Miranda and Gerald arrived early at the diner this afternoon. They worked in the same department where a line manager’s anniversary cut the day short. Miranda, who hated small talk, went right into the fray.
M: “How did we arrive where we are today? A series of continent-wide mood swings:
- The financial crisis in 2008 fostered distrust in capitalism’s institutions.
- Out of that distrust grew strong progressive forces for change. Over the next years, economic forces merged with ecological forces. For instance, we got Green New Deal around that time.
- A barrage of left and progressive programs resulted in a firm belief that »this time we are really changing the world«. Reflecting on the sheer breadth and scale of the movement, it developed a determination and tenacity.
- All change faces inertia. When the movement countered that, it was interpreted as resistance by the old system.
- The progressive forces increased in bitter aggression. On top of the inherited dispute with the right wing along a conservative⟷liberal axis, we now also see a new layer of narrow-minded bitterness emerge. Let’s call it the ‘young left’, prone to more radical imagery of their opponents.
- Simultaneously a new ‘young right’ starts to grow. It has the same hallmarks of a more radical and cynical picture of their principal opponent. The two ‘young’ factions polarise heavily and become a new binary star system of mutual hate and provocation.
- Now there are two bipolar systems: The old conservative⟷liberal and the new young-right⟷young-left. Since politics is about populism, an upwards dynamics emerges resulting in the debate shifting from old to newer, shriller voices. At this point, the debate is really swamped with LGBTQ-activism and alt-right slogans.
- The right-wing backlash becomes manifest in 2025. It has of course long been underway, especially due to lack of escape hatches and depressurising valves.”
G: “We’re off to a good start.
Can you remember back in the years following 2008? How we all felt angered by the irresponsible build-up of the bubble? That must have lent credence to a lot of left wing groups. I for one did follow a lot of left social media channels those days. What happened to the anti-capitalist movement? Did it fizzle out or did it really transform into an LGBT-right movement? And is the Green New Deal people an offspring of the Occupy Wall Street movement? I find it hard to track affiliations.”
M: “Certainly I can remember. I remember both the anger at the brokers who had the audacity to stand outside on the balcony looking at the angry mob, holding wine glasses and laughing. I also remember the strange feeling I had when I saw an old man on TV being dragged away into court surrounded by another angry mob, this time, though, is was male sexual behaviour that was in the cross hairs, and no statute of limitations obtains.
But frankly, I don’t buy into the narrative that it is the same crowd, although we can today see a certain coalescing of right wing ideas such that almost all alt-right groupings are in remarkable agreement on many key issues. Who is to say that a similar phenomenon hasn’t occurred on the left wing since the financial crisis? "
G: “Why do you say that the alt-right is in unison with each other? Not as I see it. In fact, the more alternative it becomes, the wider they spread out on a hitherto undefined spectrum. From the technocratic Dark Enlightenment fantasising about corporate-run city-states to purified white supremacy movements, or Nouvelle Droite’s »Gramscian Right« which seems like a solid blend of left and right ideas. In fact, what you and I recognise as conservative is strictly limited to some blend of fiscal and moral traits. But even in that case, I cannot agree that you can judge anything on outward policies. Responsible economics can be an admission to a ruthless competitiveness or a yearning for traditional ethical foundation.”
Miranda had to give it some thought.
M: “In other words, listing traits is insufficient. We have to dig down into the motives behind the policies. I can see that open up for all sorts of libellous mind digging. Unless the authors come clean and express all layers of their thinking, we are prone to attribute our own prejudices on others.”
G: “All I am saying is that the richer our language becomes in expressing e.g. Richard Spencers nationalism, preserving all layers of sentiments, the clearer we can compare with for instance the conservatism of e.g. Buckley’s National Review magazine.”
M: “It is almost a job description you present there. What did you think about my broad timeline?”
G: “Partly I agree, partly disagree. I like the framing utilising global events: The 2008 financial crisis and I think the 2020 pandemic could also be made a part of this. Huge events unleash huge social forces. However, I am reluctant to make use of a generational gap that easily. Unless I see statistics proving disparate age dominance between the conservative and the alt-right camps, I reserve judgment on that one.”
M: “I don’t have statistics, no, and I admit to overgeneralisation. The reason I invoke age is that generational transition usually coincides with a change in awareness. Since we rarely read the printed books of a previous generation, we have a tendency to start over.”
G: “That won’t hold in court. You yourself once explained how many years CRT has existed, and that was just one example. A lot of these ideas stem from at least one generation ago. A more precise description is: Younger generations read classical textbooks on ideologies and constructs their own amalgamation in their heads. I don’t doubt for a second that the traits of Old Right, Paleo-conservatism and Nouvelle Droite all show signs of hereditary evolution. If so, people ought to pay attention to the fact that just because father and son can look related, it doesn’t mean that the son only will display hereditary features from his father. The entire gene pool is involved here.”
