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As someone who spends time on Tumblr (and thus sees a lot of people on the left behaving the way you describe), I've written a lot about this, both here and elsewhere. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
In short, they're operating on a very different definition of "democracy" than you are.
No, you need to get elite institutions on your side. The peasant masses are irrelevant.
Except it's not "our political project" they see themselves casting people out of, it's "polite society," it's "the right side of history"… in short, you are being excommunicated from the One True Church, cast into the outer darkness with the damned, unless and until you repent and make penance. And, of course, shunning only works if everyone does it, thus those who fail to shun must be shunned themselves.
How does a firebrand Puritan preacher accumulate a flock? Not by friendly chats "exclusively through the lens of what we could agree on," but through fire-and-brimstone sermons denouncing them as damned sinners, and demanding they repent.
I come back to my classroom analogy (it's in one of those links above). It's long been a noted phenomenon — the subject of jokes, even — that whenever someone on the Left says "we need to have a conversation about [X]," what they actually mean is "I'm going to lecture you about [X], and you're going to sit down, shut up, and listen uncritically to what I say." Which I bring up because it's also what a teacher usually means when saying they "need to have a conversation" with a student and/or their parents about the student's behavior.
How does a teacher "get students on her side"? By asserting her authority, telling them to sit down, be quiet, and listen up; and punishing those who fail to obey.
That's the way the classroom works. The Expert speaks, and everyone else listens. Your grade, your status, is based on how well you absorb what Teacher says, and how flawlessly you parrot it back. Then you get to college, and its more of the same. Professor gives you the Correct Position, and your progress is based on how well you parrot it back. And then you get your degree that says you're an Expert now, so you either stay and become Professor, and tell the kids How It Is; or you leave into the world… and tell all the non-Experts How It Is. In both cases, when you speak, everyone is supposed to Listen to Teacher; that's how it's always worked.
And if students aren't learning the lesson? Well, maybe the teacher isn't matching their learning styles ("Democrats have a messaging problem"). Or maybe the kids are being distracted ("pipelines for alt-right disinformation like Musk's x.com") and you need to shut down anything that keeps them from Listening to Teacher. Or maybe they're just being stubborn and refusing to accept that the curriculum is Correct, and thus they are misbehaving and need to be punished; perhaps even expelled. In any event, the curriculum, the Lesson, is never wrong, no matter how large a fraction of the student body disagrees with it.
No, from what I've seen, they're quite aware of it, and do see it as a problem. They just don't see it as a problem with the institutions, but a problem with the people. If you don't find the mainstream media credible anymore? Then you're willingly choosing to believe lies over The Truth, and you're what needs fixed. You need to be made to trust the institutions again, even if it means literal re-education camps.
It's not a desire to "grow their own political opposition," it's a desire to make people submit, to punish disagreement until people stop disagreeing with them. To make all the Bad Students Listen To Teacher. To denounce all the sinners, heretics, apostates, and infidels, and impose all the punishments their priestly powers allow them to inflict, until all repent and accept the dogmas of the One True Church. Because error has no rights.
I think you accidentally hit on a pert of the appeal of this style of discussion and why it’s so popular. The people who tend to be on the left are basically overeducated and therefore have adopted the ethos of the classroom in which you are to sit and take notes and regurgitate the answers given by an authority. We’re sending most of our current crop of young adults through a system where by the time they reach full maturity, they’ve spent 20 years in school under the thumb of a teacher, and any sports they played were on teams with a coach.
I’ve had run ins with some of them when I suggest that it’s perfectly reasonable to get some education on the arts and literature by reading texts for yourself, learning to draw by simply getting some very basic instructions and doing it yourself. Or that history can be learned by … reading about history. I don’t think it’s possible to become a professional without a bit of classroom teaching. But im often shocked at how completely the very concept of autodidacts breaks modern brains when it used to be the norm. Abraham Lincoln was basically an autodidact— most lawyers of the time began by studying law on their own and taking an exam. That was it. And up until the advent of the modern Prussian model of education, even classroom instruction was more of a discussion than a lecture. It was structured, but kids were reading and talking about what they read by mathematics equivalent of high school.
This is something that often makes me fear for the future. The entire society is over structured and therefore any thinking for oneself, creativity, or initiative is being slowly ground out of society in favor of more formal education and activities.
I think it's superimportant not to discount the effect that social media has had on this, too. People of all political stripes are easily seduced by "likes," and nothing gets more passionate likes than when one stakes out positions that make themselves and their followers feel more virtuous than the baddies over on the other side. It's not just an echo chamber, in which one hears their own positions reverberate, but a stadium in which the response is the roar of the crowd in deafening agreement.
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I find it rather telling that the one regime this tribe constantly holds up as the bright shining light of model liberal democracy is the FRG i.e. former West Germany. It makes sense, as it’s an otherwise nonsensical polity that was artificially created by first merging America’s local zone of military occupation with those of Britain and France i.e. states that economically and militarily depended on the American empire for their very existence after 1945, and then absorbing another fake state, the GDR into it in 1990 and then lying that this constituted the “reunification” of two sovereign states. It’s clear as day that this whole power structure exists under the tutelage of the US Deep State (also under the strict understanding that it continues to economically aid Israel) and that there’s not a single citizen of the FRG that may assume any high-level position of local authority of any sort before being vetted for years by NGOs, foundations, universities and other tools of said Deep State. This in itself explains why this whole political organism is heading straight towards voluntary self-abolition and annihilation.
