1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived in the same place | Hacker News Reader

1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived in the same place

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254 pointssamdung222 comments

The Austro-Hungarian Empire and Vienna in particular were an amazing place, a sort of proto-EU that really had a shot at creating lasting prosperity and peace in Europe. I highly recommend Stefan Zweig's "The World of Yesterday", his memoirs of life before WW1. It reads disturbingly like an account of today's world, written just on the cusp of WW3.

It’s interesting how the way that author you mentioned describes the attitudes and views of his parents and the upbringing he had when he was a young lad growing up in Europe of the 1890’s.

It’s surprisingly very similar to the attitudes in parents of the 1990’s America and the upbringing many of us who grew up in the 1990’s….

Was interesting. Especially the way it all shattered after world war 1.

Hell the author fled Europe to escape the Nazis. I read in a history book that that author committed suicide in despair because he thought the Nazis would win.

His memoirs of his life are filled with sadness and melancholy. The enormous optimism that his parents had for him in his upbringing during the 1890’s. When his parents and many of their generation believed the march of science would lead to a new century of reason and peace and progress….and then in his lifetime the world descended into a level of brutality and violence and horror that would have been unimaginable in centuries prior…

Poignant stuff

> I read in a history book that that author committed suicide in despair because he thought the Nazis would win.

[citation needed] heavily so.

https://web.archive.org/web/20101014145959/http://www.time.c...

> Friends in Brazil said he left a suicide note explaining that he was old, a man without a country, too weary to begin a new life.

Dostoevsky really saw the gathering storm clouds, especially in his book, "The Possessed." He did a great job of criticizing the idle status seeking upper classes who were charmed and oblivious to the gathering power of radical ideologies like that of Pyotr Stepanovich and his gang of radicals in that book.

James Lindsay has spent a lot of time talking about the Gnostic and Hermetic currents running through these disastrous revolts against liberal ideas that occurred throughout the 20th century.[1] It seems that the ancient Gnostic and Hermetic cult ideologies and their derivatives, imported into the modern world by Marx, Hegel and Rousseau are exploiters of many unfixed security vulnerabilities in the human psyche, especially in large groups, that are used to regularly create all sorts of mayhem, and pointless civilizational self-destruction by promising easy societal transformation in any way imaginable and a forthcoming great vague unspecified utopia where the details of how it actually would work are considered unimportant.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk_w2-8snWk

To save me watching the video, can you articulate why you believe that Marx was influenced by Gnosticism and Hermeticism?

Is this the Popperian "Plato was an enemy of open society"?

Gnosticism has the pattern that there is a demiurge that created this world as a prison. This is the capitalist economy. Gnosticism says that those initiated into secret knowledge will become of aware of the real nature of the world and seek to wake everyone else up. This is the idea of the revolution fixing all problems and bringing about the great communist utopia by transferring all capital ownership to the state. Marx doesn't say a whole lot about how the Utopia would actually operate, those were details Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky were figuring out in Vienna.

Hermeticism, specifically the emerald tablet, says that we can make things become believable by just willing them with our minds. Those who believe the things should be treated preferentially, and those who don't should be persecuted because they stand in the way of the implementation of those things. This applies to Marx's beliefs in the labor theory of value among other totally non-empirically backed beliefs being treated as ideological indisputable truth.

The credit for the labour theory of value goes to Adam Smith, specifically the Wealth of Nations. Whether it was true or not is a separate question, but it was based on empirical data available at the time. Marx is usually credited with it because he altered it, and saw a flaw in Adam Smith's version. The idea that "what something costs is what people are willing to pay for it" was something Adam Smith was familiar with and addressed in the Wealth of Nations.

> Those who believe the things should be treated preferentially, and those who don't should be persecuted because they stand in the way of the implementation of those things.

The Gnostics and followers of Hermes were one of the most hounded and persecuted groups throughout history. The Cathars were wiped out, and Giordano Bruno, an early proponent of the Copernican model of the solar system was burnt at the stake by the inquisition. It seems to be the other way around.

> Hermeticism, specifically the emerald tablet, says that we can make things become believable by just willing them with our minds.

I don't think this is correct, but I can't prove a negative.

> The Gnostics and followers of Hermes were one of the most hounded and persecuted groups throughout history.

And for good reason, as we later found out in the 20th century.

You're talking about genocide and religious discrimination.

Wikipedia: Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word "genocide" in the 20th century,[110] referred to the Albigensian Crusade as "one of the most conclusive cases of genocide in religious history".[111]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism

I thought the demiurge was simply ignorant not malicious. It found itself in a chaotic world and tried to make sense of it. In doing so it mistook itself for a god. That said I'm not an expert in gnosticism.

Whether the truth is found in Sophia or quintessence, I think transcendent claims are the real problem. This applies to both the orthodox traditions in the west as well as the esoteric traditions.

Gnosticism is not a term that can be used to define a uniform metaphysical system. There are a variety of metaphysical schools that are bundled together in the modern usage. For example, in what German scholars of early 20th century came to call "Iranian Gnosticism" (in reference to Manichaeism [1]) it is in fact the Father of Light that "sacrifices his sons" as 'food for daemons' so that the battle between Light and Darkness is taken to 'their turf'.

> Capitalism

Interestingly enough, another Iranian gnostic school derivative of Zoroastrianism - that of Mazdak [2] - shared everything, including "women".

In general, one should be careful to be quite specific as to what metaphysical school of thought they are referencing when using the currently ambiguous term "Gnosticism". ~

Mani's metaphysical vision is rather wild. I was just reading up on it the other day - apparently he even resorted to diagrams to make things clear.

[1]: https://iranicaonline.org/articles/cosmogony-iii

[2]: https://iranicaonline.org/articles/cosmogony-iv

One of the criticisms of Gnostisicm, even going back to the ancient Greeks is it never makes positive assertions about what the new world will be like. It's only negative saying things like "all this is illusion," "all this is bad." It never puts up its own program for criticism. So if you say anything about Gnosticism, the Gnostic can just respond, our faith isn't that, it's better than that. However, they never tell you what it actually is so it can be objectively criticized.

I'm wondering how you square this with fascists being largely responsible for the body count and the most egregious human rights abuses (particularly, for the purposes of this conversation, those attributed to Imperial Japan).

Communists believe that classical liberalism does not exist. That all systems are an arbitrary unprincipled prejudiced exercise of power with law and merit being clever illusions hiding raw power and prejudice, so if the communists are not exercising it arbitrarily and with no concern for any principal except raw power on behalf of the proletariat, then someone else must be exercising it on behalf of whoever they think should exercise tyrannical power for the greater good like the Japanese, or the Germans racists.

The fascists have the same gnostic and hermetic beliefs as the communists. For example, the Nazi belief in the control of the world by the inferior and evil races, representing the demiurge and all that garbage.

Liberalism, on the other hand, is based on the idea that there are no special people. No enlightened people with the true knowledge of the world, or special truths that would become true if only everyone started believing them.

Among the communists, I think both types could be found, it is just that the more idealistic, moderate and anti-authoritarian people always lose out in those revolutions. An organized, amoral and unscrupulous minority has a big advantage over them. Classical liberalism suffers from the same issues, and systems designed by classical liberals also often get subverted by minority interests.

>Classical liberalism suffers from the same issues, and systems designed by classical liberals also often get subverted by minority interests.

Yes but in classical liberal states, when the minority interests subvert established norms, it very rarely leads down a path of mass bloodshed and wanton destruction. In heavily authoritarian communist revolutions, one mistake of letting the "more extreme" (because even the less extreme figures in these kinds of regimes tend to also be fanatics) reach power gives you a regime like Mao's or Stalin's. Even in less extreme examples, few people would call a government like Castro's preferable, or claim that if Trotsky had come to power, then repression and mass shooting would have ended in the USSR.

Beyond just ideology, the type of state institutions and their fundamental tendencies of respect for the rule of law (or a lack of this respect) are important factors in deciding how far the unscrupulous can go even if they do come to power.

This is why in a country like the U.S. with very stable liberal traditions and strong state institutions built with these traditions in mind (if imperfectly), having someone like a Nixon or Trump get into power gives results that are nowhere near as bad as they are when a Hitler, Castro, Mao or Lenin comes to power in a country with much weaker bulwarks of liberal history.

Fascists are 100 percent part of this Gnostic and Hermetic tradition though.

To the person who had a comment removed:

The reason we don't talk like that is because it turned out to encourage wholesale murder. It's not that you're "wrong", it's that you're not singling out the responsible individuals when you could just do that. It comes across as intentionally painting with too broad a brush.

