Is it wrong for a leftist to think of right wing thinkers such as Carl Schmitt and Nick Land as true intellectuals worth reading?
Is it wrong for a leftist to think of right wing thinkers such as Carl Schmitt and Nick Land as true intellectuals...
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I'm going to disagree with Mao and say that you should read whatever you like.
But, as for those two, I'm not immediately hostile to the idea but I would like some justification. What do you think is worth considering from their works?
You are tiny and a fool
The gremlins 2 institute has called to debate Land numerous times but he refuses, now they have more followers than Land
Absolutely not. Debating ideas is primordial and an important part of the ideological class struggle.
It's never wrong, but is it worth your time? Schmitt is pretty good and influential, Land is fucking insane but looks interesting. The same can't be said of Rosenberg or Pierce. Plus it won't do you harm to know your enemy, tho it isn't that important given Zig Forums doesn't even read their own authors.
But I'd leave reactionaries as dessert reading, reading lolberg authors and working out their theories is more important than taking a trip to the schizophrenic reaches of some esoteric fascist.
I finally let myself get memed into reading Fanged Noumena.
I'm not sure if I'm ready for this.
delet this
Nick Land isn't an intellectual. He writes scifi that pretends to be political theory. When will people realize this?
Every good leftist should read Heidegger, Schmitt, and Leo Strauss.
all correct. Schmitt is definitely worth of our time.
Gremlins 2 seems like it was tailor made for a Pervert's Guide and I'm genuinely surprised Ziz hasn't done one.
Nick Land is still a Marxist despite whatever comes out of his mouth post-CCRU, he's just too permanently fucked up from drug and ramen noodle binges to realize his NRx attitude and "insanity" are necessary defense mechanisms in response to the knowledge of what's to come.
On his Urban Future blog, he defined accelerationism with an awesome quote from the Communist Manifesto : ufblog.net
Also, when Jehu (therealmovement.wordpress.com
When he announced that he was leaving Twitter because they put restrictions on his account, Nick posted pic related.
My point being, Nick Land has more than one internet persona. and while I think he may deride Marx in a basic libertarian fashion with one of his accounts, he might also engage with his theory with another one. I think he is consistent in his thinking and is definitely right-wing, but I feel like he unironically pretends to be retarded sometimes, to attract the Scott Alexander fandom into his trap or something. One thing is sure though: he has read Marx.
Essential non-leftist reading for lefties:
Niccolò Machiavelli
Thomas Hobbes
Carl von Clausewitz
Carl Schmitt
Leo Strauss
Henry Kissinger
Add more, comrades.
Clausewitz is pure larp.
Why? Are you going to lead an army equipped with 19th century firearms? I have him and he's pretty cool, but I don't see why he's necessary beyond maybe historical curiosity and how military discipline developed from him
Why is he important?
There's no point to reading Strauss if you've read Heidegger and Schmitt.
Lenin borrowed a lot from Clausewitz for both his political and military doctrine, in fact the concepts of "strategy" and "tactic" when used in a political context stem from him
Friedrich von Hayek, his supporters and his critics. Basically anyone involved in the socialist economic calculation debate
What if everyone on the internet is actually Nick Land?
what if we're all fragments of Nick Land's consciousness shattered after a particularly hard DMT trip?
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Ok I'm memeing but his aphorisms are ok for a light reading.
Yes. Reactionary literature has a negative effect on the mind whether you want it to or not. Destroy all right wing "knowledge".
Yes, this is wrong.
Nick Land isn't an intellectual, he's a drug addled cyberpunk nut. And probably worth reading. He's also not, afaik, necessarily even definitively right-wing - accelerationism and right-accelerationism aren't really fundamentally different and are both bullshit. Pushing capitalism to the max in order to bring about some non-capitalist system is fundamentally pro-capitalism no matter how you slice it, and the pretense of some preferable society emerging is ideological wank. In this regard, I think I'd rather read Land's speed-binge fantasies than the more academic writings of serious accelerationists.
