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Antifa

Stevicus

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
That's not really true. The Battle of Berkeley and related tensions which set this whole "antifa vs. the hard right" thing off was with the aforementioned "alt-lite" types mainly, hence why Based Stickman has become a celebrity for them. That wing of US politics actually is large, and growing - considering the popularity of Infowars and Breitbart, I don't see their fans as just random rednecks or NEETs.

I understand, although Berkeley seems to be one of those places which attracts a lot of controversy and dissension. But it seems to come down to the same thing. As I understand it, the whole "Battle of Berkeley" started when the Antifa wanted to shut down a right-winger from speaking. It's kind of ironic considering that Berkeley was the center of the Free Speech Movement during the 60s.

But yeah, it's easy for students and protesters at a liberal university to get the administration to block a right-wing speaker. Again, they're going after easy targets.

I don't like Antifa either by and large, mainly because they're generally assorted communist and anarchist radicals who'd be dangerous in their own right if they grew in size. And their conflation of the alt-lite with the alt-right proper seems to actually further cement the two in alliance, further radicalizing the former when it otherwise works through and can be fought through normal channels. But the recent Unite the Right kerfuffle isn't the only thing Antifa have been involved in, or even really the main thing they're known for.

I don't mind communists or anarchists, but only when they go after the wealthy, not the poor or working class. The trouble with Antifa is that they appear to be politically conflicted. They're not really so "communist" that they would risk alienating wealthy liberal sympathizers.

Agreed with all of this.


I'd argue the best way to counter it is actually to deal with the economic backdrop that you mentioned. Those people need healthcare taken care of, plus some form of employment or (more likely considering their jobs are increasingly automated) social insurance + training. Efforts to combat atomization would also help to defang the more middle-class suburban end of this, which is where a lot of "identitarian" youth are coming from. That would include religious revival, and long-term better urban planning to foster a more town-like atmosphere where people walk around and know each-other. e.g. New Urbanism.

Yes, improving the economy and standard of living for all should be the highest priority for the left right now. If they had done that sooner, they might not have lost so many working class folks. That's where they went wrong. I happen to think that identity politics was a deliberate smokescreen and a distraction to keep negative public attention from the wealthy ruling class. So, those who get caught up in it are merely dupes for the capitalists.

Greater openness and transparency in and of itself seems like it wouldn't impact much, since every government by their nature negotiates some things in secret. Probably a considerable amount if your country is larger in size than Luxembourg. So, conspiracymongers will always have something to point to; sometimes rightly, usually wrongly.

Yes, there are some things which a government would legitimately hold secret, such as new military technology and things of that nature. They might negotiate some things in secret, but we are a government of the people. As such, the people have a right to know what is being agreed to in their name.

But the point is, the best way to thwart "conspiracy mongers" is through our government and political classes being more open and transparent.

Better investigative reporting from the professional journalists would also be helpful. I recall a time when two plucky young reporters from the Washington Post brought down a U.S. president, which just goes to show what people can do when they put their mind to it. But now, they're being upstaged by YouTube and other rank amateurs who run conspiracy mills.

I think the difference with Bannon and much of Trumpism as a movement is that they seek that state power, which I agree is often overbearing, in hands specifically targeting sections of civil society that aren't their own. Not simply going after threats to order that are generally agreed on by civil society with some low-key racial bias here and there, but one set of the citizenry bearing down on another in near-explicit terms. In short, the beginning of liberal democracy eating itself at the hands of populist demagoguery.

That's the issue liberals and traditional conservatives have with them, anyway, along with the movement's general coarsening of political discourse. The issue Antifa has with them seems to include the "unabashed near-explicit racial targeting" element, but seems to also fold in with broader dislike of the right in general. And seems to remove broad dislike of demagoguery in general.

Many of the issues facing the country today are actually very old - some of them have been with us even before the U.S. gained independence. We have had periods of unrest, not to mention a Civil War. We might have another one someday.

The thing about America is that we are a large country which has become very wealthy as a result of slavery, genocide, rapid expansionism on stolen land, exploitation of resources, industrialization (which was accompanied by labor unrest). We've done these things and became very wealthy and powerful as a result. We are now a superpower and a world leader, a global defender of justice and freedom, which has (unfortunately) become a great source of enormous pride to people who don't want to give that up.

The trouble with a lot of Americans these days is that we want to have our cake and eat it too. We still want to be prideful and revel in the greatness of our "empire," but we want to believe that it's all been clean - or at least, that it's clean now. They want that image and illusion to remain in place, yet Trump is screwing it all up. I think people are more embarrassed by Trump than anything else, since he's ruining the image that people have desperately wanted to believe is real - but never was.

Sooner or later, we, as Americans, will have to come to terms with a lot of things about where this country has been and where it's going now.
 

Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
I've just read that in the US, democrats' color is blue, while Republicans are red.

Pretty funny:D:D...in Italy red is the color of the left-wing, blue of the right

In fact the leftists recently started a movement called #redshirts to protest against the nationalist government
maglietta-4_MGTHUMB-INTERNA.jpg


to which the rightists responded with the #blueshirts movement
180711-MaglietteBlu.jpg
 
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Loviatar

Red Tory/SpongeBob Conservative
But it seems to come down to the same thing. As I understand it, the whole "Battle of Berkeley" started when the Antifa wanted to shut down a right-winger from speaking.
Sure, Milo Yiannopoulos and then later Brittany Pettibone. I don't believe Antifa's no-platforming of them was justified, it's counterproductive mob action that hands the hard right victim points and pushes people already teetering on the edge of extremism into alt-right territory. But, the claim was that Antifa were just attacking powerless rednecks and NEETs, when Milo in particular is actually a very popular figure who wrote for Breitbart at the time. Pettibone is a semi-frequent Infowars guest and sidekick of Lauren Southern, so also not really fringe in my view.

It's kind of ironic considering that Berkeley was the center of the Free Speech Movement during the 60s.
Eh, that's a common talking point, but a look at the history shows there's not really any irony at all. That was a left-wing free speech movement, they barred "reactionary" speech too.

I don't mind communists or anarchists, but only when they go after the wealthy, not the poor or working class. The trouble with Antifa is that they appear to be politically conflicted. They're not really so "communist" that they would risk alienating wealthy liberal sympathizers.
I've seen plenty of "liberals get the bullet too" signs at their marches, actually, from the pictures that get floated online. The ones on my campus seem to detest liberals too and see them as fascism's gateway drug, anecdotally.

As for my dislike of communists and anarchists: I'm from Finland, which is a country that the Russian Civil War spilled over into. We had our own Reds vs. Whites struggle, it killed off a large chunk of the young male population and came within a hair's inch of creating a dictatorship. So even speaking as a supporter of workplace democracy, which is to say classical non-state socialism when you get down to it, I wouldn't wish violent revolution on anyone unless it were absolutely necessary.

Yes, improving the economy and standard of living for all should be the highest priority for the left right now. If they had done that sooner, they might not have lost so many working class folks. That's where they went wrong.
I completely agree.

