Question for the next mailbag: on the most recent Know Your Enemy, Sam and Matt mention your cooking skills. As a solidly sub-mediocre cook, any recommendations on how to up one's cooking game? How and when and why did you learn to cook? Any favourite recipes?
Thanks as always John. I have a question for a future mailbag:
With the kinds of political movements you write about, in what ways and to what extent do you think of them as top-down vs bottom-up? You mostly focus on the intellectual leaders and scribes of the movements, but do you think of their work as a distillation/recording of reality as it unfolds "in the streets," or are these intellectuals driving public action? Similarly, how and to what extent are political leaders of the movements you write about mostly pandering to (or more charitably, representing) popular sentiment, vs driving sentiment?
Good stuff as usual. Extra points for using “as is their wont.” Brought to mind the comedy genius of Derek and Clive
My $0.02, media dislocations and abuse also play a huge role, with the two questions more closely linked than may appear at first glance. There is enormous amounts of malign influence campaigning, propaganda, disinformation and so forth pushing both the US and international liberal establishment away from Ukraine support and towards populist authoritarianism. With the newish and expansive internet as well as lack of trust in traditional media gatekeepers, that malign influence has been incredibly effective.
Much of this is directly from Russia and its state apparatus. but at this point, it is being carried forward mostly by domestic populist authoritarians, now empowered. Unfortunately many media barons (like Musk) and influencers seem to be in on the effort. But Russia has also not stopped and continues their narrative warfare, seemingly unopposed — the West seems unwilling or unable to respond in kind. So, liberality is being systematically cut down, often from the inside, with no opposing systematic effort to counter it. That is a horrendous dynamic for liberality that is not sustainable.
I see the war in Ukraine as the hot piece of a hybrid world war that Russia has waged since EuroMaidan, with its US election interference as a central strategy. The military aspect is far less directly important to the outcome than has traditionally been the case. Here, if Russia can influence the US to drop support for Ukraine, that should be far more decisive than day to day changes in turf. It appears they have largely succeeded in that effort
Of course, for such messaging to be effective, there must also be grievance to exploit. Spending billions on security overseas after a couple decades of income stagnation is an easily exploitable grievance imo. And if Russia can influence the US to drop support for Ukraine, a receding US helps fuel grievance in states that have relied on US security and leadership.
Hi John, the following is a question for a future mailbag:
In your post concerning Samuel Moyn's book on 20th century liberalism, you address his criticisms of Hannah Arendt and offer what is to me a very convincing defense of Arendt and her writings on Israel and third worldism. Do you think there is reason to be concerned by Arendt's fall from favour and the related elevation of Franz Fanon to something approaching sainthood among younger intellectuals?
Gotta agree on the immiseration thing. There would have been a lot more fascist regimes in the past century if the relation was that direct. Autocratic or outright dictatorships in underdeveloped or severely impoverished countries is a bit different to fascist movements, imo. I'm also a bit sceptical of the "countering the threat of imminent communist revolution" theory - apart from anything else, we could all rest easy about fascism in the near term, if that was strictly true. And I think that's a little too complacent, even if it hasn't fully made its reappearance yet. My intuition is that the conditions are more to do with a relatively developed capitalist polity where the capitalist class loses its relative unity and starts to divide into different factions that are no longer happy for their differences to be resolved through the liberal democratic process and can't agree on the way forward for the "regime of accumulation". Then the competing factions cast around for a populist force that can break the stalemate in their favour and hope they can either put the populist force back in its box after the fact, or ride the tiger. Obviously we're not in Weimar anymore. But the latent crisis of climate change is not going away, and its noticeable that pretty much all the media platforms pushing the GOP/FR boundary are funded by Big Carbon, while a lot of the globalised tech and finance plutocrats have some concerns about climate catastrophe being bad for business. I feel the conjuncture has the potential for seriously dividing the capitalist class on which way forward, and that's when shit can get dangerous
Question for the next mailbag: on the most recent Know Your Enemy, Sam and Matt mention your cooking skills. As a solidly sub-mediocre cook, any recommendations on how to up one's cooking game? How and when and why did you learn to cook? Any favourite recipes?