The point is to try to push capitalism's contradictions, not to try to maintain it.
Capitalists and neoliberals unironically push for the same things. Calling for free trade because you read Ayn Rand and calling for it because you think it exposes contradictions results in the same outcome. It doesn't really matter what your intentions are.
I really hope that quote is not your standard of theoretical background.
It's the ☭TANKIE☭ standard tbh.
You make leftism sound like some kind of religion. Of course it isn't "wrong", rightist thinkers can have intelligent ideas even if some of their basic premises are shit, and you don't somehow cause harm by reading their books anyway. I don't have a clue about specifically Schmitt and Land though.
Every fucking time, I swear
This. Nick is intelligent, but a lot of his intelligence comes from the fact that he's a lapsed Leftist. He used to be one of us, which is probably why his hatred for us is so pure. That said, Accelerationism, the theory, not the common misconception that it's just a fancy word for Marx's theory of immiseration, is a growing academic tendency that every Leftist should at least interact with a bit. Also, Jehu is the shit.
He's a fiction writer and a brainlet who projects his misanthropy onto technology because he doesn't understand it.
Why does this board take this fucking lunatic seriously
Bump
It's not just this board. He was a contemporary of Mark Fisher and Fisher considered him at the very least an interesting case study.
Land a shit
Read Bifo instead
It goes like this, Kant -> Bataille -> Land
if you want to catch the philosophical thread of where we're at with 'spirit', 'the thing in itself' .. in a world with a dead God, then Land is important
I think there is an argument to be had for the validity of some readings of Mao's statement.
Simply, as is observable, knowledge is a very dangerous thing when proverbially spun the wrong way.
I'm not exactly saying the general public is too stupid to be trusted (OK I half am) but we must consider the consequences of what is injected into public discourse and consumed by the masses.
You're right, the masses are massively consuming accelerationist literature.
No but seriously rather than actually destroying works (which can count as important historical relics) we should simply debunk their reactionary message. Censorship is doomed to work backwards
seconding Heidegger (Being, Dasein, world, resoluteness) can't speak to the rest
Is there a version of Leviathan with updated English?
The version I found used old English spelling for most words, and it was frustrating.
It was like reading a bunch of non-obvious "hookt on foniks" puns.
In any case, Sloterdijk is pretty good.
This is the kind of shit tankfags unironically believe. And I'm not taking you out of context, in your next sentence you claim workers are too stupid to trust with reading books so long as the state doesn't exist to suppress and censor wrongthought. If Communists were actually any good at changing the material conditions of society they wouldn't need to commit atrocities like the Cultural Revolution. Did Capitalists have to go around destroying every cultural vestige of Feudal society? Did they have to completely erase all history like Pol Pot's Year Zero? No, once Capitalists took control all those things became powerless artifacts of a bygone age, Capitalists done wake up screaming in bed because they know that museums exist, they don't think anyone's going to look at a medieval tapestry and decide to bring back monarchs, and it's because the Bourgeoise really did irrevocably alter the course of history. The real question now is why didn't we?
Good post, agreed on all counts
for anyone interested, here's a copy of fanged noumena should anyone want it
Yes, you fucking brainlet.
And yet there are websites populated by people that want just that for exactly those reasons.
What could it mean?????
lel, NRx fags are powerless, the vast majority of people will never be swayed by their arguments, and it's obvious that history will not magically reverse course back to Feudalism any time soon. Not too dissimilar from the situation that the average tankcuck finds themself in. Now what was your point again? :^)
They used violence to seize power, but they didn't then need to go on an enormous reeducation campaign to supposedly rewrite human nature, hell, in some places they still keep their aristocrats around as benign figure heads, like toothless dogs.
I DISAGREE
...
NRx is not meant for the masses, they believe in >muh Exit: small pockets of reactionaries leave modern society and start a new polis somewhere else, to be ruled by a benevolent CEO dictator.
any chance there could be a need for peons for a permanent colony on mars, giving someone an opportunity to join, and convert the lolberts to communalism? asking hypothetically.
