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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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Something that always bothered me about the Motte is that while massive cultural/political events are going on in Europe, one needs to dive deep into the roundup thread to find any discussion of it at all. Meanwhile the latest trans-people-in-school or outrageous-nytimes-oped controversy (which nobody will remember in a week) will have 500 comment threads dedicated to extreme nitpicking.

Anyway sorry for the rant. It looks like the far-right (of the quite openly far-right, even post-fascist variety) has just won the Italian elections and will very likely going to provide the prime minister to a cabinet that will include a 85 year old Berlusconi among others. Italy is the 3rd most populous and wealthy country in the EU. It also acts as a perennial threat to the stability of the Brussels-led order and the euro, since an Italian default or currency exit would almost definitely trigger the collapse of the euro with who knows what consequences. The EU looks determined to fight. Meloni herself does not sound like the type of politician who will accept to be crushed as easily as her predecessors. Here is a French interview with a 19 years old activist Meloni. She still sounds like a true believer to me. To get the gist of just how radical (from the EU-norm) she is willing to be with regard to cultural issues, I recommend this speech from 3 years ago (with English subs).

What are your expectations? Are we coming near a grand showdown? How is this going to interact with the looming threat of grid collapse in Europe? Russia sanctions and the European willingness to keep Ukrainian army in the field? NATO expansions? Is her family and God rhetoric just fluff or do you expect some real moves in this regard? When the ECB will have to start increasing interest rates substantially and Italy has to choose between bankruptcy or euro-exit, how will this go under this government?

P.S. Italy was one of the most anal countries with regard to vaccine oppression and corona measures in Europe. Does anyone know what the position of the Fratelli was back then? And how they talk about these things now?

This is mostly the result of Germany using their "refugees welcome" strategy to attract hordes of migrants with sometimes also questionable motives, and then completely refusing to actually take responsibility, stranding all of these refugees in Italy and Greece. Then the EU kept nagging Italy about the refugee camps, while at the same time nagging them about their economy and refusing to help them much at all. It doesn't really surprise me that right wing sentiments across Europe are surging, with the refugee crisis as the embers, and then the corona crisis as a catalysator we had two crisis in succession where the popular opinion is identical with the right wing opinion (the majority of Europeans in most countries is both against taking in more refugees and against corona restrictions).

I don't think Italy will be the Fulcrum, France is. The population wants a right wing government, it is just that Le Pen and Zemmour split the right under them, and Macron has more charisma than all of the competition combined. If a charismatic young right wing leader emerges, France will get a far right government aswell. The only real left wing anchor in Europe right now is Germany, and it itself is firmly left-leaning or at least moderate, with a very recent historic victory of the SPD over the CDU, but it is running out of allies in Europe.

However the current Russia Crisis will most likely be a force in the opposite direction, and weld the EU stronger together against a common enemy. I think it will end in a victory for the West, which will rally unity in the Western world and symbollically show the superiority of the Western ways, it's drawbacks in globohomo, critical race theory and especially complete hypersensitation to human deaths which lead to complete lockdowns just to prevent miniscule increases in mortality rates nonwithstanding it crushes other systems into the dust when push comes to shove.

the majority of Europeans in most countries is both against taking in more refugees and against corona restrictions)

What makes you think they were against those restrictions? That doesn't sound true to me at all.

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/08/11/partisanship-colors-views-of-covid-19-handling-across-advanced-economies/, huh I guess I was fooled by my filter bubble. I am a German law student, and most law related discussion unequivocally opposes the corona handling as it is plainly unconstitutional.

That did not come through at all. Politicians, the media, and some, no doubt hand-picked lawyers, would casually brush off the unconstitutional objection, as if it were a meaningless piece of paper, red tape you can jettison whenever you feel like it. I refused to get tested daily when paragraph 28a went into force, sent an email referring to the grundgesetz , got fired. The direct result of government interference in my supposedly guaranteed rights. The lawyers I talked to said there was nothing to be done, it was all fine.

Not only did the lawyers failed to stop egregious violations of the constitution (and lockdowns are imo even worse), they failed to even communicate their opposition( if there was one) in the public square. Do you have some sources for the claim that lawyers unequivocally opposed the corona handling, was there an official pronouncement we all missed?

If you want to you can get digging in the NJW (Neue Juristische Wochenzeitschrift) archives, given that that is the premier magazine that every law related academic reads and wants to be published in irregardless of field. It usually has a strong libertarian slant, although there are a few CDU and Greens aspected articles aswell. Be warned however, the magazine is entirely formulated within technical jargon and is thus near incrompehensible for a layman, and it carries a pricetag of 25€/month at least.

If you want some work alleviated here is an univeristy website which has also an article by a professor who published one of his NJW articles about the constitutionality of the Corona regulations freely accessible in pdf format, it is "Der demokratische Rechtsstaat in der Corona-Pandemie, Neue Juristische Wochenschrift (NJW) 2021, 2766-2771". I scanned that one and it seemed very archetypical for the stance of the NJW towards the constitutionality of the corona regulations, the other articles linked on that website, judging from the headlines, share similar stances.

Also since I just realised that technically does not answer your question of "why can my rights be reduced despite the lawyers saying this is unconstitutional", that is because in Germany lawyers do not actually hold any political power. The power of the lawyers can be summed up as the "Herschende Meinung in der Literatur". The only way the literature opinion has actual effect on the interpretation of the law is when the courts take it over, and make it "Rechtsprechung", thus entering the judicative. As long as the courts disagree with the common lawyers opinion in the literature, that opinion is mostly worthless, all political power is with judicative, executive and legislative in Germany. And the courts were extremely loyal to the state in the corona pandemic, the BVerfG, the constitutional court and technically the highest court in the country routinely sides with the state in these decisions.

You’re lawyering here, by pointing to formal powers. If farmers or postmen were ‘unequivocally opposed’ to a government decision, I would expect to at least hear about it, despite them not having the formal power to overturn anything. Lawyers, as one of the priestly classes of civil society , possess far more power, prestige and verbal ability, yet nothing was heard from them. And the highest courts, their elite, those who actually did something instead of sending a memo in a technical journal, were completely on board with the program.

Let's make a distinction here. Are you arguing that lawyers were not opposed to the corona regulations, or that the lawyers opposed to the decision had a moral duty to make themselves heard more?

Both.

Are you arguing that lawyers were not opposed to the corona regulations

How do you explain the courts siding with the state every time, otherwise? And the silence.

the lawyers opposed to the decision had a moral duty to make themselves heard more?

Definitely.

More comments

I'd say that thus far the reaction to Meloni by "official" Europe has been a bit subdued. After all, she's not a hard euroskeptic and not anti-NATO; those are probably far more important regarding how the institutions view challengers than any cultural war issues or even fascist legacies. Besides, her party and coalition are a known quality, they've already been in government previously (under Berlusconi). There's going to be a lot of rhetoric going back and forth, but the actual EU reaction depends on whether the Meloni government consciously goes on a warpath with EU, like Orbán has done.

I think most EU officials (the ones smarter than Von der Leyen) have been silent so far in order to not increase Meloni’s support even more. Random Eurocrats warning you against voting a certain way is usually a strong reason for voting that way.

Yeah, but there's no such necessity any more, with the election gone.

My best bet is that they are waiting for Meloni's move before declaring war. She was explicitly endorsing the pro-NATO sentiment during the campaign and claimed to not have any intentions to mess with the Euro. But everyone can see that her other stated goals as well as her coalition partners are going to push her towards confrontation with the EU on these subjects.

The best course of action for a eurocrat at this point would be to wait and make sure Meloni doesn't have to get into public confrontations with the EU.

Von Der Leyen went beyond warning, she threatened the people of Italy if they voted for Meloni. The only thing worse than nationalism is globalism. I love Meloni and I understand why the evil politicians in Germany and France hate her, but I don't understand why ordinary people do, unless they just go with the media flow.

I'm pretty sure the only reason she's not openly euroskeptic is because the failure (perceived or actual) of Brexit has poisoned the well of euroskepticism for mainstream politicians on the continent. Perhaps also because she feels she will be able to find ideological allies within the EU (namely Duda and Orbán). In the abstract, euroskepticism should be a very natural corollary of her fundamental beliefs: anti-globalist, anti-liberal, pro-nation-state.

I'd love to get daily dispatches from themotte about foreign politics, war, energy, and economics. Unfortunately those things take expertise to talk about. Running your mouth about the teacher wearing giant prosthetic breasts to shop does not.

What are your expectations? Are we coming near a grand showdown?

70% prediction: Italy is slapped on the wrist with some sort of minor bureaucratic penalty by the EU, at most.

How is this going to interact with the looming threat of grid collapse in Europe?

The fact Europe has bigger fish to fry is part of why the above is the most likely outcome.

Russia sanctions and the European willingness to keep Ukrainian army in the field? NATO expansions?

The US is keeping Ukraine in the field.

90% prediction: Sweden and Finland process to join NATO continues. 99% prediction: Italian politics aren't cited mentioned as a major factor if these talks derail.

Is her family and God rhetoric just fluff or do you expect some real moves in this regard?

I really am speaking from ignorance here, but based purely on my priors of the way these sort of politicians play out:

80%: Italy sees lower immigration while her government is in power.

99%: The fertility rate of native Italian women remains below replacement rate while her government is in power.

I'd love to get daily dispatches

There were a few users who have done semi-regular dispatches about their country in the past. Gloster80256 did some during COVID. I remember someone doing updates on politics in Finland. MacaqueOfTheNorth would occasionally do Canada.

Maybe a weekly thread where people could just post about happenings in their country/state/province/city? Or just encouraging more dispatches in this thread.

Are there no Mottizens in Ukraine? I can't remember seeing any comments from any. Maybe they are a bit busy.

Are there no Mottizens in Ukraine? I can't remember seeing any comments from any. Maybe they are a bit busy.

We had at least one that I recall but they'd already been inactive for several months before the shit kicked off.

The US is keeping Ukraine in the field.

That is a good point. After some thinking, I get the impression that at this point even an openly pro-Russian leader (they went extinct or dormant in Europe in the last 6 months) would really struggle to resume trade against American wishes as the US controls the escalation opportunities in the Ukrainian war.

99%: The fertility rate of native Italian women remains below replacement rate while her government is in power.

Very probably yes. Finding a solution to the Western fertility rates which doesn't involve "be Israel" would be an achievement on par with fusion energy at this point. I don't expect much more than some welfare state fiddling a la Hungary.

Hungary did raise their fertility rates.

I mean, not above fertility, but I don’t think anyone expected them to.

Admittedly I don't know much about the data in detail. But I suspect that much of the fertility increase in Eastern Europe has to do with repairing the absolute socio-economic wreck the end of communism had unleashed.

post-fascist

I keep seing this term bandied around and I can't get seem to get a definition that doesn't just amount to "people on the far right we really want to call fascists but aren't in actuality". What is post-fascism?

Good question. Probably shouldn’t have used it myself without having a clear idea. What I tried to say is that Fratelli is clearly part of the Italian political tradition that derives from Mussolini’s fascist party. It’s also quite clear that they have some admiration for the guy and his political philosophy. On the other hand it’s not 1930 anymore and they deal with substantially different issues, organisational possibilities and societal dynamics. Hence the post part.

In this particular context, it seems accurate, as the party has a fairly direct lineage (via mergers and renamings, the AN and MSI) to Mussolini's. At one point their antecessors renounced the term (and explicitly a subset of the ideology of) fascism, hence post-.

Here is a random dictionary entry describing a somewhat symmetrical case as "post-communist".

Beyond the "lineage", it's probably worth pointing out the intellectual and philosophical foundations of the leadership. Both of Die Linke's chairs openly and explicitly praise Karl Marx, and Meloni's pretty clearly and publicly a Mussolini fangirl.

And Democrats in the US have a direct, unbroken and not renamed lineage to the party of slaveholders, Jim Crow and internment camps for foreigners.

