
The shape of a 21st century I don’t want to see - mpweiher
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/05/happy-21st-century.html
======
jgh
I've been having similar feelings about the state of the world for the past
few years, and that's only been amplified by revelations like Cambridge
Analytica and hysteria around GDPR. We're in a dystopian world now, one that
could have been written about in the 70s or 80s when people feared technology,
except worse. In those dystopian visions the world was chaotic. Today we are
seeing the surveillance and panopticons that were envisioned in those
dystopias, but we are, largely, comfortable.

So it's almost illusory. Am I paranoid, or is the world really walking down a
dark path towards....what?

~~~
netsharc
Makes me think of the intro movie to the game Syndicate Wars: the world looks
shiny and beautiful, until an agent hacks your chip, and you see that you're
walking a dystopian world:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGvIrf86g4Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGvIrf86g4Y)
.

Another thesis which basically supports Charlie's is:
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/25/13-cri...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/25/13-crises-
we-face-trump-soil-loss-global-collapse)

~~~
bhouston
> Makes me think of the intro movie to the game Syndicate Wars: the world
> looks shiny and beautiful, until an agent hacks your chip, and you see that
> you're walking a dystopian world:

Our existing dominant forms of escapism, video games & TV, have accomplished
this fairly well already.

------
icebraining
As Ursula Le Guin wrote, _" Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of
charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more
honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). (...) I
don't recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information.
It's none of their business."_

------
msandford
Let's not forget that it isn't 100% the right that likes to deny banking to
"undesirables" \- the Obama administration put the kibosh on Wikileaks funding
through questionable means: [https://wikileaks.org/Banking-
Blockade.html](https://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html)

It's very much a "people in charge" vs "people not in charge" rather than
"this political ideology" vs "that political ideology"

~~~
dantillberg
Maybe you like what Wikileaks has done, but if a group solicits and then
publishes huge troves of your nation's secrets, it's kind of hard to
distinguish the group's actions from those of a hostile foreign power. I used
to be a fan myself, but nowadays I can't figure out why Americans don't all
consider Assange to be either a malicious spy or a malicious insurgency.
They're definitely not on the USA government's side, and it's not clear to me
that they're on my side, either, but they're definitely on _some_ side, and
they are on the attack.

~~~
marssaxman
I am a US citizen and it is blatantly obvious that the US government is not on
my side. "My" nation shouldn't have those secrets in the first place. They
clearly can't keep themselves honest, so it's good that someone has found a
clever way of forcing them to deal with it.

------
miiiiiike
Or, good people will continue coming together in good faith to create new and
marginally better times. Is that guaranteed? Nope. But, I've seen too many
good people (from all sorts of places and backgrounds) to be pessimistic.

~~~
jgh
The problem, the way I see it, is that a lot of the problems that are going to
be coming to a head over the next decades aren't even really from malevolence.
It's just ignorance, incompetence, and not really working together. Of course
there are bad actors (e.g. the oil industry) who spread FUD and discord when
it comes to the things they are interested in, but mostly it's humanity being
too disorganized to really fix problems. Humanity being too short-sighted to
see what the culmination of individual, otherwise innocuous, steps toward
prolific data collection would mean.

Did you imagine in 2006 when you first joined Facebook that some day it would
impact your immigration status? Likely not.

So going back to what you said yes there are lots of good people with good
intentions, but along the way to creating our problems have been good people
with good intentions.

~~~
miiiiiike
We don't disagree on much of that. The road to hell is paved with good
intentions, people will act in poor faith, etc. Although, yes, I've always
believed that anything that I say, anywhere, can and will be used against me.

What I do think is unlikely/hyperbolic is the global "soft genocide" and
organized "culling" that he describes in the post.

I'm not much for Utopians or Dystopians, they're always trying to sell me
something.

~~~
jgh
Yeah I doubt it would be organized as stated. Probably more along the lines of
various restrictive immigration policies and sanctions which, perhaps
inadvertently, lead to famine and war.

------
JasonFruit
And of course people on the left who are certain all the killing will be done
by the right aren't dangerous at all. Beware a prophet who proclaims your own
perfection.

