So says Paul Joseph Watson.
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Conservatism is the new counter-cultureFebruary 10th, 2017 |
 36 comments to Conservatism is the new counter-culture |
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I’ve heard this theory a lot in recent years, and I mostly buy it. THink about it this way – where are the fun-hating soccer moms who are protesting at how children are terrible and more things need to be banned? In 1967, they were all conservatives, and liberals were the counterculture. Today, they’re all whiny feminists, and conservatives are the counterculture.
Maybe not “conservatism” per se, but Trump, Breitbart, and the alt-right: certainly. Today, they reflect the spirit of the counter-culture, of Dada, of punk. Trump has pranked the media several times, to hilarious effect. The left had that spirit in the ’60s, but now they are pearl-clutching, censorious scolds, sprinkled with neo-fascist Antifa thugs who enjoy street violence and chants like “free speech is hate speech.”
Lulz! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNmta1gFjxU
PJW can be a bit shouty, but what he says is often bang on the money. Having once considered cultural libertarianism to be a mostly male, mostly middle-aged phenomenon, I have been heartened to see just how many young folk are now kicking against the prevailing orthodoxies.
It’s all Tucker Max like spin and monetization strategy. That’s why PJW so interested in US affairs. It’s just bigger crowd.
Yes Alsadius, I knew things were a bit off when some twenty years ago I had to teach my son how to climb a tree…
Hey, I’ve also been saying this for a while (said it in a Samizdata comment the other day, in fact).
Not really – as (behind the scenes) the so called “counter culture” was being pushed by both the education system and the media (especially the entertainment media).
Conservatives are (and were) isolated rebels – the “counter culture” were (and are) the people with power.
Look what novels, films, television shows (and so on) are pushed – the left are in power and they have been in power for a very long time indeed.
Any effort to fight back (even in a jokey way – as with Kelly Ann Conway on Fox and Friends “fight back against this by buying Ivanka Trump stuff now they have banned it” – or words to that effect) and they (the people with real power) will come down on you like a ton of bricks.
I really do believe that there is very little hope for the survival of Western Civilisation.
The left control just about everything – and their true goal is not power (power is just a means to an end).
Their true goal is destruction.
I literally just gone done watching that video and then came here and saw it as quote of the day.
Back in the 1940s the heat of “establishment” painting was Frank Salisbury.
Yet this “establishment” man was never invited in to the key bodies in painting – why was that?
Because he was not really the “establishment” – even in the 1940s.
Ditto writing, ditto architecture, ditto music, ditto everything.
And when he died Frank Salisbury left his house (the house that had been mocked by the critics when built in the 1930s – as it was not ugly, as modern places are supposed to be) to the World Council of Churches (he was a believer – and in his innocence he thought they were to).
They, of course, gutted the place.
Paul Marks,
You realise what is called a counter-culture and what is a counter culture are not the same thing?
The sixties counter culture was not really a counter culture by the end of the decade, more of an accepted youth movement (at least in the UK – Vietnam muddled things in the US), hence the appearance of various extreme manifestations outside the main ‘movements’. The next mainstream counter-cultural movement was punk, which was clearly not in the control of your beloved cultural Marxists (they hate nihilism with a passion as a rule, and punk was hellishly spontaneous).
I’d argue most counter-cultures are free of control, but are often hijacked. A conservative counter-culture could be difficult for our lovely left-wing idealogues to hijack though, so expect them to go all out to destroy it (with hilarous results for those of us with no skins in that fight).
@Watchman: already has led to hilarious results. Watching Trump’s election through the_donald on Reddit was incredibly good fun. Watching the entire DNC+media machine get smashed was beautiful to behold. Fingers crossed for an even more enjoyable 2017.
Watchman
The Marxists may have preferred punks to be marching around in Mao suits or green fatigues, but if that could not be achieved, the nihilism was a good second, as it meant a rejection of the West.
Paul Joseph Watson is a genius.
Punk was pretty soon coralled by the establishment.
I do think many Marxists and other assorted lefties are in fact motivated by nihilism, even if the Doctrine is not.
Paul, as someone who describes himself as ‘not a cultured man’, you do comment on culture (and counter culture) with some certainty 🙂
Patrick Crozier, I think you’re over-estimating PJW. He is an effective communicator and clearly intelligent but I don’t think he is a genius. I don’t see much original thought in his work – he is effective at spreading the ideas of others with his own contributions but that could be said for most Samizdatistas too.
The Left don’t like PJW’s profile pic because he’s gorgeous. And yes, he’s “a bit shouty”, but that’s fine unless I’m standing next to him. 92% of Berliner activists live with mom and dad, LOL. And 1/3 are jobless. ‘Figures.
Paul Marks said,
Hit the nail squarely on the head and firmly into the board with one shot. Yes, Neo-marxists want to destroy every civil norm assuming something marxist will be the default fall-back replacement. But it won’t be, just as it wasn’t when they weren’t neo at all, but rather first gen paleo marxists.
What we’re seeing on the streets are not “protests”, we’re seeing Neo-Marxist Critical Theory being acted out by paid agents.
It’s because we’re so groovy.
Alisa wrote, “do think many Marxists and other assorted lefties are in fact motivated by nihilism, even if the Doctrine is not.”
Agreed. Some are Marxists, but many are simply destructive thugs with no agenda beyond destruction it seems.
Alex wrote,
I’ve seen this idea (conservatisim is the new counter-culture) bandied around lately with everyone giving PJW verbal credit, even the Master Level wizard, Rush Limbaugh. My ownly critisism is that cultureal libertarianism, I would argue, Isn’t “conservative”. Unless one limits the definition of conservatism as merely the desire to retain the lettering and intent of the US Constitution. That’s inadequate IMO, sort of like defining christians as “people who believe in purgatory”.