What's your point?

I don't know why it's so hard for you to accept semantically that someone who glorifies, and is part of a party that glorifies, Mussolini and his party - the inventors and namesakes for fascism in its original incarnation - can be described as post-fascist.

I think it's more an objection to the intentional smuggling of the word "fascist" into a description that is otherwise vague. "Post-fascist" could mean anything: rejecting fascism, re-inventing fascism, whatever. The goal of calling them "post-fascist" is, presumably, for the prefix to be mentally filed away as decorative.

Meloni and her party have both long rejected the mantle of fascism. Corbyn says he's a socialist, I take him at his word. Meloni says she isn't a fascist, I take her at her word. Neither term means much anymore.

The US seems like a clear outlier case of political lineage to me, where the parties shifted all over the spectrum to capture the maximum number of votes rather than by the minimum required to stay within the Overton window. Both Meloni's political ancestors and the Linke did something close enough to the latter (see especially what your sibling post pointed out).

First time I've seen the term, so don't give this too much credence, but when I see it I think "someone who wants to try fascism again but doesn't think Hitler was a good prototype".

Like, let's be clear here, by the standards of fascism Hitler was a total failure. The central dogma of fascism is to prioritise the goals of the society and, yes, the race over those of the individual, in order to succeed and compete as a group - and you win if your group is the one left around to write history books. Obviously, Hitler's actions did not benefit Germany, Germans or German culture in any enduring fashion; WWII and its aftermath saw a shocking number of Germans killed, dispossessed or re-educated into Polish or Russian culture, and saw Germany semi-permanently dethroned from great-power status and lose a lot of territory. Hitler didn't intend that, of course, but the whole point of fascism is that it doesn't care about what you intended - it's social-Darwinist and only cares if you won.

Fascism can never truly be nice, but the ideology's not totally meritless even from a "societal virtues" point of view; we yearn for a purpose beyond ourselves, we yearn for a community that cares for us as kin and is free of exploiters, and we certainly yearn for the power to overcome foreign threats to our way of life and culture. I'm not a big fan of the sacrifices fascism makes on those altars (and it has to make a lot of them), but I will grudgingly grant that you can be a Literal (Post-)Fascist without wanting to be Literally Hitler (postwar Japan is perhaps the most positive long-term case of a near-fascist society; there are a few other examples in East and South-East Asia - though I'd exclude the PRC as being too close to Literally Hitler - and 50s America also had significant fascist attributes in a somewhat-positive fashion).

I think this is a great development for Italy and the entire West. She is interested in change that allows Italians to exist in the future, which really ought to be political priorities 1 through 99. If she increases Italian birth rates by just 5% that would be a great success.

Those transgender stories are not irrelevant; in her own speech she brings up a dozen small culture war stories as motivation for her political will, like Alfie Evans.

This website has a predominantly US readership, I think .

In other news, the Euro and Pound are in freefall , the former down 5% and the later down an astonishing 10% over the past month. This show how bad things are over there even compared to here. Inflation higher ,too. It's a mess over there due to a combination of poor policy, risk aversion (flight to safety trade), and other factors, and will probably get worse. Western Europe pretty much missed out on the entire 90s and 2000s tech boom and you can see it the huge difference between the returns of the US vs. UK stock market starting in the early 2000s which has continued since . There is nothing to be optimistic about over there .

True. But any other English language European focused forum I can find out there is pathologically pro-EU. I know some Brussels career bureaucracy types and even they are usually much more sensible about the limitations of the EU than your average pro-EU Redditor. It would be nice to cultivate some habit of broader discussion about these subjects here.

There is nothing to be optimistic about over there .

Unfortunately looks like that. Perhaps I should slowly start checking my options for Atlantic migration as well.

From what I've noticed, the fanatically pro-EU types are mostly blue tribe Americans who adore it as some mythological anti-red America. Most European Redditors(or Europeans in general) are pro-EU too, but lean much more nuanced than whateverthefuck goes on at any given Reddit sub.

Europeans in general are vastly pro-EU. While most Europeans aren't of course going to have the fervor of the most committed Europhiles, it's still generally a popular project, and the most Europhilic contigent is just the tip of the spear of a larger crowd that might gripe about EU stuff occasionally but still wouldn't dream of supporting their country's exit from the Union.

I sometimes think that Americans (the ones with actual interest in Europe) really get a lopsided view about the EU's popularity from following the debates through a British lens, where EU is actually a general subject with strong pro-EU and anti-EU camps. In the continent, the anti-EU camp is really comparably much weaker, which also shows in right-wing populist parties continously moderating their anti-EU views the closer to actual power and mass appeal they get.

I am honestly not so sure about that. I tried to do a deep dive into this subject at some point. I remember that the gist of it was that people gave quite different replies to pollsters about how much they like the EU depending on what they associate with the EU at the time of asking. Eastern Europeans may love the free travel arrangements but won’t stand for the gay stuff or African immigration. The rich northerners suddenly get quite negative about it if you remind them how much they are subsidising the lazy southerners etc.

I believe the politicians coming near power moderate their stance towards the EU primarily to avoid what happened to Syriza or Berlusconi. In practice they have much to gain from working with the EU, damned what their voters wanted, and they know they will likely get crushed otherwise.

Yeah the Euro going under .96 is bad on its own but it's really just a sign of how weak and overhyped the EU has been for a while now.

The Fed can afford aggressive hikes to contain inflation though it remains to be seen if they will succeed without triggering a great depression. Meanwhile the ECB knows that if they get as aggressive, the weight of southern europe's debts will just collapse them. So they don't and the Euro loses against the dollar, and a weak currency is only good if you're a big net exporter, which the EU with its -250B trade balance most definitely isn't.

I don't see a way out of this that doesn't seriously shrink the pie, and economic strife means political strife. And it's not like there's a way out with our shitty demography and lack of innovation.

EU with its -250B trade balance

Just checked this, the chart is catastrophic! They used to enjoy a trade surplus too.

https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/balance-of-trade

The US is much worse though. It will be extremely damaging when the house of cards collapses and foreigners are no longer prepared to export valuable goods in exchange for bits of paper printed by the Fed.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade

The US is much worse though. It will be extremely damaging when the house of cards collapses and foreigners are no longer prepared to export valuable goods in exchange for bits of paper printed by the Fed.

I think people rightly think by the time "piece of paper printed by the FED" loses its value, we are probably in so much deep shit globally (nuclear exchange? global shipping collapse? Solar flare? Free for all world war?) that finance is the least of our problems.

That doesn't even apply to the EU. Euro can lose its value and fundamentally not much would need to change in the world.

Western Europe pretty much missed out on the entire 90s and 2000s tech boom and you can see it the huge difference between the returns of the US vs. UK stock market starting in the early 2000s which has continued since . There is nothing to be optimistic about over there .

I really do hope they find some new productive niche, as coasting on reputation and accumulated capital is not a sustainable strategy, and attempting to leverage those to be "regulatory leaders" would probably just exhaust those stores faster.

I am witnessing first-hand the EU's desperate attempt to create such a niche in a small communications related field. It is pathetic unfortunately. One clearly gets the idea that anything productive has been taken over by the Americans or the Chinese and this is just scraps. Furthermore, most of the academics involved are Chinese/Indian anyway so even if this stuff produced something useful, who knows how much they will contribute to Europe actually.

I realise this is an extremely flippant way to treat what you present as a serious problem, but it's Italy. It's entirely possible that they will have a completely new government by Thursday week. And the fact that Berlusconi is still influential is some kind of signal, even if I can't think what.

If it's on cultural issues, then I think there will be less of a showdown to the point of Italy walking out. Right now in Europe we have bigger problems, like the cost of energy and will we be able to keep the lights and heat on this winter. Faced with that, having a fight over social conservatism is not the time.

I am really curious about what sort of person still votes for Berlusconi. What does a 85yo Berlusconi still contribute to the Italian politics that other right wing or centrist leaders don't?

I am not aware of what Meloni thinks or says about the Russia sanctions, but it looks like Salving and Berlusconi both would at least privately really appreciate if trade with Russia just continues as usual and don't give two damns about the Ukrainian cause. If/when the sanctions lead to a deep depression and blackouts this winter, I expect Italy to be one of the weakest links in the Atlanticist "front".

I am not aware of what Meloni thinks or says about the Russia sanctions

She supports sanctions and arming Ukraine.


ROME, July 22 (Reuters) - Italy will keep sending arms to Ukraine and back Kyiv in its war against Russia if the conservative bloc wins a forthcoming national election, the head of the most popular party in the alliance has said.

The far-right Brothers of Italy, led by Giorgia Meloni, has been one of the few Italian parties that has wholeheartedly endorsed Prime Minister Mario Draghi's decision to ship weapons to Ukraine, even though it was in opposition to his government.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-will-keep-supporting-ukraine-if-right-wins-vote-says-meloni-2022-07-22/

both Brothers of Italy and the League have condemned the war, Salvini, who once heaped praise on Vladimir Putin, even signing a cooperation pact with the Russian president’s United Russia party in 2017, said the sanctions were not working and were instead “bringing Europe and Italy to their knees”.

Meloni, meanwhile, argues that the sanctions are working, citing a significant slowdown in Russia’s GDP growth prospects, and since the start of the war she has been resolute in her support for sending arms to Ukraine while reassuring the international community that she is pro-Europe and pro-Atlanticist.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/09/cracks-show-in-meloni-salvini-alliance-over-russia-sanctions-italy

I am really curious about what sort of person still votes for Berlusconi. What does a 85yo Berlusconi still contribute to the Italian politics that other right wing or centrist leaders don't?

"I had good years under Berlusconi." I knew a ton of people who voted for Bush II in America on that basis, and some who voted for Hillary for that reason. Part of it isn't really anything to do with economic policy, it's just, well, Berlusconi was in charge when I was young and vigorous, those were good years for me. Why vote for someone like him when the real thing is right there?

Older than Radio, Marx in the Eighteenth Brumaire:

Historic tradition has given birth to the superstition among the French farmers that a man named Napoleon would restore to them all manner of glory. Now, then, an individual turns up, who gives himself out as that man because, obedient to the “Code Napoleon,” which provides that “La recherche de la paternite est interdite,” he carries the name of Napoleon. [#6 L. N. Bonaparte is said to have been an illegitimate son.] After a vagabondage of twenty years, and a series of grotesque adventures, the myth is verified, and that man becomes the Emperor of the French. The rooted thought of the Nephew becomes a reality because it coincided with the rooted thought of the most numerous class among the French.

”I’m voting for the right-wing coalition but I’d prefer if they concentrated on cutting taxes and being pro-biz instead of this nationalism and anti-immigrant stuff’, presumably.

And, presumably, ‘I really want Russian gas this winter’.

To reply my own question, I found this link from La Republic and auto-translation reads like it is clear they are running against any more vaccine mandates/green pass. That is a pretty positive development and substantially reduces my fear of renewed covid fight this winter.

I watched Meloni’s talk at that congress. Is everyone in Italian politics so high energy?

Lol seriously. It made me wonder whether we think Hitler was so high energy simply because he was copying Mussolini who was just being a regular Italian dude.

Something that always bothered me about the Motte is that while massive cultural/political events are going on in Europe, one needs to dive deep into the roundup thread to find any discussion of it at all. Meanwhile the latest trans-people-in-school or outrageous-nytimes-oped controversy (which nobody will remember in a week) will have 500 comment threads dedicated to extreme nitpicking.

I suppose being the change you want to see is the ultimate solution. So good on you for delivering on that other than just complaining about it.

I think the bare links repository (BLR) would help alleviate this. What some stupid teacher said to her stupid student in Stupid Small Town, in Stupid State in USA about boyss being girls and girls being boys; can just be posted about in the BLR.

