If You Don't Know Mao By Now

"Opposition and struggle between ideas of different kinds constantly occur within the Party; this is a reflection within the Party of contradictions between classes and between the new and the old in society. If there were no contradictions in the Party and no ideological struggles to resolve them, the Party's life would come to an end." ~ Mao Zedong, 1937.

"  "You are dictatorial." My dear sirs, you are right, that is just what we are. All the experience the Chinese people have accumulated through several decades teaches us to enforce the people's democratic dictatorship, that is to deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that rights." ~ Mao Zedong, 1949

It is relatively recently that I have been haemorrhaging confidence that the general public, likely including Chinese nationals, know the essentials about Mao Zedong, and probably to a lesser extent Joseph Stalin.

I read Jung Chang's 'Wild Swans' in the 90s, a book I suspect not many of my contemporary teenagers are likely to have picked up. Hollywood's depictions of the Communist Party of China kind of stop after 1997, a year that packed Seven Years In Tibet, Kundun and Red Corner. It could be entirely constrained by my availability heuristic, that films like 'The Last Emperor' and 'Farewell My Concubine' dry up after 1997, it could be a passive bi-product of the success of 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon' driving Hollywood audiences tastes and preferences towards China's mythical past rather than the history of its current one-party incarnation. Richard Gere, star of Red Corner offers some corroboration of my impression:

Testifying before the United States Senate Committee on Finance, Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness on "censorship as a non-tariff barrier" in 2020, Gere stated that economic interest compel studios to avoid social and political issues Hollywood once addressed, "Imagine Marty Scorsese's Kundun, about the life of the Dalai Lama, or my own film Red Corner, which is highly critical of the Chinese legal system. Imagine them being made today. It wouldn't happen."[18][19][20]

So, it's hard to know where to begin with Mao. His wikipedia page is probably decent enough, where I found the below quotation:

"Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say? ~ Chen Yun, a leading Communist Party official under Mao and Deng Xiaoping[269]

Thus it might be good to just recap some of his greatest hits:

1. The Cultural Revolution
2. The Great Leap Forward
3. Campaign to Suppress Counter-Revolutionaries
4. The Hundred Flowers Campaign and subsequent Anti-Rightist Campaign

If you just have a squizz at those, you can find a veritable rabbit hole of bad ideas with disastrous consequences. 

This post was in large part inspired by a statement by journalist Megan Day in this interview that caught my attention:

"...whether or not the burden of proof is on socialists to describe what a socialist future should look like...I feel like the burden of proof is often shifted on socialists to explain first of all to atone for the sins of societies that look extremely extremely different from the United States in 2018 and carried out very different forms of experiments than the ones people are even advocating and two why isn't the burden of proof on capitalists to explain why (hapless ideologues that is, not people who own capital, capital assets) ... to explain why this [capitalism] is the best humanity has to offer." ~ transcribed by me.

The whole discussion is actually a really great and interesting one. Burden of proof, with some hubris, I feel can be clarified easily - whoever is making a claim holds the burden of proof. Such that in the above example, if you are claiming a socialist future is the answer, I would say you absolutely need to define what that future looks like and defend it. If conversely if you are claiming that capitalism is the best humanity has to offer, you absolutely need to define and prove that claim.

Noah Smith poses great questions that expose the vagueries of socialism, with one problem being that both capitalism and socialism, in my experience tending to be poorly defined. Such that it is easy to point to Russia, China, Cambodia, Viet Nam, Venezuela  or whatever and define socialism as 'not that' the rhetorical trick of stalwart Communists of 'true Communism has never really been tried/Marx's vision has never really been implemented.' 

A rhetorical trick that is inevitably not valid for the converse side of whatever argument 'well the problems you identify with capitalism are because it isn't true capitalism/the markets aren't truly free.' Megan Day makes this point later in the discussion, that if market failures under capitalism don't disqualify capitalism, the failures of the USSR shouldn't disqualify socialism.

I would leave that discussion behind though, it's a good discussion but it isn't definitive. Because to equivocate the USSR or Maoist China with Socialism is to miss the point of knowing Mao. I'm not anti-socialist, my concern is with the totalitarianism. One can read for yourself on Mao's wikipedia, that this collaborative non-capitalist project contains the nuance and complexity of Mao and his legacy ~ there are comparisons to figures like Andrew Jackson that are interesting, and there is factoring the annexation of Manchukuo by the Japanese and horrors like the Nanjing Massacre that would fulfill Mark Twain's personal heuristic of sympathy:

“I am said to be a revolutionist in my sympathies, by birth, by breeding and by principle. I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.”

Which I suspect might capture the sentiments and sympathies of contemporary radicals and would be revolutionaries. The trouble is it's proneness to confirmation bias. Twain was remarking presumably mostly looking to the French Revolution, and probably being American, the American War of Independence. 

“When I finished Carlyle’s French Revolution in 1871, I was a Girondin [a moderate]; every time I have read it since, I have read it differently — being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and environment … and now I lay the book down once more, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte! And not a pale, characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat.”

From what I have read of Mark Twain on the subject, his increasing radicalism seems to be informed by an increased appreciation of how bad being a serf ruled by nobility and absolute monarchs is. Dismissing the 'Reign of Terror' as but a brief, acute reign of terror compared to the reign of terror that had lasted thousands of years ~ That of a Monarchy and Nobility reigning over the populace.

So much as the thing that is wrong with Hitler, is his conduct, much is the same with Maoism, what is wrong with Maoism is the conduct, particularly during the Cultural revolution, as most relevant to now.

Which is where I shall turn to the experience of pop star Camila Cabello, taken from wikipedia:

In December 2019, Tumblr posts Cabello reblogged between 2012 and 2013 surfaced on Twitter, containing racial slurs and derogatory language including the N-word, and mocking of Chris Brown assaulting Rihanna in 2009. Her Tumblr account was deactivated soon after and Cabello issued an apology stating she was "uneducated and ignorant" when younger, and that she was deeply embarrassed she ever used "horrible and hurtful" language. In her statement, she added that "those mistakes don't represent" her and that she "only [stands] and [has] ever stood for love and inclusivity".[129][130] In March 2021, Cabello said she reached out to the racial equity group National Compadres Network and partook in weekly racial healing sessions, where “you get corrected, you have homework, and you learn ... Now I know better so I can do better."[131]

She as of writing is currently 24 years old, meaning 8-9 years ago she was 15-16 years old. And this example is neither here nor there. We have camps though, and I probably fall into the camp of 'A teenage girl said a bunch of crude hurtful shit, a) has she stopped? yes. b) I don't care then. Recognition of time served.' versus an extreme fringe camp perhaps reflected in the following article (source number 130 cited above):

"Disappointingly, Cabello’s approach to the controversy reflects a greater trend. She is one of many of celebrities who, after being confronted with indisputable receipts, have “apologized” for past incidents of racism without actually holding themselves accountable."

And:

"The “sorry something I said offended you” approach to apologizing is a tried-and-true Hollywood PR tactic to place blame on the victims of language that is, at best, ignorant and at worst, hateful. Though Camila Cabello’s apology feels more heartfelt than these other examples (or, at least it is intended to be read that way), it is disheartening that it was forced out of her at the risk of jeopardizing her career. Ultimately, her refusal to explicitly label her actions as racism is just another, slightly more tactful way of saying “sorry, not sorry” and alleviating herself of responsibility."

So that article is published December 2019, and one can note above that it was only in March 2021 that Camila reported attending National Compadres Network's weekly racial healing sessions. Also keeping in mind, this is purely my inference but we can imagine a group that feels one can use past behavior (substantiated) to draw conclusions about present mind states (mind-reading) and that these should be disqualifying or require restitution - eg. Camila's continued career be contingent on participating in a program of education, 'racial healing' etc. 

Now that camp may wish for legal reforms, or there may be a sub-camp so confident in its conclusions that it is happy with a paralegal process. Also, again my inference from "it is disheartening that it was forced out of her at the risk of jeopardizing her career." that their may be a camp that also does not believe that such treatment be restricted to celebrities/public figures on the grounds that they are role models, but that a failing of society is that there are perhaps tens of thousands of women not held to account for shit they said when they were teenage girls, because they aren't large enough targets to hit with a public shaming campaign.

My presumption is that for the most part, members of such camps are ignorant of Mao's cultural revolution, (but also the suppress the counter-revolutionaries campaign early on in Mao's reign) and specifically the struggle sessions run by the Red Guards:

The process of struggle sessions served multiple purposes. First, it demonstrated to the masses that the party was determined to subdue any opposition (generally labeled “class enemies”), by violence if necessary. Second, potential rivals were crushed. Third, those who attacked the targeted foes became complicit in the violence and hence invested in the state. All three served to consolidate the party's control, which was deemed necessary because party members constituted a small minority of China's population.

