I may be overreacting here but I am starting to feel that the distinction between Fascism and Communism is reflected – in perhaps a very weakened and diluted way – in the divergence between the Marxist and non-Marxist strains of opposition on various internet sites. And this has become extremely marked since the covid manoeuvre began and so many Marxist sites seemed to fall under the sway of this new pseudo-Leftism adopted by the mainstream, leaving the rejection of covid, climate, transgenderism (and other such Pavlovian props) to the non-Marxists.
This issue can be demonstrated clearly by an encounter I had recently with one Sam Gerrans who has some videos on YouTube in which he inveighs against the rubbish ceaselessly pushed by the media but then arrives at the claim that the entire West is a vast cult. This is one of those statements that has an exciting sense of “ultra-radicalism” about it. But the fatal mistake here is to fail to realise that every social order that ever existed needs to have behavioural norms. Thus to simply train citizens to behave in a certain way cannot be glibly dismissed as “brainwashing”.
The dismal effect of this failure to see the roots of any social formation always presupposes a – usually unacknowledged – assumption that there is some kind of “pure behaviour” floating somewhere that we can just “tune in to”. This is similar to the notion that capitalism is a purely natural order that would spontaneously develop if we “just left things alone”.
The inevitable course of all such naïve thinking is to arrive at a deeply regressive outlook that postulates a golden age somewhere in the past. One of the tell-tale signs is the use of the word “modernity” as a pejorative.
A clue to what is happening here can be found in Trotsky’s essay, “FASCISM What It Is and How To Fight It”, which can be found here:
“The gigantic growth of National Socialism is an expression of two factors: a deep social crisis, throwing the petty bourgeois masses off balance, and the lack of a revolutionary party that would be regarded by the masses of the people as an acknowledged revolutionary leader. If the communist Party is the party of revolutionary hope, then fascism, as a mass movement, is the party of counter-revolutionary despair. When revolutionary hope embraces the whole proletarian mass, it inevitably pulls behind it on the road of revolution considerable and growing sections of the petty bourgeoisie. Precisely in this sphere the election revealed the opposite picture: counter-revolutionary despair embraced the petty bourgeois mass with such a force that it drew behind it many sections of the proletariat ...”
Thus, in times of crisis, we have two emergent forces: revolutionary optimism (communism) and counter-revolutionary despair (fascism). The former looks forward to a hopeful new society, the latter looks backward to an imagined pristine innocence.
I don’t think it is accidental that every one of the backward reactionary anti-Marxist sites I’ve been reading tends towards religious or occult notions. Gerrans is a student of Islam and has produced his own translation of The Koran. Another anti-Marxist, Guido Preparata, seems to have a fixation with some kind of esoteric interpretation of Catholicism. He has also hinted at demonic entities. And, most infamously, there is David Icke and his reptilian beings.
These are the murky waters through which I have been paddling since the “Left” succumbed to the bogus revolutionary twaddle of the mainstream.
As always, when I listen to this I feel compelled to make comments as it proceeds. I apologise if the following seems a bit fragmented. Much of it may seem questionable but it is limited by my own ignorance over many of the details.
I was happy that you mentioned Michael Parenti. I have quite a number of his books – though one thing that I found curious is his antipathy towards Trotsky. I’ve read a fair bit of Trotsky and I think he was a brilliant writer. But I know he has provoked a lot of animosity throughout the Left. And I note that Max made a disparaging remark about Trotskyists too. But then the WSWS is an allegedly “Trotskyist” organisation which doesn’t bode well for what Trotskyism has become.
I also relished the comment about the British Empire arising “by accident” and wasn’t aware of the American playing of the same scam though I’d heard the common sentiment that the USA was a kind of “occasionally mistaken friendly giant”! This is a very interesting sign of consistency between the old British and new American ideology. And it trashes those like Preparata who try to cast the US as some “initially pure” venture “corrupted by the British”.
Speaking of which, this fixation on the British as “The Root of All Evil” and as still somehow threatening the “goodness” of America is quite widespread. I think there is opportunity for a vast analytical expansion of this e.g. how it also seems to permeate down to pop culture with those devious Beatles infecting the US with their “hidden communist agenda” etc. Perhaps it has something to do with this idea that seems common within the US that everyone outside their sacred realm is still locked into the dark ages of the feudal system!
