Yes, but this is not just an emotional response on the part of young men. It's pretty clear that we cannot have a functioning society if we go on like this (how many more incompetent females, for example will be LA firefighters or helicopter pilots? Who's going to be the "second female VP" of Bud Light?).
If your political opposition is opposed to reason, how are you supposed to move forward without turning into a total dick? If all that matters is power and identity, how do you beat that if the movement refuses to accept any other terms? Also, melanin is not the only thing that differentiates people - IQ is probably around 80% heritable, and different groups have different IQ distributions. Is it possible that *on the average* some groups lack the intellectual gifts to live in a liberal democracy?
Edit to add: Also, if race politics is so easy for unscrupulous politicians like Obama to use, is the loss of civil liberties (the government uses your paycheck to censor you or force experimental medicine on you) necessarily going to occur in a multiethnic society?
This constant white male bashing does more than piss people off. It consistently raises questions for which progressives have no answer.
This is one of the things I have never understood. If you argue that all white people are racist, and no matter what they will continue to be racist - then why shouldn't all the white people move 'racism' out of the column of things they care to do something about ... not be racist ... and into the column of things that it is impossible to do something about, and thus foolish to try. It becomes more like the problem of 'anger' ... being angry is part of the human condition, and sometimes people do terrible things out of anger. Some people really would benefit from learning techniques to control their anger, and to control their behaviour whenever they get angry. If they do not learn this on their own, the rest of us may end up imprisoning them, or even in extremis killing them, because it is too dangerous to have them walk around free but subject to their uncontrolled anger. But for the rest of us, getting angry is just something that happens, isn't a big deal, and mostly doesn't need any more fixing than an apology. I suppose racism is too much of a big business for the people making a living out of it to ever reach a point where they celebrate that their services are no longer needed. If you ever wanted evidence that the state isn't going to 'wither away' when we reach the promised utopia, this is what it looks like.
So, I'm guilty of arguing that history has been misrepresented, but I come with receipts. Fortunately, we still have out-of-print books and in the case of more recent history, interviews with people who were actually there. Postmodern history is more like weaving a narrative from the thinnest of threads, while ignoring the primary sources which contradict it. That's why the result is flimsy and liable to fall apart the minute you use it.
The problem that the authoritian left is creating is that the forces of reaction only have to point to the obvious.
For example, maybe abandoning the West's supporters in Afghanistan to the rule of the Taliban was not going to go well. Perhaps allowing Hamas to create an autonomous territory in Gaza could be dangerous for Jews. Maybe allowing jihadists and sectarian mass murders to settle in the West and recruit new followers could harm social cohesion. Allowing men to compete in women's sports is just the cherry on the progressive cake of absurdity which has been baked for thirty years or more.
Spot on. A few months ago I heard some early 20s Gen Z kids at a cafe in Miami using "racist" as a compliment. Like greeting a friend with, "Hey my racist! How you doing?"
There has just been an attempted cancellation of one of Elon's whiz kids, when a WSJ woke reporter, formerly with USAID, outed his earlier social media remark "I was racist before it was cool." Interestingly, Elon and JD Vance rejected the cancellation and he was rehired, in a striking rebuff to wokery.
According to critical race theory, all white people are racist and zero non-white people are racist. So, according to the colour of their skin, that person may have been correct. Progressives really need to get their act straight. Sorry, anything other than straight.
We need to stop accepting the basic tenets of liberalism, e.g. that racism and discrimination are even bad. Less "progressives are the real racists", more "with this sword of steel I will cast you out from my kingdom!"
Racism, which is prejudice, is unhelpful to a society because by definition, it judges people before the facts are known. Rational discrimination can be helpful, such as not leaving people with a history of violence alone with children.
What if a race is known to have a 10 or 15-fold higher probability of committing crimes, wouldn't that also count as rational discrimination?
Also, we need to address what the purpose of "society" is. One reasonable purpose is the preservation of the race and people that created it, i.e. self-preservation, which means you probably do want to discriminate against other races.
That would be rational discrimination if it were true, but it isn't the case for Western societies in general. What you're talking about is not a society, it's an ethnostate.
