Welcome back to IN THE RAW. We’ve got two episodes for you this week: today’s with Isaac Simpson and tomorrow’s with Constantin von Hoffmeister. Today Isaac and I are talking about a guest essay he posted on his Stack last Friday and my response to it, published on my Stack the very same day.
The issue at the centre of the original article, or rather the question, is whither anonymity? Where are the anons going? The question was prompted by recent high-profile face-reveals by Bronze Age Pervert, Delicious Tacos and, most recently, Sol Brah, who posted a dramatic video filmed in the sultry jungles of Guatemala, no expense spared. The author of the article, Bobby Mars, considers the matter from an “esoteric” perspective, arguing that there’s an inner logic to the cultivation of an anonymous internet persona that’s very closely similar to the relationship between a master and his initiate. What’s fundamentally at issue here, Mars thinks, is that “mystery is not infinitely sustainable.” At some point, the secret — i.e. the anon’s identity — must be revealed if the mystique is to be maintained.
I agreed with Mars to a degree, but I also believe that there’s a power dynamic at work which is not at all like that between a master and his initiate. Where the master, in the archetypal esoteric situation, chooses when to inculcate his followers in his deeper truth, the anon does not have the luxury of free choice. He is hunted by the regime and its myrmidons, which want to unmask him themselves.
The regime doesn’t want to shatter whatever mystique it is you or I have managed to acquire through online anonymity: they want to unmask you so they can punish you. That’s it. They want to make an example out of you, just like they’ve done with Douglass Mackey.
Pour encourager les autres.
You can be a handsome ripped chad bodybuilder who loves raw milk and pineapple or you can be a Norwood 7 slob larping as a the reincarnation of some great warrior-king of yore: it doesn’t matter. The reality of who you are matters less to the regime than the reality of who you reach and what you reach them with.
If you’re influential and you’re saying things the regime doesn’t want you to say, that puts a target on your back. It’s that simple.
Isaac and I talk about both essays and the broader issues at stake on the dissident right today, especially with regard to anonymity. It’s a great conversation — as always.
IN THE RAW 18: Isaac Simpson