Project Veritas: the left never seems to lose that Gulag impulse
BREAKING: @BernieSanders “free education” policies to “teach you how to not be a f**king nazi.”; 'There is a reason Stalin had Gulags'; 'Expect violent reaction' for speech. If Bernie doesn't get nomination "Milwaukee will burn"
Stay tuned: https://t.co/BFGnoCeJE7#Expose2020 pic.twitter.com/Koh6UTibbe
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) January 14, 2020
That tape reminds me very much of this from the 60s:
The American Spectator had an interesting piece a few months ago entitled “Is Bernie Sanders Still a Communist at Heart?” His politics may now be slightly less extreme than when he was young, but no-one with such wildly unrealizable utopian fantasies about remaking our republic has ever been so close to attaining the goal of the “fundamental transformation” of America to which Obama alluded but in which he was less the true believer than Comrade Bernie.
A few months ago a very leftist, but also avowed pacifist, friend of mine, mused aloud about the possibility of putting rich people to work in rural camps. He would vigorously reject being labeled as totalitarian or authoritarian, but as far as I could tell he wasn’t especially bothered when I pointed out the historic instances in which this idea was put into practice, to say nothing of the violence that would obviously be required to begin it. He is a fervent Bernie supporter.
Mac,
As far as I can tell, a leftist defines pacifism as “aversion to war” but certainly not aversion to violence to achieve their utopian goal. In order to have global “peace” it is necessary to get rid of all those evil people. And if that means throwing them in gulags or executing them, then so be it. To such a person, those people are subhuman as they oppose the leftist’s obviously superior vision, and are thus evil and must be eliminated.
physicsguy, yes, that’s certainly true in general, but this guy in particular is quite sincerely pacifist at a personal level. And would say not that those people are subhuman and must be eliminated, but that they need…correction, or something. His views at this point (he was not always thus) are profoundly inconsistent and incoherent. I’m not sure whether that’s to the credit of his better nature or the blame of his intellect. The people in the two videos that Neo posted do not exhibit that kind of inconsistency.
“The two greatest men of the 20th century are Vladimir Lenin and Adolf Hitler”. Joseph Goebels
“Except for our racial theories there is no difference between us and the Communists”. Adolf Hitler
“You can’t invade the United States, there would be a gun behind every blade of grass” attributed to Admiral Yamamoto.
Bernie’s puffed up soy boy doesn’t understand that there are only minute distinctions among variants of socialism nor what happens when you get into an all out war, or even a street fight.
A lot of people are sensitized to the totalitarian tendencies of the left today in a way that they weren’t in the sixties because of the constant attacks on the Second Amendment. It wouldn’t go well for the Bernie Bros if they seriously tried to impose their will by violence.
I heard O’Keefe talking to Mark Steyn on Limbaugh’s radio show this afternoon. Steyn asked if these sorts of sentiments are isolated among Bernie supporters. O’Keefe pointed to his history of releasing more videos, and implied that he’s got more.
It will be interesting to see if Sanders: denounces his staffer and fires him (despite almost certainly agreeing with his statements); deflects blame to O’Keefe for doing something mumble-mumble-illegal-mean-mumble without addressing his staffer’s conduct; ignores the revelation; or doubles-down.
If O’Keefe plays true to form, he will wait to release some video until it can be used to refute something Sanders and his campaign assert.
I don’t believe Bernie is any less a Communist than when he honeymooned in the USSR. I do think he’s a little more careful pretending otherwise.
They’re not targeted specifically at the rich, but national service programs involving young people have been supported by both the left and the right, see “It’s time to make national service a universal commitment”.
I think it’s indicative of the sort of flotsam and jetsam campaigns attract. I wouldn’t pay much attention.
We have some problems we need to address with the degree to which the law governing incorporation, the financial sector, intellectual property, and civil liability generates rent seeking opportunities. We also have threats to civic hygiene from schemers of various sorts (the Google crew, the Facebook crew, Amazon, and Soros). People like Sanders and Warren hardly have any constructive ideas about this and aren’t visibly bothered by deplatforming activities because these are directed at the opposition. Instead, there’s a great deal of huffing and puffing about rich people and sketchy plans to relieve them of their property, but no serious plans to address quality of life deficits in urban slums or decaying non-metropolitan towns (above and beyond proposing ever more allocation of goods and services through public bureaucracy). I’ve not seen any indication that Warren or Sanders is an exponent of Marxism (though Sanders did read Trotskyist literature when he was younger). What they are is advocates of institutionalized looting.
Remember, there is no end state the left seeks. Any state is a point of departure for demanding more – in the regulatory realm and in the realm of taxation and public expenditure.
Grathwohl’s reporting that Weatherman Politburo discussed eliminating 25 million has been discussed over the years. Lefties often consider it to be a false reporting of what the Weatherman Politburo said. Maybe it was, but in looking at Commie takeovers in Russia & China, the 25 million eliminated is a fair description of what happened there.If the Weather Politburo didn’t believe it needed to eliminate 25 million, then it was being unrealistic.
Regarding Bernie Sanders being or not being a Commie, consider what he said about Cuba. When Bernie Sanders Thought Castro and the Sandinistas Could Teach America a Lesson.
If the Cuban people had “an almost religious affection for” Fidel Castro, then why didn’t Fidel ever test that “almost religious affection” with free, open elections? Bernie doesn’t speak Spanish, so he needed a translator, which in totalitarian Cuba was most likely a state-supplied translator. No one, in the presence of a state-supplied translator in a totalitarian regime like Cuba’s , is going to give a candid opinion of Fidel or of the regime. If Bernie believed that citizens of a totalitarian state would give candid opinions in the presence of a state supplied translator, he is a credulous fool- a.k.a. True Believer. (If Bernie didn’t use a state-supplied translator, most of the Cubans interviewed would have assumed the state supplied the translator.)
“Revolution in terms of values”: that is a rehash of Lenin’s New Soviet Man.
I love the part where Jurek says that Gulags were just misunderstood because of CIA propaganda. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn must have been a CIA stooge. That clears up so much.
