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Jon "J Onwuka" Wuka @nearzone.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

If you are reading "What Is A General Strike?" (journalofcogency.com/2025/03/02/w...), at the beginning I talk about issues I have with the UAW's planned general strike of 2028 (just corrected). I didn't get to them in the article but I'll talk about it here.

journalofcogency.com

What Is a General Strike? – Journal of Cogency

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Jon "J Onwuka" Wuka @nearzone.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

New post on Journal of Cogency: What Is a General Strike? Briefly exploring five* modern historical examples and trying to find the common traits: journalofcogency.com/2025/03/02/w...

journalofcogency.com

What Is a General Strike? – Journal of Cogency

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 19/02/2025

Just posted "A Non-Grand Thesis of Luxury Politics", which is the introduction to my in-progress explanation of the fascism of the current moment through a philosophical-psychological exploration, ~14 minute read: journalofcogency.com/2025/02/19/a...

Right now, I am starting to put together a work of philosophy, a thesis. My goal with this work is to explore this question: How does a smaller group of people manage to rule over a larger one? Why is “there are more of us” not enough to create change? My answer to that question is “the subjugation effect” and this work is my attempt to explain what that is.

To properly explain this phenomenon, I need to proceed in six stages. The first stage, political systems, will set the basic context of the argument. The second stage, money as a medium, will explore the binding force of money as an example of such forces. Third, the way we think, will develop the second stage and show how this “binding” can be generalized to other agents. Fourth, the mystery of cogency, will discuss the construction of social power and indirect action. Fifth, the subjugation effect itself, where specific manifestations of political-cultural subjugation will be examined in light of the first four stages. In the last stage I’ll explore the reason which motivates the continuing of the subjugation effect: the desire for luxury.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 19/02/2025

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 16/02/2025

Read my first-blush review of "Nietzsche and Philosophy" by Gilles Deleuze, in which I refine my position against Nietzsche: journalofcogency.com/2025/02/15/d...

I think that the core appeal of Nietzsche is in asking the question again; I’ve said this before. I didn’t, perhaps, give enough credit to what a monumental moment that may have been. This might be a historical fallacy; that is, because it’s such a common thing now, I assumed it was always the case. Surely there must have always been iconoclasts who went against the philosophical grain.

Also, Nietzsche’s dramatics and poeticizing are aesthetically appealing. It appears to be a much different way of doing philosophy than anyone else, and for that reason it appears to be saying something which is different than anyone else. It seems to demand appraisal on its own terms because it does not easily fit within the run of philosophy as such.

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Jon "J Onwuka" Wuka @nearzone.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

I wrote another anti-Nietzschean manifesto, this one is also a review of "Nietzsche and Philosophy" by Gilles Deleuze (12 min read) journalofcogency.com/2025/02/15/d...

Why do I want to do this? I have said this before, too. It’s because these ideas are conservative ideas. They are the conservative justifications for their political agenda. As such, they have no value for those who want real justice. They have less than no value because they make you second-guess the things you would do to achieve justice. They make you wonder whether even if you got a lot of support if it’s “the right thing”, if you are organizing “without ressentiment“, if you are not determining right and wrong through “slave morality”. It serves only to convince people that they should not seek to redress wrongs and it does this through leaps in logic and disguised interest. Holding onto Nietzscheanism is one of the biggest flaws that leftists have currently and its one they absolutely must let go of.

I am the man of ressentiment. I am the man of bad conscience. I am the slave who triumphs. Nietzsche put the poison pill down and I am swallowing it, and I will shit it out, too. I refuse to be afraid of being accused of the ideas he made up.

I am also the philosopher with the hammer. Nietzsche is the anvil. And I will never stop beating him to produce something better.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 29/01/2025

Because I'm feeling generous to all the losers: Why I Hate Nietzsche substack.com/home/post/p-...

But more than his existence, I hate the people still cite him approvingly. People listen to ideas about bad conscience and ressentiment, where Nietzsche is saying "you, the reader, are nothing but malice unless you are an elite" and say "yes actually, I feel so much ressentiment and that's why I want justice." They try to convince themselves that actually Nietzsche was being more nuanced than he appears to be.

