Yeah, I mean, I always start casual anyways, so it's not... Yeah, it's always very casual, the content-minded, like no official...
like introduction and maybe maybe when like five minutes in the conversation something will like this is uh content's mind is and welcome to this episode with dot dot dot same with the the digital archipelago like ah oh we're recording for 15 minutes it's been 15 minutes you might as well say the episode number yeah yeah no no but that's no but um
What were you going to say, Volpeus?No, I was just going to say that's nice, that it's too regimented content.
It can be good if it's really structured, but for a stream or an interview, it's nice if it starts a bit casually and not too much haste in it, just doing it casually.
Yeah, no, because then I mean, it's better for guests, too, because I mean, some some guests.It depends.There was one that wanted to record the whole thing again, and you know who you are, OK?She knows who she is.
But, you know, maybe maybe I will, because like it was a bit too casual or whatever.But yeah, so just anyways, for those who don't know, I'm starting. you know, I'm starting to get back into the habit of having guests.
But like, I mean, because, you know, like me and Catherine, we have guests all the time on the computer room.So I'm here with my good friend Volpez.And he
We wanted to talk about Björn Schoen, but then we also are going to talk about the article that he wrote on his stack, on his chud stack, about... Reinhardt's Castle.
It means like Reinhardt's Castle.That's the name I've chosen.And also the profile picture of that sub stack is the famous Flemish poet, Guido Gesell.Very important Flemish poet, yes. It's a bit of an inspiration for me.
But we can also talk about this a bit later.
Yeah, yeah.So, because you wanted to talk about, well, I wanted to ask you about the current state of Europe.So, without doxing yourself,
Where are you from?It's quite well known in the sphere that I'm from Belgium, from Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium.So that's quite common knowledge. Yeah, I live in the heart of Europe, as they say.
Not that far from, of course, not that far from Brussels.Belgium is not a large country, so everybody lives reasonably close to Brussels.But yeah, it's interesting living here, I would say.
Very, very different experience from like even Germany or like especially like countries like Poland.And I'm not necessarily talking about like
different, like based right-wing Poland or things like that, but more about the geography, like Belgium and the Netherlands and Northern France and Western Germany are very densely populated.
It's like lots of cities, smaller towns, villages, all quite close together.And the moment you go to East Germany, then to Poland, the balance expands of the East.So, it's a very different temperament that creates to a large degree.
Something I quite often talk about, the sense of distance is very different between somebody who lives here and somebody who lives in Eastern Europe or even like especially in the Americas or Russia.
Like for me, I complain if I have to like drive for 30 minutes.I consider that like a bit of a distance, like two hours for a one-day trip.That's already like pushing it. While for people from Eastern Europe or the Americas, it's like nothing.
They laugh at you.You're complaining about driving for 30 minutes.What is this?I drive one hour and 30 minutes every day to work.What are you complaining about?
Yeah, I drive sometimes four hours to see my GF, so that's like... For us, we would see that as total insanity, completely insane.
Why would you drive four hours away?Especially a lot.If you do that for a week, you're going weekend out, weekend away.Sure, four hours is nothing, but...
if you're doing it like for a day it's like mad yeah and you're near antwerp my good friend fan is from it well he's from scotland but like i mean he lives in antwerp well i i'm not from antwerp in fact i i despise that city but that's like it's like me how i hate toronto it's like i'm not from but yeah that's that's like an internal flemish
divisions like Antwerp has its reputation and things and the like.But other than that, of course, you're asking about situation in Europe because of like, of course, European elections that happens.Because this was, to some degree, significance
mostly as a way to see how certain sentiments have changed.That was an interesting thing about the elections.But of course, everybody knows that the European Parliament has literally nothing to say.
So it's like, whatever, when it comes to pure power.But to see how, especially in France or in Germany, and also here, certain sentiments have changed, it's an important thing.
Yeah, but before we get into the contemporary situation, I'm fuzzy on the history of, specifically in relation to the European Parliament and the EU, why Brussels had become the center of Europe.
Is it just because of pure geography or is it because of other
like you couldn't have it in germany you couldn't have it in france you couldn't have it in the uk it's it's because but a lot of americans don't know for i've forgotten how many months a year but for a significant part of the year the european parliament is in strasbourg and in northeastern france like it's basically the part of france that they took from germany let's see the region of azaz
Which a certain painter wanted to take back in a certain 20th century.
Yes, yes.But it's this, partly I think you're correct about like, you don't want the center of the EU in any other places.
And also it's this very central place, especially like when the EU was first conceived, because like then it was only like the coal, the steel and coal union, when it was mostly an economic zone.
So that's, it was a very convenient place for these reasons.Brussels is a very central place in a way, all roads lead to Brussels. Like just the way it's it's construct has been always been an importance At least for like the last five.
Yeah, 500 years been an important city and also Brussels was already quite cosmopolitan at that point because Brussels in Dutch you speak old brook sale it that's the like that's the official Dutch Dutch name is brush as a brussel, but like the historical name is brook sale it and The thing is like in the last
century and a half, no, not century and a half, last century, Brussels became more and more French.Because, like, Belgium and the language issues in Belgium are something quite complicated.
But Brussels, because it was the administrative center, the capital of Belgium, and even before that, there were lots of people going, French people going there, especially like the bourgeoisie, like the elites.
spoke French, and also a striver upper-middle class who wanted to mean something, especially when the King of Belgium was phoned, you had to speak French, otherwise you couldn't be a high-standing lawyer or be a judge or work in administration.
Like what Latin was in throughout parts of Europe.
The difference is that French was a practical language that is used in everyday speech.But the thing is that already by, I think, about the 50s, Brussels was already more than 50% French-speaking.
And that already created that it was a very cosmopolitan, in a way, city.Not like the real Bruxellois.They have quite a strong, or had quite a strong identity, but still it was a bit
fuzzy and that made it much more convenient and especially since the EU solidified to import like get like eurocrats from whole of Europe to settle there because it was already a bit of an like I said, a cosmopolitan city.
So that made it more convenient for Brussels to become the center of the EU.
Yeah, almost like what Prague was a few hundred years ago.It was sort of like a forward-thinking cosmopolitan city that had an emergence of a lot of art movements.
It's an administrative city.It's not a culturally vibrant city.I'm thinking about that
In Canada we have like Ottawa that's like as opposed to Toronto, yeah.
It's a very, it's an administrative city and it also now has helped to some degree that Brussels is its own unit, like unity within the Belgian, like entity within the Belgian system of regions and provinces and the like.
So, Brussels itself as a city has quite a bit of autonomy, so that makes it more convenient also.Like, it's basically, like, in some ways you can, like, compare it to D.C., how its status in Belgium, but it's more independent than D.C.
But it's, like, it's not a And this is, again, the confusing thing about Belgium.Maybe I explained from the beginning, since not the latest, I think it was the sixth government reform in the 90s, a part of the structure of Belgium changed.
So how Belgium is constructed is you have, of course, the federal governments of Belgium, and you have the 10 provinces.
But between the provinces and the federal government, you have also two institutions, basically have the regions and the communities.The regions are basically economic, they like they control economic laws and all these things in that sense.
The communities is more for education, culture, and these things.But the reason why, like any, in most other countries, the region and the communities would be always one thing.
But in Belgium, it's not the way because we have three languages spoken, Dutch, French, and German.And the way, like in Flanders, the regions and the communities is one. It's one government.
