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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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Here is an excellent article on the Russian revolution:

https://www.theconundrumcluster.com/p/you-should-really-read-this-introduction

Before the bloody civil war there was a lot of incompetence and appeasement. People to the right of other figures, refusing to use power, abdicating their duties and giving power to people to their left and letting them get away with crimes. Then came the violence.

A very rough summary of this: You had the Tsar giving power to a liberal relative Grand Duke Michael, who gave power to the Constituent Assembly (which imprisoned Tsar Nicolas)and the monarchy disintegrated to provisional assembly to lead the country during the elections lead by to Kerensky who followed a "no enemies to the left" dogma while the Bolsheviks were rising. Lenin ended up removed from prison. Both The Grand Duke and Tsar were murdered and Kerensky ended up in exile.

If they actually suppressed the radicals with force, and didn't give them more power the civil war would had been averted or less severe.

Point being, refusal to try to shut down leftist radicals and being afraid more of doing so than them makes future conflict larger, inevitable, and also their future atrocities. Putting and keeping people like Lenin in prison is more important than violent fantasies. It is only a failure to keep law and order and suppress such elements that lead to the Russian civil war and then the red terror.

Rather than lamenting future violence, you ought to be critical of the current right refusing to use power to suppress leftist extremists. I do agree with most of what you say of how the left breaks norms. I also don't want to see things breaking down in the ways the Russian revolution, civil war did.

But the right also breaks norms by complicity and not stopping them. For example, how about actual strong reprisals like trying to shut down left wing media with unhinged hateful rhetoric towards right wingers? Such as advocating to limit their reach by reprisals from their specific state We know the republican party is willing to do plenty of authoritarian moves, by looking them doing so when it comes to the Israel issue.

Although stopping criminals does include a component of physical violence, which is part of any duties of any police force, there are ways to exercise power, (and you are a moderator who have some power of your own however limited), that is different than just physically hurting people.

For example treating antifa as a criminal organization and then arresting their members, and have them subject to prosecution could be one of the possible ideas to suppress leftist extremism, targeting one of the worst of the worst groups most characteristic of it and it would qualify as qualitatively different than just physically harming in a purity spiral people identified as a different political tribe.

Another example, would be to try to debar antifa lawyers.

I see suppression of leftist/liberal radicalism and anti-right wing radicalism as preventive of current and future escalating violence, and the refusal to act as ensurer of things escalating...