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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   23621 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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Chaos in French Politics

After a heavy defeat in the European elections, French President Emmanuel Macron has used his constitutional power to dissolve the French National Assembly and call a snap election.

The significance of this move cannot be overstated. Dissoudre is not something you do lightly, it's a very risky move that can easily have unforeseen consequences.

The last invocation of that power in 1997 by Jacques Chirac had devastating effects. Chirac, who was President alongside a right wing majority that he couldn't properly control sought to get a more presidential majority and in the end the left wing formed the Gauche Plurielle coalition led by Lionel Jospin, won a majority in the election and got Jospin appointed Prime Minister.

Many are speculating about Macron's motives. Not least because he has a reputation as a schemer.

Some see it as a trap laid for whoever wins the necessarily narrow majority. Historically Jospin's own cohabitation government would end up being so unpopular that he wouldn't make it to the second round of the presidential election following his tenure and would retire for public life altogether. Macron has had to rule with a very narrow majority since his own election and he may be ceding power to the left or right blocks which he knows are disunited to lay the groundwork for the next presidential elections.

Others even speculate this may be part of a complex scheme to allow him a third term beyond the two consecutive ones allowed by the constitution, as he would resign and then come back.

Whatever his motives were, he has succeeded in plunging the entire spectrum of French politics into unmitigated chaos. The elections are on the 30th of June and everyone is scrambling to ally and/or betray each other in most dramatic (and French) a fashion.

The Rassemblement National at the gates of power

The clear winner of French seats these European elections, Marine Le Pen's RN has never been so close to power.

This is the culmination of a decade of "dédiabolisation": efforts by her and her party to to become more respectable and erase the stigma of her infamous father and his ex-SS friends.

The broad appeal of the RN has surprised many. It is no longer a reactionary old man's party but has voters in pretty much all social stratas of French society. Young and old, poor and rich, everywhere the RN is now a force to be reckoned with.

The reasons are only now being admitted by French intellectuals who refused to see them for years and recently were even acknowledged by Macron himself: a broad rejection of France's policy on public safety and immigration.

This broad appeal is perhaps best represented by the RN's current party leader and would-be Prime Minister, Jordan Bardella. A 28 years old of Italian, French and Algerian ancestry who used to be a Call of Duty youtuber.

Despite this growing popularity, the RN has never led a French government and is still the would be target of the barrage républicain, the informal alliance of every other party against them on antifascist grounds. Though as we will see, this is now cracking.

The RN is in a sense the board onto which this whole election is played, and all stratagems relate in some way to its growing popularity.

Civil war among Les Républicains

LR is the established center right party, the party of Sarkozy and Chirac.

The party has waned in popularity under Macron but its position at the gates of the right and established apparatus has maintained its importance in French politics. LR parliament members have been the kingmakers as of late since Macron's party couldn't get a clear majority.

However the party's historical roots as a big tent for the right have posed a problem. Within it are now two coalitions, one of center right liberals sympathetic to Macron and another of conservative nationalists sympathetic to the RN.

Party leader Eric Ciotti is squarely on the conservative side which is more popular with the base, while his lieutenants are on the liberal side. A high-low vs middle configuration if you will.

As a result of the dissolution, Ciotti announced an alliance with the RN. This immediately lit the fires of rebellion.

His lieutenants unanimously moved to remove him from the party over this. However he ignored the decision, saying it was illegal and barricaded himself at the seat of the party.

This led to a number of dramatic scenes, including Ciotti talking down to journalists from the window of his office, as if on the battlements of a castle, as well as various party officials saying they were going to remove him by force, or call emergency services to remove him as he had lost his mind. French twitter went ablaze with memes comparing him to Tony Montana and his last stand.

Eventually the party officials found a key to the seat, opened the door and held an exceptional session of the political bureau to remove him with the forms. However Ciotti kept ignoring them and contested the decision before a judge.

His legal arguments were just recently vindicated and his exclusion stayed. Whatever this means for the future of the party or that of their alliance with the RN, nobody really knows.

The implosion of Reconquête!

R! is the party formed by right wing intellectual Eric Zemmour as part of his presidential bid. More radical than the RN on immigration but more liberal on economic questions, it was joined by Marion Maréchal, the niece of Marine Le Pen.

Maréchal and Zemmour share very similar politics, but a very different disposition towards the RN. And have led a bifurcated campaign during these European elections.

Zemmour antagonized the RN quite a bit, and Marine Le Pen in particular as being ineffectual, weak and ultimately left wing, whilst Marion Maréchal held to a more conciliatory stance seeking the union of the right.

This came to a head right after the dissolution, when in a party address, Maréchal, with Zemmour right behind her, announced apparently without his knowledge or consent that she was in talks for an alliance with the RN. To the applause of everyone but him.

They then proceeded to accuse each other of duplicity and treason on various media interviews. Zemmour excluded her from the party and she is now calling for people to vote for the Le Pen-Ciotti coalition.

The rise of the Nouveau Front Populaire

Before dissolution, the French left wing had been at its most fragmented for years. The Gaza war had finished to highlight the division between Jean-Luc Mélenchon's LFI and less radical parts of the left.

Mélenchon's conciliatory stances towards Palestinians and Islam in general may have played a big part in the surprise rejuvenation of the Parti Socialiste under Raphaël Glucksmann. The center left party which used to be the big tent for the left was left completely destroyed by Macron's first election and has only recently recovered the ability to contend with LFI for the leading spot on the left.

LFI had recently managed to put together an uneasy coalition with the left and the greens under the name of NUPES, but it was functionally defunct by the time of the European election.

Nevertheless, dissolution and the possibility of RN government turned every left wing mouth in the country to one word: union.

The same people who were at each other throats over Gaza quickly signed an unanimous pledge to unite under the name of the Front Populaire the famous antifascist 1936 left wing coalition of Leon Blum that instituted paid leave, the 40h work week and led France into its WW2 capitulation.

This new popular front has made a large contrast with the disunity of the right, however it seems on the left the knives still do come out, if after declarations of unity.

Mélenchon himself has not wasted time to attempt to seize control of the alliance. He has already declared himself the putative candidate for prime minister and his party cronies have started unilaterally nominating candidates.

As part of this, Adrien Quatennens, a high ranking LFI MP, who in 2022 had been convicted of domestic violence, pretty brazenly called for feminists to support him after being nominated for his own seat. To massive backlash.

The alliance also nominated François Ruffin (a documentarian and MP very popular on the left) for his own office seemingly without telling him. This angered him so much that he started attacking them and listing all the ongoing controversies with respect to the nominations.

This includes Quatennens' case but also the ongoing purges that Mélenchon has been doing, removing potential seats from anybody who ever criticized him. Committing the crime of "lèse-Mélenchon" as one of the purge victims put it.

The center left is no less divided in this unity. Many see Glucksmann's timidity towards LFI as weakness given he held a larger share of the vote in the European elections, and some, including two former prime ministers have denounced the alliance's inclusion of parties that supported Hamas, including the NPA, a small trotskyist party which is currently under investigation for making the apology of terrorism (which is illegal in France).

The mess in the background

All this political chaos has conspicuously overshadowed what are usually major events in French life: the football Euro and the coming Jeux Olympiques. Whoever wins this election will have to preside over the JO and the already expected chaos of them is to be compounded by the disorganization of a new administration.

Meanwhile and ever since the results of the European election, there has been a constant movement of riots and both declared and undeclared demonstrations against the popularity of the RN. Police officials have opined that with how occupied and exhausted they are with the JO they wouldn't be able to handle widespread riots that are sure to come with a potential RN win.

Overall France is at its most disorganized it has been in years. Even the election itself, the cause of all this ruckus may be difficult to make happen in the given timeline. There are concerns that there physically isn't enough paper to print all the ballots in time and many jurists have deposed motions before the Conseil Constitutionnel to stay Macron's move or delay the election, though the timeline is on the face of it within the bounds described by the constitution.

Quatennens

He's since retracted his candidature, so there are no major problems on the Front Populaire side and I think overall they did a pretty good job of presenting a clean front; Quatennens was their main mistake; on the Hamas aspect they made a common declaration condemning it as terrorist, which addressed some accusations that LFI would never call Hamas terrorists.

Many see Glucksmann's timidity towards LFI as weakness given he held a larger share of the vote in the European elections, and some, including two former prime ministers have denounced the alliance's inclusion of parties that supported Hamas, including the NPA,

[citation needed] What prominent politicians "support Hamas"? What did they say exactly?

Here's the official release by the NPA which they are being investigated over. It includes the following phrase:

Le NPA ne se joint pas à la litanie des appels à la prétendue “désescalade”. En effet, la guerre contre les PalestinienNEs dure depuis 75 ans, et la gauche devrait se rappeler de la nécessaire solidarité avec les luttes de résistances contre l'oppression et l’occupation. Le NPA rappelle son soutien aux PalestinienNEs et aux moyens de luttes qu’ils et elles ont choisi pour résister.

I think it's pretty straightforward. They are literally supporting "palestinians and the means of struggle they chose to resist" and end with "Intifada!".

I wouldn't expect any less from revolutionary trotskyists, and I think they should be allowed to say that, but as the law stands in France right now, that opinion is illegal.

Now it merits to be said that this party, despite a long history on the left, is extremely marginal.

A lot more important is the position of LFI, the now most influential left wing pary, and while it isn't anywhere near as inflamatory, they are still aligned to a specific side. Mathilde Panot got raked over the coals for refusing to call Hamas a terrorist organization and Mélenchon himself is constantly denouncing Israel and its appartheid state whilst being a lot more evasive about any questions involving Palestinians.

Anyway. The center left has fought LFI on the Gaza question and I interpret Glücksmann's success as a rejection of "antisemitism" from center left voters given the testimonies of the many such people I know. Though to be fair, I don't have hard numbers to back this.

Good post. It's crazy to me how disorganized and fragmented France can be sometimes. On the one hand this could be the sign of a healthy democracy, on the other hand this level of fragmentation is part of what led France to being shattered so easily by the Germans in WW2.

Leon Blum that instituted paid leave, the 40h work week and led France into its WW2 capitulation.

Small correction, it was Reynaud that led France at the time of its capitulation.

It bears mentioning that the French people are currently on their 5th attempt at creating a healthily running republic.

Others even speculate this may be part of a complex scheme to allow him a third term beyond the two consecutive ones allowed by the constitution, as he would resign and then come back.

How would this work? It's hard to find a direct source on this but ChatGPT claims/hallucinates that Macron can only run again with another person serving a full presidential term in between.

You asked a bot before checking the constitution?

The constitution did not spell out the nuance on what defines consecutive.

Leaving it open to interpretation I suppose -- probably the French courts will not be letting ChatGPT do the interpreting though?

The constitution says

le président de la République est élu pour cinq ans au suffrage universel direct. Nul ne peut exercer plus de deux mandats consécutifs

The whole question is this allows for a third nonconsecutive one or not. If the limitation is of more that two terms back to back or if the limitation is anything beyond two consecutive terms.

The literal reading of the text is ambiguous, though it's clear the intention way always to cap a man at 10 years.

Why put the word consecutive at all in there if the intention was to forbid nonconsecutive terms?

The issue seems to be the following: if Macron resigns, the president of the senate will become interim president, and Macron will be nothing. At the same time, this will trigger elections for the presidency.

Assume now that Macron is a candidate for this election. Is this his 3rd consecutive mandate (and thus unconstitutional) or is the intervening interim presidency enough to give him a blank slate for another 10 years?

It would be his 3rd consecutive term. I don't think it would be constitutional. He could run again in 5 years, however.

Let me put it this way: Macron has already had two consecutive terms. Does this make him part of "Nul" or not? Is he now off limits to the presidency or does the limitation specifically limit how consecutive mandates can be? It's not clear.

I expect the CC to attempt to interpret the intent of the legislator here, which would likely allow for an ex president returning to political life but likely not procedural tricks to get around the rule.

The Constitution says no more than 2 consecutive terms. Since three is more than two, he can't have a third consecutive term. Unless I am misled there is nothing at all said about nonconsecutive terms.

What about 3 terms, all with a term in between? That clearly complies, the intention can't be to cap at 10 years overall.

The argument as I understand it is that the intention of the legislator was to prevent a single man ruling for too long whilst still allowing for enough time to enact an ambitious long term political program.

In this sense, having someone do two terms, retire, and then come back and do two more would probably be fine (though you'd have to start young). Your scenario would probably be fine too, maybe even if we're talking about a Putin/Medvedev situation.

But doing two, then doing some procedural shenanigans where you resign on your last day so somebody else is in the seat and it doesn't count as consecutive? That probably wouldn't be fine.

The question then is where on the spectrum between those two Macron's scheme is, and where on it would the CC put the line.

Macron has a genuine will to power. Hard to describe in other terms, but it really feels like, completely independent from ideology, he desperately seeks a kind of greatness. He will likely fail, but he will do whatever he thinks it will take to get it, even if it involves sacrificing his own party and movement to do it.

I think he wants someone to win. If the RN (or RN-LR coalition) wins a majority I don’t particularly think that he would have much trouble agreeing to much of their program, his own views on things like immigration and security are pretty vague, it’s questionable if they’re even views at all.

Others even speculate this may be part of a complex scheme to allow him a third term beyond the two consecutive ones allowed by the constitution, as he would resign and then come back.

It unironically cannot be ruled out.

Party leader Eric Ciotti is squarely on the conservative side which is more popular with the base, while his lieutenants are on the liberal side. A high-low vs middle configuration if you will.

As a result of the dissolution, Ciotti announced an alliance with the RN. This immediately lit the fires of rebellion.

His lieutenants unanimously moved to remove him from the party over this. However he ignored the decision, saying it was illegal and barricaded himself at the seat of the party.

Hey hey hey, you're not supposed to be making DECISIONS here. You're supposed to be the disreputable figurehead who attracts the base while we respectable people set the policies.

This guy gained so much street cred by telling his party to pound sand until he had a judge tell his party that they couldn't do squat. Not knowing anything else about the guy I'd say he's well placed for a very senior leadership role if the right alliance wins (up to supplanting the 28yo from RN).

The judge seems to have only done the equivalent of a preliminary injunction; the ouster may yet prevail.

I doubt part of the job description of a party leader is make unilateral decisions over alliances for the party with zero discussion.

What does the word "leader" mean? He leads, they follow.

The leader is not supposed to just be able to walk over the entire party in a parliamentary, party-based system. Like, they are the helmsman, they are supposed to have a great deal of room for making decisions and maneuvering around, but there are obvious limits.

I didn't include it for the sake of brevity, but there were some really funny episodes during this whole thing. At one point the Facebook and Twitter pages of the party were attacking each other because the password holders belonged to different coalitions.

They're just now removing his party credit card from him (as the treasurer is from the liberal coalition). It really has all the trappings of civil war except violence, which is hilarious.

Although my favorite image from the whole thing is tiny Valerie Pécresse, trying to act tough and saying there is "no place for traitors" as she's coming to try and fail to remove Ciotti.

Shameless plug for something I run but https://shuffle.com/sports/novelties/politics/france/french2024 we were first up with markets and been surprisingly heavy betting on it. Super heavy RN action. No US/UK/AUS.

So does betting on women's sports exist online on your platform or other platforms?

I wanna try out that meme where you bet on the former men competing in women's sports.

Not generally on the sort of leagues/comps where trans are going to be included.

What are the odds for Rassemblement National to win a majority in the National Assembly?

$6 for RN to have a straight up majority

I think the polls suggest they’ll probably get 20-60 seats short of an outright majority.

Which, of course, means they have no power at all. In fact, the more seats they get (short of an absolute majority), the more power the far left has. Unless Ciotti wins his fight, but I suspect what will happen is the wrangling will go on until Ciotti loses.

Which, of course, means they have no power at all. In fact, the more seats they get (short of an absolute majority)

Ah, but you forget yourself. Even if they win a majority, there's always the bureaucracy of the deep state, the judiciary, the media and the academy ready to block any meaningful changes.

This, but unironically.

France isn't Germany or the USA; the law of the sword is a lot closer to the surface there - remember, they've had a constitution fail and get replaced within living memory, and French history for the last few centuries is mostly just one bloodbath after another (this is the French Fifth Republic).

Defying the mob there is not a safe proposition.

Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait

III. The North Shore: When Planners Draw the Map

To old-timers like my father, there is no North Shore. For the past 30 years, every time the neighborhood is mentioned on the news, I hear “When did it become the North Shore? It’s the North Side. There is no shore.” He’s right about it not having a shore. The Allegheny usually sits at lest 6 feet below the riverwalk, and in warmer months there are plenty of boats tied off. As to when it became the North Shore, the earliest reference I’ve seen is from 1974, but I haven’t exactly looked very hard. Nonetheless, for reasons that will soon become apparent, I share my father’s disdain for what feels like a neighborhood that was designed more by city planners than by natural processes. But this time the planners won, and to everyone who isn’t my father, it’s the North Shore.

The North Shore begins roughly at the West End Bridge and runs between the river and the highway for about 2 ½ miles before the last occupied land peters out as you approach the line with the independent borough of Millvale. There are roughly three sections. The first section comprises the area around the stadiums, ending around Federal St. This area was historically known as “The Ward”, the first ward of old Allegheny City, and was similar to the Strip in that it was a rough, mixed-use area near a river with small-scale industry and rowhouses for working-class residents. By the ‘30s the residential areas were being cleared out for warehouses, by the ‘50s the area was run down, by the ‘70s there wasn’t much left. When Three Rivers Stadium was built in the late 1960s, the land it sat on was formerly occupied by a scrap yard. The Carnegie Science Center opened in 1992, but other than that this area was basically a no-man’s land for 30 years, a stadium in a sea of parking lots.

In the ‘90s is when the “North Shore” really took off as a buzzword. The Pirates were demanding a new stadium. The Steelers weren’t exactly demanding one, but they figured that if the Pirates got one then they deserved one too. The Pirates threatened to leave; the Steelers didn’t exactly threaten, but there were mysterious rumors of a stadium being built at a racetrack in a neighboring county. To make a long story short, the teams got their stadiums. I could focus this section on the pros and cons of public stadium financing, but that argument has been done to death. What’s more interesting is the other bullshit that went along with this.

It wasn’t enough that the teams got new stadiums; the North Shore had to be an entertainment district. And in typical municipal fashion the city awarded the exclusive development rights to Continental in a no-bid contract. Development has been consistently behind schedule, though there are rumors that the Steelers are quietly trying to prevent construction on the surface lots because they don’t want to lose tailgating space. The existing footprint is smaller than originally envisioned and a large apartment complex has been delayed for about 15 or 20 years at this point. There’s an okay but rather uninspiring stretch of North Shore Drive that’s occupied by several small office buildings and the kind of bars that sell well drinks by the gallon in a plastic cup after 9 pm, actively recruit bachelorette parties, and reference the “hit” TV show Nashville filming there as a reason to show up. I guess this is what politicians must picture when they envision “nightlife”. In the same vein, when the Port Authority (now PRT) decided to expand the light rail network in the mid-2000s with a tunnel under the Allegheny they decided to make it run west along the Ohio so it could have one stop between the stadiums and a terminus near the casino. This routing pretty much foreclosed the possibility of any network expansion into the more populated parts of the North Side or surrounding suburbs in favor of slightly better access for the occasional southern suburban tourist.

The second section is a small area between Federal St. and Anderson St. that has the most urban feel of the neighborhood. It’s a dense collection of midrises including one attraction, the Warhol Museum (that is, if you don’t include my old office). There may have been residential here at one point, but it’s long gone.

The final section is the most obscure. The remainder of the neighborhood is what used to be Schweitzer Loch, or Swiss Hole. There are a few scattered commercial and industrial concerns along River Ave., and it’s bounded by apartment complexes on either end, including lofts in the old Heinz plant, but it’s mostly empty these days. It’s commonly said that the neighborhood was destroyed when the highways were built between the 60s and the 80s, but that’s not exactly the case. George Warhola, Andy Warhol’s nephew, owns a scrapyard in the area, and he explained the real story to a newspaper a few years back. There were plenty of rowhouses there as late as the 90s, and there are a few remnants of the old neighborhood remaining today. What really happened is that Buncher, the developer largely responsible for the Strip, spent several decades buying up property and demolishing the buildings as soon as the deals closed. The idea was that once the last of their Strip real estate is built out they’ll have acquired the entire area and will be able to build their own model New Urbanist community as a sort of extension of the Heinz Lofts. Warhola basically told them to fuck off innumerable times no matter how much he’s been offered. I say good for him. If some developer wants to tear down a real urban neighborhood so they can build a fake urban neighborhood, they deserve to have a scrap yard in the middle of it. People like Warhola aside, Buncher ended up running into a more formidable foe, the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority (ALCOSAN).

Combined sewage outflows have been a problem in Pittsburgh for quite some time. In the old days, all the sewage, whether from stormwater runoff or domestic water use, went straight into the rivers. In the 1950s ALCOSAN built a treatment plant that was intended to end this practice. The problem is that treatment plants are only built for a certain capacity. While they can handle the actual sewage without a problem, since sanitary lines and storm drains are all tied into the same system, they become overloaded any time there is significant rain (which is pretty often in Pittsburgh). To prevent sewers from backing up into people’s homes, there are several combined sewer outflow points along the rivers and their tributaries. The upshot is that anytime we get more than a tenth of an inch of rain, a certain amount of untreated sewage is being directly discharged into area streams. This isn’t a problem unique to Pittsburgh, but it’s worse here than in any other city in the country.

The most straightforward solution to this problem is to redirect sewage into dedicated lines. The problem is that there is a high cost for the authority to build the dedicated lines, and a high cost for homes to tie into them. The terms of an EPA consent decree meant that houses along the new lines were virtually unsaleable for a while (and accordingly sat vacant), because the cost of redoing the sewerage made buying them financially unfeasible. Decades later, split systems have hardly made a dent in the problem. ALCOSAN’s solution, then, is to build a series of tunnels that will hold the excess stormwater so that it can be treated during dry periods. Construction of the system is expected to take years, but it will reduce combined outflows by 70%. Construction, however, requires a a large amount of land to use as an access point for the boring equipment, and there’s no better place for an access point that a large vacant area along the river. So ALCOSAN bought all of this land off of Buncher earlier this year and will soon tear it all up to build their tunnels. What will happen to the land after this is anyone’s guess (I didn’t read anything about any permanent facilities there), but Buncher is out of the game for the moment. My guess is that once the project is complete Buncher will see what the property looks like and maybe buy it back off of ALCOSAN for less than they sold it for, just in time for them to build their dream community. And since the remaining individual landowners will see their property condemned through eminent domain, Buncher won’t have to deal with the George Warholas of the world. But that’s off the table for now.