But in Wallonia, you have a government for the region of Wallonia, you have a government for the community of Wallonia, and you have also a government for the community of the Ostkantons, which is where the Germans live.
Because the Germans have cultural autonomy, like their own education, their own cultural institutions, and other things.But in Brussels, is a region, but it's not a community.So education in Brussels is run by both the Flemish and by the Wallonians.
And if you live in Brussels, you can either be a Flemish, a Dutch speaker or a French speaker.And then if you're a Dutch speaker, you fall under the Flemish community and you send your children to Flemish schools.
cultural, like if you have certain subsidies or the like, these things are done through the Flemish governments, while if you're a French speaker, these things get done through the Wallonian government.
So, Brussels has economic independence, like not economic independence, but economic autonomy, but culturally, they're governed by the region, by the community, so it's a bit of a very confusing thing.
But in this way, my point is that Brussels has a certain economic autonomy, which makes its own government structure.It's also very confusing, but it's also like, as everything in Belgium, dozens of compromises that make it.
I'm not going to explain everything because it's a very confusing thing.
It depends on the residual powers of each.For example, in America,
No, it's just going to say like in America, it's much more clearer.In Belgium, the problem is nobody wants to define it because the moment they define it, they really like, make the division very clear.
Like, there are lots of areas that, like, we don't, like, nobody knows, is it the region or communities who has the power here, or the federal government?Like, it's very up in the air on certain issues.
And that makes it very, like, yeah, it makes it difficult to really exactly know always, because in some ways we are a federation, in some ways we're more a confederation.So it's a very up in the air situation.
For example, who takes care of healthcare?
Is it the region or community?That's difficult in a way.The money for healthcare is not split. It goes from the federal government to the regions, but the management of it is regional.
Oh, God, that's exactly like Canada.Because Canada, we have universal health care, but each province… But we don't have universal health care.
We have a mixed Bismarckian system, which is basically a mixture of private and public.Basically, you are by law forced to be a member of an insurance company.There are many different insurance companies.
And basically, through that insurance company, most of your healthcare is done.But you can also, some insurance companies offer different packages because not everything is backed by law.
There can be a very new medicine for something, and it's not yet gone through the administrative process to be recognized and then to get funding.And then an insurance company can say, we include coverage for that, even though it's not yet federally
Oh, so it's more like America with their health care?No, not really, because they get much more funding from the government and it's much more intertwined, but there is a bit more freedom in it.
Well, I'm referring to like post-Obamacare America, so it's a little bit similar, yeah.But it's not as... As far as I understand it, there is only one insurance company in a state or very confused.
It's not that way because most of the money we spend for healthcare we get back.
Oh, I see.But it just is administered by semi-private.
Yeah, semi-private hospitals.Not all of them, but quite a few of them are private hospitals, but they get heavy subsidies from the state, but they have some autonomy.So it's more, again, it's a much more mixed system.
I don't know all the details of it because I haven't yet had the needs to do really deep investigation into it, but it's a much more, like you said, mixed system.
It's not as like the NHS who rules and the Britons and enslaves them basically, but it's... Yeah, same with here in Canada, with universal health care.
You can choose the hospital you want to go to.
We can choose the hospital we go to.We can choose the general practitioner we go to.Almost all these things we can choose.
Of course, there are only limited slots usually, and often a general practitioner will say, I'm only accepting people from my own neighborhoods.
but we can we can choose same with hospital we can choose like so like sometimes you know like and this hospital they have a few doctors working there who are very good for this i like this doctor i will go there you can do that yeah and also our doctors get paid quite a lot of money so there is a quite the like the incentive for doctors to do what like they earn a lot of money so there's quite the incentive for doctors to work more so it's
Yeah, because here we have a huge doctor shortage because of taxes and the way that the universal health care system works and you get slotted into different places.So there's this huge like medical brain drain that goes to the United States.
Like I have a cousin who's a surgeon nurse and she lives in San Francisco.
you know so it's like um yeah the thing is like belgian health care even though it's been declining at least flemish health care it's been declining in general but still it's quite good especially compared to the netherlands like the border hospitals are always full with dutchmen
oh yeah because they prefer going to here well that's the thing about belgium is that you really do cross into every strain of europe you have yeah you you face the mediterraneans well through france you can cross into the east even you face um the scandinavians or i mean right there is britain right so you know
And the thing is, in Belgium, especially Flemish, we are a Germanic people, but we are in a lot of ways much closer to the French.
We have a bit of a mix in our attitudes and our things are a bit of a mix between Latin and Germanic, which makes it so that we are, like I said, a bit more of a mix, a bit less rigid than
the Dutch or the Germans, but of course more rigid than the French or the, especially like the Italians or the Spanish, but still it's a bit more flexible.
You don't have that Mediterranean laziness, yeah.
No, no, that's not, we don't have that, but we have, like, I have difficulty often, like, communicating with Northern Dutch, not the Southern Dutch, But the formerly Calvinistic Dutch, because they have quite a different spirit than the Flemish.
I'm much more comfortable with Northern French than with the Calvinistic Dutch, because they have their own way of doing things, and that's a bit alien to us here.
And of course, also their way of speaking is quite different from ours, so it's also a bit jarring when I hear people from Holland speak, but that's... Oh yeah.Yeah.
But so what is, I wanted to ask, like, what is the ethnogenesis of Belgium?Like, is it, are most of you Germanized, or is it, there's a huge French element?Like, what really is the genetic?
Belgium is like, of course, I know I'm discounting foreigners.Belgium is about 6 million Flemish, about 6 million people live in Flanders, 4 million in Wallonia, and a million in Brussels. The Flemish, of course, we are Germanic.
The Wallonians are French, they speak French.Of course, we have like 80,000, 90,000 Germans. in Eastern Wallonia living there.
So that's a bit of the composition, but historically the Flemish as the Dutch are mostly of Frankish, like the sense of the Franks.It's also our dialects, like the language we speak Dutch or Flemish has been descended of Frankish.
Like, for example, Clovis, the first king of the Franks who converted to Christianity, his capital was in... I've forgotten the English name for the province, but in what we call Henegouw in Bergen.They're in Dornick.Tournai is it in French.
That was his capital.So it's like in... in what is now Belgium.So there is especially that element.Also on the Flemish coast, there were Saxon villages.Even in some of the dialects there, they have some Saxon elements, for example, in the words.
In some of the cities on the coast for a spider is a kobbe, which, if you know English, a cobweb. So this is one small example.
Then the funny thing is, because Flanders, and I'm speaking about the county of Flanders, which is now composed of East, West Flanders, Zee Flandern, which is a part of the Netherlands, and then a part of French Flanders, which is now a part of France.
that was a county that was historically an autonomous part of the Kingdom of France.While east of Antwerp, which is the Duchy of Brabant and of Lom, which is now Limburg, was part of the Holy Roman Empire.
And most of the now Wallonian provinces were also part from the Holy Roman Empire.So there is a bit of like, In some way, Flanders has a lot of cultural connections with the French, but we speak in Germanic language.
But then we have the Wallonians, who now they speak French.A hundred years ago, they spoke their own dialect, Walloon, but that's been almost completely replaced by French, because of some educational policies and French chauvinism.
So that's there, but to the point that
Leon de Grel, which is a famous Wallonian fascist of the previous century, said in one of his interviews, when he was interviewed when he was in exile in Francoist Spain, he said something to the like of, we Wallonians are more Germanic than the Flemish.
