Liberal Interventionists Running Victory Laps, Post-War Prosperity Blip, US Expats Flood Mexico, Rise of Fall of the IDW, Collapse of Scottish Clan System
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The most striking thesis for calling "demented" the radical left-wing intellighenzia is that nobody complained or tried to change course when they saw clearly the birth of the final project of Liberalism; the fusion between technocratic liberalism, Neo-Conservatism and Feminism, creating the ultimate monster. Not only they did nothing, they actively supported people that only 20 years ago where lambasted as the "Enemy".
Or they are demented or simply they are foxes and moles inside the Western system, ready to dismantle it in the next decades. Probably the first.
Prior to your referenced time frame but it was incubated and weaponized during the Cold War primarily through the Congress for Cultural Freedom (undermining the Soviet on the left with non-financial progressive dogma) so the roots were deep
🗨 Many [...] had already embraced the toxic Marxist stew of leftist identitarianism borne from academia’s completely made-up divisive intersectionality matrix that pits oppressors against victims in a zero-sum game of cultural war subversion, a terminal malignancy engineered by global technocrats to destroy any national unity and cohesion in now-former western liberal democracies.
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PS Fundies of Packer’s ilk gonna fundy; jihad is their middle name 🤷 Yet one is left vacuously blinking in sheer disbelief: *how ffs* can’t they see that the roots of current sorry state of the world reach deep back to the very tenets of liberalism doctrine.
What I would like to know is just how “integrated” these Americans are living in Mexico. My bet is that at most, living in La Condesa and La Roma really just means going out for dinner and drinks every night and taking fun weekend trips to beautiful spots they’d heard about but never been too...in other words living like they did in New York City or San Francisco before they made those places prohibitively expensive too. It’s sad to say, but the more this internaitonal culture grows the more traditional culture is destroyed. At most, these expats might be friends with other rich “international” minded Mexicans like them. My experience in these places, including Roma is that it’s not “mexico” it’s just some other, run of the mill monoculture hipster neighborhood you could find anywhere. In the end, they’re just participating in international arbitrage and creating one “internaitonal” ghetto after another.
It's not about integration. It's about gentrification. They'll use their purchasing power to drive out the "undesirables" then the powers that be will appease them by starting a deplorables PR campaign to justify said transition. Are you not versed in the playbook?
Sure, but my point is that they’re not aware of any of it. They actually think they’re living in Mexico and might even think they are integrated. Latin America is especially weird because of the “clase alta” effect, by which I mean that most of the mega cities in LA are filled with people that belong to an internaitonal/cosmopolitan culture already, living in their exclusive neighborhoods (Condesa and Roma are very much that, Roma more hipster Condesa more established) making many of these Americans actually feel right at home, especially because they usually studied in the US (and increasingly Europe) and speak English. It’s just a really weird, increasingly obnoxious space.
That's until the native men start to get salty. In Korea, the influx of foreign teachers who started dining on the native women has become such a menace because of effectively sex tourism that foreign men are now looked at with a degree of suspicion. Like every new paradigm, there comes a tipping point.
Expats and foreign retirees are never fully integrated anywhere (unless they have cultural connections and are fluent in the local language). They are not moving to Mexico to become Mexican, but for the good life. Also not just Mexico but Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Uruguay, Argentina. And not just Americans but also plenty of Canadian sun birds. Mexico is cheaper than Arizona with a better lifestyle. Much of Baja California seems like a suburb of Calgary or Regina during the winter.
Except these aren’t retirees, it’s a new, single, young, mobile class of individuals with expendable income that doesn’t really live “anywhere”. They are rootless consumers that move where it’s easiest for them to consume. Yes, they are after the “good life” but the good life is consumption, which includes tourism. The fact that they travel and can live “where they want” is a sign that they’ve made it but also that they don’t belong to anywhere. I think a lot of them (and us) first got a taste of this life when we studied abroad. What scares me I guess is that it’s becoming a larger and larger, stateless group of individuals with no loyalties other than to Amazon etc. It’s a group that should be looked at more closely because I think its a bigger phenomenon than we think. Think about how so many of us don’t even belong “anywhere” in the US.
They are also the most destructive if not kept in check. They are unhappy and cannot stay anywhere long enough to feel contentment which can only come with belonging.
And remote working has changed/impacted desirable destinations both in the US and around the world (not that I personally consider Mexico City desirable- I’d rate Montevideo, Buenos Aires and three Colombian cities ahead of Mexico City, other than for its food/bar scene- and one of my relatives works remotely from Medellin currently). The question is whether the remote working boom of the last couple of years had petered out. I don’t think we’ll match the last two years’ growth in expat working anytime soon. Retirees, though, will continue to increase- particularly as medical care continues to improve across Latam.
I agree with you about the global professional class fitting in anywhere. I’ve had colleagues in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris etc that are more my “ilk” than average Americans or Brits - this is not a new phenomenon- ask anyone who works in banking, consulting, tech, intelligence or a large multinational.
Yeah, sorry, I got caught up on the Baja comment. I lived in Medellin in 2011 and even before remote working, the phenomenon of the rootless American (and European) abroad was already a trend. It certainly has to do with cheap travel and internet, but it’s also something about total lack of loyalty/belonging to a country/place. Young people are willing to leave their homes and families because they don’t have them or really care about them, and internet makes it easy to pretend if they sorta do. Friend of mine was also on a grant with me down in Colombia and shortly after was hired by Uber to open up the market there and then in Brazil. Remote working/Covid has catalyzed the trend, but it was already very real 10 years ago. As for health care in LA, if you have money private health care is already amazing (very first world) in all of the cities you mentioned, including Medellín.
My view has always been that I would work anywhere if the job was good. That ethos has been somewhat common in global businesses, but usually there is something that connects the job to the place (eg if I am head of the Europe, Middle East/Africa region, I have to live and work in a major city or HQ within that region, and the business focus is entirely on clients in that region). Agree the new thing is people working domestically who choose to live overseas (or in Jackson Hole or the Lake District ) for lifestyle alone. They have no real business connection to their place of abode. Do we call these people career tourists?
I find these people very lightweight. Their views are downloaded from the internet just like their work, entertainment and even sex. It seems the norm for the middle class to move away for work even when they don't have to. I know someone whose father died and his mother is now at home alone. She is lonely but cannot say so as she does not want to burden her children. The son is married to a teacher at an expensive school (of which there are several close to his mother) but they persist in living in a county on the other side of London. I simply don't understand moving away for work over family unless you are compelled to do so.
Homogenisation is integral to the system. People are interchangeable factors of production. Everything is standardised for the convenience of industry. Differentiation is tolerated for marketing purposes only.
I think this is closer to the point. We’ve literally become factors of production. The weird thing though is that the poor aren’t as mobile or as exchangeable. It’s harder for them to move around even though it’s also the case that human smuggling is more accessible and cheaper than it used to be. We’ve never seen irregular migration numbers like what we’re seeing now but the borders are closed for them and not for (us) this other “working class” or maybe managerial class, that brings money and skills with them. There’s a lot here to unpack, but I agree this has to be part of the point.
The asymmetries of mobility will shape the world for the next several generations.
The truly poor are stuck in the Third World. Those who can access resources move to Europe or North America as refugees or illegals. The email caste in the West disperses to congenial enclaves where both rent and domestic service are cheap. The truly privileged commute between homes in London and Amalfi or Porto Ercole.
The net effect of it all is convergence: the West incorporates Third World toleration for inequality, an informal economy and illegal immigration, while the fast-developing world adapts to swelling enclaves of Westerners who disseminate/model the lifestyles and values of Turbo America.
Exactly. Forbearing any apocalyptic event that dramatically reduces mobility and connectivity, this is the direction “culture” and the economy are taking, especially in the west. Although doesn’t seem like many countries are able to truly disconnect. I just can’t help but wish that our criteria would change and the asymmetries would increase. Sometimes it seems like we realize this is destroying us and making us much easier to manipulate, flattening culture and desire, but we have no idea of the alternative. It’s also not about “going backwards” but it is about dismissing the current situation as real, undeniable “progress”.
I suspect that there is no answer until the full implications are clear to all and the costs become unendurable to key constituencies.
Terms like 'progress' mislead us all. Progress does not necessarily bring freedom, opportunity or betterment to all. It never has. Modernity can facilitate immiseration and enslavement. The 'Enlightened Despot' Catherine the Great enslaved/enserfed more Russians than any previous ruler.
The current wave of progress in the form of global economic integration will pauperise and marginalise large numbers across the West.
I am severely disappointed, Soldo. Not one mention of Croatia's rise to colonial power over its triumphant victory over the Portuguese adjacent. And you call yourself a countryman. How dare you! Have you no shame? Petty grievances aside, congratulations on the final 4. Can Croatia solidify its reign over Southern America? Time will tell but Croatia has experience on its side. Cheers bruv
Francis Fukuyama is right: a Russian defeat in Ukraine could well have a negative impact on populist parties in the West. But it will be above all the fault of pundits who tried to justify an indefensible Russian aggression against a nationalistic Ukraine. The outcome could have been the opposite as Ukraine was a shining model for a nation breaking free from foreign domination, just like Croatia was in the 1990s (at the time the Western nationalists were lucid enough to seize this opportunity to advance their cause).
