/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2930072
Also: concerning that list of reactionary books, I might add Plato’s Laws to the list.

>>2930072
it is not worth understanding how the reactionary mind thinks. they don't think. it is not worth reading their "theory" because being anti-materialist they have no theory. it all boils down to pseudo spiritual self help and excuses for divorced dad losers. I've tried reading it and there's nothing there at all.

polite sage.

>>2930072
>we aren’t supposed to debate fascists, we’re supposed to shoot them.
?????????

Is it worth it to understand those who control society? What do you think?

>>2930072
They are secretly the opposite of what they say they are. Conservatives love the government boot more than anyone else, as long as it is used to crush minorities. They hate free markets, people trying to start a small business are bums who need to get a job in their eyes. Conservatives watch more gay and trans porn per capita than any other demographic. Belief in the supernatural and acting as such is a sign of mental illness, conservatives are physicalist as hell. Must I go on? I can do this all day.

Yes, it is necessary. They are winning the minds of the masses through social-media exposure and algorithmic infestation. Nazism is as hip as it has ever been since the 1930s. This is a cultural phenomenon as well as a material one - understanding its theoretical bases (and the arguments that debunk them) is needed to push back against misconceptions, deception and lies pushed by a very class-conscious bourgeoisie.

>>2930072
cringe thread.

1. 99% of chuds you will ever encounter are running on vibes from social media, not whatever bullshit you posted
   
2. the remaining 1% doesn't care either, their objective is to give capital more power and they will say whatever they have to say to achieve that goal
   
   

this is all common sense. whenever I read anyone talking about discourse analysis I stop paying attention because none of this is complicated, you don't need a bunch of books or long words to describe these people. they are completely transparent and basic. that's also why people should stop wasting time with the critical theory shit and the verso-books authors: it's not that complicated, you can get the vibes yourself. maybe that chomsky book is worth reading, if you're really bored, but only because he presents lots of data, which sets him apart from all the other guys

tl;dr read capital volume 1, then read it again, then read it again

>>2930073
Millerman is a Zionist Jewish supremacist. Stop posting him.

>>2930095
They aren't winning the minds of the masses. It's always been like this. The masses are inherently reactionary.

All the answers ITT are retarded and wrong.
>>2930072
>Is it worth it to understand how the right-wing thinks?
Given that all human agency is mediated by material conditions, understanding the conditions and circumstances that fuels right-wing thought is highly pertinent. It allows us to identify and leverage those conditions into class consciousness by disarming the terrain of what ever made them right-wing to begin with. After all, right-wing beliefs are only a response to the same class contradictions. Demanding ideological purity from the working class is idealist nonsense.

>>2930095
Except this answer. This user is smart.

>>2930072
contrary to the fake quote "why should we reply to kautsky" Marx, Engels, and Lenin put a lot of effort into understanding and replying to the reactionaries, reformists, revisionists, and opportunists of their time:

Young Marx writes with passion and fury against Max Stirner and Pierre Proudhon. Older Marx writes with frustration and scientific acumen against Ferdinand Lassalle and Mikhail Bakunin. Engels writes an entire book dedicated to quoting and debunking the mostly forgotten Eugen Duhring. Lenin writes an entire book against Kautsky. All of them were interested to some extent in combating capitalist mythmaking and apologia.

I think where some people draw the line is the urgency. If you're going to be shot while writing about your enemies, best to shoot first.

>>2930109
>inherently
elaborate

>>2930118
>replying to the reactionaries
and yet you only commented on the intra-left polemics

they rarely did comment on reactionaries because they knew it was nonsense and a waste of time. and even then, it was far from "a lot of effort into understanding": they didn't take them at face value. you capitalize duhring and post his entire name trying to act smart but I assume you haven't read the fucking book, because engels wastes 0 lines trying to play debate lord or taking the guy seriously. most of it boil down to
>this guy is a crank
>he says a lot of bullshit
>it's not worth reading
>it doesn't make sense
>and ultimately it's just an angle to push the party to the right

>>2930072
This list is completely philosophically incoherent and the quality of the inclusions varies considerably - Buchanan and Goldwater are not worth reading. If you’re talking about ‘Reaction’ specifically then this list is even worse because a bunch of these people are explicit liberals like Nozick and Hayek. Also left-wing influences on radical right-wing thought like Sorel and Marx are probably more important than Oakeshott to the contemporary right. What fucking right-winger is influenced by Heidegger’s metaphysics

You don't typically see the average reactionary type of person try to make the case that they base their stance on some kind of academic or educated foundation, save for the ones that call up their preferred foundational civilization myth as some sort of mystical guiding spirit, or the ones that base their beliefs entirely off their preferred religious tradition.

