One of the clearest historical parallels to now, he notes, is the 1970s. That decade saw radical movements emerge from university campuses and middle-class enclaves not just in the U.S., but across the West. The far-left Weather Underground movement, which started as a campus organization at the University of Michigan, bombed government buildings and banks; the Red Army Faction in West Germany and Italy’s Red Brigades carried out kidnappings and assassinations. These weren’t movements of the dispossessed, but of the downwardly mobile—overeducated and politically alienated.

“There’s a real risk of that dynamic resurfacing,” Turchin said.

People will only stand for getting shit on for so long.

Amusing to watch western academics rediscover dialectical materialism from scratch.

The empire is collapsing.

Unequivocally good for the world but sucks to live here. There is no going back. The right cannot be reasoned with