Then I offer your consideration excerpts from Jung Chang's Wild Swans, who certainly has an axe to grind, but given what facts and information are available, I see no reason to discount her memoirs and not Eli Wiesel's:

But Mao's theory might just be the extension of his personality. He was, it seemed to me, really a restless fight promoter by nature, and good at it. He understood ugly human instincts such as envy and resentment, and knew how to mobilize them for his ends. He ruled by getting people to hate each other. In doing so, he got ordinary Chinese to carry out many of the tasks undertaken in other dictatorships by professional elites. Mao had managed to turn the people into the ultimate weapon of dictatorship.

That was why under him there was no real equivalent of the KGB in China. There was no need. In bringing out and nourishing the worst in people, Mao had created a moral wasteland and a land of hatred. But how much individual responsibility ordinary people should share, I could not decide.

And:

Once I read an article by a Westerner who came to China to see some old friends, university professors, who told him cheerfully how they had enjoyed being denounced and sent to the back end of beyond, and how much they had relished being reformed. The author concluded that Mao had indeed made the Chinese into 'new people' who would regard what was misery to a Westerner as pleasure.

I was aghast. Did he not know that repression was at its worst when there was no complaint? A hundred times more so when the victim actually presented a smiling face? Could he not see to what a pathetic condition these professors had been reduced, and what horror must have been involved to degrade them so? I did not realize that the acting that the Chinese were putting on was something to which Westerners were unaccustomed, and which they could not always decode.

 Now since it's been a while, let's hear from Mao:

As for members of the reactionary classes and individuals so long as they do not rebel, sabotage or create trouble after their political power has been overthrown, land and work will be given to them as well in order to allow them to live and remould themselves through labour into new people. If they are not willing to work, the people's state will compel them to work. Propaganda and educational work will be done among them too and will be done, moreover, with as much care and thoroughness as among the captured army officers in the past. ~ "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship" (1949)

How compassionate.

The people's state protects the people. Only when the people have such a state can they educate and remould themselves by democratic methods on a country-wide scale, with everyone taking part, and shake off the influence of domestic and foreign reactionaries...rid themselves of the bad habits and ideas acquired in the old society, not allow themselves to be led astray by the reactionaries, and continue to advance- to advance towards a socialist and communist society. ~ "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship" (1949)

Democracy is practiced within the ranks of the people, who enjoy the rights of freedom of speech, assembly, association and so on. The right to vote belongs only to the people, not to the reactionaries. The combination of these two aspects, democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, is the people's democratic dictatorship. ~ "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship" (1949)

Mao is an intellectual, his writings like Hitler's are translated from a language I don't understand, so I don't know if they lose a certain beauty, however, my own cultural prejudices are such that I do not regard Mandarin and German as particularly beautiful languages, easy on the ear and what not. Regardless, Mao's writings don't scream mediocrity like Hitler's do insofar as I have sampled them.

Where Hitler in my opinion asserts things baselessly and has a 'here's what I reckon' tone, Mao's writings are intellectual only in the sense that circular logic and undefined terms is more sophisticated than baseless assertions. A member of the Red Guard is less likely to spot the incoherence in their enthusiasm.

So just like it is important to be able to spot a Nazi without having a swastika armband give them away, same-same with disastrous Maoist policies and ideas without depending on portraits of Mao and little red books. 

In my own personal shorthand, one abstraction is 'the Freedom to Agree' where discourse is essentially dishonest, would be interlocutors have all the answers and dissent, pushback, even questions or criticisms aren't welcome and are perceived as threatening, violent acts. So that the Hundred Flowers campaign might manifest as calls to 'join a conversation', simple word substitutions like 'reactionary' for 'fragility' and 'advancement' for 'progress'.

It's at this point that I really lose interest in Communism, Fascism and whatever specific economic policies or structures take place, because it is totalitarianism I am concerned with. By Jung Chang's account, one of Mao's achievements is his ability to resemble Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia without an SS or KGB.

Left wing totalitarianism provides us with an uncomfortable fact that creating free societies is a lot harder than just being anti-fascist. Somewhere (the 29 minute mark) in the discussion between conservative thinker Douglas Murray and Jordan Peterson they discuss this very problem, of how there's a consensus as to what point right wing politics becomes a problem - racism - but where is the line for left wing politics ...it's much more ambiguous, but would be really good to define to avoid having to take a slippery slope approach to left wing reform.

And both these thinkers I personally characterize as advocates of a theory that the collapse of religiousity is to blame for so many of societies current woes. This for me is another point towards the power and necessity of abstraction rather than getting bogged down in particulars, because the Inquisition resembles Witch Trials resembles Show trials resembles Struggle Sessions resembles McCarthyism resembles Non-Crime Hate Incidents resembles Diversity Training. John McWhorter and Glenn Loury use a substitution test of 'Witch' for 'Racist' in critiquing Antiracism methods.

At the abstract level of totalitarianism there's principles you can see a left-wing workers movement like Chinese Communism and right-wing Nationalist movements like German National Socialism are virtually indistinguishable.

Really basic things like censorship, inability to take criticism, unwillingness to answer critics, purges, cognitive distortions like always being right, social harmony, an absence of due process, guilt by association, denouncements, 'for the good of the people', double standards, blaming etc. 

I feel the ignorance surrounding left-wing totalitarianism is probably a massive failing of our education. In my own speculation, for the right wing I have a notion of racism that would explain how common psychology allows it to spontaneously arise, thus you don't need a figure like Hitler to invent it and then an unbroken chain of meme-transmission for it to survive. I personally am confident we could eradicate all the racists in the world, and racism would crop up again in no time.

Just so, my notion as to why a) Mao's ideas could find traction with the students of the Red Guard and b) why people can spontaneously recreate Maoist like policy whether it be tearing down statues like Mao's 'Four Olds' needn't have germination in some Marxist trained Intellectual (though there seems to be evidence that this phenomena exists). It is simply ordinary psychology we are prone to, the dunning-kruger effect in combination with a desire for efficiency, or an absence of friction in the pursuit of our goals.

For an example of this ordinary human psychology, imagine you are going to take an international flight that departs at 8am. The Airline instructs you to allow 3 hours to clear security. Novel viruses aside, you know with certainty that you are not a suicide bomber or plane hijacker. You've packed your own bags. Why do you have to arrive at the Airport at 5am to go through an arduous, boring process to prove to strangers what you already know? Wouldn't it be better to arrive at 7am? Get that extra sleep without the multiple redundant questions, having to take shoes, jacket on and off, empty pockets, have things sent back through the X-ray and then be told to empty your bottle of water or drink it, or throw away your nail scissors, have a gunpowder swab and worse, get through security and immigration with 2 hours to spare, before your informed your flight is delayed...

I think the exact same psychology that finds the administrative bureaucracy of airports frustrating is the same that finds political opposition frustrating, combine that with a confidence that you actually know the solution to one of societies long intractable problems and faced with the dissonance that your views are actually just not popular enough and suddenly freedom becomes undesirable. Cognitive distortions like mind reading also are likely culprits as to why people might want to get rid of friction like 'due process' and 'presumption of innocence' in favor of just harassing someone to confess what you already know.

My own desire for an efficiency gain would be if the public were aware that Mao already tried a bunch of ideas that people or communities feel worth trying. I agree, it is perplexing that anyone alive looks at the Third Reich and says 'let's try that again' because it is reasonable to assume people have heard about it, are aware of its reputation etc. In this regard it's more understandable when people want to try Maoism again, because we can probably safely assume that even Chinese Nationals are not aware that Mao already tried that shit at the cost of lost decades, lost generations and somewhere north of 40 million lives.

The rest of the post is my speculating as to why people are not aware of Mao. Short possibilities are a) racism, Westerners generally feel somewhere between apathy and antipathy for the Chinese, so the crimes of Mao against his own people pale in comparison to the crimes of Hitler against the Jews, as do the crims of Imperial Japan against China, Korea, Phillipines etc. b) The Chinese Communist Party has not to date disavowed Mao's policies officially, his descendants represent some of China's richest business people and military generals and Document Number Nine specifically forbids 'historical nihilism'. 

Then we can get into China's 'soft power' or 'economic vasselization' in the aforementioned loss of appetite for producing books and movies that cannot be sold in China, or even professional sports where players might criticize China's human rights transgressions. 

