Street smarts remains essential

How do you know a topic is over and you won? Well, the opposition speaks your language and the head of a multi-million dollar media empire that dwarfs CNN, MSNBC, BBC and France24 together in terms of audience basically speaks the exact same words you’ve been speaking when you ushered in your own narrative.

Daily Wire is in top 10 largest podcast publishers (bigger than Disney!), in top 10 most widely read websites from the entire Internet and gobbles up 8 and sometimes 9 digits (!!) audience figures per day across platforms. In other words, Daily Wire is as mainstream as it can possibly be.

The video above, where Ben Shapiro (whose wife is a doctor – let’s not forget this 😂) speaks the language of the opposition effectively ends the conversation. So the pandemic project is over (even if you can still see pockets of Branch Covidianism on Twitter and Facebook). So, as this is slowly coming to an end, it’s time to ask, in all seriousness, what have we learned?

Reading back to the article I wrote at the beginning of this panic, almost three years ago, I have to say I’m sorry I was right on the 5th point. I was really hoping that I’d be proven wrong, and not too many little dictators would emerge. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, things rolled more or less as I predicted. But the question is: How did I, and tens if not hundreds of millions of us across the Northern Hemisphere know?

No accident

I don’t have a Harvard Law education (thank God for that!) and my wife isn’t a doctor (Слава Богу for that too!) – and this remains true for every single individual who supported the Sofa message right from the get go.

Very well-educated and well-read men (and some women) are now coping with the fact that what they perceive as “the lesser” were entirely correct and they were wrong. Some are coping with it relatively honorably (by acknowledging they were wrong) while others maintain to this day that the rest of us simply got lucky. The latter category is worthy of scorn for many years to come, not only because they commit the sin of assuming shit but also because such hubris should be socially discouraged wherever possible.

We could’ve discussed luck if we had gotten one or two disparate things right while being just as wrong (or even more wrong) than the booksmart people. But that’s just not the case.

On everything – from survival rate, to the immorality, illegality and illiberalism of so-called NPIs, to the viability of the myocarditis-inducing experimental gene therapy clotshot… on everything we got things right, or at the very least closer to the truth than they did. That’s not a coincidence nor is it luck. It’s something else. Something that is now missing from those who profess to be thought leaders: street smarts.

Street smarts breed adaptable people

In the past, until the 1950s or even later, both the elite and the plebs had street smarts. In the past, the elites would speak 4-5 languages as a matter of routine, travel more or less with the plebs, and reality compelled them to learn how the world actually works once they step foot outside the reading room.

Now, however, most of these people live completely separate lives from the rest of us. In a very physical and concrete way. And that is to their detriment too.

Erika Fatland is the only writer that I’m aware of in contemporaneity that is both in the traditional elite chambers and still behaves like an elite used to. She makes good money off of investors and institutions for doing more or less what I do: travel the world by train with the plebs, speaking with the plebs rather than at them, and then report about it. Turns out the plebs are still willing to listen/read even a snob/elitist opinion as long as it comes from a place of authenticity (i.e. you’ve actually been there and know your stuff) – which is a nicer way of saying… having street smarts.

Us, the plebs, got the pandemic project right not necessarily because we were smarter (though in some cases that was the case too), nor because we were lucky. We got it right because we had a higher dose of a different type of smart.

Having street smarts is not just physical fighting skills and ability to manage difficult situations in an urban setting. Street smarts is also the ability to blend in with many different types of people.

By necessity or by choice, us plebs with street smarts didn’t stay in an physical or virtual silo during the pandemic project. We kept on talking to people who virulently disagree with us but also with people who probably agree with us a bit too much.

Street smarts does mean being able to assess risk. So for those with street smarts, it simply came natural not to freak out too much about the Wuhan Cough. It made sense not to automatically trust the “official sources” – precisely because down here, at the street level, we’d seen this movie before. We knew – not by luck, but by previous trial and error – that the official sources will lie if they’re required to do so or if they panic and get stupid in public.

Unlike the so-called “educated” we didn’t display the memory of a paramecium. So by September 2020, nearly 100% of the street smarts people had figured out most of the pandemic project. Face it: It wasn’t even hard. When you tell plebs that the Wuhan Flu spreads dangerously at the Church but not in crowded shopping malls, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that something’s rotten.

The shock and horror of the book smarts people when they learned that the plebs will go around the mandatory vaccination with impunity (see Germany, France, Greece and Bulgaria, Italy, and so on) also showed just how out of touch these people are. I could go on more but you get the point.

Ideally, one would seek a balance between street smarts and book smarts. But, when such thing is not possible, then more street smarts is preferable for most people, since most of what constitutes street smarts used to be called common sense which, yeah, ain’t that common anymore.

Get the nerds back in the closet

So if there’s anything we can learn from the pandemic project in terms of reference points, it’s this: While books are good, touching grass is far better. And not being a terminally online NPC is highly helpful.

Ultimately, the pandemic project was a long, costly and painful experiment of a society ruled by nerds manipulated by pseudo-elites who wanted money and power (not necessarily in this order).

Face it: Most doctors are either corrupt bribery-receiving psychopaths or they are nerds. Neither category is fit to run society. Yet that’s exactly what the pandemic project attempted to do: to run society as if it’s a gigantic hospital ward with the sole purpose of preventing one disease.

Such dogmatic unidirectional focus and utter disregard for collateral damage (i.e. trade-offs) can be found in many people but it is overwhelmingly concentrated in just two categories: psychopaths and nerds.

And most of the people directly tormenting us for the last three years were nerds, not psychopaths. And without them, acting as enforcers, the pandemic project wouldn’t have been possible.

Think about it. Who tended to be the most Stakhanovite about the pandemic project? Corporate middle managers (nerds), hyperspecialized previously obscure Twitter accounts (nerds), terminally online antisocial IT folks (nerds) and the writers at “serious” newspapers (most of them nerds). Everyone else not in these categories dropped the pandemic project from their mind by September 2020.

Sure, we can quibble about exceptions and all that, but, by and large, the nerds were very good enforcers of the pandemic project without whom the project would’ve failed even earlier.

Some people still think this is something new. But it’s not. In 2009, Mexico went into lockdown for a flu. But in 2009, it was still acceptable to respond to those proposing such crap with the perfectly sensible reply of: “Shut up, nerd! Touch grass!”

I cannot stress enough just how big of a civilizational mistake it was to let the nerds out of the closet. It’s bad for society and it’s bad for nerds themselves too.

Can this geenie be put back in the bottle? I don’t know. But I do know that it’s worth a shot. Start by not taking nerds seriously and by avoiding as many activities associated with nerds as possible. It’s definitely a good start. Also, discourage your children from nerdy activities. Get him/her to play football/volleyball/whatever outside.

The takeaway is to continue to do what we, the street smarts people, got correctly right from the get go: Touch grass!

That’s it.

February 1, 2023February 1, 2023

Understanding the Danish society

Denmark is often held as some sort of Utopia by the Western world due to its welfare state and highly homogeneous culture. Much has been said about not just the positives, but also more recently, by the political right, the negatives of such a system. However, neither side has ever truly understood what the pros and cons of the Danish way are, nor what type of society would accept it in the first place.

The Danish way of thinking is, in many ways, self-contradicting and it is just as hard to wrap one’s head around it as it is with the Russian mindset. This would have been more apparent, were it not for the complete absence of conflict within the Danish state.

