Traditionalism: the belief that could doom us all
It can be difficult to understand what connects free market devotees, white ethnostate militants, Christian Nationalists, tech bros and mere conservatives in the West. One concept that can help understand their rough alliance is traditionalism. In fact it draws together an international contingent that shares goals and enemies, shaping domestic and foreign policy against the interests of the majority.
The international rise of traditionalism became a quantum leap more obvious over recent weeks. Between calls for televised executions sponsored by Coke, the welcoming of the end of democracy, the beginning of the doom of American IVF and rampant Islamophobia in Britain, the eruptions are becoming louder. This week prospective US President Trump is welcoming the leader of Europe’s traditionalist illiberal movement, Viktor Orbán, at Mar-a-Lago.
Adherents of the esoteric heights of philosophical Traditionalism believe that we live in the depraved Age of Slaves – democracy – that must reach its destruction. Our current Kali Yuga, dark age, will be followed by a rebirth into the golden age, the theocratic Age of Priests, in this cyclical rhythm. It is a spiritual belief that demands hierarchy, order and an end to every poison that comes from the Modern age: reason, freedom, equality, progress. These ideas are inspired by the writings of René Guénon and Julius Evola.
Two of the most influential adherents are Steve Bannon, formerly Donald Trump’s first Chief Strategist, and Vladimir Putin’s alleged intellectual inspiration, Aleksandr Dugin. Benjamin Teitelbaum’s hours of interviews with Bannon, and other key figures in the global Right, on the subject are fascinating.
They are radicalising figures. West-loathing Dugin, for example, earned a number of travel bans by calling for genocide in Ukraine in 2014, to rid that valuable land of the “race of bastards.” He helped create in Russia “an atmosphere in which violent internal repression and armed foreign aggression seem natural.” For Dugin, and Putin, a Russian empire will lead this new age. Bannon proclaimed in 2013 that he wanted to destroy the American state and “bring everything crashing down.” Now Bannon runs his media campaign, which is understood to be a significant force on the MAGA+ Right, and plots to reignite his dream to unite Europe into a Traditionalist force. Bannon boasted of his time spent planning with Dugin.
Julius Evola, who shaped the key tenets of Guénon’s writing into its current form, is a pivotal figure feeding into libertarian apocalypticism amongst the tech bros and neo fascists of the internet, disseminated outwards from being the guide of self-styled intellectual fascists. Manosphere podcaster Joe Rogan and former-Murdoch darling Tucker Carlson have both amplified his ideas. These concepts infuse the ideology promoted by the neoreactionary inspiration of the tech magnates, and “leading intellectual figure on the New Right,” Curtis Yarvin. Yarvin shares the fascists’ goal to speed up the destruction of the Kali Yuga in Accelerationism. He schemes for the destruction of the government (and other liberal institutions such as academia, known collectively as the Cathedral) to be replaced by a monarchy. His essays were mainstreamed to the New Right by the Claremont Institute, an Atlas Network partner. Yarvin’s plan to unmake the government is now set out in clear steps by the Atlas-partner Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership. It is hardly surprising that the billionaire owners of the platforms of civil discourse are investing in potential boltholes in New Zealand, Hawaii and are shooting for Mars.
The popular version of traditionalism, by contrast with this “philosophical” version, appears a nostalgia for a past that never existed. Instead its proponents create a past whitened of sin and pain which narrative they mandate as the only truth. This traditionalism is a site of rampant hypocrisy: a cavalcade of adulterers pontificate about the sacredness of the family and the sinfulness of the diverse modern world. It is a mechanism for control, deployed by people who resent the power they’ve been forced to share with communities they despise. While some only wish to recreate that past, with no care for how differently others experienced the White men’s better days, for others the intentions are extreme.
Populist traditionalism ties together the bigotries against shared enemies of the international Right. Unlike the spiritual racism of the esoterics (handily borrowing Aryan ideals that lighter skin means higher caste and more priestly), this version is overtly biologically and essentially racist. While China is a primary international target of the movement, the most violent bigotry is directed at Muslims, denoted as Brown, and whose lives, according to the Right, are clearly worthless. This aspect of traditionalism unites the currently acceptable Hindu nationalists with the currently acceptable Israeli Jewish nationalists.
Thus in Britain, the Conservative Party Whip lost his role over vile Islamophobic comments. Much of the longterm Tory Islamophobia is spelt out by politicians of ministerial seniority, often from immigrant origins themselves. India and Israel have deep political connections, to a substantial extent united by Islamophobia. Former Secretary of State for the Home Department Suella Braverman depicted ceasefire rallies, calling for an end to the slaughter of innocents in Palestine, as “hate marches.” Any support for human rights by a multicultural array of Britons – White and Black, Jewish bloc, and Muslim Brits – is thus depicted as a violent Muslim insurgency and a sign that they are not fit to live in Britain.
This fits with recent investigations into Paul Marshall, the hedge-fund multi-millionaire, and the beliefs implied by his Twitter (X) activity. Marshall has retweeted calls for a range of Islamophobic arguments including the mass deportation of immigrants. Marshall is a major funder of GB News (Britain’s equivalent to US Fox News or Sky Australia), UnHerd, and has put in a bid to buy The Telegraph, the preeminent “conservative” paper in Britain. He is also one of the founding supporters of the Atlas-linked Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, funding its global anti-climate action agenda and its mission to impose traditionalist values.
