The following from Hillary Clinton's speech at a community college in Reno, Nevada
Alt-Right is short for "Alternative Right."
The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loosely organized movement, mostly online, that "rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity."
The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the "Alt-Right." A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.
This is part of a broader story -- the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.
She claims the Alt-Right has taken over the Republican Party.
Why would right-wing nationalism be rising around the world?
Good question, I don't know. Because people feel more military threat now than... maybe 50 years ago? Or... Because stabilizing organizations like the UN and/or dominant countries like the USSR and USA appear to be less reliable than in the past? Because close relationships between neighbors (or among regional partners) have collapsed?
Fundamentalism seems to be on the rise too, along with greater secularism. Globalization seems (or would seem) to drive nations into alliances, rather than a narrow nationalism, but... maybe not.
Because liberalism, internationalism, global trade, secularism, 'progress', etc. have turned out to be disappointing?
If right-wing nationalism is increasing, it seems like it would be reactionary -- against a dilution of local values.
I've read some of a couple of their intellectuals, Nick Land and Mencius Moldbug (you can google their key works). I suppose the high-brow aspect has little to do with low-brow stuff, especially after looking at videos of that Milo character. He has a certain charisma, but he's basically absurd.
Check out Vox's article on the movement, which is pretty comprehensive: http://www.vox.com/2016/4/18/11434098/alt-right-explained.
"The label blends together straight-up white supremacists, nationalists who think conservatives have sold out to globalization, and nativists who fear immigration will spur civil disarray. But at its core are the ideas of a movement known as neoreaction, and neoreaction (NRx for short) is a rejection of democracy. ... The purpose of government, in the view of neoreactionaries, isn't to represent the will of the people. It's to govern well, full stop. 'From the perspective of its subjects, what counts is not who runs the government but what the government does,' Moldbug explains. 'Good government is effective, lawful government. Bad government is ineffective, lawless government. How anyone reasonable could disagree with these statements is quite beyond me. And yet clearly almost everyone does.'
And democratic government, the neoreactionaries insist, is not effective, lawful government. Because the will of the people is arbitrary and varying, it cannot have the consistency of real, durable law, and it creates incentives for wasteful and, worse still, left-wing government. ... But while mainstream libertarians are outspoken about democracy's deficiencies, they rarely propose an alternative. The neoreactionaries do: monarchy. Well, not monarchy specifically, but some kind of nondemocratic system with rule-driven succession. Moldbug likes to use the term "formalism," or "neocameralism," a reference to "cameralism," the philosophy of government embraced by Frederick the Great of Prussia. Moldbug's vision is corporatist, where instead of a nation belonging to a royal family, it belongs to corporation with shareholders to whom it is accountable. 'To a neocameralist, a state is a business which owns a country,' he writes."
1) Take some fear and hate
2) Sprinkle it with vanilla essence
3) Mix it up during the Obama administration
4) Add some coconut frosting
5) Put it on the Alex Jones show.
I'm starting to think at least part of this negative portrayal of the average Trump supporter - or Alt-Right - is a calculated attempt by 'elites' to fend off criticisms of a status quo that benefits them at the expense of working class folk. This is achieved through association of hostility to globalization and neoliberal economics with white racism and xenophobia.
For a long time this demographic stood firmly within the Republican fold, at the expense of their own economic interests no less, but this is no longer the case and the free market fundamentalist wing of the Republican Party appears to be collaborating with the Democratic elite to marginalize the very group they exploited for the past 40 or so years through implicitly racist imagery.
One obviously needn't be a racist of xenophobe to feel bitterness towards the growing disparity in wealth and power between the absurdly wealthy and everyone else -- but of course no respectable white person wants to be accused of racism or xenophobia, so we distance ourselves from those uneducated dolts and whatever they stand for. By doing so, we prove our own sophistication and membership amongst our 'respectable' and progressive fellow citizens. Pretty straightforward but effective strategy.
I'm also beginning to think that BLM and other divisive movements are being fomented at this precise moment when that old concatenation of power and interest are, or could have been, under their greatest threat from a broad grassroots movement of disadvantaged people of all races and type. It's the old divide and conquer approach which has worked in this country from its inception.
Anyhow the key now, to me at least, is to separate the essential from the inessential, the legitimate social, economic and political grievances of our current world from accidental traits of race and nationality. Not sure if this is even possible but it's worth thinking through: finding some common ground that people from different cultures and nationalities can agree upon that goes even deeper than the old communist notion of class warfare.
Yeah, I'm becoming a bit paranoid and cynical these days.
The Great WhateverAugust 29, 2016 at 08:28#184230 likes
The alt right as I've come to understand it is a resurgence of genuine rightism, as opposed to mere modern conservatism (which is just a brand of classical liberalism) and in particular in the US the Republican party, which is not even classically liberal but a weird centrist populist statist mishmash. That means rejection of core tenets of liberalism, not just epiphenomena, welcoming back notions of racial difference, nationalism, hierarchy (possibly even monarchy), and rejecting broad notions of equality generally taken for granted in modern western political discourse. It seems to be mostly a tech savvy revival at this point, but its earlier incarnations (and the 'dark enlightenment' and 'neoreaction' and so on) has its source in oddball internet intellectuals like Nick Land and Mencius Moldbug. Since then it's become a little less interesting, and has attracted broader social issues like the backlash against 'PC' culture, racist and anti-semitic tendencies, anti-feminism, and Trump's campaign. It looks as if right now the term is fast on its way to losing any meaning at all and becoming an Emmanuel Goldstein sort of thing for moderate liberals, identifiable with any vaguely disliked sentiment. Hillary Clinton awkwardly seemed to want to tie it into Trump himself, Wikileaks?, Russia, and so on, it doesn't make much sense.
I'd define it at its most basic with a core lack of sympathy for basic, foundational liberal impulses among a tech-savvy and disenfranchised youth.
The Great WhateverAugust 29, 2016 at 08:35#184250 likes
Reply to Mongrel My personal take on this is that rightism is more or less the natural state of things and leftism is a historical aberration that has to be fueled by specific cultural trends. People are naturally in-group supporting, and that cashes to in nationalism and racism and desire to defend their own identity and so on.
Liberalism is a weird historical quirk spurred for the most part by the unique historical position white people found themselves in during the 18th century. It is, by and large, an ideology of modern white people and their hangers-on. It's still an open question of course whether this historical aberration will become the new norm or go back to the nothing that it came from.
The Great WhateverAugust 29, 2016 at 08:39#184260 likes
I'm also beginning to think that BLM and other divisive movements are being fomented at this precise moment when that old concatenation of power and interest are, or could have been, under their greatest threat from a broad grassroots movement of disadvantaged people of all races and type. It's the old divide and conquer approach which has worked in this country from its inception.
Maybe -- BLM seems to me sinister because it equates being black with being criminal, and defending criminality as equal to defending black communities. This is of course a narrative that your average Democrat, white or black, implicitly believes in all that they do, and is calculated to keep black people in America a perpetual Democrat-voting underclass.
That's my tinfoil hat speculation for the day. Shrug.
I just find it strange that BLM makes a concerted effort to dissociate itself from ALL white people, regardless of class, educational background, or any other relevant issue that could possibly make the 'movement' more sympathetic, at least to poor and marginalized white people. The spokespeople that I've read or listened to do this very aggressively too, bludgeoning white people (again, ALL white people) for being the beneficiaries of some ubiquitous 'privilege' floating around them that they apparently can neither fathom nor appreciate. And for poor white folk struggling to afford the basic necessities of life, this seems bizarre -- and then, to make matters worse, even suggesting how strange or disconnected from reality it is results in loud cries of " RACIST!!!', apparently for questioning the dogmatic narrative.
To make the issue even harder to comprehend is that, almost without exception, the BLM attackers of white privilege don't appreciate being lumped together and stereotyped with other black people, yet they do that very thing to white people, and don't hesitate to make broad sweeping (and negative) generalizations about them. Of course some who do this may engage in the tactic with a sense of irony, in order to make some relevant point, but most that I've argued with don't appear to even be aware of the inconsistency, or to feel the need to offer some justification for it beyond the platitude that only those with power can be racist.
As a pragmatist, I can't fathom how anyone in a position of influence would purposely alienate and marginalize the group they represent, when even the possibility to expand your base of support exists potentially. But I'm probably missing some important feature of BLM that would make the strategy intelligible, or the seemingly favorable portrayal BLM received in the media, at least until it got out of hand and cops started getting killed. The public visibility of BLM - perpetuated by major media outlets and prominent politicians - seemed to coincide with a growing sense of anger amongst Trump's supporters, specifically against a 'system' they were finally beginning to see as rigged against them by both traditional Republicans and Democrats. Probably just coincidence.
Anyhow I don't want to turn this into a discussion of BLM, and I'm probably connecting dots haphazardly. I just found the timing and emphasis of BLM to be interesting. I do know of the taped killings and how those played a role, but I began to wonder how certain issues gain prominence for a time and what role the media has in this. And who owns the media outlets? And do they have a vested interest in stirring up certain groups against each other? If manipulation via divide and conquer has even a hint of truth, I'd imagine it's due more to instinctive self-preservation of those who dominate politics and business and media than a coordinated and self-conscious conspiracy amongst them.
Apologies to any who read this for the disconnected rambling. I'm on guard against turning into a conspiracy nut, although I do believe people with similar interests conspire collectively to protect those interests. That seems a pretty rational if not ethical thing to do.
Tom Slater's take on it in Spiked is quite interesting:
On the one hand, the alt-righters are actually a product of political correctness. The politics of victimhood nurtures victimisers; the more people talk up their emotional and moral vulnerability – as a result of their gender, race or sexuality – the more saddos will try to have a pop. A culture of You Can’t Say That will inevitably embolden some people to Say That – again and again and again. So, the liberal journalists currently penning self-righteous takedowns of the alt-right need to have a word with themselves. By contributing to the cult of victimhood, they helped make these monsters.
But, on the other hand, the alt-right is the mirror image of political correctness, specifically the victimhood that underpins it. They don’t just want to have a pop at self-styled victims – they want to claim victim status for themselves. Their broadsides against feminists, Black Lives Matter or Islam are underpinned by the idea that straight, white males are an oppressed group – that ‘white culture’ is under attack. They may take up arms against weepy identitarians, but they share the same, deadening sense of victimhood – just with another set of dreamt-up grievances attached.
Their rightism was once an ideology of the ruling class, but now it is just another identity. I like this criticism partly because it's the one that I imagine would annoy them the most.
unenlightenedAugust 29, 2016 at 10:45#184400 likes
Examining how the balance of power between the colonizer and the colonized remains relatively stable, Freire admits that the powerless in society can be frightened of freedom. He writes, "Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion". Wiki
Not sure I agree with Slater, at least not without serious qualification, but these are definitely thought-provoking points, especially the second.
I know very few people who would talk openly about the need to preserve 'white' culture, but many do speak of an attack upon American culture, or Western culture. The growing equation of American culture with white culture, with special emphasis on its inherently racist and oppressive tendencies, may have the (perhaps) unintended consequence of pushing white people to identify as a group that's come under attack and, by default, caused them to rally together collectively. I'm sure there are white men and women (especially men) who find some strange psychological solace or even enjoyment in playing the role of victim in this new scenario, but I also think a distinction should be made between 'dreamt-up' and reasonable grievances.
I think we can all agree that the last 40 years has hit the middle and lower classes of all races hard, very hard in fact, and, in the US at least, the Democrats - who would appear to be the historical and ideological representatives of this demographic - have purposely fostered an emphasis on identity rather than class-based politics. I also think an argument could be made that 'progressive' intellectuals who push things like multiculturalism and identity politics could be the cause of increased white racism, precisely because they purposely go out of their way to highlight differences amongst people based upon race and ethnicity and sexual orientation - black culture, Latino culture, LGBT culture - and then refuse to allow straight, white men to have any identity beyond perpetual racist or bigoted oppressor.
So this group has been backed into a corner and forced to assume an identity, irrespective of vast social and economic differences, with no legitimate effort being made to find another, more transcendent and inclusive one. You are white, therefore you are the new 'other' who must be demonized and marginalized. You will be able to maintain your livelihood and profession as long as you don't voice any 'pride' in your background, or voice your displeasure that other groups are allowed and even encouraged to do so. There are reasons for this discrepancy, but they've been articulated by people much smarter and more educated than yourselves, largely within the comfortable confines and abstractions of academia. The motivation may have been pure (correcting past and current injustices), but the best way to overcome an unjust hierarchy IMO is not an inversion of the old one in favor of a new, but rather searching for commonalities beyond accidental differences of birth.