All of this reasoning is trickle down from the "lesson" leftist learned of Fascism as "Late Stage of Capitalism" instead of "Reaction against Communism"
Yes. It's been clear to me for a while now that these people are creating the racism they purport to loathe. If one were to look at things from just a slightly different perspective, you'd think there were some extremely intelligent forces manipulating progressives into end goal racism.
Exactly! In much the same way as the extremely intelligent forces are now manipulating the shift from left to right leaning politics throughout the west.
Thanks for this. Leninism-Stalinism and and its degenerate offspring wokism are forms of oppression masquerading as a form of liberation.
Just a small point, though. You write "Mussolini was a former radical socialist", but it's not obvious that this is the case. For example, L K Samuels in "Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum" shows, using Mussolini's own writings from when he was dictator, that Mussolini always though of himself as a radical man of the Left.
Indeed, he authored a favorable book on Marx. He turned on the socialists and their party, but this shouldn't be taken as a complete abandonment of left ideology. Rather, he modified it into corporatism, which our society has increasingly come to resemble. No state ownership of means of production, but complete centralized control of the economy and much else.
"No state ownership of means of production, but complete centralized control of the economy and much else."
This is the big lie that there's a difference between Communism and Fascism. Nazi Germany took complete control over the economy down to the smallest details. Production and every economic decision was determined by the government. If profits accrued they were directly or indirectly shifted to Party bosses. Without any economic freedom, how is this any different than Communism? It's a distinction without a difference, used to keep people from understanding the real distinction is between true liberal democracies and totalitarian states.
They were playing an awkward game of control without frightening too many folk too inconveniently. Some of it was also working out what worked.
The CCP in China is playing the same awkward game. They want enough commerce to fuel their economy to fund what they want but not too much to undermine CCP control. It is not clear that there is a stable equilibrium.
The difference is that if you played along in fascism, you typically got to keep your company and position.
In Communism, you're disposed of once you're mildly inconvenient to those in power.
Either way you're dancing on someone's puppet strings with little choice in the matter, but in one of them your position is a bit less precarious.
Well, OK, except for Hitler's paranoia-based fascism where somehow his personal architect ended up being the Minister of Armaments (see Albert Speer's memoir "Inside the Third Reich" for a fascinating look at that).
Fair quibble. The difference between official Socialism and a new version of socialism. Mussolini didn’t do much nationalising of industry though. Hence the “third way” rhetoric of the time.
Mimetic exchange between Left and Right inevitable. It is downstream from our neural system. Rene Girard's take on the effect of mirror neurons on culture worth a look.
Over time all ideologies create the very conditions that they presume to be natural. This is then used to prove that the ideology was right from the very beginning. To put it another way, we construct a world in our heads, then create it in real life so as to perform our nightmares with the greatest possible realism.
Race-baiting has always been a method to distract people from unifying together in order to take down the oppressive class. Can’t question the elite’s methods if subtle racial inequities between the working and lower classes have been highlighted because heightened emotional states block critical thinking.
I think the reason they copy each so easily is that they are all the same thing. It would take doing away with the entirety of late western imperial era socialist culture to rid ourselves of it. Fighting it from either side merely results on it reforming with a different mask.
Communism and Fascism and Nazism are all derivatives of Prussian Socialism, namely putting society to 'work' with all the state trappings like public education, employment etc. The aim may be different (class, ethnos etc) but the method and structure is always the same. Left/right is quite meaningless in this regard.
A true right wing/conservative movement would be a return to monarchy/hereditary rule, landed aristocracy with parliamentariansm (an aristocratic invention), clergy etc.
This was a lot of words to say what I've said for years: I'm not particularly enamored with the nastier elements on the right, but I have a graduate degree. There are a lot of people who won't have that experience, and who will be far more tempted to fall into it.
And in the end, if my only choices are the side that hates me and destroys everything I care about, or the side that hates someone OTHER than me and maybe I might at least get to keep SOMETHING that I care about... well what do the leftist lunatics THINK that I'm going to ultimately side with when finally forced to, if only out of self-preservation?
Yes, but this is not just an emotional response on the part of young men. It's pretty clear that we cannot have a functioning society if we go on like this (how many more incompetent females, for example will be LA firefighters or helicopter pilots? Who's going to be the "second female VP" of Bud Light?).
