Trump Derangement Syndrome

[Alexis Jacobi]

So the speculation among some on the right is that those who brought Nazi flags to the Unite the Right rally were actually trying to undermine the people who were rallying? That sounds a bit like speculation among some on the left that vandalism at their demonstrations is sometimes the work of "counter-demonstrators" trying to undermine the movement.

In the 60s there was a literal paramilitary war conducted against the Black Liberation Movement and the Civil Rights Movement. See for example Ward Churchill's Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. It outlines, I think very accurately (i.e. without excessive embellishment) the use of the Federal police in a literal para-military war conducted against political factions considered dangerous and therefore warranting suppression.

Calling the FBI America's political police, this book examines the agency's harassment, surveillance, and disruption of black and Native American groups in the 1960s and 1970s, and shows how it sought to maintain the sociopolitical status quo within the country. The authors demonstrate how the FBI's covert counter-intelligence program known as COINTELPRO, which was set up to undermine liberal groups, came to symbolize the whole context of "clandestine political repression activities.

This study gives a chilling account of the government attack against the American Indian Movement and the Black Panther Party, placed in the context of the traditional use of the FBI for domestic political repression. It is a powerful indictment, with far–reaching implications concerning the treatment of political activists, especially those that are Black or Native American, and the functioning of our political institutions generally.

— Noam Chomsky

These wars were necessary, from the perspective of the ruling factions, in order to confront and defeat sixties radicalism. I refer to The Spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Postwar Radicalism as a sourcebook to understand this movement (it is written from a very progressive and supportive stance). It is not possible to understand the present progressive-left movement and position unless one studies the views and ideas that inform it.

I seem to be getting myself into some ideological trouble because I demonstrate my resolve to speak clearly, fairly and in a non-partisan manner about contemporary events. By taking this stance I am seen as *suspect* or *complicit*. But my retort is that those who do this, reflexively, reveal just how much they are bound up in partisan positions. I am not criticizing being bound up in a partisan position, but I am suggesting that it is better (in my view) to approach our examination of current events from a position of distance and dispassion.

If you accept that the US in now a cultural war, in the context of developing world-struggles (verging into fourth generation warfare) and if you then take into consideration the function of America's political police in disrupting or eliminating movements that were understood as posing a threat to the continuity of the US and of the 'health of the nation' as a giant economic-cultural machine, then you will have a means to understand the that any faction that disrupts the continuity of the nation as a giant enterprise must be confronted by police force, federal police force, and para-military force.

Presently, but very very unusually, the federal police (FBI acting as political police) has taken aim at the Republican Right. This is unprecedented! The Republican Right (to use a general term) is being vilified and its activists are being arrested, charged, as well as being associated with Nazism and terrorism.

Thus there is an obvious internal war going on. It is a war of consequence given what is at stake.

There was definitely Democrat support and encouragement of rioting, looting and burning, and all the violence of the summer of 2021. It would be naive to assume that there were not also intelligence operations and operatives. Again, if you accept that the FBI and other agencies are political police and have a role in defeating movements that threaten the 'continuity'.

Similarly, all of the events of Charlottesville, and the media-narrative and the propaganda-narrative, have to be examined from a more removed and dispassionate perspective. Having made this effort (by reading material that does not enter the mainstream) I am aware that events there were manipulated for specific purposes. And certainly intelligence agencies and operatives had a role in all of that.

You and others may not want to hear this but those who came to Charlottesville (there were 40 different groups, more or less) came from the grassroots mostly in the South. These are people who have their perspective and have a sense of their 'way of life' and their values. More will be got from understanding them, and them in the context of the present, than in simply decrying their existence.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Do you know that your level of conversation (quote/unquote) is not significantly different from that of Hot Pants? Are you content with that?

Who is "Hot Pants"?

That would be me, I don't think I can be bothered retaliating in kind.

He thinks that if he obscures his own voice with a passive enough one, he can pose as an academic superman with such a talent for detached observation that he might as well be an alien anthropologist observing humans as if we were ants compared to his might.

It's bullshit and the only idiot falling for it is him. He completely assumes all the precepts of various racist theories such as the great replacement and so on. In fact for all the usual boring hard-right conspiracy nonsense, he's just as deeply invested as IC whose false detachment is equally absurd. But he has the extra bit that he clearly and obviously does believe in a Jewish plot to rule the world, and he won't explain what part of the holocaust he thinks is mythical.