In America, Donald Trump is also calling for mass deportation of immigrants. Steve Bannon predicted that these would encompass at least 14 million people. Logistics suggest this scale would be impossible, but the targeting of Brown Americans and residents will be ghastly. Trump’s “top immigration adviser,” Stephen Miller authored the plan to take children – even babies from their mothers’ arms – because crossing the border to apply for asylum made their parents “criminals,” based on his White supremacist beliefs. He is now strategising to assemble an ad hoc army for a military operation that will seize people in mass raids across the country, place them in concentration camps, then apparently deport them in multiple flights each day, overriding all their rights. He intends Republican state armies to invade resistant Democrat states. This sounds like civil war.
Esoteric Traditionalism demands patriarchy. Populist traditionalism unites American Christian Nationalists with the range of MAGA Trumpists in their determination to enforce the nuclear family as the central unit of order. They intend to control people’s sexuality. LGBTQIA+ sexuality and identities are to be eliminated; people who won’t be “cured” will be killed. Women are to be constrained to the home and subordination to a husband. The demarcation of IVF as a current target denotes both that there will be no reproduction without God, and also that birth control is the next target. Already figures are arguing that birth control harms women physically and socially. Life beginning at conception eliminates several key methods of contraception as the start of the new battle that will join abortion-elimination in the battle to deny all reproductive rights. The Right also has begun fighting no-fault divorce (despite the fact that there was as much as a 16% reduction in female suicide after states introduced no-fault divorce). It is not just the belief that women must be returned to their place that drives these measures: this Western Right also promotes natalism – the idea that White women must breed to prevent “race suicide.”
The recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland was a hotbed of traditionalist radicalisation of the Trumpist base. Trump also declared himself ready to claim “ultimate and absolute revenge” on his opponents. Jack Posobiec is a conspiracist and Lincoln Fellow at the formerly prestigious Atlas Network-partner, the Claremont Institute. He claimed, in typical trolling rightwing spirit that his comments were satirical, but this is the way the movement has long mainstreamed ideas. He said: “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely.” Typical of a number of speakers at the event, he promoted the attempt to overturn the last election: “We didn’t get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it.” It is hardly surprising that this iteration of the event allowed open Neo Nazis to spruik antisemitic propaganda: there is considerable overlap in the projects now.
Another key Trump-supporter, Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, has illustrated how biological racism is core to the new Right with even the Republican Party’s bowdlerised vision of Martin Luther King Jr to be abandoned. This deployment of MLK to appeal to Black voters has been superseded by the depiction of Black people as essentially inferior and a threat. Kirk also argued, in a dog-whistling display that his listeners know refers to Black people, that executions should be shown on television and children made to watch. He joked that Coke should sponsor that exhibition.
Steve Bannon spoke with Tucker Carlson late in 2023 promoting the Great Replacement conspiracy. Both men evoked a White-race-hating “elite” replacing uncontrollable White populations with manageable non-White immigrants. Bannon praised Viktor Orban as the “political and … public intellectual leader of this.” Carlson has interviewed and praised both Orbán and Putin for his radicalised audience, displaying both electoral authoritarian regimes as models. Putin has been described as a neo-Stalinist dictator, so supporting his more violent measures can inflict costs on the less ostentatious Right. Orbán, leaning towards subtle authoritarianism is a lower-cost role model. Orbán has much to gain from Republicans’ strategic support of Putin’s military goals, and a longterm observer of the authoritarian-admiring Right believes Republicans aim to leave eastern and maybe central Europe for Putin to take. It is debatable whether racism or “family values” bigotry is a stronger driving force in the Putin and Orban traditionalist sphere. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat argued in her study of authoritarians that the “big continuity and constant is homophobia…even more than race.” Viktor Orbán’s prioritising of the “traditional family” and targeting of LGBTQIA people certainly makes him a hero on this Right. Traditionalism ultimately embraces both forms of prejudice as required.
Several Australian Liberal Party grandees and apparatchiks are integrated into the Orbán traditionalist propaganda campaign. Tony Abbott decried “immigrants swarming across the borders in Europe.” Alexander Downer disdained immigrant “bantustans.” Both seem fixed in the “Clash of Civilisations” mentality that characterised the 9/11 aftermath. Kevin Andrews complained that “[p]opular ideas and current lifestyle choices militate against the acceptance of appropriate policy responses” to a purported birthrate crisis. This natalist position allows no scope for lives that don’t promote breeding within sacred marriage. Last year Downer spoke at another Orbán event, criticising the Left’s “divisiveness” caused by “identity politics.” Thus the traditionalists delegitimise voices that experience life differently: we would be united if the rest would only accept straight, White, “Christian” men’s experience as the only reality. News Corp’s Greg Sheridan criticised the “green madness” which is the “new religion” taught in schools, signalling the fossil fuel agenda entwined with this ideology. It’s likely these Australians’ traditionalism is populist (as one imagines is the traditionalism of Orbán and Putin); it remains to be seen whether any esoteric Traditionalists number amongst them. Regardless, they too despise the democratic project that allows freedom to their “woke” enemies.
Opinion-writers are trying to suggest that democracy is more resilient than our worst fears have portended. As Protect Democracy senior lawyers pointed out recently, however, the USA played its Get out of Jail card when Biden was finally named Trump’s replacement on the night of the 6th. It is valuable to understand this illiberal movement as a process of “competitive authoritarianism,” where the democratic project is hollowed out until the incumbent can no longer be ousted, as appears to be the achievement for Orban. The election itself remains but it is increasingly meaningless. Where our democratic projects worked for so many years to extend the franchise to men without property, to women, to non-White people, now the efforts work to reverse the goals as these traditionalists aim to entrench themselves as the new aristocrats. In Australia, Tony Abbott tried to resuscitate knights and dames. In Britain, departing Prime Ministers install Atlas Network figures into the House of Lords to shape the country more directly. In the US, notable figures have begun to echo radical Right talking points that women should not have the vote; working people have long struggled to vote there with elections held on weekdays, and fewer booths in poorer districts. Anti-majoritarian mechanisms pervade their system. Republicans now speciously boast that the USA was never a democracy as part of the efforts to kill such flawed representation as they allow.