They’re not targeted specifically at the rich, but national service programs involving young people have been supported by both the left and the right, see “It’s time to make national service a universal commitment”.
No, they’ve been supported by subsets of liberals. I think Charles Peters promoted national service back in the day. The Corporation for National and Community Service was a Clinton-era creation. Most liberals aren’t interested. One young intern employed by Michael Kinsley asked Jack Kemp about it many years ago and Kemp was annoyed with him. “When you’re 18, you should be focusing on your dreams and ambitions, not picking up cans in Yellowstone”.
It’s perfectly gratuitous. You had the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression, but we had that because the labor market was so dysfunctional at the time. You had military conscription from 1940 to 1973. We’ve been able to staff the military adequately without it and the institutional military has long been satisfied with volunteer forces. Leave conscription to general mobilizations.
It’ll decay into an ineffectual boondoggle. What we’d actually benefit from would be a six-fold increase in the police presence in slum neighborhoods, conjoined to the construction and maintenance of day detention centers to hold incorrigibles so the rest of the youngters in slum schools could learn something and the teachers could actually teach rather than spar with their disciplinary problems while fat-assed administrators sit in their office and recite mantras about ‘teach every child’. Hiring and deploying 400,000 cops and putting godawful youngers in cages is not something liberals want to do, unless they’re unionized government workers subject to arrest-by-race quotas.
I love the part where Jurek says that Gulags were just misunderstood because of CIA propaganda.
The Gulags antedated the CIA.
So Sanders is accepting organizers from the revolutionary left for staff, which isn’t entirely surprising, given Sanders’ politics.
Still, as weird as the Democratic Party has gotten, I doubt O’Keefe could catch a staffer for any of the other candidates saying things quite so horrible. Frankly I wonder how many twenty-somethings know what a gulag is.
Perhaps O’Keefe will prove me wrong tomorrow!
If only there were as many films about the Communist gulags as Nazi concentration camps…
Paul in Boston
“Except for our racial theories there is no difference between us and the Communists”. Adolf Hitler
For extended documentary proof of the same , consider the best source: Adolf himself.Hitler’s Table Talk.
Hitler and social equality .
Hitler found more in common with the Reds than just “social equality for the masses.”
HItler on Stalin.
In Hitler’s opinion former Reds became the best supporters of the Nazis.
In looking at the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, Hitler saw the possibility of the Falangists making common cause with the Reds. Hitler did not like the clerico-monarchial tendencies of Franco, and saw the possibility of the Reds and Falangists uniting to get rid of “the clerico-monarchical muck.”
Nazis and Commies were rivals for power- which is why they disliked each other. Red Sox versus Yankees, Patriots versus Ravens. In power, they weren’t that different.
To amplify Dwaz, this piece suggests that Sanders embraced Trotskyism and Stalinism, once upon a time.
I love that you guys think Bernie is somehow the next Stalin. As if he could become president and the entire structure of our government would shift toward a communist model in four to eight years. It would take a whole heck of a lot more than one guy getting elected. And with the way that most of this country is numbed by technology we are closer to having a revolution about 5G than we ever will about tossing the entire Constitution for Mao’s Red book. But I get the scare tactics as a political tool to win. Democrats think Trump is trying to be a dictator just like Republicans thought Obama was trying to be a dictator. Two boring arguments that anyone with reasonable thinking skills would realize is nonsensical.
Montage:
You write: “I love that you guys think Bernie is somehow the next Stalin.”
I love that you would like to pretend that anyone here said anything of the sort. Bernie is no Stalin. But some of his followers are Stalin wannabees. And that gulag impulse – which is what my post was about – is one that often seems to surface from the left. Because – as I quoted Roger Scruton in yesterday’s post:
Ignore or deny that ultimate tendency at your peril.
I love that you guys think Bernie is somehow the next Stalin.
Montage: Leaving aside your strawman attack, aren’t you at all surprised, maybe even a little disturbed, that Sanders has organizers who freely spout off about putting Americans in gulags and burning Milwaukee down?
I admit I’m somewhat surprised. I would have thought Sanders would have vetted such people or made sure they understood they were supposed to be “Clean for Gene,” so to speak, as long-hairs who worked for Eugene McCarthy were supposed to in 1968.
Dreams of utopia always involve blood. Many on the left who imagine (cue John Lennon) utopia do not want actual blood on their hands, but they will turn their pretty heads away while monsters spill it in the pursuit of utopia.
Join the NRA even if you don’t own a firearm.
At a New Year’s Eve party a Mayor Pete supporter told me menacingly that if Trump was re-elected Dems would no longer be nice guys. Things would get serious.
I was flabbergasted. The last 3 years is what they call civil behavior?
And did he think I would back off? Jeez, I check my Inbox each morning for a msg from the VRWC authorizing us to begin random attacks on Democrats…
Over the years now the political left — oft if not exclusively the targets of O’Keefe’s kindly ministrations — has shown an incapacity to grasp his methods, walking into one trap after another. O’Keefe’s first thrust in these encounters is never his last: he holds worse cases up his sleeve to be produced as needs arise. The dopes make defenses, excuses, cavils . . . and O’Keefe happily drops an anvil on them. It’s kinda funny to watch. Let’s see if they’ve finally figured it out, or if they remain a Charlie Brown to O’Keefe’s ball jerking Lucy.
If you think Sanders’ staffer is alone…
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/first_the_purges_comrade_chesa_boudin_fires_prosecutors_for__prosecuting_.html
Neo,
One would have to assume that the far left who want have the gulag impulse would attempt to find a candidate who could carry out their wishes. And maybe they think Bernie is that man but I don’t think anyone of the candidates want that. So the gulag mentality is simply a mentality – granted an ugly one. But they would not be able to carry it out alone. It’s like some on the far right who talk about carrying weapons and gathering in militias to fight the impending Federal government take over. They may be real but finding an actual candidate who would lead them to armed insurrection is pretty much minimal.
