2016: Abject Despair

keep beling the only people who do not see the world as different flavours of spooks are only a white minority

I've spoken with arabs, asians and the like who embrace egoism

And good fucking riddance. Replace it, don't defend it.

Fuck liberalism. It's a contemptuous, worthless, hedonistic, spineless, complacency breeding abortion of an ideology.

Fuck you.

Are you a white racist? Socialism was born out of liberalism in theoretical terms. The whole idea of liberating the individual from that which lies exterior to him - racist religious beliefs like Christianity, racist traditions, implicitly or explicitly racist hierarchies, came from liberalism.

Conservatives pining for the glory days of the 50's aren't reactionaries?

The whole problem with liberalism starts off with the idea that we're equal and deserve to be free.
It's premises are delusional.

We don't deserve anything, only that which we can take by our own merit. We have no rights other than those we can enforce ourselves. Our lives have no value, outside of what we assign to it.
The only way we can get anything done is if we fight for it.

Liberalism breeds complacency. Slaves in America didn't escape chattel slavery because they deserved to be free, they were liberated (though only partially) because people fought and died to change the system.
India didn't throw off the yoke of British imperialism because Ghandi threatened to starve himself, it became independent because radicals threatened to raze it to the ground if the British wouldn't leave at once.

People put their faith in states and superiors to grant and protect their rights, not realizing that those "rights" can be taken away at a whim.
You, as an individual, are the sole guardian of your own dignity.

I think having enough power to actually enforce said rights is going to be very hard to accomplish in the 21st century.

If the bulk of the non-western world is illiberal and nationalist, then us setting ourselves us as the only leftists/liberals basically establishes leftism/liberalism as de facto white identity.

Fuck.

It's been a shit year, politically and personally

can't get any worse next year, right?

Sure it can.

actually aleppo signified it does

I'm not sure about Europe and America, but there's no real chance for any sort of progressive/leftist resurgence outside of western europe and north america now. I mean outside of Nationalistic Socialist variants.

It's hard for me to impress upon the less worldly just how little brand value "western" ideas have, particularly in East Asia now.

The high point of liberalism in China was 1989, few people realize just how widely derided it is now:

foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/16/the-peoples-republic-of-donald-trump-why-educated-chinese-are-spurning-western-liberalism/

Don't let the trotting out of the odd human rights lawyer fool you, Chinese have zero interest in liberalism.

Why does everyone outside the Western world have an aversion to social liberalism? They certainly don't have an aversion to economic liberalism. I can understand the Islamic world because of religion, but is China so opposed to social liberalism or Western democracy?

pls no

If Assad ends up crushing the YPG it will all be for naught

how has this happened? I can understand liberalism and "western" ideas declining but why not socialism? Surely people can see the issues of global capitalism

Various strains of trade mercantilism and state management of the economy are the norm outside of the western world too though. Particularly in China, it's not a "free market" as the west would imagine it eg suppressed consumption to facilitate credit rather than equity-funded corporate structures, major industries are all state owned and so on. Hell even the companies that aren't state owned are so close to the state they may as well be, that's how the amakudari system in Japan works.

As for social liberalism, it's a distinctively western thing, same with universalism. Goes back to the Greeks. It could also theoretically be argued to be a highly dangerous strategy to employ with groups who do not reciprocate it.

The Chinese economic system is a mixed economy in the truest sense of the term. The state is an proactive manager in the economic structure, MITI and the Japanese Miracle is a great book on how this system actually worked (and still does to a certain extent) in Japan for example.

Calling China "state capitalist" or whatever is just asinine neo-liberal crap. Decades if not centuries of dichotomies firmly rooted within enlightenment thinking (a tiny portion of western thought, not just human thought) have completely dulled the western mind to anything that falls outside of this structure. So the fact China may be following a millenia-old tradition of a huge, active state that manages the economic in many ways but also allows for markets is alien to them, they have to massage it into enlightenment thinking somehow for it to make sense to them ("oh, so it's *state capitalism*, hah, that makes sense!")

As for their opposition to democracy, Chinese value stability above all else.

Can you not see how a Chinese person sees what is unfolding in Europe, with millions upon millions of people crossing across porous to non-existent borders, terror attacks everywhere, increasing danger, economic stagnation, demographic replacement of the native population etc and thinks "Hm, that's not for me"?

