Pocket

Hate to Say I Told You So - 2017 edition

Trump in the Whitehouse, Nazis on the Street: The Left Reaps what it Sowed.

Judging by the last few weeks of unrelenting screaming hysteria, it seems the left are beginning to grasp how much trouble they're in. The appalling scenes of neo-fascists marching in Charlottesville has woken the 'woke' from their echo chambers. The reaction, of course, is to attack *everyone*. For instance, The Guardian's Owen Jones launches an attack on 'centrists' here.

Anyone who hangs out on twitter has noticed recently that 'centrists' are the new Oceania that the left has always been at war with. In the last month or so, twitter memes about 'centrists' accusing such people of always adopting a 'middle position' no matter how ridiculous, suddenly began popping up. This is the new front if the campaign to alienate everyone, which has been so successful in relegating the left to glorious irrelevancy in the past few years. For those of us who predicted this day years ago, only to be shouted down and told to "Shut the fuck up" by the left, there's a certain satisfaction in seeing ourselves proved so decisively right.

The left has spent half a decade now shouting abuse at the majority of the electorate. The message from countless online outlets like The Huffington Post (who's South African division actually published an article suggesting white men should be deprived of the vote) has been "If you're white, we hate you, if you're male, we hate you, if you're working class, we hate you". Men are constantly derided, insulted and demonized in online feminist outlets. The issue of class is everywhere ignored by so-called leftists telling us that "white male is the lowest difficulty setting". And then, surprise surprise, the left loses elections.

Repeatedly over the last five years I found myself warning people "you're scaring the white electorate". The reply was always "what does it matter if we scare white people?" Well, here is your answer: Donald Trump in the Whitehouse, Nazis marching in America's streets, the American left completely rejected by the electorate. The only thing preventing this being a truly historic catastrophe is the incompetence of the Trump administration.

As someone who used to lean quite strongly left, (that being 'old left' not 'alt left'), I've been trying to speak to people on the left about where they're going for about six years now. I'm just a nobody with a website, so the range of people I get to speak to is pretty limited, and realistically I'm never going to change the world, but when one can see disaster looming, one feels that telling people about it is the right thing to do. Of course, as a friend pointed out to me, that just makes you the guy with the placard saying "Repent! The End is Nigh!" But worse than that, trying to get lefties to think politically, instead of ideologically, tends to get you abuse. Thus I and many others have learned to "shut the fuck up" and leave the sinking ship. Things are panning out as we foresaw, albeit much quicker, and we are likely past the point where they can be turned around. Thus the spectacle of what I fear is the final end of the left, has become more an occasion for popcorn than regret.

For me, the initial realization came in 2011 when I encountered the social-justice-troll "requires_hate". This was a person active in the science-fiction community and pushing the most disgusting ideology of racial and gender hate that I'd seen outside of actual Nazis (who I'd not really seen, as they weren't marching in the streets those days). But requires_hate claimed to be a leftist, and I assumed she was a 'false flag' operation by the right to discredit leftism. But when I turned to my fellow 'leftists' and said "See how this troll is misrepresenting you!" they answered "No she's not, that's exactly what we believe". And so began my descent into a kind of hell. You see anyone looking at requires_hate could see the coming age, fake news, manipulation of large numbers of people via ideology, increasing ethnic tension, and the decline of traditional 'leftist' ideas and parties. But try speaking to anyone about any of this. It was hopeless, and it was frightening. Requires Hate was a mistress of slander and online abuse, and the leftists of the sci-fi community loved her for it. These very same people would turn about and be outraged, outraged, when gamergate trolls used the exact same tactics they'd been applauding. Hypocrisy like this, backed up with forked-tongued 'social justice' theory has done untold damage to the left's image with much of the common people. Trying to speak to such people was hopeless, eventually, even after requires_hate had fallen from grace, I left the community. I was just experiencing too much conflict to stay there.

