I used to read "The Economist" and believe its articles but I regret ever reading that magazine now. Today, it reads more like a parody magazine, do they still believe that stuff? Like old communists with whom they have a lot in common.
A lot of neolliberal true believers I've met (though there are fewer around theee days) had previously been Trotskyists. It's not actually a very big leap.
They've done almost as much damage, too. We've been living inside an "Economist' view of the world for a while now, and their utopia turned out to be a dystopia.
I sometimes think that the technocrats/elites (however you wish to label them) have no idea how wrong they could be and how quickly it could all collapse. In that respect they perhaps could be compared to the insulated Politburos and Central Committees of Communist parties in power across Eastern Europe. They just didn't see the collapse of their system coming because they had built a self reinforcing mental and physical bubble which they lived exclusively in. Whilst all around ordinary people were starting to question everything and act on their sense of having had enough of it. Sorry for the long comment.
I forgot to add tjat another commonality between these two groups is their materialism. I have often thought that many of these former Trotskyists that have become advocates of corporate globalisation/late capitalism are fundamentally materialiats in their world view. This is perhaps why so many Marxists do indeed "sell out". If you inherently believe it's all about a struggle for resources you might just find privileged access to these far too difficult to resist. Again sorry for the long post.
i really like this essay, though I'm not really sure it explains the Trump phenomenon which seems to be an appeal to caricatures of immigrant danger and a reaction to global inflation, though I agree that people for sure reject the clearly dishonest way Democrats suggest they care about the working class.
It's not quite clear to me what you mean exactly by left progressivism, and it seems strange to call Nike or Facebook leftist, just because they embrace a pseudo identity-politic. A nuanced account is given by Olufemi Taiwo, in his book Elite Capture. Not sure you'd like it as he is a Marxist, but it does give an account of how liberal capital markets have consumed identity politics.
I'm also quite curious why you seem to have left the Zapatista account in more recent years, as if they have gone away. To me, they are still one of the best accounts of a real community living out the principles you are drawn to. Have you rejected them for some reason?
As I said in the essay, I think that leftism and capitalism have the same root attachment to 'openness'. It explains how both embrace the mass immigration which drives populism.
I haven't written about the EZLN since I was in Mexico all those years ago, but yes, they were genuinely grassroots and built to last. I'm not at all surprised to see them still flourishing, though my politics would differ from theirs these days.
I appreciate your response at the Erasmus Q & A regarding your thoughts on the Trump administration, a question that wasn’t particularly relevant to the talk. Point is, thank you for responding with diplomacy, humor, and discretion. You could have dumped all over Trump but you didn’t. Very classy.
Yes, our root problem is not political, but spiritual. We are in the process of reaping the whirlwind for the mocking of God in most of Western culture for over half a century now. Thank you for your insight in trying to make sense of it all. Your thoughts surprisingly overlap with an essay I read earlier today. https://archive.is/X53XW
As to the recent US election, I think many of the talking heads are missing the point. Independents have not converted to being Republicans. Folks like JD, Tulsi, RFK, Jr., and Ramaswamy banded together against a kind of machine that was trying to crush them using state authority. Media lied about Biden's health and a variety of other topics. The stories tend to focus on Trump himself.
Another concern was poor people who were getting less than new (illegal) immigrants. This was noticeable to them.. and they weren't happy. There's a resentment, appropriate or not that follows from ... "we have to obey the laws or go to jail.. they don't. We get some things from our government, they get more and better things." And when they ask "why"? There is no answer.
Makes sense. Mass immigration is generally a driver of populism. It is also an article of faith both for the left and for the capitalist true believer that borders should be as open as possible.
In London, they are currently getting the majority of the social housing. There's quite a long list. You would have to be looking the other way not to see that some of the resentments people have are based on reality.
I know nothing about London. I don't think anti-immigrant sentiment in the US is based on much other than xenophobia. Border towns in the US do have higher crime rates, but that is a pretty specific context that doesn't actually affect the majority of the US population. Undocumented (and legal) immigrants, do represent a good way to whip up resentment though, to be sure. Mostly, those people are working difficult labor jobs that people in the US don't want to do.
So what precisely is the reality that the resentment is based upon? That's very unclear to me.