What does the future of the North Shore look like? Probably not too dissimilar to the present. The area is still pockmarked with a number of large surface lots that are unlikely to go away unless the Steelers abandon their current stadium for one built elsewhere and this seems unlikely to happen, because the Steelers aren’t the kind of team that’s going to start screaming for a new stadium. I’m convinced they’d still be playing at Three Rivers (which was a very good football stadium but a terrible baseball stadium) if there hadn’t been such a push to build a new home for the Pirates. Heinz Field is already about as old as Three Rivers was when calls for its demolition began, and the lease on Heinz is set to run out in 2031, but the Steelers have already indicated that they intend to renew the lease and at the very least haven’t given any indication they want a new venue. While I promised I wouldn’t get into stadium politics here, I personally find it pretty wasteful that NFL teams can’t share stadiums like they used to. When I worked on the North Side, I’d occasionally take walks along the river and would see Heinz Field invariably standing vacant, a monolithic white elephant. You’re talking about a facility that cost hundreds of millions of dollars that’s used 8 times a year for regular season games plus a couple preseason games and maybe 1 or 2 playoff games if you’re lucky. The situation in Pittsburgh is actually better than in most NFL cities, because Pitt also plays here 6 or 7 times a year. Add on a couple concerts and the occasional miscellaneous large event and you’re talking maybe 20 out of 365 days that you actually need a large stadium. And these events are almost always on weekends, which is great for parking but bad for integrating it into the urban fabric. I don’t find the baseball stadium nearly as distasteful, because they at least use it 81 times a year, and the environment surrounding a weekday or weeknight Pirates game adds a festive air to a normally mundane workday, as opposed to a Steelers game, or even a Pitt game, which is like “dropping a circus” on an area that’s not really used to it.

But, as I mentioned earlier, the Steelers unfortunately seem to be driving the North Shore’s development, which means that the surface lots adjacent to the stadium on the eastern side are unlikely to ever be developed. They actually build a parking garage on one of them at an od angle, the seeming intention being to make the remaining space unusable for anything but surface parking. There was some recent development next to PNC Park, and there’s some planned development on the western side of the stadium, but nothing to suggest that this will ever develop into a real neighborhood. ALCOSAN’s acquisition of the entire Schweitzer Loch area takes that off the table for at least the next half decade, though it seems unlikely that anything would have happened over there in that timeframe anyway. Buncher certainly didn’t seem to have any problem selling it after spending 30 years acquiring it, and if they have to wait another 10 to buy it back it then it’s no great loss. Given that the entire area is being controlled by developers who don’t seem to be in too much of a hurry to do anything, or are at the very least facing strong disincentives (hey, we gave you that sweetheart deal, so you’d better play by our rules), buzzwords like gentrification don’t really apply. I don’t see the area becoming anything more than it already is, at least within my lifetime, but I don’t see it becoming anything less either, so I guess that’s a good thing.

Neighborhood Grade: Non-residential. There are only 3 residential complexes in the neighborhood at present, with a fourth one on the horizon, but they’re pretty well spaced from one another, and Heinz Lofts isn’t even in the official neighborhood boundaries (it’s officially in Troy Hill, but that’s crazy talk). There’s practically nothing in the way of functional businesses here, which is to say that there may be some but I’m not aware of any. When I worked down here there were plenty of casual bar and grill type places I could go to for a greasy lunch, but not much in the way of casual grab and go spots with the exception of a cafeteria-type place in an office complex lobby that was obviously geared towards office workers.

Having reached the conclusion of this section, I want to say that my father’s hatred of the term “North Shore” is symbolic of the type of boneheaded planning the whole area represents. I have no idea what my father’s opinions are on urban development are, if he even has any (and considering my parents moved beyond the suburbs when they were still in their 20s to avoid having neighbors it’s a pretty good bet that he doesn’t), but the whole enterprise seems like one of these misguided efforts to generate a tourist area from scratch. “North Side” sounds too urban and gritty, “North Shore” sounds pleasant and inviting. And I will admit, the riverfront is very well done. I enjoy tailgating as much as the next guy, but why leave what should be prime real estate an empty lot most of the year so that the diminishing percentage of people who can afford to go to Steelers games can drink outside for a few hours beforehand? The worst part of this is that there is plenty of space under elevated highways that’s really only suited for parking, so filling in the remaining holes doesn’t diminish the total amount of tailgate space as much as an aerial photo would suggest. Why redirect your light rail system toward serving a nonresidential area? Why give development rights to one company that can be manipulated rather than selling the parcels individually?

The answer to these questions is fairly simple — there seems to be an obsession among city planners towards catering to suburbanites who may visit a few times a year rather than creating a neighborhood where people might want to live every day of the year. The Tilted Kilt was not the kind of bar one was inclined to go to every day after work. By their own convoluted metrics, the North Shore has been a roaring success. Even the slow pace of development contributes to this illusion. Instead of a quick wave of construction that nobody can keep up with and that comes to an end they get an endless cycle of project announcements, groundbreakings, ribbon cuttings, etc. Rinse and repeat for every 5 acre parcel. Get the mayor’s name in the paper (though to his credit the current mayor hasn’t seemed as involved with this nonsense). The fact that what we end up with is an incongruous mishmash of parking lots, legitimate destinations, and tourist tat is completely lost on the so-called City Fathers.

I assure you I’m not as salty about this as I may seem. The riverfront is a legitimate asset, Stage AE gave us the mid-size concert venue we’d needed since Syria Mosque was torn down, and the bars have their market. It’s certainly a lot better than it was during the Three Rivers Stadium days. It’s just frustrating to realize that certain pressures never go away. History, largely correctly, regards these kinds of large-scale renewal efforts as failures, and one would think that our elected officials and hired planners would be hip to this. But there’s still a tendency to abide by these old principles, even if under another name. If the presence of sports stadiums drives the kind of economic development that politicians promise when they want to spend money on them, then the land they own in the vicinity should sell for top dollar. They shouldn’t need to give one developer rights to the entire area because even if the developer can list 500 reasons why it needs all the land to achieve the city’s vision it will still be more economical to sell the parcels individually at market rates. But the risk there is that things might not turn out as the politicians envision. Instead of a nightclub and Southern Tier Brewing you could end up with anything. A lot of black people live on the North Side; what if the land doesn’t sell for as much as you hoped and the commercial strip in front of the stadium is filled with check cashing places and pawn shops? What if it looks like Forbes Ave. did in the ‘90s? What if it just sits vacant? There’s a push/pull dynamic of city planners seeing an undeveloped area and developing a vision for it, and then trying to make sure that vision is achieved, irrespective of whether there’s a market for that vision or not. Developers show glossy renderings of shiny new buildings surrounded by lush landscaping on sunny days inhabited by happy pedestrians, and everyone — politicians, the media, normal people, etc. — thinks “that would be nice”, and the politicians want to make it happen come hell or high water. So then begins the long fight of trying to realize that vision, to turn renderite into reality. But then come all the external pressures and arguments about traffic, parking, affordable housing, architectural design, and, above all, cost, and the whole thing gets slow-walked and built in a piecemeal fashion, and since this was the vision of politicians and not the market, there’s no guarantee that it will fill any real demand.

So what we get is the North Shore we deserve. A place that’s good enough. Cromulence, if you will. But it’s nonetheless a place where one is forced to reckon with whether full potential was ever realized. A place that’s urban without the urbanity. It has pedestrians but no real street life. It’s an office park in the day, a bar neighborhood at night, and a festival ground on the right weekends, but it rarely manages to be all at the same time. It’s a place where a pleasant riverside stroll among rare beauty leads to a terminal vista of an empty parking lot. It’s frustrating. I’ve walked around here more than most other neighborhoods, and I still don’t know what to make of it.

Addendum to Part I

I got into it a bit in the comments about my remarks that the Parkway running through Point State Park actually added to the park's charm rather than detracting from it. @sarker argued essentially that there was no way this could be the case, as a tunnel would have kept traffic out of the way while a decorative structure such as an arch would have created the same separation of space that the highway does. I wanted to respond here because I don't want the argument to be buried in a stale thread. First, a tunnel isn't feasible in this location. The length of the Parkway through the Point is only about a thousand feet, and most of that space is occupied by ramps. Most of these, however, are disguised by embankments with trees planted on them, the only exception being where the Fort Pitt Museum stands adjacent, blocking the remainder. The entrance is no mere highway underpass; it's a specially designed arch bridge that required a company that manufactured ship hulls to design the falsework. Pedestrians passing through pass over another bridge over a reflecting pool underneath, which is quite stunning at night when the lights from above and below and the lights from the fountain combine on the water's surface. And most views through the tunnel frame the Point fountain in a pleasing way.

Could this effect have been achieved without a highway? Sure, but then we wouldn't have the Ft. Pitt and Ft. Duquesne Bridges framing the scene. More importantly, it wouldn't have. The city initially wasn't thrilled about having the highway situated where it was. The vision had always been for the park to offer a sweeping vista that reminded visitors of Pittsburgh's historic role as the Gateway to the West. They wanted to avoid a simple rectangular underpass that would make the entrance nothing more than a "keyhole slot", didn't want a wider entrance that would require piers, and didn't want a simple archway that would obscure the view of the fountain. The low, wide arch that exists is an engineering marvel in and of itself, albeit an understated one, and it wouldn't exist if necessity hadn't required it.

Addendum to Part II

I was riding my bike in the Strip last week and I noticed some newer houses that merit consideration. Infill construction is always a tricky proposition. It generally comes in two flavors. The first is ultra-modernist monstrosities that act as a giant "fuck you" to the surrounding neighborhood by drawing attention to themselves. I don't think anything is wrong with them per se, but there's something tacky about a building that shows absolutely no regard for the surrounding neighborhood. The house pictured actually won awards when it was built in 2018, and it looks as though it wants every other house on the street to know it. The other kind is what I call "soft urbanism" that attempts to blend in with the existing vernacular but doesn't try too hard, practically giving away that this is new construction and not a lovingly restored home. The basic forms are still there but there is no attention to detail; instead of trying to accurately represent a historic style the features are sanded off in favor of a generic "old style" look. Compounding the problem is that the setbacks are too far from the street, though everything about these houses is still better than the suburban crap they built in the 70s that now looks shabby and anachronistic (the two developments are across the street from one another in a formerly blighted area).

The houses I saw weren't really infill since they're new construction in a previously non-residential area, but they seem to have broken the dilemma. It seems that the key is to build unabashedly modern houses that still pay tribute to to the styles of the past. The large windows, lack of significant ornamentation, and geometric design are clearly modern, but the traditional brick facing and attic dormers add an understated dignity. If one of these were built in a gap of Victorian-era row houses most people probably wouldn't notice, but they're interesting enough architecturally that they avoid the blandness of soft urbanism. They also managed the setback requirements in a way I haven't seen. Instead of plopping them however many feet back and putting an unusably small lawn on the front, they are raised off the ground. The steep slope practically requires some kind of landscaping, and the stairways act as portals to the private worlds within. Having stoops instead of walkways makes it look more like a city and less like a suburban townhouse development. I'd prefer that they ditched the setback requirements altogether (houses built prior to them don't seem to have any trouble selling), but this is a nice workaround.

Heinz Field

Technically now Acrisure Stadium, I suppose.

One total aside that I cannot cast out of my brain is how much sidewalk quality seems to set the vibe for a neighborhood. Why does the suburban crap side look so much worse than the other newer side? Is it simply newness? Do sidewalks simply need to be replaced after a certain period of time, or repaired, or can grass growing up through cracks in the sidewalk be prevented easily by design or maintenance or is it a losing battle? Does type of concrete matter to avoid the curb crumbling away, or is that also inevitable? Does the fact that the new side planted trees in tiny little cutouts mean that in 20-30 years the sidewalk will be broken up and destroyed by roots?

Another side note: these are awesome. I wish patios hadn't disappeared in so many parts of the country and construction styles.

In Pittsburgh, sidewalk maintenance is the responsibility of the adjoining homeowner. The city isn't going to get on you for a crappy sidewalk unless it's hazardous to the point of a code violation, and maybe not even then unless a lot of people are complaining. The image I posted is from a low income area, and the suburban style houses were built in the 70s when the neighborhood was going downhill fast as an attempt to stabilize it. There's a good chance that these homes are owned by elderly black people who simply can't afford cosmetic sidewalk improvements, especially considering that sidewalks are often bad in much nicer areas. The ones on the opposite side of the street were probably redone when the houses were built a few years back, whereas there's a good chance that the suburban side hasn't been touched since those houses were built decades ago.

The length of the Parkway through the Point is only about a thousand feet, and most of that space is occupied by ramps.

This is indeed the problem! I am reminded of the anecdotal debate among engineers about what kind of engineer designed the human body. The conclusion was that it must have been a civil engineer, because who else would route a sewage system through a recreational area?

There are certainly other ways to build a park rather than to route seven-odd lanes of freeway traffic through it. If tunnelling under the park would not have been possible, it would have been better to move 279 north to the edge of the park instead. The land immediately north of the bridges seems to be primarily parking lots anyway.

I don't think that people are usually fooled by trees and embankments and it is indeed absurd that (eyeballing the map) something like twenty percent of the park is freeways and interchanges. I brought up road noise multiple times in my other posts and you did not respond to this point, so I must imagine that there is indeed a noticeable road noise in the park.

I've spent my fair share of time in parks regrettably close to freeways. Freeways are noisy, they emit pollution, being near them plain sucks. We only tolerate them because they benefit motorists, and while perhaps we can say that the pedestrians should take the L in this case, it really seems like a bridge too far to say that the freeway benefits the people trying to enjoy some time in the park because it's a nice overpass. Again, if the freeway did not pass through the park, I cannot imagine that anyone would miss it.

I don't have anything to add, but i enjoyed the read.

I think one of the strangest instances of a woke injection into a film/story just occurred and it seems to be flying under the radar. FULL SPOILERS AHEAD for Under the Bridge, a Hulu murder mystery show that’s based on a non-fiction book of the same name. For what it’s worth, I thought the show was pretty good despite what I’m writing here.

In real life, Rebecca Godfrey wrote the Under the Bridge non-fiction book. In the Hulu show, Rebecca Godfrey is a character portrayed by Riley Keough. Godfrey (speaking about her character henceforth) was born in Vancouver Island in Canada, moved to New York to start a writing career, and then at the start of the show, she moved back to Vancouver Island temporarily in the late 1990s to write a new book on her hometown.

But soon after moving back, 14 year old Reena Virk is murdered seemingly by a group of her friends. The story is so shocking and intriguing that Godfrey begins investigating the crime independently to write about it. In addition to talking to a bunch of the kids involved, Godfrey reconnects with Cam Bentland, a local police officer investigating the murder. Cam is a Native American who was adopted by white parents, and Cam is also implied to be Godfrey’s ex girlfriend. They soon rekindle their romantic relationship and begin using each other to get different informational angles on the case.

Most of the show consists of uncovering what happened with the murders, and for the sake of this post, I don’t need to go into it. Basically, a group of very troubled girls (aged 14-16) got pissed off at one of their own and decided to beat the shit out of her. Then one girl and another guy took it way too far and murdered her.

Godfrey becomes a key media player in the very high-profile case. She works both with and against the police to push the kids in different ways, and at one point, she passionately argues for the innocence of one of the main accused kids. Meanwhile, Cam eventually discovers that she was adopted by her white parents through the Adopt Indian Métis, in which the government encouraged white parents to adopt Native American orphans. Cam feels disgusted by the revelation, disgusted with her parents for being involved and never telling her, and disgusted with herself for being a cop, so she leaves the police force and decides to try to connect with her real family.

To reiterate, this is based on a true story. Reena Virk really was brutally murdered by her friends, and Rebecca Godfrey really did write a book about the murder. So it might surprise you to learn that in real life:

  • Rebecca Godfrey had no direct involvement in the murder investigations. She wrote her book after everything occurred.

  • Cam Bentland, the Native America cop, was entirely invented by the show.

  • By extension, Godfrey’s lesbian romance with Cam was entirely invented.

  • I have no in depth knowledge of Godfrey, but she was married to a man, and I haven’t seen any evidence that she was a lesbian or bisexual.

  • While there really were some heinous laws regarding Natives in Canada, none of that stuff had anything to do with the murder of Reena Virk or the Under the Bridge book.

  • Godfrey presumably approved of televised adaptation of the show, but she died at the beginning of its production, so it’s unclear if she approved of any of these additions to the real story

Discussion points:

  • If Godfrey wasn’t aware of these changes, then Hulu’s writers portrayed a presumable straight woman as a lesbian/bi woman in a fictionalized account of her. Is that a step too far in wokeness for the average media consumer?

  • Can someone clue me in on what actually happened with the Adopt Indian Métis program and programs like it? In the show, it’s implied (I think) to be literal kidnapping of Native American children by the Canadian government, but I have a hard time believing that’s true.

  • Maybe this is too broad or vague, but is it disrespectful in some sense to take a real tragic story in which most of the participants are still alive and use it to prop up unrelated woke narratives? I’m not meaning this in an obviously baity or culture war-y way. I mean, does calling that “disrespectful” make any sense? Is the concept of respecting true stories in this sense valid?

Can someone clue me in on what actually happened with the Adopt Indian Métis program and programs like it? In the show, it’s implied (I think) to be literal kidnapping of Native American children by the Canadian government, but I have a hard time believing that’s true.

The view of natives by educated liberals was very different at the time. Now people think of them like wood elves with a sacred culture. At the time they were viewed more as backwards illiterate hillbillies who needed to be brought into the modern era.

So there were no foster homes in native areas. If a child needed to be put into the system they were shipped off to a city and adopted. This was before birth control pills so young mothers having children they couldn't take care of was more common.

There's still a lot of debate about how aggressive social workers should be, so I'm sure it is easy to find cases where the child should have stayed in the home.

Can someone clue me in on what actually happened with the Adopt Indian Métis program and programs like it? In the show, it’s implied (I think) to be literal kidnapping of Native American children by the Canadian government, but I have a hard time believing that’s true.

There apparently was encourage adoption by white parents back in the 60's which was later called the 60's scoop. I tried to parse the article about why the kids were taken (eg was it from abusive or neglectful families?), but the article states it was just to place indigenous kids with white families to raise them with white culture. The article also makes reference to a program in the 50's when children were taken from single mothers to place with families.

Similar policies happened in Australia until the 1970's leading to what is now referred to as the Stolen Generations. Even though anyone involved in decision making on the policy is either long since retired or dead and the federal government issued a formal apology in 2008, it keeps being brought up in media by the usual issue motivated groups as an example of modern day racism. What is ignored though is the high endemic rates of child abuse, sexual abuse and neglect that are rife in indigenous communities even to this day.

I've always wanted to see a detailed side-by-side analysis of life outcomes for the 'stolen generation' versus those who remained in remote communities. I've got a sneaking suspicion that the stolen generations actually benefited from the transaction

I agree that it would be interesting to see a detailed analysis like that and I realize you aren't saying large QOL improvements would be exculpatory ... but reading your comment made me think about discussions about progressive indoctrination in US schools.

It's plausible that learning progressive manners and beliefs will give children a substantial leg up, socio-economically. Depending on events, graduates of the Evanston, IL public schools system might be on average, better-positioned than those from, say, the Florida suburbs in the US of 2045. But I don't think many parents resisting leftward changes to their public schools would be impressed by that.

The analogy is quarter-baked, but just contemplating it weakens my openness to arguments that material improvements can justify inter-generational dispossession (for lack of a better term)

Weren't a lot of them half-caste? Seems to complicate things- would they have been treated as full community members had they stayed, or would they have been discriminated against? I'm sure it varied from community to community. Did they have an IQ advantage over their coethnics, or were the white men who impregnated aboriginal women an example of not sending our best? Etc, etc.

would they have been treated as full community members had they stayed, or would they have been discriminated against?

IIRC this was part of the justification for removing them from the communities after some bad headlines around treatment of half-caste children

It's hard to judge - the stats that we have generally compare members of the Stolen Generations (in Australia) typically compare them either to non-Aboriginal people of the same cohort, or to other Aboriginal people in general, rather than to members of remote communities.

These statistics suggest that an SGer is on average worse off than the median Aboriginal - but as you say, SGers were specifically selected from among the worst-off Aboriginals. Is an SGer better or worse off than they would have been had they not been removed? That's the question we don't have an answer for. AIHW's full 2018 report is here. From page 74 on they show that SGers were worse off than 'the reference group', but the reference group is Aboriginal people in general, not remote communities. We have some stats on health in remote communities here and here, but cross-referencing those is more work than I'm up for at the moment. Suffice to say that we know remote communities are significantly worse off.

Yeah the Aboriginal statistics are pretty inherently tainted by the amount of 1/16th suburban Sydneysiders who get meshed in with the residents of Meekatharra. I did a year in Darwin and until you've been out there it's hard to really understand what the situation on the ground is like with the remote populations.

I’d be interested to hear more about your experiences. What’s the situation like on the ground?

It's precisely because they benefited they can be enough of a fixture in the culture to make a fuss. The kids who got adopted can use the education and stability they got from it to make a fuss about how it robbed them of their culture. While those who got to experience the culture first hand probably just died of alcohol poisoning or are trying to forget they ever grew up on the rez.

A couple of small revelations on what the poor story construction in blockbuster movies reveals about the zeitgeist.

It seems to me that major movies released in recent decades have bifurcated in scope. At one end, you have character-driven drama set in a household or small town where the budget mostly goes to A-list actors looking to win awards. At the other, you have epic visual spectacles with tons of international locations or even extraterrestrial or extra-dimensional. This could be me finding patterns where none exists, but it seem rational for producers to pick a side: if you want to sell on the intricacies of human relationships, you can do that on a smaller budget; if you want to sell on big explosions and special effects, then you might as well make the story scope expansive and perhaps ridiculous anyway. Ergo, don't worry about realism, just put it in the trailer that if the heroes don't win, then humanity is doomed!

