[Ukraine] ahegao to the poles

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Ukraine] ahegao to the poles

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Toplowtech: Aug 31, 2004

January 6 Survivor posted:

I'm glad our batch of dumbass failsons think that playing all sides is how you can diplomatically succeed but maybe France would have an easier time acting as a bridge between NATO and Russia if we hadn't loving done so much dumb bullshit to make them our enemies in those last few years.

We elected a liberal banker as president and his dumbass court as parliement, what did you expect?
The thing is we are making relatively good money at the moment selling weapon systems (even if i will never have faith in India buying anything, those fuckers like to play hard to get) and our allies hosed us over a few billion dollars contract with Australia because of their Sinophobic bullshit. I would blame our current behavior more on "elite panic" than on any form of "strategy"

Toplowtech has issued a correction as of 09:43 on May 20, 2024

# ? May 20, 2024 09:40

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 12, 2024 23:52

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Ghost Leviathan posted:

We really need a big thing about how Nazi Germany was a corporate state to loving Shadowrun levels.

President Dunkelzelensky

# ? May 20, 2024 09:41

crepeface: Nov 5, 2004; r*p*f*c*

great long post for the new page.

dk2m posted:

Schmitt's core study was in his legalist doctrine - he criticized liberalism on a jurisprudence basis. It's worth it to note that fascism is a rejection and criticism of classical liberalism, though he by no means is the first and comes from a long line of thinkers.

It's helpful to think of classical liberalism as the creation of "the political" from the Enlightenment. Particularly, if we focus the broad goal of turning people into political agents and decentralizing power from monarchies into the "General Will" as Rousseau would call it. The mechanism on how this would be achieved would be to categorically reject any sort of theological basis in any part of society, and thus place reason at the core of organization. Political liberalism was therefore the project of using reason to organize society in the best way possible, not by the whims of hereditary rulers and powerless feudal subjects.

Anti-Enlightenmentent thinkers, of which there were many at the time, saw the tyranny that would emerge from this project - though Nietzsche is more than just that label, the idea of God being dead, and therefore the death of meaning, is partly a reaction to the dogma of mechanical, impersonal reason of the Enlightenment.

Hegel is the first strike into the liberal project, where he notes the failure of the Jacobins and the success of the bourgeois were both a negative and positive development. As the pioneer of "dialectic" logic, Hegel will oppose the mere syllogistic mode of reason that the Enlightenment was based on - typified by Kant, where logic provided no context and empiricism was not interested in what actually animates human behavior. Thus, by looking at logic, and by extension the emprical world, as a "process", one in which tension between opposites is itself creation, it paves the way for historical materialism.

What Schmitt does is continue in the tradition of Marx and Hegel by criticizing liberalism in the jurisprudence realm. He makes a few key observations: 1) liberalism depends on constitutions to grant power to the state, 2) liberalism is obsessed with rationality and reason and 3) liberalism assumes opposite poles can reach a compromise.

For point 1- he makes the case that democracy is simply a "monarchy in waiting". Though a constitution supposedly sets limits to powers, and introduces checks and balances between competing forces, ultimately all it takes is for a crisis to undo that. He saw this happen throughout the 19th and 20th century and it's simply taken for granted now. An example of an emergency is when there is war - even though liberalism fiercely rejects a sovereign, out of practical necessity there needs to be a strong leader that has the capability to make unilateral and sweeping decisions without the meddling of others. Without such an ability, then a society will not be able to respond to an emergency. His point here is that a constitution is just window dressing. He makes a really interesting observation that in democracies, we don't see this power in peace and stability and only in times of emergencies. He makes the case that this is exactly what happens under monarchies - you are largely left alone by the King when things are normal. In this jurisprudential way, laws are temporary, absurd, and arbitrary as they can be immediately nullified by a head of state in a democratic system if there is an emergency.This is what eventually leads to an embrace of fascism of being a more "natural" type of system, where the reality is that a constitutional state is nothing more than an illusion.

For point 2 - liberalism can only work in the framework of "reason". In a philosophical context, reason is the mode of epistemology where syllogistic and reductive forms of statements are made to justify valid truths. In the sociological sense, reason eschews the myths, superstitions and dogmas of a theologic society (specifically, a Christian one). Schmitt finds the obsession with reason to be why liberalism explodes in the "techno-cratic" bureaucrats of parliamentary democracies. He says:

Though he finds Hegel and Marx revolutionary, this is where he draws the line between fascism and Marxism. Both systems agree that the "laissez-faire" systems of liberalism lead to exploitation and misery - Marx's viewpoint is that the Enlightenment didn't use reason correctly and instead needs to emphasize dialectics, where Schmitt says that reason is itself the root problem, dialectics or not. Schmitt offers some solutions here, but fascism's obsessions with the occult, eccentric and ancient are to harken back to pre-Enlightenment days before the reason was the primary operating principle of society.

