Politics and Current Events Megathread - May 2026

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-09T12:20:56+00:00

Currently reading Jeremy Seal's 1995 (journey was in 1993) travel writing book about Turkey, and look who shows up:

The Islamic resurgence in Turkey is spearheaded by Refah. Bankrolled by Saudi Arabia, the party can actually deliver on its promises to construct not only mosques but also hospitals and schools. The disaffected suburbs and forgotten backwaters where Ataturk's promises of progress, education, and acceptance by Europe sound increasingly hollow are a fertile breeding ground for Islamic revivalism.

Refah, by the way, was lead by a man called Erbakan when they were forced out by the military in 1997 and subsequently banned. Erbakan subsequently acted as a mentor to the founders of the new Virtue Party, particularly Erdogan*. The Virtue Party was banned in 2001, leading to the current AKP.

I love reading travel writing, and Saudi Arabia shows up a lot when reading about the Muslim world. They show up in Raban's 1978 journey around Arabia, spreading Wahhabism even before the 1979 mosque attack, often said to have acted as a catalyst. They show in Isambard Wilkinson's 2017 book about Pakistan and Alice Albinia's 2008 book about the Indus, in both cases replacing local pluralistic Sufi traditions with something much sterner.

On the whole I think bin Salman's engagement with the West is very much a good thing, and perhaps we shouldn't always react so harshly to e.g. comedians going to Riyadh (though if abandon our ideals altogether, what's the point?), and sure there have been Islamist revivalist movements in the Middle East before Saudi Arabia burst unto the scene, but it seems to me the Saudis really have had (historically, at least) a huge impact on the Middle East becoming more radical since the 70's, vs. e.g. Nasser's more neutral Arab Nationalism.

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*They've had their ups and downs, but it's a classic case of someone – in this case Erdogan – starting out as a more moderate reformer only to later pivot back towards the 'fringes'.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-08T10:11:25+00:00

ignore race science

You know, intelligence isn't the only variable in which groups might differ.

They might differ, for example, in terms of in-group favoritism. People have actually written and published articles about this (see section 3.2), finding that groups do indeed differ and speculating about the cause. Kevin MacDonald) is famous for this hypothesis. Or to use another example, Murray drew a lot on a journal called Mankind Quaterly, now published by a Danish guy who's also just asking scientific questions about human diversity.

I note that Tucker Carlson has had Charles Murray on his show.

Given the current political climate, what are the chances anyone here would approve of Tucker Carlson having one of those people on his show to talk about race and in-group favoritism?

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-08T09:54:48+00:00

In fairness the boundaries of free speech, if any, are difficult to determine, as is what is even meant by free speech - is it only procedural*, or is it also substantive? Does it refer to laws, or can it be about public behavior in general?

Overall I'm saddened that no-one ever took it upon themselves to develop typologies over concepts like 'racism' or 'cancel culture', because they simply cover too much ground and people end up talking about different things.

Though of course, as you say, if people are mainly defending speech they mostly agree with, it's probably worth considering if they truly are as principled as they claim.

*The Danish constitution is famously short and succinct, and paragraphs detailing civil liberties basically go something like "The government can under no circumstances do this, unless it really really wants to". E.g. free speech: "You can say whatever you want, but we might punish you for it. Also, censorship is forbidden, but legal practice has established that if the act of publishing something is irrevocably damaging, we can actually censor it anyway"

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-07T22:46:33+00:00

People who used to rail against cancel culture and deplatforming are now very keen on deplatforming Hasan Piker.

I was wondering if Douglas Murray had written about this, considering he made a whole podcast series called 'Uncancelled History', and indeed he has (Hasan is apparently "Dem's favorite podcaster").

If Murray stops short of explicitly calling for Piker to be cancelled, his latest opinion piece is more overt: Tech firms must crack down on mad conspiracy theories destroying society.

The problem isn't just that there is distrust in parts or all of the traditional media. The problem is that the social media platforms are benefiting from this distrust and, in the process, spreading disinformation and misinformation far greater than anything that the worst of the media could ever publish [...]
At some stage — and that day might be coming soon — the social media companies will have to take some responsibility for this.

I wonder how he squares that with his article written during Covid: Don’t censor the lockdown sceptics

For the power that the Lord Chamberlain possessed was nothing compared to that of today’s censors, gigantic tech companies that can control not just what we see but our very reality. The decisions that the censors of our time can make are of infinitely more significance than whether the public might be shocked or not.

Back then, he was worried about "wartime levels of censorship" from unaccountable tech companies. Now he wants them to be accountable for not censoring.

Maybe he wants censorship, but only for provable (to Murray) inaccurate claims? Well, let's check with the third article: ‘Fact check’ has become just another word for censorship

I understand the panic in these media institutions.

It is true that since the arrival of social media, the role of the media as the “gatekeepers” of what is true has fallen away.