As Parenti pointed out, the fascist emphasis on permanent war to create a “healthy culture” plays very conveniently into demands for the conditions that maximise the exploitation which is essential to capitalism e.g. the “Don’t you now there’s a war on?” mentality reinforces the call for expanding working hours round the clock, pushing the wages down, minimising sustenance for the workers etc.
“The Origins of Totalitarianism” was published in 1951 i.e. right at the start of the Cold War theatre. That the second part contradicts the first is curious. Does this signal some pressure on Arendt to conform to the anti-communist meme?
As well as the world wars being a matter of imperialist rivalry was it not the case that these wars also had the handy effect of derailing powerful rising worker movements by diverting from the class issue into a chauvinistic nationalist screaming match?
The original fascist was Mussolini and it’s interesting that he started out on the Left and was then “seduced” by the Right. You may say that the capitalist order realised that this emerging threat could be twisted to their own purpose – as if saying, “So you want a rising mass movement to have a revolutionary effect? Very well – we can do that but under OUR control.” After which they then have a kind of “super-capitalism” i.e. exploitation of the working masses but without the façade of “free enterprise”.
Mention of the “Phoenix programme” makes me think of a chapter title of a “conspiracy” book I once read: “Kinder Gentler Death Squads”. This suggests that the full-on violence and brutality dished out to the populations in e.g. South America are, as it were, “watered down” for the US (and UK) domestic population. This was clearly highlighted by the recent alliance of the anti-trans movement with the Zionist supporters which showed up the sad fact that there were duped Westerners who could see the damage done to the citizens of the West via the butcherings of the trans surgery and the use of puberty blockers but they turned away from the total slaughter of the Gazans. Of course this in itself is powered by the age old cultural superiority notion which is an update i.e. a more “woke” oriented version of the old racism. These brown people are simply not like us, not as sensitive, don’t care about their children like we do etc. In short it is the mentality of Israel.
All of which underlines another development i.e. that the Israel assault on Gaza has reignited the “War on Terror” meme with “those Muslims” being carted out as an example of an inferior species. And if the race card is no longer acceptable then we can vent against “Islam” itself – which then puts us in the essentialist position of inveighing against a religion without consideration of the nuances of actual practice.
I like Hiroyuki’s remark about how Corey Morningstar’s analysis of the climate change movement was rejected which led to John talking about how “The Left” didn’t take up a Marxist perspective over e.g. the covid matter. Indeed I have found that the most Marxist analyses come ironically from sources that wouldn’t be counted as Marxist e.g. Jennifer Bilek’s investigation into the transgender movement. And I was initially excited by Simon Elmer’s articles on covid. But he seems to have gone off the rails.
But the ignorance displayed by general conversations on social media is jaw-dropping. The hysteria over Trump is an appalling indictment of what much of the Western public has become. And this applies to us here in Bonnie Scotland too. After I had a blow out with a friend over the covid vaxxes I don’t bother raising such heavy topics at all since it is counterproductive. And I have to be careful with my incorrigibly facetious quips since on a little probing I have found the same liberal hysteria bubbling up amongst my work colleagues!
You brought up so much I could respond to, but what I noticed during COVID-19 and what you and the group in the podcast pointed out, is that the left lost their mind (was it fear?) and believed the narrative. They hung on every case reported and every word out of Fauci's mouth.
They used the story that Cuba sent doctors around the world to help fight the pandemic as proof that it was real and that my questioning was proof I was a reactionary and a fascist. They also fell prey to the Trump derangement syndrome. It was jaw-dropping to me. I was banned and blocked by every socialist and communist I once was friends with and also my own liberal friends, who did not identify as communist.
Lex Olson blocked me but now it seems she is connected with me again on FB, or at least I am no longer blocked. I was called so many names for questioning and pointing out inconsistencies and sharing evidence there was fuckery afoot..especially called fascist and Trump supporter and Nazi.
I remember Native Americans, especially those who live on reservations that are poisoned from mining uranium, seemed to be hit really hard during the pandemic during normal flu season. I was told I was a murderer because I did not support the indigenous having first access to the vaccines. Of course, there was no treatment allowed to be used for the so-called covid illness (and every illness was called covid) because as Fauci said, we have no medicine to treat this "novel virus" until the vaccines are available, except Remdesivir, which we discovered killed people in the same way that AZT did during the AIDs thing.