I happen to think that identity politics was a deliberate smokescreen and a distraction to keep negative public attention from the wealthy ruling class. So, those who get caught up in it are merely dupes for the capitalists.
There I don't really agree. It seemed to me that some people had grievances, some legitimate and some not-so-legitimate, about racial/gender/sexual identity issues. One could incorporate those alongside class politics, a few of the radicals in BLM even tried to (much of their manifesto is outright Marxist), but it seemed like it pushed the white working-class away since these concerns aren't the concerns of their own in-group. In tandem with the Republicans addressing a small amount of that in-group's concerns.

Basically, sometimes different interest groups clash. But complaints about "identity politics" as a whole seem to mostly be complaints about politics not based on one's own identity, people making them tend to instead identify with aforementioned interest groups that clash with the ones they're criticizing.

Yes, there are some things which a government would legitimately hold secret, such as new military technology and things of that nature. They might negotiate some things in secret, but we are a government of the people. As such, the people have a right to know what is being agreed to in their name.
Senate treaty negotiations are secret as well until the final product is unveiled and voted on, the reason being to prevent rival powers from catching wind of the details and offering a better deal. The inner workings of most government departments are also secret, ranging from intelligence agencies (to prevent security breaches) to the Department of Energy (nuclear secrets). All of the above provides more than enough room for the conspiracy crowd to claim the gubbermint is out to get you, and not always without justification.

So, simple "more transparency" seems like it would have zero real impact on the power of conspiracy culture, unless one totally reworks the international and technological order in such a way where openness in all of the above doesn't weaken one's competitive advantage or basic security.

Many of the issues facing the country today are actually very old - some of them have been with us even before the U.S. gained independence. We have had periods of unrest, not to mention a Civil War. We might have another one someday.
That's the fear, that we're entering another period of tension with sharp regional dividing lines, akin to the 1850s. The Civil War was only a decade off.

We still want to be prideful and revel in the greatness of our "empire," but we want to believe that it's all been clean - or at least, that it's clean now.
I agree with that, it never has been clean.

They want that image and illusion to remain in place, yet Trump is screwing it all up. I think people are more embarrassed by Trump than anything else, since he's ruining the image that people have desperately wanted to believe is real - but never was.
This seems partly right, but the breakdown of civil society seems like part of it too.

Civil society tends to be fairly united against outsiders and non-members (slaves and universally agreed on social lessers included) in a perceived crisis, in any country. After desegregation there were no open declarations of attack on components of the internal society, systemic racial biases had to instead be achieved through things pretty much everyone wants to do like fighting drug use. The belief that we had equal opportunity extended to all was in most respects genuine, and institutional biases were lower than they had been in the near-past.

Trumpism, as a mass ideology represented more by the alt-lite's formative ideologue Bannon than by the political figure (i.e. shifting with the wind and toned down to some degree) Trump, is the first time in a while that there have been basically open calls for the state favoring one end of civil society over another. Alongside tensions growing in tandem within it, it's the first time in post-WWII history that things seem to be getting worse, not better, on those questions in the US.
 
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Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
Sure, Milo Yiannopoulos and then later Brittany Pettibone. I don't believe Antifa's no-platforming of them was justified, it's counterproductive mob action that hands the hard right victim points and pushes people already teetering on the edge of extremism into alt-right territory. But, the claim was that Antifa were just attacking powerless rednecks and NEETs, when Milo in particular is actually a very popular figure who wrote for Breitbart at the time. Pettibone is a semi-frequent Infowars guest and sidekick of Lauren Southern, so also not really fringe in my view.
.

It's funny how Southern, Molyneux, Pettibone etc...are constantly demonized by mainstream media...

We have to acknowledge that in Europe a huge Nationalist-Souverainist front (of ca. 12 EU countries) exists and opposes globalism.
 

Loviatar

Red Tory/SpongeBob Conservative
It's funny how Southern, Molyneux, Pettibone etc...are constantly demonized by mainstream media...
Someone who hangs out regularly with literal "Generation Identitaire" fascists and posts her videos praising them as "truth-tellers" all over YouTube, a cult leader who advises fans to abandon their families if they believe in taxation ("putting a gun to your head"), a primary exponent of Pizzagate theories...

These don't seem like people worth praising.

We have to acknowledge that in Europe a huge Nationalist-Souverainist front (of ca. 12 EU countries) exists and opposes globalism.
I don't support globalism in the one-world government sense either; contra Alex Jones et.al., I don't think globalism is the norm among the American ruling class (support for the aggrandizing military-industrial complex and US civic nationalism is), but it is legitimately a pretty common belief among Finnish liberals and the left of American elites.

Opposing it does not mean giving way to populist demagoguery and carnival barkers, who are worse than what they're fighting. Instead, it means rationally standing against policies that threaten to turn the EU into a superstate.
 
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Stevicus

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Sure, Milo Yiannopoulos and then later Brittany Pettibone. I don't believe Antifa's no-platforming of them was justified, it's counterproductive mob action that hands the hard right victim points and pushes people already teetering on the edge of extremism into alt-right territory. But, the claim was that Antifa were just attacking powerless rednecks and NEETs, when Milo in particular is actually a very popular figure who wrote for Breitbart at the time. Pettibone is a semi-frequent Infowars guest and sidekick of Lauren Southern, so also not really fringe.

I suppose it's a matter of opinion as to what constitutes "fringe" or not, although my claim was that they go after relatively easy targets, which would still hold true even with this incident.

Eh, that's a common talking point, but a look at the history shows there's not really any irony at all. That was a left-wing free speech movement, they barred "reactionary" speech too.

Then it wasn't exactly "free speech" then, was it? Not that it matters much now, but it makes it seem as if some people on the left are afraid of words. Either that, or they're afraid that these right-wing speakers are sooooo persuasive and that their arguments are ironclad that their only solution is to shut them down. They make it appear as if they're incapable of discussing and debating these issues without becoming unglued.

I've seen plenty of "liberals get the bullet too" signs at their marches, actually, from the pictures that get floated online. The ones on my campus seem to detest liberals too and see them as fascism's gateway drug, anecdotally.

I would agree with that to some extent. I see many liberals as dupes and unwitting enablers. Another thing that many have noted is that liberals have grown out of touch, which was brought up as one of the reasons Hillary lost the last election. Whether insulated by academia or within their upper class coastal bastions, liberals seem to live in a completely different world than what most working stiffs are used to.

As for my dislike of communists and anarchists: I'm from Finland, which is a country that the Russian Civil War spilled over into. We had our own Reds vs. Whites struggle, it killed off a large chunk of the young male population and came within a hair's inch of creating a dictatorship. So even speaking as a supporter of workplace democracy, which is to say classical non-state socialism when you get down to it, I wouldn't wish violent revolution on anyone unless it were absolutely necessary.

I've studied a fair amount of Russian history, and without going into a long dissertation on the subject, I would say that my opinion is that the Russian revolutionaries had a righteous grievance against the Tsarist regime at the time.

I wouldn't defend the excesses or atrocities attributed to communism, although it seems pretty clear to me that, at first, communist goals and objectives were based on simple notions of wanting people to be treated justly and equally - which is what many liberals claim as well.

