Your Journey to the Alt-Right.

the UBI approach is extremely reminiscent of Rome's approach to its urban poor - the capite censi

thought of as literally contributing nothing, simply existing and having to be fed to keep from burning the city in food riots

Rome did eventually find a use for them as soldiers once the shift from city-state to empire made the old system of propertied manpower insufficient

not a solution we can replicate, obviously, for many diverse reasons

constant escape said:

But couldn't consumer eugenics "naturally" become widespread enough as to be indistinguishable from imposed systemic eugenics?

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not indistinguishable - you're still talking about individual selection vs imposed exclusion

anyone with the $ able to buy [x upgrade] vs excluding [x undesirables] from the gene pool altogether

in terms of societal penetration tho, sure, all that

that's why I meant by "also a concern where the former [consumer genetics] bleeds into the latter [systemic eugenics]"

it's a serious question, I agree

it's been on the fringe of public consciousness for awhile but will become more prominent as the technology improves

But if it becomes another expensive way to bolster your family line, inaccessible to those who would have the most to gain from it, could it not have the kind of consequences that as systemically imposed eugenics would have? It would just be a natural disparity rather than an artificial one, depending on how we define those terms.

That is, even if there aren't systemically imposed eugenic measures, the effects of such could very well be met, de facto, by consumer eugenics. Especially if you need to meet certain medical/insurance qualifications, or if other regulatory and exclusive mechanisms are thought up.

"anyone with the $ able to buy [x upgrade] vs excluding [x undesirables] from the gene pool altogether"

I just don't quite see how these two are necessarily mutually exclusive. On the one hand, the system independently undergoes some kind of disproportionate genetic leap, and on the other hand the same disproportionate leap is just administered by the government. The only difference is the means, no?

I should clarify that I'm not saying there is no difference between the outcomes of the two cases, just that the systemic impact can result from either, and that they aren't distinct from one another in that respect.

One question would be about legislation. Are there already any laws regarding eugenics? Anywhere?

And frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if there were already uber-wealthy parties engaging in, or at least funding, such experiments. The CRISPR babies turned out well, right?

Corpsey said:

"I am whatever you say I am
If I wasn't then why would I say I am?"

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There's a million others just like me who walk talk and act like me who just don't give a fuck like me.

I'm about 200 posts late but on South Park: it was huge when I was in school and especially with boys who were into nu-metal/Eminem and Jackass, and I think they all have a nihilistic cynicism at their core and they look like cruelty as entertainment.

I think a lot of this stuff is more sophisticated and nuanced than it seems on the surface. But in high school the joke was not "Cartman's homophobia is abhorrent" the joke was "haha cheesy puffs haha gay"

Twenty years ago a generation of teenagers were given this as entertainment and now they're at an age where they're in jobs and roles of significance. I don't think it's a surprise that the alt-right is growing the way it is in 2020, the roots were planted at the right time.

boxedjoy said:

I'm about 200 posts late but on South Park: it was huge when I was in school and especially with boys who were into nu-metal/Eminem and Jackass, and I think they all have a nihilistic cynicism at their core and they look like cruelty as entertainment.

I think a lot of this stuff is more sophisticated and nuanced than it seems on the surface. But in high school the joke was not "Cartman's homophobia is abhorrent" the joke was "haha cheesy puffs haha gay"

Twenty years ago a generation of teenagers were given this as entertainment and now they're at an age where they're in jobs and roles of significance. I don't think it's a surprise that the alt-right is growing the way it is in 2020, the roots were planted at the right time.

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I'm sure there's a lot in that, and I recognise the stereotypical South Park superfan, but I don't think the causal link between that and the rise of the alt-right is all that straightforward. For one thing, there's certainly a strain of nihilism in various elements of the fringe left, too - tankies, I guess, and the Putin-fetishists and other unpleasant weirdos who exist in the murky red-brown hinterland. For another, pure nihilism is ultimately apolitical, because even the most bloodthirsty ideologies - colonial imperialism, Nazism, Stalinism - ultimately have to stand for something, as well as against something else, and nihilism by definition can't actively be in favour of anything, except perhaps immediate personal ego-gratification (which is why I think Trump has become the figurehead for an ideology without actually being ideological himself).

Then there's the extent to which the alt-right isn't so much a new phenomenon (granted that it's taken a form that could only have been enabled by the internet) as a revival of a type of conservatism that the Republican party moved away from during the Reagan/Bush/Bush years, and probably before that to some extent, when it prioritized The Market above all concerns about culture. So now you have all these kids and young adults - and some not-so-young adults - trading in memes all about WWII, European colonialism, the Crusades and even ancient history - "the Chad Roman Empire vs the Virgin Ottoman Empire". Researching their ancestry and talking earnestly about Y-chromosomal haplogroups, genes for lactase persistence and the Bell-Beaker Culture. Luka's mentioned influential right-wing Instagram accounts that are full of photos of Greek sculptures and gothic cathedrals. The Spengler revival.

