Racism in the knitting community
Yes, the knitting community.
I didn’t even know there was a knitting community. So go figure; learn something new every day. And I even used to be quite a proficient knitter, back in pre-internet (and pre-arm-injury) times.
But the times they have a changed, even in an endeavor like knitting, which used to be pretty peaceful. No more, now that the SJWs of the New Red Guard Thought Police have gotten to it. Here’s a description of what happened to a knitting blogger who was about to go on a long-awaited trip to India and was very happy and excited at the prospect, and wrote something to that effect. There was backlash (the following begins with Ace’s sarcastic description of that response):
The reason why you can’t be too excited to visit a country largely populated by people of a slightly different genetic make-up than you is that you might “exoticize” them and you might expect them to deliver you some kind of spiritual uplift, which forces them to do unpaid labor as your Brown Gurus. And also appropriates their culture for your personal White Journey.
My culture isn’t your Prom Dress, Hater. (This a reference to Social Justice Warriors attacking high school girls who like Asian and Indian fabrics. Apparently Round-Eye isn’t allowed to wear anything but linen and sheephide.)
This story is from a couple of weeks ago but it’s as timeless as suggesting that Jews are motivated by dual loyalty and money and the blood of Christian infants:
In January, Karen Templer, a popular knitting blogger, told her followers about an upcoming trip to India, kicking off the whole debate. The post, which discussed Templer’s excitement about her childhood dream finally being fulfilled, praised India’s culture and food and also noted Templer’s “lifelong obsession with the literature and history of the continent.”
Her innocuous comments about India were immediately attacked. One commenter, Alex, noted her “words feed into a colonial/imperialist mindset toward India and other non-Western countries.” Vox author Jaya Saxena also jumped on board, saying the tone Templer used, as a white person, “felt like they thought India only existed to be all those things for them.”
After several days of this and other ridiculous abuse, Templer apologized for the post, writing that her earlier post was “insensitive” and that “words matter.”
…All of this proves the point of Peggy Noonan’s column from yesterday, that America is entering a period of Maoist “struggle sessions,” in which people are battered until they confess their toughtcrimes or even knitcrimes.
“Knitcrime.” It’s got a ring, doesn’t it?
It’s so absurd it’s hard not to joke about it, and joking is appropriate. But there is nothing really funny about it. In just a few short years, these SJWs have gone from unhinged and powerful to more and more unhinged and more and more powerful. Knitting is just one community this has infected; there are plenty others.
The precedents are obvious and numerous, and tend to feature leftist-dominated societies and to end in murder. We haven’t gone there yet (and perhaps we never will), but the place to which we’ve gone is bad enough—obligatory self-abasement, and grave threats to freedom of speech. And the road to worse things has been paved and cleared.
Peggy Noonan has had a few misses, but she nails this one.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/get-ready-for-the-struggle-session-11552003346
‘SJWs have gone from unhinged and powerful to more and more unhinged and more and more powerful’
It’s grown exponentially because of social media. It gives these blood suckers more power then they really have. One partial answer is don’t post any personal private information about yourself on social media. The need to share personal thoughts and plans with strangers completely baffles me.
Our public discourse would improve a thousand fold if people disconnected from twitter and facebook entirely. It’s the fuel that feeds these dangerous people’s fire.
CapnRusty:
That link is in my post, too.
neo,
I’ve made the same mistake as CapnRusty did.
The color scheme makes the links hard to see sometimes, at least for me.
Griffin:
There’s a way for you to change the colors of the links. I read about it once, but I forget where. If you’re colorblind, you need to know about it (I can’t recall whether you’re colorblind or not).
On my computer, the links are very clearly another color. Since most people don’t seem to have a problem, I haven’t changed the color. Let me know if you find a solution.
neo,
Nope, not colorblind. Don’t remember having this problem at any other site.
And it’s only on your black text on lighter background sections. Like above I had to hover over your paragraph til I found ‘they have’ which linked to Ace. The shaded ‘quote’ parts I can clearly differentiate.
Ah! I see. It’s a contrast problem: In the quote box, the link shows up as darkish red (just south of medium value) on medium-value tan, and you do have to be a little extra-alert to see it. Maybe in fact that’s why I’ve missed a few links here and there.
I’ve always thought that a mid-value blue was the internet standard for links; it shows up pretty well against most backgrounds, at least those that are fairly light or pretty dark. (Just sayin’, no dog in the fight — heh, except that I’m a blue freak!)
Nowadays I see some pretty sad colors, like spring green, and tan, and even grey, that don’t show up at all well against light grounds.
. . .
On topic: the people (I guess they’re human) who blather on about how it’s wrong to go to India cuz somehow this means we (any “we,” you ask me) are “using” them … are scolds, pure & simple. They need to be put to useful work digging ditches and cleaning the latrines. Maybe they could sort through the Recycle.
PS. The degree of tilt in the monitor screen makes a difference, too.
Speaking of not seeing, am I the only one that sees the songs post and then none of the last two days of posts?
And the songs post has a detransitioning video at the end and the comments are for that post?
I keep thinking this stuff will level out and I keep being horribly wrong.
Is there a name for this positive feedback cycle in which people adopt more and more radical positions? It seems like an ideological tulipmania.
huxley — “animal spirits.” I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it does rather resemble that, or the South Sea Bubble, or various real estate bubbles, or the dot-com bubble and the day-trading bubble, doesn’t it.
