My friend's brother loves to read, mostly nonfiction. He also listens to a lot of podcasts. The past few years he's been getting further into right-wing media and punditry. He reads so much, but it's all shit about Fascism and conservative viewpoints. What sort of books can help show him a different perspective without immediately turning him off?
Usually on this subreddit, people are looking for something else for themselves to read. They liked a certain book, and they want to hear about other, similar books. Or they have a certain feeling, and they want books about characters who feel like that too. But here's somebody who wants to massage or manipulate another person — a person they don't even like. They want to derail a young person who seems to be finding his way along a conservative path.
But the most interesting thing about this thread, to me, isn't the desire to affect another person's political orientation, it's that the other commenters have a hard time coming up with good ideas about books that might reroute this young reader. Don't lefties have some antidote-to-conservatism books?
And then there's the way they get twisted up in confusion over whether individualism is fascism.
Somebody asks:
First thing I would clarify - what exactly do you mean by "alt-right" - is he reading actual fascist publications, or is he just into kind of male-centric self help like Jordan Peterson which gets declared "alt-right"? How far out is it?
I am intrigued by this comment:
Anything by Kurt Vonnegut or John Steinbeck will help guys who 'like reading about men' to become more central or left-leaning.
He'll also just get a girlfriend who'll help him realize how 'in his head he is', and he'll come out of it — it's a phase healed by love and compassion some guys don't experience until their mid- to late-twenties.
And:
What makes you think it's your right to change someone's political views?
If you are concerned about the quality of his reading, recommend scholarly conservative works like those by Russell Kirk, Roger Scruton, and Thomas Sowell. Read Clarence Thomas' autobiography, My Grandfather's Son.
Maybe read some of these yourself.
By the way, I'm so old, I imagined everyone would say "Grapes of Wrath"!
Posts
34 comments:
"Anything by Kurt Vonnegut or John Steinbeck will help guys who 'like reading about men' to become more central or left-leaning."
Um, no. Because Steinbeck's characters are pretty much all losers, or evil.
Technically speaking, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" and "1984" are books about fascism. Neither book would be considered an endorsement of the idea.
I doubt that "Grapes of Wrath" would turn a right-winger ("alt" or not) into a left-winger. It's a great novel in some respects, but overrated. Far too contrived and sentimental. I remember reading it for high school English, and I liked the chapters that were off-topic. The one about the turtle, for example (if I remember correctly). I like Steinbeck's small classics like "The Pearl," "The Red Pony," and "Of Mice and Men" much more than "The Grapes of Wrath." Same with Hemingway. "Old Man and the Sea" resonated with me, but his large-scale classics did not.
These days, wouldn't the main characters of "The Grapes of Wrath" be the deplorables? I bet they voted for Trump, and at least a few like Ma rejected the vaccine.
In the marketplace of ideas--whether they come from the left or right--an individual reader might conclude that some ideas are winners--and other ideas are losers. And I think it's presumptuous to tell others what to think--although isn't that the central idea of cancel culture?
Tastes vary--and as the old saying goes, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. (I always disliked that saying--but heard it often enough from my friends on the left.)
Althouse asks: Don't lefties have have some antidote-to-conservatism books?
I answer: Yes. Fahrenheit 451, used as a how-to manual.
"Don't lefties have have some antidote-to-conservatism books?"
The right understands the left much better than the left understands the right. People on the right cannot escape exposure to lefty thinking in the media or at school. Many people on the left, though, have very little actual exposure to people on the right and how they think.
"Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world."
William Penn, who penned several books on the matter.
It's too late. Once we've read 'Atlas Shrugged' there's no saving us. We just don't like collectivists.
No links we can go see for ourselves?
We have to rely on your interpretation?
Especially after you post about Matt gaetz without the extortionist has been arrested. "but I didn't know." you might say. Fair enough. Perhaps you missed it on the NYT front page (apparently, hard to tell for sure the page)
Perhaps, as you read the comments on the gaetz post, you missed several comments about the arrest.
I try to trust your cruel neutrality but occasionally it gets hard.
John Henry
I would humbly recommend reading the cruel neutrality of Ann Althouse. For the prescribed reason and many others.
...it's a phase healed by love and compassion some guys don't experience until their mid- to late-twenties.
I think the commenter would be alarmed to discover that conservatives (all conservatives expect David Brooks are alt-righters, donchano) tend to trace the dawning of their alignment to their middle/late twenties, often with the assistance of a person of much greater significance than a mere girlfriend.
