Category Archives: Culture Wars/Current Controversies

The Future of US Party Politics? 1

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right

A reader at AttacktheSystem.Com nails it:

“I’ve noticed more and more folks on the current right becoming anti-war (at least, selectively anti-war for pragmatic reasons, though some have begun to sound like full-on peaceniks). If nothing else I guess that reflects neocons’ losing hold on the GOP.

 

Which raises another interesting question. What is the future of the Republican Party proper? As you pointed out yesterday in your Coming Dystopia piece, and in the past, the kind of Republicans that make up Trump’s base are largely a (literally) dying breed. And the more time passes the more I agree with your assessment that the new “conservatives” will essentially be neoliberals who reject progressive-style economic proposals and/or some of the excesses of SJWism.

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The Coming Dystopia? 14

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right

The future of the US, or the future “post-US” or the “future of the Western world” or “the future of the global order, will be rule by the techno-oligarch/new clerisy alliance, where neoliberals constitute “conservatism” and progressives/SJWs constitute “liberalism.” Everyone, including the historic WASP culture, will be a minority. We will have a highly stratified Latin American-style class system with the Rainbow Culture as its self-legitimating state ideology. The emerging ruling class will also have a world empire, a military industrial complex and a police state that it will have inherited from previous regimes.

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Slavoj Žižek: Trump’s rise is a symptom of a dark and subtle force 22

by • American Decline, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right, Police State/Civil Liberties, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism

For 25-30 years, I have said that the main political issues in the USA are imperialism, widening class divisions, and use of the wars on drugs, crime, and (later) terrorism to create a domestic police state. Regrettably, most of liberal and left opinion during this time has been more focused on “identity” issues and (to a lesser degree) environmentalism or expanding the welfare state instead.

We are seeing the consequences of that now. The US has killed millions of people in …the past 20 years with wars of aggression. Class divisions are the widest they have been in a century, and incarceration rates are setting world records. In fact, it’s often been the far right (paleocons, libertarians, sovereign citizens, isolationist xenophobes) who are more in tune on many of these issues than liberal and left opinion.

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Texas indicts Cody Wilson on multiple counts of sexual assault of a minor 3

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Law/Justice, Uncategorized • Tags:

By Nathan Mattise

ARS Technica

AUSTIN, Texas—More than three months have passed since a warrant (PDF) initially went out for Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson’s arrest. That document detailed Wilson’s alleged sexual assault against a female “child younger than 17 years of age” whom he reportedly solicited through the website SugarDaddyMeet.com. Last Friday, December 28, the State of Texas finally formally indicted (PDF) Wilson. The 3D printed gun advocate now faces multiple charges: four counts of sexual assault of a child, two charges of indecency with a child by contact, and two charges of indecency with a child by exposure.

These charges are all second-degree felonies punishable by up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $10,000.

Wilson’s two previously scheduled initial court appearances in November and December had each been pushed back, as often happens in cases still waiting on a formal indictment. This recent filing may make it more likely that the newest tentative date (scheduled for early February) will occur, meaning Wilson’s team would need to finally appear at the Travis County Courthouse.

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The Sordid Origin of Hate-Speech Laws Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Police State/Civil Liberties
by Jacob Mchangama
Thursday, December 1, 2011

All western European countries have hate-speech laws. In 2008, the eu adopted a framework decision on “Combating Racism and Xenophobia” that obliged all member states to criminalize certain forms of hate speech. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Supreme Court of the United States has gradually increased and consolidated the protection of hate speech under the First Amendment. The European concept of freedom of expression thus prohibits certain content and viewpoints, whereas, with certain exceptions, the American concept is generally concerned solely with direct incitement likely to result in overt acts of lawlessness.

Yet the origin of hate-speech laws has been largely forgotten. The divergence between the United States and European countries is of comparatively recent origin. In fact, the United States and the vast majority of European (and Western) states were originally opposed to the internationalization of hate-speech laws. European states and the U.S. shared the view that human rights should protect rather than limit freedom of expression.

Rather, the introduction of hate-speech prohibitions into international law was championed in its heyday by the Soviet Union and allies. Their motive was readily apparent.  The communist countries sought to exploit such laws to limit free speech.

