Re: <nettime> Europe and the MAGA mind virus

[Brian Holmes via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Ted's whole diatribe on liberal denialism is brilliant, see below. It's
pretty much exactly what I was thinking when I read this thread. Of course,
the part I agree with most could well be exactly where we disagree on
closer examination....

In the US, liberal denialism is so great that they still think Trump is a
blip, a charismatic freak of nature, an outbreak of pure irrationality, a
scheme concocted by dark conspiratorial forces - anything but a brilliant
politician with a vision, a plan and a constituency. Anything but a peer
and a serious enemy, that is. Similarly, the liberals are in total denial
over the need for their own self-critique, as though all their virtues did
not depend on the profits of a violent capitalist state - that is, as
though they were not also the Party of Empire, a fact which has been proven
over and over again from Wikileaks to the Gaza genocide. Americans who
propagate liberal denialism are not just complacent with the monstrosity of
their state - they're actively supporting it.

However, liberal denialism goes much further. In Europe, too, you have the
fundamental denial that capitalism, with its extreme intra- and
inter-national inequalities, does not inevitably lead to fascism. Sure, if
waves of migrants are being  forcibly drowned by the transnational state,
while isolated inhabitants of the bloc periodically go on bloodthirsty
rampages of revenge, then everything must be fine in the EU - it's just
Donald Trump who's crazy! We Europeans/Westerners/globalists live in
historically unprecedented luxury defended at the point of a gun, while
continuing to exploit the world's resources in a dead-end race to
catastrophic climate change, so who could possibly complain? We shaft our
working classes, depend on imported labor that we revile, and pour mediated
garbage into everyone's brain and heart, so what could possibly go wrong? I
am a good European, a moral individual, I am against Donald Trump! Etc etc.

It was not difficult to predict that globalization would end in a series of
nationalist backlashes. In fact, I made that prediction in my very first
nettime post. It drew on some wiser source than me, to point out that
corporate arrogance was already producing  a populist reaction at the heart
of the West. However, there was no audience for it and I soon ceased trying
to make that point (shame on me). The reason why is that the internet-happy
anarchists, with all their open-border idealism, just didn't give a damn
about lessons of history. Their / our universalism was very much like that
of the libertarians. And for good reason, as we were part of the same
technocratic middle classes who saw a cultural confirmation and an economic
opportunity in open borders and uncontrolled comms, even though these
things were obviously being set up by major corporations and governments
for imperial advantage.

What we are living through now is the blowback to this globalization, and
particularly, to its commercial and cultural arrogance. That it should be
led by the chief national exponent of globalization is a paradox you had
better get used to. The right-wing strand of Western society is far from
exceptional, as Ted points out. In fact the whole process of tariff wars,
arms races and clash-of-civilizations rhetoric is following a pattern very
close to the blowback against Britain's liberal empire. Said blowback was
an extremely violent process which began in 1914 and culminated in Nazism,
that is, the revolt of the second-best, the economic losers, just as
contemporary American fascism is a losers' revolt against China. Political
realities on this scale are dangerous to deny, even if you disagree about
their reasons for existing.

So, I don't know if Ted has exactly the same concept of liberal denialism
as me, but anyway, I do agree with every word as written below. Denialism
is the way that liberals maintain their self-certainty, their authority,
their ability to pontificate on everything and everybody, while keeping
their boardroom votes, their vacation rentals and their stock-market picks
secret. Denialism is the way that liberals now maintain their world. But we
are presently moving through the period in which this denial, like
liberalism itself, will become obsolete. Either some current of thought and
action emerges that can universally address the world-transforming
challenges of global inequality, economic breakdown, war and ecological
collapse, or the national-fascist right will go on with its supremely
ignorant and strategically manipulated version of an answer to those
challenges. The hardest thing to admit right now is that their version is
more effective, and therefore, politically better than anything on offer by
the cosmopolitan left. So even if their approach is short-sighted, morally
wrong and fundamentally destructive, maybe there are undeniable reasons why
our counter-arguments are not so convincing?

