A cracking stream. Really useful. Agree with your selections. We can disagree with the destination that Leftists seek, but we will learn a lot from their insights on how to get there.
I don't think leftists even know what they really want. They say it's equality but. lately, they've done their best to undermine any hope of them promoting equality!
@@ziggytheassassin5835the sad irony is that they were at the same time losing every economical shift. Wealth inequality now is worse than it was during Great Depression or pre-revolutionary Russian Empire. So all the marketing tactics they came up with were adapted, but their economic program was rejected.
Because that means he would be admitting that he uses the friend enemy distinction, which was invented by Carl Schmitt, which means that James is woke!
@@YashArya01 Because we live in the real world and not the propaganda one we use to smear the left. The left are not "destroyers", They are trying to build a socialist state and implement their vision for a better society. Just as we are trying to build a traditionalist state and implement our vision for a better society. For example, they hate the boomer truth regime because it enforces Capitalism and English exceptionalism, we hate it because it enforces anti-nationalism and individualism. We both hate it for different reasons, but by we both acknowledge all four of those are aspects of the Boomer truth regime and we can both make good critiques of it. We are just an opposing faction, if an outsider was to look in on us they wouldn't say "they are the forces of Dark and they are forces of Light" they would say "They are one faction and they are another". What works for them works for us and what fails for us also fails for them. This is a game of power politics, not a story of good and evil.
I just purchased the first volume of the Muqaddimah, which I'll start after I finish Don Quixote, but even what I skimmed through would no lead anyone to think that a devout 14th century Islamic scholar would be "woke"
@@isaiahsmith7123 That's because Lindsay has gone goo goo gaga. The more you read, the more he's analyses look *insaane.* Especially since his "woke" right saga
I said this earlier - "They seem to get discernment exactly backwards in 100% of cases - they compare things by looking at similarities rather than differences. To them a mouse and an elephant are the same thing because they have 4 legs and 2 eyes." This is a major problem. I think it's the NPC phenomenon - they're not actually capable of discernment. They don't understand how to discriminate between one thing and another. They compare similarities! This isn't just folly, but legitimately stupid. They're stupid. A person who doesn't understand how to tell the difference between one thing and another is a person who doesn't have anything to say worth listening to. They're literally worthless people.
AA once said if a headline is put to you in the form of a question, the answer is always “No”. I predict that these books will not change our political orientations. Edit: Video title was changed; old title was a question. This comment was made prior to the change.
Unlikely to change your political orientation, but they could prove invaluable in helping you get to where you want to go and understanding why you want to get there.
The point being that ”no, these books will not turn you into a communist or a leftist but they have valuable insight that is somewhat congruent with right wing thought. Therefore, these books are worth reading.”
Ironically, we read left wing theorists despite our fundamental disagreement with them. The Lindsay crowd don't read left wing theorists, but actually agree with their fundamental points.
When I studied at university in the 1990s, the left was intellectually still something and I learned quite some things from the left. One of the eye-openers was the internationalist nature of capitalism and the entrepreneurs. A good example is General Motors, who made trucks for the U.S. Army in the early 1940s, while also making trucks for the German army via their Opel factories in Berlin. The Americans did not bomb these factories until August 1944 and the Ford company was compensated for this destruction after the war. In any case, the left did much to awaken me to the menace of these 'talking clubs' like the Bilderberg Group, etc. They really delved into mapping these networks. A remnant of this kind of leftism is the Corbett Report (check it out!), which is really strong in research. Recently James Corbett rehashed his content on the ozon layer and global warming, priceless content.
@@Post-ModernCzechoslovakianWar Corbett is so good and to a certain degree 'value-free' that he is beyond left and right imho. His works deserves a wider audience.
WOW! AA is FINALLY doing the KEYWORD trick with his titles (INSANE) (REAL) I can't believe he just did THIS: What a CRAZY situation 1 millions subs here we come Edit: he changed it ;(
I would be considered far right by my colleagues but my right wing friends scoff at me when I tell them that Foucault and Lenin are very smart and have a lot of excellent insights. I also read right wingers like Schmitt when I was a leftist and heard the same garbage from the Marxists. The fact of the matter is that most people are anti-intellectual and enjoy being NPCs.
I discovered Evola when I was a leftist psychedelic subculture enjoyer 10+ years ago, «Meditations On the Peaks» was 80% off at one of those new age crystal shops, lol. I can’t be bothered with Foucault, Lacan etc but I do really like Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher. Not just in that it’s «useful», I tend to agree with his points.
This is why AA is one of the few people whose opinions I look forward to hearing. There aren't many who both instinctively avoid group think, but yet take interest in one of the groupthinkiest pursuits that is politics.
“We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent.” ✡️-James Paul Warburg, whose family co-founded the Federal Reserve - while speaking before the United States Senate, February 17, 1950
A very interesting but overlooked intellectual (because he published in French) was Henri de Man, the chairman of the Belgian Labour Party (1933-1940). He was a professor in Frankfurt/Main and wrote the book 'Beyond Marxism' (1927). In this book he attacked cultural relativism, for example.
@ He published in French, and who reads French nowadays? That’s also a problem of the so-called right - it is all English. Learn some German or French!
James still hasnt realised that his "classical liberalism" is just a stopgap along the way to the woke revolution. Even if he were to take over and implement his version of liberalism, all of the presuppostions of that world are still geared towards producing some version of woke. There is a reason that the golden age of classical liberalism (the 90s) didnt just stay the way it was indefinitely. It was an era that got the benefits of the last vestiges of traditional society and just the right level of technology to get convenience without surveillance, brainrot and control. But classical liberalism devoured the traditional society and technology crossed that threshold. The society of the 90s couldnt resist woke takeover, so why would james' 90s society be able to do so when he has changed nothing about it? His unwillingness to criticise classical liberalism shows that he has not surpassed the ideology phase of political thinking. His high IQ can trick you into thinking he has passed this phase but all the signs are there that he hasnt.
