“It is thus best to conceive of liberalism, socialism/communism and right-nationalism as overlapping electron clouds, which achieve mutual exclusivity only at the extremes.”
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This man in my view is the best political explainer on Substack and perhaps in the whole wide world, though of course I can’t prove it.
But I got great antennae so everyone ought to trust me here.
It’s easy to agree with this description, however there is another description I’ve always liked about left and right wing extreme governments, being adjacent, and that it’s not a political spectrum as much as a political circle.
Therefore, I might say that liberalism, Socialism, communism and right nationalism overlap at the extremes.
Great post/observation !!! If I might, I would like to expand upon that a little further:
Where they converge is on the amount of “state control” and there you can lump them together, as an ordinary citizen living under a communist or fascist government is unlikely to detect a difference. A more intuitive linear political spectrum might look something like: Anarchist – Libertarian – Classical Liberal – Socialist – Totalitarian. And that totalitarian category can be teased apart a bit further. What is the difference between “state ownership of businesses” verses “state control of businesses”? Not much to the average person. However, as counter-intuitive as it seems, Fascism is slightly more “democratic” than Communism, as it leaves an oligarch class intact that might occasionally push back on the government.
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Nationalism was not some academic intellectual invention but arose organically in response to the inability of conglomerate empires, like the Austro-Hungarian and the British Empire, to govern effectively and justly at the regional and local level. Many scholars like to claim that the world has moved beyond the Westphalian model of sovereign nation states. However, we have never lived in a truly Westphalian world. After World War II the British Empire was replaced by the American Empire and the Soviet Union and its satellites, followed by the American Unipolar Moment after the Cold War. (In a sense, the EU is just a rehabbed version of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that was allowed to emerge during the Unipolar Moment, to keep Europe governable.) The implication is that the Westphalian revolution, that started in 1648, is still underway. The only difference between the globalist vision for the future and the old Austro-Hungarian Empire is “grandiosity of scope"; it is not anything new. If one accepts that, then the globalists are not progressives but reactionaries and it is the BRICS that are trying something new: a world of respectful sovereign nation states, organized on Westphalian principles.
Love this discussion! This,--> "A more intuitive linear political spectrum might look something like: Anarchist – Libertarian – Classical Liberal – Socialist – Totalitarian."
and this --> "What is the difference between “state ownership of businesses” verses “state control of businesses”? Not much to the average person. However, as counter-intuitive as it seems, Fascism is slightly more “democratic” than Communism, as it leaves an oligarch class intact that might occasionally push back on the government." I often experience dissonance trying to figure out if canada is a socialist nation or if we're all just nazis, when companies/industries have such a powerful influence on policy and not necessarily for the good of the people but for the elites at the top of the food chain from appearances.
and thought provoking --> "BRICS...respectful sovereign nation states, organized on Westphalian principles". Thanks to you, I found my way to this article by Daniel Araya of CIGI which contains interesting perspective about the passing of the US unipolar moment into a post-western multi-polar world, the rise and growth of BRICS and a way forward.
Thanks for the reply! What you are describing is the inverse of "state control of business": "business control of the state". Aristotle and Plato made the observation that the "end state" of a democracy is oligarchy. Whether the West gets to that end-state is still to be determined. If you want a preview of what that might look like, I suggest reading the English language version of the Wikipedia page on the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) of Mexico, sadly, it should look very familiar.
The Fiona Hill lecture (Lennart Meri Lecture 2023 on YT) was a wakeup call to the Western oligarchy that things are not going its way ("Russia and the Rest against the West"). How that happened is something future historians will need to piece together, but I think the globalist oligarchs lost interest (or became too arrogant/incompetent/corrupt) in playing the incremental slow game, behind the scenes, and revealed themselves. If you read the early speeches and writings of Gorbachev, Putin and Xi (through Wang Huning) they all saw the West the way Francis Fukuyama described it, as the "shining city on the hill" but are now completely disabused of that notion.
A fascinating time we are all living through, for better or for worse.
Absolutely. Just take the straight line from left to right of the standard diagram of the political spectrum, and bend it around until it forms a circle. Then you have a much more accurate picture of the political spectrum, with authoritarianism at the apex of the circle, and freedom at the opposite point.
I imagine if we were to "weight" the circle by popularity of the ideology, the left, socialists and authoritarians/totalitarians would hold the far greater portion of the circle.
That was my understanding of politics until I read this essay. Of course it's best read in the context of eugyppius' earlier articles.
There's a progression from his initial observations regarding the unprecedented COVID panic/hoax and subsequent vaccination regime, towards analysis as to why these things were happening, and now to a better model of the modern administrative state.
I suppose all of us could argue all day and night and onward about how we draw this diagram.
What I appreciate in Eugyppius is how he backs up his statements with careful delineation [some moron once told me I mean "adumbrate" and that ain't a word I'd ever heard of and see no need to add to my vocabulary] of the facts/history to support his conclusions.
He ain't no god to me. Just a really good--a superior--explainer.
Agreed. I've been saying the right doesn't really exist today; what is called right-wing is just normal people who reject leftism, or at least parts of it. But eugyppius explains it much better here.
In the US there are plenty of extreme right-wing Christian extremists who fancy themselves patriots and who are the absolute antithesis of our foundational American values.
The Alabama Supreme Court just declared embryos created for the purpose of IVF to be termed minor children due the full protection of law and whose destruction may be charged as murder. The chief justice in that court used Biblical references to bolster the argument.
This is derangement of the highest order. And the surrender of the Republican Party to this sort of derangement does indeed make them genuinely right-wing.
Normal people are politically homeless these days.
I sided strongly with this, so many of us are today framed as right wingers but I was always an open minded moderate/centrist with a ‘ play fair’ mindset - no men in womens sports, immigrants improperly using asylum channels, corporate/govt cronyism, excusing violent criminals.
Call it anything you want or not, but in the end it is anti-human. The simple struggle between life and death where politics are meant to determine the outcome. The clowns and parasites who would rule over us are becoming more and more desperate as their computer algorithms and faulty game shows are not jiving with reality.
if they are aliens like David Icke thinks, they should soon depart, leaving the world in a mess, but we will be rid of them. We are used to clean up mess.
It is in my view cowardly and expedient thinking to insist common human passions and failings are of alien origin. "Them not us." No, human nature is immutable and that really aggravates those who want to find permanent solutions for durably incurable problems.
Isn't it too bad how many nice animals are slandered because we can't just say "it's us!"
I'm very fond of lizards, and snakes, and weasels, and even pigs who make wonderful mothers though they certainly could use some of that Lume full-body deodorant stuff.
And cattle and sheep. They've all got quite charming personalities when you get to know them.
I'm a reptile-phile myself. And I think pigs only smell because of their conditions of captivity.
I'm afraid I'm one of those loathsome people who don't consider Homo sapiens to be superior to other life forms. Yet I still enjoy a good science-fiction yarn, such as national leaders being lizard people in disguise.
Oh, I'm with you here in everything except about pigs. I worked in a children's farm as a tour guide for a few years, and pigs have a distinctive natural odor that only pigs can love. Even in a clean large-enough pen open to the fresh air and regularly cleaned out, Essence de Sow is overpowering.
That is pretty loathsome to me, as we clearly are. I'm going to guess you are further incoherent to the point that when AI is demonstrably 'conscious' you'll insist we give it rights equal to human rights, or even higher?
By this do you mean the survival imperative, meritocracy and all that? If so, i agree. The whole ‘guaranteed equal outcome’ thing is so perverse, especially when mandated by people who have carefully secured a very tidy luxury existence for themselves, one completely unaligned to the philosophy.
I agree. The labels are confusing because they include forms of government as well as philosophies of governance. In the end, if government is in charge of the people, it's some form of authoritarianism, no matter how its mechanisms operate. Even most "democracies" today shape the opinions of their own people (with propaganda, mis- and disinformation, censorship, etc.), causing the people to demand what the government desires, fooling the people into believing they are directing the government. These are not actual democracies, they're covert authoritarian governments.
It is interesting how the spectres and shadows of the past influence today. Those long since vanished threats both take on mutated, sometimes even entirely new meanings with increasing time since the events they are based on, and also get revived just at the point when you thought they had become completely irrelevant.
Growing up in the UK in the 1970s and 80s, the Germans were very often the playground roleplay baddies. One group of kids would do the comedy accents, Hitler moustaches and salutes, and always lose. Of course we were too young to understand why, but having watched the entire covid mania (where I have my own theories about what we should have learned from the Holocaust, that for another time), I don't think most people ever did understand once they grew up.
The open and murderous racism of the national socialists ties in well with the mutation in "anti-nazism" because it comes from the same place as "anti-racism". Racism when I was growing up was already largely reduced to name-calling. Like Nazism it had been defeated, and it didn't take a war (at least, not in the UK). Today it is a problem that is almost totally nonexistent, and it is clear that all the wonderful new racism suppression ideas the left comes up with in the pursuit of equality of outcome, or the constant invention of new -isms that we apparently all need training out of, actually do more harm than good on their own terms. One man's privilege is another man's disadvantage - so creating new discriminatory privileges to "address" the past creates resentment that is equally as morally justified as past resentment against the discrimination of the past.