Nostalgia for a mythic past pervades internationally-connected, far-right movements and it is closely allied to the neoliberal project. The Atlas Network is the primary driver of the neoliberal alliance globally. Its forces have been integrated into the populist-nativist Right in Europe, and they are now driving the American democratic project further towards authoritarianism. The forces allied around the Atlas Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 for a new Republican president are formidable and far more organised than Trump’s team was in 2017 when they carried out two-thirds of Heritage’s previous Mandate for Leadership. Project 2025’s Advisory Board combines many Atlas partner bodies with a range of the Christian Nationalist organisations that make up the Council for National Policy (CNP). The new Mandate lists many oppressive social policies intended to be carried out by a President functioning mostly by executive action, overriding a devastated federal workforce where 50,000 are to be sacked. (Ron DeSantis’s vow to start “slitting throats” of federal workers in August was echoed by a Trump supporter beheading his federal-employee father and broadcasting the head on social media in a “Call to arms for American Patriots.”) The often-traditionalist libertarian donor class and the Christofascists are now more closely aligned in goals than they have ever been.
The 2025 Mandate provides again the evidence that these traditionalists know their goals are minoritarian, but they will impose them on the majority using any authoritarian mechanism they can devise.
If they succeed in winning a Trump victory, it will also mean a rolling back of Biden’s impressive program promoting the transition to renewables. It will mean a crumbling of any nascent global effort to combat the climate catastrophe. This is hardly surprising since many of the plutocrats who fund the junktanks in the Atlas Network and the CNP stem from the fossil fuel sector. The support for Russian imperial goals, alongside other petrostates, will hasten the climate catastrophe.
Australians might believe a Trump victory’s social implications remain distant for us, but our rightwing parties seem determined to impose their minoritarian will like their American role models. Liberal politicians, Atlas-connected Advance – unfortunately aided by an awkwardly-timed police mistake – worked to inflame nativist-populist grievance in a by-election last weekend. Policy is abandoned; divisive propaganda is the replacement. These politicians continue to support nuclear reactors primarily as a further delay on climate action and, when we experience the climate catastrophe as a worse permacrisis than we might have, will do the bare minimum to support affected communities.
The traditionalism that is being promoted by the Radical Right around the world will doom us all, but not before stripping our freedoms.
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Lucy,
A disturbing read. The rise of the tech billionaires is a troubling factor…they have achieved their wealth…so now they want all the power they can get. However, one thought might be that these men are so competitive and selfish that they might even defeat themselves, but with grave consequences for the rest of us.
George Orwell pales.
The true face of liberalism was exposed in the 1970s and ‘80s with the rise of Thatcher and Reagan. The cult of individualism flowered to such an extent that Thatcher was emboldened enough to declare “There is no society — there’s only individuals and families.”
And now we see the consequences of fifty odd years of telling people that their values are more important than social values. That their rights are more important than social rights.
But to put that last one more sharply, and relevant to this article, that their rights are more important than human rights.
The world of chaos, anguish, and pain that we see about us is to a very large extent a victory — the realization of the liberal dream.
Traditionalism.., sticking to the old, known, simple, childish, egofocussed, selfcentred, the known world of mememe-ism. Some of today’s rich biggies are just swollen kiddies, the fat dream a reality to them.., and you and I can get stuffed.
Excellent article.
Lots of interconnective informational strands revealing disturbing nests within concerning webs.
I hadn’t encountered the term ‘traditionalism’ before.
Historically, the belief that all moral truth can only be derived from divine revelation passed down through tradition, and is incapable of being attained through human reason.
Not exactly an ideology I’m entirely comfortable with.
Thank you for your sterling work, Lucy.
cb.
Thanks so much Corvus – really appreciated. And thanks for the other comments.
Steve Davis – what’s your ideal replacement?
Great article, Lucy.
So many blue bits to go at, my head spins.
And more ‘ists’ and ‘isms’ than one can poke a stick at. 25 years ago, a witty and snarky mate said to me, “The era of ‘ists’ and ‘isms’ is well finished.” How clouded was is crystal ball?
I am prepossessed by the thought that the fossil fuel industry is economically and resource failing, and close to bankrupt. Now squawking with subterfuge in some bid to hang on to money and power …. neither of which is possible.
I am also prepossessed by the thought that the evangelists unleashed by Reagan appear cringing cowards and scroungers peddling fear and oblivion for a buck.
And together as landed immigrants and mercantile militants, they have no ideas to rub together other than to dis immigrants on the move, refugees and all ‘others’.
And perhaps the soulless dull coders of silicon valley see no future other than war games, so they hop on the band wagon.
Together a dung heap of squawking losers, rallied by desperate loser politicians and their flunkies who license themselves under America’s pesky Bill of Rights and Constitution to spread hocus-pokus and gobbledygook to and from any angle they can dream up. A lawyer’s paradise.
Putin and Bibi have seen it and opportunistically run amok. Other states stand by quivering – what to do? Bury the dead, then detente?
Whilst Uncle Sam looks over its shoulder and again thinks of resort to civil war, without regard for its modern habit of externalizing everything.
More grist for the msm, social media, and the future Holywood mill :-
Endless discombobulation for the goggle-eyed and others predisposed to myths and the blood of dead gunslingers.
Is it pain and ouch, or avert the senses? We only have a mind a mouth and a vote per se.