I've always been of the mind that the western trope of the "left wing academic" existed precisely because they have read everything and came to the conclusion that "left wing" ideas are simply the vanguard of intelligentsia of the western world, which is why "right wing academic" was a phrase unheard of until very recently, because in the past, monarchists and the like based their authority on the basis of religion, which was at odds with academia.

In that sense the kind of reactionary political parties made up of "straight rich white men looking to preserve their institutional power" is not the same kind of reactionary which lives below the poverty line and is currently being crushed by the capital power of the former, while simultaneously advocating for that power. These are the people who, if asked where they base their political beliefs on, will more commonly point to "tradition", "culture", "religion", "race", "tribe", etc., but will almost never say that they adhere to their politics based on some kind of systematic study of an academic subject. Such a thing is anathema to them, and more often than not will say that those are the types of people they are stalwartly against.

So this leaves reactionary academics in a very strange position. They are hated by the majority of the working class man that supports their politics, and are irrelevant to the ruling class which derives its authority from a combination of capital and institutional power, not the conclusions of academics. In my personal opinion, right wing academics are simply just half-baked academics, often ones who study independently, who came sprinting to tell the world a teleological destiny immediately after reading the first piece of literature that managed to shake the foundations of their worldview, quite often a work that is a hundreds, if not thousands of years old, completely unaware of the following works that have gone on to critique, expand, and sublate into a better understanding of those old books. Many reading lists for reactionaries, like the one in OPs post are simply lists for propagandizing oneself, as such lists will hardly ever give the reader a separate list of works critiquing or countering its positions.

>Yet there’s always that curiosity concerning how and why right-wingers believe what they believe.
The explanation is that they are retarded. Not all people are equal. Imagine you're trying to move and a bunch of weights are tied to you via rope. The weights are the reactionaries trying to resist the tide of progress, they must be cut loose.
>I know the standard answer is that they’re all a bunch of straight rich white men looking to preserve their institutional power
I don't think this is accurate for 99% of right wingers. The simple truth is that some people are predisposed to "magical thinking" and the right rewards this, I went more in depth in another thread https://leftypol.org/leftypol/res/2927644.html

Mix magical thinking and sadism and you end up with the modern far right

>>2930120
Nta but he’s confusing “inherently” with “by default”, the latter is way closer to the truth

>>2930107
He's literally a Plato scholar. Jews and Greeks are opps, idiot.

>>2930203
plato can be read as a spiritual elitist, with the republic et al not describing a real polity but rather a spiritual truth

Dissect it, figure out how it forms and how to stop it from forming in yourself, but don't adopt it willingly.

A lot of it boils down to catharsis seeking, which is dangerously common on the left–worsened by twitter and tumblr–so the more you can understand about it and cut it out early, the better.

>>2930204
And what does that have to do with Jews?

>>2930211
not sure, what i said is only tangentially relevant, i dont think plato belongs in a list of right wing books

>>2930219
The Zio in the video >>2930073
is talking about Plato's Laws, not The Republic. A totally different dialogue.

studying reactionary thought can be interesting, because it gives you a deeper understanding of how incoherent it is

>>2930209
>catharsis seeking
Looks like babby learned a new word.
Catharsis against the bourgeoisie is a good thing, retard.

Low empathy and critical thinking, that's it

>>2930072
You should understand them but not by reading their works, which are always just handwringing justification for an underlying dispositional impulse

Political alignment today is a function of underlying disposition. High openness, high agreeableness? Leftist or liberal. Low openness, low agreeableness? Reactionary - conservative to fascist. High openness, low agreeableness? Some kind of right-libertarian or leftypol type.
The mediating factor of this basic system which distinguishes a conservative from a fascist and libertarian from a leftypoller (perhaps the oddest one) is neuroticism, which usually tracks extremism except in the latter case.

