Tucker Carlson interviews & ideologies

[luc]

My take on that is that Whitney is wrong. Trump is the enemy of the deep state. Anyone that was paying attention to his presidency and his court cases can see that. No matter the mental gymnastics she makes, he is not controlled. If the above were true, they wouldn't have stolen the 2020 election.

Agreed. I think Withney is somewhat part of the "schizoid school of conspiracy theory" that looks at people and events in an abstract, detached way and gives priority to patterns and connections over direct experience and "putting yourself into the shoes of people", i.e. understanding humans from a visceral level. Which isn't to say that this approach can't yield very interesting results and is necessary to understand reality, but if it's the only focus, you easily end up with absurd conclusions because "that's what the data suggests" without looking at the bigger picture using your own experience, intuition and empathy.

McGilchrist has this example where the left-brain hemisphere was sort of activated/predominant and people were given tests with logical syllogisms, where the conclusion followed from the premises, but the conclusioin was obviously absurd (like porcupines are trees or something like that). The left-brain people would accept such nonsensical conclusions as true, whereas the right-brain people recognized it's nonsense, regardless of whether it follows from the syllogism or not. This seems to be what's happening with a lot of the die-hard conspiracy theorists - lack of balance!

 

[luc]

To add to this, here is an description of the experiment - something to keep in mind when dealing with all kinds of intellectual games and puzzles:

To illustrate how this works, consider this experiment that McGilchrist brings up in his book, The Matter With Things:2

Candidates were asked to look at the following syllogisms (logical arguments) and decide whether they are sound or not:

1. All monkeys climb trees; [OK]
2. The porcupine is a monkey; [obviously wrong]
3. The porcupine climbs trees. [obvious nonsense]

And:

1. Winter is cold in tropical countries; [obviously wrong]
2. Ecuador is a tropical country; [OK]
3. Question: Is it cold in winter in Ecuador, or not?

Now, in the experiment, the right or left hemisphere had been artificially inhibited.

Result: those with predominantly right-hemisphere thinking tended to see through the nonsense at once; those who thought with their left hemisphere tended to accept the conclusion because the logic is formally correct, even though it clearly was nonsense.

One respondent who accepted the nonsense answer, when asked why she thought so, answered that “it said so on the card!”

This shows how left-hemisphere thinking takes place in a void, unhinged from reality, and relies on logic-chopping to come to conclusions, no matter how absurd they clearly are once you take a step back.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

To add to this, here is an description of the experiment - something to keep in mind when dealing with all kinds of intellectual games and puzzles:

So much conspiracy thinking is left-brained. "It said so right on my social media!" Even "cui bono" can be a left-brain trap - multiple parties will benefit from every action, which doesn't necessarily implicate all of them (or even any of them) in orchestrating the event. Add in paranoia and you get the schizo-paranoid school of conspiracy where every event is orchestrated and every person is either a puppet or part of a unified collective acting in perfect harmony according to a planned evil agenda. Something like that may be true in a metaphysical sense, but down here things are a lot more mundane.

 

[Charade]

I watched the Whitney Webb interview. What caught my attention was her claim that Trump would be elected President because it would be considered a victory. It would be by all the gun toting conservative faction of Republicans. There is still faith in the two party paradigm. They would be more controlled because having their guy as President would make them complacent. Put Americans off their guard and compliant since he is so popular and the opposite of Biden. I hadn’t thought it possible for him to be allowed back in office but that is so diabolical and brilliant it might be in the cards

My take on that is that Whitney is wrong. Trump is the enemy of the deep state. Anyone that was paying attention to his presidency and his court cases can see that. No matter the mental gymnastics she makes, he is not controlled. If the above were true, they wouldn't have stolen the 2020 election.

Agreed. With the C’s as a source for a window on the world I don’t think he has a chance in hell. But I do think he could be used in such a position to promote agendas like the Smartwall like he pushed the vaxx.

 

[Revolucionar]

What he said so briefly, is the main thesis of his Manifesto of Great Awakening book written in response to Schwab's Great Reset. It's nicely presented in his article on Medium. It's longish, even in my excerpt.



Dugin draws a lot from German political thought and philosophy, especially Heidegger with his anti-Anglo-Saxon sentiments and objection to their domination. Dugin also subscribes to Heidegger's conception of truth as being rooted in a given community and changing throughout history. That's why it's so wrong to spread one's ideology and impose it on other countries who may have, and prefer their own ways.