All societies have a more or less formal contract with their state, some founding principle that makes it legitimate in the eyes of the people: In the US this is the upholding of the Constitution; in China – to avoid a repeat of the starvation events under Mao and ensure everyone has food on the table. In Denmark, it is simply to preserve a state of comfort.

While the same is true of the rest of Scandinavia, the Danish mindset has evolved, for the most part, naturally, with little deliberation on the part of the state.

Danish culture has been in large part defined by the presence of the state, in ways that most free countries simply have not. The most apparent of which is family structure or, better said, the lack thereof as the individual is completely atomized.

The average Danish child will be placed into a kindergarten from the age of 3 – 4 years old with minimal interaction with their parents, as both of them typically are working full time to afford the bills that come with having the highest tax pressure in the world, and second worst purchase power parity in Europe.

Their middle aged parents do not fare much better, as divorce is frequent enough as to become ubiquitous. Here it is worth mentioning that Danish adolescents are among the first to move out of their parents’ home in Europe. While I do not see this as inherently negative, it does add to the overall state of disconnect within the family. This disentanglement is perversely mirrored in the usual treatment of the elderly in Denmark.

Children do not interact much with their parents after they move out, and the parents life is expected to go on as usual until they are too old to live on their own. At this point the overwhelming standard is to let your parents be institutionalized. This is so common to the point where any other arrangement is practically unheard of.

With the exception of the occasional visit, the parents are left completely out of sight and thus out of mind. It’s the polar opposite of Italy, where the child is expected to either move out at some point in their forties, or simply inherit the family home and take care of their parents until their death.

While abuse is not the absolute standard within retirement homes, it is frequently reported on. It is not unusual for horror stories of elderly, no longer capable of standing on their own and bedridden, to be neglected by social workers that simply don’t want to help them get to the bathroom, and instead leave them mired in their own fecal matter for several days.

Its not that anyone wants this abuse to continue per se, in fact the topic has had mainstream attention both in the media, among political parties, and in political satire for several decades now. The truth is quite simple, and quite depressing: No one cares.

This is not meant in the sense that people find the abuse mentioned above acceptable, they don’t. Instead no one really thinks about or wants to do anything to change things.

A far leftist and former friend of mine once said that the greatest boon of the welfare state was that it “liberated him from his own morality”. Thanks to it, he argued, there was no need to care about the homeless, the poor, his family, or anyone other than himself, because ”society will take care of it”.

While many Danes would feel repulsed by such a statement, there is a kernel of truth to it: The welfare state has in its own perverse way ”liberated” the individual from his morality and responsibility. This is at least in part what we are seeing with the disentanglement between families and the elderly.

Denmark is a deeply apathetic country, and the odd thing about this characteristic apathy, whether towards governmental overreach, abuse in the social sector or blatant corruption, is that there is barely any propaganda effort from the state itself involved. Rather there simply is a disinterest so ubiquitous as to become part of the background noise, as it permeates every part of the Danish worldview: both empathically, intellectually, and politically, in ways that often appear paradoxical.

The national self-image vexes between viewing ourselves as a small, irrelevant spot in the middle of Europe to extreme arrogance over our glorious welfare state, especially compared to those stupid Americans that are constantly shooting each other or going broke from their dysfunctional, obviously anti-human private healthcare system. Although self-contradictory at a glance, these two ideas can coexist in people’s heads at the same time without cognitive dissonance, as they are not two mutually exclusive ideas, but rather a single, logically coherent narrative that can produce diametrically opposed feelings depending on the context: This national narrative, referred to as “Lilliput Chauvinism” by the politician Uffe Østergaard, is best summarized as “we are small and irrelevant but our socially homogenous and deeply empathetic culture has resulted in the north – and in particular us, creating a much more humane, and happy society than the rest of the globe.”

Like how a faucet can produce either warm or cold water, depending on how you turn the knobs, the focal point of the narrative can be altered to hone in on either the inferiority aspect as a means to deflect criticism of flaws brought to the surface, or the superiority, to induce a delusional belief in the superiority of the Danish system – which therefore does not need to be altered, as there’s no need to change what is already as good as it gets.

Complementing this is the insular nature of Danish society. Not much is reported on or understood, or even paid attention to of our neighboring countries. There is some superfluous reporting on whatever happens in the United States, usually ripped straight from their legacy media, and sometimes Sweden (since the border with them is right next to our capital) but that’s about it. Rarely is anything ever reported about Norway, Germany or Britain. The cultural insularity of the nation solidifies it’s inferiority-superiority complex, since the country as a whole is simply not aware or interested in other ways of structuring a society.

For a personal example, a family movie I watched as a small child had a song in the intro credits with lyrics such as:

man er som man er det kan ikke laves om
man går rudnt og ser ud som maan gjorde da man kom
du kan drømme om at være en kineser I new yok
men man er som man er og det er godt nok.

En hest er en hest en kat er en kat
de er ligesåforskellige som dag og som nat…
og tyskere og svenskere er også en slags menesker
og rødhårede piger er kønne

You are as you it cannot be changed
one walks around and look as one did when you arrived
you can dream about beign a chinese in New York
But you are what you are and it’s good enough

A horse is a horse a cat is a cat
they’re as different as day and as night
and Germans and Swedes are people too I suppose
and read-haired girls are cute

The song is quite indicative of the mentality here. Danes are not devoid of humour, especially not when at the expense of our neighbours, due to historical beef turned banter (as is the case with practically all Old World countries). But there’s also this notion that what you are is pretty good, so there’s no need to do anything about it, or change, or improve. What you are is more or less “good enough”.

This is certainly not helped by the populace’s disinterest in seeking out knowledge or wisdom on their own.
It’s not that Danes are stupid, as the over representation among Nobel price winners for instance shows, but that their thinking is rigid. Knowledge is only gathered and created, and expertise only acquired within already established fields, such as the hard sciences, and outside them, is a dearth of intellectual curiosity. Appeal to experts is commonplace and expert opinion is paraded around by the media on a daily basis.

It is not without reason Denmark has not had a renowned thinker – neither globally, nor domestically, since Søren Kirkegaard. On a related note, Denmark has not created many cultural movements of its own for at minimum the last 100 years. More often than not, ideas are simply imported from abroad, as was the case with Lutheran Protestantism by the priest Hans Thausen or with the welfare state itself, originally imported from Bismarck’s Prussia, until it developed a life of its own here.

Much of this lack of interest can be traced back to the 1800s: Following the loss of Norway to Sweden during the Napoleonic wars, Denmark entered a cultural period known as Romantikken, or the romantic period. The core idea was that ”what was lost externally, must be won internally”. No longer was Denmark to pay attention to anything outside of it’s own borders, as it refused to look away from its rural landscapes through rose tinted glasses; effectively romanticising what was left of the country in an attempt to ignore the nation’s sorry state of affairs.

It is here we find the source of Danish Lilliput chauvinism, as both a coping and a defence mechanism against harsh reality, as it reminded us of our own inadequacy.