This is very important to you in your daily online life because it helps you ask the right questions: not "why does this idiot believe this untrue thing? How do I show him the facts?" But "what underlying psychological need is met by this belief?"
(This is also why ideological coalitions form the way they do, when they're often incoherent in class or logical terms.)

>>2930381
>wojak brain virus
We got an infected one here

It's always the idiot who treats knowledge as a means to an end:
<Evidently then we do not seek [Knowledge] for the sake of any other advantage; but as the man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for another's, so we pursue this as the only free science, for it alone exists for its own sake.
https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.1.i.html
Why wouldn't you read authors for their own sake?

most genuine rank-and-file level 1 Goon tier reactionaries I've met(not just run of the mill conservatives who are basically just classical libs who hate progressive libs or the actual leadership) more or less have a genuine cognitive deficit/cluster B personality disorder or somekind that future socialist societies will be able to describe and study in a scientific matter. I would say the defining features are a sense of self aggrandizement and high levels of magical thinking/idealism.

>>2930458
Cognitive deficit and decline are the cards we were dealt by capitalism. If you not play them then there will be no future socialist societies at all.

>>2930461
Utilizing brainrot just gets you Hegseth

>>2930300
What makes you assume all reactionaries lack empathy?

>>2930537
Watching them jerk off to dead Iranian kids is a pretty good indicator

>>2930548
I see no indication that they’re doing such a thing.

>>2930600
Try talking to your average right-populist

>>2930390
>It's always the idiot who treats knowledge as a means to an end:
Knowledge for its own sake is quickly forgotten. Abstract knowledge can be a means to many ends. For example to know 2+2=4 as a general fact is not necessarily immediately applicable upon learning it, but becomes applicable in many situations. Concrete knowledge is a means to an end because it is practical. If your parent teaches you how to tie your shoes it is so you can walk around outside without tripping over your shoelaces, or sustain injuries from going barefoot.
>Why wouldn't you read authors for their own sake?
I do, but among those who do not, I think the most common answer might be "lack fo time" or "boredom"

posts whatever you like you will never be able to refute the fact that negros are cognitively inferior, and if it weren’t for the white the world would still be living in mud huts

we will continue to have a monopoly on the truth :)

Some of these are just basic philosophy. Heidegger should be read by everyone.

>>2930649
So have I. They 100% are.

>>2930654
But most of it isn't, and if you're going to spend your time reading 20 books, there are better books.

>>2930657
>They 100% are.
What did they say?

>>2930662
I would recommend Dostoevskt down to Heidegger then Buchanen and Deneen add in some Dugin for fun

Psychological building blocks, in rough order of explanatory weight:

<Threat sensitivity. Stronger reactions to negative stimuli and perceived danger (Hibbing, Smith & Alford). The world is experienced as more dangerous than the left experiences it. This is the upstream variable for most of the rest.

<Right-wing authoritarianism (Altemeyer, Duckitt). A dangerous-world belief produces three things together: submission to legitimate authority, conventionalism, and aggression toward groups that authority marks as threats. Not stupidity, not sadism: a security strategy.

<Social dominance orientation (Sidanius & Pratto). A competitive-jungle belief produces preference for group hierarchy. RWA and SDO are separate; the extreme right is typically high on both, which is rare in the general population.

<Need for closure (Jost). Intolerance of ambiguity, preference for clear categories and settled answers. Liberal pluralism feels like disorder, not freedom.

<Binding moral foundations (Haidt). Loyalty, authority and sanctity are active moral receptors. “Harm to the nation”, “betrayal of our people”, “defilement of our culture” register as real moral violations, not metaphors. Disgust is the engine of sanctity and the mechanism of dehumanization (vermin, disease, filth language).

<Status threat, not poverty. The strongest sociological predictor is relative decline in social standing, especially for men without higher education (Gidron & Hall, Gest). Absolute income predicts poorly. The grievance is “we used to count, now we’re laughed at.”

<Significance quest (Kruglanski). For the extreme end: need (humiliation, loss of meaning) + narrative (an enemy and a mission) + network (brotherhood). Radicalization is usually social before it is ideological. The neo-Nazi is a young man who found a group, then adopted the doctrine.

