For example, why do people who want laissez-faire free trade empirically also prefer a strong military and oppose gay marriage?
Data point: In Slovakia the only party ever openly supporting gay rights and marijuana legalization is also the most laissez-faire party. (More info, in Slovak language.) And for many people here it feels these topics “naturally” belong together: we want less state regulation, both in economic and private lives. On the other hand, we have no significantly pro-guns or pro-feminism party. Guns are not a big topic here. Feminists are opposed to the religious party (which is considered right-wing, but many of its opponents are also right-wing), but don’t seem to support any specific party.
So it would be interesting to have data from other countries, whether the described connection is US-specific, or typical for most countries. Because if it is US-specific, the most likely explanation would be “somewhere in the past, for whatever reason, people advocating A and B formed a coalition, and since then people perceive A and B to be parts of the same political opinion”, and in other countries the historical accident could have been different.
People may have the universal tendency to make politics two-sided (“us” and “them”), but the specific contents of those two sides may be accidental. And if some people are more concerned about choice between A and B, but other people are more concerned about X and Y, over time these choices will collapse into AX and BY, or AY and BX.
Even if the choice is neurologically based, e.g. some people prefer “safety” (right) and others prefer “exploration” (left), what exactly is “safe” and what is “adventurous” may depend on the specific historical context. For example, the first Communist regimes clearly were “adventurous”; something new, never tried before. But what about the post-Communist countries now? Here it is reversed; the “safety-oriented” people dream about the good old times when men were men, women were women, and The Party had everything firmly under control; while the “adventurous” people dream about the endless opportunities of the free market utopia. But we must be careful in such reasoning, because not everything is reversed. For example even in these conditions, the religion still remains the symbol of “safety”, and feminists still need state support. So we should expect different coalitions.
EDIT: Another data point, again I don’t know how much is Slovakia exceptional here. When making government coalitions, the nationalists always go with the communists. (Only recently, the communists added nationalist rhetorics to their repertoire, so they took their voters, the nationalists did not get to parliament, and the communists now rule alone.) So if someone asks me whether nazis are left wing or right wing, to me it seems obvious that they are left-wing, and I don’t even understand how anyone (in my country) can ask this question. But I assume in other countries, the coalitions and rhetorics may be completely different. Again, it could be interesting to collect data from many countries.
Also, sorry for the mindkilling here. I mostly wanted to give specific examples contradicting the analysis in the linked article, to show that even if the basic premise about “safety” and “exploration” is essentially correct (seems plausible to me), some other parts may be results of specific history in USA, not valid universally.
EDIT: Now I realized the link is to the whole blog, not only to the article which was on the top of the blog when I clicked it.
I think the alliance between nationalists and communists is a pan-European phenomenon after the end of the Cold War. My model of European politics says that after World War I and onwards there are three competing ideologies (Communism, Nationalistic-fascism, Progressivism/Liberalism) which concentrate around states and state alliances and shift ideological alliances after major events. If a power center suffers a significant defeat, its ideology tries to ally itself with another formerly opposed ideology. The victorious power center on the other hand seeks to purify itself from internal fractions, and thus becomes “purer” in a sense.
Initial ideological players: Soviet Union (Communism), Axis (Fascism), USA+UK+France (Progressivism)
World War II ends—Fascism under Germany suffered a devastating defeat, so the leftover nationalists (both as individuals, and as leftover regimes like Franco), allied themselves with the USA against the communists.
New ideological players: Warsaw Pact (Communism), NATO (Progressivism + nationalist fascism)
Cold War ends—Communism suffers a defeat, so the leftover communists (both as individuals, and as leftover regimes) seek an alliance with the remnants of fascism—fascism accepts because progressivism holds it in contempt, and USA starts reducing interest in Europe to focus on Arab issues instead.
New ideological players: European Union (Progressivism), informal alliance centered on Russia (Nationalist fascism + communism)
Just to make sure: In your model, the laissez-faire guys are classified as a part of “Progressivism/Liberalism”? Or are they just statistically too insignificant to be included in any major political force?
Yeah, I meant Liberalism both in the sense it’s used in America and in the sense of the classical laissez-faire liberalism. There are disagreements between social democrats and the libertarianian-minded, but they’ve not yet gone to war against each other as the other groupings have, and instead allied against both other groups I mentioned.
