Eric S Raymond picks up on themes readers of this blog will surely recognize. From “Gramscian damage”::
Americans have never really understood ideological warfare. Our gut-level assumption is that everybody in the world really wants the same comfortable material success we have. We use “extremist†as a negative epithetic. Even the few fanatics and revolutionary idealists we have, whatever their political flavor, expect everybody else to behave like a bourgeois.
We don’t expect ideas to matter  or, when they do, we expect them to matter only because people have been flipped into a vulnerable mode by repression or poverty. Thus all our divagation about the “root causes†of Islamic terrorism, as if the terrorists’ very clear and very ideological account of their own theory and motivations is somehow not to be believed.
By contrast, ideological and memetic warfare has been a favored tactic for all of America’s three great adversaries of the last hundred years  Nazis, Communists, and Islamists. All three put substantial effort into cultivating American proxies to influence U.S. domestic policy and foreign policy in favorable directions. Yes, the Nazis did this, through organizations like the “German-American Bund†that was outlawed when World War II went hot. Today, the Islamists are having some success at manipulating our politics through fairly transparent front organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
But it was the Soviet Union, in its day, that was the master of this game. They made dezinformatsiya (disinformation) a central weapon of their war against “the main adversaryâ€Â, the U.S. They conducted memetic subversion against the U.S. on many levels at a scale that is only now becoming clear as historians burrow through their archives and ex-KGB officers sell their memoirs.
The Soviets had an entire “active measures†department devoted to churning out anti-American dezinformatsiya. A classic example is the rumor that AIDS was the result of research aimed at building a ‘race bomb’ that would selectively kill black people.
On a different level, in the 1930s members of CPUSA (the Communist Party of the USA) got instructions from Moscow to promote non-representational art so that the US’s public spaces would become arid and ugly.
Americans hearing that last one tend to laugh. But the Soviets, following the lead of Marxist theoreticians like Antonio Gramsci, took very seriously the idea that by blighting the U.S.’s intellectual and esthetic life, they could sap Americans’ will to resist Communist ideology and an eventual Communist takeover. The explicit goal was to erode the confidence of America’s ruling class and create an ideological vacuum to be filled by Marxism-Leninism.
Accordingly, the Soviet espionage apparat actually ran two different kinds of network: one of spies, and one of agents of influence. The agents of influence had the minor function of recruiting spies (as, for example, when Kim Philby was brought in by one of his tutors at Cambridge), but their major function was to spread dezinformatsiya, to launch memetic weapons that would damage and weaken the West.
In a previous post on Suicidalism, I identified some of the most important of the Soviet Union’s memetic weapons. Here is that list again:
* There is no truth, only competing agendas. [see my take here]
* All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.
* There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.
* The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.
* Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.
* The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)
* For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.
* When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.As I previously observed, if you trace any of these back far enough, you’ll find a Stalinist intellectual at the bottom. (The last two items on the list, for example, came to us courtesy of Frantz Fanon. The fourth item is the Baran-Wallerstein “world system†thesis.) Most were staples of Soviet propaganda at the same time they were being promoted by “progressives†(read: Marxists and the dupes of Marxists) within the Western intelligentsia.
[…]
The first step to recovery is understanding the problem. Knowing that suicidalist memes were launched at us as war weapons by the espionage apparatus of the most evil despotism in human history is in itself liberating. Liberating, too, it is to realize that the Noam Chomskys and Michael Moores and Robert Fisks of the world (and their thousands of lesser imitators in faculty lounges everywhere) are not brave transgressive forward-thinkers but pathetic memebots running the program of a dead tyrant.
[My emphases]
Raymond’s thesis is sure to generate a bit of outrage—at the very least, we’re likely to hear claims that he either a) overstates the influence of the memes (which I don’t think possible); b) that, regardless of their origins, we have coopted and westernized what was essentially true about materialism and the various critiques of western capitalism and have been able to use them to better our society, much like with did with bits and pieces of other pre-Enlightenment and Enlightenment philosophical systems that taken together form the core of western liberalism; or c) that such a critique disparages an entire important subsector or our activist political culture—modern “progressives”—who, by his tethering of their beliefs to communist propaganda and ideological warfare1, Raymond means to disparage and discredit by a process of intolerance and guilt by association, albeit one festooned with showy erudition (and, rather unhappily for those leveling such a charge, backed up by clearly traceable historical avenues of influence and usage).
Luckily, those of us who are willing to consider the trajectory of modern western progressivism—or, better, those of us who have already seen behind that particular faux wizard’s curtain—aren’t the types who view “tolerance” as placing unpleasant intellectual critiques off limits in civilized debate in order to spare the feelings of one’s ideological opponents. Because such a conception of tolerance, we recognize, is meant to chill speech and protect the very shibboleths that insulate the larger viral meme war that is being waged against individualism.
Unfortunately, as a compassionate and free society loathe to harm others (ironically, our belief in individual freedoms enables the “live and let live” ethos upon which such a pernicious conception of tolerance thrives, especially when expertly finessed and promoted, either through social policy or the academy), many of us too easily concede to the demands of such PC tolerance—and as I’ve been at great pains to point out in a string of posts, one of the reasons for such easy acceptance (and to my mind, the most important structural flaw in our system, which continues to cause us all manner of philosophical trouble) is that the incoherent linguistic system we’ve adopted whereby meaning, unmoored from intent, is tied to actions divorced from personal originating agency (cf. Judith Butler, “actions continue to act after the intentional subject has announced its completion”)—and left to the whims of interested interpreters to pronounce upon.
