Turner is obviously a maniac and it's shocking that anyone could see him as anything other than, at best, an insecure worm, or, at worst, an evil tyrant hell bent on destroying lives to flatter his own ego.
This is very moving Nina. I follow you only as an admirer of your book, your politics and your mind and had no idea you were embroiled in this legal nightmare.
What a relief it is over for you and what a masterclass on postmodernity it must have been.
I am a visual artist who has been, and still is, cancelled and ostracised by multiple social media and the arts community for refusing to believe men can turn into women and making my view public. Regardless of the pain, loss of time and income I can honestly say having the integrity to stand up for truths sincerely believed in is something only fleetingly regretted on my worst days. It has been worth it to find out with certainty the answer to that question - would I have been a Nazi? - is a resounding and absolute NO.
I used to read your stuff back in the old Infinite Thought days - and we even met up once (remember the Non-Aligned Lefties for Left Unity...? lol) but I hadn't been keeping up, so when I saw these reports I'll admit my first thought was: "oh no, Nina Power has gone down the neo-reactionary path..." But then I listened to a few podcasts you did recently and was like: "eh? This is more or less the same old Nina Power" - and reading this clears a lot up for me. Really horrible to hear that you have received threats - such cowards!
Funny how that goes and is so often the way. I've basically the same politics as I had c.1970, but now I'm supposed to be somewhere to the right of Genghiz Khan. How does that even work?
Thanks for sharing, Nina. The outcome of all this seemed ludicrous even from Turner's deranged thread...er...perspective, but now even more so with your retrospective. But something you didn't mention: it seemed like Compact threw you under the bus and your resignation was not entirely voluntary. Is that inference true? What really happened there?
Well, I have a lot of respect for the magazine and my colleagues. I offered to step back and on Thursday they said that I should do that. So I did resign, but I don't know what would have happened if I had not. I don't envy their choice either way.
It's so disappointing that they did this to you. Compact was one of the very few media outlets that I trusted. This trust is now severely damaged. I understand that they must have made a business calculation and feared that the mob would go after them. But on the other hand, I suspect that a large proportion of their subscribers hate cancel culture, and given that you were such an integral and highly visible member of the team (with the two podcasts and the weekly newsletter that you co-hosted), I suspect that they have severely damaged their reputation among subscribers. It seems like a very bad decision. I will miss the podcasts and your inspiring weekly newsletter!
Compact is toast. I'm not wishing them ill but skittering and rolling over *never works*. Never never never. It's like pasting a "kick me" sign to your own back. It's like the fifth skittish pony of the apocalypse. When people and institutions do it it's like they are announcing "I am just going outside and may be some time".
Really? On what grounds? Why do institutions and the media care so much about a few online psychopathic bullies with social media bully friends and witch-hunt-voyeurs? The majority of readers never notice or care about such things and are able to take a differentiated position on their own. I'm really sorry for you, Nina.
This is one of the great mysteries. It seems like none of this would work in real life. Generally these people are so repellent that no-one would put any stock in their opinion. Somehow the internet changes all that and the mutants take over everything.
I suppose the description of the campaign they were subjected to is pretty revealing. You have to be some kind of jobless religious zealot to dedicate yourself to that type of online activity.
I am working on an article: Standing up to the Authoritarian Left's ruination and purity campaigns and Plots (see livestream below for some context).
If any of you have any tips, examples, anecotes, cautionary tales please let me know. And thanks again Nina for coming on my infant podcast & sorry for the accidental abrupt end to the stream.
I’m sorry for what you’ve gone through, and hope the tides that are turning are towards better shores.
I’m grateful to you as you were one of the first people to set me on the track of thoughtful disagreement and so proper differentiation. You insisted people read their seeming enemies, and so I did, and I still disagreed for the most part (very triggered I must say) but came to understand why I disagreed, or ultimately what I actually thought/think at a given time. And now disagreement feels alot less dangerous to me, infact it feels human. And I grow increasingly curious about the world thanks to it.
Jokes and irony go over my head so for a while I paranoiacally believed that Luke was doing some super ironic meta modern performance, because how can someone from the irony riddled art world not see the ridiculousness of using a flag that says ‘you will not divide us’ to actively ostracise and divide? Is he performing liberal capitalism?
Flags are a problem, they don’t want to include/represent difference, they want to claim and flatten it. People want difference and don’t want to be reduced to a flag. This is good health I think
Thank you, Kirsty. I think "He Will Not Divide Us" was indeed an attempt to use and invert the tactics of 4Chan and mid-2010s trolling. It depended upon an envy and mimicry of the successful strategy of the playfulness of memes in the run up to Trump's election in 2016. HWNDU relies on a completely divisive logic, as you say, and was an institutional attempt to harness the energy and subversive humour of meme/online culture (think of the role of major institutions in promoting HWNDU). There was a very interesting recent thread about the political nature of the metamodernism project recently: https://twitter.com/MattKnightLewis/status/1809286332448993785
I think Daniel Keller pointed out at some point that HWNDU was a major missed opportunity insofar as there could have been this spectacular dialogue between 4chan/meme guys and their flag, like a genuine opportunity for dialogue. But instead they bottled it and called everyone Nazis. I would - and almost have - lose everything for art! They could have made the single most interesting artwork of the 2010s!