Liberalism's brand value was ALWAYS tied to its material and technological success. Chinese rose in 1989 not so much because they were ideologically wedded to liberalism, but because they bought into the neo-liberal idea that technological modernity, material success and liberalism/democracy are mutually inclusive, necessary parts of a systematic whole, if that makes sense.

What has happened since then is that China has broken the spell that liberalism somehow "owns" technological modernity. As a result, liberalism has to be taken on its own merits as an ideology rather than simply by laying claim to the notion it can catapult every nation to developed nation status, and really, in of itself as an ideology it's pretty fucking terrible.

People criticize Greek Philosophy for its relative simplicity, but much of Enlightenment Philosophy is jaw-droppingly bad when you first read it. Anyone read Rousseau's "General Will" idea for example? Jesus Christ, it's some of the worst political philosophy I have ever encountered in my life.

also

I assume you mean the Muslim immigration? I have read that some Chinese and Japanese view Germany as committing suicide because of this.

Yes. It's a common view. They don't really understand the psychology behind it, to them it seems so obviously self-destructive and insane.

To be fair to democracy, the US, for example, had only one civil war in 300+ years. China has had tons of wars over imperial succession, no?

Though, the US in a way never really finished the Civil War, seeing as one party has basically been the Yankee/Northern party and the other has been the Southern party for a long time now. The name on the party changes but the ideology and worldview hasn't changed a ton, I think.

Not him but China is a lot like economic social democracy with fascist, illiberal characteristics. It was kind of the necessary outcome of Maoism as the liberal free-thinking mix of American democracy and Soviet socialism that he wanted to build couldn't work in a developing non-western country with such a massive population.

The irony is although Maoists trumpet their superiority to Stalinism in the superior humanism and free thinking dialectic of Mao in fact what they did is create something even worse then Stalinism. What they live under is something worse then the revisionist USSR and perhaps bc they never had anything that came close to real socialism.

Although its easy to overemphasize "traditionalism" those traditional spooks have surprising traction their modified to fit the mold of the capitalist system there, and perhaps work to promote economic liberalism where Western liberal ideas cannot. A lot like Zizek's analogies about Buddhism and Hinduism and global capital.

From what I can tell from thousands of miles away, their ideology seems a lot like pic related.

*It'd be more accurate to say that mixing American democracy and Soviet socialism (really any type of socialism) was doomed to fail period. Not just a developing country though that added to its problems.

On average, Chinese dynasties tended to last a long time.

Both parties represent a divergence of liberal thought. They're both fundamentally liberal.

Try to view things macrohistorically and in a global context. Enlightenment thought isn't the totality of western thought, let alone counting the philosophical schools of every other race/ethnoreligious group on earth.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

Because you have absolutely no understanding of Chinese Philosophy. You have been completely pozzed by generations of autistically focusing on a tiny portion of western thought as the sum total of all human knowledge and philosophy.

It happened all over East Asia. The VCP and the DPRK both have morphed into nationalist parties which will increasingly resemble traditional modes of government that existed there before.

Remember that Joseon Korea was even more closed off and "hermit like" than Sakoku-period Japan. This is, in grand historical terms, nothing new for them.

The problem is liberals.

I don't really want to sound like a crazy Tankie when saying this, but it's completely true.

Not in liberals as in your general normal people in urban society, but liberals as in ideological liberals, New Labour, Clintonites, LibDems, Trudeau and the like.

ChapoTrapHouse was 100% right when they said "Liberals have to learn that these people will abandon everything you believe in, before they abandon neoliberal economics" and it's been shown true time and time again.

The liberal project is collapsing, they don't believe in anything apart from appeal to moderation fallacies and golden mean circlejerking so they don't have anything to sell the public aside from just being smug intelligentsia, but these neolib scumbags just can't fucking stand us on the left, because even though we agree on all the same progressive identity issues they do, we threaten the status quo and the neoliberal economic structure, so these neolibs will do anything to destroy a resurgent left, as seen with the UK and Corbyn, New Labour will even start leaking to the right wing parties and right wing press.

