On the other hand, when they got out in front of the movements, they would alter the course of the movements.
Alter to what? You are implying some sort of underhanded maneuvering that I not sure ever actually occurred.
After Civil Rights, Martin Luther King Jr was moving to topics of that are still controversial today—like ending the Vietnam War and ending pervasive poverty. As you say, one’s the net effect of that change depends on one’s prior values. More importantly, I think these types of change were organic to the movement that King was leading, not imposed from above.
Instead of imply, I’ll just state that they supported movements to further their own interests, which were not identical with the interest of the followers of those movements.
I don’t disagree that leaders like Ralph Nader or Martin Luther King advocated for what they thought was a good idea, which might not have a close relationship with what the followers would necessarily articulate as goals.
What specific changes in positions advocated occurred based on this disconnect? I’m particularly interested in changes that occurred because the leaders were Communist sympathizers when the membership wasn’t.
What specific changes in positions advocated occurred based on this disconnect? I’m particularly interested in changes that occurred because the leaders were Communist sympathizers when the membership wasn’t.
I don’t think this is a good place to start. While Raymond is mostly correct in the particular facts he points out, his overall picture is ill-informed and misleading. His ranting style also doesn’t help.
A better example to answer Tim’s question would be the fall of China to Mao, discussed in this Overcoming Bias post.
Don’t get me wrong, the basic story about the Soviet-directed subversion is true and well-attested by testimonies of Soviet defectors. However, there are two major problems with Raymond’s narrative.
First, his ideological concept of “suicidalism” is highly contrived and detached from reality on a number of points. Raymond starts from his own libertarian ideology—with which I in fact have some sympathy, but which is in his case very nerdy and simplistic—and then he takes a caricatured version of every opinion he disagrees with, and amalgamates all this. Now, I do think a correct analysis along these lines could be done (i.e. reducing the dominant ideology in the modern West to a list of principles, some of which need to be only stated plainly to see how pernicious they are). However, I think Raymond fails in this task, being driven by the desire to see something as close as possible to a simple evil inversion of his own principles.
(He also displays a trait common among modern libertarians and conservatives that I find indescribably irritating. Namely, they often scour the rhetoric of liberals and then exclaim in triumph when they find something that seems like a good target for propagandistic attack because it superficially looks bad from the liberal point of view. Of course, they never managed to fool anyone of any consequence this way, it and just makes them look like clowns to anyone but their own choir to whom they are preaching.)
Second, I think that a correct historical analysis would show that Soviet subversion—in the sense of subversion planned and directed from Moscow—was by no means unimportant, but not of such central and exclusive importance as Raymond believes. Furthermore, it’s very simplistic to believe that whenever some ideological interaction and intermixing occurred, it was just diabolically clever Russians duping their Western useful idiots. Plenty of that happened, of course, but the overall picture is much more complex than that. The story of the cooperation and mutual ideological influence between the Soviet and American elites was definitely not simple and unidirectional.
That said, there is much that is perfectly correct in Raymond’s article, and it would be a good reference if it were written in a more cautious and less ranting way. But as it is, it has serious flaws.
That said, there is much that is perfectly correct in Raymond’s article, and it would be a good reference if it were written in a more cautious and less ranting way.
At that point, I’m not sure that there’s anything left of the article that isn’t better stated by you in this comment here. In short, the whole purpose of the article was to rant (which is problematic for exactly the reasons you described).
Thanks for the link. Whatever the merits of post-modern thought, I don’t think King was a post-modernist. Assuming that the FBI was right to monitor him, what did he do to further the Communist agenda?
And I don’t really agree that your link was a fair minded view of post-modernism, or that it was a poison-meme from the Soviet Union.
According to this article, postmodernism seems to be, in its barest essence, a form of impiousiconoclasm as applied to the analysis of traditional concepts. It’s a very honoured tradition in Western Philosophy: in one century of democracy, the Athenians managed to practically destroy their entire body of traditions by discovering the base, petty group interests behind the so-called “sacred” and “natural” laws of their City.
Let me just say that I don’t think that post-modernism can be thought of as Socratic iconoclasm. I think it has valuable insights, many of which have been co-opted by more “rationalist” philosophy.
For example, I don’t think Michel Foucault can profitably be described as a nihilist. And whatever his sympathies to the Soviet Union (it appears that it was different at different stages of his life), I think the idea that he was generating poison-memes on behalf of the Soviet Union is ludicrous.
I would downvote your post because of the way its statements seem to be disjointed to each other, but I’d rather not have your post go below threshold, so I’ll directly ask you:
Why do you not think that post-modernism can be thought of as a form of methodological and cultural iconoclasm, and in hwat measure do you think it is not comparaabe to the efforts of Socrates and his contemporaries… and the backlash they suffered because of it.
What are those valuable insights you talk of, and what is that quote “ratonalist” unquote philosophy that has coopted many of them?
Why would Foulcault be described as a nihilist?
You are aware that Appeal to Ridicule advances the discussion excatly nowhere. Why do you think the fact that he was “spreading poision memes on behalf of the Soviet Union” to be remarkably unlikely and incongruous?