No they are absolutely wrong. Painting the kinda normal violence of a city with richish criminals as a parallel to the beginning of a State sanctioned erasing of an ethnicity from their boarders is delusion. The case they reference is literally a gang banger who shot a cop.

France is not experiencing a genocide FFS

"We don't talk like that" because being that absurdly catastrophizing, that disingenuous about a situation, is called being a liar.

Imagine calling Al Capone's violence a genocide.

I'm trying to convince, not vent.

Exactly. The modern take is to try and compare the US to Pre-WW2 Germany. But really the entire Globe is more like pre-WW1 so something like Ukraine or Gaza is the flame to start the bomb fire.

Maybe if you ignore the vast nuclear arsenals that various countries have aimed at each other at all times..

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Let's hope that MAD will deliver lasting world peace.

What, me worry?

Love the eggcorn as it works in well in context [bomb fire / bonfire]

The US is a bit like pre-WW2 Germany, in the sense that a group of power-hungry, self-proclaimed defenders of the people want to overtake government, by whatever means, and suppress basic rights for large groups, based on political conviction and ethnicity.

The world isn't pre-WW1. Russia stands alone in its conflict with Ukraine, and Palestine's neighbors don't give a shit. The only thing that could turn it into a wide scale war, is use of nuclear weapons. It would be a madman's hubris, not geopolitical games of a fading elite that drives the process.

> Palestine's neighbors don't give a shit

I wouldn't say that, they just can't do anything about it or whatever they do is emotionally triggered retaliation without thought or strategy such as firing rockets into Israel of which very few explode on land or nor cause any real casualties to Israel.

Had Egypt been ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood they'd likely retaliate against Israel. Then there's Turkey, a serious regional power, they seem to do give some shit, they just can't do much about it.

I agree, it was not a very nuanced way of putting it, but by and large it seems to be true.

I don't know if Turkey is really that vested in the topic. They had good relations with Israel, and they really don't want to ally with Iran. It seems more of another PR stunt for internal indignation by Erdogan.

The Egyptians people treat their refugees quite badly. The Muslim Brotherhood also doesn't care about Palestine and the Palestinians, it cares about Hamas and Israel. If they ran the country, they could have used it as a pretext for military action, but how likely would they have been to succeed? And it still wouldn't escalate the conflict to extra-regional levels, unless Israel, in a fit of Biblical retaliation, would then invade Egypt as well.

Actually, there are lots of things that could happen to "tip the cart" still.

Though unlikely, Trump could (conceivably) win, ditch Ukraine exactly as promised (not in 24 hours but over time), which would of course deeply embolden Putin (and/or lead to a nuclear escalation in itself, particularly if Ukraine does something really desperate). Putin could die (or be assassinated) and easily be replaced with someone way more ideological and/or simply stupid.

Farther afield: though it would irrational in every respect -- China could make its move on Taiwan. And as always, in the Middle East, anything can happen (especially if the current government in Israel stays in power and continues to radicalize and throw oil on the fire).

Any of these could escalate on its own. But it is the prospect of the these three theatres deteriorating rapidly at once that has people up at night. Not so much on WWI or WWII lines, but a different kind of global conflagration altogether.

I'm not a doomer on the prospect, but it's by no means out of the question. These are indeed very unsafe times.

(As an aside, and in line with what the other commenter, it's just not true to say that Palestine's neighbors "don't give a shit". Their interest may not be altruistic, but to many of them the situation there is deeply significant, for a host of geopolitical, ideological, and religious reasons).

> China could make its move on Taiwan

True. That would turn the world into chaos pretty quickly.

> it's just not true to say that Palestine's neighbors "don't give a shit".

I agree it was short on nuance, but there's little evidence that they ever cared. I mean: Egypt has kept the border closed, and treats the Palestinian refugees badly.

Egypt has kept the border closed, and treats the Palestinian refugees badly.

At present the border is closed because Israel captured it back in May.

As to the rest -- one could delve further into this, but it would start to drift from the subject of the original thread. For the time being would seem best to stick with less controversial topics, like Hitler and Stalin.

Though seen by many of its contemporaries as an anachronistic, oppressive state which was doomed to collapse (and it did indeed).

> I highly recommend Stefan Zweig's "The World of Yesterday", his memoirs of life before WW1

I'm only about 1/3 in but as far as I can tell Zweig only claimed Vienna to be this "enlightened" place. He's still writing quite a lot of critique of the rest of Austria. He's also fully aware of how fragile that Viennese subculture is.

The Eastern European population ruled by Austrians lived in abject poverty and there was no talk about making them partake in the prosperity of the elites. The affluence of Vienna did not extend onto the rest of the empire.

There were multiple projects meant to increase the standard of living in the outer provinces, especially in the ones ruled by the Austrians. Compulsory education, industrialization, electrification. Sarajevo had the first tram system!

And there was at least some moving to where the opportunity was. I got a hint of this doing some superficial family research; based on graves and directories, some people made their way from a town in Bohemia where everyone with a version of my rare last name seems to come from to Vienna and Trieste (the imperial port city). Reflected in the article too:

> "While not exactly a melting pot, Vienna was its own kind of cultural soup, attracting the ambitious from across the empire," says Dardis McNamee, editor-in-chief of the Vienna Review, Austria's only English-language monthly, who has lived in the city for 17 years. Less than half of the city's two million residents were native born and about a quarter came from Bohemia (now the western Czech Republic) and Moravia (now the eastern Czech Republic), so that Czech was spoken alongside German in many settings.

The Austrian partition of Poland was the poorest (even if it has the most political liberties).

Sarajevo had the first tram system in Sarajevo, not in Europe or the world.

Which populations? Because most were ruled by Hungarians.

Zweig was hopelessly delusional about what was actually going on, especially when so many of his contemporaries (Kraus, Musil, Broch to name a few) understood what was happening.

With regard to Vienna, Fröhliche Apokalypse(The happy apocalypse) is probably much more accurate than Zweig's cosmopolitan dreams.

To be fair to Zweig, history's events could have unfolded differently than they did.

They could've, but tbh its just very hard to read the memoirs of a guy who is extremely privileged, uses his family's money to travel around Europe just as it is ready to fall apart completely, and he is just stuck in this cosmopolitan idealism.

I've found Mann to be absolutely insufferable for the exact same reason(although both are very good writers when one only considers literary skills and ignores the actual themes).

Also with the Wes Anderson movie "The Grand Budapest Hotel" you can get into the mood.

Interesting. I too see many parallels with present-day United States. Especially with all the current political turmoil and cultural ferment. History doesn't repeat perfectly but reading about Vienna and Austro-Hungary before the war and knowing what came after out of this melange- Nazism, Communism, Fascism, it feels somewhat portentous.

I don't see how Austria-Hungary could be seen as a proto EU, unless you mean that they couldn't agree on many things and had muddy compromises on authority and autonomy. How it could have created lasting peace is beyond me. Germany was its natural, but more powerful ally, and France, England and Russia were sworn enemies of Germany, and didn't seem to care for the double monarchy. It had very little credit in world affairs, so how could it have swayed the whole continent?

Also: we're not on the cusp of WW3.

> unless you mean that they couldn't agree on many things and had muddy compromises on authority and autonomy

Kinda reminds of EU right now...

yes that's part of the point that the comment you're responding to was making

Russia also was a complete mess at this time. Its serfdom and class system were oppressive as hell.

To give you one idea: soldiers could never be out of uniform. Officers could strike soldier at any time and routinely did. Soldiers were paid roughly 50 kopeks a month while officers go 50-1000 rubles (100k = 1r).

Europe was also 60 years into the emergence of Communism at this point because there was very little upward mobility from general populace to the higher classes. Sounds more like author bias and wishful thinking but I will add this book to my list to see if I am wrong.

People don’t understand that western countries overthrew feudalism in the fire of revolutions a hundred years prior, but for other countries liberation from feudalism or colonialism happened under the banners of communism.

But it was the same process of purging the same old system, purging of serfdom and of people being property

Land reform, not revolution, is the key to unlocking modernity.

However where feudal land ownership is entrenched revolution may be necessary.

Don't know about all the countries, but since you're answering a comment on Russia, I must say, it reads comically out of touch.

Yeah, the old system was purged alright, but calling it a liberation is disrespectful to the lives of millions of common Soviet people driven to hungry death, being forcefully moved around the country, killed in internal squabbles or purges or otherwise "collectivised".

And it all happened despite the fact they hadn't exactly been property for more than 50 years by the time tsarism was overthrown.

Appropriate comparison would be French Revolution and napoleonic wars that followed. The whole mess lasted for decades.

