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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35330 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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Over the summer, Arizona lawmakers passed a universal educational voucher program, to my understanding the first in the nation. It attaches state education dollars to students rather than to specific schools, allowing parents to choose where to send the money the state spends on educating their children.

This was immediately challenged by, well, the whole education establishment. Kathy Hoffman, Arizona's State Superintendent of Public Instruction, was officially tasked with overseeing the program; instead, she doxxed parents who signed up for it. Arizona's teacher's union was immediately mobilized to work with the far-left non-profit "Save Our Schools" organization, which sought to gather signatures to put a repeal of the scholarship law on the next election ballot.

Arizona's Secretary of State excitedly tweeted her receipt of the supposedly over 140,000 signatures (almost 120,000 were required). Her statement that

Filing petitions today means the applicable portion of law will not be implemented tomorrow on the General Effective date🛑As long as the petitions continue to meet the min sigs through all the processing, that portion of the law stays on hold.

is a bit confusing to me, I don't know how Arizona referendum law works but the idea that a petition to add an issue to the ballot could function to suspend the operation of a signed law raises several questions in my mind. However, as the Secretary of State maybe this was her call to make? Anyway she was too glib by half. The libertarianish Goldwater Institute, which had posted watchdogs on the filing process, immediately noted that fewer than 90,000 signatures had actually been filed. "Save Our Schools" Facebook page calls this "questionable" and notes that only the Secretary of State can make the final determination, but apparently the Secretary of State's office only received 8,175 petition sheets with a maximum of 15 signatures per sheet. Off their Facebook page, SOS concedes that they have likely fallen short. Their explanation of the miscount? "Well we were just estimating." Apparently Arizona's schoolteachers aren't so great with math!

SOS receives preferred treatment in the news reporting, but poking around some parent sites it looks like they have been predictably underhanded pretty much the whole way. Despite the support of both the Secretary of State and the Superintendent of Schools, both of whose offices are supposed to be effecting the law rather than repealing it, the voucher program is likely to proceed (which may only attract even more anti-choice money to the state's lobbies, I guess). With almost 11,000 applicants pending, it's likely to generate some very happy parents--along with at least some frustrated ones. I doubt we've heard the end of this.

But the victory here may encourage other states to follow suit. I feel like this is one more symptom of the present educational paradigm unraveling. COVID showed parents both how much, and how little, public schools do for them, personally. I know many parents who were relieved to send their children back to school. But I know many others who have simply decided to not. It's a bit of a homeschooling renaissance, it seems, and now in Arizona there are public education dollars attached to that. A family with three children could get something like $21,000 per year to help educate them.

The substance of the opposition is that this deprives neighborhood schools of much-needed funding, "skims the cream," hasn't got enough oversight, and empowers uncredentialed teachers to teach. These are basically all the same criticisms teacher's unions offer against charter schools, which are booming business in Arizona--Arizona's BASIS charter schools are regularly ranked among the best in the country (I count four of their Arizona campuses in the US News top 30). Basically, it looks like public education simply can't compete, and is desperately scrambling to protect its monopoly and union largess.

Parents, apparently, are not buying these arguments, at least in Arizona. And indeed I have never seen any evidence that these arguments have any merit; to the contrary, I am persuaded by The Case Against Education that our existing K-12 system cannot be upended fast enough. So I have been, and will be, watching Arizona's voucher experiment with great interest!

But in case I have not sounded appropriately unhinged thus far--I do have to ask. What would have been the outcome, if the Goldwater Institute had not posted watchdogs on the counting process? The Arizona news media seems to want to cast SOS as the watchdogs, here, but SOS appeared to be quite happy to smear their numbers in their own favor, and they have at least two powerful allies within the government who swallowed their claims whole, declaring the law "on hold" even when the math obviously didn't add up. This kind of narrative-crafting is really disturbing to me, and the fact that the Secretary of State seemed happy to take SOS at their word, to the point of tweeting about it, even as the Goldwater Institute knew instantly from the math that this wasn't going to fly... well, the whole thing seems awfully shady.

(This is where I deleted a paragraph borrowing a jack about "finding" a thousand more pages in a box somewhere...)

I keep wanting to write something about this kind of blatant procedural outcome manipulation (but I'd be better off searching for someone who already has).

Utopians constantly say things like "we shall have a System to ensure X and prevent Y", and then spend zero time designing a system that isn't trivially exploitable by baseline sociopaths who, shockingly, are agents with goals that don't necessarily align with The System. See the current "communism with magic robots has never been tried" thread for a typical example.

Is there any way to get this across to people who don't want to understand it? In my experience the same people who were just complaining about the nomenklatura betraying the last revolution will stubbornly refuse to entertain the idea that the same thing could happen to their revolution.

Anyway, I'm willing to bet this particular event will get officially recorded on wikipedia as "extremist MAGA election fraud conspiracy theory derails effort to save Queer and Brown school children." Because a coalition of Facebook boomers just found out that the secretary of state lied about ballot counting on a massive scale, and the media has spent two years enforcing the consensus that this can't happen:

A shortfall of that size, about 37% less than the number of signatures supporters said they gathered, is not a "rounding error," said Christine Sawhill Accurso. She organized school-choice proponents to monitor petition signing stations — sometimes pushing back against the petition drive — and report their findings. Either Save Our Schools lied about its support, or was negligent in checking the petitions as they came in, Accurso said.

I think the most predictable outcome here is a huge effort to make this kind of organization impossible in future; bank accounts shut down mysteriously, all online accounts banned, and the phones of every participant added to spam blocking lists. The censorship framework is already there and rapidly growing more sophisticated, but some groups can still slip through the gaps for now.

Utopians constantly say things like "we shall have a System to ensure X and prevent Y", and then spend zero time designing a system that isn't trivially exploitable by baseline sociopaths who, shockingly, are agents with goals that don't necessarily align with The System. See the current "communism with magic robots has never been tried" thread for a typical example.

I feel like this is a fundamental difference between Communists and Capitalists.

Communists seem to think the vast majority of human beings are intrinsically good and only do evil when forced to by circumstance. By fixing the circumstance, you can remove the evil, hence prescribing increased bennies as a panacea to crime. In a utopia, nobody would do wrong because nobody would have a reason to. Everyone wants to hit co-operate and is only forced to hit defect by circumstance. Communism is supposedly about providing for everyone so nobody ever needs to defect against society. It is about diminishing the difference in rewards for co-operation vs defection to almost nothing and trusting in people's better nature to want to be good.

Capitalists recognise that the vast majority of people have at least the capability for evil, if not the constant inclination. People will commit crimes of opportunity and exploit systems and other people when they think they can get away with it. Most people will defect when they're reasonably sure they'll both profit and come out on top. Capitalism is supposed to channel people's greed and other evil instincts into a constructive direction by incentivising pro-social things with monetary rewards. It's putting a thumb on the scale of co-operate by increasing the rewards for co-operating. In theory.

To be clear, this is the platonic ideals of these ideologies and I think that almost nobody who supports them actually supports them in these forms or for these reasons. Most real life "communists" just want to upend society for a quick route to the top via new ruling party loyalty and are perfectly okay with guillotining criminals (and most of them think some people are inherently evil, mainly whites). Most real life "capitalists" don't care for much of capitalism at all honestly, they just don't want those aforementioned communists to win power, because they stand to lose personally, in terms of money, status or their life itself, and probably all three.

There are lots of bogus or even downright fraudulent signatures on any signature-gathering mission. People will put bogus information on your petition to deliberately fuck with you and you cannot stop them.

Well yeah, but in this case nobody had to do any of that for the official overseeing the process to celebrate tens of thousands of nonexistent sigs.

If they had written down "Mickey Mouse" an extra 50000 times, the process was for the SoS to verify the sigs to her satisfaction, then send a "randomly selected" 5% sample back to individual counties to do their own verification. Lots of opportunities to sneak things through there, kinda surprised it didn't happen; the last big one only failed after it went to the courts for review for fraudulent sigs the SoS "missed" (iou a source that isn't Salon)

That's the sort of thing I was talking about with people designing a System that on the surface looks secure, but in practice totally depends on one person playing by the rules.

See also: Verizon vs. Net Neutrality

I think the most predictable outcome here is a huge effort to make this kind of organization impossible in future; bank accounts shut down mysteriously, all online accounts banned, and the phones of every participant added to spam blocking lists.

I'd take that bet, I don't think these people are going to face any consequences. School choice is well within the Overton window.

nomenklatura

Can someone explain why I have seen this word maybe 10 times in the past week but never before in my life? Did some prominent person or blogger use it recently?

