Mike Cernovich

An admixture of mindset and media

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Do Memes Cause Violence

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First movies, then video games, and now memes. The media is outraged not by actual ANTIFA violence against Trump supporters but instead are targeting a meme video, which is being characterized as an “incitement to violence.”

The video was an adaptation of the Church Massacre scene from a film that grossed half-a-billion dollars at the box office. No one in the media had an issue with a man going into a church to slaughter Christians, in a video that has over 7,500,000 views.

You can watch the Trump meme video here:

 

You can watch the scene from Kingsman: The Secret Service Here:

Did that movie scene incite violence?

Many have pointed out that the New York Times sponsored Shakespeare in the Park. In 2017 the play depicted Trump being assassinated with knives.

And that the White House press corp laughed about violence against Trump supporters

Maybe 10 people saw the meme video. Now millions have.

And that the meme video wasn’t widely shown, and instead was played in some side room as an example (not an endorsement) of memes.

(This is the room where the meme video was shown.)

The media’s outrage is an example of amplifying a trivial true event to manufactures outrage.

They do this every day.

None dare call it a hoax.

Pro-Social – How the Internet Gave a Voice to the Forgotten

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Everyone is allowed to be angry except Those People is the central thesis of Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, which is a deep look into online culture and also the life of Mike Cernovich. Antisocial’s author, Andrew Marantz, spent hundreds of hours with me and I’m featured throughout the book, usually not favorably.

Marantz, who is a more nuanced thinker than he lets on in the book, plays to the conformist class of woke white liberals, leading him to release a one-dimensional book that will please the cable news audiences at MSNBC.

Despite it’s strongly left-wing point of view, Antisocial is a good read if only because of Marantz’s talent as a writer. He embedded with all of the Wrong People, and his storytelling, while no doubt inspiring chills in others, had me laughing out loud throughout.

Economic populism vs. woke culture.

One way to understand the rise of Trump is to look at the bailouts, foreign wars, and the sheer wrongness of the pundit class. But how could Marantz rise in his own career if he asked why people who were wrong about significant, life-altering issues (housing always goes up and there is no bubble; Iraq has WMD’s) are given a platform by very prestigious outlets?

Has anyone in media ever been seriously held to account for any story, including the more recent Covingtongate fuck-up?

A book honestly examining bad actors on the far left (include cable news commenters) and right wouldn’t sell well, however, and thus the trend (and this is also true of conservatives) is to firmly stake out a place on the Hegelian dialectic.

Either Brett Kavanaugh is 100% not guilty and his accuser is a liar or by supporting Kavanaugh, you are a rape apologist.

Either the Deplorables really are deplorable, or they are great American patriots.

Choose a side and fight!

Reductionism.

Despite the hundreds of mentions of me, you won’t find any references to my major journalistic achievements such as forcing a member of Congress (John Conyers) to resign from Congress.

In an entire career, most reporters will never break the kinds of stories I have, but to appease Marantz’s audience, I must be reduced to a caricature.

The New York Times reviewer describes me as “a hawker of nutritional supplements and self-published books about the irresistibility of simian dominance.”

I checked the reviewer’s resume, and she’s never broken any major story, let alone one leading to the National Security Adviser to the United States President holding meetings about why she has all of the good sources. Maybe she needs to take some Gorilla Mind Rush.

Her view is what you’d expect, as cognitive dissonance leads people to freak out rather than confront the complexity of the human condition.

  • Watch the TED talk about me.

Moral ambiguity.

What if Kavanaugh’s accuser believed her story, either due to false memory or maybe mistaken identity, and Kavanaugh was sort of a drunken lout while also being innocent of the accused conduct?

My mental model of the world, much like quantum computing, allows for probabilities. Maybe seemingly contradictory claims can simultaneously be true.

Maybe Trump supporters aren’t racist (or are) and the media (including a recently fired NY Times columnist Sarah Jeong) are racist.

