Armin
1yr ago
When in real life or in social, talking about this death, I say to people that the greatest risk is the permanent loss of British cultural independence, and the loss of their social-political-cultural rally point, they see me as a crazy
Incredible how the basic function of how institutions works has been completely lost in the liberal age
Armin
1yr ago
Reading your open society link, I understood that I never despised so much a single organization, beside ISIS
Advocating for socialism and planned economy while being heralded as a fighter against "authoritarianism" is what made me think that really our élites were hijacked by Soviets agents, and the fall of the URSS was only a setback
Armin
1yr ago
No one of these monarchies have the same challenges the British one has.
Apart from the absence of separatism and ethnic grudges and diversity and ex-empire going around, the United Kingdom have the ever threatening cultural americanization of the local culture
I would not be surprised to see American-style republicanism growing on the left as one of the next issues of culture war, especially knowing that Charles III have a lot of sympathies for conservatives environment (Blair forbid him to meet Hitchens when he published one of his first book, because he was scared of the Prince meeting a "reactionary")
Armin
1yr ago
Yup, my thesis on cancel culture is the following:
It was less aboyu converting people to the new cause, and more about having the justification to purge people from academia and cultural production factories, and putting new barrier at the entrance.
Armin
1yr ago
Knowing a bit of the Hungarian Right-Wing Intellighenzia, I really hoped that they would have worked hard to not attract the Eye of Sauron (the US)
It is one thing to cultivate relationship with the American right-wing, another one to become the focus of the attention of the global liberal commentariat. At this point Hungary is receiving an enormous and not proportional to her size attention by Bruxelles, and I would not like to see also attention from Washington.
Better to have a lot of abortion and to have more space to cultivate pro-family and anti-immigration sentiments than fighting a stupid CW on a topic that in Europe is almost settled.
Armin
1yr ago
It is simply pure Conflict Theory.
The transgender movement is, at heart, a radical leftist ideology, and so they work to identify enemies, isolate and smear them, promising to be tolerant, and then smashing them.
Armin
1yr ago
I mean, in a world where socialism realism is dead and planned economy is deader then ever and a failure, we can expect to see an infusion of leftism with capitalist values.
Armin
1yr ago
I was reflecting on the right-wing tactics in a world where they have less and less cultural power, and the Eye of Sauron in Washington is completely fixated on destroying them whenever they are.
I, as a chronic pessimist, don't think that they will ever adapt their tactics fully against the left-wing. Because, unlike the left that moves only by using Conflict Theory, the right-wing coalition suffer often from desertion, moderatization of issues, necessity of creating coalition with more moderates party and organizations etc.
For example, how anyone can think that the right-wing can be successful when, if they are in a coalition, only the most moderate and centrist policies that they promote can pass?
In a left-wing coalition you can be sure that, in a given arc of time, the coalition will implement policies that are more centrists first, then they will pass to more radical positions, and so on and so on.
The arc of history goes left also because the right has no sense of scale and can only concede, never take something. The only place where the government and administration (But not the Culture or the youngs!) have gone right in the West is Hungary, and only because Fidesz has total control!
Meanwhile, in order to help the left, you need only a smallish more leftwing party in the coalition, who will ask for more immigration, more of something, that will be for sure accepted.
That is why I absolutely despise centrists coalitions: Because they will negotiate with the Left, receiving something inconsequential on the long run (like a lesser tax on something useless) and giving to the leftist part something that cement their coalition (immigration, genderification, more cultural egemony)
How the right can win something if, whetever party or coalition you vote, they will for sure adopt with time leftists policies?
The process is like this:
-
Right wing comes in power, they adopt more centrist policies and get attacked as nazi anyway.
-
Centrist parties come in power, the negotiate with the left and with time leftist policies get adopted as a result of this.
-
You vote moderate left, and with time they switch to some more radical leftists positions.
It is maddening how there is no escape from this spiral.
The problem here is less with journalism and medias or whatever being left wing, and more with the right-wing being completely useless at doing anything of substance.
Armin
1yr ago
Dissidents under Stalin were hunted down and shot.
Here the dissidents can actually win election and make laws.
Armin
1yr ago
My judgement of "radical leftists position" is not made by my personal thought about it. I am talking about the leftist spectrum represented in Western Parliaments, where you have a more leftist and a more centrist wing inside the left-wing coalition.