I'm partial to certain Romantic critiques of the Enlightenment, but I do appreciate the latter's universalist tendencies and lament its apparent demise in this day and age. Very sad. I 've always felt this to be one of the great things about America: I have zero sense of historical identity to European ancestors, I have married a woman of indigenous Mexican heritage, we have children that are (obviously) mixed race, and all of this is seen as pretty normal in the part of the US where I live and grew up in -- oddly one of those maligned white suburbs teaming with Trump supporters. These are non-issues to me and to most of the people I know, but others want to push a divisive race narrative that makes them more relevant than they should be. That's my limited experience at least.
Whatever the case may be, ending the blame game and searching for viable solutions that DO involve a new sense of shared identity and ethos needs to begin ASAP. This obviously gets into complex matters that try to balance the preservation of multiple cultures and identities while also facilitating the aforementioned transcendent sense of belongingness which encompasses each of these separate groups. Or we all blend into a homogeneous and dominant culture, regardless of race or ethnicity. Can't have it both ways, though, at least not as far as I can tell.
I also think an argument could be made that 'progressive' intellectuals who push things like multiculturalism and identity politics could be the cause of increased white racism, precisely because they purposely go out of their way to highlight differences amongst people based upon race and ethnicity and sexual orientation - black culture, Latino culture, LGBT culture - and then refuse to allow straight, white men to have any identity beyond perpetual racist or bigoted oppressor.
I think it's worse than this. I think these progressives are guilty of a kind of racism or racialism of their own, because they implicitly reject the dream in which people "will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Martin Luther King's vision is, to this way of thinking, a microaggressive denial of racial identity. (I think some conservatives have said what I'm saying here too, so I'll probably be accused of being a conservative, again).
It can also be seen in the European left-liberal attitude to Muslims, who become to them another monolithic group of victims with characteristic grievances. To these "progressives", the poor little Muslims can hardly be blamed for their rage against the West, and criticism of ISIS is deemed to be Islamophobic (an extreme example perhaps, but it did happen: NUS motion to condemn Isis fails amidst claims of islamophobia).
One obviously needn't be a racist of xenophobe to feel bitterness towards the growing disparity in wealth and power between the absurdly wealthy and everyone else -- but of course no respectable white person wants to be accused of racism or xenophobia, so we distance ourselves from those uneducated dolts and whatever they stand for. By doing so, we prove our own sophistication and membership amongst our 'respectable' and progressive fellow citizens. Pretty straightforward but effective strategy.
A number of my friends are saying stuff along these lines. They think of Clinton as the face of the establishment... or a servant of it. Trump's suggestion that the US should back out of NATO is an attack on that establishment, which promotes US dominance in the world as some sort of quasi virtuous adventure when it really just provides the means for certain parties to engage in exploitation.
But what I see is that Trump actually does come across as either racist or stupid. The answer I get back is that that's because what I know about either candidate is influenced by a biased media.
I guess what I'm saying is that I see how the puzzle pieces fit together.. but I think that this organization must partly be accidental?
What it reminds me of is the way that there were no books about Karl Marx in the school library when I was a kid. Yes, this benefited the Kings of the Status Quo, but the USSR really was a gravely diseased state and it really did have an aggressive stance. If you look at the whole thing naturalistically, the world has just been a very rich and nutritious environment for a certain type of organism: Exploitative Americanus (direct descendant of Exploitative Britannica.) Some of the success of this genus is its own genius. Some of it is just amazingly good luck.
So, TGW gave his tinfoil hat speculation on BLM, I'll give mine on the Alt-Right. I see a relationship between the rise of the Alt-Right and the continually diminishing reproductive prospects of the poor white male. This goes back to the libralisation of American society in the past half-century and the associated steady movement away from monogamy and towards polygyny in the form of serial monogamy. (As serial monogamy allows older richer men of status disproportionate access to younger women's most fertile reproductive years - i.e. one rich man monopolises the pre-menopausal years of several women in sequence and in the process denies access to them to poorer males - it's effectively indistinguishable from polygyny). So in concert with the widening monetary wealth gap caused by neo-liberal economic policies, you get a widening of the reproductive wealth gap. Add to that recent advances in technology that allow more mobility in the dating market - giving women more choice than ever concerning their potential mate - and the movement of desirable females up the wealth and status ladder is exacerbated. The result of this is the creation of a huge cohort of reproductively frustrated lower status males, i.e. a recipe for social upheaval. And this is what it seems to me the so-called Alt-Right reflects, a channeling of the repressed frustrations of this increasingly reproductively diminished group with the nationalism, racism and xenophobia being used as a way of cementing group bonds, and also a regression away from the social contract that has so badly served their needs.
Reply to Mongrel Yeah, and I think TGW made a good point about defining it. Now that Clinton has mentioned it, and dozens of pundits have followed up with their denunciations of it, whatever meaning it had will now be lost in a sea of negative connotations. It's just another spooky -ism to scare those on the left into voting for Hillary.
I was watching the CBS evening news the other night and they had a report on this. During the segment the presenter called Milo Yiannopoulos a white nationalist. I almost fell out of my chair. That's what the establishment media thinks of the Alt-Right and poor Milo? Wow. Milo is a professional troll who tries his best to test the limits of free speech, for which I commend him, even though it causes him to be utterly ridiculous. But it's not hard to understand that this is what he's doing, so it's amazing that CBS fell for it. Many of those on the Alt-Right may be genuine racists, I have no doubt about that, but to cast the whole movement in such terms shows once again that the left is only capable of smears.
It can also be seen in the European left-liberal attitude to Muslims, who become to them another monolithic group of victims with characteristic grievances. To these "progressives", the poor little Muslims can hardly be blamed for their rage against the West, and criticism of ISIS is deemed to be Islamophobic (an extreme example perhaps, but it did happen: NUS motion to condemn Isis fails amidst claims of islamophobia).
Yeah, I've heard Zizek talk about this, the denial to the right of the minority even to be morally wrong as a disguised form of racism. I tend to agree, and the NUS seem to have thought themselves into a hole on this one. On the other hand, the progressive attitude can have the positive effect of combating the creation in society of a group that it becomes socially acceptable to discriminate against.
Many of those on the Alt-Right may be genuine racists, I have no doubt about that, but to cast the whole movement in such terms shows once again that the left is only capable of smears.
CBS is a mouth-piece of the left? I think it's just a content purveyor looking for a market. News is entertainment.
If not, then how would you draw a line from CBS to some leftist entity? I'm not saying you're wrong.. I'm just asking how you connect the dots.
Yeah, I've heard Zizek talk about this, the denial to the right of the minority even to be morally wrong as a disguised form of racism. I tend to agree, and the NUS seem to have thought themselves into a hole on this one. On the other hand, the progressive attitude can have the positive effect of combating the creation in society of a group that it becomes socially acceptable to discriminate against.
Agreed, but I think there's a big difference between, on the one hand, the defence of a group by standing up for the rights of its members to be treated the same as everyone else (the Civil Rights Movement), and on the other hand, the attempt to protect a group's identity and culture (multiculturalism and identity politics). A person's particular identity and culture may be exactly what he or she wants to escape from.
Of course, when identity and culture are precisely what a person is attacked for, there is good reason to defend them, and to assert them. This has often been an aspect of protest and is not peculiar to modern identity politics as such. But it's a problem when this becomes the deep and not merely symbolic mode of protest, and the only one seen as legitimate by the most vocal activist groups, which people formerly on the same side must abide by or else suffer the wrath of the self-appointed guardians. (For examples of that, just look at the way Peter Tatchell and Germaine Greer have been attacked by LGBT activists and feminists, and the the way that Muslim and ex-Muslim opponents of Islamic fundamentalism have been attacked by the Left.)
Where previously it was quite common to protest with "no, I am not defined by that group or culture; I am a citizen just like you and I demand the same rights," now everything is being drowned out by "I am defined by my identity and my background, and it is sacrosanct". At least, this is the sanctioned script.
There's no way that reporter was not a self-identified liberal who's voting for Hillary.
Could be. I don't know. I watch streaming CBS. They have a reporter named Sanchez who is a Republican strategist. She reported that Clinton "obviously" was engaged in pay-for-play while Secretary of State. It wasn't marked out as a editorial, although there were several people talking to each other.
The news has opinion all mashed into it. I don't remember it being like that in the old days.
The news has opinion all mashed into it. I don't remember it being like that in the old days.
I agree. It even spreads into sports reporting, which is ruined by continual opinionating :) How can I work out how the game really went?
With a caveat, though, that in my youth the news was more controlled by different vested interests, yet had a cleverly-maintained appearance of impartiality. In the UK, looking back, that's clear for instance in old reporting on stuff from the royal family to misbehaviour by public figures.
War reporting was very circumscribed - the Vietnam war then erupted with a much greater openness of reporting - the last war to be so well-reported at the time, for the military worked out how to control it.
Interesting thread: in Britain and especially England there's been some debate about people who voted to leave the EU - the Brexiters - and whether they partly represent this 'white working-class' group who aren't allowed to have an identity of their own. I think it's overdone in relation to the referendum - the political classes lost control of the terms of the debate - but there's definitely an element of it there.
The Great WhateverAugust 29, 2016 at 18:51#184950 likes
In general there is an odd tendency to see sex as preferably 'free market' in a context where most people despise an unrestrained 'free market.' This is, no surprise, dependent on whether you benefit from the freedom of the market (and let's not kid ourselves, sex is a commodity with a class structure built into it).
The Great WhateverAugust 29, 2016 at 18:52#184960 likes
Reply to m-theory Initially I think no. As it's becoming popularized it's taken on a Trump wing, it looks like. But people like Milo Yiannopoulos that have fomented this change don't strike me as intellectually serious in any way and so not engaged with the movement's ideological origins. The Trumpers seem to be concerned more with the less interesting stuff I mentioned: reactions against PC and feminism and so on.
Reply to The Great Whatever
Well Trump certainly sells himself as the alternative against the right wing establishment.
And his rhetoric echo's the tone of white victimization that is the central theme of the alt right.
Just a bunch of racists who meet each other on-line?
How is that supposed to be of significance in the up-coming US election?
Progressives - like all leftist groups having a tendency towards totalitarianism and decadence - must always create this "Other" who is a false image of the real threat - their own projection, which is aimed at nothing but maintaining their ignorance. That's what the Alt-Right is. Of course, they will paint this other exactly according to their own worldview - in this case - sexually frustrated, white, minority, etc. But this is nothing other than a big red-herring to mobilise the stupid masses and drive them against people who actually hold a very different world-view, and thus perceive and interact with the world through a different set of glasses.
You will find very little information online or in Western Academia about the real enemy of progressives. Everything becomes a fog that is just a projection, a vilification which seeks to eliminate alternatives, and force those who disagree - through a self-fulfilling mechanism - to become the enemy whom the progressives order them to become. Then they can be marginalised, mentally destroyed, and brought to submission - once they agree to play the progressive's game, starting from progressive principles, of course they will end up with progressive conclusions, seeing themselves as monsters. Psychology and psychiatry have already been corrupted to serve these ends. Men and women for example - are told continuously by the controlling liberal elite that unless they wear their sexuality proudly in public, they are not fulfilling their potential. They are told that unless they have others sexually attracted to them, something is wrong. Their whole set of values is constructed and imposed - BY FORCE - very important! - on them. It is hilarious, an absolute joke, when you see a married woman refusing to get an operation because she fears MEN will no longer be sexually attracted to her. This goes to show that this has been ingrained as a priority in her brain. There is no question of morality - her whole worldview is corrupt. And she cannot find out because wherever she turns, there the progressive ideologue is whispering in her ear.
