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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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I think liberalism would win anyway, but I’d rather not have The Eastern Front, Civil War Edition , if all it takes to avoid it is closing the border and telling imams they can’t teach death for apostasy anymore. As you say, islam is so weak that expansion by the sword is not even an option for it, unlike nazism and communism. So the wolf is not really at the door-door, we can just tell him to fuck off. It would be a huge own-goal to import a problem that’s so easily avoided. Let liberalism and islam duke it out in their countries, and they can have their algerian civil wars instead of us.

I'm not into that but to be fair, I am realizing now that the version of liberalism that defeated the Nazis and communists was quite a bit less liberal than the version that I want. For example, communists were actually persecuted back in the first half of the 20th century in the West.

It was not "liberalism" that "persecuted" communists. Liberals were often fellow travelers.

The society that defeated the nazis was not ideologically liberal but had a mixture of liberal and non liberal beliefs. Like in fact most of the people called far right extremists and hated by liberals today.

Contrarily, most people who complain more about the far right today have insufficiently conservative views and are also insufficiently pro groups associated with the right.

It is not fair for liberals who are quite more far to the left and antinativist, to claim that they are part of the same tradition to people who are actually part of a different tradition. Modern liberalism is part of the new left and it represents a break from the past. It is continuous from some extremists that existed in that period too, but not the general society. It is much more far to the left and antiwhite than what Eisenhower or Churchil argued for. Of course neither figure was successful in the domestic culture war on the long term.

I don't agree with focusing on intolerance to far left communists in the first half of 20th century as the problem of liberalism.

As society and elite institutions became more liberal and left wing this did not result in less authoritarianism.

For a half-century, academics denied that there was substantial endorsement of authoritarianism among the left in the democratic West (e.g., Altemeyer, 1996) or of its psychological underpinnings, such as dogmatism (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski & Sulloway, 2003; see also Forgas, this volume). More recent research, however, has found ample evidence of leftwing authoritarianism (Conway, Houck, Gornick & Repke, 2018; Costello, Bowes, Stevens, Waldman, Tasimi & Lilienfeld, 2022). Leftwing authoritarianism (LWA) is characterized by dogmatism, social vigilantism, prejudice against outgroups, anti-hierarchical aggression, and willingness to censor one’s opponents (see also Forgas, this volume).

snip

The main outcome assessed was how many participants agreed with at least one of the modified Hitler quotes. 55% of college student participants agreed with at least one Hitler quote when it was applied to White people. Figure 1 presents the means by participant political identity (progressive liberal, moderate, conservative) and by the group used in the Hitler quote (Jews, Whites, Blacks). Endorsement of the Hitler quote when referring to White people was significantly higher across the board. This was especially true for U.S. liberals, who also showed the highest overall endorsement (55% vs < 40% for moderates and conservatives) of the Hitler quote when applied to Whites. Bernstein and Bleske-Rechek (2023) found a very similar pattern of endorsement of the rhetoric in DiAngelo’s White Fragility as was obtained for Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/the-new-book-burners

Moreover, seems that this discussion is full of people who are forgetting the neocons.

Are coups, CIA involvement, and politicians like Zelensky who ban political parties and don't oppose new elections part of liberalism? Is the American miliary industrial complex, AIPAC, thinktanks, the lobyists who fund them and politicians like Nikki Haley who also is ex director of Boeing part of liberalism? Because they seem to be pushing for constantly more authoritarianism. What about the highly influential ADL and the mainstream liberal parties that are also promoting more censorship?

Is Greenwald and Snowden, and Manning and Assange, part of liberalism, or the enemies?

If we define liberalism more narrowly, then liberals should be less arrogant about their current victory. A question arises if they even qualify. And if we define it more broadly, then it isn't the principled pro freedom, pro rights, against racism ideology that it is claimed to be.

Is modern South Africa a success of liberalism, or a failure? Unlike the academics who see no evil, hear no evil and can't see left wing extremism, we should examine this.

What about those who support mass migration and are against islamophobia, and are antinative racists and support hate speech laws to enforce this ideology? Do people who defend rhetoric like "kill the boer" such as ADL qualify as liberals?

To conclude, there is a confusion about what liberalism means from liberals and is hard to separate it with far leftism and even warmongers, neocons, the American establishment and the desires of partisans for say the uniparty, or Democrats in particular.

What you advocate will likely end with the muslims who claim they will take over the west, and other groups who do this, to succeed. And no it won't be an elimination of tribalism and a freer society.

Has the last decade lead to "liberal" societies becoming freer or less free under this trajectory of the tribe of liberals gaining more influence?

They became less free and more in the direction of discriminatory hateful antinativist authoritarian states which are indeed lead by people who are incapable of standing up to fanaticism if promoted by the ethnic groups they sympathize with. And this element is key for liberalism's willingness for prioritizing "rights" is applied in a wildly inconsistent manner.

the version of liberalism that defeated the Nazis and communists was quite a bit less liberal than the version that I want.

Yes, the Nazis allowed quarter-jewish people to marry Germans while many white Americans were not allowed to marry quarter-black Americans.

It's not really free speech, freedom of religion, or due process that defeated the nazis but overwhelming fire-power and millions of slavic bodies.

Modern secular liberalism does not seem capable of sustaining birthrates, so all the muslims have to do is come in and wait for the old liberals to die out for a victory by default.