The problem with a lot of liberals in recent decades is that they've pushed for the agenda of "social justice" while carefully excluding most elements of economic justice. Without a strong foundation of economic justice, then "social justice" is nothing more than an empty, meaningless gesture. It may make some people feel good, but it's mostly symbolic. It's just like with Antifa: It may make them feel good to attack Nazis and Fascists, but they're not likely doing anything of any real political significance.

I completely agree.


There I don't really agree. It seemed to me that some people had grievances, some legitimate and some not-so-legitimate, about racial/gender/sexual identity issues. One could incorporate those alongside class politics, a few of the radicals in BLM even tried to (much of their manifesto is outright Marxist), but it seemed like it pushed the white working-class away since these concerns aren't the concerns of their own in-group. In tandem with the Republicans addressing a small amount of that in-group's concerns.

Basically, sometimes different interest groups clash. But complaints about "identity politics" as a whole seem to mostly be complaints about politics not based on one's own identity, people making them tend to instead identify with aforementioned interest groups that clash with the ones they're criticizing.

The thing is, identity politics keeps the working class members of different "identities" at odds with each other. The ruling class benefits from the lower classes being at odds with each other. It doesn't mean they all hate each other or that they're necessarily clashing with each other. Most of the time, people get along with each other and our society is able to adequately function, but there's still the underlying issue of grouping and categorizing people in ways advocated by identity politics. That's what racism originally did; that was the purpose of why it existed in the first place. America's racism and the atrocities which are associated with it didn't just happen; it wasn't some accident of nature.

Identity politics holds to the same perceptions and uses the same identities which were first established by racists who ruled America. That doesn't mean they share the same values or principles, but they still insist on seeing the world in the same way. It's because of this that identity politics are flawed to their very core.

Moreover, despite whatever Marxist or quasi-Marxist underpinnings might exist to some extent, they're still mostly ardent capitalists. Sure, there are rather vocal critics of capitalism, just as many people loudly rail against "the system" - but there's also a certain sense of resignation that "there's nothing we can do" about the system. In actuality, there are plenty of things that we can do, but few people actually want to do anything that would rock the boat too much - especially those who would have too much to lose in the event of political instability or upheaval.

That's where identity politics comes in, since it's a relatively safe and non-boat-rocking path to take, while still giving people something to do to make them feel like they're doing something righteous and politically active.

Senate treaty negotiations are secret as well until the final product is unveiled and voted on, the reason being to prevent rival powers from catching wind of the details and offering a better deal. The inner workings of most government departments are also secret, ranging from intelligence agencies (to prevent security breaches) to the Department of Energy (nuclear secrets). All of the above provides more than enough room for the conspiracy crowd to claim the gubbermint is out to get you, and not always without justification.

It largely depends on what type of government we have, its ideological foundations, and the pretexts and justifications which are offered to the people in order to gain their support. Granted, as you mention above, there are some things governments have to do out of necessity (such as keeping secrets). Part of openness and transparency is not necessarily a matter of revealing all the secrets or getting too specific on details, but it also means giving honest justifications and explanations as to the motives and goals of our government.

A lot of it seems to have to do with wanting to maintain a certain political image of freedom and democracy. By controlling what information is released to the public, they can maintain that image - which many perceive as a false image.

Some of it also appears to imply a certain mistrust or disdain of the American public, based in the notion that they "can't handle the truth." There's a kind of paternal, insulating aspect to it, as if they view the American people as children who need to be protected from "bad things." I've seen a lot of military types take this attitude, especially when they're addressing "spoiled kids who don't know what it's like to serve their country."

The basic implication is that many Americans have been spoiled, pamper, insulated, and protected (by the government and military) from whatever "evil forces" exist outside of America and which supposedly threaten "our way of life." The idea is that they live in a land of freedom, a land of plenty, a land of opportunity - where they can live quiet, peaceful, productive lives in relative safety from all the boogiemen in the outside world.

So, on the one hand, we have the stated ideology and ruling principles which our government is based upon, but when the American public is told of government actions which seem to contradict those principles or seem to be based on shaky pretexts, that's when the wheels of conspiracy theorists are set in motion. This, coupled with many of our politicians' reputations for corruption and lying, is enough to give fodder to the conspiracy theorists.

One of the granddaddies of modern conspiracy theories are those which involve the JFK Assassination. JFK was assassinated - a known event which wasn't a secret to anyone. It was a horrible event which shocked a lot of people, made many quite upset and despondent. Understandably, the entire country demanded an explanation, and the government then launched an investigation which culminated in the Warren Report, which many people found unsatisfactory and still had many unanswered questions. It was also noted that most of the physical evidence and files, notes, and reports were still kept classified and inaccessible to the general public. A lot of it has come out since then, but even now, there are still files that are kept secret.
 

Stevicus

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
So, simple "more transparency" seems like it would have zero real impact on the power of conspiracy culture, unless one totally reworks the international and technological order in such a way where openness in all of the above doesn't weaken one's competitive advantage or basic security.

All I would say to this is that, at the very least, people should fulfill whatever oaths they make and live by their stated principles. If, for reasons of political necessity (which I understand perfectly), they find the need to compromise or alter their principles, then they should state it publicly, openly, and honestly.

And keep in mind that these are not always national security issues. When I say "more transparency," I'm also referring to local and state governments, such as when police-related shootings occur. Oftentimes, the police have a shroud of secrecy or at best, information comes out in a trickle over days at a time. It's not because of national security that they do this, but more likely motivated by local officials wanting to protect their own behinds.

That's the fear, that we're entering another period of tension with sharp regional dividing lines, akin to the 1850s. The Civil War was only a decade off.

Things started to heat up in the 1850s, but the seeds of the Civil War were planted much earlier. Part of it was out of political necessity at the time that America gained independence. Much of it was compromise based on mutual greed and desire for expansionism.

The Civil War resolved some issues. It's considered a pivotal event in U.S. history, and its impact is sometimes viewed as superseding the ideals and principles of the Founders themselves. An analogy might be to compare the Old Testament and the New Testament. Antebellum America was the Old Testament, and Postbellum America is the New Testament. Lincoln was not one of the "Founding Fathers," but he was, in a way, a "Founding Son" (for lack of a better term). In many ways, he is elevated above the Founders.

But after the Civil War was over, both sides were pretty much interested in peace and reconciliation. Grant was a big proponent of that, at least among the military personnel from both sides. They were comrades who served together before the Civil War, but despite what had happened, there was a push towards patching things up and working together. So, they compromised...again.

And it wasn't as if the Northern states were really that clean either. They wanted to end slavery, but it was clear in the Postbellum era that they didn't really care much about the well-being of people of color. Freed slaves who went North were not warmly welcomed at all. And in the West, the processes of "Manifest Destiny" were still quite active in the slaughters and "ethnic cleansing" taking place.

That doesn't get the Confederacy off the hook by any means, but my only point here is to illustrate that our current political divides go a long way back. And they're largely the result of governments trying to maintain a false "image." It's because of governments which refuse to be transparent and open. It's because of lies, which whole generations have been born and raised with.

Gotta go...
 

Loviatar

Red Tory/SpongeBob Conservative
I suppose it's a matter of opinion as to what constitutes "fringe" or not, although my claim was that they go after relatively easy targets, which would still hold true even with this incident.
Hm. Even as an e-celeb, I don't think Yiannopoulos can be described as an "easy target." He was enormously popular on the right at that point in time, and holds onto a cult of personality even after he was caught on tape sheltering pedophiles.