This liberal cancer is a betrayal of real Western culture and civilisation - freedom has never, until the last 200 years, been understood as the ability to do whatever you want. On the contrary - the real Western idea of freedom was the man who held all his impulses in check - the free man was identical to the good man, and to the man free from the bondage of desire - NOT the one who yielded to whatever desires were found inside of him. Starting around the time of the French Revolution this originally ARISTOCRATIC understanding of freedom started to be corrupted, and a disgusting idea of freedom - the idea of freedom held by the spiritually weakest pace Nietzsche triumphed. What was worst in civilisation started to become acceptable. Little by little - to the point where today, even what is good is judged by the standards of evil: such that a desire for love, is judged to be a desire for sex. Such that love is found to be compatible with this disgusting idea of servitude to one's own ego and one's own desires. Such that society dissolves in an ocean of small separate islands. The real problem with things that progressives are obsessed with, like feminazism, equality, sex, etc. is that they destroy society, and as man is a social animal, it makes it impossible for any degree of happiness to be achieved. How do they destroy society? By destroying the MORAL and CULTURAL bonds between people. For example - a married couple is held together by the moral bond that exists between the two. What is beautiful in love is not just sex or what results from it. In fact - even for the progressive, it's not the pleasure of orgasm that drives him towards promiscuity (otherwise they would just be compulsive masturbators :) ). But rather - it is an evil and pernicious spiritual desire which is found in their heart - the desire for power and domination over the other (notice also how sex has become a matter of "social status" for them). That's why they want others to be attracted to them, and so forth. A person with a natural constitution, untouched by this progressive madness, has little interest in such matters. Yes - they do desire love - but they don't desire generalised sexual attraction towards their person. They just desire ONE person to be sexually attracted to them.
But if you change their mindset, such that in their brain, they perceive the world through the progressive categories, they will never understand why their marriages fail, they will never understand why they children are growing up crooked, they will never understand why they can't find love. The problem is themselves. How can you find love when you are interested in others being sexually attracted to you? One cannot serve both God and Mammon. One cannot want love - that which is an eternal and exclusivist feeling (hence why lovers feel "special" to one another) - and at the same time want sexual attraction which contains in itself the contradictory desire to love - love's undoing.
"Reproductive wealth gap" listen to this. As if love is some business dealing, and we must organise society such that we have an equitable distribution of the currency of sex . That will surely solve our problems, because the missing ingredient was certainly the asymmetrical distribution of sex. Trust me - if you organised, successfully, an equal distribution of sex then progressivism would end - because everyone would see through the deception, that it has never been sex that was the missing ingredient, but rather the fact that love has become impossible. Love is only possible in a society which preserves the cultural and moral bonds between people. Love requires loyalty, denial of self (which is never going to be congruent with desire for sexual attraction), courage, and faith. Love does not occur on Tinder. But of course - you keep creating the alter-egos, and the smoke and mirrors. Maybe you will keep fooling people. But the real threat to progressivism isn't these idiotic totalitarian Alt-Right neo-fascists. The real threat is those people who KNOW the historical traditions of the West, and who understand how progressives have stolen everyone's freedom, and imposed chains, by ideological force on everyone. Those people who know that progressives have stolen the possibility of happiness from the common man. Those people are the real threat, and let me tell you something about those people - you can't buy them out with sex, or with money, or with anything of this sort. Because what they are interested in, is not bought and sold like some dirty currency... what they are interested in cannot and will never be bought and sold because it is part of those perennial things - as T.S. Eliot called them. You can offer them all the sex you imagine - such people will refuse, because they know that your offer is actually your request for them to give up their faith, their morality, and their belief in love.
Emptiness, and feelings of meaninglessness - they are only possible in modernity, because only in modernity the perennial things have been dissolved. That's why the historical record does not have complaints of meaninglessness - life, in itself, untainted by progressive madness - is already so rich and meaningful. The progressives max out on drugs, sex and debauchery to run away from their own inner emptiness. The common man goes from party to party - but s/he will never find happiness - it will always elude him, because what happiness demands is rendered impossible by current Western society. This anger that you find building up in the unconsciousness of mankind is exactly the result of this: LOVE FRUSTRATION. Love for God, love for husband/wife, love. Real love, by the way, NOT the mockery of progressive love on Tinder, or the progressive mockery of traditional marriage and their deception of women that marriage is a misogynist institution from its conception, or their imposition on the young of a culture of "rap and drugs".
Progressives - like all leftist groups having a tendency towards totalitarianism and decadence - must always create this "Other" who is a false image of the real threat - their own projection, which is aimed at nothing but maintaining their ignorance.
Typical, only the opposition has extremist that would impose totalitarianism.
In fact a great many alt right "intellectuals" believe democracy should be done away.
This liberal cancer is a betrayal of real Western culture and civilisation
Extremist believe that social values are a zero sum game.
You basically argue that if someon does not share your values then they have no values at all.
I guess you have never heard of the is/ought problem?
It is very much not a fact that "values are values."
The is/ought distinction is founded on a category error. Values don't exist in the sense of the way a chair exists, somewhere to be found and touched in the real world. They are transcendental, above and beyond the world. A mere analysis of the physics of the world will not yield you any values. And yet, that is not to say values don't exist. Only that they don't exist in the same way as atoms do. To expect the same kind of being with regards to values as in regards to atoms is to misunderstand the nature/essence of each.
The is/ought distinction is founded on a category error. Values don't exist in the sense of the way a chair exists, somewhere to be found and touched in the real world. They are transcendental, above and beyond the world. A mere analysis of the physics of the world will not yield you any values. And yet, that is not to say values don't exist. Only that they don't exist in the same way as atoms do. To expect the same kind of being with regards to values as in regards to atoms is to misunderstand the nature of each.
We could say the same thing about any values.
Your particular values are not a special case.
Anybody with any values can claim the same thing and it does not prove truth in any way.
Reply to m-theory Yes, and the color-blind I suppose should also say the same about the existence of colors they cannot see, that they don't exist, and their sight is perfectly fine, everyone else is wrong. But they don't, because they're smart enough to open a text-book and read about the subject. Perhaps you too should have a look at your tradition and see, maybe you'll learn something. It's not all about what a man can see with his tiny mind. We have the intelligence of the species on our side through tradition. Our tiny minds are nothing without the help of tradition.
My claim is rather simple - just like we have a sense to see chairs in the world, we have a sense to see values, which are transcendental. Some of us do this more clearly than the others (just like some have better vision, while others require glasses), but all of us live our spiritual lives bounded and governed by the existence of these same values, whether we recognise them or not. Hence our happiness depends on and is determined by those eternal values, and if we struggle to see what they are, then that's what tradition is for... tradition is equivalent to the glasses, which help fix our vision.
Yes, and the color-blind I suppose should also say the same about the existence of colors they cannot see, that they don't exist, and their sight is perfectly fine, everyone else is wrong.
Except nobody can see the transcendental.
We are all color blind.
Even those in our traditions.
Except nobody can see the transcendental.
We are all color blind.
Even those in our traditions.
That is your belief sir and you may hold it if you wish - I know it to be otherwise, and I hold it to be self-evidently true, as if it weren't, I wouldn't even be able to talk of values (as no such idea could form in my head without the necessary underlying experience). But if this doesn't convince you, fair enough, I can do no better! :)
I'd define it at its most basic with a core lack of sympathy for basic, foundational liberal impulses among a tech-savvy and disenfranchised youth.
Right on the button, here. The alt-right's rejection of political liberalism is so radical that most progressives fail to understand the movement fully; it is simply outside of their horizon of thought.
Reply to m-theory To show you a proof sir, first you must elucidate for me what such a proof would consist in, so that I can deliver to you what you're asking for.
Reply to m-theory Yes sir, I can see that already. But I'm not quite sure what would count as proof for you. Because you see, as Aristotle has taught us, proof is different according to the different subjects that we study, and it would be an error to consider proof in biology, what is considered proof in physics. For example, in physics we consider a certain experience, namely measuring the mean-square distance of a polen particle suspended in water undergoing Brownian Motion under a microscope over a fixed time interval and then finding this to be equivalent with what we predict based on the assumption of elastic collisions, transfer of momentum, and conservation of kinetic energy (which are a priori accepted as true) in a theoretical frame-work based on the assumption that water is formed of small ball-like particles called atoms as proof for the existence of atoms. So before anything is done, we must determine what counts as proof. So please, let me know what would count as proof of a transcendental experience sir. If we are interested to advance a certain science, then we must choose the methods which advance it, and not those which keep us stuck.
Reply to Agustino
By definition you will not be able to show empirical evidence in support of your claim.
So you tell me what sort of proof that will leave?
By definition you will not be able to show empirical evidence in support of your claim.
So you tell me what sort of proof that will leave?
Well sir, I am asking you this question. What would you be willing to consider as proof? I've already explained what proof looks like in physics, and you seem to agree. So before I bring about a proof of a transcendental experience for you, please let me know what such a proof would look like. What would it take to convince you? Because without knowing this, we're like blind men looking for a black cat in a dark house :)
Will you trust me? If you won't, then please provide me with a vague notion of what the transcendental means for you. Define it. Then I may be able to point you to an experience of the transcendental.
Well if you will know whether something is transcendentally true or not my friend, then clearly you must have an idea what the transcendental is. Otherwise how will you recognise it?
Reply to m-theory Interesting. So then you will clearly be able to show me how you have gained that knowledge, will you not? Moreover, since you have transcendental knowledge regarding transcendental proofs, I take it you already know what they are. So please outline me what a transcendental proof would consist in, and also what the object of transcendental knowledge is. Since you have gained this transcendental knowledge, this should be easy for you!
Reply to m-theory Yes indeed. I see that you do not want to share your knowledge of the transcendental or of what a transcendental proof would look like. So I will proceed with a definition of transcendental to advance our discussion.
I propose sir, that transcendental is anything that cannot be investigated with physical instruments (meaning instruments of physical sciences - microscopes, etc); anything that knowledge of the structure of the physical world as investigated by physical instruments would not reveal. Is this in accordance with your understanding of transcendental sir?
Yes indeed. I see that you do not want to share your knowledge of the transcendental or of what a transcendental proof would look like. So I will proceed with a definition of transcendental to advance our discussion.
I propose sir, that transcendental is anything that cannot be investigated with physical instruments (meaning instruments of physical sciences - microscopes, etc); anything that knowledge of the structure of the physical world as investigated by physical instruments would not reveal. Is this in accordance with your understanding of transcendental sir?
The truth that I know transcendentally that you are wrong cannot be investigated physically.
Reply to Thorongil Indeed. But this is very important, because worldviews are the glasses through which we see, perceive, feel and navigate our own experience and the world. A worldview which is not in agreement with our basic human essence is going to be ruinous to our well-being, and we will not be able to perceive it unless we change the glasses :) . So it's important for people to realise the tremendous effect worldviews have. Maybe if they do, they will be interested to experiment with changing glasses, just out of that nagging curiosity which progressives always display :).
Reply to m-theory Ok perfect, so it seems you agree with the definition then. Fine! So if we know what the transcendental is, what would count as adequate proof given its essence? Would we ask for scientific experiments to be run? Would we count repeatability as strong a factor as we do in the physical sciences? Will we still nevertheless expect there to be a way for each person - granting only that they desire and are willing to persevere sufficiently in their attempts - to nevertheless replicate an experience? Would we expect multiple sources of evidence to be corroborated together, and outnumber those who state the opposite?
I think sir, that granting the essence we cannot expect scientific experiments to be run - it would be unreasonable, as we already accepted that the instruments of science are inadequate for this job. I also think that granting that there is no help from physical instruments, and man must rely only on his own experience, we cannot expect repeatability to be systematised. There will be no system to reproduce a given experience. Nevertheless, we do expect, if the transcendental is what we said it is, that people would be able to arrive at the same experiences described by others if they so desire and are willing to do what it takes and strive for the experience - this is to say, we would expect the experience to be common, if indeed the transcendental is what we said it is. And finally we would expect the transcendental landscape to be corroborated by multiple sources which outnumber those who state the opposite is the case, just like we expect the geographical landscape to be corroborated by multiple sources which outnumber those who state otherwise. Do you agree sir? If so, then what shall we say about the transcendental truth that you know? Can it be proved according to this criteria? :)
No what you are arguing for is a shared agreement about beliefs of the transcendental.
Not transcendental truth.
But experiences vary and we do not all agree.
There are different religions for this reason.
Take for example that Muslim transcendental truth of honor killing ones daughter.
Do you agree with that?
Many Muslims report that they experience the truth of this tradition from a transcendental source.
So no I don't agree with your criterion.
Shared agreement does not equal proof.
Sir, I take it then that you have a better idea of what proof of the transcendent should consist in. So please go ahead and outline it for me, and please explain how it's suitable to the definition towards which we have both expressed our agreements! :)
Sir, I take it then that you have a better idea of what proof of the transcendent should consist in. So please go ahead and outline it for me, and please explain how it's suitable to the definition towards which we have both expressed our agreements!