But I think you’re right to land on the Tulip Mania.
Edit’s AWOL suddenly. Oh well.
I thought that the communal self-flagellation sessions went back to the USSR. Was I wrong? I thought it was a feature of Remaining True to the Communist Ideal or some such thing.
Griffin:
Yes, something is awry with the blog for some people, with the newer posts disappearing. I’m working on it. Sorry! It’s a strange problem.
testing
“Templer’s excitement about her childhood dream finally being fulfilled, praised India’s culture and food and also noted Templer’s “lifelong obsession with the literature and history of the continent.”
“these SJWs have gone from unhinged and powerful to more and more unhinged and more and more powerful.”
“After several days of this and other ridiculous abuse, Templer apologized for the post, writing that her earlier post was “insensitive” and that “words matter.”
So, it’s ‘insensitive’ to perceive another country and culture as admirable?
These SJWs are ‘powerful” because their targets give in to them and apologize. They look for victims because attacking them and forcing an apology is the source of their power.
SJWs need targets because the public paying attention to their “outrage” and their targets groveling to them, demonstrates their ‘power’. It’s societal importance they seek. SJWs are intellectual bullies and submitting to a bully gives them power and encourages the bully to continue.
Unless they can get their target fired, they have no power.
As, if they can get their target shunned and/or expelled from a group to which they were a member… then the people now ostracizing them were not worth associating with in the first place.
Whether an intellectual bully or a physical bully, the same lesson applies; “a difficult lesson”
For me the link at “they have” is almost invisible; I can see it after it’s been pointed out to me. Would there be anything wrong with underlining the links?
There was nothing whatever wrong with her original post, and the people criticizing her are crazy.
On the topic: India is, in fact, very colorful. Women wear brightly-colored saris and shalwar kameez. There’s a cheerfully colored swastika on the back of every truck (it’s a good luck symbol). And it really isn’t like the USA.
I’m glad to know it isn’t just me on the missing posts here. On both my MacBook Air (Safari) and on my iPhone this evening, things mysteriously disappeared.
The posts are back!!!
I fixed it—with a little help from my friends. It was the strangest thing. At some point I may describe it in a post.
Not a great way to spend Saturday night 🙂 .
I’ve got an MB-Air also, and the music posting is indeed messed up.
. . .
Geoffrey, your comment is excellent (and the linked story is sickening but it sure makes the point! — and I don’t blame the ‘little sailor’ at all; but in that posting, vis-á-vis Israel, the other countries were not refraining from holding the little sailor back, except physically. If anything, they were rooting for the bully.)
There was also something about Munich … appeasement … oh, we all know how that worked out.
Yes. The targets have GOT to quit apologizing for doing absolutely nothing wrong. For all our sakes. (But I don’t entirely blame them. Having really nasty stuff said about you cannot be pleasant, and it can even be dangerous. Furthermore, a lot of us are trained that if you’ve really upset someone you need to make nice, to make up for it. This makes us easily manipulated.)
Great, Neo! Thanks! Now have a glass of wine or whatever, and a nice relaxing session with a good book. :>))
Diversity, including racism, is a clear and progressive problem.
Count me in the “almost invisible links” bucket; sometimes I see them better than at other times. Usually, the more words that are included in the linkage text, the easier it is to see them. The ones inside the blockquote are quite clear, and seem even redder than the first one.
I had seen the Knitcrime article before; it is an example of what someone recently labeled the Wokescolds.
Also, Noonan refers to another facet of the mobbing that I think we’ve covered here, and I’ve certainly read about at Sarah Hoyt’s blog, since she is a writer and has experienced some of the same charges about cultural appropriation (especially by people who don’t do any research and don’t know she is a WOC herself, being first-generation immigrant from Portugal (which is a White country unless you want to be included in the LatinX (which is an absurd extension of an already absurd trope) victim group)).
“The spirit of the struggle session is all over Twitter. On literary Twitter social-justice warriors get advance copies of new books and denounce them for deviationism–as insensitive, racist, appropriative, anti-LGBTQ. Books on the eve of publication have been pulled, sometimes withdrawn by authors who apologize profusely. Everyone’s scared. And the tormentors are not satisfied by an apology. They’re excited by it and prowl for more prey.”
Change that “sometimes” to “always” for literary, and especially Young Adult and Junior, books — the vilified authors who don’t withdraw books and don’t apologize don’t get attacked anymore, and they have a fan base that is quite happy to keep buying their insensitive works.
Here’s the post about Wokescolding.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/life-among-the-wokescolds/
Geoffrey Britain on March 9, 2019 at 8:47 pm at 8:47 pm said:
…
These SJWs are ‘powerful” because their targets give in to them and apologize. They look for victims because attacking them and forcing an apology is the source of their power.
SJWs need targets because the public paying attention to their “outrage” and their targets groveling to them, demonstrates their ‘power’. It’s societal importance they seek. SJWs are intellectual bullies and submitting to a bully gives them power and encourages the bully to continue.
Unless they can get their target fired, they have no power.
* * *
It’s repetitious but true: this is why we have Trump.
He does NOT back down and apologize, and there is a substantial market for somebody taking point on that; someone who can’t be fired or shamed or kicked out of his knitting group because he is more powerful than the Wokescolds (I kind of like that word!).
