When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, gave in his Noble Lecture the credo, “Let the lie come into the world. Let it even triumph. But not through me,” that was based. Not participating in transparent lies or mass delusion is based. Doing so against the madness of the following crowd is based. Nearly everything that it means to be based is either contained within or predicated upon this one trait of character.
Solzhenitsyn wrote those words as a result of his observations living in what may have been the most brutal tyranny of human history: Stalin’s USSR. That simplest of refusals—the refusal to lie on command, or even to fit in—is, in the end, the summary of his observations of what kind of people had what it took to resist a totalitarian regime. Keeping your head down while you hope the unconscionable blows over, say, so you can keep your job but none of your dignity, is not based.
Being unwilling to lie, which is to say being based, is what set Solzhenitsyn’s various heroes apart from the weakness of character, cowardice, and greed that allowed others to survive, if that’s what it can be called. Solzhenitsyn’s brilliance was in observing that, in the end, this trait of character—the willingness to resist lies, be yourself, and tell the truth even when people won’t like you (or will kill you) for it—is one of the small number of necessary characteristics to grind true tyranny to a halt. The other, if you want to know, is laughter. Both of these things, mixed in the right proportions and applied in the right circumstances, make what it means to be based.
Solzhenitsyn’s time in the USSR under Josef Stalin was extreme, but it was not unique. China, Cambodia, and other places saw similar, or even perhaps worse, depending how one counts untellable horrors. While “it could never happen here” is a bit of wishful thinking applied to the question of whether the Nazi regime could ever be repeated in the United States, the ideological conditions and general cowardice that enable these sorts of catastrophes have already come knocking at our door. Their reception has been, from those with the power to answer, troublingly warm.
Though, for the moment, better conditions generally prevail in our day-to-day lives in our teetering Western liberal democratic republics, we have also found ourselves in yet another period in human history when the many millions believe—or at least pretend to believe—outright, transparent lies about the nature of reality, both social and material. What’s more, our elites and the institutions they command have taken the repetition and promulgation of these lies as sure marks of both status and, believe it or not, sanity. That is, once again the lie is coming into the world, and we have been forced to ask ourselves: will it triumph?
That’s an open question, and its answer depends, in turn, upon the answer to the more personal question Solzhenitsyn answered firmly in the negative. Will it come through me? The fate of the future of Western Civilization and Mankind may well hang in the balance of how that question gets answered, and by who, and how many. That is, its answer depends on how many people are willing to get based and stay that way.
The risk is in a peculiar way perverse. If lots of us get based, there’s very little risk to any of us. On the other hand, if only a few of us do, the risk is immense. It’s the prisoner’s dilemma writ large. If a few get based and most don’t, I lose my skin where you might not. If a lot get based, there will be some damage, but it will be minimal. The trouble is that everyone’s self-interest calculation looks straightforward: getting based is a fool’s errand. This misunderstands both the stakes and the truth of the situation. Going based en masse breaks the spell and eliminates the danger. Failing to do so will bring ruin upon all but a few. Put more plainly, you should take the radicals running this show seriously when they say “liberals get the bullet too.”
To me, then, there’s just one option. It’s time to get based and help other people get based. It’s time for based nation. It’s time for a based movement.
Before we begin on such an ambitious venture, however, the origin of the term “based” should be addressed forthrightly because it is profoundly limiting and, in fact, something that prevents being properly and fully based. The term arose online in talking about various ideas that might justify biological racism and referenced being unafraid to say those things because they are politically unfashionable. It arose in being intentionally, and often crudely, politically anti-correct. It arose, frankly, in crowds rightly identified as being “alt-right.” One could say it has expanded from there into something mostly more commendable. I contend something further: that these new early adopters of the mentality were merely re-inventing, typically crudely, something that has been known since time immemorial, while lashing out at the absurd and illegitimate powers of our absolutely ridiculous day. Forget all that edgelord garbage. The Declaration of Independence was based as hell and still is, and no sane person could mistake Thomas Jefferson for some douchey shitposter just looking to rile up some Libs.
Now we can begin. To be based, simply enough, begins with being willing to speak your mind and state objectively true facts about the world even when people don’t like you for it. It means neither lying nor apologizing just because the crowd expects you to, least of all under the absurd implication that doing so makes you more virtuous and brave. It is the refusal to be concerned with what other people think of you when you’re being yourself and the recognition that it doesn’t even make sense to apologize for being true to yourself and your values, telling the truth as well as you can see it, or making a joke, even a bad one. In judo and jujitsu, base is what keeps you from getting thrown, swept, or flipped. Having base is based.
Being based means tolerating most of what’s done in good faith or to lighten the mood. It’s being real with lots of room to play. It elevates the worthy without falling into the indulgent trap of “celebrating” the ordinary, mediocre, and fake. It includes forgiving the trespasses of others when they aren’t rooted in malice and being unwilling to be a doormat when they are. It also means being sensitive but never hypersensitive. When you’re throwing a tantrum, you’ve definitely stopped being based.
Put another way, fitting to our contemporary circumstances, being based is the opposite of being Woke. Woke is wholly intolerant of everything but itself. It, because it is cynical of every motivation, it never acts in good faith. It brings down every mood and celebrates the worthless and the ugly so long as these take no shame in themselves for being worthless and ugly. Woke forgiveness is impossible because, to the Woke, forgiveness would justify the sin. It demands absolute conformity and tolerates no dissent. It defines hypersensitivity, elevates it as a virtue, and, as a result, is always throwing a tantrum.
