trends in violence culture

Authoritarians don't imagine that they could be caught up in what (deservedly) happens to Those People. It's a worldview built on outgroup antagonism, you'll wait a long time for them to make an imaginative leap of empathy.

empathy has nothing to do with it. only delusional fantasists think that limitless state violence is feasible. the only people who would support that would be rahowa lunatics who think pushing the antagonism further from both sides will lead to race war and successful genocide. most authoritarians realise something has to be kept in reserve, violence is most effective when unseen.

You could delete "violence" and the specific examples you gave and that would be almost as true of the culture at large.

this is correct, yet slightly misunderstood. why wouldn't violence culture be performative? realness is the delusion of its subscribers. they don't realise they look more fake and preening than the feminized mass culture they profess to see through.

It is a whole culture devoted to being so thoroughly and meticulously equipped and prepared to overwhelm the quarry that it makes you wonder (a) has gear supplanted character as the reigning indicator of masculinity; and (b) when you spend so much money on this stuff, when you drool at it when reading the magazines, when you elevate it to talismanic status in your favorite messageboard.... isn't it a pity if you end up not using it? Is it possible that the whole process of researching the product, eroticizing it, fondling it, reading the manual, and taking it out to the practice range (or what have you) make you lean toward finding pretexts for putting it to use?

It's as though there's little interest in being David any more; the manly virtue is to be Goloath, especially if he owns a bunch of really cool shit with which to neutralize all threats or desired targets.

― never have i been a blue calm sea (collardio gelatinous), Thursday, 21 August 2014 06:45 (8 hours ago)

this is excellent. the hunting nonsense is not something that is apparent in the uk, where hunts are mostly organized trips for stockbrokers who cosplay being victorian lairds while discharging antique shotguns into the vague direction of partridges and pheasants.

the whole thing is an assymetric warfare mentality, fetishism of superior hardware rather than superior fight in any intrinsic sense. traditionally violence culture is about concealment, veiled threat and allusion.if you look at photographs of sas or soe operatives from world war two they do not look like mma fighters. it was often observed how many of them were quite small and unprepossessing, lithe and adapted to subterfuge and concealment.

supposedly a roid culture has developed in the uk military in the last decade. resembling an nfl fullback is not something that is of any great pragmatic use in 21st c assymetric warfare, if anything it is likely to inhibit agility and endurance, but it surely makes them feel better.

typically you aren't really understanding anything. ferguson is what happens when you have lost. tanks in the streets and sniper rifles on unarmed civilians is an endgame stategy, ceaucescu, yanukovich. since they do not have license to use them fully in situations like ferguson, absent a level of insurrectionary violence that has not and is not likely to be displayed, they look vestigial and futile. the last sentence is your usual homiletic obviousness. there is a video from ferguson of a solitary frightened fat cop hysterically swearing at protesters while gesturing with the sort of firearm that could kill an elk with a single round from a mile away. the protesters are laughing and baiting him.

― Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (nakhchivan), Thursday, August 21, 2014 6:38 AM (27 minutes ago)

not saying the police response is actually accomplishing anything. i agree that such displays have obviously become self-defeating when mainstream conservative voices begin to push back. my point was narrower, perhaps tangential, addressed only to your characterization of "the most vicious authoritarian". the license to harm granted by such types to civil authorities varies enormously depending on the targets in question and the level of perceived threat at large. not claiming that's any grand insight, but nor is it much in doubt, imo.

and sure, armed authority can always seem laughable, be laughed at. granted, but i simply don't see the 'roided-raging, hypermilitary police response in ferguson as intrinsically camp. not yet. the muscle on display would lose its ability to intimidate if it were never flexed, but this whole situation exists because, where the police are concerned, the killing technology isn't just for show. and sure, maybe the tide recedes decisively from this point, but maybe it doesn't. maybe, over the next decade or so, we become increasingly used to this sort of iron-fisted response, the resulting detente. and maybe then we can begin then to comfortably chortle at the campiness of toothless civil authorities dressed up all robocop, threatening force they're not prepared to use. for the moment, i'm nowhere near convinced that some asshole won't pull a trigger, kill another kid. nowhere near convinced that a group of cops backed into a corner and feeling threatened won't put some of that hardware to lethal use. which dulls my amusement just a little.

i mean, nazi militarism, power-fetishism and self-importance can look rather camp from a sufficient remove, but you seem to equate violent camp with the failure of would-be-controlling power to effectively manifest itself. tbh, i'm not terribly worried about this being the harbinger of nascent fascism, but nor does it strike me as a self-popping balloon. i suppose we will see.

plus fuck you. no cause to personalize shit like that.

one difference is that the nazis, despite history whitewashing to the contrary, weren't occupying germany. things that work when done against a foreign population delegitimize itself when done to domestic population.

wasn't even considering legitimacy. i'd say the nazis pretty effectively occupied certain parts of germany; the parts the weren't inclined to get with the program.

the problem is you post prolix partially educated nonsense on every thread which by accident or design engages your calvinist lectern mentality. sometimes it is liable to get treated as the tl;dr timewasting that it usually is.

tbf contenderizer, you've been a bit insufferable as of late. lots of third-person omniscient posting.

okay, let me tighten that up for you. fuck off.

not saying i can't take a word of friendly advice, mordy, but this whole thread tends to the 3rd person omnicient. it's there in nakh's op. but then again, the tone you're objecting to (not alone, mind), is obviously invisible to me.

