Social Corrosion

While looking for the exact wording of a Stalin quote, I found this nugget on a Wikipedia page:

[E]specially in Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia, a fanatical certainty that socialism could be made to work motivated communist leaders in “the ruthless dehumanization of their enemies, who could be suppressed because they were ‘objectively’ and ‘historically’ wrong. Furthermore, if events did not work out as they were supposed to, then that was because class enemies, foreign spies and saboteurs, or worst of all, internal traitors were wrecking the plan.

The parallel with today’s “woke” social justice culture is frightening.

• Fanatical certainty: Go ahead, try and tell a SJW that he’s wrong about any of his opinions or points of view. You won’t get a defense. Instead, you’ll be attacked, personally, with accusations of some sort of “ism.”

• Dehumanization of enemies: Remember Clinton’s “deplorables” line? Or Obama’s “bitterly clinging” bit? Or the automatic tagging of anyone in a MAGA hat as a racist? These are tell-tales of people who look at those of differing beliefs and opinions not as fellow members of society, but as subordinates and subjugates whose views are ill-informed or wrong or simply of no matter.

• Suppression of enemies: See “cancel culture.” Consider this article by a Women’s Studies PhD, writing under a pen name, who abandoned her woke ways. “I have seen this ideology up close and seen how it consumes and even destroys people, while dehumanizing anyone who dissents.” Call something “hate speech,” no matter whether the description is valid or simply asserted, and it no longer deserves protection or even consideration. Moreover, its offeror gets an eternal scarlet letter, and is to be de-platformed where possible and shouted down otherwise.

• Objectively and historically wrong: The New York Times 1619 project seeks to wholly rewrite history, to retell it in a manner that communicates a ‘new truth.’ Meanwhile, statues of Columbus are being taken down, along with countless others. As above, no debate or discussion is brooked, and those who dissent are simply presumed wrong, and categorized as…

• Class enemies and internal traitors: If you’re an of an “oppressor” identity, it doesn’t really matter what you believe – you’re deemed an enemy. If you’re of an “oppressed” identity, and you don’t conform, you’re a heretic or an apostate (the latter abandoned the “truth,” while the former never held to it in the first place).

All around me, I’m warned about the dangerous lunatics of the alt-right and hate groups (those d-mn Catholics!), and told that they are an existential threat to the nation. Indeed, there are criminals, assholes, and idiots who populate those spaces, and indeed, they warrant watching and prosecution if and when they violate others’ rights. The culture war has, however, been won by the Left. Society and corporate America are conforming to the demands of social justice, Critical [fill-in-the-blank] Theory and the requirements of “woke,” not the ravings and reactionary scattershot of racists, bigots, and nativists. Nancy Pelosi eradicated “man, woman, husband, wife, father, mother” from the House. That these demands and requirements are propagated by people whose behavior and mindset are shockingly similar to the Communists and Soviet Socialists of 20th century Eurasia is being overlooked by many, obfuscated by many more, and secretly embraced by some.

As time goes on, those secret embracers are not hiding it any more. Two of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter organization are overt Marxists. Bernie Sanders has made a career (and probably a lot of money) repackaging and rebranding socialism. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has picked up Bernie’s playbook, blended it with social media savvy and clever branding/self-promotion, and convinced a generation of earnest young people that a murderous ideology is the path to some fairer and more just future. Newly elected Congressman Jamaal Bowman said the “current system of capitalism is slavery by another name.”

All this echoes the rise of Marxist thinking among the intelligentsia of a century ago, thinking that killed over a hundred million people and impoverished billions. Its persistent attractiveness lies in its false promise: that things can be made better by imposing the will of a few on the lives of many. Its inevitable outcome, totalitarian and authoritarian power invested in a small class of “elites,” is already appearing in our society and culture.

Wherever Marx’s ideas were practiced, life got worse. There’s not a single exception to this rule. — Paul Kengor

It, quite simply, will destroy all the values upon which this nation was built and aspires to: individual liberty, equality of opportunity, due process, protection against arbitrary and tyrannical rule, freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of religious belief, and of a commitment to logic, reason, and the free exchange of ideas. It’ll do so by convincing the young, naive, and good-intentioned that these foundational principles are cover for a scheme that keeps an oligarchy in power and the masses suppressed, no matter that this is exactly what socialism, in whatever incarnation and packaging it’s offered, intends, has always brought about, and will always produce. And, it’ll do so by selling to the selfish a notion that their selfishness is justified, that taking what belongs to others is not only legitimate, but appropriate, when those others have more than they do, and that state-sanctioned armed robbery is somehow more moral than voluntary cooperation for mutual benefit.

This cultural Marxism is winning the hearts and minds of Americans, and the extent of its threat to our lives, liberties, and prosperity cannot be overstated. It has spilled from the insulated echo chambers of liberal arts academia into the broader political sandbox, into entertainment, into marketing, into corporate behaviors, into the financial world, and into the rhetoric of those with the true power: the politicians we’ve elected to protect and defend the principles, tenets, and mandates of the Constitution.