In 2015 I managed to pluck up some courage to try and speak about these issues again. The UK left had just lost the general election to David Cameron, despite all expectations that they would win. One of the major events of that election was a huge swing of support over to Nigel Farrage's UKIP party. This was, of course, an indication of what was coming, although longer term UKIP has proved to be an incompetent mess of a party (but these days aren't they all?). In a post of mine entitled "Rise of the Social Justice Warrior, Decline of the Left" I laid out what was coming, starting with the political influence of the internet:

"We now live in an age where an increasing number of people get their information through social media. Everyone I speak to refuses to admit this, in fact I've rarely seen anything that gets people livid quite as fast as pointing this out. "No!" they declare "People read papers! Here, let me check on my phone what the circulations of major papers are! Ah, I've found a facebook page with the figures on!" Even the papers and the TV news are now reporting events on twitter as though they were newsworthy themselves. Lots of people cannot accept this shift is happening, but it is."

A year later everyone had caught up with the idea of 'fake news', but still almost no-one grasps the idea that extremists on the internet claiming to be members of your movement undermines your political appeal. Indeed, said extremists can use the internet to drown you out and effectively become the voice of your movement. As I said in my 2015 blogpost:

The mainstream left is slowly being eaten away from within by an insurgency that, as with the right and UKIP, it fails to take seriously. Meantime, the people who aren't committed ideological wonks, AKA 'The Public' are leaving the left in ever greater numbers.

The insurgency I spoke of, of course, are the 'social justice warriors', the gentrified, middle-class left that talks of 'whiteness' and 'toxic masculinity' and which spends its days constantly attacking white people and men in the online media. When I first started trying to warn people about where this was taking us, they were still confined to cultural spaces like the science fiction community. If something had been done to distinguish them as a lunatic fringe, the current situation might have been avoided. But six years on they've become mainstream. Everyone I speak to now says "fucking social justice warriors", except of course on twitter, where the social justice warriors live. Again from my 2015 blogpost:

If you go around attacking people of one racial group, they will generally develop the same attitudes towards you. Of course, this anti-white racism is born out of centuries of white racism, but if you're an anti-racist, then you need to realize the nature of the cycle and stop it turning. 'Social Justice Warriors' are absolutely incapable of doing that, and are, in my opinion, a force that is actively radicalizing new white racists at every turn, who will go on to produce more anti-white racists, and so the cycle goes on.

But the left, what's left of it, still doesn't see how this ideological group is an albatross around its neck. In fact it always acts in such as way as to keep wearing the albatross. Therefore the left has no long-term future. And this is all its own fault. The left, always eager to suppress free speech, drives out those who see trouble on the horizon. Leftist communities are, in my direct experience, often prey to sociopath takeover because they suppress ideological diversity, effectively lowering their white-blood-cell count and so becoming vulnerable to social pathogens. This is not a policy for long term survival.

So things have now pretty much panned out as I foresaw. What were people on the left predicting, even as late as 2016? A massive win for Hilary Clinton. Well, okay, #NotAllLefties. There were a few voices like Michael Moore who foresaw the Trump victory. And I didn't think Trump would win myself, a major surprise for people who knew me and said, "But this is all the stuff you've been talking about!" Yes, it is, but I felt that we weren't *that* far gone yet, it was coming, but 2016 was too early, and the threat would be someone with more class than Trump.

But here we are, the American left was beaten in an election not by some evil mastermind, but by a man who daily demonstrates himself to be a moron. The left's only response to this disaster seems to be insistence that 'we won really'. No, if you'd won the election, Hilary would be in the Whitehouse. The American right fared no better, the GoP's best candidates no match a man who coats himself with orange facepaint. However, I must confess I am not that concerned with the wellbeing of the GoP, and they are doing far better than the Democrats. Let's review the worldwide situation of the modern left:

In America the left is now completely out of power. The right holds senate, congress, and presidency, leaving the American left as a powerless irrelevance in US politics. The only thing the US left have going for them, is Donald Trump, who is unquestionably their best weapon. In Britain, the left remains out of power even with a frankly incompetent Tory government as their opposition, and is reeling from Nigel Farage's great victory of Brexit. In France, birthplace of the left, the Socialist Party went from being the party in power, to collecting only 6% of the vote. Emmanuel Macron's brand-new centrist party, "En Marche" and Marine Le Pen's far right "Front Nationale" were the two parties vying for control of France. Similarly in Holland the center-right VVD got 20% of the vote, effectively winning the election, with Geert Wilder's far-right PPV coming in second with 13%, and the Christian Democratic Appeal coming in third with 12%. The CDA has some left-leaning policies, but I think its Christian roots will make it swing right on many issues. Parliaments across Europe are drifting rightwards. And it's not just America that has a Nazi problem. Far right movements like Jobbik and Golden Dawn are on the rise, in some cases even winning seats in Parliaments. Worldwide the trend is clear: the left is, as I predicted, in decline.

