#MAGACommunism?????, Classical Liberalism vs. The New Right, UK Economy in Dire Straits, US to EU: Cut Down on Trade With China Now!, the Revolutionary Jean-Luc Godard
Before the "Left" (those delegates to the 1792 French National Convention seated left of center) was hijacked by the bloodthirsty guillotine fiends led by Robespierre, it simply meant opponents of
1. Absolute monarchy, and
2. A government establishment of religion
Ironically, today's "Populists," though fierce opponents of any variety of Marxist tyranny, are not either monarchists or advocates of government-run religion.
It really has been the template for all left revolutions since 1789, with conception of an enemy class who must be exterminated to bring about perfect freedom and happiness. So many Far East revolutionaries received ideological education in France - Deng Xiaoping, Ho Chi Minh, Khmer Rouge elite.
Most of what has changed is the technology, from guillotine to gulag to concentration camp to cancel culture. The last creates a state of virtual death, unlike all of the former, which created martyrs.
Ran into maga communism for the first time over on the RWA boys discord; I’m still doubtful about it, but it is encouraging to see left-wingers breaking themselves out of their deeply engrained programming and recognizing the one development that (I think) truly scares the powers that be is a joining of the ends of the political spectrum and the recognition that the entire system is the problem
I know. Been a part of a community (largely divorced from politics, or should be) that has a majority of Europeans (mostly UK, but fair amount of Scandinavians etc)...anyways, I’ve learned how uniquely and deeply conditioned we Americans are against even the slightest utterance of “communism”. Regardless, at very least this is another development that certainly means we live in interesting times.
The "Dirtbag Left" was already trying to open up/break away from the woke crowd since 2019 or so, but they quickly ran into their own limits and started going in circles.
Their limitations were so obvious from the outside.
Class consciousness that can supersede ethnic (racial) differences can only arise in the real world, at the bottom of society, though tribal segregation is more likely to rule the day (there's no London Working Class, only ghettos of Turks, Kurds, Poles, etc.)
No solution will come from subreddits full of white kids who are kind of tired of woke but still want to be nice and socialist and idk post Zizek. They might annoy the even more extremely online, lunatic Left, but so does everyone who is just normal and "want to grill".
When I was young I did work a few times in an actual steel mill, summer jobs, didn't like it back then, but the experience pays off every time I meet "working class advocates" online. No amount of virtual circlejerking will ever gaslight me one way or another.
What does the working class want that unites them, no matter what their backgrounds are? The best answer I have is a cool motorbike.
George, what you are saying is entirely correct, especially about the wannabe-Leftists of today. Yet as you acknowledge, there are possibilities.
Class consciousness will form, is forming now, where conditions are right. The realities of life (the rationing of opportunity by class, the differential effects of politics and the division between creditors and debtors, to name a few) has a way of intruding and disrupting even the fog of infotainment and indoctrination. Naturally, this consciousness will be mitigated in many, perhaps most, instances by tribal, ethnic and racial divisions. It is unlikely that the phenomenon will behave in any way that resembles the expectations of the activists.
But the fact remains that the ability of the system to buy social peace through mass consumption, welfare and upward social mobility is breaking down. Most of the West is in the grip of transformative social changes, above all the formation of a new caste system: the few are becoming ever more distinct from the many in lifestyle, education, income/wealth and health. Trends in morbidity, mortality, family formation and completed fertility all reveal that the castes now forming can expect to have little in common. The gap in belief and sensibility between the rival strata is evident.
The working class in the old Marxist sense is most unlikely to ever unite (at least in the West), but forms of class consciousness amongst various elements is bound to develop and become a serious problem for the Left and Right alike. This is good. Neither Left nor Right serve their constituencies faithfully. They will deserve the problems they get.
Tom Wolfe (again) is hilarious about the academic left conception of the Common Man, From Bauhaus to Our House. Not to mention that bombastic hoopla by Copelamd and his Fanfare. Not. A, Clue.
Academics have always been ridiculous. Swift had fun at their expense.
The expansion of education (child-minding certified by the award of a credential) has simply made ambient derangement more common than it was in the old days.
How can one frame this as anything else than class struggle?
Its the ruling class vs the working class.
Americans seems to always get stuck in soviet implementation of Marxism, fearing the dissolution of private property. To put ownership of the means of production in to the hands of the workers producing is what the new right is about in many ways. It's anti globalisation and anti centralization.
The struggle rises from the same predicament, the awful terms for work that's intrinsic to industrialization, only keot bearable through technology and massive propaganda. Left or right we're in the same predicament.