The thing is, if the left do not rise, who controls the narrative? Who is selling a better future to the general population? It's not the neolibs, they don't believe in anything, it's not the liberals, they don't believe in anything. It's the far-right.

These "Center-left, moderate" Neoliberal fucks are our greatest enemy.

It's just a sad thing that Shitliberalsay is a fucking toxic as fuck board where anybody that isn't a tankie as fuck DPRK/USSR circlejerking and idpol nutter is "liberal".

I agree, I think democracies are not necessarily unstable, though.

What can you do? If people decide that they want an Islamic Democracy where the State upholds Sharia, or that they want no democracy at all in order to maximize stability, you aren't going to have much luck in forcing Western-style governments on them. Assuming that capitalism will break down in the future anyway, it really doesn't matter.

I'm not really Holla Forums though I'm socialist, I can never get on board with internationalism and the racial self-flagellation so common on the left, and the historical narrative of Muslims as enlightened scholars and perennial victims of western aggression makes me personally butthurt as an ethnic Greek, but you're bang on about Trudeau.

Trudeau is the template moving forward for the center-left/liberal parties. He's the kind of leader you'll see pop up in social democratic parties everywhere.

Trudeau is even more on-board with free trade than Harper was, incidentally. It's a complete clusterfuck.

Because America has been stable? America has been one of the most unprecedentedly prosperous societies for the past two centuries. It enjoys some of the most beautiful and fertile lands on earth during the period of settler-colonialism and homesteading and then dominated the entire global economy for the better part of the 20th century.

You're making the mistake I identified above, you're insinuating that democracy/liberalism has ownership of technological modernity. You identify trends that have more to do with technology and then, ex post facto attribute them to liberalism (how? does LGBT rights somehow lead to 3d printing?) and so on.

Really you don't think there's any social democratic element to modern China? Its pretty clear all they mean by "socialism" is strong state+some welfare and making sure some poors get educated. Yeah, its shit compared to the West and is often pointed to by Western radicals like Zizek as our nightmare potential future but that would be true of social democracy in almost any poor country. It seems pretty obvious to me that China isn't India or the rest of the third world where its lassiez-faire with kangz characteristics. I concede that your mostly right that "state capitalism" is too simplistic of a term to define china–I never contested that point.

Historically speaking, I'd say you underestimate the impact of Western models on Asia. Even if """traditionalism""" still holds sway there, its a traditionalism modified to meet the challenge of the modern world, in dialogue with the West. Just because something is Western and liberal doesn't mean it isn't modern or hasn't been modernized.

Sure but I don't think it can really work long-term as the contradictions of capital are the same whether you become a lassies-faire liberal, a western social liberal, or whatever set of special snowflake ideology adapted from local conditions that you choose as your belief system.

What do you mean by the term "strong state"?

Every single industry of importance is controlled by the state in the PRC. From Oil & Gas to banking to construction. They even force private companies to consolidate (eg auto industry), and they de facto control private ones of sufficient size and scope (eg huawei) through proxy means.

You underestimate the respect Chinese have for the gaokao system. It's not like the west, they view exams as the ultimate leveler of the playing field.

It took 40 years, half an adult lifetime, for China, North Korea and Vietnam to morph back to traditional models of governance - in the case of the DRPK, a hardcore form of racially-based Not Socialism.

We'll see about that. To me it seems like you're just trying to characterize anything you don't like or understand as some variant of a doomed-to-fail capitalism by default.

Okay, assume that the left is completely delegitimized outside of Western countries due to liberal stances on social issues. What happens in the event of capitalist breakdown?

There have been Western countries where the state has been massive and had a huge hand in industry, promoting mergers etc. Nazi Germany to an extent, post-war France, Italy and South Africa under Apartheid (which was made up of a few big firms and a massive state sector economy). The state in American and Britain prior to the economic crisis accounted for almost half of economic activity–and that's been barely rolled back by austerity, although its created massive social pain. Those are the two great liberal "free trading" Western states, some countries like Denmark are greater then half.

No, the state doesn't function and prop up capitalism in the same way. China and the rest of East Asia could not wait 100 years for private enterprise to develop their economies the way it happened in the West–the East Asian countries have always had a heavy state factor in their economies, even when they embraced lassiez-faire, but what we see in the West where capitalism has been mature for sometime and there's longstanding bias in state intervention is something like a distorted mirror. Just because these two things aren't the same doesn't mean they don't embody similar phenomenon.