For point 3 - The most famous thesis of Schmitt is his friend/enemy dynamic. Summarized - liberal democracies promise that problems can be solved through reason. Freedom to debate, freedom of ideas, freedom of speech, freedom to associate - all of these are supposed to create a marketplace of ideas where 2 people can debate on opposite sides and come to a reasonable middle point. Like in science, where careful trials and repeated experiments lead to better results, getting us closer to the truth, so the political should operate. Schmitt found this completely flawed - instead, he posited that Hegel's dialectics is probably right - that these tensions don't create a third result, they sublate and lead to constant revolutions (no matter how small the disagreements are). Fundamentally, there can be no "middle position" between 2 sides on opposites sides of the spectrum - there can only be one winner. In this case, the winner is the one that can crush their opponent. Thus, liberalism creates not a harmonious society in which rational agents solve problems amicably through reasoned debate, but instead an extremely contentious and violent on in which warring factions are a permanent feature. This leads to the final fascist belief system, which is that power is the only thing that matters. A victorious idea is won through blood, sweat and tears, not through technocrats writing op-eds. In this way, a martial society is preferred, as the enemy can never be convinced, only crushed.

After Schmitt joined the Nazi party, he became a hugely influential lawyer and philosopher of jurisprudence within the ranks. The phenomenon of modern liberals is that they have simply adopted these views into the technocratic order of the Anglo sphere. The explosion of executive power, especially once the President is able to wipe out the world with a nuclear football, is a tacit agreement that the fascists were largely correct. Constitutional crises are common and the political sphere is complete theater as everyone is quite aware that there can be no compromise between 2 widely separated groups.

Within the specific quote of neoliberalism, I absolutely agree with it. Neoliberalism is an attempt to homogenize the world through the market - by economically dominating and creating systems that are beyond your control, a level of stability can be reached through domination by market factors. At the same time, neoliberalism creates a similar martial system, just an economic one - neolliberalism encourages and forces you to compete in carefully allowed ways (a nice car, a nice house, etc) to give you some locus of meaning. Ultimately, both systems are totalitarian in nature, but with neoliberalism cloaking itself in the language of the Enlightenemnt (freedom, choice, etc) rather than fascism (power, will, etc).

# ? May 20, 2024 09:42

Endman: May 18, 2010; That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even anime may die

You could say that Big Steel paid for the Nazis to Big Steal the 1933 election :imunfunny:

# ? May 20, 2024 09:43

crepeface: Nov 5, 2004; r*p*f*c*

Officer Sandvich posted:

Before the big fight:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/may/18/ukraine-divided-over-oleksandr-usyk-world-boxing-champion-facing-tyson-fury

Ukrainians divided over Usyk, the world boxing champion facing Tyson Fury
by Charlotte Higgins

After the big fight:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/19/ukraine-kyiv-kharkiv-reaction-oleksandr-usyk-boxing-champion

�Proud and happy�: Ukrainians embrace Oleksandr Usyk�s boxing victory
by Charlotte HIggins and Sam Jones

just caught the highlights, seemed like a good fight!

# ? May 20, 2024 11:07

CN CREW-VESSEL: Feb 1, 2024; 敌人磨刀我们也磨刀

Nix Panicus posted:

One of the fun inherent contradictions of liberalism is that because it has no greater organizing principle for the people, once the liberal elite summons a horde of fascists to protect and expand its influence there is no inherent defense against the fascists just kinda taking over. Its an inevitable betrayal anyone can see coming but the cycle is doomed to repeat because its the only move they have in response to any serious threat

# ? May 20, 2024 12:37

CN CREW-VESSEL: Feb 1, 2024; 敌人磨刀我们也磨刀

I think you would appreciate All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism, because it shows how liberalism creates the crisis in legitimacy where Islamism, Liberation Theology and Integralism emerge. You can see the mythical strain of Fascism as similar to this, Himmler was obsessed with creating some sort of church, and there was that Nazi created Lutheran denomination.

According to a common narrative, the twentieth century spelled the end of faith-infused political movements. Their ideologies, like Catholic integralism, would soon be forgotten. Humans were finally learning to keep religion out of politics.

