Jul 19, 2023·edited Jul 19, 2023Liked by Christopher F. Rufo
Yes, it's great to nail these Freire/Marcuse types for their Machiavellian poisoning of the West. But what made them so SUCCESSFUL in wokefying our Western culture? That's the bit that's missing here....and needs to not be shied away from if we are going to get at the real truth of things. What made them so successful is that so many people (especially the 'higher educated') are so intellectually biddable. Take another context: it is an almost universal conceit that the horrors of The Cultural Revolution were all about Mao and his gang. The truth is much darker. Mao would have been nothing without tens of millions of biddable, favour-seeking, grudge-bearing followers.
What made them so successful is that...the Left’s appeal to the prosperous, university-educated middle class is an essentially seductive, narcissistic one; offering a way to feel more sophisticated than thou and a cost-free way to feel virtuous. Many people instinctively recognise the truth of this but it runs so contrary to prevailing MSM narratives that any such heretical thoughts get drowned out by the sheer volume of virtue-signalling tales of victimhood. And expressing such thoughts out loud risks offending friends, colleagues and neighbours. Saying them out loud is, for politicians, a high risk strategy. Even for combative conservative politicians there is a perceived imperative to flatter the electorate as a whole and keep the targets of invective within careful limits....https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
"Mao would have been nothing without tens of millions of biddable, favour-seeking, grudge-bearing followers."
Great post! Your last sentence captures what I observed when I was working with members of totalitarian cults during the Eighties. The anti-cult movement insisted that the (mostly young) members were hapless "victims" who were more or less abducted by the cult leaders. What was so apparent to me, however, was the extent to which the cult members pushed the leader to take on the messianic identity they projected onto him. Ultimately, some of the leaders were destroyed as individuals by the grandiose projections of the "followers."
Wow! Well said... Envy, greed and tribalism are key elements. You hear it in terms like 'white priviledge' and 'systemic racism'. Nebulous and vague terms that are almost impossible to refute but elicit primal & powerful emotions.
What the woke talk about without ceasing is what they call "power." "White privilege" and "systemic racism" are synonymous with "power." The wokes' sins map quite accurately over the terrain of narcissistic fairy tales. I would say that their core sin is hubris, the belief that they are gods.
Thanks again for your work Christopher! Just purchased the audible version and looking forward to it, albeit with mixed feelings. As an older person this takeover has made me incredibly sad, disoriented and worried for my children and grandchildren. The work Christopher and others are doing is so important in pushing back against the unreality and anti-humanity of these destructive ideas. I hope it’s not too late.
Too late to continue the process of creation? Creator rested on the sabbath knowing that all was perfectly harmonious getting ready for you to be the one the only one who chooses to magnify the beauty of creation in your special way🎉
I have the same thoughts! No grandchildren yet, but I do worry what society will look like when the do arrive. I grew up in the 70s. Could not have even fathomed then what is happening now.
I could be wrong but it seems like the national Democrat party politicians are going along with far left ideologies. Its as if they are in lockstep. If that's true then why???
A great book to read is Joshua Muravchik's Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism (2002). Muravchik was National Chairman of the Young People's Socialist League in the late 60s and early 70s, then shifted his politics towards the right. His thesis is that socialism -- plus other Marxist variants like communism and social democracy -- are attempts to supplant traditional religions with an ideology supposedly grounded in "science." Seeing Marxist-isms in this light, as "religions," I think is super helpful.
Jul 20, 2023·edited Jul 20, 2023Liked by Christopher F. Rufo
I'd add David Horowitz's book " Destructive Generation - Second Thoughts About The 60s" to a potential reading list. Horowitz was in the thick of it with the Black Panthers, Weathermen, & Students for a Democratic Society as the editor of their publication Ramparts Magazine. He doesn't say much about the Frankfurt intellectuals but he is extremely well versed on the violent "New Left" and does a great job describing their tactical switch from a violent overthrow of the US govt to the "quiet/soft revolution that was a major component of the march through the institutions. He is a prolific author, and excellent historical analyst of that era. There is a fair amount of overlap in some of his books & I highly recommend reading one or more,
David Horowitz is a keen student of the Left and understands the ideology of the left very clearly and has special insight as a person who was a product of the left and walked away from the left
Thankfully. this generation has a number of conservative authors whose books , radio shows and podcasts are must reading and listening . Mark Levin's books especially Unfreedom of the Press, American Marxism and the soon to be released book about why the Democrats Hate America and his nightly show are a must as is Ben Shapiro's show, whose views on polticis , culture and the family are always worth listening to or reading in his books, especially if you are a member where Ben interviews fascinating guests . Matt Walsh is singularly responsible for exposing the fraudulent junk science that is called the trans movement. All owe a lot to Rush Limbauigh who was the pioneer in conservative talk radio. The WSJ editorial and op ed page is a great resource too-while the news coverage in the WSJ is not as bad as the legacy media, the WESJ editorial and op ed page is always worth a read.
One of the great ironies about our zeitgeist and our Cultural Revolution, which as Chris shows was written, produced and directed by people united in hatred against capitalism, is that Social Justice has turned out to be the greatest gift to capitalism since the carried-interest loophole.
Social Justice has become the official ideology of the global corporate state for various reasons, including: it mentions nothing about money and is fine with a hierarchy of wealth, as long as this hierarchy has proper "representation"; it allows corporations and the plutocrat class to easily co-opt symbols of political virtue, with BLM stickers and Pride flags the equivalent of a robber baron wearing a large crucifix to show they're on the side of the angels; it allows them to purchase a commissar class on the cheap, who are happy to viciously attack any and all enemies, and thus redirect their anger from the ownership class; and it opens up whole new lines of niche marketing, so now instead of your annual Labor Day and Black Friday sales you have all the new Social Justice holidays plus all the new bespoke identities to cater to...