This can also be seen in the notion of the Janteloven, a set of laws unique to the fictional town of Jante, made as a satire of Scandinavia’s stigma against excellence:

Don’t believe you are anything
don’t believe you are as much as us
Don’t believe you are smarter than us
Don’t believe you are better than us
Don’t believe you know more than us
Don’t believe you are more than us
Don’t believe you amount to anything
Don’t laugh at us
Don’t believe anyone likes you
Don’t believe you can teach us anything

At no point has this order of affairs ever truly been disputed. While the central focus of the following era, the modern breakthrough, indeed was that the nation ought to cease its nostalgic ruminations and face cruel reality, the cruel reality in question was the suffering of the poor and the working class, underneath the classicist society. It was essentially proto-socialism. Created a century before Marx was even born and complete with deconstructive reinterpretations of established folklore to serve the anti-idealistic bend of the era. Added to these is a fear of going outside of the system.

Dissent is allowed, but only in predetermined ways by going through the system itself, never around it, and it is frowned upon to criticise individuals working in the bureaucracy as “just doing your job” is a commonplace and acceptable justification for state overreach. The result? A society unwilling to engage in the historical arena (with the blessing of its geography), uninterested in learning from others and dedicated to the alleviation of harm from its citizens, and one which has effectively produced an “end of history”-like scenario.

There are no conflicts here and with the exception of a brief almost bloodless invasion by – and immediate submission to – Nazi Germany in the 1940s, the notion that you need to defend what you hold dear, that there’s something it must be defended against, and whether it was even worth defending in the first place, is mute. In its place there’s a perpetual state of nothing ever happening.

It can be seen even in the language too: For instance, the standard response to being asked how are things going is “stille og roligt/quiet and calm”.
Another example is the word “hygge”. Which is often paraded around as the quintessential Danish word, as it has no direct translation. The approximate is a mix between “cozy” and “comfy”. That feeling of sitting and chilling with your friends and feeling pleasant while nothing is really happening.

I’m defining it because Danish does not typically make use of a direct word for “scary” or “horrifying” instead the most commonly used word is “uhygge”. It’s much like how Russian does not have a direct mainstream word for “safety” or “security” but instead uses “undanger” [безопасность].

As nothing is happening, and will never happen, conflict is viewed as unnecessary and abnormal if not to some extend unnatural, if it is ever placed in bigger doses than the occasional joke about the Nazis or drawing of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban here and there. The ability for, and conceptualization of, conflict taking place is not only absent on a national scale but on the individual level as well. No one is capable of starting conflicts and no one has the necessary mental reflexes to handle it.

This conflict avoidance leads to an odd form of moderation, where the victim of the state will always react to abuse by pleading. If the state overreaches, the reaction will always begin by admitting one is themselves guilty before stating that what’s happening is absurd. There won’t be any backlash, only a plead for a slightly thinner slice of the salami to be served this time around. This is arguably why the country has some of the highest anti depressant consumption in the world.

It is not that we batter our children into soulless drones, it’s that we don’t need to. Because the concept of conflict simply does not exist inside the little Danish world. As there’s simply no practical way of venting frustrations people simply give up trying or become bitter and resentful, as the shadow parts of the human mind are not being allowed to fully integrate. The populace may act nice but it is not good.

And if you dig deep enough down underneath that outer layer of niceness in a Dane’s psyche, you’ll find something you won’t like looking at.

January 25, 2023January 25, 2023

Some administrative changes

Following the announcement earlier this month and the subsequent consultation, we continued to implement new changes in the way things are done around here, all with a view to make the workflow easier as our teams grow and the backlog of things to do also grows.

Resources page

Following both practical necessity and strategic demand for increased transparency (to make delegation easier and also to simply keep track on things) we made a few changes around here.

For starters, we added the Resources page which documents the resources available for the public much better and also chronicles the resources developing for the benefit of those who choose to join the Donors’ Circle.

With this occasion we also cleaned up the site’s menu and removed some legacy pages whose relevance was deprecated.

Expanding the News Feed team

The News Feed that we’ve been maintaining on Telegram for over four years now has attracted a more diverse audience than we expected.

Initially, the Feed was made more or less for internal use so we can keep track on what’s going on and maybe pick up links to then use in podcasts/videos. However, it turns out there was a need for a curated news feed for others as well, attracting quite a bit of praise, including from people who generally disagree with us.

While we appreciate the positive feedback, the fact remains that the Feed was largely run by a team of four,… more or less. We are already underway to changing that by expanding the team and also opening up applications for new members.

As such, we published the first version of the guidelines for the Feed, making a step we stayed clear from for years: towards quasi-institutionalization.

We’re hoping to improve the quality of the news feed during 2023 and increase the status of the Feed as a reference point for relevance on politics.

Other less visible technical changes

In the background, we started managing our activities (or at least trying 😅) through a ticketing system that we’ve also made transparent (for the most part) to our donors. The same system will now be used for some internal communications.

The system is not (yet?) ready for public consumption and we’re still unsure on whether such a resource should be public to begin with. The risk of spam is much higher than the potential benefits.

The idea is to remove critical dependency from services we don’t control and we have limited trust in (e.g. Telegram). Social media (including Discord, Telegram, etc.) is great for growth and some coordination, but far from great when it comes to non-public conversations or, even worse, hinging a group’s very existence on one of them. Many good projects died as a result of their group being wiped out from social media.

While we are under no danger of that happening to us anytime soon, it is better to be prepared in advance. Besides, it simply is good practice to own your internal affairs, rather than outsource them on an opaque third party that doesn’t have your best interests in mind.

Also, we moved both torrent folders (for public and DC) on the same server.

Speaking of torrent, we’re still testing webapps for that. If we end up implementing one of them, it will not be announced on the website.

Still no consensus over the forum so the issue will thus be kicked down the road again.

As January draws to an end, so does the talk about change.

That’s it. Time to work more.

January 9, 2023

Raiffeisen Bank recognizes Putin’s republics

The Russian branch of the Austrian company Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI / Райффайзен Банк) continue to offer financial assistance to Putin’s regime and advantageous loans to Putin’s enforcers on the occupied territories in Ukraine.

Source: Raiffaisen.ru – archive format in case it disappears.

On Twitter, the bank defended itself that it is merely following ~~the orders~~ laws in force in the country in which it is located (archive link in case it gets deleted).

The page about the reduced-rate loans offered to the armed forces (see photo) is pretty explicit and it says that among the conditions to getting a loan is “the borrower is doing military service in the Russian Armed Forces under a contract or is in military service for the troops of the National Guard of the Russian Federation […], subject to its participation in a special military operation on the territories of Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic“.

The law the bank is referring to is Law №377/2022 approved in October 2022 that provides for deference of payments, reduced rates for loans and extended grace periods for those engaged in Russia’s war of aggression and for their families.

It’s not the first time

The Austrian bank is accustomed to bowing to any demands by the Putin regime. In 2017, Raiffeisen was the only Western bank to help the Russian government provide passports and identity documents to those requesting them in the separatist regions.

Half of the profit made by the Raiffeisen group was made in Russia last year and Raiffeisen also assisted the Russian government in late 2022 with the conscription efforts.

In 2021, Raiffeisen Bank assisted the Belarussian government as well in its effort to violently crackdown on those who dissented to Lukashenka’s regime.

January 8, 2023

On diversification and increased resilience

Every year between December 20 and January 15-ish we change some things around. Some changes are recurrent (such as the Christmas hat on our logo in the videos), some changes are not visible (like the behind-the-scenes clean-ups and upkeep) and some changes are on the policy level and on the way we do things. It is this latter category that this short note is about.

