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Discussion point The far-Left’s attempted putsch in places such as Seattle and the statue-defacing/removal frenzy in the UK, among other outrages, are a delayed reaction not so much to a specific police act in Minneapolis, but because the far Left suffered a major electoral setback in December 2019 in the UK (yes, I get that the Tories ran to the political centre, but it was still a reverse for Corbyn & Co) and also because of the dawning horror that Trump could well retain the White House in November. Trump was on course to win because of factors such as the Russia-gate scandal that wasn’t, the pre-COVID-19 economy, the fact that the Democrats are led by people either out of their minds or losing them to infirmity, etc. So street politics – or “riot ideology” fills the vacuum of political power that parts of the far Left perceive they have lost. (See a related discussion here.)
Related thoughts from Joel Kotkin on the economic drivers of anger (not that he is excusing it).
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Add the Brexit result to that list. Infantile kidults that respond to the word no with a tantrum.
In the UK the disorder is largely from bored middle class kids allowed a bit of leeway from the lockdown, only able to drink their skinny lattes takeaway, can’t meet in each others home so on the street; fancy a bit of excitement, let’s have a protest.
Can’t be against lockdown, that’s what the far right Brexity people do. Oh look some Black people in America upset about something, that’ll do.
Trump… Trump… Trump…. Everything that happens is Trump’s fault.
He is the “feuerteufel” (fire Satan) says “Der Spiegl”
There is absolutely no doubt that the riots are motivated by hatred of Trump. (and other causes, maybe, too…).
I have been reading a book about the fall of Saigon in 1975. If I’ll be around in 30 year’s time (fat chance) we’ll read about the fall of the USA. Well, like the Roman empire (another racist entity) every civilization falls sooner or later. The Barbarians always win. Barbarianism is the natural state, civilization the exception.
By the way:
Riots, started in October 2019, have destroyed a perfectly nice and hitherto well managed and behaved country: Chile. It was also during the reign of a democratically elected “right wing” President who is also a rich businessman.
Kotkin is right, but he is documenting an effect, not the multiple complex and interrelated root causes.
Here is the ever controversial Jordan Peterson on IQ and the job market. For about 10% of the population of countries like the US and the UK there are just no jobs in which their marginal product is positive, and that is assuming they are all at least somewhat conscientious and stress-tolerant (i.e. not too neurotic), which is of course not true. And for those just above the bottom 10%, their jobs tend to be repetitive and not complex (and low-wage, of course) – the kind the demand for which is dwindling because of automation and globalization. And then there is the whole mismatch between the expectations of college kids these days and reality. When you are told that you can change the world, and you find out that you’re barely qualified to serve lattes… well, Radiohead put it well:
I don’t care if it hurts
I wanna have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice
When I’m not around
You’re so fuckin’ special
I wish I was special
For some of these people the answer is depression and intoxicants. For some it is anger and resentment. They are ripe to be radicalized, especially when you convince them that they are not just needed, but have the glorious destiny of fighting Nazis and racists.
Somewhat related, a UC Berkeley history professor has written – anonymously for obvious reasons – a searing email to wokerati colleagues, taking issue with the severe flaws in their position on BLM. It’s longish, but cogent and well argued, and well worth reading in full. If his identity is discovered, he’s likely never to work again in American academia, as he himself acknowledges, so it took some courage to write. That it took courage to present a counter-argument is itself a grievous indictment of modern academia.
I got the original link from Toby Young’s lockdownsceptics.org . That link is now dead, but the wayback machine has the page here:
https://pastebin.com/WBzAFDgA
The kicker is in paragraph 44. (They’re numbered.)
Plamus, have you read “Average is Over” by Tyler Cowen? Sounds as if it backs up some of what you say here.
Yes, Johnathan, indeed. Tyler tends look further ahead than I am willing to try to forecast intelligently. He foresees a small minority of intelligent/educated people, and a vast majority of ZMP people; I see right now a growing minority of ZMP people. We may get there, eventually, but as the end of a long process, and meanwhile a lot can happen, or not happen. I am not sure I see (as Tyler does) the majority of people accepting to live equally… wealthy? poor? Most humans are very status-driven, as numerous experiments in socialism/communism have shown; they’ll punish the productive minority. In this, I am less Tyler Cowen, and more Robert Heinlein:
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
Seems to have gone.
