zazen

Agree with this too. It's annoying to even have to box yourself into ''left'' or ''right''. If a liberal is trying to integrate their progressive views into the messy reality of politics and reality - are they now called a regressive centrist for trying to ground some of their utopian ideals and aspirations? Conservatives are too fixated on form and order - meaning rigid constraints. Liberals nobly want to loosen themselves and others from those constraints and introduce some flexibility and humanity into the equation - but the slippery slope is getting rid of all constraint for some juvenile idea of freedom that they try to apply to the real world.

NeoNazism is fringe, MAGA isn’t. If MAGA’s fringe why has it democratically been voted into power twice? It’s so fringe that we have parallels across the West - populism started hatching in Europe before Trump even came on the scene. Why? Because that structural tension I mentioned above is coming to a head - MAGA is manifesting as a symptomatic solution to that tension and is just one of the more cruder versions of it - populism with American characteristics. Even if MAGA is temporary, the conditions that caused its rise are structural and yet to be fixed. You’ll keep seeing similar movements that differ in name and keep mislabelling them as fridge. The reason it seems fringe or alien is because each side is standing inside a different cultural universe with different base assumptions about reality to the other. How do people share political space if one side believes reality/truth is more flexible and fluid (chosen) vs the other viewing it as more fixed or given (by God, biology, tradition)? Abortion is a thorny subject that exposes that divergence on reality. Both agree killing a life is bad, but can’t agree on when life begins (conception vs viability/independence). Their base assumptions about the reality of life differ, which means their problems and solutions will differ, which means their political visions will be mutually exclusive - as different as a flat earther vs a round earther. @Joshe Centrism can def be lazy both sides-ism or the harder work of integrating worldviews and complexity. Leftist progressivism can look brave, but be equally simplistic moral chest thumping that dodges the work of integrating ideals with reality. Basically, the left believe that the ideals of freedom, equality and inclusion are what allow society to progress - and that as long as we are moving towards that, society will progress. It believes there are no limits to those ideals and aspirations - but mother reality says otherwise. And if your politics is based upon the illusion that those limits don't exist and are merely self-imposed “constructs” by the relic of tradition, then the reality of ignoring reality will show itself in the form of unintended consequence. Also, ISIS and Taliban don’t seem to suffer from cowardice but lack of conciousness and wrestling with complexity.

This video was good: Covers a lot of what I was talking about in comments elsewhere which is the deeper double whammy cause of populism: economic dispossession from neoliberal globalization+ cultural disregard and dissolution from liberal universalism that views limited identities as backwards. Liberalism thinks it’s liberating people from those limitations, but instead uproots them in the process - populism is a backlash to that uprooting. People reach out for darker forms of belonging that are then exclusionary and crude - Hitlers Nazism being the worst manifestation. The major fault line of our times is how to reconcile that tension - how to align the interests of the I (individual), WE (communal/local), ALL (global/universal). From a big picture view the eternal tension is how to balance the security of the limited (human form) with the aspiration of the unlimited (formless Godliness). Or how to balance isness (internal essence) with what is (external form) which has constraints and limitations. Liberal technocratic globalists vs Conservative pragmatic nationalists is the socio-cultural-political manifestation.

This video was good: Covers a lot of what I was talking about in comments elsewhere which is the deeper double whammy cause of populism: economic dispossession from neoliberal globalization+ cultural disregard and dissolution from liberal universalism that views limited identities as backwards. Liberalism thinks it’s liberating people from those limitations, but instead uproots them in the process - populism is a backlash to that uprooting. People reach out for darker forms of belonging that are then exclusionary and crude.