Censorship-resistant

To be fair, over the last 8 years, we had minimal troubles on this front – with the exception of Faceberg. Fortunately, Faceberg’s importance in the milieus we’re interested in has been steadily declining for 4 years in a row now so, overall, there was no serious issue. In fact, our effective reach increased after our already-throttled Faceberg page was finally shitcanned.

With that said, one of the reasons we didn’t have big issues is because we stayed ahead (or sometimes behind) the curve by implementing measures meant to absorb potential blows without compromising on what we need to say. Measures such as:

Moving to Telegram in 2017 (the rest of the world learned either in 2020 or in 2022 that moving to Telegram is a good idea).
Implementing our own IRC server for quick discrete chats in 2015
Big shoutout to the Discord moderation team who’ve been running our Discord server diligently and cleanly since 2018, entering in the 5th year without any major incident and keeping a much-needed balance between shitposting and serious chats
Getting a discrete (but consistent) presence on alt-tech [Gab, MeWe, Bitchute, Odysee]
Opening up this website in 2018 [using partners with a proven trackrecord of standing firmly for freedom of expression in the face of great adversity]
Acquiring a parallel physical infrastructure for backups-of-backups to make sure that if we are taken down, we’d be back within 72 hours
Implementing an internal sharing procedure and the Donors’ Circle in 2020

All of these (and others less visible) have made it very difficult to effectively censor us.

Going forward (with the approval of the Donors’ Circle) we are taking another two steps in the direction of both resilience and censorship-resistant infrastructure. As the Internet (re)Balkanizes, the opportunities present themselves.

As of this year, all of our public files and some of the internal ones shall be distributed using the BitTorrent protocol. This may seem like a step backward technologically (and it may indeed be) but the fact remains that distributing 7+GB files in an efficient manner and cross-platform compatible cannot be done more effectively and cheaper than the torrent protocol.

Sometime in the next 18 months (subjected to the Donors’ Circle opinion and technological constraints) we will try our luck with a semi-open forum. Open in the same way our Discord server is open, but also with reserved sections. The experience with the Discord server is encouraging enough to consider such an option – even though there are multiple reservations and concerns (not least in relation to privacy).

A heterodox approach to tech is the way forward and, just like we were right to switch to Telegram years before everyone else, we will very likely be proven right to set up the infrastructure for the rebalkanization of the Internet before it fully happens (mentally, it already happened).

Financially stable

The Network is not meant to turn a profit but activities costs money. And 2022 was a surprisingly good year in this department. So good that we still have a hard time believing it. In 2021 it could’ve been “blamed” on the exceptionally low-expense year of 2020. But last year exceeded the optimistic expectations. For the first time, there were no significant financial concerns.

We intend to work harder in 2023 to build upon this status quo. This will likely involve some legal changes too, though a lot of factors are beyond our control so no ironclad promises can be made in public. Suffice to say though that with a bit of luck, by 2025 we might be looking back at January 2023 as “late dark ages” in terms of the Network’s abilities to sustain itself financially.

Delegation

Throughout 2022 we managed to delegate more and more tasks and activities away from the core without any noticeable difference in quality. We are very proud for that achievement and for the work done by those who were willing to take on the tasks.

Regardless of financial results in the near future, we intend to delegate even more in order to both increase the output from the core (by freeing up time now still spent on activities that can be delegated) and also to strengthen the Freedom Alternative community. More people than we imagined 6 years ago ended up coming for the videos and staying for the community. And we want to reward that.

The decision-making process is intentionally slow, in accordance with our general philosophy and because oftentimes no policy may indeed be better than a rushed/spontaneous/spur-of-the-moment policy or action. That’s why we roll out new things slowly – much to the annoyance of some.

We know we can’t please everyone and we’re okay with that. We also know that we’re all inherently flawed so the best that can be done is to strive to do better whilst keeping in mind that perfect is the enemy of good.

To all those who’ve been with us through various parts of this magnificent journey, we humbly thank you and we hope you stay with us for new heights.

Let’s explore!

December 14, 2022

On the November drought

Over the course of this past November, three countries were expected to see a wave of right wing success in their upcoming elections. Denmark, Brazil, and the United States, were embroiled in elections of great importance – not so much due to the next four years of government, but for the long term cultural trends they represent.

All three countries saw significant right wing success around 2016, followed by what is now a surprisingly successful pushback from their left wing status quo.

In America, this has been in the form of the disastrous last two years of the Biden administration as well as mediocre results for the right in the Midterms. Mediocre enough that Donald Trump’s future as the GOP’s main presidential candidate has been openly questioned.

In Brazil, a hostile state apparatus sought to quell the flames of support for Bolsonaro and the left has now successfully ousted him during this past election.

And in my home country of Denmark, our left-wing government had successfully taken on the mantle of populism to win the elections back in 2019, only to impose lockdowns and egregious breaches of the Constitution under the pandemic.

During the elections of this past November they not only managed to maintain an almost unchanged number of votes compared to 2019, the social liberal party that forced them to call an election over their continued breaches of the constitution and peoples trust have seen their voter base cut in half.

As a morbidly ironic cherry on top, several of the small villages of northern Jutland that relied heavily on mink farming voted overwhelmingly for the political party that destroyed their way of life.

Despite the large differences in the cultures of these three countries as well as how the reassertions have played out, the right-wingers in all three countries had developed very similar, but equally dangerous narratives on what should have happened;

These narratives all revolve around some form of revolution, wherein the capital P People have realized the tyrannical nature of the left and rise up, and through the Democratic Process push the country back towards Truth, Justice, and Liberty, and render us from corruption and progressive tyranny. It just so happens that it didn’t pan out that way.

The cause of this dissonance between right wing mythology and left wing reality however, is not to be found in some unknown source of leftist competence, or a successful propagandizing of the voters, but in the Right itself.
Specifically the populist savior mythos that the right has capitalized on since the campaign of Donald Trump in 2016.

Here, it is important to make a distinction between populist policies and populist savior mythos. Populist policies are merely whatever form of policies are written with the intent of appealing to the working man. Things like lowering immigration, or removing CRT propaganda from schools are contemporary forms of populist policies from the Right, while raising the minimum wage or giving more power to worker unions are examples of Leftist populist policies.

It should be noted that these policies do not need to actually be beneficial to the working classes, nor that being populist inherently means they’re harmful either. It is simply a label for any policy, good or bad that aims to appeal to the lower classes. The issue here, however is the mythos.

As it has resulted in the cult-like mentality that as long as the correct person is voted into power (Donald Trump being the best known example of this) victory is assured, as well as a distorted view of democracy.

The populist mythology was effective at the time, but was also simplistic and overly black and white. This is nothing new, it is in fact a historical norm for any successful narrative; the problem is that this time around there were no checks and balances within the Right that could mitigate the negative effects of the current party narrative.

This is usually done by having a well established elite that understands the shortcomings of the narrative, and knows which of the newer recruits to select for or filter out of the upper parts of the party hierarchy.
The checks and balances were not present this time around, however, and now the Right has a lot of people believing their own propaganda way too far up in the party.