I have already made it clear that there is no transcendental proof.
You can claim whatever you want and say it is transcendentally true.
That does not make it true in any way except that you believe it.
I have already made it clear that there is no transcendental proof.
You can claim whatever you want and say it is transcendentally true.
That does not make it true in any way except that you believe it.
Well sir, if you hold it axiomatically that there is no proof that can be offered, then you have been quite disingenuous in asking me to offer you one no? Because you would outright deny it, by this very axiom. So sir, if you will ever be interested and open to experience of the transcendental, and interested to expand your knowledge about it, then you will have to be willing to discern, given the nature of the transcendental, what would constitute as proof. Until you develop interest in this, it will not be beneficial to you to axiomatically claim there is no proof. Proof is something we decide upon given the essence of the subject, and you have agreed on the essence.
Take for example that Muslim transcendental truth of honor killing ones daughter.
Do you agree with that?
Many Muslims report that they experience the truth of this tradition from a transcendental source.
So no I don't agree with your criterion.
Shared agreement does not equal proof.
No - actually they don't. There's social traditions - such as women have to wear the hijab - and then there's VALUES - such as women have to dress DECENTLY. The values are present in all the world's main religions,the same values. The social traditions may be different. Sexual purity and virginity are important values in all religions again - what is to be done in cases of impurity is a social custom and is different. So I think you need to sharpen your understanding of what values are, and differentiate them from social traditions which are founded upon those values. Yes, I think it is wrong to honor kill your daughter - because sexual purity isn't the only value out there, and the moral landscape is hierarchical - some values are more important than others. Social traditions may be critiqued, but only once values are understood.
Claiming something is transcendentally true does not make it true.
For example some claim that we must follow the teaching of the prophet Mohammad is a transcendental truth.
Would you agree that it is a transcendental truth?
If you don't agree then you are saying that some people are wrong about what is transcendental truth.
A statement is not trasncendental, no. What the statement refers to may be transcendental. Following a way isn't one of those things. Values, meanings, significance - those things are transcendental. And of course, merely claiming something is transcendentally true doesn't make it so, neither did my proof criterion claim it does make it so. Have you failed to read that it should be possible for any person, if they truly want and are open towards it, to have the same experience and hence find the same value as someone else? - Validate it through their own experience?
And honour killing your daughter is NOT transcendental - neither is following the teachings of Prophet Mohammed. These are actions, which may be initiated upon VALUES, which are indeed transcendental. The actions definitely aren't. Killing your daughter is located in this world, most definitely - it's a physical event. So of course it's not transcendental.
Reply to Agustino
Once again even people that are truly open towards the transcendental disagree about what is true and what is not.
And claiming something is transcendentally true does not mean it is necessarily true at all.
So again, you can claim you know something transcendentally all you want.
That claim does not prove anything about the transcendental and it certainly does not mean what you claim is just true.
All it means is that you have a belief that something is true.
Once again even people that are truly open towards the transcendental disagree about what is true and what is not.
No actually they don't disagree. There is no major world religion which claims that sexual partners should be promiscuous or otherwise be unfaithful to one another for example. None. So why do you think different cultures, different religions, in different time frames have always agreed upon this? Chance? No - it's because these values have been perceived to be true for human beings - or at least for MOST human beings.
And yes, of course there have been exceptions. But there have also been exceptions in geographical maps which are wrong. That doesn't mean no map is correct. Most geographical maps state the same thing, this is corroborating evidence towards the conclusion that they are accurate descriptions of reality. If we disbelieve them, no problem, we can go out there and check for ourselves. Same here.
Again it does not matter that these are actions, what matters is people claim these things are based on transcendental truths.
Yes, so what? You're not speaking to "people" - you're speaking to me. So why does it matter what they say? That's clearly nonsensical given the definition we both accepted, as I've explained.
Reply to m-theory Yes if you're not interested in the transcendental, like you seem not to be, indeed, then my claim (or that of other people for that matter) is irrelevant to you :)
TheWillowOfDarknessAugust 29, 2016 at 23:37#185670 likes
Reply to jamalrob I think that last paragraph speaks to classical liberalism misunderstanding of identity. People are never seperate to the identity and culture they express-- their culture they partake in always defines them.
To be a citizen of country, the with same rights, includes that personal and cultural identity, assuming that person is considered part of the country and considers themselves belonging to that society. In reading identity and culture as separate to society, the classical misunderstands the role of identity and how it may be in conflict with society.
The result is absurd situations, like mentioned in this thread, where acts like condemning ISIS are treated as some measure of just how well people fit.
Saying whether ISIS is terrible isn't are measure of how well a person's indentity and culture fit with our society. It's just postering to make people in the West feel a bit better.
Every time there is an attack, we hear the same bluster about how Muslims are meant to be condemning it, as if somehow such public declarations in the West were a solution to the schism in culture between the West and Radical Islam.
The issues of identity and culture run far deeper. Here the problem is not how much Radical Islam is condemned in the Western media. It's about the relationship of people's identity and culture and our society.
This obsession with condemntion points scoring is, and many on the Left recognise this, just an excuse to vilfy Muslims. It's not Radical Islam and the people who followed who are the problem, but rather any Muslim at all, for not doing enough to stop (supposedly) members of their own community, for (supposedly) Islam is always a culture and identity seperate to our society.
But this forgets that ISIS and Radical Islam is not the community of many Muslims. For many Muslims, Islam is part of their lives and identity within Western culture. They are actually with us, not ISIS. Stopping Radical Islam doesn't, in principle, fall on them anymore than it does on us, for they no more share it values than we do.
It's insidious. Not only does it vilfy Muslims, but it prevents us from making the distinction between Muslims who are a part of our society (with their identity and culture) and the Radical Islam which will never fit. It quite literally hindering the very thing, an Islam together with the values of the West, which it supposedly wants so badly.
Reply to Agustino
I am interested in pointing out that your claims about the transcendental are no different than anybody's claims about the transcendental.
Again anybody can claim they know something from transcendental truth.
That does not mean they actually know anything at all except that they believe.
I liked Brokaw, he slurred his words in just the right tempo.
Yes, I don't think the Alt-right can be anything but nostalgic. Nick Land, says that the Alt-right are foundational, they can't be dialectical. A progressive agenda is lost on them because they cannot go beyond their foundations. Any give and take on their part is a movement towards the center, negating their foundations. The ultimate nostalgia.
Hard to disagree with that. I do see the danger of failing to recognize the distinction you pointed out and so abetting the kind of oppression we set out to oppose.
In general there is an odd tendency to see sex as preferably 'free market' in a context where most people despise an unrestrained 'free market.' This is, no surprise, dependent on whether you benefit from the freedom of the market (and let's not kid ourselves, sex is a commodity with a class structure built into it).
Yeah, and it's interesting to speculate further on how it pans out. Regardless of the outcome of the election, this reproductively disadvantaged cohort aren't going anywhere and their relative numbers are likely to increase as the wealth gap increases and technology advances. As polygyny is an inherently unstable form of sociosexual organization, certainly in a democracy, it may turn out to be the bug in the system of the neo-liberal enterprise that leads to its demise. My tentative prediction is that we are either headed towards authoritarianism in the states (with a Trump or equivalent at the helm), in which the gap is actually likely to balloon and then burst in serious social upheaval, or the US reverts back to a more enforced egalitarianism like social democratic Europe that reduces the wealth gap and thus the reproductive gap. You then get a kind of irony where what is most in the Alt-Right's interest is something like the Bernie Sander's revolution. The caveat here is that that only applies to the economics. A social-conservatism with more emphasis on families, reduced levels of divorce, and less licentiousness would also suit. Not sure though of the extent that those two can be combined.
There is no major world religion which claims that sexual partners should be promiscuous or otherwise be unfaithful to one another for example. None. So why do you think different cultures, different religions, in different time frames have always agreed upon this? Chance? No - it's because these values have been perceived to be true for human beings - or at least for MOST human beings.
They've tended to agree on these values for very straightforward evolutionary reasons. It's in men's reproductive interest not to be cuckolded. Those that were would tend to nurture the genes of more cunning rivals and fail to pass their own on. Hence the evolved tendency in men to value faithfulness and fear promiscuity in their female mates. The virgin / slut dichotomy is built in to the male psyche. As for women, it should be obvious that promiscuity in men is a threat to their and their offspring's monopoly on men's resources. You don't need any transcendental magic to explain this stuff.
TheWillowOfDarknessAugust 30, 2016 at 07:10#185930 likes
The embarrassing thing is the is/ought distinction is exactly what you are (supposedly) describing here: that values are not states of the world.
They are never given by the mere fact someone thinks them. Or than many people belief them. Rather they are a logic which is given irrespective of what exists, which is how values and ethics are still binding, even when people don't enact them or agree with them.
The "transcendent" nature of values destroys your essentialist line of argument.
Agustino:Sexual purity and virginity are important values in all religions again - what is to be done in cases of impurity is a social custom and is different.
At the level you argue this, the popularity of them throughout history, they are only social customs. Just because a people believe certain values, it doesn't mean they are true. You are making the pathetic sort of argument as the individualistic Westerners who proclaim an action is right becasue the happen to think so.
The Great WhateverAugust 30, 2016 at 07:13#185940 likes
Yeah, and it's interesting to speculate further on how it pans out. Regardless of the outcome of the election, this reproductively disadvantaged cohort aren't going anywhere and their relative numbers are likely to increase as the wealth gap increases and technology advances. As polygyny is an inherently unstable form of sociosexual organization, certainly in a democracy, it may turn out to be the bug in the system of the neo-liberal enterprise that leads to its demise. My tentative prediction is that we are either headed towards authoritarianism in the states (with a Trump or equivalent at the helm), in which the gap is actually likely to balloon and then burst in serious social upheaval, or the US reverts back to a more enforced egalitarianism like social democratic Europe that reduces the wealth gap and thus the reproductive gap. You then get a kind of irony where what is most in the Alt-Right's interest is something like the Bernie Sander's revolution. The caveat here is that that only applies to the economics. A social-conservatism with more emphasis on families, reduced levels of divorce, and less licentiousness would also suit. Not sure though of the extent that those two can be combined.
I don't think angry virgins are powerful enough to do anything tbh. Men don't really have any power in that domain, least of all undesirable men.
I tend to think technological shifts will make many of the debates we have now irrelevant and dislodge us from our most basic anthropological moorings. The structure of the family and reproduction, and the way basic human relationships are carried out, is about to topple, for a number of reasons.
TheWillowOfDarknessAugust 30, 2016 at 07:36#185950 likes
I'd say power is a much better description in this context. It is the power of the man which is protected-- his wife cannot leave him, cannot be without him, cannot partake in sexual relations with anyone but him, etc.,etc. Society gives him the right to have what he wants (her) for the remainder of his life.
For the angry undesirable man, I think this idea is quite powerful. If society were to simultaneously demand life-long partnerships and stop and roll back women's rights to one degree of another, he would (seemingly) have a chance. He might become desirable, either as an economic or a local authority figure. Then, if he does find someone, society would proclaim he will have her for so longs he wants.
The Great WhateverAugust 30, 2016 at 07:45#185960 likes
I'd say power is a much better description in this context. It is the power of the man which is protected-- his wife cannot leave him, cannot be without him, cannot partake in sexual relations with anyone but him, etc.,etc. Society gives him the right to have what he wants (her) for the remainder of his life.
?
Men don't get any of that, I'm not sure what you're talking about. An undesirable man won't be married in the first place anyway. Do men want that? I don't know, maybe some? But I think women tend to overestimate their own importance in the eyes of men, as men do in the eyes of women.
The structures are changing and what people want seems to be changing with it. Yes some men want a return to an era where they were valued as heads of family and productive job holders. But the alt right by and large seems to want more radical, risky things.
Reply to Baden I agree with TGW that what you outlined seems a very plausible (at least partial) explanation of what's motivating this horde of angry white working class males. Makes a lot of sense actually.
I also think Francis Fukuyama's notion of the desire for 'recognition' has a certain explanatory power when assessing the driving force behind the growing hostility of this demographic. The dignity that this group once enjoyed has been eroding for quite some time, and we're seeing some blowback now. I think there are many people who will forego material comfort and well-being - to the point of sacrificing their lives if necessary - for the sake of more ethereal values like honor and respect.