Just Bader Meinhoff.

Yeah, or maybe synchronicity in the Jungian "meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved", with the 'something other' being memetic. People who are all thinking about the same topic are likely to be in a similar headspace. You want to decry nepotism, and you think some recent instance feels particularly soviet, and what was that cool word they had for them? Nomenklatura.

This is how memes are started though, and nomenklatura definitely fits the bill, so it is possible everyone saying it picked it up from the same source. They don't even have to do it consciously - if it fits well your brain might do it anyway.

I keep conflating "Baader-Meinhoff" with "Dunning-Kruger." I suppose the composite that results is "you think this is just the frequency illusion, but you're mistaken."

It's been extremely common in political speak since the Cold War.

You might have drifted into a new circle? It and the New Class concept have been popular in the dissident right for a long time (was it Sam Francis who introduced it from the New Left clique?)

I've been totally offline for a few weeks now, so it's probably not a current trend.

These days many people use it as a synonym for PMC, sadly.

This, and the continuing efforts to get a Texas independence referendum, are two key efforts to watch for ascertaining the effectiveness of said censorship.

Couple of scattered thoughts on this:

  1. I have no opposition to public schools in principle, graduated from one myself without too much apparent damage. What I do have strong opposition to is this notion that an educator understands what a kid needs better than that kid's own parents and that we should just surrender the education of our children to the state without question or opposition. There are shitty parents to be sure but there are also shitty teachers in probably about the same proportion.

  2. When topline education funding takes a hit, I predict there will be no firing of excessive administrative personnel like diversity experts or secretaries or superfluous academic committees. The budge hits will be directly to education funding proper, textbooks and materials and the like, so the entrenched education interests can point to a shortage of textbooks and say "See what your ESA is doing to our precious children!?"

When topline education funding takes a hit, I predict there will be no firing of excessive administrative personnel like diversity experts or secretaries or superfluous academic committees. The budge hits will be directly to education funding proper, textbooks and materials and the like, so the entrenched education interests can point to a shortage of textbooks and say "See what your ESA is doing to our precious children!?"

This reminds me of the other thing I saw about Arizona education over the summer. I guess a couple years ago there was a bunch of organized protesting demanding a raise in teacher salaries, and the governor and legislature allocated money to give teachers a 20% raise over the next few years. But the public school districts did not pass that money on to teachers as promised, leading to another round of demands for increases in "teacher pay":

The Arizona Auditor General released a report earlier this year showing the average teacher salary increased by 16.5% or around $8,000, less than the promise of 20% by 2020. That report shows that while most districts increased pay, only 43% of districts statewide actually met the 20% goal since there was no requirement that districts spend the money on teacher salaries.

(I do wonder how widespread salary increases of 10%+ contributed to Arizona's inflation...) Meanwhile, Arizona district superintendents are pulling down $200,000 annual salaries, plus stuff like this:

She was joined by dozens of other educators who had gathered before heading into the first Buckeye Elementary School District meeting since the Arizona auditor general’s finding that the district paid its superintendent $1.7 million in retirement credits and unused leave and then failed to note it in public employment records.

The amount of money being poured into "public education" systems in the United States is absolutely gob-smacking. I don't know who first said that "think of the children" is the root password to all government systems, but it certainly seems to be true. It will be interesting to see how things change as more parent groups catch wise to the scam. Something else I saw on social media somewhere, was that the biggest mistake Democrats made during COVID was turning "parents of school-aged children" into a special interest voting bloc opposed to Democrat policies.

Meanwhile, Arizona district superintendents are pulling down $200,000 annual salaries

Hm, I think Superintendent Chalmers could afford much more than a 1979 Honda Accord these days.

But why would he ever want to?

This strategy of cutting the most visible and useful parts of the budget first to argue the whole is necessary, is called the Mount Rushmore Syndrome.

The most successful counterstrategy I know is to signal boost (and even fabricate) cases of largesse that is not being cut:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loony_left

This was sufficiently successful that, when the generally nonpartisan Yes, Minister TV series had an episode with Thames Marsh local council, who had cut all civil defence but kept open the "gay bereavement centre" (and a small bunker for the council leader) this was something that the audience could recognise and accept easily. It also meant that, even as the UK Labour party moved somewhat to the right between the 1983 and 1987 elections, they were still associated with radical socialism and social progressivism, due to their association with "loony left" local councils.

That article is fascinating. The "Baa Baa White Sheep" section is a several pages long explanation of how the whole thing was fabricated, with quotes and citations, how it was some private initiative, and how the council said that they support it but actually they said that it's none of their business, and how actually some reporter couldn't find any worker that confirmed the ban, and so on and so forth.

And then it ends with a single sentence: "In 2000, the BBC reported the withdrawal of guidance to nursery schools by Birmingham City Council that "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" should not be taught."

The way Wikipedia manages to lie its head off while still sticking to reputable sources is fascinating.

Yes, it's a good example of misleading by selective elaboration.

A contemporaneous American documentary on the loony left:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=COt65HZCJaA

The "Why is this English school only serving English food?" part is particularly amusing. And I also feel sympathetic: I would feel bad if my child was only eating English food, but for the psychological welfare of the child, not for reasons of objecting to an English school serving only it in England.

I hope republicans haven't squandered the moment, instead of passing laws that try to dictate curriculum that teaching will find ways to get around in about 5 seconds they should have used the momentum to pass universal vouchers in every strong red state. Even then, I doubt republicans will have the fortitude to crack the public school system. When schools want more money they'll just stop the busses.

Some anecdata:

As someone from Arizona whose mother took them out of the public system and put them into a charter school, I suppose the public system was indeed a poor fit for me (and probably other kids like me), though I still kinda struggled grade-wise until I magically cleaned up in 12th grade.

I have a friend who works as a teacher, who is LGBT and very likely votes Democrat, and listening to him venting, it seems that his biggest complaint about his work environment isn't the kids (he loves them) or their parents, but the administration/bureaucracy/faculty/fellow teachers.

Good teachers have valid complaints aimed in many directions, though teachers in general make a bunch of crazy claims as well.

I have a friend (also a Democrat) who used to work in a large urban school district, but quit teaching because she was tired of taking time off to heal from injuries caused by her students, and the administration was thoroughly incompetent at addressing teacher safety. She wasn't even teaching special ed.

It seems like /r/teachers complains… well mostly about republicans existing, but when it takes a break from being a mainstream sun and focuses on being a sun for teachers, it complains about admin slightly more than parents or kids(but less than the two combined).

SoS claimed there was 10,200 petition sheets. i'm sure after they have finished properly reviewing all the signatures they will find the missing ones that weren't part of the initial count.

As I understand it, one of the biggest cost drains to public education is providing for mentally and physically disabled children. They're just vastly more expensive to teach than normal kids. And on top of that, if there's a slip in providing them good education, they're potentially able to sue, so even more costs have to be added to ensure that all education meets the legal requirements. If parents of normal children are effectively no longer subsidizing disabled children, educating disabled children will be very difficult.

"Don't destroy the price signal in order to transfer incomes."

It's vastly more beneficial to simply directly subsidize the education of mentally and physically disabled children while letting choice make things better for everyone else than to hobble the system for everyone.

Seriously. There is no good external reason to hide the ball that these students cost X dollars each to educate, whilst THOSE students cost 3X dollars.

If we agree it is important to educate the latter group, then assign 3X dollars for each of those students. Make it an open fact.

Arizona's BASIS charter schools are regularly ranked among the best in the country (I count four of their Arizona campuses in the US News top 30). Basically, it looks like public education simply can't compete, and is desperately scrambling to protect its monopoly and union largess.

I am extremely unconvinced by this logic. Those rankings mostly reflect the pre-existing traits of the students and their families. No one has provided any evidence that these rankings reflect anything causal and, to the degree they do, that these causal effects aren't purely zero-sum peer-effects. There is some evidence that specific inputs to rankings like this (e.g. class size) might have causal effects, but even there, the evidence is typically quite mixed.

To be quite honest, I would expect that the smart kids from stable two parent homes are doing a lot better in classes full of other smart kids from stable two parent homes than sharing classes with the local crack dealer’s bastards, and that you’re not going to help the latter anyways.

Those are the "zero-sum peer-effects" I reference.

The literature is mixed on whether they exist. For evidence contrary to your intuition, see https://doi.org/10.1086/666653

Even if they do exist, they're not a good reason to support non-public schools from a policy perspective, because peer effects are zero-sum. They're merely a reason to support private schools if you're rich/white/etc.

