StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
There's a perception that Democratic politicians are particularly fringe or loony with respect to trans issues or immigration and in general they're not.
Maybe on a personal level, but as political figures, there was and largely still is an absolute consensus within the Democratic party on these issues or at least the supposed core beliefs underlying them. The fact that there is a diversity hire Supreme Court Justice who was literally unable to define the word "woman" during her Senate hearings and was voted in unanimously by the Democrats should attest to this. I'm sure quite a few Senators privately think she's a moron, but their political actions are what determines their politics, not what might be whispered behind closed doors.
But for Americans who personally know racists or look on social media and see examples of politicians who are overtly racist it's uniformly Republicans.
If you define racism as "being resentful of black people", sure. But if I consider racism as any undue or malicious injection of race as a marker of superiority or inferiority as pertaining to a political issue, it's most certainly been the left-liberal wing of the spectrum that's by far the most common offender. I actually remember very little hostile discussions of race in Western politics growing up - there was a kind of consensus that fixating on race was low-class skinhead behaviour and that the most one should do is be courteous and non-judgemental. Every now and then you'd get a "George Bush doesn't care about black people" moment, but those seemed more like rebellious provocations and tabloid scandals than any kind of real societal divide. Here in Europe, the big topic around race 15+ years ago was football fans making monkey noises when black players of the opposing team were on the field - again, condemned as low class, provincial behaviour mainly driven by stupidity and a lack of education rather than any kind of malice or "institutional oppression".
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
I agree with everything you say, but it seems obvious that this entire liberal consensus perspective and method of curtailing dissent hinges on having a critical mass of support - you downplay the electorate's power in this process, and I agree that institutions are the bigger players here, but there are still points of contact between the two. Think of the absolute fiasco for the progressive project that happened when those Ivy League Deans - all women who were very obviously hired for diversity points and were completely unable to handle the gravity of the situation - were questioned by Congress and unable to deny even the most outrageous accusations against the campus culture they fostered because the institutional jargon they use to defend it only worsens their case in the eyes of the public.
A Dean of Harvard getting easily out-dribbled rhetorically by some Republican congresswoman seemed unthinkable even 15 years ago (or maybe I just have rose-tinted glasses of the Democratic coalition before Obama), but the liberal project has allowed their own echo chamber to become so narrow and restrictive that they have no idea how stupid and hypocritical they sound to anyone outside of it - all while doing all in their power to push as many people out of said space as possible. There's also just been a massive cratering in terms of intellectual standards, which I guess was to be expected of any environment that punishes skepticism.
Regardless, Trump's rather decisive re-election (and it's equally significant flip side, the electorate's clear disapproval of Kamala Harris) should have been the writing on the wall for how useless this style of politics has become - the liberal establishment still has a lot of strings it can pull, but these strings are increasingly being stress-tested, dismantled, and in some cases, outright disregarded by the current administration. By keeping up this arrogant and deliberately antagonistic style, the establishment seems to be heading for a scorched Earth policy rather than any serious attempt to recapture their lost electorate - how long will it last?
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
I think I should have been more specific - I'm not really talking about wokeness or cancel culture as it's existed in the past decade per se, I agree that's it's on a downward trend and that many people are now much more comfortable with opting out of progressive discourse or openly critiquing it. Especially today, "cancelling" someone carries much less weight than it did years ago, because there's now a massive contingency of the population that considers being "anti-woke" as it's own social identity and relishes in provoking and triggering the progressive project. You can quite literally make a career off being cancelled today, and the only ones who seem to truly suffer from cancellation anymore are left-liberal people enmeshed in progressive media and activism (which in turn gives the anti-woke crowd even more incentive to keep the siege atmosphere within the Left going and watch them tear each other apart).