The criticism of instrumental rationality/dialectics of enlightenment (Horkheimer/Adorno) is rather similar to conservative critiques (lke Heidegger's at about the same time) in pointing out the problems of enlightenment and classical liberalism. Leftist can be pretty good in analysis of social and societal problems, they are usually completely wrong about the remedies.
If everyone believed in everything they had read, like Lindsey is arguing then , we would have a world filled to the brimm with schizophrenics. The old Yes minister bit about, railroad privatisation comes to mind.
I have mentioned Escape from freedom multiple times in the comments and here it is on the list. It was book that got me interested in social and political psychology when I read it in high school. It a sense it was my first step towards intellectual right as it got me interested in concept of authoritarianism and connection between personality and society. Authoritarianism was subject of my bachelor thesis and then I first figured out that something is seriously wrong with Adornos approach to it and that they have added bunch of stuff to otherwise valid concept, clearly in order to pathologise political opposition. This led to interesting moment when I was giving presentation in front of commission of which dean of my uni was one of the members ...and she was also author of questionnaire for measuring authoritarian traits based on Adornos model, which I used for my research. I straight up told them that I think entire model seems outdated and that field needs to be cleared up of all nonsense. Dean was good sport and she took that challenge really well.
Lindsay is not really on the right at all, tho apparently his followers are. He is an atheist libertarian fancying himself a classical liberal. I've always thought Lindsay was so obsessed with CRT that one of these days he would just drop the pretense and come out as a full fledged believer. Btw, Michael Hudson's books are quite worth reading.
Pre-watching assumption: You're in a room with a bunch of people, and a gun. Previously, others have held the gun, and many of them did bad things. You should know how they got the gun, even if you don't intend to shoot anyone. Especially if you don't plan on shooting anyone.
I listened to Vaurofakis recently (Marxist, greek minister of finance) and i thought his ideas on the 'techno-feudalism' were spot on. I have never considered myself on the left. In fact, my sympathies lie more in the direction of evola and the mid-century germans. Am i wrong or has anyone ekse listened to vaurofakis and his ideas and found them to be somewhat based in reality?
Maybe look to his work where he explains what was it like to deal with the EU as finance minister of Greece. Also while on economics I heard him make some interesting insights even if he's a Marxist on social issues he's radically liberal and for an example, has called for a gypsy BLM movement in Grecce.
@phillidaadamus4349 yeah, I get that he's got woke social ideals. I did hear him propose a law which would make owning stock in a company that one was not an employee illegal. I thought that was an interesting idea.
Hi AA, you mentioned that you had previously given some lectures on Louis Althusser. Are these available to view online? If not, it would be of great interest to see you present them again.
Here’s an important factor regarding Gnosticism (outside of who, historically pushed it, I’m surprised Wikipedia hasn’t deleted it). Gnosticism is a religion without God, the Monad, who’s supposed to be the top God, is an impersonal entity, aka, said entity cannot judge you, and the Demiurge/Yaldabaoth is an antagonistic entity, which humans fight in order to escape their reality. It is a religion that glorifies rebellion, apathy to the material realm, individualism (pneumatics vs Hylics), and detachment from bonds by flesh. Now, ask yourselves these two questions, for a liberal (aka modern day gnostic) like James will never do: 1) why would someone promote this religion/philosophy? 2) what are the results of the general populace in a host nation accepting this philosophy? There’s an entire rabbi(t) hole in this thing, to the point that I’m second guessing myself if stuff like the “Faustian Spirit” was just a dangerous ps*op we suffered in the past.
If we want a diagram, it would be more appropriate to arrange them in a triangle with the conservatives occupying one corner, with the socialists pulling toward the second and the liberals toward the third. -- Why I Am Not A Conservative, FA Hayek, 1960
In a recent conversations with Tyler episode kotkin describes being a student of focaults and how that informed his study of Stalin, despite disagreeing with him politically
I read the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx. If you go through it, he makes some very sharp observations on 19th century developments, but it does not mean you have to approve his solutions (like abolishing the nuclear family, nation, etc.). A lot of leftists were/are not 'uncut' lefties - Engels was a member of the Burschenschaften (a German-nationalist student fraternity) and a German nationalist all his life. Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx saw German national unity as a prerequisite for the revolution, for example.
I fear reading the Communist Manifesto because I fear it turning me Communist. Would you think either my fear is justified?, or that I have nothing to worry about?
@@Reubentheimitator6572Probably best to first read from the booklist on Imperium Press (AA's books are there) to ground your position so when you read from the list in this video your reaction to marxist honeyed ideas is a tightening of the gut muscles and a firm NO with rebuttals ever handy.
@@Reubentheimitator6572 The Communist Manifesto is a booklet rather than a book. It is very readable compared to other writings of Marx. It is too much embedded in the 19th century to have a gripping effect in the 21st century. If you are swayed to Marxism this easily, you are lost anyway.
It's astonishing how such an obvious thought that a certain broad philisophy or political movement cannot be 100% wrong all the time is not so obvious to some
This is definitely a true position to hold, but I can't help but think that there is merit to the chad no regarding these books. Not everyone will have the mental fortitude to remain uncorrupted by contact with subversive thoughts. “Blessed is the mind too small for doubt”
A couple of thoughts on the intellectual authors on your list (ie: not Lenin and Mao): 1) A theme across these books is to deconstruct politics/society/culture. Their ideas have been used by the regime to dissolve traditional society. Many of them would either consider this progress or has given cover, however indirectly, for the regime to concrete over the Village Green. They've been used to tear down what people hold dear, even if they acknowledge that people do hold it so. 2) Is not one of the lessons of these books that there is the friend-enemy distinction? Aren't they enemies? Because of 1), why should we give these leftists the light of day? What do they say that Carlyle, Evola, Bowden, and others don't? Didn't the Frankfurt school at one point control the CIA, de-nazify Germany, and sponsor things like the Race Relations Board in Britain? Why can't we focus on building our own power and use our intellectuals to justify it?
If we could build a society based on our ideas and beliefs we would already have done it. The question is, why were they so successful? We need to understand their appeal and the tools they used to spread their message. Always study the enemy.
