These are entertaining reads, but you're too easily spooked and don't seem to have an adequate lay of the land with respect to the online right. Do you really think there's a brewing fascist threat from "frog twitter"? The MAGA, Q, and America First crowds are orders of magnitude larger (literally, not in the English major sense of that phrase) and have catalyzed actual IRL demonstrations, and both the HBD and IDW crowds have more mindshare on the "dissident right" than right-wing bodybuilders and shitposting grad students.
Make explicit the model of the near future latent within your foreboding historical allusions to see how preposterous its predictions and causal machinery are: "BAP and adjacent personalities, starting from Twitter and podcasts, are building a following they will turn into the cadre of an extremist political movement that will seize power in the United States and... do genocide, or whatever." lol.
The most charitable reading of all this petty name-calling and attempted mogging that I can muster is this: "These ideas are morally objectionable and not in line with the principles of the American Founding." To which my response is: "Yeah, no shit. And yet."
Why would they be so resonant with Claremont types? Is it possible, just maybe, that given the course we've been tracking as a country for decades now, the "Bronze Age Mindset" offers a salutary corrective to our heading that actually brings us *closer* to something like what might be called a Founding Generation Mindset?
We are so far from the founding stock of this nation — not just institutionally, intellectually, and experientially, but yes, biologically (and this is not a claim about race or ethnicity, at least not in the contemporary sense of those terms) — that only radical departures from contemporary thought can bring us closer to actually existing 1776 red-white-and-blue Americanism.
I suggest temporarily suspending the post-Nuremberg neurotic impulse to cry out "fascism!" at every turn, and instead reading recent phenomena on the political right with a more open mind and broader historical frame of reference.
Yes, let's just "radically depart" - in *any* direction - from contemporary thought, and see if it can bring us closer to "1776 red-white-and-blue Americanism". Even if the direction we choose (and which, you admit, seems to be considered by a segment of the political right's intelligentsia) is "not in line with the principles of the American Founding." Yeah, that'll work.
Or, we could try to identify those principles, argue for why they are consistent with man's nature, and thus likely to work (and, indeed did work for over 100 years, viewed in a "broader historical frame of reference"), while pointing out the flaws in the arguments of the enemies of those principles, on BOTH the left and right. This is the tack taken by Thompson, and it is our only practical hope for turning the tide.
It's like all of human history has been nothing but application of BAP's "ideas" and it has been nothing but an unmitigated disaster. Then two centuries ago we start applying concepts like individual rights and rights-protecting government and prosper like never before.
So clearly we need BAP's ideas to save us.
I mean, it's so obviously wrong that I can't understand how it could even need explaining. It doesn't even work on the most superficial level.
But BAP and co can't seem to manage even this most basic of integrations.
Or they just want to watch the world burn and everything else is just rationalization and evasion.
your first paragraph is a straw man (a lazily constructed one at that) and your second is unpersuasive. I chose my metaphor advisedly — have you ever steered a ship? it develops the relevant intuition fairly well.
But as Thompson and others such as Bloom (to whom Thompson alludes) have shown, this sort of warmed over Nietzsche does not represent a "radical departure from contemporary thought." It has dominated much of contemporary thought, particularly in the far right and postmodern left and right, for the past century. For all the boasts of originality, BAP largely copies not just the content but also much of the aphoristic style of Nietzsche, and uses neologisms in order not to make the plagiarism too obvious.
BAP is the most consistent application of where movements like MAGA and Q are trending. I'd say America First is already there. That's why BAP is correctly identified as the major villain, but the entire conservative movement is heading in this direction. That's the whole point of calling this out.
"To which my response is: "Yeah, no shit. And yet.""
Then you're response is a contradiction. Which is it? Because you can't both agree and disagree.
"Why would they be so resonant with Claremont types?"
Because conservatives are religious kooks and politically illiterate leftists. Their ideas are so badly thought out that most of them don't even work on the face of it. Even when they were on the right side of issues, like with their previous tepid support for capitalism, their "arguments" often did more harm to the cause than progressives ever could've managed on their own.
BAP gives conservatives an out. Instead of facing the fact they don't have the faintest clue what they are talking about and have no business pretending to be a political movement, it allows them to just avoid all this tricky "ideology" business altogether. That's why it resonates.
"Is it possible, just maybe, that given the course we've been tracking as a country for decades now, the "Bronze Age Mindset" offers a salutary corrective to our heading that actually brings us *closer* to something like what might be called a Founding Generation Mindset?"
