askchapo

You're better off reading counterinsurgency manuals to understand how those orgs operate IRL. People on the left don't read their theory, and the people are on the right are even more anti-intellectual and illiterate than the people on the left. But the forces of reaction, both state and non-state actors, absolutely take cues from those manuals.

If we follow Marx’s example, then there are two kinds of right-wing theory. First is vulgar theory, then there is scientific theory. He didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the vulgarians except to make fun of them.

On the other hand, Marx understood the material advantage held by bourgeois intellectuals over proletarians, namely that proletarians don’t get paid to produce theory. Therefore not only was it necessary to generate theory from below, from the proletarian standpoint; it was also necessary to critically examine the most advanced bourgeois theory, to dust off the class bias, and then to hand it to the working class for their revolutionary purposes. That is essentially what Marx dedicated his life to, as himself an intellectual of bourgeois background and education. Lenin made makes this point in What Is To Be Done, stating: ” We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness ...” Gramsci also wrote about the need for the working class to have its own intellectuals and the nature of these different intellectual strata.

In brief: if you are going to read theory, left or right wing, clarify your own purpose before wading in. If your purpose is entertainment, go ahead and read whatever drivel is written by The Economist or Tucker Carlson. If your purpose is to advance your ability to help the working class, then at most I would read relevant academics pursuing science honestly, even if those academics adopt imperial or class-biased attitudes.

The podcast "Know your enemy" describes right wing theory, history and internal disputes. Its engaging enough to listen to sometimes but very rare for anything discussed to have much utility. If you want to do the reading yourself it might still be useful to skim their episode outlines for author names.

The fundamental problem is you're projecting how leftism works on to the right. The right doesn't read theory, they have books but basically none of them read them, the right just gets angry and posts on twitter. At their very core reactionaries are anti-intellectural therefore their works hold no value.

Right wingers are driven by gut instinct reaction and emotion

Any theory is a wallpaper of intellectualism to satisfy the kind of right wingers that don't like associating with hogs

As I said in my previous comment to someone else, reading any old slop will get you nowhere. But there is still a basis upon which the thinking generally arises, and that can be analyzed. Carl Schmitt, piece of absolute shit, was a very good philosopher (derogatory). And understanding him is vital, imo, to getting fascism. And Nietzsche too. I think Losurdo describes Nietzsche well enough that reading him directly might be unnecessary, but seeing how aesthetics lies at the bottom of his justification right next to goodness is really something that you only get from reading Good and Evil.

Right wing "thought" is fundamentally anti-scientific so it's consistently wrong and useless. Anti-medicine (trans, vaccines, sexuality), anti-geology (climate change, hydrology, crops and sustainability), anti-sociology (racism, misogyny, discrimination), anti-economy (economic planning vs laissez faire, anti-MMT, anti Marxian economics)... I don't see how you can honestly get any worth understanding the position of people whose worldview is to systematically deny reality and to be intellectually dishonest.

I bet 95 % of it is nearly useless slop, but I would certainly prefer to have someone in an organization know the 5 %. I'm not going to be that person though, that sounds awful.

The 5-4 theory of conservative jurisprudence is useful: right wingers simply operate on good boy bad boy theory. The law is to punish bad boys (who are naturally so) and all leniency to good boys (and again, good as inborn based on race etc.)

Everything else is backfilled from that political end.

Do you know that chart that right-wingers love to show off that shows that the right has a greater diversity of thought than the left?

That's because right wing theory ranges from stuff like Ayn Rand to QAnon and the Flat Earth movement. A lot of them believe we live in a world of demons and monsters.

It will help you as much as studying the bible helps combat evangelicals (i.e., not at all)

A lot of right wing theory is Marxism but inverted on class conflict. They recognize the bourgeois as a class, but right wing theory makes up reasons for why the bourgeois is good and that the working class is bad. Capitalists are aware of capital extraction from labor, but make up reasons for why the capitalist deserves it.

Early capitalism was an opposition to monarchy. Modern capitalist theory is an opposition to socialism. Capitalists just look at socialist theory and say that we should do the opposite.

Nah, it is all wrong. Properly knowing leftist theory will allow you to see the holes in it readily.

Eeven without that you deserve better than that to spend your brain wrinkles on bullshit.

I think it is worth understanding the gist of Hayek for example, as there was something to his critique of central planning. But that's all you really need from the neoliberal canon. For libertarianism, Nozick is pretty much the only one with any substance. If you read (or read around) him you will come out of it with a very good sense of exactly how bankrupt that tradition is (basically, they all flail around, desperately trying and failing to prove that it's alright to break all of their own ethical rules in defense of private property).

You need to seek out the best stuff, basically. At least personally, I find it much easier to tune out the noise if I know I've already engaged in good faith with the strongest version of an argument. Also, when you know the lay of the land, you can get a sense of who is arguing in good faith, who is bullshitting, who is just pig ignorant in your day-to-day conversations

It's only useful insofar as it'll tell you what their factions are.

Occasionally they have useful theory - I think the "realist" school of international relations has a lot useful stuff (I'll skip the rant about them for now) - but the realists have completely eaten shit over the last few years, replaced with people with completely magic-based world views, so you see how far all that theory got them.

