/461/ Welcome to the World of the Right ft. Michael C. Williams

[@shanihandel9621]

Loved this this conversation. I’m hungry for this type of analysis.

[@zainmudassir2964]

True

[@OrwellsHousecat]

Cheers

[@turquoise3851]

51:00 there is an impersonal systemic critique available on the Right in form of Curtis Yarvin and his idea of The Cathedral

[@chrishorner7679]

Excellent and timely. Maybe the 'concrete universal ' is the way to reconsider the concept of universalismin a left, but not liberal, manner?

[@nigelalcorn787]

Great episode.

[@afromarxistbodyguard]

I was fortunate to be a student of Prof. Williams and he is as accommodating and insightful as he was then. One of the best anticommunist moves of the twentieth century was the creation of the so-called "New Left" to further alienate the working classes of the global North from truly internationalist solidarity of the working classes, because a peasant farmer in the global South is just as much a part of the working class as an industrial worker in the global North. Thinkers like Foucault and even Zizek today are what we communists refer to as the "compatible left" (distinct but achieving the same results as the infantile left). Compatible, that is, in their roles as intermediaries of the ownership class rather than its challengers - has Zizek ever organized a labour strike to cripple to financialized economy of an imperial power? No, he's written and sold some books with cultural critiques and podcast tours couched within the comforts of that imperialism's academia. No one in the Global South takes Zizek seriously, and decades of intentionally funding anti-communist leftists by the U.S. government in particular, as scholars like Gabriel Rockhill have detailed, ensured the intellectual divide from the proletariat of the Global South would be strengthened. I would seriously pushback against anyone who would claim the working class has failed to be the principal agent of change, however. Certainly this would be the case in a Global North context, but that excludes the two-thirds majority of people on this planet from the Global South who are doing the majority of the world's productive labour, and while not organized into an internationalist dictatorship of the proletariat, this nonetheless has produced such fundamental changes like the advent of digital economies and the fact that the majority of production of materials needed for renewable energies is done by Global South countries, even if those economies are still entwined and imposed upon by the Global North. Food production alone throughout the COVID pandemic would not have been possible without a marginalized, criminalized and terrorized global working class persisting against these tendencies of both liberalism and the rightwing. Lastly, I would also object to the characterization of the Radical Right eschewing a violent politics. Each of its proponents, in all cases, support the use of state authority and policing powers to crush civil disobedience that even attempts to impose working class power on the ruling class even briefly. Violent street politics is not central to fascism, growing and deploying the state's monopoly of violence is, and in this respect the Radical Right is still very much a part of the status quo comfortable with applying said monopoly when in power. Liberals betrayed themselves by continuing imperialist wars under the guise of "human rights" discourse, nothing more, and the Radical Right capitalized on that contradiction to further ensure the working class did not turn on the ruling class entirely but only the Right's designated class competitors. Both classes are, practically speaking, comfortable with thousands upon thousands of people being murdered in warfare as "acceptable losses" and exploiting workers to death in the millions worldwide and domestically. Even the term "migrant crisis" is a neutered language that intentionally excludes the thousands upon thousands of people who are killed during this migration, itself driven by imperialist wars committed by both the liberal and rightwing elements of the Global North's ruling class. With the likelihood of climate collapse, if not nuclear annihilation, the national question becomes even more dangerous as the working classes of the Global North are alienated from imposing their general will on the ruling class to such an extent that the slaughter of millions can be exercised with relative ease. Ukraine would be the most recent example - once again, under the pretense of "democracy" and "human rights", NATO powers have encouraged Ukraine to destroy itself in an effort to weaken a capitalist competitor in Russia, and the working class of the global North has done very little to prevent this from happening, contradicting overt support for Ukraine as a nation in theory while the material nation itself is destroyed at NATO's command. In a global competition over finite resources in a crumbling ecosystem, the long history of humanity might end in a brutish and short burst of Hobbesian delusion or even the logic encapsulated by Rahm Emanuel's quote of never letting a good crisis go to waste. I will simply end with a counter from John Steinbeck: "All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal." and hope that the efforts to reduce the next generation of the global North's working class to the labour conditions of the exploited Global South will produce an internationalist working class solidarity that relative material privileges of the past 50 years have otherwise prevented so far.

