The paradox of tolerance: do we suppress authoritarians’ speech before they suppress us?

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1. Modern liberalism has two main planks — property rights and the rule of law. The exalted position of the rule of law in liberal thinking is evidence for the distrust liberals have for ordinary folk. This distrust comes from their mistaken belief, from Thomas Hobbes, that members of society would be at each others’ throats if not for fear of the law and enforcement of the law. Basically they believe that we all despise each other and try to take advantage of each other. Because they believe we are all like them.
   Their veneration for the rule of law tells us that liberalism is simply another form of authoritarianism, but Lucy tries to distinguish between the two.

   Lucy has spoken again of the liberal regard for tolerance, but the liberal regard for tolerance is a myth. Liberals certainly are tolerant of private activities, but are brutally intolerant of threats to their precious economic system.

   Lucy states “The actors around Trump know that crushing protest is crucial to their Christofascist goals if they can return Trump to the White House in January.”
   Possibly so, but that is still conjecture. Trump might not make it to the White House, and if he does, will be hampered by the Constitution. More importantly, Christofascist goals are a sideshow to this problem; they are not the main event. Overstating their importance, worrying though they are, diverts attention from the fact that the crackdown on protest is not restricted to conservative regimes or religious themes.

   Liberal regimes are in it up to their necks, and with much of the current protests worldwide being concerned with energy resources and conservation, as it is in Australia, the crackdown is intended to protect the liberal economic system.
   This is happening across Europe, where a liberal economic system holds sway and is fiercely defending its turf.

   Lucy repeatedly draws attention to “Australian Liberal Party grandees” rubbing shoulders with authoritarian figures in Europe. This is only natural. Liberalism has an authoritarian base.

   Liberalism is the problem.

2. Good article and also gives away what drives much of the corrupt nativist authoritarian movement, whether Christianism or the raw nativism for corporate <1%.

   Fossil fuels are now past climate science denial and into delaying tactics e.g. dissing renewable sources, EVs, batters, wind and solar to prolong their income streams, preceded by Brexit (by UK with US & Russian help) to avoid constraints on corporates, and especially fossil fuels.

   Then the broader ecosystem of these Hungarian govt. foundation think tanks and events supported by PM ‘mini Putin’ Orban, in particular the Danube Inst. partnered with Koch’s Heritage Foundation, for which Abbott and (allegedly his advisor) work; they need a heads up or more scrutiny (Downers & Sheridan too) for being part of this ecosystem which is anti-Ukraine, anti-EU, anti-NATO, anti-immigrant and anti-semitic, just like Putin?

   The fondness for authoritarians meant many former proponents of liberal democracy, as described by Anne Applebaum, have crossed to the dark side of authoritarianism by supporting Brexit, Trump and indirectly Putin, she’d been pointing the finger at former Spectator colleagues & scribes inc. former Thatcher aide John O’Sullivan, Abbott’s Danube boss?

   Abbott needs a heads up on Danube & Heritage links and his alleged support, like Fox, for Ukraine, from GOP ‘never Trumper’ Bill Kristol

   ‘@BillKristol

   10 Dec 2023

   Heritage Foundation and Viktor Orbán are not simply against aid for Ukraine. They are against Ukraine. They hate Ukraine, because a) they’re pro-Putin, and b) they hate liberal democracy, especially one fighting to defend itself against a brutal dictator.’

   And same with Danube will never criticise corrupt nativists authoritarians,but like the ‘intellectual dark web’ spend much of their time to create doubts and confusion amongst liberals on e.g. ‘woke’ & freedom of speech, while disappearing the authoritarians of the right inc Putin, Trump/GOP, Tories, Orban/Fidesz, Netanyahu/Likud, Erdogan/AKP etc.?

   As Jane Mayer said years ago, ‘they are trying to change not just what we think, but how we think’ and if you follow disinfo/misinfo of Koch, Murdoch, Russian etc. media it’s an outcome they desire to discourage and protect themselves from liberal democratic challenges in future; see Project 2025.

3. Not going to comment. it is necessary to think further on on reading, since this piece highlights a dark aspect of our times that many dont notice like the Cosmic Noise, or are too depressed on reading to really offer some thing constructive up.