Following the link got me to a message saying “This page is no longer available” Do you have any other links? I’m really quite interested in reading it.
“Seems to have gone.”
Try here:
http://archive.is/bzTpa
I wonder whether today’s confirmation that there will be no extension to the Brexit transition period will provoke a frenzy of rioting among the wokerati and their BAME useful idiots.
FAO Stonyground
https://cloverchronicle.com/2020/06/10/uc-berkeley-history-professors-open-letter-against-blm-police-brutality-and-cultural-orthodoxy/
Longrider has pasted it into the comments on his most recent post.
https://www.longrider.co.uk/blog/
“The far-Left’s attempted putsch in places such as Seattle”
i thought Seattle was run by the far left, ie democrats, so fairer to say the far left succeeded in their putsch and now are getting overtaken by the nihilistic far left
Not much different from the Munich Soviet Republic separating itself from the Weimar Republic in 1919, though really. I’m not expecting the Seattle Soviet to be any more successful, either they will collapse or be brutally crushed.
Neither of them will be remembered by the left, because of course “They weren’t real Communism”.
I wonder when the hard lefts explicitly anti-white agenda will be discussed.
After all the Democrats in the US and the Labour Party in the UK are flirting with explicitly anti-white policy platforms.
From my perspective, this inst a new thing.
The white supremacy/ white people are to blame for everything agenda has been mainstream for 20 years. White boys are bottom of the educational pile, no one gives a damn. When White people are the minority in Western nations which is the forecast for most of them in the next 20-50 years what then? If South Africa is anything to go by, it isn’t going to be pretty.
Thanks for that. The link now works but when I first tried it I found it blocked by my ISP’s porn filter. Obviously we can’t have our kidiwinks being exposed to wrongthink.
Reading that professor’s letter one thing stands out – the BLM narrative is bollocks. Any examination of the underlying data shows that the narrative is bollocks.
So why do some many people & institutions buy into the framing? I’m not talking about the NYT or the BBC- they’re guaranteed to lie, but when the framing is endorsed by Ted Cruz or Priti Patel then the bad people win.
Ethnic minorities do not supply disproportionately from police violence in the US. Ironically if the “black community” were to join with others, they could make a legitimate case that the police are overly violent to everyone. See the Daniel Shaver case for example. But the narrative and the relentless “white supremacy” propaganda encourages them to blame white people.
If the bullshit narrative is supported and endorsed, how do you fix it? This is where the “defund the police” narratives come from. Stupid answers to ignorant narratives.
An example of the BBC brainwashing children:
https://twitter.com/cbbc/status/1271129658722070529
The only people fighting the BLM narrative is Candace Owens and the Hodge Twins:
https://twitter.com/hodgetwins/status/1268309646034432001
The media and much of Big Business are firmly in support of the Marxists and “anarchists”.
“But Paul when the left starts to loot, burn and kill – Big Business will turn against them”.
The left are looting, burning and killing (David Dorn and many others) and much of Big Business is supporting them EVEN MORE.
This week’s “Economist” magazine (the Bible of the “Woke”) was wall-to-wall “Diversity” and “how protest can drive social change” – as when they cut people up in their “protests”. There is no evil in the Western word, no matter how extreme, that the Economist will not support – and they are not some fridge publication, they are the “mainstream” – the average Corporate manager sees their “educated” opinions reflected back at them in it.
Not Paul being gloomy – Paul reporting the facts.
The West is in terrible peril.
Much of Big Business in their “educated” insanity, is supporting the forces of evil – for that is what they are.
If the senile puppet Joseph Biden wins in November it will be OVER.
Any dissent will be treated as “Hate Speech” and will be censored (with the full support of the judges who will be appointed) and people will lose their jobs or have their business destroyed, and be driven to suicide.
Not speculation – it is ALREADY HAPPENING.
But it will become universal. The Deep State bureaucracy, joined at the hip with Big Business – as in the People’s Republic of China.
It will not be some employers – it will be ALL employers.
The dream of the education system (the schools and universities) will be achieved.
Hell on Earth.