The results of believing too much in the populist narrative in question have been overly naïve views on not just democracy but a genuine belief that there is a right side of history, that there will be a permanent victory over the forces of evil (the left), and that democracy unhindered and without interference will always move towards the side of the party that is on to the right side of history. At its core this is a surprisingly leftist and revolutionary way of thinking. Combined with a characteristically Protestant Christian form of moral prudence.

Since all actions are filtered through the lens of right vs wrong side of history, even the most benign attempt to persuade public opinion towards the right must be stomped out, with much more extreme prejudice than they’d display to even the most sadistically violent Antifa member, as long as it in any way is perceived as ”rude” or ”indecent” or a ”danger to Our Democracy”

What’s more, the criteria for what is ”immoral” is barely even dictated by anyone on their own side, but more often whatever far left propaganda manages to bubble up through the legacy media. In practice this means the Left can declare any rules of engagement they feel like, and no matter how ludicrous they are, no matter how obvious it is they themselves don’t take said rules seriously, the Right will enforce them upon their own and solely their own with unparalleled religious zeal.

It doesn’t matter that the Right themselves are aware that said propagandists are merely trying to manipulate them, nor does it matter what consequences following said propaganda will bring. As long as it touches their ideological blind spot of recoiling from anything and everything that is not pristine and principled, they will instinctively jump on the opportunity to throw as many spanners in the works of what any sane man would call their party fellows, until they have returned the Right to its state of ”principled conservatism on the side of democracy”. Which almost always is identical to a state of stagnant ineptitude.

Much of the Right’s current miserable situation is as a direct result of this segment. And as much as I hope dearly that at least some of these people will realize how wrong they were in following the ”will of the people”, now that the populace is kissing the hand of what they perceive as totalitarians on the wrong side of history, I honestly fear they’re too emotionally invested in their ideological framing for anything to convince them.

While it is impossible to have a political party without these people – just as it is impossible to be without any other form of narrative in an organization, too many of them have moved far too near the core of the organized right in far too many western countries. If the Right wants to regain its footing, it is to push it’s populist tendencies back out into the peripheries and ensure it’s core is more in tune with reality.

If the right instead chooses to preserve its delusional aspirations of sainthood it will experience the same filtering out and discarding at the hands of cruel nature as any other entities that proved unfit for their environment throughout life’s evolution on this earth.

November 16, 2022November 16, 2022

Poland is not yet lost

Last Friday, November 11, marked the 104th anniversary of the Independence of Poland. As customary for over a decade now, the patriots held the Independence March from Rondo Dmowskiego to the National Stadium in Warsaw.
What made this one special was that it’s one held while war is still going on very close to Polish borders and 4 days later a stray missile was going to hit inside Polish territory.

We expected a tensed situation and so we took a quick trip with some of our younger members, thinking it would be a good opportunity to learn a bit more about the Polish ethos and the lying media, as well as to catch up with some of the older friends of the Sofa. And we hit jackpot on all three.

Rondo Dmowskiego, at the start of the Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022

The lying media

Here’s how Reuters (a source still considered trustworthy by far too many) decided to describe the event:

Thousands of people gathered in Warsaw on Friday for an annual march organised by Poland’s far-right to mark Independence Day, with a handful carrying white supremacist or anti-gay banners and firing off red flares.

Marchers, including families with children as well as representatives of far-right groups, waved white and red Polish flags and chanted “God, Honour, Homeland” as they walked through central Warsaw amid a heavy police presence.

The parts marked in red are, essentially, lies. And, since the authors of the Reuters article are Polish, we will go ahead and say these lies are intentional, premeditated and broadcast in bad faith for a political agenda.

On al. Jerozolimskie, during the Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022

”Thousands”

There were “thousands” of people, alright. After all, 200,000 and 2000 both qualify as “thousands” even though the attendance at the Independence March was much closer to the former, rather than the latter.

This is a consistent pattern with illegitimate media: Normal people’s civic manifestations are downplayed (when they can’t outright be ignored) while the far-Left’s agitation is intentionally overplayed. For example, click this link to see how Reuters covered an equally big protest back in 2020 against a court ruling concerning abortion. Please notice that at the height of the panic porn regarding the Wuhan Flu, suddenly none of that mattered when it was leftists protesting for ~~the right to murder babies~~ abortion. And now please compare how Reuters covered the Independence March that took place less than two weeks after the Leftists’ protest.

”Far right”

Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022

It is a constant smear by Western media to paint anyone to the Right of the unelected, unaccountable and illegitimate Brussels bureaucrats as ‘far right’ – but it is particularly egregious when this is applied to both the organizers and the attendants of the Polish Independence March.

Like every year, the march featured the signage of Polska Walcząca (Poland uprising/Poland Fighting) – which is the oldest antifascist organization in the world. When posh Western liberals were still implementing the exact same policies as the failed Austrian painter turned German dictator, the Polish people were already organizing the resistance. Only to now have the same Western liberals come in to smear them. The fact that Polish people aren’t even harsher against West-Europe in particular is a testament of Poland’s goodwill – albeit unearned when it comes to continental west-Europe.

Like every year, the march was very explicit in its opposition to international-socialism, national-socialism, LGBT-ist ideology, Russian imperialism, Putinism, Islamism and generally all forms of totalitarian ideology. Apparently, this is ‘far right’ every year. Likely its because the Polish people oppose the West’s preferred forms of totalitarianism too, not just those that are fancy to oppose.

Poland doesn’t have genderist grooming scandals in its schools or Islamist attacks on its streets precisely because it is successfully opposing these forms of totalitarianism as well.

Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022 Banner reads: “Kyiv and Warsaw – common cause”

With that said, it is true that a legit far right contingent was present at the march and, just like in previous years, it constituted less than 5% of the overall huge march. After all, when you gather 200,000 people, it is effectively impossible not to also have some more… let’s say colorful elements showing up too.

It is worth noting, though, that the legit far right elements (or at least those willing to openly display far right symbolism) are also in full support of Ukraine – unlike the so-called far-right in the West which is always busy doing inconspicuous Putinist shilling or outright approving, quite openly so, Russia’s imperialist and expansionist agenda.

Say what you want about the ‘far right’ in Poland, but at the very least they’re not cucking for Russia nor are they in the business of being fooled by Dugin’s ramblings. Everyone would be better off if their ‘far right’ would be like this.

As for the ‘far right’ organizing… this is such a bald-faced lie that’s hardly worth debunking. The public is made to believe that the ‘far right’ in Poland is at the same time extremist but also so lovely that children, old people (who’ve seen two or three forms of totalitarianism in their lifetimes) and upper-middle class young people all come in enthusiastically at a far-right event. Yeah… right.

In reality, the Independence March this year was (just like every year) an expression of unity and strength of the Polish people in face of aggression. Even lefties attended the march (at least not the insane ones, who end up writing for Reuters).

It should be noted that on the issue of Ukraine, there was also some diversity of thought. While the overwhelming majority do support the Ukrainian war effort, a few don’t – and made their voices heard at the march as well.

Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022 Banner reads: “Not our war. Stop the Ukrainization of Poland”

While it is not our place to say what Poles should or shouldn’t support, it is worth mentioning that supporting Ukraine in this conflict makes impeccable geopolitical sense for Poland’s strategic national interests – especially considering that the price in human lives low (though unfortunately non-zero).