Sadly, the extent to which such thinking has taken root in American public discourse was exposed by the PC reactions of some notable conservatives (from Bill Kristol to the White House), who advocated indirectly for that very dangerous hermeneutic position in the Bill Bennett affair (and, to a lesser extent, other conservatives took a similar tack with regard to the Flight 93 Memorial controversy).
Which is why Raymond is absolutely correct to note that the first step to recovery is understanding the problem. But beyond that, in order to make sure we are able to understand the problem, we must first point to it each and every time we can clearly identify it—whether it shows itself in the western media’s refusal, on grounds of “tolerance,” to publish Danish Mohammed cartoons (even as they insist to hold back new Abu Ghraib photos would be a violation of their journalistic mandate), or in the kind of identity politics that segregate book stores or give self-organizing groups unassailable autonomy and freedom from criticism of the Other.
Raymond’s critique goes into far more historical detail than I am able to do so here (I’m going to Best Buy!), so I encourage you to read the whole thing.
****
(see also, Classical Values; h/tPajamas Media)
****
update: The Islamic World…Oprahfied? (h/t Allah)
****
1 See also, Mark Brittingham, who identifies much than animates the philosophy in Rousseau and the post-Enlightenment Romantics (the idea of the “noble savage” can also be found in early travel guides to the “new world”; see also, transnational progressivism.
I thought this was to be done with flouridation.
Ah actus, you’ve fallen for the old double bait and switch. Still, at least you didn’t fall for any of the other memes.
Thank you, General Ripper.
“Actus Dei nemini facit injuriam.”
Also
“The judgements of the LORD are true and rightous altogether.”
SB: himself
he he
Every liberal that I know will reject this thesis. The fact of the matter is that they are too weak minded to trace where their opinions originated. It’s bad genetics in some cases. They regurgitate this propaganda that was taught them by there feeble-minded parents (passionate drug addled hippies).
Not that this is the venue to say this, but any person who promotes abortion while railing against capitol punishment, is mentally and morally inferior. That includes you Actus.
And even luckilier, some of us are even less that type than others, now aren’t we? Know what I mean, nudge nudge?
Pull aside that curtain, you fearless intellectual Adonis, you. Discover that Network. Rock on, man.
Rock. On.
Almost like a wingnut wearing, on their blog, the colors of a scandinavian welfare state.
I knew those abortion promotion banners on my website would come back to show how inferior I was some day!
Yes, actus, to an absolutist such as yourself, the idea that one could be against the extent of the welfare state and for the act of standing up for free speech, must be scary and confusing.
I recommend mass quantities of alcohol in combination with the loving of a good right leaning individual (of your gender choice) stat!
It’s for your own good, really.
Are you being serious? You’re actually personally attacking the parentage of liberals? I thought you grown-ups were above that childish fever-swamp nonsense.
If you are seriously going to suggest that American liberalism is a genetic disorder caused by bad parenting (which, I’m not really sure how that works – Nature and Nurture? Who’da thought?), at least provide some empirical backup. Maybe you can start here.
But I doubt you’re serious. You just sort of decided it would be fun to squeeze out little puddle of wingnut spooge on the Internet so you could congratulate yourself on your own righteousness in the full confidence that it would go unchallenged in a forum friendly to that “type”. In which case, fuck you. Painfully.
Like wearing a keffiyah and not being cozy with the 7th century caliphate. Absolutely absolutist. Or not.
CJ and Actus,
Ouch. Did I touch a sore nerve? You seem to be so angry and….. liberal. I probably does suck to have a complete stranger diagnose you both with very little effort.
Once more I have to ask: WTF does actus add to discussions? All he does is strike poses, and if you disagree with one of them, he strikes another one.
It’s crap. It’s trolling—he’s not trying to communicate, just to piss people off.
The point of the entry was where these memes originated and who their early proponents were. Unfortunately for some they seem to have sprung from one of history’s greatest collection of villans. The fact that they caught on with some segment of our society is truly disappointing.
As far as the hippy generation, they were products of overly indulgent parentig and continue that sad tradition. This class of narcissists do not see the worth in truly thinking out some of the positions they promote. Evidence to the contrary isin’t important
Hmmm.
I for one am immune to such destructive memes. Primarily because my father taught me to always ask, prior to accepting any viewpoint for debate, the most useful phrase known to man:
“Why should I give a rat’s ass what you think?”
Ahh. I think I will now retire to my study and write a pean to my father’s great wisdom. Perhaps I’ll title it:
“Who the fuck are you and where the Hell is my beer?”
“It’s bad genetics in some cases. They regurgitate this propaganda that was taught them by there feeble-minded parents…”
That is not “genetics”. No bullshit metaphors allowed. Plain English referring to the facts will do. That’s crucial.
Its this strange fascination with diagnosis based on what is written on the web? Wasn’t there a recent study that its really hard to communicate inflexion and emotion? yet for you, its anger that you see.