I believe national socialist is the translation you're seeking. While its literal meaning in English is quite different than what integral nationalist (which may make more sense as the translation of the literal Russian into literal English) would probably mean were it a phrase, NS is the English-language euphemism for Nazism according to the nomenclature of ideological labelling.
If I never have to read something Fukuyama has written again it will be too soon - disgusting warmonger. All the usual suspects out in chorus. Imagine wanting to ‘recreate the spirit of 1989’ and what the last thirty years have been like.
Also interested in hearing other’s expatriate experience, I know mine is a little unusual (and hard to describe/explain) since I don’t really live as an ‘expat’
He has no other choice but to double down. His entire identity is predicated on his assumption. It's like writing a PHD thesis and then realizing its bullshit right before submission date. Self interest has a funny way of clouding over judgment
Dec 10, 2022·edited Dec 10, 2022Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Admitting that he got it spectacularly wrong would take humility. Worse still, it would confuse the mid-wits who lapped up his garbage years ago and presumably some of those are crazy enough to still bother reading Fukuyama.
Essentially Fukuyama is a bluffer. The apologetics for liberalism are a part of his personal brand.
Dec 10, 2022·edited Dec 10, 2022Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Humility doesn't exist for the fanatical. As Niccolo said, this is a holy war and the priests dare not risk heresy. For much of the secularized subverted, the concepts of religious fanaticism is designated for those perceived as lesser than which is why the confusion is so great when ascribing fanaticism to those who present themselves as pure rationalists. See Sam Harris. The ability of self delusion to mask and justify self interest is one of liberalisms greatest strengths. During the Enlightenment, the newly appointed "reasonable" castigated religion as mere superstition. A month later, they all congregated at Notre Dame Cathedral to crown the goddess of reason. It's been delusion ever since.
I actually thought his book--End of History and the Last Man--was a little smarter than the "End of History" simplification we make of it. Of course, we make that simplification in large part b/c FF made it himself in his personal politics, speaking tours, and the article he wrote with that name in National Interest in 1989, so I pity him not at all.
But, in his book he does fill a significant number of pages imagining the discontents. He repeatedly invokes the Greek word thymos to argue that the dominant secular-capitalist-socially liberalizing paradigm is going to piss a lot of people off because it's boring and lacks larger spiritual sources of meaning, and that its relentless obsession with individualism is going to bite it because polities that fetishize individual expression will corrode themselves with hypocrisy if radical individual expression is permitted to challenge everything but their governing structures (which are kind of, you know, some of the most important things).
It's super weird, however, to make this reasonably intelligent argument but then deny the possibility of such discontents organizing themselves in a manner powerful enough to topple, or at least threaten, the paradigm. I believe one could call this history. But I guess not History. Maybe it needs to be called HISTORY. Anyway, FF wasn't smart enough to say it but I think you can build on that and say, as Turbo America and others on here seem to, that a super-individualistic paradigm can be surprisingly resilient because of its relentless individualism--i.e., individuals may be able to devise and express potent dissents, but these get lost in maelstrom of billions of individuals doing their own things.
It's also weird and hilarious that FF basically said "Marx's framework was right but the particulars of his analysis and conclusion were wrong...I am going to use the same framework and it's okay because MY particulars are right."
It has been decades since I read either of those books, but FF was covering himself. He acknowledged where it would all lead but marketed himself as a champion of the post- Cold War status quo. Disgusting IMO, but common enough.
There were any number of people of integrity on Left and Right alike who were more honest, more consistent and bolder.
FFs debt to Marxism is not really odd. Marxism was the largest and most extensive mass movement in history and it influenced everyone. The smart people on the Right have always read Marx attentively. Marxism draws very heavily on the Ricardian economics at the roots of classical capitalism. The common assumptions are not acknowledged because of sectarian rivalry and fear of frightening the midwits.
Essentially FF was of his time. He was (and remains) an opportunist and a lickspittle. The philosopher Epicurus used to mock Plato and his followers for their attempts to ingratiate themselves with the tyrant who ruled Syracuse in Sicily, so FF has eminent antecedents.
Can you tell me more about the Brussels bureaucrats throwing open the door to millions of more migrants -- i.e., how and why they're actually doing this?
BTW I am that "Schwarzgeist" mutual of yours on Twitter, Niccolo. :D
My Uber driver at the Dubrovnik airport told me he was getting a growing group of Americans buying homes in the area.
I wonder if Croatia could play some role with Meloni and Orban vis-a-vis publicly opposing massive migration flows. What I'll call "Third World Marxism" (BAP uses a more inflammatory term) amounts to blaming all Europeans for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which ended in the 19th century. In the late 80s/early 90s when Milosevic & crew started blaming their neighbors for things that had happened generations and centuries ago, the Western press called it crazy "ancient hatreds" and the Croats and Slovenes told him to go to hell. Could the same be done by the Croats today?
Fukuyama confirms to be nothing more than a panegyrist and very weak intellectual. He believes that if Russia is defeated, we are all going to accept to worship mentally ill dudes wearing a wig and letting them mutilate kids genitalia, accompanied by the usual humiliation, ethnic replacement and exclusion of straight white males. Nobody is going to protest. Yeah, right
Fukuyama disgusts me, but he has a point. The way Turbo America is going they are quite likely to sink even deeper into the craziness. The normalisation of mental illness, the intrumentalisation of dysfunction as a means of control and the demoralisation of large segments of the population is not abating.
Russia is not going to be defeated, but I fully expect that the cultural and moral isolation of the Turbo American West will intensify. As the multi-polar world develops, the empire will become more inward looking. A Ukrainian defeat will be used as an excuse for further purges of deplorables, who will be written off as Putin's fifth column.
The instrumentalisation of dysfunction is an adaptation for ruling a dystopia.
My take on the current, post-liberal democratic, regime is that it is Sado-Malthusian. The central means of control is the normalization of dysfunction (social problems like crime, somatic and psychic morbidity, self-destructive behaviour). Dysfunction at the institutional and personal level is used to weaken the population and disable opposition.
The normalisation of dysfunction disables opposition by misdirecting energies of potential opponents into fixing problems the system either created or curated through neglect and maladministration.
Dysfunction in key areas (education) prevents the development of alternative or ensures that potential opponents are less capable than they would be in the absence of the dysfunction.
Dysfunctional economies enable rent collection by favoured elements; enable either to transfer costs to disfavoured groups or to suppress the emergence of competition from below.
While the mass prosperity of welfare capitalism guaranteed social peace under the New Deal and consumer credit supplemented by the promise of future social mobility enabled social peace in the post-Cold War era, today the main need of the regime is to manage economic and social decline. The regime requires the management of intensifying austerity and insecurity. The engineered scarcity of advanced deindustrialisation and decarbonisation aim to perpetuate this.
Haven't been able to read through it completely yet, but the little I was able to get through seems pretty similar to what you were saying. The book's about how governments use passions as a means of social control. I think sexual addictions specifically. Basically, someone who is, for example, addicted to pxxxography is either too behaviorally dysfunctional or has too many skeletons in the closet (so to speak) to be a credible threat to a regime in power. Really eye-opening stuff for anyone out there trying to kick that particular habit.
Very, very good on liberal interventionists. It’s truly astounding to me how venal, entitled, and tone deaf the Biden regime all is. You wait to hit bottom, and while plummeting into the abyss you see that it’s faucis all the way down.
Is Substack a successor to the IDW? I think so. The IDW and Substack appear to me as stages of the ongoing conversation amongst people who want to think for themselves, are interested in other people's views and not inclined to freak out when confronted by people with whom they differ in opinion. A vestige of civilization as the lights go out.
I'm not so sure - the IDW, in my opinion, was made up of people who could sense their power and understanding of society slipping away and its formation was their version of a hissy fit.
Note how they all have the same broad mission - to take the world back to 2011-ish - when they had all of the cultural power.
Substack genuinely has a mix of viewpoints. Some of the top Substacks are, in my view, completely insane.
Insane works for me, so long as it is the right kind of insanity.
In my defence, my impressions are deeply coloured by wishful thinking. I long to believe that there is an underground out there full of people who are freethinkers or inclined towards pluralism and this underground is working to undermine Cthulhu....maybe even a Shangri La style refuge hidden away where people with unfashionable views can thrive. Pure projection and fantasy.
In my experience this can be found in trashy sports and dive bars (not redundant in the latter case, many "dive" bars are, in fact, not dives by design) in the U.S. Amazing how many of the conversations I assumed I would have in college were had in such locales.
Not amazing at all, inevitable. Academia is about socialising youngsters into habits of mind that will make them tractable and marketing credentials.