Am I trying to say that Nietzsche has no complexity? Of course not. But people who defend Nietzsche's work almost demand that you ignore the things he says, things he never contradicts and that no one even suggests he contradicts.

His ideas are bad because he refused to understand the morals of his day, because he rejected their basis and therefore never considered that they might be as much a matter of practicality as they are of empathy. He never thought procedurally about why certain things might take place. The lack of connective tissue in his work is fairly alarming, and this is important because his ideas do not really make sense unless, like most philosophers, you have a little self-doubt inside that you like someone to beat on from time to time.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 29/01/2025

I do not have any time of patience for Nietzscheans. You are all dupes. The only thing you have to say is "you don't understand what he wrote". No one has ever successfully challenged my arguments. Shut the fuck up.

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Jon "J Onwuka" Wuka @nearzone.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

I changed the title to "Why Normal People OFTEN Don't Fight Fascism" cause my point is that it's hard for normal people to fight fascism, not that it's normal to not fight fascism. Most people are anti-fascist open.substack.com/pub/jonwuka/...

Ultimately, most people are good, and good people are too trusting. That's not why the world is bad. It is why evil people get the upper hand.

Why is this?

The desire to not be bothered is incredibly powerful. It's probably the key to politics. It's why, despite everything, it's so tough to mobilize good people against the evil ones.

A lot of people forget (or want to ignore) that, to some extent, we are society. Rules and laws and norms are all things that get upheld because we collectively uphold them. This goes all the way up to national politics.

Most people are who I would call "normal people". If you're reading this, you are most likely a normal person. Do you think you're weird? You have strange politics? You're still normal. You're normal in the sense that you are willing to be a part of society to some level. If society at large decides something is a crime, let's say, a normal person will -- for the most part -- see the sense in this and work with it.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 08/01/2025

While I know that there are communists/anarchists who are pro-Nietzsche, I really doubt that Nietzsche's work would endure a thorough communist or anarchist critique.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 08/01/2025

What I think is most irritating about critiquing Nietzsche is that he is extremely clearly an arch-conservative, to the point that people arguing that he isn't are primarily going "yeah he did say that, but...". It's all "being charitable" etc. etc. Why, though? Why do we have to do that?

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 08/01/2025

We're living in Nietzsche's world and it sucks so much.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 30/11/2024

The thing about politics is that so many people with "good politics" have really horrible, unworkable ideas. They have dating advice ideas, you know what I mean? Their ideas sound good to them and their ideas make them feel good, but they are not tested in any way, not even just through logic.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 30/11/2024

A deceptively terrible idea. Promises given on the campaign trail, especially by small parties, have to be executed on. How far are you willing to lie? Are you voting to end gay marriage "for strategic reasons"? When your base & recruits become only conservatives, will you be able to pivot?

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 27/11/2024

It's so funny to see liberals constantly going "Hillary was right about _____!" No, she wasn't. You know this Trump guy you hate so much? Or "Drumpf" or "Fanta Cheeto"? Yeah, that was Hillary's fuckin idea. The Republicans would have beat him. She didn't know anything. Awful politician.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 27/11/2024

One thing which feels important to realize is that people can only be persuaded to hate the parts of communism that can be made to look like fascism.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 26/11/2024

Taking bets on the specific threat that Chicago PD made to the mayor. Personally I think they were more creative than threatening to throw him into the river.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 25/11/2024

If you want to develop "revolutionary consciousness" I'd suggest you give this a read to help you define what it is you're trying to accomplish

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 25/11/2024

IMPORTANT READ: Read "Protest and the Construction of Power" (14 mins) on Journal of Cogency, about how a process becomes an act of power and how power acts to snuff out anything that challenges it. journalofcogency.com/2024/09/23/p...

When the police assault peaceful protesters, when courts send people to jail for years because they block traffic for mere hours, these things have happened in some part because no challenge to the system of power can be stomached by arch-conservatives. The protest, the resistance to being subsumed, is itself what the state wants to eliminate. If my arm hurts, I’m not likely to tolerate it more because I hurt it while helping my grandmother or practicing jiu jitsu. What might help me tolerate the pain — not try to extinguish it immediately — is if you tell me it is a sign of my arm healing. For those reliant on the power process, what is important is not order or disorder as such but the effective functioning of the power system. Protest is a breakdown, and the state’s violent reaction is the clearest sign that the threat posed to the state power system is real.

