It would be shocking to rightists of the 19th century how common it is for rightists of today to have made their peace with socialism. The fighting hatred for terms like ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ that persisted even through much of the 20th century made it so that, in the West, it became necessary to redefine different planks of the socialist platform as ‘democratic’ or, for people who did not know how Communism was referred to in Russia, ‘progressive.’
One of the reasons for this is because socialism tends to be so dogmatically, militantly secular. When people say ‘militant atheist’ today, they usually mean a guy in a fedora who posts a lot on reddit. In the earlier 20th century, they meant a man who used rifles and whatever else he had on hand to kill religious believers, deprive them of their property, torture their priests, rape their women, criminalize worship, and scourge religious influence from the culture at large.
So, the militant atheists of the time were members of militaries or guerrilla groups, with a mandate from their superiors in the international Communist conspiracy to do what needed to be done.
In the earlier 20th century, before the late 1960s, the culture was still by and large profoundly religious in a way that most younger Americans would have a hard time understanding. They may have been marginally less religious than the typical European of the 17th century, but they tended to believe that the Bible was a sacred text, and that religion was the moral basis for contemporary philosophy.
Imagining that the Nazis won World War II is a popular jumping-off point for a lot of speculative fiction. The reader is supposed to feel glad that the Nazis did not in fact, win.
Unfortunately, a more brutal, cruel, and anti-human government won World War II — the Soviet Union. The United States at the time, and for a long time afterward, was substantially honeycombed with people who were either sympathetic to or reporting directly to the Soviet government.
One of the main effects of this is that the Western world, despite the collapse of the USSR and the implosion of its sphere of influence, came to resemble what conservatives of the earlier 20th century would readily recognize as a secular socialist state, with Christianity relegated to vestigial or subordinated status, the living faith reduced to a way to spend a Sunday, with sincere Christians repeatedly harried and legally attacked when trying to practice their beliefs in a sincere way.
If you don’t believe that the Communists won World War II, ask yourself whether or not it’d be easier to argue Paul the Apostle’s position on marriage in any of America’s most conservative magazines with a circulation above 50,000 subscribers. You would be likely to be lynched if you did so under your real name. If you related this fact to an average American man from 1895, he would feel appalled, regardless of whatever there might be in the Constitution around the prevention of the establishment of a state church.
Another sign of the enduring appeal of socialism is that it is nearly impossible to make strong arguments against it, even in venues labeled as rightist, without receiving endless whines and quibbles from people sympathetic to this or that socialist position. That is how complete the socialist victory in the realm of culture in particular has been, even if the progress that they have made on issues of economic policy may not have been as complete as some have hoped it to be.
Consider that Americans today will tend to learn that the implementation of plank after plank of the socialist platform represent progress, rather than the destruction of what our ancestors had considered their sacred way of life. Only the terrible quality of state education is a source of salvation there, because even the most ardent drones tend to be less than perfectly indoctrinated.
This is the reason why it should not be given an inch: there aren’t all that many inches left to give.
The first “old books” I picked up on Moldbug’s suggestion were his recommended John T. Flynn books and various other Bircher readings.
It was really terrifying how straightforward and readily, publicly evidenced the Communist infiltration was, and how clearly those of the Old Right saw what would happen to the country.
Now, looking around my rural community, the best paid and most respected positions are those in the “social service” sector — our modern day apparatchiks, managing the lives of the proletariat from cradle to grave.
We’re “Red” as “Red” can get, so far only lacking the State-Sponsored domestic mass-murder that inevitably accompanies the system. Tick-Tock.
At wars end General George S. Patton said, “We fought the wrong side” and that “The only decent people in all of Europe are the Germans.” All One has to do is take a glance at a post WWII map to see who won “The War to Make the World Safe For Communism.” Now the question is, “Why?”
The answers aren’t hard to find. You simply have to do away with your programmed prejudices and be willing to cross the bridge over the intellectual Rubicon to get the answers.
“It ain’t what you think you know that hurts you so. It’s what you think you know that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain
Man, you guys are hilarious. “As red as red can get”? Clearly you’ve never been to Europe.
Experience with Europe is why I say “not another inch.”
What is your experience with Europe? I’m from Germany and my experience with Europe is quite positive. Mostly, nice, normal people living nice, normal lives, not that different from I know about the US.
So no answer? Nothing to back up your point? Go figure.
Some places, like Germany, Switzerland, and fragments of the UK, are much nicer than the others. Urban design is far superior in Europe in the old cities to the US. That doesn’t have much to do with European socialism.
