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Brilliant article.

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Solid piece. Well researched and argued.

What's your take on the Tablet magazine's hypothesis? Do you see it as a competing idea, or just one that explains the establishment of some of these activist nodes?

https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/rapid-onset-political-enlightenment

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Have now carefully read the entire terrifying Tablet article (thank you for bringing it to my attention). Doesn’t change my view—we see the same patterns I analysed above outside the US.

It does, however show the political organising possibilities. How the natural totalitarian tendency in the “we are superior deciders” politics of the professional-managerial class could be mobilised.

It did also, however, bring out something that has occurred to me since publishing the above post. Their politics of being the “superior deciders” is profoundly and pervasively the politics of contempt for others, and their choices. Hence the self-defeating hubris.

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Ta, and ta for the link. What the Tablet examines just explains the establishment and mobilising of some of these activist nodes. There is no way Obama came up with all the language and ideas, which have a history well before his political arrival.

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When you say, woke as relying on liberal humanitarianism, I do not fully understand what you mean. For myself, I see woke (especially its obsession with equality) as being a kind of Christian purity spiral. And one of the reasons why it so difficult to control is because those who are responsible are the least likely to acknowledge their Christian inheritance.

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Christian Social Gospel is one of its feed-ins and the derivation of Christian patterns in wokery are clear. One reason why the Churches have proved vulnerable.

But liberal humanitarianism itself is a Christian derivative. In fact almost all Western political philosophies are Christian derivatives. The main exception is Nazism—a major reason Hitler has become so much the secular Satan, as Tom Holland points out.

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I don't suppose it is a very profound statement to suggest this activist network scheme also sounds like how religions are formed and promulgated. But it probably applies to a wide variety of groups with some common interest: say CPA's, medieval historians, chemical engineers, etc., possibly devolving to subgroups within each of the larger ones. We think, or would like to think, that our specialized knowledge and the effort to acquire it makes us special in some way, although perhaps not in some gnostic secret way. Most people would not make the effort without at least some expectation of earning more than minimum wage, although we now know some fields of "studies" are not really even worth that rate of pay, except for the conjugal activism of the HR and related networks you describe.

So am I correct in understanding that what makes this woke related side of things different is the strong focus on emotional feedback and satisfaction of your "correct and true view" even though a more rational and fact based/ science based approach would keep us more humble about the certainty of our beliefs, knowledge, and "lived experience"?

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Yes, it is very like how religions promulgate and yes the destruction of any sense of moral and epistemic humility and replacing it with a self-righteous moral narcissism is indeed crucial. The politics of being superior deciders is pervasively the politics of contempt for others and their choices.

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Excellent piece. A bull's-eye.

As a self described (and active) enemy of Critical Theory, I especially like the idea of the *activist network* (and the effect structures that it includes):

“Thus, we in the West do not live in Party-States. We increasingly live in activist-network states.”

I may have other thoughts, but here are two:

1. The Aristotelian notion of praxis is an utterly essential tool in the CT toolbox. Marx famously declared, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." This is praxis, and it is deeply rooted in CT.

2. CT grounds itself in the systematic “deconstruction” of all of Western thought as it comes to us as Texts. It is all some form of structural oppression, and students are relentlessly inculcated into this endless exercise. “Decolonize your bookshelf” is the most concise dictate of this idea.

More to come if there's time.

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Thank you for such a thoughtful essay. Coupled with the Tablet article, it's given me much to ponder.

Great timing, I suppose!

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My pleasure, thank you.

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One of the most thought-provoking pieces I’ve read in MONTHS.

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Thank you.

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Excellent article.

I started to write a response to build on the idea, but it turned into a short essay. So instead of filling up your comments section, I will just link it.

https://open.substack.com/pub/dochammer/p/coordination-in-activist-networks

Merry Christmas, Lorenzo!

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Great job!

Merry Christmas

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Thank you, same to you.

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Wow! Great distillation again, Lorenzo!

These ideas overlap with The Open Society model that Scott Howard talks about.

Interesting you mention decision-making - this week, I realized it’s helpful to think about who holds the power to decide.

Fewer and fewer people do.

The Schmittian exception and “who decides has power” both highlight that power shapes the rules - deciding when they apply and when they don’t.

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Fantastic summarisation of the phenomena. I don't believe in conspiracy theories but there is clearly an all-encompassing element driving these movements, particularly since its so consistent across the West/Anglosphere. A kind of "distributed conspiracy" where mutual alignments of self interest align to manifest as an emergent phenomenon.