I can remember, better than I can remember the year, 2006~07 or something discussing with a Canadian in a Hostel in Nurnberg, just what it was China brought to the global economic table. The flavor of the 2000s I would characterize as 'The Stonecutter Problem' Where China was posting double digit economic growth as it rapidly caught up to the Anglosphere in industrialization. The analogy fails though because countries, or at least, our countries' media showed less sense than Lenny, and were actually jealous of economic growth that was being achieved largely because of the leadership of Chairman Mao, leaving one of the Earth's largest markets sitting on it's hands for most of the 20th century going fucking nowhere if not backwards. My tentative conclusion was China provided a supply of cheap labor, a lack of environmental regulation and demand for... basically landfill. 

That though is modern China, not Maoist China, but it is relevant insofar as offering a potential explanation as to why people can get ideas already proved brutally stupid by Mao. Mao's portrait still hangs over the forbidden city, overlooking Tiananmen square where I had the unenviable honor of informing school buddies from mainland China about the massacre that went down there. I've also been face to face with the cognitive dissonance of Mainland Chinese friends' understanding of Taiwan's independence, which they believe to be part of China, you know, a part of your home country that you require a passport to visit and has a special separate Olympic team like Tasmania, Alaska or the Isle of Wight. Again, that massacre is post-Mao, but I cannot imagine an analogous experience for an Australian citizen. 

Sure, Australians might be ignorant of an Aboriginal genocide, or, as our questionably competent Prime Minister recently discovered, any history of slavery in Australia. With each new unveiling of an Australian historical atrocity, speaking only for myself; none of it is surprising, nor runs contrary to the characterization of Australia's colonial history I learned in school. It is a relatively easy and ongoing process to update my beliefs about Australia's history.

Then like with German National Socialism, education probably lets us down, and since China became Australias major export market, I suspect it has only gotten worse. My schooling had us read Animal Farm, by George Orwell, maybe in other years other students study1984 by George Orwell as a mandatory text, anyway we'd get a rough overview... an impression really that Communism is bad, but little more than an analogy of how Communism worked out in the 20th century. Furthermore Orwell seems focused more on the soviet model of Communism - Napoleon is Stalin, Snowball is Trotsky, Old Major is Marx-Lennin... 

We even watched the Disney animation of Animal farm which really dumbed things down and possibly betrays the authors intent. Then as far as I recall, our teacher shared some anecdotes about the heights of centrally planned economic stupidity, like quotas for nails that were by weight, so factories produced useless nails that were 5 feet long or glass panels that were a meter thick etc.

I feel education fails us on teaching Hitler and German National Socialism, because it isn't taught to the point where fascism becomes an abstractly recognizable philosophy. Feeling that way, it certainly fails on the Maoist and Stalinist front, perhaps the last part, because Communism/Socialism is taught mostly as economic theory which is non mandatory and also not my big problem with Mao and Stalin. (Yes they did starve unforgiveable numbers of people to death, that's economic and political mismanagement).

It's the totalitarianism. Monopoly powers. 

What was wrong with this years protestors storming Capital Hill? I would say most universally odious was that they see their opposition as illegitimate. What's wrong with the GOP campaign of voter suppression? I would say most universally odious is that they see their opposition as illegitimate. What's wrong with Hitler? same as above. What's wrong with Mao? Same as above. Stalin? As above.

Such is the power of abstraction, and how I would answer the 'falling off point' for both right and left of the political spectrum, even before right wing politics gets racist, I would draw a line where you get to the point of 'we cannot tolerate the other wing.'

The World Needs Less Activists

"The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution." ~ Hannah Arendt

Somewhat of a facetious framing, if we regard people taking to the streets and taking direct action as a symptom of societal failure, then it follows that the world needs less activists.

And I should probably define what I'm talking about when I describe an 'activist' which I would think of as a private citizen (as opposed to 'public servant, public officer') who campaigns to bring about political or social change.

Pretty close to the dictionary definition, just the dictionary says 'person' which could technically include someone who runs for public office.

In my mind, so this is my perception, opinion etc. I'd go further to say activism is akin in some ways to lobbying, if one is not a subset of the other, but lobbying where say a corporation or industry group finance professionals to lobby public servants for disproportionate representation. Activism is similar in terms of it's an attempt to get disproportionate representation - perhaps most charitably in modern contexts it may be seen as an attempt to rebalance to proportionate representation given the influence of lobbying.

But yes, if a small ethnic group of first generation Freedonians and sympathizers representing less than 1% of the population take to the streets of Canberra to protest the annexation of their homeland by neighbouring Sylvania hoping to solicit a change in Australian foreign policy; this is a population attempting to obtain an outsize effect, one that they couldn't obtain through an act like voting in a federal election.

And, I'm perfectly fine with this form of activism. There's a principle from John Stuart Mill's 'On Liberty' called 'the tyranny of the majority' because minorities - down to the individual need to be protected within a democracy. An example of activism that by my persuasion is justified is protesting the treatment of asylum seekers in Australia, where policies and successive elections of the Howard, Rudd, Gillard, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison Governments as well as the High Court of Australia has confirmed, by majority, the constitutionality of indefinite mandatory detention of non-citizens, it indicates that immigration policy is not unpopular enough to impact the electorate nor protected by the constitution. Bringing me to:

Because if we're going to resist our leaders we have to say, "On the basis of this set of facts, this is the state of affairs; it's intolerable; therefore we resist." If there are no facts we can't resist, it becomes impossible. ~ Timothy Snyder

So you need things to build a case for activism, and my chief problem with activism is that of quality control. 

Here is a premise that one may feel free to challenge - Someone can act against their own interests. 

Examples I might offer would be somebody talking to the police in a police interview, somebody gambling, somebody voting for a candidate who's policies if implemented would harm them, and advocates generating antipathy in their target audience.

There was much talk, by my recollection about Trump's election emboldening racists. I heard the most about this between the election victory and the Charlottesville protests so beginning of his term. It didn't click for me until the 2020 election time period, that it was equally true to say that the Trump presidency emboldened groups like Antifa and BLM. One plausable retort would be that Trump emboldened white supremacists and white nationalists while frightening groups like Antifa and BLM. I suspect that's neither here nor there because under the Obama/Biden administrations could then be said to embolden Antifa and BLM and frighten white supremacist and white nationalist groups. It's not like one becomes justified based on the present emotional state. How activists feel in fact, has no baring on their legitimacy. Bringing us back to "On the basis of this set of facts, this is the state of affairs; it's intolerable; therefore we resist."

Imagine if you will now, activism as a business model where your core performance measure is activity, which can be measured by membership numbers, event turnout and event frequency, stuff like that. I can envision much like the owner of a 100 year lease and mining license for coal reserves, equivalent behavior from activist organizations.

1. "On the basis of this set of facts..." if the facts don't agree with the organizational mission, be you a mining magnate, a white supremacists or a more noble activist group, these facts have to be attacked in the interest of the survival, growth and influence of the organization.

2. "...this is the state of affairs;.." I could have grouped this with the proceeding, but one could actually grab a set of facts, like facts about inequality, and provided that set of facts are limited to a present snapshot rather than a time series, an organization can use facts to manufacture a narrative that is not in fact, the state of affairs. It could also drive a process of reinterpretation - should another more universally pressing issue present itself eg. climate change, a global pandemic, an activist organisation with a specialised mission is incentivized to attach itself to that more pressing issue, ie. reinterpreting the state of affairs through the lens of the organizational mission.

3. "...it's intolerable;..." tolerability, I imagine, is particularly key for activist organizations, even ones such as climate change skepticism. I recall seeing this as an argument to 'vote' "no" in the marriage equality survey held by the Turnbull government in Australia in 2017 - that once the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual communities obtained the right to marry, they would lose motivation/solidarity to be activists for other issues. So in a business framework like 'SWOT' a threat to an activist organization's activity levels is actually the situation becoming tolerable, demands being met, progress being made etc. Demands being met would indicate the fulfillment of the activist mission, reason to pack up and go home. If the activist org measures success by growth, rather than growth as a path to eventual success (fulfillment of mission and conclusion); then you will see activists claiming a situation is getting worse rather than better.

4. "...therefore we resist." so say you live in a set of circumstances where factually speaking things are gradually improving at a fairly constant rate. We now enter a gamble where time will deliver everything we want, but it's possible that through political or social change we could a) reduce the time of delivery, b) increase the time of delivery c) lose the delivery and make everything worse.

 Here then, is where I have a major problem with activism's quality control. I'm not so sure activism isn't a business, and that it isn't big business, even though most activists participation is unpaid. Like a social media influencer, activists function as an assett base or market power for the organizers or figureheads. The number of followers becomes a currency.