I think the physicals vs virtuals is a lacking description. All programmers are working class, and programming is btw also being outsourced to asia.
Journalists which i think fits the virtuals form the best are mainly working class sucking up to the ruling class. The self loathing is strong in that group, never saw more of it than my years in the television industry.
As mentioned in the piece where the graphic first appeared: academia is not wedded to the current constitutional system that is in place in the USA. They (meaning large parts of it) would be happy to discard the whole thing.
"Perhaps most of all, it is dangerous when “how much can we trust elites?” becomes a major dividing line in society."
Did a ctrl-f on Tyler's piece with "elite". Oh boy.
While Hungary is not a high trust society (maybe middle, in-between), I can assure Tyler (if anti-elitism is his biggest reservation) that he has nothing to worry about: here the Right wins hard power with a massive majority, yet the Left controls the soft one, dominating it. People loathe both elites, and both elites loathe each other. The culture war is ever so vicious. Yet somehow societal trust increased in the past 15 years by all measures.
We do have very clean elections, done on paper ballots, observers from both block preset at every voting place. If the US is facing a fatal societal trust issue, it already had a taste of it in November 2020, and the mid-terms can also turn ugly.
1. any voting that is not on paper, tallied by people, must not be allowed.
2. there should be no voting place where the major parties (in the US it's as simple as it gets, the Two) don't have delegates, throughout the voting and the tallying.
In Hungary the ballots close at 7pm and we should have a result before midnight. It's fast and infinitely scaleable. Results are sent in to the center electronically, but all the parties have their own records from even the smallest village so they can double check the data (it's only sent in if they all agree locally in the first place).
I might write an article about it if I can get hold of an expert. Constitutional lawyer, preferably.
Electronic voting is not worth the tradeoff. Democracy is about legitimacy, it sucks at anything else (maybe to meritocratically select snake oil salesmen).
No lost ballots found until the Dems win and such shenanigans, like in Florida 2018. The Republicans are responsible for any cheating in 2020, they had 2 years to prepare, and did jack shit.
India can manage it. Here in Ireland a postal vote is rare, and for specific cases - when my wife went abroad for work, she filled in her ballot, and then brought it to the cop station where they witnessed her seal it in an outer envelope and they signed it. US system is ripe for corruption. Notice early reports of unwarranted postal ballots (unvalidated, no unique code!) being reported by workers, maybe unwilling to be caught up in fruad if it all goes west.
The classical liberal debate is interesting. It’s very fashionable to skewer “liberalism” and wish for based tyranny but in fact there’s little classically liberal about our modern government. The idw dorks kind of see this but seem to think they can just resurrect liberalism through facts and logic. A lot of the new right was influenced by libertarianism but being autists I think that they actually mapped out what engineering would have to be done to restore proper rule of law, property rights etc and realized that it would require a rather illiberal temporary changing of the guards using a state of exception
MAGA is a (admittedly clever) political slogan. That’s it. The only person so far with the charisma needed to lead a movement and actually overthrow the current system never understood the power he derived/could wield through the mechanisms of the US government because he was too busy trying to figure how he could build resorts in North Korea. What are we even talking about??
Curtis Yarvin argues Lincoln had 10x the power of FDR, who in turn had 10x the power of LBJ and that if Biden or Trump or Obama doubled the power of the Presidency it would be like an increase from 0.2 to 0.4.
Laviathan is upon us; the managed state moves as it will, the president is not going change that. Curtis calls the mechanism of human affairs “ the selective advantage of dominant ideas” and describes our polity - the west, turbo America- as being a clerical oligarchy. The dip shit Trump had no power. As for the sundowner in chief, word has it that he is peeing on house plants.
Yarvin said in a podcast that he knew Trump was not going to be his guy when he refused to fully give up his business. His heart was not in the Presidency. Imagine if Ceasar sold wine or Napolean sold cheese as they led their nation. You need a guy who is 100% into running the country.
Napoleon and Caesar didn't expect to get booted out in 4/8 years though. For them it was literally do or die. And Trump wasn't selling cheese. He has guys to sell for him, while he banks the cheques.
Indeed. Who would even have thought of that in November 2019? Tyler certainly wouldn't have as late as March 2020.
He's like the world's best sports announcer, who happens to face away from the field while reading the rulebook. Utterly exceptional at divining how power actrd according to a rule breach; completely useless at telling you what might happen five seconds from now.
It must be incredibly exciting being this guy. Every election so incredibly unpredictable, every shift in public policy a jawdropping aurora borealis.