Right wing "theory" doesn't really exist. What passes for it is done in reverse. They don't start with analysis and develop a position, they start with a vibe or a goal then engage in motivated reasoning to justify it ex post facto.

All I can say regarding right wing theory is that the “read siege” meme is embarrassing for fascists and they should feel bad to hold James Mason among their more “serious” thinkers.

It can help rhetorically in an already pointless argument. So, not to the loint that its worth your time. We're living in the results of right wing theory and current reality is an even better source than any drivel you may need to subject yourself to.

I unfortunately understand them too well, I was young once and surrounded by a frankly socially fascist society. To truly understand them is to destroy your mind and your life, at least from my experience.

My immediate reaction is that it's a good way to know how to combat the right wing specifically, but probably wouldn't help you much in regards to "the average voter"

Ultimately, the right wing political project comes down to nihilistic pursuit of their own power at the expense of everyone else. Any "theory" they produce is the equivalent of a Terminator's skin suit. That's why hypocrisy mongering doesn't work, for example.

Tangential to your question, but I think one of the worst things you can do is stifle your curiosity. There's way too much of a trend in the Western left of refusing to engage with anyone that isn't firmly in-group (the parameters of which are determined by memes and whim and whatever single sentence was most recently quote-mined).

Ideally you should develop the ability to read fascist or liberal or leftist concepts and identify their problems and merits (if any) through analysis, rather than just being told to dismiss them. Lenin wasn't a brilliant theoretician because he selectively read only "correct" theory; he read everything and refined his analytical power through critique (in tandem with praxis/experimentation).

People who seriously put thought into their theory (as in, eliminating bad faith nonsense like peterson and the like) are rarely just gonna be simply wrong, wrong, wrong. They're gonna have ideas that may speak to different material interests, from different experiences, through different ideological lenses. Their ideas might be right for the wrong reasons, right in specific circumstances, almost right but mistaken because of xyz, or corruptions/deviations from "right". Any idea that's had influence or gained a following speaks to something in people, which is often worth trying to understand, if for no other reason than to be better able to engage with those people.

At tension with all my vague nonsense is our limited time and attention. We're forced to be selective with our efforts. So threads like this can be useful, or skipping over an idea to read its critiques (e.g. Losurdo instead of Nietzsche as mentioned in this thread). Just don't short-change your own analytical abilities by only engaging with consensus-approved theory. Way too few Marxists have studied Hegel, in my opinion.

And if you're curious about someone like Land or Heidegger or Schmidt, sometimes it's worth the effort to hop on libgen and spend a few hours skimming their work. Nothing to say you have to develop a perfect and comprehensive understanding of every single theorist before you decide they're not worth your time. You can dive in, satiate your curiosity, hone your analytical muscles, and move on whenever.

Nick Land is fucking deranged. Reading Fanged Noumena and reviewing the essays every once in a while have been useful for:

1. Making jokes about Nick Land in my book club and to Deleuzian leftists.
2. Understanding why Mark Fisher fell off and that he died a legend before becoming an anti-woke chuddy weirdo.
3. Saying without a doubt that CCRU only functioned to break people's brains.

The first essay, "Kant, Capital, and the Prohibition of Incest" is actually kinda good, so it's interesting, but not practical, to witness the man's descent into madness. But you kinda have to already be a very strong reader, and there's like way better uses of your time.

1. Read and really study Theses on Feuerbach - this is like the most important work in the Marxist canon IMO, esp in conjunction with The German Ideology. It's the cheat-sheet for Marxism, and hot take, a better summary of the Hegelian aspect of Marx than Anti Duhring; so we don't have to spend like 6 months cloistered and studying Philosophy of Right and The Logic of Hegel like Lenin did. 16 paragraphs, just read them over and over and look up the meaning of the passages if you get stuck.
2. Read and study Gramsci - the right is obsessed with a caricature of him, and nobody really understands his theories. He was an incredible thinker, and his theories on hegemony and passive revolution are more of a right wing playbook than Land. But Gramsci's theories on hegemony and passive revolution also include how to counteract them.
3. Read Laclau and Mouffe "Hegemony and Socialist Theory" this is the post-marx neoliberal playbook, all the problems with the neoliberal "left" are formulated here, and this view is widely and absolutely adopted by post-left academia. Way more insidious than any of the facades put up by the far right, which is always just putting "lipstick on a pig," the pig being fascism.
4. Literally anything else. Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Nietzsche all top contenders.

Seriously, you can skip Fanged Noumena

From my POV, worry less about their theory and more about their arguments. Not to argue against them, rightoids will scoff at you and any thought you have no matter how true. But for baby leftists who might still have reservations.

Know how they think. At least those among them who do think.

Its useful when talking to people who don't know. I've seemed like a damn prophet to some people because of it and that helped me gain credit with them to explain other things to them.

Btw its always fun when in the end of a session your therapist is like "hey uh, can you talk more how you knew that January 6th was going to happen?"

If nothing else, you might be able to hear the dog whistles a bit better.