Also, don’t whine on this blog.
@henrydampier: There is no such thing as socialism in Europe. The last “socialistic” state was East Germany. Where did you get that notion that Europe is socialistic?
I seriously don’t understand you. Just one thing: when you refer to European secularism you seem to mix up communism with socialism. These two are not interchangeable. Here is a link where the differences are explained:
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Communism_vs_Socialism
Anyway, you didn’t answer my question. Sure, Greece is in serious trouble right now, as are a few other states, to a minor extent. But the vast majority? Living standards, personal freedom, etc., it’s more or less just like in the US. Some people are rich, some are poor, most are somewhere in between.
So, again, what is your experience with Europe?
No idea how you found this blog, but you don’t have a firm grasp of the concept.
I found this blog via a link in a thread called “America is…” in the politics section of a German gaming forum where people got asked to state their opinion about the USA.
My stance was (and is) that nowhere in the world the concept of personal freedom is being realized and lived as it is in the USA, and that if every country in the world would be like it, nothing of value would be lost – because there is room for everything there, for the most outrageous madness and for the best ideas and ideals.
And that the “idea USA” is the best humanity has done so far, only that the execution is lacking, sometimes. But if that happens, the consequences can be quite dramatic.
Most people agreed with me there, with the exception of a few who reflectively bash everything USA. But those are quite known in this forum for their negativity, closed-mindedness and hyperbole regarding more or less everything, so they don’t really count.
Anyway, I find it’s a shame that you don’t want to answer my question. I understand that such an answer can be quite lengthy and that you want to avoid getting stuck in an equally lengthy discussion.
I also understand that you are what many people might consider quite radical (if that is what you mean by “a firm grasp of the concept”).
But don’t you think it could be interesting? As it seems, you don’t. As I said, I think that’s a shame.
Read Karl Marx and some Engels and then come back later re: socialism and its definition.
>My stance was (and is) that nowhere in the world the concept of personal freedom is being realized and lived as it is in the USA, and that if every country in the world would be like it, nothing of value would be lost – because there is room for everything there, for the most outrageous madness and for the best ideas and ideals.
In some ways yes, in other ways, no. Not even the entire US can be like the ideal of the US, and not all Americans can even agree on what that ideal is.
You need to spend more time studying before tangling with these ideas effectively. You have a rather romantic way of thinking about my country. You should probably visit and see it for yourself.
What people don’t get is human societies are inherently collectivist and the idea of individual value is anomalous mainly reserved for rare periods when Western societies have a lot of extra land or workers can command large wages. For the US it was about a 100 year period unevenly applied and even than requiring some degree of State (the military mostly) In Europe, individual value was higher after the Black Plague and till the Renaissance to some degree but again only some with the Church and State still out there, Medieval Europe after all was almost totalitarian by our standards.
Our Communism is a natural probably inevitable consequence of our automation, industrialism and early mass media.
Automation removed what Marx called the “Means of Production” from most people weakening them and growing the state since people have to eat (c.f 40 million+ using SNAP in the US) Industrialism weakened everything larger than the nuclear family in its incessant demand for centralization and “rational” control, Early mass media allowed mass dissemination of the related cultural Marxist messages which damaged the family even further,
The trifecta of wounds,
The alternative National Democratic Workers Socialism was just as variant of same equally violent and depraved thorough more pro family which is a plus I suppose.
Actual Fascism had some advantages I suppose, much less mass death but again its an industrial age philosophy of control. Its probably the least odious of the three I mentioned
What Americans want,actual freedom is only really probably after a black plague level die back or apocalypse that leaves much of society somewhat intact while leaving large need for labor, in an agrarian based society with broad ownership of land and wealth or if we make another frontier somehow
Individual freedom uber alles though is rubbish no matter what , an individual or nuclear family is dog meat for the State or any larger more powerful family in any case. Clan systems and tribes work fine but in such systems the persons is subordinate to the clan who protects the greater needs.
The dead bone minimum people should be considering is a large extended family to pool resources against the State, global corporation and others, Its the historical norm anyway and likely will provide the greatest degree of happiness and security in upcoming times.
It won’t be easy, the State is a jealous mistress, multi-national corporations often are quite above the law and easily suborn the State for their own ends. Given how dispersed they are they are nigh untouchable at times
Thus if you can manage a clan or groups of allied families so much the better, best have your own property, own means of production and as much as possible own systems for justice thus starving other unfriendly ideologies of resources.
