James Lindsay, anti-Communist Profile picture
Mar 27, 2022 19 tweets 4 min read Read on X
If you want to understand what's happening in the world today, you must understand: (1) We live in Herbert Marcuse's world, and (2) Our children almost all go to Paulo Freire's schools.
These two facts take many, many hours to unpack and understand, but they can be summarized quickly in a thread. I have produced and am producing podcasts on New Discourses covering those hours and hours as well.
First, we live in Herbert Marcuse's world. This is the world of "Repressive Tolerance," at first blush. It's a world in which movements from the Left must be extended tolerance, even if violent, and movements from the Right must not, to the point of censored *thought*.
We also live in Marcuse's aims, which include sexual liberation (his 1955 book, Eros and Civilization), liberation more broadly through Identity Marxism (Essay on Liberation, 1969), and total Critical Theory and Sustainability (One Dimensional Man, 1964).
The biggest thrusts of Marcuse's work as it applies to the world today, aside from the abusive hierarchy in Repressive Tolerance, are Identity Marxism (new proletariat) and achieving liberated Sustainability (Neo-Communism) through introjecting a "New Sensibility" for Socialism.
The Great Reset is the attempt to create conditions by which total social control can introject the "New Sensibility," including Identity Marxism (Equity and Justice) through Repressive Tolerance. The goal is a "sustainable and inclusive future" under Neo-Communism.
By controlling social media, algorithms, community standards, social credit, etc., the New Sensibility will be forced upon the population until it sticks (Marcuse's introjection). Sustainability in a circular economy will resolve Marx's fundamental contradictions of capital.
The brand name and mechanism for the New Sensibility are "ESG" (Environmental, Social, and Governance standards) and "SDG" (Sustainable Development Goals"). Like Marcuse said, these will require being content with less of everything and a reduction in the world's population.
NB: Marcuse, in the name of Sustainability (Neo-Communism), explicitly calls for a reduction in the world's future population near the end of One-Dimensional Man. That book was written in 1964, when the world population with 3.9 billion, about half of what it is now. Here it is:
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So, we live in Herbert Marcuse's nightmare world (which he modeled after those who reject everything, thus both Heaven and Hell, in the third canto of Dante's Inferno).

Why? Mostly ESG and SDGs, but also because our children almost all go to Paulo Freire's schools.
Paulo Freire, like Herbert Marcuse, was a neo-Marxist nutjob, but rather than giving a nightmarish totalitarian vision for the whole Great Reset future, Freire merely redefined education completely in Marxist terms. Not like Dewey and Counts, who used parts of the Soviet model.
Freire actually redesigned education completely to be Marxist. His books are among the most cited in education, humanities, and social science, and all they really do is take the product of education, being educated (or "literate") and turn it into a Marxist structure.
For Freire, being "formally educated" is like having gained access to bourgeois society, so learning what society considers knowledge (or literacy, including social literacy in the existing system) is to obtain a form of bourgeois property, which, per Marx, must be abolished.
Freire retooled education to get away from learning skills that are useful in the existing society (like being able to read, as literacy) and redefined being literate, or educated, as having obtained a critical consciousness of one's conditions and context. Knowing made Marxist.
Culturally relevant teaching (the other CRT) reproduces this Freirean frame within Marcuse-derived Identity Marxism. Thus, there, context matters and educational attainment doesn't, because that would merely reproduce the existing dominant system, which is the worst thing.
Because for Freire education (and "literacy") is sociopolitical education on Marxist terms, Freire also explicitly blends the roles of educator and social worker, paving the way for the (Transformative) Social-Emotional Learning of today, which enables Identity Maoism in schools.
So now we live in this nightmare world where our kids don't just go to Soviet-style schools or Maoist schools but go to schools where the entire program of education has been retooled into a Marxist endeavor used to program Marxist thought. Total disaster!
This is all being used to set the bottom-up stage for what ESG and SDGs achieve from the top-down and inside-out: the Marcusian "Sustainable" Neo-Communism in which technology solves the production (automation) and distribution (AI) problems inherent to central planning.
If you want to understand the crazy world we live in, then, it's applied Herbert Marcuse. If you want to understand why our kids are being programmed instead of educated, it's Marcusian-adapted Freirean schools. All of this is neo-Marxism, which is really just Marxism warmed over

