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      "author": "alexcypher",
      "body": "@@ -564,18 +564,18 @@\n narchism\n-,\n  \n+(\n which is\n@@ -605,16 +605,63 @@\n gin with\n+) on the basis that it requires state apparatus\n , but al\n@@ -740,16 +740,107 @@\n the USSR\n+ because it rejects the centralized, authoritarian models of governance they operated under\n . I also\n",
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      "body": "@@ -5899,16 +5899,20 @@\n orities,\n+ and\n  will in\n",
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      "body": "@@ -1414,16 +1414,17 @@\n is skin.\n+%0A\n  %0AAnyway\n@@ -1978,16 +1978,100 @@\n which he\n+ taught his dog to perfom Nazi salutes and respond to phrases such as %22gas the Jews%22\n . But Br\n@@ -3542,16 +3542,17 @@\n  games.%0A\n+%0A\n Another \n",
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      "author": "alexcypher",
      "body": "Before we begin, I feel I should clarify my political position within the left, so as not to leave anyone in doubt. I am a syndicalist socialist. When I say this, I support state socialism as opposed to anarchism, but not the kind characteristic of the historical Marxist-Leninist states. My preference is towards the socialist industrial republicanism and the All Industrial Congress proposed by Daniel De Leon, as well as the federated state and the Agro Industrial Federation proposed by Pierre Joseph Proudhon, and Titoism. This is in opposition not only to anarchism, which is a silly ideology to begin with, but also the model of the Marxist-Leninist states of the 20th century such as the USSR. I also align not only with the classical school of Marxism, but with the Praxis School of Marxism as espoused by philosophers like Mihailo Markovic and Rudi Supek, and I have great admiration for the ideas espoused by Gaddafi in his Green Book. I reject unequivocally the dogma of intersectionalism, and the divisive power it wields against the working class, under which the working class goes from a united class to a class divided by mystical axes of oppression defined by race, gender, sexual orientation and even lifestyle, and how it has the perverse audacity to obfuscate the real economic suffering shouldered by the white working class man and present it instead as privilege because of the colour of his skin. \nAnyways, with that introduction out of the way, I believe it’s time to address the real point.\n\nThe advocates of hate speech legislation proclaim that to say words or trains of thought that are deemed hateful, by whatever standard we’re dealing with, stirs up hatred directed towards given groups, with particular attention given to racial and religious hatred (that is, directed at racial and religious minorities). You may be aware of how my country, the United Kingdom, handled this with the trial and fining of YouTuber Count Dankula over a joke in which he. But Britain has been interested in policing so-called hate speech for years now, an example being The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, passed under the Labour government during the tenure of Tony Blair, to curtail speech seen as aiming to inspire religious hatred. One is left to wonder exactly which religion they were aiming to protect. In fact, the law Count Dankula was being prosecuted under was section 127 of the Communications Act of 2003, which prohibits “grossly offensive” electronic communications.\n\nThe first problem with this should be obvious to all. There is no material basis by which we measure offense, and any perceived harm it generates to the health of the individual or his/her psyche, let alone how much harm we can say is to warrant legal action. Proponents may say that saying offensive words, telling offensive jokes or explicating offensive ideas is a means of inspiring people to act based on the speech, but if we are to believe that this is true can we not stretch this logic to violent video games? After all, playing a violent video game, through the player’s interface with the game world, supposedly fills the player’s head with ideas and impulses that later motivate him to violent action. But we haven’t seen any evidence that video games actually cause violence, and on the contrary it has been largely shown that the overall crime rate has been on the decline for years, coinciding with the mass proliferation of violent video games.\nAnother problem with having hate speech legislation is that governments, invariably, decide what constitutes hate speech to suit their interests. In the United States of America, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that hate speech is not exempted from the First Amendment, the state of South Carolina has instituted a law in which criticism of the state of Israel, including criticism of the current occupation of Palestine, would be counted as anti-Semitic speech and be subject to prosecution. In the Canadian city of Hamilton, a group of anarchists were forced to remove the A symbol from its own headquarters on the grounds that it allegedly was a kind of hate material.\n\nIn Spain, however, it is even worse. A rapper named Pablo Hasel has been arrested and faces trial for his lyrics, which apparently contain anti-monarchist sentiments, his Twitter posts, and for publicly praising two groups the Spanish government deems terrorists: the ETA (aka Basque Homeland and Liberty) and the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Groups. Similarly, another rapper by the name of Josep Miquel Arenas Beltan (aka Valtonyc) has been sentenced to three years in prison for his anti-monarchist lyircs, and is now fleeing the country for his freedom. The Spanish government has issued an international warrant for his arrest. Not only that, but ordinary people can face jail time for making comments deemed offensive by the government. An example is a Spanish student named Cassandra Vera, who was arrested and tried by the Spanish government for joking about the assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco, who was prime minister of Spain for only six months in 1973 before getting killed in a car bombing by members of the ETA. This to me is about the equivalent of getting arrested for saying Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet or Pol Pot did nothing wrong. In fact, it almost reminds me of Count Dankula being put on trial for joking his dog being a Nazi, or the French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala being arrested on two consecutive occasions for “hate speech” – once in January 2015 as part of a wider crackdown on “hate speech” in the wake of the first Charlie Hebdo attack, and again in November of the same year for making anti-Semitic jokes.\n\nGive the state the apparatus to enforce a limit on speech, and it will not do anything substantial to protect minorities, will instead use it to silence individuals that it deems subversive, as we now see with individuals like Tommy Robinson here in the UK. In fact, one ought to keep an eye on the state of British hate speech legislation. I personally think that it will not simply be leftie liberal types who will utilize hate speech legislation for their own political goals, but also Tories who whine about how their left-wing opponents are being divisive. Indeed, take note of the latest proposals concerning speech here in the UK. Not only is it being recommended that sharing “hate posts” online should result in a six month prison sentence, but also that public figures (including politicians) receive harsher sentences for “stirring up hatred” on the basis that they are “in a position of authority”.\n\nThe latter proposal should be of especially grave concern for the left considering that it will not only be right-wing or far-right activists who become the targets of this law. The Labour Party, along with its current leader Jeremy Corbyn, have been smeared as the party of anti-Semitism on the basis that a few MPs in the party made anti-Zionist or outright anti-Semitic comments online. If a Tory government is given the proper legal apparatus, it will be inevitable that the government starts using this law to take down Labour MPs for taking an anti-Zionist stance with accusations of anti-Semitism. I also suspect that Tory MPs will utilize this law to try and suppress political opponents on the basis that they are “spreading division”, as I have seen a few Tory MPs complain about their rivals, including Labour and the SNP, for supposedly spewing toxic rhetoric about the Conservative Party. Even worse is the fact that there is no civil libertarian opposition to these laws in almost any party, so both Labour and the Tories will likely be OK with this legislation.\n\nAll of this is why I think the left in general needs to stand firmly against hate speech legislation and for almost a kind of free speech absolutism, in defence of the right for all citizens to make their arguments no matter how detestable they may seem. And I am not alone in this sentiment. Mike Stuchbery, yes that Mike Stuchbery, agrees with me. He attended the #DayForFreedom rally on May 6th and wrote a thread where, among other things, he said that suppressing the speech of people whose ideas we may find uncomfortable only gives them power, and he even agreed with Count Dankula on the basic premise that giving the state more power to suppress speech is a bad thing. I was genuinely surprised to see him on the right side of this issue, considering the kind of SJW lolcow he’s known for being, but I couldn’t be happier that he agrees on the importance of freedom of speech.\n\nAs a final note, leftists should be very concerned with social media censorship as well, because historically speaking it does not solely target the right. In fact, Ben Bours wrote an article for Wired last year on how Facebook’s speech policies will adversely affect members of the LGBT and queer communities by not allowing them to use pseudonyms and blocking users for saying words like “dyke”, “fag” or “tranny” in reference to themselves and fellow community members. I have also seen a surprising number of left-wing YouTubers have their videos put into limited state, partly due to the algorithm targeting references to fascism or Nazism and partly as a result of flagging from the alt-right (which just goes to show how easily the system can be abused by the very people the YouTube team was probably targeting).\nTherefore, we cannot allow the right to be the only people who are standing against the rampant censorship of the modern age at the hands of this hate speech nonsense. We must stand against it on principle, or run the risk of being cast aside politically as the overton window shifts to the right.