I am uncomfortable with the idea of being held responsible for them circulating this data - if they did not illegally obtain it, can it be said to be the case that they are violating rights by presenting it…? Unless, of course, they believed they were functioning passwords and it was part of a further operation to continue using the information to breach the company’s data.

It could potentially be seen simply as verification of some element of a news story - like how we have seen the publication of names / email addresses / passwords etc. of Nazi websites be leaked, often after the sites have been taken down, simply as part of verifying that the site was legit taken down, the site was populated by actual people, etc.

I also do not think it is good to take down “far right” news media that isn’t even really far right. OAN, Newsmax, etc., are certainly conservative, but what would we really be even doing if we were to take down mid-stream conservative Trumpist outlets…? Driving more people towards news sites like Unz and platforms like Gab. Make it impossible for them to have larger networks in the free marketplace of ideas, and then you drive them into the arms of smaller & more radical networks.

I am not a Leftist, but I wouldn’t think of this as a leftist W unless your idea of a W is serving the short-term interests of the DNC.

Ummm… but what about all the men in the bible with many wives. There was no one man one wife thing in almost the entire Bible. Almost all of the people who are touted to be amazing examples of God’s peopel… were polygamists… and since that wasn’t enough, they would have the concubines on the side. Point that out and they run away.

There’s several points in the Gospel where Christ points at a departure from this though, right, like in Matthew 19 and Matthew 22, but the most poignant passage is 1 Corinthians 7:

2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 I say this as a concession, not as a command. 7 I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.

8 Now to the unmarried[a] and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. 9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

The purpose of getting married is the relief of sexual lust - and since we are talking about just relieving it, the idea of having multiple wives or concubines on the side is a perversion of this. We can even look at the story of King David and Bathsheba as an example of why you shouldn’t covet moaaarr wamen. It has been pointed out before that, like, adultery and lust are so powerful and pertinent that 2 of the 10 commandments are about it…

So i would say that one of the clarifications that exist, and one of the new usherings in of Christianity, is strict monogamy, and also praise for monasticism…

Conservatism, at its core, has always been a purely reactionary opposition to liberal and progressive politics. In the modern era, it has felt the need to wrap itself in something resembling a positive ideology which presents thinly falsifiable policy positions, regardless of how narrow and mutable those ideological boundaries might be.

Well, there’s two major divides within conservatism as it plays out today, right?

Classical liberalism, we can call one, and then populist conservatism…

Classical liberal Republicans/Libertarians are highly principled and highly progressive with very positive, engaging values - think about these old guys like Paul Findley who were fundamentally isolationist, anti-war, pro-Palestine conservatives, that truly believed in Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty and that the key to bettering humans is through decentralization of power, minimal government, and human freedom.

And then there is conservatism that goes back to, like, tradition or populism.

Of course, these things often combine, but I think you need to treat conservatism with a lot of nuance because otherwise you are just dismantling a strawman.

Because until recently, abject, reactionary nihilism has been seen as a losing position.

Revolutionary nihilism is how radical liberalism was portrayed by Dostoevsky in the Devils - a great book - and it does make sense, because we see at its root that some of these radical movements actually were about reinventing all of society around totally new principles and annihilating what has hitherto been normalized in Western civilization…

Yes, there is like the Nietzschean reactionaries who want to build the New Man, but yeah, it’s still a losing position. I do not even think that guys like BAP are even on that level - like some of the hardcore neopagan LARP squad certainly envisions a completely new basis to muh Western civilization. But it’s not like Varg Vikernes is a viable option - in spite of how wildly popular Black Metal became after hipsters getting into blackgaze and shit after ironic Pitchfork album reviews, not even one of the most seminal figures in the genre can be anything much more than a joke for having these beliefs.

I think one of the problems we have is the paranoia about this stuff - you act as if the right is really some monster that is rising to swallow the country in a wave of Fascism, but it’s not the right who are anywhere near successfully removing their opponents from ballots.