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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   31616 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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Tyler Cowen published an analysis of the “new right” today.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/10/classical-liberalism-vs-the-new-right.html

He illustrates the new right as a reaction against two factors: the pretty crazy level of what we’ve come to call wokeness on the left, and the capture of most of the main cultural institutions by the same left.

At the same time, there are signals that the woke left is declining in power and relevance (not quite a sure thing yet, but he lists a few signs that we’re trending this way).

Tyler does a good job in my opinion of fairly representing the views of the new right, while also laying out his own disagreements with the philosophy. These center around the idea that the new right is unlikely to be able to create a high trust society. Indeed, since 2016 we have had a precipitous decline in trust in our society, and while almost no one would disagree with this, the different sides would place the blame on different factors.

He finishes the piece:

The polarizing nature of much of New Right thought means it is often derided rather than taken seriously. That is a mistake, as the New Right has been at least partially correct about many of the failings of the modern world. But it is an even bigger mistake to think New Right ideology is ready to step into the space long occupied by classical liberal ideals.

Overall I think it’s an important piece and potentially a lot of the more thoughtful members of the new right might get a lot out of reading it.

Political movements often do a good job at identifying problems in society, but it’s usually their own internal quirks and flaws that end up being magnified if and when they do come to power. Politics tends to progress as these flaws become exposed, as one side reacts against the excesses of the other, and vice versa.

Whatever the case may be, it leads one to wonder whether the woke left and the new right are short term aberrations, specific to what will be looked back upon as a short period of time, or whether these are indeed the feedstock of long lasting ideologies that we’ll be stuck with.

The polarizing nature of much of New Right thought

That’s certainly one way of putting it.

I’ve argued previously that the biggest liability of this New Right is free speech absolutism. So long as they incorporate a subculture which is really loudly invested in, say, using slurs, they will continue to polarize fresh enemies. It may still be strategically wise—the absolutists claim that without them, the New Right loses outright to censorship.

This is the same drawback faced by identity politics. It generates pushback at an astounding rate. Look at how much of the New Right is fixated on calling out woke excesses—how much ammunition has been handed out. “Polarizing” is the intersection of “offensive” and “useful.”

That said: I’m firmly in the short-term camp. The utility of these strategies will hit its limits before the outrage thus generated. Cowen points out some evidence for idpol approaching that point; I read the dissident/alt/New right as following a similar curve. When the seams of angry young men are mined out, when the blue-check well runs dry, mainstream politics will shamble back to the old standbys of economics and social safety nets.

Race realism, killing the civil rights act, and 'tough on crime' without slurs is going to polarize more than that with slurs?

When the seams of angry young men are mined out

"angry young men" aren't really an independent class and that doesn't describe most of the specific things driving people to the far-right - but taken literally, no they won't, because every year a new 1/100th of the population is born, and a new 1/100th turns 18!

True.

And while I could appeal to the barber-pole theory of fashion, claiming that tomorrow’s young men will view today’s as hidebound reactionaries, I don’t think that’s necessary. These movements’ growth is due to new “markets.” The (social) media landscape of 2015 was so different from 2005 that it exposed a wider population to the alt-right and social justice movements.

As mainstream politics fumbled to tap it, we saw—and are seeing—overcompensation. But there is a feedback system in place, and I expect it to dampen out the initial impulse. There are only so many heathen communities who haven’t heard the Good News, and within an election cycle or two, we’ll be back to limited by the growth rate.

I’ve argued previously that the biggest liability of this New Right is free speech absolutism. So long as they incorporate a subculture which is really loudly invested in, say, using slurs, they will continue to polarize fresh enemies.

Is the New Right absolutist on freedom of speech or is it simply defensive about the unpopularity of its own speech? If we're identifying the New Right with people like, e.g., Sohrab Amari, they might use absolutist rhetoric when one of them gets banned from twitter, but then they'll turn around and argue for banning speech they disapprove of (and not in a 'ban from privately owned social media' sense).

This is a sticking point for me with Cowen's overall analysis - I don't think the New Right is rooted in libertarianism/classical liberalism at all. Amari and Dreher are integralists, Yarvin is the neoreactionary, Carlson is a bit of a chimaera but at heart seems to be a paleocon, etc... but the common thread of wanting to use state power to remediate culture war losses puts them quite far from classical liberalism (to say nothing of rising anti-capitalist sentiments).

There’s definitely some odd bedfellows involved.

I don’t read enough of these folks to judge how much they appeal to free speech. When one gets controversial enough to cop a ban, the absolutists are usually vocal among their defenders. Maybe the common thread is HBDers, maybe it’s belief in institutional capture. Cancellation within the left receives little such sympathy.

Cowen thinks that a lot of the New Right would have been libertarians in the 80s. He’s casting a wide net.

The free speech group has overlap with the right these days out of a common enemy, but I have no illusions that things would change if the right grabbed control of institutions.

The most basic issue is that the right is correct to mistrust the government, academia, the MIC and the corporate-activist superstructure. Those institutions had maintained the facade of neutrality for a long time, but decided to burn it all to damage Trump. Now the elites need a new pack of grifters to control this diffuse mob that doesn't trust all their carefully controlled outlets.

Tucker and DeSantis are some of the early attempts to get controlled opposition out in front of this distrust, but they won't be the last. Eventually the "new right" will be either discredited, destroyed or co-opted (probably all three). Just like the "new left" forty years ago, only these poor bastards aren't going to wind up in tenured academic positions once their "revolution" fails.

Tucker and DeSantis are some of the early attempts to get controlled opposition out in front of this distrust, but they won't be the last.

Are you suggesting that Tucker and Desantis are intentional establishment plants meant to lead the new right astray, or am I misunderstanding the use of controlled opposition? If you believe this, who are the genuine leaders or influencers of the new right?

Tucker's definitely a plant. His dad was an ambassador, head of Voice of Democracy and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Being the semi-respectable right-leaning face of official propaganda is basically the family business. DeSantis is just another politician trying to court the energetic vote of his own party, but if anyone thinks politicians are loyal to their constituents, I have two bridges to sell.

... you can absolutely just betray the interests of your parents. The children of monarchists or even aristocrats became revolutionaries, the children of russian elites became communists, children of union bosses become nazis, children of nazis become psychoanalysts, etc. Why can't that happen?

And every influential group will be overrepresented as relatives of every other influential group because of social selection and genes.

You don't mean to imply that DeSantis the Yale BA, Harvard JD, Navy JAG who at Guantanamo and Iraq dealt with the legal side of treatment of prisoners interrogated for intelligence purposes is not a man of the people do you?

The first couple of pieces of evidence are solid, but his complicity in the US torture programme doesn't disqualify him from the title "man of the people". It would, had it been unpopular at the time, but it wasn't.

Less the popularity of the programs and more the involvement with the TLAs running those programs might be considered a demerit.

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