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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   28289 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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A short prompt of good news for starting the week- the likelihood of the current Gaza conflict ending just got significantly higher today, as Hamas has released at least the first 7 of 20 surviving hostages to Israel, with more expected later today (or maybe already completed), as part of a Trump-mediated peace deal that is excepted to culminate in a regional summit this week.

Big if carried through, and while there was leadup to it last week, there was a fair bit of (and fair grounds for) skepticism on if the deal would actually be followed through. There were questions on if Hamas even could deliver all the living hostages given how the hostages were often not under Hamas's direct organizational control (but sometimes under other groups), and this deal does not address the bodies of the dead hostages, among other things.

There is also some irony, or possibly some future culture war conspiracy theories, about how this will not get Trump a noble peace prize, since they announced that late last week.

That said- and I think this is good news in general- it's also worth noting this doesn't mean stability or even a lasting peace. While the Yemen-based Houthis have indicated they will stop their Red Sea attacks so long as Israel upholds the ceasefire, this runs into complications like how Hamas has already engaged in gun battles with gazan clans as it tries to re-assert control, which goes significant premise of Hamas being removed as the military and civil authority of Gaza. Which remains a huge, unanswered question which could restart this problem all over again, if Hamas remains in power for lack of anyone actively displacing. The NYT is running a piece on how mediators are already signaling this isn't a comprehensive deal for either side.

One thing that isn't in question, however, is that the return of the still-living hostages is going to reshape the underpinnings of Israeli politics, as the post-October 7 war cabinet coalition that kept Netanyahu in power will lose much of the reason for being. This means political instability, for worse or for better, as Israel rebalances. The next election would be no later than late next year regardless, and could come earlier.

Absent some new (and detrimental to all) nonsense, this means that a lot of the people who only supported Nnetanyahu because of the war will likely be more willing to withdraw their support and trigger early elections, which would be no later than about a year from now anyways. This does not, however, mean a general discrediting of the Israeli right, and a decades-belated return of the Israeli left (whose original decline was after the failure of the gaza withdrawal almost two decades ago). The war was a significant polarizing effect on Israeli politics and society, and while I'd not bet on Netanyahu I'd also not bet on any part of the political left seen as opposing the war for pro-Palestinian reasonings.

I'll end it there. While there is plenty of reasons things could yet again get worse, and while I am sure eventually they will, for the moment I'll encourage people to view this new news as good news, which can well make many people's lives better.

Thank you for the detailed, succinct write-up. I intended to make a top-level post using the presumptive end of the current Gaza conflict as a jumping-off point to ask a much broader question, namely:

What will the next Current Thing™ be?

In May of last year, I argued that media minutes, column inches and the forefronts of public consciousness follow a Pareto distribution, in which one issue clearly dominates at the expense of all others. In Ireland (and presumably a significant chunk of the Anglosphere and also the entire world), a list of these "primary" issues over the past decade or so looked as follows:

  • Brexit (June-November 2016; intermittently recurs as a secondary topic whenever there's a lull in one of the subsequent primary topics)
  • Donald Trump election and presidency (November 2016-March 2020)
  • Covid (March 2020-January 2022)
  • George Floyd/BLM protests (May 2020-September 2020) [I'm cheating a little bit; while the protests were ongoing they seemed to take up exactly as much space in the discourse as Covid, then after they died down Covid returned as the sole current thing)
  • Russia-Ukraine war (February 2022-October 2023)
  • Israel-Gaza war (October 2023-present)

I'm not saying the Israel-Palestine conflict is permanently over: as a cold conflict which periodically goes hot for 77 consecutive years, it would be very impressive indeed if the imminent cessation of hostilities represented a decisive end to the conflict. But I do think there's a very good chance that it stops being the "primary" issue that dominates the discourse, and retreats to the status it occupied prior to October 7th, 2023. Diehards will still emblazon their balconies with Palestine flags, you have not heard "from the river to the sea" for the last time, there will be periodic calls to boycott and divest — but it will go back to being a page 4 story. I strongly suspect that the era of copycat attacks on random Jewish civilians in First World nations has come to an end.

Which invites the obvious question: what will the next Current Thing™ be?

Playing the game on Easy Mode, and the answer might be that something which was a secondary issue for the last two years now jumps forward to become the pack leader in the Pareto distribution. Sometimes the easy, obvious answer is the correct one: activists had been complaining about police mistreatment of black Americans for years prior to the murder of George Floyd, and Putin's invasion of Ukraine could not have come as a complete surprise to anyone with even the most passing familiarity with the geopolitics of the region. In this framing, obvious candidates for the next Current Thing™ include AI, the ongoing debate about immigration from the global south, and Orange Man Bad. In the latter case, it's entirely possible that all of the "ceasefire now" people will quickly realise that their moment in the limelight has passed, exchange their keffiyehs for black bloc and get back to partying like it's 2017.

Playing the game on Hard Mode, the answer might be something completely unexpected. In January 2020, who among us could have foreseen that a virus in Wuhan (whether from a lab or a wet market) would determine the course of our lives for pretty much the duration of March 2020-December 2021? In this light, do any of you have candidates in mind for dark horse black swan events which could dominate the discourse for the next two years or so?

Environmentalism vs Reindustrialzation in the US. For Military purposes we need to reshore rare earth refinement. This will undoubtedly lead to some desert in Nevada getting radiated and risk the extinction of some heretofore undiscovered species of jackalope.

Alternatively, bringing freedom and democracy to Venezuela. The latest Nobel Peace Prize winner was practically begging Trump for it.

Reindustrialization would inevitably entail giving well-paying jobs to universally reviled toxic smelly dudebros. We need to keep that in mind.

You mean the guys who drive pick up trucks and already destroy the environment with their capitalist spending habits? Guys like those will turn Nevada into even more of a wasteland? Anger! Let the culture war commence!

The Palestine situation is not over. Israel is continuing to oppress Christians, is continuing to occupy parts of the west bank, is continuing its war in Syria and is continuing its meddling in other country's policies. AIPAC's absurd meddling hasn't gone away. The US is still wasting billions and billions on Israeli interests in the middle east and Israel is still making it hard for refugees to return from Europe.

  • -12

I explicitly stated that I don't think the Israel-Palestine conflict will come to a complete end any time soon, so I don't know why you're pointing that out. It doesn't seem like a productive contribution to the discussion.

Israel is continuing to oppress Christians

Can we please proactively provide evidence for inflammatory claims? Or at least a clear explanation of what manner of oppression is occurring?

I know public proselytizing is illegal in Israel. I suppose the claimed oppression is something far harsher than that.

Firing tank shells into Churches, backing jihadists in Syria and occupying Christian territory.

This interview with Tucker is a good intro

Firing tank shells into Churches

From what I can gather it was a fragment of a single tank shell which struck a single church by mistake. Your hyperbolic condemnation of every single thing Israel does is counterproductive.

Firing tank shells into Churches

That is actually oppression. If done intentionally and regularly.

On July 17, 2025, part of an Israeli tank shell hit the only Catholic church in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military expressed regret for the incident and launched an investigation. On July 23, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stated that the church was "accidentally hit due to an unintentional deviation of munitions" during operational activity.

Okay. So a one-off accident. The actual definition of collateral damage. If anyone is ever going to fire a tank gun or drop a bomb, then there will be some failure rate in targeting. An accident is not what I would call oppression.

Googling more I see other collateral damage examples. A church water tank is broken while the Israelis battle jihadists, etc. The expected occasional screw up when firing tanks and missile striking urban regions. Regrettable, but not oppression.

occupying Christian territory

Between the alternatives of Jewish Israeli control or Palestinian jihadist Islamic control, there's no "Christian territory" under discussion. I get that the small Christian minority is in a tough spot. They don't have territory. If the crusades had turned out differently we'd be meaningfully discussing "Christian territory" in the region. But we aren't.

backing jihadists in Syria

Wisely arming non-jihadist rebel factions in Syria in order to counter Iranian influence. Not that Christians would flourish if Iranian-backed jihadist rebel factions got the upper hand. Arming the mildest rebels as a counter against the Islamist extremists is not oppressing Christians.

Israël seems to have a history of backing credible shots at a Christian state(eg the Maronites), but doesn’t treat Christian’s in its territory any better than other Arabs. This means that there is discrimination against Christian’s in Israël- but Arab Christian’s are one of the world’s genuine high-IQ groups, so they still do very well.

I do note that the main article currently on the English language section of Yomiuri, a Japanese paper, is about Gaza.

Are you serious that there have been no domestic Irish issues that were the Current Thing in Ireland at any point in the last decade? (I agree Brexit and COVID had pretty large domestic impacts, such that being the Current Thing in Ireland is reasonable).

Domestic issues that have been the Current Thing in the UK over that time period include Brexit (obviously), COVID (obviously), ongoing uncovering of cold case paedo scandals, Partygate, Trussonomics, and small boat immigration.

I may have exaggerated slightly. Prior to Covid, the gay marriage referendum was the thing everyone in Ireland was talking about for the first half of 2015 and several months prior. The campaign to legalise abortion via constitutional amendment was likewise a really big deal for several years prior to its successful legalisation in 2018, occupying discussions almost as much as Brexit and Orange Man Bad (Irish people would put "Repeal the 8th" in their Instagram or Tinder bios, and plain black sweaters with the word "REPEAL" emblazoned on them in all caps sold in their tens of thousands). One sometimes gets the impression that progressive politicians and activists in Ireland were victims of their own success: after both gay marriage and abortion were legalised with massive public mandates, they found themselves at a bit of a loss for what to do next, hence their eagerness to lend their support for foreign causes like Ukraine and Gaza. Neither nebulously-defined "trans rights", nor farcical efforts to portray Black Lives Matter as a movement which has the slightest relevance to Irish politics, scratch quite the same itch. The campaign to amend the Irish constitution to remove any reference to "marriage" or "mothers" was a resounding failure, being rejected even by many who consider themselves progressive. Likewise the so-called "hate speech bill", which was never put to a public vote but which was so controversial that it was shelved.

Other than those two, in the linked post, I listed some domestic Irish issues which were the Current Thing in Ireland — but, as a rule, only for the duration of a single news cycle. For a few weeks in January 2022, everyone was talking about the murder of Ashling Murphy, then promptly forgot about it as soon as her killer was arrested, and immediately started talking obsessively about Ukraine for the next twenty months.

Looking back over the past two years, I sincerely cannot think of any domestic Irish event or issue which captured the public's imagination (or had nearly as much staying power) as much as the conflict in Gaza has. There have been literally hundreds of protests against Israel across the country; both our prime minister and President have weighed in on the conflict several times, as has virtually every recently-minted Irish celebrity (and some less recently minted); our government are considering passing a bill which would make it a criminal offense to do business with certain Israeli firms and so on and so forth. The only domestic issues which even came close to this level of omnipresence were a) the ongoing debate about immigration, and by extension the anti-immigration riots in Dublin in November 2023; and b) the civil rape trial against Conor McGregor, which everyone was talking about from the tail end of last year and early this year.

Mass riots over some ICE injustice. In the leadup to George Floyd you could tell the media was agitating for it with Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, it took them about six months of sustained efforts to get the temperature high enough. The media has certainly been trying with ICE, but until somebody gets shot on camera I don’t think they’ll get much traction. They may pivot back to blacks if ICE isn’t working though

I can definitely envision nationwide anti-ICE protests in the same ballpark as 2020 BLM next year.

I don't think this is likely. There's definitely agitating for it, but having those sorts of riots depends on the authorities tolerating them, and if it happens Trump is going to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in the National Guard before the relevant Federal judge even wakes up.

They may pivot back to blacks if ICE isn’t working though

I have a hard time imagining the whole Black Bodies, People of Color, Black-owned Businesses, Defund the Police thing coming back in full force; we're supposed to be over peak woke. I'd like to believe normies got a little sick of it.

A secondary issue that's been smoldering in the background for sure, my guesses from most to least likely:

  1. The economy and the job market, even the out of touch boomers are starting to notice prices just keep going up and their grandkids with a fresh college degree can't get a job no matter how many times they tell them to walk in with a firm handshake and a can-do attitude.

  2. The AI bubble deflating, even if the bet pays off in the end the rate of cash burn is insane at current revenues. I expect it to at least take a major haircut possibly causing a cascading panic pullback when investments slow down and timelines extend.

  3. Trump rapidly and obviously declines physically/mentally like Biden.

  4. Republicans do something truly insane like massive election interference or rejecting midterm results if Democrats are making big gains.

I think most the responses here are taking “Current Thing” to mean something like “biggest issue”, but I disagree. To me the Current Thing is what normie women put in their instagram bio. Palestine, Ukraine, BLM, those were current things. The AI bubble deflating will simply never be the current thing no matter how earthshattering it is

You're absolutely right, I didn't mean "the most important issue facing the world right now". I simply meant "the issue that everyone is talking about", regardless of its importance.

Does the Charlie Kirk thing have legs? It's been the Current Thing in our newspapers since before the body was cold.

It might be a local Current Thing in the US for some time to come, but it didn't seem to get much traction in the wider Anglosphere. In Ireland, people had already stopped talking about it by the following week.

In the UK, according to Google Trends, searches for his name peaked the day he was killed and had fallen to one-fifth of their peak by September 13th. Numbers for Ireland, Canada and Australia are practically identical.

Immigration enforcement/concern about trump authoritarianism(real or not, people are worried about it).

Which invites the obvious question: what will the next Current Thing™ be? ... Playing the game on Easy Mode, and the answer might be that something which was a secondary issue for the last two years now jumps forward to become the pack leader in the Pareto distribution.

Immigration is the duh example, and I'd expect that we'll continue to see a parade of real and imagined oversteps by the Trump admin, along with real and imagined bad behaviors by protestors or state governments in response.

On this side, I think you're going to see trans stuff become much more prominent, quickly. Republicans see a lot of options as 80-20 issues, and a large part of the Dem activist branch isn't willing to Sister Souljah even the clearest nutjobs. But a lot of the political activists have very strong opinions and/or investments in this matter, they've got a massive amount of logistical and big corp support, and there's a lot of things that look like low-hanging fruit to social conservatives that are either hard problems or unacceptable compromises to even moderate Dems.

From the other direction, I expect that we'll have a Mass Casuality Gun Incident (a la Los Vegas) or targeted assassination (... that Dems care about, a la Giffords), and gun control will show up as a major political discussion again. There's a lot of Dems and self-described moderates that are absolutely sure they've got a vast majority of the population on their side, here, and they just need the right salience/terms, and while some of that reflects badly-run poll manipulation and huffing their own farts, it genuinely is a space that a lot of Republicans shoot their own feet.

In this light, do any of you have candidates in mind for dark horse black swan events which could dominate the discourse for the next two years or so?

Serious domestic infrastructure attacks by a coordinated and uncaught adversary. We've seen them in warfront environments, a few nutjobs using them for publicity, and a few dry runs (aka Metcalf) by uncaught (and thus presumably serious) actors, and maybe some arguable cases (aka Florida Oranges), but there's Moore's Law of Mad Science reasons to suspect it to hit in the next ten years. It's bad when 'someone kills dozens at multiple subway stations and gets away with it' is the optimistic version of the problem, but the pessimistic one is much worse, and either version will have obvious direct culture war ramifications as increasingly broad conspiracy theories drop. More critically, it will also have a ton of 'obvious' and wildly contradictory solutions with large-scale impact on the innocent.

It would be nice if it was the social media digital id thing all the five eyes countries are currently doing to try to ensnare the US and enforce their social media policies.

Don't forget "#MeToo" (October 2017 - ~January 2018)

True.

I don't think that the Israel issue is over - even though the focus might change away from Palestine, my money on the next major issue in US politics is the US-Israel relationship. The current arrangement isn't sustainable, and the polling I've seen suggests that a majority of Americans want AIPAC and Israel brought to heel. There's no way this particular milk gets unspilled, and none of the normies who supported Palestine because it was the Current Thing are going to forget what they saw Zionists and those funded by them do. The activists are already hard at work on projects like the Hind Rajab foundation and other efforts to make sure the world does not forget what Israel did. The outsize influence of Israel over western governments is being pulled into the spotlight all over the world, and the consequences of that conflict have in no way finished playing themselves out. Given that Israel is potentially going to be restarting the conflict with Iran and drawing the US in to that fight as well, I don't think this particular issue is going to leave "current thing" status barring some other major event (AGI getting achieved, climate disaster, another pandemic, another war, etc).

Well, for my money the Current Thing at the moment is the hot war in Gaza. So assuming that specific war ends and stops being the Current Thing, my question is what will be the next Current Thing other than the hot war in Gaza.

Personally, I am sceptical that "the relationship between the US and Israel" will become the thing that everyone in the Anglosphere is talking about in the way that e.g. the conflict in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, BLM and Covid were. Even if a majority of Americans want something (such as AIPAC being brought to heel), that doesn't mean it'll be the thing that everyone is talking about (indeed, per the toxoplasma criterion, controversial things get discussed more than things about which there is widespread agreement).

none of the normies who supported Palestine because it was the Current Thing are going to forget what they saw Zionists and those funded by them do

I think you greatly overestimate the staying power of Current Things and the degree of emotional investment normies hold in them. I think that, by Christmas, an absolute majority of normies will have completely forgotten about the "genocide" they spent two years performatively condemning. In the US, Google searches for "Black Lives Matter" peaked in June 2020 and had fallen to 6% of the peak by December. Of the people who posted a black square on their Instagrams in the summer of 2020, what proportion of them do you think could name an unarmed black person killed by a police officer since George Floyd? Of the people calling for others to mask up and calling the unvaccinated "plague rats", I suspect that a majority of them believe that literally no one has died of Covid since the lockdowns ended. Out of sight, out of mind.

Think about how much the average American (even the average Democratic-voting American) cared about the Palestinian cause before October 7th, 2023. By January, I think they'll have regressed to the historical mean. Expecting anything else is almost certainly the product of wishful thinking.

Yeah but on the other hand I'd expect the majority of BLM people wouldn't have really changed their minds on the underlying subject, just buried it underneath other issues in terms of primacy.

I disagree. I suspect most of the people loudly chanting "defund the police" in the summer of 2020 would be very embarrassed if you pointed that out to them five years later. And as for the people actually calling to abolish the police, forget it.

Data points: in June 2020, 34% of Americans supported defunding the police. Nine months later, that figure had fallen to 18%. By October 2021, only 15% of Americans wanted police departments defunded at all, of which 9% only wanted them defunded "a little" (Ctrl-F "a little").

In other words, at most one-sixth (probably more like one-twentieth) of the US are progressive diehards, and a further sixth (or perhaps a quarter) will pretend to be progressive diehards so long as they think it's socially advantageous to do so.

If by "change their minds on the underlying subject" you mean "most BLM people think it's bad when the police kill unarmed black people who are not resisting arrest" — that was never the part of the movement that was under dispute. Even MAGA types agreed that this was bad. Even Bill O'Reilly was horrified by the Eric Garner case.

Which invites the obvious question: what will the next Current Thing™ be?

AI. I won't know what the exact angle will be until I see it, but it seems like a good bet it will be AI-related.

What will stop Netanyahu from attacking the Strip again? Now that there are no hostages he can just turn it into fine rubble. It's not like American military and intelligence aid to Israel will stop if he does that.

What was stopping him before? Israel had already been accused numerous times of being callous to their hostages' safety, Hannibal Doctrine etc.

What was stopping him before?

Domestic political pressure to bring home as many live hostages as possible.

Yes, Israel had been accused of callousness from without, and Bibi doesn’t seem to care (see e.g. his “super Sparta” remarks). However, his legitimacy and that of his coalition are hanging by a thread and so he is sensitive to political considerations from within.

I mean most likely outcome is that the conflict will kick off again within a few months off whatever random terrorism Hamas can muster

There is also some irony, or possibly some future culture war conspiracy theories, about how this will not get Trump a noble peace prize, since they announced that late last week.

This led to some incredibly stupid discussions I've seen with both leftists and rightists assuming that the Machado selection was some sort of a woke Yass Queen finger in the eye towards Trump instead of doing just the barest amount of Googling to recognize that this was very much in the line with the Trump admin foreign policy goals, ie. getting rid of Maduro, which was then confirmed with Machado going out of her way to congratulate and give credit to Trump after the selection.

Yes - I was surprised that the line on MAGA Twitter was "Trump woz robbed" and not to congratulate Machado and make hay out of her anti-leftist status (which she was very much up for), possibly along with a call for Trump to be nominated next year for the Gaza ceasefire. (If it holds, he may have actually earned a Nobel Peace Prize. If it doesn't, given the history, he has definitely earned a Nobel Peace Prize).

