There’s much to be learned from studying movements that thought they were the wave of the future, and weren’t. To begin with, there’s a distinctive tone of strident triumphalism that most movements doomed to fail seem to adopt, some at the very beginning of their trajectories, others once they pass their peak and start down the long slope into irrelevance. Learning to catch that note when it appears in the political and cultural movements of the present, by listening carefully to past examples, is one way to get some sense of the shape of the future well before it happens.
Yet there’s a broader value to failed movements for change, whether they happen to be religious, political, economic, cultural, or something else entirely. It’s a rare movement of this kind that doesn’t have something useful to teach. It’s even rarer for such movements to fail to have important things to say about the unmet needs and unspoken passions of their time. In the case of the movement we’ll be discussing here and for several essays to come, Situationism, both these are even more true than usual, for reasons we’ll explore shortly.
The Situationist International was one of dozens of little fringe movements on the outskirts of European Marxism in the middle years of the twentieth century. Its total active membership could have found seats quite easily in a modestly sized Paris bistro, and the fraction of its membership who contributed anything memorable to the movement could show up for an evening of conversation in the living room of my apartment without any undue sense of crowding. It produced a few journals, a flurry of communiqués, and a handful of books, and made a modest contribution to the atmosphere of unrest that inspired the French student riots of 1968, after which it fizzled out of existence and was replaced by other, equally marginal groups.
I freely grant that none of this may inspire any particular confidence in the value of Situationist ideas. As it happens, though, some of those ideas are worth close study. To understand why this is, we’re going to have to situate Situationism in its proper context—and that, in turn, is going to require a close look at the social ecology of Marxism.
To do this, it’s helpful to start with one of the basic principles of systems theory: The purpose of a system is what it does. (The helpful acronym POSIWID has been coined as shorthand for this.) As the delightfully named systems theoretician Stafford Beer liked to say, “There is no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.” Marxism is a fine case in point. Talk to any doctrinaire Marxist and you’ll be told that the purpose of Marxism is to pave the way for the inevitable overthrow of capitalism by the revolutionary proletariat, and thus to help bring about a utopian future in which private property will be abolished forever and each person will contribute according to his abilities and receive according to his needs.
This, however, Marxism has never done, nor is there any particular reason to think that this is something that Marxism will ever do. The rise of the revolutionary proletariat, the supposedly inevitable overthrow of capitalism, and the rest of Marx’s prophetic system still hover just as far in the indefinite distance as ever, as tantalizing and inaccessible as the Second Coming of Christ, on which the whole scheme was so obviously modeled. If the purpose of a system is what it does, rather, Marxism has two distinct purposes, depending on the nature of the society in which it operates. The purposes are different enough, and the social and organizational patterns that unfold from them are also sufficiently different, that it makes sense to speak of two different kinds of Marxism, which we will call alpha-Marxism and beta-Marxism.
Alpha-Marxism emerges in countries with little or no industrial sector and a large and politically powerful agrarian aristocracy—for example, Russia in 1917, and China and much of the global South after 1945. Its purpose in these contexts is to dispossess and destroy the landowners and the governmental system they control, replace them with a bureaucratic managerial aristocracy, and industrialize the economy. It does all this with tolerable efficiency, though extensive and brutal civil rights violations are also normally involved, and in the process it jumps over one step of the more usual three-stage process seen (for example) in western Europe and eastern North America: the replacement of landed aristocracies by capitalist “robber baron” aristocracies, which took place here in the late 19th century, and then the replacement of the robber barons by managerial aristocracies, which took place in the mid-20th century.
Beta-Marxism, by contrast, emerges in countries that no longer have a powerful agrarian aristocracy and have already made the transition to an industrial economy. Unlike alpha-Marxism, beta-Marxism never takes power or grows to anything much more than a fringe movement, but it still has an important purpose in the workings of modern society. In every generation, a certain number of youths from the managerial class are dissatisfied with the status quo. Beta-Marxist parties are among the marginal groups that absorb their energies and direct those into channels that are harmless to the managerial state.
Such groups also help stabilize society in an intriguing and indirect way. Where alpha-Marxists generally focus on effective means of seizing power and leave theory to the academics, beta-Marxists usually combine highly cogent theoretical critiques of the existing order of society with feeble and ineffective means of attempting to change that state of affairs. The critiques, shorn of rhe dead weight of ineffective technique, are then brought into managerial circles, once the formerly disaffected youths get bored of Marxism and settle down into the jobs their class status guarantees them. In this way the managerial state can sometimes get ahead of genuine movements for social change, handing out reforms to placate this or that dissatisfied group and stave off trouble. All in all, it has a certain elegance.
I should probably mention in advance—since some of my readers will doubtless bring this up—that a case could be made that the labels alpha-Marxism and beta-Marxism ought to be assigned the other way around, because beta-Marxism is actually the original form. It wasn’t until Marxist ideas seeped out of western Europe into Tsarist Russia and the global South that alpha-Marxism had a chance to emerge. I’ve chosen to use the labels as given, however, because of the meanings of “alpha” and “beta” in modern slang. Alpha-Marxists, after all, do tend to behave like alpha males, complete with the swaggering arrogance, the aggressive quest for privilege, and the tendency to outbursts of brutal violence in response to any show of opposition.
For their part, those beta-Marxists who stay in the movement for the long run and form the backbone of beta-Marxist organizations tend to be drawn from among the also-rans of industrial society, those who by temperament or talent aren’t well suited for a salaried position among the bourgeois enablers of the managerial aristocracy, and who exchange the prospects normal to their class for downward mobility and a place on the fringes. Those that are good enough at the game end up being supported by the broader society, because they provide the service described above—catching disaffected youth who might otherwise become a genuine danger to society, and redirecting their energies into some colorful but harmless form of eccentricity, while exposing them to various critiques of the existing order of society that may be useful to them later in life.
Of course Marxism is far from the only ideology that fills some version of this same role. Every complex society has an assortment of dissident belief systems, and these form a penumbra of alternative options out on the fringes of the culture. Some complex societies object to this state of affairs and try to get rid of the dissident fringe through one means or another, with recurring bouts of mass murder a common option. Modern industrial society, having learned a few things from history, takes a different tack and tacitly permits the fringe ideologies to exist and even thrive while overtly discouraging membership in them.
There are good reasons for this tolerance. Partly, campaigns of extermination are costly in terms of resources, and they also give a glamor to dissident groups that their own beliefs and actions do not always deserve. What today’s beta-Marxists resentfully call “repressive tolerance”—that is, allowing fringe ideologies to flourish unmolested while using propaganda and other means of controlling popular opinion to limit public interest in them—is much more economical and even more effective as a means of repression.
Yet there’s another factor. To borrow and rework a turn of phrase from Marx, the fringe constitutes a sort of reserve army of unemployed ideas, any of which can be drawn upon at need to fill gaps in the existing ideological structure of society. That possibility is anything but abstract. It quite often happens, in fact, that belief systems and their associated groups that once were part of the established order of society get eased out onto the fringes, while other belief systems that once survived on the fringes find their way into the establishment.
Consider the trajectory of conservative Protestant Christianity over the last century. It’s hard to think of any set of ideas more thoroughly hardwired into the social structure of the American mainstream in 1910; it’s hard to think of a set of ideas that had been more completely excluded from that mainstream by 2010. In the same way, but with the opposite dynamic, consider the trajectory of the gay and lesbian subcultures; it’s hard to think of anything more harshly excluded from the mainstream in 1910, while by 2010 both had been integrated into the mainstream. That conservative Protestant Christianity was affiliated with the Democratic Party in 1910, just as the gay and lesbian subcultures were in 2010, just adds a nice fillip of irony to the landscape of social change.
Now, in an interesting contrast, conservative Protestant Christianity seems to be moving back into acceptability just as the gay and lesbian subcultures seem to be moving out of it. That may not be a mere accident of history. In the late 20th century, many people in the United States were worried about overpopulation, and so it isn’t exactly surprising that belief systems that encourage propagation moved toward the fringes while those that discourage it became much more acceptable. Now that the population boom is ending and depopulation is on the horizon, popular culture is shifting in the other direction.
Meanwhile there are plenty of other groups and ideas that have been shut out of the mainstream for a very long time and show no signs of finding their way further in any time this millennium. Beta-Marxism is one of these, but far from the only one. There are plenty of alternative groups in that category, ranging from fringe religions to proponents of exotic economic theories to the fans of invented languages such as Esperanto. While they vary in some ways, notably in the level of hostility they direct toward the established order of things, the common features greatly outnumber the differences.
As all this may suggest, the penumbra of fringe ideas and their proponents is a social category I know fairly well. That’s not surprising, since I belong to it. I might have ended up a beta-Marxist, in fact, if I’d made a few different choices in my late teens. Back then I was an amused but interested spectator of the fringe Marxist parties in Seattle, whose antics I followed in some detail by way of their monthly newspapers, which could be purchased at the Left Bank Bookstore in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. In those days the two big fish in that very little pond were the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Freedom Socialist Party, though there were also even smaller parties that appeared and disappeared like mushrooms after a rainfall.
All this was grist for my mill back then. I read the doings of the local radicals fairly regularly, attended the occasional rally and protest march, and drew my own conclusions from the mismatch between their angry and grandiose rhetoric and their complete inability to make any kind of difference outside their own membership, and tolerably often, not even there. Mind you, I also paid attention to the equally unrewarded labors of wholly non-Marxist political groups such as Technocracy, which still had a presence in Seattle in those days, to a variety of other alternative scenes, and also to the occult scene, which ended up becoming the branch of fringe culture that ended up attracting my enduring attention.
The conclusions I drew were not exactly flattering to the pretensions of beta-Marxists. Life on the fringes has its consolations, notably a great deal of personal freedom, but it also has costs, and a lack of political influence is one of them. Thus beta-Marxists are no more likely than beta males to overthrow the system. One of the things that differentiates me from beta-Marxists is that I’m fully aware of that fact, and of my function in the wider structure of society, while their ideology forbids them from ever noticing this. Still, their limitation need not hinder those of us who hope to make more productive use of their insights.
Situationism was one flavor of beta-Marxism, and partakes of all the standard characteristics of that broader phenomenon. It emerged out of several rather less memorable micromovements that rose and fell just after the Second World War, among them Lettrism and Imaginism; like these, it had its birth from the fusion of radical politics and the arts that began with Dadaism during the First World War and arguably reached its peak with the Surrealists between the wars. That’s where the term “Situationist” came from: the Situationists began as an artistic movement that imagined the creation of entire situations for esthetic purposes, and then morphed into a political movement as the political implications of these creative acts became clear.
From its mixed parentage, Situationism picked up an equally mixed assortment of habits. One of them was the strident insistence that while there were Situationists, there was no such thing as Situationism, no ideology or set of ideas that united the movement. Of course this is nonsense—the ideas in question can be found set out in detail in books by leading Situationists—but it was a common pose of avant-garde artistic movements of the time, and it was also a helpful countermove to the obsessive fixation that more orthodox Marxists had on embracing the correct ideology (another of the habits Marxism borrowed from Christianity).
Another example was the systematic refusal of Situationists to embrace the organizational forms standard for radical movements of their time: the political party, the organizing committee, the trained units of brawlers ready to mix it up with rival groups, and the rest of it. Partly this was a recognition of the way that those forms so easily got coopted by the existing order of society if they got large enough to be noticeable, but partly it reflected the usual practice of avant-garde artistic movements, which gave each artist as much leeway as possible while still preserving a façade of shared identity. Mind you, none of this kept the Situationist International, the mostly disorganized organization that waved the banner of Situationism over a variety of European cities for a decade or so, from replicating most of the more embarrassing habits of beta-Marxist groups worldwide.
To see those in action, it’s helpful to read the articles and essays that appeared in the journal Internationale Situationniste and other Situationist periodicals, either in Ken Knabb’s capably edited collection Situationist International Anthology or, better still, in online archives of the movement which preserve the texts in their original settings (in French and English translation). Here you’ll find the sneering denunciations of alternative views, the acts of excommunication consigning an assortment of heretics to the abyss, the strutting self-importance of those who insist on seeing themselves as history’s vanguard even though nobody else notices their existence, and the rest of it. It’s all very reminiscent of a teacup poodle barking frantically at a Great Dane, trying to make up through sheer shrillness what it lacks in size and strength.
At the same time, other features of the movement come through here and there, like glimpses of an unfamiliar landscape seen through mist. Now and again, the Situationists took into account the realities of the social setting in which they operated, even when those contradicted (as they generally did) the precepts of Marxist dogma. Now and again they took on the flaws in Marxism itself, and reached toward ways of making change that didn’t just rehash the failed prophecies of proletarian revolution and the rest of it.
It’s important to keep all this in mind, so that Situationism can be seen as what it was and not what it wanted and pretended to be. What it was not, of course, was a means of overthrowing capitalist society, or even taking the most modest step in that direction. What it was, at its best, was a cogent critique of certain crucial features of modern industrial society (capitalist or socialist) that have not been as clearly recognized anywhere else, and a first tentative sketch of a set of strategies that leverages the strengths of fringe culture against the weaknesses of the established order to expand the possibilities for human freedom. We’ll discuss all this in upcoming posts.
What right wing ideologies today behave like beta-Marxism?
What a brilliant sobriquet: “beta-Marxist”. Not to mention your analysis around it hits on so much truth. Works on multiple levels and deserves wider adoption.
When I was at Cornell in the early 1980’s the most popular class from the most popular professor in the economics department was on Communism. At the time,this seemed surprising to me, that such a class would exist in an obvious training ground of the PMC.
But your explanation of the purpose of Beta marxism explains it perfectly. I never took the class, but it was talked abut frequently around campus. I still remember the most common comment from those who were taking the class, ” If you are not a communist, you are not really thinking”.
I look forward to the discussion of useful strategies that the situationists came up with. The conventional narratives seem to be cracking, and they desperately need a bit more shaking up.
Though they seem to have cracked more in some places than in others. My area of coastal BC seems to be one where the narrative is pretty solidly in place among the vast majority of the people I run into. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of them are mouthing platitudes they don’t believe, but it’s hard to even be silent here, let alone put forth different ideas among people I meet in the real world. I listen a lot more than I speak with almost everyone I know.
POSIWD is so obvious but rarely recognized. It is a useful tool for cutting through baloney. For example, if you looked at the system of slavery in the United States, all the grandstanding about uplifting and civilizing the negro is revealed to be a farce, the real purpose is the obvious one (producing cheap goods at a high profit).
Similarly, applied to industrial civilization, all the rhetoric about human progress evaporates and we are left with the real purpose: recklessly extracting natural resources as fast as possible to produce wealth for a small group of elites.
I like the fringe on my cut off jeans just fine… not bored at all… not bored.
…Lettrism, while of not much interest to many, does have its joys for those of us like me interested in these small artistic / political groups.
The excommunication reminds me of something from Robert Anton Wilson, where he made people popes, and then promptly excommunicated them so they could be their own popes… or something along those lines. I have a business card from him with something like that on it that came with the Maybe Logic DVD -and it had the motto “like what you like and don’t take [shale] from anybody.” So, in a way I can see this as a potentially useful habit of fringe groups excommunicating each other.
Guy Debord as the main ring leader, though he wouldn’t want to call himself a ring leader, was a major drunk, and I can see some of the interpersonal friction within that scene just coming from being an intoxicated intellectual jerk (you had a name for this in French culture, which they took for granted but us Americans don’t seem to get off the bat).
Asger Jorn was one of the excommuniques who I rather like. Especially his triolectic football. More broadly his notion of moving from dialectics to triolectics I find would be very useful!
Of the tools created by Situationism, detournement as culture jamming really got utilized to a high degree by media collective Negativland (who coined the term culture jamming, based on their work documenting / making art out of ham radio jammers in Berkely area) and others who followed their path of editing the fragments emerging from the media spectacle into new creations. Meanwhile psychogeography really got a hold in England, though not so much here. Other early culture jammers were influenced by the SI as well… people like the Billboard Liberation Front.
As another commenter mentioned, the punk subculture owes a large debt to the writings of SI, and key elements of Situationism can be traced in the Sex Pistols, Crass, The Clash, and others…
Speaking of fringe culture and the reverse osmosis of assimilation / excommunication, the next entry in my National Characters / American Iconoclasts series is up here. It’s about the Birth of Freeform Radio and the Crazy Wisdom of Wes “Scoop” Nisker who embraced paradox and ended his shows with “If you don’t like the news… go make some of your own.” Useful advice now as it was in his heyday.
https://www.sothismedias.com/home/the-birth-of-free-form-radio-and-the-crazy-wisdom-of-wes-scoop-nisker
I was a college-campus Marxist when I was in school, and the reason it turned out to be a five-gallon bucket of fail was that “politically correct” ideology rendered what you call beta-Marxism even more neurotic and dysfunctional than when it started out of the gate. I think I ended up being alienated from it because, while it initially fostered some good, solid questioning and thinking, it soon ended up entrenching my neurotic and dysfunctional tendencies that were preventing me from truly growing up. That is why I think Spirit pretty much arranged for me to become socially alienated from it immediately after I was done with school. Having to stand by myself in a steaming garbage-dump of a society without the armor of that ideology left probably the most enduring emotional impression of my formative years.
Anonymous, Dark Enlightment crowd, i think.
Do you think the fringe relates to what Yeats calls the antithetical tincture, and the lamestream as the primary tincture?
I too have looked at “beta-Marxist” over the decades. I still read well-written Marxist books that examine modern capitalism and imperialism. What I’ve seen is that as a group ordinary beta-Marxists tend to be misfits who because of lack of social skills, technical skills, or just inclination, cannot be part of mainstream bourgeoisie society. Their talk is grandiose, they talk of the impending revolution (at some unspecified time) and they tend to have a grossly inflated opinion of themselves, seeing themselves as a “revolutionary vanguard.” Very few of them have actually read even the first volume of Marx’s “Capital.” Some of them could be seen during the so-called Occupy movement of fourteen years ago. One more thing I want to mention in passing is that they seldom practice what they preach — if one of them were to win a lottery and come into $20 million he or she would promptly become bourgeoisie and forget his or her erstwhile radical leanings, just as a suddenly enriched pauper throws away the rags he has hitherto been attired in. Why do I say this? Because their selfishness and self-centeredness is clear to see beneath the radical rhetoric.
“What right wing ideologies today behave like beta-Marxism?” – I suspect that many visible right wing groups do not have much or a coherent ideology. The left tends to build theoretical castles in the air, and then when the ideas are picked up by a genuinely disadvantaged group who can use the ideas to validate their actions they become like alpha Marxists. Both National Socialism and Neo-Liberalism achieved this from the right, enabling a relatively small core group to change the direction of society. In the case of Neo-liberalism without a mass movement of support, thus creating one of the few genuinely revolutionary changes without mass violence (albeit plenty of covert non-physical violence). Both had a more or less coherent ideology.
The right wing groups we see waving flags on the streets of the UK today are more like movements without an ideology. Reacting to knee-jerk ideas rather than attempting action based on reflection like the beta-Marxists. Behind them the leaders are very much part of the establishment, stirring up a mass to promote their ambitions. To that extent they will seem to achieve more success than the betas could dream of, but it it will not be significant social change – the old order will persist.
The White Nationalist scene and related movements behave exactly like beta-Marxism, down to the impossible revolutionary schemes, the small groups gathered around one or two articulate leaders, and the catfights with related groups. Some of their ideas are being pressed into service now, to shore up the system at various weak points.
POSIWID has been strongly criticised as reductive and, ironically, Marxist. It all depends where you stand of course, since the judgement about what a system “really” does is inevitably subjective. My favourite example is the US military system, which provides direct employment to a million people, as well as medical care, indirect employment to millions more, and injects billions of dollars a year into the economies of other countries through overseas bases, and expenditures of soldiers in bars, discos and, um, other places. So in fact it’s purpose is a charitable one.
I think it’s also important not to reify ideas. Marxism is, after all, a system of thought and analysis which has no agency in itself. Individuals calling themselves Marxists, and seeking to justify their actions under that banner have formed movements and organisations, although as with most labels of that sort (“democracy” is probably worse) all sorts of different results are possible. “Marxism” as implemented by Trotsky would have been different from that implemented by Stalin, although the formal CPSU party structure might not have changed at all.
Finally, It’s important not to forget the French and Italian Communist parties, (“Betas”) in your terms, which were major political forces after 1945, regularly getting 20% of the vote in elections, and running important towns and cities (this hasn’t entirely finished.) Much of the postwar instability of Italy is explained by the need to put laborious coalitions governments together which excluded the Communists.
I’d be interested to see how your essays develop. I’ve tackled another aspect of the same subject– thepost-1968 life of many of the ideas of the era, in which of course the situations played a major role. I hope you’re going to let us have your thoughts on Guy Debord.
JMG, from the way you always express yourself, I’ve long known that you are a disappointed Marxist. Good to see you admit it. There’s a kind of determined cynicism in your attitude to The Left which is a dead giveaway. Quite understandable, of course.
Thank you for this post, which served as a helpful jolt to my own consciousness.
Did you ever encounter a set of ideas, internalize them, and then forget where you had learned them, all the while they’d been running in the background of your consciousness for years? I have that sort of relationship with systems theory. I studied it in as much depth as I could (admittedly, not very much) in college, and have had it running like hidden software in the background of my mind ever since. “The purpose of a system is what it does” is one of these immensely useful ideas which clarify a very great deal that seems otherwise mysterious.
I was never a beta-Marxist, because Marxism never appealed to me. Instead I was a beta-anarchist– or just an anarchist, since there have been few if any alpha anarchists outside of Spain in 1936, and perhaps Ukraine in 1918. Six of one, half dozen of another; the structure of the thing was the same.
It always seemed to me, though, that we had a perfectly good thing going, enjoying alternative lifestyles and genteel poverty in our networks of collective houses and the like. I enjoyed revolutionary talk as much as anyone– it’s nearly as good as an amphetamine– but would really have preferred to keep doing our own thing on the margins of capitalist society, and leave everyone else out of it. Of course, that’s exactly what everyone else wanted, too– but almost no one was willing to admit it. Oh well.
That was all many years ago. Recently I said to some friends that I’ve come to look on that time as one part initiation, one part inoculation. An initiation, because I learned skills which serve me to this day both in the realms of personal independence and interpersonal relations. An inoculation, because I’m largely immune to the pressures of radical politics of any stripe at this point. And according to your analysis, that was precisely the point!
Anonymous #1: the “White Nationalist” and “National Socialist” wings of the Dissident Right are absolutely beta-Marxist in spirit. Wearing swastika armbands and screaming racist slogans in public is a singularly poor way to gain political power. But it’s great for gathering a small, dedicated coterie of people who pat each other’s backs and feel superior to the Cuckservatives who aren’t hardcore enough to accept the Real Truth.
The Internet has also become a fertile breeding ground for every loony political cause. And of course you get the endless denunciations, excommunications, and internecine squabbling JMG mentions in his essay. While many people claim the Internet radicalized America, one might just as easily argue that the Internet is a giant pressure valve that lets people engage in performative radicalism without actually getting their hands dirty or endangering the social order.
I’m currently reading Adorno & Horkheimer’s “Dialectic of Enlightenment.” The Frankfurt School was more influential than most beta-Marxists, but it has the same dreary habit of trying to shove everything in a Marxist lens. A & H interrupt a thought-provoking essay on the roles of myth and reason in early history for a discussion of how the engagement between Odysseus and the Sirens is a harbinger of the bourgeois takeover of the systems of power and their willful deafening of the Proletariat. I gotta admit I got a hearty chuckle out of that passage, though I doubt very much that was what the authors were aiming for.
Alpha- and beta-marxism are excellent coinages! I hope your essay helps lay to rest those fears of somebody implementing “Communism!” or “Marxism!” in the near future in countries like Canada, the USA or Brazil.
I would add an additional category: ex-marxism (call it chi-marxism if you want). There are parties that originally espoused Marxist theory, but as their membership ballooned among the working-class population, they abandoned Marxist tenets for more pragmatic goals like universal health care, affordable housing and some degree of worker control of enterprises. The example I know best is the Social-democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which turned its back on Marxist revolution, in practice, in 1918/1919, and then even in theory at its Godesberg congress in 1959. I suppose the Scandinavian, Dutch and French social-democratic parties underwent similar transformations. It might be (though I am not sure) that even the French and Italian communist parties went a similar path.
Hello JMG and kommentariat. I can say Situationist poster is cool…Thanks for the links to Situ texts in original French and English translation. I used to read Situ stuff when I was a (late) teenager, although I thought sometimes they were a bit nuts, or they simulated being nuts. Am I explaining it well?
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(Slightly off topic) This is a message for Achille. I’ve read a lot of the web “virtud y revolución”, and well, I’ve realized soon they’re “traditionalist anarchist”, I suppose for “serious” Anarchists (if this cathegory exists nowadays, I doubt it). From my point of view, they’re partly right in their critics to established Left and Right. However, they are too radical for my taste…
NephiteNeophyte @ #5, speaking of POSIWID, the welfare agencies come immediately to mind, their purpose being a jobs program for the less competent among college graduates.
Existennial Comics is produced by some sort of establishment feminist anarchist, and it occassionally takes potshots at the ideas of Karl Marx.
I love “Communist Brainstorming” where radical philosophers think of ways to overthrow the bourgeise. The solution they come up with is unorthodox yet surprisingly effective:
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/389
@Steve T: ” enjoying alternative lifestyles and genteel poverty in our networks of collective houses and the like.”
Sounds like a good time to me…
I always enjoyed reading anarchist philosophy, but was always bored by Marxism. The two were bedfellows often enough, but anarchism just as often had other inclinations as well.
I’ll think of myself as a theta-Anarchist to tie it in with the 8th letter of the Greek alphabet.
Anon, nearly all the neo-Nazi and neofascist groups, the Dark Enlightenment and Neoreaction scenes, and some of the right-wing Transhumanist groups, just for starters.
Tomfoolery, thank you, but it seems very obvious to me!
Clay, I think it was Churchill who said, “Anyone who is not a Communist at twenty has no heart; anyone who is still a Communist at forty has no brain.”
Pygmycory, that doesn’t surprise me at all, I’m sorry to say. I hope you find some of the Situationist insights and tactics useful.
Nephite, exactly. Apply POSIWID to everything, and especially to the ideas you believe in most strongly; the results are always useful.
Justin, oh, granted. Lettrism actually helped me develop my concept of the life cycle of artistic movements, though I think Isou badly underestimated the potential for creativity in the performance phase, when the creative space is filled — there’s more to be done than chiseling!
Mister N, it’s a common experience — glad you came through it more or less in one piece.
Justin, it depends on whether the collective phase is primary or antithetical. In collective primary phases — we’re in one of those now — the fringe is antithetical; in collective antithetical phases, the fringe is primary.
AA, you’re certainly right about how shallow the rhetoric is. A good many of the beta-Marxists I’ve known were trust fund tragedies — they denounced capitalism while living off monthly checks from trust funds invested in the stock market. It’s mostly just a pose.
RogerCO, we have a rightist movement of that sort here in the US, too — purely reactive, focused entirely on returning to something less toxic than the latest antics of wokery. It’s fairly powerful these days, not least because it helped put Trump in the White House. Look around, though, and you may find that there are also ideologically intense groups on the right.
Aurelien, the US military certainly isn’t in the business of fighting wars, a job it does very ineptly at best. I’d characterize it as a gravy train for corporate interests, with giveaways to other pressure groups; that’s what it does, and so that’s its purpose in POSIWID terms. I grant that reification can be problematic, but so can idealization — claiming that there’s this thing called “real Marxism” out there somewhere, doubtless rubbing shoulders with Plato’s ideas, is among other things camouflage for the way Marxist groups actually behave. As for France and Italy, that’s a valid point, but I’d note that after the war, French and Italian industries had been devastated and both nations were in a very real sense industrializing rather than industrial nations. As that process completed itself, the Communist parties in both nations transitioned from alpha-Marxism to beta-Marxism.
Ben, that’s not quite accurate, as I was never a Marxist. In my radical phase I was a democratic syndicalist with some influence from guild socialism via Chesterton and Belloc. The determined cynicism is there, to be sure, but it doesn’t take membership in a Marxist party to become very deeply soured on Marxism; in my case it was partly a matter of watching the antics of the parties I cited, and partly spending a couple of years in my mid-twenties working as a nursing home aide and talking during quiet hours with a young man from Cambodia who had the same job. He and his sister survived the Khmer Rouge regime. The other forty-odd members of their extended family did not.
Steve, I’ve had that same experience many times. For example, it wasn’t until I reread the Illuminatus! trilogy a couple of years ago, after about a decade during which it sat neglected on the shelf, that I realized how strongly it influenced The Weird of Hali! But you’re right that life on the fringes is partly an initiation and partly an inoculation; it can also become an enduring lifestyle, for those who can figure out how to make a living at it, as I have.
Kenaz, so you’re tackling Adorno and Horkheimer! One of these days I need to waste a year or so writing a book-length deconstruction and détournement of that sadly influential work– “waste,” of course, because the resulting book will be read by about fifteen people in the subsequent history of the universe, if that. Unpacking what A&H have to say from the standpoint of occult philosophy will nonetheless be a treat, at least for me.
Aldarion, “chi-Marxism” is funny and useful, as I don’t happen to recall what “selling out and cashing in” works out to in Greek. Yes, it’s an important factor, not least because there are also parties such as our Democratic party which borrow Marxist rhetoric but remain hopelessly bourgeois, and in fact grand-bourgeois, in their attitudes. I’m not sure what to call them — phi-Marxists, with the phi standing for “faux”?
Chuaquin, the Situationists were a bit nuts. That’s one of the reasons they’re valuable. In a late industrial society, going at least a little nuts is the only sane alternative. 😉
I will also put in another plug for Mackenzie Wark’s excellent history of the Situationist movement, The Beach Beneath the Streets, published by Verso Books.
Another interesting title from the Leftist press Verso was Breaking Things at Work :the Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job by Gavin Mueller. If it had more Luddism and a lot less Marxism I would have liked it more.
I thought about making a list of beta-ideologies but I realized it boils down to one nearly infallible rule: if an ideology has a name and is almost entirely subscribed to by college students and graduates, it’s a beta-ideology.
For myself, I’m a disappointed anarchist. After about a decade I noticed that it was just a sink to preen about how much better your ideology is than either major party while abdicating any and all responsibility for politics in the real world, which I hardly need a sophisticated ideology to do!
That or throw bricks and get in fights to impress women. (I wish I were joking.)
For better or worse there has only ever been one alpha-anarchist of any note: Buenaventura Durruti. Everyone else is a beta or beta pretending to be an alpha. Or worse, like Hakim Bey.
Anonymous #1,
There’s a local group that gets together to read things like the Federalists and Anti-Fedralists, various correspondence of the Founding Fathers, etc. I suspect they are one of the right-wing ideological equivelents. They occasionally manage to get up a counter-protest to one of the inevitably geriatric and sparsely populated leftist protests.
(Those of us who are younger are absolutely scathing on the local rags’ comment sections about these: Oh, did the nursing homes have an old hippie park field trip? sort of snark.) However, local demographics, there are no observable young person’s movements. Both sides are the retirees.
Any young person stuff would be in video game chat channels, and as a Gen Z Mom, it is wild hearing “So in Judges 8 we see-@#$&! you @#$&!- that when Israel . . . ” when the kids are running themselves a Bible Study and a game raid at the same time.
Middle aged seem to be busy wrangling the older generation and the younger generation at the same time, and I suppose the closest to social philosophy we usually manage is “Well, we like Plato and a Platypus walk into a Bar, and Heiddeger and a Hippo walk through those Pearly Gates, for intro to Western Philosophy texts. The kids retain the broad strokes because it’s all jokes.”
I’d second Aurelien’s criticism of POSIWID. If applied too strictly, it seems like it would mean that the purpose of every defeated side in a war was to lose that war (though, of course, many losers end up looking that way in retrospect…). That said, I can definitely see its value as a lens for analysis. Those “beta Marxists”, and many others like them, may have been working in their inept and delusional way towards a very different purpose, but the function they end up performing in society is as you say. I’m also not sure that this function was something most in the elite have thought a lot about – it may have been enough for them to conclude that those people were mostly harmless – but the outcome is the same. And when a process consistently achieves the same outcome over and over again, it’s definitely worth noting regardless of what we make of stated intentions.
@Steve T #15 “I enjoyed revolutionary talk as much as anyone– it’s nearly as good as an amphetamine– but would really have preferred to keep doing our own thing on the margins of capitalist society, and leave everyone else out of it. Of course, that’s exactly what everyone else wanted, too– but almost no one was willing to admit it.”
Once again I find myself thinking that I’d be really into anarchism if it dropped those revolutionary pretensions, which strike me as at best annoyingly disingenuous and at worst self-destructive. If people in such groups could admit that a revolution was neither possible nor, in light of historical experience, desirable, and instead concentrated on improving their life on the margins… well, they would appeal a lot more to me and probably a lot less to some others. But they may also gain something from such honesty.
@ Justin– It was quite a good time, if you were willing to learn the secret passwords. Certainly the Clash (which remain my favorite band) were heard very often at our parties. I began to distance myself from the “movement” when I started practicing daily banishing rituals in 2013 and discovered that all of my old friends had taken on the appearance of bloated fish-monsters. A year later I learned the mental practice of “resolving binaries” from JMG, applied it to the Trayvon Martin affair, and was summarily purged.
(Well, that’s the rough outline, anyway.)
One of the funniest things about far extremist left is the fear/hate whem they say the ominous words: “reformist” and “socialdemocrat”. There’s a lot of comedy in it, although involuntary.
By the way, I suppose there’s the same BS in the Right, with far Right freaks scorning mild Conservatives as moderate…
JMG #22.:
John, it’s good to hear that about getting nuts; in fact, I am myself a bit nuts too…
JMG,
I never got around to reading Illuminatus, and should probably rectify that! Now, though, I’m thinking about what else I may read 20 years ago that’s still shaping my thoughts.
One thing I find fascinating is the way that certain fringe ideas have migrated from the “left” to the “right” in the past decade. When I think of the “fringe-as-initiation,” one of the things on my mind is the use of herbal medicine, which I picked up in my anarchist daze and have carried on ever since. Fifteen years ago, holistic healthcare (of every sort) was a left-wing affair, associated with hippie communes and Northern California. Now it’s a right-wing thing, associated with trad wives in South Appalachia. From my own perspective, I just want to treat common ailments with plants gathered from the woods behind the house. I don’t want to be part of any political movement, since there isn’t one I agree with. But the strange reversals of the past decade, and the way that so few many people have gone along with them without remark– often enough, apparently, without any memory of their former positions or awareness that they’ve changed– remains the weirdest thing I’ve ever lived through.
On Reddit, I noticed a clear distinction between the theory-light, doomer-heavy American beta-Marxist crapposters on the Late Stage Capitalist subreddit, and the well-read beta-Marxists that seem to be older and from Eastern Europe who post on other communist subreddits.
The former is the left wing of present-day progressivism, and as ideologically shallow as any other wokel; the latter seem to have members that were educated in Marxist-Leninism back before the collapse of the Soviet Empire (however, even they are wokeified, probably by aggressive commemt moderation).
Disclaimer: I haven’t spent enough time on those subs to know for sure if my characterization of the doctrinaire Leninists is accurate.
JMG, as a contemporary example of what you described in your last paragraph, cogent critique, tentative description of set of strategies, etc. I would like to draw your and commentariat’s attention to this charming group of anarchists in the UK:
https://winteroak.org.uk/2021/12/28/the-acorn-70/
What I like about this group is their focus on environmentalism; they are not your typical high urbanites sneering at “the establishment” over their lattes.
This essay gives quite a bit of food for thought. 🙂
What I’m grasping so far (although admittedly this may not be *very* far) is that the point of Marxism – as evaluated by what it accomplishes – is to act as the midwife (alpha-Marxists) and/or baby-sitter (beta-Marxists) for the process of Industrialising? or maybe for the process of bureaucratising? a society.
Although in some countries, the birth of industrialisation, but not of bureaucratisatiion, was first attended by capitalist robber baron midwives, before Marxism had properly developed.
In other words, by this reckoning, Marxism is very closely intertwined, possibly irreducibly, with the industrial/bureaucratic nature of THIS society.
Am I on track? or have I gone grieviously off the rails?
About Comunism and industrialization, i think you are right on target. That’s why even when comunism speaks of peasants and workers, it always wants to destroy the formers and their communities, and turn them into the later.
That’s also the reason that lead Stalin to quickly dismantle the NEP and proclaim that the country was going to Industrialize, at any cost, because it was either this or be crushed by the western powers.
Considering the methods he employed however, which included , aside from the well-known extermination of the “kulaks”, creating famines on purpose to starve the country side, while at the same time forcing the desperate country-people to the cities to be employed in factories, it might have been better for the Russian people to wait for the Germans to invade them. The body count may well have been much lower!
I’ll add a charachteristic to your description of alpha-comunists, however: They tended to be very succesful preachers and propagandists. Trotski was credited with the ability to walk into an isolated village, full of distrustful and scared people, and walk away followed by a crowd willing to fight into the then incipient Red army. The same ability still existed in the Spanish Civil war, where Communists started as a very small party and ended the war as the dominant and most popular faction, even failing at almost everything!
Guillem.
@Slithy Toves: When I was first introduced to Hakim Bey and TAZ around age 17 or 18 I loved it. The same when I read his Immediatism and other works around 22. Fast forward a number of years and I reviewed several of his more recent books, then found out about some of his other, uh, inclinations. Re-reading bits of him later I was able to pick up on those inclinations in his text that I’d missed the first time. My taste for it was done.
That said I was inspired by real world TAZ examples such as Dreamtime Village. I’m not sure how that experiment has played out in its later years. But it reminds me of the talk here on the ghost towns in the future desertified west. Good place for nomads to take up… though I doubt they’ll be pacifists… I’m reminded with the ghost towns of the YouTube channel Ghost Town Living. Of course that guy has lots of money to put into his Ghost Town. Still the model might work for some form of collective.
Justin, I doubt Mueller broke things at his own job!
Slithy, that’s probably the best touchstone, yeah. As for alpha-anarchists, no question, Durruti was the man; I think there have been a few other anarchists who had comparable roles, but anarchism’s a miserably difficult ideology for that sort of thing, as its sole purpose (by the POSIWID standard) is to fail and get people killed. As for Peter Lamborn Wilson aka Hakim Bey, well, yes. Ick.
Daniil, POSIWID can’t be applied to a single instance — for example, one war. If a given country repeatedly started wars and lost them, especially if it lost them in the same way every time, then you could apply it. (This offers an interesting insight into the history of Germany.) You’re right that the ruling elites doubtless haven’t given a single moment of thought to the fringe groups and their social function; one of the advantages of systems theory is that it makes it possible to see social processes as emergent functions that nobody planned, rather than getting stuck in a cascade of “who set out to make this happen?” fallacies.
Chuaquin, it is indeed the same thing on the far right. The blistering scorn with which Marxists denounce liberals is matched point for point by the blistering scorn with which neofascists denounce ordinary conservatives. As for being nuts, of course you are — anything else would be crazy!
Steve, that’s one of the most fascinating changes of my lifetime. I’ve changed very, very few of my beliefs since my late 20s, and yet in that time I’ve drifted all the way from the extreme left to the moderate right. Alternative medicine? Opposition to centralized government control by bureaucratic “experts”? A taste for retro tech? Support for small local businesses? A conviction that individuals ought to be left free to lead their own lives without having official busybodies hassling them? Those used to be positions of the extreme hippie left when I was a young man; they’re standard on the right at this point, while the left has embraced nearly all the opposing points of view.
Patrick, I haven’t been on that end of Reddit enough; most of where I lurk is in the occult and alternative-realities subs. I’ll have to visit r/latestagecapitalism one of these days.
Mary, thank you for this! An anarchist movement that rejects the latest high tech boondoggles and is skeptical of the pharmaceutical industry — gosh, I feel twenty again. 😉
Scotlyn, you’re not off the rails at all. Marxism is an ideology of bureaucratic power — that’s why so many Marxists nowadays focus all their ire on the capitalist class, the people who get their income from investments, and go out of their way to ignore the power of bureaucrats, who get their income from government salaries. Some Marxists want to become government bureacrats, others want to bring about a society run entirely by government bureaucrats, but it’s alway the bureaucrats who benefit. The populist right has almost figured this out — that’s why they screech about Communism, when what they really mean is bureaucratic centralism.
Guillem, so noted! Spain had no shortage of alpha-Marxists during your Civil War; unfortunately for them, it had a considerably more robust supply of alpha-fascists.
Leftism in my country is fully kidnapped by wokery since some 10 years ago. From bland socialdemocrats (like our “beloved” Pedro Sánchez President nowadays), to the most fierce (?) Anarchists, they’ve gone all woke. They imitate like monkeys whatever they can hear and translate to Spanish from USA woke universities and “Democrats”. Only a few scattered freaks in the fringe are in dismay with this sad and ridiculous situation alike…I suppose there’s the same s**t everywhere in Western countries. Am I right?
Ok, so you answer focuses in on bureaucratic power and bureaucratic centralism as the specific social phenomenon that Marxism aims to birth and tenderly care for.
That leads to the question of why industrialisation was seen as a necessary part of the process by those you’ve named alpha-capitalists?
And, on that score, is it possible for industrialism to exist without developing a thick bureaucracy? Are these two (industrialism and bureaucracy) inextricably co-joined siamese twins? Or can they exist independently of one another.