Well, I couldn't say anything about the situation in the US. From over here though, the discourse sounds very similar to that in Europe, on both sides of the fence. One side deals, at least sometimes, in apocalyptic and often abusive language to describe immigrants. The other side denies that the sheer scale of the current migration causes any problems at all. I am hoping this logjam will be broken, but they feed off each other. All I know is that, twenty years or so ago, when inward migration was at a much lower level, none of this was occurring. In my country, what is clear is that the current rate and scale of immigration is unsustainable and has no popular mandate behind it.
In an attempt to be as specific as possible, which I think is the best way to talk about these issues, I'll cite the data. Department of Homeland Security (that's a big brother name, isn't it) had 6.5million encounters at the US-Mexico border between Feb 2021 and Oct 2023. Of those, about 2.5 million were released into the US with notices to appear in court. So the numbers are greatly exaggerated by politicians who have much to gain by stoking fear.
By contrast, in the 1940's to 1960's, the Braceros program allowed for 5 million immigrants yearly for farm work.
So whether the US can handle the numbers of undocumented immigrants seems not to be that concerning to me.
Moreover, my problem with the overall media/political narrative (again, talking about the US context) is that it does not include the fact that migration has been happening because of US policies that for decades have destabilized Central and South America through banana republics, NAFTA, and through propping up dictatorships that have been incredibly destructive. I find it incredibly cynical to point blame at people legitimately seeking a better life from problems often directly caused by US intervention.
What then, in your opinion, is the reason so many of your countryfolk seem so upset about migration? Do you believe there is no reason for concern at all? Is it all just invented or stoked u? From what I have heard from many other sources, that seems like a highly unlikely scenario. But like I say, I'm not American.
Same thing in the US. Free money, free lodging, free phones, get out of jail free. Absolutely criminal. Accusations of racism, sexism and zenophobia are the territory of the intellectually infirm.
again, are we talking about refugees, or undocumented immigrants. I think its helpful to be specific. I am intellectually infirm, and since I'm quite ignorant, I love to know the sources behind claims since I know very little about these things.
Take your pick, with an open border, there is no real difference. This is not hidden, the Dems have been bragging about it. A few dead people, and billions in squandered taxpayer money is merely so much collateral damage.
But it’s not an open border. DHS apprehended around 5million people in the time between Feb 2021 to Oct 2023. If you look at my comments you can find sources for info about immigration numbers. If you have alternative sources that say otherwise, please share, but otherwise it’s hard to have a conversation and it’s not really helping your cause because without offering data to the contrary you seem to be parroting GOP taking points.
In the U.S. they are often set up with subsidized housing, food subsidies, and job placements which are difficult to access if you're just from a long-standing poor family that's lived in the U.S. all along.
Can you give sources for this? Refugees definitely get the assistance you mention, but Sharon F. above said specifically that "illegal immigrants are getting assistance.
During Trump's first term when he first threatened to send immigrants to Democratically-run big cities it occurred to me that if it could play this right (low hopes), the one nearest me, sorely depopulated Detroit, could really turn that to its advantage. Of course that would take considerable resources, and there are already a lot of people there struggling to find food, housing, get a decent education, job training who ought to have priority. But if a surge of new resources were directed toward native Detroiters, many of those living north of 8 Mile currently voicing (and voting) immigration resentments, along with some who aren't, would be just as upset as they are about assistance going to newly arrived Venezuelans or Haitians.
I agree. I was much affected by reading Christopher Hill's THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN in college. The ideal of the "masterless man"; all those ideas of the Diggers and the Levellers. When "Occupy Wall Street" came along I felt it again walking by a vacant lot fenced off no doubt for some future commercial development. As soon as Bloomberg sent New York's Finest to clear Zuccotti Park I knew it was over.
You are the voice of sanity in a confusing, discouraging world I see taking shape. My grandparents were born around 1900 in rural communities, were self sufficient and members of large extended families. All of that has evaporated and where the families scattered, I have no idea.
I imagine what it would be like to march into my town here in the Southern US and stage a rebellion. After a day or so we would droned into oblivion by the local SWAT team and soon forgotten. I'm sure we may get a few funny memes out of it though. The Zapatistas survived not because of their cunning or ferocity so much as the ineptitude of the Mexican govt. And their pretty much becoming what they once fought against. Give a Communist leader power and money and they'll become a Greedy Capitalist, or some amalgamation thereof. All of these problems stem from the Love of Power and Money.
