Some thought provoking insights from Yoram Hazony in The Challenge Of Marxism. I’m not inclined to read analysis of anything Marxist, but this moment in history has some uncanny similarities I was not aware of, and Hazony connects the dots from Karl to Kamala (so to speak). He paints a compelling pattern, even if I want to add details and patterns myself. It’s a springboard…
Read it all.
The Marxists have forced out the Conservatives, now the wheel has turned and they’re coming for the Liberals, argues Hazony. The Liberal world thought they were marching through the institutions but the momentum was with the Marxists among them, who have now forged ahead and are turning on their own.
Will the liberals drop their liberalism and adopt marxism, or will they push back?
Anti-Marxist liberals are about to find themselves in much the same situation that has characterized conservatives, nationalists, and Christians for some time now: They are about to find themselves in the opposition.
This means that some brave liberals will soon be waging war on the very institutions they so recently controlled. They will try to build up alternative educational and media platforms in the shadow of the prestigious, wealthy, powerful institutions they have lost. Meanwhile, others will continue to work in the mainstream media, universities, tech companies, philanthropies, and government bureaucracy, learning to keep their liberalism to themselves and to let their colleagues believe that they too are Marxists—just as many conservatives learned long ago how to keep their conservatism to themselves and let their colleagues believe they are liberals.
This is the new reality that is emerging. There is blood in the water and the new Marxists will not rest content with their recent victories. In America, they will press their advantage and try to seize the Democratic Party. They will seek to reduce the Republican Party to a weak imitation of their own new ideology, or to ban it outright as a racist organization.
Language is a weapon, and they shalt not be known publicly as Marxists but by a shifting sea of names:
…they disorient their opponents by referring to their beliefs with a shifting vocabulary of terms, including “the Left,” “Progressivism,” “Social Justice,” “Anti-Racism,” “Anti-Fascism,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Critical Race Theory,” “Identity Politics,” “Political Correctness,” “Wokeness,” and more. When liberals try to use these terms they often find themselves deplored for not using them correctly, and this itself becomes a weapon in the hands of those who wish to humiliate and ultimately destroy them.
But they are Marxists:
The new Marxists do not use the technical jargon that was devised by 19th-century Communists. They don’t talk about the bourgeoisie, proletariat, class struggle, alienation of labor, commodity fetishism, and the rest, and in fact they have developed their own jargon tailored to present circumstances in America, Britain, and elsewhere. Nevertheless, their politics are based on Marx’s framework for critiquing liberalism (what Marx calls the “ideology of the bourgeoisie”) and overthrowing it. We can describe Marx’s political framework as follows:
Hazony goes through the core Marxist concepts and we can see how so much of this framework is at play today: There is class warfare preying on people’s envy, the oppressors and oppressed. There is the invisible unknown hand of oppression that has been “AWoken”.
1. Oppressor and oppressed
“…people invariably form themselves into cohesive groups (he calls them classes), which exploit one another…”
2. False consciousness
“…the liberal businessmen, politicians, lawyers, and intellectuals who keep this system in place are unaware that they are the oppressors,…. even the working class may not know that they are exploited. “
3. Revolutionary reconstitution of society
The oppressed seize control of the state. Revolution or war.
4. Total disappearance of class antagonisms
Everything will be peace and roses again if they just throw out the Orange Man. Like Marx, it’s a wonderful future but no one has any idea how to get back to peace and happiness after the revolution.
I can’t do it all justice without repeating much of it.
Hazoiny argues that Marxists ideas are attractive because there is a little truth underlying the tension. Groups do form. Power relations between them do have different interests and it can resemble a ruler and slave, but in most normal times it is a symbiotic relationship, not pure exploitation. The shallowness of Marxism is the superficial appeal without the principles that go under and around it.
I crave a slightly more biological model — one that uses evolution and an understanding of groups and battles from power. But Hazomy powers through some core contradictions that power the Liberals.
I think the biggest problem with Liberals is that they are not liberal (when the crunch comes) on the most important liberty liberals are meant to defend — free speech. Hazony writes of a group that aims for an impractical Utopia, believes in reason rather than tradition, and thus the Marxists use every admission of failing as a way to control the Liberals.
In 2020 the control has become hidden in plain view as nearly every opinion (other than the permitted one) is delegitimized.
Thus the endless dance of liberalism and Marxism, which goes like this:
1. Liberals declare that henceforth all will be free and equal, emphasizing that reason (not tradition) will determine the content of each individual’s rights.
2. Marxists, exercising reason, point to many genuine instances of unfreedom and inequality in society, decrying them as oppression and demanding new rights.
3. Liberals, embarrassed by the presence of unfreedom and inequality after having declared that all would be free and equal, adopt some of the Marxists’ demands for new rights.
4. Return to #1 above and repeat.
Liberals and Marxists are locked in this endless dance.
I know that many liberals are confused, and that they still suppose there are various alternatives before them. But it isn’t true. At this point, most of the alternatives that existed a few years ago are gone. Liberals will have to choose between two alternatives: either they will submit to the Marxists, and help them bring democracy in America to an end. Or they will assemble a pro-democracy alliance with conservatives. There aren’t any other choices.
(Read it all). https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/
Interesting article and a pleasant change from the daily diet of covid and climate.
However I think it would be useful if someone could explain what it is that modern Marxists now believe and what sort of policies they would put in place should they gain power, either at the ballot box or by taking control of institutions
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“However I think it would be useful if someone could explain what it is that modern Marxists now believe…”
The same as they always believed:
George Orwell, 1984, Part 3.
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Power to do what? The quote is meaningless.
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The power to take away all of our freedoms, obviously.
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Perhaps my mistake is in assuming Marxists are followers of Marx, whom I taught a semester long course on at one point. Private property is eliminated, but except for the freedoms that flow from property I can’t recall any others being taken away.
The radical environmentalists are certainly not Marxists, they are the very opposite. Marx envisioned a workers paradise based on technological progress, something the greens abhor.
The social justice folks might be Marxists, which makes their teaming with the climate greens a contradiction in progress. But I have not heard the justice types attack property per se, so they are more likely socialists, which is very different.
Of course both the greens and the justice warriors are totalitarian, but that is far from unique to Marxism. My concern is that calling people Marxists, when they are very not, prevents a clear understanding of what is actually going on.
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“Private property is eliminated, but except for the freedoms that flow from property”
which means everyone is a mendicant of the state and, therefore, has no rights.
if you speak against the state you will not get fed.
if you speak against the state you will not be allowed to fly.
…
and don’t tell me it wouldn’t happen that way.
that is exactly how it happens, as Eastern Europe can well attest.
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Indeed David W. you appear to be naive. Maybe pretending to be so or else oblivious. Orwell’s description of power and it’s absolute application is not just Marxist. Marxism is perhaps the tool of choice to accomplish the goal of absolute power.
Orwell warned and we need to heed no matter what name is applied to the “ism”.
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Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War and reckoned the fascists were a nasty piece of work.
‘Throughout the civil war the term ‘Nationalist’ was mainly used by the members and supporters of the rebel faction, while its opponents used the terms fascistas (fascists) or facciosos (sectarians) to refer to this faction.’ wiki
Capitalism of course is good to go, the US is a military industrial complex and police state.
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Which they were, but Orwell came back less than enthused by the communists. Probably something to do with their behind-the-lines executions.
And while I am on the subject I point out that the ghastly military fascists in Argentina ‘disappeared’ 30,000 or possibly double that. Pinochet in Chilé was found guilty of less than 5,000 murders (although the total number, including foreigners, may have been as high as 15,000). The swinish Colonels in Greece MIGHT have killed thousands, less than 30,000. Even Franco, in Spain, only managed a maximum of 100,000 in 35 years (after the Civil War).
‘Good old Uncle Joe’ Stalin eliminated at least 13 million, possibly twice that. Mao’s total in China reaches as high as 65 million, even Pol Pot “only” killed one third of the population.
The odds are better under the fascists, because they are less efficient? Less blood thirsty?
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Mao allowed 40 million of his own people to starve so that he could impress the Western World with his strong export credentials.
We can agree that last century the fascists and communists were ruthless in killing their own people, in the same way Hitler exterminated the Jews.
War creates monsters of us all, Churchill didn’t need to fire bomb Dresden, nor did the US have to kill 200,000 Japanese with a weapon of mass destruction. Excuses are made, savage behaviour and barbarity become accepted norms, but surely its time to move on in the hope we have learnt something useful.
Premier Ji says war is totally unproductive, but its fair to say it pulled the US and Australia out of economic depression.
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“nor did the US have to kill 200,000 Japanese with a weapon of mass destruction”
actually, they did, otherwise Japan would never have surrendered as quickly as it did.