Well, what do you think Gary? Was this directed at you? You are being asked to make assessments and decisions. To *take a stand*. Not to do so will indicate your own *complicity*.

What I suggest is to examine what Hot Pants writes as an example of the use of hot rhetoric and also moral coercion. I am not saying that moral coercion not be used, or that it be used, but rather that it simply be noted.

Hot Pants is making interpretive statements and since *interpretation* (how we do this and for what reasons) is very interesting to me I am very interested in what he says. I find that I cannot engage with him, because hysterical reaction does not suit my objectives, so I simply note that he and people like him *exist*.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Personally, and with all the respect I can muster, I think you are non-qualified to participate in conversations of this depth. And I have spent a good deal of time musing in an attempt to understand why this is.

As you well know Nazism pertains to a specific cultural and political movement that developed in the early 20th century.

You really can't complain of a lack of depth if your argument for why contemporary thinkers on the 'dissident' far right are not Nazis is because this isn't the early 20th century. I will rephrase my question. Do you think no contemporary members of what you call the dissident far right have values that Nazis of the early 20th century would share?

There just isn't enough here for me to trouble with Tillingborn. You will have to engage with the entirety of what I wrote in my past post to you. And if you don't want to -- no problem.

[FlashDangerpants]

Who is "Hot Pants"?

That would be me, I don't think I can be bothered retaliating in kind.

He thinks that if he obscures his own voice with a passive enough one, he can pose as an academic superman with such a talent for detached observation that he might as well be an alien anthropologist observing humans as if we were ants compared to his might.

It's bullshit and the only idiot falling for it is him. He completely assumes all the precepts of various racist theories such as the great replacement and so on. In fact for all the usual boring hard-right conspiracy nonsense, he's just as deeply invested as IC whose false detachment is equally absurd. But he has the extra bit that he clearly and obviously does believe in a Jewish plot to rule the world, and he won't explain what part of the holocaust he thinks is mythical.

Well, what do you think Gary? Was this directed at you? You are being asked to make assessments and decisions. To *take a stand*. Not to do so will indicate your own *complicity*.

What I suggest is to examine what Hot Pants writes as an example of the use of hot rhetoric and also moral coercion. I am not saying that moral coercion not be used, or that it be used, but rather that it simply be noted.

Hot Pants is making interpretive statements and since *interpretation* (how we do this and for what reasons) is very interesting to me I am very interested in what he says. I find that I cannot engage with him, because hysterical reaction does not suit my objectives, so I simply note that he and people like him *exist*.

Well that was the most passive-agressive thing I have read in a while.

[Walker]

If someone wanted to destroy the USofA, they would do what Biden is doing.

Is there a reason for this death-defying non sequitur, Walker? If it had even a tangential relationship to the truth, it would have no such proximity to the issue of evidence and clarity in Manny's poker metaphor.

Is it possible that both he and you are running out of coherent defences of your right-wing, pro-Trump position? Are you suffering from a falure of intellectual stamina?

Nit-picking and childish comments such as yours underplays the tragedy of TDS*, which could cause one of the TDS-afflicted who has a community consciousness to start a Go Fund Me project to help the afficted, however it would only be a successful campaign if it included the promise of further destruction of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, seeing as how another effect of TDS is tight-wadiness when it comes to charity.

