By way of #introduction, I'm an Australian #photographer based on the coast south of Sydney. I shoot mainly #nature and #landscape images, and have a particular love of #monochrome with an emphasis on #line, #tone and #texture. I operate almost entirely in a #reactionary way, setting out without expectations, rather simply responding to the way #light falls on a scene or subject.
My thanks to @geoff_eg and @mattpaynephoto from the Discord server Landscape Photographers Worldwide for the intro
Even at this late stage, the combination of such an extreme lack of self-awareness and so much self-pity all wrapped up in a single person is just astonishing.
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Yarvin seems shocked that Musk (with zero government experience except for a reliance on government contracts) is doing such a poor job. He also seems chagrined at Trump's specific actions, like tariffs, which are throwing markets into chaos. In political terms, the whole thing is a total disaster. By early 2025, millions of Americans are marching in streets and even Republican voters are showing up at town halls to express seething anger.
Yarvin seems to have come to a stark realization: If Musk/Trump fail to destroy the democratic system, extreme anti-government pseudo-intellectuals may face a bleak future. He urgently warns them against half-assing the revolution – and reveals his own fear of what might happen when the pendulum swings in the other direction:
But in the end, it is the road toward winding up in the foam yourself—probably with me, for all my troubles. (This is what usually happens to right-wing intellectuals, actually.)
https://www.thenerdreich.com/curtis-yarvin-fears-his-authoritarian-fantasy-is-flopping/
特朗普试图通过残暴的关税来实现美国的再工业化。
他的计划很可能会彻底失败。尽管现在还不能确定，但事情绝对不是这些天里人们所谈论的那样 …
纸条更新：《回复关于关税 - 粉黑纠缠蒙蔽了整个反动时代》https://iyouport.notion.site/1cc34ca2d46d80b7b7a7c21eb45ec839
‘Reactionary nihilism’: how a rightwing movement strives to end US democracy
There is a “real and very, very present” threat to the US from a shadowy collection of rightwing leaders,
a new book on the movement behind Donald Trump warns,
with the aim being
“an end to pluralistic democracy”.
#Katherine #Stewart, a journalist who specializes in the religious right, spent years researching the money and influence that has aided and encouraged tens of millions of Americans in their worship at the throne of Trump.
The result is
"Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy",
which sees Stewart explore the “antidemocratic movement”
– an unholy mix of Christian nationalists, billionaire oligarchs and conservative ideologues who have seized control of the Republican party,
and aim to fundamentally change the US.
“#Money is a huge part of the story,
meaning that huge concentrations of wealth have destabilized the political system.
Second, #lies, or conscious disinformation, is a huge feature of this movement.
And third #God, because the most important ideological framework for the largest part of this movement is Christian nationalism,” Stewart said.
In the book, Stewart details how Republicans have been held hostage by the antidemocratic movement,
something that “came together long before Donald Trump descended on a golden escalator in 2015 to announce his candidacy for president”.
Stewart – whose previous two books,
"The Good News Club" and
"The Power Worshippers",
focused on the impact of the Christian right and religious nationalism in the US
– spent years traveling to an array of rightwing conferences,
from Christian nationalist events to
”Make America great again” fests and sober thinktank talks,
and found many similarities.
The eclectic groups may not seem to have much in common, but their aim is the same:
bringing an end to democracy in the US as we know it.
Their method of achieving that is the same too.
“The overwhelming message, from speaker after speaker, was that ‘Trump needs to be allowed to enact his agenda, and you need to get behind him,’” Stewart said.
Though there is an intriguing collection of individuals and organizations in the movement,
Stewart categorizes its members as #Christian #nationalists
– who believe, wrongly, that America was founded as a Christian nation and must be governed as such
– and the #super-#rich, who are seeking to secure their own wealth at the expense of others.
“Much of the energy of the movement, too, comes from below,
from the anger and resentment that characterizes life among those who perceive, more or less accurately, that they are falling behind,” Stewart writes.
