Quote of the Day
Their worldview includes fixed positions on race, gender, decolonisation, sexuality, slavery and the Palestinians. Although much of this causes real harm, particularly to teenagers and Jews, these ideological positions are signifiers of social status rather than authentic moral positions. They are luxury beliefs.
It is striking how closely this group adheres to these orthodoxies. Because it is a question of identity, it is almost unthinkable for devotees to hold some of those views but not others, and very hard for them to change their minds. Last week, Jeremy Corbyn appeared unable to revise his vision of Hamas as “friends” even in the aftermath of the massacre.
Jake Wallis Simons
October 15, 2023
Why liberals have ended up cheerleading for jihadism
I like the label, “Luxury beliefs.” That describes the beliefs of gun control advocates as well. The people advocating for gun control will not be materially affected by the banning of guns and they like pleasure of feeling morally superior in ridding the world of the yucky guns.
Jeremy Corbyn, If you can’t change your mind, are you sure you have one?
I posit he does have one, albeit small. He is “unable to revise his vision of Hamas as ‘friends’ even in the aftermath of the massacre” not because he’s incapable of changing his mind, but because he has no reason to; deep down, he’s just as full of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism as Hamas. He just doesn’t live in a place where he can openly support or engage in it.
I saw a twitter video of a very white chick with an accent that led me to believe South African talking about the Hamas terrorist attack and saying “what did you think decolonization was going to look like?”.
The implication is that people who agitate for “decolonization” of “oppressed indigenous peoples” should be celebrating the Hamas attack because that’s what “decolonization looks like”.
And all I could think of was that I wonder if she realizes that her lily white colonizing ass would be one of the ones being raped and tortured and murdered if “decolonization” came to her home town.
It seems it’s pretty easy to root for the terrorists when it’s someone else having poles shoved into their eye sockets and being gang raped to death…I doubt she’d be so sanguine about it were it she being subjected to such noble decolonization efforts.
“Luxury beliefs” indeed.
It’s a luxury belief that aforementioned female person of pallor will be be able to say, “It’s OK; I’m an ally” and the dark angel of decolonization will pass her by.
Spot on, to funny, bro! Maybe some conservative white people blood on her lentil posts?
Kind of like all the morons wearing “Che”, clothing. He would have executed 90% of their bourgeoise asses.
And right now they’re importing the Narcan antidote for OD on luxury beliefs.
And speaking of colonizing/decolonizing. Since when does anyone coming across the border have a claim on/as an American?
My family has been here for almost 300 years, and we ain’t native yet?
The problem is nobody is getting punched in the face by the truth. And the second one is that most wouldn’t know truth if it kicked their ass.
Which it’s about to do.
The truth is that unless you’re a Christian, might makes right. And if not, you just rewrite history to make look like it was.
Ain’t nobody but satan going to enjoy the next 10 years. No matter what you believe.
Decolonization is just another word for genocide.
And remember to them every single white person in the United States along with every white person on the planet not it Europe (and even then) fall under that umbrella.
You already know where this is going it’s just a matter of how much you are willing to admit it to yourself and accept the fact that they view the literal complete and total global extermination of all white people on earth as an acceptable action to fix literally everything wrong with the world.
That “Luxury Beliefs” closely follow the spread of “Basic Luxury” should not come as a surprise.
When living quarters became “luxurious” as measured by previous standards, jobs became neat, clean, air conditioned and highly socialized weekday 9-to-5 coffee klatches, automobiles became comfort-oriented, and every nutritional need satisfied by 100,000 square foot supermarkets and on-call home delivery, gadgets and gizmos arrive on one’s porch within 48 hours, why would one not expect “luxury” everything – including mental state – to permeate society? When one’s most strenuous expenditure of effort is reaching for the remote, clicking the mouse, putting the lever in ‘Drive” or using a ubiquitous phone to adjust the thermostat why would we expect anything different?
There’s a huge disconnect between “reality” as usually lived and “how we live now” that fosters those casually adopted “luxury beliefs;” a friend from Florida often opines that the state constitution should require living in an un-air conditioned house south of I-4 for a full 12 months as a prerequisite for running for any elected office in Florida.
I don’t think he’s wrong, but other than dependence on a single centrally located wood stove for heat and cooking, I’m not sure what the northern corollary would be. Perhaps also requiring a year of commuting on horseback would be a help.
I suspect the Luxury Believers will be providing a great many second homes and large boats for psychiatrists and psychologists should the economy take a tumble, at least as long as their money, or benefits, hold out.
While I broadly agree, there are several factual or contextual errors in the article that call it into question.
1. The Soviet support of the Arabs began before the 6 Day War. A lot of it had to do with the Aswan Dam which the US and UK originally agreed to finance but then withdrew the offer due to various displeasures with Egypt. The Soviets stepped in and an arms deal came with it. At that time the main weapons supplier to Israel was France.
2. The question of de jure recognition is sort of inside baseball. While it is true that the Soviets were the first to do that, the US was the first to recognize Israel, followed by Iran.
3. The passage about the Nazis despising cities and idealizing the rural life while true, lacks context. The same could be said about Thomas Jefferson who was no anti-Semite. There is no inherent connection between extoling the rural life and anti-Semitism. For that matter, the early kibbutzniks had the same attitude.
4. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is Tsarist propaganda that was late appropriated by the Nazis and then the Arabs.
5. Malcolm X never replaced King as the leading figure of black liberation. Malcom was assassinated before King was. While they had distinctly different world views, this was an evolution from the rivalry between Booker T. Washington and WEB Dubois.
I see a parallel between ‘luxury beliefs’ and Thorstein Veblen’s conspicuous consumption.
Veblen challenged the assertion of classical economists, that ordinary people are rational actors, that spend and save in a way that advances their material well-being. Instead, people spend and save to move, or appear to move, from a lower socio-economic stratum into a higher one, even to the point that such spending can harm the spender’s material well-being.
Behind that is an assumption that socio-economic strata are matters of birth and breeding, and cannot be bought, or changed like a stained shirt.
Developing . . .
“Luxury beliefs” by “Limousine Liberals”.
Has a nice ring to it!
But what the adopters of those luxury beliefs object to is that
such beliefs now impose costs. Costs that make it more difficult for people of the leisure class to remain in the leisure class, as well as making it more difficult for people not in that class to enter it.
Their worldview includes fixed positions on race, gender, decolonisation, sexuality, slavery and the Palestinians. Although much of this causes real harm, particularly to teenagers and Jews
An interesting take, considering who invented and propagated most of these views.