I find myself very very confused by this article. There are too many priors we don’t seem to share, too much inferential distance I need to jump. What is the American Way of Life, and what is this “Lockean individualism” he keeps talking about? How is anywhing Bin Laden said comparable to the contents of “Z Magazine”, which appears to be an amusingly old-fashioned doctrinal Marxist publication? He talks a lot about past events I’m unfamiliar with, and sources I haven’t read (yet).
The death of that dream is being written in European banlieus by angry Muslim youths under the light of burning cars.
Okay, that practically discredits the entire work, and puts the predictive ability of the author’s priors to the test, since he clearly didn’t bother to do the research here, and dared to speak of subjects he is ignorant of. As it turns out, it fails. I will only say this much: the Paris Riots were about as much of an Islamic crusade as The Los Angeles riots were Christian ones.
EDIT: Wooooow comment thread. That is long. Would you recommend reading it?
Also these lines from the Deceleration of Independence are decent summary.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Two large differences with Marxism and volk-Marxism is that rights are attributed to individuals rather than groups, and that emphasis on freedom from government interference rather than the “right” to goodies from the government.
Okay, that practically discredits the entire work, and puts the predictive ability of the author’s priors to the test, since he clearly didn’t bother to do the research here, and dared to speak of subjects he is ignorant of. As it turns out, it fails. I will only say this much: the Paris Riots were about as much of an Islamic crusade as The Los Angeles riots were Christian ones.
I’m not sure you understand what he means, he’s not claiming that the all the Paris rioters were motivated by jihad (although that’s probably a larger component than you’d care to admit) any more than all the Egyptian anti-Mubarak protesters were motivated by jihad. Nevertheless, the effect of the revolution in Egypt has been to make the government much moreIslamicfundamentalist. Similarly, the way Europeans (at least everyone to the left of Geert Wilders) responds to riots by Muslim youth is to officially give Islamic organizations more influence and those organizations do promote the Islamization of society.
Two large differences with Marxism and volk-Marxism is that rights are attributed to individuals rather than groups, and that emphasis on freedom from government interference rather than the “right” to goodies from the government.
Strangely enough, this fragment of the declaration, out of context, appears to enable a Marxist revolution as easily as any other, and without much of a stretch: if one assumes that the current Governments are acting as merely enablers and administrators of a corporate power that would stand between them and their rights to Life (nationalized healthcare, the right to the minimum amount of resources to survive whether you want to work or not), Liberty (job protection, safety nets, elimination of censorship and surveillance, not being discriminated from jobs because of race, creed, sexual life, or having children), and the pursuit of Happiness (depending on whose definition, it might involve minimizing time spent working, assuming your job doesn’t provide you with happiness, and maximizing the time spent with one’s family, or doing other stuff one actually likes to do, including non-remunerated but actual, tiring, productive work). I guess we should praise the Founding Fathers for the foersight they put in their work, and having made it as flexible as it is.
That said, it is indeed sad how doctrinal Marxism has shown an absolutely deplorable disregard for the rights and interests of anyone who wasn’t a proletarian. Luckily, democratist, egalitarian movements have predated and outlived Marxism, being born of a sensibility that is beyond mere memetic and mimetic propagation.
By the way. what is volk-Marxism, for that matter? A search in google mostly turns out the blog you linked to, Youtube comments, and some right-wing blogs. It does not seem to be a very widespread word… could you allay my suspicions that it isn’t a buzzword? (I don’t say this in a spirit of mockery, I am genuinely curious).
that’s probably a larger component than you’d care to admit
I’d like you to source the priors that allow you to assess such a probability. As a Muslim, and someone who was in close contact with those movements throughout, I do not recall a single source phrasing the conflict in religious terms.
the Islamization of society
What does that entail, exactly, and why is this a bad thing? I’m not assuming it is a good or bad thing, I just want to know why you think it would be.
the effect of the revolution in Egypt has been to make the government much more Islamic fundamentalist.
Typical case of reversed stupidity. As I think I have already mentioned somewhere on this thread, you will observe that once people believe themselves free of the yokes of their oppressors, and their oppressors’ agents, the same people will tend to feel attracted to said oppressors’ designated enemies (regardless of the details of the nature of said enmity, or its truth beyond rhetorics). In the Wars of Religion, it was Protestantism, in the Cold War, it was the USSR, and in The War on Terror, well, it’s the guys with the beards advocating the return to an idealized, pure past, and the rights of the common man against the foreign oppressor, again: they’re just wearing a different hat.
the way Europeans (at least everyone to the left of Geert Wilders) responds to riots by Muslim youth is to officially give Islamic organizations more influence
Maybe applying the right-left label here is a mistake: maybe it’s a “left wing” thing in Britain, but in France it’s more of a “right wing” thing: the French left has a bit of a vendetta against religion in any way shape or form, and thinks the “goodies” of the Goverment (and its funds) shouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.
