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CW: Suicide, violence against women
Gary Mosher wants everyone to know he had nothing to do with Saturday’s bombing of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs by a man who celebrated Mosher’s philosophy of “Efilism” in a brief manifesto he posted online.
Mosher, known on YouTube as InMendham, is the inventor of “Efilism”–a radical brand of antinatalism that puts forth the proposition that “the best outcome for life on planet earth is extinction, through a collective act of non-procreation.” (“Efil,” you see, is “life” spelled backwards.)
In his videos on YouTube–he’s made an astounding 4000 so far–Mosher offers an even more radical interpretation of his philosophy, such as it is, suggesting on more than one occasion that we shouldn’t wait for humanity to extinct itself by refusing to breed, but that we should instead take extinction in our own hands by putting down “the breeders” who insist upon bringing more life into this world of suffering.
The Palm Springs suicide bomber, Guy Edward Bartkus, wrote in his manifesto (now deleted from the internet but archived here) that
The end goal is for the truth (Efilism) to win, and once it does, we can finally begin the process of sterilizing this planet of the disease of life. Life can only continue as long as people hold the delusional belief that it is not a zero sum game causing senseless torture … I think we need a war against pro-lifers. It is clear at this point that these people aren’t only stupid, they simply do not care about the harm they are perpetuating by being willing agents for a DNA molecule.
Bartkus was obviously deeply steeped in Mosher’s repugnant philosophy, if it can be called that. The notions that life is a zero-sum game, and that we are all agents of our DNA are two of Mosher’s main obsessions.
But Mosher thinks it’s deeply unfair to suggest that anything he’s ever said may have put violent ideas into Bartkus’ head.
In a rambling, evasive “emergency video” posted on YouTube on Sunday, Mosher declared that the bombing was “stupid and um, pointless and even show offy or something,” and would only serve to “put an entire subject”–that is, Efilism–”in jeopardy in some way by um associating it with some dumbass act of violence.” He insisted that he had “never advocated any kind of show off” behavior like this.
I had nothing to do, no knowledge, no anything about any of this stupidity. Um, it’s certainly not my fault that he has in some way um bent um a commentary on the the negative reality of reality uh into an excuse uh to put his name on one of these silly … stupid human tricks. …
Anyway, so I just disassociate all whatever. … I’m saying clearly not my fault. Uh I haven’t done anything wrong, okay? By having a philosophy that says life is poopy, it doesn’t mean you go out and try to assassinate whatever the breeding machine or uh the clinic or the this or the that.
He continued on with more of this evasive babbling.
I have never advocated anything um, why would I advocate something stupid? Something stupid. Just completely in a sense destructive. Yeah. Okay.
It’s in the papers for a couple of days. Um, and in a totally negative context … like I guess it’s not as dumb as a school shooter, but … it’s dumb. And I didn’t have anything to do with it. I don’t I don’t advocate anything. I don’t suggest anything. I don’t endorse anything ever um that involves anything act upish in any way.
Making pretty clear that his main concern was that the bombing would make him look bad, he dismissed Bartkus’ terrorist act, which left much of the clinic in ruins and shattered windows blocks away as a “pointless and irritating distraction,” though it clearly meant a good deal more than this to the four people injured in the explosion.
Mosher concluded with a weird sort-of apology, though he insisted he had nothing to be sorry for.
Uh, sorry. Um, condolences to anybody’s life who was fucked up by this idiot.
And um, condolences to civilization for having to clean it up and do all this shit afterwards. Um, sorry. Not my fault, but you know … I’m sorry there’s crazy people on Earth. Well, like, you know, it’s not my fault. Uh, anyway, so till the next time and such and so forth and whatnot.
NOT MY FAULT!
NOTHING TO SEE HERE!
Now if anyone doth protest too much, it’s this guy. You’ve heard some of Mosher’s opinions on “the breeders.” Here he is describing how he would “kill a bitch,” possibly by throwing her down a flight of stairs, if he got her pregnant and she refused to get an abortion.
Here he is explaining how he has such contempt for poor people who have kids that he would like to see them all shot in the head:
Here he is comparing humans to “cockroaches” and “viruses,” and fantasizing about mass murder and genocide. (Watch through about 3:39:00 for the full effect.)
There are more videos like this online, many more, but I think you get the idea. Mosher, for what it’s worth, is also a holocaust denier, a homophobe, and has said some incredibly skeezy and alarming things about child sexual abuse material. Oh, and he encourages people to drown kittens. For receipts on all these statements, and many terrible others, see this “community letter” prepared by a group of antinatalists and ex-antinatalists, appalled by Mosher’s views and disturbed by the ongoing efforts of his most enthusiastic acolyte, podcaster and YouTube creator Amanda Sukenick, to recruit antinatalists to the Efilist cause.
The anonymous authors of the “Antinatalist Community Letter,” posted online long before the events of last weekend, wrote that they were “genuinely frightened that the violent rhetoric coming from the Efilist community will lead to someone getting hurt.”
And now what they warned of has come to pass, and then some.
The authors, much like Mosher in his latest video, worried that this sort of violence would tarnish their cause unless antinatalists were to do everything in their power to denounce, and disassociate themselves, from the considerable evils of Efilism.