Traditionalism,
The school of ‘thought’ that prescribed hemlock for Socrates, and excommunication for Spinoza.
Often overfond of dick deity brands.
Traditionalism is evident to me on a daily basis.
Any tosser wearing a nice suit, white shirt, and a tie can decree what is right, and what is wrong.
The skin colour is of less significance, its the wrapping, of the confident speaker on our screens, and we fall for it all the time
Who will live and who will die is dictated by the rules based order, and we know the rules, and you dont..
Young folk in casual attire are making a point about our looming extinctions on the West something bridge.
But we can fix that says the screens so some burk pops up, suitably attired, and assures us that extinction is of less concern than getting down to the shopping mall promptly.
The machine plods on relentless.
And the irony of all this white male dominance is that every one of them is a descendant of immigrants. They have no more right to profess that they are sons of America than do the immigrants currently crossing the borders.
Unless they are of Native American (constantly denigrated by the term “Indian”) descent they are themselves immigrants.
Ideal replacement?
Lucy, thanks for the question.
I’ll give a quick response, because your question is in fact THE QUESTION when it comes to political philosophy, and THE QUESTION deserves a considered, in depth answer.
Here’s a quick response off the top of my head.
We were very close to an ideal situation immediately after WW2, a situation that was further improved by the Whitlam government.
Ideal in the sense of a situation that gave everyone a reasonable chunk from their list of political and social preferences.
We had enough union influence to prevent outrageous exploitation, and to provide a reasonable living wage through the arbitration system.
We had enough social security legislation to eliminate many but not all of the cracks through which some might fall.
We had enough private enterprise to allow entrepreneurial expression for those so inclined.
We had what some described as a welfare state.
But for liberals, that was not ideal.
Despite the original philosophers of liberalism such as Locke being forced to concede that the national wealth belonged to all, they were determined to bring about a system in which the national wealth became available to those who could grab the biggest chunk possible for themselves.
And so with the 1980s ascendancy of liberalism we saw and still see, a whittling away of the gains that working people had made over centuries.
Instead of seeing unionism as an evolutionary step forward that would ensure that everyone got a fair share of the national wealth, liberals see unionism as a barrier to their greater accumulation of wealth. A barrier to their class interests. And so liberalism was based on deceit from the very beginning. Their expressed interpretation of national wealth was a distraction.
With liberalism totally in control now, we see a slow strangling of union influence and a move towards a neo-feudal social system.
I have to stop, because I could go on for hours.
But one thing I am sure of.
The liberal pursuit of individual rights ensures that those born with a head start in life get more than their fair share, and also get to enjoy putting their feet on the necks of those struggling with little. And what do those who struggle do when they see no way out of their dilemma? They turn to the loudest voice that promises a way out.
Get rid of the liberal economic system and most of the problems you see, will disappear.
I think the way forward in Aus is to promote the commons (in common parlance ‘a fair go’), because every child born deserves to thrive.
Our world is abundant and we have the technology to provide enough for all to thrive.
Good read and could include along with Christian ‘dominionism’ and the like, white nativism links across Russia, the Anglosphere and Europe including not just Bannon, but Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings, Renaud Camus and Jean Raspail* et al. that have become central to the right or corrupt nativist authoritarianism
The ever present link includes ‘the most influential unknown man in America’ (Linda Chavez in NYT), dec. white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton originally of fossil fueled ZPG with Paul ‘population bomb’ Ehrlich, admired white Australia policy, visited and hosted by SPA; Tanton was described as the ‘racist architect of the modern anti-immigration movement’ (SPLC) and nowadays his ‘network’ in the US shares donors with Koch Network (latter shares similar views on humanity and somewhat benign view of Putin, Orban, Trump et al.).
Tanton’s beliefs and writings are reflected in the words of Bannon, Farage, Carlson et al., mainstreamed by RW MSM including Australia and foundation of negative migration policies in the Anglosphere and Europe based on border security and population control.
*Further, Tanton’s publishing house TSCP The Social Contract Press published Jean *Raspail’s ‘Camp of the Saints;’ which inspired Renaud Camus’ ‘great replacement’; ‘traditionalist’ Raspail was interviewed some decades ago for TSCP by a sympathetic academic from Melbourne’s Swinburne linked to Tanton.
‘An Interview With Jean Raspail
By Katharine Betts Volume 5, Number 2 (Winter 1994-1995)
Issue theme: “The Camp of the Saints revisited”
https://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc0502/article_415.shtml
I remember my Year Eleven Modern History Teacher telling us that we must not confuse liberalism with the Liberal Party. That is so true. Libertarians are not about individual liberties but the right of the majority to discriminate and impose their will upon others without recourse.
Paul Keating was 100% correct when he labelled Tone the Botty an intellectual nobody. Tone the Botty was all about imposing his will upon the public. One area where Tone the Botty was in the opposite league to David Cameron is that David Cameron did not believe that Brexit would succeed, but it did, and Tone the Botty believed that the marriage equality postal survey would see the public vote no, but his electorate had one of the highest yes votes and the majority voted yes nationwide!
Viktor Órban is an evil, dangerous man.
Evan, thank you, you’ve summed it up nicely.
The question we need to ask is why is it in a world of abundance that not everyone gets a fair go?
Why is it that every child born does not thrive?
The answer lies in an economic system that actively works against such outcomes, and so ensures that we constantly live in chaos, confusion and suffering.
As long as individual rights are seen as superior to social needs, the suffering will continue.
Thanks and agreed Steve. Next big discussion, how we are related to each other – individuals promoting thriving cultures and cultures promoting thriving individuals.
Evan, you’re into the big picture. I love that.
