Fall of liberalism: we are doomed to Byzantium?

submitted by Rakean93Identitarian socialist from self.debatealtright

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[–]LGBTQIAIDSAnally Injected Death Sentence 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Fukuyama's views are essentially:

  • Liberalism is the ideal political ideology;

  • Democracy is the ideal political system;

  • The development of liberalism is inevitable (it will eventually destroy Islam, conservatism, Marxism and anything else that deviates in some way from liberalism);

  • The development of democracy is inevitable (authoritarian regimes like those in Venezuela are doomed to be replaced by 'liberal democracy', populists like Orban will also fail to move towards 'illiberal democracy');

  • The Far-Right (of which he seems to think Nietzsche is essentially part, similar to his teacher Allan Bloom, who also identifies Nietzsche with the Right) is very bad;

  • The Far-Left (of which he mostly thinks of as Marxism) is also bad, but not as bad as the Far-Right;

  • Trump bad, Obama, Clinton and Biden good;

  • The only acceptable forms of national identity are 'creedal', ascriptivist forms of national identity (e.g. ethnonationalism) are bad. I think he's on the Left-wing of Civic Nationalism;

  • Problems with 'liberal democracy' can only be solved by even more 'liberal democracy', that is, they come from too little 'liberal democracy' rather than too much;

Three things that come to mind that I have no confirmation of:

  • I think he is wary of 'The Squad' but still prefers them over Trump, which is why he's an Obama/Clinton/Biden Democrat and has probably voted straight Democrat since 2008 or even 2004;

  • I think he would choose liberal-progressivism over democracy if forced to choose: he'd rather a 'progressive' undemocratic regime than a conservative democratic regime. This is why he's become a mild Civic Nationalist: he, I think, has slowly realized that atomistic hyperindividualism is corrosive and unsustainable, and hopes that a 'creedal', Civic Nationalism can save liberalism from collapse and replacement by something like what Orban offers (which is clearly unacceptable to Fukuyama, for who liberalism must be saved by all means necessary);

  • I think his conversion from Republican to Democrat is representative of a wider process that will likely occur in all democracies that become too liberal, especially that become multiracial: that is, the general replacement of ideology with identity. In other words, Fukuyama started to care less about his liberal triumphalist ideology in the Bush era (belief in which perfectly augmented him being a Republican) and aligned with his immediate racial interests as a nonwhite combatant in an informal racial war over control of the United States (which are better served by the Democrats). This is probably why he has backed away from some of his claims since he was catapulted to fame in 1989. But I've heard nothing which suggests that he's rejected the core liberal triumphalist beliefs that made him famous in the first place, he's only changed peripheral beliefs.

I don't really know what Dugin believes in order to comfortably contrast the two.

As for my view on Fukuyama, I think that Fukuyama is probably right in his core argument that 'liberal democracy' will eventually take over everything, though I believe it has very little if anything to do with the thumos or recognition he believes is the prime mover behind this development. The only difference is the value-judgement to which I apply to it: For Fukuyama, 'liberal democracy' will perfect the world, whereas my view is precisely the opposite, that it will literally extinguish the world (i.e. reduce all birth rates to zero if given long enough, through a very wide range of proximate causes in which 'liberal democracy' plays a clear causal role, such as feminism and transsexualism).

[–]EthnocratArcheofuturist 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

of which he seems to think Nietzsche is essentially part

Nietzsche's message is far-right. His ideas were a major inspiration for fascism. Mussolini himself translated his work from German to Italian.

[–]Rakean93Identitarian socialist[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Nietzsche is a wild card, like Wittgenstein, Gramsci, Heidegger and so on. Everyone is using them for extremely different purposes, mostly because the reality they were grounded in is gone and all it's left is an interesting way to think the world.

[–]EthnocratArcheofuturist 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Yes and no. It's true the Nouvelle Droite used Gramsci's ideas, but there's no doubt about the fact that Gramsci was an avowed Marxist who would have opposed them. The same is true for Nietzsche and Heidegger in the opposite direction. They were both fundamentally opposed to egalitarianism and universalism, which makes them right-wing by definition. Heidegger himself was a member of the NSDAP and never rebuked it. There are indeed left-wing Nietzscheans and Heideggerians, but I fail to see how they could use their work for left-wing purposes. With Gramsci it's much clearer because his concept of cultural hegemony could be used by pretty much any political force.