- TDS afflicts the physical bureaurcratic swamp that Trump opposes.
- The humans who make the swamp possible invariably vote Democrat, which is the racist party of the Left.
- TDS is also the mind swamp that makes the physical swamp possible.
- The TDS physical swamp is centered in Washington DC.
- The TDS mind swamp spreads infectious tendrils throughout the world, even to Germans whose TDS’s afflictions caused them to smirk when Trump as POTUS pointed to the obvious implications of their Russian energy dependence.
- The governor of California is afflicted with TDS.
- This is evidenced by his confusing the Leftist political narrative with the natural laws of cause and effect. This is what totalitarians do either by design or ignorance. They make a proclamation and assume that the proclamation explains away natural law. Of course, they don’t really think that, but they do think that if they proclaim it, the population will believe it.
- In this case of TDS, with details explained in the attached link, the State of California has done so much to raise the price of gasoline, and now it attacks the sellers of gasoline for charging higher prices. However, the sellers who refine the petrochemicals are not public utilities, so the governor attacks them through the courts, legislated regulation, and through propaganda. (This is reminiscent of 9-12-01, when the Left was blaming the CIA for no intelligence after years of attacking and decimating the agency).
- However, this attack on oil refiners/sellers is only a skirmish.
- The Left knows how to maintain focus on the War, on the purpose of this battle.
- The War is won when fossil fuels dies.
- As everyone knows, fossil fuel will never die. However, the government, and those with political influence, will have access to the refined black gold. They won’t have to wait in line at the charging stations. Besides, black gold is necessary to generate clean electricity.
- The government, in today’s climate of corruption, can simply make it illegal for a refiner to sell to any market other than the government. If the refinery boss breaks the law, an FBI swat team can be sent to his home before dawn to terrorize his family, and it will be okay to the TDS afflicted, because the authorities will have a legal warrant.
- When only the government and the connected can taste the convenience of the black gold, then clean electricity will power the electric vehicles driven by the proletariat and their modern day equivalences.
- When the total electric car impact upon the environment is calculated, from mining to disposal of used batteries, electric car impact on the environment is greater than internal-combustion car impact. (Fact-checkers should get on this, because I haven’t personally checked the numbers.)
- Therefore, the climate-change excuse for the Left’s war on oil is total Hogwash.
- The need to believe Hogwash over facts is an affliction of TDS.
- We should have compassion for the TDS afflicted and no longer allow them access to the car keys or the liquour cabinet, ‘cause they be crazy enough to destroy Oil.


* It may also be a symptom.

https://conservative-daily.com/biden/va ... tes-newsom

[Gary Childress]

So the speculation among some on the right is that those who brought Nazi flags to the Unite the Right rally were actually trying to undermine the people who were rallying? That sounds a bit like speculation among some on the left that vandalism at their demonstrations is sometimes the work of "counter-demonstrators" trying to undermine the movement.

In the 60s there was a literal paramilitary war conducted against the Black Liberation Movement and the Civil Rights Movement. See for example Ward Churchill's Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. It outlines, I think very accurately (i.e. without excessive embellishment) the use of the Federal police in a literal para-military war conducted against political factions considered dangerous and therefore warranting suppression.

Calling the FBI America's political police, this book examines the agency's harassment, surveillance, and disruption of black and Native American groups in the 1960s and 1970s, and shows how it sought to maintain the sociopolitical status quo within the country. The authors demonstrate how the FBI's covert counter-intelligence program known as COINTELPRO, which was set up to undermine liberal groups, came to symbolize the whole context of "clandestine political repression activities.

This study gives a chilling account of the government attack against the American Indian Movement and the Black Panther Party, placed in the context of the traditional use of the FBI for domestic political repression. It is a powerful indictment, with far–reaching implications concerning the treatment of political activists, especially those that are Black or Native American, and the functioning of our political institutions generally.

— Noam Chomsky

These wars were necessary, from the perspective of the ruling factions, in order to confront and defeat sixties radicalism. I refer to The Spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Postwar Radicalism as a sourcebook to understand this movement (it is written from a very progressive and supportive stance). It is not possible to understand the present progressive-left movement and position unless one studies the views and ideas that inform it.

I seem to be getting myself into some ideological trouble because I demonstrate my resolve to speak clearly, fairly and in a non-partisan manner about contemporary events. By taking this stance I am seen as *suspect* or *complicit*. But my retort is that those who do this, reflexively, reveal just how much they are bound up in partisan positions. I am not criticizing being bound up in a partisan position, but I am suggesting that it is better (in my view) to approach our examination of current events from a position of distance and dispassion.

If you accept that the US in now a cultural war, in the context of developing world-struggles (verging into fourth generation warfare) and if you then take into consideration the function of America's political police in disrupting or eliminating movements that were understood as posing a threat to the continuity of the US and of the 'health of the nation' as a giant economic-cultural machine, then you will have a means to understand the that any faction that disrupts the continuity of the nation as a giant enterprise must be confronted by police force, federal police force, and para-military force.

