My view is that those media that offered those "news clips" -- you are referring to Charlottesville -- are in our present time a *culprit* involved in distorting perceptions. There is (in America) a long history of strong criticism of the media machine and the way news is spun and people's views influenced. Most of that criticism was developed by the Left and, having read a good deal of it, it is entirely valid. Modern criticism of media systems, again in America, could be said to have begun during the Spanish-American War and the Philippine War. Notable among the critics of the imperialistic shift in US policy was Mark Twain who wrote "To the Person Sitting in Darkness".Gary Childress wrote: ↑Thu Aug 17, 2023 3:48 amSo far I've seen IC ask me "where are the Neo-Nazis" when I asked him what we ought to call someone who attends a rally waving the flag of a regime that is probably most infamous for exterminating human beings deemed 'undesirable' in order to "solve" societal "problems". I told him I saw news clips of people at conservative rallies waving those flags. He says it's just some sort of show of "edginess". Apparently, people marching in "pride" parades aren't displaying "edginess". No, unlike "edgy" people they're just not tolerable. They're going to bring about the fall of decent society (or whatever).
So the first order of business, for one inclined to gain a position of genuine understanding and therefore about what is *true*, is to recognize and understand that mass media systems are generally corrupt. Now, until very recently it had been the position of the critical Left to take an openly suspicious view of the news system. But how strange and unlikely it is to notice that the critical position has shifted to a significant degree. As one example it is people like Tucker Carlson who are examining their own political biases and their former beliefs and understanding of things and discovering that things are actually different. I have two examples. One is a short expose on the "vulture capitalism" of Paul Singer and the other is a recent interview with Robert Kennedy. What can one say about the content and the focus? It is not possible to call it either classically Conservative but neither could you label it Left Wing. It involves deeply critical positions that, in my own view, are impossible to assign in strictly binary terms.
However, my point is that the legacy media, and the general narrative that is put forth, requires a non-informed citizen to receive the content of the messages, and for my purposes here I would suggest that you are an example of that citizen.
The reason I say this is because I devoted months to examining the events of Charlottesville and I learned that what actually happened there is extremely different from what Media Systems said happened there. Let me say this so that my own orientation is more clear: in order to understand Charlottesville, and what is going on in American society and politics, and by extension in Europe (and Canada and the English speaking countries) one has to take off the lenses of pre-established binary political vision. So and for example if you desire to see all those who came to Charlottesville as *evil* and as *neo-Nazis*, and if you want to see those who came out to oppose them and battle with them as *the good* and also the *righteous*, you will, right there, make a serious mistake. And the mistake will inhibit you from seeing clearly and understanding what is actually going on, and also why.
Though I cannot verify it, and no one can, I think there was one swastika flag that appeared at the Charlottesville event and many on the Right speculated that it was planted there. However whther or not that flag did appear there authentically or was planted does not change the fact that there are currents swirling in America, in Europe, in Canada, Australia and NZ (and other places I gather) that one could label anti-Liberal. When the Progressive Left, the Left and the Radical Left perceive any trend in thought which deviates from its own ideological commitments, they always use the term fascistic, Nazi and Neo-Nazi. It has also been noted that although radical Left thinkers are allowed into the university institutions and students are routinely exposed to that side of the ideological spectrum, that the opposing side, or the countervailing side, is excluded.
If you or anyone reading is actually interested in this issue see this interview with Michael Millerman.
Trust me, I do not deny nor sugarcoat the rise of or the return of anti-Liberal ideas. But what I do say is that if one is genuinely interested in understanding what is going on today one must, as a starting point, remove the fetters that keep one looking only superficially or binarily at the events as well as the people who are described (basically, reductively) as emissaries of Adolf Hitler. So I would suggest also being aware of the work of people such as Ronald Beiner and his book Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right.
In a sense -- that is, if you were to ask me -- I would say that you get many things wrong but not because you are getting them completely wrong but because you rely on partial pictures. Binary pictures. Pre-established view-points. You are a very lazy intellectual. So it has seemed to me that when you bust out with some *general interpretation* it is always slanted by ideas and views that have been provided to you -- for example in *news clips*.If I've got that wrong, then I will be happy to hear the clarification of the admitted interpretations I have given the phenomenon of the sinister forces driving homosexuality and sexual impropriety that perhaps aren't present in those waving the flags of regimes that seem to have given life to genocidal policies and events.
So here are a few conclusive statements. I put them out there so they can be examined and potentially discussed. Those who seem to be on the Critical Left like Flash Danger Pants and McThinks (two examples) can only see things through a lens that is binary and skewed. They can only see critical postures of their own ideological commitments as being Nazi-esque. There is no nuance in their positions. In the end (this is my opinion) their binary positions, their binary orientations, turn against them and they wind up advocating for elimination of any ideas, and the people who hold them, from participation in the conversational sphere. I think it was Sculptor who said that anyone who voiced a view that he regarded as *racist* should be immediately banned from PN. Think about what that means in the context of cancellation, calumny, and cultural war.
To sum up: I have read what IC writes for a long time and I do not see him even remotely friendly to those who read, for example, Nietzsche or Heidegger or who are at all involved in or attracted to Dissident Right political ideas or to anti-Liberal ideas. Any such accusation is completely unfair. He advocates often for the general position held by James Lindsay and, by way of comparison, Lindsay is advocating strictly for classical American Liberalism. And that is far more likely to be IC's basic orientation.
They do not speak the truth...especially any truth that undermines their agenda or prevents them from dismissing all critics outright. Theirs is an entirely ideologically-possessed mission, one that relativizes all values to its belief system.