Your reference to thriving cultures reminds me of the great work Robert Ardrey did in the field of evolutionary biology.
He showed that the successful groups and societies (and we’re talking millennia here) are those that actively promote social cohesion while allowing for diversity at the level of the individual. Groups that have that balance have the flexibility to withstand environmental challenges. Ardrey was detested by those who held to the gene-centric view of evolution as gene-centrism was and is a propaganda tool for individualism.
The lack of balance in liberal economic dogma will ensure that liberal economies face ever greater challenges, even to the point of failure. I believe that evidence for that is emerging now.
Lucy Hamilton,
Return nod.
I’ll leave you to contemplate the various inputs into what you meant to say, what you ought to a have said, what questions need to be asked and in which direction the discussion must now progress.
Look forward to your next article,
cb signing off.
I thought, a very neat and comprehensible precis.
I read it elsewhere and thought, here is a heuristic through which people can get a comprehensible look, at what seems to be going on today and why.
It has obvious a germinal effect from which outgrowths have occurred as different contributors found that it enabled a space on which people could confirm and understand the process and manipulations that have corrupted older mechanisms…makes me me think of “Mythologies”.
Steve, thanks. I haven’t heard of Ardrey, I’ll look him up.
pw,
Indeed, from the heuristic nucleus of the author’s initiating article, elements have sprouted and ‘evolved’ where they will.
Personally, given the immediate situational perils of the nefarious networking highlighted and pinpointed within the article, I will focus more sparetime attention on orienteering from some of the trailsigns Lucy has mapped out than towards following further permutations of conversational mutations.
Meantime I’ve learned me a couple new words (including heuristic) and that’s always a good thing 👍.
Return word:
‘coddiewomple’
(archaic) To set off determinedly without a clearly defined purpose or destination.
cb to pw, out.
‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy is not a ‘conspiracy’. It is a fact. The UN even put out a paper in 2020 ‘Replacement migration : is it a solution to declining and ageing populations?’ The paper is based on the idea that “populations of virtually all countries of Europe as well as Japan will face population decline and population ageing”. The UN has so kindly decided to help replace lagging natural births with mainly fighting age men in a number of countries. Journalist Michael Yon has exposed how NGOs including the UNHCRs IOM (International Organization of Migration) are helping channel millions of undocumented immigrants across the southern border of the US. The pace of this facilitated influx must have seemed a bit slow so there was talk of building a bridge near the Darian Gap to speed things up. The Gates-funded Guardian news and other propaganda outlets only began to report on the issue after it was highlighted by Michael Yon.
I’d be unsurprised if Australias high migration rate is part of the UN agenda.
At the level of improving living standards & controlling inflation it’s a total disaster.
As for traditional values, what’s the problem. Do people really want consensus socialism running every aspect of their life? How about firstly a Bill of Rights with the right to freedom of speech? Or is it a case of let’s allow propaganda outlets such as the Guardian set the agenda?
Hi Bob. The conspiracy theory and the UN agenda aren’t quite the same. The difference has to do with the mechanisms involved. The conspiracy theory sees it as a conspiracy, the UN is quite open about what it wants.
Aus imports people because otherwise our population would be aging and we rely on income tax to fund government. In my view tax on wealth and corporations should be rising and so change the tax mix.
My own view is that our society including people from around the world can be a good thing. Though this needs to be married with sending money to other countries to alleviate poverty and build infrastructure. I’d like to see China and Aus enter into a mutual agreement – China providing funding to First Nations development and Aus funding rural development in China (esp for women’s education).
The relevance of Robert Ardrey’s work to this article should be obvious.
Lucy has highlighted many of the forces emanating from the hard Right that are breaking social bonds. That are pitting sections of society against other sections with the aim of social domination.
The point that is repeatedly overlooked is that activities of this nature can only gain traction in a society that is already weakened and vulnerable.
So what has weakened society?
Clearly liberalism with its focus on individual rights pits the individual against society. The promotion of individual rights encourages individuals to see others as rivals at best, enemies at worst.
We saw this a few days ago when a Liberal MP who warmly congratulated the Dunkley winner was attacked by members of her own party for fraternizing with the enemy.
We should not be surprised at this fear and suspicion of others that lies at the heart of liberalism. This was the starting point of one of the early figures of liberal philosophy, Thomas Hobbes. It still lies right in the heart of the movement.
Ardrey was on the right track.
Successful societies that endure are those that promote social cohesion while allowing for diversity at the level of the individual.
Liberalism cannot promote social cohesion as that is a foreign concept, at odds with liberalism’s base concepts, and regarded by many as a weakness or an illness.
Steve, and others interested, a modern researcher working along the same lines as Ardrey perhaps (have only checked him out briefly), is Michael Tomasello. He is an experiment based researcher. The research concerned with how we differ from (other) apes. He gives an account of our sense of ethics evolved. He talks about ‘we-intentionality’. He has a brief book giving an evolutionary account of our social morality – eg that people incline to equal shares among participants in a task, but not with outsiders.
Evan, many thanks, will check him out.
Yes, Corvusboreos, it is most certainly cattywumpus, this issue that we attempting to uncover.
It does remain this due to wankpuffins like several on the panel of the last QA, who in the face of information presented and of sick events over the last five months fled panickily back into obscurantism, with ludicrous theories as to Israelis and Arabs have “different” views on murder, what an inferred slur.
F’rinstance that Israelis think it is ok to kill tens of thousands but god help the Palestinians if they retaliate.