Now, I’ll grant you AOC has some rhetoric that turns heads [including mine] but her run is 4 or 8 or possibly 12 years off [depending on who wins this time]. But I think depending on what happens in this election her rhetoric cold cool considerably. And in general our government is set up to halt the extremes of either party. [At least I hope].
AesopFan
Chesa Boudin is simply cleaning up the ‘swamp’ as he sees it. If Trump can drain long term employees who disagree with his policies then Boudin can too. I personally don’t like seeing clean sweeps but it’s the right of all new bosses to clean house. CEO’s have been doing it for years.
Bernie is no Stalin. But some of his followers are Stalin wannabees. And that gulag impulse… [Neo]
What makes you think Bernie does not want to be another Stalin? I think he’d love to be; love to be. But he knows himself that he doesn’t quite have those iron gonads.
All you have to do is watch Bernie’s eyes flair as he speaks of his love for the USSR — light leaps into them, a crazy kind of light — and his voice goes into “Imagine there’s no country” mode, and it is obvious that Bernie is a street-corner kook. He’s just a yenta from Brooklyn. There is nothing else there than what you hear from the crazy guy in the park who stands nearby normals and mutters stuff, hoping they’ll engage with him.
If you think Sanders doesn’t agree with his staffer….
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0120/lowry011420.php3
Montage:
You show remarkable naivete.
A gulag mentality is only a mentality until a set of circumstances – the details of which are not precisely predictable and foreseeable – bring it to reality. Those circumstances do not always exist, but when the mentality and desire is there the risk is certainly there.
And no, the people interested in that do not choose a candidate who boldly telegraphs that intent. That wouldn’t appeal to the vast throng of voters they mean to deceive and then re-educate.
And whether Bernie is that guy, they believe he’s an instrument by which they can ultimately reach that end.
Do you think the foot soldiers in the Russian Revolution all knew exactly where all their dreams and endeavors would end up? Of course not. But some of them were as willing to be as ruthless as necessary – and they felt it was very necessary.
Our government is set up to discourage that sort of thing but there is no question in my mind that there are ways it could happen. I am not saying it will, but I’m saying it could.
The 1960’s was a long time ago, and while Bernie never wrote articles praising the virtues of Joe Stalin, the guy who ran the kibbutz that Bernie spent roughly 9 mo. at, did. There were lots of kibbutz (plural?) he could have attended, but he chose that one. Then were plenty of opportunities where Bernie could have repudiated those youthful decisions, but he never has.
Of course, Montage is correct that one guy getting elected president isn’t going to convert the U.S. into a communist or hard socialist nation overnight. But remember that Venezuela not that long ago had presidential term limits and other nice constitutional features, and now they don’t. There are a number of constitutional features that the U.S. used to have that are now essentially dead letters. (Not long ago, we decided that the feds. can levy fines and call them income taxes, or something.)
Here is a look at what Bernie has been saying recently, by James Freeman:
Neo,
The circumstances for a gulag mentality revolution have to involve a leader and I’m saying I see no leader in the current crop who would somehow lead us to outright communist revolution. Maybe in the future some crazy leader could.
So, yes, I am likely naïve about what could happen in the future in the United States. Most of us are. But I’m looking at probabilities not possibilities. Sure, the country could swing Communist or Trump could declare himself dictator and line up his family to run the country for 50 years… but the probability is pretty low on both of those. Most likely the country stays fairly moderate going back and forth each election cycle.
I’ve always been one that felt if this country swings into the extremes it will be a slow creep to where we find ourselves one day in places we never imagined 30 or 50 years ago. And then we’re too old to do anything about it
Like Sir Roger said, the intellectuals often support socialist big-gov’t control, because they believe they will be the ones in control. Further they believe they should be in control, because their ability to get higher test scores makes them more intelligent so it would be better.
They also believe they deserve to be in control, because of their “moral superiority”, which proves that they are better. This is big drive of the PC-true believers, the need for moral superiority, so that, in their own minds, they do deserve more power.
There were many Iranian intellectuals who believed all these things when they were opposing the SAVAK running Shah. Other communist supporting Iranians, and other more normal democracy supporting Iranians, as well as the plurality, if not majority, of Islamic supporting anti-Shah Iranians. Who won partly thru being the most ruthless against their rivals.
These thoughts are leading me towards the idea that the most ruthless opponents to democracy are the ones most likely to win over it. Not just Leftists, Socialists (including the Nazi National Socialists), and Theocrats, willing to be ruthless. I don’t like that idea, tho, even if it’s true. We need to support graceful, non-ruthless losers.
Getting the other party as President after no more than 12 years has been reasonably good since WW II. There should probably be stronger support for other Term Limits, on elected as well as high level non-elected gov’t workers.
One would have to assume that the far left who want have the gulag impulse would attempt to find a candidate who could carry out their wishes. And maybe they think Bernie is that man but I don’t think anyone of the candidates want that.
Montage: One would think.
Nonetheless, ultimately Bernie hired these yahoos to represent him. How does that happen unless Bernie wants that or can’t be bothered to prevent it?
We’ll see how the Sanders campaign responds.
O’Keefe has been doing sixties-style guerrilla journalism for a while — only from the right. The complacency of today’s Democrats/progressives/leftists to believe they are perfectly safe, babbling any sort of crazy in public is breathtaking.
Meanwhile, most conservatives are correctly in fear for their jobs, reputations, and maybe more, to wear a red cap or say, “Well, gee, I dunno … maybe there are only two sexes.”
if this country swings into the extremes it will be a slow creep to where we find ourselves one day in places we never imagined 30 or 50 years ago [Montage]
Why a slow creep? I suspect most radical change occurs rapidly, once the conditions have coalesced.
Meanwhile, we ARE in a place I never imagined 30 to 50 years ago. A new McCarthyism filling the culture; a government coup underway; and a communist with a good chance of getting a major-party nomination for President. It doesn’t take a Manchurian to imagine how circumstances could twist about and make his otherwise-unlikely election a reality.
