→ Curtis Yarvin debates Christopher Rufo on the future of the Right
Help, the Online Right is fighting again! In a long, wide-ranging article published yesterday for the digital magazine IM-1776, the neoreactionary blogger Curtis Yarvin and the conservative activist Christopher Rufo debate DEI, Plato and the American Revolution. In a battle between Yarvin’s often high-falutin metaphors and Rufo’s more practical approach to advancing conservative thought, there doesn’t seem to be a clear winner. Just insults galore.
"Readers must decide: step into the opium den with Curtis Yarvin, or into the arena with other men."https://t.co/BtYrBE64iN
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 11, 2024
Yarvin says of Rufo’s campaign against DEI that “even when your sword goes home and sinks to the hilt, you only demonstrate what a pinprick it is to this Brobdignagian monster”. The activist, meanwhile, asks his counterpart, “You claim to have immense ambitions […] but what are your practical accomplishments?” Ouch.
But there’s more. Rufo accuses Yarvin of being “too clever” not to know that “lifting metaphors from action films and fantasy novels is not a substitute for the practical work of governance”, but “too arrogant to fully accept it”. Is the Right’s cathedral about to experience a schism?
→ Nearly half of Germans want more Ukraine aid
Olaf Scholz may be something of a Ukraine sceptic, but the German public seems to be moving in the opposite direction. According to a new ZDF poll, 42% of Germans now think there should be more military support sent from the West. Significantly, this is up by 11 points since February — meaning that the hold-up on US aid, as well as fears that Donald Trump will stop support for Ukraine altogether, may be worrying Germans.
The latest poll by @ZDF shows that in the past two months, more and more people in Germany become convinced that #Ukraine needs a stronger military assistance than before.
42% of people surveyed favour stronger assistance, which is 9% more than in a survey in February 2024.
31%… pic.twitter.com/RKShNB37vz
— German Aid to Ukraine 🇩🇪🤝🇺🇦 (@deaidua) April 12, 2024
This finding does come with the caveat that the German public doesn’t appear to believe Ukraine can win the war, however. The poll showed that only 8% expect the country to defeat Russia, down from 23% in August 2023. A total of 82% is “sceptical” that Ukraine can win. Is there any contradiction in these views? Either way, it’ll be interesting to see if this research influences German policy. Boots on the ground, anyone?
→ Ontario resident wins phallus-preserving vaginoplasty case
As common sense returns to the UK on trans issues, Canada is marching in the opposite direction.
This week, an Ontario resident won a case to secure public funding for gender-affirming surgery described as “experimental”. The person, known as K.S., will be flown to the US at taxpayer expense to receive a phallus-preserving vaginoplasty (don’t Google that one) after a years-long legal battle.
Ontario’s Health Insurance Plan initially denied K.S.’s request for the surgery in 2022 on the grounds that it is experimental and not available in Canada. But K.S. argued that their reason for wanting a vaginoplasty without a penectomy would validate their non-binary identity, winning on appeal. How would the world cope without such valuable and important surgeries?
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SubscribeOn the plus side K.S. can go screw themselves in due course.
All I can say is that Curtis Yarvin changed my life by writing about Italian elitist Gaetano Mosca’s Ruling Class and Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt’s Concept of the Political.
Do you know what a “political formula” is? No? Then go to the back of the class.
Rufo is decidedly taking DEI apart; Yarvin writes winding, if entertaining, Alice in Wonderland paeans to monarchy. I’ll take Rufo any day.
Imagine a ménage à trois between a French counter-revolutionary ( or a Romantic fascist, take your pick ), a postmodernist, and a gonzo journalist whose mind in pickled in Schedule 1 drugs and high concepts. The issue of such an unholy union might be the eponymous Moldbug, a homeless wanderer in the archives of history, who has read everything and understands nothing, who is nihilistic, fashionably paranoid, and….how to put this….”a manic combination of grandiosity and fatalism”.
DEI, ESG, CRT, and the rest of it, it’s true, are symptoms. Yarvin is right about that much. One of these days they will all perish from their internal contradictions. It is inevitable. There are signs already. In the meantime, Rufo is doing the hard yards of bringing that day forward. The question is why he consented to engage with a niche eccentric like Yarvin.