“The best label I can find for the phenomenon
– and I do not pretend it is a fully satisfactory label
– is ‘#reactionary #nihilism’.
It is reactionary in the sense that it expresses itself as mortal opposition to a perceived catastrophic change in the political order;
it is nihilistic because its deepest premise is that the actual world is devoid of value,
impervious to reason, and governable only through brutal acts of will.
It stands for a kind of unraveling of the American political mind
– a madness that now afflicts one side of nearly every political debate.”
In addition to relationships with #Thiel and #Yarvin,
#Vance is also in close contact with the 
bottom feeders on the far right.
For nearly two years, according to The Washington Post, Vance was in regular conversation by text message with
#Chuck #Johnson,
a notorious Holocaust denier who has spent the better part of a decade promoting right-wing conspiracy theories.
And as my Michelle Goldberg wrote this week,
Vance is close enough to #Jack #Posobiec
— an alt-right lunatic who pushed the vile and absurd Pizzagate conspiracy theory
and collaborated with online neo-Nazis to spread antisemitic hate
— to blurb his latest book, a polemic devoted to the idea that liberals and leftists are #Untermenschen who must be stopped lest they destroy civilization.
“As they are opposed to humanity itself,” Posobiec and his co-author, Joshua #Lisec, write,
“they place themselves outside of the category completely, in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision, the unhuman.”
These are the friends and influences that JD Vance brought with him to the United States Senate, and these will almost certainly be the same friends and influences he’ll bring to the White House if he is elected vice president.
The single most troubling thing about Senator JD Vance
— his bizarre understanding of the work of J.R.R. Tolkien notwithstanding
— is his close relationship with some of the #most #extreme #elements of the American right.
When asked to explain his worldview, Vance has cited his former boss, #Peter #Thiel,
the billionaire venture capitalist who has written passionately against democracy
(“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible”),
and #Curtis #Yarvin, a software developer turned blogger and provocateur
who believes the United States should transition to monarchy
(“If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia”).
Yarvin has also written favorably of human bondage
(slavery, he once wrote, “is a natural human relationship”)
and wondered aloud if apartheid wasn’t better for Black South Africans.
While Vance’s admirers see him as a uniquely intellectual presence in American politics
— a thinker as much as a politician
— his right-wing, #authoritarian views are largely derivative of the views and preoccupations of Thiel, Yarvin and their community of “#postliberal” ideologues and #reactionary venture capitalists.
Take Vance’s view that the United States is in a period of Romanesque decline.
“We are in a late republican period,” Vance said on a podcast in 2021.
“If we’re going to push back against it, we’re going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there,
and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”
Compare this to 
Thiel’s view that “liberalism” and “democracy” are “#exhausted,”
and that to restore the nation
“we have to ask some questions very far outside the Overton window.”
Is this a call for new tax cuts, or does it represent a fundamental hostility toward popular constitutional government in the United States?
The Strange Villainization of the Walkable City | The New Republic
https://newrepublic.com/article/181593/strange-villainization-walkable-city-15-minute-moreno-book #qanon #climatechange #walkable #walkablecity #walkableStreets #walkablecities #reactionary #reactionaries #urbanism
“ignore it at your peril. The massive tome is the latest iteration of a four-decade-long process of crafting #rightwing policies to dismantle the federal government, deregulate industry and eliminate consumer protections and public health measures, while installing a regime controlled by #fossilfuel interests and the #ReligiousRight”
“Voters should regard #Project2025 as a full-throated statement of intent” https://washingtonspectator.org/project-2025-the-latest-plot-against-america/
#reactionary #farright #Republicans #GOP
“a man who arguably did the most to push #ClaudineGay, #Harvard’s first Black president, out of the door: #BillAckman, a #billionaire #hedgefund manager and #Harvard alumnus.