Tsatism was indisputably a tyrannical system, and many peasants were still not free until they paid for their freedom

‘Most former serfs had to pay a land redemption fee (redemption payments were not abolished until 1907’

Except for the last paragraph of your reply, what’s different today?

Today there is a middle class (by Eastern European standards) and there is no hereditary nobility. Outside of penal colonies, forced labor isn’t a thing. The government isn’t constantly fumbling for control against political agitators (in fact it went too far into totalitarianism). Casual physical abuse of soldiers isn’t at least as widely reported on so I would assume that it isn’t an everyday norm in every unit. Pay inequality between officers and soldiers isn’t measured in how many orders of magnitude.

Russia is not on the brink of three revolutions and a civil war in the span of a year. It isn’t a good place but it is very different than how it was 100 years ago.

Hereditary nobility doesn't exist in Russia since 1917. What's your opinion on sending thousands and thousands of people to the front lines in Ukraine? Is it not true it's often forced? Or lied about where they are being taken to? What do you think about recent influential people in Russia falling out of a window? Or state-sponsored propaganda, how much of the free press remains in Russia? What happens to a regular middle class person when they speak up against the government? Can people go and protest against the government without repression? How has the Russian mentality changed in the last 60 years?

I am in no way defending Russia. As a Ukrainian I am appalled at its government’s actions.

What I am saying is that 2024 Russia is very different from 1917 Russia:

1917: weak government, 2024: strong government

1917: lots of protests, 2024: no protests

1917: class system (if you are born a peasant, you remain a peasant), 2024: you can sell hotdogs then become a billionaire, then have a mercenary force, then be shot out of the sky

1917: widespread income inequality, 2024: billionaires but a Lieutenant doesn’t make 1000x what a soldier in his command does.

1917: mercenary groups are a normal part of life, 2024: they are officially outlawed and unofficially there are only a few.

There are lots of other differences. Again, this isn’t to say that Russia is good or doing good things. They aren’t. But you can’t say nothing changed. That is simply ignoring history. There are similarities in that Russia is still a shitty place to live.

If you want a perspective, check out Antony Beever’s Russia for a history of the 1918 revolution.

> Also: we're not on the cusp of WW3.

How could you know that? Are you a time traveller? It is unlikely in any specific year, but over 100 years a 1% chance is likely to happen and the risks seem elevated right now. There isn't anything in particular stopping WW3 and there are lots of ways it could happen (open war with Russia, China or Iran spring to mind, civil war in the US spiralling globally is thinkable, the EU is re-arming and something absurd might happen there for a 3rd time). The US doesn't have the economic sway it used to either, it appears unable to just dictate military terms to its competitors right now which has been a major factor for the last 70 years.

Even a good argument isn't comforting. There were really good arguments why WW1 and WW2 wouldn't break out. In the case of WW2 for example, it was pretty foreseeable what could happen - devastation of Europe, probable defeat of the Germans by a large coalition and a roughly century-long occupation. No real upside for them. Happened anyway. And famously before WWI there was that book that correctly argued that the economic interconnections between European powers was so great that war could only bring economic ruin - which also happened to be right in hindsight, WWI set up some of the most catastrophic economic conditions ever seen and was also the death knell of Europe's long term economic dominance.

> Also: we're not on the cusp of WW3.

>> How could you know that?

We're rather close. All it would take is a major blowup in the Ukraine war. The war has stepped up a notch in the last two days. Ukraine has been attacking Moscow with drones.[1] What if they stop hitting apartment buildings and level the Kremlin? Or Russia steps up attacks on Latvia, a member of NATO.[2]

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/10/europe/ukraine-drone-strikes-...

[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-drone-crashes-i...

> Ukraine has been attacking Moscow with drones.

That's not new, see this from a year ago:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65475333

Russia, controller of the worlds largest arsenal of nuclear missiles, currently has foreign troops on its land that are attacking it. The US is publicly signalling that this might not be going far enough to pressure the Russian homeland [0]. This attitude floors me. I can't figure out if people legitimately believe that we can just ignore the nuclear war risk because they can't conceptualise how bad it'll be [1] or if the plan is to purposefully explore for a limit where Russia snaps. I suspect we've literally never seen such reckless escalation against a nuclear power.

[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-uk-discuss-lifting-m...

[1] EDIT - Fun fact for the day, the shockwave from Tsar Bomba circled the globe thrice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba#Test_results

You can't ignore the nuclear threat (and the constrained escalation approach the US has taken is exactly the opposite of ignoring the nuclear threat; it is entirely because of that threat), but you also can't surrender to it unless you are prepared to surrender everything to it.

It has become uncomfortably clear over the last 5 years how Europe triggered its world wars. But 4 posts ago Animats was drawing our attention to the fact that Moscow is being bombed. Are we supposed to give serious consideration to the idea that leaving Moscow un-bombed represents some sort of surrender to Russia?

The US has launched invasions of multiple countries with less of a pretext than even the Russians and nobody pretended that bombing Washington was clever. Or even particularly justified.

> and nobody pretended that bombing Washington was clever. Or even particularly justified.

Save for Osama Bin Laden who not only "bombed" the Pentagon in Washington he also took out the twin towers in NYC and tried for other targets.

Further back the Canadians firebombed multiple targets in Washington, including the Whitehouse, in retaliation for similar US actions in Canadian territory.

Looking back, would you say that Bin Laden's controlled and calculated escalations against the Pentagon, etc, was a move resulting in a reasonable response? He wasn't even an official representative of Aghanistan and the US still went full-on crazy and got ~150-200,000 people killed.

And it isn't even obvious how linked the war was to Bin Laden or Al Qaeda, when he was eventually killed it wasn't in Afghanistan and it didn't take an invasion of Pakistan to achieve. The Taliban controlling Afghanistan obviously wasn't a problem because they still do. In hindsight the whole thing looks like a futile dick waving exercise to keep the military industrial complex profitable.

Provoking the Russians in a similar way is not clever.

The USA screwed up in funding the mujahideen in Afghanistan, which included Bin Laden, against the Russian invasion, which in turn led to 9/11, which in turn led to a USA invasion of Afghanistan instead.

Some rather tenuous assertions of cause-and-effect we have here.

OBL was a self-propelled force. There's no indication that the US supported him, or even knew about him until 1996. To suggest that the US operation in Afghanistan up through 1989 (make of it what you will) "led to 9/11" seems quite specious indeed.

The guy listed many grievances in his justification for the 9/11 attacks, but (AFAIK) the prior US support for the Muj (i.e. the very people he was fighting with), or any aspect of it doesn't seem to have been one of them. Rather, it was all that stuff about the Holy Sites, US presence in the gulf (on behalf of regimes he didn't like), and last but not least the fact of Clinton going after him directly (and trying to kill him in fact) which seem to have lit his flame.

(And then the idea of 9/11 "leading to" the Afghanistan invasion is a wholy different, and even more convoluted thread -- but which also seems to have been sufficiently addressed by others already).

The problem with this argument is that russia literally has no non-nuclear ways to escalate. America did and used them.

All you can say is "well this time it's over the line and they'll start using nukes" but that argument applies just as well to literally every action.

I think to say that "Taliban controlling Afghanistan obviously wasn't a problem because they still do" is inaccurate. The problem the US had with the Taliban is that being an Islamic fundamentalist political entity, they provided safe harbor for al-Qaeda. They refused to cooperate with the request to extradite Bin Laden. The west had every intention of eliminating the Taliban for good and failed to achieve this goal.

The prevailing wisdom at the time was to remove the Taliban from power and to establish a deradicalized, democratic Afghanistan that would hopefully cooperate with the west in fighting terrorism as well as removing the conditions that would cause jihadist movements to flourish. The template for this being the destruction of Axis powers during WWII and their subsequent rebirth as deradicized, prosperous, militarily benign nations.

It took a decade long man hunt to locate Bin Laden which was unanticipated. When he was found in Pakistan he was in hiding, not being intentionally harbored by the government as in Afghanistan.

In hindsight it was probably unrealistic to expect a rebuilt stable Afghanistan free of the Taliban. Perhaps a larger "surge" level of troops for a longer period of time and greater focus on Afghanistan rather than invading Iraq would have achieved a different outcome. Let's not forget that the US was not being entirely rational at the time. The government and the public wanted revenge in a big way.

When he was found in Pakistan he was in hiding, not being intentionally harbored by the government as in Afghanistan.

By all indications, he was being effectively harbored by the Pakistani ISI.