The left and right can't even agree on what a man is. This is the deeper issue as to why Western politics has become so polarized - their base assumptions about reality differ, which means they differ on what the problems are, including their solutions. It’s like flat earthers and round earthers trying to exist in the same political frame work. The crux of it comes down to economic and cultural anxiety and dispossession. The working class felt the those two forces first - which is what allowed them to tap into the energy of discontent and anger over a much longer time frame to galvanize and propel them politically. The middle class felt economic anxiety later (2008) as late stage capitalism started to bite their pockets, and the cultural anxiety of having right wing populism rise in power woke them up to potential cultural dispossession. These are the two same issues that caused Hitlers rise (economic+cultural dispossession). The reason the right are angrier and more violent (in some peoples eyes) than the left, is because they are more powerless (or were). This is structural. Urban centers are centers of power, and urban centers trend towards more liberal cosmopolitanism - which then dominates the country at whole on an institutional level (academia, law, corporations, media etc). This is why parallel networks were built (in media - social media) to counter the main stream media (''fake news'' lol) and are attempting to be build alternative academia (Jordan Peterson Academy). Power is blind to those who have it - including their abuses of it (cancel culture, de-banking, law fare). The logic becomes - act sorta authoritarian today to prevent future authoritarianism - whilst authoritarian undertones start creeping into their camp. Liberal / urban elites were historically sheltered from both anxieties. But now as right populism gains political ground - they’re experiencing cultural anxiety for the first time. They now fear conservative/nationalist values being imposed on them, just as conservatives felt liberal cosmopolitan values were imposed before. Both sides now feel the double squeeze (economic + cultural dispossession), but they don’t share the same definition of culture or the same solutions to their economic troubles. Their fighting over who ''we'' even is (identity - universal vs national), including what even is (reality). Liberalism began as the noble liberation of individuals from the harsh realities of power dynamics and domination (kings, priests, feudalism, tribalism) and mutated to liberation from reality itself (naive) - if the individual must be free then why not free them from gender roles, sexual norms and biology itself? Perhaps loosening of constrains it’s a better aim than freeing from constraints themselves - but be wary of the slippery slope they leads to. Reality became negotiable - which to many people who want to have a sense of rootedness (in tradition, geography, biology) seems non-negotiable. Late stage capitalism (causing economic anxiety for all) is now colliding with late stage liberalism (dissolving a cohesive cultural identity and worldview of reality for the many). Democratic politics only polarizes this further because now your neighbour can vote in a version of reality you are at odds with. It's healthy in a democracy to argue over the means, but now people are arguing over the ends (what the good life is, what reality is, who ''we'' even are). When you can't even agree on what the problem is, you are fundamentally at odds with each other. Instead of democracy being a safety valve, it becomes the amplifier of division - because the losing side experiences it as domination. Two “Americas” no longer share the same definition of the problem, let alone the solution. Populism is liberalism's shadow. The liberal establishment can't comprehend the nationalist, traditionalist worldview because they view any type of boundaries or constraints on reality as chains. They universalize and absolutize freedom - which manifested as globalization and financialization - which hollows out a nations people and sense of rootedness or belonging. The clash from another lens is about the legitimacy of globalization vs the legitimacy of the nation state, or national interest vs internationalists interests. Something Hitler also commented on in his speeches, and that we see commented on today. There is a smart way to go about this or a distorted dark way to go about this - as in the case of Nazism and fascism, but that’s another discussion.

Not Noah’s ark but Noticings arc:

So what’s the causal factor in rising political violence and populism in general? You guys are masturbating over semantics of whether the right are facist yet - it’s fair to say they are increasingly becoming so, with disagreement on where they are on the spectrum. We can all agree things are getting polarized - but why? Liberal types pride themselves on their empathy and systemic analytical skills looking at root causes of inequality and crime in their urban cities but don’t extend that over to rural MAGA die hards who are just racist red necks though.

I actually gave MAGA the benefit of the doubt initially and didn't agree with slapping them with the fascist label. But seeing how things are turning out it's slipping into that territory in its own way. There's actually nothing inherently fascist or wrong with grievance politics (grievances) or cultural panic (fear of cultural loss and belonging) - fascism is what shows up in the solution and its implementation. If that solution excludes or scapegoats whole groups, and uses intimidation or violence to enforce that solution - bingo you got some fascism no? It's legitimate concerns gone about in illegitimate ways - the problem of the left can be that they don't always consider or understand those concerns as legitimate - and simply slap on the racist-fascist label simplistically. Grievance politics shouldn't turn into purity politics that seek to purge those from society that are scapegoated as the cause of those grievances. Also - I literally commented on how US fascism isn't going to look like Nazi Germany or fascism of old. MAGA has the energy of facism but not the infrastructure to fully replicate it. It has the grievance fueled rhetoric of decline (cultural-national) and rebirth, scapegoats (immigrants, elites, wokies) and some flirtation with violence or full on affair with it depending on who you ask. But there's no paramilitary fusion with the state, and there's no replacement of the liberal technocratic bureaucracy with MAGA loyalists at the scale needed to call it a full blown fascist makeover of the state - it's not total and there are structural constraints as to why. They don't have a big enough pool of loyalists to pull from and staff the state at such a scale - which is also why they perhaps want to shrink or defund what they can't control. They want to shrink the state to concentrate power, and sidestep the need for a loyalist bureaucracy. Everyone's circling around the what, what about the why though?