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More from @ConceptualJames

Jul 7
Canada seems to be trying to set some kind of record for being a completely self-unaware Woke retard country, and this official parliamentary report on combating antifeminism is a great unintentionally hilarious but terrifying new example. Image
You can tell from the summary that this is going to be grade-A retardation where the feminists and masculinity scholars (lol) who wrote it cannot begin to fathom that what they're on about is 100% predictable backlash to their own feminist abuses of men, boys, society, and women. Image
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I'm not going to go through it all here, but these recommendations are so stereotypically Woke that it's funny except that they're actually going to implement it and aim to criminalize totally normal things because they can't figure out that people hate being abused by them. Image
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Read 5 tweets
Jul 6
Some more ramblings of Russian anti-West, anti-American, weirdo Aleksandr Dugin, darling of the Woke Right, sounding surprisingly like JD Vance's economic policy (which Grok will confirm if asked):

"The true "third way" in economics found its classic embodiment in the works of Friedrich List, who formulated the principles of "economic autarchy of large spaces."

"This theory proceeds from the fact that the economic development of capitalist societies is uneven and from the logical consequence of economic colonization by the "richer" countries of the poorer ones; moreover, for the "rich" in such conditions "free trade" is beneficial, and for the "poor" on the contrary.

"From this, List concluded that at certain stages of the economic development of society, it is necessary to resort to protectionism, dirigism and customs restrictions, i.e. to limit the principle of "freedom of trade" at the international level, in order to achieve the level of national and state independence and strategic power.

["Dirigism" refers to an economic system in opposition to laissez-faire in which the state takes an active and directive role in shaping and guiding the economy, rather than limiting itself to a purely regulatory or hands-off approach within a market economy.]

"In other words, it was obvious to List that the economy should be subordinated to national interests, and that any appeal to the "autonomous logic of the market" is only a cover for the economic (and subsequently political) expansion of rich states to the detriment of the poorer, and the subsequent enslavement of the latter.

"This approach immediately sets clear boundaries in which the "market" principle should operate, and in which the "socialist" one.

"It is interesting that Rathenau, the author of the German "economic miracle," and Witte, Lenin, and even Keynes formulated their economic principles on the basis of the doctrine of Friedrich List, although they used a language that was closer to or purely capitalist, or communist vocabulary, that the economy should be subordinated to national interests, and that any appeal to the "autonomous logic of the market" is only a cover for the economic (and subsequently political) expansion of rich states to the detriment of the poorer, and the subsequent enslavement of the latter."

CC: @PhilWMagness
After describing the theory a little, our behated weirdo continues, ominously given the context:

"It is very interesting that it was the Friedrich List model that was used by historically developed capitalist countries in times of crisis. Thus, even the United States, the radical defenders of the principle of "free trade", periodically resorted to protectionist measures and state subsidies to the industrial sector when periods of "economic depression" began.

"It was precisely such a period that was the stage of implementation of the New Deal, when the Americans almost literally reproduced the principles of List, although they submitted them in a relaxed version of Keynes, the author of the theory of "economic insulation", which, in general, is nothing but a new name for the theory of "economic autarky of large spaces ".

"By the way, List himself lived in the United States for a long time and observed the process of capitalist construction in the early phases. Based on these observations, he formulated the basic principles of his theory in relation to Germany. But, of course, the most ambitious results were given by the implementation of List's doctrine in National Socialist Germany, when his ideas were implemented totally and without any liberal or Marxist amendments."

Sounds very Woke Right overall, including the idea of a new New Deal, the favortism of FDR who implemented it, and all the rest. The Woke Right's rejection of Keynes here and a certain revisionist tendency that shows up in that last sentence in Dugin is blatantly concerning.

For further context, Dugin began this discussion (in The Foundations of Geopolitics) by criticizing the application of Hayek to the Russian context in the post-USSR period (which is what he's technically writing about here). All our favorite Woke Right weirdos also criticize Hayek rather strangely and specifically, claiming he is the falsely "conservative" wing of the same liberal (or neoliberal) project that gives us Woke and Communism.

Very interesting, indeed.