Obviously, Solzhenitsyn wasn’t writing about the Woke in The Gulag Archipelago, but what he was writing about was another species in the same totalitarian genus. He was writing about people who, due in large part to their ideological commitments, had become “conscious” of a pseudo-real distortion of the world that we otherwise all must share. The lies he admonished us not to live by might be different lies in specific, but they hold up the same sort of regime in general: a tyranny simultaneously doomed to fail and, according to the preposterous theory informing it, unable to fail. The lies serve this intolerable contradiction, and, in the end, so does the censorship, the gaslighting, the caprice, and the murder, by the tens of millions, if necessary. According to Solzhenitsyn, the one remedy to this sort of incomprehensible (and avoidable) tragedy is to, in a word, get based.
There are, in the end, only two things that can tear such a regime down, and they are, as it happens, interrelated. They are the two most powerful weapons against tyranny in the human arsenal: telling the truth, including by refusing the lie, and laughter. Both are based, and to win both are necessary. While Solzhenitsyn tells us that the whole of a tyrannical regime can be brought down in the end by a single person repeatedly telling the truth, the fact is that the USSR that tyrannized him actually fell when its subjects—for citizens they were not—began to laugh at it. So, where being based begins in a certain stoicism, it’s the most based when it’s stoicism with a sense of humor.
Humor isn’t necessary but is the key to being truly based. Absurdity must be exposed, and no acid is more corrosive to the absurdity of tyranny than laughter pointed in its general direction. So, while being based begins with being unapologetic in yourself and the truth, whatever anyone thinks, it does this ideally while being funny. Power, as it happens, abhors a laugh, at least when it’s not based (based power abides). The more seriously anything takes itself, then, the less based it is, and, in turn, the less able to withstand the based it can be. Voltaire was based; John Oliver is an asshole. This is why the left can’t meme. Meme culture is based. The left is not based. (All your base are belong to us, indeed.)
In a very real sense, being based means being able to roll with the joke and knowing that when someone can’t, it’s on them. The based don’t apologize for jokes because they understand that, simply enough, the only people who would demand an apology for a joke didn’t get it—and that’s not at all based. Jokes are meant to dissolve pretense, and there’s nothing more pretentious in the world than asking someone to take back a joke. Some jokes aren’t funny, and in that case, all that’s needed is to let them fall flat.
This isn’t to say, of course, that being based means being disparaging. Far from it. That’s an earlier and more pitiable iteration of based. As noted above, the based are a tolerant lot, unless it’s of pretense, unfairness, cruelty, or bullshit. Disparagement and bullying aren’t cool—and thus they are primary modes of the Woke—so they sure as hell aren’t based. Jokes are subversive. Jokes erode power everywhere it is abused. Jokes burn off the dead wood and leave what’s green, what’s authentic, untouched. Being based includes understanding the difference.
In fact, the subversive humor of being based is what makes being based so open instead of being closed. It is by its very nature irreverent and sometimes crude, but it always punches up, as they say. It is, after all, based, meaning being planted squarely on the ground. In that regard, being based means recognizing the plain fact that life is, on the balance, a comedy rather than a tragedy, and the more pretentious and unaware those in power are of this fact, the funnier their absurdities become.
To strike a more philosophical tone, being based means having common sense in a postmodern context. Like it or not, “Postmodernity” is the name for the time in which we live. It’s a time of images, corporate gloss, and a certain imposed detachment from the real. If you’re Woke, you think this is a weapon. If you’re based, it’s funny as hell, and, let me tell you something, brother, we’re not going to hesitate to drop our best memes from the top rope. The politics of parody are infinitely lame against the relentlessly subversive power of kayfabe. The cream, after all, rises to the top. You may not like it, but you have no choice but to accept it.
To put that somewhat more seriously, the difference between being based and being Woke is the difference between laughter and shame. Comedy and satire have always had incredible subversive potential against illegitimate power because they get those seduced by that power to laugh at themselves for being a bunch of rubes and fools. That makes them based. Shame has no subversive potential. It’s the tool of tools and scolds. It bends people only to a certain point, and that point is precisely the moment at which they finally laugh. This is why based will always defeat Woke. Because Woke is dumb.
The subversive world of the based is one of pushing boundaries so that the arbitrary and pretentious ones fall even while the real ones are allowed to stand. In this observation is all the difference between humor and shame and thus all the distance between based and Woke. Humor washes away the absurd in a tide of laughter and leaves behind what’s real and what really matters—that’s based. Shame doesn’t. It just knocks everything over in its ridiculous attempt to prove that it’s the only thing that isn’t absurd—so not based; totally cringe, in fact. That is, humor is gentle while shame is crude, and humor is alive where shame is afraid to live. This is why the based roll with the joke. This is why the Woke laugh at nothing. It’s because they have no base.
Tyranny is knocking, and we need to get based. Solzhenitsyn told us what it would take to stand up to the end of the world, and what it boils down to is being based—and being based for our times. Our times are absurd, but this doesn’t diminish the threat. Still, in the end, there’s nothing new under this yellow Sun, and, as ever, the truly absurd cannot possibly abide people who completely refuse to take them seriously. The future, then, belongs to the based, not to the clowns. That future is ours because the future is based.
Freedom is ours for the taking. The lies are coming into the world, and, for the moment, they have begun to triumph. Lord, though, are they funny. Being based is little more, then, than a laughing refusal to be pushed around by the preposterous. It’s a refusal to go along with the crowd when the crowd has gone mad. While many people seem to realize that there is some problem, only the based realize not only that its safer and healthier to break away, but that it’s also hilarious. The based aren’t about to live by ridiculous lies because they’ll be too busy laughing the bottom out from under them.