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At the time they were fire bombing Japan with incendiaries and threatened them with extinction unless they surrendered. The end of the European war meant Joe Stalin was free to join the allies and annihilate their old enemy, but the Americans couldn’t risk Japan falling into the communist orbit so they dropped the WMD to prevent that happening.
It was a good strategic movement.
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All freedoms come from private property.
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“Power to do what? ”
George Orwell, 1984, Part 3.
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Stop theorizing, rationalizing and being philosophical about it. The object is power, and then retaining that power “until Jesus comes” to benefit the ruling class and only the ruling class. It’s simple, go study some of the dictatorships or pretend-democracies that we currently have in power and who were trained when the communists still ran Russia and you will easily pick up the trends as described by Orwell. Or better still, go live under such a regime for a while and you will learn a lot faster. Cultural Marxists, Neo-Marxists, Socialists – birds of a feather. And once you grasp that, a lot about the Green movement will become clearer as well.
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I agree, Tony B. I cannot figure out who these supposed Marxists are. The climate radicals and social justice radicals that I track do not strike me as Marxists. Is this just name calling?
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I’d suggest that the climate radicals and social justice radicals that you track are the ‘useful idiots’ of the Marxist cause. They just don’t know it.
That’s how Marxism advances. Terms like ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Anti-Fascist’, ie ‘Antifa’, suck innocent people into believing they are supporting a worthy cause.
In reality, they are enabling the cause of Marxist socialism.
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Talking about terms and name calling, it’s common to distinguish Marxism and National Socialism. In actual fact they share so many common attributes they are essentially one and the same thing. Some use the different names to confuse the masses so they can switch from one to the other and make it appear things have changed for the better but in reality the opposite happens.
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Its important to recognise that the National Socialists support capitalism and the Marxists don’t. Times have changed and the Russian and Chinese communists have become fascists.
Going back to the mid 19th century we can see that the Irish Potato Famine gave the US the opportunity to import a lot of cheap labour. After the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves, labour became even cheaper as these two groups fought amongst themselves for employment.
So we can say that slavery distorted the economic market and that their freedom was ideal for laissez faire economics.
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‘… the ‘useful idiots’ of the Marxist cause.’
Rubbish, there is no such thing as a Marxist cause. As you know Russia and China are not Marxists, they are fascist dictatorships.
There are pseudo socialists, like in the UK and Australia, we call them Labor. The party originally came about as a bulwark against Marxism.
The fascists and capitalists are doing business, so the BLM and Antifa mob are playing right into their hands. One day you’ll wake up, but it’ll be too late.
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In reality, they’re the same.
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No they are not, fascists have four social classes just like us and they support capitalism.
Is our ABC pseudo Marxist or pseudo fascist? Bluey has been sent to the dog house.
‘In two episodes called “Teasing” and “Flat Pack,” a phrase is used that some viewers have found offensive: “ooga booga.”
‘The viewer complaint prompted a public apology from the broadcaster for including a phrase that had a “problematic history for Indigenous Australians” and “racial connotations.” 7News
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I agree EG. there are a lot of different radical causes, movements and philosophies in play. Calling them all Marxists precludes understanding. That there is somehow a hidden Marxist power manipulating them all strikes me as extremely unlikely, probably impossible.
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Whether one is shot by a left-handed gun man or a right-handed gun man the result is the same.
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Peter than is nonsense.
Let us focus on China, a great trading nation. During the 1980s the Solidarity Movement in Poland sent a shudder through the CPC and they quickly began to reform. The authorities created a singular trade union movement where the members couldn’t strike and eventually it came close to Western norms.
https://clb.org.hk/content/workers’-rights-and-labour-relations-china
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“Terms like ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Anti-Fascist’, ie ‘Antifa’, suck innocent people into believing they are supporting a worthy cause.”
So true. And that’s what irks me about the organisers behind this mess. They’re actually using/abusing the decent nature of many people for mischievous purposes. Idealistic school children in particular can easily be tricked into believing things that aren’t true – that’s why we have minimum ages for criminal responsibility, voting, driving etc. The climate warmists, BLM, radical feminists etc have the same standards as con men.
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The breeding ground for Marxists,or their affiliates like Maoist, Leninist, Stalinist, Trotskyists are the University campus.Still. It infests the academic class.It is small but influential and its acolytes are inserted into the polity. There is only one solution to them and it won’t be pretty.
D
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If we are not sure what constitutes a marxist these days, defining a liberal may be even more difficult.
The Liberal party in Australia was founded by Robert Menzies as a middle of the road party but has come to represent the conservative side of politics. In the USA a liberal is more likely to indicate someone who leans toward socialism (I think).
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Yes Peter. Sometimes they lean very hard, as with AOC and Sanders who actually call themselves socialists. We still have lots of conservatives who really are, including me.
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Zealotry is the real problem. Ideals are fine but implementing much of an agenda that stems from an ideology can be difficult. Change for change sake? A better ,fairer? World. Pragmatically we have understood that these the easiest of times and change is better suited to a gradual approach. Anyhoo as they say , enjoy the Holocene.
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The same now as it was then!
The Zealots were Jewish ideological terrorists. “They opposed the Roman occupation of Israel. Their purpose was to incite people into rebelling against the Roman Empire and expelling it from Palestine by force. ….. They also expressed their dislike of Roman rule by violently targeting Romans and Greeks.
Zealots were also known for raiding Jewish habitations and killing Jews they considered apostate and collaborators. They also bore the name Sicarii from their custom of carrying Roman daggers hidden beneath their cloaks. Zealots would use such weapons to stab anyone found committing a sacrilegious act or anything provoking anti-Jewish feeling.”
https://www.biblestudy.org/beginner/new-testament-groups/zealots.html#:~:text=In%20the%20Bible%20his%20name%20is%20Simon%20the,the%20Canaanite%20in%20Matthew%2010%3A4%20and%20Mark%203%3A18.
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And so Judas Sicarius got changed over time to become Judas Iscariot.
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[Duplicate]
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I can only comment on US politics, and even then, I’m not entirely certain of terminology, due to large numbers of fluxes in definitions.
In United States parlance, if one is described as a “Conservative”, one tends to think that government, ” … is a necessary evil, and that government governs best, which governs least …” (T. Jefferson, a ‘Founding Father’). The Constitution was written to limit governmental power. The one fail-safe that the Founders put in was the Second Amendment, providing for the citizenry to be able to keep and bear arms, both in support of national defense, and being the ultimate check on an out-of-control autocracy. Free citizens own firearms; slaves do not.
The contrast to a conservative is called a ‘liberal’ in US language, even though the root word for a ‘liberal’ is “liberty”, or at least it should be. The modern-day ‘liberal’ in the United States is almost a pure totalitarian, thinking that government is the only good that exists in the entire Universe, and that government should control, own, and decide everything. I was a lad of about ten years old when I became aware of the distinction between ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ , and have been, for all practical purposes, a conservative since about that time.
Please note that the terms (U.S.) ‘Democrat’ and ‘Republican’ are slowly becoming meaningless within the context of politics. At one time, I would have described myself as a “Republican”, since that was, once, associated with conservatism. Any more, with RINOs (“Republican In Name Only”) like Mitt Romney and John Kasich, among others, the “Republican” party resembles nothing more than ‘Democrat-lite’. Paraphrasing Ronald Reagan, I did not leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me. I am officially registered as an Independent, and voted as such in the Wyoming primary election, just held on Tuesday, 18 August.
I honestly cannot say what the Republican Party stands for, but I think I can accurately state that the Democrat Party of the United States is very strongly Marxist, or in some semblance, totalitarian, whether that is Fascism, Communism, National Socialist, or what have you, it is just plain, simple, totalitarian. Everything they do, say, plan, and implement is totalitarian in nature, so please feel free to label it what you will. The Democrat Party seeks to increase its power solely for the sake of having power. They will tell their various rent-seekers that they will see improvement in their circumstance, and many of those same rent-seekers vote automatically for the Democrat candidate, regardless of who it is.
I am reminded of Alexander Hamilton’s words in the first Federalist paper:
” … and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the zeal for the rights of the people, than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found to be a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter; and that of those rulers who have succeeded in overturning the liberties of republics, the greatest number began their careers by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.”
Note that Hamilton wrote a couple hundred years before Lenin and one A. Hitler … … …
… … …
… … …
… … … jes’ sayin’ … … … … …
Regards to all,
Vlad
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In Australia and America the idea of left or right politics has shifted greatly partly because of public perceptions from the MSM and from the unnoticed creeping ideology that Marxism fosters within a society.
