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Its principles were part of Leninism from the start. In the short-lived Communist dictatorship in Hungary in 1919, Georg Lukacs, the Commissar for Culture introduced pornographic sex education in schools, forced nuns to watch pornographic films and demonised the family.
The Russian Revolution was not supposed to happen in Russia. It was supposed to happen in Germany, and possibly Austria and Hungary.
When the revolutions in those countries quickly failed, Communists asked why and for Marxists there could only be one explanation: false consciousness on the part of the workers.
After the Romanian army marched into Budapest to get rid of the Bolsheviks (whom they knew wanted to recapture Transylvania and other lost Hungarian territories) Lukacs set up the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt to marry the ideas of Marx, Lenin and Freud, from which emerged the Frankfurt School of Marxism.
Lukacs famously asked: “Who will save us from Western Civilisation?” and tried to do the best he could to do so himself.
He was considered a great literary critic in England in the 1970s and 1980s and probably today. At least, his books continue to be published by Penguin Books, that arbiter of literary fashion.
Now we have Black Lives Matter (BLM) saying on its website that it specifically targets “the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement” and Rebecca Futo Kennedy of Denison University argues that Western civilization and study of the classics only provides cover for racism and sexism. Ancient Greece was “an imperialist, anti-immigrant society convinced of its own superiority because of its ethnic purity.” Aristotle “tells his readers that women are naturally subordinate to men.” If men, sorry people, of good will do not denounce Western civilisation, we “give sanction by our silence to the classical past’s uglier tendencies and embolden those who would use it as justification for present racism and misogyny.”
I owe the information in the last paragraph to Paul Gottfried, sturdy fighter for truth, justice and freedom, writing in Chronicles yesterday. He draws the lesson that it is Anglo-Saxon culture and Western civilisation, not the principles of the US Constitution, which are the basis of the USA and which are under attack.
'Confederates were simply the easiest targets in the opening days of the upheaval. Conservatism, Inc. and other useful idiots, blinded by their deification of Lincoln and his misguided constitutional theory, could not accept that the arguments employed against Confederate monuments could be logically extended to the entirety of American history. The cultural revolutionaries want to destroy the civilization that produced not just Lee, but Grant, Webster, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Washington. This is about power and the ushering in of a new order. Paeans to the Gettysburg Address or the Grand Army of the Potomac will only hasten our destruction.
'As the nation dedicated to a proposition breathes its last, we must embrace Western civilization, which forms the core of our heritage from the mother country. Western civilization is the true target of our enemies, the modern-day Jacobins, and it is the best this world has to offer.'
The Confederacy was established to maintain slavery; it's destruction was right and meet. That said, only a fool would not realize that the effort to pull down statues to CSA heroes was simply the first-step in undoing the foundational civic virtues of Western nations - honor, respect for valor, loyalty to homeland, respect for ancestors, courage, and honesty. Gottfried is right that Western Civilization is the true target of modern Jacobins. You can see a bit of it play out in the hearings for the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. Teh Democrats are more subtle than BLM in their insidious assaults, but both are sawing off the branch on which they sit, like all Jacobins.
ReplyDeleteThe South made a tragic mistake in seceding - they would have maintained slavery without doing so. The North did not of course go to war to end slavery and as I told my supervisor in my first term at university that would have been a completely inadmissible reason for war. Lee and the rest had the same ideals as Washington but unlike him they did not make war on their lawful king. The whole story of the South from 1861 onwards is tragic.
DeleteAlso whatever you think of the Southern cause the men who fought for it were just as brave and patriotic as the men who suppressed them with in many cases great brutality. Getting rid of the statues is a message to the Southern whites, that they are still defeated. Statues are always demonstrations of power. They were erected as sad symbols of defiance of the Yankee conquerors.
Delete"With in many cases great brutality"? Compared, say, to Fort Pillow?
DeleteThe Confederates, after a certain point, won the peace. They kept the black population in subjection while the north got bored and went off to make money. The southern habit of voting against Lincoln ensured great stability in their congressional representation, which counted for a great deal in under the rules of seniority and gave them disproportionate power for many years.
Are you really going to compare a marginal group like BLM to the forces that overthrew czarist Russia after centuries of repression? Seems a bit dramatic.
ReplyDeleteThe Bolsheviks were a tiny group who hijacked Russia for 74 years. There is nothing marginalised (dread word, to quote Wallace Arnold) about BLM. I agree with old man Biden that Antifa is an idea, not an organisation, but a very powerful one.