No. Why would you even suggest such a thing? BAP is the polar opposite of the Founding Generation Mindset.
"I suggest temporarily suspending the post-Nuremberg neurotic impulse to cry out "fascism!" at every turn"
No one is doing this. BAP and co ARE fascists. That is an accurate description of them. They tell you this themselves if you didn't evade.
Also, you could figure it out for yourself if you understand the subject matter.
"then your response is a contradiction... which is it? because you can't both agree and disagree."
not so. one man's modus tollens is another's modus ponens. I don't share the background assumption I see here, that these ideas should be shut down, discredited whole cloth, moralized away, considered beyond the pale, etc. I'm saying there is value — specifically from the vantage point of someone committed to the specific form of republicanism bequeathed to us by the founders — in this discursive ground having been broken.
If you're a liberal I can see why you'd disagree but in that case there are broader and deeper points of difference here.
The specific form of republicanism bequeathed to us by the founders was that of the worlds first rights-protecting republic.
BAP and co categorically reject this and instead advocate for the most primitive forms of collectivism and authoritarianism, based on a cargo cultist view of history and a childish romanticization of savagery.
This is why those of us who actually understand America's founding ideals, as well as possess a high school level understanding of history, quite rightly believe that "these ideas should be shut down, discredited whole cloth, moralized away, considered beyond the pale, etc. "
Also, you should know that if you support BAP, then you are on the same side of politics as any other collectivist, like the ones you would incorrectly call "liberal."
Then I assume you'll be taking Brad up on the offer of airfare for you to travel to any number of locations where you can live the life of "battle for everything else?"
I can just stay in the US and see it all come to fruition. I assume you and Professor Thompson are aware that Americans are stockpiling large amounts of firearms and ammunition.
I have. The Proposition Nation is literally breaking down in front of our eyes. There is zero consensus on the Proposition, the supposed defining fundament of the US nation. So if the Proposition is gone, what's left? I'll answer that one for you: identity and territory.
Whether I like it or not is completely beside the point. The point is these movements would not exist without a breakdown of the current regime. Something is going to be next, and it won't be English-Scottish classical liberalism.
That's actually what every single "classical liberal" overlooks. It was never really about ideology. It was simply Anglo-Celt (i.e., WASP) rule. The French have an entirely different view of liberalism and the Germans another view as well. Outside the Hajnal lines, I'm not sure liberalism really even exists. This supports the thesis that something other than ideology is going on.
Lmao all this gnashing of teeth and butthurt because of an anonymous shitposting frog and a podcast. BAP has maybe has a few thousand fans? Meanwhile the USA in the current year is turning into the Weimar Republic, complete with a potential communist takeover. Where is Thompson’s angry screeds about that? What a jabroni.
I think the part you're overlooking in your critique is that the system in which you thrive and hence naturally defend is not sustainable. Politics will become (are becoming) territorial versus ideological; this cannot be avoided at this point. The Proposition Nation is breaking down along its fault lines because its citizens no longer share any consensus on the Proposition. After all, it's not like disagreement on the Proposition results in someone taking away your American-card.
Politics within the broad Overton frame of classical liberalism is done. It cannot survive multiculturalism (i.e., imperialism), a populace with large swathes either too stupid or frankly mentally ill for self-rule, and a government that prints all the money it needs. No multi-national empire has ever survived over the long term and no economy has ever been able to print money and buy its own debt with it forever. At some point the party is going to be over and something is going to be next. The movements you criticize would not arise except in response to the visible breakdown of an old order.
Interesting article. Language is a little over the top perhaps, but some things to think about. I look into works cited.
What's your position on political Zionism embedded within our political system, Professor Thompson? We just had Sheldon Adelson flying the extremely damaging traitor Pollard to Israel on his private jet, landing to big fanfare, including attendance of PM Netanyahu. Adelson spent $218 million on last election, $123 million on midterms. Obviously this is not "capitalism" or "freedom of speech". What is your position on political Zionism embedded within our politics?
The challenges you put forth above amount to nothing if you don't address what people are discussing.
"are repulsed by the soul of modern man, whose life has atrophied and is facing its final indignity as the homogenous mass man becomes indistinguishable from a herd of cattle safely grazing in comfort and peace"
Like most often in American history, conservatives or right-wingers often find the most similarities in what they reject or what they see that they must oppose. The discord happens when we start talking about positive ends and the means of achieving them. I strongly depart from BAP in that I believe the cure for the prevalent world of Leftwing nihilism is not Rightwing nihilism, but Rightwing Christianity.