Incidentally this phenomena would also appear to shed light on BLM and other marginalized groups' struggle for recognition, as well as hostility to the domination of the West in places like the Middle East. In China too they remember the Hundred Years of Humiliation and use that memory to inspire the current generation to do what they must to prevent it from happening again. Historic and more contemporary examples abound.
So I see the biological, economic and more incorporeal psychological aspects as overlapping and reinforcing, rather than an either/or matter in which only one explanation is right. People will fight to the death over material and non-material things alike, and I think an awareness of these different aspects of human existence may help us understand and address the pressing issues of racial and class and national antagonisms.
I tend to think technological shifts will make many of the debates we have now irrelevant and dislodge us from our most basic anthropological moorings. The structure of the family and reproduction, and the way basic human relationships are carried out, is about to topple, for a number of reasons.
I'd agree to this extent: If it comes to the point where technology produces for men an equally or more satisfying alternative to natural sex then the whole dynamic gets pushed off its axis and we could end up in a very odd place.
TheWillowOfDarknessAugust 30, 2016 at 08:41#185990 likes
Reply to The Great Whatever I'd agree. Undesirable men have never got what they wanted, not even when men were economic providers and heads of family.
But I'm talking more on the level of an appealing fiction. In an idea of what what are supposed to get or status we are meant to have.
The social promise of power though, to their group (wanting men) over another (women, whether they keep wanting or not), can be attractive even to those who never attain it.
To me this seems to reflect the alt-right to its foundation. Not merely on respect to positions of women and men sometimes expressed, but across the board-- it wants a social authority, a promise of who gets to enact power over others, not countered or restricted by pathetic concerns such as individual's rights, respect of agency, democracy, equality, etc.,etc.
TheWillowOfDarknessAugust 30, 2016 at 09:03#186000 likes
Erik:I just find it strange that BLM makes a concerted effort to dissociate itself from ALL white people, regardless of class, educational background, or any other relevant issue that could possibly make the 'movement' more sympathetic, at least to poor and marginalized white people. The spokespeople that I've read or listened to do this very aggressively too, bludgeoning white people (again, ALL white people) for being the beneficiaries of some ubiquitous 'privilege' floating around them that they apparently can neither fathom nor appreciate. And for poor white folk struggling to afford the basic necessities of life, this seems bizarre -- and then, to make matters worse, even suggesting how strange or disconnected from reality it is results in loud cries of " RACIST!!!', apparently for questioning the dogmatic narrative.
The point is to avoid the equivocation of what's happening to black people with others, so allowing it to just be passed of as "an issue which affects anyone." When that happens, awareness of what's happening to black people gets lost.
If someone raises just how much of an impact actions of the police have on the black community, it will frequently get dismiss as "just crime" or "just poverty," in a way that undermines efforts to address the issue-- it all becomes part of the endemic problems of "crime" and "poverty" which are seen to have no solution, nothing to do with our major institutions and the specific people who suffer in these instance.
So it is not that a poor white person will necessary be better off or be less impacted by police action (sometimes they suffer just as badly or worse than a poor black person), but rather that, in the case of this issue (the black community in relation to the police), it is about how a black person life is affected.
If we ignore this, if we try to say it the same for anyone else, we are ignoring black people are affected in these instances. We are burying that they are the one's harmed in these instances. (usually, to the effect of saying there is no problem with how black people are treated in society).
The Great WhateverAugust 30, 2016 at 09:09#186010 likes
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness Yeah, that sounds right. But I think value for authority is the norm in human life generally. So it's only in the context of an oddly liberal society that it comes off as dangerous.
They've tended to agree on these values for very straightforward evolutionary reasons. It's in men's reproductive interest not to be cuckolded. Those that were would tend to nurture the genes of more cunning rivals and fail to pass their own on. Hence the evolved tendency in men to value faithfulness and fear promiscuity in their female mates. The virgin / slut dichotomy is built in to the male psyche. As for women, it should be obvious that promiscuity in men is a threat to their and their offspring's monopoly on men's resources. You don't need any transcendental magic to explain this stuff.
I perfectly agree that there also exists a biological basis for sexual practices. I probably disagree with you a little over the nuts and bolts of it, but it's somewhat as you put it. However - that is not what I was talking about. Man has both a biological and a spiritual side. The spiritual will reconcile and fulfill man's biological nature as well as his spiritual. But the spiritual is different. Man and women have a different biological nature when it comes to sexual preferences: man is by nature polygamous, as this maximises his chances of developing as many offspring as possible. No aspect of his biology can restrict his reproduction - he can always, if the females are available, reproduce. Due to the fact that a woman cannot go from man to man and give birth - because she requires sustenance and protection during pregnancy, which lasts for a significant time, and poses significant risks - she by nature will be monogamous. Out of this biological difference between men and women, there can arise many conflicts - that I agree. This is assessment is justified by: (1) the stronger emphasis on sexual purity for women across all the world's cultures, (2) the fact that women are more frequently the victims of cheating, (3) the existence of large social groups (Middle East) where polygamy for men is acceptable, (4) the lower number of unfaithful women in comparison to men.
However - from a spiritual point of view, it is not reproduction that matters, and that drives practices, but rather intimacy and love. From love's point of view monogamy is demanded for both men and women, and is necessary for the fulfilment of their spiritual nature. Today's problems do not stem from biology - indeed it is precisely a wilful, spiritual betrayal of biology that is the cause. Young women do not reproduce - the average age of marriage and child-bearing is getting higher and higher, 27+. The age of reproduction used to be much much lower, down to as low as 21. There isn't a reproductory rush towards rich males to ensure sustenance of offspring. There is a rush towards rich males to ensure what progressive's love - lots of parties, lots of drinking, lots of drugs, lots of "fun", lots of promiscuity, lots of holidays in exotic places. That's what these women do until they're 27, they're not concerned about reproduction (it would in fact be a much better thing if they were concerned with reproduction) That's why the rush is towards the rich. Take away the drinking, drugs, and fun - say by looking at a rich religious man, and you'll see a lot less, if any, of those young girls rushing to him. They're only rushing to the new, progressive rich, not to the old, aristocratic wealth, which still remains largely socially conservative, and which remains anathema to these progressive women. So this is all a SPIRITUAL disorder, which needs to be understood in spiritual terms, not in biological terms. Biological terms fail to see the source of the problem, which has very little to do with reproduction, and much more to do with wilful spiritual rebellion and lack of piety.
But I think value for authority is the norm in human life generally. So it's only in the context of an oddly liberal society that it comes off as dangerous.
Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness I understand what you're saying, and largely agree with it, but my point in bringing up BLM was not to dispute the disproportionate level of violence and oppression that people of color receive at the hands of police, but rather to point out that at a time when many white folk like myself were inclined to stand with this group against injustice, we were purposely pushed away and told that we were part of the problem.
I'm thinking particularly of what I felt to be a grotesque article accusing all white people of ipso facto being racists and beneficiaries of 'white privilege'. The article was written by a wealthy, black, and well-connected college professor (Michael Eric Dyson), no less. Now, it may be my imagination running wild, but it seems like he was using his platform in the NY Times to make a concerted effort to drive a wedge between whites and blacks, when issues of economic background and social status could have served as a rallying cry to bring people of different races together under the banner of fighting against a corrupt establishment, of which the police (also blue-collar workers) are paid to protect and serve. And his was not an isolated case but one of many that harped on similarly divisive themes through major media outlets.
When working class white stiffs finally started complaining about the economic elites who dominate the country (instead of 'black welfare queens' or other traditional scapegoats), most of whom are white, an attempt was made to minimize the vast differences in power and influence amongst whites by welding us into a monolithic block. My take, or perhaps my hope, is that poor people of all races come to see that they have more in common with each other than with elites like Michael Eric Dyson. But I'm rambling unnecessarily now...
Now of course these aren't entirely related matters (police oppression against blacks and growing economic inequality), but the economic aspect - specifically the plight of working class people regardless of race - has been almost entirely ignored in favor of a racial narrative by those news outlets which hold the most sway. It just seemed a bit fishy to me, almost like it was purposely contrived given the timing of other things going on concurrently that were bringing awareness to global and national socio-economic issues. But again, I'll chalk all this up to my paranoia rather than some elaborate scheme of the rich to divide poor people against each other. Perhaps racial identity is more important to most people than class identity, and I should just accept that this will always be the case.
Comments (102)
She claims the Alt-Right has taken over the Republican Party.
Why would right-wing nationalism be rising around the world?
Good question, I don't know. Because people feel more military threat now than... maybe 50 years ago? Or... Because stabilizing organizations like the UN and/or dominant countries like the USSR and USA appear to be less reliable than in the past? Because close relationships between neighbors (or among regional partners) have collapsed?
Fundamentalism seems to be on the rise too, along with greater secularism. Globalization seems (or would seem) to drive nations into alliances, rather than a narrow nationalism, but... maybe not.
Because liberalism, internationalism, global trade, secularism, 'progress', etc. have turned out to be disappointing?
If right-wing nationalism is increasing, it seems like it would be reactionary -- against a dilution of local values.
"The label blends together straight-up white supremacists, nationalists who think conservatives have sold out to globalization, and nativists who fear immigration will spur civil disarray. But at its core are the ideas of a movement known as neoreaction, and neoreaction (NRx for short) is a rejection of democracy. ... The purpose of government, in the view of neoreactionaries, isn't to represent the will of the people. It's to govern well, full stop. 'From the perspective of its subjects, what counts is not who runs the government but what the government does,' Moldbug explains. 'Good government is effective, lawful government. Bad government is ineffective, lawless government. How anyone reasonable could disagree with these statements is quite beyond me. And yet clearly almost everyone does.'
And democratic government, the neoreactionaries insist, is not effective, lawful government. Because the will of the people is arbitrary and varying, it cannot have the consistency of real, durable law, and it creates incentives for wasteful and, worse still, left-wing government. ... But while mainstream libertarians are outspoken about democracy's deficiencies, they rarely propose an alternative. The neoreactionaries do: monarchy. Well, not monarchy specifically, but some kind of nondemocratic system with rule-driven succession. Moldbug likes to use the term "formalism," or "neocameralism," a reference to "cameralism," the philosophy of government embraced by Frederick the Great of Prussia. Moldbug's vision is corporatist, where instead of a nation belonging to a royal family, it belongs to corporation with shareholders to whom it is accountable. 'To a neocameralist, a state is a business which owns a country,' he writes."
2) Sprinkle it with vanilla essence
3) Mix it up during the Obama administration
4) Add some coconut frosting
5) Put it on the Alex Jones show.
Et voilá, the Alt-Right fruitcake.
For a long time this demographic stood firmly within the Republican fold, at the expense of their own economic interests no less, but this is no longer the case and the free market fundamentalist wing of the Republican Party appears to be collaborating with the Democratic elite to marginalize the very group they exploited for the past 40 or so years through implicitly racist imagery.
One obviously needn't be a racist of xenophobe to feel bitterness towards the growing disparity in wealth and power between the absurdly wealthy and everyone else -- but of course no respectable white person wants to be accused of racism or xenophobia, so we distance ourselves from those uneducated dolts and whatever they stand for. By doing so, we prove our own sophistication and membership amongst our 'respectable' and progressive fellow citizens. Pretty straightforward but effective strategy.
I'm also beginning to think that BLM and other divisive movements are being fomented at this precise moment when that old concatenation of power and interest are, or could have been, under their greatest threat from a broad grassroots movement of disadvantaged people of all races and type. It's the old divide and conquer approach which has worked in this country from its inception.
Anyhow the key now, to me at least, is to separate the essential from the inessential, the legitimate social, economic and political grievances of our current world from accidental traits of race and nationality. Not sure if this is even possible but it's worth thinking through: finding some common ground that people from different cultures and nationalities can agree upon that goes even deeper than the old communist notion of class warfare.
Yeah, I'm becoming a bit paranoid and cynical these days.
I'd define it at its most basic with a core lack of sympathy for basic, foundational liberal impulses among a tech-savvy and disenfranchised youth.
Liberalism is a weird historical quirk spurred for the most part by the unique historical position white people found themselves in during the 18th century. It is, by and large, an ideology of modern white people and their hangers-on. It's still an open question of course whether this historical aberration will become the new norm or go back to the nothing that it came from.
Maybe -- BLM seems to me sinister because it equates being black with being criminal, and defending criminality as equal to defending black communities. This is of course a narrative that your average Democrat, white or black, implicitly believes in all that they do, and is calculated to keep black people in America a perpetual Democrat-voting underclass.