The idea that the institutionalised racism of, say, American slavery, could ever reemerge is insane, just as insane as the idea that some nonexistent German neo-nazi group would rebuild death camps, or that anyone really gave a monkey's about the strange man in a dress most would (and will) never encounter in a lifetime anyway. But the left sees racists and nazis everywhere.
The progressive left is fighting a dim and partially incorrect recollection of last century's wars against a comic-book straw man. By equating name calling with slavery, opposition to mass immigration (especially having to pay for it) with mass murder, and respect for property rights and minimalist government with fascism (god the irony), they can keep the whole schtick going forever. You will never completely eliminate "racism" or other "isms", you will never achieve absolute equality across all metrics between all groups however defined (even if you legislate for it), so there is always more progress to be made, and more authority to be exercised.
I had to look it up, but there is a biblical passage "The sins of the forefathers will be visited unto the third generation."
I am into at least the fifth generation of North American born, so I don't think I owe much for my (non-slave owning) ancestors. On the other hand, if they had been wealthy slave owners, maybe I would be a rich heir and wouldn't have to worry about Substack resistance. In reality there are few families who manage to maintain power and assets through the centuries, and for the most part WE DON'T SEE THEM.
George Carlin made it perfectly clear: "It's a big club, and you aint in it."
The interesting ones are the ones we do see- from south to north, Peron's, Roosevelt's, Clinton's, Bush's, Trudeau's.
A good window on the event is to look at the names on trusts and foundations. They have organised our regimes to (somewhat) anonymously, and with observable tax-advantage, maintain their power and influence. Note that the tax advantage gives them exponentially increasing wealth.
I think there is a recurrent error in taking their arguments at face value... Eg "their use of racism is meaningless or actually opposite" etc. You see this a lot in the more popular rightish press,eg Daily Wire.
A good thing to remind ourselves of is the post modernist refutation of language and logic as simply vehicles of power. Ie. They'll call me racist because it results in desired effects for them; the actual meaning of what they say, the validity of terms, etc, isn't relevant... May not even realize they are using language that way (think juvenile Hamas supporters in the US) they just have a "feel". Term nazi is used this way here a great deal.
I grew up in the UK in the 70s and was a young person in the 80s - name-calling in the schoolyard sometimes, but we all went to each other’s birthday parties, and gave valentines cards to peole whose names we had to ask how to spell. Older, many of my friends came from around the world and I accepted if not loved differences, if I even noticed them and usually we aligned around commonalties anyway.
Over the last couple of years, My neighbourhood in a suburb of Toronto was peppered with posters saying ”hate has no home here”. What hate? Someone constructed a bogeyman of non-existent “hate” to muster around.
It's Hegelian dialectic, all social relationships are based on winners or losers. Marxism, has to have a "zero sum game", if I win then someone had to lose.
Of course that's not true in reality. Though corruption is enabled by government, and the growth of government will lead to more corruption. And corruption does take from others without the great exchange of the free market.
What are the AfD doing about this deliberate intimidation, surely there must be laws against the deliberate intimidation of electoral candidates.
Care to comment? The AfD should be raising merry hell about this intimidation campaign, they are entitled to stand and have the same protection as any other politicians standing in elections
Ideology of left or right isn't at the core of this globalist movement. Any ideas are thin veneers for a massive power/money grab. The reason why leftist ideas predominate as the veneer, is that they all require increased central power to enact. Global phenomena like climate and pandemics are useful in that they can create crisis narratives to fuel the grab for central power. Any time spent debating labels is wasted really. It all comes down to totalitarianism with poverty and dependency for the masses and riches and power for those ruling.
I would argue that all ideologies are secondary to political power – they are often merely ways of articulating this power, or of achieving it. In a weird way, though, they seem to have a recursive influence on this power itself and its exercise. Liberal, democratic states, even when they have succeeded in largely suppressing the voice of their own people, still operate in ways distinct from illiberal dictatorships or police states. This is very interesting phenomenon in general which I hope to write about in my next book.
I think this last bit is determined by the propaganda value of being "free" and "liberal" states. Its like stealing credit card numbers via some clever ruse instead of shoving a gun in someone's face. Both are hated thieves, but only the latter gets a life sentence.
I agree ideologies are merely ways of achieving political power. The different ideologies simply use different methods of interacting with, convincing, and controlling the masses.
For the most part, those being controlled are the only ones who really believe the ideology.
This is my completely superficial and unsophisticated description of politics. But what do I know, being just a near-microscopic aquatic animal. At least I'm resilient.
A possible angle to consider is (obvously, I'd argue) the aspect of culture/ethnicity (I mean kultur but it doesn't "work" in english) and how it causes the -ism to manifest.
Based on the following reason:
As a swede, I'm obviously very aware how we have both been passively affect but also actively looked abroad many times to find things other neighbouring cultures do with succes, that may be utilised by us.
Even 500 years ago when Gustav Vasa, the first king of the unified nation, looked to Germany of that era, it was for an idea how to get the church under the control of the crown (ie.e under his control). That idea being Lutheranism. Then it was the dutch and the english which were "looted" for ideas bith technical and political. In Gustav III's day (the 1700s), the cultural epicentre was France, so french ideas became the fashion of his rule.
And then we swung back to Germany until the 1940s, and after that it's been USA.
To me the effects are obvious: french 1700s liberalism (to use a uniform term for the ideas of that century) greatly influenced the final movement away from tradition-based privilege-style laws and ordinances to rights-and-principles based same. The later german influences greatly affected the organisation of the state apparatus, so where alloyed to the liberalist ideals. Culturally, nationalromatik had its heyday during the 19th century, inspired by the unification of Germany and spawning (in Sweden, danes and finns and norwegians weren't quite so keen) a drive for a new Kalmar Union.
The cultural influence from the US led during the 1960s and 1970s to increasing tension between the inter-war inspired socialists and communists on one hand, and everyone else on the other, culminating with the Socialist Democrat party losing it's postion as /The Party/ in 1991, and them subsequently abandoning all their old principles for neoliberalist globalism (economically speaking) and US campus radicalism-inspired multikultur (socially speaking.
I hope the idea I'm fishing about for is clear to you - the underlying kultur will shape the -ism being implemented, much more than vice versa.
Can I take this to another level I have been contemplating Eugyppius?
A democracy is based on a constitution, however, there may come a time when the constitution no longer works, and working around it leads to more failure to deliver and political unrest.
In such a situation there has to be a democratic means of changing the constitution so that the constitution works again for democracy.
That is not possible unless a political party realises that, is able to build popular support, gain sufficient strength and therefore mass the democratic force to do so.
The AfD is likely that party.
In The UK we are in my opinion reaching the limits of a constitutional "norm" settlement, we are tied in by far to much international law, and the apparatus the left have developed by NGO's infiltrating the major institutions like the WEF, NGO's, the Judiciary, the Civil Service - in fact everything but government office and is deliberately trying to frustrate democratic change.
The "world order" is not working for the people any more, not in most of Europe or the UK and arguably the USA as well
If the AfD is banned, or as they now seem to be trying to do intimidate them out of office or putting them under a police state, merely for opposing the liberal lefty consensus and clearly represent a large section of the electorate, that is nothing short of totalitarianism identical in my opinion to Putin's intimidation of his political opponents.
What laws on political intimidation does Germany have? What legally can the AfD do in terms of the law to force fair elections and stop intimidation that looks to be to be state sponsored?
Because what you describe is the use of a police state for the purposes of political intimidation of opponents, that put bluntly is no different to Putin, Xi, Stalin or Hitler.
Speaking from a US Constitution perspective, it’s not that our Constitution didn’t/ doesn’t work, it is that it has not been adhered to for decades by the very people who swore to uphold, preserve and protect it. And they have never been held accountable, this continue to trample it further and further. And that is why they hate it so much, because its very design was to “check” the power of the State.
If it had been adhered to, our country would be a very different place.
But the one element essential in order to adhere and maintain that Constitution was a moral people, people with a conscience and truly virtuous Judeo-Christian values.
And where can you find a people or a representative today with such a character? Rare, indeed.
This is precisely and exactly true. We in the US have a remarkable document, the finest fruit of the Western Enlightenment, and the Founders, whatever their human flaws, achieved something extraordinary at the moment such genius was necessary.
Everyone who wants to "update" it is truly made unhappy by the concept of individual liberty and limitations on the power of the state. This is true throughout the political spectrum.
Edit: Almost precisely and exactly true. Sectarian values are not necessary for anyone to behave in ethical and decent ways. Goodness is an innate trait and not created by belief systems.