Strangely enough, this fragment of the declaration, out of context, appears to enable a Marxist revolution as easily as any other, and without much of a stretch:
Only in the sense that any text can be interpreted to mean anything with enough “interpretation”, as you proceed to do in the next paragraph. Also I shown mention that Jefferson broke with what one might call “orthodox Lockeanism” by substituting “pursuit of happiness” for “property”.
elimination of censorship and surveillance
Marxists tend to be all for censorship and surveillance as long as they’re the ones doing the censoring and surveilling.
By the way. what is volk-Marxism, for that matter?
A term for the Marxist-dervied/inspired memes that Eric Raymond discusses in the blog post I linked to above.
A term for the Marxist-dervied/inspired memes that Eric Raymond discusses in the blog post I linked to above.
Yes, I know, I have read that article in full, but I still didn’t understand the delimitations of that definition.
Only in the sense that any text can be interpreted to mean anything with enough “interpretation”, as you proceed to do in the next paragraph.
You seem to imply that my interpretation wasn’t legitimate.
Marxists tend to be all for censorship and surveillance as long as they’re the ones doing the censoring and surveilling.
However, I suppose all power units, be they political, economical, or otherwise, will try to get their hands on as much information as they can get away with, while denying it to others. They will also be hypocritically outraged that other power units censor and suveil them. Hardly something endemic to Marxism, regretfully enough. One would argue that the ultimate elimination of censorship and surveilance is simply the complete empowerment of the general public to censor and surveil everyone else: all your words and actions are known to everyone, and no-one dares step out of line. Truly a Tyranny of the Public, if the Public isn’t memetically equipped to resist the temptation.
In case you thought otherwise, I am not suggesting the American Consitution or the Declaration of Independence are tweakable to accomodate leftism. More the opposite: that a leftism that respects individual rights can be Consitution-compliant.
You seem to imply that my interpretation wasn’t legitimate.
Well, yes. I particularly object to your redefinition of the word “liberty”.
liberty (job protection, safety nets, elimination of censorship and surveillance, not being discriminated from jobs because of race, creed, sexual life, or having children)
pursuit of Happiness (depending on whose definition, it might involve minimizing time spent working, assuming your job doesn’t provide you with happiness, and maximizing the time spent with one’s family, or doing other stuff one actually likes to do, including non-remunerated but actual, tiring, productive work)
Also notice that it says “pursuit of Happiness” and simply “Happiness”, i.e., the government shouldn’t get in your way of pursuing happiness but isn’t obliged actively assist you.
he government shouldn’t get in your way of pursuing happiness but isn’t obliged actively assist you.
Why, yes, what I meant to say there was that the government should enable you to pursue happiness in any way you choose, by guaranteeing your liberty to choose who to work for, what to work at, and how much you work. To be precise, the freedom to do whatever you want with your very limited time on this earth (I think people will still end up working just as much, when offered this freedom, unless they deliberately want to starve en masse, among other losses of comfort). The government isn’t actually helping you be happy in any particular way, they just make sure you are able to pursue whatever would make you happy.
Of course, that’s not Marxism: Marx would have said that “from each in accordance with their capacity, to each according tot their necessity”, which I think is utterly dumb: who’s going to decide how much ouput one is capable of, or where one’s needs stop?
Of course, if your notion of happiness is, say, to be someone’s slave, the government shouldn’t get in the way of you pursuing that. I’d be curious to see how many people do choose slavery over freedom.
Anyway, the Constitution forbids the Government to get in the way of your happiness, it doesn’t forbid it to make that pursuit easier for you, unless that gets in the way of your happiness. But then you could just reject their help, right?
Why, yes, what I meant to say there was that the government should enable you to pursue happiness in any way you choose, by guaranteeing your liberty to choose who to work for, what to work at, and how much you work. To be precise, the freedom to do whatever you want with your very limited time on this earth (I think people will still end up working just as much, when offered this freedom, unless they deliberately want to starve en masse, among other losses of comfort). The government isn’t actually helping you be happy in any particular way,
Yes it is. It’s forcing the employer to hire you.
Anyway, the Constitution forbids the Government to get in the way of your happiness, it doesn’t forbid it to make that pursuit easier for you, unless that gets in the way of your happiness.
Speaking of the topic of “generating poision memes”, I think that, since part of our endeavour would involve the deconstruction and destruction of propaganda and its pernicious enabling of “nationalism”, “groupism”, “collectivism” or however else we may call it, it might be interesting to study contemporary Think Tanks and their strategies with as much diligence and interest as those institutions of the past that this deeply interesting (if sometimes objectionable) article mentions.
For a rationalist to be able to function properly as a citizen, and defy the expectation that they would enclose themselves in ivory towers, unconcerned with the affairs of foolish mortals, one must develop tools to identify and deconstruct “poison memes” as soon as they come in contact with them, without having to rely on analysts who are ideologically indentured to the group opposing the creators of those memes, since they would in turn spread “poison memes” of their own.