It turns out these aspiring world-changing revolutionaries really just wanted to be some combo of Soviet commissar and German Stasi, to be able to attack and punish anyone who gets in their way, but with a socially approved (even socially lauded) pretext.
Or (once again) as Mencken said: "The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve."
I think there are some on the left who are well aware of the irony but think they’re using the woke corporations to help them cement their cultural dominance — hegemony, if you will — imagining that at some future point they’ll turn the conversation to economic matters and challenge the capitalists.
I'm sure "there are some on the left" who think they can reroute this train and turn Idealists back into Materialists, but I see no reason to believe that once some supposed representative of the Marginalized cries "Trauma!" these Leftists won't face the same fate as everyone else who preceded them: either apologize for "harming the X community" and promise to Be Better! or else face social death at the hands of a bigotry accusation.
Also, the real goal and terminus of all Left revolts is always the installation of a large, powerful and parasitical bureaucracy, and as they've already achieved this, my guess is that Woke is happy to keep eating and reproducing, much like a family of maggots feasting on a fresh corpse.
"One of the great ironies about our zeitgeist and our Cultural Revolution, which as Chris shows was written, produced and directed by people united in hatred against capitalism, is that Social Justice has turned out to be the greatest gift to capitalism since the carried-interest loophole."
It has turned out to be compatible with neoliberalism and the therapeutic régime (neoliberalism's degraded child, IMO) and with both what Marx called "Wage Slavery" and...with actual slavery.
Progressivism and Mammonism make a great couple because of their shared hatreds: of citizens, borders, tradition, religion, culture, history etc, anything standing in the way of their totalizing plans for control. They both need to destroy the Old Man for their New Man to appear, the deracinated 21st- century zoo animal with a barcode for a soul, who believes he is the sum of his desires and who worships only the Self and owns nothing except bespoke pronouns.
> that Social Justice has turned out to be the greatest gift to capitalism since the carried-interest loophole.
No it's not. Social Justice means that corporations are forced to hire large numbers of incompetent people in the name of diversity, who then act as political commissars.
On one side of the ledger is the extra cost of hiring a commissar class, on the other side is the protection this provides from Civil Rights lawsuits (both individual and class action), the personal protection this provides the C-Suite class (burning a pinch of incense to the Social Justice gods), and the overall benefit of diverting any class-based appeals to identity-based appeals, like how Occupy Wall Street morphed into DEI Struggle Sessions.
Also, no one hates a commissar if they're on your team/payroll, attacking your enemies.
It seems these benefits must outweigh their costs, as the entire Fortune 500 has eagerly signed on...
Without a doubt...In many cases the Civil Rights Act(s) have supplanted the Constitution and the reach of the voters. I think it's Christopher Caldwell who wrote a really good book about this...
Jul 19, 2023·edited Jul 19, 2023Liked by Christopher F. Rufo
When Marxists speak of "liberation," they mean liberating people from freedom so they may have "liberated" totalitarian government control. China is a good example of a nation that has been "liberated." Every action of the Chinese people is monitored ruthlessly and punishments are exacted by the Chinese Communist Party. I suggest watching the film documentary "The Final War" to learn more about the Chinese Communist Party's quest for world domination. You can find "The Final War" on The Epoch Times website or at https://www.thefinalwar.org/
Unbelievable that Western society is being destroyed by malcontent half baked social pseudoscience academics spouting incorrect divisive invented theories. Marxist theory is not a realistic, accurate assessment of how society or economics in practice actually work. Critical race theory likewise is not an accurate representation of modern social reality in the United States. Ivory tower eggheads with no experience in the real world can theorize to their hearts’ content. In fact, their intellectual
output is crap- wildly and deliberately inaccurate. The question is how these dingbats were able to sell this package of lies and misrepresentations to powerful people and why it took the country by surprise. Nothing good can come from any of this. The socialist creates misery and failure every time. We already see the effects of three years of power hungry idiocy at work. It’s like suddenly nothing in America works by the agreed upon rules.
"The question is how these dingbats were able to sell this package of lies and misrepresentations to powerful people and why it took the country by surprise."
The people who run our country have been attending the same universities generation after generation via legacy admissions. When they graduate from a handful of elite prep schools, they attend these universities, graduate and enter the top levels of corporate and governmental power through the relationships they built during their education.
The critical theory cult developed in certain departments of elite universities, where for a long time it was an esoteric preoccupation confined to philosophy departments and gender studies, but it spread like a cancer. It continued to grow and to induct students into woke activism for decades, according to the university faculty who have spoken out about it. Eventually the number of indoctrinated students reached a critical mass, and when they entered the PMC class and the realms of top power they were prepared to take up activist roles. People who had been in academia during 1990 onward knew this was going on and where it began, but most people outside the universities did not know.
I was blindsided a couple years ago when an aggressive DEI "officer," an employee of a company with which I am contracted, started harassing me about not being willing to "provide more personal information" about myself. The requested information consisted of the list of identity boxes that DEI people always want people to check. I had no idea what the significance of this information was to the DEI officer, but I never post personal information of that sort on a contracting company's website. I thought at the time that employers at least were prohibited by civil rights laws from asking these questions.
I was engaged by this attack on my civil rights and my privacy, I started looking into what was happening, and the thread led to my discovery of the woke cult. By the time I discovered it, the cult had already taken over most of universities, professional schools, professional associations, the federal government, my state and city governments, and on and on, as we now know. My friends are mostly retired and they get all their news and opinions form the MSM. They still don't know that the woke cult has pulled off a coup. They are focused exclusively on their fear, instilled by the Democratic media, that Donald Trump planned a coup and nearly succeeded. All they care about is preventing him from succeeding. Psy ops run by the woke cult have all succeeded, while the Democrats wander through the haze of lies they have spun.
