Are You TRAPPED in Outdated Political Thinking?

Why you should study right-wing anti-liberalism.

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[ClassicCase]

I used to be a socialist, but then I took a tax return to the knee.

[tantalus]

I used to be a libertarian. Now I'm a monarchist waiting for the return of the king.

[OrwellsHousecat]

I used to be a Librarian but now I have a Kindle

[Mongoloid]

I used to be a liberal. Now I identify as a far-right extremist.

[Coynepurse]

Race based nationalism is not inherently supremacist. In-group preference does not equal xenophobia or bigotry. Believing in a naturally occuring hierarchy of intelligence and character is in line with the scientific literature, not against it. Liberals seem to not accept all of what i just said.

[Davidbirdman]

Interesting ideas. I guess it all depends on your perspective. I was born in Mississippi in 1957, my mom was a lifelong FDR Democrat. We were very poor, I mean, dirt poor. My father was a share cropper and one of my first memories is of being drug up and down rows of cotton on the end of a cotton sack by my mother.
We lived in a big ol ramshackle house with no heat except for a wood burning stove. We survived by getting "commodities" ( Google it) and charity. My father was a raging alcoholic and was terribly affected by the second world war in which he served throughout the whole war in the Pacific and had 2 ships sunk under him. We were forced to listen to him recall every battle with all it's gory details every time he got drunk.
My brothers and sister and I went bare footed in the summer months because shoes were really expensive and were only worn to church and special occasions.
Then came Viet Nam and both of my brothers were drafted and sent to southeast Asia to stop the "DOMINOES" from falling. My mom voted for a Republican one time and that was Nixon because he promised to end the war in Viet and that Lyndon Johnson said was crucial to preserving "democracy" in the world.
Well, Viet Nam fell and America fled and as far as I know, the dominoes didn't fall.
Then came Iraq. After preserving the status quo for the rich oil tycoons and George Bushes, we just had to go back in and get those "weapons of mass destruction", then we also had to go into Afghanistan and install "democracy" so the Taliban would not train terrorists and harm women. So we spent trillions and trillions of dollars and killed thousands and thousands of people and maimed children and blew up a wedding party(for which we had to pay out millions in compensation), we handed over bags of cash to warlords to keep them from killing our troops. Then one day Joe Biden decides that it's time to pull out and leave billions of dollars in weapons for the fanatical muslims to use against their own people and maybe even America one day.
Now, it's time to defend democracy again in Ukraine. Yes we are responsible for the democracy all over the world now.
We have to show Putin who's the boss and don't forget about China. So I guess I'm kinda skeptical about everything because I have heard so many lies in 68 years. Joe Biden said we have to go, so I guess we don't have a choice but I wonder, does Joe Biden's son get a cut of the pie? After all he has an expensive habit to maintain and the military industrial complex has to be fed and....
Oh my God! I just realized that I'm on a rant! Sorry man.I apologize.

[CRegenschen]

At this point i am just done with any form of progressivism
With the crises ahead we need sober pragmatism
The ruling class will loose their legitimacy by not being able to deliver on their promises they have made

[robertholston]

I've never heard of this channel before.


Where I am at currently is I still cannot believe the year that was 2020. I never bought into any of it even the slightest bit. At any moment millions of people in any state can be deemed non-essential and it will be a crime for them to go to work. The entire population can be forced to do things detrimental to one's health all in the name of safety. People can lose their ability to earn a living for themselves because they declined a pharmaceutical product.

Nobody was ever held accountable for any of this. There is no indication that this won't happen again.

[MGPlutoski]

