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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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This is the best image I've seen to understand the symmetry of the woke left and Trump-right when it comes to foreign affairs. Partisans are willing to jam round pegs into square holes, and so leftists squint and see the Israel vs Palestine conflict as white colonizers vs oppressed brown natives. This worldview is incoherent when you do deeper analysis, but it has sufficient surface level appeal to rip left coalitions apart in circular firing squads around the world. The right (ala Trump) is steadfast in its support of Israel apart from the unironically antisemitic fringe who'll end up throwing in their lot with Trump anyways as part of the coalition process.

Hlynka's analysis is basically just that the woke left and Trump right both want change and are willing to flirt with authoritarianism to get it. There's some stuff about Locke vs Hobbes in there but that's just intellectual salad dressing for the previous sentence. If status quo bias and democracy vs authoritarianism are the only thing you care about, then yeah the two sides probably look pretty similar. But go beyond those and the differences are massive.

So is Hlynka right? Are we going to see the far right attempt to form an alliance with the left in the hopes that their shared antisemitism will be sufficient to gain political power?

No lol. If anything, expect Israel vs Palestine to simply become more partisan. As leftists become more flippantly pro-Palestine, expect the right to use this as ammo to justify tacking towards Israel to an even greater degree. Public polling backs this up.

We have seen plenty of cancelling by Neocons now and pre Trump. Woke left is also the Democratic establishment at the very least and part of republican establishment as well. The new republican speaker of the house is at least somewhat woke on race, talking about how his black son will have to deal with disadvantages for being black while his white son wouldn't have said problems.

The dialectic of bad left vs bad right and us good in the middle misses the boat greatly. To the extend the neocon-ish people fit somewhere it isn't a moderate side, just cause they have differences with both some on the left and some on the right.

There aren't really sizable factions with anti-authoritarian bona fides and when one criticises the supposed woke left and Trumpian right, what remains and is implied are are mostly the neocons like Nikki Haley who are more authoritarian than MAGA. Although MAGA politicians including Trump seems to be going back to more neocon direction in recent time.

There isn't any sizable faction of moderates around in the establishment. There isn't a sizable faction of moderates among rationalists and associated people neither who mostly seem to fit somewhere between the woke democrat establishment and neocon agendas. Although some people here don't fit into the rationalist associated tribes.

Also, there is some attempt to associate limitless Jewish tribalism (which is blatantly racist) with moderation. Being very pro Jewish does not make you a moderate neither. Being more pro Jewish to someone who is abusing Jews might make you moderate perhaps. But you can be so pro Jewish that you are an extremist and racist against non Jews.

Someone who is supporting attrocities, rejecting nuance, supporting cancelling any speech that is critical of Jews and promoting hate speech laws, slandering anyone opposing their country from funding Israel and its conduct. Plus there is also the extreme element of corruption and influence of foreign lobbies.

On Jewish influence, the moderates are those who have a negative opinion of this pro Jewish racism without going too far to the other side of the extreme. Although, hate begets hate, and to oppose movements you need determination and a will to not be politically correct. There is a certain proportionality necessary when dealing with the extremism of the woke and neocon factions, but one must still try to retain certain principles in opposing them which is about what end goal you are trying to reach.

I admire the people that in opposing the more pervasive bad faction of our time with all the slander, all this hateful provocative rhetoric and all the consistent false framing manage to deal with these issues without accepting to play the role of the villain and reject this false dialectic.