What I'm trying to get at feels more like a kind of bitterness or "lashing out" of the liberal project towards its supposed own subjects. The pretence of being a self-justified, End of History blueprint for civilisation that wins based on the superior civic and economic model it offers compared to the dark and tyrannical systems of "the past" seems to be evaporating - all they still offer is the rhetorical comfort of being on "the good side" and how this fulfils some supposed higher historical purpose. They no longer have a believable hegemony in assuring a high standard of living, personal liberties (I think they truly do not understand how much of an anti-system awakening the pandemic was for many people), or embodying the will of the people (Migration being the most obvious case, but also Von der Leyen being weaselled into the leadership of the EU despite not being on the ballot) - so being on "the good side" seems to have next to zero actual advantages aside from validating bourgeois sensibilities and assuring you'll be invited to the next dinner party.
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
I agree to an extent. I've had many discussions specifically around Ukraine where even non-opinionated mentions of basic facts - like how the country has always had an extreme cultural and political rift between it's Western and Eastern regions - will garner accusations of relativising Putin or "playing into his hands".
I think you're right in the sense that the subtext is always "you don't want to be on that side, outside of polite society, do you now?" Unfortunately for them, this kind of threat of social exclusion only really works if you want to be socially included to begin with, and if the power relations are sufficiently one-sided. But why would I want to be included in a social paradigm that treats me as lesser and deserving of retribution for my gender and skin colour, all while failing to deliver on the basic quality-of-life promises of it's post-war social contract? At least pre-Trump and wokeness, there was one clear side of the sociopolitical spectrum that was cooler, younger, made better art, etc. none of which is really the case anymore.
I'm very curious to see how this continues - already, the AFD is inching towards overtaking the CDU in the polls and becoming the largest party in Germany, at which point virtually every single major player in the EU (not counting Spain since it's irrelevant) will have far-right electorates. The fever must break at some point, right? Or is the doubling-down going to turn into a tripling-down?
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
Here in Europe, I actually think it’s worse than ever. Maybe it’s the war atmosphere our media and elite are desperate to drum up.
I'm increasingly fascinated by how counter-productive the current modus operandi of political discourse within the Left and Liberal wings of Western society has become.
When in a political discussion, I try to rarely make sloganeering arguments - very few buzzwords, no contentious examples, generally attempting to keep a big picture in mind, clearly distinguishing between what I believe to be a core principle and what I think could be a likely hypothesis, etc. Of course I sometimes take the bait or let spite and Schadenfreude get the better of me, but generally I think I'm pretty good at discussing politics and have been able to have nice and constructive conversations with people across the political spectrum : I think it's precisely because of the rather tentative way I go about defending or questioning ideas that the discussions almost always conclude on a cordial tone, completely irrespective of how close we are ideologically or if anyone involved was really convinced of the other's perspective.
It has long been remarked that the Left has an issue with both internal and external discourse, pushing for alienating purity tests and distorting supposedly open discussions into show trials the moment an unsavoury subtext or implication can be gleaned from the other's words - no matter how minor or semantic. From a Marxist-Leninist perspective, this makes some sense to me as an internal approach to maintain ideological unity - it has a martial aspect to it that places a very high value on cohesion and loyalty, exactly what you want from an organised Vanguard movement waiting to strike. As an external form of discussion geared towards convincing the public at large or gaining new recruits to your cause, it's obviously abysmal and essentially filters out normal people in record speed.
As a former Marxist-Leninist myself, who was in such a "Vanguard party" in my home of Austria way back during Obama's second term/Trump's first years in office (and who now, over a decade later, feels more sympathy for Mussolini than Lenin), it's been interesting to see how this internal form of discourse (which I guess we now would call wokeism or cancel culture) has also completely taken over any approach to external messaging and discussing. When I was in a Marxist org over a decade ago, we would go to worker's clubs, employee's strikes, union meetings and such in the hope of recruiting or latently indoctrinating the working-class there. The explicit modus operandi that we were taught and regularly coached on was to insist on opinions of theirs that were bauchlinks - "left-wing by gut feeling", essentially. Even though by the mid 2010's most working-class people in Austria outside of some flagship unions were already comfortably captured by the far-right, we spoke to them exclusively through the lens of what we could agree on, not what they were wrong about believing. Of course, this made for a lot of friendly conversations and momentary feelings of having made progress. But in the end, these actions had next to zero effect since most of the Marxist org members were bourgeois students slobs and therefore neither trusted nor taken seriously by the workers, and we really didn't have a good answer on immigration and the refugee crisis (since we were wrong on this issue, as the Left still is today).