And we are more white, basically, was he also saying, which is quite funny.But because Wallonia was so long a part of the Holy Roman Empire.So that's a bit of the situation.And the thing is, in Belgium, nobody thinks of himself as a Belgian.
except maybe the certain liberal bourgeois types in Brussels, they might consider themselves a Belgian, but almost everybody else thinks of themselves Flemish, Walloon, German, Bruxellois.
Because there is no Belgian people, there is no real unity in Belgium.
Oh, that's very interesting, because you don't conceive yourselves as sort of like a civic sort of nationalism where there is a collective unity of what Belgium is, but it's more of like this ethno-nationalist thing where it's like, I am a Flemish, I am... Yeah, especially in Flanders, because, again, the whole history of the creation, the creation of Belgium and the revolution happens
Like, of course, Belgium after Napoleonic Wars, Belgium was integrated into the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.It's the Netherlands.We were for about 15 years one United Kingdom.And the thing is, why did it break apart?
Well, there were several, two basic reasons. One was the Dutch king, royal house, were Calvinists, and Belgium was up until that point, and still for more than 100 years after, a very staunchly Catholic
States the Catholic Church had immense power in Belgium like extreme power Especially like for example like all the Calvinists were of course during the eight years war kicked out of the south They fled to Amsterdam and the like.
Oh, it's all Belgium like the southern Netherlands was very Catholic so that was one point of contention and
The Dutch king, he liked that Belgium, that was Willem I, liked that Belgium was added to their, or like the Southern Netherlands were added to the Northern Netherlands, gave him more power, more population.
All these were good things, but also they increased the Catholic population massively.So that was one thing he was a bit iffy on.He was, certain policies he was committing was to the disenfranchisement of the Catholics.And then on the other hand,
He was also pushing quite hard to get Dutch to be the administrative language, where previously it had been mostly during, of course, French, during French rule.So that was also a sour point.
And because of this, it created what we call the monster alliance between the Catholics and the liberals. which then, of course, declared revolution against the Dutch that eventually won that war.
And then, because a lot of those people were basically French supremacists, so they had their goal of Frenchifying the Flemish.But the same they did with the Walloons, because
Walloons, they spoke their own dialect of French, but it's quite a distinct dialect, and so they also wanted to replace mostly that with proper French, the same with Flemish, even to the point that certain Wallonians at the time thought that, of course, the racial science was all the
was all the go back then.And so, doing cranial measurements of Flemish skulls and determining, yes, they are less intelligent than us.They were doing the whole nine yards, which was quite funny.
But that's, again, one of the things that created Belgian unionism has a very French supremacist tendency to it, in the sense of like… The Catholic Church was pro-French supremacy at that time.
along with the cosmopolitans?
Yes and no.To some degree yes, but there is also the thing is in Belgium you can be authentically a catholic as both a Flemish nationalist and as a Belgian unionist.
You can be both because of like the catholic church especially local clergy were one of the main driving forces behind Flemish nationalism Oh, really?
So they weren't, because I would automatically assume that they would be more progressive.
Because my, my, the, the person, Guido Gesell, who I film on my sub stack, he was a priest poet, and he was a very notorious, like, he was, he was in,
very large sense, a Flemish nationalist, more in the sense of he wanted the Flemish language to be promoted, to be strengthened, to become a central part of life, of the Flemish life.He wanted to elevate that.
And he also wrote quite a bit of nationalistic poetry and the like.And there were quite a few clergy, especially in the
early 20th century, we had a father, Father Dams, which was, if I recall correctly, at Aalst, and he was a very strong part of Christian democracy, was a priest, he also got elected to the Chamber of Representatives.
He was part of the Front Party, it was a nationalist Flemish Catholic party at the time, basically the first Flemish nationalist party that existed after the First World War.There has always been a very strong Catholic element in
Flemish nationalism, but also on the flip side, Catholic monarchy, especially more French bourgeoisie, especially if they were on the Catholic side and not on the liberal side, because Belgium was also very confused ideologically.
Yeah, that's what I was going to say.Would Belgian nationalism be considered more right-wing or more left-wing or as a liberalizing force?
It really, really depends because you have very strong conservative unionists.They are very rare, but you will find them in certain Catholic circles.But that's Belgian nationalism or unionism of an older
If somebody says he's a Belgian Unionist without saying he's also a Catholic, then you immediately know he's a very, like, basically a globalist.
He's like a libertarian.He has blue hair.
Yeah, and then related, so this is one thing, like, we're saying that The thing is, Belgian nationalism was always a French, like not even a Wallonian project, but a Brussels, French, middle class, bourgeoisie, upper class type project.
Because I would imagine that the aristocracy at the time, the real upper class, they would be opposed to such a thing.
A lot of the aristocracy was, of course, driven out or weakened in power with the French Revolution.
Most, yes, most aristocracies throughout Europe at that time, yeah.
So this is one thing, but the thing is also, and this is also very important to understand,
Belgium, and at some point, I'm going to write in a more comprehensive sub stack about it, but it's what we call pillarization, which is very important to comprehend, to understand Belgium.Basically, it means the vertical integration of society.
And what it means is like a class-based society would be a horizontal integration of society.And since like the UK had a very strong sense of, you have the working class, the middle class, the upper class, and it's really something in common.
very classist type of society.While in Belgium, of course, we had the classes, yes, but what's triumph class, what's pillar?
And pillar is an ideological vertical integration of society, which means you had three pillars in Belgium, the Catholic, the Socialist, the Liberal, and later the Socialist pillar, which means if you're a Catholic pillar, it has farmers, laborers, but also small businessmen,
could be like maybe certain bureaucrats could be part of that of that pillar like lots of different people but also more like bankers could be part of it yeah like everything aristocrats like former aristocrats rich like all part of it of the catholic pillar but that meant that like that pillar had its own newspapers
of course, its own political party, which was first the Catholic party, then the Christian People's Party, its own political party, its own affiliated banks, its own libraries, its own cultural institutions.
Of course, the church itself was a very central part of that pillar.So that's like youth organizations, women's organizations, unions were all part of that pillar.
If only the Catholic Church could do this stuff now, especially here in America.
This was a large part of the response to the mass socialist movements and the like, and that was the type of response that was done especially in Belgium, but also to a large degree in the Netherlands.
The thing is, like I was saying about those insurance companies back in the day, there were basically three main insurance companies.One attached to the Catholic pillar, one attached to the liberal pillar, and one attached to the socialist pillar.
And this is something very important to understand about Belgium.Lots of institutions are very integrated with the state because of that pillarization system.But to explain further, the socialists had their pillar and the liberals had their pillar.
In Vlaanders, the Catholic pillar was the strongest by far. then socialist pillar and liberal pillar were about equal.
Usually social pillar was stronger and the liberal pillar the weakest, but liberal pillar had of course lots of money in it because lots of small shopkeepers, bourgeois liberals, but also Freemasons and the like were part of the liberal pillar.
But in Wallonia, it was the socialist pillar that was the strongest, then the Catholic pillar, then the liberal pillar, and in Brussels, the liberal pillar was the strongest.
Oh, interesting.Like in Basel, the liberal one becomes like, yeah.
But in this way, this was how our society solved the problem of different ideologies and modernity.This is also partly one of my speculations, the reason why fascism never, and even communism, never grew that powerful in Belgium.
