Fall of liberalism: we are doomed to Byzantium?

submitted by Rakean93Identitarian socialist from self.debatealtright

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[–]NeoRail 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

he basically claims that globalism failed, free market integralism failed, national identity is actually valuable and we need to consider that in order to defend liberalism, which is, in his opinion, rule-of-law and check and balances

This seems to be in line with some of the takes I have seen - I no longer remember where, maybe Keith Woods - that since the American global project has collapsed, they are now attempting to seize most of the developed world and create a new Cold War situation. This would mean another round of "national liberalism", or in other words, more slow collapse, until another opportunity arises for a complete liberal world order.

Given that this particular definition can fit most of the ancient regime states

I have to disagree, in my view the traditional European states relied on completely different, opposite set of principles - the rule of men and decentralisation.

what do you think will happen, assuming I'm right?

I think a lot depends on how the Chinese and the Russians handle their own internal politics. There is a very real chance that after Putin dies, the Russian system will collapse and be replaced by a liberal regime. Currently, the only thing sustaining Russian independence is the power of the ex-KGB clique that Putin represents - if their power fails, Russia will become a liberal plutocratic regime basically overnight. China is much better off, but they are facing their own internal problems - from what I can see, Xi is attempting to keep the Chinese oligarchs in line and to curtail the social rot that economic conditions, both positive and negatives, are creating in the country. It remains to be seen if his efforts will prove successful. If China and Russia fall, then the liberal project will succeed, despite everything.

At the same time, the West also has all sorts of internal problems. The issue is that in the West, there are basically no alternative power centres, and it is difficult to imagine that such will emerge in the immediate future. This precludes the possibility for real change. What is more likely is to see various flavours of liberal elites replace each other, but this will not address any of the main problems in the West, and because of the economic and demographic policies of the past sixty years, the number of viable liberal currents is rapidly declining. I think the most likely replacements for the liberalism of now would be either some sort of hard left, resentment-based populism or Trump-style civic nationalism that attempts to weld a nation together. France seems to be the only major exception where right wing political forces demonstrate some sort of serious activity.

Unless some serious, right wing reconstruction movement takes off in the West or the situation with Russia and China changes, I suspect that the future of the West will be more of the same - continual decline.

Since I already agree with let's say 50% of the stuff Dugin says and I consider the remaining 50% Russian jank I'm too Western to even start to understand

Dugin is a schizo, I doubt even he understands that other 50%.

[–]LGBTQIAIDSAnally Injected Death Sentence 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I think the most likely replacements for the liberalism of now would be either some sort of hard left, resentment-based populism or Trump-style civic nationalism that attempts to weld a nation together.

I particularly find this part of your comment agreeable. Essentially, I think the only two things that can happen is:

  • A doubling down on the Leftward shift occurring in late-modernity. This means that the problems consequent of our being poisoned are to be addressed only by taking more poison. This is the position essentially represented by Sanders, 'The Squad', Green parties, etc.;

  • Or, slightly reverting the Leftward shift occurring in late-modernity without altering any of its fundamentals. This means that the problems consequent of our being poisoned are to be addressed only by taking a slightly lesser dosage of poison. This is the position essentially represented by Trump and DeSantis.

What I do think, however, is that one of these two camps must prevail because the 'centrist' (by modern standards) camp represented by the likes of the Clintons, Biden and Bloomberg is simply going to lose the appeal that these two camps do. People on both sides of Western politics now understand that something is very wrong, but the Left-side of it have never been and likely never will accept responsibility for the decline, whereas the Right-side of it still agrees with the Left-side on all of the core fundamentals like universal adult suffrage, and only fights (and usually loses) against whatever the latest issues are, like CRT. Essentially, you have one side who acts ('Left') while the other side ('Right') has become accustomed merely to responding. There is no real opposition faction, only more-status-quo and less-status-quo factions.