Personally I think "what a pompous insufferable ass" upon seconds of submitting most of my posts.

But I agree with contenderizer that third-person grand theorizing is what this thread invites. We're all throwing spaghetti at the wall.

yah but the acid test is 'would I read a book written like this'

I'm tone deaf enough to need to ask: Srsly?

i think my main objection to contenderizer is that his post is essentially accusing nakh of making light of the phenomena through his contextualization of camp - which is just the same, tho more intelligently formed, objection of anyone who says 'you're not taking this seriously enough.' true, anyone with a gun pointed at them will be frightened, and true, the police officers themselves surely don't recognize the absurdity in themselves. but that doesn't mean there isn't an element of theatricality going on. not to mention that the performance of violence is under-theorized imo, making the objection more of a derail than just throwing pasta at a wall.

and one shouldn't need to parse the differences between the Nazis and the Ferguson PD to make that point

third person omniscient is fine sometimes. if anything conty tends too much to the reflexive first person, nothing can go without comment refracted through his four hundred and eighty seven years of continuous terrerstrial existence during which he has laboriously examined everything under the sun. a lot of scientia producing not an awful lot of potentia.

yah but the acid test is 'would I read a book written like this'

surely that's gonna vary from one of us to the next. your "insightful erudition" might be my "self-indulgent preening", and vice-versa. i mean, i could fling childish shit at others' posting style for sport, but hardly see what good that might accomplish.

fwiw, i don't feel that nakh is taking anything too lightly. the performance of lethality doesn't strike me as "paradoxically feeble" in the manner he suggests, but i don't fault the perception.

xp dude, people just like tossing off ideas sometimes. like doing a crossword puzzle. nothing can go without examination when it comes to opportunities to demonstrate your brilliance. nakhchivan is a man who's traveled the desert, come down from the mountain, and blasts our minds with the terrifying light of a god's mind.

surely that's gonna vary from one of us to the next.

well exactly. and one of us and the next have spoken ;)

i'm sorry i shot your dog, nakh. okay? i'm sorry.

it goes w/out saying that the patron saint of ILAFL is ilx's finest poster

i have brown-nosed nakh enough. maybe it is time to develop some cool opinions about him

surely that's gonna vary from one of us to the next. your "insightful erudition" might be my "self-indulgent preening", and vice-versa

― Adding ease. Adding wonder. Adding (contenderizer), Thursday, 21 August 2014 17:01 (43 seconds ago)

yeah except fortunately it is possible to parse the two. if collardo worries that he is a pompous insufferable ass then that it is because he lacks confidence in his own eminent lucidity and erudition rather than because this is a relativist swamp where such discriminations are impossible.

anyway i am on record as generally being in approval of contenderizer. in this instance you are just not going for the core argument and engaging in obfuscatory asides. it's not unfair to give this short shrift else you get into a tiresome tuomasism where every irrelevant thing is queried endlessly.

pish. i won't bicker. asides are no huge threat to conversation, but i do tend to forget that disagreement rarely improves relations. on that note, i like that there's a thread specifically dedicated to the grotesque swolesomeness of contemporary american masculinity, whether or not we limited ourselves to post-9/11 violence culture bloat. i like the focus on militarized masculine power as performative.

if anything, i'd like to suggest that the risible campiness of the culture in question depends a lot on where one stands, and that in turn is often a product of class. in going on at length earlier in the thread, i was trying (if poorly) to steer the conversation that way. from within gear-dependent american working-class culture, the gun show may look a little more convincing & proportionate.

i skip every contenderizer post. who has the time to not-think along with them.

also i'm aware of my weaknesses in posting, have no problem if there are people out there who find me not worth engaging, and try to take the feedback i get implicitly or explicitly into account to "post better", not without a high failure rate.

let's not turn this into a circular firing squad; after all even the least of the ILAFL cadre is still bringing valuable content to the fore

valuable like bucketing out the contents of a stopped-up toilet

be nice. despite my complaining i've generally enjoyed contederizer's contributions to ilx.

i wrote that wrong. i meant "the bucketed-out contents of a stopped-up toilet". essential distinction.

Guys, you can't fight in here, this is the violence culture thread.

I don't think I understand why campily excessive displays of power would necessarily be self-undermining or self-limiting. Who's going to de-escalate?

only delusional fantasists think that limitless state violence is feasible.

Well, not "limitless". But they're nowhere near the upper bound yet, compared to what (other) authoritarian police states have done.