I think it has more to do with what James C Scott calls "rough terrain". It's simply more costly than beneficial for the Mexican government to do anything about it. Although that is starting to change with an attempted railroad project to go through part of Chiapas.
I definitely agree that US cops would obliterate any attempts to replicate this in the US. We just don't have the same sort of rough terrain, and anyway, don't have villlages intact in the way it would require to stage a united rebellion of the sort.
There's a dandy list of excuses growing, but I'll wager a fiver that none of the billionaire tech 'bros' pushing this electoral outcome give two hoots in hell about gender identity, EXCEPT when the birth rate falls off and the list of potential soma consumers and drone workers diminishes, and their whole entire "natural law' market 'economy' stops working at the scale they desire. It's all spectacle. I'll not be participating.
Paul your insight justifies my sense you are a Prophet for our time.
Sorta wish you had been around when I abandoned my childhood faith and ventured out as a 'seeker of the truth behind all religion and philosophy' as an eighteen year old merchant naval cadet just returned to my home county, New Zealand, after a three month voyage to the 'Far East'!
Not that, that would have enlightened either of us, at the time, because time and tide had not yet done its work on us both.
I have come to see that an Aramaic speaking prophet, and former carpenter, gave us the message that we (you and I) both rejected BUT have come to see is THE answer.
We are as vulnerable as our parents, who resided in a Garden and like Lucifer, rebelled.
I used to read "The Economist" and believe its articles but I regret ever reading that magazine now. Today, it reads more like a parody magazine, do they still believe that stuff? Like old communists with whom they have a lot in common.
A lot of neolliberal true believers I've met (though there are fewer around theee days) had previously been Trotskyists. It's not actually a very big leap.
They've done almost as much damage, too. We've been living inside an "Economist' view of the world for a while now, and their utopia turned out to be a dystopia.
I sometimes think that the technocrats/elites (however you wish to label them) have no idea how wrong they could be and how quickly it could all collapse. In that respect they perhaps could be compared to the insulated Politburos and Central Committees of Communist parties in power across Eastern Europe. They just didn't see the collapse of their system coming because they had built a self reinforcing mental and physical bubble which they lived exclusively in. Whilst all around ordinary people were starting to question everything and act on their sense of having had enough of it. Sorry for the long comment.
I forgot to add tjat another commonality between these two groups is their materialism. I have often thought that many of these former Trotskyists that have become advocates of corporate globalisation/late capitalism are fundamentally materialiats in their world view. This is perhaps why so many Marxists do indeed "sell out". If you inherently believe it's all about a struggle for resources you might just find privileged access to these far too difficult to resist. Again sorry for the long post.
And yet, The Economist belongs to the Rothschilds and Agnellis, as far as I know. Not that the apparent contradiction should be a surprise these days.
You could not be more right. Today's anarchist is a quiet mom who tries to love her neighbor.
i really like this essay, though I'm not really sure it explains the Trump phenomenon which seems to be an appeal to caricatures of immigrant danger and a reaction to global inflation, though I agree that people for sure reject the clearly dishonest way Democrats suggest they care about the working class.
It's not quite clear to me what you mean exactly by left progressivism, and it seems strange to call Nike or Facebook leftist, just because they embrace a pseudo identity-politic. A nuanced account is given by Olufemi Taiwo, in his book Elite Capture. Not sure you'd like it as he is a Marxist, but it does give an account of how liberal capital markets have consumed identity politics.
I'm also quite curious why you seem to have left the Zapatista account in more recent years, as if they have gone away. To me, they are still one of the best accounts of a real community living out the principles you are drawn to. Have you rejected them for some reason?
As I said in the essay, I think that leftism and capitalism have the same root attachment to 'openness'. It explains how both embrace the mass immigration which drives populism.
I haven't written about the EZLN since I was in Mexico all those years ago, but yes, they were genuinely grassroots and built to last. I'm not at all surprised to see them still flourishing, though my politics would differ from theirs these days.
I appreciate your response at the Erasmus Q & A regarding your thoughts on the Trump administration, a question that wasn’t particularly relevant to the talk. Point is, thank you for responding with diplomacy, humor, and discretion. You could have dumped all over Trump but you didn’t. Very classy.