Self organising systems have been the subject of formal study under the field of "spontaneous order". EG defining behaviour of flocks of birds which behave as a unit but without actual central steering mechanism. This is getting some serious attention now with the AI boom taking off.

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Your comment led me to imagine bird murmuration, although this 11 year old article says they still don't really understand how the birds do it, except it appears they respond to the movement of their 7 nearest flight neighbors. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/how-do-starling-flocks-create-those-mesmerizing-murmurations/

If humans take about 30 milliseconds between subconscious sensing and conscious reaction, perhaps birds are faster given smaller brains and bodies, plus use joint feedback? [I don't recall the word for that.] Say 10 milliseconds to sense and then to respond within 50 milliseconds? Over 20 groups might "get the message" in a second? [Really just wild speculation on my part.]

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An excellent analysis of how wokeness helped to destroy the Democratic Party and elect Trump.

My stock response on the election. If you have seen it before I’m sorry, if not enjoy.

After the election the Democratic Party (my party) must rethink many of its policies as it ponders its future.

To be entrusted with power again Democrats must start listening to the concerns of the working class for a change. As a lifelong moderate Democrat I share their disdain for many of the insane positions advocated by my party. We are no longer the patriotic, sensible party of FDR and JFK.

Democrat politicians defy biology by believing that men can actually become women and belong in women’s sports, rest rooms, locker rooms and prisons and that gay kids should be mutilated in pursuit of the impossible.

They believe borders should be open to millions of illegals which undermines workers’ wages and the affordability of housing when we can’t house our own citizens.

They discriminate against whites, Asians and men in a futile effort to counter past discrimination against others and undermine our economy by abandoning merit selection of students and employees.

Democratic mayors allow homelessness to destroy our beautiful cities because they won't say no to destructive behavior. No, you can’t camp in our city. No, you can’t shit in our streets. No, you can’t shoot up and leave your used needles everywhere. Many of our prosecutors will not take action against shoplifting unless a $1000 of goods are stolen leading to gangs destroying retail stores. They release criminals without bail to commit more crimes.

The average voter knows this is happening and outright reject our party. Enough.

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The woke just took your own premises, staffing networks, and legally-imposed incentive / punishment framework to their logical conclusions. Which is why you needed an outside force to beat them, rather than doing it yourselves within the party.

We’ll see whether the new war-state push that’s coming from above both parties offers enough of a baseline shift to give you any prospect of future success.

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What is a woman? What is a machine gun?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0ciNwcafDs

See what I`m getting at?

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Lorenzo please read this short essay from 1944 “The Peace” by Ernst Junger. 50 pages.

The Peace was to be handed to the allies if the July 20 attempt on Hitler Succeeded. Junger was in Paris, the heart of the conspiracy- Berlin was its arm.

Summary:

Liberalism led to nihilism which led to Bolshevism, countered by Nazism, to have a peace of Liberalism is to return to the starting point.

But We did.

https://ia802902.us.archive.org/10/items/ThePeace/ErnstJuenger-ThePeace.pdf

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Thank you for the link, I've studied the Stauffenberg histories but haven't encountered this document yet.

My initial response is a little skeptical however. The men behind 20Jul were conservative nationalists who were fine and dandy with the Nazis until they just went too far. Goerdeler even wanted Germany to keep its conquests (!) when negotiating secretly with the Allies. Their interpretation that liberalism poisoned the well and led to Communism & Nazism as the response if obviously quite self-serving.

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Also, Germany was by then obviously losing. AJP Taylor’s unkind remark of “the thing to remember about the German resistance to Hitler was that there was no German resistance to Hitler” is a little harsh, but only a little.

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Uh, no German resistance until they were losing- unless you go back to the 1930s, and numerous attempts on his life before July 20, 1944.

The German military resistance to Hitler started in the 1930s with the night of the Long Knives when the former Chancellor and his wife were shot dead in their house - General Kurt von Schleicher.

Now of course I’m talking to inhabitants of the Commonwealth, the Germans will remain irredeemable forever to the relief of the French, and before we get too into Fawlty Towers here…

(Yes you did you invaded Poland!)

May I add - It’s also untrue that Napoleon was short as well.

Of course Napoleon was Corsican, although born a year earlier he would have been Italian, or perhaps Genovese…

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The Night of the Long Knives is not a good example, because the Prussian officer corps accepted the killings and then swore personal allegiance to Hitler. There were some individuals and small groups who attempted to resist, or to organise such, but it was all either peripheral or abortive until July 1944. Which was 10 months away from complete defeat.