If peer effects are zero-sum, they are neither a reason to support, nor to oppose, non-public schools, right? Because it means that who your peers are has ~no effect on performance once you control for "pre-existing traits of the students and their families."

This isn't true. Zero-sum means the overall effect of the peers is zero-sum - we have a number of children, and some offer bonuses and others maluses to the performance of their peers. This is the traditional argument for removing ability-streamed classes, incidentally, that we need to put the smarter kids in with the dumber ones in order to ensure that everyone gets a chance to get the adjacency bonus from the smart kids.

I'm not sure things function that way in reality - it runs up against obvious limitations like 'putting a mentally disabled kid in the accelerated class is going to badly screw someone over, or possibly everyone involved depending on how you run things' but the peer effects being zero-sum means your peers do have an effect on performance, but the positive externalities are strongly connected to better students who in turn yield said positive externalities themselves.

What if putting smart kids together benefits smart kids to a greater degree than putting smart kids with dumb kids benefits the dumb kids?

What if the smart kid bonus only applies to other conscientious smart kids and the dumb scumbags don't really gain from sharing a learning environment with the smart kids, they just hold the smart kids back?

I agree and think that's true - I was accelerated in high school, but then the program got shut down and I got put with the speds for a few months (on the basis that the special education teacher was trained in gifted education) until they decided to put me back into regular classes. Spending time with a guy who couldn't read did nothing for me, nor did it help him. I viewed him with contempt because I hated being sat with him, and he was barely aware of anyone's existence at all.

I'm just outlining the logic of 'something can be net zero-sum yet be bad for some and good for others'.

Yes, exactly.

Careful now, you're not supposed to be muddying the rigorous analysis of experts with silly things like logic and heuristics.

Please speak plainly. What point are you making here?

UPDATE:

  • Lots of ideas worth considering here. In the end, I just didn't wear the shirt. It turned it to be hugely overthought on my part because

a) 4 other people had no orange shirt, and 5 more had shirts of strategically (cowardly!) ambiguous orangeneity.

b) A kid GRIEVOUSLY injured himself in the shop class, which made everyone forget about Orange Shirt Day entirely. Apparently he's fine.

As an aside, I have come to doubt the sincerity of the people who are the public face of this stuff in schools. Twice now I have seen people go all in on this stuff, then 2 years later apply to become principals, fail to become principals, and then set it all aside. I believe I am seeing a third case now. For a day of grim solemnity, the video they used to Educate students was some instragram girl's "Top 5 questions about truth and reconciliation" [it's really called that here] but it was an actually an ad for her online feather-and-bead store. The bathos boggles the mind.

I need advice on what amounts to conduct in the Canadian culture war.

  1. For a little over a hundred years, indigenous (native/Indian/aboriginal) children in Canada attended boarding schools designed to drag them into the modern age. For about 40 of those years (a bit longer, depending on the area), attendance was compulsory, and at all times physical and sexual abuse were at least common, though not universal. A little less than half of all indigenous children who lived during that period attended these schools. 4100 deaths are known to have occurred at these schools, most of them from tuberculosis. While the death rate of the schools was not way higher than the death rate generally, it was higher and most of the children who died in the schools would not have died if they had not attended the schools.

  2. Indigenous people in Canada today are not well integrated into society. Many live on reserves (reservations, if you're American) and these reserves are isolated, sometimes accessible only by air. Almost no economic activity occurs on these reserves, so unemployment is widespread. The reserves are plagued by extreme substance abuse problems, sexual violence, parental neglect, lack of education/credentials and the shame that results from knowing that these problems are much less severe everywhere else. Even people who move away from the reserves are affected by these problems, or from having grown up surrounded by them.

  3. For the past 20 years or so, but especially following the George Floyd affair, there has been a major push by the people who set the cultural tone in Canada to establish that (2) is a direct result of (1), just as in the US there is a great yearning to prove that the problems faced by black Americans are the direct result of slavery. In Canada, this has led to strident narrative-crafting. It is commonly (but mistakenly) accepted that residential schools were a big secret, that children were murdered routinely in them, that attendance was always compulsory and, most recently, that there are hundreds of tiny graves hidden all around Canada concealing the remains of the victims of what all bien-pensants agree was a cultural genocide (Side note: While the culture is definitely damaged, there is much evidence to suggest that it was damaged before the imposition of the residential school policy, but this is a matter of historical debate, and no such debate is currently permitted in Canadian society). These graves are in some cases the confirmed rediscovery of previously marked graves in community cemeteries, but the most cited example is of 215 ground-penetrating radar hits near a former residential school in Kamloops, BC. 2 minutes on Google will explain that GPR cannot find human remains, it can only find disturbances, and that those disturbances must be investigated by excavation. No excavation is happening in Canada because it would be disrespectful to the spirits of the children.

  4. One former residential school student once received a special orange shirt for her first day of school, but this shirt was confiscated by the nuns when she arrived at the school and was made to wear a uniform. Therefore, orange shirts have become/been made a symbol of public regret (in a bizarre inversion of the American culture war they bear the slogan "every child matters"). Regret over what? Formerly, it was regret over the abduction of children by the state, though this was always the policy, but more and more they have become a symbol of regret that the Canadian government literally murdered children and hid their bodies and used residential schools as a way of making this possible.

  5. Ironically, schools are the main institutions pushing the new narrative, in many cases explicitly as a means of correcting the backward thoughts of the students, since they cannot correct the backward thoughts of their parents. This was precisely the rationale for residential schools.

  6. Advice time: I am a teacher. Tomorrow is my school's Orange Shirt Day. I have lived in the fly-in communities I described above. I have seen the mind-boggling material and moral squalor of reserves. I have lived in it. I do not see how anyone wearing an orange shirt will bring about one iota of improvement in the lives of the people I knew Thus, if I were to wear an orange shirt, it would only be to avoid the consequences of being literally the only member of a 60-person staff without one, but these consequences would be entirely social. Canadian teachers are virtually impossible to either reward or punish. I would be something like Havel's Schoolteacher, only worse, because of the much smaller threat.

-I could wear the shirt but inwardly resist acquiescence to the narrative. This is what Havel argues quite convincingly against.

-I could wear the shirt so my friends on the staff are not marred by their association with me, although the consequences would be entirely social.

-I could wear the shirt because, having argued against pretty much every hyper-compassionate wine-mom idea my fellow teachers have, I am now regarded as a mere contrarian, so if I don't have a shirt they'll just roll their eyes and whatever statement I think I'm making will fail.

However, if I were to wear an orange shirt, in addition to just feeling like I took an L, it would also greatly undermine every argument I have made to my students regarding the value and possibility of resisting conformism. I am not so naive as to think that any of this will be remembered a year after they graduate, but day-to-day we all have to look each other in the eye.

Not wearing the shirt incurs only social consequences, but I have been incurring them for years now, and it's getting tiring.

I don't want to wear the shirt, but I also don't want to make a scene, but I also want to be credible to the people I ask to believe me.

Someone talk me into the right course of action here.

My favorite part of Kamloops-gate is that Franz Boaz personally excavated on the school property and discovered lots of old corpses, which he writes were previously buried by the injuns. This is my favorite part because, first, it’s so interesting, second it’s completely ignored, but third it proves that the corpses might not even be TB victims who attended the school — they might have been buried dozens or hundreds of years before the school was founded. Another favorite part is that Indians have a higher rate of severity from TB, explaining most of the high mortality rate in residential schools.

The whole thing was, uh, bullshit. Canadian George Floyd but somehow even worse? It was a psy-ops tier event that ushered in church burnings.

Anyway to answer your question, wear an orange prison jump suit and talk about George Orwell or something.

Simple suggestion: is there a charity whose work with indigenous Canadians you respect and think is valuable? If so, make a donation to them - maybe as little as $10. Do not wear the shirt. If anyone asks you, grumble that you feel there's too much performative politics, and instead you chose to mark this day by making a donation, as you think that's far more meaningful.

Just don't wear the damn shirt. Doesn't seem very complicated. You already know that you don't want to and the consequences are insignificant either way, so you may as well be true to yourself.

It's so strange reading this because when I was in school (in the US) there was never any hint of a compulsory nature to these kinds of thing, which happened often enough (and I often partook).

There was always respect towards people's autonomy and personal feelings, and I never sensed or felt any judgement towards either decision people made.

I'd wear a different shirt for the sole reason of making kids who chose not to feel comfortable. It doesn't even matter what the cause is or how credible. A socially enforce uniform to determine "good person" status is basically an illiberal environment.