A seeker of truth that would bounce between these sources would not find said truth, but only confusion piling upon confusion, save if they perform a truly exhausting effort of mental analysis and cross-referencing. As Descartes might have put it, partisan works do contain many excellent and true precepts, but these are mixed in with so much other harmful or superfluous stuff that it is almost as difficult to separate out the truth from the rest as it is to pull a Diana or a Minerva from a rough block of marble by separating out the wanted goddess-shaped marble from the unwanted remainder.
Hence I think developing a toolset to see through politically-motivated memes, if not outright cataloguing and properly sourcing them, would be a worthy task to undertake. If not by us, then by some other, specialized organ, that would be equally commited to the advancement of correct epistemology and mental hygiene.
Note: I want to make it clear that I do not think said article is entirely without merit. Far from that. I have seen some of the very stupid memes therein described existing in left-winger people I know, such as one of my dearest friends saying that, were the oppressed masses of the Third World to invade his country in revenge, he would allow himself to be killed. I was so shocked I could have slapped him then and there. (As a representative of said Third World (and of freaking reason for that matter) I explained to him that that was a preposterous notion,)
Nevertheless, knowing this person well, I can say with some certainty that he did not “catch” this meme from any marxist or progressivist literature or propaganda, but came to it on his own entirely. You see, not all pernicious ideas need to be taught (what a wonderful world would it be if they were): sometimes they arouse in parallel, in different people, because they make the same fundamental thinking mistakes, starting from similar but widespread faulty priors. Such as the ideas that:
a criminal should own up to their crimes and allow themselves to be punished, that victims have a right to violent vengeance
that by allowing injustice without speaking out against it one is automatically an accomplice,
that this notion could possibly be valid on the level of an entire country (I blame the Nurnberg trials for that meme),
that punishment can be dealt by proxy.
If the brutal, violent exploitation of the Third World by the colonial powers is seen as a crime, a mind equipped with the aforementioned memes would, with a high probablity, come up with this idiotic idea, without any Soviet prompting at all! Heck, not even those memes could be seen as Soviet-generated, they predate the USSR by far, heck, they probably predate dirt.
As for the horrors of colonialism are undeniable historical fact, and their criminalization seems to have been hardly a matter of left-versus-right, and more of a matter of much more diverse “nationalisms”, including literal Nationalisms, and one country calling out another for a crime the likes of which their own forces proceed to commit immediately, and which they vigorously deny or ignore, when called out in turn. At some point, internationally-minded people, such as, say, humanists, seem to have come up with the conclusion that those are all crimes.
Nevertheless, knowing this person well, I can say with some certainty that he did not “catch” this meme from any marxist or progressivist literature or propaganda,
Well, he might of caught it from someone who caught it from said literature.
but came to it on his own entirely.
I find this extremely unlikely. At best he came to it by following trains of thought inspired by reading progressive literature. Note that the most effective propaganda stops lays own all the premises but stops just short of stating the intended conclusion, so that the target believes he came up with the idea on his own.
Well, he might of caught it from someone who caught it from said literature.
But then wouldn’t their work automatically be a part of said literature?
Note that the most effective propaganda stops lays own all the premises but stops just short of stating the intended conclusion, so that the target believes he came up with the idea on his own.
I do find it amazing how many people who are clearly parroting memes without much personal input claim to have come up with them themselves. I for one like to give credit where credit is due.
I find this extremely unlikely. At best he came to it by following trains of thought inspired by reading progressive literature.
What evidence would falsify your theory that those memes are automatically descended from deliberate Soviet efforts? Because at this rate you’re starting to sound like my “Protocols of the Sages of Zion” reading uncle, who thinks everything the West does is the result of Zionist lobbying, Zionist subversion, and the Zionist conspiracy to sap and destroy our precious bodily fluids. Sorry, not bodily fluids, I mean our precious way of life, our intellectual integrity, the patriotic/religious fervour of our youth, the unity and freedom of the Islamic peoples, etc. etc. etc. . By sapping and neutering it and precipitating its decadence with their filthy propaganda spread through media manipulation and the aid of servile, self-hating intellectuals, them and other sorts of useful idiots. Only to replace it with their own, self serving work, that will render us impotent to resist their tyranny. Sounds familiar?
Hey, actually, the more I think about it, the more this pattern reemerges. I can think of examples from Ancient Greece! Ever heard of a guy named Pausanias? Maybe we could write an interesting article out of this! I genuinely feel we’re onto something.
What evidence would falsify your theory that those memes are automatically descended from deliberate Soviet efforts?
Do you mean my theory that your friend came up with the idea that “were the oppressed masses of the Third World to invade his country in revenge, he would allow himself to be killed” on his own or my theory that those memes ultimately descend from communist propaganda.
Because at this rate you’re starting to sound like my “Protocols of the Sages of Zion” reading uncle,
Another good example of a memetic weapon doing damage long after the war it was created to fight is over.
Do you mean my theory that your friend came up with the idea that “were the oppressed masses of the Third World to invade his country in revenge, he would allow himself to be killed” on his own
No, that’s mytestimony. I’m asking about your theory that anyone coming up with those memes is a result of the previous existence of those memes, and that said existence is exclusively owed to soviet agents manufacturing them under a specific agenda, as opposed to them being autonomous thinkers drawing similar conclusions in front of the same facts because they have a similar sensitivity and share some preconceptions that are in no way exclusive to a societ influenced or for that matter even leftist culture.