Slaveholders among prominent Founding Fathers of the United States of America: Charles Carroll, Samuel Chase, Benjamin Franklin, Button Gwinnett, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, James Madison, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Benjamin Rush, Edward Rutledge, George Washington
"The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity, and humanity, let the blackguard Paine say what he will; it is resignation to God, it is goodness itself to man." -- John Adams (26 July 1796).
The US Constitution is the finest fruit of the Western Enlightenment.
Just as Christianity is not Judaism and Judaism is not the older Canaanite religions, the Western Enlightenment is not Christian. It is the evolution away from narrow sectarian values.
Today's electorate would be unimaginable to the authors of our constitution, none of whom would ever have allowed their hired (or forced) help, their local shopkeeper, or even their wife anywhere near a mechanism that could threaten their interests or their prosperity.
This isn't simply a problem of providing mail-in ballots to every Tom, Dick, and Harry with the result that now there are means are available to upend an election in the middle of the night; it's that there are millions of people who have no skin in the game but have been given a voice. (The person who would rob Paul to pay Peter can count on Peter's support.)
The western Enlightenment is precisely what has gotten us to where we are in this very moment, and where we are right now ... is why we are here in this forum trying to figure out how to save civilization from self-destructing.
The problem with a constitution is interpretation, unless its crystal clear what it means in all circumstances.
The operation is usually by the executive, challengeable to courts, in your case the Supreme Court, which is less than politically independent.
I'd say that matters, if its not for the fact that the appointment of judges in other countries like the UK is totally opaque, I heavily suspect after Brexit, that its stuffed full of lefties.
Therefore a constitution is not a "cast iron" set of rules, certainly not in itself, and certainly not under the action of courts.
Therefore these things get bent out of all recognition by politicians that try things when they know or heavily suspect that the Courts will back them up, and by doing so they effectively change the constitution itself.
The same is happening everywhere, in Germany, in the EU where it amends and over interprets its own law to suit itself and applies it selectively.
We have seen it here with Brexit, where parliamentary constitution was practically torn up, we have seen it from the EU and the ECHR and all these institutions are doing the same to morph into totalitarian states where dissent is no longer tolerated.
As they say, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. As they also say, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
The key elements have to be that constitutions have to be amendable, things happen in time that the people who drew them up never envisaged.
Fundamentally, politically, nothing should be off the table, the AfD should be able to campaign on deporting people who have been naturalised in Germany if the people so desire it, or have the Nazi's back if the people want it.
The key point is that if the AfD want to do that, that's an electoral choice, but they would have to agree that it would require constitutional change and agree to lawful constitutional change to achieve it.
That is often a two thirds parliamentary majority in most countries, and if it can manage those numbers there is nothing wrong with proposing it.
What would be subversive would be to say "we'd tear up the constitution and act as a dictatorship" which would be very silly for numerous reasons
1. It has a PR system, and its highly unlikely to be able to govern without another party
2. Its electorally counter productive, because the AfD is nowhere near getting an electoral two thirds majority on its own, so its simply not a realistic policy.
But the right to say you'd like to change the constitution is not subversive, provided that its done by democratic means.
Therefore the AfD are not subversives unless its planning a coup to overthrow the state, and as far as I'm aware they aren't, so they should not be under "police state" surveillance for being subversives.
It is fashionable to hate on Christians in the West. Another manifestation of oikophobia. Much of what we consider self evident insights of the enlightenment come from the judeo christian tradition, not from precursor antiquity. It is a conceit (in the true sense of the word) in the culture of "educated" people in the West to make broad comments that disparage or downplay its value. A more balanced historical look would acknowledge its value. And i would argue that the comments here would be less negative if we were discussing islam or some minority animist religion.
In Germany the constitutional limits are dealt with by simply ignoring them. It is clear from the corona era that the written provisions of your rights are not worth the paper they are written on. The judiciary will ignore them, the police will enforce the will of the government.
There was a period, around the end of 2021, when living here was seriously fucking scary. It literally looked as if they would stop at nothing to stop the unstoppable.
I don't know if there is any kind of constitutional settlement that will actually deal with this entirely human propensity to extreme mob violence when faced with a (imaginary) threat. Perhaps the best we can hope for is retribution against those who played up the threat after the event and the hope that might encourage future actors.
I would be asking about things like "why are the state not protecting democratic candidates from intimidation?" and "Is it still legal to oppose the government?" and that runs to the heart of democracy, those are legitimate political questions that i would make central to any upcoming election campaigns.
If you don't vote for us, you may lose any option you have to oppose legally what you disagree with.
Make the government answer those questions, and watch the votes pile up when they don't have any answers.
The problem is the AfD was completely isolated from public view.
Not a few months ago there was what was almost certainly an assassination attempt on the co-leader of the AfD. The press did everything they could to cast doubt. Two suspects were detained at the scene, no action was taken.
About the same time the other co-leader was subject to certain unspecified threats and temporarily relocated away from her home. The press said the German authorities knew nothing of supposed threats, a deliberate distraction since Weidel lives in Switzerland and the Swiss authorities said they did.
If the government doesn't investigate an attempted assassination of an opposition political leader what chance does anyone lower down the food chain have?
Also the atmosphere here is genuinely approaching "if you oppose the government then yes, that is illegal".
Then as I said, if I was the AfD, I'd be asking all these questions in public?
Why did the state not investigate an attempted murder?
Why is it illegal to oppose the government?
Why is it illegal to challenge a lack of border controls?
Why is it illegal to question any international agreements
Why does the state not stop intimidation of political opponents?
Make the elections about democracy, and say if you don't vote for democracy, this lot will take it away, you won't be allowed to challenge the EU, or net zero, or mass immigration against your democratic will.
No one is listening to the questions being asked. The AfD can issue all the statements they want and they will be ignored or twisted. If Chrupalla had died, the AfD would have been accused by the media of going after sympathy votes.
No doubt a conspiracy theory would have been floated that it was an inside job and we would be seeing documentaries now about why the conspiracy theory is true.
It is really, really difficult to get across how one-sided the entirety of German media is at this point in time.
Even much of the independent, dissident media are not particularly fans of the AfD so don't always fill the gaps that well.
German news media is at this point is a Pravda with better production values. Everyone in Germany is required to pay a monthly fee for the public-private broadcasts. If you do not own a TV, radio or computer, i.e. you have no access to the broadcasts, you are still required to pay. Last I knew, if you are blind you are required to pay. This is called social solidarity. Not making this up folks .... And if you refuse to pay, you will be hounded forever, as if you owed a huge debt. One woman of honor and principle was so outraged that she refused to pay, and refused, and refused. She was sentenced to jail time. This was a long time ago. Germany is not suddenly coming unglued. It never was glued. When I first moved to Germany in 2001, the broadcasters had specially equipped vans that slowly cruised through the neighborhoods. On the roof were installed rotating electronic devices that looked like radar. Those instruments were able to pick up broadcast signals and determine from which apartments they were coming -- or not coming. Check that against the payment records, and determine who was not paying. I was here only a few weeks when there came a knock at the door. A guy is standing there with a name tag and a clipboard. He is from the public broadcaster and wants to come in and search my apartment to see my TV, radio, computer. Not the Soviet Union, folks ... the Federal Republic of Germany. Shameful to say that I am still here, because that should have made it clear that I needed to pack my bags and head to the airport. Saved the best for last -- the public broadcasters, being in the spirit of solidarity among the people, is required in their charter to, naturally enough, be balanced in their reporting, to ensure there is no bias to left or right etc. But that requirement is ignored and they broadcast only blatantly biased left-wing bullshit.
'there has to be a democratic means of changing the constitution so that the constitution works again for democracy...deliberately trying to frustrate democratic change...' Well, the US Constitution famously has an amendment process built in. Unfortunately, since at least the 1970s, our two entrenched parties have managed to lard on enough obstacles to make any amendment essentially impossible. I wish Germany better luck.
And no states have joined the union since the 1950s. My personal suspicion is that this is related to the entitlement state. Perhaps that is also the reason that no amendments have been ratified since 1965.
Ummm .... excuse me ... everything is decided by JUDGES!!! Who are our modern-day equivalent of the kings of the much maligned age of the great monarchies. The judge is somehow endowed with a wisdom possessed by none of us commoners, and he or she can impact our everyday lives tremendously. How many times did the current chief justice of the German supreme court travel to Berlin expressly to hang out with Angela Merkel ... while coincidentally also being, in his decisions, totally in harmony with her views? It is so disgustingly infantile I can hardly stand it anymore ... as if it would be possible for a judge ... or anyone ... to be impartial ... as if a judge, particularly in our present times, could be equally impartial and decide fairly in favor of, or against, a Donald Trump or a raving Green politician or the AfD and so on. Always impartial and in keeping exactly with the written word of the law. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, the judge would have to be superhuman. Fairy tales to help us go to sleep at night.
A simple concept of fascism is the partnership of the state and corporations versus the citizenry. This is somewhat concealed in the current construct by the smokescreen of foundations and NGO's, but remember the duck- if it quacks like a duck... The promotion of PPP's almost makes the point.
