Am I the only one worried that the right-wing is already taking advantage of the fact that the left has become a vacuum of intellect, and is now re-embracing intellectualism on its own terms?
I’ve seen multiple IG pages recently that talk about the literacy crisis in America; however, a good number of these pages/accounts are made by right-wingers/reactionaries. They use very blatant dogwhistles like “classical education”, “great books”, “virtue of the Ancients”, “glory of Western Civilization”, etc. etc. They talk about getting kids (read: they’re kids, the kids of right-wing elites) to study Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, etc., learn Latin and Ancient Greek at young ages, and pump their heads full of political philosophy. Yeah it’s indoctrination but still.
My assumption here is that the right-wing in America is trying to regroup and reorganize now that MAGA is clearly crashing and burning beyond repair. A lot of the rhetoric they use makes me think this stuff is coming from either the Heritage Foundation, Claremont Institute, or both.
But I think the deeper issue here is that the left has no way of effectively countering this, assuming this is true. Especially in the past five years or so the American left has almost entirely dismissed intellect and intellectualism in favour of appeals to emotion and petty in-fighting over covid masking, whose identity makes them the most marginalized, and whether or not going to the gym is “fascist”. Hell, someone just posted a screenshot from Reddit arguing that narcissists and psychopaths should be seen as “oppressed”. Why? What’s our antidote to the right when the right uses literacy and philosophy and such as a means of implementing fascism (or fascism-lite)? The American left seems to be taking the view that intellect is either 1. oppressive (because it inevitably creates a culture whereby smart people are upheld over stupid people) and/or 2. useless, because ethics are allegedly already embedded within human genetics and therefore all we need is intuition (Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid book is often invoked here). Why?
So what should we be doing in response?
234 posts and 28 image replies omitted.>>2941469Queer theory soup kitchens are no different from the soup kitchens run by Evangelical churches, FYI.
>>2942017They can eat when they prove that they deserve to. During a period of civil war food will be scarce, those not in the Party must prove themselves and carry their own weight before they can gain access to our rations
>>2942017Explain Gaza then.
>>2942165Imagine thinking READING two seminal works of political philosophy requires gulag.
Can someone explain to me why leftists are supposed to detest the classics?
>>2942627Ask yourself what a greek aristocrat raping young boys on his slave plantation over 2000 years ago has in common with a modern laborer.
>>2942632What if that text is a defining writing of western civilization?
>>2942632Sounds like the elite today
>>2942902and (you) aint one of them
>>2932284>the left has become a vacuum of intellectfalse premise, irrelevant time wasting question
>>2943016there isn't anything to be learned from reading le greeks in 2026. i will literally gain more knowledge insight and practical information from reading leftypol and 4chan than from reading ilikeboysies
>>2943020Heh, suit yourself. But why discourage others from reading them?
>>2941137Queer Theory is the philosophy of HR departments. All the radikewl speak we used in anarchist slaves 15 years ago has been fully co-opted by the capitalist system. Nothing revolutionary about pronoun circles or being non-binary.
>>2938034Her ideas are fully integrated into the ruling class nexus.
>>2943029>picIsn't it obvious?
>>2943051>anarchist slaves*spaces
Duck autocorrect
>>2943051imagine thinking this. in order to keep the proles divided there MUST be people who are viewed as freaks by the greater population. the circus needs clowns
>>2943068It’s better for capitalists to integrate marginalized folks into the corporate world than it is to keep them as lumpen, idiot.
>>2937501Hardcore truth nuke.
>>2937517>>2938310Both of you are slaves.
>>2937501This actually reminds me of how Bill Kristol (who is a total slimeball) said in The Power of Nightmares how he and his fellow neocons/Straussbros all had PhDs in political science or philosophy but couldn’t get jobs in academia, because even in the 1970s academia had an aversion to conservatives, so they instead went to Washington where they engaged in all sorts of political fuckery. Had the neocons like Kristol, Wolfowitz, etc. been given jobs in the universities maybe America would have been spared some of the worst foreign and domestic policies of the past 50 years.
It actually makes me think that the main reason you see so many right-wing podcast bros and tradwife influencers is for the exact same reason. The internet is the only place where they have any platform, so they monopolize the discourse online. If these people were allowed into the Ivory Tower and given a platform their toxicity would be limited to whatever institution they teach for and — more importantly — their bullshit would be subject to peer review before anyone else consumes it. So some right-wing woman writing an academic journal article arguing against feminism or abortion rights would get her article handed back to her covered in blood and told to use better arguments, better philosophy, better statistics, etc. Really makes you think.
>>2937517Butler isn’t someone I would ever associate with integrity.
>>2943749the problem with this premise is that if an idea is incorrect it can not stand up to rigorous review or criticism no matter how well you state it
>>2937501>teaching Plato is not a conspiracyThe ENTIRE text describes a conspiracy by elites.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12630 >>2943819And? Doesn’t that prove the point about right-wingers being forced to come to term with his retarded their ideas are if their ideas were allowed to be talked about in academia?
>>2943749This makes no sense when you realize that Hillsdale College, Grove City College, Franciscan U, Norte Dame, CUA, GMU, Auburn U, and nearly every college and university in Texas exist.
>>2943926nobody talks about them because they are easily proven to be incorrect
>>2943974Incorrect ideas still deserve a platform so others will understand why they’re incorrect. We still read Marx and Engels’ polemics against their opps, for instance.
>>2944067academics isn't about giving people a platform
>>2944069There’s plenty of leftist academics who spew out bullshit who still get a platform in academia. You have a very oversimplified view.