“And whether Bernie is that guy, they believe he’s an instrument by which they can ultimately reach that end.” — Neo
I think this is one of the essential calamities of authoritarian governance. Where V.I. Lenin ended up was probably much different than where Trotsky wanted to go, and Stalin was further removed yet again. Trotsky may have been a relatively light handed authoritarian, but once the power structure is in place, the lightweight gets pushed aside by the strongman. Isn’t it bizarre that the Soviets had to send assassins to Mexico to kill Trotsky?
Art Deco says: “Remember, there is no end state the left seeks.”
The totalitarian is supposed to have an end state in mind, and they all need the authoritarian power structure, but the authoritarian strong man has no need for fabulous visions of the future.
My assessment is that the left still gives some lip service to the new and wonderful “end state” but increasingly they do it with a nod-nod wink-wink. The really woke voter base understands and just wants a bit more power and a lot more money.
Montage:
It already hasn’t been what I’d consider a slow creep.
Plus, the leaders who are bent on tyranny do not ordinarily telegraph that in advance. People usually do not see it coming, and it sometimes comes quite fast.
1. As if he could become president and the entire structure of our government would shift toward a communist model in four to eight years.
Right. A President Sanders could shift huge amounts in two years, with a little Congressional support. Strokes of the pen — eliminate student loan debt, the government’s single largest “asset.” Nationalize healthcare. Free college. Then, come June or July, ……
2. It would take a whole heck of a lot more than one guy getting elected. And with the way that most of this country is numbed by technology we are closer to having a revolution about 5G than we ever will about tossing the entire Constitution for Mao’s Red book
Democrats are anxious to toss the Constitution right now. Toss the Electoral College. Impeach over nothing; and maybe do it two, three or many times. Charge climate-change doubters with treason and execute them. Eliminate several of the rights in the Bill of Rights and get ready to dump the rest.
Montage, you lack imagination! Or maybe it’s just simple observation that you’re missing.
TommyJay:
Nope, Trotsky was on board. See this.
All you have to do is look at what is going on in Virginia. The govenor (black face) is considering using the Virginia National Guard to knock on doors and confiscate legally purchased firearms. Every totalitarian first seeks to disarm the peasants. Then comes the gulags/death camps.
Join the NRA even if you don’t own a firearm. (Everyone should own a firearm.)
Montage: So what is your argument now?
You aren’t going to worry until sizeable numbers of people are rousted out of their homes and into cattle cars in the early AM?
Is it not a little concerning that a presidential candidate among the top three Democrats is a self-proclaimed socialist, who has praised communist states like the USSR and Cuba, and has hired radical goons for paid staffers who blithely talk about putting Americans in camps and burning down cities?
When do you start worrying?
Chesa Boudin is simply cleaning up the ‘swamp’ as he sees it. If Trump can drain long term employees who disagree with his policies then Boudin can too.
Chesa Boudin’s complaint is that the law is enforced contra Democratic Party clients, as opposed to just being enforced contra deplorables. That’s rather contrary to impartial administration of justice.
The most important take away from the video- common sense suggests that this should hurt Sanders badly, that people wince when they hear this, many of his supporters are embarrassed, and so on. But there is a problem, and that is that this will never get the exposure it deserves. Even if reported by the MSM, it will then be buried as not representative of the Sanders crowd. The NYT will not run an editorial on this, and it will not invite writers to submit dueling commentaries on it. Ditto CNN, MSNBC and all the rest. Anything that might interfere with the defeat of Trump will be trivialized. More time will be spent attacking James O’Keefe than the ones who made these comments. The media, entertainment industry and the rest of our betters will never support us on things like this, ever. Moral- help conservative internet, and expose, expose, expose.
O, la.
James Hutchinson, Bernie campaign supporter, remember? Tried to murder Rep. Congressmen, severely wounded Steve Scalise. Yeah. That.
If you think this stuff is just a problem of the extreme Left, think again. Just look at the current impeachment nonsense. The House engaged in the most ramshackle process possible without even a hint of fairness. Pelosi then refuses to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate in what can only be described as an effort to violate the Constitution and the exclusive power it gives the Senate to conduct an impeachment trial.
This gross bastardization of both legal principles and bedrock political norms has been cheered on by 99.9% of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media. And even though the only apparent impact of impeachment has been to improve Donald Trump’s standing and there is ZERO chance he’ll actually be removed, they’re still obsessed with the idea that there’s still some secret evidence out there that will change everything.
If you think Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t put YOU in a gulag and MSNBC and the New York Times wouldn’t cheer while she did it…think again.
Mike
That ain’t even his right name, the guy is so forgettable: Hodgkinson. Mass murder attempting Hodgkinson.
Art Deco. The CCC was voluntary. The left’s current view is not.
The most interesting thing to me about Montage’s comment (“I love that you guys think Bernie is somehow the next Stalin” etc.) is that it’s not, mainly, us, who think the presidency has that kind of power. The Bernie-loving friend I mentioned earlier really seems to think that if elected Bernie would immediately implement a vast number of left-wing dreams requiring power that the president simply doesn’t have. My first experience of being “unfriended” on Facebook was right after the 2016 election, by a guy who apparently took exception to my saying something like “Calm down, Trump cannot actually implement fascism.”
Many, many, especially those left-of-center but also too many right-of-center, do in fact talk and vote and presumably think that the president has more or less monarchical power. We’ve heard a huge amount of that over the past twenty years. “Obama will give everybody health care.” Etc. What else is the endless Trump-is-Hitler yowling but the voice of those who apparently believe that a president can, for instance, order the incarceration of any group of people he dislikes? I don’t think they really truly believe it but they certainly get some kind of weird thrill out of acting as if they do.
Art Deco says,
That’s right. How do we know? By both asking them, and by drawing conclusions from their metaphysics, or worldview, or anthropology, or whatever it is that results when you frame, and then examine the notion of what it means to be-in-the-world to a Marxist or collectivist of any stripe.
For them, it’s all a never ending, ultimately pointless, but somehow nonetheless allegiance worthy [see my favorite punching bag Richard Rorty on ‘chance’] “evolution” toward a brave new world wherein alienation, and individual responsibility are replaced with solidarity, and bliss.