\n----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\nSouth Carolina’s new hate speech law: https://www.mintpressnews.com/south-carolinas-new-hate-speech-law/241331/\nHamilton bans the anarchist A symbol: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/hamilton-anarchy-symbol-1.4664192\nPablo Hasel arrested for “praising terror groups”: https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/catalan-rapper-pablo-hasel-trial-spain-spider-operation-20180201-0034.html\nValtonyc flees Spain after being sentenced to prison for his anti-monarchist lyrics: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-44253045\nSpanish student gets arrested for joking about the assassination of a Spanish prime minister: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/18/student-cassandra-vera-tweet-case-puts-free-speech-under-spotlight-in-spain\nFrench comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala arrested in hate speech crackdown in France: https://news.vice.com/article/france-accused-of-double-standard-after-comedian-arrested-during-hate-speech-crackdown\nDieudonné arrested again in Belgium: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3336097/French-comedian-Dieudonne-jailed-two-months-making-anti-Semitic-jokes-show.html\nUK proposes six month jail sentence for sharing “hate posts”: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5707039/Sharing-hate-posts-online-lead-six-months-jail.html\nBritish public figures could face harsher punishments if accused of spreading racial hatred: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hate-crime-sentences-increased-harsher-influence-social-media-followers-a8341991.html\nMike Stuchbery’s Twitter thread concerning the #DayForFreedom rally: https://twitter.com/MikeStuchbery_/status/993184162004787201\nBen Bours’ article on the possible effects of Facebook’s speech policies on LGBT and queer individuals: https://www.wired.com/story/facebooks-hate-speech-policies-censor-marginalized-users/",
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      "body": "A while ago I made a crack about one of Jordan Peterson’s principles for conservatism on Minds for sounding quite a bit like what socialists might advocate for despite constantly shilling against those who might actually want it. But after some thought, I decided that these precepts are worthy of a broader critique in that they resemble a legitimate premise for a conservative ideology as presented by Jordan Peterson, a man who I’m told likes to shy away from labels.\n\nOn that point, I also think it will be a good opportunity to delusion that Peterson is somehow not a right-winger. Now, I’m not one of those people on the leftoid circles who view him as far-right or crypto-fascist, because those labels are simply inappropriate. I simply view him as a conservative or a reactionary (at least a mild reactionary anyway, as opposed to people like Mencius Moldbug). Peterson himself calls himself a “terrified traditionalist”, which to me suggests that he is a social conservative who is fearful of the social changes happening around him. By his own admission, he can’t be anything but right-wing no matter how much he likes to deny it.\n\nAnyway, we will go through the precepts point by point in the order presented via a tweet he put out in which he summarized them for our convenience.\n\n\n\nThe fundamental assumptions of Western civilization are valid\n\nThis on its own is simply not good enough. It’s not simply a matter of the wording (as in, why “valid” as opposed to “necessary”), though without a doubt it does tell me that we have to coddle our cultural assumptions quite a bit if we go down this line, but I think it’s not enough to simply say “they are valid”. Every set of ideas has to be defended on its merits, we have to prove that these ideas have value rather than simply assert them on their own. The advocates of classical liberalism and Jordan Peterson’s conservatism would expect the same of all of their critics, so it is not unreasonable to expect the same of the vision of Western civilization they hold sacrosanct.\n\nMore to the point however, what are the fundamental assumptions? And at which point in time. It might surprise Mr. Peterson to learn that the assumptions of what is called Western civilization have never remained the same. For instance, one of the assumptions of contemporary Western society is the intrinsic equality of all human beings (you know, “that all men are created equal” as the American Declaration of Independence says), from which some extrapolate a kind of taxonomic equality (meaning people are all basically equal in terms of constitution and capacity). Did we ever make this collective assumption this before the Enlightenment? Well, that’s not fair really; The Bible did, and it is supposed to be the backbone of Western civilization according to Peterson. For instance, the Bible says in Romans 10:12 that there is no distinction in God’s eyes between the Jew and the Greek, in James 2:9 there is an explicit condemnation of favouritism and in Acts 17:26 God is said to have made all nations from one man, yet the attitudes of society towards social equality of the races have not been historically consistent, especially in America where there is sadly a rather storied history concerning the treatment of the African races, perhaps indicating that we have contradicted the Bible in our assumptions about race in the past, despite the Bible and its teachings being the apparent building blocks of Western civilization. Jesus was even quite socialist in his views considering that in Acts 2:44-45 he describes the fellowship of the believers as holding all things in common domain and distributing resources based on need. Yet, despite this, if you talk to the people who boast of the assumptions of Western civilization, they will likely tell you that socialism is at odds with everything about their conception of Western civilization. Indeed, the West was hardly socialist for much of its history, despite it supposedly being founded on Christianity or the teachings of the Bible. I wonder why that is. I truly find it odd how Christianity came to be associated with right-wing capitalist politics historically.\n\nSo, returning to the basic question, what are the assumptions here? Is it the modern assumptions we have? I would think he considers much of our modern agreed upon assumptions to be a little too liberal. Is it the Enlightnment era assumptions, which are really a mix of different philosophical traditions? Is it the assumptions made in the Bible, some of which contradict a lot of conservative ideology? Or is it a very contemporary idealization of Western values that he generated himself? That’s one thing I complain about with Peterson a lot: when you drill into his philosophy you will find he is actually quite vague and wishy-washy about himself. Hell, even in interviews you can see him to be rather vague except on certain issues. As you’ll soon see, this is also a recurring theme throughout his conception of conservatism.\n\n\n\nPeaceful social being is preferable to isolation and war. In consequence, it justly and rightly demands some sacrifice of individual impulse and idiosyncrasy.\n\nThere are many ideologies and philosophies that stress peaceful social being as preferable to isolation and war, so this ideology is really not that special in this regard. And again, on what basis is peaceful social being determined? Because this is something that many people are going to disagree on. For instance, some people may view peaceful social being as possible only through relative isolation, as with the Amish communities who largely cut themselves off from modern society. Others view peaceful social being as defined by rigid deference to authority and servility to all people at all times even on a bad day, as is basically Japanese social norms in a nutshell. Some view peaceable social being as defined by primarily tolerance and openness towards outsiders, which is something Peterson himself would associate with the typical liberal mindset. So it is important to define what constitutes the conservative idea of peaceful social being. You can’t just hide that behind sensible-sounding but ultimately vague wording.\n\nThe same holds for the second part of this sentence. Which individual impulse and idiosyncrasy is problematic? Hell, defining that probably requires you to define peaceful social being as well. Beyond that though, it is a decent signpost for what conservatism is about: a social order for which you must sacrifice some of your individual being and impulse in order to co-exist with your peers and either ascend or make peace with the dominance hierarchy. Liberals, libertarians and I suppose progressives to some extent, at the very least, wish to minimize this as much as possible, while conservatives try to avoid shedding many historical norms whenever possible. The problem with this is that one of the ways in which progress is measured sometimes consists of what we have gotten past as norms. Slavery as we all know was once considered quite normal, indeed it was once considered part of the fabric of human life, the natural order of things. But we have moved past this, and not entirely for moral reasons either. The basis of the prevalence of slavery was largely economic in nature, as the global slave trade remained a benefactor to regional economies within pre-abolition societies per the conditions they found themselves in. In some parts of the world, women and children sacrifice much of their innocence in accordance with social norms which insist that they ultimately assume a wifely role as soon as possible. We chide their societies for this, of course. Because we have moved past those ideas, and they have not.\n\n\n\nHierarchies of competence are desireable and should be promoted.