When you extend that abusiveness outside the internet world, you get Jussie Smollett (who has gotten his own chickens home to roost), but there isn’t any recourse against the cyber bullies (it’s ironic that one of the things being pushed at our kids is how to protect themselves from online bullies).
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2019/03/08/jussie-smollett-indicted-grand-jury-16-counts-lying-police/3108645002/
I picked that article to contrast what his (leftist) lawyer is saying with the furor on Manafort’s “too light” prison sentence; prosecutor’s always charge everything they can, and wait for defense to whittle it down. And Jussie will not see the inside of a jail, probably get a fine and maybe community service.
https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/433175-four-years-for-paul-manafort-is-the-right-sentence
Darn – no edit – pretend you don’t see that apostrophe in the plural prosecutors.
Also to Geoffrey – that was a great link, but the lesson was advocated in 2006, and Israel didn’t listen (or at least, couldn’t convince the US to back them if they did).
See the comments therein.
Another positive thing about President Trump:
The US Embassy is in Jerusalem, where it should be.
And should have been decades ago.
I think the SJWs are ‘culturally appropriating’ when they wear jeans, t-shirts, and leather jackets. Sweatshirts with hoods are a big NO, NO! Oh how it offends my Montanan Irish blood!
This time in the US is so absurd. I heard about this knitting story a couple of weeks ago. Really? This is upsetting? People need to stop apologizing and individuals with prominent positions need to stop ‘falling on their swords’ when every silly emotional young person gets bent out of shape over nothing. It encourages this idiotic behavior and denies these individuals from growing up. What are they going to do when they have real issues in life? They are wholly unprepared.
It is funny that the show ‘The Walking Dead’s’ most popular character (there are a lot good characters) is Darrell. He is the southern, white (trash) man that knows how to hunt and work machinery. Toughen up kids.
SJWs are horrible amateur (and professional) sociologists and psychologists.
No doubt the pickling community is next.
I can see it already: sour and half-sour SJW activists (though I assume that most, if not all, of them are thoroughly sour) in a Gramscian rampage through the supermarkets, farmers’ markets and online pickling-sites.
I’m wondering why in the world the knitting blogger apologized? Did she decide she agreed with the critic’s characterization of her post? Did she decide it was in her best interest, as a blogger, to apologize? Both?
She should have told her critics to eff-off, or simply not responded to the criticism. Bullies are emboldened to more bullying when their victims accept defeat.
AesopFan,
That lesson is… an eternal lesson.
True, Israel did not listen and is still not listening. But neither is the West with Islam.
Speaking of knitting: there was an Italian blog (in English) called ‘The Joy of Knitting’, although it was mainly a political blog. One post I saved:
“Cupio dissolvi…These words have been going through my mind for quite a long time now. It’s Latin. They mean “I (deeply) wish to be annihilated/to annihilate myself”, the passive form signifying that the action can be carried out both by an external agent or by the subject himself…Cupio dissolvi… Through all the screaming and the shouting and the wailing and the waving of the rainbow cloth by those who invoke peace but want appeasement, I hear these terrible words ringing in my ears. These people have had this precious gift, this civilization, and they have got bored with it. They take all the advantages it offers them for granted, and despise the ideals that have powered it. They wish for annihilation, the next new thing, as if it was a wonderful party. Won’t it be great, dancing on the ruins?”
I believe that the nihilism she described here, the desire to Dance on the Ruins, is a big factor in the emergence of SJW Wokescolding.
David:
Surely should be a Quote of the Day.
The entire quoted passage is good. Thanks.
The 1960s student uprisings, with occupation of college buildings, arson, theft, violence, have never left us. The authority figures then were craven in response to these not-yet-adults acting out, and that cowardliness in our social, religious and political authority figures has grown ever since. See AOC and Omar, trivial horrible people who, young, and young to politics, are celebrated, not put down.
Craven.
The needed response is obvious.
We must all just do it.
Do what?
Man up; put them down.
No breaks, no mickey-mouse vacuity.
AOC has just been quoted as saying that Capitalism is “irredeemable.” Now where have we recently heard that word “irredeemable” before?
Why, from Hillary in her famous “basket of deplorables” speech, during the last campaign.
Whether they consciously know it or not, I think that for far too many people, the idea of “Dancing on the Ruins of Western Civilization,” and of our Republic here in the U.S. and all they represent and stand for, is exactly what they want to do.
Far too many of our young people, having been thoroughly propagandized by the Left, and told that our Founders were all evil old White Men—slaveholders, etc., and that the U.S. is an evil, racist, greedy, violent nation, a never sated ravisher and occupier of every other continent and country, and that patriotism is the province of the moronic, uneducated, and deluded, in a word that everything about us and our civilization is irredeemable—just want to tear it all down.
And the Left—i.e. Communist ideologues working under the guise of being the less threatening and much more palatable “Leftists” or “Socialists”—the very deliberate authors of almost all of this world-view and dissatisfaction—have sold these highly propagandized but deliberately ill-educated young people—of little actual “on the ground” experience of the world, and of other lands and cultures—on the idea that replacing our current democratic Republic with Socialism/Communism will lead to a more fair and just society.
To quote the Joker’s line from a recent Batman film, “Some men just want to see the world burn.”
