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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35342 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=Tno6nPT66RM

Have we talked about Georgia Meloni’s powerful speech? A few days ago half my twitter feed was talking about.

I believe she is fundamentally correct that we have robbed society of their identity and tried to replace it with whatever pronouns are.

The consumer stuff gets a little silly but whatever it sounds good. Need to have an enemy your fighting against.

My pro nouns are

Man, American, Catholic, Son.

I think makes a strong implication that gender identity and whole pronoun thing is for those without roots. Empty people.

Had started writing a commentary on Meloni’s speech myself but as this thread is here I'm just going to piggy back off of it.

Long story short I think that you and pretty much everyone amongst the dissident-left are alt-right are getting the causality backwards by accepting the default progressive framing of identity as correct. It's this framing that Meloni is explicitly rejecting. It's not that gender identity (along with the rest of the progressive stack) are for "empty people". It's that empty people latch on to those things as an identity because they don't have a strong identity of their own. An individual with a strong sense of self does not require affirmation of their identity from others, an individual with a strong sense of community doesn't care what his neighbors look like or how much the make so long as they are good neighbors. Preoccupation with gender identity, race, class, etc... are down stream of the social atomization. As you yourself note: @Stefferi's critique of Meloni's position could almost be read as making her point for her.

Meanwhile @DuplexFields talks about progressives fighting against the purity spiral, but was that really ever they case? Some of the oldest critiques against the entire post-modern and progressive movements come from Christian Apologists of the late 19th and early 20th century like Kipling, Lewis, and Chesterton. The characterization of progressivism by it's critics was that they were never interested in fighting oppression so much as weakening the structures that stood as bulwarks against it. They dismissing binary views of black and white, good and evil, truth and untruth as "simplistic", only to replace them with an even simpler view, a unitary view where there is only grey, and do as "do you will". Or as a more recent critic put it "when everyone is 'Super', no one is"

I think that Meloni's choice of closing quote makes this interpretation makes this interpretation explicit so here it is in it's proper context...

It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogmas. It may be thought “dogmatic,” for instance, in some circles accounted progressive, to assume the perfection or improvement of man in another world. But it is not thought “dogmatic” to assume the perfection or improvement of man in this world; though that idea of progress is quite as unproved as the idea of immortality, and from a rationalistic point of view quite as improbable. Progress happens to be one of our dogmas, and a dogma means a thing which is not thought dogmatic. Or, again, we see nothing “dogmatic” in the inspiring, but certainly most startling, theory of physical science, that we should collect facts for the sake of facts, even though they seem as useless as sticks and straws. This is a great and suggestive idea, and its utility may, if you will, be proving itself, but its utility is, in the abstract, quite as disputable as the utility of that calling on oracles or consulting shrines which is also said to prove itself. Thus, because we are not in a civilization which believes strongly in oracles or sacred places, we see the full frenzy of those who killed themselves to find the sepulchre of Christ. But being in a civilization which does believe in this dogma of fact for facts’ sake, we do not see the full frenzy of those who kill themselves to find the North Pole. I am not speaking of a tenable ultimate utility which is true both of the Crusades and the polar explorations. I mean merely that we do see the superficial and aesthetic singularity, the startling quality, about the idea of men crossing a continent with armies to conquer the place where a man died. But we do not see the aesthetic singularity and startling quality of men dying in agonies to find a place where no man can live– a place only interesting because it is supposed to be the meeting-place of some lines that do not exist.

Let us, then, go upon a long journey and enter on a dreadful search. Let us, at least, dig and seek till we have discovered our own opinions. The dogmas we really hold are far more fantastic, and, perhaps, far more beautiful than we think. In the course of these essays I fear that I have spoken from time to time of rationalists and rationalism, and that in a disparaging sense. Being full of that kindliness which should come at the end of everything, even of a book, I apologize to the rationalists even for calling them rationalists. There are no rationalists. We all believe fairy-tales, and live in them. Some, with a sumptuous literary turn, believe in the existence of the lady clothed with the sun. Some, with a more rustic, elvish instinct, like Mr. McCabe, believe merely in the impossible sun itself. Some hold the undemonstrable dogma of the existence of God; some the equally undemonstrable dogma of the existence of the man next door.

Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage.

  • G.K. Chesterton, Heretics 1905

...and before anyone tries to paint this as an uncharitable weakman I must ask "what is a woman?".

Clarification: I use “purity spiral progressives” instead of “woke” both for clarity and politeness. The purity spiral I see these progressives fighting for is the discarding of previous progressive darlings such as JK Rowling for not fully embracing all the fourth wave “feminism” of transwomen, for example.

...and before anyone tries to paint this as an uncharitable weakman I must ask "what is a woman?".

No need to reach so far, we in fact literally had disputes on whether 2+2 = 4.

I believe she is fundamentally correct that we have robbed society of their identity and tried to replace it with whatever pronouns are.

Pronouns are words that serve as stand-ins within a sentence for nouns, including the names of people and things.

You should be more precise here. Have we robbed the individual members of society of their individual identities? Have we robbed the individual members of society of some shared collective identity? Or have we robbed society, considered as a gestalt, of its identity, separate from the identities of its members?

The consumer stuff gets a little silly but whatever it sounds good. Need to have an enemy your fighting against.

I'm surprised that you consider modern society to be rootless but don't see this as downstream of consumerist ideology. This is something that is widely agreed upon in anti-neoliberal circles on both the left and the right. I think that you've actually misunderstood Meloni's argument - you think she positions herself as opposed to the nebulous enemy 'pronouns', as you yourself have. In fact, she positions herself as opposed to the globalising and commodifying trends in modern capitalism and views pronouns as being simply detritus strewn in the wake of these forces. Her vision is of a reactionary and illiberal opposition to neoliberalism; I would favour a more socialist and egalitarian approach - but in any case, we would find common ground in the idea that global capitalism makes homogenised consumers of us all. You say it yourself - empty people. Consider that this may be a direct consequence of the consumption patterns that we are subjected to.

Would this, in your opinion, mainstream the Third Position on the right? I see many (most?) American right wingers still arguing that socialism has infiltrated their institutions to birth much of the social ideologies that dominate the western zeitgeist today. Maybe Europe will take the "red pill" sooner?

I'm not totally sure what you mean by the 'red pill' in this context but I will try and answer. I do not see orthodox 'Third Positionism' coming back into vogue: besides the stain of historical association, it is anachronistic - politics from an age when modernity was symbolised by screaming-fast newspaper presses and the broadcast tower at Alexandra Palace.

American right wingers don't even know what socialism is for the most part so it's barely worth listening to their opinions. However it is true that far-right parties have always been, let's say, undogmatic about economics. They just don't find it interesting. They care only about power: power over people, power over institutions.

Yeah, by "red pill" I meant if the European right will become less committed to upholding capitalism. I agree with your 2nd paragraph too, I once spoke to a paleocon from Minnesota years ago and he'd propounded the view that the alt right movement is largely Jacobin in its visioned role of the state. Which may be true, but yes, they probably don't care what political or economic system they need to employ in shaping their socio-cultural agenda. I just don't know what kind of comeback the right would do in the US, nearly all big businesses generate a lot of social capital by espousing liberal values which show no sign of going out of fashion anytime soon. Perhaps they'll just wait until the free markets "correct themselves"?

I think the ‘plan’ is to punish businesses for being woke and hope they respond rationally to incentives. Of course the right doesn’t really have the personnel to do this consistently, but you know. Baby steps.

Point of order, the "third position" is not "neo-fascist" it's old fashioned, original flavor, Benito, Franco, and Failed Austrian Painter fascist. and if it does take root I'll wager that it takes root amongst those that it took root among historically, that is black-pilled leftists.

She quoted Chesterton. My jaw dropped, what do I have to do to get a politician in my neck of the woods to do that?