The centrist part of the coalition can be unsure or unwilling of adopting the issues of the most leftwing policies (because they are not popular!), but they will do in 3 years!
I will make a concrete example to explain myself, in the Italian Parliament.
DDL Zan, a law presented by left-wing elements of the left-wing coalition, is about hardening sentences against aggressions against LGBT people, and inserting the notion of gender identity inside the Italian Corpus of Law.
When it was proposed, almost three years ago, there was an uproar inside the left coalition, because it is composed also by Left Catholics, Radical Feminists and more Blairite-like people, all of them wary of DDL Zan for different reasons.
After some years, DDL Zan appeared again in the Parliament (Same legislature, so exactly the same people as parlamentarians!), but this time was supported not only by the entire Left coalition, but also by the centrists and liberal parties. The law did not pass only because all the right wing went against it.
Withouth any change of popular support or coming from the change of the actual politicians, a fringe policy was completely adopted by the entire left-wing spectrum without problems.
Noteworthy, and useless, to say that now the same people that created Zan are beginning to create now proposal that goes hard towards transgender education and representation. They will propose them, be rejected, and propose them again in two years only to be completely accepted.
Armin
1yr ago
Maybe it is because I am European and I come from a different political culture, but a lot of these actions make no sense to me.
It is NPR public and at the same time insanely left wing? It is simple, you are the government! You decide who staff the NPR and PBS and whatever! Are the journalists there unsatisfacted? They will leave or bow. Is the problem classical music or traditional western music or whatever? Fund another national public broadcast who will do these things!
I understand the libertarian political culture, but leaving these things at the force of the market will help only the left, not the right.
Armin
1yr ago
As always terms are muddied in the polls. It is true that Italians are pretty liberal (and also pretty tolerant). But at the same time they would for surely back off if they saw the consequences of inserting gender ideology in the Law. But the right cannot explain it (because they are lazy and stupid).
Armin
1yr ago
Just saw it, and I was covering my head in embarassment.
The worst thing is that every "normie" aound me is acclaiming this episode as "the best"
Unreal, am I living in a different world?
Armin
1yr ago
The "blame colonialism and the supreme capitalist whiteness" looks like it is more diffused in certain particular demographics (left-wing above all, but especially academics and women) than between the lower-middle classes natives of these countries.
All the above I have seen in my life came always from upper-middle class women, often daughters of immigrants themselves, and almost never from the proletariat
Especially when I saw the influencer daughter of Africans complaining about the last oppression, and immediately after that hearing the congolese taxy workers saying "this place (Belgium) is amazing and the people are even better.
Armin
1yr ago
I know that complaining about Reddit is an old thing here, but I am still surprised how Reddit Brain, the one that always pop up in subs like politics and news, react when there is some news about Hungary.
Apart from the total ignorance about Hungary and the fact on the ground, how is possible that posts about third-tier countries (no offense to Hungarians) are so upvoted in /r/all?
Is there is some sort of algorithm, or the average reddit man is totally on on the neocon train "whatever we do not like is a threat to democracy?"
Armin
1yr ago
Notice that, if rape is about power and not sex, the rhetoric can push on the notion of deconstruction of the hierarchy, and not on concepts like self-control like religions of old (that are bad because they are hierarchical).
Rape is about power, not sex = another instance of academics trying to do their distruption of eternal fascism.
Armin
1yr ago
The main focus of the New Left is the analysis of hierarchies, power and how different groups and concepts and words interact with each other in the creation of hierarchical organization, born from the desire of finding, analyzing and deconstructing every structure that can remotely generate fascism again.
While sex is a biological function, and so is extremely difficult to dismantle without sounding as a crazy ideologue, power was the perfect word to use.
If rape = power we switch the focus from "maybe males biologically leans to lust, sex and degeneration, and that is life" to "Patriarchy and male dominancy derive only from the fact that exist a hierarchy of male power that provokes rapes, oppression or discrimination"
If it is the second case, this hierarchy can actually be deconstructed through education, word-renaming and all the usual instruments, causing another crack in the Hierarchy.
Armin
1yr ago
I do not think that the European Green movement will collapse.
