Politics in a liberal democracy is first and foremost performative. Getting attention is the first goal for political types and they do that by comporting to familiar roles. How well they play those roles, as in any type of theater, establishes their status in the hierarchy of the political theater. Some actors, of course, take a short cut and play one of the various fools or jesters in the political drama. If done well this is a fast-track to attention, but the role itself is always on the periphery of the main show.
If most people were operating from self-interest and had a reasonable sense of their self-interest, political theater would not exit. For example, why would people line up to vote when they know their votes will be ignored? Most people know this to some degree and the science bears it out, but people still vote. In fact, voter participation has gone up as the effectiveness of voting has declined. The theater of democratic politics blinds people to the futility of it for some reason.
This is most obvious in the cosplay brand of politics. This is where people dress up in strange outfits and play make-believe on the streets. Antifa is just cosplay for people with a taste for violence. Instead of playing characters from their favorite TV shows, they play characters from their misreading of history. The black outfits make them the heirs of the Schwarze Scharen or maybe the red makes them the modern day Rotfrontkämpferbund or the post-modern Khmer Rouge.
Their view of themselves and their role in the political drama is as imaginary as the characters they are playing. No one bothers to ask any of them why they go around smashing windows and harassing people. Why do they show up at some right-wing political event? What is the point? There is no practical point. They do it because politics for them is a real life fantasy game. They have to show up at these things to keep the game going. That is the whole point of it.
Of course, their analogs are the flag and costume characters who are eager to play their part in the drama. Since the 1960’s anti-Semites have been staging flag and costume shows. They play the part of the Freikorps in this endless replay of the interwar years in Germany. The credit for this belongs to George Lincoln Rockwell who landed on the idea of playing dress-up to get attention. He dressed up as a cartoon Nazi and marched around with his followers.
For fifty years now anti-Semites and make-believe Nazis have been doing flag and costume parties in the public square. They say they are trying to draw attention to their issues, but that is part of the fantasy. After more than fifty years, everyone is well aware of the issues they support. In reality, it is just political cosplay. Like the Antifa people, it is all about maintaining a fantasy version of politics and history. Instead of the hammer and sickle eventually winning the game, it is the swastika.
What lies beneath cosplay politics is escapism. Like libertarianism, this type of political theater is a way to avoid reality. There is the personal reality of the players themselves, who are low-status people with no role in society. They will never be the important people they dream of being, so they play one in minor politics. At a higher level there is the grim reality of liberal democratic politics. No one wants to face the fact that the will of the people plays almost no role in the affairs of men.
The absurdity of political cosplay plays another role. It allows people who turn away from these ridiculous performances to believe their brand of performative politics really do matter. Serious Progressives, for example, condemn street violence as it distracts from their important issues. Conservatives condemn the “Nazis” because they make them look bad in front of their liberal friends. Cosplay politics gives them an excuse for why their performative politics is equally ineffective.
This addiction to performative politics is the primary manifestation of the narcotic of liberal democracy. Once a people accept the “general will” as their god, they have an unshakeable believe in the power of persuasion. They are forever convinced that if they can just win the next election, have the right performance, they can gain the backing of the general will and the wheel of history will turn their way. Heroin addicts have a better grasp of their circumstances than people in a democracy.
The Roman poet Juvenal is credited with coining the term “bread and circuses” to explain how rulers gain public approval. To generate public approval, they use public spectacle and satisfy the base requirements of the people. As long as people are fed and entertained, they are compliant. Juvenal’s actual point here was to condemn the people for selfishly going along with it, but over the centuries the expression has come to mean a ruling ethos, especially in democracies.
The magic of liberal democracy, at least in the short run, is it becomes something of a self-licking ice cream cone. The people, in search of bread and circuses, create their own circuses in the form of political theater. To underwrite the drama they endlessly seek to improve their conditions in order to have more time and money for the political circuses they are creating. The people in charge just put their thumb on the scale in order to direct the activity to their benefit.
Therein lies the real alternative to modern politics. Since there is no voting your way out of democracy, the only solution is to boycott it. If the audience fails to show up for the great political drama, the players have no purpose. Performative politics requires an audience as that is its point. Boycotts are not as fun as playing dress-up or voting harder, so it is at a disadvantage. It may be that the only solution to the narcotic of democracy is for the people to vote themselves to death.
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For fifty years now anti-Semites…
What’s wrong with being an anti-Semite?
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Honestly Z throws that term out a lot even on Gab. A proper definition may be in order. We know why our enemies use it .
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I’ve talked about this a lot, but it has been a while, so here is the short version. I use the term anti-Semite for people who have organized their politics around the belief Jews are the prime mover in Western history. The point of their politics is to defeat the Jews. They divide politics into two buckets. Those things that are controlled by Jews and those things they ignore.