If you want to get a sense of the state of the American hard left, visit the WSWS (World Socialist Web Site). I used to read their articles until they went all-in with the Covid pandemic response.
I don’t know what to think about these guys either. The first time I went on their website it was to look at this article criticizing the 1619 Project:
“Despite the pretense of establishing the United States’ ‘true’ foundation, the 1619 Project is a politically motivated falsification of history. It presents and interprets American history entirely through the prism of race and racial conflict. The World Socialist Web Site published detailed refutations of the numerous falsifications contained in the Times project, and interviewed leading historians of the United States.”
There's no doubt that David North has been at this for a long time. I used to find their analysis in line with socialist theory up until the pandemic. I would compare them with the DSA, who are obviously co-opted. Now, as far as Covid is concerned, they're no better.
“Build Back Better, WORLD” had me laughing. Reminds me of the idiotic business plan from the movie Stepbrothers, “Prestige, WORLDWIDE!!!”. That this initiative is supposed to counter China and instead promotes gender equality is just perfect comedy. When people mention “Brazilification” of the U.S, I no longer think of the country of Brazil but rather the Terry Gilliam directed movie. Tyler Cowen’s critique of the new right falls pretty flat to me when we’re already living in clown world.
The dual socialist and libertarian critique of the new right(alt right, NRx, MAGA, etc) is interesting and reminds me of something BAP tweeted about being able to tell whether someone in the new right had previously been a Ron Paul fan. From his tweets BAP seemed more skeptical of those that had come from socialism than libertarianism.
On turbo America: America as the global hegemony has been talked about for 30 years, however it’s really only in the last few years it could be described as “turbo”. Do you think this change is due to younger elites replacing Cold War veterans? Changing cultural mores, i.e. woke? The demographic decline and “soft power” decline of Europe as a competing liberal influence? I ask because I find it hard to believe the U.S. military and economy are in a better spot than they were 20 years ago, yet America acts like it is.
The political cadre of Turbo America was selected for conformity by complaisant mentors from the Silent Generation who simply had no idea how dumbed down the education system has become. The younger elites have never faced the challenges the Silent Generation did, but they have retained the ideological legacies of the twentieth century (above all a tendency towards extreme reductivism) and mistaken these for genuine insights.
I work at a left-wing college campus that was subjected to a nearly-successful hostile takeover by an ad hoc faculty coalition of communists and racial nationalists in the wake of George Floyd Summer.
It didn't dawn on me that a Croatian colleague whose neighborhood was bombed in the early 90s would think it's good to inflame racial hatred in The New World over things that happened generations and centuries ago, but commie gonna commie.
“They can join leftists in demonizing MAGA supporters … or they can sacrifice ideological purity and side with the only mass working-class and anti-establishment movement that currently exists in America. There is no middle path.”
100%. I don’t trust any leftist who supports the status quo or believes in democratic change
In Marxist-Leninist circles, I’ve commonly encountered the sentiment that America needs to have its “fascist revolution” before it is ready for a communist one. They perceive class conscious to be suppressed enough that a communist revolution is impossible; the various state control apparatus are too strong. The destruction of the status quo, by any means is necessary, is needed for communism to succeed in America
From what Niccolo writes, it seems the most likely outcome is the liberals taking over the state, but smoothly, with the support of the elites. This keeps state apparatus intact… the ones the communists expect to weaken to allow their revolution
We’ll see what happens but Niccolo is correct, the best thing for any non-systemic opposition is for any non-systemic opposition to succeed, even if that opposition is radically different from your own
"In Marxist-Leninist circles, I’ve commonly encountered the sentiment that America needs to have its “fascist revolution” before it is ready for a communist one."
This is the dialectic at work, and which is what was responsible for German Communist Party (KPD) leader Ernst Thalmann to tell everyone not to worry about Hitler and the NSDAP getting into power because "they'll quickly show themselves to be incompetent, and then it will be our turn to rule."
😂 it seems that history may repeat itself with a different flavor of fascism, or whatever you want to call what is occurring in America right now, with the “suede denim secret police” instead of the Gestapo
Systemic and non-systemic, a good  lens that makes a lot of sense.
Trump is the most significant president of our lifetime. I love saying this to upset people, which it does.