An important difference though, is that if a bunch of people were to voluntarily send me $10, and I gained the influence in society that a rich person has, my influence would be secured by my physical possession of currency, not the people who sent it to me. Whereas an organization claiming to represent me - like a spokesperson for an activist organization has demonstrated one thing - that a person will turn up somewhere at sometime. 

There's a test that can be conducted, and in some cases I'm told, has been; where you walk up to someone at a protest or whatever and quiz them in order to ascertain their understanding of the issue they are protesting, even their understanding of the organization whose banner they march under.

I cannot imagine for example, a protest more easily dismissed, than the climate strike by primary school students, though I wholeheartedly agree with it. I can recall being a secondary student, and even a primary school student. I am subsequently, not inclined to believe students organize protests so much as are organized to protest. Or rather, in the case of students, the larger the turnout the less credulous I am that they are moved by conviction rather than esteem. There's also my impression that those most likely to be informed by the facts are likely to be the most reluctant to miss any more school than the strict minimum.

"Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people." ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

So let's get radical now, something that has become not just increasingly acceptable, but increasingly fashionable. Just to be clear, after sticking my tongue in my cheek, the aim of society has to be: 

to function. 

A revolution is an admission of failure, an extreme measure that has a very high risk of not being a remedy. My intuition, (something very unscientific) is that interpreting a revolution as a kind of reorginizing of society - the criteria to be met for a revolution is: things cannot get worse. So we aren't taking a risk, because it is all uphill if we lose the current system. We may as well experiment with new powers, take a gamble on this passionate man on a horse. Particularly in light of the disastrous history of revolutions. 

Contemplate in general how beyond repair a situation has to be to scrap everything and start from scratch. How bad does the sauce have to be to decide more salt or more water isn't the remedy, but tossing the pot and starting from scratch? The humble and modest project of reorganizing society entirely. 

The question that needs asking is 'how much of the society functions?' 

There is a clear difference between a demand like 'Move the 0-net emissions target from 2050 to 2030!' and 'Destroy Capitalism' one requires reform, the other requires revolution.

There is also massive disparities between how outsize the activist influence would be in the instance of success. Revolutionaries get their way over 100% of people, individuals cannot have a more outsize effect on politics and society. 

Soviet membership was initially freely elected, but many members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, anarchists, and other leftists created opposition to the Bolsheviks through the Soviets themselves. The elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly took place 25 November 1917. The Bolsheviks gained 25% of the vote. When it became clear that the Bolsheviks had little support outside of the industrialized areas of Saint Petersburg and Moscow, they simply barred non-Bolsheviks from membership in the Soviets. The Bolsheviks dissolved the Constituent Assembly in January 1918.

So I am not sure if I know the answer to the empirical question of how often it is the case, but revolutionaries strike me as implicitly or explicitly knowing what is best for everyone.

That 'knowledge' badly needs quality control. Particularly if you'll let anyone wander up on the day and march with you, hold a banner. 

For example, it may seem intuitive that if there is massive inequality with 1% accruing 80% of the wealth or something then the system is broken. I'd almost certainly agree, over the long term-inter-generational picture. 

However, it can be counterintuitive how outsize the effects of an initial small inequality can be. Behavioral Economist Dan Ariely in this google talk which I will summarize here. You have 101 women and 100 men and each receive $10, rule 1: if at the end of the game you have any money you get to keep it IF you are paired with a person of the opposite gender. rule 2: you can buy people, by offering some of your $10 to someone else's partner to ditch them and join you. rule 3: if someone buys you for $1, and then someone else buys you for $2, you have to return the $1 to the person who bought you in order to get the $2. 

The beginning conditions of the game 101 women command $1,010 and the men command $1,000. At the end of the game where all partner switching stops, the outcome mathematically is that the women's cash received will be $100 (with $10 returned by an uncoupled woman) and the men will have $1,900. This is all driven by one initially unpartnered individuals attempt to maximize their return under the rules of the game. The important thing to stress is that this is a game, much like the pirate game, the Monty Hall Problem, the prisoners dilemma etc. where often it has to be specified that the participants are 'rational' - I can easily imagine trying to practically demonstrate the above partner matching/buying game where either a) the initial unmatched person construes the situation as hopeless and gives up without buying a partner. or b) some dudes attempt to buy 'hotter' partners than their initial pairing, missing the point of the game (to make money) assuming at the end of the game they'll go on a date or something.

The point being, these games are controlled, isolated descriptions of real world phenomena, where resources are limited and we are faced with an uncomfortable paradox, articulated for me by Mark Blyth:

Whoever has the power to enforce property rights, has by definition the power to take your property away.

This I suspect is why, when the radical project of reorganizing an unfair uneven society into a more equal one the 'cure' has been worse than the disease.

Warfare cannot be the only institution that permits an individual to be wrong. When I say the world needs less activists, I could draw a distinction between those trying to redress political disenfranchisement - eg. we don't have the cash reserves of the industry group lobbyists, so we need to make noise and draw attention and sway public opinion. From those that entertain a radical mindset of 'well I'm not getting my way, I'm not popular enough, therefore we need to get rid of the system.' 

The latter group helps delegitimize the former. 

There's also the scary positive feedback loop, where to sway public opinion activists need to command attention. Activists aren't just competing against every other news story of the day, but against other causes for attention. There are to the limits of my learning and imagination, only two broad strategy groups: penetration (more/better) and differentiation (different), and if your cause can't attract more protestors, then you have to set yourself apart by being more creative (rare, hard to repeat), or more violent (increasingly common).

The positive feedback loop comes in because more violent protests justify stronger police presence and expanded police powers, which in turn seemingly justify more violent protests and so forth. The big cost is that I suspect, violent protests while successfully commanding more attention, also are more polarizing - they generate both more attention and antipathy - whether the violence is disproportionately on the filth's side or on the protestors side. 

Bringing us all the way back to competence. Looking to the example of some of recent history's best activists Women's Suffrage movements, Gandhi, and the Gandhi inspired Martin Luther King where a core aspect of their quality control was peaceful protest strategically important for maintaining a moral high ground and public sympathy, particularly I presume, when facing opposition that is claiming the moral high ground.

If a violent act, like punching or spitting on an officer of the law, destroying public or private property receives disproportionate attention to the proportion of total participants in the protest that commit that act - eg. someone throws a stone at a cop, so the media story goes from 'thousands marched in the streets protesting...' to 'a protest turned violent today as activists clashed with riot police...' then having the wrong activists show up to your protest is a failure by organizers to exert quality control. 

Something I intuit, as getting harder and harder in the modern era, where organizing a protests has become easier (set up a facebook event) and organizing activists (having a chain of command, commitment to non-violence) has become harder, this is the major area in which the world needs less activists.

A protest needs to be scrubbed of anyone who wants a nice human smokescreen to take the opportunity to punch cops. I would also argue, a protest ideally would be scrubbed of any participants who cannot intelligibly articulate the cause they are protesting. 

So I do mean the world needs less activists in an academic/philosophical sense, where actually addressing public dissatisfaction through real policy change and reform creates more tolerable situations. But also in a quite literal sense of less activists manufacturing intolerable situations in the pursuit of growth, and more competence... where any particular cause only demands so much activism, and often the supply is in excess. It is perhaps worth looking to the lobbying model, or often the most successful forms of activism which involve raising funds to pay for legal expertise. 

Champion warfare did not historically exist, but I would certainly believe that champion activism exists and is highly effective. Of course, selection of a champion may require the highest quality control of all, and if activists build the platform on which a champion stands, well then back to square fucking one I guess. 

 

On Follow Through Failure

This post is about a specific effect I have recently had named for me, much to my relief, as I'd noticed it happening on social media. The effect is 'Failure to Follow Up' and what I want to emphasize upfront is that in any of the examples below, I do not wish to commit the fallacy-fallacy. In this case, some examples deal with crimes where prior to the conclusion of an investigation narratives are asserted that satisfy some audience to explain the crime. A failure to follow up when the investigation is concluded by either the press or the demands of public interest, mean it is missed that some specific crime does not specifically support a widely held belief in some previously asserted narrative. This does not invalidate that that narrative doesn't hold in a general sense or other specific incidents. Disclaimer done.

I am of an age to remember the Columbine School Shooting Massacre, I would have been in year 10 at the time... in Australia, so being in a jurisdiction that had recently passed gun control laws back in 1996 following the Port Arthur Massacre, I mainly remember the issue that effected me as an adolescent high school student at the time - Videogames, Music and Movies.