Really odd.
It just seems a tad Buck Turgidson. I don’t have a hard time believing in memetic warfare. What I do have a hard time believing in is that its the Soviets fault that we have these memes. They could come from other places.
The author of that article would have us believe that yes, the Hollywood ten WERE “stalinist tools.” But so what? Does that mean that Bridge on the River Kwai was problematic? Salt of the Earth? Exodus? Spartacus? Johnny got his gun? Those are good films, with unproblematic, if preachy, values.
But now we discuss—or rather are having a discussion that assumes—that certain memes such as egalitarianism, progressivism and non-representational art (!) are inimical to our country. Are enemies of our country. Great work on the memetic warfare front.
Robert, didn’t you hear? actus is an artificial intelligence that Jeff is developing. Once we can’t tell it apart from real Democrats, Jeff’s going to let it loose on the internet (on the orders of The Rove, of course) where it will totally replace the commentators of the Democratic Party. All moderate voters will then run to the right and soon after Dick Cheney’s Cock gets a life-time appointment to the Supreme Court, the Glorious States of America will be born. The GSA will, of course, be this totally cool theocracy where we will get to oppress women and brown people at will.
No actus, your absolutism seeps in when you allow yourself to constantly play the part of one who thinks the left side thinking to always be correct and the right side thinking to always be EVIL PATRIARCHAL OPPRESSOR RACIST BULLSHIT.
Either that or you are just immune to rational thinking, because you surely read enough of it here and you still don’t seem to be able to recognize it.
You had me at flouridation[sic], actus. You had me at flouridation[sic].
We could probably stop some of the old Soviet memes from further propagation by adding some level of critical thinking studies to our high school curriculum.
Then again, I think we should be teaching the little bastards about gun safety and financial intelligence as well, and so far those ideas haven’t exactly taken off in the mainstream.
Did the Soviets promote them? Did Soviet agents promote them?
The Nazis didn’t create antisemitism. They used it for their own ends, however. Same thing in this case.
Would you say “so what” if they had been Nazi tools?
Define “egalitarianism” and “progressivism”.
NB: The first use of those words in this thread was yours. Are you defining them in terms of the eight points Raymond cited?
It’s actually two separate lines of thought, but hey, thanks for the grammar lesson Aging Hippy Douche Bag.
Does it seep, or does it wash in uncontrollably, when I diagnose what the other ‘constantly’ is.
Other than the millions dead thing. You know. Like I said, I don’t have a hard time believing soviets promoted myths and memes. I do have a hard time thinking they had the same effect of Nazi antisemitism.
Oour author and the hat tipped link used the term progressivism. I thought it would be safe to use it too. Egalitarianism would be in general the values promoted by a film like ‘Salt of the Earth.’
No charge, sonny. So, go back to the woodshed and practice your new chops. When you can actually articulate two separate lines of thought, then you can join the grown-ups.
This thread delivers. We have natesnake, with an assist from Deacon, acting like a parody troll from Freeper Land and, with apparent sincerity, actually ranting about dirty hippies in 2006. We have clever spelling flames courtesy of Slartibartfast. And of course, a few folks hit the “you’re not a grown up. you don’t think rationally” grace notes. It’s everything that’s wonderful about “debate” on blogs! Keep the cliches comin, boys!
Aging Hippy Douche Bag,
If the ‘grown ups’ are the ones who still fantasize that they’re gifted musicians who are going to change the world with music, flower printed shirts, and bad hair….. then I prefer to stay at the kid’s table.
I can only tell you, actus, that I have never seen you agree with even the smallest point made by Jeff. You seem to use as a baseline, the idea that anything put forth by a ‘rightie’ must be wrong or flawed in some way.
I so love leftards like CJ up there going off all righteous-like on simple common sense. How dare anyone challenge the rot of political correctness.
By now the steps of leftard discontent are so tired, so predictable, so impotent:
1. Get all incensed and emotional. Work up a good head of steam;
2. Counter self-evidence with sheer decibels. Say anything but just say it loudly;
3. Offer no insights, alternatives, facts, or reason whatsoever;
4. Close with profanity. It shows yer serious, fuck it.
Godamn fucking wingnuts, challenging my proud hippie-chick birth. The fucking gall.
I’d recommend Slouching Toward Gomorrah, CJ, but you’d never get a clue…
From Amazon reviews:
Heh. Sounds familiar.
Is he the one that was blocked for smoking weed? Or was that a different nutjob supreme court nominee? I think this was in my copy of ‘America: the Book,’ but I don’t have it with me right now. Sounds like he didn’t have enough of a good time back then.
(Sigh.)
Brittingham’s path back to Rousseau takes in more of the landscapeâ€â€the McMansions that Chomsky and Rorty and Fish have built are seen as part of the metropolis, at leastâ€â€than ESR’s back-to-Stalin shortcut, which makes for too much quibbling over who’s “in” and who’s “out.” But it’s good that he makes the association, because it’s (mostly) true, and people need to see it said.
My own quibble with ESR:
There is no precedent for that.
(And now back to the actus/CJ show.)
Ever heard of the Gulag?
Or Pol Pot?
Or what’s happening in Zimbabwe?
Are you really so ignorant of history as to not know that Communism killed more than Naziism?