Fascism with American characteristics as I outlined in my previous comment. But why..what caused the rise of millennial and Gen Y neo-nazis? Why weren't there as many Gen X neo-nazis? Perhaps because liberal democracy’s contradictions hadn’t yet unraveled - because the conditions that made it viable (which are a narrow set of conditions) were still intact (wealth + cohesion). Prosperity and the future promise of it (social contract) cushioned the conditions for Gen X to exist in a sweet spot that assumed the universal sustainability of liberal democracy itself. Relative prosperity, equality and cohesion existed thanks to geopolitical stability (unipolar order), shared identity of ''we'' as Americans, wealth and the hopes of achieving it ie the American dream. Millenials and Gen X'rs radicalized because those conditions started to crumble (social contract ending) - 9/11, wars on terror, 08 financial crash, de-industrialization, multi-polarity knocking at the uni-polar hegemons world order. The result is populism, polarization and extremism beginning to surface on both ends (antifa, groypers etc) and now at their culmination. There's no longer a shared ''we'' or a transcendent identity to exist as a limited identity within - there is now only identity politics itself. A fight for ''we'' and identity. Identity politics took off in the 2000's because prosperity + empire could no longer subsidize cohesion ie conditions for it, the politics followed. Minority rights and protections of identities started much earlier but still existed within a larger “we”. That gave space for new identities to be recognized within the system, not against or outside of it. The fact that identity politics is even a thing is indicative that it is a child of liberal democracy’s contradictions. Outside the West there is still a shared larger ''we'' people exist within - religious, civilization, national. Liberalism is trying to liberate people from all of it. If all identities are just limited constructs, at some point people question the civic and national identity that makes liberalism work in the first place - via some cohesive glue. Liberalism starts to liberate people from liberalism itself eventually. Your point is a good point though - everything I wrote just above highlighting the dynamics of the breakdown - are only amplified by social media. Social media creates echo chambers and parallel realities that amplify the tribalism. Liberalism simultaneously uproots people from their ''limited and backward identities'' (which is noble) but doesn't realize the difficulty or development required for people to place themselves in a transcendent universal identity (the naive part). They then go hunting for belonging to some identity or sub-group which social media provides a buffet for. Without rootedness or cohesion people reach for extremes to feel rooted and cohesive again. Liberalism universalizes outward in its geopolitics and foreign policy (everyone must adopt liberal frameworks, pre-text for empire), whilst fragmenting inwards (the sacredness of individual expression that multiplies identities and differences). Social media then is the perfect tech embodiment of liberal democracy’s paradox: promises universal connection but delivers tribal fragmentation the same way liberal democracy promises universal belonging but splinters belonging into identity politics. The 90s were the last decade when the liberal order still “worked” for those of us in the West (myself included) - universalizing ideals + relative cohesion + prosperity + US or Western dominance. The good old days - nostalgic blockbuster feel good type shit. It felt like liberal democracy had finally solved history’s problems post cold war - but they were conditions masking the contradictions underneath that were yet to unravel when those conditions cease to exist - like today. P.S I’m not saying I have the solution - I’m simply sharing what I think is the crux of the problem facing much of the West today. A thesis in progress. People are searching for solutions. The rights is crude, the lefts is simplistic and naive. Both fail because they operate within the same paradigm that created the problem. The right want to double down on differences within a limited tribal identity of nation, religion, civilization (particularism). The left want to champion all differences (micro identities - pronoun gang) whilst simultaneously dissolving all those differences into a blob of universal oneness (universalism).