I'm always classy when I'm wearing a tie ;-)
Yes, our root problem is not political, but spiritual. We are in the process of reaping the whirlwind for the mocking of God in most of Western culture for over half a century now. Thank you for your insight in trying to make sense of it all. Your thoughts surprisingly overlap with an essay I read earlier today. https://archive.is/X53XW
As to the recent US election, I think many of the talking heads are missing the point. Independents have not converted to being Republicans. Folks like JD, Tulsi, RFK, Jr., and Ramaswamy banded together against a kind of machine that was trying to crush them using state authority. Media lied about Biden's health and a variety of other topics. The stories tend to focus on Trump himself.
Another concern was poor people who were getting less than new (illegal) immigrants. This was noticeable to them.. and they weren't happy. There's a resentment, appropriate or not that follows from ... "we have to obey the laws or go to jail.. they don't. We get some things from our government, they get more and better things." And when they ask "why"? There is no answer.
Makes sense. Mass immigration is generally a driver of populism. It is also an article of faith both for the left and for the capitalist true believer that borders should be as open as possible.
I'm not sure I understand this. What are immigrants getting that "poor people" are not?
In London, they are currently getting the majority of the social housing. There's quite a long list. You would have to be looking the other way not to see that some of the resentments people have are based on reality.
I know nothing about London. I don't think anti-immigrant sentiment in the US is based on much other than xenophobia. Border towns in the US do have higher crime rates, but that is a pretty specific context that doesn't actually affect the majority of the US population. Undocumented (and legal) immigrants, do represent a good way to whip up resentment though, to be sure. Mostly, those people are working difficult labor jobs that people in the US don't want to do.
So what precisely is the reality that the resentment is based upon? That's very unclear to me.
Well, I couldn't say anything about the situation in the US. From over here though, the discourse sounds very similar to that in Europe, on both sides of the fence. One side deals, at least sometimes, in apocalyptic and often abusive language to describe immigrants. The other side denies that the sheer scale of the current migration causes any problems at all. I am hoping this logjam will be broken, but they feed off each other. All I know is that, twenty years or so ago, when inward migration was at a much lower level, none of this was occurring. In my country, what is clear is that the current rate and scale of immigration is unsustainable and has no popular mandate behind it.
In an attempt to be as specific as possible, which I think is the best way to talk about these issues, I'll cite the data. Department of Homeland Security (that's a big brother name, isn't it) had 6.5million encounters at the US-Mexico border between Feb 2021 and Oct 2023. Of those, about 2.5 million were released into the US with notices to appear in court. So the numbers are greatly exaggerated by politicians who have much to gain by stoking fear.
By contrast, in the 1940's to 1960's, the Braceros program allowed for 5 million immigrants yearly for farm work.
So whether the US can handle the numbers of undocumented immigrants seems not to be that concerning to me.
Moreover, my problem with the overall media/political narrative (again, talking about the US context) is that it does not include the fact that migration has been happening because of US policies that for decades have destabilized Central and South America through banana republics, NAFTA, and through propping up dictatorships that have been incredibly destructive. I find it incredibly cynical to point blame at people legitimately seeking a better life from problems often directly caused by US intervention.
My source, by the way, is this: https://www.factcheck.org/2024/02/breaking-down-the-immigration-figures/
What then, in your opinion, is the reason so many of your countryfolk seem so upset about migration? Do you believe there is no reason for concern at all? Is it all just invented or stoked u? From what I have heard from many other sources, that seems like a highly unlikely scenario. But like I say, I'm not American.
Pay no attention to the thousands of refugees drop-shipped into small towns, disrupting services, taking the jobs, etc.
do you want to give a source for this claim?
https://im1776.com/springfield-investigation/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/how-2000-haitian-migrants-changed-rust-belt-town-of-charleroi-pennsylvania/ar-AA1s3jjN
Same thing in the US. Free money, free lodging, free phones, get out of jail free. Absolutely criminal. Accusations of racism, sexism and zenophobia are the territory of the intellectually infirm.
again, are we talking about refugees, or undocumented immigrants. I think its helpful to be specific. I am intellectually infirm, and since I'm quite ignorant, I love to know the sources behind claims since I know very little about these things.
Take your pick, with an open border, there is no real difference. This is not hidden, the Dems have been bragging about it. A few dead people, and billions in squandered taxpayer money is merely so much collateral damage.