Or do you think Nazi propaganda had more of an effect on Western society than Soviet propaganda?
Oour author and the hat tipped link used the term progressivism. I thought it would be safe to use it too. Egalitarianism would be in general the values promoted by a film like ‘Salt of the Earth.’
Nice hand-waving on progressivism. You ever going to define it?
I haven’t seen “Salt of the Earth”, and try not to judge movies by their IMDB entries. So, again, nice handwaving. Definition, please?
Dictionary definitions don’t count; they’re as nebulous as the phrase “affirmative action”. Frankly, I think that’s on purpose—the most anti-progress people I’ve met label themselves “progressive”.
You’re simply brilliant, actus. Good to know you were fully behind the Clinton impeachment. And you hid it so well…
actus latest evasion of facts in 5 … 4 … 3…
Not with memes that have “ruined” American society. Nazi anti-semitism is quite directly connected to the final solution, to the killers doing the killing and the population that worked in the various steps leading to that killing.
Mao and Stalin and Zimbabwe? Not so connected with Dalton Trumbo or “Salt of the Earth.” The fault lies more with, Mao Stalin and Zimbabwe rather than with what meme we may or may not have here.
You said I was the first to bring it up in this thread. I’m not. Can I use our host’s words. Do you not know what he means?
By egalitarianism I do mean the standard dictionary.com definition. Is there a problem with that? Is there some deeper intent you imagine I must have and make explicit before you can understand?
Hey, and the most radical, wasteful people I’ve met are conservatives.
I did like the part where they put online their report, which had details that may have been counter to the Communications Decency Act that the same congress had passed. Brilliant!
I did like the part where you put online your lack of credibility, actus, which also has details that may be counter to the correct use of the English language that the same population uses.
By the way,
In English, please? All I get is that there was only one Hitler, which kinda follows already…
I think impeachment is a political process, not a question of law. And I don’t agree with the politics of impeaching Clinton. Just like most of this country.
Its really simple. Nazi anti-semitism leads to the holocaust quite directly. It leads to the killers doing the killing. Memes which the soviets supposedly caused to be in American popular culture? Those don’t really have much to do with what Stalinists or Maoists do.
Ah, I see you missed it then, actus, which doesn’t surprise me because I think you’re willful.
It’s easy: Your implying that Bork’s opinion is disqualified by marijuana is akin to suggesting Clinton was rightly impeached by what you moonbats insist was a damp cigar.
Right; but you disagree with Bork because you say he toked. Like, I’m guessing, most of the country.
tw: Try taking a firm stance.
Ergo:
It’s all making sense now, actus. It’s all making sense.
No no. I think the guy needs to chill out and have smoke. And I’m not sure he was the nominee that DID smoke. There was another one rejected during the reagan years.
I’m confused. Is actus actually defending Mao/Stalin/et al?
I’m saying that their badness was their own, and had not much to do with memes in american popular culture. To me thats the opposite of defending, that’s damning. They’re the ones responsible for their evil, not the scriptwriter to Spartacus.
Wow, this post really must’ve hit home to the leftoids. They’re spinning furiously, and at least one of them is making less and less sense.
So their commie systems had nothing to do with their pure evil. The systems themselve were, like, innocent by-standers.
Of course not. When I talk about Stalin I’m talking about Stalinism, sorry that wasn’t clear.
But its a big leap from what memes are in american popular culture to Stalinist Russia. A much bigger leap than the anti-semitism of Nazi culture and the Final solution.
Because, you know, communism was never actually really tried out.
Because, you know, communism was never actually really tried out.
And even if it was, 70-some years wasn’t really long enough to determine its success, right?
Actus,
Perhaps a somewhat more useful way of looking at it is notions about euthanasia, social darwinism and racial will don’t lead to Holocaust talk at one remove, but they are critical elements of the foudational structure that led to a lot of the Nazi behavior.
Folks aren’t saying that believing that “The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)” causes atrocities. However, looking at a whole raft of atrocities by Stalin, Mao, PolPot, et al, that they tend to share this point of departure as a common element, in much the same way that many radically racist groups (those who lynch, burn crosses, et al.) tend to share much of the same intellectual and philosophical framework with some really bad guys e.g. the Nazis.
BRD
Where would you rather go to vacation, Cuba/Venezuela or, say, The Bahamas/Virgin Islands? Two totally different systems–two totally different ways of life. The choice is yours. INCREDIBLY, many asshats in this country would choose the former.
Ne’er the twain shall meet, though even the NY Times does lovely exposes showing the people’s paradise as Ozzie and Harriet times infinity, or Jimmah Cardah states that we have an irrational fear of communist mass murderers. Because the USSR was so inconsequential, and far away. Its not like we were fighting a fifty year war or anything with the Soviets. Like buddhist monks, Ivan was too busy waxing-on, waxing-off in Shangri-La, hermetically sealed on Jupiter’s eighth moon.
And I make another keyboard a soda pop spittoon: we are talking about memetic warfare and you bring up a party platform. The Nazis, in fucking’ Germany btw, have oh somewhat less of a problem influencing, uhh, shit, than Muscovites trying to stick it to the Man, in the White House, dude.
You, actus, are a moron.
