"Ban AfD in the Name of Democracy!", Biden Regime vs. Hungary, De-Dollarization Much Tougher Than It Sounds, Englishness As A Brand, 19th Century Slum Photography
BRICS should focus on making themselves immune to sanctions inspired by Washington.
The people of the West should question the ideology of free trade. Protectionism may be a dirty word for BRICS enthusiasts, but not necessarily for us.
The "skinniest kid at fat camp" analogy is spot on and is why the USD is so resilient. As insane as our fiscal policies are, we still dominate the competition. Many people on the right thought hyperinflation and shortages would hit the US after the war broke out but I thought it was pretty obvious the US would find a way to keep food on the shelves and export the ruin everywhere else. Biden's team even pointed out our inflation rate, as bad as it is, is lower than everyone else's and therefore we're doing fine. He was not entirely wrong and it was not accidental he said this
What has to happen is two things: a crisis that hits the US particularly hard and can't be exported elsewhere, and BRICS becoming competent in time for that event and remaining united in its response
I do think these things can and will happen but it's not happening tomorrow or even in a decade. The first goal is simply carving out enough of the pie to get around sanctions. Do you stop there and declare a victory, or keep pushing? What response do you provoke in either case?
Zeihan has been beating this drum for quite some time. It's trendy to hate on him but the demographics are quite objective. China has major issues, they literally just quit publishing the youth unemployment rate as it tops 30%+ there, shit is going to keep getting more unstable
I am headed to Zagreb tomorrow to attend a wedding this weekend and will not be anywhere near a laptop until at least Monday morning, so I decided to crank this one out today.
Please hit the like button at the top of the page to like this entry. Use the share or re-stack buttons to share this across social media. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so, and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't done so already.
Request: please do share my content with others. Elon killing Substack links at Twitter has made promotion much, much more difficult for me. Thank you to those who take the time and effort to do this on my behalf, I appreciate it!
About Twitter killing Substack links, have you thought of getting your own domain ?
I got my own domain (following Razib Khan's advice) and it seems to have worked in terms of Twitter not manifestly killing my links. My own domain I got with Godaddy (not fond of them, just used to them) and configuration was a bit more difficult than necessary but eventually worked fine. Configuration is in Settings for your Substack, then Domain.
You could easily-peasily facilitate the sharing by supplying each of your five ‘insightful, informative, interesting, important, or a combination’ articles/essays/reports with directly linkable anchors/headings 😇 Say, in this manner --> niccolo.substack.com/i/135697841/councils.
Mayhaps tinkering with 'stack tools would even allow linking to head pictures 🤔 (I gather you mysteriously distaste captioning your *disparate* topics... likely for aesthetic reasons 😊)
PS Then five specific 'Share' buttons would come handy (next to 'Upgrade to paid' if you must).
PPS Just puhleeze make no mistake, me ain't no fisherman's wife! I'm honestly grateful for your superb write-ups presactly as they are 🤩
Aug 24, 2023·edited Aug 24, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Of course, the redefinition of democracy to deny the populace a voice is straight up 1984.
What is anyone proposing to do about it? Pointing out the raging hypocrisy of the German political class is not going to stop them.
Anyway, "The will of the people” has taken a back seat to concepts such as minority rights, for example, allowing those who act in the name of democracy to either disregard the will of the people, or outright penalize some representatives of that very same will."
Only when this corresponds with the elite consensus at the moment. For example, Protection Of Minority Rights is very important, but only when it's the right minority in the right place at the right time. A Kurd can do no wrong, but only as long as he is in Syria. Turkiye is far more ruthless when it comes to suppression of minorities, but a Kurd situated there cannot count on the same blanket support.
The continually evolving nature of Muh Democracy ever always only happens to reflect elite views at a given time and is used to shore up that elite consensus at that time.
The cynicism and amorality of the elites is enduring. The German elite are following the example of their predecessors. In the 30s the elites undermined and suppressed democracy because they loathed class compromise (embodied by the Social Democrats) and made common cause with a minority of extremists who never got more than 33% of the popular vote. Today the German elites are wedded to the lie that populism is heir to fascism while they defend the imported criminal underclass that is terrorizing the country. The German ANTIFA now function as Brownshirts and are used to suppress/constrain opponents of the regime.
