Seth Shabo
2.6K posts
@feeling4reality
Philosophy professor Writing at The New Dispensation: Essays in Unauthorized Sense-Making https://t.co/dZrwZaNXIa
One of the most notable failures of the leftwing pundit and academic commentariat scene over the 15 years is how they completely misdiagnosed the dynamics of what was happening on the American right. They dreamt up fantastical conspiracy theories about the history of "neoliberalism" and "market fundamentalism," both pejorative caricatures. And they focused their energies on attempting to show how all of their own political grievances, which were mostly economic in nature, traced back to Mises, Hayek, Friedman, and/or Buckley. In the process, the left punditry almost entirely missed the emergence of the Postliberal right, which also shares their own animosity toward Mises, Hayek, Friedman, and Buckley. When Deneen's book appeared in print, they joined Obama in soft praise for its "provocative" thesis. When JD Vance burst onto the scene with Hillbilly Elegy, they accepted him as a respectable and perceptive critic of alleged free market "excesses" from the right (and only really soured on him when he became a Trumpist cultural warrior). They barely even noticed Adrian Vermeule's rehabilitation of Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt, save to also afford it intellectual respectability since (a) he was a Harvard elite who coauthored with progressives and (b) there was also a progressive strain of Schmittian rehabilitation in this same period. The left-pundits of this era also spilled barrels of ink trying to prove that Pat Buchanan's cultural crankery transmitted to the present day via the late-life political alliances of Murray Rothbard. In reality, Rothbard was simply trying to latch himself onto Buchanan, whose movement predated and was much larger than the paleolibertarian scene. And now that Buchananite movement has grafted itself into Trumpism as well, without any discernible influence of Rothbard whatsoever. The result is that the left-pundit class of the 2010s now struggles to comprehend the divisions on the right, even though the evidence is all around them. They can't process how much Buckley's Fusionism is despised by the Postliberal & Buchananite crowds that migrated into Trumpism. They can't comprehend how Postliberals like Deneen, Vermeule, and Pappin embrace anti-capitalist economic narratives that are not far removed from their own positions. They don't understand how the same Postliberals have adopted their own narratives and pejorative screeds about "neoliberalism" and "market fundamentalism." All they can do is repeat the same old tropes of the 2010s "neoliberalism studies" genre, and hope that by repeating the name "Trump" enough they can somehow make it stick to a Postliberal intellectual scene that, just like the far left, also views what it calls "neoliberalism" as its primary enemy.
This actually happened.
🚨 The Islamic regime in Iran executed Mohammad Abbasi, a 55-year-old father, this morning… alongside him, they arrested his daughter Fatemeh during the January protests and sentenced her to 25 years in prison. Fatemeh is a mother to a 13-year-old little girl… They tore this family apart forever. A father executed, a mother ripped away from her child, and a little girl left orphaned by the regime… all because they wanted a free Iran. This is heartbreaking...
🌹🍉 You’ll see A LOT OF HATE against Israel and Jews this weekend on the streets. Who is behind it? At @FoxNews Digital, I teamed up with my colleague @M_Dorgan to follow the money and the digital breadcrumbs. A coordinated global network of socialist, communist and Islamist groups is behind “Nakba 78” protests this weekend and today, using the metaphor of the “Nakba,” the Arabic word for “catastrophe,” to dismantle Israel’s creation 78 years ago on May 14, 1948. 🌹🍉 425 organizations with a combined funding footprint of annual revenues of about $1 BILLION are organizing an estimated 736 “Nakba 78” events across 39 countries. Full story 🔗 foxnews.com/politics/israe… ⚖️ @LeoTerrellDOJ @EliseStefanik @HarmeetKDhillon @JasonMiyaresVA and many others have warned this network has stoked much of the rising antisemitism felt by Jews. Thank you to the erstwhile @DataRepublican for her help collating the data. The coalition spans communist groups, Islamist organizations, anti-Israel activist networks and student coalitions using the anniversary of Israel’s founding to challenge the Jewish state’s legitimacy. 🌹 Socialist groups use a rose symbol. 🍉 Palestinians groups use a watermelon symbol. 💡 Brave Middle East scholar @ISGAP @DaliaZiada calls the anti-Israel network a “sinful marriage between the radical left and radical Islamism” united against Western democracies. 💡 @yudapearl, the father of my colleague and friend Danny Pearl, murdered for being an American Jew of Israeli ancestry, calls it “Zionophobia.” 🌹🍉 The investigation traces the influence of a Shanghai-based American Marxist mogul, Neville Roy Singham, who has poured $278M into activist nonprofits tied to anti-Israel organizing. 🌹🍉 Sen. @MarshaBlackburn, a strong critics of China’s “soft propaganda” campaign against the U.S., tells us that the Singham network will look to partner with any “bad actor” to sow discord in the U.S. 🌹🍉 Indeed, we used a large-language model to analyze the protest rhetoric and found 85% repeatedly frame America as “imperialist” and Israel as a “genocidal settler state, while critics warn chants like “from the river to the sea” erase Israel’s right to exist. ⚖️ @GoldsteinBrooke of @LawfareProject warns that when demonstrations cross into intimidation, obstruction, vandalism, or targeting Jewish institutions, it moves beyond protected speech. The same groups that harassed Jews at synagogues earlier this week — Within Our Lifetime, Muslim American Society, PAL-AWAD and others — will be out on the streets of New York today with the Singham network’s People’s Forum, Party for Socialism Liberation, ANSWER Coalition to send one message: they want to destroy the state if Israel. Full story below👇 and watch our coverage this weekend with our colleague @MizellPreston as we report from the streets. Why do I care? This hate killed Danny Pearl, and I don’t want to see it stoke more hate, violence or death. See you on the streets!
