RIP Hulkamania

(originally published at TheRightStuff.biz here)

In June of 2007, WWE held its annual June pay-per-view, Vengance. Vengence is noteworthy because of one match on the card that never happened. The vacant ECW Championship (ECW at the time being a WWE-owned brand) was supposed to be up for grabs between up-and-coming CM Punk and the legendary veteran Chris Benoit. However, Benoit no-showed the PPV, and so instead the undercard high-flyer Johnny Nitro defeated Punk to win the belt. At the time, no one knew why the normally on-point, on-task Benoit no-showed such a huge show. Not long after, the horrifying reason why was discovered.

Over the course of that weekend, Chris Benoit murdered his wife Nancy (formerly Nancy Sullivan AKA Woman) and his son Daniel before hanging himself. It had started with an arguement between Chris and Nancy that had come to blows again, only this time ending with Nancy dead. Benoit spent the rest of the night in a confused, mentally broken stupor before smothering Daniel to death with a pillow, to spare him the shame of living as the son of a murderer and his victim. Unable to cope with the horror of what he did, he proceeded to place bibles by their corpses before hanging himself in the weight room, texting a suicide note of sorts to his friend Chavo Gurerro (nephew of the late great Eddie Gurerro).

At first, it was treated as an unsolved mystery, and WWE ran the standard tribute for Benoit. However, as more details came out while the live broadcast was going on, it became obvious that WWE was honoring a murderer. In response, WWE essentially removed Chris Benoit from history- his championship wins (including a historic victory over both Triple H and Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania 20) and other accomplishments (winning the 2004 Royal Rumble, being a part of “The Radicalz” who left WCW for WWF in what was considered the final part of WWF winning the Monday Night Wars) had all ceased to happen according to WWE record books. For a while, it was even a verb- When someone was “Benoit’d” they were erased from history, a modern version of what the Romans called damnatio memoriae or what George Orwell called making an “unperson” in reference to Stalinst practices. The only real other contemporary people to be subjected to the practice for moral reasons are former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky and British entertainer Jimmy Saville, both avid child rapists.

And now, the immortal Hulk Hogan has joined their ranks.

Supposedly, leaked audio from his sex tape with radio personality/literal cuck (more on that later) Bubba The Love Sponge’s wife has him just calling them niggers when referencing his issues with this daughter. Hogan went on to say that he doesn’t want his daughter dating a black man and said he was “a little bit racist”. That’s it.

That’s all Hulk Hogan did, and WWE is now putting him on the same level as Chris Benoit. He’s been pulled from the ongoing reality show Tough Enough and all the presently existing replays have been pulled from their streaming service. References to Hulk have been removed from WWE’s website. According to insider journalist Dave Meltzer, WWE is explicitly telling everyone in the company never to reference Hulk Hogan or even say his name going forward. Any and all Hulk Hogan merchandise has been pulled from the shop. Hogan’s character has been pulled from an upcoming animated cartoon series. They didn’t just fire Hulk Hogan, they’ve all but wiped him from history.

Now for those of you non-autistes who are unfamiliar with wrestling history, Hulk Hogan essentially built the WWE (formerly WWF). When Vince McMahon decided to make the WWF the first real nation-wide wrestling promotion, he needed a big star to really carry the company on. So he brought in Hulk Hogan (powerword Terry Bollea), a fairly skilled wrestler and bodybuilder, gave him an “All-american Hero” gimmick, and had him defeat the dastardly Iranian Iron Shiek for the WWF title, live in Madison Square Garden. In what was called the “Hulkamania” period from 1984 to 1993 Hulk Hogan was a cultural icon and the greatest force in the WWF. When Hogan jumped ship to rival promotion WCW in 1994, he founded the nWo with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall in 1996 to make WCW the largest wrestling promotion in the world. While the more obsessed fans may dislike his slow, heavily theatric style and his backstage prima donna antics, it’s almost impossible to argue that Hogan is one of, if not the biggest name in wrestling history. But now, in this modern world we live in, it’s entirely possible that a man can be removed from the media empire he helped build for the crime of not approving of interracial relationships.