All the raging hot CW topics that generate much albeit low quality discussion could be contained that way. Another hidden benefit of the BLR was that it added an element of transcience since the posting rate was so high that some stupid trans story wouldn't sit there and gather 500 comments it would get discussed a bit and eventually get burried by newer links.

I've been pestering the mods to reinstate the BLR for a while, but I obviously don't have much influence other than just being annoying. The mods cite their reasons for not doing so, but I ultimately see little value in just one more conversation about trans or race issues.

As it stands right now, if I see something I want to discuss about on the Motte but I am not well informed about it, I just have to ignore it, instead of just sharing the link which would have generated some conversation at least. The BLR adds diversity of topics.

You could also become informed on such an issue, then make a careful top-level. That seems like a win-win as far as inciting effortful responses for you to consume.

The BLR seems likely to encourage more trans- and race-outrage posts, even if an individual example is more transient. And I’m not sure that the latter would be true given memetic fitness, toxoplasma of rage, etc. I don’t want to lower the barrier to contributing in the thread because even users capable of producing decent top-levels will be incentivized to wage culture war through the BLR.

Maybe—maybe—we could benefit from a Bare Link BWednesday. I still think it would act as a giant witch magnet.

We had the BLR before. Did it act as a witch magnet?

Hard to say.

One one hand, that was when we had a larger sub, a better connection to other reddits, and (American) CW events that were drawing in a lot of posters anyway. On the other, those same CW events were apparently attracting enough witches that moderation thought the BLR would help.

Is this a massive cultural / political event? Brexit was supposed to be massive, but I don't see that much of a course change in the UK. What exactly are you expecting to see in Italy?

We get plenty of coverage on American insider baseball and X-wrote-Y-about-Z-saying-K-about-J-which-may-not-even-be-real in agonizing detail when it pertains to the least significant facet of the CW in America. Significance is hardly the only criterion here.

Oh, please don't get me wrong, I am absolutely in favor of discussing news from other corners of the world. I was just objecting to the criticism, that we spend too much time on vanilla Culture War.

Brexit was not that much of a change only if your expectations of change were formed by feverish media coverage of implied mass deportations and economic collapse. But that is not the topic here.

My primary expectation with regard to political consequences of this even isn't some sort of battle over gays or abortion but about the future of the Euro. I firmly believe that the Euro has been disastrous for plenty of countries but primarily Italy. The Italian political elite (mainly the PD adjacent people) had been taking decisions to the active detriment of their own country to sustain the Euro project. Roughly since Berlusconi was ousted. We are approaching a serious economic crisis and the end of the QE project which has kept the Euro on life support in the last 10 years. Certain decisions taken or not taken by the Italian government in the next year when the push comes to shove might very well cause the collapse of the EU project in unpredictable ways.

Brexit was not that much of a change only if your expectations of change were formed by feverish media coverage of implied mass deportations and economic collapse. But that is not the topic here.

My expectation was some kind of departure from the default Western Orthodoxy. I don't see much talk about reindustrialization, cutting immigration, or cutting bureaucracy. They didn't even use their independence from the EU to pursue a different COVID policy.

My primary expectation with regard to political consequences of this even isn't some sort of battle over gays or abortion but about the future of the Euro.

I see where you're coming from, and I agree it's going to be interesting. There are a lot of forces pulling in completely different directions, and like you say to whole thing might finally tip over. I'm just hesitant to assume this particular election changes anything, after seeing how almost every populist turn has been pacified in recent memory.

They didn't even use their independence from the UK to pursue a different COVID policy.

I think you are mostly right except this bit. For much of last year the UK had radically different covid policies than the EU (often absolutely no policy at all). I believe it was partly the embarrassment and disturbing questions caused by the fact that England was doing just fine with no rules compared to places with vax and mask obsession, that brought about the end of European corona regime. I can only talk for Dutch language media but mainstream people were definitely questioning heavily why we had to scan vax QR codes everywhere and keep a lockdown while while the Brits were business as usual, with similar corona outcomes.

I'm just hesitant to assume this particular election changes anything

I expect a big change in some way we totally did not predict. After seeing how the neoliberal masters of the world almost crashed the continent in 2008 and got rewarded by gaining almost complete bankers hegemony, who the hell can even claim to foresee anything.

I think you are mostly right except this bit.

I think what you're describing is mostly after the craze has passed? I'm pretty sure I remember plenty of Brits complaining about lockdowns, at least at the beginning. The interesting part is that originally they did have an idea to pursue the complete opposite "let it rip" policy, but that was shut down very fast, by some Scientific institution releasing extremely exaggerated numbers of expected deaths, based on a simulation running on buggy code.

It's that kind of stuff that makes me very apathetic about election results.

People from different places have a very different idea of when the craze has passed. For example the Netherlands has entered a total lockdown (as in, basically everything closed) on 19th December 2021 over models showing omicron will kill us all. Meanwhile Peru has lifted its inside-outside-at-all-times mask mandate literally last week after 3 years.

The interesting part is that originally they did have an idea to pursue the complete opposite "let it rip" policy

Almost every single country did, as this was the basic pandemic planning everywhere until Wuhan lockdown was declared an unprecedented success. The following events have caused unfathomable economic/social damage and suffering. And it is somehow entirely forgotten from mainstream consciousness. I still can't get my head around this.

While the covid policies in the UK weren't very different from Europe, they still did some things on their own. The UK did lockdowns unfortunately and barred people going to national parks and fined them for breaking lockdowns. Also required a lot of testing and quarantine for travellers. But at least with vaccination I think the UK did much better. IT provided better information about vaccines, spaced out doses when vaccine was in short supply, abolished vaccine mandates even for healthcare professionals. It even did some human challenge studies, albeit very late. I am in healthcare and the health authorities tried to evaluate available evidence better than other countries. For example, the UK quickly understood that Paxlovid effect is limited to unvaccinated risk groups and stopped using it unnecessarily while the US gave it green light and it was just wasted money. The Europe simply skipped on Paxlovid probably due to its cost, though :)

Brexit was supposed to be massive, but I don't see that much of a course change in the UK

It might eventually mean the dissolution of the United Kingdom given that it has given the Scottish nationalists a lot of energy and they're pretty eager to hold another referendum.

Similar (but to a lesser extent) in Northern Ireland where most voted Remain. I'd say it's early for anything to happen yet, but given the recent demographic tipping point some economically minded pro-EU Protestants would be an important cohort for nationalists to court.

Three-step plan to effecting an irreversible change:

  1. Polarize the issue along partisan lines.

  2. Spam referenda again and again on the issue until, by chance, the political weather favors your side at a time a referendum is held enough to put you over the 50% threshold.

  3. Once you get your victory, it's permanent. Rejoice!

I have doubts that 50% thresholds are a good idea when the choice is between "the status quo since time immemorial" and "breaking it permanently," owing to the polarization effects. (The past three years have pretty well demonstrated that anything can be subjected to a partisan split, so it seems.) I think that standard for Brexit itself was unwise (but it was still the standard chosen.) But when it's paired with "vote until they vote right" it seems hardly honest.

See also: The US Constitutional amendment process, intentionally made nontrivial but flexible.

But when it's paired with "vote until they vote right" it seems hardly honest

Same thing happened with the Lisbon Treaty referenda in Ireland. The first try it was rejected in 2008, they held it again the next year and it passed.

It might eventually mean the dissolution of the United Kingdom given that it has given the Scottish nationalists a lot of energy and they're pretty eager to hold another referendum.

It gave them a rationale, but didn't make an obvious impact on Scottish opinion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_Scots_Indep_V6_new_format.pdf

The Scottish nationalists did better in the general election before the Brexit vote than after.

It's an anglophone community the largest nationality of which is American. It's hardly surprising that in aggregate it has less to say on and less interest in stories from the Old World.

Which isn't to say that I wouldn't appreciate seeing more of them. Hell, I'd post them if I currently had the stomach to consume much news.

Also, generally speaking, a community less likely to weigh in on subjects where they have no knowledge base. I appreciate Stefferi’s Finnish culture war entries, but never comment on them as my knowledge of Finnish politics could be contained in a matchbook, with plenty of room to spare.

Some German content would definitely be interesting. European culture wars are pretty pathetic though. Mostly it is just very unoriginal unambitious people arguing over how to assemble the latest hot American cultural mess into something slightly more local. Trying to come up with "gender-neutral" ways of speaking in very gendered languages and so forth.

Much of the actual Finnish culture-warring is actually over environment-related subjects (use of forests, use of peat biomass in energy production, fur farming, veggie days in school etc.) that would be quite obscure and hard-to-approach to Americans, or over immigration, which likewise has implications that directly don't always resemble the immigration culture-war in USA. The washed-over American stuff is what might get shown abroad, but it's not comparably that large a part of the local experience.

For instance, I remember that when the big George Floyd protests were happening, some local antiracists organized a solidarity protest and two with some thousands of people, and that was obviously a direct attempt to export something from the US, but it was also a simple come-and-go event that maybe got some news reporting for a few days and was then forgotten, the sort of a protest anti-racist organizations would organize at some intervals anyway expect now with a particular news-related hook, not a vast, almost epochal event like it was in the USA.

Whenever I hear the term, "far right," what I hear in my mind is "90's liberal." You may need to clarify what exactly you mean by that, making clear how your definition is distinct from partisan media painting anyone they don't like as fascist.

If you believe that "Family, country, God" is "far right" then you should recognize that is almost half the country. And that also means over 90% of people in the last thousand years have been fascist.

And that also means over 90% of people in the last thousand years have been fascist.

I do unironically agree with this. I believe humans have a natural tendency to organize around political forms similar to feudalism, whose combination with industrial society is more or less what most people call fascism. It is certainly what Mussolini seemed to understand when he was referring to his party's ideology. I also think the unique weirdness of the term fascism (it is really difficult to define in a way most people agree) has a lot to do with this underlying nature. Intellectuals of progressive/enlightenment bent keep recognizing signs of fascism everywhere because human societies keep reproducing elements of it adapted to the changing societal conditions.

You are right at recognizing the political terms of right and left can refer to very different positions on issues at different times. But I believe that is because the specific issues are not that relevant when coming up with these labels. What matters chiefly is the direction and speed of political change (or lack thereof) you want. Today's far right might look more leftist than yesterday's conservatism (case in point, Meloni is an unmarried mother of 1 hardly a Catholic motherhood icon) but it is still far right because it advocates for a fast reversal of the enlightenment project while yesterday's conservatism just wanted to conserve the society as it is.

I do unironically agree with this. I believe humans have a natural tendency to organize around political forms similar to feudalism, whose combination with industrial society is more or less what most people call fascism.

I'm not convinced. Humans may organize and develop hierarchies automatically, but I don't think it's people on the bottom who espouse the idea of "knowing one's place", and that idea is an important part of fascist thought. At the very least, they would not believe it is moral or right that they remain where they are, even if they have to accept it.

Almost everyone in almost every human society in the past remained exactly where they are in the economical/political order their entire life. Almost every traditional religion that I can think of is based on the idea that human hierarchies are ordained in some way and should be maintained. When peasants rebelled, it was typically not against their place in the traditional order but against an overlord who is not keeping with their responsibilities in the traditional order.

That was, until the Western discoveries of the rest of the world and industrial revolution suddenly made it possible to have societies where everyone is constantly striving up and a lot of them are indeed succeeding. This created new radical possibilities in societal thinking (commonly expressed with the umbrella term enlightenment) and today we are so used to it that we cannot even imagine people were serious in their traditional beliefs of hierarchy. Surely the peasants always hated their lord and envied him? Maybe some of them did, but this is the typical mind fallacy in my opinion.

Almost everyone in almost every human society in the past remained exactly where they are in the economical/political order their entire life.

Sure. But them accepting their lot in life isn't the same as proof that they found it moral that they are in that lot of life.

Almost every traditional religion that I can think of is based on the idea that human hierarchies are ordained in some way and should be maintained.