A few years later, Michael Moore was riding high, young people like myself were learning about the republican party for the first time with George W Bush as president, and Moore's book 'Stupid White Men' was a bestseller, and his documentary 'Bowling for Columbine' released in 2002 won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. This was long after the news cycle attributing motive for the massacre to consumption of  Doom, Duke Nukem and Marilyn Manson had seen any daylight.

My impression, my confidence, I placed in my community (left-leaning-well-meaning Australians) was that this theory: that playing violent videogames, watching violent movies and listening to industrial music/metal was debunked and these discussions of motive served to distract from the questions of opportunity - largely access to fully-automatic guns, semi-automatic guns and handguns. 

So I was surprised to learn that this old dead horse gets trotted out contemporarily, the theory that violent video games inspire/motivate school shootings.

Fortunately, there exists an organization - The Heterodox Academy that is surprisingly unpopular as a Youtube Channel as at writing with views far below their reported membership, (though channel subscribers are above) and in a member spotlight video shared this presentation which taught me a few new and interesting concepts:

1. "Availability Cascade" which I can't describe better than wikipedia so won't try (I'll just add emphasis):

An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing cycle that explains the development of certain kinds of collective beliefs. A novel idea or insight, usually one that seems to explain a complex process in a simple or straightforward manner, gains rapid currency in the popular discourse by its very simplicity and by its apparent insightfulness. Its rising popularity triggers a chain reaction within the social network: individuals adopt the new insight because other people within the network have adopted it, and on its face it seems plausible. The reason for this increased use and popularity of the new idea involves both the availability of the previously obscure term or idea, and the need of individuals using the term or idea to appear to be current with the stated beliefs and ideas of others, regardless of whether they in fact fully believe in the idea that they are expressing.

Aka 'I'm not an expert but that makes sense to me'  

2. "The Follow Through Failure Effect" which I can't find a succinct link for because I lack the google-fu. Searching for it comes up with a bunch of links to business articles relating to following up on customer service etc. or personal motivation like 'I wanted to write a book but I didn't do it'.

So this is as near as I can gather (emphasis, I am conveying my impression/interpretation) the follow through failure effect.

It is largely an effect bouncing between the media who supply news stories and often speculate, and the general public who demand news stories and speculation. The character of demand for news media is novelty, and as such their is little demand to cover the follow up, so combining with the availability cascade, the general public might adopt a piece of speculative opinion as an established fact and this never gets revised.

I'll present some examples now, because I find them interesting.

The Gene-theory of Addiction

So this is pure hearsay on my part, but was presented as the earliest articulate description of this phenomen: basically that there's an 'alcoholism gene' which was published in an article way back in 1990 by Time Magazine. So I can see already the 'makes sense to me' aspect in that alcoholism appears to run in families, and certain populations. 

But as was articulated by Gabor Mate, and I'm not sure if the linked Time magazine article was the example he was referring to, when it turns out that in 1990 they didn't discover an alcoholism gene after all the correction is page 10 news, unlike the initial story that was page 1 news. 

In terms of damage done, the two most prevalent notions of addiction out in the public, again as described by Gabor Mate are the 'choice theory' (people choose to be addicted) and the 'gene theory' (people are genetically determined to be addicts) both of which let society itself off the hook.

The gene theory is what allows say, a nativist group to look at a devastated indigenous population with high frequencies of addiction problems and say 'well they just aren't genetically equipped to handle booze/horse/meth/crack.' rather than 'gee I wonder why these dispossessed, economically excluded, disenfranchised, alienated and dehumanized people would want to turn to chemistry for an escape from an oft depressing reality?'

interestingly (emphasis mine):

The alcohol dehydrogenase allele ADH1B*2 causes a more rapid metabolism of alcohol to acetaldehyde, and reduces risk for alcoholism;[74] it is most common in individuals from East Asia and the Middle East. The alcohol dehydrogenase allele ADH1B*3 also causes a more rapid metabolism of alcohol. The allele ADH1B*3 is only found in some individuals of African descent and certain Native American tribes. African Americans and Native Americans with this allele have a reduced risk of developing alcoholism.[74][90][91] Native Americans, however, have a significantly higher rate of alcoholism than average; risk factors such as cultural environmental effects e.g. trauma have been proposed to explain the higher rates.[92][93]

Violent Video Games and Sandy Hook

It's all in the afore-embedded presentation, and again, I don't think most in my circle actually believe that violent video games have any predictive power as to who will commit a violent crime. But many people I know have analogous beliefs, about the power of culture consumption to predict/address real world behavior. 

But some brief highlights are - The Sandyhook School Shooter's most played video game was 'Dance Dance Revolution' or alternately, by one account Super Mario Bros. Youth crime has been falling while video game consumption has been rising, globally there's no correlation between gun related crimes and consumption of video games etc. School shooters on average have much less interest in violent video games than the general population.

What's interesting is why this would even make intuitive sense to anyone. This is very much coming from my own perspective in my own thought experiment - which is if the police contacted me to try and predict and profile which of my friends played violent video games, so as to prevent a mass-killing. Of which my response would have to be '98% of my male friends I am confident, play violent videogames.' a causal link that is only slightly more helpful than sex, being a predictor of violent crime.

Egg Boy and Rule of Law

In the wake of the Christchurch NZ murders (where I believe the Australian perpetrator live streamed his crimes and commentated as though he were playing a videogame) some dickhead conservative politician made a tweet, and then some dickhead kid dubbed 'Eggboy' in the media cracked an egg on said dickhead politician's head while taking a selfie and the politician turned around and punched the kid before the kid was restrained by private citizens who also I believe punched and kicked the kid.

The police announced the completion of their investigation three weeks after the incident, saying that Anning would not be charged as his actions had been in self-defence, and that Connolly had received an official caution. However, a man who allegedly kicked Connolly several times while he was held down was charged with assault.[67]

Public sentiment, at least in my circle, was overwhelmingly in favor of Eggboy. Here it was revealed to me, just how little knowledge of the law almost everyone I know has (including Prime Minister Scott Morrison whom I do not know, but frankly that isn't surprising, he doesn't appear to know much), but there was no greater failure than the news media in covering this issue, to explain how lucky Eggboy probably was to get punched by an elected official who was within their rights to press assault charges.

The probable result of this lack of thorough analysis was the embarassment, charging and sentencing of Amber Holt keeping up the Aussie tradition of being a dickhead, whom attempted to egg Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and failed. Which, not being qualified or able to form an opinion on the relative lightness/harshness of her sentence for common assault, I can't actually tell how much the culpability of the media at large to not properly consult legal expert analysis of the initial Eggboy case. 

At anyrate, for me, it indicates the lack of follow up, where a white Australian Male lucks out of criminal charge and conviction, and subsequently can profit from his celebrity and a white Australian Female gets to cry in court as her sentence is read out.

The media, notably do cover these things, but again it's the page 1 speculation followed by page 10 facts some weeks or months later. This here is more the publics failing.

Murder of Eurydice and Sentencing of Eurydice's Killer

Due to it being contemporaneous with the death of somebody close to me, I remember the social media onslaught following Eurydice's death, and the rapid peaking and collapse of interest in the story.

When she was found dead, murdered, people wanted answers and people had them.

Her killer had already turned himself in, before the public determination of why it happened had even really gotten started. This was a popular view at the time (even if coming from an unpopular Prime Minister), taken from an article from The Age/Sydney Morning Herald I will link to momentarily:

The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, urged us to start at the beginning. “We start with the youngest men, little boys, our sons and grandsons, which makes sure that they respect their mothers and their sisters and all of the women in their lives,” he told Parliament.

Turnbull’s words struck at the core of an emotive debate. To stop other women from being killed, we didn’t need more CCTV cameras or police on the streets and we didn’t need women to take more steps to protect themselves when out at night – we needed to tackle the misogyny that lurks beneath so much violence against women.

 What I noticed was that while her killer was in police custody within 24 hours of the crime, the attention/interest and opining was at its highest when the general public knew the least. By the sentencing of her killer, there was I would guesstimate close to no interest, when we knew the most. Checking on google trends, this observation holds true with the September 2019 interest in Eurydice Dixon charting at 3, around the time media would have been covering the sentencing of her killer, as compared to 100 in the immediate aftermath of her murder. I'm not sure how to read google trends but it seems pretty safe to assume about 3% of people actually followed up on that case...

...at least among the general public, the previously quoted article offers me reassurance that we have institutions and professionals that invest the time and energy to follow a case through. In the interest of honest discourse, here is a write up post sentencing that asserts a hatred of women as the motive.