Because we had that pillarized structure that dominated society completely, they basically took almost everything in it.
Because the thing is, if you were part of the Catholic pillar, you would go through all your life as part of the pillar, because also schools were pillar-affiliated.
Of course, the Catholic pillar was the strongest in certain places of Flanders, even though you were of more of a liberal persuasion.You could live in a village where the only school was a Catholic school and you send your children to school.
You could be a liberal and also go to church, because most people did.But for political things, you would attach yourself to the liberal pillar.So there was lots of
I'm not laying it out systematically, but I think you have some kind of idea how that's worked in society.
It seems that ideology takes the place of, for example, class, because you would picture that class, okay, you go to the better schools, if you're richer, blah, blah, blah, you go to this district in this community, but it's almost as if because of the
contrasting ethnicities in Belgium.
It's almost as if ideology… That's not because of the ethnicities, because the pillars were, up until after the Second World War, not even necessarily completely that, but up until after the Second World War, the pillars were unitary.
There was one pillar for both sides, because Flanders and and Wallonia only really started, it's like the divisions were already there, but really only after the Second World War they were becoming very clear.
So it's just important to consider because, for example, Kryptos, whom you know, I suppose, He's a Dutch Calvinist.And the thing is, in the Netherlands, it's quite a similar polarization system.
There it was the Catholic, the Protestants and the liberal pillar.They didn't really have a strong socialist pillar.
But as far as I understand, a large part of his idea of parallelism and the like comes from certain ideas that he took up from that Dutch history of polarization.Because I think if people really want to look at parallelism, then
Pillarization is something very important to look at because it can give some interesting examples of interesting ways how basically three semi-independent societies could live in one country.
Because it was really, like I said, it were almost like different societies at some point.
Because if you're a Catholic, you went to Catholic cultural institutions, you went to Catholic tea, like, of course, there were big theaters in the cities and like, but quite often you had like a cultural hall for Catholics.
And so usually it was like attached to the parish or to the church, like the parish hall, and there they, went to theater performances or the like, while the liberals would have their own theater.Same with, like, libraries.
You could have villages with three libraries, one for the Catholics, one for the... So you'd have, like, one teacher would be, like, a nun, because that would often happen.Yeah.
Yeah.And if you went to Catholic school, the thing is, like, in Florence... But then you went to liberal school and, like, the... There was no liberal... Liberal schools were government schools. Oh, okay, okay.
Because there were what we could also call like the school wars, there were two.But there was like political fighting about the status of like the schools, like should all schools be copied.
The first one was I think in the 1890, 1890, I think something like this. Like this, I'm a bit fuzzy on the exact details of the distributors, was like, should every Catholic school be just turned into a government school?That was one of the points.
Should it be funded equally?Yeah.
No, no.That was the second school war was after the Second World War.Then it was a question of like, should Catholic schools also get subsidies?And the Catholics won.
And so they got subsidies from the states to better compete with the government schools. Yeah, same here in Canada.But the thing is, in Flanders, something like 80% to 90% of schools are Catholic schools.
In Wallonia, it's, I think, at least 60% or 70% are government schools.But this is one of the... And then there's also whole Byzantine structures in the school system itself.
I'm not going to say much about this, what I will say will probably be wrong, but it's a very weird... system that makes it even more complicated on the ground itself.But the general point is that Belgium was a segregated society in that way.
Of course, during the 90s, that started all to collapse slowly.
You started off with this globalist nonsense about integration and yeah.
Yeah, and then the holds that the pillars had on people became much, much weaker, because it was like the pillars were really like a very powerful structure.It was a semi-government structure, but not really.
But it was really something people could be attached to and for a lot of people and did a lot of good in society.But of course, it created certain, yeah, of course, you had certain tensions that were always there.And of course, like during the
especially like the 70s, 80s and 90s, where of course movements wanted to break away, like destroy the pillarization.For example, the Flemish nationalists explicitly didn't create their own pillar.
They had their own party and certain organizations, but they deliberately didn't build their own pillar.Then you have also like the Greens who were coming up in the, what is it, 80s and 90s, and they also didn't build a pillar.
So it was, pillarization was also going on its way out.
And then we are, now the situation here, it's still relevant to the former pillars because they still have some power, even though the parties attached to those pillars have all been like steadily declining.
But it's still an important something to keep in mind when you're thinking about Belgium.For examples, our farmers union, It's very closely attached to the current Christian Democratic Party.
They are a very important lobby group for the Christian Democratic Party.And some may, certain politicians in the Christian Democratic Party are, quote unquote, in the back of the farmers.
And the same goes like the unions, especially like the Socialist Union, still have quite a bit of links with our Social Democratic Party. So there's still some connection between those groups.
But it's more of an updated form than what it was, though.It's more of an ideological thing.
No, they're more independent now.The parties don't have the total control they once had on those groups. but they're still somewhat affiliated.
Yeah, but I mean like the pillar system as a whole, it sort of had to, like it went through a modernization process.
Yeah, and not just a modernization process, just a crumbling, just the beginning of the structure itself.And now we just, we are in the remnants of it.It's like it's, for example, for my parents and my grandparents, it would be almost unthinkable
like 20, 30 years ago to change insurance company because you're a part of the Christian pillar, the Catholic pillar, you pay money to the Catholic insurance company.You do, you don't change.
while now it's much more like now you look like the former socialist insurance company gives cheaper on this or it's better for this coverage so I'm going to change now that's much more possible while even in the early 90s that was very much frowned upon like you didn't just do that it was like like you also if you're part of the catholic pillar you wouldn't send your children to
a liberal alliance or a socialist alliance scouting group, you wouldn't.But now that's almost totally like not totally gone, but it's quite weakened.
So it's much more easy to like, like I said, change these things because it's more convenient or like ideology no longer has that holds that it once had.
Oh, that's crazy.Because like, like, I could imagine like, like, I don't know, like, You go to the Catholic school and you're being taught by a nun and the librarian is a nun.
Then you go to like the socialist school and the kids in the socialist school have like drag time story hours.
But the thing is also like there are almost no nuns or priests teaching anymore.Haven't been for like 20 years.
Same here, well, same here in Canada and in America as well.There used to be Catholic predominant neighborhoods.Like my father was educated by nuns, right?But now that's, yeah.
My father, by priests, like the school, I went to the same high school as my father did.And I think he had like five, there were like at least eight or nine still priest teachers at the school back then.
Yeah, the principal was also a priest while my old man was there.Yeah, so.
But so, in this way I give a somewhat a short overview about, because you asked about ethno-genesis, and I think partly because of the pillarization, but also partly because the different languages and the problem that's
Belgian unionism was always very French coded so there is never really a formation of a Belgian people and also included one of the only real king who attempted to create a real Belgium was Leopold II, the greatest king of Belgium without a doubt.
Oh, but not according to historians though.
No, they're false.This is why you should go to the sub stack.I forgotten.I think it's Amphora is the name, but of Leo Kaisaris, a very good poster, a very good friend of mine.Yeah, he's a very good friend of mine.
I also met him some months ago in Rome. But very, like I said, a very good friend of mine, and he translated a primary source of Belgian colonialism.
There was a viral tweet.They claim that he G-word-ited, for YouTube, he G-word-ited 10 million Congolese, but there wasn't even 10 million Congolese or something like that.
