On the Nature of Things | Forum

Simple Minded wrote:What? Getting to know someone before labeling them? Thou speaketh Internet Heresy!

Very succinct summary SM. I propose elevating it to a divine command. Oh but wait... people in the past did kind of figure out the same, and there even wasn't Internet yet! "Do not judge, or be judged". The heresy part is also very old. So little is new under the sun. Scary. I might reconsider my view of the Internet as a terrible source of misinformation and mob-mentality. It is more like a security wall that keeps us from physical proximity and hence from skull smashing.

Parodite wrote:

Mr. Perfect wrote:Bernie Sanders is closer to Venezuela than Europe.

I don't know enough about Venezuela but I would rank it closer to failed states where a dictatorship/elite enriches itself by steeling national resources, engaging in corrupt and criminal activity. Giving free hand-outs i.e. meaningless words/chants or little presents to a disenfranchised and struggling population to keep them quiet and happy for as long as they do. Until the economy is wrecked and the ship goes down. Hardly any oil revenues were used to invest in the country and its people. But there no doubt is more complexity to Venezuela and its downfall.

The MSM lies about Venezuela too. The issue is their nationalization of their oilfields. The corporate globalists object to countries controlling their own resources, so they are are running the MSM propaganda machine in a way that the American people will support military intervention.

China and Russia own islands offshore too and have a military presence. The globalists also control Colombia, who is sending in land troops from the west. There are problems, but not as endemic as the lying MSM presents. We are seeing propaganda from Venezuela and not news. The real news is Russia sending Tupolev bombers and building a huge new airstrip offshore.

Mr. Perfect wrote:Bernie Sanders is closer to Venezuela than Europe.

Nah, its all the basic stuff that every other developed country except the US has, plus some free post-secondary education that every developed country outside the anglopshere has. But after people tried to claim that lame centrist Obama was a Stalinist I'm not sure how much longer the right can cry wolf on this issue.

Nonc Hilaire wrote:

Parodite wrote:

Mr. Perfect wrote:Bernie Sanders is closer to Venezuela than Europe.

I don't know enough about Venezuela but I would rank it closer to failed states where a dictatorship/elite enriches itself by steeling national resources, engaging in corrupt and criminal activity. Giving free hand-outs i.e. meaningless words/chants or little presents to a disenfranchised and struggling population to keep them quiet and happy for as long as they do. Until the economy is wrecked and the ship goes down. Hardly any oil revenues were used to invest in the country and its people. But there no doubt is more complexity to Venezuela and its downfall.

The MSM lies about Venezuela too. The issue is their nationalization of their oilfields. The corporate globalists object to countries controlling their own resources, so they are are running the MSM propaganda machine in a way that the American people will support military intervention.

China and Russia own islands offshore too and have a military presence. The globalists also control Colombia, who is sending in land troops from the west. There are problems, but not as endemic as the lying MSM presents. We are seeing propaganda from Venezuela and not news. The real news is Russia sending Tupolev bombers and building a huge new airstrip offshore.

The government in Venezuela failed, and it was a government claiming to be socialist and trying to implement at least some socialist principles. But, as you correctly point out, this failure was not even %100 due to the regime, let alone "socialism" in theory. We can all agree that we don't want our respective countries to look like contemporary Venezuela, but its also pretty laughable when people try to claim that e.g. expanding Medicare to cover all US citizens would be the first step on a path that inevitably leads to contemporary Venezuela. It could just as easily lead to contemporary Denmark.

Parodite wrote:

Mr. Perfect wrote:Bernie Sanders is closer to Venezuela than Europe.

I don't know enough about Venezuela but I would rank it closer to failed states where a dictatorship/elite enriches itself by steeling national resources, engaging in corrupt and criminal activity. Giving free hand-outs i.e. meaningless words/chants or little presents to a disenfranchised and struggling population to keep them quiet and happy for as long as they do. Until the economy is wrecked and the ship goes down. Hardly any oil revenues were used to invest in the country and its people. But there no doubt is more complexity to Venezuela and its downfall.

Quite.

Latin Post | Maria Gabriela Chávez Net Worth: Hugo Chávez's Daughter Richest Woman in Venezuela, Worth $4.2 Billion

[South] America is ungovernable. Those who serve the revolution plough the sea. The only thing to do in [South] America is to emigrate.

~ Simón Bolívar

Bolívar's observation about S America has unfortunately withstood the test of time with the possible exception of Chile.

