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]
|
Samizdata quote of the day – the poison of identitarianism What is happening in London cannot be laid solely at the feet of the anti-Israel protest movement. The poison of identitarianism must assume the bulk of the blame for the cultural dismemberment of society. We have a mayor who constantly preaches difference over unity. We have a Metropolitan Police so paralysed by fear of being called racist that they make endless excuses for anti-Semitic demonstrators. And we have a national broadcaster that refuses to call Hamas terrorists, while happily instructing non-white children that they are under the yoke of ‘white privilege’.
We are confronted with a choice right now. We can continue pushing children into silos of racial and religious hatred. Or we can start forging a society free of identity politics which aims to bring people of all backgrounds together. I know which path the London of my childhood would choose.
– Ike Ijeh
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Popeye had the best view of identity: “I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam.” Today, folks don’t know who they yam.
I still want someone to square the circle of just how it is possible to hold the view that you can’t use stereotypes and racism against anyone at all, and yet… Cis-hetero white males are responsible and to be punished for everything ever done everywhere by another cis-hetero white male.
I mean, OK… If you’re a minority, you’re not responsible for anything one of “your kind” does or did. If you’re a cis-hetero white male, however, you’re to blame for it all, forever. Blood guilt…
I’ve heard this argument made, literally, by dozens of “activist” types: They’re not responsible for all those African slave dealers who were black, ‘cos… Well, just because. Yet, the cis-hetero white male, on the other hand, is forever guilty and stigmatized because some other white guys bought slaves from those black African dealers.
Not going to lie; I’m gradually coming around to the idea that if I’m to be excoriated forever for things I had zero agency over, and which I haven’t personally benefited? Ya know what? I just might take up being a bigoted, intolerant, hateful racist. What have I got to lose? I’m going to be blamed for being one, no matter what…
I’m not sure this entire concept really works to the benefit of anyone, least of all the former “victims of racism and bigotry”.
Funny – if you fight this, our society says you’re a racist.
I always thought that white supremacists were a laughable bunch. Basically semi evolved knuckle dragging thargs who think of themselves as a master race. But then when the identity obsessed start banging on about white privilege, I
get to thinking about where this privilege came from. These cis-hetero white males quite literally built the modern world as we know it. Sometimes I think that the rest of them should be grateful that we allow them to come and sit at our table. I never used to think like that, I used to see everyone as an individual and didn’t care at all what colour they were. But if someone is going to weaponise their race and use it against me, what choice do I have but to be racist in return?
I wonder how much of America is culturist versus how much is racist. I can believe that some cultures are much better at providing a good general way of life than other cultures are, without regard for racial makeup of any culture as a causative factor.
Am I racist simply because my ranking of cultures ends up partially grouped by race? Or does holding such a belief make me, not facially racist, but racist as applied? (In the legal sense.)
I am an old cis-hetero white male.
Surely I am worthy of protection as an oppressed minority? A big minority perhaps but one almost universally reviled. Unless of course the identitarian argument *needs* a pantomime villain to rail against. Which undermines the very nature of ‘intersectionalism’.
Why are we using the enemy’s jargon? I’m a straight white male.
Not all of them were hetero, of course.
Snorri:
You are right, Cecil Rhodes was gay, but it gets him no credit at all.
Whenever I encounter this identity politics mind-fuck, I now pose the question: who benefits? Who benefits from the relentless Balkanisation of society, this constant focus on grievance and power relations, rather than on what people have in common? (Hint: It isn’t the broad public.)
Sometimes people, even those on the libertarian side, get a bit annoyed at the term “cultural Marxism” to explain what’s been going on, and of course Marx is not the only game in town here. But as a form of shorthand for much of the intellectual degradation of our times, it does quite a lot of the lifting. Consider: Marx conflates power with economics. To be wealthy, or to have some capital, is to wield coercive power over those who have less or none. The Marxist idea that there is an economic “base” sitting underneath a political/ideological “superstructure” has been taken up by the advocates of critical race theory, so that to be Black, or gay, etc, is to sit in a subordinate ranking on the power/oppressor league table, with white, heterosexual, bourgeous, pro-reason and “normal” (or not!) people at the top of the oppressor league. Like classical Marxism, this view regards notions of individual moral responsibility, of volition and free will, of agency, as null and void. People are reduced to the status of avatars for race, gender, class, ethnicity, or whatever other classification is in vogue.