How do your retired friends think they'll succeed in preventing Trump (or anyone else) from staging a coup successfully? By definition, such an outcome would ignore their votes.
My retired lib friends were exultant about the ongoing efforts by Dems in Congress to put Trump in jail, so I assume they must have thought that being convicted of something would knock him out of competition. I assume that the show trials were more than just show to the Dems. What my friends think now is that Trump will win the Republican nomination and that he will defeat Biden, and that he will then convert our system of government to a dictatorship. This has been their interpretation of what was going on Jan 6, and that Trump could succeed next time. They keep telling me that the U.S. is teetering on the brink of becoming an authoritarian system, whereas I think it has already fallen over the brink, but we have differing perspectives on which side is to be feared.
This is a sad commentary on the low quality of civics learning and understanding. Presidents cannot even forgive indebtedness so what are the chances a president could overturn the entirety of American government philosophy? Presume January 6 had resulted in a faction actually taking exclusive possession of the Capitol? When the snack machines were emptied, then what? Your retired friends need to pour a drink and chill. Believing the hyperbole will shorten their lives unnecessarily.
Really enjoying these excerpts while I wait for my copy. Your analogy to Mao's "Long March" in yesterday's excerpt was both striking and closely apt, as our ideologists did in incorporate Maoism into their thinking.
Jul 19, 2023·edited Jul 19, 2023Liked by Christopher F. Rufo
I admire those who have the patience to read critical theory and grapple with opaque statements like, 'American teachers and students, McLaren argued, must “[break] the imaginary power of commodified identities within capitalism” and “construct sites—provisional sites—in which new structured mobilities and tendential lines of forces can be made to suture identity to the larger problematic of social justice.”'
OK . . . do these theoretical essays or anti-Capitalist broadsides come with glossaries? How is one expected to understand the meaning of terms like "structured mobilities and tendential lines of forces"? If I was inclined to make a real effort to glean meaning from this, I don't even know how to paraphrase it. Off the top of my head, a "commodified identity" refers to some generalized type of person used as an image to sell products or services, you know, advertising. The horror! You're so precious and unique that the sort of person you imagine yourself to be is above being captured to sell condoms? What's the gripe? "Hey, I made up this persona and if you want to use it to sell stuff, I want my cut"? These commies of consciousness appear to believe in a contradiction-- that the ego is at once fluid (see transgenderism) and immutable or sacred in some sense. It also gives advertising far too much credit for the influence it has on people. Only the most childish "identify" with commercial images or--god forbid--model their lives after them. I like The Three Stooges as an example of this--how soon does a kid learn that if you drag a saw over your buddy's head you can seriously injure him? More seriously, the neo-Marxists appear to want to take control of how we idealize others, who we admire and trust; they want to control who and what we value as Good and True.
I do not for one millisecond trust neo-Marxists with control of my archetypes and social relations. They want to burn down Western culture with nothing to put in its place but vague theoretical vaporings, if that. What will be the new idealized Socialist image of Man? I think we can all guess. Disney's working hard to figure it out, but so far their revisions aren't going over so well.
I have a problem with this sentence of Rufo's: 'The theoreticians divide the world into identity hierarchies; the teachers engage in the work of decolonization; the students become entries in sprawling databases; the bureaucracies process human data into social change.'
Is this bit about "databases" a metaphor? if it is, I don't get it. What sort of databases? For what purpose?
Marx's concept of the "commodification of labor" had something to do with counting the work of individual humans in terms of the "man hours" required to do a job. Marx regarded this capitalist tendency as dehumanizing.
The irony, of course, is that the woke movement is completely a creature of social media, where the commodification of humans has reached a level that Marx could not have comprehended. The so-called revolutionaries have realized what might have been his worst nightmare, if he had been able to anticipate such a bizarre outcome. The problem has become not that people are used to advertise products, but that they have turned themselves into products that they sell online. Many people, especially but not exclusively the young, equate themselves to the number of "likes" they get on social media each day.
Thank you for elaborating on this set of concepts, Tommaso! Your first sentence is very helpful.
Would you please help me understand "reification" in this context? I understand that Marx meant it as "make it into a thing." Is "objectification" a synonym for "reification"? Is it valid to say there are the following steps?:
1. the live person is projected as "enhanced images"
2. the images are treated as objects, with valuation assigned in terms of the number of likes and subscribers they attract
3. "the full reification of the person"---Does this refer to the images or the original living person? I ask this because the images of Dylan Mulvaney, for example, are what his followers seem to equate to the existent "thing." His actual self is never revealed, even in his live appearances, and his followers appear to not know this or care. The concept "Dylan Mulvaney" is a performed character and most definitely a "brand," which he was happy to extend with the Bud Light self-image.
As I look over what we have said, I realize that it is worse than I understood. By making our lives/ourselves into "Projects," we are turning ourselves both into "products" or "market products," but even "Processes" rather than "things" - which we are. Perhaps this is the fuller meaning of neoliberalism.
By "reification" I meant what you already understand - though the "process" aspect would seem to make it worse than Marx's definition.
I like what you say about Mulvaney. Is he just an "actor" with a private life, or has he turned his life into "Dylan Mulvaney?" Which is, as you say, a brand.
The securitization of attention seems to be an internet phenomenon - and something that has "quickened" existing tendencies.