So if nihilists are people who don't care about anything, then these guys care very, very deeply about things that they think the left hates and that normie, neoliberal conservatives are indifferent to.

"I am a leftist. But I like guns, free speech and pussy. I fly the Flag. Eat BBQ. Do all sorts of fun drugs. Work fulltime. Pirate UFC and Bellator every other weekend. I drive a gas guzzling muscle car. I hate paying taxes. I'm not a Christian but I believe in God. Been listening to JRE for about 5 years."

There's a book about this called South Park Conservatives

padraig (u.s.) said:

the UBI approach is extremely reminiscent of Rome's approach to its urban poor - the capite censi

thought of as literally contributing nothing, simply existing and having to be fed to keep from burning the city in food riots

Rome did eventually find a use for them as soldiers once the shift from city-state to empire made the old system of propertied manpower insufficient

not a solution we can replicate, obviously, for many diverse reasons

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Today I learned!

Rudewhy said:

I attended a public lecture given by one of Mark Fisher's PhD students at Goldsmiths around five years ago - Mark was moderating the discussion and it was the only time I ever saw and heard him speak in the flesh. I went with a couple of friends, one of whom used to post reguarly on here and another who was born under communism and whose entire existance had been shaped and determined by the realities of such a system. We were all big fans of Mark's writings at the time and, really, we attended just to see him talk. The PhD student spoke for about an hour on their "research" into what housing would look like under an imagined future communism. To both myself, who had just finished three years attempting to study urban planning and housing in a British context, and to the friend who had spent their entire life living in the type of housing communism actually provides, it was a blatent clusterfuck of absolute nonsense - my friend spent most of the discussion rolling their eyes, facepalming and eventually getting quite angry with this middle-class English student going on about the life of luxury Britain is missing out on by not implementing communism. In hindsight, I understand that evening, and the subsequent discussions I had with my friend about what the left in Western countries get completely wrong about the state of the world, as the beginning of the process where I stopped following and reading the output of that whole intellectual scene, and subsequently stopped self-defining myself as left-wing.

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interesting, i think i stopped defining myself as left wing about 6-7 years ago now, seeing the left as statified capital fetishism (as opposed to state capitalism as a different mode of production) and little else. which made me double down on marx's writings (particularly the early writings) of course.

Always thought k-punk cared more about the british left than the working class, it's why he never had any time for anarchists/leftcommunists/council coms because his politics was always based on cultural aesthetics and not lived proletarian experience, be that under the soviet type transitional to capitalism systems or working class militants who grappled with the fact that they would not/could not live under Stalinism. Too much post-punk, not enough rare groove.

Wow CRISPR is gonna be such a shit-show.

constant escape said:

Is it a matter of linearity vs network-like/rhizomatic structure? I mean, that shackle was busted a while ago, Ulysses at the latest, no?

One lecture described Ulysses as fascicular, which is a great word I painfully forgot about for a while then recently reencountered. Sort of an in-between of linear and rhizomatic.

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Ulysses is porn you muppet. Finnigans wake is the interior biological monologue of a sex maniac.

catalog said:

I think the novel as a form definitely reached its apotheosis in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Before film, telly radio took over.

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astute observation. novel is all indebted to auteur theory. there have been a few attempts to make novels more collective - Q by Luther Blissett springs to mind but by and large its hard for the form to become senius.

Rudewhy said:

"Fully Automated Luxury Communism", "Acid Corbynism", "Left-Accelerationism" - the British intellectual left has been awash with these insane ideas over the past decade.

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this is why i think these bozos are more dangerous than Nick Land, who knows he's a far right troll and owns it. He wants to be confined to the periphery. these middle class dickheads want to make him chic commodity porn. Death in June for woke social justice activists. I expected better from Nina, if I'm being honest. An excessive proclivity for anglo cock can never end well.

shiels said:

personally very on board with all these ideas

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Because you're lazy and don't want to study. put down the fucking bong. weed is banned for anyone over the age of 20. It's a dissensus golden rule. weed is haram on here, only meth+lsd+shot of testosterone.

Luke I'm still disappointed you never introduced Mark to amphetamines. would have blown his mind if you put him in a floatation tank and put mescalinum united - symphonies of steel part III on loop.

luka said:

John Eden is the only other person on here who is fully commited to the idea of violent revolution. you would think third is but third's image of revolution is actually more miracle than it is violent bloody struggle and slaughter.

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not true, I'm actually the most violent on here, I reject democracy entirely, even its direct participatory kinds.

suspendedreason said:

I'd sooner see a hyper-capitalist environment with good safety nets and serious eugenics than I would a communist state that just breeds human mediocrity and slave morality for millennia as standard of living slowly crumbles

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good thing the hypercapitalism you fetishise is stuck in the 18th century then.

you're right I fetishize hypercapitalism, I love it, adore it, can't get enough of it. I lick its bootheel