Trump himself went for the pro-Machado approach, so I don't know why the number of Trump sycophants posting "Trump woz robbed" were doing it. Obvious candidate theories include King Canute's courtiers tier more-royalist-than-the-King competitive uber-sycophancy, back-channel co-ordination to give Trump himself plausible deniability that he was having a bitchfest by proxy about not winning it, and failure of the administration to co-ordinate with its supporters on MAGA Twitter.

I think it was just an atavistic reaction, partly to the simple idea of it being the height of wrongness for the God-Emperor to not get what he wants at all times and partly to the "brown foid from a shithole country? Must be a woke commie!" kneejerk assumption.

If you put it to the same standard as Obama getting one for being Brown, charismatic and existing it is a bit of a robbery considering Trump's actually secured Peace in places

I think the actual reason was that despite the fact Trump is ostensibly in charge and agitating for war with Venezuela, it is the exact opposite of what his base wants and voted for. "No more pointless foreign wars" was one of Trump's main selling points, so the Nobel going to someone who wants to start another pointless foreign war isn't actually seen as a good thing for Trump by his base, even if it is a "good thing" for the wealthy ghouls who run the MIC and are actually in charge of US policy.

It’s clear that the Nobel committee for reasons of generic Nordic internationalist liberalism could not stomach giving it to Trump directly (think of the humiliation at parties!) but decided to give it to a Trump-aligned Venezuelan conservative and anti-communist as a kind of consolation and gesture, in that Trump could hardly say she absolutely didn’t deserve it.

Of course, there's another reason why the Nobel committee would be adverse towards granting Trump Nobel right now - there's already a precedent of giving an US president a Nobel for practically nothing (sure, sure, cease-fire and all that, but it's still uncertain how well it holds and the decisionmaking process had already been going on for quite a period at that time) and then getting a lot of flack for it. For American conservatives, certainly, this might seem unfair with Obama and Trump being considered the opposites, but for practical purposes the rest of the world does often tend to consider them to belong to the same category - American presidents.

Some have also pointed out that the Machado decision is generally well in line with other recent Nobel Peace Price decisions - four out of five last years have seen the NPP being at least in part awarded to dissidents from American enemy countries (Dmitry Muratov from Russia in 2021, Ales Bialiatski from Belarus in 2022, Narges Mohammadi from Iran in 2023, Machado now.)

Wake me up if Israel/Palestine stop killing each other for more than a few months! I think this is a case where Trump's approach of steamrolling Israel into accepting his terms worked well and good for him, but it also seems way too easy to be real. Also, it is somewhat difficult to evaluate Israel outside of the context of Ukraine, on which there has been no progress toward a peace that doesnt just reward Russia's initial invasion.

There is a little bit of that but giving it to trump also seems very premature, especially given his other proclivities.

giving it to trump also seems very premature

Not least because it's awarded for deeds done before the year 2025. How exactly did Trump advance peace in 2024 when he wasn't even a president?

Yeah, I couldn't imagine them giving a nobel peace prize to a newly-elected president before he'd even done anything. That would be the scandal of the century.

It should have been (and in some ways was!) the scandal of the century. All the more reason such mistake (giving a US president an entirely premature Nobel peace prize) shouldn't be repeated.

Has there ever been a Middle East deal what wasn't 'cautiously optimistic'. Things can pop off at any moment. There was a long stretch of peace following the death of Yasser Arafat, so who knows..

I don't have a direct reply, but I'm going to piggy back off this post because I'd written up a related issue. I’d like to look at the prisoner exchange ratio.

We’ve looked at this issue various times before on The Motte, with amazement at the disparate ratio of prisoners being exchanged on each side, and the risks involved in releasing terrorists freedom fighters in a prisoner exchange only to have the prisoners commit attacks on Israel in the future.

This time its 20 Israeli hostages against a list of 1900 Palestinian prisoners.

One way of looking at this is that it’s a release of ‘Prisoners of War’ and that all POWs are released at the cessation of hostilities. Except that the hostages were civilians deliberately taken as.. well as hostages, to prevent military advancement and also as leverage in negotiations such as this peace deal.

In addition, the list of 1900 is not limited to ‘POWs’ captured during the latest war, but includes 250 other terrorists freedom fighters that have attacked Israel prior to the current war)

If this peace plan doesn’t hold then Hamas would have bolstered its force by almost 2000 fighters, not for this war, but the future wars to come.

I don't blame Trump and other peacemakers for trying and I am a fan of lasting peace, but this exchange ratio has always been a bugbear of mine and I don't think I'm alone. At a minimum they should stagger out the prisoner release with the 250 non-POWs to be released after the peace holds for 5+ years.

I feel like the political leverage the hostages represented was probably worth a lot more to Hamas than 2000 additional warm bodies. In spite of any Israeli rhetoric to the contrary, I'm pretty sure if the ceasefire breaks down, Israel will no longer be fighting with one arm tied behind their back.

Israel will no longer be fighting with one arm tied behind their back.

Israel was lining Palestinians up and then crushing them with bulldozers (see the story about the IDF soldier who killed himself because he couldn't live with being the driver), on top of torturing people with downs syndrome (Mohammad Bhar) and murdering small children (Hind Rajab). They deployed more explosive power relative to the size of their target than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you think this is them being restrained, you're making the case that Israel needs to be removed from the Earth before they can do this to anyone else.

  • -10

They deployed more explosive power relative to the size of their target than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Having better weapons makes you the bad guy? When the Americans fought Nazi Germany, the Americans had way more bombs and planes than the Germans did. Does that mean the Americans were big meanies, or does it mean the Nazis shouldn't have picked a fight they couldn't win?

Palestine supporters do this all the time, and it's never persuasive. Israel fires more bombs, Israel kills more people, as if these are bad things to do in a war. Winning is evil? When they get attacked, the Israelis should chivalrously lower their military power to be equal to their opponents? It strikes as sour grapes; 'They're only winning because they have more weapons!' See: don't pick fights you can't win.

Every time someone says that the Israelis have killed more Palestinians than vice-versa or set off more bombs or whatever, my only thought it that they clearly haven't done enough because the Palestinians haven't stopped fighting yet! How can you set the bar for too many casualties in a war below the number required to win? You can hardly ask the Israelis to stop fighting and wait for the Palestinians to catch up in the kill count.

You can hardly ask the Israelis to stop fighting and wait for the Palestinians to catch up in the kill count.

I feel like the definition of the term "proportionality" as a military/conflict term was one of the major casualties of this war, but I also don't think it matters. If Israel were to have shut down the Iron Dome, so more of its own civilians were being killed, those misusing the term proportionality wouldn't have changed to "well, now it's not genocide/war crimes because the Israeli deaths are closer in count to the Palestinian deaths", it would be "good, that's what they deserve for attacking Gaza." At least, among the die-hards, rather than the normie supporters who hear about a bad thing on social media and take their views/marching orders from it. They'd just go along with whatever the newest talking point was instead.

I feel like it might be a tad uncharitable to have said that, but I've never seen anyone change their mind when confronted with the text or context of the various laws and regulations that cover waging ethical and legal warfare.

I feel like the definition of the term "proportionality" as a military/conflict term was one of the major casualties of this war

"Proportionality" never meant that death counts had to be close or that an ineffective attack has to be met with an ineffective response. That's just something Palestine supporters claim or imply because it's useful for them. Proportionality means that the collateral damage of an attack has to be proportional to its military objective.

Yes. That's the point I was trying to get across. I believe we are in full agreement.

Having better weapons makes you the bad guy?

No, that's not the point being made.

Winning is evil? When they get attacked, the Israelis should chivalrously lower their military power to be equal to their opponents? It strikes as sour grapes; 'They're only winning because they have more weapons!' See: don't pick fights you can't win.

Would you apply this argument to the jews of Nazi germany? Was it their fault for attacking the big meanie and then having a sook and cry about how badly it went for them? Why did they pick a fight they couldn't win?

I don't think that argument would convince you to support the nazis, and it isn't going to convince me to support the Israelis.

Every time someone says that the Israelis have killed more Palestinians than vice-versa or set off more bombs or whatever, my only thought it that they clearly haven't done enough because the Palestinians haven't stopped fighting yet!

If the Palestinians stop fighting they believe they will be wiped out, which is supported by a vast number of statements from members of the Israeli government. What alternative are you leaving besides a final solution?

You can hardly ask the Israelis to stop fighting and wait for the Palestinians to catch up in the kill count.

My position, which I have stated on here, remains that there should be a single state solution which includes the Israelis and Palestinians both.

Would you apply this argument to the jews of Nazi germany? Was it their fault for attacking the big meanie and then having a sook and cry about how badly it went for them? Why did they pick a fight they couldn't win?

The Jews of Nazi Germany didn't attack the Germans. That's literally an antisemetic conspiracy theory invented by the Nazis to demonize the Jews, and I wasn't aware that anyone believed it except a few diehard neo-Nazis. Conventional history tells us that it was actually the Nazis who attacked the Jews.

If the Palestinians stop fighting they believe they will be wiped out, which is supported by a vast number of statements from members of the Israeli government. What alternative are you leaving besides a final solution?

If they believe that then they're simply wrong. If the Israelis wanted to wipe out the Palestinians they could have done it at any time. Ergo, they don't want to. Given that recent history suggests that every Palestinian attack on Israel is followed by an immediate upswing in Palestinian deaths, it is not clear to me how this course of action prevents the Israelis from wiping them out.

If wiping out is on the table, it seems clear to me that starting pointless wars over and over again for decades can only increase its likelihood. If it isn't on the table then the pointless wars are just that - a meaningless outpouring of useless hatred that accomplishes nothing and causes only misery.

The Jews of Nazi Germany didn't attack the Germans. That's literally an antisemetic conspiracy theory invented by the Nazis to demonize the Jews, and I wasn't aware that anyone believed it except a few diehard neo-Nazis. Conventional history tells us that it was actually the Nazis who attacked the Jews.

That is in fact the point of my argument. The Palestinians were there before Israel was, and we can even directly identify many of the violent terror groups that helped establish Israel like Irgun and Lehi. The Palestinians didn't start this fight any more than the Jews of Nazi Germany started the holocaust.

If they believe that then they're simply wrong.

Incorrect. Multiple high-ranking people in Israel and Israeli think-tanks have made it clear that they view the entirety of the region as being given to them by god, and that it should be an exclusively jewish homeland. The Palestinians aren't so stupid as to think nothing bad would happen to them when their homes become the exclusive homeland of another people!

If the Israelis wanted to wipe out the Palestinians they could have done it at any time.

Mass extermination of unwanted brown people to give your society a bit more lebensraum is the kind of gross crime against humanity that gets your nation completely ostracised from the rest of the world. Not only that, the actual human infrastructure of the state would likely have trouble - look at growing number of IDF suicides and imagine how much worse it would be if they were explicitly committing another holocaust without any figleaves. Just nuking them would engender such a hostile reaction from the rest of the world that Israel would simply cease to be a viable state.

If it isn't on the table then the pointless wars are just that - a meaningless outpouring of useless hatred that accomplishes nothing and causes only misery.

In the absence of violent resistance Israel would simply do to Gaza what they are doing with the west bank and take over the land piecemeal. As I've said, they believe that a lack of resistance means they will simply be wiped out and dispossessed - and I think they're right to believe that. I do agree that this conflict is a meaningless source of misery and the world would be a better place if it didn't happen at all, but sadly I'm not in charge of the region.

The Palestinians were there before Israel was, and we can even directly identify many of the violent terror groups that helped establish Israel like Irgun and Lehi. The Palestinians didn't start this fight any more than the Jews of Nazi Germany started the holocaust.

When I use the word 'attacked,' I do not refer to the crime of existing while being Jewish. I use the word 'attacked' to refer to that thing where you use guns and bombs to kill people.

If the Palestinians were there first (debatable), so what? The German gentiles were undeniably 'there' before the German Jews. Does that mean the German Jews were 'attacking' the German gentiles with their presence? No. By logical extension, the Israelis are not 'attacking' the Palestinians by existing in their vicinity.

On the other hand, last year the Palestinians launched a literal attack on Israel. Lots of people died. It started a war. Ring any bells?

Mass extermination of unwanted brown people to give your society a bit more lebensraum is the kind of gross crime against humanity that gets your nation completely ostracised from the rest of the world. Not only that, the actual human infrastructure of the state would likely have trouble - look at growing number of IDF suicides and imagine how much worse it would be if they were explicitly committing another holocaust without any figleaves. Just nuking them would engender such a hostile reaction from the rest of the world that Israel would simply cease to be a viable state.

Then why are you so concerned that the Palestinians will be 'wiped out'? Since you've just explained why it can't possibly happen regardless of what the Palestinians do, you yourself prove that Palestinian 'resistance' is just a waste of lives. By your own argument there will be no 'wiping out' so what are we even talking about?

In the absence of violent resistance Israel would simply do to Gaza what they are doing with the west bank and take over the land piecemeal. As I've said, they believe that a lack of resistance means they will simply be wiped out and dispossessed - and I think they're right to believe that. I do agree that this conflict is a meaningless source of misery and the world would be a better place if it didn't happen at all, but sadly I'm not in charge of the region.

wiped out and dispossessed

I see. When you say 'wiped out' you don't actually mean anyone will be killed. It's a kind of nonviolent 'wiping out' where people lose landownership in a dispute over whose ancestors stole what from whom, but continue living their lives without being bodily harmed in any way. This is one of those irregular verbs, you know, I'm buying a house, you're dispossessing the native population, he's committing genocide.

So in order to prevent the Jews from metaphorically 'wiping them out' (by existing nearby), the Palestinians must heroically resist (by massacring the Jews). I do not like this abuse of language.

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see the story about the IDF soldier who killed himself because he couldn't live with being the driver

"Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be."

They deployed more explosive power relative to the size of their target than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

... which they deployed over the course of two entire years, as opposed to all of that explosive power being released in one go. And the death toll in that period was between a quarter* and three-fifths** of the death toll of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, making it abundantly clear that the primary function of all this explosive ordnance was not the taking of human life for its own sake, but the destruction of Hamas's tunnel network.

I'm baffled as to how you expect me to be horrified by this metric.

*Assuming a death toll of 246k in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a death toll of 63k in Gaza.

**Assuming a death toll of 150k in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a death toll of 90k in Gaza

"Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be."

I've actually already posted and discussed this particular story on the motte with multiple people - my apologies for assuming that this was just commonly accepted knowledge.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/21/middleeast/gaza-war-israeli-soldiers-ptsd-suicide-intl

making it abundantly clear that the primary function of all this explosive ordnance was not the taking of human life for its own sake, but the destruction of Hamas's tunnel network.

Actually it doesn't make that clear at all - and if that's the case, then the IDF was actually just extremely incompetent, given that the tunnels are still there and they're making noises about how important it is that they be let in to clear out the tunnels. They've blown up the civilian infrastructure and all the hospitals, and there are more amputee children in Gaza than anywhere else in the world. If that was the goal then the IDF is incredibly incompetent - but they've demonstrated enough competence elsewhere that I just can't accept the claim that this was to destroy the tunnels.

I'm baffled as to how you expect me to be horrified by this metric.

Horrified? I'm not expecting that at all. You claimed that Israel was being restrained and fighting with one arm behind their back. But when I look at what's left of Gaza now the idea that this is Israel being restrained just makes me believe that they need to be stopped or denazified before they get the chance to do this to anyone else.

They've blown up the civilian infrastructure and all the hospitals

If you don't want your hospitals and civilian infrastructure blown up, don't use them as weapons caches in flagrant violation of the Geneva convention. I really don't see what's so complicated about this.

You claimed that Israel was being restrained and fighting with one arm behind their back.

When did I say that?

But when I look at what's left of Gaza now the idea that this is Israel being restrained just makes me believe that they need to be stopped or denazified before they get the chance to do this to anyone else.

How do you think Israel ought to have prosecuted a war against a combatant like Hamas? What would you have done differently?

If you don't want your hospitals and civilian infrastructure blown up, don't use them as weapons caches in flagrant violation of the Geneva convention. I really don't see what's so complicated about this.

They didn't. Israel lied and just blew them all up anyway - I haven't seen any confirmation that these hospitals were actually terror bases. Rather, I've seen evidence that the fancy visuals they used to tell people those hospitals were terror bases were largely manufactured out of videogame assets https://www.972mag.com/israeli-army-3d-propaganda-animations/

When did I say that?

My apologies! My posts have been so popular and generated so many replies I didn't realise you weren't actually the person I was replying to.

How do you think Israel ought to have prosecuted a war against a combatant like Hamas? What would you have done differently?

Well, first of all, I simply wouldn't institute apartheid - I'd give the Palestinians equal rights and full franchise, giving them an actual path to peaceful and shared co-existence, giving them a stake in a shared society that could lead to mutual success. But assuming that's out of the question because my government coalition is full of bloodthirsty ethnonationalists and if I resign I'll just get killed... I'd either flee the country or kill myself rather than take part.

But if I had to prosecute it... I would implement incredibly rigorous conduct rules and make sure that the IDF became the most ethical and well-behaved army in the world. I'd make sure that there's zero opportunity for hostile propaganda, fill the waves with stories about our brave soldiers helping rescue people from dangerous conditions and improving their lives. Be as brutal as you want with the people actually taking up arms, deploy drones to the tunnels etc... but guerilla forces can only operate with the help and assistance of the people around them. Public perception and reputation is incredibly important to Israel and I don't think the country is sustainable without support from the west - so I'd make sure that whatever I did, there wouldn't be gigantic protest movements against my country all over the world.

I'd make sure that whatever I did, there wouldn't be gigantic protest movements against my country all over the world.

Your phrasing is very telling. Whatever I did. Because I really do get the distinct impression that whatever Israel does, people will be condemning it.

The gigantic protest movements against the country in question had begun in earnest less than a week after October 7th, well before Israel even had the opportunity to commit any war crimes. In New York, there were protests and calls to "globalise the intifada" literally the day after. (The less said about the people at these protests chanting "Allahu akbar" and "gas the Jews", the better.)

Call me crazy, but it kind of seems like at least a significant proportion of these protests have nothing to do with how Israel's military conducts itself, and more to do with the fact that Israel exists at all.

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Yes but if the boot were on the other foot (assuming somehow the Palestinians were militarily paramount to the same degree, maybe via the act of a warlock) the Palestinians would actually carry out an effective genocide instead of awkwardly trying to ferret out a deeply-buried guerilla insurgency without doing too much damage to civilian populations.

Yes but if the boot were on the other foot

Historically, when the boot was on the other foot, the Palestinians regarded the Palestinian jews as their brothers and lived together for centuries. It was the zionist immigration project which caused hostilities to erupt.

That said, I don't really disagree with you. When you look at the Palestinians and what they've suffered at the hands of Israel, I find it highly likely that they'd take revenge when they were given power - which is one of the reasons why I think that Israel should have actually tried to live and coexist peacefully with their neighbors.

without doing too much damage to civilian populations.

I've seen far too many confessions of deliberate targeting of children, as well as really nasty salami-slicing of exactly who counts as a civilian. I don't believe this is what Israel was doing, and neither do the Israelis if you read hebrew media sources rather than english ones.

Having weak and marginal Jews in your community that paid the dhimmi tax and that you could coerce the beautiful daughters into Islam is nothing like brotherhood, unless you want to tell me that the European ghettos were similar exemplars of tolerance and understanding. The Jews don't want to be dhimmi. No one wants to be a non-Muslim subject in a Islamic country if they can help it. Even the most tolerant Palestinian wants the Jews to live in a box outside of the holy places and be milked for taxes by the bridge troll.

I'm sorry, but your historical read is just wrong. The leftist perspective is simply delusional: too focused, as it were, in the splinters in others eyes to mind the logs in theirs. Your romanticization of Muslim tolerance is historical revisionism at best.

Exactly. Most of the peaceful era was with a relatively tiny population, the local arabs having fuck all control of their own composition due to the Ottoman empire (which was relatively peaceful so long as you paid the Dhimmi). The history of dominant muslim populations treatment of Religious minorities in the region trends a lot closer to an effective genocide than Israel somehow barely being able to make a dent in the Palestinian population over decades of supremacy.

Having weak and marginal Jews in your community that paid the dhimmi tax and that you could coerce the beautiful daughters into Islam is nothing like brotherhood,

How much do you know about Jewish life in Palestine or the muslim world prior to Israel? Who was in charge of the government during the Jewish Golden Age?

