the alt-right

I seriously doubt even the most knowledgeable scholar can keep that shit straight ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

as usual, whatever point you are trying to make seems both incoherent and irrelevant

Perhaps it might help if you didn't pull one sentence out from the middle of it?

But the thing is, the members of parliament in Britain weren't exactly serfs either, they were quite depended on the societal system as well.

why is this relevant

Go ask the peasants being squeezed by everyone above them whether or not they liked the system

We can't, they're all dead and generally didn't leave behind twitter feeds.

There were republics and democracies in antiquity,

all of them involved strong heads of state and severely limited the franchise, and even then they tended to be the exception, not the rule, as forms of government. The French and American Revolutions built on these examples, but were also radical departures. This is fairly conventional wisdom.

who knows what on earth happened in Italy and Germany in the middle ages up through the renaissance

there are p clear (if complex) historical records of what forms of gov't existed in these places during this time. They did not have republics or democracies in any real functional sense.

I don't buy the idea of democracy as a 'switch' - and it works both ways: the founding fathers were slaveowners, the French who wrote of the Rights of Man still wanted to keep Haiti as a slave system, and nobody thought women should be included.

OK sure, in this respect they were v much like the republics/democracies of antiquity that they looked to for inspiration. But they *were* broader in terms of the voting franchise and various other enumerated rights. This is what Mordy was getting at by specifically tying the ideas of the french revolution to the (yes, revolutionary) idea of universal emancipation. Which was definitely not "mainstream" before then.

Distribution of power has been a gradual process, and it does go back and forth.

No one's really arguing this point. But you seem to want to jump on Mordy for positing the French Revolution as a significant turning point, even though it's undeniable that it was just based on how it affected other subsequent developments, how it impacted the US, etc. This stuff is v well documented, it isn't controversial.

Frederik will tear us apart, again ;_;

I seriously doubt even the most knowledgeable scholar can keep that shit straight ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

― Frederik B, Friday, February 10, 2017 10:54 PM (forty-one minutes ago)

lol at this

who even knows what quantum mechanics is, i seriously doubt even the most knowledgeable physicist can keep that stuff straight

Shakey, I think you're simplifying history. Massively. What Mordy was talking about wasn't just political history, but history of mentalities - and I have studied that, for years, the Annales shit, Roger Chartier, Carlo Ginzburg, etc. While the Revolutions are massive turning points, it's not as if they just all of a sudden made people think differently. But the people who drove them were, as you say, the ones who left twitter feeds. But what were the thoughts of the people in the many, many peasant revolts, or the millennial movements, or the religious 'fanatics' like the cathars?

When I've read the testimonies of medieval peasants - and is it really mostly 'testimonies', because they've mostly left written records from when they were dragged into court - it's so often surprising the open mindset they had. Which, of course, was why they got in trouble with the law to begin with.

I also kinda think most scholars of quantum mechanics would agree they still don't understand what it 'is' as much as what it 'does', btw ;)

Go ask the peasants being squeezed by everyone above them whether or not they liked the system

We can't, they're all dead and generally didn't leave behind twitter feeds.

― Οὖτις

thank christ for small favors

ok Frederik so it seems like yr real issue is w this:

the french revolution is really the genesis in western civ of things like universal emancipation going mainstream ... it seems pretty evident that there was a political breakthrough in terms of our expectations for the correct organization of society that took a long time to ferment before hitting a critical mass

and specifically with the "mainstream" and "critical mass" terminology, which is doing the heavy lifting here

I assume your explanation re: why democracy flowered after the French Revolution has nothing to do with its ideas becoming incredibly popular

See, I don't even know what you're talking about? Where did democracy flower after the French revolution? Did any country become democratic between 1789 and, I don't know, 1848? (Really, I'm asking, I don't know)

The reason I jumped into the discussion was because it seemed to me that Mordy suggested authoritarianism was popular as such today, and had been in the past. When really, feudalism, monarchism, had to use incredible violence to keep the plundered population in check. And probably the main reason that I find the neo-reactionaries to be completely useless is that they either ignore, or lie, about this. At least in what I've read.

It's like with communism: At this point you can't ignore the question of political violence, which is why Slavoj Zizek is worthwhile while JacobinMag is worthless.

i think you misunderstood what i was saying.

it's kinda wild that a philosophy of govt (authoritarianism/monarchism) that was the predominant one throughout every culture in the world for thousands of years is so marginal now that its adherents are seen as weird kooks

i was merely noting that for an ideology (authoritarianism) that defined most of human existence, it's interesting that today in the West ppl who advocate for it are considered marginal figures. that is all.

i think maybe you're not sure about the meaning of omnipresent?