With that said, one should also expect some backlash, particularly in Poland – a country that not only isn’t a big fan of mass migration, but a country which also spent the most resources in all of Europe to helping Ukrainians fleeing war. At least 3.2 million Ukrainians remain in the country right now (2 million refugees and 1.2 million migrant workers, most of the latter predating the onset of the war). By the end of 2022, Poland will have spent $8.3 billion on housing, health and other services for Ukrainians, the highest in Europe. So in this context (and an inflation rate at about 20%), some grumbling is to be expected.

Americans are furious at an inflation rate of 8% and immigration levels far lower per capita than Poland. So a bit of perspective is in order before classifying anyone fatigued as a Putinist.

Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022, Warsaw Putin hanged symbolically by the Poniatowskiego Bridge

“Amid heavy police presence”

The independence march is, by far, the most peaceful yearly manifestation in its category (150,000 people or more every year) so the adding of the phrase “amid heavy police presence” by the Western media’s reporting is not only a factual lie (see video at the beginning of the video) but also a sneaky trick to paint a different image in the minds of the readers than what reality looked like.

Yes, of course there was some law enforcement – just like at any protest/manifestation anywhere on Earth. But most of it was concentrated in the Old Town, around government buildings (given that both the President and the Prime Minister held public speeches before the march) – while the march itself was, just like in previous years except 2020, free of any interference by law enforcement.

One caveat though: there was heavy police presence on the street that goes to the Russian Embassy that is orthogonal to the main street that the march ran on. Such action by the police is quite understandable, given that the Russian Embassy and Russian diplomats have been constantly under various non-lethal attacks by civilians. If as little as 2% of the crowd decided to take a detour to the Russian Embassy, the situation could’ve ended up quite badly, given the understandable “love” of the Polish people for the Russian State.

Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022, Warsaw. On the Poniatowskiego Bridge with the scary red flares

The whining about the red flares (which is barely mentioned in local media) is part of the wider safetyist anti-fun nanny-statist mentality of the contemporary Left. Anything that’s fun and involves fire is reflexively opposed by the so-called liberals.

To a contemporary leftist, flares should be outright banned or at the very least so heavily regulated that only big corporations that are friends of the Party can afford the monstrous cost of compliance to do anything fun (cost which would, of course, then be passed down to regular people to then be taxed by the State).

To us, it’s a breath of fresh air and, yes, an expression of freedom. We gladly helped the teenagers along the way who asked us to take pictures or video with them doing fun stuff with the flares.

It was also great to witness the disorganized spontaneously-ordered spectacle of fireworks, firecrackers and flares – all fired by regular people (from 10 year olds to 80 year olds) as another facet of the joy to be living in a country that takes its sovereignty seriously.

A word on politics

The media only covered the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (the ruling party in Poland) versus the EU-backed Left angle. But this is not the only angle. And, when it comes to this march and national(ist) politics, it’s not even a relevant angle to begin with.

Tensions between the mainstream Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS) and the non-leftist groups that are not part of the ruling coalition have been growing over the last 3 years. And growing faster since the escalation of the war in Ukraine.

The nationalist and other non-leftist groups that traditionally supported PiS or at the very least didn’t oppose PiS have shifted gears a little bit. And some of them quite a lot.

Whether it’s intentional or not, or whether it’s just a cynical power play or they’re Kremlin stooges – the fact remains that a loud minority of self-identified conservatives are no longer busy opposing the sources of Evil in the country (the EU, Russia and the far-Left) but busy opposing PiS while remaining silent on other issues – a phenomenon known as punching right or punching to your immediate left.

Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022, Warsaw. On the Poniatowskiego Bridge. Banner by Konfederacja Korony Polskiej (Confederation of the Polish Crown). It reads: “Stop the Ukrainization of Poland”

Perhaps the biggest exponent of this is the KKP (Confederation of the Polish Crown), a far-right party that advocates the abolition of the Republic and a return to Monarchy, in addition to ”shaping the social life based on the principles of Latin civilization.”

The KKP is in an alliance with the more known Konfederacija, namely the libertarian-conservative Konfederacja Odnowy Rzeczypospolitej Wolność i Nadzieja (Confederation for the Renewal of the Republic Liberty and Hope) – routinely abbreviated as KORWiN and founded by… well… Janusz Korwin Mikke.

While Korwin-Mikke himself and the party stayed away from such messaging, the suspicions of him being a Kremlin stooge have only increased in the last 3 years – especially given that both himself and the alliance largely has become more noticeably anti-PiS rather than pro-conservative and anti-Left.

While these tensions were not necessarily visible during the march – as the KKP activists marched side by side with people and groups sporting pro-Ukraine signs, Ukrainian flags or anti-Putin messages – the political tensions in society are on the rise.

Since Poland doesn’t have a two-party system, these tensions don’t necessarily help the Left. There are 14 stand-alone political parties in the Parliament, plus two coalitions (a centrist one of two parties and a right-wing one of 4 parties). But these tensions could lead to a more fragmented Parliament (Bulgaria or Israel-style) come 2023, thus making coalition building much more complicated.

So,… yeah. Poland’s not yet lost. And it is forging its own path to go through this current crisis. Unlike others who talk about resilience, the Polish history is wholly about a resilient people so, if there’s anyone we’d bet to pull this off, it is Poland.

Honor i Ojczyzna!

November 6, 2022November 6, 2022

What next after flattening the groomers

Over the last 12 months, the issue of (trans)genderist ideology being shoved down the throats of children blew up and will likely influence the upcoming Midterms positively.

Needless to say, it isn’t a new topic. Here we’ve been discussing it for years. Because that’s why people come to the Sofa – to learn the news from the future.

Watch videos:
46 year-old dude is a 6 yo girl
Norway’s intellectuals: Transchildren “need” legal recognition
Progressive transgenderism: Sex toys for 3 year olds
Carnival cancelled because the kids dressed ”gender stereotypically”
“No Gender December” – The UN’s latest cause in Australia

So considering that now even left-wing mainstream figures sound on this issue almost exactly as the Sofa sounded over 7 years ago, suffice to say that the issue is now past the narrative curve’s third inflection point and, as such, it no longer requires the attention of cognizant political actors – such as this esteemed audience.

Put it simply: The issue will be solved regardless of whether we put in any effort from now on. The alliances are set, the plebs are awoken, the money is already there for the campaigns and momentum is also present. So, best we can do is make sure they don’t blow it (never underestimate good people’s ability to fuck things up).

So what we should be thinking now is the next step. What happens after this? The moment of “after” isn’t far away at all. Just a few days ago Florida banned puberty blockers and the whole “therapy” aimed at castrating and mutilating children. Most countries in Europe have either already did this or are considering similar policies. Most of the US will follow suit in the next 3 to 5 years. It’s a done deal. So… what’s next?

Tantalizing both sides

Once the children issue is solved (for which near-universal agreement exists), the issue will naturally gravitate towards adults. What to do with so-called “transgender” adults?

The current alliance between normal people, religious freaks, far-Left feminists and other members of the C-set may or may not hold. Those more libertarian will be tempted to abandon the issue once the children side of the story is solved. This will necessarily increase the power within the remaining alliance of the recently-acquired far-Left feminists (so-called “TERFs”). And their argument is a powerful one: Protect single sex spaces!

Now, the message itself is not prima faciae wrong or morally reprehensible. The problem is that, in practice, this means protect women’s and only women’s single sex spaces. And THAT, I contend, is morally reprehensible.