But it’s not an open border. DHS apprehended around 5million people in the time between Feb 2021 to Oct 2023. If you look at my comments you can find sources for info about immigration numbers. If you have alternative sources that say otherwise, please share, but otherwise it’s hard to have a conversation and it’s not really helping your cause because without offering data to the contrary you seem to be parroting GOP taking points.
In the U.S. they are often set up with subsidized housing, food subsidies, and job placements which are difficult to access if you're just from a long-standing poor family that's lived in the U.S. all along.
Can you give sources for this? Refugees definitely get the assistance you mention, but Sharon F. above said specifically that "illegal immigrants are getting assistance.
During Trump's first term when he first threatened to send immigrants to Democratically-run big cities it occurred to me that if it could play this right (low hopes), the one nearest me, sorely depopulated Detroit, could really turn that to its advantage. Of course that would take considerable resources, and there are already a lot of people there struggling to find food, housing, get a decent education, job training who ought to have priority. But if a surge of new resources were directed toward native Detroiters, many of those living north of 8 Mile currently voicing (and voting) immigration resentments, along with some who aren't, would be just as upset as they are about assistance going to newly arrived Venezuelans or Haitians.
I agree. I was much affected by reading Christopher Hill's THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN in college. The ideal of the "masterless man"; all those ideas of the Diggers and the Levellers. When "Occupy Wall Street" came along I felt it again walking by a vacant lot fenced off no doubt for some future commercial development. As soon as Bloomberg sent New York's Finest to clear Zuccotti Park I knew it was over.
You are the voice of sanity in a confusing, discouraging world I see taking shape. My grandparents were born around 1900 in rural communities, were self sufficient and members of large extended families. All of that has evaporated and where the families scattered, I have no idea.
I imagine what it would be like to march into my town here in the Southern US and stage a rebellion. After a day or so we would droned into oblivion by the local SWAT team and soon forgotten. I'm sure we may get a few funny memes out of it though. The Zapatistas survived not because of their cunning or ferocity so much as the ineptitude of the Mexican govt. And their pretty much becoming what they once fought against. Give a Communist leader power and money and they'll become a Greedy Capitalist, or some amalgamation thereof. All of these problems stem from the Love of Power and Money.
I think it has more to do with what James C Scott calls "rough terrain". It's simply more costly than beneficial for the Mexican government to do anything about it. Although that is starting to change with an attempted railroad project to go through part of Chiapas.
I definitely agree that US cops would obliterate any attempts to replicate this in the US. We just don't have the same sort of rough terrain, and anyway, don't have villlages intact in the way it would require to stage a united rebellion of the sort.
Awesome read…me thinks you may have been hanging out with Rod Dreher❣️
It's the other way around ;-)
but of course 😉
my daughter and son in law were at Samford to hear your talk and so excited to be
Fascinating and thought provoking. Not sure how I found your work but really glad I have!
There's a dandy list of excuses growing, but I'll wager a fiver that none of the billionaire tech 'bros' pushing this electoral outcome give two hoots in hell about gender identity, EXCEPT when the birth rate falls off and the list of potential soma consumers and drone workers diminishes, and their whole entire "natural law' market 'economy' stops working at the scale they desire. It's all spectacle. I'll not be participating.
You might find this amusing (or terrifying). Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, published his (Utopian) view of the AI-enhanced future "Machines of Loving Grace." https://darioamodei.com/machines-of-loving-grace#basic-assumptions-and-framework. There, there, nothing to fear from the Machine. It's fueled by loving grace!
Paul your insight justifies my sense you are a Prophet for our time.
Sorta wish you had been around when I abandoned my childhood faith and ventured out as a 'seeker of the truth behind all religion and philosophy' as an eighteen year old merchant naval cadet just returned to my home county, New Zealand, after a three month voyage to the 'Far East'!
Not that, that would have enlightened either of us, at the time, because time and tide had not yet done its work on us both.
I have come to see that an Aramaic speaking prophet, and former carpenter, gave us the message that we (you and I) both rejected BUT have come to see is THE answer.
We are as vulnerable as our parents, who resided in a Garden and like Lucifer, rebelled.
Peace and All Good
Martyn-Thomas
Wallaroo
South Australia