His victory was the beginning of something new as Soldo tells us in the first piece.Trump’s brilliance was in gaming the system defeating both the Rs and the Ds. In office he was a Buffon that fought with everyone. But even that has become a feature not a failing; people let down by the system have rallied around him and his petulant rudeness. If the elite want a revolution, excluding Trump could cause it. I know, some portion of the elite has to join the dispossessed for anything to change, but negating Trump might send people like me into the street. The safest bet would be to let him run potentially win and then bumble his way through another four years: he can’t change anything.
Our elite are very smart but made dumb by their arrogance. They could blow this whole thing up by excluding him.
The reason America looks politically incoherent is because people get confused trying to describe it as a whole, when in fact they should be describing it as the ruling pragmatic elite class, and the irrelevant tards and plebe, which contains vooters and various pseudopolitics groups like the rainbow and minority alliance, the MAGApedes, Qtards, NRxers, WN, libs and cons and hell knows what else.
The ruling elites have proper political and economic goals, and are socially indifferent, or at least try to be neutral. They are deeply, financially invested in the American project and its dominance, and want it to continue to succeed. Lives of the plebe are of small relevance, depending on their ability to play nice and be the correct type of needed useful idiot for a specific period.
The ruling class is Machiavellian and high IQ, and pursues its goals with the persistence of a child stricken with the 'tism. Collateral damage is largely irrelevant, as long as the masses can be pacified with some crumbles.
If you write about these elites, you're not part of them, basically.
Random: Bravo, good judgment and very well written. NS Lyons killed it on his substack in a piece called “they are not hypocrites, you just don’t matter” or something like that. I find randoms argument altogether correct.
“But Niccolo, half of the country hates this!” Sure, but they don’t matter. Flyover America can rot for all they care, so long as the lights aren’t turned off in the places that count. The idea that the people matter was easily laid to rest with how easily the Trump Administration was subverted through the joint action of the intelligence/security servies with the mainstream media, NGOs, the judiciary, and various planted agents within the actual Trump Regime. They then went on to “fortify” the 2020 election to ensure that such a wrong result could not be repeated. If it is repeated again, they will simply subvert once more, as they got away with it the first time and are still in the same positions of power.
It does not matter to the elites whether Peoria, Illinois or Topeka, Kansas is seeing growth or regeneration. This does not impact the concerns of those in power on the federal level because these are national concerns that have for some time taken a back seat to imperial concerns. John McWilliams in Greenville, South Carolina is as relevant to them as Jose Cortes in Arica, Chile, or Dieter Schliemann from Dortmund, Germany: they are all imperial subjects.
Yes I believe I’ve read that piece from you twice and you state it - they don’t care - very well. Very earnest and argued oh so we'll BUT the NSLyons piece is very funny and your audience needs to read him.
I think the essential substack‘s are You, Curtis Yarvin, NS Lyons, the post liberal order professors, Matt Tiabbi, Glenn Greenwald, Leighton Woodhouse and Paul Kingsnorth who frightens me, he manages to communicate the eternal.
Is that where he pointed out that hypocrisy is the point? That it's a simple flex to rub the power they have in your face? If so, maybe I'm extremely dense, but I found that to be genuinely eye-opening and it has redrawn how I look at so much of the behaviour of the elite class since.
Well perhaps Urban Flight to Rural will help.
The Urban might do as the plebes do...
...woke ain’t gonna go down well or at all...
... hey pardner whatsay we go to the range?
😂
Thank you. Love your calypso singing.
Hit the like button above to like this entry and use the share button to share this across social media.
Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so (be nice!), and please subscribe if you haven't done so already.
Before the "Left" (those delegates to the 1792 French National Convention seated left of center) was hijacked by the bloodthirsty guillotine fiends led by Robespierre, it simply meant opponents of
1. Absolute monarchy, and
2. A government establishment of religion
Ironically, today's "Populists," though fierce opponents of any variety of Marxist tyranny, are not either monarchists or advocates of government-run religion.
Back to the roots of MAGA?
Maybe.
As Carlyle called him - The sea green incorruptible. Personal probity and public savagery.
Oh, yeah. I didn’t know.
https://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/History/article/why-did-carlyle-refer-to-robespierre-as-the-sea-green-incorruptible/
Many many years ago, my grandfather told me that his mother was a big fan of Carlyle. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/07/fren-j17.html
But in my view a guillotine fiend is pretty damn corrupt, whatever color the sea happens to be.
I am a Lafayette Leftist.
It really has been the template for all left revolutions since 1789, with conception of an enemy class who must be exterminated to bring about perfect freedom and happiness. So many Far East revolutionaries received ideological education in France - Deng Xiaoping, Ho Chi Minh, Khmer Rouge elite.