Consider JFK, decorated for his service, a proud Catholic, pro Israel, opposed to Communism but was still considered too Liberal by Republicans of the time today would be labelled a right wing nut job by Democrats.
This is how far the definitions have swung.
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Going back to the Magna Carta Libertatum, the origin of the word ‘liberal’ is liberty which is about freedom. Somewhere along the way, freedom turned into free stuff fooling Democratic voters into believing that Socialist and Marxists policies are consistent with a liberal ideology. Then they rename the ideology ‘progressive’ to make it sound friendlier when what they promote are among the most regressive policies possible.
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I’ve preferred “Left and Right” not “Liberal and Conservative” partly because I believe “Liberal” was co-opted by the left and no longer has much to do with liberty. Arguably a Libertarian would choose smaller government which is a “Conservative” philosophy.
Also, for me, the association of “left” with “sinister” makes it easy to keep track of what is what.
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Marxists like all socialist types abhor individual choice, as for them, freedom of choice is selfish. freedom of choice breeds winners and losers, and if there are winners in the political/wealth making system then there must be losers. And according to socialist doctrine these losers are created because the winners win!
Socialists offer the MYTH of ‘collective choice’. ‘Collective choice’ is a nonsense whereby the a very large state authority enforces on you to do what the authority elites desire. ‘Collective choice’ is a method of oppression and mass control.
.
.
Socialism is a mind-set where there is only one size of financial pie, and those who take more than their ‘fair share’ must be robbing from someone else. What these socialist idiots can not see is that through hard work and good investments by individuals, anyone can lift themselves and ALL of society. With properly deregulated open markets the wealth grows because it ensures that the financial pie expands, with everyone free to use their talents, joining in with open market trading.
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David,
You might have taught Marxist theory, but these people already know that if they run on a platform of Marxist theory, they will fail. To achieve their outcome they have devised a cunning but very comprehensive plan, which preaches a propaganda that all minority groups are victims of colonialism, capitalism, white people and democracy. The idea is to create race hatred, civil unrest and violence, needed to trick mainstream society into thinking that our system has failed and we must therefore move to a different system. In this new age of Marxism, they present Marxism dressed up as a GND which uses the fake end of world CC scare, along with the concept of a fake green utopia with high paid jobs for all or a high paid welfare choice for those who don’t wish to work, to fool people into supporting the change. What will follow will not necessarily be a purist version of Marxism, and will more likely resemble Chinese communism. But, whatever version of Marxism they create, we know it will be ruthless and brutal and will seek total control over every word spoken or written.
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The new Marxoid dispensation is social justice through aggressively racist anti-racism. Students of Marxism will see the extension of traditional class antagonisms of evil capitalist versus good worker remapped as an unjust racial conflict of white oppressor versus black victim, with “Harrison Bergeron” (short story by Kurt Vonnegut) society as the end state where everyone is finally equal. (But BLM advocates elimination of the White race.)
In other words, “non-racist” is not permitted. One must be anti-racist until outcomes are equal by race, according to historian Ibram Kendrick, recently a professor at American University in Washington, DC.
Now, one of Twitter’s founders gave Boston University $10 million to lead a Center devoted to teaching this, racist anti-racism, as in his book “How To Be an Anti-Racist.” Are you White? Then you are a racist!
“The university’s press release omits Kendi’s more controversial statements, including those that lay bare the racism at the heart of his ideology. One of them:”
https://www.thecollegefix.com/twitter-founder-gives-10-million-to-university-research-center-that-promotes-anti-white-discrimination/
Only an impossible but hopeful utopian outcome is just, it is maintained.:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/prof-defines-antiracism-as-belief-in-equal-outcomes-among-racial-groups/
Well, I hope this message is inspiring.
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CORRECTION: Ibram Kendi, not Kendrick.
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This brings into question of “freedom” and how our levels of governments have minutely taken it away.
It truly effects how happy you are.
When you need a lawyer with you to know what level of laws your breaking now, we have a problem of our government who we trust to work in our best interest.
Forcing citizens into buying products by law or making laws that make penalties are taking your freedom away to choose.
Many young people don’t know freedom compared to elders who seen it and have had it in the past.
This is why the happier times were vastly less government interventions.
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The Canadian federal government creates and borrows money while the Provincial and Municipal have to borrow and beg from the federal which then puts in shared programs forcing more borrowing and begging to the federal. The federal government then blackmails the others to put in its policies.
I don’t like this scam…
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Yes, this civil war on the left has been going on for a few years now but it has only really come to main stream attention in the last 6 months. The frequency of appearances by liberals like James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose of the Grievance Study Hoax fame on conservative Youtube channels shows how the alliance with conservatives is being forged. BTW Linsday and Pluckrose have a book coming out in a few days which deals with the liberal battle perspective. If you are interested in this type of thing the book can be found on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cynical-Theories-Scholarship-Everything-Identity_and/dp/1634312023/ref=zg_bsnr_266129_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=FKD34B4RB7B1B0WP4RS8 It’s already a best seller before release so that’s encouraging.
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The civil war is very apparent in the green climate movement:
https://www.cfact.org/2019/09/28/is-climate-alarmism-tearing-itself-apart/
I call them moderates and radicals, but I do not think the radicals are Marxists.
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The radical left in the US promotes the destruction of capitalism and replacing shareholder equity with some sort of nebulous collective ownership, i.e. government ownership. That sounds pretty Marxist to me.
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The Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairies … (Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite).
… it’s all sweetness and light — at first; but only at first.
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Umm, Sophocles. There is a dance for the single Sugar Plum Fairy and a strange little dance for the quartet of junior swans!
I used to infest the Royal Opera House to watch ballet in my earlier years.
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That strange little dance is inserted into Swan Lake…doesn’t gel with the mood.
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You, of course, are correct, Annie. The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier, and The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. in The Nutcracker ballet. Tchaikovsky put together The Nutcracker Suite from the ballet as a concert suite (opus 71a) with a modified DotSPF if IIRC, and with seven other extracts from the ballet — very singular 😀
It means it’s past time for me to dig it out from my collection and give it an airing. I have the Suite but not the Ballet … oops, wrong again — it’s the complete
ballet, not the Suite. Headphones, come out from where you’re hiding …
I am more than a little envious of you and your “infestation.” 😀
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I’m not very familiar with Swan Lake. I haven’t listened to it enough … 🙂
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Our Canadian Government is in its 3rd scandal with the Finance Minister quitting giving money to charities that give them kickbacks and family jobs. Trudeau has frozen our parliament with another perroge of parliament which closes the investigations and will open with a speech on September 23.
It is expected he will introduce the Universal Basic Income and call an election in the spring.
Buying us with our debt.
We can sort of expect an inheritance tax and one on investments.
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It’s Rudi Dutschke’s “long march through the institutions”.
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Joel Fitzgibbon, Labor frontbencher has suggested the same thing, that the ‘Progressives’ and the Unions will soon split the party. Climate Change destroys jobs which is against the essential reason Unions are formed. Green jobs are a lie. And he has been immediately attacked by Wong and Plibersek. Burn Loot and Murder is another completely artificial imported cause. Whatever the central committee overseas wants is suddenly a requirement. So they paint statues and complain of police brutality, as was tried two years ago but failed. And compliant weasel politicians let the marches go, despite lockdown.
This is painted as a battle between the ‘left’ and the ‘progressives’, but is is a battle between the international Marxists and the traditional Labor members from a time when Labor was a reasonable group of workers fighting for workers rights. Not for the last thirty years. All the direction and ’causes’ are so obviously coming from overseas, whatever is needed to bring down Western democracies. James Cook, Lord Nelson, Winston Churchill are now villains? Who said? No wonder history courses have to be cancelled at Universities and schools. Book burning is next.
And the lie of man made Climate Change is being exposed even by the Greens, many of whom like Greta really believe the world is about to end and those poor Polar Bears. Useful idiots. Like most staff at Universities and councils around the world, overpaid, underworked and compliant, scared for their jobs. And the Capitalists also fall into line. Bankers. Goodyear in the US. They prefer the Fascist version of socialism to the Communist version, so they keep their massively overpaid jobs. The thugs, the Blackshirts, the AntiFa are the Fascisti. Two generations later and they want to do it all again. And their cry is wreck the joint. Why?
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When Che took over cuba, the marxists began executing each other if they “werent marxist enough”.
Marxism is a form of madness…its has no rules excexpt a murderous lust for power that can never be satisfied.
The only way to remove marxism is to completely crush it…..
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OriginalSteve:
Traditional behaviour? Same thing in the French Revolution, then in Russia after the communists took over.