77 comments
“More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’ Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; … [and] if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.'”
Quoted in Ericson, Edward E. Jr. and Daniel J. Mahoney, The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings 1947-2005. Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2006, page 577.
James,
I am going to have to read this another time to judge my level true level of baseness, but if the fact that about half of my family has shadow banned me is any measure then I am at least somewhat based. Considering most of the other half only sometimes likes my memes, I suppose they are neither based nor woke. They are the get-along(s) I guess.
Alone in the desert, I have been wanting to write a manifesto explaining that I believe in objective truth and I won’t be gaslight. That I will call out the absurd when I see it; however, I will consider any and all arguments. And so on. This, because I am afraid that should something happen to me I would be the only person at my funeral who understands me and either no one would show up, or they would use the opportunity to bash me as an alt-right, racist, homophobic, puppy-hater.
However, I think you wrote my manifesto for me. This article articulates what I know to be true, but could never express so eloquently. Should I us it in that capacity, I will cite it properly, but for now I am going to make this ubiquitous on my social media which will hopefully make the former unnecessary.
Great read.
EP
In practice, the word “based” is just generally used to express approval, including by the far-left and far-right.
I think the essence of this article is that to be based is to be authentic. To have a commitment to pursuing the truth without ever claiming to be the sole arbiter of it, and to understand people that operate under Gnosticism to be the petty fools they truly are. It is to be a good person, pursue the truth as you know it and roll with how things are. To not try and bend the world into what you think it should be but to engage with it as it is without falling into a complacency trap. To not be weak, and bend the knee to unreasonable demands, to not let yourself be bullied or your name tainted because a militant group of zealots finds you inconvenient. And to find the humor in life instead of making everything stale and moralistic. It is to live life fully and authentically instead of a mission with a finite and utopian goal.
Now this is indeed a high quality schizopost
I guess I’m a bit dense, but it took me awhile to untangle what seemed like a word jumble to me. I had to find something to help me clarify what this article was saying. What I came up with is: If something is “baseless” it is lacking in facts, therefore to be “based” then is to believe in and express facts.?
It’s not clear how or why this nonsense found its way into my inbox, but it must be a sign that my drinking is out of control. The article is a rambling incoherent narcissistic word salad and the comments seem to reflect an allegiance to confusion and obfuscation.
However, I will come back when sober, and take a clearer view.
As Usual,
EA
That is SO sad! Thank you for sharing. I hope you are able to get your drinking under control. Obviously, being a drunk really does have an adverse effect on one’s life and impairs one’s thinking. Please let us know if you need any resources to help you kick the habit, Otis.
The thing I have always had a problem with is the challenge of trading a job (and every single thing that a job can mean to a person) for whatever dignity is derived from actions taken that result in that job loss, followed by the deprivation and material chaos that follows.
I suspect that far too many people have raised this issue as a clarion call to glory, without fully contemplating the reality of action and consequence. Perhaps because in many cases, they don’t really have to.
This could be a book in itself. There is endless variety in the possible and consequential cataclysmic impact in a person’s life from loss of income. That alone and above all other impacts.
What bothers me is that sloppy and weak societies have allowed a particular kind of burglary, robbery, highwayman hit and run, mugging thuggery to have lodged deeply within the social and the economic impact of daily life, and to operate as it does with impunity. Nobody seems to talk much about the idea of its possible dance along the razor’s edge of legality, let alone a wide scope of moral and ethical infringement.
It has shown up with remarkable speed – and now languishes accompanied by a sad and pathetic apology. As if it was all no more than a really terrible lost weekend spent at a Vegas gaming table.
But how can I be more blunt? America is, in its deepest heart, a consumer and material culture. Which means that perhaps two to three decades of hard work performed in life that leads to one’s socio-economic place in the world, actually matters. Not only to the job-loser, but to those who depend upon that person. It would surprise no-one to learn that an entire self-identity is all wrapped up within all the accomplishments that led to the successful procuring and keeping of such a job.
I noticed back in the middle of last decade, ’round about 2015 or so, that social justice thugs almost immediately went after the job of their target – as if they themselves would be the recipients of that job, once vacated by its previous possessor.
I noticed also how full of shallow cowardice this practice is, and how it really does resemble various forms of street crime – because it is obvious just how vulnerable certain working people have now become to this form of attack and its consequences.
One might ask: of the sum totals statistically in the past half dozen years or so, how many lost jobs have been located in places like WalMart? MacDonald’s? You local car wash? Various downtown office building cleaning and janitorial staff? A long, long list of service-related bottom jobs?
Even 1% of the total? I’d be surprised. And yet, the owner of such a job is always and automatically less (or no less) capable of expressing whatever it is that attracts the cancel mob?
In this way does society now curiously resemble an elephant standing quite still and eternally so, for fear of treading on some amoeba, or other nameless bacterium. The urge is to coax the elephant to fall asleep, and fall over, and in so doing, get over itself.
But the meat on the bones of my argument is a simple one (and as I said, one that the thugs revel in taking advantage of) it is hardly fair to ask or expect any particular and specific person to step to the front of the line and sacrifice their means of livelihood for purposes of principle. It depends. Some can obviously weather this storm far different and far better than others.
We would not expect a Chihuahua to guard the house.
We might expect a well-trained Rottweiler to perform this function admirably.
No offense to the Chihuahua.