However, this is taking us rather far afield.

Cultural Marxism is actually an appropriate description, regardless of its history, given that the Regressive-Progressive Left in the Anglosphere frames all of human experience in terms of dialectics and power hierarchies along with the belief that a utopia can be established on here on earth.

Let's pick one example of the Institute für Sozialforschung:

Herbert Marcuse was born July 19, 1898, in Berlin, to Carl Marcuse and Gertrud Kreslawsky. His family was Jewish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_M ... Early_life

Marcuse was a Marxist in spirit and theory.

The Dialectic of Technology

In their famous book Dialectic of Enlightenment Marcuse's colleagues Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno attempted to demonstrate the Enlightenment embodied a tension between its own project of liberation and its own new mechanisms of oppression and domination. For Marcuse, modern technology (a product of the Enlightenment) embodies a similar tension. The question for him was “what role does technology play in the project of human emancipation?” The technological boom has been supported by the idea that there is some fundamental connection between technological development and the human quest for liberation and a better life. However, we were disabused of this idea by Freud and many others. The question now is “does technological advance lead to more repression and domination?”

Marcuse's critical theory is always dialectical, as he examines forms of oppression and domination he also sees at the same time the potential for liberation.

Another example of one-dimensional thinking is the subject of Marcuse famous and controversial essay “Repressive Tolerance”. Here Marcuse shows how terms, ideas, or concepts that have their origin in struggles for liberation can be co-opted and used to legitimate oppression. The concept of tolerance was once used as a critical concept by marginalized social groups. According to Marcuse, the term is now used by the Establishment to legitimate its own oppressive views and policies. It is the idea of pure tolerance or tolerance for the sake of tolerance that puts under erasure the real concrete social conflict out of which the concept emerged. Rather than pure tolerance, Marcuse calls for “discriminating tolerance” (Marcuse 1968a: 123).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcuse/

A rejection of general tolerance in favour of repressive tolerance is clearly a mode of operation of the Left today.

Marxism-Communism had considerable appeal to Jewish intellectuals in Europe, and the surviving expats in the USA, with its promise to supplant the combination of Christian dogma and extreme nationalism, the experience of which had understandably made them a very nervous people, with a new areligious internationalism.

Many Jewish intellectuals continued to cling to this belief even as events proved them wrong.

However, one should not overlook the significant French contribution to the current postmodern - poststructuralist nonsense.
Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault come to mind.

Derrida's writing, in particular, are best described as purposely obscure drivel. A spunk artiste of the highest order.

Colonel Sun wrote:Cultural Marxism is actually an appropriate description, regardless of its history, given that the Regressive-Progressive Left in the Anglosphere frames all of human experience in terms of dialectics and power hierarchies along with the belief that a utopia can be established on here on earth.

How does this differ from Marxism? What does the "Cultural" prefix add to anyone's understanding, particularly in light of the historical origin and use of the term?

A rejection of general tolerance in favour of repressive tolerance is clearly a mode of operation of the Left today.

What would be some examples of leftist politics that were "generally tolerant" and opposed to "repressively tolerant?"

Marxism-Communism had considerable appeal to Jewish intellectuals in Europe, and the surviving expats in the USA, with its promise to supplant the combination of Christian dogma and extreme nationalism, the experience of which had understandably made them a very nervous people, with a new areligious internationalism.

Many Jewish intellectuals continued to cling to this belief even as events proved them wrong.

So it is really about the Jews, but not in an antisemitic way, just in the way that "Jews" are "nervous" and naturally drawn to Marxism.

However, one should not overlook the significant French contribution to the current postmodern - poststructuralist nonsense.
Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault come to mind.

Derrida's writing, in particular, are best described as purposely obscure drivel. A spunk artiste of the highest order.

Almost no one has read, and fewer still understood, the writings of Jacques Derrida. It seems absurds to tie his work to what you seem to be saying is the dominant form of leftist political theory today. Again, why not just say Marxist?


It seems like the popular usage of "Cultural Marxism" today is just a shorthand to fold Marxism and other alt-right bogeymen like "postmodernism" and "feminism" together into a unified threat to "Western civilization," when in fact all of these things are Western and they don't really operate together in any interdependent way. Unless it says that they do somewhere in Derrida, and you read and were able to understand that argument. I have not made the attempt tbh.

What is happening today is more like cultural Maoism, complete with public denigration for undesirable opinions and destruction of culture.