Still, this approach to engaging a political conversation seemed to me productive and understanding of how politics functions - you need to get people on your side. That's easier when you make them feel like you and they already believe alot of the same things.
I won't belabour how much cancel culture et all has ruined the Left and tarnished its public image - we all know. What's more interesting to me is that even among less overtly woke or even moderate/conservative liberals, there is a growing attitude of guilt by association and implication - and a pleasure to brand someone as far-right, a nazi, a "populist", especially if said person has any kind of public presence and influence. We see this across the UK, Germany, Austria, especially when it comes to Trump or Ukraine. It's practical effect is essentially them saying "please see yourself as our political opposition and consider yourself excluded from our political project" - the exact opposite of what you want to achieve in a political discussion! Joe Rogan has of course become the archetypal example of this. The list of influential people who became right-wingers because one side of the political spectrum welcomed them with few strings attached and the other told them they were irredeemable and devoid of decency is long and growing.
What's the idea behind this kind of discourse? It seems so alien to any kind of strategic understanding of politics and campaigning to me, especially now when the liberal order is more vulnerable than ever. Are they still this oblivious to the disillusionment and loss of trust in institutions that is well entrenched in Western society today? Is it some kind of some kind of moral self-validation first and foremost? Where does this desire to grow your own political opposition come from?
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
I think it's mainly over-diagnosis and excessively pathologising certain behaviour. Also parents don't want to turn down any kind of extra support they feel they are receiving.
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
Yeah that one might be a reach, but I'm sure we can find a more fitting example elsewhere in the Arthurian Romance
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
And the men that did engage in this were mostly fathers with daughters, not single men in the current sense of the word
As a matter of fact, single men were always a clear danger to traditional patriarchal conventions for the precise reason that their singlehood made them more willing and eager to break oppressive etiquette around courtship and partnering (both fathers approving, several months of courtship in the presence of chaperones, no sex before the marriage was contractually finalised and the wedding held, etc.) in order to gain immediate sexual access to a woman.
We have largely forgotten this today, but young men as a whole were systematically more socially liberal than young women well into the late 20th century! It's kind of obvious as to why : the father of a young woman at least theoretically cares about her wellbeing as his own kin, whereas the young man cares about getting in her pants and seeing how he feels the next morning.
Western literature is so chock-full of this that "single man transgresses patriarchal rule in order to bed woman" is basically a central, foundational trope of the Western canon :
- Iliad
- Romeo & Julia
- Faust
- Exodus 22 : 16 specifically highlights this situation and gives a legal obligation on it, implying it was common enough to require a one-size-fits-all law
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Those are just off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure the Decamerone and the Divine Comedy also have instances of this.
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
I agree with this, and it matches my experience with Arab immigrants - especially the younger refugees - very well, having lived in Paris and now in Vienna. Especially in France, there was a constant sense of indignation among them and the word "disrespect" was used liberally whenever any entitlement didn't materialise. (By far the most outrageous recurrent example of this was them rudely approaching girls to hit on, and when told there was no interest, claiming they were disrespectful - a hilarious inversion of what was going on).
This begs the question - why would they even come here if they are so supremely sensitive and accept nothing but total slavish obsequiousness from the side of the state and population? I have trouble forming a theory of mind for these people, there seems to be a total lack of reflection around the most basic elements of social organisation : why would someone who doesn't work and lives off of foreign countries' welfare systems be respected? How can one perceive oneself as "strong, virile, powerful" after leaving behind one's homeland and sheepishly fabricating stories of persecution (i.e., being a weak victim) in order to gain asylum? Is it all just downstream from an extreme mix of chauvinism and anti-intellectualism?
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
You're right, I overreacted - not offended, just kinda stunned. My bad.