I feel like people used to understand this.

I think it comes down to a simple question. What do you value more, minor social consequences at work or your integrity?

I don't personally think wearing the orange shirt is that wrong (just kind of stupid), but it sounds like you do think it's wrong. And it sounds like you're going to face the same social consequences either way, because it sounds like the other staff think poorly of you already. So, maybe wearing this shirt will get you a brief reprieve, but it probably won't change anyone's opinion of you either way. With that in mind, it's really a question of what is more important to you here.

Integrity here suggests you don't wear the orange shirt. You've made the argument yourself and if you're looking for validation/affirmation, you now have it. Go forth, and fret no more.

For your own mental health, I suggest you employ the old trick of flipping a coin, then do whatever option you find yourself hoping for.

That said, I think it is the duty of those who are insulated from formal reprisal for non-conformity to non-conform. You are a teacher; you don't even need to fear being passed up for promotion. Of course, I am assuming you are an upstanding citizen in the non-culture war parts of your life. If you are a callous, uncharitable, self-absorbed, or god-forbid criminal person in other areas, non-conformity will not make you a saint, and I'd prefer you restrain your non-conformist streak, lest other non-conformists be so tarred.

The major price you'll pay is the scorn of peers who have already elliptically disclosed you have a low opinion of, and maybe being pilloried by activist students. Being pilloried with dignity is, likewise, a duty. There will be no reward.

Of course, I am assuming you are an upstanding citizen in the non-culture war parts of your life. If you are a callous, uncharitable, self-absorbed, or god-forbid criminal person in other areas, non-conformity will not make you a saint, and I'd prefer you restrain your non-conformist streak, lest other non-conformists be so tarred.

I thought this was a really good comment, except for this bit. Personally I think you are missing the point of non conformity a bit if you are worrying about the reputation of non conformists. Criminality is already associated with non conformity, and it always has been. When you don't have free speech or enfranchisement, non conformity is criminal. Callousness, lack of charity and self absorption are also already associated with non conformity, because many conformists can't understand people who refuse to conform and think "why would I refuse to conform? I would refuse if I was being callous or uncharitable or self absorbed, or if not refusing might get me arrested, so that's what motivates all non conformity".

During the height of the pandemic, a fairly well-known IDW figure tweeted something to the effect of "To be resistant to hive mind programming, you must either be autistic or an asshole." I agree with a weaker version of her sentiment. I'd say: To be resistant to hive mind programming, you must either be the sort who processes society's rules intellectually, not intuitively, or you must hate society and not find its opinion relevant.

This set of people obviously includes sociopaths, assholes, disagreeable misanthropes, and socially illiterate nitwits. But I don't agree that it's the entire set. Jesus Christ, MLK, and Buddha were in that set. They may have been "criminals" but only in a non-central way.

@gog should boycott if they are a non-central non-conformist. (AKA not criminal, self-absorbed, or an asshole.) That is the only sort of non-conformist who can set a positive example and start a preference cascade towards the end of moral panic. If they are a "central" non-conformist, they should not boycott, but will ignore moral advice in any case.

Yeah, I'm saying non conformists will always be perceived that way by conformists. And sometimes even non conformists it seems. Even though, as you say, Jesus, MLK and Buddha are non conformists, the perception remains.

You will be tarred by association regardless. That doesn't mean you should say 'fuck it, may as well crime it up', but it does mean you should stop caring about being called something by conformists.

Also I assume that you are a good person yeah? You are worried about society and other people's feelings certainly. So if someone called you a sociopath or a misanthrope, you would know they were wrong because you know who you are right? So why would you think they were right about anyone else? Isn't it more likely they are just using the same brush they used to tar you?

I disagree with this. Your reputation is important when you are trying to convince others of things, especially in a setting like work with many repeated interactions.

Spend your contrarian points wisely @gog

I'm too late to contribute anything on this, but I would just like to request that you post a follow up to this in the new Culture War thread for this week and let us know what choice you made and how it went.

This makes me think, while the bien-pensants proclaim that the state literally perpetrated genocide (regardless of whether it is true or not, they seem to believe it), they usually do not support restricting the abilities of the state to do such things again in any way. Moreover, the same category of people (generally speaking of course, there might be individual exceptions but I suspect if they exist, they are rare) they support things like forced vaccinations, lockdowns, school closures, blocking bank accounts of people who protest the government, widespread speech censorship and punishment for speaking against the government-approved narratives, equating dissent or doubt about the dogma with violence, etc. - all look like the things which while do not compare to a genocide, could be easily deployed to enable one if the government decides to do something like that again. A person with systemic thinking would use the opportunity of the dedicated day - shirt or no shirt - to discuss these things and maybe make the students start thinking about such matters, and may be how it is possible to make a society which would make things like that less like, and how to evaluate government actions with the lens of "can this also be used to oppress people?".

As for the shirt itself, wearing a non-orange shirt saying "this shirt is not orange, ask me why" would be heroic, in my opinion, but I understand not making a scene part. Taking a stand is usually very costly and only rare people can handle it. If you feel it'd be too much for you, just wear the shirt and try to do what you can to make it mean something you'd want to mean instead of meaningless guilt-absolution gesture. I think as a teacher you have a good opportunity to do so.

People's thinking about genocide generally starts and ends with "goodies in charge means no genocide, baddies in charge means genocide". I think the topic of the state infrastructure required to enable genocide will go over their heads.

You're right about lockdown-related state infrastructure also being indicative of what countries could carry out genocide. The infrastructure Canada used to carry out a political and social purge of unvaccinated people could trivially be pointed at ethnic minorities and used for genocide too. And there's certainly something in how China's covid surveillance infrastructure and Uighur surveillance infrastructure are the same infrastructure. But again, I think "If you can do lockdowns, you can also do genocide" is likely to go over people's heads (or, in Canada, mark you as one of the anti-vaxxers to be purged). OP is a teacher at a school, having to impress other teachers at that school, in a society that for the past two years has marked people who dissent on these matters as persona non grata. They'd be more likely to survive just outright ignoring the day than by trying to point out the connections between lockdowns and the oppression of ethnic groups, even if it's likely relevant to why Nunavut had the least stringent vaccine mandate policies.

It's one day, right?

Just call in sick. The only winning move is not to play.

My dad went to two Indian residential schools in his youth (he's white, just grew up in the north). Every now and then I mention it and it kind of breaks people's brains because they never consider it a possibility. Because 1947 was the end of mandatory attendance most of the indigenous people around where I live don't have parents who went to residential schools (or at least my three friends in high school didn't).

Though let me say I never use this as kind of a trump card or whatever. My dad's experience was fairly out of the norm and it doesn't really have any relevance to the years (mostly the 1890s-1910s) where the residential schools were pretty awful for students.

The main problem I have with it is the motto for it: "Every Child Maters". That's the attitude that created this mess in the first place! The motto should be something like "Mind your own damn business". But I mean...how do you express that?

Not that I'm not sympathetic to the plight of far-rural communities, right? I think there's a real problem there. But I don't think there's any sort of good solution for it, unfortunately. The best I can do is suggest help for people who want to exit those circumstances...but this is seen as essentially genocide.

(The reason I say far-rural is my understanding that near-rural reservations are doing much better in these regards)

That's a great idea, a blm slogan for the grillpilled. How about "Your life matters" - with the motte being the concept of focusing on fixing personal issues and the bailey being that it is about positivity and opposing the feeling of futility which many people grapple with every day.

This is the framework I'd start with; you might find it helpful.

There are two distinct but related concepts here--your character and your reputation.

Your character is the objective picture of your moral self. It's the accumulation of all the choices you've made, within the context of each of those choices. You have usually got the best access to what this picture looks like--the shiny spots and the black marks--but there are many varieties of self-deception that can produce a distorted view of yourself, either better or worse than accurate (or both, in different areas).

Your reputation is the socially-constructed external view of your moral self. While your character will constantly provide evidence of itself, contributing to your reputation, there are other factors: others' limited knowledge of you, unearned compliments, malicious rumors, etc. Your reputation may be better or worse than your character, or a mix in different areas, but while you can provide the most reliable evidence of your character through your actions--and therefore influence your reputation--the full social interpretation of your character is not within your control.

I think both are important, and you have some level of moral responsibility to maintain both, though not equally. Your choices are what define you in your character; your public choices have the biggest impact on defining your reputation. That's why compelled speech is so powerful--it affects both. The choice to comply or defy contributes to your character; how your choice is viewed by others contributes to your reputation. Other people don't have direct access to your actual character, either to know it or affect it. Only you can affect it, and your knowledge of it is usually the best available, if imperfect.

