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  "I am 18. I belong to the massacre generation."
Posted by: gabrielle - 11-02-2018, 10:29 AM - Forum: Homeland Generation/New Adaptive Generation - Replies (1)



I am 18. I belong to the massacre generation.

Quote:By Julia Savoca Gibson
Julia Savoca Gibson is a freshman at the College of William & Mary who plans to study history, film and the media. She is from Richmond.

November 1

It was last Saturday when it hit me that my entire life has been framed by violence.

I don’t remember being born on Jan. 28, 2000, and I don’t remember being a year and a half old when 9/11 happened. I don’t remember the panic of my mother as she stepped outside our house in Washington and smelled the smoke of the burning Pentagon. I don’t remember her knowing I would grow up in a changed world.

But I remember other things. I remember being 7 years old and seeing adults who were sad, angry, shocked after something terrible happened at Virginia Tech. I remember not knowing why. I remember the lockdown drills at my elementary school, the helpful signs in every classroom telling us where to hide in case of a “Code Blue,” which meant active shooter. (I remember we were told that having all the kids in one corner, a misguided protocol no longer followed, was the best means of protection.)

I remember being in seventh grade, and I remember my teacher looking up from her computer, pale, and running out of the room without a word during a quiz. I remember her walking back in, tears streaking her face, as she told us there had been a shooting in Newtown, Conn., where her grandchildren lived. I remember her telling us they were all right, and I remember thinking of my little brother in his second-grade classroom and feeling my stomach churn.

I remember walking into my high school the day after the Orlando nightclub shooting and seeing one of my gay friends sitting limply in a chair, eyes hollow. I remember sobbing. Often, I remember sobbing. I remember friends’ tears a year later, after the shooting in Las Vegas, and I remember feeling angry that I wasn’t crying. I remember Parkland the most clearly. I remember the silence. No one talked about it the morning after. No teachers mentioned it. I remember bringing it up at lunch but receiving only passing responses. I remember talking to my friend Max about how odd it was that no one said anything. I remember him gathering our friends to organize a walkout. I remember walking out, and I remember the silence of the crowd of students standing outside in the March cold. I remember the crackle of the megaphone we used as we read one name of one victim every minute. I remember those 17 minutes. I remember marching, once, then twice, and again and again.

I remember going with two friends last Friday to a Shabbat service in the spare room of a local Methodist church, sponsored by my college’s Jewish organization Hillel. I remember my friend Lucy leading the prayers, with her singing and playing guitar, and I remember my valiant attempts to sing along using the transliterations below the Hebrew in the books they’d handed out. I remember getting kosher dinner with them afterward as they explained to me how and why kosher food was a thing. I remember them describing the different kinds of Judaism they all came from.

I remember waking up on Saturday morning and seeing the news on my phone. I remember the sadness, shock, anger. I remember the haunting thought that the shooter might have gone to our service instead, or could go to the next one. I remember a stream of dripping wax burning my finger at the vigil I attended. I remember the look in my Jewish friends’ eyes.

And it was then that I remembered everything at once. I remembered all the violence looming around me, and my friends, and my entire generation. I remembered that for anyone born near the year 2000, this is all we’ve ever known.

I remember filling out my absentee ballot a few weeks ago. I remember voting, hoping that weeks, years, decades from now I’d be able to remember that we changed.

Sad

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  Coming European Civil War and World War III
Posted by: Teejay - 11-01-2018, 12:05 AM - Forum: Beyond America - Replies (3)

While at a quiet time at work today reading through company policies and procedures I have been thinking about the situation in Western Europe. I am predicting a messy civil war like that in Syria or the former Yugoslavia in the 1990's for whole of Western Europe. It could very well envelop the whole continent.

If there is an economic meltdown which I am predicting, the tensions between the Far-Right and Islamist's in Europe are going to led to spiral of violence, which will end up in a civil war(s). Both sides believe they are in a deadly civilizational struggle.