@Aurelien
Speaking about Trostki or Stalin’s comunism, i think that in the end we can’t atribute to chance that, wherever Comunism has seized any power, it has always ended up dominated by the Aparatchiks, and not by it’s most “idealistic” members.
For example, when Trotski fell into disgrace, there were people who protested, among them Antonio Gramsci, who was quite influential, but they were not in power, and the leaders lined with Stalin.
To me, that speaks of a way of functioning that promotes such leadership, and made the success of characthers such as Trotski as leaders nearly impossible. JMG explanation, that the real purpose of Comunnism was to industrialize, makes sense in this context.
JMG, you replied to Ben: “In my radical phase I was a democratic syndicalist with some influence from guild socialism via Chesterton and Belloc.”
I have been trying to understand for some years why you write, from time to time, in positive terms about democratic syndicalism, but most of the time keep silent on alternative economic models. Is it that you now seem more flaws in syndicalism than in your youth? Or that you simply see no point in promoting society-wide change?
You also replied to me, with regard to social democratic parties: ” I don’t happen to recall what “selling out and cashing in” works out to in Greek.”
That is not what I was trying to argue. I do agree that the SPD and other social democratic parties have sold out on the working class since at least 2005, if not 1998, if not earlier. However, I do think that, at least from the 1920s to the 1970s, such parties made great strides towards their stated goals: universal health care, affordable housing, some worker control of enterprises (German Mitbestimmung), wider access to higher education, too. Those stated goals did not include revolution anymore. I fail to see where the selling out and cashing in applies (again, referring to the period from the 1920s to the 1970s – there are countless examples from more recent years).
That seems to be something different from the beta-Marxism you define and describe, not least because they weren’t Marxists anymore!
JMG, about Spain and Fascism, the fascists where indeed very useful to win the war, but there is another factor, related to the Communist attitude towards peasants. Franco succeeded in amalgamating his Fascist supporters, wich where small in number but very charismatic and influential, with the rural country-people who did not want communism inflicted to them, thank you very much. With a raquitic discourse he managed to unite very diferent people and won the war.
Prove of this is that, when he took Barcelona in 1939, many of the soldiers where in awe: They had never beheld so big, crowded and industrialized city in his life.
Guillem #34: Communists in Spanish Civil War started to grow in number and power because they were better organized and funded (Stalin rules…) than Socialists and Anarchists. When the war started, indeed, there was a lot of anarchists in the Republican side, but they lost fastly power as their revolution failed, by their own flawns but by state (and commie) repression, too.
@Justin Patrick Moore,
I don’t blame you at all for being attracted to Bey’s ideas. One takeaway I’ve retained from anarchism is that the justifications for authority are almost always transparently phony.
Hierarchy is as natural as breathing and as necessary as oxygen but the only honest justification for it among adults, other than mutual consent, is that sometimes the only way to deal with miscreants is to punch them in the gut until they stop misbehaving and/or moving, whichever comes first, but we can at least be civilized about it.
We all have to deal with hierarchies, but you don’t have to believe their self-righteous poppycock. (And yet, ironically, it’s better if most people do.)
Chuaquin, you’re right. That is to say, the left has been kidnapped and replaced by bourgeois interests.
Scotlyn, alpha-capitalists didn’t pursue industrialism because they valued industrial society as such. They each pursued the industrialization of their own economic sector because they could get obscene profits by doing so. It was only after these individual projects began to interact and weave together an industrial society that bureaucracy on the grand scale became inescapable, partly to manage the inevitable conflicts between industrial magnates and partly because the industrial economy’s harnessing of fossil fuels rendered a huge share of human labor superfluous (Marx got this right) and led to the mass production of new economic specialties to absorb the surplus labor (Marx missed this completely). So the bureaucratic society was the unintended consequence of capitalism. I suspect, for what it’s worth, that the move away from the bureaucratic state toward a renewal of entrepreneurial capitalism is a consequence of fossil fuel depletion — now that the supply of energy is not so extravagant as it once was, a growing share of bureaucratic jobs and exotic economic specialties are no longer needed to absorb a share of the work force, and so the bureaucracies are being pruned.
Aldarion, it’s because I realized through the study of history that economic systems are organic growths, not artifacts, and because I noticed that new economic systems put into place inevitably copy, and often worsen, all the problems of the systems they replaced. I retain a fondness for democratic syndicalism because in certain cases — notably worker-owned corporations — it seems to work tolerably well (and I go out of my way to patronize worker-owned businesses). As for your correction, so noted; I was being snarky. Of course you’re correct that social democracy did accomplish some of its goals.
Guillem, thank you for this. Er, what on earth does “raquitic” mean? I can’t find that in my dictionaries.
Knowing our most esteemed host, I expect this to go in an esoteric direction. I suspect our test subjects, the betamarxes, fail as they violate all of the 4 tenants of magick.
For their spell to coagulate in actually political change, they need to be truly cognizant of the reality of their time, truly motivated by the end goal and purpose of the endevor, willing to exert true force in its deployment and do it under the veil of darkness and silence.
As I see it, all modern movements lack the clarity of purpose, the will of hunger, the agency of action, and above all the humility of discretion. No wonder they fail and will keep do so until they go back to basics.
Charles Radcliffe, one of the founders of the UK SI section, wrote a highly amusing and insightful ground-floor account of how those downwardly-mobile “also-rans of industrial society” went through the 1960s & 70s, flitting from one radical idea to the next radical movement. The book is ‘Don’t Start Me Talking’.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1512158.Charles_Radcliffe
As you note, the SI’s penchant for excommunication would reach comical conclusion as they all kicked each other out. “You are no longer a Situationist, you’re just a situation!” Picture the sneer!
Original SI co-founder (and Peggy Guggenheim’s son-in-law) English artist Ralph Rumney (seated mid-right in your SI photo) was turfed out by Debord for failing to submit a written report on time. Heady stuff.
Thanks for the comment about Yeats.
What do you think the purpose of democracy is according to POSIWID?
JMG #44 and Guillem #41
“Raquitic” would a Spanish deformation of “rachitic” (adj) with is the medical term for the rickets in English, aka, “small and misshapen”. It’s kind of funny to use it to describe a speech. Short and borderline unintelligible? Spanish and French speakers will probably all understand but it sounds a little awkward and obscure in English. Arguably a perfect use for the word itself.
@Chuaquin, You are right that Anarchists made a fool of themselves when they took power, but i’ll argue that in a curious sense, they were the opposite of Comunists:
For example, Durruti and his band( as they can’t hardly be described in any other manner) of Militians were brave and capable soldiers, although recognizing that they will never be able to compete in a conventional fight with the professional soldiers on the other side, they fought in a guerrilla style. That brought significant territorial gains in the Aragon front, almost taking Zaragoza…Until the communists enforced a unified and homogenous army, capable of fighting big battles…and lose them. Never again the Republic was able to take and hold any significant piece of land.
So Comunists were way more organized, sure. More, succesful politicians and great propagandists…but bad strategists and mediocre fighters. Yet, they succedeed in hiding all this, and presenting themselves in a favorable manner, while ridiculing their rivals , when they could not afford to attack them openly.
Guillem.
Yes, I can absolutely see that alpha-capitalists, while acting to secure and increase their own profit streams, appear to have backed themselves into the industrialisation of their societies without intending any such thing. (With, as you say “the bureaucratic society… the unintended consequence of capitalism”)
I’m still wondering why, if the bureaucratic society was the INTENDED consequence of the alpha-Marxists, they found industrialisation to be the essential pathway, wherever it had not already taken place? What made them see these processes (industrialisation and bureaucratisation) as such close companions?
Justin Patrick Moore @ 47, I think the purpose of Athenian democracy may have been to give every male citizen, from the poorest thetes, whose job it was to row in the fleet, to the Alcmeonids and other rich families a personal stake in the survival and success of their city. If Athens were to field an effective army, all able bodied men had to serve. Inclusion in government, according to wealth at first, was a way to gain their enthusiastic support. The blood sacrifices were, among other things, a way to keep fighting men well fed. I doubt women were admitted to sacred barbecues. Those rites also would have provided some income and prestige to farmers and herders who supplied the animals.
Speaking of fringe movements, I would like to ask a question of any British citizens here. I keep finding on you tube and other places indications of rewilding parts of Britain, reintroduction of beavers and so on. Also, I notice there seems to be a certain interest in revival of preindustrial craft. How popular are these developments? A growing movement, or just a few eccentrics?
If beta-neoreaction, and the various beta- ideologies on the right serve the same function as beta-Marxism, why then are they not subject to the same “repressive tolerance”? I mean, you can fly the hammer-and-sickle with impunity, you can call yourself a Marxist and chant “eat the rich” on your lunch break from working at at Blackrock or Goldman Sachs… but the minute you step out of line to the right, it’s a different story. Go ahead and call yourself a race-realist in the public square, or hang a Swastika flag on your door. “Tolerance” is not what you’d expect, is it?
So the system does function somewhat differently on towards the left-fringe than the right-fringe. Following POSIWID, I believe it is an important distinction, but I’m afraid I’m not quite sure what it means.
> If a given country repeatedly started wars and lost them, especially if it lost them in the same way every time, then you could apply it. (This offers an interesting insight into the history of Germany.)
I probably don’t need to explain that this isn’t what we Germans learn in school. What purpose do you have in mind? Simply becoming Europe’s punching bag after having Austrians start world wars on our behalf or something deeper?
(I should probably clarify that the dig at Austria is mostly ironic as there’s no way Germany escapes blame for WWII, though our education does seem to suggest that we had rather less to do with WWI than popular discourse would have you believe. Mandy Rice-Davies applies, obviously.)
—David P.
>Some Marxists want to become government bureacrats, others want to bring about a society run entirely by government bureaucrats, but it’s alway the bureaucrats who benefit.
People talk about the Iron Law of Bureaucracy but they never do talk about the Law of Bureaucratic Misery, that every bureaucracy strives to increase net misery in the world. Every single one, whether it’s corporate or government. Corporate ones are constrained by the profit motive, at least in theory anyway, so you don’t see it as often as you do with government.
How did that old Monty Python song go? “You can keep your Marxist ways / But it’s only just a phase”?
YES YES YES! THIS is also my realization-cum-belief and what i’m all about now, but i had no idea that anyone else believed this!!!! and i was starting to accept that i’m likely completely insane.
(smile)
thank you, Papa.
x
——————–
“the Situationists began as an artistic movement that imagined the creation of entire situations for esthetic purposes, and then morphed into a political movement as the political implications of these creative acts became clear….
“….What it was, at its best, was a cogent critique of certain crucial features of modern industrial society (capitalist or socialist) that have not been as clearly recognized anywhere else, and a first tentative sketch of a set of strategies that leverages the strengths of fringe culture against the weaknesses of the established order to expand the possibilities for human freedom. We’ll discuss all this in upcoming posts.”
@47 Justin Patrick Moore
The purpose of democracy is to enable the wealthy to control the government via bribery and control of the mass media, with the sometimes grudging assent of the governed.
The fringes are now accepted on a conditional basis by the mainstrea., because they become a constant source for what the SI calls recuperation… rsw material to be fed vack into the system of spectacularized society.
Man, another cliffhanger:
“a first tentative sketch of a set of strategies that leverages the strengths of fringe culture against the weaknesses of the established order to expand the possibilities for human freedom. We’ll discuss all this in upcoming posts.”
I suppose that I’ll have to tune in next week to find out what happens.
In the meantime, the clueless elite are always the last to know what is happening. The politicians in the EU remain thoroughly wedded to an extreme and irrational ideology (liberalism jumps shark -> woke) eventhough it means death by migrants or death by Russia. The UK is close to imploding/exploding.
The only country in the west fighting the ideology is the US, and the outcome is far from clear. So, I’m eager to hear about these fringe ideas and their dynamics, next week.
Thankfully I lived in a small prairie town so not caught up in this. Hippy on a struggling commune. Delved deeply into Carlos Castenada’s stoned wandering was fringe enough. Since I could not afford university was fairly contemptuous of that crowd as a self defense reaction.
I like the Irish Democracy method of attacking our elite. Low profile OPSEC. Got a lot of hatred for the Covid police state and the smug PMC i need to work on.
@Justin Patrick Moore 47
POSIWID doesn’t have to be completely cynical: the purpose of democracy is to negotiate the peaceful transfer of power, privileges, and spoils among the various elite factions vying for them. The problem is that not just anyone can start a new faction and get a slice of the pie; Trump was in a position to do this because of his wealth and connections but the average citizen is not.
What we’re now seeing is the forced-but-peaceful transfer of power, privileges, and spoils away from the old elite factions to the new elite factions. The old elite factions are not happy about this at all but because we’re a democracy falling back on the traditional method of open warfare risks losing them even the veneer of legitimacy and opens the door to reprisal from Trump’s faction and looting by other factions.
Rashakor, excellent! I hadn’t analyzed beta-Marxism that way, but of course you’re quite correct.
Revelin, thank you — that’s a book I’ll have have to read sooner rather than later.
Justin, the purpose of democracy is civil war prevention. It does this in two ways: first, it gives the politically active sectors of the population some prospect of getting a hearing for their interests in some way that doesn’t require armed rebellion, and second, it provides a means for removing decadent and dysfunctional elites without the same requirement. Since civil war is extremely expensive and disruptive, democracy of some kind is therefore a relatively common condition for complex societies.
Rashakor, hmm. Okay; I considered “rachitic,” but couldn’t make it make sense. It’s as though someone’s speeches were described as oblong, corduroy, and blepharitic.
Scotlyn, Marxist theory requires industrialization. You can’t very well bellow “industrial workers of the world, unite!” if there are no industries and no industrial workers! It’s quite possible to bureaucratize an agrarian society — traditional China is of course the classic example — but it requires a very different mode of bureaucratization than the one that Marxism presupposes and then imposes. So Marxist regimes, once they seize power, always try to launch industrialization programs so that they can have the kind of society they think they’re supposed to lead. Sometimes, as in Russia and China, it works; sometimes, as in many Marxist regimes in the global South, it doesn’t, and then the local Marxist party quietly devolves into a more ordinary autocratic regime, often with a tribal basis, which uses Marxist slogans in place of some more traditional form of totemic symbols.
TylerA, repressive tolerance is only extended to movements that pose zero threat to the status quo. Beta-Marxism is never a threat to an established bureaucratic aristocracy, as it can always be coopted by recruiting successful leaders into the aristocracy (in a nutshell, this is what happened in the aftermath of the 1960s). Beta-fascism is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish, because alpha-fascism is in its element in a failing industrial state. Notice which nations became fascist in the 20th century: in each case, it was an industrial nation hit by a serious economic crisis its ruling class was too incompetent to deal with. The only way for the elites to get ahead of a potential fascist movement is to purge the system of the people and interests who stand in the way of necessary reforms, make a lot of changes in a hurry, get the support of the majority, and use the full repressive power of the state against anyone who tries to push things further in a fascist direction than the ruling interests want to go. That’s what happened in the US after FDR took office in 1933, and it’s what’s happening right now.
David P, I bet that’s not what Germans learn in school! Germany’s problem was twofold. The most obvious problem was that it got much too fond of starting wars after launching successful piratical raids against Denmark, Austria, and France in the second half of the 19th century, didn’t notice that the rest of Europe (above all Britain) had drawn the logical conclusions, and failed to let Austria go hang when the Dual Monarchy picked a fight with Russia. The deeper problem is that it’s essential for the peace of Europe that Prussia never be allowed to unite with any other German-speaking country. Leave Prussia isolated, and Germany can fill its proper role in European culture as Das Land der Dichter und Denker; let it become part of a unified nation, and sooner or later the armies start marching. You’ll notice that the inevitable remilitarization is under way there now.
Other Owen, it’s a valid law. Bureaucracies exist to solve problems, but bureaucracies also have an innate drive to grow. How does an organization that solves problems grow? By making sure that there’s an endless proliferation of new problems to solve, of course.
Erika, good heavens. I didn’t realize that you’d gotten there on your own — I’d assumed you knew you were following in the footsteps of a grand tradition. I’ll consider doing a post on the history of the fusion between the arts and politics in 20th-century Europe — the Dadaists, the Surrealists, and the Situationists were merely the high points in a whole world of artistic politics and political art. In the meantime, if anyone else can recommend some good sources, it should be possible to get you a reading list.
Justin, that’s part of it. Another part is that the fringes are a source of ideas for the aspects of the system that aren’t pure Spectacle — when the system runs up against problems that can’t just be ignored, it sometimes happens that fringe ideas can solve those problems.
Team10tim, the US is shaking off those ideas because the US is not a European society — it has a thin European veneer over the top of something very different, and the veneer is cracking and peeling around us. As for Europe, it was probably inevitable from the start that it would perish from the attempt to follow misguided ideologies straight to utopia.
Longsword, hatred’s a fatal weakness because it makes you stupid. That’s why Hitler lost — he hated his opponents so much he could never measure their strength adequately. That’s why he sent the Wehrmacht into Russia without equipping his troops with winter gear — which you must admit is dumber than the proverbial box of rocks.
I liked Scotlyn’s metaphor of midwife and babysitter! In the same vein, I will say that in the most industrialized countries of Europe, Marxism transformed into something rather different, social democracy, which we might as well call a wife. The industrial economies had to be forcefully convinced to get married (UK and Germany in the aftermath of WWI, France, Sweden and to a certain point the USA in the 1930s), but the marriages turned out to be quite stable and advantageous – as long as the industrial economies maintained their vigour.
When they lost steam (!), when they suffered two heart attacks in 1973 and 1979 and then entered a long period of anemia and consumption, the formerly social democratic parties lost their purpose and direction. They are unable to work productively with a financialized economy, and in those countries where the industrial economy is more dead than alive, the formerly social democratic or otherwise leftist parties are to be had for the bidding.
On the weird synchronicities and affecting politics front: last week I emailed Pierre Polievre and suggested that he take aim the temporary foreign workers programme and the way it is fueling unemployment among Canada’s youth, which has skyrocketed recently. I go on CBC today, and lo and behold! he’s doing exactly that in parliament, making exactly the points I mentioned, and a couple I’d thought of mentioning but didn’t make it into the email.
Cue double-take. I kind of doubt he got the idea from me, or even read my email, but wow. So I wrote another email thanking him, and expressing shock at this having happened.
Don’t know if it will do anything, but at it gets a nasty piece of Canada’s predicament aired in the halls of power and the main page of CBC so the libs can’t hide what they’re up to and it gets more public scrutiny.
This post brings back memories. My experience was a bit like what Steve T. describes. As a political science major at the U of Illinois in Urbana in the 70s, I was exposed to Anarchism and Situationism. There were about 3 other classmates who were interested in the Situationists, although our professors knew about them. The active anarchists were all dropout rabble rousers of the kind that hung around college towns in those days.
After that, I spent some time in Detroit where I got to know editors of a zine called The Fifth Estate. They were supportive of a cadre of old anarchists who had been partisans in the Spanish Civil War. I met some of these old timers at their annual Anarchist Picnic. I enjoyed reading the critiques of society from these sources and thought that syndicalism made the most sense.
The most fun I had as an anarchist was a campout at Wildcat Mountain in Wisconsin with the Midwest chapter of the Social Revolutionary Anarchist Federation. There was a big bonfire that night and one friend threw his clothes in the bonfire as an act of liberation only to discover the next morning that he had liberated himself from all of his cash (a hundred dollars!) that was in his pants pocket.
“For a society of masters without slaves!” This rallying cry spoke to me, but I think the main impact of my early anarchist years was to inoculate me against ideologies of all kinds. Of course it is easy to get caught up in the ideology of anti-ideology or opposition for its own sake and that is the peril of life at the fringes.
I eventually left anarchism for the radical environmentalism of Earth First! and found that when you are focussed on a concrete goal, like saving a particular forest from destruction, you need to build bridges with others and even compromise on some things for the sake of the greater good.
I also came to realize that human nature does not really change and that counter to Murray Bookchin’s “Post Scarcity Anarchism” thesis, technology-mediated abundance has not led to any improvements in human freedom, arguably only making things worse for most people. I began to resonate more with John Zerzan’s Anarcho-Primitivism, the bankruptcy of civilization and the virtue of returning to a hunter-gather lifestyle where people supposedly worked only 4 hours a day for their subsistence.
These days, I see that my old friends in both of these circles, anarchism and Earth First!, have become standard liberals with raging TDS who bought into the covid jabs 100 percent. I don’t get it. What’s the point of calling for freedom if you cannot take a critical look at your assumptions about life every once in awhile and reassess?
I am not sure what I believe these days, except that I want to prepare myself and my community for a resource constrained future. I guess my ideal society is a small, self-sufficient village of hard-working people with a benevolent warlord to protect us and a full schedule of fun festivals celebrating nature and family.
Here are links to some pictures of Anarchist and Situationist books that I have hung onto all these years. Against History, Against Leviathan by Fredy Perlman, Black & Red, Detroit, 1983. This one is worth re-reading.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ogchkit3s3jlil9j5ik7r/against-history.png?rlkey=m6nn6fynbnxtnwvhm3v6bytth&dl=0
The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem. Translated from the French and published in 1972, with the dedication: “I live on the edge of the universe and I don’t need to feel secure.”
I don’t think I got through this book back when I first acquired it, but it seemed precious so I hung on to it. It also seemed pretentious. Its critique of “recuperation” becomes a cultural object that can itself be recuperated in the service of power. Just take a look at the back cover and the inside cover illustration to see what I mean. It is all so self-consciously “fringe.”
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/po6705vnzcs17x6y3pkap/everyday-life-front.png?rlkey=s3nme0fpjcbna1d0w5b97l2ht&dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hpw3da23j3toqxiwl0zjo/everyday-life-back.png?rlkey=64k1l0alk9i6mqpr6hipmra4k&dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/avm5o45s545mxy5ctr5l6/recuperation.png?rlkey=9jodljb2rg3mp1qbkoizdsyj2&dl=0
I like making art, and I’m frustrated with politics. Well, this morning excepted! LOL.
So I’m very much looking forward to your suggestions on political art and messing with mucked up consensus. I may try putting them into practice, if they look like something I can do.
John, a great read as always. POSIWID reminds me of the slightly more poetic statement from the Bible, “You will know them by their fruits.” If I had a dollar for every time I’ve observed this…
Hi John Michael,
I’m not sure what to make of this essay, especially from the perspective that it’s given me a few chuckles, and I’m not entirely certain that you’d share the sheer absurdity I’m observing from the circus you so eloquently described. 🙂
Man, I dunno. You suggested years ago that protesting was a great way for people to get some exercise, and I agree. But! I’m of the opinion that it’s all officially tolerated because it provides an essentially harmless outlet for people with a lot of energy, who’d otherwise be nuisances. (Jack Vance’s fictional murky and shadowy group The Institute? 😉 That was their unstated goal!)
I don’t know what to make of this, but it seems like every time there is a protest which is in opposition to the plans of the elites, somehow the neo-nazes turn up and create a lot of noise and misdirection. And then the elites get on the news and make helpful suggestions which basically spray the protesters with the same brush. Nobody then ends up talking about the underlying issues. The cynic in me wonders whether the neo-nazes are on the payroll? They might be – it being a difficult balancing act to work and be on hand ready to protest all at the same time.
Cheers
Chris
@JMG,
A friend and I noted a while back that Marxism seems to be the opiate of under-performing junior elites. Your characterization of “beta-Marxists” fits our observation exactly!
Marxism in the Philippines transitioned from mostly alpha-Marxism to beta-Marxism within my own living memory (I’m just a bit shy of 37!), as the country transitioned from an agrarian economy based around tenant-farming to an export-oriented one based around light industry, back-office service outsourcing, and labor export. There are still remnants of alpha-Marxists in more remote areas, but they’re much fewer and have significantly much less influence and impact than they did just 20 years ago.
> I read the doings of the local radicals fairly regularly, attended the occasional rally and protest march, and drew my own conclusions from the mismatch between their angry and grandiose rhetoric and their complete inability to make any kind of difference outside their own membership, and tolerably often, not even there.
Very early on when I was in university, the Marxists repelled me very hard for the same reasons. A couple of years later I ended up meeting, and sticking with, a conservative Catholic group. The Catholics at least seemed to back up what they were saying with concrete actions in their personal lives and their own immediate organization. The latter also did try to extend their influence outside, with varying levels of success (mostly lack of it), with their rhetoric tempered by a strong belief in a sovereign God who could grant whatever He liked, to whomever and whenever. I suppose it also helped that the Catholic group ran on the original operating system, if you will, that the Marxists are running the nth-generation pirate copy of.
And oh, not only did the Catholics dress better, smell better, and get better grades, they knew how to smile and have fun. I learned to drink beer from that group!
Honestly, though you’re not Catholic yourself, I’m not surprised you ended up being influenced by Chesterbelloc. I also had a bit of a democratic syndicalist phase myself, and still think that things could be made at least just a tiny bit better if corporations were smaller and the workers got to own at least a part of it.
> Like most beta-Marxists, their periodicals were their main product. They’re still worth reading.
Hah! The campus Marxists during my time were so pathetic they didn’t even have that. They did have a newspaper, but it wasn’t worth reading, as they simply rehashed very basic Marxist (and New Atheist) arguments you can find on the Internet at the time. Internet access wasn’t yet a mainstream thing here in the early-to-mid 2000’s, so someone reprinting arguments from the Internet has to be one of the most bourgeois things you can come across. I remember I came across a frat boy as a freshman, he pointed to a copy of the paper and said “You see that? That used to be the most hard-core paper in the country, but the activists have gone soft!”
@BoysMom #25:
> Any young person stuff would be in video game chat channels, and as a Gen Z Mom, it is wild hearing “So in Judges 8 we see-@#$&! you @#$&!- that when Israel . . . ” when the kids are running themselves a Bible Study and a game raid at the same time.
One of my most amusing and bewildering moments (so far) as a dad was having my eight-year-old son and four-year-old daughter have a theological argument in the back seat.
4yo: “I will go to Heaven tomorrow!”
8yo: “To go to heaven, you need to either die or the final judgment needs to happen!”
4yo: “I will take the airplane!”
8yo: “You can’t just fly there! ‘Heaven’ is a different reality!!!”
I mean, we homeschool and do have an explicitly religious (Catholic) curriculum, but I didn’t quite teach them THAT!
“Justin, the purpose of democracy is civil war prevention.”
Because someone is probably going to bring it up as a counterpoint, I’d like to add to this that the U.S. Civil War wasn’t the usual kind of civil war. The war broke out after the Confederate states had seceded, and thus functioned more as a war between two independent polities with well-delineated geographical boundaries, front lines, and the like. However, as the end result of the war was the re-annexation of the seceded states back into the same Union from which they had earlier seceded, it’s called a civil war.
The short period of time between the secession and Fort Sumter may have contributed to the use of the term. If the war hadn’t broken out until 1891 or even 1871, I feel it would have been cast even in the North more as a war of reunification or reconquest.
Erika, good heavens. I didn’t realize that you’d gotten there on your own — I’d assumed you knew you were following in the footsteps of a grand tradition. I’ll consider doing a post on the history of the fusion between the arts and politics in 20th-century Europe — the Dadaists, the Surrealists, and the Situationists were merely the high points in a whole world of artistic politics and political art. In the meantime, if anyone else can recommend some good sources, it should be possible to get you a reading list.
—
i just sobbed a wrack of tears.
x
Thank you Patrick, though I thought this edition of the comic on magic was brilliant: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/391
“a set of strategies that leverages the strengths of fringe culture against the weaknesses of the established order to expand the possibilities for human freedom” – OK, right at the end there, JMG, you’ve really got my attention! BTW, I never expected to see the phrase ‘human freedom’ in connection with a Marxist group (beta or otherwise) unless it was pure irony/sarcasm/mockery. So, that’s a first! Needless to say, I look forward to reading about the strategies you have alluded to in this week’s post.
JMG: “Those used to be positions of the extreme hippie left when I was a young man; they’re standard on the right at this point, while the left has embraced nearly all the opposing points of view.”
At times I think the path from left to right is a spiral and if you keep going you will end up back the other way, only further out.
Aldarion, fair enough. Social democracy is its own thing, radically distinct from Marxism (although people on the right like to conflate the two), and it can work as long as the real economy keeps growing faster than the costs of bureaucracy. Unfortunately for Europe, that condition ended quite some time ago — you’ll notice that the two dates you listed were the dates of the first two great energy crises in the modern western world.
Pygmycory, it’s quite possible that he’s got staff reading every single email right now and forwarding every workable idea they find. Smart politicians do that in crisis periods.
Seaweedy, the supreme fallacy of the radical left is the notion that human nature is entirely the product of economic forces. Would that it were so! In the real world, of course, humans gonna human, and societies that object to some common expression of human nature normally have to enforce that using some combination of peer pressure and violence — as, of course, hunter-gatherer societies do. As for “masters without slaves,” that’s like trying to have a beach without water. The category of “master” implies “slave” and vice versa — but of course the left doesn’t get that.
Pygmycory, I hope you can have fun with them.
Ashlar, the thought of a systems theory analysis of the parables of Jesus is almost tempting…
Chris, oh, quite the contrary. The absurdity of it all is definitely part of the experience. Imagine twenty people in slightly ragged 1970s attire marching down a street in a down-at-heels Seattle neighborhood chanting slogans, serenely convinced that they’re ushering in the worker’s paradise, while everyone else on the street gives them blank looks; it really is a comic masterpiece. As for neo-Nazis on the payroll, of course they are. Every industrial nation has secret police — most of ours belong to the FBI — and no self-respecting secret police agency neglects to have teams of faux-radicals on both extremes to scoop up idiots and put them to work in the cause of the status quo. It’s very much like Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, in which it turns out that every member of the fearsome anarchist group is a police agent…
Carlos, fascinating! Yes, that’s just what I would have expected — as the Philippines became an industrial society, alpha-Marxists were replaced by beta-Marxists. As for the Chesterbelloc, exactly — they also had their problems, but the distributist notion of fostering social welfare by making sure that ownership of the means of production was as far as possible in the hands of those actually doing the productive labor (and not, in the Marxist style, in the hands of bureaucrats who administer them in the name of the workers) strikes me as sensible.
Brendhelm, there are all kinds of preventive measures to keep airplanes from crashing, but airplanes do sometimes crash. In the same way, in 1860 the preventive measures against civil war failed, and we had one. Those measures were made considerably more robust thereafter, which is why we didn’t have a civil war in 1933 and seem fairly likely to get by without one now.
Erika, I hope they were happy tears. In any case, I hope you enjoy the posts to come.
KAN, ha! And of course that’s part of the dynamic that underlies the whole Potterverse — that it’s about privilege, of course, and also that it’s painfully English.
Ron, that’s the fascinating thing about Marxism. It can enhance human freedom quite a bit as long as it’s kept very, very far away from having the least scrap of political or economic power. There are quite a few ideologies like that. Stay tuned!
KAN, oh, sometimes you go further out, sometimes you cycle inward. Again, consider the odyssey of gay male culture from 1900 to 2000…
@JMG, @Steve T;
I have also observed the adoption of what used to be almost entirely hippie beliefs (and, believe me, there are still plenty of hippie types who still subscribe to them) by the dissident right. I think it started early in this century when social conservatives began to notice that large institutions, both governmental and corporate, were ceasing to pander to them and instead were pandering to the sexually liberated (especially the queers), the seculars and the neophiles. (Meanwhile there were longtime queer bohemians/leftists complaining loudly about the fact that, as queerness became more accepted, the community was filling up with people who, aside from their queerness, were decidedly mainstream or even, on some issues, right-wing. “Log Cabin Republican” became a stereotype that has persisted to this day.) I remember Rod Dreher repeated telling his readers “We have to accept the fact that we’re a counterculture now.”
Once you’ve accepted that the major institutions of society are not your friends and never will be again, mistrust of those institutions will lead you to their opposite and thus into the alternaworld.
@Chris
After being at some of the protests here in Aus where the Nazis turn up, they do very much seem like feds, just bizarre vibe from them, like it’s all a performance with their costumes and attitude.
I will say though the usual smearing tactics aren’t working as well as they used fo, as everyone is seeing straight through it outside your glued to the TV boomer types.
I encountered much of the same beta Marxist dynamic in the environmental movement in the 1960s and 70s.. One could write a book about it, and i’m sure some have.
@ Justin Patrick Moore
Unless I am completely misunderstanding your statement, was there a specific name in French for” intoxicated intellectual jerk”, and , if so, please tell me what it was.
Stephen
I think one of the funniest and most cogent critiques of beta Marxism, or beta revolutionism was Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Hilarious!
Steve @32 and JMG@35
Very interesting about the the political ideologies shifting around you, with the right now embracing much of what the left, or the left as I understood it ,embracing in my youth. I can never think of myself as on the right, and yet I can no longer identify with the left. Perhaps, especially at my age, time to shut up and eat my popcorn.
Stephen
Hey Justin Patrick Moore, Slithy Troves, JMG
On the subject of Hakim Bey, I read his essay collection “T.A.Z.” Quite a bit in my youth, and occasionally more recently. I still like his writing, it has this “gonzo” quality that I find entertaining, but as I have matured I don’t take his opinions as seriously as I used to, especially after Greer’s critique of some of his ideas, and his NAMBLA nonsense.
In regards to this NAMBLA stuff, it’s well accepted that while he advocated for it, he never put its “ideals into practice”, as it were. I have wondered about it, and I think that it is possible that he was not entirely genuine in his advocacy for NAMBLA, and that the whole thing was some rather disturbing attempt to be “edgy” or to scare off “posers”. But I honestly don’t know for sure, and since he’s dead there’s a chance we shall never be sure, unless he had some secret and sordid diary.
I never did hear of Situationalism. I kept my nose to the science education grindstone until a month or so before departing nearly permanently to Japan. I’m looking forward to learning more!
@Guillem41
with all due respect, I would have to disagree with you on Franco’s appeal to the peasants, or their opposition to communism, which was pretty much meaningless to them, but somehow offered hope of a better life. The fascists represented, amongst others, the landowners, who had repressed the peasants for generations, as had the church. At the beginning of the war many peasants murdered the landowners, as well as priests and nuns hoping to take their land and have a better life. I would say that pretty much the only peasants in the fascist armies were ones who weren’t killed immediately when the fascists took their villages, but were offered the choice to join them or die. Granted the regular army at the beginning of the war, as well as the foreign legion, may have had many peasants in the ranks.
Of course too the sides weren’t that simple.There were many socialists and centerists in the republic, as there were Carlists and others on the right.Certainly Juan Negrin wasn’t a communist, nor were most members of the government. The communists became a more major force as the USSR was the only country supplying aid to the republic as did the fascists on the right due too German and Italian support.
As a bit of trivia you probably know, but many others may not Franco only became the commander on the right after Mola’s death.
A very tragic period and one of the opening acts of WWII, though the point could be made that WWI never ended due to the punitive nature of the Versailles treaty. It sure can’t be explained away though by a statement like ” the peasants didn’t want the communists”
Again with all due respect
Stephen
I’ve read in the Spanish language version of Woke-pedia about German politician Sahra Wagenknecht(may I wrote her name correctly) is a politician interesting to me; in the own words of wiki-propaganda she rules a “nationalistic and socially conservative party, and she’s been critizised by the Left”. It seems to me she has commited a sin against the German and EU consensus and she won’t be never forgiven: being against massive migration and NATO support of ultranationalist Ukraine regime…By the way, Sahra political project is a classic Socialdemocratic party, not a Radical one. Any thoughts?
Having re-read this article after my morning coffee, your characterization of the beta-Marxists and their role in society reminds me of Scott Adams’ satirical book, The Dilbert Principle. The book is premised on its title, which is a riff on the classic Peter Principle. The Peter Principle states that competent people tend to get rapidly promoted until they get to a point where they’re not, after which they get stuck; e.g. a talented engineer being moved up to being a mediocre manager. The Dilbert Principle states that incompetent people should be fast-tracked to management, away from the real work and where they can do the least amount of damage.
As a side note, I read it early in my corporate career and found it hilarious, especially the chapter on “scientists and engineers and other strange people”. I have a background in engineering, and fell down laughing when he described people having the wrong impression of engineers as being stingy or mean-spirited; it’s just that for engineers, everything is an optimization problem – “how do I get out of this situation spending the least amount of money and other resources?”
(Ironic mood). Let’s sing the European Liberal “credo”: “I support war in Ukraine because I hate Russia so much; I hate working class heterosexual men; I love irrestricted migration; I support the current mess”(amen).
Has anybody read S. Zizek works? He’s a radical Marxist, I think he’s bright…but a clown.
@Chuaquin #37, Japan has gone woke to some extent, too. They have to march in step with the rest of the West. Considerable dissidence exists, as seen in the last election, where a new nationalist party got a lot of votes, but you’ll never see it in the MSM.
Russia is definitely not woke, China neither. Other Asian countries have probably managed to avoid it, but I’m not the most knowledgeable person on this. We haven’t travelled since COVID. Most of them, especially Singapore, fell in line with the international (Western origin) disease control narrative then. I don’t know how deep the woke tentacles really go.
A bit before this new post, I went through some of your old posts about alternative systems of political economy including social credit, distributism, and your mention of tripartism. Also, I started to read Henry George’s Progress and Poverty after reading the review on Astral Codex Ten.
I guess all of these are analogous to beta-Marxism in modern post-industrial societies, except perhaps less vicious than Marxists tend to be.
I’ve read quite a lot of pieces where Singapore, where I’m from, is held as the best example of Georgism in practice. Also, our local Ministry of Manpower flat out calls its model of labour relations “tripartism”.
Just as Marxist states fail to deliver on their promises, I think the same is true for these movements. I like the idea of Georgism, but if it’s implemented like in Singapore, it isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. It might be an improvement compared to having vacant lots of land and suburban sprawl, but it doesn’t defeat speculation in property and rent-seeking, with its associated societal costs, not to mention with the government being the de facto monopoly on land and perverse incentives associated with that. It also doesn’t account for massive influxes of foreign capital and labour.
I read comments by Georgists on r/Georgism and they also say “it’s not true Georgism”, they are probably right as the 99-year lease on land in Singapore is not the same as a continuous annual tax on the unimproved land value, but then I don’t see them offering better examples of Georgism elsewhere.
Tripartism in Singapore means that unions are toothless and basically barely do anything when big companies decide to close down their operations and fire a bunch of people. Hiring cheap and legal migrant labour is also fine and dandy.
I’ll still continue reading Progress and Poverty and try to read more about other forms of political economy; I do like a lot of the ideas it offers, and having gone through a deep read of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and JS Mill, I think there is a lot of value in what they wrote about labour, capital, and rent and the labour theory of value that people nowadays associate more with Marxism and neo”classical” economist have pretty much chucked aside. However I don’t have much hopes of effecting any change, except bringing it up in social media comments or conversations sometimes and hoping the ideas survive to influence a new bunch of policymakers when a crisis hits.
Do you have watched any Nanni Moretti film? He’s an Italian film maker, and it seems to me interesting in his views on Italian reality. Although his blend of Trotskism and psychoanalisis is sometimes too dogmatic to me.
——————————
Do you think Jesus was the first known Communist or Anarchist in History?
It’s a weird coincidence that one of the other fringe writers I follow, Elizabeth Sandifer is also talking about the situationists. On her site, one of her friends is even running a series of psychogeographies of Middle-Earth. I am looking forward to your take on it.
In the panoply of ideas that should never be reified (thanks for that one Arulien) the idea of anarcho-syndicalism is the one that has appealed to me most.
I will also admit (somewhat shamefacedly) that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is entirely to blame for the interest.
I am, if nothing else, a sucker for good British comedy…
>Other Owen, it’s a valid law. Bureaucracies exist to solve problems, but bureaucracies also have an innate drive to grow. How does an organization that solves problems grow? By making sure that there’s an endless proliferation of new problems to solve, of course.
Which is why any time people clamor for the gubmint to do something about it, no they won’t. They’ll just make it worse. And now you have two problems.
It may or may not interest you to hear the German school system’s perspective on these three raids. At no point were they ever treated as such, at least in my history class. Rather, they were all presented as a part of Bismarck’s clever scheme to unite Germany by way of attacking its internal enemies (Austria) and then giving them an external enemy (France) to rally against. I confess, I don’t recall in what detail we’ve discussed the war against the Danes—this might be connected to my history teacher’s ability to present even periods as interesting as this in a thoroughly boring fashion.
My immediate reaction is that that means the lesson is very much not learned. In retrospect, I walked away from that class thinking that, well, war is obviously bad, but these three served a very important purpose and brought a lot of positive change, so maybe there’s a case to be made for ends justifying the means. I’m not saying that history class should include explicit pre-selected moral judgement (we only had that when discussing the reign of the mustachioed maniac and it bothered me even then—I understand very well that horrors beyond my imagination were perpetrated back then, there’s no need to tell me every second sentence, thankyouverymuch). On the contrary, my favourite history teacher was the one who asked the class to make and debate our own moral judgements. It’s a matter of framing. Perhaps this could be fixed by including the other side’s perspectives?
Either way, I suppose this means that I need to read up on my European history, preferably from several sides. Do you have any recommendations for resources from the Anglosphere? (Or German resources, if you or the commentariat happen to know of any good ones).
As for the remilitarisation, I for my part would be quite happy to play Dichter und Denker.
—David P.
@Mary Bennet (52)
Regarding traditional crafts in the UK. They are still fringe, but there is a growing interest. I have been in the coppice craft world for thirty years, and there has been a definite upsurge in interest in the last few years. Also, though this is just observation at country shows, and from contacts in the craft world, spinning, dyeing and wearing are on the up too.