\n\nDid you know that the classical philosophers of the radical left did not actually assume that hierarchies of competence would be totally done away with per their philosophies? Karl Marx in Critique of the Gotha Program describes what he refers to as a lower phase of communism as having accounted for the fact that humans are not all equal in ability, capacity, talent or will. Friedrich Engels similarly demolishes the liberal assumptions of intrinsic egalitarianism embodied by those of Herr Duhring in a chapter of his book Anti-Duhring by pointing out that humans are not inherently equal in will and capacity. Pierre Joseph Proudhon, the father of mutualism and the grandfather of anarchism (and also, in my opinion, one of the earliest examples of a libertarian philosopher), stated to have said “the superior worker, who understands and executes faster than another, and who turns out more products of better quality, will receive a larger reward” and in The Principle of Federation he even spoke of hierarchy itself as a principle found in nature. These were some of the most important figures of socialism, and they were not hyper-egalitarians who assumed that everyone possessed some kind of taxonomic equality. What they wanted, however, was equality of power, that is to say they wanted the worker to have democratic control over the workplace, of the means of production etc. But you’ll never hear this from Jordan Peterson in any of his descriptions of radical left political philosophy.\n\nAs to the main point itself, this is yet another area where the basis of competence is to be established, or that matter the basis or shape of the hierarchy. There are several ways to manifest such hierarchies, even within cooperative or collective enterprises. So, really, what do you want? More to the point, as I see it, hierarchies do not necessarily have an intrinsic moral value any more than any other social construct. They are created in response to material conditions and needs. For the earliest parts of our history as a species we did not live under hierarchical relations, but instead lived under hunter-gatherer societies, which were comparatively egalitarian. This mode of organization suited the conditions of the time: a time when man had not discovered its capacity or the resources for agriculture and thus was forced to wonder the environment in search of nourishment and other resources. It was only after the discovery of agriculture that societies began to settle, and we needed to figure out how to distribute the resources, and so hierarchical relations were born. This, in addition to lacking the infrastructure and resources conducive to a more socialist mode of organization until relatively recently, is why they were considered desirable during our history. As material conditions change, you will eventually see the desirability of many of the old and currently established hierarchical modes of organization change with them, much like we went from feudalism to capitalism. But, the appeal of said hierarchical structures has also been greatly socialized over the years, through many philosophical ideas such as the feudalist conception of the “great chain of being”, which underpinned the medieval European societies at the time.\n\n\n\nBorders are reasonable. Likewise, limits on immigration are reasonable. Furthermore, it should not be assumed that citizens of countries that have not evolved functional individual-rights predicated polities will hold values in keeping with such polities.\n\nThis is really three points in one, and the first two can honestly be treated, once again, with an “on what basis?” question. As in, what is the basis for the reasonability of borders? What scopes of limitations are necessary, and why? This is not to be construed with a pro-open borders stance, but rather a simple call for a more concrete proposal rather than a wishy-washy pretense of common sense that seems purposefully designed to avoid giving away what you actually mean. Also, if you support limits to immigration, whatever your basis and scope is for it, and free market capitalism at the same time, you are going to run into contradictions because one of the major bases for free market capitalism is freedom of movement: that is, the free movement of immigrants across borders, and from there the free flow of capital and labor between countries so as to accumulate profit for private entities. At some point, you have to make the choice as to which is more valuable – capital or the nation state? If you’re a libertarian, you also have to contend with the problem that Murray Rothbard pointed out of how this means the state becomes the sole director of property, which is inescapably problematic to libertarian philosophy.\n\nThe third point, however, is more interesting. Essentially he is saying that you cannot expect people who are not from Western countries (or countries that have adopted similar societal bases to Western countries) cannot hold the same values as Western cultures, which seems similar enough to the way ethno-nationalists talk about immigration that lead me to think Peterson is being entirely disingenuous whenever he tries to say he isn’t right wing. There is the assumption that people cannot accept our shared values because they don’t even come from the same background as us. This ignores the fact that values simply aren’t embedded in people as a general rule, but are in fact socialized, as is social behavior in general. In fact, let me put it rather bluntly: the fact that there are people out there, all over the world, who adopt the behaviors of an animal from a young because they spent their developing years among animal families instead of human ones is enough to convince me that what we call human behavior is very much socialized. The norms and ideas we cling to are not magical constructs: without the socialization of the behaviors and values we take for granted, we would not be much more than base animals. Therefore it stands to reason that people of other societies could possibly be socialized into accepting our values. Indeed, I think many of my country’s problems relating to Islamic populations stem from either the fact that we do not socialize many migrants enough into our values system or the fact that they will always be counter-socialized to the attitudes of their own more insular communities.\n\nIncidentally, by the way, the kongsi federations/republics of Borneo, such as the Lanfang Republic, were established in the 18th century by Chinese settlers, and they were highly democratic compared to other societies to the point that the United States of America is one of the few comparisons you can draw. As far as I know, this developed outside of the influence of European powers, in fact the kongsi republics only lasted a short while before they were disbanded by invading Dutch merchant powers. Kind of makes you think.\n\n\n\nPeople should be paid so that they are able and willing to perform socially useful and desirable duties.\n\nThis precept is very much a product of the capitalist mindset, and may also tie into Peterson’s own Christian morality to some extent. The underlying assumption is that people are selfish enough that they will only perform socially useful and desirable duties if they are granted monetary compensation. It is thus implicitly assumed that humans cannot operate in any other manner economically. Of course, this assumption is demolished by the existence of cooperatives, which are organizations run democratically by the workforce and do not necessarily operate in the interest of profit first. These organizations have been shown to be more efficient than the private enterprise model, but they remain unable to compete with private business because of the material conditions they operate in under capitalism. It is very clearly possible that other modes of economic operation are possible, but we are largely socialized into thinking otherwise.\n\nI would like to explore the point of selfishness further for a bit here, as there is a point I think is worth considering. Supporters of capitalism point to rational self-interest as a moral justification for those that simply accumulate wealth, for the owning class operating as it does, yet, if we think about it honestly, once a member of the proletariat attains class consciousness and realizes what happens under capitalism for his class, is it not entirely within his own rational self-interest to resist the exploitative nature of the system and seek the reconstruction of the economic basis of society? After all, if it is the bourgeoisie who benefit more than he does within the system, it would certainly seem to him that there is no much benefit to be gained for him within the remit of the current system, thus he must in accordance with his self-interest against the system.\n\n\n\nCitizens have the inalienable right to benefit from the result of their own honest labour\n\nAnd this is actually the thing I made fun of in a Minds post earlier. Not because of the content by any means, but because Jordan Peterson, the same guy who constantly shills against socialism and the radical left and blames all of our problems on Marxists (or “neo-Marxists” or some such sophistry), is actually advocating for a socialist/Marxist idea here. Think about it: one of the main reasons we find capitalism to be a largely exploitative force is because as the boss/holy job creator hires you out for your labor, he/she profits off of it, which means some of the money you might otherwise attain for your labor is subtracted from you. This is what we identify as a result of the capitalist system of wage labor. Though I suspect he might not have meant it in that way.\n\nIt’s funny though, he reminds me of one of Richard Wolff’s lectures (by the way you should definitely check out Richard Wolff’s ideas) where he talks about cooperatives and how, often times, they are started out not by people who are already committed to socialist ideals but by people who hate their old jobs, quit and then decide to form a collaborative enterprise between themselves and set their own rules. Wolff then describes meeting some of these people to tell them that they were actually enacting a form of socialist enterprise as opposed to a capitalist one, and the people find themselves quite shocked to hear that because, oddly enough, they were conservatives. Even more amusing, Abraham Lincoln, one of the Republican Party’s most celebrated presidents, said in an annual address in 1861, \"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration”. So it’s funny how you often find conservatives who are arguably crypto-Marxists in their thinking, yet it is the liberals who are supposed to crypto-Marxists infiltrating your universities and turning your kids into communists, as Peterson say. Now if only those conservatives would come around…\n\n\n\nIt is more noble to teach people about responsibilities than about rights\n\nI honestly believe this is a product of his general sentiment of antipathy towards the idea that people can change society by demanding rights from it through protest. As in, he outright said years ago that he thought it was pointless and served no purpose. One wonders what would have happened if the civil rights movement of the 1960’s heeded his advice and focused more on being responsible to a society that they saw as profoundly unjust towards them. This is in many ways one of the errors of Peterson’s philosophy of life: it paralyzes the individual as an actor within society by having them focus on upholding ones’ duties to a static notion of society as well as being too inwardly focused to actually change the world (as evidenced by his sentiment that you should not try to change the world unless you “set your house in perfect order”). It is perhaps the product of, ironically enough, a kind of individualism that negates any social externalities that might justify actually changing society. If the radical right followed his advice, they’d be stuck with the society they hate because they’d be too busy sorting themselves out (and, by God, judging from a lot of the actors within the radical right there seem to be many things in need of sorting out), but Peterson would probably endorse a few of them anyway because they are necessary to pushing back the liberal marketable society he opposes.