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1. At the bgginning of the video, he claims it’s “inspired by Keith Preston,” and it shows. However, I fear the predictions made in this video slide too deep into historical determinism, something that I as a non-Marxist reject.

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2. It’s interesting you bring this up, because I have at times been labeled a historical materialist. I wouldn’t really accept that label for myself. I disagree, for instance, that economic forces alone are what shape history. More important than economics, for example, would be military and political power and sheer demographics, geography, climate and comparable matters. For instance, China is a more powerful nation than Japan, even though Japan is richer. Russia and India are more powerful than Sweden and Norway, even though the level of per capita wealth is lower.

   I’m also skeptical of teleological views of history, particularly those of a linear or progressive nature of the kind found in Marxism. I’m probably more inclined towards a cyclical view, or perhaps even the view that history is simply a series of events, with no distinctive pattern or purpose. With regards to the Marxists, I would maintain that Marxists are fairly good as economic historians, class theorists, and theoreticians of political economy (with some important qualifications, of course). Yet, as philosophers, economists proper, and social psychologists, Marxists are mostly worthless.

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3. I find Spangler’s cyclical conception of history (and Neitzsche’s notion of eternal recurrence) to both be examples of historical determinism, albeit not of the left-progressive variety. I’ve come to reject pretermined views of history, which is something I learned from De Benoist. As far as materialism vs idealism when it comes to the mind, and free will vs determinism when it comes to human action, I’m still grappling with those questions, and I doubt I’ll ever arrive at a firm conclusion-which is unfortunate because I feel that those queations must be answered and elaborated upon, as part of the philosophical basis for any political ideology.

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4. “I find Spangler’s cyclical conception of history (and Neitzsche’s notion of eternal recurrence) to both be examples of historical determinism,”

   Wasn’t eternal recurrence more of a thought experiment/gateway towards affirmative nihilism?

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