The unimportant news thread

[Florestan]

left equals socialism equals communism

and:

progressive equals socialism equals communism

and:

green equals socialism equals communism

For somoeone who has direct experience with communism (say, someone born and raised in the Socialist Republic of Romania) the similarities are indeed striking and shocking.

[Florestan]

" "on its way toward full blown communism," is a quote in the text.

"...says university is becoming communist" is right there in the title.

Below is the relevant part of Mr. Şerban's interview (video, in Romanian). The English translations above of what he said are not accurate. The "I felt like was living under Communism again" is accurate, though. For context, just before that he said "I was forced to take a decision which was contrary to my conscience, I was ordered what to do".

I don't have time to translate the whole thing but now that I watched it in full I can only reiterate what I said before: his choice of words is careful and accurate. Btw, he begins by saying that during Trump's mandate the right has become increasingly radical.

https://www.facebook.com/100010459937800/videos/969446060080716/

[drogulus]

You're clueless. Utterly clueless. I'm not surprised, though.

     Dogmatists hate their rivals. An open system is not admired for its openness, but opportunistically as a safe place to snipe at enemies. Solzhenitsyn won't embrace freedom, he will use what it offers him while despising how people live when they can freely choose how that is.

     I like my open society for itself, not so I can choose the means to undermine it.

For somoeone who has direct experience with communism (say, someone born and raised in the Socialist Republic of Romania) the similarities are indeed striking and shocking.

     That's the problem. That's the basis of your comparison. Therefore it doesn't occur to you how open societies grapple with coercive social movements, either the old ones or new ones as they fight with each other.

     Though I lack the experience of Communist dictatorship (or its rivals) I do have experience with social strife in the complex framework of the U.S. So even as a youngster I grasped how dogmatic people like Buckley and his anti-Communist guests interpreted freedom as room to impose a different dogma. I got the agenda, understanding openness as purely instrumental. I knew that wasn't how I understood it.

[drogulus]

     I'll try one more time. I think there is something more deeply wrong about a dictatorship than choosing the wrong god.

[greg]

According to Rolling Stone, No Nut November is alt-right now. Also, "Coomer" looks Jewish to them, so it must be proof that bad people exist and are highly influential.

Hmm, sounds legit. Not fake news at all.

(Also not providing a link because they don't deserve clicks).



...Perhaps we should make participation in this illegal. Make sure a government agent is assigned to watch every male in the US to do his business several times each November while being held gunpoint, even if he is crying. That should stop anti-semitism. 

[SimonNZ]

Well...I couldn't work out what your post meant, so I had to give them some clicks:

How a New Meme Exposes the Far-Right Roots of #NoNutNovember
A month-long masturbation-abstinence challenge has a new "coomer" meme, mocking men who masturbate

"If you spend a lot of time in certain Extremely Online corners of the internet ecosystem, you've likely stumbled onto #NoNutNovember, or just #NNN for short. An annual challenge encouraging men to refrain from masturbating (or even, for many, having any sex) for the month, No Nut November was initially created as a parody of internet-borne phenomena such as the Ice Bucket Challenge or Movember, skewering the silliness of viral internet challenges along with the more extreme claims made by proponents of NoFap, an anti-porn subreddit with half a million members. (No Nut November has no connection to NoFap, though the two are often conflated and NoFap will sometimes post #NNN memes on its social media pages, says Matthew Plummer, a community manager for NoFap.)

For most participants, the challenge is essentially an excuse to shitpost, as well as tweet memes skewering some of the more exaggerated purported benefits of abstaining from masturbation. But there are many who take it seriously, with at least 52,000 people as of this writing diligently documenting their day-by-day progress (and setbacks) on the subreddit r/NoNutNovember. r/NoNutNovember moderator /u/yeeval estimates that approximately 90% of the posts are from people "actively participating, and also there's the occasional fallen member who stays on the subreddit for the community and laughs."

[JBS]

Can we blame Seinfeld?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Contest

[greg]

If you spend a lot of time in certain Extremely Online corners of the internet ecosystem

I've heard about it from ordinary subreddits and youtube video comments, no idea what they are talking about.

Anyways, for some, it is a way to have control over one's self or something.

Can we blame Seinfeld?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Contest

That one came to mind before. Wouldn't be surprised if that was where the idea originated.

[Florestan]

     Dogmatists hate their rivals. An open system is not admired for its openness, but opportunistically as a safe place to snipe at enemies. Solzhenitsyn won't embrace freedom, he will use what it offers him while despising how people live when they can freely choose how that is.

I'll let Solzhenitsyn himself answer.

a leading [Canadian] television commentator lectured me that I presumed to judge the experience of the world from the viewpoint of my own limited Soviet and prison-camp experience. Indeed, how true! Life and death, imprisonment and hunger, the cultivation of the soul despite the captivity of the body: how very limited that is compared to the bright world of political parties, yesterday's numbers on the stock exchange, amusements without end, and exotic foreign travel!