\n\nI would argue, instead, that we do away with the dichotomy and teach both responsibilities and rights, along with teaching class consciousness so as to slowly awaken the mass progressive force of the proletariat before the collapse of capitalism happens. But, alas, I might not get my way.\n\n\n\nIt is better to do what everyone has always done, unless you have some extraordinarily valid reason to do otherwise\n\nNow you see that Peterson is essentially a social conservative, and the pretense that he is not a social conservative is simply that: a pretense. His ideal is that we do “what everyone has always done”, in essence he asks that we conform to society, or rather his conception of it. The main problem here is obvious: society is an eternally changing construct. There is no conception of what we have always done that hasn’t radically changed over the millennia. Going back to slavery, if we followed Peterson’s advice then the abolitionists would have largely just done what everyone else has always done, which was to own slaves. And before abolition, slavery as I said before was indeed a fabric of ordinary life for the middle and upper classes, so it was considered quite normal to the point that seemingly everyone did and, indeed, always did it. Democracy as we know it is fairly recent. For thousands of years, we have almost always organized society by the rule of the one or the few over the many without any democratic say.\n\nIndeed, the idea of “what has always been done” tends to be pretty socialized when you think about it, for a lot of the behaviors we want people to perform are socialized (as I’ve explained earlier). People have not simply always done things the way we did them in the 1950’s or something. Without socialization to some extent those behaviors would not be prevalent within society. The idea that we’ve always done them is pretty much just a device by which we ingrain desired behaviors into the minds of people.\n\n\n\nRadical change should be viewed with suspicion, particularly in a time of radical change\n\nWithout the French Revolution, the classical liberalism that Peterson uses as a shield for his social conservatism would not have overtaken the aristocratic regimes of Europe. Without the overthrow of the Roman monarchy in 509 BC, we would not have the Roman Republic and with it much of the foundations of what we base Western civilizational values on. Had America not waged revolutionary war against the British, we would not have the United States of America as we know it to begin with. This shows a profound error of Peterson’s philosophy, and indeed the error many liberals and conservatives when they denounce radical change. They fear any kind of radicalism, denounce it as a moral and political evil, but without it they would not have any of the constructions they take for granted today. I mean fuck it, this guy doesn’t like protests much so I guess we can throw in the civil rights movement to some extent too: without that, non-whites would be treated rather differently in America, and they would probably not be treated in a way Peterson would find favorable to him. Before the American Civil War, or perhaps before the British emancipation, the abolition of slavery was a radical position, and those who agitated against slavery occupied the fringes, but had they not pursued the kind of change they sought, we might not have abolished slavery and we might not have exiled slavery as a way of life in the West both legally and morally.\n\nAnd frankly, to say that we should denounce radical change in a time of radical change - that is, when the situation calls for it - is one of the most naive philosophical statements you can think of from him. It is pure fear of revolutionary activity overtaking even common sense because of the simple observation that, when the conditions invite a society into the arms of revolt, you cannot stop them with bourgeois appeals to temperance. If one desires a radical new mode of political organization, then, at some point, revolution often does become an option. This idea that we should just avoid radicalism is nothing more than moral and political paralysis. Particularly now when we are slowly entering into a set of material conditions that the liberal democratic consensus is not equipped to handle. Frankly, I’m convinced that even reactionaries would prefer to see revolution in their country than put up with a few more generations of what they see as liberalism gone mad. Now, as a socialist, I will say that we are probably not in the phase when we need revolution just yet. But what I do say is that, at some point, reform can only work for so long, or be held back for so long, that it will eventually become necessary.\n\nBy the way, the primary philosophical argument he presents against those who wish even to simply protest against the structures of society at large is that such desire is supposedly illegitimate if you can’t even “clean your own room”, or “set your house in perfect order. The irony here is that Nietzsche, who I’ve heard is one of his favorite philosophers, if he were alive today, he would think he was full of shit. He said in Kritische Studienausgabe, “There is a false saying: “How can someone who can’t save himself save others?” Supposing I have the key to your chains, why should your lock and my lock be the same?”. This seems to suggest Nietzsche thought that you don’t need to “save” yourself in order to save the world, which is of course in direct contradiction to what Peterson likes to tell people.\n\n\n\nThe government, local and distal, should leave people to their own devices as much as possible\n\nNow this is probably the most agreeable precept I can see here. I prefer a decentralized mode of governance that doesn’t try too much to direct the public to its whims. That said, in a more federated, decentralized system, it is probable to imagine that, for the democratic system to work, it might be necessary for the agents of such polity to be somewhat more involved with the local communities and close to their actual needs. This not need to mean that we have our elected represented A major problem with modern democracies is that the state is alienated from the needs and wants of the people, and thus fails to represent the people adequately and instead inevitably gravitates towards the ruling class. I personally am a fan of participatory democracy as opposed to the kind of democracy we have now, and favour ideas such the Popular Congress or the All-Industrial Congress as alternatives to parliamentary democracy and the US system. The latter is a system proposed by DeLeonists in which the worker is represented not by senators and congressmen but the functional representatives of industrial constituencies, voted in by the workforce and recallable whenever necessary. I have no reason to believe it will produce the maladies of the kind of nanny state government Peterson might be talking about here, and in fact the main intent of the All Industrial Congress is to negate the threat of bureaucratic usurpation of the will of the people.\n\n\n\nIntact heterosexual two-parent families constitute the necessary bedrock for a stable polity\n\nI assume he is talking about the nuclear family here, so I will start by pointing out that human civilization has been around for thousands of years and the nuclear family did not always enter the picture, let alone in the beginning. What we know call the nuclear family become prevalent with the industrial stage of the British economy, where the material conditions emanating from rapid industrialization influenced the growth of the nuclear family, which was also socialized by the church. However, it is said to have originated within the medieval period in Northwestern Europe during the 14th century. I should note that this is not me opposing the concept of a nuclear family, rather it is me saying that, as with pretty much everything else, there are material reasons for the emergence of the social norms we take for granted. And, more to the point, given that we don’t have much in the way of evidence for the prevalence of the nuclear family before the 14th century, how do we know that all the societies that came before lacked stable polity? Not to mention, these are social norms you’re talking about. Stability comes from a material source, not an ideal one. We can easily observe that it is not simply laws and codes that establish stability, but the willingness to enforce them, to support them with the threat of force for violating them. But even then, it is silly to reduce the stability of a polity to simply a social construct, or even to force necessarily, and therein lies the problem with Peterson’s thinking here, in that it is quite reductionist. It is the product of society having had a predominance of nuclear family structures for hundreds of years and the idea of having it as the basis of a society being socialized for so long.\n\n\n\nWe should judge our political system in comparison to other actual political systems and not to hypothetical utopias.\n\nIt is ironic that Peterson thinks of Marxists as the most arrogant people on Earth when really it’s him. He positions conservatism as the only political ideology that bases its assumptions on systems that operate outside of it, when in reality many people try to do the same, all the time. He also assumes anything that hasn’t yet been realized must be a utopia. It’s the kind of bullshit Thomas Sowell spews regarding the two visions, the constrained and the unconstrained, through which he positions conservatism as the realist position and liberalism as the utopian vision. It’s just a framing device positioned under the guise of common sense political advice.\n\n\n\nIt is bitterly ironic that Jordan Peterson is presented as anti-establishmentarian philosopher purely because of liberal marketable society when, in reality, the philosophy outlined in his principles of conservatism is a call for us to simply preserve what we have, what we have been taught for generations, and to reject anything that might overturn this. His philosophy is the paralysis of the individual, for it asks him not to change society and instead constantly check himself to see that your house is in perfect order (while simultaneously opposing those who tell you to check your privilege before speaking out against them). But beyond all that, it is such a milquetoast and wishy-washy worldview doesn’t to appeal to common sense, which is really all conservatism exists to do: oppose radical change by appealing to our constructions of common sense with bourgeois idealism. I say idealism, because it neglects material externalities in its assessment of the way societies and people operate. And yet he calls his opponents utopians.",
