A Bronze Age Politician (Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty)
The online dissident Right has long presented itself as a dangerous, outside force that threatens the foundations of liberal society. Yet ever since Donald Trump supposedly ascended to the presidency in 2016 through “meme magic” — rather than simply winning over voters in vulnerable Democratic voting districts — there has existed a sort of symbiotic relationship between many liberal commentators and various online radical subcultures.
The former are happy to have a set of cartoon cut-out villains to rail against: incels and misogynists who openly talk about their hatred of women; racists who unabashedly use racial slurs and claim that black people are genetically inferior; anonymous trolls who openly invoke Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust as examples to be emulated. These online villains, for their part, are more than happy to be given attention, and want nothing more than to be known as consummate outsiders; scary barbarians just waiting for a chance to pillage all the norms that liberal society holds dear.
As it happens, though, this sort of thing is mostly theatre. Far from being outsiders and outcasts, these dissidents are not so much enemies of liberal society as its products. Like the “Dirtbag Left” that once gathered around Bernie Sanders and had notions of upending capitalism only to meekly be reabsorbed into the machine they purported to fight, the average edgy Hitler worshipper on Twitter is far less scary than he tries to appear. If John Steinbeck said that the US would never be fertile grounds for socialism because every American worker considered himself merely a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, then one can add today that our online world mostly consists of temporarily embarrassed middle-class liberals.
A recent storm of drama and division within the online “vitalist” movement illustrates this well, and in a humorous fashion to boot. Vitalism, for the uninitiated, refers to an extremely heterogeneous collection of tendencies and idiosyncratic personalities, loosely affiliated with the Right and Donald Trump. This affiliation with the 46th president, however, is strictly one-way: while many vitalists would like to attach themselves to the “Trump movement” in some fashion, it seems very doubtful that Trump actually wants them or even knows that they exist.
The intellectual tendencies that make up the vitalist movement are broad —in some cases openly nonsensical — and it is probably fair to say that they have very little broad electoral appeal. What they do say runs the gamut from various oddball interpretations of Nietzschean philosophy and a veneration of scantily clad male underwear models to talking about black criminality and how we live in a “longhouse gynocracy”. In general, this is mostly a subculture concerned with edginess and self-referential jargon. Some people are only there to shitpost; others hope to market their own personal “brand” to make money from the sale of protein powders or podcast subscriptions. And finally, a few truly foolish souls clearly hope to use their online notoriety as a springboard into legitimate politics.
One of the leading voices within this subculture — a person going by the non-de plume of Bronze Age Pervert — recently had details about his real identity posted online by a rival within these online spaces. BAP, it turned out, was actually a Yale academic from a fairly well-to-do background, with many connections inside what Donald Trump would probably deride as “the swamp”. Unfortunately for his online stans, however, he was also Jewish.
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SubscribeThe final paragraph is pure gold.
Yup, nailed it cold… scarily enough.
Sounds like a description of the civil service.
Sounds like my private sector job too.
I wonder who has more clerks …. private call centers or actual civil service.
Sounds like my private sector job too.
I wonder who has more clerks …. private call centers or actual civil service.
Wow, finally somebody put into words what I’ve been thinking for years. Thank you for your pithy post, Malcolm!
Elon Musk of Twitter just fired 80% of its workforce, representing thousands of people. It will be interesting with the approaching recession whether other social media companies, bulked up with excessive staff will do the same? And will that change the dynamics of the 2024 election in the USA?
Yup, nailed it cold… scarily enough.
Sounds like a description of the civil service.
Wow, finally somebody put into words what I’ve been thinking for years. Thank you for your pithy post, Malcolm!
Elon Musk of Twitter just fired 80% of its workforce, representing thousands of people. It will be interesting with the approaching recession whether other social media companies, bulked up with excessive staff will do the same? And will that change the dynamics of the 2024 election in the USA?
The final paragraph is pure gold.
Alas liberal society has given them far too many white collar email jobs. In the HR departments of large corporates and the public sector, in the ever expanding, grant funded, charity sector ‘fighting’ for social justice, in the huge lobbying sector and, crucially, in the education sector.
A virus doesn’t believe in anything, but it spreads rapidly in a host without effective antibodies.
Perhaps the Right has misunderstood what politics was about for a very long time. We actually believed that Lockean Enlightenment stuff and thought politics was a contest of ideas with the goal of producing a better society.
In fact, politics is a patronage system which exists to funnel jobs and money to your friends. This is a standard feature of imperial politics in history (Roman, Byzantine, Austro-Hungarian, Russian all come to mind), and America is certainly an empire now.
Maybe it’s time for us conservatives to just come to terms with this and start playing the same game.
If that’s true, it’s quite ironic since it’s the Left who call the Right privileged. And the Left claim to believe in creating a better society – something the Right would never do. But in reality, it does seem that your view is more accurate.
Why do you think the right would not believe in creating a better society?
Surprisingly enough, most of those trying to get elected have to have a “make things better” interest at heart.
I work for a few years in American politics (in the background) going up to the Congressional level. Among candidates, I would say about half truly want to “make things better”; the other half are party flunkies looking to make a buck.
However, once they got into office, that changed. I would say half the former group lost their idealism completely, and another quarter started compromising very seriously. It’s a cliché, but a true one: Georgetown Congressional cocktail parties (and at a higher level, Epstein’s island — although I never saw it) are very seductive, and not playing ball means not getting invited.
I work for a few years in American politics (in the background) going up to the Congressional level. Among candidates, I would say about half truly want to “make things better”; the other half are party flunkies looking to make a buck.
However, once they got into office, that changed. I would say half the former group lost their idealism completely, and another quarter started compromising very seriously. It’s a cliché, but a true one: Georgetown Congressional cocktail parties (and at a higher level, Epstein’s island — although I never saw it) are very seductive, and not playing ball means not getting invited.
Sorry, I sensed my comment wasn’t quite clear when I wrote it.
I’m not saying they don’t. Rather that they don’t shout about it – Labour has claimed this as their “USP” (unique selling proposition). It’s just not seen as a Tory/Right thing. Of course, what happens in practice is often reversed.
As Thatcher said, “there’s no such thing as society.” Bit tricky to improve something that you do not think even exists.
Surprisingly enough, most of those trying to get elected have to have a “make things better” interest at heart.
Sorry, I sensed my comment wasn’t quite clear when I wrote it.
I’m not saying they don’t. Rather that they don’t shout about it – Labour has claimed this as their “USP” (unique selling proposition). It’s just not seen as a Tory/Right thing. Of course, what happens in practice is often reversed.
As Thatcher said, “there’s no such thing as society.” Bit tricky to improve something that you do not think even exists.
Why do you think the right would not believe in creating a better society?
I agree Brian. I have come to the conclusion that a conservative government should give grants to buy homes to married couples who are committed to having children. It would help the low birthrate problem and also build a group of family oriented home owners who are likely to gravitate towards social conservativism.
…the sort of social conservatism that gives grants to build houses.
Surely having as many people married with kids and owning their own home is a socially conservative ambition. Maybe not economically conservative, I grant you.
Surely having as many people married with kids and owning their own home is a socially conservative ambition. Maybe not economically conservative, I grant you.
Or indeed build social housing, but prioritise working people with kids, rather than perpetual doleys and junkies. You can put the latter in the workhouse. My grandparents lived in a 1930s council house and voted Tory.
Either way – the government builds them or the government helps people buy existing homes on the open market. But it should be exclusively for law-abiding, married couples with jobs and the intention to have kids. Pretty soon marriage and kids will be the norm again. And the Tories will have a secured another 30 years in power.
I think we would have to pair it with a change to the law to make divorce (while you have dependent kids under 18) much more difficult to obtain. Otherwise you risk people gaming the system: getting hitched, getting a house, getting divorced, getting hitched again etc. Plus the current No Fault/ No Guilt divorce laws are hideously hard on children.
Either way – the government builds them or the government helps people buy existing homes on the open market. But it should be exclusively for law-abiding, married couples with jobs and the intention to have kids. Pretty soon marriage and kids will be the norm again. And the Tories will have a secured another 30 years in power.
I think we would have to pair it with a change to the law to make divorce (while you have dependent kids under 18) much more difficult to obtain. Otherwise you risk people gaming the system: getting hitched, getting a house, getting divorced, getting hitched again etc. Plus the current No Fault/ No Guilt divorce laws are hideously hard on children.