Burn baby burn! (but not really just a disco inferno)
Funny, we saw the Stallone movie “Demolition Man”, which sort of gives a “utopian” future 2032 with wimpy cops but everybody as non-contact wimps. Stallone is unfrozen from the ancient 80s past. He was taught knitting in his cryogenic sleep.
Most SJ despots of the PC-Klan would not agree that they want to destroy everything. Nor do they believe that their policies would be so bad.
Sort of like Bernie and other socialists not agreeing that it was socialism, and socialist policies, that destroyed Venezuela.
There is always “somebody else” to blame, and the PC-Klan members are smart enough to choose others to blame for whom there is at least a little bit of reason to support their own lying to themselves.
They delude themselves, much like college socialist professors delude themselves into thinking how good their own, theoretical socialism is — which has never “been tried in practice”.
In their minds, they are underdog heroes, fighting for the “victims”.
And enjoying the fight.
Enjoying making the comfy oppressors “apologize”.
Enjoying the power, and the recognition, and the influence.
For at least a few seconds, maybe even a day.
And then, on to the next e-lynching, because the world is not PC enough for the PC-Klan.
Those on the Left obviously believe that a “tipping point” has arrived, and that they don’t need to hide their real ambitions anymore.
In a way the Left is right, it is “all about power,” about the Left trying to acquire power and overwhelming dominance over everything and thus, over everybody.
See, for instance, AOC’s articulation today of the tried and true Communist ambition to “acquire control over the means of production,“ at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/03/insane-video-democratic-socialism-in-aocs-own-words-we-dont-want-to-take-over-every-form-of-production-we-just-want-to-tell-every-workplace-how-to-operate/
You may not be interested in the gleichschaltung but the gleichschaltung is interested in you.
This is like something out of the Kentucky Fried Movie. Why don’t people just laugh in their faces?
And that “gleichschaltung,” that gathering together of everything under the control of the Left, and speaking the ideology of the Left with with one voice–“in thought, action, and expression”–in Education, in the News, in Politics, in Art, in Entertainment, in Culture, and the simultaneous suppression and elimination of independent, free though, action, and expression–is the consolidation that we are witnessing and living through today.
Is this just happenstance? I don’t think so.
A word to the wise: don’t mess with knitters. Think Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities. 🙂
I’m wondering why in the world the knitting blogger apologized? Did she decide she agreed with the critic’s characterization of her post? Did she decide it was in her best interest, as a blogger, to apologize? Both?
You can read her explanation of her apology here. The main part of it:
The comments are worth a read. A few think she didn’t have anything to apologize for, like this one: “I am Asian American. I don’t think you did anything that upsetting. I wish people in this country could chill. I imagine there are a lot of people in other countries who would feel that a trip to America would almost be like going to another planet. I forgive them. I am not offended.”
Ann–
News out today that–in view of the rapidly rising rate of “knife crimes” in the UK, a major UK department store is no longer going to sell kitchen knives in it’s stores.
Can forks and knitting needles be far behind?
Always amazed (and disgusted) when, instead of dealing with those who commit crimes–in this case pretty likely overwhelmingly Muslims–the authorities pointedly ignore the criminals who are committing these crimes and, instead, courageously go after the instruments they use to commit those crimes.
In the last couple of months I have seen news stories noting that–given the rising number of acid attacks in the UK (acid attacks a prominent feature in Muslim societies, but not–until now–in the UK) police are now all equipped with kits designed to dilute the acid used in such attacks, and UK newspapers have featured articles–aimed at the general public–on how to try to dilute the acids used in such attacks, if one of those victims happens to run into your place of business seeking help, or shows up at your front door.
This mentioned above article on knife attacks also noted that all people in schools in the UK were now going to be given instructions on how to stop the bleeding if someone is the victim of a knife attack.
No mention, of course, of catching or detecting in advance those likely to perpetrate such acid or knife attacks.
They say that “there will always be an England,” but they never say what that future England will look like.
I’m afraid we are getting a glimpse of what that future England will look like, and it ain’t pretty.
…gleischaltung…
I was just trying to remember that line from Michelle Obama during the 2008 campaign — “Barack will not let you go back to your uninvolved lives” or something like that — which seemed a straightforward appeal to the gleischaltung.
As I recall, she stopped making speeches for the campaign shortly after.
Any help? I couldn’t find it with Google just now and I’ve got pretty good google-fu.
Snow on Pine:
Well the authorities in England are following the South Asian rape gang approach to crime. How progressive of them. Sucks to be a victim of such thinking. But they are moving on to “decolonialize” higher education; that word doesn’t mean what you think it used to mean (education).
BARAK OBAMA WILL REQUIRE YOU TO WORK. HE IS GOING TO DEMAND YOU SHED YOUR CYNICISM. THAT YOU PUT DOWN YOUR DIVISION. THAT YOU COME OUT OF YOUR ISOLATION, THAT YOU MOVE OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONES. THAT YOU PUSH YOURSELFS TO BE BETTER. AND THAT YOU ENGAGE. BARACK WILL NEVER ALLOW YOU TO GO BACK TO YOUR LIVES AS USUAL, UNINVOLVED, UNINFORMED. YOU HAVE TO STAY AT THE SEAT OF THE TABLE OF DEMOCRACY WITH A MAN LIKE BARAK OBAMA.
