""Post Truth" politics"

firefinga

Well-known member
One could as well post the following in the Trump thread or the election 2016 doom thread, but also here:

It's also ironic that the regime of neoliberalism has corrupted (western) societies to the extent that now even several of the main propagandists of this said regime (conservative parties, lapsed former "social" democratic parites, cancerous media tycoons like Murdoch) are being swept away by products of (the permanent crisis produced by) neoliberalism, namley the populists and their disgruntled supporters.

The really said part is, we possibly get something even worse in return - authoritarian or downright fascist regimes instead of free market fundamentalism.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
One could as well post the following in the Trump thread or the election 2016 doom thread, but also here:

It's also ironic that the regime of neoliberalism has corrupted (western) societies to the extent that now even several of the main propagandists of this said regime (conservative parties, lapsed former "social" democratic parites, cancerous media tycoons like Murdoch) are being swept away by products of (the permanent crisis produced by) neoliberalism, namley the populists and their disgruntled supporters.

The really said part is, we possibly get something even worse in return - authoritarian or downright fascist regimes instead of free market fundamentalism.

I know what you're saying, and I agree that the tensions that we're seeing are remarkable, but I'd be cautious about what you say has been swept away. Conservative parties still have an awful lot of power, in countries like the UK and Spain (not to mention America - I think the demise of the trad Republicans has been much overstated), and the Murdochs of this world are stronger than ever, surely (he got exactly what he wanted with Brexit)? Obviously social democratic parties are dying everywhere, that's very true, hollowed-out hosts slowly dying after being stripped bare of all their original function from inside (Blair as zombie wasp?).

There is an obvious surface tension between nationalist fascism and neoliberalism, but I would imagine an accommodation between these two centres of power is not too far away. Neither of them have much of a problem with making the rich yet richer. Trump is doubtful to follow through on many of his promises to poor people, once he's embroiled in the political system, for example. He recognised the need for populist rhetoric, but so far nothing in actuality has changed structurally - his history shows him to be as neoliberal as the best of them.

This is interesting and I think the conclusion is right: https://www.opendemocracy.net/john-...s-fulfilment-of-neoliberalism-not-its-failure
"Fulfilment of the neoliberal transformation to unregulated capitalism is incompatible with electoral democracy. A polity can have one or the other, but not both. The dark genius of Donald Trump lies in following this incompatibility to its logical conclusion — if his brand of capitalism and electoral democracy conflict, it is democracy that will be undermined."
 
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craner

Beast of Burden
There's a deep antipathy between nationalist fascism and liberal capitalism, it's a historic mistake to associate or conflate them, it was made in the 30s by the Communists and led to catastrophe.
 

droid

Well-known member
The truth must be spoken with a view to the results it will produce in the sphere of action. As a specimen
of a truth from which no results, or the wrong ones, follow, we can cite the widespread view that bad
conditions prevail in a number of countries as a result of barbarism. In this view, Fascism is a wave of
barbarism which has descended upon some countries with the elemental force of a natural phenomenon.

According to this view, Fascism is a new, third power beside (and above) capitalism and socialism;
not only the socialist movement but capitalism as well might have survived without the intervention of
Fascism. And so on. This is, of course, a Fascist claim; to accede to it is a capitulation to Fascism.
Fascism is a historic phase of capitalism; in this sense it is something new and at the same time old.
In Fascist countries capitalism continues to exist, but only in the form of Fascism; and Fascism can be
combated as capitalism alone, as the nakedest, most shameless, most oppressive, and most treacherous
form of capitalism.


But how can anyone tell the truth about Fascism, unless he is willing to speak out against capitalism,
which brings it forth? What will be the practical results of such truth?

Those who are against Fascism without being against capitalism, who lament over the barbarism
that comes out of barbarism, are like people who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf.
They are willing to eat the calf, but they dislike the sight of blood. They are easily satisfied if the butcher
washes his hands before weighing the meat. They are not against the property relations which engender
barbarism; they are only against barbarism itself. They raise their voices against barbarism, and they
do so in countries where precisely the same property relations prevail, but where the butchers wash
their hands before weighing the meat.

...
 

vimothy

yurp
On the subject of fascism and Richard Spencer, Ross Douthat tweeted the following yesterday:

1. Last thought on Spencer: One issue is that Trumpism rose so suddenly that there's no clear intellectual substructure for his populism.
2. There's no equivalent of, say, Eric Zemmour in France or Thilo Sarrazin in Germany. Bannon is an operator, not a self-conscious theorist.
3. So there's an opening for someone like Spencer to say, "look at me, I'm the Snazzy Fascist AND the Mind of Trumpism!"
4. But he isn't. Go profile Steve Sailer or Mickey Kaus or the Journal of American Greatness guys instead.

I'm not sure about his recommendations, but I think the rest of it is largely true. Spencer is (as Douthat says elsewhere) a clever troll, and one who is not shy about taking the 15 minutes of fame offered to him by the press.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
There's a deep antipathy between nationalist fascism and liberal capitalism, it's a historic mistake to associate or conflate them, it was made in the 30s by the Communists and led to catastrophe.

i temporarily forgot that the Spanish Civil War was fought between Franco and the liberal capitalists

Liberal capitalism is only a temporary and pragmatic compromise anyways; it's not an ideology. The committed capitalist will soon abandon liberal principles as quickly as he adopted them, if it suits
 
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vimothy

yurp
Quite possibly, although I think it reflects the general tenor of hysterical pessimism into which the media has now fallen.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
In the case of Murdoch and Brexit, I think it's a Pyrrhic victory, at best. Big chunks of his (and other media tycoons) core audiences are flocking to the social media echo chambers, diminishing their profits and there's no end of that in sight. But, those social echo chambers are even worse, bc they get unchecked mainly due to financial interests of the likes of Zuckerberg.

