Musk and Mirsky

I have both Vox Day and The Z-man blog links on the side there. They both talk about similar things, and they tend to say similar things about them, but also not really. I tend to quote the Z-man more frequently, because I think he's more articulate and his rhetoric is more effective. Plus, his range of topics seems to be more broad. Vox is sharper than the Z-man, and has more truly innovative things to say, but that doesn't mean all of his material is of equal value. Plus, I think that Vox tends to jump to endpoints on the spectrum more easily and readily, which isn't always as helpful as he thinks it is. He's quick to point to Elon Musk, for example, and see in him a mendacious ticket taker playing us all false as a rearguard for the Establishment. The Z-man has what I suspect is a more accurate perspective of seeing him as a reformer within the system, such as Pyotr Mirsky, the Minister of the Interior for Tsarist Russia in 1904-5. He, like many others in late stage Tsarist Russia (and counterparts in late stage Monarchist France before the French Revolution) was part of the system, but that association doesn't mean that he was a villain. At least not necessarily. Mirsky saw that the system had problems, and that the complaints against it (which had already ended in the murder of both his predecessor and the tsar's own grandfather) had some merit, and that the Establishment had drifted from whatever standard of noblesse oblige that they should have practiced. More to the point, he saw that without some give, the system would face continued pressure and the situation would get worse.

Mirsky is probably not to blame for the fact that his compromise and reform strategy didn't work. Not only did he face too much opposition—from both sides—to effectively enact a reformist approach, but quite often by the time a reformer comes along to try and save the system, the system is already dead and just coasting on inertia. There aren't reforms that can save it anymore beyond a certain point.

But the fact that a reformer is both loyal to the system which produced him as well as sympathetic to those who are abused and victimized by the system, and aware of the system's problems doesn't make them party to the abuses of the system. In this sense, Vox is wrong about Musk and the Z-man is right. Vox will see through that to the inevitability of the system collapse—and therefore the desirability of the collapse happening sooner rather than later—and see any opposition to the collapse for any reason as enemy action. Which is a little ironic, as he also frequently preaches the mantra of not letting the desire for perfection stand in the way of a good angle or good ally, just because they're not perfect. Musk is a reasonably good ally in some ways. He's not a snake in the grass pretending to be an ally like Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson, he's just an imperfect reformer from within the system, like Mirsky. Like Trump himself was; when he's on the right track, he should be encouraged to continue along it. When he's on the wrong one, he should be called out for such. The zeitgeist hasn't reached the point where the system is going to be torn down, and pointing out that it is inevitable that it will reach that point, or even calling to hasten our arrival to that point is not wise nor prudent. 

Anyway; some edited portion of the Z-man's comparison of Musk to Mirsky.

Mirsky was not a reformer because he had dreams of creating a liberal paradise to replace tsarist Russia. He was a reformer because he worried that the lack of reform would result in more radicalism, like the sort that had claimed the life of his predecessor and the life of the Tsar’s grandfather. For Mirsky and his supporters within the system, liberal reform was a way to address some of the issues of the people, while also maintaining the legitimacy of the tsarist system.

Uncertain times always produc[e] [sic] men like Mirsky. He was not the only reformer around Tsar Nicholas before the revolution. There were others but all of them failed to arrest the process that eventually led to revolution. Reformers were around the King Louis XVI and among the aristocracy prior to the French Revolution. They failed for the same reason Mirsky failed. There were men who feared reform would go too far and there were those who feared reform would not go far enough.

This is what should come to mind while watching Elon Musk try to navigate his way through the current crisis. Musk is a reformer at heart. He bought Twitter because he thought it was drifting away from its essential purpose which is to allow for free and open debate about the issues of the day. His inhospitable takeover of the company was driven by a genuine concern for what is happening in the West. Like all reformers, Musk fears what could happen if current trends continue.

While Musk may be the world’s richest man and the most famous of the plutocracy, he is just one voice among many. The managerial elite is thousands, and the managerial class is millions of people. This new class is analogous to the aristocratic classes that existed in 18th century France and 19th century Russia. The best Musk or any liberal reformer can do is influence the people in the system. This is what Musk is attempting with his mild reforms of Twitter.

In this illiberal age, Elon Musk has appointed himself to be the minister of speech on-line and is attempting to roll back the reactionary controls that were put in place by the ruling class over the last decade. While Twitter is not the internet of old, Musk has rolled back much of the censorship. He still bans certain accounts, mostly as a way to tell the reactionaries that his reforms will not go too far. Otherwise, he has had a light hand on the censorship of his platform.

This is where that old revolutionary vice shows its jaws. The side that fears the reforms will go too far has successfully organized an advertising boycott. State sanctioned pressure groups like Media Matters have organized other pressure groups to harass companies that were advertising on Twitter. Those companies dropped their ads, resulting in a fifty percent decline in ad revenue. Musk has been forced to hire a girl boss approved by the reactionaries to be his new CEO.

Meanwhile, the other jaw of the vice sees what is happening and assumes Musk will eventually be brought to heel. Open sites like Gab continue to flourish, building on the alternative platform model. Amusingly and a bit ironically, the hard-core censors are abandoning Twitter for the opposite reason. Mass media companies, no longer assured of artificial reach on Twitter, are also jumping ship. Musk is facing the same dilemma all reformers face when taking the middle position.

In the end, Mirsky was like all prior reformers in that he was both right and wrong about what was happening. He was correct that radicalism was spreading due to the inability of the system to address the issues of the times. He was wrong in thinking that the solutions to the problems of the system could be found in the system. Just as there was no saving King Louis XVI and the old order, there was no saving Tsar Nicholas II and the system that made him possible.

This is where liberal reformers like Musk find themselves. On the one hand, they are correct in fearing a rising tide of radicalism. He rightly sees that it is driven in part by the abuses of the ruling class, of which he is a part. The trouble is the system cannot withstand open debate. It cannot risk questioning the shibboleths that sustain the moral framework at the heart of the managerial system. In the end, reformers will be crushed by that old vice that has destroyed prior reformers.