Exactly. It isn’t that you give up on making the world better. It’s rather that you realize that, since we’re going to subsidize people, let’s make sure the subsidies flow to our people and not the Left’s.
…the sort of social conservatism that gives grants to build houses.
Or indeed build social housing, but prioritise working people with kids, rather than perpetual doleys and junkies. You can put the latter in the workhouse. My grandparents lived in a 1930s council house and voted Tory.
Exactly. It isn’t that you give up on making the world better. It’s rather that you realize that, since we’re going to subsidize people, let’s make sure the subsidies flow to our people and not the Left’s.
U.S. here ….. This is why local governments are full of democrats. The big blue cites are full of Democrats who are rapidly putting minorities at the front, like his sorry-a** Alvin Bragg and Laurie Lightfoot. They don’t need to take the hit for the mess they’ve made. It’s human nature to scratch one another’s back. On the state and federal levels, human nature gets slightly more sophisticated and one begins to see more Demos and Republicans who just make common cause out of the creation and milking of government spending. Everyone not on the gravy train will protest. And when the money gets tight, and the layoffs begin, we see the hidden unemployment that needs be supported one way or another.
The problem is that when we play the same game, it becomes a “threat to democracy”!
Better men than I have noted the comparatives between Roman civilization and America up to this point. Both began as egalitarian societies dominated by small property holders. Both borrowed many aspects of culture from an established predecessor, Greek and European respectively. Both enjoyed periods of rapid expansion punctuated by warfare that enlarged their sphere of influence far beyond what their locally focused governing model was equipped to handle. America now is, arguably, where the Romans were at the end of the Republican period. As with the Romans, America has seen its grassroots politics increasingly dominated by super rich oligarchs who monopolize wealth and power. That period ended with the triumph of Julias Caesar, the original man of the people, who fought against the worst excesses of the oligarchs, breaking their power by leveraging his support within the people and the military. I suspect something similar may well be in store for us. The question is who will be the modern Caesar and what will an open and unapologetic American Empire look like.
Caesar was famed for his insidiosa clementia, or “treacherous clemency”*
Perhaps we shall be so fortunate next time?
(*Marcus Tullius Cicero.)
Well, he would know, as Caesar pardoned Cicero despite the latter’s support for Pompey in the civil war. Julius Caesar’s mercy towards many of his enemies almost certainly benefited him more than their elimination would have in most cases.
Yet those very same Patricians despised him because he spared them! As Cicero tells us.
I have alway thought that Caesar’s ‘clementia’ was his most admirable characteristic. Yet in the end those wretches he spared killed him. Surely there is a lesson there?
As the great Cistercian Arnaud Almaric said: “Kill them all! God will know his own”!*
(* Sometime later it must be said.)
Perhaps you’re right. I think the lesson is to never make deals with scorpions. They will sting even if doing so ultimately destroys them, and in this case, it did when Antony and Octavian executed most of the people Caesar had pardoned, including Cicero.
Perhaps you’re right. I think the lesson is to never make deals with scorpions. They will sting even if doing so ultimately destroys them, and in this case, it did when Antony and Octavian executed most of the people Caesar had pardoned, including Cicero.
Yet those very same Patricians despised him because he spared them! As Cicero tells us.
I have alway thought that Caesar’s ‘clementia’ was his most admirable characteristic. Yet in the end those wretches he spared killed him. Surely there is a lesson there?
As the great Cistercian Arnaud Almaric said: “Kill them all! God will know his own”!*
(* Sometime later it must be said.)
Well, he would know, as Caesar pardoned Cicero despite the latter’s support for Pompey in the civil war. Julius Caesar’s mercy towards many of his enemies almost certainly benefited him more than their elimination would have in most cases.
Rome wasn’t an empire until it conquered other nation states…. Where are America’s conquered nation states?
It doesn’t need to. That’s what “rules-based international order” is for. Whose rules?
Client states?
eg: What do you think the UK is?
Oh there are plenty to choose from, but because they were eventually incorporated into America’s existing system, they’re not as apparent. Florida was basically conquered by a rogue general. Hawaii was essentially annexed by force. Read up on the history of the Diego Garcia military base some time. Puerto Rico and Guam are still under American control. Further, some would say the westward expansion to the Pacific at the expense of Native American tribes would qualify also. This is without getting into the NATO alliance or the numerous other nations that have American military bases on their territory. Few historical empires look the same or exert their authority in the same way. The Roman empire left many of its territories basically self governing complete with their own kings (King Herod for example), but exerted control through a system of laws (like the international rules based order) and a uniform currency (the US dollar remains the only truly global currency). The idea of an empire as a vast blob spanning a huge area and made up of conquered territories comes from grade school history books. The reality is seldom that simple.
Those ‘Client States’ such as the neurotic Herod that you speak of, were later phased out during the Principate because they were rather unreliable, is that not so?
I believe you’re correct, but I was just giving an example of how what we think of as unified nation states throughout history were not necessarily the case. The British colonies had different levels of self government as well. India was ruled by a private company for decades before it was formally added to the Empire. Canada was essentially self governing during the late imperial period and if we want to get technical, they still formally recognize the British Crown. One wonders whether the history books written 500 years hence will recognize the same distinctions we do.
I believe you’re correct, but I was just giving an example of how what we think of as unified nation states throughout history were not necessarily the case. The British colonies had different levels of self government as well. India was ruled by a private company for decades before it was formally added to the Empire. Canada was essentially self governing during the late imperial period and if we want to get technical, they still formally recognize the British Crown. One wonders whether the history books written 500 years hence will recognize the same distinctions we do.
Those ‘Client States’ such as the neurotic Herod that you speak of, were later phased out during the Principate because they were rather unreliable, is that not so?
It doesn’t need to. That’s what “rules-based international order” is for. Whose rules?
Client states?
eg: What do you think the UK is?
Oh there are plenty to choose from, but because they were eventually incorporated into America’s existing system, they’re not as apparent. Florida was basically conquered by a rogue general. Hawaii was essentially annexed by force. Read up on the history of the Diego Garcia military base some time. Puerto Rico and Guam are still under American control. Further, some would say the westward expansion to the Pacific at the expense of Native American tribes would qualify also. This is without getting into the NATO alliance or the numerous other nations that have American military bases on their territory. Few historical empires look the same or exert their authority in the same way. The Roman empire left many of its territories basically self governing complete with their own kings (King Herod for example), but exerted control through a system of laws (like the international rules based order) and a uniform currency (the US dollar remains the only truly global currency). The idea of an empire as a vast blob spanning a huge area and made up of conquered territories comes from grade school history books. The reality is seldom that simple.
Caesar was famed for his insidiosa clementia, or “treacherous clemency”*
Perhaps we shall be so fortunate next time?
(*Marcus Tullius Cicero.)
Rome wasn’t an empire until it conquered other nation states…. Where are America’s conquered nation states?
Or maybe instead of coming to terms with the corruption and decline we should just give up the empire we never voted to have?
It is all the result of the empire, you know. All of it.
“A Republic, Not An Empire,” Patrick J Buchanan.
The Roman Republic had an Empire long before Augustus.
I would love to, William, but I see this is even more unlikely. We like being an empire. We like running trade deficits without consequences. We like having a fist to get our way. We like using economic coercion to benefit our companies. These interests are just too entrenched at this point, on both left and right.
Every society eventually collapses. Every empire eventually folds. My job is to try and preserve a decent life for my children’s generation. Beyond that, I can’t worry about it.
It’s worth pointing out that the imperialism runs deeper than most realize. The ruling classes are arguably more idealistic and internationally oriented than the people are. A large part of Trump’s appeal was his America first orientation, which meant, among other things, demanding tangible benefits for American military support and economic cooperation, especially benefits for the middle and lower classes. He demanded a renegotiation of NAFTA and got it because Canada and Mexico didn’t dare risk a unilateral withdrawal, and because Trump was willing to use other economic levers against them. The globalists who run things are far too idealistic for their own good. I’m sure it was quite shocking to them how quickly and how enthusiastically the American people embraced essentially imperialist policies, but they never had that firm a grasp on human nature to begin with. The era of a benevolent and idealistic America is over
It’s worth pointing out that the imperialism runs deeper than most realize. The ruling classes are arguably more idealistic and internationally oriented than the people are. A large part of Trump’s appeal was his America first orientation, which meant, among other things, demanding tangible benefits for American military support and economic cooperation, especially benefits for the middle and lower classes. He demanded a renegotiation of NAFTA and got it because Canada and Mexico didn’t dare risk a unilateral withdrawal, and because Trump was willing to use other economic levers against them. The globalists who run things are far too idealistic for their own good. I’m sure it was quite shocking to them how quickly and how enthusiastically the American people embraced essentially imperialist policies, but they never had that firm a grasp on human nature to begin with. The era of a benevolent and idealistic America is over
The Roman Republic had an Empire long before Augustus.