Then it wasn't exactly "free speech" then, was it?
I don't believe it was, no.

I've studied a fair amount of Russian history, and without going into a long dissertation on the subject, I would say that my opinion is that the Russian revolutionaries had a righteous grievance against the Tsarist regime at the time.
They had many legitimate grievances against Tsarism, and even some solid ones against the Finnish state they were revolting against. That state wasn't committing outright genocide, unlike the Tsar's pogroms; but at the time capitalism was clearly uprooting the way of life they'd come to know, creating starker inequalities and weaker civic engagement, so they looked for solutions to the problem. I actually have an Old Bolshevik in the family, and would have probably been one of Finland's "conservative Bolsheviks" at first, until Lenin suspended workplace democracy. And I'd have probably retained some kind of Marxian sympathies all the way up to the holodomor and purges proved the entire Bolshevik experiment a failed totalitarian system, one which looked at in hindsight produced something just as bad as what it replaced under Lenin and something worse under Stalin. I'd have moved to a sort of Keynesian one-nation Toryism, a la Harold Macmillan, until the lessons of the '70s crash required reformulation of even that in a less state-oriented direction.

The problem with a lot of liberals in recent decades is that they've pushed for the agenda of "social justice" while carefully excluding most elements of economic justice. Without a strong foundation of economic justice, then "social justice" is nothing more than an empty, meaningless gesture.
I wouldn't say it's meaningless, LGBT rights are mostly non-economic but implementation of them has a demonstrable better effect on peoples' lives. Homophobia has shrunk dramatically in the last decade or two. I'd agree that the black community's issues are as economic as they are social, though.

The thing is, identity politics keeps the working class members of different "identities" at odds with each other. The ruling class benefits from the lower classes being at odds with each other.
Sure, as long as it doesn't destabilize their livelihoods, which is what happens when those tensions grow too great. Then they back law and order policies to put a clamp on it. That's what happened in NYC in the 1960s for example, the tensions of that decade produced strict law and order-focused leaders. Besides a brief four-year retreat from them under Dinkins, those policies dominated the city from the end of Beame's term really until the end of Bloomberg's.

That's what racism originally did; that was the purpose of why it existed in the first place. America's racism and the atrocities which are associated with it didn't just happen; it wasn't some accident of nature. Identity politics holds to the same perceptions and uses the same identities which were first established by racists who ruled America.
I disagree with that Noel Ignatiev historiography of American racism, really. The categories of "white" and "black" and prejudice based on them predated the outpouring of colonial class tensions, even the Egyptians seem to have observed differences with their neighbors and classified those differences according to a schema that looks pretty racial.

I think people in general tend to lump themselves into in-groups and out-groups, that this often benefits the elites of a given in-group is besides the point of tribalism being to a large degree inherent in human social behavior. It seems to me that the best thing one can do is to foster more inclusive tribes, ones that cut across racial lines, by removing barriers to full equal rights within society.

Moreover, despite whatever Marxist or quasi-Marxist underpinnings might exist to some extent, they're still mostly ardent capitalists.
I wouldn't describe BLM as ardent capitalists at all in their majority, their manifesto includes demands for both explicit wealth redistribution and direct democracy. Reparations - The Movement for Black Lives Economic Justice - The Movement for Black Lives "Outright Marxist" was probably a bit strong, that's mostly just how its critics describe it and it's not really accurate, but it falls under the heading of "quasi-Marxist."

Sure, there are rather vocal critics of capitalism, just as many people loudly rail against "the system" - but there's also a certain sense of resignation that "there's nothing we can do" about the system. In actuality, there are plenty of things that we can do, but few people actually want to do anything that would rock the boat too much - especially those who would have too much to lose in the event of political instability or upheaval.
I've seen plenty of call for violent revolution from BLM types and one can observe that directly in the Milwaukee riots, it's one of the reasons why I'm largely opposed to them.

Most alternatives to things that basically resemble the current status quo economically have, unfortunately, been worse than it. I'm a big supporter of cooperatives and workplace democracy, and cooperative businesses have seen competitive advantages from much more invested workers and more well-balanced input on management. But, those becoming the majority of the economy would be a slow incremental change. Class-based violent revolution has been tried, and produced dictatorship and human rights catastrophes in every instance.

Part of openness and transparency is not necessarily a matter of revealing all the secrets or getting too specific on details, but it also means giving honest justifications and explanations as to the motives and goals of our government.
Sure, I agree with that. I just don't believe the conspiracy culture will necessarily trust that what's let out is honest, even with the act cleaned up. I think their concerns are generally more related to feeling beaten down on economically for the rednecky end, related to isolation and atomization for the middle-class end, and related to rising ethnic identity tensions for both.

You mention the Kennedy assassination for example, yet the Lincoln assassination had similar secrecy in its resolution and theories about it didn't catch on anywhere near as wildly. They exist, some fundamentalists tried to blame the Papacy for it (Jack Chick still claims this) and the claim that it was an inside job by the Radical Republicans existed in the South. The latter was fed by the Radical Republican Secretary of War taking over the investigation, and conducting most of it in private. But if you look at the political cartoons and letters of the time, these are a side-note at best. Ye Olde Alex Jones isn't really a thing.

Some of it also appears to imply a certain mistrust or disdain of the American public, based in the notion that they "can't handle the truth." There's a kind of paternal, insulating aspect to it, as if they view the American people as children who need to be protected from "bad things." I've seen a lot of military types take this attitude, especially when they're addressing "spoiled kids who don't know what it's like to serve their country."
That's to some degree inherent in the American system of government, Madison based the Constitution first and foremost around containing the threat of populist revolt. Government administration was divided between various branches and an escalating federated series of units, many top posts (the President, Senators, judges) were not directly elected and two of those remain it.

Given the history of populist revolts, I don't believe he was entirely wrong. Direct democracy does often work well in local government, and states where there's heavy active citizen engagement in the local town council generally run better. It fosters a sense of responsibility, and a higher degree of education. But, the average person doesn't seem to have the time or interest to devote to substantive engagement with nationwide political issues; besides think tank flacks and other professional politicos, the extent of it is generally trading bumpersticker slogans and badly oversimplified narratives back and forth. That's the kind of thinking that's historically led to mass support for demagogues, who destroy republics and replace them with worse systems. So, while I'd agree that we want as little elitism as possible, we'd probably disagree on where "as possible" lies; ultimately, I'm an old-school Tory who thinks some degree of paternalism is probably an unfortunate necessity.

The idea is that they live in a land of freedom, a land of plenty, a land of opportunity - where they can live quiet, peaceful, productive lives in relative safety from all the boogiemen in the outside world.
That's horribly exaggerated, yeah. As a European immigrant to the US, while I love many things about it in comparison to my home country, "quiet and peaceful" aren't terms that come to mind for the bulk of the country. One of the biggest things I love about it is its abundance of opportunity, but that tends to stand in contrast to peace and quiet. The dark side of that opportunity is that outside of some rural pockets, it's a pretty fast-paced and aggressive culture by global standards. Also contra isolationist sentiment, it's as intimately tied in with global geopolitical affairs as any other country. More than the vast majority actually, since it's established interests for itself all over the world.
 