Another good example of a memetic weapon doing damage long after the war it was created to fight is over.
Yes, well, doesn’t it trouble you that maybe Eric Raymond and others like him are being victims of a similar process, given the many remarkable parallels between their discourses, modulo Hated-Enemy-Of-The-Day?
Do you mean my theory that your friend came up with the idea that “were the oppressed masses of the Third World to invade his country in revenge, he would allow himself to be killed” on his own
I’m asking about your theory that anyone coming up with those memes is a result of the previous existence of those memes, and that said existence is exclusively owed to soviet agents manufacturing them under a specific agenda, as opposed to them being autonomous thinkers drawing similar conclusions in front of the same facts because they have a similar sensitivity and share some preconceptions that are in no way exclusive to a societ influenced or for that matter even leftist culture.
Then why didn’t anyone come up with these memes in previous empires? Or for that matter in Europe before the mid 20th century?
From what little I know, I blame, at the latest, Widrow Wilson and the notion of self-determination, i.e. the USA making a power-grab after WWI was over and declaring that Imperialism is, in fact, evil. Followed by WWII and the total, ideological war against an enemy whose entire ideology revolved around the most extreme nationalism possible, leading to everyone embracing diverse forms of Reversing that Stupidity, one of them being Anti-Patriotism. But we can go further back, like, say, Kant’s insane pacifism (what agenda might he have been possibly pushing?), or even much further back, to the Bible. Egypt deserved to be destroyed by the Plague, and its army wiped by the sea, because they refused to set the oppressed Hebrews free, and it was right for God to do so. I do find it amusing that so few Jewish and Christian hegemonies would see themselves in the role of Egypt, nor wonder whether that’s a good place to stand, until so late in the XXth century. You’d think the comparison would be obvious.
Alter to what? You are implying some sort of underhanded maneuvering that I not sure ever actually occurred.
After Civil Rights, Martin Luther King Jr was moving to topics of that are still controversial today—like ending the Vietnam War and ending pervasive poverty. As you say, one’s the net effect of that change depends on one’s prior values. More importantly, I think these types of change were organic to the movement that King was leading, not imposed from above.
Instead of imply, I’ll just state that they supported movements to further their own interests, which were not identical with the interest of the followers of those movements.
I don’t disagree that leaders like Ralph Nader or Martin Luther King advocated for what they thought was a good idea, which might not have a close relationship with what the followers would necessarily articulate as goals.
What specific changes in positions advocated occurred based on this disconnect? I’m particularly interested in changes that occurred because the leaders were Communist sympathizers when the membership wasn’t.
I linked to a relevant article elsewhere in this thread.
I don’t think this is a good place to start. While Raymond is mostly correct in the particular facts he points out, his overall picture is ill-informed and misleading. His ranting style also doesn’t help.
A better example to answer Tim’s question would be the fall of China to Mao, discussed in this Overcoming Bias post.
Could you go into more details on what you think is wrong with his overall picture.
Don’t get me wrong, the basic story about the Soviet-directed subversion is true and well-attested by testimonies of Soviet defectors. However, there are two major problems with Raymond’s narrative.
First, his ideological concept of “suicidalism” is highly contrived and detached from reality on a number of points. Raymond starts from his own libertarian ideology—with which I in fact have some sympathy, but which is in his case very nerdy and simplistic—and then he takes a caricatured version of every opinion he disagrees with, and amalgamates all this. Now, I do think a correct analysis along these lines could be done (i.e. reducing the dominant ideology in the modern West to a list of principles, some of which need to be only stated plainly to see how pernicious they are). However, I think Raymond fails in this task, being driven by the desire to see something as close as possible to a simple evil inversion of his own principles.
(He also displays a trait common among modern libertarians and conservatives that I find indescribably irritating. Namely, they often scour the rhetoric of liberals and then exclaim in triumph when they find something that seems like a good target for propagandistic attack because it superficially looks bad from the liberal point of view. Of course, they never managed to fool anyone of any consequence this way, it and just makes them look like clowns to anyone but their own choir to whom they are preaching.)
Second, I think that a correct historical analysis would show that Soviet subversion—in the sense of subversion planned and directed from Moscow—was by no means unimportant, but not of such central and exclusive importance as Raymond believes. Furthermore, it’s very simplistic to believe that whenever some ideological interaction and intermixing occurred, it was just diabolically clever Russians duping their Western useful idiots. Plenty of that happened, of course, but the overall picture is much more complex than that. The story of the cooperation and mutual ideological influence between the Soviet and American elites was definitely not simple and unidirectional.
That said, there is much that is perfectly correct in Raymond’s article, and it would be a good reference if it were written in a more cautious and less ranting way. But as it is, it has serious flaws.
Well said.
At that point, I’m not sure that there’s anything left of the article that isn’t better stated by you in this comment here. In short, the whole purpose of the article was to rant (which is problematic for exactly the reasons you described).