I have the premiere UK rewilding site near me, the Knepp Castle of estate of 3500 acres at Storrington, Sussex. It’s run by Isabelle Tree and her husband, who figured out the hard way that industrial farming on heavy clay did not pay. Rewilding has paid off for them so far. They rotate cattle, ponies, and deer on rough pasture, the meat from which they sell in their own shop and cafe. ” Plus wildlife” salaries, they manage habitat for a broad range of bird species, and have the largest Stork colony in the country. And yes they have beavers, which is very experimental at present in the UK, only a handful of other places have them.
Rewilding in general is mostly in the national parks, with the aim of restoring habitat that has been damaged by the monoculture of sheep farming in upland areas in recent decades. Much has been focused in water management to reduce flooding; by restoring peat bogs, wetlands, temperate rainforest, and rewilding rivers, and yes beavers are being introduced specifically to rewild rivers. A secondary aim is carbon capture in regenerated temperate rainforest, peat bogs, and wetlands, which at present attracts subsidies.
@JMG and commentators.
I missed out on left politics in my youth, from the comments I don’t think that’s a loss. Went to a technical college where the main non curriculum interests were motorbikes, rock music, beer, and girls. Got into back to the land/ permaculture/wood craft in my early twenties and been there ever since, it’s where I see the futures at, and time has not proved me wrong yet.
JMG – thank you for your patience. 🙂
What I’m getting is that the relationship between Marxism, industrialism, and bureaucracy is complicated. Of the three, it may be that bureaucracy is the social phenomenon most likely to be found in the absence of the other two… for example, it always struck me as interesting that Jesus, when railing at Pharisees, often used the phrase: “SCRIBES and pharisees” and I’ve often thought of the “scribe class” in ancient societies as fundamentally bureaucratic classes.
Aldarion #64 – thank you for working with and, very usefully it seems to me, extending the metaphor. Yes, “wife” works for the social democrat phenomenon, since a marriage is (among many other things) a continuous negotiation between potentially conflicting interests, and in that case, labour unions were directly involved in negotiating for their own members, as one party of this marriage. Of course, as you rightly point out, at a certain point the husband (industrial economy) lost his job, and that destabilised all previous negotiated agreements. 🙂
@Steve T: #27: I’ve been involved more in the occult scene & underground music scenes more than the fringe political scenes, although there is overlap of course. So I hear what you are saying about the banishing. That’s why I called myself a theta-Anarchist -to tap it into the power of 8, Mercury, magic, etc. Resolving binaries has been immensely helpful to my own thinking as well.
Dating a Marxist briefly resolved some things for me… and then some other anarchist friends who were of the communist strain were also on welfare and never far from a bong, until their inheritance kicked in… that did something else.
@JMG #36: I never broke anything at work, except perhaps by accident, either. I like my library job and I like the institution of the library as well, so I want them to continue into the future. I think, as far as Luddism and “breaking things at work” is where the concept of right livelihood and subcultural careers can come into play.
@Slithy Toves # 43: “We all have to deal with hierarchies, but you don’t have to believe their self-righteous poppycock. (And yet, ironically, it’s better if most people do.)” Now at age 46, and seen enough of how humans human, I reluctantly agree…
@Mary Bennet #51: Having people with skin in the game is a good incentive, for sure. Very interesting about the prestige given to farmers. One of the anarchist or anarchist adjacent ideas I like comes from potlatch and gift economy. Of course gift giving makes its appearance in all forms of human culture, with variations. One constant seems to be those who can give the most gain much prestige and are well liked in the social economy.
@Patrick #47: That’s one of the ways I’ve interpreted my experience in the USA.
@Slithy Toves #62: I agree with you about the transfer of power and the fact that not everyone can be in a position to get a slice of the pie. So many have to be content with crumbs. Those with lower resources at their disposal might be able to claw their way up in local politics from the grassroots, and from their who knows, but the larger scale of things there are too many gatekeepers.
@JMG # Civil war prevention and using the fringe as a positive resource for solutions sound good to me.
@ Seaweedy #66 “For a society of masters without slaves!”
Of course, if you think about it, a person cannot BE a “master” without procuring a “slave” to do their bidding, although, our industrial society holds out the seduction of abstract, fossil fuel energy slaves to make us “masters” without having to actually subjugate another human being.
One of the most valuable lessons I have learned from tai chi, is that a martial art CAN (although it may not) help a person to step outside of the master/slave dichotomy into a different place. If you wish to refuse to be anyone’s master and also refuse to be anyone’s slave, you need to attend to your own business as much as possible, negotiate with others by openly naming the potential conflicts of interest between you and seeking consensual agreements, AND you need to be fit to safeguard your own self and your own self-determination.
Just to give an example, it may be that some person freely chooses to attack you. You defend yourself and your self-determination strongly, while continuing to allow the person at any time to change their mind and stop attacking you. If of their own free will they wish to continue, then (as JMG has often mentioned in connection with the samurai code), you may find you have to kill them “with love”, and at no time during this exchange have you attempted to remove from them their free will (which, always includes the freedom to accept the consequences).
So, where are you, if in that fight there were no masters, no slaves, and only two free human beings? Well, you were in the greater dance… this particular dance took place under the auspices of Mars, but it might have been a different dance, under the auspices of other influences… Because the greater dance is danced by all free living beings (not only human), and it consists of every kind of encounter that it is possible to have.
Please understand that all of this is metaphor and intended for thinking with, and possibly acting with, negotiating with, and, of course… dancing with. 🙂
JMG wrote to Steve #22: “life on the fringes is partly an initiation and partly an inoculation; it can also become an enduring lifestyle, for those who can figure out how to make a living at it, as I have.”
I read an interesting book a couple of years ago called Graffiti Lives: Beyond the Tag in New York’s Urban Underground by Gregory J. Snyder, who was involved in the graffiti and skateboarding scenes, but is also a professor of sociology and anthropology. So his book is an interesting social-anthropology look at the graffiti scene. What I really liked about his book was when he brought up the topic of the subcultural career which he borrowed from the Birmingham School and the work of Stuart Hall on youth cultures.
From what Snyder wrote, he talked about how most people writing about subcultures and youth assume that as a person ages they will leave the subculture behind. This is true and is often the case. But it is just as often true that they don’t, but use the skills that they developed by involvement in that subculture to build a life. To plug another book again, Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life shows just how entrepreneurial the punk and indie music scene was/is. Snyder gives examples of how graffiti artists, to cite a Clash song, were able to use the skills they developed for a “Career Opportunities”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihPenaGJ6P4&ab_channel=TheClash-Topic
For graffiti this was often as not a way to continue doing art and doing it in a legal way. This meant going into the field as tattoo artists, graphic designers, working with skateboard companies, fine art in the gallery world, and of course getting recuperated into fashion, by becoming sneaker designers and things like that. Yet it allowed them to retain their presence within hip-hop/skating/ graf.
As skateboarding became more acceptable, to the point of being an Olympic sport, some of those subcultural careers turned into fortunes. Snyder wrote another book on the skating scene that I have been meaning to read.
I think all of this can tie in to with that part of the 8-fold path that focuses on right livelihood or in the Christian way, vocation. I’m not sure what pagans or polytheists might call this. Then you wouldn’t have to smash things. I think there are immense career opportunities available in the deindustrial future for those with a foot or two in their particular fringe. I know people who are making a living by putting on record fairs, running record labels, and music festivals… One of my good friends in highschool who was a talented local graf writer and skater now has his own tattoo shop, with time to pursue his interest of writing underground comics on the side. Lots of potentials…
(I think there is a connection between Lettrism and graffiti that might be worth exploring. I agree that chiseling away isn’t the only way to make art… but as a theta I really like the focus on words and letters.)
Hi John Michael,
Very interesting and thanks for confirming my suspicions. Churchill would probably suggest I had no heart, but as a younger bloke was a rusted on voter for the Labour Party, although they lost me with the penchant for unbridled neoliberalisms, and managerial economic theories.
As to the absurdity, and thanks! 😉 They seem to be having protests of one sort or another in the cities most weekends now. As a pragmatic kind of bloke I do wonder what impact all that activity is doing to the property values in the central business district? It wouldn’t be easy to run a retail business – which the lease conditions might not allow you to close – with a huge march going on every fracken weekend. To be honest, it would be a nifty way to ever so slowly attack and destroy the financial system by foreign powers. What do you reckon the likelihood of that possibility would be? I’d say it’s probably high.
Not that we in the west aren’t doing that ourselves… What with less international demand for western err, IOU’s, bond yields are rising and rising, as is gold, and now I read that maybe silver is too. Yikes! The winds are candidly not looking all that great.
Did you note that the former state premier down here (governor equivalent-ish) was spotted in that photo over in the land of stuff with all those other leaders? An odd look that one.
Any signs of the impending fall season yet in your part of the world? Still cold here, but the sun now has some zing, days are getting longer, and more importantly, the plants are awakening from their winter slumber. 🙂
Cheers
Chris
I’ve noticed that Marxism and communism are the fashionable Boogeymen in online alt-right discourse currently. As Zohran Mamdani said, “socialism” as a scare word just isn’t hitting as hard anymore…. no doubt due to the sky-high levels of wealth inequality in the US and rising inflation eating away at the earning power of the working class, both waged and salaried.
It all feels very dated to me, evoking vibes of Joe McCarthy or the Reagan-era Cold War. I think there’s probably a lot of value in studying Marx, even for those who aren’t communist.
My impression is that Marxism’s failure was due to the authoritarian nature of its attempted implementation, not to its economic analysis. How much of that was due to Marx himself I’m not sure, perhaps you could comment if you are knowledgeable here.
Personally I have been thinking lately that my politics are sort of “omni-libertarian.” Sometimes our species competes, and sometimes our species cooperates. People should be free to establish whatever kind of economic arrangements best suit their needs. That is the natural order of things. The problem is not one type of economic arrangement or another, the problem is authoritarians who try to coerce people into lifestyles that don’t actually suit them or allow them to meet their needs.
I guess some would argue that different economic systems can’t co-exist, and yet it wouldn’t be strange in the US to have volunteer firefighters headquartered next door to, say, a for-profit pizza place.
Are there any omni-libertarian thinkers out there? I’m not aware of any, although in some cases I have observed a mutual respect between left-leaning and right-leaning libertarians, a kind of “frenemy” situation.
JMG,
So if Alpha Marxists emerge In Agrarian Societies with an unequal landowner class. And Beta Marxists emerge in an industrial economy in an attempt to gain control of the means of production. What kind of Marxism will emerge ( or is already emerging) in post industrial societies where there are no ( or few) means of production.
In a society like modern America or much of Europe where the main source of financial well being is not industry or farming but the control of money printing, and money redistribution schemes like higher education and modern health care is there a form of marxism that can gain traction? Does it have another name or is another form of Beta Marxism?
Is it just the bomb throwing flavor of Anarchism that has “as its sole purpose (by the POSIWID standard) is to fail and get people killed.”?
Going back to other precedents of anarchism, we can look to spiritual teachers such as Chuang Tzu and Gerard Winstanley.
Penny Rimbaud of Crass is highly influenced by Zen and practices Tai Chi. Pacificism and antiwar stances have been a huge part of their philosophy. At their open door Dial House (still going) I think Penny teaches Tai Chi classes on occasion with a focus on their use for self defense while maintaining non violence. One of the slogans Crass used was “There is No Authority But Yourself” -a kind of individualist anarchism. It could be a license to hedonism taken from a base point of view, but looked at another way it could be seen as a variation on “Know Thyself,” as Rimbaud wrote in an interview: “But who is yourself? It’s meant to ask the question. We know who they are, but who are we? Who am I? It doesn’t mean, or it shouldn’t mean, that ‘oh that’s great, I can do whatever the hell I bloody well please within the existing narrative.’ It’s much more trying to suggest that we create our own narrative.”
Other flavors might be taken from Peter Kropotkin and his ideas about mutual aid and evolution, and how species don’t just evolve through the dog-eat-dog social Darwinism of “survival of the fittest” but through helping each other and reciprocity. Kropotkin also emphasized the guilds. Which leads to…
Anarcho Syndicalism (I’ll take Democratic Syndicalism) too… Alongside this we can look Ursula K. Leguin’s The Dispossessed to see the values and problems in such an approach.
Here in America perhaps we also look to Henry David Thoreau and his individualist vision and Transcendental thought as another worthy exemplar. … without the bombs & killing.
At the same time, thinking on the Law of the Planes, we might have:
Mental Anarchy: I can think my own thoughts even if I am trapped in a detention center, gulag… or work meeting that has gone on too long.
Astral Anarchy: the delightful chaos of dreams.
AEtheric Anarchy: Radionic decentralization and rogue Reichian’s high on orgone.
Material Anarchy: maybe harder to put into practice, but still possible as James C. Scott showed in his book, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. A similar Appalachian Anarchy could develop / continue here in the USA..
Patricia Ormsby # 88:
Thanks for your point of view on the current Woke mess. Thanks god, a big part of the world isn’t wokeized; it seems wokery is a puerile disease of the Western middle class…
Chaquin @ 90, IDK about Christ as an anarchist or communist, but many of his parables and instructions to his followers are quite practical, starting with Give Ceaser what is Ceasar’s. Our host once compiled a list of New Testament quotes in which Christ told his followers to pay their taxes and stop complaining.
The Zealots tried to oppose Roman authority; Pharisees were collaborators, the native elites through whom empires rule. Christ’s admonition to live Godly, virtuous lives seems to have been more threatening to the collaborators than the revolutionaries.
Joan, I wonder also how much of the adoption of hippie beliefs and practices by the conservative counterculture is a function of people like me, who found themselves moved from the left to the right without changing their own beliefs at all, because the left redefined itself!
Stephen, yes, I saw the same thing in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the environmental scene. It’s a very common pattern.
J.L.Mc12, the whole “temporary autonomous zone” concept is an advocacy of parasitism — it’s indicative, I think, that he used the pirate societies of the Caribbean as one of his core models, while evading the fact that those societies were supported by two different levels of brutal violence, that of the pirates on the one hand, and that of the Spanish grandees who enslaved Native Americans to work the mines that filled all those galleons with gold. As for his advocacy of molesting children, vile as it is, it’s not the main reason for my “ick” response to him. The guy simply gives me the creeps.
Patricia O, welcome to a wider world. 😉
Carlos, I haven’t read The Dilbert Principle but I certainly did read The Peter Principle back in the day, and other books of the same kind. The writings of C. Northcote Parkinson, in particular, might be worth reviving — he’s the guy who coined Parkinson’s Law, which is that the number of employees in any bureaucracy will tend to expand over time irrespective of the amount of work to be done. (This is why, for example, the British Colonial Office reached its all-time peak number of employees in 1968, the year that it was shut down because there were no longer any British colonies to administer.)
Alvin, oh, granted. Beta-radicalism of all kinds is a persistent feature of modern industrial life.
Chuaquin, no, I don’t do much visual media. As for Jesus of Nazareth, good heavens, no. Lao Tsu had him beat by more than five centuries.
Lieven, hmm! An interesting synchronicity.
Les, good heavens. I’m delighted, if amused, to learn that the famous constitutional peasant has had at least one disciple. 😉
Other Owen, two if you’re lucky, more than two if the bureaucracy is typical.
David P, interesting. I see the second Schleswig war, the Prussian-Austrian war and the Franco-Prussian war as straightforward land grabs, like the US war with Mexico in 1846-1848 and our war with Spain in 1898. Wars of that kind were very fashionable in those days, especially for nations and regimes that wanted to consolidate their power. I don’t have specific books in mind — it’s been a couple of decades since I last soaked myself in 19th century European history — but perhaps someone else will help.
Philip, you definitely made the right choice; motorbikes, rock music, beer, and girls are far more entertaining than members of little political fringe groups screaming insults at each other over the proper interpretation of some passage in volume 1 of Capital.
Scotlyn, the relationship’s complex in part because bureaucracy can take various forms. The mode of it we have in modern industrial society is distinctive, though some other complex societies have had first drafts of it; the scribal class in the classical eastern Mediterranean was an example of a different mode of bureaucracy, much more decentralized though equally parasitic, which can thrive very well in agrarian societies. If you want to become the head of a Marxist regime, though, you need a modern administrative bureaucracy to run industry in the name of the workers, and that means you need industry to run!
Justin, that’s why I have little time for the “breaking things at work” model. It’s so much more productive and fun to quit the job instead, creatively embrace downward mobility, and do something that allows you to meet the real needs of real people. Thanks for the book references, btw!
Chris, are the protests actually that large? Here in the Land Where Stuff Gets Consumed we’ve had a flurry of loudly proclaimed protests that turned out to be a handful of retired Boomers standing around and holding signs — of course the federal money spigot that used to fund rent-a-crowds has largely been turned off here, which may have something to do with that. As for autumn, it showed up unusually early here — around the middle of August, overnight lows started dropping into the 50s and mornings started feeling crisp rather than soggily humid.
BTT, I certainly agree that Marx is worth studying, provided that his work is approached as a somewhat dated theory and not a pseudosecular religious revelation. His analysis of class conflict was much more relevant to the 19th century than to the 20th or 21st, as he didn’t anticipate the rise of the managerial grand-bourgeiosie (in my terms, the salary class or laptop class) to its late 20th century position, where it largely supplanted the capitalist class at the zenith of the social structure; nor, of course, did he anticipate the impact of environmental limits and the slow self-termination of industrial society that those are bringing about. Like most beta-radicals, he provided a cogent critique of the society of his time with hopelessly unrealistic and ineffective proposals for changing things. As for your omni-libertarianism, I don’t know of any discussion of that, which is unfortunate — it seems like a worthwhile scheme. Have you by any chance read my novel Retrotopia, which combines public ownership of the banking industry and other public utilities with a free-market industrial system?
Clay, so far it’s still beta-Marxism, since the bureaucratic system for which beta-Marxism is the farm team remains in place. I’ll be interested to see whether we get a gamma-Marxism as decline sets in for keeps.
Justin, not at all. Beta-anarchism has the same function as beta-Marxism, and overlaps with it on one side and (as you point out) with alternative spirituality on the other.
Yes yes yes, tears of relief and joy.
Thank you
https://recordscratchradio.substack.com/p/retelling-love-stories
Xxxxxxxxx… etc
@BTT,
I don’t know, I bet some of those volunteer fire fighters would like to have a cheap fast food joint nearby where they can get a bite when hungry.
@Stephen
Well, several of your assestments are rather inexact. Franco surpassed Mola in power in the autumm of 1936, when he became the generalissimus. Mola was still alive by then, but his prestige was already dwindling, because his grand plan to seize power in one single stroke had failed. Yes, he initially had a leading role, together with Sanjurjo and Goded, but he did a very bad job as leader and that helped raise Franco.
Second, when we speak of peasants, it is fair to take a look at what that mean in Spain in 1936. Because it was not the same to be a peasant in Catalonia, Aragon and Murcia, for example, than being a peasant in Andalucia. Your description of opressed peasants corresponds with the later (Andalucia), but not with the former. The reason? In Andalucia up until the 19th century Demortizations, there was a lot of commonal land, in Church hands. The peasants depended on it, and the Church let them use it, for a fair part.
With the demortizations, all this land passed from Church hands to private hands, and unlike the Clergy, those hands did not even live in the region. Thus started “Caciquism”, with the peasants in the region being dispossesed from their very houses by speculative interests. So take note, it was not the church doing the opression!
Third, although it is true that there where many moderate voices in the Republic, there needs to be one distinction: before july 18, you had religious and political freedom in Spain, werever you were. After that date, that was no longer true in any of the two sides. Moderate catholics in Barcelona, for example, were hunted and looked for house by house, and called fascists. The same was true with moderate leftists in the National side., which were called reds.
And about the peasants not wanting comunism…If that was a neutral matter for them, how it is that Franco rallied all the forces in the National side, with only the call to fight the communism and defend religion as a unifying point? That served to mix in one bag Urban Fascists who wanted no religion with Rural traditionalists who wanted to protect the true religion. I’ll rather say that the quest had at least some appeal to many, many people, wheter you like it or not.
JMG,
I wanted to ask about communist Parties in Europe after ww2, specially in France, but Aurelien got there before. Your anwer, that European countries after the war can be seen as “Industrializing” rather than “Industrialized” seems convincing, but i just wanted to point that, among the things those parties achieved, aside from Industrializing, was the building of Social Democracy. I don’t know if you include this among their objectives or view it as a blancing effect in society as a whole?
Also, what kind of Communist would Jean Paul Sartre be?
Guillem.
A good many of the beta-Marxists I’ve known were trust fund tragedies — they denounced capitalism while living off monthly checks from trust funds invested in the stock market. It’s mostly just a pose.
Do you think this applies to the current Marxist running for NYC mayor? I’ve heard the term Neiman Marxist and thought it was pretty funny, but if he wins and his chances look good, I think the joke will be on us, the peeps of NYC. From lived experience, I get it, the city is too expensive and most are priced out but the proposed solutions, all I see is the road to hell paved with good intentions. It makes me mad cause I don’t hear viable solutions from the right. Sliwa can raise the fear flag on crime but it’s only part of the problem and not the problem everyone is focused on. It is cost and leave it to a beta marxist to point it out.
@rashakor and JMG,
Yes, the rickets is what i had in mind. In Spain, a “Raquitic” something is a thing that is weak, small and frail. I said that Franco had a raquitic discourse because it really just amounted to “Save Spain from Communism” with some winks to each faction so they all get on board, with the ilusion that after the war they will be able to apply his respective ideologies (wich they were not)
The late Manuel Vazquez Montalban, a former Communist during the dictatorsip, wrote that after the war was over, the comunists predicted that, considering the weakness of the National side ideology, wich was a preposterous patchwork of fascism and traditionalism, the whole thing will not last long. Later, as the years passed, they were forced to witness the excelent health of Franco corpse, which survived all crisis and endured like a well embalmed mummy.
Hey JMG, an interesting essay. Some of the comments so far have me thinking that maybe politics is closer to religion than I thought, with few people able to articulate their beliefs to much depth. So much of the noise on the Internet is around the topic of politics, which is often quickly reduced to a loud splutterfest of thought-stoppers. Personally, I think the best lens to use is “follow the money” when examining the effects of politics, but I certainly know that’s a superficial and lazy approach. I’m not sure how much bandwidth the average citizen can afford to spend with their political views with the Long Descent picking up speed.
It will be interesting to follow your subsequent post(s) on the topic of situationism, as the expansion of human freedoms in the near future seems limited, to say the least. I spent my youth “discovering” my conservative leanings, and was even going to vote for John Connolly in 1980 ’cause he proposed a military response to the Iranian crisis. Oh, to be so young and ignorant.
@Patrick #20 – great comic!
Is the chadliest alpha-Marxist perhaps Fidel Castro, who for all his brutality seemed to have developed a slightly less grandiose case of megalomania than his analogues in the Soviet Union and China, and was clever enough to play the USA and USSR against one another for his own benefit without actually starting a war? (From the USSR he got weapons and cash, from the USA he got a trade embargo that blocked the entry of American corporations looking for cheap labor and resources to siphon while also creating a lucrative black market in cigars.)
@J.L.Mc12 #81,
“In regards to this NAMBLA stuff, it’s well accepted that while he advocated for it, he never put its “ideals into practice”, as it were. I have wondered about it, and I think that it is possible that he was not entirely genuine in his advocacy for NAMBLA, and that the whole thing was some rather disturbing attempt to be “edgy” or to scare off “posers”. But I honestly don’t know for sure, and since he’s dead there’s a chance we shall never be sure, unless he had some secret and sordid diary.”
That’s certainly good to hear. Though now I’m tempted to start a movement calling for the release of the Wilson files. Bey did not kill himself!
@Justin Patrick Moore #98,
The nice thing about democracy, for all its faults, is that it not only averts open violence more than other forms of government, part of its narrative of legitimacy is that it supposedly provides equal access to the pie. This is nonsense, of course, but it also means the elites have to make a show of leaving more for others in order to save face. When they can’t be bothered to do that even a little, things start to get hairy.
Thankfully, this has usually meant a different set of elites notice their weakness and pounce, taking more power and privileges for themselves while still being just a little more openhanded and stepping just a little more lightly on the backs of the little people than the last set of rascals. It’s far from perfect, but compared to the status quo ante it’s win-win.
One of the critiques of BLM and Antifa by those on the right is that they are stealth Marxist organizations. Do you think this is valid or is the basic reality of Beta Marxism that all opposition groups on the left inevitably have bits of Marxism woven in to them?
At this page is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts (printable version here, current to 8/30). Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below.
* * *
This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests, selected from the fuller list.
May HippieVikings’s baby HV, who was born safely but has had some breathing concerns, be filled with good health and strength.
May Trubujah’s best friend Pat’s teenage daughter Devin, who has a mysterious condition which doctors are so far baffled by necessitating that she remain in a wheelchair, be healed of her condition; may the underlying cause come to light so that treatment may begin.
May Mary’s sister have her auto-immune conditions sent into remission, may her eyes remain healthy, and may she heal in body, mind, and spirit.
May Liz and her baby be blessed and healthy during pregnancy, and may her husband Jay (sdi) have the grace and good humor to support his family even through times of stress and ill health.
May Jack H’s friend Sheima, a Sudanese refugee in the UK, find a favourable resolution regarding her right to stay in the UK, which has been imperiled over a technicality. (8/30)
May 5 year old Max be blessed and protected during his parents’ contentious divorce; may events work out in a manner most conducive to Max’s healthy development over the long term.
May Patrick’s mother Christine’s vital energy be strengthened so she can make a full recovery from the hysterectomy and follow-up issues and resume normal life.
May MindWind’s father be completely healed of his spinal, blood, and cardio infections; may his continual and immense back pain be lifted, and may he be strengthened to bear what cannot be lifted.
May J Guadalupe Villarruel Zúñiga, father of CRPatiño’s friend Jair, who suffers from terminal kidney and liver damage, continue to respond favorably to treatment; may he also remain in as good health as possible, beat doctors’ prognosis, and enjoy with his wife and children plenty of love, good times and a future full of blessings.
May DJ’s newborn granddaughter Marishka and daughter Taylor be blessed, healed, and protected from danger, and may their situation work out in the best way possible for both of them.
May 12 year old Sebastian Greco of Rhode Island, who recently suffered a head injury, make a prompt and complete recovery with no lasting problems.
May Marko’s newborn son Noah, who has been in the hospital for a cold, and Noah’s mother Viktoria, who is recovering from her c-section, both be blessed with good health, strength, endurance, and protection, and may they swiftly they make a full recovery.
May Brother Kornhoer’s son Travis‘s fistula heal, may his body have the strength to fight off infections, may his kidneys strengthen, and may his empty nose syndrome abate, so that he may have a full and healthy life ahead of him.
May Princess Cutekitten, who is sick of being sick, be healed of her ailments.
May Jack H.’s father John continue to heal from his ailments, including alcohol dependency and breathing difficulties, as much as Providence allows, to be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Audrey’s friend’s daughter Katie, who died in a tragic accident June 2nd, orphaning her two children, be blessed and aided in her soul’s onward journey; and may her family be comforted.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Pierre and Julie conceive a healthy baby together. May the conception, pregnancy, birth, and recovery all be healthy and smooth for baby and for Julie.
May SLClaire’s honorary daughter Beth, who is undergoing dialysis for kidney disease, be blessed, and may her kidneys be restored to full functioning.
May 1Wanderer’s partner Cathy, who has bravely fought against cancer to the stage of remission, now be relieved of the unpleasant and painful side-effects from the follow-up hormonal treatment, together with the stress that this imposes on both parties; may she quickly be able to resume a normal life, and the cancer not return.
May Kallianeira’s partner Patrick, who passed away on May 7th, be blessed and aided in his soul’s onward journey. And may Kallianeira be soothed and strengthened to successfully cope in the face of this sudden loss.
May Linda from the Quest Bookshop of the Theosophical Society, who has developed a turbo cancer, be blessed and have a speedy and full recovery from cancer.
May Corey Benton, whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, and who is now able to be at home from the hospital, be healed of throat cancer.
(Healing work is also welcome. Note: Healing Hands should be fine, but if offering energy work which could potentially conflict with another, please first leave a note in comments or write to randomactsofkarmasc to double check that it’s safe)
May David Spangler (the esoteric teacher), who has been responding well to chemotherapy for his bladder cancer, be blessed, healed, and filled with positive energy such that he makes a full recovery.
May Giulia (Julia) in the Eastern suburbs of Cleveland Ohio be quickly healed of recurring seizures and paralysis of her left side and other neurological problems associated with a cyst on the right side of her brain and with surgery and drugs to treat it, if providence would have it, and if not, may her soul move on from this world and find peace with a minimum of further suffering for her and her family and friends.
May Liz and her baby be blessed and healthy during pregnancy, and may her husband Jay (sdi) have the grace and good humor to support his family even through times of stress and ill health.
May Debra Roberts, who has just been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, be blessed and healed to the extent that providence allows. Healing work is also welcome.
May Jack H’s father John, whose aortic dissection is considered inoperable and likely fatal by his current doctors, be healed, and make a physical recovery to the full extent that providence allows, and be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
May Open Space’s friend’s mother
Judith be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from cancer.
* * *
Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
@Stephen …by the way, after re-reading my response to tou, i realize i might have been a bit blunt. So i apologize for it, and take the chance to say that i respect your opinion even if i disagree.
Guillem.
JMG, I think protests as a political tool have pretty much outlived their usefulness. Partly that is because the powers that (insert undruidly word of choice here) have learned how to deal with them. First, make sure the media doesn’t cover, then coopt the leadership, such as that is, and if all else fails, bring in the armed mercenaries, whether Proud Boys or Antifa, et al. The more effective leftist organizations, such as Democratic Socialists of America and Justic Democrats don’t even bother with protest, so far as I have noticed. What they do do is look for reputable people they can promote and support to run for office, not infrequently in the face of opposition of the Democratic Party itself. Many, but not all, of their candidates failed in 2024, partly because of the mood of the electorate, and also because AIPAC dumped massive, and I do mean massive, amounts of cash in opposition to DSA clients as part of an effort, coordinated from Israel to get into power a president and congress willing to overlook Israeli activities in Gaza.
Mary Bennet #107 and JMG #108: thank you for answering to my provocative question. Supposed paralelisms between we know more of less about Jesus teachings and old school Commies and Acrats are being argued since a long time ago. It’s a delicate topic, because of the fierce atheism of the typical Leftism, and in the other hand the mainstream self-identification of Christians with the Right. However, hybridation between Christianism and at least Liberalism isn’t so strange…
Maybe Jesus was a reformist with an inclassificable style.
Excuse me, John, I didn’t remember Lao Tsu as the first known libertarian, some centuries before Christ…
Guillem #112:
A good question about the kind of Communism Sartre had…I don’t have a quick and decisive answer to it, I only can tell you he was a very controversial thinker, and he was aligned with the whole majority of intellectuals of his time, in the Left of course. However, I think his relation with Leninist orthodoxia was at least a bit troubled…Of course, if somebody here at JMG blog knows better than me Sartrian philosophy and ideology, please you could illuminate us. Thanks in advance!
responses to Ecsophia 03 September 2025
“no self-respecting secret police agency neglects to have teams of faux-radicals on both extremes to scoop up idiots and put them to work in the cause of the status quo.” JMG
This made me laugh out loud, I remember the bands of raggedy asses in Eugene OR in the 70’s, fighting the “MAN” and blocking traffic. We had hippies down in Douglas County, but they were curiously sedate, probably because a traffic blocking would have been mowed down by a log truck trying to make it to the mill on time.
“They might be – it being a difficult balancing act to work and be on hand ready to protest all at the same time.” Chris #69
Exactly. My former employer granted leave to anyone on staff who wanted to go to the protest du jour down at the capitol building, but luckily I had enough people who wanted to get their work done so they could go home on time. The coffee shop was pretty short staffed though, being mostly people in their 20’s.
For what it’s worth, the “patriarchy” is still standing.
“I eventually left anarchism for the radical environmentalism of Earth First! and found that when you are focused on a concrete goal, like saving a particular forest from destruction, you need to build bridges with others and even compromise on some things for the sake of the greater good.” Seaweedy #66
When those RedHats came into the record store, I liked to give them a lot of love, and treat them like any other customer who came rolling in to pay us money to be a social justice oasis, fighting against the entrenched power structures that oppress us. That was not what they were expecting. I was glad to see them, because part of the reason why they wear those MAGA hats is to declare their beliefs/stir up the opposition, getting love was not what they expected, and being treated like a human being temporarily shook them out of their ideology. My friend Netson and I agreed that meeting them as people would do more for “the struggle” than a hundred protest signs. Of course, I was too white, old, and boomer to survive there with the new generation coming into the store, so I got retired.
“Justin, that’s part of it. Another part is that the fringes are a source of ideas for the aspects of the system that aren’t pure Spectacle — when the system runs up against problems that can’t just be ignored, it sometimes happens that fringe ideas can solve those problems.” JMG #63,in response to Justin Patrick Moore #47
I have always been here on the fringe, happy to be a heterodox thinker. I also grew up working class, and that informed my thinking as well as my oppositional mindset. Whatever it was, I could think of a reason to be against it. I also learned early on that some fights are not worth the trouble. I found that living an example worked better than preaching an example.
Erika Lopez #109
Thank you for the link. Wonderful as always.
>It makes me mad cause I don’t hear viable solutions from the right
Why would you? I imagine being even slightly to the right of antifa is like urinating into the wind in that part of the world. The phrase “boiled off” comes to mind, they’ve all moved elsewhere. Which is what they’d probably tell you to do too. That’s what would be considered a “viable solution”.
Some days ago I watched in TV (excuse me John, I fall sometimes in this vice) an interview to the former regional President of the world corner where I use to live. Well, his interview showed me the ideologies relativity…This politician was born in the ‘50s, in Franco dictatorship, althoug he told the interviewer that his father had a discrete pro social democrat trend (well, the best democrat who could be without go to jail then). When this politician grew and went to University in late Franco years, he became an Anarchist; so convinced that he even was arrested and spent some months imprisoned. Then, started the spanish democracy in late 70s. Our hero and other comrades knew there was in my town a political meeting, by the Socialists. So they decided to go there and insult and boo the leader (by the way, he was the future President Felipe González). They started booing him, but the socialdemocrat leader was too persuasive in his speech, so the fierce Anarchists stopped shouting and started to pay attention on him…When the meeting finished, the former Anarchists were mild Socialist. And this politician kept on being it until his recent death.
Oh, he also said his soccer team
since childhood was Real Madrid: maybe sports preferences are harder in time than politics ideologies.
“trust fund tragedies”
Surely you mean “travesties” 😉
I would say the 1990s and early 2000s early anti-capitalist party and protest movement was a direct hier of Situationism: Detournement, Anti-capitalism and a flavour of Saturnalia were order of the day. Thousands of people attended those protests in the UK, and globay they say. They werent heavy on theory, it was the atmosphere at these events that was the thing.
Then laws were made, groups infiltrated, activists violated and it faded away… though fair to say it never gave a real solution to the problem of global capitalism except smash it, decorate the ruins and dance on its grave, fun perhaps, til the morning after!
Yoy can read about Reclaim the Streets, one of the groups at the helm of this here: https://rts.gn.apc.org/index.htm
Though this website embarassingly can’t quite admit its all in the past!
Erika, delighted to hear it! If you don’t know her work yet, btw, you might enjoy looking into the Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington — she was at the perfect intersection of politics, art, and magic. One of my fave paintings of hers is this, “La Maja del Tarot”:
Guillem, and Social Democracy is a different kettle of fish entirely from Marxism — just ask any Marxist! As for Sartre, his embrace of Marxism was predicated on the existentialist logic that claims that all action is absurd but you have to act anyway; I’d probably call him an omega-Marxist.
Jeff, I don’t happen to know a lot about the guy. I’m fairly sure the GOP is planning to let him win, wait until he drives New York City into effective bankruptcy, then move in with the same kind of receivership arrangement that was imposed on the city back in 1975, and use that as a lever to break the grip of the Democratic Party on the city. It’s a clever scheme, and the Democrats seem to be falling for it.
Guillem, thanks for clarifying!
Drhooves, following the money is a good start, and it’s also a useful counterweight to the sort of abstract moral posturing that passes for political thinking these days.
Slithy, yeah, Castro is as close as Marxism gets to GigaChad.
Clay, that’s one of the ways you can tell that the right doesn’t really have a clear idea of what Marxism is. BLM and Antifa weren’t ideological positions; they were hired street-fighting militias of the sort that every radical party had in the early 20th century, owned and operated by the Democratic Party, and paid for by funds laundered from the federal budget via USAID and similar grift-mills — that’s why they both collapsed as soon as the new administration cut the funding source. I’m not sure who in the Democratic machine had the smarts to revive that old custom, but it was an ingenious move.
Quin, thanks for this as always.
Mary, that’s unquestionably true; protest marches are nothing more than aerobic exercise these days. The leftist organizations are going to have to find sufficiently robust funding sources, and build strong grassroots organizations, if they want to accomplish much.
John, I knew their exact equivalents in Seattle in the 1970s.
Slithy, you can spell it any way you like!
Free Rain, sure. Just how much did it accomplish in terms of overthrowing the system?
@Slithy Toves
That’s an interesting point of view about Castro. I’ll add that he also used the EEUU as an emergency exit for his oposition, and a sort of pressure valve for his regime.(See ” The Mariel Exodus” on wikipedia)
John #129: Good definition of Sartre marxism as “Omega Marxism”. In addition to this topic, I can write (if I remember it well from books I read some years ago) that Sartre never joined the PCF, although always supported acritically the USSR politics, and their Eastern Block satellites too.
Artistic movements seem fine for prompting self-reflection, sharpening perception, questioning and revision of narratives, personal growth.
I think this goes on all the time in ever-changing (but often recurring) ways. A common denominator seems to be simply calling attention to the literal content of common public images and narratives that otherwise play in the background. “This ad is showing me if I use their product, I’ll be attacked by bears. [A real trend in TV ads a few years ago, honest.] How might I point this out?” That’s why like many others I enjoy deconstruction humor like Literal Videos, Garfield Minus Garfield, Bone Hurting Juice, and anti-memes. But each trend soon becomes part of the background itself, so there’s endless churn toward something new.
It’s a somewhat cumbersome way for an outspoken fringe to yell “pay attention! pay attention!” over and over again year after year decade after decade and mostly at one another, but it’s what’s needed.
I’ve participated in many activities and events that would no doubt have been called some kind of situationist-adjacent performances if we’d been artists but were just called games or pranks because we’re nerds instead, and doing it for fun instead of to Change The World. (I think most of the artists do it for fun too, but they’re better at keeping a straight face when claiming otherwise.) Some of our games changed lives, but always one at a time. As fringes do.
Artistic movements becoming the impetus for real political movements, though? Pull the other one. Art has to be popular to be politically influential, and the political influence on popular art flows the other way. You want a political artist? Thomas Kinkade. The connection between all those cozy flower-covered cottages and ICE is not only clear now, it was predictable back then. But it’s a connection of common origins, not of cause and effect.
BLM and Antifa are not the same animal. BLA began with a group of women in Baltimore whose sons had been killed by police. They had a simple and powerful message, Stop Killing Our Children. Now, IDK the exact circumstances of the police killings, but I do know that in the USA, police are not authorized to conduct summary executions. For that, we have judges and juries. Furthermore, in our system, criminals are tried for specific crimes, not for being bad people. However, BLA, like a lot of organizations, seems to have accepted money from people they should not have. Furthermore, they also seem to have made the mistake of thinking the Democratic establishment was their friend, whereas it reality it was and remains a predatory pack of sociopaths looking for useful tools. For the record, I Do. Not. Care. how nice a home a BLM founder might have, in a world where the likes of Mitt Romney and John Kerry can each have 5 apiece. As near as I can tell, Antifa is merely mercs for hire.
Hey JMG
Yeah, I never thought of TAZ in that specific way but I agree that some of what he wrote did seem to imply parasitism in some sense. Come to think of it, David Graeber also wrote favourably about the pirate societies of Madagascar, though I have not read that book of his yet.
Another thing that prevents me from taking Hakim Bey too seriously, was his suggestion of using black magic to upset corporations and banks. I also recall him suggesting that people should do the kind of silly stunts that the more unhinged variant of “protester” would approve of, like publicly defecating in a bank.
That being said, if I remember correctly, Hakim Bey agreed with you on the stupidity of the obsession with “diets”, and he also noticed the tendency towards Biophobia in modern society.
JMG, what protest marches can sometimes do is affect public opinion. The last effective ones of which I know were the Millions Against Monsanto: they were not covered by Lame Stream Media in the USA, a clear indication that they were in fact influencing public opinion. Did you know that the late Percy Schmeiser and his wife were awarded a Right Living Award? No, probably not. Likely you did not also know that that very low-key ceremony was accompanied by a raucous anti-Monsanto demonstration in Stockholm. No mention in American corporate media, needless to say.
The “cool” alternate economic theory at my college was Keynesian economics ! ( not socialism) . I believe my alma mater is now fully woke though, so that is probably a quaint rememberance. I was in the economic summit club for a year, led by the “cool” keynesian professor. Club met at a local bar usually to talk macroeconomics and current affairs.
Ooh I’m looking forward to this series of posts. I’ll echo Justin Patrick Moore’s #23 praise for McKenzie Wark’s Situationist International history “The beach beneath the street” and throw in Greil Marcus’s magisterial “Lipstick Traces”, which covers punk, Dada and Situationism (via Lettrism).