Well, you don’t say, mister Vercingetorix??? I’ll have you know that Nazis and Stalinists were all bad, almost as bad as the Jews with their 35-year conspiracies to wipe themselves out, by creating ex nihilo Hamas just like the stoopid Americans and their fiendish plan to create lots of real estate in New York City by funding al Qaeda thirty years before.
And lets not forget all of those trucks we sold Stalin, huh? Or the chemical weapons that we gave Saddam Hussein? So take that, dude. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Listen, actus, I’m not the one that likes to smoke big meaty pipe here, but I can’t fathom your reportage here?
We didn’t sell Saddam anything but dual use technologies and chemical weapon precursors: by your “logic” the WMDs we sold to Saddam means that we found a shit-load of WMDs in the aftermath. Somethings got to give.
And trucks to Stalin? Que pasa?
Isn’t it obvious? No, of course not, the rampant wingnuttery forbids the wondrous wonderful wunderbar wonder of the Enlightenment that is liberal logic from penetrating the dread depths of Goldstein’s oubliette of neoconism.
No, who was allies with Stalin in WWII? USA.
Who sold Stalin the trucks that carried his warmachine forward and kept the Soviets in the running on the eastern front? USA.
And so who is ultimately responsible for every dictator that has ever graced the world from 1775 to 400 B.C. and certainly to 2635 A.D. when the Taidan Empire will arrive to enslave the brown people of humanity? USA.
I don’t know about Venezuela, but I do know that people who vacation in Cuba go to posh resorts, and not quite the system that the average/median cuban sees. But I’ve never been.
I didn’t bring it up. Someone else did.
Actus1.5’s Jokes on the nutjob, it seems.
I’m speechless. There’s really a Taidan Empire?
And why only the brown people?
Because the USA is funding black helicopters and SETI, ergo sum we will eventually get the word out about our little spinning ball of rock. Add that to the FACT that the US was a slave-owning nation, mix, shake and bake…its pretty obvious what’s on Dick Cheney’s Halliburton agenda.
See. In, oh, so many different ways.
No, it said actus.
Wait, if you’re actus then who the hell is actus1.5? Or as the kids are calling him nowadays, actus1.fizull?
I mean it sounds note-perfect to the crap that usually tumbles out onto my computer-screen under your submissions, actus. Are you saying that some, terribly terrible horrible malicious person is impersonating you?
But you’re so brilliant, witty, precise, gosh golly gee, I could go on alllllll night, so how could anyone imitate that? You know without being pendantic and predictable, like you so aren’t. ever.
“Progressive” is a term that socialists took for themselves early in the 20th century when Marxian theories of value (“surplus value”) were still considered (politically at least) real contenders in the field of economic sciences.
Unfortunately, in spite of the fact that no serious economist still clings to a single premise or theory of Marx, the left continues to pretend that certain economic memes wholly predicated on Marx (rich vs. poor, “management” vs. “labor,” etc.) are still valid. Marx’s theory of surplus value offered a scientific explanation of how capitalism (a term Marx himself coined) provided the means for the rich to cheat the workers out of the economic value the workers allegedly created on their own, and thus provided the left with an invaluable legitimizing peg on which they could hang their philisophical hat.
And by the way, I for one am glad that actus posts here, because by providing a genuine opposing viewpoint he helps make this place an actual forum of debate where learning and growth are possible. I wish everyone would insult him and call him names a little less.
yours/
peter
Robert Crawford brought up Nazi uses of anti-semitism.
Some nutjob fooling you. Funny guy, or not at all?
I don’t know if actus is trying to change the subject, or if he’s just not able to follow Raymond’s argument.
To clarify:
Neither Raymond nor Jeff are saying that these idiotic memes launched by the Stalinists lead directly to the gulag.
Instead, the argument is that this drivel was designed to weaken the west and allow for the communists to win control eventually.
Or, as Jeff helpfully put in bold so that even the least literate should have been able to understand:
Clear now punchy?
Actus,
Are you disputing that the USSR engaged in the meme warfare? If so, lay out your case in a clear rational manner.
Or are you arguing that the memes have some sort of timeless platonic truth…resonating as it were with the “human heart”?
Personally, I have been hearing that BS or variants thereof endlessly for the last 40 years. Policies even remotely emanating from them has led to nothing but misery.
You must be under 30 anyone who was sentient during the Reagan era would know that Bork’s downfall had nothing at all to do with marijuana.
’actus’ lists Spartacus among “good films, with unproblematic, if preachy, values”. He seems to have forgotten the sexual values implied in the movie: the hero, Spartacus, is a monogamous heterosexual with an aversion to premarital sex, whose followers include lots of cute kids and kind grannies; the rich but not totally evil Gracchus is shamelessly promiscuous but heterosexual; the brutal villain Crassus is a predatory bisexual who seems to lean more to the homo- than the heterosexual side of the bisexual divide, and doesn’t care much whether his partners are willing or not. You have to be a lot further right than this wingnut to find the whole scheme entirely ‘unproblematic’ rather than laughably simplistic.
I think what’s clear is that the actuses are never clear, and I’m not being flip this time.
Quoting Mark Twain would be cliche but something about clearly wanting to be misunderstood comes to mind, and I’m convinced that that’s the Left’s design: Wanting to lie, obstruct, parse, challenge without cause, goad the good and support the bad, suck blood, hang on, and act less mature than children because children at least have innocence and best intentions.