So even if one considers them different movements, they’ve been in steady alliance or at least friendly rivalry for the period in European history that I was considering, and I think can be treated as a single movement. I could also probably use the Moldbuggian “Universalist” term to put them together...
On the national level, in Europe alone you had Franco’s Spain and Estado Novo’s Portugal as founding members of NATO. The Kemalist nationalists of Turkey soon joined it—and NATO accepted the nature of these regimes (and later the Greek junta of the colonels as well) in a way that the Warsaw Pact didn’t accept ideological dissent in its own ranks (as seen by its invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia).
And if you track the allegiance of individuals you can get people like Georgios Papadopoulos who were Nazi collaborators, to becoming allied with USA against the communists in the junta of the colonels in the 1960s-1970s. And Greek people most supportive of that junta, are now the same people that are anti-American, anti-EU and pro-Russia now...
There’s no change of ideologies in these people, they’re very consistent in their political positions, and their themes: nationalism, racism, militarism, religion—it’s just that the same nationalist-fascist ideology has been supported by different sides: The Axis (primary ideology) at first, NATO (secondarily) later on, Russia now...
One thing that both Communists/Socialists and Nationalists have in common is that they are both believers in what Peter Drucker calls “Salvation by Society”. Obviously, they vehemently disagree about the details of what exactly a savior society would look like, but they both believe in the same basic premise: that it is possible and desirable for humans to be redeemed or purified via political action.
So it would be interesting to have data from other countries, whether the described connection is US-specific, or typical for most countries.
FWIW, “right” does appear to positively correlate with “authoritarian” in this graph. Whether this generalizes to non-Western countries I won’t speculate about.
I would say that in my country communists, nazis, catholics are authoritarian. (OK, these are not their official names, but their official names would not tell you much. For the record, it is: Direction; Slovak National Party; Christian Democratic Movement.) Communists are considered the left, catholics are the right, nazis are outside of this axis (they have their own minor axis: Slovak nationalists versus Hungarian minority).
I would guess that the authoritarian parties are traditional—they dream about return of the glorious past. But if the country had a complex history in recent century, it has multiple pasts it could return to. The communists think the golden era was 20 years ago, catholics think it was 100 and more years ago, nationalists think it was either 70 or 1000 years ago.
From the article:
Data point: In Slovakia the only party ever openly supporting gay rights and marijuana legalization is also the most laissez-faire party. (More info, in Slovak language.) And for many people here it feels these topics “naturally” belong together: we want less state regulation, both in economic and private lives. On the other hand, we have no significantly pro-guns or pro-feminism party. Guns are not a big topic here. Feminists are opposed to the religious party (which is considered right-wing, but many of its opponents are also right-wing), but don’t seem to support any specific party.
So it would be interesting to have data from other countries, whether the described connection is US-specific, or typical for most countries. Because if it is US-specific, the most likely explanation would be “somewhere in the past, for whatever reason, people advocating A and B formed a coalition, and since then people perceive A and B to be parts of the same political opinion”, and in other countries the historical accident could have been different.
People may have the universal tendency to make politics two-sided (“us” and “them”), but the specific contents of those two sides may be accidental. And if some people are more concerned about choice between A and B, but other people are more concerned about X and Y, over time these choices will collapse into AX and BY, or AY and BX.
Even if the choice is neurologically based, e.g. some people prefer “safety” (right) and others prefer “exploration” (left), what exactly is “safe” and what is “adventurous” may depend on the specific historical context. For example, the first Communist regimes clearly were “adventurous”; something new, never tried before. But what about the post-Communist countries now? Here it is reversed; the “safety-oriented” people dream about the good old times when men were men, women were women, and The Party had everything firmly under control; while the “adventurous” people dream about the endless opportunities of the free market utopia. But we must be careful in such reasoning, because not everything is reversed. For example even in these conditions, the religion still remains the symbol of “safety”, and feminists still need state support. So we should expect different coalitions.
EDIT: Another data point, again I don’t know how much is Slovakia exceptional here. When making government coalitions, the nationalists always go with the communists. (Only recently, the communists added nationalist rhetorics to their repertoire, so they took their voters, the nationalists did not get to parliament, and the communists now rule alone.) So if someone asks me whether nazis are left wing or right wing, to me it seems obvious that they are left-wing, and I don’t even understand how anyone (in my country) can ask this question. But I assume in other countries, the coalitions and rhetorics may be completely different. Again, it could be interesting to collect data from many countries.
