We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day Peterson wryly remarked, as swarms of Antifa clones were pounding at the door and breaking windows during his brilliant presentation at Queen’s, that “the barbarians are at the gate.” In a way, this was not quite accurate. They are here milling among us, inhabiting the universities, marching in the streets, dismantling the civil order, engaged in the perversion of values, and, like Marcuse, promoting tyranny in the name of freedom. Their freedom.
The barbarians are not at the gate. The barbarians are inside the gate.
– David Solway
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When enough PC, smug and entitled Barbarians failed to appear, the Universities took it as their solemn duty to breed, convert, and encourage additional Barbarians. Properly diverse and gender fluid, of course, but sharing the Approved Hive Mind. For the greater good, because all Utopias are built by Barbarians.
It is hard to know when things are just returning to the past and when things are actually worse than in the past.
– From my 1980s memories of talking to students older than myself, I know that the 70s saw occasions in UK universities when a violent leftist gang, determined to shut down some right-wing (or ‘right-wing’) event would be opposed (if it was opposed) by a heterogenous mix of right-leaning students and left-leaning ones who shared the formers’ support for free speech. (Some cognitively-diverse friendships were formed thereby.) I wonder if student behaviour has merely returned to its dismal state of the late 60s and 70s, or is objectively worse. (In one way it is worse: there are more students at university now, and proportionately fewer of them belong there.)
– Back in the 70s, no-one was banned from the country for speculating about Allah’s orientation, and no-one was arrested in it for ‘hate speech’. These things seem to me to go beyond the absurdities of the 70s. On the other hand, I recall the ‘closed shop’ was law in the 70s. Maybe those who are the Z-echelon of students today would have been its enforcers back then. On the other other hand, Maggie was always going to abolish it if she won. May has no plans (!) to abolish ‘hate speech’ law.
So while a new generation of barbarians is repeating the 70s, I wonder if the real difference is that the old generation is now in government. Back then, it was common for the university administrators to be in cahoots with the left, or afraid of them. (Anyone read ‘The History Man?’) But today, the law itself takes their weaponised offendedness seriously.
May & her ilk need to be abolished before that is even a possibility.
https://order-order.com/2018/03/28/crackers-nus-conference-occupies/
Antifa are the street fighting arm of the establishment’s campaign to shut down free speech.
Young people used to fight against state oppression.
Now they support it.
The radicals would do well to remember the Night of the Long Knives or Pol Pot.
Off the top of my head, I can think of far more examples where young people were used as unwitting agents of the state than examples where they fought state oppression. Young people have always been the thin end of the wedge in any misguided societal change because they have a lot of energy and little wisdom or experience.
Pete, ANTIFA is the 21st century’s version of 19th century’s KKK. Masked thugs for the Left, pretending to be the good guys.
There are two groups of thugs, the visible black masked ones and the ones inside law enforcement who give orders that the law is to be selectively enforced in favor of the visible black masked crew.
The black masked crews are easy to ferret out if law enforcement actually does its job.
But strangely, there seems to be little appetite to uncover who gives the orders to betray civilization, just anger at those who actually throw the punches at the far end of those orders. This is almost entirely backwards in my view.
I can’t think of a time that young people opposed the state, what they opposed what the state acting against them and their communist friends. Now that they and their communist friends ARE the state, they act in support of them. They’ve consistently kept the same side, it is society that has been infected and rotted out by their ideology.
Good post.
I think that Professor Peterson and David Salway agree that the Marxists (either open Frankfurt School Marxists or disguised Marxist “Post Modernists” – both deny objective principles of universal reason, and base their thinking on concepts of “exploitation”, “oppression” and “the power structure”) dominate the education system – both universities and schools, including many private schools.
The Barbarians are indeed already inside the gates – indeed they dominate key institutions of the Polis and work for the destruction of society – because they believe that a wonderful new society will emerge if they destroy “capitalism”. They are mistaken – as all that would “emerge” are ashes and dried human blood.
It is part of their arrogant ignorance that they always imagine they will be the ones who kill, not the one who die, on that night. As Orwell put it, “So much of left-wing thought is playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.” (quoted from memory)
More young people than old bite the hand of any state that feeds them with freedom and kiss the boot of any state that kicks them with propaganda. Wherever communists were forced to endure real elections, they got more young votes than old – Chavez and Corbyn likewise. In one Weimar election where Hitler got 30% of the overall vote, he got 60% of the youth vote.
It is one of the many absurdities (as against many lies) of the PC that they can believe simultaneously:
– more old than young voted for Brexit and Trump
– right-wing fake news on social media caused Brexit and Trump
while also knowing that social media is read by the young far more than the old.
I understand that the old Soviet Union was a wonderful society, if you were one of the few “right people.”
The Barbarians simply believe that they will be among those “right people.”
So it’s not nearly as innocent as them simply being mistaken about what will happen. You could almost forgive that. No, they know very well what will happen, and they’re angling to be among the merchant princes who benefit from the ashes and dried human blood.
Crassus had the right idea. I’d like to see our streets decorated like he did the Via Appia.
May I suggest that most of the masked activists don’t care about the cause. They just like imposing themselves through violence, probably because they are incapable of earning attention any other way.
They would be trivially easy to deal with if the authorities chose that path. What is scary is that the authorities chose not to deal with the problem.