A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

[brainpanhandler]

I would say habit, as is unfortunately the source of a lot of our tendencies. It's also an extension of our families and therefore what is deeply familiar.

It also works as a survival strategy when resources are low or if there are external threats. Observing how my Romany Slovak** neighbour's culture has survived various levels of persecution reinforces this to me.

**Approx 20-30 families in my neighbourhood alone.

In no way is habit anything other than learned. Likewise a child with any genetic background will adopt and internalize the culture of it's family. Culture is entirely learned.

So it seems to me you are saying that tribalism is entirely learned.

Is there any aspect of tribalism that is not learned?

If tribalism is entirely learned doesn't that then imply that we can learn as a species to be non-tribalistic?

What would be an example of "micromanaging interpersonal stuff".

[jakell]

I would say habit, as is unfortunately the source of a lot of our tendencies. It's also an extension of our families and therefore what is deeply familiar.

It also works as a survival strategy when resources are low or if there are external threats. Observing how my Romany Slovak** neighbour's culture has survived various levels of persecution reinforces this to me.

**Approx 20-30 families in my neighbourhood alone.

In no way is habit anything other than learned. Likewise a child with any genetic background will adopt and internalize the culture of it's family. Culture is entirely learned.

So it seems to me you are saying that tribalism is entirely learned.

Is there any aspect of tribalism that is not learned?

If tribalism is entirely learned doesn't that then imply that we can learn as a species to be non-tribalistic?

What would be an example of "micromanaging interpersonal stuff".

I think the genetic and memetic aspects are intertwined here, and although they possibly can be disentangled it is difficult, and I would need a good motivation to do so. I think that habit (in the sense that I used it) and instinct can be regarded as roughly identical functionallly.

One aspect in which these tribal/familial traits can be regarded as genetic is in the fairly well recognised phenomenon of 'kin selection' which is observable in animals and can therefore be said to have a non-memetic root. It doesn't take much of a leap to project an element of this into human activity

This is something I can thank my white supremacist sparring partners for, because they were using it to make some racial point (I forget exactly what), which meant I had to do some pretty quick homework in order to refute this, Thankfully, as my background is in science I managed this fairly quickly,. The foundational material pointed to was this:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/

Quite heavy stuff, but as they knew it, I had to know it too and eventually managed to point out the fallacies they were using.
This is another example of getting to know your opponents, and I found my forte in this particular instance.

[American Dream]

"Racial, racist, and antiracist communities are social communities; they are spiritual communities as well, embodying both the political and the transcendent."

--Joy James, Shadowboxing

[seemslikeadream]

[American Dream]

THE SHOCK OF RECOGNITION:

Looking at Hamerquist's Fascism & Anti-Fascism

by J. Sakai

(an excerpt from Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement)
Confronting Fascism available from leftwingbooks.net




The Superman is a symbol, the exponent of this anguishing and tragic period of crisis that is traversing European consciousness while searching for new sources of pleasure, beauty, ideal. He testifies to our weakness, but at the same time represents the hope of our redemption. He is dusk and dawn. He is above all a hymn to life, to life lived with all the energies in a continuous tension towards something higher. (1)

Benito Mussolini


We weren't thinking about fascism while we watched two 757s full of people fly into the ex-World trade Center. And maybe we still weren't thinking of fascism when we heard about the first-ever successful attack on the Pentagon. But fascism was thinking about us.

Fascism is rapidly becoming a large political problem for anti-authoritarians, but perhaps moving up so close to pass us that it's in our blind spot. Fascism is too familiar to us, in one sense. We've heard so much about the Nazis, the Holocaust and World War II, it seems like we must already know about fascism. And Nazi-era fascism is like all around us still, ever-present because Western capitalism has never given fascism up. As many have noticed, eurofascism even crushed has had a pervasive presence not only in politics, armies and intelligence agencies, but in the arts, pop culture, in fashion and films, on sexuality. For years thousands of youth in America and Europe have been fighting out the question of fascism in bars and the music scene, as a persistent fascist element in the skinhead subculture has been squashed and driven out by anti-racist youth – but come back and spread like an oil slick in the subterranean watertable. It feels so familiar to us now even though we haven't actually understood it.

While the scholarly debates about "classic" 1920-30s eurofascism only increase – and journalists like Martin Lee in his best-selling book, The Beast Reawakens, have sounded the alarm about eurofascism's renewed popularity – existing radical theory on fascism is a dusty relic that's anything but radical. And it's euro-centric as hell. Some still say fascism is just extreme white racism. For years many have even argued that no one who wasn't white could even be a fascist. That it was a unique idea that only could lodge in the brains of one race! Others repeat the disastrous 1920s European belief that fascism was just "a tool of the ruling class", violent thugs in comic opera uniforms doing repression for their capitalist masters. Often, both views overlap, being held simultaneously. So we "know" fascism but really we don't know it yet. Once reclothed, not spouting old fascist European political philosophy (but the same program and the class politics in other cultural forms – such as cooked-up religious ideology), fascism walks right by us and we don't recognize it at first.