The Jews don't want to be dhimmi. No one wants to be a non-Muslim subject in a Islamic country if they can help it.

Do you think the Palestinians want to be non-Jewish subjects in a Jewish country? Hell, I wouldn't want to be a non-Jewish subject in a Jewish country.

Even the most tolerant Palestinian wants the Jews to live in a box outside of the holy places and be milked for taxes by the bridge troll.

I think the last century of events has contributed rather heavily to negative attitudes towards jews amongst the Palestinians.

I'm sorry, but your historical read is just wrong. The leftist perspective is simply delusional: too focused, as it were, in the splinters in others eyes to mind the logs in theirs. Your romanticization of Muslim tolerance is historical revisionism at best.

You might want to check up on your history before you make accusations like that - there were multiple times in history when the Jews fled to Muslim countries because Christian lands persecuted them too heavily. The great antipathy between the Islamic world and the Jews in the modern world is in large part due to the establishment of the state of Israel, and there's a wide variety of historical Jewish sources talking about how Muslim rule was preferrable to Christian rule. While you're right that Muslim tolerance was a far cry from the multicultural societies of the modern west, by the standards of those historical periods that tolerance was actually real - the Christians were treating them far worse at the time, and even some of the earliest Islamic documents (see the constitution of Medina) mention this shared connection with the Jews.

You're not beating the logs-in-eyes allegations. None of anything you said would reflect on how Arabs would treat Jews in a hypothetical one-state solution. The evidence we do have is from the expulsion of Mizrahim from all Arab countries to Israel - a pogrom you blame on Zionism. But they didn't do anything for Israel. They were completely innocent in the matter, but they were expelled and had their property confiscated anyway.

That was, undeniably, ethnic cleansing at the least. Genocide, if you stretch it. And you deny it so pithily, with a single sentence. As if the actions of Jews in Judea and Samaria reflected upon them as a whole.

Why should I trust you accusing Israel of genocide when you downplay the Arab one?

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terrorists freedom fighters

If crime-fighters fight crime, and firefighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part of it, do they?

Humanitarians.

Are there ascendant political figures to the left of Netanyahu for the country to unify around ? I know new leaders have emerged to the right of Netanyahu, but thought that political space to his left had being choked out after Oct 7th.

I guess there is Yair Lapid, but he struggled to stay in power in the calm before Oct 7. So, I don't have much hope for him.

I don't really see the point of taking this for the Palestinians and I'd consider myself broadly in team Israel. Or atleast I think a lasting Israeli victory is the most likely to maximize happiness in the region for the Palestinian population if they cease agitating.

IMO this is likely the peak of Palestinian sympathizing as a media/cultural force. Inevitably this will kick off again within months or years and the IDF will resume absolutely mauling whatever resistance Palestine can present aside from random civilian terrorism.

The Palestinians were squeezed between the IDF and the Egyptian/Qatari axis.

I doubt open hostilities rekindle that soon. There's too much graft to be skimmed from the rebuilding/humanitarian operations. Time some fat years.

IMO this is likely the peak of Palestinian sympathizing as a media/cultural force.

You want to get out at the top, not ride your bit down.

Pre 10/7, Palestinian hard-liners found themselves being abandoned by their long term backers with no realistic path forward. Free Palestine on the western left was becoming a really niche bumper sticker, like Free Tibet or Zapatista tier. Arab powers were showing a willingness to make peace with Israel without reference to Palestine or even the Arab population of Israel. The Abraham Accords were a major step towards permanent defeat of the Palestinian cause. Israel was looking like a normal country with a thriving economy and no problems which would keep international investors out.

The goal of 10/7 realistically was to reopen the conflct, draw Israel into fighting, denormalize Israeli life and economics, isolate Israel on the international stage. At some point you've maxed out the effectiveness of using dead babies for propaganda, and further dead babies have a diminishing marginal return. And at some point, the destruction wrought onto Gaza is net negative for Hamas, the loss of life undermines their ability to govern and rebuild.

So at some number of dead kids and world outrage, they'll cash out and make peace-noises.

Or at least I think a lasting Israeli victory is the most likely to maximize happiness in the region for the Palestinian population if they cease agitating.

The only realistic solution that doesn't involve ethnic cleansing is one state, or effectively one state, containing most of the current populations. How one achieves that without destroying what makes Israel worthwhile is the problem.

Israel's already got a fairly sizeable Arabic population. Of course, adding the Palestinians on top of that and retaining democracy and what makes Israel a successful state is difficult, but even a literal apartheid in terms of voting rights would still likely produce better economic and lifestyle outcomes for the average Palestinian Arab Israeli than the current status quo.

but even a literal apartheid in terms of voting rights would still likely produce better economic and lifestyle outcomes for the average Palestinian Arab Israeli than the current status quo.

Yes, at least until they got tired of the apartheid, agitated for full voting rights, got the "international community" including the US to support them, and took over. At that point your best case is South Africa.

And to note, even blacks in South Africa are much better off than in most of the rest of the continent- see the economic migration there(which has been going on for SA’s entire history).

Even without apartheid jews would be in control of the state institutions for decades, decent treatment would be enough to keep non-jewish citizens in check, time would do the rest. Problem is that jews want their state jewish.

I found it odd (perhaps naïvely so) to see headlines, notably the BBC, focused not on the release Israeli hostages, but on the Palestinians: "Palestinians celebrate return of detainees freed by Israel"

That's right below a headline about the hostages on my page.

'You're my life, my hero': Hostages reunite with families after two years

I suppose it's going to appear differently on different feeds, true enough.

Aren't we living under the conditions of an Israeli victory now. They can act as they will and annex what they want. Most of the West Bank is functionally integrated into Israel already and the only reason they don't annex it is so they don't need to give the Palestinian population there citizenship.

this runs into complications like how Hamas has already engaged in gun battles with gazan clans as it tries to re-assert control, which goes significant premise of Hamas being removed as the military and civil authority of Gaza.

I mean, this is very much understating the extent to which the ceasefire is a chance for Hamas to execute its domestic opposition.

Which, based on fairly gruesome videos circulating on social media, it appears to be doing fairly vigorously right now.

"Palestinians brutally murdered by occupying military forces!... but it's not the IDF doing it, so does anyone really care?"

Or the line right now on Left sides seems to be that Israel armed/supported the parties inside Palestine that are currently being purged so that makes them a sixth column of the evil Zionists and therefore free game, or something.

This conflict has continued for 70 years and will continue indefinitely until a “final resolution” occurs. Settlers continue to exercise growing power in Israeli politics; while not as fecund as the chareidim they stil have substantially higher tfr than secular Jews. Hamas is re-asserting control of Gaza and still likely has at least 10-20,000 fighters, and very high Gazan fertility rates and a large pool of existing 10-14 year old males means it will have many more in short order.

There are only 4 final resolution states:

  1. Total victory of the Israelis, involving the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, followed by a subsequent peace deal with the surrounding nations that involves some kind of naturalization for Palestinian emigres as full citizens of other nations or another nation. Very unlikely.

  2. Total victory of the Palestinians, involving the ethnic cleansing of Jews (either in a genocidal context or Algeria-style ‘suitcase or coffin’ emigration) from all current Israeli territory and a single Palestinian Arab state. Unlikely for now although less unlikely than scenario 1, and radically more likely if the world enters a period of sustained international upheaval.

  3. A two-state solution imposed by the United States and other powers to Palestine’s benefit. America and other nations sanction Israel or threaten to until it experiences a domestic political crisis and forcibly withdraws settlers from the Palestinian Territories and agrees to a Palestinian state along either 1967 or (less likely) 1948 borders. There is a substantial chance of this turning into scenario 2, although it is theoretically possible with a ‘neutral’ international force overseeing the process. If public sentiment shifts further against Israel in America I think this is plausible in the medium term.

  4. A two-state solution imposed by the United States to Israel’s benefit, which would involve one or more Muslim powers administering a semi-autonomous collection of Palestinian city states in an arrangement with Israel and possibly other global powers, principally America. This was the goal of the Israeli right but seems less likely as time goes on.

The most likely outcome of the current process is that Hamas returns to power in Gaza, the world mostly forgets about the conflict for 5-10-15 years, and then things eventually flare up once Hamas is ready for another big attack.

Why do you exclude South Africa-style reintegration? Eventually someone is going to realize that grotesque jihadi violence is counterproductive and that they would get way more stuff if they kept the Jews around to milk welfare out of.

Eventually someone is going to realize that grotesque jihadi violence is counterproductive and that they would get way more stuff if they kept the Jews around to milk welfare out of.

Because that someone will just get killed and replaced with someone else who values killing Jews over everything else.

Actually that person, Marwhan Bargouti, is currently in an Israeli prison being repeatedly tortured. The Palestinians keep trying to get him released and think that he'd be the best possible leader (he convincingly clears every poll for preferred leader), which is presumably why the Israelis are trying to make sure he will never get out.

So they do have a Nelson Mandela?

Yes, Marwhan Bargouti has been referred to as the Palestinian Mandela for quite some time. The Israelis refuse to release him from prison and repeatedly torture him in order to make sure there's no peaceful resolution to the conflict beyond the extermination of the Palestinians (to the best of my understanding - maybe there's an alternative and more charitable explanation, but if there is I haven't found it).

You're just never going to drop the "Israel is committing genocide" thing, are you?

If the prosecutions go ahead and it is determined that the entire thing has been a misinformation campaign or other convincing evidence arises that it was all fake I'll absolutely drop it. But I've seen the videos and comments posted by IDF soldiers, and I've actually read some translated Israeli media - it'll take a vast amount of convincing evidence to make me change my mind, but if you've got it then please lay it on the table. I'd honestly love to be proven wrong and learn that the Hind Rajab and Mohamaed Bhar stories were just a bad dream, or that all those translated comments by Smotrich and Ben Gvir were lies - but I really don't think you actually have the evidence required.

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A brief googling indicates that he is clearly a terrorist and he is popular because of that plus the martyr status of being imprisoned.

If he was released and was a five in Gaza he's quickly be on a pike.

A brief googling indicates that he is clearly a terrorist

Damn that's funny, I did the same and it told me the exact opposite - a brief google, where you are given a curated selection of results designed to cater to your biases, is less than useless in the modern day when it comes to truth-finding. Why don't you do an actual investigation into the circumstances around his arrest and base your opinion on something substantial? Look, even if you do the research and still think he's a terrorist, discussions on these topics are better when you actually do the research and can make an informed contribution.

I mean, its an easy heuristic to read Wikipedia and realize that it represents the most far left case that can be plausibly levied under their rules.

Even so I was alone during 2nd intifada, it was a terrorist campaign supported by all the relevant Palestinian parties in government, so that necessarily includes him and Arafat. If you have a lexis media account you can probably make a better assessment using only transcripts from the trial and contemporaneous media accounts, although even then they were generally Palestinian -leaning, as we see with Arafat winning man of the year

I mean, its an easy heuristic to read Wikipedia and realize that it represents the most far left case that can be plausibly levied under their rules.

No? I am a far leftist and this really isn't the case. Wikipedia is generally pro establishment, and that lines up with the left in some ways and not at all in others.

Even so I was alone during 2nd intifada

My condolences?

terrorist campaign supported by all the relevant Palestinian parties in government, so that necessarily includes him and Arafat.

If you're going to claim that lets you call him a terrorist, you're going to have to admit that the entire Israeli government consists of terrorists as well. If you're willing to make that claim, fair enough, but otherwise it doesn't really mean anything at all - not that "terrorist" is a particularly meaningful political designation these days anyway.

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In the long term, is that distinct from (2)? IIRC South Africa has had long-term white emigration that at some point starts to look like the "suitcase" option there, or sometimes worse. There was even that drama earlier this year when the current US administration looked to consider it as ethnic-cleansing-adjacent.

I'm just glancing at numbers, but it looks like white emigration from South Africa is about 2% per year, as opposed to around 40% per year for the pieds-noirs during 2 years of "suitcase or the coffin". South African white emigration has been slow enough that fertility has kept their population pretty steady over the past few decades in spite of it.

Thanks for looking at the numbers. I guess I was extrapolating from Zimbabwe, which actually did see like 90% of the white population emigrate. Although the most recent stats I've seen actually show growth within the last couple years.

White South Africans are still there, the boers are probably above replacement, the shrinking of the white population is mostly due to very high black population growth. And nobody really wants the whites to leave, either- they lay the golden egg for the ANC to then steal.

Scott once noticed that the best place in the middle east to be an Arab outside the oil rich states is Israel. Smart Palestinians should be arguing to the world that the just punishment for Israel's actions is that they must annex all of Gaza and the West Bank, make everyone living there full citizens of Israel and provide them with the same access to resources as they do to any other Israeli citizen right now.

the just punishment for Israel's actions is that they must annex all of Gaza and the West Bank, make everyone living there full citizens of Israel and provide them with the same access to resources as they do to any other Israeli citizen right now.

Are you not aware that this has been the leftist demand the whole time? The problem is obvious. If Israel annexes the whole of mandate Palestine then the Jews will be a minority and swiftly have the mechanism of state turned on them. At best they would be Dhimmi in a shariah state subject to the abuses that have led to there being basically no jews anywhere else in the islamic world and with a reasonably high chance of being subject to massive pogroms that would make the holocaust seem loving by comparison.

Right. So, rather the Americans should be telling Israelis to move to some corner of Montana and have at it. Because what's happening is not tenable by modern ethical standards, either lording it over a population in that way or having a state charter built on the lord.

If the Palestinians can give up on the pipe dream of driving the jews into the sea then a two or three state solution where both peoples prosper is totally possible. It's essentially the direction Trump's plan pushes things. What you're asking for is a near equivalent to demands all non-native americans leave turtle island and go back to the countries of their ethnic origin, justice by some tortured ethic but simply not going to happen and the sooner the fantasy is dispensed with the sooner real solutions can be tried.

I'm sorry, the Israelis are not going to lay down and let themselves all be killed or expelled from what they believe to be their homeland. If your plan is for them to do that then you need to come up with another plan.

Sure and that's reasonable. But the situation in the West Bank is also completely unique and completely untenable long term. If Israel could agree on some sort of border it would work better. But they want the land and not the people and most of the West Bank is essentially fully integrated into Israel ignoring the blobs of Palestinian towns throughout. If Israel drew a line and declared one part Palestine and one part Israel I think they'd get reasonable far many countries have disputed borders. But the West Bank is a millstone around their neck because they want the land but not the people and the occupation prevents them from being a normal country.

I agree that an enduring peace would require abandoning the settlements outside of the ones on the current 67 borders. But I will also point out that what you demand was on offer in 47 and rather than accept them the surrounding Arabs went to war with Israel and lost. It's kind of rich to attempt decades of war to deny an offered border, lose repeatedly, and then demand the original offer anyways. The Palestinians themselves have made no such offer and give every indication of denying one if it was offered without an "unlimited right of return" or a "just settlement of the right of return" which has never been defined and acts as a poison pill that sounds OK to the west but could easily expand to mean enough refugees are shipped into Israel proper to effectively make Israel a Muslim majority.

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There is no realistic two state solution that does not involve ethnic cleansing of Arabs and Jews both. The remaining areas allotted and allowed to Palestinians are so marginal and split up by settlers that there is no contiguous state possible without expelling large numbers of Jews. Otherwise a Palestinian state is unworkable and unviable, certainly not prosperous.

A one state solution is the only non-genocidal solution on offer. Recognize Palestine all they want, the West will lack the stomach to murder the Jewish settlers who drive wedges through any possible Palestine.

There is no realistic two state solution that does not involve ethnic cleansing of Arabs and Jews both. The remaining areas allotted and allowed to Palestinians are so marginal and split up by settlers that there is no contiguous state possible without expelling large numbers of Jews. Otherwise a Palestinian state is unworkable and unviable, certainly not prosperous.

The term for this when it's done as a deal and mutually agreed upon is population transfers and has been done successfully in the past in other contexts. Realistically there would be a Gaza and separate west bank state. The west bank would ideally just have jewish citizens if they don't want to transfer back to Israel although in practice I expect most of them to.

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A one state solution is plainly genocidal, once you count up numbers and birthrates.

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Freddie de Boer has this as his preferred solution, but the 'well the Israelis should all become Americans' is a nice logical solution that's completely useless. It's just as unlikely as the right wing version of this ('give all the Palestinians Jordanian/Egyptian citizenship') - a solution you come up with when you realize that neither the Israelis nor Palestinians are going to give up anytime soon, but that you're ethically sensitive enough to still want a solution. But even if President Woke threatened Israel at gunpoint to concede to a maximalist version of the 2SS, we're just going to end up where we are now after the next attack from State-Palestine, whether or not the recognized government attacks, allows an attack, or is too weak to stop one. There's no point in any of this so long as a significant proportion of Palestinian society is willing to beat their own brains out on the border wall.

second best option: extract America from this eternal nonsense as much as possible.

Actually that's the first best option

Well that's fine, but I don't see how you end up anywhere but the exact situation as today, less some Israeli military hardware. Fine, so our hands are clean. If Israel can't fight without our support, they end up in 2rafa's 3rd resolution, which will collapse immediately on the next attack; if they can, maybe they just accept being a pariah and just go to war as they need to for their security, cut a deal with China or what have you. Doesn't seem likely to produce an ethical improvement outside of American feelings.

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subject to the abuses that have led to there being basically no jews anywhere else in the islamic world

I feel like pointing out that the major historical abuse that lead to the jews leaving the arab world was actually the creation of Israel. Even wikipedia makes it clear that there were plenty of jews living in the Arab world up until the creation of Israel, and the descendants of those populations are largely referred to as Mizrahim today. Some of the other "abuses", like the 1950s Baghdad bombings, were almost certainly committed by Israelis in order to encourage Iraqi jews to emigrate to Israel to boot.

They lived in those areas as a persecuted minorities under, ironically given the current accusations, appartide conditions. Subjected to additional taxes, exclusion from official positions, lesser status under the law and the occasional pogrom. There are some few contested incidents like the 1950s Baghdad bombings but many many more straightforward incidents like the Egyptian denationalization and mass asset seizures of jews across the region. The idea that the push factors compelling jews to move to Israel from the middle east were largely fabricated is ahistorical. Certainly Israel wanted to entice jews to move there and sure up their numbers but the woes of the jews across the region were very real.

I in no way meant to imply that life as a minority was a land of milk and honey for the jews in the arab world - but when they have spent over a thousand years suffering those abuses and managed to maintain their own cultural and ethnic identity during that time, you're being a bit misleading when you say that those abuses are why there aren't any jews left in the rest of the region.

If a domestic abuse victim moves out because they finally found a safe place to stay instead, it feels weird to say "well, they didn't leave because of the abuse".

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It was those abuses plus finally having a place to go that emptied out the rest of the middle east. My point was to explain why Israelis would be unwilling to make themselves a minority in a single Palestinian state.

Plus full democratic voting rights and there's a big enough bloc to enforce shit over a decent tenure.

Even Hamas would be able to likely keep operating as a guerilla movement and any attempts to oppress the Palestinian Arab population as a result of Hamas agitation would be looked at even more disfavorably than the status quo.

Why do you exclude South Africa-style reintegration?

Because everyone can look at South Africa to see just how well that goes.

Eventually someone is going to realize that grotesque jihadi violence is counterproductive and that they would get way more stuff if they kept the Jews around to milk welfare out of.

They were getting welfare out of the international community via things like UNRWA regardless. I'm sure money will continue to roll in.

Honestly, three and four don’t work simply because of geography. Israel and Palestine are fighting over pieces of land that in total is the size of New Jersey. Problem being that any missile launched can reach just about anywhere in that land area pretty easily. Which means that if either side ever defects, it’s back to square one. And thus Theres at best the return to form — ceasefire, rearm, and start another war.

The only way to have a permanent peace is to do the suitcase or coffin solution, as nothing less will survive the first defection.

They managed to create a permanent peace with Syria and Egypt even with the Golan heights and no peace agreement and the West Bank has towns under full Palestinian control. I think a State of Palestine would be a lot less likely to just start a war then stateless terrorist groups.

I think a State of Palestine would be a lot less likely to just start a war then stateless terrorist groups.

Gaza was a test of that. It failed.

I think they'll eventually succeed at taking over the West Bank. In part because they want it (it's good land and it's right there for the taking, not to mention the religious motivation to control jeruselum), and in part because they've found a way to successfully "salami slice" it, taking little bits at a time. The rest of the world expresses outrage and indignation but does nothing, and the Palestinian authority can't fight back. There seems to be no shortage of Israeli's volunteering to move in there, and not just soldiers but normal middle-class families. This might take multiple generations, but it'll happen.

