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Didn’t Soros study under Karl Popper? I wouldn’t say he learned totalitarianism from the inside, rather he was influenced by a very astute advisor on the nature

Didn’t Soros study under Karl Popper? I wouldn’t say he learned totalitarianism from the inside, rather he was influenced by a very astute advisor on the nature of societal openness and the associated dynamics. As far as being supposedly ‘evil’, I don’t see how anyone in his position could not be. Look at the world around us. We are ruled by psychopaths, shysters and ghouls at multiple levels; middle management to heads of state. I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder about decency, humility and fairness, but the older I get and more money/power I accumulate, I’m starting to see that the monsters of the world will only be beaten by a bigger monster. So if I set out to right the wrongs I see, I too would necessarily need to become monstrous.

motohagiography 5y ago
To be monsterous and justified, what a triumph of moral expedience. Soros experienced WWII as a teenager in Hungary(?) where growing up he saw the rise of the movements that would become NSDAP and Stalinsim, respectively. My view is that the most powerful thing he has ever experienced was that evil, but in seeing the power of them, he understood what was possible, and his intent is to use them for "good." Trouble is, you need the power to do good, but once you have the power, why do you need to be good? I think what we now recite as Popper's paraphrase is just a cheap slogan for organizing banal minds, and not a model for reflection. My objection isn't to Popper and so-called open socieites, it's to the belief that the "problem," is the lack of a sophisticated plan with a system guided by ideology to run them in the first place. It's a technocratic presumption, that if we just come up with a system, we can impose it on reality and human desire, and we will "fix the problem." What Popper has been used for (regardless of what he may have written), and the viral idea that critical theorists today have made that people fundamentally want was this very justification for their own monsterousness. This is the liberation they're offering. When you revisit the idea of being a victim or being oppressed as just an infinite will to power, moralized by an ideology designed to dissolve truth and inconvenient perceptions of reality, it's pretty obvious that the OSF and its appendant bodies in the WEF and other networks are just recycled totalitarian junk from a new generation of demagogues. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe a bunch of billionaires and bureaucrats have had Damascene conversions and are really just self sacrificing martyrs and saints.
- lupire 5y ago
  If you believe that everyone is either evil or irrelevant, as you say, then why waste your time caring? You've proven that nothing matters. How is protesrint against police brutality, and supporting Israel-Palestine peace activists, totalitarian? How can you equate having nonzero will to power (resisting oppression) with infinite will to power? How can you claim that resisting rotalitarianism is equal to totalitarianism?
  - motohagiography 5y ago
    My argument is that Soros' support for activists has primarily been a means to undermine the sovereignty of the nation state as a thing everywhere, and install technocrats with the aforementioned agenda to subordinate all of humanity. I am saying he experienced this from the Germans and Soviets, studied it as a mechanism, and now funds a movement with this aim in mind. Co-opting popular movements and using them as vehicles for this agenda is specifically what Arendt identified as the mechanism. If you do some reading on the topic, the necessary condition of the technical term of totalitarianism, as distinct from say, mere authoritarian ideas like fascism or communism, is that it is a movement that uses the nation state as a host, but whose intent is the absorption of nation states into its system of control, and that its key tactic is the dissolution of truth as a means to atomize and liquidate the individual. "Resisting oppression" requires first that you identify as oppressed, and if you are a Daniel Dennet reader and use his (flawed but useful) model of self as an example, this very identity is the effect of language and narrative. The aim of these movements (and initially of marxism) was to create an identity ("consciousness") relative to a percieved material oppressor - that's the heavy lift, or leap of faith, and once you've convinced someone they are a victim, you can convince them of anything, because they have accepted the core axiom of the rest of the ideology, and the demagogue becomes the source of narrative truth for that identity. You don't need to enslave people when you can just convince them they are slaves who must do what you ask to become free. It's a simple begged question and low rent street hustle. This grand deception that underpins Marx's whole system is about as sophisticated as a predatory pimp persuading a target she owes him the money he's forcing her to work for, except instead of monetary debt, he's selling you an inferior identity that you can redeem yourself by organizing and following some political huckster. So, what do you think is more likely, that a few activists are enlightened and the rest of us live under a false consciousness of oppressive supremacy, or that a minority with an infinite will to power are selling a snake oil pseudo religion and they're no better than any other televangelists and demagogues? Soros has not resisted totalitarianism at all, he has funded and co-opted movements against nation states as a means to subordinate and dissolve them.