Well, yeah, that's one thing.And also,
That's why I implore you to go to Leo's substack, because he translated quite a lengthy report from one of the colonial governors of the early 20th century, describing these things, and one of the quotes from him was misquoted by the infamous book Leopold's Ghost.
where the whole cutting of hands propaganda comes, like, was codified in a certain way.
And basically... But they did actually cut hands, they did actually do horrible things, like, the hand cutting was a reality.
It's more complicated than that, because the thing is, like, it was never systematically organized, it was not done by the Belgian governments, and it was not done under their direction.
Because the quote that gets mistranslated was the colonial governor saying something to the degree, to the larger colonial administration, like, if you want the amount of rubber
you want from this region, where I am now the colonial governor of, then we'll only be able to get it if we will start cutting off hands and noses and ears.And we are not going to do that because we are like the Arabs.
so it's so it's and that that's the famous hands um chopping quotes that's basically was basically mistranslated and miss it was a business joke it was no no it was not a business it was not a business joke it was just like a hyperbolic statement saying like yeah yeah yeah we are going to have to do do that and i'm not going to do this
It's like saying, I'm going to pay an arm and a leg for something.Yeah.
It's like that level.Yeah.Yes.It was like a hyperbolic saying, like, what you want is impossible.And the way we could get it is immoral and is wrong.So that's one thing.
But the thing is what I was just going to say, Leopold II was really the only Belgian king who thought largely because he had drawn up plans to invade the Netherlands, take certain parts of the Netherlands.
really thinking about Belgium as a state and Belgium as a nation.He was the only real king who wanted to build a Belgian nation, but after his death, the project was basically that there was no real animus to create a real, strong, royalist Belgium.
And then especially after the Second World War, the Belgian state just devolved constantly.Like I said, the regions were created, central authority was weakened.
So you would say, like, it doesn't fall into, say, normal political lines in the Anglosphere.
You would say that centralization as a nationalistic project would in some ways, it varies between if that is a more conservative or right wing as opposed to like a liberalization force on intense ethnic rivalries between people.
yeah but the thing is but again this this is one of the problems when discussing continental european politics it's too much anglo-coded like yeah it's like a lots of the the things that's like are relevant in the anglo sphere are not relevant here of like certain ways of see like
For example, the whole thing, especially in Belgium, when you're looking at France, the whole idea of decentralization doesn't make sense with France.France is a centralized state and the centralization of the state is extremely important.
But paradoxically, because France is such a centralized state, it can be a very devolved state.What I mean with this, mayors in France can be very powerful.Why?Because they know they are backed by the power of the central state.
So when the mayor in a local level really wants to change something, he can, he has that power.So it's again, but these things are very hard to fully code on the Anglo mind and the Anglo way of thinking.
So that's why it's important to, like I said, follow people like Leo Kaisaris, who is a very good Frenchman, and he also on his sub-stack, he translates a lot of the speeches of things like Napoleon, but also Charles de Gaulle, and lots of articles on these things to get a better sense of
European politics to a European's view and not to an Anglo view.Because a lot of the things that people, like Americans especially, say about Europe, you look like, eh, this is not really true.
For example, you know that viral tweets or that viral article that went about Belgium forcing... You saw that?
for YouTube, I have to edit that.So let's, so yeah, the Belgium article by, okay, what is it, 50, by, by ex-workers, where they, they had, they can't choose between people.
You said total mistranslation, yeah.
Not only total mistranslation, it actually says the complete, the actual,
not proposed law, but the actual, like the things that were voted on, because it wasn't not yet made into law, but the law proposals and the like that were voted on, said the exact opposite thing that that article said.
And this is one of the arrogance things, and this is what I find quite an
annoying and much respect to Auron and the like, but this is what I find quite, and also a lot of other Europeans find quite annoying, is that these things that happen in Europe get immediately taken up into the American culture war without asking a European or the like.
It is actually based in truth.That's the same as like,
Talking about the whole Israel and Palestine thing, in Europe, on the ground, being pro-Palestine means being with the most trashy of leftists, like with communist anarchists who burn our cities, who spray paint on university walls, who do all these kinds of things.
This means to be pro-Palestine. So, for a right-winger in Europe, it only makes only being neutral to the conflict or being pro-Israel make sense.It's right-coded.
Because the moment you, like, are too much pro-Palestine, then it shows that you are an enemy.And this is something like when they're complaining about, like, oh, ex-right-wing politician is in the pocket of this or of the Zionists.And it's like,
Yeah, kinda, but it's like, this is not really relevant here.And again, this is a very, like, Anglo thing that they're projecting on Europe, like Anglo categories.
Well, Cheer Wilders is very pro-Zionist, that's like the example.
Yeah, he's extremely pro-Zionist, to a ridiculous degree, and it's very annoying.Right.But the thing is, these terms… Well, there's way more Muslim immigration into Europe, and that's probably… Well, yes, that's one thing, but it's also just…
the J'lobby actually doesn't have that much power in Europe.It's not to the degree that the American neocons like Ben Shapiro or the like have influence or power.Even for everyday men,
By and large, people are apathetic to the situation, like, who cares about you?Like, not angry at them, but also not, like, loving them, like some, like, I would say, American, like, Zio-Gon.
There's a performative element of Zionism in American, yeah.
Yeah, and this doesn't really exist in Europe, and that's what I was saying, like, it's difficult to project all these Anglo categories.
It's the same, the whole thing about, like, minarchism of being against the states, like, oh, American libertarian, right-wing, things very important in the United States.Well, here that category is like, it doesn't make that much sense.
So that's just one of the as European, some of the frustrations I have with, and others also have fatigue with the way these things get looked upon us.
But anyway, going back to the whole idea of Belgian ethno-genesis, like I was saying, Leopold II was the only real king who really worked for it.And after that, Belgium as a unified entity with a strong identity was dead.
And so, like I said, nobody, there is no Belgian people, there are no Belgians, there are only, and even, but this is one of my more controversial takes, even Flemish is fake, because- Oh, wow.
But like, no, Flemish is real, but it's also very modern, like nation building identity.It's much more successful than Belgian, but it also has its problems because Flemish is basically,
subdivided in, you have the Flemish dialects, the Flemish of the old county of Flanders, the Brabantians of the old duchy of Brabant, and then you have the Limburgish, and there are certain subtle cultural differences.
Of course, our dialects are quite different from one another, so there is
certain things are a bit different and while painting it all as Flemish creates some like it's it brushes over certain things yeah brushes over yes over certain things but at least Flemish as a national identity is much more real than Belgian.
Belgian is like I said it's it means nothing there is there is no real yeah there is nothing about it that really makes it
like a people, like you could say, with the French or the Germans, or even like in the Russians, because like, of course, in Russia, you have the distinction between, I think it's... In Russia, you have different ethnic blocs.Yes, kind of.
But in Russia, you have the idea of like, I think it's Russia in the sense of like Russian as a state identity.And then I also... Yes. Russia as an ethnic identity, but they're quite closely linked and in Russia everybody knows who is boss.
The Russians are the dominant ethnicity and they rule and all the others can be attached to that dominant ethnicity and hold some autonomy in it, but there is one central ruling force while in Belgium there is no
like, there is no, like, one main ethnicity where all the others are attached to.
There is no, like, because, like, it's not even the Flemish would be that main ethnicity or no?
No, no, because I said, like I said, Belgium is an inherent French, French, French projects, like, so not, not really.And also, The thing is, it's also important... Well, what are you ethnically, though?You're more... I am Flemish.
