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The war on terror primed America for autocracy

economist.com

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Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#241

Post by civet_java »

maciejw wrote: post #119

I recommend a book 'Silk Roads' by Peter Frankopan. It’s an attempt to show world’s history as a continuous movement of center of civilizational gravity. It’s not without flaws, but interesting nonetheless. Frankopan describes most of modern US history as a series of blunders. This approach is maybe a bit harsh, but it shows how difficult it is for a dominant power to stay on top. I would summarise the book with a se…

> I recommend a book 'Silk Roads' by Peter Frankopan.

Thank you for the recommendation!

> In fact you can look at China or India - future dominant powers, and guess which of their flaws will make them fall.

Are these flaws talked about in the book or are they something you've worked out since after you read the book?

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#242

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

rayiner wrote: post #240
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If center-left folks flipped on immigration, the current right wing populism would collapse, This theory is false, it does not work. It was tested to destruction in the UK this year and tl;dr: it's how to annoy everyone. When the centre-left party chases the right-wing, they disillusion their base and lose votes there, without gaining any significant number or right-wingers, who still prefer what they see as the "r…

It does work. It’s exactly what happened in Denmark: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1mgkd93r4y . But you have to actually mean it and follow through on it. People need to believe the party has genuinely changed its position on the issue, instead of merely changing its messaging. Every thing Starmer said indicated he was soft on immigration and he took no meaningful steps to stop it and send refugees back.

Your article is 404 not found. Thank you for your opinion that "centre-left parties should actually be right-wing, it works, trust me". However, I do not share it and nor did the UK. Nor does the linked study, whose analysis and methods I find more persuasive than yours.

> Every thing Starmer said indicated he was soft on immigration and he took no meaningful steps to stop it and send refugees back.

Immigration into the UK is steeply down (1), the "took no meaningful steps" is just not true. But this is not how the topic is reported. I do believe that Home Secretary Mahmood truly does believe the hard-line things that she says (2) and that it is in no way winning any votes for Labour. Again, actual Labour voters are repulsed, and Reform voters are not attracted.

This underscores my point that ceding this issue is not how centre-left parties win. I refer you to the study linked above as to how this backfired due to these perceptions.

1) https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyp1ekd584o

2) https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/21/shabana-mah...

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#243

Post by rayiner »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #242
rayiner wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does work. It’s exactly what happened in Denmark: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1mgkd93r4y . But you have to actually mean it and follow through on it. People need to believe the party has genuinely changed its position on the issue, instead of merely changing its messaging. Every thing Starmer said indicated he was soft on immigration and he took no meaningful steps to stop it and send refugees back.

Your article is 404 not found. Thank you for your opinion that "centre-left parties should actually be right-wing, it works, trust me". However, I do not share it and nor did the UK. Nor does the linked study, whose analysis and methods I find more persuasive than yours. > Every thing Starmer said indicated he was soft on immigration and he took no meaningful steps to stop it and send refugees back. Immigration into…

Try this one: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1mgkd93r4yo

What i’m describing is literally how the Danish left got back in power. In the UK you’d need someone in Labour at least as aggressive as Fredrickson: https://theconversation.com/denmarks-prime-minister-has-led-.... Immigration isn’t “left wing” or “right wing.” It’s just neoliberalism. It’s based on viewing people as fungible units of labor output.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#244

Post by [deleted] »

Schmerika wrote: post #238
JeremyNT wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a reasonable case to make that 9/11 broke American politics in a fundamental way, by fully unlocking and granting a permission structure for politicians to reach for nativism and xenophobia to justify basically everything. It's clear that Bin Laden did not "win" in any immediate sense, but America might have still lost, so there's a claim to a Pyrrhic victory. The truly erratic and unstable nature of…

> America might have still lost, so there's a claim to a Pyrrhic victory. Might have?? America has spent - at the lowest possible estimate - at least 8 trillion dollars on the "war on terror". Probably more like 20-something. Trillion . That's enough money to have transitioned to entirely clean energy, housed every homeless American, and solved world hunger. With change. The DOW is over 50 thousand though, I guess, a…

[deleted]

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#245

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

rayiner wrote: post #243
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your article is 404 not found. Thank you for your opinion that "centre-left parties should actually be right-wing, it works, trust me". However, I do not share it and nor did the UK. Nor does the linked study, whose analysis and methods I find more persuasive than yours. > Every thing Starmer said indicated he was soft on immigration and he took no meaningful steps to stop it and send refugees back. Immigration into…

Try this one: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1mgkd93r4yo What i’m describing is literally how the Danish left got back in power. In the UK you’d need someone in Labour at least as aggressive as Fredrickson: https://theconversation.com/denmarks-prime-minister-has-led-... . Immigration isn’t “left wing” or “right wing.” It’s just neoliberalism. It’s based on viewing people as fungible units of labor output.

> Immigration isn’t “left wing” or “right wing.”

I do not agree. This is obviously an issue that the far right continually talk about. In racist terms.