M: “CRT is just another something-new-something-old evolutionary step.”
G: “Which brings us back to your theory that the sophistication of CRT is lost on a younger generation who just wants to throw rocks through a window.”
M: “Street violence is a much more complicated matter. And public hangings in the shape of witch hunts on old perpetrators of indiscretions that didn’t age well, those hangings tend to be perceived as a warning to everybody, and quite possibly rightfully so! Intimidations are likely to backfire when people can rally around singular but strong voices in opposition.”
G: “The way you laid out CRT is that it was originally part of a niche debate: Whether justice can be truly blind.”
M: “Certainly. I prefer to say that you take an epistemological shortcut by pointing out that different framing and background storytelling in court can result in radically different outcomes. If a court was founded upon absolute moral ground, that wouldn’t be the case. Delgado and Stefancic writes in their CRT an Introduction that:”
These cultural influences are probably at least as determinative of outcomes as the formal laws, since they supply the background against which the latter are inter- preted and applied.
M: “If true, the implications are serious. Given that Richard Delgado and his wife both hold degrees in law, we must assume their claim is not completely unwarranted.”
G: “If they are right, the whole point of a court becomes futile. But they could be wrong. I remember seeing a study on exam scores for caucasian and asian medical students, whether they were influenced by prejudices of the examiners. Surprisingly they observed some presence of mental stereotypes in the examiners’ minds, but nothing that affected assigned grades which were identical between the two groups. The authors pointed towards other factors as explanation for the actual discrepancy between prevalence of caucasians and asians in the medical field.”
M: “That kind of research seems basic, but really it is necessary. If I sound less than convinced, it is because of the level of complexity that post-modernism operates on, while the cognitive bias studies seems to be rather crude in comparison. Cognitive sciences could easily be stuck in a pit where they basically designed experiments that simply confirmed the designers’ prejudices.”
G: “Sorry for sounding corny, but here’s a fact: I don’t mind any ideology unless people act on it. Ideas manifested as action always sours the whole pot. CRT inspiring street aggressions in my view voids the purpose of CRT, which is exactly empathic understanding of someone else’s reality.”
M: “Actions are real and tangible, and therefore also provocative. They threaten us to a much deeper degree. The actions can result in self-fulfilling prototypes.
If you can anger someone to the point where he hurls out a mean stereotype, there are two obvious interpretations:
- He always harboured those feelings. Finally the provocation worked! His festering hate burst and truth spewed out: He is capable of evil speech. Who knows what else?
- The constant provocation animated the person to act aggressively. Without prior experience with abusive language, he idiotically reaches out for anything in his verbal vicinity that can function as a punch in the face, and to his own surprise, he hears himself utter a racial slur or a sexist remark.”
G: “Action breeds counter action.”
M: “Exactly. Take École Polytechnique massacre. It is another example of how the social seesaw begets what it is trying to eradicate. The shooter had it in for feminism. He went berserk on a school for women studying to become engineers. He couldn’t be farther from feminism than that.”
G: “A very alarming example. Those women he mass murdered? They were not feminists. Marc Lépine had drafted a list of actual feminists in his suicide note that were the real targets, but I guess he settled for any random set of girls. In another life, one of those could have married him an completely fulfil his hormone-driven world view. If he could avail himself to being a man like that.”
M: “If I put aside my feminist glasses for a while, then yes, possibly. But there are many interpretations. A school shooting is perhaps one of the most polysemic events imaginable. There are a gazillion explanations and ’larger pictures’ that can be inferred, all serving conflicting political agendas. More or less feminism? More or less gun control? More or less room for old masculine ways of life?”
G: “In this instance, though, the irony is hard to miss: Marc Lépine had gotten feminism in the wrong throat, but ended up killing unrelated women. As a consequence, feminists rallies around the carcasses and promulgates even further change. Now, in this case I would regard Marc as a link in a chain of perpetuation of family violence and temper. His father lost control often, it is said. But statistically that only disposes him, makes him volatile. Seeking explanations or just being unable to control his anger, he tragically cast his hate on feminism. I don’t call that warranted. Feminism can easily get a bad rep, but in essence I see it as a bunch of mental exercises aimed at training people to not take the status quo for granted.”
M: “God I feel tired of talking. And Christine seems to have stood us down today. Should w call it a day with a bunch of disorganised ramblings?”
They both retreated, but promised to come back soon with a shovel each, ready for digging through the sordid underbelly of American political life.
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