I was nodding along 'til the article devolved into unhinged communist loony at the end. The disease is the cure? I don't think so.
That is the trouble with all of them: 90% is plausible, this is what gets you the support on the Finland Station platform, 'pass the Duce on the left -hand side', and make Chancellor of the Reich.
Then the "fun" begins.
Edit: 'not a single broken glass' good btw. I recognise it ain't iron pyrites; but I'm blowed if I understand it. :-)
MattKnightLewis leaves me none the wiser. The wrong platform, as he says himself. Not being either Elon or the God-Emperor, I can follow X not at all at the best of times!
It was chilling to read those message transcripts because it was the kind of random dumb stuff I'd say. I am just so happy that you say you've got faith and friends and support and other good things, because I was worried when your Twitter account disappeared.
Wow I had no idea about any of this, I came into your work through podcasts and YouTube talks you’ve had. I’m sorry you experienced the cruelty of these wonks. I can relate to feeling crazed and unmoored about community’s that were once so intellectual and creative seemingly overnight falling in lockstep with the most vile and detestable anti-art and really anti-life dogma of the last ten years. I want you to keep writing and working because as a writer that’s caught in this culture war dialectic the most important fact about you (to me) seems lost which is: your sheer pedigree of writing is fantastic and you’re a unique thinker. You’re way above being a figure that’s simply some counterpoint to a silly culture war. You are a fantastic writer, keep working and history will remember you Fondly.
You've always been a sweetheart in every interaction and everything I've seen you do or say in public. It seems ridiculous to me that anyone would be criticizing you about anything, or pretending there's some kind of moral or ethical issue on your part.
Well that's kind! I don't think I'm particularly good or especially evil, but I try to be temperate and open-minded and (these days) live in a Christian way, and ask for forgiveness when I've made a mistake. I'm not this scheming, horrible [insert worst word] that people like Turner and those around him try to depict me as. There's a lot of splitting, projection and black and white thinking going on. I feel like I know my heart and mind, and even if only I know who I am and what I think and feel, that would be enough, even if the whole world had taken arms (or tweets) against me.
You are dealing with some extreme bullshit and character assassination at the moment which is completely unwarranted. It's just how it is in this arena. "Either you log offline, or someone starts a gossip campaign against you." Anyway I think you're being treated very unfairly.
I very much appreciate this, kind internet stranger. I got brutally cancelled before in 2018 over gender stuff/talking to the "wrong" people and it was a lesson in how to endure. This time round, I know better what the denouncers are up to—and I think it's more and more obvious to larger numbers of people as well—and I got a lot of public and private support. People are good. Life is good. I wake up everyday with and in gratitude!
Nothing you deserve, and it's all nonsense anyway. You are taking the correct approach to this as you already know, but it's nice to have some small encouragement.
Turner is obviously a maniac and it's shocking that anyone could see him as anything other than, at best, an insecure worm, or, at worst, an evil tyrant hell bent on destroying lives to flatter his own ego.
None of his friends seem to care about his state of mind. I assume he'll just keep doing this Nazi routine forever to more people. It's very sad.
This is very moving Nina. I follow you only as an admirer of your book, your politics and your mind and had no idea you were embroiled in this legal nightmare.
What a relief it is over for you and what a masterclass on postmodernity it must have been.
I am a visual artist who has been, and still is, cancelled and ostracised by multiple social media and the arts community for refusing to believe men can turn into women and making my view public. Regardless of the pain, loss of time and income I can honestly say having the integrity to stand up for truths sincerely believed in is something only fleetingly regretted on my worst days. It has been worth it to find out with certainty the answer to that question - would I have been a Nazi? - is a resounding and absolute NO.
Wow. What vindictiveness on his part. I am new to your writing. So glad to have discovered you.
Probably not a good idea to sue for libel when you think of David Irving and the fact that you don’t have a right to a jury trial.
Effeminate liberals are both mendacious and malicious.
I used to read your stuff back in the old Infinite Thought days - and we even met up once (remember the Non-Aligned Lefties for Left Unity...? lol) but I hadn't been keeping up, so when I saw these reports I'll admit my first thought was: "oh no, Nina Power has gone down the neo-reactionary path..." But then I listened to a few podcasts you did recently and was like: "eh? This is more or less the same old Nina Power" - and reading this clears a lot up for me. Really horrible to hear that you have received threats - such cowards!