Before I could stop the hospital my husband was given a dose and he immediately went into kidney failure. I put the kabosh on it once I found out, but the ICU he was in would have killed my husband if I were not there to advocate for him. Oh how the ICU nurses hated me.
The doctors maybe not so much as we discussed the Corman Drosten PCR test (of which most of my husband's doctors were not even aware was made without even having a virus or even a genetic sequence) and the studies claiming to have isolated a novel virus, which were pure pseudoscience.
I discovered that most doctors just believe the headlines in the medical journals and even repeat them and rarely have time to read the studies and think about them critically.
My primary told me I had a 1 in 100 chance of dying if I caught covid because I was unvaccinated but he had a 1 in 1000 chance of dying because he was fully vaxxed. I asked him to show me the study bearing out that statistic and he got angry.
Finally he got real and admitted he worked for a corporation and if he wanted to continue to get a paycheck he had to be careful to follow "protocol" and rules and watch what he said. I asked him about that oath he took to first do no harm, but told him I understood that his and many others' livelihoods were being held hostage so they could be used as guinea pigs or to further some agenda.
He never asked me if I wanted a vaccine again, but he was able to get my husband alone who was not strong enough to refuse the vax, he ended up taking the first Pfizer shot and months later got a very rare arterial blood clot that wound him in hospital/He was supposed to be there two days but he tested positive for covid without ANY symptoms and they almost killed him with protocol.
Five months later he got out and is still struggling with the after effects of his treatment and the vax and probably will the rest of his life.
The left moved fell prey to what I think was a well thought out propaganda movement by the rulers that included the selection of Trump as president and then four years of Russiagate to ramp up anti Russian sentiment and that old commie trope. I think that is partially to blame for the conflation of communism with liberals and democrats who as John pointed out, have become much more fascist-like
I would like to see more education around dialectics, which I think is entirely missing. But then the communists and socialists who unfriended me certainly study Marx, so it's hard to understand how they were so easily captured by the psyop.
Anyone have an idea why the left fell so quickly for the narrative and propaganda and turned against anyone who did not fall in line, as well? It was so easy to see the signs of classic manipulation, why could they NOT?
Covid was the steepest learning curve I ever underwent. The Off Guardian website prepared me though I also checked up on their claims and found them to be accurate. And there was a wonderfully perceptive and well worded comment they made right at the start in an exchange with myself – and I wish I’d copied it since I can’t seem to find it. It was to the effect that at present (i.e. back in spring 2020) the volume and intensity of the fear porn being ceaselessly thrown up made it impossible to have any hope of a rational discussion.
So I checked the figures rolling in (i.e. being rammed down your throat) from Italy and found (shock horror!) that very old people with multiple illnesses were dying – a fact that wouldn’t have raised a single eyebrow previously. The pattern was repeated when the “bug came” to Scotland.
But this is where the start of the successful psy-oppery comes in. Even “Left” sites fell for the curious emotional blackmail whereby if you pointed out the above (i.e. that it was old people who were already ill who were dying) you were accused of not caring about the elderly. This was utterly reversed when the first vaccines came in and the issue of damaging “side-effects” arose and the BBC (I kid you not!) actually had an article that said “But don’t forget that old people die all the time”!
The craven dupery of those Left sites was gobsmacking. Decades of sharp scepticism of the media suddenly disappeared. Now I don’t know if this is a proverb but it ought to be: Always beware when your enemy starts to sing your song!
But that’s when I found out that the media was unified to a degree previously unsuspected. And it was precisely “The Left” who were leading the charge AGAINST the public. And (this has been my personal experience) the big sites pulled the little “stand alone” sites along with them.
The whole of the above could by itself stand as an invitation to analyse the psychological manipulation at work and how devastatingly successful it continues to be e.g. how these small websites I had been following and which had been so adept at deconstructing propaganda now fell for the cheapest tricks. It was frightening to behold. We had all spent our lives laughing at those WW1 cartoons of Germans bayonetting babies and here was the modern equivalent and the very ones you’d expect to be immune unhesitatingly fell for it!
In the UK we had a “Boris Derangement Syndrome” where one Leftist Firebrand spoke with relish about how (and these words will be in my head unto the grave!) "Boris was dragged kicking and screaming into lockdown”. This very same Boris who’d already made a deal with an American advertising company as to the best way to pitch the case for lockdown!
