The Dutch Connection

Forever Mag issue 6, KIRAC at Sovereign House

KIRAC’s Jini van Rooijen fondles fascist incel philosopher Sid Lukkassen in “KIRAC 23: Honeypot”

I’m at the Forever Magazine issue 6 launch party at 99 Canal Street and renowned YPG-volunteer and TrueAnon podcaster Brace Belden tells me he had been asked to come to this like a month ago and he had said yes and then they put his name on the flyer and now he just got to the party and realized that they’re expecting him to be the MC. He says he’s only got one joke in him and that it’s about how the downtown Manhattan people all love being literary and shit but they’ve only read two books and those are Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler and the Red Scare Wikipedia page. Like most Forever Mag parties, this one is packed way over the venue’s capacity with a who’s who of niche indie media personalities and the aspiring writers and starlets who curry favors with them. So the idea of standing quietly for an extended period for poetry readings in this nightclub setting is absurd as always, but the pretense needs to be maintained at least a little bit. I go to the bar and they’re serving White Russians with raw milk and “Male Vitality Mules” with horny goat weed, and I order one of the latter. I run into Peter Vack and after we exchange pleasantries I notice he whips out his phone and starts posting stories on his numerous Instagram meme accounts about his upcoming novel Sillyboy and how he and I are besties now. Brace goes up on the stage to fulfill his party obligations and he tells the joke about Hitler. It’s a surprisingly tough crowd, and someone even boos him. Didn’t Brace get the message? Hitler is so 2021 angelicismcore, and all these people are over that, that was issue 1 and now we’re on issue 6, try to keep up. But I’m laughing, especially when Brace introduces Josh Citarella, repeatedly mispronouncing his name, thanking him for keeping his book Politigram and the Post-Left so short, and urging the rest of the literati in the crowd to follow Josh’s example. Josh, who designed the cover of this issue of Forever Mag, gets on the stage and talks a bit, he seems pretty unfazed, he’s always playing the straight man comedic foil, trying out the fad diets of crank right-wing manosphere gurus in good faith without being super racist about it or getting Brad Troemel irony poisoning and reporting the results back to his followers on Twitch. After Josh finishes talking, Brace takes the mic again and introduces Geoff Rickly, lead singer in the post-hardcore band Thursday, with another joke about how the audience loves Hitler, and then Geoff gets up with his guitar and starts playing some music. I don’t remember what happens on stage after that because I wander through the crowd and get sucked into a conversation with this guy Dan Boguslaw who just put out a big piece the day before for The Intercept about The New York Times’ coverage of Hamas’ alleged mass sexual violence on October 7, and then with Nick Allen who is telling me about the Dutch KIRAC event that’s going to be at Sovereign House the next day, screening two KIRAC episodes and a Q&A with the girl who fucked Houellebecq in the porno movie they made…