Mike Brown's Death and Investigation Outcome

Mike Brown's death in Ferguson, after he was shot by a Police Officer is salient with me, for more shameful reasons. At the time, I was perplexed as to why the Ferguson police department didn't throw the officer under the bus. Something like 'You had a bad day son, and you shot an unarmed man' vis-a-vis he just wasn't good at his job, so cut him loose and spare the riots.

I was wrong, but much like the case above, the interest peak was when we knew the least, and is relatively non-existent by the time the investigation is done. 

There is, in a rare example of contemporary theatre that is excellent and innovative a play available in its entirety on youtube called 'Ferguson Verbatim'

But if you don't feel like saddling up for a virtual trip to the theatre or would rather watch a true crime Netflix documentary tonight, here's a summary from Wikipedia:

A grand jury was called and given extensive evidence from Robert McCulloch, the St. Louis County Prosecutor. On November 24, 2014, McCulloch announced the St. Louis County grand jury had decided not to indict Wilson.[11] In March 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice reported the conclusion of its own investigation and cleared Wilson of civil rights violations in the shooting. It found forensic evidence supported Wilson's account, and that witnesses who corroborated the officer's account were credible. Witnesses who had incriminated him were found to be not credible, with some admitting they had not directly seen the events.[12][13] The U.S. Department of Justice concluded that Wilson shot Brown in self-defense.[14][15]

A new St. Louis prosecutor, Wesley Bell, spent five months in 2020 reviewing the case with an eye to charging Wilson with either manslaughter or murder. In July, Bell announced he would not charge Wilson with any crime.[16]

Mike Brown however comes with a Follow up+ though, there's a documentary called 'What Killed Michael Brown' that though I haven't seen, from interviews with the film makers and Coleman Hughes, leads me to understand the documentary covers the effects on Ferguson the town of the whole debacle following Michael Brown's death.

Libertarians, Anti-Lockdown camp and the Swedish Model

Last year during the most severe Melbourne Covid lockdown, I really noticed this failure to follow up in full effect, revealing many interlocutors and pundits to be dishonest and disingenuous. 

So many people wanting the economy opened up looked to Sweden. Betting Sweden's more free-market approach to Covid would vindicate them. Here's how that turned out:

The Swedish government's approach has received considerable criticism. Some Swedish scientists had called for stricter preventative measures throughout the pandemic,[8] and an independent commission (Coronakommissionen) found that Sweden failed to protect care home residents due to the overall spread of the virus in society.[9] In December 2020 both King Carl XVI Gustaf and Prime Minister Stefan Löfven admitted they felt that Sweden's COVID-19 strategy had been a failure due to the large number of deaths.[10]

Following agency advice, the government has passed legislation limiting freedom of assembly by temporarily banning gatherings of over 50 individuals, banning people from visiting nursing homes, and physically closing secondary schools and universities. Primary schools have remained open, in part to avoid healthcare workers staying home with their children.

The Public Health Agency issued recommendations to: if possible, work from home; avoid unnecessary travel within the country; engage in social distancing; and for people above 70 to stay at home, as much as possible. Those with even minimal symptoms that could be caused by COVID-19 are recommended to stay home. The karensdag, or initial day without paid sick-leave, has been removed by the government and the length of time one can stay home with pay without a doctor's note has been raised from 7 to 21 days.

The pandemic has put the Swedish healthcare system under severe strain, with tens of thousands of operations being postponed throughout the year, and only emergency and COVID-related care being available during a surge in the winter.

and:

As of 18 March 2021, there have been 744,272 confirmed cumulative cases and 13,262 deaths with confirmed COVID-19[3] in Sweden, with Stockholm County being the most affected (during first wave).[1][12] Sweden has several times the number of confirmed cases and deaths of all neighboring Scandinavian countries; but several other European countries have higher rates of confirmed cases and deaths per capita than Sweden. Close to half of those who died had been living at nursing homes,[13][14][15] a proportion which is similar to other European countries.[16]

And yet, those still advocating abandoning restrictions appear to simply abandon the Swedish argument. 

Atlanta Spa Shootings and Future Follow Up

Bringing us into the present day, or at least present week, where the latest mass shooting is being debated at least in the American press. Speculation is happening, truths are being asserted. Particularly revolving around the role race played in the motives of the Suspect. 

As of writing the early stages of the investigation have turned up mostly evidence that an internal struggle between sex and religiosity are the major motive. Less evidence, but not none, has turned up that the suspect harbors anti-Asian sentiments. 

There's a debate that I would personally evaluate as non-controversial that race plays a role through fetishization of Asian women, this could easily be substantiated through suspects browser history, and a public debate on depictions of Asian women in media is no doubt a constructive outcome that can follow from this. 

There's also a debate that appears to take on the character that race is the primary motivator and the 'personal struggle with sex addiction' is a smokescreen. I am less confident that this notion will be born out in a competent investigation, there is already evidence to support the sex-religiosity conflict that would needs must be excluded and evidence to be found. I am open to that evidence surfacing, but not confident it will. I suspect this narrative currently being asserted though, will fall victim to the failure to follow up effect, and that it may already be a product of an availability cascade.

So I will watch this space.

Tentative Conclusion I will no Doubt Follow Up Some Day

This post is more about the failure to follow up effect, I picked high profile examples where the initially asserted narrative was not supported by the facts found in the investigation. As at the beginning of this post, once again it does not mean the narrative doesn't hold anywhere else (except maybe in the findings regarding violent videogames).

The conclusion is really that I am persuaded this effect exists, specifically > 1. something happens that captures public interest > 2. The public demands an answer, explanation. > 3. A narrative is asserted without being substantiated. > 4. Members of the public are satisfied with 'makes sense to me.' > 5. The public loses all interest in confirming/disconfirming the narrative.

Add to that the availability cascade and because the narrative wasn't followed up to see if it was true the last time, the same narratives get a second airing, which if they prove generally unsubstantiated mean it jeopardizes the chances of getting a correct diagnosis and fixing the problem.

Either way, the Failure to Follow Up effect is probably a lesser concern than good old usual suspect: confirmation bias, and you know motivated reasoning. It may though be significant when thinking about media reform, and one of the more if not most significant domains I'm virtually certain it applies is in the extremely shady business of financial and economic forecasting. 

I feel it interesting.

On Why I Am Not A Libertarian

 I begin with the question: 

Is the 'Prisoners Dilemma' demonstrably descriptive of reality? (aka - do Prisoner's Dilemma's exist?)

The short answer is: Yes.

Hence regulation is required. I'm talking of course about the (only) form of libertarianism, that calls itself "libertarian" - the dominant form in the United States. Where should this be offending any libertarians that hold the definition:

Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism and voluntary association.

In which case I would expect virtually everyone to be libertarian, but I'd be inclined like Burger King; who surrendered its brand in the Australian market having built too much equity in 'Hungry Jacks' to surrender the traditional definition of libertarians to what it has come to mean in the US.

But either way, I should say that the existence of prisoner's dilemmas in real life situations is simply sufficient for me to not be de facto skeptical of government regulation or government as an institution, there are many other documented psychological phenomena and legal precedents that prevent me from signing on/having any enthusiasm for libertarianism:

Tragedy of the commons, The Dunning-Kruger effect, Confirmation bias, Misrepresentation, Economic Bubbles, Market Failures, Economic Rents, The Bystander Effect, Group Think, Natural Monopolies...

Such that, while acknowledging the replication crisis that is hitting the field of psychology particularly hard and calls for questioning of how strong something like 'the bystander effect' is, this list is non-exhaustive of documented phenomena that I would require satisfactory exclusion to entertain any suggestion that maximizing individual autonomy leads to maximizing wellbeing.

Lastly, the global pandemic, as of writing ongoing and beginning in 2020 provided an excellent opportunity to observe different political ideologies tackle the issue.

Broadly speaking, the right has answers to a pandemic - border closures, lockdowns, quarantines, expanded police powers etc.

The left also has answers to a pandemic - welfare state, public healthcare, free testing, expanding public debt, public spending.

Libertarians - ???

Though they are a political minority, I've looked and those ??? still stand. 

For Godwin's Sake Do I Even Have To Ask...

"Michael Moriarty was very good as that, um, Nazi. And as soon as I switched off the third episode, I, er, got on, er, got on the number eighteen and got up to Golders Green and I must of, must of slaughtered about eighteen thousand before I realised, you know, what I was doing. I thought, the fucking television has driven me to this." ~ Peter Cook, Derek and Clive Get the Horn 1979.

What was wrong with Hitler?

Was it A) the haircut, B) the moustache C) the Uniform D) the Country or E) His conduct?