So cultural Marxism is a term I use. I prefer it to “woke” as it is so vague; political correctness is out of date and ambiguous. “Cultural Marxism” forces people to grapple with the ideas of the old German monster, and it gives hints at how Marx’s Hegelian ideas, and notions of “base” and “superstructure” fit into this. Marx was also good at wielding the notion of “false consciousness” to suppress dissent and denounce critics, however well-meaning, by implying that they were acting out ideas over which they had no control. Also, Marx imagined himself, and his close circle, as an elite, with the rare ability to “pierce the veil” of ideology, beyond the power of we mere mortals. The CRT advocates are similar in their arrogance and presumption.
Additionally, Marxists are as a group very determined people, good at burrowing into institutions and have often succeeded in transforming them over time, often to the befuddlement of those nominally in charge. They are malevolent, but part of me can but admire the determination. And that is why those of us who oppose Marxism in all its forms need to do the work of getting into institutions ourselves, however tedious this can be, or of creating new ones and networks that can bypass those taken over by Cultural Marxists.
Paul Marks of this parish bangs on about the Frankfurt School, and others, and he is right to do so. People need to spend time and trouble learning what these men (it was almost always men, by the way) said and wrote. So here are a few books I recommend to get started:
Thinkers of the New Left (retitled as Fools, Frauds and Firebrands) by the late Sir Roger Scruton.
This Youtube item about James Lindsay on Marx is pretty good. This is also useful.
John Fonte at the Hoover Institute has this decent overview of the “culture war”.
No list would be complete without Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict Of Visions.
Kenneth Minogue wrote a book on ideology that is relevant to all this. Expensive, so get the Kindle version!
Yascha Mounk: The Identity Trap, is a new one and I have added it to my list.
Finally, Benedict Beckeld has a book about the phenomenon of “Oikophobia” (Western self-hatred)
Silos of racial and religious hatred have been our usual homes since we noticed race and developed religion.
It probably started way back with the rejection of the “right” way of doing things by claiming it was the “white” way of doing things, that cultures were unfairly compared to a eponymous “white culture”, without acknowledging that white Europeans had abandoned many aspects of their previous cultures because it was the right thing to do.
It’s the call of the lazy, those who wish to preserve their culture even though parts of it are clearly abhorrent by today’s standards, and they now have an army of leftist progressive thinkers who support that view.
It’s true there is a thing of “white privilege”, it’s being born and raised in a culture where the old nasty ways of doing things are not done that way any more, and that doesn’t only apply to specific ethnicity, those who berate about this “privilege” are just excusing themselves from continuing to do things the nasty way in their plainly barbaric culture.
“identitarianism”
A realm best left out of the government. The social factors will need time and an orderly backstop if they are to ever be resolved. If handled within the governing system bias will favor one outcome or another and the natural equilibrium will be ignored. No, better that the matters be addressed among the people within the legal framework of an impartial set of rules. Of course, those impartial set of rules must be in place and inviolable by the parties. Limited government overseeing the administration of a fair legal system should be completely separate from the disputed matters.
Johnathan:
The answer is obvious: its’ the ruling class, or more precisely the establishment, that benefits.
It’s the divide et impera principle.
It does economize on syllables, though.
More seriously, i am uneasy with ‘cultural Marxism’ because its advocates are so openly despising the working class. Commie dictatorships have never been any good for the working class, but the very fact that the Woke openly despise the working class sets them apart from even Marxist heretics like Mussolini, let alone Lenin.