There is a similar deficiency on the left, in that they (or we, I should say, since I am a leftist) too quickly dismiss writings from the right. I have learned a lot by reading, for instance, right wing economists.
Good choices. I think the Left had some keen insights into the functioning of the system when they were exiles from it. Now they have become embedded in the institutions the same insights are subversive of their own position .
Ty for this one about JLindsay. There's something to be said for his attempts to prove a connection between wokeness and socialism in the days when people claimed intersectionality had no cultural impact on any institutions, but he's clearly burnt out on it all now. The closest thing to an existing "woke right" was probably Richard Spencer, given that he pretty explicitly wanted to take the progressive stack and put American whites on top of it.
Why are you repeating the false defamation of Foucault without any factual analysis? That was thoroughly debunked by the philosophy community *3 years ago…*
@@AcademicAgent See the thread called “Foucault's pedophilia and impacts in his philosophy?” on the subreddit askphilosophy. They are very strict about citations and verification there.
I know James can be a little wild on social media, but let's not condemn him to hard. He "woke" me up to a lot, and he has a great deal of good commentary. "Just because he's James Lindsay doesn't mean he doesn't say ANYTHING good." 😉
Perhaps this 'James Lindsay'-attitude comes from having a very ideological worldview (or something to that effect), and not having identities and alliance's based on something real. Particular if you combine this with the assumption that the marketplace of ideas is a real thing. Books and ideas from your "enemies" are then dangerous and threatening, and becomes part of the friend-enemy distinction. The books you read and cite becomes an integral part of signaling your "side". I bet Lindsay have nightmares about reading leftwing books and agreeing with the content, as he will then become infected by 'THE MIND VIRUS'.
I have a concern here AA. How much of the content in these books could be considered Pied Piper strategy, even if not consciously by design. The author wants to influence an audience, to win them over. Tony Blair style, they yield, give ground, concede, agree, empathise with the gripes some curious readers might have. They win their confidence, maybe their trust. Onced disarmed it makes pushing the more contentious and even dangerous ideas easier. What can I learn from these authors and books that I can't learn from our own chosen intellects?
As a rule of thumb, the critique and insights are solid, but the suggested remedies - especially on questions of national and ethnic conflicts - are heavily contaminated with liberal nationalism and therefore mind numbingly awful. Basically, if they suggest something that a bleeding heart progressive liberal would, be extremely critical, but otherwise they are safe to engage with.
@communist754 To what benefit? Again, what can I learn here that I can't learn from my own preferred intellects? None of these titles have been sanctioned by the state and regime so there can't be much that's truly important in them.
@tastypymp1287 if one of your assumptions is that lefties successfully subverted the system into its current state (which I don't really believe), studying their theory and tactics is always a good idea. If you don't believe they achieved anything noteworthy, then sure, there's nothing to learn.
“Really good. Really good.” -Academic Agent on Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book In all seriousness, a great video. I feel the need to revisit Gramsci after 20 years. Maybe after I finally get around to reading The Populist Delusion.
Reading through those Twitter comments coming from the James Lindsey and his fans when it was all going down felt physically painful. Can't believe how stupid they all are.
Herbert Mercuse has an absolutely brilliant critique of orthodox Marxism. It was Mercuse's "Biological Foundation for Socialism" where he postulates that bring competitiveness and greed are adapted, evolutionary traits, for socialism to be possible, these traits must be culled from the human condition. This is a foundational repudiation of orthodox, economic determinist, Marxism. Completely and totally because it admits 'capitalism' isnt the source for greed thus only equalizing for economics wont achieve the socialist vision for the future. I learned about this because *James Lindsey had a series reading Mercuse* So James has to either admit that Mercuse is wrong that you dont have to establish a biological basis for Marxism, or Marx is correct and its purely economic. People not on a crusade to advance their own image, like James, could easily admit that yes. People are naturally greedy. Traditionalists have recognized this for literally millennia. While also recognize Mercuse's doubling down on the need to selectively breed all of humanity to eliminate greed for peoples psyche as evil because instead of addressing the reality of the situation, Mercuse is so sold on the Marxist dream that infinite cooperativeness, forever is a worthwhile goal and worth the sacrifice of being a monster that wants to control who can and cannot have children. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that he's correct. He's also just evil.
James Lindsay has disgraced himself, but to steel-man his position, your conversation with Benjamin Boyce highlights what I think he is pointing to when you say that you share the or some methods of the critical theorists, just not their ends. He is claiming your methodology is woke, even if your ends are ostensibly diametrically opposed to the 'woke left.'
People don't want an authority. That's not what they're asking for. There will be an authority, and everyone naturally accepts that. They know it is the case without even thinking about it. What they want is for the authority to align with their morality. People will even alter their own morality to follow after the authority, when they resonate with the one published by the authority. To a point.
I have read many of these books, Mao, Williams, Fromm Foucault and I agree that they are worth reading. I suppose I am a sort of trawler. I trawl books for things that strike me as insightful and you can gain plenty of insight from people whose conclusions you completely disagree with. In fact it is interesting to see how you might find the individual ideas do not lead you to their conclusions. I also like to imagine say Marx or Foucault living another hundred years and ending up completely disagreeing with all the books we know by them. Reading them you can sense the cogs keep turning all the time. I confess to having been a Foucault fan but mainly saw him as a person trying to understand things and not prescribing a solution. I think he would have understood the surveillance and compliance cultures which we increasingly are being subjected to. Fromm I also felt had some interesting ideas. He understood the Marxist idea of the fetish of consumerism, opium of the people (also religion), and you don’t need to be a left winger to see value in this. James Lindsay for a while seemed to have some useful ideas. He likened left wing ideology to a gnostic revelation but to my mind Peter Hitchens and Thomas Sowel manage to explain the same phenomenon without invoking mysticism. Hitchens understands Gramsci and the idea of Hegemony is important for all sides. The likes of Blair definitely seem to consider themselves messianic. Lindsay studied mathematics which is fine, but his interest on politics feels somewhat self taught which is ok as long as the base was broad before taking to the pulpit. I fear he might be the sort of person who after every book he reads believes he has seen something everyone else has missed. More recently he seems to have gone off at a tangent and I find him hard to watch. A A on the other hand seems to get more relevant and incisive with time, maturing like a good wine.