Ones again, the difference between left-hemisphere-run West and right-hemisphere-run East, generally speaking, (McGilchrist!) is so apparent!

If this is all about cutting ties to any sort of collective identity, then why are the Liberals so adamant in creating and emphasising particular collective identities?

Identity politics seems to be the main thrust of Liberalism these days. Belonging to certain groups defined by sexual orientation, gender (sex), race, ethnicity, religion, etc., bestows upon an individual immediate higher status in the victim hirearchy of the woke. Regular people are required to think about identity all the time and accommodate the carriers of correct identity at every step.

I believe that thinking that this is Liberalism in anything but name is entirely misguided.

This is more collectivist than Communism. The people pushing this are just doing what they think will further their agenda. A sprinkle of individualism, a pinch of collectivism. I don't think it's ideological, unless you define the need to undermine everything that's good and sensible in humanity as an ideology.

The predators have given us their mind. Now they're trying to remove everything else, so it's only their mind that's left.

 

[Possibility of Being]

Trump is the enemy of the deep state.

A big part of the Deep State is Zionist (not necessarily by ideology but at least by money and close ties).
Trump is friends with Zionists (again, money and ties at least; and he is a business man first of all).
Is Trump the enemy of the Deep State?

This is an open question I'm struggling with, not a claim. Never been a fan of Trump, but I can understand he may be good, or just better than others, for America and Americans. But on the international scene he has not been good, and most likely is not going to be, as Putin hinted when talking to Tucker.

 

[Natus Videre]

To add to this, here is an description of the experiment - something to keep in mind when dealing with all kinds of intellectual games and puzzles:

Here is an example where the premises are true, but the conclusion is questionable because of the limited contextual possibilities given to the premises.

Philosophers and linguists have identified a variety of cases where modus ponens appears to fail. Vann McGee, for instance, argued that modus ponens can fail for conditionals whose consequents are themselves conditionals.[14] The following is an example:

1. Either Shakespeare or Hobbes wrote Hamlet.
2. If either Shakespeare or Hobbes wrote Hamlet, then if Shakespeare did not do it, Hobbes did.
3. Therefore, if Shakespeare did not write Hamlet, Hobbes did it.

Since Shakespeare did write Hamlet, the first premise is true. The second premise is also true, since starting with a set of possible authors limited to just Shakespeare and Hobbes and eliminating one of them leaves only the other. However, the conclusion is doubtful, since ruling out Shakespeare as the author of Hamlet would leave numerous possible candidates, many of them more plausible alternatives than Hobbes (if the if-thens in the inference are read as material conditionals, the conclusion comes out true simply by virtue of the false antecedent. This is one of the paradoxes of material implication).

Let's push it even further:

1. Either Shakespeare or my cat wrote Hamlet. [True]
2. If either Shakespeare or my cat wrote Hamlet, then if Shakespeare did not do it, my cat did. [True if you follow the logical structure; False, complete nonsense, if you actually think about it]
3. Therefore, if Shakespeare did not write Hamlet, my cat did it. [Garbage in, garbage out]

Can we make it work?

1. Either Shakespeare or nobody wrote Hamlet.
2. If either Shakespeare or nobody wrote Hamlet, then if Shakespeare did not do it, nobody did.
3. Therefore, if Shakespeare did not write Hamlet, nobody did it.

Something is still fishy. It's as if we were only considering Shakespeare in the set of possible writers of Hamlet. Could somebody else have had the ability to write Hamlet in the history of mankind? Sure, why limit the possibilities?

We may not even be aware of all the assumptions we make when we contextualize a problem.

A: Disinformation comes from seemingly reliable sources. It is extremely important for you to not gather false knowledge as it is more damaging than no knowledge at all. Remember knowledge protects, ignorance endangers. The information you speak of, Terry, was given to you deliberately because you and Jan and others have been targeted due to your intense interest in level of density 4 through 7 subject matter. You have already been documented as a "threat."

It's easy to derive many seemingly true statements from a false statement, and then logically infer an entire false reality. Just imagine what you could conclude from "humans are genderfluid!" Once the false reality is established, programming is complete... and so is damage!