Well if by communalism you mean something like a co-op business, I would say yes.
Another thing, why it is obvious that history won't be reversed? Who says so? I am not NRx but an NRx would tell you the Cathedral inculcated these ideas into you, to frame it differently we could say it's "my gott, pure ideology"
Good question. Look at social democracy, all its gains were reversed. Why the same thing can't happen in a broader sense, with capitalism, secularism, or other aspect of modernity going backwards? I'm honestly bothered by it.
The Enlightenment isn't the same thing as the Cultural Revolution or Pol Pot tho.
read whatever you want you spaz
Hmm, these are good points, I don't really have an argument against that. I do have one contention tho, it seems like NRx assumes that they can convince a substantial chunk of the ruling class to exit the Cathederal, when in reality the "Cathederal" is the exact thing that keeps them in power, and something they semi-consciously constructed themselves. I mean a lot of NRx seems to me like a slightly smarter Anarcho-Capitalism, but one that takes Hoppe's rejection of Democracy to it's most extreme conclusions, but just like with AnCaps, who says that Capitalists actually want to live in that kind of world? I don't think that most Capitalists want to "exit the Cathederal" and I don't think most Capitalists actually want the fantasy version of "real Capitalism" that most Ancaps want. I think what we have right now is what most Capitalists would prefer. At worst maybe Climate Change, increasing refugee crises, and continued Recession might lead to increased Nationalism/Corporatism/Fascism and expansion of the police/survaillence state, but I think NeoCameralism is a real long shot. Or I'm completely wrong. I'm not as well versed in this stuff as I could be. Also, who knows, I could imagine tankcuck ideas becoming popular in certain peripheral nations and leading to new "People's Republic" style situations in the future, but if that did happen I think it would mostly look very Nazbol and have a decidedly actually reactionary/Stalinoid character, I don't see why most people would want to participate in something like that, but then again plenty of anons on this board are essentially just Zig Forumsyps who prefer Stalin to Hitler as their preferred Great Man of History. Either way, my real issue is just with the degree to which it seems most Leftists can't see past some narrow vision of voluntarism as the end all, be all of praxis, that if you just force everything to be Communism with enough top-down bureaucracy and enough purges that this will somehow magically lead to Communism, I mean the greatest tragedy of the 20th Century is that Leftists had all the power in the world and they still couldn't seem to negate and sublate Capitalism. Anyway, if you have a concrete defense of "patchworks", or whatever the kids are calling them, please share, I'm all ears.
This tbh.
Also, potentially irrelevant, but to the benefit of NRx and anyone who shills NeoCameralism, it might be worth pointing out that Neoliberalism was once just some shit nerds were pushing in tiny think tanks, and now it's an ideology so inescapable in it's reach and hegemony that people seem to even project NeoLiberalism onto the distant past. Disturbing stuff, but I think a point for NRx, and the idea that you don't necessarily need mass support if you can just get porkies onboard with your ideas.
what's the "Cathedral"? I never quite got what Land meant by that.
It's actually not too different, rhetorically speaking, from what most Leftists just call "late capitalism" or "NeoLiberalism", the only difference is that NRx conflate a whole host of things that in reality don't have much in common. It's supposed to be the "Liberal Democratic consensus", but also Globalism, but also Leftist academia, but also the Liberal media, and just "progressivism" in general. It's like a non-conspiracy theory version of the 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧Cultural Marxism🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 meme. Now I'm not NRx, but this is the impression I get from reading old Moldbug blogposts and perusing Xenosystems, so maybe I'm completely off base.
I would say that's pretty accurate.
Well, Moldbug compiled his blog entries about patchwork into a book of the same name, that's a better defense of it that whatever half-assed post I could make :)
Bear in mind NRx has many internal inconsistencies, they praise Singapore as the kind of authoritarian hyper capitalist city-state they want to build, but Singapore has public housing and a heavy state ownerships of the economy, so it's far from the Randian entrepreneurial paradise they pretend it is.