Foucault or Marcuse, as degenerate or distasteful they may be, personally or from a political point of view, were deeply intelligent and insightful men who raised some interesting points.
Foucault was falsely defamed by a lying old kook 4 years ago. Academic is repeating the defamation here. Nothing degenerate or distasteful at all about Foucualt. Not sure about Marcuse
thank you, back in the early 60's, i read engels "origin of family, private property and state" - it made quite an impression at the time, not sure what i would think of it now. the little red book lead me to explore chinese culture generally. i wonder if you're familiar with the i ching - i find myself pondering specific hexagrams that seem to resolve many of the issues and views you discuss. the importance of being aware of our conditioning at all times cannot be overemphasised. i believe hillary clinton was a student of alinsky.
Crazy thought. Expand these summaries to 1 hour each and publish it as a course. Foundations of Radicalism or smth. I accept Bitcoin or uranium chips as payment.
I suppose that many of your James Lindsey aligned critics would also happily align themselves with Jordan 'Merit' Peterson? Peterson himself seems reasonably well read regarding the Frankfurt School, Gramsci, etc.., otherwise, how could he criticise it and engage with its key tenets? Perhaps Lindsey & Co. nees to 1st read a little Sun Tzu: "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
Right-wing class analysis might be dormant, but it's not entirely new. Burnham and the Managerial Revolution is the striking example. Lindsey reeks of striverism w/ his influencer-style rebrand of this concept to "Woke Right."
A cracking stream. Really useful. Agree with your selections. We can disagree with the destination that Leftists seek, but we will learn a lot from their insights on how to get there.
I don't think leftists even know what they really want. They say it's equality but. lately, they've done their best to undermine any hope of them promoting equality!
Theres a reason they have been winning every cultural shift for the past 60 years
@@ziggytheassassin5835the sad irony is that they were at the same time losing every economical shift. Wealth inequality now is worse than it was during Great Depression or pre-revolutionary Russian Empire. So all the marketing tactics they came up with were adapted, but their economic program was rejected.
Right on; as Mike from Imperium press says: the radical left & right often agree on the Description, just not the prescription.
You know we are in an alternative timeline when Tim doesn’t take a decade or more to get it right lol.
"Is it possible to learn about power?"
"Not from a liberal."
Love a well-timed Episode III quote.
Love Tone.
You can, if you look at what they do, not what they say
Why doesn't Lindsey just say "these people aren't liberal" because that's what he's trying to elucidate
Because he's a rat
He seems to believe using a slur is more convincing than an actual argument
Because that means he would be admitting that he uses the friend enemy distinction, which was invented by Carl Schmitt, which means that James is woke!
@@D3r3k2323Or worse "far right".
"We got a copy of the other team's playbook. Let's implement their strategic insights."
James Lindsay: "No"
Why would you presume that the tactics of the destroyers will work for the creators?
@@YashArya01…creative destruction
@@YashArya01 so what? Should we have conserved the Soviet Union instead of destroying it?
@@FeHearts how did you get that from my comment?
@@YashArya01 Because we live in the real world and not the propaganda one we use to smear the left. The left are not "destroyers", They are trying to build a socialist state and implement their vision for a better society. Just as we are trying to build a traditionalist state and implement our vision for a better society. For example, they hate the boomer truth regime because it enforces Capitalism and English exceptionalism, we hate it because it enforces anti-nationalism and individualism. We both hate it for different reasons, but by we both acknowledge all four of those are aspects of the Boomer truth regime and we can both make good critiques of it. We are just an opposing faction, if an outsider was to look in on us they wouldn't say "they are the forces of Dark and they are forces of Light" they would say "They are one faction and they are another". What works for them works for us and what fails for us also fails for them. This is a game of power politics, not a story of good and evil.
You don't read Gramsci because he is WOKE.
I don't read Gramsci because he is ALBANIAN.
We are not the same.
I never knew that
@@AcademicAgent Communist leaders are usually some type of ethnic , religious, sexual minority.
They often try to hide this for political reasons.
no way hes italian, he looks jewish as hell
Many Albanians left in 1600ish to escape the Ottomans.
@@AcademicAgentEvery single day! Always something new to learn.
Famously WOKE historian, FREAKING IBN KHALDOUN
😂
@@AcademicAgent want u think about this guy defending Lindsay?
ua-cam.com/video/o-ALje5vBEM/v-deo.htmlsi=2Yco8To6rq5KECbg
I just purchased the first volume of the Muqaddimah, which I'll start after I finish Don Quixote, but even what I skimmed through would no lead anyone to think that a devout 14th century Islamic scholar would be "woke"
@@isaiahsmith7123 That's because Lindsay has gone goo goo gaga. The more you read, the more he's analyses look *insaane.* Especially since his "woke" right saga
@brahimilyes681 Instead of terminally online he's terminally "woke"
Did you know leftists also drink water, i hope you havent fell for the water meme.
Woke hydration
I said this earlier -
"They seem to get discernment exactly backwards in 100% of cases - they compare things by looking at similarities rather than differences. To them a mouse and an elephant are the same thing because they have 4 legs and 2 eyes."
This is a major problem. I think it's the NPC phenomenon - they're not actually capable of discernment. They don't understand how to discriminate between one thing and another.
They compare similarities! This isn't just folly, but legitimately stupid.
They're stupid.
A person who doesn't understand how to tell the difference between one thing and another is a person who doesn't have anything to say worth listening to. They're literally worthless people.
Only drink beer
AA once said if a headline is put to you in the form of a question, the answer is always “No”.
I predict that these books will not change our political orientations.
Edit: Video title was changed; old title was a question. This comment was made prior to the change.
Iron law of headlines. The answer to the question is always "No".
Unlikely to change your political orientation, but they could prove invaluable in helping you get to where you want to go and understanding why you want to get there.
The point being that ”no, these books will not turn you into a communist or a leftist but they have valuable insight that is somewhat congruent with right wing thought. Therefore, these books are worth reading.”