Which hierarchies? It's one thing to speak about the family hierarchy in which children obey parents and wives obey husbands. Quite another to speak about a class hierarchy in which your role is to be a low-class peasant and that's just and fair.

Just from a quick glance at Wikipedia's list of peasant rebellions, it doesn't seem like the typical rebellion was about punishing rulers for not obeying traditional responsibilities.

I can accept your argument that people believe those hierarchies are to be maintained, but I feel like that's a defense by higher-status people to protect their standing from the lower-status people, meaning we're probably not talking about peasants.

I remain open to proof of your argument.

That was, until the Western discoveries of the rest of the world and industrial revolution suddenly made it possible to have societies where everyone is constantly striving up and a lot of them are indeed succeeding.

Would you mind expanding on this? How did exploration/colonisation factor in?

I don't think it's people on the bottom who espouse the idea of "knowing one's place"

I don't think there's any particular juncture to fascism here, but the Vendee was a poor region in France and fought back hard against the Revolutionaries (though there appears to be a large historiographical debate over the degree to which the Vendeans were ideological as opposed to just pissed about conscription and/or taxes).

A second, different piece of evidence might be taken from the awful reception the Russian narodniki received during the "Going to the People" attempted uplift of peasant and communal livelihood during the late 19th century - the poor peasants reacted very badly to ideas of overturning society, even to their alleged benefit; they also reacted badly to modern agronomy, medicine, religious skepticism, and literacy. Quite invested in "their place in the world," at least to hear the narodniks write about it.

It takes a shocking number of dead peasants before an intellectual will admit his ideas were wrong.

Changing medical and agricultural practices puts the peasants lives on the line. They weren't going to make any big changes without a lot of proof.

We've come full circle from the Revolution, now natural law itself is fascism and the natural inclinations of man are a tyranny that must be abolished by managerial totalitarianism in the name of liberal democracy that's in theory based on natural rights.

None of this makes any sense.

I blame Marcuse for it. There's many people to point at but he's explicitly the one who said that fascism is the natural tendency to even have a mild appreciation for any form of authority that must be stamped out and "pre-censored" everywhere if there's any chance to have communism or even not have the holocaust again.

Nonsense this is, but nonsense that defines our politics unfortunately.

Not even a "fast reversal" as much as hoping to stop the exponential acceleration without allowing basic questions to be asked.

I don't believe "anything" will happen, nothing ever does.

These are not new elements in Italian politics and she is euro-ambivalent, pro-nato and pro-ukraine. Who gives a shit about the culture war stuff given the circumstances here?

There is a major war in Europe, massive inflation, energy crisis and a looming depression. Who gives a shit if she is stricter on immigration or doesn't like trannies or wharever?

Perhaps (even probably) you are right. But we really do not know much about what she and her party really thinks about any of these "more important" issues. Were they recently just hiding their power level to not spook away the elderly vote? Or were they actually being radicals in the past as a decoy? And more importantly which direction they might pivot since with Draghi or a good-old PD technocrat this was always obvious from the beginning. Nobody seems to know or at least openly speculate yet.

Who gives a shit about the culture war stuff given the circumstances here?

I've often heard such sentiments with the implication "and since what you're talking about is much too unimportant, just shut up and go along with us." If the claim is taken at face value, then a Machiavellian impulse would say that this is exactly the time to slip in all sorts of culture-war maneuvers: to strike while the enemy is distracted, for why should they get to set the defaults that everyone "has to" go along with because there are "more important things to worry about right now?"

I think that Machiavellian impulse would be both unsporting and unlikely to work (right-wing culture warriors seeking to not let a crisis go to waste would probably find that their enemies do have plenty of energy to spare on such trivialities when called on it, even at the expense of what really is supposed to be important.) But who knows; maybe I'm wrong.

There was that top-level thread on this exact topic last week.

I don’t expect much effect on the broader world, including EU relations with Russia. Some possibility of financial instability, maybe, but Italy isn’t Greece. I’m seeing some vague opposition to “EU reforms” and terms of COVID aid—if anyone has further sources, I’d like to see them.

No idea on domestic social consequences whether or not she is a true believer.

It is funny to me, though, to see a 26% plurality in a 44% coalition as winning the vote. As much as the BBC and friends are decrying the Brothers of Italy as literally Mussolini, without an Acerbo law, Italy remains comparatively insulated against the fascist playbook.

I think the question is as much ‘who are her coalition partners and what are they asking for’ as it is ‘what does she want on her agenda’.

And let's not forget the immortal, Silvio Berlusconi. I get the sense that he takes on a much more significant role than minor coalition partner. He acts like an elderly mentor around Salvini and Meloni. And I can't think of someone with a deeper knowledge of ins and outs of Italian/EU politics. Both the clean and the dirty parts.

Berlusconi wants Russian gas more than anything, and will probably get it.

Isn’t she also in coalition with a religious right party that will probably also suck up political capital making demands?

Looks like soon he might not be able to no matter how much he wants it. Nord Stream 2 pipeline pressure collapses mysteriously overnight.

26% plurality in a 44% coalition as winning the vote

I don't get how this gives the Right a ruling majority, but Italy does Italy. Also it is important to notice that both Berlusconi and Salvini are openly signaling defections from the EU line towards Russia and may other things.

but Italy isn’t Greece.

Yes but no. Greek public debt to GDP ratio of last year was 193% while Italian one was 150% according to the internet. Greece can be kept in line and on life support with ECB shenanigans but Italy is too big for that.

Oh boy. I remember seeing AfD election campaign posters for the very first time back when Greece was the big topic in general and the centerpiece of their platform. And that was under Merkel, who had the benefit of benevolent coverage in a way that Scholz can only dream of. I don't expect lightning to strike twice, but I do wonder what would happen. Which isn't meant as darkly hinting at anything; I'm genuinely morbidly curious.

Rutte is basically a walking corpse at this point. He was supposed to retire before covid, but ended up staying "one more term" as the country would probably have multiple repeat elections and coalition failures during corona if he left. Now he is entirely toast in polling and probably won't survive 4 years. Scholz isn't much more popular as a leader either and has to appease FDP. A newer bigger euro crisis just when the creditor nations cannot make difficult political decisions would be the perfect storm

Wait, wasn't Matteo Salvini of Lega (which, iirc, used to promote Northern Italy seceding from the dysfunctional south) basically in control of the Italian government for a while during the last few years? Wasn't the other major party involved in that government the M5S, which I've heard described as "Italian Bernie-bros, but led by Italian!Jon Stewart"? Seems like antiestablishment populism of both the left and right has been the name of the game in Italian politics for a while, no? Why would Meloni be a significant departure? Is there some reason to think she's going to better at marshalling the Italian state to actually get right wing things done? Will she prosecute or sink the migrant flotillas/NGOs helping them? Will she engage in mass-deportations? Does she have some particularly-populist financial plan to boost native TFR? Is she going to stage mass weddings like Alexander with his generals and the Persians? What?

I don't think <Foreign> <American thing> is a useful way to talk about basically anything.

It is if your audience is American, and needs a translation and/or some context-by-analogy. It's definitely vulnerable to bad-faith mischaracterizing or misunderstanding, but it beats just throwing out a random name that no-one knows much about and providing nothing...

It looks like the far-right (of the quite openly far-right, even post-fascist variety)

So.......the normal center-right that always gets called "far right, semi-to-full-fascist"?

Call me when the ovens kick on. Until then, the boy called "Nazis" one or two trillion times too many.

What are your expectations?

I expect that they will govern exactly as competently and moderately as every other Italian government of the last five hundred years.

There's a long strand of postwar Italian glorification of Mussolini by relatively 'mainstream' rightist politicians

Is this fundamentally any different from the mainstream glorification of someone like Marx or Guevara in the American Left? It seems pretty universal for groups to harken back to the icons of yesterday, regardless of affiliation; I'm not sure there's too much of interest there beyond a vague nostalgic appeal and a memory of older, more vigorous times.

If there is still any energy left for this sort of discussions I might even write one day about the weird situation with Atatürk and Turkey, as it is the only country in Europe which had a single party dictatorship in the 1930s and somehow managed to never leave behind its figurehead as well as ideology. But that would require an open-mindedness and maturity about the word "fascism" which is unfortunately lacking here so far. Just because lefties use a word as a catch-all slur, it doesn't mean we can just sneer at its use and feel superior.

Ataturk and Turkey sounds like interesting reading---and far enough from my usual American culture-war bubble that it might be possible to think about productively.

As a prequel, I'd love a clear explanation of what meaningful definitions of terms like "fascist" (or "national socialist", or "marxist", or for that matter even the neo-(liberal/conservative)s) might be. Every attempt I've come across in the past has been more oriented towards drawing connections between undesirables. I'd be interested to hear, from a less agenda-driven source, how these terms can be used in a useful manner.

Perhaps there's recommended reading that I've just missed?

For starters, what sort of thing is fascism? A table is a physical object. A family is a set of people. What's fascism? Is it a tribal label? Is it a coherent ideology? A (pseudo-)intellectual heritage, with a set of mandatory heroes and demons? A form of government? An economic system?

And then, is there a relatively mechanistic procedure by which one might decide if an individual, or speech, or policy, or symbol, is "fascist"? (Ditto for all those other terms.) The sense I've always gotten is that this is labeling is driven, in practice, by who the speaker/policymaker considers their heroes, rather than any concrete aspect of the speech or policy. What's the Motte?

For starters, what sort of thing is fascism? A table is a physical object. A family is a set of people. What's fascism? Is it a tribal label? Is it a coherent ideology? A (pseudo-)intellectual heritage, with a set of mandatory heroes and demons? A form of government? An economic system?

I'd say it's a cluster in political-ideology space.

It's very cringe when we can't talk about the complexity of postwar Italian far-right politics and its relationship with fascism, which is actually very interesting, without someone making a 'muh nazi' comment

It is, but much like how "literally" has now come to literally mean "figuratively", "fascist" has now come to mean "anyone a far leftist doesn't like".

Just another turn of the euphemism treadmill, I suppose.

"Literally" has never been used to mean "figuratively." This is a misunderstanding of hyperbole.

I agree with you about "fascist," though.

I can't speak for tarrou, but I thought from the op there was a decent chance this was a honeypot to declare right wingers here fascist, because that seems to be the point of about half the conversations about Italian politics on the internet. Like when someone makes an op arguing about the holocaust, but with a dash of subtlety to hook those who think holocaust arguing is too obvious by half.

It is both annoying and exhausting to think like that though, so I appreciate you providing a path forward to actual conversations about this, and I wish there was some way I could say all this without distracting back to the mean. Unfortunately all the Italians in my family are even more blackpilled about their national politics than I am, when you bring up Italian politics with them you can practically see them deciding between telling you they don't give a shit and putting a gun in their mouth.

True all that, and I wish people would be capable of such nuance as telling apart Fascists and National-Socialists, but mostly it doesn't happen, and mostly parties are coded as "far right" are then commonly referred to as "those Nazis" and are treated exactly as they were literally Hitler. So when this coding is applied, it understandably triggers the reaction, and if serious on-merits discussion is expected, it should be accompanied with appropriate explanation about what "far right" means in this particular case. Yet better is to avoid this term altogether and use more specific and meaningful terms.

Do you think that what people dislike about fascism was Mussolini?

Or was it the world war, genocide, racism etc.?

This seems to be a very non-central fallacy at least in the civilian American market. For politics nerds and Italians, by all means, have the discussion. We're talking about the EU and some of our posters melting down because of an election of a woman they never heard of six days ago. But apparently, she was insufficiently critical of a guy who was pretty popular in Italy long ago?

Mussolini engaged in imperialism against Ethiopia and was generally pretty authoritarian and oppressive himself, even if he wasn't as bad as literally Hitler.

She's obviously a Nazi. Why else would the AP run a story leading with a photo of her like this? Completely unsubtle and is being carried on all kinds of default news bars.

What are your expectations?