Oh how this “Left” were so eager to believe the “Great Collapse of Capitalism via Covid” epic! That they were being pitched this triumphalist narrative by the capitalist press never registered. And the absolute WORST of them all, the World Socialist Web Site, even pitched the lockdown as something pushed by “wildcat strikes” across Europe!
The WSWS have been consistent in their shilling for the ruling class under the new “Leftist franchise” of the propaganda system. They have been cheer-leading the transgender thing and, most despicably, they damned the Canadian convoy protest. Indeed, their duplication of the mainstream press narrative proved a deeply embarrassing matter which they had to try and cover up. Watching their desperate gyrations in this regard is one of the few laughs I’ve had in this whole sorry saga.
There is a WSWS commenter called Carolyn Zaremba who has epitomised the idiocy of this “Groovy Left” (as I have come to call them). So there she was “excommunicating” vax blasphemer Van Morrison and eagerly lining up for her next injection which she boasted about etc. Meanwhile the ones who had the sense to critique the covid claptrap were talking about a “Marxist takeover”! Thus the brilliance of the info management.
Meanwhile even the ones who took at least a partial Marxist angle seemed to be overly suspicious. Simon Elmer blocked for reasons known only to himself.
The info management over the vaccines was another wonder to behold. Like the virus itself this scam gave itself away by that suspicious “prophetic” aspect where every detail of the development seemed to have been known in advance.
Nor is it true to say “Ah well we NOW know” because it was all pretty clear from the start.
And I was in touch with a Left blogger called Philip Roddis with whom I had a few rather heated run-ins over the issue. And I’ll never forget that when the vaxxes were first being pushed and, amidst the artificially imposed isolation, I was looking for some solidarity against the needle and I turned to Philip, he said was “too busy looking at other things” but he would let me write an essay if I wanted!
Astonishing!
The tale of your husband’s struggles with the “health” service reminds me of one thing that Simon Elmer said: that one VAST incentive to reject all scepticism over the vaccines etc. is that it is too disturbing to think that the “health professionals” could actually be aiming to kill you or at least would be complicit in such a plan.
As to why the Left fell for it, I am now certain that EVERY major official organisation – “Left” or “Right” – has been infiltrated, co-opted or even manufactured from the start as a tool of the “Deep State” (for want of a better expression). As you say, the dialectical angle is essential here i.e. to make a “phony” organisation convincing, you have to enlist people who REALLY believe the “cover story”. But this means that, to a certain extent, these “phony” organisations are actually “what they pretend to be”. So there’s always an instability to them.
But covid marked a major turn in mainstream rhetoric where, to put it vulgarly, it was implied that there had been a “Leftist revolution” thundering through the entire establishment. The ridiculousness of this vision explains why it was never explicitly stated. But the “Big Guns” in the Leftist organisations were right behind this new fable. And they drew the little boats along with them.
The WSWS alone is a most excellent demonstration of this thesis. This is a “Trotskyite” group. They are “Far Left”. But look at their output over the last four years. It has never once wavered from its viral porn. Indeed, it has gone much further than the mainstream, claiming that the covid death rate is vastly greater than what has been claimed.
I myself was drawn into an argument with the WSWS where, for the first time ever, I found myself being confronted by an administrator anxious to convince me that the bug was real. After I made a few short attempts at facetious humour (knowing I would never get a major piece through) they banned me.
Back in the dark days that marked the start of The Book of Covid, I found the following video amusing. The guy behind this is the by now compulsive anti-communist "Freedom Champion" (which is presumably why you can still see it) but it is nevertheless a pretty accurate summation of the fear porn:
I like that guy's videos..but it is a fact he is now a rabid anti Marxist, communist etc.
I would go further than he does in the video you just shared and say that NONE of the deaths were caused by Sars coV2, because that particular genome sequence, which was created in silico and exists only in a computer program and has nothing whatsoever to do with anything in nature, does not exist.
COVID was a complete scam. It was planned and orchestrated. Just like 9/11 was planned and orchestrated with the Patriot Act already written and waiting in the wings, the pandemic was planned and practiced before the op went live.
But this claim goes way too far for many to want to contemplate. People want to believe the experts, especially if they have such experts in their close circles and family.
But this is not to say that ALL doctors would have to be “in on the lie,” because, as I discovered, most doctors are far too busy to actually read the studies. And, during COVID, they became afraid to buck the system, because those who did lost their licenses.