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Jon "J Onwuka" Wuka @nearzone.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Might try Boltgun again and see if I like it. I should have finished my Plato reading but I forgot. (I never took Philosophy 101 so I'm gonna try to do it myself, blogs to come on NZ or @journalofcogency.com)

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 25/11/2024

Every time I am tempted to tweet I am gonna make myself post a link to the website. Will I ever do a video for JoC again? Maybe! I dunno!

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 25/11/2024

What Is Capitalism? An exploration of what capitalism means as well as capitalism as an ideology journalofcogency.com/2024/07/01/w...

In Europe, the rise of liberalism happened alongside the rise of another idea: nationalism. It would be incorrect to say that early liberal thinkers did not understand the need for community. Most early nationalists were liberals and vice versa. Still, the individualist goals of liberalism contradict the collectivist goals of nationalism, so I find it more useful to view these as separate ideologies which can be held together. This coincidence is important because nationalism clearly introduced an alternative value-body: the national community. This led to the creation of modern political socialism, and it is in this context that ideological capitalism first emerged. Capitalism, defined in large part by the capital value-body, was a way to avoid socialism. I will explain more about these value-bodies in the next section.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 25/11/2024

Have you ever wondered why the Democrats come right up to the line of doing something good and then back down at the last second? Read "Why the Democrats Will Never Love You", a 7 min read on Journal of Cogency: journalofcogency.com/2024/10/24/w...

And while you can read this situation as the base & the left having some amount of influence, this is a similar level of influence as "voting with your wallet". You can shout as loud as you want for things and refuse to vote for Democrats. If you go too far left, they will just sandbag you and lose. / They would rather sandbag you and lose than be "too socialist" because, fundamentally, they're of the capitalist class. And that's why they have the ultimate power in this situation. Maybe their success relies on you, but if they decide not to play, you get nothing. / I think I'm wrapping up here, so let me say this: most Democratic voters understand this innately, and most leftists do, too. The difference is the response. Committed Democrats are cowards, so they follow wherever the core leads, hoping for protection. Leftists get mad at the game being rigged.

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jashead @jashead.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

This guy was only too ready to pressure the government to bail out his friends at the Silicon Valley Bank. Now he wants all of you working and middle class (if it exists) Americans to take the bullet in order to give him and his fellow billionaires a much-needed tax cut.

This idiot named Jason is harping on all Americans to treat the country as if it's in an existential crisis as opposed to the best economy in more than a half-century. At the end of his rant he says all Americans want what the billionaires want.

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Talia "ATTACK DOGS is out now!" Bhatt ⚢ @taliabhatt.itch.io · 25/11/2024

I feel like most people fail to understand that the starting point for transphobia is the enshrinement of the ideology of sex and male-supremacy. Transmasculine erasure and violent transmisogynistic fixation stems from the same sort of protectionism regarding manhood.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 25/11/2024

Do you want to know why Biden and the Democrats lost their election? It's because Biden will be known for a genocide, not for helping anyone. Because the Democrats are led by the country's most outwardly evil president in history.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 24/11/2024

Read my commentary on the new episode of Historia Civilis: journalofcogency.com/2024/11/23/c...

On the question of revolution, what interested me is the paramilitary aspect of it. Revolutions in France, in particular, hinged a great deal on Paris and controlling it. Abdicating Paris was almost always seen as a death blow, while holding Paris gave one the right to form governments, run the country, etc. Of course, there were always conflicts like the fighting in the Vendee which went along what happened in Paris, but it’s a very common opinion that the control of Paris is a primary necessity. In the case of the July Revolution, as HC lays out, King Charles X’s withdrawal of the military from Paris was noted by Talleyrand as the precise moment when his reign ended.

Let’s try and port that over to the United States. This line of thinking will hold for many modern countries as well, likely including modern France, but the U.S. is a clearer example. To be blunt: I do not think that a revolutionary force simply taking and holding Washington D.C. would be the end of the government.

But why? That’s what interests me here. What are the differences between Paris in 1830 and modern capitals that would make this strategy untenable?