Having spent considerable time in a couple of these violence cultures myself (NFL football fandom, Evangelical eschatology and dominionism), I've not noticed too many people voicing doubts, counseling moderation or even looking sheepish about having gone too far.

ferguson is what happens when you have lost. tanks in the streets and sniper rifles on unarmed civilians is an endgame stategy

Was Tiananmen Square an endgame?

things that work when done against a foreign population delegitimize itself when done to domestic population.

Do Fox News viewers consider the people protesting in Ferguson to be a legitimate domestic population?

i think there is a way in which the state's inability to exercise restraint makes them seem, paradoxically, more powerless. the monopoly force that underwrites political authority works better when it is unseen, unspoken, and unquestioned. once it is actualized it brings questioning into play and also makes the state seem kind of pathetic, like it is insecure in its authority.

^^^ otm

yh

It makes sense in a way - you can't effectively have chaos and a strong fascist power

I've browsed through a few heavily trafficked hunting forums, checking out the "off-topic" or politics sub-forums. What's striking isn't so much the predictable identification with the white cop or the characterization of Mike Brown and protesters as thugs or animals, but something that this thread has been touching on.

What's striking throughout the discussion in those forums is how little importance (none, actually) is accorded to the values of courage and self-discipline. In other words, what surprises me is not so much the fact that Brown is assumed to be a dangerous, fearsome target (a pot smoking shoplifting black thug who may "charge" at any moment with his upraised hands), but the unembarrassed readiness of so many to announce that they too, would succumb to that fear and find no other recourse than to shower the thug with bullets. Nobody gets called out on this, either.

So yeah, it does lead me to think that we're dealing with a weird take on manhood. Consumer culture feeds into this in various ways methinks, not just the gear culture we've discussed but also the celebration of self-expression and instant gratification. I might be getting facile here, so I'll just leave it there for now. Let's just say this violence culture could not be further removed from that of the samurai.

great thread apart from the cattiness, CG killing it

thanks dp

i think this article from harpers is relevant to the thread -- it's about dan baum doing conceal-carry for the first time in his life, and the associated feelings of awareness/discipline/fear/etc it inspired: https://www.sendspace.com/file/umzust

good read so far, ty

Relevant?

One Twitter stream I came across recently was from a British radical who happily provided a running commentary, as he sat eating in a café, of the flogging he was watching take place in a nearby public square.

There are several factors to explain what drives young men raised in Britain to such cruelty.

One is the classic macho enthusiasm — characteristic of all thugs and gangsters — to revel in power. In England, Hamindur may only have been a High Street retail assistant. In Syria, he held the power of life and death in his trigger finger.

The life of the jihadist might be dangerous, but, to a twisted mind, it is also exciting. One British fighter in Syria posted on Twitter a picture of some home-made explosives with the arrogant, deadly message: ‘I hear that the British Government is worried about what skills I might be learning here.’

Was Tiananmen Square an endgame?

― Plasmon, Thursday, 21 August 2014 19:53 (Yesterday)

the difference is that there was notable violence from dissidents prior to the massacre, there are plenty of photos of lynched prc soldiers; tianenmen square was an extremely ruthless and vicious sort of instrumental response to a perceived existential threat to the state, it was not wholly performative

excellent thread, ty nakh

feel like Ferguson stirred up some cognitive dissonance going on in the American psyche between cop-as-cop (like all those TV shows and the fading McGruff image of the friendly guy on the beat) and cop-as-soldier. lotta "interesting" (in a dystopian way) & disparate elements to all this - returning vets, MMA psychology, fashion, state control, etc.

what surprises me is not so much the fact that Brown is assumed to be a dangerous, fearsome target (a pot smoking shoplifting black thug who may "charge" at any moment with his upraised hands), but the unembarrassed readiness of so many to announce that they too, would succumb to that fear and find no other recourse than to shower the thug with bullets.

I thought about this trend when Renisha McBride was killed, that it was inevitable Wafer's defense would rest on convincing everyone that he was desperately afraid of a teenage girl on the other side of a locked door. And how could that be spun as anything other than profoundly shaming/emasculating to the kind of person who cares about that kind of masculinity?

Thank everything holy for that verdict but the fact that his case wasn't widely pronounced to be more shameful by his own demographic peers can only be explained by what this thread is exploring.

Well, that plus racism.

Guys, you can't fight in here, this is the violence culture thread.

*golf clap*

ha

portentousness alert

i'm cataloging photographs taken of law students doing csi/west wing cosplay for a "counter-terror simulation" in 2012. it looks like a serial drama extension of five-years-after coed life complete with token minority. if there was a meanwhile in iraq subplot it would need a lot of curly facial hair and a playground of contemporary orientalist signifiers to go with it, ultimately making sense only as an "evil" reflection of a heartland character drama. this is our preferred reality. the ones at the top are most fluent in the sign language of the most crucial and charged simulations which are only made possible by various shifting binaries that must be whacked like moles regularly, the further down the chain the better. this is where violence culture and the men and women who carry it out reside.

thanks to Matt DC for finding this thread again.

A friend posted this on FB and I immediately thought about this discussion.

https://popula.com/2019/02/24/about-face/