Sports and dive bars form part of the zone where the respectable draws within range of, but remains formally separate from, vice. They are venues for conviviality, where the patrons actively contribute to the entertainment by way of their conversation and engaged attention. Alcohol loosens tongues. They are the modern, commercial, site for informal symposia (literally 'drinking parties') where opinions are exchanged free the policing of the state and para-state entities like schools or NGOs. In a world where adherence to orthodoxy is a precondition for participation, bars offer possibility for relief from dogma and the humiliation rituals of enforced belief in the absurd and counter-factual. Bars are licensed to serve alcohol but operate with an unacknowledged licence to host potentially transgressive speech.
I imagine that one day we shall see discrete establishments where latter-day geishas trained in arts of rhetoric and logic will offer patrons the pleasures of intelligent conversation, free from the pressures of conformity. The Longhouse owns the schools and universities, but the freethinkers will find thrills in the 'floating world'.
Factograph is a "fact-checking" site modeled after Snopes. If I remember correctly, it was founded and primarily funded by some US Democratic Party organ (or Democrat-affiliated NGO) from Florida, but I have no doubt that Soros' Open Society and the endless parade of EU-funded NGOs also play a role in the Faktograf's gaslighting and lies.(I mean financial role, ofc)
Faktograf, like all other "fact-checking" websites, is a liberal psy-op intended to patch up the gaping hole in public trust that has been created after the loss of credibility of the mainstream media over the last 10-15 years. But their "fact checking" always amounts to nothing more than writing the same kind of lying propaganda that the mainstream media usually write - using the same talkingpoints Mainstream media use, just sugar-coated with fake fact-checking.
This is where it gets interesting, regarding the State Dept-adjacent actors behind factograph, who are more or less the same who actively interfered in the Hungarian elections this year:
So the network stuff to me is already known. I'm looking for hands on, Croatian little people sentiment about their appointed Croatian Facebook and Google censors, which this group seems to be (in fact, again, proudly stated in their bio).
We don't have such in Hungary, YET. But it's a major blind side for Fidesz:
This makes Croatia very interesting and important. You are one step ahead in this regard, but only one, which is VERY close. I want to break the story to Hungarians. It's hot stuff!
Idk a lot about FB,Google censorship in CRO, but our MSM is 100% controled by
1) Austrian, German, Czech liberal media,
2) Serbian media whose owners are liberal in Cro and nationalistic in Serbia,
3) local-ex commie nomenklatura that in 1990 became liberal overnight and also very rich in process of privatization. But they don't have ethnic loyalty since they all stem from faction of Croatian communist party installed into power in 1972 that was anti-Croatian nationalist and pro Yugoslav civic-nationalism which, in reality always amounted to being filo-Serbian.
Teens in Croatia are obsessed with TikTok and Instagram. FB is for middle aged folks. Twitter is not popular and only hyper-nationalist Croatian gastarbeiters from Germany and local shitlibs use it.
MSM TVs & newspapers still have complete domination over minds of people.Alternative media have completely failed.
Sounds ghastly IMO. So much for nominal independence. You'd have expected that people exposed to several generations of communism would be actively resistant to (or deeply suspicious of) propaganda of all sorts. The worldwide popularity of social media is depressing beyond words.
Dec 10, 2022·edited Dec 10, 2022Liked by Niccolo Soldo
"why support a system that no longer promises you a better future?"
With multicultural societies this is doubly dangerous: a place like Germany already has - by proud design - a monoculture on offer that is too lame for incoming ethnic groups. (If I was a Turk in Germany, why would I identify with the host nation? Even Angela is ashamed of their flag. I'd rather fly Turkey's flag. Thanks for the euros though.)
The only thing keeping the proudly tribal newcomers loyal to greater society is a material promise for a better future. What if that starts to go away? If they reject the monocultural meme in good times, they sure as hell won't make any sacrifices for it when times go bad.
Excellent point - I pray that the foreigners leave and stop polluting my home. On the other hand, many have come from such vile societies (Pakistan, Nigeria) that even when the West is in decline it is better than home. Also, many have sold the family silver to get here in the first place.
Oh, I'll take it one step further: they will fare better in chaos than the rest of society, especially the individualized part. They can - relatively - flourish. And as you wrote, they'll be absolutely better off than where they came from.
I witnessed this in London, during the riots in 2011: ethnic enclaves could protect their home turf, their shops and homes.
They won't go home, they just lose any weak allegiance they still have for the greater host society. The West won't Balkanize, it will get dozens of new Kurdistans (per city).
We will get our expats back though, Hungarians suck at forming ghettos, they either assimilate or remain individuals, the latter will take the first budget airliner home in no time.
The retention of intact families, clan-based networks and communal cultures is a force multiplier in an atomistic and anomic social order. Any attempt to maintain anything of the sort by the natives would attract hostile intervention by the state.
The Balkanisation/Kurdistan distinction is very acute. The fragmentation will be manageable and tolerable (for the elites) rather than a threat to the system itself.
A very good point - race-based organisation is acceptable for all but the native British and as you've said is dealt with harshly. The English Defence League were one of the nascent political movements which sprang up in the later part of the thousands. They did well under Tommy Robinson when drawing attention to the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs which at the time the middle class and the various establishments refused to acknowledge or even discuss. The problem however was that power hasn't resided with the working class since Labour turned away from them under Blair and Thatcher/Murdoch et al broke the unions. Movement of industry to the Third World removed their economic power whilst social and cultural power went with the former.
Other problems included the vulgar, crude and unpleasant attitudes of many of the protestors some of whom were simply football fans in the off-season looking for a fight as well as the lack of a central message or driving principle. Robinson himself was and is clever and quick in an argument or debate with a nose for weakness: much like Trump. He kept making a fool of himself however and failed to make his defence watertight. The attacks were obviously going to be on his character rather than his campaigns and that was that.
Returning to your point however, the various ethnic groups are incapable of success even with a clan amongst aimlessly-drifting Brits. They were incapable of success in their own country so had to come here, if they could have become rocket surgeons whilst living amongst their own people they would've done. The end result is a mish-mash of ugliness.
Re the question of success, I am influenced by the situation here in Australia. Our immigration programme has an element of deliberate selection and to some extent is biased towards skilled immigration. It is a very vexed issue, since the definition of 'skill' is elastic. The net effect is that immigration critics here sometimes argue that we are importing a future overclass. In the UK, however, family reunion is the big thing.
In any case, constant, absurdly high, levels of immigration are a direct threat to the public interest across the West. Powell was truly a prophet.
I do think you are overdoing it on the US globalist bogeyman, just as commentators went overboard on Trump’s alleged “America First” direction.
There are plenty of countries hostile to America and within its Monroe Doctrine sphere who get kid glove treatment - from Venezuela and Nicaragua on the extreme leftist/authoritarian end to most of South America (following recent elections in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, etc) and some of Central America. Perhaps the hint for Orban and others to rebrand themselves as leftist firebrands? Even nativists/racists (Latam leaders who favor citizens with Native American vs colonial heritage) are well tolerated by the US in Latin America.
Dangerous hegemons generally aren’t tolerant of opposition within its local sphere of influence. Much of what you see from the Biden admin in Europe is simply signaling rather than imperial design.
Moreover, if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown anything it is that Russia is not a conventional military threat to Europe (let alone NATO) at all. Europe, with its huge population and GDP and modernish (if incoherently structured and supported ) armed forces could easily repulse (in time) any attempted conventional spearhead by Russia- spending 2 percent of GDP on defense should be enough (though perhaps with different priorities). The US is only needed for its nuclear deterrent and its advanced weaponry. There is no need for US forces in Europe at all (except as forward postioning/support for hostilities in the Mideast or Africa). Bulk purchasing of US weapons and support for US initiatives (eg against China) would be a fair trade for the nuclear umbrella.
However, we also know that Europe (particularly mercantilist France and Germany) are desperate to trade with both Russia and China. As Europe realizes it doesn’t need the US military, while Europe’s corporations demand access to Russia and China’s markets, it is not hard to see US bullying/suasion becoming less effective. Do Germany and France (let alone Spain and Italy) really think they need American nuclear protection against Russia?
Respectfully disagree with you over Russian military capacity. The Europeans do not have any serious military forces. They have parade ground armies. Defence spending does not necessarily mean that much. Numbers, logistics and military focused industrial capacity do. Russia has a large army and the industry to keep them well supplied with ammunition and materiel of all sorts. Russia has no apparent territorial ambitions outside Ukraine, so Europe is safe enough. The last thing Moscow wants is to control unruly enemy populations in Poland or the Baltic.
As for US advanced weaponry. What good is any of it? Russia has outstanding air defence and has surpassed the US in heavy artillery and hypersonic missiles. The US sells weapons to allies (client states). These sales are a form of tribute levied on subject peoples, not an indication of any intrinsic value. I am not any kind of expert on these matters, but I am sceptical of claims about US military superiority vis a vis Russia.
A small sampling of US weaponry is currently fighting the worlds 5th largest military(in both spending and man-power) to a draw. If that is not superiority then what is?
