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Was wondering if the article was about this guy, and it is!
https://x.com/hop_scotch_/status/1664017656926687234?lang=en
A true patron of the modern arts. He seems quite pleasant based on every interaction I've seen on twitter.
I’m reminded of the thesis of “Parasite”: that niceness is a privilege those on the breadline cannot afford.
Boy, the guy can't win. If he's rude, he's an entitled rich jerk. If he's kind, he's got "privilege". It's pretty tiring to have everything be about oppressing the poor, it's kind like taking a conversation hostage. Well, now that we've brought up the breadline, the conversation can't not talk about that important issue.
I think that the people in the breadline would have better things to do than be rude on twitter. Or maybe not, it is a fun way to pass the time for some.
Niceness in a tweet doesn't cost much.
Passing time and getting entertainment from being an asshole to random people is super cheap compared to many alternatives, though.
I recently fell down a wikipedia rabbit hole and found the interesting story of
Archduke Wilhelm of Austria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Wilhelm_of_Austria
It was interesting to read about the diverse opinions of the different parts of the Hapsburg.
While I don't approve the principles of royalty and nobility, the Habsburg family has a special place in my heart because Mexico executed our second emperor, Maximilian I, in the 19th century. Seems like he was a good guy, but he failed to realize how fragile his conservative support was, which he lost when he resonated with liberal ideals.
"Unemployed landowner" is a pretty funny job status.
We have a lot of those today. We just call them Landlords.
Boo. Every landlord I ever had was retired, working full time to earn enough to buy second properties, or were a management company, so the landlord there is actually a CEO of a property management firm.
If there's somebody renting property without doing any work they're probably better characterized as a slumlord.
Not landed gentry?
I can recommend the book "Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe" for anyone wanting to inoculate themselves against survivorship bias.
While we're at it I recommend The persistence of the Old Regime by Arno Mayer
https://www.versobooks.com/products/2155-the-persistence-of-...
Well many of these kingdoms existed until WW1, then not so much.
I've read the book. Prussia was the last one to go, finally extinguished in the wake of WW2.
Highly recommend any of the interviews or podcasts Eduard Habsburg has done. He seems very pleasant and reasonable. the author's tone is typical of what writers must do to get published these days, and it makes me wonder how some people would justify themselves without nobility or goodness as a foil.
take away what Habsburg recommends (family, religion, ownership, traditional values that built a dynasty, etc) and what are you left with as far as advice for a good life? middling status eating disorders and yoni sunning from what i can tell. it's good to take advice from people who win, and his family has been in that business for quite some time. it's probably worth a listen.
but nobody has to pick between “the worst manifestation of counterculture” and “traditionalist monarchism”. you can have a whole range of normal political views instead.
That’s just the thing. It seems like we can’t.
Yes, but the author of the article doesn't do that either. Everything is dismissed as ridiculous and old fashioned. Which is also just silly. Not rebelling or rebelling against everything are both bad paths. You need to realise some things you ancestors got right, and some things they got wrong.
As OP says the fashionable thing in media seems to be "dismiss absolutely anything that even faintly resembles old fashioned values as idiotic"
He did an interview about this book on the podcast “The Rest Is History” which has become one of my favorite podcasts of all time. This particular episode was really funny. They ask him a few tough questions too:
Interviewer: “Ok but your family wasn’t really great to the people of Peru”
Habsburg: “We were learning.”
> Interviewer: “Ok but your family wasn’t really great to the people of Peru”
> Habsburg: “We were learning.”
I don't know what they did to the people of Peru, but if it follows the general pattern of crimes committed against colonized peoples, that is one hell of a euphemism.
And it seems intentionally morally vague, since it's not clear from that statement what it is that they learned.
> it's good to take advice from people who win, and his family has been in that business for quite some time.
There's a reason the Habsburg Empire isn't around anymore.