I stayed the same and everyone around me went insane. I woke up one day and realised the Earth had shifted on its axis and...we were in trouble!
Funny how that goes and is so often the way. I've basically the same politics as I had c.1970, but now I'm supposed to be somewhere to the right of Genghiz Khan. How does that even work?
Thanks for sharing, Nina. The outcome of all this seemed ludicrous even from Turner's deranged thread...er...perspective, but now even more so with your retrospective. But something you didn't mention: it seemed like Compact threw you under the bus and your resignation was not entirely voluntary. Is that inference true? What really happened there?
Well, I have a lot of respect for the magazine and my colleagues. I offered to step back and on Thursday they said that I should do that. So I did resign, but I don't know what would have happened if I had not. I don't envy their choice either way.
It's so disappointing that they did this to you. Compact was one of the very few media outlets that I trusted. This trust is now severely damaged. I understand that they must have made a business calculation and feared that the mob would go after them. But on the other hand, I suspect that a large proportion of their subscribers hate cancel culture, and given that you were such an integral and highly visible member of the team (with the two podcasts and the weekly newsletter that you co-hosted), I suspect that they have severely damaged their reputation among subscribers. It seems like a very bad decision. I will miss the podcasts and your inspiring weekly newsletter!
I'll miss them too. I really loved this job and my colleagues.
You dindu nuffink wrong except believe they myth about the quality of British justice.
Compact is toast. I'm not wishing them ill but skittering and rolling over *never works*. Never never never. It's like pasting a "kick me" sign to your own back. It's like the fifth skittish pony of the apocalypse. When people and institutions do it it's like they are announcing "I am just going outside and may be some time".
It was too editorially supine to say anything of interest.
Well, given everything, they should have rejected your offer to resign and stood by their gal. What do we even have if we haven't loyalty to friends?
I agree.
Really? On what grounds? Why do institutions and the media care so much about a few online psychopathic bullies with social media bully friends and witch-hunt-voyeurs? The majority of readers never notice or care about such things and are able to take a differentiated position on their own. I'm really sorry for you, Nina.
Thank you, that's kind.
This is one of the great mysteries. It seems like none of this would work in real life. Generally these people are so repellent that no-one would put any stock in their opinion. Somehow the internet changes all that and the mutants take over everything.
I suppose the description of the campaign they were subjected to is pretty revealing. You have to be some kind of jobless religious zealot to dedicate yourself to that type of online activity.
I am working on an article: Standing up to the Authoritarian Left's ruination and purity campaigns and Plots (see livestream below for some context).
If any of you have any tips, examples, anecotes, cautionary tales please let me know. And thanks again Nina for coming on my infant podcast & sorry for the accidental abrupt end to the stream.
X https://x.com/TaravanDijk7/status/1810644732407595180
YT https://rumble.com/v562wkb-trans-left-stasi-cancel-nina-power-part-2.html
Rumble https://www.youtube.com/live/WZ8TCp71kSc?si=4AnYhGmoK6jmlA1T
Maybe the best defense is good offense? Our next Morbid Symptoms episode will be: Vaush's Greatest 'Ultrafeminist' Hits: https://x.com/TaravanDijk7/status/1811354309738561996
Oh god, not ruddy Vaush. Is he still at it? He sounds even more demented than he did back in the day.
So wasteful of your precious energy to have been forced to engage with a psychopath.
Perhaps we learned some things, perhaps we didn't. Either way, we got Nick Land into the British High Court records in perpetuity.
I’m sorry for what you’ve gone through, and hope the tides that are turning are towards better shores.
I’m grateful to you as you were one of the first people to set me on the track of thoughtful disagreement and so proper differentiation. You insisted people read their seeming enemies, and so I did, and I still disagreed for the most part (very triggered I must say) but came to understand why I disagreed, or ultimately what I actually thought/think at a given time. And now disagreement feels alot less dangerous to me, infact it feels human. And I grow increasingly curious about the world thanks to it.
Jokes and irony go over my head so for a while I paranoiacally believed that Luke was doing some super ironic meta modern performance, because how can someone from the irony riddled art world not see the ridiculousness of using a flag that says ‘you will not divide us’ to actively ostracise and divide? Is he performing liberal capitalism?