As fascism is becoming a global trend, it's surprising how little attention it has gotten in our revolutionary studies. Into this unusual vacuum steps Don Hamerquist's Fascism & Anti-Fascism. (2) This is an original theoretical paper that has in its background not only study but fighting fascists & racists on the streets.

In this discussion of Hamerquist's paper we underline three main points about fascism:

That it is arising not from simple poverty or economic depression, but from the spreading zone of today's protracted capitalist crisis beyond either reform or normal repression;

That as fascism is moving from margin to populist mainstream, it still has a defined class character as an "extraordinary" revolutionary movement of men from the lower middle classes and the declassed;

That the critical turning point now for fascism is not just in Europe. With the failure of State socialism and national liberation parties in the capitalist periphery, in the Third World, the far right including fascism is grasping at the leadership of mass anti-colonialism.

Fascism has shown that it can gather mass support. In many nations the far right, including fascism, has become a popular oppositional force to the new globalized imperialism. In many countries the far right has replaced the left as the main political opposition . It doesn't get more critical than this. This stands the old leftist notion about fascism on its head. It isn't just about some other country. Without a serious revolutionary analysis of fascism we can't understand, locate or combat it right here. And if you don't think that's a serious problem, you've got your back turned to what's incoming.

Continues at: http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/boo ... shock.html

[seemslikeadream]

The NSA has us all by the balls and he's still worried about some low life nazi's

Fascists, Fascists, Everywhere

[brainpanhandler]

I would say habit, as is unfortunately the source of a lot of our tendencies. It's also an extension of our families and therefore what is deeply familiar.

It also works as a survival strategy when resources are low or if there are external threats. Observing how my Romany Slovak** neighbour's culture has survived various levels of persecution reinforces this to me.

**Approx 20-30 families in my neighbourhood alone.

In no way is habit anything other than learned. Likewise a child with any genetic background will adopt and internalize the culture of it's family. Culture is entirely learned.

So it seems to me you are saying that tribalism is entirely learned.

Is there any aspect of tribalism that is not learned?

If tribalism is entirely learned doesn't that then imply that we can learn as a species to be non-tribalistic?

What would be an example of "micromanaging interpersonal stuff".

I think the genetic and memetic aspects are intertwined here, and although they possibly can be disentangled it is difficult, and I would need a good motivation to do so. I think that habit (in the sense that I used it) and instinct can be regarded as roughly identical functionallly.

I've never really seen the word habit used synonymously with instinct. Maybe that's a british thing. So you would say that instinct "is unfortunately the source of a lot of our tendencies"? I wouldn't.

One aspect in which these tribal/familial traits can be regarded as genetic is in the fairly well recognised phenomenon of 'kin selection' which is observable in animals and can therefore be said to have a non-memetic root. It doesn't take much of a leap to project an element of this into human activity

This is something I can thank my white supremacist sparring partners for, because they were using it to make some racial point (I forget exactly what), which meant I had to do some pretty quick homework in order to refute this,

Refute what?

The foundational material pointed to was this:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/

Quite heavy stuff, but as they knew it, I had to know it too and eventually managed to point out the fallacies they were using.
This is another example of getting to know your opponents, and I found my forte in this particular instance.

Perhaps you could pm me a link to the pages of the website where you had these interactions.

[jakell]

I would say habit, as is unfortunately the source of a lot of our tendencies. It's also an extension of our families and therefore what is deeply familiar.

It also works as a survival strategy when resources are low or if there are external threats. Observing how my Romany Slovak** neighbour's culture has survived various levels of persecution reinforces this to me.

**Approx 20-30 families in my neighbourhood alone.

In no way is habit anything other than learned. Likewise a child with any genetic background will adopt and internalize the culture of it's family. Culture is entirely learned.

So it seems to me you are saying that tribalism is entirely learned.

Is there any aspect of tribalism that is not learned?

If tribalism is entirely learned doesn't that then imply that we can learn as a species to be non-tribalistic?

What would be an example of "micromanaging interpersonal stuff".

I think the genetic and memetic aspects are intertwined here, and although they possibly can be disentangled it is difficult, and I would need a good motivation to do so. I think that habit (in the sense that I used it) and instinct can be regarded as roughly identical functionallly.

I've never really seen the word habit used synonymously with instinct. Maybe that's a british thing. So you would say that instinct "is unfortunately the source of a lot of our tendencies"? I wouldn't.