@Seeweedy #66,
Not all of the Earth Firsters and Anarcho-Primitivists turned in to TDSers and Vax promoters. I to became a card carrying member of Earth First Back in the 80’s and 90’s . I then became enthralled with the Anarcho-Primitivism, but I was more of a Derrick Jensen fan than Zerzan, though I read his books and listened to his radio show. But I did not go down the TDS, Woke road.
The interesting thing about the whole woke movement is that one of the first targets of the Transgender army was Derrick Jensen. He was canceled and pushed out of the spotlight on the left because he was supposably anti-trans.
>”Partly this was a recognition of the way that those forms so easily got coopted by the existing order of society if they got large enough to be noticeable, but partly it reflected the usual practice of avant-garde artistic movements, which gave each artist as much leeway as possible while still preserving a façade of shared identity. ”
Tamanous?
Incidentally, I’ve been thinking about English/British (Anglo?) culture, deep culture not shallow. And what I’ve concluded is that a lot of it is simply what you need to get hyper’individualists to effectively co-operate. Tolerance of the queer, since you can’t expect everyone to march to the same beat even if they walk to it. A strong sense of fair play and a love of establishing and following rules, necessary since there’s no central hierarch giving orders (this gets us into trouble when it comes to international law, since everyone else recognises that no-one is enforcing it and does whatever, whilst we have a tendency to hamstring ourselves). A recognition that you shouldn’t be overly rigid with the rules. Basically, muddling through.
I think this is also tied to the novel being our great artform, rather than something that requires more co’ordination and is enjoyed in large groups.
Anyway, if there’s every a people suited to anarchism, it’s the Anglo cultures… :p
Chuaquin, yeah, that sounds like Sartre. Predictably, the Situationists hated him.
Walt, very true. This is one of the reasons why prying Situationism loose from its fossilized matrix of Marxism will be helpful.
Mary, sure, but BLM was taken out of the hands of its founders early on and turned into another set of mercs for hire. There’s very little the current system can’t coopt!
J.L.Mc12, I didn’t know that Graeber had fallen into the same trap. Interesting.
Mary, once upon a time protest marches helped draw attention to causes. Now? Not so much.
Atmospheric, hmm! That’s at least refreshing.
Beaches, so noted and thank you.
Cererean, it’s certainly something from which the future Tamanous culture can draw.
Hey JMG
It’s been something he has talked about on and off, but he has only seriously discussed it in his last and posthumous book “Pirate enlightenment”. I have the book, but haven’t read it yet.
https://davidgraeber.org/books/pirate-enlightenment-or-the-new-libertalia/
I think he also talked about it in an out of print book he wrote about the society of Madagascar which I assume is connected in some way with the above book. Nonetheless, I’ve noticed that some Anarchists do have a fascination with pirates, possibly Hakim Bey started it but I’m not certain. I also recall pirates being a protagonist force in one of William S. Burroughs novels, “Cities of the red night”, but I’m uncertain if that has anything to do with anarchism. There’s also another book that looks at pirates through an anarchist lens called “Life under the Jolly Roger” by Gabriel Kuhn.
https://www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=155
I once read that Marx plagiarized the works of Gerrard Winstanley, a 17th century agrarian. Supposedly, Marx scratched out the word God from Winstanley’s work and substituted History. Whoever wrote that claim didn’t back it up with any examples.
Hello JMG
I am always in awe of how you see cultural patterns so clearly and accurately. So very interesting. This post got me wondering if I would have been a danger to society if I too hadn’t found my/our *fringe of choice* , occultism, lol!
Speaking of which I just saw there’s a new bio on Blavatsky by Urs App… it seems to be a very academic deep dive into tracing all her actual sources step by step. Personally, I’m satisfied with the fact that she ran with her muddled ideas on Eastern philosophy enough to spark interest so I don’t care how she got them, but thought I’d mention it.
Thanks again!
Jill C yogaandthetarot
@JMG oh absolutely, essentially the movement acted as a pressure valve for people’s anger over the unfairness of global capitalism and actually paved the way for the first of the anti-protest laws in the UK!
Another example of a protest effectively ‘dealt with’
@J.L.Mc12 #141
“I’ve noticed that some Anarchists do have a fascination with pirates”
Because pirates are cool. 😎 🏴☠️
More seriously, from what I’ve gathered, Caribbean pirates often saw themselves in a similar way as anarchists do: rebels against an oppressive system creating an alternative polity where they can be free to live as they see fit and keep what they earn.
Given how many of them started as honest sailors before realizing they were being shafted by one of the various European empires, it’s hard not to sympathize. However, as JMG rightly points out, their actual role is that of parasites, utterly dependent on the system they notionally hate.
Guillem
Any apology should be mine. You obviously know a great deal more about that period than I do, and I might have sounded a bit pompous in my opinion. I have not done any extensive reading about the period in decades. I have always leaned left and perhaps my sources have too, so I have never heard of Franco appealing directly to the peasantry. Never too old to learn something new. I suppose too I was quite influenced in my youth by veterans of the international Brigades that I knew.
A question you might be the best source for: was the Division Azul completely volunteer or could regular soldiers be assigned to it, and how many of them made it back from the eastern front, and by what route or were they all captured at the end of the war, and the survivors eventually repatriated?
Stephen
I do have a little bit of a soft spot for the Marxists. They are good at identifying the issues with unregulated free market economics but beyond that it all becomes very fuzzy very quickly. In the same way I like the libertarians in highlighting the issues of big Government. Anarchists for both of the above. However, all have sizable blind spots in terms of the details and implementation of solutions.
I am always wary of any Utopian visions that is treated as an unwavering goal. Perfect harmony communist societies and Mars bases being two of them. It is great to have a vision of the future but it needs to be flexible and allow the mess realism to saturate it.
For example, here in Australia when Adelaide was settled, they wanted it to be a utopia with no prisons. They started building the first prison less than 2 months later because it simply didn’t work.
I have said that on the off chance that the Marxists got their way, over throw ‘the system’, they would be over thrown by the libertarians a week later, the same with Anarchists and then war lords over throw them a week after that. The war lords would be thankful for them clearing the way to their success and their new work force of Marxists, libertarians and Anarchists.
@AA “Their talk is grandiose, they talk of the impending revolution (at some unspecified time)”
As my father said, he has been hearing about the impending revolution on AM talk radio since the 1960’s. Yep… any day now.
Chris at Ferndale #101
> Any signs of the impending fall season yet in your part of the world? Still cold here, but the sun now has some zing, days are getting longer, and more importantly, the plants are awakening from their winter slumber.
Now that you mention it, news from Wisconsin, USA. A friend and I have been marking time for August to finish. August has been a misery to me for the last twenty years, or so. I hardly remember looking forward to summer, as a child (”school is out for summer”). Heck, I hardly remember being a child.
Late 1950s. However, I do remember some high points of being a child, like at age six thinking it was a good idea to point the garden hose at our neighbor’s open cellar window, and turn on the water spigot, being clueless that there would soon would be screams from the higher-up windows of the neighbor’s house. Neighbor-adults, learn this: Never leave a hose lying around a driveway where a kid can come along “and stick it.” Literally. What was I thinking? Well, actually I do know what I was thinking. I was angry at that neighbor who, a year or so earlier, told me not to swing on the branches of one of their terrific branch-swinging trees, even with a spotter. Evil neighbors — how dare they? I was playing the long game, and I got even. (I don’t get mad; I get even.)
Didn’t the neighbor see that swinging on a branch of their tree was going a ways towards healing that my mother had beaten me up at age 18 months. Now THAT beating I remember as if it happened yesterday. I was crying in my crib and she came along, picked me up, carried me to the other side of the room, and threw me into the crib with one helluva force, it nearly knocking me out. Maybe it did knock me out. It is possible, if not probable, that she nearly killed me. It certainly was something I stored away as “throwing a toddler across a room, hard,” was what ‘mothers did.’ I never trusted anyone for the rest of my life; to this day, I always reserve and conserve. There is always a part of me no-one can get at.
And “the mother” (for she deserved the ‘the’) had the audacity to wonder why, when I was 14, when I had some physical bulk, I told her I hated her (but didn’t know why I hated her). I continued to hate her for the rest of my life, but at age 40, the memories came back, and then I knew why I hated her. I hated her because she was a sniveling, alcoholic coward who never confessed that she violated her infant daughter, and that she “got therapy for herself” but didn’t get therapy for me or for my older brother he witnessed the throwing-across-the-room-even. And she blamed me for being “a troubled teenager.” She was one selfish SOB.
Yet, I remember the basement flood 65 years later, where all those people died long ago, and for some reason, I am alive, and living relatively well. I am the last one standing.
Anyway, how did I get talking about this?
Still too hot here (but we have had a few days of being as low as the 70º F.), but the sun is becoming zing-less, days getting shorter, and the plants are drying up. We are headed towards winter slumber. Meditation time. Autumn couldn’t come fast enough. Summer is noisy, like May 1, the tree frogs coming down to the pond, in the thousands, and making a god-awful racket at night.
We had a fawn visit us the last couple weeks. She looked to be the equivalent of an 11-year old human. There was no sign of the mother. However, I think the mother led the fawn here because it is a peaceful place, in this case, to die. The fawn (call her a ‘she’) would eat foliage in sight thirty feet from our kitchen window, browsing right along the woods/grass line, consistently for days. She wasn’t getting bigger and stronger; she got thinner and weaker. But she wasn’t unhappy. I sensed she had intestinal parasites. Then, two days ago, she didn’t appear and hasn’t been back. The day she didn’t turn up, I envisioned her in her nest in the woods, not far, too weak to move, eat, or drink, while slowly passing away in peace. My husband and I knew we couldn’t intervene😢. What happens to a dead fawn in the woods? maggots? ants? raccoon? opossum? fox? owl? hawk?
Thanks, Chris. I guess one never knows when a paragraph will trigger long-dormant memories…
💨🌿🍂👶🏼👵🏼💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
70-something
@45 Rashakor
@JMG
The black ops units our government hires to hijack radical movements know how to accomplish their goals, will that fringe political movements remain ineffective, dare to go beyond theorizing and take the right kinds of action, and keep their true goals under wraps.
Atmospheric River #136: Keynesian economics, indeed, are the preferred economics for Socialdemocrat old school politicians, at least in Europe. It’s interesting not confuse them with Marxists, although sometimes Socialdemocrats, in spite of being really moderate Liberals, call themselves Socialists. It happens this for example in my country.
I can also tell you that when I was younger and I studied Laws, there was a matter called “Political Economy”, and some of the teachers were Keynesians or at least they teached Keynes theories at the University.
Maybe…
“Communism is good for ants, but not for mammals”. If I’m not wrong and I remember it well, this quote was said by the scientist Edward Wilson. Please, if I’m wrong and this phrase is apocryphal, I would be pleased to be corrected. However, I think I read it in a magazine some years ago…
For those people who romantize too much the Anarchist Revolution during the Spanish Civil War, I’d encourage to them reading Simone Weil diaries, about her unfortunate experience as “woman soldier” at Spain. I’ve read a spanish translation called “Los diarios de guerra”, I don’t know if there’s an English translation; but of course it exists the original in French. Well, Weil was a strange woman, both mystical and radical in politics, but I think she was honest enough to remark the flaws and abuses on the Republican side of Spanish Civil War.
On the other side of political ideologies, you’ll probably know Bernanos controversial book “Big cemeteries under the Moon”, which was praised by Camus himself. Bernanos was on Right ideology, but he was honest enough (like Weil) to denounciate atrocities perpetrated by “his” people in Francoist zone.
@JMG
“J.L.Mc12, I didn’t know that Graeber had fallen into the same trap. Interesting.”
I observe that at some point a certain feeling of powerlessness makes people admire raw violence and people willing to go over dead bodies, under as you might say, a thin veneer of political idealism.
Thus pirates become icons of the struggle of the poor, even though they’d loot and kill indifferently where there’s a chance, whether the victims count as “oppressed” or not.
The “anarchists” in Vienna’s inner city, a very typical example of your garden variety well-off fringe kids, are fixing posters to the wall proclaiming that nobody shall ever cooperate with the police, the administration of an apartment building, or any other authority.
I wonder whom they call when there’s a burglary, mugging or rape going on. In areas where the state monopoly on violence does not exist, cities in Brazil come to mind, thiefs and rapists are habitually burned alive, by the informal authority of the ruling gangs, which people prefer to entirely anarchic violence, where sheer brutality and pure chance rule the day.
I have mentioned an other day, as I pointed out the gaping black holes in the theory of “green growth” et all to some dedicated marxists, I received their shrill screeching, because I broke their LARPing fantasies.
Indeed, many of these fringe kids appear loosers unfit for the occupation of their peers, well-off with a certain envy and grudge against those on the next higher level of hierarchy above them.
There’s one case of a green party affiliated judge’s son who became a judge himself. Initially he was an “antifa” enthusiast of recreational drugs and parties. After he passed at his judges exam, he threw his homely vegan girlfriend out, got a more classy one, threw all his old friends out, and bought a huge SUV car to provoke his father in a sort of rebellion.
If it weren’t real it would be A class satire. I know of this from one of his acquaintances I socialized with and simultaneously from my father, who is an old time friend to his father.
I knew and met him personally too, here and there, though not that often.
@Carlos M
So we are the same age! When I spent time on the Philippines in 2010 the old angry self employed businessman I stayed with told me a lot about the country. When he got to Tigaon, Camarines Sur in the early 1980s he told me of the marxist guerillias, although he said they did not really know much about their own ideology.
He told me a lot about the development and history of the country, which was fascinating.
I saw personally real third world poverty there, but also a functioning modern infrastructure.
And your good comment about the catholics being better dressed and all, I concur.
I have sadly visited many left-wing burgeouis venues in Vienna, due to insecurity what else to do, and people are really run down, a thin veneer of idealism but maniacal, narcisstic individuals, greedy, and the lack of women is the most striking feature; there ARE women of course, lesbians and run down drug addicts, but women really tend to flock to where theres primarily money, and otherwise stability and security.
Whether the new burgeois woke hipster culture is separate from classical left wing activism is up for debate, but truly, the conservatives who are outwardly more about modesty and self discipline know much better to enjoy life and be respectful than the “wild” and “independent” crowd there.
The unrealistic ideal of free satisfaction to everyone’s drive creates a hostile situation in left wing circles, where real natural drives must be curtailed as much as possible, it just may not be called so.
What I also have observed, many fringe hippie people with a back to the land ideology, whether nominally “right” or “left” – they receive money and support from somebody else or have made an inheritance, they are never honest about the source of their alternative lifestyles, they may often show discipline and impressive skills in herbal medicine, craft work and physical fitness, but after a time always inevitably alienate those around them, because they don’t fit their ideal, and start harassing and judging everyone, becoming insufferable personalities and unpopular neighbours in the process.
I sadly know that, I have fallen several times into the trap of their luminous charisma. Although granted, I also learned valuable things from them and sometimes received valuable support, lets not be unfair.
(off topic). I don’t have access to internet with my home PC because of malfunction problem, so I’m writing you all with a crappy cell phone. My cell phone doesn’t allow me to put links to another webs, so I cannot link to Weil and Bernanos books, for example. Excuse me, thanks on advance.
Regarding Fidel Castro, considering that he only became a Marxist in around 1961 and previously insisted he was not a Communist but was being smeared as one, I think it may be fair to say that he was, at least initially, an accidental Marxist. He may never have become one if not for geopolitical circumstances. While he had his share of follies and abuses, I always found it striking that he killed so few people by the admittedly generous Communist standards, and many of them at least actually connected to the previous regime rather than innocent bystanders at that. Perhaps that stems from the accidental nature of his Marxism, or maybe just because he lacked roots in the frankly bloodthirsty traditions of the Russian revolutionary underground that influenced Eurasian Communism. I suppose that demonstrates variation in “alpha-Marxism”, if so.
And thank you very much for Leonora Carrington!
Your interaction with Scotlyn has raised many questions in my mind, and the more I think about it the more befuddled I become.
I was initially going to say, who dreams about becoming a bureaucrat? or imagines utopia as a giant bureaucracy? But then I realized there are such people. I know some. Basically anyone who wants to get paid for doing nothing.
From what I know of communism, it’s always been an obvious fraud from the start, so its appeal never made any sense to me: I’m not aware of a single communist who ever broke a sweat in a dirty industrial job, let alone ever touched a hammer or sickle, once they became a communist. So how exactly is that a grand union of industrial workers?
It leaves me with more questions than answers. A thought that occurs to me is there seems to be a strong strain of biphobia among communists as well. They despise hard work for sure, but it also appears they despise nature. That’s my impression, at least.
One thing seems certain to me—you’re right that ‘Political Economy’ is the only way of getting a proper understanding of this. Politics and economics cannot be properly studied as separate spheres.
@Stephen Pearson #79: I believe the term JMG used was “epic jerk” and it really does help making sense of French philosophy – or mind games – or whatever a lot of this stuff is. Here is the post he wrote about it in.
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-reign-of-quantity/
Do you remember Eurocommunism? (Nostalgia mode) I suppose John and older kommentariat will remember it, but I bet youngest between you’ll won’t…(unless you are History nerds).
Well, in the short form Eurocommunism was a trend (by French, Italian and Spanish Commies mainly) since the ‘70s, for being less dependient of Dad USSR than in past times. Of course, this approach in relationships with the Soviet Union was very controversial between Marxists, and was argued pro and again it.
Another Eurocommunist idea was to accept officially Western democracies rules, which caused dismay and rage between the Far Left, and typical denounces like “orthodox” Communists had sold themselves to Capitalism and bourgouis democracy…
If you don’t have guessed yet, Eurocommunism didn’t was accepted in the USSR in a very good mood. However, a few Russians understood that Western Communist trend, but they of course didn’t say nothing about it in public., at least until Perestroika times. But that’s another story…
@Guillem:
In your comentaries about the Spanish Civil War, I miss mentions about the importance of anarchism.
@Daniil Adamov #155
Interesting! I didn’t know this. So, much like the joke about how one of the few ways for the French to win battles is to be lead by someone who isn’t actually French (i.e. Napoleon), one of the few ways for Marxism to be somewhat functional is to be lead by someone who isn’t actually a Marxist. Makes sense.
J.L.Mc12, the fascination that anarchists have for pirates is very similar to the fascination that today’s Neoreactionaries have for Roman legionaries and barbarian warlords. In both cases, you’ve got bookish intellectuals who live entirely in a world of abstractions, full of admiration and envy for people who actually, you know, get out there and do stuff in the world, and don’t care what they break. I know the feeling — I belong to the same category, of course, but I channel that reaction into novels about tough, capable guys who dodge bullets, defeat the bad guys, and get the girl. (Or occasionally into self-mocking novels about inoffensive, dweebish intellectuals who accidentally dodge bullets and play a very minor role in defeating the bad guys, but still get the girl.)
Moonwolf8, that’s overstating the matter considerably, but it’s true that Winstanley — the chief theoretician of the Diggers, one of the radical parties during the English Civil War and its aftermath — invented the labor theory of value long before Marx got to it.
Jill, thanks for this! I’ll have a look at it.
Free Rain, the irony is that it almost figured out a different and more effective approach. We’ll discuss that later on.
Michael, the thing utopians never do realize is that you can’t deal with the grubby side of humanity by ignoring it, or pretending that it will go away. You either have to harness it or suppress it with main force, and the latter rarely works well. The great strength of capitalism is that it finds a way to harness the nearly universal human tendency toward selfish greed, and directs that toward productive labor. I’ve often thought that the only workable utopia would be one that found ways to harness every single nasty human characteristic to some form of productive action — but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.
Patrick, it’s true. At least in theory, all effective action of every kind has to make some use of each of the four magical virtues.
Curt, I’ve met many examples of the same type of beta-radicals, and yeah, it’s a safe bet that any of them that actually made something of themselves would ditch their radical friends and buy an SUV in a heartbeat.
Daniil, “accidental Marxist” is a good label for Castro. If he hadn’t thrown the Mafia out of Havana, and thus incurred the deadly hatred of the US government, he’d doubtless have settled into power as a common or garden variety caudillo; as it was, his only recourse was to turn to the Soviet Union for help, and that required him to put on Marxist drag. You’re welcome re: Leonora Carrington — a fascinating artist with deep occult knowledge. I have a copy of her tarot deck.
Blue Sun, as I see it, Marxism is interested in the proletariat only as cannon fodder. It’s a way for middle class intellectuals to dream of seizing power, or (in certain limited historical situations) to seize power in reality. Being intellectuals, they only way they can imagine having power is in a bureaucratic setting, where they have lots of people scurrying around turning their ideas into policies and programs. You’re right, too, that they despise nature — that’s partly a common failing of intellectuals, but it’s also hardwired into a system of political economy that insists that all value comes from human labor and the natural world has no value on its own.
Justin, fancy you’d mention that post. It amuses me no end that René Guenon and Guy Debord, who come to the discussion of the modern world from such violently opposed positions, have so many of the same things to say about it. Yes, we’ll discuss that.
Chuaquin, yes, and I see that as the point at which European Marxists accepted their destiny as beta-Marxists.
S. Pearson #146:
La División Azul was a mixed force made up with some Fascists Zealots, and some Legionarios too, but the dictatorship needed more men… Franco need to please Hitler desires led him to find cannon fodder in the overcrowded spanish prisons; so a lot of common criminals and Franco political enemies became “forced volunteers” for the Division Azul.
They fought against the Soviets and not very much of them returned home. A lot of them died and some were made prisoners by commies, and spent lpng years in Soviet camps.
“What right wing ideologies today behave like beta-Marxism?”
Slonking eggs, going to the gym and sunning your balls.
Whatever BAP or Fuentes and their ilk natter on about.
Andrew Tate, at all. An ideology of Hypermasculinity embraced entirely by dweeby nerds. I can say this since I’m half Dweeb on my mothers side.
D. Adamov # 155:
You nailed it about Fidel Castro. Indeed, he became a full “orthodox” Leninist Soviet style because of his Anti-Americanism and need to be helped by USSR daddy…
When I was in my 20s I read some Far Left magazines and fanzines (when it were written in real paper!). In one of them, a Leninist author denounced that both Fidel and Che Guevara weren’t true Lenin supporters, at least in their guerrilla times. It was when Batista was deposed, when they “disguised” as Leninist Marxists a la Soviet style.
JMG # 161:
I agree. In 1977 PCF and PCI leaders met with spanish communist leader and declared officially Eurocommunism. The PCE was legalized in Spain, by the way. The ‘70s were the hangover years after the ‘68 enthusiastic orgy; and the Soviet myth was also dying slowly, too.
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Oh, Guenon and Debord alike…Both French, with big Selfs and big modern world critics. I’ve read both of them.
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What do you think about Ecosocialists? They’re in theory Marxists though they despise the most deplorable aspects in Marx teachings (industrialism and proletariate dictatorship, me think). I think they have been becoming woke like the rest of the Western Left.
@Northwind Grandma (#148):
My earliest memory of my mother is very like yours of your mother, so a lot of sympathy!
I was so young that I didn’t understand English yet, and was I crying in my crib. My mother came into the room, picked me up, and shook and shook and shook me as hard as she could, roaring at the top of her lungs all the while. To the not-yet-verbal infant that I was, her voice was just terrifying noise conveying her rage, not yet any sort of meaningful words. I have no memory of how it ended, but obviously I survived it. Possibly my father intervened in time. Possibly I became unconscious and unresponsive, and she calmed down and put me back in my crib.
That memory came back suddenly about 20 years ago. My mother was still alive then — she lived to be 106 1/2 years old — and I ran it by her to be sure I hadn’t invented it. Her telling response was an exasperated, “Oh, Robert, you remember everything!” Clearly she remembered it, and was annoyed that I did, too I told her that since I’d been a parent, too, I quite understood, and even sympathized with the frustration she felt back then. I don’t think it eased her mind to hear that, alas. She never could feel guilt, or even much shame.
As I’ve said here before, I don’t — I actually can’t — think in sentences or narratives so almost all of my memories are non-verbal, too. I suspect that fact means that I can actually have memories from the time before I had any language. From observing other people, it seems that most of them usually store their memories in the form of verbal narratives, not internal silent movies.
John, your idea of the epic jerk helped me when I was writing about French serialist composer and avantgarde booster Pierre Boulez (who had his centennial earlier this year). While so many American’s and others thought he had a lot of A(rctic-drilling) Hole qualities, when I thought of him as donning the quintessential French intellectual epic jerk posture some of his behaviors and posturing made a lot more sense to me. I still like what he did in helping to establish IRCAM, some of his pieces, and his commitment to poetry. I will look forward to the articles.
@JMG
“(Or occasionally into self-mocking novels about inoffensive, dweebish intellectuals who accidentally dodge bullets and play a very minor role in defeating the bad guys, but still get the girl.)”
FWIW, Trey sunna Gwen is my second favorite of your characters, second only to the enigmatic Plummer. (Sharl is a close third. You may notice I have a particular favorite novel of yours.)
It’s easy to imagine myself in Trey’s shoes if I was only a little bit tougher, a little bit braver, and unlucky enough to find myself in the right place at the right time.
@QuadroupleHat #163
BAP is an interesting character. He strikes me less as a straightforward grifter like Tate or Fuentes and more a self-conscious performance artist, in that his real fans are in on the joke with him and take amusement at the reactions of both his overheated haters and his fawning sycophants alike.
Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s hard to know how else to take an “aspiring nudist bodybuilder” with a reputation for bombastic rhetoric.
Spot on! I completely with agree your characterization of Marxism. What surprises me, I guess, is that Marxism/communism seems to be the only system of government that is completely falsely advertised as part of the package—deception is baked right into the ideology.
With any other system of government—monarchy, empire, democratic, republican, etc—what they are described as is more or less what they are. Yes, there’s corruption and deception, but it’s not baked into the definition of the system.
For example—in monarchy, there’s a king, even if he’s only a figurehead. In democracy or a republic, there’s the ritual of voting, even if it’s just a charade. But in communism, there’s never any actual workers or actual comrades (in the original sense of the word). The Party members never do manual labor, and the only “camaraderie” is the mutual fear of being murdered.
If I show up at your door with a band of marauders and say I want to rule over you as your king, at least I’m being honest. If I knock on your door to try to convince you that I’m going to join with you, share your burdens, and work side by side with you if only you join my “party,” it was never anything but a complete crock. Communists seizing power is always a takeover by deception. I guess it’s the perfect method of gaining power for an effete intellectual.
Communism should be renamed to “Intellectual Bureaucratic Oligarchy,” or some such, and it would make much more sense to me.
Chuaquin
Thank you so much for your answer about La Division Azul. I never had the full story. I have heard the same fate was true of the Italian forces there, and probably the Romanian and Hungarian as well.
Stephen
@JMG,
I had to think about your reply from #63 a while– the idea that the system fears beta-fascists more than beta-marxists because it’s vunerable to the alpha-* form had me wondering if it’s a flaw in the system that it can’t tell the alphas from the betas. Then it hit me that I probably cannot either– Hitler and his cronies looked like an absolute bunch of bums for a while there too, after all. Even Mussolini, that failed socialist journalist, was not a man to bet on… until he was. So yeah, that tracks.
There are other rightward-fringe ideas that are not particularly fascistic that get treated the same way, and some of them might just be splashback from our overuse of the term “fascist”. Some of them are verboten for good reason to protect the system– white identiarianism isn’t incompatible with a capitalist democracy, but it IS a real threat to the current multicultural system. Thus it must be vigorously suppressed in a way that Black and other minority supremacist movements are not. (Take the news that Nova Scotia is earmarking 63 million for a black version of the white-separatist “Return to the Land” group apparently facing legal difficulties in Arkansas. One is viewed as a threat, the other, obviously not.)
Personally, I think that’s shortsighted and any ethnic identitarian movement is going to be as corrosive as minority nationalism was to Austria-Hungary or the USSR, but obviously The System(tm) disagrees. (and has since the British Empire was a going concern and pulling this divide-and-conquer shtick.) I wonder if I just have a longer time horizon than the emergent properties of our civilization on this particular issue.
@blue sun #170
Interesting point, though there is another: what does “fascism” bundle together? It’s just a bunch of jackbooted thugs running around seeing traitors and undesirables everywhere they look (often to try to take the heat off themselves for their own impurity and deviancy) and picking fights with neighboring countries that they always go on to lose badly.
Justin Patrick Moore
Thanks for your reply. I certainly agree about the absurdity of French philosophers. Just the way you initially phrased it, I thought there was a specific word in French that described them, and I was curious to know it.
Stephen
Chuaquin, Marx without industrialism and proletarian revolution is a little like Christianity without Jesus or an afterlife. In both cases — and of course there are liberal Christians like that — they’re trying to hang onto the brand name after having discarded all the actual contents.
Justin, glad to hear it was useful. It really makes much more sense of French intellectual culture to remember that in decadent societies such as France, where everything possible to discuss within the frame of the culture has long since been talked to death, intellectual life functions by way of certain established theatrical roles, which officially certified intellectuals™ enact as a performance. The role of Epic Jerk is one of the most important of these roles in French intellectual culture; Boulez had to embrace some such role, and that’s the one he chose.
Slithy, thank you! To my mind, Trey was the first of my tough characters to really work well. My portrayals of Owen Merrill and Jerry Shimizu were strongly influenced by the lessons I learned while writing Star’s Reach, and those plus Trey both fed into a character you haven’t met yet, Chris Allard, who features in a trilogy I’ve got completed in rough draft but still have to revise substantially for publication.
Blue Sun, that’s a fascinating point. You’re right, of course — even fascists are at least honest about what they offer.
TylerA, exactly. What turns beta-fascists into alpha-fascists is nothing more than opportunity, and all that’s required to give them one is the kind of abject failure to meet the basic needs of ordinary people which is so common a feature of managerial systems. As for minority supremacist movements, as long as their constituencies remain genuine minorities, they can be relied on to support the status quo out of a fear of blowback from the majority. A majority supremacist group is a genuine threat to the status quo, because it can easily become a serious contender for supreme power.
“As for minority supremacist movements, as long as their constituencies remain genuine minorities, they can be relied on to support the status quo out of a fear of blowback from the majority. A majority supremacist group is a genuine threat to the status quo, because it can easily become a serious contender for supreme power.”
Hence why some people want Trump to succeed, because if Trump were to fail, that might pave the way for an anti-Semitic white identitarian movement to take power in the United States.
JMG #175: I agree with you. A Marxism without industrialism or One-Party-Dictatorship is no way denaturalized…It’s not strange, then, that nowadays Ecosocialists are too dilluted between bland and woke-ized Socialdemocracy in Western countries. And in addition to their decline, you probably will know that German Green Party has been supporting (allied with German Liberals) NATO efforts to supply with all their arms and intelligence Kiev government…I don’t understand what the heck that militarism is ecological or socialist…
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Another topic you’ll have written about it, fascism. Do you have heard any time about “Nazi-Bolshevism”? Really there was a (fake)leftist fascism, I’ve read it somewhere in the internet, but I don’t remember it very well.
@Stephen, i’m glad that we can talk friendly, and that you didn’t take ofense, since it’s a pity that conversations so often turn into ping-pong matchs, with neither part listening. I don’t want myself to behave like this, even if, suposedly, i’ve read more about a matter.
About the blue division, for what i’ve read at the beggining it was formed at Franco request, after proposing it to Hitler many times an being rebuffed. He finally accepted, just to make Franco quiet, probably. He later regreted the decision, because the division fought very, very well.
It was a voluntary corps, but with many veterans of the civilian war, and among them many Falangists of the “camisa vieja” type, “idealists “in his own Fascist style who, although the division was retired during 1943, (to my knowledge by train) choosed to remain and were integrated into Wafen ss units.
I’m not entirely sure what became of them; Some of them probably ended his days on Siberia, most of them probably died since the Waffen SS divisions very often fought to the last man.
By the way, i have the International Brigades, and the Lincoln brigade among them, in a very high consideration, since they brought a lot of essential things to the Republican army, specially but not only in the first months.
Hi John! Glad to see you’re teeing up Rene Guenon. I’m working my way thru Intro to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines and then will read Crisis of the West. Finished The Reign of Quantity last week; eerily evokes today’s capitalist crisis; written in 1945! Also have a Situationalist book awaiting a reading.
@blue sun #170: I can think of plenty examples that didn’t work as advertised! Octavianus laid down all his public titles except popular tribune (which gave him immunity!) and the honorific Augustus. The republic continued to exist, ruled by the consuls, elected by the people and advised by the Senate. Octavianus was just a very rich and very highly respected individual who happened to be elected as a tribune year after year until his death…
For a more recent example, see the Republic of Libya, where a private citizen called Ghaddafi bearing the title of Colonel just happened to be so highly respected that all his wishes were promptly fulfilled.
I’m thinking about the idea “The purpose of a system is what it does,” and am, of course, thinking about what this all looks like from the perspective of a peasant, or as you might think of it, a person who is not a member of any of the “politically active sectors of the population” who is of a peasant sensibility. And my first thought is that the purpose of every different kind of aristocratic system that has been mentioned, is to parasitise and extract value from ordinary people. – inasmuch as that is what every aristocratic system organises itself to actually do, and does.
I would also point out that whatever these aristocratic systems DO, they DO here and now – ie in the present. What they do, they must be fully present to do, and actively engaged in doing.
And yet, each system resorts to projecting its “enabling ideology” – in the case of bureaucratic aristocracies, this would be Marxism, in the case of landowning aristocracies, I reckon Christianity has served pretty well, and very possibly in the case of the robber baron capitalists, the enabling ideology may be something like laissez faire libertarianism?? – into the future.
The future not only contains the “proletarian revolutionary utopia” of the Marxists, and the second coming of Christ for the Christians, but also all of the “gratification” that the successful entrepreneur has diligently “delayed” enjoying. The thing about this sleight of hand maneuvre is that the future, by definition, does not exist. Whatever we put there, we have deliberately put out of the reach of our own power, which exists only here, and only now, for the simple reason that our bodies can only exist here and now.
For sure, our minds, emotions, spirits can freely range over many times, past and future, and across many distant domains and locations. But we cannot act in the absence of a body. This means that every moment we spend dwelling in, or working for, a future utopia is, by definition, to dwell in our own powerlessness. This is also true, by the way, for those who opt instead, to dwell in, or work for, some golden age in the past (although it seems that the “progress” narrative is so pervasive that current and currently aspiring aristocracies happen to find it most congenial to project their own power-legitimising stories into the future).
The only place where a person, who is not part of any “system”, can make use of our own individual powers (which, in the bigger picture are relatively tiny, but still real for all of that), is here and now, by using our bodies (hopefully in alignment with mind, emotion and spirit) to enact our will in the world.
Could it be that this strategic ideological use of “future” (and also, in some cases, “past”), has the purpose (as assessed by what it DOES) of distracting me from the present here and the present now in which *some* aristocracy or other wants, and has organised itself so as to take, a piece of me that they have done nothing to earn, and the proper negotiations for which, their “system” functions to short-circuit without my knowledge or consent?
The New Statesman has an article about an upcoming age of deportations in the United Kingdom:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2025/09/the-age-of-deportation
@ Anselmo ,if i have not talked much about Anarchists is because the post only mentioned comunists, and the Spanish Civilian War is already in itself an off-topic matter!
Considering that in a country of around 14 million people in 1936, the CNT had a million of afiliates at the begining of the war, one can easily see how much raw power the Anarchists had. The use, or missuse, or fumbling about with that power, once Valhalla day arrived, is another matter.
I’m not sure what you want me to talk about, since this is a huge topic; maybe you can be more specific?
Chuaquin #177 – you may be thinking of National Bolshevism which was a German political ideology during the 20s and 30s – Ernst Niekisch was the principal thinker, and Widerstand the principal organ. Essentially ultranationalist communists who were highly critical of the National Socialists for not being socialist.
KAN #184:
Yes, thanks for reminding me the correct name of the hybrid between the two big totalitarian ideologies in the past century. I suppose National Bolshevism was seen with scorn by both ideologies, Nazis and Commies, like a bastard son. However, there’s a dirty truth: Far Right people often envy the other side of politics. I mean, the Communist propaganda, their militarism, and their charismatic leaders, for example. They even have copied some of the Marxist jargon (for example spanish Falangists talking about “revolution”).
It’s not strange that some of them succumb to the temptation to blend ideas.
I’m not sure this mixed ideology is fully dead nowadays, if you read some Duguin writings, you’re going to see a bizarre blend of Right and Left ideas. Maybe Duguin isn’t a National Bolshevik, but his trend is ambiguous.
Nowadays Left is rabidly Pro-Palestinian and Anti-Israeli, so they have had to hide under their carpet a dirty truth from the past century. You maybe will be wondering what I’m going to write now. Well, Im talking about the Liberal or “Progressive” trend in the Zionism, which led to the Israel state which we know. The most famous example of this Liberal (when not openly Socialist) trend is the kibbutz. Well, nowadays Israeli kibbutz are more a corporation than other thing, but first kibbutz were in fact socialist communes. I think it’s curious how that uncomfortable truth has been forgotten by Western Liberals.
Hey JMG
That makes sense, and I can sympathise with that sentiment since I’m also in a the same boat. However, the fact that some of them chose to idealise pirates does suggest questionable motivations for what they want to get out of Anarchism.
But on the subject of anarchism and utopias, one of my favourite anarchist texts, and in my mind one of the best utopian works, is “Bolo’Bolo” by the Swiss author P.M/Hans Widmer.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/p-m-bolo-bolo
Essentially, the utopia he describes is a good example of “dissensus” ,in which the entire Earth is divided into hundreds of little city-states and independent towns all held together by a few certain rules, like a federation, but otherwise free to live as they wish. After much thought, I realised that his utopia is essentially just getting the Swiss Canton system and applying to everyone, just as most modern utopias just apply American or European notions of ideal government and apply it to everyone.
In order to bring this world to fruition, he essentially believed that the people of the 3rd world, the industrial working class and white collar workers would develop a ternary communication and support network with each other, inspired by this book, and simultaneously realise the stupidity of current government and politics while mutually supporting and educating each other so they can live the somewhat more “down home funk” lifestyle that would be more easily supported by the political system of “Bolo’Bolo”. To Widmer’s credit, he realised that the people didn’t do as he thought they would, and addressed this failure in the introduction to the second edition. He also acknowledged that as good as his system is, it would never last forever. He knew that eventually it would disintegrate and get replaced with something else.
He also developed the barebones idea of a auxiliary language called “Asa’pilli”, written with geometric ideograms which are explained in the book, and with a simple phonology and grammar. There are also some nice illustrations of the kind of towns he imagined people would live in. All in all a good little book that I should definitely write an essay about some day.
“the fascination that anarchists have for pirates is very similar to the fascination that today’s Neoreactionaries have for Roman legionaries and barbarian warlords. In both cases, you’ve got bookish intellectuals who live entirely in a world of abstractions, full of admiration and envy for people who actually, you know, get out there and do stuff in the world, and don’t care what they break.”
I’m reminded here of one our more colorful Neoreactionaries, Costin Alamariu, better known as, Bronze Age Pervert. His whole schtick is glorifying and LARPing as ancient barbarian warlords, Classical Greek tyrants, medieval Condottieri, and other sorts of folks who know that to make omelettes, eggs must be smashed open. And he fits the exact profile above, an Ivy League intellectual (PhD from Yale, MIT undergrad degree) who grew up in a wealthy suburb of Boston MA, after immigrating to the US with his family from Romania as a child.
He wrote his doctoral dissertation (recently edited released as a book) on a comparison of the ideas of Plato and Nietzsche, and how ancient Greek city states were eugenicist success stories. It seems that in a somewhat situationist vain, he bills his work as a thing of art and aesthetics, and not serious political activism; his writing, podcasting, and online shaleposting is so thoroughly layered with irony, satire, and memes that it’s hard to point to him being dead-serious about any of the frequent ideas he pushes; there’s always an air of plausible deniability there.
His many followers and copycats tend to be disaffected academics, yesterday’s art hipsters, and members of the managerial class. In fact, it’s a bit of an open secret that more than a few high-ranking members of the current Trump admin, including JD Vance, are fans of his work. BAP’s West Coast counterpart, Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug), also of elite Ivy League pedigree, has a lot of fans and followers from these same circles.
There’s several magazines that BAP and his friends publish essays and in; the vibe of those publications conveys a similar sort of avant garde art aesthetic that the beta-left has used for many decades now.
#76 While social democracy is distinct from Marxism, I think there is actually a certain resemblance between Marxism-Leninism and the neo-liberals who have been mostly in charge of for example the UK Labour Party since the days of Tony Blair.
This is the concept of the vanguard party, which the original Marxist-Leninists justified by saying the industrial workers are a minority in a Russia that was mostly inhabited by peasants, and therefore the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ was necessary to advance history.
In a strange echo of this, the Labour Right distrusts what actual working class people might say, and fixes candidate selection etc. to make sure that the party is run largely by, and certainly for, the middle class professional/managerial types.
In some cases, the right-wing Labour types had a history as student radicals in the vein of what our host has labelled “beta-Marxist” (Trotskyist movements I think mainly), including quite a few of the Tony Blair cabinet members.
The overall goal is less clear and really it seems just to keep those rotten socialists out. Back in the days of the last Conservative government after Keir Starmer replaced Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, the Labour right often sounded more energised when debating against the social democrats/democratic socialists of the Labour left, that the Conservative Party itself.
Looked at from a POSIWID perspective, tourism seems to have a pretty clear and profoundly unpleasant purpose: to force tourist areas into poverty so that the entire economy and culture can be reoriented towards serving members of the privileged classes who visit so they can larp at being billionaires.
