Keith Preston on Woke-Capitalism, the Corona-Panic, and “totalitarian humanist revolution”

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I present the following essay, by Keith Preston, on the Corona-Panic’s place in history, the Panic’s ties to Wokeness and “Woke Capitalism,” and to geopolitical developments playing out in the 2010s and 2020s. It is a unique perspective on the meaning of the Panic of 2020.

This essay is based on an overlooked “Tweet thread” by Keith Preston. It has been adapted and edited by me (E. H. Hail) to suit this format; it has been “de-Twittzerized.” Nothing substantive within his arguments has been changed. (See original raw tweet-thread here.)

Following the essay are some words about Keith Preston and his politics. Comments invited.

Understanding the Totalitarian Humanist Revolution: Wokeness, the Corona-Panic, the New Ruling Class, and Geopolitics

1250 words

(by Keith Preston;
edited and adapted by E. H. Hail.)

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THE beginning of the pandemic, three years ago this month [i.e., in March 2020], sparked a revolution. First, the global capitalist classes used conditions as a pretext for massive economic consolidation and upward wealth distribution. Next, the economic and social effects triggered an insurrection by the Lumpenproletariat that subsequently turned into a general popular rebellion. Third, the ascendant sectors of the capitalist class used the rebellion as a pretext and rode the wave of popular revolt to vastly increased power. The “Woke revolution,” which has occurred in various institutional sectors over the past three years, was a product of this process.

The Cinephobe, on immunity from the Corona-Panic of 2020

The following 800-word essay, by The Cinephobe of Canada, engages with the question of “immunity” from the Corona-Panic in 2020. It is, at core, a personal essay on why one man feels he himself was “immune.” It is not necessarily meant to propose universalizable standards. I believe The Cinephobe’s reflections are of value in the ongoing question of the Panic’s origins. This essay is a little light is generalizable to some portion of the Anti-Panic side, though I don’t know how large a portion.

The Cinephobe (cinephobia-radio.com) originally published this as a cumbersome series of Tweets (a “Tweet thread”) in January 2023. The contents were (necessarily) somewhat distorted by that medium, as with use of abbreviations and other distortions.

I discovered this last week, and have decided to adapt it for this venue, a more coherent, traditional essay form. This version includes a degree of editing for clarity and flow, and formatting, by me. The title is also mine. Despite these adaptations, the contents are still entirely The Cinephobe’s and not my own. (Note, The Cinephobe also uses the word “Corona-Panic,” as I usually do.)

Following the essay is commentary from me again on the general lessons from The Cinephobe’s essay.

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On immunity from the Corona-Panic

by The Cinephobe of Canada,
January 2023
(edited and adapted by E. H. Hail,
March 2023)

Scenes from the anti-war rally in Washington (Feb. 19, 2023)

“A motley, disparate collection of political-forces which, at a glance, share very little in common.”

That is the gist of one of the notes I jotted down while observing the scene during the recent anti-war rally in Washington, held Sunday, February 18th, 2023.

(caption: Ron Paul calls for ending the war in Ukraine at anti-war rally, Washington, Feb. 19, 2023.)

A realization about the rally came to me some time later: the attendees did share something in common, something big in common. I do not refer to opposition to the Ukraine war (alone). The big thing they shared in common was: non-Wokeness.

Few if any of the attendees were Woke or pro-Wokeness. Some were pre-Woke. Some were anti-Woke. Some were just non-Woke of miscellaneous sort. This is one of the big lessons of the day, and there are many others, such as seeing what I suspect to be a Ukrainian influence-ops operation in progress aiming to sabotage the rally.

The World Cup caused the Chinese anti-Lockdown protests

• Fact 1: China’s Lockdown regime between early 2020 and late 2022 was more brutal than that of almost anywhere on Earth, up there with Australia and New Zealand in degree of severity and reality-detachedness. Even as Corona-Mania ebbed elsewhere, even as the Corona-juntas that had taken control of most rich-country governments began to stand down and mostly allow civilian rule again, China clamped down. A moderate-severe flu virus is too risky. Forever-lockdowns are the only answer. So it went.

• Fact 2: To all accounts, the Chinese citizenry was remarkably passive through near three years of this, with very few if any real reports of meaningful organized resistance to the regime’s Lockdownism and associated power-expansion. Pundits have said it fits with these people’s lack of protest in general despite (or “because of”) living under one of the world’s worst governments. (Neither do North Koreans protest.)