I'm sorry middling status eating disorders and what
For men, testicle sunning (it's a bit of a meme)
Yonic is the opposite of phallic, congrats on being one of today's 10,000
For it's use in a sentence, see the very fun cover of "come on petunia" by the blow:
Jamie stood on the stoop
and he challenged his homies
to go get some girlfriends
and locate their yonis
> traditional values that build a dynasty
This hides quote a lot of awful, cruel, selfish and unfair. You don't build monasty by being nice. Dynasties are possible only due to little stuff like massacres and human rights violation, belief that you are more entitled then others.
When you remove religion, traditional values that build monasty you get awful lot of great people who help other, who are nice, who work to create better world. And if you remove family you get the same except more lonely.
What eating disorders have with any of that is mysterious, since that is a disease of perfectionist girls with bad handling of fear. They are typically girls who try to please people.
That's some chip you have on your shoulder my friend!
Wait what? How has his family been winning for quite some time?
Well, they ruled for nearly 1000 years. The last 100 years might just be a fluke local minima and they still might recover and rule the galaxy...
He's able to get by on his family name, which is a marked downgrade from their long rule over most of Europe, seems to have set him up a fairly comfortable and easy-going life. That sounds like winning to me! If my country needs a new ambassador to the Pope, I'll be first in line!
Here is a review by someone who liked the book: https://theworthyhouse.com/2024/08/14/the-habsburg-way-seven...
So this guy is a character:
https://theworthyhouse.com/2021/06/17/the-foundationalist-ma...
Thus, the iron core of Foundationalism is that it opposes autonomic liberalism, and plans to destroy it as Foundationalism’s first act. Only when the Enlightenment, political philosophy based on false claims of wholesale human emancipation from all unchosen bonds, is both gone and wholly discredited is a new thing possible, for if not, the serpent will whisper his sweet lies in men’s ears forever, keeping them fixed in the dream become nightmare.
It'd be interesting to work out what the differences are between the philosophy described by these "pillars" and according-to-Payne Fascism.
a cursory search on Payne's def'n turns up "a program for national rebirth based on a primarily vitalist philosophy, extreme elitism, mass mobilization, the promotion of violence, and military virtues."
The last 4 are certainly in keeping with undoing human emancipation from unchosen bonds, but I'm not sure what "vitalist philosophy" might mean.
another cursory search yields "Vitalism, as a philosophical position, is usually tied to the assumption that there is a fundamental difference between the organic and the inorganic, between the physical forces and the “life force”"; anyone know if (a) Payne is referring to that, and (b) if so, what the Foundationalist position may be?
Vitalism is the establishment of a culture that seeks to create a "new man", prizing "courage, daring, and the overcoming of previously established limits". Which is literally one of the pillars (actually, the pillar that me off) of so-called "foundationalism".
You don't see a lot of honest-to-betsy aristocratic reactionaries, but Charles Haywood is definitely one. Makes Yarvin look like a dabbler.
One of my favourite bits of trivia about Austrian law is that it is still defacto forbidden for a member of the Habsburg family to run for the Presidency. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_Law
The Austrian president has mostly a representative/safeguarding function and currently held by a chain-smoking former Professor who was a member of the green party.
> given the counterrevolutionary legacy of the Habsburg dynasty
Might the Habsburgs have weathered 28 June 1914 any better if they'd only been a little less Bourbon during 1848?
They seem basically comfortable now, which I guess is about as much as they could have hoped for in the era of liberal democracies. Whatever little details fell out of their court games, their hard power wasn’t going to survive contact with the brutal grinding power of the giant industrial meritocracy behind a big moat.
Half of Europe is still monarchies, I don't think it was inevitable that they would lose all their thrones.
Nit: Their legal family name in Austria really is Habsburg-Lothringen. A double name. "von" was forbidden after WW1, so they replaced the von with a -.
A good friend of mine is a real Habsburg-Lothringen. From a poor farmers branch of the family.
The article takes an awfully long time to get to the point, but as far as I can tell it’s “this guy is religious and conservative and that’s bad”.
I guess the dreams of the past glory times never die for those families. Best keep them well-removed from the levers of power.
The snarky article inspired me to purchase the book!
I sure hope that this modern-day Habsburg isn't promoting royal incest, otherwise you end up with fine specimens like this guy: