United States Politics Thread 47

[rotting bones]

By Francoism I suppose you mean Solzhenitsyn being a reactionary crank, which is true.

Solzhenitsyn literally supported Franco.

What is also true is what he documented about the Gulag, which is also absolutely true and shouldn't be ignored.

The CIA also spreads many exaggerations about how bad it was that are not easy to prove or disprove. "CIA" is not rhetoric. Many Anticommunist talking points literally trace back to CIA shills.

I think the sane path is to incorporate a realistic view of the former Eastern block, which (CIA or not) is not attractive. It's really not incompatible with a leftist movement. Leftists movement often chose not to; it doesn't mean it's impossible.

The thing you have to understand about humans is that they are not sane. If you don't push back against Anticommunism, humans will not support a leftist movement. I agree that leftism is not Communism, but the masses unconsciously disagree with this obvious fact. The CIA knows this, and that's why they frame their propaganda in the manner that they do.

This is not to say we shouldn't argue against Communism. I think we should argue against it in the same way we argue against Islam. More on that below.

I think it'd be more productive to take some time to figure out what went wrong with the Eastern block (or Venezuela) rather than come up with excuses for ignoring that example.

The first point in my proposal is to uphold human rights: https://snapshotsofthelabyrinth.photo.b ... -planning/ Part 4 of my proposal discusses some Communist failures: https://snapshotsofthelabyrinth.photo.b ... responses/

I'm more optimistic than you are on the rest, there actually is quite a lot of intellectual life. It's not all right-wingers frothing at the mouth about Islamism.

There are also "leftists" supporting indigenous identities against Westernization, and Muslims are a flagship minority behind this cause. There's actually more Anticommunist sentiment, something the West and Islamists agree on.* Do you realize how pervasive a McCarthyist mindset is nowadays? Every time I search for books, I find a new Anticommunist screed. Here's today's discovery: The Physics of Sorrow by Gospidinov, award-winning writer. It's also hidden in the middle of books that have nothing to do with Communism. (How to Astronaut? Communism sucks.)

This is not to say Really Existing Socialism was good. Nevertheless, all medieval societies were worse than Really Existing Socialism. Let's take an uncontroversial example: the Aztecs. Why is it that there are no books on the market about how terrible the Aztecs were? If anything, the attitude towards the Aztecs is one of ambivalent attraction to a lost exotic world.

The Lacanian parallel is that even if your wife is cheating, your obsession with this infidelity can still be pathological. In my opinion, Islamism sucks and we must work towards replacing it. But this obsession with the horrors of Islam and mounting attacks on Muslims is still pathological. The situation is similar with Really Existing Socialism. I don't support state capitalism or authoritarian socialism either. That's why I call myself a democratic socialist in opposition to that.

*And of course the West propped up Islamism to fight Communism in the first place. The reason Wahhabis have power at all is because the West allied with them in the last century.

[bradrn]

Why is it that there are no books on the market about how terrible the Aztecs were? If anything, the attitude towards the Aztecs is one of ambivalent attraction to a lost exotic world.

You’re speaking to the wrong person, I think:

This all started with my reading Gary Jennings' Aztec. But, to be honest, I have come to have mixed feelings about it.
On the plus side, it's engaging, very-well written, and very accurate in places. On the other hand, it is somehow spoiled by the endless sex scenes (these range from awkwarkd to cringe to fairly disgusting.) which make no sense in context (the Mexica were not weird sex maniacs.) His picture of Mexica religion is generally completely wrong. For some reason, he also felt the need to make human sacrifice even more horrific than it actually was. (I don't know why you need to add horrific detail to a holiday called The Flaying of Human Beings, but apparently Jennings felt the original wasn't over the top enough.)

[rotting bones]

Why is it that there are no books on the market about how terrible the Aztecs were? If anything, the attitude towards the Aztecs is one of ambivalent attraction to a lost exotic world.