Some brave people quit the allopathic medical cartel when they found out what was happening, but that is the exception.
No one can say what caused/causes the deaths of all those that are blamed on COVID-19, except I can say with certainty that it wasn’t a novel virus from China or a lab-leak.
Every death must always be investigated individually. But once viruses and bacteria are blamed for EVERY illness of which there is a corresponding Big Pharma drug available and diagnosed by use of a completely unreliable test, then the investigation into what is making people sick never gets off the ground.
There have been no investigations, for instance, into EMFs or the effect of the blue light from our TVs and computer screens and wi-fi, because there is no funding for these studies. That would not be in the best interest of their makers. No investigations into how many people died from ventilation and from treatment with Remdesivir and Decadron, another deadly steroidal drug given to many who tested positive for covid. There are no real studies into the effects of 5G even though it has been rolled out everywhere, starting right before the scamdemic and continued during.
There HAVE been enough studies into the substantiated theory that fear, and especially fear of illness, can make people sick, while every experiment to spread illness through contagion routes hve failed.
And the fact that people in the Western world are more unhealthy today after tons of vaccines and medicines should be a huge red flag.
I also agree with you about the websites, media outlets, celebrities, artists and musicians. Only Van Morrison had the huevos and pelotas to stand up and speak out. I know I have shared this before. It's simplistic but catchy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z42pqeCicIY
BTW, a new piece by C.J. Hopkins came across my feed today. Not sure if you have seen it. It touches on much of what we have been talking about. I don't agree with everything, but some for sure.
CJH is a strange case. I was originally impressed but I became tired of his compulsive ultra sarcasm. And then after Oct 7 he came up with a bizarre line of rhetoric that echoed Zionist propaganda. But by that time I'd given up trying to follow his smartarse prose. (Indeed perhaps his seemingly pro-Zionist pose was quadruple sarcasm? Who knows? Who cares?)
yeah, his zionist apologetics were shocking, honestly. I always suspected a lurking reactionary edge, but that one article jumped the shark --- inexplicable. Also a lurking narcissism of some sort in there, too. And its too bad because he can be rather insightful at times and was on covid often.
I may be overreacting here but I am starting to feel that the distinction between Fascism and Communism is reflected – in perhaps a very weakened and diluted way – in the divergence between the Marxist and non-Marxist strains of opposition on various internet sites. And this has become extremely marked since the covid manoeuvre began and so many Marxist sites seemed to fall under the sway of this new pseudo-Leftism adopted by the mainstream, leaving the rejection of covid, climate, transgenderism (and other such Pavlovian props) to the non-Marxists.
This issue can be demonstrated clearly by an encounter I had recently with one Sam Gerrans who has some videos on YouTube in which he inveighs against the rubbish ceaselessly pushed by the media but then arrives at the claim that the entire West is a vast cult. This is one of those statements that has an exciting sense of “ultra-radicalism” about it. But the fatal mistake here is to fail to realise that every social order that ever existed needs to have behavioural norms. Thus to simply train citizens to behave in a certain way cannot be glibly dismissed as “brainwashing”.
The dismal effect of this failure to see the roots of any social formation always presupposes a – usually unacknowledged – assumption that there is some kind of “pure behaviour” floating somewhere that we can just “tune in to”. This is similar to the notion that capitalism is a purely natural order that would spontaneously develop if we “just left things alone”.
The inevitable course of all such naïve thinking is to arrive at a deeply regressive outlook that postulates a golden age somewhere in the past. One of the tell-tale signs is the use of the word “modernity” as a pejorative.
A clue to what is happening here can be found in Trotsky’s essay, “FASCISM What It Is and How To Fight It”, which can be found here:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm
This part goes right to the heart of the matter:
“The gigantic growth of National Socialism is an expression of two factors: a deep social crisis, throwing the petty bourgeois masses off balance, and the lack of a revolutionary party that would be regarded by the masses of the people as an acknowledged revolutionary leader. If the communist Party is the party of revolutionary hope, then fascism, as a mass movement, is the party of counter-revolutionary despair. When revolutionary hope embraces the whole proletarian mass, it inevitably pulls behind it on the road of revolution considerable and growing sections of the petty bourgeoisie. Precisely in this sphere the election revealed the opposite picture: counter-revolutionary despair embraced the petty bourgeois mass with such a force that it drew behind it many sections of the proletariat ...”