The Russians have only used their hypersonic missiles a few times (Yavoriv, Delyatin). They do not appear to have yet deployed the full range of new weaponry, especially the electronic warfare stuff. They are keeping a lot in reserve and do not wish to tip off NATO about anything.
Furthermore, the Russians sent in a small army in February. Russian forces with Ukraine were outnumbered by Ukrainian forces. The crack troops (above all the paratroopers) were deployed in Belarus to deter NATO.
As for a draw, don't make me laugh. There are no Western correspondents on the ground in the Donbass or the mainland portions of the Tauride provinces. NATO/Ukraine do not want the world to see how things are really going.
For an expert/contrarian perspective, check out Andrei Martyanov.
Look, I would love to see the GAE get a big fat black eye in Ukraine. If nothing else than so I can point at the neocons failure while calling them retards on twitter. However, it seems like giga-cope to me to essentially say "Russia has been fighting with one hand behind it's back on purpose!".
As it stands, the only way Russia can turn this into a win is if they completely crush Ukraine and push them all the way back to Lviv, or at the very least take Kiev. Anything short of that and the Russians, and any other potential US rivals, look like second rate powers.
The neocons are not necessarily the point. They are sinister and disgusting, but very minor players compared to the Deep State which holds the strings affixed to their puppets.
The Russians appear to have changed their aims. Originally they intervened in the Donbass with limited forces to disrupt the Ukrainian offensive against Donetsk and Lugansk and to force Kiev to negotiate and implement the Minsk Accords. This succeeded at first. Kiev and Moscow worked out a peace deal in Istanbul, which was nixed by Boros Johnson (presumably egged on by Washington).
Following the Ukrainian decision not to implement the Istanbul agreement, Russia appears resolved to dismember Ukraine and, if necessary, complete the destruction of the regime in Kiev. The mass mobilisation within Russia is being finalised.
Whatever happens, the Western media will spin things. Determining the reality of what is happening will be very difficult.
Within Europe, I’d rate the Polish and French armed forces ahead of Ukraine’s. The others have work to do, which is why I said Russia would be repulsed by Europe “in time”.
Bear in mind that Russia, in 8 months, hasn’t yet achieved air superiority over Ukraine. The US would have had the job done in a week. Of course, US AWACS flying holding patterns over Poland and helping with targeting have an impact on Russian success.
The “real” range of HIMARs and MLRS is 400km, not the 40km missiles the US supplies to Ukraine.
Air launched JASSMs (cruise missiles) start at around 400km range and go up to 1800km. Several NATO countries use these. Finland can hit Moscow without leaving Finnish airspace, launching from F-16s.
In a conflict, Kalingrad and Sebastopol would cease to exist within a week. This is why Russia would quickly escalate to nukes and the US nuclear umbrella is necessary. Why Americans should be willing to risk nuclear annihilation for the sake of the EU, which is rich enough to defend itself, is another matter. Europe is certainly going to need to scale up its nuclear forces massively over the long-term, unless it brings Russia into the fold and nuke numbers are greatly reduced.
You neglect to acknowledge the range of Russian hypersonic missiles. London, Paris, Berlin are within range. Any Russian sub in the Atlantic can take out Washington.
As for Ukraine/Russia...Russians have 1/5 of Ukraine and Ukrainian forces now rely on foreigners because their own ranks are depleted by casualties on a mass scale.
Are you arguing the Russian missiles are a dire conventional threat to London and Paris, as they have been to, say, Lviv? 😊 Or are you saying the Russians are a nuclear threat? The latter I completely agree with.
In terms of conventional arms, the Russians are no threat to Europe. Could they do damage? Sure. Would Russia be defeated - yes.
Europe should quickly get up to 2 percent of GDP in spending across the board and make better decisions on military strategy and priorities (currently, the top priority is to support EU arms manufacturers ). As Ukraine can fight Russia to a standstill whilst not being able to target Russia-based radars, air bases, supply depots, manufacturing facilities, etc in any comprehensive way (all of which would be in range of NATO weaponry) and with essentially no Air Force, it is clear that Russia presents no conventional threat to Europe. Attacks would eventually be repulsed and Russian forces would eventually be destroyed. Other than the US nuclear umbrella, US support for NATO appears to be a giant boondoggle. The reality is that Europe would be useless in a war in Asia. What the US needs from Europe is agreement on trading with enemy countries (ie economic cooperation). If America’s nuclear umbrella isn’t worth an economic quid pro quo, then what is it good for? The European record in this is mixed- the mercantilist French and Germans fall over themselves to trade with Russia, Iran, China, etc.
I think the Europeans are right, though, that Russia needs to be brought into the fold longer-term (not under Putin). Pushing Russia into China’s arms is not a good long-term decision (though Putin has only itself to blame). Hobbling (for a few years) his relations with the EU and making corrupt, impoverished Ukraine a staunch ally and hero to most of Europe and the US seems like a high price to pay for Mariupol, a thin land bridge and a bit more of Luhansk, though demographically I can see how a switch to a Russian focus on the Mideast and Asia makes more sense than tying itself to a sclerotic Europe.
I cannot really engage in any depth on military comparisons. My knowledge is next to nil and I rely very heavily on experts like Col's Douglas McGregor and Scott Ritter. I'll leave it at that.
France and Germany have long been a problem for the US. They actively undermined the sanctions against Saddam Hussein after Gulf War 1 and were aiming for strategic autonomy via an independent EU army (and that will go nowhere now). Turbo America cannot rely on their loyalty and cannot be blamed for being unsentimental in its approach to them.
Russia is making the right decision. Eurasian integration is the way to go. Europe is in decline and has nothing to offer Russia.
Personally, I think Putin had no choice but to intervene in the Donbass. The NATO backed Ukrainian campaign against the Russians and Russophones had to be stopped and any further eastward advance of NATO had to be halted. The US and the EU could have negotiated, but they preferred to set Ukraine on fire.
Very good middle two paragraphs, and I am not a military strategist, either. Not sure about the “no choice” closer. Putin had been preparing for the invasion for a couple of years - might have been the only OECD country that CUT spending during Covid. Lowest debt/GDP of any populous OECD country and a fiscal surplus plus a massive rainy day fund. From 2019-2020 onward he was clearly insulating Russia from sanctions in preparation for war (didn’t reckon on US quickly seizing reserves at the Fed, though). I think he really thought he could topple Ukraine in a decapitation strike and be welcomed by collaborators (as in Kherson in February), and I am guessing his personal health and desire for a legacy had an impact on timing. The Biden admin is imbecilic and has elevated Ukraine and demonized Putin mostly due to domestic politics (whereas Biden was an appeaser in 2008 and 2014), but I don’t think anything they did triggered the decision (Biden even approved Nordstream 2 and signed a new weapons treaty with Putin last year). Meanwhile, Macron et al tried repeatedly to negotiate.
We shouldn't neglect that Ukraine's military spent years building fortifications in that area. Russia was able to clear them out, slowly and methodically, with the least amount of loss to their own soldiers.
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The most striking thesis for calling "demented" the radical left-wing intellighenzia is that nobody complained or tried to change course when they saw clearly the birth of the final project of Liberalism; the fusion between technocratic liberalism, Neo-Conservatism and Feminism, creating the ultimate monster. Not only they did nothing, they actively supported people that only 20 years ago where lambasted as the "Enemy".
Or they are demented or simply they are foxes and moles inside the Western system, ready to dismantle it in the next decades. Probably the first.
Prior to your referenced time frame but it was incubated and weaponized during the Cold War primarily through the Congress for Cultural Freedom (undermining the Soviet on the left with non-financial progressive dogma) so the roots were deep
💬 If you can mix material self-interest and firm religious conviction, “holy war” occupies a prominent place on your menu.
A thundering echo reverberates from one Good Citizen on these same substack pastures --> https://thegoodcitizen.substack.com/p/all-the-liberals-we-cannot-see.
🗨 Many [...] had already embraced the toxic Marxist stew of leftist identitarianism borne from academia’s completely made-up divisive intersectionality matrix that pits oppressors against victims in a zero-sum game of cultural war subversion, a terminal malignancy engineered by global technocrats to destroy any national unity and cohesion in now-former western liberal democracies.
~~
PS Fundies of Packer’s ilk gonna fundy; jihad is their middle name 🤷 Yet one is left vacuously blinking in sheer disbelief: *how ffs* can’t they see that the roots of current sorry state of the world reach deep back to the very tenets of liberalism doctrine.
Great exposition, Niccolo! 👌
What I would like to know is just how “integrated” these Americans are living in Mexico. My bet is that at most, living in La Condesa and La Roma really just means going out for dinner and drinks every night and taking fun weekend trips to beautiful spots they’d heard about but never been too...in other words living like they did in New York City or San Francisco before they made those places prohibitively expensive too. It’s sad to say, but the more this internaitonal culture grows the more traditional culture is destroyed. At most, these expats might be friends with other rich “international” minded Mexicans like them. My experience in these places, including Roma is that it’s not “mexico” it’s just some other, run of the mill monoculture hipster neighborhood you could find anywhere. In the end, they’re just participating in international arbitrage and creating one “internaitonal” ghetto after another.