Much the same is true of the US elites too. The Biden regime was elected by fraud mostly undertaken in a handful of cities (Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit) and to maintain this support the regime has no choice but to tolerate a permanent low-intensity pogrom against whites and Asians and the US versions of the Brownshirts are ANTIFA and BLM. Function, not rhetoric or self-belief, is critical for explaining this.
The closest thing I can find in history to our Eleets are the effeminate fops the samurai overthrew in Japan. This is somewhat the founding of Sparta as well, in Sparta’s case asking for Lycurgus to make Sparta Laws.
"The Biden regime was elected by fraud" and "the US versions of the Brownshirts are ANTIFA and BLM" make it hard to take your comment seriously. Evidence please.
Evidence? The Supreme Court put Biden into the White House on procedural grounds alone...they never allowed Trump an opportunity to present a case based on substantive evidence. That is the ultimate smoking gun.
My understanding is that the tally in Georgia included 100,000 votes cast by voters who were legally ineligible to participate, including 10,000 dead people. This cohort enabled Biden to carry the state (he won by only 11,000 votes). The Georgia state courts refused to hear the resulting objections and delayed things until Biden was in possession of the White House. As for Michigan, Pennsylvania etc...what a sick joke it all was.
I am an Australian and can truthfully declare that I have both personal and professional experience in connection with electoral matters. It is my considered opinion that no one in their right mind could gave any confidence in the outcome of US federal elections.
As for ANTIFA and BLM, the video clips I saw of these terrorising and intimidating people were enough to convince me. Ditto the cases in Seattle and Denver where BLM gunmen murdered a couple of MAGA supporters in cold blood.
Do you think Hungary will be able to resist the pressures applied to by the USA, or will it eventually fall and be turned into another Ireland, pozzed and subjected to mass immigration? Can it hold out and weather the storm?
The US ambassador to Hungary is a massive piece of shit, just an utter disgrace who makes me want to renounce my American citizenship.
I would love Hungary to hold out but I don't think it can. It's a small country with a modest economy and one which is heavily dependent upon the EU and Germany in particular. I think they will be forced to bend the knee in due course.
Hungary still has their language. Ireland was broken by the removal of their native language. I think you can identify successful recalcitrant tribes (such as the Albanians or Basques) by the retention of language.
Ireland and the Irish are like Tea best in Boiling Water.
If we don’t have Trouble we seek it out, sorry all.
But give them suffering and they rally. A Strange race, I am one of course.
More grounded analysis; let America reveal to the world, in particular our host Nico and above all we Americans that we are entering “The Anarchy” period of America 🇺🇸 and the entire neoliberal money empire shall vanish into fog and float away. I’d hate to be the new Irish Landlords walking down to the street that day...
I would say to see how Poland holds up. They're likely hoping their support in Ukraine lessens pressure on immigration in particular. In the short term this will work. Long term, they better have another plan because the US will repay them with trans toddlers and Syrian refugees
If Germany keeps on in this anti-democratic direction perhaps they will change their name to the German Democratic Republic (GDR). I understand the name has been available since late 1990. It would fit right in with the economic wall the collective west has been erecting against Russia over the past couple of years.
The DDR only used zerzetsung (targetted decomposition, an induced psychological breakdown) on dissidents. Washington applies this to the bulk of the population. The health and fitness of East Germans (especially the young) compares well to the USA today.
One really amusing thing you see in America all the time is that the overlap of the people who place minority rights ahead of everything else in Our Democracy and the people who decry the minoritarian protections built into the Electoral College and the Senate is like 99%. Literally almost always the exact same people.
I can bet cat treats to cat turds that if Trump won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College, the same pundits who insisted that his presidency was illegitimate Because Popular Vote would be wrapping their eyebrows around their collective noses, intoning piously that The Wisdom Of The Founding Fathers Must Be Upheld or some similar pompous crap-o.
No bet. One thing you can be absolutely certain of is that whatever the issue, The Pundits will be supporting the position that increases the power of the PMC. Every. Single. Time. And they'll be justifying it on the basis of "Our Democracy".
