We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
It has almost become a feature of the English sporting calendar, like the Epsom Derby and the FA Cup final, to watch a local heavyweight lose to Oleksandr Usyk in a packed football stadium or on prime-time television. Five Englishmen, on eight separate occasions, have tried and failed across two different weight divisions to beat the Ukrainian champion. None has succeeded. When Daniel Dubois was knocked out in the fifth round on Saturday night, before a sold-out crowd of 90,000 people at Wembley Stadium, it seemed like a sporting affirmation of Einstein’s definition of stupidity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
But since October 7, 2023, it feels as if the entire informational ecosystem has collapsed under a tidal wave of noise. I’ve never seen so many people scream and tweet and chant and repost without any regard for logic, facts, or history. Emotion has not just trumped reason, it has obliterated it.
The tragedy is not that people are choosing sides; it’s that they’re doing so blindly, ferociously, and with such utter detachment from fact. The battle isn’t just on the ground anymore, it’s for the mind. And most people are losing that battle without even realizing they’ve been drafted into it.
What used to be propaganda is now performance art. What used to be journalism is now tribalism. What used to be analysis is now algorithm.
Never ever trust the French and I am not saying this to be mean or edgy.
Many seem to have fallen for Macron and France’s theatrics and rhetoric in recent years.
France has always seen itself as a superpower and always will, and it wants to wield influence and play a dominant role in European and global affairs.
It is not going on endlessly about Ukraine and Europe out of a sense of charity or a desire to do the right thing, but rather because it wants to exploit recent developments in order to take the lead and exert greater influence.
France wants a stronger European security architecture precisely because it believes it can exert influence over it to serve its own interests.
Historically, France has always been reserved about its NATO membership and American dominance in the alliance because it wants to do things its own way and, ideally, maintain its influence.
– ‘Terrorism Guy‘ – National Security Adviser to the Internet 😀
As Ferguson’s law states, any great power that spends more on debt servicing than on defence risks ceasing to be a great power. While defence spending is expected to total £56.9 billion in 2025, debt interest is almost double that at £104.9 billion — comprising 8.2% of total public spending. All of this is to say that Army personnel would be vastly outnumbered by the Jihadists already monitored by foreign intelligence and MI5, plus those awaiting release in British prisons, and emigrating through legal and illegal means. Thanks to successive governments’ failure to prepare for this eventuality, and their exacerbation of the problem through permissive immigration policies, Britain is on the brink of the barbarians within its gates putting all we love to the torch.
Mexico is inching closer to a Venezuelan-style autocracy. Consider the case of María Oropeza, who was forcibly abducted in Venezuela by armed men without due process. Her crime? Sympathizing with the opposition. That’s the future Mexico risks: where justice is not blind, but partisan. Some dismiss these warnings as exaggeration. But as Adam Smith observed in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, people often ignore distant tragedies until they arrive at their doorstep.
To be clear, there is nothing remotely ‘progressive’ about defending the current state of welfare – and incapacity benefits, in particular. As if it needs to be said, people whose disabilities prevent them from working deserve the best possible quality of life. Arguably, the system ought to be far more generous than it already is to those in genuine need.
The trouble is, as finally seems to be dawning on the political class, the soaring number of claimants bears little relationship with the state of the nation’s health. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, about four million 16- to 64-year-olds – that is, one in 10 of the working-age population – now claim some sort of disability benefit, compared with 2.8million in 2019. As explained in the Financial Times, recent rises in disability claims are almost entirely an artefact of the system itself. Policies and incentives are the main driver of rising and falling claims. Allowing claims for mental-health issues, enshrined in the 2014 Care Act, has had arguably the largest impact. Currently, 44 per cent of all claimants cite poor mental health as their primary condition.
What we are living through today, in a phrase, is an unprecedented break in national continuity. As a country we are disconnecting from the old Britain. The Britain of our national story is disappearing, the Britain of the Romans through the Anglo-Saxons, the Normans, the Tudors, Nelson and Wellington, the two world wars and even the Attlee settlement.
Gone is the Britain of Christianity and the Church as a core component of British identity, and moral judgement has become utilitarian, about what is convenient, disconnected from any traditional, let alone transcendental, set of values.
Fast receding is the Britain of real state capacity and national ambition, as we move from Victorian St Pancras to the hole in the ground at Euston, from the first nuclear power station back to the windmill.
Our national character is changing. We are, at last, becoming the “young country”, the country without a past, that Tony Blair wanted.
Personality traits such as patriotism and bravery are viewed as desirable within the military. This often encourages overt masculine behaviour amongst its members, therefore stepping outside the norm and challenging the group is often looked down upon and difficult to do. The task-focused approach can also lead to corners being cut if it is deemed that the ends justify the means, that certain actions or behaviours are tolerated if they achieve the desired result. The danger with this is that such undesirable behaviours, if tolerated for long enough, become the norm and the level of standards gradually erodes… Methods of bonding and creating team cohesiveness within the military often involve pranks and banter, but this isolates those who are different to the norm.
First, that as the Casey report acknowledges, the crimes really are mostly committed by ethnic minority men, mostly Pakistani, against white-majority children. And Labour are, far more than any other party, the standard-bearers for “diversity”. On this front, Helen Lewis spelled out the problem with commendable clarity earlier this year: no one on the Left wants a “national conversation” about the rape gangs — because so many of the possible solutions are, from this perspective, prima facie unacceptable:
“Would it include calls for the mass deportation of migrants, as many on Europe’s emergent Right want? […] Should Britain enact a “Muslim ban” or reject asylum seekers from Muslim-majority countries? When liberals are still queasy about engaging with this topic, it’s because they sense that these shadow arguments lie just out of sight.”
And second, it’s not just about race relations. It’s also about the public sector, of which Labour has long presented itself as a champion. And the extent of institutional complicity, already clear, is reiterated in Casey’s report: they all knew.
The police, especially, knew. Victims were blamed, or even arrested: in one notorious incident, a father arrived outside the house in which his own daughter was being raped, called the police, and was then himself arrested. In other incidents, girls would press charges only to be immediately contacted by their rapists with threats: events strongly suggestive of police corruption. One officer in Rotherham told a desperate father that the town “would erupt” if the crimes were exposed; another, according to the 2014 Jay report, admitted these atrocities have been ongoing for 30 years but “with it being Asians, we can’t afford for this to be coming out”.
Care homes also knew. One Bradford girl reported all the way back in 2014 that the home where she ought to have found safety and respite didn’t just look the other way — when the men who raped and sold her arrived outside the home, the staff would tell her to “go out and see them”. Councils knew, too: Birmingham was suppressing reports into looked-after children being raped and trafficked 30 years ago. In Oldham, the notorious leader of one rape gang was appointed “Welfare Officer” after a girl had already come forward with allegations against him. How many teachers knew? If Dominic Cummings is to be believed, the Department of Education knew.
The prevailing narrative in Net Zero ideology is one of a seamless “clean energy transition”. The reality is that their supposedly necessary transition is unlike any in human history because it represents a move down the energy density ladder. Properly understood, the proposal is terrifying.
It’s terrifying because it violates the “Iron Law Of Energy Transition”: successful civilisations always move toward more concentrated, more reliable power sources. Every historical example of a move down the energy density ladder has been involuntary. And every involuntary move down the energy density ladder has produced a mass casualty event.
The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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