It's not about integration. It's about gentrification. They'll use their purchasing power to drive out the "undesirables" then the powers that be will appease them by starting a deplorables PR campaign to justify said transition. Are you not versed in the playbook?
Sure, but my point is that they’re not aware of any of it. They actually think they’re living in Mexico and might even think they are integrated. Latin America is especially weird because of the “clase alta” effect, by which I mean that most of the mega cities in LA are filled with people that belong to an internaitonal/cosmopolitan culture already, living in their exclusive neighborhoods (Condesa and Roma are very much that, Roma more hipster Condesa more established) making many of these Americans actually feel right at home, especially because they usually studied in the US (and increasingly Europe) and speak English. It’s just a really weird, increasingly obnoxious space.
It works at home!
Pretty much true. But for expat men the dating scene with local girls is excellent. There's your integration
That's until the native men start to get salty. In Korea, the influx of foreign teachers who started dining on the native women has become such a menace because of effectively sex tourism that foreign men are now looked at with a degree of suspicion. Like every new paradigm, there comes a tipping point.
Expats and foreign retirees are never fully integrated anywhere (unless they have cultural connections and are fluent in the local language). They are not moving to Mexico to become Mexican, but for the good life. Also not just Mexico but Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Uruguay, Argentina. And not just Americans but also plenty of Canadian sun birds. Mexico is cheaper than Arizona with a better lifestyle. Much of Baja California seems like a suburb of Calgary or Regina during the winter.
Except these aren’t retirees, it’s a new, single, young, mobile class of individuals with expendable income that doesn’t really live “anywhere”. They are rootless consumers that move where it’s easiest for them to consume. Yes, they are after the “good life” but the good life is consumption, which includes tourism. The fact that they travel and can live “where they want” is a sign that they’ve made it but also that they don’t belong to anywhere. I think a lot of them (and us) first got a taste of this life when we studied abroad. What scares me I guess is that it’s becoming a larger and larger, stateless group of individuals with no loyalties other than to Amazon etc. It’s a group that should be looked at more closely because I think its a bigger phenomenon than we think. Think about how so many of us don’t even belong “anywhere” in the US.
Nomads always lose to the settled.
They are also the most destructive if not kept in check. They are unhappy and cannot stay anywhere long enough to feel contentment which can only come with belonging.
Note I said “expats and retirees”.
And remote working has changed/impacted desirable destinations both in the US and around the world (not that I personally consider Mexico City desirable- I’d rate Montevideo, Buenos Aires and three Colombian cities ahead of Mexico City, other than for its food/bar scene- and one of my relatives works remotely from Medellin currently). The question is whether the remote working boom of the last couple of years had petered out. I don’t think we’ll match the last two years’ growth in expat working anytime soon. Retirees, though, will continue to increase- particularly as medical care continues to improve across Latam.
I agree with you about the global professional class fitting in anywhere. I’ve had colleagues in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris etc that are more my “ilk” than average Americans or Brits - this is not a new phenomenon- ask anyone who works in banking, consulting, tech, intelligence or a large multinational.
Yeah, sorry, I got caught up on the Baja comment. I lived in Medellin in 2011 and even before remote working, the phenomenon of the rootless American (and European) abroad was already a trend. It certainly has to do with cheap travel and internet, but it’s also something about total lack of loyalty/belonging to a country/place. Young people are willing to leave their homes and families because they don’t have them or really care about them, and internet makes it easy to pretend if they sorta do. Friend of mine was also on a grant with me down in Colombia and shortly after was hired by Uber to open up the market there and then in Brazil. Remote working/Covid has catalyzed the trend, but it was already very real 10 years ago. As for health care in LA, if you have money private health care is already amazing (very first world) in all of the cities you mentioned, including Medellín.
My view has always been that I would work anywhere if the job was good. That ethos has been somewhat common in global businesses, but usually there is something that connects the job to the place (eg if I am head of the Europe, Middle East/Africa region, I have to live and work in a major city or HQ within that region, and the business focus is entirely on clients in that region). Agree the new thing is people working domestically who choose to live overseas (or in Jackson Hole or the Lake District ) for lifestyle alone. They have no real business connection to their place of abode. Do we call these people career tourists?
I find these people very lightweight. Their views are downloaded from the internet just like their work, entertainment and even sex. It seems the norm for the middle class to move away for work even when they don't have to. I know someone whose father died and his mother is now at home alone. She is lonely but cannot say so as she does not want to burden her children. The son is married to a teacher at an expensive school (of which there are several close to his mother) but they persist in living in a county on the other side of London. I simply don't understand moving away for work over family unless you are compelled to do so.
Much of the West is like this: that's why everywhere feels the same.
Homogenisation is integral to the system. People are interchangeable factors of production. Everything is standardised for the convenience of industry. Differentiation is tolerated for marketing purposes only.
I think this is closer to the point. We’ve literally become factors of production. The weird thing though is that the poor aren’t as mobile or as exchangeable. It’s harder for them to move around even though it’s also the case that human smuggling is more accessible and cheaper than it used to be. We’ve never seen irregular migration numbers like what we’re seeing now but the borders are closed for them and not for (us) this other “working class” or maybe managerial class, that brings money and skills with them. There’s a lot here to unpack, but I agree this has to be part of the point.
The asymmetries of mobility will shape the world for the next several generations.
The truly poor are stuck in the Third World. Those who can access resources move to Europe or North America as refugees or illegals. The email caste in the West disperses to congenial enclaves where both rent and domestic service are cheap. The truly privileged commute between homes in London and Amalfi or Porto Ercole.
The net effect of it all is convergence: the West incorporates Third World toleration for inequality, an informal economy and illegal immigration, while the fast-developing world adapts to swelling enclaves of Westerners who disseminate/model the lifestyles and values of Turbo America.
Exactly. Forbearing any apocalyptic event that dramatically reduces mobility and connectivity, this is the direction “culture” and the economy are taking, especially in the west. Although doesn’t seem like many countries are able to truly disconnect. I just can’t help but wish that our criteria would change and the asymmetries would increase. Sometimes it seems like we realize this is destroying us and making us much easier to manipulate, flattening culture and desire, but we have no idea of the alternative. It’s also not about “going backwards” but it is about dismissing the current situation as real, undeniable “progress”.
I suspect that there is no answer until the full implications are clear to all and the costs become unendurable to key constituencies.
Terms like 'progress' mislead us all. Progress does not necessarily bring freedom, opportunity or betterment to all. It never has. Modernity can facilitate immiseration and enslavement. The 'Enlightened Despot' Catherine the Great enslaved/enserfed more Russians than any previous ruler.
The current wave of progress in the form of global economic integration will pauperise and marginalise large numbers across the West.
It's strangely colonial really
I am severely disappointed, Soldo. Not one mention of Croatia's rise to colonial power over its triumphant victory over the Portuguese adjacent. And you call yourself a countryman. How dare you! Have you no shame? Petty grievances aside, congratulations on the final 4. Can Croatia solidify its reign over Southern America? Time will tell but Croatia has experience on its side. Cheers bruv
Francis Fukuyama is right: a Russian defeat in Ukraine could well have a negative impact on populist parties in the West. But it will be above all the fault of pundits who tried to justify an indefensible Russian aggression against a nationalistic Ukraine. The outcome could have been the opposite as Ukraine was a shining model for a nation breaking free from foreign domination, just like Croatia was in the 1990s (at the time the Western nationalists were lucid enough to seize this opportunity to advance their cause).
The conquest of mainland China by Taiwan would be even more jaw-dropping.
nationalistic ukraine: the russian euphemism is integral nationalist (not sure a good translation) or nazi.
the nationalism in the attached west is russo-phobia, driven by centuries of conflict between moscow [orthodox] and holy roman empire [catholic].
the us is siding with the anti moscow faction in the millenuial war in the steppes. the islam factor is missing.
I believe national socialist is the translation you're seeking. While its literal meaning in English is quite different than what integral nationalist (which may make more sense as the translation of the literal Russian into literal English) would probably mean were it a phrase, NS is the English-language euphemism for Nazism according to the nomenclature of ideological labelling.
The USA rightfully threatened to carpet bomb Cuba in 1962 and would not tolerate a pro-Beijing government in Mexico City either.
If I never have to read something Fukuyama has written again it will be too soon - disgusting warmonger. All the usual suspects out in chorus. Imagine wanting to ‘recreate the spirit of 1989’ and what the last thirty years have been like.
Also interested in hearing other’s expatriate experience, I know mine is a little unusual (and hard to describe/explain) since I don’t really live as an ‘expat’
The last thirty years were a golden age for hyenas like Fukuyama. But things change. The golden lads and lasses all turn to chimney-sweeps.