“ If we want to understand the singular success, not of Hitler, but of
those writers, we must cast a quick glance at their opponents who were at the same time the opponents of the young nihilists. Those opponents committed frequently a grave mistake. They believed to have refuted the No by refuting the Yes, i.e. the inconsistent, if not silly, positive assertions of the young men. But one cannot refute what one has not thoroughly understood. And many opponents did not even try to understand the ardent passion underlying the negation of the present world and its potentialities. As a consequence, the very refutations confirmed the nihilists in their belief; all these refutations seemed to
beg the question; most of the refutations seemed to consist of pueris decantata, of repetitions of things which the young people knew already by heart. Those young men had come to doubt seriously, and not merely methodically or methodologically, the principles of modern civilisation; the great authorities of that civilization did no longer impress them; it was evident that only such opponents would have been listened to who knew that doubt from their own experience, who through years of hard and independent thinking had overcome it. Many opponents did not meet that condition. “
You alluded to the saturation of academia in part one, with frustrated graduate students who will never obtain a tenure track position. This is one manifestation of a broader issue that drives BAPs appeal. What advice do you give anyone under 30 or 40 years of age in 2021, when most institutions, professions, and pathways to a fulfilling life have been thoroughly corrupted or unrealistically difficult to traverse? It would be less depressing if BAPs audience were lazy and uneducated. Even such banal advice as “get a decent 55 hour a week job, a suburban house, a respectable wife, and go to church” is far, far more preposterous a goal than many in your age bracket would suspect. As noted, I suspect you may know this. BAP, aside from outside the mainstream views and pictures of Parisian apartments, gives concrete advice that is level headed.
These are entertaining reads, but you're too easily spooked and don't seem to have an adequate lay of the land with respect to the online right. Do you really think there's a brewing fascist threat from "frog twitter"? The MAGA, Q, and America First crowds are orders of magnitude larger (literally, not in the English major sense of that phrase) and have catalyzed actual IRL demonstrations, and both the HBD and IDW crowds have more mindshare on the "dissident right" than right-wing bodybuilders and shitposting grad students.
Make explicit the model of the near future latent within your foreboding historical allusions to see how preposterous its predictions and causal machinery are: "BAP and adjacent personalities, starting from Twitter and podcasts, are building a following they will turn into the cadre of an extremist political movement that will seize power in the United States and... do genocide, or whatever." lol.
The most charitable reading of all this petty name-calling and attempted mogging that I can muster is this: "These ideas are morally objectionable and not in line with the principles of the American Founding." To which my response is: "Yeah, no shit. And yet."
Why would they be so resonant with Claremont types? Is it possible, just maybe, that given the course we've been tracking as a country for decades now, the "Bronze Age Mindset" offers a salutary corrective to our heading that actually brings us *closer* to something like what might be called a Founding Generation Mindset?
We are so far from the founding stock of this nation — not just institutionally, intellectually, and experientially, but yes, biologically (and this is not a claim about race or ethnicity, at least not in the contemporary sense of those terms) — that only radical departures from contemporary thought can bring us closer to actually existing 1776 red-white-and-blue Americanism.
I suggest temporarily suspending the post-Nuremberg neurotic impulse to cry out "fascism!" at every turn, and instead reading recent phenomena on the political right with a more open mind and broader historical frame of reference.
Yes, let's just "radically depart" - in *any* direction - from contemporary thought, and see if it can bring us closer to "1776 red-white-and-blue Americanism". Even if the direction we choose (and which, you admit, seems to be considered by a segment of the political right's intelligentsia) is "not in line with the principles of the American Founding." Yeah, that'll work.
Or, we could try to identify those principles, argue for why they are consistent with man's nature, and thus likely to work (and, indeed did work for over 100 years, viewed in a "broader historical frame of reference"), while pointing out the flaws in the arguments of the enemies of those principles, on BOTH the left and right. This is the tack taken by Thompson, and it is our only practical hope for turning the tide.
It's like all of human history has been nothing but application of BAP's "ideas" and it has been nothing but an unmitigated disaster. Then two centuries ago we start applying concepts like individual rights and rights-protecting government and prosper like never before.
So clearly we need BAP's ideas to save us.
I mean, it's so obviously wrong that I can't understand how it could even need explaining. It doesn't even work on the most superficial level.
But BAP and co can't seem to manage even this most basic of integrations.
Or they just want to watch the world burn and everything else is just rationalization and evasion.
you actually have it here:
"Then two centuries ago we start applying concepts like individual rights and rights-protecting government and prosper like never before.