But when story premises grow too big, they necessarily rope in politics and geopolitics, except most movie writers really suck at writing either. I'm going to pick a low hanging fruit to make my point--take Captain America: Civil War, with $1B+ in the box office and great reviews. In it, Earth's superheroes split into two teams, with one wanting to be supervised by the UN and the other refusing the leash. I think it's a fun watch, but its expansive scope rests on a ridiculous understanding and/or portrait of how the world actually works. Without going too deep into it:

  1. If a suicide bomber's explosion is magically diverted and accidentally destroys a floor of a building, thus killing dozens of people but also saves the lives of dozens on the ground, no one is going to think the magician is the criminal. Well, the lizardman constant may apply, but certainly you won't have a plurality to call for her head.
  2. If the superheroes are primarily affiliated with the US, there is no universe where 2/3 of the Senate (let alone a bipartisan "98-1" supermajority per the Fandom wiki) would ratify a treaty that willingly surrenders oversight over to the UN or another international body. I would argue no administration would support that either, but that's less impossible than the Senate.
  3. Who gives a crap if "117 countries" sign onto the "accords"? The UN routinely has symbolic and ineffectual votes with 100+ countries voting in favor and the US vetoing. It's been calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza with 150+ countries since last December, and that practically means very little.
  4. The very notion that you can get 117 countries to agree on accords that appear to be 300 pages long within months is farcical. How would the panel be chosen? Who gets a veto? These aren't some silly climate change pledge that just means more free money for developing countries. You're talking about real weapons of war, and you'll never have the major powers lined up all on one side agreeing to a functional system.

Normally, we go into movies with a willing suspension of disbelief. But there is a difference between accepting that infinity stones exist and that half of the avengers are cast out as criminals by the UN. I think it's partly the uncanny valley--either you make the premise obviously fantasy, or you do a good job of making it seem realistic, and partly it's like Sanderson's laws of magic, which really is about having internal consistency--I can accept a fictional world where partisan politics and multipolarity do not exist, hence you get 98-1 Senate votes and 117 countries (presumably including every country that actually matters) coming to agreement, but then you can't also ask me to emotionally buy into the idea that in such a world, I should genuinely fear the secretive Nazi organizations and ultracorrupt politicians and amoral killer CEOs. I mean, is this a utopia or not?!

But evidently most people don't care about this. So maybe the writers simply are illiterate when it comes to politics and geopolitics, but more likely seems to be that they aren't incentivized to try very hard given the paying audience doesn't appear to mind. The third, slightly tin-foil-hat possibility is that it's a very intentional propaganda--to all the teenagers watching superhero movies, it's better if 117 countries vote for a UN panel to be in charge of real power.

Another thought: it's really rather lame that so many conflicts in movies come down to good and otherwise competent people acting excessively emotionally in pivotal moments. Once again in CA:CW, the climactic fight involves Cap fighting Iron Man because the latter learns that his parents were murdered by Cap's friend Bucky when he was under brainwash control. Set aside how ridiculous this convoluted plot was on the villain (how did he know Cap and Iron Man would both end up in the arctic facility together), if the good guys just paused for a min to talk it out, there would be no reason to fight, but then the writers would have to work harder to conjure up a reason for a civil war.

To me, a much more satisfying conflict among good guys would be for good people to fight over complex issues and/or ideological divides, and do so rationally rather than emotionally. But this is politically and culturally impossible, because you'd have to believe that there are good people on both sides (TM). Instead, we end up with good people fighting not over actual reason, but over stupid miscommunications or stupid emotions, because "obviously" good people must agree that there is fundamentally only one righteous ideology, with a consensus so strong that there is no reason to debate over it.

I think it's a mistake to consider the MCU to be porting in the global political situation as it actually exists. They use the same vocabulary because it is efficient from a storytelling perspective, but I thought it was clear that the "UN" in that movie was a stand-in for "political oversight, not otherwise specified".

A lot of the issues you are identifying are medium-specific. Cinema is very very effective at conveying emotional information about specific characters. It is less effective at communicating the intricacies of various philosophical viewpoints. Feature films have good guys and bad guys. That's the format that people expect to see when they pay money and walk into a theater.

To me, a much more satisfying conflict among good guys would be for good people to fight over complex issues and/or ideological divides, and do so rationally rather than emotionally.

I thought Oppenheimer did a pretty good job of this, but at the end of the day, audiences demand cinematic cues who to root for. Some people think Kitty Oppenheimer getting absolutely roasted on cross examination is an epic girlboss moment. It has to be because the music indicates that it is a heroic moment.

To me, a much more satisfying conflict among good guys would be for good people to fight over complex issues and/or ideological divides, and do so rationally rather than emotionally. But this is politically and culturally impossible, because you'd have to believe that there are good people on both sides (TM).

I hear really good things about Twelve Angry Men, though I haven't seen it yet. It's on my list.

You have been misinformed. The movie's climax sees the one juror insistent on a guilty verdict 'proven' wrong by... all the other jurors ostracizing and refusing to talk to him?

Tell me your movie was written by women without telling me it was written by women.

Also @Tenaz

Ah, guess I was wrong. I know a little bit about the movie, and I know that that final juror (number 3?) is an emotional holdout. But I thought the rest of the jurors were more rational in their turn to not guilty. I still want to watch it, I hear it's great.

FWIW, I don't think the description of the movie's climax being the one holdout being "proven" wrong is incorrect. The holdout was "proven" wrong throughout the course of the film during which the jurors discuss the case, go over the evidence, and even mime out scenarios of what might have happened, which all introduce reasonable doubt (what constitutes "reasonable" is obviously subjective, but the film presents the doubt as a reasonable conclusion that the other jurors reach based on the evidence). The climax involving the one holdout finally relenting actually alludes to that holdout being unreasonably emotional due to past personal experiences haunting him. By the time any sort of ostracization was happening, it was obvious to all 12 jurors, including the one holdout, that the evidence pointed to there being reasonable doubt, and it was his emotional, irrational insistence in sticking with the guilty verdict regardless that was causing the other jurors to treat him this way.

Jury nullification goes both ways. It's a good thing I wouldn't consider that peer pressure, since anybody in favor of a not guilty verdict for that defendant is not my peer.

Not to spoil too much, but Twelve Angry Men is pretty much the opposite of that.

I wrote an entire story based on a (well, not realistic) but more NrX/libertarian viewpoint on superheroes, right here.

https://fiction.live/stories/Molon-Labe/tykhbTXTZhJn3FHQ4/home

Thanks, I fapped.

But I enjoyed it in other ways too. Though I don't think you have a correct understanding of a flush in poker.

It wouldn't be a proper comic book story without a egregious, poorly-researched error.

As a long time Lurker, I recommend both Molon Labe and it's sequel, Ex Machina.

You're making me blush.

So is that like a Quest thread on spacebattles or something, audience voting on what comes next?

Yes (although it's long finished.) I feel a little embarassed to shill my own stuff, but I'm currently writing fun science fiction. Fun in that 'there are as many cute girls as I can feasibly fit into the suspension of disbelief.

Don't judge me.

Cute girls in libertarian sci-fi worked out for Devon Erikson, it could work for you too. I am also sad that 'methfueledinsaneloli' is not a widely used tag.

To me, a much more satisfying conflict among good guys would be for good people to fight over complex issues and/or ideological divides, and do so rationally rather than emotionally.

This would be more satisfying, but it would make a totally crappy movie. We don't go to the talkies for reason, we go to have our adrenals stimulated.

But evidently most people don't care about this. So maybe the writers simply are illiterate when it comes to politics and geopolitics, but more likely seems to be that they aren't incentivized to try very hard given the paying audience doesn't appear to mind. The third, slightly tin-foil-hat possibility is that it's a very intentional propaganda--to all the teenagers watching superhero movies, it's better if 117 countries vote for a UN panel to be in charge of real power.

Yes, the audience doesn't care because the audience is no longer just American teenagers, it's people across the world .

There's a reason most of these movies don't even have a pretense of real politics like Civil War . Everyone can sympathize with people fighting nondescript aliens or scifi Nazis. Arabs, Germans, Chinese people all get it with minimal fuss.

Civil War has to be more political, but I hardly doubt it'd play well across the world to have the mostly American protagonists laugh off the UN like they're Dick Cheney. Marvel wants their money too and some people still feel sore about that sort of thing. Might as well let them feel like they participated via the UN. Let's not even get into "complex issues". Just having gay people in Eternals caused a minor controversy.

but then you can't also ask me to emotionally buy into the idea that in such a world, I should genuinely fear the secretive Nazi organizations and ultracorrupt politicians and amoral killer CEOs. I mean, is this a utopia or not?!

There's actually a reading that Nazis are why the world is so centralized, and not for any good reason. In Avengers the "World Council" could somehow order a nuclear strike on New York (they warned you early about the bad geopolitics). In Winter Soldier we found out that the Nazis/Hydra have been actively making the world more chaotic to centralize power in a few powerful organizations like SHIELD they could use to take over the world. In Agents of SHIELD the very person who ordered SHIELD to perform the nuclear strike is...a member of Hydra.

My problem with Civil War was that it wasn't a Captain America movie, it was an Avengers movie. I didn't even feel like Captain America was the main character, he just felt like one out of a cast of characters.

I'm sure this just comes from the comics, every time I speak up about my criticisms of the MCU I get told it's because they adapted something straight from the comics.

I had the exact opposite problem as you, but in a similar vain. I thought that because of how limited the MCU cast was at the time, there weren't actually enough characters to fully encapsulate how wide-reaching the storyline was. In the comics, Civil War was a massive event, spanning dozens of characters, including the Avengers, X-Men, The New Warriors, The Fan4stic, etc. And instead of the Airport fight scene, which was pretty cool, the fighting and devastation was much more wide-spread. The storyline also had some pretty hefty short to medium term implications, including playing into the Secret Invasion storyline.

The dumbest thing for me about Civil War started in the beginning: where Tony Stark is guilted into supporting the Sokovia Accords because the mother of someone killed in the battle blames him. The Avengers were literally saving the world from a genocidal robot, and unfortunately, there were civilian casualties. Stark and the other Avengers had been around long enough that "Oh no, an innocent person died and his mom blames us!" was the sort of black and white comic book morality you saw in the Silver Age, not in the supposedly more "gritty" and realistic MCU era.

where Tony Stark is guilted into supporting the Sokovia Accords

Also, Tony should have known better than to trust Accord oversight, considering the first thing they tried to do is nuke Metropolis [or wherever that was] to contain the Chitauri invasion. He ended up directly having to clean up that mess.

I get that Tony Stark very quickly became "Bay Area thought as a superhero", but that was not good judgment. Then again, because Tony really doesn't have good judgment, he'd naturally support the Accords, so maybe I'm more annoyed about it than I should be.

The dumbest thing for me about Civil War started in the beginning: where Tony Stark is guilted into supporting the Sokovia Accords because the mother of someone killed in the battle blames him. The Avengers were literally saving the world from a genocidal robot, and unfortunately, there were civilian casualties.

I don't think that's dumb. If there's anyone to blame, it's Stark. It was his idea to build the robot. I do think it's stupid for the rest of the avengers to feel guilty, but Stark should totally feel guilty.

I'm pretty sure the guilt was supposed to be because Tony in his hubris made Ultron.

I think the tendency to insert politics in this way is a more recent trend. Maybe Superman or Duke Nukem always had to save the president, because he's the president, that's the most important guy. But nobody cared about Senators and Generals, which I can recall showing up in X-Men, BvS, Marvel, etc.

I think as Superhero content has left comics and become mainstream, there's been a perceived need to dress it up as "more" than just comic books. Superhero movies aren't just fun anymore, they're social commentary, they're serious endeavors, they're real cinema, dad. Notably, comic books themselves went through a similar arc.

Personally I agree that all this semi-authentic political back-drama is silly, and I would prefer my schlock to not have to put on airs.

It might be stronger in recent years, where pushing "the message" became much more of a thing in entertainment, but the anti-mutant Senator Kelly was created in 1980 and appeared in the 1990s X-Men animated series. (Because you've listed X-Men alongside BvS, Marvel, etc., I'm guessing you're thinking more of the 2000s Fox movies, or possibly the recent X-Men '97.)

If a suicide bomber's explosion is magically diverted and accidentally destroys a floor of a building, thus killing dozens of people but also saves the lives of dozens on the ground, no one is going to think the magician is the criminal. Well, the lizardman constant may apply, but certainly you won't have a plurality to call for her head.

They had to keep it simple, but you don't need to change things too much to make it realistic. There would need to be a strong existing political movement demanding superhuman registration that's popular with DC types. The terrorists would need to be from a State Department backed group. Slightly muddle what happens.

In that situation the press would aggressively spin the things to get their preferred policy and protect their friends in DC.

Not to burst your bubble, but the problem with Civil War actually originates with the source material. One might watch Civil War and ask why Tony Stark, aka Iron Man is on the side of the government despite being a tech entrepreneur who refused to share his suit tech with the government for years and Captain America, an FDR Democrat (aka the closest thing we have had to a dictator since George Washington) is on the side of the libertarians. The answer is the original writer wrote it that way for nonsensical reasons.

As a result, the whole story is nonsensical, and the movie reflects that because it is based on an idiotic comic book that shares its incoherence.

One might watch Civil War and ask why Tony Stark, aka Iron Man is on the side of the government despite being a tech entrepreneur who refused to share his suit tech with the government for years

Because he built an AI that killed people and almost destroyed the world.

and Captain America, an FDR Democrat (aka the closest thing we have had to a dictator since George Washington) is on the side of the libertarians.

Because the government agency he worked for turned out to be a front for a bunch of evildoers.

I've never even seen Civil War but if there's something stupid about it conceptually it's that Cap didn't say "Hey doctor Frankenstein I agree someone should be in charge of making sure you don't blow up the world again but I just club people over the head with a shield so maybe get outta my ass."

Like Superman, Captain America's political affiliation has (intentionally) never been specified. He's supposed to represent America, and being partisan would destroy his entire mythos. (There have been various stories in which both political parties try to get Cap, and Superman, to join their ticket, and they always refuse.)

Obviously, over the years some writers have put their own political sentiments in the mouths of the heroes they're writing, but generally it's understood that flagship characters are not supposed to be Republican or Democrat.

I don't think there was ever anything in the comics at the time, i.e. the 1940s, indicating how Captain America voted? He's always been a character deliberately open to interpretation - he stands for the best vision of what America can be, but he shifts over time and is often strategically vague so that readers can project their idea of what that means on to him.

That wasn't the only problem with the comic book version. The other problem with the comic book version is that the writers didn't agree on what was in the registration act. It could be anything from just registration to conscription, and it could or could not apply to borderline cases (like unpowered fighters). Needless to say, if you're going to have political stories, stuff like that will make a big difference, and that part was completely incoherent too.

Having so many different writers work on big projects is my least favorite parts of western comics, and that's stiff competition against all the other stuff they do wrong.

I read all the early Judge Dredd comics once, and important details got changed every single issue on the whim of some writer who couldn't even be bothered to coordinate with his coworkers.
Is the megacity super wealthy with interstellar colonies and is technological unemployment only a problem because people go crazy from idleness? Or is it a decaying hive full of poor starving people commiting crimes out of desperation? It's a coin flip every issue!

Why is Cap on the side of the libertarians? Because you'd expect Cap to be on the "trust the government" side so we have to invert that to make it more "interesting". It's just expectation subversion, Rian-style, with no thought about whether it's consistent for the characters.

AIUI, the Civil War comics came out years before the current zeitgeist was born. Bizarre that they chose to adapt the story for the MCU, given that I was always under the impression that Civil War was one of the weakest storylines to come out of 21st-century Marvel.

Making heroes fight each other for questionable reasons with no lasting consequences is a proud comics tradition. Seeing them fight each other is fun, and that's what Marvel wanted on screen.

I'd indeed agree that poor political framing is deliberate because it minimizes people getting their feelings hurt and maximizes profits and audience (most of the time; you still have things like "Don't Look Up"). Imagine if Captain America Civil War actually included a more potent anti-UN arguments. You'd get a lot of negative news coverage, distracting from "Spiderman shows up and fights . Is this corporate greed and cowardice, or is it something more particular to the screenwriters and directors? Probably both, but I actually think the people themselves (whether you think this is corporate capture or not is a separate question) are choosing to enforce these hedges. Like many movies with fantastical/superpower/supernatural/advanced sci-fi elements, it's a work of fiction and escapism and spectacle, and the hard part is finding the right balance between these things. Which is actually hard. For example a too-grounded superhero film can exist (Logan maybe?) but requires much more character work, and risks boredom if it fails. A too-much-CGI film can flop, even if the CGI is good, because on some level it strays too far. Oh, but wait, if it's sci-fi, you can get weird again, but wait, you still have to anthropomorphize things to a certain extent, and you still can't get too weird or it sounds like bad writing even if there is an interesting deeper meaning. Hard to pull off. At some point "vibe" starts to matter which goes beyond just the script itself. District 9 is perhaps one of the few, very few, sci-fi films that successfully marries weirdness with actual groundedness.

I actually think the middle fight scene in Civil War at the airport is a great case in point. We go into Civil War excited for some Captain America as a character, and we know he will work at solving some mostly-solvable problem. We go in excited to see Spider-Man and Cap fight it out. We go in curious what might happen with conflict between "good guys". Fans might be wondering about the aftermath of the whole Hydra thing from Winter Soldier and other plot points. We get this! In the airport scene, we also clearly get the violence pulled back. Anytime it gets too real especially in the side cast, we get a joke, but one that's usually topical enough it doesn't feel like a total distraction (though it actually is). It is entertaining, and it mostly works. We already have accepted that kids are a prime audience for the movie. In fact, making things kid-friendly is probably part of it. Nothing exactly forbids a kids movie from discussing real-life, difficult questions, but it's harder to pull off, harder to market, and if we're being honest kids don't generally want too-hard questions in their movies. That's an adult thing. So an R-rating is an crude and easy proxy for adults to pay attention, even if it isn't strictly necessary.

I agree that personally, I find conflicts in fiction without clear good-bad divides and more than 2 factions incredibly enjoyable on average. I do wish there were a bit more of it. But also ask yourself, have you ever shied away from watching a movie because it was too explicitly political? Even if it didn't line up exactly with current attitudes or parties? I think that experience is more common than many movie-goers would let on.

I do circle back to District 9, actually, as an example of what I assume you want more of. Have you seen it? How did you feel about it? Can you think of similar others? The only ones that spring to mind are maybe things like Minority Report, Children of Men, V for Vendetta, maaaybe Dune 2.

I definitely agree with this. Especially for franchise films, they want a simple non controversial film that nobody in the audience can find a reason to dislike. It’s one reason I’m mostly over big franchise movies and TV — they’re so busy protecting their brand that they’re mostly bland and boring with very few things that are difficult to understand or too political. Making people think often means some in the audience might get confused (even more likely with the international audience) and if you say something political (outside of DEI inclusion) you run the risk that someone in the audience might disagree which would mean that person will not be there for Big Franchise: Subtitle. Most of them have become so overtaken by corporate that they’re paint by numbers, cohesive stories, good actors, or realistic fights be damned. They’re McDonald’s or Burger King at this point, and you won’t find anything that has a strong taste because there’s a chance someone might dislike the taste.

outside of DEI inclusion

This is a huge parenthetical. They're definitely alienating people with the way they're doing this, consciously. And it's not just about the inclusion, it's about the very intense way in which they're doing that inclusion and how communicating the right message flows through everything that gets made.

I think there's a lot of paint-by-numbers going on, but I'd remind you that the most controversial movie of the past decade was almost certainly The Last Jedi, which famously had an auteur who deliberately made unexpected, confusing, and ✨subversive✨ choices that alienated people and damaged the brand. There's a lot of both going on; the only constant is DEI.

I think some of it is true belief, but some of it is also artsy people(the sorts who direct movies) having different tastes than the general public(source: visit an art museum), and DEI is a convenient way for those people to shield themselves from criticism.

When I was a youth the 'in' thing for artsy types was to look down their noses at Michael Bay movies, which nevertheless sold like hotcakes. The 'designated cool grownup' teacher when I was in high school explained to a group of these kids like thus- "I know, when I go to a Michael Bay movie, that I'm going to be entertained. It's going to have action, the plot might not be great but it'll be passable and at least a little bit compelling, there's going to be a lead who actually does something, etc. I'm a teacher trying to support a family and have to choose which movies I pay to go see and I don't know that Oscar-bait is going to entertain me, but a Michael Bay action movie will. Therefore, like many others facing that decision, I see Michael Bay movies." I'm paraphrasing a bit, but the truth is that the general public and art people have different preferences. And artsy types generally resent being expected to earn a return on investment for their employers, and employers famously at least claim to put DEI before profits, so telling an artsy story about black lesbians is a way for artsy types to make their movies art and not business.

At this point, subversive isn’t even really subversive because it’s almost a trope. If there’s a single set of heroes or archetypes that haven’t been “subverted” by now I’m not really aware. The subversive thing for the modern deconstructed media landscape is actually playing it straight, having a hero who’s actually a decent guy and a villain who’s actually bad and actually doesn’t have a point to make, and a plot that actually makes sense.

Watch some anime.

A recent example I'm thinking of is Frieren, where - minor spoilers - it turned out that the demons actually were bad. That is, the story didn't follow the "what if the bad guys were actually good and the good guys were actually bad" subversion seen in, for example, every single webcomic that ever included an orc and/or goblin: instead of being different-looking people wrongly oppressed for looking different by the retrograde powers-that-be, they are actually inhuman predators who exploit the former mode of thinking.

On some more-progressive corners of the internet (I saw kerfuffles in threads on RPG.net and SomethingAwful) this made (a minority of) people upset for being a racist idea. Racist against what group, exactly? Well, it wasn't that: it was just that the idea of irreconcilable differences existing between groups that could (apparently) communicate with each other was too dangerous to be entertained at all.

I think that betrayed a weakness of faith in anti-racism on the part of the people who said that. Frieren demons are clearly unlike any real-world humans, and thus their example should be a positive thought-experiment for coexistence in our world. One thing I like about fantasy and science fiction and so forth is its utility as a lens upon our own world: it lets us consider what things would be like if something we believe is true were different. What would things look like then? If they're necessarily obviously different, then perhaps your beliefs have stood the test. If the result seems more like reality than your understanding of the real world does - then perhaps you've learned something, too.