More seriously, i am uneasy with ‘cultural Marxism’ because its advocates are so openly despising the working class. Commie dictatorships have never been any good for the working class, but the very fact that the Woke openly despise the working class sets them apart from even Marxist heretics like Mussolini, let alone Lenin.
I am not so concerned. Many Marxists were middle-class intellectuals, and this was a pattern set from the start by the man himself, living off the wealth of an industrialist friend rather working in a factory, etc. The trend continued from there. I’d go so far to say that from the beginning, Marxism encourage this idea of an “advanced guard” of self-appointed clever folk who could tell people what to do and who knew better than the people themselves as to what their “true” interests were.
So I am sticking to the CM designation for the time being.
Johnathan: you are talking at cross-purposes.
It is THE OPEN DISDAIN for the working class that sets the Woke apart from other Marxists, orthodox or even heretic.
Which disdain, incidentally, was not shared by the Frankfurt School, if i am not mistaken. They were not concerned with minorities, but with the masses.
Snorri, within limits, yes. But I think you have to accept that, when Marxists are concerned, they have often talked about the proletariat in the abstract: not as real people with their quirks, and individual qualities, but as a generality. And you only have to look at Marxist-inspired regimes to see how that pans out.
I am reminded of the PJ O’Rourke jibe at Leftist young people: “Too concerned about the world to help their Mom do the dishes.”
@Snorri Godhi,
Well, that’s what they said. As with anything, ignore what the bastards say, watch what they do.
All of this “Cultural Marxism” and attendant like BS has one root, and one root only: The soi-disant “smart people” deciding that they “know better” than anyone else, and should thus be in charge of it all.
And, if my life has taught me anything, it’s that when someone says “I’m smarter than you, you should do what I say about X…”, then it’s nearly a certainty that they are the last people to listen to about X.
Now, if someone says “Yeah, I’ve seen X about a dozen times in my life, and worked on X when it broke…”, then maybe you ought to listen to them. After carefully evaluating if maybe or not the fact that X broke on their watch might not mean that they’re responsible for X being broken in the first place…
I have been told that I was “smart” all my life. Did really well on the tests, all that jazz. Had all sorts of offers for things like West Point Preparatory and the rest of those offers while I was in the Army. The one thing I’ve known, for a certain fact, is that while I’ve got a certain faculty for language and can test really well, I’m not all that smart. When people tell me I am, I just look at them and say to myself “Yeah, and another one self-identifies as an idiot…” I’ve yet to be wrong, with that assessment; such people always demonstrate dolthood in fairly short order, usually by doing things that a person of normal intelligence possessing tiny whit of common sense would avoid.
The problem we have is that we’ve somehow managed to effectively institutionalize putting the exact wrong people in charge of things, and then failing to recognize that no, they’re actually functionally pretty damn stupid.
I don’t care how well you do on the tests, or what credentials you’ve managed to get other functional dolts to grant you, stupid is as stupid does, and if it don’t work…? Then, it’s stupid, and so are you for coming up with the idea and trying to implement it.
We’ve got too many of these “I’m so smart…” types infesting our society, playing with the plugs on the social lifeboat while everyone stands by saying “Oh, he’s a geniooous… Let him work…”
Meanwhile, those of us who can see the water coming in are putting on our lifejackets and wondering when the boat’s actually going to go under…
Jonathan Pierce said:
Snorri Godhi said:
It’s a mistake to adopt the language and terms of your opponents in an argument; you cede battlespace and lose half your arguments by agreeing to their terms.
The root of Marxist idiocy isn’t the economic class war; the real problem is that the usual Marxist and Marxist-adjacent type is generally that idle intellectual who is just smart enough to convince themselves that they’re smarter than everyone else, and yet is too lazy or ineffectual to actually make that “intelligence” that they’ve decided they have work effectively for them…
What it really boils down to isn’t “class warfare” so much as it is envy and self-hatred for their inadequacies. They think that because they’re so much smarter than everyone else, that they ought to be in charge. The real problem is that they’ve got intelligence, but no common sense or wisdom. If they had all three, then they’d either acknowledge their other deficiencies holding them back, or they’d go on be successful wielding all three qualities in the real world.