The Spanish Civil War was the dress rehearsal for World War II. Then the Civil War in Syria will be the dress rehearsal for this conflict. Alt-right fighters will be coming in from Americas and Australasia. Islamist fighters coming from the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

If Britain faces a no-deal Brexit it will be the first place this will occur. If a no-deal Brexit does not occur, then France will be most likely place it will start. In the no-deal Brexit scenario the British police force will be totally overwhelmed by the violence and the military will be forced to intervene. I don't think many in the military are going to obey the commands to shoot at the far-right forces, In fact some of them are going to join them. The violence spiraling further would depend on how the military is going to react.

As the conflict escalates expect people to choose sides, Moderate Muslims will be likely forced to pick the side of the Islamists. Everybody else will be forced to pick the side of the far-right. There is going to be one massive backlash against the Socialists and Liberals who will be seen as helping to support the other side. The LGBTQ+ community along with the Feminist activists could be subject to a backlash as well.

Depending on what happens in North America and Australasia, the alt-right will be cracked down on very hard to prevent such a conflict starting in these countries. The Muslim community I am not sure at this stage, it depends how this conflict is seen by authorities and popular opinion.

In the end the far-right will win the conflict, however the cost is going to be pretty heavy. If a civil war on the scale that of Yugoslavia happened on the European continent, the death toll would be between 3-6 million to 80-170 million displaced. Military intervention by Russia and Turkey will definitely happen as well, which will make that toll even probably even higher.

Plus liberal democracy throughout much of Europe will be extinct throughout most of it, Replaced by authoritarian regimes dependent on the military for support. For how long I don't know. Perhaps a few years before another revolution led by the majority of Millennial's who never supported the far-right or maybe not until the next Awakening.

The more I think about this the more frightening it gets, given that the Middle East has just entered a Fourth Turning. Because Turkey (along with maybe the states of the Maghreb) will military intervene in such a civil war, although such a war(s) would be rather short because the various military along with police forces of the European nations will ally with the far-right against the Islamists. Then various neofascist European states could form themselves into a neo-fascist European superstate or an alliance and then decide to re-conqueror the Middle East for Christendom. While in Turkey Edrogan could declare himself as the Caliph or leader of the faithful in 2023 or 100 years after the abolition of the Ottoman Caliph. Such a war with its theater in the Middle East and North Africa could be truly apocalyptic with nuclear weapons being used.

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  Nature of consciousness
Posted by: Bill the Piper - 10-27-2018, 07:50 AM - Forum: Religion, Spirituality and Astrology - Replies (18)

(10-26-2018, 01:01 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:
(10-26-2018, 02:47 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:
pbrower2a Wrote:What is spirit, anyway?

For Olaf Stapledon, spirit was the will for intelligence, kindness and creativity. He believed this is the essence of human personality, or any other intelligent being, distinguishing us from animals. I agree with him here.

When he wrote about the emotional source of Nazism not being simply evil, he probably had in mind the desire for loyalty to something higher than the individual. A Christian directs it towards God, an environmentalist toward nature, a Nazi towards the mystical "soul of the race". Stapledon certainly condemned the racist actions of the Nazis.

I don't know where brower's post is that asks this, but this is a question for a philosophical thread of some sort. As I see it, spirit is synonymous with consciousness, which cannot be accounted for with mechanistic or physicalist theories, and is called the "hard problem" because physicalist scientists try to solve it in their terms, which cannot be done. As I see it too, it is an ethical or moral issue. Although it has been well pointed out to me by Dr. The Rani that physical things are valuable, when we respect living beings as spirits, including humans and all possible higher beings beyond humans as well, then we treat them better than if we consider them as physical objects without sentience. That of course does not extent to "transhumans" who have become machines.

The machine age and the industrial age (same thing, virtually) were built on the model of mechanical cause and effect physicalism. We have transformed the world into our own mechanistic model of reality. That has been useful to us, but it is idolatry to conceive the world in the image of our own machine model. Machines cannot substitute for conscious organic beings, and real progress is to extend our natural human potential through expanded consciousness. The endless progress of machines has its own momentum now, and its impact may not be positive unless subordinated to real life.