DeleteNope. That battle was fought and lost at least a generation ago. Ennervated population who just doenst care about illegal immigration at least in the USA. Europe is inundated by Africans. Camp of the Saints 'R Us.
ReplyDeleteSay not the struggle nought availeth,
DeleteThe labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
Trump 2020 A Man vs. A Movement
ReplyDeleteTom Klingenstein explains why 2020 may be the most consequential election since 1860—and why President Trump is the man most uniquely suited to the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_4n_MmNdxA
Cultural marxism was a thing in the interwar years and was seen as a method for bringing about the glorious socialist revolution. But the phenomena that we call "cultural marxism" and "political correctness" (and "Wokeism") today have zero in common with actual marxism. The rise of the New Left in the 1960s represented the taking over and remaking of leftist movements to make them serve the purposes of liberalism and capitalism.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that "cultural marxism" is funded by and promoted by billionaires, bankers and mega-corporations makes it pretty obvious that it has nothing to do with marxism.
The original aim of cultural marxism was to create the necessary pre-conditions for socialist revolution. The aim of modern "cultural marxism" is to defend the economic status quo and to protect corporate profits. Modern "cultural marxism" exists in order to make the world a safe place for billionaires and bankers.
The great weakness of most right-wing dissidents today is that they're still stuck in the 1950s. They still think the communists are going to take over and start collectivising agriculture and seizing the means of production for the workers. There aren't any communists any more.
Modern cultural marxism should more accurately be described as cultural capitalism.
Some of these people might well hate western civilisation, but they have no interest in communism or marxism. They want a society that will be liberalism on steroids.
I agree with most of that. The Marxists are usually not keen on identity politics, so I read.
DeleteI did not intend to imply that we need to fear Marxism but to fear the forces of nihilism, of which Communism is the worst example. Al Qaeda is another. Jacobinism too.
DeleteWe are fighting the enemies of Western Christian civilisation not the ghost of Lenin (though he is dead but he won't lie down). We are fighting anti-colonialism.
DeleteBy which I mean not the 19th century liberal opposition to colonialism but the idea that colonialism was malign not benign on balance because it shared Christianity and Western achievements with the world. Was it Hilaire Belloc who said the British Empire was an ugly name for an ugly thing? Or his mother? In any case it was a lot better than the French Empire. I think the British Empire was the greatest thing in world history.
DeleteI did not intend to imply that we need to fear Marxism but to fear the forces of nihilism, of which Communism is the worst example. Al Qaeda is another. Jacobinism too.
DeleteI agree that nihilism is the big problem. To some extent nihilism is characteristic of all modern political ideologies. Free-market capitalism is in some ways even more nihilistic than communism, and even more soul-destroying. Which is why cultural capitalism is so damaging.
And libertarianism is nihilistic.
I suspect it's just in the nature of modernity that all politics tends towards nihilism.
I see a huge overlap between libertarianism and social conservatism. Your leftwing roots are showing yet again.
DeleteI suspect that Western Civilisation is doomed - but Poland is putting up a brave resistance against the Marxist agenda.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that Western Civilisation is doomed - but Poland is putting up a brave resistance against the Marxist agenda.
DeleteStrangely enough I think Western Europe has a better chance of survival than Eastern Europe. The long-term future for Eastern European nations like Poland is to be entirely subservient American vassals.
The supposed social conservatism of the Eastern Europeans is just a legacy of communism. The old people are socially conservative. The younger people will end up being super-Woke and super-PC.
Countries like Poland are simply not viable sovereign states and never were. Their only choices were to become vassals of Germany or of Russia or of the United States. They will almost certainly make the worst possible choice and become tame U.S. vassals.
Eastern Europe is incomparably less Americanised or globalised than Eastern Europe but young Eastern Europeans want to ape Western culture. They tend to ape their nearest Western neighbours if America and Western Europe are importantly different.
DeleteBut I don't see a distinction from my vantage point in Bucharest. Trump is unpopular here. Obama was popular. Bush 2 popular too unlike in Western Europe m
DeleteLibertarianism is not nihilistic. It simply stressed its preference for voluntary transactions as opposed to coerced transactions. (The foundation of the philosophy is called the non aggression principle, where the government's only role is to prevent the initiation of aggression). Libertarianism actually relies on healthy families and communities to function, and some sort of societal cohesion through religion and traditions, because of the voluntary and uncoerced nature of human interaction. The enemies of liberty of course figured that they must first destroy those natural societal bonds so they can implement their substitutes for voluntary interaction.
ReplyDelete