Two straws in the wind: among the Pocket posts is a picture of macaroni with tomato sauce (or soup) and the caption “The Depression Era’s cheapest food.” And – The Village had scheduled two visits from the local drugstore for flu and COVID shots, and later announced that the September one was canceled upon DeSantis announcing the end to vaccine mandates. Now, I can’t be sure whether it’s on or off (not that I ever intended to go!)
OT – very OT – (shakes head) “hung with his own rope” variety – Trump is insisting that the demand of a number of women and girls claiming to have been caught up in Epstein’s, uh, Harlots-R-u, operation to release the results of the criminal investigation is, I quote, “A Democrat plot.” Every one familiar with Trumps’s former reputation is probably thinking “Yeah, right. tell me another one.” Me, for one. And the Democrats are probably gloating over the juicy one they’ve been handed.
Of course, the one thing that could get him out of that trap is to pull the “repentant sinner” bit, if his ego would allow it. and I’m no friend to either today’s Democrats, nor those who gloat.
@Chauquin #151: The quote was “Good idea; wrong species.” And I rememebr – a quote from someone else, or my own idea? – that Ayn Rand’s ideal society was a perfect fit – for solitary predators like tigers.
Anonymous @ 176. “white identarian, anti-semitic”? Are you not aware that the Christian nationalist faction is loudly and proudly pro-Israel? Did it escape your attention that the Republicans in congress have been voting en masse, or nearly so, to give Israel whatever cash and materiel that country requests. As have, to be fair, the Dumbs as well, which is one reason I Demexited over a decade ago. Did you not notice that the Israeli government pulled out all the stops to get Trump elected? Uh, speaking of foreign influence…(I already know that there were many more reasons for the Dumbs’ loss).
In the grand tradition of new bad ideas replacing old bad ideas, multiculturalism replaced Jim Crow segregation back in the 1970s. Dislike of multiculturalism, that bastard ideology, is NOT antisemitism, however much some members of the Jewish community might want to push it. Neither is anti-globalism antisemitic.
OT, but if you want to post it: you have been referenced by name and your essay on mitigation used as a foundation for the latest essay on Surplus Energy Economics. Not sure that has happened before. I bring this up because that blog is, in a way, the orthodoxy among unorthodox economic writers!
@Aldarion #180
What I was trying to convey wasn’t that it didn’t work as advertised, but that it was never intended to work as advertised.
@Scotlyn #181
I have found all your comments this week to be quite thought-provoking! I’m currently mulling over your point that our bodies can only exist in the present moment, and the implications of that.
Then something JMG said caught my attention: “Chuaquin, Marx without industrialism and proletarian revolution is a little like Christianity without Jesus or an afterlife … trying to hang onto the brand name after having discarded all the actual contents.”
And a thought popped up that combined the two ideas: If Marxism in the present is in a constant state of proletarian revolution, then it is always in a state of chaos and never reaches Utopia, right? Perhaps that explains why it is so destructive?
Not sure if this thought makes any sense…. I’m just shooting from the hip.
“FWIW, Trey sunna Gwen is my second favorite of your characters, second only to the enigmatic Plummer. (Sharl is a close third. You may notice I have a particular favorite novel of yours.) Slithy Toves #168
My favorite too. Among many. I am such a fan of Stars Reach that I got the Merigan Tales anthology that John edited, just to inhabit that world a little bit more. Twilights Pete Bridgeport and Retrotopias Peter Carr were not heroes in the normal sense, but were honorable people responding to circumstances they were confronted with. John Michael continues to develop his skills, and we are lucky to have his work.
“a character you haven’t met yet, Chris Allard, who features in a trilogy I’ve got completed in rough draft but still have to revise substantially for publication.” jmg #175
Something to look forward to!
Anonymous, exactly. The people shrieking about how Trump is a fascist are incapable of realizing that right now he’s the one genuine alternative to fascism we’ve got.
Chuaquin, the moral collapse of Green parties into mindless obedience to the agendas of the corporate bureaucratic state is one of the most humiliating failures of modern times. I can still remember when they actually stood for something! As for National Bolshevism, sure — I mentioned in this post…
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2014/02/fascism-and-future-part-one-up-from.html
…that national bolshevism was a recognized political position between the wars.
Darrell, Guenon’s worth a read, though — like all the Traditionalists — he doesn’t just have issues, he has whole subscriptions. I should probably do another post on him one of these days.
Scotlyn, excellent! Thank you — this is really quite profound, and I’d encourage you to consider working it up into an essay.
Anonymous, fascinating. Clearly it’s sinking in, even through the yard-thick skulls of the English managerial class, that current policy is utterly unsustainable.
J.L.Mc12, so noted; if I decide to go wallow in failed utopias again sometime, I’ll keep it in mind.
Corax, yeah, he’s a good example of the type.
Mawkernewek, yes, exactly. What the Blairites did was simply to ditch the ideological window dressing of Labour and turn it into a party focused on enriching university educated bureaucrats at everyone else’s expense.
Anonymous, a case could be made!
Patricia M, that macaroni-and-soup image is a truly baleful omen. Hang onto your hat.
Aldarion, thanks for this! Good to hear.
John, so noted and thank you.
@ Guuillem ( and Chuaquin)
One last question: you mention Sanjuro and Goded ( who I haven’t heard of before) as leading nationalist generals. Why are the references to Los quatro generales, at least in republican songs, etc to Franco, Mola, Varela and Quipo de LLano? Quipo De LLano sounds like Trump in a uniform, the radio general.
A funny story, to me at least.
I had an older friend from CA who was in the republican army. He was a truck driver, since so few Spaniards at that time could drive. As he was driving along, he encountered an old friend from CA at the end of a very long rope. He asked him what he was doing with the rope. The friend replied he was leading a mule. When my friend asked why he needed a 30m rope to lead a mule, he replied that the mule was carrying munitions.
For what it is worth, I also had a friend who had been the adjutant of the Garribaldi battalion, who ended up running a very good Italian restaurant in NYC. Just so I don’t sound too one sided, I also had friends who had been in the Wehrmacht and the Imperial Japanese army, including a kamakaze pilot, but that is another story.
Stephen
Patricia Mathews #192: Thank you for correcting my E. Wilson quote, I was partly wrong!
JMG #198: Thanks for your link! I’m going to read ir ASAP…
I’ve told by some not so mainstream media that Russian thinker A. Duguin has quite influenced Putin ideas. What do you think about Duguin? Do you have read some of his essays? I recognize my ignorance in this matter. Thanks on advance.
chauquin@186 “I think it’s curious how that uncomfortable truth has been forgotten by Western Liberals.”
i think a lot of people on the left, in the center and increasingly on the right, at least among younger cohorts, are more anti-genocide than anti-israeli, are not too fussed about whether or not the original kibbutzim were genuinely socialist affairs, and are upset that their governments, at least in the uk and usa, are so reluctant to rein the israelis in when it would be so easy (at least for the usa) to do so
but perhaps they’re just a bunch of sentimentalists
You’ve written about French “epic jerks” Guenon and Debord before; now, I’d like to remember another freak of French philosophy and politics, who died some years ago. If I say Roger Garaudy, maybe I’m not reminding you a well known name, for the youngest commentariat. Well, let’s remember R. Garaudy in the short form. In his teenager years he was a Protestant, but soon he joined the PCF and indeed he was an orthodox Leninist Commie, so convinced that he was very active during 2nd WW. In the Resistance he was. After the war, he became an influencial figure in Marxist French, but oh, it came 1968. There happened the Czecoslovaquian revolt and after the Soviet invasion against that tiny country. Garaudy didn’t like that, and he condemned the USSR repression. So he was expelled from PCF. After some years, this guy became Catholic and wrote about it, but some years later declared he had been converted to Islam. In his older and later years, he was an apassionate advocate for the Palestinians. And (cough cough) he was involved in a denounce and trial for Holocaust negationism, which he lost.
In Spain he became discretly famous for leading a docunentary about Arab culture, but it was broadcasted in the ‘80s in spanish public TV, so I doubt anybody remembers it anymore.
Did you know this politician/thinker?
Thank you.
I will say that the idea of a person’s body in the here and now being the locus of their power to act in the world, is an idea I find myself communicating to others several times a week in my clinic. It is tolerably common for people to cut themselves completely off from the exercise of their own (as I always say, small, but REAL) powers, by dwelling in a past full of second guessings or regrets, or in a future full of secret longings or fears, and never notice what things they can DO right here and right now in the present to alter their own condition, and the part of the world that is lying within their own reach. I love to see people begin to emerge into their own present, their own PRESENCE, their own power. 🙂
I suspect I am more of a conversationalist, an interACTOR, than an essay writer, and so, as I continue to interact with this and other essays, I invite anyone who likes to freely take and use whatever serves them. 🙂
I will mention two references which (over the years) have helped to shape my way of thinking (and acting) on this particular topic. They may interest others.
The first is Eric Hoffer, who wrote “The True Believer: An Anatomy of Mass Movements”, an incredibly deep, but short, work. In this work he explains exactly why a poor person is unlikely to join a political movement, and this is because their PRESENT here and now is already chock full of challenge and adventure and action, just trying to stay alive. To dwell in a powerless future vision? They’ve no time for that!
The second is James C Scott, whose “The Art of Not being Governed” has been mentioned a few times. He also wrote a book called the “Moral Economy of the Peasant” in which he examines why peasants do “politics” differently. Mostly, as you point out in your mundane astrology readings, peasants don’t do “politics” at all. I mean a peasant spends the here and now attending to crops and livestock in the context of nature’s cycles and challenges. And there are always challenges – storms, pests, diseases, etc – the fact that there are always human parasites (whether maurauders or local lords), capable of taking a part of your crop, is just one more hazard that has to be accounted for. However, when in any given here or now, the human parasite has taken so much that the peasant is left with too little to subsist on, all of a sudden there is – right here, right now – reason to gather with other peasants and march/rebel, etc.
What Scott brilliantly noted is that this is not a matter of quantity or percentage. For example, in a good year, a levy of up to 80% of the crop might not be too much, whereas in a bad year a levy of 5% could make the difference between barely hanging on, and outright starving. So, percentage levies can never work, and the peasant will regard as utterly immoral any system that cannot be lax enough in a bad harvest year as to lighten the parasitic blood draw. Whereas (to the surprise of many) peasants are likely to be unperturbed by small parasitic blood draws, year on year, so long as basic subsistence is not challenged.
Please note that, as Eric Hoffer also pointed out, a disaffected middle class person – too much free time in the present, too few “prospects” for a future they’ve come to feel entitled to, cannot understand this kind of peasant equanimity. They will want the peasant to “wake up!” (and, say, form the muscle for which the disaffected youth wants to be the vanguard). And so, whenever I hear people say, “when are people going to wake up” – what I personally hear is “when are other people going to be ready to help me reshape the world in the way I want to reshape it.” Such people never stop to think, you know, just maybe, those people are not asleep. Maybe they are too busily awake living a life that is already too full of challenge and adventure in the present to get interested in your schemes.
Basically, the people that interest me most are the ones who are NOT active in the politics of their own day, with one important exception. And that is when politics enters their here and now. Mostly politics is a far away game of thrones, and if you are a peasant, you hope the blood is shed somewhere else and that they never discover the location of your fields to have tournaments on. But when, say, you have a new emergency, and politics has arrived at your front door to instruct you to shelter behind it with no more than five other persons, and etc, all of a sudden you may get political, too. At least as long as it takes to decide whether to obey, disobey, appear to comply, keep your non-compliance off the radar, or whether to protest, write letters, make public posts, etc.
There is the day to day “politics” which is a matter of contending aristocracies fighting over the levers of unearned gain, and which way to point the spigots (cloaked behind high sounding principles and future visions) and there is the politics of simple pushback in the here and now (not all of which is ever overt – as so much of it may consist of quiet, off the radar, non-compliance).
PS. I really can’t see myself writing an essay. I don’t want to be READ, I want to be conversed with. 🙂
I’ve remembered another candidate to “epic French jerk”, who in spite not being a philosopher, he fits in the cathegory, me think. I’m thinking about the novelist Michel Houellebecq, l’enfant terrible of French and whole European writers.
PS by “Mostly, as you point out in your mundane astrology readings, peasants don’t do “politics” at all.” What I meant to point out is that your mundane readings will refer to the category of people who are not represented in the political discourse of the day – which, if I recall correctly, are represented by the first house, or maybe by the moon? Apologies that I cannot remember this point. I’m not an astrologer, but am always keenly interested in this specific category of people. 🙂
When I went to study to University in the ‘90s, I found Left and Far Left there had a big reverence for Michel Foucault. I’d call it near a Foucaltian cult about him. I found some of his essays interesting, but not to workship him like a god.
It’s interesting to remark his Cyclopean figure has been dwindling as the time is being passing. He’s a guru in the woke nowadays Liberal/Far Left politics, but I’ve seen since some years ago some extremists and less Far Left activists less happy about Foucault. It’s not casual, because Foucaultian Marxism was always an Universitarian theoric one. He was never being seen at streets in Paris in 1968…And apart of his obvious homosexuality, he was never engaged on real radical activism. Some Far Leftists now call him “impostor”. Even there’s somewhere in the web a vitriolic article whose title is “Foucault, the longevity of an imposture”. (I can’t remember the writer name, excuse me). Ah, the fallen idols…It’s curious to remark that the most ferocious critics against Foucault seem having been influenced by Situs and post-Situationists authors.
I personally think not all in Foucault is rubbish, but he’s been over-valued since the ‘70s until now.
It’s a pity I can’t post links to radical texts against Foucaltians, but indeed they exist.
What do you think about this topic?
————————————————————-
In (I think) a lesser mode, it seems Deleuze and Derrida are declining as “beings of light” for extreme Far Left, at least in my country. However, I haven’t read near nothing from this philosophers, so I can’t opine about them. Thanks on advance if you have read these French thinkers and you want to share impressions on Johns blog here.
>And the Democrats are probably gloating over the juicy one they’ve been handed.
Don’t be so sure of that. Notice they’ve backed off on trying to get him over Epstein? They got the tap on their shoulder and they do what they’re told. Or all of their videos get released. The only ones that seem to be interested in it all still are MTG, Paul and Massie. I guess there’s not enough dirt on them to keep them quiet.
>the moral collapse of Green parties into mindless obedience to the agendas of the corporate bureaucratic state is one of the most humiliating failures of modern times
It’s almost like the system is impervious to reform, isn’t it? Then if it can’t change (and it really looks like it can’t), then I wonder what the inevitable outcome of that is?
Thank you for the Existential Comics. Laughed out loud.
Yes, the Harry Potter books are about an intra-elite fight over the question of how to treat muggles, as interesting pets or as cattle for the slaughter. This does mirror the real-life intra-elite struggle, though in real life the death eaters have come out on top. And JK Rowling is herself one.
White identitarianism has no future in America because the entire ideology is an Faustian ideology that makes an idol out of European heritage and ancestry. The future of America is going to be throwing off the Faustian pseudomorphosis and anything associated with that, including white identitarianism.
I have noticed that no matter the scheme for classifying personality types (for example, Briggs Myers, enneagram, desire-indifference-aversion) that I have run into, some folks just don’t fit into the scheme. One can force-fit them in but at the cost of increasing complexity (Occam entropy) and little gain (or even loss) of explanatory power.
The division into Alpha and Beta Marxism is quite to the point and does fit my own experiences (and can be applied with a bit of a twist to Western Buddhism as well), but I don’t think that stretching it to apply to cases such as post-war French and Italian Marxism explains so much. In the Italian case, I think that rather than reindustrialization as the key, it was the fact that the industry was in the North but much of the working class was migrants from southern Italy. The differences between the two regions are intense enough that what is now The League political party, was originally founded on the platform of expelling the south from Italy. This has deep historical roots. While places like Genoa and Venice were pioneering advances in capitalism, the south was mostly under foreign rule (Sicily having a kind of Hall of Fame of invaders) and often busy fighting off slaving raids.
Post-WW1 German Marxism was also both serious about power (The Social Democrats had it and kept it by hiring proto-Nazis for a decapitation strike on the anti-war faction that had become the communists) and had theoretical innovation. For example, Wilhelm Reich adding the role of the body to psychotherapy opened up a fruitful avenue of research that I ran into when participating in group therapy in the 1970s.
I can’t believe the RCP was still around for you to run into. I remember them from upstate New York in the early 1970s. The most cheerless puritanical lot you would never want to meet. I guess the feds knew who to fund.
“I’m reminded here of one our more colorful Neoreactionaries, Costin Alamariu, better known as, Bronze Age Pervert. His whole schtick is glorifying and LARPing as ancient barbarian warlords, Classical Greek tyrants, medieval Condottieri, and other sorts of folks who know that to make omelettes, eggs must be smashed open.”
And then when actual barbarian warlords (Houthis, Hezbollah, etc) started attacking Israel in 2024, BAP stopped glorifying warlords and stopped LARPing as warlords and started to convince everybody to support Israel.
The United States balkanizing into multiple countries is more likely than a white nationalist / fascist dictatorship if Trump fails imo.
We’re not a homogeneous country despite what the white nationalists wish. There are too many ethnic groups even within the supposed white majority, who just disagree with each other on fundamental values and heritage, etc. White southerners trace their identity back to Jamestown and the plantation masters that came to power there with a huge dollop of African influence from the slaves, white New Englanders trace their identity back to Plymouth and the Puritans that came to power there, the Southwest is a mix of white Anglos, native Americans, and Hispanics, that arose from the failure of Mexico to keep control of its northern frontier in the 19th century, etc. They’re as different as the various successor states of New Spain in Latin America, or the various Arab states in the Middle East and North Africa.
There is an entire series that John MIchael Greer did back in the day on the Archdruid Report on how the United States might balkanize peacefully:
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2012/10/how-it-could-happen-part-one-hubris.html
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2012/10/how-it-could-happen-part-two-nemesis.html
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2012/10/how-it-could-happen-part-three-to-brink.html
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2012/10/how-it-could-happen-part-four-crossing.html
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2012/10/how-it-could-happen-part-five.html
If anybody knows about astrology, America’s foundation chart has Saturn in the 10th house which indicates that America would have a sudden fall. Balkanization after Trump fails to save America might be one possiblilty of such a fall.
JMG and Scotlyn,
There are some fantastic comments here. Scotlyn’s observation that the body can only exist in the present is really intriguing. Alan Watts had a lot to say about how the future is an abstraction created by the human mind. I don’t know if he ever linked that to the human body, however. Really intruiguing.
Part of the reason Marxism, Anarchism, and other utopian communal ideologies devolve into impractical abstractions is that they seem to ignore the fundamental realities of the necessity of human hierarchies. I can’t find the reference now, but in a previous essay JMG wrote that attempts to do away with hierarchies only result in hidden, informal hierarchies. I have observed this to be true in Rudolf Steiner Waldorf School settings. They pretend it is a consensus-based egalitarian organization, but the reality is that it is a hidden hierarchy of senior teachers using informal power structures behind closed doors. The hierarchy is palpable.
Part of the attraction to Marxism, etc. is the seething resentment people feel toward capitalists, land owners, billionaires, politicians, “the elite”, and other fauna higher on the hierarchy ladder. Much of this resentment may be legitimate and deserved, but that’s not the point. The point is that even in an Amish barn-raising–an effort do get something practical done in a communal setting–there is a “barn builder” who is a sort of temporary dictator directing the work of the group.
>Did it escape your attention that the Republicans in congress have been voting en masse, or nearly so, to give Israel whatever cash and materiel that country requests
Noticing is antisemitic. Stop noticing.
“Walt, very true. This is one of the reasons why prying Situationism loose from its fossilized matrix of Marxism will be helpful.”
I look forward to that. I’m usually pretty good at perceiving where you’re going with a topic, but I’m at a loss at the moment, trying to imagine which of the Situationist artistic concepts you think might be more generally applicable, and for what purpose.
Given your own perambulatory habits I can imagine psychogeography and the dérive might have some appeal (heck, undirected city walking was my wife’s and my main outdoor recreation in the decades before we had access to natural spaces instead), but any connection to possibilities for human freedom appears straightforward and physical (e.g. exercise and means of access to places).
In the meantime, most of the discussion this week seems to be about the fossilized matrix, which does appear to have all kinds of interesting strata, veins, seams, and granular inclusions.
@Slithy Toves #160 Brezhnev may be another example, then! While his rule is frequently damned as a time of ideologically-inert stagnation by devout communists and liberals alike, much of the population has more favourable memories. As general secretary and even earlier, he did many small things that eased the population’s burdens (for instance, allowing peasants… that is, collective farm workers to travel within the Union without passports again – which amounted to a quiet abolition of the second serfdom). Much is made of the crackdown in Czechoslovakia and a slight growth in repressions in the Union after the fall of Khruschev, but there is reason to believe both would have been much worse if the real Communists got their way instead of the general secretary (by then only the first among equals and thus forced to compromise) bargaining them down from harsher measures they preferred.
I say real Communists, because according to later accounts of Brezhnev’s relatives, he regarded the very idea of Communism with barely concealed contempt. It only had an instrumental value because, in his words, “they killed the Tsar, blew up the churches – people needed to hold on to some idea”. He also repeatedly suggested that life was better under the Tsar and loved the joke about how “capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, while socialism is the other way around”. Apparently he lost his faith after taking part in the collectivisation campaign, which he came to regard as a crime, causing him to damage his promising career by moving across the country to get out of participating further. Which did not mean he saw no value in all Soviet policies later, he simply lacked the same ideological motivation for them and instead tried to ameliorate previous excesses while maintaining order.
Mary Bennet,
I would argue that the second religiosity itself and the turning back to Christianity that John Michael Greer predicted will happen in the United States will lead to increased antisemitism, as Christians begin to argue again that Jews should convert to Christianity in order for their souls to be saved (which is widely regarded as antisemitic by Jews). You already see many Christian nationalists today argue that the Israel that Christians should support is the body of Christian churches and not the secular country in the middle east. This tendency among Christians will accelerate whenever Israel collapses in the future, since there would no longer be any country of Israel to support.
S. Pearson #199: I’m not an expert in Spanish Civil War, but I can tell you my granpas heared Queipo de Llano speeches on radio, although they were in the Republican side. Queipo talks were a heck of propaganda, but he was funny enough to be heared by his enemies! Republican people said that Queipo drank a lot pf wine before his speeches, so he was speaking drunk on radio; however, historians and comrades who knew this man didn’t see never Queipo drunk…
It seems to me that their is much confusion, especially on the right, between beta marxism and the growth of the managerial state ( yes they are similar but have different motivations). So when a blue city seems to be moving towards more and more city owned housing to remedy the homeless problem it can on one hand be seen as managerial creep in to an area that didn’t used to be in the wheelhouse of local governments. Or it can be seen as the action of marxists who are moving us towards an entire system of government housing.
Adrian Smith # 203: I agree with your view of a lot of Leftists being not Anti-Israel,but anti-genocide. Maybe I didn’t explained very well. My point is that Leftism nowadays use to equalize Zionism with Far Right wing and even Fascism (partly true about Netanyahu band), but there was a “Progressive” flavour in historic Sionism and first years of Israeli short History.
“Anonymous, exactly. The people shrieking about how Trump is a fascist are incapable of realizing that right now he’s the one genuine alternative to fascism we’ve got.”
Indeed. I wonder how many of them are by now in detention centres or even mass graves in the Fred Halliot reality as of 2025!
The other problem with the Harry Potter series is the obsession with Voldemort and Voldemort’s obsession with Harry Potter. It’s like the ideologies that both sides hold don’t really matter and it’s all about Harry Potter defeating Voldemort or Voldemort defeating Harry Potter.
Some day I should write a fanfic where the Malfoys and a bunch of other disgruntled Death Eaters destroy Voldemort’s Horcruxes (including the one in Harry Potter himself) and knife Voldemort in the back, and they get the credit for defeating Voldemort by British wizarding society instead of Harry Potter and the trio. Then Lucius Malfoy become Minister of Magic and still implements all the nasty anti-muggle crap that Voldemort and his Death Eaters did in canon in the 7th book, clearly showing that defeating Voldemort did nothing to prevent the Death Eater ideology from rising in Britain.
Chuaquin, I’ve read a little of Dugin’s work, but not enough to have a strong sense of his take on things. What I’ve read suggests that he’s a European reactionary of the classic type, the sort of thinker who despises the Nazis for being too liberal, and also has drawn on the Traditionalists to some extent. I doubt he has anything like the influence on Putin that some people claim — Putin is a ruthless pragmatist, not an ideologue. As for Garaudy, I somehow managed to miss him — not surprising, as French intellectual life is full of posturing spoiled brats who veer from one ideology to another as ego drives them.
Scotlyn, that’s too bad. I think an essay on the theme you’ve developed would be a good opening for a very extensive conversation. Still, your call. As for the first house, yes, that’s correct — I tend to focus on the fact that the 1st house represents those people who have been excluded from the political process, but it’s equally true that many of them exclude themselves, and for good reason.
Chuaquin, if Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida were to be utterly forgotten tomorrow, and nobody ever talked about their writings again, I think it would probably benefit everybody but their publishers. Some people literally can’t type a sentence without raising barriers to human thought.
Other Owen, I assume you mean that bit about the outcome as a rhetorical question!
Jessica, oh, both sides treat muggles as lambs for the slaughter. One side is just less fond of euphemisms than the other.
Richard, eventually, sure — but I’m talking about the near future, when the Faustian pseudomorphosis still retains a grip on American culture.
Jessica, fair enough! You’re right, of course, that no typology can ever do anything but a very rough sort on the irreducibly confusing reality we live in. As for the RCP, they still exist today, though they’re not much more than a personality cult around Bob Avakian these days. Their website is still regularly updated.
Mark, in the longer run, sure, but I’m not talking about the longer run. Fascism is reliably self-terminating, and doubtless fragmentation would follow the collapse of the regime — but it seems to me that it’s not impossible that a white identitarian movement could seize power by convincing enough people, especially in the military and police sectors, that it was the only remaining alternative to woke tyranny.
Samurai_47, exactly! It’s a pleasant fantasy to insist that if only we change the ownership of the means of production, or some such detail of social life, human beings will stop behaving like human beings and behave like angels instead. It’s never worked, but earnest, dewy-eyed radicals keep on trying to find the right social detail to change, or (like Marxists) ignoring the lessons of total failure and trying to repeat the same thing over and over again.
Walt, the matrix is important, because having a sense of its problems will make it easier to extract the useful veins from the highly compressed muck. Stay tuned!
Clay, I’d say rather that beta-Marxism and the managerial state have the same motivation but different methods. The motivation is increasing the wealth, influence, and collective self-glorification of the laptop class; the managerial state has just seized the opportunity to do this much more effectively.
David, if this were a fascist state all those people who shrieked their rage at Trump’s inauguration in 2016 would have died in camps, and there would have been no 2020 election. It really is offensive to watch these pampered crybabies dishonor the memory of people who actually died in fascist regimes by LARPing around claiming an equivalent status.
Mark, that would have been a more interesting fanfic than most. I’ve sometimes imagined doing one in which the handsome, charismatic activist Tom Riddle earnestly spoke against the Muggle Menace and built a following, which he didn’t call by anything so stupid as “Death Eaters” — say, Defenders of Wizarding or something like that — and which he actually had some valid points to make. One of the things that leaves me gagging about the Potterverse is the obsessive insistence that anyone who disagrees with the Good People™ can only be motivated by deliberate, knowing evil — of course nobody could really have a reason to oppose the status quo!
Mary,
“Are you not aware that the Christian nationalist faction is loudly and proudly pro-Israel? Did it escape your attention that the Republicans in congress have been voting en masse, or nearly so, to give Israel whatever cash and materiel that country requests.”
I’m not talking about those people. I’m talking about the parts of the white nationalist right and the dissident right who are currently very disillusioned with Trump and the Republicans in Congress precisely because of their support for Israel and their failures to mass deport non-white people from America. People like Catgirl Kulak, VDARE James Kirkpatrick, the whole host of writers on the Unz Review and American Renaissance and Occidential Review et cetera. They hate the Christian nationalists and Trump because of their support for Israel and for a Christian flavored multiculturalism backed by the civil rights narrative in the United States in the past few decades.
When the Democrats and the Republicans and Trump and the Christian nationalists all have failed the American people, who will Americans turn to? It won’t be Christian nationalists because they are too much in bed with the failed elites and the existing status quo consensus around Israel, civil rights, and multiculturalism. It’ll be these white identitarian right wing radicals who have staked their entire ideology on rejecting the entire multicultural Judeo-Christian civil rights framework that defined America from WWII to the present.
@JMG (#226):
Oh my, thanks for mentioning Bob Avakian: a real blast from the past, that was. So it seems he’s still alive and kicking.
I went to high school with him in Berkeley in the 1950s. I remember him as being a bland average boy in those days, with a tendency to self-importance, but no real radicalism that I ever noticed in him. So he actually managed to win a following of sorts … wow!
WORKER-OWNED BUSINESSES
Hi JMG,
I see a pattern here. A huge hunk of humanity (the ones I hear about and see), over time:
procreate. They look to others to fulfill their own, and their childrens’, needs — in my opinion, illegitimately, and therefore function as a drag and burden on those around them. The vast majority of humans don’t look to themselves to start micro-businesses (mom & pop) to finance themselves, much less finance their kids’ lives. Secondly, those who are self-supporting learn to live within their means.
This is where you periodically mention “worker-owned corporations” (and I guess proprietorships and partnerships too). A plumber is a worker-owned business. An electrician is “that” too. A roofer is that. A farmer is that. A blacksmith is that. A woodworker is that. Many others are that.
May populations of the West be guided to keep trying new ventures (and adventures) — eight out of ten fail — where a venture finally works out successfully, and thereby that family-group flourishes, one by one. And they help give a leg up to the next person over (though not necessarily a family member).
It reminds me of the Hindu teaching: “Thou Art That.”
💨💪🏼🧹💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
@adrian smith
“i think a lot of people on the left, in the center and increasingly on the right, at least among younger cohorts, are more anti-genocide than anti-israeli, are not too fussed about whether or not the original kibbutzim were genuinely socialist affairs, and are upset that their governments, at least in the uk and usa, are so reluctant to rein the israelis in when it would be so easy (at least for the usa) to do so”
Bingo. You’ve hit the nail on the head. I don’t like Hamas and their actions on Oct 7 in particular were disgusting and evil, but Israel’s choice to ethnically cleanse much of Gaza, kill tens of thousands of usually civilians, and now start a famine, is also evil, and I want my country and government not to be complicit in it and preferably as far from the mess as possible. I’m Canadian, not American, and my country can’t reasonably stop them, but we could at least shut down every sale of weapons or ammunition or spare parts we’re currently selling to Israel, which we somehow haven’t done despite yelling at Israel a lot and not making any new weapons contracts with them. Surely there’s a ‘non-participation in war crimes/mass murder of civilians/genocide’ clause in those contracts. And if there isn’t, there jolly well ought to be.
Being anti-Israel’s current actions is not the same as anti-semitism. I don’t hate jews; I hate mass murder.
JMG # 226:
OK John, I agree. There’s been too much Russophobe propaganda which imagine Putin as the new Hitler, so according this BS, Duguin should be a Fascist too. Of course, Duguin plays on ambiguous mood to appeal his supporters, but yeah he’s not a fascist, maybe informal Traditionalist… I disagree partly in your appretiation on lack of influence on Putin. Yes, Putin is a pragmatic man, but I think he hears ideas from here and there, so…
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Well, John, you’ve missed nothing really interesting if you didn’t read Garaudy yet. You’re right in that. About Derrida and other French obscure thinkers, it seems I didn’t miss nothing when I didn’t read them.
>The other problem with the Harry Potter series
Just one? I find myself ambivalent about the series. She paints a picture where everyone is closely related to just about everyone else, if you trace who’s related to who it starts to look more like a family feud than anything else. Like a more refined pretentious version of the Hatfields and McCoys.
And even though everyone can conjure up everything they need, for some reason they all go into work for one big over-encompassing bureaucracy, the Ministry of Magic. Really? Why would anyone do that? Nobody works in a bureaucracy unless they feel they have to. Or they’re some sort of bitter Karen type. You would imagine such a world because you can’t imagine any other sort of world though.
None of these fantasy/scifi stories are about some future or (what is it with the Brits and their parallel universes) fantasy locations. It’s about the hyperpresent. The Jetsons wasn’t about the future, it was about the 1960s. Doctor Who Tom Baker was just the 70s on steroids. None of these writers would know the future if it slapped them across the face and then bit them on the butt.
>I went to high school with him in Berkeley in the 1950s. I remember him as being a bland average boy
There’s a law I’ve observed over the years. All the wildchilds, the ones that misbehave and get into Trouble, they grow up to be – sticks in the mud.
And the sticks in the mud as children, they grow up to be weird. Maybe it’s just a special case of the Rule of Alternation.
>movement could seize power by convincing enough people, especially in the military and police sectors, that it was the only remaining alternative to woke tyranny
Replace “woke tyranny” with communism and rewind the clock back to the 1930s in Germany. They don’t like to talk about it but there were almost as many Germans back then agitating for joining the Soviet Union and forcing everyone else to go along with it.
—
>rejecting the entire multicultural Judeo-Christian civil rights framework that defined America from WWII to the present
Everybody lost WW2. It was just obvious what Germany and Japan lost.
@Stephen That sounds like the kind of story that one can found on war journal by people who actually was there!
About the Generals, the thing is that the “Strike” was originally planned by Mola, Goded and Sanjurjo.
Sanjurjo was the most respected General alive at the time, and so was to take the lead. His prestige was to drag undecided generals ( such as Franco!) onboard.
Mola was the “smart man” of the team, as he had been the “security director” of the Republic some year before, and was considered to be a good organizer. He actually wrote a kind of “plan”, that describes how the coup should procees to make a quick success.
Goded was supposed to take Barcelona, since the Generals knew that the left was very strong there, and local forces will not be enough.
Those three men where, together with Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera and , possibly, Gil Robles, the main candidates to take power in the event of a Right coup.
When 1936 ended, only Mola and Gil Robles Remained. Yet, the march of things let Gil Robles as an insignificant figure, so we may count only Mola.
Sanjurjo died in very weird circumstances on July 17, when his plane crashed. His pilot survived, but himself and his field aid died.
Goded failed to take BCN, was captured and executed.
Jose Antonio was on the wrong place on Valhalla day, was captured and executed on the autumn of 1936, in one of the most stupid political moves of the Republican side, since that allowed Franco to take total control of Falange Española.
So while all this is well known, today the coup is very often described as “Franco’s coup” , when in reality he only jumped on board at the last moment, literally days before all started.
Speaking of Queipo, he hated Franco and used to mock him savagely, calling him “Paca la Culona” and other pearls, even during the war. That’s why he ended in the rear-guard, since Franco did not want him to have any real power. weirdly, he was politically moderate and wanted a Democratic republic.
I like one of his phrases” I’m loyal to whom is loyal to me”
He is a bit infamous because, although his radio programes have mostly been lost, some transcripts remain, and among them one where he explains to Republican women how they were all to soon know what real men were…
Varela was a close friend of Franco, who called him Varelita, hence his presence in every major battle and his fame.
I want to write another interesting “sign of times” about the fading god-like Foucault cult. In some of his books (I don’t remember which one it was), the famous philosopher Byung-Chul Han wrote critically about Foucault terms “biopolitics” and “biopower”, giving some reasons for this. In the short form, Foucault was thinking in the primitive Capitalism which only relied in repressive powers; but now in the 21th century, that Capitalism doesn’t exist anymore, now we’re in a capitalism (more or less) of desire and individualism.
Re: White nationalism
It’s a very good that mixed-race families were normalized in America decades ago. Whites with immediate non-white family members will not have the option to support white nationalists to be spared from woke tyranny.
I can’t avoid it, I have a certain fondness for freaks in every topics. I’d like to tell you about one of them; I think I’ve referred to him before some time ago in Johns blog, but I’ll remember again if you don’t mind. Félix Rodrigo Mora is a spanish activist and writer who has mixed Bakunin and Guenon, Anarchism and Traditionalism. He’s a former Maoist, a very fringe thinker, who had his ten minutes of relative fame among Anarchist circles here in my country, but now he’s the “black beast” for Acrats. They realized soon that Rodrigo Mora, in spite being and atheist, used to speak well of Christianism as ethical source. His love for Middle Age History also was suspicious for them. I had lost his track some years ago, but I’ve read him again in the web “Virtud y Revolución” (thank you kommentarist Achille!). Between his funniest ideas, he uses to say often that free people in the medieval towns lived in a kind of assembleary democracy. Well, they were better than aristocrats serfs, but “democracy” is a term too used and abused IMHO. Too radical for my political tastes.
Unfortuntely, his writings are fully in Spanish, as long as I know…
What annoys me most about Harry Potter is that in the seventh book, the British Wizarding World is occupied by maybe a couple dozen Death Eaters, some thugs for hire like the Snatchers & werewolves, and mind-controlled victims. Everyone else in the Wizarding World is nominally on Team Good. A handful of assassinations would have overthrown the regime. Maybe the Order of the Phoenix could have “worked on sticking a sword” into the Bad People rather than wait for a 17 year old to come out of hiding and kill Voldemort. Dumbledore was easily powerful enough to take out Voldemort’s forces after he was ousted from Hogwarts by the corrupt Ministry. He could have probably taken the Ministry by force or Imperiused Minister Fudge to mobilize for war (who would be able to tell the difference between mind-controlled Fudge and Fudge acting of his own free will? No one!)
@samurai #216: I have always been intrigued by how the characters in the frame story of the Decamerone take decisions. They are ten young people in the middle of a lawless emergency, who take refuge in the country side and need to pass the time until the emergency is over (a bit like Sheherazade, who needs to tell stories until her life is not in danger anymore). If this was a contemporary disaster movie, they would vote on each decision, or maybe attempt to reach consensus.
Instead, in the Decamerone, each day one of them* becomes “king” or “queen” and gives orders that are cheerfully obeyed by the others. Since the frame story is high-minded and idealistic, none of them gives controversial orders. Nevertheless, it is very different from how we would manage things!
Averaging over ten days, everybody has 1/10th of total power in either scheme – egalitarian, so to say. But it seems to me that having a “king or queen for a day” leads to more time spent doing things (e.g. telling funny or sad stories) and less time spent quarrelling over what to do.
*ignoring their servants, of course – a different can of worms!
@JMG:
What is the “Dark Enlightenment” scene that you refer to in #22? Do they become… endarkened…? O.o
Patrick,
Well there’s the problem that JK Rowling decided to make Voldemort immortal via the Horcruxes, and the only five people in the world who know of Voldemort’s Horcruxes are Voldemort, Dumbledore, and Harry Potter and the trio. So Voldemort cannot be defeated until all the Horcruxes are destroyed, which means killing Harry Potter since he is also one of Voldemort’s Horcruxes.
In the canon 7th book, Voldemort did end up casting the killing curse on Harry Potter and destroyed the Horcrux inside of him in the process, and Harry Potter was sent to the afterlife and had a conversation with the dead Dumbledore. But any attempt for Dumbledore to recruit other Order members to finding and destroying Voldemort’s Horcruxes runs into the problem that they will have to kill Harry Potter to destroy the Horcrux inside of him.
There’s a part of me that wished that JK Rowling ditched the politics and the ideologies completely from the Harry Potter books and simply dealt with the theme of Voldemort’s quest for earthly immortality via Horcruxes and the terrible consequences that arises from that.
Robert M, good heavens. Yeah, Bob Avakian was the chairman of the RCP-USA by the late 1970s and he’s apparently still at it.
Northwind, excellent! Yes, a sole proprietorship with no employees is the ultimate worker-owned business, and the kind that I’m happiest to support. The sort of thing where the workers collectively own and profit from a corporation is second best, and only justifiable in industries where you need many people working together.
Chuaquin, Putin is a pragmatist; Dugin is anything but. As for Garaudy, I’ll put him on the long, long list of pompous French jerks to read when I’m really bored and nothing else will do.
Other Owen, exactly. Trump isn’t Adolf Hitler, but it’s just possible that he could be Paul von Hindenburg.
Patrick, of course! The whole mythology of woke liberalism rests on the false claim that nearly everyone really agrees with them — it’s just a small group of Bad People™ who don’t, and they just need to be rounded up and, er, “reeducated” in order for the woke paradise to arrive. That’s why the Potterverse has to depend on plot absurdities like that one — neither Rowling nor any of her characters can even begin to consider the possibility that the self-proclaimed Good People™ are a small, smug, privileged caste pushing a self-interested agenda on everyone else, and that’s why the whole wizarding world falls so easily into the hands of the people that the Good People™ hate.
Aldarion (if I may), that’s a fascinating point — they picked up and used the familiar method of government in their culture, as we do with the one in ours. Hmm!
Sven, “Dark Enlightenment” is another name for Neoreaction, the ideology launched by Curtis Yarvin aka Mencius Moldbug, Nick Land, and a few others. You can find some nice hysterical rants about them online using “dark enlightenment” as a search string. Mind you, I’m no fan, but I enjoy watching extreme ideologies screech at each other!
Peter @ 220. I think you are hunting dragons where there are none. We don’t know what form a 2nd religiosity might take; American Protestants go through periods of revival every 50 yrs, or so. I, as an American, will not criticize, make fun of or in any other way disrespect someone else’s religious observance provided no laws are broken. I don’t mean so-called “hate speech”, I mean serious crimes like bodies buried in the church lawn or church funds moved to the pastor’s personal account. (I also reserve the right to criticize Christian pastors who own and use private jets.)
