I added a link to this post to an earlier post titled “Why We Like Retro” that I think applies to everyone else. I don’t know that it’s specifically a political thing with non-conservatives. A large number of retro people give off a progressive or at least neutral vibe. So when an extreme right-winger shows up, it’s a bit shocking. The maker of this console, and a certain retro Youtuber with an affinity for rotary tools (not gonna name names but that should be a pretty big hint) come to mind.

Not sure why I didn’t originally have that link in there, sorry about that. I added a link in the first paragraph.

See, I’m more or less classically liberal (certainly not on the progressive/far left though, insofar as it has inverted many of the classically liberal values). Despite that, I never saw my “retro” interests as having anything much to do with politics. I simply have deep misgivings about what computing and technology have become – I suppose you could blame a lot of that on capitalism, yes, but it’s the meaning behind them that’s changed for the worse in several ways.

The thing is, if I try to look at it through a political lens, the “conservative” angle is more immediately obvious – as you put it, it’s “the past” and all it represents. One wants to “conserve”, which implies as its subject something that has existed before. Seems like a natural fit for a conservative to be suspicious of the new, and to develop a nostalgia for the old.

So I’m curious: you wrote that eyebrows were raised about the idea of a conservative being into retro stuff. If people were surprised, that implies they instinctively expected this sort of thing to appeal only to liberals/progressives… so, how is that explained? That seems a bit more baffling to me.

I mean, the very notion of progressivism implies seeing the arc of history as proceeding from the negative to the positive. The old is always suspect in some way; the values of our parents and grandparents were always tainted by forms of bigotry, privilege and exclusion, even when they meant well; books and films older than a generation or two have to come with disclaimers regarding the sensibility of the modern reader/viewer, and their creators always end up being considered ‘problematic’ in some fashion.

I’ve seen it argued (by progressives) that nostalgia itself is an *immoral* act – because it assigns a positive value, and yearns for, periods in history when the less privileged were excluded. I even recall watching an advertisement for some computer or other from the 1980s or early 1990s – there was one commenter all up in arms, calling it awful and disgusting and demanding for it to be taken down, because “only white men” were present in the ad.

So I’ll genuinely ask… what is “the progressive/liberal case” for being into retro computing? I mean, what’s the political angle which (supposedly) makes it more natural for liberals, so much so that they’re surprised to see conservatives in the hobby? I’m truly interested in this perspective.

I remember that Toshiba controversy! In the early 90s, I was recommending Toshiba CD-ROM drives because they were almost as good as NEC drives but a fair bit cheaper. Someone with a longer memory than me took me to task for that, bringing up the submarine incident.

As for 1980s nostalgia, I just finished a piece today about a 1988 political firestorm involving Toshiba, which got caught funneling restricted computers to the Soviet Union for use in top-secret submarine design. This was at the tail-end of the anti-Japan hysteria over the tech industry. Members of Congress actually staged a photo-op smashing Toshiba electronics with sledgehammers as part of their push to ban the company from the U.S. outright for “endangering America’s security.”