atomised
1yr ago
Laying out an array of controversial opinions and then inviting other people to discuss questions which are only coherent if one a priori regards those opinions as true is absolutely a form of consensus-building. It's not as explicit as saying 'we all agree that...', but it's equivalently powerful, because it still essentially obliges the subsequent discussion thread to conform ideologically to the root comment, lest the whole debate lose its consistency. The question 'Did Poland really need money so badly that it had to join the EU?', and any responses to it, are trivially incoherent unless you assume that the EU is an inherently malignant entity.
In fact, this form of consensus building is more potent than the syntactically explicit form ('we all agree that...'), since though it is equally able to enforce conformity among respondents, one cannot as easily demonstrate with a quotation the manner in which debate is being ring-fenced.
atomised
1yr ago
If you think the rules are about tone then you have misunderstood them. The rules have always been about sincerely assuming the best of your ideological opposites, not assuming whatever you like and then applying a varnish of decorum.
atomised
1yr ago
Well, you did said it was akin to rdrama's banners, which are consciously chosen. But even if we accept that 4chan slur-users are unwitting or subconscious implementers of an anti-normie immune system, their conscious actions are obviously those of people who enjoy using slurs, so they fall into the contingent originally described in the comment above.
atomised
1yr ago
What the discussion presupposes is not that the EU is inherently malignant, but that joining the EU is undesirable for Poland
I disagree. The clear subtext of the original comment is that the EU is inherently malignant.
One can respond to such a question by saying "you seem to believe that joining the EU would be bad for Poland, but I don't think it is in fact bad for them", and go from there.
Yes, just as one can say: 'actually, we don't all agree that xyz' in response to explicit-style consensus building. The problem is that to do so cuts against the grain of the discourse, requires sticking a shovel into the ground instead of simply building constructively, and so is more arduous and less likely to be well received even if done in good faith.
'Financial speculator' is a good intuitive descriptor for the more abstract 'commodifier'. The essence of neoliberal capitalism is that it turns every human attribute into a form of capital and every cultural artifact into a commodity. Everywhere it seeks to produce systems of winners and losers, and it desires that everything be packaged up and sold. Are 'financial speculators' in the narrow sense responsible for all this? Not wholly, no, but they serve as a useful synecdoche. The mindset of the forex trader or the rolex flipper is very much the sentient manifestation of neoliberal ideology, just as the mindset of the brutal cop is a sort of sentient fascism.
Not true. Even if we assume that neoliberal capitalism is unassailably efficient, the inefficiencies induced by a socialist system would in many cases not be very great and could be protected with relatively modest tarriffs. And of course for many (perhaps most) industries, a regulated market is the best solution, as well evidenced by the real world.
Khmer Rouge and Ancapistan are two ends of a very long spectrum.
atomised
1yr ago
Huh. That probably says more about Reddit mods than it does about neoliberalism to be fair, though.
atomised
1yr ago
I doubt they ban Republicans for being too much in favour of economic liberalisation.
I went to Poland and it looked like what Western Europe should look like. The urban areas were clean and seemingly safe. Indeed the people living there are mostly European or Slavic.
This assumes as axiomatic that we all agree with white nationalism, which is consensus building.
The stated purpose of this community is for defending ideas. That is to say, users are expected to present earnestly held views, along with a reasoned case explaining why they believe them to be true. The OP has instead chosen to reel off a sequence of searingly controversial opinions—an explicit defense of white nationalism, as well as an implied condemnation of homosexuality—with markedly little effort to avoid polemical and ideologically weighted language ('tsunami of ... immigrants', 'drink the corn syrup'). To the extent that they prompt discussion, they do so by posing questions which invite only those respondents who agree with their stances on race and sexuality.
As a result of this framing, the implied terrain for debate is not 'is it important that Poland be a white ethnostate?' or 'is it right for Poles to oppose homosexuality', but rather 'given that Poland is relatively successfully defending itself against non-whites and gay rights, why would they undermine this by allying with America and the EU?'. It's frustrating and dull to unpick this sort of pre-discursive stage-setting, which is why most people who disagree with white nationalism or anti-homosexuality will simply roll their eyes and pass over comments like OP's. Thus, the entire thread is doomed to become an ideologically homogeneous round-table discussion that may raise some interesting points about the realpolitik of national alliances, but that—ironically for a culture war thread—will scarcely tackle the contentious underlying issues.