So, actual advice--I would start with considering your character. You're the one who has to live with yourself indefinitely; make the choice that will minimize your long-term regret in your own view of yourself. Second, consider how to implement that choice in a way that best preserves your reputation, starting with the people whose views you most value. For myself, I believe I would show up with a non-orange shirt, and if questioned, state that I oppose compelled social signaling, even in a good cause (...without specifying whether I think this is a good cause).

Good luck.

The pope recently went to Canada to apologize to the indigenous people for the treatment of kids in residential schools. I've been meaning to ask about this but this is a good opportunity. Is there any new discovery that prompted that pope visit? Because last time I've read about this stuff I got the impression that, as you say, these graves were just detected from the surface with some radar but there were no excavations, prompting suspicion that these may not actually be mass graves. Has this changed?

As for the question. I think it depends on how seriously you take this "mission". Because you are going against the mainstream here, if you simply don't wear the shirt, people won't be able to wrap their heads around why. Like are you actually so evil that you support the murder of indigenous children? Remember, most people, including teachers, probably know much less about the details and have read up on it much less than you have. Simply rejecting the narrative and symbolism won't change any minds, it just puts you into the "bad person" category in people's minds. If you want people to understand your resistance, make sure that you explain your rationale (this will be good towards ignorant normies, but it may attract the wrath of the already invested activists). If you don't trust yourself to keep calm and explain your reasoning over and over, then it's probably better to just wear it and shut up. Or maybe wear it but explain your reservations about the whole thing at watercooler conversations etc.

Because last time I've read about this stuff I got the impression that, as you say, these graves were just detected from the surface with some radar but there were no excavations, prompting suspicion that these may not actually be mass graves. Has this changed?

No it has not. And per OP:

No excavation is happening in Canada because it would be disrespectful to the spirits of the children.

This means that there will be no excavations, and whoever doubts that these are the graves of children will be called a genocide denier. You may think "well, they've done pretty extensive excavations in other contexts, so why would this particular excavation be verboten?" It's because they know that if they excavated the entire thing would be exposed as a giant fraud.

No, there were no new discoveries to prompt the pope visit. He’s just an octogenarian in poor health who does not speak English(notoriously, unlike JPII who spoke a mid-double digit number of languages and BXVI who spoke all the major European languages plus Latin, pope Francis speaks only Spanish and Italian, both natively, although he can read English and Latin aloud) and relies on one of the oldest and least efficient bureaucracies on earth to do everything for him.

The visit to Canada was controversial within Catholicism in part because the aforementioned inefficient bureaucracy wrote his speech with not totally up to date information.

One thing that changed is that there has been an excavation of 33 GPR hits at a former hospital site in Camsell. It turned up zero actual bodies.

But that's probably not what prompted the pope's visit. The the best of my knowledge, no actual human remains have been found yet as a result of the GPR canvassing. Why risk it?

To give an opposite option: If you really want to go down in flames, find a charity relating to the church burnings that happened in 2021 (there's gotta be one, either generally linked to churches that were burned or specifically trying to repair them). Put that on your shirt.

I suggest a pink shirt -- then when people complain about your shirt, you can either pretend to be confused about which propaganda-shirt day it is -- or ask them whether they are bullying you because of the colour of your shirt.

Seriously though, glad to hear there is at least one teacher in the land who's actually thinking this stuff through -- your concerns echo mine.

If you do choose not to wear the shirt, the line I've been emphasizing lately is that there was plenty of real shit around the residential school system that was actually horrible, which has been well known at least since I was in high school in the 80s -- the real problems are cheapened when phony stories are emphasized. (the orange shirts I've seen around here last week mostly had explicit "never forget the 220 children we murdered" type messages on them, so this complaint is not out of place.

Best luck; fight on!

(and let us know how it goes either way, ofc)

However, if I were to wear an orange shirt, in addition to just feeling like I took an L, it would also greatly undermine every argument I have made to my students regarding the value and possibility of resisting conformism. I am not so naive as to think that any of this will be remembered a year after they graduate, but day-to-day we all have to look each other in the eye.

I think you already know what you have to do, and from your other points I think it's what you want to do (otherwise you wouldn't point out that the consequences are only social). But also schools are a very conformist environment, everything about them is built towards that end. Which makes non conformity incredibly strong. Outrageously strong. Once they leave school your students will forget most of what happened, but that's because it is a blur of uniformity - everyone looks the same and does the same thing all day every day, what is there to remember? The instances where something different happened.

If I really wanted to be a dick to my co-workers about it, I would get my hands on a shirt with the indigenous Canadian flag on it. "Are you really going to roll your eyes at the flag? I should hook you up with my racist cousin, he does that all the time."

Order a custom orange shirt with an appropriate quote from Havel printed on it.

If you signal something, but nobody understands the signal, did you really signal?

I always like the approach of, "actually try and do good to solve a real problem, and use the visibility others are creating to signal boost the solutions that you think are productive."

It sounds like it is tomorrow so maybe too late to prepare, but here is one thing:

  • get a white or grey or black shirt and have printed on it, in big orange block letters, information about organizations you trust and how people can legitimately give to them in some way.

  • prepare an elevator pitch for what you think are the enduring hardships and difficulties and why the organizations you referenced can actually directly help

  • people will notice the inversion of your shirt (orange letters on non-orange shirt) and ask about it. Excellent! Deliver your elevator pitch.

This is one way to turn this into an actually productive thing for something you care about, instead of only being performative as you noted. It also demonstrates to your students how to still be mildly contrarian but also productive for a thing you genuinely care about and want to make better.

One wonders how many of the great crimes in history have occured from the efforts of "Team players"

How one does one thing is how one does all things and With the first link the chain is forged.

This is OPs opportunity to either show their students that yes they can insist on being honest to the themselves and others, or no they must constantly lie to both and lead a life of shame.

I'd say OP is \obliged, for the sake of their own virtue, to live honestly EVEN IF IT WOULD COST THEM THEIR JOB.

Life is not a dress rehearsal.

Who you are right now is who you are choosing to be in your brief moment on the stage and who you will be for the rest of eternity as your actions echo down the endless halls of time.

You have a brief 80 years out of millions to make your change to the world... are you really going to spend that one chance you've got speaking another's words, doing another's work, living another's dream?

I guess you're right. I did love the orange prison suit option, though.

KulakRevolt's reply is solid, but I've a couple things to add:

Whatever you'd hope to convince people of by not wearing it, you'll be more able to convince them by wearing it and discussing your reservations. If you don't wear it, you appear attention seeking and damage your credibility.

  1. A shirt speaks to more people than one's words, in a setting like a school (or really, most RL settings). Hundreds of people will see a non-orange shirt in the course of a day, which is more than he'll speak to in person.

  2. He's caught between a rock and hard place re: credibility; if he wears the shirt and complains, he seems like a hypocrite.

(I wouldn't recommend a black or brown shirt, though, as when attention is drawn to shirt colour this is going to wind up with being called a fascist.)

I'm going to be a contrarian (as I expect, in this place) and say just wear the damn shirt. Then tell all those students you taught the value of contrarianism that sometimes you can just put on your football team's jersey even if it doesn't help that team play football.

I do consider it "contrarian" to conform to social pressure and just go with the flow.

After all, in places so contrarian as this, conformity can be the most rebellious act.

I am reminded of the self-justifying politician in In the Loop, who justifies his decision not to resign over an unjust war, so he can keep making things better from the inside: "Isn't the braver thing to not resign?"

After reading this comment I feel like a star bellied sneetch who must immediately join the line for star removal.

Bart Simpson T-shirt

wear an orange shirt, and put some writing on it that expresses how you feel. Maybe something like "how does this shirt help indigenous people?". You can also put a QR code on it that goes to somewhere to donate money.

Canadian here. I don't quite understand what you're objecting to? You say that certain specific claims about residential schools are false (e.g. 215 kids established as buried in Kamloops). And that (2) isn't fully a result of (1). But I've never been under the impression that wearing an orange shirt implies you think otherwise.

What it does imply is that you think aspects of residential schools (and Canada's historic treatment of indigenous people) were very bad. Do you disagree with this? If so, then wearing an orange shirt would be misleading for sure. Otherwise it might even be valuable to consider whether the suggestion that you're contrarian is on the mark - contrarianism is an easy trap to fall into without realising it. (I've certainly fallen into it.)

