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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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If you look at far-right takeovers in history, they usually come after defeat in war or economic collapse. Both in the case of Germany. Italy technically won WW1, but they got suckered in the peace negotiations and were very angry about it.

Say China suplexes the US Navy, takes Taiwan plus makes some arrangement with South Korea where most of their semiconductors go to China. I'm confident that South Korea would start negotiating very quickly, they've got a land border, no nukes and no food security. Japan would be in a similar boat.

The West would face many economic crises in quick succession. You'd have the implosion of the high-tech economy, sudden currency crises, a huge political realignment as countries like Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia start switching ship, the housing market would probably implode, a lot of equities would fall significantly, debt crises, inflation... Every systemic economic problem we've been putting off would hit instantly. The whole political system would be systemically delegitimized if wages fell 20% overnight, in real terms. Greece briefly went far-right after the GFC and they were in the EU, constantly being pulled back to liberal democracy. What if there's nobody left to pull?

People would not be inclined to trust the old ways anymore, they would be very very angry. They'd stay angry as long as the economy was wrecked, which it would be for years and years. At this point, it would be a conflict between the far-left and far-right. The far-right has an advantage here since they can say 'our navies were all trained more for DEI than combat (there's actually a govt report that basically says this), those clowns lost us a war, plus the Chinese ARE communists - it's right there in the name'. They can say 'let's seize the wealth of these Jewish billionaires - Goldman Sachs and co invested so much in China, they're traitors, along with Blackrock and the NYT'. Every mainstream media org who said 'this war is justified and good and we'll win' will have a huge amount of egg on their face. And they'll all support the war because they always do.

What can the communists say? Seize everybody's wealth?

I'd put money on this being a somewhat realistic path to power for the far-right, but I will also note that the US Establishment likely has a fair few ideas on how to handle the "China takes Taiwan" scenario that will avoid the "China takes Taiwan" part altogether--or at least making it painful enough for the Chinese to regret it. Maybe I'm just too Dase-pilled, but I think the US is rather like the mythical Atlas, capable of bringing down the entire Earth with it if pissed-off sufficiently. Even just destroying TSMC before the Chinese can capture it would be the least of the Samson Options available to The Powers That Be.

The Taiwanese simply need a fairly modest quantity of high explosive to destroy TSMC.