He’s really a hero, but the reason Lost Cause propaganda is effective is that the other side is blunt - either behave or you are a racist and canceled. This has a “bonus” point of actual racists adopting the normal history narrative in a very neutered and sterile way themselves, and repeating it in such a way, and thus the normal narrative degenerating.
Similar to how Soviet propaganda caricatures about USA and the West were really not wrong, but so annoying and obnoxious and idiotic that the Soviet population believed they were wrong.
That there’s no real racism problem over there, that the democracy is real over there and if we don’t understand something, then it’s something infinitely wise above and beyond our understanding, and that those pictures about evil big capital starting wars all over the world and labor and civil rights being an illusion over there - that those pictures were all bullshit.
Except they fucking weren’t.
Also Soviet propaganda backfired in claiming that the communist system will be more efficient in changing education, labor, science to the degree that it will be what will change the world. That it will be the main real argument in its favor, it will be more efficient and better to live in. They meant that USSR is a socialist and Marxist country, not yet communism, so that was a promise for the bright future, but the wide population kinda didn’t get such nuance. Then due to Soviet internal failures one could see good level of life, industries and technologies, especially the Internet, in the West, and interpret that as the West also having better societies built, along that logic.
Except with much bigger resources and de-facto colonies all over the world (CFA for France, Latin America for USA, Britain and the Commonwealth not even needing colonies because of themselves controlling enormous resources and thus maritime trade, Netherlands and Belgium similarly, not even speaking about Western-dependent Middle-Eastern regimes) the West’s level of life should be adjusted for scale allowing bigger efficiency.
In general there’s an anecdote in the ex-USSR: When the Cold War ended, it became apparent that Western propaganda about the USSR was true. Unfortunately, it also became apparent that Soviet propaganda about the West was true as well.
So - what does this have in common with the Lost Cause and why it’s popular. Easy. Because the anti-racist and humanist narrative has jumped and missed. Like Akela in The Jungle Book. It has already tried a big offensive to undo the racist and colonial and unequal system, and it has stopped short of doing that and couldn’t move further. Both as the USSR against the empires and as the humanist-libertarian, like in Heinlein’s books (notice how all his ideal systems are pan-humanist and libertarian, despite some of them being military-hierarchical, some plutocratic, some almost socialist, some more democratic and some less), worldview in the USA.
Akela has missed, and the strongest pretender ideology is always the reaction to the main one.
So we will see very nasty things if that pretender ideology doesn’t miss in its own jump.
Also there’s one thing no American will like following from all this - if you destroy the West as it exists now, we might counterintuitively find ourselves in a world democratizing and modernizing more rapidly than before. Maybe it’s for the best that the USA weren’t fixed and instead crumbled like the USSR. Except, eh, with my analogy that could take 70 years, and those would be 70 years of genocide and oppression while still world hegemon, so maybe not worth it.
He’s really a hero, but the reason Lost Cause propaganda is effective is that the other side is blunt - either behave or you are a racist and canceled. This has a “bonus” point of actual racists adopting the normal history narrative in a very neutered and sterile way themselves, and repeating it in such a way, and thus the normal narrative degenerating.
Similar to how Soviet propaganda caricatures about USA and the West were really not wrong, but so annoying and obnoxious and idiotic that the Soviet population believed they were wrong.
That there’s no real racism problem over there, that the democracy is real over there and if we don’t understand something, then it’s something infinitely wise above and beyond our understanding, and that those pictures about evil big capital starting wars all over the world and labor and civil rights being an illusion over there - that those pictures were all bullshit.
Except they fucking weren’t.
Also Soviet propaganda backfired in claiming that the communist system will be more efficient in changing education, labor, science to the degree that it will be what will change the world. That it will be the main real argument in its favor, it will be more efficient and better to live in. They meant that USSR is a socialist and Marxist country, not yet communism, so that was a promise for the bright future, but the wide population kinda didn’t get such nuance. Then due to Soviet internal failures one could see good level of life, industries and technologies, especially the Internet, in the West, and interpret that as the West also having better societies built, along that logic.
Except with much bigger resources and de-facto colonies all over the world (CFA for France, Latin America for USA, Britain and the Commonwealth not even needing colonies because of themselves controlling enormous resources and thus maritime trade, Netherlands and Belgium similarly, not even speaking about Western-dependent Middle-Eastern regimes) the West’s level of life should be adjusted for scale allowing bigger efficiency.
In general there’s an anecdote in the ex-USSR: When the Cold War ended, it became apparent that Western propaganda about the USSR was true. Unfortunately, it also became apparent that Soviet propaganda about the West was true as well.
So - what does this have in common with the Lost Cause and why it’s popular. Easy. Because the anti-racist and humanist narrative has jumped and missed. Like Akela in The Jungle Book. It has already tried a big offensive to undo the racist and colonial and unequal system, and it has stopped short of doing that and couldn’t move further. Both as the USSR against the empires and as the humanist-libertarian, like in Heinlein’s books (notice how all his ideal systems are pan-humanist and libertarian, despite some of them being military-hierarchical, some plutocratic, some almost socialist, some more democratic and some less), worldview in the USA.
Akela has missed, and the strongest pretender ideology is always the reaction to the main one.
So we will see very nasty things if that pretender ideology doesn’t miss in its own jump.
Also there’s one thing no American will like following from all this - if you destroy the West as it exists now, we might counterintuitively find ourselves in a world democratizing and modernizing more rapidly than before. Maybe it’s for the best that the USA weren’t fixed and instead crumbled like the USSR. Except, eh, with my analogy that could take 70 years, and those would be 70 years of genocide and oppression while still world hegemon, so maybe not worth it.