There are two books by Byung-Chul Han which I read a few years ago which have helped me think about this: Pscychopolitics (my favorite) and The Disappearance of Rituals. I don't think that they are complete, but he is an acute observer of the present. If understanding means understanding origins and conclusions, he is good with conclusions.
Another perspective on the same subject comes from the psychoanalysis of people who have narcissistic personality disorder. These individuals lack a sense of self. In moments of candor and insight they say that they do not have a self, or at most, that their self is an unformed and worthless life form. Narcissists create "false selves" that they perform in social settings and in front of their own mirrors and cameras. These performances are usually tailored to create positive or negative feelings in other people, so are examples of conscious playacting. However, the narcissists do not have the inner self that an "actor" can revert to when the performance is over. They say that they need their audiences to believe that the false self is the narcissist's true self, in order to believe it themselves. If the chosen audience sees through the persona, the narcissists experience this as an annihilation of the only "self" they have, and they typically project onto the audience an intention to destroy the narcissist. Narcissists react to this situation by aggressively attacking and devaluing the audience members who failed/refused to "validate" the false self as a real entity.
The parallels with the statements by trans activists that "gender critical" people are committing genocide are unmistakable. So many of the trans activists are obviously narcissistic, like Mulvaney, it is possible that the trans genocide narrative is a case of typical narcissistic projection following onlookers' rejections of cross-sexed performances as revelations of real selves.
Wow. I have read only personality typology derived from Jung, and have found it very valuable - very. It corresponds to reality, and there is both empirical and brain-scan evidence of its reality. It seems related to CBT, which seems intuitively credible to me, and which I found helpful at one time.
What you say of narcissism is astonishing. Do you have a favorite or suggested reading? I am guessing that this explanation is the result of repeated clinical observations based upon interviews and conduct.
"The neo-Marxists want to take control of how we idealize others, who we admire and trust; they want to control who and what we value as Good and True."
This is kind of the alpha and omega here, more or less some combo of Nietzsche's slave morality and re-evaluation of all values.
Social Justice has always been at heart a morality project, it initially piggybacked on the Civil Rights movement, and gradually (much like a parasite feeding on a host) replaced the MLK open-society liberal morality with the more hard-edged CRT Manichaean morality.
But I don't think they "want to take control", I think for every educated urbanite under 30 (esp in culture), plus every college-town NPR/PBS/NYT type, they are already controlled by SJ morality and are full-fledged True Believers.
The Culture War is fought on such rich symbolic turf (race, sex, history etc), because it is at root a reflection of a deep moral and epistemic schism.
"The Culture War is fought on such rich symbolic turf (race, sex, history etc), because it is at root a reflection of a deep moral and epistemic schism."
I agree, and wonder why some still dismiss the culture war as trivial or "a distraction from more important issues." Critical Social Justice provides nothing to replace actual (blind) justice, religion or spiritual enlightenment, beauty, and truth except some vague pride in being placed at the top of the pyramid of persecution or being an amateur Torquemada enforcing their Maoist auto de fe.
The critical theory people have nothing to offer except criticism of other peoples' creative work. Their values are mostly narcissistic, and their true goal (as opposed to what they say) is to be viewed as "the top of the pyramid" (whether or not they are).
I dealt with similar questions by looking up the terms used which in this case did help. But, in writing, I try to write so as to communicate to the majority, rather than the very erudite, myself.
As well, this being only an excerpt, I'm hoping to find in the book complete examples of what is being avered or asserted, so that I am able to look at the examples from different angles or viewpoints, because in communication, interpretation is everything! People of the left ideology are apt to only see good in "anti-racism" (i.e. 'What's not to like?') not what is wrong with how it is taught (i.e. 'Whites are born oppressors.') Playing a kind of "Devil's Advocate" in this way I'm more able to avoid confirmation bias and see the real scope of a problem.
Chris, this latest socialist movement and their "progress" is extremely well researched and described in the two excerpts you've shared here. My order of your book is scheduled to be delivered today - I look forward to reading your fully developed thoughts on this evil, anti-humanist philosophy.
This article, Christopher, is exceptionally written. The halls of academia have abandoned real education and are heavily concentrated on teaching activism. In this process of dumbing down students have served as the conduit for promoting socialism and communism. Thanks for your brave reporting.
I purchased an e-book and an Audible version of the book via Amazon. Since 7/19, I've tried to submit a review to the book (as a verified purchase). Somehow, my reviews haven't been accepted or rejected—nothing! Meanwhile, there are reviews posted on 7/19 and since (including negative reviews from people who obviously didn't read it) by reviewers who don't have a verified purchase. It seems to me like Amazon might be making it difficult for positive reviewers to review the book. Am I the only one who has this problem?
Yes, it's great to nail these Freire/Marcuse types for their Machiavellian poisoning of the West. But what made them so SUCCESSFUL in wokefying our Western culture? That's the bit that's missing here....and needs to not be shied away from if we are going to get at the real truth of things. What made them so successful is that so many people (especially the 'higher educated') are so intellectually biddable. Take another context: it is an almost universal conceit that the horrors of The Cultural Revolution were all about Mao and his gang. The truth is much darker. Mao would have been nothing without tens of millions of biddable, favour-seeking, grudge-bearing followers.
The whole book answers the question “what made them so successful.” Order a copy and you’ll understand it from beginning to end!
I’ve only listened to the first part on Marcuse and I was fascinated and enlightened. Highly recommend this book!
Thanks for the kind words!