I would love to, William, but I see this is even more unlikely. We like being an empire. We like running trade deficits without consequences. We like having a fist to get our way. We like using economic coercion to benefit our companies. These interests are just too entrenched at this point, on both left and right.
Every society eventually collapses. Every empire eventually folds. My job is to try and preserve a decent life for my children’s generation. Beyond that, I can’t worry about it.
Er, you mean you haven’t already? Dear God
If that’s true, it’s quite ironic since it’s the Left who call the Right privileged. And the Left claim to believe in creating a better society – something the Right would never do. But in reality, it does seem that your view is more accurate.
I agree Brian. I have come to the conclusion that a conservative government should give grants to buy homes to married couples who are committed to having children. It would help the low birthrate problem and also build a group of family oriented home owners who are likely to gravitate towards social conservativism.
U.S. here ….. This is why local governments are full of democrats. The big blue cites are full of Democrats who are rapidly putting minorities at the front, like his sorry-a** Alvin Bragg and Laurie Lightfoot. They don’t need to take the hit for the mess they’ve made. It’s human nature to scratch one another’s back. On the state and federal levels, human nature gets slightly more sophisticated and one begins to see more Demos and Republicans who just make common cause out of the creation and milking of government spending. Everyone not on the gravy train will protest. And when the money gets tight, and the layoffs begin, we see the hidden unemployment that needs be supported one way or another.
The problem is that when we play the same game, it becomes a “threat to democracy”!
Better men than I have noted the comparatives between Roman civilization and America up to this point. Both began as egalitarian societies dominated by small property holders. Both borrowed many aspects of culture from an established predecessor, Greek and European respectively. Both enjoyed periods of rapid expansion punctuated by warfare that enlarged their sphere of influence far beyond what their locally focused governing model was equipped to handle. America now is, arguably, where the Romans were at the end of the Republican period. As with the Romans, America has seen its grassroots politics increasingly dominated by super rich oligarchs who monopolize wealth and power. That period ended with the triumph of Julias Caesar, the original man of the people, who fought against the worst excesses of the oligarchs, breaking their power by leveraging his support within the people and the military. I suspect something similar may well be in store for us. The question is who will be the modern Caesar and what will an open and unapologetic American Empire look like.
Or maybe instead of coming to terms with the corruption and decline we should just give up the empire we never voted to have?
It is all the result of the empire, you know. All of it.
“A Republic, Not An Empire,” Patrick J Buchanan.
Er, you mean you haven’t already? Dear God
Agreed. What they actually need is to get out of their basement and find something physical to work at.
Millions of years of evolution will have its due.
Perhaps the Right has misunderstood what politics was about for a very long time. We actually believed that Lockean Enlightenment stuff and thought politics was a contest of ideas with the goal of producing a better society.
In fact, politics is a patronage system which exists to funnel jobs and money to your friends. This is a standard feature of imperial politics in history (Roman, Byzantine, Austro-Hungarian, Russian all come to mind), and America is certainly an empire now.
Maybe it’s time for us conservatives to just come to terms with this and start playing the same game.
Agreed. What they actually need is to get out of their basement and find something physical to work at.
Millions of years of evolution will have its due.
Alas liberal society has given them far too many white collar email jobs. In the HR departments of large corporates and the public sector, in the ever expanding, grant funded, charity sector ‘fighting’ for social justice, in the huge lobbying sector and, crucially, in the education sector.
A virus doesn’t believe in anything, but it spreads rapidly in a host without effective antibodies.
Humans are poor at assessing large numbers. Our evolution has equipped us to have a natural feel of dozens and even 100s but after that it’s just “big”. Consequently, if we see a large vocal group we are inclined to confuse them for a large minority or a majority even if they are actually a very tiny minority.
Humans are also biased towards compromise. We might not feel it, but compared to our species’ cousins we are relatively peaceful. Our evolution has equipped us to defer to larger groups, to reach a consensus skewed by power, without the use of actual force, appeasement if necessary. Even the great dictators have needed supportive alliances of factions. Consequently, we’ve been able to build large, stable cities and nations.
The internet has utterly changed these dynamics and the long term consequences may be more destabilising than we fear. In the past the misfits, although nursing huge chips on their shoulders, would be so few and so isolated in their communities they’d have little influence. The internet has now given them a megaphone and a means to connect with like minded people like never before. The internet has not increased their number – they remain a tiny minority – but they are now well connected and form a large group that can project their grievances. And almost everyone else, programmed by their human evolution, wrongly perceives these misfits to be a *significant* group and consequently we appease to try and reach a compromise wholly unreflective of their numbers or power.
The internet strengthens consensus with humans remote to us at the cost of consensus with humans we actually physically live alongside. The very necessary consensus needed for cities and nations to exist is being broken by the internet. The irony is some may prefer great dictators and supranational powers to hold liberalism together. And it seems the supporting factions of this new scourge will be those self-declared morally superior desirables.
‘The internet strengthens consensus with humans remote to us at the cost of consensus with humans we actually physically live alongside. The very necessary consensus needed for cities and nations to exist is being broken by the internet.’ This is a very good point and explains the rise of atomised identity politics, such as trans. I would add that, at the micro level, the internet also weakens the horizontal bonds of friendship, couples, families and neighbourhoods.
Brilliant. This is why I come here. Commenters who’re essentially providing content at least as nuanced, insightful, and well-written as that of the Journal itself.
I wonder how your analysis would fit if we reverse engineered it over the history of new communication technologies. Those fundamental characteristics of humans you describe presumably evolved before the rise of alphabetic literacy, probably the most dramatic technology in our hx though to most people it’s as invisible as oxygen (see Walter Ong’s work on orality & literalcy and how externalizing memory profoundly changed human psychology.) I would think literacy itself strengthened those bonds of which you speak, in the beginning, as the most well known works prior to print technologies sort of “franchised” local organization, like Christianity organizing parishes from an empirific structure (just made that word up?).
But as print technologies evolved, you saw broader impulses like the Peasant’s Revolt after the Black Death come to find a literature in the Renaissance & Reformation a century or two later. And while distributing the Bible (via print) again only seemed to reinforce local community bonds (eg the Puritans), by the time of the Enlightenment, the world views of the various splintering sects one saw during the English Civil War began to see print and ultimately led to literatures about ideal human societies being distributed _literally_ across continents. In a way, the Enlightenment was a _product_ of those literate, symbolic abstractions about model small societies being shared among an increasingly literate, cross-continental, and engaged populace.
I’m obviously just brainstorming here, but the distribution via print technologies of those abstract models of those fundamental human groups you described, directly led to the rise of the USA, to 1790s France, and to various European egalitarian movements in the 1840s.
But then, once you’ve got Marxism, you’ve got a German-originated abstraction of societies not only across space but across time, and it’s distributed to literate readers all over the globe. And voila! Over the ensuing 70 years you’ve got the “eccentric” Lenin force-fitting this abstraction onto a vast country like Russia, which never wanted it in any organic way. Instead, it was moving thankfully to the point of a parliamentary democracy, in which they might have brought back the Czar as a symbolic figure like in the UK at the time. But a bunch of eccentric literates ruined that bottom-up revolution (based on factory and farming life) in Feb 1917. They took advantage of a fragile democracy only months later in October 1917, w/ very little effort, and then destroyed the lives of millions by trying to fit the largest landmass of humans at the time into some highly conceptualized model from a German thinker 70 years before.
I’d never thought about communist totalitarianism as a sort of “pre-Internet” example of the dynamics you describe, but it does rather fit, don’t you think? It’s not that humans destroying other humans to steal their wealth, labor, and bodily access relates to literacy per se–just ask victims of ancient Assyrians or Alexander the Great or the Gauls murdered by Caesar. But the weirdness of this being driven by trans-spatial symbolic communication does seem like a modern phenomenon, and that trans-spatial communication has now expanded far beyond the literate global culture during Marx’s and Lenin’s time to a kind of trans-chronic, instantaneous communication.
