10-25-2018, 11:43 PM
(10-10-2018, 05:58 AM)Teejay Wrote: 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.
Quote: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.
It's now up to the more basic means of addressing the potential for evil: the educational system. For years we could say "Tojo evil, Mussolini evil, and Hitler demonic". In the 1930s, evil had undeniably hijacked Germany, Italy, and Japan. Today we cannot simply say that because of America staying true to a decent heritage we Americans can expect to be on the same side of the Deity that Lincoln and FDR led us to. Referring to the purported Lincoln quote, we cannot be so complacent about America this time.
It will be easier to resist fascism in America when we do not yet fear torture chambers and summary execution than to resist it when any mistake, betrayal, or simple bad luck will put anyone at risk of death... or worse.
We need to inculcate our children with the recognition of the need for civil liberties, human rights, and checks and balances. The biggest checks and balances upon a potentially-wayward government is a population moral enough to resist such. It is not enough to brandish the word freedom; even in the hideous Horst-Wessel Lied the German words frei (an obvious cognate of English free) and Freiheit (which, not surprisingly, literally means freedom) appears. It is not enough to call for freedom; it is also necessary to recognize the need for the freedom of others. Freedom of the streets (for the Sturmabteilumgen) is the wrong sort of freedom.
Quote: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.
America has had a dangerous fascist movement that took control of whole states and expressed bigotry as vehement as that of the Nazis. That was the 1915 Klan, which was a bigger share of the American populace in the mid-1920s than the Nazis of the time. We do not live in a nation of saints, and probably never will. Democracy does not require saints, but it certainly requires that most people be willing to lose an election to people that one loathes. I can name many political figures, beginning with Donald Trump, that I loathe, as well as journalists, and political operatives. At this point we can wait them out unless they do something so horrid as to rig or nullify an election.
Quote: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.
We got out of the most dangerous economic meltdown since the Great Depression because for a time Americans could agree on backing the banks as was not done in the aftermath of the 1929 Crash. America rescued most of the people who had created the corrupt bubble that burst catastrophically in 2008... and those people found salami tactics for taking over America until it has become a plutocracy with an aristocratic bureaucracy. With all the debt that we now have, a rescue of our bad actors will be far less effective, especially if the bubble is largely crony capitalism, the favorite capitalism of Donald Trump.
Economic inequality is still severe. The only stop to a crash is that we do not have a speculative boom to go bust. I do not know whether that is the result of Obama not sponsoring one even if he could, or Republicans making sure that the recovery was agonizingly slow. This said, we have the worst President possible for meeting any economic meltdown. Can his business acumen save us? Not likely! The President that we have is nothing more than a landlord and a purveyor of schlock television.
Quote: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.
On the other side -- the two countries that had the earliest escapes from Commie government (Poland and Hungary) have radical-right regimes.
Quote: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.
I can imagine America as an Evil Empire. Just imagine what the world would be like if America had come under the rule of the KKK, the Weimar Republic survived and strengthened its institutions, Italians had sickened of Mussolini, and the nascent trends toward democracy in Japan before 1930 had entrenched themselves. The world map might look much like that of The Man in the High Castle, except with the Good Guys prevailing. Parts of America are rebuilt with the Rommel Plan and parts are rebuilt with the Yamamoto Plan.
(of the Hard Right)
Quote: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".
America has people with whom I have no trust with my human rights and civil liberties. If that Hard Right takes over and I lack the means to emigrate, I might want to make sure that I have some Valium® and vodka ready so that I can evade fates worse than death. Seeing my old age likely to not be a time of glorious and enriching hedonism, I have far less cause to fear death than I used to. Death used to scare me more for denying me delights that I might miss. A concentration camp or torture chamber is something to miss.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.