Presently, but very very unusually, the federal police (FBI acting as political police) has taken aim at the Republican Right. This is unprecedented! The Republican Right (to use a general term) is being vilified and its activists are being arrested, charged, as well as being associated with Nazism and terrorism.

Thus there is an obvious internal war going on. It is a war of consequence given what is at stake.

There was definitely Democrat support and encouragement of rioting, looting and burning, and all the violence of the summer of 2021. It would be naive to assume that there were not also intelligence operations and operatives. Again, if you accept that the FBI and other agencies are political police and have a role in defeating movements that threaten the 'continuity'.

Similarly, all of the events of Charlottesville, and the media-narrative and the propaganda-narrative, have to be examined from a more removed and dispassionate perspective. Having made this effort (by reading material that does not enter the mainstream) I am aware that events there were manipulated for specific purposes. And certainly intelligence agencies and operatives had a role in all of that.

You and others may not want to hear this but those who came to Charlottesville (there were 40 different groups, more or less) came from the grassroots mostly in the South. These are people who have their perspective and have a sense of their 'way of life' and their values. More will be got from understanding them, and them in the context of the present, than in simply decrying their existence.

What did the people who came to Charlottesville want?

[Gary Childress]

I remember seeing footage of a crowd of them chanting in unison "Jews will not replace us." Wasn't that a bit xenophobic? Granted, there are likely economic problems pushing them toward anger but their expression of it seemed misguided. I would hope one can have an empathetic ear to the less fortunate without actually buying into an ideology that appears on the surface to be destructive. I mean if they were there to protest against their economic conditions, then by all means say it out loud but "Jews will not replace us," (after all the world went through almost 100 years ago) doesn't seem like the right way to do it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I remember seeing footage of a crowd of them chanting in unison "Jews will not replace us." Wasn't that a bit xenophobic? Granted, there are likely economic problems pushing them toward anger but their expression of it seemed misguided. I would hope one can have an empathetic ear to the less fortunate without actually buying into an ideology that appears on the surface to be destructive. I mean if they were there to protest against their economic conditions, then by all means say it out loud but "Jews will not replace us," (after all the world went through almost 100 years ago) doesn't seem like the right way to do it.

What I do, what I have learned to do because it does take some training, is to withhold giving my agreement or assent to any narrative-concoction that is presented to guide or channel my interpretation. My impression is that we live in a time, perhaps it is all jacked-up now because of the civic conflicts, where *control of the narrative* and *framing* are the chief objective of news reporting -- which, in the best of circumstances) is supposed to be *neutral*. There was a NY Times piece by a journalist (an opinion piece) in which he asked rhetorically if given what is at stake (with the rise of the Trump constituency and the realm of dissident, oppositional politics) it was now the journalist's responsibility not to report neutrally but to report as an oppositional activist and with bias. (I forgot the journalist's name and cannot link to the piece).

My impression, and I did a fair amount of research and digging, is that the events at Charlottesville were never fairly reported. And the word fairly (as in see and describe fairly and describe fairly) is a word that appears in my writing often. It takes a degree of self-mastery to avoid allowing one's own biases to enter in.

So with that in mind here is an interview (by a *friendly* interviewer) of the man who organized the Unite the Right Rally (Jason Kessler).

To your question about what groups participated, unfortunately I had an article (again from a friendly perspective, not an opposing perspective) that had a list of about 40 grass roots groups that showed up to protest the removal of the Confederate statue. But I cannot relocate it. Many were pro-South advocates (obviously) who did not want to see the heritage of the South dismantled. There were other notorious personages as well such as Richard Spencer and David Duke. According to Kessler the *chant* was You Will Not Replace Us (a reference to Replacement Theory and demographic reconstitution) but some people did switch it to Jews Will Not Replace us since, as I demonstrated in a video I linked to (and one that circulated widely years ago) there are some Jewish persons who do advocate for a 'multi-culturalization' of Europe (Barbara Specter for example). I am not defending, I am explaining.

If you listen to Kessler's report (interviewed by Henrik Palmgren of Red Ice) you will get a very different perspective than the description and portrayal that is most common. To get that common perspective all one has to do is Google Charlottesville Rally or Unite The Right. All that comes up is extremely slanted, and in today's climate this makes perfect sense. There is a fierce need to control how the event is framed and, again, for obvious reasons.