Thanks. Leaving out your ideological statements and some other contrarian things, much of that was my impression of the article as well.
Thanks for the link. Whatever the merits of post-modern thought, I don’t think King was a post-modernist. Assuming that the FBI was right to monitor him, what did he do to further the Communist agenda?
And I don’t really agree that your link was a fair minded view of post-modernism, or that it was a poison-meme from the Soviet Union.
According to this article, postmodernism seems to be, in its barest essence, a form of impious iconoclasm as applied to the analysis of traditional concepts. It’s a very honoured tradition in Western Philosophy: in one century of democracy, the Athenians managed to practically destroy their entire body of traditions by discovering the base, petty group interests behind the so-called “sacred” and “natural” laws of their City.
Let me just say that I don’t think that post-modernism can be thought of as Socratic iconoclasm. I think it has valuable insights, many of which have been co-opted by more “rationalist” philosophy.
For example, I don’t think Michel Foucault can profitably be described as a nihilist. And whatever his sympathies to the Soviet Union (it appears that it was different at different stages of his life), I think the idea that he was generating poison-memes on behalf of the Soviet Union is ludicrous.
I would downvote your post because of the way its statements seem to be disjointed to each other, but I’d rather not have your post go below threshold, so I’ll directly ask you:
Why do you not think that post-modernism can be thought of as a form of methodological and cultural iconoclasm, and in hwat measure do you think it is not comparaabe to the efforts of Socrates and his contemporaries… and the backlash they suffered because of it.
What are those valuable insights you talk of, and what is that quote “ratonalist” unquote philosophy that has coopted many of them?
Why would Foulcault be described as a nihilist?
You are aware that Appeal to Ridicule advances the discussion excatly nowhere. Why do you think the fact that he was “spreading poision memes on behalf of the Soviet Union” to be remarkably unlikely and incongruous?
I find myself very very confused by this article. There are too many priors we don’t seem to share, too much inferential distance I need to jump. What is the American Way of Life, and what is this “Lockean individualism” he keeps talking about? How is anywhing Bin Laden said comparable to the contents of “Z Magazine”, which appears to be an amusingly old-fashioned doctrinal Marxist publication? He talks a lot about past events I’m unfamiliar with, and sources I haven’t read (yet).
Okay, that practically discredits the entire work, and puts the predictive ability of the author’s priors to the test, since he clearly didn’t bother to do the research here, and dared to speak of subjects he is ignorant of. As it turns out, it fails. I will only say this much: the Paris Riots were about as much of an Islamic crusade as The Los Angeles riots were Christian ones.
EDIT: Wooooow comment thread. That is long. Would you recommend reading it?
Here is a good place to start.
Also these lines from the Deceleration of Independence are decent summary.
Two large differences with Marxism and volk-Marxism is that rights are attributed to individuals rather than groups, and that emphasis on freedom from government interference rather than the “right” to goodies from the government.
I’m not sure you understand what he means, he’s not claiming that the all the Paris rioters were motivated by jihad (although that’s probably a larger component than you’d care to admit) any more than all the Egyptian anti-Mubarak protesters were motivated by jihad. Nevertheless, the effect of the revolution in Egypt has been to make the government much more Islamic fundamentalist. Similarly, the way Europeans (at least everyone to the left of Geert Wilders) responds to riots by Muslim youth is to officially give Islamic organizations more influence and those organizations do promote the Islamization of society.
Strangely enough, this fragment of the declaration, out of context, appears to enable a Marxist revolution as easily as any other, and without much of a stretch: if one assumes that the current Governments are acting as merely enablers and administrators of a corporate power that would stand between them and their rights to Life (nationalized healthcare, the right to the minimum amount of resources to survive whether you want to work or not), Liberty (job protection, safety nets, elimination of censorship and surveillance, not being discriminated from jobs because of race, creed, sexual life, or having children), and the pursuit of Happiness (depending on whose definition, it might involve minimizing time spent working, assuming your job doesn’t provide you with happiness, and maximizing the time spent with one’s family, or doing other stuff one actually likes to do, including non-remunerated but actual, tiring, productive work). I guess we should praise the Founding Fathers for the foersight they put in their work, and having made it as flexible as it is.
That said, it is indeed sad how doctrinal Marxism has shown an absolutely deplorable disregard for the rights and interests of anyone who wasn’t a proletarian. Luckily, democratist, egalitarian movements have predated and outlived Marxism, being born of a sensibility that is beyond mere memetic and mimetic propagation.
By the way. what is volk-Marxism, for that matter? A search in google mostly turns out the blog you linked to, Youtube comments, and some right-wing blogs. It does not seem to be a very widespread word… could you allay my suspicions that it isn’t a buzzword? (I don’t say this in a spirit of mockery, I am genuinely curious).
I’d like you to source the priors that allow you to assess such a probability. As a Muslim, and someone who was in close contact with those movements throughout, I do not recall a single source phrasing the conflict in religious terms.
What does that entail, exactly, and why is this a bad thing? I’m not assuming it is a good or bad thing, I just want to know why you think it would be.