#Ackman, who accused Gay of #antisemitism and #plagiarism, was a major player in what increasingly became a #rightwing campaign against the #Harvard president”
“Time to stand up to people like him. He’s odious” https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/03/bill-ackman-billionaire-attacks-claudine-gay-harvard-twitter-x #reactionary #farright #racist #billionaires #racism #DEI
by @donmoyn
“What does #plagiarism have to do with #antisemitism? Nothing. But the goal was to remove #ClaudineGay, the first Black president of #Harvard”
“For this campaign to work, they needed #mainstreammedia to support them. And the media obliged. All in all, it has been a very successful couple of weeks for #badfaith attacks on higher #education”
“the better question is why it keeps happening”https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-campaign-to-remove-the-president #DEI #racism #reactionary #farright #GOP
Folks from the #middleclass who cast their vote for overtly #reactionary or even #fascist political parties are utterly clueless imbeciles. Happily helping to wreck #democracy and the #ruleoflaw because you are afraid to lose some of the privileges and luxuries in your lives - nothing essential, mind you.
If you are unwilling to adapt and change your ways and lifestyle, #nature will make you do so, not the Greens. Don't worry about that for a second.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/09/middle-class-fear-green-policies-fuels-rise-of-far-right-colombias-petro-warns-aoe
Alan Bean concludes:
"David Gushee has emerged as a stalwart defender of gay rights and racial justice. He believes the American story needs to be retold from the perspective of the oppressed. American Christians can’t follow his guidance if we ignore these core ethical challenges."
#Christianity #reactionary #RightWing #authoritarian #LGBTQ #racism
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As Alan Bean notes, in his new book Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies, David Gushee draws attention to the way in which the reactionary authoritarian Christianity of white Christian nationalism in the US is also manifest in other nations now, including Hungary, Russia, and Brazil.
Binding these disparate national movements together is the following:
#Christianity #reactionary #RightWing #authoritarian #LGBTQ #racism
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We have to find out how we, as liberal #democracies, can protect us from #imperialist, #revanchist, #reactionary counties propaganda while still maintaining our freedom of press.
I think one step in this can be to accept, that if something is factually true, we don't need to platform contrarian positions just for the sake of hearing "both sides". If one side is only lying, propagandising and twisting facts, there is no value in hearing them, except to dismantle their strategies and uncover their lies.
This can mean only one thing. We are at the nadir (stage 3 below) in the perpetual cycle of doom, punctuated with hope. #Peace can last for 3 generations (~90-100 years) max
1st gen after major war, or after a dictator's demise, will mourn, heal, and rejoice.
2nd gen will profit from boom, enjoy carefree life, and invite #complacenceAmongIgnorant.
3rd gen will let unsavory elements in society exploit #complacence, fuel #reactionary forces, and lead to another war
Meet the man 2nd in-line to the presidency
Mike Johnson, theocrat: the House speaker and a plot against America https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/04/mike-johnson-theocrat-house-speaker-christian-trump
The Folksy Fanaticism of Mike Johnson https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/mike-johnson-cnp-christian-nationalism/
Texas activist David Barton wants to end separation of church and state. He has the ear of the new U.S. House speaker https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/03/david-barton-mike-johnson-texas-church-state-christianity/
During a campaign TV show Dutch #rightwing demagogue #ThierryBaudet told a non-binary person that they were not supposed to exist.
Let me be very clear about this: This is far from being a #libertarian. This is nasty #reactionary bullshit. You can't advocate for maximum freedom for individuals but force them to fit into one of two biological sexes in all of their activities and feelings.
Baudet is unmasking himself as an authoritarian, not a libertarian.
#Netherlands #politics
come on in #twitter lovers
here at the twisted twitter we are slashin morale values in half!
give us an offer on our vast selection of #fearmongering, this is a #bigot blow out!
alright! we got #rassist tweets, #putin tweets, #conspiracy tweets!
we got #rightwing #antivax #reactionary #sexist #climatedenial tweeets!!!
come on in #musk lovers!
PG18: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zP55sQykxQ
for those with account;
feel free to spread this on the #birdsite