With the Internet, we may have created hundreds of thousands of baby Lenins. Who knows. Thanks again for your great insights.
“With the Internet, we may have created hundreds of thousands of baby Lenin’s”.
And plenty of baby Hitlers too!
“With the Internet, we may have created hundreds of thousands of baby Lenin’s”.
And plenty of baby Hitlers too!
Really impressive thinking. I’ve been (flippantly) asking for years “Who died and left them king?” about each identity group that suddenly seems to “take over” the zeitgeist. I think you’ve finally provided a reasonable explanation! And when those tiny-factions-that-seem-big are also willing to use violence to push their agenda, it’s a perfect storm of “carrot” and “stick”.
I find elements of your well-made argument persuasive but dispute the claim that “misfits”, while digitally amplified, are not more numerous in recent years. Many violent actors have “self”-radicalized with assistance from internet vitriol.
Amen to your point about remote friends or consensus groups (often echo chambers) taking space away from vital interaction with people in real physical, familial, and cultural proximity to us. But hasn’t that led to an increased incidence of alienation, which could be also be called–somewhat dramatically–a “misfit contagion”?
You seem to apply the term “misfit” to a very troubled or sick subset of humanity, whereas I think most of have a streak of non-conformity/not-fitting-in within us–a streak that tends to get worsened by habits that are very indoors and withdrawn from in-person social contact. Going for a walk in my neighborhood now.
Love this and love Culdesac’s comments on it below. But could you Nell explain to me in simple terms why a Jewish academic from Yale would pretend to be a fan of Hitler… I just don’t get why that would benefit him in any way. It all seems like nonsense to me so I don’t understand how the author draws something meaningful and true for society as a whole from this weird behaviour.
‘The internet strengthens consensus with humans remote to us at the cost of consensus with humans we actually physically live alongside. The very necessary consensus needed for cities and nations to exist is being broken by the internet.’ This is a very good point and explains the rise of atomised identity politics, such as trans. I would add that, at the micro level, the internet also weakens the horizontal bonds of friendship, couples, families and neighbourhoods.
Brilliant. This is why I come here. Commenters who’re essentially providing content at least as nuanced, insightful, and well-written as that of the Journal itself.
I wonder how your analysis would fit if we reverse engineered it over the history of new communication technologies. Those fundamental characteristics of humans you describe presumably evolved before the rise of alphabetic literacy, probably the most dramatic technology in our hx though to most people it’s as invisible as oxygen (see Walter Ong’s work on orality & literalcy and how externalizing memory profoundly changed human psychology.) I would think literacy itself strengthened those bonds of which you speak, in the beginning, as the most well known works prior to print technologies sort of “franchised” local organization, like Christianity organizing parishes from an empirific structure (just made that word up?).
But as print technologies evolved, you saw broader impulses like the Peasant’s Revolt after the Black Death come to find a literature in the Renaissance & Reformation a century or two later. And while distributing the Bible (via print) again only seemed to reinforce local community bonds (eg the Puritans), by the time of the Enlightenment, the world views of the various splintering sects one saw during the English Civil War began to see print and ultimately led to literatures about ideal human societies being distributed _literally_ across continents. In a way, the Enlightenment was a _product_ of those literate, symbolic abstractions about model small societies being shared among an increasingly literate, cross-continental, and engaged populace.
I’m obviously just brainstorming here, but the distribution via print technologies of those abstract models of those fundamental human groups you described, directly led to the rise of the USA, to 1790s France, and to various European egalitarian movements in the 1840s.
But then, once you’ve got Marxism, you’ve got a German-originated abstraction of societies not only across space but across time, and it’s distributed to literate readers all over the globe. And voila! Over the ensuing 70 years you’ve got the “eccentric” Lenin force-fitting this abstraction onto a vast country like Russia, which never wanted it in any organic way. Instead, it was moving thankfully to the point of a parliamentary democracy, in which they might have brought back the Czar as a symbolic figure like in the UK at the time. But a bunch of eccentric literates ruined that bottom-up revolution (based on factory and farming life) in Feb 1917. They took advantage of a fragile democracy only months later in October 1917, w/ very little effort, and then destroyed the lives of millions by trying to fit the largest landmass of humans at the time into some highly conceptualized model from a German thinker 70 years before.
I’d never thought about communist totalitarianism as a sort of “pre-Internet” example of the dynamics you describe, but it does rather fit, don’t you think? It’s not that humans destroying other humans to steal their wealth, labor, and bodily access relates to literacy per se–just ask victims of ancient Assyrians or Alexander the Great or the Gauls murdered by Caesar. But the weirdness of this being driven by trans-spatial symbolic communication does seem like a modern phenomenon, and that trans-spatial communication has now expanded far beyond the literate global culture during Marx’s and Lenin’s time to a kind of trans-chronic, instantaneous communication.
With the Internet, we may have created hundreds of thousands of baby Lenins. Who knows. Thanks again for your great insights.
Really impressive thinking. I’ve been (flippantly) asking for years “Who died and left them king?” about each identity group that suddenly seems to “take over” the zeitgeist. I think you’ve finally provided a reasonable explanation! And when those tiny-factions-that-seem-big are also willing to use violence to push their agenda, it’s a perfect storm of “carrot” and “stick”.
I find elements of your well-made argument persuasive but dispute the claim that “misfits”, while digitally amplified, are not more numerous in recent years. Many violent actors have “self”-radicalized with assistance from internet vitriol.
Amen to your point about remote friends or consensus groups (often echo chambers) taking space away from vital interaction with people in real physical, familial, and cultural proximity to us. But hasn’t that led to an increased incidence of alienation, which could be also be called–somewhat dramatically–a “misfit contagion”?
You seem to apply the term “misfit” to a very troubled or sick subset of humanity, whereas I think most of have a streak of non-conformity/not-fitting-in within us–a streak that tends to get worsened by habits that are very indoors and withdrawn from in-person social contact. Going for a walk in my neighborhood now.
Love this and love Culdesac’s comments on it below. But could you Nell explain to me in simple terms why a Jewish academic from Yale would pretend to be a fan of Hitler… I just don’t get why that would benefit him in any way. It all seems like nonsense to me so I don’t understand how the author draws something meaningful and true for society as a whole from this weird behaviour.
Humans are poor at assessing large numbers. Our evolution has equipped us to have a natural feel of dozens and even 100s but after that it’s just “big”. Consequently, if we see a large vocal group we are inclined to confuse them for a large minority or a majority even if they are actually a very tiny minority.
Humans are also biased towards compromise. We might not feel it, but compared to our species’ cousins we are relatively peaceful. Our evolution has equipped us to defer to larger groups, to reach a consensus skewed by power, without the use of actual force, appeasement if necessary. Even the great dictators have needed supportive alliances of factions. Consequently, we’ve been able to build large, stable cities and nations.
The internet has utterly changed these dynamics and the long term consequences may be more destabilising than we fear. In the past the misfits, although nursing huge chips on their shoulders, would be so few and so isolated in their communities they’d have little influence. The internet has now given them a megaphone and a means to connect with like minded people like never before. The internet has not increased their number – they remain a tiny minority – but they are now well connected and form a large group that can project their grievances. And almost everyone else, programmed by their human evolution, wrongly perceives these misfits to be a *significant* group and consequently we appease to try and reach a compromise wholly unreflective of their numbers or power.
The internet strengthens consensus with humans remote to us at the cost of consensus with humans we actually physically live alongside. The very necessary consensus needed for cities and nations to exist is being broken by the internet. The irony is some may prefer great dictators and supranational powers to hold liberalism together. And it seems the supporting factions of this new scourge will be those self-declared morally superior desirables.
Culture wars aside, these otherwise unemployable graduates have been attaching themselves to productive enterprises for at least twenty years under the banner of nice or neutral-sounding things like “safety” and “procedures”. All of which are great, but you don’t need a third of your workforce tied up with it, which is what happens once they get ensconced and start building their empires.
The addition of other nice-sounding but time and resources-wasting requirements such as anti-racist, diversity etc just flows on from that.
It’s strangling the life out of SMEs and consequently acting as a huge brake on innovation in technology and business.