What made them so successful is that...the Left’s appeal to the prosperous, university-educated middle class is an essentially seductive, narcissistic one; offering a way to feel more sophisticated than thou and a cost-free way to feel virtuous. Many people instinctively recognise the truth of this but it runs so contrary to prevailing MSM narratives that any such heretical thoughts get drowned out by the sheer volume of virtue-signalling tales of victimhood. And expressing such thoughts out loud risks offending friends, colleagues and neighbours. Saying them out loud is, for politicians, a high risk strategy. Even for combative conservative politicians there is a perceived imperative to flatter the electorate as a whole and keep the targets of invective within careful limits....https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
May I quote you on that last sentence?
By all means yes...but please reference it to my Slouching Towards Bethlehem Substack
"Mao would have been nothing without tens of millions of biddable, favour-seeking, grudge-bearing followers."
Great post! Your last sentence captures what I observed when I was working with members of totalitarian cults during the Eighties. The anti-cult movement insisted that the (mostly young) members were hapless "victims" who were more or less abducted by the cult leaders. What was so apparent to me, however, was the extent to which the cult members pushed the leader to take on the messianic identity they projected onto him. Ultimately, some of the leaders were destroyed as individuals by the grandiose projections of the "followers."
Thank you!....and I hope you will consider a free sub to Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
Wow! Well said... Envy, greed and tribalism are key elements. You hear it in terms like 'white priviledge' and 'systemic racism'. Nebulous and vague terms that are almost impossible to refute but elicit primal & powerful emotions.
What the woke talk about without ceasing is what they call "power." "White privilege" and "systemic racism" are synonymous with "power." The wokes' sins map quite accurately over the terrain of narcissistic fairy tales. I would say that their core sin is hubris, the belief that they are gods.
Indeed! :-)
Thank you!....and I hope you will consider a free sub to Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
IMHO
Thanks again for your work Christopher! Just purchased the audible version and looking forward to it, albeit with mixed feelings. As an older person this takeover has made me incredibly sad, disoriented and worried for my children and grandchildren. The work Christopher and others are doing is so important in pushing back against the unreality and anti-humanity of these destructive ideas. I hope it’s not too late.
Thank you!
Yes thank you Christopher for your hard work and insightful words,
Too late to continue the process of creation? Creator rested on the sabbath knowing that all was perfectly harmonious getting ready for you to be the one the only one who chooses to magnify the beauty of creation in your special way🎉
I have the same thoughts! No grandchildren yet, but I do worry what society will look like when the do arrive. I grew up in the 70s. Could not have even fathomed then what is happening now.
I know exactly how you feel.
I could be wrong but it seems like the national Democrat party politicians are going along with far left ideologies. Its as if they are in lockstep. If that's true then why???
The Democrats are absolutely in lockstep, from the politicians down to the previously normal liberal members of the party.
A great book to read is Joshua Muravchik's Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism (2002). Muravchik was National Chairman of the Young People's Socialist League in the late 60s and early 70s, then shifted his politics towards the right. His thesis is that socialism -- plus other Marxist variants like communism and social democracy -- are attempts to supplant traditional religions with an ideology supposedly grounded in "science." Seeing Marxist-isms in this light, as "religions," I think is super helpful.
I'd add David Horowitz's book " Destructive Generation - Second Thoughts About The 60s" to a potential reading list. Horowitz was in the thick of it with the Black Panthers, Weathermen, & Students for a Democratic Society as the editor of their publication Ramparts Magazine. He doesn't say much about the Frankfurt intellectuals but he is extremely well versed on the violent "New Left" and does a great job describing their tactical switch from a violent overthrow of the US govt to the "quiet/soft revolution that was a major component of the march through the institutions. He is a prolific author, and excellent historical analyst of that era. There is a fair amount of overlap in some of his books & I highly recommend reading one or more,
David Horowitz is a keen student of the Left and understands the ideology of the left very clearly and has special insight as a person who was a product of the left and walked away from the left
Thankfully. this generation has a number of conservative authors whose books , radio shows and podcasts are must reading and listening . Mark Levin's books especially Unfreedom of the Press, American Marxism and the soon to be released book about why the Democrats Hate America and his nightly show are a must as is Ben Shapiro's show, whose views on polticis , culture and the family are always worth listening to or reading in his books, especially if you are a member where Ben interviews fascinating guests . Matt Walsh is singularly responsible for exposing the fraudulent junk science that is called the trans movement. All owe a lot to Rush Limbauigh who was the pioneer in conservative talk radio. The WSJ editorial and op ed page is a great resource too-while the news coverage in the WSJ is not as bad as the legacy media, the WESJ editorial and op ed page is always worth a read.
Interesting recommendation.
I also recommend David Horowitz’s book “Radical Son” for an insider’s look at growing up as a “Red Diaper Baby” during 50s - 60s. Eye opening.
Horowitz is great.
One of the great ironies about our zeitgeist and our Cultural Revolution, which as Chris shows was written, produced and directed by people united in hatred against capitalism, is that Social Justice has turned out to be the greatest gift to capitalism since the carried-interest loophole.
Social Justice has become the official ideology of the global corporate state for various reasons, including: it mentions nothing about money and is fine with a hierarchy of wealth, as long as this hierarchy has proper "representation"; it allows corporations and the plutocrat class to easily co-opt symbols of political virtue, with BLM stickers and Pride flags the equivalent of a robber baron wearing a large crucifix to show they're on the side of the angels; it allows them to purchase a commissar class on the cheap, who are happy to viciously attack any and all enemies, and thus redirect their anger from the ownership class; and it opens up whole new lines of niche marketing, so now instead of your annual Labor Day and Black Friday sales you have all the new Social Justice holidays plus all the new bespoke identities to cater to...
It turns out these aspiring world-changing revolutionaries really just wanted to be some combo of Soviet commissar and German Stasi, to be able to attack and punish anyone who gets in their way, but with a socially approved (even socially lauded) pretext.
Or (once again) as Mencken said: "The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve."