@@artorius_856 Absolutely. It also allows for debating Leftists properly, knowing the opposition's tenets of faith.
@@walterekurtz4320 Leftists absolutely hate it when you turn Alinsky against them--especially when you tell them that is what you are doing. 🤣🤣🤣
Ironically, we read left wing theorists despite our fundamental disagreement with them. The Lindsay crowd don't read left wing theorists, but actually agree with their fundamental points.
James Lindsay's next post: 'British-Iranian literature academic who cites Lenin, Mao, Gramsci and Foucault among his main influences'
When I studied at university in the 1990s, the left was intellectually still something and I learned quite some things from the left. One of the eye-openers was the internationalist nature of capitalism and the entrepreneurs. A good example is General Motors, who made trucks for the U.S. Army in the early 1940s, while also making trucks for the German army via their Opel factories in Berlin. The Americans did not bomb these factories until August 1944 and the Ford company was compensated for this destruction after the war. In any case, the left did much to awaken me to the menace of these 'talking clubs' like the Bilderberg Group, etc. They really delved into mapping these networks. A remnant of this kind of leftism is the Corbett Report (check it out!), which is really strong in research. Recently James Corbett rehashed his content on the ozon layer and global warming, priceless content.
Opel is/was General Motors Europe. Valid point, however.
I thought Corbett was a smart and big brained, apolitical, anarchist. Regardless, his stuff is great, I agree.
@@Salmon_Rush_Die Thanks for the correction!
@@Post-ModernCzechoslovakianWar Corbett is so good and to a certain degree 'value-free' that he is beyond left and right imho. His works deserves a wider audience.
@@ArmiesAndBattles I couldn't agree more!
Can’t believe I’m typing this but I think Tim Pool nailed it by labelling Lindsay himself as woke right. I also like the label of “Thicklets”.
I remember an old video/ stream where AA said:
"You can read leftists and just replace the yay with nay and you are basically good".
How you apply that?
Being tarded and ignorant is patriotic, at least in America…
Love muh flag, love me country. Simple as.
You guys sound like redditors.
they come from a pure line of mexican-irish genetic stock
Founding Fathers were intellectuals. US was among the most literate and informed countries until the 20th century.
I wonder what happened🤔🤨.@JohnSmith-wx9wj
What Lindsey et al are doing is classic woke, ironically. They may as well call everyone Nazis
WOW! AA is FINALLY doing the KEYWORD trick with his titles (INSANE) (REAL)
I can't believe he just did THIS:
What a CRAZY situation
1 millions subs here we come
Edit: he changed it ;(
This video changed my life
SHOCKING switch of title meta! (GONE WRONG!)
Still lacking the open mouth amazed face in the thumbnail
You WON'T BELIEVE number 10!
The MUST SEE video that made James Lindsey FURIOUS!
I would be considered far right by my colleagues but my right wing friends scoff at me when I tell them that Foucault and Lenin are very smart and have a lot of excellent insights. I also read right wingers like Schmitt when I was a leftist and heard the same garbage from the Marxists. The fact of the matter is that most people are anti-intellectual and enjoy being NPCs.
I discovered Evola when I was a leftist psychedelic subculture enjoyer 10+ years ago, «Meditations On the Peaks» was 80% off at one of those new age crystal shops, lol.
I can’t be bothered with Foucault, Lacan etc but I do really like Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher. Not just in that it’s «useful», I tend to agree with his points.
The issue is that reading doesn't produce results. We have no shortage of well-read and irrelevant nerds.
@@insomnolant6043 Reading isn't purely utilitarian. Who knew?
I long for right-leaning people actually familiar with Derrida and Gadamer. The US and Britain were always, in ways, an intellectual backwater.
@@Matt24002I agree but both had large empires, maybe there is an inverse correlation?
This is why AA is one of the few people whose opinions I look forward to hearing. There aren't many who both instinctively avoid group think, but yet take interest in one of the groupthinkiest pursuits that is politics.
So if you mix Nationalism with Socialist you must get centrist?
I see what you did there ;-)
I guess you can get the best of the left and the right of being both fiscally progressive and socially conservative.
“We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent.”
✡️-James Paul Warburg, whose family co-founded the Federal Reserve - while speaking before the United States Senate, February 17, 1950
Consent being another word for surrender
🧢🧢🧢🧢🧢🧢 . Also , my condolences that your boy Adolf lost
Carl is correct that we ought to address the relevant critiques leftists have about liberalism so we can avoid the communist revolution
A very interesting but overlooked intellectual (because he published in French) was Henri de Man, the chairman of the Belgian Labour Party (1933-1940). He was a professor in Frankfurt/Main and wrote the book 'Beyond Marxism' (1927). In this book he attacked cultural relativism, for example.
💎
I used to mention de Man a while ago but no one seemed to know who he was
😊😊
@ He published in French, and who reads French nowadays? That’s also a problem of the so-called right - it is all English. Learn some German or French!
The choices de Man made during the late 30s and WW2 are worth looking at
James still hasnt realised that his "classical liberalism" is just a stopgap along the way to the woke revolution. Even if he were to take over and implement his version of liberalism, all of the presuppostions of that world are still geared towards producing some version of woke.
There is a reason that the golden age of classical liberalism (the 90s) didnt just stay the way it was indefinitely.
It was an era that got the benefits of the last vestiges of traditional society and just the right level of technology to get convenience without surveillance, brainrot and control.
But classical liberalism devoured the traditional society and technology crossed that threshold.
The society of the 90s couldnt resist woke takeover, so why would james' 90s society be able to do so when he has changed nothing about it?
His unwillingness to criticise classical liberalism shows that he has not surpassed the ideology phase of political thinking.
His high IQ can trick you into thinking he has passed this phase but all the signs are there that he hasnt.
Yes there should be a new term for people like James Lindsay, something like "Daft Right"
Only problem is that it's obvious that James _is not_ on the right
"Moderate woke"? He just believes in demo-liberalism but pre-2012.