To be sure there was more to economic modernity and Western political-economic thought then respect for private enterprise and free trade. If you read Michael Hudson on Enlightenment economics you'll see a considerable amount of energy and theory was devoted to attacking the rentier classes, in particular the landlords classes, who were seen as bearers of unearned economic pr1vilege. When the bourgeoisie was rising they had fewer scruples about "muh private property" or "muh rights" (when it came to the aristocracy) then they do today. And surprisingly, most political economists were more pro/ambivalent about the state then is typically assumed.

There's that word again. I think Zizek is closer to the mark that North Korea is very far from being traditional state: youtube.com/watch?v=S24mH3jB-2A

You can say similar things about the rest of Asia.

That's because the problems of capitalism and capital accumulation are universal no matter the agent that carries it out (state, corporation, family or individual) or the particular ideology used to justify it. Crisis is the nature of capitalism and we're seeing that as the Chinese miracle, while still growing more rapidly then the West, is gradually slowing down and careening out of control.

You're talking about government spending as a portion of GDP, which isn't a good metric to use for a number of reasons (it doesn't actually tell you anything about whether or not the government *controls* state owned industries, merely that they're taxing heavily) - If you want a good example of this, you can look at the UK or any Western European country. None of them have the same level of state control over the major industries that the PRC does, but they still have comparatively high levels of government spending as a portion of GDP.

It's just a mild form of redistributism, nothing to do with actual policy-making control. Refer back to what I said about when whatever State Council it was literally ordered an entire industry to consolidate (the auto industry), something like that is impossible in a western economy.

You also need to understand that fundamentally capital formation works in different ways in the West and East. In the East capital formation doesn't really rely on the equity markets, it's why all that furor over the Chinese stock market crash was just a bunch of shitty fake news. Chinese companies do not really rely on equity funding, they rely on bank financing.

Correct, and this in of itself is a form of tradition. Huge state involvement in the economy is simply part and parcel of how China and other East Asian states have operated for thousands of years. The economic model they've adopted is basically this traditional approach plus the suppressed consumption model pioneered in Meiji Japan.

>There's that word again. I think Zizek is closer to the mark that North Korea is very far from being traditional state: youtube.com/watch?v=S24mH3jB-2A

"a weird matriarchal country"

Actually Zizek is just echoing BR Myers here (read Myers' "The Cleanest Race" if you haven't).

Myers is spot on in identifying the DPRK as explicitly racial and identifying this as something western intellectuals have largely ignored (out of ignorance, PC or both), at least in its internal propaganda track, but his analysis of the DPRK as matriarchal and non-Confucian because the various Kims have been viewed as protectors of the Korean people, who are viewed as childlike and naive is off-base because ALL nationalist narratives present their own people as naive and childlike and needing to be protected, it's just a natural offshoot of believing that the majority of people are incapable of independent thought and are subject to the whims of whatever the paradigmatic ideology is (correct by the way).

Calling the DPRK maternal and therefore un-Confucian because it portrays the Kims as protectors of a childlike race would be like calling the late Qing maternal and un-Confucian for similar reasons.

...

A cycle of fascism and liberal democracy, we've entered a loop of tragedy and farce

How can this happen if capitalism has broken down?

Pelphase, Interphase, and Gusphase. We Burgess now.

The historical conflict has always been between libertarianism and authoritarianism, freedom and slavery. If we hope to progress we need to abandon false theories and failed praxis and embrace a rethinking of theory and praxis. I see the works of Murray Bookchin and the Rojava Revolution as embodying that change. I cannot stress this importance of this Revolution. In a ever growing desert of authoritarianism, there lies one oasis. One way forward. Embrace libertarianism or embrace slavery, embrace ecology or embrace degradation. The choice has never been more simple.

If you actually believe, earnestly, that the story of history is the story of any sort of ideological conflict then you're delusional.

History is the story of ethnic conflict. That's all.

Where? East Asia isn't "capitalist" in the sense westerners would understand it.