In academic language from the linked study:

> Thus, accommodating the radical right on immigration could benefit the radical right by increasing the salience of an issue on which it has long been perceived as having a comparative advantage

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#246

Post by spwa4 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #201
spwa4 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. Pressed, they refuse to provide any concrete details, even in a safe context. And yet we all know why that is. We have decided that certain ideologies that are ... let's call it "easy to criticize" (because they deserve some damn serious criticism and have done enormous damage. Oh and not just one such ideology). To make things worse, in many places such discussions have been legally banned. And some of these id…

Everything you said about Islam has direct correlations in Christianity in fairly recent history. But, as you say, things evolve over time. Christians for the most part are now against slavery, as I would bet most Muslims are too. Countries that are no longer communist still have dissidents in prison, which would suggest that is not the fault of communism, but other ideologies still rampant in those countries. I'm no…

While you claim there are correlations, there is a massive difference in trajectory. Christianity has a very long and documented history of driving the movement against slavery. The abolitionist movements were rooted deeply in Christian theology and the belief that all people are created in the image of God. There are Christian abolitionist movements from the age of the Byzantine empire. In contrast, we see an ideology in Islam that not only permitted slavery but based it's economy on slavery for 1200 years, and has seen it reintroduced in various forms in modern times. As a general rule, the more religious the movement, the more it is pro-slavery. And ... where do you see any islamic movements for removing slavery out of the religion as we have seen for 1500+ years in Christianity? You know, where do you see these muslims countering the "extremist" pro-slavery camp in islam?

I wear glasses, so perhaps that's the reason I have so much trouble finding them?

(btw: yes, I know that such movements exist, like the Ahmadiyya sect. The majority sect of muslims is attempting to eliminate them, which is even worse, imho, than them not existing at all)

And given the values of liberty and human rights that Americans have, I would expect people to have a significant problem with any ideology that continues to leave the door open for slavery.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#247

Post by beej71 »

pstuart wrote: post #90
SubiculumCode wrote: post #77

The elevation of the Executive branch the last and this century has led to this primordial autocracy. Say no to the royal perogative, and accept the more limited powers of Execution of Law. https://jach.law.wisc.edu/exec-power-royal-prerogative-found...

It would help if Congress wasn't sabotaged to enable this; and to have a major political party that effectively wants a king. We were rightfully warned on the dangers of political parties and it's well demonstrated that that warning was correct in its assessment. The fact that millions of Americans declare themselves to be loyal to their party first and foremost is terrifying. Evil people have weaponized the tribal s…

I left "my" party a long, long time ago. I wish everyone would, but people really, really want to tribe up even if doing so fractures their own nation. (And sometimes especially if it does.)

Before I got banned from redstate.com 20 years ago for sharing an unflattering fact about a particular Congress, I remember one person there being genuinely uncomfortable with the fact that I wouldn't declare myself to be in one camp or the other. They really wanted me to be in a certain bucket so they'd know how to treat me. It was unnerving to them.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#248

Post by expedition32 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #202
wmf wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was his goal to provide for his people? I thought his goal was to bring down the Great Satan.

As mentioned above his main beef was American troops in the holy Land in Saudi Arabia.

No Bin Laden's beef was the flow of history. The Islamic world has lost its power and influence to control events.

What really hurt Bin Laden was the knowledge that the Saudi elite WANTED American troops in the holy land. His real enemy was never America, the West or crusaders it was his fellow Muslims- who have for the large part rejected his insane ramblings.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#249

Post by anon291 »

rayiner wrote: post #105
anon291 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a boon economically but people died. Millions of people died due to the actions of a few aristocrats and religious zealots. Probably the greatest humanitarian crisis in the last millennium. And the partition of India is the well accepted term for the event. I'm not going to be drawn into some post colonial syntactic argument in a discussion about the very real deaths if very real people as well as the human tr…

The idea of a unified, secular India was an elite notion imported from the west that elides how much sectarian animosity there was and is among ordinary people. I’m a fan of this essay on India that addresses this disconnect: https://unherd.com/2021/04/the-culture-wars-of-post-colonial...

Sure we can argue about that as well but that doesn't change the mind numbing amount of bloodshed caused by the chosen solution and the resulting successor state that harbored and continues to harbor terrorists hell bent on destroying America.

Ideally India would have balkanized into ethnolinguistic nations with a common union like the EU. That would have probably been the best outcome but the religious partition has led to increased religious extremism on both sides, seemingly unsolvable instability for 1/4 of the world population, and again, millions of deaths.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#250

Post by rayiner »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #245
rayiner wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try this one: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1mgkd93r4yo What i’m describing is literally how the Danish left got back in power. In the UK you’d need someone in Labour at least as aggressive as Fredrickson: https://theconversation.com/denmarks-prime-minister-has-led-... . Immigration isn’t “left wing” or “right wing.” It’s just neoliberalism. It’s based on viewing people as fungible units of labor output.

> Immigration isn’t “left wing” or “right wing.” I do not agree. This is obviously an issue that the far right continually talk about. In racist terms. In academic language from the linked study: > Thus, accommodating the radical right on immigration could benefit the radical right by increasing the salience of an issue on which it has long been perceived as having a comparative advantage

> This is obviously an issue that the far right continually talk about.

That’s labeling. Neoliberals coined the term “far right” to refer to a group that to the left of the conventional right on economic issues.

> increasing the salience of an issue on which it has long been perceived as having a comparative advantage

The Danish left predicted (imo, correctly) that the issue would remain and get more salient due to external factors. Then they got on the right side of it.

The alternative approach is to hope the issue will reduce in salience. The problem is that the unruly coalitions that you need to stop far right parties can’t meaningfully give their constituents anything else they want. This is the problem in Germany, France, and the UK.

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