Or were we? In the twenty-first century, nations as diverse as Russia, India, Poland, and Turkey have seen a revival of religious politics, nand many religious movements in other countries have proved similarly resilient. A new generation of political theologians passionately reformulate ancient religious doctrines to revolutionize modern political life. They insist that states recognize the true religion, and they reject modern liberal ideals of universal religious freedom and church-state separation.

In this book, philosopher Kevin Vallier explores these new doctrines, not as lurid oddities but as though they might be true. The anti-liberal doctrine known as Catholic integralism serves as Vallier's test case. Yet his approach naturally extends to similar ideologies within Chinese Confucianism and Sunni Islam.

Vallier treats anti-liberal thinkers with the respect that liberals seldom afford them and offers more moderate skeptics of liberalism a clear account of the alternatives. Many liberals, by contrast, will find these doctrines frightening and strange but of enduring interest. Vallier invites all his readers on a unique intellectual adventure, encouraging them to explore unfamiliar ideals through the lenses of theology, philosophy, politics, economics, and history.

# ? May 20, 2024 12:44

R. Mute: Jul 27, 2011

Cerebral Bore posted:

hate to break it to you, but just because you have a reason for your actions doesn't necessarily make your actions rational

what would a rational system even look like

what is rationality when talking about politics?

# ? May 20, 2024 14:23

tristeham: Jul 31, 2022

Cerebral Bore posted:

motherfuckers running the country keep on screaming about how war and death is pure and noble and how they want it so and try to shape their entire society around this concept, but actually that's just a smokescreen for their real plans for rationally saving capitalism

shut up you dumbass

# ? May 20, 2024 14:35

OctaMurk: Jun 21, 2013

Kyiv expects to receive its first F-16 fighter jets from its Western allies in June-July

# ? May 20, 2024 15:04

BrotherJayne: Nov 28, 2019

crepeface posted:

just caught the highlights, seemed like a good fight!

Was a great fight,those dudes needed a win

# ? May 20, 2024 15:51

lobster shirt: Jun 14, 2021

boxing ftw

# ? May 20, 2024 16:12

Karach: May 23, 2003; no war but class war

gradenko_2000 posted:

excellent post

# ? May 20, 2024 16:15

dead gay comedy forums: Oct 21, 2011

Fascism and liberalism are modes of rule from capitalism. I don't recall who actually figured this notion in liberalism, but somebody suddenly had finally realized this insight there and started "actually capitalism doesn't need democratic notions and the rule of law at all" and got the academic establishment quite in a bother. No news for Marxists, of course.

What gives the impression of fascism having the helm when it "takes over" is its circumstance as a spontaneous mass movement, which can be consolidated by political figures that appeal to those masses. But the fascist then goes and sits with all the capitalists at the table of government. A good number of those capitalists are appalled by their manners or their ideas, but they cannot argue that they are not getting results. Profits are increasing. When the fascist gets pushback and poo poo starts to strain, many of the capitalists go and put their money for them. Some say to actually just take down the government as it is. Until a while ago, these people were all champions of individual liberty and democratic rule. Fascism has been there in the capitalist all along: it just needs the catalyst.

# ? May 20, 2024 16:38

In Training: Jun 28, 2008

Tom Guycot posted:

So when this is all over, and Russia gets whatever resolution they decide they want, does NATO/the west really just shrug their shoulders and go "whatever, we didn't care anyways"?

It feels like the US 'n friends has committed too hard, for way too many years to get ukraine and use it for a variety of purposes, to just let it go. At the same time though a loss is a loss and theres nothing they can do about it short of sending in NATO and actually making this thing official, but thats such a huge escalation I can't see anyone in the US doing that, which means the only outcome is going to be a terrible loss for NATO, but I also can't see any scenario where they just accept a loss on this and go on with their business.

The off ramp is pretending Ukraine was always going to fail, western press checking in periodically to hem and haw about the worsening conditions of Ukraine and the need for more IMF intervention, then total radio silence until the early 2030s when Ukrainians carry out a terror attack on US soil .

# ? May 20, 2024 16:42

Punkin Spunkin: Jan 1, 2010

adebisi lives posted:

https://twitter.com/SapperJaeger/status/1790340190562549857?t=DP1p5wl-ln730qKFXdzRTA&s=19

Qanon style "patriots are in control!" posts like this always crack me up. Maybe they think Blinken is going to personally lead a counter attack

You putinailures all laughed at this but not only did Tony Blinken lead a column of Challengers to glorious victory but Ukraine also learned that Russia is big.

mlmp08 posted:

Brits sometimes gey mad

True.