Leftists are “conservative” too if we consider that they want to “conserve” nature, including the climate, thinking it’s supposed to be stagnant rather than constantly changing and evolving.
Leftists don’t consider mankind part of nature, but rather unnatural invaders messing with nature, and the religious right wing don’t consider mankind as part of nature either. They think of us as fallen divine beings.
It is not clear (to me) from Watchman’s comment who hates nihilism “with a passion”, but i assume that he refers to Cultural Marxists.
To some extent i agree with Alisa: Marxists, and especially cultural Marxists, are nihilists in the sense that they claim that morality is dictated by class interests.
The emphasis is on “claim”, however, because i hold that there are no true moral relativists (in fact, modern “relativists” are the most fanatical and dogmatic people you are likely to meet) and that nobody really disbelieves the existence of an objective reality. People who make such claims are just employing a motte+bailey strategy: when you attack their claims, they make a hasty retreat behind some trivial (if subtle) truth. In his book on postmodernism, Stephen Hicks points out that Kant provided most of the trivial truths that postmodernists need; but then, incongruously, he blames Kant for postmodernism. Nobody should be blamed for pointing out truths, trivial or not.
The same holds for free will: nobody really disbelieves in it. There are a few demented philosophers who redefine it so that it cannot possibly exist, but they continue to behave as though it exists. Note that this is the exact opposite of what Paul Marks believes: he thinks that even people who profess belief in free will (such as, most famously, David Hume) do not really believe in it. Perhaps Paul enjoys tilting at windmills.
Patrick Crozier once said something at a samizdata blogger bash back in the day that discerning folk will realise is quite germane: “Punk Rock is as English as the Malvern Hills”.
Getting back to the main topic:
That quote is just to keep things in historical perspective.
Moving on to recent times, PJW claims in the video that “we have a whole new generation emerging who have no memory whatsoever of the Right being in political power or having any dominance or having any dominance in the culture war.”
As a matter of fact, both the US Republicans and the UK Conservatives have been in power within the living memory of anybody older than 18. There was a long period when the Democrats could take Congress for granted, but that was before the last generation was born.
PJW has a stronger case when it comes to culture; but even then, it must be noted that as recently as 1979, The Life of Brian was considered blasphemous.
As for the education establishment, i suppose that it varies from country to country, but i should think that they have had little if any sympathy for pop culture, in any country at any time.
>As a matter of fact, both the US Republicans and the UK Conservatives have been in power within the living memory of anybody older than 18.
Neither of whom were very right wing. Centrists, really.
>as recently as 1979
I don’t think an 18 year old remembers back 38 years ago.
If Pat Condell had a son . . . .
Agreed. The Right hasn’t been in power in either country since Thatcher resigned in 1990.
Another think that always strikes me, remember when mentioning anything that you’d read on infowars.com lost you credibility points on highbrow sites like this? And here we are…
I think PapayaSF has got it right. Conservatism is dead. It had degenerated into a wing of the Democrat/Socialist Party. Trump and the alt-rt are the counter culture.
>As a matter of fact, both the US Republicans and the UK Conservatives have been in power within the living memory of anybody older than 18.
The UK has had a Conservative government for 20 months out of the last 20 years.
Alisa – how dare you point out my contradictions!
🙂
😛
Obama has become old hat in record time.
Steve Bannon has become the cool guy, fiercely criticized by the liberal power elite.
Now if we could make the word ‘liberal’ as despised as “Nazi” we’d have something.
It’s interesting that the CMM comes up in the political context – a correspondent of mine emailed be in September 2016 with a reminder of the ‘negative CMMI’ we experienced at a former employer, and I wondered just where you would locate the Hillary campaign on the scale where:
0 = Negligent/Indifferent
-1 = Obstructive/Counter-Productive
-2 = Contemptuous/Arrogant
-3 = Undermining/Sabotaging
After the ‘basket of deplorables’, I was pretty sure that someone, somewhere in the organization had decided to put the campaign firmly into level -3. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Cal Ford, Eric, Snag: let me remind you of something.
Before Thatcher, the top MTR in the UK was 97% (iirc); and the UK government controlled:
the Bank of England
the electric grid, and power supply
the water supply
telecom
broadcasting
the coal industry
the steel industry
the car industry
and i probably forgot something.
The only thing that the UK government did not control, was the unions, which could paralyze the country when they did not get what they wanted. (A big difference from Leninism right there.)
In addition, British people taking holidays abroad could not spend more than a few hundred quids, which meant that, in tourist resorts, German tourists were treated with a deference that British tourists could only dream about.
PJW looks young enough to have no memory of any of this socialism; and yet he tells us that “we have a whole new generation emerging who have no memory whatsoever of the Right being in political power”.
Which is fine, if he does not identify “the left” with socialism. I am quite open to such a distinction, in fact i welcome it; but then the question is, what does PJW mean by “the left” and how does he measure how far “to the left” we are today? i think we should be told.
(NB: The US was of course never as socialist as that, so the youngest American generation doesn’t know what socialism is like, either. Though it looks like they might want to know.)
I do indeed remember those things, but my post did not touch on that era at all.
Snorri, Obamacare will give them some taste of socialism. Let’s see if they like it!
Opposition to the prevailing theocracy and the unceasing advocacy for individual rights has always been the counter-culture.
It is freedom from tyranny that is the anomaly. Individual liberty and human rights are the most revolutionary ideas in human history.
The road ahead will be long, hard, and bloody, just as it always has been.