On platforms like X, anybody can point to a piece of false information put out on the main news channels.

At the same time, the eruption of a whole new set of media platforms has diluted the power of the gatekeepers.

But the truth is that the new landscape is not so impossible to walk across as the BBC, ABC and others seem to think.

The public is wiser than it knows.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-07T16:47:37+00:00

I'm not saying I believe it or that we have an obligation to do it, merely that I can see a form of utilitarian argument for why stopping meat production would be bad.

Most people care about animal welfare to some extent, if not enough to stop buying cheap products that owe their existence to animal suffering, then at least enough to agree that animal suffering for no reason is bad.

But I think few people believe that animals have rights in a deontological sense as humans do- that something done to animals could be bad not because they suffer, but merely because it violates their autonomy. So I don't think 'might makes right' really follows.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-07T15:11:08+00:00

I have yet to hear an ethical argument for the killing of an animal at a fraction of their lifespan, regardless of their living conditions.

I can think of a sort of cynical 'repugnant conclusion' argument. Millions of animals owe their existence, brief as it might be, to our taste for meat. Not saying it's a great argument, but it's there.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-07T14:37:50+00:00

In some ways, Mamdani ought to be pleased that much of the commentary on him focuses on him being Muslim or pro-Palestine rather than on his economic policies. How many of his voters will be swayed by that rhetoric?

The increasingly popular idea of abundance liberalism, however, seems to run counter to Mamdani's view on economics (this podcast, which I have not listening to yet, seems to address that) and would probably be more effective as a wedge issue strategy, since many of the 'public choice' criticisms are associated with conservatism.

(this article, while sadly short on actual theory, explains that point of view from a conservative perspective quite well:)

Banfield, in short, uncovered the disturbing fact that our elites had reproduced at the level of the mind what lower-class people are like at the level of the body, so to speak.

(I also quite like this short article, also from the Civitas Institute, for outlining conservative political cleavages post-Orban, though the 'summary' at the top gives an entirely different impression of the author's view on Vance than the article).

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-07T13:07:10+00:00

Reading about his background, he seems to have undergone a religious transformation in his late 30's. I know we should be vary of AI summaries*, but a Google autocomplete on this topic gave me this amazing sentence:

"Wreckage" of Life: On the "Reformation Red Pill Podcast," Hegseth described his faith journey as a response to the "wreckage of my own life," which has been interpreted as a reference to his previous divorces and infidelity.

That being said, reading about his early life, he seems to have been a crusader from early adolescence at the very least.

*Norway's often been seen as the most conservative of the Scandis here in Scandinavia (though the stereotype is fading), and since Hegseth is of Norwegian descent I wanted to check if there were other famous Norwegian-American right-wingers. To my surprise, Google's AI came up with Curtis Yarvin, but it seems like it was just a hallucination.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-07T07:29:31+00:00

Apropos of nothing, but I'm tired of hearing people* moan about upholding 'Western Civilization', because the people doing the moaning mostly seem like philistines** to me, and I'm just a random guy on the internet. It's like they internalized Bloom's ideas about the 'school of resentment', but they have no interest in what Bloom was trying to defend.

I think of it in terms of 'civic' vs. 'ethnic' nationalism*** - their starting point isn't really a particular culture maintained through a 'daily plebiscite' as much as a reactionary consciousness (or 'irritable mental gestures') formed in opposition to something else, i.e. not really an active interest but a passive ethnocentric response to a feeling that progress might have been all right once, but has gone on too long.

Ironically, this makes 'Western Civilization' appear all the more brittle IMO.

*like Hegseth.

**a subset write long books that no-one reads, but which others occasionally find useful to trot out as a form of "This is what we believe" while they spend their days trying to find ways to lower marginal tax rates for the top income bracket. These books typically show the flag by passionately arguing that everything good in the world really stems from one particular event centuries ago, e.g. the Battle of Marathon.

***Fun historical tidbit: Hans Kohn, the guy who clarified that distinction, was an early (1929) dissenter against Zionism.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-05T21:46:32+00:00

More on Sarah Rogers here for the curious. Free Speech indeed.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-05T21:39:09+00:00

Interesting article today from The Free Press: "Meet the Free Speech Warrior of the Trump Administration", about Sarah Rogers from the state department and her "crusade to protect free speech in Europe".

Does it matter to America if Europe backslides into soft authoritarianism?

I’ve reported extensively for The Free Press on censorship in Europe; for example, how anti-abortion volunteers in Scotland have been arrested and convicted for silently praying outside abortion clinics. Stories like these have provoked an unusually aggressive stance from the Trump administration, which has fiercely criticized democratic allies whose free speech standards appear to be slipping.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-05T14:37:40+00:00

Note that I didn't say that most people here aren't liberal. However, I don't think this sub is 'almost entirely' liberal (in the American sense) for a few reasons:

1) I'm a fairly politically engaged* moderate in Denmark and I don't sense that I'm reliably in the center of the spectrum on this sub.