Well said!
Thanks!
I think there are some on the left who are well aware of the irony but think they’re using the woke corporations to help them cement their cultural dominance — hegemony, if you will — imagining that at some future point they’ll turn the conversation to economic matters and challenge the capitalists.
I'm sure "there are some on the left" who think they can reroute this train and turn Idealists back into Materialists, but I see no reason to believe that once some supposed representative of the Marginalized cries "Trauma!" these Leftists won't face the same fate as everyone else who preceded them: either apologize for "harming the X community" and promise to Be Better! or else face social death at the hands of a bigotry accusation.
Also, the real goal and terminus of all Left revolts is always the installation of a large, powerful and parasitical bureaucracy, and as they've already achieved this, my guess is that Woke is happy to keep eating and reproducing, much like a family of maggots feasting on a fresh corpse.
Second paragraph is funny as hell, CP! You have been on a roll lately with your excellent posts!
thanks so much!
substack has so many interesting writers and commenters, is very inspiring...
The terminus of leftism is for it to devour those who pushed for it.
Outstanding analysis, CP, of the system of rewards that reinforce woke behavior and empower their unholy coalition!
thanks!
"One of the great ironies about our zeitgeist and our Cultural Revolution, which as Chris shows was written, produced and directed by people united in hatred against capitalism, is that Social Justice has turned out to be the greatest gift to capitalism since the carried-interest loophole."
It has turned out to be compatible with neoliberalism and the therapeutic régime (neoliberalism's degraded child, IMO) and with both what Marx called "Wage Slavery" and...with actual slavery.
Progressivism and Mammonism make a great couple because of their shared hatreds: of citizens, borders, tradition, religion, culture, history etc, anything standing in the way of their totalizing plans for control. They both need to destroy the Old Man for their New Man to appear, the deracinated 21st- century zoo animal with a barcode for a soul, who believes he is the sum of his desires and who worships only the Self and owns nothing except bespoke pronouns.
> that Social Justice has turned out to be the greatest gift to capitalism since the carried-interest loophole.
No it's not. Social Justice means that corporations are forced to hire large numbers of incompetent people in the name of diversity, who then act as political commissars.
On one side of the ledger is the extra cost of hiring a commissar class, on the other side is the protection this provides from Civil Rights lawsuits (both individual and class action), the personal protection this provides the C-Suite class (burning a pinch of incense to the Social Justice gods), and the overall benefit of diverting any class-based appeals to identity-based appeals, like how Occupy Wall Street morphed into DEI Struggle Sessions.
Also, no one hates a commissar if they're on your team/payroll, attacking your enemies.
It seems these benefits must outweigh their costs, as the entire Fortune 500 has eagerly signed on...
> on the other side is the protection this provides from Civil Rights lawsuits (both individual and class action),
In other words, they're being extorted by the civil rights bureaucracy.
Without a doubt...In many cases the Civil Rights Act(s) have supplanted the Constitution and the reach of the voters. I think it's Christopher Caldwell who wrote a really good book about this...
True, but...there really is more than profit - not to mention that nobody bothers them about offshore slavery anymore.
When Marxists speak of "liberation," they mean liberating people from freedom so they may have "liberated" totalitarian government control. China is a good example of a nation that has been "liberated." Every action of the Chinese people is monitored ruthlessly and punishments are exacted by the Chinese Communist Party. I suggest watching the film documentary "The Final War" to learn more about the Chinese Communist Party's quest for world domination. You can find "The Final War" on The Epoch Times website or at https://www.thefinalwar.org/
And China's population will likely halve by 2100. Absent an aspirational reason to live it doesn't take long for a society to evaporate.
Unbelievable that Western society is being destroyed by malcontent half baked social pseudoscience academics spouting incorrect divisive invented theories. Marxist theory is not a realistic, accurate assessment of how society or economics in practice actually work. Critical race theory likewise is not an accurate representation of modern social reality in the United States. Ivory tower eggheads with no experience in the real world can theorize to their hearts’ content. In fact, their intellectual
output is crap- wildly and deliberately inaccurate. The question is how these dingbats were able to sell this package of lies and misrepresentations to powerful people and why it took the country by surprise. Nothing good can come from any of this. The socialist creates misery and failure every time. We already see the effects of three years of power hungry idiocy at work. It’s like suddenly nothing in America works by the agreed upon rules.
"The question is how these dingbats were able to sell this package of lies and misrepresentations to powerful people and why it took the country by surprise."
The people who run our country have been attending the same universities generation after generation via legacy admissions. When they graduate from a handful of elite prep schools, they attend these universities, graduate and enter the top levels of corporate and governmental power through the relationships they built during their education.
The critical theory cult developed in certain departments of elite universities, where for a long time it was an esoteric preoccupation confined to philosophy departments and gender studies, but it spread like a cancer. It continued to grow and to induct students into woke activism for decades, according to the university faculty who have spoken out about it. Eventually the number of indoctrinated students reached a critical mass, and when they entered the PMC class and the realms of top power they were prepared to take up activist roles. People who had been in academia during 1990 onward knew this was going on and where it began, but most people outside the universities did not know.
I was blindsided a couple years ago when an aggressive DEI "officer," an employee of a company with which I am contracted, started harassing me about not being willing to "provide more personal information" about myself. The requested information consisted of the list of identity boxes that DEI people always want people to check. I had no idea what the significance of this information was to the DEI officer, but I never post personal information of that sort on a contracting company's website. I thought at the time that employers at least were prohibited by civil rights laws from asking these questions.