~~~
giancarlostoro
To clarify what you likely meant: Extremists on either side are equally
dangerous. I figured you'd get down voted for sounding like if you're
generalizing.

~~~
bryanlarsen
"Equally dangerous"? If so, that'd be a highly unlikely coincidence. Both
sides advocate a bunch of really stupid ideas that'd be likely to kill a large
number of people, but those stupid ideas are radically different in both
likelihood and mass death potential.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Extremists are usually unpredictable.

------
kmooney
...and now it's gone from the front page. Wouldn't want to burst that filter-
bubble!

~~~
jgh
Thankfully the tweetstorm about becoming a CEO at 20 is still there!

------
coldtea
> _People will be die in large numbers, but it will happen out of sight._

Out of sight for the first world (or parts of it in good neighborhoods) --
very much in sight for those dying....

~~~
quickthrower2
I took that as implied.

~~~
coldtea
When an international audience can read one's blog, such as the web allows
for, it can be in bad taste to leave it implied.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
In Mr Stross's case, "international audience" means "outside of Scotland".

------
brobdingnagians
They seem to like attacking the right; but it is the left which already
screams about the world being overpopulated, are intolerant of religion or
morals, advocates eliminating poor people through birth control, getting rid
of "undesirables", uses violence to get their way, etc. and everyone seems to
forget the Nazis were actually the "National Socialists", left-wing, not
right-wing, but officially denied being either. I'm not saying the right is
much better, but painting the left as being panda-bear loving hug-givers and
the right as monsters is a very biased attitude.

EDIT: main point being, I think it's a very biased article with little
evidence of their claims. Sure, I think there are some bad things going on,
and that we should take care of those, and that society should be less
complacent, but forecasting doom and a certain group of people as being
ruthless is a bit far out.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> and everyone seems to forget the Nazis were actually the "National
> Socialists", left-wing, not right-wing

They forget this because it is trivially, obviously, crashingly false

[https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/09/05/were-nazis-
socialists...](https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/09/05/were-nazis-socialists/)

[https://www.indy100.com/article/nazi-socialist-right-wing-
wh...](https://www.indy100.com/article/nazi-socialist-right-wing-white-
supremacists-history-twitter-mikestuchbery-7900001)

[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hitler_and_socialism](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hitler_and_socialism)

~~~
mindcrash
National Socialism is an (extreme) offspring of Socialism, is entirely left-
wing to modern standards and I have actual textual evidence from the man
himself to proof it:

"Socialism as the final concept of duty, the ethical duty of work, not just
for oneself but also for one’s fellow man’s sake, and above all the principle:
Common good before own good, a struggle against all parasitism and especially
against easy and unearned income. And we were aware that in this fight we can
rely on no one but our own people. We are convinced that socialism in the
right sense will only be possible in nations and races that are Aryan, and
there in the first place we hope for our own people and are convinced that
socialism is inseparable from nationalism."

\-- Adolf Hitler, August 15 1920

"The common good before the individual good. (Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz)"

\-- Adolf Hitler, February 1920

"Since we are socialists, we must necessarily also be antisemites because we
want to fight against the very opposite: materialism and mammonism… How can
you not be an antisemite, being a socialist!"

\-- Adolf Hitler, August 15 1920

"Because it seems inseparable from the social idea and we do not believe that
there could ever exist a state with lasting inner health if it is not built on
internal social justice, and so we have joined forces with this knowledge. "

\-- Adolf Hitler, August 15 1920

"There are no such things as classes: they cannot be. Class means caste and
caste means race."

\-- Adolf Hitler, April 12 1922

"To put it quite clearly: we have an economic programme. Point No. 13 in that
programme demands the nationalisation of all public companies, in other words
socialisation, or what is known here as socialism. … the basic principle of my
Party’s economic programme should be made perfectly clear and that is the
principle of authority… the good of the community takes priority over that of
the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel
himself to be an agent of the State; it is his duty not to misuse his
possessions to the detriment of the State or the interests of his fellow
countrymen. That is the overriding point. The Third Reich will always retain
the right to control property owners. If you say that the bourgeoisie is
tearing its hair over the question of private property, that does not affect
me in the least. Does the bourgeoisie expect some consideration from me?…
Today’s bourgeoisie is rotten to the core; it has no ideals any more; all it
wants to do is earn money and so it does me what damage it can. The bourgeois
press does me damage too and would like to consign me and my movement to the
devil. "

\-- Adolf Hitler, 1931

"There is a difference between the theoretical knowledge of socialism and the
practical life of socialism. People are not born socialists, but must first be
taught how to become them."

\-- Adolf Hitler, October 5 1937

"We are Socialists, we are enemies of the capitalistic economic system for the
exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its
unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead
of responsibility and performance and we are all determined to destroy this
system under all conditions."

\-- Adolf Hitler, May 1 1927

Sources, so you can read these actual quotes yourself:

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler)

[http://quotes.liberty-
tree.ca/quote_blog/Adolf.Hitler.Quote....](http://quotes.liberty-
tree.ca/quote_blog/Adolf.Hitler.Quote.D6B3)

As an added bonus I also would like to point out that Mr. Hitler hated "the
Left" (as in Marxist Socialism, but mainly because he didn't believe in "their
kind of Socialism") as much as "the Right" (Liberalism/Libertarianism). He saw
both as enemies of the German people. So why both classical liberals and
libertarians alike are branded as "fascists" or "national socialists" these
days is beyond me, because it is historically false.

Secondly, I would like to point out that I am not at all a fan of Hitler and
Nazi Germany but I do like to spend a lot of time studying history as it
happened, and I still very much hope others will find the time to do the same
aswell. If only to avert the biggest disaster Western civilization has ever
faced in the near future (or let me put it otherwise: I agree with Charlie
that a devastating event will happen in the near future. I disagree however
that the Alt-Right, and solely the Alt-Right, will be the cause of this event.
Because entoxicating extremism is literally anywhere and everywhere on the
political spectrum these days).

