HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Start here at 1:30:30 https://youtu.be/6G59zsjM2UI?t=1h30m25s

and see all of nature follows a law of square roots. If you have 10,000 people, 100 will have all the money. If you have 10,000 music artist, only 100 will be getting their songs heard. This is a law of nature. Stop fighting against it and spend some time understanding it.

This episode of the Joe Rogan podcast w/ Jordan Peterson and Bret Weinstein touches on similar issues (among other things) and discusses why it's still important to have discussions like these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G59zsjM2UI

⬐ js8

The one with Steven Pinker is also good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUDAdOdF6Zg

A recent Joe Rogan Podcast had a really interesting discussion about this [1].

Basically one of the key points, especially in light of people being called Nazis (accurately or spuriously), is that one of the major social aspects of pre-war Germany was that there was radical polarization between fascist and anti-fascist groups similar to what we see now. However because the psychological makeup of someone who would support fascism is more drawn toward structuralism, law and order etc... they are much more organized and lethal as a group.

You see echoes here with the Alt-Right and Antifa. Alt-Right is structured, highly armed, biologically motivated (aka racist) and generally support law enforcement. Antifa is a loose consolidation of many groups (LGBT, Socialists, Radfem etc...) that is under armed and would likely not be as cohesive in the long run.

So by banning these hate groups from being searchable and driving them away, it just makes both sides echo each other more and gives strength to each extreme of the movements. Even worse, it gives people like the ones in this article no real option to be moderate - they basically feel like they need to join a radical ideology because they feel the only alternative is anathema. This is by the way what happens all over the world with terrorist recruiting etc... so the pattern is pretty well understood. If you create extremes, organizations will form around them and then the majority of people get drug along for the ride and do morally dubious things along the way.

[1] https://youtu.be/6G59zsjM2UI?t=10m55s

⬐ notfromhere

Given how many communist revolutions we've had in the past, it's not an issue of innate structure between the two groups

Found this interesting after recently listening to a lot of Jordan Peterson talks - especially the latest Joe Rogan Experience episode #1006 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G59zsjM2UI

⬐ etplayer

I've found that Peterson has the habit to confuse postmodernism with "neo Marxism" (itself a term reminiscent of the "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory) while they could not be further from each other, except as being originated from conitental philosophy. I've written about one such instance here[0] and as far as I can tell it applies to this video too.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15077128

⬐ mnglkhn2

> has the habit to confuse postmodernism with "neo Marxism" (itself a term reminiscent of the "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory)

Because that is the most prominent application of postmodernism: to push forward neo-Marxist ideology.

⬐ etplayer

That's actually not true. What is "neo Marxism"? As I understand it, it is the application of Marixist class theory to other non-class power structures. However I have seen nor have been able to find any evidence that this is an actually existing group that has grown out of Marxism. Furthermore, postmodernism denies the very structures in the materialist understanding of history which is essential to Marxism. So how are they compatible? These and other issues are discussed in my post and in the article I linked therein.

There's simply no evidence for it; Peterson's confusion is his own and I hope that others do not follow him on this and instead choose to do their own research into philosophy.

⬐ SuoDuanDao

They are not compatible - Peterson's argument is not that neomarxism and postmodernism are natural bedfellows, but that people espousing postmodernist positions nearly always reveal a belief structure based in neomarxism when challenged by an intellectual equal.

His evidence is presumably his own conversations with postmodernists, and his theory as to why this is seems based more in a psychological than philosophical framework.

⬐ Emma_Goldman

This entire conversation is a tissue of confusions.

'Cultural Marxism' is a pejorative term for the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. It was invented by fascists to dismiss the whole enterprise without engaging with it.

The Frankfurt School emerged in the 1920s/30s in response to the failure of the proletariat to overthrow capitalism in the way that Marx had suggested would happen, and as a response to the crude economism of a lot of early Marxism (i.e. where 'culture' was just an epiphenomenon rooted in the economic base of a society). It was a German school - its main sources were Hegel, Marx, Mannheim, etc.

Post-modernism, on the other hand, is a term for a very amorphous group of (largely French) thinkers who reacted against the dominance of structuralist social theory in the 1960s, which itself was a reaction to existentialism. Its sources are usually the canon of phenomenology, the structuralists before them, and Nietzsche.

The Frankfurt School is best known for its formulation of ideological critique, its critique of 'instrumental rationality', its holistic view of a critical social science, and its collected writings on aesthetics and mass media.

The post-modernists are best known for their rejection of a lot of the heritage of the Enlightenment, their focus on the fragility and contingency language, and their emphasis on 'play, metaphor, rhizomes', etc. But they are not a single school - they are FAR more varied than the Frankfurt School. For example, Pierre Bourdieu (who had a fairly empirical sociology of cultural hierarchy and class) is worlds away from Jacques Derrida (who was an abstract theorist that wrote very opaquely, and IMO is responsible for a lot of the bad reputation of post-modernism).