As Americans, Europeans and others contemplate the dividing line emerging on the extent to which free speech should be limited to criminalize the “defamation of religions” and “Islamophobia,” launched by the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (oic) since 1999, they should bear this forgotten history in mind. However well-intended—and its initial proponents were anything but well-intended—the Western acceptance of hate-speech laws severely limits the ability of liberal democracies to counter attempts to broaden the scope of hate-speech laws under international human rights law, with potentially devastating consequences for the preservation of free speech.

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How the System Works 1

by • American Decline, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right

“It’s interesting how figures like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are labelled as “communists” for wanting the economic policies of the 1950s (when a third of the US labor force was unionized and the top income tax bracket was 91%), and the Trumpians/MAGA hats are considered “fascists” for wanting immigration policies that are to the left of Eisenhower’s in the 1950s. Whatever the USA was in the 1950s, it was hardly fascist or communist.

In most countries with a democratically elected government (roughly 60 to 75 percent of the world’s nations), open socialists, communists, fascists, nationalists, fundamentalists, Greens, quasi-anarchists, animal rightsers, populists, and all kinds of assorted weirdos regularly run for and get elected to all kinds of stuff. That’s how “democracy” is theoretically supposed to function.

The USA has one of the most tightly controlled and narrowly constrained electoral systems in the world. Some of the most retrograde Latin American nations have a similar system. The different factions of the oligarchy (mostly the traditional Chamber of Commerce types vs the newer techno-oligarchs and urban professional class) put forward their bought candidates as quasi-celebrities, and the role of the media is that of a pro-wrestling announcer, i.e. to pretend like it’s all a real contest as opposed to a staged theatrical production.” – Keith Preston

“Its a rigged game and a charade, and people are starting to see it, even if they cannot describe it in the political language that you just did. Parliamentary systems are better because even outsider candidates can pick up a few seats. The US is actually a Plutocratic, Quasi Totalitarian State with Democratic façades. The electoral system and the liberal and conservative wings in the US are totally bought off, and the corporate and national security state elements actually run the country, with the political class being basically their employees from the President on down. Freedom of Speech is no threat, the US population is so brain benumbed and ignorant, repeating all the nonsense they hear from Fox News and MSNBC that nothing they think, say, or do can pose any kind of challenge to the system. OTOH people are disgusted with government, corporations, banks, the government, and the establishment parties, they no they are getting screwed and the system is scared. So there is tactic of inculcating strife between various groups in society over race, political views, sexism, LGBT, etc. Cultural Liberalism as a divide and conquer strategy. Economic misery us breaking down American society, the fissures are everywhere. It will get so bad with drug use, suicide, nihilism, mass killings, mental illness, that society will no longer function normally anymore, and it will collapse.”-David Alexander

Feminism Against Chauvinistic Feminism 19

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Men and Women, Sexuality and the State • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

I’ve long considered myself to be a feminist, even before I realized I was trans. It’s always seemed like basic common sense to me that people shouldn’t be defined by the contents of their genitalia but by the quality of their character. Regardless of where you stand on rape culture or abortion or Hillary goddamn Clinton, that’s really what it all comes down to. That and realizing the basic fact that our society treats women and anyone perceived as feminine like second class citizens at best. If you ask most people, left, right, or center, on these basic realities of American life, they’ll generally (if begrudgingly) agree with you. Then why is feminism still such a controversial subject? Try casually mentioning it on almost any given message board and count the seconds before a dozen trolls threaten to rape and gut you and leave you for dead by the highway. Seriously, fucking try it. I have. The very word feminism seems to bring the worst out of people online.

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Salon Interview: Tucker Carlson bashes capitalism, says he might vote for Elizabeth Warren Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Electoralism/Democratism

Not exactly the kind of left/right coalition I would envision, but you’ve got to crawl before you can run, I guess.

By Matthew Rozsa

Salon.Com

In my recent interview with Tucker Carlson, he waited until nearly the end of a long conversation to drop a bomb: He might vote for Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2020. OK, there’s a “but” and an “if.” Carlson actually said that if Warren focuses on the economic populism ideas articulated in her 2004 book “The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke,” he would consider supporting her. It wasn’t a promise. From the point of view of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, it might be more like a threat.