And yes its very zero sum and will almost certainly reduce the total amount of wealth but a society where all the members of a family have food,shelter, medicine and such is far better off than one where one guy flies off to Aruba an everyone else goes hungry even if the total amount of wealth is much lower.
Strongly disagree, but points for citing Marx when using this type of argument.
Thanks. Disagreeing honestly is how we learn.
Marx was a luftmensch of the 1st order and the accidental cause of hundreds of millions of deaths but had more than a few correct ideas in my opinion. Not his desired outcomes, employee ownership of all production which is impractical I think or especially the intermediary state what we call Communism but the ideas of surplus production and excess efficiency
I look at Europe today and see 50% of young people cannot afford to have children, about 1/3 (age 15-29) have no full time work and the rest, not enough income.
What happened is that the old “live in a slum because you have no choice” system that provided babies for the elite ran into modernity and the people that normally would preserve society, stopped having children they can’t afford, Its honorable and rational and while they are large numbers of people who are afflicted with White guilt they don’t deserve, this would only have reduced population a bit not stopped it.
Some people still do, people who can afford them and want them and the low IQ/High Time preference types who basically can’t preserve society.
Of the people above the remaining half would probably have a couple of kids and the TFR would probably hover around 1.8 or maybe higher. I figure the guilt load is about one half, .5 babies give or take, comparing economies and White French and Swedes with low guilt with White Germans the higher loads. I dod not compare Eastern Europe here but they had a recent social collapse and are some decades out. They too need economic reform but its much harder for them
If Europe ended Cultural Marxism which is evil and could find some means to ensure stable well paying jobs and expelled foreigners, wages could rise and with pro European ideologies in place would stabilize and possible grow
However even a reduction in the scope of the welfare state won’t provide employment. There are fixed costs in having a family and for it to work in modernity, the wage scale needs to provide enough for people to enjoy modern life and to raise children.
Automation and the drive for efficiency ensures that is no longer possible and every modern society will either be replaced with people with a pre-modern ideology or will population will drop till carrying capacity is achieved.This is the goal of the elite after a fashion a fashion but I suspect they will not like the outcome at all since since the global gulag- shopping mall state they covet will go with it.
My guess assuming that Eurabia doesn’t happen, most European states will drop to about mid 19th century population levels and Asian states will decline as well.
The US either undergo civil war and collapse or become Brazil 2. I suspect the later but both is possible.
How we would stabilize and renew our societies is a question I can’t answer. Maybe someone else can
“Unfortunately, a more brutal, cruel, and anti-human government won World War II — the Soviet Union. The United States at the time, and for a long time afterward, was substantially honeycombed with people who were either sympathetic to or reporting directly to the Soviet government.”
As a Russian-American, my loyalties lie with my tribe. I don’t care if it was under a hammer and sickle, or an imperial banner, I will support my people against the outsiders. I am (more) glad the USSR won over the Nazi’s, even if I think the Nazis had some legitimate points.
The thing is, after Stalin died, the USSR was not so bad to live in. Not so great either, but it was not the orgy of violence that was Maoist China, or even the USSR of the 1920s and 1930s.
http://www.dailykos.com
http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/03/stalins-fight-against-international-communism/
Thank you for reinforcing some of my points from last year about nationalism often being a type of leftism.
Now, go to Counter-Currents. I’m sure that they need your attention, Soviet nostalgia, and donation money.
And what of all the Eastern Europeans/Slavs Hitler would have tried to have permanently rid from the earth?
It is possible to dislike both regimes, you know
“As a Russian-American, my loyalties lie with my tribe. I don’t care if it was under a hammer and sickle, or an imperial banner, I will support my people against the outsiders. ”
With all due respect, sir (and I mean that – loyalty to one’s own is an admirable thing) if your “tribe” is in Russia, that’s where you should be as well. Just as any Jews whose primary loyalty is to Israel should be there.
Personally, I agree with you – I think that the victory of the USSR, nightmarish as it was, was probably the least of two terrible evils. But how much better off everyone would have been, especially Russians and other Slavs, if the REALLY great Russians had won back in the 1920’s – the Whites. This would have prevented the rise of Stalin, the rise of Hitler, and slapped the Left back into it’s hole for another hundred years. Deep down in his heart, I’ll be Putin agrees…
Capitalism seems to have developed into crony capitalism. Maybe it was inevitable? It seems difficult to imagine that the barrier between state power and money based power would somehow never be overcome, when there is every incentive for the two forms of power to team up and eventually merge into a super organism. Except, perhaps through eternal vigilance on the part of the citizenry, but that didn’t work out and it was too much to ask.