The left is even likely to lose its online dominance. A high number of US tech companies seem to lean leftwards, and leftist, particularly feminist, outlets have been very numerous online. However, a lot of said feminist outlets have done more harm than good to the left's image among the general populace. Coked-up on gender theory they've used every instance of a man misbehaving to blame all men, and have poured endless vitriol on those who object that '#NotAllMen'. Here too the tide is turning, and feminism's stock will decline rapidly unless there's a change of tack. Meanwhile, over at Google, James Damore's firing must have a lot of people wondering when their turn will come. By now the regular drumbeat of leftists calling for people to be fired for having a dissenting opinion has become familiar to most people. A lot of talent must be thinking of leaving to environments that offer more job security for those who 'think different'. The rise of the likes of Gab.ai and other platforms that reject leftist politics entirely will likely hoover up many disgruntled valley developers (although gab, from what I've seen of it, seems to be it's own nest of extremists). Meanwhile 'fake news' websites run on a shoestring from eastern Europe often with a rightist slant, along with Russia's increasing internet power (Russia these days is no friend of western leftists) surely point to a fading away of the left's online dominance.

But the left, though it is losing power most everywhere, behaves as though it had dictatorial influence. Seemingly not a day goes by without us hearing leftist calls for free speech to be curtailed, or for companies to sack certain employees. This is very strange behavior from people in such a weak position, as they are the very people who need 'free speech' protections. Those with power do not need free speech protection, they have something better, they have power. But I fear the left still believes it has great public support. Much of the left exhibits a strange view that certain demographic groups will unconditionally support them. First it was women, whom were expected to unanimously get behind Hilary Clinton. The shock of seeing women prefer either Bernie Sanders, or Donald Trump, to the designated feminist candidate was what drove the fury against white women in the leftist media after the election. Then it's "millennials" who are expected to carry the left to victory at some future date. But the Nazi rally in Charlottesville, where so many of the marchers were young men, has burst that bubble too. Yet still, the left does not think about how it should appeal to a wide range of people, but instead expects some savior group to recognize its authority. The current 'great left hope' lies in the demographic changes that will at some point make whites a minority in America. The left, of course, expects the new Hispanic majority to vote for them. However, Hispanics are highly religious, and will wind up voting more conservatively than the left foresees.

At least Trump will go. When Trump goes, the left will interpret this as an indication that they are close to a final victory, and will double-down on the ideology that got them where they are today. The victory will be short. Trump, Chalottesville Nazis, Brexit, Russian interference in western elections, etc, etc, are not causes but symptoms of western leftist weakness. If the left was strong Russian interference would not have been able to tip the balance in the 2016 election (there's little proof that it did, but lets say it did).

One prediction of mine that hasn't developed, and which we may have to yet look forwards to, is my suggestion that Islamists will start to convert more of the white working class to their ranks. The failure of this to materialize (yet) is possibly due to a degree of racism in the minds of Salafist and Wahabi clerics, or possibly due to the fact that they don't see how bad things are in the western world. Social justice types constantly bombard white men with the message that they're worthless and to blame for everything, and that if they're in the gutter it must be their fault, for they have all the privileges (another illustration of how the SJW left is essentially Tory in ideology). As young white men start to feel society is against them, so they will surely become a rich recruiting ground for an ideology that offers them dignity in the eyes of God, and a vision of a future where the feminist agenda is rolled back. Presumably there's rich pickings here for Christian extremists too, but radical Islam is the rising world force, not Christianity. And no, it's not going to be mainstream Islam, Christian or other religious groups who pick up the discontented. People who've been radicalized by maltreatment don't seek moderate identities, but extremist ones. Perhaps I'm wrong though, about the ability of radical Islam to appeal to western men, the prohibition against alcohol might be a deal breaker. We shall see.