• Fact 3: The World Cup opened on November 20, 2022. There were multiple games per day thereafter until December 5, when the pace slowed down considerably as many teams had by then been eliminated. The feed for these games was shown freely in China showing jubilant maskless crowds.

• Fact 4: A series of small protests appeared in China in the last week of November 2022. These protests were generally tame. But any organized, multi-location, sustained protests are unprecedented in that system.

The cause and effect in visuals, for those many of you out there who prefer pictures to words:

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(originally written, December 2, 2022; revised and published, Dec. 7)

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The question: What galvanized some Chinese to — finally — protest their Corona-regime?

[World Cup 2022] England national team, racial-national ancestry demographics — 79% White, 21% Black, no Muslims

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See also the other World Cup 2022 demographics analyses:
Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Ecuador, England, France, Germany, Morocco, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Switzerland, Uruguay, USA, Wales.

Jump to comments

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This is a summary of the ENGLAND national team at World Cup 2022 and its players’ racial, national-origin, and religious demographics. A section at the end discusses some of the findings and their themes and political implications.

(England team group (back row, left-right): Raheem Sterling, Jude Bellingham, Harry Maguire, goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, John Stones, Bukayo Saka; (front row, left-right), Raheem Sterling, Kieran Trippier, Harry Kane, Declan Rice and Luke Shaw, ahead of the FIFA World Cup Group B match. Picture date: Friday November 25, 2022.)

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Summary — origins of the 26 men on the England roster:

— 79% White (20.5 / 26)
— — seventeen of the 26 are full-White (65% of the roster).
— — Over three-quarters of the White component is of English origin; up to one-fifth of the White component is of Irish origin; non-British Isles elements are minimal.

— 21% Black (5.5 / 26)
— — Three men are full-Black (Sterling, Saka, Rashford); another six are part-Black (Wilson, Phillips, Bellingham, Walker, Trippier, Alexander-Arnold), meaning nine men of the 26 on the roster (35%) have at least partial Subsaharan ancestry.
— — One man is of recent African-immigrant origin, via Nigeria (Saka). Almost all the rest of the Black component is from the Caribbean, mostly Jamaica.

— 0% Muslim or Other (not White-Christian or Black).

[World Cup 2022] Wales National Team: 91% White, majority with firm Wales ties; thoughts Welsh nationalism and the World Cup

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See also the other World Cup 2022 demographics analyses:
Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Ecuador, England, France, Germany, Morocco, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Switzerland, Uruguay, USA, Wales.

Jump to comments

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This is a study of the demographics and personal-origins of the players on Wales national team at World Cup 2022. Following the findings is a related discussion on the status of Welsh nationalism.

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The aggregate racial-national ancestry for the WALES National Team’s World Cup 2022 squad (full 26-man roster) is:

• 91% White [23.625 / 26],
  
• 7% Black [1.75 / 26],
  — via Ben Cabango, Ethan Ampadu, Sorba Thomas, and Brennan Johnson.
  
• 2% East-Asian [0.625 / 26]
  — via Rubin Colwill and Kieffer Moore.

(credit to artist Mike Guilfoyle.)

— Of the total 26-man roster: Twenty are full-White-European (77% of team) with a large-majority of this British Isles origin.

[World Cup 2022] U.S. Men’s National Team racial-national-ancestral origins and demographics

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See also the other World Cup 2022 demographics analyses:
Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Ecuador, England, France, Germany, Morocco, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Switzerland, Uruguay, USA, Wales.

Jump to comments

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This is a comprehensive racial-national ancestry analysis for the twenty-six players on the U.S. Men’s National Team roster at World Cup 2022, with each player considered separately and the findings summarized in a chart for reference. Ethno-cultural-political implications of the findings are a theme throughout.

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(Team-USA-2022: top row, from left: Ream, Johnson, Morris, Scally, Wright, Acosta, Horvath, Moore; second row: Zimmerman, Sargent, Yedlin, Long, Reyna; third row: De La Torre, Carter-Vickers, Turner, Pulisic, McKennie, Robinson, Dest; bottom row: Roldan, Musah, Aaronson, Adams, Ferreira, Weah.)