The consciousness revolution of the 2T, which reminded us of these facts about consciousness and machines quite clearly, has been put on the back burner in the 4T by younger generations who are overly enamoured with recent high tech progress, and who live in virtual realities. This trend has accelerated just in these 4T years since 2008 with the proliferation of smart phones and other mobile tech. It would be good to take stock of this trend at halftime.

My idea is that consciousness is just the subjective perception of information being processed. This is the view of Max Tegmark, an outstanding gen X mathematician, and before him Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the progressive gen Russian space visionary. Tsiolkovsky claimed also that even atoms have consciousness. I know it's counter-intuitive, but I like the simple logic: consciousness is information. The more complex the information pattern, the more complex the consciousness. Above certain complexity level, thought and emotion appear. Primitive consciousness of a calculator contains only the mathematical operation performed at the moment. It has no sense of self. Self requires certain complexity level, but it may not be unavoidable. Orion's Arm editors imagine a form of artificial intelligence, System of Response, capable of superhuman thought but without even rudimentary sense of self.

You say that machines cannot have consciousness and this applies to transhumans who have become machines. It's absurd. How many electronic implants do I need inside my head to lose consciousness?

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  Generation X at the Turning Point
Posted by: sbarrera - 10-26-2018, 01:56 PM - Forum: Generation X - No Replies

From my blog: http://stevebarrera.com/generation-x-at-...ing-point/

Generation X at the Turning Point

Let’s take that list of what to expect of the living generations in the current social era – the Crisis Era in Strauss & Howe terms – and look at the expectations for my generation, Generation X. My generation is in mid-life now, between the ages of 36 and 57, in the phase of life where we will reach the peak of our career achievement and financial earnings. Having already sorted ourselves into winners and losers in the Unraveling Era, and then weathered the Global Financial Crisis and Great Recession, for many us this peak won’t amount to much. Many of us will be lucky if we can retire with even a modicum of comfort.

A tiny minority of us have become the wildly successful and wealthy techno-utopians who have reformatted the economy. The billionaires at the very top of the heap even have their own space programs. But most of us are just muddling along, without a grand plan, as we have all of our lives. Despite economic recovery, we are anxious about what disruptions will come in the remaining few decades that we will be able to earn a living. We haven’t all been materially ruined – yet – but the Crisis Era is not over, and our President has decided to start a Trade War (insert eye roll emoji here).

It is plain that Generation X is ambivalent about the emerging new order. On social media we confront the current political crisis with posts that range in tenor from mocking to incredulous to anguished. It is unclear where we are headed, so ambivalence is perhaps inevitable. What is clear is that the old Culture Wars of the previous era have come to a head – and while some of us have picked our faction, many of us remain on the sidelines.

Gen X may be overshadowed by older generations, which have retained power at the highest echelons of government. For the most part we are ignored in the media, obsessed as it is with the generation that came after us. But we’ve quietly taken over managerial leadership positions in both the private and public sectors, where we can make a difference behind the scenes. Our generation’s archetype is known for its pragmatism and resolve in solving the issues of the Crisis Era, and with the unfolding future comes our chance to live up to the expectation.

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  The "Bad Apples" of each generation
Posted by: Ghost - 10-19-2018, 11:29 AM - Forum: Generations - Replies (72)

I don't know if threads like this are allowed, but this was something I have been thinking about for a while.