Clinging to the pious certainties of an iniquitous system may not be the
best way to survive the 21st century.

thoughtfully, Brian


On Tue, Feb 18, 2025, 08:46 GM - tedbyfield via nettime-l <
nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:

> Geoff, you’re exactly right. The usual term is “dogwhistle,” but
> like most internet-era neologisms for describing different modes and
> styles of communication (“playbook,” “trolling,”
> “canceling,” etc), that word muddies things up as much as it
> clarifies them — so it’s best to ignore it.
>
> What you point out — that Vance was speaking not to those assembled
> but to others who would take their place — should be obvious but
> apparently, amazingly isn’t. The conceit — that he would have been
> speaking primarily to them — is nonsense. Does anyone seriously think
> that officials at these rigorously ritualized speeches are actually
> *talking with each other*? At any time other than Vance’s speech the
> answer would be a resounding *of course not!*. So, if it’s surprising
> in this context, then that in itself seems strange. But it isn’t
> mysterious.
>
> The US has been awash in liberal denialism for decades, but over the
> last decade of Trump it’s drowning or, arguably, *has drowned*.
> Slogans like “this isn’t who we are!”, “we’re better than
> this!”, “not my president!”, “another world is possible!”, etc
> are just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath them is an entire empire of
> recursive negations about *this* world: “these people are insane /
> uneducated / etc,” someone — some heroic prosecutor, the courts,
> some secret “resistance” in the civil service — will stop them,
> it’ll happen in a courtroom, or in some other state, or on Election
> Day. Always somewhere else, always somewhen else.
>
> Right now, US liberaldom feels the winds of heroism ruffle their hair
> whenever they use words like “fascist,” “nazi,” and “coup”:
> they’re like OMG PINCH ME I’M ACTUALLY SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER!!!!!
> But if it feels thrilling now, that’s only because they spent the last
> decade smugly challenging those names for what was happening and (as
> always) impugning anyone who used them. Those who did were dismissed as
> (again with the negations!) unhinged, ignorant (that the left
> “always” says those things), incoherent, ill-mannered, and fifty
> other shades of othering. And after the first barrage of ad hominem was
> over, in swept the cavalry of pedants: legions of Arendtsplainers
> who’d cluck about how Trump didn’t meet X, Y, or Z criteria peculiar
> to 1930s Germany, bores arguing J6 wasn’t a “coup” because it
> failed or because the military didn’t intervene, and so on. Even now,
> as the richest guy in the world and his army of shocktwerps maraud
> around the government, demolishing one hard-won agency after another,
> liberals *still* nervously debate whether they’re allowed to use the
> word ”coup,” as if this were a crisis in taxonomy.
>
> This has a much deeper, longer history of course — most recently, the
> Democrats’ insistence, despite all evidence, that the far right was
> exceptional, though exactly *how* it was exceptional changed with the
> seasons. Rightist were the dying gasp of an old world, the result of
> “low information” or “media deserts,” loners and losers,
> anomalies brought to power by accidents of history, their bark was worse
> than their bite, etc. The *only* thing these disparate explanations had
> in common was (wait for it. . .) denialism.
>
> Unfortunately, this — liberal denialism — is one area where there
> was almost perfect accord between US and EU elites. And that, I think,
> is what explains the response to Vance’s speech. As you say, he was in
> the room with them, but he was speaking to others who weren’t there.
> And *that* sent a very strong message to those present.
>
> Ted
>
> On 18 Feb 2025, at 6:24, Geoffrey Goodell via nettime-l wrote:
>
> > I am not convinced that JD Vance's speech served no purpose.  The
> > question we
> > might ask is: Who is his audience?  It seems unlikely that the
> > audience is his
> > American constituency; suggest that they know or care little about
> > European
> > politics or even NATO.
>   < . . . >
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