motohagiography 5y ago

To be monsterous and justified, what a triumph of moral expedience. Soros experienced WWII as a teenager in Hungary(?) where growing up he saw the rise of the movements that would become NSDAP and Stalinsim, respectively. My view is that the most powerful thing he has ever experienced was that evil, but in seeing the power of them, he understood what was possible, and his intent is to use them for "good." Trouble is, you need the power to do good, but once you have the power, why do you need to be good? I think what we now recite as Popper's paraphrase is just a cheap slogan for organizing banal minds, and not a model for reflection. My objection isn't to Popper and so-called open socieites, it's to the belief that the "problem," is the lack of a sophisticated plan with a system guided by ideology to run them in the first place. It's a technocratic presumption, that if we just come up with a system, we can impose it on reality and human desire, and we will "fix the problem." What Popper has been used for (regardless of what he may have written), and the viral idea that critical theorists today have made that people fundamentally want was this very justification for their own monsterousness. This is the liberation they're offering. When you revisit the idea of being a victim or being oppressed as just an infinite will to power, moralized by an ideology designed to dissolve truth and inconvenient perceptions of reality, it's pretty obvious that the OSF and its appendant bodies in the WEF and other networks are just recycled totalitarian junk from a new generation of demagogues. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe a bunch of billionaires and bureaucrats have had Damascene conversions and are really just self sacrificing martyrs and saints.

lupire 5y ago
If you believe that everyone is either evil or irrelevant, as you say, then why waste your time caring? You've proven that nothing matters. How is protesrint against police brutality, and supporting Israel-Palestine peace activists, totalitarian? How can you equate having nonzero will to power (resisting oppression) with infinite will to power? How can you claim that resisting rotalitarianism is equal to totalitarianism?
- motohagiography 5y ago
  My argument is that Soros' support for activists has primarily been a means to undermine the sovereignty of the nation state as a thing everywhere, and install technocrats with the aforementioned agenda to subordinate all of humanity. I am saying he experienced this from the Germans and Soviets, studied it as a mechanism, and now funds a movement with this aim in mind. Co-opting popular movements and using them as vehicles for this agenda is specifically what Arendt identified as the mechanism. If you do some reading on the topic, the necessary condition of the technical term of totalitarianism, as distinct from say, mere authoritarian ideas like fascism or communism, is that it is a movement that uses the nation state as a host, but whose intent is the absorption of nation states into its system of control, and that its key tactic is the dissolution of truth as a means to atomize and liquidate the individual. "Resisting oppression" requires first that you identify as oppressed, and if you are a Daniel Dennet reader and use his (flawed but useful) model of self as an example, this very identity is the effect of language and narrative. The aim of these movements (and initially of marxism) was to create an identity ("consciousness") relative to a percieved material oppressor - that's the heavy lift, or leap of faith, and once you've convinced someone they are a victim, you can convince them of anything, because they have accepted the core axiom of the rest of the ideology, and the demagogue becomes the source of narrative truth for that identity. You don't need to enslave people when you can just convince them they are slaves who must do what you ask to become free. It's a simple begged question and low rent street hustle. This grand deception that underpins Marx's whole system is about as sophisticated as a predatory pimp persuading a target she owes him the money he's forcing her to work for, except instead of monetary debt, he's selling you an inferior identity that you can redeem yourself by organizing and following some political huckster. So, what do you think is more likely, that a few activists are enlightened and the rest of us live under a false consciousness of oppressive supremacy, or that a minority with an infinite will to power are selling a snake oil pseudo religion and they're no better than any other televangelists and demagogues? Soros has not resisted totalitarianism at all, he has funded and co-opted movements against nation states as a means to subordinate and dissolve them.