For a few decades after the Second World War politicians shared a mutual respect born of a shared experience. Debate and argument were very different back then because of that recognition that both sides had been through an existential fight for freedom (with actual fascism) with most individual politicians having played a part in the war effort. The ideological divides were as great as today but neither side saw the other as evil for both had fought real fascism.
There is an overindulgent decadence to poltical debate these days with participants having enjoyed a long period of freedom from fear and want. The realities of war are on TV screens but not viscerally a part of personal experience and family memory. A few immigrants bring their stories but rather than examples of and warnings about dictatorship they are used as props for conspicuous compassion by the middle class.
Kenneth Clark in his series Civilisation suggested civilisations fall when they lose confidence. After the war the UK was bankrupt, depleted and a shadow of itself. But, it was a confident nation. It would pull togther again and rebuid in a spirit of optimism. Identity and purpose were shared.
What Clark did not discuss was how civilisations lose confidence. But we see how now. They lose touch with their history, they cease to have a national story to be proud of, marriage and family are no longer sacrosanct, and instead of pride in the nation it is regarded as a problem. This is the left's project to undermine nationalism (in the patriotic sense), the family, and worst of all to 'decolonise' education. We are no longer peoples with distinct and shared characteristics - Italians are Italian in ways unique to them etc etc - and people become fungible instead.
Renaud Camus gave a telling example of cultures losing content: “a veiled woman with a shaky command of our language, entirely ignorant of our culture can say to a native Frenchman with a passionate interest in Roman churches, the finer points of vocabulary and syntax, Montaigne, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Burgundy Wine, and Proust and whose family has for several generations lived in the same little valley of the Vivrais …I am just as French as you are”. He cited this to illustrate how being French comes to mean nothing. This is the doctrine of muticulturalism and applicable here as being English is diluted and denigrated.
He points out you can join a peoples different from your own at the individual level - through appreciation or even love for their language, literature, history, art, landscape and architecture. But this cannot be done at scale as the rapid, mass immigration shows. Bangladeshi communities and similar do not assimilate. They recreate their homelands here encouraged by a govermning class that no longer believes in or has confidence in itself.
No wonder then that the left, for they are the ones repudiating their past trying to deny being a distinct peoples, can only hurl abuse at "fascists", devoid of any argument. The West's elites, the controllers of a nation's self-narrative, no longer have confidence in themselves and Kenneth Clark's observation is playing out in front of us.
This could be projection. As Michael Schellenberger says, "Democrats are the party of mass censorship, the weaponization of the CIA, FBI, and DHS, and the politicization of everything. What does that sound like to you?" Antifa are the ones that dress in paramilitary clothing. A more sinister interpretation is offered by Mark Steyn, who thinks it is positioning by the Democrats who will refuse to engage in the peaceful transfer of power to Trump. He points out that Schleicher handed over to Hitler is January 1933 and died in a hail of bullets a year later. If you truly believe Trump is a fascist (and it is nonsense especially as there is zero evidence he ruled as one last time) then surely you would be justified in not handing over power? Personally, I still think the Democrats will steal the election as they did in 2020 but surely must have found a different way to do it.
Unbiased (but unreported by the MSM) polls and early voting show Trump ahead, but the media persist with claims the race is tight. It's too close to call etc. This is so that the planned cheating remains plausible otherwise the overnight, last minute influx of manufactured Democratic votes would defy credibility. Already the Pennsylvania DA has announced uncovering large scale voter fraud of ballots submitted at the very last minute (to minimise scrutiny) with obviously the same signature in one instance using the names of 2,500 dead people.
Calling Trump a fascist is not becaue they have run out of arguments (they have), nor to get out the vote (it's not), but to licence and encourage fraud and corruption. At least that is the effect.
Interesting that Pennsylvania should make this announcement - I thought it was a Dem-run state? If it is Dem-run, then maybe this is a false flag to divert attention from some other scam to be implemented on Nov 5 or in the wee small hours of Nov 6.
Pennsylvania is a swing state. Red in 2016 and blue in 2020. I doubt it is a false flag (but concede it could be) as it may be that not every DA is corrupt or, as appears to be the case, some Democrats think Harris would be more of a disaster than Trump. It was lower income blue collar workers that saw improved wages under Trump but not under Biden. Those voters are going back to Trump, the same voters that may or may not reelect the DA. She may be noticing the early voting returns of Trump well ahead, and Harris well behind, the 2020 position at the same time. So the one political constant of self-interest could be at play.
An excellent piece that poses three related questions. First is this the beginning of the end of the use of Fascism as turnip ghost to cohere the support base of the Liberal elite? Second are Conservatives and Traditionalists about to become the new main Reichsfeinde for the Liberal Elite. Thirdly will this open hostility to the traditional values of society and political identities entail a period of much more direct and coercive control of Politics, what the practitioners imagine is Liberalism but using Totalitarian methods?
Also there is a piece in The Telegraph this week by Jordan Peterson about the Canadian bill which is their equivalent of the Online Safety Act, which is absolutely horrifying. (Which isn't to say that our legislation is atall acceptable).
"Liberalism but using Totalitarian methods". Matt Goodwin wrote a substack very recently on "Liberal Authoritarians" which is well worth reading if you haven't done so already.
For a few decades after the Second World War politicians shared a mutual respect born of a shared experience. Debate and argument were very different back then because of that recognition that both sides had been through an existential fight for freedom (with actual fascism) with most individual politicians having played a part in the war effort. The ideological divides were as great as today but neither side saw the other as evil for both had fought real fascism.
There is an overindulgent decadence to poltical debate these days with participants having enjoyed a long period of freedom from fear and want. The realities of war are on TV screens but not viscerally a part of personal experience and family memory. A few immigrants bring their stories but rather than examples of and warnings about dictatorship they are used as props for conspicuous compassion by the middle class.
Kenneth Clark in his series Civilisation suggested civilisations fall when they lose confidence. After the war the UK was bankrupt, depleted and a shadow of itself. But, it was a confident nation. It would pull togther again and rebuid in a spirit of optimism. Identity and purpose were shared.
What Clark did not discuss was how civilisations lose confidence. But we see how now. They lose touch with their history, they cease to have a national story to be proud of, marriage and family are no longer sacrosanct, and instead of pride in the nation it is regarded as a problem. This is the left's project to undermine nationalism (in the patriotic sense), the family, and worst of all to 'decolonise' education. We are no longer peoples with distinct and shared characteristics - Italians are Italian in ways unique to them etc etc - and people become fungible instead.
Renaud Camus gave a telling example of cultures losing content: “a veiled woman with a shaky command of our language, entirely ignorant of our culture can say to a native Frenchman with a passionate interest in Roman churches, the finer points of vocabulary and syntax, Montaigne, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Burgundy Wine, and Proust and whose family has for several generations lived in the same little valley of the Vivrais …I am just as French as you are”. He cited this to illustrate how being French comes to mean nothing. This is the doctrine of muticulturalism and applicable here as being English is diluted and denigrated.
He points out you can join a peoples different from your own at the individual level - through appreciation or even love for their language, literature, history, art, landscape and architecture. But this cannot be done at scale as the rapid, mass immigration shows. Bangladeshi communities and similar do not assimilate. They recreate their homelands here encouraged by a govermning class that no longer believes in or has confidence in itself.
No wonder then that the left, for they are the ones repudiating their past trying to deny being a distinct peoples, can only hurl abuse at "fascists", devoid of any argument. The West's elites, the controllers of a nation's self-narrative, no longer have confidence in themselves and Kenneth Clark's observation is playing out in front of us.
This could be projection. As Michael Schellenberger says, "Democrats are the party of mass censorship, the weaponization of the CIA, FBI, and DHS, and the politicization of everything. What does that sound like to you?" Antifa are the ones that dress in paramilitary clothing. A more sinister interpretation is offered by Mark Steyn, who thinks it is positioning by the Democrats who will refuse to engage in the peaceful transfer of power to Trump. He points out that Schleicher handed over to Hitler is January 1933 and died in a hail of bullets a year later. If you truly believe Trump is a fascist (and it is nonsense especially as there is zero evidence he ruled as one last time) then surely you would be justified in not handing over power? Personally, I still think the Democrats will steal the election as they did in 2020 but surely must have found a different way to do it.
Unbiased (but unreported by the MSM) polls and early voting show Trump ahead, but the media persist with claims the race is tight. It's too close to call etc. This is so that the planned cheating remains plausible otherwise the overnight, last minute influx of manufactured Democratic votes would defy credibility. Already the Pennsylvania DA has announced uncovering large scale voter fraud of ballots submitted at the very last minute (to minimise scrutiny) with obviously the same signature in one instance using the names of 2,500 dead people.
Calling Trump a fascist is not becaue they have run out of arguments (they have), nor to get out the vote (it's not), but to licence and encourage fraud and corruption. At least that is the effect.
Interesting that Pennsylvania should make this announcement - I thought it was a Dem-run state? If it is Dem-run, then maybe this is a false flag to divert attention from some other scam to be implemented on Nov 5 or in the wee small hours of Nov 6.
Pennsylvania is a swing state. Red in 2016 and blue in 2020. I doubt it is a false flag (but concede it could be) as it may be that not every DA is corrupt or, as appears to be the case, some Democrats think Harris would be more of a disaster than Trump. It was lower income blue collar workers that saw improved wages under Trump but not under Biden. Those voters are going back to Trump, the same voters that may or may not reelect the DA. She may be noticing the early voting returns of Trump well ahead, and Harris well behind, the 2020 position at the same time. So the one political constant of self-interest could be at play.
An excellent piece that poses three related questions. First is this the beginning of the end of the use of Fascism as turnip ghost to cohere the support base of the Liberal elite? Second are Conservatives and Traditionalists about to become the new main Reichsfeinde for the Liberal Elite. Thirdly will this open hostility to the traditional values of society and political identities entail a period of much more direct and coercive control of Politics, what the practitioners imagine is Liberalism but using Totalitarian methods?
Also there is a piece in The Telegraph this week by Jordan Peterson about the Canadian bill which is their equivalent of the Online Safety Act, which is absolutely horrifying. (Which isn't to say that our legislation is atall acceptable).
"Liberalism but using Totalitarian methods". Matt Goodwin wrote a substack very recently on "Liberal Authoritarians" which is well worth reading if you haven't done so already.