I do not think they'll take over the Gaza strip that way, because the situation is totally different. Nobody really wants it, because it's an ultra-dense ghett of bomb-blasted buildings and unexploded ordnance. The people living there are highly motivated to fight back, and there's a ton of world attention that would make a huge outcry if Israel tried to adjust the borders even slightly. There's also no holy city there, no natural resources, limited water... it's not a place any sane person would want to live.

But they haven't yet been able to expel the population and I don't know if they realistically can. So far they've just been settling the gaps and ignoring the Palestinian settlements but this doesn't seem stable.

There have been many instances of palestinian settlements in the west bank being demolished and the people being evicted: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/06/1164971

How do you rate scenario 2 as more likely than scenario 1???

The IDF is one of the most formidable militaries on planet earth, who's primary opponents (Arabs) have one of the worst track records of modern warfighting and who's societies/institutions make them absolutely AWFUL at it.

How on earth do you imagine Israel (who also has nukes) losing?

Western countries will intervene of 1 appears to be happening. They will not of 2 appears to be happening.

Israel has four neighbors, two of which are borderline failed states and the other two are strong American allies. None of these countries are staging an invasion.

They might if America itself turns against Israel

I think Israel will change behavior if that happens and act / beg for scenario 3, but as I said, there are many routes by which that leads to scenario 2 anyway.

So? Maybe Turkey gets excited. Maybe the US gets taken over by lefties and imposes a blockade.

Assuming the UK and the rest of Europe don't deal with their Muslim problem and population replacement continues apace it will not be too much longer before there are a few muslim societies with nukes and modern militaries which are willing to declare war on Israel. I think that is the biggest risk factor for number 2.

How do you rate scenario 2 as more likely than scenario 1???

Israel needs western support to exist. Europe is going to become very muslim (and also very failed) in the next 100 years. In the US support for israel rests on three pillars: jews, defense contractors and red heifer evangelicals. The evangelicals are dying, the jews are quickly coming to see themselves more as liberals than as jews. On the other hand jews map to white and palestinians map to brown in the woke mind.

Within the next two generations israel needs to either resolve the problem fully, somehow, or find a new partner or they lose.

Within the next two generations israel needs to either resolve the problem fully, somehow, or find a new partner or they lose.

This isn't the first time I've had this discussion on here, but I think you're not just right, you're understating the problem they face. Who is going to be the next imperial patron for Israel? They can't exist without one without a severe reduction in social complexity, and I don't see Russia (currently engaging in deep military co-operation with their greatest adversary) stepping up to the plate. China has absolutely no need to sponsor Israel and they're not going to be vulnerable to the same strategies that worked on America and the broader west. Who's left? India?

Why does Israel need an imperial patron?

In the past Israel got along okay without the US (buying military hardware from, notably, France).

Today they are capable of manufacturing most of their own military hardware except for fighter aircraft and helicopters (the bottleneck on the former likely being engine manufacturing). It looks like they are a net food importer but are energy independent. As others have pointed out, they have a growing population and an advanced military.

So why do they need a patron? I'm not trying to be confrontational here, I'm just trying to figure out the argument that they can't survive without a sponsor. It seems like to me that as long as they can prevent sea access from being cut off they should be just fine on their own. Is there a bottleneck that I'm not seeing here?

Why does Israel need an imperial patron?

Because Israel's geography and productive economy aren't able to sustain their population and current level of social complexity. Their incredibly challenging security environment necessitates immense military investment, and their internal politics require them to support and feed a growing population of useless eaters who just study the torah all day (the orthodox, who do not contribute to the economy in any real way and are exempt from military service). Their military additionally requires a vast array of inputs which they are unable to source domestically, and if their current imperial patron left they would be unable to maintain the military edge their security environment requires.

In the past Israel got along okay without the US (buying military hardware from, notably, France).

Do you mean when their imperial patron was the UK?

It looks like they are a net food importer but are energy independent. As others have pointed out, they have a growing population and an advanced military.

A growing population isn't a good thing when you are already importing food - but it becomes ruinous when you have an extremely dangerous security environment which would add significant difficulty and expense to those food imports. Currently, the US is spending a lot of money to make sure the Middle East is survivable for Israel and they can continue to import food, and Israel just isn't capable of stepping up to the plate by themselves to ensure that food security.

But energy independent? LOL

Israel currently produces 5% of their oil consumption domestically, with approximately 220 thousand barrels imported each day. Petroleum is currently irreplaceable as an energy source - there is no alternative with equivalent energy density or existing infrastructure investments that can take its place (i.e. even if they discovered a perfect new energy source which they had in abundance, it would take a long time and huge investment to set up the infrastructure required to distribute and use it). Oil is used in farming, transportation and of course in the military - so if those imports were halted due to a conflict, the food situation would very rapidly become extremely dire and the military would be hamstrung by lack of access to the fuel which powers all of their tanks etc.

Without the US empire giving money to all the other nations in the region to pacify them, supplying Israel with interceptor missiles/other materiel and engaging in various trade arrangements with oil suppliers, how does Israel maintain their energy security? How do they maintain their food security, given that modern farming practices also rely heavily on petroleum for energy and fertiliser? How exactly do they make up for that 95% reduction in available energy when the imports get cut off due to war? How much of their military supply chain is entirely domestic?

These are the questions which convinced me that Israel would not be able to survive without an imperial patron, and I haven't seen any convincing arguments otherwise.

(the orthodox, who do not contribute to the economy in any real way and are exempt from military service)

Interestingly that exemption ended last year.

Their military additionally requires a vast array of inputs which they are unable to source domestically, and if their current imperial patron left they would be unable to maintain the military edge their security environment requires.

What, specifically, can they not make? And if they can't make something, why couldn't they source it from a non-patron power? The US declining to be Israel's patron doesn't mean, for instance, that the US stops selling Israel aircraft - but if they did, Russia, France and China would all be happy to source anything Israel couldn't domestically manufacture, don't you think?

But energy independent?

Ah, my mistake. They export LNG, but that doesn't go writ large for the rest of their energy.

Without the US empire giving money to all the other nations in the region to pacify them, supplying Israel with interceptor missiles/other materiel and engaging in various trade arrangements with oil suppliers, how does Israel maintain their energy security? How do they maintain their food security, given that modern farming practices also rely heavily on petroleum for energy and fertiliser? How exactly do they make up for that 95% reduction in available energy when the imports get cut off due to war? How much of their military supply chain is entirely domestic?

Presumably the answer to these questions is "the same way all other nations do." (Now, in point of fact, I think Israel sources their own interceptors - Iron Dome, David's Sling, and Arrow, since they have retired the Patriot.)

Who, specifically, is going to cut off their imports? And how?

Perhaps you tacitly assume that all surrounding countries will attempt to attack Israel again as soon as the US withdraws its security umbrella? I do not understand why I should assume that this will happen (let alone why the attempt should succeed) - a lot has changed in the Middle East since the Yom Kippur War. But if I should assume that, I would like to know!

What, specifically, can they not make?

Anything with significant quantities of rare earths - which describes a lot of modern military technology. Israel has plenty of deposits, but they don't have the infrastructure required to refine and process them into usable material. To the best of my knowledge Israel doesn't actually have any mines at all (plenty of quarries, but good luck turning stone into hypersonic missiles or drones), which will make resupplying the metal used for modern military technologies a bit difficult.

And if they can't make something, why couldn't they source it from a non-patron power?

Who?

China's not going to help - China wants to make sure the Israeli security situation is as miserable as possible, because that means US resources and attention will be diverted there and away from Taiwan. Additionally, the comments made by Chinese officials regarding the current conflict are very much not indicative of future support for Israel - they have explicitly supported the right of Palestine to full statehood and development. France? I wouldn't pin my hopes on France coming to the rescue given their own large internal problems. They can't even supply the Ukrainians with enough materiel to fight off Russia. As for Russia itself? Russia supplies the air-defence systems used by Iran and has been accepting a lot of help from them with regards to drone technology and drone warfare. Russia is the largest military partner of Israel's biggest regional threat - I don't think they're going to be much help.

Who's left? What other nation can both supply advanced modern military materiel, has plenty of said materiel to spare and the capacity to open a secure land route to get that technology to Israel? Without the US guaranteeing global shipping and commercial trade, or paying Egypt to stay friendly to Israel, how exactly does this mysterious nation even get their technology to Israel? Furthermore, how's Israel going to pay for it? Right now they've duped the Americans into paying them to receive free weapons, but that isn't going to work on China. In the same future where the US has abandoned them, there's no doubt going to be a cessation of remittances and other support from American jews to Israel - so the budget is going to be taking a significant hit already.

Presumably the answer to these questions is "the same way all other nations do."

Historically, the way all other nations solved the problem of having an unsustainably large population, 95% reduction in available energy and an economy unable to support their military is by collapsing or experiencing massive famines and starvation.

Who, specifically, is going to cut off their imports? And how?

The nations surrounding them, and by simply closing their borders to land/air traffic. Iran is more than capable of shutting down their shipping infrastructure, even if they have to send the weaponry to the Houthis to do it.

Perhaps you tacitly assume that all surrounding countries will attempt to attack Israel again as soon as the US withdraws its security umbrella?

I assume that when the US stops paying them to be nice to Israel, they will stop being nice to Israel. I don't think they'll necessarily attack them, but charging obscene fees to render those imports uneconomical when they don't just sabotage or block them is well within the bounds of what they could do.

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the jews are quickly coming to see themselves more as liberals than as jews.

very much the opposite in my social circle. (I'm jewish). There's a lot of "we still don't like Trump, but the left hates Israel, so we'll put up with him" - pithily captured as "Jews went to bed October 6th as Democrats - but woke up Republican"

Within the next two generations, Israel will be significantly larger than today, both in population and land area.

Israeli population growth shows no sign of abating, and, while the world is transfixed to Gaza, ancient biblical land of Bashan is now in the play.

Judea and Samaria and faith accompli, Bashan (and Gilead, when something happens in Jordan) are the next steps. Handmaid Tale fandom could rejoice, their fantasy could soon become real.

I don't think 3 has any chance of turning into 2. Even with the 1948 borders the Israeli military would still massively outclass the Palestinian one.

It’s more about the situation in which 3 would occur, namely near-total loss of US support, an increasingly Muslim Europe, China and Russia signing onto sanctions to appease Muslim allies like Pakistan and Iran, and then relatively quickly almost the whole world is against them, the US for residual world peace reasons forces them into this quasi peace, and then maybe Turkey or another coalition of Arab nations decide that it’s just time for the killing blow, there’s a mass Palestinian uprising of the kind that didn’t occur on October 7th etc…

I think you're overestimating how much the broader Muslim world cares about the Palestinian cause, or atleast the adults in charge of other nations.

Obviously the calculus could change if Israel were already weak/vulnerable, but there's a reason most of the other countries in the region try their best to ignore what's going on.

The bulk of the peasantry and proletariat in the region would gladly throw everything at Israel. The leadership refuse because of a number of reasons; the connection between Hamas and other Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood that wants to overthrow the Egyptian military regime, those who would destabilize the Jordanian monarchy etc; the fact that the US supports Israel; the fact that the IDF could destroy their militaries leaving them vulnerable to domestic upheaval (see the first reason) and so on.

However, if Israel appears weak, these same governments may be unable to resist popular pressure to give in to the people and mount an invasion. This would be especially true if there was a Palestinian uprising. In addition, Egypt may well eventually fall to an Islamist government.

Also the US gives both Egypt and Jordan over $1 billion a year in aid to prevent them from attacking Israel.

Marxism and the History of Philosophy:

Most people in most places, including intellectuals, have never worked out their basic worldviews, and thus, they flounder without foundations. This is what Marxism has to offer: foundations and meaning.

We have a worldview that is clear, coherent, comprehensive, and credible. We bring a way to think that combines totality with historicity, a way of processing experience that is both integrative and empirical, and a way of synthesizing that is not an abstract unfolding of a mystified idea, but a constant and dynamic interaction with nature and with labor in a material historical process.

We need to show how the system structuring people’s lives, capitalism, is responsible for the terrible injustices of the world, the ecological destruction of the world as well as for the cultural decadence and psychological disorder of the world. We offer not only analysis in understanding the nature of the system generating the most basic problems, but also a solution in a movement to expose this system and to bring about an alternative system, socialism. We offer both meaning and purpose. [emphasis mine]

If this sounds a lot like a religion, then that's because it should. Marxism undoubtedly shares many structural features with traditional religions in its fundamentals.

(I have argued previously that wokeism is not identical with Marxism. The relationship between wokeism and Marxism should be understood as being something like the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. Adherents of the newer religion incorporate the sacred texts of the older religion as their own, but they also make a number of modifications and additions that adherents of the older religion would stridently reject. Nonetheless, the two traditions are united in certain ethical and philosophical commitments that more distant outsiders would find baffling.)

Much ado has been made about the "crisis of meaning" in the contemporary West, and how "we", as a civilization, "need" religion (and how in its absence, people will inevitably seek out substitutes like wokeism). But speaking at this level of generality obscures important and interesting psychological differences between different individuals. Many, perhaps most, people are actually perfectly fine with operating in the absence of meaning. And they can be quite happy this way. They may be dimly aware that "something" is missing or not quite right, but they'll still live docile and functional existences overall. They achieve this by operating at a persistently minimal level of sensitivity towards issues of meaning, value, aesthetics, etc, a sort of "spiritual hibernation".

It is only a certain segment of the population (whose size I will not venture to estimate -- it may be a larger segment than the hibernators, or it may be smaller, I don't know) that really needs to receive a sense of purpose from an authoritative external social source. And this segment of the population has an outsized effect on society as a whole, because these are the people who most zealously sustain mass social movements like Christianity and wokeism.

Finally there are individuals who are seemingly capable of generating a sui generis sense of meaning wholly from within themselves. This is surely the smallest segment of the population, and it's unlikely that you could learn to emulate their mode of existence if you weren't born into it -- but you wouldn't want to anyway. Such individuals are often consumed by powerful manias to the point of self-ruin, or else they become condemned to inaction, paralyzed with fear over not being able to fulfill the momentous duties they have placed upon themselves.

I think one of the stronger tells re:Marxism-as-religion is how they treat Marx himself, much more like a prophet than a scholar (despite protestations to the contrary).

I don't think that the way Marx is treated is all that out of the ordinary compared to how other canonical historical philosophers are treated (and you can find other historical thinkers who have a bigger cult of personality, like Lacan imo). I think the locus of emotional investment is more in the cause of socialism itself rather than Marx as a person.

The particular attention paid to Marx's writings and Marx as a person may seem strange to people with a STEM background, where primary historical sources are never read by anyone except dedicated historians. But that's simply how things are done in philosophy. If you want to do serious scholarly or intellectual work using X thinker’s ideas, then you're expected to read what X actually wrote.

No one treats Marx's thought as an infallible edifice which can never be criticized or amended. The Frankfurt school thought that Marxism had to be supplemented with psychoanalysis and cultural criticism in order to address some of its blind spots. Wokes are intrinsically suspicious of Marx because he was white and male. Etc.

I mean maybe im not into the philosophy scene enough to be in on those conversations but I’ve never seen any other philosophers treated as Marx is. People in the Woke/Marxist movements insist that you aren’t well educated in political theory until you have studied Marx. This isn’t what people claim about Kant, or Shoepenhour or Pascal. Nobody’s passing around Critique of Pure Reason like they do for Communist Manifesto. Some weird libertarians might pass aroun$ Milton Friedman, but it’s pretty rare. The closest I’ve seen to people treating philosophers like prophets is the Neo-Stoic movement that encourages people to read Seneca and Marcus Aurelius.

Lacan's cult of personality is bigger than Marx's? What? How are they even in the same order of magnitude?

I feel like you are in a very small bubble if you genuinely think that! Unless maybe you're defining it in a counterintuitive way.

Lacan's cult of personality is bigger than Marx's? What? How are they even in the same order of magnitude?

Psychoanalysis is a weeeeeeird discipline, man.

I suppose that was ambiguous.

In terms of the sheer number of people around the world who (claim to) adhere to his ideas, no one can really touch Marx. But within academic circles, self-professed "followers of Marx" I think are more willing to be critical of Marx when compared to followers of certain other philosophers.

Such individuals are often consumed by powerful manias to the point of self-ruin, or else they become condemned to inaction, paralyzed with fear over not being able to fulfill the momentous duties they have placed upon themselves.

What names come to mind?

Nietzsche certainly. Kierkegaard too.

Oh, a Nietzsche-type destined to to be "consumed by powerful manias" or "paralyzed with fear over not being able to fulfill the momentous duties" should be very rare, but real. Was Diogenes the first recorded Nietzsche-type? It is difficult to discern to what extent the Nietzsche-type, the Grill-type, and the Priestly-type are conditionally generated or individually driven. The printing press, plow, literacy, the Enlightenment, and the 20th century provides tools to enable the Priestly-type that simply didn't exist at other points.

I think it is fun to think of this piece as reactionary. RETVRN! The philosophy of individualism fallen prey to anti-materialist, post-modernist witchcraft contradictions. "We must go deeper and wider." The heretical sect -- that which has sapped vitality of the faith -- has not sinned such that they cannot be forgiven, but only if they repent and, once again, condemn capitalism the evil that corrupts them.

The printing press, plow, literacy, the Enlightenment, and the 20th century provides tools to enable the Priestly-type that simply didn't exist at other points.

Can you explain this a bit more? If you're talking about the ability to maintain an unproductive priestly class it seems like the ancient extractive hierarchy (whether through direct taxation or tradition-bound hospitality) is a social technology which is very capable of doing this on its own. With Christian poverty you even get priests, monks and saints in places where they can just about feed themselves, and their number seems more constrained by the strength of their ideals than anything else.

Can you explain this a bit more?

Not with much clarity. OP has a point, many societies have priestly class, social role, and some part of it is filled by the Priestly-type, individual psychology. The psychological need is constant, but the available options are historically contingent.

I listed some of the things that help guide the psychology of Priestly-type to meaning and zeal. The printing press and the October Revolution happened. The former helped democratize literacy, thus enabling the spread ideas to more Priestly-types, and the latter was added to the catalog of ideas that the Priestly-type now access and maintain. The catalog grows, and Priestly-types continue to splinter, branch, and find novel doctrinal positions.

I didn't mean to imply that we can't find zeal in the past, only that we won't find Marxist Priests there. That sounds boring and obvious to write, but it doesn't feel boring in my head. The catalog of ideas has exploded in size, and it continues to grow at an incredible rate. So if we were to say the population is 15% Priestly-type psychologies, accept they have "an outsized effect on society," then it seems relevant just how many varied positions of meaning Priestly-types defend now. But, I need to think about thinking about it some more.

Powerful manias happen when that type of person builds up momentum, and the paralysis happens when they cannot build momentum. The "gifted kid burnout" is what happens when somebody takes up more of a challenge than they can handle. The more resistance you overcome, the greater the rush you experience when it is overcome, if you overcome it. Perfectionism is similar, people either make amazing things, or they're destroyed by their own high standards. I think what happens is that such people accidentally condition themselves into inaction. If you deem your own imperfect product to be a failure, then you punish yourself for your own hard work. The higher your standards, the less reward you get from your accomplishments.

Suffering leads to greatness because suffering is the gap between your current state and your goals. But if this gap is too wide, you realize that the current you is insufficient in reaching the goal, so you realize that you "aren't good enough". Most positive emotion felt in life comes from movement towards ones goals, and despair generally comes from the prediction that one will not reach their goal. Often, despair drives one to re-evaluate things, and if one questions reality for too long, it falls apart, and one falls into nihilism. From nihilism, one can build their own, better philosophy out of the rubble, but it's generally a really difficult thing to do.

If Diogenes was a Nietzsche-type, then he was broken early, only to never fully recover. A common trait in nihilistic people is that they find enjoyment in pointing out other peoples illusions, e.g. "love is just chemicals". If he had actually recovered, he'd be more positive and monk-like, or like Jesus or the Buddha. A well-made philosophy is for something good, while poor philosophies rely on something else to be against, they exist only as a negation of something else

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc. Titans of business are often of this mold.

If this sounds a lot like a religion, then that's because it should. Marxism undoubtedly shares many structural features with traditional religions in its fundamentals.