This is why consenus-building is disallowed. I'm happy to lay my cards on the table: it won't come as a surprise that I don't personally like white nationalism. Yet I value the fact that the Motte does not censor such viewpoints. It is critical, though, that when one presents controversial ideas, one does so according to the principles of the community, since laxity in this regard will induce an echo-chamber before you can say 'globohomo'.
atomised
1yr ago
Whatever you think of her character, I can't imagine anyone thinking she's a 'famehunting fake tanned slag', since she was already quite famous, is obviously not fake tanned, and is undeniably elegant and attractive - a world away from the stereotypical Essex sambuca girl.
This is not really an argument, this is just a list of things you dislike.
It's funny to me when people say that the left can't meme. In one sense I get it: the edginess and nihilism that characterises imageboard meme culture is mostly not compatible enough with progressivism for them to create something like the soyjak. And yet, consider that the 'tolerance of tolerance paradox' went from being an obscure philosophical musing to an almost globally enforced rule of the internet in less than a decade. In memetic warfare terms, that's a victory on the scale of desert storm. A similar argument applies to 'stating ones pronouns' and 'the power plus prejudice definition of racism'. These might not be memes in the same way soyjak is a meme, but they are memetic ideas nonetheless and they have won big time.
P.S. There are a few good leftist memes in a format recognisable to the average reactionary shitposter. 'le pol face' is probably the best example.
P.P.S. All souffles collapse, even expertly made ones.
atomised
1yr ago
Mainstream news media takes its foreign policy cues from the Government as a matter of state cohesion and security. If you want to call that a psyop then fine, but it's also the way the world has worked for centuries.
atomised
1yr ago
Well as someone with leftist inclinations I would raise the point that neoliberalism remains, in the grand scheme of things, a fundamentally right-wing ideology, since it supports loosening the regulations on private businesses and dismantling direct state involvement in the economy.
atomised
1yr ago
I'm pretty sure the only reason she's not openly euroskeptic is because the failure (perceived or actual) of Brexit has poisoned the well of euroskepticism for mainstream politicians on the continent. Perhaps also because she feels she will be able to find ideological allies within the EU (namely Duda and Orbán). In the abstract, euroskepticism should be a very natural corollary of her fundamental beliefs: anti-globalist, anti-liberal, pro-nation-state.
The idea that it is impossible to discern the personally held feelings of posters here towards progressivism because everyone's so level-headed and decorous is frankly risible.
atomised
1yr ago
This is a bit of a semantic argument but I feel obliged to tell you are America-brained. No-one else in the world thinks that a loosely regulated, globalist, capitalist economic system is 'leftist' because of high government spending and land-value taxes. I do agree that the strain of neoliberalism you see in the Biden administration and on the /r/neoliberal subreddit is not quite that espoused by Reagan and Thatcher, though.
atomised
1yr ago
The trifecta of classic neoliberal economic policies - low taxation, market deregulation, and globalisation - describes large swathes of contemporary western politics, including the present government of the United Kingdom.
atomised
1yr ago
Go to the neoliberal sub on Reddit and they'll tell you themselves that they're 'economically centre-right'.
atomised
1yr ago
largest breach in American-German trust since the NSA spying debacle last decade
I would feel fairly comfortable in saying that it would be larger than that. Spying won't win you friends, but it's been a tacit axiom of geopolitics since the founding of Jericho that everyone spies on everyone. Damaging critical (not to mention obscenely expensive) national infrastructure, however? Wars have started over much less.
If this is Biden's doing I commend him for his pluck. I have my problems with NATO, but Ostpolitik really should've died with the USSR. There is nothing redeeming about Putin's Russia.
atomised
1yr ago
I'm not totally sure what you mean by the 'red pill' in this context but I will try and answer. I do not see orthodox 'Third Positionism' coming back into vogue: besides the stain of historical association, it is anachronistic - politics from an age when modernity was symbolised by screaming-fast newspaper presses and the broadcast tower at Alexandra Palace.
American right wingers don't even know what socialism is for the most part so it's barely worth listening to their opinions. However it is true that far-right parties have always been, let's say, undogmatic about economics. They just don't find it interesting. They care only about power: power over people, power over institutions.
For every person on 4chan who uses slurs as a tactical normie-filter there's three people who just enjoy being shocking and hateful.
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