Which is of course not a logically defensible belief drawn from categorical inferences, or even historical evidence, but a kind of secular religion – as people have been pointing out here for years.
My own exchanges with leftists online have gone basically along these lines:
Me: “When is enough enough?” Them: “There is no answer to that.”
Me: “How then do I know when your needs are fulfilled?” Them “Needs are constantly evolving. They arise from social interaction, and are unlimited.”
Me: “But human nature has its limits, by definition.” Them: “There is no such thing as one human nature.”
Me: “When does this cycle of interpersonal demands come to an end?” Them: “Never.”
Me: “How much money do I have to throw in your goddamned face before you agree to f88k off forever?” Them: “No amount is enough. This is about your unconditional participation, not some objective need that can be checked off, and then sets you free.”
Me: “Where do you get this authority?” Them: “The ‘general will’ as it should be, or as is interpreted by the most advanced persons in society.”
Me: “Why don’t you just voluntarily construct the system you crave with like-minded associates if the “plan” is so damned attractive?” Them : “No. Socialism in order to work, is an ‘all-society’ [whole] proposition.”
And so it goes. Progressivism: the scheme of some people self-styled as progressives, for off-loading the costs of their dysfunctions and deficits as well as those of their human pets, onto innocent others; all in the supposed name of a morality and human solidarity which can never be demonstrated as an actual moral imperative.
Montage on January 14, 2020 at 7:41 pm said:
…
Chesa Boudin is simply cleaning up the ‘swamp’ as he sees it. If Trump can drain long term employees who disagree with his policies then Boudin can too. I personally don’t like seeing clean sweeps but it’s the right of all new bosses to clean house. CEO’s have been doing it for years.
Montage on January 14, 2020 at 8:31 pm said:
…
The circumstances for a gulag mentality revolution have to involve a leader and I’m saying I see no leader in the current crop who would somehow lead us to outright communist revolution. Maybe in the future some crazy leader could.
* * *
(1) CEOs can’t send the police to my door with a gun to force me to go along with their plans (they hire the government to do it for them).
(2) Maybe Chesa is the wave of the future.
The incrementalism of every radical socio-political change is like this:
“How did you go bankrupt?”
“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
– Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-17/slowly-first-then-all-once
The date was 2013 and the subject was the debt ceiling, but the general idea has multiple applications.
TommyJay on January 14, 2020 at 8:04 pm said:
The 1960’s was a long time ago, and while Bernie never wrote articles praising the virtues of Joe Stalin, the guy who ran the kibbutz that Bernie spent roughly 9 mo. at, did. There were lots of kibbutz (plural?) he could have attended, but he chose that one. Then were plenty of opportunities where Bernie could have repudiated those youthful decisions, but he never has.
* * *
Kibbutzim.
Most if not all were socialist in principle; most if not all eventually moderated to a quasi-capitalist set-up.
I don’t know enough to know what Bernie’s actually practiced at that time.
kib•butz k?-boo?ts?, -boo?ts??
n. A collective farm or settlement in modern Israel.
n. an Israeli communal{2} form of agricultural settlement. Originally it was predominantly agricultural and practiced a very high level of sharing, including collective rearing of children. More recently (by 1998) industries have taken over a significant role in the Kibbutz economy, and the level of sharing has dropped significantly.
n. A community, usually a village, based on a high level of social and economical sharing, equality, direct democracy and tight social relations.
Ann on January 14, 2020 at 5:41 pm said:
They’re not targeted specifically at the rich, but national service programs involving young people have been supported by both the left and the right, see “It’s time to make national service a universal commitment”.
* * *
Interesting article; I had lost track of that program.
It sounds great in principle: Uncle Sam as a matchmaker between volunteers and organizations or communities needing service, with some taxpayer funded perks for the, um, paid volunteers.
So far, no problem (depending on the cost of the perks).
BUT — once it’s mandatory, how long before all of the service is directed toward only federally approved outlets, with mandatory indoctrination along the lines now seen in schools and colleges?
The Left then has a place to catch all the home-schooled, non-university-graduate folks that, at the moment, are slipping through their clutches.
John Hinderaker wrote a good essay on this at PowerLine, with some interesting information and a useful look at Sanders’ past.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/01/remembering-james-hodgkinson.php
Bernie is a not really a communist.
Practically nobody who can tie his own shoe actually believes in socialism, much less communism.
When was the last time anybody actually proposed nationalizing the commanding heights, abolishing constitutional, limited government; and eliminating enumerated, bourgeois rights? Was that person wearing shoes?
There are plenty of people in favor of tinkering around with the various features of a mixed economy… like pumping up the welfare state… and calling it socialism… but is it? Nah.
Transnational progressivism is a different beast. It’s basically fascism.
Fascism is possible (and ubiquitous); but socialism? Nah. Deranged, wannabe socialists do fascism and call it socialism.
Private-Public “partnerships”? Check.
Rejection of methodological individualism? Check.
Police state? Check.
“Social Death” for scapegoated groups? Check.
“Socialists” accept all these things as intermediate steps on the way from dictatorship of the proletariat to a post-scarcity freedom and the withering away of the state… but but but…
Once The Party controls the apparatus of coercion and control, you get what they give you; and what you probably get is a boot to the face forever…. or at least until the food, fuel and/or bullets run out.
The only genuinely socialist proposition I worry about is open borders. And so-called real socialist Bernie Sanders rejects it.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/story/2019/04/08/bernie-sanders-open-borders-1261392
Bernie is not an international socialist; he’s a national socialist. He don’t give a shit about Chinese workers, it’s all about the workers within that arbitrary national boundary called the USA.
He wants a highly-bureaucratized, mixed-economy in one highly-policed nation-state. He’s basically a fascist.
