The far left is usually a minority, but relies on the inaction and cowardice of others
This seems correct to me, both then and now:
Communists triumphed in Russia not because of a popular uprising, but because a small group of disciplined and armed intellectuals, ready to use maximal violence, staged a coup. They could do so because liberals, anarchists, populist socialist revolutionaries, and other Marxists resisted them, if at all, only when it was too late. “Condemn terror?” indignantly asked Kadet leader Ivan Petrunkevich. “That would be the moral death of our party!” “No enemies to the left!” was an article of faith that Lenin, who was unprincipled on principle, knew how to exploit.
In the 1960s and ’70s, I was surprised my liberal friends would rather side with Communists, who rejected their core beliefs, than with conservatives, who differed only on details of policy. Better those a mile to one’s left than an inch to one’s right! It was a matter of identity: If you grow up regarding yourself as the opponent of conservatives, it becomes psychologically impossible to join them. Is that why liberal Democrats back Hasan Piker, who praises Stalin’s USSR and Mao’s China? More terrifying than Abdul El-Sayed, Graham Platner, and Zohran Mamdani is the readiness of those who are neither totalitarians nor antisemites to support them. It is that support that may enable their eventual triumph.
I see this operating constantly. There is the reflexive reluctance and often absolute refusal to vote for a Republican, however bland or moderate, combined with a willingness to hold one’s nose and vote for the most extreme and vicious (and/or most stupid) of leftists – or to sit the election out, which has much the same effect.
Plus, once an extreme leftist wins a Democrat Party nomination, there is sometimes a fatalism if the state or city is very blue. This depresses turnout immensely. Why bother to go to the polls if the outcome appears to be a foregone conclusion?
But Yeats said it better, and he said it a long time ago:
”
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
In the life of this blog, there are certain poems and scenes I’ve quoted over and over. One is the Yeats poem I quoted above, “The Second Coming.” Another is the Kipling poem “The Gods of the Copybook Headings.” And still another is this scene from the movie A Man For All Seasons.
Evergreens, I’m afraid.
Yes, my frustration with the left has always been that they punch so far above their weight. And while I have a few thoughts on the subject I still don’t feel I truly understand why it is so.
Here in CO, the Rep party is mostly dead. A couple of bright spots. I still vote straight Rep ticket. Except for the Judges. I always vote NO on every one. I will lose my Republican Rep, Gabe Evans, this Nov. So much money coming in to defeat him. His opponent is a closet DSA guy.
Don’t forget Kipling’s “The Beginnings”
There’s a lot of wisdom in this post! Neo, do not be afraid.
For a leftist, nothing is too extreme to further their cause.
They will hitch their horses to any wagon if they believe it will be beneficial to their cause.
Their ability to formulate a message to gain adherents is unparalleled.
There is no point in talking to them or trying to reason with them or trying to reach some sort of compromise with them because as soon as they get the opportunity, they will kill you.
The ONLY thing that is effective in dealing with leftists is killing them first.
That is the lesson learned – or should have been learned – in seeing what happened in the USSR, China, Cuba, N.Korea, Venezuela, and all of Eastern Europe from 1945 to about 1990.
Communists triumphed in Russia not because of a popular uprising, but because a small group of disciplined and armed intellectuals, ready to use maximal violence, staged a coup. They could do so because liberals, anarchists, populist socialist revolutionaries, and other Marxists resisted them, if at all, only when it was too late.
This is what “radicalization” is all about. Compensate for a lack of numbers and money with zealous action by the base. Maybe it wasn’t true during the Russian revolution, but anarchists groups have strongly adhered to this logic.
The other thing I read about that revolution was that the German government funded the early communist radicals, thinking that the internal conflict would stunt Russia’s ability to attack Germany. The communists took the money and arms and seized one or more major banks with gold reserves and greatly expanded their funding.
– – – – – –
I see this operating constantly. There is the reflexive reluctance and often absolute refusal to vote for a Republican, however bland or moderate, combined with a willingness to hold one’s nose and vote for the most extreme and vicious (and/or most stupid) of leftists – or to sit the election out, which has much the same effect.
I’ve been thinking that this attitude of “being terrified of Republicans” is something worth exploring more.
What are some of the big, terrifying bugaboos? Republicans are racist. Or anti-worker. They are heartless towards lower income folks. They are religious zealots. They will become authoritarians, because they are fascists.