I concede though, the Murdochs of the world are far from finished, yet losing influence by the minute and now look like the zombies they ever were.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
the power of social media vs trad media is definitely an interesting issue, but it seems incredibly difficult to get anywhere near the truth on that one. probably no-one has much of an idea right at the moment as to their relative influences. are there many individual social media bubbles that get a consistent editorial line (well, allegedly consistent...)anywhere near the reach of the Sun/Mail (thinking of the UK)?

Murdoch bought myspace but ruined it, didn't he?
 

firefinga

Well-known member
the power of social media vs trad media is definitely an interesting issue, but it seems incredibly difficult to get anywhere near the truth on that one. probably no-one has much of an idea right at the moment as to their relative influences. are there many individual social media bubbles that get a consistent editorial line (well, allegedly consistent...)anywhere near the reach of the Sun/Mail (thinking of the UK)?

Murdoch bought myspace but ruined it, didn't he?

The tabloids and things like Fox still reach far more people, that's true, but it apparently just takes a considerable amount of people who form those social media echo chambers who are not reachable any more via other ways and will vote for the populists.

In Germany as well as Austria the last two, three years have seen the massive rise of this phenomenon and it'S usually the populists profiting from this - wrong stories (for example on refugee related crime and such) get viral extremely quickly, if they get disproven people dont't believe the facts - Afd or in Austria the Freedom party has the most followers/likes. Those people have created a whole "alternative" media system without the checks of traditional media (be it due to laws, code of decency and so on)
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
A question for anyone in the "Fascism is just capitalism on steroids" camp:

Leaving aside the early history of (Italian) Fascism and National Socialism, and looking at just at how the word's been used post-1945 up to the present, surely it has to be accepted that Fascism of any period is nothing without nationalism? Now there has very obviously been a huge resurgence in nationalism in many countries over the last few years, culminating in this year's dismal events in the UK and USA as well as a wave of nationalist populism across Europe. But as vimothy (mainly) has described elsewhere, the primary attitude of late capitalism/neoliberalism towards the nation-state is that it is not much more than an annoying impediment to the free flow of money, goods and labour, or that at best, it's something for the proles to hang the remains of their cultural identity onto, while globalization leads to an ineluctable homogenization of culture, until it's as easy to find dim sum in Rome and pizza in Shanghai as vice-versa.

I would argue that nationalism is much more important to the definition of Fascism that capitalism is. The Strasserist tendency within Nazism was genuinely national-socialist, in that it was both nationalistic (obviously) and socialistic (but not Marxist, of course). And there's a National Bolshevist movement in Russia, for fucks's sake. Are they Fascist, too? It's hard to say.
 
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vimothy

yurp
Bernie Sanders takes a similar view, incidentally. Here he is being interviewed by an incredulous Ezra Klein:

Ezra Klein
You said being a democratic socialist means a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing ...

Bernie Sanders
Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal.

Ezra Klein
Really?

Bernie Sanders
Of course. That's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ...

Ezra Klein
But it would make ...

Bernie Sanders
Excuse me ...

Ezra Klein
It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn't it?

Bernie Sanders
It would make everybody in America poorer —you're doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don't think there's any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
A question for anyone in the "Fascism is just capitalism on steroids" camp:

Leaving aside the early history of (Italian) Fascism and National Socialism, and looking at just at how the word's been used post-1945 up to the present, surely it has to be accepted that Fascism of any period is nothing without nationalism? Now there has very obviously been a huge resurgence in nationalism in many countries over the last few years, culminating in this year's dismal events in the UK and USA as well as a wave of nationalist populism across Europe. But as vimothy (mainly) has described elsewhere, the primary attitude of late capitalism/neoliberalism towards the nation-state is that it is not much more than an annoying impediment to the free flow and goods and labour, or that at best, it's something for the proles to hang the remains of their cultural identity onto, while globalization leads to an ineluctable homogenization of culture, until it's as easy to find dim sum in Rome and pizza in Shanghai as vice-versa.

Quick answer - the attitude of neoliberalism towards the state is not as you suggest at all. For example, neoliberalism has depended upon the state for its own continued existence, as after the phenomenal bailouts - and that was not happenstance, it's all part of the systemic logic of neoliberalism, that it can run wild with the knowledge that its monumental gambles will be insured against. Neoliberalism relies upon the state to bar the kind of movement it doesn't want - its championing of free flow of goods and labour is only ever on its own terms, the rest is simply propaganda. And as described many times, proponents of free markets only ever like free markets because it will disadavantage their (less advanced) competitors and overrun their incipient industries - America or any other major power obviously isn't built on free markets, but protectionism. It's totally pragamatic, and barely an ideology in any real sense - which is why I have sympathy with some who question whether 'neoliberalism' has much meaning at all (not to say I agree with them - I would certainly say it describes a wide range of related ideas in late capitalism, though not a v coherent/consistent ideology in the way that I understand ideology)

Ha-Joon Chang is pretty readable on all this stuff.

Btw, obvs agreed on the link between fascism (as popularly understood now) and nationalism; although as said above, the propaganda of fascism and the actual structural change a fascist state might/might not bring about in the 21st century, are v different things (and pretty open to speculation at this stage, without a whole lot of evidence - and hopefully it will stay that way).
 
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droid

Well-known member
Precisely. The aim of neo-liberalism is not to destroy the nation state, but to hollow it out so it solely serves market interests.
 
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