Actually I think they have done that in my lifetime, either for Clinton or Bush vs Gore.
They Democratic Party has always understood politics is power, at no time in their entire history have they ever confused power with principle. That folly is the Conservatives.
"Democracy is too precious to allow millions of people to participate in, it seems."
I am stealing this, and I'm going to use this at every opportunity in meatspace. I like the pithiness; it drives an important point about a major motivation in this freaking out over "saving democracy!".
My best friend has been living in Berlin for a bit. They're an American expat, with an interesting background. The one parent is a Haitian who has childhood memories of the Tonton Macoutes and having to flee with his parents from Papa Doc Duvalier's reign of terror. This news about the Germans planning to ban AFD has had both mom and dad telling them to consider leaving. The very sound/smart reasoning is once one political party is banned, very soon you're going to have trouble that extends beyond the ability to choose who rules you.
It makes me very sad. I love Germany and it's people, but I'm not confident that this rhetoric will be reeled back in. I hope I'm wrong!
"A ban is more popular in the west and among liberal Greens."
I can't go a few hours without hearing someone preaching about "political beliefs" and "political principles" (or the odious "Everything is Political!"), how they should take the place in our hearts where the Lord and his Good Book once resided, how they need to be the foremost consideration in everything from dating to breakfast cereal to the books you read (and even write).
But then I can't help but notice that all the Lefties I once knew and loved (or at least respected) took one look at the Orange Gorgon and were transformed into the opposite of all they once claimed as sacred beliefs. And not just a volte-face, but a double volte-face: 1) they have completely renounced and now vehemently oppose freedom of speech, thought, expression and of association, and are primed to punish any dissenters; and 2) they've gleefully climbed into bed with Big Tech, Big Pharma, the FBI and CIA, the US Military and any NGO or other corporate entity who promises to destroy their enemies.
So what does this say about our supposedly sacrosanct "political beliefs"? One lost election and they all go in the garbage? And "Democracy" gets redefined as "heads I win, tails you lose"?
Everyone has "beliefs" and "principles" until they get the chance to deliver the coup de grace to their enemies, then the gloves come off and the mask falls to reveal just another petty tyrant with delusions of grandeur.
"1) they have completely renounced and now vehemently oppose freedom of speech, thought, expression and of association, and are primed to punish any dissenters; and 2) they've gleefully climbed into bed with Big Tech, Big Pharma, the FBI and CIA, the US Military and any NGO or other corporate entity who promises to destroy their enemies."
What happened was the liberals got the whip hand. If you want to see who someone really is, give them power.
Most ordinary people very literally do not know what they believe. They just know who they follow. And those people they follow were lying about their real beliefs for a very, very long time
our brains are social, designed to maintain our place in the tribe and thus help us survive and flourish. there is no brain that is not invisibly linked to hundreds of others, from our friends and family to the things we read and see (myself included)...
unfortunately our brain design also prevents most of us from seeing/knowing that what we imagine as "beliefs" and "convictions" are just tribal or social or mating signals that could dissolve at any moment, especially once calories get scarce.
the best brains come sprinkled with a few dashes of skepticism and indifference, otherwise you're just a puppy waiting for some better brain to train and leash yours.
Skepticism is the true Mark of Cain that marks out the neurodivergent fifth column...Nature's punks. At least amongst the helots. Occasional free-thinkers would be tolerated within the elite...provided they were super-discrete, never rocked the boat and could be relied upon to support the system.
Nietzsche wrote that ideas are shadows of our emotions. Political beliefs simply camouflage how we feel about others. The force of emotion exceeds that of any abstract formulation about right or wrong. Libidinal/hormonal disgust for the Deplorables is driving much of it, with status signaling playing a very big role too.
Minority rights are the central mechanism by which this works. Because elites can choose whichever minority who's rights happen to coincide with what they like. The so called "oppression olympics" that Fox News dads were decrying ten years ago is precisely this: a hierarchy of minorities based on how closely that minority's particular ambitions, aesthetic, and so on, aligns with viewpoints, trends, and occasionally even interests of elites.