I myself, when I was young and dumb, voted for Barbara Boxer in her first run for the Senate. Why? Because I believed the media when they told me her opponent was an extremist right winger. And because I didn’t appreciate how entrenched incumbents could become in congress.
Backing up in history, how is it that the GOP party founded on anti-slavery became associated with racism? The only clear turning point I’ve seen (I’m sure there are others) is when there was a huge flood in the Midwest and Sec. Herbert Hoover led an extensive rescue operation. He employed low cost labor which was mostly black and many of them died in the effort. “It’s because the GOP is racist,” was the political message in the wake of that effort.
I am or was most sensitive to the religious zealot charge. Having been raised in the Catholic family, I saw the pros and cons of that. While I wasn’t anti-Catholic, I did think that it should stay the heck out of our politics. Within the last few years, I wasn’t thrilled by the response of many red states when the SCOTUS changed the legal framework of abortion. The idea of treading softly on people’s freedoms, wasn’t given much consideration. Or so it seemed to me.
Commenter HC68 stated a week or two ago that he is, or can be, “terrified” because the GOP is anti-worker and anti-union. I guess I can understand that. However, my father was a small business employer and was heavily taxed. And unions have a varied and quite checkered past and present.
Plus, it is not too hard to find a Republican who embraces crony capitalism from time to time. Possibly Trump fits that charge. That supports HC68’s worries.
But hope springs eternal…
“Federal agents smash huge voter fraud ring in California…”—
https://nypost.com/2026/10/19/us-news/fbi-smash-huge-california-voter-fraud-ring-in-los-angeles-days-after-feds-issued-ultimatum-to-state/
Consider myself at least well read on Russian history. Besides being the most vocal minority, they get others to pull their ideas, useful idiots, then get rid of them after they take over. They rigged elections before the Revolution just like our Marxists are doing.
Not sure I’d rely on the premise of the current post, though it is undeniable that the worst are—often—full of passionate intensity (and now, huge amounts of money, as well as control of the global media; not to mention well-organized and disciplined cadres…)
Anyways…here’s something related that might be useful:
“WHO’S WHO: Inside France’s ‘Chaos Inc’ franchise of communist groups, labor unions and global activists”—
https://www.foxnews.com/world/whos-who-inside-frances-chaos-inc-franchise-communist-groups-labor-unions-global-activists
H/T Blazingcatfur blog.
+ Bonus (Brendan O’Neill):
“How ‘Palestine’ conquered France;
“Saturday’s violent desecration of the French Republic was a mob jihad against democracy itself.”—
https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/10/19/how-palestine-conquered-france/
H/T Powerline blog.
In fact, today’s Powerline blog is on a roll…
https://Powerlineblog.com
E.g., the hugely ironic, if enormously illustrative
“Bibi and Macron at the UN”—
https://www.civitasoutlook.com/research/bibi-and-macron-at-the-un-7e073e22-d5a3-4d2c-95be-f60599fa8c24
+ Final query: Is the blowback against unions these days such a flaw?
Even my Montpellier host says the current riots aren’t the usual French riots but coordinated attacks on the system.
Major protests and riots are also springing up in other countries in Europe — Italy, Belgium, Albania, Portugal and Spain.
He is truly worried.
I’m starting to.
Is this part of an international October Surprise? Trump is Enemy #1 for the Red-Green alliance and rightfully so.
I don’t believe Obama could have found his route to the White House without being sponsored by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, the king and queen of the communist Weather Underground.
This is not well-known and should be.
Jacob Rees-Mogg has thoughts on “The Revolting French” (8:25):
https://youtu.be/jdkAleidU2k
One reason for gun control to be so important to the left is to avoid another McMinn County War (aka “The Battle of Athens, TN).
Wish I could take credit for it: “I’ve never seen the expression on the face of a vampire confronted by a large silver crucifix. But I have seen the expression on the face of a gun control advocate asked the plan for disarming criminals, so I think I ‘m close.”
Nope, it’s the ordinary citizens they fear.
TommyJay
That may well be the first turning point. Thanks for informing me. A more recent turning point would be Goldwater’s voting against the Civil Rights Act in 1964. He did so because he thought it was government overreach. He was a leader in desegregating Phoenix stores in the 1950s.