Flood

>>2930090
>They are secretly the opposite of what they say they are … Conservatives watch more gay and trans porn per capita than any other demographic.
There's a lot of psychological projection that goes on. I think a lot of them are also obsessed with feelings of humiliation so they feel humiliated but are also driven to try to humiliate others. It's a kind of repression and also involves weird relationships with traditional authority figures and patterns of deference and command. To use an analogy it's like hating your dad because he beat you with a belt but you're also psychologically incapable of talking back or punching dad so that strange mix of feelings are projected outwards.

An example. I was driving through a highly conservative place called Johnson County, Texas and saw this billboard on the side of the highway. So apparently Southwest Airlines did something woke (not sure what) and whoever put this billboard up didn't like that. But I honestly legit thought this was an ad for Southwest for a second, like "that's weird… in Johnson County?" then the moment it sunk in two seconds later that it was some conservatives who did this, I blurted out loud WHAT THE FUCK. Like I'm gay and been to gay neighborhoods in coastal cities and I've never seen a drag queen on a billboard before and these faggots put one up in Johnson County. Are they threatening me with a good time?

BTW legend tells me a Johnson County commissioner was once outed and resigned because he liked to dress as a woman in the privacy of his own home. Idk if that's related but at any rate if just look at right-wing Twitter, they're constantly posting pics like this, or pics of men in thongs touching dicks and are like "THIS IS YOU." This has been talked about to death here already but I'm like bro I don't have that much gay porn on my computer, why are you showing me this. I think they are trying to get a disgust response out of other people but they're just putting gross stuff up everywhere. It's one of the most bizarre aspects of the right.

>>2930073
How is Plato reactionary?

>>2930072
>Reactionary
>Right-wing
Dude: right-wingers are liberals who support the crown. Reactionaries was the reimposition of the ancient regime.

>>2930072
Incredibly stupid list.

I'd remove Hayek, Buchanan and Goldwater, the road there just leads to capitalism and individualism.

Nietzsche and Heidegger have arguably had a bigger influence on the left than on the right.

Schmitt's work is extremely useful for the left, likewise.

Strauss' book is just him moralfagging for 300 pages.

>>2930683
><Social dominance orientation (Sidanius & Pratto). A competitive-jungle belief produces preference for group hierarchy. RWA and SDO are separate; the extreme right is typically high on both, which is rare in the general population.
YAY! and stuff…

But let us for a minute understand, what is "social-dominance?" What is a nuclear warhead? What is your a piece of shit fucking dross fucking piece of shit that should die in nuclear hellfire before the rest of us you garbage piece of shit motherfuckers I will smile ass you burn in hellfire?

>>2930718
>Supported slavery
>Supported imperialist wars
>Was super butthurt about "tyrants" aka proletarian heroes who freed the slaves
idk fam you tell me

>>2930745
Plato was the first libtard. All the mistakes of Western civilization can be traced back to the Greek or Roman periods. Anyone who unironically praises the "Greco-Roman" roots of Western civilization needs to be shot for supporting slavery.

There are generally three types of right-wingers I have encountered.

> The Scared Middle Class

This is the guy in his 40s–65s who managed to survive the 2008 crisis while still holding on to his pre-2008 neoliberal brainrot about competition and fair markets. He thinks anyone who protests is lazy and is deathly afraid of any political or economic change because he is in debt and knows he could easily fall behind on his payments. Funnily enough, the politics he supports are almost guaranteed to bring about the next crisis.

Lately, he has become increasingly addicted to TikTok and dreams of investing in real estate, watches, and old cars.

He is pro-cop, whines about taxes, fears Islamocommunism, and owns a small business.

The majority of modern right-wingers are like this.

> The Chud

He is either a young, kissless virgin or an older, rural poor guy. He is afraid of cities and migrants, has weird sexual and psychological complexes, and rages all day on the internet.

He LARPs as religious and patriotic but is neither. He thinks he deserves a middle-class job or his own business, but he is more likely to be a low-paid cop or soldier, or a firewood seller.

He has little contact with organized labor or foreigners but hates them because he saw something on the news or his favorite streamer/podcaster told him the are bad.

More populist than the first category.

> The Yarvin Lord

He thinks he has solved politics with math and autism score tests. He is a libertarian, but he is afraid the internet will bully him if he openly admits it, so he claims to subscribe to some obscure ideology.