If your political opposition is opposed to reason, how are you supposed to move forward without turning into a total dick? If all that matters is power and identity, how do you beat that if the movement refuses to accept any other terms? Also, melanin is not the only thing that differentiates people - IQ is probably around 80% heritable, and different groups have different IQ distributions. Is it possible that *on the average* some groups lack the intellectual gifts to live in a liberal democracy?
Edit to add: Also, if race politics is so easy for unscrupulous politicians like Obama to use, is the loss of civil liberties (the government uses your paycheck to censor you or force experimental medicine on you) necessarily going to occur in a multiethnic society?
This constant white male bashing does more than piss people off. It consistently raises questions for which progressives have no answer.
This is one of the things I have never understood. If you argue that all white people are racist, and no matter what they will continue to be racist - then why shouldn't all the white people move 'racism' out of the column of things they care to do something about ... not be racist ... and into the column of things that it is impossible to do something about, and thus foolish to try. It becomes more like the problem of 'anger' ... being angry is part of the human condition, and sometimes people do terrible things out of anger. Some people really would benefit from learning techniques to control their anger, and to control their behaviour whenever they get angry. If they do not learn this on their own, the rest of us may end up imprisoning them, or even in extremis killing them, because it is too dangerous to have them walk around free but subject to their uncontrolled anger. But for the rest of us, getting angry is just something that happens, isn't a big deal, and mostly doesn't need any more fixing than an apology. I suppose racism is too much of a big business for the people making a living out of it to ever reach a point where they celebrate that their services are no longer needed. If you ever wanted evidence that the state isn't going to 'wither away' when we reach the promised utopia, this is what it looks like.
So, I'm guilty of arguing that history has been misrepresented, but I come with receipts. Fortunately, we still have out-of-print books and in the case of more recent history, interviews with people who were actually there. Postmodern history is more like weaving a narrative from the thinnest of threads, while ignoring the primary sources which contradict it. That's why the result is flimsy and liable to fall apart the minute you use it.
The problem that the authoritian left is creating is that the forces of reaction only have to point to the obvious.
For example, maybe abandoning the West's supporters in Afghanistan to the rule of the Taliban was not going to go well. Perhaps allowing Hamas to create an autonomous territory in Gaza could be dangerous for Jews. Maybe allowing jihadists and sectarian mass murders to settle in the West and recruit new followers could harm social cohesion. Allowing men to compete in women's sports is just the cherry on the progressive cake of absurdity which has been baked for thirty years or more.
Spot on. A few months ago I heard some early 20s Gen Z kids at a cafe in Miami using "racist" as a compliment. Like greeting a friend with, "Hey my racist! How you doing?"
There has just been an attempted cancellation of one of Elon's whiz kids, when a WSJ woke reporter, formerly with USAID, outed his earlier social media remark "I was racist before it was cool." Interestingly, Elon and JD Vance rejected the cancellation and he was rehired, in a striking rebuff to wokery.
According to critical race theory, all white people are racist and zero non-white people are racist. So, according to the colour of their skin, that person may have been correct. Progressives really need to get their act straight. Sorry, anything other than straight.
We need to stop accepting the basic tenets of liberalism, e.g. that racism and discrimination are even bad. Less "progressives are the real racists", more "with this sword of steel I will cast you out from my kingdom!"
Racism, which is prejudice, is unhelpful to a society because by definition, it judges people before the facts are known. Rational discrimination can be helpful, such as not leaving people with a history of violence alone with children.
What if a race is known to have a 10 or 15-fold higher probability of committing crimes, wouldn't that also count as rational discrimination?
Also, we need to address what the purpose of "society" is. One reasonable purpose is the preservation of the race and people that created it, i.e. self-preservation, which means you probably do want to discriminate against other races.
That would be rational discrimination if it were true, but it isn't the case for Western societies in general. What you're talking about is not a society, it's an ethnostate.
It’s a vicious cycle. Everyone creates the very thing they decry, in this cycle.
In a word, hyperstition.
probably by design to ensure increased funding
Cynic. But I like it. Are they that clever though?
