Social Justice Warriors resting after a busy day elfing in the city.
I will say one thing about Return of Kings writer André du Pôle: He doesn’t let his lack of understanding of what words mean get in the way of telling us how he really feels.
In a post titled “6 Leftist Concepts That Pretend To Be Positive But Are Not,” du Pôle attempts to show that many ideas popular on the left — like equality, social justice, and progress, to name just three — are actually super evil and bad. The post is a barely coherent rant full of weird non-sequiturs, so it’s hardly worth arguing with.
Instead, let me present you with the 4 Most Gloriously Incoherent Statements From “6 Leftist Concepts That Pretend To Be Positive But Are Not.”
Let’s start with perhaps the best sentence ever to appear in Return of Kings:
Citizenship today is a mean [sic] to virtue-signal when you are an urban elf.
At no point does he explain what an urban elf is or what elves, urban or rural, have to do with citizenship. Urban Dictionary has a definition for Urban Elf that is less than helpful.
Let’s move on:
In this sense, “social justice” is deeply divisive, defamatory, aggressive, and amounts to a Moloch that eats families, nationhood, and most men.
Run! It’s a family, nationhood, and most men-eating Moloch!
In case you’re wondering if this makes more sense in context, not really! The preceding sentences don’t provide a “sense” in which social justice is a hungry, hungry Moloch.
Du Pôle follows this with his own definition of “justice,” which as far as I can tell is some sort of white-male supremacist thing he’s cooked up in his brain.
Methinks true justice should acknowledge the fact that we are the sons of the Western civilizations, its human substance and legitimate heirs, and that we have a prime right over it. We should have jobs, freedom of speech, protection over violent crowds, a right to fair judgment instead of getting screwed over by HR, “minority” impunity and pussy pass, a right to chances to thick relationships with at least some women instead of clowning our ways through hypergamy…
In case you’re wondering, that bit at the end isn’t an ellipsis. It’s a period so nice he typed it thrice.
Some manipulated the proclivity to empathy to pretend they were “oppressed” and thus entitled to sympathy when they were actually hateful, anti-middle-class Marxist or deviant family-hating lesbians.
I think he means “some leftists” here, though earlier in the paragraph the subject is not leftists but “libertines.”
It’s also charming how he expresses his bigotry towards lesbians in a sentence that explicitly denies that lesbians have any discrimination to worry about.
Is it possible I’m being a little unfair to Mr. du Pôle? I mean, he’s got a French-sounding name, and it seems pretty clear that English is not his first language — though that wouldn’t explain why his editor at Return of Kings, who presumably does know English, didn’t bother to actually edit du Pôle’s words into something that more closely resembles normal English.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m literally the only person who reads Return of Kings posts all the way through.
I thought urban elves virtue-signalled with cookies. That’s what the TV told me.
@Victorious Parasol
Iron aside, elves would be in the Shades only very, very briefly. One way or another.
@Policy of Madness
Sorry. I’ll watch my words better in the future.
@MrsObedMarsh : The historical sparta was likely not a pleasant place by modern standard, but it was nowhere near North Korea. You still have a point in that it’s not like thoses bozos know anything about Sparta. I guess if we ask where Greece is, they would say “on the frying pan”.
(the desesperanto joke was from a belgian comic author called Thiriet IIRC)
I don’t think they’d enjoy Sparta too much, if only because of all the gay relationships.
