Why does Marxist thought inspire so much violence? It goes back to that core oppression narrative, the notion that private ownership of capital is exploitation and free societies are SYSTEMICALLY corrupt (or "racist" in the currently fashionable iteration of Marxist theory.)
Of course every collectivist, statist philosophy is inherently violent, because sooner or later they must use force to compel obedience, but Marxism gets to looting, burning, beating, and killing VERY quickly because it sells itself as a revolution against systemic corruption.
We don't reflect enough on how every exercise of state power is an implicit threat to use force. As I believe Walter Williams once put it, even the most benign-sounding law ends with an implied "... or you'll be killed," because that is the final outcome of disobedience.
We should be treating laws like loaded guns, because they are. Instead we allowed our ruling elite to distort American society with an endless maze of laws, making every one of us a criminal, and then we wonder why there's so much violence.
Marxist theory encourages violence before its adherents have official power to sanction the use of force to compel obedience, because it wants to completely overthrow and replace a corrupt society. "Systemic" critiques mean EVERYONE is an oppressor, so everyone is a legit target.
The core goal of the Left is to make every citizen feel like a criminal, so they will accept the limitless expansion of punitive State power. You deserve to have your property seized, your job killed, your activities regulated, because you're racist, sexist, greed, anti-trans...
This descends from the Marxist critique of systemic corruption, which flows inevitably from the private ownership of capital. Everyone is complicit. Everything free people do with their capital is a crime. Every free transaction is exploitation. Everyone is an oppressor.
Designated victims who don't think they are oppressed have "false consciousness" and have been brainwashed into serving the corrupt capitalist system. People who sincerely believe they are not oppressors are likewise in need of re-education. There are no innocent bystanders.
Marxists are taught there is no true freedom under a capitalist system, because everyone is a hapless pawn of corrupt forces, tricked into loving their oppressors, bound by chains they cannot see. Marxists accept that hurting those people may be necessary to wake them up.
You hear this sort of rhetoric constantly from terrorists, many of whom have some degree of formal Marxist training. But you also hear versions of it from mainstream Democrat Party politicians and American Left "thought leaders." They all pose as revolutionaries.
It's one of the big reasons Marxism remains so popular, constantly repackaged and relabeled after each of its bloody failures. It provides a sturdy intellectual framework to justify the use of force - including violence - against corrupt societies.
Marxist recruits turn quickly to violence because they've been programmed with that core belief of universal guilt, total complicity. No one is innocent, so everyone is a target. No one really has a right to their property because they stole it, perhaps unwittingly.
A currently popular strain of Marxist thought says everyone in the oppressor race (white people) stole their property and prosperity from the oppressed (people of color) because of the legacy of slavery. EVERY white person is complicit in this systemic corruption.
It doesn't matter if you never had a racist thought in your life, or you started from nothing and worked hard for everything you have, or even if your family just came to America ten years ago. You're guilty because you benefited from systemic racism. You're a LEGITIMATE TARGET.
Of COURSE people whose brains have been stewed in this sick garbage are prone to violence. If everyone around you is a thief, why not steal from them? If you believe they're all oppressors, why not fight them? If you think peace is a hopeless illusion, why not choose war?
And remember, Marxists always excuse their failures by claiming they didn't have enough power or money to make utopia work - in other words, the oppressors cheated and won. Of COURSE the faithful are furious and prone to venting their rage with violence and destruction.
Meanwhile, Marxists with power facilitate useful political violence by indulging it with legal protection and dismantling society's resistance against it. Rioters must be given space to destroy! We must understand their grievances! They were mostly peaceful!
How did this ideology survive the demise of the Soviet Union, you wonder? How could it NOT have survived? It's too useful, too adaptable. It's like a virus that can infect any operating system. Non-Marxist ideologies lack the capacity for righteous violence needed to resist it.
There will always be people who feel cheated, alienated, frustrated. Marxism weaponizes those feelings with its doctrine of systemic oppression. The elite feel justified in using force to compel obedience. Their footsoldiers feel justified using force to put them in power. /end
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