Your Journey to the Alt-Right.

I realize "realistic" here is inherently restrictive - how does one determine what is realistic and what is not

and gives in exactly to the trap of capitalist realism - or some kind of realism trap, anyway

but solutions even we ourselves acknowledge to improbable if not impossible cannot be regarded as realistic, ipso facto

suspendedreason said:

who is this thot nomad whose spectral sexuality haunts this forum

Click to expand...

she was actually a big forerunner to you and constant escape, now that I'm thinking about it

American, background in philosophy, always up for a tussle. it was a different time in internet discourse tho. more pedantic, more earnest, etc.

definitely not a thot, nor a catfish. last I knew, many years ago, she was career-switching into medicine.

craner's idealized version of her is only somewhat loosely related to the reality, but it would be churlish to begrudge

padraig (u.s.) said:

definitely not a thot, nor a catfish.

Click to expand...

And, for the record, not a man either (sorry, luka).

luka said:

I think this is an interesting question and there does seem to be a crisis ahead, for which the usual Bilderberg reptilians have been planning for for some time and preparing us for as well through news stories and reports etc.

But I don't think we have to go along with this notion that we simply become redundant when we can't do our boring stupid jobs anymore. The repitilians might not be able to think of any useful way for us to serve them (although this in itself is questionable) but it may be we will find ways to amuse ourselves.

Click to expand...

As an aside, part of the reason I'm very resistant to this framing of the rich and powerful as inhuman - other than the fact that it's a psychology only a cunt-hair away from literal Nazi-style antisemitism - is that it lets the rest of us off the hook. These people aren't another species, even if their material lifestyle might be very far removed from ours, and we delude ourselves by imagining that we'd be any better in their position. And yes, some of them like Trump have been born into vast wealth in the first place, but many haven't. Zuckerberg's family background is middle-class professionals, not poor but hardly zillionaires, while Martin Shkreli's parents were dirt-poor immigrants who worked as janitors.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently, as some of my managers at work have properly dicked me over, or have attempted to. The guy I report to is on, what, maybe half as much money again as I am? The guy he reports to is probably on twice my salary, something like that? Hardly wealth beyond my wildest dreams. And if I ever find myself in that sort of position, with underlings like I am now, will I treat them any better? I like to think I would, but who can say? Now scale that level of wealth up from the order of a hundred grand a year to a hundred million a year, or consider those in the Bezos/Gates class with a personal wealth of the order of a hundred billion.

So if you'd met Bezos when he was, I dunno, 18, you might have been struck by his ambition and interest in technology, but I doubt you'd have pegged him either as the likely future richest human of all time or as a being fundamentally alien from yourself.

Another reason is that treating them as humans means we can judge their actions by the standards of human ethics, instead of writing them off as intrinsically and inhumanly evil, which lets them off the hook, too.

padraig (u.s.) said:

sorry, I should have been clearer. I wasn't really interested in your take on UBI, which is basically what I'd imagine it to be.

something more like - what's your preferred realistic solution to the coming crisis of obsolescence for some large portion of the labor force?

Click to expand...

Well I hope there is an intensification of revolt and a reclamation of the commons, but is that realistic? I don't know. I'm quite pessimistic about revolution, if it does happen, happening at all. I think the eventual ruin of the contending classes is more likely, and maybe something will arise out of that, but by then I'll probably be dead.

padraig (u.s.) said:

none of that is controversial or new - as I said (and as I'm sure you know) it's the basic critique of democracy as old as democracy itself

one that has been iterated many times throughout history, more often from a reactionary standpoint tho also from one like yours

in the reactionary vein it's - again as you probably know - the exact argument of yr typical current post-Curtis Yarvin etc neoreactionary

their answer for an optimal system is some form of enlightened despotism, be it actual monarchy, technocratic oligarchy or whatever

which, even ignoring its prima facie absurdity, has a ton of problems, not least basically ignoring the entire history of despotism

I personally am also agnostic about an "optimal system" in the same way I am about God - if it exists, it's unknowable by finite beings i.e. us

and as a great as a "true communist" society sounds, I have the same inability to see how it comes about

as any kind of belief in its possibility seems to require ignoring most of the history of human civilization

and possibly also ignoring "human nature", tho idk if it's possible to disentangle some purer human nature from whatever civilization has made of it

as you say "the essentials of life are demarketised, housing, food, healthcare, clothing etc. Which will obviously never happen"

so we're left at the exact same place as it's ever been - democracy as the least bad realistic option

Click to expand...