Excellent piece. Here’s a piece I wrote about the cowardice of MIT researchers who will do everything but just admit that anti-maskers were right this whole time! MASKERS ARE AN ANTI-SCIENCE CULT https://justintrouble.substack.com/p/maskers-are-an-anti-science-cult
Thanks Justin. I just read your piece on MIT and anti-maskers, which I can relate to because I’ve been seeking out medical journal articles and reading the graphs and thinking it all through since the hysteria began early last year. In my circle of acquaintances nobody else does that; they all worship Fauci and his ilk without thought or question. They spout the buzzword “Science” but have no clue what it actually means.
So it would be “based” if you say “the election wasn’t stolen”.
Or “Trump won’t be reinaugurated in August”.
Or even “the biggest inauguration crowd ever”?
Never give in to falsehoods and always maintain a sense of humor These are the traits of surviving and overcoming falsehood perpetrated on a mass scale
I keep finding myself coming back to two things, one of which is Vaclav Havel’s ultimate point in “The Power of the Powerless” (1977). On my reading, it is: When everyone knows the system is a joke, and everyone knows that everyone knows that the system is a joke, then it’s just a matter of flipping a coin to predict when the system will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.
So, yes. It is important to let lies go unchallenged, and it is important to make out what a joke the system is.
It is important to NOT let lies go unchallenged. My bad.
Wow. And all I wanted to say is that I have never liked that word “Manifesto” – it is so bossy – Man-ifest? Please rename the article and maybe people will not get their knickers is a twist about what you are saying because they can’t get past the title. Thanks for all your work, James.
Talk about missing the whole point. Good grief.
It’s all well and good to be based if one can live with the consequences that those in power impose. Solzhenitsyn was arrested during military service and before he started a family. But the typical provider can scarcely afford to give up a job or even an entire career.
In the 1970s, how did being based work out for the Chinese property owners that the videos show being paraded around, beaten, and shot?
When the revolution gets to the point of demanding that one sign a “confession” of being racist in order to get one’s driver’s license renewed or to access bank accounts, what will James do then?
The question you need to be asking is not “what will James do?”, rather, consider “what will I do?”
Yes, of course, the question is, “What should any (based) person do?”, but I put James in there in hopes of prompting him to offer advice for when “a laughing refusal to be pushed around” doesn’t work.
Thank you for this James. Your stoicism and integrity are on a par with the Ancients. You are the kind of individual that makes it possible for me to keep believing in humanity even in these darkest of hours.
So let’s establish a base about the elephant in the room regarding political opposition to, well call it woke corporativism (formal nominal democracy where voting is a ritual, state & party/-ies permeats all and acts as legislator to banks & big business – for an example look at Sweden and the EU).
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Demography and ethnicity (race to americans). That’s the elephant.
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Compare #children per woman for white western europeans with the same for ME women and black african women. At a guess, it’s 1-3 for whites, 4-6 for ME, and 6-8 for africans. Add to that that western women hace their children, if any, much later in life creating longer generations.
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This elephant turns “if” white western will be made extinct to “when”. The same goes for white americans, though in your case it is mainly SA migration.
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Perhaps you don’t think it important? Perhaps America is America even if the population is all SA, black, and chinese? Well, ask the native americans fka indians about that. Ethnicity, race, as you call it, is more than melatonin and pigmentation.
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Unfortunately, even people who are in opposition against woke et al dare not name this elephant, and they dare consider its implications even less. For a quick and dirty lesson: compare South Africa before and after apartheid. Compare and contrast Sweden with Poland (or indeed Sweden 1975 with Sweden 2021). World Population Review places Sweden in sixth place from the top for rape, and national figures show that 85%+ of all rapes in Sweden are committed by non-european migrants. The rape-ate of Sweden is almost three times that of the US.
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That’s your elephant: demography, ethnicity and that all races are not equal. Different values, different behaviours, different IQs, different levels of aggression, and so on. It’s almost as if different peoples are different and thrive when segregated…
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Oh, and the baby-elephant: by writing my opinion on this, I have just committed thought crime, which in Sweden is an actual real crime that can render 2yrs in prison. Think about that. Peace out, and other modernities.
None of the problems you mentioned are “race problems”.
They are all “culture problems”.
They are linked to race in that the culture is imported when immigrants bring it to their new countries, and these people are generally neither western nor white.
I am not trying to be PC about it. I make this distinction because there are plenty of non-white people in the US (and elsewhere) who have been born into western culture or have willingly assumed it as adults. These people are not the problem. Often, quite the opposite; some immigrants understand better than the locals the risks of Woke mentality, and see the similarities between that and what they had seen happen in their own countries. Such people are not part of the problem. They can very well be part of the solution.
One can and should be against uncontrolled immigration, and also unequivocally require immigrants to learn and assume the local code of behavior in society. There needs to be zero tolerance to cultural habits that conflict with the local culture. Behaviors that degrade women, violence, public noise disturbances (aka Mosques’ invitations to prayer), etc. should not be tolerated. But if a person arrives legally and is willing to accept the local societal codes – their race or the color of their skin are immaterial.
I pretty much totally agree but I always have this question…….
How do we know that we aren’t just the “old guard” defending the way things used to be? How do we know that we aren’t just the modern equivalent of the people who resisted the civil rights movement in the 60s? How do we knownwenarwnt the grumpy old men complaining about “kids these days”? Sure lots of young people agree with us, but I’m sure there are always some young people that agree with and prefer “the status quo”.
I dont think that is the case, but how do we know?