You’re speaking to the wrong person, I think:

This all started with my reading Gary Jennings' Aztec. But, to be honest, I have come to have mixed feelings about it.
On the plus side, it's engaging, very-well written, and very accurate in places. On the other hand, it is somehow spoiled by the endless sex scenes (these range from awkwarkd to cringe to fairly disgusting.) which make no sense in context (the Mexica were not weird sex maniacs.) His picture of Mexica religion is generally completely wrong. For some reason, he also felt the need to make human sacrifice even more horrific than it actually was. (I don't know why you need to add horrific detail to a holiday called The Flaying of Human Beings, but apparently Jennings felt the original wasn't over the top enough.)

This sounds like ambivalent attraction to me, both from Gary Jennings and Ares Land. Besides, my point is about 21st century intellectual life, not any one person.

In my opinion, early modern society was worse than Really Existing Socialism too. I just went with the least controversial argument. This is the a fortiori strategy of the rabbis.

[WeepingElf]

And re: malloc's point on propaganda, again, I kind of think that right-wingers generally tell people the things that, for many, feel true, while left-wingers - at least in the more thoughtful and less repulsive parts of the Left - tell people the things that actually are true, which leaves them at a disadvantage. This means that right-wingers are usually very good at winning power and very bad at using it.

Until around 1990, there were big left-wing movements around the world. As soon as the USSR collapsed, human nature mysteriously changed, and now everyone is literally Hitler.

Those "big left-wing movements" are precisely what Raphael meant with "repulsive parts of the Left", and they were in that regard just like the right wing today. And human nature did not change, and definitely not "everyone is literally Hitler". You sound just like a tankie.

[rotting bones]

Those "big left-wing movements" are precisely what Raphael meant with "repulsive parts of the Left"

The movements weren't all the same. For example, there were libertarian Marxists, anarchists and democratic socialists of various stripes. During my childhood, I grew up under a democratic Marxist government (which, don't get me wrong, was still unjustly authoritarian). I've argued against repulsive leftism at length.

Back in the day, I supported TMC against CPI(M), which I now regret. TMC was responsible for bringing the fascist BJP into the state as a weak opposition they thought they could control.

and they were in that regard just like the right wing today.

Debatable. They were bad in different ways. E.g. They were better on women's rights than the early 20th century, but not as good as 21st century liberalism. They were very bad on free speech, probably worse than Trump. (He's not making it easy to do a comparison since he gets worse by the day.)

And human nature did not change, and definitely not "everyone is literally Hitler".

I would go farther: Hitler was awful to the extent that he resembled the average 21st century intellectual. All Hitler did was to take identity politics to its logical conclusion.

You sound just like a tankie.

Well, you sound exactly like Hitler to me. I can practically hear echoes of "Sieg Heil!" after every sentence you write.

I am a minority under attack from a fascist government as we speak. I'm out of patience with Western moralizing and logic chopping which ignores arguments and context, and is totally disconnected from the thinking of the masses. This attitude is what got us in this position in the first place. I wouldn't blame Jews under Nazi occupation if they decided to collaborate with the Soviets. I'm not in that bad a position (yet), and I'm not arguing that we actually support Communism.

[Raphael]

Re: situation in the US vs. Germany, I should also note that basically everyone in Germany outside the far Left is a deficit hawk. The Obama and Biden stimulus packages would have been unimaginably left-wing by mainstream German standards. It was sometimes amusing to watch the major German legacy media outlets, which generally loved Obama at the time but also hated deficits, wonder how to report on those packages. And, of course, German deficit hawkishness has caused enormous suffering in other European countries.

My understanding is that under the capitalist model, when countries try the things the US does, it leaves them in debt to China. When the US goes into debt to China, China does nothing because their reserves are in dollars. Wrecking the US economy will deplete their reserves. Countries that don't directly control the world's reserve currency have less flexibility when it comes to not going "broke", meaning being forced to hand over control of their economy to foreign powers.

I mostly agree. The problem with Keynesianism is that you apparently can only afford it if you're on top of the world. Keynes himself was British at a time when the British Empire was already in decline but still widely seen as a major world power, and most of the main advocates and practitioners of his ideas after him were Americans at the time when the USA either was or at least was seen as a world hegemon. And today's supporters of Keynesianism love to argue against the deficit hawks by showing us diagrams depicting the historical development of British and US debt.