Most of what has changed is the technology, from guillotine to gulag to concentration camp to cancel culture. The last creates a state of virtual death, unlike all of the former, which created martyrs.
Ran into maga communism for the first time over on the RWA boys discord; I’m still doubtful about it, but it is encouraging to see left-wingers breaking themselves out of their deeply engrained programming and recognizing the one development that (I think) truly scares the powers that be is a joining of the ends of the political spectrum and the recognition that the entire system is the problem
The strategy is the correct one, but Marxism in the USA violates the Prime Directive: The Business of America is Business.
I know. Been a part of a community (largely divorced from politics, or should be) that has a majority of Europeans (mostly UK, but fair amount of Scandinavians etc)...anyways, I’ve learned how uniquely and deeply conditioned we Americans are against even the slightest utterance of “communism”. Regardless, at very least this is another development that certainly means we live in interesting times.
The "Dirtbag Left" was already trying to open up/break away from the woke crowd since 2019 or so, but they quickly ran into their own limits and started going in circles.
Their limitations were so obvious from the outside.
Seeing 'Garbage Ape' getting shredded on twitter reminds me of the whole treats thing.
Spoiler: they're still spinning in circles, but at least there they can own the chuds!
See also: the skeptical community debunking Bigfoot for the millionth time, and everyone else still trying to do thinking on the bunny slopes.
Class consciousness that can supersede ethnic (racial) differences can only arise in the real world, at the bottom of society, though tribal segregation is more likely to rule the day (there's no London Working Class, only ghettos of Turks, Kurds, Poles, etc.)
No solution will come from subreddits full of white kids who are kind of tired of woke but still want to be nice and socialist and idk post Zizek. They might annoy the even more extremely online, lunatic Left, but so does everyone who is just normal and "want to grill".
When I was young I did work a few times in an actual steel mill, summer jobs, didn't like it back then, but the experience pays off every time I meet "working class advocates" online. No amount of virtual circlejerking will ever gaslight me one way or another.
What does the working class want that unites them, no matter what their backgrounds are? The best answer I have is a cool motorbike.
George, what you are saying is entirely correct, especially about the wannabe-Leftists of today. Yet as you acknowledge, there are possibilities.
Class consciousness will form, is forming now, where conditions are right. The realities of life (the rationing of opportunity by class, the differential effects of politics and the division between creditors and debtors, to name a few) has a way of intruding and disrupting even the fog of infotainment and indoctrination. Naturally, this consciousness will be mitigated in many, perhaps most, instances by tribal, ethnic and racial divisions. It is unlikely that the phenomenon will behave in any way that resembles the expectations of the activists.
But the fact remains that the ability of the system to buy social peace through mass consumption, welfare and upward social mobility is breaking down. Most of the West is in the grip of transformative social changes, above all the formation of a new caste system: the few are becoming ever more distinct from the many in lifestyle, education, income/wealth and health. Trends in morbidity, mortality, family formation and completed fertility all reveal that the castes now forming can expect to have little in common. The gap in belief and sensibility between the rival strata is evident.
The working class in the old Marxist sense is most unlikely to ever unite (at least in the West), but forms of class consciousness amongst various elements is bound to develop and become a serious problem for the Left and Right alike. This is good. Neither Left nor Right serve their constituencies faithfully. They will deserve the problems they get.
Tom Wolfe (again) is hilarious about the academic left conception of the Common Man, From Bauhaus to Our House. Not to mention that bombastic hoopla by Copelamd and his Fanfare. Not. A, Clue.
Academics have always been ridiculous. Swift had fun at their expense.
The expansion of education (child-minding certified by the award of a credential) has simply made ambient derangement more common than it was in the old days.
How can one frame this as anything else than class struggle?
Its the ruling class vs the working class.
Americans seems to always get stuck in soviet implementation of Marxism, fearing the dissolution of private property. To put ownership of the means of production in to the hands of the workers producing is what the new right is about in many ways. It's anti globalisation and anti centralization.
The struggle rises from the same predicament, the awful terms for work that's intrinsic to industrialization, only keot bearable through technology and massive propaganda. Left or right we're in the same predicament.
N.S. Lyons framed it as Physicals vs Virtuals. There are many ways to frame this.
The means of productions were moved to Southeast Asia.
Well just the more reason to get it back.
I think the physicals vs virtuals is a lacking description. All programmers are working class, and programming is btw also being outsourced to asia.
Journalists which i think fits the virtuals form the best are mainly working class sucking up to the ruling class. The self loathing is strong in that group, never saw more of it than my years in the television industry.