I'm now also a bit confused since you're talking about the doctor who committed the Magdeburg attack, when that doesn't at all match the category I was describing - he was from a middle class Saudi Arabian background and definitely not receiving welfare. On the surface he's literally a model migrant - proudly secular, professionally educated and employed, clean record, etc. He also arrived in Germany by legal means long before the 2015 refugee crisis. What I was referring to are the vast bulk of uneducated, often rural refugees who enter illegally and then claim asylum in order to be allowed indefinite stay and financial assistance.
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
I know plenty of pothead layabouts here in Vienna that are chronically unemployed and while they aren't super happy with themselves, they definitely enjoy the subsidised social housing and the welfare checks that allow them to live like perpetual college students without having to work. I really don't see Middle Eastern culture as having a "provider masculinity" at all - its a culture infamous for creating failsons, momma's boys and general worthless biomass that just lingers and mills about aimlessly in public squares. The idea that an Afghan asylum seeker only values what he "achieved through hard work" is an insane projection of your post-Protestant American work ethic on a culture that largely runs on family clan handouts and being the right person's nephew. How one can see an ingrained value for hard work in some of the most nepotistic and unproductive societies on Earth confuses me - why do you think they came to Europe in the first place, if for not free shit?
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
There were explosive devices in his car that were supposed to render his body unidentifiable
Where are you reading this? Skimming German newspapers gives me nothing on explosives. Also the idea that his body would be unidentifiable to the point where no one could conclusively claim his identity is ridicoulous, and not how forensics nor modern surveillance technology operates. And the biggest question - who committed this false flag? State powers? The AfD? Right AFTER an election when it will have minimal impact? I'm not buying it.
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
The reason for the anger and resentment of the Magdeburg attacker is fairly clear. He was in contact with numerous people from his region of origin and felt that they were, in some specific cases, not treated fairly by German society.
I will never understand this thought process - he wanted the German state to expedite refugee claims for secular Saudi Arabians and to take a more anti-Saudi stance geopolitically, which would never happen due to the balance of power in the Middle East and energy/economic interests - so his solution is to select a Christmas market and kill random people shopping there? Why not stab someone walking out the Saudi embassy, attack a Wahhabist, Saudi-funded mosque or, heck, even travel to Saudi Arabia and attempt to do maximum damage there since it's the supposed main focus of his ire? Even attacking organs of the German state makes marginally more sense. Instead, he selected for a group of people that probably largely agreed with him and his cause.
It all seems somewhat convenient that after doing the deed, he allowed himself to be arrested without a struggle (maybe I'm wrong but I can't find a german-language article saying the opposite), will now face a fair trial in which he can argue for insanity and will most certainly be able to finish whatever sentence he gets before he dies of old age - and without fear of being targeted by muslims within the prison system, as might have been the case had he chosen Islam as his target. Maybe murdering Europeans has just become the most low-risk of political extremism with the least relative consequences?
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
focusing on the victims and their stories.
Doesn't that inevitably engender talking about the carnage, the shooters, and their motive?
It feels like wishful thinking to believe you can control a story so meticulously that the most titillating, sensational and puzzling parts of a story - i.e. the components most people want to know more about - could be left out in favour of someone talking about how hard it is to lose their son or friend in such a violent manner (the one component of the entire story that we can already imagine and know intuitively without needing it reported to us)?
Also, I feel like school shootings (in the media sense of the term, not the usual gang related shootouts that make up the vast majority of cases) have been somewhat decreasing compared to the past decade - maybe we have become a bit numb to it through over-saturation and that's dissuaded potential school shooters? 30 years ago shooting up a school could make your name and face legendary, you could become a kind of patron saint for outcasts and losers overnight. Today it's a crowded space, much more difficult to become part of the school shooter Pantheon like those Columbine kids.
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
I think Princip's motivations and actions were totally coherent and well-directed (he might not have imagined WW1, but the step-by-step consequences of his attack were exactly what he and the rest of the Black Hand had hoped for) and don't really fit our descriptor - I do agree about the "internal narrative" and I think that's an important component, that these sprees somehow make sense to the people committing them, no matter how wanton they seem from the outside.