Here are the ones I can think of for each generation starting with the Silents:

Silent Generation:

Pol Pot (b. 1925)
James Earl Ray (b. 1928)
James "Whitey" Bulger (b. 1929)
Jim Jones (b. 1931)
Louis Farrakhan (b. 1933)
Dianne Feinstein (b. 1933)
William Luther Pierce (b. 1933)
Charles Manson (b. 1934)
Saddam Hussein (b. 1937)
Maxine Waters (b. 1938)
David Lane (b. 1938)
John Wayne Gacy (b. 1942)

Baby Boomer:

Ted Bundy (b. 1946)
Hillary Clinton (b. 1947)
Edmund Kemper (b. 1948)
David Duke (b. 1950)
James Hodgkinson (b. 1950)
Harvey Weinstein (b. 1952)
Stephen Paddock (b. 1953)
Mark David Chapman (b. 1955)
John Bachtell (b. 1956)
Osama Bin Laden (b. 1957)
Jeffrey Dahmer (b. 1960)
Yolanda Saldivar (b. 1960)

Generation X:

Malik Zulu Shabbaz (b. 1966)
Timothy McVeigh (b. 1968)
Mohammed Atta (b. 1968)
Cory Booker (b. 1969)
Paul Nehlen (b. 1969)
Quannel X (b. 1970)
Matthew Hale (b. 1971)
Wade Michael Page (b. 1971)
Kristian "Varg" Vikernes (b. 1973)
Jared Fogle (b. 1977)
Rachel Dolezal (b. 1977)
Richard Spencer (b. 1978)
Linda Sarsour (b. 1980)
Mark Collett (b. 1980)

Millennial:

Eric Harris (b. 1981)
Dylan Klebold (b. 1981)
Anita Sarkeesian (b. 1983)
Jason Kessler (b. 1983)
Seung Hui-Cho (b. 1984)
Nathan Damigo (b. 1986)
Omar Mateen (b. 1986)
Colin Kaepernick (b. 1987)
Jared Lee Loughner (b. 1988)
Travis Reinking (b. 1989)
Christopher Harper Mercer (b. 1989)
Aaron Hernandez (b. 1989)
Inna Shevchenko (b. 1990)
Devin Patrick Kelly (b. 1991)
Matthew Heimbach (b. 1991)
Elliot Rodger (b. 1991)
Adam Lanza (b. 1992)
Dylann Roof (b. 1994)
TJ Lane (b. 1994)
Joshua Ryne Goldberg (b. 1995)

Generation Z:

James Alex Fields (b. 1997)
XXXTentacion (b. 1998)
Nikolas Cruz (b. 1998)
Thomas Rousseau (b. 1998)
Trippie Redd (b. 1999)
Anissa Weier (b. 2001)
Morgan Geyser (b. 2002)
Danielle Bregoli (b. 2003)
Kaia James (b. 2006)

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Lightbulb The MSM Notices that Generations Matter
Posted by: David Horn - 10-12-2018, 12:30 PM - Forum: Theory Related Political Discussions - Replies (6)

Tim Egan lives in Washington State and has been writing for the NY Times for decades.  Normally, he writes East Coast opinion with a West Coast spin.  Today, he took on his Boomers and Millennials to task, asking why Boomers are so backward and the Millennials so lame.  It was so in step with what we've been writing, it could have been posted on this forum.

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  First Turning "purge"
Posted by: Teejay - 10-10-2018, 05:58 AM - Forum: Turnings - Replies (82)

I have figured out what the main battle of this Fourth Turning, it is Liberal Democracy vs the Alt-Right/Neo-Nationalist (which I see as a spectrum) movement. For a while I was on the fringes of the alt-right scene, I got into because of the my involvement in the counter-jihad movement and in recent years it has been entering this territory. I have recently figured out how incredibly insidious this ideology is and they are duping a lot of people, usually gradually.  


I don't believe law enforcement authorities (in general) know how bad it has gotten, because they only notice when the people have reached the alt-right stage, not the neo-nationalist/alt-lite stage. For example; Milo Yiannopoulos or Jordan Peterson* and Richard Spencer are in the same movement, just on different points of the spectrum. Essentially people start on the road to the alt-right when they get 'red-pilled' or starting believing in conspiracy theories say like that of cultural Marxism. I think writing book on this whole movement (if good guys win) will become my life work, so that future generations of people can avoid same fate.



The neo-nationalist parties which are major political players now aren’t too extreme. Although it is alarming that it has entered the American Right (which is 30% odd percentage of the American public that are Trump supporters). In Australia on the other-hand they are still pretty fringe, although starting to enter into a few minor parties.