Montage: “I’ve always been one that felt if this country swings into the extremes it will be a slow creep to where we find ourselves one day in places we never imagined 30 or 50 years ago. And then we’re too old to do anything about it”
The first sentence is a precise description of where it seems to me we are right now, except for the “slow creep” part. I’m referring to changes like those described by Kai Akker at 8:47 p.m. — and it didn’t take anywhere near 30 to 50 years for them to happen. For instance, most of the current social movement on the left toward McCarthy-esque repression of political dissent and destruction of dissenters (such as the gleeful willingness to wreck the lives of 15-year-olds in MAGA caps) came about within the past 10 or 15 years, simultaneously with the rise of social media.
As for the second sentence, I’m struck by the naivete of Montage’s remark about being “too old to do anything” by the time dangerous political change can occur. It’s an odd thing to imagine that increasing age necessarily means political incapacity at this particular moment in our history, when our current president, his leading political opponents, the Speaker of the House and many more of our political leaders are well into their 70s. It doesn’t suggest knowing much about the later stages of life, or having thought much about them, either.
Art Deco. The CCC was voluntary.
I know, along with the programs under the CNCS rubric, some of which date from the Kennedy Administration.
The left’s current view is not.
In fairness to Bernie, National Service was always a vaguely wonkish notion promoted by liberals dissatisfied with prevailing currents of liberal thought, e.g. the circle around Charles Peters. Peters had in that era a take on things worth pondering, but his crew wasn’t nearly as original as they pretended to be (or as unoriginal as Arthur Schlesinger claimed they were). It’s never been an item on the liberal agenda generally and the rest of us take no interest in it. Ann’s trying to stick us with the bill for it. (If memory serves me, Ann tried to retail the Obamacare-was-a-Republican-Program meme here as well, but that one’s such a staple for sorosphere trolls I can never quite remember which of them have tried to serve it up and which haven’t).
Peters is still alive at age 92, which is amazing as he wasn’t a man who had healthy habits. The young men he as a middle-aged man hired to run his magazine are now old men. It seemed to me that by 2004 he had slid into a hyperpartisan stance, defending the likes of Mary Mapes, and the Washington Monthly under his successor had no distinguishing features in its impulses and editorial line. Usually, people in his age group are not all that lucid, but he managed to publish a book as recently as three years ago. If there is a candidate running most likely to be in tune with Charles Peters ca. 1983, it’s Petey Booty-gig.
I have a friend who lost more than half her body weight some years ago. She did it really fast, too – less than a year and a half, close to 10 lb a month, which is a rate of weight loss VERY hard to maintain over time. In the year that followed, she would sometimes check in with me about her eating habits: “Today I was really stressed, and I ate a bunch of potato chips. Is that normal?” She had such a disrupted relationship with food, as they say, that she truly didn’t know how “normal” people ate.
Well. I reassured her, and reassured her, and reassured her, starting to feel a little uneasy as her eating scenarios got stranger and stranger. Finally when she told me she was regularly getting up in the middle of the night and getting dressed, driving to a convenience store (in a rough part of town), buying a bag of chips and eating it all in her car in the parking lot… I had to say, “Honey, I think maybe you have an eating disorder.” She started therapy, but she also gained back all the weight.
Point is, I think Montage is choosing, as we all do sometimes, to look at the still-present normalities of our nation’s civil life despite the outliers. But if we fail to take note of the outliers, we may miss some point of no (effective) return. The devil is very much in the details: at what point do we need to become as wild-eyed in our denouncement of the stroll toward totalitarianism as Bernie is about American drug costs?
Things change slowly until they change quickly. One might recall the 1960-1975 rise and fall of the American counterculture.
Who saw that coming? Or going?
Happily it didn’t involve gulags. The changes were largely cultural — not descents into communism or fascism. But 1968 was unimaginable to 1960 and irretrievable to 1975.
In retrospect the counterculture was like seeing the Lost Continent of Atlantis emerge from the sea, shine in its bizarre glory for six years or so, then sink back below the waves.
He wants a highly-bureaucratized, mixed-economy in one highly-policed nation-state. He’s basically a fascist.
Sanders largely lacks the revanchism which is a signature of fascist movements. He appears to have only a pro-forma interest in identity politics.
shine in its bizarre glory
It’s a peculiar glory alright which leaves nothing of substance behind — I mean even Achilles can complain to Odysseus from the afterlife in Hades that all his unequaled glory is as nothing, and yet here we are reading about him 3,000 years later.
As “cultural” mounds go, the “shining” 60s seem more like a modern landfill mount than an Atlantian lost civilization. One merely has to query contemporary teenagers to find just how forgotten that time has become.
But then no one bothers to read Plato’s dialogues these days either, let alone understand them.
One might recall the 1960-1975 rise and fall of the American counterculture.
Who saw that coming? Or going?
Happily it didn’t involve gulags. The changes were largely cultural — not descents into communism or fascism. But 1968 was unimaginable to 1960 and irretrievable to 1975.
Huh? Anybody who was alive and interested saw it coming. The hep cats and beatniks of the ’50s turned into the hippies (and Yippies) of the ’60s. The Zen of the Alan Watts ’50s turned quickly into the ’60s LSD parties of Leary and Alpert, and then on to Haight-Ashbury and thence to the cover of Life magazine.
The hippies of the ’60s affected the future policy makers starting in the ’70s. Tom Hayden, for example. And has Hillary Clinton had one single new idea since she helped the Black Panther defense while at Yale Law? Today’s Democratic Party is the legacy of all that counter-enlightenment thinking and living.
Huh? Anybody who was alive and interested saw it coming.
And anybody would be lying.
Cite someone in 1960 who foresaw that in 1968 millions of young people smoking pot, taking LSD and dropping out plus three high-level assassinations — Malcolm X, MLK and RFK — and a “police riot” at the Democratic convention in Chicago.
Remember that 1960 was basically as buttoned-down conformist as 1959.
Neo,
I have a question for you, if you don’t mind….
Am I correct to think that, back before your “A mind is a difficult thing to change” process, you would not have agreed with the statement, “The left never seems to lose that Gulag impulse” …?
You say, “That tape reminds me very much of this [Bill Ayers] from the 60s.” Well, yes: I think it should. But, that was in the 60’s, and of course your change-of-mind didn’t happen until after the 9/11 attacks.