⬐ jules

Why is cultural Marxism a conspiracy theory? It was my impression that Marxism just means class struggle in this context, and that cultural Marxism means class struggle on cultural issues rather than economic issues?

⬐ mrkgnao

That's not the sense in which it is used most of the time (at least outside of academia). To repeat something I quoted up-thread:

> 'Cultural Marxism' in modern political parlance refers to a conspiracy theory which sees the Frankfurt School as part of an ongoing movement to take over and destroy Western society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School#Cultural_Marx...

⬐ jules

I don't see how this contradicts what I said. A class struggle is about disrupting the existing structure, which is western society. Classical communism was also aimed at replacing the existing structure. There are people who don't like the current structure and aim to replace it. How is this a conspiracy? Western society already changed tremendously compared to 100 years ago. If you went back 100 years and asked a person what they think about their culture vs our current culture they might very well say that their version of western society has been destroyed.

⬐ etplayer

>Classical communism was also aimed at replacing the existing structure.

No it wasn't (and no it isn't), it's aimed at abolishing the class structure.

>There are people who don't like the current structure and aim to replace it. How is this a conspiracy?

GP is referring to "cultural Marxism" being a conspiracy, and it is, not that Communists want to replace the class structure. The "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory posits that there is a group of people who want to destroy Western society. This is false. It relies on the idea that at some point Marxists changed to thinking in terms of gender or race rather than class - this is also false and lacking in evidence as GP also noted. The Wikipedia section really is a good overview of it.

⬐ jules

> No it wasn't (and no it isn't), it's aimed at abolishing the class structure.

So it was aimed at replacing the existing structure...

> The "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory posits that there is a group of people who want to destroy Western society.

How is this a conspiracy theory? There are people on the fringe left (and fringe right) who want to do exactly that. They wouldn't necessarily phrase it that way, but what they advocate for would accomplish that as a side effect. If the conspiracy theory is that these people are everywhere, then sure, but that such people exist is in no way a conspiracy theory.

> It relies on the idea that at some point Marxists changed to thinking in terms of gender or race rather than class - this is also false and lacking in evidence as GP also noted.

That is precisely what intersectional feminism is about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality#Marxist-femi...

⬐ etplayer

>So it was aimed at replacing the existing structure...

If I told you that I'd be replacing your broken windshield, would you understand that I'd be simply removing your windshield and not putting anything in its place?

>There are people on the fringe left (and fringe right) who want to do exactly that.

I should have been more specific; the group which is accused of being "cultural Marxists" includes the Frankfurt School which did nothing you describe nor expounded any intention to. Of course they exist, but the people accused of being those people who exist are not those people.

>That is precisely what intersectional feminism is about.

That's true, though it does little to hold for Peterson's argument that "Marxists" in general have moved to such a position, or have mutated class theory rather than simply adding to it. Marxists, orthodox and otherwise, still think in terms of class.

⬐ jules

> If I told you that I'd be replacing your broken windshield, would you understand that I'd be simply removing your windshield and not putting anything in its place?

That's not how societies work. You cannot have no social structure anymore than a person can have "no age". You can try to create a flat social structure, but that's still a social structure (and not a stable one, obviously).

> That's true, though it does little to hold for Peterson's argument that "Marxists" in general have moved to such a position, or have mutated class theory rather than simply adding to it. Marxists, orthodox and otherwise, still think in terms of class.

Intersectional feminism certainly seems to be by the most popular strand today. Of course some old school Marxists still exist.

⬐ etplayer

>You cannot have no social structure anymore than a person can have "no age"

Class is not equal to social structure; when Marxists talk about classes they refer to economic power relations, as in, there is no group of people with majority or exclusive control over the main social means of production. This is in contrast to today in which the social means of production are owned almost entirely by the bourgeoisie, as in, the capitalist class, which employs wage labour.

In higher stage Communism, there is free association of people and the method that may be chosen would likely be decentralised direct-democratic councils with random or rotating delegates.

⬐ Hasknewbie

Peterson is apparently getting his definition of Postmodernism from a book he occasionally advertises for ("Postmodernism Explained"), by another Canadian professor, and which has virtually no standing: it is not peer reviewed, and is in fact self-published.

Its thesis is apparently that secret Marxists propped up post-structuralism/postmodernism because they knew communism had failed (in the 1960s? Yeah. Right.) and needed their ideology to be furthered via a new channel. Or something.

The author also has a hard-on for Ayn Rand, which coming from a philosophy professor I find funny.

It's odd that Peterson is very specific in some parts of his discourse, but has such lackluster premises. If I wanted to convince the world that postmodernism was bad, I would point people to a more established work. It's not like criticisms of postmodernism are rare, no?