Reminds me of the old ‘joke’ from behind the Iron Curtain.
3 men meet in a concentration camp.
First man; I got 20 years sentence for plotting against Radek.
Second man; I got 20 years sentence for plotting for Radek.
Third man: Pleased to meet you, I’m Radek.
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Kamala Harris who is Biden’s running mate, is a fool: she’s already committing to spending trillions of the US Taxpayer’s dollars to ‘halt the warming of the oceans.’ She’s late, and wrong. The oceans don’t need her help, they’re just quietly getting on with the job.
and it’s only 2020 …
[https://www.climatedepot.com/2020/08/10/new-study-a-southern-ocean-site-has-just-cooled-to-ice-age-era-temperatures-2c-colder-than-20000-years-ago]
But how is she going to do it? There are just a few tekkernickel problems in her way:
1. the oceans hold almost 99% (98.8%) of the world’s CO2 dissolved within them. That’s 52 times the
amount held in the atmosphere.
2. the oceans outgas or emit CO2 from that enormous reservoir as and when they are warmed by the sun. They reabsorb when cooled.
3. the oceans are starting to cool and are no longer warming to the same extent. The cooling has begun.
4. Mankind’s supposedly profligate combustion of so-called fossil fuels forms slightly less than 4%
all the nature’s emissions of CO2.
I think Harris’s ideas form the proverbial `single bristle tooth-brush,’ and I’m not even having to point to the huge hole in mankind’s emissions over the the first four months of this year when the Western kneejerk reaction to Covid was to lock their populations down. Eyes Wide Shut is an apt phrase which springs to mind.
I don’t think the Sun (the principal warmer of the oceans) will listen to her, let alone even acknowledge her existence. It doesn’t do it for the other 6 and a bit billion humans.
Back in 1970, the pioneer of ice core environment measurement, Dr Willi Dansgaard, forecast:
We’re through all those warming periods and now five years into the `next fifty.’
And the cooling is beginning.
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There is a lot of discussion on certain web sites about a sort of Marxists-like post-COVID world by way of what they call is a Great Reset. Klaus Schwab’s vision is one main proponent of such a reset, and is taking it very seriously. His words:
“The COVID-19 crisis is affecting every facet of people’s lives in every corner of the world. But tragedy need not be its only legacy. On the contrary, the pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world to create a healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous future.”
The excuse (more like Trojan Horse) given is we need to fix the inconsistencies, inadequacies and contradictions of multiple systems, from health and financial to energy and education.
The primary supporters of the Great Reset include Prince Charles, Gina Gopinath, the chief economist at the IMF; António Guterres, the secretary-general of the UN; and CEOs and presidents of major international corporations, such as Microsoft and BP. Activists from groups such as Greenpeace International and a variety of academics also expressed their support for the Great Reset. The NWO is no longer a conspiracy theory; it’s WIP supported by Marxists, right-wing extremists and Capitalists. It’s ironic how such groups who typically hate each other with a vengeance happen to agree on something. The Great Reset is described in some detail here:
The Great Reset
https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/
The only question is the timing and for that we have to wait and see. It might take many years for the Great Reset or some derivation of it to be instigated.
More here:
Klaus Schwab’s vision of a post-COVID world, and how the economy can work with nature – this week’s Great Reset podcast
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/klaus-schwab-nature-jobs-great-reset-podcast/
‘Collective action’ – restarting the global economy amid a Great Reset
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/covid-great-reset-gillian-tett-abiy-ahmed/
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It’s a pity the religious order of Davos hasn’t adopted a vow of silence for its annual retreat in celebration of wishful thinking; let’s not take their dilettantism seriously.
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If Prince Charles would like to see a ‘more equitable’ society then he should be prepared to dissolve Royalty and survive on his own merits like the rest of us.
Of course, a ‘more equitable; society still requires the self-appointed leaders to be more equal than others (ala ‘1984’).
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“Of course, a ‘more equitable; society still requires the self-appointed leaders to be more equal than others (ala ’1984′).”
Or perhaps Animal Farm?
― George Orwell, Animal Farm
40
Another name for the wef is “globalists”.
The wef web site is pretty much a plan in plain sight of whats to be foisted on us.
The Great Reset also knobbles capitalism to a “sustainable” level. This is also achieved by laughable covid-driven limits of the number of people in shops ( it was never about the disease…). This is a way of controlling energy use and how much money capitalism can make.
All this comes back to the globalists and thier occult earth-centric religion.
Rebooting capitalism into an eco-straitjacket by limiting the number of people in restaurants/venues is here to stay. Even if the globalists manage to fool enough people into taking thier likely dangerous RNA vaccine, it will really be about controlling what the plebs who currently “pollute” thier mythical “gaia” can do via “immunity passports” ( a la Fauci ) that locks down your life and makes you forever subservient.
No covid paasport? No travel…no normal life.
At the core of ut is population control.
We need to push back hard niw and refuse thier controls, or lose our freedoms..its that simple…..where is Ivemectin or HCQ? Those drigs allow choice and feeedom. Do you see them? No. Only the vaccine-driven slavery paradigm….
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Well at least if they openly start talking about population control and reducing the number of souls on the planet we can say they’ve arrived at the point where they are honest now and tell us what their true intentions are. Because that is the ONLY way for the Green Movement to achieve their goals of placating GAIA. And maybe then the world population will wake up – one can only hope.
60
The first principle of Marxism: It is better for all to be equally miserable than it is for some to have joy and others not.
160
Except if you are in charge; you are wielding the power. Then, it is about appearance. As Orwell said in Animal Farm
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
RicDre is absolutely correct. It is about nothing but power. Because they are right. They can control. Marxism is only about jealousy of not having control. They want power because they don’t have it and they feel they deserve it. It is the most evil thing. Power for its own sake. Because, like the 1984 quote, they won’t know what to do with it when they get it. There will be infighting amongst the new elite whilst everyone else suffers with nothing. And so the cycle continues.
The Chinese Communist Party is corrupt because it has no tradition. Yes, they fought the Japanese, but suffered no where near what the Nationalists did. Yes, they defeated the Nationalists, but only because the Nationalists were war weary from fighting the Japanese for more than a decade. They did not win in Korea. Every traditional Marxist policy they have followed has failed. So they invent “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”. Or Capitalism, as it is known everywhere else. No tradition.
Ready for a fight?
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China has had strong central government for thousands of years, that is their tradition. The Europeans and Americans came in with superior arms during the 19th century and forced them to capitulate, leaving them vulnerable to Japan in the mid 20th century.
Socialism with Chinese characteristics gradually came about after the Gang of Four purging, they were the architects of the Cultural Revolution.
The new broom, a complete break from the past, brought about the greatest economic revolution the world has ever seen.
13
This new broom “leader for life” will be their undoing again, and he might take a part of the world with him. The day the US election results are out and it’s a Biden win, they will invade Taiwan.
70
China won’t invade Taiwan, no matter who wins the US election, but I can see Puerto Rico (an unincorporated territory of the US) being sold to China if Donald gets in.
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Wow
40
I support the proposition.
‘Donald Trump wanted to sell Puerto Rico or swap it for Greenland because he viewed the Caribbean territory as “dirty” and “poor”, a former senior White House official has said.’ Independent
Beijing would make it into a prosperous tourist destination.
15
The terms ‘Marxism’ ‘Marxist’ etc. are anachronisms.
They can be called ‘Marxists’, some may even describe themselves as ‘Marxists’ without having read a word of Marx, but what the ‘left’ in the US and here promote is statism, a shift to the corporate state.
As in the current US election campaigning climate and Covid19 bogies are perfect vehicles for an increase in the power of the state and the concomitant shrinking of individual autonomy and choice.
The riots and lawlessness are tangential, it is ‘The Swamp’ and Wall Street that is supporting the Democratic Party.
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In other words it’s better to stick with terms like communism, socialism and capitalism. Marxism, Nazism, etc. don’t exist today apart from some tiny extremists groups that hardly ever show themselves in public for obvious reasons. Not many know there exists a neo-Nazi group called the Golden Dawn here in Australia, which is a part of the Golden Dawn Party in Greece. They do the usual Nazi salute, have a derivation of the Nazi flag, etc. but I haven’t seen nor heard them in public thus far.
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Here is a multiple choice comprehension IQ test:
‘Communism, Socialism, Capitalism, Marxism, Nazism’: based on empirical evidence which is the odd one out?
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Communism. The rest have an A
10
Marx was, one supposes, an economist. Marxism was taught as an economic theory.
