Timothy Snyder, the author of Bloodlands [wc] and On Tyranny [wc] has some really interesting thoughts on the current swing toward totalitarianism in much of the first world.
One of Snyder’s strengths, I believe, is that he takes a very cosmopolitan and language-oriented view of the contemporary political landscape. I find it refreshing to encounter someone who unabashedly uses the world “fascism”, but who does not use it lightly. The question, of course, is “what is fascism?” – the term has become a frustrating political football as anti-fascists quickly point out fascistic tendencies in many/most governments, and authoritarians try to verbally whitewash what they support as various flavors of “populism” or “authoritarianism” or whatever.
Midjourney AI and mjr: “boris johnson as the joker played by heath ledger”
This whole situation has been scaring me for some time, because it seems as if the authoritarians of the world are tightening their grip, preparatory to hanging on through the climate crisis. I don’t think that they understand that the oncoming disaster will outlast recorded human history – and supplant it. The discussion, in other words, is pointless noise – pissing toward a hurricane that will be completely unchanged by how humans contextualize it. But, is the underlying driver of the swing toward authoritarianism part of a ground-swell of authoritarians getting ready to weather the storm, or is it something else? Snyder’s take appears to be linguistic, and I think that’s also important – especially if we believe that language is both an indicator and controlling factor in how we conceptualize things. I’m not going to make Snyder’s argument for him, but there’s a bit I found absolutely fascinating about the “build the wall!”, “lock her up!”, and “stop the steal” memes which, I did not know, were created by Cambridge Analytica and test-marketed on Facebook. His point is that they’re abstract almost to the point of meaninglessness: Who is going to build the wall? Who is going to lock her up? Who is going to stop the steal? Obviously, the leaders of the right wing movement are going to do none of that. Donald Trump can barely manage a casino without looting its cash register, and the idea of building a massive wall is patently absurd. Snyder goes through a bunch of these fascistic deepities and reveals them as basically vacuous: “the scientists are wrong, the fascists say, don’t believe them, believe in a higher truth which is that by leaving the European Union we will rejoin the great English empire which really never existed and which everyone was trying to get out of, at the time.”
It does make you shake your head and wonder how so many people fell for such bullshit, but the reality of the situation is that humanity’s global flirtation with self-rule by the polis has probably ended. The US is an oligarchy run by gerontocrats and billionaires, England is an authoritarian fascist state run by cosplay politicians, China is an authoritarian police state, India is an authoritarian state led by a mountebank who is trying to spin up an anti-muslim holocaust, Brazil managed to dodge a second hit from the same bullet but the bullet looks to be circling back for another pass, and Russia is Russia. Turkey is an authoritarian dictatorship with no help of self-rescue, Egypt is a police dictatorship middle eastern client of the US. Indonesia is “a democracy in the most minimal sense of the word”, Pakistan a dictatorship, etc. [Looking at the population breakdown makes you really realize how relatively unimportant Germany, France, and England are – they’re just the shattered remains of old empires dreaming of when they mattered. Which, according to Snyder, is an early stage of impulse to fascism]
Midjjourney AI and mjr: “imagine donald trump as the homelander from The Boys”
While the world is being dominated by bullshit, it works exactly because it is bullshit and it cannot be measured objectively in any way that makes sense [paraphrasing Snyder here] Trump’s followers never really expected him to build a wall or anything like it – simple reflection is enough to reveal him as an incompetent blowhard – like Erdogan, Sisi, Xi, Bolsonaro, Johnson, Putin, and Macron. The semantics of “Make America Great Again” would have worked fine for Putin, or Johnson, or Xi. Although, I must add, that China has at least been great a few times, which is more than the Russians have ever managed to accomplish. Snyder discusses how the higher truth that fascists wish to get their followers to believe in is the relationship between the followers and the mythical past, or the mythical great race, or the relationship with the leaders’ personal mythos. I think that’s a great point. The leaders have substituted their truth for the national or racial or planetary truth, which is that we’re not going to be OK, and climate change is going to fuck us all the way up. Their truth is that by simple means, such as leaving the EU, or killing a bunch of muslims, or building a wall, we can be great again.
At times when the darkness is upon me, I haul myself out by remembering that I did try to keep my impact on the earth as small as possible, by not having kids, by recycling my plastic straws, and a bunch of other stuff that completely makes no difference at all. Really, the only thing that had a significant impact was not having kids. Such an easy thing to … not do.
There are so many nuggets in Snyder’s talk that I don’t want to start extracting them and typing them up. Just give it a listen.
OK, so The Boys is a series I’ve only watched a bit of. I thought it was pretty good but the overall point was … we are ruled by ruthless shitbags who will use power and force however they please to dominate us. That’s a familiar message. I suppose we’re supposed to “BOHICA” and hunker down, or something?