I have found Ayn Rand's formulation of statism useful in helping to see motives and structures.
Your description of invented "rights" is indeed a trap, as they are constructed with no apparent responsibilities for exercise by the citizenry or consequences for governments which override them. Our current experience in Canada is a fine example- most are aware of the imposition of the "Emergencies Act" two years ago, but far fewer are awake to the destructive adoption of the UNDRIP on a widespread basis. The destruction of property rights through"climate" rules is another example of the statist impulse.
Describing what we are witnessing in the west is extremely difficult. I believe it is because it does not fit nicely into any of the boxes that make up our prior experience. Wokism, or whatever name it is given in Europe shares a lot of elements with prior ideologies.
When it comes to classifying communism, socialism and fascism I like to use Hayek's formulation that they are all essentially collectivist ideologies. They only differ in their definition of the in-group involved in "the struggle" and the out-group against whom they are struggling. The same goes for all the other isms of the 20th century.
I think when people talk about the modern regime being fascist, what they are referring to is the seeming melding of public and private entities towards a common goal. In the United States big finance is used as an enforcer of the current woke ideology against corporate America. On an individual level, the corporate HR department is the enforcer against the employee. I've experienced this myself recently. Operationally, I think there are significant parallels to fascism.
What is truly different is the underlying ideology. Communism, socialism and fascism are not only collectivist, they are also identitarian. Although the definition of the in and out groups differ among them, the in-group is identified as a majority of the population in whatever subdivision the ideology chooses. In the nationalist sense it would be some historic or ethnically homogeneous group. In the internationalist sense it would mean the underclass or working class.
Wokism is collectivist in that it is a call to collective action on a number of issues, the alleged climate emergency being the most obvious. However, it is different in that in the identitarian sphere the in-group that is elevated is in all cases a distinct minority relative to the population, whether they be migrants or sexual minorities. In both cases, the wokist ideologue urges the majority of the population to work against its own interests to either achieve some nebulous collective goal, such as net zero, or to elevate minority rights over the rights of the majority. I think this relates back to a series of articles you did on Exogenous Moral Orientation (I think I got that right finally!).
It is my view that collectivist ideologies by their nature always turn repressive, because by their nature they require the entire population to get with the program. The only way to accomplish that is through coercion, particularly when the goal is contrary to the interests of the majority of the population.
While I don’t disagree with Hayek at all, I would note that one weakness of diagnosing ‚collectivism‘ in communism and national socialism, is that it is a bit like elephant zoologists developing a category for ‚trunkless mammals.‘
In fact it is liberal individualism that, across human history, is highly marked and unusual.
Very good comment. One of the reasons why it's so difficult to put one's finger on what's unfolding in the West, is because it's something very particular that's outside the framework of most people. However, a certain futurologist (of the not too distant past) have already laid out in detail how this would all unfold and is unfolding as we can observe on a daily basis. There's great depth in his analysis and it's well recommended for a study of current events:
Great post, I wouldn't have commented if I'd read this first. In the US, children since the 60's were indoctrinated that Naziism was "on the right" by the Democrats to try and associate the Republicans with it. Just as they're doing today, even though they are worlds apart ideologically.
An honest appraisal...Germany is well on the way to creating a State that is impervious to the wishes of actual Germans..The only way out will be nationwide strikes by workers who can't be replaced, like truckers and farmers...
It's not just Germany. Liberalism has degenerated into farce - albeit in varying degrees - right across the Western world. Here's how: you still have a pluralist electoral democracy but just as a kind of plaything....part of the media entertainment industry. Meanwhile the real government is a permanent and almost unchallengeable techno-bureaucracy constantly topped up by 'experts' emerging from its 'one-party' universities.
N.B. Two common dictionary definitions of "fascism." (1) a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition; (2) a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control. (This 2nd definition being the sense most old-school leftists use the term in, as opposed to capital-F Fascism.) Two definitions of "totalitarianism." (1) centralized control by an autocratic authority; (2) the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute [state] authority. (The rather sloppy definition and resulting misunderstandings of these terms is such that their meanings cannot be taken for granted, and thus the terms need to be clearly defined by the author in any serious discussion involving their use.)
1) is largely what I mean by "right-nationalism," but I prefer that term over 'fascism' in general because the latter entails some extraneous elements we would expect in any illiberal regime.
2) as you say is more of a leftist polemical understanding of the political opposition.
I would say "Fascism" (def 1) is a very specific subset of right-nationalism, whereas "fascism" and "fascist" (def 2) are non-scholarly vernacular uses of the term, still casually used by old lefty dinosaurs like me (i.e., not just the new woke leftists) to describe any form of extreme authoritarianism (e.g. "my aunt Martha goes fascist at Thanksgiving," "the Covid measures were so fascist," etc.), in addition to the use you describe (i.e., stigmatizing the political opposition). Hence the need to clearly define the terms in any serious discussion.
Anyone who supports the founding principles of the U.S. constitution, division of power in the branches of government and between the states and the federal government, is called a right wing extremist. A centralized autocratic government of any type would then seem to be of the left not right. I think that fascism is just a heresy of communism which substitutes tribe for class. Fascism seems more expedient in its alliance with business. Communist take on too much by trying to reinvent the economy. Communists also seem more interested in signed confessions. Fascists don't bother and go straight to elimination of the opposition. Having said all that, it's really just name-calling. The things that matter are money and power.
Excellent Ms. Durden! The miscreants are not concerned with labels, they are too busy working to ensure that power and wealth and comfort is in their possession and that of their fellow club members. And any commoners who would like a share of that -- understandably since they foot the bill for everything by paying always higher taxes -- must be disabused that their voices can be the decisive factor.
Authoritarian liberalism is real phenomenon. Now I am real "economic leftist", I support high taxes, Piketty style politics, and I tell you that from my point of view these EU regimes are nowhere left enough😀. So there is another left/right cleavage, on economic issues. And here leftism has suffered immensely and has been replaced with identity politics.
One of the great challenges is that when one is young, it's natural to want to travel to interesting places and meet lots and lots of people who one imagines are different from oneself, and the concepts of globalism and internationalism seem very right and the natural goal to fulfill the great dream of that Coca Cola commercial.
It's only after you've been beaten up a little along the road of life that you start to wisen up and by then you've voted foolishly for so long and supported initiatives that are now coming back to bite you quite viciously in your tender parts.
"That said, these lunatics are anything but toothless; they can do a lot of damage to ordinary people." And it is in damaging ordinary people that terrorism produces its greatest effect.
“It is thus best to conceive of liberalism, socialism/communism and right-nationalism as overlapping electron clouds, which achieve mutual exclusivity only at the extremes.”
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This man in my view is the best political explainer on Substack and perhaps in the whole wide world, though of course I can’t prove it.
But I got great antennae so everyone ought to trust me here.
Hear, hear! 👏👏
And whatever name they may fall under at any given moment (right now it’s quite the Smorgasbord to choose from wherever you look!),
they’re all after the same thing: power, by any means necessary.
"they’re all after the same thing: power, by any means necessary."
And without responsibility, naturally!
Yes, and his explanation today, while focused on Germany, can easily be applied to my native Canada, unfortunately.
Any western nation.
I agree completely! This cleared up years of confusion for me.
Though I am no longer of tender years I really do swoon over good explainers.
It’s easy to agree with this description, however there is another description I’ve always liked about left and right wing extreme governments, being adjacent, and that it’s not a political spectrum as much as a political circle.
Therefore, I might say that liberalism, Socialism, communism and right nationalism overlap at the extremes.
Great post/observation !!! If I might, I would like to expand upon that a little further:
Where they converge is on the amount of “state control” and there you can lump them together, as an ordinary citizen living under a communist or fascist government is unlikely to detect a difference. A more intuitive linear political spectrum might look something like: Anarchist – Libertarian – Classical Liberal – Socialist – Totalitarian. And that totalitarian category can be teased apart a bit further. What is the difference between “state ownership of businesses” verses “state control of businesses”? Not much to the average person. However, as counter-intuitive as it seems, Fascism is slightly more “democratic” than Communism, as it leaves an oligarch class intact that might occasionally push back on the government.
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Nationalism was not some academic intellectual invention but arose organically in response to the inability of conglomerate empires, like the Austro-Hungarian and the British Empire, to govern effectively and justly at the regional and local level. Many scholars like to claim that the world has moved beyond the Westphalian model of sovereign nation states. However, we have never lived in a truly Westphalian world. After World War II the British Empire was replaced by the American Empire and the Soviet Union and its satellites, followed by the American Unipolar Moment after the Cold War. (In a sense, the EU is just a rehabbed version of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that was allowed to emerge during the Unipolar Moment, to keep Europe governable.) The implication is that the Westphalian revolution, that started in 1648, is still underway. The only difference between the globalist vision for the future and the old Austro-Hungarian Empire is “grandiosity of scope"; it is not anything new. If one accepts that, then the globalists are not progressives but reactionaries and it is the BRICS that are trying something new: a world of respectful sovereign nation states, organized on Westphalian principles.