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Just to nitpick in a friendly manner: I suggest that instead of linking to two dozen or so comments, you post the first comments of comment chains / discussions where you participated.
I don't remember where I read it — if it was Unherd or Compact or elsewhere — but I recall about half a year ago or so reading an essay by a German about German politics, and specifically why the AfD should be banned. The author argued that the West German constitution — and thus modern Germany — was basically set up to be a system with three major parties that would pretty much set the limits of political options, and thus the space on which the electorate may vote. That where those parties are in agreement on an issue — such as immigration — then the voters simply don't have a say. And especially that trying to form a party around such a forbidden view, particularly those beyond the rightward edge of elite-acceptable views, must be shut down.
That modern "democracy" is when elites decide most issues, then let the electorate vote from a carefully curated and limited menu of options for the remaining issues (because anything less restrictive risks another Austrian Painter Party).
Except I tried to make sure those comments were all from different comment chains / discussions (though I may have gotten one or two from the same). They should be spaced out across various discussions over the past several months or more. Thus, that would still be about the same number of links.
When I said I've written a lot about this, I meant it.
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I agree with everything you say, but it seems obvious that this entire liberal consensus perspective and method of curtailing dissent hinges on having a critical mass of support - you downplay the electorate's power in this process, and I agree that institutions are the bigger players here, but there are still points of contact between the two. Think of the absolute fiasco for the progressive project that happened when those Ivy League Deans - all women who were very obviously hired for diversity points and were completely unable to handle the gravity of the situation - were questioned by Congress and unable to deny even the most outrageous accusations against the campus culture they fostered because the institutional jargon they use to defend it only worsens their case in the eyes of the public.
A Dean of Harvard getting easily out-dribbled rhetorically by some Republican congresswoman seemed unthinkable even 15 years ago (or maybe I just have rose-tinted glasses of the Democratic coalition before Obama), but the liberal project has allowed their own echo chamber to become so narrow and restrictive that they have no idea how stupid and hypocritical they sound to anyone outside of it - all while doing all in their power to push as many people out of said space as possible. There's also just been a massive cratering in terms of intellectual standards, which I guess was to be expected of any environment that punishes skepticism.
Regardless, Trump's rather decisive re-election (and it's equally significant flip side, the electorate's clear disapproval of Kamala Harris) should have been the writing on the wall for how useless this style of politics has become - the liberal establishment still has a lot of strings it can pull, but these strings are increasingly being stress-tested, dismantled, and in some cases, outright disregarded by the current administration. By keeping up this arrogant and deliberately antagonistic style, the establishment seems to be heading for a scorched Earth policy rather than any serious attempt to recapture their lost electorate - how long will it last?
Because I don't see the electorate as really having much power, nor their temporary, merely-elected representatives. To quote the Dreaded Jim:
You say:
I don't see how that was a fiasco. The Ivy League seems pretty undiminished in institutional power to me. And if the NYU hack was any indicator, they're probably actively defying the recent Supreme Court ruling (as they declared they would), and I'd say they still have good odds of getting away with it. (Because who's gonna stop them?)
My point is that as the system is set up, working within the confines of the law, they don't have to care how stupid and hypocritical they sound, because all real power centers lie inside their bubble, and the people outside it, including the many people they've pushed out of it, are mostly powerless, no matter how numerous.
I doubt Genghis Khan's inner circle had highly rigorous intellectual standards, and that didn't stop him. So long as you have power…
"Should," but from what I've seen, it hasn't — only that they haven't tried "this style of politics" hard enough.
I'd say way it's too early to tell if this really is the case, and there's plenty of people in the circles I frequent who are highly skeptical, viewing Trump as "containment" by the establishment, and all of his "victories" as just an empty show for the rubes.
Until the next Democrat administration holds Nuremberg trials for Trump, Vance, Musk, etc., and engages in a thorough "de-Nazification" of the electorate, potentially with re-education camps?
Lol. LMAO even. Top recruiters are shifting away from the ivies, for just one metric.
I've sorta-kinda heard this, but have you got any examples I could look at?
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The power of a military leader and a priesthood both exist but they aren't the same.
The power of the intellectual elite comes from the perception that they fulfill some essential, moral role in society. They're a priesthood that cannot even claim to have been invested with their power by a god.
This might be why they've collapsed so readily into endless moralism.
But that is also a weakness. It depends on the deference of the people.
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Apologies if I'm being rude, but what exactly is your power level?
Well, I was referring, at least somewhat, to things ranging from Parvini's "putting the woke away" to this piece at unz.com:
to the general attitude at therightstuff.biz.
But if you must know, I'm a couple of degrees of IRL separation from those TRS podcasters, and the Charlottesville organizers, etc., mostly thanks to a couple of old friends from grade school. (OTOH, I'm also a couple of IRL degrees of separation from the likes of Rod Dreher.) Very much "I know a guy who knows a guy…," along with how pretty much everyone in the Anchorage School District's gifted program around my age ended up either solidly woke leftists or far-right radicals, and the far right can be a pretty small space.
Wait... goddamn, somehow I confused you with @ControlsFreak. I already had a good gauge of your views.
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