These are entertaining reads, but you're too easily spooked and don't seem to have an adequate lay of the land with respect to the online right. Do you really think there's a brewing fascist threat from "frog twitter"? The MAGA, Q, and America First crowds are orders of magnitude larger (literally, not in the English major sense of that phrase) and have catalyzed actual IRL demonstrations, and both the HBD and IDW crowds have more mindshare on the "dissident right" than right-wing bodybuilders and shitposting grad students.
Make explicit the model of the near future latent within your foreboding historical allusions to see how preposterous its predictions and causal machinery are: "BAP and adjacent personalities, starting from Twitter and podcasts, are building a following they will turn into the cadre of an extremist political movement that will seize power in the United States and... do genocide, or whatever." lol.
The most charitable reading of all this petty name-calling and attempted mogging that I can muster is this: "These ideas are morally objectionable and not in line with the principles of the American Founding." To which my response is: "Yeah, no shit. And yet."
Why would they be so resonant with Claremont types? Is it possible, just maybe, that given the course we've been tracking as a country for decades now, the "Bronze Age Mindset" offers a salutary corrective to our heading that actually brings us *closer* to something like what might be called a Founding Generation Mindset?
We are so far from the founding stock of this nation — not just institutionally, intellectually, and experientially, but yes, biologically (and this is not a claim about race or ethnicity, at least not in the contemporary sense of those terms) — that only radical departures from contemporary thought can bring us closer to actually existing 1776 red-white-and-blue Americanism.
I suggest temporarily suspending the post-Nuremberg neurotic impulse to cry out "fascism!" at every turn, and instead reading recent phenomena on the political right with a more open mind and broader historical frame of reference.
Lmao all this gnashing of teeth and butthurt because of an anonymous shitposting frog and a podcast. BAP has maybe has a few thousand fans? Meanwhile the USA in the current year is turning into the Weimar Republic, complete with a potential communist takeover. Where is Thompson’s angry screeds about that? What a jabroni.
I think the part you're overlooking in your critique is that the system in which you thrive and hence naturally defend is not sustainable. Politics will become (are becoming) territorial versus ideological; this cannot be avoided at this point. The Proposition Nation is breaking down along its fault lines because its citizens no longer share any consensus on the Proposition. After all, it's not like disagreement on the Proposition results in someone taking away your American-card.
Politics within the broad Overton frame of classical liberalism is done. It cannot survive multiculturalism (i.e., imperialism), a populace with large swathes either too stupid or frankly mentally ill for self-rule, and a government that prints all the money it needs. No multi-national empire has ever survived over the long term and no economy has ever been able to print money and buy its own debt with it forever. At some point the party is going to be over and something is going to be next. The movements you criticize would not arise except in response to the visible breakdown of an old order.
Interesting article. Language is a little over the top perhaps, but some things to think about. I look into works cited.
What's your position on political Zionism embedded within our political system, Professor Thompson? We just had Sheldon Adelson flying the extremely damaging traitor Pollard to Israel on his private jet, landing to big fanfare, including attendance of PM Netanyahu. Adelson spent $218 million on last election, $123 million on midterms. Obviously this is not "capitalism" or "freedom of speech". What is your position on political Zionism embedded within our politics?
The challenges you put forth above amount to nothing if you don't address what people are discussing.
"are repulsed by the soul of modern man, whose life has atrophied and is facing its final indignity as the homogenous mass man becomes indistinguishable from a herd of cattle safely grazing in comfort and peace"
Like most often in American history, conservatives or right-wingers often find the most similarities in what they reject or what they see that they must oppose. The discord happens when we start talking about positive ends and the means of achieving them. I strongly depart from BAP in that I believe the cure for the prevalent world of Leftwing nihilism is not Rightwing nihilism, but Rightwing Christianity.
“ If we want to understand the singular success, not of Hitler, but of
those writers, we must cast a quick glance at their opponents who were at the same time the opponents of the young nihilists. Those opponents committed frequently a grave mistake. They believed to have refuted the No by refuting the Yes, i.e. the inconsistent, if not silly, positive assertions of the young men. But one cannot refute what one has not thoroughly understood. And many opponents did not even try to understand the ardent passion underlying the negation of the present world and its potentialities. As a consequence, the very refutations confirmed the nihilists in their belief; all these refutations seemed to
beg the question; most of the refutations seemed to consist of pueris decantata, of repetitions of things which the young people knew already by heart. Those young men had come to doubt seriously, and not merely methodically or methodologically, the principles of modern civilisation; the great authorities of that civilization did no longer impress them; it was evident that only such opponents would have been listened to who knew that doubt from their own experience, who through years of hard and independent thinking had overcome it. Many opponents did not meet that condition. “
You alluded to the saturation of academia in part one, with frustrated graduate students who will never obtain a tenure track position. This is one manifestation of a broader issue that drives BAPs appeal. What advice do you give anyone under 30 or 40 years of age in 2021, when most institutions, professions, and pathways to a fulfilling life have been thoroughly corrupted or unrealistically difficult to traverse? It would be less depressing if BAPs audience were lazy and uneducated. Even such banal advice as “get a decent 55 hour a week job, a suburban house, a respectable wife, and go to church” is far, far more preposterous a goal than many in your age bracket would suspect. As noted, I suspect you may know this. BAP, aside from outside the mainstream views and pictures of Parisian apartments, gives concrete advice that is level headed.
These are entertaining reads, but you're too easily spooked and don't seem to have an adequate lay of the land with respect to the online right. Do you really think there's a brewing fascist threat from "frog twitter"? The MAGA, Q, and America First crowds are orders of magnitude larger (literally, not in the English major sense of that phrase) and have catalyzed actual IRL demonstrations, and both the HBD and IDW crowds have more mindshare on the "dissident right" than right-wing bodybuilders and shitposting grad students.
