For Giant Gio As long-time followers of mine will know, I am a lifelong aficionado of pro-wrestling, especially of the 1980s and 1990s. However, my fandom does not extend far into the 2000s, I am much more likely to go back to the 1970s than range forwards to the modern era, and there is a very good reason for that: the death of kayfabe. As almost everyone knows, pro-wrestling isn’t ‘real’, by which I mean the participants are not really fighting each other and the outcomes of matches are predetermined; in some cases, whole matches are scripted ahead of time. In wrestling parlance this is known as a ‘work’, the wrestlers – or ‘workers’ – cooperate in creating the illusion of a real match and in keeping the fans invested in the outcome. Fans who do not know that wrestling is ‘worked’ are called ‘marks’, this is old carny terminology from the days when wrestling was a side show on travelling carnivals. Back then, the pro-wrestler would challenge anyone in the crowd to face him and some brave volunteer would put their hand up. Only the volunteer was secretly another worker, and hence the crowd were literally ‘marks’ for this ruse. Over the years, the volunteer element was dropped, and promoters would instead put on marquee matches of star wrestlers and eventually whole cards. The maintenance of the illusion that wrestling was real was called ‘kayfabe’ and wrestling promoters and their workers would go to great lengths to ‘protect the business’. Pro-wrestling matches were typically worked between babyfaces and heels, or if you prefer heroes and villains. On television, announcers would use euphemisms such as ‘fan favourites’ and ‘rulebreakers’. Protecting the business was taken so seriously that babyfaces and heels had to keep to separate locker-rooms and were not allowed to be seen to socialise in public. Workers would also go to other lengths to protect the business, for example, by getting into bar fights with any punks who dared suggest that wrestling was fake. The opposite of a ‘work’ in wrestling is a ‘shoot’. A shoot is anything ‘real’ and ‘unscripted’. The workers who would takedown real-life punks were known as ‘shooters’; such workers were hard men in real life and promoters would also occasionally use them to enforce locker-room discipline. Famously, the young Hulk Hogan had his leg broken by Hiro Matsuda, an enforcer for the legendary Florida promoter, Eddie Graham. If you watched WWF pro-wrestling in the 1980s, you might remember a Polynesian wrestler called Haku, he was later known as Meng in WCW. He was a shooter who beat up many a punk in a bar fight.
This analogy is like Yarvin's oligarchy narrative in that it is vastly superior to the conventional wisdom but does have a few (perhaps unavoidable) flaws. One issue here is that wrestling is 98% fake while (US) politics is only 80 or 90% fake. They didn't kill Kennedy for nothing.
And of course, in other countries, politics is not fake at all, as we are learning as our muppets go up against people like Mr. Putin. I enjoyed the comments earlier this year by "oligarch" Mikhail Fridman, who got caught up in the anti-Russian sanctions, saying effectively "why are you sanctioning me, I have no control over Putin". Like, that's how YOUR system works that's not how our system works. I think he was honestly surprised that western policymakers didn't understand.
Moreover, politics will presumably become less fake as living standards continue to decline. Normally I would say the regime is pretty good at keeping living standards high enough to keep doing what they're doing, but I actually think they may have managed to fill their own ranks with so many poor/misaligned decision makers that we are headed towards real crisis. I have also noticed that the GenX generation of certain groups is garbage (such as Tony Blinken, Victoria Nuland), perhaps providing further evidence of looming rough seas as the RBG/Garland generation becomes decrepit and dies off.
It really shocks me how bad the Gen X generation is. Bari Weiss is smart. I don't know what so many others are doing. How can one not see the ground shifting under one's feet?
One other comment. The regime coordinates via process and narrative egregores. It's an egregarchy (this is what Yarvin either doesn't understand or doesn't explain well). But an egregore isn't real... it's sort of a demon? Surely riding a demon is at least as bad as riding a tiger. If the demon runs loose they can't easily stop it. Are Harvard and the New York Times still strong enough to control what they have created?