We usually call them the Cuck Right
Woke lite
Gooey centre
The criticism of instrumental rationality/dialectics of enlightenment (Horkheimer/Adorno) is rather similar to conservative critiques (lke Heidegger's at about the same time) in pointing out the problems of enlightenment and classical liberalism. Leftist can be pretty good in analysis of social and societal problems, they are usually completely wrong about the remedies.
If everyone believed in everything they had read, like Lindsey is arguing then , we would have a world filled to the brimm with schizophrenics. The old Yes minister bit about, railroad privatisation comes to mind.
You can always learn something from people who are obsessed with power and have demonstrated they know how to take it
I have mentioned Escape from freedom multiple times in the comments and here it is on the list.
It was book that got me interested in social and political psychology when I read it in high school. It a sense it was my first step towards intellectual right as it got me interested in concept of authoritarianism and connection between personality and society. Authoritarianism was subject of my bachelor thesis and then I first figured out that something is seriously wrong with Adornos approach to it and that they have added bunch of stuff to otherwise valid concept, clearly in order to pathologise political opposition.
This led to interesting moment when I was giving presentation in front of commission of which dean of my uni was one of the members ...and she was also author of questionnaire for measuring authoritarian traits based on Adornos model, which I used for my research. I straight up told them that I think entire model seems outdated and that field needs to be cleared up of all nonsense. Dean was good sport and she took that challenge really well.
This is one of the very few comment sections that I learn from. It's refreshing and appreciated.
Lindsay is not really on the right at all, tho apparently his followers are. He is an atheist libertarian fancying himself a classical liberal. I've always thought Lindsay was so obsessed with CRT that one of these days he would just drop the pretense and come out as a full fledged believer. Btw, Michael Hudson's books are quite worth reading.
Pre-watching assumption:
You're in a room with a bunch of people, and a gun. Previously, others have held the gun, and many of them did bad things. You should know how they got the gun, even if you don't intend to shoot anyone. Especially if you don't plan on shooting anyone.
I listened to Vaurofakis recently (Marxist, greek minister of finance) and i thought his ideas on the 'techno-feudalism' were spot on. I have never considered myself on the left. In fact, my sympathies lie more in the direction of evola and the mid-century germans.
Am i wrong or has anyone ekse listened to vaurofakis and his ideas and found them to be somewhat based in reality?
Naah, you are just a crypto-Commie
@@burlbird9786 Lame comment
@@Vingul so is your mum
Maybe look to his work where he explains what was it like to deal with the EU as finance minister of Greece.
Also while on economics I heard him make some interesting insights even if he's a Marxist on social issues he's radically liberal and for an example, has called for a gypsy BLM movement in Grecce.
@phillidaadamus4349 yeah, I get that he's got woke social ideals. I did hear him propose a law which would make owning stock in a company that one was not an employee illegal. I thought that was an interesting idea.
Any book written by Mao, Lenin, and some of Stalin stuff is pretty good I recommend checking out some of their books on politics.
If you've been influenced in any way at all by Peter Hitchens, then you'll understand the point of this
I am going to put Peter Singer on here. A lot of the modern non think in g progressives just kind of seem like they do whatever he says.
47:20 I’ll have you know AA I am an individual….
I listen to Pink Floyd
Deep lore.
Hi AA, you mentioned that you had previously given some lectures on Louis Althusser. Are these available to view online? If not, it would be of great interest to see you present them again.
AA you should do a deep dive on each of these books.
Here’s an important factor regarding Gnosticism (outside of who, historically pushed it, I’m surprised Wikipedia hasn’t deleted it).
Gnosticism is a religion without God, the Monad, who’s supposed to be the top God, is an impersonal entity, aka, said entity cannot judge you, and the Demiurge/Yaldabaoth is an antagonistic entity, which humans fight in order to escape their reality.
It is a religion that glorifies rebellion, apathy to the material realm, individualism (pneumatics vs Hylics), and detachment from bonds by flesh.
Now, ask yourselves these two questions, for a liberal (aka modern day gnostic) like James will never do:
1) why would someone promote this religion/philosophy?
2) what are the results of the general populace in a host nation accepting this philosophy?
There’s an entire rabbi(t) hole in this thing, to the point that I’m second guessing myself if stuff like the “Faustian Spirit” was just a dangerous ps*op we suffered in the past.
Know thy enemy. If we didn't read opposing literature then we would be unaware of their weapons
British-Iranian thought leaders!
*The Archangel Michael-Ahriman angle intensifies!!!* :O
Hahaha "the real brain behind the Lotus Eaters"
If we want a diagram, it would be more appropriate to arrange them in a triangle with the conservatives occupying one corner, with the socialists pulling toward the second and the liberals toward the third. -- Why I Am Not A Conservative, FA Hayek, 1960
So is James Lindsay just the rubber band used to castrate the right?
I’m ashamed to say, I haven’t read any of them. I will rectify this
Big Phil Jagielka used these books to start a wheelie bin fire outside Lidl
Im a football fan, and know who Jagielka is but please offer some context on this one
@ No context needed. He’s a top bloke. Always up for a scruff
At least he didn’t put one of them Forrest Gump people in a wheelie bin
@ Vingul o7, hope your music is coming along well
@@ZhangWeiMenacing thank you! Enjoying trying to make something decent. It’s da wei.
It'll take a full generation to clean up the misdirection mess created by a certain Horace Raffensperger Professor of Humanities.
James Lindsay is Kraut's 2018 dream coming true.
In a recent conversations with Tyler episode kotkin describes being a student of focaults and how that informed his study of Stalin, despite disagreeing with him politically
Top-tier video with sash of rare AA emotion.
I read the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx. If you go through it, he makes some very sharp observations on 19th century developments, but it does not mean you have to approve his solutions (like abolishing the nuclear family, nation, etc.). A lot of leftists were/are not 'uncut' lefties - Engels was a member of the Burschenschaften (a German-nationalist student fraternity) and a German nationalist all his life. Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx saw German national unity as a prerequisite for the revolution, for example.
I fear reading the Communist Manifesto because I fear it turning me Communist. Would you think either my fear is justified?, or that I have nothing to worry about?
