We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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My dear friends on the Left: what happened to you? Half a century ago, when I was a young man, you were the ones celebrating individuality and anything-goes self-expression.
Back then, you were the ones burning the draft cards and defying authority. Today you’re a masked lump sitting on an airport bench, scolding with narrowed eyes anyone who delights in the air touching her face. What happened to you?
Back then, you were the ones demanding to be heard, saying the things the establishment didn’t want to hear, speaking truth to power. Today the phrase “free speech” terrifies you, and you offer a dozen excuses why we’re better off muzzled and restrained by those in power, like some kind of pet.
– Henry Racette
(h/t David Foster)
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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They claim they want access to the halls of power, but once they get there, they want the doors slammed shut. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, if not worse.
Don’t worry. When the next generation starts getting politically active, they’ll handle this by calling the masked lump “The Establishment”, and they’ll have plenty of teachers to reassure them that The Establishment was actually The Right all along.
Some friends and I, working in Personal & Business Development for some 40 years, have noticed this very trend. Young folks (back then) championed non-conformity.
Working with young people now, especially university students, it’s quite shocking (for a while) to see how much they desire to conform and not express any dissenting opinions. Even making eye contact seems to be an aversion for them. After a while, it’s not shocking, it’s cause to wonder how things have swung to a polar opposite, and to start digging for reasons how and why it happened.
Here’s a good example: we’re all familiar with the recent antics of The Nudge Unit. Understanding where that came from does shed light. I refer my honourable friends to this article:
Ref : https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/vaccine-skeptics-are-the-true-critical
Please note how strongly that article has resonated with readers – over 2,000 comments and climbing! There is still cause for hope; we are just adapting our message to the needs of the time. And how to cut through the Asch Ache.
Answer: The boomers (I am one) got old and frail. Some projected their frailties outward. These manifest as “climate change”, “novel corona virus”, and other uncontrollable things to dread.
Ah yes, I cannot control the failings of my physical self so I must control my environment. Some of the young also fall in line with their grandparents ideas.
I’m reminded of this line in Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune:
”When I am Weaker Than You, I ask you for Freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am Stronger than you, I take away your Freedom Because that is according to my principles.”
The issue is never the issue. The issue is always power.
When it helps the left to encourage rebellion that’s what it does.
When it helps the left to encourage conformity that’s what it does.
The majority of “Liberals” were always like the bits of coral that some crabs attach to their shells – camouflage, cover, and foot soldiers for trends set in motion by the hard Marxist core.
They told us from the very start that they would destroy the family, private property, Judeo-Christian morality, and reason itself.
They told us – then they went and did it. With the cleverly constructed diversion-subversion of “Liberals” bleating about Civil Rights and Feminism and Pollution and Narratives and “My Truth” and Spirituality.
Now they have the shatttered, fatherless generation they wanted… Who are hungry to conform, to believe, for a tribe, an identity… Whose furious anger at their self-indulgent “Liberal” parents can be channeled into quasi-religious woke enforcement.
It’s no longer necessary to shake people loose from the Western tradition. They are already disconnected. So now it’s about conformity.
As a matter of fact, continental-Europeans have been calling the Establishment “the Right” for a couple of centuries. Parties that used to be “of the Left” have been re-labelled as “of the Right”, all the way through the xix century. A phenomenon that has been labeled sinistrisme.
It is only with the rise of socialist parties that the “old Left” has stopped being pushed “to the Right” when replaced by a “new Left”. But please note that, except for the Nordic countries, it was “the Right” that was usually in power in Western European countries, up to the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the “””far-right”””.
The logical thing to do now, for Trumpists, would be to say that they are the True Left, because they are the enemies of the Establishment and the friends of the working class and small business. And the insanity of the NeverTrumpers can be seen from the fact that they still think that they are the party of the Establishment.
Only a very small part of the left.
Well in those times the left did not controlled the establishment or perceived not to. Everyone with less power tend to talk about freedom. When they reach power, freedom disappears magically from their speech.
I’m not sure what universe that 50 years ago was in, but in this universe the left has always been about power and only power.
In the US 50 years ago the so called “New left” was busy overthrowing the old left. Currently the “New new left” is overthrowing the old “new left”. That’s why many of the targets (eg. transphobes/TERFS) are people who were once thought of as being on the left.
I don’t believe that the left EVER supported individualism – collectivism is the the constant in all iterations of the left. Greens (aka utopian socialists) are diametrically opposed to the scientific socialism of Marx, but both are collectivist. The new left supported free speech when it helped them overcome the old left in institutions like the universities but the idea that individualism underpinned that position is laughable.