However, the second global financial crisis will come and a lack of global effort to combat it will plunge the world into an massive economic downturn like the Great Depression. Then those countries with neo-nationalist parties in power will get more extreme or more extreme alt-right parties will come to power. 

The countries of Western Europe have been pretty good at identifying and containing alt-right. However the European Union is weak and neo-nationalist parties are governments in some Eastern European countries. Such parties as the Austria Freedom Party and Italy's Lega Nord are in government in those countries. Millennial students on university campuses have been good at trying to prevent speakers they deem as having 'alt-lite' or 'alt-right' ideas.
 
Therefore, the first Turning Purge which the one in the last first turning was McCarthyism can go two ways depending on which side wins. 

If Liberal Democracy wins, anybody who part of the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right or even suspected of Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right leanings. Nationalism and Populism are going to become words akin to Fascism and Nazism. I applaud Twitter and Facebook for starting to purge people with this subversion elements. Donald Trump is complaining that it unfairly targets Conservatives.
 
If the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right wins, little doubt authoritarian regimes would emerge that would be at best 'illiberal democracies' at worst downright totalitarian. 

They will purge what they consider their enemies which will be at the very least.
Anybody in the media and in public life they deem as "Leftists" or "Communists".
Feminist and LBGTQ activists.
Academics and teachers which they see as peddling "Cultural Marxism".
Transgender and even Homosexual people will be regarded as suffering from a mental illness and be sent to psychiatric hospitals to be retreated.
 
Depending on the regime in power:
Muslims (in some areas, where they are especially big enemies of whatever alt-right regime is in power)
Jews
Other ethnic groups deemed undesirable.
 
These regimes death toll won’t be on the scale of Nazism or Communism, still a lot of people killed.
Ultimately the alt-right want to take society back to the 1950's (well a fantasy version). Expect the education system to be purged of anything remotely resembling “cultural Marxism” and "post-modernism". 

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  First Turning "purge"
Posted by: Teejay - 10-10-2018, 05:54 AM - Forum: Turnings - Replies (49)

I have figured out what the main battle of this Fourth Turning, it is Liberal Democracy vs the Alt-Right/Neo-Nationalist (which I see as a spectrum) movement. For a while I was on the fringes of the alt-right scene, I got into because of the my involvement in the counter-jihad movement and in recent years it has been entering this territory. I have recently figured out how incredibly insidious this ideology is and they are duping a lot of people, usually gradually.  


I don't believe law enforcement authorities (in general) know how bad it has gotten, because they only notice when the people have reached the alt-right stage, not the neo-nationalist/alt-lite stage. For example; Milo Yiannopoulos or Jordan Peterson* and Richard Spencer are in the same movement, just on different points of the spectrum. Essentially people start on the road to the alt-right when they get 'red-pilled' or starting believing in conspiracy theories say like that of cultural Marxism. I think writing book on this whole movement (if good guys win) will become my life work, so that future generations of people can avoid same fate.



The neo-nationalist parties which are major political players now aren’t too extreme. Although it is alarming that it has entered the American Right (which is 30% odd percentage of the American public that are Trump supporters). In Australia on the other-hand they are still pretty fringe, although starting to enter into a few minor parties.

However, the second global financial crisis will come and a lack of global effort to combat it will plunge the world into an massive economic downturn like the Great Depression. Then those countries with neo-nationalist parties in power will get more extreme or more extreme alt-right parties will come to power. 

The countries of Western Europe have been pretty good at identifying and containing alt-right. However the European Union is weak and neo-nationalist parties are governments in some Eastern European countries. Such parties as the Austria Freedom Party and Italy's Lega Nord are in government in those countries. Millennial students on university campuses have been good at trying to prevent speakers they deem as having 'alt-lite' or 'alt-right' ideas.
 
Therefore, the first Turning Purge which the one in the last first turning was McCarthyism can go two ways depending on which side wins. 