Granted, there are likely economic problems pushing them toward anger but their expression of it seemed misguided. I would hope one can have an empathetic ear to the less fortunate without actually buying into an ideology that appears on the surface to be destructive. I mean if they were there to protest against their economic conditions, then by all means say it out loud but "Jews will not replace us," (after all the world went through almost 100 years ago) doesn't seem like the right way to do it.

No, the discourse of the Dissident Right is not related to impoverishment (in respect to a Jewish- and a Judaism-critical stance and discourse). The ideas and the expressions of views (which extend far beyond a Jewish critical discourse) that comprise it are very wide and grounded in clear and well-articulated intellectual discourse. The Dissident view is that the Left-Progressive view is the only view given legitimacy and allowed to be studied -- for example at University. To understand that perspective I'd refer you to an interview of the Canadian academic Michael Millerman.

Here is a shorter video by the man who interviewed Millerman describing his orientation and reasoning.

I realize that recommending that people broaden their views and curtail their biases in order to examine a countervailing perspective (that is on the rise and not decreasing) is seen as complicity. I accept this. Nevertheless I am still convinced that it is a better course, especially for those inclined to philosophical perspectives.

And note that this does dovetail with the title of this thread.

What did the people who came to Charlottesville want?

They got a legal permit to have a peaceful rally for the ostensible purpose of opposing the removal of a Confederate monument. And the larger idea was to create a forum for the communication of their conservative and dissident views.

[Gary Childress]

I remember seeing footage of a crowd of them chanting in unison "Jews will not replace us." Wasn't that a bit xenophobic? Granted, there are likely economic problems pushing them toward anger but their expression of it seemed misguided. I would hope one can have an empathetic ear to the less fortunate without actually buying into an ideology that appears on the surface to be destructive. I mean if they were there to protest against their economic conditions, then by all means say it out loud but "Jews will not replace us," (after all the world went through almost 100 years ago) doesn't seem like the right way to do it.

What I do, what I have learned to do because it does take some training, is to withhold giving my agreement or assent to any narrative-concoction that is presented to guide or channel my interpretation. My impression is that we live in a time, perhaps it is all jacked-up now because of the civic conflicts, where *control of the narrative* and *framing* are the chief objective of news reporting -- which, in the best of circumstances) is supposed to be *neutral*. There was a NY Times piece by a journalist (an opinion piece) in which he asked rhetorically if given what is at stake (with the rise of the Trump constituency and the realm of dissident, oppositional politics) it was now the journalist's responsibility not to report neutrally but to report as an oppositional activist and with bias. (I forgot the journalist's name and cannot link to the piece).

My impression, and I did a fair amount of research and digging, is that the events at Charlottesville were never fairly reported. And the word fairly (as in see and describe fairly and describe fairly) is a word that appears in my writing often. It takes a degree of self-mastery to avoid allowing one's own biases to enter in.

So with that in mind here is an interview (by a *friendly* interviewer) of the man who organized the Unite the Right Rally (Jason Kessler).

To your question about what groups participated, unfortunately I had an article (again from a friendly perspective, not an opposing perspective) that had a list of about 40 grass roots groups that showed up to protest the removal of the Confederate statue. But I cannot relocate it. Many were pro-South advocates (obviously) who did not want to see the heritage of the South dismantled. There were other notorious personages as well such as Richard Spencer and David Duke. According to Kessler the *chant* was You Will Not Replace Us (a reference to Replacement Theory and demographic reconstitution) but some people did switch it to Jews Will Not Replace us since, as I demonstrated in a video I linked to (and one that circulated widely years ago) there are some Jewish persons who do advocate for a 'multi-culturalization' of Europe (Barbara Specter for example). I am not defending, I am explaining.

If you listen to Kessler's report (interviewed by Henrik Palmgren of Red Ice) you will get a very different perspective than the description and portrayal that is most common. To get that common perspective all one has to do is Google Charlottesville Rally or Unite The Right. All that comes up is extremely slanted, and in today's climate this makes perfect sense. There is a fierce need to control how the event is framed and, again, for obvious reasons.