So Fukuyama has finally completed a 360 and is back to his End of History claim to fame?
He has no other choice but to double down. His entire identity is predicated on his assumption. It's like writing a PHD thesis and then realizing its bullshit right before submission date. Self interest has a funny way of clouding over judgment
Admitting that he got it spectacularly wrong would take humility. Worse still, it would confuse the mid-wits who lapped up his garbage years ago and presumably some of those are crazy enough to still bother reading Fukuyama.
Essentially Fukuyama is a bluffer. The apologetics for liberalism are a part of his personal brand.
Humility doesn't exist for the fanatical. As Niccolo said, this is a holy war and the priests dare not risk heresy. For much of the secularized subverted, the concepts of religious fanaticism is designated for those perceived as lesser than which is why the confusion is so great when ascribing fanaticism to those who present themselves as pure rationalists. See Sam Harris. The ability of self delusion to mask and justify self interest is one of liberalisms greatest strengths. During the Enlightenment, the newly appointed "reasonable" castigated religion as mere superstition. A month later, they all congregated at Notre Dame Cathedral to crown the goddess of reason. It's been delusion ever since.
I actually thought his book--End of History and the Last Man--was a little smarter than the "End of History" simplification we make of it. Of course, we make that simplification in large part b/c FF made it himself in his personal politics, speaking tours, and the article he wrote with that name in National Interest in 1989, so I pity him not at all.
But, in his book he does fill a significant number of pages imagining the discontents. He repeatedly invokes the Greek word thymos to argue that the dominant secular-capitalist-socially liberalizing paradigm is going to piss a lot of people off because it's boring and lacks larger spiritual sources of meaning, and that its relentless obsession with individualism is going to bite it because polities that fetishize individual expression will corrode themselves with hypocrisy if radical individual expression is permitted to challenge everything but their governing structures (which are kind of, you know, some of the most important things).
It's super weird, however, to make this reasonably intelligent argument but then deny the possibility of such discontents organizing themselves in a manner powerful enough to topple, or at least threaten, the paradigm. I believe one could call this history. But I guess not History. Maybe it needs to be called HISTORY. Anyway, FF wasn't smart enough to say it but I think you can build on that and say, as Turbo America and others on here seem to, that a super-individualistic paradigm can be surprisingly resilient because of its relentless individualism--i.e., individuals may be able to devise and express potent dissents, but these get lost in maelstrom of billions of individuals doing their own things.
It's also weird and hilarious that FF basically said "Marx's framework was right but the particulars of his analysis and conclusion were wrong...I am going to use the same framework and it's okay because MY particulars are right."
It has been decades since I read either of those books, but FF was covering himself. He acknowledged where it would all lead but marketed himself as a champion of the post- Cold War status quo. Disgusting IMO, but common enough.
There were any number of people of integrity on Left and Right alike who were more honest, more consistent and bolder.
FFs debt to Marxism is not really odd. Marxism was the largest and most extensive mass movement in history and it influenced everyone. The smart people on the Right have always read Marx attentively. Marxism draws very heavily on the Ricardian economics at the roots of classical capitalism. The common assumptions are not acknowledged because of sectarian rivalry and fear of frightening the midwits.
Essentially FF was of his time. He was (and remains) an opportunist and a lickspittle. The philosopher Epicurus used to mock Plato and his followers for their attempts to ingratiate themselves with the tyrant who ruled Syracuse in Sicily, so FF has eminent antecedents.
Can you tell me more about the Brussels bureaucrats throwing open the door to millions of more migrants -- i.e., how and why they're actually doing this?
BTW I am that "Schwarzgeist" mutual of yours on Twitter, Niccolo. :D
Short answer: look at the pressure being applied to Italy and its new government over migrants. Another 500 came ashore yesterday.
My Uber driver at the Dubrovnik airport told me he was getting a growing group of Americans buying homes in the area.
I wonder if Croatia could play some role with Meloni and Orban vis-a-vis publicly opposing massive migration flows. What I'll call "Third World Marxism" (BAP uses a more inflammatory term) amounts to blaming all Europeans for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which ended in the 19th century. In the late 80s/early 90s when Milosevic & crew started blaming their neighbors for things that had happened generations and centuries ago, the Western press called it crazy "ancient hatreds" and the Croats and Slovenes told him to go to hell. Could the same be done by the Croats today?
Montenegro is hot, too
In the 2018 movie "Superfly" the drug-dealer protagonist ends up escaping to Montenegro.
In a barely related story, the actor who plays the psychopathic antagonist in "Superfly" gives a very convincing performance. Turns out there's a reason. He was arrested a few months after the movie came out for being a serial rapist and recently was sentenced to no less than 50 years in prison. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-11326527/Rapper-actor-Kaalan-Walker-sentenced-50-years-life-prison-rape-conviction.html
Geez
Who is "BAP"?
Nic's buddy https://youtu.be/4NrHKX6ob4I
Fukuyama confirms to be nothing more than a panegyrist and very weak intellectual. He believes that if Russia is defeated, we are all going to accept to worship mentally ill dudes wearing a wig and letting them mutilate kids genitalia, accompanied by the usual humiliation, ethnic replacement and exclusion of straight white males. Nobody is going to protest. Yeah, right
Fukuyama disgusts me, but he has a point. The way Turbo America is going they are quite likely to sink even deeper into the craziness. The normalisation of mental illness, the intrumentalisation of dysfunction as a means of control and the demoralisation of large segments of the population is not abating.
Russia is not going to be defeated, but I fully expect that the cultural and moral isolation of the Turbo American West will intensify. As the multi-polar world develops, the empire will become more inward looking. A Ukrainian defeat will be used as an excuse for further purges of deplorables, who will be written off as Putin's fifth column.
I'm curious. What do you mean by "intrumentalisation of dysfunction as a means of control"? Is that a reference to Libido Dominandi?
Not a direct reference to Augustine of Hippo.
The instrumentalisation of dysfunction is an adaptation for ruling a dystopia.
My take on the current, post-liberal democratic, regime is that it is Sado-Malthusian. The central means of control is the normalization of dysfunction (social problems like crime, somatic and psychic morbidity, self-destructive behaviour). Dysfunction at the institutional and personal level is used to weaken the population and disable opposition.
The normalisation of dysfunction disables opposition by misdirecting energies of potential opponents into fixing problems the system either created or curated through neglect and maladministration.
Dysfunction in key areas (education) prevents the development of alternative or ensures that potential opponents are less capable than they would be in the absence of the dysfunction.
Dysfunctional economies enable rent collection by favoured elements; enable either to transfer costs to disfavoured groups or to suppress the emergence of competition from below.
While the mass prosperity of welfare capitalism guaranteed social peace under the New Deal and consumer credit supplemented by the promise of future social mobility enabled social peace in the post-Cold War era, today the main need of the regime is to manage economic and social decline. The regime requires the management of intensifying austerity and insecurity. The engineered scarcity of advanced deindustrialisation and decarbonisation aim to perpetuate this.
Very interesting. Thanks for the response.
You're right that Libido Dominandi is from St. Augustine (I think the City of God?), but I was referring to a book by the same name I was introduced to the other day. It's available on archive.org at this link https://archive.org/details/jones-eugene-michael-libido-dominandi
Haven't been able to read through it completely yet, but the little I was able to get through seems pretty similar to what you were saying. The book's about how governments use passions as a means of social control. I think sexual addictions specifically. Basically, someone who is, for example, addicted to pxxxography is either too behaviorally dysfunctional or has too many skeletons in the closet (so to speak) to be a credible threat to a regime in power. Really eye-opening stuff for anyone out there trying to kick that particular habit.
Very, very good on liberal interventionists. It’s truly astounding to me how venal, entitled, and tone deaf the Biden regime all is. You wait to hit bottom, and while plummeting into the abyss you see that it’s faucis all the way down.
Is Substack a successor to the IDW? I think so. The IDW and Substack appear to me as stages of the ongoing conversation amongst people who want to think for themselves, are interested in other people's views and not inclined to freak out when confronted by people with whom they differ in opinion. A vestige of civilization as the lights go out.
I'm not so sure - the IDW, in my opinion, was made up of people who could sense their power and understanding of society slipping away and its formation was their version of a hissy fit.
Note how they all have the same broad mission - to take the world back to 2011-ish - when they had all of the cultural power.
Substack genuinely has a mix of viewpoints. Some of the top Substacks are, in my view, completely insane.
Insane works for me, so long as it is the right kind of insanity.
In my defence, my impressions are deeply coloured by wishful thinking. I long to believe that there is an underground out there full of people who are freethinkers or inclined towards pluralism and this underground is working to undermine Cthulhu....maybe even a Shangri La style refuge hidden away where people with unfashionable views can thrive. Pure projection and fantasy.
In my experience this can be found in trashy sports and dive bars (not redundant in the latter case, many "dive" bars are, in fact, not dives by design) in the U.S. Amazing how many of the conversations I assumed I would have in college were had in such locales.