Flubber:
I do not have an answer, but I have a CSB that illustrates the magnitude of the problem. Not a first hand account, so take it with a grain of salt. I have a friend (college roommate) who is very high up the food chain in Marketing in a major pharma company in the US – not Astra Zeneca, that’s a good comparison, just for an idea. He is an Obama voter, and hates Trump. He tells me that things have gotten absolutely bonkers. The last 2 weeks have been non-stop meetings where senior management listen and nod empathetically while minority employees tell how terrible their life is, and how they are discriminated against all the time, literally with sniffling, sobbing, etc. Examples:
– Black woman saying she lives in a “white” neighborhood (which is actually 60% Indian, as in India, not Native American), and sobbing that neighbors look at them funny.
– Indian woman (first generation immigrant) saying she has never seen such discrimination as in the US (that’s again from India, with the castes).
– Closeted gay man saying that the company is not doing enough to make him feel comfortable coming out.
What does the company do in response? Per my friend, not verbatim, but close: I’ll not be able to hire a white person (even a woman) without explicit approval from the Chief Marketing Officer for foreseeable future. On the other hand, if you tell me you’re non-White, I can hire you on the spot – no verification whatsoever, that would be a huge no-no.
This is not a company that has been in the news for any reason, so their hand is not being forced.
I need a drink.
“So why do some many people & institutions buy into the framing? ”
It gives them the opportunity to feel moraly superior. That hasn’t anything to do with actually doing “the humane thing” or even no destroying everything including yourself.
Well, at least the acronym is somewhat truthful: BLM means Bigoted Leftist Morons, right ?
The fact that the bankers were bailed out in 2008, and have also received trillions in handouts this year for no justifiable reason, while the poorest were thrown under the bus, would obviously lead to a seismic increase in social division, leading to societal collapse. How could it not?
Taxpayers money handed out in a big fat welfare package to Richard Desmond by his bootlicker Robert Jenrick, the deliberate, scandalous murder of the elderly by putting Covid patients in care homes, that would make Hitler blush, and the hilariously delusional British belief that we are superior to the South Koreans despite our government and our scientists, being clearly vastly inferior.
Plus, those that rule us despise the working class and their un-PC attitudes to things like immigration and the EU. A lot of what they do is just woke virtue signalling to the relatively small cohort that share their world view.
The London bubble is real and distorting. Once BRExit is over and done with I expect the real assault on the status quo is going to begin. I doubt that any of the current parties will survive in their current form.
“He foresees a small minority of intelligent/educated people, and a vast majority of ZMP people;”
That was already foreseen by Aldous Huxley’s 1928 “Brave New World”. All work is done by robots, the vast majority of ZMP people are kept happy (and idle) by drugs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
The hatred towards the cops and police brutality are not new. I can remember it to at leas as far back as hippie times (1968). And it has a grain of truth to it: the war on drugs… This is a dirty war and unjustified assault on the rights of people. And is also violent and brutal.
Of course, it’s not the cops who are guilty – it’s “society” which institutionalized drug prohibition. It’s the war on drugs that enhances and exacerbates the violence and clash with police.
About the UCB History professor letter: see the reaction of UCB (University of Berkely): “We condemn“. They condemn the truth.
re: Paul Marks
“But it will become universal. The Deep State bureaucracy, joined at the hip with Big Business – as in the People’s Republic of China.”
How much of this is directly due to China? We know the US is awash with Chinese bribery, Confucius Institutes and the like.
Is Trump’s analysis that China not Russia are the enemy, and that the uniparty have been in bed with the Chicoms just 20 years too late?
Did the world miss the reality that the Globalists prefer the Chinese model of governance than the US’s?
Mayor Khan of London is boarding up statues of Ghandi and MLK against threats from far right racists when everyone and his dog knows the real threat is the exact opposite.
Mayor Khan of London is boarding up statues of Ghandi and MLK against threats from far right white racists when everyone and his dog knows the real threat is the exact opposite.
@Flubber:
A great deal of it. Not all of it though. The first event that radicalized the Western Left was the fall of the USSR — the Western Left lost all hope and became very destructive. The USSR never completely gave up on certain Western values. But the Western Left has given up on all Western values. They want the destruction of Western civilization almost more than they want dictatorial power.
China? They’re footing a large part of the bill, they are cheering and inciting the Western Left. But the Western Left was well on its way to destroying the West before recent events.
In Europe the approach they had settled on well before 2016 was to replace the Western locals with inimical immigrants who, like the Western Left, are hell-bent on destroying Western civilization.
