Jordan Peterson

[Lexicus]

Yeah, so you're arguing that no claim is not worth making.

To me it's not so much that no claim is worth making, as that people who make such claims tend to vastly overestimate their originality. So when you're like me and have been dealing with racists on the internet for nearly a decade, you start seeing patterns, the same claims made over and over again no matter how many times they're debunked, and you just get pretty tired of it. Now, I'm a white person so I can only imagine how tiring it must be for the people these claims are made about to have to deal with them (and that's not even getting into the consequences of racism as a social reality).

It's not so much a general principle that some claims just shouldn't be made (though I agree that part of having social skills is knowing when that certain claims just should not be made in certain contexts), so much as arrogant racists responding to "I've already debunked this claim thirty times, just shut up and fornicate off" with "you have no opposing arguments, I win, QED, it's not racist if it's true"

 

[inthesomeday]

This is a fairly classic example of the substitution of a trope for analysis of actual facts. The trope is that the Nazis are axiomatically "the opposite" of socialists and so any comparison of the two must be some form of liberal horseshoe theory designed to obscure the differences (or, worse, serve as a form of Nazi apologism by comparing Nazis favorably to Stalinists). Historically Stalinists had no trouble working with the Nazis when it was seen as being to their advantage, and indeed Stalin was supplying Hitler with the raw materials he eventually used to sustain the invasion of the Soviet Union, but reality is largely ignored because the trope is Manichaeism.

I’m not even arguing for Stalinism here, this is the thing, I’m more arguing against Americanism. I wholly agree Stalinism is only a hair better than Nazism. However I think the same could easily be said for Americanism.

I mean it’s not like Americans refused to do business with the Nazis either.

Nazism and Stalinism do have many similarities. And that is unsurprising since the immediate political goal of both Nazis and Leninists was to annihilate the distinction between civil society and the state by replacing both with the Party. They wanted to do this to accomplish very different aims, but their methods ended up being fairly similar. In the context of this political project, all independent organizations of the working class (which are part of civil society) must be brought in line with the Party, whereupon they cease being independent organizations and start being Party organizations.

Once again I’m not exactly trying to defend Leninist centralization of power here. I’m just saying ultimately it was actually much nicer to the worker’s organizations it assimilated than the outright destruction of worker’s organizations under the contemporary American program.

I think that if we were being intersectional we could recognize that the poor of the global north participate in the exploitation of the global south while still being exploited themselves. Rather like the classic understanding of poor whites as exploiters of the black underclass even as they are being exploited by the rich whites.

If we’re being really intersectional we could further recognize that there are millions of destitute Americans in the working class that don’t have any more power than the third world poor.

Well, yes, but inthesomeday is doing a good job of concealing his contempt for my liberal and reformist treason and I want to encourage that behavior.

Am I? I fear I slip up a fair amount

 

[Lexicus]

I’m not even arguing for Stalinism here, this is the thing, I’m more arguing against Americanism. I wholly agree Stalinism is only a hair better than Nazism. However I think the same could easily be said for Americanism.

I mean it’s not like Americans refused to do business with the Nazis either.

I don't know what, exactly, you mean by "Americanism" though. The Americanism of Trump supporters is basically Nazism, not even "a hair better". But conceding that ground to the Trumpists, of allowing them to define "Americanism", is a lot like the discourse that implicitly identifies True Islam as that practiced by the Islamic State or the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Americanism I'm defending is the Americanism of Douglas and Lincoln and Debs, of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, of Langston Hughes and James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr. And I do happen to think that it is a whole lot better than Nazism. A whole lot better than Stalinism too.

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

 

[inthesomeday]

I don't know what, exactly, you mean by "Americanism" though. The Americanism of Trump supporters is basically Nazism, not even "a hair better". But conceding that ground to the Trumpists, of allowing them to define "Americanism", is a lot like the discourse that implicitly identifies True Islam as that practiced by the Islamic State or the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Americanism like the ideology that created America, basically. America, which sucks.

The Americanism I'm defending is the Americanism of Douglas and Lincoln and Debs, of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, of Langston Hughes and James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr. And I do happen to think that it is a whole lot better than Nazism. A whole lot better than Stalinism too.

Lincoln aside I find it deeply insulting you’d lump these fine people in with America. I really don’t think they, or I, would want to be an American.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Lincoln aside I find it deeply insulting you’d lump these fine people in with America. I really don’t think they, or I, would want to be an American.

They were, and apparently so are you. Your inability to deal with that is showing.

 

[Lexicus]

Americanism like the ideology that created America, basically.

I thought you were a historical materialist? What are you doing calling an ideology a motive force in history? Even without this methodological issue, you realize that it is a simplification to the point of caricature to portray any single "ideology" as "creat[ing] America"? @Traitorfish, help me out here...

America, which sucks.

Sounds like your analysis needs more nuance but ok

Lincoln aside I find it deeply insulting you’d lump these fine people in with America. I really don’t think they, or I, would want to be an American.