**how do we know we aren’t the grumpy old men…….
I do know that indeed I am part of the old guard. No period is without flaws, but the flaws of the way things used to be, pre-wokeness, were nothing compared to the out-of-control lunacy the woke are attempting to force on us today. As long as these totalitarian, anti-science, Marxist, intolerant, anti-individualist woke robots continue to shove their insane version of society down our throats, I will continue to be a grumpy old man and resist.
I have also had such thoughts.
To me, the answer lies in Common Sense, the Scientific Method, and Occam’s Razor.
If I can refute what Wokes say using common sense and scientific method (rather than by axiomatic principles, faith, or claims like “because it’s always been like that”) – then I am in the right.
CRT and its Woke proponents exhibit a host of logical fallacies and contradictions in their most basic claims/ideas (such as “there is no objective reality” yet “all whites are racists”).
They are hypocritical, as they apply different standards to different people (such as seeing women as an oppressed group, but only as long as these women are oppressed by whites, and glaringly ignore abuse when conducted by so-called “allies” or minorities).
They make tautological claims that are technically irrefutable (white fragility, internalized bias).
They modify and abuse language.
They use tools like public shaming and cancellation, often without giving the victim a chance to defend themselves.
They give anecdotes and personal experiences greater weight in policy-making than data produced with the Scientific Method (and in the extreme, they even attack the Scientific Method itself). My ability to write this message here and your ability to read it on your computer or mobile screen are proof that the Scientific Method works. Had it not – we’d still be living in caves.
Even if claiming that anecdotes and personal experiences and “other ways of knowing” are superior to the established scientific “way of knowing” did not offend reason and common sense – the burden of proof is still on them. I may change my mind when they show me the astonishing tools they’ve built using data accumulated through Lived Experiences and with the application of ethnomathematics.
When it comes to values and world views, like Communism vs. Capitalism, Open Borders vs. Closed Borders, Globalization vs. Nationalism, etc. – people defending the current order may be just “old guard” (though that is not necessarily bad or wrong). But considering the full breadth of CRT/Woke agenda, I think that even Open Borders Communist Globalists should stand against them, as the end does not justify their means, and changing public policy or even system of governance does not mean we should throw out two thousand years of progress and reason.
In “The Mysterious Stranger”, Mark Twain hit on this:
“[Humanity] has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”
Such a profound truth has rarely been better captured by words.
We’re living in The Emperor’s New Clothes made real.
How did that story end? When the kid asked why there was a naked man prancing down the street, and said what everyone else was thinking.
Be the kid.
We live in a world of deadly serious absurdities, and the only way we can take away the deadly seriousness is by treating them like the absurdities they are.
There may be consequences. We may lose friends, we may be exiled from our families, we may lose our jobs, careers, and the esteem of all of these pretenders.
Is it worth those things to live a lie?
Is it worth those things to bend the knee to a monumental absurdity?
The esteem of the delusional isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit, and the esteem of totalitarian scolds, even less.
As long as based never becomes Based, like woke became Woke, this could work. So long as the based resist the Woke as well as (if it happens) the Based, I’m in.
Excellent article. But a note to the webmaster. Reading white on black is extremely difficult. I had to copy the article and put it in a Word document with black type in order to read it.
You can set your website color preference on desktop by clicking the light bulb icon in the top right corner of the site. Your theme choice may be toggled anytime, and will be preserved when you return to the website in the future. This also works on mobile.
Thanks. That changed the article but the comments are still white text. Can that be changed?
Not at the moment.
Personally I prefer “dark mode” but you can switch it to black on white in the menu at the top. Click the lightbulb (That is on my phone, I think it’s similar on a PC).
‘Based’ seems so dry and bloodless. Like ‘Bright’ for atheists.
Labeling is important. I personally prefer ‘Aware’ as a term, as in being aware of the BS claims of the Woke/CRT/CSJ ideology. But I’m a nobody posting on a relatively small blog.
Unfortunately “aware” was a term that used to be used, several years ago, to describe what is now known as “woke”.
As usual, well done sir.
The issue I see is simple to describe and difficult to untangle. Where the USSR had a clear head; a central power to undermine the problem in today’s west is that those who pedal in Theory are distributed through out every institution imaginable. Cultural institutions like Hollywood and full of it. Political institutions are full too, and it’s not just political parties, but the military and the government bureaucracies which keep the show running. The corporate world now hires C-Suite level DEI folks either because the leadership believes in it or they wish to mitigate the potential risk associate with woke online mobs going after them. Consultancies are up to the eyeballs in DEI stuff, just check out something like accenture or PWC.
(https://www.accenture.com/us-en/about/inclusion-diversity/us-workforce or https://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers.html) Adding to the pressure are advocacy groups which push more and more of this nonsense upon institutions. Education which all of these places pull people from is also of course ridiculously woke.
There is no central authority it’s everywhere. There is no body to which one can stand up and perform that revolutionary act of truth telling or resistance to lies. In the past one person could stand up… now everyone must, but to do so one risks at the worst life destruction. If I stand up and tell the truth will I be able to pay my mortgage and feed my self and my kids? I wanted to say something to my corporate leadership after I attended a required implicit bias training, the obligation to the truth weighs on me, but financial security is a greater weight in light of the family my income supports.
Can’t believe I lost two whole minutes to skimming this dump truck load of self-congratulatory bullshit.
Anonymous “Based”. You just proved the point by being anonymous.
you’ve described my toon.
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com
Totally innocent questions: Does this mean we get to be based about race and IQ? Race and crime? Can we be based about keeping women in the kitchen?
Or is being “based” just about rejecting the most ridiculous woke claims, while trying to pile into the center?
Is the “truth” we’re supposed to be telling to be based, uh, Q Anon truth?
