[Samseau]

(11-23-2016 07:57 PM)Phoenix Wrote:  

To be that annoying guy who advocates using well-known words, instead of trying to overlap them with such meaningless vague new invented ones that you need to keep adding extra invented words to try and make it make sense:

Right-wing: The politics of order. (With leftism being 'the politics of movement' i.e. disorder).
Subdivisions thereof:
- Conservative. Primarily resists social changes. Focused on maintenance of existing social order. Hence the 'conserve' bit in 'conservative'. Doesn't really want to make significant constitutional changes. Mostly happy with supporting the ideals of family & church and so on.
-- Subset: the Cuckservative. Resists change in either direction. Generally just wants to grumble about 'conservative principles' but hiss and spit whenever a reactionary does anything towards restoring social order.
- Reactionary. Aims to revert the current society to a previous form. Considers existing social order to be dysfunctional, and insufficiently ordered. Wants constitutional change, generally reversion to previous constitutional forms. Favours stronger and more powerful forms of patriarchy and family, such as monarchy and nobility.
- Fascist. Wants society to be transformed into a human cudgel (the fasces was a bundle of rods tightly bound around an axe handle to increase its strength). Views the world as 'fight or die'. Favours a single, strong dictator at the head to wield that human cudgel. I.e. maximum ant-colony-like social order to maximize aggressive strength. Unlike conservative or reactionary, it is inherently aggressive. This could be further divided into two camps:
- Defensive. They claim that fascism is required for survival purposes. White nationalists would fall into this group, as it would fundamentally require a powerful central government (which always tends towards a dictator) to enforce race laws throughout social & business life. By definition, a white nation is a nation that primarily characterizes itself as white, rather than a multitude of traits.
- Offensive. They claim that their group is the strongest and by right should control more of the earth and have more power generally (i.e. whether they are under threat or not is irrelevant). White supremacists would fall into this group.

This forum on average sits between Conservative and Reactionary. Maybe around 40% conservative, 60% reactionary. Most people here want to revert some things but not others. For instance, only a few people here have supported my critique of democracy and my support of monarchy & nobility. At most people have argued for some voting qualifications or disenfranchising women. On the religious side, there are a lot of strong Christians here, but generally they are just holding-the-line against atheists and leftists -- they seldom argue for restoration of religiosity.

There are a few fascists here, but very few, and none argue the offensive form. It's worth noting that 'fascist' isn't a bad word by itself, in the same way 'communist' isn't a bad word by itself. Indeed there are probably hypothetical situations in which fascism is the best system -- i.e. being assailed by a enemy that has intent to exterminate you. Fascism is typically considered bad because of how extreme it is versus the actual perceived problem it seeks to address.

Nationalism doesn't sit in any particular stratum of the right, in and of itself. It depends on its form. For instance, a conservative nationalist might just advocate more flag waving and celebration of his countries culture. A reactionary nationalist might perceive his country to be in a fundamentally degraded state, and seek to revert it to a stronger prior position, such as by building a wall, banning undesirable immigrants, or deporting some part of the population. A fascist nationalist wants to prepare his country for battle and antagonism generally.

A simple example would be US-Mexico relations. A conservative nationalist would argue for teaching American culture to Mexican immigrants, encouraging the use of English, and so on. A reactionary nationalist would argue for kicking them out unless they had become indistinguishably American. A fascist nationalist would consider it an invasion and be threatening Mexico with war.

A "1488er" ( this word is a thing?) is a Nazi. It means Nazi because 88 means "hail Hitler" -- which only Nazis do. A Nazi is a flavour of fascist of the offensive variety, as they argued their group was superior and should conquer the world and exterminate other groups. And before anybody points out that the full term is "National socialist" -- sure, and North Korea is the "democratic people's republic". Actions override words.

Trump supporters and Trump himself are generally reactionaries. You can see that from the hostility the conservatives had to him and the lukewarm response and lack of loyalty from conservatives generally. He's upsetting the slow, controlled decline they're so comfortable with. The reason Trump is popular with fascists is that many of his policies align with theirs. That doesn't make him fascist. For instance, the nuclear family is supported by conservatives, reactionaries, and fascists alike -- so that by itself doesn't distinguish which stratum you're in.


So, to take a wild guess at what these "alt" things are, they're an attempted lossy rendering of the reactionary & fascist strata. My guess is people are using these words to attempt to look "new". Like they have invented some new politics. Whereas really its well worn, well-known, and already well defined.

Or perhaps the intent is just to play the "which club are you and me in" game because it's enjoyable, and the ignorance of existing terminology and use of new more vague terms is deliberate so as to permit that recreation.

Although I like this post, I feel like it doesn't even begin to capture most right-wing people.

The fact is, I don't consider myself part of any movement or care what people label me as.

All I care about is the pursuit of the Truth. What is both good for myself and my Neighbor. This used to be called, "being a Christian," but even the term Christian is polluted with tons of bullshit.

I think it's best to avoid labels as much as possible because no one label can perfectly encapsulate the complexities of the Truth. Reality is far too complex for just one word and all labels can do is make approximations for our complex world.

Anyone ever read their Socrates? They chase definitions over words, trying to find the perfect definition to get at the essence of things and always fail. This is a feature, not a bug, of human language and understanding. It's simply epistemologically and linguistically impossible to create words that can encapsulate perfect meanings.

You can always ask, "What is X?" and think of a counter-example to the question. For example, if someone asks, "What is a swan?" and you point to a big white bird that lives around lakes, and then find the black swan, what good is the old definition?

Words are nothing more than conveniences, and it is important for people to remember that.

(Both Taleb and I come from the exact same epistemological tradition of Kant and Popper. We even have similar DNA, and we're both Orthodox. I came to the same conclusions as Taleb long before I knew of him. The black swan is a concept from Popper that Taleb popularized.)