Not amazing at all, inevitable. Academia is about socialising youngsters into habits of mind that will make them tractable and marketing credentials.
Sports and dive bars form part of the zone where the respectable draws within range of, but remains formally separate from, vice. They are venues for conviviality, where the patrons actively contribute to the entertainment by way of their conversation and engaged attention. Alcohol loosens tongues. They are the modern, commercial, site for informal symposia (literally 'drinking parties') where opinions are exchanged free the policing of the state and para-state entities like schools or NGOs. In a world where adherence to orthodoxy is a precondition for participation, bars offer possibility for relief from dogma and the humiliation rituals of enforced belief in the absurd and counter-factual. Bars are licensed to serve alcohol but operate with an unacknowledged licence to host potentially transgressive speech.
I imagine that one day we shall see discrete establishments where latter-day geishas trained in arts of rhetoric and logic will offer patrons the pleasures of intelligent conversation, free from the pressures of conformity. The Longhouse owns the schools and universities, but the freethinkers will find thrills in the 'floating world'.
As a Croatian, do you have any native insight regarding faktograf.hr?
I'm researching them.
Croat here:
Factograph is a "fact-checking" site modeled after Snopes. If I remember correctly, it was founded and primarily funded by some US Democratic Party organ (or Democrat-affiliated NGO) from Florida, but I have no doubt that Soros' Open Society and the endless parade of EU-funded NGOs also play a role in the Faktograf's gaslighting and lies.(I mean financial role, ofc)
Faktograf, like all other "fact-checking" websites, is a liberal psy-op intended to patch up the gaping hole in public trust that has been created after the loss of credibility of the mainstream media over the last 10-15 years. But their "fact checking" always amounts to nothing more than writing the same kind of lying propaganda that the mainstream media usually write - using the same talkingpoints Mainstream media use, just sugar-coated with fake fact-checking.
Thanks, Croat!
I got the same from their bio, these orgs wear it as a mark of pride. Copy and paste is half of the investigation done.
However:
This is my previous - and so far only - post on Croatia:
https://www.magyar.blog/p/colonial-mavericks-croatian-edition
This is where it gets interesting, regarding the State Dept-adjacent actors behind factograph, who are more or less the same who actively interfered in the Hungarian elections this year:
https://www.magyar.blog/i/74902116/andras-schiffer-action-for-democracy-export
So the network stuff to me is already known. I'm looking for hands on, Croatian little people sentiment about their appointed Croatian Facebook and Google censors, which this group seems to be (in fact, again, proudly stated in their bio).
We don't have such in Hungary, YET. But it's a major blind side for Fidesz:
https://www.magyar.blog/p/fragile-fidesz-a-spooky-hypothetical
This makes Croatia very interesting and important. You are one step ahead in this regard, but only one, which is VERY close. I want to break the story to Hungarians. It's hot stuff!
Be my source, Exolon! menyhei@tuta.io
You can bring anecdotes, I don't mind them. I can work with that stuff. The clinical investigation is not the problem. I need human stories.
Idk a lot about FB,Google censorship in CRO, but our MSM is 100% controled by
1) Austrian, German, Czech liberal media,
2) Serbian media whose owners are liberal in Cro and nationalistic in Serbia,
3) local-ex commie nomenklatura that in 1990 became liberal overnight and also very rich in process of privatization. But they don't have ethnic loyalty since they all stem from faction of Croatian communist party installed into power in 1972 that was anti-Croatian nationalist and pro Yugoslav civic-nationalism which, in reality always amounted to being filo-Serbian.
Teens in Croatia are obsessed with TikTok and Instagram. FB is for middle aged folks. Twitter is not popular and only hyper-nationalist Croatian gastarbeiters from Germany and local shitlibs use it.
MSM TVs & newspapers still have complete domination over minds of people.Alternative media have completely failed.
Aww, Croatia is very different in many regards compared to Hungary, and eerily familiar in others.
Thanks, I'll use it.
Do you mind being credited? You can be "Croat Anon" if you do.
Ok, why not.
Thanks! It won't result in a war crime trial. I promise (99%)
Sounds ghastly IMO. So much for nominal independence. You'd have expected that people exposed to several generations of communism would be actively resistant to (or deeply suspicious of) propaganda of all sorts. The worldwide popularity of social media is depressing beyond words.
"why support a system that no longer promises you a better future?"
With multicultural societies this is doubly dangerous: a place like Germany already has - by proud design - a monoculture on offer that is too lame for incoming ethnic groups. (If I was a Turk in Germany, why would I identify with the host nation? Even Angela is ashamed of their flag. I'd rather fly Turkey's flag. Thanks for the euros though.)
The only thing keeping the proudly tribal newcomers loyal to greater society is a material promise for a better future. What if that starts to go away? If they reject the monocultural meme in good times, they sure as hell won't make any sacrifices for it when times go bad.
Excellent point - I pray that the foreigners leave and stop polluting my home. On the other hand, many have come from such vile societies (Pakistan, Nigeria) that even when the West is in decline it is better than home. Also, many have sold the family silver to get here in the first place.
Oh, I'll take it one step further: they will fare better in chaos than the rest of society, especially the individualized part. They can - relatively - flourish. And as you wrote, they'll be absolutely better off than where they came from.
I witnessed this in London, during the riots in 2011: ethnic enclaves could protect their home turf, their shops and homes.
They won't go home, they just lose any weak allegiance they still have for the greater host society. The West won't Balkanize, it will get dozens of new Kurdistans (per city).
We will get our expats back though, Hungarians suck at forming ghettos, they either assimilate or remain individuals, the latter will take the first budget airliner home in no time.
The retention of intact families, clan-based networks and communal cultures is a force multiplier in an atomistic and anomic social order. Any attempt to maintain anything of the sort by the natives would attract hostile intervention by the state.
The Balkanisation/Kurdistan distinction is very acute. The fragmentation will be manageable and tolerable (for the elites) rather than a threat to the system itself.
A very good point - race-based organisation is acceptable for all but the native British and as you've said is dealt with harshly. The English Defence League were one of the nascent political movements which sprang up in the later part of the thousands. They did well under Tommy Robinson when drawing attention to the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs which at the time the middle class and the various establishments refused to acknowledge or even discuss. The problem however was that power hasn't resided with the working class since Labour turned away from them under Blair and Thatcher/Murdoch et al broke the unions. Movement of industry to the Third World removed their economic power whilst social and cultural power went with the former.
Other problems included the vulgar, crude and unpleasant attitudes of many of the protestors some of whom were simply football fans in the off-season looking for a fight as well as the lack of a central message or driving principle. Robinson himself was and is clever and quick in an argument or debate with a nose for weakness: much like Trump. He kept making a fool of himself however and failed to make his defence watertight. The attacks were obviously going to be on his character rather than his campaigns and that was that.
Returning to your point however, the various ethnic groups are incapable of success even with a clan amongst aimlessly-drifting Brits. They were incapable of success in their own country so had to come here, if they could have become rocket surgeons whilst living amongst their own people they would've done. The end result is a mish-mash of ugliness.
Re the question of success, I am influenced by the situation here in Australia. Our immigration programme has an element of deliberate selection and to some extent is biased towards skilled immigration. It is a very vexed issue, since the definition of 'skill' is elastic. The net effect is that immigration critics here sometimes argue that we are importing a future overclass. In the UK, however, family reunion is the big thing.
In any case, constant, absurdly high, levels of immigration are a direct threat to the public interest across the West. Powell was truly a prophet.
Wide-ranging and interesting, thanks.
I do think you are overdoing it on the US globalist bogeyman, just as commentators went overboard on Trump’s alleged “America First” direction.
There are plenty of countries hostile to America and within its Monroe Doctrine sphere who get kid glove treatment - from Venezuela and Nicaragua on the extreme leftist/authoritarian end to most of South America (following recent elections in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, etc) and some of Central America. Perhaps the hint for Orban and others to rebrand themselves as leftist firebrands? Even nativists/racists (Latam leaders who favor citizens with Native American vs colonial heritage) are well tolerated by the US in Latin America.
Dangerous hegemons generally aren’t tolerant of opposition within its local sphere of influence. Much of what you see from the Biden admin in Europe is simply signaling rather than imperial design.
Moreover, if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown anything it is that Russia is not a conventional military threat to Europe (let alone NATO) at all. Europe, with its huge population and GDP and modernish (if incoherently structured and supported ) armed forces could easily repulse (in time) any attempted conventional spearhead by Russia- spending 2 percent of GDP on defense should be enough (though perhaps with different priorities). The US is only needed for its nuclear deterrent and its advanced weaponry. There is no need for US forces in Europe at all (except as forward postioning/support for hostilities in the Mideast or Africa). Bulk purchasing of US weapons and support for US initiatives (eg against China) would be a fair trade for the nuclear umbrella.
However, we also know that Europe (particularly mercantilist France and Germany) are desperate to trade with both Russia and China. As Europe realizes it doesn’t need the US military, while Europe’s corporations demand access to Russia and China’s markets, it is not hard to see US bullying/suasion becoming less effective. Do Germany and France (let alone Spain and Italy) really think they need American nuclear protection against Russia?