I don't know enough to have any. How thoroughly infected by fifth columnists are the institutions of Italy? If they're like the UK and US she will not be able to do anything effectively unless she fires and salts these institutions, as they will oppose her in everything. Does anyone have any insight as to the state and mentality of Italian institutions?

On the radio last night they mentioned she had a distinctively Roman accent. Is Rome perceived as a southern or northern city, or is it indeed viewed as its own distinct thing? If the latter, could this aid her efforts to be a unifying figure?

Italian native speaker here.

Her accent is not only Roman (so perceived as "low class), but it also a very working class one.

Thank-you. Will this help her unify the North/South division?

So she is like out of Gianna Nannini's bello impossibile?

Is Rome perceived as a southern or northern city, or is it indeed viewed as its own distinct thing?

As I recall, it's a bit like Washington: it's in whatever part you don't like.

Just as Washington has the friendliness of the North and the efficiency of the South, Rome is seen as having the friendliness of the North and the efficiency of the South. When I visited, there was a public transport strike and an astonishing sense of bitterness, so I was not disappointed by the performance of Romanness.

I wish them luck. My current view is Brussels delenda est. I am all for unified Europe, but the current ideology of EU and Brussels must be thoroughly purged and dismantled.

Oh? What’s wrong with this particular flavor of pan-Europism?

The EU should be mainly a customs and trade union. No human rights and other bullshits. No hate speech and disinformation fighting. And it should put Europeans first.

IMO it was doomed from the start. Since the mid-20th century practically all institutions are being taken over by big-government leftists, and creating one from scratch that's too big for anyone to take down and too far removed from the people for anyone to keep it in check just meant giving the institution-eating left a giant gift that keeps on giving. An alternate, politically neutral EU was never an option.

The development of the EEC/EU in this direction was surprisingly late. The devil's bargain seems to have been circa 1990: German demands for a Größerer Staat to rival the US were granted by the nationalistic French left, in return for the EU becoming a device for enforcing social democracy across France's competitors. The British Conservatives said "FOMO!", ditched the Eurosceptic Thatcher, and the other countries had little choice but to come along.

However, there are complexities, e.g. the EU has gradually adopted German hard-money/fiscal prudence views, and so that has also become associated with the EU even in the minds of Eurosceptics. The EU's expansion east has also brought in countries who are not aligned with the social projects of the Brussels elites, and this tension has not yet been resolved.

Overregulate everything into stagnation either out of naive Staatsgläubigkeit or in order to create an entire ecosystem of grift in which economically illiterate leftists and amoral opportunists thrive, submerge it all in woke lingo until there's not a refugee you can turn back nor a woman you can say no to and not a single thing you can refuse to do for the climate, burn money and ruin economies with a vengeance because that far up and so many layers removed from the taxpayer what do you care. Look at the EU and see what the progressive left desires for America. Or, if you aren't American, what's wrong with that particular flavor of pan-Europism is that it's just plain not viable in the long term. It will make Europe poorer, reduce social trust, weaken important national and cultural institutions and slowly builds up a bureaucratic monstrosity that becomes ever more expensive to maintain while it provides next to no service of value but plenty of disservice.

By default, about 99% of mentions of the "far right" in the press means "not socialists". I mean, of course they could be really far right, and true far-right exists (even discounting widely accepted mis-classification of Nazis as "far-right") - but this term is so consistently and thoroughly abused that I want to see proof they are actually "far" before I make any judgement on the subject.

It's probably not good for Ukraine because for some reason beyond my comprehension both tribes framed the Ukraine issue as tribal, and since the pro-EU tribe is (at least in words, though much less in deeds) pro-Ukraine, that pushed the EU-skeptic tribe automatically to become Ukraine-skeptic (see Hungary). It doesn't always happen - e.g. as far as I know, UK conservatives are firmly pro-Ukraine, and actually help in deed much more, than EU does in speech and Macron in his "fireside chats with Putin" over the phone. So maybe Italy will resist the temptation of easy tribalism too.

As for the rest, a lot depends on what "far right" actually means in this case - as it means next to nothing specific in general.

In most of Europe (ie. outside of countries with traditional Russia sympaties), the pro-Ukraine position is widely shared by essentially the entire political spectrum, apart from the far-right and far-left fringes (the exact size of those fringes depends on the country, for instance in Finland those fringes are very fringe indeed).

Glad to hear that people there manage to have more sane politics than in the US, at least in that aspect of it.

In Germany there's a very large part of the population who are deeply and solidly pro-russian, some out of anti-americanism and some out of genuine sympathy for russia (there are lots of russians and russo-Germans in Germany, after all), and this used to extend into politics as well. Those were not just the fringes, but large parts of all political parties - though the fringe parties had a larger share each, to be sure.

They're all silent now. They might emphasize the risks involved in prolonging the ukraine crisis, our dependency on russia or the need for peace, but always on the back foot and ready to go into hiding. The overton window here has grown very narrow very fast.

People are arguing as if German-Russian interdependence is some vague deus ex machina. It was deliberately devised and implemented by several popular chancellors over three decades. Everyone understood that the goal was a Europe spanning Hamburg till Vladivostok or whatever. German industrial prosperity is in large part a consequence of cheap Russian energy and imports. Hell, it even used to be common knowledge that could be discussed on mainstream media that Ukraine is a very corrupt and oppressive state who coincidentally ended up with a lot of Russians within its borders.

I feel like the civ games are missing an important victory mode, the media victory. It’s when a country has such domination over your media that they can make your own population forget or come to believe anything overnight.

I think it's that the pro-Ukraine position has broad support but is also new enough that politicians have not yet figured out how it's sliced. It's less that 70% are for supporting Ukraine, and probably more that parties are uncomfortable with how many people in their own electorate support Ukraine. There's no "common knowledge" that any party's votership is pro-Ukraine or anti-Ukraine.

If 70% of people want a product with feature A, and 22% want a product with feature B, then 100% of products will have feature A unless a company can figure out how to target the B market segment reliably. (Preferably both at once, of course.)

If 70% of people want a product with feature A, and 22% want a product with feature B, then 100% of products will have feature A unless a company can figure out how to target the B market segment reliably. (Preferably both at once, of course.)

I'm very sure it's possible to be in 22%, companies to know about it and still don't get the product. I wish a smartphone without silly notches or punchholes, and without glass

By default, about 99% of mentions of the "far right" in the press means "not socialists".

Non-socialist parties which don't get the "far right" adjective in the press, off the top of my head (even using an inaccurately broad sense of socialism):

  • UK, Conservatives

  • UK, Lib Dems

  • France, Macron's party

  • France, Union of Democrats and Independents

  • France, Republicans

  • Germany, Christian Democrats

  • Germany, CSU

  • Germany, Free Democrats

And that's just the 3 biggest countries. I.e. every single major right-of-center party in these countries, excluding the French National Front.

Hence, your statement is false in a way that's clear to anyone with passing familiarity with the press.

(Meta-comment: another example of The Motte's descent into hysterical tribal right wing persecution complexes, and move away from Scott-style balanced, empiricial rationalism.)

You're confusing "the press is always calling everybody who's not socialist 'far right'" and "if the press is calling somebody 'far right', their actual political affiliation could be anywhere rightwards from socialists". Do I need to draw a Venn diagram to explain the difference?

The "99%" figure is clearly a rhetorical device (I can't believe I have to explain that) - I readily admit I did not make a compendium of all mentions of "far right" ever in the press and calculated how far from socialists they actually are. What I meant (I can't believe I have to explain that, again) by it that the accuracy of this label is overwhelmingly very low and most of the mentions of "far right" is nothing but the label, and can be attached to anybody on the right. And has been attached to Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, etc. I don't watch French and German politics that closely so I'm not sure how that label is being used there.

hysterical tribal right wing persecution complexes

You sure know how to demonstrate that famous "balanced, empiricial rationalism" thing. Or maybe you do think that's what "balanced, empiricial rationalism" actually is? Oh my.

If "far right" were used to mean "not socialist" by the media, then the media would call non-socialist parties "far right".

If you're reacting in part to the emotional tone of my comment, then fair enough, I do have feelings about what's (in my personal perspective) happened to The Motte. So my phrasing is admittedly not emotionally balanced/level.

If "far right" were used to mean "not socialist" by the media, then the media would call non-socialist parties "far right".

That would only be true if the media had to use only one single term to describe the whole spectrum of parties. Then this term would either be "far right" or not, and your claim would be correct. However, in reality it uses a variety of terms, and some of them are used without any accuracy, as general pejorative labels. That doesn't mean the media always wants to use general perjoratives when talking about every party, of course.

what's (in my personal perspective) happened to The Motte

I am flattered to be elected (by a single vote, but apparently it's enough) a representative of the whole forum, but I think your lament is rather misguided and driven by misunderstanding more than anything. You may consider that if somebody tells you they didn't mean what you say they mean, then maybe they didn't mean what you say they mean.

This whole thread is kind of odd when only a few posts mention the specific reason the words "fascist" and "post-fascist" are applied to Meloni and Fratelli d'Italia: Her party's roots go directly to the original Italian Fascist party, particularly the Saló Republic period. Wikipedia:

Brothers of Italy emerged from a right-wing split within Silvio Berlusconi's party, The People of Freedom (PdL), in December 2012.[18] The bulk of the party leadership (including Meloni), as well as the symbol of the movement (the tricolour flame),[19] comes from the National Alliance (AN, 1995–2009) party, which had merged into PdL in 2009.[20] AN was the heir to the Italian Social Movement (MSI, 1945–1995), a neo-fascist party founded by former members of the banned National Fascist Party (1921–1943) and the Republican Fascist Party (1943–1945).[21][22][23]

Meloni herself joined at the time when MSI still existed and praised Mussolini in her youth:

Meloni was a teenage activist with the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), formed by supporters of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini after World War II.

At 19, campaigning for the far-right National Alliance, she told French television that “Mussolini was a good politician, in that everything he did, he did for Italy.”

After being elected an MP for National Alliance in 2006, she shifted her tone, saying the dictator had made “mistakes,” notably the racial laws, his authoritarianism and entering World War II on the side of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

Of course, most actual prestige media reporting on this topic also reports that she has moderated her views and her party's views notably, and the word "post-fascist" is precisely meant to remind that her party, while having fascist roots, cannot be called fascist any more. I'm actually going to quote a local article here from this morning - Google Translate, apart from some flaws, offers a serviceable translation:

THE PARTY LED BY MELONI is right-wing, but it is not market and economic liberal. It gives the state an important role in the economy and its social policy includes income transfers between different income groups. In many matters related to the economy, it is more moderate than, say, the coalition. For example, the Italian brothers opposed the liberalization of the Italian taxi market a few months before the elections.

Outside of Italy, there has also been concern about the country's immigration policy. Meloni has often spoken of his opposition to illegal immigration, but – like Lega 's Matteo Salvini – he has added that the doors are open to those who want to work and do not break the country's laws. This is a necessity for Italy, whose demography is in a catastrophic state. Meloni's view of immigration is therefore in a way more moderate than, for example, that of basic Finns.

It is also worth mentioning that Meloni's party has traditionally been supported by the Italian armed forces. One of the founders of the party - Ignazio La Russa - served as Italy's defense minister for several years. Italy has been a member of NATO since its inception, and the Italian brothers and the parties before it have always been staunch Atlanticists. For them, the Soviet Union before and then Russia has been the entity that Italy has needed a defense alliance for.

"Basic Finns" is a mistranslation of the Finnish right-wing populist party's name.

It absolutely is very common to call Die Linke the post-SED party or otherwise remind that its roots go back to the DDR when discussing it.

I dunno? My occasional experience in looking at German news media content about Die Linke, which hasn't been necessary for some time considering how powerless Die Linke currently is, did tend to emphasize it's DDR roots.

