I resent your January post claiming the alternatives would be ''liberal democracy'' and ''autocracy''. What even are those in the end? Liberal democracy today is anything except a democracy. You correctly coined the NGO-state term. Power is elsewhere, elections are meaningless and parliaments a scam. It's a supranational plutocratic klep…
I resent your January post claiming the alternatives would be ''liberal democracy'' and ''autocracy''. What even are those in the end? Liberal democracy today is anything except a democracy. You correctly coined the NGO-state term. Power is elsewhere, elections are meaningless and parliaments a scam. It's a supranational plutocratic kleptocracy. I look at Italy, Italian oligarchs are hardly Italian anymore. They have double-citizenship (American, Dutch, Swiss, British are popular) for tax purposes and do not spend more than the necessary time in Italy anymore. Speaking of Italy, if you really want something spicy maybe look up Enrico Mattei. The one that created the Italian energy monopoly, secured non-American controlled resources and was able to balance well socialists and Christian Democrats to avoid turning Italy into a vassal of the Soviet Union or the US. He died ''in an accident''.
Back to my main criticism, it is mainly towards a conservative tendency to accept liberal premises, languages and narrative. This has been particularly catastrophic with the Wuhan Coronavirus and the NATO occupation of Ukraine. You accept the liberal narrative, their rules and then wonder why you keep losing. WTF is autocracy anyway? Is Hungary an autocracy? It's far more democratic than any so called liberal democracy. It's just not liberal and it does just fine.
I LOOOOL all the time at the zombie-like worship of "muh democracy" by these activists-journalists and the childless white middle class women in their 30s and 40s + the scrawny post teen virginal nerds (both eternally looking for a purpose to a boring, empty life) that make up the bulk of the liberal coalition.
"Democracy"TM by ITSELF hasnt pulled out India or Latin america (in many cases, democracies for decades) out of poverty or 3rd world status
In fact, id say the equation --- Democracy = economic development" is as true as 2+2 = 5
The country that has grown economically the fastest in the last 40 years?
A VERY AUTHORITARIAN China,,, the horror !!
Also. i'd add that many confuse,,things
MOST Western countries became rich and developed FIRST waaaay before becoming democracies (18th-19th centuries)
with iconic countries like France and Germany becoming democracies in some modern sense only around 1870 and 1950, respectively.
So, NO evidence at all that DemocracyTM gives us economic development
The accepted line in the West is that it is capitalism that has pulled much of the world out of poverty, but these types insist that only liberal democracy can do this.
Alexios, you get it. Today the contrast between 'liberal democracy' and 'autocracy' is worse than absurd. The contrast is designed to mislead.
Autocrats can function as an essential enabler of democracy. The best example of this is Putin's Russia. The Russian presidency is a very powerful executive position that can (and is) used to constrain oligarchic power, thereby enabling the masses to exercise meaningful political agency via contested elections in which they can chose between political parties that are anything but interchangeable.
In the West, which defines itself as 'liberal democratic' autocracy is reviled precisely because it is a threat to oligarchic power. Autocrats function as the modern equivalent of the Crown in Parliament established by the Glorious Revolution in 1688: the Crown balanced the competing forces of the land-owning aristocracy and the common people (represented by the property owning non-aristocrats).
Readers familiar with Curtis Yarvin's thinking about a CEO saviour-president will appreciate all this.
Finally, we need to recuperate the language. The term 'autocrat'...it derives from 'autocratos'...one who rules by himself, i.e. has no equal. It was about accountability and responsibility, not unconstrained power. 'Democracy' refers to the situation where the many rule...in modern terms where the masses have genuine political agency. The 'liberal democracies' are not remotely democratic...attempts to establish any political agency for working class people is demonised as 'populism' and is widely misunderstood as a form of fascism.
PS Congrats for mentioning Enrico Mattei...his life and death illustrate the realities underlying 'liberal democratic' empire.
Conservatives need to be able to offer a narrative and language that rejects the ever-mutating liberal one. No conservative should ever use ''undocumented migrant'' to refer to illegal immigrants. No conservative should ever say ''Kyiv''. No conservative should ever say ''gender affirming healthcare''.
Exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The regime and its supporters use neuro-linguistic programming to shape the political environment and to psychically castrate the conservatives (which in the US simply means anyone not cheerfully enthusiastic about the social engineering of the regime). All opportunities for debate or the broadcast of opinion become humiliation rituals for conservatives once they buy into the language of the regime. There will be no real progress until the dissenters and dissidents start using language properly and thereby redirect the focus back onto reality.
The weakness and cowardice of the self-proclaimed 'conservatives' disgusts potential voters and rightly so. This helps demobilise the constituencies that could be used to contest the regime's policies.
Correcting this will allow the dissenters to wield microaggressions against the constituencies of the regime. This is essential for meaningful politics. Instead of "gender affirming healthcare" they need to talk about grooming, mental illness and castration. And illegal immigrants are "illegals" and "criminals" who form a replacement population based on the ruin of the rule of law and the annihilation of citizenship.
Its not even a questions of liberals or conservatives. Concepts, especially political ones, need to be well defined. If we lose sight of that all discussion is worthless.
People who play fast and loose with historical concepts should not engaged with in any form.
I disagree. Some people may need a second chance. The standard of discussion is so low that many people of goodwill simply do not understand how it is done and may be making mistakes unwittingly. Remarkably few people today have any exposure to the rigorous use of language. There is a reason that Leviathan/Cthulhu has dumbed down education and culture!
I'd say that we should engage with everyone, without prejudice, provided that they are civil. IMO it is dangerous to evade discussion, to go hors de combat as it were, because that leaves regime apologists in an uncontested position and that is the greatest danger of all. The best response to a bad idea is a good one and the experience of debating those who argue in bad faith is to expose them. It works.
Those who think for themselves need experience taking on the regime. Hiding in intellectual ghettoes (the favourite past-time of generations of 'conservatives') is a recipe for failure. I have long thought that we need more organised training in debate, including both formal logic, classical rhetoric and a bit of the latest psychology/neuroscience (because logic only works on one dimension).
The value of polemic (practiced properly) is that it fortifies the confidence and capacity of the dissenters. We stand to secure the gains from this, not just by ensuring that heterodox ideas remain current in public, but by retaining space or visibility in the public sphere. The demonstration effect will apply and encourage others to either come forward or at least send a message of comfort to those who can't or won't come forward just yet.
And nothing beats real-world experience...today's 'conservatives' are disgusting and vile creatures, happy to waffle on inside their sectarian ghettoes where transparent nonsense can pass for self-evident truths and (being full of self-pity in the best hyper-feminine manner) whine about the Left. They are not called polemics for nothing... πολεμικός means 'warlike'...this is indeed war by other means. The regime's supporters are hostile for a reason, the regime defines itself politically by enmity towards dissenters. Silence is unconditional surrender. And I'd rather be damned for what I have said or written than for being suspected of thought-crime.
Very good comment. I agree with everything you said. Just want to mention that autocracy is a real and well defined political form. Basically it defines a regime where all power is concentrated on a single individual or entity.
Really it is quite a common political form and there are various examples of autocratic regimes like Ataturk's Turkey or even Napoleonic France.
The people who recoil at the mere utterance of the word are conceptually literate and prefer to live in their delusional alternate reality. I would put many of Americas elites in this category.
That is the regime's game: normalise confusion by means of behaviourist psychology...train people like Pavlov's dogs so that they fear anything that is not regime-compliant propaganda.
Saw a wonderful movie in Italian (wife translated) Il Divo, by Sorrentino, based on Giulio Andreotti, the legendary survivor of Italian politics (until he wasn't). Clearly implies the CD party was not unhappy that Aldo Moro was killed.
Not unhappy? I bet they gave a sigh of relief. Moro's death remains a scandal. One of the bastards in the Brigata Rosa (Antonio Negri) was sheltered for years by the French (presumably as a favour for the right people) and returned to Italy to serve an extraordinarily modest sentence. IMHO this is as good as a confession that the Italian Deep State and their friends were compromised. At the time Moro was held in captivity, Negri rang Moro's wife and taunted her on the phone that her husband was going to die.
There is no way the best (in the classical sense) ever go easy on anybody involved, however obliquely, in the murder of a professional politician (still less a head of government) unless the murder served their purposes. They are thugs at heart...and shameless. Mattei, Moro, Pasolini and so many others...they (the best and their friends) have the blood of innocents on their hands. The same was true elsewhere in the 70s and 80s especially.