 

[Possibility of Being]

If this is all about cutting ties to any sort of collective identity, then why are the Liberals so adamant in creating and emphasising particular collective identities?

Following Dugin's (and others') way of seeing it, as I understand it, Liberalism today, at least the leading branch, is not the same as classical Liberalism and should be called neo-liberalism. Just like neo-conservatives have little to do with classical Conservatism. And the neo-liberals are fueling and pushing the minority ("collective") victim identity. Again, contrary to classical Democracy ruled by majority, the push is to suppress the (mostly rational) majority for the benefit of (detached from reality) individuals. I say individuals, because they don't care much about their "collective" other than using it when beneficial, and would not give away any of their own comfort for the good of said collective. So the collective is ephemeral, so to say. Or something like that.

But you said more or less the same, one thing that may need a discussion is if it can be considered "more collectivist than Communism". I sense a possible confusion of concepts more than disagreement, FWIW.

 

[BHelmet]

There are pitfalls in putting yourself in the shoes of another as a test for reality especially when the shoe fits a psychopath and the evil is unfathomable.

Direct experience is another pitfall. Who really has it when it comes to the subject of conspiracies? And that is part of what makes conspiracies so tantalizing. We know what we read and see and hear on the internet and media. 99% of that is indirect experience. So we discern based on what we have learned, real personal experience and our biases.

What any data set suggests can just as easily mislead any type of thinker especially when the data is manipulated. (The American consumer is in great shape, and inflation is coming down, as per Yellen and J Powell and all the cooked stats, for example)

Is the syllogism mainly about left/right brain thinking or is it as much about not thinking at all, or authoritarian following? I think there is more at play in this experiment that left v right brain.

As for conspiratorial thinking in general, conspiracy is actually the way of this world to some significant extent, so it can just as easily be a right brain activity to follow that line of reasoning. Here is what I mean: what corporation or politician or potential lover announces their strategy and real intentions in a truly forthcoming way? In what sport do the teams not try to disguise their game plan at least to some extent?

Another data point is that if you believe that we live in a 3DSTS world where manipulation is a cornerstone, then part of crafting a balanced view, even from a right brain perspective, requires taking these things into consideration.

 

[Revolucionar]

Following Dugin's (and others') way of seeing it, as I understand it, Liberalism today, at least the leading branch, is not the same as classical Liberalism and should be called neo-liberalism. Just like neo-conservatives have little to do with classical Conservatism. And the neo-liberals are fueling and pushing the minority ("collective") victim identity. Again, contrary to classical Democracy ruled by majority, the push is to suppress the (mostly rational) majority for the benefit of (detached from reality) individuals. I say individuals, because they don't care much about their "collective" other than using it when beneficial, and would not give away any of their own comfort for the good of said collective. So the collective is ephemeral, so to say. Or something like that.

But you said more or less the same, one thing that may need a discussion is if it can be considered "more collectivist than Communism". I sense a possible confusion of concepts more than disagreement, FWIW.

Well, these are your words, but he makes no such distinctions. For him it's all liberalism. The current collective identity that liberalism is against is gender, the next, humanity itself.

But you said it yourself, these are neo-liberals. So, I'd say, liberals in name only.

I don't think his analysis of history pitting rali against nominalism is an adequate explanation of things. Things seem to be much more complex and what seems to be missing is the understanding that there are forces of evil that will use whatever means suit them at a given time to further their agenda of dehumanising the human race.

I think this whole divide between liberals and conservatives, left and right, is a distraction from the real culprits. Evil forces have been seen taking all sides of the spectrum at different times and different locations, always using the prevailing public opinion and grievances to get us proles to support their hasnamussian ideas, which inevitably led to misery for the proles.

Just look at us here on the forum. We've been mostly left leaning until the spectrum shifted and we turned right. Now we find ourselves again on the same side with some of the left when it comes to Israel. At the same time, the left is all pro Ukraine.

In my opinion, these political spectrum dichotomies are completely useless for people who are sincerely trying to get to the truth and stand with the truth on any given issue.

It's interesting to read these historical analyses, don't get me wrong, but I've had enough of the divisions. Reading about liberalism, you'd think the opposite was the good side, but then you look at the fruits of conservatism and you see only more of the same sort of destructive social and political experiments.