Mid- to late-twenties [sic] -- that's when the brain matures, and the ability to distinguish individualism from fascism is acquired. It's also the point at which the normal brain understands that fascism and fascist behavior (silencing speech one finds objectionable, beating up persons protesting against the fearless leader, setting alight or otherwise vandalizing businesses and property belonging to those not in agreement with your political dogma) are effectively indistinguishable. It should also be clear to the normally maturing mind that one cannot be anti-racist by practicing racism.
Corollary: Pay no attention to adolescent philosophers.
The Little Book of Stoicism.
"Don't lefties have have some antidote-to-conservatism books?"
Das Kapital?
They don't actually need antidote-to-conservatism books. They have the public schools and the universities along with popular culture. This is just an anecdotal instance where a young man somehow resisted the indoctrination.
Massaging and manipulation are tools of indoctrination, are they not?
Anything by Kurt Vonnegut or John Steinbeck will help guys who 'like reading about men' to become more central or left-leaning.
Not sure about that "Anything" there. I think "Harrison Bergeron" is possibly Vonnegut's most famous work that people actually read (Slaughterhouse-Five is more famous but, I would venture, less read), and I suspect the casual reader would tend to categorise it as almost cartoonishly Ayn Rand-ish hard right.
Nor is it clear that someone like Steinbeck, in the current political environment, would read as "left." I've only read The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, but I see a clear through line from Steinbeck to Trump, in part because Trump's main economic policies -- restrict low skill immigration and aggressive use of trade restrictions (both policies hated by corporate interests) -- were historically more popular on the Left than the Right. If we're talking about a novel highlighting the plight of American workers whose wages have been driven down by a glut of labour . . . well, isn't that why people voted for Trump in the first place? Trump represents a very different sort of Rightism, and something that, pre-Trump, would barely even have been categorised as "Right" at all. But today, that's where it gets bucketed.
I suppose Rawls could have been recommended, but first consider Swift: “Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.”
Which is to say that perhaps the reason no book recommendations were forthcoming was that so few folks with left-wing orientations arrived at their positions through the intellectual pursuit and assessment of ideas, but rather through social contagion and the types of cues incessantly pounded out by media.
Many left-wing issues seem largely based on shallow emotional appeals rather than assessments of data pursuant to a set of primary principles. That happens with conservatives as well, of course, but to a lesser extent, if only because conservatives do not enjoy the extensive control of cultural institutions progressives hav. All manner of media and other institutions address socio-political and cultural issues largely on the basis of appeals to sympathy, compassion, caring, etc., which should, of course, be considered, but not to the exclusion of all other factors.
We are, for example, encouraged to consider illegal immigration largely on the basis of poetry—one or another variation on Emma Lazarus—rather than on an additional assessment of the effects of increased levels of immigration on assimilation, wages, costs vs. benefits, and the many other trade-offs involved. The push for empathy is so relentless that it is considered hard-hearted even to identify some immigrants as “illegal.”
That emotional appeal is reinforced by a further emotional appeal: what the “cool kids” (celebrities) think. On any given issue, a platoon of celebrities may eventually appear in extreme closeup online, looking into the camera, each in turn reciting a single line of some pitch as though they were in an elementary school play, or Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama will lean back in their shirtsleeves and leisurely shoot the breeze as though everything was so obviously clear that no real argument, much less thought, was necessary.
What a putz--"my friends brother has ideas I don't like, how can I use other people's work to make him think more like me?" I'm glad you included that last comment--this guy is the one with the problem, not his friend's brother. Hopefully more commenters realized this, but at least this last one did.
My kids have books about all the great people of the world who were smart and invented things. Maybe they could have a series of books about all the great leftists who created such utopias in the world that everybody flocks to. Oh, right. There aren't any
I thought Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" was a pretty good general introduction to a conservative outlook on life. But then again, it worked on me. That, and also being asked what I believe.
Read "How to Love and Embrace the Coming Serfdom," by Pajama Boy.
Had to google it to find it, but the other comments posted there demonstrate -- once again -- that leftists are totally ignorant and clueless about what conservatives really think and believe.
Their comments and suggestions and echoes tell more about themselves than they do about having a chance to persuade anyone about anything.
It's telling that no one over at reddit just suggested that the kid read the comment section of the NYT or WashPost and that would convince him to become a lefty.
"No links we can go see for ourselves?"
Oops.
Fixed.
Just a mistake. Not an effort to suppress the flow of information!
The Grapes of Wrath is an elegant homily on the virtues of democratic socialism. It's not hard to believe it has drawn readers to the left.
Blogger Achilles said..."The Little Book of Stoicism."
I think I'm getting that. Thanks!
I bet stoicism is right up there with punctuality and obsession with getting the right answer as one of those white things.
"Don't lefties have have some antidote-to-conservatism books?"
"How To Lobotomize Yourself in 3 Easy Steps".
He reads so much, but it's all shit about Fascism and conservative viewpoints.