Granted, there are likely economic problems pushing them toward anger but their expression of it seemed misguided. I would hope one can have an empathetic ear to the less fortunate without actually buying into an ideology that appears on the surface to be destructive. I mean if they were there to protest against their economic conditions, then by all means say it out loud but "Jews will not replace us," (after all the world went through almost 100 years ago) doesn't seem like the right way to do it.

No, the discourse of the Dissident Right is not related to impoverishment (in respect to a Jewish- and a Judaism-critical stance and discourse). The ideas and the expressions of views (which extend far beyond a Jewish critical discourse) that comprise it are very wide and grounded in clear and well-articulated intellectual discourse. The Dissident view is that the Left-Progressive view is the only view given legitimacy and allowed to be studied -- for example at University. To understand that perspective I'd refer you to an interview of the Canadian academic Michael Millerman.

Here is a shorter video by the man who interviewed Millerman describing his orientation and reasoning.

I realize that recommending that people broaden their views and curtail their biases in order to examine a countervailing perspective (that is on the rise and not decreasing) is seen as complicity. I accept this. Nevertheless I am still convinced that it is a better course, especially for those inclined to philosophical perspectives.

And note that this does dovetail with the title of this thread.

What did the people who came to Charlottesville want?

They got a legal permit to have a peaceful rally for the ostensible purpose of opposing the removal of a Confederate monument. And the larger idea was to create a forum for the communication of their conservative and dissident views.

What you seem to advocate for is called by some the "view from nowhere". Some journalists might protest your view on the basis that a journalist is ultimately--in the final analysis--a human being with human responsibilities. If you see someone drowning you might stand there and notice everything about them as they go under, or you may decide to drop the camera and microphone and interject yourself into the situation and throw them a life preserver or something. If a journalist believes something is wrong, then, according to some views of responsible journalism, the journalist ought to place himself in the situation present to intervene in a way that is the right thing for a human being to do.

I've read a fair amount of Chomsky's politics and Chomsky goes to great lengths to demonstrate the effects of journalistic propaganda in misleading people. It's not to say that it's wrong to have a view (which you seem to be advocating unless I'm mistaken) but rather that it's wrong when the view doesn't correspond to reality or needs to be spun in a way that deceives the reader or consumer of it. You might say the people in Charlottesville have their view that the confederate generals were American heroes worthy of statues. A person whose ancestors suffered under slavery might point out that they're celebrating the exploits of people who were rebelling because they wanted to preserve slavery within their jurisdictions. I mean, who cares if they take down a statue of a Confederate General? Those people are all dead and their progeny are welcome to feast at the table along with everyone else. Erecting statues is not a neutral act. It's a celebration of what the individual stood for and did. It's a celebration of people who fought and killed to preserve slavery. Can we not move past that and embrace some of the things that make the US a good nation? Why do we need to preserve those statues? It's like preserving a turd because you believe a turd is good. I mean, what do you stand for when you stand up for depraved viewpoints and denigrate those with better sense as being naive or lacking "self-mastery"? Why not join the club and agree with someone who has a valid point? Or are all points valid?

[Gary Childress]

Note, it's not a crime to be wrong and then right yourself. It's a crime to be wrong and refuse enlightenment when you're wrong.

[Age]

Note, it's not a crime to be wrong and then right yourself. It's a crime to be wrong and refuse enlightenment when you're wrong.

In whose law, or in what country, is it a 'crime' to be wrong and refuse enlightenment, when you are wrong?

And, what penalties, punishments, and/or consequences are there for committing such a 'crime'?

[Gary Childress]

Note, it's not a crime to be wrong and then right yourself. It's a crime to be wrong and refuse enlightenment when you're wrong.

In whose law, or in what country, is it a 'crime' to be wrong and refuse enlightenment, when you are wrong?

And, what penalties, punishments, and/or consequences are there for committing such a 'crime'?

I apologize, "crime" was not the right word, "mistake" or "shame" would be better words. I'm prone to overstatements sometimes when trying to highlight a point and understatements sometimes in others. It's admittedly a bad habit that I need to work on.

The only punishment is to be wrong. To be mistaken. It's not a crime to be wrong, if it's something relatively harmless. But it's not good to stick to your guns if you're wrong.