It never had much to do with how oppressed anyone is - they'll laugh at ethnic concentration camps as long as their memeplex lets them know it's okay. And this is not to say they're evil - this is just to say that they're human. What's unique to them is not even that they are living in an era of memetic selection (because that is even truer of "our" side). In fact, they're not even unique.
The age of memetic selection means that the symbolic order is controlled by the salience of truths, rather than by their correlation to reality (or derivation from the divine, or whatever else it could be instead but currently isn't) - but (at least for people who spend their time fighting over the symbolic order) we've been in an age of post-scarcity memetic selection at least since Sumer. In such an era, true power means the power to alter the symbolic order to conform to yourself (ie, the power to give the divine law - which is, not to command obedience of action, but to really change hearts and minds).
The biggest hole in my theory is that it's wrong. ISIS had the hearts and minds of the world. America, their enemy, had lots of money, which they used to bomb their rival into oblivion. Now people don't care about ISIS. Another Lost Cause maybe for some emuzzies who will hang controversial flag outside of trailer in refugee camp. Also, look at liberalism. Neither left nor right believes in it. Yet if either left or right deviates from it, they instantly are chopped off the vine of power and go into the ground to nourish the chthonic earth creatures (substack and podcasts or whatever lives down there). So ideology and power just seem to be irrelevant to eachother, except that power keeps ideology in check, and was ISIS really an ideology or just the pent up energy, dynamism, and fire latent in the Islamic spirit all these centuries, which other power noticed and squashed early (which explains why the hypocrisy about Saudi Arabia, which has the same ideology, but is not a power threat, and so was left alone).
Anyway, memes don't actually matter, they just pick a convenient minority as a moral shield, and we stupidly fling arrows at the shield praying to every now and again ding their helmet. If you look past the ideology you could understand them and power and maybe fight, but you'd also lose your reason to fight, because you'd understand how stupid the current fight is. When really, you should be fighting for peace and love on the internet with me and the other cyber sweethearts (yeah this is one of those gay ass milady BRG "lil clearpill" type posts, here on a FbF comment, i literally don't give a fuck cousin. Say some shit cuz im 6'13 and lift weights to your FACE NIGGA), because we're all one soul
The pettyness of the state department's "punishment" of Hungary amazes me. So that wealthier and more educated type of Hungarian who actually visits the USA is punished by removing the visa waiver. Therefore that part of society will become more anti-American. How does that benefit the USA?
This is what absolute power does to a foreign policy.
In Hungary, despite what the Spiegels/Politicos claim, the Kremlin has no soft power presence. They used to prop up Orban's Far-Right opposition until 2015, since then, crickets.
If Putin was running a cunning operation in Hungary, Washington would have to play a much smarter game.
It is not so much absolute power as thoroughgoing self-absorption on the part of the US elite. The reality of Hungary is irrelevant to the consumer of quality media in the US...it is enough that the narrative fits the needs of the powers that be.
BRICS should focus on making themselves immune to sanctions inspired by Washington.
The people of the West should question the ideology of free trade. Protectionism may be a dirty word for BRICS enthusiasts, but not necessarily for us.
The "skinniest kid at fat camp" analogy is spot on and is why the USD is so resilient. As insane as our fiscal policies are, we still dominate the competition. Many people on the right thought hyperinflation and shortages would hit the US after the war broke out but I thought it was pretty obvious the US would find a way to keep food on the shelves and export the ruin everywhere else. Biden's team even pointed out our inflation rate, as bad as it is, is lower than everyone else's and therefore we're doing fine. He was not entirely wrong and it was not accidental he said this
What has to happen is two things: a crisis that hits the US particularly hard and can't be exported elsewhere, and BRICS becoming competent in time for that event and remaining united in its response
I do think these things can and will happen but it's not happening tomorrow or even in a decade. The first goal is simply carving out enough of the pie to get around sanctions. Do you stop there and declare a victory, or keep pushing? What response do you provoke in either case?
Zeihan has been beating this drum for quite some time. It's trendy to hate on him but the demographics are quite objective. China has major issues, they literally just quit publishing the youth unemployment rate as it tops 30%+ there, shit is going to keep getting more unstable
A revolt of the youth worldwide... I can’t blame them...