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 24/11/2024

Read my commentary on the new episode of Historia Civilis: journalofcogency.com/2024/11/23/c...

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 24/11/2024

Yeah and to think nothing of the uncivilized Mesoamericans! /s

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 23/11/2024

New Historia Civilis video is up on YouTube, and I've just written a commentary on it here: journalofcogency.com/2024/11/23/c...

journalofcogency.com

Commentary: Historia Civilis – The July Revolution (1820 to 1830) – Journal of Cogency

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 07/11/2024

Read Whipping Ourselves and Weeping, a 10 minute read about Marx & destiny, Nietzsche & self-flagellation, and why the left is always soul-searching journalofcogency.com/2024/07/24/w...

Destiny is fake. The problem with destiny, and with the logic of self-flagellation, is that it ignores the agency of the other side.

For self-flagellation to make sense — for the logic of leftists having an inherent flaw to hold up — the failures of the left would have to be the fault of the left alone. That implies that nothing is fighting against the left. This is the problem with destiny, and with the elevation of Marxite use of the process of dialectical materialism to the status of prophecy simply because the argument is extremely persuasive. We have reduced our situation to something like a mountain climb, where no matter how hard it is, it is a stationary obstacle whose challenges are known and just have to be overcome.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 24/11/2024

What Is Religion? (7 min read) A bias (hypothesis) about how we can understand what religion is in a way that clearly indicates what we should include and why: journalofcogency.com/2024/08/13/w...

The four tiers of observance or worldview are general abstract levels of knowing and understanding the world. Through these lenses, a person figures out how they should live and act in the world. These tiers are (1) the cosmos, (2) the world, (3) the society, and (4) the self. These are addressed by the four discourses: (1) cosmology, (2) epistemology, (3) axiology (or teleology), and (4) deontology. In this context, each has a specific definition that I’ll go over now.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 23/11/2024

New Historia Civilis video is up on YouTube, and I've just written a commentary on it here: journalofcogency.com/2024/11/23/c...

journalofcogency.com

Commentary: Historia Civilis – The July Revolution (1820 to 1830) – Journal of Cogency

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 07/11/2024

Read Whipping Ourselves and Weeping, a 10 minute read about Marx & destiny, Nietzsche & self-flagellation, and why the left is always soul-searching journalofcogency.com/2024/07/24/w...

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 07/11/2024

It was a lot of posts in a row, I know, but people have been talking about figuring things out and agitating, and I thought I'd give people a good place to start. Oh, I forgot one actually.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 07/11/2024

Read "Against Ur-Fascism" on Journal of Cogency, a critique of the essay "Ur-Fascism" by Umberto Eco which I feel is a naive view of what fascism is, one which I try to update journalofcogency.com/2023/10/19/a...

First, it’s necessary to dispense with the notion of fascism-as-syndrome, and my approach is straight-forward: no collection of “fascist” symptoms can be said to be representative of fascism alone. Eco does address this issue, it must be noted, but mentioning a problem does not solve it. For the proposed facets in “Ur-Fascism” to be useful they must provide a way for us to see fascism as distinct from other political ideologies. “Ur-Fascism” does not achieve this. I’ll demonstrate with a few examples.

• The cult of tradition exists in most liberal(izing) societies, including the United States, India, Brazil, et. al., in heritage holidays, national dress, and so on; if viewing “rural exile” policies as fitting into this category (i.e. sending city-dwellers, especially intellectuals, to rural places so they could learn from simplicity and poverty), socialist-communist countries also engaged heavily in promoting traditional values and ways of being.
• The appeal to the frustrated middle class was the explicit draw in the American and French Revolutions, and can be said of the Russian Revolutions as well (considering that urban workers were seen as more socioeconomically developed than rural peasants).

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 07/11/2024

Anti-Fascist Thought: Read "Against Ressentiment" on Journal of Cogency, about how people (especially liberals & leftists) have internalized the idea of ressentiment and bad conscience, and why that fuckin sucks journalofcogency.com/2024/03/08/a...