Journos fit the comprador bourgeoisie more. So are many computer janitors.
Why do you separate the academia as non-systemic (part of the left)?
As mentioned in the piece where the graphic first appeared: academia is not wedded to the current constitutional system that is in place in the USA. They (meaning large parts of it) would be happy to discard the whole thing.
"Perhaps most of all, it is dangerous when “how much can we trust elites?” becomes a major dividing line in society."
Did a ctrl-f on Tyler's piece with "elite". Oh boy.
While Hungary is not a high trust society (maybe middle, in-between), I can assure Tyler (if anti-elitism is his biggest reservation) that he has nothing to worry about: here the Right wins hard power with a massive majority, yet the Left controls the soft one, dominating it. People loathe both elites, and both elites loathe each other. The culture war is ever so vicious. Yet somehow societal trust increased in the past 15 years by all measures.
We do have very clean elections, done on paper ballots, observers from both block preset at every voting place. If the US is facing a fatal societal trust issue, it already had a taste of it in November 2020, and the mid-terms can also turn ugly.
You’re right, mail in ballots is asking for trouble.
It's not just mail in ballots.
1. any voting that is not on paper, tallied by people, must not be allowed.
2. there should be no voting place where the major parties (in the US it's as simple as it gets, the Two) don't have delegates, throughout the voting and the tallying.
In Hungary the ballots close at 7pm and we should have a result before midnight. It's fast and infinitely scaleable. Results are sent in to the center electronically, but all the parties have their own records from even the smallest village so they can double check the data (it's only sent in if they all agree locally in the first place).
I might write an article about it if I can get hold of an expert. Constitutional lawyer, preferably.
Electronic voting is not worth the tradeoff. Democracy is about legitimacy, it sucks at anything else (maybe to meritocratically select snake oil salesmen).
No lost ballots found until the Dems win and such shenanigans, like in Florida 2018. The Republicans are responsible for any cheating in 2020, they had 2 years to prepare, and did jack shit.
Perfect formulation!
https://menyhei.substack.com/p/why-i-ignored-your-midterms
Did a followup.
India can manage it. Here in Ireland a postal vote is rare, and for specific cases - when my wife went abroad for work, she filled in her ballot, and then brought it to the cop station where they witnessed her seal it in an outer envelope and they signed it. US system is ripe for corruption. Notice early reports of unwarranted postal ballots (unvalidated, no unique code!) being reported by workers, maybe unwilling to be caught up in fruad if it all goes west.
The classical liberal debate is interesting. It’s very fashionable to skewer “liberalism” and wish for based tyranny but in fact there’s little classically liberal about our modern government. The idw dorks kind of see this but seem to think they can just resurrect liberalism through facts and logic. A lot of the new right was influenced by libertarianism but being autists I think that they actually mapped out what engineering would have to be done to restore proper rule of law, property rights etc and realized that it would require a rather illiberal temporary changing of the guards using a state of exception
haha, this is a pretty good summary
That's a very polite way of putting it. And an excellent one.
MAGA is a (admittedly clever) political slogan. That’s it. The only person so far with the charisma needed to lead a movement and actually overthrow the current system never understood the power he derived/could wield through the mechanisms of the US government because he was too busy trying to figure how he could build resorts in North Korea. What are we even talking about??
Curtis Yarvin argues Lincoln had 10x the power of FDR, who in turn had 10x the power of LBJ and that if Biden or Trump or Obama doubled the power of the Presidency it would be like an increase from 0.2 to 0.4.
Laviathan is upon us; the managed state moves as it will, the president is not going change that. Curtis calls the mechanism of human affairs “ the selective advantage of dominant ideas” and describes our polity - the west, turbo America- as being a clerical oligarchy. The dip shit Trump had no power. As for the sundowner in chief, word has it that he is peeing on house plants.
The latest piece by Curtis ("An English Meiji") is the best piece of political theory written in my life-time. He nailed it.
I’ll read it later. Curtis is unique and indispensable.
Yarvin said in a podcast that he knew Trump was not going to be his guy when he refused to fully give up his business. His heart was not in the Presidency. Imagine if Ceasar sold wine or Napolean sold cheese as they led their nation. You need a guy who is 100% into running the country.
Napoleon and Caesar didn't expect to get booted out in 4/8 years though. For them it was literally do or die. And Trump wasn't selling cheese. He has guys to sell for him, while he banks the cheques.
Actually, he has guys to bank the cheques too.
The money makes itself, at his level.
