Encrypted War Declarations
Pointing out a common type of newspeak
A political commentator calls for the repeal of affirmative action laws. The media calls him racist. His bank account is deleted along with his social media.
A rapper says that he thinks Jews are disproportionately overrepresented in positions of power. The ADL and Ari Emmanuel call him an anti-semite. His bank account and Instagram are deleted and he loses several business deals.
An astronomer claims that the Earth revolves around the Sun. The government calls him a heretic. His works are banned and he is placed under house arrest.
A nerd posts an HBD thread on a rationalist forum. The most frequent posters call him a crank and a troll. His account is banned and his thread is locked.
An outer Party member questions whether we’ve always been at war with Eastasia. An inner Party member accuses him of being a counter-revolutionary working for Goldstein. The Thought Police arrest the outer Party member and kill him.
A Wikipedia editor removes woke activism from an article on eugenics. The activists accuse him of racist activism, violating viewpoint neutrality. He his banned from editing Wikipedia.
What do each of these instances have in common? In each case, someone declares war on their adversary in dishonest terms. Instead of saying “so-and-so did X, and therefore I will do Y to so-and-so or else someone else must do Y to so-and-so or I will do Y to them,” they lie and obscure and claim so-and-so to be [slur word]. Each slur word has the feature that low information imagine some clownish evil when they hear the word. A racist wants to enslave black people. An anti-semite wants to do another Holocaust. A heretic worships Satan and sacrifices children to him. A troll doesn’t actually believe anything he says and just wants to piss off his victims. A counter-revolutionary wants to murder Big Brother and install oppressive capitalism. A non-neutral activist wants to turn Wikipedia into a political platform, instead of letting it be an objective, neutral encyclopedia.
The reality, of course, is that, in their usages above, a racist is actually someone who opposes affirmative action, i.e. 74% of the population. An anti-semite is actually someone who noticed a basic statistic about the ethnic makeup of the Patriciate. A heretic is actually someone who noticed a basic fact about the solar system. A troll is actually someone who noticed a basic fact about race and genetics. A counter-revolutionary is actually someone who noticed that Oceania was at war with Eurasia yesterday. A racism activist is actually someone who opposes woke activism in favor of neutrality and factualism.
How would it sound to tell the truth? “Kanye West noticed a basic statistic about Jewish media involvement. I demand that his bank account be deleted and he be cut off from his business deals. If these things do not happen, there will be material consequences. Sincerely, Ari Emmanuel.” This sounds horrible. This might motivate low-information, low attention bystanders to attack Ari Emmanuel. Ari Emmanuel doesn’t want his exercise of marginal influence, his expenditure of credit counteracted by another force — he wants bystanders to support him or stay away. Therefore, Kanye West is an “anti-Semite.” You were taught in school that an anti-Semite wants to kill all Jewish people. Kanye West doesn’t want to kill all Jewish people? You sound like an anti-Semite — besides, he’s pointing out Nazi canards, the exact same hate-facts that Adolf Hitler used to do the Holocaust with. And, poor me, I’m just a victim here! I leave figuring out what sorts of things I can do if my slur isn’t heeded as an exercise for the reader — and only a reader in the right position will complete this exercise. Bystanders won’t see it and therefore might not realize that this is a declaration of war — an encrypted declaration of war. Or rather, it’s steganography, the technique of hiding secret data within an ordinary, non-secret, file or message in order to avoid detection. But it can also be thought of as code — the slur words are code words.
Silence is dangerous. It allows forms of hatred and racism, including anti-Semitism, to spread and become normalised. It coarsens and degrades our society and country.
This wasn’t just one tweet. Shortly before his ugly return to Twitter, West was locked out of his Instagram account for an anti-Semitic post. And now Vice has obtained unaired footage from West’s interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox of West “making bigoted statements about Jewish people”.
We know that hatred is on the rise and is surfacing in troubling ways — from public figures of all kinds. In just the past few weeks, both LA City Council member Nury Martinez and Alabama Senator and former college football coach Tommy Tuberville were exposed for their deeply offensive, racist remarks.
West is not just any person — he is a pop culture icon with millions of fans around the world. And among them are young people whose views are still being formed.
This is why it is necessary for all of us to speak out. Hatred and anti-Semitism should have no place in our society, no matter how much money is at stake. According to the Anti-Defamation League(opens a new window), anti-Semitic incidents in the US were up 34 per cent in 2021 over the previous year.
This doesn’t mean what it apparently means. This isn’t actually some poor oppressed Jewish person begging people to take action against “hatred and anti-semitism.” The secret code encrypted in this letter is, “I am Ari Emmanuel. I am extremely privileged and have the power to have my voice be heard. I am privileged enough to publish this dumb letter and have it be heard by millions. If you do business with Kanye West, I will use my vast wealth and connections to punish you. You will be dead to me and my friends. Kanye West made the mistake of saying a thing about my race on Twitter. Don’t be like him.”
But the rubes aren’t privy to the real meaning of the text. They only see the formal meaning. They stand by. Only those in the know, whether they be other powerful people, or crazy exousiologists, see the real meaning of the text. They can decrypt the encrypted war declaration. The war declaration is encrypted, because not being encrypted would greatly harm its efficacy.