If Liberal Democracy wins, anybody who part of the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right or even suspected of Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right leanings. Nationalism and Populism are going to become words akin to Fascism and Nazism. I applaud Twitter and Facebook for starting to purge people with this subversion elements. Donald Trump is complaining that it unfairly targets Conservatives.
 
If the Neo-Nationalist/Alt-Right wins, little doubt authoritarian regimes would emerge that would be at best 'illiberal democracies' at worst downright totalitarian. 

They will purge what they consider their enemies which will be at the very least.
Anybody in the media and in public life they deem as "Leftists" or "Communists".
Feminist and LBGTQ activists.
Academics and teachers which they see as peddling "Cultural Marxism".
Transgender and even Homosexual people will be regarded as suffering from a mental illness and be sent to psychiatric hospitals to be retreated.
 
Depending on the regime in power:
Muslims (in some areas, where they are especially big enemies of whatever alt-right regime is in power)
Jews
Other ethnic groups deemed undesirable.
 
These regimes death toll won’t be on the scale of Nazism or Communism, still a lot of people killed.
Ultimately the alt-right want to take society back to the 1950's (well a fantasy version). Expect the education system to be purged of anything remotely resembling “cultural Marxism” and "post-modernism". 

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  Millennials in the Crisis Era
Posted by: sbarrera - 10-09-2018, 06:51 PM - Forum: The Millennial Generation - Replies (18)

My most recent blog post. Finishes up the list of "what to expect in the Crisis Era" from the Millennial generation.

THE SPOTLIGHT ON MILLENNIALS
 October 3, 2018  Steve Comments 0 Comment
I’m going to return to looking at the list of patterns to expect for the living generations in the current social era, the Crisis Era in Strauss & Howe terms, picking up where I left off a few months back.

[Image: gwsubshot-focus.jpg?resize=300%2C182]Let’s look at the remaining items on the list of predictions about the Millennial generation – that Millennials will heroically rise to political challenge, that they will develop a sense of generational community, and that they will benefit from a new focus on the young-adult world. For evidence, I will simply consider the kinds of news stories that have been prevalent on social media and the web in the past decade. So let’s start with the last item on the list.

In the Millennial generation’s childhood era, which began way back in the 1980s, children benefited from a new focus on child-rearing. A wave of social change in the direction of increased child protection came in the form of mandatory safety rules, zero tolerance policies, and laws named after child victims (for example, Megan’s Law). I wrote about this on my old blog nearly twenty years ago.

Now that we are in the Millennial young adulthood era, the impetus for social change has shifted to the adult sphere of life. Political change may be stymied by partisanship, but a wave of social movements has risen in response to long-standing problems. These problems were tolerated when they affected previous generations – but no more.

A prominent example which can be thought of as zero tolerance policies reaching the workplace is the Me Too movement and its effects. This took off last year as a viral social media hashtag when a prominent Hollywood producer was accused by multiple women of sexual harassment. Since then, a flood of accusations has led to the downfall of many men in high places. Sexual harassment in the workplace has long been covered up by HR departments and endured by female employees, but in the Millennial era this may not be possible, or desirable, any more.

A less politically charged example is the new concern over reducing concussions to football players in the National Football League. The research into the problem began in the Gen-X era, but it was only ten years ago that the U.S. Congress compelled the NFL to act.  An enormous settlement was agreed upon, which has benefited retired Gen-X players, but only after they sustained the injuries in the first place. For Millennials, a protocol is coming into place to reduce the prevalence of injuries in the first place.

Not that there isn’t a politically charged example connected to the NFL, by which I mean the Black Lives Matter movement. Football players kneeling during the national anthem are in solidarity with this movement, protesting police shootings of unarmed young black men. Though rates of violence have been declining for a generation, police killings still disproportionately affect minorities. In the past this may have been a topic for moralistic commentary in academia and the arts, but today it is the focus of a stubbornly persistent and controversial activist movement.