We’d think so but body count doesn’t matter as much as intent. If the word is defined as violence for political ends surely it fits the definition? Thats the point I was making in the previous comment about how we mentally fix a word to its most extreme or notorious example - anchoring bias at play. Terrorism doesn’t need mass casualties to be terrorism just like genocide doesn’t need gas chambers to be genocide. Just shows how the word “terrorism” is politicized and not neutrally used. Or maybe I’m getting too loosey goosey with my definitions.

@PurpleTree @Inliytened1 Words alone aren’t violent but the worldview behind them can be. I think the difference is in using words as analytical or descriptive vs as a moral marker on an enemy that justifies violence against them. I don’t think Israelis writing “To Amalek” on their missiles was them trying to identify Gazans analytically - that was to exterminate them. Obviously. On a side note - isn’t it odd how this fucker hasn’t been called a terrorist?

Felt cute, may start defending Israel now not sure.. There's a difference between defending their right to exist and defending their non-existent right to dominate.

I agree rifts happen within culture, but sometimes those rifts don't mend back together into one cohesive culture - they crystallize into a separate culture. So then you don't have a rift within a culture, but a rift creating two cultures that are now at odds and rifting with each other. They become different versions of what America should look like - almost like rival religions. Once you differ on the fundamentals of what is true (ontology) and what is good (morality) you are different cultures. The left and right differing on a whether a woman can have a cock or not, or whether women should remain virgins till marriage or not (heck even the idea of marriage itself) - are two sides walking the same planet but in different worlds all together. Semantic hair splitting aside - whether liberalism allows or creates diversity - the structural point is liberal democracy proliferates, politicizes and polarizes that diversity in a way that conservative non-democracies don't. A centralized un-democratic system becomes unstable when the demos get fed up enough not having their voice heard and revolt. A de-centralized democratic system becomes unstable when the demos fractures because too many voices within it diverge and fight over the political space their supposed to share. Rifts within culture create differences, that sometimes splinter into different cultures. Liberalism gives those differences legal protection and room to grow. Democracy then politicizes them by giving each faction the political power to impose their different visions via the state. Those differences are no longer private beliefs but become codified in policies that affect everyone. So suddenly, your neighbor’s worldview becomes a political threat, because it might be voted into law. In a non-democracy there's no political expression for all those differences to allow for that polarization.

The classic definition of facism and communist don’t cleanly map onto what’s happening today if we only use their worst historical examples as barometers. It’s like how Zionists will say genocide isn’t occurring because it doesn’t match the Holocaust or Rwanda like a carbon copy. Theirs a danger in using definitions too loosely - because it’s premature, demonizing and polarizing. But then again - there’s a preventive logic in broadly defining something as a danger in order to stop it in its tracks. People call something “fascist” or “genocidal” early on not because it resembles Mussolini’s Italy or Rwandas genocide but because they fear it could harden into that if left unchecked. But also - not every case is supposed to look like its worst example of those definitions. Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin notoriously cemented those definitions, so we historically gravitate to those examples as anchors whenever those words are evoked. It’s possible to have facism and communism with American characteristics. So what is US facism? I don’t think US christo-facism will look like the total fascism of the 20th century because they lack the educated bureaucratic staff to run the machinery of the state in such a total way as to impose their vision top down. The base is made up of blue collar workers which means they don't have the pool of white collar professionals needed to staff the institutions to carry out their vision. This is why “the establishment” generally leans liberal for that very structural reason. That’s why all they can do is gut institutions rather than have the capacity to build or revamp institutions in their own image. The same reason they can’t run a modern expansive government of a superpower is the same reason their international imperial empire will be in rapid retreat. This doesn’t mean it won’t be bad at home - it will be patchy authoritarianism using the existing tools of state, but not totalizing the state for their own end. Relief abroad from US imperialism, repression at home. The US right are reactionary populists with patchy authoritarianism and racists among their ranks. The US left are technocratic liberal reformists with commie revolutionaries among theirs. But the extremes within their own ranks don’t define the total. Generally, the right aren’t pushing an organized ideaology of racial supremacy and domination - and the left aren’t pushing a commie revolution to abolish private property. The larger point to all this is why the polarization in the first place? Ask yourselves if this is structurally due to the inherent contradictions within liberal democracy itself? If liberalism encourages diversity, and democracy gives those differences political power - then when those differences grow too divergent, each side uses politics to impose its “vision of America” on the other. Social media and dumbed down discourse doesn’t help in fueling that conflict over whose version should prevail.

https://thegrayzone.com/2025/09/12/charlie-kirk-netanyahu-israel-assassination/ Not outside the realm of possibility is it. Conspiracy ooo, cohencidences oooo, literally a thread about Israeli deception but we can’t be deceived here can we ooo The professionalism wasn’t in the shot itself but the set up and being the fall guy. Cui bono? Still don’t think it’s worth the geopolitical risk though. Possible but perhaps not probable - even with the odd timing of it all.