It sounds like the fellow who wrote that needs to do some reading himself to clue him in as to the differences between "fascism" and "conservative viewpoints."
Also, given that so much fiction and nonfiction is written from a liberal or leftist point of view, the fact that it didn't make much of an impression on the guy he's talking about is itself significant.
The problem may be that literature can give you the emotional wallop but it doesn't necessarily help you to make practical policy decisions. I'd suggest actually engaging with the guy on policy questions and expecting that he might change your mind as much as you change his, rather than looking for something that will convert him to feeling as one thinks people ought to.
The point isn't so much that Sowell or Hayek or whoever it is that he's reading are wrong or evil, as that their point of view, like other points of view, doesn't include or address everything. Don't simply replace one ideological stance with another, but strive for greater completeness or comprehensiveness.
I think Gone With The Wind is eligible for some revisionism. Scarlet is not exactly into civil rights, but she is a proto-feminist. She instinctively shies away from the rather patriarchal Rhett Butler who is always mansplaining things to her... In the area of civil rights and equality, Margaret Mitchell is ahead of other authors. Show me a servant who has as much impact on the heroine in a Jane Austen novel as Mamie does upon Scarlet. Lillian Hellman has some plays set in the Old South, and none of her characters of color have any vivacity or impact upon the drama....The novel is exemplary in its depiction of religious and ethnic tolerance. Scarlet's father emigrated from Ireland at a time when anti-English feeling ran very high. He didn't pass any of those negative feelings onto Scarlet. Scarlet actively pursues a WASP and shows no religious animus against any of her husbands-- none of whom were raised in the one, true faith. She's remarkably tolerant when it comes to religion and ethnicity.....Women could do worse than adopt Scarlet as a role model.
Bender: "Had to google it to find it, but the other comments posted there demonstrate -- once again -- that leftists are totally ignorant and clueless about what conservatives really think and believe."
Thats what gave LLR Chuck away many years ago.
What I'd suggest is that he gather Joe Biden's speeches off Youtube and sit down and quietly listen to our President explaining things. This is the perfect antidote - quietly listen to the one leftists selected as leader.
I haven't read Grapes of Wrath, but I saw the movie ...
and in the movie, a crucial step to the promised land was what I took to be some kind of a WPA camp, where things were way better than they were where evil capitalists were auctioning for lower labor costs.
I'm willing to forgive depression era communists, my own grandfather among them, because when things look very bleak you'll grab onto whatever floats by. But it struck me that Steinbeck was no libertarian.
He'll also just get a girlfriend who'll help him realize how 'in his head he is', and he'll come out of it — it's a phase healed by love and compassion some guys don't experience until their mid- to late-twenties.
Yeah, and that's when we become pro-life!
History, but the real stuff and not the faux history of the left. Of course if one reads history you quickly learn of the biases of the historian. That is the best part of history because it challenges you to “try on” a point of view and compare it with other points of view. It also teaches just how limited one’s perspectives of events can be when trying to create a narrative and how to piece together an outline of what happened from a preponderance of first hand knowledge reporters. I find ancient history (Greeks, Romans, etc.) a great starting point because there was no clear left/right forces so one can observe and learn from past experiences and the enduring individual, social, and spiritual needs. Not something that one can tie up in a bow, but real knowledge, not derivative ideas.
One recent discovery (to me) is how England had a tradition (including royal decrees) of no slavery from the early Middle Ages (before 1000). There was an insistence on those in servitude having rights as reflected in a host of rules and customs about the duties of serfs to landlords and vice versa. Later, when England rediscovered trade with Africa in the mid 1500s they treated Africans the same as people from other trading countries. No racism overlay. There are estimates of 1,000 or more Africans who came to live in England with no evidence that they were other than free people. One was a well-paid court musician. Others worked in various trades. Some took English wives with nary an issue (so long as they went to church). Later there were some forays into the slave trade by a few, but never even close to the scale of the Portuguese and Spaniards. So when current race hustlers say that white people are inherently racist, it’s clear this is not true and varied a lot by country and culture. Only a knowledge of history can counter the Marxist-motivated claims of the left, but history does not make one left or right. It just tethers one to the complexities of life and the lessons of past experience.
“What makes you think it's your right to change someone's political views?”
It’s what one does when one is no longer seeking truth, because one no longer sees any need to do so, because one is convinced that one convinced that already possesses The Truth.
And therefore anyone who disagrees (even in the smallest way) must, at a minimum, be deluded.
You know, fascism: the belief in a powerful government that controls the market and much else. In the words of one of its most prominent advocates: "Nothing outside the State, everything for the State, nothing against the State." You can eà sily see why the Left would recoil in horror at such a philosophy.
Post a Comment