@@Reubentheimitator6572Probably best to first read from the booklist on Imperium Press (AA's books are there) to ground your position so when you read from the list in this video your reaction to marxist honeyed ideas is a tightening of the gut muscles and a firm NO with rebuttals ever handy.
@ thanks for the recommendation
@@Reubentheimitator6572 The Communist Manifesto is a booklet rather than a book. It is very readable compared to other writings of Marx. It is too much embedded in the 19th century to have a gripping effect in the 21st century. If you are swayed to Marxism this easily, you are lost anyway.
More videos like this!
I tend to like tankies. They can be pretty crazy but at least they ask the right questions.
It's astonishing how such an obvious thought that a certain broad philisophy or political movement cannot be 100% wrong all the time is not so obvious to some
"Team Evil" 😂😂
8:25 Darth Parvinius the Persecutor 💎
This is definitely a true position to hold, but I can't help but think that there is merit to the chad no regarding these books. Not everyone will have the mental fortitude to remain uncorrupted by contact with subversive thoughts.
“Blessed is the mind too small for doubt”
A couple of thoughts on the intellectual authors on your list (ie: not Lenin and Mao):
1) A theme across these books is to deconstruct politics/society/culture. Their ideas have been used by the regime to dissolve traditional society. Many of them would either consider this progress or has given cover, however indirectly, for the regime to concrete over the Village Green. They've been used to tear down what people hold dear, even if they acknowledge that people do hold it so.
2) Is not one of the lessons of these books that there is the friend-enemy distinction? Aren't they enemies? Because of 1), why should we give these leftists the light of day? What do they say that Carlyle, Evola, Bowden, and others don't? Didn't the Frankfurt school at one point control the CIA, de-nazify Germany, and sponsor things like the Race Relations Board in Britain? Why can't we focus on building our own power and use our intellectuals to justify it?
If we could build a society based on our ideas and beliefs we would already have done it. The question is, why were they so successful?
We need to understand their appeal and the tools they used to spread their message. Always study the enemy.
Woke by association
Bring back monarchy
Read Hans Hermann Hoppe's Democracy The God That Failed. He argues why monarchy is better than democracy, but natural order is best.
Yes. Natural order as structured by mutual aid for all creatures.
See Kropotkin to supplement Hoppe
It will fail too. Monarchy is just larping, biscuit tin stuff that will corrupt the same way democracy has. Case in example, Britain.
James Lindsay needs Merit, such Merit
There is a similar deficiency on the left, in that they (or we, I should say, since I am a leftist) too quickly dismiss writings from the right. I have learned a lot by reading, for instance, right wing economists.
You forgot branding in what the left is good at.
Western one, perhaps. USSR did extremely bad job at that, so much so that their own elites lost interest and decided to abandon the project.
Erich Fromm was also an excellent writer. Unlike so many academic types he wrote in a clear concise manner that’s pleasant to read.
Good choices. I think the Left had some keen insights into the functioning of the system when they were exiles from it. Now they have become embedded in the institutions the same insights are subversive of their own position .
Is it Harry Potter and the Infinite Horseshoe Triangle?
Ty for this one about JLindsay. There's something to be said for his attempts to prove a connection between wokeness and socialism in the days when people claimed intersectionality had no cultural impact on any institutions, but he's clearly burnt out on it all now. The closest thing to an existing "woke right" was probably Richard Spencer, given that he pretty explicitly wanted to take the progressive stack and put American whites on top of it.
Looking forward to your professional wrestling video you mentioned from a while back and how it applies to western power structures in general.
Why are you repeating the false defamation of Foucault without any factual analysis?
That was thoroughly debunked by the philosophy community *3 years ago…*
I was unaware of this debunking
@@AcademicAgent Are you aware now? If not, I’ll show you
@@AcademicAgent “Must We Cancel Foucault?”
By Mark G. E. Kelly · Monday, May 10, 2021
@@AcademicAgent “Press release on Guy Sorman’s accusations against Michel Foucault”, by Centre Michel Foucault
@@AcademicAgent See the thread called “Foucault's pedophilia and impacts in his philosophy?” on the subreddit askphilosophy. They are very strict about citations and verification there.
17:00
We should just call them dorks and laugh at them.
I know James can be a little wild on social media, but let's not condemn him to hard. He "woke" me up to a lot, and he has a great deal of good commentary. "Just because he's James Lindsay doesn't mean he doesn't say ANYTHING good." 😉
do i even need to point out the schizo posting about auron macintyre and the archangel Michael?
When the headline of any publication is a question, the answer is simply “no”.
Perhaps this 'James Lindsay'-attitude comes from having a very ideological worldview (or something to that effect), and not having identities and alliance's based on something real. Particular if you combine this with the assumption that the marketplace of ideas is a real thing. Books and ideas from your "enemies" are then dangerous and threatening, and becomes part of the friend-enemy distinction. The books you read and cite becomes an integral part of signaling your "side". I bet Lindsay have nightmares about reading leftwing books and agreeing with the content, as he will then become infected by 'THE MIND VIRUS'.
"what the left is not good at - basic food production" gave me a good chuckle
Iames Lindsei stultus est.
I realise that I’m a passive wokester by just listening to a chap discuss another chap discussing woke… 😮
Did You talk about the shrinking markets idea in Your channel's older videos?
Perhaps
I have a concern here AA. How much of the content in these books could be considered Pied Piper strategy, even if not consciously by design.
The author wants to influence an audience, to win them over. Tony Blair style, they yield, give ground, concede, agree, empathise with the gripes some curious readers might have.
They win their confidence, maybe their trust. Onced disarmed it makes pushing the more contentious and even dangerous ideas easier.
What can I learn from these authors and books that I can't learn from our own chosen intellects?
As a rule of thumb, the critique and insights are solid, but the suggested remedies - especially on questions of national and ethnic conflicts - are heavily contaminated with liberal nationalism and therefore mind numbingly awful. Basically, if they suggest something that a bleeding heart progressive liberal would, be extremely critical, but otherwise they are safe to engage with.
@communist754 To what benefit? Again, what can I learn here that I can't learn from my own preferred intellects?