In the West? We're likely to see balkanization as living standards stagnate or crumble. It won't be pretty, and it will largely - though not exclusively - be split around racial or ethnic lines.

im just sitting here laughing because you faggots thought you could sway Holla Forums with your shitty commie threads and now you stopped that because it wasnt working and so you just make shitpost and gay cuck threads LMAO

HAHAHAHA. Once again socialists are failures

It's really sad how easily people fall for the capitalist propaganda.

Post-colonialists pls go

I am the furthest, furthest thing from a "post-colonialist" friend. Any form of newspeak bullshit (what virtually all of postmodernism is) is anathema to me. It's of no value to the world and discusses nothing meaningful at a tangible or metaphysical/ethical level.

Nor am I "pro-Asian" or anything like that. The one demographic I despise above all others are Asian Americans. Supercilious, uniformly upper middle class faggots whose brand of idpol (think Eddie Huang and that anarcho-feminist who occasionally trolls around here) is perhaps the most obnoxious variant out there. A group that earnestly believes that not enough blonde white girls liking them constitutes some systematic framework of oppression.

At least black people have shitty lives to complain about. Fuck Asian Americans.

Those are our libs, there's a segment of us that don't really want any beef with Holla Forums because we understand the anger that led to the support of Trump.

These people aren't really leftists in any sense of the term, they're the kind of people who think Justin Trudeau is going to save the free world. They're terrible people.

If you start offing them, I'd happily cheer.

Don't be snide to mom.

What's the implication here? Is there some epic meem I'm missing out on?

youtube.com/watch?v=eBfK3ye_SBc
watch this.

rev up your Fatal Strategies comrades

No thanks. Again, if you actually believe everything from the Punic Wars to the Mongolian Conquests to the expansion of the first Arab Caliphates was about secular ideological conflicts then I have no idea what to say to you.

It's the story of migration.

There was essentially no distinction between the two concepts before the 20th century (see the way the Romans reacted to the Cimbrii and Teutones invading/migrating into Transalpine Gaul as an example).

Proximity plus diversity = Conflict (especially in systems like democracy that exacerbate racial conflict).

Always has, always will, unless managed - which takes up an enormous amount of resources in of itself.

...

They were disagreements in ideology motivated by migration of two groups.

Who cares at this point when Holla Forums isn't even white.

There is no historical basis to suggest where history is headed in an age where communication is so intimate across spaces.

Get your soft science bs out of my face you're not in a university studying for history at all.

This is immaterial. You can compartmentalize or taxonomically group particular civilizations as propounding one or another ideology, but this doesn't demonstrate a functional link between that ideology and that nation's historical conflicts.

That's my point. It doesn't. It's about ethnic conflict first and foremost. The Romans didn't attack them and wipe them out because they propounded an alien dialectic, you idiot. They wiped them out because they were an outgroup pouring into a Roman province who couldn't be controlled.

What ideology?

Racial conflict is a function of racial diversity. Why do you think Japan's "racial issues" are so comparably irrelevant when compared to those of the US? Because the Japanese are kinder and more welcoming? Or because the country is significantly more homogeneous?

t. non-white viet who thinks she understands western antiquity history better than a European who can read Greek and Classical Latin.

I speak three languages, so what? That's not very impressive. I know European history. I know Asian history.

I know African history.

I know you're full of soft science bioshit that's full of loaded assumptions about race that to say Historians would call dubious would make a historian blush beat red with laughter

You don't know anything about western antiquity unless you read the relevant primary sources and have a firm understanding of chronology. Reading a bunch of sourcebooks and secondary sources with a particular political bent of their own is masturbation. Nothing more.

I'm not saying anything about the biology of race, it's really immaterial to my wider point, which is that racial conflict is a function of racial diversity within a given polity. The more diversity, ceteris paribus, the more conflict.

We can postulate theoretical mechanisms by which this conflict can be contained and controlled all day, and some may even be somewhat effective, but again: it's immaterial to my wider point.

Try to keep on topic.

You don't have that.

You're doing that. You're saying history shouldn't be analyzed while analyzing history.

Nothing more.

Any sources on this? What makes class a distinct entity here from "diversity"

Anger comes from unfair circumstances, psychologically speaking. History really isn't any different, it's just as easy to say history is a history of class conflicts.

