the alt-right

i.e. the contemporary intersectional/identity-oriented left, esp in academia, which applies a sort of 'class struggle' model but thinks it is wrong to look one single type of class, or apply a single overarching objective analytical pov, to the exclusion of others. (That said, Peterson still casts his net far too wide.)

it's really not these thinker's fault if activists decide their work is useful to their project. it's like political claims on the bible - you see what you want to see esp when writers are intentionally layering meaning, obscuring, contradicting, etc.

I did know that; I was just trying to see a way in which "postmodern neo-Marxism" could make some kind of sense as a description for what I think JP is trying to describe.

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), 24. januar 2018 23:38 (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And you're otm :) A lot again has to do with 68, imo. The idea that this narrative of French Revolutions, from 1789 onwards, has been thwarted, and everyone needs to figure out what to do next. Seven different types of maoists shouting at each other at the exact same time Mao was at his most murderous. A need to look elsewhere all of a sudden, be it to the third world or back in the past, or to marginalized groups.

this Twitter thread confirms what I kinda figured was true - these guys and gals are massive shitheads but they're more driven by fame than dreams of a white ethnostate

Thread on the @xychelsea shitstorm. First, read this: https://t.co/noDse7rPU3

— Contra 🌸 (@ContraPoints) January 24, 2018

Peterson doesn't appear to be very well read. His entire shtick consists of strawmanning the shit out of the left from the vantage point of his media-fueled position as a learnèd, heroic scholar who dares shake academia's ivory foundations by telling it like it is, thus submitting his ideas to the democratic court of populist opinion rather than that of his elitist peers. This is not a bad thing in and of itself, but it requires an acute sense of responsibility, one that is conspicuously lacking in his case, since he systematically paints his adversaries as dangerous obfuscators – an easy charge in a playing field defined by its carnivalesque 'gotcha' moments and worship of 'common sense'. Steven Pinker tends to do this as well so it may just be a common trait among so-called 'public' intellectuals.

Derrida does have a lot to do with contemporary social justice discourse though. Way more than Marx does. Derrida’s “big idea,” putting it as crudely as possible, is that identity is constituted in difference, that the process of differing/deferring proceeds by acts of violence and exclusion as one term becomes dominant and the other subordinate, and that therefore the critical examination of any concept should begin with an attempt to uncover this originaty moment of violence. This seems really similar to, say, microaggression theory—this hyperattentiveness to language that carried within itself the stain of history, which it reproduces unconsciously as it continually remakes the world. I can’t say for sure but I think Derrida’s work probably had a lot to do with the way progressives think about language and history today even if they don’t know it.

There are typos and tense errors in there but still. Derrida’s work is as powerful as Nietzsche’s or Marx’s in that it demands a kind of reckoning — once you “see things” as he saw them it’s hard for a while to unsee it. As a meme I think the kind of structure of his thought had a big impact. And he’s an unnerving writer to read too because if you think like he does you can never “affirm” anything, because concepts are in flux, and they are always already in the process of becoming their opposite. (I can’t really describe how this works, but it is one of his big ideas. Martin Hagglund is good on this — the co-implication of opposites, death is constitutive of life, etc.) All of this presents challenges to the western project of trying to ground beliefs in something solid, human freedom or reason or earlier on God or whatever.

He deserves a better class of critic than Peterson thouh.

I guess my main issue is like, duh, the idea of a postmodern neo-marxist cabal is conspiratorial and idiotic. But I also think ideas matter and when people say that the radical skepticism of Derrida can be corrosive to institutions, even if only humanities departments, I don’t think they’re necessarily being “crazy.” I don’t think Derrida would find them crazy either. As Frederik said, Derrida’s thought came out of a crisis.

otm

Also the alt right thread is the perfect forum for this discussion. The left should try to understand its own intellectual genealogy if they want to refute the fake versions the alt right proffers.

Undecidability, aporia, the pharmakon: all of these 'concepts' (barely concepts, if we go by his philosophy) are frankly disquieting when taken seriously (which they should be). This undermines both Peterson and his nemeses, which is why very few are willing to take up Derrida's mantle today.

There's nothing angelically ethical about his take on difference, either, which is shot through with strangeness and uncanniness (see his beef with Levinas, re: violence). And yet, in spite of that, he advocates hospitality. Ethics for with the acknowledgment that it is grounded on groundlessness, that if there is no risk gestures of welcome are meaningless.

*Ethics starts with

It's typo night.