Here was the same denialism that is commonplace in Traditionalism deteriotating to conservatism and finally reaction. the weeding out of inconvenient facts and employ mindless, contradictory fantasy in conscious attempts to derail discussions to a point incomprehensible, the fostered ignorance of any truth that gets in the way of cherished illusions. The attempt of *Ignorance to that reality crashed Hitler’s empire and Mussolini’s kingdom, but when you believe your own bs in the refusal of fact, isnt this like walking on a roof near to to the edge earing a blindfolded?
Great comments, so many of you. Clakka, Douglas, Andrew etc.
Steve – I think we’re talking about different definitions of liberal. You have the Cold War disillusioned version that become neoliberal and neocon so firmly in mind that you don’t seem to see the difference. Why can’t the common be in a healthy tension with the rights of the individual. As a woman looking towards women being subjected once again to a version of the commons in the USA right now, it feels a bit sickening. There’re about 30% of Americans ready to get around putting women, Queer people, PoC and non-Christians in their place without liberty, without rights, without needing the consent of the governed.
And thanks, Andrew. I looked at the infernally long essay and knew it needed Tanton. That will have to be in the extended, extended version down the track.
Steve. Socialism has a long history of struggling to see beyond the needs of white men. We need to balance intersectionality with class consciousness, and fighting for the common good.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/historical-struggle-rid-socialism-sexism-180969610/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25144336
Ever evolving and changing helix…..
Tanton flies under the radar as his ideology is so embedded now (too easy in Oz with old white Oz sentiments), exemplified by Bannon, Farage, Carlson, Abbott, Downer et al. and broader society, by the same talking points; requires the skill of inference to ascertain what is the (wholesale) influence or ideology in the background informing the retail messaging of leadership reported publicly
Related Tim Snyder spoke of Dugin’s influence on Putin or the Kremlin, in a presentation he cited and compared him with Ivan Ilyin, who he thought was more influential, but the audience disagreed.
Here he is in NYT on related ‘We Should Say It. Russia Is Fascist.’
‘In the Russia of the 21st century, “anti-fascism” simply became the right of a Russian leader to define national enemies. Actual Russian fascists, such as Aleksandr Dugin and Aleksandr Prokhanov, were given time in mass media. And Mr. Putin himself has drawn on the work of the interwar Russian fascist Ivan Ilyin. For the president, a “fascist” or a “Nazi” is simply someone who opposes him or his plan to destroy Ukraine. Ukrainians are “Nazis” because they do not accept that they are Russians and resist.’
For any actual leadership, their use of these influential figures can be more utilitarian than ideological e.g. how ‘free market’ politicians misinterpret and cite Adam Smith who was far more liberal than they let on.
Snyder’s work on the Ilyin links is terrific. Fascinating stuff. Scary re goals for the Eurasian land empire.
Lucy,
In my view, continuing to expand advances in female access to education, and emancipation of life choices is not only ethically just, it is also one absolutely crucial element in humankind having a serious chance of collectively mitigating against the worst of possible near futures offered by our acceleratively destabilising climate and biosphere..
Education not only improves lives, it also lowers birthrates.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/womens-educational-attainment-vs-fertility
From an ecological viewpoint, we probably need to start seriously tapering off with the growth, we’re already rapidly running out of room for wild things.
https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass
*the 4% wild mammal category includes human vectored ferals and vermin (eg Rattus Rattus).
Alternative perspective.
Lucy, thanks for the discussion.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “the common”, but I’ll proceed on the assumption that you mean “the common good”.
You ask “Why can’t the common be in a healthy tension with the rights of the individual.”
Because that approach plays into the hands of those who have greater power to enforce what they see as their rights. In a situation of tension the strong will prevail. The excesses of liberalism thrive on that tension.
You are concerned, as we all should be, about the attacks on the rights of women in the US, but what is the origin of those attacks? They come, mainly from men, who see their rights and values as superior to those of women. There has always been those who think that way, who deny the existence of human rights, but fifty years of liberal ascendancy, putting the individual at the centre, has given these crackpots a veneer of respectability, of credibility, and the drive to press their claims.
You say “Socialism has a long history of struggling to see beyond the needs of white men.” Sorry Lucy, I have to disagree on that one.
In the history of socialism there has been some prominent women, Emma Goldman and the brilliant Rosa Luxemburg come quickly to mind.
And in the history of 19th century union struggles in the US, where strikers were routinely bashed and murdered by company thugs, the wives of striking workers were often more radical than their husbands. The wives held the strikes together. They did not see their struggle as a struggle for white men.
Between their rise to power in the late 1940s and up to the late 1960s, state-socialist governments throughout Central and Eastern Europe made efforts to promote women’s economic inclusion. Moreover, women’s economic independence was seen there as a necessary precondition for women’s equality.
And you overlook the principal role the Soviet Union played in the struggle against colonialism.
Let’s not forget that attitudes towards work and gender are shaped by the conventions, practices, and policies that are in place at a particular time. To expect perfection from a social movement struggling against oppression is not realistic, but on one factor alone, rates of pay, it could be argued that socialist states win that comparison with ease.
The gender pay gap is a hot topic in Australia at the moment, and will remain so until the majority of workplaces are unionised. In other words, will remain so forever. I’ve worked in two industries in which pay rates were equal. Both industries were unionised.
And who is it that opposes unionisation? Yep. Liberals.
So who is it holding women back? It’s not socialists.
Women and socialism.
“From its very outset, the struggle for women’s liberation has had deep connections to the development of the socialist movement. The utopian socialist Charles Fourier said famously that a society was judged by its treatment of women. The oppression of women in both work and in the home and the hypocrisy of bourgeois morality were dealt with by Marx and Engels over and over again in their works, not as something separate from the class struggle and the exploitation of the working class by capitalists but integral to it.