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      "body": "One thing I’ve noticed among left-wing circles online is that there is a schism between people in the far-left regarding the question of Bashar al-Assad in relation to the recent military intervention in Syria.\n\nTo be clear: everyone on the left agrees that the intervention itself was wrong. We all agree that it was an unjust intervention based on scant evidence and without an investigation into the truth behind the chemical attack. However, where we seem to be divided is the issue of whether that means we support Bashar al-Assad, the leader of the Syrian nation. This debate also touches on questions not uncommon in leftist discourse, such as the question of national liberation within the broader context of anti-imperialism.\n\nTo summarize the whole debate: there is one side of the debate that believes it is justified to support Bashar al-Assad because his government, although bourgeois, represents a national bourgeoisie attempting to resist the imperial bourgeoisie and thus the struggle for national liberation and determination becomes a part of the struggle for socialism and against capitalism, and another side which opposes support for Assad on the basis of his character and policies and/or because the national liberation question is less important than the broader class struggle central to socialist and communist discourse. The former side is occupied by people like Jason Unruhe and my senpai Pierre Tru-Dank, and the latter side is supported by Muke (aka Xexizy).\n\nThis is summed up by an exchange between Pierre and Muke over Twitter on the very subject three days ago. Muke thinks that Assad’s opposition to US imperialism is meaningless, presumably because he dislikes Assad as a leader. Pierre countered this by pointing out that Karl Marx supported US President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, despite him suspending Habeas Corpus, his forces burning Atlanta and him apparently viewing black people as racial inferiors. The reason Marx supported Lincoln and congratulated his re-election in 1864 was because he saw his side of the war as being an ultimately emancipatory force because it would lead to the abolition of slavery in the United States of America.\n\nThe next day, Muke tried to assert that Marx’s reasoning for supporting Lincoln was totally different in context from the way Pierre had argued, but then stated that he didn’t care. Pierre responded to this by pointing out that Marx supported Lincoln because he thought it would empower an industrial bourgeoisie over a slave-owning aristocracy, and from there that the Assad government wants to empower a national bourgeoisie (the indigenuous entrepreneurial class) over what he calls a reactionary comprador bourgeoisie (referring to those who were allied with foreign organizations interested in economic investment, trade and exploitation).\n\nWhen responding to the accusation that his side was secretly pro-war, Muke responded that, according to him, there was no need to leap to Assad’s defence on the basis that the strikes against Syria were self-evidently wrong and that only idiots defend them, to which Pierre responded by questioning the consistency of his anti-imperialist position given he spends more time shilling against Assad, to which Muke replied that there is no need to argue against war because it should be self-evident why war is bad. Oh Muke, shouldn’t you know by now that the free market of ideas doesn’t actually work? Even Rocking MrE can tell you that, in politics and philosophy, it is inevitable that you will face having to repeat yourself.\n\nMuke then went on to say that he dislikes the pro-Assad side more than the pro-war side because he views them as just supporters of quasi-fascist dictatorships who promote their views under the banner of leftism, adding that he views national liberation as just bullshit that appeals to naive people who are new to socialism, thus he considers refuting the national liberation ideas more important than making anti-war or anti-imperialist arguments. Pierre, in response, sent Muke a letter Marx wrote to Sigfrid Meyer in which he outlines the importance of the Irish struggle for national liberation to the liberation of the working class.\n\nI hope I’ve given a good window into the debate within the far-left over the question of Assad and national liberation, and with that I think it is time to present my view.\n\nI am of the opinion that we should, as a tactical measure, support Assad. The key word here is tactical, not moral. It’s not simply because of some of the wrongdoing attributed to Assad (not including the fictitious chemical attacks attributed to him), but also because, while Assad seemingly represents the national bourgeoisie in Syria, he is also a client of Russia one way or another. See, Syria is also a client state of another arguably imperial faction of bourgeoisie: Russia. Russia wants to keep one of its military bases in Syria and maintain access to the oil that Syria has, and because of that Russia would not like Syria to fall into Western hands. Thus the economic interests of Syria are invariably tied to that of a larger faction of the bourgeoisie, and it from there it would be a bit misguided to extrapolate that Syria represents an independent national bourgeoisie.\n\nYet, we mustn’t forget that it is the Western bourgeoisie who we are concerned with right now, for they hold hegemony over the world and thus present the greatest danger. We must remember that, although Russia is considered a formidable power in its own right, the United States and NATO surround it, with several military bases dotted across the world. Indeed, Russia are really the underdog in this geopolitical situation.\n\nSolidarity with Bashar al-Assad, then, represents the desire of the socialist to see the international bourgeoisie fracture and weaken through its division of power, and in particular to see the growth of Syria’s national bourgeoisie make way for the rise of a Syrian proletariat, in a similar vein to how Marx saw the Irish national struggle as paving the way for the growth of both the Irish and British proletariat. Thus, we want to see the dominion of the Western comprador over the Middle East bourgeoisie broken, and Assad’s government in this sense represents resistance to said bourgeoisie, whether material or symbolic. This is what I mean when I speak of tactical support for Assad.\n\nIn addition to this, we have a clear memory of what happens when we allow the Western bourgeoisie to exert themselves in the Middle East. When any Middle Eastern leader that exerts its own national economic interests against those of the West, the end result is a military intervention supported by a propaganda campaign in order to train us into morally justifying what is essentially pure robbery and conquest in the name of capital and the petrodollar. And after that leader is deposed, the Islamists who have been waiting in the wings, kept at bay by the former national bourgeois presence, will enter the power vacuum that has been created and turn what was a stable country practicing economic nationalism, secularism or even a kind of socialism into a barbarous, relatively poor, theocratic Islamist hellhole. It happened in Iraq when the US overthrew Saddam Hussein, it happened in Libya when the Western-backed Libyan revolution overthrew Muammar Gaddafi, and thus we have every reason to assume that it will happen again in Syria when Bashar al-Assad is deposed. Not to mention, we have reason to believe that the Islamists have always been supported by the US bourgeoisie that they might fulfil their economic and political interests, as the Saudi businessman Osama bin Laden, before he became public enemy #1 for the United States following the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001, recruited muhajideen with the support of the United States in order to undermine the Soviet Union during the Cold War.\n\nAs a final note, I may be a socialist, but I am far from anti-nationalist like so many leftoids seem to be. I support the right of nations to determine their own destiny and uphold their own sovereignty, and thus as a socialist national liberation is one of the pillars of my socialism. If you think about it, this makes sense. So long as the world remains dominated by global capitalism and its interests, the nation state will always be subservient to capital and thus it will always be looking for new masters. We see this in the way Britain, even after leaving the European Union, could find itself subservient to either the USA or China under the guise of becoming a more “global” Britain, and in the way that America, even under Donald Trump, reminds subservient to Saudi interests. Therefore it becomes pertinent to unburden the nation state and the world from capitalism so that its people are no longer slaves to capital.\n\nSo there you have my stance on the Assad debate within the online left. While acknowledging that Assad’s interests are not pure, I ultimately align with Pierre Tru-Dank’s side of the argument on the grounds of national liberation and undermining the cause of the Western bourgeoisie in their quest to carve up the Middle East.\n\nIf you want to follow the conversation I talked about earlier on Twitter, look for Pierre Tru-Dank at @HauntedPierre and Xexizy at @muke010.\n\n-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nMarx’s letter to Abraham Lincoln: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm\n\nMarx’s letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htm",