# ? May 20, 2024 16:45

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

CN CREW-VESSEL posted:

I know there's a reason none of this is easily accessible to people, but if you read only on Romania in the lead-up to WW2 you can see the contours of the whole thing.

Romania is organized into an alliance with the Czech and Poles by France.

This is supposedly to keep an eye on Germany, but seems really to exist to fight the Soviet Union.

Romania expresses concern that Poland is the greatest threat to peace in the region, fears Poland will instigate a war against the Baltics or Czechs.

Romania contacts France in 1936 to gain assurances in preventing the annexation of Austria. France tells Romania to back down.

Romania partially mobilizes in 1938 as Germany (and Poland) invade Czechoslovakia. France tells Romania to back down.

Romania asks France again about a plan if Germany invades Poland. France hems and haws. Romania allows Polish government and a good chunk of the army, to escape into Romania, and transports them to France where they form a large part of French defences in 1940.

France tells Romania to give territory to the USSR.

Romania joins the Axis.

The West has always sucked rear end at diplomacy.

# ? May 20, 2024 16:47

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Cerebral Bore posted:

what does set apart fascism from liberalism is that fascism forces capital into a junior position within the bourgeois state because at that point capital has already lost control, unlike liberalism where capital is ultimately in the driver's seat

Citation loving needed.

# ? May 20, 2024 16:53

Zodium: Jun 19, 2004

my bourgeois state with capital in the junior seat

# ? May 20, 2024 16:55

Nonsense: Jan 26, 2007

Hitler challenged capital and they took his country from him, obviously nothing else happened.

# ? May 20, 2024 16:58

RedSky: Oct 30, 2023

Orange Devil posted:

Citation loving needed.

Fascists are liberals bud, liberalism in crisis is fascism.

Welp quoted the wrong person but it's too late to fix now.

# ? May 20, 2024 16:58

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

R. Mute posted:

what would a rational system even look like

what is rationality when talking about politics?

Politics is the distribution of scarce resources.

My political platform consists of 2 planks:
1. All the scarce resources belong to me
2. gently caress you

Rationally debate me to change my mind!

Orange Devil has issued a correction as of 17:05 on May 20, 2024

# ? May 20, 2024 17:03

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

dk2m posted:

Schmitt's core study was in his legalist doctrine - he criticized liberalism on a jurisprudence basis. It's worth it to note that fascism is a rejection and criticism of classical liberalism, though he by no means is the first and comes from a long line of thinkers.

It's helpful to think of classical liberalism as the creation of "the political" from the Enlightenment. Particularly, if we focus the broad goal of turning people into political agents and decentralizing power from monarchies into the "General Will" as Rousseau would call it. The mechanism on how this would be achieved would be to categorically reject any sort of theological basis in any part of society, and thus place reason at the core of organization. Political liberalism was therefore the project of using reason to organize society in the best way possible, not by the whims of hereditary rulers and powerless feudal subjects.

Anti-Enlightenmentent thinkers, of which there were many at the time, saw the tyranny that would emerge from this project - though Nietzsche is more than just that label, the idea of God being dead, and therefore the death of meaning, is partly a reaction to the dogma of mechanical, impersonal reason of the Enlightenment.

Hegel is the first strike into the liberal project, where he notes the failure of the Jacobins and the success of the bourgeois were both a negative and positive development. As the pioneer of "dialectic" logic, Hegel will oppose the mere syllogistic mode of reason that the Enlightenment was based on - typified by Kant, where logic provided no context and empiricism was not interested in what actually animates human behavior. Thus, by looking at logic, and by extension the emprical world, as a "process", one in which tension between opposites is itself creation, it paves the way for historical materialism.

What Schmitt does is continue in the tradition of Marx and Hegel by criticizing liberalism in the jurisprudence realm. He makes a few key observations: 1) liberalism depends on constitutions to grant power to the state, 2) liberalism is obsessed with rationality and reason and 3) liberalism assumes opposite poles can reach a compromise.

For point 1- he makes the case that democracy is simply a "monarchy in waiting". Though a constitution supposedly sets limits to powers, and introduces checks and balances between competing forces, ultimately all it takes is for a crisis to undo that. He saw this happen throughout the 19th and 20th century and it's simply taken for granted now. An example of an emergency is when there is war - even though liberalism fiercely rejects a sovereign, out of practical necessity there needs to be a strong leader that has the capability to make unilateral and sweeping decisions without the meddling of others. Without such an ability, then a society will not be able to respond to an emergency. His point here is that a constitution is just window dressing. He makes a really interesting observation that in democracies, we don't see this power in peace and stability and only in times of emergencies. He makes the case that this is exactly what happens under monarchies - you are largely left alone by the King when things are normal. In this jurisprudential way, laws are temporary, absurd, and arbitrary as they can be immediately nullified by a head of state in a democratic system if there is an emergency.This is what eventually leads to an embrace of fascism of being a more "natural" type of system, where the reality is that a constitutional state is nothing more than an illusion.