Love this discussion! This,--> "A more intuitive linear political spectrum might look something like: Anarchist – Libertarian – Classical Liberal – Socialist – Totalitarian."
and this --> "What is the difference between “state ownership of businesses” verses “state control of businesses”? Not much to the average person. However, as counter-intuitive as it seems, Fascism is slightly more “democratic” than Communism, as it leaves an oligarch class intact that might occasionally push back on the government." I often experience dissonance trying to figure out if canada is a socialist nation or if we're all just nazis, when companies/industries have such a powerful influence on policy and not necessarily for the good of the people but for the elites at the top of the food chain from appearances.
and thought provoking --> "BRICS...respectful sovereign nation states, organized on Westphalian principles". Thanks to you, I found my way to this article by Daniel Araya of CIGI which contains interesting perspective about the passing of the US unipolar moment into a post-western multi-polar world, the rise and growth of BRICS and a way forward.
https://www.cigionline.org/articles/americas-unipolar-moment-is-over-what-comes-next-is-unclear/
Thanks for the reply! What you are describing is the inverse of "state control of business": "business control of the state". Aristotle and Plato made the observation that the "end state" of a democracy is oligarchy. Whether the West gets to that end-state is still to be determined. If you want a preview of what that might look like, I suggest reading the English language version of the Wikipedia page on the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) of Mexico, sadly, it should look very familiar.
The Fiona Hill lecture (Lennart Meri Lecture 2023 on YT) was a wakeup call to the Western oligarchy that things are not going its way ("Russia and the Rest against the West"). How that happened is something future historians will need to piece together, but I think the globalist oligarchs lost interest (or became too arrogant/incompetent/corrupt) in playing the incremental slow game, behind the scenes, and revealed themselves. If you read the early speeches and writings of Gorbachev, Putin and Xi (through Wang Huning) they all saw the West the way Francis Fukuyama described it, as the "shining city on the hill" but are now completely disabused of that notion.
A fascinating time we are all living through, for better or for worse.
Absolutely. Just take the straight line from left to right of the standard diagram of the political spectrum, and bend it around until it forms a circle. Then you have a much more accurate picture of the political spectrum, with authoritarianism at the apex of the circle, and freedom at the opposite point.
I imagine if we were to "weight" the circle by popularity of the ideology, the left, socialists and authoritarians/totalitarians would hold the far greater portion of the circle.
Probably so. Liberty and self reliance may not be as popular as serfdom.
The welfare state trains people to love their shackles.
A history teacher in high school taught me this - would have been 1977/78.
That was my understanding of politics until I read this essay. Of course it's best read in the context of eugyppius' earlier articles.
There's a progression from his initial observations regarding the unprecedented COVID panic/hoax and subsequent vaccination regime, towards analysis as to why these things were happening, and now to a better model of the modern administrative state.
I suppose all of us could argue all day and night and onward about how we draw this diagram.
What I appreciate in Eugyppius is how he backs up his statements with careful delineation [some moron once told me I mean "adumbrate" and that ain't a word I'd ever heard of and see no need to add to my vocabulary] of the facts/history to support his conclusions.
He ain't no god to me. Just a really good--a superior--explainer.
Yes, agree. It’s a rare skill.
Agree
I would add Monarchy as well.
Agreed. I've been saying the right doesn't really exist today; what is called right-wing is just normal people who reject leftism, or at least parts of it. But eugyppius explains it much better here.
In the US there are plenty of extreme right-wing Christian extremists who fancy themselves patriots and who are the absolute antithesis of our foundational American values.
The Alabama Supreme Court just declared embryos created for the purpose of IVF to be termed minor children due the full protection of law and whose destruction may be charged as murder. The chief justice in that court used Biblical references to bolster the argument.
This is derangement of the highest order. And the surrender of the Republican Party to this sort of derangement does indeed make them genuinely right-wing.
Normal people are politically homeless these days.
I agree. I am astounded by how vocal and angry people get on reproductive topics, people I otherwise align with on any other topics.
People always want to control what other people do. This is the most egalitarian of human impulses.
I sided strongly with this, so many of us are today framed as right wingers but I was always an open minded moderate/centrist with a ‘ play fair’ mindset - no men in womens sports, immigrants improperly using asylum channels, corporate/govt cronyism, excusing violent criminals.
I trust you
Call it anything you want or not, but in the end it is anti-human. The simple struggle between life and death where politics are meant to determine the outcome. The clowns and parasites who would rule over us are becoming more and more desperate as their computer algorithms and faulty game shows are not jiving with reality.
if they are aliens like David Icke thinks, they should soon depart, leaving the world in a mess, but we will be rid of them. We are used to clean up mess.
It is in my view cowardly and expedient thinking to insist common human passions and failings are of alien origin. "Them not us." No, human nature is immutable and that really aggravates those who want to find permanent solutions for durably incurable problems.
But it's so much fun to talk about lizard people! 👽
Isn't it too bad how many nice animals are slandered because we can't just say "it's us!"
I'm very fond of lizards, and snakes, and weasels, and even pigs who make wonderful mothers though they certainly could use some of that Lume full-body deodorant stuff.
And cattle and sheep. They've all got quite charming personalities when you get to know them.
I’ll take just about any animal over some of the people and the content of their minds on X
I'm a reptile-phile myself. And I think pigs only smell because of their conditions of captivity.
I'm afraid I'm one of those loathsome people who don't consider Homo sapiens to be superior to other life forms. Yet I still enjoy a good science-fiction yarn, such as national leaders being lizard people in disguise.
Oh, I'm with you here in everything except about pigs. I worked in a children's farm as a tour guide for a few years, and pigs have a distinctive natural odor that only pigs can love. Even in a clean large-enough pen open to the fresh air and regularly cleaned out, Essence de Sow is overpowering.
That is pretty loathsome to me, as we clearly are. I'm going to guess you are further incoherent to the point that when AI is demonstrably 'conscious' you'll insist we give it rights equal to human rights, or even higher?
By this do you mean the survival imperative, meritocracy and all that? If so, i agree. The whole ‘guaranteed equal outcome’ thing is so perverse, especially when mandated by people who have carefully secured a very tidy luxury existence for themselves, one completely unaligned to the philosophy.
All of life is the struggle for power and resources. It ain't fancy.
I agree. The labels are confusing because they include forms of government as well as philosophies of governance. In the end, if government is in charge of the people, it's some form of authoritarianism, no matter how its mechanisms operate. Even most "democracies" today shape the opinions of their own people (with propaganda, mis- and disinformation, censorship, etc.), causing the people to demand what the government desires, fooling the people into believing they are directing the government. These are not actual democracies, they're covert authoritarian governments.
It is interesting how the spectres and shadows of the past influence today. Those long since vanished threats both take on mutated, sometimes even entirely new meanings with increasing time since the events they are based on, and also get revived just at the point when you thought they had become completely irrelevant.
Growing up in the UK in the 1970s and 80s, the Germans were very often the playground roleplay baddies. One group of kids would do the comedy accents, Hitler moustaches and salutes, and always lose. Of course we were too young to understand why, but having watched the entire covid mania (where I have my own theories about what we should have learned from the Holocaust, that for another time), I don't think most people ever did understand once they grew up.
The open and murderous racism of the national socialists ties in well with the mutation in "anti-nazism" because it comes from the same place as "anti-racism". Racism when I was growing up was already largely reduced to name-calling. Like Nazism it had been defeated, and it didn't take a war (at least, not in the UK). Today it is a problem that is almost totally nonexistent, and it is clear that all the wonderful new racism suppression ideas the left comes up with in the pursuit of equality of outcome, or the constant invention of new -isms that we apparently all need training out of, actually do more harm than good on their own terms. One man's privilege is another man's disadvantage - so creating new discriminatory privileges to "address" the past creates resentment that is equally as morally justified as past resentment against the discrimination of the past.
The idea that the institutionalised racism of, say, American slavery, could ever reemerge is insane, just as insane as the idea that some nonexistent German neo-nazi group would rebuild death camps, or that anyone really gave a monkey's about the strange man in a dress most would (and will) never encounter in a lifetime anyway. But the left sees racists and nazis everywhere.
The progressive left is fighting a dim and partially incorrect recollection of last century's wars against a comic-book straw man. By equating name calling with slavery, opposition to mass immigration (especially having to pay for it) with mass murder, and respect for property rights and minimalist government with fascism (god the irony), they can keep the whole schtick going forever. You will never completely eliminate "racism" or other "isms", you will never achieve absolute equality across all metrics between all groups however defined (even if you legislate for it), so there is always more progress to be made, and more authority to be exercised.
"An 'ideal society' would be the graveyard of human greatness." — Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Nice comment - final paragraph is very astute.
I had to look it up, but there is a biblical passage "The sins of the forefathers will be visited unto the third generation."