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The aggregate racial-national ancestry for the U.S. Men’s National Team’s World Cup 2022 squad (full roster) is:

• 54% White-Christian [13.95 / 26]
• … 40% White-Christian of U.S. origin (including Ream, Morris, Scally, Long, Zimmerman, Sargent, Aaronson, Pulisic [partly recent foreign].)
• … 14% White-Christian of recent foreign origin (post-1950) (mostly half-foreign ancestry from Reyna, Pulisic, De La Torre, Horvath.)
  
  
• 31% Black [7.95 / 26]
• ….. 7% Black of U.S. origin (including Adams [mixed], McKennie [mixed], Acosta [mixed].)
• … 24% Black of recent foreign origin (including Weah, Wright, Musah, Johnson, Moore, Robinson [mixed, UK-raised], and Carter-Vickers [mixed, UK-raised].)
  
  
• 8% Hispanic-Mestizo [2.0 / 26]
• ….. 4% of U.S. origin (Roldan, a 1980s arrival.)
• ….. 4% of foreign origin (Ferreira, a 2010s arrival.)
  
  
• 4% Jewish [1.0 / 26] (via Yedlin and Turner.)
  
• 1% East Asian [0.25 / 26] (Japanese, via Acosta.)
  
• 1% Middle Eastern [0.25 / 6] (via Morris.)
  
• 2% miscellaneous, not otherwise classified, or unknown [0.6 / 26] (Dest, Surinamese origin)

— Up to twelve men of the 26-man roster (ca. 45%) can be said to be full-White in origin, depending on definition. There is only one Hispanic-Mestizo of U.S.-origin. There are no full-Black-American players. —

See the chart for how this is derived, and the player profiles for explanations of each.

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Election froth

(600 words)

The U.S. elections have come and gone.

Some reflections on the nature of ‘voting’ as civic ritual, and what it means; on the nature of power and legitimacy; on what the Regime is, what it does, the puppet-shows it runs, all through a simple metaphor:

Voting, and elections, under this Regime, are understandable as froth on top of a drink.

Imagine the Regime as a drink. With all its variegated power(s), institutions, influence mechanisms, methods of control, policies, agenda-setting, gatekeeping, discourse-enforcement, favoritisms, grudges, aspirations, and goals. The whole thing: compact the Regime all down, conceptually, so as to reduce it to a drink. A mug full of liquid. Regime subjects all have to drink this drink.

Imagine this Regime drink is one of those elaborately made coffee-shop concoctions, requiring multiple ingredients and multiple moving parts to create. Something more elaborate than the image I included there.

The end-product you are presented with is a warm, steamy drink. It is decorated in such ways to impress the impressable.

If you’re with me, if have just imagined such a drink, you may put in a red-white-and-blue mug for effect, because the Regime coffee-house loves doing things like that anyway.

Now, for what elections are under the Regime. What ‘voting’ is about:

Voting is the froth on top of this drink.

The participators in the civic-ritual of ‘voting’ (voters) get to choose whether the froth on top of the drink comes with a slight flavor-and-color variation between white-chocolate or dark-chocolate. Be advised, the selection does not include strawberry, nor vanilla, nor any other flavor. Those are not available options.

The oddballs out there among the civic-ritual participators here in the Uncle Regime’s Coffeeshop, you can ask the Regime barista for such things (known by the technical term, “throw your vote away”), and the grinning Regime barista there behind the counter will humor you and accept your request, for there’s no need to be rude about it. Meanwhile, the Good People, the loyal civic-ritual participators who select white-chocolate or dark-chocolate flavoring, they determine the way the froth comes out.

The size of the mug and the contents thereof, what the liquid(s) and other ingredients went in to create the drink and where they came from, and really all the characteristics of the drink except the slight flavor and appearance variation of the froth on top — that all stays the same. It is predetermined and non-negotiable.

From taste, to size, to nutritional value, to the origins of the beans or other products used to make the drink, to how sick-to-the-stomach the later consumption may make you, all aspects of this drink are predetermined, except this one around which the civic-ritual (‘voting’) revolves, the froth. The potential changes to the froth layer do not much affect even the taste of the whole drink, much less its nutritional value, size, and anything else.

A lot of people get excited about the froth. The excitement is much like some of the secondary definitions of the term ‘froth’ in English (some from Merriam-Webster: “something resembling froth, as in insubstantial, worthless, or light and airy” talk, ideas, or activities; “to foam at the mouth”; “to throw froth our or up”; “gaily frivolous or light in content or treatment”). An excited child might get excited about which color of sprinkles go on his birthday cake.