In the U.S. that wasn’t going to work fast enough, not after November 2016, so they went for something new: set every possible trap for Trump, and if he didn’t fall into any of them, resort to outright violence. Those “protestors” who hurt over 100 LEOs at the White House a few days ago, do you think they wouldn’t have murdered the President if they had managed to overrun the White House’s secret service and other defenders? I’ve no idea how close-run a thing that was, but however close it was, it was too close for comfort.
The Left could taste final victory in 2016, but they lost. Now they’ve gone too far to win cleanly, so they’ll do anything and everything in their desperation to not be marginalized completely. They know if they lose all remaining political power in 2020 in the U.S., they’ll lose it for many years — 2024 will go to the R’s in the U.S., and all the reforms they fear most might happen, which might dismantle their hold on the education system, and thus set them back decades. Trump is not a homophobe — there’s no hate they can pin on him. They could not possibly win fighting clean. They will fight like cornered animals through November and beyond. It’s going to be ugly.
We need to take back the House, keep the White House, and keep the Senate, get rid of the filibuster, pass anti-censorship and education reform laws, and uproot China’s business influence in the U.S. (also by law, but also by EO where possible). These are the necessary things for defeating the Left long-term. China will react badly too, so we’re looking at many years of strife.
While he would never admit it, he’s probably close enough to the activists to know they perpetrate fake hate crimes whenever a spinnable supply of misrepresentable incidents runs short. It is probably a good sign (but only very relatively speaking!) that, rather than let them get on with it, he thinks it better to avoid “tu quoque / you started it” replies, maybe followed by exposure on someone’s video, and/or to have an “MLK too” reply ready to Churchill-boarded-up remarks.
A statue of a black man (in Bristol IIRC) has had an acid attack, making his face now more ‘modern art ‘than ‘socialist realism’. This may well be a standard fake-hate crime but it could instead have been done as a sauce-for-the-goose reply to events. It is a just reward for the PC that they can justly be suspected of crimes apparently against them as well as crimes obviously for them, but we may never know precisely who attacked the black statue or precisely what their motive was. As the left become more absurd, the world they move in becomes less meaningful.
Palm Beach County here, observing that the data concerning DJTs popularity with Black Americans is at a level ( certainly above 10% ) that will assure victory in November. The Dems can’t have that; expect more such race related incidents to occur between now and then
One (race related incident) a day, keeps the Trump away. -Dems, no doubt
In my last company upper management responded to outside complaints of too many white men in management by promoting only women and minorities. I don’t know how that can be legal, but that’s what they did.
Every white male first level manager in my department found another place to work (this was telecom, where it was easy to find a job at the time). By the time I left our mission was secondary to the sort of racial and sexual salami slicing concerns this kind of stuff invites. We had two discrimination complaints filed by the new diverse managers against the higher ups.
I’m not a believer in karma but I like to see it in action on occasion.
The Democrats have sold out to the Marxists – anything (spread a virus, start a race war – anything) to defeat “Orange Man”.
But there are also the “Republican” traitors, people such as the “Lincoln Project” and John Bolton – who will tell any lie in return for the promise of Endless (Eternal) War.
It turns out that the system that the NeoCons wanted to spread, via war, to the world, was the system of President Johnson, endless “Entitlements” (from the cradle to the grave) and regulations controlling every aspect of life. A system that does-not-work – why spread a system that does-not (can not) work?
Not that President Trump s going to roll back the Entitlements or anything like that (if only….) – but he feels no burning desire for endless war to spread the system all over the planet.
Let us be blunt about this – people such as Mr Bolton are aiding the Democrats, trying to help them win the elections (for the Senate is up for grabs as well – not “just” the Presidency) and the Democrats have totally sold out to the MARXISTS.
This means that indirectly JOHN BOLTON (and others) have sold out to the Marxists.
An astonishing turn of events – and it shows that the neocon claim to care about spreading freedom was a lie. They do not care about freedom at all – they have allied with those who wish to exterminate freedom in the United States.
I am astonished by this – as I did NOT hate the neocons as so many libertarians did.
The neocons, Bolton and co, have damned themselves now – they have allied with the enemies of the United States (for the Democrats are the puppets of the Marxists) and the enemies of the West generally.