Are there many other mass political / economic systems that don't share structural features with traditional religions like offering meaning and purpose to varying degrees? Is Marxism a significant outlier?

It depends what qualifies as mass politics. You'll find lots of political movements that are interested in a specific issue (notably, who rules) and are therefore compatible with a lot of ideologies and/or religions and don't necessarily have something to say about the meaning of one's life.

But if you're asking in the largest sense whether Weltanschauungen contain any view of purpose, that's a tautology.

Marxism is different precisely because it is a worldview, not merely an interest group.

I believe it is a significant outlier yes, in terms of providing a comprehensive metaphysical worldview, an ethics, an eschatology, etc. I think it's more of a religion than any historical form of fascism is for example.

It sort of comes from a period of time (1860s and 1870s) where the immediate success of the theory of evolution in providing an overarching material explanation for diversity of life on Earth engendered great enthusiasm in discovering similar sorts of grand theories that explained fully other disciplines. And while we eventually got some for certain of the "harder" scientific fields, obviously the softer sciences have resisted such attempts. Marx attempted to provide a grand theory of politics; it has clearly been about as successful as grand theories for history, criminality, economics, poverty, etc.

This article by arcove is a great dive into the genetic & cultural markers of the priest caste, which sounds like what you're pointing out here.

I recently stumbled onto a website outlining something called “CAPS” (aka CYP21A2 Mutation Associated NeuroPsychiatric Spectrum), which is a medical theory proposed and advanced by a psychiatrist named Dr. Sharon Meglathery.

Briefly, we know that the RCCX genes are unique in that mutations can be inherited together and they mutate often. There is a collagen matrix/hypermobile gene (TNXB) sitting next to a stress response gene (CYP21A2), sitting next to an autoimmune/CVID/schizophrenia gene. Doctors often see combos of these illnesses in families and individuals at a rate far higher than by chance alone.

It claims that if you have one of the following conditions it is likely you and blood relatives have others:

“Giftedness” (unusual abilities in music, maths, arts or abstract thinking)

5/5 of the “Major Psychiatric diagnosis”: Autism, ADHD, Bipolar, Schizophrenia, and Depression.

Hypermobility/Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (aka double-jointedness)

Hormone disorders

Sensory processing issues

Anxiety, Cutting and Eating disorders

Autoimmune disorders, Asthma, Allergies, Mast cell activation disorder

Gender dysphoria, fluidity, Same-sex attraction

Sleep disorders, Chronic fatigue

Left Handedness

… and loads of other random stuff.

It apparently makes you “wired for danger”, and so overly stressed by the normal world that many have brain wiring identical to PTSD patients despite having lived relatively tame lives. Perhaps there's something to all of this talk about “trauma” after all. People with these qualities seem to be drawn to one another, so you might even find evidence of this lineage on both sides of your family tree.

When the stress accumulates past a certain threshold, something called 21hydroxylase overwhelm is triggered, and it brings about near-death illness, life-changing burnout, and/or psychosis.

That was a fantastic read, cheers. I liked his list of jobs for modern shamans in particular.

There are far too many conditions and too many of them are common (or general) for me to take that too seriously. Also my own family has some of them, but they definitely weren't shamans. Maybe the branch I know of really does have "it", though, and it's a selection issue -- the "it" being they immigrated to the US.

That hypothesis would have to be made a lot tighter before it could even be tested. I know links between left-handedness and giftedness have been tested, with widely varying results (some studies showing a strong effect, some none).

Idk, I could see you as sort of a nihilistic shaman. I think most prolific online posters have the potential.

I've never heard of this idea before but it grossly fails the sniff test - a lot of this stuff is pretty much known in medicine to almost always be untreated/diagnosed/refused diagnosis Cluster-B.

Some of the rest of it is known to have other different causes for instance (allergies).

Seems very likely to be bullshit, especially since the patients we see who fit into these buckets are um very un priestly.

Seems very likely to be bullshit, especially since the patients we see who fit into these buckets are um very un priestly.

Perhaps they would've lead happier lives as priests!

And why would Cluster-B not fall into this? Also you're saying hypermobility and chronic stomach pain are cluster B as well?

People with Autism and people with "Autism" are very different. There is a large community of people in the US who have a number of the conditions on this list by their own understanding but are really just someone with BPD.

"Yes I have depression, anxiety, PTSD, EDS, mast cell blah blah and 5 allergies as well as a non-typical gender presentation." That person is a borderline who refuses diagnosis or is not diagnosed.

This is so wildly off base.

Additionally most of these people are women. Women aren't really priests in the abrahamic tradition and the emotional instability associated with these people is not a good fit for priestliness.

Most of the listed disorders are incompatible with leadership and gravitas.

"Yes I have depression, anxiety, PTSD, EDS, mast cell blah blah and 5 allergies as well as a non-typical gender presentation." That person is a borderline who refuses diagnosis or is not diagnosed.

Idk man, I am one of these, and I'm a man. Perhaps I'm extremely rare. But the article matches my personal experience extremely well.

Again, what is the point of labeling it "borderline?" How does that solve anything? You're still agreeing that this is a real phenomena just putting it into a different box.

You're still agreeing that this is a real phenomena just putting it into a different box.

No, the point of doing that is because people who say they have it are usually using it as an excuse to be destructive, and the cost of making a Type I error here is nothing compared to what you'll spend if you make a Type II error here instead and give a bunch of wicked people carte blanche to just make up self-serving nonsense at everyone else's expense (otherwise known as "sufferers of Cluster B disorders").

Naturally, this has a huge selection bias, where people who are just making shit up are overwhelmingly more likely to talk about it, especially if society is currently biased towards making Type II errors in their direction. The word "religious sacrifice" was generally used to refer to this when society contextualized its desires using that lens, which is why people with an inkling of this tend to class atheism and woke as religions (because of the way they justify the benefits of intentionally making those particular Type II errors).

And even then, there are people who can use this 'condition' productively, and there are those who can not. Again, in conditions of societal oversupply [which people without the condition are relatively adept at noticing, at least on a group level] it can be a reasonable strategy to over-reject people on the grounds that they're destructive with that power, or that they don't have enough of the power to actually be worth fully utilizing them.

Much like with words related to gender identity and sexuality, and potentially for the exact same reason, the terms the wise (or more precisely, those who have this condition, or at least those who are fully capable of understanding what it is and how it works) use to talk to each other are dangerous to everyone else when they inevitably fall into the wrong hands.

A big part of having this condition is knowing when, when not, and how to talk about advanced topics to co-sufferers.

No, the point of doing that is because people who say they have it are usually using it as an excuse to be destructive

Idk man, I have experienced the opposite where I am genuinely hypermobile (source: my joints pop around!) and if anything it was less of an excuse to be destructive. I think that you and mister throwaway are being far too negative towards this subset of the population, though I'm sure he at least has fair reason having to deal with many more of them than I do.

All this being said, I'm not sure how this line of argumentation applies to the original point that some people with these health issues have shamanic abilities/tendencies. Can you tie it back for me?

I think that you and mister throwaway are being far too negative towards this subset of the population

You misunderstand.

We know that they misuse these tools/words/concepts that could have (and perhaps were originally intended to) helped us, in an intentionally destructive way. It's not Complete Asshole Disease Cluster B disorder, it's My Anxiety (and everything else I've Munchausen'd my way into today).

The article very clearly describes us, who are describing actual problems (and I can attest that the statements made in the article are indeed very accurate), and not just using them as a license to be selfish pricks.

It's difficult for the normies to tell the difference and depending on the situation sometimes there legitimately isn't one. They just have to trust us. And that is difficult, even for others like us.

No there is a specific pattern of issues in emotional response and personality construction with associated genetic markers known as borderline personality disorder. Many people with this condition incorrectly label themselves with a bunch of other stuff that may or may not be real but generally doesn't apply to them.

True allergies have an at least partially known mechanism.

Depression doesn't quite march clearly with the others listed and likely represents multiple syndromes.

Some of the big names in medical research have tried to genetically localize schizophrenia and firmly failed to do so, even if it is strongly suspected to be genetic and cause.

Emotional instability is poorly correlated with abrahamic tradition priests.

And so on and so forth. This model really doesn't make sense and ignores quite a bit of known medical knowledge.

And so on and so forth. This model really doesn't make sense and ignores quite a bit of known medical knowledge.

A perfectly fair accusation. I do indeed ignore quite a bit of 'known' knowledge of psychology and psychiatry. I find this perfectly reasonable given the replication crisis, the obvious corruption in the field, and my own personal experiences.

ETA: For the record I still love you @self_made_human!

I love you too my dude, even if you love Jesus more :(

Alright I've repeatedly tried to be a bit soft here but to be blunt this is absolutely horseshit that seems to not match genetic studies, general research, or the gross consensus of individuals working in the field.

Some additional examples:

Gifted people have good life outcomes and contra to expectations are more attractive than average.

The "major psychiatric diagnosis" is just not true by any stretch of the imagination. It does not capture definitions of serious mental illness, inpatient populations, or most the most likely diagnosis (anxiety disorders are more common).

EDS has several known genetic markers and the one that all of the psych patients has is mysteriously the one that doesn't have genetic markers. Also women are more flexible than men and many women who are normal will claim they have EDS.

Additionally googling this person appears to show all the usual signs of questionableness and medical inaccuracy.

You are falling for pure ascientific bullshit quackery.

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Many people with this condition incorrectly label themselves with a bunch of other stuff that may or may not be real but generally doesn't apply to them.

Just chiming in to note that I've personally heard mental health professionals admit to incorrectly diagnosing borderlines as well, ostensibly so that they could receive mental health services that explicitly excluded borderlines from eligibility in their guidelines. I strongly suspect that several percentage points of bipolars are misdiagnosed borderlines.

Thank you, that was highly interesting.

This same concept has been independently rediscovered in multiple communities (including the link to the historical practice of shamanism) which increases my confidence that there's something to it.

This post is uncomfortably well suited for me. Thanks for sharing it! It ties together a lot of seemingly unrelated things that I've already come across by chance (I noticed years ago doing my depression that the shared reality of a group was more or less the sum of individual interpretations, making social matters collaborative storytelling). The advice is good as well, but it seems difficult for shamans to achieve financial security. Oh well, at least my autism gives me a buff in STEM related tasks

My advice, find yourself a lady who likes shamans and makes a lot of money. Assuming you're a man.

“Giftedness” (unusual abilities in music, maths, arts or abstract thinking)

5/5 of the “Major Psychiatric diagnosis”: Autism, ADHD, Bipolar, Schizophrenia, and Depression.

Hypermobility/Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (aka double-jointedness)

Hormone disorders

Sensory processing issues

Anxiety, Cutting and Eating disorders

Autoimmune disorders, Asthma, Allergies, Mast cell activation disorder

Gender dysphoria, fluidity, Same-sex attraction

Sleep disorders, Chronic fatigue

Left Handedness

This is such an eclectic collection of traits, I challenge you to find one Mottizen who doesn't qualify.

It's tough to have all 5 of the psychiatric diagnoses in a single individual. I think Schizophrenia, Bipolar, and Depression are exclusive.

Why are schizophrenia and depression mutually exclusive?

Because the diagnostic criteria explicitly say that if it's schizophrenia it's not depression.

The occurrence of the major depressive episode is not better explained by schizoaffective disorder, schizophrenia, schizophreniform disorder, delusional disorder, or other specified and unspecified schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders.

It's possible to have both at once though. Like if you are depressed and then you develop schizophrenia. In that instance they determine schizophrenia by assessing whether your symptoms are affected by your mood - if it is, it's more likely bipolar or schizoaffective disorder, if it isn't, it's schizophrenia.

Ah, my bad, I didn't mean qualify for all of them simultaneously. Rather, qualify by having some undefined number larger than one of those traits. Vague, yes, I know.

Indeed! As I told @The_Nybbler, I think pretty much everyone here is basically shaman-typed. We are heavily selected if we post on niche internet forums, you know.

wokeism is not identical with Marxism

I find these arguments nonsensical.

The Jordan Peterson-esqe "cultural Marxism" shibboleth is genuinely gibberish.

What on earth does grievance politics have to do with redistributing the means of production so that the workers capture more of the surplus value of the product of their labour? How do you do that with "culture" at all?

It's literally just "I 'ate communism, I 'ate wokism, refer to 'em interchangeably, simple as"

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OG Marxism says that the key to true freedom is for the proletariat to seize the means of industrial production because they are materially oppressed. Cultural Marxism says they need to seize the means of cultural production (art, universities, etc) because they are socially oppressed. Replace "economic status" with "cultural status." Hence "cultural Marxism."

Genuinely asking, who is the "they" in "they need to seize the means of cultural production"

Who are the cultural Marxists? Because the people Lobster Daddy hates have been in control of art, universities, etc for the back half of the 20th century and all of the 21st

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who is the "they" in "they need to seize the means of cultural production"

Realistlcally, a small vanguard party of dedicated ideologues.

Who are the cultural Marxists?

Initially there was Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Fromm, Benjamin, Pollock, and Lowenthal. Of those, Columbia, Brandeis, and a few west coast public universities (Marcuse wound up at UC San Diego) saw the most influence in political science and theory. Fromm had a large impact on feminist theory.

Second generation figures include Habermas, Frederic Jameson, Stuart Hall, and generally the New School for Social Research and the UC system more broadly (which also played a big part in bringing in and fusing French post-structuralist analysis into it).

Then you have the full efflorescence through Judith Butler, Gayatri Spivak, Duncan Kennedy, Kimberle Crenshaw, Nancy Fraser, Donna Haraway, Wendy Brown, Cedric Robinson, Walter Mignolo, Andreas Malm, Shoshanna Zuboff, etc.

"They" is the disadvantaged. And if "they" won't seize the means of cultural production, then a cultural Lenin or Lenins has to do it for them. When the welfare state (mid-20th century, which explains your timeline) solved economic problems but none of the attendant social problems in marginalized communities, it seemed like maybe the problem was cultural power. If no one lacks anything material, but you still don't have the equality you were looking for, maybe you need a black little mermaid.

So you're saying cultural Marxists think black people need to be in charge of art, universities, etc?

They want whomever they believe to be low-status in the culture to have more status. They believe everything is a social construct, and so they conclude that status is not earned, but granted by authorities to preferred classes of people, and stigma to disfavoured classes. Cultural marxists want to become the status/stigma-granting authority, and for them this means controlling art and education. In the US they’re primarily concerned with black people. In Canada they’re concerned about indigenous people. In Europe they’re concerned about migrants or something. You can question whether status actually works this way, but you can’t dispute that this attitude toward status is widespread all across the political spectrum.

I mean yeah agree with all of this

My thesis isn't that these people don't exist, they do.

My thesis is just that the phrase "cultural Marxism" has been beaten and twisted to the point it's basically just an out-group signifier that has nothing to do with Marx

I don't think Marx would like DEI departments. I'm actually pretty confident he'd see all the DEI stuff as the bourgeoisie using a wedge issue to keep workers fighting each other.

He probably wouldn't like it because his era was obsessed with industrialization, yeah, but that doesn't mean that the people doing it are not transplanting his ideas from the factory to the movie studio.

Yes, and that is why the people we are calling Cultural Marxists have engaged in a protracted and highly public campaign to, among many other things, put black people in charge of art, universities, and "etc". Surely you are aware of this campaign, the explicit arguments forwarded for its necessity and its many notable and expensive foibles?

What is your actual argument here? You appear to be quoting newspaper headlines as examples of ridiculous things that obviously haven't happened.

I was legitimately just trying to clarify what he was saying

Obviously that is happening, I have eyes and I'm not a shitlib

My argument is simply that the phrase "cultural Marxism" is pretty devoid of meaning and when used in common parlance has essentially nothing to do with Marxism at all.

It's basically the right-wing equivalent of the very common leftist trope of "everything I hate is neoliberalism, the more I hate it, the more neoliberal it is"

Just in this case it's "everything I hate is Marxism, the more I hate it, the more Marxist it is"

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My argument is simply that the phrase "cultural Marxism" is pretty devoid of meaning and when used in common parlance has essentially nothing to do with Marxism at all.

There is a lot of meaning, but most of that meaning is indeed in the meta: these people blame entire groups for the alleged oppression of other groups, based on a very poor analysis, and see the solution in giving power to these supposedly oppressed groups with the assumption that this will solve the alleged oppression (and not create new oppression). As people have explained to you, the initiators of this movement actually saw cultural Marxism as a meaningful name, that they chose for themselves, where they shifted their Marxist reasoning and methodologies to a new field.

Imagine that there is a group in Indonesia who wrote the Protocols of Sino, blaming Indonesian problems on a secret cabal of Chinese elites and think that the solution to Indonesian problems is to kill the Chinese. And imagine that they initially called themselves 'anti-Chinese Nazi's', but ran into the issue that Nazi has a rather negative connotation outside of their own little bubble, so they rebranded with a different name. Not because their beliefs fundamentally changed, but just to get more acceptance.

Then it makes perfect sense for the critics to use the original name. Not because it falsely links the ideology to another ideology with a negative connotation, but because that link actually exists and is strong.

Because the people Lobster Daddy hates have been in control of art, universities, etc for the back half of the 20th century and all of the 21st

And are we arguing that that has yielded no fruit? All of the things people blame on Tumblr started in the academy.

Or is that they clearly aren't trying because they otherwise would have succeeded given their hegemony in those spaces?

I don't see why "they did try. They were just wrong, like their Marxist forebears" isn't an answer in this framework. There may just be limits on what you can do sometimes using those tools.

And are we arguing that that has yielded no fruit?

No I'm just saying I don't understand the explanation

We are generally lax about modding when it comes to insulting public figures, but "Lobster Daddy" doesn't really express much but your contempt and seems meant only to provoke people. Don't use whatever cute nickname some person's enemies use for him on Twitter.

I actually enjoy his writing/ideas/most of his arguments and use the term because I find it absolutely hilarious and slightly endearing, although I see how that isn't intuitive given the context

I'll defend @fmac and say myself and other friends who like Peterson also call him Lobster Daddy. It's a bit of an affectionate nickname ime.

The Jordan Peterson-esqe "cultural Marxism" shibboleth is genuinely gibberish. ... It's literally just "I 'ate communism, I 'ate wokism, refer to 'em interchangeably, simple as"

It really isn't. It's a popularization (thus, inevitably, a bit of a bastardization) of a real theoretical development. I strongly recommend Martin Jay's "The Dialectical Imagination" for an academic but decently accessible intellectual history of the movement.

How bastardized does a theoretical development have to be before it can be considered an entirely different thing?

The Frankfurt School had lots of critiques of Western Civilization. But "people having critiques of Western Civilization" isn't a useful class--it'd group together everyone from the Frankfurt School to Evola to wokes to Mottezans to etc.

And, when you look at the actual content of Frankfurt critiques, they don't overlap much, if at all, with woke ones. They seem rather quaint actually, given the points of conflict and focus of today. And when you look at their actual actions during e.g. 68, they were considered enemies by student activists, shiftless intellectuals creating masturbatory theories while ignoring praxis. Habermas condemned "left wing fascism," Adorno famously called the cops on students protestors who occupied a lecture hall. (Marcuse, to be fair, was friendlier.)

The current theory of the American Left doesn't draw much from the Frankfurt School or any thinkers really; to the extent it exists at all, it's just a ramshackle gloss on patronage politics with a couple academic shibboleths to give it an air of legitimacy.

And, when you look at the actual content of Frankfurt critiques, they don't overlap much, if at all, with woke ones.

If the venn diagram of Critical Theory and wokism isn't a circle, it's pretty damn close. Or are you saying Critical Theory is not related to the Frankfurt School at all?

I'm saying that it's a mistake to identify the critical theory of wokism with the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. The major figures of the Frankfurt School would reject wokism--ideologically and aesthetically, and in particular its focus on consumerist identity.

The only major thing they do share (at least, if we don't want to group together a lot of wildly disparate approaches) is a rhetorical commitment to communism, and in both cases that commitment is fake.

The major figures of the Frankfurt School would reject wokism--ideologically and aesthetically, and in particular its focus on consumerist identity.

They had the opportunity to, but didn't. Just off the top of my head, Critical Race Theory kicked off around the time of the Civil Rights Act, and was indistinguishable from BLM from the start. I'm less sure of it, but I think even some of the people who developed it studied directly under the major figures of the Frankfurt School.

I think even some of the people who developed it studied directly under the major figures of the Frabkfurt School.

Correct.