Ibrahim wrote: How does this differ from Marxism? What does the "Cultural" prefix add to anyone's understanding, particularly in light of the historical origin and use of the term?

That's already been covered in Cultural Marxism 101, the original Marxists expected to implement Marxism globally through economic policies, when they failed they turned to different/cultural methods. It's as if you don't know anything about this.

I can answer any other questions.

Ibrahim wrote:

Mr. Perfect wrote:Bernie Sanders is closer to Venezuela than Europe.

Nah, its all the basic stuff that every other developed country except the US has, plus some free post-secondary education that every developed country outside the anglopshere has. But after people tried to claim that lame centrist Obama was a Stalinist I'm not sure how much longer the right can cry wolf on this issue.

You guys really seem to be unfamiliar with Bernie Sanders.

If you get to cry wolf you have to let other people cry wolf.

Nonc Hilaire wrote:What is happening today is more like cultural Maoism, complete with public denigration for undesirable opinions and destruction of culture.

I'm open to the idea, but there would have to be more peasant insurgencies against the bourgeois oppressive classes. Instead it seems like a lot of shaming online about using insufficiently "woke" language.

The one upside of the "cultural marxism" term, antisemitic though it may originally be, is that it refers mostly to a bunch of people who mostly just wrote criticism of political structures (and more broadly in the Nazi context, the urban cosmopolitan society of the 1920's), so today's SJW's complaining online and living mostly in an urban or college setting has more in common with Adorno than Red Guards.

Ibrahim wrote: I'm open to the idea, but there would have to be more peasant insurgencies against the bourgeois oppressive classes. Instead it seems like a lot of shaming online about using insufficiently "woke" language.

And doxing people, deplatforming people and making people unemployable.

The one upside of the "cultural marxism" term, antisemitic though it may originally be, is that it refers mostly to a bunch of people who mostly just wrote criticism of political structures (and more broadly in the Nazi context, the urban cosmopolitan society of the 1920's), so today's SJW's complaining online and living mostly in an urban or college setting has more in common with Adorno than Red Guards.

There is nothing antisemitic about the word Culture or Marxism. Just like there is nothing anti semitic about highways. Or Volkswagens.

BTW SJW Marxists are making it illegal to speak in Canada, and pushing for their own set of policy goals in various governments on a host of issues.

And they are winning.

For a more appropriate thread, I just spent some quality time on the SPLC site for their hate map, and I would have to say one of the biggest problem we have over there is it reads like a Huffington Post page. If you were just collecting data for public dissemination there is no need for the politicking.

Even worse, if you click around on their pins they don't tell you anything about the "group" or what they did to get labeled a hate group. It obscures more than it reveals.

Ibrahim wrote:

Colonel Sun wrote:Cultural Marxism is actually an appropriate description, regardless of its history, given that the Regressive-Progressive Left in the Anglosphere frames all of human experience in terms of dialectics and power hierarchies along with the belief that a utopia can be established on here on earth.

How does this differ from Marxism? What does the "Cultural" prefix add to anyone's understanding, particularly in light of the historical origin and use of the term?

Marxism is based on the belief of oppression, power structures, and class struggle as the key aspects of capitalist societies.

Cultural Marxism extends these beliefs to race, gender, religion, and ethnicity.

Ibrahim wrote:

A rejection of general tolerance in favour of repressive tolerance is clearly a mode of operation of the Left today.

What would be some examples of leftist politics that were "generally tolerant" and opposed to "repressively tolerant?"

Harassment, both online and physical, loss of livelihood, and social isolation of anyone who openly expresses a view that deviates from the Left's doctrines regarding race, gender, religion, and ethnicity.

Offhand, a specific example is James Damore, formerly of Google.

Ibrahim wrote:

Marxism-Communism had considerable appeal to Jewish intellectuals in Europe, and the surviving expats in the USA, with its promise to supplant the combination of Christian dogma and extreme nationalism, the experience of which had understandably made them a very nervous people, with a new areligious internationalism.

Many Jewish intellectuals continued to cling to this belief even as events proved them wrong.

So it is really about the Jews, but not in an antisemitic way, just in the way that "Jews" are "nervous" and naturally drawn to Marxism.

You raised the issue of Jews in European intellectual life, not I.

I'm noting some historical realities. The Jews have made a disproportionately large contribution to Western civilization.

As for the Jews being a nervous people, I'm paraphrasing the Jewish writer Zangwill, if memory serves,

The Jews are a nervous people, two thousand years of Christian love has made them so.