So, when you get at the innards of it, it’s not necessarily the Marxist delusion of classes we have to contend with, but the actual fact of dealing with a group of people who’ve decided that they’re smarter than everyone else who ever lived, and who think that they can better order the world.
The minute you run into someone making mock of the older generations? Start eying them askance, because that’s where a lot of this arrogant thinking proceeds from: “Oh, we’re so much smarter than they were…” is about where the twits like Greta Thunberg’s handlers started going off the rails. No, you’re not really “so much smarter” than they were; you’re standing on their shoulders, dumbass. Absent the hard work of those ohsoverystupid generations, Greta Thunberg would be a Norwegian subsistence farmer worried about where the hell her next meal was coming from, going into winter…
Arrogance and certainty that you’re smarter than everyone else? Yeah; those are two qualities we’ve enshrined as virtuous, when we really ought to be looking at them askance and saying “Hey, aren’t those the same things we usually see in confidence men…?”
The real “thing” that’s been going on since the beginning, with regards to Marxism? Intellectual classes, not economic ones. The “enemy” has always been arrogant, over-educated people with a particular sort of brittle intelligence and zero sense, common or otherwise. They’re “intellectually gifted, yet functionally deprived”. Look at all the varied and sundry intellectual conceits that one would have to believe, in order to try and make a planned economy actually work, from some central office somewhere in the big cities of your nation: You have to convince yourself, somehow, that you’re all-knowing and able to foresee every little need and necessity in a complex economy that’s only going to grow more complex as it advances. You might manage such a thing, when dealing with what amounts to a jumped-up subsistence agricultural economy, but once you’ve injected industrialization…? WTF? How do you propose to work all that out, keep what you have running, from a central location, and then totally discount the functional and decentralized system that was in place before you started meddling.
It takes a certain sort of middling intelligence to develop and hold these arrogant ideas and then try to put them into effect. That same sort of idiocy continues to be necessary in order to keep on hammering away at failures while doing so, in denial of reality, until the whole thing caves in on you.
Lenin tried it, then realized “This ain’t working…” and went with the New Economic System. Stalin said “Yeah, I’m smarter and way more ruthless than Lenin, so I can make it work…” which it kinda did, until the 1980s. In the end, all either one accomplished was creating a nation of petty criminals and thieves that stole from the state and others.
Which is precisely what that other great socialist, Adolf Hitler did.
The key shared quality is the intellectual dwarfism and inability to recognize the limits of human organizational skills, along with the arrogance to think that they all “knew better” than everyone else. Which fact time has demonstrated simply wasn’t so…
“The problem we have is that we’ve somehow managed to effectively institutionalize putting the exact wrong people in charge of things, and then failing to recognize that no, they’re actually functionally pretty damn stupid.”
I give you Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, a man educated at the best school (possibly) in the UK and one of the top 2 universities, who achieves high grades at them both, and becomes leader of his country, yet is unable to understand some pretty simple bar charts and statistics.
We all need to have an identity in order to function in society. However, it doesn’t need to be unique, nor need it be very precise. In ethnically homogenous societies with common traditions, you could adopt (in most cases subconsciously) an identity that would be a cross section of a fairly limited number of stereotypes that everybody would understand ‘mother/father, warrior/scholar, etc.,). In a more diverse society it follows that a larger number of stereotypes is available. It’s unclear to me why we have an epidemic of narcissism, but high on the list of suspects must be reduced religiosity (“we are all in the image of God”) and a lack of or weak father figures (thank you feminism). The politicisation of identity is unfortunate but politicians will politick.
Johnathan and Kirk: let me remind you that, with the arguable exception of some forms of anarchism, ALL prescriptive* political philosophies must be regarded as justifications for the rule of a particular ruling class/establishment.
* as distinct from purely descriptive theories of politics, what you might call “political science”.