–Michelle Obama, Feb.3, 2008
https://www.c-span.org/video/?203975-1/michelle-obama-california-rally
That was more work than I expected. Excuse the all-caps — it’s from SPAN’s voice recognition software.
Boy, it’s a good thing Barack showed up to show us the way.
Ann,
The apology made me sick at my stomach, and the comments, oh so kindly and compassionately complimentary, were worse.
There are people who do need to more careful in what they say, but in cases like this, which as we all know are inexcusably frequent, the target of criticism who responds as she did is actively helping in the project to destroy her self-esteem and her sense of herself as a good and worthwhile person (I assume she basically is one, just a little too sensitive to the cruelty of others) — “worthy of living and capable of living.”
Thank you, though, for posting it. We should all learn from it.
“to destroy her self-esteem and her very sense of herself”
Which is the goal of the communists’ self-flagellation and group-excoriation sessions. (Well, that and the thrill of torturing people.) Big Brother, and less famous persons, absolutely need to destroy others’ senses of self.
And, their own pseudo-self-esteem requires it.
Huxley…..I did a post in 2014 keying off of that Michelle Obama statement from 2008: Life in the Fully Politicized Society
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/42932.html
David,
Your discussion of Kira Argounova is exactly, exactly on point. It’s just what we are talking about here and what the ill-natured, purposely-destructive “wokescolds” (and the double-Os, if you see whom I mean) are all about.
And Miss R was, as so often, right to stress the importance of self-defense.
A very well-written posting. Thanks.
The apology made me sick at my stomach, and the comments, oh so kindly and compassionately complimentary, were worse.
Julie near Chicago: It was quite the display. But if you’re gonna raise consciousness you gotta break some psyches.
Or maybe that’s what they believe is “healing souls.” Michelle Obama op. cit.:
Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands… That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.
I can’t wait for my telescreen to be installed. I am so broken and in need of healing.
David–I hope that everyone takes the time to read the quote from Ayn Rand’s book, “We The Living,” via the link you have provided to chicagoboyz.net, which shows in chilling detail exactly where we are headed, if the Left gains the control over every aspect of our lives, thoughts, acts, and expressions that they are attempting to–and are well on their way towards–achieving.
This would be a truly unholy, disgusting, and horrible end for the American experiment.
Out of my dalliance with the New Left back in the seventies I found myself briefly in a “men’s consciousness raising group.” The leader was another student, but he was ultimately under the Big Gun from New York, 2nd-wave-feminist-founder, Robin Morgan.
The leader had us go around the room confessing how sexist our sexual fantasies were. The leader gave it a shot, but really wasn’t comfortable confessing his fascination with fellatio. Everyone else was pretty half-hearted. I muttered something vague and averted my eyes. The meeting ended quickly.
I stayed on the left, but that was the end of my involvement with the New Left in college.
David Foster:
That’s a great essay with great quotes. I am always impressed with Haffner’s book, which I believe is a masterpiece, and which I seem to recall I first became aware of, if I’m not mistaken, through your essays about him.
Neo–who is this Haffner that you mention?
P.S. Looking around the Web and trying to find Haffner, I ran into this letter, that is relevant to our discussion, here at a website called the Skeptical Pathologist at https://socialpathology.blogspot.com/2018/11/whittaker-chambers-enemy-within.html
“August 5, 1954
Dear Bill:
I no longer believe that political solutions are possible for us. I am baffled by the way people still speak of the West as if it were at least a cultural unity against Communism though it is divided not only by a political, but by an invisible cleavage. On one side are the voiceless masses with their own subdivisions and fractures. On the other side is the enlightened, articulate elite which, to one degree or other, has rejected the religious roots of the civilization—the roots with-out which it is no longer Western civilization, but a new order of beliefs, attitudes and mandates. [ED]
In short, this is the order of which Communism is one logical expression, originating not in Russia, but in the culture capitals of the West, reaching Russia by clandestine delivery via the old underground centers in Cracow, Vienna, Berne, Zurich, and Geneva. It is a Western body of belief that now threatens the West from Russia. As a body of Western beliefs, secular and rationalistic, the intelligentsia of the West share it, and are therefore always committed to a secret emotional complicity with Communism of which they dislike, not the Communism, but only what, by the chances of history, Russia has specifically added to it—slave-labor camps, purges, MVD et al. And that, not because the Western intellectuals find them unjustifiable, but because they are afraid of being caught in them. If they could have Communism without the brutalities of ruling that the Russian experience bred, they have only marginal objections. Why should they object? What else is socialism but Communism with the claws retracted? And there is positivism. ‘What is more, every garage mechanic in the West, insofar as he believes in nuts and bolts, but asks: “The Holy Ghost, what’s that?” shares the substance of those same beliefs. Of course, the mechanic does not know, when he asks: “The Holy Ghost, what’s that?” that he is simply echoing Stalin at Teheran: “The Pope—how many divisions has the Pope?” [ED]
That is the real confrontation of forces. The enemy—he is ourselves. That is why it is idle to talk about preventing the wreck of Western civilization. It is already a wreck from within. That is why we can hope to do little more now than snatch a fingernail of a saint from the rack or a handful of ashes from the faggots, and bury them secretly in a flowerpot against the day, ages hence, when a few men begin again to dare to believe that there was once something else, that some-thing else is thinkable, and need some evidence of what it was, and the fortifying knowledge that there were those who, at the great nightfall, took loving thought to preserve the tokens of hope and truth.