In a number of European countries, Marxist socialist parties, in the tradition of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), advocated women’s suffrage and women’s rights when liberal and even self-styled radical parties avoided the issue for fear of losing both their capitalist financial backers and male votes.”
From : https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/a-few-of-the-communist-women-who-shaped-u-s-history/
Until women decide the god of abraham is bullshit they will be just 75% of men.
If men would let palestinian and israeli women negotiate there would be peace and cooperation.
To expand upon the composition of the global mammal meat patty;
34% Homo sapiens
62% Human domesticated livestock.
4% wild mammals.
Of the 4% doing the wild thing, about 2% are cetaceans, leaving 2% of mammals as terrestrial natives and ferals
For comparison, the average human body biome consists of a similar weight ratio (1-3%) of associate microbiota.
Hypothetical question; if, as per predictions, the human population balloons out to about 10 billion before plateauing (+20% increase), what likely impact will this have on the last remnants of native mammal populations?
Sam Kerr is alleged to have referred to a London bobby as “A stupid white bastard”.
I would enjoy seeing her prove that this is the case.
Personally I think its an expression that could be used very frequently in our society, especially when it comes to chaps playing with war toys benevolently provided by society paying their taxes.
I`m inclined to the radical theory that the age of “Master and servant”, or slave trade, has never really left us.
As Steve said earlier there was a window of opportunity in our evolution after WW2 when we could have held onto a sustainable balance.
“The peasants are revolting” declared the hoy poloy.
They fixed it.
Of course if we simply boycotted old white men and got chicks to sort the world, then it would continue to be mad but in a more interesting way.
Something sadly wrong with the system of Justice in the UK that the incident with Kerr was in January 2023, the charges were brought as a criminal charge in February 2024 and the case is scheduled to be heard in February 2025.
Surely this is a summary matter that should be heard by a magistrate and resolved quickly, possibly by mediation and an apology.
Terence, that’d make sense. But doing so would miss a major PR opportunity for the paparatzi gossips and, for the barristers, lot$ of legal argy bargy and a chance to make a name bringing down a football celeb. For what reason, someone made an insult either under duress while being hassled by a plod or while under the weather? Priorities, what happened to that concept? Slap on the wrist and on your bike, try not do it again. Tall poppy syndrome much?
As far as I see it, Sam Kerr’s words are a matter for local court in the quaint village of Little Fuxgiven to attend to when schedule permits.
She faces a fine at worst.
In Putin’s Russia, you can suffer incarceration just for calling their 2-year long multi-divisional invasion of Ukraine a ‘war’ rather than a “Special Military Operation”.
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/russian-federation
PS, I.understand if such statutes in any way influence the coyness of terminology employed by those here with loved ones who sometimes visit Putin’s paradise, health and safety of one’s own family is of paramount priority.
Lucy, I would not be in too much of a hurry to accept without question Snyder’s claim of a link between Putin and Ilyin. Snyder has gained a reputation as being more of a propagandist than a historian.
In regard to the alleged Ilyin link, Sophie Pinkham has written ; “But for Snyder, Ilyin is not just one of many Russian thinkers revived by Russia’s current political players; instead, he insists that “no thinker of the twentieth century has been rehabilitated in such grand style in the twenty-first, nor enjoyed such influence on world politics.”
This is an overstatement, to put it mildly. As Marlene Laruelle, a leading expert on Russian nationalism, notes, Putin has cited many other Russian thinkers far more often, and by her count has only quoted Ilyin five times. His Ilyin quotes are, moreover, hardly the radical statements of Christian fascism that Snyder would have us expect.”
And later, “In a 2012 article on the national question, Putin quoted Ilyin in reference to Russia’s supposed ability to bring peace and harmony to an ethnically and religiously diverse empire. Though expressed in Ilyin’s words, this idea is much older; it was important, for example, in rhetoric about Catherine the Great’s annexation of Crimea in 1783. Putin’s relatively tolerant attitude toward Islam within Russia and the power he has allowed leaders like the Chechen Muslim warlord Ramzan Kadyrov do not fit with Snyder’s theory of Russia as a state influenced by “Christian fascism” and are never discussed in (Snyder’s book) The Road to Unfreedom.”
In regard to Snyder’s lack of professional objectivity, “As someone with a profound knowledge of the region’s history, culture, and languages, Snyder could have provided a much-needed corrective to the glib, uninformed assessments of many of the Western politicians, pundits, and self-anointed experts who commented on the crisis. But his Manichaean vision of an ideological struggle between Russia and the West, between tyranny and freedom, led him to consistently overemphasize Russia’s “fascism” and its threat to Europe and the United States and to play down the significance of continued corruption in Ukrainian politics as well as the country’s small but forceful faction of ultranationalists.”
Meanwhile, as the civilian deathtoll from the Russian invasion of Ukraine tops the 5 figure mark (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293492/ukraine-war-casualties/)
Russian police have put out arrest warrants for a bunch of Baltic states MPs (including the Estonian PM) because they authorised the demolition of some Soviet occupation vintage concrete edifaces.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-puts-estonian-pm-two-baltic-ministers-wanted-list-2024-02-13/
Steve, you’re taking a whole lot of points as read here. Socialism has struggled to deal with intersectionality and intersectionality can forget the importance of class critiques. Also, Yes, Tankies reject Snyder, but nobody cares what Tankies think.
fiddler on the roof is to tradition as rashomon is to truth
Traditionalism doesn’t exist with either but, like religions, neither is required.
Lucy, you’ve made a very sweeping statement about socialism here.
I hope that what you meant to say is “ socialists have struggled to deal with intersectionality and intersectionality can forget the importance of class critiques” because we could be in complete agreement on that.