Marantz’s book is a game of chess where his side are the good guys, and the Trump side are the bad guys. He wants to move social media companies to clear the board of MAGA, while leaving members of his own social class to start more wars in Iraq and God knows anywhere else.

Toxic internet culture.

There were and are no doubt some very toxic “right wing” places online. Gas chamber memes are bad, we can all agree.

Yet it was recently AJ+, a “woke” media network, that published a Holocaust denial video. Is far left wing Al Jazeera playing into anti-Semitic tropes, too? That question is best not asked if you want booked on CNN.

For all their talk about internet culture, woke white liberals are careful to avoid troubling questions, which they dismiss as “Whataboutism.” The now-disbanded Reddit board Coontown was vile even by my standards. While I generally oppose censorship, it’s not hard to see why Reddit wanted it gone.

Does the left dare address videos of the Knockout Game going viral via World Star Hip Hop? Such questions are to them off-limits as it could put their bona fides at risk. What does it say about a culture where innocent people are attacked, camera phones are pulled out and you hear people scream, “Woooooooolrd Star!”

None dare ask that question, yet they be attacked by the toxic call-out culture from their own side.

However no serious discussion of online culture and its toxicity can avoid looking at the bad behavior by every group – not just bad behavior by MAGA types.

The most revealing scene.

After Trump had won the New Yorker held a meeting where they all agreed that Hillary Clinton should have won. The talk immediately turned to how everyone on deck would speak Truth to Power. By this they all understood, “We must attack Trump.”

Andrew, as he does, sets the stage: “We met in a thirty-eight-floor conference room with plate-glass windows overlooking the rooftop gardens of Goldman Sachs, and the Hudson River, and the skyline of New Jersey.”

The irony is lost on Marantz. Or maybe it isn’t, and his intent is Straussian, leading the reader to smile over a snifter of Yamazki 18 and aged Cohiba Siglo VI to observe –

Goldman Sachs wanted Hillary Clinton to win, too.

Hoaxed Book Flash Sale

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Considering there’s a new book out about me, written by someone else, I’ll give you all the chance to read a book about me by me.

Hoaxed book is legit, and contains the full interviews with people who were in Hoaxed, everyone from Jordan Peterson to Scott Adams to Cassie Jaye to Anthony Scaramucci.

Hoaxed also contains original essays on news and life.

What people are saying about Hoaxed book:

  • Where to start on a review of this eye-opening book? (And upcoming movie!) There is a lot to unpack in this well-written factual expose of the hypocrisy of the mass media and what counts as “journalism” today. Fake News truly does abound and we are a dumber angrier country because of it. It’s almost as if the MSM is conducting military styled information operations ie propaganda with the same talking points flowing across every news medium available.
  • Whatever you think about Cernovich, Hoaxed will make you think about what you see on the news and whether it’s real. Hint: it’s not.
  • Stumbled across this book scrolling through social media – couldn’t put it down – and am a deeper thinker as a result.
  • Outstanding book with excellent analysis and the most brilliant minds of our time, weighing in on the farce that is mainstream media. Read this book to become fully aware of today’s truth; this book is an effective antidote for the lies we are fed daily. You will come to understand how priceless independent media truly is … and how urgently each of us should take action to protect our bill or rights. Freedom of the press does not mean libel and slander are lawfully protected… and nearly all the media we consume is replete with nothing but libel and slander. Support independent media and citizen journalists! The future of our civilization depends upon it.
  • This book will change the way that you think about news, even if you are already a skeptic. Before getting started, I was initially sort of expecting to and hoping that I wouldn’t have to read a recap of a bunch of hoaxes that I had already known about. I follow Mike’s coverage pretty closely. I was pleasantly surprised in a couple of ways. 1) I enjoyed the recaps in the beginning because I realized there are SO MANY hoaxes in the news that you forget 90% of them. I was like “oh yeah!! That happened too!!” dozens of times. 2) Most of the book has new insight into how those hoaxes went down.