I dislike (detest, more accurately) right-wing racist hate mongers, but I fear left-wing cultural elites and social justice warriors far more. The former are obvious, easily denounced, and mostly powerless in our culture. The latter, on the other hand, have established the rules by which we communicate and interact. Their influence is so pervasive that our entire economy increasingly marches to their drumbeat. Some will argue, with some degree of legitimacy, that the societal changes advanced via “social justice” are beneficial. However, evolution that is coercive in nature is also corrosive in nature, fanaticism is destructive, and this philosophy spawns anger, division, misery, envy, and greed, not peace, harmony, felicity, or philanthropy.

The main difference, apart from the form of Marxism, between the murderous regimes of the 20th Century and our cultural drift today is the form of coercion. Theirs was overt – police and armies pointing guns at dissidents. Ours is more covert – thus far. Actual political violence remains at the fringes – the Antifa crowd and the alt-far-right-Proud-Boys crowd beating each other up, with in-betweens sometimes getting caught in the middle (and with a terrible and terribly under-reported toll on property). But, there are people who should know better, people who are educated, who hold esteemed positions in society, and who, if not already cognizant of history, have access to history, calling for political violence against ideological foes. There are people who teach divisiveness, in the form of critical race theory, a “philosophy” whose purpose, practically speaking, is to justify rejection of the basic principles of this or any free society, including individual and property rights, in favor of a twisted “you’re not in power, so you’re justified in seizing power from those you think have it” motivation to endless conflict, and a perpetuation of racist thinking.

Then there are the people who want political violence to spread. They believe that the only way to reorder society in a socialistic/Marxist fashion is to precipitate its collapse first. Back in the 1960s, that collapse was to be precipitated by economic means, by overloading state and local welfare systems in order to cause civic unrest that would force the federal government to institute a universal basic income. Today, it’s to be precipitated by amplifying racial and identity-politics strife, and it’s a strategy that has taken firm root in academia and among the intelligentsia, even if many of them don’t realize they’re accomplices.

From this last group come the grossly illiberal ideas that will, if left unchecked, irreparably corrode our society. Free speech, free association, the free exchange of ideas, the primacy of the individual, the notion that one owns the fruits of one’s labor, limited government, the free enterprise system, self-determination, and, most of all, personal responsibility, are now taught as problems and injustices, rather than as the core of a liberal society. They are cast as the unjust benefits of power, when used by those who disagree with a particular narrative.

The basic principles of liberty, born of the Enlightenment and used to create societies that have done more to elevate the human condition than any others in history, are being delegitimized. Simply because they are not perfect and have not delivered utopia. By people who resent not having as much power as they want, and who have no qualms about destroying as many lives as necessary to achieve the power they crave.

It’s that simple.

Resisting it, unfortunately, is difficult. The social justice crowd has, unjustly, claimed sole moral high ground on racism, sexism, and bigotry, meaning that expressing any sort of dissent will first be met with accusations of some sort of “-ism.” The list of “-isms” grows daily, to the point of crippling our very ability to string together a series of cogent thoughts. This is deeply insidious, and quite effective. Say that desiring the return of socialism is crazy will not precipitate a debate about socialism, but instead will draw accusations of “ableism” and other personal attacks. It takes a very strong will, a very thick skin, a lot of persistence, a lot of patience, a lot of free time, and, ultimately, the ability to withstand “cancellation,” to combat such tactics. It’s also wearying, because this form of rebuttal is endless and relentless, so most just walk away from it rather than confronting it. While those who recognize it are unlikely to succumb to the woke agenda, the stifling of dissent leaves the young vulnerable to unchecked inculcation. As time goes on, and people age into and out of the adult population, these corrosive illiberal ideas can and will infect more and more of the populace.

History tells us what will eventually happen, if this is left unchecked.

Already, we know that the individual no longer matters, apart from identity group utility. If you think and say the right things, you’re of value to the SJ movement. If not, you’re either an enemy or a traitor.

It really is that simple.

Fortunately, these radicals are few. Polling suggests only one in eight American voters self-identifies as a “progressive activist,” and I’d bet the ranks of the truly woke are significantly smaller. They’re not the majority, they’re not the mainstream, and the results of this past election speak of a message that much of the electorate isn’t buying.

Unfortunately, these radicals have outsized influence. They’ve not only claimed sole possession of the “not racist” intellectual space, they’ve redefined the concept itself. Same for all the other “isms.” We witness the conformity and affirmative behaviors they demand in corporate America, in the consumer space, in marketing, in entertainment, and in mainstream news and opinion. They’ve succeeded in stifling diversity of opinion in our premier intellectual spaces, to the degree that those being educated are not even offered a glimpse at other viewpoints, other schools of thought, or rebuttals to their orthodoxy. Eighty percent of Twitter tweets are posted by two percent of the American populace, but they influence policy and daunt politicians to an inordinate degree.

George Santayana told us that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” What do we do about those who’ve never even been shown the past? How can we address the deliberate blinding of the young to the horrors of socialism? How do we reinstall the liberal values that are at the root of the incredible advancements in the human condition across these past couple hundred years?