And some have tried to do so. But the fact is that Efilism and antinatalism have been deeply entangled for years, with many antinatalists defending Mosher and citing him as an inspiration for their beliefs. They too have some culpability here. This will be the topic of a future post.
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Goddess help us if any of these misanthropists ever gets their grubby mitts on a bioweapon.
OT: What’s with the seemingly irrelevant writing coach image embed? The previous article had something similar that was likewise unrelated to the surrounding text.
Gary Mosher needs to be put on a watch list if he isn’t on one already.
For someone who has made 4000 videos, he sure seems bad at speaking clearly, without self-interruption.
Not sure if these were scripted or extemporaneous, but either way shows quite a bit less capacity to learn with experience than I would expect from the average YouTuber.
And to be clear, I don’t expect a lot from the average youtuber.
Wow, that guy really hates cats.
I already disliked this guy, and then he decided to go after kitties.
I am not wasting any of my data to give this guy any views. I just gotta say, the whole idea of life being so horrible we should all just give up and rot is hardly some new concept. Dude just dusted off some old school dispair stuff from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche he didn’t understand, gave it a “clever” name and tried to grift his way into fame with it
I just skimmed the community letter there, and I want to profusely apologize to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche for thinking their memories were tarnished by even being read by this guy. These people are something else
Something stands out, the reference to wanting to hand out suicides like candy at Halloween, how the world is disgusting and “we” just want out. Uh, if you feel so strongly about it, why are you still breathing? Funny how you fantasize about torturing and killing other people, but somehow none of that applies to you….
@ .45: I don’t know if there’s a name for it, but I refer to it as “ideological paradoxia” – A situation wherein the best way to advance one’s ideology in a big-picture way is by small-scale violations. This especially applies to situations where passively failing to advance one’s ideology is a major violation in itself – so due to external factors outside one’s control, avoiding the appearance of hypocrisy is impossible regardless of one’s choices or actions.
Take, for a common example, women who believe that women as a whole should not vote, but vote anyway, particularly for men who express the goal of taking away women’s rights. Yes, by voting, they’re doing things which their ideology says they shouldn’t be doing, but *not* doing so makes it less likely that other women would be prevented from voting in the future. Where vote-by-mail exists, it’s entirely possible that some of them get around it by not voting at all, but allowing their husband get a second vote in their name… and elsewhere, they might claim that they’re doing that in spirit.
In the case of something like this, privately committing suicide is detrimental to the “higher goal” of spreading an omnicide imperative to the rest of humanity. You can’t spread a message if you don’t exist to spread it. Though unlike Mosher, Bartkus managed to sort of do both: a flashy public suicide which sent a message. It wasn’t very convincing, granted, but it was heard. That doesn’t necessarily make Bartkus less “hypocritical” than Mosher, though, just more fanatical and less practical. Fanatics sometimes end up sabotaging their own cause, or sacrificing their lives for minimal gain.
Unfortunately, the right seems to be better at this than the center or the left. Biden could have used the supreme court immunity ruling to take direct, precipitate action to head MAGA off at the pass and to fix the supreme court itself, but refused to do so “standing on principle” … and look where that got the US.
Well, that’s the charitable interpretation anyway. The less charitable, but unfortunately all too plausible, is that like a lot of dem politicians Biden put class loyalty above both party loyalty and national loyalty.
@ Snowberry
Yeah, I was a bit sarcastic there. I get the justification, but still… They are just fanatics hating people with a religious zeal
“Mosher, for what it’s worth, is also a holocaust denier, a homophobe…”
You’d think that anyone who opposes procreation would be in favor of being gay.
@.45
“Funny how you fantasize about torturing and killing other people, but somehow none of that applies to you….”
This is one of the biggest issues I had with the MCU Thanos fans, and people championing this character as a great villain. In the end, if he was so concerned about there being so much life in the universe, that half of it needed to be destroyed, then why didn’t he ever off himself. I noticed after he murdered half the cosmos he still opted to live.
And the same thing goes for the real life people (like the ones in this post) who think like him. Ultimately, it is a self serving philosophy they’re just using to express their psychopathy, and their hatred (eventually) of the poor and People of Color. That’s what it always eventually leads to anyway. A Final Solution for people who are NOT them.
@E.A. Blair
People like that have a nasty habit of never completely thinking their philosophies all the way through. They lack context and nuance. They think that simply having it is enough to make it a rational one. But of course if they had the ability to engage with the topic all the way to its conclusion then they would have to reject the philosophy, or accept some aspect of it they like think is distasteful, like being gay.
In fairness to Thanos, it’s not clearly established whether he gave himself the same 50% odds he gave everyone else and simply got lucky, or did actually exempt himself.
Goofy Gary is so off-putting in his personal manner of extreme arrogance. Also, he has a whole other channel where he thinks most of physics is wrong – DraftScience. He depends on using his copious amounts of free time (from a very dubious disability claim that he has been milking for decades) to practically bury the internet in so much video that one has to be a historian to mark all his wacko claims. It is funny that he hates Google while using up an inordinate amount of storage space, free to him, with his videos – when factoring in that very few actually watch them and he doesn’t allow ads. He has some principles, I suppose. Sometimes it is like trying to not look at a car crash.