None of these titles have been sanctioned by the state and regime so there can't be much that's truly important in them.
@tastypymp1287 if one of your assumptions is that lefties successfully subverted the system into its current state (which I don't really believe), studying their theory and tactics is always a good idea. If you don't believe they achieved anything noteworthy, then sure, there's nothing to learn.
“Really good. Really good.”
-Academic Agent on Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book
In all seriousness, a great video. I feel the need to revisit Gramsci after 20 years. Maybe after I finally get around to reading The Populist Delusion.
Reading through those Twitter comments coming from the James Lindsey and his fans when it was all going down felt physically painful. Can't believe how stupid they all are.
"thought terminating clichés"
Correct.
Herbert Mercuse has an absolutely brilliant critique of orthodox Marxism. It was Mercuse's "Biological Foundation for Socialism" where he postulates that bring competitiveness and greed are adapted, evolutionary traits, for socialism to be possible, these traits must be culled from the human condition.
This is a foundational repudiation of orthodox, economic determinist, Marxism. Completely and totally because it admits 'capitalism' isnt the source for greed thus only equalizing for economics wont achieve the socialist vision for the future.
I learned about this because *James Lindsey had a series reading Mercuse*
So James has to either admit that Mercuse is wrong that you dont have to establish a biological basis for Marxism, or Marx is correct and its purely economic.
People not on a crusade to advance their own image, like James, could easily admit that yes. People are naturally greedy. Traditionalists have recognized this for literally millennia. While also recognize Mercuse's doubling down on the need to selectively breed all of humanity to eliminate greed for peoples psyche as evil because instead of addressing the reality of the situation, Mercuse is so sold on the Marxist dream that infinite cooperativeness, forever is a worthwhile goal and worth the sacrifice of being a monster that wants to control who can and cannot have children.
It doesn't take a genius to recognize that he's correct. He's also just evil.
I am loving this current act of the James Lindsay villain drama.
Good content, but please invest in a better microphone.
James Lindsay has disgraced himself, but to steel-man his position, your conversation with Benjamin Boyce highlights what I think he is pointing to when you say that you share the or some methods of the critical theorists, just not their ends. He is claiming your methodology is woke, even if your ends are ostensibly diametrically opposed to the 'woke left.'
There is no need to read books. Just be anti-bourgeois, but oriented downward.
@@salted_lizard Real leftists did not read books, they were revolutionizing everything. Participation in that changed their lives.
@@salted_lizard If that's the goal then it's propaganda, not codswallop.
Not gonna LARP as an elite and nor should any of us.
Do you rate Terry Eagleton?
Yes he’s not bad
Remember Lord Keynes II? Good times...
People don't want an authority. That's not what they're asking for. There will be an authority, and everyone naturally accepts that. They know it is the case without even thinking about it. What they want is for the authority to align with their morality. People will even alter their own morality to follow after the authority, when they resonate with the one published by the authority. To a point.
I have read many of these books, Mao, Williams, Fromm Foucault and I agree that they are worth reading. I suppose I am a sort of trawler. I trawl books for things that strike me as insightful and you can gain plenty of insight from people whose conclusions you completely disagree with. In fact it is interesting to see how you might find the individual ideas do not lead you to their conclusions. I also like to imagine say Marx or Foucault living another hundred years and ending up completely disagreeing with all the books we know by them. Reading them you can sense the cogs keep turning all the time.
I confess to having been a Foucault fan but mainly saw him as a person trying to understand things and not prescribing a solution. I think he would have understood the surveillance and compliance cultures which we increasingly are being subjected to. Fromm I also felt had some interesting ideas. He understood the Marxist idea of the fetish of consumerism, opium of the people (also religion), and you don’t need to be a left winger to see value in this. James Lindsay for a while seemed to have some useful ideas. He likened left wing ideology to a gnostic revelation but to my mind Peter Hitchens and Thomas Sowel manage to explain the same phenomenon without invoking mysticism. Hitchens understands Gramsci and the idea of Hegemony is important for all sides. The likes of Blair definitely seem to consider themselves messianic. Lindsay studied mathematics which is fine, but his interest on politics feels somewhat self taught which is ok as long as the base was broad before taking to the pulpit. I fear he might be the sort of person who after every book he reads believes he has seen something everyone else has missed. More recently he seems to have gone off at a tangent and I find him hard to watch. A A on the other hand seems to get more relevant and incisive with time, maturing like a good wine.
Foucault or Marcuse, as degenerate or distasteful they may be, personally or from a political point of view, were deeply intelligent and insightful men who raised some interesting points.
Foucault was falsely defamed by a lying old kook 4 years ago.
Academic is repeating the defamation here.
Nothing degenerate or distasteful at all about Foucualt.
Not sure about Marcuse
Just adding here that AA and Karl Marx both breath air... Make of that what you will..
thank you, back in the early 60's, i read engels "origin of family, private property and state" - it made quite an impression at the time, not sure what i would think of it now. the little red book lead me to explore chinese culture generally. i wonder if you're familiar with the i ching - i find myself pondering specific hexagrams that seem to resolve many of the issues and views you discuss. the importance of being aware of our conditioning at all times cannot be overemphasised. i believe hillary clinton was a student of alinsky.
Crazy thought. Expand these summaries to 1 hour each and publish it as a course. Foundations of Radicalism or smth. I accept Bitcoin or uranium chips as payment.
We are truly blessed to have such stupid enemies. Give thanks, friends.
I suppose that many of your James Lindsey aligned critics would also happily align themselves with Jordan 'Merit' Peterson? Peterson himself seems reasonably well read regarding the Frankfurt School, Gramsci, etc.., otherwise, how could he criticise it and engage with its key tenets?
Perhaps Lindsey & Co. nees to 1st read a little Sun Tzu:
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
Right-wing class analysis might be dormant, but it's not entirely new. Burnham and the Managerial Revolution is the striking example. Lindsey reeks of striverism w/ his influencer-style rebrand of this concept to "Woke Right."
They remind me of the Linux community.
25:00 sounds like Hollywood