My dog makes more sense then today’s Left, which considering his intelligence, says something else’s seriously wrong.
Which is that the far Left is evil. It’s evil because it’s pathologically dishonest and because that flagrant and harmful mendacity is willful. The Left has been hijacked by personality disorders and the Left fully intends to be misunderstood.
The Clinton Syndrome didn’t leave the political scene when the Liar in Chief did.
If the actuses wanted to be understood—bullshit English aside—they would, plain and simple. But they simply do not.
The moonbat Left thrives on its own inadequacy. It feeds on its own vacuum of ideas. It touts its sheer incompetence at solving a single fucking thing—it’s called dependency—and it’s actually proud of this inverted logic. It’s parasitic and the only way it lives is by guile, conceit, The Lie, and theft.
For these reasons anyone riding this putrid wagon of moral and intellectual filth while expecting to be taken seriously simply must disguise their meaning and speak in vagaries or in the rhetoric of bankruptcy. It’s simple cause and effect; guilt by willful association with a cancerous dogma.
Many good folks have taken the time to descend to the level of the left and entertain it when they should just ignore the pointless, meandering rot and leave them to their own end.
There is no “genuine opposing viewpoint” there anymore.
And sometimes even fools go too far. Today’s lesson involves culling through the aftermath of 100,000,000 murdered souls—100,000 a year for a century—NOT including wars for and against just causes, and coming up with some partisan, masturbating, self-inflated, utter bullshit about memes and appearances and opinions and every other godamn thing the Left—and only the fucking Left—holds dear.
It’s enough to make a man puke, which is undoubtedly why the moonbats consume it with so much relish.
One hundred million dead and all of them by totalitarianism. None by freedom. And we’re fucking around trying to figure out if socialist elite feel that Hitler or Stalin or Hussein cut a more dashing figure, or some such nonsense.
Put it in the Guggenheim, next to the latest NEA shit on a stick. Either way, at some point it’s just sick.
Me too, Peter. But I’d like to know just how obtuse a person can be in otherwise polite society before having their head taken off because they keep asking for it. Sure, the actuses can’t sell water to a burning man but they keep playing with fire, expecting to be taken seriously. Problem is when enough idiots DO fall under that spell, people get hurt.
Personally, at some point I want to know who’s with and who’s against.
tw: Far. Yeah, way too far.
I’m so confused. Maybe I’m drunk…I’m seeing two of you.
Yes, yes, I seem to remember the circumstance, I think it was a Sunday…or maybe not. We were all sitting, well, right here, on the veranda, I was sipping a martini, no ice please, you boor. You had a Shirley Temple spritizer, sissy-pants.
And then you went into some nonsense about how the kind, gentle Soviets either did not launch memetic warfare or such warfare was happy-go-lucky in the first place. Hmmmm
You forgot reframing. Can’t forget to reframe. Reframing is critical. Heck, that’s the ONLY thing that separates the liberals from defeating the dreaded Rethuglican noise machine.
Someone else brought up the millions dead by communism. I want to make clear that the memes had nothing to do with that.
I’m disputing that it had much of an effect.
Why the dichotomy? They could also have other sources besides timelessness. I don’t think
And yet, it was written by a soviet tool. memetic warfare!
We’re not going to be very good memetic warriors then.
6Gun!
I don’t really disagree with anything you say. If I could have anything to do with it, the post-collectivist period would start now. And certainly the fundemental dishonesty of the left should be recognized and pointed out as often as possible, especially to the left themselves, because as long as otherwise intelligent people like actus are unable to recognize that (horrors!) they could actually be wrong, they will hang about the neck of civilization like an albatross, and we will progress nowhere.
As vexing as actus can be sometimes, you have to remember that he is not “the left.” He’s actus, and it isn’t fair for us to hold him personally responsible for all of the butchery that has resulted from the goals of collectivism.
Most of us, regardless of our political persuasion, have really considered the fundemental premises of our world views. But that is where our disagreements actually lie, not in the opinions based upon them; we have to realize that the left is being as logical as we are, but based on a different set of fundemental premises. Until we realize this, each side will continue to argue past each other as we use the same language to indicate totally different concepts because of our premises.
</blockquote>
Then why are we hereâ€â€no, why are YOU hereâ€â€nearly a generation after the fall of the Soviet Union, arguing about the same fucking thing?
God, the irony is excruciating.
yours/
peter.
That’s certainly true.
(I’m not going to try and sleuth out your various mysteries and multifaceted hidden “memes” anymore, actus, because it’s pointless. It’s as pointless as anything you’ve polluted the Net with. I realize it blows your skirt up but I don’t have all day on the taxpaid dime (yes, I speculate; it’s the only explanation) to screw around with this.
While I genuinely appreciate the Peter Jackson’s of the board defending your right to say whatever you want, I’m not going to waste my time being baited. If you have something to say that’s suddenly not contrary for it’s own pointless sake, have at it…)
Oh, so the fact that the USSR couldn’t collectivize the Mid-West, thus not allowing them to butcher the requisite tens of millions, means what again?
So if they did not succeed, they did not even try? Can you even hear how asinine that point is?