No society could ever develop as Marxist, of course, because any society more sophisticated that hunter-gathering
requires the organization of capital. It became conflated with socialism on the notion of ‘stakeholders’ beyond
those who actually risked capital in a business nonetheless being deserving of goodies from its operation beyond a legitimate remuneration for services.
Basically, today’s Marxists want power so they can take everything. They plan to consume what they take and rub your face in it. There doesn’t
seem do be any plan beyond that. No reason not to dispense with them with extreme prejudice if they attack you neighborhood that I can see.
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Marx was a philosopher.
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Mick Taylor was public relations officer for backpackers !
130
Ivan Milat was a pioneer in the ride share industry !
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I shouldn’t laugh – but that is so funny!
60
Yeah and Ivan Milat was a backpacker tour guide.
110
Beat me to it, I guess the difference between the two was Marx put more thought into achieving the same result.
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Today, Marx would have been a promoter of the lie of anthropogenic global warming. Instead, today, his followers do it for him.
Johnson, Paul (2007) [1988]. Intellectuals From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky by Paul Johnson (revised ed.). Perennial. ISBN 978-0061253171.
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Consider the Workplace.
In any business enterprise, you are told when to work, how long to work, what to produce and how to produce it. The output of your labour stays with the owners of the enterprise.
The decisions on where the enterprise is located, how its workers will be rewarded, what workers are needed, and everything else necessary for the operation of the enterprise are made by a small group of people, for example, a board of directors, who are only interested in the bottom line.
In Australia we have the example of Qantas where the board after sacking 6,000 workers in July will sack another 4000 next week. Do the workers who provided the labour have any say – No
To repeat – a small group of people control the welfare of a larger group of workers.
Where does this expliotation occur?
you know the answer
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Yes but in a democracy and free market those same workers have the right to start their own business or even as a group enterprise bargain for better conditions and pay, every Australian associates the union movement with the southern cross flag but nothing could be further from the truth, the miners who fought and died for fair trade laws were up against a government and its standing army that had gone bad from the bottom up not someones private enterprise that any of us is free to attempt to emulate or not.
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you miss the point yonniestone. you lose all of your democracy the moment you trade your labour for a wage. you have less say in how your labour is used than any worker in a Marxist or socialist regime (I am excluding communism). So exactly where is the difference?
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You don’t like where you are? Find something else more attractive. Employers have to compete as well under capitalism.
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The thrust of the post is that a particular philosophy, which is mislabeled as Marxism is taking over politics. I’m saying that this is natural extension of that “marxism” which has always been the basis of the labour market. Your point is true, but is not germane to the topic of the post.
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Neither is your original post about exploitation, then
80
If you have never worked as a permanent, casual, contract or owned a business then then its impossible for you to understand the workings of a free market, your misguided placement of Marxism in our economy clearly explains your imposition of a failed hypothesis no matter the cost.
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Well Peter, now we know you have never worked in a factory; you know, those places actually doing something.
And as for those poor downtrodden ‘serfs’ I remember the Operations Manager at my last employer complaining that he had just found out that he was the seventh highest paid employee. All of them supposedly under him.
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“Well Peter, now we know you have never worked in a factory;” – how do you know?
stupid ad homs reflect on your intelligence is a good way
39
Well, have you?
51
In any business enterprise, you are told when to work, No – I worked from home in my last job and made appointments that suited me and my clients
how long to work, No – I had reports to produce, agreed with the clients, not the employer
what to produce and how to produce it. No – I presented information in the way I felt achieved most appropriate for the client and independent readers
The output of your labour stays with the owners of the enterprise. No – it was shared between my employer , the clients and parties either chose to share it with.
The decisions on where the enterprise is located, No – I was given the choice to work from home or my employers office
how its workers will be rewarded, No – It was a negotiated contract of employment – most are but by a union rather than individually
You have a very aged and tired view of employment. It is inconsistent with employment arrangements in the modern world. Many people in large cities around the world are presently working from their home – some by choice, some by government decree, some by employer decree.
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Peter, no one forced any of those Quantas employees to accept the employment offered by Quantas. It was their decision to work for Quantas instead of taking some other position with some other employer.
Do make an effort to understand that Quantas is a business, not a charity. If there are no travelers buying tickets because of the AU lockdowns and other Covid impacts, then there is no money to operate Quantas. Thus, there is no money to pay employees who are doing nothing because there is nothing to do. But the costs of Quantas continue to accrue. Loan payments on aircraft, gates, specified maintenance, etc. Essentially, Quantas is a financially sinking ship that is trying to stay alive long enough to start over again and avoid total insolvency.
The AU Government dictated the conditions that preclude tourism and paying flight customers.
For the record, I’m not adding another $3000 to $5000 USD to my travel costs to quarantine for 14 days in a foreign country. Email, Zoom, etc, work well enough there’s rarely an absolute need to travel anyway, for business purposes. For pleasure travel, I simply won’t leave the state I live in.
There are direct and indirect cost impacts to locking down an economy. Quantas is simply one example of many.
Your understanding of economics and business is quite depressingly shallow.
Tell you what, why doesn’t ScoMo take AU deeper into debt and subsidize those Quantas employees and Quantas itself for their troubles? Surely the taxpayers will understand. Never ending lockdowns have a price. You’d simply rather that businesses pay for it, rather than the taxpayers whose elected representatives created this mess in the first place.
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how many of the board were let go?
This is an event that could have been foreseen, and provision made for it. The board should have, it did not, it should be sacked. (count the number of economic shocks there have been since 2000, and the number of virus outbreaks in the same period).
But the point is that the workers have no say in the operations of the business, but take the brunt of the choices of the board.
So you have a small group, who garner a lion’s share of the the profits, but socialise the losses. Yet MARXISTS!
Marxism might be better than the kleptocracy you and I labour under.
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Peter, a Board is comprised of members legally mandated by articles of incorporation. Those positions, not the people in them, are required by law.
I wonder where your foresight was a year ago. If it was so easily foreseen, why didn’t you warn everyone?
The workers have choices to become stockholders, to vote, and to have a say in the business, to the extent they wish to do so.
Your position reminds me of an experience in Spain, 1998. I saw 3 people sitting in a room, doing nothing, day in and day out. I asked one of the other employees “What are they supposed to do and why do they not do it?”.
He informed me that they were Union members, Typewriter Repairmen, to be exact. I asked him how many typewriters still existed that needed repair. He said “Zero, but they are ready, willing, and able, to repair any possible broken typewriters if the need arises”. I asked him why they were not retrained to repair printers and copiers. He said “Oh no. That’s a different job in the Union, you can’t take away their existing positions they’ve held for 20 years”.
Peter, I’m guessing you were a Typewriter Repairman.
130
or possibly a Telephone Sanitizer.
40
TELEPHONE SANITISER?…no way would Peter ever be in that critical job position. He would be on the “A” ark running HR.
40
Peter,
The “board” members are often officials from other successful companies, and while receiving compensation they are not employees in the sense of “workers.”
Do they “ garner a lion’s share of the profits”, …?
I assume not. That would be the largest stockholders.
When the company goes belly-up, stockholders lose, board members are out the position, and the workers likely receive residual benefits.
The things you blame on the “board” ??
Explain what they should have done. Keep in mind they are paid advisers, not paid workers.
40
board members are often appointed from/by the larger stock holders — they have a vested interest in the company’s performance after all
00
It is never exploitation when the job is first created, when the workers are hired, when the economy benefits. At least I think not:
“no sir, that flight attendant’s job is clearly exploitation, I think I’ll keep bagging groceries at the workers free food pantry”.
Now, I do admit it is possible for the workers to buy a plane, inasmuch as the grateful Delta workers bought their company one in good times.
But, of course, when we all have to pay attention to Schumpter, then, of course, the destructive part of creative destruction is always exploitation.
Funny about how there are no violins for the losses of those who put up capital.
Reality is such a problem for left wing types, who must always focus on micro failures and ignore macro successes. Unless one is talking about the jurisdictions they
govern, where we do have macro failure and no visible success.
50
In the developed world, the majority of people are business owners through their investments for retirement. Most super funds are invested in businesses and most people in paid work have funds in super. Many people are unhappy with their declining wealth due to the impact of CV19 on share markets and their own super fund.
The violins may not be playing for QANTAS, for example, but a lot of people are appreciative of the efforts being made to keep the company afloat and with retained value.
I am told aeroplane cabin crew make very good hotel quarantine supervisors; as one door closes another opens. The flexibility of market economies.
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So all I get back is assertions, individual stories which prove my point, and the same old tired arguments
The point remains, most you spend 8 hours a day 5 days a week without the individual freedoms you hold so dear. And those conditions are worse than “marxism”.