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      "body": "Hey @alexcypher, great post! I enjoyed your content. Keep up the good work! It's always nice to see good content here on Steemit! Cheers :)",
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      "body": "With World War 3 upon us any day now and the United Kingdom gearing up to join the USA and France in carving up Syria for the Western bourgeoisie, one of the only voices in British politics to stand up against the prospect of more war is Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Where our current Prime Minister Theresa May seems all too eager for my country to join a war we need not be part of without the approval of Parliament, even having the gall to claim that to not do so would mean ceding foreign policy to Russia, Corbyn is questioning the legality of our involvement in the war and calling for Parliament to assert its authority on the issue.\n\nNow you might be thinking, \"surely you, an unabashed Marxist, would have no problem supporting Jeremy Corbyn\", right? Well, not necessarily.\n\nDo I agree with his stance on war in Syria? Absolutely, I don't want us involved in the war. Do I want Theresa May gone? Again, I absolutely do. But do I think Jeremy Corbyn is a long-term alternative to the current system? My answer would emphatically be no.\n\nHere's the thing, Corbyn presents a much stronger social-democratic alternative here in the UK than Bernie Sanders does in the United States (sorry Berniebros but liberal social democracy going up against hegemonic capitalism just doesn't cut it for the left) in the sense that presents a more overt program of nationalization than Sanders does. But of course, I don't want social democracy anymore than I want the continuation of neoliberalism. What I desire instead is socialism in its authentic form: joint ownership of the means of production, an economy dominated by worker-owned cooperatives rather than capitalist enterprises, horizontal democracy, a needs based economy rather than a profit based one, and to compliment this an entirely new democratic system not beholden to the interest of party politics or capital. As I'm partial to DeLeonism, such a democratic framework might look something like how the Socialist Labour Party envisioned what they called \"Socialist Industrial Unionism\".\n\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_apBa-Gx5mo\n\nAnyways, with that out of the way, I do not believe Corbyn is capable of bringing about such a system, nor is it obvious that he desires one. For starters, he and his fellow social democrats seem convinced that simply borrowing money will lead to a real transformation of the economy, and I never hear them talk about any mechanism by which the means of production can be put into real democratic ownership. The closest I've seen is John McDonnell talking about putting infrastructure into public hands by nationalizing everything at once, which of course he intends to fund by more borrowing. It's funny in the case of McDonnell because I'd expect someone who's been a Marxist for a long time to have more creative solutions. I have heard that the Labour Party has a page on cooperatives, but I don't see Corbyn himself talking about expanding the cooperative sector at all. Just making sure the rich pay more in taxes most of the time, which to me is besides the point, yet he wraps it up into socialist-sounding rhetoric, which a lot of leftoids seem to do these days in order to bring more people into their cause. Not to mention that he has supported Venezuela, a country which still has the means of production in private hands and where the economy is still dominated by private enterprise, and has never in the 28 years of the Bolivarian Revolution changed that. I have never seen him go out of his way to support, say, Rojava, where there are far-left militias actively fighting ISIS and trying to establish a democratic confederalist society in one of the most backwards places on Earth, nor talk about how socialism worked for Grenada, Burkina Faso, Chile, Kerala, The People's Republic of Kampuchea and the many other successful socialist countries that weren't the USSR or China. That to me shows he isn't particularly invested in socialism, unless somehow I've missed something.\n\nAlso, while it's not on the same level of importance as economics, his alignment with liberal wedge issues presents a problem for the far left. I mean, this is the guy who wants to ban after-work drinks because, supposedly, they represent sexism, and he's called for Theresa May to suspend the MP Phillip Davies over supposedly sexist comments because he dares speak about issues men face as opposed to espousing bourgeois liberal feminism. It's all so leftoid, far too leftoid for me, or far anyone serious about socialism, to fall in line with.\n\nNow to be fair, he does still seem to present some threat to the interests of the ruling class, at least judging by how often the media seems to unfairly attack him. For instance, more recently, he is accused, largely by the right-wing section of the corporate media, of being a traitor or unpatriotic for expressing skepticism of Russia's involvement with the poisoning of the ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, and he is also now demonized for his anti-war stance on Syria. Although he does decidedly find support among left-leaning outlets, even they sometimes turn on him for not being progressive enough, or over his supposed anti-Semitism (which they extrapolate from the fact that a few Labour party members seem to be anti-Semites) and sexism (itself extrapolated from when some of his supporters allegedly assaulted Jess Phillips). But even then, his threat to the ruling class interest comes largely from his departure from the neoliberal line that both Labour and the Tories had followed after Margaret Thatcher's government through his social-democratic program, which in my view isn't substantial.\n\nWhat's more, the nature of the modern liberal capitalist system for me entails that someone like Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn would not be able to do much. As agents within the system, they would find themselves limited by the constraints of the system, unable to pursue a more radical agenda because the establishment, still entrenched within the system, would oppose them. This is because, while they appear to challenge the system, they - in true leftoid fashion - do not go far enough, they do not wholesale deconstruct the political system they instead choose to operate within.\n\nIn my view, it would be more beneficial for the left to start gathering around more radical ideologies - things like classical Marxism, syndicalism, DeLeonism, even anarchism -, build revolutionary parties, build up, support or lead socialistic organizations, and in general assert their own political identity instead of just getting behind the leftoid mass of the new Corbynite Labour movement or waiting for the next election to bring about real change. However useful a bulwark against the current system he may be in the short time, because he doesn't go far enough the left needs to look to other roads to socialism through the constructing the current system. If they fail to do this, they will be stuck.",
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      "body": "With the Liberalist movement making a righteous ass of itself within only the first month of operation - plagued by autism, pretentiousness, the increasing egotism of its founder Carl Benjamin (aka Sargon of Akkad) and the simple fact that nothing of substance from the movement seems to be happening - and the liberal center of politics showing no signs of recovery from its decline in relevance within contemporary politics, I believe we are at a point when even liberals like myself (albeit myself being more decidedly nationalist than most liberals) are going to have to admit one thing: modern liberalism is dying.\n\nIf the last decade has shown us anything it's that liberalism has entered a decadent phase in its history, having embraced wholesale the following vices: bourgeois globalization and \"internationalism\", progressivism, intellectual vacuity, and Francis Fukuyama's end of history prattle. We have also seen that modern liberal democracy is, largely, a farce. The Marxian left knows it, the libertarians know it, the fascists know it, the far-right knows it, the anarchists know it, even some liberals will concede it at some point. Our democratic system tells us that we have a say in the way we are governed, and that our politicians will according to what we desire of them, but in reality the people hold very little substantive power over our governments, and our politicians are largely ruled by subversive monetary interests. The \"left\" and the \"right\" wings of the political establishment have, until recently, been facets of the same basic ideological family: the \"left\" consists of nothing but the progressive and social democratic flavor of neoliberalism, the \"right\" consists of conservatives who draw their ideological current from neoliberalism and, for conservatives, are appallingly willing to concede to social democracy.\n\nI suspect that, on some level, we all know this once we get into politics, we all know that not all is well with the system we have, and it seems as though everyone is ready to address with their own radical solutions, except the liberals.\n\nMarxists, understanding the emptiness of our current democratic system, believe that the solution is to enact a kind of economic democracy through joint ownership of the means of production. Libertarians are split on what to do, divided by whether they should simply focus on ending corporatism, or pursue populist nationalism as the way forward. The alt-right see democracy as being corrupted by racial classes: not just the Jews who are at the top of the system per their reasoning, but the ability of non-whites to corrupt the system by supporting political actions against the ethnic majority of the country. The fascists think democracy as a whole needs to be abolished and replaced with a strongman state. The anarchists also want to abolish democracy, and replace it with whatever strange vision for society they think might be able to replace it. But the liberals? They honestly think that continuing to preach the values of the current system and fighting against radicalism will save us, when in reality the radicals are all driven by the economic and structural realities of the current system. They might point out flaws with their respective visions, but don't have much of a substantive answer to their concerns.