It's fair to say that the CRA is central in the history of social justice activism, right? And, I agree, the Frankfurt School didn't condemn it. But that's because they by and large ignored it--a quick search through Google books isn't digging up anything by Adorno, Fromm, Habermas, Horkheimer where they even mention it. They would probably have thought it was a fine thing, in the sense that people generally think "oh, that sounds good!" But race, in general, isn't something they concerned themselves with much: anti-Semitism gets at least 100x the attention (which is a point of critique against them by the social justice crew).

It's fair to say that the CRA is central in the history of social justice activism, right?

Sort of. There was a whole conflict between the liberals that actually made the CRA happen, and Critical Race Theorists, who had a much more radical vision, and were salty about the liberal one winning out.

The latter aren't likely to say nowadays (they did in the past though) that they the CRA was bad, because that would make them even less popular than they are now, but they will put out memes that go directly against the philosophy of the Civil Rights movement (for example seeing "there is only one race, the human race", or "I don't see color" as expressions of racism).

But that's because they by and large ignored it--a quick search through Google books isn't digging up anything by Adorno, Fromm, Habermas, Horkheimer where they even mention it. They would probably have thought it was a fine thing, in the sense that people generally think "oh, that sounds good!"

No, not really. Like I said, Critical Race Theory thinkers studied directly under them. It would be bizarre if they never heard of their theories, and took no inrerest in them. I think the most reasonable interpretation of their silence is complete approval of the crazy woke theries you claim they would have opposed.

I'm saying that it's a mistake to identify the critical theory of wokism with the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. The major figures of the Frankfurt School would reject wokism--ideologically and aesthetically, and in particular its focus on consumerist identity.

Would it also be a mistake to identify the socialist theory of Trotsky with the Socialist theory of Stalin? (Or that of Kamenev and Stalin, or Zinoviev and Stalin, or Bukharin and Stalin, or...)

...I submit that Marxism is best understood as a bundle of critiques of society emerging from a particular worldview. Beyond those worldview-clustered critiques, Marxism contains no actual, gears-level insight or plan for fixing society beyond "amass absolute power and use it tear down this society and build a much better one in its place". If you are tracking ideological descent, you should track it through the worldview, the critique cluster, and the prescription of amassing and wielding absolute power. These are the constants of Marxist thought.

The non-gears-level theoretical confections layered atop by Marx and his feuding successors are best understood as superstructure, epiphenomena. Lenin gutted much of Marx's own theoretical constructs to carry out the Russian Revolution, and no one cared because he maintained the constants of perspective, critique, and seizure of power, and he won. The Russian Revolutionaries who followed him themselves contained great diversity of thought and and many beautiful theoretical elaborations, until Stalin culled them all by hueing to the constants of Perspective, Critique, and seizure of power, and no one cared because he also won. Mao likewise diverged greatly from Marx, Lenin and Stalin, and yet he stuck to the basics, and he also won and so was recognized, at least initially, as a Real Marxist.

Consider the idea that Marxism does not actually contain actionable insight into the human condition or the proper ordering of a peaceful, prosperous society. Because of this lack, people attempting even minimally to engage with the human condition or build such a society in the real world quickly find themselves having to make shit up. Then if their improvisations work, they must have Really Understood Marx, and if they fail, clearly they were heterodox and benighted, at least by everyone within reach of the winner.

You may be correct that all the Frankfurt School and modern Social Justice share is a rhetorical commitment to communism, and you may be correct that in both cases, that commitment is fake. When in the history of the ideology has it been otherwise?

...I submit that Marxism is best understood as a bundle of critiques of society emerging from a particular worldview. Beyond those worldview-clustered critiques, Marxism contains no actual, gears-level insight or plan for fixing society beyond "amass absolute power and use it tear down this society and build a much better one in its place".

A friendly amendment - Marxism isn't just the critiques of society; it's also (1) critiques of the critiques, usually trying to explain why their prior predictions didn't pan out [e.g. Frankfurt school], and (2) tactical theorizing about the proper way in which to actualize the vague, high-level, utopian promises of the original critiques [e.g. the Trotskyite "Permanent Revolution", Leninist "Vanguardist", Stalinist "Socialism in One Country", etc.].

When in the history of the ideology has it been otherwise?

The Khmer Rouge. (And, yes, Lenin/Stalin/Trotsky/Mao.)

The distinguishing characteristic of communism is not that it critiques society. It's that it seizes state power and uses it to commit mass murder in order to radically reorder society, with the murderers being at the top of the new order.

Neither the Frankfurt School nor Social Justice activists, despite their faults, desire that. Their relationship to power in the existing order is very different, in that they, in different ways, already had/have substantial access to it. That's not capable of creating the apocalyptic communist revolution, because that kind of upending would undermine their power. Instead, they want to expand their existing power and use it to push their different visions (a legally and socially recognized racial and gender hierarchy for the wokes, and some odd psychological liberation for Adorno etc).

The distinguishing characteristic of communism is not that it critiques society. It's that it seizes state power and uses it to commit mass murder in order to radically reorder society, with the murderers being at the top of the new order.

True, but building up a cadre willing and able to implement that plan requires significant preparation, and during that preparation the naïve will claim the ideology is all about peace and love, the brotherhood of man, and gradual, incremental, painless reform.

Neither the Frankfurt School nor Social Justice activists, despite their faults, desire that.

This man saw a political opponent murdered in front of him, and his instinctive reaction was to begin dancing and cheering in exuberant celebration. Why do you think he did that?

We've already seen Social Justice lead directly to the celebration and implementation of large-scale, lawless, organized political violence, including cold-blooded murder. We've already seen Social Justice lead directly to both the attempted removal of policing, and also the draconian and illegitimate use of police powers against dissenters. The (surviving) previous generation of violent Marxist radicals got tenure, and are considered luminaries by their intellectual progeny.

Social Justice academia is overrun with arguments for the necessity and inevitability of Revolution. Social Justice culture, likewise, is typified by a totalizing model wherein the forces of oppression permeate every facet of society and only a complete leveling and reconstruction can deliver a truly just society. We've had a decade to observe how these cultural assumptions interact with our society's formal and informal power structures, and the answer seems clear to me: they aim to amass and wield absolute, unaccountable power without limit or restraint, and more "moderate" forms of Progressive culture are set up to pointedly ignore, cover for and enable the harms they cause.

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How bastardized does a theoretical development have to be before it can be considered an entirely different thing?

Depends on whether you take a genealogical (A taught B, who was read and cited by C, who taught D...) vs. taxonomic approach. Both have their strengths and weaknesses; both capture something useful and real about the world but have blind spots.

The current theory of the American Left doesn't draw much from the Frankfurt School or any thinkers really; to the extent it exists at all, it's just a ramshackle gloss on patronage politics with a couple academic shibboleths to give it an air of legitimacy.

One could certainly say the same of Mormonism vis a vis the early Christian church fathers...or indeed wokism vis a vis the early church fathers. But there are clear historical and sociological lineages there as well.

The issue with a genealogical approach is that theory is more like a lattice than a tree, with extensive lateral gene flow and different branches being reabsorbed into the main.

For instance, we have a Marx -> Marcuse -> New Left -> Social Justice lineage. But what do we make of Carl Schmitt's significant influence on Marcuse (who found his critique of liberalism very strong)? Does that mean woke activism is just a far right extension of Nazi legal theory adapted to modern times?

Not "just", "partially inspired by", the same way it was by Marx.

Does that mean woke activism is just a far right extension of Nazi legal theory adapted to modern times?

Clearly not an extension in the sense of merely being an appendage of. However, it would be fair to say that there is some degree of cross-pollination (though the influence can certainly be overstated; significantly less than Freud and the psychoanalysts, for example).

Freud was a much bigger influence. But, a quote from him, to highlight the issues with the genealogical approach:

The Communists believe they have found a way of delivering us from this evil. Man is wholeheartedly good and friendly to his neighbour, they say, but the system of private property has corrupted his nature... psychologically [communism] is rounded on an untenable illusion. By abolishing private property one deprives the human love of aggression of one of its instruments, a strong one undoubtedly, but assuredly not the strongest. It in no way alters the individual differences in power and influence which are turned by aggressiveness to its own use, nor does it change the nature of the instinct in any way. This instinct did not arise as the result of property; it reigned almost supreme in primitive times when possessions were still extremely scanty; it shows itself already in the nursery when possessions have hardly grown out of their original anal shape; it is at the bottom of all the relations of affection and love between human beings.

Freud was a classical liberal in his politics. But we can draw a very clear line from his thought to the Frankfurt School. Can we then conclude that the Frankfurt School was anti-socialist? No; the existence of a genealogical relationship is interesting and often a useful lens to view things through, but to stop there without looking into the content of the theories can lead to very wrong conclusions.

Does that mean woke activism is just a far right extension of Nazi legal theory adapted to modern times?

Thus, the feminazi :)

Does that mean woke activism is just a far right extension of Nazi legal theory adapted to modern times?

I don't know if that's what it means, but this is certainly an elegant summary that mostly accurately describes what woke-ism is. Woke-ism is just the latest iteration of an ideological structure for justify bigotry against types of people one dislikes, that has been adapted to be palatable to high status people. In the past, it might have been things like "grace of God" or "they're genetically predisposed to being lesser than us and thus belong in the fields" or whatever, but in modern times, it involves narratives around "oppression means that people we dislike are actually each individual, down to the last baby, guilty of [crime]."

Cultural Marxism is a demonstrable thing, unless you believe that culture is some sort of fungus that shows up on economies. What do you think Homo Sovietcus was, anyway? Only orthodox Marxists care to elevate their dogma as some sort of materialist science of history, which it obviously isn't and has failed on its falsifiable claims over and over. Late-stage capitalism has come and gone like so many proclamations of the Rapture.

Wokism is the bastard child of communism, and the connection strengthens in spite of strenuous denials of paternity. People realized you could substitute historical materialism for any other sort of intersectional nonsense. They could add infinite categories to the class-based analysis to suit their own purposes. As an active heresy and schism of the left it remains after Communism itself discredited its own legitimacy over a hundred years. They even claim to be communists themselves!

This was birthed from intellectuals on the left. History didn't stop with Kapital. Pay the damn child support - with words, if not action.

Isn't this a motte and bailey?

The motte is Marxists caring about culture, which obviously they have done throughout history. The Soviet Union is just one famous example.

The bailey is the much less defensible claim that "wokism is the bastard child of communism" - this kind of 'cultural Marxism' is a much larger, more complicated narrative about how intersectionality, modern progressive thought, etc., derive from a complex chain of descent from Marxism.

The bailey may be true - you'd have to defend it - but you don't get it free with the motte.

(And it's a genetic fallacy anyway, but that's a whole separate issue. Suffice to say that I think wokism is wrong, but it's wrong because it's wrong, not because of this or that historical antecedent.)

The historical antecedent does not cause it to be wrong, but the explanation for why it is wrong may be analogous to the explanation for why its historical antecedent is wrong.

The motte is Marxists caring about culture, which obviously they have done throughout history. The Soviet Union is just one famous example.

The bailey is the much less defensible claim that "wokism is the bastard child of communism" - this kind of 'cultural Marxism' is a much larger, more complicated narrative about how intersectionality, modern progressive thought, etc., derive from a complex chain of descent from Marxism.

This claim comes around with some frequency, and has always left me quite confused as to where exactly such a view emerges from.

From your understanding, what is the doctrinaire Marxist view on, say, feminism as an ideological/philosophical system?

My understanding is that doctrinaire Marxism had no room for Feminism as such; class conflict was the problem and the solution, and the future classless society would provide seamless, perfectly egalitarian solutions for existing conflicts between the sexes with no need for further analysis or theoretical constructions. My impression of the attempts to implement Marxism likewise believed this, even as they often implemented, for example, what from a feminist perspective would be considered large-scale rape culture, exploitation and repression of women in their societies.

Likewise, from your understanding, what is the mainline Feminist view of Marxism as an ideological/philosophical system?

My understanding is that mainline Feminists consider Marx enormously influential to their critique of society and its discontents, but believe their ideological/theoretical model is an application and refinement of Marxist social critique, and that as a refinement, their movement's distinctive perspectives and prescriptions should be prioritized over the older, cruder, pure-class-conflict marxist view.

It seems to me that the above two descriptions are accurate for central examples of Doctrinaire Marxist and Feminist thinking respectively, and that both the fundamental relationship and fundamental conflict between them is undeniable. This old comment provides concrete examples of the phenomena both from popular appeals to academia, and from within academia itself; I'd be interested in whether you think I'm engaging with a Motte and Bailey there, and if so how. The dénouement to that post seems evergreen:

It seems obvious to me that the various branches of Social Justice theory are, to a first approximation, direct descendants of Marxism. It seems obvious to me that a supermajority of the people promulgating Social Justice theory believe that they are performing some combination of extending, expanding, or (for the truly arrogant) correcting Marxism, quite explicitly. I think the above position can be defended unassailably by looking at the academic output that constitutes the headwaters of the Social Justice movement. I think that those who argue that the obvious, inescapable ties between Social Justice theory and Marxism are some sort of hallucination or sloppy categorization are either woefully uninformed or actively dishonest. To those who have advanced such arguments in the thread on the subject below, I offer an invitation: assuming the above examples are insufficient, what level of evidence would satisfy you? How many papers from how many journals do you need to see? How many quotes from how many prominent figures within the modern social justice movement, and the people who taught them, and the people who taught them, and so on? How far back do we need to go to satisfy you? How deep do we need to dig to bring this question to a conclusion?

(And it's a genetic fallacy anyway, but that's a whole separate issue. Suffice to say that I think wokism is wrong, but it's wrong because it's wrong, not because of this or that historical antecedent.)

I would disagree. New Ranch Marxism goes wrong specifically because it retains many of the distinct errors of its progenitor.

My understanding, roughly, is that classical Marxism, to the extent that it acknowledges patriarchy as a concept at all, holds that patriarchy and gender-based oppression are downstream of economic class. The father and husband holds power in a way derivative of his position in the economic system. As such any attempt to solve the patriarchy problem or liberate women that does not engage with capitalism is doomed to fail. The liberation of women is, insofar as it goes, a good thing, and a component of the overall class struggle, but it is subordinate to that struggle and must not be separated out from it.

Today I don't think there is an ideologically coherent 'mainline Feminism'. I think that feminism today is an extraordinarily contested label that is riven by internal strife, and as such it is very hard to generalise about a doctrinaire feminist position on anything. There are some obvious fault lines (pro-porn vs anti-porn, pro-trans vs anti-trans, pro-choice vs pro-life, and in general radical/separatist vs accomodationalist/assimilationist), but they are often mixed up and not immensely predictive of any individual's position. If I were to generalise, I would say that what makes a person or position 'feminist' today is 1) it is primarily interested in the position of women in society, and 2) it holds that women, as group or class, are in some way disadvantaged, and some sort of collective action is necessary to ameliorate those disadvantages.

Within that broad heading, there are both Marxist and non-Marxist feminists, and the line can be blurry. Moreover, because Marx is such a massively influential figure in the history of sociology, philosophy, etc., if you search for traces of Marxism in almost any school of social analysis, you're going to find some. I think it's fair to say that it is reasonably common to find bits or pieces from the wider Marxist tradition in most feminist schools of thought today - but which pieces, and how consequential they are, will vary widely.

I would not generalise that modern, mainline feminists consider their critique to be a refinement of Marxism. I think that most academic feminists, if questioned, will grant that there is some Marxist influence on their thought - but that most will not see that thought as decisive, and most do not think of themselves as working in a Marxist school, or as part of the Marxist tradition. I'd guess that just as classical Marxists think of the class structure of society and the economic mode of production as the umbrella issues, and everything else as derivative, academic feminists today tend to take gender as the umbrella issue, and see economics as downstream of that. For them Marx is an important historical figure working in a related field, whose insights are sometimes but not universally applicable to their own analyses.

I would not generalise that modern, mainline feminists consider their critique to be a refinement of Marxism. I think that most academic feminists, if questioned, will grant that there is some Marxist influence on their thought - but that most will not see that thought as decisive, and most do not think of themselves as working in a Marxist school, or as part of the Marxist tradition.

That would require pretty low self-awareness. For example if you take either the pro- or anti-porn or prostitution feminists, they will both frame women as victims of capitalist exploitation. Arguably Marxism is the glue that holds all the factions you mentioned together.

My understanding, roughly, is that classical Marxism, to the extent that it acknowledges patriarchy as a concept at all, holds that patriarchy and gender-based oppression are downstream of economic class.

If there's a difference between our understandings here, I'm not seeing it. So far, so good.

Today I don't think there is an ideologically coherent 'mainline Feminism'.

I would disagree quite strongly. The terms "Patriarchy", "Sexism", and "Misogyny" seem like stable, highly politicized tokens of a highly coherent ideological structure. Likewise "reproductive rights", "women's rights", "women's safety", etc, etc. There can be lots of disagreement over lots of things, even very important things, without an absence of a unifying foundation. As you say:

If I were to generalise, I would say that what makes a person or position 'feminist' today is 1) it is primarily interested in the position of women in society, and 2) it holds that women, as group or class, are in some way disadvantaged, and some sort of collective action is necessary to ameliorate those disadvantages.

..To which one might add additional precision: women as a class are seriously disadvantaged due to the nature and structure of society, and this sum of disadvantages can only be resolved by fundamentally deconstructing and rebuilding the nature of society. Patriarchy in Feminist ideology is isomorphic to Capitalism in Marxist ideology, in much the same way that the Greeks worshiped Ares and the Romans worshiped Mars.

Within that broad heading, there are both Marxist and non-Marxist feminists, and the line can be blurry. Moreover, because Marx is such a massively influential figure in the history of sociology, philosophy, etc., if you search for traces of Marxism in almost any school of social analysis, you're going to find some.

bell hooks is my go-to central example of modern Feminism as an ideological structure. Googling "bell hooks on Marx", first result:

The Black Marxist Feminism of Bell Hooks

This book explores bell hooks' trajectory of work and cohesiveness of thought about the meaning and meaningfulness of black womanhood in terms of a Black Marxist feminism, which uniquely confronts the dimensions of feminism and womanism; the relations between the secular and the religious; the problems of gender and sexism; and the structural and systemic issues of oppression, domination, white supremacy, and capitalism. In making sense of black womanhood in its philosophical, social, cultural, institutional, and historical complexities, hooks' Black Marxist feminism constructs an intersectional theory about what hooks describes as white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. In this sense, hooks' Black Marxist feminism conceptualizes the ways and means by which white supremacist capitalist patriarchy imposes intersectional predicaments upon black womanhood, drawing foundationally on Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, working within the purview of a host of Marxisms in Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Karl Kautsky, Nikolai Bukharin, and Georgi Plekhanov, and speaking to the Marxist proclivities of Cedric Robinson, Cornel West, Charles W. Mills, James H. Cone, Stuart Hall, and Angela Y. Davis.

Okay, but this is commentary about bell hooks, not hooks herself. So let's skip several repeat results, and we find:

Challenging Capitalism and Patriarchy: An Interview with bell hooks (apparently republished from "Third World Viewpoint" via the Espresso Stalinist). Pertinent Excerpts:

...I think that what we see globally is that there have been incredible struggles to combat capitalism that haven’t resulted in an end to patriarchy at all. I also think that when we study ancient societies that were not capitalist we see hierarchical systems that privileged maleness in the way that modern patriarchy does. I think we will never destroy patriarchy without questioning, critiquing, and challenging capitalism, and I don’t think challenging capitalism alone will mean a better world for women...

...I think that strategically, we have to start on all fronts. For example, I’m very concerned that there are not more Black women deeply committed to anti-capitalist politics. But one would have to understand the role that gender oppression plays in encouraging young Black females to think that they don’t need to study about capitalism. That they don’t need to read men who were my teachers like Walter Rodney, and Nkrumah, and Amilcar Cabral.
I think that as a girl who grew up in a patriarchal, working-class, Black, southern household there was a convergence of those issues of class and gender. I was acutely aware of my class, and I was acutely aware of the limitations imposed on me by gender. I wouldn’t be the committed worker for freedom that I am today had I not begun to oppose that gendered notion of learning that suggests that politics is the realm of males and that political thinking about anti-racist struggle and colonialism is for men.
I’m very much in favor of the kind of education for critical consciousness that says: Let’s not look at these thing separately. Let’s look at how they converge so that when we begin to take a stand against them, we can take that kind of strategic stance that allows us to be self-determining as a people struggling in a revolutionary way on all fronts...

