up this excellent dissident essay on the FLDS raid by my favorite "Catholic reactionary," Andy Nowicki, whose indescribably impolitic book,  Considering Suicide, will be published by Nine-Banded Books in 2009. Just you wait.

Memento mori.

         

Random Rules V

• "How did the United States, the world's scientific powerhouse, reach a point at which it grapples with the ethical challenges of twenty-first-century biomedicine using Bible stories, Catholic doctrine, and woolly rabbinical allegory?" Steven Pinker has some ideas.

• Ostensibly "about sex offenders and the art of photography," Peter Sotos' forthcoming book, Lordotics, promises to bring poor Lyndie England into the frame.  With Errol Morris's captivating apologies back on the festival circuit, white people may want to prioritize their attention carefully. At least Andrea Dworkin isn't around to complicate matters.   

• Jim Crawford continues his exceptionally perceptive chapter-journal on David Benatar's Better Never to Have Been. You can catch up, here, here, here and here.

• Twenty minutes into a radio interview with Holocaust revisionist Robert Faurisson, the French government's editorial ombudsman pulled the plug, apparently for fear of running afoul of France's Fabius-Gayssot law (or Gayssot law), which, like similar statutes across the globe, imposes criminal sanctions upon those who publicly contest "crimes against humanity" as defined by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal of 1945-46. Courtesy of the stalwart racialist thought criminals at The Civic Platform, you can now read an English translation of the banned interview, in which Faurisson provides a scathing account of anti-denial laws without contesting one word of Nuremburg scripture.   

• Schopenhauer understood the sufferings of the world. But does the plight of wild animals and insects count for anything at all?  What about plants? Are you sure?

Here's another one from the abridged and updated Lexicon:

Zygote, n. - A human being, just like you and me. Hath not a zygote eyes? Hath not a zygote hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick them, do they not bleed? If you tickle them, do they not laugh? And if you wrong them, shall they not revenge? 

Memento mori.

Rollins Teaser - "Lucifer's Lexicon" (updated)

UPDATED on 05/04/2008

In addition to the eponymous monograph, The Myth of Natural Rights and Other Essays will include a generous assortment of rare and never-before-published writings by L.A. Rollins, perhaps the most notable -- if not the most notorious -- being an "updated abridgment" of the underground classic, Lucifer's Lexicon.

Here follows a small selection of newly-minted nuggets for the craw:

Banquet, n. - 1. A sumptuous feast.  2. A presumptuous frozen dinner.

Dualism, n. - Duelism.

Godfearing, adj. - Afraid of nothing.

Holocaust revisionist, n. - One who denies being a denier.

Hurricane, n. - An act of God, which proves that God is a terrorist, an evildoer who should be put down like a mad dog.

Islamofascist, n. - A Muslim follower of Mussolini.

Jesus Christ, n. - The sin of God.

Jungian, n. - One who is a Freud of his own shadow.

Koran, the, n. - A holy source of toilet paper, like The Bible, The Talmud,  The Book of Mormon, the Urantia book, etc.  The Koran is also useful for children's games of "kick the Koran."

L.D.S., n. -  A psychedelic drug more dangerous than L.S.D.

Legislation, n. - The poetry of power.

Liberal, n. - One who believes a woman has the right to kill her fetus, but not with a gun.

Moral Compass, n. - A direction-detecting device used by American and Israeli pilots to find bombing targets. 

Mithras, n. - An ancient savior-god who stabbed the bull, as distinguished from Jesus, who shot it. 

Ombudsman, n. - A watchdog without teeth who works for the thief.

Our Troops, n. pl. - Our thugs and assassins. Of course, we all support our brave thugs and assassins, because we are all cowardly conformist cunts, aren't we?

Politically Correct, adj. - Intellectually crippled.

Satan, n. - The son, not the father, of lies.

Senseless Murder, n. - A murder that makes no sense, as distinguished from a sensible murder, the only kind of murder that a sensible person, wearing sensible shoes, would commit.

Solipsist, n. - 1. One who has only himself to blame. 2. One for whom masturbation is the only kind of sex possible.

Sour Grapes, n. pl. - Fruits, which when fermented, produce fine whines.

Suffer, v. - 1. To be human, according to Buddah. 2 To be a Jew, according to Judah.

Village, n. - What it takes to raise a village idiot.

Weapons of Mass Destruction, n. pl.  - The most dangerous weapons of all, so dangerous that they constitute an intolerable threat, even when they don't exist.

Work ethic, n. - Slave morality.

Memento mori.

Random Rules IV

Elsewhere. . .

• 4/22/08 Update: Jim Crawford, host of the essential Antinatalism blog,  kicks off a series of posts in which he promises to provide chapter-by-chapter commentary on David Benatar's maligned and misunderstood monograph, Better Never to Have Been.  If you have more than a passing interest in the multi-fanged case against breeding, you should know that Jim is also contributing several essays for the Hog-edited anthology, Against Life, Against Death, which will be released by Nine-Banded Books in 2009.         

• Via Hit & Run comes news that John Stagliano, director of the seriously great (if unheralded) confessional documentary, Buttman Confidential, is being prosecuted for obscenity. You can follow the press links here, and you can contribute to his defense here.

• Pat Buchanan has some kind words for Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke.

• "Our rejection of polygyny brings into stark relief the persistence of shibboleths and unspoken norms," writes Razib of Gene Expression in a nuanced and historically informed post on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the bourgeois-bound limits of tolerance.

• Meanwhile, TGGP points out that David Friedman stands virtually alone in his skeptical coverage of the FDLS  raid, which continues to unfold.

• Jack Malebranche, whose book Androphilia reads like something Justin Raimondo might have penned in more peaceful times, has a blog.

• The SPLC is picking on Kevin MacDonald, who apparently has a new book. In emphatically unrelated news, Sylvia Stolz is still in jail, along with this guy, this guy, and this guy. Wait for the documentary, I guess.

• And yes, Nicolas Claux is one talented cannibal.

Memento mori.

"A series of dreamlike vignettes"

The Lawnchair Philosopher posts a most thoughtful review of Bradley Smith's The Man Who Saw His Own Liver. An excerpt:

The writing style is at the same time sparse, and elegant. This is no dry accounting, but a work of poetic prose, rich in metaphor and emotional content. Each reminiscence stood alone for me; which might be a drawback to the reader expecting a more linearly styled memoir. Doubly so for those who don't like their diatribes leavened with subtlety, or self examination. Being the sort of fellow who likes to bury his head in the cat box at the mere mention of politics, extremist or otherwise, I was fairly taken aback upon delving into the author's 'infamous' political predilections (addressed by Chip Smith in the introduction). It made me glad that I read the book first; I still haven't ever read 'On The Road', and probably never will, because I made the mistake of reading the bios first, and can't get past the fact of Kerouac being a total ass-wipe. Now, instead of picturing Bradley Smith as some cartoonish Art Bell reject with a penchant for paranoid conspiracy theories, I'll always see him as a zen aspirant on his way to cracking that last koan. And how can you be mad at a guy who writes a line like this?...

I've always felt the urge to slip through desire, like an eel passing through nets cast out for bigger fish.

If you like great prose, written by a man just an epiphany or two short of emergence into a new, brilliant sphere, buy this book. There's an innocent clarity here, as well as a surprising sense of humanitarian compassion.

Another recent review characterizes Liver as having "the feel of Ludwig von Mises passed through the filter of, say, Errol Morris (or, in his artier stages, Roman Polanski)."

Curious? Order your copy here, here, here,  here, or here. Autographed copies are available upon request through Nine-Banded Books.

Memento mori.