[@nondairy3633]

Excellent

[@weatherwaxusefullhints2939]

As a right winger, this is the best I have heard from any leftist in a long time. I'm interested in a society that is built on truth. I would be happy about a left, that is a critical counterbalance, so that the right may not derail as the left has so fundamentally. I would encourage you to deeply and fundamentally re-evaluate your own positions. Maybe you can start criticising us out of our mistakes even before they have unfolded. I wish you the best, I wish you to integrate our critique and Erkenntnisse, so that you can help us move to an even better place, leaving the evils you have brought upon us far behind. See you in a couple of decades.

[@elmazote]

"I'm interested in a society that is built on truth." Which truths? Do you accept the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming & evolution? Or do you, perhaps, like so many right wingers, assert access to some 'revealed' (unfalsifiable) religious Truth via some Bronze Age text? Or might you reject these scientific consensuses outright, sans the religion?

[@weatherwaxusefullhints2939]

@elmazote Evolution seems to be rock solid. The IPCC report outlines the upper bounds of problems, that might be caused by anthropogenic climate change. The scientific project is difficult for humans under the best of circumstances. With massive societal, economic, political and reputational pressures all aligned to push for the most dramatic results, the lower bounds of what climate change might mean is sadly not possible to ascertain.

[@weatherwaxusefullhints2939]

@elmazote your tone is quite interesting and in sharp contrast to the professor's. Very aggressive and judging. You seem to be more of a fighter than someone interested in ideas. Are you sure that academia is the right thing for you? You would probably feel more at home in a militant urban guerrilla organisation, right?

[@elmazote]

@@weatherwaxusefullhints2939 Someone takes a sharp tone with you and you immediately assume guerrilla warfare...?! That's truly bizarre Your tone is interesting as well (e.g. "The scientific project is difficult for humans under the best of circumstances.") Writing as if from on high, observing another species, perhaps. Are you a distinguished philosopher of science? And one can be interested in ideas without desiring to be an academic. As for being a fighter, I do find it difficult to be generous with right-wingers' claims to love "truth" at a political moment when said lovers instead seem to be actively destroying our social epistemology, while thumping their sacred texts.

[@weatherwaxusefullhints2939]

@@elmazote I'm not even religious

[@O_Draws]

One of your most compelling episodes in a while. Ooof.

[@zainmudassir2964]

Hope the resurgence right is defeated without going back to Obama liberalism

[@weatherwaxusefullhints2939]

Maybe it would have been beyond the scope of this conversation, but the very material problems, that are the result of leftist/mainstream policies, are a core part of the rights appeal. Today's left tends to view empirical reality as a product of discourse, not as something that puts hard limits on what a sensible position can be.

[@LucaAlex-sl8dy]

Great for taking an effort to systematize right wing ideology where there is none.

[@lawrencemorris2261]

I'm surprised JP was never mentioned. If you don't know who JP/JBP is you probably don't know anything about the online American right.

[@elmazote]

Quite true... And JP has now willfully abandoned any claim to intellectual respectability & is a shameless political grifter, even seeming now to consider himself a kingmaker (eg. his absurd Trump's X-Men & very recent Poilievre for President videos).

[@Chris-z1k7x]

Putin is not right wing, and I doubt that Modi is. They come from a non-Western political matrix that the left-right dichotomy, which is born out of European experience, is incommensurate with. Neither is Dugin.

[@tharunb4124]

yes, exactly as an indian, MODI BLENDS BOTH PRO BUSINESS AS WELL AS WELFARE POLICIES, WESTERN LEFT - RIGHT DOESN'T EXIST HERE, HE IS MORE SOCIALISTIC THAN ANYONE IN WEST AND ALSO FREE MARKET, HE IS THE ONE STARTED DEVELOPING START UP ECOSYSTEM, TODAY ITS 3RD LARGEST STARTUP ECOSYSTEM AND IN MANY CULTURAL THINGS TOO

[@elmazote]

Nonsense on stilts... Your iconoclastic assertion is entirely unsubstantiated & laughable given that the burden of proof is entirely on you.

[@tharunb4124]

@@elmazote No, he is right, i am from india, modi is not right, HE IS VERY SOCIALIST THAN DEMOCRATS IN US AND MANY CULTURAL ISSUES HE TAKES A BALANCED POSITIONS