Curtis Yarvin - Opinion Quotes

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In fact, the word racism is applied in almost exactly the same way, by almost exactly the same authorities, as atheism in 1811. It is an omnibus epithet for a tremendous variety of ideas and opinions which responsible authorities find dangerous or displeasing.

Curtis Yarvin
[…] public opinion in a democracy is a sort of funhouse mirror that reflects—albeit inaccurately, imperfectly, and often quite reluctantly—the views of the governing elite. To be fair, it also has a certain filtering effect which discourages some of the nuttiest intellectual fads, if only because they can be positively incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't been to Harvard.

Curtis Yarvin
On a number of subjects—not just segregation—I note that the public opinion of California in 2008 is quite similar to the public opinion of Stanford in 1963.
This is easy to explain: in post-1945 America, the source of all new ideas is the university. Ideas check out of the university, but they hardly ever check in. Thence, they flow outward to the other arms of the educational system as a whole: the mainstream media and the public schools. Eventually they become our old friend, "public opinion". This process is slow, happening on a generational scale, and thus the forty-five-year lag.

Curtis Yarvin
[…] power in a democracy is held by those who manage public opinion.

Curtis Yarvin
Moderation is not an ideology. It is not an opinion. It is not a thought. It is an absence of thought.

Curtis Yarvin
The basic premise of UR is that all the competing twentieth-century systems of government, including the Western democracies which came out on top and which rule us to this day, are best classified as Orwellian. They maintain their legitimacy by shaping public opinion. They shape public opinion by sculpting the information presented to the public. As part of that public, you peruse the world through a lens poured by your government.

Curtis Yarvin
Therefore, to establish any stability, the democratic State must manage public opinion. This is also known as manufacturing consent, and it typically involves a substantial system of official or quasiofficial education and/or journalism.
So a good way to see which faction holds real power in a democratic state is to look at which can get its people into influential roles in education and/or journalism.

Curtis Yarvin
Democracy means that popular opinion controls the state; intellectuals guide popular opinion; ergo, intellectuals guide the state.

Curtis Yarvin
In a democracy with a free press, the press is the government. Public opinion on any subject will naturally shift toward the opinions of those who explain that subject to the public.

Curtis Yarvin
The entire intellectual system of the West was corrupted by its twentieth-century connection to government. Public opinion reflects press opinion, press opinion reflects academic politics, and academic politics are driven by power-struggles in which the attraction of the state is clear.
The victory of Keynesian over Misesian economics, for example, is a classic case of this. Theories of economics which led to jobs advising the state were adaptive. Theories which didn't weren't.

Curtis Yarvin