Arguably sociopaths. My understanding of demons in Frieren is they evolved to lack empathy. They understand that humans will lower their guard if you tell them your parents or your children died, but they don't fully understand why because they can't feel familial love or sadness. There's even a demon who is portrayed slightly sympathetically as he alternates between helping and torturing humans because he's trying to see if he can experience emotions.

One thing I like about fantasy and science fiction and so forth is its utility as a lens upon our own world: it lets us consider what things would be like if something we believe is true were different.

A lot of people are unable to consume media in this way. If a piece of media says something is true in this fictional hypothetical that wildly diverges from out world, they are trying to say it is also true in our world. So, Starship Troopers a story about a united humanity fighting against literal bugs is really promoting racism and white supremacy in our world, despite it's protagonist being Filipino.

It's similar to people who argue against the hypothetical in thought experiments. They seem to believe worlds in which their current politics fail just can't exist and anyone who would think up such a world only does so to push evil beliefs in the here and now.

In the defense of midwits, people who argue against the hypothetical intuitively sense that the other party is trying to convince them of something, and that is always unambiguously suspect, so it's better not to give the other party an inch.

On some more-progressive corners of the internet (I saw kerfuffles in threads on RPG.net and SomethingAwful) this made (a minority of) people upset for being a racist idea. Racist against what group, exactly? Well, it wasn't that: it was just that the idea of irreconcilable differences existing between groups that could (apparently) communicate with each other was too dangerous to be entertained at all.

I'm reminded of the thread spawned by this Tumblr post, which begins:

Fantasy races are an uncomfortable concept, because they present a world that literally works the way racists think that it works. The attempts to mitigate this problem often fail to address the core concern, merely making the idea more palatable.

It also addresses sci-fi — specifically Mass Effect — as also problematic for having different alien races be, well, different:

This is something that puts me on edge in Mass Effect, otherwise one of my favorite games. True, the game ultimately lands on condemning the genophage, and it’s not subtle about that. I mean just look at the name… But it’s still considered debatable, morally grey, and Mordin Solus remains one of the most charming and enduring heroes of the series. The setting has bent over backwards to make every racist stereotype and talking point as legitimate as possible. In this setting, it is objectively true, scientifically proven that it is in the DNA of Krogans to naturally be violent, warmongering killing machines whose explosively rapid breeding poses an existential threat to the galaxy. That in turn is meant to make us think that maybe forced sterilization is something worth considering. It’s hard to ignore the parallels to real life racist propaganda. I don’t think it’s malicious, just ungrounded and thoughtless; the result of creators to whom these ideals are abstract thought experiments, rather than reflections of real history.

In short, treating differences between thinking beings as anything other than purely cultural is Problematic.

I don’t know how else you’d handle magic creatures or aliens. They’re not the same species. Orcs are specifically not humans, and neither are elves. Klingons aren’t humans. And as such saying that an Orc or a Klingon doesn’t act like a Southern California PMC half wit isn’t quite the same as being a racist.

The things that make me uncomfortable in those settings is less that Orcs act differently than humans, it’s that all orcs have the exact same culture and belief system and nobody rejects it or questions it. Humans are certainly one species, but we are different and have different opinions and cultures and religions. Or maybe I just wonder what a hippy orc would be like.

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The female Ghostbusters was within the last decade.

I don't know, wouldn't the Cathedral want control over superhumans? Wouldn't they make a power-grab to centralize control over these dangerous rogue elements lest they overthrow the empire of finance and paperwork with personal power? Wouldn't they want to divide and undermine any would-be Caesars? We saw in another universe the superhumans are in complete control, the 'Illuminati' rule.

However, I 100% agree that Marvel movies are stupidly written and don't make sense. The superheroes are weak in relative terms. A couple of Stryker brigades could demolish Thanos's army. Iron Man is worth maybe five to ten jet fighters. None of them could handle tactical nukes. All superhero movies seem to adore Bronze age tactics: mass charges and 1v1 duels.

DC did better I thought, Superman takes on seriously powerful beings who are fast and strong enough to overmatch human forces. He does tank nukes. It makes sense for people to fear him. But DC also had a lot of ridiculous plot decisions and some silly character interaction (your mother's name was Martha too, I guess we're best friends!)

You could have an interesting movie about the struggle for political, economic and military power between capes and mortal men. But scriptwriters aren't smart enough to write that or don't want to. It's as if they're taught in movie school 'who cares about having a plot that makes sense, we need to affirm these saccharine character moments where the power of love, cameraderie and family triumphs over all odds'. I think only the 5% of the population in the INTJ/INTP area really cares about having plots that make sense.

But scriptwriters aren't smart enough to write that or don't want to.

I could be wrong, but I believe that scriptwriters at the level of actually writing scripts are professionals who produce the script they're being told to produce by the person paying them to do it. The plot, characters, etc. are decided on by directors and producers.

Yes. Whedon said the list of required character vs character fights or interactions was so large it took up all of the run time for The Avengers. To the point where he had no time to conclude the story and simply decided that all the aliens would fall over dead at the end to instantly wrap things up. Which he thinks is a bad ending, but he had no choice given the constraints.

However, I 100% agree that Marvel movies are stupidly written and don't make sense. The superheroes are weak in relative terms. A couple of Stryker brigades could demolish Thanos's army. Iron Man is worth maybe five to ten jet fighters. None of them could handle tactical nukes. All superhero movies seem to adore Bronze age tactics: mass charges and 1v1 duels.

Good luck making a show about tactics like the survability onion the thing is that modern tactics make terrible movies. You can't talk to the villan when all your weapons move at mach 2 and a lot of defensive tactics are based around stealth, evasion and recon. The staple trope of superhero movies of the villan/hero discussing the villan's plan doesn't work at all when the entire conflict strategy is to not be seen heard or detected and the fighters can't even see each other.

Unless you're one of the weird nerds who wants their shows to seem "real" it's typically accepted to do completely irrational actions so that the movie can actually be good. (Otherwise you get the Saga of Tanya the Evil where the magical characters actually do use rational tactics but the show has little character)

If you were a skilled artist, surely you could make such a film entertaining. Imagine a band of heroic scouts discovering some deception operation, that the enemy was trying to outflank them or that a seemingly huge army was actually just balloons and dummies. What about a duel between cyberpunk drone operators, scrabbling around a ruined megacity as their drones hunt eachother's weak flesh and blood body? That's just extending what we see in Ukraine a few steps.

What about using clever tactics to get around superior firepower by fighting in close quarters? Or basic things like fire and manoeuvre, characters working together?

Tanya the Evil was well-liked IIRC.

You could, but then it would be a War Movie, not a Summer Blockbuster, and would appeal to fewer potential audience members.

I can imagine certain types of shows working with those sorts of premises, but the key there is there would be no dialog between our pro/antagonists except before and after action sequences. So our cyberpunk drone operator sequence would be cool but it would have to be a thing where all the talking happens by characters that aren't our drone operators, maybe observers in a meeting room or something.Can't have them communicate via comms since that would cause them to get caught by the other operator.

The only other example I know of is The fan animation astartes which you know isn't even a real show. Reading /r/combatfootage sort of shows just how hard it is to even come close to making modern weapons interesting storytelling, you walk around in a trench and then boom an artillery round killed you. No drama between you and the antagonist, just nothing nothing nothing dead.

As for the saga of Tanya the Evil, it's a decently popular show, but definitely not some major franchise like the MCU or something. The author of the novels is clearly some guy who played a lot of Hearts of Iron 4 and also clearly read a lot of World war history novels before making the original books. Unlike live action, the animation actually can make explosions ect that "look" real because in spite of the cartoons not being real this means the stupid cartoon can have the bullet actually go through the persons head. According to imdb it's probably about in the top 15% of shows ratings wise. Now I will admit the show really does use rational tactics for the mages, having them provide cover fire, spot for artillery and engage in aerial bombardments, even though it's a show about magical girls. (heck one of the main villains is called Mary Sue :D) But it's a major exception, and one I'm a big fan of.

Reading /r/combatfootage sort of shows just how hard it is to even come close to making modern weapons interesting storytelling, you walk around in a trench and then boom an artillery round killed you. No drama between you and the antagonist, just nothing nothing nothing dead.

Tolstoy did a good job of it where Prince Andrei was just walking around, pacing somewhere, and then boom, a cannon ball, then, because it's Tolstoy, FEELINGS, Universal Love, loss of consciousness. But that has probably never translated well to screen. Also the scene where (someone who's name I've forgotten) is in the middle of a battle, and it suddenly occurs to him that the other fellows are actually trying to kill him -- whom everybody loves! But it's really difficult to pull off inner monologues in movies. But, also, Tolstoy makes it pretty clear they weren't using much in the way of tactics, just throwing men at the problem, so it might not count. A relative has been watching drone footage from Ukraine, and it really just sounds depressing.

Oh War and Peace is great but was a terrible movie precisely because so much of the book does not translate to the big screen.

I watched some drone footage of Russians fighting drones and it's a really depressing scene, lots of footage of drones flying not seeing anything then transmission ends via shotgun blast. (you often see the shotgun shells just before impact).

I can imagine at some point a video game where you are using drones shotguns and artillery to fight your opponent with drones shotguns and artillery in a trench, maybe even some Rifles and machine guns placed in for more trench warfare. Clearly you being the player would have to control drones, but small drones dropping mortar round after mortar round would be a fun game maybe idk.

Astartes was universally beloved though, it's the platinum standard for 40K fanworks. The guy who made it was clearly super talented but it proves that it can be done. 'Show don't tell' is great!

I think you could have a film with a nailbiting, dialogue-free action finale between drone operators. Or maybe they do psy-ops to taunt eachother with pre-recorded messages on their drones? If you can send a signal from your person to the drone, you could send a message too. Occasionally there are these scenes where soldiers bait drones to attack and then dodge. Or that Bradley-BTR duel from the other day, these crazy moments are rare but do happen.

Tanya the evil novels were fun, I liked all the autistic stuff they put in about how Russian air defences were so shit a random Finn landed a light aircraft in Moscow, so they could do a deep strike there and get away with it.

Ahhh I see you're like "the few examples of actually good uses of military action are incredible and I want more of it."

Sadly I just agree, The Saga of Tanya the evil was the best war show of all time in spite of it involving fucking magical girls. The levels of thinking in those books/shows was just off the charts. I get a lot of the same vibes as when I hear Skullagrim review mary the virgin witch somehow by having higher variance the animated shows can have some of the best depictions of conflict.

I really liked the Saga of Tanya the evil and am looking forward to season 2, Season 1 was so good and while the books are ok, the animated version really sells you on the "this is what war is like" doctrine (except for mary sue fuck mary sue)

/r/PoliticalCompassMemes of all places tipped me off about an entertaining animated short movie depicting two mercenary groups in realistic urban combat: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OTLGWNruuOE

Very inferior in quality to Astartes, but still quite nailbiting while dialogue-free.

That was a cool video, liked the fire-and-manoeuvre plus hand signals.

However, I 100% agree that Marvel movies are stupidly written and don't make sense. The superheroes are weak in relative terms. A couple of Stryker brigades could demolish Thanos's army. Iron Man is worth maybe five to ten jet fighters. None of them could handle tactical nukes. All superhero movies seem to adore Bronze age tactics: mass charges and 1v1 duels.

The superheroes are weak, which is actually a double penalty because the armies/countries have to be weak for them to matter. So Asgard's army has to be useless outside of flashbacks, and let's not even get started on any battle in Wakanda. And the bad guys basically have to be incompetent hordes literal children can fight.

Say what you want about Snyder but you actually get why people with modern armies would actually keep his superheroes around.

Well, Watchmen kinda exists. And so does The Boys. The TV show Watchmen does too, though it goes in a crazy different direction which I can't help but wonder how this forum would feel about it. It takes place in some alternate reality where they pass massive reparations for Black Americans and the show is set in Tulsa (deliberate echoes of the Tulsa race massacre) and there's a neighboring white slum/trailer park trash place locals call Nixonville. A white supremacist group starts targeting police officers and so cops start to wear masks to protect their identities -- in a country where masks and vigilante superheroes are explicitly illegal, and hunted down. The main character is a cop but also a closet superhero, and also tortures people, and it turns out at least one other cop is a closet KKK member. And then there's other wild Watchmen stuff that happens. Not exactly what you're describing, but it was interesting.

I think only the 5% of the population in the INTJ/INTP area really cares about having plots that make sense.

I regularly get told to stop thinking so much when I point out plot holes in movies. I'm probably not the only one here.

I run into this issue with plot holes, where I can see them if the show/movie is "thinky" or is trying to make you think, but when the show is just trying to be fun you can easily ignore the plot holes because the show isn't trying to do this. Books are typically the domain where you can have stories that have thinking and work well. Stuff like to Kill a mockingbird works because it's in book form. The television show Attack on Titan was like this, the first few seasons were a pure spectacle, there was no real deep plot going on and no need for one, but once they started having a major plot in the last 26 episodes+2 1.25 hour long television specials, the holes in the story started to show.

I don't know what to call this it isn't "suspension of disbelief" it's more like "suspension of thinking rationally about the plot". Like the issue is that these stories have 1 writer only and you have to write both a plot and the characters. Most people actually care more about #2 than the plot and most plots kinda blow. The spectacle of most shows is more important than the actual story for good reasons, (Books typically are a much better medium for pure storytelling, but a lot of the best books tend to fall in the "books you read in high school" category, which if you really pay attention the grand narrative of them is mostly trash). The only exception was this tiny weird niche space opera called Legend of the Galatic heroes which I swear is like if star wars was written by a Neoreactionary. Breaking bad is also good but it is more of a "character driven narrative". I should watch house of cards someday

LotGH is far above the average for stories when it comes to caring about the plot and world making sense, but even then it has a few things that seem poorly explained/motivated. Off the top of my head:

Everyone's insistence of following Commodore Fork's invasion plan regardless of how retarded it was

Trunicht's motivation for letting the child emperor live in alliance territory and form a government in exile

Almost everything surrounding the Reuental Revolt, though I feel like the author was starting to run out of steam at that point

The novels behind LoGH were quite good too. I think the English translations were released a few years ago.

Translations of the first two books were ok (not amazing). They changed translators for book 3 onwards and they were pretty awful, it would have been almost impossible for me to follow if I hadn't already seen the anime.

Blah. Thanks for the correction. I stopped at two when grad school got really busy, planned to get back to it... guess that's out.

I think this forum is about 60-70% INTJ or INTP. But in broader society the ratio is much lower.

INTJ is just Myers-Briggs for autist, I guess.

But seriously, another INTJ reporting in. If I recall correctly, it’s among the rarer MBTI types. I wonder if you’re right about your assessment of this place as having massive overrepresentation.

Have we ever done surveys or tried to get a handle on the demographics here? Given the amount of wrong think/number of witches, it might be interesting. Or people might not want to participate and we’d see skew as a result.

I wrote a fucking book because I'm tired of plot holes and shoddy world building, it grates like diamond dust beneath my eyelids.

This has been a busy week for the US Supreme Court, with a total of six published decisions on hot-button culture war issues including abortion (a boringly unanimous Article III standing decision, already discussed in its own thread below), gun control, immigration, labor relations, and even a Trump-bashing trademark registration case. Even the sixth case, about boring-old bankruptcy fees, produced an unusual 6-3 split: Jackson wrote the majority opinion, joined by Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Kavanaugh. Gorsuch authored an impassioned dissent, joined by Thomas and Barrett.

The trademark case, Vidal v. Elster, is more interesting than it looks at first glance. The question is whether a provision of the Lanham Act (the federal statute governing intellectual property issues), which forbids registration of trademarks featuring the name of a person without that person's consent, is constitutional. All nine justices agree that it is. And yet, instead of a simple unanimous opinion, we get:

"THOMAS, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part III. ALITO and GORSUCH, JJ., joined that opinion in full; ROBERTS, C. J., and KAVANAUGH, J., joined all but Part III; and BARRETT, J., joined Parts I, II–A, and II–B. KAVANAUGH, J., filed an opinion concurring in part, in which ROBERTS, C. J., joined. BARRETT, J., filed an opinion concurring in part, in which KAGAN, J., joined, in which SOTOMAYOR, J., joined as to Parts I, II, and III–B, and in which JACKSON, J., joined as to Parts I and II. SOTOMAYOR, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which KAGAN and JACKSON, JJ., joined."

The gun control case, Garland v. Cargill, divides predictably 6-3 along right/left lines. Thomas, writing for the majority, holds that "bump stocks" are not machineguns within the meaning of the National Firearms Act, abrogating a (Trump-era) ATF ruling that sought to ban such devices.

The immigration case, Campos-Chaves v. Garland, is the closest of all, with Alito writing for the 5-4 majority and Gorsuch joining the three liberals in a dissent authored by newcomer Jackson.

The labor case, Starbucks Corp. v. McKinney, was almost unanimous, except for Justice Jackson's solo partial-dissent-but-concurrence-in-the-judgment. It seems to me (I have not attempted to quantify this impression) that Justice Jackson is much more likely than the other liberals to author a solo opinion.

I have only skimmed a few of these cases, so I don't feel equipped to dive deep into the merits of each case, but I always enjoy the Motte's Supreme Court culture-war takes. For my own contribution, I just want to articulate my view of the Justices' voting patterns: I feel like the Court's conservatives disagree with each other a lot more often than the liberals do. It's very common to see conservatives on both sides of an issue, while the liberals overwhelmingly tend to vote as a block. This week is just an example of the general pattern, I think. Many right-leaning court watchers see that as a bad thing, as if the Court's conservatives are wishy-washy and ideologically unreliable. I tend to see it differently; to me, it suggests the conservatives are more even-handed and unbiased, while the liberals are more interested in conformity and towing the party line--undesirable traits in a judge. As I said, though, I haven't attempted to test my hypothesis by quantifying who voted which way, when. Someone has surely done that, and I'd be interested to see their results.

I'm far too late, but I wrote up the (unevenly too long) following on a plane ride.

A few noteworthy, or amusing things I didn't see mentioned:

  • The Vidal case is essentially 5-4 on methodology, despite all that mess. I don't really see why the majority is doing what it's doing, at all?

  • Alito using "alien" and Jackson "noncitizen" at every possible opportunity, which is hilarious.

  • The dissent from Gorsuch in the bankruptcy case is pretty strongly phrased. Jackson, in turn, quotes back Gorsuch's own words from a previous case, that the dissent is "just that."

  • Barrett's trademark opinion at one point refers to someone attempting to register a trademark for Duchess of Windsor for ladies' underwear.

Regarding your point on the conservatives disagreeing more, the liberals agreed in eight of the nine cases the last two weeks—the only case not unanimous between them was the (in effect) 8-1 NLRB case, (and I suppose if you want to count it, agreeing with different portions of Barrett's concurrence). Meanwhile, the conservatives were less unified. Nearly every pair of conservative justices had some disagreement somewhere in the past two weeks:

Gorsuch disagrees with the other conservatives on the immigration case. Barrett disagrees with the other conservatives on the trademark case. Roberts disagreed with the remaining conservatives on Native American healthcare. Thomas disagrees with the Alito and Kavanaugh on the bankruptcy case. That leaves only Alito and Kavanaugh who didn't really disagree at all these last two weeks.

Anyway, now to what I had written:

Two days of opinions, this last week, in six cases. I've commented on the one about mifepristone here—in short, the doctors trying to get it removed from the FDA had no standing, that is, nothing that made them eligible to bring their case, no harm done, no remedy, etc.

As to the others:

Thursday's cases were all 9-0, at least in judgment, but only the above was truly unanimous; the others had some form of disagreement.

I had a bit more time, so I wrote more.

Starbucks Corp v. McKinney

Thomas wrote the opinion and everyone except Jackson signed on. Jackson filed an opinion which agreed with part of what they said, but had more to say, and I think, disagreed with what the practical outcome should be, despite agreeing on the court's action. That is, Jackson is "concurring in part, concurring in the judgment, and dissenting in part."

That's opaque, so let's get into it.

The case is between Starbucks and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Some starbucks workers tried to unionize and called in a news crew to support them. Starbucks fired them. The NLRB was contacted, who filed a complaint with Starbucks, and filed a §10(j) petition (of the NLRA) asking for a preliminary injunction (that is, until the actual judgment) making Starbucks reinstate the fired employees. Notably, the judgment will be by the NLRB itself. The question is how exactly that petition should that be handled.

§10(j) authorizes a district court "to grant … such temproary relief … as it deems just and proper."

Courts follow two sorts of tests: a two-part test, used by the 6th circuit, or a four-part test. The two-part test is peculiar to the NLRA, and asks whether "there is reasonable cause to believe that unfair labor practices occurred" and whether granting the injunction is "just and proper." Note that "reasonable cause" is kind of broad—you don't actually have to think that they're right, this just requires that it's not "frivolous". This also seems to be derived from the statute of 10(j), as listed above.

The four-part test is from for preliminary injunctions more generally. They cite another SCOTUS case here, which, I think, applies to preliminary injunctions more generally. What this requires is that they are (1) likely to succeed, (2 )to suffer irreparable harm unless granted such a preliminary injunction, (3) "that the balance of equities tips in [their] favor", and (4) "that an injunction is in the public interest." Note especially that "likely to succeed" is a good bit more stringent than the previous "reasonable cause to believe," and "irreparable harm" than "just and proper."

Thomas argues that section 10(j)'s "just and proper" phrase isn't establishing any other standard than the already accepted one, and so they should use the four-part test.

But the board, and Jackson, yield this. Where the disagreement rests is how those should be applied. Thomas addresses this in II-B, but first we'll turn to Jackson's dissent, on the same topic

Jackson argues that, from Hecht Co. v. Bowles, the courts must take into account the judgment and intent in the act from Congress. (This act was also cited by Thomas, but to a different end.) Jackson argues for a two part-standard to decide how the court should judge: first, "whether Congress has clearly displaced courts' equitable discretion," and second, "if no such clear statement exists, we evaluate how that discretion should be exercised in light of Congress's choices in the NLRA." She agrees on part 1, the question is on part 2, which she thinks the majority has hardly addressed.