In the UK is this an unintended consequence of Blair’s 50% target for degrees in our population? The finance for this expansion being the introduction of student loans. However the mistakes made are that Universities saw an avalanche of money coming their way – and there were no measures to ensure the quality of their courses and teaching was maintained. They are mostly pitiful and politically infested by leftist bonkers ideology. There are no market pressures in this system to get the universities to up their game. Secondly, how employable are the graduates, they have frankly been betrayed. It’s such a shame vocational learning and decent apprenticeships have been ditched because they are underinvested, and our crazy emigration policy allows employers to ditch training budgets and employ emigrants at lower overall wages. Blair and the con-socialists have done so much damage with well-intentioned but crazy improvements to education that were not properly thought through!
The same can be said for the US. Student loans were initially backed by the government and swarms of people went to college on my dime.
I think the UK system of student loans is ‘reasonable’ but could be improved. The student takes money that they only pay off through the tax system once they start earning above a certain amount. If the loan is outstanding after a number of years it is written off, paid by the taxpayers (Government). This means students are investing in their own future, which I think is fairer than expecting lots of other taxpayers who do not have the intellect to do a degree to pay for them to up the student’s potential to earn more. (this is unfair). I think the nuance that the universities should have some responsibility to deliver good quality in the courses they offer could be substantially improved. There should be a measure of how much the earning power of students has increased after graduating, and if a median measure of students shows they have not improved their wages the universities should refund some of the student loans. In the UK this could be traced through our PAYE tax system. In this way universities would be partially liable, and be naturally incentivised to improve quality. The argument would then rage what about the difference between research and education for vocations. They might say “Pure learning (especially in the humanities) would suffer badly”. My response would be I think there may be a case for a new balance between vocational/pure learning at the bachelor’s level, but if students wanted to go on to an academic career, then Masters/doctorates could be more biased toward pure learning or pure research for knowledge. Also, I think a bachelor’s degree could be viewed as an opportunity to gain skills for “learning how to learn”, how to apply critical thinking and do research properly (applying the “scientific method”). The universities are plagued with leftish Ideology, that would need to be changed before proper critical thinking is taught as opposed to indoctrination. Even if you do this in a humanities subject the value to an employer for having employees with these skills should still be high.
I think the UK system of student loans is ‘reasonable’ but could be improved. The student takes money that they only pay off through the tax system once they start earning above a certain amount. If the loan is outstanding after a number of years it is written off, paid by the taxpayers (Government). This means students are investing in their own future, which I think is fairer than expecting lots of other taxpayers who do not have the intellect to do a degree to pay for them to up the student’s potential to earn more. (this is unfair). I think the nuance that the universities should have some responsibility to deliver good quality in the courses they offer could be substantially improved. There should be a measure of how much the earning power of students has increased after graduating, and if a median measure of students shows they have not improved their wages the universities should refund some of the student loans. In the UK this could be traced through our PAYE tax system. In this way universities would be partially liable, and be naturally incentivised to improve quality. The argument would then rage what about the difference between research and education for vocations. They might say “Pure learning (especially in the humanities) would suffer badly”. My response would be I think there may be a case for a new balance between vocational/pure learning at the bachelor’s level, but if students wanted to go on to an academic career, then Masters/doctorates could be more biased toward pure learning or pure research for knowledge. Also, I think a bachelor’s degree could be viewed as an opportunity to gain skills for “learning how to learn”, how to apply critical thinking and do research properly (applying the “scientific method”). The universities are plagued with leftish Ideology, that would need to be changed before proper critical thinking is taught as opposed to indoctrination. Even if you do this in a humanities subject the value to an employer for having employees with these skills should still be high.
I think you mean immigrants rather than emigrants, but other than that, spot on.
“In the UK is this an unintended consequence of Blair’s 50% target for degrees in our population?”
Yes.
The same can be said for the US. Student loans were initially backed by the government and swarms of people went to college on my dime.
I think you mean immigrants rather than emigrants, but other than that, spot on.
“In the UK is this an unintended consequence of Blair’s 50% target for degrees in our population?”
Yes.
In the UK is this an unintended consequence of Blair’s 50% target for degrees in our population? The finance for this expansion being the introduction of student loans. However the mistakes made are that Universities saw an avalanche of money coming their way – and there were no measures to ensure the quality of their courses and teaching was maintained. They are mostly pitiful and politically infested by leftist bonkers ideology. There are no market pressures in this system to get the universities to up their game. Secondly, how employable are the graduates, they have frankly been betrayed. It’s such a shame vocational learning and decent apprenticeships have been ditched because they are underinvested, and our crazy emigration policy allows employers to ditch training budgets and employ emigrants at lower overall wages. Blair and the con-socialists have done so much damage with well-intentioned but crazy improvements to education that were not properly thought through!
Culture wars aside, these otherwise unemployable graduates have been attaching themselves to productive enterprises for at least twenty years under the banner of nice or neutral-sounding things like “safety” and “procedures”. All of which are great, but you don’t need a third of your workforce tied up with it, which is what happens once they get ensconced and start building their empires.
The addition of other nice-sounding but time and resources-wasting requirements such as anti-racist, diversity etc just flows on from that.
It’s strangling the life out of SMEs and consequently acting as a huge brake on innovation in technology and business.
Here’s a question for you all: why is the white UK/US world so concerned about the fate, well being, rights, poverty, etc of the black and Islamic world when the Black and Islamic world are vociferously united in opposition to the white world, whether by Islamic insurgence, political and social opposition, and exclusion in everything from politics to TV adverts and journalists?
We have become obscenely decadent.
Or as Frederick the Great so perfectly put it “ the more I see of the human race the more I love my dogs”!
Eric Kaufmann’s concept of ‘asymmetric multiculturalism’ is part of your answer.
Why oh why do you have to look at this by separating everything by ethnicity and identity groupings? – this is divisive and ultimately self-defeating. We all have more in common than we have differences and we should focus on that. Your claim that all of the black and Islamic worlds are ‘vociferously’ against the white world is also very dubious. There are very active vocal minorities who push this view, not held by the silent majority.
Thanks for making these sensible and humane points.
The facts show your suggestion to me manifestly incorrect
Thanks for making these sensible and humane points.
The facts show your suggestion to me manifestly incorrect
We have become obscenely decadent.
Or as Frederick the Great so perfectly put it “ the more I see of the human race the more I love my dogs”!
Eric Kaufmann’s concept of ‘asymmetric multiculturalism’ is part of your answer.
Why oh why do you have to look at this by separating everything by ethnicity and identity groupings? – this is divisive and ultimately self-defeating. We all have more in common than we have differences and we should focus on that. Your claim that all of the black and Islamic worlds are ‘vociferously’ against the white world is also very dubious. There are very active vocal minorities who push this view, not held by the silent majority.
Here’s a question for you all: why is the white UK/US world so concerned about the fate, well being, rights, poverty, etc of the black and Islamic world when the Black and Islamic world are vociferously united in opposition to the white world, whether by Islamic insurgence, political and social opposition, and exclusion in everything from politics to TV adverts and journalists?
If universities didn’t exist we wouldn’t invent them because scholars no longer need to congregate in order to communicate. Instead of pushing them into university and a lifetime of debt and frustration, wise parents would encourage their kids to learn skills that AI can’t easily replace: cabinet making, horticulture, nursing …
It must be blatantly obvious to most that we need a ‘new’ Thomas Cromwell, and the complete Dissolution of the Universities.
Sadly, had Cromwell not been beheaded in 1540, he may also have achieved just that.
Do you think universities will continue to exist as physical entities?
MOOCS challenge them with remote teaching. During the lockdown many universities corralled their students in their rooms and taught them remotely.
What’s the point of going to campus now?
The point(s) are booze, sex, getting away from family etc etc.
The Navy did that for me and provided me with pocket money as the British Armed Forces did for many others of my ‘cohort’.
‘The Gut’ in Malta perhaps?
‘The Gut’ in Malta perhaps?
The Navy did that for me and provided me with pocket money as the British Armed Forces did for many others of my ‘cohort’.
As I predicted in the 1990s, the real “digital divide” will be between those who can afford to live in an idyllic community of other brilliant young people and immerse themselves in intellectual (and social) endeavors for 4 years, vs those who get their “education” from canned online courses via a screen while sitting in a dim closet.
And that’s true of kids too. I said it then when working on grants with the idiot “thought leaders” whom I was forced through material necessary to enable–and 20-30 years later, here we are.
They did, but the result was utterly shitty leaning.
The point(s) are booze, sex, getting away from family etc etc.
As I predicted in the 1990s, the real “digital divide” will be between those who can afford to live in an idyllic community of other brilliant young people and immerse themselves in intellectual (and social) endeavors for 4 years, vs those who get their “education” from canned online courses via a screen while sitting in a dim closet.