4. Andrew Smith says many former proponents of liberal democracy “have crossed to the dark side of authoritarianism by supporting Brexit, Trump and indirectly Putin.” That does not make them “former” liberals. That just makes them liberals. Liberalism is authoritarian. Its reliance on the rule of law, its reverence for the rule of law makes it authoritarian almost by definition.

   As for there being a “dark side of authoritarianism”, that’s merely a spat between competing liberals.
   Trump is feared by liberals because he threatened to “drain the swamp”. This was not a threat by Trump to end liberal profiteering and exploitation, after all, he appears to be all in favour of that side of liberalism. His draining the swamp was directed at the liberal love for perpetual war that he apparently saw as a danger to his preferred way of doing business.
   I can hear the howls of protest already. “Liberals are not warmongers!” Well guess what. The US, the country that has been at war since its inception, describes itself as a liberal democracy and no-one disputes that. In fact, the US is regarded as the quintessential liberal democracy.

   A Smith, and just about every liberal on the planet, has cleverly declared support for Putin as support for authoritarianism. This is simply the pot calling the kettle black. Putin’s alleged authoritarian streak is beside the point. Liberals have no qualms in supporting authoritarian regimes that make Putin look like a Sunday school teacher. And it’s not just the US that has overthrown democratic govts to install dictators. The Brits have history there also.

   The liberal fear of Putin derives from his challenge to the way they do business. It’s that simple. He was not considered an authoritarian until 2007 when he challenged the liberal status quo.

   The world is in turmoil at the moment due to the lies about the virtues of liberalism finally coming into full view. Unable to be hidden any longer. That’s the source of protests across the globe and the protests will continue while liberals call the shots.

5. Thanks Andrew. Interesting comment again.
   I’m not going to engage with Steve here although I appreciate the time he has put in to commenting. We don’t agree on a definition of liberalism because he always asserts his is the only accurate understanding of the contested term. He asserts that the left has been an ally of women and the non-white (and non-straight) but he’d find history is much more complicated than that if he cared to look. Steve thinks what he thinks and is welcome to continue doing so naturally. It’s a waste of my time to engage since we don’t share a basis for discussion and he won’t allow that there is more complexity to those discussions.

6. Lucy, thank you for your considered response to my rather forceful comments.

   Let me clear up a little misunderstanding of a point that I should have presented more clearly.

   It’s not that I see my view of liberalism as the correct view. There are many shades within liberalism just as there are many shades within the labour movement. I see my preferred version as the one that takes control within liberalism when push comes to shove, when the pressure’s on, when the ideological stakes are perceived to be high. As we saw in the Voice debate within the Liberal Party, when several pro-Voice members saw resignation as their only option.
   This problem is not restricted to liberalism.

   In any broad-based political movement the hard-nosed, ruthless, scheming types end up in control because the rest are just too nice. We see it now in the Labor Party, where what we might call the pragmatists have control of policy to the dismay of the idealists or purists.

   We saw it in the Russian Revolution where the Bolshevik faction within a nation-wide revolutionary movement took control of the entire movement and ultimately the country.

   So I see no point in discussing outliers who have no power. The dominant view is the one that must be dealt with.

   Thanks again, and thank you for your stimulating articles.

7. And of course, now, it’s as if countries, interest groups, ists and isms are no longer relevant having had their souls removed by the industrial behemoths of digitization; the ‘internet’ of everything, automation, robotics, remote control and their attendant algorithms, along with so-called news, revisionism, entertainment and social media.

   Everyone can get into the act. Techno-feudalism [Varoufakis].

   Now, via AI (ChatGPT etc), under the auspice of assuaging complexity, they would have us abdicate our responsibilities, thoughts, actions and humanity to perpetually machine generated algorithms and their wee cabal of elvish tamperers.

8. I hasten to add Lucy, at the risk of appearing argumentative, that the version of liberalism that I prefer to deal with is the version according to Britannica, Stanford, Ethics Centre etc.
   It is not a version that I created from my own imagination or bias.

   Which raises the question as to why they all see this version as being representative of liberalism. My guess, and I admit to bias here, is that they see that version as the dominant version. To put it slightly more starkly, the version that dominates. The version that dominates, I believe, is the version we have to deal with.

   I think we have only one substantial point of disagreement.
   That is, that the dominant version of liberalism is the cause of most global problems.

