Hi Theo, I really enjoy your posts and am looking forward to hearing your thoughts in longer-form on your Substack!
I'm not left wing (or right) - never have been. I've come across a significant number of people though who identify as 'left' but reject the ideological narrative you set out. The UK publication Spiked, which is one of the few places left in the country to find critical and investigative journalism, is diametrically opposed to it, though tends to identify as a left-wing publication. Some of its prominent journalists still call themselves 'Marxist'. The Communist Party of Great Britain a couple of days came out against Gender ideology and has defended its position aggressively. Successful Twitter accounts like James Melville's identify as left-leaning.
Still, the feeling in every one of my bones (and probably in most people reading this) is that you're on the money. Why is this?
Perhaps the answer lies in the common response of Marxists to people pointing out the unimaginable level of misery and death caused by Communism in the 20th Century? That this failure lay in the fact that it was 'never implemented successfully'?
The reflex action of reasonable people to this defence is to bristle, look in disbelief, wonder at the level of moral disconnect people can subject themselves to in the name of a pet ideology. But perhaps in our bluster, we fail to recognise the fact that they might be on the nail.
Far left socialist ideology could never be implemented successfully (and can never be), because it overturned society's only means of policing overreach and corruption by those who had grabbed power either by force or stealth. This cleared the way for psychopaths to take control. The system they implemented, though it picked key points from Marxist doctrine to enforce its totalitarianism, bore more resemblance to feudalism than the ideology that launched it, which apart from the recent flicker of popular freedom in the industrial age, has been the dominant power structure since the beginning of civilisation.
The project failed, because the socialist ideology we all know and love was only ever a cloak. It was a vehicle for one set of society, perhaps organised organically, or as a reaction to an existing societal imbalance, to take control of another, or perhaps more accurately take control of existing means of control from the existing dominant group by force and coercion.
The left are pretty much a spent force, and have been since the end of the last century. Any resemblance between what you identify and what is taking creeping control of society through 'disruption' from above and below comes about through the similarity in appearance to this means of establishing control. It's so close that many in it identify as 'left'. In reality they are vehicles for the push towards a new variant of feudalism. They might not know it, but they feel it, along with the potential for control it might bring by associating with the winning side, even if they lack the nous to ever be anything other than pawns.
And they are winning, because ordinary people - the vast majority - can't understand this. There's no name for the force they represent, because it hasn't happened before and we don't have the prior experience to draw on.
All we know is the power striving for dominance has control of vast wealth, and utilises a statist, bureaucratic power base, academia, pharmaceutical, tech and communications industries and an activist complex through the establishment of a financial and cultural pyramid scheme to exert influence to cause maximum disruption to the current order. This comes with its own rules for identification and communication in the form of complex hermeneutics (which you identify), acting as a placeholder for actual intent, which can be denied, even to the self.
We scrabble about with words like 'woke' and 'socialist' and 'fascist' - none of which adequately pin down the reality of the situation - because we don't have the lexicon to define it. Even feudalism brings to mind a system of lords, surfs and peasants, which doesn't look much like the modern world as we know it. The feudalism we're headed towards will look a lot more like the Soviet Bloc or Maoist China, just without the trappings of any pretence to economic equality - rather a cultural / quasi religious / environmental one instead.
Because we can't define it, we can't fight it. The salvation of Liberalism in its original sense: a civilisation in which individuals have some measure of control of their destiny (though never perfect) - will come from someone who can define this new phenomenon - the new vehicle to reach the same old ends - in a way that is resistant to propaganda and totalitarian mind control; that is easy enough for people to grasp and see for the existential threat it represents.
Marxism 2.0 is "Workers of the world, be divided by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity and fight among yourselves while the bourgeoisie steal everything!"
I guess Marxism 3.0 will be, "The working class are all locked in their homes or dead; bourgeoise of the world, unite in a big Rainbow Pride orgy!"
This is why we homeschool. My husband and I have 4 adult children, and between those 4, we have 10 grandkiddos. They are ALL homeschooled. 4 of them live with us (multigenerational household) and 2 of the other 6, I babysit during the week. And I am homeschooling them as well. It's busy and crazy and hard, but worth it.
❤️ I love that! How rich for all of you that you get to spend so much time together. Reminds me of older days when many families stayed local and intergenerational. It's sad we're losing that.
This started from Paulo Freire. This is the Marxification of education. Literally all this garbage is is different forms of Marxism.
CRT = race Marxism.
Queer theory = queer Marxism.
Gender theory = gender Marxism.
This is an attempted Maoist thought reform project writ large.
"You’re looking at a material directly from leftist revolutionaries."