What about aliens and flat earth?
I just think maybe you’re too dumb to philosophize about being based. That’s my based take.
It’s not really about being right or wrong.
It’s about stating what you think is right without being afraid of personal consequences.
(I’m not talking about the consequence of being shown to be wrong in your beliefs or to be thought of as stupid…but consequences like losing your job or being physically attacked, etc.)
Not one reference to Lil B the based god who is literally the reason being based is a word used in today’s society being used in that fashion. Shameful.
The question is “Is it possible to “base” individual who cannot find their own way? Is there some argument that can accomplishment ‘basing’? Personally, I do not think so. I see a range in human society of having empathic skills. Empathy is useful to view as an evolutionary tool meant fo help us discern ‘friend from foe’ through assessing another’s comportment while communicating situations and ideas with the goal of deciding if we should trust that individual. Some have more empathy and are ‘based’ while some have not enough and are predators of others as we all seek to improve our standard of living. Being a constant critic without adding other’s standard of living is a sign of low empathy. Is this a genetic condition much like most mental illness? I think it is and has no cure but for the rest of us to recognize it and treat all with kind respect but not be taken in.
I’m just passing through and I’ll leave it up to you. I’m just sad that we let our education system turn into a propaganda machine that turned many kids into little leftie puppets. Younger people than me will have to take action. I suggest getting started. Ha, Ha, Ha.
My comment needs no moderation. Good essay, always liked mathematicians. They are based in the real and know that feelings won’t buy what you need.
It’s striking how relevant Solzhenitsyn’s 1974 essay, “Live Not By Lies” is to the present day: https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies
Based was a popular slang for “cool” and “truthfull” back in gamergate in 2014, it was used to call people like christina hoff sommers. Then the alt right came. Anyway most of what you argue in terms of objective reality is similar to objectivism but objectivsts believe everything they heard from the media about trump. So, i guess we are at a point that its impossible to pursue objective reality and its better to push narratives to win. Worked for the left, look at blm.
I like Karlyn for her based reviews of diversity training. It’s the kind of humor I used to go to Sargon for, but she’s so much funnier. She’s now instituted a bingo game.
It’s worth noting that, as Alex would likely have said himself, based and woke run right through the heart of everyone, including yourself. It’s not a flaw, just something to watch out for.
Bravo, votre texte, votre enthousiasme sont formidables… It only leaves me with a serious doubt, how to translate “based”? Ancré, axé? Anyway, très bon travail monsieur Lindsay. Merci
Got you “manifesto” thru sott.net…
Je crois que peut-être « basé », comme « basé sur une histoire vraie ». J’imagine plutôt la base d’une maison qu’une ancre. Aussi c’est plus proche de « based », un mot tiré de l’ancien français « base » en fait.
I agree with the thrust of everything you’re saying, but sometimes you focus very heavily on a word that is not intuitive, in this case “based.” I still couldn’t explain to someone what that even means after reading this and I’ve never heard of the concept before this article, despite reading most of your work and following you for quite a while. I had the same problem with your ideas about wokeness being rooted in psychopathy. It’s not intuitive to what people think of when they think of psychopathy. I wish you would try harder to be both clear and concise in your definitions. You provide useful tools to people who follow your work, but sometimes your terminology gets in the way.
It seems to mean “agrees with me about stuff and makes jokes I find funny”
Based is quite an unusual word, and the start of this article gives a rather confusing introduction to it.
If you really want to understand it fully, head to desuarchive.org, choose one of the Archives, and search for the word based and you’ll get a good idea about what being based means. There is a ton of connotations for the word which need to be understood by observing natural language.
While Lindsay is correct in that it means telling the truth in spite of “Big Lies”, based is a lot more than that. It means not caring what other people think, even if a mob forms against you. It’s about not apologizing for your beliefs. It’s about having courage and standing up, and not caring about the consequences when you’re in the right.
As you browse desuarchive.org, you’ll see that “based” is often associated with views which most would consider beyond the pale in polite society, because it is brave to be an earnest bigot in a world which condemns even the lightest accidents as bigotry. But it’s also about unpopular opinions, embracing natural behavior (such as finding women attractive or wanting to be outside),
One of the best examples of based behavior comes from a game I was playing not too long ago. The cooperative group had achieved the objectives we wanted to achieve, and were moving towards leaving the game. One player said that he didn’t really care about efficiency or maximizing the objectives completed in the time. He just wanted to continue shooting at the waves of cloned bad guys. Immediately everyone in the group recognized this behavior as based. He didn’t care what we wanted or what the average person might have wanted or what the gaming community at large might have wanted, he just did what he wanted and asserted his position unapologetically.
Follow up here to make my point.
Post #1
The fact that we have to do things like this [make videos to encourage people to take a vaccine] is so absurd
Getting a vaccine shouldn’t be a choice; unless you have some medical issue with vaccines, you take it. If you complain, they ought to just hold you down and inject it. I am not an authoritarian but this is ridiculous.
Post #2 (in reply to Post # 1)
I hope you die a painful death and then burn in hell for eternity.
Post #3 (in reply to Post # 2)
based. sic sempter [sic] tyrannus
You’ll notice in post #1, the anonymous poster does several unbased things. First, he makes an appeal to the collective, hiding behind other people. He wouldn’t be the one forcing people to take vaccines, “they” would be the ones doing it. Second, he makes a major contradiction (forcing people to do something while claiming to not be an authoritarian) which exposes at least part of his post as a lie, a lie told to make him look better.