I can't really give you advice from experience: I mostly try to avoid these things by slinking about unnoticed and slipping through cracks. It's worked for me before - from what I have heard, there's an act of fealty I would ordinarily have to perform to satisfy my employer (it's a sort of thing anybody here has probably heard of), but through luck and by keeping a sufficiently low profile, this is a threat I believe I have passed under unnoticed.

I would not do it, but exactly because I'm chicken enough to prepare to slip underneath conflicts like this ahead of time that I think I would be in a not-so-noticeable position. I cannot speak to anything likely to involve confrontation.

Fellow Canadian here. I do not believe you should wear a shirt if you are not comfortable with it. Problem with our society is we kneel on social matters that we do not agree with and stay quiet.If you think to be only person not wearing it would have serious consequences for your work you can either sue them but best middle ground would be to call in sick and not to go on that day. Also remeber that trans teacher with large boobs? I mean he did something outrageous. I dont think you should think too hard on whether wearing an orange shirt or not.

Tough call. You might be ignored or you might receive the Bret Weinstein treatment. I don't envy your position.

Do you have a dark yellow shirt or a red-orange shirt with a color ambiguous whether or not it is orange? If I were you I would wear a dark yellow shirt and tell people (truthfully) that it is the closest thing to orange I have in my wardrobe.

I saw “Weird Al” Yankovic in concert last night. For those who are unfamiliar with his work, Weird Al is an American comedy/novelty singer, known best for his parodies of popular songs, although he also has a large body of non-parody original comedy songs. I assume that there is a large overlap between the users of this sub - at least those who grew up in America or Canada - and the kinds of people who would be fans of his work. And there definitely is a specific “type” of person to whom Weird Al has always appealed, which is what this post is about.

While the concert itself was a wonderful time - on this tour, Al is only performing his non-parody songs, without the frenetic costume changes and multimedia content for which his live shows used to be known, so this was definitely a “for the hardcore fans only” kind of experience - I was taken aback by something I experienced during the opening act. A stand-up comedian named Emo Philips opened the show. Philips’ onstage persona is an oddball autistic type, and his material is generally self-deprecating, ironic, and full of absurdism and clever wordplay - very much in the same vein as the style of humor that appeals to Weird Al’s fans. The first thing Philips said that raised an eyebrow for me was the statement, “I don’t think there’s a single person in this room who wasn’t bullied.” This got a relatively positive vocal response from the crowd. Then a bit later, he started talking about COVID. “How many people in here have a vaccination card?” (Wild applause and raised hands.) “Now, be honest, how many people here have a fake vaccination card?” (Some scattered hoots and raised hands.) “See, those are great, because you get to have the vaccination card and you can still die of COVID-19!” (Raucous laughter and cheers.) My brother and I, both right-wing COVID skeptics, shared an exasperated look, but the joke sure seemed to kill with this crowd. Later in the set, Philips made some more political comments and jokes, basically along the lines of how “you Californians shouldn’t let anyone make fun of you for being from this state, because they’re just all extremely jealous and resentful.” Now, I am well-aware that comedians play to their crowd, and that this stuff all could have just been naked pandering to the local sensibilities; maybe when he does a set in Tulsa, he tells mocking jokes about COVID paranoia and the scourge of Californian transplants. Still, I found it extremely odd that he would get political at a Weird Al concert - Al’s music is decidedly non-political and infamously inoffensive - and, moreover, that he predicted (correctly) that this type of material would do so well with this crowd in this context.

However, after the show, I reflected on this, and I concluded that it’s not surprising at all. I bet if you took a poll of the political affiliation of the audience at a Weird Al concert in any venue around the country, no matter how deep-red, the results would show overwhelmingly left-of-center. You would get a lot of open SJ progressives - I certainly saw a number of individuals in the crowd whose dress, demeanor, and mask-wearing marked them as MSNBC devotees - and almost certainly the farthest-right you would get would be “both parties are crooked, throw the bums out” apathetic centrism. The demographics of this crowd were overwhelmingly - quite possibly exclusively - white, middle-class, college-educated, and above-average IQ. Even above those reliable correlates of Blue Tribe affiliation, though, there was an additional set of selection effects that would skew the politics of this particular fandom.

Al’s oeuvre - not only his music, but also his cult-classic film UHF and his various other comedic endeavors - is clever, self-deprecating, absurdist, full of obscure cultural references, and, well, weird. His parodies generally take mass-culture popular works, strip them of their cultural context, and transfigure them into absurdist comedy songs totally disconnected from - and appealing to a very different audience from - the source material; many of Al’s parodies, especially his parodies of hip-hop songs, introduced the original songs to an audience who would otherwise have had no engagement with the pop-culture apparatus that generated them.

This sense of being outside of the mainstream, and of only engaging with it in an ironic, deconstructive, and alienated way is a key element of his appeal; this phenomenon is probably best exemplified by his song “White And Nerdy”, a parody of the rapper Chamillionaire’s hit “Ridin’”, which became an anthem for his socially-awkward (and overwhelmingly white) fan-base. I would wager that nearly everyone in that concert venue last night considers himself or herself “an outsider”. Not in any concrete demographic/“identity” sense - fre if any of these people qualify as a member of a recognized “marginalized community” - but in the sense of belonging to a fictive identity centered on personality traits and aesthetic preferences outside of, or in opposition to, “normie” culture.

Decades before the Marvel ascendancy catapulted “nerd culture” into the mainstream, Al cultivated a following among genuine weirdos and the socially maladroit. Even though they’re no longer truly “outcasts” in any important material sense, their internal self-image is still tied to their sense of being simultaneously victimized by and superior to the people who comprise the “normal” or “mainstream” culture. This affective orientation is a central component of leftism in an atavistic, visceral, pre-political sense. People with that orientation, of course, also tend to gravitate strongly toward leftism in the political sense.

There is also an additional component to Weird Al’s music - a slightly “darker” side, if you will - that tends toward poking fun at certain characteristics of what might be considered natural outgroups for the people to whom he appeals. I recall, years ago, reading a thinkpiece - I believe it was in Slate, but I don’t care enough to check - in which the author argued that Al’s song “Word Crimes” (a parody of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”, in which Al assumes the character of a pedantic grammar-Nazi taking the listener to task for making various common grammar/spelling errors) reveals the elitism and “punching down” that underlies much of his work. His popular parody song “Fat” is another great example of this; it’s the type of casual mockery of fatness which would be deeply taboo in most mainstream-media circles today. There is certainly an element of mockery in some of Al’s work, and it all tends to target people who are low-IQ, low-class, and physically unappealing.

While it is indeed odd for a fandom full of self-proclaimed weirdos and outcasts to find such enjoyment in the mockery of other ostensibly subaltern identities, I don’t actually think there’s much of a contradiction there. While being fat, poor, uneducated, and lacking in middle-class cultural capotal are all markers of an “outsider”, they’re markers of a very different kind of outsider than the modal Weird Al fan. They’re the qualities that a middle-class nerd would associate, on a conscious or subconscious level, with the Red Tribe. Never mind what any empirical data say about which identity groups are most likely to be poor, fat, and stupid; in the mind of an urban white nerd, when you say “imagine a fat and stupid person” the mental image conjured is always a conservative rural white. And if you have built your identity around finding ways to be different from, and superior to, that class of people, you will find your prejudices well-reflected in the Democratic coalition. Is it actually true that a white jock is more likely to bully you than a member of the black underclass? Certainly not - unless you don’t know any underclass blacks, and the white jock is the only thing remotely like an enemy that you have any experience with. That doesn’t matter, though; what matters is whom you identify with, or more importantly whom you identify in opposition to, that’s determinative of your political tribe.

I often ask myself, “Why were you a leftist when you were younger. What about it appealed to you?” And the inescapably obvious answer is that it provided me with an outlet to express my sense of contempt for, and superiority to, regular run-of-the-mill non-nerdy white people. It was pure atavistic chauvinism that led me to identify with the “nerd culture” of the time - which had not yet become fully commercialized at that time - and with pseudo-“outsider” figures like Weird Al Yankovic. I was lamenting to my brother that if my political views were somehow made known to those in that room, many if not nearly all of them would want to see me hounded out of the room and banned from any venue they expect to attend in the future. I might be an outsider - in a much more important material sense than whatever these people still think marks them as outsiders - but I’m an outsider of the wrong kind, and there’s probably no longer any room for me in the coalition of the fake, self-indulgent, marginalized-in-their-own-heads community that comprised the people in that room last night.

