Some person named Yassine Meskhout has been writing about me.
I’m not going to respond with a post, so I’m going to address everything in this note thread and that will be that.
YASSINE MESKHOUT IS A RACIAL BIGOT. He describes himself as a “Saracen invader.” If you don’t see a problem with that, you probably have a racial double standard. How would you react to someone who called themselves an “Aryan invader”?
Yassine Meshkout accuses me of saying that Kamala Harris personally was actively trying to shut down independent media outlets, which I did not say. I said that the “normal experts” who staff a Democrat administration would try to shut down independent media outlets. In fact, they are already doing this. I linked to a story about the New York government’s intimidation of VDARE. Yassine seems to not have heard of the VDARE situation, and most of his post is a cope which appears to be borne out of his embarrassment at how bad the VDARE situation makes liberals look. In a move that is sadly common among people who have been caught in a lie or presented with a fact that embarrasses them, Yassine retreats into psychobabble and radical skepticism, claiming that it is often psychologically impossible for people to discern what is true. He insults my appearance and gives a bizarre thought experiment about a person who has erections when he sees the color red. The fact that Yassine thinks this thought experiment has something to say about human nature, suggests that Yassine himself has a shaky understanding of reality and human nature.
AD HOC RATIONALIZATION OF INTENSE TRIBAL AGGRESSION. This is the real problem. The gist of Yassine Meshkout’s post (and the gist of our substack Notes exchange) is that: i. Yassine presents examples of extreme, illiberal, authoritarian action being taken against people he doesn’t like. ii. At some level, Yassine realizes that those actions starkly violate the liberal principles he claims to hold. iii. Then Yassine lies or lies by omission, OR invents a bunch of ludicrous, ad hoc, arbitrary reasons why the illiberal state aggression against people he dislikes is actually like totally ok and it actually doesn’t contradict liberal values because of some obscure bullshit reason that Yassine made up just now for this specific circumstance, and only people as sophisticated as Yassine are sophisticated enough to understand this bullshit reason, and it’s actually like so nuanced and complex so who even knows anyways, and if you believe in equality under the law then you’re like totally uptight, man. I think we’ve all encountered people like Yassine. Let’s speak frankly about this. THE MOST PROBABLE EXPLANATION OF WHY PEOPLE ACT LIKE YASSINE IS BECAUSE THEY ARE VICIOUS, AGGRESSIVE TRIBALISTS.They are acting out of the deep evolved instinct to override their conscience when there is an opportunity to brutalize the other tribe. At some deep level they know that it’s wrong to put innocent people in prison, so they invent some bullshit excuse to rationalize it. Let us not forget that there are psychopaths in this world. There are people who either do not have a conscience or choose to ignore their conscience, but pretend that they follow a moral compass. When someone cheers on acts of vicious aggression against outgroup members, and makes up transparently ridiculous justifications for doing so, the most parsimonious explanation is that they do not care about truth or fairness and their pretended morality is just a front for their bitter, seething tribal hatred. (side note: some people think that it is somehow wrong to express negative assessments of people. I disagree. I think that we should tell the truth.) As dissidents and as Westerners, we need to get serious about this. People like Yassine may not consciously want us dead, but if Yassine’s friends pulled you out of your house tomorrow and killed you or imprisoned you, the odds are greater than 50% that Yassine would make up some bullshit excuse about how you deserved it. If Yassine had been raised in Russia, he would ignore the fact the Navalny was killed for being a dissident, and he would make up an excuse about how actually Navalny was put on trial for being a Neo-nazi or whatever. Rounding up and murdering Kulaks doesn’t require every person to be a psychopath, it just requires enough people to be like Yassine. Yassine appears to be a vile piece of filth, and I initially said so. A little while later I edited my words because while Yassine certainly appears to be an evil person, I have only interacted with him in substack Notes; I have never met him in person. Yassine’s new post seems to confirm my suspicions about his character, but we need to be precise when we say that someone is an evil person; we don’t want to let that serious accusation get watered down from overuse.
If you think I am exaggerating in my description of the ludicrous excuses Yassine Meshkout gave as justifications for state violence against people he doesn’t like, here are the examples. i.Douglas Mackey case. In 2016 Douglas Mackey shared a meme which urged Hillary voters to vote by text. The Biden administration prosecuted Mackey and sentenced him to prison. Yassine Meshkout made a post defending this. Yassine’s post never mentions that a Hillary supporter shared a video urging Trump supporters to vote by text, but she was never prosecuted. ii. Yassine Meshkout’s post says that he “asked [Simon] for details” about the VDARE case. He did not. In his summary of the VDARE case he says that the New York Government’s intimidation of VDARE is “a loooong ways out from” the claim that “Kamala Harris wants to shut down independent media outlets.” Again, I did not make the claim that Kamala Harris personally wanted to do that, but it’s also not a long ways from that. When the American press reports that some third world government drove an independent media outlet out of business, they’re often talking about the same kind of tactics that the New York Government used against VDARE. iii. Putting Trump in prison for mishandling classified documents. Yassine justifies this by saying that he’s in favor of prosecuting people who commit crimes. Of course Yassine did not say that Hillary Clinton should be prosecuted for mishandling classified documents, even though everyone agrees that she committed a crime. Back in 2016 prosecuting a presidential candidate was (not Yassine’s words) a “violation of democratic principle that distinguishes free polities from authoritarian ones.” But in 2024 it was flipped. Suddenly, even a presidential candidate could be prosecuted because no one is above the law. These people have absolutely no respect for the principle of equality before the law. They would make up bullshit excuses to justify literally anything. If Yassine had been raised in Russia, he would ignore the fact the Navalny was killed for being a dissident, and he would make up an excuse about how actually Navalny was imprisoned for being a Neo-nazi or whatever.
YASSINE MESHKOUT ACCUSES ME OF HIDING MY BELIEFS, BUT I EXPLICITLY STATED EXACTLY WHAT I THINK. I honestly have no idea what he thinks I believe or what he thinks I am hiding.
You can see our substack notes exchange in the attached images. Here is the link:substack.com/@simonlair…
Here’s Yassine Meshkout’s piece about me:
You can also see his craven, two-faced behavior in the interaction. Ending with “thank you for the information my friend” and then writing an entire smarmy, personally vindictive essay about our interaction. He appears to have absolutely no shame about this and he links to the interaction in his own article.