For point 2 - liberalism can only work in the framework of "reason". In a philosophical context, reason is the mode of epistemology where syllogistic and reductive forms of statements are made to justify valid truths. In the sociological sense, reason eschews the myths, superstitions and dogmas of a theologic society (specifically, a Christian one). Schmitt finds the obsession with reason to be why liberalism explodes in the "techno-cratic" bureaucrats of parliamentary democracies. He says:

Though he finds Hegel and Marx revolutionary, this is where he draws the line between fascism and Marxism. Both systems agree that the "laissez-faire" systems of liberalism lead to exploitation and misery - Marx's viewpoint is that the Enlightenment didn't use reason correctly and instead needs to emphasize dialectics, where Schmitt says that reason is itself the root problem, dialectics or not. Schmitt offers some solutions here, but fascism's obsessions with the occult, eccentric and ancient are to harken back to pre-Enlightenment days before the reason was the primary operating principle of society.

For point 3 - The most famous thesis of Schmitt is his friend/enemy dynamic. Summarized - liberal democracies promise that problems can be solved through reason. Freedom to debate, freedom of ideas, freedom of speech, freedom to associate - all of these are supposed to create a marketplace of ideas where 2 people can debate on opposite sides and come to a reasonable middle point. Like in science, where careful trials and repeated experiments lead to better results, getting us closer to the truth, so the political should operate. Schmitt found this completely flawed - instead, he posited that Hegel's dialectics is probably right - that these tensions don't create a third result, they sublate and lead to constant revolutions (no matter how small the disagreements are). Fundamentally, there can be no "middle position" between 2 sides on opposites sides of the spectrum - there can only be one winner. In this case, the winner is the one that can crush their opponent. Thus, liberalism creates not a harmonious society in which rational agents solve problems amicably through reasoned debate, but instead an extremely contentious and violent on in which warring factions are a permanent feature. This leads to the final fascist belief system, which is that power is the only thing that matters. A victorious idea is won through blood, sweat and tears, not through technocrats writing op-eds. In this way, a martial society is preferred, as the enemy can never be convinced, only crushed.

After Schmitt joined the Nazi party, he became a hugely influential lawyer and philosopher of jurisprudence within the ranks. The phenomenon of modern liberals is that they have simply adopted these views into the technocratic order of the Anglo sphere. The explosion of executive power, especially once the President is able to wipe out the world with a nuclear football, is a tacit agreement that the fascists were largely correct. Constitutional crises are common and the political sphere is complete theater as everyone is quite aware that there can be no compromise between 2 widely separated groups.

Within the specific quote of neoliberalism, I absolutely agree with it. Neoliberalism is an attempt to homogenize the world through the market - by economically dominating and creating systems that are beyond your control, a level of stability can be reached through domination by market factors. At the same time, neoliberalism creates a similar martial system, just an economic one - neolliberalism encourages and forces you to compete in carefully allowed ways (a nice car, a nice house, etc) to give you some locus of meaning. Ultimately, both systems are totalitarian in nature, but with neoliberalism cloaking itself in the language of the Enlightenemnt (freedom, choice, etc) rather than fascism (power, will, etc).

interesting recapitulation of Schmiitt, but I'm missing two of his most important points. The philosophical anthropology that underpins his entire theory and Weltanschauung, and his political vitalism. Even though the last chapter of Politische Theologie relies on the same assumptions, Schmitt only mentions late in Begriff des Politischen that his entire theory relies on the most bleak, hostile view of humanity possible. This anthropological leap of faith (itself a reference to Kierkegaard, whose philosophical method and critique of liberalism shows many similarities to Schmitt's) is used by Schmitt to critique the anarchists, liberals and even marxists who - in Schmitt's view - all assume that man has rational control over his faculties and could, in theory live in harmony in society without coercion from the state or sovereign. In that sense, it's not so much that liberalism creates a chaotic, violent political, but that the depoliticized, rational politics envisioned by liberalism is fundamentally unworkable. As much as the liberals want to create a apolitical, peaceful world, they are unable to completely eliminate the possibility of either internal or external crises, that can only be understood and solved by the existential and eminent decisions over the state of exception and distinction between friend and enemy.