Huge numbers of paid and volunteer or semi-volunteer flavoring-propagandists blare things at you, for a while, about how bad the white-chocolate-leaning froth can be for your enjoyment and well-being. When you are forced to imbibe for the next designated period of mandatory drinking from the mug that is the Regime, it’d be a lot better to have a dark-chocolate-flavored frothy foam, and they’ll tell you why at length. Another set of flavoring-propagandists say the opposite. But what’s the difference as to a slight difference in color or taste the froth on top? The drink that is the Regime remains.

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The elections of 2022 in Sweden (nationwide) and Germany (Lower Saxony): Sweden’s AfS vs Nyans a preview of battles to come

A commentary on the election results in Sweden and Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), Germany, in the past month. Focusing more on the Swedish election, but both elections are of interest and have things to tell us.

I am especially interested in the contrast and the symbolism of two minor parties in the Swedish election, the Swedish-ethnonationalist AfS and the anti-Swedish immigrant-supremacist, Islamicist Nyans party.

(“Which Sweden will you choose” — AfS vs. most other parties)

The result in Sweden got much sensationalized attention because a so-called “Far Right” party, the Sweden Democrats, gained ground and helped to form the new government. The rest of the story is that: (1.) it was only a modest gain in a fractured multi-party system, not some huge shift from the previous election, (2.) it’s under a Regime and a political-culture with serious commitments to a racial-ethnic-religious policy unfavorable to natives, (3.) the SD has softened its line significantly and is not the one which can really reverse the situation, which would be the smaller rival AfS (Alternative for Sweden) or a successor occupying tha AfS’ political space.

Why does Gregory Cochran support the Ukraine war?

After the coordinated bombings against the Nordstream gas pipelines by unknown actors in late September 2022, the commentator, blogger, and physicist-anthropologist Dr. Greg Cochran began promoting a theory on what happened and what it means. There were three stated or implicit tenets to his theory:

(1.) Ukrainians committed the bombings;

(2.) the Ukrainians who committed the bombings (whoever they were, be they direct state agents or otherwise) were unaided by anyone, by any other force, nation-actor, or organization; technical or logistic outside-help was either zero or minimal; the planning and execution were either entirely or practically entirely by Ukrainians; the operation took the neutral NATO members by surprise; and

(3.) the pipeline-bombing by Ukrainians is morally justified despite being an act of geoeconomic war against Germany and Western-European NATO; that is, the pipeline bombing was an overall positive-good in the context of sacred holy-war against Russia, of the noble-cause of defense of holy Ukraine’s sacrosanct borders forever, and towards the keeping together the coalition-of-the-possible-unwilling, being NATO’s lesser-members, all towards the end-goal of regime-changing the Evil Doers (Putin/Russia).

This set of positions is, for many of us, not very firmly rooted in clear or rigorous thinking. It is reckless. It fraught with risk. It may be into the realm of immorality in foreign policy, some suggesting the US/CIA/NATO goal is the promotion of war for war’s sake. Others were critical of Cochran’s pipeline-bombing theory because it seemed to let the US/CIA and most-likely-suspect Poland off entirely.

The bigger question is, why is Greg Cochran, who made his name in anthropology and genetics, backing one side or the other here? It has many of asking “What’s going on?”

(Greg Cochran, circa 2009.)

Yes, we want to know: Why do good people allow themselves to fall for the siren-song of foreign-policy adventurism? Especially in this case, with the Ukraine-Russia imbroglio.

Why does Steve Sailer support the war in Ukraine?

Steve Sailer has come out as an essentially uncritical supporter of the NATO/US/Ukraine side and of the Zelensky government.

One detects little gap between his and the standard, “mainstream media” position on this matter.

This from the man who coined the subversive slogan “invade the world, invite the world” as a satirical summation of the prevailing U.S. Regime foreign-plus-domestic policy-package, which had support from both sides for years but was generally bad for the nation and its core population, as well as reckless and destabilizing in other parts of the world.

(“Invade, Invite”: coined by Steve Sailer, mid-2000s.)

What do we make of Steve Sailer’s new pro-Ukraine, pro-war, pro-intervention position in 2022?

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