Another famous movement that seems to have come and gone is Occupy Wall Street, which protested income inequality and the corruption in government and finance that was brought into stark relief by the financial crisis and bailouts in 2008. The protests on the street may have ended, but they continue in the online world. On today’s Internet feeds there are endless posts about the difficulties faced today by Millennials trying to get by in the current economy – the burden of student debt, the impossibility of surviving on minimum wage, the need to delay life events like home buying or marriage until financial stability is achieved.

All of these difficulties were faced by previous generations, but now that Millennials face them there is a greater sense of urgency. Will these problems be addressed by drastic measure while Millennials are still young adults? Will student debt be discharged, and higher education be payed for by taxpayers, like primary and secondary education? Will the minimum wage be raised significantly?

This ties into the first item on the list of what to expect from Millennials – that they will heroically rise to political challenge. There is less evidence of this. Youth voting rates have increased slightly since their nadir in the Gen-X era, but have not come anywhere close to that of the great era of civic participation of the mid-twentieth century. Older generations still have a lock on government, which partisanship has rendered contentious and barely functioning. But time favors the young generation, and they will eventually make their voices heard.

All that is discussed above connects to the remaining item on the list – that Millennials will develop a sense of generational community. Just that fact the their generation’s name – originally coined by Strauss & Howe as part of an academic theory – has become a household word, and that news about them has become so prominent, shows how they are in the forefront of social awareness. 
Everyone is familiar, for example, with stories about how they are reshaping the economy. With the spotlight shining on them, it is hard to imagine this generation doesn’t have a strong self-awareness. If they can combine that awareness with an enforceable political consensus, they could reshape our society, and truly bring about a Millennial era.

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  Neo-nationalism, Identitarians and the Alt-Right
Posted by: Teejay - 10-09-2018, 04:31 AM - Forum: General Political Discussion - Replies (20)

Neo-nationalism is a political ideology which has spread across the world in this Fourth Turning. I am quoting a Wikipedia article on Neo-nationalism. This ideology started in Putin's Russia and China and has spread in the last decade to about everywhere in the world essentially. It is a lot like Fascism in the 1930's expect usually considerably milder, in formerly Liberal Democratic countries there has been a slide back to authoritarianism. I am not sure if they will be like the Nazis of the Last Fourth Turning, it could be given early last decade I thought the Fourth Turning would centering on how to civilize globalization and the need for more globalization to deal with the challenge of man-made climate change.
 

Quote:Neo-nationalism or new nationalism is a type of nationalism that rose in the mid-2010s in Europe and North America and to some degree in other regions. It is associated with several positions, such as right-wing populism, anti-globalization, nativism,  protectionism, opposition to immigration, opposition to Islam and Muslims and Euroscepticism where applicable. According to one scholar, "nationalist resistance to global liberalism turned out to be the most influential force in Western politics" in 2016.Particularly notable expressions of new nationalism include the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum and the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States.
 
Quote:Writing for Politico, Michael Hirsh described new nationalism as "a bitter populist rejection of the status quo that global elites have imposed on the international system since the Cold War ended, and which lower-income voters have decided—understandably—is unfair." Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote in The Week that new nationalism is a "broad nativist revolt" against post-Cold War politics long "characterized by an orthodoxy of free trade, nurturing the service economy, neoliberal trading arrangements, and liberalized immigration policies."
 
The Economist wrote in November 2016 that "new nationalists are riding high on promises to close borders and restore societies to a past homogeneity." Clarence Page wrote in the Las Vegas Sun that "a new neo-tribal nationalism has boiled up in European politics and to a lesser degree in the United States since the global economic meltdown of 2008," and Ryan Cooper in The Week and researchers with the Centre for Economic Policy Research have linked 21st-century right-wing populism to the Great Recession. According to Harvard political theorist Yascha Mounk, "economic stagnation among lower- and middle-class whites [has been] a main driver for nationalism's rise around the globe." According to religion scholar Mark L. Movesian, new nationalism "sets the nation-state against supranational, liberal regimes like the EU or NAFTA, and local customs and traditions, including religious traditions, against alien, outside trends."
 