Also, sorry for the mindkilling here. I mostly wanted to give specific examples contradicting the analysis in the linked article, to show that even if the basic premise about “safety” and “exploration” is essentially correct (seems plausible to me), some other parts may be results of specific history in USA, not valid universally.
EDIT: Now I realized the link is to the whole blog, not only to the article which was on the top of the blog when I clicked it.
I think the alliance between nationalists and communists is a pan-European phenomenon after the end of the Cold War. My model of European politics says that after World War I and onwards there are three competing ideologies (Communism, Nationalistic-fascism, Progressivism/Liberalism) which concentrate around states and state alliances and shift ideological alliances after major events. If a power center suffers a significant defeat, its ideology tries to ally itself with another formerly opposed ideology. The victorious power center on the other hand seeks to purify itself from internal fractions, and thus becomes “purer” in a sense.
Initial ideological players: Soviet Union (Communism), Axis (Fascism), USA+UK+France (Progressivism)
World War II ends—Fascism under Germany suffered a devastating defeat, so the leftover nationalists (both as individuals, and as leftover regimes like Franco), allied themselves with the USA against the communists.
New ideological players: Warsaw Pact (Communism), NATO (Progressivism + nationalist fascism)
Cold War ends—Communism suffers a defeat, so the leftover communists (both as individuals, and as leftover regimes) seek an alliance with the remnants of fascism—fascism accepts because progressivism holds it in contempt, and USA starts reducing interest in Europe to focus on Arab issues instead.
New ideological players: European Union (Progressivism), informal alliance centered on Russia (Nationalist fascism + communism)
Just to make sure: In your model, the laissez-faire guys are classified as a part of “Progressivism/Liberalism”? Or are they just statistically too insignificant to be included in any major political force?
Yeah, I meant Liberalism both in the sense it’s used in America and in the sense of the classical laissez-faire liberalism. There are disagreements between social democrats and the libertarianian-minded, but they’ve not yet gone to war against each other as the other groupings have, and instead allied against both other groups I mentioned.
So even if one considers them different movements, they’ve been in steady alliance or at least friendly rivalry for the period in European history that I was considering, and I think can be treated as a single movement. I could also probably use the Moldbuggian “Universalist” term to put them together...
In what sense do you see more nationlist facism in NATO then there was before WWII in the USA, UK and France?
On the national level, in Europe alone you had Franco’s Spain and Estado Novo’s Portugal as founding members of NATO. The Kemalist nationalists of Turkey soon joined it—and NATO accepted the nature of these regimes (and later the Greek junta of the colonels as well) in a way that the Warsaw Pact didn’t accept ideological dissent in its own ranks (as seen by its invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia).
And if you track the allegiance of individuals you can get people like Georgios Papadopoulos who were Nazi collaborators, to becoming allied with USA against the communists in the junta of the colonels in the 1960s-1970s. And Greek people most supportive of that junta, are now the same people that are anti-American, anti-EU and pro-Russia now...
There’s no change of ideologies in these people, they’re very consistent in their political positions, and their themes: nationalism, racism, militarism, religion—it’s just that the same nationalist-fascist ideology has been supported by different sides: The Axis (primary ideology) at first, NATO (secondarily) later on, Russia now...
One thing that both Communists/Socialists and Nationalists have in common is that they are both believers in what Peter Drucker calls “Salvation by Society”. Obviously, they vehemently disagree about the details of what exactly a savior society would look like, but they both believe in the same basic premise: that it is possible and desirable for humans to be redeemed or purified via political action.
FWIW, “right” does appear to positively correlate with “authoritarian” in this graph. Whether this generalizes to non-Western countries I won’t speculate about.
I would say that in my country communists, nazis, catholics are authoritarian. (OK, these are not their official names, but their official names would not tell you much. For the record, it is: Direction; Slovak National Party; Christian Democratic Movement.) Communists are considered the left, catholics are the right, nazis are outside of this axis (they have their own minor axis: Slovak nationalists versus Hungarian minority).
I would guess that the authoritarian parties are traditional—they dream about return of the glorious past. But if the country had a complex history in recent century, it has multiple pasts it could return to. The communists think the golden era was 20 years ago, catholics think it was 100 and more years ago, nationalists think it was either 70 or 1000 years ago.
What sort of graph has contemporary UK as being equally authoritarian as Stalin? I am sceptical.