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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   28006 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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Insane how far things have gotten in Germany.

In Germany in 2024, aligning with nationalism may be analogous to a kind of new punk that will definitely freak out your parents and set you apart from the older lamer generations.

In my mind, right-wing is the true counterculture. But I am a contrarian and most people are not.

I think the model of young people as rebels a bit flawed. In many ways young people are slavishly conformist. Think of a high school clique. Or think of the various social movements that became purity spirals, with people cast out over tiny doctrinal differences.

Young people do want... something. They're not sure what they want exactly, but they know they want it hard. This energy can form the base for many political movements, but it's actual direction can be molded from outside. Mao realized this when he created the Cultural Revolution, weaponizing the energy of the young to cow his rivals.

Maybe today's new "rebels" will be a true counterculture, like the hippies of the 1960s, largely an organic movement undirected from the outside. More likely, the rebels will be completely co-opted by the people already in charge, and will be used to fight their intra-elite battles. It's pretty amazing how today's Antifa members have nearly the exact same ideology as a Harvard professor or WaPo journalist. "What do we want! The current regime – but even harder!", they chant as they throw a trashcan through a Starbucks window.

In my mind, right-wing is the true counterculture.

Can you say more about why you think that?

It holds every value of the current zeitgeist in contempt, and values things that the current zeitgeist hates. The CZ wants a libertine society and the youth are off insisting on traditional values and culture and religion. The youth are so trad at thins point that not only are they religious but in the case of catholic youth, they’re going for Latin Mass and fighting popes and bishops to get it.

I'd be interested in his answer too, but the basic case is pretty simple: being a part of that subculture puts you at risk of exclusion from polite society, therefore it's a counterculture. Calling it "the true" counterculture might be going to far, I'm sure there's plenty of other groups that can lay claim to being countercultural, but this one's by far the biggest.

It doesn't exist enough to be a "subculture". Being a right-winger is like being the class clown or something; you may be counter, but you're not culture.

In many ways young people are slavishly conformist.

I don't know if younger people are more conformist by nature but they are undoubtedly far more sensitive to social pressure from their peers. In most cases this manifests as conformity to whatever's popular, but it also means the returns on bold individualism can be far greater.

but it also means the returns on bold individualism can be far greater.

Yes, in absolute value, but the sign is negative.

Bold individualism in the sense of pioneering a new musical genre of style of clothing etc.

Sure, but unless the counterculture is classically liberal/in the middle of a genuinely prosperous age (which is generally the cure to "social pressure from one's peers) it just turns into "boldly advocating for 50 Stalins". One of the more visible new youth styles of clothing, "men in ill-fitting dresses", is ultimately (and perhaps ironically) more conformant to social pressure than not doing that.

True, but we do live in funny times. I'll admit I'm not an expert on the history of such things, but my understanding had been that it was teens who pioneered things like punk, grunge etc that weren't exactly aligned in every way with the Cathedral of their times.

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