The traditional narrative is that Goldwater’s voting against the Civil Rights Act began the change from the solid (Democrat) South to the South voting Republican. The facts say otherwise. Republican Presidential candidates running against FDR got around 20% of the vote. In 1948, Dewey got 26% of the vote in the South, running against Truman(D), Strom Thurmond (Dixiecrat), and Henry Wallace (Progressive). In 1952, Eisenhower got 48% of the vote in the South. In 1956 and 1960 Eisenhower and Nixon’s percent of the South’s vote was in the mid to high 40s. Note that Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock in 1957 to enforce desegregation—which didn’t hurt Nixon that much in 1960).
— TommyJay
No, I didn’t say that I was terrified of the GOP, I said that working class voters, many of whom are sympathetic with the GOP on social, defense, and national identity issues, are terrified of the GOP on economics, and anti-unionism is part of (but not all of) why. I’ve seen this in operation for decades.
(My own personal views are more frustration than terror.)
— TommyJay
When the black civil rights movement leadership sold out, more or less, in the sixties, that was a big part of it. Also, the black working class has the same distrust for the investor/owner class that the white working class did, which is why the black vote (which had been reliably Republican until FDR) switched over back then. The Depression.
The Great Depression still shapes and colors every aspect of American politics.
— TommyJay
Trump is the least crony capitalist Republican President in decades. That’s part of why the GOPe wants him gone so badly. He’s rocking a very lucrative boat.
Yeah, the unions have been and are a mixed bag. But the good they did is real along the way, too. Likewise, the inherent conflicts of interest between employer and employee.
The black vote is sometimes said to have gone Dem in the 1960s over the Civil Rights movement. This is a spin sort of like the ‘Iraq cost the GOP the 2006 election’ spin. Yeah, the black Dem vote did solidify somewhat at that point, but the black working class and black poorer vote had been shifting toward the Dems throughout the 19teens and 1920s, and it was FDR who brought the black vote into the Dem coalition.
IIRC, in 1936 FDR is believed to have won over 70% of the black vote. It was the decisive shift, and it was driven by economics. The Great Depression and the New Deal that drove it.
It’s just about impossible to overstate how great the political and social impact of the Great Depression was.
TommyJay
For those who like unions, consider the following . The State of Public Sector Employment and Unionization in the U.S.
That statistic does not endear me to unions.
All political systems have a life span. The more oppressive ones seemed to be shorter.
A wit once said fascism is always descending on the US but falls on Europe.
Public sector unions are not the same entities as those private sector. Public sector unions, such as teachers, government employees are an abomination IMO.
FDR ,damn him to hell,, was against public sector unions. But damn him anyway. He also got a massive % of poor white southerners votes. He was the progenitor of the free shit army. As I said damn him to hell.
Thanks HC68! Sorry for the misrepresentation. You are frustrated, and others are terrified. 😉
Very interesting other HC68 responses as well.
Yes, I looked up the Civil Rights Act or 1964. (Also, Eisenhower signed a more modest one in 1957.) While the GOP was in the minority in congress, their yes vote percentages were much higher than the Dem vote percentages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#Legislative_history
See the Vote Totals heading
It’s just about impossible to overstate how great the political and social impact of the Great Depression was. — HC68
HC also mentions FDR’s draw for black voters.
President Hoover erred severely in the depression. Serious emergency federal action was required, and he felt differently and didn’t act. That this, and FDR and the New Deal, could lead blacks to feel hostile towards the GOP is a little surprising to me, but very believable.
Certainly, labor unions filled a real need historically. The story of the business dealings of Andrew Carnegie and Mr. Frick are quite shocking. Then you have guys like Frank Nitty (aka Francesco Nitto) running labor unions behind the scenes back in the 1930’s.
Trump is a mixed bag in many respects. I like the fact that he stopped federal subsidies for the purchase of Telsa cars. That goes against the friendship he had with Elon Musk, which I think was in effect when the subsidies stopped, or was proposed.
I very much dislike Trump’s federal acquisition of various corp. common stock deals. Even if what he is doing is fruitful, it sets a terrible precedence for future presidents.
https://www.cato.org/blog/government-ownership-stakes-companies-becoming-routine-under-trump
Just as this TDS thingy that took off and started popping up in unexpected places. Like those otherwise sane people you know that suddenly go off the rails at the mention of this new forbidden ‘he who shall not be named’ guy. It screams extraordinarily inorganic. And it spooks the holy hell out of me as well; as Trump pulls back the curtain, do you recall Toto ever getting this much hate for doing the same stunt? But then, that movie predates the CIA.