So clearly we need BAP's ideas to save us."
But you've failed to consider that a lot has intervened in those two centuries.
An imperfect but useful analogy:
"Do you really mean to tell me that injecting myself with cowpox might *prevent* me from getting sick??"
your first paragraph is a straw man (a lazily constructed one at that) and your second is unpersuasive. I chose my metaphor advisedly — have you ever steered a ship? it develops the relevant intuition fairly well.
But as Thompson and others such as Bloom (to whom Thompson alludes) have shown, this sort of warmed over Nietzsche does not represent a "radical departure from contemporary thought." It has dominated much of contemporary thought, particularly in the far right and postmodern left and right, for the past century. For all the boasts of originality, BAP largely copies not just the content but also much of the aphoristic style of Nietzsche, and uses neologisms in order not to make the plagiarism too obvious.
BAP is the most consistent application of where movements like MAGA and Q are trending. I'd say America First is already there. That's why BAP is correctly identified as the major villain, but the entire conservative movement is heading in this direction. That's the whole point of calling this out.
"To which my response is: "Yeah, no shit. And yet.""
Then you're response is a contradiction. Which is it? Because you can't both agree and disagree.
"Why would they be so resonant with Claremont types?"
Because conservatives are religious kooks and politically illiterate leftists. Their ideas are so badly thought out that most of them don't even work on the face of it. Even when they were on the right side of issues, like with their previous tepid support for capitalism, their "arguments" often did more harm to the cause than progressives ever could've managed on their own.
BAP gives conservatives an out. Instead of facing the fact they don't have the faintest clue what they are talking about and have no business pretending to be a political movement, it allows them to just avoid all this tricky "ideology" business altogether. That's why it resonates.
"Is it possible, just maybe, that given the course we've been tracking as a country for decades now, the "Bronze Age Mindset" offers a salutary corrective to our heading that actually brings us *closer* to something like what might be called a Founding Generation Mindset?"
No. Why would you even suggest such a thing? BAP is the polar opposite of the Founding Generation Mindset.
"I suggest temporarily suspending the post-Nuremberg neurotic impulse to cry out "fascism!" at every turn"
No one is doing this. BAP and co ARE fascists. That is an accurate description of them. They tell you this themselves if you didn't evade.
Also, you could figure it out for yourself if you understand the subject matter.
"then your response is a contradiction... which is it? because you can't both agree and disagree."
not so. one man's modus tollens is another's modus ponens. I don't share the background assumption I see here, that these ideas should be shut down, discredited whole cloth, moralized away, considered beyond the pale, etc. I'm saying there is value — specifically from the vantage point of someone committed to the specific form of republicanism bequeathed to us by the founders — in this discursive ground having been broken.
If you're a liberal I can see why you'd disagree but in that case there are broader and deeper points of difference here.
The specific form of republicanism bequeathed to us by the founders was that of the worlds first rights-protecting republic.
BAP and co categorically reject this and instead advocate for the most primitive forms of collectivism and authoritarianism, based on a cargo cultist view of history and a childish romanticization of savagery.
This is why those of us who actually understand America's founding ideals, as well as possess a high school level understanding of history, quite rightly believe that "these ideas should be shut down, discredited whole cloth, moralized away, considered beyond the pale, etc. "
Also, you should know that if you support BAP, then you are on the same side of politics as any other collectivist, like the ones you would incorrectly call "liberal."
nah. go back and reread my last until it sinks in.
Wow. Powerful documentation, interpretation and integration. We have been forewarned.
But if your ideology ends with baby sorting tables then what do you need ideology for?
No wonder BAPists are done with "philosophy and talking."
They should stick to their "shit poasting."
The age of ideology is over. Stated another way, the battle of ideas is over; the battle for everything else has begun.
Then I assume you'll be taking Brad up on the offer of airfare for you to travel to any number of locations where you can live the life of "battle for everything else?"
I hear Syria is wonderful this time of year.
I can just stay in the US and see it all come to fruition. I assume you and Professor Thompson are aware that Americans are stockpiling large amounts of firearms and ammunition.
Uh-huh. Of course given you're not that eager to fly off to Syria or Somalia you may find it's not to your liking when it comes to fruiting here.
But I'm sure you've thought this through.
I have. The Proposition Nation is literally breaking down in front of our eyes. There is zero consensus on the Proposition, the supposed defining fundament of the US nation. So if the Proposition is gone, what's left? I'll answer that one for you: identity and territory.