We have to put Salon’s interview with Carlson, a top-rated prime-time host and commentator on Fox News, in the proper context. That context would be the Overton window, a concept developed at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy by Joseph P. Overton:

Imagine, if you will, a yardstick standing on end. On either end are the extreme policy actions for any political issue. Between the ends lie all gradations of policy from one extreme to the other. The yardstick represents the full political spectrum for a particular issue. The essence of the Overton window is that only a portion of this policy spectrum is within the realm of the politically possible at any time. Regardless of how vigorously a think tank or other group may campaign, only policy initiatives within this window of the politically possible will meet with success.

That doesn’t exactly describe my conversation with Carlson, but it provides a useful frame. In any society at a given time, certain political ideas are deemed to fall outside the realm of the acceptable. Sometimes that’s healthy, if it drives totalitarian ideologies to the margins, but it can be harmful when it stifles meaningful dialogue.

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Alexander Reid-Ross-Podhoretz-Kristol: State Department Anarchist 10

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies • Tags: ,

Mr. Antifa Intellectual serves up the “Anarcho-MSNBC” line. This kind of stuff is why I started attacking anarcho-social democrats and totalitarian humanists so vehemently 20 years ago. Regrettably, a substantial tendency has developed among “anarchists” that opposes regional or localized illiberalism more than it opposes imperialism, opposes marginal right-wing extremists more than it opposes the power elite, opposes redneck ruckus makers like the Bundys more than it opposes the FBI and ATF, opposes social conservatives more than it opposes the state itself, and (probably) opposes the reality show president more than it opposes the actual national security state.

I suppose they’re entitled to their opinion. Unlike many anarchists, I consider freedom of opinion and freedom of association to be paramount. But, seriously, how are these kinds of folks any different from the Democratic Party?

 

Dancing On America’s Grave 2

by • American Decline, Culture Wars/Current Controversies • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

Washington is a fucking zoo. The entire town seems to be teeming with an almost demonic energy that’s usually reserved for Third World capitals hours before the fall of some CIA funded cannibal despot. We have had fucked up presidencies before, about 44 of them if memory serves correctly, and the temptation is always rich to proclaim the current bastard the worst, but the Donald is a very special flavor of fucked up and his ADHD appears to be contagious. For the first time in centuries, the crumbling ghettos surrounding the District of Colombia look downright pristine compared to the cracked ivory white domes that have long cast shadows across their project courtyards. If you look real carefully through the purple haze of the Sour Diesel and Sherman Hemsley of Potomac Gardens you can just barely see a teary eyed Mike Pence in a West Wing window, dreaming of some place that’s green.

All across the vast expanse of Trump’s America this chaos is spreading like lice. Peep through the blinds of any given ranch-style rambler from Pittsburgh to Peoria and you’ll witness tableaus straight out of a Flannery O’Connor novel. Grotesque creatures ranting and raving across the dinner table at one another over their supposed loved ones’ refusal to despise the right villain in this sick Southern Gothic horror story of a country. Brothers at war with brothers over two sides of the same foul oligarchy. Republicrats or Dempublicans? Crips or Bloods? Kind of grants the concept of ‘White People Problems’ a sick new irony. How much for a room at the Gardens again? I desperately need some sleep and even gunshots beat the sound of gnashing teeth and cable news.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump and his Botox poisoned limousine liberal nemesis, Nancy Pelosi, continue to play one side of the country off the other, shutting down our crooked federal government over some fictional crisis manufactured in the middle of the fucking desert. Prison guards and TSA gropers are expected to sexually violate the public without a paycheck while Trump bets his staffers $6 billion that he can piss over that 12 foot wall.

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In Defense of Tulsi Gabbard Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right • Tags: ,

An interesting article from Daily Kos. I know the author of this piece, who is generally friendly to ATS.

By Alex Shepard

Daily Kos

he election of 2020 is approaching us fast, and the primary season will be here before we know it. Already, the 2020 democratic field has a few challengers. The darling of the establishment, Elizabeth Warren, has announced. From the insurgency ranks, outside of the establishment, is Hawaii congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard.