(There's also Hersh's theory that it was a "walk-in" from Pakistani military intelligence who actually tipped them off to, or at least provided strong corroboration as to the existence of Bin Laden's compound -- rather than the CIA sleuthing this out on its own from tracking various couriers. I never got caught up on how that particular theory panned out, as I've never been too obsessed with Bin Laden or the circumstances surrounding his extrajudicial execution anyway).

Let's not forget that the US was not being entirely rational at the time. The government and the public wanted revenge in a big way.

Indeed. My sense is that it wasn't so much a desire for revenge (thought there was certainly a large element of that). But rather fear, and a desire to send a "message". And so bombing the shit out of some dirt-poor country (whose population had generally no awareness of, let alone complicity in any of this) seemed to be the perfect way to do that.

> They refused to cooperate with the request to extradite Bin Laden.

Which almost sounds reasonable until compared to when the US went after Bin Laden in Pakistan they didn't bother asking. I'm no UN level diplomat, but to me maybe 2 months negotiating before launching an invasion would make sense. Maybe even 12 months. A little bit of patience before setting off on a path lined with mountains of corpses.

That really showcases how flimsy the US justification was; the fact that the Afghan government didn't completely overturn their own sovereign system in under 30 days is held up in some sort of weird way as a provocation. And I don't even exactly object to the outrageous hypocrisy on what justifies a US invasion vs a Russian one, I just think that what is happening in Russia is risky, has no upside for the West and a lot of upside for China. I'd like someone to be able to put out a cold hard case for how destabilising large nuclear powers is supposed to lead to a better world. It seems like a hard case to make.

> In hindsight it was probably unrealistic...

Yeah. Maybe in hindsight maybe they didn't think it through. Everyone move on. Broken eggs required for omelettes except we burned the omelette because it turns out we didn't know how to cook. Oops.

You know what? Maybe we should be more thoughtful before invading people. It'd give the West a lot more intellectual credibility when they complain about other armies launching invasions. I have difficulty even pretending to respect the idea that Russia is a bad actor here given the US record we're all expected to look past. The Europe is not somehow more important than the Middle East.

We need an actual case for why we are supporting what is going on in Ukraine. The moral case that people try to hide behind is farcical, we've seen exactly how the US military handles this sort of thing over the last 25 years. There is no material upside for us in this war, and lots of real and potential downsides.

The same people who didn't think that through now think destabilising Russia is a going to work out great. What does that tell us.

> We need an actual case for why we are supporting what is going on in Ukraine.

The case for me is that I live a few hundred kilometers from Russian border. If Ukraine falls, I'll be next and scenes like this will be happening on my street to people I know: https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1820831971573973385 (as they happened in the past to people I knew).

> The same people who didn't think that through now think destabilising Russia is a going to work out great.

Russia is becoming unstable because Putin launched an unwinnable war, destroyed foreign trade relations, hollowed out civilian economy and sent god knows how many to death while trying his best to keep the true scale hidden. Rest of the world is not "destabilising Russia", but doing what they can to hold the shithouse together while trying to end the war. It is not their fault that Putin is not taking any exit ramps offered to him and instead keeps doubling down on a obvious mistake.

Deserves a mention that overblown concerns about stability are nothing new. As the USSR was falling apart, George Bush Sr made a speech in Kyiv warning Eastern European independence movements about rocking the boat too much. NY Times dubbed it the Chicken Kyiv speech. The fears about nuclear war or weapons falling into terrorists' hands turned out unfounded. Instead, the lasting effect was that 100 million more people in Europe are free now than 35 years ago.

> I have difficulty even pretending to respect the idea that Russia is a bad actor here given the US record we're all expected to look past.

Hundreds of thousands of people are dead, millions of lives ruined, entire cities flattened, occupied areas littered with mass graves, ground contaminated with millions of mines that will take centuries to remove. And yet you can't even entertain the idea that the perpertrator is a "bad actor"? That shows a disturbing lack of any moral sense. Looting, torture, rape, murder and other crimes are disgusting and reprehensible and deserve a punishment, and if you insist on ranking countries, then Russia has committed these acts at scale uncomparable to the US.

> The fears about nuclear war or weapons falling into terrorists' hands turned out unfounded.

They're controlled by Putin. There is a pretty solid argument that his inner circle is a mafia with nuclear weapons. What ended up happening is only a few shades improved on terrorists; it isn't particularly encouraging to have dictators with weapons that powerful.

> Hundreds of thousands of people are dead, millions of lives ruined, entire cities flattened, occupied areas littered with mass graves...

If anyone had responded to the US invasions by escalating them to proxy wars the US would have the same blood on their hands. That is in fact one of my main points here - the decision to support the Ukrainians and try to bleed the Russians out was when most of the damage was committed to. The precedent here is the UN sends thoughts & prayers, the Ukraine government gets blatted and we all move on a la the Afghan or Iraq invasions. Ugly affairs, morally devastating but not quite the level of destruction that the US engineered in Ukraine.

But not only did the west decided this was a good one to escalate from disaster to bloodbath, but we seem to be pushing the limit to find out if we can make the Russians really angry. There is almost no way that is a good idea, there isn't a limit to how far this can escalate.

> They're controlled by Putin. There is a pretty solid argument that his inner circle is a mafia with nuclear weapons. What ended up happening is only a few shades improved on terrorists; it isn't particularly encouraging to have dictators with weapons that powerful.

Nothing changed then. The USSR was a reckless totalitarian dictatorship too, with the major difference being that the current version has managed to enslave 100 million less people than the previous iteration. Hopefully the next version will be even smaller.

> That is in fact one of my main points here - the decision to support the Ukrainians and try to bleed the Russians out was when most of the damage was committed to. The precedent here is the UN sends thoughts & prayers, the Ukraine government gets blatted and we all move on a la the Afghan or Iraq invasions.

You skipped over the destruction of Ukrainian statehood, eradication of Ukrainian language and culture, physical extermination of entire classes of people (at least several million in total) and a totalitarian dictatorship for the rest, followed by further invasions westwards into Poland, using Ukrainians as cannon fodder like Russians have already decimated the male population of occupied territories by forcing them against Ukrainian Armed Forces.

For Ukraine, the alternative to war is another genocide carried out by Russians. Loss of people and loss of culture. Afghanistan and Iraq are nothing comparable.

> Ugly affairs, morally devastating but not quite the level of destruction that the US engineered in Ukraine.

No more has the US "engineered destruction in Ukraine" than it did when it supported Britain against invaders. Germans intended to use British merchant fleet to deport all European Jews to Madagascar, but they had to abandon the plan after failing to invade Britain. For lack of better options, Jews were burned in ovens instead. If you are inclined to blame anyone but the perpertrators, then this is your opportunity to pin the Holocaust on the Americans, because their aid was vital to British victory.

The same people who didn't think that through now think destabilising Russia is a going to work out great.

Russia chose to destabilize itself. The surrounding countries are simply ducking for cover, and doing what they have to do to survive.

> They refused to cooperate with the request to extradite Bin Laden.

Actually they said they would consider the evidence of a request. Bush invaded anyway.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1539468.stm

At the time (from Australia, having already travelled a good deal mapping and working in global geophysical exploration) my opinion was that OBL executed a carefully thought out and well executed plan with the specific intent of eliciting an over the top batshit crazy response from the USofA.

In this he succeeded without a doubt. (NB. I'm absolutely not endorsing his actions).

He delibrately provoked the US and he was extremely clever about it.

> He wasn't even an official representative of Aghanistan ... Pakistan ..

All immaterial from an OG Al Qaeda PoV - they were intent on starting a mass war between the Arab world and the West based on a dislike of the Saudi Royal Family, their corruption of "true" Arab values (for some intepretation of "true arab values"), the US support of the Saudi's, the US actions in Islamic countries and their support and or acceptance of atrocities committed against Muslims.

Very early on there was a teetering point when the US could have capitalised on a global wave of sympathy that included much of the Islamic world.

Then was the time to form a small group with international partners to target and capture the small Al Qaeda and leverage support from Muslims outraged at OBL's actions.

That opportunity was squandered badly with the Bush versioned War on Terror and sideshow invasion of Iraq, the search for non existent WMD's and the Coalition of the Reluctant Few.

The US went down an avoidable 20 year rabbit hole and squandered reputation and relations.

Firebombed? With Avro Lancasters?

The British Army burned the White House and a few other buildings in Washington, in retaliation, as they said, for the burning of buildings in York (Toronto).

That seems a tad alternative history.

Regular old throwable fire bombs | lanterns | incendiary devices | oil filled clay pots with a wick, etc. work just fine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_thermal_weapons

It is difficult to take nuclear blackmail seriously every time Moscow simply accepted the 'escalation' everytime western powers provide more and ever greater aid.