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
This is a good point, and I agree that jihadism is often more ethnocultural than people assume. What I have trouble with is the idea that Syrian/Afghan asylum claimants in Western Europe feel like they've "failed at life" - they literally experienced the single greatest upward mobility of their families' entire history in terms of living standards, security and access to healthcare and housing by moving from rural poverty to countries like Sweden or Germany. Their apartment is paid for by the state (and even the shabby social housing here is better than living without running water or electricity in a village with no public transit connecting it to urban centres), food and clothing are provided reliably by both government agencies and charity groups/NGOs, they get to live in centres of cultural activity many of which are completely free of charge to enjoy, they even receive a monthly stipend to spend as they wish (granted, not much, but it's literally unconditional free money), AND they have the very real possibility of having their family getting residency permits in the same Western country if one member been living there long enough - how is this "failing at life"? It sounds like unimaginable luxury and comfort for someone living in quasi-medieval standards in some hut in Afghanistan.
And all the benefits I've mentioned are unconditional! That's not even getting into the possibilities if you take language courses (also offered for free by the government) and then seek employment (aided by governmental institutions and NGOs that exist specifically to help refugees find jobs, also free of charge), at which point you're on track for eventual citizenship, which is a lifetime, intergenerational guarantee that your needs will be met.
If one is given all of this, and the reaction is a so severe feeling of failure that you must take revenge on the country that gave you these amenities by wantonly slaughtering its children, I have to assume that the base expectation of life in Europe as a refugee was so outrageously high and inordinate (big house, nice car, pricey status brands of clothing, probably a state-mandated white sex slave, AND not having to work nor even learn the local language to acquire this) that one can barely consider these people adults or even mentally able.
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_and_violence#Notable_actions
Here's a pretty good survey of anarchist violence, you'll notice that the choice of targets is precise and systematic.
February 12, 1894 – Émile Henry, intending to avenge Auguste Vaillant, sets off a bomb in Café Terminus (a café near the Gare Saint-Lazare train station in Paris), killing one and injuring twenty. During his trial, when asked why he wanted to harm so many innocent people, he declares, "There is no innocent bourgeois." This act is one of the rare exceptions to the rule that propaganda by deed targets only specific powerful individuals. Henry was convicted and executed by guillotine on May 21.[5]
Interesting to note that even when anarchist violence was more "randomised", it still focused on bourgeois institutions and symbols like the Opera and established coffeehouses with wealthy patrons. I really think the comparison to these recent sprees doesn't hold up well.
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
Yes, I thought of the stabbing sprees in China, but I know very little about it and am always cautious about Western reporting of these kind of events, so I didn't mention it. A similar process, as you hint at, might apply there, too: what started out as a precise method of autonomist/islamist terror became a modus operandi for expressing dissatisfaction no matter your politics or chosen targets.
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
As far as I know, the anarchist attacks of the late 19th Century were not randomised at all, but targeted precise members of the existing power structures - royals, police chiefs, ministers, etc. They might have had a psychotic/romantic component to them, but they had a vaguely coherent moral system of who deserved to be the target of violence - can you name an anarchist attack in which someone stabbed a random child that just happened to be there? I think throwing a hand grenade at the Tsar's carriage and stabbing a group of kindergarteners is not comparable in the slightest.
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
I'm curious about the potential for social contagion emanating from the recent wave of lone wolf terror attacks in Europe, especially Germany. I specifically don't mean male muslim asylum seekers/immigrants observing a terror attack and deciding to emulate it - they already have extremely powerful religious and ethnocultural dispositions towards such behaviour (and the deterrents are extremely weak - if you grew up in rural Syria or Afghanistan, German prison is comparatively nice, just commit your attack, then turn yourself in to police and you'll be rewarded with 10+ years of free room and board). I'm referring to otherwise non-jihad minded individuals, often people with psychiatric issues, shifting towards previously unheard of forms of randomized violence that conspicuously copy the exact methods pioneered by lone wolf jihadis.