One aspect in which these tribal/familial traits can be regarded as genetic is in the fairly well recognised phenomenon of 'kin selection' which is observable in animals and can therefore be said to have a non-memetic root. It doesn't take much of a leap to project an element of this into human activity

This is something I can thank my white supremacist sparring partners for, because they were using it to make some racial point (I forget exactly what), which meant I had to do some pretty quick homework in order to refute this,

Refute what?

The foundational material pointed to was this:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/

Quite heavy stuff, but as they knew it, I had to know it too and eventually managed to point out the fallacies they were using.
This is another example of getting to know your opponents, and I found my forte in this particular instance.

Perhaps you could pm me a link to the pages of the website where you had these interactions.

Maybe it is a British thing, but I'm really using habit and instinct interchangeably here as in this context they are entangled in the way I described above

The refutation was of the white supremacist point that was they were attempting to make using biological altruism I've recalled a fair bit of it now, but would like to save this for a later date when I get properly back into WN refutations, it's fairly technical and needs taking seriously.
My actual thrust here in bringing up biological altruism was to illustrate a possible link between tribalism and genetics, which you asked about

I'll point to this thread if and when the BDF re-opens to lurkers and new members, it'll take a bit of finding on my part though as it was back in 2012. There was a doozy of a holocaust denial one too which I really want to recover (I wish I'd saved it before I left).


ETA: It's still closed, I've just checked. Linking to it should lay to rest these rather silly recent statements that it is a 'fascist' board. It is a general political board that is right -leaning.

[brainpanhandler]

I would say habit, as is unfortunately the source of a lot of our tendencies. It's also an extension of our families and therefore what is deeply familiar.

It also works as a survival strategy when resources are low or if there are external threats. Observing how my Romany Slovak** neighbour's culture has survived various levels of persecution reinforces this to me.

**Approx 20-30 families in my neighbourhood alone.

In no way is habit anything other than learned. Likewise a child with any genetic background will adopt and internalize the culture of it's family. Culture is entirely learned.

So it seems to me you are saying that tribalism is entirely learned.

Is there any aspect of tribalism that is not learned?

If tribalism is entirely learned doesn't that then imply that we can learn as a species to be non-tribalistic?

What would be an example of "micromanaging interpersonal stuff".

I think the genetic and memetic aspects are intertwined here, and although they possibly can be disentangled it is difficult, and I would need a good motivation to do so. I think that habit (in the sense that I used it) and instinct can be regarded as roughly identical functionallly.

I've never really seen the word habit used synonymously with instinct. Maybe that's a british thing. So you would say that instinct "is unfortunately the source of a lot of our tendencies"? I wouldn't.

One aspect in which these tribal/familial traits can be regarded as genetic is in the fairly well recognised phenomenon of 'kin selection' which is observable in animals and can therefore be said to have a non-memetic root. It doesn't take much of a leap to project an element of this into human activity

This is something I can thank my white supremacist sparring partners for, because they were using it to make some racial point (I forget exactly what), which meant I had to do some pretty quick homework in order to refute this,

Refute what?

The foundational material pointed to was this:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/

Quite heavy stuff, but as they knew it, I had to know it too and eventually managed to point out the fallacies they were using.
This is another example of getting to know your opponents, and I found my forte in this particular instance.

Perhaps you could pm me a link to the pages of the website where you had these interactions.

Maybe it is a British thing, but I'm really using habit and instinct interchangeably here as in this context they are entangled in the way I described above

The refutation was of the white supremacist point that was they were attempting to make using biological altruism I've recalled a fair bit of it now, but would like to save this for a later date when I get properly back into WN refutations, it's fairly technical and needs taking seriously.
My actual thrust here in bringing up biological altruism was to illustrate a possible link between tribalism and genetics, which you asked about

I'll point to this thread if and when the BDF re-opens to lurkers and new members, it'll take a bit of finding on my part though as it was back in 2012. There was a doozy of a holocaust denial one too which I really want to recover (I wish I'd saved it before I left).

So you were not refuting: "It doesn't take much of a leap to project an element of this into human activity"?

ETA: It's still closed, I've just checked. Linking to it should lay to rest these rather silly recent statements that it is a 'fascist' board. It is a general political board that is right -leaning.

I definitely agree the term fascist is misused and overused, but without seeing it I can't say for myself. I couldn't find it either. Do you know why it is closed?

[jakell]

Duplicate post... sorry.

[jakell]

I would say habit, as is unfortunately the source of a lot of our tendencies. It's also an extension of our families and therefore what is deeply familiar.

It also works as a survival strategy when resources are low or if there are external threats. Observing how my Romany Slovak** neighbour's culture has survived various levels of persecution reinforces this to me.