\n\nAnd this in my view is a good opportunity to segue into the Liberalist movement, and the \"skeptics\" that preceded them. The Liberalist movement is largely radical only in the context that they are opposed to political correctness and hate speech laws, which as they will point out are poisoning the liberty of my country, Britain. But outside of that, they are liberals who still earnestly believe that they are reforming the left, even though their actual position is arguably either an anti-authoritarian of social democracy or the conservative position judged within the context of the current political climate, or they are just centrists. Much of this was true with the skeptics, who were only ever good for debunking feminism, social justice and \"cultural Marxism\", all of which, it's time to just admit, are simply products of the decadent, bourgeois phase of liberalism as both the Marxian left and the conservative or reactionary right have identified.\n\nI am increasingly convinced that their failures as movements can at least partly be attributed to their failure to understand the underlying realities of the modern world. All they know is what's happening on the surface level, and all they're good at is pointing and laughing at it. Every other movement offers a kind of political ontology that attempts to explain the world around them, and the skeptics and the liberals reject them, while offering none of their own except for John Locke (who, by the way, have you even read hurr durr?). All they have is largely talking points.\n\nWhat we need now, more than ever, is a way forward from what we have. I understand the preciousness of many of the values liberals wish to protect, I believe them myself, but to me the current system. I still do not know which way forward is the best path for our politics to take, but what I do know is that we cannot stay in our current paradigm forever.",
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      "body": "<html>\n<p>Congratulations <a href=\"/@alexcypher\" target=\"_blank\">@alexcypher</a>, you have decided to take the next big step with your first post! The Steem Network Team wishes you a great time among this awesome community.</p>\n<hr>\n<div class=\"pull-left\"><img src=\"https://steemitimages.com/DQmaAdLUJ3yaSkmcmWECWyPGPWcjfbCoZ8Tu4RM6H4DbjCi/steem-network-thumbs-up.gif\" alt=\"Thumbs up for Steem Network´s strategy\" title=\"I suggest Steem Network´s strategy\" width=\"320\" height=\"222\"></div>\n<h1>The proven road to boost your personal success in this amazing Steem Network</h1>\n<p>Do you already know that awesome content will get great profits by following these <a href=\"/steem-network/@steem-network/spread-your-posts-through-this-proven-strategy-and-get-great-profits-in-return--for-posts-created-at-2018-01-13\" target=\"_blank\" alt=\"Steem Network\" title=\"Follow Steem Network´s suggestions to boost your success\">simple steps</a>, that have been worked out by experts?</p>\n</html>",
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      "body": "Three days ago, the prominent liberal YouTuber Sargon of Akkad released a video entitled 2018: What We Can Do, wherein he announced his plans form a new political movement. He said that he got a response from somebody about the debate he had prior to that with Richard Spencer and Millennial Woes on Andy Warski's podcast last week, and he decided that he felt that this was a loss for him, and that the primary reason he is starting the Liberalist movement was because he felt he needed to position himself as the leader of a movement because his critics kept saying that he should.\n\nAnyways, not long after that, his friend Louis Le Vau hosted a livestream between himself, Sargon and professional shitposter Mister Metokur to discuss the Liberalist movement. In my opinion, that stream was a complete and utter disaster.\n\nI'll try to keep my assessment of this stream short before I move on to my criticisms of the Liberalists, which was the main point of this post, so I'll be brief which each point. The first problem I saw is that Sargon wasn't even on the stream until about 20 minutes in. He was in the chat talking Louis and Metokur, and his initial absence led to Metokur suspecting that Sargon had Louis speak on his behalf rather than try to speak directly to him. The second problem is that Metokur floored Sargon and Louis on almost every point, and they were unable to answer him on the question how their new movement differs from conservatism since both movements fundamentally agree on things like property rights, but they had trouble acknowledging it. Metokur had Sargon pinned right down to the very reason why he started the movement, because he knows that Sargon is doing this to prove the alt-right wrong (as we'll discuss much further a little later) The third problem is just the incessant, autistic moralizing about it, and in my opinion Louis Le Vau is the most guilty of this; he often accused Mister Metokur of running from his \"responsibilities\". What responsibilities? Being a leader of a movement that was, let's face it, a disparate collection of gamers frustrated with the games industry, press and the political correctness they imbibe in, which he left because he decided that people were only using it to make money? Both Sargon and Louis tried to hit Metokur with the notion that people in GamerGate expected Metokur to be a leader, which Metokur easily brushes off by pointing out that they were wrong to do so. The fourth problem, quite frankly, is that they were arguing with someone who did nothing more than joke about the Liberalist movement on Twitter, and they take getting mocked way too seriously.\n\nAfter seeing that train wreck of a stream, I decided to break my malaise regarding video content and post a video titled FAO Sargon, where I try to warn Sargon away from going down the path of pretension and excessive ego inflation. And then I saw the Liberalist Principles stream he had with Louis, Vee, Scrump, Rags, King Crocoduck, Uzalu and Friended. And, quite frankly, it was shit. While the principles being discussed were mostly acceptable or good, the stream was, by and large, a circle jerk consisting of people who were more interested in the fact that they thought were doing something than run a movement properly. It's only been three days since the Liberalist idea was brought to the table, and already it looks like this movement is going to flop.\n\nAnd with that said, we can now move on to my main criticisms of this new Liberalist initiative, based largely on what I saw on the stream.\n\n\n\n1.) The name\n\nI know this is going to seem like a tired point, but I think it is worth mentioning. The name just sounds lazy. It's just Liberal with ist at the end, or Liberalism with an ist at the end of it instead of ism. Fox from the West even suggested that it could refer to \"liberal autists\"as a form of mockery. And the way the Liberalists justify the name is a little hollow. They say Liberalist refers to liberal (or rather classical liberal) activists, but come on. Conservative activists don't call themselves Conservativists, do they? Just conservatives. The name isn't even all that original, Sargon admits that he borrowed the term from an American Thinker article dated to 2011. One of the comments that Sargon covered in a later video on The Thinkery said that a better name for the movement would be Alternative Liberals, or Alt-Liberals, but he doesn't prefer it. I can only guess that he thinks the label is too similar to the name Alt-Right, but it's definitely a better name than Liberalist. I understand that you want to separate your movement from the modern usage of the word liberal, and I wholeheartedly agree with basic idea of creating something separate from modern liberalism, but they could have come up with a better name. If anything, I think Alternative Liberals would probably have been the best possible name for this movement because of the fact that its proponents represent an alternative form of liberalism from the modern form of liberalism currently present in mainstream politics.\n\nBut, to be honest, the name is actually the least of our worries.\n\n\n\n2) The Liberalists don't agree on freedom of speech\n\nWhen Uzalu joined the stream, he said that \"I don't say freedom of speech I say freedom of expression, because we're targeting political ideas and artistic expression.\", which is the dumbest thing you can say if you're a liberal. Actually I think it's extremely dumb on its own. Somewhere around this time they get into a disagreement regarding whether or not you should be able to run as, say, a communist in a democratic society. Uzalu thought that communists should be banned because they want to turn democracy into communism, while Scrump and others thought they should be allowed to run on the basis that democracy should allow anyone to be able to run for political office, even those who want to overturn democracy itself, because the whole point is the ability to change the system through political means. But the whole problem is that they can't seem to agree on the free speech issue because Uzalu wants to be ambiguous with the terms. He does the same thing with equality of opportunity, he thinks the concept is ambiguous, and Crocoduck says \"how about nobody will be prevented by the circumstances of their birth from the pursuit of happiness\", which literally all equality of opportunity should mean in the fucking first place! I'm not kidding. How does a liberal movement fuck up its own basic ideas with such pedantry?