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Loviatar

Red Tory/SpongeBob Conservative
All I would say to this is that, at the very least, people should fulfill whatever oaths they make and live by their stated principles. If, for reasons of political necessity (which I understand perfectly), they find the need to compromise or alter their principles, then they should state it publicly, openly, and honestly.
I agree with this.

Things started to heat up in the 1850s, but the seeds of the Civil War were planted much earlier. Part of it was out of political necessity at the time that America gained independence. Much of it was compromise based on mutual greed and desire for expansionism.
Also sort of with this, though I think slavery was supported mostly for greed-based/economic reasons. Desire for expansionism, instead, seems like it was to a significant degree for protecting the institution rather than vice versa - expansion into the Southwest was mainly based on preserving slavery from higher Northern birthrates, by creating new slave states.

It's considered a pivotal event in U.S. history, and its impact is sometimes viewed as superseding the ideals and principles of the Founders themselves. An analogy might be to compare the Old Testament and the New Testament. Antebellum America was the Old Testament, and Postbellum America is the New Testament. Lincoln was not one of the "Founding Fathers," but he was, in a way, a "Founding Son" (for lack of a better term). In many ways, he is elevated above the Founders.
All true, absolutely.

But after the Civil War was over, both sides were pretty much interested in peace and reconciliation. Grant was a big proponent of that, at least among the military personnel from both sides.
Among military personnel yes, but Reconstruction occurred under his administration and it really wasn't reconciliation-based. Out of necessity, if we're going to end slavery it makes no sense to replace it with half-baked pseudo-slavery, but the South was definitely up in arms about it. Literally, in the case of the Klan.

Many Radical Republicans also thought Grant was too soft on Confederate military officers, but he was generally their ally and was implementing most of their platform so it wasn't seen as a deal-breaker. Johnson's reconciliatory stance before Grant was, he survived removal from office by only one vote.

They wanted to end slavery, but it was clear in the Postbellum era that they didn't really care much about the well-being of people of color. Freed slaves who went North were not warmly welcomed at all. And in the West, the processes of "Manifest Destiny" were still quite active in the slaughters and "ethnic cleansing" taking place.

That doesn't get the Confederacy off the hook by any means, but my only point here is to illustrate that our current political divides go a long way back.
You'll get no disagreement from me on that. I'm not arguing these problems are new in American society, they've been much worse than they are now even. Just that they're declining rather than improving for the first time in the post-WWII era.

Gotta go...
...yeah, this is getting long and deviating very far off-topic. Nice chat, though. xD
 
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Stevicus

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Hm. Even as an e-celeb, I don't think Yiannopoulos can be described as an "easy target."

It's a judgement call, I suppose, although it's clear that they haven't been storming any winter palaces either.

I'd have moved to a sort of Keynesian one-nation Toryism, a la Harold Macmillan, until the lessons of the '70s crash required reformulation of even that in a less state-oriented direction.

I'm probably more Keynesian myself, although I would not agree that the Soviet Union was a failed experiment, at least when compared the regime they had before. I think the most obvious proof of this is to compare the Russians' performance in WW1 vs. their performance in WW2. I'm not dismissing or denying the atrocities that occurred, although I wouldn't attribute it to any systemic issue, as most of it was circumstantial based on the historical realities they were dealing with.

I wouldn't say it's meaningless, LGBT rights are mostly non-economic but implementation of them has a demonstrable better effect on peoples' lives. Homophobia has shrunk dramatically in the last decade or two. I'd agree that the black community's issues are as economic as they are social, though.

Most of it seems to be in the realm of symbolism and the abstract, though.

Sure, as long as it doesn't destabilize their livelihoods, which is what happens when those tensions grow too great.

That's the risk they take.

Then they back law and order policies to put a clamp on it. That's what happened in NYC in the 1960s for example, the tensions of that decade produced strict law and order-focused leaders.

That wasn't due to identity politics, though. The reason NYC was such a sewer pit back then was because the local authorities had turned the blind eye to organized crime for so long.

I disagree with that Noel Ignatiev historiography of American racism, really. The categories of "white" and "black" and prejudice based on them predated the outpouring of colonial class tensions, even the Egyptians seem to have observed differences with their neighbors and classified those differences according to a schema that looks pretty racial.

I wasn't thinking about Noel Ignatiev. I was thinking more about Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia in the 17th century. Prior to that, slavery was more along the lines of temporary indentured servitude, and it affected both blacks and whites. Once their term of servitude was completed, they were given blocks of land which would be their own. Blacks and whites could intermarry, and there were instances where black land owners had white indentured servants.

This all changed after Bacon's Rebellion, after which slavery became race-based, life-long, and generational. One aspect of the rebellion itself is that it had lower-class white and black farmers fighting side by side, unified in common cause against the white upper-class gentry. I think this might have scared the ruling class at the time, so their solution was to divide poor whites and blacks.

I think people in general tend to lump themselves into in-groups and out-groups, that this often benefits the elites of a given in-group is besides the point of tribalism being to a large degree inherent in human social behavior. It seems to me that the best thing one can do is to foster more inclusive tribes, ones that cut across racial lines, by removing barriers to full equal rights within society.

That might work, although I tend to reject notions that racism is somehow a "natural" default behavior for humans. Tribalism may be natural, but both whites and blacks in America came from different tribes within their own continent. European immigrants were pushed into assimilating as "white Americans," while inhabitants from Africa were forcibly relocated to America and forced to assimilate as "black Americans." This is where racists argued from the point of view that there was such a thing as "white culture" and "black culture," and it was because of this that they were able to argue for a policy of "separate but equal."

I wouldn't describe BLM as ardent capitalists at all in their majority, their manifesto includes demands for both explicit wealth redistribution and direct democracy. Reparations - The Movement for Black Lives Economic Justice - The Movement for Black Lives "Outright Marxist" was probably a bit strong, that's mostly just how its critics describe it and it's not really accurate, but it falls under the heading of "quasi-Marxist."

Perhaps, although I wasn't really thinking about BLM as much as the overall scope of those who favor and advocate identity politics - of which BLM (and Antifa, for that matter) appear to be relatively small factions within that overall faction.

I would also suggest that any form of nationalism - even if it's in the form of national liberation - would be antithetical to the more internationalist leftists who saw Marxism as a worldwide goal. As a result, it must necessarily be beneficial to all people, not just black people.

(Granted, I know that international Communists supported nationalist liberation movements in the disintegrating colonial world, but it was this contradiction which ideologically compromised the left. If you're anti-nationalist when it comes to Hitler, yet pro-nationalist when it comes to Idi Amin, then you're going to have some serious ideological problems to face.)

I've seen plenty of call for violent revolution from BLM types and one can observe that directly in the Milwaukee riots, it's one of the reasons why I'm largely opposed to them.

We've had calls for violent revolution before. It was a popular topic during the 60s and 70s, but only a few radicals were actually serious about it.

Class-based violent revolution has been tried, and produced dictatorship and human rights catastrophes in every instance.