Thus, in times of crisis, we have two emergent forces: revolutionary optimism (communism) and counter-revolutionary despair (fascism). The former looks forward to a hopeful new society, the latter looks backward to an imagined pristine innocence.
I don’t think it is accidental that every one of the backward reactionary anti-Marxist sites I’ve been reading tends towards religious or occult notions. Gerrans is a student of Islam and has produced his own translation of The Koran. Another anti-Marxist, Guido Preparata, seems to have a fixation with some kind of esoteric interpretation of Catholicism. He has also hinted at demonic entities. And, most infamously, there is David Icke and his reptilian beings.
These are the murky waters through which I have been paddling since the “Left” succumbed to the bogus revolutionary twaddle of the mainstream.
Great lecture. I appreciated how you all tied in imperialism and colonialism to the discussion and related it to the Gaza genocide
As always, when I listen to this I feel compelled to make comments as it proceeds. I apologise if the following seems a bit fragmented. Much of it may seem questionable but it is limited by my own ignorance over many of the details.
I was happy that you mentioned Michael Parenti. I have quite a number of his books – though one thing that I found curious is his antipathy towards Trotsky. I’ve read a fair bit of Trotsky and I think he was a brilliant writer. But I know he has provoked a lot of animosity throughout the Left. And I note that Max made a disparaging remark about Trotskyists too. But then the WSWS is an allegedly “Trotskyist” organisation which doesn’t bode well for what Trotskyism has become.
I also relished the comment about the British Empire arising “by accident” and wasn’t aware of the American playing of the same scam though I’d heard the common sentiment that the USA was a kind of “occasionally mistaken friendly giant”! This is a very interesting sign of consistency between the old British and new American ideology. And it trashes those like Preparata who try to cast the US as some “initially pure” venture “corrupted by the British”.
Speaking of which, this fixation on the British as “The Root of All Evil” and as still somehow threatening the “goodness” of America is quite widespread. I think there is opportunity for a vast analytical expansion of this e.g. how it also seems to permeate down to pop culture with those devious Beatles infecting the US with their “hidden communist agenda” etc. Perhaps it has something to do with this idea that seems common within the US that everyone outside their sacred realm is still locked into the dark ages of the feudal system!
As Parenti pointed out, the fascist emphasis on permanent war to create a “healthy culture” plays very conveniently into demands for the conditions that maximise the exploitation which is essential to capitalism e.g. the “Don’t you now there’s a war on?” mentality reinforces the call for expanding working hours round the clock, pushing the wages down, minimising sustenance for the workers etc.
“The Origins of Totalitarianism” was published in 1951 i.e. right at the start of the Cold War theatre. That the second part contradicts the first is curious. Does this signal some pressure on Arendt to conform to the anti-communist meme?
As well as the world wars being a matter of imperialist rivalry was it not the case that these wars also had the handy effect of derailing powerful rising worker movements by diverting from the class issue into a chauvinistic nationalist screaming match?
The original fascist was Mussolini and it’s interesting that he started out on the Left and was then “seduced” by the Right. You may say that the capitalist order realised that this emerging threat could be twisted to their own purpose – as if saying, “So you want a rising mass movement to have a revolutionary effect? Very well – we can do that but under OUR control.” After which they then have a kind of “super-capitalism” i.e. exploitation of the working masses but without the façade of “free enterprise”.
Mention of the “Phoenix programme” makes me think of a chapter title of a “conspiracy” book I once read: “Kinder Gentler Death Squads”. This suggests that the full-on violence and brutality dished out to the populations in e.g. South America are, as it were, “watered down” for the US (and UK) domestic population. This was clearly highlighted by the recent alliance of the anti-trans movement with the Zionist supporters which showed up the sad fact that there were duped Westerners who could see the damage done to the citizens of the West via the butcherings of the trans surgery and the use of puberty blockers but they turned away from the total slaughter of the Gazans. Of course this in itself is powered by the age old cultural superiority notion which is an update i.e. a more “woke” oriented version of the old racism. These brown people are simply not like us, not as sensitive, don’t care about their children like we do etc. In short it is the mentality of Israel.