It gets worse. Arguably, the entire reason this is happening is because Hulk Hogan is suing Gawker media for 100 million dollars. Back in 2009/2010, Hulk Hogan was friends with Radio DJ Bubba the Love Sponge. Bubba, as it turns out, is a literal, no-joke, full-on cuck. He had gone on record as asking people more rich and famous than him, like Hogan and noted degenerate Howard Stern, to fuck his wife Heather. Predictably, she is now his ex-wife. Somehow, surveillance footage leaked of the sexual encounter without Hogan’s permission. It found its way to Gawker, who published the “sexy” part of the security camera footage. Understandably upset, Hogan filed suit.

It’s painfully obvious that Gawker is in dire straits. Thanks to Sam Biddle’s crass behavior on twitter, #GamerGate managed to cost them over seven figures from lost advertisements last year. With the outing of a Conde Nast executive, #GamerGate struck again along with the rest of the world and cost them arguably even more, with the editorial staff resigning in protest of the offending article being pulled. And to make things worse, Chuck C. Johnson is also suing Gawker for a considerable amount over the rumors they published about him. With all the money that they’re bleeding, it’s no surprise that they’re hurting. They’re so desperate that they’re rebooting the entire site. If Hogan wins his suit, Gawker is as good as dead.

So even if the National Enquirer originally ran the story about Hogan refusing to let his daughter have a more vibrant vagina, who do you think really stands to gain from this story taking off? It’s not too far off to imagine Gawker sending the transcript to the Enquirer with the hope that it’ll hurt Hogan. After all, Gawker IS known for being full of some of the most spiteful, bitchy people on the planet. These are the same people who published a man telling the story of how he hooked up with Christine O’Donell and defended it as “public interest”.

So this is more than likely your real story. A media outlet, infuriated that they no longer have the power to destroy anyone they don’t like, decided that they would expose the man who will most likely kill them as a racist in hopes that they’ll take him down to hell with them. This man, despite being a highly successful and influential entertainer and pop culture icon, is now destroyed as well, all for the crime of political wrongthink. No one has won, nothing of value was accomplished, society has not benefited in any way possible. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to clown world.

(But hey, it’s not that bad. At the time of this writing, THE DONALD is still in the WWE Hall of Fame. Plus, Coontown just hit 20,000 subscribers on Reddit and is only growing despite measures to contain it.)

Some more random thoughts and musings

This week has been pretty hectic, so I’ll just throw out some random stuff. We’re celebrating my dad’s birthday almost all this week, since he’s actually managed to take some time off of work. Hence, things have been pretty slow and plodding.

• I just got back from seeing Kingsmen. Excellent movie, amazing choreography in the action sequences. It deals heavily with class in England, but in a way that reminds me of Justine Tunney’s plans for Occupy: The elite are detached and awful, and must be replaced with a new elite. It’s unapologetic with its chauvinism and political incorrectness, something that’s also quite refreshing. It’s already on its way out of theaters, but I highly advise you see it if you get the chance. Tomorrow we go and see the new Fast and Furious, and I’m a little less than excited for it.

• I’ve been considering switching from Gratipay to Patreon- it seems that Patreon gives you a much wider audience and more potential to make some money. Bryce has been doing fairly well for himself, making a few hundred a month. Obviously, I don’t intend to ever get that degree of cash. I want my crowdfunding to be a bit more like a public tip jar, where people who like my work can consider donating to me. Maybe it’s my chronic humility, but I don’t see the idea of making a living off of the donations of random strangers to be that feasible or secure. Even though right now I’m shit broke, I still intend to start working again, since to me crowdfunding has always been supplementary in nature.

• I recently got mentioned in TRS’s Daily Shoah, and my heart literally skipped a beat. Getting praise from guys like them, Nick B. Steves, Common Filth, and even Nick Land  is worth more than any donations. I know I sound like a huge kiss-ass, but I put all of these guys on a pedestal, and knowing that they like my work really speaks volumes.

• InternetAristocrat is back, now calling himself Mister Metokur. I’d love to chat with him for TheRightDrama (and I’d love for him to go on Between Two Lampshades for TRS) but honestly, what do I have to offer him? Still, best I can do is add him onto my Beginner’s Guide to the Alt-right. I recall him answering a question of mine months ago about him being into strict Constitutionalism, and I’d love to follow up on that. IA/MM/Jim seems to be a really smart guy, and I’m really interested to see what he’ll be doing next.