And that’s true of kids too. I said it then when working on grants with the idiot “thought leaders” whom I was forced through material necessary to enable–and 20-30 years later, here we are.
They did, but the result was utterly shitty leaning.
My 27yo has a brain the size of a planet, and I applaud his decision not to go to university, despite my own fairly extensive time in academia. Kudos also to him for installing the shower in the old bathroom when he and his girlfriend lived with me during Wuhan Flu.
Your son has made the correct choice.
Long may he prosper.
My old blog on the university swindle:
https://universityswindle.blogspot.com/
Thank you.
Somewhat naughtily I never tire of asking people what Oxbridge contributed to the birth of the Industrial Revolution, (the greatest event in human history, bar none! )
As you well know the answer is absolutely NOTHING, but that does come as an unpleasant surprise to many seduced by the elixir of “Porterhouse Blue, Brideshead Revisited” etc.
Entrepreneurs and wealth builders have not changed since then, and tend to be non graduates. Risk takers do not want to get on a train every morning, to a secure job, but have to employ same, annoyingly, not least as ” slisters” and acuntants.
Entrepreneurs and wealth builders have not changed since then, and tend to be non graduates. Risk takers do not want to get on a train every morning, to a secure job, but have to employ same, annoyingly, not least as ” slisters” and acuntants.
Thank you.
Somewhat naughtily I never tire of asking people what Oxbridge contributed to the birth of the Industrial Revolution, (the greatest event in human history, bar none! )
As you well know the answer is absolutely NOTHING, but that does come as an unpleasant surprise to many seduced by the elixir of “Porterhouse Blue, Brideshead Revisited” etc.
My old blog on the university swindle:
https://universityswindle.blogspot.com/
There is a belief that pure academics can tell you the volume, weight, chemical composition (etc.) of a jar of jam (US = Jelly), but are unable to get the lid off.
Your son has made the correct choice.
Long may he prosper.
There is a belief that pure academics can tell you the volume, weight, chemical composition (etc.) of a jar of jam (US = Jelly), but are unable to get the lid off.
It must be blatantly obvious to most that we need a ‘new’ Thomas Cromwell, and the complete Dissolution of the Universities.
Sadly, had Cromwell not been beheaded in 1540, he may also have achieved just that.
Do you think universities will continue to exist as physical entities?
MOOCS challenge them with remote teaching. During the lockdown many universities corralled their students in their rooms and taught them remotely.
What’s the point of going to campus now?
My 27yo has a brain the size of a planet, and I applaud his decision not to go to university, despite my own fairly extensive time in academia. Kudos also to him for installing the shower in the old bathroom when he and his girlfriend lived with me during Wuhan Flu.
If universities didn’t exist we wouldn’t invent them because scholars no longer need to congregate in order to communicate. Instead of pushing them into university and a lifetime of debt and frustration, wise parents would encourage their kids to learn skills that AI can’t easily replace: cabinet making, horticulture, nursing …
To me the weakness of the argument is that while the idea of the “overproduction” of graduate elites has something to it, I’m not sure I can really see a very obvious massive excess of unemployed/underemployed graduates. I don’t, to be honest, know much about the social profile of social media far-rightists or pretenders to far-rightism, but as far as conventional left-modernism is concerned (including intense preoccupation with racism and the identification of racists, but also misogynists, various phobes and so on, and a generally critical and rejecting stance about national community, history and so forth, and an at least superficial attachment to climate catastrophism.), it seems to me as or even more entrenched among the affluent without job cares than among the struggling young members of the middle-class. In fact, in some areas of graduate employment (publishing, broadcasting, public services, education) it is becoming a condition for success, not a reaction to failure. .
To me the weakness of the argument is that while the idea of the “overproduction” of graduate elites has something to it, I’m not sure I can really see a very obvious massive excess of unemployed/underemployed graduates. I don’t, to be honest, know much about the social profile of social media far-rightists or pretenders to far-rightism, but as far as conventional left-modernism is concerned (including intense preoccupation with racism and the identification of racists, but also misogynists, various phobes and so on, and a generally critical and rejecting stance about national community, history and so forth, and an at least superficial attachment to climate catastrophism.), it seems to me as or even more entrenched among the affluent without job cares than among the struggling young members of the middle-class. In fact, in some areas of graduate employment (publishing, broadcasting, public services, education) it is becoming a condition for success, not a reaction to failure. .
Why are liberals pretending to be racist?
They ain’t pretending.
Ask yourself, “Why are racists pretending to be liberals?”
But these days, isn’t EVERYONE “racist” … if not today, then maybe tomorrow?
For myself, Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.
For myself, Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.
Ask yourself, “Why are racists pretending to be liberals?”
But these days, isn’t EVERYONE “racist” … if not today, then maybe tomorrow?
Why are liberals pretending to be racist?
They ain’t pretending.
Pretty accurate account for a fair number of those involved and BAP being Jewish is one of the funniest plot twists in years, but the presumption is that a white collar job in a sclerotic liberal democracy is the panacea for what is a much deeper problem than simply finding good jobs for the glut of middle class graduates. Such jobs have long diverted minds from the existential wound of nihilism in the Western psyche (until predictable mid-life crises strike) but, given this generation have been staring into that particular abyss for 15 years now, the white collar job ain’t going to be the diversion it once was. We are too far down the road now and the old liberal faiths are failing fast. It’s going to be a wild ride.
Pretty accurate account for a fair number of those involved and BAP being Jewish is one of the funniest plot twists in years, but the presumption is that a white collar job in a sclerotic liberal democracy is the panacea for what is a much deeper problem than simply finding good jobs for the glut of middle class graduates. Such jobs have long diverted minds from the existential wound of nihilism in the Western psyche (until predictable mid-life crises strike) but, given this generation have been staring into that particular abyss for 15 years now, the white collar job ain’t going to be the diversion it once was. We are too far down the road now and the old liberal faiths are failing fast. It’s going to be a wild ride.
As the Great White Racist wrote:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more
The great challenge of the “overproduced elite” is to rise above mere strutting and fretting. But it ain’t easy. No siree.
But the “overproduced elite” are dancing (strutting and fretting) before the Emperor seeking patronage. But the Emperor has no patronage to bestow. So grifters got to grift.
I blame Tony Blair for increasing the supply of University graduates without ensuring employment opportunities. But then how many Media degrees can society support?
It’s even harder when the only thing you’ve been taught is strutting and fretting, Sometimes it’s advanced strutting and fretting. It’s easy to get a master’s in strutting and fretting, but it’s no more marketable. You have to get a doctorate and specialize in either strutting or fretting.
There’s always a PhD, piled higher & deeper!
There’s always a PhD, piled higher & deeper!
But the “overproduced elite” are dancing (strutting and fretting) before the Emperor seeking patronage. But the Emperor has no patronage to bestow. So grifters got to grift.
I blame Tony Blair for increasing the supply of University graduates without ensuring employment opportunities. But then how many Media degrees can society support?
It’s even harder when the only thing you’ve been taught is strutting and fretting, Sometimes it’s advanced strutting and fretting. It’s easy to get a master’s in strutting and fretting, but it’s no more marketable. You have to get a doctorate and specialize in either strutting or fretting.
As the Great White Racist wrote:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more
The great challenge of the “overproduced elite” is to rise above mere strutting and fretting. But it ain’t easy. No siree.
Despite the author’s cavalier attitude, most historical dissident movements, notably the intelligentsia of the late Russian Empire, are indeed made up of groups of educated but unemployed individuals. Sometimes that’s second and third sons of noble houses and sometimes its the products of an overbuilt and self-serving education system. The fringe elements on both the right and left have become large enough to become problematic for both parties because, among other things, unemployed intellectuals have plenty of time for political proselytizing and voting in primaries. They’ve pulled both parties towards their respective poles. The problem is compounded by the fact that the political ‘center’, the establishment, has lost the public trust. Their vision and ideology have failed and been broadly rejected by the masses, yet they have refused to reform and offered no alternatives. With no viable vision of their own, they resort to peddling fear of the scary extremists on either side, a temporary delaying action that normalizes radicalism over time. This represents yet another failure of our ruling class. They are essentially plowing the fertile ground for wannabe Robespierres and Lenins to plant seeds of revolution. It takes time for seeds to grow, but without serious changes to the globalist system, these will eventually grow and bear bitter fruit. If they are so incompetent that they can neither see it nor stop it, they’ll deserve what they get, even if nobody else does.