Part of the reason for such catastrophes is due to the fact that the target governments in these revolutions were far too stubborn, intransigent, and greedy to discuss any possibility of compromise or reform. They should have just made a deal before it got to the brink of revolution.

Fortunately for those of us in the West, we had more reasonable governments willing to make such deals, compromises, and reforms before it reached the point of violent revolution. The labor movement was becoming a serious force to be reckoned with, but government mediation and support of workers' rights to collectively bargain made it possible for workers to make gains without revolution. To be sure, there was a good deal of strike violence and unrest, but wise leadership prevailed and heeded those warning signs to bring about a better life for the common people.

But ever since the Reagan era, I fear that the ruling class has become more and more intransigent, arrogant, stubborn, and greedy - just like the old Tsarist regime. They haven't gotten as bad (yet), but they do appear to be just as out of touch.

Sure, I agree with that. I just don't believe the conspiracy culture will necessarily trust that what's let out is honest, even with the act cleaned up. I think their concerns are generally more related to feeling beaten down on economically for the rednecky end, related to isolation and atomization for the middle-class end, and related to rising ethnic identity tensions for both.

They have to show tangible results in order to make people believe and trust them. Lip service is not good enough.
 

Stevicus

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
You mention the Kennedy assassination for example, yet the Lincoln assassination had similar secrecy in its resolution and theories about it didn't catch on anywhere near as wildly. They exist, some fundamentalists tried to blame the Papacy for it (Jack Chick still claims this) and the claim that it was an inside job by the Radical Republicans existed in the South. The latter was fed by the Radical Republican Secretary of War taking over the investigation, and conducting most of it in private. But if you look at the political cartoons and letters of the time, these are a side-note at best. Ye Olde Alex Jones isn't really a thing.

You may be right, although I have heard of some conspiracy theories about the Lincoln Assassination. They may not have been as widespread back then, possibly due to the fact that they were just coming out of a Civil War. But the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments still passed, so in essence, Lincoln's goals were still achieved and the Union was preserved - which was a clearly tangible result evident to the people.

In contrast, some of the more compelling conspiracy theories about JFK were about his apparent opposition to expanding/escalating the Vietnam War. Details might differ from theory to theory, but the basic idea was that Kennedy was killed by various anti-communist and militaristic factions who feared that Kennedy was soft on communism and was intending to yield to communist expansion in Southeast Asia. After LBJ became president, the war expanded (mainly as a result of the Gulf of Tonkin fabrication), which then led to further protests against the war.

People started to see the government in a different light, after living through the Second Red Scare, nuclear brinkmanship, assassinations, wars, military coups allegedly backed by the U.S. government. The idea that people of such character would carry out such vicious and aggressive tactics in the name of "freedom" made it all the more plausible that they might have offed the President. After the Pentagon Papers broke (which is the kind of transparency we needed at the time), Nixon became even more paranoid, which led to the infamous Watergate scandal which ended his presidency. But that, too, led to many people believing that our government is capable of anything.

Sure, they might not have been as bad as Hitler or Stalin, but that's the only thing they could say in their defense. And that's not saying much.

This is where today's modern "conspiracy theories" come from. However embellished they might be, they are advanced in the context of established facts about our government which are already known to be true. I don't see conspiracy theories as truly "factual" as much as allegorical. They are an examination of the culture of government and politics in this country - and that's where their value comes from. I don't believe they're meant to be taken literally as factual historical accounts, although some conspiracy theorists tend to go overboard in that regard.

But if the ruling class and others in society don't like conspiracy theories, then it's incumbent upon them to work to change the culture of government and politics. If they do not, then they're the last ones who should be complaining if the public starts to get riled up and "uncivil."

So, while I'd agree that we want as little elitism as possible, we'd probably disagree on where "as possible" lies; ultimately, I'm an old-school Tory who thinks some degree of paternalism is probably an unfortunate necessity.

Well, see, that's where it gets a bit dicey. If we're going to tout ourselves as a "free" country, then we need to practice what we preach. That's, frankly, what a lot of the Civil Rights battle was all about. In one of our most precious Founding documents, we openly state that "all men are created equal." The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments further codified the idea of equality and made it the law of the land. (True, they didn't say much about women's rights or LGBT rights, but that would come later.)

But if we're going to publicly proclaim that all citizens are equal before the law, then we have to mean it and practice it. We have seen the kind of dissension and civil disturbance which result when we do not adhere to our own stated principles.

That's the problem that we face. You speak of demagogues who destroy republics, but depending on who you're referring to, it might be that they still kept a semblance of "republic" in their system - at least the image of it for the sake of the masses. On paper, the Soviet Union was a federal republic with a constitution not much different than our own. Even in Nazi Germany, they still maintained the bureaucracy, the Reichstag, and the court system - the basic elements of republican-style government. Hitler's Enabling Act and subsequent dictatorship were considered "an unfortunate necessity" - ostensibly a "temporary" act made necessary by the alleged "crisis" they were facing.

That where fascism seems to come from. It's not necessarily an overtly anti-republican ideology. It can come from any ideology or form of government facing a "crisis" which may necessitate "temporary" curtailment of civil liberties.


That's horribly exaggerated, yeah. As a European immigrant to the US, while I love many things about it in comparison to my home country, "quiet and peaceful" aren't terms that come to mind for the bulk of the country.

Well, I meant quiet and peaceful in more relative terms. Some areas of America are much more quiet and peaceful than others. Still, we haven't had a war fought on our soil in over 150 years (and that was a war among ourselves). We haven't had a foreign army touch our shores in over 200 years. A lot of nations around the world are living in impoverished, chaotic, and unstable conditions - which we don't really have in America, although we may be heading in that direction at some point.

Reagan talked about America being the "shining city on the hill," and many speak of all these immigrants coming here for a better life - which implies that their lives were worse in their nations of origin. I don't believe this is really true, but these are the kinds of ideas that have been around for generations - and this is what many Americans have been taught to believe. Manifest Destiny, the American Dream, American Exceptionalism - it all basically comes down to the same line of thinking.

That's one of the reasons I tend to roll my eyes about statements which imply that it's all Fox News' fault for so many misinformed people out there. It goes way beyond Fox News or the alt-right media. This is part and parcel of Americana as it has been taught for generations.
 

Stevicus

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
...yeah, this is getting long and deviating very far off-topic. Nice chat, though. xD

Yeah, I'm confounded by the 12,000 character posting limit.

I must say that I'm quite impressed with your knowledge of American history. Well done.
 

Loviatar

Red Tory/SpongeBob Conservative
I'm probably more Keynesian myself
I wouldn't consider myself one now, at least not a classical one, but that's an arcane technical discussion on how to respond to a recession. The short of it is that inflation and unemployment rose and then fell in tandem in the '70s crash, debunking Keynes' theory that they existed as a trade-off with each-other and lending credence to the idea that inflation is a monetary phenomenon instead.

That implies a bit more fiscal responsibility than most of the world practiced in the '70s pursuant to classic Keynesianism. The crash was hardest in areas that followed it the closest, like the Nordic countries. In some ways, it occupies a place for them similar to the Great Recession in the Anglosphere, for all but Iceland which heavily depends on Britain to begin with.