My own experiences with school bullying (taunting to the point of tears, flinch-teasing, verbal bullying), though never physical, were free of politics. However, though it was the Popular Kids and Sports Kids I expected to tease me (because American entertainment made me expect it), it was actually the everyday kids, and sometimes my fellow nerds. The Cool Gamer and his buddies stole my box of 1.44” floppies twice.

American entertainment also told me to look for outsiders as my natural friend group. What I got was a series of bad friends who were outsiders for a reason: they were toxic. The Island of Misfit Toys is as fictional as Rudolph the Inspiringly Disabled Reindeer.

Conformity to tribal norms is valued across all three tribes; it’s just that uniqueness is a norm of the Grey Tribe: liking geeky and nerdy things, dressing in reference-laden clothing, taking being kept outside the Red Tribe’s inner circle as a badge of honor. As a kid with autism, I also heavily enjoyed Robin Williams’ weirdness, and his death hit me so hard because he was the first person to tell me it was okay, and even good, to be weird. Having attended Weird Al’s Poodle Hat, Running With Scissors, and Straight Outta Lynwood tours in Albuquerque, I felt as accepted as I am at sci-fi conventions and game stores.

As a Grey Tribe Christian from a Red Tribe church, I never consciously sought to feel superior, and when I notice it’s a motive of mine, I deconstruct it to not feel it. What I crave is acceptance of my whole self: my truth-seeking, logic-loving, nerdy self. And I find it at Weird Al concerts. I don’t want to analyze it away.

Man, am I the only person left alive who went through the stereotypical jocks vs. nerds thing? I'm getting the feeling everyone is conspiring to convince me it was all a dream.

American entertainment also told me to look for outsiders as my natural friend group. What I got was a series of bad friends who were outsiders for a reason: they were toxic.

I'll give you that one. Even at the time, I remember thinking "you guys are cool, but howcome everyone here comes from a broken home, and seems to have a drug or alcohol problem?"

My school was small, in a deep red, rural area so probably different enough from the norm, but outside of a few very physically gifted kids, like the 300 lb guy who'd started on the offensive and defensive lines all his years, or the son of a former major league pitcher who wasn't too bright, the jocks were most of the advanced tracked kids, too.

Our math olympiad team included two very nerdy guys, one very nerdy girl (our schools only national merit finalist) the head cheerleader, a starter on the basketball team, and me who lettered in 2 sports.

I went to a relatively large suburban California high school, and noticed the same thing. Most of the popular kids were also jocks and most of the actually outstanding athletes were also honors students, and a fair number also acted in the school musicals. The fact they were likeable and good at everything and possessed the social confidence to effortlessly pass between groups was why they were popular.

The vast majority of the bullying I saw, experienced, and (shamefully) participated in was intra-clique. You were far more likely to be humiliated by the only-slightly-more-socially-adept-than-you nerd attempting to gain status within the small group of friends you played video games with than some chad in a letterman's jacket. They were too busy bullying the fat kid on the football team to pay attention to the nerds.

At small rural schools, there's often not much else more interesting to do than athletics and AP classes, and classes are small enough for teachers to actually teach the material. Unless there's a "real" ambient culture of thinking learning is dumb and for poofters (seeing a black guy on TV occasionally doesn't count), so you don't see as much segregation of academic performance, athletics, and popularity.

My high school was in a military town. While we did have folks that might fit the definition of a jock, there was no dominant jock clique, and jocks were distributed pretty diffusely throughout many friend clusters. There was also a great deal of kids that had just arrived last year and would be leaving the next, and didn't have the time to develop strong cliqueish ties.

I witnessed one instance of physical bullying during all of high school, and as far as I know it didn't recur. The bully didn't get any positive or negative reinforcement, those of us around just kind of stared because this was strange and like something from a TV show.

I also can't recall any instances of serious nerd teasing, and being fairly nerdy, I think I would've been a target. My friends and I would tease each other about all kinds of things, but there wasn't anyone enforcing non-nerdy norms.

My experience with jocks (students who participated in the school's sports teams) is that they were perfectly nice, friendly people. Not as smart as me, but then again I wasn't as athletic as them.

Virtually all trouble (bullying, fighting, stealing, class disruption, etc.) was caused by underclass kids. And, yes, they were mostly black.

More of my teasing was in elementary, where those groups hadn’t yet coalesced. Ironically, I was in track & field (100y dash + long jump) and T-ball at the time, so technically, I was jock as well as nerd.

In middle school, I had the distinct displeasure of being picked literally last every time we had captains picking teams in PE, so by that point, it was closer to true. But in high school, the jocks were in such a different social class, I barely even interacted with them.

What I got was a series of bad friends who were outsiders for a reason: they were toxic.

This can be true, but I do not like to push it all onto them. The people who are freaks and outcasts of society are that way partly because of their own choices and partly because society did it to them.

Some are genuine social retards in the sense that they simply cannot comprehend that their own behavior is bad -- while others use that excuse to continue their shitty behavior. Without seeing in their heads I cannot tell.

One was a lapsed Catholic with bipolar paranoia who evaluated literally every bad, unpleasant, or unfortunate event in his life, no matter how small, as if God were trying to judge him on something he should already have figured out.

One had Borderline Personality Disorder because he was a victim of childhood emotional and physical abuse by a Vietnam vet alcoholic father.

One was a person with autism and an iq of 86 whose perseverative interest is tirelessly manipulating and wheedling other people into giving her everything she wants.

One was a person with autism and an IQ of 145 who had been instrumental in hardening satellite microchips against cosmic rays, but whose wife had left him because of his biological anxiety attacks, which gave him psychological anxiety attacks too.

When I realized my only role in their lives was to be “the good friend,” the Linus to their Charlie Brown, I left each one in turn. I’m now in a recovery group for codependency, and doing much better, but they cost me the two decades I could have spent raising a family.

Public school failed me by not having a friendmaking curriculum. I aim to change that.

When I realized my only role in their lives was to be “the good friend,” the Linus to their Charlie Brown, I left each one in turn. I’m now in a recovery group for codependency, and doing much better, but they cost me the two decades I could have spent raising a family.

My life followed a remarkably similar trajectory, down to the amount of time lost and the conclusion that family was absolutely not going to happen. I wasn't even interested in trying. I have a family now anyway.

Where there is life, there is hope.

Weird Al is a master of parody (e.g. "Like a Surgeon," a parody of Madonna's "Like a Virgin"), but where he really shows off his talent is in his "non-parody" songs, because they fall into a related category: pastiche. Where a parody takes an original work and exchanges some of the words, keeping much of the structure but telling a different story, pastiche takes as its baseline another artist's style, and builds the rest of the variant work from the ground up. Done well, the pastiche sounds like a lost work of the original artist, but (often, in Weird Al's case) with a comic twist (e.g. "Mission Statement," an excellent send-up of Crosby, Stills, and Nash's body of work).

Parody is simple enough, assuming you're sufficiently clever with words, but pastiche--especially pastiche across many musical subgenres--is what marks out Weird Al as a generational musical talent. It doesn't hurt that he's much beloved by his fans as a genuinely sweet and humble person.

So the current tour has stuff like "Velvet Elvis" and "Dog Eat Dog"?

I noticed years ago that a lot of his non-parody songs ended up as "random stream of conciousness" lyrics. It felt like the constraints of parody forced him to work harder, with better results.

To be fair, Phillips certainly panders to the crowd. In Calgary, he apologized to us for Californians getting lost on the way to Texas and ending up in Calgary.

I love how half a continent is united in their dislike of Californians who move to their area.

My experience in youth politics tells me that there's nerds in basically all political movements, though the mainstream ones are probably less nerdy than the fringe ones - people from the right-wing populist youth org certainly gave often huge nerd vibes, as did many of the far-leftists I have the most experience with. Politics is a very good avenue for people who didn't have social acceptance in their youth and were left traumatized by it to seek for that social acceptance, often very directly in the form of votes. Likewise, it contains a huge amount of interesting and exciting data and potentials for speculation to geek over - you can even turn political data geekery into a career, like Nate Silver and David Shor have done.

It's also true that all political nerds like calling their political opponents nerds. The whole "soyjack" thing the extremely online right-wingers keep portraying the left as surely is a huge nerd stereotype in all the various ways.

I think this is just a specific instance of the more general statement, "nerds are low status." In any context where there's an identifiable "us" vs. "them," attacking your opponents' status is at least an obvious secondary objective, when it's not a straight win condition.

Even in the zeitgeist of the past several years, where "nerd stuff is cool," it's always struck me as not "nerds are cool," but "the stuff nerds built is cool; it's ours now."