The other “side” isn’t/won’t be any better: They will claim that adults can “self identify” as whatever they want and disagreeing is discrimination which is allegedly a bad thing (it isn’t).

What I suggest is that we tantalize both sides (the English language doesn’t have a perfect equivalent for a băga bățul prin gard).

We tantalize the TERFs (alongside the well-meaning people who actually buy into the inherently misandrist message that women’s single sex spaces are for women’s safety – which is a deeply hateful message if you think about it) by imposing conditions: You want our help? Great! Right after we get codified in law the exclusive right of both men and women to single-sex spaces.

We tantalize the other side by over-enthusiastically supporting their bid(s). And by that I mean saying the quiet part loud: The transgender agenda as applied to adults will destroy women’s sports (which is not a bad thing, given that women’s “professional” sports is already entirely subsidized by men and is generally of no value to the community). This agenda will also ruin all sex-specific policies (which is objectively a good thing) when it comes to “affirmative action”, “all-women shortlists” (in politics) and other similarly destructive, illiberal, immoral and inherently misandristic policies that are plaguing our societies.

Why?

Ultimately, we have to admit we don’t really have a dog in this fight. Whichever side wins, it brings some positive and some negative things with it. So the best we can do (and, I argue, should do) is to try to influence the final position(s) of both sides in such a way that we get as much as possible out from this conflict.

If the “TERF side” wins with our amendments as well – we get an important step in the right direction when it comes to freedom of association. The very idea that in most countries of Europe you can’t run an all-male OR all-female club/business/NGO/school/etc is bonkers and illiberal in and of itself. Freedom of association also means freedom not to associate. And, as politically incorrect as that may sound, yes, this includes the freedom to refuse to associate with the opposite sex sometimes.

I’m not going to get now into the benefits of that. The benefits of single-sex schools are well known. Not to mention the benefits to the mental health of both teenage girls and especially teenage boys of having a place to go to where one is not subjected to the inherent weirdness of the opposite sex.

Today we are at a time and place where all-male spaces are either outright banned or heavily shamed into oblivion. There’s a reason the phrase “sausage fest” has an inherently negative connotation and it is also much more widely known that its equivalent – fanny fest.

What I’m arguing is that instead of fighting to get “fanny fest” down to the same negative connotation, we should instead fight to abolish both terms. There is nothing inherently wrong with events/places where most or all participants are of one sex. Quite the opposite: oftentimes it’s very healthy.

The downside of this route is that we’re not getting rid of feminist harpies this round either.

If the progressive/gender abolitionist side wins, we get, progressively, the destruction of all women-only policies, render “affirmative action” useless and, bonus, our societies end up saving up on some money too.

Just as I’m typing this, the Women’s EHF EURO 2022 is taking place in Slovenia, North Macedonia and Montenegro. A handball tournament that very few care about, but for which the governments of these (already poor) countries paid a fuckton of money that they’ll never see back – because Women’s Handball is nowhere near as interesting as Men’s Handball. Just like in other sports, a 3-rd tier division match between semi-pro men’s handball teams is far more competitive and attractive than even the grand final of Women’s EURO.

So, if the progressive side wins, all of that goes out of the window. Slower, or faster – but out it goes. It’s the natural/logical conclusion.

The downside of this is that it actively harms women without benefiting men. But is it really a downside?

Women allowed feminist harpies to protest in their names, for decades, for nothing less than the legal abolition of male-only spaces. So why should we care that, if in this dispute the “progressive”side wins, it would effectively do the same to female-only spaces? Welp,… I will need to be convinced to give a damn. I don’t actively want to destroy women-only spaces – but I honestly dgaf if they end up being destroyed because of this conflict.

The point being this: We cannot go on for much longer with the status quo – where single-sex rights de facto only exist for women. Whichever way this conflict goes – either by abolishing single-sex rights altogether or by reverting to saner standards – will still be a better position than the current one.

Of course, ideally, both sides should win and lose at the same time. Ideally, we should restore much of the freedom of association lost on the altar of feminism and progressivism and we also should get rid of affirmative action (of all kinds), get rid of feminist harpies and all the rest of the single-sex (read: women-only) programmes that exist solely on the basis of theft of resources from men and redistributed to women for no benefit whatsoever for the community as a whole.

But, we don’t live in an ideal world. So, the best we can do is to try to influence the position(s) of both sides in such a way that minimizes harm and maximizes the steps in the right direction.

That’s it for now. I haven’t yet made up my mind on the strategy – so I am all ears on a different strategy. Now it’s your turn to convince me that I’m wrong. Through the usual channels, of course.

Cheers!

October 31, 2022October 31, 2022

Pandemic Amnesty? Not without conditions

Dear Branch Covidians,

In the last day of October, the far-Left propaganda and Regime shilling outlet The Atlantic published an astonishingly tone-deaf piece titled Let’s declare a pandemic amnesty.

As per the article itself, our response simple: NO. And by that we mean HELL NO!

With that said, however, we are open to discussion about a pandemic amnesty. We have no interest in holding a grudge forever. Unlike the Branch Covidians – who never stopped with their creepy and dystopian talk of “the new normal” – we have no intention of inflicting a revanchard agenda upon them forever.

But, we’re also not interested in unconditional amnsety. Justice needs to be served. Forgiveness can only come after punishment has been doled out, contrition has been shown and apologies have been asked. Not a second earlier.

So here are the Sofa’s conditions for amnesty both at an individual and collective level:

Get fired and don’t work anywhere for 24 months (work for free is an acceptable option) and live on savings. No welfare either. In the case of medical profession, the period must be a minimum of 48 months because of the inherent Evil of that profession
Pay an amount equivalent to 8 months of the Branch Covidian’s current income plus 20% plus all of the bank/transfer fees to a reparations fund
Additionally, pay out of pocket reparations to all those you personally harmed, but no more than the equivalent of 16 months of your current income. Subjected to the private arbitration of a panel of your peers – two normal people and one Branch Covidian
Post public heartfelt apologies and, where applicable, do a TV tour as well
If applicable, publicly denounce your political party’s Covid19 policies and leadership and work hard to remove them from politics altogether
You are automatically signed up as a volunteer for all trials of mRNA-based medical products, in addition to mandatory 4 Moderna shots per year for 10 years
No right to vote for 10 years
Make amends by amplifying those who were right about Covid19 and purposefully making space for them explicitly to the detriment of those who were wrong
If applicable, denounce those above you and collaborate to any investigation that can lead to jailing, firing or fining of those above you (applicable for anyone working in “public health”, education, medicine, multinational corporations, any government agency and other institutions at fault for the situation)
Publicly work, for at least two years, to get “public health” recognized as an illegitimate profession which thus enjoys undue and illegitimate authority

Why is this necessary

Of course, at an individual level, especially with the rank and file, we are open to further negotiations (except for the reparations fund – that’s a must). But without personal punishment equivalent to the harm(s) inflicted, this whole madness will happen again.

You can’t just come out and say “Ooops, my bad!” after two years of being consistently wrong and after two years of demonizing, dehumanizing and abusing those who were correct.

And most certainly you cannot, as Prof. Emily Oster does in The Atlantic, come out and say that those of us who were entirely correct all along were simply “lucky”. No, we weren’t lucky. You can be lucky once. Maybe twice. After the third time in a row of being correct, it’s no longer coincidence or luck.