That is a different thing than someone who thinks Jews have too much influence or that Jews stick together for their own benefit. Those are simply opinions, not the basis for a moral philosophy. You may think homosexuals are over-represented on television, but you do not think homosexuals are part of a centuries long intergenerational conspiracy against straight people.
In short, for the anti-Semite, the answer to all political questions is the same, the Jews. For most other people, the Jewish question arises only as an incidental issue within their political philosophy. Where do Jews fit into a society organized around nationalism or how should a majority deal with minority populations. That sort of thing.
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They’re the mirror image of the “systemic racism” crowd on the left, just replacing the White Devil with the Eternal Jew.
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I use the term anti-Semite for people who have organized their politics around the belief Jews are the prime mover in Western history.
That’s an awfully narrow definition. The term is widely used against anyone who criticizes Jewish power in America today.
I know the kind of people you refer to and I understand why you find them annoying but as Dave says, the term itself is an enemy meme.
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The starting point of my politics is not allowing my enemies to control my mind by controlling my language.
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Then there is Joe Sobran’s definition:
“An anti-Semite used to mean a man who hated Jews. Now it means a man who is hated by Jews.”
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I am honestly torn on this. I totally sympathize with Zman’s detached stance on the antisemites, but on the other hand it seems like anything that is not explicitly antisemitic is eventually infiltrated and subverted to the service of international Jewry.
It’s always bad form to try and speak for another, but I’ll do my best to give my interpretation of what I’ve seen from Z. (Is that enough caveats.)
To start, I’d say that Z is pretty careful with the whole JQ. He speaks of the usual suspect often enough but tends to keep the subject in the background as much as possible. From what I can tell, there are two reasons for this.
First, any direct mention of the usual suspects seems to bring out a horde of people who are pretty obsessed by the tribe. These people generally are not the kind of people that you want a movement or group to be associated with, so Z is trying to steer clear of these folks.
Second, Z, correctly, believes in having a positive identity rather than a negative identity. Focusing your energy on a single group is a sign that you have a negative identity.
Both of these are reasonable concerns.
Z also seems to distinguish between anti-Semite and counter-Semite. To be honest, that’s where things get a bit muddy for me. I suppose an anti-Semite is obsessed while a counter-Semite just views the tribe as one of many impediments rather than as some super-natural force that once toppled solves all of our problems.
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“As long as people are fed and entertained, they are compliant.” It would seem this isn’t working as well as it once did. Especially since global corporations, not Government, are responsible for feeding and entertaining the masses these days.
Perhaps this should be rephrased to read; “As long as people are compliant through vaxation and taxation…” the government leaves the people alone – at least for now.
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Everything is relative in this sense. Probably the better way to phrase it is “as long as the expectations of people are met, in terms of essentials and entertainment, they are compliant.” Expectations play an enormous role n public attitudes. Middle-class blacks in America have been revolting because they really thought they were get more from American by this point. Those black Ivy League students moaning about racism are responding to unmet expectations.
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They are revolting… They stink on ice…
‘”As long as people are fed and entertained, they are compliant.” It would seem this isn’t working as well as it once did.’
I went to the store over the weekend and the ham that I have regularly bought for a long time for $15-20 is now over $50. Hollywood’s latest circus is an (((elf))) challenging the patriarchy of the North Pole.
It’s hard to say, because the violent protests in the past couple years have really only occurred in handful of liberal big cities. If people wanted to destroy the system, they’d kill loan originators at the major banks, the families of law enforcement officers, and set to work tearing up random stretches of interstate. That some public performances (most notably in Minneapolis and Portland) have led to negative real-world consequences for the performers doesn’t exactly translate to the destruction of the system. Essentially, burning down a small business to get the government’s attention is performative, attacking cops’ families would be effective. Given that protestors are doing the former, not the latter, would support Z’s claim.
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The patriot front guys (people I’ve never really heard of, and I think it’s safe to assume are right wing) doing their march the other day was probably one of the more hollow and pointless thing I’ve seen in a while. I don’t think it even succeeded in provoking any liberal hysterics. It provoked a lot of online arguments over how many feds were, or were not involved in creating a spectacle to rile up liberals, if that was the point. It seemed point-less. It felt pointless. I mean I don’t really even know who these people are, and I suspect I’m not alone on this one, but even if I did, so what? Well now I’m asking questions your article answered quite well. Ty Z man.
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I was aquainted with a guy years ago who was in the process of joining PF. I lost contact with him since, but I hope he came to his senses and got out of that thing. He was a decent kid.
The only thing the Patriot Front march benefitted was their recruitment. Rest assured, hundreds of right-wing people, from lowlifes to normal young guys who want adventure, salivated when watching it and now want in. If course, this was at the price of increased police scrutiny. Does it help the right achieve its goals, probably not, but other than your usual suspects most either assume they are feds or simply don’t care.