Yep. The wolves are moving in. I wrote this, updating the old fable as a modern allegory.
https://medium.com/@ashleybrookslawrence/the-other-boy-who-cried-wolf-ed595a95729b
Hi Theo, I really enjoy your posts and am looking forward to hearing your thoughts in longer-form on your Substack!
I'm not left wing (or right) - never have been. I've come across a significant number of people though who identify as 'left' but reject the ideological narrative you set out. The UK publication Spiked, which is one of the few places left in the country to find critical and investigative journalism, is diametrically opposed to it, though tends to identify as a left-wing publication. Some of its prominent journalists still call themselves 'Marxist'. The Communist Party of Great Britain a couple of days came out against Gender ideology and has defended its position aggressively. Successful Twitter accounts like James Melville's identify as left-leaning.
Still, the feeling in every one of my bones (and probably in most people reading this) is that you're on the money. Why is this?
Perhaps the answer lies in the common response of Marxists to people pointing out the unimaginable level of misery and death caused by Communism in the 20th Century? That this failure lay in the fact that it was 'never implemented successfully'?
The reflex action of reasonable people to this defence is to bristle, look in disbelief, wonder at the level of moral disconnect people can subject themselves to in the name of a pet ideology. But perhaps in our bluster, we fail to recognise the fact that they might be on the nail.
Far left socialist ideology could never be implemented successfully (and can never be), because it overturned society's only means of policing overreach and corruption by those who had grabbed power either by force or stealth. This cleared the way for psychopaths to take control. The system they implemented, though it picked key points from Marxist doctrine to enforce its totalitarianism, bore more resemblance to feudalism than the ideology that launched it, which apart from the recent flicker of popular freedom in the industrial age, has been the dominant power structure since the beginning of civilisation.
The project failed, because the socialist ideology we all know and love was only ever a cloak. It was a vehicle for one set of society, perhaps organised organically, or as a reaction to an existing societal imbalance, to take control of another, or perhaps more accurately take control of existing means of control from the existing dominant group by force and coercion.
The left are pretty much a spent force, and have been since the end of the last century. Any resemblance between what you identify and what is taking creeping control of society through 'disruption' from above and below comes about through the similarity in appearance to this means of establishing control. It's so close that many in it identify as 'left'. In reality they are vehicles for the push towards a new variant of feudalism. They might not know it, but they feel it, along with the potential for control it might bring by associating with the winning side, even if they lack the nous to ever be anything other than pawns.
And they are winning, because ordinary people - the vast majority - can't understand this. There's no name for the force they represent, because it hasn't happened before and we don't have the prior experience to draw on.
All we know is the power striving for dominance has control of vast wealth, and utilises a statist, bureaucratic power base, academia, pharmaceutical, tech and communications industries and an activist complex through the establishment of a financial and cultural pyramid scheme to exert influence to cause maximum disruption to the current order. This comes with its own rules for identification and communication in the form of complex hermeneutics (which you identify), acting as a placeholder for actual intent, which can be denied, even to the self.
We scrabble about with words like 'woke' and 'socialist' and 'fascist' - none of which adequately pin down the reality of the situation - because we don't have the lexicon to define it. Even feudalism brings to mind a system of lords, surfs and peasants, which doesn't look much like the modern world as we know it. The feudalism we're headed towards will look a lot more like the Soviet Bloc or Maoist China, just without the trappings of any pretence to economic equality - rather a cultural / quasi religious / environmental one instead.
Because we can't define it, we can't fight it. The salvation of Liberalism in its original sense: a civilisation in which individuals have some measure of control of their destiny (though never perfect) - will come from someone who can define this new phenomenon - the new vehicle to reach the same old ends - in a way that is resistant to propaganda and totalitarian mind control; that is easy enough for people to grasp and see for the existential threat it represents.
I wish I was smart enough to do it.
Wow! What an incredible comment. Thank you for sharing that. I think you're clearly smart enough to do it. ;-) I'll have to check out your Substack.
Marxism 1.0 was "workers of the world, unite!"
Marxism 2.0 is "Workers of the world, be divided by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity and fight among yourselves while the bourgeoisie steal everything!"
I guess Marxism 3.0 will be, "The working class are all locked in their homes or dead; bourgeoise of the world, unite in a big Rainbow Pride orgy!"
John Carter over at Postcards from Barsoom has a great term for these blue-haired genderqueer cretins: "Marxcissists." https://barsoom.substack.com/p/the-marxcissists
This is why we homeschool. My husband and I have 4 adult children, and between those 4, we have 10 grandkiddos. They are ALL homeschooled. 4 of them live with us (multigenerational household) and 2 of the other 6, I babysit during the week. And I am homeschooling them as well. It's busy and crazy and hard, but worth it.
❤️ I love that! How rich for all of you that you get to spend so much time together. Reminds me of older days when many families stayed local and intergenerational. It's sad we're losing that.