I was engaged by this attack on my civil rights and my privacy, I started looking into what was happening, and the thread led to my discovery of the woke cult. By the time I discovered it, the cult had already taken over most of universities, professional schools, professional associations, the federal government, my state and city governments, and on and on, as we now know. My friends are mostly retired and they get all their news and opinions form the MSM. They still don't know that the woke cult has pulled off a coup. They are focused exclusively on their fear, instilled by the Democratic media, that Donald Trump planned a coup and nearly succeeded. All they care about is preventing him from succeeding. Psy ops run by the woke cult have all succeeded, while the Democrats wander through the haze of lies they have spun.
particularly succinct, your last paragraph!
How do your retired friends think they'll succeed in preventing Trump (or anyone else) from staging a coup successfully? By definition, such an outcome would ignore their votes.
My retired lib friends were exultant about the ongoing efforts by Dems in Congress to put Trump in jail, so I assume they must have thought that being convicted of something would knock him out of competition. I assume that the show trials were more than just show to the Dems. What my friends think now is that Trump will win the Republican nomination and that he will defeat Biden, and that he will then convert our system of government to a dictatorship. This has been their interpretation of what was going on Jan 6, and that Trump could succeed next time. They keep telling me that the U.S. is teetering on the brink of becoming an authoritarian system, whereas I think it has already fallen over the brink, but we have differing perspectives on which side is to be feared.
This is a sad commentary on the low quality of civics learning and understanding. Presidents cannot even forgive indebtedness so what are the chances a president could overturn the entirety of American government philosophy? Presume January 6 had resulted in a faction actually taking exclusive possession of the Capitol? When the snack machines were emptied, then what? Your retired friends need to pour a drink and chill. Believing the hyperbole will shorten their lives unnecessarily.
I completely agree! Unfortunately, they get all their fear from the Dem media they use as their exclusive source of info.
Nathaniel Pawlowski testified today in the European Parliament about the Tyranny in Canada!
https://youtu.be/fFWmsVaNO8Y
Terrifying! You explain this with great clarity. Looking forward to reading the book which I’ve ordered.
Thanks!
Really enjoying these excerpts while I wait for my copy. Your analogy to Mao's "Long March" in yesterday's excerpt was both striking and closely apt, as our ideologists did in incorporate Maoism into their thinking.
Appreciate it!
I admire those who have the patience to read critical theory and grapple with opaque statements like, 'American teachers and students, McLaren argued, must “[break] the imaginary power of commodified identities within capitalism” and “construct sites—provisional sites—in which new structured mobilities and tendential lines of forces can be made to suture identity to the larger problematic of social justice.”'
OK . . . do these theoretical essays or anti-Capitalist broadsides come with glossaries? How is one expected to understand the meaning of terms like "structured mobilities and tendential lines of forces"? If I was inclined to make a real effort to glean meaning from this, I don't even know how to paraphrase it. Off the top of my head, a "commodified identity" refers to some generalized type of person used as an image to sell products or services, you know, advertising. The horror! You're so precious and unique that the sort of person you imagine yourself to be is above being captured to sell condoms? What's the gripe? "Hey, I made up this persona and if you want to use it to sell stuff, I want my cut"? These commies of consciousness appear to believe in a contradiction-- that the ego is at once fluid (see transgenderism) and immutable or sacred in some sense. It also gives advertising far too much credit for the influence it has on people. Only the most childish "identify" with commercial images or--god forbid--model their lives after them. I like The Three Stooges as an example of this--how soon does a kid learn that if you drag a saw over your buddy's head you can seriously injure him? More seriously, the neo-Marxists appear to want to take control of how we idealize others, who we admire and trust; they want to control who and what we value as Good and True.
I do not for one millisecond trust neo-Marxists with control of my archetypes and social relations. They want to burn down Western culture with nothing to put in its place but vague theoretical vaporings, if that. What will be the new idealized Socialist image of Man? I think we can all guess. Disney's working hard to figure it out, but so far their revisions aren't going over so well.
I have a problem with this sentence of Rufo's: 'The theoreticians divide the world into identity hierarchies; the teachers engage in the work of decolonization; the students become entries in sprawling databases; the bureaucracies process human data into social change.'
Is this bit about "databases" a metaphor? if it is, I don't get it. What sort of databases? For what purpose?
Edited for usage
Marx's concept of the "commodification of labor" had something to do with counting the work of individual humans in terms of the "man hours" required to do a job. Marx regarded this capitalist tendency as dehumanizing.
The irony, of course, is that the woke movement is completely a creature of social media, where the commodification of humans has reached a level that Marx could not have comprehended. The so-called revolutionaries have realized what might have been his worst nightmare, if he had been able to anticipate such a bizarre outcome. The problem has become not that people are used to advertise products, but that they have turned themselves into products that they sell online. Many people, especially but not exclusively the young, equate themselves to the number of "likes" they get on social media each day.
Securitization of attention as market and projectification/self-projectification of the person as "goods."
The full reification of the person. Neoliberalism. Now, narcissistic displays of debility as product. "Identity" nearly "brand."
Thank you for elaborating on this set of concepts, Tommaso! Your first sentence is very helpful.
Would you please help me understand "reification" in this context? I understand that Marx meant it as "make it into a thing." Is "objectification" a synonym for "reification"? Is it valid to say there are the following steps?:
1. the live person is projected as "enhanced images"
2. the images are treated as objects, with valuation assigned in terms of the number of likes and subscribers they attract
3. "the full reification of the person"---Does this refer to the images or the original living person? I ask this because the images of Dylan Mulvaney, for example, are what his followers seem to equate to the existent "thing." His actual self is never revealed, even in his live appearances, and his followers appear to not know this or care. The concept "Dylan Mulvaney" is a performed character and most definitely a "brand," which he was happy to extend with the Bud Light self-image.