You insist that Marxism was never meant to benefit the masses, but that is belaboring the obvious: Marxism, or rather Marxisms, are political philosophies, and therefore they serve the interests of an establishment — or a would-be establishment, where the Marxists are not yet in power.
But if you want to understand a political philosophy, as distinct from understanding an establishment and its power, you have to look at what they say, NOT what they do.
Kirk: It’s a mistake to adopt the language and terms of your opponents in an argument; you cede battlespace and lose half your arguments by agreeing to their terms.
I am not making that mistake. I just use the term Cultural Marxism precisely because I think the geneology of much of today’s crap has its origins with Marx, although there are others who feed into the pot, such as JJ Rousseau (a thinker who did enormous harm but is not often mentioned as he should be). I think the “base”/”superstructure” point explains a lot of the obsession today with language, although it has taken different forms.
Yes, I understand that a lot of this stuff is also about certain people thinking, falsely, that their presumed superior morality and intelligence gives them a right to rule over others. There’s always that H L Mencken point about how a desire to improve humanity usually is a front for control.
Kirk: It’s a mistake to adopt the language and terms of your opponents in an argument; you cede battlespace and lose half your arguments by agreeing to their terms.
I am not making that mistake. I just use the term Cultural Marxism precisely because I think the geneology of much of today’s crap has its origins with Marx, although there are others who feed into the pot, such as JJ Rousseau (a thinker who did enormous harm but is not often mentioned as he should be). I think the “base”/”superstructure” point explains a lot of the obsession today with language, although it has taken different forms.
Yes, I understand that a lot of this stuff is also about certain people thinking, falsely, that their presumed superior morality and intelligence gives them a right to rule over others. There’s always that H L Mencken point about how a desire to improve humanity usually is a front for control.
As Johnathan Peace and others have pointed out…
Frankfurt School “Critical Theory” (or “Woke”) Marxism declares that certain sexual and ethnic groups are “exploited and oppressed” – so these “marginalised groups” must not be criticised – as Freedom of Speech is “Repressive Tolerance” according to Herbert Marcuse and his allies long ago – although this did not become American government policy till 2009 when a certain person became President of the United States.
“True” Freedom of Speech is what pushes the “Progressive” (i.e. Collectivist) cause forward – allowing “reactionary” speech is “Repressive Tolerance” which “harms” “exploited and oppressed” “marginalised groups”.
And this makes for strange alliances – for example, supposedly, both homosexuals and Muslims are “oppressed” by the “capitalist West”.
Hence we get such things as “Queers for Palestine” (“Turkeys for Thanksgiving”) and-so-on.
Did Karl Marx admit that he took many ideas from Rousseau? No he did not. Did he take lots of ideas from Rousseau? Of course he did. For example, what people “think” they believe not being what they “really” believe – and the need for a great intellectual (guess who) to tell people what they “really” think, what is their true “class interests”.
Thanks to Johnathan’s link, i have read Brian Doherty’s short essay, and it seems to me that Doherty did not have clearly in mind what he was trying to say.
There seem to be at least 3 theses in it. The trouble is that Doherty does not seem to know which of them he is arguing for.
The 3 theses (in my interpretation) are:
(1) ‘Cultural Marxism’ (the Frankfurt School) is much misunderstood.
(2) The Frankfurt School does not have anything to do with the “culture war”, anyway.
(3) The notion that PC is a product of cultural Marxism is a conspiracy theory concocted by bigots such as William Lind and Pat Buchanan.
I have no problem with (1), and would be willing to listen to an argument for (2) — except that Doherty does not offer one.
But when it comes to (3), Doherty is clearly delusional.
I would entirely agree with him, if he were to say that we should not blame the Frankfurt School for providing a principle of legitimization to the American establishment: if “cultural Marxism” were not available, the establishment would find a principle of legitimization elsewhere.
But Doherty completely fails to realize that PC (or Wokeness, as some of us call it today) is the main current principle of legitimization of the American establishment. That is what makes him seriously delusional.