   

[drogulus]

     

I'll let Solzhenitsyn himself answer.

a leading [Canadian] television commentator lectured me that I presumed to judge the experience of the world from the viewpoint of my own limited Soviet and prison-camp experience. Indeed, how true! Life and death, imprisonment and hunger, the cultivation of the soul despite the captivity of the body: how very limited that is compared to the bright world of political parties, yesterday's numbers on the stock exchange, amusements without end, and exotic foreign travel!

     Yes, that's exactly what I mean.  He doesn't see merely free people as worthy like himself.

     Saints and mad monks don't impress me. They are not models. They can't take a joke or tell a joke. They are not fun!!

[JBS]

Drogulus is right. The quote merely demonstrates that AS thought that his years in the Gulag made him superior to those who had not suffered like him, and gave him the right to sneer at people who led normal lives...as if suffering in and of itself gives an extra level of virtue and knowledge. Amfortas should have healed Parsifal, not vice versa.

[SimonNZ]

I've read quite a lot, if not most, of Solzhenitsyn's writing and I've never seen him come across like that.

[JBS]

I've read quite a lot, if not most, of Solzhenitsyn's writing and I've never seen him come across like that.

Read the section subtitled "Criticism of the West"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

His censure of Western materialism is certainly in the vein of what that quote says. To me it reads like the words of a man who despised the West.

(And he managed to say the Vietnam War was a genocide by the Americans, but the Holodomor was not a genocide.)

What I have read of his fiction supports your comment, but apparently expulsion from Russia and then the fall of the Soviets  allowed his basic conservatism to express itself in an attempt  to absolve Russians of the sins of the Soviets.

[SimonNZ]

I'm not at all familiar with his interviews or later utterances as a public intellectual. I don't doubt he said the things in that section (they also don't seem groundless or especially crazy). I was saying the arrogant tone of the earlier quote is nowhere in his remarkable Soviet-era body of writing, not just the novels but also in the three volumes of the Gulag Archipelago and the two volumes of literary memoir The Oak And The Calf and Invisible Allies. There's no hint anywhere that he sees prison survivors as somehow "superior". It would be a pity if anyone unfamiliar thought that was representative.

[JBS]

I'm not at all familiar with his interviews or later utterances as a public intellectual. I don't doubt he said the things in that section (they also don't seem groundless or especially crazy). I was saying the arrogant tone of the earlier quote is nowhere in his remarkable Soviet-era body of writing, not just the novels but also in the three volumes of the Gulag Archipelago and the two volumes of literary memoir The Oak And The Calf and Invisible Allies. There's no hint anywhere that he sees prison survivors as somehow "superior". It would be a pity if anyone unfamiliar thought that was representative.

Fair enough.

[Florestan]

He's actually spot on. People who have lived all theiir life in comfort and security will never be able to understand fully what it means to live under a totalitarian regime. The reactions here --- which are based on a complete misunderstanding of his point --- are proof enough.

As someone who risked his life and liberty in order to fight communism he is clearly morally superior to some Westerners ---- not to the common people of the West as you wrongly infer, but to all those who, while Solzhenitsyn and hundreds of thousands of others suffered in the Gulag, preached about how wonderful communism is and what a blessing it would be for the West to have it, all the while enjoying the political, social and material comfort and security made possible by the very society they so much despised and wanted to see overthrown. And while Solzhenitsyn, who was never a threat to the West anyway, is dead, the number of people like those I described above is probably larger than it was during his lifetime, and their ideas and actions do pose a threat to the Western civilization.

[SimonNZ]

He's actually spot on. People who have lived all theiir life in comfort and security will never be able to understand fully what it means to live under a totalitarian regime. The reactions here --- which are based on a complete misunderstanding of his point --- are proof enough.

But that quote you found was about "prison camp experience". Do you have this? Will you be happy being told that without it you understand nothing?

What was the source and context of that quote, btw?

[Florestan]

But that quote you found was about "prison camp experience". Do you have this? Will you be happy being told that without it you understand nothing?

Fortunately, I don't have such experience but I'll tell you something. After 1989 it was discovered that some of the former political prisoners had become informers of the secret police in exchange for a better treatment or even release. Shock and outrage ensued but I was neither shocked nor outraged. Not a single one of those who condemned these people had experienced life in communist political prisons and the psychological and physical distress inflicted therein and therefore not a single one of them could have been able to state "I would certainly not have done that". So you see, I don't need to be told that without prison experience I don't understand ulterior behavior --- I know it myself.

What was the source and context of that quote, btw?

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/solzhenitsyn-as-he-saw-himself/

The whole article is the context; the quote is found in the very last paragraph.

[Florestan]

Entirely unrelated to Solzhenitsyn.

https://quillette.com/2019/09/17/i-basically-just-made-it-up-confessions-of-a-social-constructionist/

[drogulus]

     

He's actually spot on. People who have lived all theiir life in comfort and security will never be able to understand fully what it means to live under a totalitarian regime. The reactions here --- which are based on a complete misunderstanding of his point --- are proof enough.

     I would prefer not to live in a prison society so I know what it means. The point of an open society is that you can read In The First Circle, not live it.