Anonymous poster #3 calls post #2 based. Let’s explore this further. In contrast to anonymous poster #1, he uses “I” instead of coming from a collective point of view. His opinions are his own. They are also slightly edgy, wishing for the death of the other person, but unapologetic about it. There is no weaseling or hedging. It’s also principled. Poster #2 believes it’s wrong to impose your will on others and be authoritarian and isn’t willing to hide or lie about his idea. Post #2 is based.
Did you and your friends happen to be playing Helldivers?
Warframe actually. It now has an interesting mechanic where at certain points players can leave a party while other players remain in the mission.
I agree. “Based” is not immediately intuitive and thus subject to misunderstanding. I am not nominating an alternative term, but I have found the use of the world “real” to be helpful when I debate with so-called woke proponents. Real, to me, connotes a sense of the reality of history’s pendulum swings between liberty and tyranny. And I say “so-called” woke because they are the very opposite of “woke.” They sleep through history, unaware or blissfully acceptable of tyranny of thought, e.g. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.
Finally, CRT’s true evil is not in the religion itself but its actual manifestations in society, namely the utter lie that without equity we are racists. The drive for equity, if successful, will be the death of America as an idea. It is the single greatest threat we face, China and Russia notwithstanding.
As I understand it, “based” is when one cuts through the bullshit to get to the root of things – thus, the “base” of the matter.
One need only look at the uproar – even today in what passes for textbooks – in response to Reagan’s expression of a simple truth in his 1983 “Evil Empire” speech to appreciate the gulf between the based and the Woke. While the use of this simple phrase was derided by the Left in the West as the blathering of a fool – there were even some in Reagan’s circle who had attempted to keep those words out of the speech – the effect on many within the Soviet Union was electrifying. As former inmate of Permanent Labor Camp 35, Natan Sharansky, later put it: “We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth—a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.” It’s likely that even Reagan’s harshest critics knew that he spoke the truth.
my favorite bit:
“Shame has no subversive potential. It’s the tool of tools and scolds. It bends people only to a certain point, and that point is precisely the moment at which they finally laugh. This is why based will always defeat Woke.”
why:
this reminds me of Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” when he says something like (liberally paraphrasing) “after a time [in the camps], you don’t feel sadness anymore. there was even a peculiar sense of humor… who would be killed next, who would die of which disease. etc.”
when i first read that i thought, this is what the path to psychosis looks like. and a warranted case of it at that, given the circumstances. but after reading this piece i see a pattern.
laugh, be reasonable, forgive, and refuse to to participate in delusions of reality.
Your efforts are doomed by your own logisticating as you still see this as a class issue and not a specifically Jewish led campaign against white people, even though it’s demonstrably true in triplicate 4KHD black letter proof.
You’re having fake fantasy arguments while never identifying the source of your problems. Any other Solzhenitsyn books you think might be relevant to his views on how this stuff happened in Russia? No? Nothing?
This is why I can’t take you seriously. You’re an unserious thinker telling lies.
Are you the same John Oliver referred to as an asshole in the above article?
this comment is what we used to call based. now that the term has been sullied by normie trash, i must say it is full of good information, gives zero fucks, and:
https://twohundredyearstogether.wordpress.com/
https://archive.org/details/Solzhenitsyn200YearsTogether/Solzhenitsyn-200%20Years
https://200yearstogether.wordpress.com/
https://jewise.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-200-years-together/
You’re doing yeomans work linkbro.
The Jews might be leading. The problem is that everyone else is following. Even if you get rid of the Jews, I doubt that the decadent trends would go away.
Actually trying to deflect attention and scrutiny away from everyone else onto the Jews is what will cause efforts to be doomed.
At the end of chapter nine of 200 Years Together, Solzhenitsyn denounces “the superstitious faith in the historical potency of conspiracies” that leads some to blame the Russian revolutions on the Jews and to ignore the “Russian failings that determined our sad historical decline.”
While people with hypersensitivity to Jews or JDS (Jew Derangement System) continue to focus solely on the Jews, people from other groups (who are doing the same things the Jews are doing) are given a free pass to continue to destroy society…because everyone’s busy hyperventilating over Jews.
This can often be seen with the “Name the Jew” theme — which could more accurately be described as “deflect attention to the Jew” . The Jew is named, while those people who the Jew reports to escape scrutiny and can continue with their destructive aims.
Why you wouldn’t just link to the wikipedia (lmfao you pedestrian) that you lazily ctrl v’d into this comment box is stupid, but since you brought it up I see absolutely nothing fishy at all about taking a quote of a guy effectively saying “the problem with Russians was we listened to the Jews but other people just threw them out and they were fine” and planting a flag on that sandhill that says “Solzhenitsyn’s 1200 page anthology of the Jewish rape of Russia proves that Jewish Bolshevism isn’t real”
Must be why wikipedia is so widely cited as the most accurate and reliable source of information in the history of information.
This was a 2/10 effort motzo ball. Just a flattened, dissolving half baked turdball floating in the packaged soup that was, and is, this fake e-intellectual website.
sounds to me like yur not based! Pretty funny semantics tho! But James’s article is way funnier, so he’s more based. Go base yourself!
So you admit that was Solzhenitsyn’s actual quote. You are free to imagine in your head what you thought he meant by it, and put words in his mouth. But that doesn’t change the fact that those were his actual words.
Nice hysterical rant about Wikipedia and totally missing everything else I said.
Looks like I found someone with JDS.
unbased and cringepilled
Edited to remove swearing, I am sorry, I forgot my manners, I was in a bleu mood. I also added a bit for context.
