the alt-right

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"

This thread turned epic? Why is there - is that poop? How did it get on the wall?

and btw for an expert in european history you don't have much to offer on the subject and apparently aren't familiar w/ anything within the medieval european history discipline which even an ignoramus like me knows is prolific from studying medieval european jewish history. you're derisive about mike duncan's podcast, a pretty bright and curious guy, but you might benefit from reviewing some of these topics yourself. finally, even though your outrage is completely asinine and misplaced, maybe even this can be a learning experience because now you know how americans feel when you pontificate about american politics despite having only a poor grasp of them.

anyway i've enjoyed this little spar if only bc it has made me feel nostalgic for classic nakh takedowns which i'm clearly only able to mimic in their most superficial ways. u deserve far more acerbic mockery than i'm able to dredge-up.

Any continents you're not an expert on, Fred?

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?

― Treeship, 11. februar 2017 15:19 (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I depends on the person, especially his or her 'class', but most of the peasant population would probably find it extremely complex and convoluted, and not that important to his or her own existence. If you asked him or her whether or not he or she wanted to radically change the system away from it's authoritarian ways, I'd suspect most would say yes. And they quite often did try and change the system, and was struck down with extreme violence.

I've never said I'm an expert, btw. Most of what I've said is things I learned in middle school in Denmark. But I've taken university courses in South American, African and Asian history as well, yeah. As I said, I'm a history major.

I do like Mike Duncan, btw. Listen to him myself. He also does explain that the people he talk about in England and France aren't that representative of the entire populations of those places. Something I think is lost on quite a lot of you. As Shakey said, they're the ones with twitter feeds. But if anybody wants to read what a simple medieval miller thought, go read Carlo Ginzburg's The Cheese and the Worms, btw. A masterpiece of history of mentalities.

ffs u're a pompous little shit. i read cheese and the worms in college as well as the night battles and ecstasies. you still have yet to say anything that isn't either a) needlessly pedantic and wrong or b) self-aggrandizing and tedious.

Fred I know most people were illiterate and unversed in political theory in medieval and early modern Europe.

The french revolution was more than a peasant uprising though. A lot of the force behind it was fueled by economic grievances, but the ideology aimed at transforming the entire society according to universalist principles. That's why it was a revolution.

do you even know what you're arguing? you're all over the place. you're surely not arguing that there wasn't a major shift in the conception of human rights over the course of modern european history. even you are not dim enough to think that's the case. instead you're trying to make some case that peasants in authoritarian europe didn't like being ruled by a king. of course if they thought about how much they disliked it at all (for someone who thinks he understands mentalities you sure don't get how ppl become inured to the conditions they're born into) they certainly didn't conceive of how the system would be radically altered years later. but even then - no one said they liked it or was discussing their opinions on the topic at all. i just don't know what to do w/ you. it's like arguing w/ a college freshman who is way too infatuated w/ his own brilliance despite knowing v little. xp

you still have yet to say anything that isn't either a) needlessly pedantic and wrong or b) self-aggrandizing and tedious.

― Mordy, 11. februar 2017 15:38 (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And neither has anyone else in this thread. And neither has Mencius Moldbug. So the whole thing is fucking stupid.

"do you even know what you're arguing?"

No I don't. And I've admitted to that, repeatedly. The problem is, I have no fucking idea what you're arguing either, and I suspect you don't either.

I thought I knew what you were arguing, turns out I was wrong. But you've substituted my misconception with nothing of interest, instead you're just extremely agressive and seems obsessed with whether or not I understand English correctly.

... ok whatever.

Eventually those ideas became second nature even to everyday people. Ask a Trump supporter whether the president should be beholden to the rule of law. They know that they are supposed to say yes, even if in practice they want Trump to steamroll over people. Authoritarianism is taboo now -- when it emerges it tries to disguise itself by using democratic language -- but before the age of revolutions there was no need for that, authoritarianism was in itself taken to be an acceptable, even obvious way to organize society. People did not believe that sovereignty resided in "the people" in past centuries; now they do. The toothpaste is out of the tube. That was Mordy's point. (If I understand it correctly.)

Sorry lol xposts to my last post

yes u do. it really was not a v complex or interesting pt as i've said so don't understand why we had to spend so much time on it.

Treesh, what you write still don't answers my main question about this whole discussion. I think it boils down to what you mean by "authoritarianism was in itself taken to be an acceptable, even obvious way to organize society". It can mean two things 1) Authoritarianism was called what it was, and wasn't dressed up in democratic language. Which is banal and pointless, but ok. Or, what I thought Mordy meant 2) That the acceptability of authoritarianism was uncontested and natural, which it wasn't. It rested on violent repression and extreme ideological indoctrination through the church.

And I think from where you sit, you see the reason people don't like authoritarianism anymore to be because of the adaptation of the universalist principles from the French revolutionaries, and not the historical memory of the extreme brutality of the former regimes. And I'm telling you, as a European, I didn't learn about the fancy scrolls from US and France in middle school, but the history books were filled with drawings of executions, burnings, torture, etc. It's much more practical than philosophical.

And I might be wrong about what you think.

I think what you're missing Fred is that when you're born into authoritarianism it is all you know; your political imagination is stunted. So even if you hate the government maybe you wish you have a more enlightened ruler but you don't even have a conception of universal suffrage to yearn for. But once such a thing is implemented - slowly and in stages that phased out the authoritarian - the imagination is expanded. The acceptability of authoritarianism /was/ uncontested and natural. You're confusing resisting say a religious hegemony (like say Jews in Catholic Spain or Catholics in Protestant UK) or resisting onerous taxes or resisting some other malady of authoritarianism, with resisting the very concept of a central monarchy itself. The latter took an ideological sea change to happen. It was not, as your suggesting, fermenting on the minds of all peasants laboring under oppression. They bemoaned the oppression but they didn't conceptualize this new way of organizing society. I don't think this is particularly controversial even.

robin hood just wanted a better king