So are we still supposed to fight for crony capitalism? I’m not inspired by the idea.
It kind of seems like the whole laissez faire side of the movement is LARPing, dreaming about transplanting a vanished, temporary, long dead thing into the present day. To some extent they seem to be on par with monarchism and vikings riding wolves style ethno-nationalism.
So far, running a mixed economy doesn’t seem that hard. Even progs can keep it running. If anything, the economy used to be better before free trader ideologues got their hands on it and sent all the jobs to China.
Did they send all the jobs to China because of socialism? Kinda, but only in the dumbest sense of the term. More likely it was because we wanted a high standard of living with health and safety laws, while China was willing to work for slave wages and ruin the environment in their country to the point where they all get cancer from breathing.
Dunno, I want to believe in capitalism, because it sounds more right wing than the standard mixed economy, but it just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, more of a holdover from the libertarian roots of the movement.
If you guys are serious you’ve got a lot of work to do.
There is absolutely a lot of work to do.
I also don’t have a problem with shunting readers who are socialists to other sites and writers who are more friendly with socialism or the ‘third way.’
You made me laugh with that Vikings riding wolves remark but you have a good point. I wouldn’t quite count the ethno-nationalists out though.
At the time the USA entered WWII, the worst mass murderer in world history was the leader of the USSR, Joe Stalin; he had ALREADY EXTERMINATED about 20 to 50 MILLION !!! citizens of the USSR.
For a comparison, Hitler “only” murdered 10 to 12 million souls in his death camps.
Also, by Dec 1941, when the USA entered the war and began ACTIVELY ASSISTING Stalin with war materiel, etc., Stalin had ALREADY INVADED Eastern Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland. He was free to do so per the Hitler/Stalin Pact of 1939 (which also gave Hitler the green light to invade Poland in Sept 1939, and a few weeks later, the green light for Stalin to invade Eastern Poland).
Sweden and Finland had ZERO illusions about the GREATER threat posed to them by Stalin, which is why the Finns allowed the Germans onto their territory to help them fight the Russians and why Sweden allowed free passage through Sweden, via rail, for German troops on the way to Finland.
ALL of the above was known by the American govt., by American supporters of the CPUSA (including Betty Friedan – an active pro Stalinist supporter/activist) , and by the many American spies for the USSR within the FDR administration. It also was known by the Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, the infamous NY Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner, Walter Duranty (of “you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette” fame), et. al.
The support by Americans for a monster like Stalin – who arguably was WORSE than Hitler demonstrates the arrogance, the perversion, the immorality of many liberal progressives; and this includes FDR who was very chummy with Uncle Joe. It shows that leftists , regardless of their level of education and high socio/economic standing, will stoop to any and all means – including mass extermination – to impose, by force, by murder – their utopian, heaven on earth vision upon the “great unwashed masses.”
By the end of WWII in 1945, Stalin was STILL the worst mass murderer in world history. And STILL, the American left and liberal progressives jumped through their ass to support Stalin and his successors.
In the end, the USA did not learn ANY lessons from any of this.
Nixon and Kissinger in the 1970s tossed back a few drinks with Mao at a “meet and greet” in Peking. Think about this, Mao Tse-Tung, the WORST MASS MURDERER IN WORLD HISTORY !!!!!!!, is feted by an American President and his Secretary of State.
(it is estimated that Mao’s policies resulted in the deaths of 70 MILLION SOULS !!!!!)
This would have been no different than if FDR HAD visited Berlin in 1943 and declared his friendship with Hitler and signed off on a bunch of trade and aid agreements.
And much later still, the US Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, Madeleine HalfBright, tosses a few at a meet and greet with Kim Jong in N.Korea’s capital city.
Think about this, the mass murderer ruling N.Korea is feted by a US Secretary of State, yet she, is loud and clear reminding all of us of Hitler’s atrocities in her homeland of Czechoslovakia.
This is the liberal mindset; mass murder and extermination, repression, tyranny is all just fine, all OK, just as long as the victims are not the relatives, friends or associates of said liberal.
The liberal progressive/socialist/communist simply does NOT CARE how their worldly utopia is imposed upon the masses.
When your religion IS your political ideology; when your GOD is staring back at you when you look in the mirror, then absolutely nothing is immoral. Everything is acceptable and moral.
It is hard to believe that we live here in a nation whose founding documents are the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and its most important amendments, THE BILL OF RIGHTS.