9. The Donald seems to be looking more and more like a deflated, hunched, dumpy, wrinkly, whining and saggy faced old man every day.

10. A mistake and a clarification. It was not The Ethics Centre that agreed with my view of liberalism, it was the Political Science site. Its description goes — “Robert Eccleshall in his noted article ‘Liberalism’ has stated that liberalism, in ultimate analysis, is a political ideology intimately associated with the birth and evolution of the capitalist world. So we can say that as a political ideology liberalism means to pursue policies of freedom in the political and economic spheres and clear restrictions on the activities of state authority… Liberalism, strictly speaking, is an offshoot of capitalism…”

    So I note with interest an article by Jason Hickel published yesterday at Pearls and Irritations in which we find this; “What the present moment reveals, once again, is that Western aggression during the “Cold War” was never about destroying socialism, as such. It was about destroying movements and governments in the periphery that sought economic sovereignty. Why? Because economic sovereignty in the periphery threatens capital accumulation in the core. This remains the primary objective of Western aggression today. And it is the single greatest source of violence, war and instability in the world system.”

    As I said at Lucy’s article — Illiberalism – the Dunkley By-election — “Difference at the level of the individual is fine under liberalism. Differing views on sexuality, gender, etc are protected as part of the liberal cult of individualism. But watch out if you want to differ on how you manage your economy. That’s when you find out the true liberal position on difference and diversity.”

    How to relate all this to the very real problems of creeping suppression and protest outlined in the article above?

    After more than forty years of liberal ascendancy, where liberals have had free rein to show their true colours, unrestrained by opposition from an alternative social structure, the disintegration of social bonds that all the great socialist thinkers of the 19th century feared and predicted, have come to pass.
    Reducing society to a collection of seemingly disparate individuals is not just a random consequence of liberalism, it’s inherent to liberalism. Emphasizing the worth of the individual without context, that is, the individual outside of society, creates individuals divorced from their true nature. We are social beings. Humans depend for their well-being on a sense of self-worth and we find that in our social relations.

    But those who are most susceptible to this attack on our true worth, those who truly see themselves, or even vaguely feel themselves as being divorced from society or adrift from society, are forced to find a measure of self-esteem in a search for superiority. By differentiating themselves from others instead of looking for commonality. By looking down on difference instead of appreciating diversity.
    The result is discrimination against those who are different, and the rise of right-wing opportunists ready to exploit the fear of difference.

    And all the while, the liberals who instigated this sickness that is eating away at everything that is truly precious, are telling the world how tolerant of difference they are, and how committed they are to all that is good.

11. Thanks to Lucy for raising a very complex and vexing question in such a comprehensively referenced article.

    Liberalism and its limits of tolerance to the forces that would use their freedom to destroy it, is a matter that attained central importance early in my development of political awareness, back in the 70s in what was then W.-Gernany: the radicals decree was my initial introduction to the concept of defensible democracy.

    To my mind, the obvious questions about this concept remain fundamentally unresolved. Worse still: I have since learned, that variations of these questions have been under inconclusive discussion and review since before Plato extemporised on the inevitable decay of deliberative democracy into populist mob rule into ruthless despotism into self-destructive anomie. Karl Popper warned that democracy can never be secure, for as soon as it appears to be, people will take it for granted and neglect it. And Austrian logician Kurt Gödel himself applied his insights into Incompleteness to constitutional reasoning, and found it to be wanting, of logical necessity.

    Also instructive is Lucy’s refusal to engage in exchange with Steve because their respective definitions of “liberalism” are insufficiently congruent. Steve has offered some indication of his understanding of the term – I would be interested in Lucy’s. For mine, I have long since recognised the usefulness of distinguishing between the original 18th and 19th century “classical liberalism” of thinkers like Adam Smith and J.S.Mill, which did have rather clearly discernible socialist aspects, and the grotesquely distorted caricatures of it as resurrected under the heading of “neo-liberalism” by the likes of von Mises, von Hayek, Friedman, Thatcher and Reagan.

    In that sense, I am reminded of an article on the website of the local Blackheath Philosophy Forum (still available, but with expired security, hence no link), whereby some Sydney philosophy lecturer, in what I considered a rather hair-raising conflation of secularism, materialism and atheism, painted himself into a very doubtful corner of recognising Joseph Stalin as preeminent representative of liberalism! Go figger!