I’ve long held the view that many on the left have no firm base to work from, due to a drift away from the class critique provided by Marx. But I’ve not come across a lack of appreciation of intersectionality as a criticism aimed at socialists. Could you please give some examples.
You said “tankies reject Snyder”. Criticism of Snyder comes from across the political spectrum as far as I can see, and in all the cases I’ve seen the criticism is backed by evidence. Solid evidence. Quote by quote evidence.
In regard to Marlene Laruelle who I mentioned above, this from her home page — “Trained in political philosophy, I work on the rise of far-right, nationalist and illiberal ideologies in Russia, Europe and the US. I am a Research Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at The George Washington University, and Director of GW’s Illiberalism Studies Program.”
Not exactly what you would call a “tankie.”
I’d be interested in Andrew Smith’s take on that because he follows the region very closely. Snyder has no doubt annoyed people by being partisan but decades of studying Ukrainian suffering will do that to you. His translations of Putin and Silovarch commentary on imperial goals, the West and Ukraine are much more interesting than their PR in English.
In a word: Fascism.
Lucy, it seems that contrary to your hopes, Andrew Smith has decided to make no contribution to this discussion.
Which is odd, given that it was Andrew who chided me 11 months ago for not being familiar with Snyder; “If you don’t know who Tim Snyder is, then one assumes you have not been following credible sources, hence, not adequately informed to make any credible judgement or analysis;…”
Speaking of credible sources, you might find the following useful.
Snyder has dismissed Russian references to Ukrainian nationalists’ mass murder of Poles and Jews during World War II as “a past that never happened” and “nonsensical and necrophiliac accounts of history.” (NYT April 22)
But in 2003 Snyder wrote detailed accounts of the genocidal activities of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). His 37-page article focused on the OUN’s mass killing of Poles in Volhynia. According to Snyder the OUN’s military wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army [UPA], “killed about fifty thousand Volhynian Poles and forced tens of thousands to flee in 1943… By the end of April 1943, the UPA had perhaps ten thousand soldiers under its command, and had reduced much of Volhynia to mutual slaughter.”
This was not a one-off account by Snyder of mass murder by Ukrainian nationalists. In an article published in February 2010 in the New York Review of Books, Snyder denounced then Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko for a cover-up of OUN crimes.
Snyder now dismisses references to Ukrainian fascism as Russian propaganda. But in the 2010 essay, he wrote that the Soviet description of “German-Ukrainian fascists” was “accurate enough to serve as enduring and effective propaganda both within and without the Soviet Union.”
For reasons he has never explained, in the months between the February 2010 article in the New York Review of Books and the October 2010 publication of Bloodlands, Snyder radically changed his account of Ukrainian history.
The activities of the OUN totally disappeared from the anti-Soviet narrative that he presented in Bloodlands.
This is not the standard that we should expect and demand of historians.
I think you are misreading Snyder: “Of all the volatile issues emanating from Ukraine’s participation in the Second World War, perhaps the most debated has been UPA’s conflict with the Poles, which has been described by Yale historian Timothy Snyder as one of the earliest examples of ethnic cleansing in the 20th century.” And that is Ukrainians massacring Poles not the other way around according to Snyder. Did you get yours from the World Socialist Website? (This is not relevant enough to me to go pursuing it any further. I am using Snyder’s translations (and other conduits) from the Russian of Putin and pals’ goals. They repeatedly speak of imperial goals and of the Jewish weakening of the West and that weakening taking the form of tolerance of immigration and Muslims and LGBTQIA+ people – not to mention feminism. They do not say this freaky stuff much in English.)
Andrew may well be busy. He has been writing a lot and doesn’t exist to be summonsed by me (or you).
I don’t hold any brief for any country being “good” and certainly not after emerging from totalitarian or authoritarian suppression and persecution. The former East Germany has lots of pockets of Nazi-leaning people. Some support for fascism seems to tie to its opposition in the public’s mind to the communists who oppressed them. Putin’s use of Stalin and Hitler and fascism is quite unlike ours. None of that would justify Ukraine or any of the other countries trying to sort out their domestic politics post Cold War becoming targets of imperial greed by Putin (or his likely fellow-KGB replacement) and their ethnic cleansing violence.
Lucy, Snyder’s account of UPA atrocities came from his 2003 article “The Causes of Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing 1943”.
The question that needs an answer is why Snyder saw a history of Ukrainian right-wing extremism from 2003 to 2010, saw it as significant, saw it as worth writing about at length, then later in 2010 saw it as irrelevant.
This abrupt turnaround that has not been explained, puts in doubt all of Snyder’s translations of Russian material in which you put so much faith.
Just as a matter of interest, this from the NY Review of books, 24 Feb 2010 — A Fascist Hero in Democratic Kiev. Timothy Snyder.
“The incoming Ukrainian president will have to turn some attention to history, because the outgoing one has just made a hero of a long-dead Ukrainian fascist. By conferring the highest state honor of “Hero of Ukraine” upon Stepan Bandera (1909-1959) on January 22, Viktor Yushchenko provoked protests from the chief rabbi of Ukraine, the president of Poland, and many of his own citizens. It is no wonder. Bandera aimed to make of Ukraine a one-party fascist dictatorship without national minorities. During World War II, his followers killed many Poles and Jews. Why would President Yushchenko, the leader of the democratic Orange Revolution, wish to rehabilitate such a figure?”
Bandera is still a Hero of Ukraine, with monuments now erected in his honour.
So am I misreading Snyder as you suggest? I think not.
Are the Russians seeing fascism where none exists? I think not.
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