I think the most obvious proof of this is to compare the Russians' performance in WW1 vs. their performance in WW2.
Russia was directly under attack in WW2 though, and the Eastern Front was badly mismanaged by both sides. Hitler was micromanaging the war and pursuing an insane strategy that almost made some of his top generals assassinate him as a threat to Germany (Operation Valkyrie), Stalin had pruned many of his best generals in the purges and was totally unprepared since he for some insane reason trusted Hitler would uphold Molotov-Ribbentrop.

I think both expose the failure of a highly centralized system, so I do view it as systemic. Also looked at in the history of every other overnight utopian "change the world" system, including fascism and earlier Jacobinism, the destruction that the Soviet system caused really fits a consistent pattern. The two go hand-in-hand too. It's hard to change the world overnight without putting it in very centralized hands, which is ripe for abuse of power even aside from atrocities committed in the name of achieving utopia.

Most of it seems to be in the realm of symbolism and the abstract, though.
Equal legal marriage rights and anti-discrimination protections don't seem like "the abstract" to me. They seem like concrete benefits.

That wasn't due to identity politics, though. The reason NYC was such a sewer pit back then was because the local authorities had turned the blind eye to organized crime for so long.
No, organized crime wasn't what got Ed Koch elected. That had been an issue for decades previous as well and was actually much worse in the 1920s-1930s than the 1960s. It was primarily a decade and a half of race-related tensions, mostly but not entirely politically charged crime. The Harlem riot of 1964, the 1968 New York City riot, the Black Panther shootings, and for a non-criminal one: school busing in suburban neighborhoods.

The biggest issue was the massive blackout and subsequent rioting, mostly in minority-majority parts of the city. That's explicitly what carried Koch over the top, over a second term for Beame - which was humiliating since he was primaried out within his own party.

I wasn't thinking about Noel Ignatiev. I was thinking more about Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia in the 17th century.
Yeah, what you cited was specifically Noel Ignatiev's interpretation of where the American racial order came from. ;) His work was influential in historiography, I've met a few historians who take it very seriously, but it's extremely disputed and you can find just as many who see it as trying to fit the square peg of Marxian tabula rasa beliefs into the circle of actual events.

This all changed after Bacon's Rebellion,
From what I can find, it was changing by 1640 actually. John Punch, a black slave, was given a life sentence for attempting to flee - meanwhile, the white indentured servants he fled with only had a few extra years tacked on. Bacon's Rebellion certainly made things worse still, but contra mainly Ignatiev's historiography, it isn't the source of whites and blacks being treated differently in America. It seems to have gotten worse based on ingrained attitudes the slaveholders already had.

Tribalism may be natural, but both whites and blacks in America came from different tribes within their own continent. European immigrants were pushed into assimilating as "white Americans," while inhabitants from Africa were forcibly relocated to America and forced to assimilate as "black Americans." This is where racists argued from the point of view that there was such a thing as "white culture" and "black culture," and it was because of this that they were able to argue for a policy of "separate but equal."
Sure, they all came from different tribes and created two new ethnic identities out of it. But, that's the thing. "White" was a tribe that was formed, based on a mix of shared culture (these were mostly Northwestern European) and genetic proximity relative to black Americans. It wasn't a negation of the trend towards tribal identity, it was creating a new one out of whole cloth to define their group against a perceived out-group.

Unlike white nationalists for example, I don't believe the genetic proximity is necessary for a tribal identity though, just that it's a common basis. Filipinos of a certain generation (ones from before ASEAN membership) tend to identify as closer to Latinos than Asians for example, despite being much closer genetically to Indonesians than to anyone from Latin America. The reason is culture. For a less stark example: I'm considered Nordic, as in Scandinavia et.al., even though the average Finn is genetically closer to Finno-Ugric tribes in Russia than to most Scandinavians. Yet those tribes are Orthodox or pagan, not Lutheran, and tend to have a decent amount in common with tribes from the Urals which the average Finn would see as very foreign.

Cracks in early American white identity, which prompted panic and then either calls to close the borders or assimilation campaigns, seem to have come mainly when cultures that aren't describable as "broadly British-y" arrived. Non-Saxon Germans, and Irish Catholics, first. Then they mostly assimilated, with a bit of their customs being injected into the American mainstream (burgers and being a Plastic Paddy), and the cycle goes on.

(Granted, I know that international Communists supported nationalist liberation movements in the disintegrating colonial world, but it was this contradiction which ideologically compromised the left. If you're anti-nationalist when it comes to Hitler, yet pro-nationalist when it comes to Idi Amin, then you're going to have some serious ideological problems to face.)
I agree with this with regard to Idi Amin specifically, but being anti-colonial subjugation and then also anti-Hitler doesn't strike me as a contradiction in and of itself. Far from it, considering Hitler was a supporter of German colonialism himself in Namibia.

Many new states, when they first form, are fairly authoritarian. Even George Washington clamped down on numerous riots against the new constitutional order. What really signals whether the anti-colonial movement is positive, to me, is whether the change is better than what existed before.

The Algerian independence movement seems like it met that. Controversial in America, but despite the Viet Cong's butcherous war tactics, the Vietnamese one also did. One was fighting against a concerted campaign of cultural genocide ("assimilation" on their home turf), the other against a very brutal imperial regime that was preventing their country from entering the community of nations on an even footing.

I should also add that Idi Amin didn't really lead an anti-colonial movement to begin with. He came to power as a pro-Western dictator, later shifted to a pro-Soviet dictator, in neither case was he really associated with consistent anti-colonial groupings like the Non-Aligned Movement.

We've had calls for violent revolution before. It was a popular topic during the 60s and 70s, but only a few radicals were actually serious about it.
Yeah, I would have been against much of the New Left too. ;) Like, Ed Koch above? I would have voted for him, since I support weakening (ultimately abolishing) American racial stratification but don't think riots help anyone. Someone with a record of supporting racial integration who also promised a firm response to rioting sounds right up my alley, standing against both the radical left and weak appeasers of it, and a right that wanted to halt integration altogether.

Much of the New Left's work to bring marginalized groups into the American mainstream was positive, and honestly some of Marcuse's arguments about capitalism breeding cultural degradation had merit. But, ultimately I'm against non-necessity-based violent revolution on principle, I think caution about dramatic change is almost always a must, and much of that wing of the New Left seemed to be calling for Maoist-style Cultural Revolution frenzy.

Part of the reason for such catastrophes is due to the fact that the target governments in these revolutions were far too stubborn, intransigent, and greedy to discuss any possibility of compromise or reform. They should have just made a deal before it got to the brink of revolution.
It depends on the circumstances, to me. If the revolutionaries have a legitimate point, and they often do, then I agree. I don't believe that justifies atrocities on their part though, or being worse than what they replace.

Fortunately for those of us in the West, we had more reasonable governments willing to make such deals, compromises, and reforms before it reached the point of violent revolution. The labor movement was becoming a serious force to be reckoned with, but government mediation and support of workers' rights to collectively bargain made it possible for workers to make gains without revolution. To be sure, there was a good deal of strike violence and unrest, but wise leadership prevailed and heeded those warning signs to bring about a better life for the common people.