So the economic nightmare scenario is that we might live in a world where the Keynesians and the deficit hawks are both right about why the other side's approach won't work.

Until around 1990, there were big left-wing movements around the world. As soon as the USSR collapsed, human nature mysteriously changed, and now everyone is literally Hitler.

My impression is that in large parts of the Global South, left-wing movements became popular and influential for a while by effectively aligning themselves with local nationalisms, spreading messages like "These rich capitalist foreigners are oppressing and exploiting us all, and we must get rid of them!" If true, that would strengthen my point about right-wing appeals to basic human instincts.

In reality, there's no more money in fighting the CIA talking points about Communism being the worst society to ever have existed.

CIA talking point or no CIA talking point, it's a basic fact that Soviet Communism had to build walls and fences to keep its own people from running away. The only other societies I can think of that had to do that were those settler colonies that relied very heavily on Transatlantic Slavery.

It turns out there's no way to incorporate Solzhenitsyn's Francoism into one's worldview and continue to push for a leftist movement.

True as far as outright Francoism is concerned, but of course you can see Soviet Communism as bad and still push for a leftist movement. Just because not many people are doing something, it doesn't mean that it can't be done. You yourself have a combination of political and philosophical/religious views that's relatively rare these days, too, and that doesn't stop you from holding those views.

The controversy that now polarizes the world of ideas is whether and how much to tolerate Islamism, the last non-Western ideology with any significant financial backing. This is why I think it's pretty safe to ignore everything the 21st century has to say in matters of political economy.

One problem with that is that a mindless copy of 20th or 19th century thought can't take anything that happened in the 21st century into account, and therefore can't learn or draw conclusions from it.

[bradrn]

Well, you sound exactly like Hitler to me. I can practically hear echoes of "Sieg Heil!" after every sentence you write.

I think you are alone in that.

(Trying to stay polite here. Comparing someone like WeepingElf to literally Hitler is extremely offensive to me.)

[rotting bones]

Well, you sound exactly like Hitler to me. I can practically hear echoes of "Sieg Heil!" after every sentence you write.

I think you are alone in that.

(Trying to stay polite here. Comparing someone like WeepingElf to literally Hitler is extremely offensive to me.)

And yet I'm the one under imminent threat of being killed by my own government, a government allied with the Western coalition Weeping Elf is defending. Why should I give a fuck about you taking offense? Or any opinion held by any human for that matter?

[WeepingElf]

and they were in that regard just like the right wing today.

Debatable. They were bad in different ways. E.g. They were better on women's rights than the early 20th century, but not as good as 21st century liberalism. They were very bad on free speech, probably worse than Trump. (He's not making it easy to do a comparison since he gets worse by the day.)

I specifically meant their autoritarianness.

And human nature did not change, and definitely not "everyone is literally Hitler".

I would go farther: Hitler was awful to the extent that he resembled the average 21st century intellectual. All Hitler did was to take identity politics to its logical conclusion.

No. The average 21st century intellectual has no inclination towards world conquest and industrialized genocide. What you say is an offense to Hitler's victims.

You sound just like a tankie.

Well, you sound exactly like Hitler to me. I can practically hear echoes of "Sieg Heil!" after every sentence you write.

That's a vicious offense. I have to report your post to zompist.

[rotting bones]

I mostly agree. The problem with Keynesianism is that you apparently can only afford it if you're on top of the world. Keynes himself was British at a time when the British Empire was already in decline but still widely seen as a major world power, and most of the main advocates and practitioners of his ideas after him were Americans at the time when the USA either was or at least was seen as a world hegemon. And today's supporters of Keynesianism love to argue against the deficit hawks by showing us diagrams depicting the historical development of British and US debt.

So the economic nightmare scenario is that we might live in a world where the Keynesians and the deficit hawks are both right about why the other side's approach won't work.

It might still be doable. It wouldn't be as easy as in the US. Or perhaps WAS in the US. USD was the global reserve currency because it was backed by military power that assured control over shipping lanes and resources like oil wells. After Iran, this assumption is looking increasingly shaky. Still, things won't change overnight.

My approach bypasses the monetary system altogether.

