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I know it's beating a dead horse at this point, but this whole Prigozhin situation made one fact crystal clear: American dissident right (and "anti-nato left" by extension) is extremely solipsistic, much more than other factions in American culture war. Just take a look at some of those takes which are prevalent among this crowd
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Essentially, their model of the world looks like: here we are, honest god-abiding Americans, and then there are "elites" — Biden, Hillary, DNC, Podesta, Bill Gates, World Economic Forum. How then do you view something that lies outside your usual experience and ideology? If you are dumb, you deny it altogether:
"Ukraine War is fake, all of it is CGI, Zelensky and Hunter Biden siphon gajillions dollars from American taxpayers to buy mansions in Bahamas"
For those people Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Finns, Prigozhin, Zaluzhny, Macron, Scholz, ... do not exist.
If you are smarter, you align yourself with perceived enemies of the elites: Putin, Xi, Orban, .... You say things like:
totally oblivious of cases like this
https://zona.media/online/2023/06/22/sko
being a regular occurrence in Russia, when a girl is sent to prison for putting anti-war slogans on price tags in a shopping mall. Of course they'll have prepared a long list of grievances with "elites" that are intended to persuade you that whatever happens in the US is much worse than repressions in Russia or China. And, sure enough, all of it "glownigger propaganda" anyway.
You might say: "Well, I don't care about anti-Putin Russians, unfortunate pro-Putin Russians who became victims of the regime, neutral Russians, Ukrainians, Uighurs, Tibetans, Taiwanese, ... all I care is that my children don't get castrated and turned into trannies". Fair enough. But then please don't take a high moral ground. You are just as evil as "elites".
Whatever patience I had with American "anti-establishment" right-wingers, it ended. I guess Hanania is the only one I keep reading/listening at this point.
The 'dissident right' does not refer to catturd2, who is a relatively normal conservative twitter person. Dissident right refers to like, moldbug or bap. Although the broad statement about the DR is still mostly true.
"These tweets are dumb" isn't a good toplevel post (unless you start there and go somewhere else interesting), almost all tweets are dumb.
It might be if these tweets are dumb in a way that reflects a typical dumb thinking pattern. Which, unfortunately, it kinda does. I mean, I can get the catturd2's thing - ok, you don't care about anything that happens outside the border, fine (though what "proof" do you expect? All the proofs are known, and all the fixes are in, that's what you're getting, no refunds). But the rest is just dumb reflective "all this is lies" automated contrarianism. Very popular among certain circles, because it's low effort but makes you look stunning and brave. At least the opposite side has to dress up (and some even cut off their dicks for it) - these ones are as low effort as one can be.
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I'll answer to "it's not representative; it's just some dumb tweets" in this post, as it was point of @anti-dan, @Gaashk and some others' replies.
Are people like Tucker Carlson, Max Blumenthal, Trump Junior, 'America First' caucus, Jordan 'Do you even know about Holomodor' Peterson et al — are they all nobodies? They use the same talking points when talking about events abroad, displaying the same solipsism demonstrated in those screenshots I took when checking replies to some tweets and top level 4chan pol posts. They ARE representative.
Well... shit. I had better opinion of "normal conservatives". I still prefer to think of him as a fringe pushed by Elon's algorithm and frequent endorsements.
I don't follow Tucker Carlson, Max Blumenthal, Trump Junior, or "'America First' caucus" very closely, so am not sure what they said about it, and don't see any specific thing they said here, so it's hard to judge. It would be a better post if it had started with "Tucker Carlson said [wrong thing], at [link]this is why it was wrong, this is how it is destructive."
I do follow Jordan Peterson on and off -- more off since he's started mostly interviewing campaigning politicians and alternative currency salesmen. The last time I heard him discuss Ukraine, this past spring, he was talking to some American representative (glancing at the descriptions, maybe it was Senator Mike Lee), who was basically just explaining why he saw it as in America's interests to get involved and the situation from the perspective of the American establishment, which Peterson did not really question or push back against.
There is a good breakdown of his arguments
https://old.reddit.com/r/enoughpetersonspam/comments/12fvhhs/axis_jordan_and_senator_vatnik_on_ukraine/
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Tucker Carlson and Jordan Peterson and Max Blumenthal are not on the 'dissident right' either. If you want to criticize the populist side of conservatism (which blumenthal isn't), then say that! Also, if Tucker and Peterson (mainstream conservatives) are saying this, then lead with their statements, not catturd2, a 21 like post, and a random 4chan post.
The actual DR's (twitter) opinions are somehow dumber, though, and confirm your thesis of solipsism. From eg BAP's twitter account:
This is just the populist / democratic "the real people are behind our niche ideas!" thing, which is dumb when a leftist does it, but especially dumb when someone who claims to be anti-democracy does it.
I'm not sure where to find long-form written 'dissident right' takes on ukraine, tbh (other than moldbug, who has different but more coherent ideas).
Also seen on twitter, this, on how J6 vs Prigozhin shows Russia handled coups better than the US and Russia is stable. What?
The Wagner saga was so confusing to westerners because life of greatness is no longer imaginable to most. We presume that men must be objects of political forces and historical script; never subjects acting freely in time and space, open to consequences. Such vitality is alien.. Lmao? Military coups in less-developed countries are ... not unfamiliar for westerners, and are well considered as 'political forces'.
All of it more than confirms the 'only thinking about the US' thesis
I read this as claiming that the people aren't invested enough in democracy to defend it, that is to say, concerned about the practicality of overthrowing a democratic government. Not about the people actually supporting the ideas, but anti-democratics not caring about the people supporting ideas seems reasonably consistent.
While political coups are quite understood, that a single private actor can become a sufficiently powerful political force is a bit jarring to some.
Yeah, but they are invested enough to defend against an actual "nazi coup". Look at how upset people were about J6, which was more circus than coup? This includes the military (who these people call woke).
I don't think it is? A warlord in an african country isn't a new idea.
Are they? Getting upset is very different than standing up and defending. What are you seeing that makes you think the average person would get involved if an actual nazi coup showed up on the horizon?
Sure, but people in the west like to feel like they're fundamentally superior to africa, that's not... the same thing. At least emotionally.
The literal average person won't defend democracy unless they're drafted, for the same reason the average Ukrainian didn't until they were drafted. But the average American does believe in democracy, and vaguely idolizes defending it against nazis. And there is a substantial minority of people who will both provide either technical assistance or military assistance the defense of democracy against Nazis (again consider the entire US military). The idea that the US is so low-energy they'll just ironically laugh and go back to work if there's a reactionary coup today isn't true whatsoever.
I don't think the idea of dictators who exercise personal power in eastern europe is really unfamiliar either. Like, honestly, how is he different from Putin from the perspective of the US public? Maybe I'm wrong, can you link some tweets/posts of people who that tweet describes?
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