I am Flemish.Like, I have some... And you speak French, or...?I speak French, not as well as I would like, but I can speak it, because it's a second language.We learn it at, like, when we're 10 in school.
I imagine a lot of people have a working knowledge of English as well.
I think Flanders is one of the most English literates.Like, it's very English literate.Especially if you're at university level, you have to speak English.
oh okay well you have to have a lot of foreign students as well no no because the dutch like i have to speak english i mean implicitly because like if you want to read a lot of the texts you want and the like you have to at least have some competency in english but the thing is like because flounders has lots of language laws it prevents
large parts of education and the like to be in other languages than Dutch, so we have quite a limited amount of foreign students compared to the Netherlands.
In the Netherlands it's really bad, while in Falmers it's not that bad, because like I said about these language laws that prevents anglification of our institutions.
Oh, interesting.You mentioned that in your article, actually.
The ones that are most hit with global progressivism, or what would you call it, transnational progressivism, as we used to call it back in the day, although people have different terms for it, seems to be the most English-speaking centers of a lot of Europeans.
We can talk about this then later.
Let's go to the political situation in Europe currently. And in Belgium, is there a huge anti-immigration wave in Belgium as well?
There has been a huge anti-immigration wave in Belgium for at least five, six years.Also, like the previous elections, our real nationalist party grew back again, but there also have been very strong anti-immigration sentiments in Belgium.So, yes,
So, yeah, there is quite a strong anti-immigration sentiment here.
And do you think it will translate into political victories the way it has in... No.No?
Not like, yeah, not like in France or Germany or... No, but even in Germany, it won't really translate to much political victories.In France, it has the potential.Oh, yeah.
But in Belgium, the thing... I'm not going to bore, like, because we've already been talking for... for quite a long time about Belgium.But I think it's also an important thing to understand about Belgian politics.
Maybe the last thing I'll say about this is we pioneered the concept called the Cordon Sanitaire, which means that all other regime parties, like in the 90s, or real nationalist parties, started to grow.
and they got after a certain election, I think, I forgot, I think, was it 88?Something like that, or is it 91?
One or the other, they got quite a significant, like, still, I think it was only like seven or eight percent of the votes, but they got much more than people expected.And so this caused a massive panic.
It's also called Black Sunday, because the fascists are back in town.
The Zwarte Zondag in Dutch.And so all the other parties signed documents which is called the Corridor Sanitaire, so the sanitary corridor, which means like none of us is ever going to work together with them.
never, not even local coalitions, national coalitions, whatever, we are not going to work with them.And that informal agreement has still stood to this point.
Essentially making the right wing illegal.
Well, the really radical right wing, but not illegal, but deprived of power in most ways.And the thing is like, they didn't win enough this election to force our more center-right party to work with them.
Because if they have only for the Flemish election gotten like two or three more seats, something like two, three, maybe four more seats, they would have forced the center-rights to work with them or work with the communists.
So this didn't came to be this election.
And you don't think the AFD in Germany is going to win?I mean, there's immense political pressure against them.
Yeah, it depends what you mean with win in governments.Well, the AFD might be in government in certain of the Bundesländer in Germany.That might be a possibility, but I think it will be quite some time before something happens there.
But on the other hand, it depends on France.For a political coalition, for example, that would be... It's very much up in the air, but a lot of it also depends on what happens in France right now.
Because, like, they're the centre-right, declared union with the far-right, so if they win and they can secure a French governments, then there might be some more possibilities in other nations.
Because France has done it, a major European power has done it, so maybe we can also do it now here.
And then Le Pen would be mainstreamed, for instance, in France.
That would be a positive outcome, yeah. The positive outcome is just that our ideas become more acceptable.Like, Le Pen has many flaws, many issues, and the like.Oh, yeah, God, yeah, yeah.
But lots of our ideas, and also the idea of working with the far right, becomes much more, like, normalized.So that's definitely a good thing.
What I wrote about in the article is the 90s slop, which is basically, like I said here, these are books that pretend to be about the modern world but are actually stuck in the 90s.
And of course, I define the 90s as the 90s till 2008, 2009, basically pre-smartphone.
Yes, but also like racial issues weren't as severe, cultural issues weren't as like, it was like a new history world, yeah.
Yeah, and the thing is, the main problem with all these books and all these shows and what the thing is like, they refuse to write, because one of the great things that literature can do
is to really expose or give a place about the current world, like the Russian novelists of the 19th century were masters at this, of writing a social commentary or laying out certain social aspirations or psychological things, laying them out, like how that person is at that time.
The really powerful books
Well, the characters, for example, Brothers Karamazov, they almost feel real.
Yeah, more than real.But the thing is, they really give, especially realists, they really give away the way that people lived and thought at the time.And from that, a social critique.
And a possibility from that to build to something more, to see certain things, to recognize certain things, say like, we can do better, or like, I know I understand this.
But the problem is that most books are like, not even only books, but also TV shows, movies, and the like.
they, even the ones that claim to be about the modern world, they are never really dealing with the modern problems.And there are several ways they escape that way.
They're like friction-free propaganda
And they are about the 90s slope.Why?Because it's a much more easy era to talk about, not only about the social problems, but also things like technology.
Because I fundamentally believe that things like a smartphone or like what you're doing now on the computer and all these things, they are very difficult to put coherently into a book or a movie or a TV series.
Some people try, but it's... It's really hard because at one point it's boring.
because like if you see some movies like those movies where they have like text messages on the screen yeah and they're scrolling like you see that but a problem about this is you if you don't do these things you are missing a very fundamental part of our lives
And things going to the 90s is not only a propaganda thing, but also a cop-out to escape writing about these things.And another technique... And a lot of it's millennial nostalgia on the part of the writers themselves, yeah.
Yeah, but even Zoomers often, when they write their fantasy novels... Yeah, because millennials have colonized their imagination with, like, the 90s was a perfect period of time.
Like I said, not only perfect, but also much easier to write about, because even if they write about the modern day, what often do they do?They turn it into a paranormal movie or a paranormal series or book.
And through the paranormal they can escape the question of technology.They can escape all these questions.Because this is one of the points here that I make.
Because through that they obfuscate and escape the whole problem of writing about the modern world. you invoke the supernatural as in because of magic, smart phones and the like can't work.
Voila, the whole problem of writing about these things gone away or like magic solves these things or makes it possible that certain relations are no longer a difficulty.
Another thing people almost never write about are male-female relations, the way they are
No, you can't, you can't, because it has to be, you know, like... Yeah, but it's also difficult to write these things.
Yes, yes.And that's one of the points, like a large part of it is propaganda, yes, but not all of it.
It's difficult to write about them honestly, I think.
Yeah.And then another, and this is which I think you found the most interesting, is that another trend in modern literature are the wish fulfillment novels.Yes, yes.And these are
They also escaped the 90s by enlarging, for example, a lot of the Isekai LitRPG harem novels.Because they escaped the... A lot of them were inspired by Sleeves of Gore, yeah.
Yeah, but they escaped the modern world problems by going to a fantasy world.Also, I could create a whole rant about LitRPG because that's one of the very insidious and very interesting
Oh, modern RPGs, you mean?
No, lit RPGs.They have lit RPGs?Do you do not know what lit RPG is?Oh, Gio, I'm going to, like, visualize your worlds.But first, of course, that's for the middle.There's a risk refinement novel.Central to all these novels are power.Yes.