~~~
dragonwriter
> National Socialism is an (extreme) offspring of Socialism

No, it's not, though (especially early on) the mixed salad of policy proposals
from different sources they adopted as a platform did include some originating
in socialist movements.

Nazism was an right-wing authoritarian populist movement much like Trumpism,
and much like Trumpism some of its early appeal to the working class came from
some superficially left-wing prescriptions decontextualized from their
ideological roots.

> is entirely left-wing to modern standards

Even less true.

> I have actual textual evidence from the man himself to proof it:

No, you have quotes from Hitler that demonstrate that he tried to use appeal
to association with socialism as a sales technique. It's not all uncommon for
leaders of authoritarian movements to use the rhetorical association with
different ideologies than their own as a promotional technique, as hinted at
in the “Democratic” in the name of the former German Democratic Republic and
the current Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

> Hitler hated "the Left" (as in Marxist Socialism, but mainly because he
> didn't believe in "their kind of Socialism") as much as "the Right"
> (Liberalism/Libertarianism).

Classical liberalism is not the right, though it overlaps the part of the
right that Hitler opposed in that some portion of it (basically, the part
sometimes distinguished now as neoliberalism plus that labelled right-
libertarianism) is part of the 20th-21st Century center-right. The Nazis,
Fascists, and similar movements were novel far right groups with some
similarities to classical conservatism (but incorporating modernist elements
from classical liberalism, and corporatist elements various sources across the
spectrum, peppered with populist rhetoric.)

~~~
mindcrash
> It's not all uncommon for leaders of authoritarian movements to use the
> rhetorical association with different ideologies than their own as a
> promotional technique, as hinted at in the “Democratic” in the name of the
> former German Democratic Republic and the current Democratic People's
> Republic of Korea.

And both are based on a form of Socialism. The DDR was a satellite state of
the Soviet Union and the DPRK is based around Juche, which also is a form of
Socialism. Another example would be "The People's Republic of China" which
makes it sound like China is a democracy (demos = people) while it is
absolutely not.

Also the economic engine of Nazi Germany was centered around a planned economy
for the common good (or at least, "the common good" according to the Party);
an economic system which can only be found in Socialist countries.

> Nazism was an right-wing authoritarian populist movement much like Trumpism

False, because "Trumpism" doesn't want to end capitalism as Trump is a
businessman himself who loves capitalism. Hitler _hated_ capitalism and wanted
to get rid of it. Also authoritarian? Since when did Trump dissolve nearly all
civil liberties in the US, and made all political parties except the GOP
illegal? Because Hitler did exactly that, right after the Reichtstag fire and
the Enabling Act. Trump sometimes does some pretty awkward shit, but until now
he didn't do ANYTHING closely resembling to what those people and freedom
hating assholes in Nazi Germany did.