These sorts of divisions open the door for phenomena such as JBP supporting genocide and we here at the forum supporting a lumbering fool like Trump just because we're alligned with one part of they represent. Of course, the Trump thing is much more complex, but he is a fool and not someone whose positions I would think to support until the woke mob went after him.

Just remembered James Lindsey being all up in arms about Gnosticism of all things. If you follow these divisions, you inevitabely end up believing and supporting lies.

That's why I don't have much faith in anything better coming out of the East in the coming decades as the West declines and Russia and China come up on top. It may look like one thing now, but it will inevitably turn into the opposite of itself very soon. The only hope lies with regular people aligning with the truth and continually realiging with the truth, but I don't see much hope for that either when I observe the level of discourse among the general population. It's bloody hopeless.

Not to end on a bummer, I think we need to look to ourselves, strive to better ourselves and then the small circle around us. That's all. I would even argue to withdraw from any discussions about these topics with the general population. You can only get yourself mired in the mud. Even the ones who may seem to understand will misunderstand and end up believing a whole different set of lies, such as wild conspiracy theories or worse.

Ok, that's another bummer. Anyway, there's hope, but only at an individual level and the level of this network. Anything outside of that is the wastelands if you ask me. I don't even read SOTT anymore. I can't stand to look at the comments. And I've been one of those lost souls spewing bullshit on the interwebs once.

Haven't posted in awhile here. Lots of thoughts stewing. Apologies for the rant. Happy Friday folks!

 

[Beau]

A big part of the Deep State is Zionist (not necessarily by ideology but at least by money and close ties).
Trump is friends with Zionists (again, money and ties at least; and he is a business man first of all).
Is Trump the enemy of the Deep State?

He's far less controllable. So, maybe enemy wasn't the best word to use. But there's a reason they stole the election from him, and he was just as friendly to Israel then as now.

 

[luc]

If this is all about cutting ties to any sort of collective identity, then why are the Liberals so adamant in creating and emphasising particular collective identities?

I think Dugin's argument goes something like this: liberalism has this inherent drive to liberate individuals from everything: religion, then state, ethnicity, family, even sex, finally humanity. This leaves the individual in a total vacuum, because all of these "collective" things are actually meaningful and rooted in reality/truth. In that vacuum, the individial is unhinged, and ever more crazy and fictious new collective identities can seep in - until there isn't even a fake identity left, but just a mindless drone plugged into a collective slavemaster. Eventually, the indivodual becomes a literal robot, liberated even from "being human", where it's just straightforward mindcontrol by evil.

 

[Niall]

A constructive criticism of Dugin's interview with Carlson, posted on X by US journalist Darren Beattie:

Some have asked me about this, so I figured I'll go against my better judgement and say a few words. First, I commend Tucker for his courage and open mindedness in having such discussions with controversial figures. Nothing I say should be interpreted as a criticism of Tucker's laudable efforts.

This conversation reinforces in my mind two priors: one is that while Russians are a great literary and musical people, they are not a philosophical people (well, no people is really is a philosophical people post WWII)

The second prior I had, reinforced by this talk is that it is very difficult, next to impossible and rarely optimal to connect "deep level" philosophical diagnoses with diagnoses of more surface level political and cultural phenomena. Let's take Dugin's example of what went wrong---the rise of "individualism." Dugin perfunctorily gestures toward various "deep level" accounts of individualism in his reference to the "subject," and to theological nominalism respectively.

This already gets into problems because the diagnosis of modernity as flowing continuously from nominalism and the diagnosis of modernity as discretely emerging from the self-grounding Cartesian subject are different and competing diagnoses. The "purpose" of nominalism was not to liberate the individual, but rather to liberate God.

The structure of the self-grounding Cartesian subject moreover analogizes much more easily to other identifiable features of modernity (Rousseau's and then Nietzsche's self grounding will)

Things get even more confused when we bring in the third, implicit and most important aspect of individualism---its implicit contrast with collectivism. This seems to be the dominant version Dugin focuses on as in his telling the key feature of "liberalism" is the liberation of the individual from collective entanglements (tradition, culture, gender, humanity).