The thing is, though... If you look at all of the monikers she mentioned, each of them forms a group that is a lucrative target for vast amounts of consumerism. There's certainly a lot of nation-related consumerist goods; I'd imagine that during the World Cup, and at other times too, you are going to make a buck selling various fan gear in Italian flag colors, just as during the last IIHF world cup (ie. hockey) in my hometown every second person on the street seemed to be wearing a hockey shirt in Finnish flag colors. Secularized as the society is, there's still a plenty of Christianity-themed consumer goods going around - even in largely post-Christian Finland, cross necklaces aren't uncommon. Women, of course, are a huge consumer segment, and even a male parent can't help but encounter an imposing amount of maternity consumerism of various sorts.

That’s because she doesn’t view those things in terms of consumerist angles. Christianity is god, church, morals, faith, etc. It’s not wearing a trinket. Same thing with your nation. It’s where your ancestors grew up. It’s your national history’s. It’s shared memory. For many it’s shared values (once upon a time the US Constitution was considered special by the left and right and a moral document on how people will live together as much as a rule of law).

For family it’s things like Christmas. But not the presents under the tree. It’s spending time with loved ones over Holidays.

You almost make her point for her. These are things of identity. It’s not about wearing your nations flag for the World Cup and getting drunk at the pub while posting Instagram stories.

You can say the same about virtually any identity you can imagine though. Any identifiable group of people can be marketed to. Does that mean it’s conceptually impossible to have an identity outside of consumerism? It seems like that argument proves too much.

I was thinking about her speech on my way into work today, and I realized that invalidating my identities is indeed the current work of the successor ideology. I am not allowed to be Normal, Patriotic American, Not Racist, or A Good Christian anymore, the four identities I most value.

Taking away the ability to identify as they choose is the oppression the purity spiral progressives fought against, but once they won, they kept going.

Sure you are.

I rate as 2-3 of those 4, and I'd proudly announce such to anyone I work with or know by name. It might not even get a weird look. Ads for political candidates and for trucks proudly trumpet one or another of those categories.

Yeah, you could probably draw down some ire for stating such on the wrong parts of Twitter. But in the real world? In your job and neighborhood? We can still live those values.

At my workplace two days ago, I walked in on a conversation about fast food, and one of my co-workers actually said this: “I won’t eat at Chick-fil-A because they sponsor charities that commit genocide against LGBT people in third world countries.” I looked around incredulously, but the other two people in the room just nodded sagely.

Now, this goes beyond mere bigotry. They were claiming that every meal bought at a Christian restaurant chain includes some money going to killing people for being gay. That’s a blood libel, and in that moment, I realized some people who call fundamentalist Christianity “American Taliban” or “Y’all Quaeda” are no longer joking.

I wrote a more thorough commentary on that conversation, which is depressing to hear, as a top-level.

I want to defend the broader stance and say that a fossil criticism of one organization is not the same as a blanket condemnation of Christians. Ultimately, though, I would agree with you that being anti-Christian is more acceptable than any of the other categories. Regardless of the historical justifications (which mostly cash out as "it's still punching up, right??"), this sort of conversation is depressingly plausible.

But you aren’t allowed to be those things in your public persona anymore. You can’t be a son. You can’t be a Christian. They are literally trying to repress these things at elite institutions https://www.foxnews.com/politics/air-force-academy-diversity-training-tells-cadets-to-use-words-that-include-all-genders-drop-mom-and-dad

At a technical level I'd be more offended that the Academy which now produces both Airmen and Guardians recommends using "Guardians" in favor of "Mom and Dad."

A diversity PowerPoint says that cadets shouldn’t assume parental gender. Corporate PR in the armed forces, sure. How the hell is that exclusive of “being” a son?

“Refrain from saying things like mom or dad”

You can secretly be a son you just can’t openly be a son.

Oh, we’re interpreting this different ways. I figured it was if you don’t know—like if asking “where are your parents?”

If it is actually telling cadets not to gender their own, known parental units, then whoever wrote the guidelines is a moron. I don’t think that’s what’s going on, but I’ll grant that.

