the alt-right

and the winner on all three judges scorecards.....

The material suffering of the colonized is part of the reason why colonialism was wrong. Moldbug does not exactly say this, though, as much as he is using the quote as evidence that progressives value these nebulous abstract concepts of independence and freedom even when they come along with material suffering (I think...?)

I think you're right about this argument. I always read this as a combination of a criticism of dogmatic liberalism that sees abstract concepts as valuable even when they come with material suffering as well as a little bit of the classic /bringing civilization to the savages/ argument. I think there's a way to see both sides - that liberal post-colonialism has valued the end of colonization even when the material conditions that followed their end were far worse than the conditions that preceded them (cf the rise of political Islam in the wake of European withdrawal from the Middle East and Northern Africa - though I'd argue that is just replacing one terrible colonialism with a worse one), even while the crimes committed during colonialism were very real. Or even that it's possible to celebrate the end of colonialism even while understanding the value of the institutions and cultures that colonialism introduced in various places (there's an interesting thing about maintaining the institutions of colonialism in the wake of post-colonialism as being one of the hallmarks of countries that successfully navigated the transition). But like he says in that piece - even if virus X is wrong, that doesn't mean Y is right. I don't know if he thinks neocolonialism is the right approach (um - I really mean post-neocolonialism since I think he's advocating for actual colonialism and is probably not interested in what we consider capitalist neocolonialism - though maybe he thinks it's a good compromise) or just that the narrative that is predominant regarding this is simplistic.

re nationalism I think he's right that there's a lot of confusion on this mark. there's no question that the liberal West has supported ethnic nationalism when it comes to some groups and demonized it when it comes to others - or celebrated native/indigenous control among some groups and demeaned it for others. this could just be a consequence of a simplistic view that glorifies the marginalized and marginalizes the powerful (so that if you're doing okay you should be doing less okay and if you're not doing great you could do better) but i mean i often see regarding issues like immigration, ethnic/racial control + power, nationalism, etc at the very least a willingness to overlook the crimes of nationalism perpetrated by some groups contrasted w/ others. Again, does this mean that we should embrace self-interested nationalism for everyone, or should we be consistent and oppose it for everyone, or some third option? I think neoreactionaries go with the first option when the second two are probably better imo.

iirc and I'd have to reread I think his point about WW2 is that it was more about maintaining/protecting a global hegemony than it was about opposing the humanitarian crimes of the Nazis. i think that's pretty true even if there's nothing wrong with trying to defend against a totalitarian regime bent on world domination (and unlike north korea possibly able to achieve it). if anything i think the US was consistent on this pt - refusing to accept Jewish refugees that would've saved 4-6 million lives and basically ignoring the crimes against the Jews (and other marginalized groups) up until they were forced into the war by an attack on them personally.

Does the ruling class of the US, who fought a Cold War against the Communist world for 45 years, really treat Communist atrocities as a peccadillo?

i think this point is for the truest of the ones you've mentioned - at least for "ruling class" defined as the academy/media class. at least ime in the academy. a peccadillo would probably be a good thing since it was often lionized.

Ok, Fred. You understand what I'm saying and you're dragging this out to save face. So let me help you out. You're 100% right, thank you for showing me the error of my ways, etc.

I'll never get that hour back.

i must have spent at least an hour arguing with fred - i'd suggest your hour reading moldbug was more worthwhile

Also Fred - one more note for now (I have to go out to lunch soon) - I think maybe another possible confusion here is that you're interpreting authoritarianism exclusively according to its most violent/dictatorial characterization. The term implies a strong central power and limited freedoms. You keep mentioning examples of ppl who had a limited amount of freedom or strove for a limited amount of self-determination as proof that the authoritarian model was itself contested. I'm arguing that this is a confusion. Even among ppl - like the German peasants - who wanted better conditions for themselves, their imagination did not include toppling the monarchy. This is the central pt and only bolsters my initial point. Among those who rebelled violently against their regimes, EVEN they still did not dream of ending the monarchy. One of the twelve principles of the German Peasants War was that "The nobility shall not force more services or dues from the peasant without payment. The peasant should help the lord when it is necessary and at proper times." Does this sound like a radical alteration of the basis of society? You are correct, there are antecedents to universal emancipation. There were attempts to acquire levels of liberty that were in almost every case COMPATIBLE with an authoritarian form of government. Read authoritarian for monarchist (tho not all authoritarian govs are monarchies) and you'll understand better I think. These ppl weren't looking to overturn the monarchy. They were trying to improve the material conditions of their lives. I think you know this.