I am into at least the fifth generation of North American born, so I don't think I owe much for my (non-slave owning) ancestors. On the other hand, if they had been wealthy slave owners, maybe I would be a rich heir and wouldn't have to worry about Substack resistance. In reality there are few families who manage to maintain power and assets through the centuries, and for the most part WE DON'T SEE THEM.
George Carlin made it perfectly clear: "It's a big club, and you aint in it."
The interesting ones are the ones we do see- from south to north, Peron's, Roosevelt's, Clinton's, Bush's, Trudeau's.
A good window on the event is to look at the names on trusts and foundations. They have organised our regimes to (somewhat) anonymously, and with observable tax-advantage, maintain their power and influence. Note that the tax advantage gives them exponentially increasing wealth.
astute, yes. i know absolute useless people advantaged by family trusts. i'm jealous, of course.
And hence the need to create ever more victim groups, such as the "men" with vaginas and the "women" (womyn?) with penisis. 😞
I think there is a recurrent error in taking their arguments at face value... Eg "their use of racism is meaningless or actually opposite" etc. You see this a lot in the more popular rightish press,eg Daily Wire.
A good thing to remind ourselves of is the post modernist refutation of language and logic as simply vehicles of power. Ie. They'll call me racist because it results in desired effects for them; the actual meaning of what they say, the validity of terms, etc, isn't relevant... May not even realize they are using language that way (think juvenile Hamas supporters in the US) they just have a "feel". Term nazi is used this way here a great deal.
I grew up in the UK in the 70s and was a young person in the 80s - name-calling in the schoolyard sometimes, but we all went to each other’s birthday parties, and gave valentines cards to peole whose names we had to ask how to spell. Older, many of my friends came from around the world and I accepted if not loved differences, if I even noticed them and usually we aligned around commonalties anyway.
Over the last couple of years, My neighbourhood in a suburb of Toronto was peppered with posters saying ”hate has no home here”. What hate? Someone constructed a bogeyman of non-existent “hate” to muster around.
It's Hegelian dialectic, all social relationships are based on winners or losers. Marxism, has to have a "zero sum game", if I win then someone had to lose.
Of course that's not true in reality. Though corruption is enabled by government, and the growth of government will lead to more corruption. And corruption does take from others without the great exchange of the free market.
Absolutely correct.
Harrison Bergeron.
Have you read about this?
https://rmx.news/germany/this-shouldnt-happen-in-a-democracy-afd-politician-withdraws-from-election-race-after-threats-to-his-family/
What are the AfD doing about this deliberate intimidation, surely there must be laws against the deliberate intimidation of electoral candidates.
Care to comment? The AfD should be raising merry hell about this intimidation campaign, they are entitled to stand and have the same protection as any other politicians standing in elections
Seems like almost on a weekly basis that AFD politicians are threatened, assaulted ... has been going on for a very long time now. The German mainstream press does not report it. The German authorities left this AFD politician to the wolves: https://europeanconservative.com/articles/interviews/violent-mob-rampaged-outside-home-of-german-mp-it-was-like-something-from-a-war-zone-an-interview-with-petr-bystron-mp/
most of the intimidation is astroturfed
Ideology of left or right isn't at the core of this globalist movement. Any ideas are thin veneers for a massive power/money grab. The reason why leftist ideas predominate as the veneer, is that they all require increased central power to enact. Global phenomena like climate and pandemics are useful in that they can create crisis narratives to fuel the grab for central power. Any time spent debating labels is wasted really. It all comes down to totalitarianism with poverty and dependency for the masses and riches and power for those ruling.
I would argue that all ideologies are secondary to political power – they are often merely ways of articulating this power, or of achieving it. In a weird way, though, they seem to have a recursive influence on this power itself and its exercise. Liberal, democratic states, even when they have succeeded in largely suppressing the voice of their own people, still operate in ways distinct from illiberal dictatorships or police states. This is very interesting phenomenon in general which I hope to write about in my next book.
I think this last bit is determined by the propaganda value of being "free" and "liberal" states. Its like stealing credit card numbers via some clever ruse instead of shoving a gun in someone's face. Both are hated thieves, but only the latter gets a life sentence.
I agree ideologies are merely ways of achieving political power. The different ideologies simply use different methods of interacting with, convincing, and controlling the masses.
For the most part, those being controlled are the only ones who really believe the ideology.
This is my completely superficial and unsophisticated description of politics. But what do I know, being just a near-microscopic aquatic animal. At least I'm resilient.
Indestructible!
Resilience is the new black
A possible angle to consider is (obvously, I'd argue) the aspect of culture/ethnicity (I mean kultur but it doesn't "work" in english) and how it causes the -ism to manifest.
Based on the following reason:
As a swede, I'm obviously very aware how we have both been passively affect but also actively looked abroad many times to find things other neighbouring cultures do with succes, that may be utilised by us.
Even 500 years ago when Gustav Vasa, the first king of the unified nation, looked to Germany of that era, it was for an idea how to get the church under the control of the crown (ie.e under his control). That idea being Lutheranism. Then it was the dutch and the english which were "looted" for ideas bith technical and political. In Gustav III's day (the 1700s), the cultural epicentre was France, so french ideas became the fashion of his rule.
And then we swung back to Germany until the 1940s, and after that it's been USA.
To me the effects are obvious: french 1700s liberalism (to use a uniform term for the ideas of that century) greatly influenced the final movement away from tradition-based privilege-style laws and ordinances to rights-and-principles based same. The later german influences greatly affected the organisation of the state apparatus, so where alloyed to the liberalist ideals. Culturally, nationalromatik had its heyday during the 19th century, inspired by the unification of Germany and spawning (in Sweden, danes and finns and norwegians weren't quite so keen) a drive for a new Kalmar Union.
The cultural influence from the US led during the 1960s and 1970s to increasing tension between the inter-war inspired socialists and communists on one hand, and everyone else on the other, culminating with the Socialist Democrat party losing it's postion as /The Party/ in 1991, and them subsequently abandoning all their old principles for neoliberalist globalism (economically speaking) and US campus radicalism-inspired multikultur (socially speaking.
I hope the idea I'm fishing about for is clear to you - the underlying kultur will shape the -ism being implemented, much more than vice versa.
The Marxists put it more succinctly: "It's in the dialectic."
It is very difficult to oppose!
Can I take this to another level I have been contemplating Eugyppius?
A democracy is based on a constitution, however, there may come a time when the constitution no longer works, and working around it leads to more failure to deliver and political unrest.
In such a situation there has to be a democratic means of changing the constitution so that the constitution works again for democracy.
That is not possible unless a political party realises that, is able to build popular support, gain sufficient strength and therefore mass the democratic force to do so.
The AfD is likely that party.
In The UK we are in my opinion reaching the limits of a constitutional "norm" settlement, we are tied in by far to much international law, and the apparatus the left have developed by NGO's infiltrating the major institutions like the WEF, NGO's, the Judiciary, the Civil Service - in fact everything but government office and is deliberately trying to frustrate democratic change.
The "world order" is not working for the people any more, not in most of Europe or the UK and arguably the USA as well
If the AfD is banned, or as they now seem to be trying to do intimidate them out of office or putting them under a police state, merely for opposing the liberal lefty consensus and clearly represent a large section of the electorate, that is nothing short of totalitarianism identical in my opinion to Putin's intimidation of his political opponents.
What laws on political intimidation does Germany have? What legally can the AfD do in terms of the law to force fair elections and stop intimidation that looks to be to be state sponsored?
Because what you describe is the use of a police state for the purposes of political intimidation of opponents, that put bluntly is no different to Putin, Xi, Stalin or Hitler.
This will not end well.
Speaking from a US Constitution perspective, it’s not that our Constitution didn’t/ doesn’t work, it is that it has not been adhered to for decades by the very people who swore to uphold, preserve and protect it. And they have never been held accountable, this continue to trample it further and further. And that is why they hate it so much, because its very design was to “check” the power of the State.
If it had been adhered to, our country would be a very different place.
But the one element essential in order to adhere and maintain that Constitution was a moral people, people with a conscience and truly virtuous Judeo-Christian values.
And where can you find a people or a representative today with such a character? Rare, indeed.
This is precisely and exactly true. We in the US have a remarkable document, the finest fruit of the Western Enlightenment, and the Founders, whatever their human flaws, achieved something extraordinary at the moment such genius was necessary.
Everyone who wants to "update" it is truly made unhappy by the concept of individual liberty and limitations on the power of the state. This is true throughout the political spectrum.
Edit: Almost precisely and exactly true. Sectarian values are not necessary for anyone to behave in ethical and decent ways. Goodness is an innate trait and not created by belief systems.
Slaveholders among prominent Founding Fathers of the United States of America: Charles Carroll, Samuel Chase, Benjamin Franklin, Button Gwinnett, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, James Madison, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Benjamin Rush, Edward Rutledge, George Washington
So? Robespierre and Stalin did NOT own slaves. Would you rather live under their political vision?