Allow me to direct your attention to the remarks of Richard @ 212 and Other Owen @ 217. When people start making fun of your memes, those memes are no longer effective. Like Richard pointed out, we Americans are in the process of throwing off imposed old world dogmas, such as white identitarianism, Marxism, and free market unregulated capitalism.
Anonymouse @ 227, “the entire multicultural Judeo-Christian civil rights framework that defined America from WWII to the present.” I think your statement insults the Civil Rights Movement by ignoring it. Segregation, backed up by terrorism, was still alive and well after WWII. Furthermore, that war ended 80 years ago. Almost a century. Times have changed. “Multiculturalism” was a miserable ideology imposed on the credentialed classes–no one else believed it for a second–in the 1970s, which, spectacularly did. not. work. Insertion of interesting people from overseas, very few non-white Americans have benefitted from multiculturalism, into various agencies and professions has not made life better in any way for ordinary working Americans.
I agree with those above who don’t like mass murder and don’t want our governments funding it.
The things which most clearly characterized American life in the post war era were mass culture, the mass market and the Cold War.
I too had heard of national bolshevism . Apparently Joseph Goebbels had admired Stalin and the Soviet Union in the mid-1920s and briefly dreamt of a bolshevism that would be German-nationalistic rather than pro-Soviet. However, Goebbels soon moved over to Hitler’s side of the Nazi party, seemingly having become entranced by a devotion to Hitler that remained with him to the end, when he and Hitler committed suicide in the bunker in Berlin.
Hitler claimed in private that “I socialise the people, not the economy.” He knew that an abrupt transition to a socialistic economy would have risked collapsing the economy and Germany’s wealth and therefore power.
In the early 1990s I used to walk through an underpass on my way to work her in my little London district. I was intrigued to see on the wall one day a most unusual poster. It showed a fierce-looking man in what looked like a Nazi stormtrooper’s uniform circa 1934, except that it bore no Nazi insignia. The man was standing upright and alone with a snarl on his face and wielding a large baton. In the background was an urban landscape of ruined and / or demolished buildings.
The slogan on the poster proclaimed: “Abandon the cities! Back to the land!” Or did it say “country” or “countryside” rather than land? I can’t be sure now. The words “THIRD WAY” appeared at the top of the poster. It seemed to suggest a weird melding of the early left-wing Nazism of the brothers Otto and Gregor Strasser with the politics of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. It boggled my mind. The “Back to the land” part was presumably pushing the romanticised “blood and soil” element of Nazism that idealised the peasantry, while in practice the Nazis were all for technological modernity and industrialisation, just as the Soviets and the western democracies were, in their different ways. I failed to see how the vision that the poster was pushing could appeal to any common-sense British person, since it would have plunged us into poverty and backwardness.
Normally, angry passers-by would have quickly defaced or torn down any poster with nazi-like imagery, but the underpass where this poster had been put up was not at all heavily used, so it was about three weeks before the poster disappeared. I wish now that I had taken a photo of that poster, which was quite well done in its melodramatic way. I imagine that some adherent of a short-lived neo-nazi movement or party must have been responsible for putting it up.
Lots of interesting comments concerning the Spanish Civil War. Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia has always been a favorite.
I’m hoping that some of the knowledgeable commenters here could provide a list of recommended memoirs from this war. Not books on the overall military and political history but memoirs in the same vein as Orwell’s. I’m especially interested in less well known accounts (at least in the US) such as from the Nationalist side and some of thier more obscure opponents such as Anarchist and out of favor Trotskyite groups like the POUM. Spanish language recommendations are fine.
Don’t forget that Voldemort and the Death Eaters supported a big giant bureaucracy as well, they just wanted the bureaucracy to be used against muggles. Had Voldemort succeeded in taking over Britain, by the 2020s and 2030s, the British wizarding society would have turned against Voldemort and the Death Eaters, because the bureaucracy would have become as parasitic as the bureaucracies are in real life, and the average British wizard would want to destroy the bureaucracy regardless of who was in charge just so they can live a little better.
>Trump isn’t Adolf Hitler, but it’s just possible that he could be Paul von Hindenburg
I’m not convinced a Fearless Leader is out there, who can unite a people who currently have little in common with each other. Ask them sometime, what unites us, and you’ll get crickets in response.
What I think is most likely to happen is it all blows apart into smaller chunks. That sort of happened with the collapse of the Soviet Union, I’d expect it to be more dramatic here.
Trumpachev, not Hindenburg. And we’re awaiting some Yeltsin to step forward and get slapped in the face by it all.
There is plenty of prejudice against muggles in the Wizarding World even amongst the so-called “Good People”. In the first chapter of the first book, Minerva McGonagall reacts with extreme disgust when Dumbledore tells her that he will send Harry Potter to live with his muggle relatives. Does McGonagall dislike Hermione’s parents because they are muggles as well? We don’t know because McGonagall never tells us, but it might be an inference one can make based off her behavior in the first chapter of the first book.
So I seriously question if most of the people in the Order and in British wizarding society really care about reducing prejudice against muggles and defeating the Death Eater ideology. The Order wanted to defeat Voldemort and reconvened for the sole purpose of defeating Voldemort, and British wizarding society wanted to ignore Voldemort at all costs and get Harry Potter to fight Voldemort for them, until Voldemort took over the government. Dumbledore had over a decade to implement reforms in Hogwarts between Voldemort’s disappearance in 1981 and his return in 1995 to counter the Death Eater ideology (such as teaching students to ignore enemies and build a better alternative, etc) but he did nothing of that sort.
Hi John Michael,
All that talk you’re writing about, no wonder hippy communes have a high rate of failure!
A month or so ago I wrote an essay about all the various taxes and fees hanging off my own small business, and it makes for sobering reading. On the other hand, with my own life lived here, I make it as deliberately unappealing as possible through the use of overalls and hard work. Apparently that’s something of a big turn-off. 😉 Who knew?
Funnily enough, the other day the home insurance premium turned up in the mail and the increase was a whopping 45% over last year. I’d describe that as increasingly unaffordable, and that industry may fail by winning. When you write about a bureaucratic class unable (or unwilling) to address day to day problems, I’m of the belief that without the ever increasing government, corporate and household debt, this whole house of cards will tumble. Then we’ll be back to hard work. It ain’t all that bad. Increasing bond yields and a lower demand for the reserve currency will eventually blow that baby up. Why the people in power don’t see that train wreck coming is beyond me.
Your essay keeps bringing to mind a line I read in Jim Kunstler’s most enjoyable World Made by Hand series. Two ex-vet characters were asked their opinion of a bunch of grifters, and one of the two stalwarts replied: They’s socialists 🙂
Cheers
Chris
There are apparently a lot of Mexican and Native American white identitarians these days.
https://aridoamerica.substack.com/p/understanding-mexican-white-supremacists
So any white identitarian movement in the United States will have to deal with this fact, that will make the movement look different from 20th century white identitarianism.
Guillem and Chuaqin
I can’t thank you enough for your detailed responses to my questions. I could have spent years and libraries of books and not discovered this information. I am very grateful to you both. I feel I have gained two friends.
One movie you might enjoy, if it is available, is an English one called Land and Freedom about an Englishman in the anarchist militia. It doesn’t get very ideological, but gives a good feeling of the times.
Thanks again
Stephen
Hey JMG
Fair enough, but I will say that compared to most works of Utopia that assume one lifestyle and ideology must be followed by everyone in the world, the assumption that besides the few regulations that allow the “Bolo’bolo” system to work, every micronation can follow whatever lifestyle or ideology it wants is very refreshing and in a sense realistic.
On the subject of Situationism, are you familiar with the website “The sinister science”? It is written by a guy who, amongst other things, criticises science fiction from a situationist standpoint.
https://thesinisterscience.com/
Dear Scotlyn,
Thank you for your comments about masters without slaves. Self-mastery is the real objective, I agree.
I also meant to thank you last week for your comment quoted below. I feel similarly to Sarhaddon and I needed to hear the message that contempt is optional. Why should I feel superior to all those fools who fell for the jab? Do I need to feel superior? How does feeling superior benefit me? Such things may help create the Master – Slave relationship.
Anyway, thanks for the valuable meditation fodder.
”
@ Sarhaddon #100
What I would add to your observation (being at odds with people who appear – to you – to all be “wrong and have been taken for a ride”), is this.
Being at odds with other people is normal – each of us has a unique set of purposes, experiences, values and interests that shape us. None of us are born knowing everything already, and so learning – which takes time, many lessons, many tests, many challenges – is slow.
The thing I strive to remember is that the opposite of deference is contempt. Loneliness can be hard, and that is actually a reason that many people seek out these comment threads and take part in them. 🙂
But just as we do not NEED to defer to any other person, we do not NEED to fall into contempt for any other person. Both can get in our way, and distract us from the small, but real, powers that WE (each) have, and which only WE (each) can exercise. Other people have their own stories, and they will tell them in their own way.
Be well, and may your intentions be blessed. Stay free!”
“I’ll consider doing a post on the history of the fusion between the arts and politics in 20th-century Europe — the Dadaists, the Surrealists, and the Situationists were merely the high points in a whole world of artistic politics and political art”
Please do; I suddenly realised that Erik Satie and Johnny Rotten have quite a bit in common..
–bk
Regarding Harry Potter, those books do have their charm and storytelling qualities. Having read them all, I can definitely see why HP succeeded to the stratosphere. However, they have their shortcomings too — for one thing, there’s the juvenile nature of the books, restricting both drugs & sexuality, which should’ve been far more prevalent in a boarding school full of teenagers (they’re in the books, but repressed). But more than that, Harry Potter is a product of Progressive Liberalism and the Boomer Truth Regime, as stated in the comments. The finest critique I’ve ever seen of HP was a *chan post from 2017 that’s been screencapped and shared far & wide, which is documented here:
https://ryttu3k.tumblr.com/post/672686578850840576/description-a-text-post-originating-from-4chan
The author is a tankie, so we have our ideological differences, but this is still the most incisive analysis of the books I’ve seen.
Other than that, it always irked me how Slytherin was the villainous house, with a lack of moral ambiguity. And it would’ve made far more sense for the Death Eaters to call themselves the Knights of Walpurgis, with “Death Eater” being a slur used against them. But again, there’s the fundamental conceit that the Other Side must be a bunch of goblins and stormtroopers being evil for the sake of it, and We are morally & intellectually superior. It never crosses their mind that the factions they’re battling are just as human, with their own values, beliefs & concerns, and that the Liberal side are not the paragons of moral virtue they think they are. We can readily see this pattern in the events of the past decade plus, eg Gamergate, Trump/MAGA, and the Russo-Ukrainian war — all of these conflicts are thorny and ambiguous, with understandable motives from the “antagonists”, yet they’ve all been framed as Manichean clashes of light and darkness.
@Scotty (me) #246 – oops, looks like Trotsky disavowd the POUM. Great example of the confusing mix of factions.
(Off topic) To the kommentariat concerned about the Palestinian tragedy: well, I’m not in favor of massacres or induced famines (nobody decent would be me think), but I also think we as westerners we can’t do much for ending the ethnic cleaning perpetred by Netanyahu and his buddies. I see European people more critic with western support for Israeli war than Americans, by I’m seeing in my internet subjective “talks” in another webs. I think we can only pressure our beloved governments to withdraw militar support for Sionist war machine.
By the way, yesterday there was here another riot against participation of Israel team in the Vuelta Ciclista. There were arrested 12 people at Asturias. Days before there were fighting in Bilbao, when the bikes racing arrived to that town. So I think if I were an Israel team cyclist, I’d be pissed off. The irony in this thing is that some cyclist in that team aren’t Israelis…
Guillem # 235:
I’ve read with big interest your comment about Franco and his “friends” at the first movements in Spanish Civil War in 1936. I didn’t know about Queipo’s sarcastic mocking about Franco.
I’d like to tell you my opinion about National side in War times and first Franco dictatorship years.
I think the 1936 rebellion wasn’t clearly a Fascist one. Indeed, you could find supporting the Generals against the Republic a bunch of ideologies mixed together: Traditionalists (Carlists), Monarchists, Right wing people, the Catholic Church and of course the Falangists.(all of them only united by their hate against Marxism). These last people could fit more of less in the Fascist ideology, according to José Antonio Primo de Rovera “thoughts”. However, José Antonio was killed opportunely by Republicans, like you said, so Franco had free way to impose his umbrella “ideology” named “nacional-catholicism”. Falange boys, after their Franco useful role as stormtroopers in the war (cough cough massacres), were desactivated as effective political force on the after war times. When the Fascist Axe lost WW2, Franco was smart enough to abandone his Faux Fascist uniform and adopt the anti-Commie one. So his regime lasted until his death.
Do you agree? I’ve argued this topic with some people and often we don’t agree.
JMG #243: We don’t need to argue more on the Putinesque topic, because we don’t have a personal profit in that topic, me think. I respect your point of view, although I don’t have to share.
Friendly…Chuaquin.
Zemi # 245:
Thanks for your comment on National Bolshevism, I think it’s very interesting. I’d like to add to your view about this topic that indeed, now there’s yet some fringe cult-like National Bolsheviks in the internet, if you don’t mind to be dragged to extremist hate speeches. Me, of course, won’t link that webs.
Scotty # 246:
I’m not an expert in the past century History, but in the short form I could give you two names: Simone Weil and Georges Bernanos. This two people couldn’t be more opposed in their ideological positions, but they had in common their honest view of the war evenings.
Weils “Diaries of War” and Bernanos “Big Cemeteries Under the Moon” are complementaries to see the common atrocities in both sides of Spanish War.
Jack # 251:
I’m not surprised by your comment and link about Mexican and Native American being White Supremacists. If you look at some Far Right South Americans folks, they don’t look like very Indo-Europeans. In spite of their racial origins, they support Western culture and Christian Conservative points of view angryly…
>There are apparently a lot of Mexican and Native American white identitarians these days.
To a certain kind of rigid blue haired fundie, those phrases “white supremacist” and its variants, you can just translate into “f**got” or “poopy person”. It’s just their way of expressing their disapproval at your thinking and behavior. Or existence. I find it amusing that they have to call more and more people those things. It’s almost as if the more they tighten their grip, the more star systems slip through their fingers…
My computer has been repaired now, so I can put here links.
Bernanos book about Spanish Civil War. Well, it was correctly titled “Great Cemeteries…”, not “Big”.
https://www.amazon.com/Great-Cemeteries-Under-Moon/dp/1944418873
I haven’t found an English Translation for the Simone Weil War Diaries. However, I found these links in spanish and French.
https://es.scribd.com/doc/283254859/Weil-Simone-Diario-de-Espana-y-Carta-a-Georges-Bernanos-pdf
https://books.openedition.org/pupvd/35717
At the risk of trying our host’s patience by adding even more discussion about Bertie Scrubb and pals to his post about the Situationists, I’d just like to point out a couple of things since the topic came up. I’m not at all a mindless defender of Rowling, and I agree with most of the criticisms that have come up here (and that HP is hardly the Gods’ gift to fantasy literature, even if it has its charms). That said, I do think Rowling deserves credit for two things.
First, there’s one scene in particular from the fourth (or fifth?) book that still stands out to me, even if it’s been 20 plus years since I read them. Dumbledore barges into Cornelius Fudge’s office and demands that he and the Ministry finally acknowledge that Voldemort is back, after more than a year of official denial. Fudge blusters at first, but his resistance soon collapses, and all he can offer is a plaintive “he can’t be back, Dumbledore. He just can’t.” When I first read JMG’s posts about industrial civilization’s denial of limits and the “30-year vacation from reality”, that scene played at the back of my mind. Just substitute “Voldemort” for “scarcity”. Even if Rowling probably didn’t intend it that way, it can easily be read as a metaphor for how the managerial elite stubbornly refuses to acknowledge material limits. In general the books seem to have a pretty ambivalent attitude towards the managerial state and bureaucracy, even if I do agree it suffers from “Good People Syndrome” at times.
Second, as I’ve pointed out here before, Rowling gave us an absolutely pitch perfect caricature of wokeness with Dolores Umbridge, ten years before it became a phenomenon in the real world. Of course there’s a delicious irony in how so many Millennials who grew up loving to hate Umbridge became woke zealots in their later years.
On a whole different topic, as for Foucault, put me in the camp who’d be very happy if I never had to hear about him again too. I’m unlucky enough to have to deal with mainstream academia again these days, and unfortunately it seems like the cult is still in full flower. JMG, you wrote in an earlier post about “dewey-eyed American intellectual innocents” who took French poseurs too seriously, and that’s definitely what happened here in Norway with the Foucault cult too. I sometimes feel like we’re half-barbarian up here on the fringes, not fully part of the mainland European tradition, so maybe we have a shared intellectual vulnerability with the Americans here.
@The Other Owen #233
“And the sticks in the mud as children, they grow up to be weird. Maybe it’s just a special case of the Rule of Alternation.”
Interesting. That certainly proved to be the case with me, for what it’s worth.
Re: Hakim Bey
@JMG #161
“J.L.Mc12, the fascination that anarchists have for pirates is very similar to the fascination that today’s Neoreactionaries have for Roman legionaries and barbarian warlords. In both cases, you’ve got bookish intellectuals who live entirely in a world of abstractions, full of admiration and envy for people who actually, you know, get out there and do stuff in the world, and don’t care what they break.”
I don’t doubt that this fits the American view of him. From a British perspective, however, you couldn’t be more wrong. Hakim Bey, with his theory of the Temporary Autonomous Zone, was a huge, major influence on the rave culture of the late 1980s and early 1990s, in which sound system organisers took over unused buildings or countryside fields to organise mass dance events. These illegal, unauthorised events grew into a movement that led to the government passing legislation which banned gatherings whose ““music” includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats. If you’ve got Parliament actively targetting you, I’d say you’re doing stuff in the world.
Pirates:
The pirates even at the time were recognised as creating an alternative social model, the floating commonwealth. It famously appealed to ordinary sailors, who happily joined rather than stay within the brutal hierarchy of the contemporary state. My Welsh compatriots, Henry Morgan and Bartholomew Roberts are particular standouts here. The latter was a flamboyant character who insisted that his ships have a band to accompany the crew into combat, and whose motto, “A merry life, and a short one” strikes me as a modern and realistic interpretation of carpe diem or of “Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die“.
This is the underlying theme of Hakim Bey’s Pirate Sanctuaries: he pointed out that many sailors found conversion to Islam and a career as a pirate renegado in Morocco to be a far easier life than their previous existence under repressive regimes in Europe. Frankly, I have a huge amount of sympathy with that sentiment.
AlsoJMG @226
“Putin is a ruthless pragmatist”
Well yes, but more importantly he’s a patriot who believes in furthering the cause and the interest of his nation. In western countries today, that’s a bizarre and outdated notion. It is, nevertheless, where he’s coming from and to not understand that is to not understand anything that’s been happening since 2000.
JMG,
“The purpose of a system is what it does”
I have to believe the principle of “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” was created mere moments after the above was uttered.
@Mary Bennet
But we see that “Civil Rights” and Multiculturalism ended up being one and the same thing. In practice, the Civil Rights Regime (whose legalism arguably supersedes our original constitution, in terms of actual power today) ended up abolishing Freedom of Association for the American people. It would have been one thing if they stopped at merely desegregating public facilities, but of course that’s not how it worked out; bureaucracies only grow; they never slam the brakes on their own affairs, much less self-abolish. The ultimate result of “Civil Rights” is that we now we have government bureaucrats and s-lib activist judges meddling in peoples personal interactions, telling us who we are allowed and not allowed to do business with.
Yeah… the Managerial State twisted Civil Rights into a very effective method of destroying and criminalizing organic communities. Their first targets, back when the apparatus was still mostly controlled by the old WASP elite, were the white (primarily Catholic) proletarian ethnic enclaves in the big industrial cities. Though malicious forced-bussing schemes, their schools and communities were effective destroyed and the people dispersed to the suburbs and turned into generic “white” worker-consumers with very weak cultural identities (i.e. made very malleable for TV propaganda and advertising). Forced Multiculturalism (well, if you happen to be white) was the grand result of so-called “Civil Rights.”
Some of us in the younger generations are very serious about seeing a cultural and legal “de-boomerization” happen during our lifetimes. And a big part of that will be undoing most of the Civil Rights Regime and subsequently resorting some semblance of liberty, as it pertains to individual and community concerns. I’d like to see this happen in a not-so crude or vulgar manner, but y’know, humans are gonna human, so I don’t have my hopes very high on this being a smooth and bloodless process.
@Other Owen
What you say squares well with my own experience. Before the middle of my college years, I was a boring, risk-averse “stick in the mud,” now I’m just weird. And many of the “cool kids” I knew back in the day are totally lame conformists now.
@Jack
That’s a great article, I remember reading it awhile back. Within one of my online circles, the joke is that Mestizo Mexican kids are LARPing as Visigoths, while the whiter ones are LARPing as Aztecs.
To address some comments above,
I think in the US if there ends up being resurgent white identitarian movement that assumes some degree of political power, it’s probably going to be an “off-white” one. What will count as “white” will probably be a lot more flexible than say what Ben Franklin considered to be white. I can use my own extended family as a personal anecdote. I’m white and have a total of 9 first cousins, and 5/9 of them are part Hispanic. Yeah, they’re all white-passing as far as physical appearance is concerned, but the identity they have is more nuanced than a simple White Anglo one. On a more general note, when nonwhites properly assimilate into White American culture, it created a rather complicated cultural situation that can’t be reduced down to mere physical appearance. Those who can’t (or refuse) to assimilate are an unambiguous “other” though.
However, I don’t think hard racial identitarianism as a primary means of killing wokeness is really necessary though. In an idea world (LMAO, yeah right)… (1) Simply enforcing the laws on the book wrt everyday criminality will go a long way toward addressing some of the grievances many of us have on the topic of public safety and decency, and (2) once again allowing American to associate or disassociate with whomever they want for whatever reasons they want, might diffuse a lot of current tensions between different communities.
If an identitarian movement does take power then it’s going to be very tough times ahead for Foundational Black Americans, as their sympathy card has long been maxxed out (thanks, Democrats and Academia) and there’s plenty of Americans from other groups chomping at the bit to come collect on that massive overdraft balance. That future would be quite unfair for the many otherwise decent black folks who might get caught in the crossfire. Ditto for Jews and any resurgent antisemitism that might be bundled with said indentitarian revival.
Robert Mathiesen says:
#166 September 5, 2025 at 11:24 am
“As I’ve said here before, I don’t — I actually can’t — think in sentences or narratives so almost all of my memories are non-verbal, too. I suspect that fact means that I can actually have memories from the time before I had any language. From observing other people, it seems that most of them usually store their memories in the form of verbal narratives, not internal silent movies.”
Fascinating. I have no narrative memory at all, just images and flashes (fully sensory immersion) of moments. Only got a sort of narrative when I had to explore my tax records, etc., to put together a government resume. Now I have some idea, roughly, of what happened when. But no direct or narrative memory. I have the ability to throw words at thoughts that arise. I rarely internally dialogue (though I do). Mostly it’s silence, and images arising. If I can’t picture myself doing a thing, it doesn’t get done. And I have one or two memories of my preverbal life, clear as anything.
Fortunately, my mother was not a completely malevolent creature. She wanted complete control, yes, and indulged in copious gaslighting to get it, among other things, but she was rarely obviously abusive. She wanted me (an Aspie) to fulfill her vision of a good, middle-class and socially conservative life. Hah! Good luck on that one. I’d not have joined the Navy if I hadn’t needed to get as far away as possible, as soon as possible.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to put some things into perspective. I suspect all this runs parallel to issues of our larger society and the various movements of control toward utopias being discussed here.
CBS got caught creatively editing another interview. At this point you have to wonder if they even realize there is such a thing as the truth.
“the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the broadcaster removed over 23 percent of her answers, “exposing the truth about criminal illegal alien Kilmar Abrego Garcia, President Donald Trump’s lawful actions to protect the American people, and Secretary Noem’s commitment to fight on behalf of the American people and their tax dollars.”
CBS initially defended its actions, saying that the unedited version was posted online, but the backlash continued to grow on social media and beyond.”
Reminded me of this;
“But the plans [unaltered interview] were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice [unalteredinterview], didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
Such diminishing trust in mainstream media has to be partly the cause of this.
“”For the third month in a row, people in the United States spent more time streaming on Roku-powered devices than they did watching traditional broadcast television.”
Nielsen’s latest data shows Roku-powered devices accounted for 21.4 percent of all TV viewing in July. Broadcast came in at 18.4 percent. That gap may not seem huge, but it marks a steady trend from May and June where streaming also came out ahead. Roku says its share of TV viewing is up 14 percent year-over-year, which suggests people are not just trying streaming, they’re sticking with it…”
> One of the things that leaves me gagging about the Potterverse is the obsessive insistence that anyone who disagrees with the Good People™ can only be motivated by deliberate, knowing evil — of course nobody could really have a reason to oppose the status quo!
I will not be so foolish as to try to convince you that there really is a good story in Harry Potter once you see past Bertie Scrubb magic and the, especially in the first few books, occasionally rather heavy-handed writing. I personally think so, but then, I grew up reading the books, so perhaps my perspective is just too clouded by nostalgia.
Either way, I’ll have to disagree with that statement. The biggest counter-example, one that I thought you might actually appreciate, is the one that BorealBear already brought up: the Good People™ spend all but the last chapter of the fifth novel in opposition to the status quo because the government bureaucrats have become too sure of their power to see that they could possibly lose. Instead of engaging with the dissident Good People™ to solve the problem and possibly remain in power, Fudge leans heavily on the media to silence their voices until that strategy clearly no longer works. At that point, the elites switch him out for an ex-cop who acknowledges the problem but just repeats the same mistakes directed against different people, as nobody with power in the institutions actually understands how to do anything else. I say the elites switch him out because, canonically, the post of Minister for Magic is usually democratically elected but doesn’t need to be. Meanwhile, in spite of his failures, Fudge just gets demoted to a consultory role rather than kicked out of the government.
—David P.
Corax @ 269, Yours was a most interesting post. Thank you for this. The initial Civil Rights legislation was passed by congress in the mid 1960s. President Johnson had initially offered to a gathering of civil rights leaders that he could issue executive orders to accomplish what they were asking for. The leaders said, no, they wanted actual laws, and repeal of Jim Crow type laws. This was accomplished by Johnson calling in favors from his wide network of political associates, with the help of Rep. Powell, whose contribution ought not to be forgotten. Multiculturalism, that bastard ideology, was imposed on us about a decade later, mid 1970s, as an alternative for actual reparations for slavery, which is what we probably should have done. In the 1970s, reparations was doable, it would have taken about a generation and would have been painful for some but would have been far preferable to what we see now. American colonial possessions were some islands in the Carribean Sea and the Philippines for about a half century. It is not our job to make up for European colonialisms in Asia or Africa.
JMG and Northwind, sole proprietorships with few or no employees were what Medieval guilds were set up to protect. The guilds set quality standards and prices. No outsiders could move into a city and undercut guild members’ livelihoods.
Zemi, thanks for the data point! I note also that Aleksandr Dugin, as a young man, proclaimed himself a National Bolshevist. He’s moved considerably further to the right since then, of course.
Hendrick, that last point is crucial: eventually it becomes clear to everyone who isn’t a bureaucrat that it’s the existence of the bureaucracies, not who happens to staff them, that’s the great problem. Of course that’s the one thing that the laptop class will never mention, because the bureaucratic system is the basis of their power and influence, not to mention where most of them get their paychecks.
Other Owen, we’ve long since passed the point where ideas can unite people. Personalities, not abstractions, are the points of coalescence now. As an inverse example, notice how many people who agree about nothing else agree that the Orange Lord is evil incarnate! In the same way, imagine a charismatic politician who’s not as divisive as Trump, and runs on an “anything but woke” platform that allows most people to think they’d benefit. I think he’d become very popular in a hurry.
Aimee, exactly! That’s just it — the secret agenda of the wizarding world is that nothing must be allowed to change. There’s a past (represented by Voldemort) and a present (represented by the allegedly good people) — but there’s no future, never a thought that there could be something genuinely new on the horizon. Rowling’s idea of victory — a very Blairite, liberal notion — is an eternal present in which the existing state of affairs continues forever.
Chris, at this point the entire superstructure of the lenocratic system is strangling the actually productive sectors of the econmy that support it. It’ll be interesting seeing how that plays out, if dodging fallng bureaucrats is interesting…
Jack, I know. One of the most racist people I’ve ever met, a guy who liked to praise Hitler, was Native American. The thing to keep in mind is that racial identity is always a construct, and it’s defined by who it excludes, not who it includes. We’re not that far from the time when Italians weren’t considered white; we may not be too far from the time when Hispanic and Native American people are considered white.
J.L.Mc12, so noted. Thanks for the reference!
BK, they do indeed!
Xcalibur/djs, that is indeed a precise and cogent critique! It’s quite correct, of course — and so is yours.
Other Owen (if I may), ah, but it’s more interesting than that. Many Hispanics consider themselves white, and I’ve seen the first stirrings of alignment between conservatives on both sides of the line, such as it is, dividing Hispanics and the rest of the self-identified white population. As for Native Americans, that’s another wild card in the free-for-all of American racial identification. Did you know that straight through the two-century-long era when black American men weren’t allowed to join regular Masonic lodges, Native American men were welcomed into those same lodges? (One of the men who received the degrees of Masonry at the same time I did was from the Seneca nation, interestingly enough.) That label “white” is a social construct, not a biological one, and it’s been defined in many different ways over the centuries. It may be in the process of being redefined again.
BorealBear, I’m profoundly sorry to hear that you have to deal with Foucault! How dreary.
Bogatyr, interesting. You’re right, that’s not something we saw of him over here.
GlassHammer, I think “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is the older principle, and the systems theoreticians simply found a way to make it sound slightly more respectable.
Siliconguy, because of course they did. I wonder whether they’re going to figure things out before the three (formerly) big networks declare bankruptcy…
David P., by “the status quo” I don’t mean the specific identities of the people in power. I mean the whole structure of the Ministry of Magic and the rest of it. The struggle between Dumbledore and Fudge was purely over how the status quo was to be preserved, not over whether it should change in any general way.
Mary, it was a good system when the economy was localized enough that the manufacturers in one city or region couldn’t flood other cities or regions with cheap mass-produced products — a process that was already under way two centuries before the Industrial Revolution, interestingly enough.
@BorealBear,
I had an interesting realization recently that a lot of the things I dislike most about the Canadian government of late are exactly the same things I always loathed about Dolores Umbridge. And yes, they remind me of her. So you may have a point, even if this particular millennial didn’t stop disliking the similarities.
There is this article from Time Magazine dated to March 16, 1942, which indicates what the Protestant churches had planned for America and the world after WWII:
https://time.com/archive/6603746/religion-american-malvern/
I’d like to echo and endorse what Bogatyr (#267) said about Putin, whom our host has also rightly characterized as a “ruthless pragmatist”:
“Well yes, but more importantly [Putin is] a patriot who believes in furthering the cause and the interest of his nation. In western countries today, that’s a bizarre and outdated notion. It is, nevertheless, where he’s coming from and to not understand that is to not understand anything that’s been happening since 2000.”
In a Russian context, an ethnic Russian who is a patriot is also, as a general rule, going to be a Russian Orthodox Christian of one sort or another — as Putin in fact has always been (having been secretly been baptized as a child with the connivance of his grandfather), and as Dugin now is (having adopted one of the so-called “Old Believer” forms of Russian Orthodoxy as an adult).
Public gestures such as Putin’s visiting and venerating the relics of Alexander Nevsky, speak volumes to Russians in a way that has no parallel in the so-called “West.” Indeed, I would go so far as to say that American politicians simply lack the mental categories necessary to understand Putin (and similar Russian leaders such as Medvedev), and most will never acquire them. One simply cannot make any sense of modern Russia and its actions in the world stage if one does not have a deep knowledge of Russian Orthodox Christianity. The modern West has nothing like it, not even in countries where the Roman Catholic Church still plays a strong cultural role.
How many Western politicians have even heard of the ancient and still wide-spread Russian notion that Moscow is literally the “Third Rome,” foreordained by God to succeed the “First Rome” (Rome itself) and the “Second Rome” (Constantinople) as the center of the (Christian) world empire? Even modern, relatively secular Russians are aware of this as a leading factor in the unfolding history of Russia.
One of the Ancients said, “Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.” I would add that making them ignorant and stupid works almost as well. Honestly, I sometimes despair of the very survival of the United States, and grieve for its fall!
>I wonder whether they’re going to figure things out before the three (formerly) big networks declare bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is so 20th century. If you’re big and connected enough, you get nationalized instead, like with Intel.
Re: Harry Potter again
I am going to state the elephant in the room: the main appeal of Harry Potter is the compelling worldbuilding of Hogwarts. Namely, the young reader’s capacity to imagine him or herself getting their Hogwarts letter delivered by owl that tells them they’re superior to almost everyone else going to Diagon Alley to have their unique wand choose them, getting Sorted into a house, becoming a Quidditch star with no effort on their part, etc. It takes us years to notice how flawed the books really are.
To use a similar example, I read Christopher Paolini’s Eragon years before I watched the first Star Wars movie. I immediately realized that Eragon is just the plot of Star Wars transplanted to a generic fantasy setting. And it’s the best book of the series, because the success of Eragon made the author (even more) full of himself, and the later books were overwrought & boring. The cliches were unfamilar to the target demographic of nerdy ten year olds, in both Eragon & HP.
Here’s a story JK Rowling will never write. A disease is turning wizards into muggles, and it has the Ministry of Magic in a blind panic. In their heavy handed incompetent haste, they create a disastrous potion that makes everything worse and speeds up the disease. But they can’t admit they screwed up so they keep insisting all wizards must drink this potion. A few wizards rebel while the majority of the wizarding world collapses around them.
Come to find out the disease came from the Ministry of Magic itself, some secret project that went awry.
@Anonymous (#276):
Thank you so much for this article from 1942. I had never heard of this meeting before, and it is highly significant.
However, I would note that its chairman was John Foster Dulles, and thus its resolutions can be better seen as one step in the efforts of the notorious Dulles brothers (Alan Dulles was the other brother) to shape a post-war world under the firm and surreptitious control of the USA. Here John Foster was simply co-opting Protestant Churches into their program. Contrary to what the article claims, the initiative for these resolutions surely came from the chairman, Dulles, not from the attending churches.
In that case, fair enough. If you’re taking that lens, then I would argue that the lesson presented is even worse than just “everybody who agrees with the status quo is Good and everybody who disagrees is Bad”.
Dumbledore does not approve of the status quo. Perhaps not as strongly as we’d like where muggles are concerned but, I do get the impression that he recognised they are in many ways equal to wizards once he’d gotten over the edgy phase in his teenage years. Either way, he quite definitely sees the denizens of the wizarding world as equal. He does not care one bit about “blood status”. He offers Dobby a rather generous salary. He recruits centaurs, half-giants, and werewolves.
And yet, he does nothing to change the system. Even in the tiny world of Hogwarts, when push comes to shove, he caves to the system over and over again.
To give one of many small-scale examples, he apparently got the convicted murderer Hagrid a job at the very school where the murder had taken place when he wasn’t even headmaster. And yet, when, years later, Lupin the werewolf resigns from his position and returns to a life of poverty, Dumbledore apparently doesn’t even try to convince him to stay. Perhaps the school council would have forcibly ejected Lupin from his position at the school but Dumbledore has to have the resources to support Lupin covertly, perhaps have him team up with Sirius or use him as a spy. Yet, he does nothing of the sort. I can only imagine that he does so out of fear for his reputation.
Arguably on a more important scale, when Fudge does turn on him later on, he resists covertly but as far as I can tell, he does nothing to fend of the smear campaign or laws against him. He tells the public that Voldemort is back and, apparently, that’s it. Clearly, many important people still respect him despite the Ministry’s best efforts, so why not use those to defend himself?
Well, we canonically know the answer to that: he’s afraid of what he’d do when given power. Rather than growing above his failings in the Grindelwald affair, he is forever held back by a mistake he made as a teenager. Thus, he cannot admit to himself that he has gathered quite a substantial amount of power and has to shirk the responsibility it gives him.
The real tragedy is that, up until the very end, Harry was set up overcome his teacher’s neurotic failure For most of book seven, he struggles to choose between following Dumbledore and rejecting him. Clearly, he should have learned to transcend him, to recognise both the good intentions and the mistakes, and to actually follow through on the former. Yet, in the end, Harry chooses to follow. Worse still, he apparently learns the entirely wrong lesson and assumes that good motivations excuse everything, naming one of his sons after Snape of all people.
Having rejected his call as leader or teacher, both roles which suit him perfectly, he opts to become an agent of the status quo. And so, to use the series’ closing words, he deluded himself into thinking that “all was well”.
You know, this is a perspective that sort of “jumped me”, if that makes sense. I didn’t think I’d be this critical when starting the comment but then Dumbledore’s role hit me and the rest followed from there.
—David P.
Dolores Umbrage was also one of the people in the Ministry of Magic who willingly helped Voldemort and the Death Eaters establish their reign of terror over Britain and persecute muggles in the 7th book. Really shows that bureaucrats don’t really care about morality or ideology, they just want to maintain their bureaucratic power at all costs.
There are apparently also Asian white nationalists in America today:
https://www.waltbismarck.com/p/interviewing-an-asian-white-nationalist
@Chuaquin, In general, yes, i agree with what you’ve said. It isn’t hard, since what you’ve exposed is very well proven.
If people don’t agree with you in Spain, it’s probably because they have been fed a fake , disney-like version of the Civilian war, with the good and bad guys neatly arranged each in it’s proper side.
The true “Fascists” of the old Falange, the “camisas viejas” or “Joseantonianos” were always a minority, that grew mightily once Franco took control of the party and turned it into the official “National” ideology. The “camisas viejas” looked the new members with contempt, because they understood that most of them were arribists (don’t know if this word makes sense in english) oportunists, and called them ” Camisas nuevas”.
I’ll probably add that Franco did not completely corner the “Falangists” after 1943. Rather, he let them keep some power because he intended to use them as a counterweight against the rest of his Allies: The Church and the Monarquics, and later the Opus Dei technocrats.
They were also useful at the SEU, to beat leftist students and keep liberal professors permanently scared.
Also, do you know that many people, even some of his Generals including Queipo, did try to force Franco to resign during the forties, and hand down power either to the Borbons or to an elected government?
@ Seaweedy #254
Thank you! 🙂
So, since you are already feeling thoughtful, let me plant just one more little seed… for thinking with.
Which is my immediate response to the concept of “self-mastery”… which goes like this.
IF one cannot be a “master” without subjugating a “slave”, THEN, “self-mastery” implies that there must be a “self-slave” to be subjugated….
Personally, I do not wish to enslave any part of myself, although there are (probably, as R. Mathiesen is constantly telling us) many parts to “myself”. And, in my personal experience, IF *I* go to war with *myself* THEN, whoever wins, some aspect of *me* must lose.
A conundrum. 🙂
May your goings and doings be blessed!
JMG,
So once again “common sense” is revealed to be the most esoteric set of human knowledge.
I remember being at a lefty gathering back in the day when word spread that the secret police had infiltrated the crowd dressed as hippies.
Not to worry: “You can tell who they are because they polish their shoes.”
@ Other Owen #280 –
Great scenario! A big improvement on the original.
David P.
That’s why so many people in the fandom hate the canon epilogue:
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Epilogue%3F_What_Epilogue%3F
If I understand the concept of Detournament correctly, internet memes are the modern expression of the concept, being reinterpretations of existing works to convey a different message.
Robert M, it’s Russia’s immense good fortune that in its post-Soviet crisis, it found a leader whose skills as a pragmatic politician and whose alignment with the culture mean that he will almost certainly be remembered as Bторой Bладимир Bеликий, a second Vladimir the Great. As for those the gods would destroy, I’d almost be happier to see some genuine florid psychosis these days. Bland ignorant vacuity seems to be the preferred divine instrument of vengeance in our present situation.
Other Owen, we’ll have to wait and see. I suspect from time to time that Trump would rather see at least one of the networks collapse completely in bankruptcy and humiliation, so that he can dance on its smoldering ruins.
Patrick, of course! By pushing that fantasy, in turn, those books helped convince much of a generation to keep marching blindly into the university system, long after that had become little more than a scheme for pushing predatory loans on vulnerable borrowers.
Other Owen, come on, that’s just so utterly improbable! 😉
David P, yes, that makes a great deal of sense. The ultimate virtue of the laptop class is always obedience to the system; it’s fine to have your doubts, and even to propose changes, but when push comes to shove, shutting up and doing what you’re told is what you’re paid to do, and what you do.
Jack, that doesn’t surprise me either. The famous “rooftop Koreans” who defended their properties in Los Angeles against rioters have become folk heroes of the far right, after all.
Guillem (if I may), the French word arriviste has been borrowed into English, and is probably the word you’re looking for.
GlassHammer, in a society this far gone in the barbarism of reflection, common sense is the most uncommon of human capacities.
Martin, I have similar memories! The other thing that the old radicals I knew would do is to wait for them to start trying to encourage illegal activities, and then out them as Feds. I think I’ve quoted the standard line: “The only people who advocate for illegal activities in public are agents provocateurs and morons. Which are you?” (I note that today’s online radical communities have similar habits — the term “fedposting” can be found there.) As for memes, they can be détournements, but they don’t have to be. Some memeposters create their own images, after all.