The relation of this version to nominalism is incomplete as nominalism has to do with the liberation of God from man's cognitive categories. As to the Cartesian subject, the emergence of subjectivity exists at a deeper layer than and is presupposed by the more superficial distinction between individual and collective (at least according to Heidegger's telling)

Enough for a moment about the "deep level" diagnostic problems. Now let's turn to the political/cultural diagnostic problem.In short, the "liberation of the individual" seems to be a very poor description of the present political moment. Dugin's focus on the liberation of the individual might account for a "dystopian" society that were social darwinistic, pathologically dedicated to scientific progress and advancement and the elevation of the individual over all else (including his gendered and all biological constraints).

There are confused hints of this of course that we see in our philosophically impoverished tech elite (and what do you expect when from a society that confers such powers on glorified software engineers). But this is hardly the dominant thrust of the present moment, and if it were, notwithstanding the philosophical childishness of the tech class, would actually be a very welcome and profound improvement from what we have today.

No, what we have today in "wokeness" the political weaponization/empowerment of women and minority special interest groups, is far from the liberation of the individual. If we must use the "individualism" vs "collective" at all to account for what is going on, it can hardly be described as liberation of the individual.

Wokeness, intersectionality is all about group identity. The purpose of censoring individuals is to assuage the collective inferiority complexes of politically weaponized groups (mostly women and minorities)

The whole thing is about pandering to the emotivism, unfounded indignation and undeserved pride of resentful underachieving and independent groups. Politically the transsexual phenomenon is so much less a trans-human liberation from biology and much more an empowerment of a politically favored GROUP identity (sexual degenerates).

Thus one can much more easily buy a trajectory from liberalism to transhumanism (elevation of the individual decision maker, individual choice) than one can see between liberalism and "wokeness."

One can imagine a line from epistemological grounding of things in the self-knowing subject (Descartes), to the political grounding of things in individual choice and consent (Locke) to a kind of hyper liberated individual apotheosis in transhumanism.

Finally-- In the discussion Tucker raises the point a point about so-called "classical liberalism," mentioning that this is about individual choice, freedom from slavery, etc. This is more or less Locke. I was somewhat surprised that Dugin didn't respond that Locke (via Descartes to Hobbes) and by extension classical liberalism represent a profound step toward liberation of the individual that he decries (a politics based on choice and consent rather than heredity, tradition, etc).

Instead Dugin simply embraces the classical liberal vs bad liberal distinction, without noting that, as explained above, the bad "degraded" liberalism is not really liberalism in any sense of the word---the political dystopia we see today is in every sense post-liberal.

Perhaps I should polish this up at some point but those are some immediate thoughts. And as mentioned in the beginning, my prior sense is that it is very difficult to have a discussion that gets into deep level philosophical diagnoses and more surface level political diagnoses without impoverishing both.

 

[Revolucionar]

I think Dugin's argument goes something like this: liberalism has this inherent drive to liberate individuals from everything: religion, then state, ethnicity, family, even sex, finally humanity. This leaves the individual in a total vacuum, because all of these "collective" things are actually meaningful and rooted in reality/truth. In that vacuum, the individial is unhinged, and ever more crazy and fictious new collective identities can seep in - until there isn't even a fake identity left, but just a mindless drone plugged into a collective slavemaster. Eventually, the indivodual becomes a literal robot, liberated even from "being human", where it's just straightforward mindcontrol by evil.

Again, it seems to me like you're projecting your own reasoning onto what Dugin is saying. I don't see any of that nuance in that quoted text about nominalism. See Niall's post below. IMHO, Dugin is missing the point entirely.

At the same time, I wouldn't agree with some of what you said above, personally.

Religion, state, ethnicity hasn't been doing us much good. The problem is that the vast majority of people have nothing of worth to replace those things with at an individual level, so they flail in the wind and end up being swept up by whatever new identity presents itself.

 

[Revolucionar]

A constructive criticism of Dugin's interview with Carlson, posted on X by US journalist Darren Beattie:

Thanks for that. Pretty much my point.
And I think these sorts of thinking errors, or at least errors in perception, by a thinker of Dugin's calibre are the result of being ideologically inflexible or even subscribing to any ideology whatsoever.

Look at JBP and how he is unable to accept that his ideological enemies might be on the right side of the argument on a particular issue. For him, and those like him, it's enough to take the position opposite to the the leftists and he's golden. You get into all sorts of quagmires you're ideologically driven.