Central, because The central point, and the same with fanguner novels, fanguner novels are fundamentally also about power of the women.Both are wish fulfillment in that way, with the Isekai novels.
In general, there it's more like a man gets a cheat code, basically, to gain power and to get all the things that he wants.While the fanguner novel is much more
It's much more complicated in the sense, of course... Like a woman gets RP'd, but that also increases her Girlboss stats boost.
Yeah, they're both... They always have the very vulnerable woman, who is at the same time a badass.Almost all of them have that double implication, because, yes, she gets by the billionaire,
But she also now, the billionaire becomes attached to her and can't live without her.
It's a female power fantasy.It's ultimately a female power fantasy, and it's a very But on the other hand, it's a very honest expression, since people feel stuck.And this is something which Bob is very correct about.
It's that whole stuff, the longhouse that crushes you.You want to do things, but you can't.You are just imprisoned in the modern world.And Isekai books, and especially the RPG,
which is basically you get transported to a world which has video game logic, so you can level and the like, but usually the protagonist has certain cheat codes through which he can basically dominate the world.
But the funny thing is, LitRPG in one way makes it so that you can be everything.Because like, yes, you can, you can, every class, every, like, or you build a certain skill, you learn the skill and you can even cheat to get better in the skill.
So in one way, it's a very, like, existentialist thing, like, you are not an essence, but in the other way, you're also extremely determined.
So in other way, you imprison yourself in your class, because like certain other RPG novels are basically about people being confined by class, by their class and the system, and becoming basically... You're a slave to the game logic, in other words.
Yeah, becoming a slave to the game logic.And while other novels are like, no, through the game logic, I become free.So it's also a very...
Or you play the most that you can out of your class.It's almost like Sutry in Bad Faith.Like, you're the best damn waiter ever.Even though you're just like, you're a wagee slave.Yeah, in a cage.
But again, it's a very... I'm going to write more about this, but it's a very interesting way how people, and because of the, through the LitRPG, or like Isekai Cop Out, and also the...
fanguner romance in a way, because they purely focus on the thing, they escape a lot of the writing, the problems of smartphones and the like, that whole problem of technology, they just escape it.
Well, they're not really, yeah, they're not really even talking about that.They're not talking about their own alienation because there's no such thing as alienation in those ones.There's no, yeah, there's no ennui anywhere.
It's just like pure fantasy, libidinal fantasy.
Yeah, but because they are so alienated, they enjoy them, or like they become, because usually the protagonist of an Isekai novel is a wage slave.
almost always is a wage slave who escapes and can make his fantasies come true.And also this is why like the harem part isn't important because that's of course degenerates into complete relation.
But it's yeah, you become like a detached aristocrat in some kind of like pop culture version of what the aristocratic class was doing.Like there's orgies and excess everywhere.And yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's not really a reality what you don't really go through, like the reality of administering a people.Rather, it's all about the hedonic collegian excess of, you know, like your collegial forever, you know.
And like I said in the end quote of that book, even though they express a true sentiment of the modern world, by escaping they refuse to deal with the realities of the modern life and so can never become a positive literature.
And that's what I mean with a positive literature, it's that transformative power of literature of books that can elevate the people.That's what a positive literature is.It makes something.It can make creative people.
It can pull people into the future.And that's the problem with those, even Van Goener and Isekai
books, they are through expression of the problems of the modern world, of the lack of power, of possibility to claim space, of even get healthy relationships and the like.
But instead of looking and almost look at it and seeing like, here do we break, here are we the problems, here is the struggle, no.They create a cop-out to escape the struggle and then live a fantasy life.
And that's why I say it's one of the most honest expressions, because it's instead of normal 90 slop, which is just one thing to get stuck in something that was lost, here it is in a fantasy escape of a world to something, a perceived better thing.
where you have real power and autonomy, while the 90 slot is usually just a continuation of the same.
Yeah, you still are alienated in 90 slot, like there's a lot of...
Like, like I remember watching Duckman, the cartoon, and it would be like, you know, the it would portray like the alienation of modern life in the 90s, like before the Internet really hit things.But it's also like, oh, life sucks in the city.
You're just a drone.You're a slave.And it's like people are rude.People are idiots.And it's sort of like that.You know, everyone recognizes that we live in hell.But even though like we live in a historically unprecedented period in human history.
It's like there's still this existential hell.
Again, that's talking about you live in hell and this is not how you write something positive.It's like you have to show so people really feel it's not being told about it.Because the implication of those 90s flop things is I am the authentic
Yeah, and society is full of posers.It's a very, like, Gainax attitude of life.
Well, the real way to do it is, like, saying, like, no, I am also stuck in this.Yeah.We are all stuck in this.And we can all have to see a way to get out.And this is what I mean with the positive literature.
And this is why the 90s slope is especially, like, deranged, because it's... keeps us in the same, and why I have a certain appreciation and understanding for those Aes Sakae and those Fem Gunur Noh romances.
They eventually fail because they push one even deeper into despair.
Because you're not that, because you're not that fantasy.
Yeah, and you can never be.And it's just an even stronger quality.
Yeah, a vampire is never going to, you know, never going to do ass to mouth with you.I'm sorry, it's not going to happen, ladies.
You know what I mean?Yeah, or you are never going to die and wake up in a fantasy world.And the thing is, like, and it's not a fantasy because, like, this is different with, like, the work of, for example, Tolkien or Lewis or others.
That is a fantasy world, but the thing is, it's not a self-insert where you're like, oh, I'm going to live in that world.No, the right approach of that is, I am going to become like, for example, Aragorn, or like
Lucy or like in the real world, like I'm going to take the virtues that they carry and become like that's a positive.That's what also what a positive literature can do.While something like in an Isekai or a fangunner, they don't do that.
They just keep you in that
in that loop and again yeah it's because it's ultimately wish fulfillment it's like you are that it's it's the typical like stephanie meyer is uh yeah yeah like like um i think i'm going to be whatever her name is in 50 shades of gray or whatever yeah i think i'm going to even take um twilight as the prime example of fem goner because you can be yeah any woman can be bella
Yeah, like she's so ambiguous.I mean, OK, I know the movies are Kristen Stewart, but like she the way that's written, it's so ambiguous that any woman could be that a black woman, an Asian woman, a fat woman, a skinny woman like it doesn't matter.
You can be Bella and Robert Pattinson.What's the guy's name?
Edward, yeah, Edward Collins can be like your dark fantasy vampire, you know, before Blade comes.I love that.I love that meme back in the day where like it was the like Edward Collins was like glowing in the sun and then right behind him is Blade.
I love Blade when I was a kid.I remember seeing that first time when I was a kid, the club scene.That was amazing.But no, but so what do you think is like, what is the origins of the Fem Gooner?Oh no, Fem Gooner.Yeah, okay.
Like the origin, I think it's not that important because to some degree novels like this have always been there.But the thing is they have been getting more extreme and more deranged.Because do you know what reverse harem is?
Where like the woman becomes like the like sort of a weird like madam or whatever like what is the... Yeah but there are different like I've
I have never read one of those novels, thank God.And I will never read one of those, because even for my research, I've read certain more plain fanguner novels.Not even all of them are erotic.Some of them just skip these things.
A genre, manga, and anime.Reverse harem.So this comes from Urban Dictionary.Let me find it.Reverse harem. Where is it?Oh yeah, genre and manga and anime.So I'm assuming, what's the... A lot of them are just romance novels.
