/348/ Aufhebonus Bonus: June 2023
Added 2023-06-27 06:00:03 +0000 UTCOn your questions and criticisms.
Bumper edition of Aufhebonus Bonus where we discuss whether we're technologically determinist with regard to artificial intelligence; whether the left should be bulding stuff; why criticising wokeness is boring; work, retirement and time; more on family abolition; and everyone's favourite topic – the PMC/new elite, etc.
Event: The Professional-Managerial Class and their Politics, London, Wednesday 28 June, 7pm
Comments
I think the big distinction between Matt Goodwin and Michael Lind in terms of their reception by the fans is twofold: 1. Goodwin comes off as trollishly provocative in the language he uses around immigration and more motivated by personal grievance in his professional life whereas Lind comes off as straightforward and without any personal agenda in what he's saying (that goodwin spent so long talking mostly about the ways to improve the lives of historically middle/upper middle class white collar professionals isn't a coincidence in contrast to Linds general focus on blue collar/non knowledge economy workers). 2. Lind seems ti understand the immigration issue in a way that is fundamentally more sound and more honest. Linds perspective is essentially bringing in high value, low social risk immigrants (IE: PHDs and doctors) and keeping out foreign competition for domestic blue collar labor and high social risk individuals. It's a simple formula, but a very reasonable one and one where he has answers for how it will affect supply chains in the short and long term. Goodwins plan for relocalizing labor supply chains ultimately comes off as poorly thought out to a borderline delusional level and possibly self destructive in the short term. He repeats "short term labor solutions" several times but never actually provides a plan to deal with the short term labor and supply chain issues that would come from his vision or how ti even localize the labor force (particularly with a relatively low tax/low regulation environment as he hinted at). At one point he says the answer to how ti relocalize the British labor force is "reiventing and reshaping our political economy and giving people a sense of meaning and purpose with their lives". That's nonsense hippy babble and everybody knows it. A sense of meaning and purpose doesn't address labor facing supply chain issues, nice as it sounds
jkjkjkj
2023-07-06 00:29:45 +0000 UTC>For sure there are anti-Zionists who are also antisemites but not every critic of Zionism is an antisemite. By his definition even Finkelstein and his strong criticism of the Israeli state comes close to being a Jew hater. Can we please stop spreading this a decade after it turned around and became its opposite? The very BDS types you mention in your next paragraph cancelled Finkelstein the instant he told them that their demands were not justiciable merely from the text of international law -- that is, that they were political demands rather than legal torts. Norman Finkelstein is a Zionist now, not necessarily in turns of what he calls himself, but certainly in terms of how the Left views his politics on the issue! Now, to be dialectical... >The idiots one finds in pro-Palestine circles, particularly BDS types, who write “Israel” in scare quotes and basically advocate for the destruction of the Jewish state... If we move beyond the issue of whether or not these people are "antisemitic" or how to define that particular word, do you really think this movement is going to wither away, politically, without criticism and struggle against them? Of course not! So we're left with a perfect impasse of technocracy: the BDS-supporting Corbynites say Zionism is apartheid and David Hirsh and LFI say antizionism is antisemitism. The former call the latter reactionary liberal racists and the latter call the former ultraleft antisemites. Around and around and around it goes. What is the political function of this? Beyond Labour losing in 2019, certainly the Israeli Left, by committing itself to a post-Zionist End of History liberalism that failed when Oslo failed, has utterly crippled itself as a political force in the country. Economically, perhaps this just keeps liberal professionals gainfully employed? But I think there's a genuine politics, too: it keeps alive the middle-class liberal AND RADICAL dream that at the End of History, civil society organizations (read: NGOs) staffed by educated, left-wing 68ers would smother the state and replace it as the governing body. If this theory holds, then these people have to keep up their damn culture war to stop geopolitical policy from being determined by mere elections and national interests. By fighting to "rule out" contestation with their own politics, they ensure that the dream of a social life beyond political contestation remains alive. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/israel-woke-religion
Eli S
2023-07-04 22:24:03 +0000 UTCLargely agree with Philip on left antisemitism though I do think his definition of the ‘new’ antisemitism is a bit broad. For sure there are anti-Zionists who are also antisemites but not every critic of Zionism is an antisemite. By his definition even Finkelstein and his strong criticism of the Israeli state comes close to being a Jew hater. The idiots one finds in pro-Palestine circles, particularly BDS types, who write “Israel” in scare quotes and basically advocate for the destruction of the Jewish state, but without saying so directly, personify the "socialism of fools", no argument there. Some of these people really are fools in the truest sense of the word and have never thought through what their position actually advocates. Israel, the Jewish state, isn’t going anywhere and that’s just something they will have to accept. That said there is no shortage of people who conflate any and all criticism of how Israel deals with the occupied territories as antisemitism and they will often cast Jews who aren’t sufficiently pro-Israel as self-hating or even antisemitic even though Jewish criticism, secular and religious, of Zionism is as old as Zionism itself. To complicate things even further there are elements within Israel, particularly among the Likudniks and far-right, who will tolerate “classic” antisemites so long as these are ok with Israel existing as the Jewish state. E.g. Followers of American evangelicalism are valued as tourists and as vocal defenders of the Israeli state even though their religious texts are seriously antisemitic. Agree that the although the media campaign against Corbyn was seriously absurd and ott and surely contributed to Labour’s downfall, the Corbyn movement was sunk primarily due to its own ineptitude re. Brexit and internal Blairite mutinies. We live in an era of information warfare, quite literally, with hyperbolic accusations and loaded terms with multiple meanings thrown around that attempt to divide the world between the good and the saintly (my people) and the evil and demonic (the other guys) so defining terms, calling out sophistry, avoiding blanket generalizations and keeping a clear head when parsing this stuff are extremely important if one doesn't want to become just another slogan shouter, someone's useful idiot or an unwitting contributor to the confusion.
Roman
2023-06-29 20:34:21 +0000 UTC
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