Connected to this is that Liberalism is ultimately noble but naive. The same way those two rights (speech and arms) cancel each other out without a culturally-socially cohesive foundation - liberalism and democracy cancel each other without a similar foundation. You may be able to have liberalism and democracy separately but not together without a strong foundation - and that foundation can't simply be papered over with more constitutional ''rights, laws and freedoms''. Liberalism multiplies the differences that democracy can only manage if differences are limited. The more plural the society, the less coherent the demos. The less coherent the demos, the less functional the democracy. As liberalism creates more diversity and democracy gives political voice to that diversity, each group starts using democratic power to impose their vision on the others. Which creates more conflict. Which liberalism responds to by celebrating even more diversity. Which democracy expresses through even more polarization. Democracy only works under very narrow conditions: relative equality, cultural cohesion, and some shared belief in progress or prosperity. For a while the UK and US could maintain those conditions because empire guaranteed both wealth and the expectation of more wealth to come ie the social contract. That economic cushion bought them the stability to pretend that democracy was universal and self-sustaining. But once empire and unipolar supremacy fade as they are doing so today - those conditions vanish. If liberalism is built on the sovereign individual and the sanctity of self-expression, then logically it must extend to groups of individuals - cultures, religions, lifestyles - all treated as equally valid within the same political framework. That’s how liberalism naturally evolves into multiculturalism - even without migrating multiple cultures into the ''demos''. Liberalism generates internal multiculturalism because once you elevate individual freedom and choice as the highest good - people splinter into subcultures, countercultures, ideologies, and identities. It inevitably fragments the cultural fabric. Belonging is a longing and a need that can't be un-needed - people must identity with something. Liberalism dismembers limited identities of belonging for a larger identity of universal belonging (the noble part) - it tries to transcend nationalist tribal belonging into a internationalist globalist one. But its very hard to scale tribal identity (the naive part) - and in doing so you uproot many people who then backlash at being uprooted. Now with multiple cultures under one roof, diverging worldviews mean you don’t have one demos but many, all trying to operate under a single democratic shell. It's no longer one people or demos, but multiple peoples attempting to share one political frame work and territory - essentially multiple countries in one. You can have a multi-ethnic society with a mono-culture, but a multi-cultural society that's even mono-ethnic, becomes in-coherent. If America was 100% ethnically homogeneous, you'd still have the same breakdown because the fundamental problem isn't simply racial diversity but cultural fragmentation. These are religious differences dressed up as political ones. Its fundamentally a socio-religious problem trying to be solved at a political level. Democracy contains the seeds of its own undoing in that if the people or demos ''will'' an authoritarian, and use the vote to elevate them, democracy has faithfully functioned - but only to end itself. That’s why populism is such a dirty word among the liberal elite establishment: it exposes the contradiction and breaks down the worldview underpinned by enlightenment and liberalism. Democracy demands fidelity to the people’s will (the most popular voted in), but the people’s will is not guaranteed to be enlightened, moderate, or liberal. Sometimes it’s angry, fearful, or authoritarian. Sometimes it chooses Caesar. Populism is simultaneously democracy’s purest expression and its greatest danger. I found this interesting: ''Modern liberalism is what happens when you take classical liberal insights and turn them into a totalizing ideology divorced from any limiting context. Classical liberals wanted freedom FROM oppression. Modern liberals want freedom FROM reality itself - from biology, from scarcity, from human nature, from the basic constraints that make civilization possible. Classical liberalism was a scalpel designed to remove specific tumors from an otherwise healthy social body. Modern liberalism is chemotherapy that's been running so long it's killing the patient along with the disease. The original vision? It was actually achievable under certain conditions - homogeneous societies with strong social trust, shared cultural values, and clear external threats that maintained internal solidarity. America in the 18th and 19th centuries actually pulled it off for a while, at least for white Protestant males who owned property.''