Absolutely. I think Marxist thought–the work of people like Gramsci–is very crucial to educating ourselves for political consciousness. That doesn’t mean we have to take the sexism or the racism that comes out of those thinkers and disregard it. It means that we extract the resources from their thought that can be useful to us in struggle. A class rooted analysis is where I begin in all my work. The fact is that it was bourgeois white feminism that I was reacting against when I stood in my first women’s studies classes and said, “Black women have always worked.” It was a class-biased challenge to the structure of feminism...

Absolutely. In my newest book, Killing Rage: Ending Racism, one of the big issues I deal with is the degree to which capitalism is being presented as the answer. When people focus on the white mass media’s obsession with Louis Farrakhan, they think the media hate Farrakhan so much. But they don’t hate Farrakhan. They love him. One of the reasons why they love him is that he’s totally pro-capitalist. There is a tremendous overlap in the values of a Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam and the values of the white, Christian right. Part of it is their pro-capitalism, their patriarchy, and their whole-hearted support of homophobia.
Farrakhan’s pro-capitalism encourages a kind of false consciousness in Black life. For example, you have a Rapper like Ice T in his new book, The Ice Opinions, making an astute class analysis when he says that “People live in the ghetto not because they’re Black, but because they’re poor.” But then he goes on to offer capitalism as a solution. This means that he has a total gap in his understanding if he imagines that becoming rich within this society–individual wealth–is somehow a way to redeem Black life. The only hope for us to redeem the material lives of Black people is a call for the redistribution of wealth and resources which is not only a critique of capitalism, but an incredible challenge to capitalism.

I would not generalize that modern, mainline feminists consider their critique to be a refinement of Marxism.

Would you say bell hooks considers her critique to be a refinement of Marxism? For the many, many feminists who draw on bell hooks as an inspiration, and who likewise employ formulations about Capitalist White Supremacist Patriarchy and Late-stage capitalism, would you say that they also appear to consider their critiques to be a refinement of Marxism?

...In any case, we apparently agree that there are Marxist feminists, and I hope I've demonstrated that these are often central examples of most workable definitions of "feminist". Can you provide some clear-cut, central examples of prominent Feminist theorists or intellectuals who are not Marxists?

I think you're assuming a more stable ideology behind some key feminist terms than actually exist. I don't think, for instance, that using the terms 'patriarchy', 'sexism', or 'misogyny' necessarily implies that the user subscribes to a particular "highly coherent ideological structure". The latter two, in fact, are regularly used by non-feminists. 'Sexism' and 'misogyny' have clearly understood general meanings (discrimination based on sex and hatred of women) and are obviously compatible with a wide range of feminist beliefs, including those more or less influenced by Marxist thought. 'Patriarchy' is a bit more specific but I think that among feminists it does admit of different interpretations - 'patriarchy' is a word for a general social bias in favour of men, and anything past that is the subject of debate internal to feminism. This is why the word 'patriarchy' itself is contested and opposed by some feminists; 'kyriarchy' is an alternative that some prefer.

I don't see here a coherent ideology 'isomorphic to Capitalism in Marxist ideology'. To Marxists, capitalism means a form of political and social economy organised around the interests of owners of capital. To feminists, patriarchy means the idea that society favours men over women. These seem meaningfully different, and if the Marxist understanding of capitalism is more more specific than the feminist understanding of patriarchy, that's because Marxism is a much more narrow tradition with a single ideological forefather and body of canonical work, whereas feminism has neither. There is no feminist Marx; there is no feminist equivalent to Capital.

Thus you take Bell Hooks as one representative example. I'm a bit surprised because my first thoughts as to some of the most influential authors and texts shaping modern feminism were Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch. I submit that de Beauvoir and Greer are more important and influential feminist thinkers than Hooks, at least. Are these particularly Marxist texts, in your view? Do they describe a Marxist or quasi-Marxist philosophy? There's obviously some Marxist intellectual influence there (de Beauvoir was quite familiar with Marx), but there is as much by way of resistance as there is by way of agreement - de Beauvoir disagrees with some of Marx's central claims!

At any rate, yes, there are certainly Marxist feminists, and there are feminist Marxists. But I don't think that shows that feminism is descended from Marxism, a form of Marxism, isomorphic to Marxism, or anything like that. It is equally true, for instance, that there are both Christian Marxists and Marxist Christians (I find this baffling, but it nonetheless appears to be the case), and yet nobody tries to tell me that Marxism and Christianity must be closely related in this way.

(Well, I suppose maybe Nietzscheans. Slave morality and equality and so on. Or Randians/Objectivists, for whom both Marxism and Christianity are forms of altruism. Nobody who I think is worth taking remotely seriously tries to group together Christianity and Marxism.)

There is no feminist Marx; there is no feminist equivalent to Capital.

Feminism is redistributionist at its core, though. It just looks really weird because men don't understand women, and understanding women takes way more words to write down. They have a 200,000 year head start on their complexity and selection pressure has been high with respect to hiding their resource-extraction behaviors from the gender that most often takes the time to seriously analyze this sort of thing.

Redistribution looks like traditional communism when men do it because their biological specialization [and inherent worth] is based on labor (so equality of outcome means a good laborer and a bad laborer receive the same economic capital). When your biological specialization is something else, the character of redistributing what that is will be entirely different (perhaps one where equality of outcome means a pretty woman and an ugly woman receive the same social capital- efforts to establish equality of outcome won't focus on labor, or if it does it's just a side effect of technology-enabled gender equality).

Nobody who I think is worth taking remotely seriously tries to group together Christianity and Marxism.

Only in the sense that Marx (as far as I can gather; I haven't taken the time to properly read his work) is pointing at (intentionally or not) what the wiser Christian communities were doing at the time. And neither of those approaches scale, for the same reasons- they don't account for the wicked.

More comments

The motte is Marxists caring about culture, which obviously they have done throughout history. The Soviet Union is just one famous example.

Yes, Soviet Union cared about culture a lot, by promoting classical literature, art, music, opera and ballet to the masses (even when the masses were not interested and would prefer pop music, comic books and cowboy and gangster movies). Marxist-Leninist line always was that feudal and capitalist culture is great and belongs to working class, what was wrong with it was that the oppressors kept it only for themselves.

Marxist-Leninist line always was that feudal and capitalist culture is great and belongs to working class, what was wrong with it was that the oppressors kept it only for themselves.

Not always. The 20's and early 30's (aka the years of peak Marxism) were all about new culture and everything old was derided. I think [Alexander Nevsky (1938)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Nevsky_(film)) was the first instance when a historical figure, a "great man" was shown in a positive context. Before that, everything associated with the "great men" of old was held in contempt, as nobles and clerics and merchants of any kind, native of foreign, were viewed as the natural enemies of the "common men".

The bailey may be true - you'd have to defend it

I mean, there's this obvious pattern where if you look at the SJ and traditional positions on most cultural issues, the (actual) Marxist position is right in the middle. How did I put it?

Tradition: "Men should be in charge of women", Marxism: "Sex divisions are a distraction and should be ignored", SJ: "Women should be in charge of men".

Tradition: "The white man is the best man", Marxism: "Racial divisions are a distraction from class struggle; be colourblind", SJ: "Whites suck".

Tradition: "White culture is scientifically superior to natives' primitive culture and we should raze the latter", Marxism: "All cultures suck and we should make a new, constructed culture designed by science", SJ: "Indigenous ways of knowing are just as valid as science; traditional Western culture should be razed".

And as others have noted, there is a direct line of descent. The obvious culprit would be the Marxist academic community attempting to out-Marx itself on cultural issues (having adopted a virtue axis of "Marxism good, tradition bad").

You are of course correct that this interesting historical tangent is not dispositive of the question "is SJ good or bad?". Merits are merits; descent is descent.

Merits are merits; descent is descent.

Of course, you notice that the SJ position is the exact same as tradition but with the labels swapped. This makes perfect sense, because reversed stupidity is intelligence (or revenge, if you prefer).

What you have labelled as the Marxist position is just the classical liberal position, but with a class angle grafted on.

This is an obvious pattern to me- traditionalists and progressives have a... significant amount of inertia in their political philosophies, and while liberals might actually be able to accomplish the tasks at hand, they're also generally outnumbered so unless you have philosopher-kings in charge like the US did after WW2, you're stuck with either traditional stupidity or modern ytidiputs.

Yeah, I probably should have included "and six-foundationers were winding up raised Marxist and/or hippie liberal and tried to extend these to fill in the missing foundations".

Cultural Marxism is a demonstrable thing, unless you believe that culture is some sort of fungus that shows up on economies. What do you think Homo Sovietcus was, anyway?

I mean sure, "the culture of Marxists" obviously exists

But when my uncle goes on about how DEI departments are "cultural Marxism" I think that is nonsense words. That's "progressive liberalism" and has essentially nothing to do with Marx except that I guess both have a general goal of a more equitable society (although I question if progressive liberals even want that).

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But when my uncle goes on about how DEI departments are "cultural Marxism" I think that is nonsense words. That's "progressive liberalism"

How? Critical Race Theory explicitly stood against the liberal approach to race.

Ahahahaha it's fucked up colloquial word usage all the way down

Yeah fully agree that CRT and classical liberalism are at odds.

But much like the term "the left", which used to be a reference to actual Marxists but now means "progressive liberalism" (I genuinely don't know what else to call this).

The word "liberal" has evolved from the classical (borderline "don't tread on me") industrial Revolution liberalism to a phrase that's basically interchangeable with "the left"

AHHHHH

I don't think it's quite so bad as you say. I wasn't referring to 19th century industrialists when I said "liberal", I was referring to the American center-left of the 1960's, the architects of the Civil Rights Act.

Critical Race Theorists were explicitly opposed to them, claiming that the liberal / center-left approach doesn't go far enough. A lot of their ideas gained prominence recently in the forms of BLM, DEI, "racism = prejudice + power", "colorblind racism", etc. These people's scholarly lineage draws a straight line through generations of Marxist thinkers, and straight back to Marx himself.

You can call it a bastardization of his thought, if you want, I think Marx himself told one of his descendants "bro, if this is Marxism, than I'm not a Marxist", so it wouldn't even be the first time it happened. But your uncle is straightforwardly right about DEI, and your denials are just inadvertant gaslighting. Like, some of these people literally and explicitly called themselves "cultural Marxists".

To this day you find leftists who insist that progressive liberals aren't actually leftists. Nobody in the American system cares much but they'll passionately insist that America doesn't really have a left because they're all liberals.

The obscuring factor here is that progressive liberals seem to see leftists as closer to them politically than right liberals. But leftists will generally attack them even more for being more susceptible to their attacks than right libs.

Of course, when they're attacked from the outside they have no problem hiding behind the ambiguity.

But your uncle is straightforwardly right about DEI, and your denials are just inadvertant gaslighting

The uncle/"simple as" stuff really does feed my belief that it just comes down to these terms being low status.

I don't know that any of the supposedly technical or more accurate terms - like Mounk's "identity synthesis" - are actually superior in intuitiveness to "cultural Marxism" or, even worse, "gay race communism". Those other terms are just used by icky dumb people like right libs.

I see why this ideology, which is notoriously against being named at all would behave this way but I don't see what anyone else gains.

but I don't see what anyone else gains.

I'm at a loss myself, but I think the status thing might be a big part of the equation. Some people built their entire philosophy around "Uncle Roy is wrong".

For a parallel that captures a lot of the nuance (and echoes another discussion that happened here a while back), do you think a committed atheist from out of state bristling under Mormon rule in Utah would be justified in lumping it in as "Christian supremacism"?

Maybe I'm slow today but I'm not understanding your parallel.

Mormon rule is a derivative of Christianity and by prioritizing it with rules you do give it a "supremacy" of a sort I guess.

The words are actually connected to the real life effects.

"Cultural Marxism" has very little to do with Marxism, although I'm still reading through all the philosophy everyone linked so maybe there was a more coherent connective thread in the 1960s, but these days the way it's used is borderline meaningless

There are others around who are far more qualified to make the argument than I am, but my understanding is that the circumstance that Critical Theory is derivative of Marxism is beyond dispute. Wikipedia itself devotes a big section to it, and the introductory paragraph on its history already says,

Max Horkheimer first defined critical theory (German: kritische Theorie) in his 1937 essay "Traditional and Critical Theory", as a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only toward understanding or explaining it. Wanting to distinguish critical theory as a radical, emancipatory form of Marxist philosophy (...)

I suppose that the assertion that is more likely to be disputed is that CT is a driving cultural phenomenon or could be described as the principal philosophical basis of US progressivism, for which it is much harder to show receipts. The only way I can see is to painstakingly show the provenance of defining features and tenets of it - value systems built around class/group interest and oppressor/oppressed dynamics, the fundamental rejection of positivism (lay definition, perhaps: the premise that something like a correct way of reasoning can be discovered and yield a "symbol-pushing" way of generating true statements that should be upheld regardless of human interests) and embracing of textual criticism (dismissal of a "text"'s content in favour of a meta-analysis of who stands to benefit from it being accepted and the motivations of those authoring and conveying it) as a tool to implement this rejection, emphasis on subjective experience, and faith-based anticipation of radical changes to society leading to an improvement of conditions.
One could also point at the high correlation between above-average engagement in the Social Justice movement and explicit self-identification as Marxist with all it entails (being concerned with economic oppressor-oppressed dynamics, anticipating a labor-based radical reorganisation of society resulting in utopia), which would be an unexpected phenomenon that warranted explanation if the two philosophies were not actually closely related.
Lastly, my personal experience as someone fairly deeply embedded in academia and acquainted with many Social Justice activists is that questioning any particular tenet of the movement on a philosophical level (like, "why is it actually desirable that black people get the same average salaries?" or "wasn't colonialism a net good?") will inevitably be answered with arguments from/concrete references to publications that explicitly situate themselves in the CT tradition. If the typical follower believes that SJ is fundamentally moral because its morality is asserted by a selection of activists and intellectuals they trust, those trusted assertions of morality are grounded in Critical Theory, and Critical Theory is grounded in Marxism, is it fair to assert that SJ is Marxist? My sense is yes, but there is obviously some nuance there.

I am actually with you insofar as I don't think that it is politically sensible or productive to apply the "Cultural Marxism" label as part of public discourse. This seems comparable to me to the erstwhile push to attack Muslims by saying things like "Allah is an Arabic moon god" - it may be true that Islam was shaped by the polytheistic soup of medieval Arabia, and this may even have great explanatory power regarding its culture and tenets, but in a modern context where most everyone is more familiar with Islam than with the medieval Arabic moon god you are trying to link it to, all it will achieve is making you look obsessive and schizophrenic as it suggests that your beef with Islam is just because you are the sort of person who would have a beef with the worship of a moon deity from 1500 years ago.

Seems like one of those pervasive labeling problems: the Mormons in question label themselves as "Christian", which I think makes the use of it in this context within the realm of reasonable takes, even if the Pope, or maybe even the majority of self-identified Christendom don't accept that label.

Analogously, I don't think "Islamic fundamentalism" as defined from the outside in the West needs to take into detailed account which groups think of each other as infidels. "Actually Hamas aren't Islamic Fundamentalists because Ali was the rightful heir to the throne" is, uh, a take.

Doesn't the Christianity-Judaism parallel work for that too?

"What on earth does some theory about God sacrificing his own son to himself to absolve all of humanity's sins have to do with the Jews being God's chosen people? How do you do that with 'culture' at all?"

Yet, "Judeo-Christian culture" is a term that is being used, predominantly by Christians. If the Imperial Romans had our version of the discourse and pagans actually spent time tweeting at Christians rather than trying to feed them to the lions as their control slipped, I can absolutely imagine that they would have called the Christians an offshoot of Jewish culture with the intention of associating them with pre-existing negative sentiment towards the rebellious colonial subjects, and the Christians in response to this would have done a public 180 on this (despite continued internal efforts to market themselves as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy) and claimed it to be an insane conspiracy theory.

Pagan polemics against Christianity exist, though. They’re not much about that- some common themes include accusations of magic/sorcery, Christian’s being low class/gullible, and rebelliousness/insufficient patriotism. Not a lot about it being too Jewish.

Contemporary Roman humor made fun of Christian’s as good natured but very strange, often particularly mocking charity and the treatment of slaves as being eccentric.

and rebelliousness/insufficient patriotism. Not a lot about it being too Jewish.

The Jews were seen as troublesome, stubborn bastards too. It was just that they were clearly an ancient people and so got somewhat of a pass. Christians not so much.

After the rebellion this association would have been even stronger. Which explains the Christian efforts to distinguish themselves in their Gospels.

We call by many names the "successor ideology", "wokeness", "PC", "Cultural Marxism" etc. It is all the abstracted christian heretical sect which has no true ideology except opposition to western society and its economic and military success. These are deracinated christian cultists who believe the US is the devil. It really isn't much deeper than that. Any number of political, social or entirely imaginary theories will be propagated to hold up this structure, but it really is just oikophobia at the root.

That this ideology is the ruling ideology of the western empire, which legitimates their expansion of empire, is merely the crowning irony.

It is all the abstracted christian heretical sect

As I wrote before:

That's [wokism as Christian heresy] an interesting claim, considering that it came significantly out of atheism. E.g.:

Most movement atheists weren’t in it for the religion. They were in it for the hamartiology [the study of sin, in particular, how sin enters the universe]. Once they got the message that the culture-at-large had settled on a different, better hamartiology, there was no psychological impediment to switching over. We woke up one morning and the atheist bloggers had all quietly became social justice bloggers. Nothing else had changed because nothing else had to; the underlying itch being scratched was the same. They just had to CTRL+F and replace a couple of keywords.

I'm pretty doubtful that if one examines the continental->critical philosophy pipeline that may have undergirded some of the trend, one would find a pool of Christian heretics, either. I guess if you say that all the atheism is just Christian heresy (would be quite a claim) and that Wokism is just atheist heresy, blink and imagine some form of transitive property, you might be able to think that Wokism is just Christian heresy.

The last time, it seemed like most of the response was to actually entertain the idea that atheism is just Christian heresy rather than contest that Wokism was just atheist heresy. There was some discussion on whether or not that was justifiable, but no real discussion on whether any sort of transitive property could be used to make Wokism a Christian heresy through the intermediary of atheism.

It's all right in front of you. This is a belief system that posits "scientific" politics as a substitute for what christians would call "godliness". "Science" is the clerisy that interprets the Moral Arc of History (the Popular Will, or Will of God) and informs the initiated what the correct Just Being A Decent Human Being (politically correct, christian) behavior is. Marx was just the first big one to take off during the religious doldrums of the second half of the nineteenth century, and so it is his name most associated with all the related sects that squabble among us to this day. From the enlightenment until now, this has been the pattern. The first attempt in France to replace Christianity failed miserably, the second in Russia worked, sort of, for a while. The third, in the west has been more successful, largely by free-riding on western military power and religious tolerance. But here too, we see cracks forming.

I'm not really following. Sure, "Science" has been the calling card for many a scientismist for quite a long time, core to their being as atheists. One question is whether this is truly "Christian heresy", but all these atheists have, indeed, been around for a long time. Plenty stretching back to antiquity and in non-Christian societies.

Then, within this group of scientism atheists, there are remaining questions. The standard "big four" being epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and politics. I think we're mostly skipping the squabbles on the first two, as I think you're focusing on the latter two (ethics as "correct Just Being A Decent Human Being behavior" and politics is called out by name). These have, indeed, been tough questions for atheist sects for a long time. I've observed plenty that The Ethics was always a sore spot for Internet Atheism; they just couldn't figure it out, and they ran off in a bunch of different directions with mutually-contradictory sects, some trying to prop up some form of "science-based" "objective" version and others often running headlong into naive meta-ethical relativism. Interestingly, you see both forms in Wokism, depending on how hard you scratch and how far up the priesthood you inquire.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't note that even more recently, we're seeing the anti-woke atheist Counter Reformation still grasping with these problems, thinking that they're going to get game theory to do their work for them. I've noted before that most of these attempts misunderstand the basics of game theory, and you can see by their actions that the Wokists actually understand some elements of game theory better than their opposing sect.

I think the TL;DR is that you're probably just mistaking what they're doing as replacements for specific Christian things, whereas it's more that the pieces you've described are just versions of Ethics/Politics. They were all already atheists, and then they split sects depending on how they wanted to build Ethics/Politics, where in these topics, Scott points out that hamartiology turns out to be important. This is unsurprising, since so many atheists think that they've grasped the Problem of Evil and think that it's a big deal for them. Hamartiology is pretty naturally paired with it.

thinking that they're going to get game theory to do their work for them. I've noted before that most of these attempts misunderstand the basics of game theory, and you can see by their actions that the Wokists actually understand some elements of game theory better than their opposing sect.