But the whole point is like one woman, multiple men.But not always.Often it's like multiple men competing for one woman and one man winning out.
The girl is liked and followed by a bunch of handsome men, three or more, who are all madly in love with her.
The girl often cannot pick when a guy she... So it's kind of like that new Zendaya film, Challengers, where she's like a tennis star and everyone loves her.All these guys are cooming over.Zendaya.
But sometimes it becomes also ménage à trois, like... Yes, yes, yes.Just full on, completely degenerate.
And the men degrade themselves by doing semi-biceps.Yes.
But that's like the most extreme version I can think of of the femme gooner, because that creates that whole... That goes even further on the whole power girl.
Yeah, that's why a lot of femmes sounds like Yaoi.
It's the same... But that's why the origin is not that important.What is more important is that it's, in a way, like I said, an honest expression of certain problems.Desires.Desires. of also a lack of felt power, a lack of... Yes, yeah.
Yeah, because this is also one of the things they... What those Femkongerners explain... But how you integrate those desires... They really, yeah, they really, really, really want to find the perfect husband who will care for them and be powerful and strong.
And, like, it's a very, very weird dynamic.Also something... interesting and why I think lots of those, especially Fem Goner series, are maybe government psyops to some degree.
Maybe that's a bit too strong, but there is a tendency of in those, especially paranormal romances, they go like you have 10 books in the series and then the 11th, the 12th, the 13th book around there, there gets a gay romance thrown into the series.
Yeah, but it's always like... I actually talked about this a long time ago with Helena Kirchner in Default.
The Yowie thing, it's a very like feminized, like it's a feminine picture of what they think homosexuality looks like or what male male relations looks like.It's in the reality is not that it's basically like they want the perfect man.
The perfect man is almost basically like a soft boy for it, because because a lot of them, they feel threatened by actual either heterosexual or like, you know, actual, you know, hetero or homosexual male. identity or male reality.
So the average man is threatening to them.And so therefore they have this fantasy where men are these like soft twinks.
And again, a part of the movie gets to watch and she's involved.And yeah.
Yeah.And the thing is, it's it's not the it's it's not fantasies.And like I was saying, the sense of Tolkien, Lewis or even like myth and the like. Right, right.It's, it's, it's, it's in the attached fantasies.
It's like, there is no, there is no grip on the reality at all.
And that's, that's the, that's what it makes him like, all that kind of visual film.And so understandable, but also, it's just, it's just like, a palliative, like, you're just
you're just like making yourself weak and making yourself tired and just brain dead and this is in general but in a way like I said even worse than just common 90s slope because just common 90s slope is just like turning off your brain into mush while this is more like this is much more like you have a real desire
and you project that desire on something else and something impotent and then you destroy it while with just general 90 slop there is no real desire to just watch to be busy because so
well yeah it's like Hallmark movies for like middle-aged women yeah it's like it's got that powerful like unreality that translates into fantasy whereas like you can identify with characters in 90s slop or whatever but like this is more of like you insert yourself the way that if you're watching like prawn like if you're watching the Simpsons you're not thinking like I'm going to be in Springfields
Right.I mean, some people do, but like, yeah.
But that's not the, like, of course, that's one of the, like, the, which is why, like, Tolkien, that's also a reason why fandoms are completely deranged.Yeah.
Because the moment you get into, as an adult, like, if you're a child and you do self-inserting, that's normal.
But at some point, like, well, this is also a more controversial opinion, but why, like, dressing up, it can, like, for, like, for Halloween and, like, it's not really a problem.But, like, going autistically to conventions and the like.Yeah.
And as dressed up as... It's... I think it's not an innocent thing.Cosplaying?Cosplaying, yes.Yeah, it is.And it's a bit of a controversial take, maybe, but... It depends though.
Because that self-insert confusion can get, if you're not careful, can start causing problems.Because trunification is also related to this in reality.Very strongly.
Because one of the, like on Royal Roads, a very important, like not a very important, but like a genre that's exists is gender bender, because you get isokaited to a new world, but suddenly you're the soul of a man stuck into the body of a woman.
But that's, again, this is also one of the things that the whole isokaiting exposes this very, very essentialistic view of identity.It's actually quite amazing how essentialist certain leftoids can be, but that's maybe a topic for another time.
What do you mean by essentials, like how in sync, like how... Instead of they going full on Judith Butler, it's all fake, but it's all performed.No, they believe like, no, I am really that soul, a soul attached from my body.I am really this.
very reified.Because that's one of the implications of the whole Isekai, because that's what lots of people believe.Like, I am this very reified thing, which is even mistaken.It's, in my opinion, as much of a mistake as the Judith Butler.
Like, everything is a construct that's also very mistaken.
And it's funny to see that on the left there is, I think you mentioned this at some point, it's quite a civil war between the new essentialists and the old guards from people like Butler and the Beauvoir.
Yeah, exactly.There's sort of like a There is like, some of them are like totally postmodern, non-binary, any gender you want.Then other ones are very like, you know, like even radfems have their own form of gender essentialism.
So, yeah.And again, like, especially like those Asukai novels show that's very prevalent.That's basically the main idea, that's how people think about their soul.
And also, what it also implicates is that you are not your body, which is very anti-Christian. Because we are of unity of body and soul.Oops, something fell.But very of the unity of body and soul.
And this is also, I think, a reason why transgenderism and all the like, and even people being fat and all the like, is very common.Like obesity and like also because the whole idea that you are not your body.
That your body is really not a part of you.
It's a weird form of mind-body dualism.
Yeah, but I think that, and this is why I was saying that going in those web novels is very anthropologically very interesting because it really exposes much more than other things how lots of people think about certain issues and how these are contemplated.
And it's all filtered through this like libidinal complex.It's all filtered through show fantasy.
Very often, yeah.And so I think like, I would say like women relate to that fantasy different than men, but it seems like There is a disassociative aspect.
I remember that one famous image from TikTok that got passed around on Twitter where it's like some woman in glasses saying like, I was reading the most steamiest smut ever and I peered up and I realized my boyfriend was way next to me.
And like, I was totally unaware.I'm like, man, that's so, you know what I mean? You could have a normal fulfilling sex with your boyfriend, but instead you choose to read this like a lichen werewolf having relations.
Yeah, we're talking about this another time about how it's basically female pee. Yes, yeah.Like on the same level as men watching things.Yeah.The same destructiveness.And in a way, those Isekai novels are also a form of male power fantasy.
A very potent one.Male power fantasy, yeah.Yeah, a power fantasy is the right word to describe it.
Like, I'm a Ouija loser.I mean, some anime, some shounens have that, but it's not as... But RPG, it comes from Japan.
Like, lethargy is... Those things have their origin in Japan.They, of course, become their own Western...
But yeah, it's very interesting because then of course you get whole problems with the multiverse that's also in there and it's their own very degenerate literary device.
It's like if I can't explain anything, I could just be like, oh, it's in the multiverse, like Chris Chan, like all in the multiverse, yeah.
Yeah, the dimensional marriage, sorry.
The dimensional marriage.But I think we can now move to the last parts.
Of course, like problems with attention span, because what I didn't say, or maybe not yet come fully to the forefront, the goal of my article was not just to contemplate language, but also think about literature in general, and mainly think about the question, why hasn't there been a real
new literature, like why aren't there great works, great books being written?
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