This is his first video below, a thought-provoking and badly needed perspective on a new Alt Left politics:
I like this principle very much:
Alternative LeftAgent Commie sees this as the essence of the Alt Left:
Politics, so far confined to the internet and social media, centred around advocacy of a program of protecting Western civilization from decline due to an erosion of humanist values created by regressive leftism.
(1) economic leftism;I am comfortable with this, but an Alt Left really needs more than this, as follows:
(2) anti-conservatism;
(3) civil libertarianism, and defence of freedom of speech and expression.
(1) a clarification of its economic thought and policies.I urge the Alt Left community to consider these ideas.
In reality, the hard work has already been done here by left-heterodox Post Keynesian and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) economists.
The left-heterodox Post Keynesian position supports full employment, Keynesian macroeconomic policies and management of our economies, a high-wage economy, industrial policy, managed trade in the national interest, a humane welfare state, and an end to offshoring of manufacturing and service jobs to the Third World.
(2) an Alt Left should take a strong stance against cultural leftist identity politics and endless cults of victimology, and the bizarre conspiracy theories that blame all our problems on the capitalist, white-male, heterosexual patriarchy and universal “institutional racism.” Third Wave Feminism is the worst offender here and needs to be subject to withering critique.
(3) an Alt Left should reject extreme social constructivism and the “blank slate” view of human beings, for a sensible understanding that many human traits are a complex mix of both genetics and environment. For example, all the scientific evidence you want and your basic experience of the world should show you a basic biological fact: that men – generally speaking and on average – tend to be physically stronger than women, and so are better suited to certain kinds of hard and difficult physical labour than women are, such as firefighting, construction work, and so on.
(4) an Alt Left should continue the anti-imperialist tradition and be largely non-interventionist on foreign policy, but not isolationist.
(5) an Alt Left, at the very least, should be open to serious and rational discussion of the breakdown of the nuclear family in the Western world, and what harm this may have done to our societies, but with humane policies free from right-wing viciousness or free market economics. The excellent work of the communitarian ex-Marxist Bob Rowthorn should be a starting point for this (see here).
(6) an Alt Left must have a sane and pragmatic immigration policy. This is crucial. You have to recognise reality: most people have a normal and natural wish to preserve their nations as homelands for their majority culture and their people. Low-level immigration and reasonable refugee quotas are fine, as long as minorities actually do remain a minority of the population, and people who wish to stay assimilate and do not bring hostile and incompatible cultures.
Realist Left on the Internet:
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Social Democracy for the 21st Century: A Realist Alternative to the Modern Left
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Alt Left on the Internet:
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An Alt-Left closed Facebook discussion group can be accessed through this page as well.
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I used not to care about immigration except in so far as the talk about it made me hate the Tory opportunists using it. And I questioned Migration Watch etc. But now with the 2010 Labour loss and Brexit I don't want any more immigration. Not limiting it from Eastern Europe was the stupidest thing they ever did. Even if immigration *did* raise economic growth per head, it's not noticeable and you gain no votes from it, but lose millions of votes because people are so scared of it. The Mail, Express, Times, Torygraph can't be censored and it gives an advantage to the Tories with working people. Immigration is the policy Labour must ditch to get back in and get anything else done.
ReplyDelete"Even if immigration *did* raise economic growth"
ReplyDeleteOf course immigration raises economic growth. Any idiot can grow an economy by expanding the population without limit. Growing an economy with a static or falling population is the real trick - and also very necessary to crack if we are to survive on this planet as a species over the next century.
It's the consequences of population importing that are not thought through. And here in the UK we know the consequences of importing a population into an area from the surrounding countries locking into a fixed exchange rate policy. London has drained the rest of the country and even with a transfer system it is too weak to counter that pull.
We had the same before with the industrial cities. And yet we repeat the mistake time and again all across the globe.
Open borders is just a way of trying to turn an entire country into an industrial city, and lock it into the support structure of the surrounding countries in a way that cannot be altered - largely via the food, water and power supplies. That then neutralises the power of the government to assist its population against global forces.
Brexit is the rest of the UK pointing out the obvious problem with the London brain drain and the push to turn the entire country into London.
civil libertarianism with social limits. The excess individualism that ends with the 'special snowflake' syndrome has to be opposed.
ReplyDeleteWe need to get back to the core values of 'after you' and 'how would you like it if' that instil a sense that there are others with needs and wants in society as well as you.
It used to be the case that people had learnt that lesson by the age of 3, but it seems to have been weakened recently and the 'adult toddler' appears to be a thing.
the trick is not to make the economy grow but how to make it grow per capita (which is more important) and how to make it grow more or less equally.
DeleteI like how he said before geek was cool when geek has never been less cool on a council estate. Amazingly SJW thing to say.
ReplyDeleteAre you sure you're trying to win over the working class, LK?
Having no mates before university, playing dungeons and dragons, saying that geek is cool - these are all hallmarks of an SJW autistopia.
ReplyDeleteIdk about your country LK, but in America the left was usually the more interventionist, especially FDR.
ReplyDeletesince then they became interventionist only in cases of identity politics.
Delete