There are some indications that reality is starting to sink in on the political left. This article from Vox magazine, for instance, carefully makes the argument that whites have been made to feel marginalized by globalization and the rhetoric of the left. However, the article continues to make the case that banning people from twitter or otherwise rolling back free speech is going to solve the problem. It won't, it will make it worse. But it's likely too late to turn the ship around now. It's not just right-wing whites that has been radicalized. Very many people have drunk the social-justice kool-aid by now. You will not stop them denouncing 'whiteness', telling whites they have no culture, using sexist language like 'mansplaining' or slogans like 'Kill all men', etc, etc. A generation has grown up thinking this is how you do politics, and what they've learned cannot be unlearned. It's all very well for Vox to make the case that we need a more nuanced discussion of race, but this isn't possible while the basis for that discussion is critical race theory and third wave feminism.

Where does this all leave us? Well, very bad times are ahead. It would take another blogpost to explore the state of things to come, but basically things are, sooner or later, going to start to roll back. The major target of attack will be feminism, which has been the source of most of the trouble that we've seen in the last ten years. Having gradually transformed from a movement for gender equality into an ideology that hates men, and particularly white men, feminism has placed itself in a very vulnerable position. Now, it will be objected that #NotAllFeminists, and that's true. But the more traditional feminists who don't sign up to the new agenda have lost the battle for control of the movement, and many of those leading the charge against the movement will not be people who care about such distinctions. The rise and rise of the western 'alt-right' combined with many male 'allies' walking away as they realize that 'alliance' is a one-way street, will start to tip the scales against the movement. The expectation that the support of women alone will be enough to hold the line will be undercut by the many women who sign up to religious or other traditionalist world-views. (Feminism is in deep denial about this issue, as can be seen in their constant claim that opposing forces are all 'bros', and the appalled fury from some feminist outlets when election results come in and they see how many women voted against their preferred candidate).

Things are even worse for feminism on the world stage, where even traditional 'positive' feminism has enemies who are rising in power. Much of the Islamic world has no time for western gender equality (and I think this extends a long way outside 'radical' groups) and as Islam gains more online presence the pushback will become stronger. The decline of the left is going to go hand-in-hand with the decline of western ideological influence worldwide. In the 20th century it was western theory and practices (democracy, civil rights, free markets, gender equality) that were broadcast into other nations. When western societies were riding high they were considered to be the standard to emulate. However the 21st century will see the opposite dynamic coming into play as the West's power and influence declines. Non-western ideas and principles will be broadcast into the west, and countries like Russia, China, and India will become the new models for emulation. Islam, though not a country, will become ever more of a world power, and will increasingly have media outlets broadcasting in western languages. Quite where India and China stand on issues of women's or LGBT rights is a little hard to judge, especially how it will move going forwards, however Russia is moving in a strongly traditionalist direction under the influence of the Orthodox church, and Islam, on average, is pretty hostile to these issues.

Thus feminism, unable to appeal to men, trapped in an ideological dead-end that drives people away, undermined by scientific studies of brain sex (which will be used to 'prove' all manner of things that they don't actually prove) and facing new and very powerful ideological opponents, will lose much ground in the 21st century. The future isn't female any more.

Furthermore the "humanity is all one family" ideology of the old left has been replaced by "identity politics" which encourages a vicious tribalist dynamic. The result is inevitably an ideological fracturing and the rise of nationalist, religious, racial and other tribalist identities. With the left no longer making its traditional case for unity, no one is making that case, and thus tribalism, xenophobia and factionalism are the future. Obviously this is not a recipe for peaceful co-existence.

Ironically then, the future is likely to more and more resemble the 'patriarchy' that the SJW left have always raged against. A gradual swing back to nationalist, religious and traditionalist world-views is, I think, inevitable now. Indeed, isn't this already happening? The left will rage against this, constantly calling people to fight, but it will be their very methods making it happen. This is why I consider these changes inevitable, the people trying to fight the fire have firehoses full of gasoline. But perhaps this has always been the secret agenda of the SJW left, for people who enjoy nothing quite so much as they enjoy outrage must surely desire ever more to be outraged about.