Jackson thinks three of the four factors follow straightforwardly: for irreparable harm, that the interim relief is necessary to remedy the violation of labor rights. For balance of equities, they may consider harms to (in this case, Starbucks), but not its "desire to continue engaging in an alleged violation of the NLRA." For public interest, they defer to Congress in issuing the NLRA. Only the likelihood of the case's success remains. But in this case, it is the Board itself which issues the judgment, and requesting the injunction is a pretty good sign of what it's going to think in the actual judgment, especially since the NLRB doesn't ask for many injunctions, and since the board is granted quite a bit of deference in the appeal.

Okay, that's Jackson, now back to Thomas. He says that the Board actually thinks what the Sixth Circuit is doing is about the application of the statutory criteria. He argues that the reasonable cause standard goes well beyond what's in the traditional criteria, as "likely to succeed" is far more of an evaluation than "reasonable cause to believe." Then, in one paragraph, which is, as far as I can tell, practically the only one actually dealing with what Jackson is asserting, he states that "none of the views advanced in a §10(j) petition represent the Board's final position—they are simply the preliminary legal and factual views of the Board's in-house attorneys."

I don't know what I'm talking about, legally speaking, so I could be off-base, but he didn't explain that at enough length for me to be convinced that Jackson is wrong—if the NLRB is judging the case after the NLRB submits an injunction, then it seems reasonable enough to think it'll win on the merits. I'm not used to siding with the 1 in an effective 8-1 where the 1 is Jackson. Perhaps if I misunderstand this in some respect, it'd be great if any of you who are more knowledgeable could clear it up.

Practically speaking, this doesn't seem like it matters very much in the specific context that it's applied in. 14 injunctions filed per year doesn't seem like much, though I imagine that it could matter more if some of those are large in scope. I can't speak to whether there will be any larger effects regarding willingness to defer to the judgment of agencies.

Vidal v. Elster

Also 9-0 in judgment, but quite the mess in terms of who's with whom.

THOMAS [Sorry, I don't know how to do small caps on themotte], J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part III. ALITO and GORSUCH, JJ., joined that opinion in full; ROBERTS, C. J., and KAVANAUGH, J., joined all but Part III; and BARRETT, J., joined Parts I, II–A, and II–B. KAVANAUGH, J., filed an opinion concurring in part, in which ROBERTS, J.J., joined. BARRETT, J., filed an opinion concurring in part, in which KAGAN, J., joined, in which SOTOMAYOR, J., joined as to Parts I, II, and III–B, and in which JACKSON, J., joined as to Parts I and II. SOTOMAYOR, J. filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which KAGAN and JACKSON, JJ., joined.

So, all in all, six different positions, considering the opinions together. But really, it's more like 2, the men versus the women.

The case regards the matter of trademarks. Steve Elster sought to register the trademark "Trump too small," (referring back to the Rubio comment in one of the 2016 debates) and was refused, because the Lanham Act prohibits registration of a trademark that "consists of or comprises a name…identifying a particular living individual except by his written consent." Elster claims that this restriction, as a content-based restriction, violates the first amendment. The whole court agrees that it doesn't but has some substantial disagreements over why, exactly.

First, to Thomas's opinion (and I'll break them down a little further, because of all the partial concurrences).

In section I (Signed onto by all the conservatives, including Barrett) Thomas mostly just says the same things as I said two paragraphs ago, but at more length, and with a little more detail. Since he'll get into the detail later, I see no reason to look more.

In II–A (Also agreed upon by all 6), Thomas lays out the first amendment claim. Essentially, (by precedent) government content-based regulations are presumptively unconstitutional. Viewpoint discrimination is distinguished (by precedent) as a particularly bad kind of content discrimination. The court's already agreed in 2017 and 2019 that viewpoint-based discrimination, such as the Lanham Act's ban on disparaging trademarks and on immoral/scandalous trademarks were violations of the First Amendment, were unconstitutional. The names clause doesn't discriminate on viewpoint.

(I'll note here that my instinctive reaction to trademarks is backwards to that of the court—they feel more like prohibitions on speech than a case of speech themselves to me, but the court protects with the first amendment registering trademarks as a sort of speech.)

In II-B (also agreed on by all 6), Thomas considers the constitutionality of content-based but viewpoint neutral trademark restrictions.

Thomas begins by saying that there should not be heightened scrutiny here, most importantly because they have always coexisted with the First Amendment. Trademarks have been around from before the founding, going back to English law. Their purpose was to mark the manufacturer. The first federal trademark law was in 1870 (before that, purely states), and included some content restrictions (as did a SCOTUS case), which didn't change with the Lanham Act in 1946. They always involve content restrictions, including, for example, barring the registration of a trademark that is likely to cause confusion with another trademark. Thomas argues that because they have always coexisted with the first amendment that therefore there should not be heightened scrutiny. Further, content-based restrictions are inherent to trademarks more generally, as prohibiting confusion over the manufacturer requires looking to the content of the mark.

Thus far, Barrett signs off on it. In II–C, she departs, leaving us with five justices. Here Thomas chooses not to give a framework as to when content-based trademark restrictions are permissible, but chooses instead to look at history and tradition. It is for this, as we shall see, that he gets excoriated by the defense. Anyway, onto the history of name restrictions. Because people own their own names, trademarking names, even their own, was illegal (consider: there is more than one John Smith, so a ban on using it merely because another had the same name, would be a problem). Trademarks could contain one's name, though, if they also had other content. Originally, this allowed others with the same name still to use it (see, for example, SCONY's Faber v. Faber in 1867). The Lanham Act is to be seen to be incorporating existing trademark law, not making up a new one. The names clause serves to help identify the source, and to protect the markholder's reputation, by prohibiting the use of the name of another without permission. And no one has a "first amendment right to piggyback off the goodwill another entity has built in [that entity's] name."

Thomas concludes that there's a tradition of resisting trademarking of names, coexisting with the First Amendment. He declines to develop a comprehensive theory. Yes, nearly his sole argument in this opinion is that there's a history to it, therefore it's constitutional.

In part III, Thomas briefly addresses Barrett and Sotomayor, arguing that their analogy-based approaches are bad. He is joined in this only by Alito and Gorsuch, Roberts and Kavanaugh having dropped out. I'll return to this later. Part IV is a summary.

Kavanaugh's concurrence (joined by Roberts) is very short, one nine-line paragraph, only adding that such a content-based trademark restriction may well be constitutional even without the history backing it up, and that can be addressed in the future.

Now to Barrett's opinion. Kagan joins in its entirety, Sotomayor joins as to parts I, II, and III–B, and Jackson joins as to parts I and II. She disagrees that history and tradition settle the constitutionality for two reasons: first because the history doesn't suffice to match the names clause, and second, because the court never explains why the whole look for predecessors of the clause is the right approach anyway. Barrett prefers to adopt a standard.

Again, I'll break it down by section, because of the partial endorsements. In Section I (agreed by all four), Barrett begins by framing the constitutional issue as that content-based prohibitions are generally prohibited because they work to drive ideas or views out, but there may be some cases where there's no realistic possibility of suppression of ideas (citing precedents). Content-based trademark restrictions are not presumptively unconstitutional. It's always been content based. For example, trademarks merely describing a quality of an item were prohibited, as other manufacturers should be allowed to use them—that's a content-based rule. Barrett explicitly mentions the incorporation of the first amendment in 1868, which it seems to me, the majority really ought to have done, and agrees that content discrimination was inherent to "the very definition of a trademark" at that time. Hence content-based trademark rules have been needed historically. They've also coexisted with the free speech clause because they do not suppress ideas, and even can help protect them, by preventing things that shouldn't be, like the word "potato" from being trademarked. (example mine, sentiment hers)

In section II (still agreed upon by all), Barrett turns to decide how to judge this. She follows an analogy (proposed by the solicitor general) to limited public forums, when government allows speech on its property, but in some restricted manner. Rules restricting speech in limited public fora are judged based upon "whether they are reasonable in light of the purpose which the forum at issue serves." She thinks that though trademarks are not limited public fora, it's an apt enough analogy. Therefore, "content-based criteria for trademark registration do not abridge the right to free speech so long as they reasonably relate to the preservation of the markowner's goodwill and the prevention of consumer confusion," and therefore, if it helps to serve as source identifiers. The names clause passes.

Before we get to section III (where Barrett addresses the Court), let's return to Thomas' thoughts on Barrett. He comments in two places: in a footnote in section II, and in section III. For the time being, only section III is relevant. Recall that section III is only Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, not the opinion of the court. Thomas argues that she doesn't justify why that makes sense, merely says that it is "apt," and that the rule is about fora, specifically, and that this is not a forum, and so as there is no analogous forum, it is hard to see why such a test should apply. (Barrett, in response, notes that she didn't say it was a forum, just analogous in that they form content-based restrictions, and states that Thomas ignores her reasons for drawing the analogy.)

Now to part III. Here, Barrett addresses the court's methodology, stating that she does not think the historical record suffices. In III–A, with Kagan alone, she argues that the history does not support what the majority does. Barrett is not convinced that the common law provides protection to someone seeking a trademark including someone else's name. She cites the SCOTUS case Thaddeus Davids Co. v. Davids. Mfg. Co. from 1914, where a "fairly complete" list of invalid marks are made, among which is not listed any names-clause analogue. Further, the sources cited in that case are against enforcing a trademark against individuals with the same name, not prohibitions on names without permission more generally. Barrett argues that the names clause prevents uses of names that may have been permissible under common law, citing several cases that allowed the use of names even of living individuals in the right case, such as Bismarck (because he was famous. The trademark was not to pretend the product is made him). The legislative history backs up that it was not merely common law, but meant to exclude cases like Bismarck, or "the Duchess of Windsor for brassieres and ladies' underwear" that might otherwise be permissible. (Thomas argues that the names she cites are not applicable, being dead, or already generic terms. Barrett rejoins that the cases explicitly allowed for living individuals, and in the case of Bismarck, he was alive at the time.)

In III–B, where Sotomayor joins back on, but not Jackson (and Kagan remains with Barrett), Barrett argues that tradition should not be the proper bar, even if it should be yielded to in some cases for purposes of stare decisis (that is, not changing up the law on everyone for minor reasons). She argues that the majority does not treat the history itself merely as "a persuasive data point," but as the constitutional argument itself. Rather, the court should articulate principles. Her preferred takeaway from history is that trademark restrictions have "been central to trademark's purpose" and "have not posed a serious risk of censorship," and states that this is a good way to think about whether such restrictions work with the first amendment.

Thus far Barrett. Now to Sotomayor, who is joined by Kagan and Jackson. (Simple, for once.) This is another methodological disagreement. Sotomayor argues against the use of looking to history and tradition in general. She points to Barrett's disagreement as indication of the uncertainty of such an analysis, and that the justices are looking at these without them having been raised by litigants, and that nonhistorians are doing historical analysis. She argues further that usages of it in Bruen are problematic, as it has led to confusion. Sotomayor would also prefer "a doctrinal framework drawn from this Court's First Amendment precedent," with the standard being that trademark restrictions should be viewpoint neutral and reasonable for the purpose of trademarks. Sotomayor, in accord with Barrett, allows some use of history, such as to understand what the purpose of trademarks is. Sotomayor argues that the reason that registration restrictions is fine with the first amendment is that failing to get a trademark registered is not a restriction on speech, merely the withholding of a benefit. She argues that there are several cases which back this up, including limited public forums (yes, she uses that plural, not the latin plural. Barrett used no plural, so I said fora due to nerdiness) and monetary subsidies. Those precedents permit imposing a "resonable, viewpoint-neutral limitation on a state-bestowed entitlement." (Thomas, in section III thinks that these are too different; Sotomayor thinks that the underlying principle is still useful.) Because here, if a mark is ineligible for registration, it can still be used anyway (but not restricting the use of others) it's not a problem. It only does not confer exclusive rights to speech, it does not restrict that speech.

My thoughts: I found the (in effect) dissents quite compelling, and am not a fan of the majority's use of historical analysis as sufficient. One interesting thing to think about is what factors may have led some justices to sign onto parts and not onto other parts of opinions. I assume the difference between Barrett and the liberal justices in whether they agreed in part with the main opinion had to do with whether they wanted to show solidarity. Perhaps Barrett didn't sign onto Sotomayor's due to the more oppositional tone, as well as, perhaps, that it seems slightly harsher towards use of history more generally? I imagine Sotomayor either didn't want to engage in any historical analysis (by endorsing Barrett's), or agreed with Thomas that it wasn't sufficient. I'd guess the former. No idea why Jackson declined to sign onto Barrett's part 3. I assume Roberts and Kavanaugh chose not to sign onto Thomas's part three because they didn't want to reject the tests of Barrett and Sotomayor, merely not sign on to them on this occasion?

Now to Friday's cases.

United States Trustee v. John Q. Hammons Fall 2006, LLC

6-3 Opinion by Jackson, joined by Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Kavanaugh. Dissent by Gorsuch, joined by Thomas and Barrett.

In Siegel v. Fitzgerald, the supreme court ruled that differing bankruptcy fees in districts governed by the U.S. Trustee Program vs. the Bankruptcy Administrator Program is unconstitutional (yes, it's weird that there are two types of districts). This case is about what remedy those harmed should have. Specifically, those who paid the higher amount when others paid the lower amount.

The majority rules that the only remedy is to be equal prospectively. They argue that the harm is inequality, not high fees, and that such a harm may be remedied in three ways: reimbursing those who overpaid, exacting more now from those who underpaid, or only changing things prospectively. Jackson then turns to Congress' intent as to how the remedy should occur (citing precedent). Since Congress wanted to raise fees in order to keep the U.S. Trustee Program to be self-sustaining, they would not have wanted something financially burdensome upon the program, and so remedying it would plainly be opposed to congressional intent. Further, such a remedy would make the disparity worse—if some are rewarded the remedy, then that would merely increase the amount, unless practically everyone, as only 2% of the bankrupt got to pay lower fees. Then, turning to the question of whether congress would want to impose higher fees, they argue that it did not, looking at its subsequent decisions, and that it would have pretty negative consequences. Hence, only prospectively. The remainder of the opinion responds to the dissent, so I'll turn to that first.

Gorsuch's dissent is rather up-in-arms. (And in turn, Jackson's opinion cites Gorsuch's own language that the dissent is "just that."—i.e. only a dissent.)

The dissent argues that Hammons should be entitled to a refund: the U. S. Trustee is agreed to have promised it, and Congress is agreed to have appropriated funding for refund, it is agreed that the suit is timely. Further, when "there is a general right to sue," but no specified form of relief, courts may use any remedy. It's long been the case that the proper remedy for overpayment is to pay them. They argue that this is no remedy at all—the past harm is not remedied. The dissent also casts some doubt on the whole process of imagining what Congress would do. Gorsuch also thinks that congressional intent is in favor of a refund, looking at the statutory text, where the program is authorized to provide refunds. Further, he characterizes it as a bait-and-switch, by promising the the refunds by standard procedures, and now denying any such possibility, and that that bait-and-switch violates due process. Gorsuch also attacks the argument that it would be disruptive as a turn to policy, but "not how remedies work." It's always cheapest not to give remedies.

Okay, now the majority, addressing the dissent: They argue that the dissent misunderstands the problem: to remedy a disparity, not to pay damages. Further, turning to congressional intent for a refund, it's passed regularly and therefore (only applies to ordinary situations, not ones involving 326 million? This is my best guess, it's not quite explicit.). And third, the government didn't really make a promise, but merely that it would wait to remedy until exhausting all appeals.

Jackson argues also that the dissent is wrong in its understanding of due process—she doesn't think the tax cases apply here, and there was a meaningful chance, which satisfied the due process clause.

I think I find the dissent more convincing, but am not sure. A lot would turn, I think on where precisely the harm in nonuniform bankruptcy rests: is it upon those who got a worse deal, or is it something ethereal upon the whole system?

Campos-Chaves v. Garland

Written by Alito, joined by Roberts, Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Jackson wrote the dissent, joined by Sotomayor, Kagan, and Gorsuch.

This case is about deportation hearings. Aliens have to be provided with written notice. There are two varieties: in paragraph 1, it describes the notice to appear (NTA), and in paragraph 2, a notice saying the new time and place. Here, there were three individuals each of whom got notices that were defective, in that they had TBD or similar written in place of the time. They were subsequently given a notice saying what the time of the hearing was, but didn't show up. The defendants argue that they failed to be served the proper notice, and so should not be removed from the country.

Part of this has to do with the word "or". The statute says, "did not receive notice in accordance with paragraph (1) or (2)." Unfortunately legal statutes don't have parentheses, so such combinations of ors and negatives tend to be ambiguous. Alito argues that a notice of either variety counts. More specifically, it has to be whatever notice is relevant—whichever one is connected to the hearing missed.

Alito also interprets the phrase in the statute of changing the time to include the change from TBD to some concrete time.

Jackson disagrees, seeing this as giving the government a pass for writing incomplete and therefore invalid NTAs under paragraph 1. Because time and place is a necessary part of the notices to appear, failing to include them makes them not count under paragraph 1. But a paragraph 2 notice should be dependent upon a paragraph 1 notice: 2 only describes notices changing the time and place, which Jackson thinks should mean that there is already a valid notice to appear before 2.

Jackson also argues that the majority's understanding of the word "change" is a bit unreasonable: the passage is clearly talking about replacing one time with another.

I think I found Jackson more compelling—it's at least a little unintuitive to have a valid notice dependent on an invalid one. The court's remedy (show up and mention the lack of proper notice) helps, at least.

As a side note, it's pretty funny to see Alito using the word alien at every possible opportunity, whereas Jackson uses noncitizen as much as possible (and maybe even bracketed alien out, in a footnote? I didn't check.).

Garland v. Cargill.

Thomas writes the opinion, which the other conservatives join. Alito writes a one-page concurrence. Sotomayor writes a dissent, which the remaining justices join.

The National Firearms Act defines a machinegun as "any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger." The question: are bump stocks machineguns? Thomas argues no. This used also to be the ATF's position, prior to the Las Vegas shooting, but afterward they included bump stocks. The core of Thomas' argument is as to what the words "a single function of the trigger" refers to. He argues that it refers to the trigger of the weapon, well, triggering once. (And he goes through, with diagrams, how exactly a trigger works.) Bump stocks do not change that there is one pull of the trigger for each shot. The finger pushes the trigger once for each shot. They argue, as a different route to the same point, that bump stocks do not cause it to happen automatically, as the forward pressure required is an extra thing in such a way that it is not automatic.

Alito mentions that the ATF should not have changed the rules—rather, congress should. And that the Las Vegas shooting doesn't change the meaning, merely reveals that regulation of bump stocks is probably a good idea. He agrees that the original congress would have wanted bump stocks banned, but denies that they did.

Sotomayor on the other hand argues that "a single function of the trigger" should not refer to how many times the lever of the gun moves, but rather its relation to the user, whether it's a single pull to the user. And in this case, as bump stocks allow for the use of them in a single motion, it should be considered a single function of the trigger. the relevant quality for a trigger is the relation not the user, not to the gun.

I found the dissent in this case more compelling than I expected, given the political valence. I'm not sure who I'd agree with, if I had to choose. But this case is essentially guaranteed to make liberals mad. Not good for trust in the court.

Sotomayor on the other hand argues that "a single function of the trigger" should not refer to how many times the lever of the gun moves, but rather its relation to the user, whether it's a single pull to the user. And in this case, as bump stocks allow for the use of them in a single motion, it should be considered a single function of the trigger. the relevant quality for a trigger is the relation not the user, not to the gun.

Sotomayor's argument sounds compelling, except that it's not at all how bump stocks, as banned by the rule in question, work. Accelerators with springs (or rubber bands or even shoelaces) were machine guns before the new rule. The bump stocks in question here do not and can not allow continuous fire in a single motion, because they simply have no ability to store energy between cycles of the action.

To operate, the shooter must push the rest of the gun forward from the stock, after each shot, bringing their finger back into contact with the trigger. There is a 'single motion' only in the sense that people can more readily apply forward pressure that can be overwhelmed by recoil than they can make fast squeeze-and-unsqueeze motions.

And that distinction was present even shortly after the NFA's introduction: then as into the 1950s and even now, hand-cranked gatling guns remain legal, while gas- or electric-operated ones were not. They can fire pretty fast, and there are points in their cycle where the shooter is 'just' continuing the spinning motion. But you can't make a heap from grains with the magic of 'action', here: there is a shot, and if the shooter disappeared or petrified by magic at that moment, the gun would stop.

((I'll point to a big frustration I have with the left side of the bench, here. Sotomayor cites and summarizes one case as "United States v. Camp, 343 F. 3d 743, 745 (CA5 2003) (upholding classification of fishing reel attached to a rifle trigger that, upon activation, repeatedly operated the curved lever of the rifle).". Which would be pretty strong evidence in favor of a long history of prosecuting gatling-like devices were that the case! But actually look at it and you get something drastically different [emphasis added]:

Louisiana authorities executing a search warrant at Camp's home seized firearms, illegal drugs, and drug-manufacturing equipment. One firearm was a modified semiautomatic rifle; Camp had added an electrically-operated trigger mechanism (device).

When an added switch behind the original trigger was pulled, it supplied electrical power to a motor connected to the bottom of a fishing reel that had been placed inside the weapon's trigger guard; the motor caused the reel to rotate; and that rotation caused the original trigger to function in rapid succession. The weapon would fire until either the shooter released the switch or the loaded ammunition was expended.

Yes, technically a fishing reel was involved. But come on. Camp wouldn't 'activate' the fishing reel; Camp activated a motor attached to the fishing reel. And indeed 'gat crank' devices that are little more than a better-machined fishing reel, without a motor, were still legal under the bump stock rule.))

Vidal's breakdown is... less interesting than it seems from the top line.