I'd imagine that if we looked at recent German media coverage about Die Linke vis-a-vis FdI, it would probably not need to emphasize the DDR thing that much, since Germans already know what Die Linke is and how it came about to be, while they would very likely be encountering Meloni and FdI for the first time right now.

Anyway, I'm not sure what the problem is. The fascism thing absolutely is a part of FdI's party history, should they NOT mention it for some reason? Censor this rather important part of understanding Italy's political history regarding the election of this party?

Anyway, I'm not sure what the problem is.

I just don't believe this statement. What you're discussing here is a very basic propaganda method, and everybody objects when their side is targeted by it.

Yes unfortunately I didn’t expect this basic label to be the object of discussion. Their ties with literal original fascism is plain and obvious. It’s a party that suddenly went from irrelevance to prime ministership so people need an introduction. When Lega had a similar sudden success, media coverage similarly mentioned their Northern separatist roots.

Unfortunately half the thread devolved into people scoring cheap dunks about the fascist/right wing label and not contributing anything to the conversation

That paper did not predict an outbreak in May. It is a wargame that seems to have chosen its start date arbitrarily, as is the norm for these sorts of things. And, note that under the scenario discussed, the initial outbreak is in June of 2022, not May. Note also that the monkeypox variant in the scenario is airborne, since the paper states that measures like social distancing and mask mandates were effective at reducing transmission.

Erik Hoel on Effective Altruism, Utilitarianism, and the Repugnant Conclusion - https://youtube.com/watch?v=PCnkJ1y9kys

Russ Roberts talks with Erik Hoel. They both think overall that effective altruism does good, but they think it, and strong/exclusive forms of act utilitarianism have some strong problems. Most of what they mention will not be new to many people here, they talk about the repugnant conclusion, and the difficulty of predicting results, and comparing the utility of different outcomes. They mention Yudkowsky discussion of a huge number of trivial harms being compared to one severe harm (specifically a googleplex people getting hiccups compared to one person being torn apart and killed by a shark). Despite the fact that most of it wasn't new to me I still found it to be an interesting discussion.

I think I agree with them on what I called strong/exclusive act utilitarianism (they didn't use that term they just called it utilitarianism). What I mean by strong/exclusive is that you don't consider other moral principles, and that you give an extremely heavy weight to utilitarian calculations. OTOH I don't think totally ignoring consequences, or even specifically utility is a good idea either. I think your actions should aim for outcomes with higher utility. I have a mixed moral view both deontological and consequential. Sometimes the two conflict. When that happens I don't have some well developed overarching theory to choose between them its more of an intuitive thing. If an act I consider to be immoral on deontological grounds is necessary to prevent some horrible catastrophe, I'd probably say it still is immoral but you should do it anyway.

I feel like utilitarianism - perhaps most any moral system - is at its best when it's serving to restrain some other moral system from going off the rails, and at its worst where it would go off the rails itself.

Utilitarianism is at its best when it's reining in the likes of "if it saves even one life, it's worth any cost!" through saying "whoa, there: that's crazy, and here's why."

Utilitarianism is at its worst when it's proposing "so here's why we need to tile the entire universe with-" and needing something else to rein it in in turn.

It would be nice if I had some clear, consistent standard to say what "sane" was, but I don't, and I fear there's some impossibility theorem lurking in these parts. I hope not, though.

Something unspecified happened at the Eradicate Hate Conference this week and nobody who’s upset is saying what

I feel like there's enough information leaking through here to infer what happened -- why would they stay quiet, with no defectors; "a range of events"; etc -- but I'm too stupid to put it together.

Any guesses?


Looking back into this a few days later: some people went to a strip club

Much less interesting than I was imagining.

What is that conference and why does it matter?

It was a conference run from Sept 19-22 in Pittsburgh, and while not drawing a huge attendance count (the layout looks to be designed for the low hundreds), had a large number of high-profile governmental and non-governmental big names, including the director of the ATF, a variety of DHS bigwigs, and some ODNI names, along with reps of various big tech companies and special cases like the Christchurch Call To Action group. So while you probably don't care about it, it does care about you.

The only thing I can pick out here is that it's an man or men's fault. There's more oblique references that they might be white and cis.

Are they being vague because they know it will look stupid and petty? Some minor, dongle-level micro aggression?

I suppose I'm buying into this sort of marketing. I'm fascinated at the weaponization of "consent" language here:

Be mindful when someone has confided in you. That does not mean they have consented to have their name and story shared widely across the field....Please do not share detailed accounts of stories which are not your own. Everyone has to have their own agency to tell their stories themselves, on their own terms

Distilled down, this is "Shut the fuck up until the head of the serpent decides they can release.... whatever this is for maximum impact" but it's couched in truly impressive nothingspeak.

But yeah I'd love to see what happens next.

The same sentence stood out for me. What a masterful twist of rhetoric: in the name of protecting agency, I forbid you to speak about this thing! I can only imagine that it's somehow embarrassing (or can be framed so) for the bluecheck left.

Lol, I'm here to eradicate hate and bang mad pussy... and I'm all out of pussy.

Out of mad pussy anyway, probably overstocked with crazy pussy.

I have no idea what happened at the Eradicate Hate Conference, but the implied tears say more than actual facts ever would.

(I'm just making the Simpsons reference, but the reply by Arie Perlinger isn't far from this seriously)

It would make me so happy if Requires Hate was present, protesting something.

I have no idea what happened at the eradicate hate conference but I’m certain I want to back the offensive behavior.

My guess is that the conflict mostly comes down to disrespect, and when the disrespect was called out, the person doing the disrespecting did not sufficiently admit guilt.

I don't know much about this conference, but from the tone and keywords in their public materials it sounds a lot like a gathering of offense-seekers. When a lot of people who are concentrated on seeking things to be offended at and hyper-over-react over them get together, I guess some people offending some others and some people literally shaking and some people complaining to Twitter would only be expected.

It actually isn't. They have this in Pittsburgh so it gets mentioned on the news, and most of the speakers are people from law enforcement, DHS, mental health professionals, etc. Former PA Governor Tom Corbett, a Republican, and his wife each moderated a panel discussion, and last year's conference had recorded remarks from George W. Bush. One of the co-chairs is Mark Nordenberg, who made a name for himself as Pitt Chancellor and, while a Democrat, has a reputation for being moderate and mostly nonpartisan. There are some dippy sounding panels but most of them are stuff like FBI guys talking about how to investigate suspected hate crimes and the like.

Well, that sounds much worse than JarJarJedi's assumption.

OK, I am interested - so what law enforcement, DHS, Tom Corbett, etc. did there actually? I mean, for me the conjugation of "DHS" and "stopping hate" immediately invokes the abortive "disinformation panel" as an attempt of the Government to route around the First Amendment somehow and get rid of the annoying necessity to ask Facebook/Twitter to censor for them "voluntarily" and demand the same directly and without question. An offer nobody could refuse. I mean, not that Big Tech would ever refuse to censor people they don't like, and it so happens the people who control the government and the people who control the Big Tech dislike the same people, so we have perfect harmony - but still, the control is in the wrong place. That's how I see this combination. But I am ready to keep an open mind and let myself be surprised.

So I didn't spend much time on it, but I went to look at the agenda. Looks like I need to correct my prior almost-zero-information impression about it and add some details.

  1. The Military and Veterans are major source of Hate. If fact, they are the only segment of society that has a separate track concentrating on how to deal with Extremists among them. It's actually Track 1.

  2. Far-right is full of Hate and Extremism. Far-left does not exist at all. I did find one single panel that suggests left-wing extremism exists, though nobody cares to study it, but no mention of it beyond that.

  3. Antifa does exist, but only as a target for hate from the Far Right, because for some of them for reasons beyond comprehension, think anti-fascists are their enemies.

  4. Anti-semitism exists, but the sources of it are on the Right only.

  5. There's no hate at all directed towards white males (yay!) unless they're Jews of course (dang...)

  6. January 6 demonstrators are roughly the same thing as Nazis. At least considering them together in one bucket is entirely appropriate.

  7. Islam does not exist. Islamic State did, but it's all in the past and they didn't do anything of interest to anybody there. Wait, no, Muslims do exist - as targets of hate from the right.

  8. The reaction to violent extremism should include increased censorship and suppression of speech on the governmental (or inter-governmental) level. This includes suppressing "misinformation", as it is a major driver of extremism.

Of course, this is from the agenda description only, but I think I'm not wildly off base here.

So yes, I think I was wrong in my initial assessment. This is not a gathering of people who want to feel offended. This is a gathering of people who want to suppress and eradicate "haters", "extremists" and "domestic terrorists", by which they will primarily designate their political opponents, and these political opponents will be mainly residing on the right. The terms "hate" and "right" aren't really as much equated as "hate" is presumed to be almost fully contained and encapsulated by the "right".

Now I wish my original assessment were true. It was so much more comfortable.

OK, I am interested - so what law enforcement, DHS, Tom Corbett, etc. did there actually?

They've got a YouTube channel, although it only seems to have the keynote speeches uploaded now; the smaller side conferences seem to be in-process.

Looks like they're uploading all the tracks now, starting right after you posted https://youtube.com/watch?v=n4isUbJwPeo

Going to try to listen to a few. My thousandaire kingdom for auto-transcripts.

Ah, speculating on the happenings of a conference I hadn't even known existed before reading the comment, my specialty. I'm registering a prediction that this is an entirely fabricated happening meant to raise awareness of the Eradicate Hate Conference.

it's like the rumors spread in hushed voices when the Pope or queen fell ill or something.

it could be related to this: https://twitter.com/Skip_Borders/status/1574542329465036801

My last panel I was ejected for asking simple topic based questions by a radicalized individual that was triggered by the very notion that there were different thoughts on the topic.

Hoping future panels are open to market place of ideas & interested in addressing key issues!

it sounds like they had some wrongthinkers at the event

The rest of that users comments and replies do not seem to have much in common with someone who would have been at the event.

I had no idea who this crowd were and I'm still not clear. The amount of "don't say anything but something definitely happened" is ridiculous. I'm betting that it's a split between the original set of people who set this up - white, probably majority Jewish because it was in response to an attack on a synagogue, and older male - and the new cluster of people who got included, who seem to be female and BIPOC. The old guys probably don't know what all this intersectional stuff is about and want to concentrate on global anti-Semitism, which might have caused a row between them and one of the new set who are trying to get more power and influence. Old Jewish guy verbally slaps down younger woke BIPOC female, tears before bedtime, but because it's all a lefty in-house fight and more importantly because it's to do with avoiding even the perception of anti-Semitism, nobody makes it public because it would be too embarrassing all round.

All the above is just wild guessing on my part, though. It could have been a row about vegan catering.

So...the interminable Duchess Megan scandal is in the news again. It seems like with Charles becoming King and Harry soon to have a book out everyone is going back to their corners to relitigate this.

(For those of you who were complaining about frivolous Anglosphere topics : you're welcome :))

Last time I actually dug into this the conclusion I came to was that there was essentially a cultural clash between Hollywood and royal values. I similarly felt that the geographic divide in the reactions (Americans seeing her treatment as obviously racist, there being a more mixed British reaction) was a product of clashing ideas about work and just how awful life could be for a royal of any race (my take being that the Americans vastly underestimated the relevance of classism and foreign culture - since they tend to see this stuff through a mainly racial lens, other factors either merely being aggravating ones or just dogwhistles)

Recently, a new book based on the Courtier's perspective had excerpts published in the Times that go into more detail.. It had some interesting tidbits that were reported years ago.

The take of Palace courtiers is - unsurprisingly - that they tried to be accommodating but a combination of culture clashes made this impossible: Megan not respecting that the Palace staff had no interest in being called on late, Megan being directly hostile and rude, Megan simply not understanding how the Royal family worked (as that Palace Papers' excerpt puts it "she thought she had more seniority [than she did]").