All of which underlines another development i.e. that the Israel assault on Gaza has reignited the “War on Terror” meme with “those Muslims” being carted out as an example of an inferior species. And if the race card is no longer acceptable then we can vent against “Islam” itself – which then puts us in the essentialist position of inveighing against a religion without consideration of the nuances of actual practice.
I like Hiroyuki’s remark about how Corey Morningstar’s analysis of the climate change movement was rejected which led to John talking about how “The Left” didn’t take up a Marxist perspective over e.g. the covid matter. Indeed I have found that the most Marxist analyses come ironically from sources that wouldn’t be counted as Marxist e.g. Jennifer Bilek’s investigation into the transgender movement. And I was initially excited by Simon Elmer’s articles on covid. But he seems to have gone off the rails.
But the ignorance displayed by general conversations on social media is jaw-dropping. The hysteria over Trump is an appalling indictment of what much of the Western public has become. And this applies to us here in Bonnie Scotland too. After I had a blow out with a friend over the covid vaxxes I don’t bother raising such heavy topics at all since it is counterproductive. And I have to be careful with my incorrigibly facetious quips since on a little probing I have found the same liberal hysteria bubbling up amongst my work colleagues!
You brought up so much I could respond to, but what I noticed during COVID-19 and what you and the group in the podcast pointed out, is that the left lost their mind (was it fear?) and believed the narrative. They hung on every case reported and every word out of Fauci's mouth.
They used the story that Cuba sent doctors around the world to help fight the pandemic as proof that it was real and that my questioning was proof I was a reactionary and a fascist. They also fell prey to the Trump derangement syndrome. It was jaw-dropping to me. I was banned and blocked by every socialist and communist I once was friends with and also my own liberal friends, who did not identify as communist.
Lex Olson blocked me but now it seems she is connected with me again on FB, or at least I am no longer blocked. I was called so many names for questioning and pointing out inconsistencies and sharing evidence there was fuckery afoot..especially called fascist and Trump supporter and Nazi.
I remember Native Americans, especially those who live on reservations that are poisoned from mining uranium, seemed to be hit really hard during the pandemic during normal flu season. I was told I was a murderer because I did not support the indigenous having first access to the vaccines. Of course, there was no treatment allowed to be used for the so-called covid illness (and every illness was called covid) because as Fauci said, we have no medicine to treat this "novel virus" until the vaccines are available, except Remdesivir, which we discovered killed people in the same way that AZT did during the AIDs thing.
Before I could stop the hospital my husband was given a dose and he immediately went into kidney failure. I put the kabosh on it once I found out, but the ICU he was in would have killed my husband if I were not there to advocate for him. Oh how the ICU nurses hated me.
The doctors maybe not so much as we discussed the Corman Drosten PCR test (of which most of my husband's doctors were not even aware was made without even having a virus or even a genetic sequence) and the studies claiming to have isolated a novel virus, which were pure pseudoscience.
I discovered that most doctors just believe the headlines in the medical journals and even repeat them and rarely have time to read the studies and think about them critically.
My primary told me I had a 1 in 100 chance of dying if I caught covid because I was unvaccinated but he had a 1 in 1000 chance of dying because he was fully vaxxed. I asked him to show me the study bearing out that statistic and he got angry.
Finally he got real and admitted he worked for a corporation and if he wanted to continue to get a paycheck he had to be careful to follow "protocol" and rules and watch what he said. I asked him about that oath he took to first do no harm, but told him I understood that his and many others' livelihoods were being held hostage so they could be used as guinea pigs or to further some agenda.
He never asked me if I wanted a vaccine again, but he was able to get my husband alone who was not strong enough to refuse the vax, he ended up taking the first Pfizer shot and months later got a very rare arterial blood clot that wound him in hospital/He was supposed to be there two days but he tested positive for covid without ANY symptoms and they almost killed him with protocol.
Five months later he got out and is still struggling with the after effects of his treatment and the vax and probably will the rest of his life.
The left moved fell prey to what I think was a well thought out propaganda movement by the rulers that included the selection of Trump as president and then four years of Russiagate to ramp up anti Russian sentiment and that old commie trope. I think that is partially to blame for the conflation of communism with liberals and democrats who as John pointed out, have become much more fascist-like
I would like to see more education around dialectics, which I think is entirely missing. But then the communists and socialists who unfriended me certainly study Marx, so it's hard to understand how they were so easily captured by the psyop.