But your belief is in a document. Is that not a belief system?
If that document is so brilliant ... how come you have a senile crook as the head of state?
It's not magic, is it? Just a great blueprint.
Excellent Suzie. Thanks for sharing your concise and clear thoughts.
I wholeheartedly agree that the USA Constitution needs a moral people who uphold the Christian values upon which it was founded.
Respectfully, I'd just like to point out that Christians don't have a monopoly on those values.
Christians in real life rarely exhibit a fidelity to, you know, Jesus.
Lots of us are faithful to Jesus. Are we perfect? No. If you’re looking for perfection, you will only find it in Jesus Himself.
You are welcome to your beliefs.
According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, there were 2.2 billion Christians around the world. How many of them do you know personally?
"The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity, and humanity, let the blackguard Paine say what he will; it is resignation to God, it is goodness itself to man." -- John Adams (26 July 1796).
Adams was just a human being, right?
The US Constitution is the finest fruit of the Western Enlightenment.
Just as Christianity is not Judaism and Judaism is not the older Canaanite religions, the Western Enlightenment is not Christian. It is the evolution away from narrow sectarian values.
But as Mark Steyn said, having the world's greatest constitution means nothing if you have the world's crappiest election system.
It means plenty if the electorate would understand that ground-up rather than top-down politics are how you rip down rotten growths.
Today's electorate would be unimaginable to the authors of our constitution, none of whom would ever have allowed their hired (or forced) help, their local shopkeeper, or even their wife anywhere near a mechanism that could threaten their interests or their prosperity.
This isn't simply a problem of providing mail-in ballots to every Tom, Dick, and Harry with the result that now there are means are available to upend an election in the middle of the night; it's that there are millions of people who have no skin in the game but have been given a voice. (The person who would rob Paul to pay Peter can count on Peter's support.)
The founding fathers of the United States were all wealthy elite, a majority of them slaveholders. Is that what you mean by "ground-up"?
The western Enlightenment is precisely what has gotten us to where we are in this very moment, and where we are right now ... is why we are here in this forum trying to figure out how to save civilization from self-destructing.
It's human nature that gets us wherever we are at the moment.
The problem with a constitution is interpretation, unless its crystal clear what it means in all circumstances.
The operation is usually by the executive, challengeable to courts, in your case the Supreme Court, which is less than politically independent.
I'd say that matters, if its not for the fact that the appointment of judges in other countries like the UK is totally opaque, I heavily suspect after Brexit, that its stuffed full of lefties.
Therefore a constitution is not a "cast iron" set of rules, certainly not in itself, and certainly not under the action of courts.
Therefore these things get bent out of all recognition by politicians that try things when they know or heavily suspect that the Courts will back them up, and by doing so they effectively change the constitution itself.
The same is happening everywhere, in Germany, in the EU where it amends and over interprets its own law to suit itself and applies it selectively.
We have seen it here with Brexit, where parliamentary constitution was practically torn up, we have seen it from the EU and the ECHR and all these institutions are doing the same to morph into totalitarian states where dissent is no longer tolerated.
All true. Hence, the requirement and absolute necessity of a MORAL people who will properly adhere to and abide by it.
As they say, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. As they also say, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
The key elements have to be that constitutions have to be amendable, things happen in time that the people who drew them up never envisaged.
Fundamentally, politically, nothing should be off the table, the AfD should be able to campaign on deporting people who have been naturalised in Germany if the people so desire it, or have the Nazi's back if the people want it.
The key point is that if the AfD want to do that, that's an electoral choice, but they would have to agree that it would require constitutional change and agree to lawful constitutional change to achieve it.
That is often a two thirds parliamentary majority in most countries, and if it can manage those numbers there is nothing wrong with proposing it.
What would be subversive would be to say "we'd tear up the constitution and act as a dictatorship" which would be very silly for numerous reasons
1. It has a PR system, and its highly unlikely to be able to govern without another party
2. Its electorally counter productive, because the AfD is nowhere near getting an electoral two thirds majority on its own, so its simply not a realistic policy.
But the right to say you'd like to change the constitution is not subversive, provided that its done by democratic means.
Therefore the AfD are not subversives unless its planning a coup to overthrow the state, and as far as I'm aware they aren't, so they should not be under "police state" surveillance for being subversives.
It is fashionable to hate on Christians in the West. Another manifestation of oikophobia. Much of what we consider self evident insights of the enlightenment come from the judeo christian tradition, not from precursor antiquity. It is a conceit (in the true sense of the word) in the culture of "educated" people in the West to make broad comments that disparage or downplay its value. A more balanced historical look would acknowledge its value. And i would argue that the comments here would be less negative if we were discussing islam or some minority animist religion.
Correct. Thank you for your analysis and comments! The US Constitution was practically abandoned decades ago.
Yes, it will ultimately come down to the People. Whatever that looks like, I don’t know.
Much better articulated than my comment!
In Germany the constitutional limits are dealt with by simply ignoring them. It is clear from the corona era that the written provisions of your rights are not worth the paper they are written on. The judiciary will ignore them, the police will enforce the will of the government.
There was a period, around the end of 2021, when living here was seriously fucking scary. It literally looked as if they would stop at nothing to stop the unstoppable.
I don't know if there is any kind of constitutional settlement that will actually deal with this entirely human propensity to extreme mob violence when faced with a (imaginary) threat. Perhaps the best we can hope for is retribution against those who played up the threat after the event and the hope that might encourage future actors.
The question to me is how the AfD play this.
I would be asking about things like "why are the state not protecting democratic candidates from intimidation?" and "Is it still legal to oppose the government?" and that runs to the heart of democracy, those are legitimate political questions that i would make central to any upcoming election campaigns.
If you don't vote for us, you may lose any option you have to oppose legally what you disagree with.
Make the government answer those questions, and watch the votes pile up when they don't have any answers.
The problem is the AfD was completely isolated from public view.
Not a few months ago there was what was almost certainly an assassination attempt on the co-leader of the AfD. The press did everything they could to cast doubt. Two suspects were detained at the scene, no action was taken.
About the same time the other co-leader was subject to certain unspecified threats and temporarily relocated away from her home. The press said the German authorities knew nothing of supposed threats, a deliberate distraction since Weidel lives in Switzerland and the Swiss authorities said they did.
If the government doesn't investigate an attempted assassination of an opposition political leader what chance does anyone lower down the food chain have?
Also the atmosphere here is genuinely approaching "if you oppose the government then yes, that is illegal".
Then as I said, if I was the AfD, I'd be asking all these questions in public?
Why did the state not investigate an attempted murder?
Why is it illegal to oppose the government?
Why is it illegal to challenge a lack of border controls?
Why is it illegal to question any international agreements
Why does the state not stop intimidation of political opponents?
Make the elections about democracy, and say if you don't vote for democracy, this lot will take it away, you won't be allowed to challenge the EU, or net zero, or mass immigration against your democratic will.
No one is listening to the questions being asked. The AfD can issue all the statements they want and they will be ignored or twisted. If Chrupalla had died, the AfD would have been accused by the media of going after sympathy votes.
No doubt a conspiracy theory would have been floated that it was an inside job and we would be seeing documentaries now about why the conspiracy theory is true.
It is really, really difficult to get across how one-sided the entirety of German media is at this point in time.
Even much of the independent, dissident media are not particularly fans of the AfD so don't always fill the gaps that well.
German news media is at this point is a Pravda with better production values. Everyone in Germany is required to pay a monthly fee for the public-private broadcasts. If you do not own a TV, radio or computer, i.e. you have no access to the broadcasts, you are still required to pay. Last I knew, if you are blind you are required to pay. This is called social solidarity. Not making this up folks .... And if you refuse to pay, you will be hounded forever, as if you owed a huge debt. One woman of honor and principle was so outraged that she refused to pay, and refused, and refused. She was sentenced to jail time. This was a long time ago. Germany is not suddenly coming unglued. It never was glued. When I first moved to Germany in 2001, the broadcasters had specially equipped vans that slowly cruised through the neighborhoods. On the roof were installed rotating electronic devices that looked like radar. Those instruments were able to pick up broadcast signals and determine from which apartments they were coming -- or not coming. Check that against the payment records, and determine who was not paying. I was here only a few weeks when there came a knock at the door. A guy is standing there with a name tag and a clipboard. He is from the public broadcaster and wants to come in and search my apartment to see my TV, radio, computer. Not the Soviet Union, folks ... the Federal Republic of Germany. Shameful to say that I am still here, because that should have made it clear that I needed to pack my bags and head to the airport. Saved the best for last -- the public broadcasters, being in the spirit of solidarity among the people, is required in their charter to, naturally enough, be balanced in their reporting, to ensure there is no bias to left or right etc. But that requirement is ignored and they broadcast only blatantly biased left-wing bullshit.
The good thing is that lot of Germans in last few years stopped believing what the TV says. Lot of them feel betrayed.