Despite the author’s cavalier attitude, most historical dissident movements, notably the intelligentsia of the late Russian Empire, are indeed made up of groups of educated but unemployed individuals. Sometimes that’s second and third sons of noble houses and sometimes its the products of an overbuilt and self-serving education system. The fringe elements on both the right and left have become large enough to become problematic for both parties because, among other things, unemployed intellectuals have plenty of time for political proselytizing and voting in primaries. They’ve pulled both parties towards their respective poles. The problem is compounded by the fact that the political ‘center’, the establishment, has lost the public trust. Their vision and ideology have failed and been broadly rejected by the masses, yet they have refused to reform and offered no alternatives. With no viable vision of their own, they resort to peddling fear of the scary extremists on either side, a temporary delaying action that normalizes radicalism over time. This represents yet another failure of our ruling class. They are essentially plowing the fertile ground for wannabe Robespierres and Lenins to plant seeds of revolution. It takes time for seeds to grow, but without serious changes to the globalist system, these will eventually grow and bear bitter fruit. If they are so incompetent that they can neither see it nor stop it, they’ll deserve what they get, even if nobody else does.
Great piece… i have to admit following the curve a bit as a kid. Not in search of any great job or social status but went from football and far right rhetoric post puberty to leftism at college and eventaully grew out of tribal stuff. Funnily enough i thought i was “true to the scene” and most others were posers, when in fact we all were. The fashion either followed or drove the politics. Punk – skinhead- peacnik-mortaged about sums up the cycle. Sadly the “edgy” idiots featured in the article are going through their process in their 20s and 30s when our cohort was dealing with jobs and children.
True
True
Great piece… i have to admit following the curve a bit as a kid. Not in search of any great job or social status but went from football and far right rhetoric post puberty to leftism at college and eventaully grew out of tribal stuff. Funnily enough i thought i was “true to the scene” and most others were posers, when in fact we all were. The fashion either followed or drove the politics. Punk – skinhead- peacnik-mortaged about sums up the cycle. Sadly the “edgy” idiots featured in the article are going through their process in their 20s and 30s when our cohort was dealing with jobs and children.
One bone of contention for me is the assertion that the financial crisis of 2008 brought down the house of cards. The jobs for all these surplus graduates were never there in the first place and recent graduates competing for white collar work were as exposed to competition from young Eastern and Southern European immigrant graduates almost as much as skilled blue collar workers. Espousing open borders remained in fashion, despite this cohort very much being inconvenienced by it all.
The UK never needed endless arts and humanities graduates and there were never going to be enough jobs to go round. The expansion of universities also came at the cost of reducing vocational and technical tertiary education. Between 2008 and my own time at university (when you still had polys and tech colleges) numbers nearly trebled. Despite being an undistinguished scholar, I walked into an industry job in my science field within a few months of graduating.
Where we are now, when looking at job applications for entry level posts, I find myself wondering which applicants with a first class degree, master’s/PhD, extensive volunteering/internship experience and charity work on their resume should even get shortlisted. The gravy train rolls on and until a government comes along with a serious package of reform, this malaise ain’t going nowhere.
One bone of contention for me is the assertion that the financial crisis of 2008 brought down the house of cards. The jobs for all these surplus graduates were never there in the first place and recent graduates competing for white collar work were as exposed to competition from young Eastern and Southern European immigrant graduates almost as much as skilled blue collar workers. Espousing open borders remained in fashion, despite this cohort very much being inconvenienced by it all.
The UK never needed endless arts and humanities graduates and there were never going to be enough jobs to go round. The expansion of universities also came at the cost of reducing vocational and technical tertiary education. Between 2008 and my own time at university (when you still had polys and tech colleges) numbers nearly trebled. Despite being an undistinguished scholar, I walked into an industry job in my science field within a few months of graduating.
Where we are now, when looking at job applications for entry level posts, I find myself wondering which applicants with a first class degree, master’s/PhD, extensive volunteering/internship experience and charity work on their resume should even get shortlisted. The gravy train rolls on and until a government comes along with a serious package of reform, this malaise ain’t going nowhere.
An excellent read, Malcolm. Thank you.
An excellent read, Malcolm. Thank you.
This is the third time Malcolm Kyeyune has referred to Donald Trump as the “46th president” when he was the 45th. If the author can’t get this simple fact right, there is no point in reading his musings about anything.
Especially when his sources about America are all from online stories and from books. I wonder if he ever actually has stepped foot on this soil?
between Trump 45 & 47 he chooses the middle path
Isn’t he also the 46th lol
Especially when his sources about America are all from online stories and from books. I wonder if he ever actually has stepped foot on this soil?
between Trump 45 & 47 he chooses the middle path
Isn’t he also the 46th lol
This is the third time Malcolm Kyeyune has referred to Donald Trump as the “46th president” when he was the 45th. If the author can’t get this simple fact right, there is no point in reading his musings about anything.
I never used to look at the Daily Mail. I started looking at the comments a while back – to bear wittiness to all the wicked right-wing and fascistic things people say. I was wrong. It was full of horrible trolling hate-speech by obvious SJWs. Why does the left LOVE hateful forms of referring to others? Why are people not allowed to disagree?
Nobody is allowed to disagree nowadays. The labour party disagrees with Brexit but has to agree with Brexit.
Same goes for the Telegraph and Spectator. They attract such lengthy flame wars you have to scroll up to remind yourself of the actual subject article.
Nobody is allowed to disagree nowadays. The labour party disagrees with Brexit but has to agree with Brexit.
Same goes for the Telegraph and Spectator. They attract such lengthy flame wars you have to scroll up to remind yourself of the actual subject article.
I never used to look at the Daily Mail. I started looking at the comments a while back – to bear wittiness to all the wicked right-wing and fascistic things people say. I was wrong. It was full of horrible trolling hate-speech by obvious SJWs. Why does the left LOVE hateful forms of referring to others? Why are people not allowed to disagree?
One natural home for these “overproduced elites” wishing for a white collar job with a modicum of respect is of course parliament. This may already be a reason for the ineffectiveness of that institution and reason to fear further progression in the same direction. Members with wider previous experience and technical proficiency will become even rarer than they are now.
One natural home for these “overproduced elites” wishing for a white collar job with a modicum of respect is of course parliament. This may already be a reason for the ineffectiveness of that institution and reason to fear further progression in the same direction. Members with wider previous experience and technical proficiency will become even rarer than they are now.
“Yet ever since Donald Trump supposedly ascended to the presidency in 2016 through “meme magic” — rather than simply winning over voters in vulnerable Democratic voting districts”. – begins as he goes on, without much reference to the truth. Clearly Trump did win over millions of working class votes, and MAGA is picking up an increasing number of black male voters as well.
Everyone is online It’s not at all clear which bit of the on-line right you are talking about. The actual racist/aesthetes addressed by BAP are a relatively tiny group…and yes the incident was amusing/interesting – but has almost no wider relevance.
Yes there are thousands of [ ‘over’]-educated people who are moving away from liberalism and the progressive left. But perhaps that is because they intuitively understand one or more or the following:
(1) limits to growth are finely kicking in
(2) the market liberalism (‘neoliberalism’) of the globalist ‘right’ and the open borders progressivism and identity politics of the left amount to the same thing – and share an anti-human anthropology that starts with atomized, isolated, disembedded sovereign individuals;
(3) consciously or not, they veer towards a vision of people that centres on covenantal individuals embedded in a tissue of familial, clannish, place-based, communities and neighbourhoods;
(4) that secularism and liberalism have been disastrous – and the reason for this is a false metaphysics, the worship of man rather than God and various forms of idolatry (and on this point, people as different as Ben Shapiro,Michael Knowles and Dave Greene (AKA ‘the distributes’) and likely Yarvin, would see Andrew Tate as an abomination and actually the narcissistic twin of the most mysoginist trans ideologue);
(5) that the logical endpoint of this religion of the individual and metaphysical materialism upheld by the UN, WEF, transgenderism, and the rest – is transhumanism – a literal destruction of humanity that starts with the destruction of women and motherhood. Our BraveNewWorld will start and end with a society of motherless monsters (look here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2RIvJ1U7RE)
The upshot of all that is that the tiny splinter of the dissident right that you describe is largely irrelevant in numbers, coherence and direction – mostly performative nonsense like BAP – compared with a much larger group of post-liberals rooted in natural law, Christianity, Judaism – and a historically astute recognition that liberal democracy is not the only, nor necessarily the best way to organize the ‘good society’.