@David P
Remus Lupin was an irresponsible, selfish coward who deserved to be sacked. As a professor, he had a responsibility to inform the authorities that the man he believed to be an insane terrorist has an Animagus form, and to collapse the secret passages connecting the school to Hogsmeade. Not only did he fail to do that, Lupin FORGOT to take the potion that would let him keep his mind when transformed on the night of the full moon and could have mauled or turned staff/students/villagers if not for luck. (And Remus is one of the few werewolves not radicalized into hating the society that screws them over. Those werewolves likely can’t be integrated into Magical British society, even if later generations of lycanthropes can enjoy equal rights).
And Hagrid was raising a monster with a taste for human flesh in his dorm. Dippet was right to expel him before Aragog gave into his instincts and attacked others.
I’ll also say that some woke causes are like if the Ministry embraced Hermione’s SPEW activism because it sounds progressive, and coerces everyone (house elf and wizard) into pretending that house elves are just like human slaves and need to be liberated.
Yeah, the world situation is crazed and sucky. One of the unpleasant truths and understandings found in the New Testament is that like it or not this world is inhabited by active potent evil forces/beings along with the intrinsic weaknesses and negativities found in humans and even woven into the material. There are also countering positivities both human and spiritual and material but this conflict will not be resolved prior to return of Jesus and the Re-Creation and that it will get worse before it gets better
@JMG #226 “Chuaquin, I’ve read a little of Dugin’s work, but not enough to have a strong sense of his take on things. What I’ve read suggests that he’s a European reactionary of the classic type, the sort of thinker who despises the Nazis for being too liberal, and also has drawn on the Traditionalists to some extent.”
While we do have some intellectuals of that type here, the impression I have of Dugin (though I also haven’t read that much of him) is that he is something different, if not necessarily for the better. He is a postmodern omnitotalitarian – in his own words, “we support any [ideocratic] project so long as it is great and terrible”. A kind of postmodern embrace of ideocracy for ideocracy’s sake, of strong, vigorously violent “Eurasian” regimes driving their peoples towards greater glory and meaning, even if it must be manufactured out of nothing, and overriding their petty, selfish “Atlantic” desires for everyday comfort, security and wealth. I think he does borrow some ideas from Traditionalists, but it is not typical of a classical European or Russian reactionary to praise Stalin and co-found something called the National-Bolshevik Party with its black hammer-and-sickle emblem (even if he drifted away from it later).
He is rather more eclectic and versatile, and also very reminiscent of those bookish intellectuals craving action you describe – only in his case it is primarily hypercollectivist action, with a masculine state going around and breaking things for the sake of a great spiritually-uplifting idea. I think he may have been playing up religious fundamentalist themes in recent years, and he may be genuinely devout in his highly idiosyncratic way, but it is just one of the flavours at his disposal. The classical reactionaries that I know of despise him – everything else aside, any positive view of Bolshevism is a red line for them.
I agree, though, that all of this has very little if any influence on Putin…
Oh, by the way, out of curiosity I looked up whether Dugin had anything to say about the Situationists. Apparently he wrote an article called “Guy Debord is Dead: the Spectacle Goes On” in the Limonka, the National-Bolshevik periodical (named after the late party leader Eduard Limonov and also the Russian slang term for a grenade). Sadly I cannot find the article itself, but other mentions indicate that Dugin admired and agreed with Debord’s insights, though no doubt he also interpreted those in his idiosyncratic and rather convoluted fashion. Then again… well, he is pretty much in the same boat, only perhaps unusual for being a beta-leftist and a beta-rightist all at once. Perhaps they really did see eye to eye.
“And sometimes I wonder if an alien species that has entirely different experiences would use a completely different way to explain the same physics.”
Stars Reach and Sabine reach the same conclusion.
“https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wh5NAM0oNaQ”
Warning, Fourier transforms are just the warm up for this, and wave/particle duality appears as well.
S. Pearson # 252;
I’m glad you’ve had a good use of my comments and Guillems too. I can also tell you I’ve seen Land and Freedom in a movie theater alot of years ago, and I liked it. In a lot of details it’s a true story, from the point of view of Leftism not Communist. Bad boys are both the Franco boys and the Stalin people (Commies), so the good people are Trotskists and Anarchist. However, I can say that some Anarchists and Trotskos did bad things too during the War, so they weren’t angels; but directors movie Ken Loach has had always fondness for Trotskism…
@Scotlyn #286
“Which is my immediate response to the concept of “self-mastery”… which goes like this.
IF one cannot be a “master” without subjugating a “slave”, THEN, “self-mastery” implies that there must be a “self-slave” to be subjugated….”
Hah! My thoughts exactly. I suppose one way around the impossible position of being “a master with no slaves” is being both master and slave. Whether that is a path to enlightenment or to miserable self-torture is not immediately obvious, though. I do think self-control and discipline have their uses, and that does require subordinating one or more parts of yourself to another part of yourself. But slavery makes me anxious, and I’m not sure that’s solely the result of the modern rejection of it as a social institution. Even if I try think about it as a pre-modern for whom slavery is just another unpleasant fact of life, I cannot help but notice that slaves often cheat their masters and sometimes rebel and kill them…
JLMC12 #253:
“On the subject of Situationism, are you familiar with the website “The sinister science”?”
I’m not familiar, I didn’t know it. Thank you for your link. It’s always comforting to see Situs aren’t dead yet, or at least their Post-Situationists heirs, so we can read their comments about science fiction.
Boreal Bear #266
“On a whole different topic, as for Foucault, put me in the camp who’d be very happy if I never had to hear about him again too. I’m unlucky enough to have to deal with mainstream academia again these days, and unfortunately it seems like the cult is still in full flower. JMG, you wrote in an earlier post about “dewey-eyed American intellectual innocents” who took French poseurs too seriously, and that’s definitely what happened here in Norway with the Foucault cult too. I sometimes feel like we’re half-barbarian up here on the fringes, not fully part of the mainland European tradition, so maybe we have a shared intellectual vulnerability with the Americans here.”
Well, if a rock-star philosopher like the German-South Korean Byung-Chul Han dares to criticise godlike Foucault, his days as Armchair Leftist Cult haven’t no much future. At least in Spain and France, some FAr Leftists are moving away his long shadow, as I’ve written before.
Guillem # 285:
“Also, do you know that many people, even some of his Generals including Queipo, did try to force Franco to resign during the forties, and hand down power either to the Borbons or to an elected government?”
I didn’t know that fact…It’s amazing. I only knew that relationship between Franco and Don Juan de Borbón (King Juan Carlos I father) weren’t very quiet for some years…
Thank you for your comment!
I’ve seen a lot of comments about Harry Potter books; well, if you like to argue about them you’re in your right you’ll kommentariat! However, my tastes are quite more pedantic: I can’t avoid it, I prefer High Literature.
Now, I’d like to comment about a novel which happens in a “hotel” for tuberculosis patients. Of course, I’m talking about “The Magic Mountain”, written by Thomas Mann.
John and some part of the kommentariat, I think you’ve have read this thick book; and to the part of kommentariat who hasn’t read it yet, I encourage them to read it.
I could be hours and hours writting or speaking about this fabulous novel, but I’m going to pay attention only to two characters who plays an influential role in main character -Hans Castorp- adventure: Settembrini and Naphta. Both represent, IMHO, politics and life attitudes, but they’re opposite in their points of view.
Settembrini (a Italian Free Mason if I remember it well) is the humanist, mild Liberal/moderate Conservative who believes in democratic order.
Naphta (a former Jew converted to Catholicism, and Jesuitic) represents an Extremist mix of Marxism, Anarchism and Far Right.
Both characters fight dialectically first in front of Castorp young eyes, but the tension groes until they decide to fight a duel. OK, I won’t tell you who dies and who survives that duel, if you haven’t read this novel. No spoiler here.
It’s interesting to me that Mann doesn’t present a fighting between typical Left/Right dycothomy, but an opposition between western democracy and extremisms. This is my personal view, if you John and kommentariat agree or disagree, I’d pleased to read your answers. Thanks on advance.
————————————————————————————————————————–
Another topic I had in my mind this evening before entering here in JMGs blog, it’s about Noam Chomsky. I’ve read some of his writings, not all, and I’ve always had the same question about him. Is he a real and proud Anarchist, or maybe a shamefaced crypto-Communist? I expect, dear John and dear kommentariat, that my doubt doesn’t seem silly to you…
@JMG So, ho do you spell it in english? Just like in French? And if i may, does it get used often?
@Chuaquin,
Much thanks for the memoir suggestions and the links!
@Scotty I didn’t knew that Trotsky disavowed the POUM. Nonetheless, Dolores Ibarruri and the PCE propaganda during the war called them that.
About books and war journals and diaries, it’s dificult to make a recomendation since the ones i’ve read have somehow mixed in my mind, and i don’t remember them well individually. Plus, many of them i read in Catalan.
Have you heard about Valentín Gonzalez ” el Campesino”? He was a Commie superstar, if that’s even possible. A propaganda hero, complete with a custom cloak, to make him more recognizable. That’s why i say that comunists were masterful propagandists, starting from that famous soviet poster that says “Read Books”!
The man fled to Russia after the war, and later wrote a book about her nightmarish experience once he got there… It’s free to download these days, and worth at least a casual reading, although it not deals with the war directly.
@JMG and Robert M, the US leadership is a beacon of intelligence compared to the EU leadership. The EU chief of foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, recently claimed that Russia and China were not among the winners of WW2. She was serious about it and added that many people these days don’t know history because they don’t read books https://x.com/DavidLe76335983/status/1963621371520434455
As for the possible British turn around in immigration, there are some great and stinging songs going around to make the point. For people who do video/audio: Scottish Dundee Axe Girl Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vviurY3SIY or https://x.com/GenFlynn/status/1964124667385630980 Also an Irish song: https://x.com/irishpatriot91/status/1946893640682332257 (YT version is already deleted)
@JMG, If i can bother you with yet another question, would you consider Eurocomunism the point at wich post-war alpha comunists started turning into beta-comunists?
Thanks for all the free-reign you have given this week to discuss off-topic matters.
Guillem.
BeardTree, the idea that things will inevitably get worse identifies you as a premillennial Protestant. There’s an entire school of postmillennial theology that claims that things will get better and better until the Second Coming puts the capstone of perfection on it. It’s unfashionable these days — I think it had its last period of popularity during the 1950s — but it interests me that two groups of equally intelligent and devout Christians can read the same scriptural prophecies and interpret them in such diametrically opposed ways.
Daniil, fascinating! It’s been a wry observation of mine for quite some time that if you go far enough to the right you end up on the left, and vice versa. Dugin may be the ultimate proof of that.
Chuaquin, not only have I read (and greatly enjoyed) Mann’s novel (and many of his other works), I used it just under a decade ago to talk about the terminal crisis of the Western establishment:
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2016/04/where-on-titanic-would-you-like-your.html
As for Chomsky, he’s neither. He’s one of the supreme examples of the beta-radical in American public life, busily sucking at the teat of the system he loves to denounce. Oh, and he’s also responsible for stopping American linguistics in its tracks for half a century by pushing, via grubby academic politics, a theory of grammar that makes it painfully clear that the only language he’s ever really mastered is American English. No, I’m not a fan — how can you tell? 😉
Guillem, the French spelling is standard in American English — we shoplift words that way quite often. Like a lot of borrowings from French, it’s mostly used by geeky intellectuals like me.
Boccaccio, okay, that had my jaw hanging wide open. Since I don’t think anyone can actually be that stupid, I can only assume that she read Orwell’s 1984 as an instruction manual.
Guillem, I’d have to learn more about Eurocommunism before I could make that call and, er, it’s not that high on my list of interests.
Regarding the discussion of Remus Lupin and other Harry Potter characters:
I will preface this by saying that I am absolutely part of Generation Potter, meaning that on average, my age upon the release of the books averaged out roughly to Harry Potter’s age. I suspect I have read the first four books more than ten times (and yes, was disappointed when I did not get an owl at 11), and have read all but the final book more than once.
The success of the Harry Potter franchise is a reflection of the moral poverty of my generation – the only book I read – or indeed the only moral instruction that I received – that actually dealt with certain existential issues like love and death in my childhood was the Harry Potter books. My parents are wealthy and did their best, but they are of the generation they are. The first time I seriously thought about voluntarily sacrificing my life was reading the final Potter book, which in turn opened my mind to other ideas.
I could also be identified as a Roman Catholic Christian – “Before Jesus’ triumphant return, the Church anticipates trials, including an increase of evil and persecution, natural disasters, a great apostasy, and the presence of false prophets and an Antichrist figure, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC)”
Or an Eastern Orthodox Christian – “In Eastern Orthodoxy, the period before Christ’s second coming is a time of intensified spiritual warfare, increased global suffering, and deception”
According to some quick research classic postmillennialism was a post reformation Protestant understanding that flowered in the optimistic USA after the Revolution and became dominant in the American mainline Protestantism that then proceeded to be disappointed by 20th century events.
Looking at Matthew chapter 24 among many scriptures Postmillenialism comes across to me as wishful thinking of someone trying to deny something unpleasant. But then wishful thinking is a common description of Christianity, but since the Triune God is alive and present to me I remain stuck in that mode.
Regarding some of the comments on master/slave etc, I could not help myself:
Self-mastery is slavery! Second-hand thoughts of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but their brains!
The Irish song mentioned by Boccaccio is called Shadows over Tara by the Crack Tracks and can be found reuploaded on Youtube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkbcZo1FqhE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngqQIt6njoU
To those of you who want a villain who believes in a kind of stasis to be defeated by a Bertie Scrubb who believes in something, has ideas and plans for a future different from both the present and the past, and forms his own faction: Bertie Scrubb and the Methods of Rationality exists – not that you’d like it.
@JMG#63: “The only way for the elites to get ahead of a potential fascist movement is to purge the system of the people and interests who stand in the way of necessary reforms, make a lot of changes in a hurry, get the support of the majority, and use the full repressive power of the state against anyone who tries to push things further in a fascist direction than the ruling interests want to go. That’s what happened in the US after FDR took office in 1933, and it’s what’s happening right now.” &
@JMG#198: “The people shrieking about how Trump is a fascist are incapable of realizing that right now he’s the one genuine alternative to fascism we’ve got.”
I’m no Trump-worshipper, but I certainly hope that his administration is successful in catering to the legitimate disillusionment of the population regarding the red/blue status quo. Just like I hope that he is able to foil the globalist economic elite’s plans (as described by Tom Luongo, which I believe has some credence). However, woe be to the nation to the north (Canada) as well as nations across the pond (the UK and nations of the EU), whose ruling classes have apparently decided to play “chicken” with the potentially fascist-influenced segment of their populations. Something tells me that fascists aren’t the kind to “swerve” in the game of “chicken” as their members tend to be made of sterner stuff than the laptop/bureaucrat/lenocrat class – especially when they feel that they have nothing left to lose! Seeing what’s been happening in England recently, Rudyard Kipling’s 1917 poem “The Beginnings” has been running through my mind a fair bit lately.
@JMG: “”
This is known as Chiliasm, and has been condemned by the Orthodox Church.
The late Archbishop Averky (Taushev) commented as follows:
“These first six verses of the twentieth chapter of the Apocalypse have served as a pretext for the development of a false teaching concerning the “thousand-year reign of Christ on earth” which has received the name of Chiliasm. In essence it teaches that not long before the end of the world, Christ the Saviour will come again to earth, defeat Antichrist, resurrect the righteous, and make a new kingdom on earth. As a reward for their struggles and sufferings, the righteous will reign together with Christ for the course of a thousand years, and will enjoy all the good things of temporal life. Only then will there follow the second, universal resurrection of the dead, the universal judgment, and the general giving of eternal rewards. This teaching is known in two forms. Some say that Christ will restore Jerusalem in all its beauty and reinitiate the fulfillment of Moses’ ritual law with all its sacrifices; and that the blessedness of the righteous will consist in all manner of sensual enjoyments. In the first century this teaching was held by the heretic Cerinthus and other judaizing heretics: the Ebionites, the Montanists, and in the fourth century by the Apollinarians. Others, on the contrary, have affirmed that this blessedness will consist in purely spiritual delights. In this latter form, chiliastic ideas were expressed first by Papias of Hieropolis; later they are to be found in the holy Martyr Justin, in St. Irenaeus, in Hippolytus, Methodius and Lactantius. In recent times it has been revived with certain peculiarities by the Anabaptists, the followers of Swedenborg, the Illuminati and Adventists. One must be aware, however, that neither in its first nor in its second form can the teaching of Chiliasm be accepted by an Orthodox Christian ….”
He goes on to explain that the Gospels plainly speak of only two comings of Christ, not a third, and that a literal interpretation of this chapter contradicts other parts of Scripture. He concludes:
“Certain ancient teachers of the Church—Justin, Irenaeus and Methodius—held Chiliasm only as a personal opinion. At the same time there were those who decidedly rose up against it such as Caius the Presbyter of Rome, St. Dionysius of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, St. Basil the Great, St.Gregory the Theologian, St. Epiphanius, Blessed Jerome, and Blessed Augustine. To hold Chiliasm even as a private opinion was no longer permissible after the Church, at the Second Ecumenical Council in 381, condemned the teaching of the heretic Apollinarius concerning the thousand-year reign of Christ. At the same time this was confirmed by the introduction into the Symbol of Faith of the words “of His Kingdom there will be no end.”
“One must likewise know that the Apocalypse is a book which is profoundly mystical, and therefore to understand and interpret literally the prophecies contained in it—especially if such a literal understanding contradicts other passages of Sacred Scripture—is entirely opposed to the rules of hermeneutics. In such cases, it is correct to seek in perplexing passages a metaphorical or allegorical meaning.”
Some Orthodox scholars interpret the “thousand year reign” as the Church Age (i.e., the present age), after the Resurrection but before the Last Judgment. Again, that is a theological opinion, and is not dogma.
Justin, please permit gently to suggest that you have confused what you call “moral poverty” of your generation with the actual insufferable drek that was offered as intellectual fare and entertainment to your generation. Interminable series about bratty, oh, excuse me, assertive, children; crap books about adorable unicorns and rainbows, kids TV and movies each more stupid than the one before. I know this because I was raising children at the time. I had to strictly supervise TV, not only forbidding sexualized content but stupid as well, and obsessively comb public libraries for what I considered suitable books for little girls. Both loved Dorrie the little witch and Ms. Frizzel. The youngest read all of the original Nancy Drew books, till she figured out the formula. The Miyazaki animated films were like clear spring water in a desert when I was finally able to buy them.
@JMG (#348) on Noam Chomsky:
If possible, my opinion of Chomsky and his linguistic theories is even lower than yours. From the very beginning of his career he was an advanced master of what (following Stephen Potter) I might call “academic gamesmanship.” (That’s the “art” of winning academic power and status by any means it takes, however devious.) Despite his fashionably radical, anti-establishment political views, he somehow managed to get much of his early linguistic research at MIT funded by grants from the US Department of Defense(!), which took some pretty impressive politicking! He also seemed to me to prefer cultivating loyal disciples rather than encouraging independent thinkers among his students, and IMHO there is no offense worse than that in academic life.
When Chomsky’s first books came out in the late 1950s and the 1960s, most young linguists were fascinated by the new vistas he seemed to open up before the profession, and I among them. But when you read his books, and especially his technical articles, with critical eyes, checking every claim against data from a fairly wide range of languages that Chomsky himself seemed never to have looked at, and also checking every published reference he cited in support of his arguments, his elegant and apparently powerful theories turned out to rest on foundations of loose sand. (It helped a lot that, unlike most linguists in those days, I had already had some academic training to formal and mathematical logic, so his quasi-mathematical notation in some of his more technical articles published in computer-science and engineering journals did not put me off, as it did many of my colleagues.) Eventually I just stopped paying attention to his ongoing work.
Chuaquin @297
I would say that everyone did bad things in the civil war, as in every war, certainly in the only one I was ever in.. My feeling in Land and Freedom was of the director’s sympathy for the individual militia soldiers, not for the anarchist militia as such. I think the atrocities they committed in Barcelona are pretty well known. I think a lot of soldiers start in a war with the belief in the justice of their cause more than a specific belief in the doctrine of whatever army or party they are fighting for, be it communist, fascist, democratic, monarchist, religious, nationalist or whatever. Do you know the Buffy St. Marie song ” the Universal Soldier” or Joan Baez ” Saigon Bride”. Then they are usually thrown away at the end of it. As I said, I have only ever been in one war, but I have known a lot of people who have been on a lot of sides in a lot of wars.
To me the simplest breakdown of sides in the civil war, and in Europe and the west in general was that the left saw themselves fighting for freedom and universal rights, and the right saw themselves fighting to defend traditional European/western values, not that the right was specifically opposed to human rights or the left to European values. Obviously there were extremists on both sides. I know/know of many people in the Anglosphere who were communist party members in the 20s and 30s and left the party when they learned of Soviet brutality. On the other side, for instance, W.B. Yeats was a fascist sympathizer, as was my father, because he felt they defended European culture .Quien sabe. I had a friend, Mr Kim, who was in the S.Korean forces in Vietnam. He would get drunk, which was often, and say, Steve, I have done some terrible things. Once one has done these things, it is very hard to turn around and say one was wrong.
Stephen
As to memoirs from the civil war: though it is fiction, I still feel Hemmingway’s ” For Whom The Bell Tolls” gives a very accurate feeling of the war. Though he was a journalist on the republican side, he was certainly no apologist for the republican hierarchy, especially the Soviet advisors or Enrique Lister, whom he describes as being the most fond of executing his own men of anyone he knew of.
Stephen
JMG #308:
I like your comment about Mann “The Magic Mountain”, and thank you for your link to your own analysis about it.
Chomsky…well, you don’t have a good opinion about him, I see. I was suspicious about Chomsky too, because he plays Anarchist or Marxist according the circunstances, me think. He’s not a “clean” thinker…So do you think he’s really a mild Socialdemocrat or Democrat parasitic thinker?
R. MAthiesen #319:
Thank you for your comment about over-valued Chomsky. I agree…
S. Pearson #320 and 321:
It’s true in wars the worst crimes are perpetred, and Zealots can be found everywhere. I agree. However, I think it depends on circumstances in which crimes were commited to consider them. My granpa (mothers dad) fought in the Republican side, he was relly a mild Republican, but he joined the Anarchist forces as “forced volunteer” and he saw there not very good things. His opinion about Durruti people wasn’t positive, although he believed in social change. My other grandpa was also in the Republican side, as convinced Socialist, so he has a very good opinion about Stalin and USSR during the war. When the Civil war ended, he was processed like my other grandpa and had to make military service again with Franco. During the dictatorship, he kept believing Soviet Union was cool, but he realized since 1968 that USSR wasn’t the paradise anymore (when SOviet Union invaded Czekoslovakia). In his last years he become critic with Fidel Castro too, in the early 90s.
The Harry Potter books were a ubiquitous presence during my children’s upbringing. My wife read them as well. They, and the movies, made my skin crawl, I just didn’t “get it.” Never got the Hobbit either, but I might be more open to Tolkien now.
Scotlyn #286 Thank you so much for your contributions to the conversation. Thinking about the master/slave conundrum, I would like to think that mastery can exist outside of the slave dynamic. Deciding what to want has always been a problem for me. I guess I would like to master my will, and be honest with myself. At this point in my life, I don’t want the responsibility of telling anyone but myself what to do. The trouble is figuring out what I’m doing!
I am not a fan, nor a detractor of Chomsky. As far as he’s concerned, I’m going to have to Southern Lady him. “Bless his heart.” He sounds like a try hard, making things up as he goes along.
VondaRoark #318. I wondered why I was falling so short: my office furniture was ill conceived and not conducive to higher thought.
What do you think (John and kommentariat) about Toni Negri book “Imperium”? If you didn’t know him Negri was a former member in Red Brigades in Italia, so he was a terrorist, oh oh. But he was also a (pos)Marxist thinker after being imprisoned. A controverted figure, me think. I think it was influential on antiglobalization movements in early 21th century. I’m suspicious with him because he was defended by Foucault when he was accused of “moral” terrorism, but I haven’t read much of his books, Imperium and Multitude. Thanks on advance…
@STS
HPMOR is indeed quite forgettable but I truly enjoyed its sequel ‘Significant Digits’ and I think some people here might too. As a not too spoilerish sample, take a look at
https://www.anarchyishyperbole.com/2015/07/significant-digits-chapter-fourteen.html
Am I missing something, or is #318 an advertisement for Russian office furniture?
Patrick #293:
I will not defend Lupin here. I’m just saying that Dumbledore could have handled this situation better. As I said, Dumbledore clearly has resources. Lupin is struggling to find work after his year at Hogwarts. He’s a decent enough spy. He’s good in a fight. Despite his flaws, he’s a good teacher. Dumbledore knows that Voldemort is about to return. Why not hire Lupin to help rebuild the Order of the Phoenix? They could have started a year earlier and prepared for what’s to come.
As for Hagrid, sure, though Dippet thought that Aragog already did that. I’m just saying that Dumbledore managed to get Hagrid a post at Hogwarts in spite of that. Why not go to these lengths for other people like Lupin or, you know, Harry?
The SPEW stuff is quite funny to me. I never thought it was meant to be taken seriously. The elves, unlike human slaves, generally enjoy their position. According to Hermione, that’s because they’re “uneducated,” which of course echoes talking points of beta-marxists, some modern feminists with their “internalised misogyny”, and other, similar groups. You can imagine my surprise when I heard two Harry Potter fans who are currently dissecting the series in a podcast take SPEW quite seriously and complain about the irreverence with which Harry, Ron, and the narrator treat the subject.
—David P.
John, I can tell you that when I was in my teenager years, I quite liked Chomsky writings as activist and political thinker, but I didn’t understand Chomsky as (fake)scientist. As soon as I started to study at Universitity, soon I started to distrust him. Reason of it’s what you’ve said about his comfortable seat in American Academy, living of state money while preaching a day like Anarcho-Collectivist, another praising Rosa Luxembourg Marxism. Since a lot of years ago, I find him utterly dishonest as activist (thank you for showing me his disguise as “scientist”, I didn’t know it yet). LAst thing I’ve known about him was he wrote a essay about Ukraine war, which was very mediocre even to average Spanish Left standards (which aren’t very high, by the way). I was told by someone in the internet he’s beeing fiercely advocating for mandatory COVID vaccines in the USA (cough cough). Am I letting clear my opinion about this Armchair Leftist Guru?
JMG – I don’t know whether Brezhnev said it or not, but it resonates: “In Fascism, the people who run the factories make the laws, but in Communism, the people who make the laws run the factories.”
@ Daniil Adamov #298
Exactly. A master/slave relationship corrupts both side of it, neither master nor slave come out of it smelling of roses! 🙂
Well, there are many other kinds of relationships to have, and (in general) when it comes to developing relationships between the different parts of myself, I aim for the kind of mutually satisfactory relationship that is based on consent, appreciation and honest negotiation.
There is a phrase that I am about 87% certain I can credit to JMG, although I could not find it for you now. But it has always stuck in my mind. Which is that a successful negotiation produces an agreement that, while not guaranteeing everybody everything they want, ensures that no one loses anything they genuinely need – and (key), an agreement which both can go on living with.
@ KAN #312
LOL! 😉
Noam Chomsky supports the American establishment elite on the issue of Israel and Palestine. This opened a lot of people’s eyes in the past few years to how fake Noam Chomsky is.
There’s another meaning of the word “master,” which doesn’t presuppose the existence of any “slaves”: he’s a “master” chef, for example, or a “master carpenter.” Being a decent human is also a skill to be “mastered” that doesn’t imply enslaving any other person.
@ Stephen Pearson #320
“I had a friend, Mr Kim, who was in the S.Korean forces in Vietnam. He would get drunk, which was often, and say, Steve, I have done some terrible things. Once one has done these things, it is very hard to turn around and say one was wrong.”
Stephen, this is sadly very, very true in many different areas of life. And, sometimes I wonder if it comes back to the ways in which elites resort to gaining co-operation (in the present) from people who’ve been stirred by their promises and visions (of a better future), or by their sense of loss and regret and grief (for a better past)?
Because if what you believed in was this better future (your “END”), but what you actually DID in your present engagement with it was to take part in their “MEANS”, it becomes very hard to forswear your original vision, perhaps harder the bigger the gulf between the MEANS they got you into, and the ENDS they distracted you with.
This, I think, also explains the situation for many doctors, who got into medicine with high hopes for helping people regain health. When the means they are trained in, fail to do this, and in fact, sometimes injure health, but somehow remain inextricably bound together with their hopes and ideals, it can be very hard to turn around and say one was wrong.
It seems that the people most resistant to this are those who are able to keep their MEANS well aligned with their ENDS, and not allow them to diverge too much.
In many jobs, master is used as a designator for someone who is the best. Thusly, you master those things you have control of. Master plumber, electrican, woodworker, etc.
So, you work to master those qualities in yourself that make your life better.
Oh…I read again this Johns post, and I see it’s titled “Situationism, a voice from the fringes”. I’ve enjoyed every of your comments, dear kommentariat, but I feel we’ve went out of the way which JMG proposed us…Everybody has the right of writing about whatever topic he/she wants, but I’m going to make an effort to return to the Situ topic.
Debord died in the 90s, but I think Situationism isn’t dead yet. It’s interesting to see some Situ attitudes and terms are also used today in the Extreme Left, with more or less fortune.
I’m not an Anarchist, but I’ve found casually this book written critically against Venezuela Bolivarian regime (who talks big about being XXIst century Socialism), from a Far Left point of view. I’ve found first in Spanish, of course, but with a little effort, I’ve found an English translation, which I link to you:
https://books.google.com.gt/books?id=x_8BBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
OK, I expect not having opened a can of worms here. I’m not interested in finding evidences pro or against Maduro business (although it could be a hot off topic…), but in remarking this Anarchist activist is using a Situationist term: Spectacle; as ammonition against the Bolivarian system. He has his reasons to do it, if you don’t mind to read this fringe book you’ll know them. You’ll agree or disagree with him, but you must recognize this man has made a good mind effort to write this essay which won’t probably like both Chavistas and Right wing anti-Chavistas…
The most interesting in this thing, me think, is that Situ terms are being used to fight not the typical Right wing ideology, but a Leftist one. I don’t know in your countries, but in mine Chávez and his political heirs have been near untouchable for certain Leftism…I think things aren’t black or white in real world.
Robert M #334 and Clarence #336
You are both correct to try for some disambiguation of the word “master” and I thank you for this.
The word “master” contains connotations of domination, control, leading, overcoming, supreme and so on. It seems useful to me to consider the implications of these connotations by distinguishing between “I/it” relationships and “I/you” (or as Martin Buber first introduced the category, “I/thou”) relationships.
There are many “I/it” relationships in which these themes of domination do not require subjugation of a “you” – by definition, a skill, a craft, an art, a technique, a set of qualities are various types of “it’s”, and have no feelings or wishes in the matter. Their consent and co-operation cannot be sought, to negotiations in which they cannot participate.
Still, when it comes to “I/you” relationships (and we all have different ways to decide who is a who, and what is a which) and both parties are sentient agents, then I will continue to act in accordance with my personal observation that a master/slave type relationship (AKA a dom/sub style relationship) IS profoundly corrupting, and that it is equally corrupting to both parties, although in different ways.
Anonymous #333:
Wow! I didn’t know that hard fact…thanks a lot for your information.
@Anonymus (#333):
Noam Chomsky happens to be Jewish. (His father, William [Ze’ev], was an academic, a well-known specialist in the history of the Jewish tradition of the study of Hebrew grammar. William was born in the Russian empire, in what is now Ukraine.) So his (former? present?) support of Israel might disappoint, but ought not to surprise.
Hot off the news, unrest in France. Does that even qualify as news?
“French PM Francois Bayrou, the fourth prime minister in just 20 months, became the latest to depart having failed to get sufficient support to push a budget through parliament as 194 voted for him, 364 against.”
Austerity unpopular, film at eleven. “We demand the free stuff we were promised. Pay for it is your problem.” As my college put it; Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that man behind the tree.”
As far as the use of the word master, Washington has a Master Hunter program. Dad considered going for the Master electrician card but decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
I took SPEW as a parody of the common feel good organization that tries to be helpful and fails miserably.
@Robert M. @clarence: I have always taken “Master” to indicate that somebody both teaches and takes on responsibility for one or more apprentices. A different relation from master-slave, but still, it seems to me that referring to somebody as master only makes sense when other people are not-masters.
PS: While etymology is not always the most helpful tool, in this case I am rather sure master is derived from “magister” – teacher. “Teachers without pupils” would be a nonsense proposition, though somebody could be a master in some skill, and a pupil in another one.
It’s been a staple on the British dissident right for a while to view Trump, as the American Gorbachev, with a similar likelihood of being successful:
https://morgoth.substack.com/p/western-perestroika-is-trump-the
Ah, I see I’ve been summoned
I can’t speak to what’s useful in German history directly with regards to the wars of the 50s and 60s, and I’ve seen the take about what Bismarck did, but I do want to mix a a couple of things into the discussion. First is that I think it’s helpful to put Bismarck in context and talk a bit about Napoleon III, who won an election in the newly proclaimed Second Republic after the revolutions of 1848 and then proclaimed himself Emperor when it looked like he would lose the next one. Napoleon III spent much of the mid-19th century engaged in a highly successful attempt to break the post-revolutionary diplomatic cordon around France, but did so with nowhere near the resources of his uncle. So, Napoleon III kept looking for like-minded politicians to back in Europe, and then promptly getting backstabbed by them. The Count of Cavour in Italy is one such, and so is Bismarck. It’s not until after the Battle of Sedan that Bismarck’s the main actor in European diplomacy – before that, it’s Napoleon III, and that’s when Bismarck’s wars take place.
Second, I want to note that one important thing to keep in mind about Prussia is that as a state, Prussia always came off to its enemies as terrifyingly ferocious and to itself as weak and more than a little desperate. Prussia was the weakest of the European pentarchy and very aware of it. So, my read of Bismarck is that his overarching goal was to basically nestle Prussia inside progressively larger and stronger layers of defensive structures, be they alliances or the army or the united Germany, but that a lot of how the broader Prussian state thinks about things is still driven by that deep-seated sense of weakness. Isabel Hull’s Absolute Destruction goes into great detail about the consequences of that sense of weakness and claims it’s the reason that Prussia uniting with Germany causes armies to go marching – the Prussian influence meant Germany acted like a much weaker country than it actually was, leading it to react to lesser provocations with greater force than anyone else.
As for Harry Potter, moral poverty, etc as another member of that generation the entire reason I got so heavily into anime at that age is because it was very different from anything in the west at the time. It didn’t talk down to me or make any efforts to be “relatable” – instead, it gave its teenaged characters all the agency, power, and weight in the world and tasked them with fixing it. IMO this is kinda the great failing of the series – it basically zigs in that direction for the first five books, with all of the setup about how the wizarding world itself is the problem, and then zags away from it at the end. There is *so much fanfiction* which takes as its jumping off point “Yeah, the wizarding world kinda sucks, and Our Heroes are gonna be the ones to fix it”
Oh, and to stay on topic instead of just jumping into discussing comments, I’m really excited for the rest of this series! The point about fringe ideas getting taken up by the mainstream or vice versa hits close to home – I was a close follower of the rationalist and rationalist-adjacent scenes back in the early 2010s when those were on the fringes and since some of you have cited ACX I know you were too. That’s meant the crypto and AI crazes right now feel kinda like a funhouse mirror version of the conversations I was lurking in on tumblr, twitter, and the broader blogosphere way back when.
@Daniil Adamov (#295):
If you’d like to read Dugin’s text, Guy Debord is Dead: The Spectacle Goes On in Russian, here it is:
http://uprising.chat.ru/dugin-best.htm
Dear John ONeil – thanks for being the wind at my back regarding my thoughts. (smile)
and Papa thank you for blowing my mind again. I forgot to admit that in addition to the joy and relief, there was a ton of embarrassment and shock that i was so shallow. I was trying to remember whether i didn’t know all this stuff because i was shallow in the 80s and 90s, or if it was realistic to expect anyone in academia to get the surrealists and dadaists beyond the chit chat.
on an intuitive level i “got” Duchamp as if he were kin. his r mutt urinal punked the art world that supped up whatever he ladled and he was a trickster with his female character.
but Dali seemed coopted like Osho had become.
thanks for turning me on to Leonora Carrington. that image she did feels like Maya Deren, who did become a voodoo priestess.
Peter at Citylights told me that. I think like you, Peter thought I already knew the actual history behind what they were doing and that’s when he’d take me out to the beach and spend all day talking to me about what i now see are these trickster / paranormal things Geo P Hansen writes about in “Trickster and the Paranormal.”
i feel simultaneously retarded naive clueless and also very excited like i just got here because i’m seeing EVERYTHING from a new fresh vantage point and it’s blowing my cotton pickin MIND.
thank you for that.
and Mr ONeil, thanks for getting me.
Scotlyn’s helping me on the side to learn to defend myself without attacking or playing dirty.
x
Anonymous # 333 ..
Ol’ Noam .. during the whole CONvid imbroglio, professed to wanting NOTHING to do with the ‘questionable deplorables .. thus the rather retarded view towards ‘starving the unvaxxinated’ because of ‘fearful reasons’ …..
It was at that this point, that I lost total respect for this particular, um, ‘$CHOLARE’.. **
** and if you don’t like that option .. we’ll, I have other examples that would fit the bill.
F#ck him!
Yeah, CHOM$sky .. waaaaay too far out on his academic skis. I believe that many of these so-called university ‘professors’ have reached their edge over the cornice, and have now no recourse but to tip forward .. relying on their own merits .. WITHOUT the benefit of a scholastic sinecure, come what may!
@Inna #345 Thank you! “Sooner or later, the endless spectacle will end, and we will take merciless revenge.” Yes, that’s the Dugin I remember. 🙂
More about the (in)famous Chomsky…In the book “Revolution as Spectacle”, the author is very critic with Chomsky attitude towards Chavez Venezuela. It seems Chomsky supported acritically Chavist regime, and I suspect he keeps on supporting it now.
I’ve just finished reading “La revolución como espectáculo”(Revolution As Spectacle), and although I don’t share 100% author ideas about his topic, I like his Debordian point of view about Venezolan situation. I’d like to say that I’ve been thinking after reading it, and I’ve finished thinking that Situ critics could apply perfectly to whatever democratic western countrie like mine one. Pedro Sánchez government in Spain today is the politics as spectacle too (the Faux woke socialist one) and to their Conservative counterparts…
@ Aldarion #342
“While etymology is not always the most helpful tool, in this case I am rather sure master is derived from “magister” – teacher. “Teachers without pupils” would be a nonsense proposition, though somebody could be a master in some skill, and a pupil in another one.”
Now this is a fair point.
However, the discussion started around the use of the political slogan. ““For a society of masters without slaves!” and it is hard to imagine anyone, on any set of political barricades, shouting “For a society of masters without pupils!”
That said, the master/pupil relationship, the master/apprentice relationship do have enormous precedent, and in many cultures the person who taught you your trade, skills or knowledge, was also someone whom you served dinner to, and cleaned up and ran errands for. And that kind of relationship can certainly revolve around mutual consent, without requiring subjugation of one person by another. (Although, in some instances it can certainly be taken to that extreme. Runaway apprentices were also a thing).
Now, what this discussion is making me wonder is this: how did a term meaning teacher come to be used as a term for slave owner? Was a slave owner’s way of comforting themselves that they are somehow bringing the light of civilisation, or some other enlightening benefit, to their benighted slaves?
Deo #344,
It seems my library has a copy of Absolute Destruction; thanks for the recommendation.
With regards to Harry Potter, I think it makes sense for that not to be the focus in books six and seven. That’s just not the battlefield Harry is in during those books. We should see the consequences of some problems being fixed (or not) in the epilogue, though.
In fact, thanks to the comments here, I’ve come up with an interpretation that tries to make sense of this: Harry actually died in the forest. Everything that follows is playing out in his head, like the scene with Dumbledore. It’s why nobody on his side gets seriously injured or even killed at the final battle. It’s why he gets exactly the life he wished he could at age seventeen. Why everything is in this weird kind of stasis.
—David P.
>somehow remain inextricably bound together with their hopes and ideals, it can be very hard to turn around and say one was wrong
If you were deep in debt from all that training and the only thing keeping you from collapse was that precious medical license, you’d probably sing and dance to any tune that kept you in the good graces of the establishment.
>Guillem, the French spelling is standard in American English — we shoplift words that way quite often
Well, when it came to French the original English speakers didn’t shoplift French so much as were force-fed it like some fraternity initiation. DRINK DRINK DRINK. But that experience taught them how to import foreign words and they developed a taste for it. Although today if you look at other languages, you can see where the process is running in reverse. Especially German. Der Job. Das Handy. Der Oldtimer.
>Ol’ Noam .. during the whole CONvid imbroglio, professed to wanting NOTHING to do with the ‘questionable deplorables .. thus the rather retarded view towards ‘starving the unvaxxinated’ because of ‘fearful reasons’
Cloud Person hating on Dirt People? That’s what the vaccine was really about – are you a good Cloud Person or are you one of those Dirt People? Well, which is it? And be pretentious about it while virtue signaling. That’s about like saying “Gee, it’s summer and it sure is hot”. I wouldn’t expect less out of your standard Cloud Person.
Shrug, based on what we know about the vaccine, I encourage every Cloud Person to multiple-down and go get their booster. Show me what a good person you are, show me.