David Brog and Yoram Hazony wrote in National Review that some conservatives view the new nationalism associated with Brexit and Donald Trump as a betrayal of conservative ideology while they see it as a "return". According to conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg, the nationalism associated with Trump is "really little more than a brand name for generic white identity politics."
 
Writing for The Week, Damon Linker called the idea of neo-nationalism being racist "nonsense" and went on to say that "the tendency of progressives to describe it as nothing but 'racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia'—is the desire to delegitimize any particularistic attachment or form of solidarity, be it national, linguistic, religious, territorial, or ethnic."
 
Regarding new nationalism, The Economist said that "Mr Trump needs to realise that his policies will unfold in the context of other countries’ jealous nationalism," and called nationalism itself a "slippery concept" that is "easy to manipulate". They also repeatedly contrasted ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism and implied new nationalism could become "angry" and difficult to control, citing Chinese nationalism as an example.
 
I don't believe this ideology is going to win out in the Fourth Turning. Because the second global financial crisis is coming, which is predicted globally to be as bad as the Great Depression was. n economic collapse in both China and Russia, which will result in political revolutions which will bring Liberal Democratic regimes into power. This global financial crisis will need a global approach to solve it and the Neo-Nationalists have only emerged, because the Left did not develop an ideology during the Global Financial Crisis that would have 'tamed globalization' so that it benefits the people rather than the big corporations. Also, there is the need for a global approach to the challenge of climate change which the Neo-Nationalists who are inclined towards being skeptical to man-made climate change are also at a strong disadvantage.
 
Since the neo-nationalists who reject globalism, just don't have any solutions to this challenge. Also, the internet will undermine any neo-nationalist authoritarian regimes that come to power. An old fourth turning forum user who I chatted to on Facebook said at China's Great Firewall can be circumvented quite easily. Not to mention the neo-nationalists are going to be blamed most likely for this economic collapse. A McCarthyite sort of purge against anybody who is remotely 'nationalist' might very well occur. There are signs of that beginning to occur with social media de-platforming of people seen as racist, sexist, homophobic and trans-phobic. Something Donald Trump has complained about, because a lot of die-hard supporters have been de-platformed.

 The way I see it that the alt-left will emerge that will support an ideology known at Alter-globalization. The British Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, along with some 'far-left' parties in Europe are beginning to develop this 'alt-left' ideology. My prediction it will emerge somewhere in the Anglosphere hard to know at this stage.
 Australia and New Zealand (yay) could very be where such an ideology could get started. Both countries have very high percentages of their populations who were born overseas, and neo-nationalism's appeal is likely at its weakest anywhere in the world.  In Australia nearly 30% of the population were born overseas and half the population have at least one parent born overseas. In New Zealand the percentage of people born overseas is 20%.
 
There is also the fact both countries since the 1980’s transformed from high protectionist to highly free trade-based economies and protectionism does not have very much electoral appeal in either country. Protectionism in the bigger economies of the United States and the European Union have more electoral appeal.
 
I believe this wave of Neo-Nationalism will last another 5 years and then recede in the last five years of the Fourth Turning which will be around 2028. Therefore; people buckle up, it is going to one hell of a ride, although given a massive economic crash being predicted the Alt-Right racial identitarians could experience a massive rise in support which makes a McCarthy style purge of anybody who is Ethnic identitarians very possible. I believe the Millennial's will more strongly identify as more 'Global Citizens' as opposed to just solely being members of a particular nation. Indeed the whole identitarian , neo-nationalist and alt-right movements have been born out of a concern that national and ethnicity identities are under threat from globalization.

Although given the Middle East has just started it's Fourth Turning which is predicted to one hell of a battle between Islamists and Secularists. A possible final battle of the 'War on Terror' or more appropriately the 'War on Islamism' will probably occur during this Fourth Turning or in the first half of the First Turning. Islamists who are Islamic identarians could be subject to this McCarthyite purge as well.
 
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/10-...86481.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alter-globalization

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