No argument from me, in fact, I’ll give actus the benefit of the doubt. He’s not even a bona fide leftist. He’s a troll with what he thinks is a handle on the most subtle, most nuanced and most enlightened fine points of the most arcane and obscure conflicts of political minutiae the anti-conservative stance ever ginned up.
actus is the how-many-Stalins-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin liberal. The reeelly, reeelly keen-o kind; the kind that illuminates the deep dark neocon forest. At no charge!
actus is no more a liberal than his twaddle is legit. It’s a shell game.
Which is why intellectual turnabout works for me. Act like a lying socialist, get called one. My pencil doesn’t get any sharper than that; it’s not worth it.
Now, if there’s going to be some real dialog about a single damn thing that connects, that enhances, that improves, that honors honor, I retract it all.
But until that it walks like a duck.
tw: And it can bugger off, if you don’t mind.
Actus, what about the impact of various memes regarding defeat, hopelessness, “quagmire,” and the like that were floated by people very much of the Left that contributed to America’s withdrawal from Vietnam? What about the aftermath of that withdrawal? How do you square that with the view that many historians are now putting forward, that right up to the eve of the Paris Peace Accords that the NVA and Viet Cong forces were actually near defeat?
Simple truths that pinko fruitbats like actus despise:
A. Your loathing of Ronald Reagan aside, all the bad shit we think about the Soviets was actually true. Yep, they had plans to invade Western Europe. Sorry that all that actually existed.
B. The memes are/were part of the problem. Look at sub-Saharan Africa and certain strains of current Latin American economic policy (God sure looks out for drunks and Hugo Chavez with those oil prices, because he is a complete economic nitwit). The damage done by the whole “we’re fucked up because we’re exploited” meme is STILL working its way through the world economy. Note how the Chinese and Indians are finally over it and the results are remarkable. The commies never did so well at explaining places like Taiwan, Singapore, or for that matter Japan on the exploitation meter.
C. The Venezuelans don’t get the tourist thing and, aside from recent oil-price-induced distortions, their per capita GDP has been declining on an annual basis since…wait for it…they nationalized their oil industry in 1977. Don’t believe me? Just fly to Caracas airport–now cut off from the freeway access to the capital because of highway viaduct collapses that the Chavez government knew about, but did nothing about…for seven years. The drive used to take half an hour. It now takes at least five over winding mountain roads. Then fly to Aruba and see the wonders that Dutch oppression worked on everything from the airport to the casinos.
In the end, as Jeff always correctly points out, the words do matter.
Shit. What I meant to write is that most of us have NOT really considered the fundemental premises underlying our world views. And that’s why when someone on the left uses the words “freedom,” or “power,” or “war,” or “peace,” etc., they mean something completely diffent with those terms than the rest of us do.
yours/
peter.
Too bad it’s Raymond making the comments. The Leftoids have “debunked” him (i.e., shouted him down) already.
Just as a data point: I’ve been saying this, much less effectively, for years. But, then, I’ve actually met some of the folks responsible for the meme-spreading. Proud of their work, they were.
Regards,
Ric
Our nuclear deterrent worked?
They worked just as well as the similar memes being echoed by the liberals in power. The ones that came up with the stuff that ended up in the pentagon papers. War can’t be won, etc…
*chokes on own tongue* So you’re saying that the Soviets believed that we would have nuked them if some American rabble-rouser had, say, collectivized Grand Island, Nebraska? Please try to make some sense.
TW: progress
Make your own joke.
Ah yes, actus, the same nuclear deterrent that the left wanted to “freeze” at one point. Ahem…the same point in time that the Soviets also wanted to freeze it. But the memes don’t matter, right?
What the Pentagon Papers said was that the war could not be won as then currently being fought.
That was ante-B-52’s over Hanoi, actus. Accounts from the Vietnamese themselves now indicate if the Christmas bombing had gone another week to ten days, they would have cried “uncle.”
To that end please acquaint yourself with the BDA photos of the Hanoi railyard before and after the Stratos got hold of them.
You’re not bright, cute, or engaging–just ignorant.
You’re right. Those american rabble rousers would be working completely on their own.
So I guess its not the leftists that are perfect at hindsight, but the told-ya-so’s that list off what the vietnamese tell us.
If it was another week, why did Nixon not go for it? Was he just overcome with great passion for that poor peasant under a ton of high explosives?
* All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.—All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
* There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.—Judge not that ye be not judged.
* The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.—Do not lay up treasures for yourself on earth […] You cannot serve God and mammon.
* Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.—If anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well.
* The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)—It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
* For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.—But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.
* When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.—I say to you do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
The commies really did a number on us, but methinks they had a little help.
And that, actus, is how its done.
Hmmm.
The day that liberals like actus finally wake up and see the world as it really is, and not how they wish it would be, is going to be a very interesting day.
Ardsgaine —
Why not just quote Kristofferson?
Jesus was a capricorn
He ate organic food
He believed in love and peace
And never wore no shoes
Long hair, beard and sandles
And a funky bunch of friends
Reckon we’d just nail him up
If he came down again
Chorus:
’cause everybody’s gotta have somebody to look down on
Who they can feel better than at any time they please
Someone doin’ somethin’ dirty decent folks can frown on
If you can’t find nobody else, then help yourself to me
Eggheads cussing rednecks cussing
Hippies for their hair
Others laugh at straights who laugh at
Freaks who laugh at squares
Some folks hate the whites
Who hate the blacks who hate the klan
Most of us hate anything that
We don’t understand
Ha!