After reading Eric Weinstein's articles and hearing his comments about Kayfabe (which I recommend, even for the right), It's great to hear a prominent content creator from the right address this. Something that I find troubling is the tendency to embrace a very naive approach to politics. I was aware of Machiavelli's work as a young adult, but found the concepts so obsolete and antithetical to my beliefs that I never bothered to read it. AA, your commentary on Machiavelli (and your new book) encouraged me to embrace it.
Definitely recommend you folks check out Weinstein's comments on Kayfabe, regardless of what you think of him.
This is a useful piece in light of the way the midterm elections were held in America. The sheepdogging that goes on in order to push everyone back into their Dem v Republican establishment teams is intense and the info-sphere is pumped full of clickbait stories about roving mobs of negro youths, pizzagate style atrocities and post birth abortion aimed at herding recalcitrant reactionaries back into the Mitch McConnel Republican team or stories about Russian viagra rape gangs, Racist militias mustering for the final battle royale in DC with Donald Trump leading on a black horse, or the coming ban on abortion of any kind for any reason to keep the pearl clutching liberal librarrians and their pink haired sons in Team Dem.
Wasn’t expecting to enjoy an article about pro-wrestling but this was excellent.
This analogy is like Yarvin's oligarchy narrative in that it is vastly superior to the conventional wisdom but does have a few (perhaps unavoidable) flaws. One issue here is that wrestling is 98% fake while (US) politics is only 80 or 90% fake. They didn't kill Kennedy for nothing.
And of course, in other countries, politics is not fake at all, as we are learning as our muppets go up against people like Mr. Putin. I enjoyed the comments earlier this year by "oligarch" Mikhail Fridman, who got caught up in the anti-Russian sanctions, saying effectively "why are you sanctioning me, I have no control over Putin". Like, that's how YOUR system works that's not how our system works. I think he was honestly surprised that western policymakers didn't understand.
Moreover, politics will presumably become less fake as living standards continue to decline. Normally I would say the regime is pretty good at keeping living standards high enough to keep doing what they're doing, but I actually think they may have managed to fill their own ranks with so many poor/misaligned decision makers that we are headed towards real crisis. I have also noticed that the GenX generation of certain groups is garbage (such as Tony Blinken, Victoria Nuland), perhaps providing further evidence of looming rough seas as the RBG/Garland generation becomes decrepit and dies off.
It really shocks me how bad the Gen X generation is. Bari Weiss is smart. I don't know what so many others are doing. How can one not see the ground shifting under one's feet?
One other comment. The regime coordinates via process and narrative egregores. It's an egregarchy (this is what Yarvin either doesn't understand or doesn't explain well). But an egregore isn't real... it's sort of a demon? Surely riding a demon is at least as bad as riding a tiger. If the demon runs loose they can't easily stop it. Are Harvard and the New York Times still strong enough to control what they have created?
After reading Eric Weinstein's articles and hearing his comments about Kayfabe (which I recommend, even for the right), It's great to hear a prominent content creator from the right address this. Something that I find troubling is the tendency to embrace a very naive approach to politics. I was aware of Machiavelli's work as a young adult, but found the concepts so obsolete and antithetical to my beliefs that I never bothered to read it. AA, your commentary on Machiavelli (and your new book) encouraged me to embrace it.
Definitely recommend you folks check out Weinstein's comments on Kayfabe, regardless of what you think of him.
I would be interested to know if Japanese wrestling has suffered equally in the last twenty years..?
This is you at your best AA good stuff!
This is a useful piece in light of the way the midterm elections were held in America. The sheepdogging that goes on in order to push everyone back into their Dem v Republican establishment teams is intense and the info-sphere is pumped full of clickbait stories about roving mobs of negro youths, pizzagate style atrocities and post birth abortion aimed at herding recalcitrant reactionaries back into the Mitch McConnel Republican team or stories about Russian viagra rape gangs, Racist militias mustering for the final battle royale in DC with Donald Trump leading on a black horse, or the coming ban on abortion of any kind for any reason to keep the pearl clutching liberal librarrians and their pink haired sons in Team Dem.
Are Putin and Xi Jinping the equivalent of Ted Turner?
Excellent article.