Like the neoreactionaries are not advocating for a violent dictatorial authoritarian obviously! They are advocating for an enlightened ruler, a philosopher king, etc. What they are advocating would not just be an acceptable belief in almost the entirety of history but would in fact be a leftist reformer position! This is one of the arguments - Democracy has become such an ideological hegemony that even this extremely left-wing authoritarian position is utterly discredited + marginalized.

I'll just quote what I wrote upthread, because it's still kinda the crux of it:

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.

When they're arguing for 'an enlightened ruler, a philosopher king', they're arguing for something that never existed. And never can exist, and history has shown this pretty decisively. Which is why their viewpoint is discredited and marginalized.

They ARE advocating for 'a violent dictatorial authoritarian', they're just lying about it.

Some authoritarians were clearly better than others but I'd agree w/ possibly this point whole-heartedly: the possibility of abuse when there is absolute power is too significant, and the ability to cause damage with such power too extreme, to ever allow it even if this current guy is ok the next guy might not be. which doesn't insulate democracy from the possibility of abuse but from my limited perspective it has done a better job than authoritarianism at mitigating such abuses. or to quote really the most banal cliche we possibly could: "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Since Plato there have been people who argued that an enlightened despot would be a better guardian of individual freedom/social stability than democracy, which can tend toward mob rule. For Plato, it was democracy which had been proven definitively to lead to tyranny, not authoritarianism. In the first century of the Enlightenment this was the dominant position, as people looked to Catherine the Great and others as examples of "enlightened" monarchs. For most of history it was not seen as obvious or reasonable that democracy would secure individual liberty better than other systems -- the thinking started changing in the late 18th century

I'm all in for democracy for the record but I don't think it's a good idea to collapse the idea of democracy totally into "good people, good times." It means self-governance. People can be against that idea and not want to live in some gulag state, even if (practically) it is more likely for an authoritarian state to turn that way than a democratic one

And yes, in our time, any attempt to institute authoritarianism would require widespread, violent repression, which is why these neoreactionaries are so dangerous, especially if they have the ear of Steve Bannon

Well, it's easy to point out intellectual contradictions within progressivism if you're defining "progressive" to include everyone from Bill Clinton to Noam Chomsky, including anyone who shops at Whole Foods and listens to NPR. I could probably respond better if I had specific examples of what you're talking about wrt nationalism, but pointing out some potential contradictions in how some liberals or progressives approach nationalism in practice doesn't exactly strike me as something that undermines the basic principles of liberal humanism. I agree with everything you said about WW2 below (and think it's fairly obvious) but feel similarly about this point:

I think his point about WW2 is that it was more about maintaining/protecting a global hegemony than it was about opposing the humanitarian crimes of the Nazis. i think that's pretty true even if there's nothing wrong with trying to defend against a totalitarian regime bent on world domination (and unlike north korea possibly able to achieve it). if anything i think the US was consistent on this pt - refusing to accept Jewish refugees that would've saved 4-6 million lives and basically ignoring the crimes against the Jews (and other marginalized groups) up until they were forced into the war by an attack on them personally.

i think this point is for the truest of the ones you've mentioned - at least for "ruling class" defined as the academy/media class. at least ime in the academy. a peccadillo would probably be a good thing since it was often lionized.

I'd really quibble with that definition of "ruling class". But we're talking about an American academic class that included the University of Chicago School of Economics and Henry Kissinger and Samuel Huntington, right? (If "ruling class" means anything, I have to assume we're focusing on those in the academy and media who have had the greatest influence.) The fact that many academics might find Marxist analysis a useful tool does not equate to whitewashing the gulags imo.

the greatest influence

on the people who, you know, rule

Thanks for that video again, it's an almost beautiful torrent of bugfuck bullshit. I bet whoever caught that on camera couldn't believe their luck.

If he kept up that level of incredible nonsense, I would definitely not want to cut him out my life.

Mordy:

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.

Fred:

And I'm saying this is wrong. Which also isn't very controversial, even. The antique forerunners, the Hanseatic league, free imperial cities, Florence. The Münster Rebellion, the German Peasants War. They might not have thought of universal suffrage as we say - much of it was a sort of Christian communism, kinda? - but there was a lot of constant struggles against authoritarianism.

You overestimate the extent to which the imagination was stunted. You know, Ginzburg! The medieval mind was fertile, hungry and imaginative. That they didn't conceptualize this new way of organizing society doesn't mean they didn't conceptualize others.

Aren't you both right? Or at least Mordy is right in broad terms, but also Fred is right to mention this long tradition of thought and action, even before the classic 18th century reforms and revolts, some of which even went further.