**Approx 20-30 families in my neighbourhood alone.

In no way is habit anything other than learned. Likewise a child with any genetic background will adopt and internalize the culture of it's family. Culture is entirely learned.

So it seems to me you are saying that tribalism is entirely learned.

Is there any aspect of tribalism that is not learned?

If tribalism is entirely learned doesn't that then imply that we can learn as a species to be non-tribalistic?

What would be an example of "micromanaging interpersonal stuff".

I think the genetic and memetic aspects are intertwined here, and although they possibly can be disentangled it is difficult, and I would need a good motivation to do so. I think that habit (in the sense that I used it) and instinct can be regarded as roughly identical functionallly.

I've never really seen the word habit used synonymously with instinct. Maybe that's a british thing. So you would say that instinct "is unfortunately the source of a lot of our tendencies"? I wouldn't.

One aspect in which these tribal/familial traits can be regarded as genetic is in the fairly well recognised phenomenon of 'kin selection' which is observable in animals and can therefore be said to have a non-memetic root. It doesn't take much of a leap to project an element of this into human activity

This is something I can thank my white supremacist sparring partners for, because they were using it to make some racial point (I forget exactly what), which meant I had to do some pretty quick homework in order to refute this,

Refute what?

The foundational material pointed to was this:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/

Quite heavy stuff, but as they knew it, I had to know it too and eventually managed to point out the fallacies they were using.
This is another example of getting to know your opponents, and I found my forte in this particular instance.

Perhaps you could pm me a link to the pages of the website where you had these interactions.

Maybe it is a British thing, but I'm really using habit and instinct interchangeably here as in this context they are entangled in the way I described above

The refutation was of the white supremacist point that was they were attempting to make using biological altruism I've recalled a fair bit of it now, but would like to save this for a later date when I get properly back into WN refutations, it's fairly technical and needs taking seriously.
My actual thrust here in bringing up biological altruism was to illustrate a possible link between tribalism and genetics, which you asked about

I'll point to this thread if and when the BDF re-opens to lurkers and new members, it'll take a bit of finding on my part though as it was back in 2012. There was a doozy of a holocaust denial one too which I really want to recover (I wish I'd saved it before I left).

So you were not refuting: "It doesn't take much of a leap to project an element of this into human activity"?

ETA: It's still closed, I've just checked. Linking to it should lay to rest these rather silly recent statements that it is a 'fascist' board. It is a general political board that is right -leaning.

I definitely agree the term fascist is misused and overused, but without seeing it I can't say for myself. I couldn't find it either. Do you know why it is closed?

No, that was my position....'it doesn't take much of a leap to project an element of this into human activity'

The BDF is still going, but is closed to outsiders from Autumn last year. Most of the board were puzzled why the owner did this, and it's membership must be falling. I suspect some legal issues.

I wanted to make a clean break as I was wasting a lot of time there in the end, some long term opponents had given up debate and were just spamming me constantly, a clever use of images with (vaguely apt) slogans mainly, never any typed in text, was the one I found hardest to deal with.
As some of you on here seem to feel, it's hard to let go, and there were some decent people on there. One day I sabotaged my password and that was it.

[American Dream]

ETA: It's still closed, I've just checked. Linking to it should lay to rest these rather silly recent statements that it is a 'fascist' board. It is a general political board that is right -leaning.

I definitely agree the term fascist is misused and overused, but without seeing it I can't say for myself. I couldn't find it either. Do you know why it is closed?

I should also clarify that it was jakell, when he really came on board here a couple of months ago who kept making references to his longstanding contacts with White Nationalists and conversations at the British Democracy Forum. The sponsor of the board, the UK Independence Party- while it is and has been a refuge for the more extreme racist/fascist/xenophobic/homophobic types- is striving for a broader appeal that makes it want to kick out and/or hide the most obvious goose stepping types.

Therefore jakell may have been hanging out on a particular subforum where certain extremists liked to congregate. Or something like that.

[brainpanhandler]

I should also clarify that it was jakell, when he really came on board here a couple of months ago who kept making references to his longstanding contacts with White Nationalists and conversations at the British Democracy Forum.

I don't think the insinuation folded into the phrase "longstanding contacts" is fair AD.

Jakell,

Are there any other forums i might visit and read your exchanges/participation?

[seemslikeadream]

I have a question

would jarell be here if it were not for AD's OPs?

[American Dream]

I should also clarify that it was jakell, when he really came on board here a couple of months ago who kept making references to his longstanding contacts with White Nationalists and conversations at the British Democracy Forum.

I don't think the insinuation folded into the phrase "longstanding contacts" is fair AD.

Point well taken and it is not my intention to be unfair- but it does get into the uncertainties about him, which have always been within his power to resolve.