Tulsi Gabbard, on nearly all sensible and progressive policies gets a perfect score. She supports the reinstitution of the Glass Steagall act.[1] She supports raising the minimum wage.[2] She also has vocally opposed and taken part in protests against the monstrosity called the Keystone Pipeline. She has continuously called for Climate change to be taken seriously and for America to embark on a pragmatic shift away from fossil fuels to efficient alternative energy.[3] She has supported civil rights for all individual Americans, including our Latino, LGBT, African-American, disabled and Muslim citizens.[4] So therefore, it appears she should be an ideal candidate for all left-leaning individuals, mainly those who supported Sanders in the 2016 primary. She also was one of the few Democrat Party officials to endorse Bernie Sanders during his presidential race in 2016, with considerable risk to her political career. She freely resigned from her high ranking post as vice chair of the DNC in order to follow her conscience and endorse Sanders, much to the chagrin of the DNC’s operators.

Most importantly, and speaking from the personal perspective as a PHD candidate in the field of Middle Eastern Studies, she has a spotless foreign policy. Hers is the kind needed for a successful and functional American relationship with not only the Middle East, but the rest of the world as well. She has rightly condemned the illegal war of aggression against Syria.[5] At great risk to her person, and her own political career, she undertook a fact-finding mission in the war-torn nation of Syria. She has since taken it upon herself, much to the ire of the Democratic Party establishment, to tell Americans the truth about where their tax-dollars are going. They are being funneled at the behest of the Military Industry Complex, Saudi Arabia, and Israel to aid the wrong side of a conflict that is of no interest to the United States. Mainly, the American government is actively using American money to assist those who have killed Americans in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.[6] She also repeatedly called for the suspension of aid and weapon sales to the atrocious and genocidal regime in Saudi Arabia, which has been in the process of starving the Yemeni population to death.[7] She also condemned Obama’s illegal war of aggression against Libya, which our former commander in chief admitted was a tragic mistake.[8]

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Robert Stark talks to Guillaume Durocher about the Yellow Vests & National Economics Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations • Tags: ,

The Stark Truth. Listen here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Stark and Anatoly Karlin talk to Alt-French Unz Review blogger  about the Yellow Vest Protests, political situation in France, and National Economics.

Topics:

The gas tax as largely symbolic for overall populist discontent
Macron’s Neoliberal economic polices
Decentralized nature of the movement
The culture of protest in France
The role of the police(update: Police Deploy Rifles with Live Ammunition to Yellow Vest Protests)
The White Working Class demographic
Fusion of Left and Right Populism and support from both nationalist Le Pen and leftist Mélenchon supporters
How the outcome of the Yellow Vest protests will impact the next election
Why movements need a segment of the elite to succeed
Russian and American(ex. Steve Bannon) conspiracy theories
Orbánomics, or the Return of National Economics
National Economic policies such as state control of banks, national banks, and local production
The Economics of Globalism and High vs. Low Globalism
Left Wing French Social Nationalist Alain Soral
France Is Becoming More Violent

Who Cares About Russia? Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies • Tags:

The Russian Bear is the Wizard of Oz, and Putin is the man behind the curtain. The Russophilia of the far left/far right and the Russophobia of the center left/center right is pathetic.

My own geopolitical outlook is more like that of the classical anarchists of the late 19th/early 20th century or the Sunni jihadis today, i.e. global insurgency against the global enemy even if I don’t share the politics of the jihadis.

Ultimately, I would want to see worldwide insurgencies attacking states, ruling classes, and empires on a global scale. An insurgency against the DC empire, against the EU, against the Kremlin, against Beijing, against Delhi and Islamabad at the same time.

The problem that I have with the Russophiles and Sinophiles is that ultimately they are just an Eastern version of the Republicans, only instead of a bunch of yahoos chanting “USA! USA!” at a monster truck exhibition it’s “Russia! Russia! China! China!” at a Communist or Alt-Right assembly. Just like the SJWs are really just a variation of social conservatism, only instead of being anti-abortion fanatics they are animal rights fanatics, or instead of being obsessively anti-gay they are obsessively pro-gay, or instead of protesting against adult bookstores and Satanic rock they are protesting Confederate flags and center-right campus speakers. And sometimes they overlap, e.g anti-porn feminism, anti-smoking puritans, sex trafficking hysteria, etc. It’s the same problem with the antifa who are just a variation of the skinheads (and both of these have their roots in the cultural milieu in England in the 70s and 80s). A real anarchist revolutionary insurgency would not be wasting time with any of this crap.