This is something I've noticed, with no small amount of smug self-satisfaction I might add, but every hyper-capitalist nation-state, all the former "Four Tiger" nations in East Asian, as well as post-Dengist China itself, seem to encapsulate everything AnCaps want to achieve, and yet they do it all through an increasing Centralisation, and even here in the West companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Google seem to be heading further and further towards a future where the norm will be some kind of "Capitalist Centralism". I'm almost convinced that command economies are an inevitability at this point, it's just that Marxists won't be the ones pulling the strings. Anyway, thank you for the recommendation user.
Also, if you have any PDFs, that would be much appreciated.
This blog compiles all Moldbug posts, I bought the Amazon release of Patchwork and afaik is the same
moldbuggery.blogspot.com
Here's a PDF of Neoreaction: A Basilisk, it is a critique of both Moldbug and Land, and it's pretty good.
it's wrong to worry about buzzwords such as "intellectual". there are either capable thinkers or bullshitters/idiots. carl schmitt was certainly a very capable thinker, he came up with some truth about politics which are just universally true. his political objectives and preferences are pretty much the complete opposite of my political ideals, but although he holds an elitist point of view, he is frank about it, doesn't work with sophistry and other tricks and is logically coherent, which cannot be said about the likes of ayn rand, mises or peterson.
therefore i do respect him a lot and would probably enjoy talking to him.
Thanks user
How would you know?
I disagree, the former can be combated using econ101, the latter can be combatted using… even more esoteric mystical 5d hyperdimensional theology stuff?
also read slatestarcodex for debunk
keep in mind economically speaking hayek was never relevant, austrian "economics" is only normal in dark corners of the internet and ron paul forums. for almost its entire history economics was/is keynesian. the influence of friedman and hayek are pure myths by propagandist conspiracy nuts such as david harvey, if you look up actual govt spending stats worldwide you'd see there havent been any cuts anywhere, we are at an all time high (ignoring fiscal stimulus after 2008 ofc)
data.oecd.org
data.worldbank.org
his only contribution is price theory something.
although he does give good criticism of social democracy in "Law,legislation,liberty" and explains in-depth how an economy interacts with state policy without actually using any maths, his idea of spontaneous order and catallaxy are really interesting. he really criticizes the socialdemocratic mindset in planning, and im using a VERY specific definition here. its sad his work has been strawmanned to death by his opponents (and sometimes supporters even, see Ron Paul et al)
It's not that NRx are even against the Cathedral necessarily, they just don't like who's in the pews right now. What they call the "Cathedral" to me has always existed throughout history, only in different forms. Right now it's civil rights and multiculturalism, but during the time of kings it was divine right.
David Myatt/Anton Long, Aleksandar Dugin, Francis Parker Yockey, Franco Freda, and Evola since no one listed them yet. Maybe Varg's books on paganism too.
He was mainly speaking of Asian style educational systems than reading whatever actually.
is this satire stalinposter
I suppose I should add Yukio Mishima too
That's from Cyclonopedia by Reza Negarestani
Basically its saying that institutions of education have replace the church in inscribing spooked morality upon people, and operate in a way with effectively listable doctrine. He also sees capitalism as artificial intelligence (its not stupid, its just inhuman) that operates through people and makes em do wild shit, operating like cogs in the dance of capital reproduction, an infinite system in a limited world. vimeo.com
HELL NO NOTHING THAT IN THAT GREASY BASTARD'S BOOK WAS INSIGHTFUL AT ALL
t. brainlet
Quit false flagging and trying to make us all look bad
Link? What are you referring to exactly?
Why do people, especially leftists, take Nick Land as anything more than a meme? He'll be just another forgotten fad in just a couple of years.
He's sort of been rediscovered lately, so as a consequence being hyped. Some people find the insane more interesting, provided they are intelligent as well.
Is Spengler worth reading?
