Conservatives of my generation made the terrible mistake of believing Marxism was fatally discredited with the fall of the Soviet Union, and only a few aging freaks in campus faculty still took it seriously. We weren't ready for the next wave of the mind-virus and its variants.
It was an easy mistake to make. How could people cling to an ideology that spread death, poverty, and failure around the world, once its primary nation-state supporter lay in ruins - its claims of success across the decades exposed as lies, its victims celebrating their freedom?
How could so many people ignore the hideous history of Marxism and continue to believe THIS time it will work, THIS time all the bugs have been ironed out, THIS time the right people are finally in charge? Forgive my generation for thinking the horror was finally over.
Marxism persists because it IS a virus. It was designed that way - give the old devil and his disciples credit for being ahead of the curve in realizing that an ideology could be custom-tailored to propagate itself endlessly, without needing any nourishment from success.
Marxism is designed to spread by infection, to subvert and overturn institutions, to destabilize societies, to feed upon the offal of greed and envy, which it metabolizes into "virtues." It infects young minds by presenting itself as the utopia that has never been reached.
Every single aspect of Marxist theory is designed to protect and perpetuate the ideology no matter how badly it fails, most notably including the elements of every Marxist ideology that justify the use of violence against those who threaten it, or refuse to submit to its demands.
An ideology that asserts dissent from its principles in good faith is impossible - making dissent a sin punishable by loss of rights, confiscation of property, imprisonment, torture, or death - is well on its way to insulating itself against any degree of objective failure.
The most viral element of Marxism, the DNA that carries over into all its mutations, is the elimination of individual responsibility - the promise of "justice" and "entitlement" achieved through collective power. Every strain of Marxism tells adherents they have been exploited.
This is reflected in the core economic assumption of Marxism: capitalism "exploits" workers and "steals" the value of their labor. All of Marxism's misery and bloody horror, all of the failure and brutal civil warfare it spreads through societies it infects, flows from this idea.
Marxism tells the infected that profit is theft. When an employer hires them for $15 an hour and sells the product of their labor for $20, the employer is "stealing" $5 of value that rightfully belongs to the worker. The employer is a parasite.
You might ask, "How am I supposed to generate that $20 of value unless a business hires me? Doesn't the employer provide valuable to the enterprise? Didn't he take risks starting that business? Didn't I take this job voluntarily? Isn't working better than lying around?"
Marxism has answers for those questions, and its entire toxic ideology, all its society-destroying mutations - right up to Critical Race Theory and the vicious stupidity of wokeism - are built from those answers. The answers teach its subjects to value collectivism over freedom.
"How am I supposed to generate $20 of value unless a business hires me?" Marxism says capital should be owned collectively - by everyone, by no one. In theory, The People own the capital and "share" it. In practice, it ALWAYS ends up in the hands of greedy, despotic politicians.
"Doesn't the employer add value to the enterprise?" No, he's a capitalist exploiter who gets fat and rich by stealing the excess value of your labor. The collective - the State - should "give" you everything you need to thrive because you "deserve" it.
"Didn't the employer take risks starting the business?" That's just a lie fatcat rich capitalists use to justify their obscene profits. Under Marxism, there is no risk. Wise central planners decide where capital goes, doing the best for everyone and bringing "economic justice."
"Didn't I take this job voluntarily?" No, you only think you did. You have a "false consciousness" of freedom. Work under capitalism is slavery disguised as liberty. Only when the wise and loving State frees you from need are you TRULY free to exercise your will.
"Isn't working better than lying around?" Under Marxism, all costs and risks will be socialized, spreading them so thin that they disappear. Everything important will be "free!" In return, the State may require you to make some contributions in accordance with your abilities.
This is the only "just" model of labor under Marxist theory - it's all about people "contributing" "sharing," and "helping," as directed by their brilliant scientific State - which all agree is the only legitimate authority, since all consent to be governed by it.
Never again should any defender of freedom underestimate the seductive viral appeal of these ideas, especially to young minds. Marxism is a vision of society run like a big family. It appeals to kids from good families... and those who desperately WISH they had good families.
Marxism flatters envy and transforms it into a virtue. It offers a regimented vision of society that appears logical once its (entirely false) basic premises are accepted. It claims to makes sense of a senseless and unjust world - very appealing to the young and alienated.
Most importantly, Marxism lifts the burden of individual responsibility from its acolytes. "Socializing" costs and consequences, classifying all misfortune as "exploitation," dividing people into static classes at war with each other - it all says nothing is YOUR fault.
Every strain of Marxism tells its victims that they can never hope to find success, fairness, justice, equity - whatever euphemism becomes fashionable after the old ones wear out - on their own. You can never get a fair shake from a system rigged to exploit you at every turn.
Only the State, the collective, can deliver justice and fairness. Only through collective power can you overthrow the exploiters and steal back your capital, defeat systemic racism, remake humanity into a New Soviet Man better-suited for collective effort and ready for utopia.
And once you join the Marxist collective, you're not individually responsible for DOING anything. You just have to vote the right way, mouth the correct slogans, obey when your betters give you marching orders, and agitate against the old unjust order - which is FUN.
Marxism's viral engineering redefines every sin and indulgence as a virtue, provided it gives Marxism more power and helps it spread. Everything that feeds the collective and destabilizes the old society is either encouraged or tolerated, including criminal violence.
Can you see why this ideology is so infectious, how it has survived so many hideous failures and mutates so readily into new strains, bypassing any immunity built up by healthy societies? It has answers, and excuses, for everything. It supplies enemies, and plans to defeat them.
We should not have been surprised that Marxism would endure, since its adherents control so much of academia, culture, and the information space. They rewrite history daily in their thought-virus laboratories to keep it alive and virulent.
They do this because the smartest thing Marxism's developers did was program it to reward the elite who spread it. It's a perfect weapon for destroying and looting civilizations, then it helps the "revolution" become permanent tyranny. THAT part of the code works perfectly. /end