Fun with Tucker Carlson:

Tucker Carlson wishes someone would let him know what a “white nationalist” is and how he qualifies. I gave it a shot: pic.twitter.com/BzW7iYBiBp

— Jack Smith IV (@JackSmithIV) January 24, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhdEbOzcN1U

It’s kinda funny seeing these high falutin criticisms of Peterson when his core audience is like 15 year old boys

Schadenfreude today: prominent alt-righter with a pregnant wife tries to use feminist dating app, gets dunked on

https://www.fastcompany.com/40521433/bumble-bans-alt-right-darling-jack-pobosiec-in-a-very-public-way

looool

white supremacists are always the best argument against their own ideologies

just tremendous opsec from a guy with 'veteran navy intel officer' in his twitter bio

'incel officer' more like amirite

Peterson is posting on twitter in barely concealed accounts again:

https://www.twitter.com/WeeEgalitarian/status/957873627311038465

https://www.twitter.com/shujaxhaider/status/957949776129155072

https://www.twitter.com/ETZithrow/status/958052099752939520

corny. these people are all so fuckin corny before you even consider their ass opinions

https://alternativeright.hopenothate.com/my-year-inside-the-international-alt-right

In march, spencer is coming to speak at the university where I work. He either threatened or actually pursued legal action and they capitulated. Since they had to give him a venue, he will speak in what is essentially the ag school cow barn at the ass-end of campus, on the Monday of Spring Break week when nobody will be around.

I'm already seeing tons of flyers, ranging from "we should meet at the library to talk about the impact of this" to a number rather large posters about attacking a group of nazi marchers in 2006 and running them out of town and how they can't wait to do it again.

This should be fun. I'm kind of glad I'll be out of town.

There was still a local ARA chapter when I was there, of course that was almost 20 years ago. Here's hoping they're still around.

lmao @ "Hope Not Hate" and the "alternative right" (didn't read the actual piece tbf)

many xps. I'm reading derrida and foucault again because of this thread <3 thank you, jordan peterson. you kermit-voiced sack of albertan shit

wtf i love jordan peterson now

its been over a week since ive let everyone who helped me out of prison down, so many of you have helped me thru tough times, i tried too hard to do too much, im sorry im a human being and not a symbol, i have hit rock bottom

— Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) January 30, 2018

Chelsea Manning not feeling too great about hanging with the fash

In all seriousness, though, everyone should check out Derrida's seminars. Due to their self-evidently pedagogical and oral nature, they're more idea-oriented and hence more approachable (as well as more easily translatable into English). They're also more explicitly 'political' than many might expect, giving the lie to the all-too widespread, quasi indestructible notion according to which he never seriously engaged with anything beyond philosophy and, at best, literature.

sorta tangent to peterson's fame i really fuckin hate the centrist anti-left crew and their wounded/smug act: the weinstein brothers, sam harris, quillette mag.

haidt, maher, chait, ~sullivan fit that description too.

yup. chait didn't used to, i didn't think! but maybe he did.

there's the feminist-not-feminist annex too: paglia, sommers, roiphe

paglia is too weird to be in this group imo

yea camille paglia does not fit but sommers & roiphe are def in there

what's infuriating is how content-free their politics are. it's all meta concepts like open discourse and closed mindedness and group thinking and hard reason but... there's no meat.

like, what do you want the world to be? what do you want to say that (you say) you can't say now? make a list of 25 live issues at work in this country, or any country, and none of these people will have said anything about them. voting? climate change? war? (ok we know what harris thinks about war...) financialization? (one of the weinsteins works for peter thiel lol) worker rights? abortion rights? there's n o t h i n g

these are the only people left who care about paglia!

there's an essay to be written about the fetishization of live debate across the right wing: this set ^ of people, the alt-lite youtube scene, ben shapiro

shuja haider wrote that great piece of JP, most of the angry replies were "you couldn't take him on live, i dare you" or that like, writing everything down in a essay was... cheating somehow? against the rules? oddly authoritarian impulse. it has to be a match with rules and if you lose you have to stay down! or something

these are the only people left who care about paglia!

wrong, also fans do not condemn the person. camille paglia talks about her views all the time, she's written thousands of pages about art and literature and history

i know, it's a shame

just replace paglia in yr annex w/ caitlin flanagan

is jon stewart somehow culpable for the "reasonable moderate"?

Nah

maybe a bit. can we blame capitalism? i feel like we should blame capitalism

no lets blame the daily show

"lets"... ugh. sorry #groupthink

About the diaper-clad shitheads in TPUSA

https://thebaffler.com/the-poverty-of-theory/no-re-turning-point-u-s-a

a chilling must-read; thanks.

I keep waiting to encounter these guys on campus