Respectfully disagree with you over Russian military capacity. The Europeans do not have any serious military forces. They have parade ground armies. Defence spending does not necessarily mean that much. Numbers, logistics and military focused industrial capacity do. Russia has a large army and the industry to keep them well supplied with ammunition and materiel of all sorts. Russia has no apparent territorial ambitions outside Ukraine, so Europe is safe enough. The last thing Moscow wants is to control unruly enemy populations in Poland or the Baltic.
As for US advanced weaponry. What good is any of it? Russia has outstanding air defence and has surpassed the US in heavy artillery and hypersonic missiles. The US sells weapons to allies (client states). These sales are a form of tribute levied on subject peoples, not an indication of any intrinsic value. I am not any kind of expert on these matters, but I am sceptical of claims about US military superiority vis a vis Russia.
A small sampling of US weaponry is currently fighting the worlds 5th largest military(in both spending and man-power) to a draw. If that is not superiority then what is?
Ukraine has payed for that "draw" with heavy loss of life. They're going to lose.
Maybe, but at this point the war has made the US seem like an invincible colossus and rival powers look like pygmies.
To put it in Zoomer terms: The US is S tier, every other power is at best B tier.
Media propaganda has made it seem that way. I've been following Scott Ritter, and Col. Douglas McGregor - their analysis indicates otherwise.
What was Scott Riter's and McGregor's assessment of the development of the conflict back in February-March? Was it subsequently proven correct?
Taking the mainstream media at their word is for chumps!
Ritter and McGregor are essential resources for figuring out what is really going on.
This may be of interest. It is by Larry C. Johnson, a retired CIA analyst who appears to have his head screwed on.
https://sonar21.com/the-war-in-ukraine-has-exposed-the-weakness-of-the-u-s-military/
The Russians have only used their hypersonic missiles a few times (Yavoriv, Delyatin). They do not appear to have yet deployed the full range of new weaponry, especially the electronic warfare stuff. They are keeping a lot in reserve and do not wish to tip off NATO about anything.
Furthermore, the Russians sent in a small army in February. Russian forces with Ukraine were outnumbered by Ukrainian forces. The crack troops (above all the paratroopers) were deployed in Belarus to deter NATO.
As for a draw, don't make me laugh. There are no Western correspondents on the ground in the Donbass or the mainland portions of the Tauride provinces. NATO/Ukraine do not want the world to see how things are really going.
For an expert/contrarian perspective, check out Andrei Martyanov.
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/ or his youtube videos https://www.youtube.com/@smoothieX12
Look, I would love to see the GAE get a big fat black eye in Ukraine. If nothing else than so I can point at the neocons failure while calling them retards on twitter. However, it seems like giga-cope to me to essentially say "Russia has been fighting with one hand behind it's back on purpose!".
As it stands, the only way Russia can turn this into a win is if they completely crush Ukraine and push them all the way back to Lviv, or at the very least take Kiev. Anything short of that and the Russians, and any other potential US rivals, look like second rate powers.
The neocons are not necessarily the point. They are sinister and disgusting, but very minor players compared to the Deep State which holds the strings affixed to their puppets.
The Russians appear to have changed their aims. Originally they intervened in the Donbass with limited forces to disrupt the Ukrainian offensive against Donetsk and Lugansk and to force Kiev to negotiate and implement the Minsk Accords. This succeeded at first. Kiev and Moscow worked out a peace deal in Istanbul, which was nixed by Boros Johnson (presumably egged on by Washington).
Following the Ukrainian decision not to implement the Istanbul agreement, Russia appears resolved to dismember Ukraine and, if necessary, complete the destruction of the regime in Kiev. The mass mobilisation within Russia is being finalised.
Whatever happens, the Western media will spin things. Determining the reality of what is happening will be very difficult.
Within Europe, I’d rate the Polish and French armed forces ahead of Ukraine’s. The others have work to do, which is why I said Russia would be repulsed by Europe “in time”.
Bear in mind that Russia, in 8 months, hasn’t yet achieved air superiority over Ukraine. The US would have had the job done in a week. Of course, US AWACS flying holding patterns over Poland and helping with targeting have an impact on Russian success.
The “real” range of HIMARs and MLRS is 400km, not the 40km missiles the US supplies to Ukraine.
Air launched JASSMs (cruise missiles) start at around 400km range and go up to 1800km. Several NATO countries use these. Finland can hit Moscow without leaving Finnish airspace, launching from F-16s.
In a conflict, Kalingrad and Sebastopol would cease to exist within a week. This is why Russia would quickly escalate to nukes and the US nuclear umbrella is necessary. Why Americans should be willing to risk nuclear annihilation for the sake of the EU, which is rich enough to defend itself, is another matter. Europe is certainly going to need to scale up its nuclear forces massively over the long-term, unless it brings Russia into the fold and nuke numbers are greatly reduced.
https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/jassm/
You neglect to acknowledge the range of Russian hypersonic missiles. London, Paris, Berlin are within range. Any Russian sub in the Atlantic can take out Washington.
As for Ukraine/Russia...Russians have 1/5 of Ukraine and Ukrainian forces now rely on foreigners because their own ranks are depleted by casualties on a mass scale.
Are you arguing the Russian missiles are a dire conventional threat to London and Paris, as they have been to, say, Lviv? 😊 Or are you saying the Russians are a nuclear threat? The latter I completely agree with.
In terms of conventional arms, the Russians are no threat to Europe. Could they do damage? Sure. Would Russia be defeated - yes.
Europe should quickly get up to 2 percent of GDP in spending across the board and make better decisions on military strategy and priorities (currently, the top priority is to support EU arms manufacturers ). As Ukraine can fight Russia to a standstill whilst not being able to target Russia-based radars, air bases, supply depots, manufacturing facilities, etc in any comprehensive way (all of which would be in range of NATO weaponry) and with essentially no Air Force, it is clear that Russia presents no conventional threat to Europe. Attacks would eventually be repulsed and Russian forces would eventually be destroyed. Other than the US nuclear umbrella, US support for NATO appears to be a giant boondoggle. The reality is that Europe would be useless in a war in Asia. What the US needs from Europe is agreement on trading with enemy countries (ie economic cooperation). If America’s nuclear umbrella isn’t worth an economic quid pro quo, then what is it good for? The European record in this is mixed- the mercantilist French and Germans fall over themselves to trade with Russia, Iran, China, etc.
I think the Europeans are right, though, that Russia needs to be brought into the fold longer-term (not under Putin). Pushing Russia into China’s arms is not a good long-term decision (though Putin has only itself to blame). Hobbling (for a few years) his relations with the EU and making corrupt, impoverished Ukraine a staunch ally and hero to most of Europe and the US seems like a high price to pay for Mariupol, a thin land bridge and a bit more of Luhansk, though demographically I can see how a switch to a Russian focus on the Mideast and Asia makes more sense than tying itself to a sclerotic Europe.
I cannot really engage in any depth on military comparisons. My knowledge is next to nil and I rely very heavily on experts like Col's Douglas McGregor and Scott Ritter. I'll leave it at that.
France and Germany have long been a problem for the US. They actively undermined the sanctions against Saddam Hussein after Gulf War 1 and were aiming for strategic autonomy via an independent EU army (and that will go nowhere now). Turbo America cannot rely on their loyalty and cannot be blamed for being unsentimental in its approach to them.
Russia is making the right decision. Eurasian integration is the way to go. Europe is in decline and has nothing to offer Russia.
Personally, I think Putin had no choice but to intervene in the Donbass. The NATO backed Ukrainian campaign against the Russians and Russophones had to be stopped and any further eastward advance of NATO had to be halted. The US and the EU could have negotiated, but they preferred to set Ukraine on fire.
Very good middle two paragraphs, and I am not a military strategist, either. Not sure about the “no choice” closer. Putin had been preparing for the invasion for a couple of years - might have been the only OECD country that CUT spending during Covid. Lowest debt/GDP of any populous OECD country and a fiscal surplus plus a massive rainy day fund. From 2019-2020 onward he was clearly insulating Russia from sanctions in preparation for war (didn’t reckon on US quickly seizing reserves at the Fed, though). I think he really thought he could topple Ukraine in a decapitation strike and be welcomed by collaborators (as in Kherson in February), and I am guessing his personal health and desire for a legacy had an impact on timing. The Biden admin is imbecilic and has elevated Ukraine and demonized Putin mostly due to domestic politics (whereas Biden was an appeaser in 2008 and 2014), but I don’t think anything they did triggered the decision (Biden even approved Nordstream 2 and signed a new weapons treaty with Putin last year). Meanwhile, Macron et al tried repeatedly to negotiate.
We shouldn't neglect that Ukraine's military spent years building fortifications in that area. Russia was able to clear them out, slowly and methodically, with the least amount of loss to their own soldiers.