    But let’s not forget, that the Pinochet-coup in Chile served to advance the cause of neo-liberal aims as enunciated by the Chicago School of Economics.

    About a century earlier, one Karl Marx severely reproached the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin for conceptualising, in the name of liberty, “a most oppressive form of barracks communism”. Yet another instance of the political spectrum not extending in a linear fashion from left to right, but rather in a horseshoe-shaped, with the extreme ends being closer to each other than they are to the political middle ground.

    The notion that liberalism can morph into totalitarianism, and rather easily at that, has been explored elsewhere, by Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville under the headings of “Tyranny of the majority” and Soft Despotism:

    After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

    I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.

    Tocqueville. Democracy in America

    It’s a subject that has been ably updated by Slavoy Zizek in Liberalism as politics for a race of devils.

    As I said before: there seems no convincing resolution to the dilemma of liberalism either resolutely negating itself from within, or meekly succumbing to destruction by forces from without.

    It’s enough to drive one to distraction, and to seek solace and refuge outside of political philosophy altogether.

12. Steve Davis: Strawman argument?

    ‘A Smith, and just about every liberal on the planet, has cleverly declared support for Putin as support for authoritarianism. This is simply the pot calling the kettle black. Putin’s alleged authoritarian streak is beside the point. Liberals have no qualms in supporting authoritarian regimes that make Putin look like a Sunday school teacher.’

    So the ‘liberals’ supporting which ‘authoritarian regimes’? Again depends on your definition, e.g. like many US right use the word ‘liberal’ as -ve dog whistle towards the centre, and describing as communists or lefties?

13. Arnd, many thanks for your wide-ranging input.

    I completely understand your urge to seek solace outside political philosophy. I’m forever glad that I’ve had an interest in Eastern philosophy since my teens; it serves that purpose.

14. Andrew Smith asks in his usual cryptic manner (that’s me being polite) “So the ‘liberals’ supporting which ‘authoritarian regimes’? Again depends on your definition, e.g. like many US right use the word ‘liberal’ as -ve dog whistle towards the centre, and describing as communists or lefties? ”

    To Andrew’s first question — does he really want me to list them all?

    Let’s look at just one that has already been mentioned by Arnd, or we’ll be here forever.

    From wiki — “An authoritarian military dictatorship ruled Chile for seventeen years, between 11 September 1973 and 11 March 1990. The dictatorship was established after the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup d’état backed by the United States on 11 September 1973. The government was advised by the Chicago Boys, a team of free-market economists educated in the United States. Chile was drastically transformed from an economy isolated from the rest of the world, with strong government intervention, into a liberalized, world-integrated economy, where market forces were left free to guide most of the economy’s decisions.”

    Remember that the coup occurred at the height of the Cold War, so it’s in line with the observation by Jason Hickel that I gave in an earlier comment, that “Western aggression during the “Cold War” was never about destroying socialism, as such. It was about destroying movements and governments in the periphery that sought economic sovereignty. Why? Because economic sovereignty in the periphery threatens capital accumulation in the core.”

    To Andrew’s second question.
    I find it interesting that Andrew, while appearing to defend liberalism with his questions, has made no attempt to articulate what he sees as the essence of liberalism. He has given no summary that could be seen as a reasonable representation of liberalism in action. In fact, his second question could be seen as an attempt to ensure that the murkiness that characterises perceptions of liberalism stay murky. He wants his “depends on your definition” situation to continue forever.

    This is a consistent theme with Andrew. When you think back to his many comments over months and years, we get no sense of what Andrew actually stands for. We know all about his dislikes, a little about his likes, but we have no sense of the philosophy that drives him. Is Andrew hiding something? Or is this just Andrew being a typical liberal with no coherent philosophy to declare?

15. In a comment above I mentioned that reducing society to a collection of seemingly disparate individuals is not just a random consequence of liberalism, it’s inherent to liberalism. An article in the Guardian today focuses on this problem, but blames the growth of social media.

    Max Jeganathan in an article titled “Social media lies can unleash a dangerous contempt for others – We can stop it”, has done a great job, by referencing the two recent knife attacks, of articulating the problems that he explains are derived from “our atomised society”.