I am headed to Zagreb tomorrow to attend a wedding this weekend and will not be anywhere near a laptop until at least Monday morning, so I decided to crank this one out today.
Please hit the like button at the top of the page to like this entry. Use the share or re-stack buttons to share this across social media. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so, and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't done so already.
Request: please do share my content with others. Elon killing Substack links at Twitter has made promotion much, much more difficult for me. Thank you to those who take the time and effort to do this on my behalf, I appreciate it!
About Twitter killing Substack links, have you thought of getting your own domain ?
I got my own domain (following Razib Khan's advice) and it seems to have worked in terms of Twitter not manifestly killing my links. My own domain I got with Godaddy (not fond of them, just used to them) and configuration was a bit more difficult than necessary but eventually worked fine. Configuration is in Settings for your Substack, then Domain.
You could easily-peasily facilitate the sharing by supplying each of your five ‘insightful, informative, interesting, important, or a combination’ articles/essays/reports with directly linkable anchors/headings 😇 Say, in this manner --> niccolo.substack.com/i/135697841/councils.
Mayhaps tinkering with 'stack tools would even allow linking to head pictures 🤔 (I gather you mysteriously distaste captioning your *disparate* topics... likely for aesthetic reasons 😊)
PS Then five specific 'Share' buttons would come handy (next to 'Upgrade to paid' if you must).
PPS Just puhleeze make no mistake, me ain't no fisherman's wife! I'm honestly grateful for your superb write-ups presactly as they are 🤩
Condolences.
First we get a Saturday Review on a Monday; now we get one on a Thursday? Niccolo, you’re a madman!
Anyways, looking forward to reading when I finish work. And it sounds like we all need to gift our friends with a subscription to FbF!
LOL, that would be great
Niccolo is like the NFL weekly schedule now
A week with two Saturdays! We are approaching the end times!
It’s the Croatian Calendar.
Of course, the redefinition of democracy to deny the populace a voice is straight up 1984.
What is anyone proposing to do about it? Pointing out the raging hypocrisy of the German political class is not going to stop them.
Anyway, "The will of the people” has taken a back seat to concepts such as minority rights, for example, allowing those who act in the name of democracy to either disregard the will of the people, or outright penalize some representatives of that very same will."
Only when this corresponds with the elite consensus at the moment. For example, Protection Of Minority Rights is very important, but only when it's the right minority in the right place at the right time. A Kurd can do no wrong, but only as long as he is in Syria. Turkiye is far more ruthless when it comes to suppression of minorities, but a Kurd situated there cannot count on the same blanket support.
The continually evolving nature of Muh Democracy ever always only happens to reflect elite views at a given time and is used to shore up that elite consensus at that time.
The cynicism and amorality of the elites is enduring. The German elite are following the example of their predecessors. In the 30s the elites undermined and suppressed democracy because they loathed class compromise (embodied by the Social Democrats) and made common cause with a minority of extremists who never got more than 33% of the popular vote. Today the German elites are wedded to the lie that populism is heir to fascism while they defend the imported criminal underclass that is terrorizing the country. The German ANTIFA now function as Brownshirts and are used to suppress/constrain opponents of the regime.
Much the same is true of the US elites too. The Biden regime was elected by fraud mostly undertaken in a handful of cities (Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit) and to maintain this support the regime has no choice but to tolerate a permanent low-intensity pogrom against whites and Asians and the US versions of the Brownshirts are ANTIFA and BLM. Function, not rhetoric or self-belief, is critical for explaining this.
The Iron Law Of Oligarchy is called an "iron law" for a reason.
But they’re pussies , unlike previous oligarchs.
The closest thing I can find in history to our Eleets are the effeminate fops the samurai overthrew in Japan. This is somewhat the founding of Sparta as well, in Sparta’s case asking for Lycurgus to make Sparta Laws.
"The Biden regime was elected by fraud" and "the US versions of the Brownshirts are ANTIFA and BLM" make it hard to take your comment seriously. Evidence please.