Take the doctor who drove into a crowd of people at a Christmas market in Magdeburg - the right-wing in Germany was quick to point out he was an asylum claimant from a Middle Eastern country. But his extensive social media presence and past activist work point to an ex-muslim who fled Saudi Arabia on grounds of religious persecution, became a doctor in Germany and focused his political efforts on limiting Islamist power in Germany, going as far as expressing sympathy for the AfD. When this background information emerged, it was the German left-wing's turn to gloat and call him a far-right terrorist, which definitely matches his ideological profile better than jihadist. But why the fuck would an ex-muslim right-winger, obsessively terrified of an Islamised Europe, choose to drive a truck into a crowd of white Germans visiting a Christmas market, an obvious symbol of European christian heritage? If it was some kind of 4-d chess move to turn German opinion against refugees, it seems like a ludicrous goal for someone who has a record of constantly begging the German state to accept more secular Arab refugees persecuted by their home countries. If it was just a case of severe mental illness, why did his madness know to perfectly emulate a jihadi attack, right down to the method and target (cherished symbols of Western Christian culture and life)?
Equally perplexing is the recent car attack in Mannheim - the perpetrator is an ethnic German. Details are emerging that he was present at some far-right demonstrations in 2018, which for the political left in Germany makes this an open-and-shut case of right-wing terrorism. The police, however, is calling an ideological motive unlikely and highlight the attacker's psychiatric issues as the probable cause. Again, the same situation : why is a far-right terrorist (if he indeed is one) driving a car into a crowd of random Germans? There's virtually hundreds of more obvious targets he could choose that would conform to his ideology. And if he did it because of his severe mental health issues - why is this happening now? We now have centuries of documented experience of clinically insane people's behaviour and the risks thereof, and driving cars into crowds seems completely unheard of in the larger scale of things. Generally, randomised sprees of violence in which the victim's profile is irrelevant to the perpetrator are a historically extremely rare phenomenon - the recent stabbing spree in Villach in the Austrian region of Carinthia was apparently the first time EVER that such an attack took place in the entire region's history - not the first time in 50 years, not the first time since WW2, the first time ever. In a region that keeps documented chronicles of events since the Middle Ages. (This attack was committed by the usual suspect though, so it's less relevant to my argument.)
Does anyone have any ideas on what's going on here? Are we experiencing a jihadification of psychiatric issues and radical politics at large? Is there a growing sense among the extreme fringes of politics that lone wolf jihadism as a modus operandi has the highest ROI for influencing public life and political discourse, so one might as well emulate the methods and see where it goes? If you can't beat them, join them? Are mentally ill people who already harbour delusions of paranoia and grandeur enraptured by the vast amount of national attention and infamy these attacks receive, turning it into the method of choice for a kind of extreme attention-seeking/lashing out? Is social media somehow to blame?
I'm reminded of something Zizek stated about a decade ago in a discussion about lone wolf terror attacks - he said he could envision a future in which these events are sufficiently normalised to the point where they will happen without clear origin or purpose, almost as a new form of reactive behaviour your brain will simply intuitively tend towards due to it becoming a habitual social phenomenon rather than the progressive result of a precise form of Islamist theories around militant action. This seems increasingly possible - and absolutely terrifying.
StJohnOfPatmos
4mo ago
Being poor in a Western European country is still a better deal than receiving a generous salary to fight in a bloody war. The standard of living is too high for that tradeoff.
StJohnOfPatmos
5mo ago
Off the top of my head, Castro, Noriega, and Thomas Sankara come to mind as wearing everyday military attire, and I think Saddam usually wasn't wearing ceremonial uniforms. But yes Zelenskyy is definitely doing something more toned down and palatable.
StJohnOfPatmos
5mo ago
I think the male culture within seafaring could be a more accurate example - it's in large part a totally confined social space that developed over the course of millennia with next to zero female influence. We find strict hierarchies - but camaraderie is a given and mutiny an ever-present possibility should the captain fail his crew. It's also a very fratty environment in the sense that hazing is commonplace and there's usually a whole array of crew-specific rituals an shibboleths meant to confer a strong sense of shared identity.
Honest question : how else would you qualify someone's politics, other than by their voluntary political actions?
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