Make explicit the model of the near future latent within your foreboding historical allusions to see how preposterous its predictions and causal machinery are: "BAP and adjacent personalities, starting from Twitter and podcasts, are building a following they will turn into the cadre of an extremist political movement that will seize power in the United States and... do genocide, or whatever." lol.
The most charitable reading of all this petty name-calling and attempted mogging that I can muster is this: "These ideas are morally objectionable and not in line with the principles of the American Founding." To which my response is: "Yeah, no shit. And yet."
Why would they be so resonant with Claremont types? Is it possible, just maybe, that given the course we've been tracking as a country for decades now, the "Bronze Age Mindset" offers a salutary corrective to our heading that actually brings us *closer* to something like what might be called a Founding Generation Mindset?
We are so far from the founding stock of this nation — not just institutionally, intellectually, and experientially, but yes, biologically (and this is not a claim about race or ethnicity, at least not in the contemporary sense of those terms) — that only radical departures from contemporary thought can bring us closer to actually existing 1776 red-white-and-blue Americanism.
I suggest temporarily suspending the post-Nuremberg neurotic impulse to cry out "fascism!" at every turn, and instead reading recent phenomena on the political right with a more open mind and broader historical frame of reference.
Wow. Powerful documentation, interpretation and integration. We have been forewarned.
But if your ideology ends with baby sorting tables then what do you need ideology for?
No wonder BAPists are done with "philosophy and talking."
They should stick to their "shit poasting."
Lmao all this gnashing of teeth and butthurt because of an anonymous shitposting frog and a podcast. BAP has maybe has a few thousand fans? Meanwhile the USA in the current year is turning into the Weimar Republic, complete with a potential communist takeover. Where is Thompson’s angry screeds about that? What a jabroni.
Reductio ad Hitlerum packaged as “original thought” in the current year 🤦♂️
I think the part you're overlooking in your critique is that the system in which you thrive and hence naturally defend is not sustainable. Politics will become (are becoming) territorial versus ideological; this cannot be avoided at this point. The Proposition Nation is breaking down along its fault lines because its citizens no longer share any consensus on the Proposition. After all, it's not like disagreement on the Proposition results in someone taking away your American-card.
Politics within the broad Overton frame of classical liberalism is done. It cannot survive multiculturalism (i.e., imperialism), a populace with large swathes either too stupid or frankly mentally ill for self-rule, and a government that prints all the money it needs. No multi-national empire has ever survived over the long term and no economy has ever been able to print money and buy its own debt with it forever. At some point the party is going to be over and something is going to be next. The movements you criticize would not arise except in response to the visible breakdown of an old order.
Legendary article. As you recommended in person, I'll start taking the pills that make my skin soft in preparation for the surgery.
Interesting article. Language is a little over the top perhaps, but some things to think about. I look into works cited.
What's your position on political Zionism embedded within our political system, Professor Thompson? We just had Sheldon Adelson flying the extremely damaging traitor Pollard to Israel on his private jet, landing to big fanfare, including attendance of PM Netanyahu. Adelson spent $218 million on last election, $123 million on midterms. Obviously this is not "capitalism" or "freedom of speech". What is your position on political Zionism embedded within our politics?
The challenges you put forth above amount to nothing if you don't address what people are discussing.
"are repulsed by the soul of modern man, whose life has atrophied and is facing its final indignity as the homogenous mass man becomes indistinguishable from a herd of cattle safely grazing in comfort and peace"
Like most often in American history, conservatives or right-wingers often find the most similarities in what they reject or what they see that they must oppose. The discord happens when we start talking about positive ends and the means of achieving them. I strongly depart from BAP in that I believe the cure for the prevalent world of Leftwing nihilism is not Rightwing nihilism, but Rightwing Christianity.
“ If we want to understand the singular success, not of Hitler, but of
those writers, we must cast a quick glance at their opponents who were at the same time the opponents of the young nihilists. Those opponents committed frequently a grave mistake. They believed to have refuted the No by refuting the Yes, i.e. the inconsistent, if not silly, positive assertions of the young men. But one cannot refute what one has not thoroughly understood. And many opponents did not even try to understand the ardent passion underlying the negation of the present world and its potentialities. As a consequence, the very refutations confirmed the nihilists in their belief; all these refutations seemed to
beg the question; most of the refutations seemed to consist of pueris decantata, of repetitions of things which the young people knew already by heart. Those young men had come to doubt seriously, and not merely methodically or methodologically, the principles of modern civilisation; the great authorities of that civilization did no longer impress them; it was evident that only such opponents would have been listened to who knew that doubt from their own experience, who through years of hard and independent thinking had overcome it. Many opponents did not meet that condition. “
You alluded to the saturation of academia in part one, with frustrated graduate students who will never obtain a tenure track position. This is one manifestation of a broader issue that drives BAPs appeal. What advice do you give anyone under 30 or 40 years of age in 2021, when most institutions, professions, and pathways to a fulfilling life have been thoroughly corrupted or unrealistically difficult to traverse? It would be less depressing if BAPs audience were lazy and uneducated. Even such banal advice as “get a decent 55 hour a week job, a suburban house, a respectable wife, and go to church” is far, far more preposterous a goal than many in your age bracket would suspect. As noted, I suspect you may know this. BAP, aside from outside the mainstream views and pictures of Parisian apartments, gives concrete advice that is level headed.
Is there overlap between the pervs and the Proud Boys? Could this be confirmation they're moving from Nintendo and unto the streets?