    “Both post-attack escalations had telling similarities. A disregard for truth. An elevation of pre-existing prejudice. The inflammatory power of social media. They also reflect something that has crept into our public square that fuels disproportionate disfunction. Contempt. More than mere disagreement, it thinks less of those with whom we disagree. We don’t just reject ideas and identities, we dehumanise those who hold them. This “othering” leads us to exclude others from the community of humanity… In societies, contempt is kryptonite to social trust… Hurt is weaponised. Differences are moralised. Those not like us are stigmatised. And – in the words of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin – “It seems that more and more we come to expect less and less of each other.”

    Max correctly concluded that these problems arise from “our atomised society” but by putting the blame on social media, is essentially declaring that prior to social media everything was fine. In fact, the problem was detected centuries ago as our modern economic system was taking shape.

    I wrote a 2200 words article years ago, explaining that liberalism cannot have an ethical basis. It turns out that Max Jeganathan, who is a senior research fellow at the Centre For Public Christainity, is undertaking a PhD on the ethical foundations of liberalism. If Max is true to his undoubtedly sound ethical convictions, this may be the most concise PhD thesis in history.

    Check out his very good article.
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/28/social-media-lies-can-unleash-a-dangerous-contempt-for-others-we-can-stop-it

16. Steve

    If Max is true to his undoubtedly sound ethical convictions, this may be the most concise PhD thesis in history.

    Right up there with John Cage’s 4’33” and Wittgenstein’s “Worüber man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen!”

    Re. your mention of Eastern philosophy as refuge from the irreducible indeterminacy of fully developed liberalism liberalism: I don’t know much about that … – except that Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach proved very useful in lending shape and structure to my youthful political ruminations – and that book does seem to include a fair bit of eastern influence.

    I arrived at an understanding of the nihilistic indeterminacy of fully developed liberalism over thirty years ago – AND I DO RECALL THIS AS A QUITE DISCONCERTING REALISATION, despite the fact that I came prepared: my father had introduced me to paradoxes like Epimenides’ “All Cretans are liars” and Socrates’ “I know that I know nothing” during my childhood.

    I caught myself rather quickly: if nothing is determined a priori, then we have to generate our own determinations – i.e. we have to replace heteronomy with true autonomy, or as I put: squarely face up to the responsibilities that come with the freedoms of true anarchism.

    But that invariably turns out a few bridges too far for conventional bourgeois liberals: they merely expect the powers and authorities of the state to forcibly impose the nihilistic absence of definitions – which, of course, is extraordinarily threatening to those who do rely with their livelihoods on state authority to maintain a workable reference framework, and who consequently turn for support and validation to political strongmen and their simplistic agendas.

    That these agendas are not sustainable – “all that is solid melts into air” – and will, of necessity, eventually fall into a nihilistic abyss of their own, is unfortunately of no immediate help.

    All this was predicted, of course, some 2,000 years ago, and thus I did find refuge by rediscovering, for myself, and at my own pace, my own anarcho-communist understanding of Christian doctrine.

    It’d be interesting to compare notes with Max Jeganathan when he has completed his PhD.

17. Arnd, many thanks for that personal history.
    It’s always fascinating to learn of someone else’s voyage of discovery, moreso in this case as you ended up in pretty much the same place as me.

    I won’t go into my details, except to say that when I read Henry Lawson’s poem The Faces In the Street at about age 10, I knew then whose side I was on. It still grips me today.

    You mentioned that it would be good to compare notes with Max on completion of his thesis. The same thought occurred to me. I would love to know the angle from which he approaches the subject.

18. Arnd, Steve,I am mightily impressed by your erudition, know
    ledge and articulation,and I might mistakenly give myself some understanding of your discourse,but I think it would be helpful to ,at least occasionally,put these things into terms that, at least us shitkickers can digest.I’m pretty sure most of us venting our spleen on a forum like this are wanting the same things, and are on the same page, so to speak.
    What I would personally like to know, is how are these fine words going to change mankinds charge into oblivion.

19. Harry Lime,

    how are these fine words going to change mankinds charge into oblivion.

    They are not, I’m afraid. Not immediately, anyway. If I am not mistaken – and I don’t think I am – then it will get worse before it gets better. And I’m not saying this lightly: I’ve got a daughter in her early twenties, who will pay heavily for our generation’s failure to get a handle on the problems that are now spiralling out of control.