The media landscape is terrifying to me now. There’s The Boys, sure, but also Tom Cruise (who appears to have been pickled in silicone) has come out with an abstract jingoistic follow-up for his previous abstract jingoistic paean to war in all its, uh, you don’t actually participate in it, glory. Like in his earlier effort, the killing is all abstract and pointless – this time it’s US aircraft committing an act of war against (apparently) China that would touch off a major conflict except the movie ends with a bunch of feel-good credits before that happens. And then there’s the John Wick series which are beautiful stupid fun, but ultimately the message there is that there is a secret world behind this one that can step in and fuck your life up for no apparent reason except that some guy’s dog was killed and his car stolen so his response is to kill a huge number of people in the process of shooting his way to a fairly easy target that a better killer would have finished without having to “delenda Carthago” the entire ethnic militia of bad guys. What are these media teaching us? They are reinforcing the idea (long held by Americans) that there are unnamed forces moving behind the tapestry and massive, over-the-top, pre-emptive and thoughtless violence is the only answer. And it’s not even an answer. In the end, Wick’s dog is still dead. Perhaps the message we are supposed to take into the future of climate change is “misery loves company.”
Cambridge Analytica began testing out pro-Trump slogans the same year Russia launched its influence operation targeting the 2016 election
The London-based data firm Cambridge Analytica was testing out slogans like “Drain the Swamp” and “Build the Wall” as early as 2014, the same year Russia launched its social media influence operation targeting the 2016 US election.
Those slogans would later become the bedrock of Republican nominee Donald Trump’s platform while he campaigned for the presidency. He invoked them frequently at his rallies, and his supporters often chanted them.
“We were testing all kinds of messages and all kinds of imagery, which included images of walls, people scaling walls,” Christopher Wylie, a former employee at Cambridge Analytica, told CNN. “We tested ‘drain the swamp’ … ideas of the deep state and the NSA watching you and the government is conspiring against you.”
It’s not complicated. When the going gets tough, the sheep look for easy answers, and there’s no shortage of grifters to supply them.
Well, if you hate kids (as you’ve said), that doesn’t really count as ‘trying’, does it? But the other stuff (recycling, etc) does count, if enough other people do it.
Rob Grigjanis@#1:
It’s not complicated. When the going gets tough, the sheep look for easy answers, and there’s no shortage of grifters to supply them.
True. There’s always someone willing to fill a vacuum with some fine fine bullshit.
Well, if you hate kids (as you’ve said), that doesn’t really count as ‘trying’, does it?
There are some fairly unpleasant surgical procedures and I underwent one of them; I consider that “trying.” Besides, a truly shocking number of new people are created each year out of sheer laziness – you know – I’m too drunk to go get contraceptives, that kind of thing. I think there’s some trying involved in not having kids. Sure, that aligned well with my interests but I consider that wise strategic recognition of reality.
Hmm. I’m not entirely sure about *that*. As far as I can tell from multiple viewings, there is no world *in front* of that one: everyone appears to be in on it. I’m not sure there is one single “real person” in the entire series so far – which is what really confused me about suggestions of a John Wick/Atomic Blonde crossover. The latter appeared to be firmly embedded in a plausible history of things that actually exist.
xohjoh2n@#3:
I have only seen the first two. I don’t know if I’ll bother with the others, they seem to be becoming cameo vehicles and I’m just waiting for Chuck Norris and John Travolta walk-ons. As soon as hollywood “franchises” something, they ruin it, in general.
But, yes, you have a point – everyone is in on it, except that since we’ve got an omniscient view we only see “everyone” who matters. I’m not sure if most of the orcs that get turned into fodder for the cannons are in on it or not. They’re just doing their jobs, wearing their sunglasses, packing their ammo and guns in case Wick needs more.
Did you ever read The Invisibles? There’s one substory in there that I really love, in which we see inside the life of one of the orcs that King Mob turns to compost. He’s happy he got this good-paying security guard gig…
I did not know they fused Wick with Atomic Blonde. See aforementioned comment about “franchises.”
@4:
Dog people of a certain bent have understandable problems with #1. In #3 the dogs are Action Heroes in their own right. That may not be any better depending on your outlook.
As for The Invisibles: I never really liked DC as a child, it all seemed, I guess, “boring and normal” which wasn’t really wasn’t what I was after. I was much more into Marvel stuff. Older I sort of got into the Vertigo stuff a bit… Anyway the Mooks-Have-Families-Too thing is a trope, and put forward in the Austin Powers films. That tickled me a bit.
I don’t know they did do the fusion: there was just a suggestion that they should, and I was surprised anyone would thing that that would be a useful thing to do.