It's all a bunch of bluffing and empty threats.

Nuclear weapons only deter the Western powers from simply marching on Moscow to make it stop the war in Ukraine. It is otherwise basically useless because precisely it is the nuclear option.

Russia [...] currently has foreign troops on its land that are attacking it.

Ukraine is the defender in this conflict. Every reasonable action it takes to encourage a Russian withdrawal is, by definition, defensive.

The US is publicly signalling that this might not be going far enough to pressure the Russian homeland.

The intent is to put pressure on the regime, not the "homeland".

This attitude floors me. I can't figure out if people legitimately believe that we can just ignore the nuclear war risk [...] or if the plan is to purposefully explore for a limit where Russia snaps.

There shouldn't be any mystery to this. The intent is to help the current regime in Moscow come to the only rational decision available to it, which to stop the war it should have never started in the first place. There is no intent to make it (and certainly not Russia as a country) "snap". That's just your projection.

On the contrary, the intent it is to help the regime come to its senses. Like the US was finally forced to do in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

And in parallel, to save Ukrainian lives, especially civilian lives -- which are being lost daily due to attacks launched from within Russian territory

You should read a bit of Dostoevsky for his analysis how 'rational' people are. Not to mention what decades of absolute power do to your ability to reason. I am also not sure what the end game is here and what 'defeating' a country with nuclear arsenal looks like. And why there is no more calls for negotiation (like there is in the case of Gaza).

I am also not sure what the end game is here and what 'defeating' a country with a nuclear arsenal looks like.

The decisive US defeats in the aforementioned countries, and the equally compelling Russian/Soviet defeat in Afghanistan provide hopeful models.

>> Russia [...] currently has foreign troops on its land that are attacking it.

> Ukraine is the defender in this conflict. Every reasonable action it takes to encourage a Russian withdrawal is, by definition, defensive.

War is peace etc etc.

I'd like to point out that an attack is the opposite of defense and the scale of the attack does not make it not so. Your argument does not negate the GP statement which btw is true.

Both statements you quoted can be true at the same time. Russia is the aggressor in this war, and Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil have the goal of repelling the aggressor, and not conquer or subjugate Russia.

If Russia wants to stop these attacks, it can do so at any point. Their government simply has to stop their attacks on Ukraine and retract its troops. Surely, even to a madman like Putin, this humiliation would be preferable to global nuclear armageddon.

> Surely, even to a madman like Putin, this humiliation would be preferable to global nuclear armageddon.

I can think of numerous reasons why it wouldn't be preferable, even to a non-madman.

Feeling humiliated and driven to a point where one’s subjective feeling is that there is nothing left to lose, one does not need to be a madman to launch everything one has. Vengefulness is sufficient.

Note that subjective assessment of the situation is sufficient. Putin is dependent on nobody to come to such a conclusion, especially not the west, and why should he care anyway? Western war escalation enthusiasts apparently are willing to take the risk anyway or do not seem to understand this.

Where do you draw the line? Since you say this is purely dependent on Putin's subjective perception, and since you can't read his thoughts, would the logical consequence be that we need to just let him do unopposed whatever he wants to, out of fear that the smallest grievance could result in nuclear armageddon? This, to me, seems what imperialism apologists are arguing for. Ignore the war of aggression, ignore the genocide, rape and murder of civilians, sacrifice Ukraine to protect Putin's ego, and just pray that his greed stops at that and that he won't continue given another opportunity.

There is probably a point where things go from happening gradually to happening suddenly. Very few can relate to the horrors of nuclear war or have the consequences of nuclear bombs in living memory.

> On the contrary, the intent it is to help the regime come to its senses

It's funny how 'realist' viewpoints, when applied equally from both sides, lead to inevitable nuclear annihilation.

> can't figure out if people legitimately believe that we can just ignore the nuclear war risk because they can't conceptualise how bad it'll be

So what you're saying is, if a country has nuclear weapons they can do whatever they want to you and you'll just take it in the ass, is that it?

Im glad that a lot of people choose to stand up and fight.

More than 25% of the Ukrainian population have left the country or died. We're figuring out how much of their territory they lose, looks like more than 10%. Word on the street suggests Russia is committing war crimes against their infrastructure so they're unlikely to be seeing much economic success in the next 5-10 years. They've also made an enemy of Russia for the foreseeable future, and Russia seems to be part of the bloc with the economic advantage that is forming around China.

While surrendering in the first week is an uncomfortable option, I think they'd have been better off exploring that as an option even before nuclear weapons come into the picture. Russia in 2024 is bad but not the USSR. Ukraine'd be putting a brave face on to describe what just happened to them as mere buggery and they don't appear to have achieved much. There is a serious argument that their choice to fight was a mistake.

Russia (more specifically its current regime) is the one who has chosen to make itself an enemy to its neighbors, not the other way around.

What Ukrainians choose to do about their situation is up to them. If you think you have constructive advice to offer them -- as someone not facing that situation, yourself -- you're welcome to speak with them directly and see what this effort brings you.

Victoria Nuland and Boris Johnson enjoyed offering advice.

Obviously it was bad advice.

"Victoria Nuland on Russia-NATO relations, peace negotiations with Ukraine, and the U.S. elections"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiS2dg_atfc&t=3192s&ab_chann...

Obviously it was bad advice.

Without articulating what this advice supposedly was, or why it was bad (if it even was).

More to the point: if you think anyone has time to fish through 72 minutes of some interview about anything political on a summer weekend to sift out whatever insinuation it is that you're attempting to posit here -- then your worldview is quite dark and austere, indeed.

"In a surprise visit to Ukraine on 9 April, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said "Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with"

In retrospect, the attempt to win the war instead of negotiating was a catastrophic mistake that many people paid for and are paying with their lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russ...

The Ukrainians are facing the situation they're in, not you. And they understand the parameters of that situation infinitely better than you do.

They can decide for themselves whether to bend over and let Putin have his merry way with them is such a fine idea as you seem to think is, or not

Boris didn't make them do anything. That's just a myth, which presumes they are hapless fools with no agency.

> They've also made an enemy of Russia for the foreseeable future

Russian propaganda is always "Russia is the victim".

No, Russia made themselves their event.

One more step closer to war today.[1]

Suggested reading: "The Fallacy of Unambiguous Warning", from the current issue of Parameters, the U.S. Army War College quarterly. This is a study of what was known and not known just before some past wars started. The point made is that by the time enough people are convinced that there is an unambiguous warning of impending war, it's usually too late.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-west-will-be...

[2] https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

Not going to happen.

A conventional conflict between Russia and NATO would be short and would end with a Russian defeat. That is clear from the war in Ukraine. Russia would very quickly lose all the territory it has seized in Ukraine and NATO would press no further.

Nuclear conflict? Everyone loses.

War with China is far, far from a reality, I really doubt anyone's intelligence if they claim so, maybe read less of your government's propaganda.

How high do you think are the chances of China taking Taiwan by force? And how would US or NATO respond to that?

They should fuck off to their part of the world. I am not Chinese but everyone in this region has gotten enough of you idiots fucking us up over colonialism dont you think?

China has no incentive to disrupt the status quo, they have already invaded Taiwan culturely and economically. It's only the western simpletons brainwashed by the military industrial complex who think that people somehow want war or that "those Asians" want war (I guess because we are stupid?)

Most of China's neighbours seem to also have a problem with the way it behaves around it borders and sees.

But maybe you would consider them simpletons as well or is that too transparent and close to the colonialism you supposedly despise?

I am Vietnamese. Of course I cannot speak for everyone, but I think, in general, I can call westerners simpleton in this matter.

Ah, Vietnamese. North or South?

If you wanna put people into boxes, I am northern Vietnamese - Australian

You can't, but oh well, good luck to you and your racism.

I think I can, this is the part of the world where I know the history & culture. I understand the nuances in the feud I am supposed to have with the Chinese. What do you know? Do you even live here or speak any of the languages?

That is true today. Will it remain true in the next decade? There’s troubling signs that the probability may rise.

> Are you a time traveller?

If only.

> over 100 years a 1% chance is likely to happen

This is extrapolated from two events that occurred 25 years apart?

> the EU is re-arming ...

First, the EU has practically brought peace in Western Europe. And it was disarming, and now sees itself forced to get back to previous levels. While rearming is technically correct, it's a sign of something outside the EU, not the EU being on the war path.

> The US ... appears unable to just dictate military terms to its competitors

I don't see how what that has to do with it. Are you suggesting WW3 didn't break out earlier because of the Cold War?

> Even a good argument isn't comforting.

True, but it doesn't somehow make the opposite true.

> There were really good arguments why WW1 and WW2 wouldn't break out.

And there were many people all over Europe steering towards WW1, and WW2 was famously predicted at the signing of the peace treaty.

But a world war requires more than two local, unrelated conflicts, one of which is not even a real war. It requires large groups of combatants, and one group should have some strategic goal it wants to pursue at all costs. But only Russia wants that, and its goal isn't that great, and it stands alone. So I don't see how it could explode into the next world war.

Anyway, let's hope for the best.

World Wars occur when competing great powers reach an impasse over sharing the loot (aka "the world"). The correct parsing of the phrase "world war" is making war for control of the world. We are yet again at such a juncture.

> Also: we're not on the cusp of WW3.

We're on the cusp in the sense that the World War is not yet and might never be recognized (because one or the other side might fall apart without a fight); OTOH, we're not "on the cusp" in that, if the conditions which would cause it to be recognized occur, we're past the point that will likely be looked at as the start date.

The Russo-Ukrainian War, and the war between various Iranian proxies and Israel, are all part of the same global conflict between an axis centered around Russia and Iran and a broader one in the West

The geopolitical headlines today could have all been written in 1967

and it was far more harrowing and precarious - at least for the continuity of the US - back then

In 1967 the only real risk to the US was a nuclear strike. In 2024 the only risk is a nuclear strike. When you say it was "more harrowing and precarious", in what sense do you mean that? The risk is about the same.

Presumably that the risk of nuclear strike was higher

In 1967 US had something like 30,000 nuclear warheads deployed and USSR had 6,o00. Today both countries have around 1,500. Both countries had bombers with nuclear payload continuously up in the air. The risk was much bigger then.

[1] https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/transparency-us-nuclear-weapons-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_sto...

The bulk of the risk wouldn't really scale with number of warheads though would it? I was thinking it is more of a binary. There is some number of warheads that is enough.

The experience in the Cuban Missile crisis suggests that the number deployed on submarines is probably more of a concern when it comes to miscalculation than the total. And for deliberate attacks the militaries have probably calculated that the number currently deployed is reasonable to wipe out a major power.

The risk of an accident or otherwise unintentional initiation goes up with the number of warheads deployed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_B-59#Nuclear_...

(or of course Dr Strangelove)

Russia and Iran are sideshows, the upcoming conflict, if it happens, would be between China and the West.

That a conflict between the West and China was the most likely has been the conventional wisdom since the fall of the USSR, but its very strange to suggest that it is more likely to occur than a conflict which is, in fact, actually already happening.

> Also: we're not on the cusp of WW3

yeah and we all know that there would be no more war after ww1.

proxy conflicts between big powers are very dangerous.

It literally forced a bunch of peoples into a single entity run by a family (aka monarchy). It predates the nation state, it was blown up by the very desire of the peoples within it to get out.

Vienna was the center of this entity, not a part of "Austria". Stefan Zweig, being Jewish, also wasn't connected to the native Austrian population - just like most the persons mentioned in the article. Vienna was an unaligned entity, what New York became later.

The backlash against this amalgam fueled WW1 and WW2. It's still reverberating, as can be seen in various European issues today. Bolshevism and its reaction, fascism, geared up to eradicate the old Christian/Aristocratic structures across Europe. The Habsburg emperor wasn't just leading Austria/Hungary, but also the Holy Roman Empire (of German Nation). Christian god-given authority, verbatim.

> Bolshevism and its reaction, fascism

One might argue that fascism is a natural consequence of unfettered rabid capitalism, no need for Bolsheviks at all.

And one would be wrong, unless by fascism you mean "Italian fascism".

I think a reoccuring problem here is that there really isn't a consistent definition of 'facism'. The miriam-webster definition is basically just describing any authoritarian state, including the USSR, North Korea, or Uganda. Some people try to add a racialist component to it, but then struggle to apply that definition to governments traditionally understood to have been fascist, like Pinochet's Chile.

Eco's got about as rigorous a definition as you ever see, but it's pretty broad and could easily apply to any nostalgic / conservative movement. (Which is fairly common in authoritarian ones anyway.)

The people who apply a racialist component to it also then get uncomfortable when you point out that the PRC is basically a fascist state under Han Chinese dominion.

It can be both. The Bolshevik revolution scared the rulers of many European countries, and its capitalist class. People were very impressed that a regime as stable as that of the tsar could fall like that. This is a regime people invested in at the time because it was considered safe.

It is arguably as a consequence of this, that these rulers and capitalists supported more or less enthusiastically fascism as a way to contain the masses. Without that (implicit) support, it's hard to say whether fascism would have been anything more than a bizarre cult.

"Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains! Let the ruling classes tremble..."

They brought it off. In an era when most of Europe was ruled by weak, aging monarchs.[1] In 1917, most of Europe except for France and Portugal still had a monarch, most with real power.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_last_monarchs_in_E...

It is according to level-headed history.

facism is a consequence of unfettered rabid anything, including bolsheviks. And pre-revolutionary Imperial Russia was not an example of unfettered capitalism.

One might also argue that free market capitalism is the only cure against fascism that we have so far invented. You just need to actually do it instead of piling huge amounts of well-intending but ultimately malicious structures on it.

> One might also argue that free market capitalism is the only cure against fascism that we have so far invented.

Tell me you are American without telling me you are American!

By all means, name an alternative cure that doesn't also butcher and imprison people under a repressive regime of some sort while denying even basic personal freedoms.

Or would you like to claim that a large part of Europe was "cured" of fascism after WWII by Stalin's USSR and its system, or that Nationalist China was cured of its (essentially) fascistic government by the liberating beauty of Maoism?

The socially democratic, largely western capitalist model of mostly free markets has indeed been fairly good at resisting the kind of extreme governments and despotic states that most of history endured. It's not perfect, and authoritarian regimes do develop capitalist economies, but compared to any alternative we've seen so far, it's a winner hands down.

Such an argument is far removed from any simplistic bullshit about deriding Americans for their cultural values (which happen to be essentially not bad despite the nose sniffing they get from so many people in so many countries with their own bloody, turbulent histories of despotic and revolutionary violence.) For example, given most of Europe's history well into the 20th century, it's laughable to see Europeans in particular feeling superior to Americans.

I'm not American, but rather born and raised in a scandinavian democratic socialist paradise. And while I see it could be lot worse and really not at all fascist, I think there are places where we should use the free market more, not less. It's the best protection against fascism.

Is there some place this has been tried? How long has the experiment been going on? How long until we can definitively say that it worked?

One can argue this, but they would be incorrect.

Bolshevism and Fascism were both about hyper centralized governance. Essentially they were an extension of European monarchy.

Free markets (“unfettered rabid capitalism”) is about decentralization of power on to individuals (market participants). It’s the opposite of centralized governance, it’s the lack of governance.

Facists like Hitler and Mussolini were not the outcome of “unfettered capitalism.” If they were, both would have come to power by being wealthy industrialists. Neither did, and the fascist movement was only supported by certain industrialists at the time in the pragmatic sense (turns out if the fascist guy in power likes you, he’ll let you keep selling your stuff).

I think this take on history is a bit rough. Free markets are a fiction. Their ideal picture can only exist in a capitalist sense due to the force monopoly of the state. Otherwise, what is stopping me to shoot you to get your means of production? And is that really a free market, given that I skipped the laws of supply an demand by taking your life? So some governance is needed to keep things kind of orderly. Now the question becomes how much, but that is a political question.

As for your second point: One could indeed argue in turn that they were. In both countries WW2 was preceeded by extremely harsh economic conditions for most of the population, while industrialists prospered, leading to extremist voting shares previously unheard of. Big Industry in turn directly sponsored the NSDAP in many ways, big and small, to get them into power. Hitler especially preached terror to the masses and met with Krupp, Bormann et al. in the backrooms to talk policy. So the previous comment had a point, yours not so much I am afraid. one particular item of interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler_Fund_of_German_Tr...

Mussolini: "Fascism is reaction".

That guy, a former Marxist, who invented fascism might be a more credible source than other opinions.

Fascism is as revolutionary as communism, focused on the collective vs. the individual. The only real difference is that fascism keeps capitalism intact.

Both are at odds with the aristocracy and liberal democracy.

I have a slight quarrel with the first part of your statement. Nation states have been around for thousands of years in both the east and the west.

I suspect I am missing either an in-joke or a revision to geopolitical terminology.

Nations (in the western definition of the term) didn’t exist before the French Revolution.