Many normie bourgeois politicians have adopted his social Darwinism, yet he will never admit that he is just another normie.

The reverse of the Chud

to reinforce the point I made in >>>/leftypol/2930103 and >>>/leftypol/2930121 because everyone in this thread besides me and a few other posters seem to be either chuds trying to concern troll, or complete retards that love the marketplace of ideas. here is marx explaining it himself: chuds don't give a fuck about chuds authors, they do not care. it is pointless to debate this stuff because the motivations are material, not ideological. the opinions of none of these authors have ever affected reality, they were just playing defense for the status quo

<Our capitalist, who is at home in his vulgar economy, exclaims: “Oh! but I advanced my money for the express purpose of making more money.” The way to Hell is paved with good intentions, and he might just as easily have intended to make money, without producing at all. He threatens all sorts of things. He won’t be caught napping again. In future he will buy the commodities in the market, instead of manufacturing them himself. But if all his brother capitalists were to do the same, where would he find his commodities in the market? And his money he cannot eat. He tries persuasion. “Consider my abstinence; I might have played ducks and drakes with the 15 shillings; but instead of that I consumed it productively, and made yarn with it.” Very well, and by way of reward he is now in possession of good yarn instead of a bad conscience; and as for playing the part of a miser, it would never do for him to relapse into such bad ways as that; we have seen before to what results such asceticism leads. Besides, where nothing is, the king has lost his rights; whatever may be the merit of his abstinence, there is nothing wherewith specially to remunerate it, because the value of the product is merely the sum of the values of the commodities that were thrown into the process of production. Let him therefore console himself with the reflection that virtue is its own reward. But no, he becomes importunate. He says: “The yarn is of no use to me: I produced it for sale.” In that case let him sell it, or, still better, let him for the future produce only things for satisfying his personal wants, a remedy that his physician MacCulloch has already prescribed as infallible against an epidemic of over-production. He now gets obstinate. “Can the labourer,” he asks, “merely with his arms and legs, produce commodities out of nothing? Did I not supply him with the materials, by means of which, and in which alone, his labour could be embodied? And as the greater part of society consists of such ne’er-do-wells, have I not rendered society incalculable service by my instruments of production, my cotton and my spindle, and not only society, but the labourer also, whom in addition I have provided with the necessaries of life? And am I to be allowed nothing in return for all this service?” Well, but has not the labourer rendered him the equivalent service of changing his cotton and spindle into yarn? Moreover, there is here no question of service. A service is nothing more than the useful effect of a use-value, be it of a commodity, or be it of labour. But here we are dealing with exchange-value. The capitalist paid to the labourer a value of 3 shillings, and the labourer gave him back an exact equivalent in the value of 3 shillings, added by him to the cotton: he gave him value for value. Our friend, up to this time so purse-proud, suddenly assumes the modest demeanour of his own workman, and exclaims: “Have I myself not worked? Have I not performed the labour of superintendence and of overlooking the spinner? And does not this labour, too, create value?” His overlooker and his manager try to hide their smiles. Meanwhile, after a hearty laugh, he re-assumes his usual mien. Though he chanted to us the whole creed of the economists, in reality, he says, he would not give a brass farthing for it. He leaves this and all such like subterfuges and juggling tricks to the professors of Political Economy, who are paid for it. He himself is a practical man; and though he does not always consider what he says outside his business, yet in his business he knows what he is about.

>>2930095
>They are winning the minds of the masses through social-media exposure and algorithmic infestation
All they’re doing is being loud and obnoxious, and appealing to a demographic that is literally dying off. And “masses”? Seriously?

>>2930825
i want add that all this groups unite in three things:

1)That despite some criticism of neoliberalism in praxis they still hold into the neoliberal/capitalism ideology. Hard personal work in a free market enviroment can make you rich(dont think about 2008). People who fail at that are stupid or lazy. And in general Thatcerism "There is no society just the person and his family"

2)Thus they are sceptical/fearful of social movements and organized workers struggle, when shit hits the fan they always side with the state, see France now

3)Their capitalist ideology requires some type of social darwinism, some people will loose for others to be winners, this game may require class conflict from above, violent crack downs and dead foreigners/poor
Thats why they like Israel