  • Thomas I, IIA, and IIB are pretty standard breakdowns of the case history and the most immediately relevant caselaw. There's not really anything to disagree with, here.
  • Thomas IIC points to pre-Revolutionary British and early-American law and tradition. The liberals and Barrett split here.
  • Thomas III is a teardown of Barrett and Sotomayor's analysis of more distant First Amendment jurisprudence (limited public forums and public benefits, respectively). Kavanaugh and Roberts left here, in addition to the liberals and Barrett. There's a philosophical position where the, but since neither Roberts nor Kavanaugh joined in the liberal more likely it's just collegiality uber allies.
  • Kavanaugh said even without a historical tradition, a viewpoint-neutral and content-based trademark rule would still be constitutional (why? doesn't say). Roberts joined.
  • Barrett I and II argue that trademark law is newer than the Founding era, and as a result, more expansive analogies are required, including matters like limited public fora. This... works, but it reads very much as finding an answer first and then reaching for something that would justify it, even by her own words: "I view the content-based nature of the limited public forum as analogous to the trademark registration system." Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson joined here.
  • Barret IIIA argues that some of the early laws Thomas points to did not include the prohibition on names that he thinks they did. This lost Sotomayor and Jackson, probably because they neither know nor care to be shown wrong.
  • Barret IIIB argues that even if the evidence were "rock-solid", she wouldn't focus on, but instead note that trademark law as a whole has generally revolved around content-based limits. It's kinda interesting that Jackson didn't sign on, here, but it's probably just her reading Barret's history here as more focused on the pre-1950 era.
  • Sotomayor wrote for the liberals, arguing in favor of looking more at judicial precedent. It's also conveniently pointing to the height of progressive control of the courts, but the bigger motivation is just blasting at historical analysis: there's a ton of cites, not always in context, about other complaints about it (even to an amici in Rahami). There's ways to read it as more compelling than 'stare decisis of the Warren Court', but they're pretty hard to get to.

This part of a longer and larger conversation on an originalists-versus-formalists-versus-progressives-trying-to-figure-out-a-principle thing, but I don't expect it to take a very memorable part of that.

Garland v. Cargill is... disappointing.

Especially from the left branch. I was kinda hoping for a Caniglia, here: not only was the bump stock ban a Trump act, it just touched on so many matters that should appall the progressive side of the branch, and they still (and it's a pretty nakedly partisan Sotomayor opinion that can't even get the facts right). It's not a Second Amendment case, and it wasn't a Chevron case, just bare statutory interpretation. Can the feds rewrite a law decades later with serious criminal penalties as punishment without involving an actual bill? Does the rule of lenity mean anything, if it doesn't apply where even regulating officials were apparently 'confused' by the text of the law?

I guess on the upside, I don't think even Sotomayor would condone a President unilaterally declaring thousands or tens of thousands of people into federal felons with nothing more than an APA notice, outside of a matter where she doesn't like it. But, uh, that's... not actually a compliment.

Alito signed off on federal laws banning machine guns -- no, he doesn't openly say he thinks it's constitutional, but it's very clearly why he wrote it. Which a) not a huge surprise, guess it's good to have the writing on the wall, and b) invites lower courts handling state assault weapons bans or other more arguable cases to read expansively.

Thomas' opinion is technically interesting (embedded images!) so yay.

But the biggest downside is just the procedural stance the whole thing got to SCOTUS in, and how little any member of SCOTUS seems to recognize that or try to cordon it off from repetition. As far as I can tell, no circuit court actually applied a preliminary injunction, most lower courts found for the government in increasingly-messy text, SCOTUS punted here on Aposhian v. Garland (2022), Gun Owners of Am., Inc. v. Garland (2022), Guedes v. ATF (2020), and even Hardin (I think?) end up in a bizarre indefinite stay. The Trump bump stock ban went into action 03/26/2019.

It's 2024.

Yes, no small number of people had boating accidents, often without owning a boat, and will be doing some impressive magnet fishing for aluminum. But this was a blatantly unlawful regulation, and in almost all of the United States, acting in accordance with that would leave you at serious risk of a long prison sentence for over five years. There's reason all the plaintiffs here were people who'd surrendered their stocks, and they're not alone. You'd be a moron (or hate your dog) not to! The ATF will have destroyed (or 'destroyed' into someone's private collection) any and all it received, no takebacks or cash-on-receipt; manufacturers have been driven out of business or moved into different fields; inertia gained ground.

Even prospective owners should consider, seriously, that all of those takings clause concerns and Second Amendment matters mean, at best, they'll be joining the landlocked boat club, and more likely that they'll be hung out to dry. They're inviting those threats in the future, and likely the near future.

Which is funny for bump stocks, but it's not like this has stuck to bump stocks. There's a fair argument that SCOTUS doesn't, but Aposhian, GOA v Garland, and Guedes all strike here. Guedes even had Gorsuch writing out bad some lower court opinions were. In 2020, he could punt in the hope that other courts would give considered judgement -- "provided, of course, that they are not afflicted with the same problems." Today, we know exactly how that turned out, and what cost it took to receive other courts making the same fuckery with Chevron.

Campos-Chaves v. Garland is... very Gorsuch.

The nexus for this case is that various government groups have been sending Notices to Appear with a Date of TBD, then sending the actual date later. The statute requires illegal immigrants to have a Notice to Appear with a specific date included (along with other information that seems to have actually been included) or a notice updating them after a change in proceedings.

This isn't as arbitrary a difference as it sounds at first glance -- illegal immigrants are more likely than citizens to miss individual papers, or be delayed receiving them, or have trouble with legal paperwork. And Campos-Chaves didn't appear before an immigration judge in 2005; if he was properly ordered removed at the time, he's still subject to removal; otherwise, he's eligible for discretionary relief from deportation (that he will almost certainly receive) under the 'continuous presence' rule.

((Though this does make Jackson's displeasure that the federal government did not behave better after SCOTUS gave notice in 2018 and 2021 rather uncompelling. His co-respondents aren't much better, here; Signh's NTA was issued in 2016 and repeatedly rescheduled, once due to Sighn's non-appearance, and Mendez-Colín was 2001 and he showed up to several immigration court appearances until it was clear he wasn't going to win (and was removed, probably 2005ish?).))

The law is written poorly, and I can see the potential for abuse: the strictest literal version would allow the state to send just a date and time, and not any of the other info, which has significant due process concerns. (As a pragmatic matter, it's not entirely clear why the government isn't just issuing the full I-862s with a rescheduling checkbox. Maybe privacy?)

But it doesn't seem like anyone has claimed the government has, or even wants to; both these cases and previous ones Jackson highlights seem more trying to get illegal immigrants out of custody quickly, even where the final hearing date isn't available. And from a pragmatic perspective, it's very far from clear that it would be better for ICE to issue I-862s with a knowingly false date, only to give a 'real' one later: it wouldn't change the stop-clock stuff, and obviously increase confusion. There are even some marginal cases where the government's arguments would lead to longer time being run before the 'stop-clock', compared to that counterfactual, though I doubt any would matter.

Jackson's position seems to be based on the argument that the update notices are always invalid without fully complete initial NTAs, and that they can't be said to have been issued at all. And at first glance that's not a crazy pragmatic matter. But it's a textual nightmare; it means the statute about update notices qualifying never applies.

Starbucks

Jackson's dissental is mostly trying to argue in favor of vastly increased deference to the NLRB -- while she says concurring in judgment, it's very hard to see her version of Winters as going against the NLRB, here. Probably under the assumption that, like a lot of Breyer's later work, it'll get cited as by lower courts as often as the opinion itself.

It's not a crazy argument -- Congress does often limit judicial review of some agency decisions, and it might even be reasonable in the NLRB's context -- though it is hilarious in contrast with her anti-Munsingwear takes. Not necessarily wrong, though.

Which is funny for bump stocks, but it's not like this has stuck to bump stocks. There's a fair argument that SCOTUS doesn't, but Aposhian, GOA v Garland, and Guedes all strike here. Guedes even had Gorsuch writing out bad some lower court opinions were. In 2020, he could punt in the hope that other courts would give considered judgement -- "provided, of course, that they are not afflicted with the same problems." Today, we know exactly how that turned out, and what cost it took to receive other courts making the same fuckery with Chevron.

The thing to remember here is that the Supreme Court does not want you to have guns. Even the six are elites and elitists. (OK, maybe not Thomas). They're appalled at the idea of guns in the hands of ordinary people. But they have a peculiar attachment to the high-class Constitution debating society they're in, and they have a side, and that side is both pro-gun and sour on expansive regulatory powers. So they want to make the point that the Constitution does support gun rights and not expansive regulatory powers, but also ensure the actual system of government restricts guns by any means necessary. Thus, decisions with loopholes that they refuse to plug, a refusal to provide any interim relief, and slapping down the Fifth Circuit when it attempts to apply these academic decisions as if they matter.

But it's a textual nightmare; it means the statute about update notices qualifying never applies.

It's not that it wouldn't apply, it would just be that it would only apply if the time/place had to be changed (from another time/place), right?

Maybe? I'm not sure how: the dissent's take is pretty explicitly that an update notice requires a complete I-862, and Niz-Chavez is pretty explicit that the stop-time rule only applies when a complete I-862 is delivered. And I'd be pretty willing to bet that a complete I-862 without a proper update notice for the real hearing's date wouldn't be any more appealing to Sotomayor (correctly, imo, and maybe even to the majority here). That sounds a lot more like an "and" than an "or", and even that would turn the statute into a necessary authority for an immigration court to reschedule (or serve multiple) hearings, which is pretty far from typical interpretation.

That sounds a lot mhre like an "and" than an "or"

It would be an "or"—whichever, (1) or (2), applies to the relevant hearing.

Mendez-Colín appeared for (multiple) previous hearings and was issued an order of removal after failing to appear at a hearing with an updated notice, and the dissent (and unpublished 9th Circuit opinion) didn't distinguish his case, so that doesn't work.

It's very common to see conservatives on both sides of an issue, while the liberals overwhelmingly tend to vote as a block…. Many right-leaning court watchers see that as a bad thing, as if the Court's conservatives are wishy-washy and ideologically unreliable.

As far as I can tell, most (thoughtful) conservatives would agree with you that the conservative justices are more principled and unbiased. They just see that as a bad thing since they perceive the liberal justices as defect-bots in an iterated prisoner’s dilemma, and it pains them to see the conservatives cooperating with them. These conservative commenters complain about ideological unreliability because, not being familiar with the field of game theory, they lack the vocabulary to couch their objections in other terms.

I don't think the liberal justices are insincere, exactly. (Actually, I'd need to go back and look at Dobbs to see whether I'll stand by that.) I think it's just closer to turning to asking what Congress/the Constitution/former versions of the court would want, which in practice are interpreted as benevolent entities in accord with their own opinions.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

U.S. Constitution, Preamble

I think the liberal justices, generally, take the underlying sentiment of the Preamble seriously, and see the rest of the Constitution as the means to the ends laid out above. The Supreme Court is one of the major branches of the government thereby established, and so it ought to carry its weight in pursuing the goals of the Preamble. Therefore, the Court ought to promote and defend good policies, and reject bad policies. After all, in doing so, it isn't making policy, but merely exercising judgment to ensure that the popular branches are properly oriented to the "general Welfare."

I'd go so far as to say that about half that logic is uncontroversial, but the remainder draws in some premises that are not shared.

The liberal justices largely follow the dominant philosophy of the American legal profession--legal realism. This philosophy was formulated over a hundred years ago, in its rejection of the dominant mode of thinking at the time, which the realists called 'legal formalism.'

The formalist frame was that every case had an objectively best outcome, determined by applying the governing law to the operative facts. Sometimes judges would fail in this task, and sometimes even the best outcome wasn't very good--or even good at all--but there was a best outcome to be found.

The realists rejected this frame, accusing the formalists of feigning their roles as a disinterested third party merely applying law to facts mechanistically, and instead smuggling in their own policy preferences in determining outcomes. In fact, the realists claimed that this was inevitable: no matter how much the formalists claimed to be acting in good faith in trying to be neutral arbiters, they were actually just another set of partisan actors on the stage of national politics. Since neutral disinterest was only a convenient mask for the formalists, it's all politics anyway, and the realists might as well pursue their own policy preferences unhindered by feigned neutrality.

The core of Justice Scalia's judicial philosophy was a rejection of legal realism, and a return to the narrow conception of the judge's role commonly understood beforehand. While the realists correctly pointed out that no judge could consistently be perfectly disinterested, the ideal of neutrality was too important to jettison, and it is the obligation of every judge to stick as close to that ideal as possible. Judges are not permitted to reject bad policy solely on the basis of its badness; they are only allowed to overturn any policy--good or bad--if it is inconsistent with a controlling authority, and properly presented as part of a real 'case or controversy.'

The liberal justices intend for their decisions to make a difference in the real world. The conservatives, so far as I can tell, are merely engaged in a legal debate society. They'll give the liberals a win out of sportsmanship if they come up with a clever enough argument (e.g. Bostock or McGirt v. Oklahoma) And while they're very insistent on making their points about the law, they'll never engage in the steps necessary to get those points translated into changes on the ground; they don't bother taking follow-up cases to slap down lower courts who didn't get the message. Though they ARE fond of slapping down the Fifth Circuit which does take conservative principles a little too seriously.

And sure they are right if the outcome is limited to the decisions at hand. But Scalia once talked about how he writes his dissents for law students since they are the ones who really have to grapple with trying to understand the law.

Regardless of how liberal or not liberal they are, Scalia heavily influenced numerous lawyers to move towards textualism.

My contention (maybe my cope) is that being honest jurists produces better thought out opinions. Better opinions have a real influence on the next generation. So you end up winning over time.

I think I share that hope/cope. IMO, partisan hacks just aren't going to leave a lasting impression on the judicial culture. Whereas Justices who focus on principled outcomes, like Scalia with his textualist approach, have an undeniable impact (Kagan famously said "We're all textualists now," which has not proved as true as I could wish, but the trend does seem to be in that direction--at least, very few opinions on either side of the Court in recent years have been as nakedly outcome-oriented and political as the decisions of e.g. the Warren court).

Did you see this opinion piece just two weeks ago that mathematically broke down voting patterns? They use some data to show there's a bit more of an L-shaped 3-3-3 split on the court (with they consider to be both an institutionalist as well as ideological axis), and also mention that not very many of the cases overall show the traditional 6-3 explicitly partisan split vote. In fact only 5 of 57 cases landed this way. Related, they also argue that how "important" and "divisive" a case is (per the media) actually turns out to be even more highly subjective than commonly thought.

NB: split and analysis was from the 2022-23 session

NB2: The groupings they found are Sotomayor - Kagan - Jackson; Roberts - Kavanaugh - Barrett; Alito - Gorsuch - Thomas

Some friends and I discussed this and propose the following improvement: 3-3-2-1. Keep the groups almost the same, except cleave Gorsuch into an idiosyncratic group of one. Thomas and Alito seem extremely compatible, but Gorsuch is the member of the court most often beating his own drum. And of all the conservative justices he's the one most likely to cross over to the liberal side, for reasons conservatives will unusually respect.

Do you think Gorsuch is his own group, or just happens to have a few "pet issues" that he individually feels strongly and deviantly about? I think the article pointed out he often goes his own way in Native American cases, for example.

Gorsuch is I think the only one formally trained in philosophy. He has a very interesting mind that creates unique opinions. His influence will be profound. Doesn’t hurt that he is a good writer.

I don't think I'll ever forgive him for Bostock, but he's easily the best Justice since Scalia, and as good a replacement as anyone could have hoped for.

Interesting article! This finding in particular caught my attention:

The three liberal justices voted together in fewer than a quarter of the non-unanimous cases, and the six conservatives voted together only 17 percent of the time.

This suggests the pattern I noticed is real, although the size of the disparity is not huge. However, I would still like to see a similar voting breakdown focused only on cases with strong culture war salience. The court decides a large number of cases each term that don't have any obvious partisan ramifications. It may be the case that the justices don't particularly care about ideological conformity in such cases, but are more likely to vote as a block on cases involving controversial partisan issues. And the conservatives and liberals may do so at different rates.

I also dispute the 3-3-3 breakdown presented in the article. The authors put Gorsuch and Thomas (who agree 77% of the time) in the same group, but their chart shows that Thomas is more likely to agree with Barrett (82%) than with Gorsuch, and Gorsuch is more likely to agree with Barrett (82%) and Kavanaugh (80%) than with Thomas, and equally likely to agree (77%) with Roberts!

I confess, I am a hopeless wordcel, so it's highly likely that I've misunderstood the statistical wizardry at play in this chart. However, the numbers they give suggest to me that the Justices' breakdown more like 3-3-1.5-1.5: three liberals who vote together, three conservatives who vote together (Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett), Alito, and two Justices who often vote with Alito but don't reliably vote with each other (Thomas and Gorsuch).

Roberts and Kavanaugh definitely vote together more with each other than with Barrett.

Yeah, I thought it added something unique. Re: "I would like to see a similar voting breakdown focused only on cases with strong culture war salience":

Let’s look at the three cases from last term that were described as the most politically divisive that were decided along that ideological, x-axis.

The Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s student loan debt forgiveness plan. That was a 6-3 case that lined up ideologically and was by nearly any measure an important one. But if that case were decided only along the ideological axis, then why did five of those conservative justices uphold the Biden administration’s immigration enforcement plan? That decision held that states — in this case Texas and Louisiana — couldn’t sue to force the president to deport undocumented immigrants who had been convicted of crimes while in the United States? This was also considered a highly political case while it was pending before the court, but because it was decided 8-1 in favor of the Biden administration, it barely got any attention. If it had been decided 6-3 against the Biden administration, it no doubt would have been considered divisive — which just highlights the problem with the definition.

The Supreme Court also decided three cases about how to deal with the country’s history of racial discrimination last term. The court upheld section 2 of the Voting Rights Act which requires states to consider race in creating congressional districts. That was a 5-4 decision with the chief justice, Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh and Jackson in the majority. The court upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act which gave adoption placement preferences based on tribal status. That was 7-2. And it struck down Harvard and North Carolina’s race-based admissions policies by a 6-3 vote along ideological lines. Only the last case got major headlines. Why? Perhaps because the other two didn’t line up strictly on ideological lines, and therefore were not divisive.

I think they are making the case here that there's some very, very strong selection bias in play when we categorize things as "politically divisive", roughly analogous to "strong culture war salience". In other words, if we only ever describe whether a case is divisive based on the result, rather than the actual case, of course we are going to see a lot of divisive and partisan cases! It's - I think it's kind of like begging the question logical fallacy, yes?

Of course you probably could rate ideological controversy before cases are decided and then look at voting patterns. I think they didn't in this case because they wanted to focus on a time period where the 9 justices were also the current justices, and Jackson was only confirmed in 2022. I agree I would be interested if this type of analysis held up in other previous years with different justices, though it would lack the same generalizability.

I like your writeup.

Hypothesis for your latter observation: there are more conservative justices, appointed over a longer period. I wouldn't be surprised if they have more competition between viewpoints.

But then, I do tend to take weird splits like Campos-Chaves v. Garland as evidence against partisan capture. I want to believe that Court is better modeled as a club of weirdo turbo-lawyers. They obviously aren't immune to mainstream politics, but they play with a rather different set of incentives.

"Weirdo turbo-lawyers" is exactly how I view most of the Justices, with the exception of a few who seem reliably partisan (Alito on the right, Sotomayor on the left; maybe Jackson as well, but it's too early to tell). Thomas in particular holds so many idiosyncratic views at odds with the rest of the Court that he seems like a sort of mad genius: he loves to write these audacious solo opinions confidently attacking well-established precedents, but I often find myself thinking "damn ... he might be right!" after reading them. (For example, he consistently argues that the Establishment Clause is not incorporated against the States; in other words, the Constitution does not bar States from establishing a State religion--see Section II of this opinion). There has been a lot of scrutiny lately over Thomas receiving gifts from Republican donors, with pundits suggesting they were bribes for voting a certain way. Maybe, but Thomas's opinions seem way too weird, and at the same time too carefully-thought-out, to be insincere. And if I was a billionaire trying to buy votes, I wouldn't bother with Thomas--Empirical SCOTUS has a "Justice Power Index," and Thomas is consistently on the bottom because he so rarely agrees with the rest of the Court.

Jackson's starting to have her own windmills to tilt at: the anti-Munsingswear solo dissents and concurrences, and while they have obvious political ramifications (tactically mooting a case after receiving a favorable injunction in lower courts is mostly useful for current progressive goals, if only because SCOTUS demonstratably isn't going to wait before slapping down the 5th Circuit), it's at least a meaningful position with not-crazy-partisan political underpinning. She's not a Thomas or Gorsuch on that (yet!), but it took a few years for Thomas, at least, to grow into it.

I don't like the position, and maybe it's not enough to pull her from the 'reliably' partisan, but not an obvious thing either.

If I were a rich man trying to keep the flyer a particular way, I might try to find a SCOTUS justice so he doesn’t start thinking “maybe I retire in order to make some real money.”

I want to believe that Court is better modeled as a club of weirdo turbo-lawyers.

Among whom Gorsuch prides himself on being the most idiosyncratic weirdo.

I think so too. Textualists are supposed to care about the meaning of the statutory language, without worrying too much about "legislative intent." But Gorsuch, sometimes, takes this principal so far that he seems to enjoy finding a perversely-literal interpretation of a statute which everyone agrees the legislature could not have intended. Bostock is the clearest example IMO: according to Gorsuch, the Civil Rights Act's prohibition of sex discrimination also unambiguously prohibits employers from discriminating against homosexual and transgender employees (of both sexes), despite the fact that (in the words of Judge Posner) "the Congress that enacted [the Act] would not have accepted" that interpretation. In fact, Congress had already considered and rejected a proposed amendment to the Civil Rights Act that would have extended its protection to "sexual orientation and gender identity," and (Alito points out in dissent) "until 2017, every single Court of Appeals to consider the question" rejected Gorsuch's reading of the text. According to Gorsuch, treating men and women equally is not important; the Civil Rights Act apparently requires men and women to be treated exactly the same, to the point that you can't fire a male employee for wearing womens' clothing (it's important to note that Gorsuch's reasoning here would apply to all male employees, regardless of their "gender identity."). So, can an employer take action against a male employee--who identifies as a man--who insists on using the women's bathroom? Wouldn't firing that employee be motivated, in part, by the employee's sex, according to Gorsuch's rule? Yet Gorsuch refuses to engage with this inescapable extension of his reasoning, lamely announcing that those cases "are not before us ... we do not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind."

So Gorsuch, one of the more reliable conservative votes, has on at least one occasion handed a huge culture war victory to the left because (in my uncharitable opinion) he thought it would be impressive to discover a "counterintuitive" reading of the statute. The reason Congress and all those appellate courts didn't interpret the statute the same way is that they just weren't smart enough to find the "unambiguous" meaning of Title VII, unlike the eagle-eyed textualist Gorsuch. Then he refuses to even consider the obvious import of his holding on nearly-identical culture war issues, like sex-segregated bathrooms and changing rooms, because--again--he's one of those elite compartmentalizing textualists who consider only the issues before them, and who are not swayed by irrelevant appeals to unlitigated issues and public policy concerns.