Imagine a course called 'spot the fascist' that everyone had to take and pass to graduate. Alas, despite the teachers' best efforts to teach fascism in the abstract (so it can be spotted anywhere that it occurs) all the examples of fascism in the teaching materials come from German National Socialism. 

When the teacher hands out the test papers, it turns out that the assessment is easily hacked - the right answer always has a Nazi Swastika on their arm, the victims' a Star of David pinned to them... such that it turns out one doesn't need to understand what fascism is: the crucial policies, tactics and strategies, you just need to be able to recognize armbands.

Which isn't useless... unfortunately, there are still some people that look on the complete failure of the Third Reich, and say 'let's try that again' (this concern is dwarfed by the sheer volume of people who want to try Maoism again, this is literally another post).

But it's pretty close to useless. I don't know, but would bet that: if we systematically took note of every white boy in Australia that draws a swastika onto their pencil case or ruler or desk in school, and then longitudinally tracked these students sympathy to German National Socialism, I would be confident that regression analysis would find somewhere between no relationship to a 0.0001 predictive relationship to be drawn. 

I actually would most honestly have to say, I don't know what psychological journey someone has to go on before they spraypaint a swastika onto the wall of a synagogue, or onto the window of a Jewish owned business. And all of this is to concede, there is some value in being able to identify a fascist by recognizing a swastika. It is in my opinion though frighteningly, woefully inadequate. 

Contemporary to my writing, Gina Carano has been fired for demonstrating a lack of understanding in analogizing what I can only assume are 'Trump is the messiah' type QAnon republicans to Kews in Nazi Germany and occupied territories. This demonstrates her inability to identify what was bad about Hitler. Comparisons of that minority of Trump voters that participated in the bone-headed attempt to seize the capital is, if not Fascism or Nazism, certainly totalitarian, in that they viewed the democratic majority will as illegitimate and intolerable.

The answer, by the way, to the multiple choice question was 'E: Hitler's conduct' was what was bad about him. The conduct is where I feel 99% is so valuable to understand because it can be abstracted into the general, as opposed to the specific. 

One reason this might be missed, is because of the conjunction fallacy which people reliably get wrong here's the most basic 'Linda' example:

Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

Which is more probable?

Linda is a bank teller.

Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

So most people guess the second, even though mathematically it has to be less likely because it has more conditions. In the case of fascism, we may have an intuition where when asked 'which is more probable?'

A fascist regime rises in power and initiates a genocide. OR A white nationalist fascist regime rises in power and initiates a genocide.

And there's some evidence that this is the case, given my perceived general lack of concern over the credible allegations of China's treatment of the Uighur Muslim minority.

And I can appreciate how history itself makes it difficult, for example take the value statement:

What the German National Socialists did to the European Jews was wrong.

And then generated the following value statement:

If the European Jews did to the German National Socialists what the German National Socialists did to the European Jews, that would also be wrong.

The very notion is laughable that it could ever have happened. This is what in the abstract is fundamentally wrong about scapegoating, it is targeting as a threat, a person or population who is unable to defend themselves and subsequently, no real threat. More on this later.

The importance of understanding what was wrong about Hitler in the abstract is to generate a string of If statements (with 'Nazism' serving as an abbreviation of 'what Nazi Germany did to the Jews'):

If the Chinese Communist Party does Nazism to the Uighurs then that is wrong.

If the Russian Federation does Nazism to the Ukrainians then that is wrong.

If Sunni Muslims does Nazism to the Shia Muslims then that is wrong.

If Shia Muslims does Nazism to the Sunni Muslims then that is wrong.

If Australia does Nazism to New Zealand then that is wrong.

If Thailand does Nazism to Cambodia then that is wrong.

If Manchester United does Nazism to Manchester City then that is wrong.

etc. unfortunately, what appears from my experience to be the case is that what was wrong with Nazism, is poorly taught. The sum total of my recollection of any of my secondary instructors dealing with Hitler's book 'Mein Kampf' was a teacher saying it is one of the most boring and tedious books ever written. 

I was listening to Yale history professor Timothy Snyder talk about Putin's favorite Russian Fascist philosopher - Ivan Ilyin, Snyder does something that I think is actually a triumph of liberalism - he recommends people read Ivan Ilyin. At this point it occurred to me that I had never read a word of Mein Kampf, even again as a triumph of modernity and a triumph over Nazism, Mein Kampf has not been censored, deemed illegal, nor gone out of print, it has simply become relatively impotent.

So I didn't want to buy a copy of Mein Kampf, nor did I want to borrow a copy from a public library. In this regard psychologically for me, it is a hard book to read because I don't want to be affiliated with Mein Kampf, so I just looked it up on wikiquote, and what excerpts are there paint it as tedious and mediocre as the one teacher that described it said:

And so I believe to-day that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. In standing guard against the Jew I am defending the handiwork of the Lord.

Was there any shady undertaking, any form of foulness, especially in cultural life, in which at least one Jew did not participate? On putting the probing knife carefully to that kind of abscess one immediately discovered, like a maggot in a putrescent body, a little Jew who was often blinded by the sudden light.

For to call the trade-union movement in itself unpatriotic is nonsense and untrue to boot. Rather the contrary is true. If trade-union activity strives and succeeds in bettering the lot of a class which is one of the basic supports of the nation, its work is not only not anti-patriotic or seditious, but 'national' in the truest sense of the word. For in this way it helps to create the social premises without which a general national education is unthinkable. It wins the highest merit by eliminating social cankers, attacking intellectual as well as physical infections, and thus helping to contribute to the general health of the body politic. Consequently, the question of their necessity is really superfluous.

I mean, I've devoured the wikiquote pages of many thinkers, but even Hitler's most colorful antisemitism is not that interesting, and I know many of the quotes are lacking the full context, but what is revealed doesn't strike me on an intuitive level to be anywhere near the calibre of anyone I'd call 'intellectual' more it strikes me as the overconfident writings of someone who doesn't know how much he doesn't know.

The three quotes I've selected, I feel are representative of how un-amazing Mein Kampf is, at least translated into English. 

The first is somewhat satisfying, because Christians often claim German National Socialism was an Athiestic regime, and it seems Hitler felt himself elected by no lower a figure than God Himself.  

The second quote is interesting to me because it's an example of an empirical question posed as a rhetorical question, functioning as an assertion that we know what and who is to blame for all ills, this is prime juicy example of what Hitler did wrong that could be abstracted into a general principle ~ and indeed have: assertions aren't arguments, claims come with a burden of proof, burden of proof can't be shifted etc. it's just that these abstract principles are from what I have observed very difficult to actually efficiently transmit throughout a population.

The third I pick out, because I feel it stands a chance to demonstrate how little we might know about Hitler, to see him speak of worker unions as essential to accomplishing his vision of a strong Germany. Now this may be counterfactual to his treatment of labor unions, but I feel that I lack confidence that most people I know, would know that the Nazi's didn't refer to themselves as Nazi's, the Nazi party program was indeed socialist, just not socialism for all, but those of 'the race' 

I believe this to be a serious problem, for the only thing required for most of the population to not be able to identify a Nazi, is for them to take the armband off. 

When the Grievance Studies Affair sought to expose whatever it is they sought to expose, one paper accepted for publication (but not yet published when the hoax was exposed) was "Our Struggle Is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism" which utilized a simple word substitution into a translation of Mein Kampf's 12th chapter in this publication.

It should be concerning if an ideology committed to dismantling the patriarchy, cannot recognize the thought processes of the Fuhrer. I have some sympathy though, because up until a month ago I wouldn't know a single fucking thing Hitler ever said. That said, chapter 12 has some particularly spicy language like:

The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine.

Now the paper in question is behind a paywall so I'm not fit to judge how easy or hard it would be to detect fascist sentiments in a text. I have no idea of my own competence/incompetence, there's also I feel a reasonably good critique of the grievance studies affair in this slate article, that while not closing the door on the problems revealed, does somewhat rebalance the perspective, at least for me should you feel an overexuberance for it.

Personally, I would actually find more useful a level of abstraction of conduct in our education system not to the level of Fascism, but up further to the level of totalitarianism. For example, Mein Kampf is I'm told an 'autoethnography' which to my limited understanding is a style of writing where one takes their personal lived experience and generalizes that out to draw broad conclusions. (The hint is in the title 'My Struggle', as it was for the peer reviewing journal of 'Our struggle is my struggle') so we could abstract out a principle that autoethnographies are a terrible and unsound way to generate knowledge. (Please note, my blog is largely autoethnography, though I try at least for the past ten years to clearly mark where I am presenting an opinion, rather than asserting opinion as fact.)