IL DIVO is a great movie...I have seen portions of it and a friend born in Rome is a very great fan of it indeed. Andreotti was a sphinx with manners that would shame a gentleman...the politicians of today are guttersnipes compared to that monster.
Philip, a student of corruption in politics like you would love Il Divo. That slow dawning on Andreotti that this time around HE is the mark is extraordinary. Once Wall came down, West dumped all those people like him, the egregoius Craxi and co. Hard to explain to young folks that Berlinguer in Italy, Marchais in France were major political figures in Europe.
I must get a copy and watch it in full. The real Il Divo was way too serious and capable to enjoy the support of Turbo America on a permanent basis. The US tolerates capable clients only when they have to but when free to do so they purge them and replace them with dross.
They were not stupid or callous enough to neglect their people. Corruption is tolerable so long as it is kept within limits and balanced by a regard for the welfare of the whole. The current blend of selfishness, smugness and depraved indifference is going to prove explosive.
"Back to my main criticism, it is mainly towards a conservative tendency to accept liberal premises, languages and narrative."
----------
Love Niccolo, but he has done this on a number of occasions-- and gets me riled-up each time -- referencing (if not buying into) this notion that there's some White Nationalism movement in the USA. No such thing exists except for in the MDM-MSM (Misinformation, Malinformation, & Disinformation -- Main Stream Media).
What DOES exist is an Anti-White GloboHomo movement intent on criminalizing & destroying conservatism & Christianity, if not mere whiteness itself.
Nic is 3000000000000000000000% correct when he says white nationalism is a loser's crusade. It's weak ideologically, tarnished beyond repair and infiltrated at all levels. The fact that many white nationalists today side with the GAE against Russia is just the nail in the coffin for something that is completely delusional and hopeless.
I resent your January post claiming the alternatives would be ''liberal democracy'' and ''autocracy''. What even are those in the end? Liberal democracy today is anything except a democracy. You correctly coined the NGO-state term. Power is elsewhere, elections are meaningless and parliaments a scam. It's a supranational plutocratic kleptocracy. I look at Italy, Italian oligarchs are hardly Italian anymore. They have double-citizenship (American, Dutch, Swiss, British are popular) for tax purposes and do not spend more than the necessary time in Italy anymore. Speaking of Italy, if you really want something spicy maybe look up Enrico Mattei. The one that created the Italian energy monopoly, secured non-American controlled resources and was able to balance well socialists and Christian Democrats to avoid turning Italy into a vassal of the Soviet Union or the US. He died ''in an accident''.
Back to my main criticism, it is mainly towards a conservative tendency to accept liberal premises, languages and narrative. This has been particularly catastrophic with the Wuhan Coronavirus and the NATO occupation of Ukraine. You accept the liberal narrative, their rules and then wonder why you keep losing. WTF is autocracy anyway? Is Hungary an autocracy? It's far more democratic than any so called liberal democracy. It's just not liberal and it does just fine.
Yes, liberal democracy is no longer democratic. I've written at length on this here on this Substack.
Re: autocracy - I'm fine with this term as I don't see it as inherently negative, even though it is supposed to be to western ears.
"liberal democracy is no longer democratic." Nor is it "liberal"... not here in the US; it is stridently and proudly "illiberal". Doublespeak.
Definitely.
I am aware and I give you credit for it.
I LOOOOL all the time at the zombie-like worship of "muh democracy" by these activists-journalists and the childless white middle class women in their 30s and 40s + the scrawny post teen virginal nerds (both eternally looking for a purpose to a boring, empty life) that make up the bulk of the liberal coalition.
"Democracy"TM by ITSELF hasnt pulled out India or Latin america (in many cases, democracies for decades) out of poverty or 3rd world status
In fact, id say the equation --- Democracy = economic development" is as true as 2+2 = 5
The country that has grown economically the fastest in the last 40 years?
A VERY AUTHORITARIAN China,,, the horror !!
Also. i'd add that many confuse,,things
MOST Western countries became rich and developed FIRST waaaay before becoming democracies (18th-19th centuries)
with iconic countries like France and Germany becoming democracies in some modern sense only around 1870 and 1950, respectively.
So, NO evidence at all that DemocracyTM gives us economic development
The accepted line in the West is that it is capitalism that has pulled much of the world out of poverty, but these types insist that only liberal democracy can do this.
Alexios, you get it. Today the contrast between 'liberal democracy' and 'autocracy' is worse than absurd. The contrast is designed to mislead.
Autocrats can function as an essential enabler of democracy. The best example of this is Putin's Russia. The Russian presidency is a very powerful executive position that can (and is) used to constrain oligarchic power, thereby enabling the masses to exercise meaningful political agency via contested elections in which they can chose between political parties that are anything but interchangeable.
In the West, which defines itself as 'liberal democratic' autocracy is reviled precisely because it is a threat to oligarchic power. Autocrats function as the modern equivalent of the Crown in Parliament established by the Glorious Revolution in 1688: the Crown balanced the competing forces of the land-owning aristocracy and the common people (represented by the property owning non-aristocrats).
Readers familiar with Curtis Yarvin's thinking about a CEO saviour-president will appreciate all this.
Finally, we need to recuperate the language. The term 'autocrat'...it derives from 'autocratos'...one who rules by himself, i.e. has no equal. It was about accountability and responsibility, not unconstrained power. 'Democracy' refers to the situation where the many rule...in modern terms where the masses have genuine political agency. The 'liberal democracies' are not remotely democratic...attempts to establish any political agency for working class people is demonised as 'populism' and is widely misunderstood as a form of fascism.
PS Congrats for mentioning Enrico Mattei...his life and death illustrate the realities underlying 'liberal democratic' empire.
Conservatives need to be able to offer a narrative and language that rejects the ever-mutating liberal one. No conservative should ever use ''undocumented migrant'' to refer to illegal immigrants. No conservative should ever say ''Kyiv''. No conservative should ever say ''gender affirming healthcare''.
Exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The regime and its supporters use neuro-linguistic programming to shape the political environment and to psychically castrate the conservatives (which in the US simply means anyone not cheerfully enthusiastic about the social engineering of the regime). All opportunities for debate or the broadcast of opinion become humiliation rituals for conservatives once they buy into the language of the regime. There will be no real progress until the dissenters and dissidents start using language properly and thereby redirect the focus back onto reality.
The weakness and cowardice of the self-proclaimed 'conservatives' disgusts potential voters and rightly so. This helps demobilise the constituencies that could be used to contest the regime's policies.
Correcting this will allow the dissenters to wield microaggressions against the constituencies of the regime. This is essential for meaningful politics. Instead of "gender affirming healthcare" they need to talk about grooming, mental illness and castration. And illegal immigrants are "illegals" and "criminals" who form a replacement population based on the ruin of the rule of law and the annihilation of citizenship.
Its not even a questions of liberals or conservatives. Concepts, especially political ones, need to be well defined. If we lose sight of that all discussion is worthless.
People who play fast and loose with historical concepts should not engaged with in any form.
I disagree. Some people may need a second chance. The standard of discussion is so low that many people of goodwill simply do not understand how it is done and may be making mistakes unwittingly. Remarkably few people today have any exposure to the rigorous use of language. There is a reason that Leviathan/Cthulhu has dumbed down education and culture!
I'd say that we should engage with everyone, without prejudice, provided that they are civil. IMO it is dangerous to evade discussion, to go hors de combat as it were, because that leaves regime apologists in an uncontested position and that is the greatest danger of all. The best response to a bad idea is a good one and the experience of debating those who argue in bad faith is to expose them. It works.
Those who think for themselves need experience taking on the regime. Hiding in intellectual ghettoes (the favourite past-time of generations of 'conservatives') is a recipe for failure. I have long thought that we need more organised training in debate, including both formal logic, classical rhetoric and a bit of the latest psychology/neuroscience (because logic only works on one dimension).
Yes you are actually correct. I think i was to uncharitable in my last comment.
Ultimately polemics will will always have their value especially in this modern age.
The value of polemic (practiced properly) is that it fortifies the confidence and capacity of the dissenters. We stand to secure the gains from this, not just by ensuring that heterodox ideas remain current in public, but by retaining space or visibility in the public sphere. The demonstration effect will apply and encourage others to either come forward or at least send a message of comfort to those who can't or won't come forward just yet.