It doesn’t sound like it means if you asks someone “use neutral terms” but if you talk about yourself you shouldn’t say your a father or a son etc. Which robs people if their identity as a father or a son.

I think the anglosphere right have been burned too much by talking the talk but not walking the walk for anyone to get excited about more words, however passionate and pleasing they may sound.

When she takes some decisive actions, maybe then she'll become a champion. Not before.

Sorry you’re getting downvoted. There’s nothing wrong per se with what you said; you just need to stretch it out over five paragraphs in order to be in compliance with the etiquette of this forum.

  • -15

That's not accurate and you know it.

Don't be obnoxious.

I can't seem to report comments at the moment, but you can put in more effort than importing Twitter takes.

we have robbed society of their identity and tried to replace it with whatever pronouns are.

I'm not a fan of trans ideology or wokism in general but you need to do better than "wE lIvE iN a SociEty" level takes.

Wokism as an ideology and wokism and its symbols being a standin for a tribal identity is not some novel analysis.

Wokism as an ideology and wokism and its symbols being a standin for a tribal identity is not some novel analysis.

It's hard to find truly novel analysis about anything. People devote their their lives to doing just that-- authors, professors, etc.- Finding novel insights is very hard; hard enough that every year some important people convene in Stockholm to award people who have done just that a million dollars. A famous intellectual with a decades-long career may only have a handful of actual original insights (Dawkins and selfish gene, for example). Also, there is so much content being produced that the odds are close to 100% that it's already been done.

What evidence is there that financial speculators are the right people to blame for what she is complaining about?

It depends what is meant by financial speculators. There were a number of Jews on Twitter that seemed to think she was talking about them.

My take was corporations with access to capital markets that use cheap debt to 'disrupt' existing commerce chasing growth while searching for a path to profitability. The marketing and PR for these companies is typically on-board with the current thing.

I see them as both the corporations and their financiers.

'Financial speculator' is a good intuitive descriptor for the more abstract 'commodifier'. The essence of neoliberal capitalism is that it turns every human attribute into a form of capital and every cultural artifact into a commodity. Everywhere it seeks to produce systems of winners and losers, and it desires that everything be packaged up and sold. Are 'financial speculators' in the narrow sense responsible for all this? Not wholly, no, but they serve as a useful synecdoche. The mindset of the forex trader or the rolex flipper is very much the sentient manifestation of neoliberal ideology, just as the mindset of the brutal cop is a sort of sentient fascism.

Financial speculator' is a good intuitive descriptor for the more abstract 'commodifier'. The essence of neoliberal capitalism is that it turns every human attribute into a form of capital and every cultural artifact into a commodity.

I think this view is flawed. neoliberal capitalism doesn't do that, it recognizes that this already happens naturally as we better understand the world around us. At every level of business if communication is possible there are immense benefits to scale and specialization. This goes all the way up the chain and naturally has all these effects you dislike. This is not some memetic belief system infecting the people that we can wipe and then return to our idyllic past. This is a force of nature that can only be combatted by forcing isolation from the nation outward and within the polity itself if too large. And even that would fail to outside interference with competition. This is Moloch. One does not slay Moloch so easily for he is deep in our nature.

Tariffs and regulation are probably sufficient.

I don't think so unless you're ready for the quality of life to drastically reduce and to become a global backwater entirely dependent on allies. You'd need to totally isolate your markets or your internal market simply can't compete and will collapse immediately.

Not true. Even if we assume that neoliberal capitalism is unassailably efficient, the inefficiencies induced by a socialist system would in many cases not be very great and could be protected with relatively modest tarriffs. And of course for many (perhaps most) industries, a regulated market is the best solution, as well evidenced by the real world.

Khmer Rouge and Ancapistan are two ends of a very long spectrum.