Not sure I agree. China did by the Qin Dynasty. They have spent centuries defining the notion of centralized government right down to civil service exams (imperial examination system) for a thousand years. Rome was a pretty well-defined system of government, no?

I suspect the China issue was a carve out in the comment you replied too. Since they were referring to the west.

As for Rome, it was never a Nation in the modern sense. It started as a city state and became an empire.

My understanding is that nation states (where the rule and the border were defined nationality of the population) were born as a reaction against empire. Starting with the French Revolution, where the desire for the French to be ruled by French in France was new concept.

Thanks. A way to frame history I never encountered.

That really wasn't new. The Imperial Senate of the HRE was assigning rulers to fiefdoms also based on locality.

He's using the term "nation state" in the political science sense, not in the colloquial sense of a political entity that encompasses a people (nation). The very concept of a modern nation-state is, as tomcam stated, quite new. Before that, loyalty was primarily given to people (individuals or families) rather the state as an abstract concept. Empires like Rome touched on the concept as far as we can tell from historical sources, it was fairly different from the concepts of patriotism today.

The concept of "modern” nation-state is modern and therefore new, it cannot be otherwise.

The original comment remarked on nation-states, and that they have existed in the past. They are not new as far as I am aware.

Some of the nostalgia for A-H empire is driven by the hindsight of "what happened after 1914". Which tends to give you rosy glasses.

The Austrian part (Cisleithania) was okayish place to live, relatively industrially developed (less than Prussia or England), but it had a massive problem with political dysfunction. The Babel of nations was unable to agree on pretty basic things, resulting in paralysis of local and central parliaments and frequent governmental crises. There also was visible, very nasty anti-Semitic resentment. Hitler learnt to hate the Jews from certain Georg Schönerer [0], a rabid Austrian Jew-hater who came up with the idea of a "Final Solution".

The Hungarian part was outright backward and oppressive towards non-Hungarians, who constituted at least half of its population.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Ritter_von_Sch%C3%B6nere...

I was curious to learn more about that claim about Hitler's origins, because Hitler himself explained how he became an anti-semite and I don't remember Schönerer appearing anywhere in that explanation. But the wiki link doesn't explain either. It just makes the same claim and cites a book from 2017. It turns out that book is readable on Google Books and it also doesn't provide any evidence for the claim of a Hitler/Schönerer link. It just asserts it without presenting any evidence or any further citations, in fact, the entirety of the argument is that Hitler was "no doubt" influenced by Schönerer. This is a worse level of evidence than a tweet.

Also you claimed Schönerer is the origin of the Final Solution but the Wikipedia page doesn't say that, so where did that come from?

I honestly wonder if Wikipedia should cite books. It's too hard to check those references so people don't and that lets un-evidenced claims get treated as "reliably sourced". Putting something in a book doesn't magically make it more reliable than putting something in a blog, yet Wikipedia's policy strongly assumes that it does.

The German Wikipedia article on Schönerer is a lot more extensive:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_von_Sch%C3%B6nerer

I was probably wrong about the Final Solution, though. It was first used during Sch\onerer's youth, but not attributed to him:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endl%C3%B6sung_der_Judenfrage#...

It was certainly the most delicate of the 19th century European empires. Its attempts to Germanize its subjects was not what you saw in Prussia/later the German Empire, or as bad as Russification in the Russian Empire.

I see some similarities between Austria-Hungary and Poland-Lithuania. I think their Catholicism is what permitted the tolerance you saw, because it was tolerance of the authentic sort, not the liberal ersatz: they were both Catholic confessional states that tolerated a variety of religious belief pragmatically, but the parameters were openly and decidedly Catholic. And because Catholicism acknowledges that forced conversion is not only impossible, but immoral, as well as counter to the common good, when accommodation of other religions occurs, it occurs genuinely and according to a clear, realistic, and substantive position.

Liberalism, OTOH, simply pretends to be an impossibly big "neutral" tent, but it practices its jihad in secret. No religion is allowed to dominate or function as the organizing principle of the realm, it claims. But liberalism is itself a worldview rooted in a distinctive anthropology, and it is the worldview that reigns. The result is that:

1) Liberal doctrines become these organizing principles, which are sold as "neutral" and therefore beyond discussion and disagreement, something that leads to their imposition and the undermining of other worldviews. A supposed pragmatic doctrine forces other worldviews into the private sphere, and itself is elevated into an ideology that denies it is one. In a Catholic confessional state, no one is pretending to be "neutral", and so someone of another worldview can accept the Catholic terms of the polity on pragmatic grounds without ever being duped or coerced into thinking these are anything but Catholic terms. They are asserted as true, yes, but toleration is identical to acknowledging and accepting the existence of theoretical disagreement, even if there are pragmatic limits.

2) The public sphere becomes anemic and restricted to "pragmatic" things like economics, which vulgarizes the culture, elevating consumption into the religion of consumerism. This vulgarization not only produces a vulgar public culture for the polity, but it necessarily spreads into the private sphere and suffocates the dynamism, richness, and higher ends offered by other, more substantive worldviews, hence negating the very tolerance that it purported to have. The net effect is decadence.

> The public sphere becomes anemic and restricted to "pragmatic" things like economics, which vulgarizes the culture

In correct. This is more recent Neoliberalism, which is an attempt to remove public democratic participation from as many walks of life as possible and to claim that’s ‘freedom’. They play tricks on you, Freedom from democracy is freedom from government intervention, leave it to the capital class / aristocracy to make all these decisions.

Life as a rich person in the capital city of an Empire is great.

I doubt that people in conquered territories felt the same way about the Empire.

We in Bohemia and Moravia, despite being conquered, relatively prospered and were allowed significant freedoms by the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Much more so than under the occupation of the Soviets...

And your doubts are well founded. The Polish have been liking it so much, that "Mazurek Dąbrowskiego" (the Polish anthem) has references to Bonaparte (perhaps not exactly deservingly) and Italy because of the Partitions of Poland and currently Poland issues passports with jubilee cover due to 100th anniversary of regaining independence after its Partitions.

If the Assassin's Creed franchise ever decides to do the Twentieth Century, 1910s Vienna certainly seems like a leading candidate for the setting.

It certainly would be interesting if the Austrian-Hungarian Empire survived into current times. Every nation that wanted to leave it probably ended worse off if they had stuck together.

I can't believe someone would make such claim with a straight face considering Partitions of Poland.

Austria-Hungary was as much a proto-EU as Yugoslavia.

Make of that what you will.

There was also a lot of other cool stuff happening in Vienna in that time period - Math, Philosophy (https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/deep-roots-digital-era-five-v...), the Arts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Secession), music (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Viennese_School) and even physics (Boltzmann). Too bad they had to screw it all up by getting all nationalist, nativist, and anti-Semitic.

The best single volume overview is this page-turner, which embraces Vienna and Paris, for math, science, philosophy, literature and art at the turn of the 20th century:

The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought

William R. Everdell

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/244346.The_First_Moderns

Are people's historic perspectives really that cartoonishly small-minded?

The early 20th century was a flashpoint where rising powers decided who would become the global superpower.

Agree or not about antisemitism and nationalism, both of those were enormously popular, mainstream things. It wasn't weird or fringe to adopt an national ideology character used by those things. So much of Europe (centered around Germany) acting on those views isn't the cause of their downfall—on the contrary, they were convinced (and these were not dumb people who couldn't see patterns) that such things would strengthen their people and their homes.

So obviously that isn't what "screwed it all up". What screwed it all up was the existence of other rising powers and the timing of it all. Their rise was threatened by a strong Germany. This is all completely mundane, predictable global politics.

The rest, about who was "evil" and "the bad guys" is almost entirely fiction written by the victors—also, coincidentally, completely mundane and predictable.

Clarifying that I misread who this was a response to. I thought you were talking about Germany and the area around it, and in specific with the last part of your comment, referring to Germany.

If anything this highlights how important Vienna was pre-WW1 and how much that status has changed. I suspect history articles of the future could likewise point to Manhattan as having hosted many famous people simultaneously, and anyone living today wouldn't find that terribly surprising.

Same people.

Many refugees (mostly Jewish) from Vienna went to Manhattan, or the Manhattan Project. A few, like Freud or Popper, stopped in Britain, but many passed through to New York. Bernays (Freud's nephew) used his uncle's psychological insights to invent propaganda, marketing, advertising and PR. Others invented atomic and hydrogen bombs (probably less devastating than therapy and ads :) Some were Soviet atomic spies that reported back to the USSR.

Much of American pre-war/post-war intellectual life is due to European refugees. It's interesting to posit what might have happened without the influx.

And arguably much of current decline in intellectual standards in the public space is to blame on the integration and Americanization of their descendants.

