Jon Pretty

As far as I can tell from the quotes I've seen here, Yarvin speaks a load of nonsense which appears to be a weird racist fantasy and is difficult to take seriously. It is fundamentally unpersuasive.

The Nazis did not gain power (by democracy) by promoting the atrocities they were to commit ten years later, because this was not a persuasive argument then. Instead, they enacted propaganda campaigns which shifted public opinion towards enabling them.

And that is the real danger to societies right now, and all the attention on Yarvin or John de Goes takes attention away from the slow but steady, incremental normalization of unpleasant ideas promoted by political parties in almost every developed country right now.

Firstly, thanks (seriously) for engaging with me in good faith on this. I'm aware of the link, and Yarvin may indirectly feed the ideas of the Trump administration. But I think it's harder to argue that the public should not have visibility of what crap Steve Bannon is being fed.

Here's what Amar Shah wrote about De Goes's attitude with respect to Yarvin: "What I found unsettling was how generous this appraisal felt – as if to convince us that Yarvin isn't a bad guy, just somehow misunderstood. The entire letter reads this way."

This isn't about "visibility". De Goes went out of his way to provide cover for Yarvin, after claiming to have "reviewed nearly all of his writings and videos".

From what I know, John's absolutism on freedom of speech at the time trumped his judgement of what is acceptable speech. I think his "mistakes were made" point, coupled with private conversations we've had, acknowledges this, albeit in a way that's unsatisfactory to most people.