Very little of that spectrum is devoid of molochian tendencies though. Moloch is able to instantiate itself within even moderately small economies. especially if exposed to a global information source. Maybe my critique is better express in more concrete terms. If you can only really know 300 people, and I'm being generous here, and you want to know the people responsible for your various staples and customs then you're going to quickly run out of your 300 person budget. How many of those people are doing your sewer work, without economies of scale how many of them are cobbling your shoes and keeping your clothing patched up? Producing your food? Nearly zero of them are producing entertainment for you. Modern day man's consumption is the center of a web of many millions, isolating your economy isn't just a matter of cutting off some dubious Disney channels, it's paying a lot more for everything, including essentials and many going without for that fact. Those people are going to see what your vision costs them in very real and personal terms. If you can sell them on the vision you still need to deal with the fact that a collection of strong independant local communities are reliant on the kindness of other geopolitical actors to prevent their pillaging on a global stage. How do you produce cars if companies can't be allowed to grow so large that they commoditize the workers? let alone warships.

Limited. The corps do push wokeism (not speculators it’s the PMC; most speculators lean right). I think they push it because of anti-discrimination laws in the US which means they can’t say anything back about the ideas pushed by wokes or they could open themselves up to a lawsuit. So in that sense she correct that trans ideology has capture Disney etc.

Financial speculators are a much more specific group than corporations. Also, this is Italy, not the US. Do they have a similar phenomenon of companies going woke to avoid discrimination lawsuits?

American media and tech dominate the globe.

I think she’s using financial speculators as a fill in for corps. The culture wars aren’t about some autistic SBF type sitting in a basement running algos. But American corporates do dominate. And that ties into consumption a lot better.

I think it's, frankly, kind of dumb. There are plenty of trans people whom I know of who have families (in the sense of a spouse, children, and relatives). The idea that trans people, or people who support trans rights, are opposed to the idea of "family" seems straightforwardly false. Indeed, a large concern among trans people (I'm given to believe) is how their family will react to their coming out. Not quite the concerns of someone opposed to the idea of a family! Similarly I know of plenty of trans people who conceive themselves as "woman" or "man", as "husband" or "wife" and have no issue with cis people identifying similarly.

On the religious front, there are christian denominations that are welcoming to trans people. Almost certainly there are trans people who identify as much with "Christian" or "Catholic" as you would. I'm confident this holds for national identity as well, though I don't have citations to hand.

I think it's a pretty standard speech blaming minorities in a society for its perceived decay regardless of the actual facts.

Did you listen to the speech? I don't see any blaming of minorities. The transgender culture and movement is toxic to families and there is limited data on the long term prognosis for children raised by transgender parents which I'm sure will be censored if anyone at all is studying the topic, which I imagine is impossible in academia now. Transgender people are mentally ill, unfit for raising children, and absolutely disgust me and I'm tired of pretending they don't.

Transgender people are mentally ill, unfit for raising children, and absolutely disgust me and I'm tired of pretending they don't.

Well, you don't have to pretend you aren't disgusted by them.

You do, however, have to follow the rules of discourse which still apply in our new space. Trans people are welcome to post here, there probably are a few around, and blankly asserting that they are all mentally ill, unfit for raising children, and disgusting, isn't acceptable. Just like you can talk about HBD, crime rates, your pet theories about the Holocaust, redpill philosophy, etc., but you cannot just say "black people/Jews/women suck." Even if that is what you believe.

You are right I will take heed

While I agree with the rest I find this curious:

blankly asserting that they are all mentally ill

But aren't they sufferers of Body Dysmorphia which was (is?) a mental illness? or why would they want to change their body if it wasn't a mental illness? Are you asserting that being trans is normal?

This has come up before, and it really depends on the tone in which you are making the statement. It's one thing to say that you do not believe that anyone has a "gendered brain" or is "born in the wrong body," and that trans people who genuinely feel these things are suffering from body dysmorphia, i.e., a literal mental illness. That allows room for reasonable discussions that don't just express contempt, like, "Okay, so how should we treat these people? Do we allow them to identify as the gender they think they are, or do we argue that therapy would be more useful?" While a lot of trans people would still object to those discussions (which is ironically a major part of the reason why we are here and no longer on reddit, sigh), reasonable people can treat these as legitimate arguments that can be made in good faith. As opposed to just saying "Trans people are crazy and disgusting."

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