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More from @Doc_0

21 May
Some follow-up to yesterday's thread on Marxism:

It's sad how many people have been programmed to think Marxism and socialism just mean "generous welfare benefits," so anyone who criticizes those ideologies is just a meanie who wants poor people to starve.
That's not thinking, it's regurgitating Marxist cant. Of COURSE totalitarian collectivists want to be given sole credit for "caring about the poor" - or more importantly, to make people think that only be submitting to their toxic ideologies can the unfortunate be cared for.
The idea does not survive a moment of reflection, or a single look at the life in the real world. The unfortunate benefit far more - orders of magnitude more - from the prosperity and technological innovation of capitalism than from the allegedly tender ministrations of Marxists.
Read 23 tweets
21 May
The Left loves cancel culture, but it needs to immunize properly credentialed members of the Left and its Journalism Guild from cancellation, so it's working hard to plant the idea that criticism of them is always "bad faith" and should be ignored.
It's a nifty racket. Lefties can dig up ancient comments or actions from decades ago, or fabricate controversy, but as soon as a credentialed lefty is hit with smelly old email, tweet, or Facebook post, suddenly the intentions of the people who uncovered it are the story.
Of course, lefties aren't going to dig up "problematic" material about credentialed lefties, so everything that ever threatens people of the Left with cancellation will come from someone who isn't a leftie, and is therefore acting in "bad faith" by definition.
Read 6 tweets
19 May
American Jews who vote Democrat should look at Dems rooting for Hamas and understand: this is all Critical Race Theory for them. It's the brain rot that has utterly consumed their collective hive-mind. Oppressed brown people vs. evil rich white oppressors.
Jews are evil rich white oppressors to the left-wing hive mind - and yes, that includes American Jews who currently vote for them. They will grudgingly give you a limited parole from Critical Race Theory as long as they need your money and votes, and you pay tribute to CRT.
It should be more clear than ever, after the events in Israel and Gaza, that Jews are White Oppressors to the CRT hive mind. You'll NEVER be People of Color. You'll never sit atop the intersectional totem pole. You're like Woke CEOs, receiving indulgences because you pay tribute.
Read 6 tweets
18 May
The worldwide Left has been working for a very long time to legitimize political violence and terrorism from themselves and their allies. They're devoted to the idea that violent "resistance" is justified by grievances they deem valid.
The Left wants political violence legitimized because it thinks it will always have a decisive advantage on the streets. Its followers are always on offense, always seeking to destroy what they deem unjust. They see themselves as "revolutionaries" even when they have total power.
The Left has worked very hard to eliminate the old understanding that violence and terrorism delegitimize political causes - the "don't negotiate with terrorists" mindset. They have replaced it with the toxic notion that grievances must be evaluated before violence is condemned.
Read 14 tweets
14 May
The Church of Covid, that bizarre pseudo-science religion, managed to do everything possible to make the pandemic worse. It scared people away from fresh air and exercise. They packed on weight from loneliness and stress, increasing major risk factors for the coronavirus.
Lockdowns wreaked economic devastation and shut down medical treatment for other conditions, at a nearly incalculable cost to health that nobody will ever try to calculate, because it would enrage the public if they saw the hard, cold numbers.
Mask Mania gave people a false sense of security at best, making them devoted to flimsy, unsanitary masks with minimal benefits - and might actually have made the coronavirus spread worse, based on the observable results of mask mandates vs. no mandate.
Read 4 tweets
12 May
Why would anyone think an America Last president-puppet and his handlers would be willing to defend America's allies in a moment of crisis? The world's predators certain don't expect that, and they are acting accordingly.
The lazy caricature of America First as nativism or isolationism had it exactly backward. It's when America Last democrats are running the show that our allies should be nervous, as Joe Biden's World on Fire demonstrates. America Lasters are easy to trick, roll, and intimidate.
America First foreign policy is rational and predictable. Allies and adversaries alike know what we want, and what we're prepared to do to get it. It's straightforward and more likely to be genuinely principled, instead of just TALKING about "principles."
Read 11 tweets

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