Another reason why there will only really be two options is because numerous factors (such as Duverger's Law, that first-past-the-post political systems tend to sustain two-party states like America) will preserve the GOP and the Democrats. Direct political change cannot really come from outside of these two groups. The only ways that the two-party state can change is:

  • First-past-the-post disappearing. The outcome of this is that American politics will increasingly resemble many Western European political systems in that coalitions between parties are needed to form government. Nonetheless, I think all that would happen is that you'd see Democrat-Green or Democrat-Libertarian-Green or possibly Republican-Libertarian coalitions forming. This doesn't really improve our specific situation, because even the AfD (and even moreso the NPD and III. Weg, who are practically the only good guys) is shut out of all coalitions in Germany and thus any party even slightly better than the GOP, like the A3P, would also be.

  • If something leads to either dominant political party disappearing. That being said, I don't see the Republicans splitting at all (the Trump v. GOPe divide is the only chance of that) and the Democrats probably won't split until after America is firmly majority nonwhite (at which point I imagine they will start to become much more split between ethnic factions because teaming up against Whitey no longer has as much of an appeal when Whitey is no longer a threat). What would happen in that scenario is that some other party (probably the Libertarians if the GOP collapses, or Greens if the Democrats collapse) would rapidly fill the gap and therefore preserve the two-party state.

It is worth mentioning that activist or lobbying groups are becoming so powerful that in some Western countries they have higher membership counts than the major political parties themselves do. Political party membership counts in general are actually decreasing across the vast majority of European nations. Considering this, I suspect that people underestimate the power of activist, lobbying groups and overestimate the power of political parties, hence why the DR keeps trying to make political parties that have no chance of electoral success any time soon if ever.

[–]NeoRail 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I think Democrat centrists like Biden may actually hold their ground. They already compromise with the left on everything that is not related to money, and they have enormous wealth and connections, both of which are powerful tools in a plutocratic system like America.

Political party membership counts in general are actually decreasing across the vast majority of European nations.

It would be interesting to see if that also translates into lower turnout at elections. Unfortunately, there are still too many people who are stuck in the hyperreality spectacle etc. etc., but at the very least if there are a lot of people dropping out of politics, that would create a large pool of disaffected potential voters.

[–]LGBTQIAIDSAnally Injected Death Sentence 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Memberships in organizations of all sorts with few exceptions (including the activist and lobbying groups I mentioned, which seem to be bucking the trend) are declining. There is some sort of wider atomistic, hyper-individualizing sociological phenomenon occurring, one which is leading to people disengaging from being card-carrying members of all sorts of groups, including labour unions, whose decline has long been observed. Indeed, the decline of labour unions (and thus of the 'Old Left') accompanied Leftist parties essentially discarding their old, less trustworthy voting blocs and resorting to becoming the parties of 'post-materialist' voters.

I think that we can see these parties changing their voting blocs again, by trading out 'post-materialist' Whites, who cannot always be counted on because of their declining numbers and so forth, for various nonwhite groups. So the Tucker Carlson types who say that mass immigration is solely to change election results are not wrong, they're just missing other things.

'Post-materialist' is essentially social-scientific jargon denoting people who, due to rising wealth, are economically comfortable enough and have primarily non-economic concerns, such as self-actualization. This of course ties in with all the extreme 'wokeness' that some, who conceptualize Left and Right only economistically, deny is even Left-wing. Of course, I do not mean to suggest that 'wokeness' is reducible to a mere side effect of economic success.

That being said, people ceasing being card-carrying members of political parties does not necessarily indicate that people are becoming disaffected with party politics more generally. They may be among the very same people taking up memberships in the growing activist, lobbying groups instead.

I haven't looked at whether voter turnout is also being reduced at the same time as party membership count decline. The closest thing that I can offer is that American voter turnout was far higher back in the 19th century (the record is an astonishing 81.8% in 1876), and it is unlikely that many 'postmaterialists' existed at that time. My feeling is thus that voter turnout is also declining alongside party membership count. Of course, it is not clear whether that means that they are more likely to engage with other political parties like those of the DR, like Patriotic Alternative and AJP, because they're just disengaging from almost every type of institution, irrespective of whether they are pro- or anti-System.