It looks like your mom listened to the same records mine did. Pass the tea and sympathy, for the good old days are dead…
Jeff,
Why quote Kris, when I can go straight to the source?
My point is that communist propaganda finds a home here because it resonates with Christian ethical teachings. How could it not? It is essentially a Christian criticism of capitalism with a pseudo-scientific veneer. It relies on every Christian prejudice against wealth and the pursuit of wealth that can be found in the Bible or the writings of the saints.
Just in case it’s not clear, I’m not on the side of the communists. I’m saying, if you’re going to be on the side of capitalism, be completely on the side of capitalism.
TW: Gives. As in, gives your money to the poor and follows Him, or keeps your money and lives for your own happiness.
Then there is “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, render unto God that which is God’s†Somehow my version of the Bible does not include the part where Jesus got the government involved in his program. That is the teeny, tiny differnce between communism and Christianity.
In fact, that is one of the reasons he was crucified.
I gotta sit down and read that book someday.
Well, I ain’t a Christian, and I think there are a number of problems with your analogues (number one, for instance, posits God (perfection) vs man, and so naturally every man will fall short of God’s glory—which doesn’t mean that some men/causes aren’t morally superior than other men/causes), but the reason I prefer Kris is because it has a better beat.
Kristofferson is neat. I wore out two cassettes of that album driving back and forth across the country. But —
They’re rioting in Africa
(ta tata tata ta ta)
There’s fighting in Spain
(ta tata tata ta)
There’s hurricanes in Florida
(ta tata tata ta ta)
And Texas needs rain.
The whole word is festering with unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles;
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch,
And I don’t like anybody very much.
Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose. Yes, I know the last verse, too, but even then it was just boilerplate, part of the meme war.
Regards,
Ric
It was a difference, sure. But at the time Marx was writing, Europe was just beginning to emerge from a period of time when Caesar and God had been skipping merrily along together, hand-in-hand, for centuries. In other words, the Christians in Europe had a strong tradition of using the coercive power of the state to enforce ethical mores. Marx wasn’t innovating.
Jeff,
It’s the first half that’s the problem: “All have sinned.” I could have used the one that says, “Let he who is without sin, etc.” The message constantly pushed is: Don’t think you’re better than anyone else, because you are just as sinful as the next person.
It is a reflex, therefore, to acknowledge any flaw in ourselves–or our society–and allow it to be held up to us as a reason why we should not look too closely at someone else’s sins. Cast the mote from your own eye, and all that.
Did Stalin starve 14 million Ukrainians? What about the Trail of Tears? Shut up! Look the other way, because you’re no better than Papa Joe.
Did he swallow eastern Europe whole, and demolish their hopes of freedom? Hey, what about the Phillipines? Shut up! Better worry about your own evil country before you look over here at Stalin’s bloody hands.
It’s the same principle at work: magnification of our own sins, and agnosticism towards the sins of others.
I really am a huge Kristofferson fan. It started for me with catching Cisco Pike on one of the movie channels (FMC, AMC?) one night. The dude is a poet.
Curious and curiouser.
From a nearly 30 year old memory, I swear:
All he’s good for is getting in trouble
Shifting the shadows of blame (?)
Some people swear he’s my double
Some people say we’re the same
But the Silver-Tongued Devil’s got nothing to lose
I’ll only live ‘til I die
We take our own chances, pay our own duesâ€â€
The Silver-Tongued Devil and I.
Sorry Ardsgaine, I remain unconvinced. Your analogies are strained and don’t even touch upon the main point of Jeff’s article. These memetic weapons were not launched at America by Karl Marx but by Stalin era Russian intellectuals. So what if Marxism borrows ideas from religion? Maybe that’s why it still has so many adherents even after being discredited so many times. Of course the memetic weapons we recognize are the ones that succeeded because they resonate with something here. So you took this rather banal observation about our society’s vulnerabilities and turned it into an attack on Christianity. What’s next, will you explain how the ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ hoax must be true because it fits the anti-Semitism of 19th century Europe? Could it be that you’re just another religious bigot and capitalism has nothing to do with it?
Ardsgaine,
Your comments make no sense from a historical perspective and are nonsense on stilts from a Christian perspective.
With few exceptions, laws are designed to use to coercive power of the state to enforce ethical mores. Laws against murder, theft, and rape enforce the ethical mores of the people of a community. That, my friend is not a uniquely Christian perspective.
You see, there is a vast moral and ethical gulf between giving to the poor as a personal and private act of charity and having the tax man take it from you (enforced by the police powers of the state) to re-distribute it to the poor. Most Christians understand this; most non-Christians don’t.
[…] the real irony here is they can’t do that — and that’s precisely because their worldview is predicated on being able to control “meaning” by consensus. And one of the problems […]
[…] “progressives” — decided it was better to attack from within, just as Alinsky and Gramsci counseled. The new left progressives, who at one time spit at the bourgeois liberals of the […]