That's my tinfoil hat speculation for the day. Shrug.
I just find it strange that BLM makes a concerted effort to dissociate itself from ALL white people, regardless of class, educational background, or any other relevant issue that could possibly make the 'movement' more sympathetic, at least to poor and marginalized white people. The spokespeople that I've read or listened to do this very aggressively too, bludgeoning white people (again, ALL white people) for being the beneficiaries of some ubiquitous 'privilege' floating around them that they apparently can neither fathom nor appreciate. And for poor white folk struggling to afford the basic necessities of life, this seems bizarre -- and then, to make matters worse, even suggesting how strange or disconnected from reality it is results in loud cries of " RACIST!!!', apparently for questioning the dogmatic narrative.
To make the issue even harder to comprehend is that, almost without exception, the BLM attackers of white privilege don't appreciate being lumped together and stereotyped with other black people, yet they do that very thing to white people, and don't hesitate to make broad sweeping (and negative) generalizations about them. Of course some who do this may engage in the tactic with a sense of irony, in order to make some relevant point, but most that I've argued with don't appear to even be aware of the inconsistency, or to feel the need to offer some justification for it beyond the platitude that only those with power can be racist.
As a pragmatist, I can't fathom how anyone in a position of influence would purposely alienate and marginalize the group they represent, when even the possibility to expand your base of support exists potentially. But I'm probably missing some important feature of BLM that would make the strategy intelligible, or the seemingly favorable portrayal BLM received in the media, at least until it got out of hand and cops started getting killed. The public visibility of BLM - perpetuated by major media outlets and prominent politicians - seemed to coincide with a growing sense of anger amongst Trump's supporters, specifically against a 'system' they were finally beginning to see as rigged against them by both traditional Republicans and Democrats. Probably just coincidence.
Anyhow I don't want to turn this into a discussion of BLM, and I'm probably connecting dots haphazardly. I just found the timing and emphasis of BLM to be interesting. I do know of the taped killings and how those played a role, but I began to wonder how certain issues gain prominence for a time and what role the media has in this. And who owns the media outlets? And do they have a vested interest in stirring up certain groups against each other? If manipulation via divide and conquer has even a hint of truth, I'd imagine it's due more to instinctive self-preservation of those who dominate politics and business and media than a coordinated and self-conscious conspiracy amongst them.
Apologies to any who read this for the disconnected rambling. I'm on guard against turning into a conspiracy nut, although I do believe people with similar interests conspire collectively to protect those interests. That seems a pretty rational if not ethical thing to do.
Source
Their rightism was once an ideology of the ruling class, but now it is just another identity. I like this criticism partly because it's the one that I imagine would annoy them the most.
Wiki
I know very few people who would talk openly about the need to preserve 'white' culture, but many do speak of an attack upon American culture, or Western culture. The growing equation of American culture with white culture, with special emphasis on its inherently racist and oppressive tendencies, may have the (perhaps) unintended consequence of pushing white people to identify as a group that's come under attack and, by default, caused them to rally together collectively. I'm sure there are white men and women (especially men) who find some strange psychological solace or even enjoyment in playing the role of victim in this new scenario, but I also think a distinction should be made between 'dreamt-up' and reasonable grievances.
I think we can all agree that the last 40 years has hit the middle and lower classes of all races hard, very hard in fact, and, in the US at least, the Democrats - who would appear to be the historical and ideological representatives of this demographic - have purposely fostered an emphasis on identity rather than class-based politics. I also think an argument could be made that 'progressive' intellectuals who push things like multiculturalism and identity politics could be the cause of increased white racism, precisely because they purposely go out of their way to highlight differences amongst people based upon race and ethnicity and sexual orientation - black culture, Latino culture, LGBT culture - and then refuse to allow straight, white men to have any identity beyond perpetual racist or bigoted oppressor.
So this group has been backed into a corner and forced to assume an identity, irrespective of vast social and economic differences, with no legitimate effort being made to find another, more transcendent and inclusive one. You are white, therefore you are the new 'other' who must be demonized and marginalized. You will be able to maintain your livelihood and profession as long as you don't voice any 'pride' in your background, or voice your displeasure that other groups are allowed and even encouraged to do so. There are reasons for this discrepancy, but they've been articulated by people much smarter and more educated than yourselves, largely within the comfortable confines and abstractions of academia. The motivation may have been pure (correcting past and current injustices), but the best way to overcome an unjust hierarchy IMO is not an inversion of the old one in favor of a new, but rather searching for commonalities beyond accidental differences of birth.
I'm partial to certain Romantic critiques of the Enlightenment, but I do appreciate the latter's universalist tendencies and lament its apparent demise in this day and age. Very sad. I 've always felt this to be one of the great things about America: I have zero sense of historical identity to European ancestors, I have married a woman of indigenous Mexican heritage, we have children that are (obviously) mixed race, and all of this is seen as pretty normal in the part of the US where I live and grew up in -- oddly one of those maligned white suburbs teaming with Trump supporters. These are non-issues to me and to most of the people I know, but others want to push a divisive race narrative that makes them more relevant than they should be. That's my limited experience at least.
Whatever the case may be, ending the blame game and searching for viable solutions that DO involve a new sense of shared identity and ethos needs to begin ASAP. This obviously gets into complex matters that try to balance the preservation of multiple cultures and identities while also facilitating the aforementioned transcendent sense of belongingness which encompasses each of these separate groups. Or we all blend into a homogeneous and dominant culture, regardless of race or ethnicity. Can't have it both ways, though, at least not as far as I can tell.
Quoting Erik
I think it's worse than this. I think these progressives are guilty of a kind of racism or racialism of their own, because they implicitly reject the dream in which people "will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Martin Luther King's vision is, to this way of thinking, a microaggressive denial of racial identity. (I think some conservatives have said what I'm saying here too, so I'll probably be accused of being a conservative, again).
It can also be seen in the European left-liberal attitude to Muslims, who become to them another monolithic group of victims with characteristic grievances. To these "progressives", the poor little Muslims can hardly be blamed for their rage against the West, and criticism of ISIS is deemed to be Islamophobic (an extreme example perhaps, but it did happen: NUS motion to condemn Isis fails amidst claims of islamophobia).
A number of my friends are saying stuff along these lines. They think of Clinton as the face of the establishment... or a servant of it. Trump's suggestion that the US should back out of NATO is an attack on that establishment, which promotes US dominance in the world as some sort of quasi virtuous adventure when it really just provides the means for certain parties to engage in exploitation.
But what I see is that Trump actually does come across as either racist or stupid. The answer I get back is that that's because what I know about either candidate is influenced by a biased media.
I guess what I'm saying is that I see how the puzzle pieces fit together.. but I think that this organization must partly be accidental?
What it reminds me of is the way that there were no books about Karl Marx in the school library when I was a kid. Yes, this benefited the Kings of the Status Quo, but the USSR really was a gravely diseased state and it really did have an aggressive stance. If you look at the whole thing naturalistically, the world has just been a very rich and nutritious environment for a certain type of organism: Exploitative Americanus (direct descendant of Exploitative Britannica.) Some of the success of this genus is its own genius. Some of it is just amazingly good luck.
You're saying the same thing Erik did... I think. That bringing up Alt-right is an attempt to spin the facts against Trump and toward Clinton.
I was watching the CBS evening news the other night and they had a report on this. During the segment the presenter called Milo Yiannopoulos a white nationalist. I almost fell out of my chair. That's what the establishment media thinks of the Alt-Right and poor Milo? Wow. Milo is a professional troll who tries his best to test the limits of free speech, for which I commend him, even though it causes him to be utterly ridiculous. But it's not hard to understand that this is what he's doing, so it's amazing that CBS fell for it. Many of those on the Alt-Right may be genuine racists, I have no doubt about that, but to cast the whole movement in such terms shows once again that the left is only capable of smears.
Yeah, I've heard Zizek talk about this, the denial to the right of the minority even to be morally wrong as a disguised form of racism. I tend to agree, and the NUS seem to have thought themselves into a hole on this one. On the other hand, the progressive attitude can have the positive effect of combating the creation in society of a group that it becomes socially acceptable to discriminate against.
CBS is a mouth-piece of the left? I think it's just a content purveyor looking for a market. News is entertainment.
If not, then how would you draw a line from CBS to some leftist entity? I'm not saying you're wrong.. I'm just asking how you connect the dots.
Agreed, but I think there's a big difference between, on the one hand, the defence of a group by standing up for the rights of its members to be treated the same as everyone else (the Civil Rights Movement), and on the other hand, the attempt to protect a group's identity and culture (multiculturalism and identity politics). A person's particular identity and culture may be exactly what he or she wants to escape from.
Of course, when identity and culture are precisely what a person is attacked for, there is good reason to defend them, and to assert them. This has often been an aspect of protest and is not peculiar to modern identity politics as such. But it's a problem when this becomes the deep and not merely symbolic mode of protest, and the only one seen as legitimate by the most vocal activist groups, which people formerly on the same side must abide by or else suffer the wrath of the self-appointed guardians. (For examples of that, just look at the way Peter Tatchell and Germaine Greer have been attacked by LGBT activists and feminists, and the the way that Muslim and ex-Muslim opponents of Islamic fundamentalism have been attacked by the Left.)
Where previously it was quite common to protest with "no, I am not defined by that group or culture; I am a citizen just like you and I demand the same rights," now everything is being drowned out by "I am defined by my identity and my background, and it is sacrosanct". At least, this is the sanctioned script.
Doesn't the alt right try to attach itself to Trump?
Could be. I don't know. I watch streaming CBS. They have a reporter named Sanchez who is a Republican strategist. She reported that Clinton "obviously" was engaged in pay-for-play while Secretary of State. It wasn't marked out as a editorial, although there were several people talking to each other.
The news has opinion all mashed into it. I don't remember it being like that in the old days.
I agree. It even spreads into sports reporting, which is ruined by continual opinionating :) How can I work out how the game really went?
With a caveat, though, that in my youth the news was more controlled by different vested interests, yet had a cleverly-maintained appearance of impartiality. In the UK, looking back, that's clear for instance in old reporting on stuff from the royal family to misbehaviour by public figures.
War reporting was very circumscribed - the Vietnam war then erupted with a much greater openness of reporting - the last war to be so well-reported at the time, for the military worked out how to control it.
Interesting thread: in Britain and especially England there's been some debate about people who voted to leave the EU - the Brexiters - and whether they partly represent this 'white working-class' group who aren't allowed to have an identity of their own. I think it's overdone in relation to the referendum - the political classes lost control of the terms of the debate - but there's definitely an element of it there.
In general there is an odd tendency to see sex as preferably 'free market' in a context where most people despise an unrestrained 'free market.' This is, no surprise, dependent on whether you benefit from the freedom of the market (and let's not kid ourselves, sex is a commodity with a class structure built into it).
Well Trump certainly sells himself as the alternative against the right wing establishment.
And his rhetoric echo's the tone of white victimization that is the central theme of the alt right.
Progressives - like all leftist groups having a tendency towards totalitarianism and decadence - must always create this "Other" who is a false image of the real threat - their own projection, which is aimed at nothing but maintaining their ignorance. That's what the Alt-Right is. Of course, they will paint this other exactly according to their own worldview - in this case - sexually frustrated, white, minority, etc. But this is nothing other than a big red-herring to mobilise the stupid masses and drive them against people who actually hold a very different world-view, and thus perceive and interact with the world through a different set of glasses.
You will find very little information online or in Western Academia about the real enemy of progressives. Everything becomes a fog that is just a projection, a vilification which seeks to eliminate alternatives, and force those who disagree - through a self-fulfilling mechanism - to become the enemy whom the progressives order them to become. Then they can be marginalised, mentally destroyed, and brought to submission - once they agree to play the progressive's game, starting from progressive principles, of course they will end up with progressive conclusions, seeing themselves as monsters. Psychology and psychiatry have already been corrupted to serve these ends. Men and women for example - are told continuously by the controlling liberal elite that unless they wear their sexuality proudly in public, they are not fulfilling their potential. They are told that unless they have others sexually attracted to them, something is wrong. Their whole set of values is constructed and imposed - BY FORCE - very important! - on them. It is hilarious, an absolute joke, when you see a married woman refusing to get an operation because she fears MEN will no longer be sexually attracted to her. This goes to show that this has been ingrained as a priority in her brain. There is no question of morality - her whole worldview is corrupt. And she cannot find out because wherever she turns, there the progressive ideologue is whispering in her ear.
