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Not a little baffled by the uncritical praise of Paul Kingsnorth’s latest and characteristically conservative “back to the land” essay. Did people read to the end where he bashes “endlessly multiplying genders and ‘identities’ constructed online with no reference to reality”?
I agree with some of his criticisms of techno-capitalism and the flattening of culture and tradition, but I think he gets the cart before the horse on his relentless attacks on identity politics and the “woke”, which he thinks has only risen because they’re under threat
He has an interesting trick where he elevates himself above anyone who cares about anything remotely “woke” by saying“only [middle class] Western people could believe them”, citing his chats with people in “genuinely rooted cultures” as trumping literally everyone else
Essentially, if you have been touched by the hand of the West, or the global economy, or, I suppose, the internet, you are fooled and you are fooling yourself and others.
It is a deep social conservatism that parallels others around the world (e.g. J*rd*n Peterson) and provides intellectual cover for political attacks against minorities - who, after all, he thinks either don’t exist or are fabulists
Read his essays, by all means, but read them properly. Don’t make the mistake of thinking, “oh here is another smart anti-capitalist online thinker who has a broader historical range than most, I like that” https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-great-unsettling