So, how did you look at such “Gulag impulses” until then?
Did you ignore them? Were they surrounded by an “ugh field” in your mind?
Or did you say to yourself, “I’m a liberal, and a normal one; that hard-left stuff has nothing to do with me” …?
Or was it more like, “Well, the right is always (some bad adjectives here). So we may have to fight fire with fire, or at least mount a credible threat; that’s where Ayers and other folks regrettably come in” …?
I’m asking this, Neo, because it seems like the “Gulag impulse” has been pretty obvious since the 60’s. Yet left-of-center folk still somehow seem, in their own minds, to paint themselves as “the good guys” rather than “the guys who, perennially, sprout new batches of ill-groomed, irrational, firebomb-waving Che wannabes, from the KKK to Antifa.”
My sister, for reasons related to her social set and (I’m sorry to say) my mother’s poorly-thought-out, unwinsome, and hypocritical conservatism, went leftward starting in college. But I don’t think she sees herself as associated with these Bernie types despite the trend.
What gives? Can you offer any insight?
While I disagree with Montage on the pace of change, I certainly consider it an argument with two sides.
I don’t find the point of the Left lacking a leader persuasive at all though. Recall that conservatives did not not want government healthcare (for example). We kept electing Paul Ryan and John McCain and wondering why there was no change. No one predicted Trump. Trump did not create the conditions for a conservative Presidency. He rose by taking the mantle of an existing constituency.
Anyone living in blue areas knows there are howling packs of Dems ready to swarm if you offend their orthodoxy on NextDoor or FaceBook.
If you are a Repub, even an official like Steve Scalise, Rand Paul or Sarah Sanders you can be assaulted in public at a moment’s notice.
Trust me, the Gulag leader can rise at any moment. It’s a done deal.
“Trust me, the Gulag leader can rise at any moment. It’s a done deal.” – JimNorCal
I’m going with Jim here. The question of WHO that leader might be depends on circumstances, but there are plenty of nascent autocrats out in the field.
Nobody predicted Hitler or Lenin would become the top dogs, but any of the other curs in their packs would have been just as bad.
I’m a changer from liberal to conservative. My recollection, as a formerly unquestioning NY Liberal, is that I took comfort being open minded, tolerant and smart as a protection against tyranny, because tyranny is stupid.
There seems to be an impression that authoritarianism is always right wing and followers are always fearful right wing idiots, regardless of the ideology. There are even academic studies that prove it!
It really took a lot of work to bust through my preconceptions, such as that I was smart, open minded and tolerant. Seeing my own, huge mental blind spot, was like having a migraine.
It wasn’t my intention to change my political perspective. My motivation was only to understand my mother’s experience surviving the Holocaust as a prisoner in a Soviet Gulag and her rescue to Israel.
Just the other day, a smart, educated, open minded, liberal man smugly told me that “Israelis are the new ‘Germans’ and that “real Socialism has never been tried yet.” Talk about stupid.
Cite someone in 1960 who foresaw that in 1968 millions of young people smoking pot, taking LSD and dropping out plus three high-level assassinations
Huxley, you’re confusing the scale of the phenomenon with its existence and development. Few foresee the scale of a future war, but many sense its coming.
Most of the ’50s beats felt they were onto something, from Lenny Bruce to Paul Krassner, Allen Ginsberg to Timothy Leary, Jack Kerouac to Paul Goodman, Norman Mailer to Buckminster Fuller. Each one felt he was riding some special tide, and they turned out to be right.
There were others who understood the trend and opposed it.
Remember that 1960 was basically as buttoned-down conformist as 1959.
Sort of, but those years have been falsely stereotyped in that regard, IMO. The nonconformist jazz world was going strong in the ’50s, rock-n-roll was exploding, Rebel Without a Cause came out in 1955, and Time publisher Henry Luce was probably taking LSD in 1960. There was a ton of ferment in the ’50s going on at the very same time that the suburbs were starting to be built out. Levittown was conformist, but none of those other trends were.
The video about the “Weathermen:” seems to be a preview of a preview of Kurt Schlicter
‘s novel, “The Peoples Republic.”
AesopFan,
Thanks for the info.
“Peters is still alive at age 92, which is amazing as he wasn’t a man who had healthy habits.”
My grandmother was a WCTU prohibitionist, who in her later years would have a “little bit” of wine, multiple times throughout the evening in addition to being overweight. She lived to be almost 106. Modest amounts of alcohol (or is it red wine?) are the secret to longevity, is my theory. I also had a couple of aunts on the other side of my family that dropped dead in their 50’s.
_____
Mentus, Interesting comment.
” ‘Socialists’ accept all these things as intermediate steps on the way from dictatorship of the proletariat to a post-scarcity freedom and the withering away of the state… but but but…”
About 20 years ago I was interested in how it came to be that an anarchist assassinated President McKinley and led myself down the rabbit hole of Marxist organizational history. Back then I believe that those folks largely put out what they believed onto the web. (Now propaganda is the thing.)
Anyway, the big schism for Marxists is between big state communism and tiny or nonexistent state anarchism. Plus many subdivisions and sub-subdivisions. Was or is it a genuinely large schism? In the last few weeks of the Spanish civil war, the anarchists started killing the communists and vice versa, so it was a serious division then.
The anarchist theories struck me as absurd; as type of libertarianism gone mad. Mentus’ phrase “a post-scarcity freedom” is a good short-hand for it.
Mostly agree. He codes his heterodox fascism as orthodox Marxist-Leninism instead.
Polemics aside, to describe fascism functionally… as an economic system… I’d go with “socialism in one state”. That’s totally Burn-ee.
He appears to have only a pro-forma interest in socialism. He’s really just a bum. He’ll say whatever he has to say to avoid work.
Remember, he was kicked out of a commune for shirking:
“Lazy Bernie” Was Once Kicked Out of Hippie Commune
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thelibertarianrepublic.com/lazy-bernie-was-once-kicked-out-of-hippie-commune/amp/
Bernie was too lazy to be a hippie.
Pingback:You Ain’t Lost That Gulag Feeling
Esther:
Me, too – the last thing I wanted or expected was to change my political point of view. I also was merely seeking to get closer to understanding and truth.
What a long strange trip it’s been.
Montage; JimNorCal: et al:
R.C.:
Actually, I think I would have agreed with the idea that the LEFT never loses that gulag impulse.
I was never a leftist at all. In fact, I detested the ideas of the left, having been exposed to leftist (Communist) fanatics in my own family quite early on in life, and finding them uncompromising, unreasonable, and rather frightening. I doubt they would have owned up to thinking the gulag was good (I have no idea whether they agreed or disagreed with it), but I know they would always have a rationalization or excuse for anything the USSR did, or a denial.
I also had some experience in college with leftists, and rejected what they had to say. Back when I was growing up, leftists did not dominate the Democratic Party, and I distinguished them utterly from liberals. I was a liberal, I thought, and a rather mild one at that.
It took me quite a while to learn what a “useful idiot” was, however.
There will be no comfy chairs in the free education camps.
the revanchism which is a signature of fascist movements
I would argue that revanchism as such isn’t a necessary feature of fascism, but rather is a historical accident due to the fact that all the European fascist states arose in countries that had just lost territory in a war or not gained territory they thought they should have, in an era when moving borders was not unthinkable.
Indeed, I think it’s the “populist grudge” that’s the necessary feature, which happened to be “revanchism” then, but is the “1%” now.
I don’t know that Bernie has Gulag tendencies. I’d go 90-10 that he does and, if he’s frustrated in one of his plans, he’d be up to the hundred.
Either way, he knows he has to allow his supporters the vision or they’d find somebody else.
I don’t know that Bernie has Gulag tendencies. I’d go 90-10 that he does and, if he’s frustrated in one of his plans, he’d be up to the hundred.
Either way, he knows he has to allow his supporters the vision or they’d find somebody else.
Bernie just needs to be loved. No, listened to. That’s more important to him than love. He exists when talking to an audience. Without the audience, Bernie does not exist.
As “cultural” mounds go, the “shining” 60s seem more like a modern landfill mount than an Atlantian lost civilization. One merely has to query contemporary teenagers to find just how forgotten that time has become.
That last thought is not a high standard! What other time than their brief lives ISN’T forgotten, sdferr? Or perhaps I should say, never learned about, thought of, or even remotely considered in any format?
That your estimation of the ’60s-’70s? A landfill equivalent, better done for than remembered?
Does it not seem to you that various ’60s themes have been returning of recent years?
I would argue that revanchism as such isn’t a necessary feature of fascism, but rather is a historical accident due to the fact that all the European fascist states arose in countries that had just lost territory in a war or not gained territory they thought they should have, in an era when moving borders was not unthinkable.
You might, but your taxonomy would stink.
Does it not seem to you that various ’60s themes have been returning of recent years?
“Putney Swope”?
Imagine no John Lennon
It’s easy if you try
No empty love of tyrants
And socialism bye bye
Imagine all the steeples
Ringing loud and free
You may say I’m a boomer
But I’m not the only one
One day you’ll be older
Will your foolish ways be done?
lame, as was much of the 60’s and 70’s
I was thinking of psychedelics, suddenly coming back into vogue, with new stories of what they can do to improve our lives. We should be taking them. It’s certainly not because they are fun! They are good for us.
Like Putney Swope, but not as good, RD Laing is suddenly getting another whirl, too. Still a little whirl at this point and hopefully that is all it will be.
Also, English muffins.
Speaking of how ignorant this Bernie supporter is, he is talking about the coming convention in Milwaukee. “We’re going to make 1978 look like a f@#%ing cookout.” (The video corrects the date.)
Can’t even get the dates straight on what he doubtless considers an important event- the unrest at the Demo convention in Chicago in 1968. Which reminds me that I cringe every time I hear CSNY’s Chicago. “We can change the world, rearrange the world.” Yeah, right.
I doubt he has even HEARD of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. Well, maybe that’s going a little to far, but I would be very surprised to find out he read as much as a paragraph of it.
Gringo, I too was wondering if he had read a word of Solzhenitzyn.
I was trying to edit my comment and ran out of time. I wanted to say that if he does not know of Solzhenitzyn, his ignorance may be understandable. But if he does, or should, and simply hasn’t bothered, well then, it’s inexcusable.
Well, looks like I didn’t get things exactly right. Sanders did not address the allegation, but shutting down his staff is not the same as ignoring it.
Maybe that counts as an assertion?
Can’t wait to see if O’Keefe got someone besides the first staffer on camera, since that guy is claiming the campaign is full of his buddies, and that Sanders is “masquerading” as not-a-full-bore-communist, to sucker the rubes.
AesopFan on January 14, 2020 at 5:40 pm said:
It will be interesting to see if Sanders: denounces his staffer and fires him (despite almost certainly agreeing with his statements); deflects blame to O’Keefe for doing something mumble-mumble-illegal-mean-mumble without addressing his staffer’s conduct; ignores the revelation; or doubles-down.
If O’Keefe plays true to form, he will wait to release some video until it can be used to refute something Sanders and his campaign assert.
* * *
https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2020/01/15/sanders-campaign-staffers-are-locking-down-their-accounts-after-project-veritas-expose/
https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2020/01/15/project-veritas-releases-second-video-featuring-sanders-staffer-promising-murder-and-violence/
https://www.redstate.com/alexparker/2020/01/15/766518/
Even robot is tired of yelling Warning warning will Robinson…
and feels screw it..
[should i link to where i posted it? nope]
Artfldgr: LOL
It’s not as if the Robinsons ever listen to him.
The Sanders supporter is ignorant about his history of gulags. He is idiot and like the Weathermen, will be a dark dash in history. There have always been extremists, by different names in the USA. We just see more of it because with cell phones, Facebook, etc., these individuals are embolden to televise their opinion. Sanders will not be the Nominee.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/16/the-war-for-the-democratic-party-will-destroy-lives-and-change-our-country/