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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   31260 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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Classical liberalism vs. The New Right

Tyler Cowen responds to the ‘New Right’-

There is also a self-validating structure to New Right arguments over time. You can’t easily persuade New Right advocates by pointing to mainstream media reports that contradict their main narrative. Mainstream media is one of the least trusted sources. Academic research also has fallen under increasing mistrust, as the academy predominantly hires individuals who support the Democratic Party.

Most classical liberals are uncomfortable with the New Right approaches, and seek to disavow them. I share those concerns, and yet I also recognize that hard and fast lines are not so easy to draw. The New Right is in essence accepting the original classical liberal critique of the state and pushing it a few steps further, adding further skepticism of elites, a greater emphasis on culture, and a belief in elite collusion rather than checks and balances. You may or may not agree with those intellectual moves, but many common premises still are shared between the classical liberals and the New Right, even if neither side is fully comfortable admitting this.

The New Right also tends to see the classical liberals as naïve about power (the same charge classical liberals fling at the establishment), and as standing on the losing side of history. Those aren’t the easiest arguments to refute. Furthermore, the last twenty years have seen 9/11, a failed Iraq War, a major financial crisis and recession, and a major pandemic, mishandled in some critical regards. It doesn’t seem that wrong to become additionally skeptical about American elites, and the New Right wields these points effectively.

The major thing he misses, or perhaps only elides to, is that the individualist framework that libertarianism was built on has been utterly obliterated by technological, political, and demographic shifts. The future is now, old man, and it’s all about groups, and Kaldor-Hicks efficiencies. Given our degenerate institutions there is no way any particular set of losers can actually expect compensation for their damages, and so all one can hope for is that our particular sect wins out in the scrum of sectarian squabbling.

Yet, listening to a recent interview of his, I was struck by his (likely correct) bone-deep cynicism towards grand reform. His marginal revolution is lower variance than a monarchy or integralist state, and so intrinsically less ambitious. X-risks seem to demand a serious response, but Cowen just shrugs and hopes we have a nice few centuries before we destroy ourselves.

The radical right in America is unable to articulate a coherent vision of the kind of society it wants to live in. This is the problem with many modern Western conservatives: they live modern, liberal lives and then preach against it. Georgia Meloni is a single unmarried mother with a bastard, to provide one illustration. The parliamentary leader of the AfD is a transnational lesbian with a wife who prefers living in Switzerland to Germany. That’s not very trad of them.

Maybe, but when the opposition is a Luciferian death cult that wants to fuck our children while drinking their essence, anyone will do. At least that's where my friends on the New Right go when pushed. I had one explain to me his support for Russia v Ukraine as follows, "I know we [The West] are evil. I don't know that Putin is evil." In the battle between literal demons (or Nephilim, more like it) and flawed strongmen, they pick the strongmen. And they don't care if civilization gets destroyed in the process, because civilization has been ruined by gays, Jews, and gay Jews. The best case is that a strongman can put all the gay jews in prison, so we can build something better. This feels like a strawman as I write it, but it seems to be the essence of their private views. And they really do believe that the World Economic Forum/Democrats/RINOs/Neoliberalism is literally Satanic.

I do know that Putin is to a degree evil (or at least partly a self-serving sociopathic careerist at best, which is essentially the same thing), but I also am nearly 100% sure that he still doesn't intrinsically despise my skin color, my natural expression of my secondary sex characteristics and masculinity itself, etc. and also probably doesn't hate or want to eradicate my heritage, culture, and traditions too much (minus the parts of it that have been hijacked by glob‍ohom‍o to destroy his).

Putin is just banally evil, a simple, corrupt apparatchik qua autocrat of the Russian security state who just wants to be free to L‍ARP as Diet Stalin, take his share of the illicit cut off the top, and restore a bit of the Russian national pride he's made himself a venerated mascot of (and he probably genuinely, as genuinely as he can anyway, believes in it all some decent amount too, which is a majorly redeemable quality). Perhaps the world would be better overall if such people didn't exist (which they might not if glob‍oho‍mo didn't constantly put heterodox cultures under siege, causing them to desperately turn to perceived strongmen in self-defense), but they hardly ruin the planet.

Some 13 year old Iranian girl out there isn't tw‍erking to vulgar and nonsensical din‍du rap on TikTok and causing her anguished father to question every life decision he's ever made and contemplate suicide because of Putin. Some 10 year old boy in Venezuela isn't wearing women's clothing and dreaming of his future lifetime paid subscription to the proper functioning of his own endocrine system via synthetic pharmaceutical hormones because of Putin. Some decent enough 27 year old British lad wasn't guilt-tripped and shamed into having a h‍eart atta‍ck leading to death from "SA‍DS" sponsored by Pfiz‍er™ because of Putin. Whatever problems Putin causes, he at least has the courtesy to almost always keep them in Russia (or in the case of a certain recent special operation, Russia Jr.). His flaws don't spread like a virus.

I still don't believe the WEF etc. is literally Satanic, because I don't believe in a literal Satan, but they do match most descriptions of the classic nefarious tempter archetype. With that being said, the whole hating my basic demographic characteristics stuff and constantly spreading society-eroding degeneracy stuff weighs more heavily on my mind, so I would say that either I'm heterodox among my fellows here or you're either strawmanning a bit or interpreting hyperbole (I've made a few "I HATE THE AN‍TICH‍RIST" posts in my day in response to the latest glo‍b‍oho‍m‍o affront, but it's just a me‍me.) a bit too literally.

Though you're right about Jews ruining society, especially the gay ones! (Or should I want them not to breed?)

Putin predates wokeness.

Wokeness isn't globohomo, just its current face with the mask slipped further down. Russia's been dealing with globohomo since at least Yeltsin.

That remains to be seen. He's certainly toying with the idea of nuclear escalation.

If globohomo didn't want nuclear escalation, then maybe they shouldn't have tried to boiling frog a fellow nuclear power with far more vile and underhanded kinds of escalation.

...and Georgia, Moldova, Syria, Belarus...

Moldova, Georgia, and Belarus also count as Russia Jr. (Stalin was even Georgian), and I don't see how he did anything negative in Syria. Or would it have been better for them if the US had succeeded in illegally couping Assad and turning the whole country into Libya? I'd definitely rather live under the relatively moderate Assad than under whatever random warlord moved into town that day. If I were a Syrian I'd like Putin even more.

...and a lot of Europeans weren't too happy about the grain and gas prices recently. We'll have to see how the winter goes.

Putin didn't do that to Western Europe. Western Europeans (to be fair more the governments than the average people) did that to themselves to try to own le heckin' Putler by... dying, I guess? All they had to do was admit that Big P has a point about NATO expansion and say they'd very much so like to keep purchasing his fine natural resources in a mutually beneficial economic relationship. There's no indication Putin would have been the one to say no. They played themselves here.

Since I assume you're asking about online materials, I read here, CWR, /pol/ on various imageboards, various random Substacks, etc., stuff I'm assuming most people here already know about. What are you most interested in? I'm not sure I have any ultra-obscure links to share.

I am sorry that you can't find yourself intellectually open to opposing views at this time. Have a lovely day.

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