Flags are a problem, they don’t want to include/represent difference, they want to claim and flatten it. People want difference and don’t want to be reduced to a flag. This is good health I think
Thank you, Kirsty. I think "He Will Not Divide Us" was indeed an attempt to use and invert the tactics of 4Chan and mid-2010s trolling. It depended upon an envy and mimicry of the successful strategy of the playfulness of memes in the run up to Trump's election in 2016. HWNDU relies on a completely divisive logic, as you say, and was an institutional attempt to harness the energy and subversive humour of meme/online culture (think of the role of major institutions in promoting HWNDU). There was a very interesting recent thread about the political nature of the metamodernism project recently: https://twitter.com/MattKnightLewis/status/1809286332448993785
Re flags, there was an exhibition in New Zealand about flags by Mercy Pictures which got seriously attacked, partly because of my having written a text for them. This is the text: https://ninapower.net/2020/11/12/piece-on-flags-for-mercy-pictures/
This was in 2020. There's a very fair account of what happened by James Robb here. You'll notice a pattern with recent events! https://convincingreasons.wordpress.com/2020/11/16/a-witch-hunt-devastates-the-auckland-art-world/
The Mercy Pictures "People of Colour" exhibition was an incredible thing.
I think Daniel Keller pointed out at some point that HWNDU was a major missed opportunity insofar as there could have been this spectacular dialogue between 4chan/meme guys and their flag, like a genuine opportunity for dialogue. But instead they bottled it and called everyone Nazis. I would - and almost have - lose everything for art! They could have made the single most interesting artwork of the 2010s!
If even art criticism gets you cancelled, we might as jump straight into philosophy, politics, religion and theology!
I was nodding along 'til the article devolved into unhinged communist loony at the end. The disease is the cure? I don't think so.
That is the trouble with all of them: 90% is plausible, this is what gets you the support on the Finland Station platform, 'pass the Duce on the left -hand side', and make Chancellor of the Reich.
Then the "fun" begins.
Edit: 'not a single broken glass' good btw. I recognise it ain't iron pyrites; but I'm blowed if I understand it. :-)
Ah interesting 👀 thanks for these links, I’m going to check them out now 🙏
MattKnightLewis leaves me none the wiser. The wrong platform, as he says himself. Not being either Elon or the God-Emperor, I can follow X not at all at the best of times!
His original project was called "the void"
Show us your first editions, you tease!
But warn us first: I have a weak heart.
I hope you continue to stay on The Lack. I love the conversations you have with Benjamin on the Patreon episodes.
Thank you. We shall carry on.
Tremendous news.
Oh God, I just read many tweets responding favorably to Luke Turner. Blows my mind how stupid and vengeful (but mostly stupid) people can be.
I'm sorry this happened to you, keep fighting the good fight.
It was chilling to read those message transcripts because it was the kind of random dumb stuff I'd say. I am just so happy that you say you've got faith and friends and support and other good things, because I was worried when your Twitter account disappeared.
My intellect's proceed...with Nina Power!
90's pop culture references aside, Nina, you have my support.
Yes
Wow I had no idea about any of this, I came into your work through podcasts and YouTube talks you’ve had. I’m sorry you experienced the cruelty of these wonks. I can relate to feeling crazed and unmoored about community’s that were once so intellectual and creative seemingly overnight falling in lockstep with the most vile and detestable anti-art and really anti-life dogma of the last ten years. I want you to keep writing and working because as a writer that’s caught in this culture war dialectic the most important fact about you (to me) seems lost which is: your sheer pedigree of writing is fantastic and you’re a unique thinker. You’re way above being a figure that’s simply some counterpoint to a silly culture war. You are a fantastic writer, keep working and history will remember you Fondly.
Thank you. I will.
You've always been a sweetheart in every interaction and everything I've seen you do or say in public. It seems ridiculous to me that anyone would be criticizing you about anything, or pretending there's some kind of moral or ethical issue on your part.
Well that's kind! I don't think I'm particularly good or especially evil, but I try to be temperate and open-minded and (these days) live in a Christian way, and ask for forgiveness when I've made a mistake. I'm not this scheming, horrible [insert worst word] that people like Turner and those around him try to depict me as. There's a lot of splitting, projection and black and white thinking going on. I feel like I know my heart and mind, and even if only I know who I am and what I think and feel, that would be enough, even if the whole world had taken arms (or tweets) against me.
You are dealing with some extreme bullshit and character assassination at the moment which is completely unwarranted. It's just how it is in this arena. "Either you log offline, or someone starts a gossip campaign against you." Anyway I think you're being treated very unfairly.
Thank you. I refuse to indulge in self-pity, but I also refuse to shut up as well. Take that, denouncers!
Just wanted to express my friendship and public support as you go through this lonely ordeal and are abandoned by others
I very much appreciate this, kind internet stranger. I got brutally cancelled before in 2018 over gender stuff/talking to the "wrong" people and it was a lesson in how to endure. This time round, I know better what the denouncers are up to—and I think it's more and more obvious to larger numbers of people as well—and I got a lot of public and private support. People are good. Life is good. I wake up everyday with and in gratitude!
Nothing you deserve, and it's all nonsense anyway. You are taking the correct approach to this as you already know, but it's nice to have some small encouragement.