In that sense they operate as Aristotelians who have read Gramsci (rediscovering Tocqueville, Burke and the Federalist/Anti-Federalist papers along the way)
Dave the Distributist would be a good example. Certainly most of the Alt Right with large followings fit into this….Tim Pool..in the UK the Podcast of the Lotus Eaters….and on the more liberal edge, former/disappointed/red-pilled feminists such as Meghan Murphy…and in the middle…many of the people who crop up in Unherd – even Mary Harrington and Paul Kingsnorth who would never identify as right wing, or even necessarily conservative both are highly skeptical that the liberal centre can hold and see transhumanist individualism as the greatest threat to our humanity as well as our civilization.
Curtis Yarvin plays in the sandbox described by the author on occasion – but even he is contemptuous of real racists most of the time (when he’s not doing a Yanos Yoannopoulus and playing to the gallery. Monarchist radical libertarianism is not necessarily racist; nor is the intuitive sense that ‘small is beautiful’ . It’s just not liberal/individualist nor progressive.
” These people have worn many masks before, and they will wear more masks in the future, until liberal society recognises them for who they are and finally gives them the only thing they really care about: a white-collar email job, ideally one that carries a little prestige and can be performed remotely”
Except, white collar jobs never coming back. Growth is likely not coming back. LIberal democracy is in real trouble. And when people are hungry they will come off their keyboards and make choices, alliances…
Go and have a chat with Mark Goodwin and re-write with some actual data, numbers, demographics….and I think you’d come up with something important and interesting. This is just late night bar talk.
“Yet ever since Donald Trump supposedly ascended to the presidency in 2016 through “meme magic” — rather than simply winning over voters in vulnerable Democratic voting districts”. – begins as he goes on, without much reference to the truth. Clearly Trump did win over millions of working class votes, and MAGA is picking up an increasing number of black male voters as well.
Everyone is online It’s not at all clear which bit of the on-line right you are talking about. The actual racist/aesthetes addressed by BAP are a relatively tiny group…and yes the incident was amusing/interesting – but has almost no wider relevance.
Yes there are thousands of [ ‘over’]-educated people who are moving away from liberalism and the progressive left. But perhaps that is because they intuitively understand one or more or the following:
(1) limits to growth are finely kicking in
(2) the market liberalism (‘neoliberalism’) of the globalist ‘right’ and the open borders progressivism and identity politics of the left amount to the same thing – and share an anti-human anthropology that starts with atomized, isolated, disembedded sovereign individuals;
(3) consciously or not, they veer towards a vision of people that centres on covenantal individuals embedded in a tissue of familial, clannish, place-based, communities and neighbourhoods;
(4) that secularism and liberalism have been disastrous – and the reason for this is a false metaphysics, the worship of man rather than God and various forms of idolatry (and on this point, people as different as Ben Shapiro,Michael Knowles and Dave Greene (AKA ‘the distributes’) and likely Yarvin, would see Andrew Tate as an abomination and actually the narcissistic twin of the most mysoginist trans ideologue);
(5) that the logical endpoint of this religion of the individual and metaphysical materialism upheld by the UN, WEF, transgenderism, and the rest – is transhumanism – a literal destruction of humanity that starts with the destruction of women and motherhood. Our BraveNewWorld will start and end with a society of motherless monsters (look here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2RIvJ1U7RE)
The upshot of all that is that the tiny splinter of the dissident right that you describe is largely irrelevant in numbers, coherence and direction – mostly performative nonsense like BAP – compared with a much larger group of post-liberals rooted in natural law, Christianity, Judaism – and a historically astute recognition that liberal democracy is not the only, nor necessarily the best way to organize the ‘good society’.
In that sense they operate as Aristotelians who have read Gramsci (rediscovering Tocqueville, Burke and the Federalist/Anti-Federalist papers along the way)
Dave the Distributist would be a good example. Certainly most of the Alt Right with large followings fit into this….Tim Pool..in the UK the Podcast of the Lotus Eaters….and on the more liberal edge, former/disappointed/red-pilled feminists such as Meghan Murphy…and in the middle…many of the people who crop up in Unherd – even Mary Harrington and Paul Kingsnorth who would never identify as right wing, or even necessarily conservative both are highly skeptical that the liberal centre can hold and see transhumanist individualism as the greatest threat to our humanity as well as our civilization.
Curtis Yarvin plays in the sandbox described by the author on occasion – but even he is contemptuous of real racists most of the time (when he’s not doing a Yanos Yoannopoulus and playing to the gallery. Monarchist radical libertarianism is not necessarily racist; nor is the intuitive sense that ‘small is beautiful’ . It’s just not liberal/individualist nor progressive.
” These people have worn many masks before, and they will wear more masks in the future, until liberal society recognises them for who they are and finally gives them the only thing they really care about: a white-collar email job, ideally one that carries a little prestige and can be performed remotely”
Except, white collar jobs never coming back. Growth is likely not coming back. LIberal democracy is in real trouble. And when people are hungry they will come off their keyboards and make choices, alliances…
Go and have a chat with Mark Goodwin and re-write with some actual data, numbers, demographics….and I think you’d come up with something important and interesting. This is just late night bar talk.
Equity, diversity & inclusion departments are still hiring, public/private partnership!
Equity, diversity & inclusion departments are still hiring, public/private partnership!
What became of Bronze Age Pervert? Has he perhaps been ‘offered advice’?
On his way to becoming a Silver Surfer?
Ooh, I’d pay to see that!
Ooh, I’d pay to see that!
On his way to becoming a Silver Surfer?
What became of Bronze Age Pervert? Has he perhaps been ‘offered advice’?
This was pretty glib regarding the Red Scare podcasters. Dasha was briefly a Bernie Bro but then she tends to hop from one thing to another, Catholicism, chess… Anna wasn’t really a Bernie supporter, she clearly indulges Dasha but her real convictions are obvious and have been from the beginning. And when was the last time she was an art critic, 5 years ago? Linked to her PhD studies? This smacks of petty jealously honestly.
I agree – I recently became a fan of Anna and Dash after reading an article about them in (of all places) the American Mind. They are a bit Valley-Girl in their presentation, but genuinely clever and articulate with each other and their guests.
Clearly, they prefer making good dough to no dough, but the effect is often enlightening.
I agree – I recently became a fan of Anna and Dash after reading an article about them in (of all places) the American Mind. They are a bit Valley-Girl in their presentation, but genuinely clever and articulate with each other and their guests.
Clearly, they prefer making good dough to no dough, but the effect is often enlightening.
This was pretty glib regarding the Red Scare podcasters. Dasha was briefly a Bernie Bro but then she tends to hop from one thing to another, Catholicism, chess… Anna wasn’t really a Bernie supporter, she clearly indulges Dasha but her real convictions are obvious and have been from the beginning. And when was the last time she was an art critic, 5 years ago? Linked to her PhD studies? This smacks of petty jealously honestly.
On April 23rd, around 3pm, turn off all internet commenting forever. It achieves nothing, sways no opinions. Return to writing to the editor, by which time, if missives are even read, opinions will be out of date and pulped.
On April 23rd, around 3pm, turn off all internet commenting forever. It achieves nothing, sways no opinions. Return to writing to the editor, by which time, if missives are even read, opinions will be out of date and pulped.
Very funny!
Interesting article but appears to not address the main driver for our current societal malaise….neo liberalism and late stage capitalism. People’s aspirations have been robbed by a corporate owned elite. Like a good lefty I’m not surprised by the attacks on a fundamental popular movement such as socialism.
I ask again.. can someone PLEASE actually define ” racist”?!!!
Anyone who is white.
Read it quickly, so I may have missed something, but did it claim that Bernie Sanders and many/most of his supporters were racist? Evidence? And he hasn’t exactly been “easily reabsorbed into the Democratic Party”: his public statements on taxation, the financial industry, the Middle East, etc give the Dem party leadership fits (when they notice them).
When I hit the sentence about hermit crabs, I lost it: “a horde of hermit crabs in search of new shells.” And then it just built so beautifully to the end. Very well done. I do love a good laugh.
What does the author mean by “Liberal” ?
The way this term is used in the US means
“Leftist”.
Of course the Left are racists and facists and have been for a long time.