Whether I like it or not is completely beside the point. The point is these movements would not exist without a breakdown of the current regime. Something is going to be next, and it won't be English-Scottish classical liberalism.
That's actually what every single "classical liberal" overlooks. It was never really about ideology. It was simply Anglo-Celt (i.e., WASP) rule. The French have an entirely different view of liberalism and the Germans another view as well. Outside the Hajnal lines, I'm not sure liberalism really even exists. This supports the thesis that something other than ideology is going on.
Lmao all this gnashing of teeth and butthurt because of an anonymous shitposting frog and a podcast. BAP has maybe has a few thousand fans? Meanwhile the USA in the current year is turning into the Weimar Republic, complete with a potential communist takeover. Where is Thompson’s angry screeds about that? What a jabroni.
Reductio ad Hitlerum packaged as “original thought” in the current year 🤦♂️
I think the part you're overlooking in your critique is that the system in which you thrive and hence naturally defend is not sustainable. Politics will become (are becoming) territorial versus ideological; this cannot be avoided at this point. The Proposition Nation is breaking down along its fault lines because its citizens no longer share any consensus on the Proposition. After all, it's not like disagreement on the Proposition results in someone taking away your American-card.
Politics within the broad Overton frame of classical liberalism is done. It cannot survive multiculturalism (i.e., imperialism), a populace with large swathes either too stupid or frankly mentally ill for self-rule, and a government that prints all the money it needs. No multi-national empire has ever survived over the long term and no economy has ever been able to print money and buy its own debt with it forever. At some point the party is going to be over and something is going to be next. The movements you criticize would not arise except in response to the visible breakdown of an old order.
Legendary article. As you recommended in person, I'll start taking the pills that make my skin soft in preparation for the surgery.
Interesting article. Language is a little over the top perhaps, but some things to think about. I look into works cited.
What's your position on political Zionism embedded within our political system, Professor Thompson? We just had Sheldon Adelson flying the extremely damaging traitor Pollard to Israel on his private jet, landing to big fanfare, including attendance of PM Netanyahu. Adelson spent $218 million on last election, $123 million on midterms. Obviously this is not "capitalism" or "freedom of speech". What is your position on political Zionism embedded within our politics?
The challenges you put forth above amount to nothing if you don't address what people are discussing.
"are repulsed by the soul of modern man, whose life has atrophied and is facing its final indignity as the homogenous mass man becomes indistinguishable from a herd of cattle safely grazing in comfort and peace"
Like most often in American history, conservatives or right-wingers often find the most similarities in what they reject or what they see that they must oppose. The discord happens when we start talking about positive ends and the means of achieving them. I strongly depart from BAP in that I believe the cure for the prevalent world of Leftwing nihilism is not Rightwing nihilism, but Rightwing Christianity.
“ If we want to understand the singular success, not of Hitler, but of
those writers, we must cast a quick glance at their opponents who were at the same time the opponents of the young nihilists. Those opponents committed frequently a grave mistake. They believed to have refuted the No by refuting the Yes, i.e. the inconsistent, if not silly, positive assertions of the young men. But one cannot refute what one has not thoroughly understood. And many opponents did not even try to understand the ardent passion underlying the negation of the present world and its potentialities. As a consequence, the very refutations confirmed the nihilists in their belief; all these refutations seemed to
beg the question; most of the refutations seemed to consist of pueris decantata, of repetitions of things which the young people knew already by heart. Those young men had come to doubt seriously, and not merely methodically or methodologically, the principles of modern civilisation; the great authorities of that civilization did no longer impress them; it was evident that only such opponents would have been listened to who knew that doubt from their own experience, who through years of hard and independent thinking had overcome it. Many opponents did not meet that condition. “
You alluded to the saturation of academia in part one, with frustrated graduate students who will never obtain a tenure track position. This is one manifestation of a broader issue that drives BAPs appeal. What advice do you give anyone under 30 or 40 years of age in 2021, when most institutions, professions, and pathways to a fulfilling life have been thoroughly corrupted or unrealistically difficult to traverse? It would be less depressing if BAPs audience were lazy and uneducated. Even such banal advice as “get a decent 55 hour a week job, a suburban house, a respectable wife, and go to church” is far, far more preposterous a goal than many in your age bracket would suspect. As noted, I suspect you may know this. BAP, aside from outside the mainstream views and pictures of Parisian apartments, gives concrete advice that is level headed.
Is there overlap between the pervs and the Proud Boys? Could this be confirmation they're moving from Nintendo and unto the streets?