Typical case of reversed stupidity. As I think I have already mentioned somewhere on this thread, you will observe that once people believe themselves free of the yokes of their oppressors, and their oppressors’ agents, the same people will tend to feel attracted to said oppressors’ designated enemies (regardless of the details of the nature of said enmity, or its truth beyond rhetorics). In the Wars of Religion, it was Protestantism, in the Cold War, it was the USSR, and in The War on Terror, well, it’s the guys with the beards advocating the return to an idealized, pure past, and the rights of the common man against the foreign oppressor, again: they’re just wearing a different hat.
Maybe applying the right-left label here is a mistake: maybe it’s a “left wing” thing in Britain, but in France it’s more of a “right wing” thing: the French left has a bit of a vendetta against religion in any way shape or form, and thinks the “goodies” of the Goverment (and its funds) shouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.
Only in the sense that any text can be interpreted to mean anything with enough “interpretation”, as you proceed to do in the next paragraph. Also I shown mention that Jefferson broke with what one might call “orthodox Lockeanism” by substituting “pursuit of happiness” for “property”.
Marxists tend to be all for censorship and surveillance as long as they’re the ones doing the censoring and surveilling.
A term for the Marxist-dervied/inspired memes that Eric Raymond discusses in the blog post I linked to above.
Yes, I know, I have read that article in full, but I still didn’t understand the delimitations of that definition.
You seem to imply that my interpretation wasn’t legitimate.
However, I suppose all power units, be they political, economical, or otherwise, will try to get their hands on as much information as they can get away with, while denying it to others. They will also be hypocritically outraged that other power units censor and suveil them. Hardly something endemic to Marxism, regretfully enough. One would argue that the ultimate elimination of censorship and surveilance is simply the complete empowerment of the general public to censor and surveil everyone else: all your words and actions are known to everyone, and no-one dares step out of line. Truly a Tyranny of the Public, if the Public isn’t memetically equipped to resist the temptation.
In case you thought otherwise, I am not suggesting the American Consitution or the Declaration of Independence are tweakable to accomodate leftism. More the opposite: that a leftism that respects individual rights can be Consitution-compliant.
Well, yes. I particularly object to your redefinition of the word “liberty”.
Also notice that it says “pursuit of Happiness” and simply “Happiness”, i.e., the government shouldn’t get in your way of pursuing happiness but isn’t obliged actively assist you.
Why, yes, what I meant to say there was that the government should enable you to pursue happiness in any way you choose, by guaranteeing your liberty to choose who to work for, what to work at, and how much you work. To be precise, the freedom to do whatever you want with your very limited time on this earth (I think people will still end up working just as much, when offered this freedom, unless they deliberately want to starve en masse, among other losses of comfort). The government isn’t actually helping you be happy in any particular way, they just make sure you are able to pursue whatever would make you happy.
Of course, that’s not Marxism: Marx would have said that “from each in accordance with their capacity, to each according tot their necessity”, which I think is utterly dumb: who’s going to decide how much ouput one is capable of, or where one’s needs stop?
Of course, if your notion of happiness is, say, to be someone’s slave, the government shouldn’t get in the way of you pursuing that. I’d be curious to see how many people do choose slavery over freedom.
Anyway, the Constitution forbids the Government to get in the way of your happiness, it doesn’t forbid it to make that pursuit easier for you, unless that gets in the way of your happiness. But then you could just reject their help, right?
Yes it is. It’s forcing the employer to hire you.
Or gets in the way of someone else’s freedom.
Speaking of the topic of “generating poision memes”, I think that, since part of our endeavour would involve the deconstruction and destruction of propaganda and its pernicious enabling of “nationalism”, “groupism”, “collectivism” or however else we may call it, it might be interesting to study contemporary Think Tanks and their strategies with as much diligence and interest as those institutions of the past that this deeply interesting (if sometimes objectionable) article mentions.
For a rationalist to be able to function properly as a citizen, and defy the expectation that they would enclose themselves in ivory towers, unconcerned with the affairs of foolish mortals, one must develop tools to identify and deconstruct “poison memes” as soon as they come in contact with them, without having to rely on analysts who are ideologically indentured to the group opposing the creators of those memes, since they would in turn spread “poison memes” of their own.
A seeker of truth that would bounce between these sources would not find said truth, but only confusion piling upon confusion, save if they perform a truly exhausting effort of mental analysis and cross-referencing. As Descartes might have put it, partisan works do contain many excellent and true precepts, but these are mixed in with so much other harmful or superfluous stuff that it is almost as difficult to separate out the truth from the rest as it is to pull a Diana or a Minerva from a rough block of marble by separating out the wanted goddess-shaped marble from the unwanted remainder.
Hence I think developing a toolset to see through politically-motivated memes, if not outright cataloguing and properly sourcing them, would be a worthy task to undertake. If not by us, then by some other, specialized organ, that would be equally commited to the advancement of correct epistemology and mental hygiene.