• Speaking of which, it looks like the guide itself is getting some traffic, which makes me happy. My greatest fear though, is still that I’m enabling entryists. I want to make it clear that my guide, a work in progress, isn’t necessarily for neoreaction. As Dampier reminds us, Neoreaction is not a populist movement. Our strength is in our content, not our numbers. Our goal is not to change the world, but to instead help create the people who will change the world. It’s actually better that TRV, rather than help introduce people to neoreaction, instead diverts and directs them elsewhere.

• I’ve unfortunately relapsed and started playing Minecraft again. Despite the hilariously awful community that the game spawned, I still think Minecraft is genuinely good. It’s extremely satisfying to build yourself a humble little cabin by the river, then expand that cabin into a farm, then slowly improve your farm with brick roads, a dock, and other features. Of course, it’s best when played singleplayer- just one man on his own, braving the elements and even thriving. That in itself is amazingly reactionary: Man makes mother nature his bitch. There’s also another important aspect: you have to work for everything. It’s not like Garry’s Mod where you can just spawn in stuff to play with: everything in Minecraft has to be either built or harvested. It actually builds a really healthy attitude where you learn to work for results.

• I’ve also been playing the shit out of Medieval II: Total War. So far, my Spanish empire has removed kebab from the Iberian peninsula in a glorious Reconquista before also annexing Portugal. Meanwhile, the Knights of Santiago embarked on a successful crusade, seizing Antioch and the surrounding areas of Aleppo and Adana as well as claiming the Holy Lance of Longinus. I had also discovered the Ark of the Covenant in Cairo, but the brave soul who did it tragically perished on the voyage home. At the present, greedy Frenchmen are trying to snatch up Pamplona from me, but the joke’s on them-  We’ve sailed the Mediterranean to take Toulouse right from the little bastards!

• In wrestling news, this happened. It might just be my favorite Wrestlemania moment yet if not just because of how fucking dumb it is. While Triple H’s overgrown ego will hurt the company in the long run, his stupid, overdone Wrestlemania entrances will always be lovable. Seriously, go check this shit out.

• I’ve started reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. While I really like them, it feels like a rehash of the stuff I read in the Analects of Confucius. And while I know I’m gonna piss off a LOT of people by saying this, I prefer Confucius at this point. Aurelius focuses heavily on theory, while Confucius tends to take a more practical approach to his version of stoicism and traditionalism. I’ve always preferred to read about practice more than theory, and part of what I intend to do with TRV is to help translate theory into practice.

• Speaking of practice, the tragic passing of Lee Kuan Yew has me considering buying his autobiography. Admittedly, my reading list is quite out of whack- I need to finish Aurelius before jury duty on Monday so I can start reading Evola (Yes, I intend to read Julius Evola while on jury duty). At some point in all of this I need to get back to Moldbug, but I also want to read Spengler too, even though I don’t own anything by him yet. And somehow in the middle of all of this I need to fit Plato in!

So yeah, expect things to be fairly silent for the next few days- tomorrow I spend more family time, then Sunday is Easter and all the festivities that entails, and then after that it’s two days in the county court hoping I get to sit in on something interesting. I’ll plug my gratipay again as well as my paypal– donations will go towards me going somewhere nice to lunch and finally buying myself a new pipe!

Random, disjointed thoughts

Right now I’m looking at three half-finished essays on my desktop. One is hopefully going to be published in the lovely Rachel Haywire’s Trigger Warning magazine, the other two are going to show up here. There’s a fourth essay, a run-through of the Donovan Test on Moviebob that I’m going to scrap for a number of reasons. First, it’s a bit mean-spirited. Second, reading his stupid fucking book is giving me a killer headache. I highly regret even downloading it. So in the mean time, have some random, informal thoughts and observations I’ve had this week:

