Marxists don't want to confront their own dialectical contradiction: How to use authority to (supposedly) get rid of authority. Likewise, the Liberal Democratic contradiction is how to Limit authority but keep it too.

US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s 1964 remark about obscenity. While he couldn’t explain it, “I know it when I see it.”

With the exception of anticommunism, there is no doctrine that can be attributed to all fascist or authoritarian groups. It might be better to say that there is no clear understanding of fascism.

The reissuing of George Mosse’s work is a timely reminder of how that [using fascism as an insult ] doesn’t happen anymore, and why it’s necessary to make fascism a pejorative again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mosse “ Mosse saw nationalism, which often includes racism, as the chief menace of modern times”

I never heard of Mosse before. I couldn’t find out much about His own politics as far as Liberal or Marxist or whatever. Of course, that’s often the case with academics to avoid the scourge of dogmatism lol. I “might” like to read something of his, but I’m not convinced this would help much. The core concept of palingenetic nationalism has been taken up by Jason Stanley who I like except he’s a total Lib politically.

Very well put.

Give up. Follow them to the back room. Wait for the police. Or Run. Probably run.

I find it very misleading the way climate change is described as “on the edge” or “at the tipping point”. It is here. Climate change is inexorably slow. It’s like the reformer who thinks everything will be fine if we just tweak the system a little more because nothing is fundamentally wrong. True, small changes may speed up or slightly slow the larger trend, but that won’t change the overall trend. The Guardian may be more “progressive” (or Liberal) than many other news sources, but this is how these underlying assumptions come out. Thanks for being here Raddlers.

Condolences?!

I read it a while back. The main thing I thought they were arguing against was the hegemonic narrative that agriculture always ends in hierarchy. I watched a YouTube guy channel is called What Is Politics that seems pretty critical as well. For me, not too deep in archeology/anthropology it was ok. My impression was they were trying to reach a broad audience- not just anthropology specialists and anarchists..

In any case, I’ve been trying out a thesis that even if all that humans have ever had is hierarchies, anarchy still makes a good case for the future as a goal and critique of the past and present.

Grow weed.

Antediluvian.

I wonder why Courant is at the top of the bottom. Wikipedia Gerard Courant

This is so me. I went to college anyway. I wanted to move to a gentrified area, but couldn’t afford it. I don’t get anxiety about not doing anything progressive because I’m not sure what that could mean and and I only care in an abstract superficial way. I don’t have a job. Well, I went to college anyway.

Rim shot!

It’s interesting that Stanley calls the U.S. Fascist as well in his book on Fascism. It’s like he almost gets it, but still thinks, somehow, there can be some sort of social hierarchy that isn't authoritarian. Liberal democracy is an ideal for him.

"Only where the climate and geography favored cereals, was hierarchy likely to develop," says Mayshar from the Hebrew University of Jearusalem.

"Our data shows that the greater the productivity advantage of cereals over tubers, the greater the likelihood of hierarchy emerging."

The quotes above misleadingly imply, at least on my reading, that tuber societies, weren't hierarchical at all. For example, in pre-Western contact Hawaii, there was definitely a well developed class structure-the kapu (taboo) system. This was a little like European fuedalism.

It's just not funny if you try to explain it.

What happens when an empirisist tries to quantify a priori? How is space-time represented as a square? What is the white area and why are all the important measures and concepts outside the known universe? Feels like bad infinity.

Thomas Szasz The Myth of Mental Illness, 1960. Not sure if it's exactly anarchistic, but I found it helpful.

Shoot?

“Though they painted themselves as scions of a new age, the Fascists and Futurists were really ultraconservatives ideologically,” writes Gabriel T. Rubin. Again, sound familiar? In their never-ending quest for progress at any cost, today’s companies are flirting with fascism themselves.

...but if they ignore the lessons contained in that [Futurist] movement, they’re bound to repeat it.

“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”-Hegel

LOL