    As for your suggestion to “put these things so into terms that, at least us shitkickers can digest” – I’ve been trying to do that for over thirty years now. But, as they say, “Nice try, but no cigar!”

    I’m not sure why. It could be because it is I who is mistaken. But I don’t believe so. Things are broadly turning out as I thought they would in the event that we continue to follow our leaders down the path of hubris and institutionalised ignorance – which, back then, I considered so highly improbable as not to seriously consider.

    Yet here we are! We still have not moved on from Francis Fukuyama’s somewhat premature declaration of the universal acceptance of political and economic “liberalism” marking “The End of History” as we know it.

    Google “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism”, and you might find yourself introduced to Mark Fisher’s critical analysis of Capitalist Realism. The earlier mentioned Slavoy Zizek made contributions to this slim yet very erudite volume – yet even he can’t theorise his way out of our contemporary malaise. And Mark Fisher himself tragically committed suicide not long after publication of his book about a decade ago.

    I think there are two major issues that might explain my inability to communicate my ideas.

    Firstly, some complexity is indeed involved, especially of the self-referential kind. Someone famous – it might have been Daniel Kahnemann – observed that “it is difficult to discuss issues with people who have difficulty grasping the concept of compound interest”.

    Secondly, though, and perhaps more importantly, is that, unlike the advocates of more popular critiques and remedies, I do not blame others – immigrants, say, or dole bludgers, or venture capitalists, or the 1%, or Aborigines, or Donald Trump, or the Atlas Network. Even Putin and his coterie of billionaire oligarch war mongers were enabled by Western movers and shakers, and left-of-centre ‘liberals” did not, and never have, developed any novel economic understanding that could provide credible alternatives to the neo-liberal agenda that took over as the post-WWII Keynesian compact ran up against its natural limits.

    Approaching our contemporary problems with a bit of investigative curiosity led me to the seriously discomforting realisation that, in the first instance, we have only ourselves to blame – and as I found out subsequently, that’s not a message that people are especially keen to confront. Not if there are other, more reassuring alternatives on offer.

20. Steve Davis, et al.

    The Musk/censorship seems to have taken off as a topic as the US Presidential election nears. I just caught part of an SBS dcco on Elon
    Musk and the Twitter Files, where he debunks Twitter as leftist censorship rather than conservative stuff.

    All I can say is, after watching both him and his critics is, one-all draw. He did well to alert the public over State intrusiveness:Gaza is the consequence of such thinking. But I think he is very Murdoch-oriented…Mogul libertarian.

    (wondering what Lucy Hamilton makes of him).

    One-all, but it is a win to have the issue out in the open.

    He is a good example of why geriatrics should be kept away from politics and policy, in so far asTrump, Biden etc are way too slow for rogue operators in America and off shore

    But that is the system. Musk seems crafty and has discovered the luxury of firing into the citadel from the overhanging rocks rather than being a target. And some of his foes have been inept, although ,of course, they lack his resources. The woman charged with running soc media surveillance also came across as disenjenuous when it comes to honesty. Cogntive bias or just plain old prejudice?

    Anyway, am off Twitter for now, their censors must have got me.

21. Harry, thanks for your interest.
    As you imply, fine words have been spoken for millennia, yet we still deal with the same old problem — the need of a certain class to dominate. In the modern era, that’s liberals.
    That need to dominate has finally brought us to the problem you highlight; our charge to oblivion.
    We face I believe, two paths to oblivion.

    First, if it was not for a blind adherence to the ideology upon which our economic system is based, we could have and would have changed course years ago, to avoid the worst of climate change in particular and environmental destruction in general. Never forget that decades ago we acted globally with admirable speed to neutralize the threat to the ozone layer. My gut feeling is that our cultural managers learned from that, because despite torrents of fine words and noble aspirations, combatting global warming proceeds at a snail’s pace and is resisted by certain sectors every inch of the way. But at least we seem to be moving in the right direction.

    Our second path to oblivion is by way of nuclear war.
    It’s noteworthy that the same news media outlets that fight against CO2 reduction are also involved in downgrading diplomacy, promoting distrust and coflict, and urging nuclear weapons proliferation. That’s the only way to describe our involvement with AUKUS. We are now part of the problem. As I said on another thread, the possession of nuclear weapons capacity has a corrosive effect on judgement and moral outlook. We will not be immune to that despite being a minor player.