Some figures
5 investment institiutions own most of Australian stock
labour share of GDP down through the floor
46
Would you spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without the individual freedoms you hold so dear? – apply Do Pi Dan head of Victoriastan.
40
Your argument is no more valid than saying you are not “free” when you are sitting on the toilet.
The argument is, are you free to choose, and to change, this so-called servitutude, or will a government of
hideous Peters be assigning you? “Free to Choose” and making choices is the operative difference. If all employment
is deemed the same by you, you won’t enjoy the job I’ll assign you if some fool were to give me power.
50
Peter Fitzroy,
20 years ago Apple© was a tiny company struggling to survive. Today they are worth $2 trillion. Who did they ‘steal’ the money from?
50
This exploitation of the worker kills me. In which communist country were the workers really in charge?
There needs to be coordination of the work force and this sort of drivel from Fitzy is just the usual complaint of why does he have to be the worker and not the coordinator.
40
The workers in capitalist countries are not compelled to work, but they do because they prefer to be in the lower middle class than among the five percent who live in relative poverty.
20
Yeah. I can’t begin to imagine why that should be!
But, Shirley, the experience and skills stay with you?
I started work at 15, with no qualifications.
Each job increased my experience and skills, enabling me to become more selective of the next.
(As Bertie Wooster might phrase it, “Rising on the stepping-stones of my dead self to higher things.”)
(Basingstoke! It’s always bloody Basingstoke!)
There’s more to consider than just the workers? Say it isn’t so!
Who are informed by a larger group of people, The Mangement.
Yes, in order to avoid bankruptcy or a hostile takeover, and to ensure their bonuses are paid.
Santa Claus they ain’t.
Why should they?
Their labour is no longer required. End of!
A project on which I was working was cancelled, and all employees who had been taken on specifically for that project were made redundant, 1 month’s notice.
Was I happy to be dumped as a 60 year old IT professional? No.
Did I expect to be thrown a life-belt by the Company? No.
I just applied for jobs all over (except Basingstoke), because our neighbourhood was suddenly awash with IT professionals much younger than me.
An exciting 4 years 6 months.
Having been a junior “Pen Pusher” for a Gas Board, and an “IT Guy” for an Electricity Board, I can assure you that the Unions had a much higher leverage in Nationalised Utilities.
In such a Socialist set-up, the Unions exploited the Company on behalf of the blue collar workers; “Pen Pushers” – not so much; “IT Guys” – not at all (quite rightly – the market set our rates).
10
Basingstoke! Years ago, on my way by train up to London to do something at Australia House re. our emigration application, we stopped at Basingstoke. Announcement on the platform: ‘Basingstoke, Basingstoke, this is Basingstoke’. I regret to say that I looked up and said to the other passengers ‘Centre of the Universe’. They didn’t seem very amused, poor dears!
I do something of the sort on the way in from Lilydale to the city (Melbourne) when we stop at Mitcham; sorry, Mitcham!
10
I used to drive between Reading and Andover quite often via Basingstoke; it was never a place that appealed to me.
10
Sorry.
Away from tablet.
To stay within the Marxist theme.
We down-trodden workers were offered low-cost mortgages, all fees incurred for sale and purchase, and all removal expenses, paid for by the company as an inducement to re-locate to Basingstoke.
But, having been driven around the new estates, shopping facilities, etc., it appeared to have had its “soul” planned out of it.
Most of us stayed on in London. (Well, it was the 60s. Who wanted to be a Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James?)
10
What a great article. It explores the vast substructure of the endless political frauds being perpetrated on society under the various banners of Climate change=Global Warming, Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter by the ‘neo-Marxists’. It highlights how the new Elite are, in fact, the new Overlords ruling over and crushing the new Proletariat who are the new Serfs.
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Helen Puckrose has said this also :
The desire to ‘smash’ the status quo, challenge widely held values and institutions and champion the marginalized is absolutely liberal ethos. Opposing it is resolutely conservative. This is the historical reality, but we are at a unique point in history where the status quo is fairly consistently liberal, with a liberalism that upholds the values of freedom; equal rights and opportunities for everyone regardless of gender, race, and sexuality. The result is confusion in which life-long liberals wishing to conserve this kind of liberal status quo find themselves considered (accused of being) ‘conservative’ and, wishing to avoid (the label of) ‘conservatism’ at all costs, find themselves defending irrationalism and illiberalism.
Puckrose continues (here, term ‘modernity’ being the goal of ‘liberals’ and therefore a synonym for the ‘Enlightenment’ in juxtaposition to the ‘postmodernists’) :
If we see the essence of modernity as the development of science and reason as well as humanism and universal liberalism, postmodernists are opposed to it. If we see modernity as the tearing down of structures of power including feudalism, the Church, patriarchy, and Empire, postmodernists are attempting to continue it, but their targets are now science, reason, humanism and liberalism. Consequently, the roots of postmodernism are inherently political and revolutionary, albeit in a destructive, or as they would term it, in a de-constructive way.
The point is that there was a first “Culture War” when the liberals of the Enlightenment defeated the Conservatives during the Eighteenth Century. We now have a second “Culture War” between the Liberals and the Marxists.
Puckrose , H., 2017. How French ‘Intellectuals’ Ruined the West : Postmodernism, and its Impact, Explained, Aero. 27/3/2017.
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I recommend this video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjYvitCeMPc&feature=youtu.be – of a doctor discussing Covid which includes (from around 44 minutes) how governments are using the virus to control the populace.
Lots of interesting info on the inadequacy of masks, Bill Gates’ connections, Dr Fauci, HCQ/Vitamin D effectiveness, etc)
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This is a must see presentation. From any of us with a medical background it is well put together, and this Dr knows what she is talking about.!…..Very concerning for everyone.!
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Don’t worry, the “liberals” will go after the Marxists for being non-something_or_other
They fully deserve each other
50
We are all equal, just some are more equal than others.
2 legs good, four legs bad.
Where have I heard that before?
20
Confucius say “All men come from same mould – Its just that some are mouldier than others.”
40
I was once amazed at the enthusiasm of young male students for conflict, revolution, challenges, wrongs to be righted, people to be saved. They actually idealised the protest marches of the 1970s against the Vietnam war. Their lives they saw as relatively privileged, safe, simple, boring. Everything their parents wanted, but they wanted and idealised social conflict and causes.
Young people are full of energy, enthusiasm, strength, vitality and desperately want meaning in their lives. For them get an education, get a job, get married, have children, get old, die is not appealing. Put like that it’s not surprising. And young men are happy to go to war and fight. It is in their design. If only for the excitement. There was a sad scene in Les Miserables, ’empty chairs and empty tables’ where his friends talked of revolution.
And they are just feed stock for the Hitler youth and armies and the Progressive and Soros manipulators. Give me a child when he is young is followed by give me a fit young man with ideals and give him training and a weapon. And they will give you back a violent young man fighting for AntiFa. Without even realising they are the fascists.
There is an extraordinary amount of manipulation of young people. And the universities are part of it. So a great proportion of those in these mad causes are educated, privileged young men and women who are having a black sort of fun. While some others indulge themselves in real violence using the others as cover.
How else do you explain three months of riots in a places as privileged as Portland or Seattle or even London? These are not the people being targeted by the police. They are Lenin’s useful (and willing) idiots. Regrets come later.
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‘They are Lenin’s useful (and willing) idiots. Regrets come later.’
Its perfectly natural for the educated young to revolt against the status quo, but eventually they mature to accept that democracy is better than authoritarianism.
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James Delingpole commented that a lot of the ‘protesters’ in the BLM marches had private school accents from the South of London. These are not your natural underprivileged classes or Welsh Miners or grumpy Northerners but people looking for a cause. And they are supported by their ‘progressive’ teachers.
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Yes, while gaining a journalist degree at a reputable university I discovered that all my lecturers were Marxists sympathisers. So that is how the ABC became what it is.
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It reached the heights of conspiracy when teacher and lecturers in the UK and US gave young people the time off and even passing grades without examination if they protested. Like Primary teachers indoctrinating infants on Climate Change and extinction and bad coal, gas, petrol and parents. Indoctrination. Manipulation. Climate religion in a non denominational system. Simply, subversion.
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There is no doubt that the ABC has become the propaganda wing of the Klimatariat.
81
Intelligence and commonsense rarely go together !!
60
But “maturity,” age, wisdom is precisely what those under 40 reject today — or so says the UCLA prof of psychiatry in the latest PragerU video “Time to grow up “. (IIRC).
40
If democracies are pushed off the wall,
And crashed like the Humpties that fall,
The leftist comrades,
Will form red brigades,
And a Marxist dictator install.