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I think I’d read it before judging, and it’s Junger’s view not the German’s position. It’s Junger’s, although the others involved wouldn’t have objected to his view that a lasting peace shouldn’t return to the starting point.

I just happen to agree Liberalism is empty materialism, that it led to nihilism, which in Russia led to Bolshevism, which did indeed cause the reaction of Fascism and Bolshevism’s murderous mirror of Nazism. This is the sequence of events, and here in the West we’re certainly into a period of nihilism followed by whatever Woke is, and wherever the Populist and Nationalist reaction and rebellion take us… which we don’t know yet. I doubt we’ll be returning to Boomer Consumerism (of everything and then they die) anytime soon.

Junger here as usual a unique view, but one that bears out.

Let’s remember the man lived 1895-1997, fought with exceptional Heroism in WW1, was under threat by the Nazis before they took power, his son imprisoned and killed by the Gestapo, and he had an unmatched view of the 20th century having been party to it.

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The German opposition is a movement I studied in detail at university although by private reading rather through a formal course. So I am aware of the many conspiratorial groups and players (Oster and Hammerstein-Equord are the men who impress me most as honourable men, while I found Canaris the most interesting).

So I'm curious re Junger since I don't remember encountering him before. I'll give him a good read and let you know what I think.

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Thank you. The bottom line on Junger and the opposition to Hitler was he was in his own way but not operationally involved.

In fairness he wasn’t into war after 1918.

He wrote. A writer. When you rise from Private to Sturm Battalion Commander in WW1 and have wounds, all the Iron Crosses and the Pour Le Merite (Blue Max) what is left to prove?

Or discover?

However- It’s less Junger was opposition than he was as always his own man, his last collective group effort besides writing was being in the Reichswehr and he left in 1922 to pursue writing - which he committed to, however…

It’s best to characterize Junger as an opposition of One.

His book “The Worker” in 1932 earned him a death threat from Goebbels for not being German over all enough.

His later book “On the Cliffs” is very thinly veiled allegory of contempt for the Nazis.

Junger is going off to be the Forest Anarch, the rejector of the world and its follies.

In 1940 he reports, serves in France, under fire he saves a wounded soldier-but he clearly doesn’t want to kill again.

He doesn’t.

He describes his army service under the Nazis as “internal emigration” meaning under military law, not The People’s Court, etc. This was apparently common at the time.

He’s in contact with the Paris Generals against Hitler, one of whom he thanks by name for not giving up his name under interrogation after July 20.

He isn’t part of any plot except being a dangerous man of letters, essentially withdrawn from the Madding Crowd. He isn’t committed, he’s publicly opposed in his own way. Some others criticize him for not committing, but my take is he’s no coward just disgusted.

After July 20, Keitel wants to expel him from the army so he can be tried and certainly executed by the People’s Court, but Hitler says “leave the young man alone.” Junger’s son is arrested for anti Nazi sentiment and is KIA in Italy, but his wounds of shot behind the ear indicate execution, probably by Gestapo.

Rommel was executed for knowing of a plot against Hitler, Junger knew a great deal more.

Again what I am mainly pointing out is we America after WW2 descended into vain materialism and consumerism and this most certainly led to nihilism in the 1960s and 1970s and we never quite rebounded. What Junger basically said in The Peace was go back to Church- the problem isn’t Materialism and Liberalism per se as much as if that’s ALL there is, people are left empty (nihilism) and then they begin to go mad. He’s writing that in 1941-1943. That’s a big change for Junger on God and Church from say 1932 “The Worker” which says the old Church doesn’t work anymore.

So The Peace almost approaching Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor but without the hard edge of Dostoevsky’s Despairing Inquisitor.

I go into this detail for some clear record of Junger but also because I remember the 1970s as a child and I understand Nihilism in practice. Going abroad for war and seeing the Islamic Nihilists of D’aesh also informs me.

We made the same mistakes.

America remains a deeply religious nation that in the 20th century accidentally channeled that energy into Politics.

We gave up the Divine Check of God Is Watching and became unbalanced. An unwise bargain. God may not fill your stomach, but Junk Food cannot fill your soul. Why do you think so many got fat? It’s PRAYER. Or gluttony in place of prayer. Hedonism.

Same with sex, drugs, rocknroll.

And Greed.

🙏 Amen

>That’s my observation and his warning. For behold , here cometh Wrath. Why do you think we have more guns than people?

Indeed more than hands.

Cuz we ain’t gone through all Seven just yet.

Amen.

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This is Junger, he wrote it by 1943, he was linked to the Paris group of Officers but not operationally involved, that’s established history.

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