• The “manosphere” is thoroughly pwned, as Thuthmosis and Roosh’s meltdowns have shown. I’ve previously witnessed incidents like when /u/slutlord-fascist of /r/antiPOZi trolled /r/TheRedPill with some HBD truthbombs, and the wannabe-hardcore PUAs flipped their shit and immediately went into leftist signaling mode, worried that being seen as racist would impede their quest for pussy. Indeed, the “manosphere” is nothing more than a group of peacocks preening and trying to compete for status and attention. It’s embarrassing.
• The more I watch WWE self-destruct, the more I have my doubts in Justine Tunney and Mencius Moldbug’s ideas about a CEO as king of the country. All it takes is one senile old fool to undo decades of growth and development and possibly irreversibly damage his own company. Dave Meltzer has a great write-up in his Observer newsletter about how Vince is slowly killing his own company through poor booking and egomania.
• Playing Shovel Knight has really made me remember how much I love video games. It feels great to get angry at myself for fucking up rather than blaming the game. It’s a challenging, engaging experience and I feel like I was right to say it was one of the best things in 2014. I feel like a little kid again thanks to the game, but in all the right ways.
• Nick Land linked to my piece on Hatred! I don’t comment on Land that much since his work is way beyond my reading level, but it feels great to be noticed. Still, I think my thinkpiece isn’t THAT great. Even though I look at things realistically, I’m not really a fan of pessimism. As cold as I am, I can’t really entirely divorce myself from the human cost of social decay. I’d much rather my work that involves praising people who do things right get promoted instead. Sadly, that seems to be in short supply…
• Speaking of folks that are doing it right, #GamerGate has been kicking ass and taking names. Nearly any twitter hashtag created to mock #GamerGate has been hijacked and driven into the ground through a wide variety of funposting. The #GamerGate army is strong enough and loud enough to out-muscle even the most vocal of their opposition. Meanwhile, #GamerGate tags like #DontDateSJWs and #LetMarkSpeak will easily get trending worldwide thanks to #GamerGate’s strong willpower. Through the magic of mass-emailing, #GamerGate even cost one SJW writer her job for a poorly-researched hitpiece on 8chan. They might be a mutation in the Cathedral, but damned if I’m not proud of them anyways.
• Chuck C Johnson is an interesting case. For all intents and purposes, he should have gone rampant long ago in the face of the press and intelligentsia’s attacks. He seems to have a basic grasp of HBD and gender dynamics. However, he obviously is still pwned, parroting the same old conservakin talking points. I do eagerly await the day Johnson finally wakes up, as I feel like his mechanical, brutal investigation process would make him a powerful ally.
• TheRightStuff (no relation) has probably what’s one of the funniest, most informative podcasts out there with The Daily Shoah. I’d highly recommend you all give them a listen. Their latest guest, Common Filth of Common Filth Radio is also great, and I’d recommend you check out his work as well. It really makes me want to break into the podcast game, albeit that would be down the line.
• I’ve been working on building my own PC so I can finally join the PC Master Race where I belong. It’s a surprisingly fun project, researching parts and comparing them, plus asking friends for recommendations. I’d highly recommend it to any guy with a good $2,000 to burn.
• Yesterday I started watching Twin Peaks, and I’m already hooked. I’ve always thought David Lynch was onto something in Eraserhead, especially in terms of focusing on the evils of industrialism and modernity. Of course, Lynch could have just been trolling intellectuals much like Samuel Beckett was in Waiting For Godot, an equally noble cause.

So yeah, that’s a short write-up of what I’ve been up to. Sorry it’s so late, but I do hope to have some sort of new piece up next week. Maybe I’ll take my shit-talking the manosphere to the next level, or I’ll finish one of these pieces I already started. Either way, I’d just like to remind you all that my Gratipay is still open if you want to help fund my work!

Wrestle Kingdom IX: A Night to Remember

                Wrestling fans in the US will sing the praises of Madison Square Garden and Allstate Arena, but any true fan of the sport will tell you that the greatest wrestling venue known to man is the Tokyo Dome, located in the capital city of Japan. The Dome has housed some of the greatest pro wrestling matches of all time. The Dome has hosted a number of some of the greatest matches in wrestling history. New Japan Pro Wrestling has always made it a point to have their first show of the year at the Dome, the show being the NJPW version of Wrestlemania. This show, called Wrestle Kingdom, is known for showcasing some of the most talented wrestlers in the world today. This latest Wrestle Kingdom, Wrestle Kingdom IX, was no exception. It was not only a dazzling display of excellent wrestling, but a celebration of what it meant to be Japanese, with the traditional values of Japan on full display. So without further ado, let’s dive right in and break this show down match by match.