CC: @PhilWMagness
It gets a little worse. Remember, this is Dugin writing in 1997 for the Russian context, but our question is why is this the American post-liberal vision today in these United States of America:

"It is this version of the "third way" economy that is the only alternative in today's Russia, which is opposed at the same time to rampant liberalism and restorationist projects of neo-communists who do not want to seriously correct outdated and proved ineffective dogmas. If it were not for the instantly emerging associations with the Hitler regime, one could call this project "socialism of the national type.""
Read 4 tweets
Jul 2
Woke 2.0 is coming. It's starting already.

Rather than foregrounding identity politics, it will push:

1) Affordability (Marxist materialism);
2) Anti-corruption (ironic but an excuse to go after Trump);
3) Anti-Israel (pro-Palestine).

It will be warm to political violence.
The identity politics won't go away, but it won't be foregrounded any longer. It will definitely play supporting roles. They won't lead with it, though.

They'll find much superficial alignment with the Woke Right and Woke-ish "Libertarians" on their three key issues and violence
The agreement will only be superficial and occasionally strategic to block actual patriots. Like with every issue upon which they align, Woke Left (2.0) and Woke Right will come at the issues from different angles, e.g. pro-Palestine vs anti-Israel. Applies to all issues.
Read 5 tweets
May 8
Do you think this right-wing influencer is Woke Right?

This is a thread of new polls revisiting the same questions and same personalities from last August, so scroll down and RT the top post.

1) Tucker Carlson
2) Ben Shapiro
3) Candace Owens
Read 35 tweets
Dec 7, 2025
From my Woke Encyclopedia, an explanation of the "friend-enemy distinction" of Carl Schmitt, which is the Woke political logic. Link at the end!🧵

(1/13) The friend-enemy distinction refers to the cornerstone object of the political and judicial philosophy of a German theorist named Carl Schmitt, who wrote a number of works of right-wing political philosophy and thought before becoming such an enthusiastic Nazi in 1933, just after Adolf Hitler took power, that he earned the informal title “the Crown Jurist of the Third Reich.”

Though most of his significant political thinking was done both before and after he was a Nazi, during the years when he was a part of Hitler’s National Socialist movement and Party, he contributed strongly to the legal theory that justified the Nazi “total state,” including writing the 1933 piece that gets rendered in English as “The Legal Basis for the Total State,” which is significantly based upon the friend-enemy distinction.
Friend-enemy distinction:

(2/13) Schmitt’s thought is primarily of interest on the Woke Right, where he is a favored thinker and model political mind. He is vigorously forwarded for a handful of his political concepts, perhaps most visibly his “friend-enemy distinction” as the essential criterion of what makes politics political. This idea is first presented and developed in full detail in his 1927/32 book The Concept of the Political.
Friend-enemy distinction:

(3/13) For Schmitt, what makes the politics political is the distinction between (public) friend and (public) enemy, where enemies are defined as those who are interested in destroying one’s way of life and friends are defined as those who are willing to band together in its defense.

Schmitt specifically compares the essential nature of this distinction in politics to the distinction between good and evil in morality, beautiful and ugly in aesthetics, and profitable versus non-profitable in economics.

That is, politics is only political to the degree that it recognizes the possibility of factions that exist in mutual enmity underwritten by the potentially existential threat of violence. Of course, that means that Schmitt believes the essential criterion of politics is war, which he reveals also in part by making his point by completing the identity contained in von Clausewitz’s famous remark that “war is politics by other means.”
Read 13 tweets
Nov 7, 2025
All radical movements find themselves in a pinch: they can only really advance when people don't know their true intentions, but they can only really advance by going public with what they're doing. It's an intrinsic dilemma that only rare figures in rare circumstances can win.
Mamdani is a good example of a rare figure (extremely good at presenting himself disingenuously while looking real) in rare circumstances (terrible primary opponent, then running against a terrible combination of Cuomo/Sliwa, then still not winning by huge margins).
The primary reason NYC got Mamdani isn't something to do with the electorate, the climate, or anything else. Mamdani, with tons of weird money, ran a very strong campaign (rare figure) in very weird circumstances, most of which were candidate-specific, not conditional.
Read 9 tweets

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