In my secondary school one of the compulsory texts my year had to study was 'Night' a memoir by Eli Wiesel, which is when I learned about the Holocaust and forms half of the arguments that convinced me not to seek out news media as a waste of time, (the other half being the writings of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, most succinctly in 'The Bed of Procrustes' about 12 years later). Learning the horrors of the Holocaust was immensely valuable, but I wonder how different my own culture would be if at some point during the compulsory schooling years, it was mandatory for a qualified history teacher to take us through the 25 point National Socialist Program and dissect just what was wrong with it. Likewise Stalin's 5 year plans, (not just 'Animal Farm') and Mao's Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution and whatever other dumb ideas are in Mao's little red book.

An exception has to be noted here however, which is: if you are analyzing it through the perspective of 'Identity Politics' the answer to that initial multiple choice may well be 'D - the country' or some variation in terms of the problem with Hitler was because of his skin colour. Now I don't think any practicioner of identity politics would ever consciously choose those terms, I find the term ;Identity Politics' itself ambiguous, and likely suffering a Motte & Bailey type effect where the academic literature proposes one version of Identity Politics in theory:

Identity politics is an approach to politics by which people of a particular religion, race, social background, class or other identifying factor organize themselves politically based on the systems of oppression that they believe apply to them because of these identities.

Identity politics centers the lived experiences of those facing various systems of oppression to better understand the ways in which racial, economic, sex-based, gender-based, and other forms of oppression are linked and to ensure that political agendas and political actions arising out of identity politics leave no one behind.[1][2][3] Those who criticize identity politics from the right see it as inherently Collectivist and prejudicial, in contradiction to the ideals of Classical liberalism.[4] Those who criticize identity politics from the left see it as a version of bourgeois nationalism, i.e. as a divide and conquer strategy by the ruling classes to divide people by nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, etc. so as to distract the working class from uniting for the purpose of class struggle.

...Versus in practice, for which I would employ my own autoethnography and describe it as: An intellectual tradition in which Ad Hominem is no longer a fallacy, and to a lesser extent accepts Slippery Slope fallacies and Affirming the Consequent fallacies.

Ad hominem arguments are one of those things that we had abstracted out from history as no good, but it is a highly popular intuition that the validity of an argument has something to do with who is arguing it. It is the foundational intuition behind double standards, and identity politics as practiced by laypeople is filled with double standards.

Probably the most obtuse example of double standards is that people of color cannot be racist, as racism is defined as 'prejudice + power' and not simply 'prejudice', a definition I could get on board with if I knew how 'power' is defined, because as per the standard definition of power 'the ability to act or do' which few people lack absolutely...but again autoethnographically speaking, it appears a more circular definition - eg. power is something white people have and others don't, which could be restated as: 'racism = power + whiteness' 

But there are other concepts like 'mansplaining' etc. that have legitimate definitions (a lay person lecturing an expert on their area of expertise eg. typically a man explaining to a woman the female experience), but practices that amount to double standards (a man explaining anything, even their area of expertise to a layperson).

So Identity politics near as I can tell, is a prism by which conduct is acceptable or not depending on who is carrying it out, rather than conduct itself. It also near as I can tell generally only operates on a macro scale, therefore scale or scope cannot be adjusted to analyze localized cases where the makeup of majority-minorities or power dynamics might switch.

Earlier I offered a definition of scapegoating where an inability to defend oneself was intrinsic to the notion of scapegoating, something akin to scapegoating = blame + powerlessness, which is certainly bad. As such, using that definition I could argue that blame directed at say wealthy enfranchised white people does not constitute scapegoating, and is therefore not bad.

In this regard I am not particularly concerned about either Neo-Nazis, (they exist, they are bad, and I do understand Jewish individuals particular vigilance on the matter) nor Identity Politics in the domain of its capacity to succeed at changing the world (at least say, having the kind of impactful change as significant as the iPhone had) I feel it is inherently terminal and incoherent. My concern is more that identity politics is costly and counterproductive to its stated aims, it uses up oxygen better spent on more pressing concerns like wealth inequality and climate change.

'Mein Kampf' is not censored, you can purchase it on Amazon where Hitler's literary efforts now generate proceeds for Jewish Charities and organizations, but there is a kind of self-censorship of Mein Kampf. In my marketing degree, a lecturer had a slide that was just a massive Nazi swastika, it was an example of a non-consumer product brand that achieved world-wide recognition, but anyone walking past and glancing through the window into the lecture hall at that moment could be forgiven their concerns - a point made with amusement to me by my Jewish friend and classmate. I suspect given the current climate; if that faculty member still teachers, they no longer use that example, or at least have toned down the drama of its presentation. I also suspect few teachers feel comfortable actually teaching any of the content of Nazism, because of how easily it could be misconstrued as teaching Nazism bringing us all the way back to Peter Cook's ridiculing of the idea that mere exposure to bad ideas will result in bad action.

The Amazon blurb for Mein Kampf I feel puts it beautifully:

“In the pages of Mein Kampf Hitler presented the world with his dark vision for the future. Years would pass before he attained the power to realize that vision, but Mein Kampf’s existence denies the free world the excuse of ignorance." ~ Abraham Foxman.

I can only speak for myself, that my education, a private one that boasts impressive academic results (not necessarily mine) did afford me the excuse of ignorance because well, nobody understandably wants to read Mein Kampf, nor associate in anyway with Hitler. Here then, a potential example of 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,' manifesting in the degree to which individuals might share Hitler's intuitions of (bad) reasoning to formulate their own impression of their own localized and particular 'struggle'.

Having said that, I have no intention of reading any more of Mein Kampf, I don't think Hitler is a historical person that suffers from informed attribute where someone might be shocked at how mediocre his writings are. I feel it is probably enough to look up 'totalitarianism' on wikipedia, and 'authoritarianism' and if you get the basic concept that problems begin when you become intolerant of dissenting voices, I feel that has been sufficiently abstract to have me avoid signing up to bad ideologies. 

I actually feel the odds of anyone seriously trying Nazism again to be quite low, and I may be in a process of being humbled by that presumption, based on the number of right wing populists in Europe and South America. It's curious to me though how little detail about the Nazis I actually know, yet somehow know the basics enough of liberalism to both A) avoid conducting myself like a fascist and B) avoid comparing interlocutors to Hitler/Nazis (knowing Godwin's Law helps with this). I have read John Stuart Mill's 'On Liberty' but can literally recall almost none of it, except the part where he speculates that Marcus Aurelius could have wiped out Christianity if he so chose which has little enough to do with liberty, yet I know the basic take-aways, such that maybe informing yourself of 'On Liberty's' thesis is sufficient to avoid being a totalitarian/authoritarian/useful-idiot.

The evidence of my life and times, in my sphere of experience - Elie Wiesel's 'Night' isn't enough, and furthermore looking to the Uighurs. evidently may be too specific for people to identify with non-Europeans. It may be to an extent counterproductive, as I suspect but have not, and will not prove the empirical question - that a significant number of people would say the Allies fought and defeated Hitler because of the evils of the Holocaust, rather than established imperial powers resisting (or in the Commonwealth's case - called to resist) an encroaching new imperial power. All that tangentially supports my speculation, is the popular sympathy with Antifa whom fundamentally don't appear to understand how or why fascism takes off, nor history, given their complete failure to stop Nazism.

Speaking for myself, I found Crash Course world history's episode on WWII informative, and I'm currently halfway to the halfway point of Timothy Snyder's 'Bloodlands' which is explaining the central role the Ukraine played in both the killings of the Stalin and Hitler regimes (point 3 of the 25 point National Socialist Program: "We demand land and territory (colonies) for the sustenance of our people and colonization for our superfluous population.") such that, I am working on my ignorance of what actually happened.

I like Mark Blyth's prime-mover point too, in addressing the West's current preoccupation with rising white supremacy; which I shall attempt to paraphrase: 'you can't explain an increase in racists with an increase in racism' that strikes me as circular, there has to be environmental factors driving an uptick in sympathy for a long latent/widely condemned idea. 

struggling to conclude this post feeling if anything by now I have belabored the point, let me maybe set some homework because most people don't have to worry about becoming Hitler. A vanishingly small proportion of the population face any risk of rising to power of a totalitarian regime nor inspiring another citizen to 'slaughter about eighteen thousand' of anybody, one might be more concerned for their resemblance to an ordinary German citizen during the Third Reich. It concerns me, and I too have not read 'Eichmann In Juerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil' controversial as it may be  assuming Evil is banal strikes me as the conservative risk management policy.

Let's maybe just end with some levity from cracked.com: