The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1128: The Thought of Eric Hobsbawm: Part 2 - 'The Short Century' w/ Thomas777

Episode Date: November 3, 2024

61 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.Thomas continues a series in which he discusses the thought and work of Eric Hobsbawm. In this episode he talks about "The Short Century."Thomas' SubstackRadio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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beyond the wall.com forward slash support and do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignano show. Thomas is here. We're going to go into part two of Eric Hobbsbom. Are you doing, Thomas? I know it pretty well. Thanks for hosting me. Of course. So what are we going to look into today when it comes to Mr. Hobbsbom? I was going to expand upon his historical perspective

and why in substantive terms he opposed the schismatics, the schismatic tendencies and the standard bearers of those things after 1968. and people have every superficial understanding of Marxist Leninism and of what Sovietism was generally. You know, that's why I object a lot of people banning the phrase cultural Marxism. Like there's an appropriate context to apply that phraseology. I'm not going to say there's not. But generally, people don't apply it in those contexts. And they seem to discern anything.

identify anything that's at all like radical or you know progressive in orientation or that's related to the ongoing social engineering regime and like the paradigm that it gives rise to in like discursive terms they identify that as mercism and that's grossly incorrect you know and it's not i'm not just playing word games or being like a pet ant or something you know it's important to be clear about what we're talking about, particularly when we're doing with something as kind of abstract and conceptualist political theory.

You know, and a guy like Hobbswell was a real Marxist, you know, and he actively disdained the standard bearers of the sorts of tendencies I just mentioned. You know, not because he was like a good guy or because he was correct in his assessment of historical phenomenon and the proximate causes of, you know,

um, these punctuated developments in the 20th century but he did have certain insights into historical processes you know he's the one who coined the phrase the quote quote the short century to refer to the 20th century I mean no he agreed with that you know the short century being the cycle of events that were emergent in 1914 and that ended on November 9th 1989 you know um contra the long century you know after water after water after waterloo until 1914 I mean after waterloo other than the Crimean War and the

Franco Prussian War both of which were very localized conflicts and both of which were brief and neither which really had some destructive impactfulness at scale on the continent one of the reasons why so many murder from Europe fought in the war between the States. And even, you know, Henry, Henry Wurst, the commandant of Andersonville, who was unceremoniously hanged. That's a really grim and macabre thing, everything about Andersonville and his demise. But he was a Swiss national who found his way in the United States, you know, because that's where the action was. You know, don't get me wrong.

Like all kinds of punctuated things were happening in Europe of a technological nature, of a developmental nature. But like power political affairs weren't really happening there. You know, I mean, and if you take a long view, yes, okay, that kind of thing is always underway. But in war and peace terms, there were not punctuated crises. There were not, you know, crisis modalities that were. emerging that, you know, generated a need for men under arms and men with adjacent sorts of skill sets, you know, to participate in those sorts of happenings. But in America, obviously, you better believe that was underway. And it's, um, this is a tangent. I'll, I'll make it brief.

But, you know, McClellan, who was famous, sexed by Lincoln you know and he you know Lincoln I'm paraphrasing but you know know Lincoln family said you know I've got I've got a commanding general who refuses to assault you know and so his detractor is and not just among um not just among radical reforms and abolitionists but even pretty moderate people they're banned they either brand him some kind of coward who was like afraid of being under fire or this or he was some kind of like secret copperhead he was neither of those things he'd been on the ground in Crimea because before the war between the states kicked off other than the

Indian wars which were utterly savage but were not um but in scope and scale we're very limited you know other than that uh like conventional uh combined arms what was then emerging combined arms you know indirect fire like the only way you really i mean liaising was with foreign militaries was like something that was done in the western world anyway, but it's also, like, if you wanted to, you know, if you wanted to, if you wanted to cut your teeth in, in a combat zone, you know, McClellan's generation, well, you went to Europe, you know, you drilled with the Prussians or, you know, you were a liaison to the French or the British, and McClellan saw what was happening on the ground in Crimea, and you saw like master artillery and what it was doing

to the human body. And he's like, this is horrific. So he's like, if we, you know, if we, if we start, if we start, if we start, if we start cavalry charging, like, mass Confederate artillery, like, this is going to be a slaughter. And that's what happened, you know, but, uh, that's just sort of an aside. But in any event, um, you know, uh, to bring it back to where we should be at. I did a write up years back of Paul Gottfried's talk and his paper, how the left won the Cold War, because the left did win the Cold War.

The people like Hobbsbaum lost the Cold War, you know, the standard bearers of Sovietism and of, I don't think Hasbom was a Stalinist in the sense that somebody like Dugian kind of is, or in the way more and more properly he's not a Stalinist in the way the guys like jackson hinkle are but i mean he wasn't he wasn't opposed to that tendency either you know um and like we got into he stated in no uncertain terms you know after after uh the inter german border came down that you know whatever happened in the soviet union um what it had had the had the communist revolution been realized, it would have been worth it in his opinion.

You know, and that's, so he was honest about, you know, about that perspective. And I mean, that's the way every, that's the way every Marxist-Leninist thought, you know, and such that they still exist today. I don't think guys like Henkel and like the kind of reconstituted American Communist Party, they've most got a presence on the East Coast these days. they're distinct from like whatever this investigal communist party USA which are just like a bunch of liberals

who don't know what the fuck they're talking about but kind of like the reconstituted American Communist Party I mean they believe that too but they're kind of they're kind of like a dialectical offshoot of what was the marcus lenin's perspective I think that they

I think they're big on guys like Emmanuel Wallerstein and like they subscribe like global systems theory which is serious stuff But they are like Stalinists. Like they don't, you know, they're, they tolerate religious people these days. They're not, they're not these like doctrinal atheists who view themselves as being at war with established churches and things. Like they're tolerant of that, but they remain like atheistic.

Like what does it matter if you kill 20 million people to advance, you know, the realization of true communism? Like it doesn't matter because, well, you know, that that's, that's, that's a. creative destruction and if humans are just so much mentioned material, admittedly more valuable than, you know, animal livestock or material things, that may be, as they may be, they're still just like so much, you know, material. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items, all reduced to clear.

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Trump on Dunbioghush Faragea. You know, and that's important to keep in mind. I mean, I'm not just, I'm not being, I'm not like moralizing here saying like and this is why the communists are a bunch of slavering beasts. I think that their worldview in addition to being kind of laughably obtuse and it's error. Yeah, I believe it's like highly corrupt and morally, but that's, that's not, at base, it's not really why people like me like object to their perspective, you know. but at the same time, you know, I, for some reason, the kinds of people, it's like Chomsky all the time. And don't get me wrong.

Like, I think Chomsky wrote some pretty good stuff on linguistics. And he, he, he pretty handily treated people like Foucault, who he considered to be kind of insurious degenerates. But, I mean, Chomsky, Chomsky is basically like a moralizer and a polemicist. And I don't think he's got a really developed view of political theory. but I mean I mean guys on the right or at least guys kind of adjacent they don't have to say Chomsky but then they act like I'm some weirdo

where like it's or I'm being like deviant or I said Habsbaum. You know like Hotsbom was a serious historian man unlike Chomsky who like drops polemic about like you know America is doing mean things but the um I'm like don't mean wrong like America

is there to be savage but the way Chomsky you know he's he comes out like some hand-wringing old woman and I don't I don't think he's a real political theorist. You know, like, it's, I don't, it's not just me kind of guarding my own proverbial wheelhouse. I, you know, at a level of deep analysis, like Nolte and Hossbaum and, like, economic, political economics, like, Joseph Schumpeter, the sorts of insights they were capable of, like, in the moment, most people can't do that, you know. and I meet a lot of guys who have this idea that, you know, oh, you're like a mathematician or like you sell insurance or like you're, you know, some kind of molecular biologist, but oh, anybody can have a take on political theory. It's like, what the fuck are you talking about? You know, and that's these guys that wouldn't know, no insight. It's not even made of like IQ, man. Like, these guys are like way smarter than I am, you know, but they're like conceptually illiterate because they can't discern the relevant pattern. And so. And

and things. You know, like, it's not like an intelligence thing. Yeah, I don't think you can be like, I mean, I Q is a religion now on the right, on, on some parts of the right. I mean, if you mention IQ and you do anything to like take one step to say, well, you know, it really doesn't matter with this. They just, oh, that's cope. That's cope, bro. That's cope. Well, no, they're retards. And that's like outmoded thinking. You know, like, always making the point, like, build. Gates, I guarantee you, has a higher IQ than Muhammad, Pramwell, Napoleon, or Hitler. He's also, like, a total shithead. He's totally devoid of any creativity. And in some ways, it's a fucking idiot. And, like, nobody's going to die for Bill Gates. Okay? I mean, it's like, okay, great.

Like, there's some Chinese guy who, like, faint if you ever saw, like, a girl naked and lives with his mommy. And he's got an IQ of, like, 200. Okay, that's awesome. I get, if I need somebody to do like math problems, nobody can do, I'll hire them to do that. But I don't understand why I should give a fuck. You know, like, it's basically, you know what IQ is, man? IQ is, it's like, it's cold war managerialism, whereby it's like, look, we basically, like, we need, like, widget makers and we need guys who manage the widget factory. And we need some criteria where we can identify people who below a certain threshold are basically subnormal and useless.

is that's what IQ is. It's not like, you know, oh, if your IQ is this high, you know, you're, you're, you're gonna, like, lead, like, a revolution and conquer the Arabian Peninsula. Or if, like, your IQ's, like, within these parameters,

like, you're Edo of Hitler. Or, I mean, it's fucking retarded. Like, it doesn't... And, I mean, for people, I even mean, it's something on Von Misesian sort of like that. And it's like, you're basically taking... You're basically taking, this kind of ridiculous sort of, like,

bureaucrats fetish from the public school system and like deciding it's like some like holy criteria like and they don't even realize that's what they're doing so yeah we'll get into the substance of what we need to talk about today um i uh i didn't mean to uh whip off about uh about tangents but i made the point before you know hobbsbom he talked a lot about the origins of nationalism and to clarify because i don't want people jumping over my shit we're not talking about believing in one's ethnos. We're not talking about caring about your race. We're not talking about any of that. We're talking about this kind of like progressive modernist like political modality, like organizing modality called nationalism.

Which is a base of liberal idea. It basically arbitrarily says, you know, kind of the classical view of sovereignty, whether it vests in like a royal dynasty or whether it vests in, you know, men were kind of like you know for all private person an elected king by the polis in lieu of that it says like

all these people in this geographic area who happen to have linguistic fluency and like we've declared the national dialect you're part of this nation now you know it doesn't matter what religion you are it doesn't matter where your loyalties lie

in terms of things that supersede you know administrative politics This is just like the French nation or this is the Polish nation and famously Hitler said that was about the biggest obstacle to Germany being able to project power on the world stage is people internalize this nonsense and it became this kind of like self-defeating imperative like whereby people admired in this kind of alienated circumstance wrought by industrial urban modernity and They kind of like clung to this idea of like a nationalist, like, a political model.

And again, we're not talking about real, like, belief in one's ethnoists. We're talking about it contrivance. You know, and the, and it's also, Hotswaw made the point and Rousseau made the same point, nationalism at base is individualistic. It emerges as a liberal idea and entailed the notion of, okay, here's this nation based on these arbitrary criteria that generally have to do with the ability to communicate and mutual intelligence. But it's made up in the estimation of people who contrived this ideology of individual citizens. And every individual is recognized by the nation, you know, as some kind of like sovereign decision maker unto himself.

Like obviously, Robert meets the road, nobody abides that. It was actually in power. But that's the theory and that's kind of like the moral mythology of it. You know, this is extremely at odds with the past, you know, where your responsibility was to your monarch or to the local lord and above him and ultimately, like, to, you know, your faith and the representatives of your confessional heritage. And your rights and privileges accrued from your profession or from, you know, these social and collective or corporate groups. that you belong to. You know, the whole point of nationalism is it tears all that down. You know, these kind of natural ancient communitarian bonds.

No, no, no, that's the legitimate now. You're just an individual, but you're part of this body politic because you happen to speak French. Or you happen to speak Polish. Or like, you know, you happen to be somebody who speaks like high German, but you live in Belgium. Like, that's what we're talking about. That's what he was talking about. You know, and that's Cobb's take, which was well

placed, was that conservatism is just like liberal individualism that's basically a kind of class war against aristocracy by like a thirsty and kind of capitalist class. Who want to like discredit everything that came before say, no, no, no, all these things that are important, you know, relating to national

identity. the, like, we're the ones who are the managers of those things. And, you know, everybody's an individual, but you need us to, like, guard these individual rights. Like, that's what nationalism is in the capital and sense. It's not saying, I don't live in multiculturalism. It's not saying, I'm proud to be white. It's not saying, you know, I want my country to be understood Catholic. There's nothing to do with it.

Nothing. And that's one of the reasons why these, quote-unquote, nationalist governments, they, like, never to lead to anything, you know, and the moment they go away, you know, what little kind of concession is there were, they got of preserving normalcy, just like evapolates, because it's a, it's a, it's a paper house, you know, and, um, Hobbsbom was very big on what he called the dual revolution. I mean, when I say he was big on it, I mean, he identified, he identified the dual revolution as the historical phenomenon that came to shape governmental imperatives and came to kind of frame everything related to, you know, the political sphere of activity, both, you know, in theoretical

capacities as well as in terms of praxis and what actually developed. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design. They move you. Even before you drive. The new Cooper plug-in hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon and Terramar.

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Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Ready for huge savings? Well mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-haves When the doors open, the deals go fast.

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Your five-star getaway, where every detail is designed with you in mind. Give the gift of a unique experience this Christmas with vouchers from Trump-Dunbeg. Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunbioghush Faragea. What did you mean by the dual revolution? specifically, and as we got into before, last time, we were talking about Hobbs-Bohm's kind of like four-value magnum opus, you know, dealing with the age of revolution. Between 1789 and 1848, how someone's take is that, okay, you know, the Jacob Revolution and all this kind of radicalism and all this, all this upheaval, you know, he's like, that was inextricably bound up with, like, technological and economic. changes that constituted this kind of grand future shock.

You know, really like the first industrial revolution. So you can't extricate these things. You know, um, that they're very marvellous and his view of it, but they're not wrong. Um, you can't really,

you can't really identify like what came first or what was the prime move on. It was both of these things. You know, kind of like inextricably tethered to one another or a combination of like dialectical process. and conceptual activity, as well as, you know, kind of the, the binding up of economic imperatives with political life in a way that hadn't happened before. So, you know, these enlightenment ideas, which on the one hand are kind of hollow ideological

phraseology, these kinds of, you know, democracy, like, but not real democracy, like, you know, procedural, procedural democracy, like nationalism and liberalism, this kind of stuff gained traction because people are getting crushed by these new economic modalities that nobody knew how to manage, you know, and old wealth was being wiped out, hand over fist, you know, so there was catastrophic effects to this. So, like, people looking for remedies, they were uniquely susceptible to this kind of thought but they also people develop

these kinds of ideas based on these disruptions because they were kind of ripped out of environments where they had meaningful reference points beyond their own lives and people's lives are comparatively short then you know and so this this kind of taken together this developed its own momentum.

It was both a process and an animating principle as well as a key framing a key framing device of the zeitgeist. You know, now, when the French Revolution was defeated, you know, and particularly after, you know,

Waterloo. I mean, because Napoleon was a lot like Cromwell and a lot like Hitler. I agree with Russell Stoffley. I think Hitler was more like Mohammed than he was anybody, but and Napoleon didn't have that messianic sensibility. I'm talking in political terms, not in like theological ones. But what happened in the, I mean, mean, what happened in the reign of terror and what happened in the aftermath, when Napoleon literally trying to conquer the continent and become emperor of Europa, the view from what remained to like the royal courts in Europe, and the view from kind of like the nascent political managerial class was this can never, ever happen again. Okay. So the kind of the kind of

Congress of Vienna, Metternich kind of first and foremost among this type, you know, kind of like the whole raison d'etre of state craft became like balance of power. You know, E. Michael Jones makes the point that all rationalist perspectives partake in some way of like Newtonian physics, you know, this kind of like perfect balance of like dynamic but totally controlled motion. It's more complicated than that. And Jones is a very like punitive view of like Newton. I don't want to get into that. But he's right about what I just indicated. Okay. And balance of power politics, that's where it comes from. Okay. And that's why it's misguided when a lot of these people it's kind of like the mantra of the midwit that, oh, Churchill wasn't crazy and Churchill wasn't

totally corrupted, you know, by alien interests. He was just trying to maintain the balance of power, and no European power can become too strong. It's not at all what he was doing. And that was obsolete anyway by the 20th century. That got shot to pieces in 1914, and nobody thought that way anymore. Okay? And that's why it was while it was apocalyptic thinking came about in the 20th century, because what had been the return to rationalist normalcy that died in the trenches

along with millions of guys who got blown to bits. It died buried beneath the mud and shit and all of their body parts. Nobody thought that way. And that's not what Churchill was doing. And even if it was, that that'd be a ridiculous mission to take on in 1939.

It would make no sense. But that, But that's the source of this kind of like reactionary stance. And Hasbom calls it reactionary. He calls the Marinish perspective reactionary. Because it's not truly conservative. It's literally a reaction. It's saying how do we deal with future shock?

How do we deal with the disruption of this kind of like rational balancing of furies? how do we restore something manageable and something that is primarily governed by reason here is how we do it. We do it by managing power like it's some kind of like quantity of energy that can be like redirected or kind of purpose

towards this or almost like an engineering problem okay that's what is meant by reactionary because it wasn't nobody not metternich, not the people at the Congress of Vienna, not not, um, you know, not the people who later opposed the 1848 revolutions. Nobody was saying,

we're going to go back to having, you know, like a king who holds absolute sovereignty. Nobody was saying, we're going to go back to, you know, the Pope being the true like emperor of Europe is God's emissary. Nobody was saying that. It wasn't even, they would have like scoffed at that prospect,

but it wasn't even within their contemplation. You know, it was a reality. action, okay, and the fact that it had some trappings of what came before that really had more to do with an interest in stability moving forward and like enlightenment, ideology, conceptual biases than it did with any like, oh, we got to guard tradition and we got to guard like the organic basis of national life. So this is really important. Okay, this is one of the reasons I cite Hasbaugh because conservatives are not traditionalists. They're not trying to preserve, like, the integrity of your race, if that's important to you or whatever. They're not trying to undo modernity. They're not trying to, I mean, I'm not even saying good, but they're not doing that.

You know, they're arch-modernist. They're arch-modernist liberals who are trying to manage revolutionary imperatives and stop them from happening, whether they're from the left or whether they're from the right. You know, no matter where they come from, that is their notion. That's why conservatism is bullshit. You know? And this is a, you know, again, that's if people, I know not everybody wants to sit around reading political theory like I do. But it's like, okay, this is why you should read Hobbsbaum just as like an educated partisan.

Okay, because he's right about those things. Like his conclusions in terms of like applied efforts and his conclusion. in terms of what's desirable are wrong, but his diagnostic process isn't wrong, and his observations aren't wrong. They're generally correct. You know, and again, the Marxists overemphasized this,

but, you know, the degree, and the degree to which suddenly production got taken out of like a communitarian shop, or like your household, to go from being like, I'm a farmer and, you know, I'm a subsistence farmer, but I have enough surplus to trade with other farmers.

Or going from being like a blacksmith or you're part of some collective with like three other guys and you like make stuff people need. Getting ripped out of that and going to work in a factory where you're literally pulling a lever or like manhandling some dangerous machine for 10 hours a day. That's probably

that's about the most disruptive thing that's ever happened to people at scale. And on top of that, too, the introduction of money at scale, like any, all indicators of wealth that for 40,000 years, quite literally, like people were habituated to do, no, no, no, no, no, no, now you get a paper certificate. And it's fungible. And if you can find somebody who, like, has stuff you need, they'll accept that. This is insane. This is totally insane. You know, and it took decades for people to adapt to that.

You know, and it really wasn't until people born in the 1920s and 30s were totally abituated to that, but it took that long. You know, so the degree to which this disrupted everything that everybody had taken for granted and, you know, just created unmanaged, conditions. You know, I mean, think about two, like trying to manage economic imperatives. I'm not even talking about a planned economy. I'm saying just being able to balance the proverbial like ledger bucks. There's a factory that employs 20,000 people. I'm using a pencil and paper and an advocate to try and figure out, like, what our

outlays are, like what we need to produce to be profitable, like what we need, how much we need to earn to, like, stay afloat. what debts we owe to who at some point that's going to collapse on itself and people are going to starve. And it happened over and over and over again. And most punctuatedly,

it happened in the Great Depression. And it wasn't because of like bankers or whatever like Von Mises think. It was because of what I just said. That could never happen now because it's been rubberized. Because data management now it's as simple as turning on a machine.

Now, that's incredibly corrupt. People make haste with that. Wealth is wiped out, owing to malfeasance and greed. But there's not going to be, like the stock market is not going to plummet 5,000 points because of some like error, because of like some accounting error at scale or because of like a lack of situational awareness that has like a catastrophic impact. That could never happen again. Okay. So when people talk about that, that's stupid.

but this was like an everyday reality really from like the close of the 18th century until like like really until like the 1970s you know what I mean so basically people were like tossing on the precipice of some kind of like disaster

you know and that's why people became communist like the man in the street and that's why guys like Ernst Talman who was kind of the consummate like like like Aryan German

like burger type. Like that's why those guys like factory florida has been named communist. Like communist ideology and its foundation and like a Jewish revolutionary spirit or like sectarian antipathy or

like ethno sectarian hostility like yes, at scale of at dialectical scale and process like yes that is where it comes from. But where the rubber meets the road, what I just said is why it became this, this animating imperative that swept up millions and millions of people. Like, that's why.

You know, now it's a bit different. There's other reasons why, I mean, it would never become a mass movement again. You know, even though when I say that, like, Marxist-Leninism or, like, it's dialectically altered variant, when I say that it's, like, enjoyed something of resurgence, I mean, like, in terms of, fringe elements, okay? And there's like a small, very small and absolute terms like vanguard of those guys who are somewhat impressive and kind of have their shit together. And moving forward like this century, they will probably be able to carve out some semi-sovereign spaces locally, but for small and scale. But that's what I mean. I don't mean that like, oh, this is resurgent, then there'd be like some sort of highly scaled variant of this again. But one second.

But, but Hasbo, I'm also, like moving on a bit, you know, all these things, this basic. historicism. This is kind of what separated Haswell from the schismatics, like initially, okay? Because there were always schismatics. I mean, the 68ers were basically the ideological descendant and Sotrowski. Even a whole lot of them were just kind of bandwagoning. I didn't realize that's what they were, you know, at the cadre level of

the leadership element. that's what they were about, you know, and this is important. And, you know, Hosbaum, his later output especially, and, you know, after people are about 40 or 50, they don't, like, really radically change their viewpoint. Like, that's what I mean in a moment in context. But Hasbom, his later output, in, like, especially in 19, 1990s. It dealt a lot with what he perceived as like cultural decadence, like the kind of corruption of social democracy, the intellectual and moral poverty of the new left, you know, the ability

of capitalism, as he perceived it, to resist historical processes and endure beyond in his estimation. It's what should have been. It's kind of viable, it's sort of viable life as a conception. model. So people kind of said like oh, Hadswam again, it was like embittered old guy after the Cold War and saying, no, I don't believe that. He always thought this. But it would have been pointless to kind of bandy that like during the Cold War. There was this, there just wouldn't have been a context and it would have gone without saying. And also even much as like the Orthodox left, you know, the pro-Soviet left, much as they

kind of despise the schismatics, I mean, they were they were literally at war with, America and NATO and it's adjacent elements. They weren't, they weren't going to pick like some sectarian fight with a bunch of 60-8ers who were like voting in like the sweetest green party when, you know, there's

there's a good possibility at some point. There's going to be a nuclear war with their ops. They're not, that was just was not even within their contemplation. But in, uh, in the early 90s Hasvon dropped a book that's, I think this might have been his last, I should know this. I think this was his last,

he wrote essays subsequently but I think this is his last like published book it was called the age of extremes the short century the short century 1914 to 19191 I identify the end of the short century as 1989 hobbs bought 1991 with the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union so for clarity that's what he meant but he commented on popular culture a lot you know and he said look he's like in the 60s popular culture were totally changed. He was like before that,

he's like the kind of pop culture icons, whether you were talking about like Pet Boone or whether you were talking about John Wayne or whether you were talking about somebody like, even somebody like Steve McQueen or some of these guys. You know, they might have represented

kind of an idealized vision of Americana. But he's like, and he's, and he's, and it was very deliberate, and there was something very corporate about that. But at the same time, these kinds of figures and these motifs, they basically mirrored the way that people had always kind of thought. You know, like simple minds that may be to some people. You know, in the 1960s, the kind of like rock star identity, which don't get me wrong, had always, you know, the reason why like old rock and blues guys would always talk about selling your soul to the devil, because guys in that life, they, they'd always.

die young and they ended up in totally fucked up circumstances. But kind of like the mass marketing of this to like boogeys and like and lames. You know, he identified like Janice Joplin, Brian Jones, Bob Marley,

you know, and all this kind of hippie garbage. You know, he's like, okay, these people weren't just viewed as pop culture figures. Like people decided, these people stood in for like literal cultural icons. You know, thus you have like the kind of like

stereotypical like boomer idiot or things like the Beatles are like uttering like like sacred truths or something you know like and um this idea that being old is bad you know life is horrible after you're like 28 or 30 you know uh there's something glorious about not getting beyond that stage and like dying from partying you know hasba view was like okay first of all this is a way of kind of like dumbing people down. And it's a way of kind of like capitalism artificially sustaining itself by selling this kind of like a lifestyle image that's pretending to be radical or pretending to be like at odds of what came before.

And it is, but not in, you know, the post 1789 sense. You know, and he said that like this basically, this kind of passive nihilism turns anybody, you know, basically into sort of like a comatose like consumer. you know um and this kind of contempt for older people he's like you know if you're going to say that like everything is shit basically after not ruled by your hormones and i don't i don't have content for young people and i don't think has won't that either but he's saying this kind of caricature of youth that was presented you know by like capitalist media in his estimation you know he's like basically you're saying that anyone who has lived long enough

going to develop like an evolved view of what of the system we live under a scale they're bad or they're like the police or they're trying to tell you to do things you don't want to do so it's kind of this like deliberate dumbing down under auspices of rebellion

and that's insightful because that really is true and this kind of weird preaching you know these like rocket belly guys like Eddie Cochran like Elvis like Buddy Holly like you know

like Richie Valens these guys weren't trying to sell people on some lifestyle you know they were like poor redneck guys in Valens case you know they were poor like East LA Spanish guys you know and there was a real like energy there that had kind of a dark side

that was exemplified by people like Starkweather I mean unfortunately but these guys were never going out and like preaching some weird sociology to people That wouldn't even occurred to them because that that's not what musicians do. Like the fact that this became part of the package in Hobbswams view, that was totally ideological. You know, that was not some accident. That wasn't just people in the same with the zeitgeist.

It wasn't just some kind of weird feedback loop owing to sort of like the integration of narratives because of TV. No, this was very deliberate, you know. And so in his view, in his view, like basically American pop culture from about 1964, 65 to like the then present, which was like 1993 when he wrote this, he's like, this is basically capitalist propaganda. You know, and obviously, in our view, it's social engineering and Hobbsom, they don't really care about that on its own terms. But again, he opposed that stuff because he's like, this is basically trying to get you drunk on sex or taking drugs. or clout chasing so that you basically never mature

in like a rational adult and you never contemplate why you're in the condition you're in and you never contemplate like why there's not like any economic justice in his view and again these conclusions really have nothing to do

with our perspective but the process he describes and what these what this sort of like pop cultural product represent like he is right about that or he was right about that

you know and he and he said this stuff had like real um he said that the true like he said that was truly different about this this sort of this sort of propaganda as pop culture is threefold you know he's like first

he's like youth was always seen even in cultures that like revered youth when you're talking about like classical Greece or the Third Reich or even like the Soviet Union it was still viewed as like a preparatory stage for adulthood in some sense. As, you know, youth is important. The youth are vigorous. We need them to protect us, to fight our wars, to, you know, develop

passionate ideas that they can later build upon and innovate. But, you know, this is important because it's a critical stage for the final phase of full human development. That all was like done away with. It's like, no, youth is some end in itself, being old as shit, you know, being a young, a teenager or a young person, that is the zenith of life. And your life is miserable after that. So you've got to try and hang on to those aspects as much as you can, whether it's through taking drugs or like, you know, including hormones, whether it's like refusing to get married so you can

like have sex, a lot of girls. Whether it's, you know, refusing to behave in a responsible way, whether it's, you know, refusing to take on a real political perspective because that's like, oh, that's like, you know, that's that square stuff. This all is very deliberate. And this is very, this is an odd basey with every human culture that ever existed. Secondly, it became dominant in market economy. It's like every single one of them. It's not just like in America or in the UK, there's this weird kind of youth-obsessed

tendency owing to kind of the population boom at World War II. No, this happened like everywhere that America like was able to like plant its footprint. You know, whether you're talking about Japan, or India, whether you're talking about, you know, France, whether you're talking about, you know, the then, you know, East block, former East block that was like opening up, but you're talking about Finland. But they talk about, you know, Latin America. They can't just be like some spontaneous homogenization, okay? Like, pop culture doesn't just develop this kind of like homogenous ideological imperative just by complete accidents. especially like pre-internet. That was laughable.

And the third thing you identified was that it became truly international in a way that didn't really make sense. You know, he's like, if you take stuff like the Beatles or if you take stuff, you know, like some of these movies that like pop so much out of the production code got done away with like the graduate,

a lot of the stuff wasn't even translated. Like people didn't even understand like what they were hearing. because it was you know and it wasn't it's not like there was some program where you could upload subtitles to release a movie in India or China but nevertheless there was this constant stream

of mostly radio then but also TV and like the richer developing world that said like this is cool this is how you should be so people kind of like ate up the visual aspect and you know

kind of in Congress with, you know, the overly ideological kind of like radio media stuff. There's all modeled at radio for Europe, of course. You know, it's like this became this international kind of, it became this uniform, ideologically motivated international subculture without even being linguistically diverse. You know, and it was, it's not like, no, It's not like this was happening at gunpoint.

You know, like, it's not like, uh, it's not like American soldiers were going into, like, Angola and like blowing away the guy ran, like, the local radio station and saying, you're going to listen to this. You're going to play this. You know, this ability to, like, insinuate itself kind of along with, you know, the illusion of wealth. He's like, that's rare in terms of trying to insinuate, um, a social sensibility. within people or try to get them to develop sort of like a covetous sense of self and how they want their life to be you know he's like that's kind of the strength of capitalism capitalism is really really really good and again i don't use terms like capitalism to describe what he's describing but we're talking about hobbsbom so i'm using

his vernacular in his view he said other ideologies whether you're talking about state socialism you know whether you're talking about some kind of a you know some kind of anti-modernist but the same time, like futurist fascism. Nothing is as effective as this. And like insinuating itself globally. Now there's a rebuttal of that, obviously, it's like, well, you know, if you're dealing with like poor mentioned material or, you know, if the rest of the world's laying in ruins and all that exists is America and the Soviet Union,

as producers of, you know, mass culture, you're going to have perverse outcomes. Yeah, that's true. But that's not really what he's talking about. He's saying like in absolute terms You wouldn't think that this stuff Would have like gone what we consider it by the day's terms like viral But it did and in Hobbs's view That's what keeps capitalism alive

Because it's not like it's not like there's like great outcomes for people Like yeah if you're in America You're basically rubberized if you're like If you're if you're rich comparatively your middle class or amazing middle class You're basically rubberized against like true catastrophes Now, there are people in America really struggle and they are not, but they're not the majority. Hobbson was talking more in terms of, like, planetary scale. Most people in the world, they're not really, there's really nothing to offer you from, like, what he called the capitalist system.

I mean, yeah, you can, you know, shortages, as you may have known in your lifetime have been largely mitigated, but that probably would happen anyway. That doesn't explain, like, why, in, like, in brass tax terms, like why people in Africa, why people in Latin America, why people in Asia have just like internalized this perspective. It doesn't explain why some like jackass in Liberia like decided in 1995 he wants to be a gangster rapper. Like that doesn't make any sense in terms of kind of most precedented sociology. I think it makes a lot of sense according to certain criteria that we're not present before, that are about outside the scope. but that's kind of Hobbsom's point, okay? And there were not many true sociologists on the left.

There was C-right Mills who wasn't really a leftist. I mean, he was viewed as like a progressive by like, you know, by like Eisenhower era standards. But he was in a, he was more kind of like an economic sociologist who was like, hostile to like what's considered a capitalist perspective. But Habsvom was a genuine, you know, Again, this is not an absolute signifier that encapsulates what he was, but he was like a Stalinist of its height. And very few of those guys were like real sociologists, he was.

Christopher Lash, ironically, came to a lot of the conclusions, Hasbaw did in his final book. It was called Progress to Trunely Heaven. It dropped in like 1994, so he'll ever Lash died. Now, of course, Lash had been some kind of peculiar Frighton. Marxist in his younger days, like the kind of guy who'd been on, oh, geez, I'm drawn, um, Mark, he'd been very much influenced by Marcuse, in that school I thought. And then Lash gradually became, like, more and more kind of conservative in his thought,

like, literally conservative. Um, so I'm not sure if you really count. So, Hazzam kind of stands, not quite alone, but it's a very small fraternity. revolutionary Marxist Leninists who who had you know like a sociologist that was both methodologically as well as intellectually rigorous in terms of you know in terms of output so that's another reason why people should take him seriously if I haven't convinced the subs and other people who like what we do um I Hasbond did say, though, with the big shortcoming of capitalism or the capitalist perspective is, he says that owing to this inherently conservative tendency, now again, we're talking about conservatism in the post-1789 sense.

We're not talking about belief and tradition. We're not talking about, you know, reverence for customs. We're not talking about people want to preserve old ways or preserve Harry. We're not talking about ideological conservatism, which, again, is a, you know, is a product of enlightenment liberalism 100%. Osama says that the thing that these capitalist ideologues are really, really, really bad at is predicting the future. Not predicting the future like a gypsy with a crystal ball,

but kind of diagnosing the trajectory of politics and an economic phenomenon. You know, that's why he said that like, he said that like people like Fukiyama are laughable, you know, with their like theories of everything. Like, oh, you know, they'll be, they'll be. be no more armed conflict because, you know, there'll be prosperity. And, you know, people will naturally, like, reject religion because they'll, they'll have all these, like, hedonistic outlets that no longer force them to sublimate. And, like, Hobzum's like, that's ridiculous, that's nonsense. You know, and he's, like, basically, nobody has a worse track record.

Speaking in the 1990s, he's, like, nobody had the worst, nobody has a worst track record to the preceding 40 years. So basically, probably a post-war era, like the 90s, then, like, you know, the capitalists. You know, he's like, they're spectacularly bad at predicting what's going to happen, and that's also why they got utterly blindsided by, like, the implosion of the Soviet Union.

You know, Hobbs on Reserve particular contempt for Calvin Coolidge. If you'd Coolidge is kind of like a Reagan figure, which isn't, I mean, Reagan himself like, lionized Coolidge, but I think Reagan was more like Eisenhower, frankly.

but interestingly George Kenan had a similar contempt for Reagan he thought he was an idiot's I mean I got love for Kenan all day but I think he had some blind spots in his own right but what uh what hasblum said in one of his later books um Coolidge in 1928 I think it was his like a holiday message uh you know this was on the eve of the great depression they had not the kind of terrorism in 1929 obviously had not sit in yet, but there was an ominous air about things.

So Coolidge's message like a holiday season 1928 was quote, the country can regard the present with satisfaction and anticipate the future with optimism. That's fucking meaningless. That's like saying like things are great

because my McDonald's lunch today, you know, cheeseburgers taste good and it's Friday and, you know, I like pussy. Like, it's, it's like a crazier version of what cool, it dropped. Okay. I mean, that's, that's like almost Clintonian in its superficial, superficially moronic, you know, uh, um, essence, you know, um.

So, like, that's why, Habsman says that, like, capitalism, it's got a permanent alibi for its failures because it creates this climate it basically is a dumbed-down climate of clout chasers and people thirsty and desperate for youth and the kind of pleasures that supposedly attend youth

and they're told that the experts and you're always supposed to trust experts you know like no balls walls says we trust doctors you're always supposed to trust the experts whether they're an economist, whether they're, you know, some Pentagon Whiz Kid, abating myself with that phraseology, I realize, or whether they're, you know, some medical doctor like Dr. Fauci. And the experts always say, you know, something in the same vein as what Coolidge said,

there's just nothing but progress ahead. There's nothing but prosperity ahead. So, oh, when there's natural, when there's natural hiccups, so to speak, you know, in markets or when there's problems, or when a combination of malfeasance and badly coded inputs leads to something like the 2008 crisis where billions of dollars wiped out, like, oh, the alibi of the capitalist and who in a, in a, in a view, was like, oh, this was an unforeseen crisis, almost like a terrorist attack. You know, but darn it, like, we got the gumption to get through it and these things just can't be

predicted. You know, so, how's the nonsense. This is absolutely foreseeable. You know, like, granted, there's always something of, uh, there's always something of a mystic's belief in augury to Marxist-Leninist. It's like dressed up as like, oh, no, we're just diagnosing, you know, through a scientific method, the world historical process. But they do, they are right when they say, like, no, history does not repeat itself that's something moron say. But there are patterns to events, particularly crises of, like, an economic or military nature.

and this idea like, oh, we're just being blindsided because this can't be predicted. You know, like that, he's right about that. And that is the ongoing alibi of capitalism. Again, this is his phrase all that he calls capitalism. I think, I want to take part three in some of a different direction. And I think we're coming up in the hour. So I'm going to cease if that's okay. Because if I start in on what I want to start in on it,

we're just going to have to abrogate it. And I don't want to do that. No problem at all. No problem at all. And you're getting ready for a trip and everything. So, yeah, I don't want to keep you here forever. Yeah, do plugs. We'll get out of here.

Yeah, no, my good buddy, I don't want to name check him because he's a very private person. But like my homie and my erstwell, like tech frog who maintains my website, it's back up and running. Thomas777.com. Number 7-HOMA 777.com. it's up to date, it's current, you can find the archives of everything I do, and like the alerts automatically kick on. Like when this gets uploaded, it'll automatically pop up. So it's current. I know it was down for a few days.

I'm going to retool some stuff, or rather my guy is going to retool it. I know how to do that, but there's some things I want to change. I can't do that until I get back from this trip. I'm going to Portland tomorrow, tomorrow being Halloween, and happy Halloween. I'll be back on November 7. I'm going to need a few days to recover. So realistically, it's probably going to be like November 10th before like I'm, I'll be, I'll be streaming and stuff from the road, but I,

the stuff's not going to get done other than that. So there's good, it's going to be about three weeks before a new pod episode is, is, is, is, is, is uploaded. But speaking of the pod, you can, and I'm going to retool the website around mid month of November. So they'll, it'll be a lot easier to use and navigate. There'll be, I want that to be, at archival library where you everybody can find everything for free of course and that's that but

you can find the pod at real thomas seven 777 at sub sac.com it's the mindfeasor podcast we've also got a pretty active forum there's also like there's a combination like short and medium forum stuff and that's the best way to keep up with me like hit me up there or hit me up on tgram um i got a tgram channel I don't fuck with DMs on Twitter and stuff. Too many bad experiences and I cannot keep up with like half a dozen DM systems. But I'm on social media at capital REL underscore number seven, HMAS 777 on Instagram on Tgram. I got a MERS shop. And yeah, man, if you'd plug like the MERS shop in the description, that would be tremendous.

I'd appreciate it very much, man. Absolutely. It's all set up and just copy and paste it over. Safe travels, ma'am. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, buddy.