I really don't think that idea was ever omnipresent. Took a heck of a lot of violence to stamp out all other ideas all the time.

what does its omnipresence have to do with the violence it inflicted?

mordy, nick land's twitter account is a lot less uh subtle about where he actually stands than his theoretical texts are - https://twitter.com/Outsideness

tho he does seem to have brought in more slipperiness there too lately. some reflective older tweets - https://twitter.com/Outsideness/status/498491899016003584 / https://twitter.com/Outsideness/status/498147406593028098 / https://twitter.com/Outsideness/status/497084751400796161

the racism/race realism probably the least interesting thing about neoreactionaries and something they share w/ the populist nativists that they despise

Isn't it essential to their program? They want to defeat the idea of universality.

I'd want to learn more about what, if anything, Bannon takes from Moldbug. He is really smitten with this idea of a grand clash of civilizations, and I think he sees in this conflict an opportunity for "the West" to assert itself as a particular ideological force. His ideas aren't too far from Houellebecq's -- in "Submission" France dissolves because it doesn't stand for anything, it doesn't offer people some concrete explanation of who they are and what they should do. I think that's how Bannon sees the liberal West, especially America, whose identity is supposed to reside in its very pluralism.

In any case this is all extraordinarily dangerous stuff. We live in a pluralistic world; any political program that tries to turn back the clock on that by inflaming long simmering cultural conflicts is a program of destruction. I don't know how the left will overcome it but I think it should start with affirming universality as a positive value in clearer, starker terms. They need to have a strong narrative if they're going to go up against Bannon.

it's certainly an important feature (not sure that it's 100% necessary to the core idea which is anti-democracy and pro-authoritarian - we can all be equal under the caesar) and certainly there are cruder and more sophisticated ways of defeating universality. when they engage in the basest bigotry masquerading as an important part of their ideology then it's the clearest that it's just a sop for their baser instincts. not all cultures are the same and some have more successful memes than others = something that is obviously true to everyone but the most ideologically committed liberal. hurr hurr jews love money = like gmafb i need to read a thousand pages of neoreactionary thought for something i could get from a 4chan meme?

Yeah I think a lot of this is a kind of pseudo-intellectual cover for racism/base tribalism. But that's what reactionary politics very often is. In the Magic Mountain there is a character called Naphta who attacks humanism on the ground that it deals in ideals, not reality, that nothing in its message speaks to people's emotional needs. His actual ideology was all over the place, including some far right ideas, some anarchistic ones, and involving a veneration of the Gothic middle ages, but the main current was just a general resentment of the kind of optimism one would need to believe that a successful society could be built on the basis of freedom and equality.

That's how I see Bannon -- I'm not sure he knows what kind of world he wants, just that he is dissatisfied with this one. It's an incredibly childish way to look at the world, but one that is obviously shared by the throngs of people who voted for Trump because they craved "change."

http://jezebel.com/check-out-these-dribbling-nazi-milkboys-1792240299

i was merely noting that for an ideology (authoritarianism) that defined most of human existence, it's interesting that today in the West ppl who advocate for it are considered marginal figures. that is all.

― Mordy, 11. februar 2017 02:05 (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sorry if I read more into it than there is, but this just seems really uninteresting and basic. Authoritarianism as practiced was never popular, and rested on extreme suppression and violence, so it's really not surprising that once people got rid of it, it became marginalized. It's a bit like asking why nazism was marginalized in Germany so quickly after it had been law of the land for years. It's really not surprising at all. It failed, it was marginalized.

Nazism was fairly popular in Germany, wasn't it? and there were polls taken in West Germany in the 1950s still showing a pretty high level of support for Hitler and nazism

You're not seriously arguing that nazism wasn't marginalized after the war, are you?

it was marginalized after the war, but I don't think it's correct to say it "was never popular" or that its maintenance between 1933-45 rested solely on "extreme suppression and violence"

Look, not to turn the tables, but a lot of you guys don't really live in former feudalist monarchies. I'm guessing you don't read the same history books in school that for example Danish kids does, don't walk around monuments to the freeing of the serfs as in Copenhagen.

soref, that 'solely' you've inserted into my sentence really does a lot of work there ;)

Authoritarianism has been popular, and welcomed with open arms, in the past and will be again in the future.

Sorry if I read more into it than there is, but this just seems really uninteresting and basic.

Ffs dude it was a throwaway line in a larger post I'm not the guy who spent his time trying to disprove it

Authoritarianism seems attractive to some people when, for whatever reason, they don't feel democracy is working out for them. Likewise demorcracy seems attractive to people when they are being crushed under the yoke of authoritarian rule. It's harder to stir those democratic feelings, however, in people for whom the authoritarian rule seems to be working out just fine.