Honestly, I think the only way you could sustain this opinion is by not really knowing much about any of them. All of them were fierce critics of America for not living up to its ideals . They didn't claim that because the historical project is flawed, the ideals themselves must "suck".

 

[inthesomeday]

They were, and apparently so are you. Your inability to deal with that is showing.

We are American as much as someone with a bad cold is a virus.

 

[inthesomeday]

I thought you were a historical materialist? What are you doing calling an ideology a motive force in history? Even without this methodological issue, you realize that it is a simplification to the point of caricature to portray any single "ideology" as "creat[ing] America"? @Traitorfish, help me out here...

The conditions that manifested into the Great Satan were created by humans motivated by ideology, yes. The ideology of conquistadors and colonists. I guess I could call it colonial capitalism, if you want.

Sounds like your analysis needs more nuance but ok

I think you’ve got the wrong idea of what America is.

Honestly, I think the only way you could sustain this opinion is by not really knowing much about any of them. All of them were fierce critics of America for not living up to its ideals . They didn't claim that because the historical project is flawed, the ideals themselves must "suck".

The ideals people like to pretend have something to do with America have nothing to do with America or Americanism.

 

[Kozmos]

Americanism like the ideology that created America, basically. America, which sucks.

Nah, America is pretty swell. I grew up in the decayed ruins of socialist states. Workers paradises, they were not, even with a pretty light hand of secret police compared to similar systems of the times. You think corruption is bad in democracy? Psshaw.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Reality is the rain on the idealist's parade.

 

[Lexicus]

The ideals people like to pretend have something to do with America have nothing to do with America or Americanism.

People like...all those people I just mentioned?

 

[inthesomeday]

People like...all those people I just mentioned?

A lot of them, yeah.

 

[Lexicus]

K, just making sure.

 

[Traitorfish]

The conditions that manifested into the Great Satan were created by humans motivated by ideology, yes. The ideology of conquistadors and colonists. I guess I could call it colonial capitalism, if you want.

I'm not really sure that you will find any one, coherent ideology under-girding America from Jamestown to Trump, except perhaps acquisitiveness, and that's less an ideology than, I suppose you might say, an attitude. Nor is it uniquely American, or Americans uniquely acquisitive.

If you want to present a convincing model of "Americanism", it's going to have to be framed in terms of institutions, of the structures which shaped and gave shape to ideology, in all their contradiction and ambiguity, rather than framing it in terms of abstract ideology, else you risk trying to explaining the bloody history of a continent as the over-accumulation of Badthink.

 

[Berzerker]

Hitler's a hair worse than Trump and Lincoln's a saint?

Didn't Lincoln effectively sign a death warrant for Indians out west?

 

[Berzerker]

Okay, then you just misunderstood what I said, that is fine. As you could see in the quote, I give a list of four factors that I think could influence why someone is a conservative, and at least three of them are completely environmental. So, your claim I said that conservatism is hardwired, is simply false.

I thought you were describing 'nature and nurture' with examples of both as opposed to just nurture.

 

[Lexicus]

If you want to present a convincing model of "Americanism", it's going to have to be framed in terms of institutions, of the structures which shaped and gave shape to ideology, in all their contradiction and ambiguity, rather than framing it in terms of abstract ideology, else you risk trying to explaining the bloody history of a continent as the over-accumulation of Badthink.

Doing this several times, so we have multiple theoretical alternatives to consider, would be Step One. Step Two would be starting to think about America, the concept, as a terrain of political struggle and considering the various ways different interests and ideologies have tried to define America. Step Three might be thinking about the best way to understand America, the concept, to accomplish our desired political ends...whatever those may be. I'm of the opinion that declaring the essence of America to be slaveholding and genocide and Donald Trump is a grave mistake from a pragmatic perspective, whether it's "true" in some metaphysical sense or not.

Didn't Lincoln effectively sign a death warrant for Indians out west?

Yes, rather like Hillary Clinton signed a death warrant for all those Iraqis.

 

[Yeekim]

Yeah, so you're arguing that no claim is not worth making. Know that that view is far from uncontroversial and plenty of reasonable people don't agree, not just SJWs, the far left, the radical left, or whatever you wanna call it.

You might wish to read my answer again. I specifically said that a fact may be "irrelevant".

It's not so much a general principle that some claims just shouldn't be made (though I agree that part of having social skills is knowing when that certain claims just should not be made in certain contexts), so much as arrogant racists responding to "I've already debunked this claim thirty times, just shut up and fornicate off" with "you have no opposing arguments, I win, QED, it's not racist if it's true"

... and anyone reading the conversation can easily get an impression he is right.
Which is why, if one is too exhausted to argue properly, one shouldn't do it. Unless one is a paid troll of course.

 

[Berzerker]

She has buckets of blood on her hands too... I hope you weren't thinking of surrounding her with 'Douglas and Lincoln and Debs, of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, of Langston Hughes and James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr.'

Well, Lincoln sure as hell doesn't belong on that list either...

 

[Lexicus]

Douglass*