Evidence? The Supreme Court put Biden into the White House on procedural grounds alone...they never allowed Trump an opportunity to present a case based on substantive evidence. That is the ultimate smoking gun.
My understanding is that the tally in Georgia included 100,000 votes cast by voters who were legally ineligible to participate, including 10,000 dead people. This cohort enabled Biden to carry the state (he won by only 11,000 votes). The Georgia state courts refused to hear the resulting objections and delayed things until Biden was in possession of the White House. As for Michigan, Pennsylvania etc...what a sick joke it all was.
I am an Australian and can truthfully declare that I have both personal and professional experience in connection with electoral matters. It is my considered opinion that no one in their right mind could gave any confidence in the outcome of US federal elections.
As for ANTIFA and BLM, the video clips I saw of these terrorising and intimidating people were enough to convince me. Ditto the cases in Seattle and Denver where BLM gunmen murdered a couple of MAGA supporters in cold blood.
Do you think Hungary will be able to resist the pressures applied to by the USA, or will it eventually fall and be turned into another Ireland, pozzed and subjected to mass immigration? Can it hold out and weather the storm?
The US ambassador to Hungary is a massive piece of shit, just an utter disgrace who makes me want to renounce my American citizenship.
My answer is: I don't know.
Moldbug is extremely negative about Hungary's long-term prognosis in this respect, for whatever that's worth.
Then we should be fine.
🤣
I would love Hungary to hold out but I don't think it can. It's a small country with a modest economy and one which is heavily dependent upon the EU and Germany in particular. I think they will be forced to bend the knee in due course.
Hungary's greatest threat, economically, is German de-industrialization. We really can't do much about that.
try creating your own industries?
sounds simple but I know its complicated starting from scratch
but I'd rather as a country have my own industries than depend on some foreign big power
Hungary still has their language. Ireland was broken by the removal of their native language. I think you can identify successful recalcitrant tribes (such as the Albanians or Basques) by the retention of language.
Ireland and the Irish are like Tea best in Boiling Water.
If we don’t have Trouble we seek it out, sorry all.
But give them suffering and they rally. A Strange race, I am one of course.
More grounded analysis; let America reveal to the world, in particular our host Nico and above all we Americans that we are entering “The Anarchy” period of America 🇺🇸 and the entire neoliberal money empire shall vanish into fog and float away. I’d hate to be the new Irish Landlords walking down to the street that day...
We’re ☘️ all Travelers underneath.
Ireland is too harsh a fate for anyone
I would say to see how Poland holds up. They're likely hoping their support in Ukraine lessens pressure on immigration in particular. In the short term this will work. Long term, they better have another plan because the US will repay them with trans toddlers and Syrian refugees
Nothings too harsh for the Irish ☘️, I am one.
The present situation just doesn’t suck enough, yet.
If Germany keeps on in this anti-democratic direction perhaps they will change their name to the German Democratic Republic (GDR). I understand the name has been available since late 1990. It would fit right in with the economic wall the collective west has been erecting against Russia over the past couple of years.
Gracious this is very unfair to the DDR.
The Marx Brothers did it best in Duck Soup.
“We have principles. And if people don’t like those principles, we have others.”
The DDR only used zerzetsung (targetted decomposition, an induced psychological breakdown) on dissidents. Washington applies this to the bulk of the population. The health and fitness of East Germans (especially the young) compares well to the USA today.
One really amusing thing you see in America all the time is that the overlap of the people who place minority rights ahead of everything else in Our Democracy and the people who decry the minoritarian protections built into the Electoral College and the Senate is like 99%. Literally almost always the exact same people.
I can bet cat treats to cat turds that if Trump won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College, the same pundits who insisted that his presidency was illegitimate Because Popular Vote would be wrapping their eyebrows around their collective noses, intoning piously that The Wisdom Of The Founding Fathers Must Be Upheld or some similar pompous crap-o.
No bet. One thing you can be absolutely certain of is that whatever the issue, The Pundits will be supporting the position that increases the power of the PMC. Every. Single. Time. And they'll be justifying it on the basis of "Our Democracy".
Actually I think they have done that in my lifetime, either for Clinton or Bush vs Gore.