I dunno. I don't know quite how one would go about getting the numbers, to show exactly how representative things like the Peasant's war were of general thinking at the time ... would probably need numbers and data to decide this one?

The main difference being that Mordy didn't throw a whiny tantrum(p) in the process.

Man, I don't in any way feel bad about that. Mordy is defending Mencius Moldbug. Check out what he wrote about Anders Breivik. I'm a Scandinavian socialist, that day was one of the worst in my life, I honestly think I've been pretty calm, all things considered.

That is a libelous characterization of Mordy's posts and I wish it was actionable.

Nah, it's pretty clear Mordy is defending Moldbug? I mean, of course not the parts about how it's sorta okay to machinegun people like me and my high school friends, it's the other parts that are 'interesting + frames things in provocative ways'. And I am compartmentalizing, I really am. But sooo sorry if I lose my temper around that piece of shit Moldbug, but I fucking hate that guy.

Mordy does not think Moldbug is "not that bad" or "on the right track." He reads him because he thinks it is valuable to understand one's ideological opponents, as he has pointed out many times.

Like it or not the West is experiencing the rise of racist nationalism. We can either seek to understand these new movements in order to defeat them or we can just scream that they are Nazis and hope they go away on their own. If the left ends up losing definitively to these alt right morons it will be because we were too lazy to fight this kind of thinking head on.

Sure, and I'm glad if you get something out of it, I just don't feel bad for 'throwing whiny tantrums' when we're discussing people who think I should be gunned down.

Always hard to tell if Frederik's chronic misreadings are guided by intentional bad faith arguments, ignorance, or misunderstandings. Also hard to care about which it is at this point.

Xp

Yr gonna banned again if you keep this up

I remember that day. I remember calling my Norwegian friends to hear if they were okay. I remember checking facebook, seeing the RIP's for friends who had died. Everyone I knew were safe, but one guy - who works for the Arbejderpartiet - had the windows in his office blown out, while he was there. I remember my Norwegian roommates crying for weeks afterwards. And I remember when I read Moldbug's blogpost on Breivik. And that despair, that rage, that hatred, that sorrow, that is not ever going away. Breivik is the 9/11, or the Orlando Massacre, for people like me, of my age. And Moldbug is a piece of shit, and I just felt blinding rage every time a new post in this thread ticked in. And I'm not going to feel bad about that.

Then I calmed down, and tried to have a real conversation. So sorry if I lost my temper a couple of times. But it's raw.

If there's anything you should feel bad about it's your non-stop character assassination of other posters and poor reading comprehension.

Everyone otm

fred, conflating finding someone interesting to read w/ agreeing with what they wrote is imho a sign of a very immature mind - one that can only get value from what reciprocates their own opinions and thoughts. u may get some value in general from disentangling the two - for one it may give you the freedom to have civil conversations on topics w/out assuming yr interlocutors are engaging in bad faith (a sure sign that you yourself are engaging in bad faith). treesh gives the most pragmatic perspective for reading things w/ which you disagree - to know what the enemy is thinking (and to refine your own arguments) - but there can even be a kind of pleasure in reading something coming from a dramatically different perspective from your own; even from a perspective that you find heinous. i've read antisemitic thinkers extensively - to know what and how they think and just for the raw experience of encountering a perspective that is so different from my own that it's alien; i've even in some ways had some pleasure in a horror movie kind of way in reading something that sent chills of discomfort and fear down my spine. i'm maybe unusual in that regard but i don't think it's a totally valueless way to approach life. what i notice about how you argue on ilx is that you present as someone who a) believes they know more than everyone they are talking to and b) makes little effort to understand the ppl they're speaking to. beginning to separate your moral perspectives from your intellectual perspectives (something you (jokingly?) disavowed on a different thread) might be a good way to start that. learn the difference between a logical argument and a moral argument and know when you're arguing one or the other. you mention 9/11. i was living in NYC on 9/11 - experiencing that trauma made me more interested in reading the works of radical islamist thinkers. i wanted to know what kind of ideology could convince ppl to murder thousands of people. and i wanted to really understand it - such that i knew it well enough that i could give over their argument myself in a convincing manner.