>his quasi-mathematical notation in some of his more technical articles published in computer-science and engineering journals did not put me off
Yeah, I almost forgot – if you go really deep into making a computer language, eventually you will run into Chomsky and his stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy
But it’s one thing to say stuff about a computer language, quite another to say things about a hooman language. Nobody thinks or talks like a computer, except maybe those LLMs. Although if there’s one spooky thing those LLMs uncovered, if you represent a word as a 12,000 element vector, you can apply all the mathematical machinery to words and have things work out better than you would think. Language has some mathematical basis to it.
Inna # 345 and D.Adamov #349:
Very interesting…So Duguin has read Debord too…and he had his own opinion on Spectacle. Thank you for your apportations!
Justin, thanks for this. Your comment about moral poverty feeds very well into the Situationist analysis of society as spectacle — given the complete erasure of issues of meaning and value from public life, and even from much of private life, a simulation of moral virtue is the best that most people can hope to encounter.
BeardTree, nah, despite proof texts, the tone and overall historical dynamic set out in your comment identifies you clearly as a premillennialist Protestant. The postmillennialists could brandish just as many proof texts; the 20th century was very hard on them, to be sure, but if the Second Religiosity picks up the way I expect it to, it’s likely that postmillennialism will stage a comeback.
STS, presumably you mean Harry Potter. Bertie Scrubb is meant to lampoon something very different — not that you’d like it.
Ron M, as the US pulls itself loose from the Faustian core, Canada is almost certain to become a major battleground between the US and the EU. I hope that battle is fought with nonlethal weapons, but I can’t be sure of that.
Michael, so noted! As far as I know, though, the postmillennialists only believed in two comings of Christ. The idea was that the Second Coming would come after a thousand years in which Christians would fulfill the Great Commission, convert all lands and peoples to Christianity, and bring the world as close to perfection as human fallibility would permit, and that Christ would then return to put the capstone on the work and bring on the New Jerusalem of genuine perfection. If it was chiliasm, it was a chiliasm highly modified to fit the scriptures and counter critiques like the one you cited.
Robert M, my take on Chomsky’s intellectual sins is that of an interested layperson rather than a scholar of linguistics, but none of this surprises me. Everyone I know who’s got a working knowledge of languages besides English, and especially those who have studied non-Indo-European languages, has told me that Chomsky’s theories are complete crap. Meanwhile I’ve watched his beta-radical posturing for years, and learned a great deal about beta-radicalism by watching the way his denunciations of the establishment always carefully avoided anything that would inconvenience his ability to keep profiting from it and using it against his academic rivals. I’m not sure that’s the kind of education he means to pass on, but it’s hard to miss.
Chuaquin, I see Chomsky as a complete opportunist. He spouts leftist rhetoric because that’s fashionable in American academe these days. If fascism was in favor I’m quite sure he’d have spouted its rhetoric instead, the way Heidegger did during the Nazi years.
John, I loved Tolkien when I was a kid — I’m not so much of a fan now. Harry Potter struck me as a bland little pastiche when I read the first volume — it wasn’t until I read the next two that I started to catch on to the underlying logic, and bristle.
Chuaquin, I haven’t read him either. Sorry.
Walt, Byelorussian office furniture. I have no idea how it got through; it’s been removed, IP-banned, and ID’d by my spam program.
Chuaquin, exactly. He’s all up in arms about this or that issue, as long as it doesn’t involve the least risk on his part, and licks the boots of authority any time it does. Yes, he was among the academics who shilled for the vaccine firms.
Lathechuck, that sounds like Brezhnev! You’ll recall his favorite joke, I’m sure, but I’ll repeat it here for those who don’t: “Under capitalism, man oppresses man. Under socialism, it’s exactly the other way around!”
Anonymous, er, Chomsky’s Jewish. Very few Jews are willing to oppose Israel in any way that matters.
Siliconguy, it’s nice to see France returning to its grand tradition of constant political instability. Now all they need is a revolution or two to really make things feel like old times!
Logan, and that’s also a possibility, of course. We’ll see how it turns out.
Deo, thanks for this. It’s precisely Prussia’s sense of itself as weak and vulnerable that makes it so dangerous. Notice how many American school shooters think of themselves as weak, vulnerable failures — it’s the same mindset. Unfortunately, when Prussia can grab the rest of Germany as its gun, it’s not just a school that gets shot up.
Erika, that is in fact Maya Deren! She and Carrington were good friends. There’s a whole world of occult-centered Surrealism that I’m just beginning to study.
Other Owen, of course — it’s always the dominant language that gets to dictate the spelling. France was the great cultural center of Europe for a coiuple of centuries before 1940, and so its spelling habits got picked up embarrassingly often by other countries. Now it’s our turn, and I pity the world’s languages!
The Other Owen #355:
I find it hilarious that you included “Handy” in your examples because as far as I can tell, it bears no relation whatsoever to any English word for mobile phones. But yes, especially us Zoomers have been big importers of English words. Strong. Sus. Vibe (I think). Cap/no cap. Alright. Fly. Note that this includes both regular English words and English Gen Z slang.
Apart from the older imports you mentioned, English loanwords seem to divide into jargon, Gen Z slang, and words to reach for when you to express yourself with a little more flair. A party doesn’t just happen at an “Ort”, a place, it’s in a “location”. It’s reminiscent of last century’s splicing of French phrases into English text.
I don’t know how to feel about this. Occasionally, I find myself using English words where German ones would’ve been perfectly fine. Is something lost in that process? JMG lamented English’s lack of noun declensions but it seems that grammatical treatment of English imports in German differ based on both the word and the person using it. Then again, does that even matter? Unless I’m actively communicating with Germans (and just Germans), I reach for English anyways. It’s become the language of my personal notes, my rare attempts at writing stories, even most of my thoughts.
—David P.
JMG # 359:
“Canada is almost certain to become a major battleground between the US and the EU. I hope that battle is fought with nonlethal weapons, but I can’t be sure of that.”
Indeed, Canada’s influenced by both American and European culture, to the extent it has the bettere and the worst of both cultures, IMHO.
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“Chuaquin, I see Chomsky as a complete opportunist. He spouts leftist rhetoric because that’s fashionable in American academe these days. If fascism was in favor I’m quite sure he’d have spouted its rhetoric instead, the way Heidegger did during the Nazi years.”
Wow! It’s a hard critic. Well. Chomsky hasn’t been a Fascist all these years, but he’s a (not very)shamefaced Zionist. That attitude in the times we’re living (cough cough Gaza) it’s not Fascist yet, but he’s approaching it some way…
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“Chuaquin, exactly. He’s all up in arms about this or that issue, as long as it doesn’t involve the least risk on his part, and licks the boots of authority any time it does. Yes, he was among the academics who shilled for the vaccine firms.”
His attitude’s authoritarist, not Libertarian in the Anarchist sense. I agree.
Hi JMG,
I like your Alpha/Beta Marxism terminology. I had used “chad/cuck Marxism” to mean the same thing. Something interesting to me about historical Marxist regimes that does not seem to get much play is how they were in the main nationalist movements, with a thin internationalist veneer. The intellectuals who embraced Marxism seem to have thought that it offered a cheat code to leapfrog the existing industrial powers and would lead to rapid industrialization.
I find this pattern very interesting and don’t have much of an explanation for it as there was a model that worked if you were a non industrial society that wanted to rapidly industrialize but it wasn’t Marxist in the slightest.
I’m of course talking about Japan.
Japan is particularly noteworthy in the Russian context; Japan beat Russia in 1905 in a war, and instead of saying “ok let’s attempt to broadly emulate what Japan did” the intellectual class in Russia went for Marxist fantasies instead. Why? What about Marxism in particular enables it to have such a hold over intellectuals even when models that actually work are available?
Cheers,
JZ
Johm, I wonder if you’ve read this essay about public protests and demostrations in History:
https://www.amazon.es/Contentious-Performances-Paperback-Cambridge-Politics/dp/0521731526
If your anwer is “yes”, do you think it’s worth to read it or am I wasting my time doing it? Thanks on advance.
> Bertie Scrubb is meant to lampoon something very different — not that you’d like it.
Now I’m curious. Who is Bertie Scrubb? I took him to be a (very) thinly veiled dig at Harry Potter too.
—David P.
“Erika, that is in fact Maya Deren! She and Carrington were good friends. There’s a whole world of occult-centered Surrealism that I’m just beginning to study.”
Papa i can’t take much more of this! This is all so…WEIRD. and coming from ME that’s a lot.
that looks JUST LIKE Maya Deren.
—
also to everyone, when i’d “blamed” my lack of understanding or seeing the Dadaists and Surrealists on academics, i meant that as my TEACHERS at the Pa Academy of Fine Arts, Moore College of Art, or University of the Arts (nee Philadelphia College of Art), now defunct and where Camille Paglia taught— i meant that i think as we were taught art history, i think i got a 1980s pretentious art world version of history.
i am humbled because i feel like i was feeling orphaned on a train, while unknowingly actually sitting next to my REAL FAMILY with a sheet of huge paper between us.
i learned what i know from being in my family and saw a lot of other of us in art school. but art school was full of rich people with trust funds and many were outcasts and had done time in psychiatric institutions and we all had had lots of diagnoses all our lives about why we were incorrigible problems.
art school was an escape from the ghetto trajectory i’d been on and i tried to make a place for myself as an ARTIST. but even among the institutional artists i was black listed quite literally at times.
i realized artists are no more different than accountants.
so i’ve always distrusted others who call themselves artists, make a living as artists or in our institutions, as well as SUCCESSFUL artists. we turn into Osho real fast because as outsiders, we ALL want to really be let “in.”
that’s why i’m horrified I’d discounted dadaists and surrealists as self-indulgent after awhile. i loved the dadaist way of LIVING… dunk watch parts in ink and see how they land when you toss ’em on the paper!
so Papa, you’ve brought me BACK AROUND to Home.
thank you. i’m so glad that i apologized weeks ago and got over so myself so i wouldn’t miss ANY of this. things are happening so fast i’m having a hard time catching up to what things MEAN or what to do with all this.
That’s why i’m glad Scotlyn’s got me. this stuff hurts my head sometimes.
it’s too much.
i’m actually so …. safe and ordinary. for real. for ME, i’m conservative.
however, in going through years of old emails to my landlord i see why others think i’m insane. i’ve never understood why ANYONE reads anything i write to the end. i’m not being faux modest. i find even THIS that i’m writing now, confusing and tedious to understand because it’s all so NEW to me.
but writing is sketching. i have to do it to get to the pretty parts i like.
x
Also if anyone does come across books on surrealism dadaism situationism and how it relates to actually DOING stuff like we talk about here, i’m always going to be open to catch up on what i never knew and how they worked it. They’re the OPPOSITE of Edward Bernays as i see it.
“There’s a whole world of occult-centered Surrealism that I’m just beginning to study.”
let me know of any books you want to tell me about. i’ve only ever had older weird art friends nod and point to this stuff but never ARTICULATE it. that’s why my understanding of art is a lot of “nudge nudge wink wink say no more say no more” and now i want what’s SAID specifically because we were all talking different things.
“It’s always the dominant language that gets to dictate the spelling.”
Well, it’s not just spelling, but everything else: pronunciation, vocabulary, the subtleties of language usage. Since the infamous Chomsky was discussed here, I’ll bring another Russian-American-Jewish linguist, Max Weinreich. He popularized the phrase, “A language is a dialect with an army and navy”. Language is also the perfect tool to keep outsiders… well… outside (“the perfect” or “a perfect”? I will never know 😂).
J. Zybourne #362:
You’ve noted historical Marxist regimes were in a nacionalist mood “with a thin veneer of internationalism”, if I’ve understand you well.
I think Marxism and Leftism in general terms are fiercely internationalists and against nationalism…always in theory. In the unavoidable real world, revolutions happens in a country with an state, so revolutionaries dress themselves as nationalists, even they soon become in nationalists. Soviet Union is a weared but typical example for that trend. World revolution or at least international one was forgotten, except for propaganda, as soon as Lenin secured his power over Whites Tsarits and Leftists dissidents. Stalin attitude when Hitler invaded USSR was nationalistic, and we could say quite Russians…pardon Sovietics, fought and died not for saving the Revolution, but for Mother Russia.
(Warning: a bit of a nerd-out below on basic computational linguistics.)
I think it’s telling that one of Chomsky’s few genuine insights, the Chomsky hierarchy, as discussed briefly upstream by The Other Owen, is barely about language at all. It’s mostly about how complex a machine or program needs to be in order to verify that a string of symbols is syntactically valid in a given language. (As well as the dual problem of producing a syntactically-valid string of symbols; the two are closely related, and this is part of what makes LLMs viable.)
For those who don’t know, the hierarchy ranges from so-called “regular grammars,” which require only very simple finite-state machines or equivalent programs to verify correctness, up to unrestricted grammars, which require the full power of a general-purpose computer to handle.
One thing that is not usually recognized is that once you need Turing-completeness, the halting problem and thus Goedel’s incompleteness theorem come into play: there can be strings of symbols in the language which may or may not be grammatically valid, but which no amount of effort can allow you to know which one it is.
Two possible examples are the famous sentences: “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo,” and “James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.” These are, in fact, grammatically valid (though very awkward) for their intended meanings, but if you don’t already know what those meanings, they very much look invalid. And I challenge anyone to figure out what these mean without looking it up.
JMG, have any of your linguist friends mentioned, or do you have any thoughts about the divergence of spellings among the major Romance languages. How, for example, did French end up with three vowels lined up in a row in many words, and why so many mute consonants?
John Zybourne, “The intellectuals who embraced Marxism seem to have thought that it offered a cheat code to leapfrog the existing industrial powers and would lead to rapid industrialization.” That is precisely how Milovan Djilas described the attraction of Communism for his generation of European youth. In Eastern Europe especially, the USSR had a great reputation after WWII. The pre-war monarchies, Victoria’s progeny and even more incompetent than herself, had not been able to defend their subjects from the Nazi war machine; Russia had defeated it.
For those above who were mentioning or discussing multiculturalism, please try to understand that it was nothing more than an advertising slogan, a piece of what our host has elsewhere called low-grade sorcery. Certainly not a fringe social movement from which interesting and useful things can be learned. Now, that kind of sorcery can do a lot of harm. Consider how many Americans were condemned to painful, lingering deaths by the Marlboro Man.
Scotlyn @ 345
I have seen it with people in the corporate sector who realize they have basically wasted their lives, but become very bitter and angry and defensive about them.
I think the thing that makes the military stand out is that some have actually killed people, or at least facilitated it, and many have been wounded or had their health ruined by exposure to chemicals or radiation. If they can’t continue to justify it to themselves, their lives can become a complete ruin.
Stephen
“Now I’m curious. Who is Bertie Scrubb? I took him to be a (very) thinly veiled dig at Harry Potter too.”
Bertie Scrubb is a character in the Ariel Moravec books.
John Z, “chad Marxism” vs. “cuck Marxism” — I like it! It’s a slightly less polite version of the terms I settled on. As for Japan and Russia, Japan passed through a revolution from above in 1868, when an alliance of progressive daimyo and mercantile interests overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate in the name of the Emperor and launched a program of breakneck industrialization in which the existing elite classes maintained their power by abandoning their feudal status and becoming capitalists instead. If the Russian aristocracy had embraced the same project when Alexander II abolished serfdom in 1861, Marxism would never have gotten a foothold there, but the Russian elites (like the southern US elites after 1865) tried to maintain their role as agrarian aristocrats, and so got shoved aside by a revolution. Marxism was simply the fashionable ideology du jour for that process, as liberalism had been in 1776.
Chuaquin, no, I haven’t read it, but it sounds interesting.
David P, Bertie Scrubb is the central character in a fictional set of children’s fantasy novels that feature in my Ariel Moravec occult detective novels. Yes, the Bertie Scrubb novels are a parody of Harry Potter, but they’re meant to make fun of those aspects of the Potterverse that pretend to be magic but have nothing to do with genuine occultism. For example, unlike the rest of us, Bertie has seen the Magic Sign, and that means he’s special and gets to study magic, first with the magician Mabel Figworthy (and anyone who knows where I got her and her signature line, “Oh, really?” gets a gold star), and then at the Academy of Magic in the city of Borblegorm, all the while being persecuted by the sinister and mustachioed Lord Roderick Dudgeon and his ally, the wicked witch Maledicta Gabble. All this, of course, is meant to contrast both with real magic and with the experience of Ariel Moravec, who is a geeky, bookish, but otherwise utterly ordinary girl of eighteen who is studying magic with her grandfather, Dr. Bernard Moravec, and has to slog through all the awkward realities of genuine occultism while investigating the occasional curse, ghost, or what have you.
Oh, and in case Ms. Rowling’s lawyers happen to be listening, the Bertie Scrubb novels (all 13 of them, with more on the way) are written by a Florida couple, George and Matilda Osbert, who have precisely nothing in common with J.K. Rowling. They’ll be showing up in the sixth book of the series — I’ll leave most of the details to your imagination. The one thing that probably needs to be mentioned up front is that neither of the Osberts has ever expressed even the least trace of an opinion about transgender issues, or anything else even remotely controversial. He’s a lean, balding accountant who collects antique clocks, she’s a plump and theatrical bottle-blonde Southern belle fifteen years his junior who lives for the adoration she receives from her fans and always, but always, dresses in Pepto-Bismol pink. (She drives a Rolls-Royce she had painted that same color.)
Erika, don’t feel humbled! You came out of that education with your own sense of creative passion intact, which is more than most of your classmates did. As a starting place, you might like The Tarot of Leonora Carrington by Susan Aberth and Tere Arcq — that was the book that clued me in to the occult dimensions of Surrealism. I’ll keep you posted as I find more.
Inna, ha! I like that comment of Weinreich’s, not least because it’s so accurate.
Slithy, those sentences are great, not least because they’re so much better than the sleeping habits of colorless green ideas.
Mary, one of them proposed a theory to me, which I have not yet been able to refute: that all the countries within easy reach of English armies embraced spelling systems that were deliberately intended to be unpronounceable by English speakers, in order to make sure that English armies that were trying to conquer them couldn’t figure out where they were. That’s why there’s an Irish town pronounced Dunleary but spelled Dun Laoghaire, why you have French place names such as Lourduoeix and Houeilles, and in Wales, which still holds the all-time prize for extending a linguistic middle finger to the English, Bwlchgwyn, Eglwyswrw, and Ynysybwl are real place names — and that’s without even mentioning the most famous example, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Yes, that’s also a real place name:. Here’s an image of the train station:
Anon, fortunately, he will never actually appear on stage in the novels.
JMG # 374: I see I’ll have to read that book I told to you; I hope it’s interesting too.
It appears I may have phrased my comment poorly, though you still gave the answer the answer I was looking for: Having read and enjoyed the Ariel Moravec novels (and looking forward to the next one—incidentally, do you have some idea when we might expect its release?), I of course know the character, I just thought your comment implied he wasn’t based on Harry Potter after all.
As for Mabel Figworthy, I can’t pretend I got that reference, but that’s nothing a quick web search couldn’t fix. I’ll let someone else try to get the gold start but have to say, I imagined the “oh, really?” to sound a lot more dignified. I thought she’d be more of a McGonnagall type.
I’m sure meeting the Osberts will be great fun. I’m a little surprised you give away future plot points so readily, though not at all unhappy to have more food for speculation. Not just in this matter—I recall you revealing your plans for Austin some months back too. (As an aside about that, I’ve recently reread The Carnelian Moon and wondered whether the Feronia statue might be part of setting those up. If I may be so bold as to ask, is this correct?)
—David P.
(Maybe too late to post this, but I hope to be published…thank you). When I studied at University, I was told by Economics teachers there was a German economist and sociologist whose name was Werner Sombart. This thinker started as a Marxist-Socialist, but in his older years he moved towards Right Wing ideology. Some people think he became a kind of Nazi like Heidegger, but some other say not. I didn’t read Sombart full essays, but short selected texts, so I can’t opine about him honestly.
I don’t know who’s right, but I think that if everything is fascist, nothing is fascist (“reasoning” which goes into the absurd). I mean you cannot accuse someone to be a Fascist without evidences. I’d like to know if you (John and kommentariat) have read some Sombart book, and then what do you think about his later ideology.
>I find it hilarious that you included “Handy” in your examples
Don’t ever ask a native English speaking stranger for a Handy. You might not like what you get. Asking someone who likes you a lot for one is OK. You still might not like what you get, but you probably will like it more.
@ Stephen #372…
Yes. As you know (because, from what you say, you have seen it first hand) a soldier has to be MADE into the kind of human being who is willing to KILL for their country (or for whatever other future vision is placed before them).
Even though, what a soldier is challenged to accept outwardly, in public discourse, is a view of themselves as someone who is willing to DIE for their country. (And, yes, there is a difference which becomes very real when wheel touches road).
Eric Hoffer had things to say about people willing to DIE (be sacrificed) for their cause… he said that their sense of their own self worth must be already ruined for this willingness to exist, creating a need to believe in something greater than themselves, some “greater good” which, by their willingness to sacrifice their own self to it, raised their sense of themselves and redeemed their personal worth in their own eyes.
However, Hoffer says, a person willing to sacrifice their own self (because it has no intrinsic worth to them), will not hesitate to sacrifice any other self for this same “higher good” – why would they grant worth to any other self, if their own is already of so little worth that it can go on the chopping block?
This may bear a relationship to the comment above (whose author I have forgotten) that made reference to the Prussians as feeling “internally” weak, even though they appeared as highly destructive to their enemies.
Hey JMG
On the subject of surrealism, I once read a decent biography of most of the major artists of that movement titled “Lives of the surrealists” by Desmond Morris, which might be useful to you.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35407457-the-lives-of-the-surrealists
Also, in regards to the occult side of surrealism, I’m curious about whether you managed to get a copy of Dali’s rather odd manual of oil painting that I reviewed that had a fair bit of occult elements in it?
>These are, in fact, grammatically valid (though very awkward) for their intended meanings
I suppose, but language is supposed to communicate things and those phrases make most people’s parsers go “ERROR: STACK OVERFLOW”, so yes, they’re technically correct but in practice? Or the number of people you can communicate to is a small set of very smug, very autistic persons.
I don’t like using pretentious words when plainer ones will do. For example, what’s a catamite? Oh, you mean f**got. Pretentious.
It’s sort of like with microkernels, sure the microkernel is still running but if the userland driver has crashed, the system is unusable. But it’s still running. Technical robustness.
Or like with technical virginity. Sure she’s still a virgin but…
@John Zybourne #362 Bear in mind that Russia in 1905 or 1917 was very different from Japan in 1868. For one thing, although the population was primarily rural, the country already had multiple developing industrial regions (the Urals, Donbas, around Moscow and St. Petersburg…). Industrialisation was indeed a Marxist obsession – but non-Marxist officials also pursued it and non-Marxist intellectuals also supported it, with little reference to either Marxism or Japan (although some, like Chekhov, did admire Meiji reforms). If by the working model you mean pragmatic reforms in national interest, then many did of course support that – Stolypin comes to mind, but he was from alone. Those people did not get their way for many reasons, some of them essentially a matter of chance, others more systemic.
As for the Russian Marxist intellectuals, they wanted industrialisation because they saw it as a key to a worldwide utopia (industrialisation created a “proper”, non-property-owning, collectivistic working class that would then create a new kind of society with their guidance). The nationalist Marxism you describe, while present in many other countries and eventually in Russia as well, does not apply to the majority of Empire-era Marxist intellectuals. They embraced this ideology for a host of reasons, but national interest was usually low on the list – those who cared strongly about that, and there were many such people, usually did not become Marxists. There was a revolutionary tradition going back decades by the time of the Russo-Japanese War, and it regarded the historical Russian state with a hatred of the sort that was not paralleled in most other countries – certainly not in Japan. It is nearest to the hatred of Islamist revolutionaries for European-created and Western-influenced Muslim states. Those intellectuals and professional revolutionaries that responded to the defeat were influenced by generations of predecessors who viewed the destruction of the state (often, of all states) as a sacred goal and any compromise or reform as a pathetic and disgusting surrender.
Of course, once one faction of this revolutionary underground managed to securely establish itself in power, various compromises with reality began and many of the people who joined the party after the takeover did see communism at least partly as a matter of strengthening the Russian nation (young Brezhnev was one such, before his disillusionment; Tukhachevsky, Stalin’s most famous military purge victim, has also been quoted as saying some things to that effect). But that was later, a product of drastically altered circumstances…
In brief, it’s not that this subset of Russian intellectuals rejected a workable Japanese-style method of reaching a desired goal. It’s that they had a completely different goal, as absurd as it may seem from the outside, and therefore had no interest in the means for reaching a goal they emphatically rejected.
As for why Marxism specifically appealed to them so, that is a much harder question, but I would say there was fertile soil prepared over decades through the alienation of our overproduced Westernised intellectuals from both broader Russian society and the historical Russian state. This made them especially receptive to abstract, utopian schemes that would let them remake the alien and off-putting world around them in line with their values. Among such schemes, Marxism did a good job of appearing to be more solid and scientific than all that earlier lemonade ocean nonsense. That was enough.
I’ve been thinking about Harry Potter quite a bit since making my previous comment. It’s a little foggy as I closed the back cover on the last book nearly 20 years ago, but I remember my fascination with them despite my awareness of the serious deficits in Rowling’s worldbuilding by probably the third book, but definitely by book 4. My opinion about popular culture is that even if it is a blatant cash grab or whatever, if people are paying for it and spending time on it, that tells you something important. Harry Potter was the most important pop culture thing that happened to my generation (or at least westerners of a certain class background) by a long shot and it is worth exploring why.
It isn’t some sort of power fantasy – I have tools that can do most of the everyday useful things that magic, as depicted in the books can do – while I can’t turn a teacup into a stoat or something, I also don’t need any stoats, so that’s OK. Or maybe it is – after all, they have a wizard-born but nonmagical janitor cleaning up after a bunch of teenagers who are used to the idea that cleaning can be accomplished by waving a wand and saying “Save us, Mr. Clean!”.
I have more thoughts but they aren’t organized particularly well right now – but I will say, in Rowling’s defense, that Voldemort was a good portrayal of Ahrimanic evil, at least in my mostly uneducated opinion.
Mr. Greer .. regarding your response to Anonymous …..
James H. Kuntsler enters the chat..
Hi John Michael,
Yes, a lurid pink Rolls Royce would probably work wonders for the self esteem of the buxom lady. At the very least a person would be hard to miss in that get-up.
Since we are speaking this week of clueless intellectuals pushing for policies which have unintended consequences, I thought you might be interested in this: Supermarket chain threatens to close stores after rise in violence and aggression against staff.
I’d describe that as a shift in culture following on from the health subject which dare not be named. And recall that in the state of Victoria in which I reside, things were more draconian than pretty much anywhere else on the planet. I’m unsurprised to see flow on effects, because if you push people out of the formal economy, it’s not like they sit on their hands and do nothing. There’s a whole informal economy out there, as the clueless idiots responsible for the mess are now discovering. Oh well, I never said that any of this was a good idea, ain’t my circus… Makes you wonder what they did expect would happen?
It’s worth noting, that crime is merely returning to its roots. When I was a young lad, armed hold ups, stand over tactics (chop-chop anyone?) and protection rackets were all very much a thing. I’m of the opinion that the resurgence reflects the lower wealth/energy per capita of recent times. Back to the past, sorry to say.
Cheers
Chris
Lieven #326: Let it be known that Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is absolute garbage, a fedora-tier fanfic where a 30-something grad student with no literary chops tries to show off how smart he is by trying to punch holes in the Potterverse. It falls completely flat; I read through almost everything and not even I stuck with it. The worst part is that he could’ve used his powers for good, and elaborated on the worldbuilding, instead of shooting spitballs at JK Rowling’s work. As an example, there’s a scene in there where he plans to arbitrage wizard currency, LOL. Obviously, they would’ve thought of that and put a barrier in place, given how segregated the wizarding world is from us hoi polloi muggles. The only criticism that rang true is that Quidditch is a seriously unbalanced game, but that’s because it’s designed for Harry to be MVP, and also because JK Rowling probably doesn’t relate to sports (ppl who play irl quidditch, running around with brooms, have altered the rules so the snitch is a bonus instead of de facto deciding the game).
While I’m on the topic of fan-fiction, Cursed Child is also pretty bad. Time travel, alternate realities, the secret love-child with the villain, etc, it had all the laziest tropes. At least when the official books utilized time travel, it was done sparingly. That said, however incompetent it was, at least CC was a genuine attempt, which imo puts it above the insufferable reddit snark of Methods of Rationality.
David P #353: That’s not supported by the text, however. There are casualties on Harry’s side in the Battle of Hogwarts, including deaths, to JK Rowling’s credit. There’s also the epilogue that shows how things turned out much later.
Whatever its faults, Harry Potter is basically a shared mythology amongst my millennial generation (and maybe some Xers and zoomers too). This ultimately reflects a paucity of shared myths that have any meaning in our pop culture. The other notable shared myths are Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, which are both excellent in original form (the books for the former, the original trilogy for the latter). That’s why there was such an uproar over the Disney reboots, particularly the cultural marxist vandalism of The Last Jedi — Disney was basically tearing down a shared mythos, and dividing an audience that was supposed to be united. That ridiculous Amazon show tried to do the same with LotR, but I think most people just tuned out by then, myself included.
>theatrical bottle-blonde Southern belle fifteen years his junior who lives for the adoration she receives from her fans and always, but always, dresses in Pepto-Bismol pink
Is she always saying “Hon”?
@The Other Owen
“I suppose, but language is supposed to communicate things and those phrases make most people’s parsers go “ERROR: STACK OVERFLOW”, so yes, they’re technically correct but in practice? Or the number of people you can communicate to is a small set of very smug, very autistic persons.”
The point is that the grammatical validity of the sentences is closely tied to its meaning: if “buffalo” wasn’t the name of an animal, the name of a place, and a verb all at the same time, the first sentence would not be grammatical. Same with the second sentence and the many meanings and uses of “had.”
This is not the case for Type-1 through Type-3 grammars, which can always be checked for validity without knowing what was intended. Nor is it true for some natural language sentences: as Chomsky pointed out, “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously,” is obviously grammatical but it doesn’t mean anything.
And contrast all these sentences with “Time flies like an arrow,” which is grammatical but can be parsed in three completely different ways depending on which word is the verb.
Are these useful in everyday conversations? No, but if you’re designing a programming language you know to keep it to context-sensitive, preferably context-free, because otherwise you can’t guarantee an unambiguous parse.
@JMG and @Curt,
The way it happened in the Philippines is that, initially in the late 19th and early 20th century, the landed families began venturing into industry. For the most part, however, it was more of a side-gig for them than a focused attempt to reinvent themselves, so it took a lot of time (the good part of a century).
The guerilla movement really began to gain steam in the late 60’s and early 70’s, with the foundation of the Maoist New People’s Army in 1969 iand the Islamic nationalist Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) n 1972. Also in 1972, President Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law, and started aggressively confiscating land from the old families and giving them to allies, while also getting huge loans for infrastructure and industrial development.
In hindsight, all these players were reacting to the same realities. Marcos is (in)famous for being smart and cunning and it looks like he was trying to get ahead of the curve, while also of course trying to make his own position and those of his friends as cushy as possible.
The Marxist guerilla movement peaked in the 1980’s. Reading about their exploits during this era left me very impressed with how strong they were – they’d assassinate American military personnel right outside their outposts in broad daylight, and regularly blow up critical infrastructure. The Bicol peninsula (where Camarines Sur province is), in particular, was one of their strongholds. In 1987, they managed to completely cut off access to the Luzon mainland and the army estimated that they controlled at least 1/3rd of the region (government propaganda being what it is, it was probably more) – see https://archive.is/wh0uH. It also happened that the most purges within the movement happened during that decade – with the massive increase in membership also lead to a massive increase in paranoia that everyone around you might have been a government agent. Ironically, this was the time when the government (and military) was weakest and they probably had the biggest number of sincere members including those from government and military backgrounds. Who knows, they could have won if not for their own paranoia! But isn’t that the story with every Marxist movement whether they got into power or not!
Anyway, you might have noticed that the sitting president is the son and namesake of the Ferdinand Marcos mentioned above. That’s an interesting historical twist; as while the Aquino family that took over from Marcos in 1986 remains one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) landholding families to the present day, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. studied in Oxford and has presented himself as someone who’d continue the managerial-technocratic successes that his father started. The biggest irony being that he won the 2022 elections in the biggest margin of any national elections conducted under the 1987 constitution: he beat the Aquinos at their own game because his family actually managed to reinvent themselves instead of trying to preserve something that’s been fading away for a couple of generations now.
@JMG
P.S. having read your comment to John Z. on turn-of-the-20th-century Japanese and Russian elites, you could say that the Philippine elites were a bit smarter than the Russian ones, but much lazier than the Japanese ones, and about 50 years behind the curve from both. Which got us to where we are now!
I had forgotten adding something to my comment about Sombart: he’s (or at least he was) famous for having popularised the term “Capitalism”. If you’ve noted it, Marx and Engels liked to write “the Capital”, but “Capitalism” indeed became more popular term until nowadays.
@Scotlyn #379 “However, Hoffer says, a person willing to sacrifice their own self (because it has no intrinsic worth to them), will not hesitate to sacrifice any other self for this same “higher good” – why would they grant worth to any other self, if their own is already of so little worth that it can go on the chopping block?”
“Чужая головушка полушка, да и своя шейка копейка”, as Pushkin called it (possibly citing an earlier phrase, but I can’t find it on short notice). “Another’s head is [worth] a polushka, and even one’s own neck is [worth] a kopeyka”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polushka
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopeck
A polushka in Pushkin’s time was a quarter of a kopeyka/kopeck, but neither one is a lot. 🙂
He wrote that only “cruel-hearted” individuals who saw things like that or youths who do not know our people could want a revolution in Russia. I think he was quite right; certainly he was validated by events. Nor is this only true here, though. It’s not that our people or any people are inherently evil, but a revolution creates temptations for violent self-aggrandisement that many will fail to withstand – and this was obvious to some writers even before further illustrations were supplied.
Chuaquin: I happened to have translated into English the first two volumes of Werner Sombart’s magnum opus Der moderne Kapitalismus, and am working on the third (three more to go after that – sigh). Sombart is an interesting character – you could say he went from beta-Marxist to beta-Conservative Revolutionary – he sits more firmly inside the Conservative Revolution than inside National Socialism. His last work is considered by some to be Fascist but was more of a prospectus to the Nazis trying to convince them of where they should have been heading (I think he was approaching 80 by then, and his best work was a good twenty years earlier).
Overall Sombart is renowned for these things:
– the depth and breadth of his approach to Economics – based very much on Economic History (he was a key member of the younger German Historical School of economics along with his friend Max Weber) and emphasising the role that the spirit of the times plays, not to mention the roles of geography and culture on economic development – his sources were very wide-ranging and covered a multitude of languages (something which has presented me with all sorts of challenges)
– he wrote a famous essay: Why is there no Socialism in the United States? – worth reading
– he is credited with identifying the key role that double-entry bookkeeping played in the rise of capitalism, along with the roles played by the military-industrial complex and by the fashion industry
– whereas Max Weber emphasised the role that Protestantism played in the genesis of capitalism (itself a reaction to something Sombart wrote), Sombart claimed for the Jews an equal share in the development of financial capitalism (some Jewish writers lauded him for this, others berated him for it)
– one of his key insights is that the earlier stages in economic development never completely disappear – self-sufficiency still continued in a more limited way, as did barter and small scale home enterprises, etc. That is, financial corporations have not taken over all of economic life.
There is probably more I could add, but you’d be better off buying the books or, if you can read German, downloading the originals (I recommend skipping the foreword to the first volume – it was more about points scoring against the critics of the first edition) and deciding for yourself 😉
Justin #383:
With regards to Filch, you may like a fan theory that states that he is a poltergeist, much like Peeves. In-universe, they’re not limited to destruction but can embody any strong motivational current in an area—Peeves embodies rule breaking and Filch might embody rule following. Come to think of it, that makes them a little egregory, no?
This would explain why Filch has to clean up after people who could do it with a simple wave of their wands—he literally manifested to do so. It’s also why he doesn’t appear to sleep, can pop up seemingly anywhere in the castle at a moment’s notice, and why he still works at the school he hates when Dumbledore and most teachers look down on him with contempt, some better disguised than others.
As he is so bent on rule following, he might be in denial about being a poltergeist, and thus assume that he is a squib.
xcalibur/djs #386:
I’m pretty sure that those casualties occur in the first part of the battle, before Harry walks into the forest. Afterwards, the combatants are, according to Harry, protected by his sacrifice.
As for the epilogue, sure, but do note that it’s pretty much just what Harry wishes his life to be at seventeen. He marries Ginny, Ron and Hermione end up married, James and Lily are back, in pretty much their original personalities, etc. I don’t think this is in the text but he also becomes an Auror, something that he really wanted at that time, but clearly isn’t the best job for him (that would be DaDA professor).
—David P.
Mary Bennet #371 wrote “How, for example, did French end up with three vowels lined up in a row in many words, and why so many mute consonants?”
Language change was rapid in the days before mass literacy and the invention of dictionaries. For example, “beau” comes from the Latin “bellus”. The pronunciation of the “LL” got dropped, possible because they were “dark” L’s. (Look at how the “L” in English “would” and “could” is no longer pronounced). Then the pronunciation first probably became “buh-aw”, before becoming by contraction the pronunciation that we know today. Anyway, look at how we shorten words in English. Many people say “probbly” instead of “probably”. And “blog” started off as “web log”.
As for “oeil”, French uses three vowels to pronounce an unusual vowel sound not served by any one or two letters. English has many vowel sounds compared to some other languages, so we typically use double vowels, e.g. in “point”, whereas other European languages use a single letter with a diacritic to render an unusual pronunciation. Alternatively the French may have used strange spellings deliberately, to puzzle the Mary Bennets of the future. You know how contrary the French can be. 😉
>As an example, there’s a scene in there where he plans to arbitrage wizard currency
If you can conjure up anything, why would you need money at all? Why would there be a bank, Gringotts, that’s so important to everyone (and to the plot)? JK Rowling is writing the equivalent of comfort food, wrapping in you in warm familiar things and rocking you to sleep while singing lullabies.
Shrug, there’s a reason why she’s a billionaire. Give them what they want and plenty of it. Nom nom nom.
other owen @381
“For example, what’s a catamite? Oh, you mean f**got. Pretentious.”
catamite is quite a bit more specific than f**got, and hopefully a lot rarer these days
Tangentially related: should you find yourself in Philadelphia later this year, the art museum is hosting a “Surrealism at 100” exhibition from November 8, 2025 to February 16, 2026.
“Jack, I know. One of the most racist people I’ve ever met, a guy who liked to praise Hitler, was Native American. The thing to keep in mind is that racial identity is always a construct, and it’s defined by who it excludes, not who it includes. We’re not that far from the time when Italians weren’t considered white; we may not be too far from the time when Hispanic and Native American people are considered white.”
I suppose since Hitler’s plans were the mass liquidation of more “white” people than the most vindictive ex-Aztec warlord (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost), that may not be suprising!
For that matter, “Europeans” only came to be perceived as a distinct grouping of people in the wake of the Islamic conquests of the 7th and 8th Centuries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronicle_of_754). This upended the Classical world distinction of Mediterranean vs non-Mediterranean whereby the further one went in any direction from the Mediterranean (North or South), the less “civilized” one was.
“Deo, thanks for this. It’s precisely Prussia’s sense of itself as weak and vulnerable that makes it so dangerous. Notice how many American school shooters think of themselves as weak, vulnerable failures — it’s the same mindset. Unfortunately, when Prussia can grab the rest of Germany as its gun, it’s not just a school that gets shot up.”
I for one think Germany’s 20th Century history would have been less tragic had the Austrians rather than the Prussians served as the locus of a united Germany. In the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, most German states sided with Austria. Prussians were (and are) perceived by other Germans as austere, humorous, disciplinary militarists whose state’s very existence came from the conquest of the last pagan states in Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Crusades
KAN 393: Thank you for your comment (although I will probably be late for JMG time).
David P #394: Those are fair points. I don’t think your interpretation is intended, but I do think the fairy-tale ending lends itself to the dark wish-fulfillment of your theory. And it’s true, teaching Defense against the Dark Arts is basically what Harry was already doing in the Dumbledore’s Army meetings.
Other Owen #396: To be fair, magic is limited by time & distance, and you can’t use it for food (or if you did, the nutrients would disappear from your body when the spell wears off). And maybe there’s some sort of magical cryptocurrency to solve the double-spending problem. But I see your point, HP is a hodgepodge of the familiar and magical, with the magical aspects largely contained in an academic setting to avoid becoming too uncanny.
Then there’s the problem of what to do with Slytherin after the main conflict is settled, which is dealt with in this classic article from Fiddler’s Greene: https://fiddlersgreene.substack.com/p/those-who-walk-away-from-hogwarts
David P:
1) The Filch as poltergeist theory has a lot of merit!
2) The idea that Potter really did die in the forest certainly has merit – and I will say that Rowling would need a bigger yacht had she the stones to just end the books with a green flash of light and perhaps a short talk with Dumbledore at a train station, which is why I don’t buy it. Or maybe, he was supposed to die there, but millions of Disneybux changed things…
I did look up the epilogue and it is more saccharine than I remembered… but on the other hand, it reflects the western Millennial desire for the end of history to continue at a time when Bush was launching a Stupid War that would set the wheel turning once again.