Ibrahim wrote:

However, one should not overlook the significant French contribution to the current postmodern - poststructuralist nonsense.
Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault come to mind.

Derrida's writing, in particular, are best described as purposely obscure drivel. A spunk artiste of the highest order.

Almost no one has read, and fewer still understood, the writings of Jacques Derrida. It seems absurd to tie his work to what you seem to be saying is the dominant form of leftist political theory today. Again, why not just say Marxist?

Few people have read Marx's work, yet many unknowingly base their beliefs on his diagnosis of and prescriptions for capitalist society.
The same with Derrida.

As Keynes so aptly put it

Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.
Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

with regards to economic theorists applies to the humanities in academia.

And now, general public life, as people indoctrinated in these beliefs enter managerial positions in government and business.

Speaking of James Damore, it never fails to astonish me how brazenly and ignorantly a liberal can lie.

qZZSYPs1_ng

City J | Today’s Cultural Engineers

The arbiters of taste loathe their audiences.

The audiences loath them as well. Or former audience.

AP | Some journalists wonder if their profession is tweet-crazy

Twitter "isn't the place where most people find us," she said. "Reporters place this outsized importance on it."

Some have done that, or tried. Manjoo's colleague at The Times, White House correspondent Maggie Haberman, wrote last July about how she was stepping back from Twitter after nearly nine years and 187,000 tweets.

"The viciousness, toxic partisan anger, intellectual dishonesty, motive-questioning and sexism are at all-time highs, with no end in sight," she wrote. "It is a place where people who are unquestionably upset about any number of things go to feed their anger, where the underbelly of free speech is at its most bilious. Twitter is now an anger video game for many users."

This would be a welcome trend.
The major problem with taking Twitter twits, er, tweets seriously is that they are a highly biased sub-sample that is in no way representative of the general population.

Colonel Sun wrote:Quillette | How Social Justice Ideologues Hijacked a Legal Regulator

excellent article. Thanks for posting. Much of the article reads like many of Mark Steyn's columns from a few (5-15?) years back.

" .....To many Quillette readers, this perversion of language may not come as a surprise. I have been late to this party, and perhaps I have been naïve about how ideology has corrupted the ideal of social justice and the words we use to describe it......

But if the proportion of some skin colours and ethnicities is too low, then the proportion of others must be too high. And while the authors of these rules no doubt would be quick to deny this plain corollary, the arithmetic truth is plain as a matter of simple logic......

But I thought those ideas meant a spirit of open-mindedness and respect toward others regardless of their personal characteristics. In fact, that is the opposite of what the Law Society means and intends. In this context, “diversity and inclusion” is code for identity politics—by which we are all slotted into factions defined by appearance, ethnicity and gender (usually through “self-identification”), supposed antagonists in an altogether imaginary and endless zero-sum game of dominance and oppression. "

So do you have any kind of plan.

Mr. Perfect wrote:So do you have any kind of plan.

once all the smart people on Earth start reading my posts, it'll all fall into place.......

spread the word!

Quillette | Confronting a New Threat to Female Athletics

On 17 February, tennis legend Martina Navratilova published an article on 17 February in the The Sunday Times wherein she voiced her concerns about men who “decide to be female” participating in women’s sports. The followup to this publication was met with Navratilova being subsequently dropped as an ambassador by Athlete Ally, an organisation which supports LGBT athletes, and she was removed from the advisory board of Trans Actualy, a non-profit U.S. organization. Here’s the back story.

In December, Navratilova responded to a tweet from one of her followers about female-identified biological males participating in women’s sport: “Clearly that can’t be right. You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard.” Rachel McKinnon, a male-born Canadian philosophy professor who competes against women as a transgender athlete, weighed in with a lengthy social-media dissertation, in which McKinnon informed Navratilova that “people’s genitals are irrelevant to sports performance,” and called her comments “transphobic.”

Not only does the Empress have no clothes, she also has a penis and a pair of bollocks.

Colonel Sun wrote:Quillette | Confronting a New Threat to Female Athletics


Not only does the Empress have no clothes, she also has a penis and a pair of bollocks.

sounds a bit misogynist and female oppressive for men to compete against women in sports. but I guess if you want to be considerate of the feelings of the men, and don't give a damn about the women's feeling, then that's OK. or was that statement misogynist?

on the other hand, I think we're all in agreement that women are much more adept than men at the fine arts:

nIGO-IyWdQs