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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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given Liberalism and Marxism joined forces on the most destructive war in human history

I know arguing this kind of point with SecureSignals is flogging a dead horse, but the point he is making is one of the Big Lies of schoolboy history, so I will make an exception.

Marxism didn't join forces with Liberalism to stop Hitler. Marxism (or at least Stalin's USSR) allied with Hitler to destroy Liberalism, and ended up allied with the UK and USA by accident after Hitler double-crossed them. This forms part of a pattern of interwar Soviet policy where all non-Communist forces are treated as roughly equally hostile-by-default.

Orwell in Animal Farm has Napoleon decide between Frederick and Pilkington based on pure calculation. This is a better model of Stalin's policy (which was based on a realpolitik assessment of the USSR's interests) than a story where he was trying to work out whether liberal capitalism or fascism was less anti-Marxist.

The position of the not-coincidentally now-defunct political tradition that claimed that feudalism and chivalry were worth preserving was simpler. Throne-and-altar (or Protestant equivalent) conservatives from Papen to Quisling lined up to be useful idiots for Hitler, frequently betraying their countries to do so.