But ever since the Reagan era, I fear that the ruling class has become more and more intransigent, arrogant, stubborn, and greedy - just like the old Tsarist regime. They haven't gotten as bad (yet), but they do appear to be just as out of touch.
Basically agreed.

That's, frankly, what a lot of the Civil Rights battle was all about.
Kind of. But, in the '50s it was seen as an "elitist Northern Yankee agitator concern." A bare majority of the US public opposed the 1958 Civil Rights Act, Bull Connor's atrocities really were what tipped the scales of public opinion in favor of the 1964 one. But even then, since it was just a bare majority, it was then seen by many in the South as an example of mob rule. Advocates, of course, saw it as exactly the "protecting the rights of minorities" a republican system is designed to uphold over and above what was seen as the South's internal mob rule.
 
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Loviatar

Red Tory/SpongeBob Conservative
But if we're going to publicly proclaim that all citizens are equal before the law, then we have to mean it and practice it. We have seen the kind of dissension and civil disturbance which result when we do not adhere to our own stated principles.
What Madison meant by "all men are created equal" is equal opportunity in civil society offered to all free white men, later rightly expanded to all citizens. The principle really has never been equal political say, else we'd have an elected judiciary and direct election of the President. The reason being that the Founders feared the destabilization that mass politics has tended to bring, and the history of popularly supported dictators like Cromwell, before him Savonarola, before him a number of Roman leaders including Julius Caesar.

That's not to say that political say was explicitly prevented either. Many states at the country's founding, like most of New England, had strong community engagement in local government. And we were set up not just as a republic, but a republic that operates on a pretty democratic basis. But, there were built-in institutional checks on tyranny of the majority, and a system of rights that in theory (not so much in practice) checks the public's ability to vote for just anything.

It can come from any ideology or form of government facing a "crisis" which may necessitate "temporary" curtailment of civil liberties.
But fascism and Bolshevism were also specifically mass movements calling for an end to the liberal epoch and a fundamental change in the world order. In contrast to stable "let's defang the riots without compromising the extant system" alternatives offered at the time. In the case of Nazism, Friedrich Ebert's Social Democrats and thence Hindenburg's semi-authoritarian law-and-order conservative government. In the case of Bolshevism, Lvov's liberal government that reformed away Tsarism and then Kerensky's broad social democratic government of the left pushing to meet a good chunk of the Bolsheviks' demands within a parliamentary context.

Well, I meant quiet and peaceful in more relative terms. Some areas of America are much more quiet and peaceful than others. Still, we haven't had a war fought on our soil in over 150 years (and that was a war among ourselves). We haven't had a foreign army touch our shores in over 200 years. A lot of nations around the world are living in impoverished, chaotic, and unstable conditions - which we don't really have in America, although we may be heading in that direction at some point.
This is true, yeah. America's distance from the rest of the West has kept it mostly free of the wars that have ravaged Europe. I was more saying that in terms of lifestyle, outside of the South and some sections of the Midwest, it seems pretty fast-paced by comparison to Europe.

I don't believe this is really true,
In the case of mass migration waves it tended to be, honestly. The Irish were escaping a famine, the Jews were escaping pogroms and periodic famines as well, the Sicilians were escaping... Sicily, the Mexicans were escaping farms that were no longer turning a profit, the Chinese now are escaping China.

I also think American exceptionalism has a point, though not always a positive one. The US does have a disproportionate focus on basic first principles (rights) in government, and liberalism is the default assumption. This is in contrast to even its frontier neighbor to the north, Canada, which probably due to its Tory history adopts a more communitarian/Burkean view on where rights arise from that's much more recognizable to most Europeans. That means the US has what looks to outsiders like wonky and selfish economic policies, but also it means their citizens seem actively motivated to defend their country and their system of government in a way that exceeds most of the developed world.

That's one of the reasons I tend to roll my eyes about statements which imply that it's all Fox News' fault for so many misinformed people out there. It goes way beyond Fox News or the alt-right media. This is part and parcel of Americana as it has been taught for generations.
This, I halfway agree with. The US, like all countries, has a series of national myths. Its isolation from the rest of the West geographically, and unique identity formation in the Revolution as standing apart from the rest of the West, seems to make their myths starker though.

That said, I think Fox, talk radio, and later alt-lite e-tabloids peddle a set of cartoony narratives about current events that drive things even more into out-there territory for some of the public. Infowars rambling about how politicians are demon possessed and in communion with DMT gremlins from another dimension, for a tamer example Breitbart peddling all kinds of conspiracy theories about their opponents being pedophiles. Climate change denial in general. A "shut up and let the President do his thing" mentality going back to the Bush years, which even the pretty authoritarian Teddy Roosevelt explicitly decried in a famous quote.

Also, unlike Fox and talk radio, the current situation differs in two respects that I can see:

1) Unlike Rush Limbaugh whose only international audience is in Alberta, those alt-lite e-tabloids aren't an exclusively American phenomenon. Paul Joseph Watson is pretty popular in Europe for example. This seems West-wide, and since the far-right is growing in popularity in Japan too and China is getting more rather than less authoritarian/propagandistic, increasingly global. These kinds of large-scale global shifts, in the annals of history, tend to precede major crises.

2) The left is starting to polarize concurrently. The Young Turks have lurched into Ocasio Cortez, fairly hard-left territory. Jimmy Dore's show is even more in that direction. BLM has taken on a pretty radical, revolutionary tone as a movement. The polarization is still asymmetric, many celebrated 2018 Democratic candidates would still be center-right in Europe and the man who's still the main figurehead of the US left (Bernie Sanders) is barely left-of-center there, but it's clearly intensifying on both sides now.

I must say that I'm quite impressed with your knowledge of American history. Well done.
Thank you. :D I've lived here since I was 14 and went to a pretty good high school. Plus, I'm a history geek who's honestly fascinated by... well, that unique history that America has, talked about above.

Your analysis is great too. We disagree in a lot of areas, but I like your willingness to buck conventional partisan divides in thinking.
 
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Stevicus

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Thank you. :D I've lived here since I was 14 and went to a pretty good high school. Plus, I'm a history geek who's honestly fascinated by... well, that unique history that America has, talked about above.

Your analysis is great too. We disagree in a lot of areas, but I like your willingness to buck conventional partisan divides in thinking.

Thanks. There were some things I was going to respond to further in your post, and I may still do so at a later time. Just a bit tired right now. Long workday.
 

dust1n

Zindīq
To be honest, I'm not sure what to make of this. Who are these Nazis and Fascists anyway? All I see are lower-class people - many of them probably impoverished and somehow "broken," possibly mentally ill in some way - wearing costumes and waving flags in some desperate cry for attention. That's really what we have here.

Sure, they're offensive, dangerously unbalanced, and violent - so I'm not minimizing what they're capable of. But I don't see how they're capable of taking over the government. That's where Antifa seems to grossly overstate their importance and confuses the issue more than offering any real clarity.

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Fighting in the streets didn't really stop the Nazis in Germany anyway. There was a lot of street fighting prior to the Nazi rise to power - mainly between Nazis and Communists, who were also developing a nasty reputation for themselves.

Ignoring and/or appeasing them didn't really stop them either.
 
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