Lot of hard working Germans are not happy where all they tax money goes.
"arguably the USA" is an understatement. Matt Taibbi has been writing quite a bit about this lately. A good representative article that is not paywalled: https://www.racket.news/p/is-the-electoral-fix-already-in
'there has to be a democratic means of changing the constitution so that the constitution works again for democracy...deliberately trying to frustrate democratic change...' Well, the US Constitution famously has an amendment process built in. Unfortunately, since at least the 1970s, our two entrenched parties have managed to lard on enough obstacles to make any amendment essentially impossible. I wish Germany better luck.
And no states have joined the union since the 1950s. My personal suspicion is that this is related to the entitlement state. Perhaps that is also the reason that no amendments have been ratified since 1965.
Ummm .... excuse me ... everything is decided by JUDGES!!! Who are our modern-day equivalent of the kings of the much maligned age of the great monarchies. The judge is somehow endowed with a wisdom possessed by none of us commoners, and he or she can impact our everyday lives tremendously. How many times did the current chief justice of the German supreme court travel to Berlin expressly to hang out with Angela Merkel ... while coincidentally also being, in his decisions, totally in harmony with her views? It is so disgustingly infantile I can hardly stand it anymore ... as if it would be possible for a judge ... or anyone ... to be impartial ... as if a judge, particularly in our present times, could be equally impartial and decide fairly in favor of, or against, a Donald Trump or a raving Green politician or the AfD and so on. Always impartial and in keeping exactly with the written word of the law. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, the judge would have to be superhuman. Fairy tales to help us go to sleep at night.
well said
A simple concept of fascism is the partnership of the state and corporations versus the citizenry. This is somewhat concealed in the current construct by the smokescreen of foundations and NGO's, but remember the duck- if it quacks like a duck... The promotion of PPP's almost makes the point.
I have found Ayn Rand's formulation of statism useful in helping to see motives and structures.
Your description of invented "rights" is indeed a trap, as they are constructed with no apparent responsibilities for exercise by the citizenry or consequences for governments which override them. Our current experience in Canada is a fine example- most are aware of the imposition of the "Emergencies Act" two years ago, but far fewer are awake to the destructive adoption of the UNDRIP on a widespread basis. The destruction of property rights through"climate" rules is another example of the statist impulse.
Describing what we are witnessing in the west is extremely difficult. I believe it is because it does not fit nicely into any of the boxes that make up our prior experience. Wokism, or whatever name it is given in Europe shares a lot of elements with prior ideologies.
When it comes to classifying communism, socialism and fascism I like to use Hayek's formulation that they are all essentially collectivist ideologies. They only differ in their definition of the in-group involved in "the struggle" and the out-group against whom they are struggling. The same goes for all the other isms of the 20th century.
I think when people talk about the modern regime being fascist, what they are referring to is the seeming melding of public and private entities towards a common goal. In the United States big finance is used as an enforcer of the current woke ideology against corporate America. On an individual level, the corporate HR department is the enforcer against the employee. I've experienced this myself recently. Operationally, I think there are significant parallels to fascism.
What is truly different is the underlying ideology. Communism, socialism and fascism are not only collectivist, they are also identitarian. Although the definition of the in and out groups differ among them, the in-group is identified as a majority of the population in whatever subdivision the ideology chooses. In the nationalist sense it would be some historic or ethnically homogeneous group. In the internationalist sense it would mean the underclass or working class.
Wokism is collectivist in that it is a call to collective action on a number of issues, the alleged climate emergency being the most obvious. However, it is different in that in the identitarian sphere the in-group that is elevated is in all cases a distinct minority relative to the population, whether they be migrants or sexual minorities. In both cases, the wokist ideologue urges the majority of the population to work against its own interests to either achieve some nebulous collective goal, such as net zero, or to elevate minority rights over the rights of the majority. I think this relates back to a series of articles you did on Exogenous Moral Orientation (I think I got that right finally!).
It is my view that collectivist ideologies by their nature always turn repressive, because by their nature they require the entire population to get with the program. The only way to accomplish that is through coercion, particularly when the goal is contrary to the interests of the majority of the population.
While I don’t disagree with Hayek at all, I would note that one weakness of diagnosing ‚collectivism‘ in communism and national socialism, is that it is a bit like elephant zoologists developing a category for ‚trunkless mammals.‘
In fact it is liberal individualism that, across human history, is highly marked and unusual.
Very good comment. One of the reasons why it's so difficult to put one's finger on what's unfolding in the West, is because it's something very particular that's outside the framework of most people. However, a certain futurologist (of the not too distant past) have already laid out in detail how this would all unfold and is unfolding as we can observe on a daily basis. There's great depth in his analysis and it's well recommended for a study of current events:
'The Crisis Of Our Age - by Pitirim A. Sorokin:
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.275906
Great post, I wouldn't have commented if I'd read this first. In the US, children since the 60's were indoctrinated that Naziism was "on the right" by the Democrats to try and associate the Republicans with it. Just as they're doing today, even though they are worlds apart ideologically.
Well, logically, if you're far left enough, fascism will be to the right of you.
Which of course says more of the politically correct, the woke and the people mouthing off about Our Democracy(tm).
Then again, Eugyppius is precisely right when he describes ideologies as overlapping fields, not points on a scale.
An honest appraisal...Germany is well on the way to creating a State that is impervious to the wishes of actual Germans..The only way out will be nationwide strikes by workers who can't be replaced, like truckers and farmers...
It's not just Germany. Liberalism has degenerated into farce - albeit in varying degrees - right across the Western world. Here's how: you still have a pluralist electoral democracy but just as a kind of plaything....part of the media entertainment industry. Meanwhile the real government is a permanent and almost unchallengeable techno-bureaucracy constantly topped up by 'experts' emerging from its 'one-party' universities.
N.B. Two common dictionary definitions of "fascism." (1) a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition; (2) a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control. (This 2nd definition being the sense most old-school leftists use the term in, as opposed to capital-F Fascism.) Two definitions of "totalitarianism." (1) centralized control by an autocratic authority; (2) the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute [state] authority. (The rather sloppy definition and resulting misunderstandings of these terms is such that their meanings cannot be taken for granted, and thus the terms need to be clearly defined by the author in any serious discussion involving their use.)
1) is largely what I mean by "right-nationalism," but I prefer that term over 'fascism' in general because the latter entails some extraneous elements we would expect in any illiberal regime.
2) as you say is more of a leftist polemical understanding of the political opposition.
I would say "Fascism" (def 1) is a very specific subset of right-nationalism, whereas "fascism" and "fascist" (def 2) are non-scholarly vernacular uses of the term, still casually used by old lefty dinosaurs like me (i.e., not just the new woke leftists) to describe any form of extreme authoritarianism (e.g. "my aunt Martha goes fascist at Thanksgiving," "the Covid measures were so fascist," etc.), in addition to the use you describe (i.e., stigmatizing the political opposition). Hence the need to clearly define the terms in any serious discussion.
Anyone who supports the founding principles of the U.S. constitution, division of power in the branches of government and between the states and the federal government, is called a right wing extremist. A centralized autocratic government of any type would then seem to be of the left not right. I think that fascism is just a heresy of communism which substitutes tribe for class. Fascism seems more expedient in its alliance with business. Communist take on too much by trying to reinvent the economy. Communists also seem more interested in signed confessions. Fascists don't bother and go straight to elimination of the opposition. Having said all that, it's really just name-calling. The things that matter are money and power.
Liberalism is con-you-ism.
So-called «liberalism» is just about as liberal as certain religions are tolerant – i.e. only until they acquire enough power to crush everyone else.
it does not really matter what you call it. the general meaning is clear. This is NOT good and going the wrong way by the day
Excellent Ms. Durden! The miscreants are not concerned with labels, they are too busy working to ensure that power and wealth and comfort is in their possession and that of their fellow club members. And any commoners who would like a share of that -- understandably since they foot the bill for everything by paying always higher taxes -- must be disabused that their voices can be the decisive factor.
Authoritarian liberalism is real phenomenon. Now I am real "economic leftist", I support high taxes, Piketty style politics, and I tell you that from my point of view these EU regimes are nowhere left enough😀. So there is another left/right cleavage, on economic issues. And here leftism has suffered immensely and has been replaced with identity politics.
One of the great challenges is that when one is young, it's natural to want to travel to interesting places and meet lots and lots of people who one imagines are different from oneself, and the concepts of globalism and internationalism seem very right and the natural goal to fulfill the great dream of that Coca Cola commercial.
It's only after you've been beaten up a little along the road of life that you start to wisen up and by then you've voted foolishly for so long and supported initiatives that are now coming back to bite you quite viciously in your tender parts.
"That said, these lunatics are anything but toothless; they can do a lot of damage to ordinary people." And it is in damaging ordinary people that terrorism produces its greatest effect.
An exceptionally clear and articulate description of the modern world, greatly appreciated by a political unsophisticate like me.