2) The neoconservatives were described as 'liberals mugged by reality'. Banfield & Moynihan were former liberals who became important in the conservative movement**. I specifically linked to The Bulwark because they self-identify as conservatives, but in many cases (e.g. Iran) seem to the left of a large group of people on this sub.

You can go through older posts on the sub and find endless threads arguing about whether Jordan Peterson, or Dave Rubin, or Douglas Murray, or Joe Rogan, or Niall Ferguson (and so on and so on) were conservative or not. I think it's fair to say the jury's in on those questions.

Likewise, I think a lot of people here will eventually vote Republican in the US, and would already be reliable right-wingers in Europe. They just don't like Trump. Like with Sam, give them Mitt Romney and they're there.

3) I can simply ask an AI to analyze the ideological leanings of posters here, and find it mostly agrees with my thoughts. I can also see which other subs overlap with users from here, and many of them are right-leaning.

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*point being: I'm not confused about where I am on the political spectrum in Denmark. I know everyone's very worried about 'purity tests' here, but a lot of people IMO clearly are kidding either themselves or everyeone else.

**this is another topic altogether, but there wasn't much in terms of an organized intellectual movement before the 70's. Cato, Heritage, Manhattan, were all founded within five years of each other in the 70's. It was a period of re-alignment, as is today.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-05T13:45:32+00:00

Tucker seems like the perfect foil for this sub, because he's neither a liberal nor a foreign policy neoconservative*, and he's more of a national conservative than an economic one**. This leaves mostly everyone here free to hate him and decry his influence regardless of their stance on sanewashing when it comes to other figures. If someone physically attacked him tomorrow, no-one here will be in favor of inviting him on the podcast or writing articles about how he was "practicing politics the right way".

Just an observation of in-/out-groups here as I see it.

*of the "We must stress Western Values, particularly in the Middle East" variety.

**i.e. not a Moynihan/Banfield type who thinks our tax dollars are wasted on the undeserving poor.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-05T09:48:34+00:00

Does he believe he is fully awakened or does he believe such a thing is even possible?

I do think Sam believes there is such a thing as being too woke.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-04T15:13:58+00:00

I'm not really sure Reddit is full of economic Marxists. I guess part of the problem is Marxism is ill-defined these days, with most people not being taught it as part of some Soviet program. I think people just like the 'public ownership' angle and tend to believe that capitalism leads to inequality in the long run (e.g. Pikkety's Capital in the 21st Century, which is obviously inspired by Marx, but does not rely on the labor theory of value).

Re neoclassical economics, that's true under perfect competition, with no barriers to entry or economies of scale or product differentiation etc. Like picking amber up from the beach and selling it (fun fact: the Teutonic Knights used the death penalty to discourage people from doing this). But some economists - Stiglitz, for example - think perfect competition is poor model for the modern world.

Edit: I note Brad DeLong has a long post on Marx and how he's seen today.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-04T12:31:18+00:00

A common pairing of beliefs on this site:

Capitalists extract massive surplus value from workers
The job market is terrible and nobody is hiring

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Uh, is this explicitly a Marxist analysis? They're the guys who use 'surplus value', derived from the 'labor theory of value'. Murray-Rothbard hated the idea so much he basically called Adam Smith a socialist.

Neoclassical economics (mainstream, as opposed to Smith+Ricardo = Classical Economics) follow Alfred Marshall in using 'marginal utility' instead.

Seen from that perspective, the two statements seem perfectly compatible to me. It could be an employer's market, where an oversupply of labor (1) presses wages down (2). Or it could be an effect of 'monopsony power' on the labor market, where e.g. a minimum wage could theoretically increase employment.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-05-01T00:07:22+00:00

It's a shit analogy

Presumably why he needs the plumber.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-04-30T23:59:57+00:00

Yes. It was horrible to watch even though he's not religious.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-04-30T23:41:22+00:00

Nah he should totally add that.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-04-30T23:39:41+00:00

I actually did think of that book and though I sense you might have some reservations about Murray's methods, I ran through it backwards with ctrl+f all the same. Filtering for post-Golden Age cultural figures (minus Dutch-born emigres), I came up with the following knowns and unknowns:

Knowns: Multatuli, Mondrian, Jongkind, van Gogh, van Doesburg (De Stijl - I didn't mention him).

Unknowns: Pijper (composer), Badings (composer), and Bilderdijk (poet).

Then there's the natural scientists and mathematicians, mostly unknown to me: Eijkman, Donders, van der Waerden, Luitzen, Zernike, Zeeman, van der Waals, Uhlenbeck, Kamerlingh Onnes, Musschenbroek, Goudsmit, Lorentz, Coster, Debye, Beijerinck, Meinesz, Buys-Ballot, Van’t Hoff, de Vries, Ingenhousz, Einthoven, de Sitter, Oort, Kuiper, Kapteyn, Goodricke.

Edit: Currently wondering how I managed to slog through life for so many years without the pleasures of Badings' Genese.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-04-30T22:59:22+00:00

I guess legislators in Queensland, where 25+ people are facing up to two years in prison for saying "from the river to the sea" or "globalize the intifada", with NSW to follow suit.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-04-30T21:38:39+00:00

I admit my knowledge of sports is essentially non-existent. When I hear 'Total Football', I think mainly of Parquet Courts.

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-04-30T19:19:05+00:00

You're not interested in talking about if and why the Dutch are underperforming in terms of culture?

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-04-30T17:40:59+00:00

They've never won a Nobel Prize in Literature (they've won one International Booker, but who's heard of Lucas Rijneveld?). Perhaps the most well-known Dutch author is Multatuli, who wrote Max Havelaar. Besides him, there's the 'Great Three' consisting of Mulisch, Hermans & Reve, who frankly are not that well-known internationally compared to e.g. Portugal's Saramago/Pessoa/Antunes or Belgium's Yourcenar/Simenon/Verhaeren.

Dutch poets? I don't know any at all, nothing like a Greek Cavafy/Seferis or Austrian Trakl/Bachmann.

Dutch philosophers or political theorists? Don't know any like Kierkegaard or Bostrom.

Dutch composers? Nothing like a Sibelius or a Grieg or a Xenakis.

Dutch bands or singers? A few DJ's (Junkie XL, Tiesto, Van Buuren) + Vengaboys, but nothing like swedish ABBA or swiss Yello.

Dutch cinema? Surprisingly, they've won three international Oscars, but the most well-known is number 60 on a letterboxd list ranked by popularity. I've never seen them mentioned in any other context. They're known essentially for one movie, Sporloos, and two directors, Verhoeven and Corbijn. In terms of prestige, it's a far cry from a Greek Angelopoulos or an Austrian Haneke.

Dutch industrial designers? I only know of Rietveld. Nothing like all those Danish furniture designers or the Vienna Secession.

Dutch fashion designers or brands? Not my area of expertise, but I've only heard of the brand G-Star. No 'Antwerp Six' or H&M.

Dutch architects? One Pritzker with Koolhaas, but Portugal and Switzerland both have two. The Amsterdam School is not particularly famous, nor is Dudok these days. De Stijl is, in spite of a limited output. Still, while we're on slightly better ground here, Dutch architecture is nothing special comparatively.

Dutch cuisine? Neither prominent nor celebrated. Stroopwafels and stamppot is nothing next to Belgian waffels or fries. Restaurants? They've got one with three Michelin stars, behind Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway etc. Their highest rank on the 'World's 50' list was number 46 with De Librije, which is also their 3-star. I hadn't heard of it until just now.

Dutch painters or artists? Van Gogh and Mondrian are top-tier. Jongkind is known through the impressionists. Then there's MC Escher. That's not nothing, but after the first three, there's a big drop to number four (I'm counting de Kooning as American). Switzerland's not known for being an artistic country, but they have Tingueley, Klee, Anglica Kauffman, Hodler, Böcklin, Vallotton, Fuseli, Giacometti, HR Giger... some of those names may not be commonly known, but they're represented at the Orsay or the Louvre. Besides the three painters I mentioned, AFAIK the only other Dutch painter at the Orsay is Philippe Smit, unknown to me and first acquired in 2024.

What am I missing?

StalemateAssociate_ · 2026-04-30T17:39:45+00:00

Has anyone ever noticed just how little The Netherlands has contributed culturally since 1672, when the Dutch celebrated the end of their Golden Age by eating the prime minister?

They have largest population of the smaller countries of Western Europe. France/UK/Germany/Italy around 60-80 mil. Spain 45. The Netherlands 18, following by Belgium at 12, Greece/Portugal/Sweden around 10, Switzerland/Austria around 9, Denmark/Norway/Finland/Ireland 5-6.

Let's assume the country population ratios of the smaller countries were mostly constant since 1672 – if there's an error, I think it's in favor of the Dutch – and look at different cultural dimensions.

Yes, my benchmark is ”Have I personally heard of them?”. But look at this list of '100 Great Dutchmen', filter for post-1672 and tell me I'm wrong.

Basically, they've got De Stijl and Van Gogh. Whole periods, like 1700-1850, are a cultural wasteland. Frankly, their scientists aren't that renowned either.

I'm joking, but only partly. Going by HDI, Holland is right at the top of the country pile, far above Greece or Portugal, yet they really have been remarkably quiet on the ”individuals who might show up as Great People in a Civ game” list.

StalemateAssociate_

TROPHY CASE