120
From Oleg Atbashian in “The Logical Sceptic”:
Economic justice:
Alternately titled as “The Six Contradictions of Socialism In America”
(“The People’s Cube”)
“America is capitalist and greedy — yet half of the population is subsidized.
Half of the population is subsidized — yet they think they are victims.
They think they are victims — yet their representatives run the government.
Their representatives run the government — yet the poor keep getting poorer.
The poor keep getting poorer — yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.
They have things that people in other countries only dream about — yet they want America to be more like those other countries”.
Wouldn’t apply to Australia though, surely?
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Maybe Jacinda doesn’t use ‘comrade’ in public anymore but she may use it inside her inner circle.
50
Search Results
Featured snippet from the web
The term comrade is used to mean ‘mate’, ‘colleague’, or ‘ally’, and derives from the Spanish term camarada, literally meaning ‘chamber mate’, from Latin camera, meaning ‘chamber’ or ‘room’.
40
Ardern was elected president of the International Union of Socialist Youth in 2008. And she used it in the context of a meeting with SOCIALISTS!
Does a tiger change its stripes?
70
Gee Aye is selective with his definitions.
He left out –“a fellow socialist or communist (often as a form of address).”
110
Or as former Labor PM Whitlam often said: “Comrades”.
40
“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.”
Winston Churchill — (Perth, Scotland, 28 May 1948, in Churchill, Europe Unite: Speeches 1947 & 1948 (London: Cassell, 1950), 347.)
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
Winston Churchill — (House of Commons, 22 October 1945.)
“I do not at all wonder that British youth is in revolt against the morbid doctrine that nothing matters but the equal sharing of miseries, that what used to be called the ‘submerged tenth’ can only be rescued by bringing the other nine-tenths down to their level…”
Winston Churchill — (House of Commons, 13 June 1948.)
“Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they already have it.”
Ronald Reagan
“It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.”
Ronald Reagan
“Remember that every government service, every offer of government financed security, is paid for in the loss of personal freedom… In the days to come, whenever a voice is raised telling you to let the government do it, analyze very carefully to see whether the suggested service is worth the personal freedom which you must forgo in return for such service.”
“If more government is the answer, then it was a really stupid question.”
“Of all the millions of refugees we’ve seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward, the Communist world.”
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Lance, thank you for the quotes and thoughts–they contain much wisdom.
20
Without reading the no doubt erudite statement leading to this topic in full, it’s fairly easy to look at the current state of USA politics and make logical inferences.
Biden, poor soul, is plainly not up to the Presidential job. Harris is there as the chosen one to quickly replace Joe after a successful election. The attempts at removing the second amendment, or just removing guns from the populace will be met with armed resistance (we have already seen military weapons on people in the streets; a statement of intent?).
The left extremists have underestimated the reaction they are invoking in normally placid citizens. They assume people will keep hunkered down in fear in their bunkers as those extremists loot, destroy, bash and murder in spreading centres around the USA. The fact is, the DNC is proving their intentions post election victory should remain as undisclosed as possible. Their morbidly Anti-Trump speeches with touchy-feely emotional outpourings avoid policy revelation like the plague. This time they have already put the policy in place to fight a Trump win; that’s what
the postal votes argument is all about. If Trump refused to go after losing on the basis of a rigged election due to those votes; trouble. The Democrats figure they would win either way.
America has had one civil war over policy abhorrent to its citizens. It is well down the road towards another. One would hope enough Republicans with the assistance of many insightful Democrats will see the writing on the wall, plainly set out in the rioting and the
efforts of the governors and mayors in California, NYC, Seattle, Portland and Chicago to take down
their police forces that are essential to hold democracies together.
If the citizens are perceptive enough, not blinded by the political hatreds engendered over the last decade by the extremist leftists that took control of, molded the youngest brains into
the modelled thinking of themselves through teachers, courts, politics, EU and UN, they will see the reality of what they are facing and dump the Democrat Party in no uncertain terms at this election. A post Biden win will not be pretty.
This US election is really at a precipice. It holds the future of Western Democracies in its hand.
Biden and the DNC are already ‘captured’ by China for all the wrong reasons, but point the way to where the Democrats are heading. Obama’s Iran deal was another placating effort with no intent at
stopping Iran’s nuclear development and provided funding for Iran to spread its terrorism where ever it would. China is a rogue nation on many levels but Obama and the Dems did nothing and Biden praises it. US big business – and Australian – are captured by globalism, cowed by the left, are totally profit minded and have no interest in nationalism nor the independence of citizens . This US election is endgame stuff. This is the extremist left endpoint that Trump negated at the last election and so upset the Democrats who couldn’t believe they would stumble at what was to be their finest hour. This time the rioting and deep left policies of those governors show there is no holding the extremists back; it’s rumblin’ time, come what may.
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I don’t believe it is correct to call the current woke identitarian left Marxist at all. Marxism is above all concerned with class struggle, meaning it defines people in terms of their relationship to capital and production. Modern identitarian politics seeks to define people exclusively by their membership of whatever race, gender or ethnicity is considered either oppressed or oppressor. This gives us the spectacle of a black female billionaire (Oprah Winfrey, but she’s not alone) lecturing poor, unemployed white males about their white privilege.
The idea that black, white and LGBT people people might have more in common with people of different identity groups but similar economic circumstances, completely escapes the new left, who insist we act out the part allotted to us by birth. This ideology is grotesque in my view, but it is the very antitheses of class based Marxism
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Best line from today’s speeches at the Democratic Convention would have to have been Julia Louise Dreyfus when she said:”When Donald Trump spoke at his inauguration about ‘American carnage,’ I assumed that was something he was against, not a campaign promise,” …Brilliant single sentence summary of Trump’s failure as President!
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The only carnage happening in America today is in Democrat-controlled cities. Trump has already stated that he will move in and fix the rioting and looting if the governors ask. Until then, it’s up to the democrats to turn it around or ask for federal help.
Come November, when Trump is returned for another four years you can bet that he will move in to stop the mindless mayhem, looting, burning and murder currently occurring in Democrat-run cities.
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I thought the grand finale of Sleazy Joe’s speech was the highlight of the Dems Convention and the promise of things to come under a Democrat presidency:
“There’s never been anything we’ve been able to accomplish when we’ve done it together.”
Atta boy Joe. Just keep dropping those one-liners and you’re a shoo-in son. The test wasn’t whether Biden could make a speech to fire up the supporters, it was whether Biden could get through a speech at all.
Trump tweeted perceptively in response: In 47 years, Joe did none of the things of which he now speaks. He will never change, just words!
BTW the Democrat Convention was such an embarrassing flop that its TV ratings relative to 2016 dropped 27% the first day and 48% the second day. Only desperate Dems are listening to the clichés, the blame-shifting and the moaning. A full 15% of Bernie’s own supporters have also promised to vote for Trump rather than Biden, so much do they despise Joe and the Dem establishment. Payback. (10% voted for Trump in 2016)
The Donald is tied at 46%:46% with Joe in Minnesota polls, that’s in a solid blue state that hasn’t voted Republican in 48 years. On the day of Joe’s speech, Trump was running at 51% in the overall polls — ahead of where Obummer was at this stage in his 1st term. Every time a Democrat mayor gives the Antifa
rioters“peaceful protesters” free rein in their city, Trump’s approval rating goes higher.20
Lenin described the Liberals mentioned in the article as ” useful idiots” nothing changed.
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OT – I’m finding the indigenous flag dispute with the AFL rather amusing. Blame is almost universally being placed on the (non-indigenous) licencees of the flag, but the legally recognised designer made the agreement under which the ban is being enforced and the licencees are defending his profits as much as theirs
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/11/company-that-holds-aboriginal-flag-rights-part-owned-by-man-prosecuted-for-selling-fake-art
On another note, it’s quite revealing that the flag was designed to be confrontational – so much for reconciliation, eh?
https://theconversation.com/explainer-our-copyright-laws-and-the-australian-aboriginal-flag-118687
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Jo, I’m afraid that Hazony is a fringe theorist whose claims don’t stand up to even simple questioning:
https://www.cato.org/blog/ridiculous-claims-yoram-hazonys-virtue-nationalism
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/a-nationalism-untethered-to-history/
He just pulls his ideas out of a hat.
Unfortunately he appeals to a lot of American Cold War nostalgics who seem to dominate discussion now.
You’d be better off reading the books of Michael Walzer who is a true master of political history, but you probably don’t have the time.
This essay is a wild entertaining ride, Hunter S. Thompson style, but includes a recent interview with Walzer and applies some of his insights to the current situation:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/calvinism-america-switzerland
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I commented on this article at forum.quillette.com. This is what I wrote:
__________________________________________
This article tries to show that the current movement is “Marxist” by listing what it and classical Marxism have in common.