Sincerely, Whittaker
The letter writer is Whittaker Chambers, and note that the year this letter was written in was way back in 1954.
So, based on his training, experience, and perception Chambers had already seen that, given the internal spiritual rot he saw, we in the West were already goners.
It’s just taken a lot longer than he probably thought to fully manifest itself, and start to come to fruition.
Just given was has brewed up–reared its ugly head–in, say, the last year or so, this is truly a scary time in our country’s history.
@huxley:
I believe “purity spiral” is the term you’re looking for.
Snow on Pine:
Here’s a post of mine about Haffner, with links.
Brian Lovely; huxley:
Also the risky shift.
Exploring some other links, I ran into the story of Vaclav Benda (d. 1999), a leading Czech Roman Catholic, anti-Communist dissident, his family of six children, and how during the Communist era he and his wife warned their children that everything they heard at school and in the media were lies, and that—as an antidote to this communist indoctrination—his wife would read to their children for two or three hours each day.
Their favorite books, “The Lord of The Rings.”
Why?
Because since the secret police were torturing people a couple of blocks away, they knew that Mordor was real, and they felt that the story of the Hobbits and others resisting Mordor “was their story too.”
I’m afraid that, as things seem to be going, we, too, are headed toward our very own Mordor.
See https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/my-night-at-vaclav-benda/
@huxley, neo:
There’s also the evaporative cooling model, but that’s specifically ratcheting up group belief in the face of contrary evidence, as less confident members “evaporate” away, leaving the group “cooler”.
(I ran across this in an Eric Scott Raymond post about AGW a few years ago.)
I’d love to see it if a few people would respond to this nonsense by simply saying, “Bullshit!” I watched the testimonies of Secretary Nielsen to the House Homeland Security Committee and the director of Customs and Border Patrol to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I would loved to have heard either of them say to one of the “questions” of the Democrats, “Bullshit!” Is there a crime of being scatological to Congress? Maybe we could start a movement.
Is there a name for this positive feedback cycle in which people adopt more and more radical positions? It seems like an ideological tulipmania.
I believe “purity spiral” is the term you’re looking for.
Bryan Lovely: I like that! Is that yours?
I was mulling over “The French Revolution,” though I’m sure there are earlier examples.
It seems much of the brutality of the Reign of Terror then originated from the Orwellian-named “Committee of Public Safety.”
It’s not mine, but I don’t remember where I heard it. It’s certainly descriptive of zillions of historical and current phenomena, though.
It’s kind of like a group recursively No-True-Scotsman-ing itself.
“…If you’re gonna raise consciousness you gotta break some psyches.”
Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were all practically ordered to RAISE the self-esteem of others (especially children), no matter what?
So now it’s: “I’m OK; You are definitely NOT OK”?
This is all very confusing….
(To be sure, Orwell would have understood it all very well.)
Ravelry is an online community for knitters and crocheters. It’s everything from patterns to yarn to supplies. It leans quite far left so I’ve been carful to stay miles away from any subject other than knitting. Once in a while someone published a pattern that is a ‘F&$K Trump’ pattern and the gushing praise it garners is amazing. Those people have sharp sticks and get stabby quickly. Tread carefully. There are a lot of nice patterns though.
The interesting thing about this set-to is that it shows how the old laws about blasphemy – which everyone (who counts) had so disdained – have been resurrected in the form of “Political Correctness”. The penalties are no longer physical flogging, imprisonment, and torture with an Auto da Fe, but a more extended and public Inquisition. As of old, it ends with a confession of sin, unaccepted repentance, excommunication, and banishment from the fellowship.
It is as much of an abomination today as it ever was.
“the old laws about blasphemy”
We now have two Established Religions, which it is blasphemy to criticize. One is Islam. The other is “progressivism”. The fact that the tenets of these religions are completely contradictory to one another doesn’t seem to matter.
David Foster,
Above, Snow on Pine posted (thanks, Snow!) a letter by Whittaker Chambers to “Bill” (“Who he?”) which he found at
https://socialpathology.blogspot.com/2018/11/whittaker-chambers-enemy-within.html
I followed the link, and behold! there were two extremely interesting and, I think, cogent comments (by a David Foster. For some strange reason I assume this person is you).
I lack the chutzpah to post your comments here myself, but I implore you to do it, as they are cogent indeed to our current situation.
Interesting to see mention of Sebastian Haffner. If you haven’t read it already, I would almost beg you to read “The Meaning of Hitler” – I believe Haffner wrote this one just after the war, after returning to Germany (he spent the war years in Britain). It’s quite a small book, almost a pamphlet, but it contains some of the most brilliant, trenchant, and convincing historical analysis I’ve ever seen. Clearly the 64 dollar question of the 20th century is – “How could the Germans have possibly fallen for Hitler?” Sometimes it feels a little embarrassing to be so fascinated by the topic. However, the question underneath that one, for which we really do need the answer, is “How great is the danger of something similar happening to us”? Our culture and our political system give us certain critical advantages compared to the Germans of the 1930s, but the fact is that they weren’t so very different from us in the end. As a historical topic, the Hitler phenomenon holds plenty of interest just from being so bizarre and so horrifying, but it also might be the most important story to understand to the best of our ability, for the sake of survival.