Thanks as always John. I have a question for a future mailbag:
With the kinds of political movements you write about, in what ways and to what extent do you think of them as top-down vs bottom-up? You mostly focus on the intellectual leaders and scribes of the movements, but do you think of their work as a distillation/recording of reality as it unfolds "in the streets," or are these intellectuals driving public action? Similarly, how and to what extent are political leaders of the movements you write about mostly pandering to (or more charitably, representing) popular sentiment, vs driving sentiment?
Good stuff as usual. Extra points for using “as is their wont.” Brought to mind the comedy genius of Derek and Clive
My $0.02, media dislocations and abuse also play a huge role, with the two questions more closely linked than may appear at first glance. There is enormous amounts of malign influence campaigning, propaganda, disinformation and so forth pushing both the US and international liberal establishment away from Ukraine support and towards populist authoritarianism. With the newish and expansive internet as well as lack of trust in traditional media gatekeepers, that malign influence has been incredibly effective.
Much of this is directly from Russia and its state apparatus. but at this point, it is being carried forward mostly by domestic populist authoritarians, now empowered. Unfortunately many media barons (like Musk) and influencers seem to be in on the effort. But Russia has also not stopped and continues their narrative warfare, seemingly unopposed — the West seems unwilling or unable to respond in kind. So, liberality is being systematically cut down, often from the inside, with no opposing systematic effort to counter it. That is a horrendous dynamic for liberality that is not sustainable.
I see the war in Ukraine as the hot piece of a hybrid world war that Russia has waged since EuroMaidan, with its US election interference as a central strategy. The military aspect is far less directly important to the outcome than has traditionally been the case. Here, if Russia can influence the US to drop support for Ukraine, that should be far more decisive than day to day changes in turf. It appears they have largely succeeded in that effort
Of course, for such messaging to be effective, there must also be grievance to exploit. Spending billions on security overseas after a couple decades of income stagnation is an easily exploitable grievance imo. And if Russia can influence the US to drop support for Ukraine, a receding US helps fuel grievance in states that have relied on US security and leadership.
Hi John, the following is a question for a future mailbag:
In your post concerning Samuel Moyn's book on 20th century liberalism, you address his criticisms of Hannah Arendt and offer what is to me a very convincing defense of Arendt and her writings on Israel and third worldism. Do you think there is reason to be concerned by Arendt's fall from favour and the related elevation of Franz Fanon to something approaching sainthood among younger intellectuals?
Thanks and keep up the good work!
Shane
Future mailbag question, which is intentionally simplistic: How are rightwingers in the Eurosphere *not* anti-Enlightenment?
And if that one doesn't appeal . . . What does Macron have in common with Napoleon?
This is frivolous, but I like the coinage "fascistoid" (;
Gotta agree on the immiseration thing. There would have been a lot more fascist regimes in the past century if the relation was that direct. Autocratic or outright dictatorships in underdeveloped or severely impoverished countries is a bit different to fascist movements, imo. I'm also a bit sceptical of the "countering the threat of imminent communist revolution" theory - apart from anything else, we could all rest easy about fascism in the near term, if that was strictly true. And I think that's a little too complacent, even if it hasn't fully made its reappearance yet. My intuition is that the conditions are more to do with a relatively developed capitalist polity where the capitalist class loses its relative unity and starts to divide into different factions that are no longer happy for their differences to be resolved through the liberal democratic process and can't agree on the way forward for the "regime of accumulation". Then the competing factions cast around for a populist force that can break the stalemate in their favour and hope they can either put the populist force back in its box after the fact, or ride the tiger. Obviously we're not in Weimar anymore. But the latent crisis of climate change is not going away, and its noticeable that pretty much all the media platforms pushing the GOP/FR boundary are funded by Big Carbon, while a lot of the globalised tech and finance plutocrats have some concerns about climate catastrophe being bad for business. I feel the conjuncture has the potential for seriously dividing the capitalist class on which way forward, and that's when shit can get dangerous