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After some quick speed-reading on Yarvin's blog, I came across this tasteless drivel on terrorism: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.no/2011/07/right-wi...

Even if one takes it to be "just" trolling, I find it in bad taste -- and if one takes it at face value, it's the sort of statements that would make it hard for me to attend an event with him in attendance. I consider myself to have a thick skin, and I generally don't care if nutjobs moan on about violence etc - except for the fact that ABB posted this kind of drivel himself, and based a lot of his mindset around it. So blogs of this kind is part of creating the nutjobs that go out and kill people. Any amount of smug moral relativism isn't going to make me say that I think stuff like this is ok.

All that said, I do support LamdaConf's decision in this case: They set out to do blind submissions, and stayed with that. They've now realized that the idea of a pure meritocracy is indeed a parody, not a real thing -- so they'll end up with a speaker selection process that is "overtly" political (even if they claim the opposite). This is of course inevitable, as no-one gets to "opt out" of politics: the "none statement" is a statement in itself (although not always a statement for the status quo).

I agree that there seems to be areas where "political correctness" has become a form of normative straight-jacket -- the same kind of conservative tendency that fuels bigotry. And I say that as a feminist and a communist/anarchist, and someone that is a strong believer in affirmative action.

Ironically perhaps, I think this is a decision Yarvin would agree on.