This ties so well with your work on authenticity, which rings really true to me. I am running for Olympia City Council, the belly of the beast, as based. Real people love me. The Woke organize against me.
This week they organized a (failed) mob to tell me I could not SAYTHEIRNAMES of two young black men who were shot by OPD in Olympia in 2015. This incident was a big part of what led to Evergreen 2017. I was the only person who reported on that case. I spent two years investigating the shooting and my work was used in court in defense of the men. I am proud of that work and put it on my website’s about me page (OlympiaFTW2021.org). I was told I “did not have permission” to cite my own work LOL. Right. They tried to muster a pile on, but out of 5K followers I got one message!!! They loved me when I was reporting what they wanted to hear, they turned on me when I was telling the truth on another case which they did not want to hear the truth. I told them I am not going to erase two years of my life, especially when public safety is an issue voters in Olympia care about.
I am reporting on homelessness from a based perspective, and I am pretty sure it is going to win me the race. My opponent does not even have the word on his website and it is the #1 issue in Olympia. Another council member (who I have a text of him mocking Black History Month) is running on equity. No regular voter in Olympia about equity, they want to stop seeing people shooting up on our streets in front of their kids, they want to be able to use the parks w/o being stabbed by needles, they want to stop having their shit stolen, they want to not be harassed when jogging by the lake and they are sick of paying $500K to clean up encampments, and $500K to basically babysit 65 people in a tent city. For the same money 1000 seniors/disabled could get $5000 housing grants to stay housed, but right now we spend all our money on a street subculture that is abusing our generosity. We have ceded our town to substance abusers, putting their needs at the top of the pyramid and neglecting everyone else. My DT looks like a war zone. It looks like they have given up.
But equity. And a year to “reimagine” LE. OPD is not the problem. Its all lies upon lies upon lies. They are delusional that people are under threat in Olympia. It is incredibly safe here for BIPOC/trans. The majority of fear is self generated, and it is self harming. We saw it so clearly w Evergreen and those false narratives are causing real harm.
My city is dying due to lies. The entire West Coast is dying due to lives. People are ashamed of Olympia. People are leaving Olympia. They do not feel safe due to the homeless crisis not racist white supremacist targeting. Businesses are being called economic terrorists for complaining about people leaving feces and needles on their premises and their employees/customers harassed. But if a homeless person harasses you/steals from you they have moral exemption, they call it survival crime.
They blame racism, capitalism and gentrification. Lies to cover their own complicity and mental illness. One Councilmember, and oh how I wish I was joking, wants to decolonize both homelessness and trash. Said w a straight face, no irony, or humor. She was held to account by a local anti-racist, same one who tried to mob me, for having a RACIST grief reaction in a public FB post, 24 hours after her friend committed suicide. Said CM wrote a long apology realizing she had humanized her dead white friend too much. They have lost their humanity. They are insane. I have begun to put them in the category of children and treat them as I would a child.
Their ignorance is killing people in my city.
I lay out my tolerance for harm argument in this piece on homelessness, w some vivid photography. Tolerance for harm is my answer for when the left goes too far. Written version: https://candacemercer.medium.com/the-real-crisis-in-olympia-is-not-homelessness-ad68199ab708 Podcast version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8unUs0QfCE
I am also organizing a coalition to flip the entire council. If we do the ROI will be enormous and we will provide proof of concept that even the most woke city will not bend in the face of reality. I see a path to victory. Everyone sees what the woke deny. The rebellion is in the air. I have never known so many people who know all 7 CM names, and will not be voting for them period. FIVE seats are open. We need to win 3 to have a majority, as we can pick off the mayor to our team. This is so doable.
RUN FOR OFFICE PEOPLE. ANY OFFICE YOU CAN HANDLE. IT IS YOUR CIVIC DUTY and YESIAMYELLING. BUT NOT SWEARING.
Good luck to you. It all reminds me of “The Emporer’s New Clothes.” I hope and pray you and other based people will get your city turned around.
Many people claim to be “based,” but they refuse to recognize the scientific/biological reality that all human life begins at conception and it is separate from the mother in this regard. This resistance against objective reality afflicts more people of the liberal persuasion than the conservative one, but too many people on either side of the ideological spectrum deny biology 101.
And speaking of biology 101, many others who claim to be “based” also accept the delusion regarding gender when the somewhat recent notion that gender is more behavioral and an internal feeling rather than being synonymous with a person’s biological sex became more widespread. However, note the root of gender: genus or specific kind of thing like a member of a certain sex; gender is also not just how it is used in grammar in another context. The delusion is completely irrational, and many people who claim to be a different gender than what their biological sex is expose their own hypocrisy by taking many foolish measures to mutilate themselves and/or try to change the appearance of their underlying biology to appear to be a part of the opposite biological sex. If behavior/feeling is definitive, then why seek to change the biological appearance and other related things like dress as the opposite sex, etc? Busted!
And so a person who is truly “based” does not refer to a biological male as a she or her just because the deluded one insists on this irrationality. The same applies in reverse. A biological female is a she and a her ; not a he or a him, and this is not simply a matter of being polite to deny reality to make a deluded person feel good. That is like telling an alcoholic that he or she is not really an alcoholic if they don’t feel like one. Then reinforce the illness by providing more drinks to the person.
Good stuff. Let’s get based, then. I’m on board.
The future is Based.
Recall there are no survivors from the armed resistance to Bolsheviks…. And Solzhenitsyn dismantled the Soviets Union with his stoic refusal to tell a lie. Bravo. He is guiding light.
The Based Manifesto