Can you explain this claim a bit more. It is not self evident to me what specific basics the anti-woke atheists are missing nor what elements the Wokies get better.

If I could, I'd like to take a rain check on this. I have an effort post in the works, and I think it's going to include this (at this moment, there is a minor chance that a narrow component of this will get edited out of that one and pushed further, so please remind me if it does).

In the meantime, here are a few comments/chains which contain some elements.

Sure, "Science" has been the calling card for many a scientismist for quite a long time, core to their being as atheists. One question is whether this is truly "Christian heresy", but all these atheists have, indeed, been around for a long time. Plenty stretching back to antiquity and in non-Christian societies.

I'm not sure why we'd assume a continuity of ancient atheism and modern atheism. Atheism is a rejection of God(s). How we see gods influences it.

Consider New Atheism: their moral critique of Christianity was that it was a) unnecessary and b) insufficiently universalist because non-Christians are excluded from full communion. The latter is not a critique that ancient atheists would necessarily have cared about. Ethics doesn't actually obligate you to be a universalist.

Criticisms of the morality of the Old Testament God are born of the same impulse that gave us an actual, clear Christian heresy like gnosticism: the god of the Hebrew Bible, at first blush, fails by the standards of the New Testament/NT-inspired modern morality. This is a problem that becomes acute when you're not a polytheist.

The other claim is that science can fill the role religion plays as an arbiter of truth, a moral authority and a source of meaning and the sense of the numinous. I see no reason for these to be basic atheistic assumptions. A lot of our debates are about principles. And truth doesn't have to be numinous.

I'm not sure why we'd assume a continuity of ancient atheism and modern atheism.

I don't know that I would. But I think that's kind of not my point. My point is more that I saw the reasoning as being, "Look at these people, having an Ethics and Politics; that's Christian!" (Yes, that's a simplified caricature.) I don't think that qualifies it as being a "Christian heretical sect".

In general, I should probably make an effort post on what it would be to be a "______ heretical sect". Tentatively, I would expect that one would find some folks in that sect writing within the context of the tradition that they are being heretical from. I think it likely that you would find them claiming that what they are doing is that tradition, while others in that tradition are saying that their work is actually heretical. I highly doubt that if we go look at the folks who developed the frameworks for wokism and the like, we will find them writing, "Jesus Christ is our Lord; we are doing our best to follow Him as we find guidance in the bible. Here are the parts of the bible that support our woke doctrines and guide our sect."

There may be other ways to argue that folks are a "______ heretical sect"; thus the need for a larger effortpost. But that would be, I think, the top-tier type of evidence.

Consider New Atheism: their moral critique of Christianity was that it was a) unnecessary and b) insufficiently universalist

I think you put a lot of stock in the universalist axis, and I don't think it's that load-bearing. Again, it's a bit of a superficial relation. Not quite "Hitler was a vegetarian", but yeah, I think we can find a range of views on the universalist axis across all sorts of traditions.

Criticisms of the morality of the Old Testament God are born of the same impulse that gave us an actual, clear Christian heresy like gnosticism: the god of the Hebrew Bible, at first blush, fails by the standards of the New Testament/NT-inspired modern morality.

Oh boy. This one takes a whole lot more actual theology, but I'm not really sure how it's germane to the question at hand of the provenance of wokism.

The other claim is that science can fill the role religion plays as an arbiter of truth, a moral authority and a source of meaning and the sense of the numinous. I see no reason for these to be basic atheistic assumptions. A lot of our debates are about principles. And truth doesn't have to be numinous.

This is a within-atheists fight between sects, which I wrote about:

I've observed plenty that The Ethics was always a sore spot for Internet Atheism; they just couldn't figure it out, and they ran off in a bunch of different directions with mutually-contradictory sects, some trying to prop up some form of "science-based" "objective" version and others often running headlong into naive meta-ethical relativism. Interestingly, you see both forms in Wokism, depending on how hard you scratch and how far up the priesthood you inquire.

Tentatively, I would expect that one would find some folks in that sect writing within the context of the tradition that they are being heretical from. I think it likely that you would find them claiming that what they are doing is that tradition

Either that what they do is that tradition or is in fact the truer fulfillment of the essence of the faith even if it does violence to a lot of the claims the tradition they're attacking stands by. Which is why I compared it to Gnosticism. Christians would deny that Gnostics are Christians. Gnostics might not deny that they are Christians, but they certainly claim that all non-Gnostics are ignorant of the true implications of their gospels and the real ground for Christian faith.

The New Atheist claim is that you can have all of the good things about God without God and, in fact, what you think is necessary might as well be the commandments of the demiurge that prevent full flourishing.

I think you put a lot of stock in the universalist axis, and I don't think it's that load-bearing. Again, it's a bit of a superficial relation. Not quite "Hitler was a vegetarian", but yeah, I think we can find a range of views on the universalist axis across all sorts of traditions.

Sam Harris came up with a hypothetical "worst possible misery for everyone" and uses this to bootstrap himself to a justification for what is basically modern liberal Western morality.

Theoretically it could come from anywhere when a Western atheist basically reinvents hell so he can also reinvent existing moral theories I think we're significantly more justified in skepticism that it comes from the aether. Harris could have come up with a more collectivist view, or something centered more in relations than individual human dignity he didn't. He could have accepted that his hypothetical appeal lacks the sort of universalizing force of God (sure, avoiding WPM state for me and mine make sense but why are we obligated to avoid it for others?)

But he ends up in the same place. This isn't ethics as such. It's a particular form of ethics.

More comments

I haven't gotten around to reading it yet, but I believe this (maybe less on the specifics of "heresy") is part of Tom Holland's thesis in Dominion. And I think it is true that Social Justice does hew closely to some teachings ("blessed are the poor", "and the last shall be first") which were first popularized by Christianity in a world where vae victus was much closer to the norm.

Yeah, it was brought up pretty much immediately in the prior (linked) discussion. I haven't read it, so I don't have much to add besides that it generated a little bit of discussion last time, and I wasn't strongly persuaded either way from what I saw. I'll probably just have to read it sometime to see if I find it or parts of it convincing.

I'm not denying it doesn't exist, full agreement there, I'm just saying "cultural Marxism" is a stupid name

  • -10

Someone should have probably said that when cultural Marxists started calling themselves that.

We write with the language we have, not the one we wish we'd thought up.

The Jordan Peterson-esqe "cultural Marxism" shibboleth is genuinely gibberish.

As @naraburns memorably explained once, it was a term coined by the original cultural Marxists themselves, not by Peterson or by any other of their opponents. The memory holing of that is just weird.

In the short term his interlocutor tried to cling to the theory that Peterson was the designer of a phrase that, by some weird coincidence, also happened to be a related field of study with diverse academic citations for decades prior, but in the long term that entire account was deleted, so perhaps there's only so much cognitive dissonance a person can take.

It's literally just "I 'ate communism, I 'ate wokism, refer to 'em interchangeably, simple as"

No; it was a self-appellation. It may have gotten too embarrassing to hang on to at some point, but that's language for you. The same thing has been happening to "woke", for that matter, after it happened to "social justice warrior". Some groups are so proud they'll even adopt exonyms their enemies created; others are so uncomfortable they have to keep escaping their own endonyms.

Some groups are so proud they'll even adopt exonyms their enemies created

4chan has wholeheartedly adopted "chud" and even taken the wojak variation originally designed to mock them and made it their own, it's beautiful to see.

Ah yes, the classic Yankee Doodle strat.

What I find especially funny/galling about this is that Peterson almost never used the phrase "Cultural Marxism" - the one time I saw him use it was in a meta way, referring to the term as something that people used and coined, but not referring to the thing that the term was pointing at.

The phrase he's most quoted as saying in terms of "Marxism" is actually "Postmodern Neo-Marxism," not "Cultural Marxism." Eliding between the two when complaining about the vapidity of the term, I think, is a reflection of the fact that there's a real cluster of ideologies there that is being pointed to that is postmodern, cultural, new, and Marxist.

Here's an 18 minute video that goes into the text and cites how the creators of Critical Race Theory (the actual academic theory) literally say they were inspired by Marx and Critical Theory. It's not that Marx himself would necessarily approve of the goals of CRT, more that CRT adopted Marx's framing of class struggle and class consciousness.

I would like to cross post this excerpt about the mathematician Imre Lakatos, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

In Nagyvárad Lakatos restarted his Marxist group. The co-leader was his then-girlfriend and subsequent wife, Éva Révész. In May, the group was joined by Éva Izsák, a 19-year-old Jewish antifascist activist who needed lodgings with a non-Jewish family. Lakatos decided that there was a risk that she would be captured and forced to betray them, hence her duty, both to the group and to the cause, was to commit suicide. A member of the group took her across country to Debrecen and gave her cyanide (Congden 1997, Long 2002, Bandy 2009, ch. 5). To lovers of Russian literature, the episode recalls Dostoevsky’s The Possessed/Demons (based in part on the real-life Nechaev affair). In Dostoevsky’s novel the anti-Tsarist revolutionary, Pyotr Verkhovensky, posing as the representative of a large revolutionary organization, tries to solidify the provincial cell of which he is the chief by getting the rest of group to share in the murder of a dissident member who supposedly poses a threat to the group. (It does not work for the fictional Pytor Verkhovensky and it did work for the real-life Sergei Nechaev.) Hence the title of Congden’s 1997 exposé: “Possessed: Imre Lakatos’s Road to 1956”. But to communists or former communists of Lakatos’s generation, it recalled a different book: Chocolate, by the Bolshevik writer Aleksandr Tarasov-Rodianov. This is a stirring tale of revolutionary self-sacrifice in which the hero is the chief of the local Cheka (the forerunner of the KGB). Popular in Hungary, it encouraged a romantic cult of revolutionary ruthlessness and sacrifice in its (mostly) youthful readers. As one of Lakatos’s contemporaries, György Magosh put it,

How that book inspired us. How we longed to be professional revolutionaries who could be hanged several times a day in the interest of the working class and of the great Soviet Union (Bandy 2009: 31).

It was in that spirit, that the ardent young Marxist, Éva Izsák, could be persuaded that it was her duty to kill herself for the sake of the cause.

Though his research program is interesting and in spite of previously defending art by question artists, I now fear such ideas as memetic viruses cast evil people. How can we verify a communist correctly described the sky as blue, might it not be grey or beautiful and pink? I marvel at just how much we should throw out.

It was in that spirit, that the ardent young Marxist, Éva Izsák, could be persuaded that it was her duty to kill herself for the sake of the cause.

Grim story. Now, let me add the necessary context to understand it, and it would be time and place where it happened.

It was late 1944 in Nazi occupied Hungary.

In this context, choosing to join underground resistance group was choosing to die for the cause, soon and often in rather unpleasant way, and it was clear to everyone.

Nothing "marxist" or "materialist" about this particular case, staunch Christian anticommunist Polish resistance would also execute their members at the slight suspicion they are compromised and endanger the group as a whole. These are rules of actual guerilla resistance against serious and determined enemy.

In this context, choosing to join underground resistance group was choosing to die for the cause, soon and often in rather unpleasant way, and it was clear to everyone.

Why would it be clear to everyone? It's clearly false: the war ended within a year, with their team winning. In fact, this resistance leader himself survived the war.

I'm not saying there aren't people with a martyrdom fetish, but that's their problem, not an objective analysis of the situation or even a coherent strategy. In the words of one of the generals on the winning team: "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."

"Accepting the risk of death" is probably a more accurate description than "choosing to die for the cause" in this context.

According to an article published in an 1998 issue of a Hungarian periodical of social sciences, reproduced online in .txt format, the young Jewish woman in question was carrying forged papers and hiding in a safehouse which she had to leave because it got compromised, and no replacement could be found. Fearing that her likely capture will compromise them all, the cell members (including her partner/lover) all unanimously voted to force her to commit suicide. In 1950, party organs investigated the matter and concluded that Lakatos formed the underground cell without permission from above and was the main culprit in this suicide, was expelled from the party as a consequence and was sent to a notorious forced labor camp (interned, technically speaking, although in retrospect it’s impossible to confirm what further considerations, if any, were decisive in that). According to his social circle he was pretty much a Dostoevsky character.

The quoted text in your post is basically all true, except of course for the fact that socialism is a terrible system.

I'll try to be short and axiomatic:

1: Systems become worse with size, meaning felt by the individual is inversely correlated to the size of the structure they exist within (a social being can tell when it's not needed by its environment. This terrifies the social being)

2: Because of laws of statistics, the limit of the micro-scale will result in a macro-scale in which the individual properties of the micro-scale entities don't matter (I don't know the name for this, perhaps asymptotic emergence?)

3: In the far past, emotions didn't exist, life competed in a purely material sense. Emotions (or more generally, qualia) came into existence because they out-competed agents without emotion.

4: It seems we may be creating an environment in which emotions are once again sub-optimal. In fact, a lot of human things are starting to be sub-optimal, and the shortest paths to "success in life" requires destruction of the self ("selling out") and of good taste (morality prunes locally optimal choices if the definition of optimal is purely materialistic)

5: We're trapped in a world in which the incentives threaten to destroy humanity, in the sense that, even if humans exist in the future, they will lack depth and personality. I predict that the standard deviation on various tests and quizzes will shrink as the homogeneity of various things increases.

In short, the problem is not "capitalism", it's the traits/structure of the system that we exist within, like it's size and connectivity. The woke are not wrong when they say that diversity is good, they're wrong when they accelerate the destruction of diversity by mixing together different things.

Technology is only making all this worse, though Ted Kaczynski seems to blame technology for all the problems I listed above.

In the far past, emotions didn't exist, life competed in a purely material sense. Emotions (or more generally, qualia) came into existence because they out-competed agents without emotion.

This is a tremendous claim. I don't object, exactly, but I wonder if you can substantiate it without what amounts to post-hoc reasoning. How exactly does consciousness arise. More importantly, why would it outcompete an equivalent setup with the same output for the same input, i.e. p-zombies?

I'll take a stab at it, because I like the spectacular boldness of the claim:

The human brain can host an extraordinary variety of mental structures. Only a minority of them give rise to consciousness. Those that do, however, are better at navigating complex environments than others (maybe some concept of the self and self narratives are the simplest way to get agency, conferring advantage, and those happen to be the ones that host qualia). But environmental drift toward increasing bureaucratized environments make agency less useful: navigating them is difficult for most people, and so the concept and resultant consciousness are abandoned. It's not so much that consciousness gives an advantage in itself, but that the simplest structures that enable taking advantage are conscious. You could have brains that are equivalently capable without being conscious, but they take too much compute to be realized.

I don't have a clue where consciousness and qualia come from, though, so I don't have a sense of whether Homo erectus or Homo bureaucratus would lack them.

P-zombies don't exist.

Precisely what a p-zombie would say...

Well, life originated on earth about 4 billion years ago. Between that time and now, qualia has slowly come into existence. Emotions, consciousness, subjective taste, ego, and other such things. I also have reasons to believe that individuality and higher levels of consciousness are somewhat recent (say, developed over the past 5000 years). But more generally, what I'm claiming is "In a completely material universe, qualia emerged due to some unknown factors, and now it seems that these factors might be disappearing again".

Why would it outcompete an equivalent setup

It must have, otherwise it wouldn't exist. The reasoning I'm using is the same that Darwin used, survival of the fittest is a tautology in a sense. If consciousness resulted in a lower fitness, I believe it must necessarily have disappeared. Another fun fact we can deduce from this is that suffering is good (useful), and that deeming suffering to be bad (a problem) is useful as well. So, suffering is good but we're meant to think that it's not.

Some more arguments for why qualia might disappear:

What you learn in school is to be less human, less spontaneous, less biased, less subjective. The socialization process is basically destroying parts of yourself until you fit within the mold. The goal of most religions is suppressing parts of yourself (Buddhism takes this idea the furthestm though). The system just wants you to be useful and productive, and you're judged by your utility alone. In society we value fairness, impartiality, reason, level-headedness, stoicism and other behaviour at which robots happen to be perfect because they lack qualia. Most psychiatry and medicine works by numbing qualia. Most psychological defense mechanisms have the goal of numbing qualia. Most people life in constant distraction (escapism) and hate being alone with themselves. Most philosophies are designed around lowering qualia, bringing it towards zero: "This too shall pass", "Nothing really matters". It's all dead-mans morality, minimization of the human experience, a sort of suicide and glorification thereof.

The remaining aspects are collapsing into categories of superstimuli (porn, girlfriend ASMR videos, power-fantasy manga, slice-of-life manga, gambling, spices, reaction videos, fast food, massage, roleplaying, daydreaming) and serve as drugs to satiate or numb a category of human needs.

Regarding the origins of wokeism, recently I chanced upon the concept of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), it also has a Wikipedia entry. Basically there are people who argue that general wokification of institutions is an internal development of some of the American elite's religion, via Unitarianism and then Unitarian Universalism, and the general "be nice, don't judge, don't harm" morality of Oprah with a deistic God you can occasionally call upon for some encouragement but doesn't demand much, just to be kind, there are many equally valid paths etc. This is of course not the same as the mandatory activism required by woke, not merely a lack of judging etc. But it is the basis for the willingness of simply nice decent people to obey such demands.

I would also consider post-WWII Boomer morality, incl John Lennon Imagine, etc, which doesn't seem all that influenced by the postmodern writers like Foucault or Derrida.

Another set of people point to a merger of a mutated American Civic Religion and German Guilt Pride (the phenomenon where Germans feel superior and proud of how well they have done the processing of the past, the Vergangenheitsbewältigung).

I don't think there needs to be a single origin.

Regarding the origins of wokeism, recently I chanced upon the concept of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), it also has a Wikipedia entry. Basically there are people who argue that general wokification of institutions is an internal development of some of the American elite's religion, via Unitarianism and then Unitarian Universalism, and the general "be nice, don't judge, don't harm" morality of Oprah with a deistic God you can occasionally call upon for some encouragement but doesn't demand much, just to be kind, there are many equally valid paths etc. This is of course not the same as the mandatory activism required by woke, not merely a lack of judging etc. But it is the basis for the willingness of simply nice decent people to obey such demands.

I've encountered the concept before, but while I think it captures something about the secularization of society and the rise of "spiritual but not religious types", I don't think it is very explanatory.

I actually think the Guilt-shame distinction (which you partially touched upon in your third paragraph) probably goes further to explain much of the shape of contemporary life. I honestly think guilt culture is just another angle of approaching Western individualism. In shame-honor culture, what is important is your place in the collective. This is the source of your pride and honor. In a guilt culture, various social technologies are used to make it so that the rules are inside peoples heads, and are pre-enforced by the knowledge of the self-flagellating guilt that will result from stepping a toe out of line.

While Christianity is one path towards a guilt culture, given its emphasis on individual repentance and salvation, I think in modernity things like Wokeism show one way this kind of culture can be maintained in a secular way. However, I think Wokeism is a lot more prone to what I see as a likely failure state of guilt culture: anxiety. If all the social structures of a guilt culture are oriented towards making human animals feel guilt, a basic problem emerges. How do you know when a person has "cooked enough", and feels enough guilt that they won't do bad things anymore? You don't.

So some people get "overcooked" or "burnt" by guilt culture, and do indeed develop a psychology that won't do bad things or break the rules at the cost of crippling anxiety. And I think because Wokeism is an amorphous mass movement, without the supernaturalism or the 2000 years of practical wisdom of Christianity to deal with it, it is a lot more prone to such "overcooking."

Relatedly, I suspect that a lot of dysfunction in pluralistic, liberal democracies is due to clashes between a wider guilt culture, and pockets of shame culture that still exist in various parts of society. For example, in America, I would put forward African American ghetto/gang culture as more of a shame culture. (I know I'm not the first person to suggest this. Thomas Sowell hints at this in his "Black Rednecks and White Liberals", and I'm sure I've read similar things around here, though I am currently unable to properly credit who here might have said something like this.) I think there's always going to be a bit of a clash between the two, especially if elements of the shame culture end up including a rejection of elements of the guilt culture's hierarchies and values.

While I think it is possible that the Kumbaya, "Let's all get along" aesthetic of Moralist Therapeutic Deism (MDT) is one foundation for Western guilt culture, I actually think it is precisely backwards. In the West, people don't decide to act nice and decent because of MDT. Instead, people adopt MDT because their brains have been programmed into guilt machines, and they thus already have a great propensity to act nice and decent most of the time.

Love, love this comment.


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