I'd caution against defining 'woke' as a left wing anti-liberalism. There is growing discussion on the left that this kind of identity politics is primarily for petit bourgeois neoliberals. There is an obsessive granularisation of *individual identity* over and above collective solidarity that acts as a kind of divide and conquer against any sort of widespread class action. "The working class is too male, too white, to hetero, too cis, too ableist" on and on. This reflects a move on on the nominal-left towards individualism, I would argue. Identity politics has very little to do with the material conditions of working people and more about the upward mobility of the middle-class. It does little if anything to actually challenge the structure of labour relations and just seeks to make the status quo more colourful. It seeks to elevate a few *individuals* from the 'marginalized' groups into the upper class of neoliberal capitalist society. The conversations around identity politics always have to do with the diversity of elite institutions or pronouns which does nothing to progress towards universal healthcare or increased wages for all working people, for example. More and more it's being recognized as yuppies cosplaying revolutionaries while they lecture and shame working people for not caring about the latest list of banned words and continue to exploit the very identity groups they proclaim to advocate on behalf of. You'd be hard pressed to find a factory worker that cares about CRT or a single black mother worried about being called a 'birthing person.' You won't catch Ibram X. Kendi arguing for anything that actually challenges power structures because then he'd be out of a job. Identity politics fits neatly into neoliberal capitalist logic where it gets packaged, marketed, and sold. If it was actually anti-liberal you wouldn't see every major corporation on the planet getting anxiety over their DEI score.

[johnrogstad]

I'm a total layperson, so if I'm mistaken here, feel free to correct my interpretation:

Both classical liberalism and contemporary identity politics liberalism (and more economically-focused positions like communism) are ALL just different forms of leftism. If they sometimes contradict each other, that's simply because leftism has grown so broad and diverse. But this isn't a super recent development.

My understanding is that leftism emerged directly out of the French Revolution, when those in favor of the revolution sat in the literal _left_ wing of the National Assembly (their version of "parliament") and those in favor of the monarchy sat on the right. This bifurcation then just cemented virtually all political orientations in the West into one fundamental dichotomy: pro-tradition and anti-tradition.

If the "anti-tradition" side went on to contain numerous apparent self-contradictions, that's not surprising, because it wasn't a singular philosophy to begin with. It was simply an anti-monarchy (and often by extension, anti-Church, anti-aristocracy, etc.) postion. And even though this anti-tradition movement proclaimed a distinct set of values at the time (i.e. liberté, egalité, fraternité), it is now blindlying apparent to us that these values taken to their extremes are not always compatible with each other.

But this doesn't mean any particular ideology today is a "false" liberalism. For one thing, it's probably more accurate to say that leftism is the umbrella term and liberalism is a sub-concept of it. But more importantly, whatever you call it, leftism as a whole contained multitudes from the very beginning (including "classical" liberalism, but also the seeds of libertarianism, communism, identity politics, and many others) united only by an opposition to tradition. So it shouldn't be confusing or counter-intuitive that different lefisms today are incompatable. Because there are many ways to oppose tradition.

[jasonxie]

This is probably the best summary I have seen on youtube on the distinctions between different trend of right-wing anti-liberalism and why making the distinction is relevant to our time. Good work!

[jake]

There's something refreshing to even hear these views stated and acknowledged. The left tries to kill by ignoring and re-framing. To them, everything is a power game even discussion of the game. It's nice to see the territory with clear eyes.

[morezenthanzen]

It's ok to criticize Classical Liberalism

[ArmwrestlingJoe]

Young people go through many phases of political identity. I would say most of my teenage and early 20s I would’ve identified with more of a right wing disposition. I’m now 25 and have tried to read more widely and critic strongly held beliefs I once had. I’m now at a point where i dont view things like capitalism, consumerism, technology, or the idea of the “individual” in the same way I once did. I’m sort of in a political limbo currently but trying to sort things out.

[cathomasuw]

When we've been told our entire lives that racism is bad, authoritarianism is bad, denying equal rights to different peoples is bad, stealing the resources and labor of native populations is bad. Almost everyone is fine with these ideas.
Oh but it's perfectly good when they do it to us. Whether it's under the guise of Marxism, globalism, or Zionism. You have to pick one slavemaster because they make up the owners club, and you aren't allowed to have a team.
They tell us every day what they fear most, the only thing that can meaningfully resist them. The only thing that ever has in the modern world.
And we've listened.

[rodrigonegreteprieto]

Brilliant by any standard. I'm quite impressed by the mental clarity of thi guy

[sahaja]

Thanks Michael! This is simple and useful.

[metafication]

Dr. Millerman are you graying or is your camera just higher definition

[Trout]

The issue underlying this entire rant is "democracy". Caring at all about everyone's mostly uninformed and idiotic ideas.

[niccolop.carlyle]

Many academics virtue signal about being sophisticated and "nuanced, " but when it comes to ideas they oppose, they often resort to painting with broad brushes, sweeping generalizations, stereotyping, etc.