I mean that's true enough for us in US and UK. Democracy, as much as it is ideological, is a real abstraction proceeding from the concrete. Yes, you or I may have no power to change anything or control our lives, but capital rewards our labour by allowing us (off the job) to retreat to the isolated spectator of leisure. Whether one can universalise that to even the US border or worldwide is a point of contention to me. so in that sense I'm not in the business of being a third world romantic revolutionary like Ho, Mao etc. Who were really like a Robespierre more than anyone, including their murder of the conspiracy of equals and Babeuf. Smash the old aristocracy and religious structures and stimulate frenetic industrialisation..

I don't see my task as advocating history which in any case is not history I find myself in of my own choosing, but confronting our material conditions. I know, hypothetically, if I advocated some kind of transitional state power, then the inherent exigencies of capitalist statecraft would get to me long before I could make any meaningful intervension. Don't forget that Allende elevated Pinochet to be able to cary out his coup.

padraig (u.s.) said:

I realize "realistic" here is inherently restrictive - how does one determine what is realistic and what is not

and gives in exactly to the trap of capitalist realism - or some kind of realism trap, anyway

but solutions even we ourselves acknowledge to improbable if not impossible cannot be regarded as realistic, ipso facto

Click to expand...

Well I would say that the existing left capitalist solutions of (hypothetically, after some mystical time period) voting the reactionaries out of power seem even less realistic to me than reclaiming the commons, which we at least have some signs of, indignatos/15m movement etc.

padraig (u.s.) said:

she was actually a big forerunner to you and constant escape, now that I'm thinking about it

American, background in philosophy, always up for a tussle. it was a different time in internet discourse tho. more pedantic, more earnest, etc.

definitely not a thot, nor a catfish. last I knew, many years ago, she was career-switching into medicine.

craner's idealized version of her is only somewhat loosely related to the reality, but it would be churlish to begrudge

Click to expand...

also never ended up notated remarc - rip although she said she could do it in 5 minutes.

thirdform said:

also never ended up notated remarc - rip although she said she could do it in 5 minutes.

Click to expand...

Big one for claims, our nomad.

Does anyone think nazism, today, under whatever prefixed layer, could (but does not just?) function in the way that satanism did in the puritan framework? And that the alt-right could function as a kind of outer cortex, insulating inward toward the core of Xth-incarnation-of-vishu-ushering-in-the-fourth-yuga, or some such. The troll as devilish.

On a gut level, do you think it grants the same jollies as dancing naked in the woods? Radical abandon? Free falling?

Not that this would be the only means of radical abandon - thats what repression's utility is, no? To carry this radical abandon into ever finer crevasses, into ever more acceptable expressions in ever more structured environments, straining from the base.

The task could be to understand the function at play within both the puritan/satanist stage and the later (Neo)liberal/Alt-right stage? What would be a more essential set of labels than "(Neo)liberal" and "Alt-Right"?

And could it correlate to the modern/post-modern dialectic?

constant escape said:

Does anyone think nazism, today, under whatever prefixed layer, could (but does not just?) function in the way that satanism did in the puritan framework? And that the alt-right could function as a kind of outer cortex, insulating inward toward the core of Xth-incarnation-of-vishu-ushering-in-the-fourth-yuga, or some such. The troll as devilish.

On a gut level, do you think it grants the same jollies as dancing naked in the woods? Radical abandon? Free falling?

Not that this would be the only means of radical abandon - thats what repression's utility is, no? To carry this radical abandon into ever finer crevasses, into ever more acceptable expressions in ever more structured environments, straining from the base.

The task could be to understand the function at play within both the puritan/satanist stage and the later (Neo)liberal/Alt-right stage? What would be a more essential set of labels than "(Neo)liberal" and "Alt-Right"?

And could it correlate to the modern/post-modern dialectic?

Click to expand...

You want to jolly naked in the woods, google dogging sites and various British locations and hop on a plane when Covid calms. Double bag your lad though, it’s wild out in them there hills. No ideological framework, just hammering away at Margaret from Mansfield while her husband take pics. Make sure you ask him to keep your face out of shot though.

I'm afraid my dogging protocols have been deleted, much to my dismay, given the apparent glory of it.

I've decided city beautification should be an important part of our new automated economy... Pick up roadside trash... We need to make it an honorable occupation

suspendedreason said:

I've decided city beautification should be an important part of our new automated economy... Pick up roadside trash... We need to make it an honorable occupation

Click to expand...

Absolutely. So many Brits are absolute horrors for littering. Does my fucking head in.

luka said:

I've never been to a country with less littering than Britain although Singapore probably beats us.

Click to expand...

You're obviously not very well travelled then.

Switzerland and residential areas in the Netherlands make the UK look derelict, shabby and noxious. It's better here now that it was when I was a kid. Less dogshit and glue bags