Submitted by d4rk in d4rk (edited )

Dear Mr. Royal Hamptons

I am a dark-skinned Visayan who wants to speak my mind. Your recent article hit a soft spot in my theoretical dealings. My purpose today in reviewing your post as much as I can without the excrement digested in my body regurgitating back up and into this article

Over the past years, from Brazil to India and the Philippines, millions of voters have placed their faith in charismatic strongmen who thrive on apocalyptic rhetoric and who promised to single-handedly address complex 21st-century challenges.

Recently, however, the three countries have been confronting some of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks and economic recessions in the world. So, what went wrong? And why are populists so incompetent in actual governance?

Not long ago, India, Brazil, and the Philippines were hailed as unlikely “success stories” where reformist leaders managed to simultaneously oversee economic growth as well as democratic reforms.

The first lines addressed as a love letter to liberals and the obvious metric of economic growth, yet again blind sighting the increasing poverty of the liberal side. He does however still use these economically impacting scandals to make sure his "views" look fair without even checking the methodologies of each regime. The problem with Marcos was the cost it took to take us to, as those who survived Martial Law says, an Enlightened era.

Second, all three reformist regimes invited widespread public criticism, especially among the newly mobile middle class, for their notoriously slow infrastructure development program. Exhibit A was the suffocating traffic in Mumbai, Manila, and Rio de Janeiro.

And third, all three countries failed to create inclusive growth with their overreliance on either services (India and the Philippines) or resource exports (Brazil) without meaningful industrialization, which is the sine qua non to sustained development.

The critique above is Engelsian. It positions the idea of both the Middle Class and Outsourcing as the main problems as if moralizing the argument. Engelsian ideas posit arguments where Morality affects Economics, this is no different. Saying that this "justified" or "gained credence to" the rise of Populism is right of the bat just wrong. Firstly, because it doesn't line up with his own criticisms that is that economic woes led to Populism instead he drew to moralize the argument. It becomes something near to a white flight argument that drove people to the return of dictatores.

Masters of performative politics, they skillfully painted their reformist-liberal rivals as exemplars of the deracinated elite and, with authoritarian bravado, even questioned constitutional democracy as a desiccated political system in need of major overhaul.

Crucially, they represented a new and distinct brand of politics, which I have termed “subaltern populism” or “emerging market populism.” Populists in the West, from Donald Trump to Marine Le Pen, tapped into the grievances of the working classes and rural populace against globalization and migrant labor. In contrast, populists in India, Brazil, and the Philippines have largely appealed to the newly mobilized middle classes in urban areas, who benefited from a decade or more of rapid economic growth yet lamented the fecklessness of liberal elites.

Once in office, these subaltern populists managed to quickly consolidate power and deftly exploit the absence of robust institutional checks and balances. The problem, however, is that they celebrated and largely relied on, to use Theodor Adorno’s distinctions, a politics of mythos (mythology) rather than logos (reason).

Now this is where it hit me the most. Let's begin from the beginning of the quotation. Performative politics making hero figures against a decadent middle class. Mind the Language. Firstly, we are in the Indosphere, decadence is something we celebrate. Saying that populists should only naturally use this argument is seeing it again through a Eurocentric lens. Let's make my position very clear, the argument going against decadence and democracy is in itself the abnormality within an Indosphere Culture. It isn't a political opinion against yours and the other side simply exacerbated it as if it was commonplace politics, no, Is it not an embarrassment to invite people to come to your birthday party, and yet there is no food for everyone? If you say yes, there you go. Culture comes pre-political. The methodology of spectacle is there but the thoughts themselves are something that goes against Cultural tradition. I could handle both of you a full counter and call you the decadent middle class for having such a worldview where this is acceptable but no.

Second, I can attest to you, from Zizek and beyond, Populism primarily comes from a failed left. The organization, radicalism, direction, it was all there. But since its failure the same levels of organization, language &c. are without the central point of focus and are thus split up and become "Populism". But again, comparing the European political scene to that of the Indosphere is an erroneous assertion since the failed left doesn't need to exist here. Instead, we have the irony of the failed left electing the Fascists. What could be described from what you have observed rather is a Post-West. The idea again that the West is more civilized and we should copy their ideologies and culture with fascism within the realm of possibility. Duterte, Modi, Bolsonaro and You are within this same sphere of influence. Recent Post-Colonial theories have begun to criticize and "decolonize" politics to avoid such a mess. As a new generation of formerly colonized people have only heard of the horrors of the European governments from textbooks. It would not be a stretch to say that the way we do things now is what was imposed on us not what historical progress would have let us have.

Lastly, Heydarian blames this unique situation on the idea that it is a failure of the politics of mythos not the politics of Logos. this is another extremely offensive assertion and quite inflammatory to my end. Because politics isn't something that you can study in your think tank policy labs. Politics involves people who believe in things and their general attitude toward them comes from interpretations of personal experiences. Put them together you have an elaborate National Mythology of which occupies and defines the politics of individuals. To say that such a thing does not exist is anthroposkeptic at least, eugenic at worst. It assumes that People in their entirety do not shape politics and assumes similar to the Marxist, Hegelian, or Fukuyaman tendency of an Objective law to History. Either you are ignorant or Neoreactionary to assume such a position. It would be wise for you to read the words of Adorno more carefully than add them in the neoreactionary matrix.

empirically-driven public policy responses that allowed the likes of Taiwan, Vietnam, and South Korea to so effectively manage the crisis.

Lastly, let us examine the real system, culturally compatible, by our shared Indospheric Culture that you say at least in Vietnam and Taiwan worked effectively. The principle is known as Singhapala, Pancasila, Bayanihan, or whatever it is being known. It is to summarize a rule of lions. Think of the kids cartoon Lion King and tell me why did Mufasa prosper and Scar languish? Well, to begin, The rule of lions is a symbiotic relationship, rarely do you find the males doing the heavy lifting until it is in dire need.

It is belief that started with the Aryans(the actual ones) where total Ethnic and Cultural equality was ensured via a caste system, which is a system of resource allocation not a system of domination, and local autonomous craft union villages would do their thing, earn and the kingdom prospers. changing from one profession to another would not be hard to do as well. As long as the flow of food and water was constant and not abused, the Lions prosper. The closest we have to that today is Singapore where a visible hand(which shouldn't be there) exists to ensure that the principle of Singhapala remains. To be fully committed to the prospect of a Multiethnic and Multiracial society where resources are allocated by needs and people give according to their ability, that is the essence of Singhapala, the ideology of the Indosphere.

Today the perversions of the west have exacerbated the mythos of savagery as a national characteristic of indosphere nations and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. What needs to be done has been done, to create a new Culture with the background of these same principles, Isabelo de los Reyes and his group have done it before and we are just now seeing it bloom, but, we have to wait to see what is going to happen next.

May this open letter find you well, Sincerly, d4rk

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