And nothing beats real-world experience...today's 'conservatives' are disgusting and vile creatures, happy to waffle on inside their sectarian ghettoes where transparent nonsense can pass for self-evident truths and (being full of self-pity in the best hyper-feminine manner) whine about the Left. They are not called polemics for nothing... πολεμικός means 'warlike'...this is indeed war by other means. The regime's supporters are hostile for a reason, the regime defines itself politically by enmity towards dissenters. Silence is unconditional surrender. And I'd rather be damned for what I have said or written than for being suspected of thought-crime.
yes, lesson number 1, dont use the language of your foes
Very good comment. I agree with everything you said. Just want to mention that autocracy is a real and well defined political form. Basically it defines a regime where all power is concentrated on a single individual or entity.
Really it is quite a common political form and there are various examples of autocratic regimes like Ataturk's Turkey or even Napoleonic France.
The people who recoil at the mere utterance of the word are conceptually literate and prefer to live in their delusional alternate reality. I would put many of Americas elites in this category.
That is the regime's game: normalise confusion by means of behaviourist psychology...train people like Pavlov's dogs so that they fear anything that is not regime-compliant propaganda.
Saw a wonderful movie in Italian (wife translated) Il Divo, by Sorrentino, based on Giulio Andreotti, the legendary survivor of Italian politics (until he wasn't). Clearly implies the CD party was not unhappy that Aldo Moro was killed.
Not unhappy? I bet they gave a sigh of relief. Moro's death remains a scandal. One of the bastards in the Brigata Rosa (Antonio Negri) was sheltered for years by the French (presumably as a favour for the right people) and returned to Italy to serve an extraordinarily modest sentence. IMHO this is as good as a confession that the Italian Deep State and their friends were compromised. At the time Moro was held in captivity, Negri rang Moro's wife and taunted her on the phone that her husband was going to die.
There is no way the best (in the classical sense) ever go easy on anybody involved, however obliquely, in the murder of a professional politician (still less a head of government) unless the murder served their purposes. They are thugs at heart...and shameless. Mattei, Moro, Pasolini and so many others...they (the best and their friends) have the blood of innocents on their hands. The same was true elsewhere in the 70s and 80s especially.
IL DIVO is a great movie...I have seen portions of it and a friend born in Rome is a very great fan of it indeed. Andreotti was a sphinx with manners that would shame a gentleman...the politicians of today are guttersnipes compared to that monster.
Philip, a student of corruption in politics like you would love Il Divo. That slow dawning on Andreotti that this time around HE is the mark is extraordinary. Once Wall came down, West dumped all those people like him, the egregoius Craxi and co. Hard to explain to young folks that Berlinguer in Italy, Marchais in France were major political figures in Europe.
I must get a copy and watch it in full. The real Il Divo was way too serious and capable to enjoy the support of Turbo America on a permanent basis. The US tolerates capable clients only when they have to but when free to do so they purge them and replace them with dross.
They were corrupt, but at least they defended our interests. Unlike today's liberals who are corrupt and defend foreign oligarchs.
They were not stupid or callous enough to neglect their people. Corruption is tolerable so long as it is kept within limits and balanced by a regard for the welfare of the whole. The current blend of selfishness, smugness and depraved indifference is going to prove explosive.
"Back to my main criticism, it is mainly towards a conservative tendency to accept liberal premises, languages and narrative."
----------
Love Niccolo, but he has done this on a number of occasions-- and gets me riled-up each time -- referencing (if not buying into) this notion that there's some White Nationalism movement in the USA. No such thing exists except for in the MDM-MSM (Misinformation, Malinformation, & Disinformation -- Main Stream Media).
What DOES exist is an Anti-White GloboHomo movement intent on criminalizing & destroying conservatism & Christianity, if not mere whiteness itself.
Nic is 3000000000000000000000% correct when he says white nationalism is a loser's crusade. It's weak ideologically, tarnished beyond repair and infiltrated at all levels. The fact that many white nationalists today side with the GAE against Russia is just the nail in the coffin for something that is completely delusional and hopeless.