True, both advocate “a revolutionary reconstitution of society”, but so do other movements, such as fascism, showing that the concept is too vague to say advocating it makes you a Marxist.
They also have in common the idea that class antagonisms will end when this revolution have taken place. This is probably true – if you asked one of the gurus of critical race theory if they want to abolish class privilege as well as white privilege, they’d agree. But for them, race is central. This puts them closer to fascism than Marxism.
It is true that Engels ‘later’ coined the term ‘false consciousness’ to describe people believing things which are not in their interests, but everyone believes this is possible, including the author, who thinks that liberalism has a weakness which enables Marxism.
But the author’s key amalgam is the dichotomy oppressor/oppressed, which Marxism does indeed have in common with Black Lives Matter and the rest of the American left. The difference is that Marx claimed to have discovered an oppression which contains its own negation – the proletariat is driven to overthrow the bourgeoisie, thus abolishing itself. This theory may be completely wrong, but it’s also completely unlike intersectionality, which compiles a list of minorities (plus women) with a grievance, and claims that their complements (eg. straight white men) gain from their oppression. Whereas it’s obvious that Jeff Bezos gains from my mate Dave slaving away in a warehouse, it’s not at all clear to me how Dave benefits from the murder of George Floyd.
Race activists suffer, not from Marxism, but from Marxism envy. They wish that the New York Times’ 1619 Project was true, that the USA was founded on slavery. In fact, the USA was founded on capitalism, which Marx rightly described as ‘progressive’, partly because it abolished slavery. And if America had not imported a single African slave, it would have survived, and avoided a civil war. Sorry guys, but black people, nor any other minority, are no substitute for the proletariat.
The current movement is not a version of Marxism – it is an amalgam of two currents, one of which became disillusioned with the proles and tried to psychoanalyse them, and another which explicitly rejected Marxism as a ‘grand narrative’.
I’d suggest the author tries again, after reading some Marx & Engels.
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One problem with Hazony is that he’s quite anti-Enlightenment, which means he wants to concede too much. This is a pretty thorough takedown of an anti-Enlightenment video he did several months ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMm7idvfn_o
Jean Kaufman was an occasional writer for the defunct periodical The Weekly Standard in the US. She blogs now, and is presently at work with due criticism of Hazony’ piece on Marx. See http://www.thenewneo.com
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Rod McLaughlin
Claim:This puts them closer to fascism than Marxism.
Very true. But the history of Fascism and it’s brief and potent 20 year run, in contrast to the decades following Stalins Volte faci after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact frames everything for the
EFT today: nationalism IS fascism to them, as Melanie Phillips explains in her first “conversation” with John Anderson in 2018 (See YouTube.com).
These are subtleties lost on a Left devoid of historical awareness or any intellectual heft these days, I’m afraid.
True, too. But they do demand the redistribution of wealth and any ability to produce it, thereby reclaiming the Manifesto’s dictum to create a society where millennialist justice like “From each according to his ability to each according to his needs” is observed.
And in that way they are not at all Fascist.
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Rod McLaughlin
For those of us who lived through the Cold War and really studied Marxism, this shadow game has an airy fairness that’s disturbing.
In the early years after 9/11, the Asia Times columnist David Goldman characterised the Jihadist quest as characterised by “fantasy ideology.” Ideology is what we face again, after its seeming demise.
But, again, to point out the nationalism = Nazi fascism equation yields globalist authoritarian government as the solution! In their minds.
The simplistic and conclusory nature of this idiotic inference is simply to characterise their program as fantastic.
Their actual program is a reiteration from “Prairie Fire!” the manifesto from the SDS faction called the Weathermen, notorious for a bombing campaign, all during the early 1970s. (“Prairie Fire!” is free to download online. It was written in Chicago, and co-written by Bill Ayers, whom Obama disingenuously claimed was some guy in his Chicago neighbourhood. “You Lie!” as Joe Wilson once shot at President Obama.)
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The problem is calling communists liberals and calling national socialists conservatives. These and similar European leftandright assaults on clarity Hazoiny parrots the way Herbert Hoover parroted Adolf Hitler. Yet in February 1947, while National Socialist eugenicists STILL insisted on the gibbet they were “the” alternative to communism, Ayn Rand penned the nonaggression principle while writing Chapter 10 of Atlas Shrugged. That book led directly to libertarian parties active in 2 dozen countries since 1971. No one has ever argued directly with Rand’s premises and conclusions, but rather, flung ordure and simian personal attacks. Adopting the terminology cultivated since 1932 by totalitarians guarantees they win and you lose.
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So that leaves the Greenies for the Marxists to go after next?
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Marxism no longer exists in the real world.
‘Cracks are opening in the Russia-China relationship, from the status of Vladivostok to Russian arms sales to India.
‘The biggest crack involves New Delhi’s suggestion that Moscow join the US-led Indo-Pacific grouping, which is widely seen as anti-China. SCMP
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The weekend! Here’s some much needed enlightened levity!
Hollywood’s cycle of rebellious campus comedies from “Animal House” in the early 1970s forward to 1994s “P.C.U.” climaxes when the latter film unintentionally predicts our recent year’s SWJs monstrous mayhem as the academic tools then strive to rule and police the University, to persecute. And today, now to politicise and prosecute private deviance through their puritanical fascist totalitarianism.
You think that long-winded over intellectualization ain’t a belly laugh of ridiculousness?
Then take in 20 minutes of this smart satirical documentary’s revelations, and I dare you not to belly laugh at least a couple of times! “How the Movie PCU Predicted SJW’s”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEvoqU-TfGk
YMMV, but this is my third viewing and I’m still laughing out loud!
The chaser is a second and longer feature on the politics of ”Demolition Man” (1993) — a future SoCal in 2032 where crime and violence is neutered in a weaponless and ultra-polite SWJ utopia…Or is it? (Starring Sylvester Stallone/Wesley Snipe/Sandra Bullock.) Human nature does a beat down on the behaviouralist social science engineering champions? How vicariously glorious!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrUNIX2Iv04
Classic Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B5v6QZ5R3g
Here’s your quiz topic, boys and girls, at least for those who care to play: which one is right? Which film more accurately defines our world today? And which one is funnier doing it?
What’s fun about pairing these two is how opposite the films and these documentary styles both are.
The first draws on Cheech and Chong doper humour, the post Alfred E Newman ”Mad” magazine style that your mother warned you against because it might corrupt you. The second is far less laconic, and more the ”sociology of film” class approach.
So, it’s like “The Dude” (“The Big Lebowski”), the doper-libertarian, versus the British son of the nephew of William F. Buckley, Jr., giving us the articulate, definitive Talk. Thus, not only are the two films very opposite in comedic style, so are these respective info illuminating videos. Quite the pair(s).
Feel free to bookmark the links and take in some flix fun edutainment whenever you like. The substance is too timely. And this topic’s relevance may be with us until…2032! Woa – Ha Ha Ha!
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Awesome climax at 36minutes: the protest “WE’RE NOT GONNA PROTEST!” Brilliant. (find the link to Remastered 40 minute version of the PCU documentary below the video to finish it.)
The original film in HD free, posted here https://vikv.net/watch/pcu-1994/
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A cynic would think that anyone with a beef about something is able to label it Marxist by using the so many forms and guises
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Thanks Jo. The more articles exposing the reality of Marxism in all of it’s form’s and disguises the better. I still have hope that one day we will soon expose Marxist philosophy for what it is. Marxism is a Trojan horse wrapped in a lie, concealed in a falsehood.
https://eyesonbrowne.wordpress.com/2019/07/28/please-help-save-the-world/
RGB
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It seems to me in order to understand the various philosophies, whether Marxist or Classical Liberalism, other facets of life must be taken into account.
Why must it be Marx with his antagonisms between capitalism and labour or Classical Liberalism between the Individual and the Group?
A much more realistic approach might be to such questions as:
Marxist: Where does human labour stand in this era of mechanisation, automation and robotics?
What answers does Classical Liberalism (self-centred individualism) have for the fractured state of families and communities in this present debt-ridden world of power-politics?
And, another thing:
Read any mainstream media article these days and one begins to realise a false picture of reality is continuously presented – and promoting the ‘herd-instinct’.
It is significant that the arguments presented are invariably appeals to the mob psychology. Look at how the public was/is psychologically manipulated in the’global warming’ scam.
The appeal is away from the conscious-reasoning individual, to the unconscious herd-instinct. And, the ‘interests’ to be saved, require mobs, not individuals!
Where does one look for articles that look deeply into why this is so?
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