My impression is that in large parts of the Global South, left-wing movements became popular and influential for a while by effectively aligning themselves with local nationalisms, spreading messages like "These rich capitalist foreigners are oppressing and exploiting us all, and we must get rid of them!" If true, that would strengthen my point about right-wing appeals to basic human instincts.

In Bengal, the democratic Marxist movement had nothing to do with culture or nationalism. The farm hands wanted land redistribution. They were supported by urban intellectuals who read Marx. (These intellectuals were mostly Brahmin. The next generation was liberal. The generation after that was spiritual AKA fascist.)

CIA talking point or no CIA talking point, it's a basic fact that Soviet Communism had to build walls and fences to keep its own people from running away.

The people who ran away were rich and middle class people who thought they could get a better life in the West. The West welcomed defectors + a brain drain. (I might have given more details in the past.)

The only other societies I can think of that had to do that were those settler colonies that relied very heavily on Transatlantic Slavery.

There was French colonialism.

True as far as outright Francoism is concerned, but of course you can see Soviet Communism as bad and still push for a leftist movement. Just because not many people are doing something, it doesn't mean that it can't be done. You yourself have a combination of political and philosophical/religious views that's relatively rare these days, too, and that doesn't stop you from holding those views.

...

One problem with that is that a mindless copy of 20th or 19th century thought can't take anything that happened in the 21st century into account, and therefore can't learn or draw conclusions from it.

I never said you can't criticize ideologies. I went out of my way to say we should do it. As you say, the number one complaint I keep getting on the ZBB about my proposal is that no faction in the world currently supports it.

[rotting bones]

I specifically meant their autoritarianness.

That's true. I never denied the authoritarian left is authoritarian. Nevertheless, they can be the only faction willing to fight for you against the fascists.

No. The average 21st century intellectual has no inclination towards world conquest and industrialized genocide. What you say is an offense to Hitler's victims.

It doesn't matter. Their talking points about cultures and civilization align exactly with Nazi Kultur. Because of RCT, this approach can only lead to genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realistic ... Cave_study

That's a vicious offense. I have to report your post to zompist.

Good. I hope I get banned from every forum, and then get killed by every government in the world. That's the only way I'll know I'm right.

I would just like to point out that I'm the one being oppressed, and you called me a tankie first.

[rotting bones]

you called me a tankie first.

Which I'm still not going to report.

[WeepingElf]

you called me a tankie first.

Which I'm still not going to report.

I said that you sound just like a tankie because you talked in a way that sounded to me as if you approved of the Soviet Bloc, and you did not do that for the first time. While I have always been clear that I am not at all inclined towards any kind of fascism.

[rotting bones]

you called me a tankie first.

Which I'm still not going to report.

I said that you sound just like a tankie because you talked in a way that sounded to me as if you approved of the Soviet Bloc, and you did not do that for the first time. While I have always been clear that I am not at all inclined towards any kind of fascism.

I've been arguing against Communism my whole life. I have started threads to do it. I did it a few posts ago in this thread.

[WeepingElf]

Which I'm still not going to report.

I said that you sound just like a tankie because you talked in a way that sounded to me as if you approved of the Soviet Bloc, and you did not do that for the first time. While I have always been clear that I am not at all inclined towards any kind of fascism.

I've been arguing against Communism my whole life. I have started threads to do it. I did it a few posts ago in this thread.

Then I apologize for the misunderstanding. Also, I do think that fascism is much worse than communism. Communism is based on agreeable ideals but perverted them. Fascism is based on despicable ideals and didn't have to pervert them in order to be atrocious.

[rotting bones]

I said that you sound just like a tankie because you talked in a way that sounded to me as if you approved of the Soviet Bloc, and you did not do that for the first time. While I have always been clear that I am not at all inclined towards any kind of fascism.

I've been arguing against Communism my whole life. I have started threads to do it. I did it a few posts ago in this thread.

Then I apologize for the misunderstanding. Also, I do think that fascism is much worse than communism. Communism is based on agreeable ideals but perverted them. Fascism is based on despicable ideals and didn't have to pervert them in order to be atrocious.

Apology accepted. I also apologize for calling you Hitler.

