I’ve said this before, but, all the main political ideologies in the West since 1945, communism, socialism, liberalism, capitalism, anarchism, etc., have denied or ignored the importance of cultural identity to people, instead treating us as no more than individuals, or else members of an economic class. This is not to say that all those ideologies are wholly wrong, only that they are all deficient.
The Alt-Right is the return of that repressed, naturally in its most pathological and extreme form. From now and for the foreseeable future, the most pressing ideological/political task is the rehabilitation and restoration of the importance of cultural identity in society, guiding it somewhere healthy, in balance with all other concerns.
It’s going to be awkward, with alliances and positionings and denunciations and guilt-by-association and whatnot, in amongst the actual progress. No doubt a lot of political glass will get smashed in the process: what was unimaginable today will be commonplace tomorrow. And the Left will certainly not let up screaming blue murder throughout.
2016 is just the beginning.
I would prefer to say they have defeated the importance of cultural identity. Mostly.
Now we just need to finish the job.
True, but…this is a project to be approached with care and thought.
Cultural identity of the old-style pre-packaged you’re-born-into-it style is terrible. But people want certain psychological, social, and spiritual things that it offers. They really, really, really want those things. They will do what it takes to get those things, one way or another.
And none of the ideologies mentioned in the OP is capable of providing those things, on its own, in the long term. Hedonic liberal welfare capitalism certainly isn’t.
So you’d better have some alternative plan in place.
I mean, that’s sort of what I’m declaring war on.
The desire for cultural identity, meaning, and belonging. That’s what I want to defeat.
Are you opposed to even the really facile Theme Park Versions of culture, like songs and traditional pottery crafting styles and secular holidays? If so, why?
@balioc I think American liberalism has and is offering a very compelling culture of its own, which people do identify with, sometimes to extreme degrees. I’m not sure if you think this hasn’t been successful?
Short version:
Liberalism-on-its own isn’t, and can’t be, a culture. It contains some culture-like norms and structures, but they’re very incomplete, and most of them are designed to prevent other cultural structures from arising to fill in the gaps. (Here I refer to meta-rules like “you can’t use most kinds of coercive punishment for anything, unless you’re the government” and “you can’t do anything that would prevent money from being an infinitely flexible tool.”) An ideology with a foundation of “people should generally get to do whatever they want” has a lot of value, but it is very bad at telling people how to live, which is culture’s primary function.
That said, American liberalism has a variety of different cultures embedded within it. The liberal context and its restrictions means that it’s harder for those cultures to do their thing, but some of them manage pretty well regardless. A lot of them fail horribly.
I’m not sure which one of those cultures you’re talking about. It’s worth noting that “people identify with a culture” != “that culture is successful at providing those people with cultural goods.” Some things are very good at demanding fervent, highly-conscious affiliation without actually making you feel like you know what you’re doing in life, or even making you feel like you understand what’s important.