I have made this point many times, but what is the point of this kind of behavior? It almost seems like instead of fascism we're getting something even fucking worse. I really like how Brace Belden, The Dark Cowboy of Syria described ISIS as "an end of history" death cult that wants "nothing to exist" because I feel like that better captures what the current right wing seems to be heading towards. It almost feels like something broke in their heads and they realized that our current way of life is untenable, but they are so unwilling or unable due to a variety of factors (indoctrination) to conceive of anything better so they are just trying to tear it all down in this conflagration of outwardly directed frustration.
I work with this reactionary guy (literal 4chan Nazi) and I remember he was trying to get a rise out of my coworker by saying "Fuck the Amazon, let it burn" in response to him mentioning wildfires and I think this helps illustrate some of what I mean. Unless this man is so delusional he believes that the rapacious deforestation and overall destruction of the ecosphere will not have negative consequences in the future, there seems to be this desire to maximize human suffering.
We will ban all vaccines so we can all have polio again.
We will normalize genocide so that we can do violence to an ever expanding group of undesireables.
We will pollute as much as we can so a few people can make a few bucks and so that you won't have any clean drinking water.
and so on...
What is even the project here? I'd argue that there isn't one, and that the logical conclusion to basing your politics in opposition to that of others (when the other is posited as being based around an ostensible dream of progress) is eventually just antipathy to the very idea of existence in general
It's consumerism and privatization brought to its logical endpoint. The customer is ALWAYS right, and in a world where everything is a market transaction and not a social good, users are always "customers". Denying a Covid-positive person access to seeing their relatives without a mask is violating their RIGHT as a paying customer.
I saw a lib doctor I think write a medium post about how these fuckers aren't in a death cult because when they're in the hospital dying of covid they refuse to believe it. Like they'll insist they have lung cancer or something (because that's so much better)—anything except covid because they are the heroes of reality and bad things only happen to other people, not them. An anti-vaxx nurse my partner knows is currently dying of covid and one of the workers at the hospital said that the woman doesn't actually have covid—she's just on a ventilator and about to have the plug pulled on her and had collapsed in her house and was lying on the floor for four days in her own shit and piss and god knows what else because of stress. This medium post argues that if "these fuckers" (what else to call them?) were in a death cult, they would be completely embracing it and celebrating even their own deaths. But can any of us think of any group in history that was just like: "kill yourself and everyone around you?" (Aside from Matt.)
I think your analysis is spot-on here. All I would add is that these people aren't actually conscious of what they're doing. It's all angry baby id energy. They've been abused by their parents and peers and by capitalism itself their whole lives, even though in a lot of cases capitalism has actually made them materially rich and comfortable—though at the same time it transformed them, psychologically, into monsters. So I think it is a death cult, but that it's an unconscious one. It's boomer (or boomer-in-training) death drive.
Aside from a few Kamalas and Pete Buttigiegs here and there, these are the people ultimately running the country. They can't deal with forest fires, hurricanes, the pandemic, or much of anything. Literally everything is completely out of control and utterly beyond their comprehension. If you look at the Fox News home page right now, every other story there is about fucking Afghanistan. It makes me think that when an uprising, a revolution, finally really does get going here, these people are going to be completely swept aside a lot quicker than we might believe. Make no mistake, they have a shitload of weapons, but when you've been huffing lead gasoline all your life and unconsciously want to destroy yourself, that might not actually count for much.
I'm normally in favor of the "100 year old terms" argument, especially on the left, but if you read Ur-Fascism the current crop of chuds easily check every single box.
Maybe that was the point all along for them, like if you go back to the Turner Diaries, even in their wildest fantasy the endpoint is exterminating like 90% of the population and the remaining white people living in a bombed-out fascist police state hellhole.
I have made this point many times, but what is the point of this kind of behavior? It almost seems like instead of fascism we're getting something even fucking worse. I really like how Brace Belden, The Dark Cowboy of Syria described ISIS as "an end of history" death cult that wants "nothing to exist" because I feel like that better captures what the current right wing seems to be heading towards. It almost feels like something broke in their heads and they realized that our current way of life is untenable, but they are so unwilling or unable due to a variety of factors (indoctrination) to conceive of anything better so they are just trying to tear it all down in this conflagration of outwardly directed frustration.
I work with this reactionary guy (literal 4chan Nazi) and I remember he was trying to get a rise out of my coworker by saying "Fuck the Amazon, let it burn" in response to him mentioning wildfires and I think this helps illustrate some of what I mean. Unless this man is so delusional he believes that the rapacious deforestation and overall destruction of the ecosphere will not have negative consequences in the future, there seems to be this desire to maximize human suffering.
We will ban all vaccines so we can all have polio again.
We will normalize genocide so that we can do violence to an ever expanding group of undesireables.
We will pollute as much as we can so a few people can make a few bucks and so that you won't have any clean drinking water.
and so on...
What is even the project here? I'd argue that there isn't one, and that the logical conclusion to basing your politics in opposition to that of others (when the other is posited as being based around an ostensible dream of progress) is eventually just antipathy to the very idea of existence in general
It's consumerism and privatization brought to its logical endpoint. The customer is ALWAYS right, and in a world where everything is a market transaction and not a social good, users are always "customers". Denying a Covid-positive person access to seeing their relatives without a mask is violating their RIGHT as a paying customer.
I saw a lib doctor I think write a medium post about how these fuckers aren't in a death cult because when they're in the hospital dying of covid they refuse to believe it. Like they'll insist they have lung cancer or something (because that's so much better)—anything except covid because they are the heroes of reality and bad things only happen to other people, not them. An anti-vaxx nurse my partner knows is currently dying of covid and one of the workers at the hospital said that the woman doesn't actually have covid—she's just on a ventilator and about to have the plug pulled on her and had collapsed in her house and was lying on the floor for four days in her own shit and piss and god knows what else because of stress. This medium post argues that if "these fuckers" (what else to call them?) were in a death cult, they would be completely embracing it and celebrating even their own deaths. But can any of us think of any group in history that was just like: "kill yourself and everyone around you?" (Aside from Matt.)
I think your analysis is spot-on here. All I would add is that these people aren't actually conscious of what they're doing. It's all angry baby id energy. They've been abused by their parents and peers and by capitalism itself their whole lives, even though in a lot of cases capitalism has actually made them materially rich and comfortable—though at the same time it transformed them, psychologically, into monsters. So I think it is a death cult, but that it's an unconscious one. It's boomer (or boomer-in-training) death drive.
Aside from a few Kamalas and Pete Buttigiegs here and there, these are the people ultimately running the country. They can't deal with forest fires, hurricanes, the pandemic, or much of anything. Literally everything is completely out of control and utterly beyond their comprehension. If you look at the Fox News home page right now, every other story there is about fucking Afghanistan. It makes me think that when an uprising, a revolution, finally really does get going here, these people are going to be completely swept aside a lot quicker than we might believe. Make no mistake, they have a shitload of weapons, but when you've been huffing lead gasoline all your life and unconsciously want to destroy yourself, that might not actually count for much.
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I mean we're watching the end stages of capitalism.
It's a self destructive ideology self destructing.
<insert Gramsci quote here>
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I'm normally in favor of the "100 year old terms" argument, especially on the left, but if you read Ur-Fascism the current crop of chuds easily check every single box.
Maybe that was the point all along for them, like if you go back to the Turner Diaries, even in their wildest fantasy the endpoint is exterminating like 90% of the population and the remaining white people living in a bombed-out fascist police state hellhole.
I'm super curious as to the source of that. ISIS doesn't get analyzed enough but I find their violent psychotic nihilism fascinating