Julie…yes, those comments about the impact of the Great Inflation were from me.
“That year (1923) newspaper readers could again play a variation of the exciting numbers game they had enjoyed during the war…this time the figures did not refer to military events..but to an otherwise quite uninteresting, everyday item in the financial pages: the exchange rate of the dollar. The fluctuation of the dollar was the barometer by which, with a mixture of anxiety and excitement, we measured the fall of the mark.
By the end of 1922, prices had already risen to somewhere between 10 and 100X the pre-war peacetime level, and a dollar could purchase 500 marks. It was inconvenient to work with the large numbers, but life went on much as before.
But the mark now went on the rampage…the dollar shot to 20,000 marks, rested there for a short time, jumped to 40,000, paused again, and then, with small periodic fluctuations, coursed through the ten thousands and then the hundred thousands…Then suddenly, looking around we discovered that this phenomenon had devastated the fabric of our daily lives.
Anyone who had savings in a bank, bonds, or gilts, saw their value disappear overnight. Soon it did not matter whether it ws a penny put away for a rainy day or a vast fortune. everything was obliterated…the cost of living had begun to spiral out of control. ..A pound of potatoes which yesterday had cost fifty thousand marks now cost a hundred thousand. The salary of sixty-five thousand marks brought home the previous Friday was no longer sufficient to buy a packet of cigarettes on Tuesday.”
The only people who were able to survive financially were those that bought stocks. (And, of course, were shrewd or lucky enough to buy the right stocks and to sell them at the right times.)
“Every minor official, every employee, every shift-worker became a shareholder. Day-to-day purchases were paid for by selling shares. On wage days there was a general stampede to the banks, and share prices shot up like rockets…Sometimes some shares collapsed and thousands of people hurtled towards the abyss. In every shop, every factory, every school, share tips were whispered in one’s ear.
The old and unworldy had the worst of it. Many were driven to begging, many to suicide. The young and quick-witted did well. Overnight they became free, rich, and independent. It was a situation in which mental inertia and reliance on past experience was punished by starvation and death, but rapid appraisal of new situations and speed of reaction was rewarded with sudden, vast riches. The twenty-one-year-old bank director appeared on the scene, and also the sixth-former who earned his living from the stock-market tips of his slighty older friends. He wore Oscar Wilde ties, organized champagne parties, and supported his embarrassed father.”
Haffner believes that the great inflation–particularly by the way it destroyed the balance between generations and empowered the inexperienced young–helped pave the way for Naziism.
“In August 1923 the dollar-to-mark ratio reached a million, and soon thereafter the number was much higher. Trade was shutting down, and complete social chaos threatened. Various self-appointed saviors appeared: Hausser, in Berlin…Hitler, in Munich, who at the time was just one among many rabble-rousers…Lamberty, in Thuringia, who emphasized folk-dancing, singing, and frolicking.”
I had just been thinking earlier today about that remark about the “self-appointed saviors”, with reference to the Democrat Clown Car.
continuing Haffner…here, the end of the inflation:
As inflation reached a point of total insanity…a miracle happened. “Small, ugly grey-green notes” appeared, with “One Rentenmark” written on them. The small numbers on these notes belied their value. You could use them to buy goods which had previously cost a billion marks. And, most amazingly, they held their value. Goods which had cost 5 Rentenmarks last week would also generally cost 5 Rentenmarks next week.
Haffner does not venture an answer to the then-hot question of “who discovered the Rentenmark,” but he credits Gustav Stresemann–who had just become Chancellor–with the general stabilization of German politics and the economy. Most people breathed a vast sigh of relief, but some were less happy:
“Twenty-one year-old bank directors began to look around for clerking jobs again, and sixth-formers had to adjust to having twenty marks’ pocket money.
But overall, the picture was bright:
“The last ten years were forgotten like a bad dream. The Day of Judgment was remote again, and there was no demand for saviors or revolutionaries…There was an ample measure of freedom, peace, and order, everywhere the most well-meaning liberal-mindedness, good wages, good food and a little political boredom. everyone was cordially invited to concentrate on their personal lives, to arrange their affairs according to their own taste and to find their own paths to happiness.”
But…and I think this is a particuarly important point…a return to private life was not to everyone’s taste:
“A generation of young Germans had become accustomed to having the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions…Now that these deliveries suddently ceased, people were left helpless, impoverished, robbed, and disappointed. They had never learned how to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful and worth while, how to enjoy it and make it interesting. So they regarded the end of political tension and the return of private liberty not as a gift, but as a deprivation. They were bored, their minds strayed to silly thoughts, and they began to sulk.”
and
“To be precise (the occasion demands precision, because in my opinion it provides the key to the contemporary period of history): it was not the entire generation of young Germans. Not every single individual reacted in this fashion. There were some who learned during this period, belatedly and a little clumsily, as it were, how to live. they began to enjoy their own lives, weaned themselves from the cheap intoxication of the sports of war and revolution, and started to develop their own personalities. It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.”
This point seems very important. I think that in America today, we have quite a few people who are getting “entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions”….not all of these people are on the Left, but the vast majority of them are.
I am so impressed with that, David. Thanks a lot for bringing it here.
