Full lecture: The cynical fundamentalism of the alt-right

[@julianphilosophy]

Thank you for watching. If you’d like to support my work, please consider becoming a patron, thank you! www.patreon.com/julianphilosophy

[@first-fundamental-field]

Way to go, Jul! Nice work and great points! Have a great, prosperous and fruitful time in London! Bless!

[@bkinstler]

Ideological critique can’t be exercised 100% of the time. We need food, and shelter, and reasonably functional clothing, so we all must work for money unless we are independently wealthy or willing to substantially forego the significant benefits that capitalism has produced - as problematic as they may be. So maybe it’s not necessary to classify the capitalist subject as an either/or fundamentalist/cynic/critic. Maybe most of us occupy all three spaces of the Venn diagram to different degrees?

[@connornelson6882]

Agreed. Keeping it in the realm of perpetual intellectual critique alienates working class people of the first and third world who get exploited the most because they don’t have the luxury of time and money to spend on critiquing and thinking about everything in order to free their mind. It becomes an elitist petite bourgeoise pass-time at a point. The critiques are still valid I think but there needs to be a materially conscious aspect in order to create concrete goals that can be collectively accomplished so that we can move past capitalism.

[@reubencanningfinkel5922]

did you watch the video? have u turned a page of Sublime Object? I just feel like a comment like this could only happen by hearing the content--but not encountering the form within the content...

[@meiriversofborg]

Julian ive been following you since went viral for rhe pedestrian take on TikTok 😹😹. Love this, thank you !

[@haltes]

Thank you for the lecture, I greatly appreciated it, specifically the fragment about the existentialist problem. Regarding 27:50 it appears to me, that participating in philosophical study so as to be able to engage in the critique of ideology can easily become a fetish. I certainly feel like it might have slowly become a sort of a fetish for me ("maybe current capitalist landscape is hell, but I have tens of Zizek's books to read, so I must keep going"). This observation lead me to realisation "well, if everything turns into a fetish, than 'it' doeasn't matter", which in turn is a blatant form of cynicism xD

[@Anabsurdsuggestion]

“The fundamentalist of cynicism is the contemporary capitalist subject.” Great thought. I’ve recently been wrestling with Tillich, and if I recall correctly he brought Adorno into play, as well as Horkheimer (maybe?). Anyway, this lecture is a good bridge from existentialism and theology to Marx and the fetish. Much appreciated. Love from Devon.

[@alvaromd3203]

Absolutely fantastic! Thank you, Julian!

[@magnet2593]

Watching this while having a fetish directly related to death is very enlightening and personal and amusing.

[@idontbelonghereanymore6834]

I’ve lived this so much the forced nihilism of being a cynical punk in anarchist circles 😂

[@johnstewart7025]

I was surprised to find a funny, smart, dedicated academic researcher online who says she is a nihilist.

[@danletras]

The third option not just as participation in ideological critique, but participation in activism and ways of living that are consciously anti-capitalist. In graduate school for English, for example, my brother encountered many literary theory professors whose Marxist and postmodern critique only ended up depositing them in the cynic category of participation in the capitalist project of destruction and exploitation. A very depressing scene to be a part of.

[@Saneslash]

Great lecture.

[@bobbygulshan3891]

I'm thrown off by one thing, the idea of the cynical disavowel "allowing" someone to nonetheless participate. There is no outside, I have no choice but to participate. So can we say that the disavowel is a kind of coping mechanism?

[@ronjames9759]

Banger vid

[@FG-fc1yz]

13:30 Warenfetischismus ab 19:00 zur FORM, Bsp: 20:30, weiter dazu 22:02 23:42 Form: nicht was es ist, sondern auf was es hinweist!!! 2:40 vlt. am Entscheidendsten: der Inhalt, der sich in der Form verbirgt, siehe Hegels Phänomenologie!!!

[@itsonlychai]

Hi Julian! Thank you so much for this lecture, I'm from Australia and so am unable to make them live, so really appreciate them being posted after the fact for me to enjoy! I do just have one clarifying question about the notion of critiquing form, and the content within form, as opposed to the content as such. As an example, I've recently become quite interested in an advertising campaign for snapchat in my city which reads "less social media, more snapchat". I find this ad to be quite humorous, Weltschmerz-inducing and so on, but struggle to find a way of critiquing the form. It feels as though the criticism i have of the ads are bound to the content, that snapchat is a social media, that snapchat inspires the same lack of connection that platforms like instagram do, etc. In this context, what kind of critique would be a critique of the *form of the content* and *content within the form itself*, rather than merely of the content itself? Thank you very much again, as someone trying to battle a tendency toward leftist cynicism in my own life, your lectures are always a joy. Hope you have a wonderful time in london! - Chai :)

[@markoslavicek]

Julian, we're all looking forward to seeing your selfie with Zizek in London 🍻

[@havadatequila]

Families operate fetishistically. No matter how dysfunctional the parents, how damaged the kids, certain traditions are upheld (the Christmas party, the family trip, the reunion) to maintain the facade. And if a symptom arises, it's ejected from the family faster than an artillery round.

[@SingularMK]

Good video 👍👍👍

[@stopshell8154]

Thank you.

[@chooselife8921]

Hey Julian, what mic do you use in this video please?

[@BasedJoeBlack]

This all makes sense but, at the end of the day, a fetish must be chosen. I rather focus my attention on spending quality time on quality fetishes. Find what you fundamentally find meaningful outside of contemporary opinions.

[@DeportedDomingo]

The alt right doesn't like people who benefit at the expense of others. Many have a dutiful attitude and want to perform an honest task/job/function and then be free to their own endeavors. That has gotten exponentially harder in recent years/decades. Andrew Tate does not represent the interests of peoples who want cohesive communities, peace and freedom.

[@bogdanpopescu1401]

this guy philosophizing on a non-existent thing such as the alt-right ideology, and singling out Tate as their voice, is not very serious; the alt-right label was applied at some point to all right wing leaning people not satisfied with the mainstream parties, and didn't really stick; rightly so, as they were a loose bunch of people, with different views on lots of topics

[@bogdanpopescu1401]

@@catholicpog7183 a real tradition? I think you highly misuse the term tradition here; if a tradition, why the need for a new term to describe it? " I believe western society has shifted significantly to the right in this decade" - the decade experienced the collapse of the left/mainstream globalist ideas of the ruling elites, but not much shift to the right in terms of real policy; Trump has similar policies with a mainstream democrat a few decades ago, and even this he found impossible to implement against the open disobedience of the federal bureaucracy; if by shifting to the right you mean ending wars, then well... what to me defines the current decade the most are the insane covid policies; and the insane public spending and the consequent debt and inflation; and the net zero insanity, and the quasi open borders; and now the war in Europe; hardly a shift to the right; rather a doubling down towards collapse; "The Reagan/Thatcher vision has been discredited " - I would say it has fallen out of fashion rather than discredited, it was a great moment for the west compared with what came after

[@daisydaisy...4562]

Thank you....

[@Justjoey17]

Does the hamster do the grieving, or does it merely hold it for you

[@lornam3637]

Because of the passage of time, it is hard to differentiate between the hamster actively doing or simply holding until the griever is ready to pick it up again.

[@translucentequivalent9754]

I prefer to think of it as the hamster , as the wheel , if that helps

[@heilkrauter2649]

Alenka has built on this

[@nikita2018]

Thx

[@gmw3083]

I dunno about y'all, but I lose interest in fetishes.