I’d not heard the phrase ‘urban elf’ before so I thought I’d google it, and about six hits down was the website of Jack Donovan, who’d done an article entitled ‘Death to Urban Elves’. Below, if you can bear it, is a sample – I genuinely have no idea if he is being serious or not:
“The thoroughly Elf and Dwarf-controlled Democratic Party has long been waging a “War on White People” by conducting a massive university-based re-education campaign to get white people to “reject their whiteness” which is code for rejecting their basic human nature, and act more like white Elves. Elves see white humans as a nuisance, and know that if white humans hate themselves and adopt Elvish breeding habits and matriarchal lifeways, they will die out in an Elvish decade or two because of their shorter life spans. Elvish Democrats have also moved to import non-white peoples, orcs and goblins into white human areas as part of their ethnic cleansing campaign. Their secret slogan, which sounds far more sinister in Elvish, is “no white people, no white people problems.” After the extinction of white people, the elves will quickly move to enslave the unsuspecting non-whites, orcs and goblins, and rule planet Earth in alliance with the clever gold-hoarding Dwarves.
“Most white people laugh at ideas like a “War on White People,” because they have been glamoured by Elvish magic, so they cannot see the Elves’ pointy ears or creepy high cheekbones. Also, it seems like the people in prominent positions on both sides of this “war” are white. Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, for instance, are not Elvish, but Elvish yes-people who have been promised immortality by Elves in exchange for their treachery. The joke will be on them, because the Elves lost the secret of passing immortality to humans in 1323 BC, during the Tutankhamen debacle, and this was well known to human scholars until the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in 642 by the Goblin Caliph Omar.”
What a strange young man.
@DanHolme:
Donovan has labelled it “humor.” However, browsing through some of his essays, it appears that this is a man who believes that “triggering SJWs” is a productive way of spending time, so YMMV as to whether his sense of humour is also yours. It isn’t mine.
@PoM
I actually think it’s easier than we think. Sure, it’s just another snarl word to those jokers and they use it as such, but it still means somebody who accepts and espouses Marxist philosophies. That kinda requires reading and understanding his work, which I certainly haven’t done.
The sillier their conspiracy theories get, the weaker they become. A simple request for specifics (e.g. “what have I said or done that gives you any indication that I have studied the works of Marx and Engels?”) will have them fumbling about for an example, and if they do manage to pull one out of their rectums, push back on that one.
I realize that it’s just a hypothetical rhetorical exercise, but I’m convinced that sharp rhetoric is key to fighting back.
@EJ
I had a look through some other bits of his website to see if this was some kind of Poe. If it is, it’s the most extended one I’ve ever come across. From his book covers (“they’ve got skulls on them!”), obsession with norse ‘manliness’ and ‘gang masculinity’, to his ‘support for white nationalists’, he strikes me as someone I would rather not be spending any more time thinking about (if it looks like a Nazi, and talks like a Nazi…). I’ll certainly not be contributing to his site traffic any more. I think his ‘humorous’ article probably masks his real feelings with a thin veneer of absurdity.
@AlanRobertshaw
I used to love HookJaw. But i could never understand why the sharp end of the harpoon was the bit sticking out, not the end with the rope in it.
Man, you miss one meeting and you have to hear about the details from third parties like, two weeks later.
Oh, I get it. This is just code words. Elves are gay men, Dwarves are Jewish, and orcs and goblins are people of color (he says as much). So that’s all clear, then.
“Gay people will never die!” That’s right, it’s biological, they won’t be going anywh … wait. “Promised immortality” ?
… what.
Oh wait, this is obviously someone’s backstory to their urban fantasy RPG campaign. The stuff no one else reads, you know? Man, some people need to make it clearer that they’re writing fiction.
Molochs?
Could he mean Morlocks – especially by contrast with “urban elves” – which may be a nod to the Eloi.
The Eloi drift about in comfort with long hair, big eyes and small chins, (slightly elvish, but without the awesome) while the Morlocks eat Eloi when they can catch them.
Methinks.
At any rate, he does write a hell of a load of Morlocks.
@ danholme
What; are you suggesting 2000AD could ever be scientifically inaccurate? How very dare you!
@ danholme
I always assumed it was just a really cool piercing. This was the days of punk after all.
@bluecat,
“Moloch” is a Biblical Canaanite god who demands child sacrifice, though.
@ falconer
And eats your lumpen proletariat:
@DanHolme
WOW, that sounds like Humanist propaganda right out of Shadowrun.