What particularly struck me, especially in light of the Young Turkesses newly infesting the House:
Julia,
I have to add one other piece of writing on the psychological impact of the Inflation. This is from the 1932 novel ‘Little Man, What Now?’, which is centered around a likable young couple trying to survive in late-Weimar Germany. Sonny and Lammchen’s landlady cannot comprehend what happened to her savings, and it has practically unhinged her:
“Young people, before the war, we had a comfortable fifty thousand marks. And now that money’s all gone. How can it all be gone?…I sit here reckoning it up. I’ve written it all down. I sit here, reckoning. Here it says: a pound of butter, three thousand marks…can a pound of butter cost three thousand marks?…I now know that my money’s been stolen. Someone who rented here stole it…he falsified my housekeeping book so I wouldn’t notice. He turned three into three thousand without me realizing…how can fifty thousand have all gone?”
The entire book is really very good. Review:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/29873.html
If you look on Ebey you can buy a reminder of just how insane hyperinflation can be–a Ten Trillion or even a Hundred Trillion Zimbabwean dollar bill that was legal currency in Zimbabwe in 2008, during the height of that country’s hyperinflation madness, since then withdrawn–worthless–and now only worth the couple of U.S. dollars a collector will pay for it.
I’ve spent a couple of bucks to buy one Zimbabwean Ten Billion dollar bill to frame, and to keep as a constant reminder of just what can happen if a country’s economy and currency are mismanaged.
Bryan Lovely on March 11, 2019 at 12:35 am at 12:35 am said:
@huxley, neo:
There’s also the evaporative cooling model, but that’s specifically ratcheting up group belief in the face of contrary evidence, as less confident members “evaporate” away, leaving the group “cooler”.
* * *
An interesting theory.
I thought this footnote was also interesting, in the context of discussions about What Does Manju Want?
Thanks, David. It sounds good. I’ll have to hunt. One problem is that the Haffner is only on Kindle. I don’t do Kindle. :>(
Julie,
I found both the Haffner and Fallada books in paper form on Amazon.
Also, Haffner’s “Little Man, What Now?” was popular enough in the US that an American movie was made from it in 1932. I reviewed it here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/29967.html
It’s now available on Amazon in DVD form. The reviews are interesting, it seems to be enjoying a new popularity. Several reviewers mentioned that their kids like it a lot.
As long as we’re recommending books, I’d bring up anything written by Erich Maria Remarque, in particular—given the current context—his novels from the 1930s (following “All Quiet on the Western Front”).
Not sure if it was he who mentioned this, but I read—somewhere—that one of the major reasons why the rank and file German was so inclined to embrace the right-of-center was not only because of the chaotic and seemingly hopeless financial situation but because of the utter, out-of-control licentiousness that characterized the Weimar period and the perception that any party that was going to end that long walpurgisnacht would be a positive force. (Alas, they never suspected that the National Socialists were going to implement one of a very different and destructive kind….)
Obviously, the rise of the Nazis is due to many factors; but it’s wise to remember that actions provoke reactions, in politics as well as in physics.
The problem facing the US at the moment is the sheer fury of the partisanship, though, I’m of those who believe that the Obama years provoked a reaction to right a “progressive” ship of state that was way off course and out of control. This reaction was not supposed to have had any chance of succeeding, given the forces arrayed against it; and Trump’s unexpected and shocking success has, in turn, provoked a simply insane reaction from those who assumed that “history was—is—on their side”.
It’s not pretty and I’m not certain how the country can get back to more or less of an even keel. This is what makes Jordan Peterson’s even-toned, rational voice, and others like him, so critically important.
2020 will be crucial.
Barry…a Remarque book that I find particularly worthwhile is his novel ‘The Road Back’, which is sort of a sequel to ‘All Quiet on the Western Front.’ It doesn’t seem to be very widely-read, which is unfortunate. I reviewed it here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/54294.html
Terrific review. Thanks very much….
I agree that the book (and others by him) are required reading for anyone trying to understand the “Great War”—and especially its aftermath—from the perspective of the decent German soldier caught up in a propaganda-generated, four-year-long bloodbath, a horror that was survived only by the very lucky (or the corrupt).
Not unlike the British returning soldier, with which most English speakers are understandably more familiar, the peace-time world was, for these German veterans (some of them not yet 20 years old), unrecognizable; and the continued propagandization of the war was intolerable.
Remarque’s humanity, his decency, his honesty and his refusal to perpetuate German propaganda—all of which imbue his novels—were the cause of his being declared “defeatest” and blacklisted by the National Socialists. He ultimately was hounded out of Germany before the Second WW broke out, but I believe that the Nazis, to prove a thuggish point, arrested his sister who stayed behind, and that in spite of his efforts to free her she ultimately died in prison. (Not certain of this; will have to check.)
He did have the “honor” of having his books burnt in those infamous bonfires, which one wishes were behind us but can no longer, alas, be so sure….
a horror that was survived only by the very lucky (or the corrupt).
This source indicates that about 16% of Germany’s mobilized troops were killed during the 1st World War:
https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I/Killed-wounded-and-missing
You’re right.
I should have said “survived unscathed”. (According to the source you linked to, about 16% of the mobilized German armed forces was killed; total casualties were 64%. For the Austro-Hungarian armed forces, the table cites about 15% killed with total casualties 90%.)
Thanks for the link.