You also cannot come out and say that despite being entirely wrong about everything, it’s all excusable because it was done with good intentions. Mao Zedong also had good intentions. We’re not interested in your “good intentions”. The policies you supported amounted to illiberal, illegal, useless and immoral abuses against basic civil liberties and human rights. That cannot and will not be forgiven by a simple ”oops!” Nor will it be waved away under the excuse that the abusers had the best intentions in mind. With all due respect, fuck your best intentions! Sideways!

If these policies had been advocated and implemented by a nominally Right Wing elite, you would be asking for public prosecutions. So you will forgive us for asking roughly the same.

You also cannot expect anyone to forgive so easily after your side closed public parks, filled skate parks with sand to prevent teenagers from having fun, called children killers (this happened in Germany, Denmark, Romania and other countries), closed churches, implemented policies that drove children literally insane (who knew that solitary confinement is torture, am I right?) and, perhaps the most unforgivable, advocated for the death through starvation of those who disagree with you (because that’s exactly what “workplace mandates” meant in practice).

It shows a tremendous sense of entitlement (and no contrition whatsoever) to simply expect to be forgiven and granted amnesty after all of this.

Your policies led to inflation, job losses, a spike in unnecessary cardiopathies, loss of careers, suicides, severe deepening of pre-existent mental health problems (in addition to creating new ones), learning losses, crime increases that we’ll all have to grapple with for decades to come (we have no idea how many new serial killers are out there and we’ll only learn the hard way over the years to come) and a whole plethora of social and economic troubles that we can’t even properly assess yet for they are yet to manifest themselves.

And this is in addition to the open celebration of the deaths of those who disagreed with you, the open instigation(s) to genocide against those who disagree with you and the destruction of important events of life (baptism, weddings and funerals).

All of this was for nothing. And you were told, a quintillion times, that you are wrong. You refused to listen. You insisted you know better.

The excuse that you didn’t know better may work for March of 2020. Maybe for April 2020. Some more charitable people (certainly not us!) may even be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt for the whole of 2020. But under no circumstances is your side deserving of anything other than punishment and scorn for the brutal insanity you personally helped implement in 2021 and early 2022.

There is no way we will forgive that easily without proper punishment being doled out.

Kathleen Hochul, the presumptive frontrunner for the gubernatorial race in New York outright said she would do the exact same sanitary fascism allover again. Kansas governor stated she has absolutely nothing to apologize for the atrocious, illiberal, illegal and illegitimate way she supposedly ”managed” the Wuhan Flu.

With very, very few exceptions, virtually nobody from your side even apologized. So, under these conditions, we have no intention of discussing amnesty unless it is in the terms we laid out above.

Until an amnesty is reached, as far as we are concerned, we continue to be at war with your side. All out war, to be more precise.

Anything is fair game: Your career, you as a person, your family, your children, your business, your finances, your hobby/ies – anything you hold dear. If it is legal for us to attack, we will attack without any regards on how this makes you feel. Until you yield to our demands. Because our demands are just and rightful and your position is illiberal, illegitimate, morally reprehensible and downright Evil.

There is a time and place for amnesty. That time has not come yet. It is up to you when that happens.

Kind regards,
The Sofa.

September 17, 2022September 17, 2022

The reckoning is here – World Sofa Report – Episode 32

Audio version: https://s.go.ro/j3x6z65a [Download 450MB]

This show survived long enough to catch the commencement of reckoning on several topics.

So… the reckoning is here for all the campus violence flamed by the far-Left and entertained by the Academia. It is here for all those who supported school closures now finding themselves in deep trouble (although not enough trouble in our view). It is here for all the politicians and pundits who supported extremist and anti-scientific policies that led to children being mutilated, mentally impaired and with a myriad of long-term issues that can’t even be assessed, yet.

Reckoning is here for Joe Biden as well – as railroad workers may end up striking, thus b0rking the supply chain even more, an issue entirely under the control of the federal government, and an issue that did not exist under Obama and Trump.

Reckoning is slowly approaching for Putin as well. Dissent was virtually non-existent until 10 days ago. Now it’s elected officials and even federal TV stations. And it’s only going to get worse.

Reckoning is seeping in for Европейски съюз in general and for Germany in particular. Because for all the belly-aching about Poland and other Intermarium countries – the Russophilia in Europe has had its capital in Berlin.

Reckoning is coming in Sweden as well. Much to the mainstream’s shock (but to the shock of exactly nobody who was following the Swedish society) the Sweden Democrats came in second in the election and a new bourgeois government is likely to be formed – and a government that will explicitly adopt immigration and integration policies that were “far right”, censored from discussion and unthinkable merely 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, in France, the underground institutions of the Right are finally yielding results after 18 years of work – showing a way for dissidents in other countries on how to advance.

Reckoning is coming in Armenia as well. Nobody is coming to its aid and the conflict reached a dead-end for Pashinyan – one of the few politicians that was simultaneously the darling of both the West and of the Kremlin. Ooops! Seems like playing both sides has limits.

Meanwhile, theft, corruption and downright stupidity is creating energy woes in Africa – particularly Nigeria and the South African Republic. All while in Ethiopia, the efforts to maintain ceasefires in Tigray continue.

Energy woes is exactly what India and Japan do not want to have. So both countries are pouring enormous amounts of money in nuclear and coal. Indians are a bit more honest while the Japanese still try to sweeten the deal by mentioning the nonsensical “decarbonization” claptrap – all while enhancing coal and setting the stage for SMRs and new big reactors.

Chinese biopharmaceutical stocks took a slump after US sanctions on intellectual property kicked in, all while the citizens in Uyguristan enter their 6th week of lockdown and a biosecurity totalitarian state.

Reckoning is coming in Oceania as well. Even with removing all of the pandemic theater, New Zealand’s children still aren’t coming back to school. The government expects 70% of children to come back to school in the next four years. All while neuropsychiatric issues continue to mount amongst the country’s minors.

Food prices are way up in NZ, even though it’s a country with a top-tier agricultural sector; and in Australia a “mortgage time bomb” is ticking – as the central bank called it.

Reckoning is coming for everyone. For many, it is already here.

These, and other news and sub-threads, are explored in great detail in the longest episode of the series. The music breaks will also bring exclusive footage from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. We thought that we’d go down with a bang since this will also be the last one in this format. We hope you enjoyed this version of traveling through the whole world’s (geo)politics.

Links:

News #1 – https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/us/oberlin-bakery-lawsuit.html

News #2 – https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/07/democrats-education-republicans-covid/

School is for everyone – https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/opinion/us-school-history.html

News #3 – https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kansas-gov-laura-kelly-makes-absolutely-no-apologies-closing-schools-covid-19-pandemic

News #4 – https://www.foxnews.com/us/montana-permanently-blocks-residents-changing-gender-birth-certificates

News #5 – https://www.denver7.com/news/contact-denver7/thousands-of-xcel-customers-locked-out-of-thermostats-during-energy-emergency

News #6 – https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-administration-avert-railroad-strike-what-to-know/

Music break #1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy27Cge_5Y4

News #7 – https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/09/12/russian-city-deputies-petition-for-putin-resignation-a78768

In isolated Russia, a tale of two economies: https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-6months-russia-cars-idCAKBN2PV08Q

Music break #2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Srmw76e67c4