However, relations between Meghan and the team at Kensington Palace were fraying fast ... a senior aide discreetly raised with the couple the difficulties caused by their treatment of staff. People needed to be treated well and with some understanding, even when they were not performing to Harry and Meghan’s standards, they suggested. Meghan was said to have replied, “It’s not my job to coddle people.”

...

At around the same time, Meghan spoke particularly harshly at a meeting to a young female member of the team in front of her colleagues. After Meghan had pulled to shreds a plan she had drawn up, the woman told Meghan how hard it would be to implement a new one. “Don’t worry,” Meghan told her. “If there was literally anyone else I could ask to do this, I would be asking them instead of you.”

Later, Prince William, who had heard of some of the treatment that she had been subjected to, came to find the woman. “I hope you’re OK,” he told her. “You’re doing a really good job.” She promptly burst into tears.

On another occasion, when Meghan felt she had been let down over an issue that was worrying her, she rang repeatedly when the staffer was out for dinner on a Friday night. “Every ten minutes, I had to go outside to be screamed at by her and Harry. It was, ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this. You’ve let me down. What were you thinking?’ It went on for a couple of hours.” The calls started again the next morning and continued “for days”, the staffer said. “You could not escape them. There were no lines or boundaries – it was last thing at night, first thing in the morning.”

...

On another occasion, there was confusion over the arrangements for a London engagement by the duchess. Meghan thought that no media would be there, but it was on a press rota. It was the sort of mishap that did not go down well. The member of staff involved knew they would have to talk to Meghan about it and was dreading the prospect. After they missed a call from her, they rang back, but she did not pick up. They said: “She hasn’t called back. I feel terrified.” A short time later, they added: “This is so ridiculous. I can’t stop shaking.”

The excerpts paint a picture of what is, essentially, a "girlboss". In multiple senses of the word . How you feel about Meghan shapes which girlboss you see. From what I've heard from pro-Meghan Americans keen on Royal gossip the Palace staff essentially come across as lazy and incapable of handling a driven woman who has strong expectations for the work ethic of her staff. To the people on the other side she comes across as a crass American determined to drive "her" workers into the ground in the name of her empowerment, incapable of adapting to a more traditional organization (one that has more...refined means of showing aggression*) - aka a "girlboss" in the pejorative sense.

Does this really come down to just a different work culture in the US vs UK? Cause, to be honest, my stereotype was that UK was basically European Canada on this: there are a few differences (and they never stop bragging about them where they feel they're ahead) but work culture and its expectations are much closer than with other states. The Palace staff sound positively French at some points of this! Is the Palace just some oasis sheltered from the rat race that envelopes other parts of Britain?

* I'm not convinced that the Palace considered her behavior immoral. At worst, it was probably considered...uncouth.

My coworker brought this up just recently. When asked by another coworker why the Royal Family seemed (disputedly) to have it out for Megan Markle, they - they're trans, and by far the most politically vocal on the team - responded with "racism." The co-worker who had brought it up suggested it was because she was American. No, they don't like the Duchess because she's black, full stop.

A fairly large problem with this argument is that under 'the English gaze' Meghan doesn't parse as black. In this country our black communities mostly are only two or three generations old so there are relatively few very light-skinned black people. Moreover, this isn't Norway - even going back centuries there has always been a non-trivial proportion of ethnically English people at least as 'swarthy' as Meghan. Personally, I did not realise that Meghan was officially black until the media kindly informed me, and that's as a young person with an unhealthy interest in the culture war. I suspect this to have been a common experience among Brits.

So, if we are to argue that racism was a large factor in Megan's treatment by the Royal Family, we must suppose that either (a) the British aristocracy are unusually well attenuated to the American racial classification system or (b) that despite not sub-consciously categorising Meghan as black, the Royals were racist to her on account of the consciously received knowledge that she is of African-American descent.

Now I accept that an argument can be made for both these cases, but neither seems obviously true to me. More probable is the suggestion that she was disliked for being American.

Moreover, this isn't Norway - even going back centuries there has always been a non-trivial proportion of ethnically English people at least as 'swarthy' as Meghan. Personally, I did not realise that Meghan was officially black

I doubt Meghan would be considered black in Norway either. She certainly wouldn’t here in Finland.

I don't think she would be considered black in the US, except by people who have an ideological interest in her being considered as such.

She probably wouldn’t be described as such by someone passing her on the street, but if she were, say, an HR lady or secretary or what have you instead of a princess, then ‘hey, Meghan the new HR admin is black’ probably wouldn’t surprise anyone.

Nobody thinks she's black. She's black in the same way that you ain't black if you don't vote for Biden. It's more of an honorific than a description, and the charges of racism are transparently cynical. To assert that she is black is to signal tribal allegiance and dare anyone to point out the madness. This is a very real case of see deer, say horse. It is perhaps fitting that your trans colleague would insist on doing so the most strongly.

I'm pretty sure you got users mixed up there. I have no trans colleague...

Right, I meant Pongahl's trans colleague.

I'm American, and she doesn't look black to me either. After hearing about it for the first time when it made the news last year, I now think... she still doesn't look black, actually. Her hair and nose especially. Unless she's displaying stereotypically black speech patterns or something in private, the race angle here is transparently silly.

She's actually almost certainly had a nose operation to narrow her nose, which was previously one of her more African-American features.

(crap site, but the pictures don't lie https://radaronline.com/photos/prince-harry-meghan-markle-nose-job-plastic-surgery-photos/)

So she made herself less pretty?

As an american, to me she looks ambiguously something-or-other; if her eyes were darker I'd think she was some manner of hispanic. I'd certainly not call her black without adding "...ish"

So, if we are to argue that racism was a large factor in Megan's treatment by the Royal Family, we must suppose that either (a) the British aristocracy are unusually well attenuated to the American racial classification system or (b) that despite not sub-consciously categorising Meghan as black, the Royals were racist to her on account of the consciously received knowledge that she is of African-American descent.

In my former British colony of a nation half-black people like Meghan are considered "half-caste" and it was a legitimately distinct category from black or white. But they are/were considered to fall between the two in status

So it's simultaneously possible for her to be not-black to people and to be different or less than.

As I said: I'm skeptical that this can all be boiled down to racism (the one concrete racist accusation they raised about the Royal Family - someone inquired about her son's skin tone- is one I've heard in black families...) but it's not impossible they actually are somewhat racist, on top of classist, snobbish and distrustful of foreigners (especially divorced Americans)

A fairly large problem with this argument is that under 'the English gaze' Meghan doesn't parse as black. In this country our black communities mostly are only two or three generations old so there are relatively few very light-skinned black people.

Also we have a fairly common thing where common chavvy white girls will fake tan to the point of looking like Meghan or darker, much like the Ganguro style girls of Japan, and this is particularly common among footballers' wives and other shallow fame-seekers -- of which Meghan is definitely one. So I presume most people just thought she was yet another famehunting fake tanned slag who landed the famous man she hunted. Her level of entitlement and attention seeking (watch her unnervingly find the camera in any room and stare directly into it with a plastic smile!) certainly made that angle seem likely to me.

Meghan doesn't look any darker than Victoria Beckham, for instance.

Whatever you think of her character, I can't imagine anyone thinking she's a 'famehunting fake tanned slag', since she was already quite famous, is obviously not fake tanned, and is undeniably elegant and attractive - a world away from the stereotypical Essex sambuca girl.

since she was already quite famous

I would be willing to bet that less than 1% of people here had ever heard of her before she became entangled with the Prince.

is obviously not fake tanned

Just because she's not obviously fake tanned (i.e. badly and cheaply) doesn't mean she couldn't be at all. Good fake tan exists and it looks pretty much like her.

and is undeniably elegant and attractive

"tactless and rude" somewhat undermines this interpretation of her. Every single part of her screams fake. But if that's what you're into...

a world away from the stereotypical Essex sambuca girl.

Seems a Prince's wife is just a tier up from footballer's wife, to me. She might be higher quality, but she's of the same taxonomy.

She can't have been all that famous, as I never heard of her before she married into the British royal family. I'm not claiming to be an infallible index of famous Americans or anything, but if I haven't even heard someone's name in passing I don't believe they're actually particularly famous. Being that famous means that almost everyone, if not everyone, actually has heard of you before.

The problem is that, at least on a social construct view of race, she's not black in Britain, but she IS American. She can self-identify as black if she wants, but one thing that almost everyone seems to agree upon regarding race is that it's not decided by self-identification.

I do agree that the racism angle is mostly meaningless in the UK. I didn't know she was meant to be black, even when I was watching Suits a few years ago. On the other hand, my wife's grandmother is in her late 80s talked disappointingly of the prince marrying "some half-caste". So data point of 1.

A second article I saw on the same topic has another "what movie are you watching?" sort of thing

These staff, write Low, “came to be so disillusioned that they began to suspect that even her most heartfelt pleas for help were part of a deliberate strategy that had one end in sight: her departure from the royal family. They believe she wanted to be able to say ‘Look how they failed to support me.’”

Cohen particularly said it was vital that staff recorded the “duty of care” they had offered Meghan. When the duchess reported her concerns to HR, the staff were clueless as to why—HR was for staff matters, not members of the family. Meghan going to HR was seen as her “laying a trail of evidence.”

Once again: reasonable behavior from an American girlboss who thinks this is how you resolve issues in the workplace? Or deliberate, malicious planning from an abusive and savvy operator?

Once again: reasonable behavior from an American girlboss who thinks this is how you resolve issues in the workplace? Or deliberate, malicious planning from an abusive and savvy operator?

Yes.

Corpo is a slur for a reason.

I’ve heard before from the sorts of people who do domestic work and related(high end hotel concierges and the like) that old money red tribe adjacent people- think the country club crowd, or oil executives, or exotic game ranch proprietors- are preferable to work for because, although their security tends to be jumpier and better armed, unlike the blue tribe money(celebrities and rich lawyers) they understand what servants are, are used to having them, and know how to maintain boundaries with them, while also being friendly enough.

This seems like the closest American division to the royal family/Meghan markle clash.

Even within blue tribe nouveau riche there's allegedly this split:

Generally, a celebrity will do a day of press and the premiere at night. Some actors will say, "I’m only doing four hours of press. So, fit in what you can, but I’m not going to work outside that window." You would think that the Mark Wahlbergs and J.Los of the world would be the most demanding but, A-list talent like them know their job and know what they are there for. The C-listers are new and so excited to do whatever you need and they don’t question anything. They’re great. The problem, in general, is the B-listers. They are about to launch, but they also know they aren't nobodies so they push [boundaries] with you. Some will demand, "Well, Julia Roberts got that why don’t I get that?" And you’re like, "Because you’re not Julia Roberts?" [Remember the "why don't my kids get to be Princes too?" drama?]

It honestly sounds too neat, like one of those stories society tells itself until seems like it can't be otherwise (e.g. stuff like "power reveals", which I loathe) but this person is speaking from experience.

I suppose we can apply this logic to Meghan herself. I don't know if you would consider her B-list in Hollywood but she was probably B-list in the family. Interestingly - and the article outright states this - Harry himself could be considered lower down the totem pole than one might think (the phrase is "heir and the spare" after all)

This is probably exacerbated by being under two layers of authority. Sure, Harry is a Prince and his brother will be sovereign and that all sounds glamorous to foreigners. But they were two steps away from the Throne under a monarch who was basically an institution of her own, courtiers who answered to her and not Harry and a dad with his own ideas about what the monarchy should be.

I continue to be baffled by people's interest in this family. Is it anything more than a British flavored Kardashian family? I understand the logic behind letting them keep their nice things after dissolving the monarchy but I can't fathom why I should care about them.

Ah that's right, the Kardashians, heirs to a thousand-year tradition and noble bloodline, models of discretion, and the ceremonial heart of a nation.

You're giving ugly credence to American stereotypes by equating a woman/family famous for a sex tape with actual royalty.

the royals aren't exactly models of discretion. the tabloids wouldn't be so interested in them if they were

noble bloodline, models of discretion, and the ceremonial heart of a nation.