Note: I want to make it clear that I do not think said article is entirely without merit. Far from that. I have seen some of the very stupid memes therein described existing in left-winger people I know, such as one of my dearest friends saying that, were the oppressed masses of the Third World to invade his country in revenge, he would allow himself to be killed. I was so shocked I could have slapped him then and there. (As a representative of said Third World (and of freaking reason for that matter) I explained to him that that was a preposterous notion,)
Nevertheless, knowing this person well, I can say with some certainty that he did not “catch” this meme from any marxist or progressivist literature or propaganda, but came to it on his own entirely. You see, not all pernicious ideas need to be taught (what a wonderful world would it be if they were): sometimes they arouse in parallel, in different people, because they make the same fundamental thinking mistakes, starting from similar but widespread faulty priors. Such as the ideas that:
a criminal should own up to their crimes and allow themselves to be punished, that victims have a right to violent vengeance
that by allowing injustice without speaking out against it one is automatically an accomplice,
that this notion could possibly be valid on the level of an entire country (I blame the Nurnberg trials for that meme),
that punishment can be dealt by proxy.
If the brutal, violent exploitation of the Third World by the colonial powers is seen as a crime, a mind equipped with the aforementioned memes would, with a high probablity, come up with this idiotic idea, without any Soviet prompting at all! Heck, not even those memes could be seen as Soviet-generated, they predate the USSR by far, heck, they probably predate dirt.
As for the horrors of colonialism are undeniable historical fact, and their criminalization seems to have been hardly a matter of left-versus-right, and more of a matter of much more diverse “nationalisms”, including literal Nationalisms, and one country calling out another for a crime the likes of which their own forces proceed to commit immediately, and which they vigorously deny or ignore, when called out in turn. At some point, internationally-minded people, such as, say, humanists, seem to have come up with the conclusion that those are all crimes.
Well, he might of caught it from someone who caught it from said literature.
I find this extremely unlikely. At best he came to it by following trains of thought inspired by reading progressive literature. Note that the most effective propaganda stops lays own all the premises but stops just short of stating the intended conclusion, so that the target believes he came up with the idea on his own.
But then wouldn’t their work automatically be a part of said literature?
I do find it amazing how many people who are clearly parroting memes without much personal input claim to have come up with them themselves. I for one like to give credit where credit is due.
What evidence would falsify your theory that those memes are automatically descended from deliberate Soviet efforts? Because at this rate you’re starting to sound like my “Protocols of the Sages of Zion” reading uncle, who thinks everything the West does is the result of Zionist lobbying, Zionist subversion, and the Zionist conspiracy to sap and destroy our precious bodily fluids. Sorry, not bodily fluids, I mean our precious way of life, our intellectual integrity, the patriotic/religious fervour of our youth, the unity and freedom of the Islamic peoples, etc. etc. etc. . By sapping and neutering it and precipitating its decadence with their filthy propaganda spread through media manipulation and the aid of servile, self-hating intellectuals, them and other sorts of useful idiots. Only to replace it with their own, self serving work, that will render us impotent to resist their tyranny. Sounds familiar?
Hey, actually, the more I think about it, the more this pattern reemerges. I can think of examples from Ancient Greece! Ever heard of a guy named Pausanias? Maybe we could write an interesting article out of this! I genuinely feel we’re onto something.
Do you mean my theory that your friend came up with the idea that “were the oppressed masses of the Third World to invade his country in revenge, he would allow himself to be killed” on his own or my theory that those memes ultimately descend from communist propaganda.
Another good example of a memetic weapon doing damage long after the war it was created to fight is over.
No, that’s my testimony. I’m asking about your theory that anyone coming up with those memes is a result of the previous existence of those memes, and that said existence is exclusively owed to soviet agents manufacturing them under a specific agenda, as opposed to them being autonomous thinkers drawing similar conclusions in front of the same facts because they have a similar sensitivity and share some preconceptions that are in no way exclusive to a societ influenced or for that matter even leftist culture.
Yes, well, doesn’t it trouble you that maybe Eric Raymond and others like him are being victims of a similar process, given the many remarkable parallels between their discourses, modulo Hated-Enemy-Of-The-Day?
Then why didn’t anyone come up with these memes in previous empires? Or for that matter in Europe before the mid 20th century?
From what little I know, I blame, at the latest, Widrow Wilson and the notion of self-determination, i.e. the USA making a power-grab after WWI was over and declaring that Imperialism is, in fact, evil. Followed by WWII and the total, ideological war against an enemy whose entire ideology revolved around the most extreme nationalism possible, leading to everyone embracing diverse forms of Reversing that Stupidity, one of them being Anti-Patriotism. But we can go further back, like, say, Kant’s insane pacifism (what agenda might he have been possibly pushing?), or even much further back, to the Bible. Egypt deserved to be destroyed by the Plague, and its army wiped by the sea, because they refused to set the oppressed Hebrews free, and it was right for God to do so. I do find it amusing that so few Jewish and Christian hegemonies would see themselves in the role of Egypt, nor wonder whether that’s a good place to stand, until so late in the XXth century. You’d think the comparison would be obvious.