They Democratic Party has always understood politics is power, at no time in their entire history have they ever confused power with principle. That folly is the Conservatives.
It’s like Pop music, they don’t listen to the words.
Democracy
A system of governance where an informed electorate sees through the BS and holds their elected representatives to account.
Informed electorate
People who serve their country by following current events and political discussions.
Requirements: free speech, free press, transparency
Unacceptable.
"Democracy is too precious to allow millions of people to participate in, it seems."
I am stealing this, and I'm going to use this at every opportunity in meatspace. I like the pithiness; it drives an important point about a major motivation in this freaking out over "saving democracy!".
My best friend has been living in Berlin for a bit. They're an American expat, with an interesting background. The one parent is a Haitian who has childhood memories of the Tonton Macoutes and having to flee with his parents from Papa Doc Duvalier's reign of terror. This news about the Germans planning to ban AFD has had both mom and dad telling them to consider leaving. The very sound/smart reasoning is once one political party is banned, very soon you're going to have trouble that extends beyond the ability to choose who rules you.
It makes me very sad. I love Germany and it's people, but I'm not confident that this rhetoric will be reeled back in. I hope I'm wrong!
What a nice surprise – wish it was Saturday already.
"A ban is more popular in the west and among liberal Greens."
I can't go a few hours without hearing someone preaching about "political beliefs" and "political principles" (or the odious "Everything is Political!"), how they should take the place in our hearts where the Lord and his Good Book once resided, how they need to be the foremost consideration in everything from dating to breakfast cereal to the books you read (and even write).
But then I can't help but notice that all the Lefties I once knew and loved (or at least respected) took one look at the Orange Gorgon and were transformed into the opposite of all they once claimed as sacred beliefs. And not just a volte-face, but a double volte-face: 1) they have completely renounced and now vehemently oppose freedom of speech, thought, expression and of association, and are primed to punish any dissenters; and 2) they've gleefully climbed into bed with Big Tech, Big Pharma, the FBI and CIA, the US Military and any NGO or other corporate entity who promises to destroy their enemies.
So what does this say about our supposedly sacrosanct "political beliefs"? One lost election and they all go in the garbage? And "Democracy" gets redefined as "heads I win, tails you lose"?
Everyone has "beliefs" and "principles" until they get the chance to deliver the coup de grace to their enemies, then the gloves come off and the mask falls to reveal just another petty tyrant with delusions of grandeur.
"1) they have completely renounced and now vehemently oppose freedom of speech, thought, expression and of association, and are primed to punish any dissenters; and 2) they've gleefully climbed into bed with Big Tech, Big Pharma, the FBI and CIA, the US Military and any NGO or other corporate entity who promises to destroy their enemies."
What happened was the liberals got the whip hand. If you want to see who someone really is, give them power.
💯
Most ordinary people very literally do not know what they believe. They just know who they follow. And those people they follow were lying about their real beliefs for a very, very long time
our brains are social, designed to maintain our place in the tribe and thus help us survive and flourish. there is no brain that is not invisibly linked to hundreds of others, from our friends and family to the things we read and see (myself included)...
unfortunately our brain design also prevents most of us from seeing/knowing that what we imagine as "beliefs" and "convictions" are just tribal or social or mating signals that could dissolve at any moment, especially once calories get scarce.
the best brains come sprinkled with a few dashes of skepticism and indifference, otherwise you're just a puppy waiting for some better brain to train and leash yours.
Skepticism is the true Mark of Cain that marks out the neurodivergent fifth column...Nature's punks. At least amongst the helots. Occasional free-thinkers would be tolerated within the elite...provided they were super-discrete, never rocked the boat and could be relied upon to support the system.
Nietzsche wrote that ideas are shadows of our emotions. Political beliefs simply camouflage how we feel about others. The force of emotion exceeds that of any abstract formulation about right or wrong. Libidinal/hormonal disgust for the Deplorables is driving much of it, with status signaling playing a very big role too.
The Petty part isn’t Petty until successfully challenged- and tosses them into history’s ditch.
And they are right about their political views; politics is power, not beliefs. Nothing is cherished except power.