Few concepts which Nietzsche developed have been less controversial than ressentiment. I view this as a problem. It’s not unusual to find that ressentiment (and its cousin bad conscience) are at the core of Nietzsche’s thought. It’s also not unusual to observe that Nietzsche was stridently elitist and aristocratic. It’s interesting, then, that people never associate those two observations and ask to what extent ressentiment was constructed to justify that aristocratic worldview. Asked another way, what explanatory force does ressentiment have outside of that view? In my estimation, it is little or none. What I will show is that ressentiment is only a way to ascribe inherent malice to weakness, a line of thought whose only end point is excusing the use of power by the powerful against the weak.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 07/11/2024

Anti-Fascist Thought: Read "Technology of Authority" on Journal of Cogency, about how the purpose of capitalism is to establish domination over people as a successor to divine kingship #philosophy journalofcogency.com/2024/06/05/t...

Technology of Authority

Yes, I wish this was a metal song, too.

This is the theory of a theory, a pre-theory. Capitalism is not simply an economic system or mode of production, it is a method of establishing domination: a technology of authority. It is the more or less direct successor of divine kingship. When the European revolutions of the 19th century had destroyed divine kingship, at a point when Europe had more or less dominated the world, this discredited divine kingship forever. Without divine kingship, a government must serve its society, and this logic always means that the wealth of a state will eventually be distributed among the common people. Capitalism as an ideology functions to justify the authority of those who wanted to stop that from happening over the common people by granting social privilege to the holders of capital over non-holders of capital.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 07/11/2024

Anti-Fascist Thought: Read "What Is Divine Kingship?", explaining why the idea of divine kingship is an important precursor to fascist ideas journalofcogency.com/2024/06/08/w...

Almost every kind of justification that is successful is a variant of the invocation of social benefit. This idea will return again later. For now, we should understand divine justification (which is the type used by sacral rule) as being an image of the invocation of social benefit. Especially in the West, it’s common to link any alliance of divinity and government with oppression, so it should be understood that this justification is based not on divine force & punishment but on divine providence. Providence is a kind of benefit which originates outside of society and is potentially limitless. Ensuring that this potential is not lost is the responsibility of the sacral ruler, such as by organizing rituals and ensuring divine wishes are followed, and this gives the ruler the justification to take acts which might otherwise be seen as against society. A dramatic example is the system of human sacrifice in the Aztec civilization. It is unlikely that this system was enjoyed by much of the population, but the system was justified as being demanded by the divine as a condition of providence. Remember that what justification accomplishes is a reduction in opposition from the society for an action taken without the society’s consent and/or against the society’s immediate well-being. Without this justification, how could we explain the fact that Aztec people allowed this to continue?

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 07/11/2024

Anti-Fascist Thought: Read "Protest and the Construction of Power" (14 mins) on Journal of Cogency, about how a process becomes an act of power and how power acts to snuff out anything that challenges it. journalofcogency.com/2024/09/23/p...

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 27/10/2024

A short piece about what morality is and what it is worth for us #philosophy journalofcogency.com/2024/01/18/a...

To oppose Chomsky’s view of moral systems, though, I do not believe moral systems (or any mental construct) are like biological organs, I believe they are like bone tools. Do we need them (or something better) to navigate the world, to get ourselves sustenance, to protect ourselves? Absolutely. But these are things that we have made out of nature, not things that nature has made for us.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 26/10/2024

What Is Capitalism? An exploration of what capitalism means as well as #capitalism as an ideology #philosophy journalofcogency.com/2024/07/01/w...

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 25/10/2024

I want to start doing book reviews but I think I need a crutch (format) at first. I can effectively use a book to make a point, but for whatever reason I can't get my head around what to say when the book itself is the subject, and I can't always rely on coming up with a point.

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 25/10/2024

The issue is that this shouldn't be happening and people shouldn't have to support it. The fact that the Democrats are doing it is a moral stain. You should have your own principles enough to not stand with it. Then, if the Democrats are not evil, they listen. It's not about "how do we win".

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 25/10/2024

Read "Protest and the Construction of Power" (14 mins) on Journal of Cogency, about how a process becomes an act of power and how power acts to snuff out anything that challenges it. #philosophy journalofcogency.com/2024/09/23/p...

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Journal of Cogency @journalofcogency.com · 24/10/2024

I am going to try and post at least one link to the blog a day. Today's link is a brand new article. Do me a favor and click on them and read the articles and then tell me what you thought! #politics #philosophy

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