This liberal cancer is a betrayal of real Western culture and civilisation - freedom has never, until the last 200 years, been understood as the ability to do whatever you want. On the contrary - the real Western idea of freedom was the man who held all his impulses in check - the free man was identical to the good man, and to the man free from the bondage of desire - NOT the one who yielded to whatever desires were found inside of him. Starting around the time of the French Revolution this originally ARISTOCRATIC understanding of freedom started to be corrupted, and a disgusting idea of freedom - the idea of freedom held by the spiritually weakest pace Nietzsche triumphed. What was worst in civilisation started to become acceptable. Little by little - to the point where today, even what is good is judged by the standards of evil: such that a desire for love, is judged to be a desire for sex. Such that love is found to be compatible with this disgusting idea of servitude to one's own ego and one's own desires. Such that society dissolves in an ocean of small separate islands. The real problem with things that progressives are obsessed with, like feminazism, equality, sex, etc. is that they destroy society, and as man is a social animal, it makes it impossible for any degree of happiness to be achieved. How do they destroy society? By destroying the MORAL and CULTURAL bonds between people. For example - a married couple is held together by the moral bond that exists between the two. What is beautiful in love is not just sex or what results from it. In fact - even for the progressive, it's not the pleasure of orgasm that drives him towards promiscuity (otherwise they would just be compulsive masturbators :) ). But rather - it is an evil and pernicious spiritual desire which is found in their heart - the desire for power and domination over the other (notice also how sex has become a matter of "social status" for them). That's why they want others to be attracted to them, and so forth. A person with a natural constitution, untouched by this progressive madness, has little interest in such matters. Yes - they do desire love - but they don't desire generalised sexual attraction towards their person. They just desire ONE person to be sexually attracted to them.
But if you change their mindset, such that in their brain, they perceive the world through the progressive categories, they will never understand why their marriages fail, they will never understand why they children are growing up crooked, they will never understand why they can't find love. The problem is themselves. How can you find love when you are interested in others being sexually attracted to you? One cannot serve both God and Mammon. One cannot want love - that which is an eternal and exclusivist feeling (hence why lovers feel "special" to one another) - and at the same time want sexual attraction which contains in itself the contradictory desire to love - love's undoing.
"Reproductive wealth gap" listen to this. As if love is some business dealing, and we must organise society such that we have an equitable distribution of the currency of sex . That will surely solve our problems, because the missing ingredient was certainly the asymmetrical distribution of sex. Trust me - if you organised, successfully, an equal distribution of sex then progressivism would end - because everyone would see through the deception, that it has never been sex that was the missing ingredient, but rather the fact that love has become impossible. Love is only possible in a society which preserves the cultural and moral bonds between people. Love requires loyalty, denial of self (which is never going to be congruent with desire for sexual attraction), courage, and faith. Love does not occur on Tinder. But of course - you keep creating the alter-egos, and the smoke and mirrors. Maybe you will keep fooling people. But the real threat to progressivism isn't these idiotic totalitarian Alt-Right neo-fascists. The real threat is those people who KNOW the historical traditions of the West, and who understand how progressives have stolen everyone's freedom, and imposed chains, by ideological force on everyone. Those people who know that progressives have stolen the possibility of happiness from the common man. Those people are the real threat, and let me tell you something about those people - you can't buy them out with sex, or with money, or with anything of this sort. Because what they are interested in, is not bought and sold like some dirty currency... what they are interested in cannot and will never be bought and sold because it is part of those perennial things - as T.S. Eliot called them. You can offer them all the sex you imagine - such people will refuse, because they know that your offer is actually your request for them to give up their faith, their morality, and their belief in love.
Emptiness, and feelings of meaninglessness - they are only possible in modernity, because only in modernity the perennial things have been dissolved. That's why the historical record does not have complaints of meaninglessness - life, in itself, untainted by progressive madness - is already so rich and meaningful. The progressives max out on drugs, sex and debauchery to run away from their own inner emptiness. The common man goes from party to party - but s/he will never find happiness - it will always elude him, because what happiness demands is rendered impossible by current Western society. This anger that you find building up in the unconsciousness of mankind is exactly the result of this: LOVE FRUSTRATION. Love for God, love for husband/wife, love. Real love, by the way, NOT the mockery of progressive love on Tinder, or the progressive mockery of traditional marriage and their deception of women that marriage is a misogynist institution from its conception, or their imposition on the young of a culture of "rap and drugs".
Typical, only the opposition has extremist that would impose totalitarianism.
In fact a great many alt right "intellectuals" believe democracy should be done away.
Quoting Agustino
Extremist believe that social values are a zero sum game.
You basically argue that if someon does not share your values then they have no values at all.
I am against the alt-right as well. It's produced by progressives.
Quoting Agustino
I guess you have never heard of the is/ought problem?
It is very much not a fact that "values are values."
The is/ought distinction is founded on a category error. Values don't exist in the sense of the way a chair exists, somewhere to be found and touched in the real world. They are transcendental, above and beyond the world. A mere analysis of the physics of the world will not yield you any values. And yet, that is not to say values don't exist. Only that they don't exist in the same way as atoms do. To expect the same kind of being with regards to values as in regards to atoms is to misunderstand the nature/essence of each.
We could say the same thing about any values.
Your particular values are not a special case.
Anybody with any values can claim the same thing and it does not prove truth in any way.
My claim is rather simple - just like we have a sense to see chairs in the world, we have a sense to see values, which are transcendental. Some of us do this more clearly than the others (just like some have better vision, while others require glasses), but all of us live our spiritual lives bounded and governed by the existence of these same values, whether we recognise them or not. Hence our happiness depends on and is determined by those eternal values, and if we struggle to see what they are, then that's what tradition is for... tradition is equivalent to the glasses, which help fix our vision.
Except nobody can see the transcendental.
We are all color blind.
Even those in our traditions.
That is your belief sir and you may hold it if you wish - I know it to be otherwise, and I hold it to be self-evidently true, as if it weren't, I wouldn't even be able to talk of values (as no such idea could form in my head without the necessary underlying experience). But if this doesn't convince you, fair enough, I can do no better! :)
Right on the button, here. The alt-right's rejection of political liberalism is so radical that most progressives fail to understand the movement fully; it is simply outside of their horizon of thought.
lol
I have beliefs but you have knowledge.
Except you can't prove your knowledge.
But you sir, I suppose you can prove that nobody "sees" (ie, experiences) the transcendental...
Anybody can claim to see or experience the transcendental.
Claiming you know something from a transcendental experience does not prove anything.
This is just another statement sir. Where is the proof?
Ok show me your transcendental proof then?
I am asking you to prove you know something transcendentally.
By definition you will not be able to show empirical evidence in support of your claim.
So you tell me what sort of proof that will leave?
Well sir, I am asking you this question. What would you be willing to consider as proof? I've already explained what proof looks like in physics, and you seem to agree. So before I bring about a proof of a transcendental experience for you, please let me know what such a proof would look like. What would it take to convince you? Because without knowing this, we're like blind men looking for a black cat in a dark house :)
I have answered several times what I am willing to accept as proof.
The transcendental.
You are the one that claims to know transcendentally.
Not me.
Well sir, if you do not know what "the transcendental" refers to, how will you recognise it when I say it to you?
How do you know I won't know it is transcendentally true and what is not?
I know transcendentally that you do not have any transcendental proof or knowledge of your claims.
You would only be able to recognize it if you knew clearly what is transcendentally true and what is not.
I propose sir, that transcendental is anything that cannot be investigated with physical instruments (meaning instruments of physical sciences - microscopes, etc); anything that knowledge of the structure of the physical world as investigated by physical instruments would not reveal. Is this in accordance with your understanding of transcendental sir?
This reminds of a Ford car company ad I keep being spammed with:
Every time it comes on I want to stab my ears. The definition of freedom you dispute is now totally ingrained, sadly.
The truth that I know transcendentally that you are wrong cannot be investigated physically.
I think sir, that granting the essence we cannot expect scientific experiments to be run - it would be unreasonable, as we already accepted that the instruments of science are inadequate for this job. I also think that granting that there is no help from physical instruments, and man must rely only on his own experience, we cannot expect repeatability to be systematised. There will be no system to reproduce a given experience. Nevertheless, we do expect, if the transcendental is what we said it is, that people would be able to arrive at the same experiences described by others if they so desire and are willing to do what it takes and strive for the experience - this is to say, we would expect the experience to be common, if indeed the transcendental is what we said it is. And finally we would expect the transcendental landscape to be corroborated by multiple sources which outnumber those who state the opposite is the case, just like we expect the geographical landscape to be corroborated by multiple sources which outnumber those who state otherwise. Do you agree sir? If so, then what shall we say about the transcendental truth that you know? Can it be proved according to this criteria? :)
No what you are arguing for is a shared agreement about beliefs of the transcendental.
Not transcendental truth.
But experiences vary and we do not all agree.
There are different religions for this reason.
Take for example that Muslim transcendental truth of honor killing ones daughter.
Do you agree with that?
Many Muslims report that they experience the truth of this tradition from a transcendental source.
So no I don't agree with your criterion.
Shared agreement does not equal proof.
Sir, I take it then that you have a better idea of what proof of the transcendent should consist in. So please go ahead and outline it for me, and please explain how it's suitable to the definition towards which we have both expressed our agreements! :)
Quoting Bitter Crank
On the other forum :P (does that count as a form of promiscuity?)
When were the old days?
I have already made it clear that there is no transcendental proof.
You can claim whatever you want and say it is transcendentally true.
That does not make it true in any way except that you believe it.
Well sir, if you hold it axiomatically that there is no proof that can be offered, then you have been quite disingenuous in asking me to offer you one no? Because you would outright deny it, by this very axiom. So sir, if you will ever be interested and open to experience of the transcendental, and interested to expand your knowledge about it, then you will have to be willing to discern, given the nature of the transcendental, what would constitute as proof. Until you develop interest in this, it will not be beneficial to you to axiomatically claim there is no proof. Proof is something we decide upon given the essence of the subject, and you have agreed on the essence.
No - actually they don't. There's social traditions - such as women have to wear the hijab - and then there's VALUES - such as women have to dress DECENTLY. The values are present in all the world's main religions,the same values. The social traditions may be different. Sexual purity and virginity are important values in all religions again - what is to be done in cases of impurity is a social custom and is different. So I think you need to sharpen your understanding of what values are, and differentiate them from social traditions which are founded upon those values. Yes, I think it is wrong to honor kill your daughter - because sexual purity isn't the only value out there, and the moral landscape is hierarchical - some values are more important than others. Social traditions may be critiqued, but only once values are understood.
You seemed to miss the point.
Claiming something is transcendentally true does not make it true.
For example some claim that we must follow the teaching of the prophet Mohammad is a transcendental truth.
Would you agree that it is a transcendental truth?
If you don't agree then you are saying that some people are wrong about what is transcendental truth.
Regardless or cultural differences appeals to the transcendental truth are made.
A statement is not trasncendental, no. What the statement refers to may be transcendental. Following a way isn't one of those things. Values, meanings, significance - those things are transcendental. And of course, merely claiming something is transcendentally true doesn't make it so, neither did my proof criterion claim it does make it so. Have you failed to read that it should be possible for any person, if they truly want and are open towards it, to have the same experience and hence find the same value as someone else? - Validate it through their own experience?
Once again even people that are truly open towards the transcendental disagree about what is true and what is not.
And claiming something is transcendentally true does not mean it is necessarily true at all.
So again, you can claim you know something transcendentally all you want.
That claim does not prove anything about the transcendental and it certainly does not mean what you claim is just true.
All it means is that you have a belief that something is true.
Again it does not matter that these are actions, what matters is people claim these things are based on transcendental truths.
No actually they don't disagree. There is no major world religion which claims that sexual partners should be promiscuous or otherwise be unfaithful to one another for example. None. So why do you think different cultures, different religions, in different time frames have always agreed upon this? Chance? No - it's because these values have been perceived to be true for human beings - or at least for MOST human beings.
And yes, of course there have been exceptions. But there have also been exceptions in geographical maps which are wrong. That doesn't mean no map is correct. Most geographical maps state the same thing, this is corroborating evidence towards the conclusion that they are accurate descriptions of reality. If we disbelieve them, no problem, we can go out there and check for ourselves. Same here.