>>2943974What do you mean by “proven to be incorrect”. Name some of these “incorrect” ideas.
>>2932302>rightoids and intellectualism are just incompatible full stopWe cannot afford to be this dismissive and arrogant in our thinking. Obviously there are highly sophisticated and smart people on the right as well. Unless you want to explain away the right's recent successes mainly by asserting they are dumb and ignorant? Because then that reflects on the leftist agenda VERY badly: for all the brains and political theory, a leftist being bested by a pigeon shitting on the chess board isn't exactly a flattering image of our capabilities, wouldn't you say? Though, there might be some truth to that; leftists in general tend to be too smart for their own good, which is why the great conundrum for the left is that, until the ordinary people are smart enough, they will never understand the Big Ideas of the left, and if they are not brought under the power of these Big Ideas, they will never be smart enough. Too many times leftists dismiss the simple ideas, which just so happens to be to the average person the most emotionally impactful ones. And at the hands of a smart right-wing intellectual who can masterfully handle the simple ideas, will almost always outplay a left-wing intellectual who overlooks those simple ideas and instead focuses solely on the Big Ideas.
>>2932284>Especially in the past five years or so the American left has almost entirely dismissed intellect and intellectualism in favour of appeals to emotion and petty in-fighting over covid masking, whose identity makes them the most marginalized, and whether or not going to the gym is “fascist”. Hell, someone just posted a screenshot from Reddit arguing that narcissists and psychopaths should be seen as “oppressed”. Why? What’s our antidote to the right when the right uses literacy and philosophy and such as a means of implementing fascism (or fascism-lite)?All of those issues are a symptom of the left-wing movement turning anomic and weak. One of the corner stones of 20th century leftist thought in terms of practical political theory, has been the Leninist vanguard, the "professional revolutionary". In the 21st century leftist movement that has been scrapped in the name of opposing elitism. That has been a grave mistake, because now the primary measuring stick of value is the retarded evaluation mode of "other-directedness", where essentially all notions of right and wrong are derived from what other people around us hold as right or wrong. This wouldn't be as much of an issue were it not for the fact that we're living in the Internet age, where insanity can fester and grow in isolated social enclaves where people reaffirm and enable each other's delusions. That's how you get to a point where going to the gym is seen as fascist: weak and delusional people leveling social power to their advantage until they are powerful enough to signal to others - and thereby determine for majority of people around them - what is right and wrong, regardless of any objective values or facts. Truth has always been something that only the strong can handle. That's why elitism, hierarchy, and vanguardism has to re-enter back to the limelight of leftist thought. Otherwise you get swarmed by the liberal hive-mind who co-opt and muddy the waters of what true leftism is all about: authority, intellect, bravery, and sacrifice.
>So what should we be doing in response?- Cultivate and mold yourself into something greater. 2. re-learn the language of the laypeople (ie. dumbing down the Big Ideas and learning the art of rhetoric in order to make those ideas appealing; right-wing elites co-opting Cicero is no excuse to dismiss Cicero altogether). 3. organize; nothing of value was ever achieved alone. If right-wingers urge people to read Plato, then you go right ahead and organize a reading group or a book club where you read Plato, and you tell them how the right-wing ideology is actually antithetical to Platonism, and that Plato was in fact the first true progressive, the archetypal leftist. From there on out you keep cultivating yourselves and your character, chiseling away all the gross metaphorical tumours and excess fat that currently plagues the liberalized left, until you have in your hands a vanguard, the best of the best, a truly professional revolutionary party. That's how literally every other leftist movement of any value from time immemorial was build.
>>2944069Plenty of wrong ideas are openly discussed in the universities. How do you come to the conclusion that they’re wrong to begin with?
>>2944469Nothing but truthpills right here.
>>2944465Am I wrong for laughing hysterically at this?
>evangelicals: “don’t read Plato, he’s occult/satanic.”
>vulgar Marxists: “don’t read Plato, he’s reactionary/idealist.”
Really makes you think.
>>2943063>Isn't it obvious?only if you do the reading
>>2944469>they're successful because they're smartno it's because they're brutal, fast, and have resources.
>>2944844>no it's because they're brutal, fast, and have resources.While all of that might be true, given the context, that sounds like an excuse meant to justify one's idleness and ineptitude. Because you still have to know how to use those resources and be those things at the right time. Moreover, none of those necessarily turns into popular support, or even into a plan or an idea of what to do with all of that brutality, speed and resources. A billionaire, for instance, *could* (and of course they do, and have done) make a swift, widespread corporate capture of media and then spend tremendous amounts of money to churn out propaganda, but if the propaganda is just slop that nobody buys, then throwing more money at the problem isn't going to fix it. In order to achieve your main objectives, you still need to be cognizant enough of the world around, be smart enough to frame it in a way that serves your political interests (ie. theorize), know how to manipulate people, and give them what they want - or, at the very least, give off the appearance of it. Even you must admit that it takes special type of skills and brains to produce content that will appeal to people and gain their support, especially if that support is going to end up hurting the people down the line. The historical point we've arrived at since the 50's wasn't concocted overnight by a merciless, barbarous, blitzkrieg war with an infinite money supply to back it up, even if you'd like to think that. It has been a gradual, sophisticated and patient process, which couldn't have been made possible without the silent, manufactured consent/paralyzation of the people. As Plato (in paraphrase) has said, "if you want to deceive, then you must proceed with the lie in small steps, instead of by leaps and bounds".
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