[tillingborn]

There just isn't enough here for me to trouble with Tillingborn. You will have to engage with the entirety of what I wrote in my past post to you. And if you don't want to -- no problem.

You tell us that your extensive research has given you insight into the American far right and that you only want to help us understand. I think most of us already understand the themes common to 20th century German national socialism, contemporary American far right goals and every far right movement elsewhere and in between. We understand that some people are Nazis. We also understand that some people who hold such views don't like to be called Nazis. Call them what you will; racial, cultural, religious or national purists, frightened or angry at what they perceive as a threat to 'their people' and prepared to use violence. These ideas have always been around, all that changes is the apologetics.

[Alexis Jacobi]

What you seem to advocate for is called by some the "view from nowhere". Some journalists might protest your view on the basis that a journalist is ultimately--in the final analysis--a human being with human responsibilities. If you see someone drowning you might stand there and notice everything about them as they go under, or you may decide to drop the camera and microphone and interject yourself into the situation and throw them a life preserver or something. If a journalist believes something is wrong, then, according to some views of responsible journalism, the journalist ought to place himself in the situation present to intervene in a way that is the right thing for a human being to do.

Here you are commenting on my anecdote about the NYTs reporter who opted, for ideological reasons and commitments, to become more a social and political operative and activist for specific factions within the political arena rather than report, objectively, about the existence and reality of various social and political factions and differing views and ideologies within the social body.

Over the course of just a few years the NYTs, once considered the national standard of sound journalism and indeed a world standard, has transformed itself into a Maoist-like journal and sponsor of cultural and political activism. I do not use the term Maoist without sound reasons. The NYTs, and many other journals of opinion, have placed themselves as social activist agents in a national transformation process -- a Cultural Revolution. I could spend a good deal of time filling out the picture of what this cultural revolution involves, and indeed it does run through all I write, but the issue hinges on the concept of cultural engineering and political and social praxis.

The political condition within Western societies has, in recent years, increasingly been cast in terms of a ‘culture war’ between radically opposed value systems: between those that want to preserve a pluralistic society where the right to freedom of expression is upheld against those who believe that society should be protected from offensive behaviours and ‘hate-speech’, which are embedded within systems of structural discrimination and oppression.

What has this condition got to do with the ghost of the Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung? More than one might think. The legacy of Mao’s struggle for power in China, and his strategic formulations for winning power, casts a long – and little understood – shadow over contemporary political conduct in the nations that constitute the liberal-democratic West. Of all the strands of modern political theorising that may be said to influence current Western political conduct, it was Mao, above all, who articulated and put into practice ideas of so-called cultural warfare. Key to the idea of culture war is the understanding that the space to be conquered to gain and retain power is not necessarily the physical battlefield but the intangible sphere of the mind. The Maoist conception of the strategic utility of the mind, and its capacity to be moulded towards the waging of cultural warfare, presents some interesting challenges to traditional Western notions of strategic formulation, as this essay will endeavour to show.

I could refer you to essays about Antonio Gramsci and to the pedagogy of Paolo Friere and to the stated objectives of activist intellectuals who made clear their social and political objectives decades ago. And within this activist praxis it became necessary to infiltrate (their term essentially) all institutions with ideological operatives in order to bring about the cultural transformation they regard as right, good and proper.

The “Long March through the Institutions” was a phrase attributed to the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) and then coined as a succinct mission statement by Marxist student activist Rudi Dutschke in the 1960s.

The phrase is used to describe the intellectual takeover of a society without need to resort to a military conflict. Instead, the strategy focuses on slowly winning over the chief institutions that determine the direction of a culture and thereby creating a soft revolution from within those institutions. So, the focus was on the universities, then the unions, the arts, the K-12 schools, the media, then corporations, and finally the society as a whole.

Now, I did not say that I am opposed, necessarily, to this type of activism, and I did not come here expressly as an activist of one political faction or the other, I came here with the intention I stated and continue to state: putting all things on the table so they can be examined.

What I am trying to point out, because it is certainly true, is that as the Progressive-Left moves farther and farther toward a notably radical ideological stance, reaction is evoked. In simple terms it could be said that urban radicalism is confronted by rural conservatism. Or hyper-liberalism ("liberal rot") provokes social reaction and political activism by those who refuse to go along with the praxis-program: the institution of radical social ideas. There you have it in a nutshell. But of course all of this needs to be expounded upon -- for the sake of better understanding.