This turned into more of a rant than I intended, but I do think it supports the argument of some right-wingers that "thoughtful" conservative Justices can be a liability, since it only takes a couple of them to side with the defect-bot liberals and inflict huge damage on the right.

I like it! This is excellent elaboration on the shorter summary of the court I had back at the beginning of the year. I think the model I lay out there continues to work pretty well with what we're seeing in rulings, particularly in the two split decisions from Friday. In Campos, I'm sure Gorsuch was very excited to contemplate the possibility of a conjunctive "or".

This turned into more of a rant than I intended, but I do think it supports the argument of some right-wingers that "thoughtful" conservative Justices can be a liability...

One part that I'd add is that we don't really have any such examples of a Gorsuch opinion that's bizarre textual literalism that benefits the right or part of its allegiances.

Maybe he'll prove me wrong -- Williams v. Kincaid in the 4th Circuit is kinda an anti-matter Bostock, where there's absolutely no question that the explicit ADA statute excludes a wide array of sexuality and gender-related stuff, and lower federal courts have decided that Congress must have really 'intended' for this exception to not apply for a wide array of sexuality and gender-related stuff.

Wouldn't put money on it, though.

Maybe he'll prove me wrong -- Williams v. Kincaid in the 4th Circuit is kinda an anti-matter Bostock, where there's absolutely no question that the explicit ADA statute excludes a wide array of sexuality and gender-related stuff

Perfect example of the use of institutional capture. Congress excludes "gender identity disorders". The (captured) APA drops "gender identity disorders" and replaces them with "gender dysphoria", and the Fourth Circuit says "Oh, that's totes different".

he's one of those elite compartmentalizing textualists who consider only the issues before them, and who are not swayed by irrelevant appeals to unlitigated issues and public policy concerns.

Just like rationalists. The biggest problem with rationalist reasoning is the refusal to sanity-check ther results of arguments. Rationalists will draw absurd conclusions like insect welfare or donating one's kidney to a stranger and say "sure, I guess that's right" rather than figuring out that something has gone wrong with their reasoning process if it produces such an absurd result. See also: terrorists who fail at epistemic learned helplessness.

Public policy concerns isn't quite the right way to describe it. That makes it sound like some sort of legislation by reinterpretation like the left does. If the people who created the law wouldn't have wanted the public policy implications of your interpretation of the law, that's a failure to sanity check, that's not public policy in the sense of "I am deliberately inerpreting the law to bring about this public policy".

US revoked the weapon ban on the openly Nazi, Azov brigade. The Azov Brigade, now 3rd separate assault force is also having considerable success in recruiting new soldiers. Now I don't know how much influence does Neo-Nazis wield in the Ukrainian government, but even assuming it is little, the thought of a trained, professional Nazi brigade with combat experience being armed with weapons and given legitimacy scares the shit out of me. What is the US thinking? What is their endgame? In the scenario that Ukraine is able to survive, do they think they can easily do away with the Brigade? In my opinion this is a huge miscalculation. The US might very well think Ukrainian politicians can outmaneuver Azovs if they decided to enter the political space orv if in worst case scenario, Azovs took Ukraine through a coup, they can deal with it through military action. Either option will come with huge costs, never-mind the possibility or degree of their success in disposing them.

Does anyone have any credible sources for the current Nazi influence in Ukraine?

I am not a Russia hawk, but I would need to see some evidence that Azov could actually topple the Ukrainian government before I believed it. As it is, the Ukrainians are hardly in a position to be picky.

More credible would be the threat of violent reprisals against Russians or Russian speakers in Ukraine, particularly in those regions that it seeks to reconquer, which seems very likely to me.

Oh, and I might add - Ukraine is not Germany. Germany is a great industrial and military power. Ukraine is poor and corrupt and has little industry. It doesn't even have young people. Even supposing it was taken over by Nazis (already a great stretch), it would not threaten Europe.

Not Azov, the far right which is far bigger than Azov. The dangers has lessened somewhat because the most zealous people were the most likely to die. A lot of Azov was killed in the futile defense of Azovstal in Mariupol.

Is this fear of Ukranaian Nazis genuine, or just an attempt to sap anti-Russian energy in the West by associating Ukraine with one of the past century's great villains?

There seems to have been a very convenient transfer of exaggerated fear of Nazis from the progressive left to the far right which took place right around the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Historically it echoes how the American Left went from impassioned pacifists in the 1930s to hawkish anti-Nazis coinciding with the collapse of the Hitler-Stalin pact.

My far-right friends mocked the "punch a Nazi" drumbeat up until it became a weapon in Putin's rhetoric, so I have trouble accepting it at face value.

Is this fear of Ukranaian Nazis genuine, or just an attempt to sap anti-Russian energy in the West by associating Ukraine with one of the past century's great villains?

Speaking for myself as someone who doesn't really consider themselves pro Russian (but would likely be considered as such by others) there's no real genuine fear of Azov - they're just shown as an example of the hypocrisy of western governments. Nazis are the worst ever and need to be punched in order for democracy to survive... but these nazis are actually heroes, and your tax dollars need to be used to support them. The reason people bring up the fact that western governments are actually extremely pro-Nazi in the Ukraine is to damage the illusion that Western governments are motivated by ethical values("defending democracy" etc) rather than pure realpolitik.

There is potential concern that after Ukraine's defeat the remnants of the Azovites will become a far-right paramilitary organisation with a bone to pick with Europe, but nobody really cares - the far right are probably ok with an armed neonazi terrorist remnant fighting for their side and bombing synagogues, while the people who support the Ukraine war are doubtless extremely happy for there to be another reason for European tax dollars to get funnelled to arms/"security" companies once the war is over.

Is this fear of Ukranaian Nazis genuine, or just an attempt to sap anti-Russian energy in the West by associating Ukraine with one of the past century's great villains?

Yeah, I'm pretty anti-Western as far as it goes, but this is one of the lamest arguments in circulation. Like, who do you expect to voluntarily show up to face bullets, artillery fire, and drones? It's going to be the same type of guy in practically every country.

I don't understand why so many people seem to believe that Nazis have some kind of mystical totemic powers that make them an ever-present threat far beyond their actual material capacity. Like if 100 people do the Nazi salute at midnight, they'll be empowered with the strength of a hundred thousand Panzers, instantly overthrow their government, and invade Poland.

"...the thought of a trained, professional Nazi brigade with combat experience being armed with weapons and given legitimacy scares the shit out of me. What is the US thinking? What is their endgame? In the scenario that Ukraine is able to survive, do they think they can easily do away with the Brigade?"

The Azov Brigade is made up of 900-2,500 soldiers. The Ukrainian Army has 170,000 soldiers. Why, exactly, do you think the Azov Brigade is such a threat? Just because they're Neo-Nazis? That's it? Being Neo-Nazis grants them the superhuman power of the Ubermensch, and with it the ability to sweep aside an army 100 times their size? Do you think that Neo-Nazism is such an appealing ideology that if they ever get the tiniest shred of power then everyone in the Ukraine will instantly convert to become card-carrying Nazis - and, after that, the world, since apparently this is a threat that the US State Department should take seriously?

People who get performatively afraid of the rising threat of Nazism remind me of those homophobic Christians who are obviously in the closet. "Everyone knows that all men are sexually attracted to other men, and the only thing stopping us from getting hot and heavy with those beautiful, chiseled male bodies is the threat of eternal damnation. That's why we can never allow any homosexual sex, ever - it's too tempting! No one could resist the siren song of gay sex if it were an option! It would destroy the family!"

Do you think the only thing protecting us from the overwhelming power and appeal of the Nazi ideology is ruthless, constant suppression? Do you think that Nazism is so appealing, so powerful, so effective, that all it takes is one active Neo-Nazi group and a handful of guns to threaten the most powerful nations on Earth? Because if so I think you might be a Nazi.

I think of Nazism as nothing but a minor historical ideology that held sway for a little more than a decade, in one country, eighty years ago. They were ineffectual rulers who only managed to start and then subsequently lose a war before being deposed. Granted, it was a pretty big war. The thought of some guys in another country cosplaying as Nazis doesn't concern me any more than the thought of some guys in another country cosplaying as Jacobins.

A war is fought not only on the battlefield, but also in the realm of propaganda.

As you point out, the size of Azov is trivial compared to the size of the army, and wearing swastikas does not actually grant combat superpowers.

But this should also mean that the possible battlefield gains from arming them with US weapons would be small.

On the propaganda front, it does not matter that they are only a small group. The USSR fought one big war, in which some 13% of its citizens were killed. In the end, they won, and it is a victory celebrated to this day in Russia. Their enemies in that war were flying the swastika.

Allowing a group of your citizens to cosplay as Nazis instead of drafting them into regular army units is handing Russia an easy propaganda victory. One would be better off supporting a brigade of child rapists and cannibals.

Also, the threat model is not that Azov declares its own state and sets out to conquer Ukraine by force of arms -- which is indeed silly given the power balance. There is a huge difference between having two thousand guys with military gear outside your borders and having them freely move within your country. It takes a lot more than 2000 men with guns to defend against 2000 determined terrorists.

One of the scarier phrases from Weimar Germany is "Reichswehr schiesst nicht auf Reichswehr" -- uttered when the German army refused to engage paramilitary putschists because they recognized them as comrades in arms. Every army seems to have some fraction of crypto-fascists, and the Ukraine army is likely no exception.

At the moment, Azov are suffering the Jewish president Zelenskyy to live because his interests and their interests align -- both want to stop Russian aggression by military means. I find it highly likely that Ukrainian mainstream -- and their president -- will tire of this war before Asov does. From the situation on the ground, it looks like any peace deal would involve some concessions to Russia, Crimea if nothing else. At that point, Azov could turn against Zelenskyy.

Allowing a group of your citizens to cosplay as Nazis instead of drafting them into regular army units is handing Russia an easy propaganda victory.

But Russia also allows groups of its citizens, like this one, to cosplay as the Nazis. Of course one could argue that kolovrat is something else than a barely-plausible-deniality swastika (after all, it has barely plausible deniality!), but come on now.

Rusich is far, far less influential than Azov.

Firstly, their influence is grossly overblown, as outlined by multiple commenters here. A few thousand neo-Nazis aren't a particularly big threat, Ukrainian civic governance seems strong enough that in the event of a peace (of whatever kind, barring Russian occupation), the state machinery is at minimal risk of being overthrown and the country thrown into internecine fighting where such paltry numbers would make a difference. There are plenty of hardened combat units in Ukraine who have only fervent nationalism in common with Azov.

Secondly, there's always the pragmatic option once employed by Hamad to deal with the Al-Qassam brigades. What do you do with a group of fanatical (and exceedingly so, even by Hamas standards) Jihadists who went into every mission accepting death with equanimity if it spread their ethos?

You marry them off, going to refugee camps and selling impoverished women on the honorable prospect of marrying a glorious almost-martyr. Give them a pension and sinecure too, and they won't need to resort to violence as the only way they know to make a living, or as their first choice of livelihood.

Circa 2008:

Hamas, the militant Islamist group that controls Gaza, has been observing a truce with Israel since June, allowing its underground fighters to resurface but leaving them without much to do. At the same time, hundreds of the group’s women have been recently widowed, their husbands having been killed either in confrontations with Israel or in the fighting last year between Hamas and its secular rival, Fatah.

Taking advantage of the pause in violence, the Hamas leaders have turned to matchmaking, bringing together single fighters and widows, and providing dowries and wedding parties for the many here who cannot afford such trappings of matrimony.

“Marriage is the same as jihad,” or holy war, said Muhammad Yousef, one recently married member of the Qassam Brigades, the Hamas underground. “With marriage, you are producing another generation that believes in resistance.”

About 300 Qassam members, mostly in their 20s, signed up with their new wives for the most recent celebration, held at a sports stadium in the Tuffah district, east of Gaza City. Local mosques spread the word about the event and offered to help find spouses for single men whose families had not yet managed to arrange them a match.

As an added inducement, couples were promised a cash grant in lieu of a dowry, which few families could afford.

Turns out that a lot of angry young men with extremist tendencies rapidly cool down when confronted with a wife and kids they love and are responsible for. You're not going to dissuade them from their ideological tendencies quite so easily, but that's effectively de-fanging them.

In other words, deal with people with nothing to lose by giving them something to lose.

If/when this war cools down, well, there's plenty of Ukrainian women abroad, and at home, and it won't take all that much to either 'encourage' them to marry a dashing young fighter, while also giving them cash/jobs, and effective indemnity from political retribution when they cease to be allies of convenience. Provide the latter two and there's almost certainly going to be women wanting in regardless.

I get what you are saying, but pointing to Hamas as an example of how to successfully de-radicalize young violent men is not entirely without irony in 2024.

I think the important part is simply, how is post-war Ukraine managed? Nazi-aligned groups getting funded in life-and-death struggle with a high mortality rate needs to be understood in this context. There are some potential parallels with Weimar Germany, where you had disbanded military units wandering around and forming militias in the context of a destabilized, new democracy with significant economic problems. I don't quite see Ukraine taking that path, but it's a possibility if the war ends with a politically divisive whimper and the economy crashes that a particularly well-trained and cohesive -but ideologically radical- group gains power in a society where post-war violence is normalized and insecurity is the norm.

Of course, there IS still a moral argument for "even in a life-and-death struggle, you don't give power to Nazis" as just that, a moral argument only (no practical considerations). I think the logical link here is, how likely are the Nazi groups to actually act on their hate-filled inclinations? If it's currently mostly-benign and political only that's one thing; if it's active in repression somehow, that's another. I also somewhat hesitate to write Nazism off as purely a local and minor ideology when it killed 6+ million people outside of war.

I think the steel man is that Azov has a lot of street cred with the Ukrainian nationalist right and could easily wind up leading the place in the event of postwar turmoil.

But again, what made the Nazis so bad was a set of policies that Azov doesn’t seem committed to. They’re close enough for government work to call Nazi but they’re not doctrinaire Nazis.

I don't understand why so many people seem to believe that Nazis have some kind of mystical totemic powers that make them an ever-present threat far beyond their actual material capacity. Like if 100 people do the Nazi salute at midnight, they'll be empowered with the strength of a hundred thousand Panzers, instantly overthrow their government, and invade Poland.

Please give some examples of people who hold the belief you are criticizing. This would be a very uncharitable interpretation of the post you're actually responding to, so let's assume it's not them you're talking about. Who is it, specifically? There's apparently "so many" of them, in your words, so examples should not be hard to find.

On the one hand, it could be seen as a knee-jerk over-reaction based on the cultural prominence of this overall viewpoint.

On the other, the thread OP did say "scares the shit out of me" about it, and did not elaborate on exactly what was so scary about a thousand-ish men being given some weapons in the middle of a huge war involving many hundreds of thousands on both sides.

Good point, I should have elaborated on that. Its not exactly the weapons that I am concerned about but rather the influence. I wanted to know how much influence they currently wield in both the system and the populace, which is answered. Azovs and Nazis wield marginal if not zero influence in the system despite being popular with populace, and as long as the war goes on. On the other hand the west needs to get the post-war management would be crucial.

I tried to look into this some a while back, mostly along the lines of, what's the deal with the supposedly-Nazi Azov Battalion working together with Jewish Ukraine President Zelensky? What I came away with is, there's more than one perspective on Nazism.

There's the actual original Nazi party, a creature of 1920s Germany. Started out with mostly reasonable-sounding goals, but went to a very bad place. They're long gone now though, and nobody but some nerdy historians seems terribly concerned with what they actually thought and why.

There's how modern Westerners see Nazism, a mix of authoritarianism, warmongering imperialism, and racism and anti-semitism to the point of genocide. Reasonable given our perspective and role in the actual war, but probably not very well connected to how actual Nazi party members saw themselves.

How Russians and Eastern Europeans saw Nazism is another perspective entirely, with no connection to either of the others. Many in Russia, particularly Russian nationalists, see them as a horrific menace, bent on total destruction of their people and culture, that they only barely survived by tremendous effort and sacrifice. And quite a few in Ukraine, particularly Ukrainian Nationalists, see them primarily as a bulwark against Soviet/Russian domination, which was itself quite brutal and arguably genocidal against Ukrainians. I believe this strain is what Azov represents - it's just a meme demonstrating that they're really, seriously, majorly opposed to Russian domination. I don't think they have any awareness of, much less actually share, any of the actual viewpoints and goals of the original Nazi party, and of course have nothing to do with the Western view of Nazism. I think they'd be utterly baffled if you tried to discuss with them whether they intended to rampage across Europe and round up all the Jews if they were to win. They'd have no idea where you were coming from or how you got it into your head that they might want to do that.

I'm not in a position to provide examples but agree with OP that the described attitude is rampant.

Motte alum KulakRevolt had an interesting piece on this recently. https://www.anarchonomicon.com/p/were-all-hitlerists-now

So- my understanding is that Azov is neo-Nazi in the sense that they’re White supremacists who love Hitler, think the Nazis should have won WWII, and have a racial hatred for Russia and Russians. Sure, I’ll call that Nazi, but they’re not promising a genocide, or to invade their neighbors. Even if they wind up in the peacetime government of Ukraine after the war, they’ll probably morph into standard average nationalist-conservative far right party- the US isn’t panicking about mi hazank or reconquete either.

You're skipping over the fact that they were engaging in ethnic cleansing in eastern Ukraine before the conflict heated up.

I have no doubts people like that would be persecuting Russian speakers using typical natsoc tactics if given power, and that's a far cry from standard nationalism. The other parties you cite didn't do that and don't have large paramilitary forces.

People don't want to contemplate this because Putin uses it to justify his geopolitical moves, but it was still a real thing.

I did a rather cursory online search because the two linked articles are sort of confusing as they focus on two different units. The 3rd Assault Brigade is apparently a regular unit of the Ukrainian ground/land forces as of now, and if Wikipedia is to be trusted, its only tangible continuity with Azov is that most of its current(?) members were recruited in the Northern theatre of operations by those veterans of the unit who weren’t encircled in Mariupol. What I think bears mentioning in this particular context is that their insignia was apparently the subject of a rather comical PR move, namely that one stripe was removed from it so as to turn it into something that’s not a wolf hook. (See it for yourself here and here.)

The brigade, on the other hand, that still carries the “Azov” name is nominally of “special purpose” (whatever that means in this context, but this phrase has mostly been an ominous one, especially in Eastern Europe) and is part of the National Guard instead of the army land forces, but that is a difference that is only relevant in peacetime. And no, they don’t carry the wolf hook anymore either.

Anyway, it’s the latter unit that this US government decision affects, but I’d guess this is a purely symbolic measure, because I’d be rather surprised to learn that the Ukrainian National Guard used to have strict measures in effect until now to ensure the Azov does not receive US arms. And even if did, that’d only mean that Azov is being supplied with arms from other NATO members, presumably with rather more strict laws in effect against neo-Nazi symbology than the US.

Westerners seem incapable of understanding the idea of different cultures. If they want to like a different people, they’ll project their own culture on them and will rationalize away major differences as not really existing. Thus, Azov aren’t really Nazis, they’re just… LARPing, I guess?

Thus, Azov aren’t really Nazis, they’re just… LARPing, I guess?

What is "really a Nazi"? The German NSDAP party (1920-1945) has been defunct for generations. It's physically impossible to be a real Nazi then. And yet people keep using that word without irony and demanding to be taken as if they are speaking seriously.

I, personally, continue to be confused and angered by other's dialog around this fetishezed word. How it's used is clearly propaganda and point blank logical fallacy usage. The equivocation fallacy, I believe. X thing holds the mental symbolic resonance of [evil] thing we all hate. People want Y thing to be hated too, so they use the title of X and expect transference of associations, even though Y is objectively different than X in all the ways that made X probable to be associated with the mental color [evil]. Namly Y is not a militarized authoritarian party in the 1940s running Auschwitz and making massacre graves on the Eastern Front. What I don't get is why people, you included, seem to believe their own propaganda. This shit ain't real. "Nazis" are no longer real. Is there confusion on this?

What there is, and has been before, during, and after Germany 1920-1945 is the an ultra "right-wing" mentality and disposition. Some of these people do in fact engage in LARPy antinomian symbology and acts associated with the past NSDAP party (e.g. swastikas, salutes, black sun) - intentionally because they are so taboo most likely, because there's limited good ultra-right art/iconography to draw on, as well as admiration for the high point of the German ultra-right at its apex when it was winning. People love a winner and tend to rally behind one. But the ultra right mentality would exist if God deleted Germany from all time. People are their own thing. Again, is there confusion on this?

“Really a Nazi” here refers to genuinely held beliefs. “Not really a Nazi” means that Azov are only acting like they’re holding Nazi beliefs (whatever those are), but actually that’s only performative - on the inside they’re perfectly race blind liberals who think just like the modal westerner. I.e they’re LARPing as Nazis, like one would LARP as a wizard without actually believing oneself to be a wizard.

None of this is dependent on there still being “real” Nazis or not, since you’re using the word “real” to mean something completely different. I’m talking about what’s going on inside their head, not their party membership.

Alternatively they understand that Ukraine isn't going to be a national socialist state under the rule of the US state department. Unless they are willing to go full taliban Ukraine is not going to be national socialist. The Azov guys will end up in a trench somewhere. Mean while Ukraine's assets will be sold off to western financial institutions who will use staff trained at american colleges for white collar jobs while Bangladeshi migrants do the manual farm labour. The soldier's who are dying by the thousands can have whatever ideology they want, the companies rebuilding Ukraine's electrical grid and supply food to Ukraine's super markets have chief diversity officers.

Sure, that might be the rationalization this time around. It doesn’t explain all the other times this happens, or all the other replies here arguing that the Nazis aren’t actually Nazis, but it works for understanding this one decision this one time. I personally don’t buy it, because I’d prefer to see the overall pattern rather than zoom in on this one instance.

Mean while Ukraine's assets will be sold off to western financial institutions who will use staff trained at american colleges for white collar jobs while Bangladeshi migrants do the manual farm labour.