I forget the source, but I remember reading in some European country how a hard right guy built his organization by getting his ideologically aligned guys in volunteer fire departments and taking them over. If one wants to be a dissident, you need to build your hard-right base in seemingly innocuous things like Elks Clubs, Soup Kitchens, and Range Shooting clubs, slowly taking them over as necessary. Having a name like Patriot Front is just begging to be subverted.
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Yes, the Judeo-Commies won by infiltrating the institutions from below. They didn’t conquer America by march down the street, chanting “Kill All Goys!”
Our guys have a predilection for going balls-to-the-wall every time, just to prove a point. That’s not how you win.
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This is my view. By design or by accident, I suspect these flag and costume things work to keep people from building local community. Their energy is directed into these sorts of things, which provide short-term gratification, but have no long term benefit. PF spent thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars for a one day event that will be forgotten by Friday. That time and money could have been used for building out their local chapters and establishing themselves as trusted community builders. These marches are singing to the choir.
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It’s because Normie still believes in the larger system. Assuming PF is what it claims to be, their goal was to send a message to the system and to voters. Every march is a marketing tool directed at an audience that you think is important.
Normie still believes in the parties and Congress and society in general. These marches and protests are part of that ecosystem.
Working at the local level isn’t just more mundane and harder, which, naturally, keeps a lot of people out, it’s also a mental acceptance that the system that you grew up with, that you thought represented you, is no longer on your side. It’s acknowledging that your country is gone.
That’s a tough pill for Normie. The Judeo-Commies started with that worldview from day one.
It is ironic that these street shows are staged by people who claim to oppose politics as currently organized. These street shows are really just the off-Broadway version of mainstream politics.
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Yeah. All I see with groups like these is young people being roped into ruining their future prospects in life, and lowlifes sinking further into the hole they’ve been digging all their lives.
I couldn’t care less how much the organizers of these groups claim to care about White people. All they end up doing is ruining the lives of Whites who get involved with them. For the anti-semites all I have to say is look at your idol Hitler. He said he was all about the wellbeing of Germans. In the end he allowed his country to be roped into a global war that killed millions of Germans and destroyed the country. If you really care about the fate of your people the only thing that matters is results. Intentions mean nothing and will not save you or your people.
I agree voting has become a meaningless ritual. Where I disagree is that the Ruling Class cares one way or another whether the charade takes place. From their perspective, if consent is withdrawn and that is taken one step further, they simply will gun down the dissenters and most people will applaud. It is hard to disagree with their assessment.
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I too agree voting is meaningless. But not only do the rulers not care, they can either add tens of millions of fake ballots (e.g. Biden’s 70 million voters), or simply explain that they are doing such a great job, people don’t even have to get involved in the process.
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Underlying the pathology of self-deception is parasitism. If all you can do in our modern post-scarcity welfare world is eat at the public trough and experience reality vicariously through a smart phone, then boredom will eventually drive you into Live Action Role Playing (LARPing). In gamer culture, our young sit in a chair and imagine moving like a real person with real mojo. LARPing requires a measure of chaotic physical movement (short duration spurts) and is therefore a small step up from video gaming. Now imagine that real bullets starting flying (hello Kyle Rittenhouse) and the imaginary becomes reality in the most existential way. Now you are really running with a purpose.
I don’t think the future is curative boycotts. Rather, methinks it is a mashup of Idiocracy and Escape from LA.
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“Believing your vote matters as an adult is like believing in Santa when you were a child”-the interwebs
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“What if they held a war and nobody came?”
All kidding aside, Brandon et al are doing us an enormous favor when it comes to encouraging localism. The ‘burb where I keep my swingin’ bachelor pad is a lot closer to an actual community now, largely thanks to lockdowns. When everybody had to physically commute, I knew the people around me by sight at best — “the woman three doors down with the poodle;” “the guy across the street with the black Hyundai.” But now that we can all finish our fakey-fake “work” in a few minutes, people are actually out and about and physically interacting with each other. The playground equipment in the park down the street is actually being used for the first time in forever, since little Kayden and Jayden and Brayden and Khaleesi can’t be shuttled from soccer practice to piano recital to tutoring to daycare anymore.
And that’s only going to increase as inflation starts giving Zimbabwe a run for the money. Even if all the Covid nonsense ended tomorrow, who could afford a night on the town these days? Pretty soon we’re going to end up singing songs around the campfire like some kind of postmodern cattle drive, because nobody can afford to do anything else. That’s a win, a big one.
Let’s go Brandon!!
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I’m convinced there is an organized shilling effort underway by NJP and their fellow travelers. Over the weekend 4chan had a plurality of threads about that lame Patriot Front display in DC and every single NJP and NJP adjacent account on Telegram would not shut up about it; posting screenshots of conservatives I’ve never heard of accusing PF of being feds. Now I don’t have a position on PF but this whole thing was an “in before” on a scale I’ve never seen.
I’m getting real tired of these characters. NJP has a tight hold on a great many right wing NPC minds.