In America today many people were attracted to the idea of Trump going into the White House, kicking out a bunch of Washington dead weight, and acting unilaterally to close the borders, expel immigrants, and put people to work. He ran as an authoritarian -- his two messages were 1.) everything is a mess because the people in charge are either indecisive idiots or corrupt phonies who don't have the best interests of the nation at heart and 2.) if we don't act now "we won't have a country anymore." This was a popular message. People liked the fact that he wasn't deferential to the norms that sustain democracy, like tolerating the free press or refraining from propagating conspiracy theories.

If Trump weren't incompetent I believe his supporters would still be enthusiastic about his style of governance. Under an authoritarian regime, only *some* are repressed, and the kinds of people who like authoritarians aren't the type to feel concerned about the rights of others.

Fred is right that old forms of repression -- slavery, serfdom -- aren't popular anymore, and people would never consent to be slaves or whatever. But that's not what they think will happen to them under the kinds of authoritarian regimes that attract them.

Fred is right that old forms of repression -- slavery, serfdom -- aren't popular anymore, and people would never consent to be slaves or whatever.

this just seems really uninteresting and basic

Yeah but thats what he is arguing for whatever reason

I tried reading part 1 of the Moldbug open letter again. I'm suspecting fairly strongly that he is just not a very intelligent person.

I feel the same way about Bannon. But I think with both of them the tendency to speak of history in broad strokes, identifying general patterns, can be seductive to people who aren't usually exposed to that kind of thing. Like there is no question in my mind that Donald Trump believes Steve Bannon is the smartest person he has ever spoken to.

Hey, sorry guys. My bad. I tried to see interesting opinions where there really were none. It really just was a bunch of Americans trying to say how Europeans feel about our past, based on having listened to the Revolutions podcast. And I shouldn't have engaged with this worthless discussion. Sorry, my bad.

Oh shut up, Fred.

xp i disagree. he says things that i know are wrong but he also says things that are interesting + frames things in provocative ways. tbh i'm surprised when someone reads open letter and comes away thinking it's just the ramblings of some dumb dude. xxp

stfu fred. last night i almost wrote that i don't understand why you can't comprehend a banal one line i wrote but then i felt bad and didn't post it. now i feel less bad. you spent hours arguing that authoritarianism wasn't omnipresent throughout history bc the romans had a senate, we don't know what kind of government medieval europe had, and the french revolution wasn't very revolutionary. you're a fucking moron just take your lumps and gtfo until you have something to contribute.

I said I'm sorry. I thought you couldn't seriously just mean that authoritarianism was widespread, because that would be the most pointless, stupid, worthless observation ever made. You must have been trying to say something about the idea of authoritarianism. You weren't. You were just writing absolute rubbish, and I read too much into it. Mea culpa.

wtf why are you so fucking dense

i said that at one time in history authoritarianism was so omnipresent that even the revolutionaries could only conceive of a constitutional monarchy as the way forward for emancipation and that in contrast today ppl who advocate for authoritarianism are painted as kooks in mainstream magazines. it wasn't a particularly exciting, original, or adventurous remark but it was just one line and i was making a larger point about sea changes in human ideology. somehow from that you got that i was making some point about how everyone used to love authoritarianism bc, and tho you won't admit it, it appears you didn't know what the word omnipresent meant. which is fine, english isn't your first language. but instead of just saying oops you've now doubled down and shit yourself over and over in order to avoid admitting to a very obvious and not v embarrassing truth about yourself.

as usual the coverup is worse than the crime and still instead of coming clean you're trying to turn it around as though i should be embarrassed that my banal point (that authoritarianism was widespread) was in fact banal. that was the fucking pt you tedious dullard.

Mordy, your larger point about 'sea changes in human ideology' is horseshit as well. I misunderstood what you meant by 'omnipresent', sure. But you have absolutely no fucking idea what you're talking about, and you're arguing about European history with a European history major, and clowning him on whether or not he speaks English as well as you do.

i'm not clowning you is the thing. i assumed this was the communication problem. it could've been cleared up simply but noting that but instead you've tried to make it into an argument about something else entirely. i really don't think it's embarrassing that someone with english skills as good as yours doesn't know a particular ten dollar word. i think it's embarrassing that once that became clear instead of just copping to it you've tried to cover up for it. i can't even figure out what new argument you've tried to shift to except that you're an expert in european history and i'm not which okay who the fuck cares? like you say, i've said nothing controversial only banal and uninteresting so why do i need a major in european history to say such things? i think you're in a mode of argumentation but your argument got pulled out from under you but instead of moving dispositions you're still stuck in an argument. the argument, now gone, all that is left is your umbrage but contentless and empty of meaning. just shake hands like a grown-up and move on. god.

by* noting that

Fred you gave the declaration of the rights of man to a 15th century French person do you think he would find the ideas familiar and logical, the kind of thing people tend to think but don't dare express? Or do you think he would say that this is a really different way of conceptualizing the relation between man and the state and I haven't seen much else like it before?

* insert "if" bw "Fred" and "you"