Apart from total collapse, the core of the Greens are insulated middle-upper class, academics and feminists. They were not massively popular from the beginning, but they can decide on policy thanks to the support of Washington and of media-friendly popular culture.
For instance, from the beginning of the war, the popularity of the Greens in Germany only grew.
Armin
1yr ago
The war between the future Italian Government and the EU is beginning.
After a question by a student, the Commission President von Der Leyen, said that the EU will use "all their instruments, as happened against Hungary and Poland" against Italy in the case of "democratic backsliding".
As always, after this, accusation from every part came, with the Left defending it and the Right attacking it. Notice that von Der Leyen is part of the CDU(PPE), but their policies have always been center-left.
Apart from this phrase (von Der Leyen is not new at speaking too much with the wrong words at the wrong time), it will be noteworthy to see what will happen if Italy enter the bad boy group with Poland and Hungary, especially when also Sweden and Spain will probably see governments with the hard-right inside or at the helm.
The instrument of "follow liberal human rights or sanctions" can work against Warsaw and Budapest, but against all these countries?
What will happen will define how democracy will function in the EU, and if parties that are not part of the PPE-PSE-Liberal-Green megagroup will bow and assimilate to the center-right, or will follow the Orban line.
For now, it looks like the Italian Goverment will follow a moderate line, considering that economic recession is behind the corner and the debt is exploding again.
Armin
1yr ago
Early Soviet and communist education, for how much it was insane, was founded on the idea that Socialism was superior because it was more rational, and that maths and logic could improve the capitalistic education system.
A good chunk of it was tossed away with Stalin, but at least they produced a very good STEM system.
This is beyond communism or left-wingism, is purely emotional-based policy made by emotional people and women.
It is not Lenin, it is the insane Church Lady with mental ilness.
Armin
1yr ago
Yeah, Warsaw hoped that, being the eastern vanguard and one of the biggest spenders-helpers on Ukraine they would receive something in exchange from Bruxelles-Washington
Nothing happened, and Bruxelles continued to go on
Gays are more important than NATO.
Armin
1yr ago
Italian native speaker here.
Her accent is not only Roman (so perceived as "low class), but it also a very working class one.
Armin
1yr ago
You are following the free-market fallacy.
In the ideal world where the market of the ideas is completely free and inefficient, that would be a great idea; join the nation that you want to live in depending on what you believe.
But, as in academia and in the economy, real life is different; the result of demolition of nationalism and national belonging in the upper-middle class and intellighenzia had the effect of ensuring monopolism.
There are no tens or hundreds of states with different ideas, but an overbearing assimilation to a stronger ideology who does not tolerate deviation from the standard, and assimilate everything in her path.
We have a world under a Monopoly of ideas, not freedom.
Your thesis would be compelling if we ignore the natural tendency of the human to create conflict and to have a sense of belonging.
As first post here, i was reflecting especially on the role of the State in a progressive/socialist society.
We can start from some axiom that, I think, cannot be disputed:
In a state, in order to pursue policy, you need state capacity, the capacity of the state of "doing things"
State capacity varies for a lot of reasons, but generally good states with a lot of capacity are the ones with an high trust society, small internal friction, a not polarized political system, and all these things, together with a smooth system that permit the state to actually control things and move them.
Now, the theoretical goals of progressivism, as said by the ideological granparents of them (the French group, the german one, David and the antiracism american group, you know what I am talking about) are still about the destruction or the surpassing of Capitalism as an economic system.
But the point is; in order to do it you need the state, as Lenin correctly theorized! You cannot destroy the capitalistic system in a country if you do not have the men, the tanks, the followers and in general the power to impose things with will and force, and also this is state capacity.
This is outside the capacity of the single individual or the group or whatever, you need the State.
The problem is, I see progressivism as a continuous tentative of - degrading - state capacity (less thrust and less homogenity, polarized systems, destruction of meritocracy)
How in the hell are they supposed to destroy capitalism if the states that are supposedly created by liberal progressivism are weaker every day? In the West we begin to have difficulties in enforcing Basic law or fixing bridges!
My answer, at the end, bring always to the same point, and is that we need to understand if progressivism is bolschevism under the cloat of liberal capitalism or viceversa.
Because if they are the first category, they are terrible at doing their political project.
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