This is just so much PR noise to me. They were professionally born. They have done literally nothing to earn my respect.

You're giving ugly credence to American stereotypes by equating a woman/family famous for a sex tape with actual royalty.

Sneer if you want, the old gods are dead and worshiping them is as contemptable to me as the new gods. I'm not a fan of Musk worship either but at least he's doing something with his wealth. If the Royals all disappeared tomorrow what actual impact would that have on the world besides the secondary effects of their fans being upset? I don't hate them and don't wish them ill will but I cannot understand why rational people think they matter because some tiny fraction of their genetic ancestry was William the conqueror who took the throne by force combined with nearly random decisions about who counts as royal over the years.

If this is a uniquely American perspective than I don't think highly of the rest of the world.

Most cultures have semi-mythical ceremonial figurheads chosen through randomness to fulfill some role and say exactly what they're supposed to with little to no personality of their own.

In Nepal they have those pre-pubescent girls whose feet never touch the ground, in Sweden they have Greta, In America they have pageant girls and child celebrities, and in the UK they have the royals.

In America they have pageant girls and child celebrities

I take your point but I'm not sure the pageant girls and child celebrities as standins for royalty really fits. Pageant girls are very much not a national past time and child celebrities aren't really talked about much among adults. I'm not positive who I'd propose as alternatives, maybe sports stars, it might have been pastors/priests in the past.

America has no such thing, at least not anymore.

The Royals are the embodiment of British identity. At home people can project on to them the essential British values they hold dear, and with other heads of state they can be the people's avatar.

The American President used to fulfill this role, but with fracturing American identity, the President is no longer is the embodiment of American identity. He can't be, what essential American values are left that he can stand for?

my stereotype was that UK was basically European Canada on this

I just realized that former Governor General Julie Payette's staff abuse scandal was going on about the same time as this. Technically she was appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister's Office. Realistically, the GG is appointed by the PMO. It even sounds like the same kind of culture clash between ceremonial staff and an outsider who doesn't understand the power dynamics.

Take the whole question of the freebies, for example. As a Hollywood actress, Meghan is used to the idea that designers etc. lend you their goods so you can be seen wearing them on the red carpet. That doesn't work for a royal, because accepting gifts bestows "By Appointment" on them, and there are rules about that.

Charles himself got into a lot of trouble over accepting donations in order to fund his charities. So "but why can't we keep the free stuff companies send us?" is a very touchy issue.

Does this really come down to just a different work culture in the US vs UK?

It's a combination of factors. On the one hand I'm actually rather sympathetic to Meghan because I deeply suspect the palace is full of blue-blooded slackers earning extremely comfortable salaries from the taxpayer for doing not very much, not very quickly. On the other hand, unless you're a character in The Thick Of It there is a baseline expectation of politeness in the workplace in Britain that probably exceeds the American norm, and no-doubt this expectation is turned up to 11 at Kensington Palace.

This reinforces my pre-existing opinion on this entire saga, which is that I don't like anyone involved and would rather like to do away with the lot of them.

Is the Palace just some oasis sheltered from the rat race that envelopes other parts of Britain?

No, there are some rat-infested places in Britain (like the City and Westminster) but in general people value their families, communities, and leisure (except they say "leh-jur" rather than "lee-jur"). The aristocracy is an elite, but it's different from e.g. the Washington Policy elite. It's into longstanding loyalty, implicit agreements that span decades or centuries, predictable norms etc.

If you want to get a bollocking from a sociopathic woman in return for a 0.5% chance of becoming a high ranking political figure and a 99% chance of being forgotten by your employer in 10 years, you work at Downing Street, not Buckingham Palace. If you want a guaranteed heartfelt handshake with the kindly monarch (who fondly remembers you dressing them when they were just 3 or 25 years old) when you are old and grey, you work at Buckingham Palace.

This kind of loyalty culture is one reason why even republicans I know who joined the army often become at least moderately royalist, because military-types also tend to like the idea of stable customs, long-term bonds, and implicit agreements.

It is the model of the Old Family Retainer, even if that is mostly fiction. It's Batman and Alfred, where Alfred is "I've served your father before you, Master Bruce, as I am serving you now" and there is no way Bruce would tear into Alfred as a mere hired hand 😁

For what it's worth, speaking as a Brit, I have little sympathy for Meghan. When you marry into the Royal family (or any British aristocratic family), you're buying into a whole host of complex norms and customs, and it's on you to conform to them, at least if you want to enjoy the benefits that come with Royal status. The key specific norm here is noblesse oblige - as a member of the Royal family, you need to be more generous, more magnanimous, more gracious than would be expected of a member of the general public, and this should be reflected in your dealings with your personal staff. Deep down, most Brits regard the Royal family as servants of the people, whose persistent anomalous status and privileges are continually earned via service. This extends to treating those in your employment with special gentleness and care. Of course, not all British royals live up to this standard, but those who don't tend to be judged harshly for it by the public in much the same way as Meghan.

I think there's a broader cultural divide here too. I remember on one occasion when my mum visited me in the US, she was appalled at the way that she heard some people treat servers in restaurants and assistants in shops, essentially barking demands at them. From an American standpoint, that makes a fair amount of sense - he who pays the piper (or pays the tip) picks the tune. By contrast, in the UK, there is much less of an overt hierarchical relationship between customer and service provider - there are strong norms of politeness and deferentiality on both sides. You don't say, "Hey, excuse me, this steak isn't properly cooked," you say, "Sorry to bother you, but is it possible that this steak is a little undercooked? If so, would you mind giving it a few more minutes on the grill?" Of course, as is always the case in the UK, there are class differences in how this kind of interaction would play out, but across the board there would be a greater expectation of graciousness in client-provider interactions. I don't know how much this carries over to white-collar office work, but there are definitely strong elements of it in British academia. I suspect that large multinational companies have their own globalised standards, though.

I don't know whether Meghan is just a bit bitchy, or whether Harry failed to adequately prepare her for the expectations that would be placed on her shoulders. However, things like the Oprah interview played out terribly with most Britons; going on American TV and airing the dirty laundry of the Royal Family leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.

Even from an American perspective, what she's doing is not acceptable. You might be the boss, or the customer, or whatever. But that doesn't give you the right to say things like "If there was literally anyone else I could ask to do this, I would be asking them instead of you." If someone's work is actually that bad, then you fire them or take your business elsewhere. You don't take it upon yourself to verbally beat that person down. I realize that she probably doesn't have the power to fire these staffers. But that still doesn't give her the right to treat people like that.

I mean, maybe the reports about her are one-sided or exaggerated. But based on the accounts in @Tanista's post, this woman is a horrible boss. And worse still, she seems to trying to get sympathy for "I'm black so they mistreat me". She isn't even black, and even if she were, it doesn't make any issue she faces the result of racism. Just a thoroughly bad showing from her, it sounds like.

This seems a bit crazy to me. I work in television and those snippets happen weekly to the crew by the talent. That’s the world she came from. Not saying it’s okay but if those are that bad then we’ve got an entire industry that needs to be dismantled and reassembled.

Here’s the famous Christian Bale outburst: https://youtube.com/watch?v=0auwpvAU2YA

I hear talent or above the line folks dressing down people just like that all the time. The only difference is Bale’s outburst was leaked.

Yes, of course it's not acceptable when that happens in Hollywood. I don't disagree that it's happening a lot. But when you say "then we have an entire industry that should be dismantled" (or presumably reformed), you seem to be saying it like that's not a reasonable thing to do. I think that's exactly what should happen if they're treating people like shit regularly.

Not saying it’s okay but if those are that bad then we’ve got an entire industry that needs to be dismantled and reassembled.

This happened to Hollywood itself (but on a different topic) five years ago. Harvey Weinstein's behavior was "just the world [they live in]" until all of a sudden it wasn't. Maybe someday that'll happen regarding this.

Everything I’ve heard from American ‘servants’- high end hotel employees, butlers, etc- is that blue tribe new money- basically celebrities, wealthy activists, and certain wealthy lawyers and doctors- are the absolute worst customers because they’re not big on boundaries, accepting corrections, etc and usually don’t know how to treat the staff(and think that any behavior is potentially acceptable so long as they’re willing to pay monetarily for it). So the idea that an American celebrity joining the British royals would treat the staff poorly doesn’t shock me.

some people treat servers in restaurants and assistants in shops, essentially barking demands at them. From an American standpoint, that makes a fair amount of sense

Even in America, I would say that is generally seen as rude, at least in every social circle I've ever been in. It of course happens with more or less frequency, as every server ever will tell you. But it's also one of the red-flags women talk about - see how your date treats the waitstaff, that's how he'll treat you when no one is around.

You don't say, "Hey, excuse me, this steak isn't properly cooked," you say, "Sorry to bother you, but is it possible that this steak is a little undercooked? If so, would you mind giving it a few more minutes on the grill?

To your point about cultural differences, I would be genuinely confused by the second approach. Unless it was just obviously raw, my first thought would be "Are you asking me to taste your steak and decide if it matches my preferences? Why?"

If I believe all this sort of gossip, how Meghan allegedly behaved is how Hollywood celebs allegedly behave to their staffers. It definitely is a culture clash, where for the royal household, they expect a different kind of treatment from their masters, whereas for Meghan she is The Talent and they are there to serve her interests 24/7.

First, all of this is celebrity gossip, and it's not just the gutter press or tabloid rags who eat it up with a spoon, even the 'serious' papers generally have royal correspondents. Tittle-tattle and controversy sell papers, so there is interest in having 'exclusives' and 'insider stories'. Even twenty-five years after her death, papers will still run articles on and about Princess Diana.

Second, a good deal of this is manufactured, and silly stories to boot. Before Meghan came along, Kate (as a commoner married in) was subject to the same kind of "she's a nightmare to work with, she doesn't understand the culture, she's too big for her boots" stories. As well as stories about who had the better arse, her or her sister. Yes, that level. Where drama doesn't exist, the media make it up, because conflict is needed for a juicy story. 'Tell all' books by courtiers and insiders and close friends and what-not have long been serialised by the media, and they whip up interest by giving juicy extracts like the "Meghan is a nightmare" one. 'Meghan and Kate are deadly rivals' is the story all the media love, and now Kate has been rehabilitated as the Good One to Meghan's Wicked Witch.

Third, there probably is a lot of behind-the-scenes (and not so behind) power tussles going on, especially now that Charles is finally king and William has moved into the position of Prince of Wales. Harry should be moving up as well, except that he and Meghan (or looks more likely Meghan) resigned as senior royals. So she definitely doesn't understand the role or how the monarchy works, and is behaving like a Hollywood celebrity and treating staff accordingly. The precedent of how the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were eased out is always there, and Meghan cut off her nose to spite her face when she walked out in an ultimatum. Doing chat show interviews about racism may go down well in the USA, but they don't make the Sussexes look good to the family back in Britain, and right now Meghan is doing all she can to bring down the fate of Fergie (Sarah Ferguson, ex-wife of Prince Andrew) on herself - reduced to having to go the chat-show circuit and make money wherever she can because she put herself beyond the pale. Just because you marry into the family doesn't automatically mean you are now rich; the 'working royals' are the ones who carry out various state duties, and they get paid from the monarch's allotment which is a combination of personal wealth and government income. If you don't want to do the duties, as Meghan allegedly didn't, then you don't get paid anything (Andrew, because of the Virginia Giuffre scandal, was stripped of titles and awards and right now is in limbo about his finances, for instance). Harry doesn't have any money of his own (unless his mother left him something, I don't know) because up to now he's been paid the allowance as a working royal. He doesn't own any estates or property personally. EDIT: Oops, I forgot that he was created Duke of Sussex as a revived title, and that is hereditary. So he is possessor of whatever estate goes with that.

We don't know what is really going on, and all the 'insider tell-all' books won't let us know, either.