[–]Rakean93Identitarian socialist[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

When I was at the university my course of philosophy of the language started with an extensive account about Nietzsche; the professor, however, was a prominent member of the left, involved in local and national politics. So here we are, the left is definitely using his works. Moreover, Nietzsche at first was more of a anarchist philosopher than a fascist one - in fact, rhe zarist regime was concerned about "nihilist and communist attacks" just before the revolution. Anarchists still like Nietzsche, and they mostly identify themselves as left.

But except for the case of Nietzsche, which was pretty much contested from the beginning, the point is simply that philosophy doesn't work as coherent blocks, so everyone now is using those authors even if they don't agree with everything they said. The whole nouvelle droit is quite composite, but if we speak about Alain de Benoist, I'm pretty confident that the most important single figures inspiring him are Gramsci and Dumezil, the first providing the method, the latter the content. It doesn't matter that Gramsci would have sided with the left if he was still alive.

Lastly, universalism is both left and right. The opposite of universalism is relativism, which used to be mostly leftish, so I would argue that if we are going to not consider the last 40 years, universalism is pretty much right wing. I'm strongly against universalism and that's why I don't like biological racism, racialism, iq and similar stuff: I don't care if they are true or not, because I don't think that any kind of measurement can be done speaking about races. Every evaluation must be subjective, which on this case means ethnocentric. And i would like to point out, since I have the opportunity, that ethnocentrism itself as a concept was divulgated by Levy Strauss, who was a Jew and started as a Marxist. So there's another example of what I'm trying to say.

[–]LGBTQIAIDSAnally Injected Death Sentence 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I take your side on the matter of the philosophers. Leftists commonly misappropriate Right-wing thought in order to repurpose it for purposes they consider 'emancipatory' or 'liberatory' or whatever. However, some feel a great deal of guilt about doing this at times.

You can see this in the way that Mouffe and Agamben (both Far-Left) misappropriate, but unapologetically so far as I know, off of Schmitt.

And in the way that Marcuse misappropriated Heidegger in the hope of fusing his ideas with the garbage of Marx. Marcuse felt exceptionally wrong in doing this and essentially discarded this project in the 1930s (probably upon realizing that Heidegger had joined the NSDAP). However, even today, some tankie morons still praise Heidegger and wish to misappropriate his ideas again.

And in the way that Horkheimer misappropriated Schopenhauer, and some might put Hegel himself on the Right as well, and thus claim that Horkheimer has misappropriated two thinkers. Furthermore, if one believes that Hegel is indeed of the Right, then they must conclude that all of Marxism has misappropriated Right-wing thought at its very base.

You're spot on about Nietzsche. If one goes back to the 1890s or so, his main supporters are essentially anarchists (indeed, one of the American anarchist leaders called him an 'honourary anarchist' or something very similar, but did admit that Nietzsche was no friend of anarchism). I have encountered the same thing in reading of Nietzsche's initial reception in Japan. There he was also again adopted by the Left. The 'Right-wing Nietzsche' seems to me a later phenomenon.

While not related to social thought per se, it is also similar to the way that Adorno felt immense guilt over liking Wagner's music, clearly believing that Wagner was an evil proto-fascist. I imagine he probably felt that in liking Wagner he was in some way complicit with fascism, connecting with it, or found that the music revealed a sort of 'fascism' within himself that he wished was not there, or something similarly silly. I think this is what happens when your artistic tastes clash with your ideology: the former tempts you to embrace the proto-fascist, but the latter tells you that you are dirtying, demeaning, lowering yourself by embracing the proto-fascist.

I agree with your second paragraph. I am also piecing things together from different thinkers and do not commit myself to any particular one. Many people who are self-proclaimed Marxists probably have far more influence from more contemporary feminist and queer 'thought' than from Marxism itself. And if they were smart enough to read and comprehend their works, they'd probably soon realize that they're closer to someone like 'Butler' or Foucault than to Marx.

However, most self-proclaimed Marxists are probably just idiots who have subscribed to some 'tankie' or 'BreadTube' video creator, have watched a few videos and thought: "Hey, this guy is pretty cool, and what he's talking about sounds pretty cool, I think I'll subscribe to him and call myself a Marxist from now on!"