When you examine the Interwar Period in Europe you will note that the same nexus of operatives -- Marxist, communist, revolutionary, Gramscian -- provoked reaction from within the European social body. Now the thing to focus on is How does this reaction manifest? and how do those who seek to resist and oppose these cultural revolutionary processes, usually with a Marxian ideology empowering them, how do people and groups go about defining an oppositional platform? That is the question really. And the issue is just as real and just as visible now as it was then.

This is why I suggest that you -- those who read on this forum -- to examine some of the resources I link to. For example the interview of Michael Millerman. If you can see how many academics in the universities are deeply enmeshed with ideologies of cultural revolution and activism, and how they limit the sources that students are exposed to, and vilify the political theory of those they regard as *evil*, you will then understand better what 'the long march through the institutions' entailed and where it ends up.

Perhaps your commitments are still toward the cultural transformation as I have outlined it? Certainly that is the stated position of Chomsky et al. But it is not a shared ideological position! Chomsky presents his ideological commitments as *right good and proper* at nearly a metaphysical level. To see things differently means, quite literally, that you are on the side of the bad and the evil.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I've read a fair amount of Chomsky's politics and Chomsky goes to great lengths to demonstrate the effects of journalistic propaganda in misleading people.

Here is the Wiki entry describing Chomsky and Edward Herman's "Propaganda Model":

The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky to explain how propaganda and systemic biases function in corporate mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social, and political policies, both foreign and domestic, is "manufactured" in the public mind due to this propaganda. The theory posits that the way in which corporate media is structured (e.g. through advertising, concentration of media ownership or government sourcing) creates an inherent conflict of interest and therefore acts as propaganda for anti-democratic elements.

Herman and Chomsky's 5 filters of Propaganda Model

First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the propaganda model views corporate media as businesses interested in the sale of a product—readers and audiences—to other businesses (advertisers) rather than the pursuit of quality journalism in service of the public. Describing the media's "societal purpose", Chomsky writes, "... the study of institutions and how they function must be scrupulously ignored, apart from fringe elements or a relatively obscure scholarly literature". The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five classes are: ownership of the medium, the medium's funding sources, sourcing, flak, and anti-communism or "fear ideology".

The first three are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important. In versions published after the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001, Chomsky and Herman updated the fifth prong to instead refer to the "War on Terror" and "counter-terrorism", which they state operates in much the same manner.

Although the model was based mainly on the media of the United States, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic economic structure and organizing principles that the model postulates as the cause of media biases. Their assessment has been confirmed by a number of scholars and the propaganda role of the media has since been empirically assessed in Western Europe and Latin America.

I would have no opposition to examining this model within the context of our present social and cultural crisis. And there is no doubt at all that powerful interests seek to *lead people* and that thus *misleading people* is also possible and likely.

So all of this only points more directly toward the necessity of seeing things from a certain detachment and distance. To see in this way is more *philosophical* and more fruitful in a context such as this forum. At least to its potential.

I have submitted this quote of Wilmot Robinson from The Dispossessed Majority (1972) because it presents and represents an alternative attitude to the developing tenets of cultural revolution. I submit it because it expresses the opinion of exactly that class to which the book refers: a dispossessed majority. Note that he refers to 'the split in the ranks' which, I submit, is only that much more visible today.

Is it not incredible that the largest American population group, the group with the deepest roots, the most orderly and most technically proficient group, the nuclear population group of American culture and of the American gene pool, should have lost its preeminence to weaker, less established, less numerous, culturally heterogeneous, and often mutually hostile minorities?

With all due allowance for minority dynamism ... this miraculous shift of power could never have taken place without a Majority "split in the ranks" - without the active assistance and participation of Majority members themselves. It has already been pointed out that race consciousness is one of mankind's greatest binding forces. From this it follows that when the racial gravitational pull slackens people tend to spin off from the group nucleus. Some drift aimlessly through life as human isolates. Others look for a substitute nucleus in an intensified religious or political life, or in an expanded class consciousness. Still others, out of idealism, romanticism, inertia, or perversity, attach themselves to another race in an attempt to find the solidarity they miss in their own.