Yes, so what? You're not speaking to "people" - you're speaking to me. So why does it matter what they say? That's clearly nonsensical given the definition we both accepted, as I've explained.
You believe you know what is transcendentally true.
So what.
A lot of people believe they know things are transcendentally true.
To be a citizen of country, the with same rights, includes that personal and cultural identity, assuming that person is considered part of the country and considers themselves belonging to that society. In reading identity and culture as separate to society, the classical misunderstands the role of identity and how it may be in conflict with society.
The result is absurd situations, like mentioned in this thread, where acts like condemning ISIS are treated as some measure of just how well people fit.
Saying whether ISIS is terrible isn't are measure of how well a person's indentity and culture fit with our society. It's just postering to make people in the West feel a bit better.
Every time there is an attack, we hear the same bluster about how Muslims are meant to be condemning it, as if somehow such public declarations in the West were a solution to the schism in culture between the West and Radical Islam.
The issues of identity and culture run far deeper. Here the problem is not how much Radical Islam is condemned in the Western media. It's about the relationship of people's identity and culture and our society.
This obsession with condemntion points scoring is, and many on the Left recognise this, just an excuse to vilfy Muslims. It's not Radical Islam and the people who followed who are the problem, but rather any Muslim at all, for not doing enough to stop (supposedly) members of their own community, for (supposedly) Islam is always a culture and identity seperate to our society.
But this forgets that ISIS and Radical Islam is not the community of many Muslims. For many Muslims, Islam is part of their lives and identity within Western culture. They are actually with us, not ISIS. Stopping Radical Islam doesn't, in principle, fall on them anymore than it does on us, for they no more share it values than we do.
It's insidious. Not only does it vilfy Muslims, but it prevents us from making the distinction between Muslims who are a part of our society (with their identity and culture) and the Radical Islam which will never fit. It quite literally hindering the very thing, an Islam together with the values of the West, which it supposedly wants so badly.
I am interested in pointing out that your claims about the transcendental are no different than anybody's claims about the transcendental.
Again anybody can claim they know something from transcendental truth.
That does not mean they actually know anything at all except that they believe.
Tom Brokaw? Am I wrong? Did he spin the news every night?
I liked Brokaw, he slurred his words in just the right tempo.
Yes, I don't think the Alt-right can be anything but nostalgic. Nick Land, says that the Alt-right are foundational, they can't be dialectical. A progressive agenda is lost on them because they cannot go beyond their foundations. Any give and take on their part is a movement towards the center, negating their foundations. The ultimate nostalgia.
Hard to disagree with that. I do see the danger of failing to recognize the distinction you pointed out and so abetting the kind of oppression we set out to oppose.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Yeah, and it's interesting to speculate further on how it pans out. Regardless of the outcome of the election, this reproductively disadvantaged cohort aren't going anywhere and their relative numbers are likely to increase as the wealth gap increases and technology advances. As polygyny is an inherently unstable form of sociosexual organization, certainly in a democracy, it may turn out to be the bug in the system of the neo-liberal enterprise that leads to its demise. My tentative prediction is that we are either headed towards authoritarianism in the states (with a Trump or equivalent at the helm), in which the gap is actually likely to balloon and then burst in serious social upheaval, or the US reverts back to a more enforced egalitarianism like social democratic Europe that reduces the wealth gap and thus the reproductive gap. You then get a kind of irony where what is most in the Alt-Right's interest is something like the Bernie Sander's revolution. The caveat here is that that only applies to the economics. A social-conservatism with more emphasis on families, reduced levels of divorce, and less licentiousness would also suit. Not sure though of the extent that those two can be combined.
Quoting Agustino
They've tended to agree on these values for very straightforward evolutionary reasons. It's in men's reproductive interest not to be cuckolded. Those that were would tend to nurture the genes of more cunning rivals and fail to pass their own on. Hence the evolved tendency in men to value faithfulness and fear promiscuity in their female mates. The virgin / slut dichotomy is built in to the male psyche. As for women, it should be obvious that promiscuity in men is a threat to their and their offspring's monopoly on men's resources. You don't need any transcendental magic to explain this stuff.
The embarrassing thing is the is/ought distinction is exactly what you are (supposedly) describing here: that values are not states of the world.
They are never given by the mere fact someone thinks them. Or than many people belief them. Rather they are a logic which is given irrespective of what exists, which is how values and ethics are still binding, even when people don't enact them or agree with them.
The "transcendent" nature of values destroys your essentialist line of argument.
At the level you argue this, the popularity of them throughout history, they are only social customs. Just because a people believe certain values, it doesn't mean they are true. You are making the pathetic sort of argument as the individualistic Westerners who proclaim an action is right becasue the happen to think so.
I don't think angry virgins are powerful enough to do anything tbh. Men don't really have any power in that domain, least of all undesirable men.
I tend to think technological shifts will make many of the debates we have now irrelevant and dislodge us from our most basic anthropological moorings. The structure of the family and reproduction, and the way basic human relationships are carried out, is about to topple, for a number of reasons.
I'd say power is a much better description in this context. It is the power of the man which is protected-- his wife cannot leave him, cannot be without him, cannot partake in sexual relations with anyone but him, etc.,etc. Society gives him the right to have what he wants (her) for the remainder of his life.
For the angry undesirable man, I think this idea is quite powerful. If society were to simultaneously demand life-long partnerships and stop and roll back women's rights to one degree of another, he would (seemingly) have a chance. He might become desirable, either as an economic or a local authority figure. Then, if he does find someone, society would proclaim he will have her for so longs he wants.
?
Men don't get any of that, I'm not sure what you're talking about. An undesirable man won't be married in the first place anyway. Do men want that? I don't know, maybe some? But I think women tend to overestimate their own importance in the eyes of men, as men do in the eyes of women.
The structures are changing and what people want seems to be changing with it. Yes some men want a return to an era where they were valued as heads of family and productive job holders. But the alt right by and large seems to want more radical, risky things.
I also think Francis Fukuyama's notion of the desire for 'recognition' has a certain explanatory power when assessing the driving force behind the growing hostility of this demographic. The dignity that this group once enjoyed has been eroding for quite some time, and we're seeing some blowback now. I think there are many people who will forego material comfort and well-being - to the point of sacrificing their lives if necessary - for the sake of more ethereal values like honor and respect.
Incidentally this phenomena would also appear to shed light on BLM and other marginalized groups' struggle for recognition, as well as hostility to the domination of the West in places like the Middle East. In China too they remember the Hundred Years of Humiliation and use that memory to inspire the current generation to do what they must to prevent it from happening again. Historic and more contemporary examples abound.
So I see the biological, economic and more incorporeal psychological aspects as overlapping and reinforcing, rather than an either/or matter in which only one explanation is right. People will fight to the death over material and non-material things alike, and I think an awareness of these different aspects of human existence may help us understand and address the pressing issues of racial and class and national antagonisms.
I'd agree to this extent: If it comes to the point where technology produces for men an equally or more satisfying alternative to natural sex then the whole dynamic gets pushed off its axis and we could end up in a very odd place.
But I'm talking more on the level of an appealing fiction. In an idea of what what are supposed to get or status we are meant to have.
The social promise of power though, to their group (wanting men) over another (women, whether they keep wanting or not), can be attractive even to those who never attain it.
To me this seems to reflect the alt-right to its foundation. Not merely on respect to positions of women and men sometimes expressed, but across the board-- it wants a social authority, a promise of who gets to enact power over others, not countered or restricted by pathetic concerns such as individual's rights, respect of agency, democracy, equality, etc.,etc.
The point is to avoid the equivocation of what's happening to black people with others, so allowing it to just be passed of as "an issue which affects anyone." When that happens, awareness of what's happening to black people gets lost.
If someone raises just how much of an impact actions of the police have on the black community, it will frequently get dismiss as "just crime" or "just poverty," in a way that undermines efforts to address the issue-- it all becomes part of the endemic problems of "crime" and "poverty" which are seen to have no solution, nothing to do with our major institutions and the specific people who suffer in these instance.
So it is not that a poor white person will necessary be better off or be less impacted by police action (sometimes they suffer just as badly or worse than a poor black person), but rather that, in the case of this issue (the black community in relation to the police), it is about how a black person life is affected.
If we ignore this, if we try to say it the same for anyone else, we are ignoring black people are affected in these instances. We are burying that they are the one's harmed in these instances. (usually, to the effect of saying there is no problem with how black people are treated in society).
I perfectly agree that there also exists a biological basis for sexual practices. I probably disagree with you a little over the nuts and bolts of it, but it's somewhat as you put it. However - that is not what I was talking about. Man has both a biological and a spiritual side. The spiritual will reconcile and fulfill man's biological nature as well as his spiritual. But the spiritual is different. Man and women have a different biological nature when it comes to sexual preferences: man is by nature polygamous, as this maximises his chances of developing as many offspring as possible. No aspect of his biology can restrict his reproduction - he can always, if the females are available, reproduce. Due to the fact that a woman cannot go from man to man and give birth - because she requires sustenance and protection during pregnancy, which lasts for a significant time, and poses significant risks - she by nature will be monogamous. Out of this biological difference between men and women, there can arise many conflicts - that I agree. This is assessment is justified by: (1) the stronger emphasis on sexual purity for women across all the world's cultures, (2) the fact that women are more frequently the victims of cheating, (3) the existence of large social groups (Middle East) where polygamy for men is acceptable, (4) the lower number of unfaithful women in comparison to men.
However - from a spiritual point of view, it is not reproduction that matters, and that drives practices, but rather intimacy and love. From love's point of view monogamy is demanded for both men and women, and is necessary for the fulfilment of their spiritual nature. Today's problems do not stem from biology - indeed it is precisely a wilful, spiritual betrayal of biology that is the cause. Young women do not reproduce - the average age of marriage and child-bearing is getting higher and higher, 27+. The age of reproduction used to be much much lower, down to as low as 21. There isn't a reproductory rush towards rich males to ensure sustenance of offspring. There is a rush towards rich males to ensure what progressive's love - lots of parties, lots of drinking, lots of drugs, lots of "fun", lots of promiscuity, lots of holidays in exotic places. That's what these women do until they're 27, they're not concerned about reproduction (it would in fact be a much better thing if they were concerned with reproduction) That's why the rush is towards the rich. Take away the drinking, drugs, and fun - say by looking at a rich religious man, and you'll see a lot less, if any, of those young girls rushing to him. They're only rushing to the new, progressive rich, not to the old, aristocratic wealth, which still remains largely socially conservative, and which remains anathema to these progressive women. So this is all a SPIRITUAL disorder, which needs to be understood in spiritual terms, not in biological terms. Biological terms fail to see the source of the problem, which has very little to do with reproduction, and much more to do with wilful spiritual rebellion and lack of piety.
Good point ;)
I'm thinking particularly of what I felt to be a grotesque article accusing all white people of ipso facto being racists and beneficiaries of 'white privilege'. The article was written by a wealthy, black, and well-connected college professor (Michael Eric Dyson), no less. Now, it may be my imagination running wild, but it seems like he was using his platform in the NY Times to make a concerted effort to drive a wedge between whites and blacks, when issues of economic background and social status could have served as a rallying cry to bring people of different races together under the banner of fighting against a corrupt establishment, of which the police (also blue-collar workers) are paid to protect and serve. And his was not an isolated case but one of many that harped on similarly divisive themes through major media outlets.
When working class white stiffs finally started complaining about the economic elites who dominate the country (instead of 'black welfare queens' or other traditional scapegoats), most of whom are white, an attempt was made to minimize the vast differences in power and influence amongst whites by welding us into a monolithic block. My take, or perhaps my hope, is that poor people of all races come to see that they have more in common with each other than with elites like Michael Eric Dyson. But I'm rambling unnecessarily now...
Now of course these aren't entirely related matters (police oppression against blacks and growing economic inequality), but the economic aspect - specifically the plight of working class people regardless of race - has been almost entirely ignored in favor of a racial narrative by those news outlets which hold the most sway. It just seemed a bit fishy to me, almost like it was purposely contrived given the timing of other things going on concurrently that were bringing awareness to global and national socio-economic issues. But again, I'll chalk all this up to my paranoia rather than some elaborate scheme of the rich to divide poor people against each other. Perhaps racial identity is more important to most people than class identity, and I should just accept that this will always be the case.