I think your last point is spot on. The people who have flooded nerdy hobbies aren't actually nerds, it's just that normies finally realized those things are actually cool/fun. And to make matters worse, the nerds are now getting pushed out of their own spaces. Because it turns out the normies still don't want anything to do with nerds, so now that they're in our spaces they want us out.

It reminds me of the bittersweet ending of Happy Feet, the movie about a penguin who can’t sing, but compensates by tap-dancing.

At the climax, Mumble shows all the other penguins how to dance, and they all pick it up pretty quickly. Now he not only can’t sing, his only contribution to penguinkind is something no longer unique to him.

Perhaps my first thought about many identity-left people when I've spoken to them has been "Why are the things they like and find entertaining so weird". It was like peering into a mindset and a type of culture that was entirely alien to me and that I still don't feel like I understand well on a base level, and this might be the first comment which I've seen acknowledge that the tastes of many people in the left are extremely distinctive and reek of an attempt at social signalling (to others, as well as to themselves).

A huge portion of their entertainment shares these ironic, deconstructive, absurdist characteristics you mentioned, sometimes with a very heavy dose of blink-and-you'll-miss-them references most of which exist primarily to confer insider/outsider status. The same goes for many of the memes they enjoy, which are these weird maximalist parodies of memes that kill my brain and seem almost exclusively like an assessment of whether one exists on a sufficiently high level of irony to understand the joke or not. Quite honestly, my level of disdain for a good amount of this kind of entertainment is off the charts, and I can't imagine anyone enjoying it or engaging with it on any real level. My disdain for it is not inherently because it's "nerdy" or exists outside of the mainstream - there are many strange cult pieces of entertainment I very much enjoy, probably more than the vast majority of mainstream entertainment - but rather because the types of entertainment I'm referring to don't seem to serve much of a purpose outside of denoting those who consume them as being an outsider. There doesn't seem to be much genuine love or vision behind the piece of work itself.

As you note this attitude also jives with the general viewpoints of the woke left, too. Their entire political worldview exists in opposition to any stable or traditional cultural structures, and continues to do so even after these cultural structures bend to them. They see themselves as being politically ascended in some sense, having "realised" that the overarching culture is intractably patriarchal and white supremacist, and thus they have to take it upon themselves to educate the unwashed masses about how everything they do perpetuates prejudice because of their superior understanding of social dynamics. Red-tribers especially are portrayed as being reactionaries, which is a very meaningless term in my opinion (since opposing change isn't inherently negative) but in the Blue Tribe the implication is that any pushback against the supposedly unequivocally positive changes they want to implement exists simply out of ignorance or fear.

The particularly notable thing to me is that much of these leftists' sense of being an outcast who looks down upon the normies can persist long after their viewpoint and sense of aesthetics become culturally entrenched. That type of self-aware, absurdist, deconstructed entertainment has become fairly widespread, but these creators and their audience do still try to portray themselves as being on the cultural fringe, the very same way wokesters think of themselves as being counter-culture revolutionaries despite their beliefs basically being the dominant view within the mainstream at this point. They would think of me as being part of the cultural hegemony and them as being outside of it despite the fact that the very opposite is true. They're perpetually able to look down upon the mainstream, even when they are the mainstream.

So, I do want to make it abundantly clear that I am a genuinely passionate decades-long fan of Weird Al’s work, and if you’re accusing him specifically of lacking a sense of love and vision, I think that accusation is baseless. I’m intimately familiar with the world of pretentious, artificial status-signaling art you’re referring to, but I cannot stress enough that Weird Al’s work, like his life as a whole, has always been characterized by a palpable sense of joy and authenticity. The people in that room last night were, overwhelmingly, not there to impress anybody or signal status. Al’s work is far too lowbrow and affable to appeal to genuinely pretentious “artsy-fartsy” people, and being a Weird Al fan carries no cultural caché. He’s basically only respected by a) comedians, who largely revere him both for being a legendarily nice and wholesome human being, and b) Gen X and millennial white nerds who wouldn’t enjoy an arthouse film or post-modern novel any more than you would.

Your points as a whole are astute and absolutely well-taken, but I cherish Weird Al too much to let anything I’ve said give the false impression that he himself is a sneering progressive MAGA-hater. I’m confident that his personal politics are standard-issue Gen X California liberalism, but he’s certainly not shoving that down anybody’s throat, and he happily plays to audiences in Red states and Blue. I’m just saying that his work carries a set of implicit themes that naturally appeal to a subset of the population to whom culturally-left politics also appeal, whether or not he has any conscious intent for that to happen.

So, I do want to make it abundantly clear that I am a genuinely passionate decades-long fan of Weird Al’s work, and if you’re accusing him specifically of lacking a sense of love and vision, I think that accusation is baseless.

I did pick up on that and am not accusing Weird Al specifically of anything (I wouldn't be able to, anyway, since I am not familiar with him or his content whatsoever). For my part, I'd also like to clarify that there's content I enjoy myself that shares some of the deconstructive/absurdist characteristics which appeal to the cultural left, but the ones that appeal to me are those that seem to have more substance and where the creator has something to say outside of dead-eyed detachment. It's the stuff that seems entirely hollow and alienated that I have a serious disdain for and exemplifies all the worst things about that kind of aesthetic.

Could I ask you to name some names regarding what's popular with the woke?

In my last brush with the New Orthodox Woke during the start of the pandemic, the stuff being pushed was Infinite Jest, Waiting for Godot, Blue Velvet, and anything Southern if it was to do with a black person, ideally a black person who had been lynched. Also, they keep saying they love D&D, but then refuse to play because the setting contains racial prejudice.

I do think there are certain things which are pretty appealing in a widespread manner. However, when you see the types of entertainment that does have a huge skew where the fanbase appears to primarily be of one political tribe, it's very notable how distinct they are.

I wasn't going to bring up specific examples because I think any specific discussion will invite some very vehement disagreement by people who happen to enjoy anything I lambast, but here we go.

So I used to be pretty involved in music communities, and a genre with one of the most overtly woke fanbases I can think of is PC Music/hyperpop (the most notable of these artists being SOPHIE). Example here. For those who are unaware of what this is, it's basically an ironic/post-ironic caricature of pop music which exaggerates every single one of the criticised elements of pop. The aesthetic of their music and music videos and entire public image exemplifies sterility, artifice, almost sickly cuteness and has a very strong undertone of cynical parody to it - basically nothing about it sounds genuine, and I think that's the point. Another factor that also probably helps to attract leftists is that a huge proportion of the artists making PC Music are part of the rainbow community.

Other artists that have a bit of a strange outsider aesthetic, even those I like, also tend to have a primarily leftist fanbase. I can testify to being kicked out of an Autechre discord server after expressing wrongthink once during a political conversation (which I did not start). While I enjoy their music quite a lot myself I can also testify that a huge amount of their fans are extremely woke and also tend to be quite the pretentious type.

Then there's games. I'm currently watching a friend play through Disco Elysium (a game with a fairly strong leftist bent to it that kind of plays out like a postmodern novel) with a group of other left-leaning friends. It's got style in spades, and I don't doubt that care was put into this, but at the moment my perception of it is that it's a pretty slow and artsy game which I can't help but regard as being quite difficult to like. It comes off as a bit of an unfocused mix of political satire, philosophical musings and absurdist nonsense all of which don't really blend into the murder-mystery narrative well. My opinions might change later, but I'm not too optimistic about that.

For film, I’ll just refer to a huge portion of A24’s output. Their films resonate with that same audience, the type who like artistic slow burns.

There are more I could include, but these are the first few examples that come to mind. And it's not even that they're always bad, either. It's just that in most of these cases, the people who consume them are often the type who tend to like distinguishing themselves from the normie crowd, and who see themselves as being part of a distinct, unique, subversive subculture that is new and revolutionary, one which is simultaneously aesthetically superior to and yet ignored by the normies. There's a certain amount of elitism that comes with the territory which doesn't seem to have been nearly as prominent in OG nerd culture.

I like weird stuff, but I don't consider myself that far to the left. I guess political lean could proably be weakly predicted by tolerance for weirdness in media (I say weakly because the more esoteric parts of the right (such as the Dissident Right) seem to be...well, rather strange).

This is a brilliant analysis. But why does this make you right wing now? Is it literally just the trope about being left when young and right when old?

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?

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.

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.

Read me.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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).

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?

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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 .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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’.

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'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.

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

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.

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...

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.

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

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.

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

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