In the same vein, his critique of liberalism (more so in PT and the age of depoliticization than in concept of the political) stems partly from the idea that meaningful, life in modernity cannot be reduced to life in the economic or social spheres (what Hegel calls Burgerliches Gesellschaft). This, in itself, Schmitt sees something miscounted by the Marxists (rather: leninists), who also see life through a purely economic lens. The always-already potentially violent opposition between friend and enemy, or the always-already existing possibility of the state of exception, are also a source of existential meaning for individuals whose lives would be little more than gears in the machine of either capitalism or socialism.

If we wish to make use of Schmitt in a left-wing fashion it's important to see where he's coming from. Yes, he's opposed to a meaningless, depoliticized (neo)liberalism, and his critiques are eminently readable. But the source of his opposition, and is preferred solutions, are entirely different from what you'd see in any left-wing thinker.

# ? May 20, 2024 17:06

mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

dk2m posted:

Schmitt's core study was in his legalist doctrine - he criticized liberalism on a jurisprudence basis. It's worth it to note that fascism is a rejection and criticism of classical liberalism, though he by no means is the first and comes from a long line of thinkers.

It's helpful to think of classical liberalism as the creation of "the political" from the Enlightenment. Particularly, if we focus the broad goal of turning people into political agents and decentralizing power from monarchies into the "General Will" as Rousseau would call it. The mechanism on how this would be achieved would be to categorically reject any sort of theological basis in any part of society, and thus place reason at the core of organization. Political liberalism was therefore the project of using reason to organize society in the best way possible, not by the whims of hereditary rulers and powerless feudal subjects.

Anti-Enlightenmentent thinkers, of which there were many at the time, saw the tyranny that would emerge from this project - though Nietzsche is more than just that label, the idea of God being dead, and therefore the death of meaning, is partly a reaction to the dogma of mechanical, impersonal reason of the Enlightenment.

Hegel is the first strike into the liberal project, where he notes the failure of the Jacobins and the success of the bourgeois were both a negative and positive development. As the pioneer of "dialectic" logic, Hegel will oppose the mere syllogistic mode of reason that the Enlightenment was based on - typified by Kant, where logic provided no context and empiricism was not interested in what actually animates human behavior. Thus, by looking at logic, and by extension the emprical world, as a "process", one in which tension between opposites is itself creation, it paves the way for historical materialism.

What Schmitt does is continue in the tradition of Marx and Hegel by criticizing liberalism in the jurisprudence realm. He makes a few key observations: 1) liberalism depends on constitutions to grant power to the state, 2) liberalism is obsessed with rationality and reason and 3) liberalism assumes opposite poles can reach a compromise.

For point 1- he makes the case that democracy is simply a "monarchy in waiting". Though a constitution supposedly sets limits to powers, and introduces checks and balances between competing forces, ultimately all it takes is for a crisis to undo that. He saw this happen throughout the 19th and 20th century and it's simply taken for granted now. An example of an emergency is when there is war - even though liberalism fiercely rejects a sovereign, out of practical necessity there needs to be a strong leader that has the capability to make unilateral and sweeping decisions without the meddling of others. Without such an ability, then a society will not be able to respond to an emergency. His point here is that a constitution is just window dressing. He makes a really interesting observation that in democracies, we don't see this power in peace and stability and only in times of emergencies. He makes the case that this is exactly what happens under monarchies - you are largely left alone by the King when things are normal. In this jurisprudential way, laws are temporary, absurd, and arbitrary as they can be immediately nullified by a head of state in a democratic system if there is an emergency.This is what eventually leads to an embrace of fascism of being a more "natural" type of system, where the reality is that a constitutional state is nothing more than an illusion.

For point 2 - liberalism can only work in the framework of "reason". In a philosophical context, reason is the mode of epistemology where syllogistic and reductive forms of statements are made to justify valid truths. In the sociological sense, reason eschews the myths, superstitions and dogmas of a theologic society (specifically, a Christian one). Schmitt finds the obsession with reason to be why liberalism explodes in the "techno-cratic" bureaucrats of parliamentary democracies. He says:

Though he finds Hegel and Marx revolutionary, this is where he draws the line between fascism and Marxism. Both systems agree that the "laissez-faire" systems of liberalism lead to exploitation and misery - Marx's viewpoint is that the Enlightenment didn't use reason correctly and instead needs to emphasize dialectics, where Schmitt says that reason is itself the root problem, dialectics or not. Schmitt offers some solutions here, but fascism's obsessions with the occult, eccentric and ancient are to harken back to pre-Enlightenment days before the reason was the primary operating principle of society.