Minority rights are the central mechanism by which this works. Because elites can choose whichever minority who's rights happen to coincide with what they like. The so called "oppression olympics" that Fox News dads were decrying ten years ago is precisely this: a hierarchy of minorities based on how closely that minority's particular ambitions, aesthetic, and so on, aligns with viewpoints, trends, and occasionally even interests of elites.
It never had much to do with how oppressed anyone is - they'll laugh at ethnic concentration camps as long as their memeplex lets them know it's okay. And this is not to say they're evil - this is just to say that they're human. What's unique to them is not even that they are living in an era of memetic selection (because that is even truer of "our" side). In fact, they're not even unique.
The age of memetic selection means that the symbolic order is controlled by the salience of truths, rather than by their correlation to reality (or derivation from the divine, or whatever else it could be instead but currently isn't) - but (at least for people who spend their time fighting over the symbolic order) we've been in an age of post-scarcity memetic selection at least since Sumer. In such an era, true power means the power to alter the symbolic order to conform to yourself (ie, the power to give the divine law - which is, not to command obedience of action, but to really change hearts and minds).
The biggest hole in my theory is that it's wrong. ISIS had the hearts and minds of the world. America, their enemy, had lots of money, which they used to bomb their rival into oblivion. Now people don't care about ISIS. Another Lost Cause maybe for some emuzzies who will hang controversial flag outside of trailer in refugee camp. Also, look at liberalism. Neither left nor right believes in it. Yet if either left or right deviates from it, they instantly are chopped off the vine of power and go into the ground to nourish the chthonic earth creatures (substack and podcasts or whatever lives down there). So ideology and power just seem to be irrelevant to eachother, except that power keeps ideology in check, and was ISIS really an ideology or just the pent up energy, dynamism, and fire latent in the Islamic spirit all these centuries, which other power noticed and squashed early (which explains why the hypocrisy about Saudi Arabia, which has the same ideology, but is not a power threat, and so was left alone).
Anyway, memes don't actually matter, they just pick a convenient minority as a moral shield, and we stupidly fling arrows at the shield praying to every now and again ding their helmet. If you look past the ideology you could understand them and power and maybe fight, but you'd also lose your reason to fight, because you'd understand how stupid the current fight is. When really, you should be fighting for peace and love on the internet with me and the other cyber sweethearts (yeah this is one of those gay ass milady BRG "lil clearpill" type posts, here on a FbF comment, i literally don't give a fuck cousin. Say some shit cuz im 6'13 and lift weights to your FACE NIGGA), because we're all one soul
Re the Brics and the USD dedollarisation debate covering both transactional mediums and reserve assetts.
The following article What I Have Learned Since 1971: Beyond The Reserve Currency by French financier Charles Gave is a very useful read IMHO
https://haymaker.substack.com/p/making-hay-monday-guest-article
Off-topic: I came across this series of tweets and would welcome comment by our esteemed host:
Feast of Blessed Miroslav Bulešić, killed by Communists:
https://twitter.com/NoTrueScotist/status/1694603377731309641
Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour on the Brits & Communists:
https://twitter.com/HorcherF/status/1694681194506441143
https://hungarianreview.com/article/history-and-grace/
Forced conversion of Serbs to Catholicism:
https://twitter.com/AschRonald/status/1694717221619306761
The pettyness of the state department's "punishment" of Hungary amazes me. So that wealthier and more educated type of Hungarian who actually visits the USA is punished by removing the visa waiver. Therefore that part of society will become more anti-American. How does that benefit the USA?
There’s a lot of ‘stupid’ in the Biden State Department- too much in fact.
you cant reason with ideologues
you can only defeat them
They aren’t ideologues either.
This is what absolute power does to a foreign policy.
In Hungary, despite what the Spiegels/Politicos claim, the Kremlin has no soft power presence. They used to prop up Orban's Far-Right opposition until 2015, since then, crickets.
If Putin was running a cunning operation in Hungary, Washington would have to play a much smarter game.
It is not so much absolute power as thoroughgoing self-absorption on the part of the US elite. The reality of Hungary is irrelevant to the consumer of quality media in the US...it is enough that the narrative fits the needs of the powers that be.