Sandra,
As I look over what we have said, I realize that it is worse than I understood. By making our lives/ourselves into "Projects," we are turning ourselves both into "products" or "market products," but even "Processes" rather than "things" - which we are. Perhaps this is the fuller meaning of neoliberalism.
By "reification" I meant what you already understand - though the "process" aspect would seem to make it worse than Marx's definition.
I like what you say about Mulvaney. Is he just an "actor" with a private life, or has he turned his life into "Dylan Mulvaney?" Which is, as you say, a brand.
The securitization of attention seems to be an internet phenomenon - and something that has "quickened" existing tendencies.
There are two books by Byung-Chul Han which I read a few years ago which have helped me think about this: Pscychopolitics (my favorite) and The Disappearance of Rituals. I don't think that they are complete, but he is an acute observer of the present. If understanding means understanding origins and conclusions, he is good with conclusions.
Another perspective on the same subject comes from the psychoanalysis of people who have narcissistic personality disorder. These individuals lack a sense of self. In moments of candor and insight they say that they do not have a self, or at most, that their self is an unformed and worthless life form. Narcissists create "false selves" that they perform in social settings and in front of their own mirrors and cameras. These performances are usually tailored to create positive or negative feelings in other people, so are examples of conscious playacting. However, the narcissists do not have the inner self that an "actor" can revert to when the performance is over. They say that they need their audiences to believe that the false self is the narcissist's true self, in order to believe it themselves. If the chosen audience sees through the persona, the narcissists experience this as an annihilation of the only "self" they have, and they typically project onto the audience an intention to destroy the narcissist. Narcissists react to this situation by aggressively attacking and devaluing the audience members who failed/refused to "validate" the false self as a real entity.
The parallels with the statements by trans activists that "gender critical" people are committing genocide are unmistakable. So many of the trans activists are obviously narcissistic, like Mulvaney, it is possible that the trans genocide narrative is a case of typical narcissistic projection following onlookers' rejections of cross-sexed performances as revelations of real selves.
Wow. I have read only personality typology derived from Jung, and have found it very valuable - very. It corresponds to reality, and there is both empirical and brain-scan evidence of its reality. It seems related to CBT, which seems intuitively credible to me, and which I found helpful at one time.
What you say of narcissism is astonishing. Do you have a favorite or suggested reading? I am guessing that this explanation is the result of repeated clinical observations based upon interviews and conduct.
Great comment!
"The neo-Marxists want to take control of how we idealize others, who we admire and trust; they want to control who and what we value as Good and True."
This is kind of the alpha and omega here, more or less some combo of Nietzsche's slave morality and re-evaluation of all values.
Social Justice has always been at heart a morality project, it initially piggybacked on the Civil Rights movement, and gradually (much like a parasite feeding on a host) replaced the MLK open-society liberal morality with the more hard-edged CRT Manichaean morality.
But I don't think they "want to take control", I think for every educated urbanite under 30 (esp in culture), plus every college-town NPR/PBS/NYT type, they are already controlled by SJ morality and are full-fledged True Believers.
The Culture War is fought on such rich symbolic turf (race, sex, history etc), because it is at root a reflection of a deep moral and epistemic schism.
"The Culture War is fought on such rich symbolic turf (race, sex, history etc), because it is at root a reflection of a deep moral and epistemic schism."
I agree, and wonder why some still dismiss the culture war as trivial or "a distraction from more important issues." Critical Social Justice provides nothing to replace actual (blind) justice, religion or spiritual enlightenment, beauty, and truth except some vague pride in being placed at the top of the pyramid of persecution or being an amateur Torquemada enforcing their Maoist auto de fe.
The critical theory people have nothing to offer except criticism of other peoples' creative work. Their values are mostly narcissistic, and their true goal (as opposed to what they say) is to be viewed as "the top of the pyramid" (whether or not they are).
I dealt with similar questions by looking up the terms used which in this case did help. But, in writing, I try to write so as to communicate to the majority, rather than the very erudite, myself.
As well, this being only an excerpt, I'm hoping to find in the book complete examples of what is being avered or asserted, so that I am able to look at the examples from different angles or viewpoints, because in communication, interpretation is everything! People of the left ideology are apt to only see good in "anti-racism" (i.e. 'What's not to like?') not what is wrong with how it is taught (i.e. 'Whites are born oppressors.') Playing a kind of "Devil's Advocate" in this way I'm more able to avoid confirmation bias and see the real scope of a problem.
The Interchangeable Carbon Units ever in need of further shaping.
Just ordered my copy last night The long march of the left is a clear and present danger to the future of America
Thank you!
Chris, this latest socialist movement and their "progress" is extremely well researched and described in the two excerpts you've shared here. My order of your book is scheduled to be delivered today - I look forward to reading your fully developed thoughts on this evil, anti-humanist philosophy.
Thank you!
This article, Christopher, is exceptionally written. The halls of academia have abandoned real education and are heavily concentrated on teaching activism. In this process of dumbing down students have served as the conduit for promoting socialism and communism. Thanks for your brave reporting.
Thanks! If you like the writing here, you’ll love the book.
I ordered it early. It should be there when I get home after the ICONS Summit.
My book arrived yesterday as did the audio. Looking forward to digging in ❤️
I purchased an e-book and an Audible version of the book via Amazon. Since 7/19, I've tried to submit a review to the book (as a verified purchase). Somehow, my reviews haven't been accepted or rejected—nothing! Meanwhile, there are reviews posted on 7/19 and since (including negative reviews from people who obviously didn't read it) by reviewers who don't have a verified purchase. It seems to me like Amazon might be making it difficult for positive reviewers to review the book. Am I the only one who has this problem?