I enjoyed the John Wick movies for the shallow action, with a minor nod to deliberately avoiding “fridging”, but I felt it was pretty much mindless action/violence. Just slightly better choreographed than most action movies, maybe?
I really liked Atomic Blonde. I’m all-for middle-aged action heroine Charlize Theron (I also really like Mad Max: Fury Road, and Netflix’s The Old Guard), and I felt like there was a lot of realistic elements in the combat scenes that are often lacking in action movies – like how fucking exhausting it is to be fighting. And also how she maintained injuries over the course of the movie – that’s something that’s often ignored. Granted, her character was a bit of an asshole, but then again, a triple(?) agent in the coldwar, pretty much goes with the territory. Although, I feel there was a bit of a redeeming element with her character seeming to be actually upset over Sofia Boutella’s character’s death.
I’m maybe partial to Atomic Blonde, because I tried to use that as an example of a “readied action” in a table-top RPG (when she was in the apartment building fight, and just hid around a door frame, and held her handgun at headlevel, and discharged it as soon as someone came through the door)
I think that’s certainly part of it, but these ideas have always been around and almost always been fairly popular – we just happened to grow up in one very rare and brief period of time when they’d recently been fairly thoroughly discredited, at least in our part of the world, so the authoritarians had to temporarily switch to more subtle methods. As the generations pass, those particular lessons of history are forgotten, and such ideas resurface from the swamp. Also, the tools of mass manipulation are so much more effective and widespread now… Can you imagine what Guy Debord would have said about social media?
Atomic Blonde is great. Possibly rumours of connections to the JW-verse arose from Theron and Reeves training together – Atomic Blonde was in production at the same time as JW2, and they both trained with the same team at the same time (and it shows in the films – their grappling styles are visibly similar). Other than that actual really real-world connection, it’s inconceivable that the characters could meet in-universe – as has been said, one is at least nominally realistic and the other is a fantasy. It’d be like having a crossover between Sicario and Harry Potter.
“Those are rookie numbers for The Reaper.”
* Spoilers below *
While searching for free online movies that are a) good and b) I haven’t seen before, I found myself watching Executive Decision (1996) recently. Its IMDb rating is above average. I quickly noticed that the movie features Steven Seagal in a prominent role. “Oh @#$%” I said to no one in particular, being alone at the time, “I hate that @$$hole, and his movies suck.” But I kept watching, and was rewarded when Seagal’s character was eliminated 43 minutes into the movie.
… the current swing toward totalitarianism in much of the first world. … it seems as if the authoritarians of the world are tightening their grip, preparatory to hanging on through the climate crisis.
The “current swing” began at least in the ’80s, with Greece’s Golden Dawn movement – not to mention Reagan ‘n’ Thatcher – and (numbers are scarce, reliable numbers non-existent) has grown on a compound-interest curve since then.
With the apparent exception of North Korea, few if any dictators seem to have much interest in much beyond holding power through their lifetimes. Bolsonaro, Trump, and some others make token efforts to prep their spawn for power, but that seems driven more by the spawns’ self-promotion than by explicit dynasticism.
That’s one of the things that really bother me. It’s not just that they’re assholes, it’s that they’re such petty assholes. It’s that their ambitions are so low. They go to all this trouble, killing who knows how many people, and then they use their power to… get a Rolex? Put up a statue? Buy a friggin’ golf course?
They want to be in charge so bad it’s like they never even considered what to do with it once they got there. So, they reach the top, but they’re stuck with the perspective of a middle-manager with an inflated ego.
Power is an end in itself.
The paucity of imagination is disappointing. It’s like they lack the personality to have ever had the “if I ruled the world” conversation.
The paucity of imagination is disappointing. It’s like they lack the personality to have ever had the “if I ruled the world” conversation.
And then you’ve got Elon Musk whose imperial agenda would be some wild thrashing around.
I’ve played “if I ruled the world” abd usually people recoil in horror. But at least I have a policy agenda that is more interesting than “lets go to Mars!” (I would have an exploratory committee work on whether we could survive on asteroids)
In terms of paucity of imagination, it’s hard to beat “lets lower taxes on the rich!”
Has anyone else here read MJ Engh’s Arslan? It’s a tough read but it kind of noodles around with the question of what might happen if a complete nihilist from a 3rd world nation was able to take over the world. Of course he does the usual stupid human tricks.
I’m with you on the kids. Imagine inflicting all this shit on another person
Marcus Ranum @ # 15: Has anyone else here read MJ Engh’s Arslan?
[Raises hand] The insight which has stuck with me the longest was the passing observation that only someone from a small nation would seriously plot to conquer the world, since ambitious youngsters in superpower nations would have their imaginations fully occupied by the scale of the ladder they would need to climb to take over their homelands. I have some doubts on the validity of that, but it would take several hundred parallel universes to test the hypothesis adequately.