Can’t have a marketplace of ideas if having those ideas gets you killed. The rights of speech and arms ultimately cancel each other out in a broken society lacking social cohesion and civic sense to exercise those rights wisely. They were intended to check the tyranny of the state - but what happens when the “other” is viewed as the tyranny? These were tools of liberation and democracy designed for a cohesive society that all agreed on some basic fundamentals - including what they considered a threat. The misuse of the first right (free speech) creates the conditions for the misuse of the second right (to bear arms). The fear of the “other” to use arms, has a chilling effect on the “other” to exercise their right to speak freely. The macro blindspot in all this is in enlightenment values and liberalism itself: that assumes wisdom and responsibility scales to the masses by default. Liberalism conflates equality of dignity with equality of discernment and responsibility. Don’t mistake the tools of civilization (rights, democracy, liberty) for civilization itself. Don’t believe that simply possessing free speech, guns, and a ballot makes a society “civilized”. The tools don’t automatically confer the maturity to use them. Civilization is having the civic sense to use them.

Crusaders were the security for the Gaza aid sites. Vile.

@Socrates The political cost is super high for them to do it, but their desperation is also higher today. Couldn’t imagine them trying this 10 years, even 2 years ago - but the shift in narrative not only globally but in the US who they materially rely on changes the calculus. Them being capable also doesn’t mean them being willing - but then capability also means being capable of doing such things and getting away with it - as they have been getting away with all they have recently. So surely they can be more brazen about what their willing to do also. They just struck a gulf capital who the US is an ally of and has the largest base. That totally fucks up the US’s image of being a reliable security partner and ally. It goes completely against their interest to be setting up mediation talks then having those mediators be bombed - in a location such as Doha on top of that. The fact that Israel can’t afford to lose MAGA cuts both ways - they can’t afford for MAGA to start questioning Israel, as much as they can’t afford to lose MAGA as a response to them taking out one of their biggest influencers.

The US is the last supportive pillar of Israel after the world has turned on them. And specifically the Christian Zionist demographic - Charlie Kirk was the biggest face of the right wing demographic and young - meaning he had a long road ahead of him in politics. He just started questioning Mossad, Epstein and the ability to question Israel. The left are already accounted for in their criticism of Israel. But to have the other side start to become increasingly so is something they can’t just allow to happen so easily. He even questioned the narrative of October 7th on PBD - saying it’s the most surveilled militarised place and that it’s fishy it took them that long to respond ie must have been ordered to stand down. Mossad are also more than capable. Israel bombs and de-capitates people in multiple countries - including a US ally with the largest US base in the Middle East just days ago (Qatar). But we’re supposed to believe they will be restrained when it comes to US soil - for sure the political cost is much higher doing anything on US soil - but at the same time they have become increasingly brazen and desperate. They also have the operatives and networks to cover such tracks on US soil. The timing is also fishy - why would an extreme leftist cell do it now when political tensions aren’t as high as for example before an election. The timing of Israel’s recent actions and the Charlie’s narrative shifting line up more with incentives to carry this out. There’s a lot of heat atm - from Epstein to Gaza etc this could put a chilling effect on others speaking up including neutralizing one of the largest voices of the right that they simply can’t afford to lose. Then again, I just can’t imagine Mossad to gamble and risk such a thing.

The US is the last supportive pillar of Israel after the world has turned on them. And specifically the Christian Zionist demographic - Charlie Kirk was the biggest face of the right wing demographic and young - meaning he had a long road ahead of him in politics. He just started questioning Mossad, Epstein and the ability to question Israel. The left are already accounted for in their criticism of Israel. But to have the other side start to become increasingly so is something they can’t just allow to happen so easily. He even questioned the narrative of October 7th on PBD - saying it’s the most survived militarised place and that it’s fishy it took them that long to respond ie must have been ordered to stand down. Mossad are also more than capable.

Disgusting what happened - even more disgusting to see the heartlessness of people’s reaction. It was clearly a profession assassination with the shooter now gone. Question is who? This came up: Was he free speeching wrongly? 4min mark, just a month ago. Could be a cohencidence though. That or a lone extremist leftist - what’s more plausible?

Have done so before. Have a good day too.