Get Hoaxed Book here today.

You can watch a free preview of Hoaxed Movie here:

 

18 Months in State Prison

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A member of ANTIFA attempted to murder someone for attending my event in January, 2018. He’s going to spend 18 months in prison:

An “Antifa” street thug can now look forward to continuing his fight — from jail. David Campbell, 32, copped a plea for his role in a 2018 beatdown outside the Night for Freedom party in Manhattan organized by right-wing activist Mike Cernovich. Campbell pleaded guilty to two counts of felony assault and will be sentenced on Oct. 23 to 18 months in the slammer, reps for Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. told The Post.

18 months seems like a light sentenced, but it’s the longest any member of ANTIFA has received.

Watch: ANTIFA terrorists attack a 56 year old man, then threaten a reporter covering the event.

Those who assisted David Campbell (and this includes a member of the “media”) will soon find themselves subject to civil lawsuits as well. Enjoy those knocks on the door…..

 

Joker is what happens when Charles Bukowski Grabs a Gun

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Two police officers stood tensely near a movie theatre tucked away near a food court at the Palms in Las Vegas, where I risked being the victim of an “incel mass shooting” by watching what was described as the most dangerous film of the year. I sat down in my reclining chair for this moment. Joker.

Set in late 70’s / early 80’s New York, the scenes are grimey. Trash bags frame many of the early scenes. One gets a look at life pre-broken windows policing. The music is dark and draws out your emotions.

Joker is Arthur Fleck’s origin story, and Fleck’s relationship with his mother foreshadowed a film more Norman Bates than Patrick Bateman.

Fleck’s relationship with his mother was a central theme of the film that most critics have missed. The trope tossed out is that of loser men living at home in mom’s basement. How many of those men were manipulated as young boys into fawning over a dramatic and needy and sufficating mom?

Did Fleck live at home because he was a loser, or because his mom was? That’s a question one dare not ask in today’s society, and the meme was hidden from view until a psychologically devastating scene in Arkham later in the film.

While watching Joker I expected some critics to see a racial angle although the film wasn’t racial. Richard Brody of the New Yorker gave us the predictable hot take, noting Fleck’s encounter with many black characters. Brody sees race where others who don’t live with Brody’s all-white neighbors see class. Of course Fleck, the abused son of a mentally ill single mother, would live around other poor people in New York. Check the demographics as to who the working poor are.

Brody also sees race in the subway scene, although his understanding of violent crime is inverted. For all the annoyances Wall Street bros are guilty of, they aren’t playing the knockout game. The subway scene was counter-factual absurdity.

What Brody and others in his class don’t see, perhaps because it’s hard to see your own privilege, was Joker’s post-racial critique of capitalism.

Fleck, the poor white man, was told by the black social worker woman, “They don’t give a shit about people like you,” before recognizing that they don’t give a shit about people like her, either.

Stefan Molyneux didn’t enjoy Joker, which he called “agony, murder and horror with no redemption. The nihilism of a world without God or good.”

Molyneux and I have different aesthetic preferences. He prefers the shiny and optimistic. (My wife sent me a text with his Tweet, as Molyneux put into words her own sentiments after watching Joker.)

What Molyneux rejected in Joker is what made the film compelling. Joker wasn’t a film about beauty or hope or redemption. Joker was a film about the beginnings of a broken man.

“God is dead, long live the Joker?”

Arthur finds meaning and his character arc is complete as he transforms fully into Joker.

Joker is driven by its score, and as Fleck walks down the stairs, the music changes. He is full and complete in and of himself.

One may not approve of what he’s become, and one’s approval is irrelevant. Joker isn’t Sunday Service or a motivational speech.

Joker is despair. Charles Bukowski grabs a gun.

P.S. If you enjoyed this review of Joker, watch my own film, Hoaxed.