I guess that user was referring to these posts :
slatestarcodex.com
slatestarcodex.com
Scott Alexander is a pretty interesting guy in general, well worth reading to get an idea of what is going on in the mind of a smart social scientist who is also unashamedly liberal. I really wish we had a Marxist equivalent of him, because he is low-key but certainly influential in cyberspace as a whole.
Why not? Our enemies (including Peter Thiel) take him seriously, he has a very frightening but interesting vision of the future, and talking about him is certainly more interesting than the endless old debates on Kronstadt or the Hungarian revolution that only radical leftists care about.
How is the Cathedral not a conspiracy? It looks like just a rebrand of Cultural Marxism.
NRx are not libertarians, they actually hate libertarians, NRx are totalitarian panarchists capitalists.
the nrx are a meme being used by Nick Land.
Edmund Burke
Pope Leo XIII
Ted Kaczynski
also
Aristotle
Smith/Riccardo
John Stuart Mills
John Rawls
Robert Nozick
I admire Nick Land. What he did was take Camatte's arguments about runaway capitalism, combine that with the neoliberal/libertarian belief in the market as an optimized self-organized intelligence, and twist all that into a bizarre Apocalyptic Sorelian Myth "Capitalism is an AI entity from the future, reaching with its chtonic tentacles into the past to ensure its own creation" it's absurd and that's the point, the horror of Capital winning can only be grasped as Lovecraftian cosmic horror, as something that exceds human understanding, something so inhuman that if contemplated would make you lose all sanity just like the author of the Necronomicon, and that, as the sniff man would say, is the truth in the bullshit.
But then he went further and turned himself into a living meme: "If capital will win, then let us commit Marxist apostasy and be on the side of runaway capital against humanity, coldness be my god…" That still wasn't enough and he went even further: "let's turn this heresy into a gnostic religion, complete with its own sacred esoteric texts and its schisms (U/Acc, R/Acc…)" the whole thing is so surreal, it's bulldada but man it is good bulldada…
Because they think the Cathedral is a sort of socio-cultural phenomenon, not an ancient Jewish conspiracy, which is unironically what the Right is talking about whenever the 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧Cultural Marxism🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 meme is brought up. The Right really does believe that Marxism was devised by Jews to undermine Western Civ, the "Cathedral" is just a word Moldbug used to describe everything he doesn't like (mostly just a conflation of both the NeoLiberal establishment and the far-Left fringe), both are retarded but if you can't see a difference then idk what to tell you. I mean there are plenty of brainlet Leftists who talk about Capitalism like it's a conspiracy organized by Capitalists, or worse, a conspiracy by le white male, but the actual critique of Capitalism is on the basis of critiquing a socio-economic phenomenon that humans mostly unconsciously participate in.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Maybe Jehu kind of comes close, and Kevin Carson comes even closer, but we don't really have a Marxist who can communicate with these people or create dialogue, or even just put Marxist ideas in a language that makes sense to people who aren't already knee deep in reading Hegel and Adorno. I guess guys like Srnicek and Paul Mason are the SocDem version? But I'd prefer an actual Communist.
Of course not.
Honestly James Mason's SIEGE might be worth reading, it outlines a rather interesting revolutionary praxis
From what I can tell, Nick Land is like if Valis was about politics instead of religion?
Fanged noumena is full of metaphors and poetics for real concepts and predictions. It isn't just nonsense. It's just nonsensically obscure. I thought it was a parody of how a lot of academic philosophers will use overly complicated language to seem deeper than they really are. Like baudrillard.
Also the way I read it wasn't necessarily about betraying marxism. It was about acknowledging and accepting capital and technology as the users of humanity and not the other way around. In this way the death of humanity is inevitable and indeed the whole point if it was to give birth to the capital post dystopian cybergothic future. To try to fight this is reactionary and pointless. At least how I understood it
What's the reason for these looney edgelord ideologies to even exist?
He really is a great writer
Isn't Land a Marxist or former Marxist?