Tyler Cowan describing classic liberalism:
...and protection against pandemics.
That is the most ridiculous tack-on I've seen to date. Protection against pandemics is a hallmark of Woke Liberalism and American Trotskyists.
Indeed. Who would even have thought of that in November 2019? Tyler certainly wouldn't have as late as March 2020.
He's like the world's best sports announcer, who happens to face away from the field while reading the rulebook. Utterly exceptional at divining how power actrd according to a rule breach; completely useless at telling you what might happen five seconds from now.
It must be incredibly exciting being this guy. Every election so incredibly unpredictable, every shift in public policy a jawdropping aurora borealis.
If you want to get a sense of the state of the American hard left, visit the WSWS (World Socialist Web Site). I used to read their articles until they went all-in with the Covid pandemic response.
I'm undecided if they're insane, or a CIA front.
https://www.wsws.org/
I don’t know what to think about these guys either. The first time I went on their website it was to look at this article criticizing the 1619 Project:
“Despite the pretense of establishing the United States’ ‘true’ foundation, the 1619 Project is a politically motivated falsification of history. It presents and interprets American history entirely through the prism of race and racial conflict. The World Socialist Web Site published detailed refutations of the numerous falsifications contained in the Times project, and interviewed leading historians of the United States.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/topics/event/1619
Like obviously socialists are going to be mad at something that focuses on race instead of class, but the lengths they went to refute it surprised me.
There's no doubt that David North has been at this for a long time. I used to find their analysis in line with socialist theory up until the pandemic. I would compare them with the DSA, who are obviously co-opted. Now, as far as Covid is concerned, they're no better.
“Build Back Better, WORLD” had me laughing. Reminds me of the idiotic business plan from the movie Stepbrothers, “Prestige, WORLDWIDE!!!”. That this initiative is supposed to counter China and instead promotes gender equality is just perfect comedy. When people mention “Brazilification” of the U.S, I no longer think of the country of Brazil but rather the Terry Gilliam directed movie. Tyler Cowen’s critique of the new right falls pretty flat to me when we’re already living in clown world.
The dual socialist and libertarian critique of the new right(alt right, NRx, MAGA, etc) is interesting and reminds me of something BAP tweeted about being able to tell whether someone in the new right had previously been a Ron Paul fan. From his tweets BAP seemed more skeptical of those that had come from socialism than libertarianism.
On turbo America: America as the global hegemony has been talked about for 30 years, however it’s really only in the last few years it could be described as “turbo”. Do you think this change is due to younger elites replacing Cold War veterans? Changing cultural mores, i.e. woke? The demographic decline and “soft power” decline of Europe as a competing liberal influence? I ask because I find it hard to believe the U.S. military and economy are in a better spot than they were 20 years ago, yet America acts like it is.
Appreciate the articles, excellent as always.
The political cadre of Turbo America was selected for conformity by complaisant mentors from the Silent Generation who simply had no idea how dumbed down the education system has become. The younger elites have never faced the challenges the Silent Generation did, but they have retained the ideological legacies of the twentieth century (above all a tendency towards extreme reductivism) and mistaken these for genuine insights.
I work at a left-wing college campus that was subjected to a nearly-successful hostile takeover by an ad hoc faculty coalition of communists and racial nationalists in the wake of George Floyd Summer.
It didn't dawn on me that a Croatian colleague whose neighborhood was bombed in the early 90s would think it's good to inflame racial hatred in The New World over things that happened generations and centuries ago, but commie gonna commie.
“They can join leftists in demonizing MAGA supporters … or they can sacrifice ideological purity and side with the only mass working-class and anti-establishment movement that currently exists in America. There is no middle path.”
100%. I don’t trust any leftist who supports the status quo or believes in democratic change
In Marxist-Leninist circles, I’ve commonly encountered the sentiment that America needs to have its “fascist revolution” before it is ready for a communist one. They perceive class conscious to be suppressed enough that a communist revolution is impossible; the various state control apparatus are too strong. The destruction of the status quo, by any means is necessary, is needed for communism to succeed in America
From what Niccolo writes, it seems the most likely outcome is the liberals taking over the state, but smoothly, with the support of the elites. This keeps state apparatus intact… the ones the communists expect to weaken to allow their revolution
We’ll see what happens but Niccolo is correct, the best thing for any non-systemic opposition is for any non-systemic opposition to succeed, even if that opposition is radically different from your own
"In Marxist-Leninist circles, I’ve commonly encountered the sentiment that America needs to have its “fascist revolution” before it is ready for a communist one."