20th century Communism can never work because Marxism is explicitly based on the idea of violating rights. This creates perverse incentives in the ruling clique. I have recommended books by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita many times in the past: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aE_fnO ... p=drivesdk

[Ares Land]

The thing you have to understand about humans is that they are not sane. If you don't push back against Anticommunism, humans will not support a leftist movement.

I guess I disagree here. If you and I can understand things, I guess a solid amount of voters can, too.
So in my view the best bet is to be honest about things; like: how bad the Soviet Union was.

If people can't handle two facts at the same time, such as: the eastern block was bad and it doesn't mean all socialism is thereby refuted, than why do we even bother giving them the vote?
(Personally I think the better informed the people are, the better the results of democracy. It does mean you have to reject simplistic arguments and go into the details.)

Do you realize how pervasive a McCarthyist mindset is nowadays? Every time I search for books, I find a new Anticommunist screed. Here's today's discovery: The Physics of Sorrow by Gospidinov, award-winning writer. It's also hidden in the middle of books that have nothing to do with Communism. (How to Astronaut? Communism sucks.)

I have the privilege (and it's a real privilege) to live in a country where, thank Marx, McCarthyism didn't take hold that much.

The Lacanian parallel is that even if your wife is cheating, your obsession with this infidelity can still be pathological. In my opinion, Islamism sucks and we must work towards replacing it. But this obsession with the horrors of Islam and mounting attacks on Muslims is still pathological. The situation is similar with Really Existing Socialism. I don't support state capitalism or authoritarian socialism either. That's why I call myself a democratic socialist in opposition to that.

On that we actually agree, and the Lacan quote is a good one which I may borrow for a later time.
But why go to the length of defending the USSR, which is almost entirely undefensible?
(I can think of one thing to say in its defense: its existence motivated the West to do better while Putin's Russia seemingly pulls everyone down to its level.)

I'm aware of the right-wing argument that anything vaguely left-wing is literally Stalinism. But the correct answer to that is to point out the ridiculousness of the argument, not to argue that Stalin had his good moments.

[WeepingElf]

I've been arguing against Communism my whole life. I have started threads to do it. I did it a few posts ago in this thread.

Then I apologize for the misunderstanding. Also, I do think that fascism is much worse than communism. Communism is based on agreeable ideals but perverted them. Fascism is based on despicable ideals and didn't have to pervert them in order to be atrocious.

Apology accepted. I also apologize for calling you Hitler.

Apology also accepted.

[rotting bones]

But why go to the length of defending the USSR, which is almost entirely undefensible?

I guess I didn't notice the place where everyone else is seeing a defense of the USSR.

Whenever I defend aspects of "Marxism", I'm defending the democratic Marxism of my childhood. Every subsequent government has been increasingly worse.

I'll say again what I said before: The CIA has framed its propaganda in such a way that if you don't argue against Communism the way you argue against Islam, most people in my experience with associate your criticism of Communism with a criticism of leftism in general.

In my experience, the right spreading CIA propaganda is a big reason why my life is under imminent threat today.

As for humans being smart, I'd put a big asterisk next to that. Most people don't have much mental space left over after devoting their brain to all the tasks they need to be good at on a daily basis. As a result, they apply heavy lossy compression to all other topics. (You might be surprised to know there are people in America today who don't know who Trump is.) Distinctions that don't apply to daily life tend to slip off their minds like water off a duck. In order to reason about such topics, they think in terms of tropes. That's why arguments like the following work: Communists created bread lines. There are leftists in our country today!!!1

Now, most people don't want to be stupid. They are willing to understand the world at a deeper level. To do that, you have to help them along. This means framing your criticism in a way that makes it easy to distinguish Communism from leftism in every single paragraph of your argument. You can't do it at one point and leave it to smart people to infer the consequences. Most people are going to forget what you said by the next paragraph. Ideally, it's a good idea to frame every sentence to make it difficult for fascists to quote mine, but that might be asking too much.

[Raphael]

I'm aware of the right-wing argument that anything vaguely left-wing is literally Stalinism. But the correct answer to that is to point out the ridiculousness of the argument, not to argue that Stalin had his good moments.

This. This. This.