@SENNACHERIB: A wit once said fascism is always descending on the US but falls on Europe.
That would be the one and only Tom Wolfe, one of the few conservative media celebrities of the 60s/70s, who celebrated America from astronauts to acidheads, lampooned Leonard Bernstein’s kowtowing to the Black Panthers, and advised writers to get their gazes out of their navels and go “stalking the billion-footed beast,” i.e. the kaleidoscopic variety of Americans and their subcultures.
“The ONLY thing that is effective in dealing with leftists is killing them first.” JohnTyler
That is the Fate they are determined to bring upon themselves.
“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (King James Version) Proverbs 14:12
Actually that was gunther grass quoted by revel who was noted by wolfe
Wolfe had that remarkable skill of observation that endured through bonfire man in full charlotte simmons and back to blood
From the great white defendent to the culture that produced sharpton to atlanta bsnking intrigues to college bacchanals (very timely)
Good news: the long sought center of the Universe has finally been found, and that center has a name! And that name is Ana C. Reyes, Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Praise her holiness evermore!
…But if/when the Left owns the Courts, all bets are off (as we have seen all too often in the past).
The following is the VENGEANCE—that’s right!—that a liberal DC court is wreaking against ULTRA-honest, dogged and (therefore?) perceived right-of-center investigative journalist Catherine Herridge.
(They thought they had her cornered years ago but she held firm.)
Here’s Turley with the raging absurdity:
“Supreme Showdown: Investigative Reporter And Accused Chinese Operative Face Off In Press Freedom Case“—
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/supreme-showdown-investigative-reporter-and-accused-chinese-operative-face-press
@Miguel cervantes: Actually that was gunther grass quoted by revel who was noted by wolfe
Nope. If you’re going to correct someone, be sure you’ve got it straight.
_______________________
Grass was enjoying himself for the first time all evening. He was not simply saying, “You really don’t have so much to worry about.” He was indulging his sense of the absurd. He was saying: “You American intellectuals—you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!”
He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.
–Tom Wolfe, “Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine”
I don’t know who said it first, only it’s quite apt.
I am humbled my stuff is read.
@SENNACHERIB: I don’t know who said it first, only it’s quite apt.
See my previous comment.
Tom Wolfe created that vivid metaphotical sentence that people often quote. It was along the lines of Revel, whom I doubt wrote anything so memorable.
He credits Revel. Wolfe deserves credit for his words.
“The State of France”—
https://www.civitasoutlook.com/research/the-state-of-france-679ea694-529e-4120-a9d9-0d2fc64e4eac
H/T Powerline blog.
“Interesting times…”
The far left also benefits from left & liberal euphemisms for Democrat.
Only when Dems get power do these extreme Dem positions gain power.
Only Dems & Reps are being voted for, or usually against; not left, right, liberal, conservative.
We should call them rad Democrats, or radical or extreme Dems. Voters who vote Dem are voting for French style riots, supported by Dem inaction.
My two cents, or two francs, on the Tom Wolfe/Günter Grass/Jean-François Revel brouhaha.
Volokh: Tom Wolfe on Fascism “tracked it down to Tom Wolfe’s ‘The Intelligent Coed’s Guide to America,’ republished in Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1976)” (Intelligent Coed’s Guide to America appeared in Harper’s, July 1976. That used to be a good magazine.)
Günter Grass was merely pointing out that he didn’t see much fascism in Amerikkka.
I tracked down a similar Jean-François Revel quote in his 1972 book, Without Marx or Jesus, in page 113.
I
FDR ,damn him to hell,, was against public sector unions. But damn him anyway. He also got a massive % of poor white southerners votes. He was the progenitor of the free shit army. As I said damn him to hell.
==
The ratio of federal expenditure to gross domestic product during the period running from 1933 to 1940 averaged about 6.5%. Higher than before, rather modest compared to what came after. Notable source of the increase in expenditure was work-relief programs (Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, Public Works Administration). During the war and its bookends (1940-46), federal military expenditure averaged 1/3 of gross domestic product. The military is an inherently federal function. During the period running from 1945-47, federal military expenditure was reduced from > 40% of gross domestic product to about 6.5% of gross domestic product and public sector borrowing from 13% of gross domestic product per annum to -2% of gross domestic product per annum.