This is the dialectic at work, and which is what was responsible for German Communist Party (KPD) leader Ernst Thalmann to tell everyone not to worry about Hitler and the NSDAP getting into power because "they'll quickly show themselves to be incompetent, and then it will be our turn to rule."
If you removed wishful thinking and theories about humanity that match zero humans who have ever lived from Marxist-Leninism what's left?
A job guarantee? Unionism?
😂 it seems that history may repeat itself with a different flavor of fascism, or whatever you want to call what is occurring in America right now, with the “suede denim secret police” instead of the Gestapo
they have come for your uncool niece!
shout out to DKs!
Fiat capitalism is opposed to the free market economy. And. I don't know any communist that promotes communes let alone live in one.
Otherwise interesting ideas to consider.
Systemic and non-systemic, a good  lens that makes a lot of sense.
Trump is the most significant president of our lifetime. I love saying this to upset people, which it does.
His victory was the beginning of something new as Soldo tells us in the first piece.Trump’s brilliance was in gaming the system defeating both the Rs and the Ds. In office he was a Buffon that fought with everyone. But even that has become a feature not a failing; people let down by the system have rallied around him and his petulant rudeness. If the elite want a revolution, excluding Trump could cause it. I know, some portion of the elite has to join the dispossessed for anything to change, but negating Trump might send people like me into the street. The safest bet would be to let him run potentially win and then bumble his way through another four years: he can’t change anything.
Our elite are very smart but made dumb by their arrogance. They could blow this whole thing up by excluding him.
Trump is the Ragnar Lothbrok of Long Island.
The reason America looks politically incoherent is because people get confused trying to describe it as a whole, when in fact they should be describing it as the ruling pragmatic elite class, and the irrelevant tards and plebe, which contains vooters and various pseudopolitics groups like the rainbow and minority alliance, the MAGApedes, Qtards, NRxers, WN, libs and cons and hell knows what else.
The ruling elites have proper political and economic goals, and are socially indifferent, or at least try to be neutral. They are deeply, financially invested in the American project and its dominance, and want it to continue to succeed. Lives of the plebe are of small relevance, depending on their ability to play nice and be the correct type of needed useful idiot for a specific period.
The ruling class is Machiavellian and high IQ, and pursues its goals with the persistence of a child stricken with the 'tism. Collateral damage is largely irrelevant, as long as the masses can be pacified with some crumbles.
If you write about these elites, you're not part of them, basically.
Random: Bravo, good judgment and very well written. NS Lyons killed it on his substack in a piece called “they are not hypocrites, you just don’t matter” or something like that. I find randoms argument altogether correct.
From Turbo-America (https://niccolo.substack.com/p/turbo-america):
“But Niccolo, half of the country hates this!” Sure, but they don’t matter. Flyover America can rot for all they care, so long as the lights aren’t turned off in the places that count. The idea that the people matter was easily laid to rest with how easily the Trump Administration was subverted through the joint action of the intelligence/security servies with the mainstream media, NGOs, the judiciary, and various planted agents within the actual Trump Regime. They then went on to “fortify” the 2020 election to ensure that such a wrong result could not be repeated. If it is repeated again, they will simply subvert once more, as they got away with it the first time and are still in the same positions of power.
It does not matter to the elites whether Peoria, Illinois or Topeka, Kansas is seeing growth or regeneration. This does not impact the concerns of those in power on the federal level because these are national concerns that have for some time taken a back seat to imperial concerns. John McWilliams in Greenville, South Carolina is as relevant to them as Jose Cortes in Arica, Chile, or Dieter Schliemann from Dortmund, Germany: they are all imperial subjects.
Yes I believe I’ve read that piece from you twice and you state it - they don’t care - very well. Very earnest and argued oh so we'll BUT the NSLyons piece is very funny and your audience needs to read him.
I think the essential substack‘s are You, Curtis Yarvin, NS Lyons, the post liberal order professors, Matt Tiabbi, Glenn Greenwald, Leighton Woodhouse and Paul Kingsnorth who frightens me, he manages to communicate the eternal.
They're all my favourites. Except Yarvin. He dances around too much
I admit his parables are exhausting but I have found them worth it. I think when you’re understanding him, you are moving forward.
Is that where he pointed out that hypocrisy is the point? That it's a simple flex to rub the power they have in your face? If so, maybe I'm extremely dense, but I found that to be genuinely eye-opening and it has redrawn how I look at so much of the behaviour of the elite class since.
It was eye opening for me as well!