    So on the face of it, it’s all doom and gloom, but I see a glimmer of hope.
    We are watching the demise of the most powerful empire in history, the empire that is stoking most of the world’s problems.

    The US currently has either outright control of most global institutions, or exerts significant influence within policy-making institutions. Until recent times that control and influence allowed the US to do pretty much whatever it liked, even to defiance of international law. And it did so without serious resistance. But in recent times that has changed. We see African nations that host US bases telling the US to leave. We see Yemen supporting the Palestinians by attacking US shipping not only in the Red Sea, but even in the wider Indian Ocean. Yemen has created a no-go zone for shipping that supports the Gaza genocide. Such things were unthinkable even a year ago. As US power declines further, its ability to stoke conflict will decline also.

    Like Arnd, I lean towards the anarchist perspective as the best solutions to these problems. Anarchism is not chaos from a lack of government as the propaganda would have us believe, it’s people doing it for themselves. People cooperating to solve problems. To build local infrastructure. We see it already in Australia with the emergence of local renewable energy projects. That’s anarchism in action.
    In 2004 a Landline segment on ABC TV featured a group of rural landholders who had decided to run their properties in common, that is, with boundary fences removed and all having access to all of the resources on their watershed. Not only had the move proved to be economically more efficient and therefore profitable, but those involved had even been able to set aside a sensitive area for conservation purposes, something that was simply inconceivable previously. So as well as purely economic outcomes, they have been able to realise social and cultural outcomes. They possibly don’t know it, but the framework they have put in place is very similar to the anarchist ideal as put forward by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in the mid 1800s.

    And check out the success of the Mondragon projects in the Basque region, from the Guardian just a few days ago.
    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/24/in-the-us-they-think-were-communists-the-70000-workers-showing-the-world-another-way-to-earn-a-living
    People doing it for themselves.
    As social conditions deteriorate we will see more community independence of this nature. The beauty of community projects such as those I’ve mentioned is that they are free of dogma. There’s no ideology dictating how things will be done. This means strength through adaptability as circumstances change.

    So Harry, I’m with the great anarchist philosopher Proudhon, who believed that we are all born with an innate sense of justice.
    Despite all the ills and stupidities of which we are capable, my hope is with people. The question is; how much will we have to suffer before we see widespread recognition of the practical value of a commitment to community enterprise? How long before all of us truly realise the extent of the bleak wilderness of alienation and separation anxiety that is thrust upon us by our liberal economic system?
    Arnd has raised the problem many of us have, that “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.” But that’s merely due to centuries of conditioning. We have been conditioned to think that way. We evolved and progressed as a species through community solidarity and endeavour. That’s the only solution to the charge to oblivion. And because it’s part of our make-up, it will emerge naturally. The foundations of our hi-tech society were laid long before capitalism became a force, and many of the most important developments since were products of community enterprise.

    Paul, I’ve never used twitter, but as far as social media in general goes, despite its problems I see it as playing a significant role in the re-emergence of community based solutions.

22. In reply to both Arnd and Steve,I understand fully, and have been viewing the planet and it’s inhabitants in a like manner for forty years.Now that I’m in the home stretch , it worries and angers me that my grandchildren,and great grandchildren are going to wear the shit we didn’t deal with.
    For what its worth,I’ve always been a non conformist,and have been called an anarchist many times,but I’ve been much closer to the truth than most.Cheers.

23. Harry, wear that anarchist badge with pride! 🙂

    Someone a lot smarter than me once said that when you agree with the majority, it’s time you had a re-think.

24. Harry, the Guardian today has a great First Dog On The Moon cartoon about our march to oblivion.

    In the comment section there was another take on the matter Arnd raised, that “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.”

    From the great science fiction writer Ursula LeGuin, also an anarchist if I recall correctly — “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. “

25. From the Guardian today, people doing it for themselves — anarchism in action.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/19/we-call-it-our-farm-meet-the-australians-swapping-supermarket-shopping-for-farm-shares

    We worry about how to change the system, but perhaps the system should be doing the worrying.
    As more and more people drift away from the system without actually leaving it, the system will be forced to adjust to the people.