All of this reasoning is trickle down from the "lesson" leftist learned of Fascism as "Late Stage of Capitalism" instead of "Reaction against Communism"
Yes. It's been clear to me for a while now that these people are creating the racism they purport to loathe. If one were to look at things from just a slightly different perspective, you'd think there were some extremely intelligent forces manipulating progressives into end goal racism.
Exactly! In much the same way as the extremely intelligent forces are now manipulating the shift from left to right leaning politics throughout the west.
Thanks for this. Leninism-Stalinism and and its degenerate offspring wokism are forms of oppression masquerading as a form of liberation.
Just a small point, though. You write "Mussolini was a former radical socialist", but it's not obvious that this is the case. For example, L K Samuels in "Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum" shows, using Mussolini's own writings from when he was dictator, that Mussolini always though of himself as a radical man of the Left.
Indeed, he authored a favorable book on Marx. He turned on the socialists and their party, but this shouldn't be taken as a complete abandonment of left ideology. Rather, he modified it into corporatism, which our society has increasingly come to resemble. No state ownership of means of production, but complete centralized control of the economy and much else.
"No state ownership of means of production, but complete centralized control of the economy and much else."
This is the big lie that there's a difference between Communism and Fascism. Nazi Germany took complete control over the economy down to the smallest details. Production and every economic decision was determined by the government. If profits accrued they were directly or indirectly shifted to Party bosses. Without any economic freedom, how is this any different than Communism? It's a distinction without a difference, used to keep people from understanding the real distinction is between true liberal democracies and totalitarian states.
They were playing an awkward game of control without frightening too many folk too inconveniently. Some of it was also working out what worked.
The CCP in China is playing the same awkward game. They want enough commerce to fuel their economy to fund what they want but not too much to undermine CCP control. It is not clear that there is a stable equilibrium.
well described!
The difference is that if you played along in fascism, you typically got to keep your company and position.
In Communism, you're disposed of once you're mildly inconvenient to those in power.
Either way you're dancing on someone's puppet strings with little choice in the matter, but in one of them your position is a bit less precarious.
Well, OK, except for Hitler's paranoia-based fascism where somehow his personal architect ended up being the Minister of Armaments (see Albert Speer's memoir "Inside the Third Reich" for a fascinating look at that).
Fair quibble. The difference between official Socialism and a new version of socialism. Mussolini didn’t do much nationalising of industry though. Hence the “third way” rhetoric of the time.
I have started to calling them Regressives, as what goes around comes back around again.
Mimetic exchange between Left and Right inevitable. It is downstream from our neural system. Rene Girard's take on the effect of mirror neurons on culture worth a look.
Over time all ideologies create the very conditions that they presume to be natural. This is then used to prove that the ideology was right from the very beginning. To put it another way, we construct a world in our heads, then create it in real life so as to perform our nightmares with the greatest possible realism.
Race-baiting has always been a method to distract people from unifying together in order to take down the oppressive class. Can’t question the elite’s methods if subtle racial inequities between the working and lower classes have been highlighted because heightened emotional states block critical thinking.
When you lie about everything, people start to wonder if you’re lying about race and sex, too.
Another banger. Completely spot on, and I’ve been saying similar things to people in my circle for years now. This is honestly just common sense.
I think the reason they copy each so easily is that they are all the same thing. It would take doing away with the entirety of late western imperial era socialist culture to rid ourselves of it. Fighting it from either side merely results on it reforming with a different mask.
Communism and Fascism and Nazism are all derivatives of Prussian Socialism, namely putting society to 'work' with all the state trappings like public education, employment etc. The aim may be different (class, ethnos etc) but the method and structure is always the same. Left/right is quite meaningless in this regard.
A true right wing/conservative movement would be a return to monarchy/hereditary rule, landed aristocracy with parliamentariansm (an aristocratic invention), clergy etc.
Cults don’t go away, they just reinvent themselves.
This was a lot of words to say what I've said for years: I'm not particularly enamored with the nastier elements on the right, but I have a graduate degree. There are a lot of people who won't have that experience, and who will be far more tempted to fall into it.
And in the end, if my only choices are the side that hates me and destroys everything I care about, or the side that hates someone OTHER than me and maybe I might at least get to keep SOMETHING that I care about... well what do the leftist lunatics THINK that I'm going to ultimately side with when finally forced to, if only out of self-preservation?