15 ms·

Do supporters of this philosophy still self-identify as conservatives? Such radical futurist visions seem directly opposite to core conservative values.

• t43562 2y ago
  What is futurist about an oligarchy...or a monarchy? Surely it's essentially what China is now. We want that?
• borgdefenser 2y ago
  I have watched a lot of Curtis Yarvin interviews. He is so well read that what he is saying doesn't work in a blog summary like this. I think he also says things exactly so people write blogs like this to make him sound extra controversial for marketing purposes. If he just said what he really believes, that the US needs a president like FDR, it would get no traction. Implying democracy is dead while really meaning Athenian democracy that we don't have and that the US needs a monarch when really talking about FDR/Hoover/Coolidge is a professional writer basically marketing themselves so other writers like this run with it and do marketing for him. I get the feeling he is doing a type of "dangerous idea" performance art because it is really hard to be a professional blogger. Almost the way the Ice-T band Body Count went from obviously stirring up controversy for the song Cop Killer for marketing purposes to Ice-T playing a cop on Law and Order. Conservative at this point has as much to do with conservation as Liberal has to do with laissez-faire economics.
  • exe34 2y ago
    this appeal to 5D chess falls on its face when you watch what they do. they do things that cause harm and don't care. you don't become a billionaire by caring about other people. empathy doesn't just snap on when your net worth hits one billion.
  • jordanb 2y ago
    > the US needs a president like FDR Conservatives like to argue that FDR was a dictator. And then argue that they want a "conservative dictator like FDR." In fact, FDR was a democratic leader with a massive and overwhelming popular mandate. His mandate came because people could see that he was overturning the Gilded Age power structure and creating a system that made people's lives better.
    • varelse 2y ago
      [dead]
    • PKop 2y ago
      You're just justifying why his dictatorship-lite was ok, which is fine. But how does any of the 2nd paragraph counter right wing calls for their own?
      • rainsford 2y ago
        I'm not a fan of the strongman approach no matter which party is doing it, but I think the argument is that conservatives want the power of an FDR-like figure absent any of the actual factors that contributed to the real FDR having that power. FDR was faced with two of the greatest challenges to face the US, the great depression and WWII, and he had overwhelming support from the voters in how he was addressing those challenges as reaffirmed in 4 elections in a row. In my opinion that still doesn't justify FDR's extraordinary take on presidential power, and the passage of the 22nd amendment among other things seems to suggest mine was not an isolated view, but it's hard to argue FDR didn't have a unique set of circumstances and a rare mandate. Some conservatives seem to want to emulate FDR's approach of having the President act like a King, but skip over the circumstances and mandate unique to FDR that "justified" that approach. It might be different if they were trying to build such a massive, enduring electoral mandate by identify some generational problem to solve with real solutions and a man or woman of destiny to embrace their historical moment. But they don't have any of that and are nevertheless jumping to the President=King step anyways, like a store brand FDR knockoff.
        • jordanb 2y ago
          FDR didn't "act like a King" he worked through congress, getting enabling legislation and appropriations for every thing he did. In addition to winning his own elections he also maintained large Democratic majorities in both houses of congress. The only branch that opposed him was the unelected one, because every opportunity the people had to consent to what FDR was doing, they gave him not just a victory but an overwhelming one.
  • lucianbr 2y ago
    > Implying democracy is dead while really meaning Athenian democracy that we don't have and that the US needs a monarch when really talking about FDR/Hoover/Coolidge is a professional writer basically marketing themselves so other writers like this run with it and do marketing for him. Lots of words boiling down to "clickbait".
• SirHumphrey 2y ago
  Most of the people in this story - most of the people in the current administrations - aren't originally conservative. Trump, Musk, Gabbard... In a sense (American) politics is experiencing a vanishing middle of epic proportions where only two strongly held positions are becoming turbo capitalism or state communism. Trump et. al. call themselves progressive only in so forth as their voters dream of the return of the good old days.
  • thrance 2y ago
    The democrats still haven't had their "tea party" and stick to economic liberalism with a dash of mild progressivism. Maybe that's why they're losing steam?
  • zxor 2y ago
    > In a sense (American) politics is experiencing a vanishing middle of epic proportions Is that true? Democrats are pretty centrist by non-American standards.
  • thuanao 2y ago
    > state communism Nonsense Republican propaganda with no basis in reality. Single-payer healthcare and decent labor laws won’t make the sky fall. Republican BS.
• Nullabillity 2y ago
  Fundamentally, conservatism is about conserving (and reinforcing) existing power structures. Everything else is just set dressing.
  • goatlover 2y ago
    Conservatives are currently dismantling the Federal bureaucracy, not conserving it.
    • Nullabillity 2y ago
      In order to conserve (well, further entrench) the power of the oligarchy.
    • ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
      The federal bureaucracy isn't the power structure, it's a threat to the power structure, hence it being dismantled by the power structure.
• thundergolfer 2y ago
  The never really did. If you saw them referred to that you were getting flimsy analysis. These people have a much more purposeful, active, and visionary approach to politics and society than any conservative ever has. Conservatism, since 2018, can be pithily summed up by this quote: > Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. Thiel et al's machinations are much more sophisticated than this quote (not an endorsement), but it basically does encapsulate the irritable gestures of your sundowning uncle and the cold selfishness of the old money class.
• monideas 2y ago
  Yarvin and Nick Land were always explicitly associated with neo-reaction (NRx), not conservatism, so this strikes me as a strange comment.
• PKop 2y ago
  They never did and they don't claim to be conservative, in fact they reject it explicitly.
• cjbgkagh 2y ago
  They do not, conservatism is seen as serving as a governor for liberalism and without conservatism liberalism would fail faster. Neo-reactionary is anti-enlightenment where some are accelerationists and others are not. The accelerationist support liberalism (to speed up the self-immolation) and the non-accelerationists support conservatism. One way to look at it is how far back do you want to unwind the clock, if to the 90s then they consider that a 'this far and no further conservative' which they consider to be a liberal. You'd have to unwind the clock all the way to pre-enlightenment to get to the neo-reactionary position.