Much of this discussion about historical uses of "cultural Marxism" in the literature is irrelevant, or at least to me. If the name had never been used before and was invented yesterday, then I would think it a very good description of the ideology that we might clumsily refer to as wokism, critical theory, SJWism, etc. I suspect that the name has likely been reinvented multiple times by different people with no idea of its historical use, because it succinctly captures the basic idea--Marxist style analyses but with economic categories substituted with cultural categories. No other name is so accurate while also being easily understood.
It helps that most cultural Marxists are also, at least implicitly or vaguely, economic Marxists. They seem to assume that something approximating economic Marxism will be the downstream consequence of their cultural Marxist project, though they don't forefront it in their rhetoric. More concretely, cultural Marxists are anti-capitalist, at least in principle, even while often living comfortably within a quasi-capitalist system. Their general idea seem to be something like using capitalism to destroy capitalism from the inside, and a big part of that is pushing cultural Marxism to undermine the foundations of capitalism. The "late stage capitalism" talk is related.
Orthodox Marxists seem to regard this as folly. In their view, the cultural Marxists have been captured by and are now unwittingly serving their enemies. They may talk in Marxist-like rhetoric and language, but they divide the people and strengthen capital with their frivolous social status games.
The name "cultural Marxist" is a really good name. I don't care if orthodox Marxists like that association.
Firstly, after looking into Haitian cuisine and religious practices and noticing the size of the denominator, it seems unlikely that it isn't happening. Moreover, waiting for evidence isn't all that important, since whether the allegations are true or not, the probability of strong evidence being found and then fairly distributed is quite low. The nature of the act is just not easy to prove.
Secondly, I think more people should be eating the local wildlife. We have severe overpopulationa of deer, rabbits, and other prey species across most if the US. Humans have displaced predators, but they have not taken up their responsibility to fulfil the ecological function predation serves. This has been highly destructive to local ecosystems. Wild cats and outdoor cats are almost as much of a problem because they destroy bird populations. Frankly, the Haitians are probably doing an ecological service while also getting a free meal, so it's a win-win scenario.
Thirdly, if it was my goal to create ethnic and racial conflict, then I could hardly think of a better way than to dump thousands of Haitians on to small town Ohio. These allegations, the suspicions, the resentments, the prejudices, etc., whether true or false, are all obvious consequences of throwing radically different people together while also encouraging a system of racial identity and spoils. This is just what happens when people don't speak the same language and have radically different cultures and values. It's not an historical anomaly--this is what usually happens. It's not even irrational, since these groups really are different, their interests do not align, and they're being pitted against one another. If the Haitians had power, then they'd almost certainly be behaving far worse toward their outgroup.
The real enemy is clearly the NGOs, politicians, and bureaucrats who made this happen.
nomenym
2mo ago
The biggest lie of all was that Ukraine could give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for protection by the West. They fell for the gun control argument. Keep your guns.
nomenym
2mo ago
Too many people would never pass such tests. Some people have better reflexes and judgement while impaired than other people have when awake and sober. The impacts of such a policy would also be too disparate.
Birth rates, mental disorders, health crisis, national debt, it's all stacking up. We're running on fumes. We've been stoking ethnic conflict for about a generation with insane ideologies and mass immigration, and it has only been subdued by continual growth and increases in wealth. That is now staggering to a stop. I don't think the current iteration of AI will be enough to push back the problem much further. But 5 years? 10? 20? I don't know. I'm always surprised at how far the can has been kicked down the road already. I hope I'm wrong.
After learning how common such culinary practices are in Haiti, I actually find it hard to believe that it isn't happening in Ohio. It should have been predictable. It's not exactly easy to prove someone has been eating cats, especially if they have even an inkling that they're not supposed to--the evidence tends to disappear. Moreover, the authorities and media have very little incentive to look for the evidence, since it can only bring trouble for them--better to just say there is no legitimate evidence and move on. 20,000 is a lot of people, and Haitians aren't exactly known for their tempered good judgement. Even if most of them know they're not supposed to be eating the cats, it only takes a few. If only 1 percent kept on doing so, then that's 200 people. If 200 people in town start eating the local "wildlife", then that's going to impact very quickly. It's basically the same with driving without a license, contracting diseases, and all the other things that are apparently going down. These are massive impacts on a small town like Springfield, Ohio.
nomenym
2mo ago
The real victims here are the Haitians. In one generation they're going to be utterly wrecked by the US welfare state, VR porn, and fentanyl. They will be chewed up and spit out. Their birthrates will crash through the floor and that will be the end of them. They are now being thrust into the hedonic suicidal memetrap that is modern culture, and they are even less equipped to survive it than the whites they are replacing.
nomenym
2mo ago
Donald Trump is the main reason to vote Democrat, and Democrats are now the party of trusting the experts. I think Democrats mostly just want "their people" (the experts) in charge, and President Kamala is just a product of circumstance. If Kamala tried to exert too much autonomy, I think the party would remove her like they did Biden, or at least freeze her out and frustrate her efforts to do anything. It could happen quite suddenly, perhaps with some scandal that had previously been denied and ignored. I think Democrats would mostly be okay with this. There is very little talk about the previous dishonesty campaign, nor the fact that the US does not and has not had a functional President for a long time. That doesn't seem to be shifting anyone to vote differently, because they're voting for the party. Attempts to build a cult of personality around Kamala have been mostly astroturfed, and it has no staying power.
Trump is entirely opposite in this regard. Much of Trump's support comes despite the party. He does have a cult of personality. This is perhaps a much weaker ideological coalition, and I am concerned about what will happen when Trump's luck runs out the next time someone shoots at him.
Personally, I think I would prefer her to be a party apparatchik, because I think another President DNC is preferable to a President Kamala. I wonder how many Democrats feel the same. The impression I am getting from many Democrats is that they're voting for the party not Kamala, so coming across as a party apparatchik might actually be a the better move. She just needs to come across as the black female girlboss figurehead but not too obnoxious to turn off moderates.
I guess $10 million sounds like a lot, but it's not really in this context, especially if they were spending $100,000-$400,000 per month on multiple influencers for a handful of hours content that didn't really include anything in the way of Kremlin propaganda. It sounds like the Russian agents were none too happy with how things were going. Is that because Chen was just bad at her job or did she just not care? Of course, it gave those agents blackmail power over Chen and perhaps others, but what good is that? These are quite marginalized figures who have little or no instituational knowledge or pull to do anything for Russia. It all seems so absurd. But you're right, governments piss away money like this all the time.
Of course, I presume there are similar shenanigans going on elsewhere, but the DoJ likely has less interest in exposing them. These influencers are politically safe targets, but that just makes the Russians even more incompetent.
Frankly, one interpretation of this whole affair is that Lauren Chen and her husband were scamming the Russians, because the Russians don't seem to have got anything they wanted out of this. They paid a lot for very little. Still, it would be a foolish thing for Chen to do.
These influencers are mostly just regular conservative culture warriors, and half of them are only reluctantly voting Trump. They're not especially pro-Russia, although they're not especially keen on the US's role in the conflict either. They mostly don't talk about it. Matt Christiansen, in particular, strikes me as a relatively fair-minded and moderately conservative libertarian type--no rabble-rouser by any means. The views these people express seem relatively normal among online right-wingers, the kind of people and views which are being systemically excluded from mainstream channels and outlets. While I don't expect it to be part of Russia's intent, I am reminded of how Western governments have in the past funded outside or underground media organizations to counter state-controlled media in foreign dictatorships.
I wonder if the reason the Russians targeted these influencers is because they actually believed the left-wing claims about all the right-wing grifters being pro-Russian, and so they decided to capitalize on that by actually funding them. They then discovered that the influencers weren't really all that pro-Russian at all, and then they felt like they had been cheated (and maybe they were?). However, the whole funding scheme is then exposed, and it has now seemingly confirmed the original left-wing claims that these right-wing influencers were all just pro-Russian grifters. Ironies abound.
Of course, if it was more like a scam to take Russian money but then just do whatever, then it has now backfired quite badly on them.
nomenym
2mo ago
It's worse than that. They actively don't want the wrong sorts of people liking their shows, because that would look bad to their peers. Trump supporters shouldn't have things they enjoy, and you shouldn't make things for them. Leaving that money on the table is the moral thing to do. You don't want to be that guy who the far-right online trolls like RLM are saying good things about.
nomenym
2mo ago
Which was more dangerous: claiming the election was rigged or rigging the election?
nomenym
3mo ago
Unfortunately, these "important conversations" in practice just mean kicking the can down the road while things get worse. Feels like a stalling action. It's like having "important conversations" about immigration while holding the door open. Just keep the "important conversations" going until the thing being discussed has already happened.
nomenym
3mo ago
My first thought is that I doubt Kamala picked him. My second thought is that he's a diversity hire just like Kamala. Whether you like or dislike Trump, if you vote Trump, then you are getting President Trump. If you vote Kamala, then you're getting a figurehead. This VP pick further drives that point home to me. Perhaps the president has been and should be more of a figurehead. Maybe that's what people want.
My rough mental model is that most men are essentially addicted to sex. It happens naturally when they enter puberty, and it doesn't really ever go away for most. There are roughly two classes of pedophiles:
- Men who are very indiscriminate in their sexual attraction. They aren't especially sexually interested in young children, but they're just sociopathic and opportunistic. If they have power over young children, they will use them for sex much like they would almost anyone else. These men are pedophiles, but almost incidentally. They're just really bad people with a often indiscriminate and sadistic sexuality. Children are sometimes their victims.
- Men who are especially or exclusively sexually attracted to young children, particularly prepubescent or early pubescent children. The existence of such men is somewhat of an evolutionary puzzle similar to male homosexuality, and it does seem mostly inherent. These men are usually not sociopathic, but the sex drive is powerful and treacherous.
All the interesting questions mostly revolve around class number 2. I generally model class number 2 like I would an alcoholic. They're basically addicts even if they have never actually partaken in their addiction. Sometimes they fall off the wagon, and other times they get back on again. Like an addict, they shouldn't be trusted with the object of their addiction. If they're otherwise good people, then they will avoid it themselves. They may try to satisfy their addiction in what seem to them relatively indirect and harmless ways, though they may also inadvertantly cultivate and strengthen the addiction. Suspicion is warranted, because people are weak and will give in to sexual desire, but many such people are not fundamentally evil and do live ordinary lives.
My impression is that this athlete may fall into this second class.
nomenym
3mo ago
It's really hard for me to believe that is their intuition. It's too contrary to human nature. I suspect it's that their morality demands they ignore their intuition. Their intuition is bigoted and transphobic, and denying it is necessary to be a good person.
What puzzles me is that as soon as men like this identify as women, they become a protected class that can do no wrong and have only the purest motives.
An all white cast. You really don't see that often these days.
I'd love ot be a fly on the wall to hear that casting discussion, or did everyone involve just know already not to bring it up? Did they audition for these parts? Did any black men show up? The hivemind is pretty strong on these things, so perhaps the coordination was all implicit.
I've noticed a lot of "presciptivism for me, descriptivism for thee". That is, the distinction is employed strategically. When it's prescribing a language change you like or think is moral, then it's fine. When it's prescribing a status quo, or a change, you dislike, then don't you know language evolves and changes with the times? The culture war angle is obvious. Left wing prescriptivism is inevitable, natural, aligning with the direction of history. Right wing prescriptivism is wrongheaded, denying the nature of language itself, and just slowing the march of progress.
For me, sure, understand linguistics in your own head descriptively, but engage in your language community prescriptively, or else the other guy's preferences win by default. Descriptivism in practice is unilateral disarmament.
nomenym
3mo ago
It's curious, then, that she doesn't introduce herself in any of the ads I've seen. In fact, she just immediately brings up Trump, literally in the first sentence. She introduces herself only as the anti-Trump ticket.
nomenym
4mo ago
He doesn't think peace is realistic. He just wants a détente, and that requires a show of strength.
nomenym
4mo ago
Well, realistically it will take at least a lifetime. Fertility rates between blues and reds weren't all that different until the 90s, but since then they've kept increasing. Blues are well below replacement. They're dependent on converting red children. Can they do this? Yes. Indefinitely? Probably not. They're picking the low hanging fruit right now, but it's like a parasite breeding resiliance in the host. Eventually, it will become harder and harder to convert red children, because they will increasingly be descended from a cultural and genetic lineage that is resistant to that conversion. The easiest converts are currently being sterilized, and so there won't be so many easy converts around in the future.
Will this all happen? I dunno. Perhaps the only way I can see modern blues achieving a sustainable fertility rate is pure technology--growing babies in artificial wombs.
The opposite direction thing you describe is rationalized on essentially the accelerationist idea of hastening the revolution. Basically, once the cultural Marxist project of destroying Western civilization and capitalism has been achieved, then we can move past the "whites suck" and "women should be in charge" stuff. It's kind of like the idea that violent revolution is necessary to eventually abolish all violence.
The whole ideology implicitly endorses the idea that beliefs are only instrumental towards goals, so whatever beliefs hasten the revolution are what you should believe, and that can change depending on circumstance. Truth is kind of besides the point, since it's a distraction from winning. This is why it can be practically impossible to have a good faith dialogue with some of these people.
That said, I agree with you more broadly. In an anthropological, perhaps even ecological, sense these are just a rationalizations of runaway virtue signaling. What the participants in this culture believe they are doing is somewhat immaterial. However, the rationalizations do somewhat orient the direction of the virtue signaling spirals even if they do not provide the fuel, so they are not entirely irrelevant. It is meme cancer.
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