Anger.

Except ideology and societal structure go hand in hand. I'll give you that usually ethnic groups would share the same ideology.

Nice naked assertion.

You're free to analyze history after you actually read the primary sources and get a firm grounding of chronology and material evidence (i.e. archaeology) in the first place.

Inter-class conflict is simply less common than ethnic conflict. The Roman Republic had, arguably, one explicit class conflict (the conflict of the orders) which was resolved through a peaceful amendment of the existing mos maiorum.

Over that same time span, the Roman nation as a whole fought, what, 40+ conflicts with other nations?

I suppose you could, if charitable, spin the conflict of the late Republic as a class conflict, but even then it only brings that total up to "2" and deflates upon realization of the fact that the champion of the landless proles, Augustus, was also a deep traditionalist who propounded deeply conservative notions about how Roman society needed to be more visibly stratified by class (hence all the patrician and senatorial muh privileges).

But this still doesn't disprove my central point. You can if you want claim pre-modern societies were staunchly ideological, but in a significantly more unconscious way than today.

Although that being said, liberalism is sort of part of the unconscious reality of westerners today. They don't really see it as ideology, just as a default set of beliefs everyone on earth should believe in.

Ethnic conflict the last 100 years has been less common than class conflict. Do you want to know why?

Who gives a fuck about Rome any more than one should give a fuck about Babylon in relation to Sumer. The Greeks were the achievers. Rome was farce, Greece was tragedy.

Have you considered that, Rome was doomed in basically every possible way in the end, and it wasn't one driving force that fucked them over.

How have you quantified this?

Well. There were issues like barbarian migrations, debasement, depopulation etc. But I think it's important to remember Rome had faced down these challenges before. They'd annihilated entire population groups that dared come onto their territory in the republican period.

For me Rome was doomed because the people, the stock, became weak, apathetic and permissive. That's what comforts like the grain dole do to a people.

Anyway on the subject of debasement. It debases me to argue with you about such matters. I'm sure you're a sweet thing outside of this context but these are matters more for men.

Because its been documented.

Then you don't understand the history of Rome.

Just curious, what ideology would you describe yourself as.

kek this. What the fuck do people becoming apathetic, weak and permissive have to do with military expansionism, and an over reliance on a slave economy? Just because Rome succeeded before does not mean it would continue to succeed. He's brushing aside the actual reason Rome fell so he can push cloaked social darwinism.

You think people have always had exactly the same levels of conflict avoidance and fear of violence for thousands of years throughout many different civilizations then?

You actually believe people don't change with the introduction of luxuries? The Romans certainly wouldn't have agreed. Look at tacitus.

You're just a stupid tabula rasa moron.

Documented by whom and what was their methodology?

You seem to have a decent knowledge of Chinese politics, would you mind telling me if this is a real thing?
ft.com/content/63a5a9b2-85cd-11e6-8897-2359a58ac7a5
I read that Maoism is having a resurgence in various other sources but others completely contradict them and outright say Mao is irrelevant to the Chinese nowadays, I don't know what to think (I understand China is so big both things could be true though)

We need a powerful idea of the future.

If it can grip the popular imagination, we can overturn even the miserable conditions that prevail today.

The aesthetics of maoism are popular and there's a certain contradictory "nostalgia" for a simpler age among the young particularly.

Ideologically? Not really.

That said I don't think third world communist movements ever really did embrace the whole internationalist, one race the human race stuff. HCM was basically an ethno nationalist to begin with for example.

Yes, that is a constant throughout history. Tacitus is nice for documenting military campaigns but his sociology is lacking tbh.

It's not about nostalgia. Hard times breed hard men, comfortable times make people love life a lot more. Or at least fear losing their material comforts.

Again. Do you really believe that all people throughout all historical periods have had exactly the same level of fear and aversion to violence as modern urban westerners?

ohlookitsthisfacebookmemeagain.jpg

I suggest reading a fucking book.

Yes, I'm sure you could endure daily subsistence toiling in some Russian field somewhere as much as a Russian peasant circa 1800AD could fam.

Of course people are partly the product of their environment (as well as their genes). Do you even understand the logical consequences of going down the opposite route?