\n\n\n\n3) They want to form a political party, but they won't admit it\n\nAt some point in the stream Rags suggests that the Liberalists should consider disavowing people in the movement who violate the core principles, Sargon also suggests having a code of conduct for events set up for the Liberalist movement, and this whole stream was intended as just a way to the solidify core political principles of the movement. Kind of like, you know, a political party. Now, don't get the wrong idea here: I'm not against that. If Sargon wants to form a political party, he can. In fact, you could make the argument that perhaps he should. But the problem is that for some reason he and his friends are unwilling to invoke the prospect of being an actual political party, even though they seem to be discussing the key elements of one. In fact, Sargon trying to form core principles of a wider movement could be considered in itself a feature consistent with the aim of forming a political party. I wonder if they'll talk about organization an another stream and then I start seeing other aspects of it. But they want you to think that they're just spitballing ideas here.\n\n\n\n4) The Liberalists keep talking about the alt-right like they're a big deal\n\nWhat's one thing I said Sargon should do in my video? Ignore the alt-right. But what does he do? He keeps talking about the alt-right. He even tries to dismiss criticism by saying most of his critics are just alt-right, which, I have to be honest, sounds like the language of the very people he's supposed to be fighting (hint hint, wink wink, the \"All my critics are Nazis crowd\"?). In fact, after the stream, he spent an entire video on The Thinkery going through critical comments from the Liberalist stream, just wasting time picking apart comments from mostly alt-right users trying to own them, but that just makes him look like he's doubling down. What's funny about this is that he keeps saying the alt-right are weak, desperate and irrelevant, but in the same breath he spends almost thirty minutes giving them attention. In the process, he's allowing himself to be baited by some fucking idiots on the YouTube comments section. He even claims that the critical comments he gets from the alt-right are part of a /pol/ operation to smear him because they feel threatened by him, for some reason, even though as he said they're an irrelevant movement. I get a weird Clintonesque vibe from this stunt. I mean think about it: where else have somebody talk about a group of autists from who are toothless and incapable of garnering political capital but at the same are also out to get him...or her? Hmmm, I wonder where I've heard it before.\n\nOh well.\n\nUzalu also seems overly concerned about the alt-right. In fact, he admits that some of his arguments come from him having to deal with the alt-right, as if he's almost trying to satisfy them, when it shouldn't be the Liberalists' business to satisfy the concerns of the alt-right if they're so opposed to them. It's like he's being underhanded with the way he goes about the basic principles of liberalism in order to compromise with the alt-right and their criticisms of democracy. And I swear, Uzalu kept trying to tell Sargon to go after the alt-right like they were a problem or even a threat to the alt-right. After looking like an idiot because of it and getting turned into fodder for shitty memes. Ironically, most of the people on the stream seem convinced that the alt-right will never win. Even Uzalu thinks it's not hard to make them look stupid, which is weird given why he'd be so concerned about them. If anything, the Liberalists aren't sure if the alt-right are even a threat. But they keep talking about them like they are, and I fear this will lead to what another autistic crusade against the alt-right just like Kraut and Tea (in which case I can only hope there will be no plots to dox anyone this time).\n\n\n\n5) Sargon has no real plan\n\nThis is arguably my biggest gripe with this whole thing. At one point in the stream Scrump asks Sargon how he intends to reach out to people who are outside of their political circle. Sargon responds by saying \"there's loads of ways\", but when Scrump asked him to give any examples he said \"I don't know\". Louis pretty much saved him by saying \"share shit on Facebook, there you go\". This is pretty basic shit, and he didn't know that? Sargon says he's thought about this for a long time, and he doesn't even know how to reach out to outsiders, and his friend has to save him with the most basic shit that he could otherwise have come up with himself. But that wasn't the end of it. Later on, Vee asks Sargon \"Where are you planning on taking this? Is it just a website or is there more to it?\", and Sargon just said \"I don't know\".\n\nPut simply, Sargon of Akkad has no idea what he's doing with this movement. He hasn't thought everything through yet, and he has to discuss how the basic principles of the movement will form in a circle jerk with his friends. Sadly, Uzalu was the guy who challenged him and his friends the most, and he still had his head up his ass. If this were more well thought out, he would have announced the core principles on his own, he wouldn't need a two hour stream to do it because he is more than capable of making an argument for liberalism, and he would have had a much clearer idea of how to organize this movement. But sadly, this is not the case, and to me it's obvious why that is: it's because Sargon is doing this to prove people like Coach Red Pill and the alt-right that he's a leader. And for all that, his critics still dislike him for it. The alt-right try to claim that he has either embraced collectivism or that he is being hypocritical, other right wingers just dismiss the Liberalists as being another form of the Justice Democrats (Kyle Kulinski's lame attempt to reform the Democratic Party by kicking out the neoliberals but keeping the identity politics and everything else that sucks about the left) and everyone is just pointing out that Sargon is being full of himself. It's the whole reason Mister Metokur felt inclined to mock the Liberalist idea to begin with.\n\nIf as Sargon said the whole point was just to come with a name for something, the effort isn't even necessary. He could have just announced that he would be calling himself an Alternative Liberal from now on as just a general ideological moniker for the ideals he already has, and just encouraged anyone else who shares his political views to take up the moniker as well. But you wanted more than that, except for when you say you don't.\n\n\n\n\n\n6) The Liberalists dismiss any criticism about how they're going about the movement\n\nLet's be honest: most of the criticism leveled at the movement doesn't really have anything to do with the movement's actual principles, other than the way some people try to say that Sargon is embracing collectivism by forming a group, and is instead focused on how Sargon and the Liberalists are comporting themselves so far. This is true of me as well. I don't have a problem with most of the principles, and I'm inclined to support the basic idea of what Sargon wants. But what I do have a problem with is how pretentious Sargon comes across as, how he's falling into the trap set up by his critics in the alt-right, and the way that the Liberalists seem to be handling this kind of criticism. They refuse to deal with this in any way other than just dismissing them as just having an aversion to them doing something. It reminds me of when Metallica released that album Lulu with Lou Reed, the fans hated it, and all James Hetfield could say was basically \"if you don't like it that you're just living in your mom's basement\". I'm not kidding. Scrump and Rags actually accused the critics of not liking the idea because \"it involves leaving the bedroom and actually doing something\". How  arrogant, pretentious and full of yourselves can you be? I can see why Sargon might be in danger of falling for this, but Scrump? What on Earth possessed such a mischievous shitposter to fall for such pretentiousness?\n\nUzalu's attempt to address the accusations of cringe by saying \"ask yourself, what are you measuring when you say cringe?\". They all agree with each other in deciding to ignore it because it's an emotional argument rather than a logical one. That to me is a sign that the Liberalists just don't get it. What is cringey is not the actual principles of the movement. What is cringey is that it's a bunch of YouTube content creators who want to be more than that, think they are so enlightened, are absorbed by their own hype or that of a greater political cause, and will belittle you if you criticize them. That is the reason why people think it's cringey. Even worse, like I said before, Sargon doubles down on this mentality through such sarcastic comments as \"making manifestos is cringe\", \"doing things is such cringe\", and then acts like a 6 minute fucking manifesto video done by the alt-right, and every other political hangout, is the same thing, just to belittle his critics.\n\n\n\n7) The stream was ultimately unnecessary\n\nIf you're going to start a movement, you should get a clear set of principles down as soon as possible, not just get a sense of \"broad goals\" down on a stream where you can't even agree on one of the most important concepts of liberal societies, if not the most important. All the time spent going through the basic principles of the Liberalist movement on a stream could have been saved by just writing a manifesto of the core political principles that it embodies, and then publishing a video where you yourself go through the manifesto and explain it to anyone watching the video. That's all you needed, and I believe Sargon is capable of writing a clear manifesto outling the Liberalist political agenda. But for some reason he needed to do that with his friends and an audience, so they can sniff their own farts and talk about how they're all doing something and they're critics are just scared of doing things. And returning to the previous point, this is why people think it's so gay! Because it seems like an attempt to grab attention, Sargon thinks that it isn't.\n\n\n\nIn conclusion, I have said many times that actions, and how you comport yourself to the public, ultimately matter more than your arguments in the realm of political activism and the path to political power. And that's not me talking out of my ass either: it's the ninth law of Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power. People are going to be more convinced by the way the movement carries itself in public than what they say. Sargon, I would have thought, would have known this, but it seems that he doesn't realize this. He thinks of himself as more than a content creator, a man driven to do something that he does not want to do but must be done by the very people who he should be ignoring. That will be his own undoing.",
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