anyway, on a personal note i think it's pretty obvious i'm not defending moldbug on any other ground than that i think he is an interesting writer. in this very thread when discussing him w/ sund4r i stopped to insert reasons why i have objections to his philosophy, as if such a thing is necessary on ilx (but there's value in that too - explicitly spelling out where the points of contention are, why you can't follow him into the ideological abyss). moreover, i don't think you think i'm defending him either. none of our arguments above - about whether authoritarianism was ubiquitous throughout history, or whether there was meaningful objection to the idea of a sole ruler sovereign, or however you want to construe it - had anything to do w/ defending moldbug or moldbug's ideology. it was just a tedious nitpicking detour that exposed a lack of reading comprehension. if you really thought i was defending moldbug on ideological grounds presumably we could've spent all this time discussing that - instead of you inserting it in some last minute attempt to tar yr interlocutor after all other arguments were dismantled. it's a pretty embarrassing thing coming from someone w/ such high self-regard. for yr v own sake you should bring yr A-game and not this bullshit.

say this for moldbug - he's a much more innovative and interesting thinker than you are (despite his championing an ideology that has been out of fashion for centuries). your "everyone i knew was safe but i was worried about them so therefore no quarter" perspective is some weak shit that should really be below you bc it's essentially an "i would've been passing the twin towers on 9/11 if i had visited New York a week earlier" type story w/ the minor added exoticism of having to do w/ Breivik and not 9/11. "i almost knew someone who was thinking about visiting the site where a tragedy occurred and therefore i must accuse ppl who disagree w/ me of arguing in bad faith." curious whether you've ever actually had a conversation w/ someone that wasn't just a thinly veiled attempt to either a) prove your own intellectual superiority or b) prove your own moral superiority. the ironic thing is that in trying to do so you end up proving the precise opposite - that you're a sloppy enough thinker to make basic reading comprehension errors, assume the meanings of words, and construct strawmen to argue with, all while demeaning the ppl you're talking to for no reason but to bolster your own moral authority. a shitty stupid person. basically the worst kind of person you can be. i don't think that's really you, but it's far too often the discourse you prefer on ilx.

iow i'm not mad, fred, i'm just disappointed.

"fred, conflating finding someone interesting to read w/ agreeing with what they wrote is imho a sign of a very immature mind"

Aaaand I didn't do this. Talk about bad reading comprehension skills.

you literally just did that when you said that i was defending moldbug

you literally said "Nah, it's pretty clear Mordy is defending Moldbug? I mean, of course not the parts about how it's sorta okay to machinegun people like me and my high school friends, it's the other parts that are 'interesting + frames things in provocative ways'."

how is that not a conflation between those two things? you excuse yourself doing it while you're doing it.

I literally quote that you find him interesting, and say nothing about whether or not you agree with him?

dude wtf. what does the word "defending" mean to you? and if you just meant "defending" on grounds that he's interesting then wtf does his support of breivik (& his vile moral transgressions) have to do with it? what you're saying makes no sense unless you are conflating interesting w/ correct.

i know that in 2017 it's verboten to ever admit that you were wrong or back off a position but i'd have so much more respect for you if you stopped digging holes and were just like "you're right that was out of line i don't think you're pro-breivik," or "i didn't understand what you were saying about authoritarianism" or whatever but every new attempt to reframe it just makes you look more and more intellectually dishonest.

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.

― My Body's Made of Crushed Little Evening Stars (Sund4r), 11. februar 2017 14:45 (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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.

― Mordy, 11. februar 2017 14:50 (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's defending him. I read that and I see red again. And it's because I hate Moldbug so fucking much.

And I've never said you were pro-breivik, wtf?

Ban Fred b

fred, this is why i said you conflate "interesting" w/ "correct." because you do.

Ban Mordy too tbh

But you know what Mordy? Just go fuck yourself. I'm not going to explain again how traumatic Breivik is, so you can shit on it some more.

i've called kevin mcdonald the most interesting contemporary antisemite. i would be very offended if you quoted that and said i was defending him and then justified your anger by recourse to his moral failings as a jew hater. someone can be evil and be interesting. someone can be good and be boring. learn to distinguish between the two.

yeah fred idgaf about your breivik trauma. it's just a way to short circuit how fucking dumb you're being by trying to cop some sympathy. own up to your shittiness please.

Fuck you too.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/Carlb-sockpuppet-02.jpg/220px-Carlb-sockpuppet-02.jpg

what do u feel about the fact that [one of?] the most famous frederiks in history was the most famous proponent of enlightened authoritarianism?

Mordy, I'm not sure you're well. Weren't you going to take a break until you got over you're own Trump-related trauma?

The name means King of Peace, btw. It's one of two names given to Danish kings as well, so I'm pretty well aware of the connection. Am I supposed to think anything about it?

i feel pretty well, actually, thank you. but impugning someone's mental health to score a point in an argument is another screaming recommendation for your moral superiority. tell me more about yr seven degrees of breivik.