Woah! what? Lol. Considering the number of nobel laureates, manhattan project scientists, turing award winners not to mention industry pioneers, prominent cultural figure etc that group has produced it would seem they did the opposite.

That's what I'm saying, read my comment again. America's highest intellectual achievements came after WW2, when there was the highest influx of European intellectuals (who studied in Europe, or were first generation). The current state of affairs is imo a kind of regression to the mean, where the culture that created them couldn't be reproduced in the US system - thus the integration and americanization of their descendants.

I think they are essentially claiming that "Americanism" has lower standards than the ethnicities that moved to America as refugees. So the people who were refugees, like all the jewish physicists in the Manhattan project came from culture that valued higher education and socially liberal society and all those good things, while American culture doesn't, so getting them "americanized" makes them value higher education etc less.

Which would be incorrect, as Manhattan ALSO has a hyper conservative Orthodox jewish population which did not assimilate largely and basically caused measles outbreaks because they are vaccine "hesitant"

The world probably would have missed out on a lot, since American industry (and exploitation) funded their R&D. Additionally, the next generation of (American, born-and-bred) scientists and engineers took us from their breakthroughs to more recent ones. The amazing things that can happen when people who were able to get an education are paid and tasked with something other than selling ads and opioids.

> American industry (and exploitation) funded their R&D.

Don’t forget that European industry was demolished in the war

> when people who were able to get an education are paid and tasked with something other than selling ads and opioids.

Efficient market!

> If anything this highlights how important Vienna was pre-WW1 and how much that status has changed.

The status might have changed, but the city remains beautiful, and is an amazing place to visit. It’s up there as one of my favourite places. The architecture, museums, galleries, food etc.

Vienna is nice, but also a has-been much like Rome or Athens is. Not just in raw power, but in intellectual capacity - its best minds are gone, or possibly underutilized and working some boring jobs. But given the Holocaust, I would bet on "mostly gone". (Same with Budapest, BTW. There won't be any new Jewish-Hungarian "Martians" like von Neumann or Teller.)

The only pre-WWI European capital that remained truly globally relevant is London.

Istanbul and St. Peterburg are also important megacities, though stripped of their capital status.

How do you define global relevance? Plenty of European capitals in this list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization_and_World_Citi...

Let us say "Top 10".

In 1914, most of the Top 10 cities were in Europe. Today, London and Paris are.

Interesting take.

What in your mind are the top 10 intellectual cities of the current era?

This is really an interesting question.

Plenty of culture war topics that currently shape the Western civilization originate in Berkeley or Boston.

There's a rather lovely Tom Stoppard play [0] that centers on the fact that James Joyce, Tristan Zara and Lenin all lived in Zurich in 1917. It's been a long time since I saw it, but I approximately recall a line were one of the characters tells [noted Dada-ist] Zara to sober up with the words "You want multicoloured micturition? Go to Moscow. They'll make you piss blood there!"

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travesties

Didn't lenin meet musolini in Zurich too

I've been to Café Central. There was a waiter standing outside telling you only to come in whenever a seat has been vacated. Once in it didn't feel crammed, and it was quite the sight. Don't eat "Sacher Torte", it's quite bland for today's standards. The Kaiserschmarrn was fantastic though.

I worked a 6 month aerospace industry assist detail in Vienna. They put me up in the Hilton hotel on Stadtpark for the entire time. Loved having my breakfasts right across the street in Café Prückel, with their 90 year old tuxedo clad waiters. Interesting to think of the famous persons that may have gathered there in days of yore.

Agree on the Sacher Torte, it's just an extraordinarily dry chocolate layer cake with a bit of apricot jam as the layer separator, enrobed in a tasteless waxy ganache. I tried it all over the city including of course at Hotel Sacher. I'm sure I could make a modern version at home that was actually delicious.

For every hit there is a miss... and for every Wienerschnitzel there is a Tafelspitz.

> Agree on the Sacher Torte, it's just an extraordinarily dry chocolate layer cake

That's why it's served with whipped cream :)

This. It's actually quite delicious when eaten together.

Tafelspitz is waste of good altweiner backfleisch.

I quite like the Sache Torte in the place I live. More importantly though it's coming up to Krapfen season.

When I first moved to vienna, I also decided to check out Cafe Central. I ordered a tea (cost 5€). A teapot arrived, with a teabag on the side that I was supposed to brew myself. But the water was lukewarm, not nearly hot enough for tea. I complained to the waiter (dressed in something like a tuxedo). He dipped his finger in my teapot!! Then begrudgingly brought me new water lol.

Makes you wonder if there's a group of people living somewhere right now in 2024, that will be talked about similarly in 2135...

Obviously San Francisco

Who are you thinking of?

altman and musk maybe? boldly leading us into the next utopia.

Maybe it'll be the people of HN. I wouldn't mind getting romanticized.

Having traveled many places, my suspicion it's a place like Taipei or Shenzhen.

It's hard for me to not imagine a quiet early evening setting in some modest cafe in central Vienna at this time, in which A skinny young Austrian, living close to the edge of deep poverty, sits down for a bowl of soup, notices that he has no salt at hand, and signals over to the moderately older, rougher looking pockmarked man with a vaguely central Asian cast to his face at the next table that he should lend him his salt.

And then there they sit in their respective bubbles of poverty and social obscurity, meters apart, two of the greatest butchers of the 20th century, who in less than 30 years would each be leading millions of men to their deaths in destroying the others regime while carving Europe with rivers of blood.

Some of the coffee houses are still there. I visited them when I was in Vienna. They aren’t the hotbed of revolutionary thought anymore, it seems. Vienna was basically the center of western civilization for quite a while, and it shows to this day.

For once the headline is under-selling it, I'm used to hearing this put as "all attended the same café".

A book about Vienna in 1913, it was very popular in Germany, I've heard good things about it.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/236412/1913-by-flor...

The headline sounds like the perfect premise for a sitcom. I'm smelling Emmy...

> No-one knows if Hitler bumped into Trotsky, or Tito met Stalin. But works like Dr Freud Will See You Now, Mr Hitler - a 2007 radio play by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran - are lively imaginings of such encounters.

Now I want to check this out!

It's actually Mrs Hitler (referring to Adolph's mom): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Freud_Will_See_You_Now,_Mr...

Can't seem to find any recordings available of the BBC production of it, and BBC doesn't seem to have it available. But you can buy the script here: https://shop.stagescripts.com/categories/plays/full-length/d...

The other much-argued encounter is that Wittgenstein was a year or two above Herr Schicklgruber in high-school. Obviously Ludwig was Jewish, and far more intelligent than Adolf, so it established a fervent resentment... or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein#Jewish_bac...

If only they had let him into Art school...

How about The Man Without Qualities for an interesting view of Vienna about then?

Is it good? I really liked Wittgenstein's Vienna, but I haven’t read anything else about the era so I don’t have much basis of comparison. Tempted to work on my German so I can understand Karl Kraus though.

Good, but it is long. I have read it only in English, though I do have it in German, purchased for about $5 at a charity shop.

As for Kraus, somebody put out In These Great Times, a slim collection of essays, about 35 years ago. Much more recently, Jonathan Franzen brought out The Kraus Project, which I have not seen.

I guess that's where the guy running the simulator was zoomed in on for that year.

don't forget Karl Kraus, was somewhere around, and has something to say....

I have an idea for a great "Young Ones" reboot...

The first rule of Time Travel is - don't nuke Vienna.

Actually… maybe the first target hit from the future should be Vienna.. you would have gotten rid of two of the biggest dictators ever…

https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/feb/...

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HitlersTimeTrave...

Went to Cafe Central one evening without knowing any of this until today. Just on a vacation. The interior was strikingly rustic and I enjoyed the coffee and cake they had but had completely forgotten about it otherwise. I suspect Trotsky and Hitler forgot about it too.

One of these things is not like the others...

...along with Hayek and Von Mises.

wow

Imagine how the history would change if someone managed to smuggle a 20 megaton nuclear bomb into Vienna of 1913? I would read that!

That’s just it though. Creaking empires would remain as would the politics and attitudes that led to the war and its flow into WW2. Something else would start it. What would it be?

Japan and the USSR would start separate expansionist wars. Germany would probably have some form of Nazi party in charge.

Don't know if there would be an actual Axis, but WW2 in the Pacific might be very similar to the original timeline.

The USSR and Nazi Germany were due (in part) to WW1. Its an interesting thought exercise.

I think that explosion would have been enough to set off WW1.

I mean Franz Ferdinand would still probably be killed, so..

This reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o7e1i7nJuQ

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