What I find sort of comical is that the situation won't be fundamentally different in the case of Russian annexation either.

Bangladeshi migrants are not a common feature of Russian economy, outside of the front line where they've managed to convince a whole bunch of Indians that a 30-40% chance of death for $4k a month is a good deal.

Well, India does have some tens of millions of surplus men, so maybe it is a good deal for everyone involved?

Bangladeshi migrants are not a common feature of Russian economy

Indeed they aren't. But Asian migrants as a whole, are.

That's the expected outcome of an invasion. Usually one lays one's life on the line and fights back to prevent such things.

Wasn't the original Azov brigade pretty much destroyed at Mariupol? It may be the hard-core guys are dead.

That's gotta be the least popular position - Azov really were a bunch of Nazis and they died heroically, defending their country to the last man because of their steadfast Nazi hatred for Russians.

They didn't 'die to the last man'.

~250 defenders of Azovstal surrendered and were exchanged in a prisoner swap mediated by Turkey. Turkey also promised to keep the commanders interned until end of war, but reneged on that promise and returned them..

I am not an expert by any mean, but imho is the same situation of Croatia in the 90s; everyone screeching about far right nationalists who like Hitler and the Ustasce and the next croatian fascist regime after the war with Serbia. Then you have liberal democracy and talk of gay marriage legalization.

The Liberal-Atlantic bloc has been very good at using then dismantling far right organisation without any sort of problem, I have no doubt they will also do it in Ukraine. Unlike far-left organisations, there is no desire to keep these groups in power after the Emergency.

The crucial difference is that the war in question was concluded with complete success in swift military operations before Croatia had liberal democracy, because their war wasn't against Serbia per se, but against a separatist state in Krajina that was in a military disadvantage in every aspect, had no nuclear weapons, no arms industry and was not supported by any other country. Croatian far-right paramilitary groups had influence during the war because it was waged in the name of national independence. Once the central government's authority was secured over all territories it staked a claim for and the Croatian state was recognized by the so-called international community, I imagine there was little political support left for maintaining those armed groups anymore. I rather doubt they were dismantled in any sense, because dismantling entails coercive state measures, which I doubt were taken; it's rather that they there incorporated into the armed forces or disbanded on their own, and transformed into purely political parties.

I'm aware that the NAFO gang wants to believe that the situation in the Donbass is basically the same and final victory is in sight, but it actually isn't.

I have to agree with Dean, there aren't any real Nazis in Ukraine. You can't be a Nazi and fight for a country run by a Jew.

Far rightists? Ultranationalists? People who love sonnenrads and take every opportunity to get edgy tattoos? People who threaten anyone who opposes maximalist war aims? Sure. If we use the liberal definition of Nazism, then Ukraine is full of Nazis. The same people who were hysterical about Trump's fascist rhetoric could hardly ignore the Waffen SS LARPing.

The real trouble is all the weapons that have been pumped into such a corrupt country. They'll presumably find their way to third parties after the war, if not during it.

I have to agree with Dean, there aren't any real Nazis in Ukraine. You can't be a Nazi and fight for a country run by a Jew.

There were jews and half Jews in the Wehrmacht, and to a lesser degree the SS and also the Waffen-SS..

Hitler could make anyone an Aryan by fiat. He did just that with the Mischlinges Field Marshal Erhard Milch, General der Flieger Helmuth Wilberg, and others who had proved their military value. One photograph of Wilberg shows him resplendent in uniform with no fewer than 12 medals pinned to his proud Aryan, formerly half-Jewish, chest. Nonetheless, despite Wilberg’s altered religious status, he insisted that he fought not for the Fuehrer, but for Fatherland and Volk. The distinction was a common refrain among Hitler’s Jewish military men, and some Aryans as well.

Sure but being Jewish is a ethnically rooted property, not an ideological property like Nazism. You could be French and hate the French nation, seek its destruction and yet still be French. It would be impossible to be a French nationalist, however.

Is it? Except for the most extreme Jews, conversion happen and are recognized now. They're merely difficult, which serves to preserve quality.

You can't be a Nazi and fight for a country run by a Jew.

This gets at an interesting difference between the western and Russian (or at least Putin's) definitions of Nazi. In the west, the defining feature of Nazis is their hatred of and desire to exterminate Jews, and any feelings they have about Russians are orthogonal to their Naziness, whereas in Russia the defining feature of Nazis is their hatred of and desire to displace and kill Slavs (and Russians in particular as the leading Slavic people), and it's their feelings about Jews that are orthogonal to their Naziness.

Now, I would say that the former definition is closer to historical reality than the latter, but this misunderstanding is why we in the west have been bemused by speeches about the "denazification" of a country with a Jewish president. Moreover, your typical Ukrainian Neo-Nazi probably ended up that way because he has heard all his life from the Russians that Nazis are people who hate Russians, and since he does in fact hate Russians he figures he might as well put on the uniform and become more intimidating to his enemies.

whereas in Russia the defining feature of Nazis is their hatred of and desire to displace and kill Slavs (and Russians in particular as the leading Slavic people),

As it happens, the Slavs were categorised by the Nazis as an Aryan race until 1939, after the conquest of Poland.

whereas in Russia the defining feature of Nazis is their hatred of and desire to displace and kill Slavs

Which makes the Azov's "Ukrainians are the real Slavs, Russians are Finno-Turkic mongrels" ideology even harder to square with neo-Nazism.

The defining feature of neo-Nazis in Russian discourse is being a Russophobic nationalist while being white. Since there are no countries that draw a meaningful distinction between Russians as an ethnic group and Russia as a state, Russian propaganda doesn't have to distinguish between instances of both either. With one exception: if you're a Russian ethnic nationalist living in Russia that hates the multiculturalist message of the Russian state, you're definitely a neo-Nazi.

You can't be a Nazi and fight for a country run by a Jew.

I think that Real Life is often much more nuanced than this – people are often happy to team up with someone they hate to fight someone else they hate more, and military exigencies in particular makes for strange bedfellows. Random examples: the Free Arabian Legion, qualified Nazi "support" for (or at least limited facilitation of) early Zionism, support during the Civil War on the Confederate side for mass freeings of slaves to serve as soldiers.

I get the vague impression that a feature among far-right Ukrainian ethnonationalists is that the RUSSIANS are the inferior racial types, but that doesn't prevent them from thinking the same thing is true of Jews. Possibly e.g. Andriy Biletsky has moderated his views over time, but it seems quite possible to me he thinks fighting for a country run by a Jew is politically expedient for an anti-Jewish agenda over the long run. Of course I think one could, ah, question whether Ukrainian ethnonationalists are really "Nazis" even if they self-identify as Nazis for much the same reason and in the same sense that one could question if Lenin was really a Marxist/Communist.

I tend to agree with the commenters on here that corruption resulting in weapons getting trafficked is probably more likely than "a few hundred neo-Nazis topple the Ukrainian government" (although I doubt that's a problem unique to Azov) but in potentially unstable countries like, possibly, a future Ukraine I think there's a lot of potential for a few hundred guys with military experience and hardline political views to do Stuff up to and including Regime change. I'm not really sure that they need US weapons to do that, but of course it will look awkward if they end up using them.

They do seem to adhere to at least some Nazi racial doctrines, like ‘Russians are subhuman mongoloids’. Yes they draw the aryan/inter mensch line farther East than Hitler did, but it’s a similar idea.

What was incredibly amusing to me on several levels was that Hitler apparently felt that, in his "tier list" of races so to speak, the British were not the top but they were pretty high up the list. So for that reason he was reluctant to bring them into the war and even apparently didn't think it was very likely they would side against him, because race reasons.

Not surprising, given they're a Germanic people.

I won't deny that they could be far-right, fascist, white supremacists (for a certain definition of white)... But the distinguishing feature of Nazism from those ideologies is anti-Semitism.

I reckon you could be really excited about authoritarianism, militarism and eugenics but lukewarm on anti-Semitism and still be a Nazi. But you can't be pro-Jewish. You can't take money from Israeli billionaires!

https://www.algemeiner.com/2014/06/24/ukraine-jewish-billionaires-batallion-sent-to-fight-pro-russian-militias/

Sure, but this misunderstands the reason for the Azov nazi LARP, which is that they hate Russians and Nazis fought Russians. Finnish neonazis are likewise primarily motivated by anti-Russian and anti-Communist sentiment. Again, almost all are actually antisemitic, but antisemitism isn’t incompatible with serving under a Jewish President provided you agree with his war aims. The Azov position is that Zelensky wavered on Russia but was strong-armed into his current position by (ethnic) Ukrainian patriots. Plus, it’s not as if Putin isn’t also very close to many powerful Jewish oligarchs and friends (and Russia to Israel), so the war can’t really be described as some kind of antisemitic struggle in any case. If Ukraine wins, Zelensky can always be replaced; if it loses, no Ukrainian is going to be in charge.

They fight for that Jew because he toes their line and gives them what they want. Should that ever change, they'll turn on him instantly.

All few hundred (or at the most couple thousand) of them? Azov is so small I don't think the rest of the Ukrainian military and government is concerned.

I suspect they wouldn't be alone in their move.

That would mean a significant portion of Ukrainians are Nazis so dedicated they are willing to coup attempt. I'm not very well informed here, but I don't suppose that is the case.

I think a couple hundred hardcore guys with combat experience and a clear vision are plenty enough people to topple a government under the right circumstances.

The Seychelles coup attempt only had 53 mercenaries, and by all accounts could have likely succeeded if airport security hadn't detected their weapons.

I can totally buy that, given Sirsky and Zelensky’s popularity problems with the troops, Azov could have enough of the armed forces behind them to credibly threaten a coup if they decide to do that and pick the right moment, sort of like how seal team six could probably cause a lot more problems than you’d think.

Nonsense, we've never given weapons to some indigenous radical group because they were fighting the Russians, only to have them turn on us once that war was over!

It'd be completely unsurprising if the war ends, Ukrainians find out they've lost half a million dead for nothing and then one night every prominent neocon in the D.C. area gets a thermobaric RPG warhead* delivered into his bedroom at 3 am.

It's like how good is anti-FPV surveillance? FBI seems interested in chasing politics. And you would only need some guys to smuggle in a ~50 RPGs and a bunch of drones. They could be flown over the internet easily.

*that's how the leaders of the Donbass uprisings were killed. It's the most powerful and compact 'bang per buck' out there. Unclear whether they were killed by SBU or Kremlin.

More likely every Ukrainian who would think to do that will be dead by the war's end, and the country will be run by parasites that went to Harvard's Kennedy School of Government

The FPV operators are well behind the lines and so far indispensable because their skill matters because for some reason, Silicon Valley still haven't delivered a good killbot.

There'll be plenty left.

9/11 was Al-Qaeda, not the Taliban.

The Taliban fought the US after (a) the US demanded that Bin Laden etc. were handed over and (b) the US joined with the Northern Alliance to overthrow the Taliban. If the Taliban had demanded the extradition of Pinochet (if he had been in hiding in the US) and allied with China to invade the US, I imagine that Americans would also have turned on the Taliban - not that the US was ever actually allied with or directly helping the Taliban, but I'm sure your suggestion to the contrary was just terse writing.

Well you've really changed my mind with that bit of scintillating criticism.

This is unnecessary dickishness. You do this often enough that you can't pretend you haven't been warned, and you are a grown man who can control your mouth and your typing fingers, so stop pretending you can't help it.

9/11 was Al-Qaeda, not the Taliban.

Bin Laden got his start in the mujahideen in Afghanistan, fighting the Soviets, supported and trained by the US. Is there an objection here beyond terminology?

[EDIT] - no, wait, it isn't even terminology. Your correction is straightforwardly less accurate than the comment it aims to correct. Didn't the Taliban get significant support from the US as well?

Bin Laden got his start in the mujahideen in Afghanistan, fighting the Soviets, supported and trained by the US.

(1) I specifically said Al-Qaeda, because the original claim was about groups, not individuals. For the specific claim I made: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_assistance_to_Osama_bin_Laden

Bin Laden was able to get Al-Qaeda going with his own money.

That bin Laden was a CIA proxy turned rogue makes for a great story and many people find it "too good not to be true". It supports non-interventionist ideologies, especially those who have never forgiven the US and the mujahideen for defeating the Soviets. The only problem is that it is not true, unless the CIA is far better at covering its tracks than we know. The suggestion in your comment (which may just be amphiboly) that he was trained by the US is a new one to me, though. I suppose it makes the story even better?

You could say that Al-Qaeda benefited INDIRECTLY from US aid to the mujahideen, but that's a clear motte-and-bailey. The original claim was (sarcastically) "we've never given weapons to some indigenous radical group because they were fighting the Russians, only to have them turn on us once that war was over!"

(2) "Didn't the Taliban get significant support from the US as well?"

You mean the organisation founded two years after the war with the Soviet-backed government ended? No.

However, someone could argue that the Taliban was the successor group of some mujahideen (specifically Pashtun ones around Kandahar) who had US support during the war, so I deliberately focused the discussion on Al-Qaeda, who seem to have undertaken 9/11 independently of the Taliban. Bin Laden claimed that Al-Qaeda was operating independently of the Taliban in the 9/11 attacks. He also did not attribute responsibility to the Taliban in tapes discovered in Afghanistan that (apparently) recorded bin Laden talking candidly. This was prior to his later (2004) admission of responsibility for the attack.

Indeed, the Taliban condemned the attack and were open (officially) to extraditing bin Laden to an Islamic country, if the US presented evidence. Of course, this offer was probably bullshit, and the US was justified in attacking the Taliban. However, the point is that 9/11 was not blowback for supporting a side in Afghanistan. If anything, it was the failure by the Bush I and Clinton administrations to support the establishment of a non-Taliban government in the mid-1990s that led to Afghanistan becoming a safe haven for bin Laden.

Does anyone have any credible sources for the current Nazi influence in Ukraine?

No, but then I wouldn't expect to much credible information on something that largely doesn't exist, and I don't know any credible sources that would unironically use the term 'professional Nazi' either.

Given that the Azov Brigade's primary Nazi-ness was primarily performative, not ideological, and the primary ideological parallel was 'anyone the russians hate who could kill a lot of them had something going for them' rather than 'uber-racist genocidal anti-semetic state-supremacist nationalist with a desire to conquer Europe and colonize the east,' I'm also unclear what you think a 'trained, professional Nazi brigade' entails. Fashion-conscious parades? Cosplay with vigor? Casual drives through the Ardennes?

The neo-nazi accusation is about as old as the Russian incursion into Ukraine, which is to say 2014 and attempted at the Nova Russia uprising that fizzled into the Separatists, and has been the go-to accusation for the Russian propaganda aparatus for a decade now. It's about as well founded as it ever was. The Azovs were Nazis in much the same way that Satanists are worshippers of evil- it was (and to a degree still is) a form of unrepentant defiance by identifying with your hated outgroup's nominal worst fear / hated foe, rather than with what otherwise might be presented as a cultural sibling.

At the end of the day, the Azovs were one of a large number of private and oligarch-sponsored militias groups that rose during the chaos of Russia's attempted nova russia uprising. They weren't particularly nazi, unless you conflate all right-wing politics with nazi, and the only thing particularly notable about them aside from their wearing accusations like a badge of honor was a relatively high valor and willingness to keep fighting, which is why they were notably effective, and one of the reasons the Russians have fixated on them in particular.

That Azov formation is long dead. Between the post-2015 reorganization of the oligarchic controlled militias into the national military with replacements of key leaders, the normal military manning cycles, and the extremely high attrition during the Mariupole campaign in 2022, very little of the original formation remains, and the formation itself has been expanded and thus flooded so even pre-war composition would be flooded by outsiders, i.e. diluting the characteristics of the precursor personnel.

Unless you believe that nazism is a magical mind-virus that converts by insinuation and proximity, there's no particular Nazi influence in the Azov Brigade. The Azovs are basically a quote-unquote 'prestige' unit that people want to join because it is prestigious, and it is prestigious does much the same thing as any other, but with better (or, if you prefer, notorious) PR.

Unless you believe that nazism is a magical mind-virus that converts by insinuation and proximity

"If there's a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, then you got a table with 11 Nazis."

So kind of yeah, that's a somewhat common sentiment among some people.

The counterpoint of this is that the is a Nazi-cosplayer at a table and 10 other people sitting there, then you have a table with 0 Nazis. And if someone comes along and points and shouts 'Nazi', you still have 0 Nazis.

Nazi is as Nazi does, not as Nazi dresses or Nazi-accused. Belief otherwise may be somewhat common sentiment among some people, but these are generally the same people who similarly mis-used 'fascist', and they are just as wrong even if their numbers do allow them to appeal to the bandwagon fallacy.

That’s a misunderstanding of the phrase though. The phrase doesn’t mean you’ll catch Nazi ideology like it’s COVID. What it means is that if you’re hanging around with Nazis you are already at least okay with the ideas they espouse. It’s not a dealbreaker for you or you won’t sit there and talk to that guy. And I think it’s pretty reasonable in that sense, though it’s true of almost any ideology. If you’re talking to them and especially in the political sense of negotiation with them for power, you’re at least okay enough with them that you’re willing to give them a seat at the political table.

What it means

What it means is a threat.

How? Again, it’s not the claim that you catch Nazi like a big. The claim isn’t even about the Nazis per se. The claim is that people willing to have Nazis involved in their professional or political or social circles are at least okay with the ideology.

It's a threat insofar as SJ persecutes Nazis and thus a statement that non-haters of Nazis are Nazis is a threat to persecute anyone who doesn't join in the persecution.

You don’t think Azov’s high status in Ukraine converts new entrants into true believers in the Nazi stuff?

I mean, obviously they’re not full bore Nazis. But they do seem to be racist ultranationalists, which is close enough for government work.

You don’t think Azov’s high status in Ukraine converts new entrants into true believers in the Nazi stuff?

No, I don't. I've seen no evidence that Azov ever had true believers in the Nazi stuff, let alone converted new entrants into it,

I mean, obviously they’re not full bore Nazis. But they do seem to be racist ultranationalists, which is close enough for government work.

That government work being the Russian state-driven propaganda narrative claiming they are full-bore Nazis, and expecting others to go along with it on 'close enough' grounds that are not, in fact, close enough.

There are a lot of racist ultranationalists in the worlds. Equating them with Nazis or would-be-Nazis-if-empowered is a facile understanding of the Nazis as a polity and an ideology.

Thanks for the reply. Your arguments regarding the "performative Nazism" of Azov makes sense to me, I find it probable that Azovs are a right wing movement instead. If you could provide additional sources for further reading, that would be helpful.

That Azov formation is long dead. Between the post-2015 reorganization of the oligarchic controlled militias into the national military with replacements of key leaders, the normal military manning cycles, and the extremely high attrition during the Mariupole campaign in 2022, very little of the original formation remains, and the formation itself has been expanded and thus flooded so even pre-war composition would be flooded by outsiders, i.e. diluting the characteristics of the precursor personnel.

Unless you believe that nazism is a magical mind-virus that converts by insinuation and proximity, there's no particular Nazi influence in the Azov Brigade. The Azovs are basically a quote-unquote 'prestige' unit that people want to join because it is prestigious, and it is prestigious does much the same thing as any other, but with better (or, if you prefer, notorious) PR.

I don't fully agree with you on both of those point. Azovs doesn't seem to me a prestige unit since all sources arguing for and against them being "neo-nazi" do agree that they have been a particularly effective unit. On the right wing ideological dilution part, that could very well be true but its hard to determine the effectiveness of it and both Ukraine and Russia have incentives to lie.

For reading, I don't have anything specific regarding the Azovs for you on hand, but I would recommend reading into how the oligarchs of Ukraine were involved in the Nova Russia uprising, both in aligning with and against, and how the early 2014 militias were formed / organized / incorporated into the Ukrainian armed forces.

I don't fully agree with you on both of those point. Azovs doesn't seem to me a prestige unit since all sources arguing for and against them being "neo-nazi" do agree that they have been a particularly effective unit. On the right wing ideological dilution part, that could very well be true but its hard to determine the effectiveness of it and both Ukraine and Russia have incentives to lie.

Being a particularly effective fighting force is why they are prestigious, despite the infamy. But being a particularly effective unit is not an exceptional status, it is a relative status, and half of all units are above average.

What sets Azovs above and apart from most other above-average units- in additional to much higher media visibility (in part due to Russian efforts)- is that the Azovs have been at some of the more notable front lines where the Russians simultaneously had the most visibility but also showed their limits, which naturally leads to the self-serving deflection narratives of 'we're not bad, they're just good.' That was literally how they first gained notice- their origin is that of a militia formed and fighting before the formal armed forces of Ukraine were able to be reorganized during the Nova Russia campaign (giving Azov rivals of mostly-forgotten militias that didn't stand the test of time) in a conflict that the Russian proxies did so badly in that (giving the Azovs a contextual win) that the Russian army had to intervene (giving their survival it's own victory-against-the-odds narrative).

Consider how the 'modern' Azov's most significant performance was in the Mariupol defense of 2022, when the Russians were forced into a three month siege. For the later in particular, a three month siege of basically March / April / May 24. Standing ground and holding out in a 3-month siege is no joke and deserves the kudos... but it's also shaped by the factor that they had very good reason to believe the Russians would kill them outright (or in a show trial) if they surrendered due to them being used as part of the Russian de-nazification war narrative, and the fact that multi-month sieges were kind of a defining characteristic of the Russian invasion after the first few months, and also that the mariupol offensive was the primary Russian offensive in that part of Summer 22 while most of the rest of the front was static with marginal creeping artillery advances elsewhere. So while the fact that the Azovs fought hard is true and commendable, but it's also relatively normal for units of highly motivated people with good cause to fear surrender, and the dramatic image of defense and hard fighting was... kind of normal across the line in a number of places.

Azov's distinction in the war isn't hard fighting or urban defensive fighting. It's branding while doing that, when most Ukrainian units that did so lack the reputation or international visiblity or the contextual international drama for the times Azov was most visible when Ukraine was still in chaos in 2014, and when the post-Kyiev Russian offensive was still new and uncertain in 2022 and people thought a dedicated Russian offensive in the south could sweep the southern coast. After the Mariupole campaign, most people understood the Russians weren't going to steamroll the south, so units that fought just as hard wouldn't get the same valor / public credit that Azov did because it was expected rather than a surprise for the Russians to struggle so hard for so long.


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