Tulsi Gabbard Is Running For President In 2020 Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right • Tags:

This is a pretty good discussion of Gabbard. From what I can tell, she’s basically just a moderate who trends liberal on social issues, who is pro-military, pro-Israel, and pro-terror war but who merely thinks the neocon/neoliberal foreign policy paradigm is insane (which it is), largely from her experience of actually having been in the military in Iraq. She apparently has a soft spot for India, which is obviously due to her own Hinduism. The worst thing that I have ever heard about her is her friendship with Sheldon Adelson.

Poll: Most Americans blame Trump, Republicans for longest govt. shutdown 4

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies

The United States’ partial government shutdown drags into its fourth consecutive week as President Donald Trump and Democrats fail to settle their scores over funding a border wall.
The stalemate has led to the closure of at least 25 percent of the federal operation since December 22. Air travelers have also had to wait for more than an hour to get through domestic checkpoints at Atlanta airport. The shutdown has also put on hold the Federal Aviation Administration approval of aircraft. Trump is demanding five-point-seven billion dollars from Congress for building a border wall with Mexico. The U-S president has warned that the partial shutdown will continue unless he receives the money.

News Review – U.S. Border wall Drama Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies • Tags:

The speaker of the US House of Representatives says the Democrats have a better idea to improve the country’s border security and eventually end the prolonged government shutdown. Nancy Pelosi added that it is now up to President Donald Trump to make the next move to end the shutdown. She made the remarks during a ceremonial signing of a House bill that restores funding for two federal government agencies that have been closed due to the shutdown. The Senate now has to vote on the bill, but its Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said he will not bring the measure up for voting as the GOP stands with the president to get the funding.

Neither Open nor Closed but Decentralized Borders: The Revolutionary Potential of Illegal Immigrants 1

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Immigration

An immensely important essay given the current controversies.

“It seems as if the time has come to abandon terms like open and closed borders in favor of decentralized borders. We imagine a free society with decentralized borders would consist of a mixture of open borders, closed borders, public property, private property and unowned land. We believe a network of competing public and private spaces which allow for freedom of movement is most consistent with the sovereignty of the individual.”

By Derrick Broze and John Vibes

Activist Post

By Derrick Broze & John Vibes

The following essay is chapter 10 from the upcoming Manifesto of the Free Humans, book 3 of The Conscious Resistance series, from Derrick Broze and John Vibes. The book will be released for purchase and free download on April 7, 2017.

We are going to take a look at one more area of conflict among students of radical political philosophy. After examining differences of opinion on property and the environment we believe it is essential to discuss the arguments around borders and immigration. We start by considering several key questions. What would migration look like in the absence of the State? How does a society’s view on property affect the view of immigration? Would there still be a class of people known as “illegals”?

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U.S. border patrols use tear gas against migrants Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Immigration

US security forces have engaged with migrants at the country’s southern border with Mexico. US border patrol agents used tear gas to keep the group from approaching the crossing line. The recent deaths of two immigrant children in U-S custody have piled pressure on President Donald Trump for his tough immigration policies. The U-S president blamed the Democrats and QUOTE- their pathetic policies for the tragedy. Democrats, on the other hand, accuse Trump of demonizing migrants for political gain. The U-S government has been on a partial shutdown over a standoff between the White House and the Congress over funding for a border wall since December 22 last year.

Ann Coulter vs Hasan Piker on Immigration 1

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Immigration, Left and Right

A predictable shit show. I love political fractiousness. Virtually none of the contending factions associated with the present political/culture war paradigm have any relevance to the pan-anarchist position. All of them are groups that seek control of the state or seek to solicit favors from the state. The best bet is for the Left and Right to continue to attack the Center, while simultaneously attacking each other, and for the Left and Right to similarly fracture internally. The objective is to weaken the state’s ability to  maneuver while preventing any political faction from gaining a monopoly on power.

 

Kyle Kulinski Vs Hasan Piker Debate On Free Speech Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies • Tags: ,

A pro-free speech progressive vs an antifa on free speech. I am actually somewhere between these two guys. I am all for violence against the state (when tactically appropriate) but opposed to either censorship/deplatforming of mere expression of opinions or violence against other political groups that are against the system and out of power.  There’s far too much moralizing on the part of both of these guys for my tastes, and this Hasan Piker guy engages in a great deal of special pleading. This discussion also represents another interesting cleavage on the left.