Oh, come on man, you can’t just say Elvish, that’s racist. What is it, Quenya, Sindarin, Telerin? (And that’s just Tolkien elves, not even getting to stuff like Drow or the Lords and Ladies [who seem to speak the common language mostly, I think] and so on)
Reminds me of something I ran across where one of those MRA sites was taking submissions for an anthology of superversive stories. That was their term for “opposite of subversive.” In this case, stories that are subervise about traditional family values and roles. This writer sounds like the kind of person who would put out that kind of writing premise.
@Penny:
I’d guess at Telerin; the immigration policy in the Undying Lands is so strict that you just know they’re all horrible racists over there.
@Psycho Gecko
I may need a new desk now that I have read this. A new face too.
Shouldn’t the opposite of subversive be domversive?
Seriously, though, if subversive fiction is that which challenges the status quo, its opposite is that which reinforces the status quo. I don’t think there’s a shortage of that.
@ Schnookums Von Fancypants, GloboThermoNuclearHomo
I wasn’t as charitable in my reading as you. I presumed they were talking first edition rules, where urban elves and Molochs were both classes AND races unto themselves, making this guy’s interpretation an even more ridiculous house rule, kinda like multi-classing your elf into a hobbit.
I think It wasn’t until the second edition where urban elves were made into a genuine race and were allowed to pick a class. I believe Moloch was gone entirely for a while until it was brought back in the third edition Book of Vile Marxism supplement book as the prestige class we modern players know.
For my part, I prefer to play as a suburban dwarf. I don’t get as high a constitution bonus as both rural and urban dwarves get, but I think that always having all craft skills as class skills – plus the massive bonus to Listen, Spot, Search and Gather Information (often role-played as having learned how to navigate cities while not actually living there) – make it a decent pick when combined with a high wisdom stat. Your mileage may vary, though.
Urban hobbits are really good too, particularly from a min-maxing viewpoint. I especially like their high stealth bonus while in a crowd. Combine that with the Urban Rogue class, max out your stealth and get the Somebody Else’s Problem feat, and you have an almost ridiculously broken character.
/silly
Why this sounds like he’s some kinda space bee, tryna harvest the affectionate bonds of earthlings to feed his hive?
“Citizenship today is a mean [sic] to virtue-signal when you are an urban elf. At no point does he explain what an urban elf is”
Maybe it’s got something to do with all those fairies who used to like to hang around Kensington Gardens and kidnap toddler boys. (Sorry. It’s right there in the book.)
“or what elves, urban or rural, have to do with citizenship.”
Hard to tell, except that if the fairies get you, you quit being a citizen of Great Britain and (if you’re lucky) turn into a citizen of Neverland. But somehow, I’m not sure that’s what he means.
@ Falconer
It is indeed.
It’s also the origin of the Arabic word Malik (king) which has somewhat negative overtones in the Arab world (as I discovered when I asked why the Emir of the country I was living in was not called a malik).
But the Biblical Moloch seems to have been solely interested in having infants, specifically first born males, “passed through the fire” to him – generally taken to mean being immolated. Although some biblical scholars suggest this just means being dedicated… hard to tell, as the Bible’s pretty anti-Moloch.
Moloch wasn’t into eating families, or nations.
And there’s certainly no mention of him chowing down on Urban Elves, whatever they are.
I’m just thinking that the person who wrote this screed, whose grasp of language and evidence seem shaky to say the least, has confused the two baddies.
@Fabe I have to agree that sounds just like anti-metahuman propaganda.
For the anti-abortionists, I think Moloch is the patron
saintdemon of abortion.@Sinkable John,
As always.
Unfortunately, many parents decide their teenager is the only rebel who has ever existed, and venal sadists will always reap the benefits.
Since the beginning of time, someone will offer to beat and rape your teenager, and if they can get you to pay for it, all the better!
Signed,
Beaten and Raped