For point 3 - The most famous thesis of Schmitt is his friend/enemy dynamic. Summarized - liberal democracies promise that problems can be solved through reason. Freedom to debate, freedom of ideas, freedom of speech, freedom to associate - all of these are supposed to create a marketplace of ideas where 2 people can debate on opposite sides and come to a reasonable middle point. Like in science, where careful trials and repeated experiments lead to better results, getting us closer to the truth, so the political should operate. Schmitt found this completely flawed - instead, he posited that Hegel's dialectics is probably right - that these tensions don't create a third result, they sublate and lead to constant revolutions (no matter how small the disagreements are). Fundamentally, there can be no "middle position" between 2 sides on opposites sides of the spectrum - there can only be one winner. In this case, the winner is the one that can crush their opponent. Thus, liberalism creates not a harmonious society in which rational agents solve problems amicably through reasoned debate, but instead an extremely contentious and violent on in which warring factions are a permanent feature. This leads to the final fascist belief system, which is that power is the only thing that matters. A victorious idea is won through blood, sweat and tears, not through technocrats writing op-eds. In this way, a martial society is preferred, as the enemy can never be convinced, only crushed.

After Schmitt joined the Nazi party, he became a hugely influential lawyer and philosopher of jurisprudence within the ranks. The phenomenon of modern liberals is that they have simply adopted these views into the technocratic order of the Anglo sphere. The explosion of executive power, especially once the President is able to wipe out the world with a nuclear football, is a tacit agreement that the fascists were largely correct. Constitutional crises are common and the political sphere is complete theater as everyone is quite aware that there can be no compromise between 2 widely separated groups.

Within the specific quote of neoliberalism, I absolutely agree with it. Neoliberalism is an attempt to homogenize the world through the market - by economically dominating and creating systems that are beyond your control, a level of stability can be reached through domination by market factors. At the same time, neoliberalism creates a similar martial system, just an economic one - neolliberalism encourages and forces you to compete in carefully allowed ways (a nice car, a nice house, etc) to give you some locus of meaning. Ultimately, both systems are totalitarian in nature, but with neoliberalism cloaking itself in the language of the Enlightenemnt (freedom, choice, etc) rather than fascism (power, will, etc).

thank you for this detailed, well written explanation

I feel bad not having more to comment but I am finding it helpful and interesting to think about. you have a gift.

# ? May 20, 2024 17:10

mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

oscarthewilde posted:

interesting recapitulation of Schmiitt, but I'm missing two of his most important points. The philosophical anthropology that underpins his entire theory and Weltanschauung, and his political vitalism. Even though the last chapter of Politische Theologie relies on the same assumptions, Schmitt only mentions late in Begriff des Politischen that his entire theory relies on the most bleak, hostile view of humanity possible. This anthropological leap of faith (itself a reference to Kierkegaard, whose philosophical method and critique of liberalism shows many similarities to Schmitt's) is used by Schmitt to critique the anarchists, liberals and even marxists who - in Schmitt's view - all assume that man has rational control over his faculties and could, in theory live in harmony in society without coercion from the state or sovereign. In that sense, it's not so much that liberalism creates a chaotic, violent political, but that the depoliticized, rational politics envisioned by liberalism is fundamentally unworkable. As much as the liberals want to create a apolitical, peaceful world, they are unable to completely eliminate the possibility of either internal or external crises, that can only be understood and solved by the existential and eminent decisions over the state of exception and distinction between friend and enemy.

In the same vein, his critique of liberalism (more so in PT and the age of depoliticization than in concept of the political) stems partly from the idea that meaningful, life in modernity cannot be reduced to life in the economic or social spheres (what Hegel calls Burgerliches Gesellschaft). This, in itself, Schmitt sees something miscounted by the Marxists (rather: leninists), who also see life through a purely economic lens. The always-already potentially violent opposition between friend and enemy, or the always-already existing possibility of the state of exception, are also a source of existential meaning for individuals whose lives would be little more than gears in the machine of either capitalism or socialism.

If we wish to make use of Schmitt in a left-wing fashion it's important to see where he's coming from. Yes, he's opposed to a meaningless, depoliticized (neo)liberalism, and his critiques are eminently readable. But the source of his opposition, and is preferred solutions, are entirely different from what you'd see in any left-wing thinker.

thank you also 🙏 🤲

# ? May 20, 2024 17:11

Freezer: Apr 20, 2001; The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but one cannot stay in the cradle forever.

OctaMurk posted:

Kyiv expects to receive its first F-16 fighter jets from its Western allies in June-July

I�ll take the contrarian opinion that these will actually help for a while, by keeping the Su-34s and their glide bombs farther from the frontlines.

Freezer has issued a correction as of 19:05 on May 20, 2024

# ? May 20, 2024 17:19

bedpan: Apr 23, 2008

Freezer posted:

I�ll take the contrarian opinion that these will actually help for a while, by keeping the Su-34s and their glide bombs father from the frontlines.

and in three days, Zelenskyy will be at the head of his victorious army while they lay siege to the kremlin

# ? May 20, 2024 17:21

Nonsense: Jan 26, 2007

slain Iranian President�s helicopter pilot thought it was smart to fly through a fog storm

# ? May 20, 2024 17:24

CN CREW-VESSEL: Feb 1, 2024; 敌人磨刀我们也磨刀

Orange Devil posted:

The West has always sucked rear end at diplomacy.

Or, France did a great job getting Romania to fight the USSR rather than Germany. It depends on how you want to look at it, I suppose.

# ? May 20, 2024 17:30

bedpan: Apr 23, 2008

CN CREW-VESSEL posted:

Or, France did a great job getting Romania to fight the USSR rather than Germany. It depends on how you want to look at it, I suppose.

# ? May 20, 2024 17:31

VoicesCanBe: Jul 1, 2023; "Cóż, wygląda na to, że zostaliśmy łaskawie oszczędzeni trudu decydowania o własnym losie. Jakże uprzejme z ich strony, że przearanżowali Europę bez kłopotu naszego zdania!"

The only real difference between a liberal and a fascist is that the liberal hasn't been scratched yet

# ? May 20, 2024 17:44

euphronius: Feb 18, 2009

I think the big difference as was pointed out is that Nazis have actual beliefs and values in addition to hating communism

# ? May 20, 2024 17:46

Regarde Aduck: Oct 19, 2012; c l o u d k i t t e n; Grimey Drawer

they tend to be surface level and contradictory

# ? May 20, 2024 17:47

Ardennes: May 12, 2002

Freezer posted:

I�ll take the contrarian opinion that these will actually help for a while, by keeping the Su-34s and their glide bombs father from the frontlines.

The question is really about the exact number of fighters and length of time, the Russians have been taking out mig-29s recently as well and they are similar aircraft in capabilities with perhaps longer range on the f-16s.

It will help but there really isn�t anything special about them beyond Ukraine is getting some more fighters. Also, the lack of Ukrainian AD is probably going to give the Russians an advantage even if the number of fighters on each side was equal.

��-

Also, there is still a bunch of hay being made about the turtle tanks: first, that they are defeat-able with enough artillery, drones, and mines, and second, they show how desperate the Russians are and how the age of the tank is over.

It turns about that sheet metal wasn�t invincible after all was it was it thread.

Ardennes has issued a correction as of 17:58 on May 20, 2024

# ? May 20, 2024 17:53

Lostconfused: Oct 1, 2008

Cerebral Bore posted:

buddy, they literally started a war against the rest of the world and expected to win purely through willpower and inherent racial superiority

And then the rest of the world saved them from being destroyed because of it.

# ? May 20, 2024 17:55

bedpan: Apr 23, 2008

lmao @ drip feeding weapons to the ukrainians at just enough of a rate to slow down the russians but not to win the war

# ? May 20, 2024 17:57

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

CN CREW-VESSEL posted:

Or, France did a great job getting Romania to fight the USSR rather than Germany. It depends on how you want to look at it, I suppose.

I mean looking at it from the perspective of the interests of the French state or even the French industrialists at the time the outcome seems less than ideal?

Though I guess I now realize I don't really know the level of continuity and impact the surrender/Vichy government/liberation had on the French bourgeois class.

# ? May 20, 2024 17:57

DeimosRising: Oct 17, 2005; �Hola SEA!

Regarde Aduck posted:

Lol at gen z being a terrible generation already

generations aren't real, it's astrology for marketing majors

# ? May 20, 2024 18:00

bedpan: Apr 23, 2008

To save the ukrainians from genocide, the west embarked on a program of financial and military support that will guarantee that the ukrainian people and state will be ground into dust. Slava Ukraini!

# ? May 20, 2024 18:02

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# ? Jun 12, 2024 23:52

Ardennes: May 12, 2002

bedpan posted:

lmao @ drip feeding weapons to the ukrainians at just enough of a rate to slow down the russians but not to win the war

There was an argument made that they are just giving enough weapons that the Russians have enough time to train on each individual platform and how to effectively counter it while not really doing serious damage.

# ? May 20, 2024 18:02

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Ukraine] ahegao to the poles

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