Anyone have an idea why the left fell so quickly for the narrative and propaganda and turned against anyone who did not fall in line, as well? It was so easy to see the signs of classic manipulation, why could they NOT?
Covid was the steepest learning curve I ever underwent. The Off Guardian website prepared me though I also checked up on their claims and found them to be accurate. And there was a wonderfully perceptive and well worded comment they made right at the start in an exchange with myself – and I wish I’d copied it since I can’t seem to find it. It was to the effect that at present (i.e. back in spring 2020) the volume and intensity of the fear porn being ceaselessly thrown up made it impossible to have any hope of a rational discussion.
So I checked the figures rolling in (i.e. being rammed down your throat) from Italy and found (shock horror!) that very old people with multiple illnesses were dying – a fact that wouldn’t have raised a single eyebrow previously. The pattern was repeated when the “bug came” to Scotland.
But this is where the start of the successful psy-oppery comes in. Even “Left” sites fell for the curious emotional blackmail whereby if you pointed out the above (i.e. that it was old people who were already ill who were dying) you were accused of not caring about the elderly. This was utterly reversed when the first vaccines came in and the issue of damaging “side-effects” arose and the BBC (I kid you not!) actually had an article that said “But don’t forget that old people die all the time”!
The craven dupery of those Left sites was gobsmacking. Decades of sharp scepticism of the media suddenly disappeared. Now I don’t know if this is a proverb but it ought to be: Always beware when your enemy starts to sing your song!
But that’s when I found out that the media was unified to a degree previously unsuspected. And it was precisely “The Left” who were leading the charge AGAINST the public. And (this has been my personal experience) the big sites pulled the little “stand alone” sites along with them.
The whole of the above could by itself stand as an invitation to analyse the psychological manipulation at work and how devastatingly successful it continues to be e.g. how these small websites I had been following and which had been so adept at deconstructing propaganda now fell for the cheapest tricks. It was frightening to behold. We had all spent our lives laughing at those WW1 cartoons of Germans bayonetting babies and here was the modern equivalent and the very ones you’d expect to be immune unhesitatingly fell for it!
In the UK we had a “Boris Derangement Syndrome” where one Leftist Firebrand spoke with relish about how (and these words will be in my head unto the grave!) "Boris was dragged kicking and screaming into lockdown”. This very same Boris who’d already made a deal with an American advertising company as to the best way to pitch the case for lockdown!
Oh how this “Left” were so eager to believe the “Great Collapse of Capitalism via Covid” epic! That they were being pitched this triumphalist narrative by the capitalist press never registered. And the absolute WORST of them all, the World Socialist Web Site, even pitched the lockdown as something pushed by “wildcat strikes” across Europe!
The WSWS have been consistent in their shilling for the ruling class under the new “Leftist franchise” of the propaganda system. They have been cheer-leading the transgender thing and, most despicably, they damned the Canadian convoy protest. Indeed, their duplication of the mainstream press narrative proved a deeply embarrassing matter which they had to try and cover up. Watching their desperate gyrations in this regard is one of the few laughs I’ve had in this whole sorry saga.
There is a WSWS commenter called Carolyn Zaremba who has epitomised the idiocy of this “Groovy Left” (as I have come to call them). So there she was “excommunicating” vax blasphemer Van Morrison and eagerly lining up for her next injection which she boasted about etc. Meanwhile the ones who had the sense to critique the covid claptrap were talking about a “Marxist takeover”! Thus the brilliance of the info management.
Meanwhile even the ones who took at least a partial Marxist angle seemed to be overly suspicious. Simon Elmer blocked for reasons known only to himself.
The info management over the vaccines was another wonder to behold. Like the virus itself this scam gave itself away by that suspicious “prophetic” aspect where every detail of the development seemed to have been known in advance.
Nor is it true to say “Ah well we NOW know” because it was all pretty clear from the start.
And I was in touch with a Left blogger called Philip Roddis with whom I had a few rather heated run-ins over the issue. And I’ll never forget that when the vaxxes were first being pushed and, amidst the artificially imposed isolation, I was looking for some solidarity against the needle and I turned to Philip, he said was “too busy looking at other things” but he would let me write an essay if I wanted!
Astonishing!
The tale of your husband’s struggles with the “health” service reminds me of one thing that Simon Elmer said: that one VAST incentive to reject all scepticism over the vaccines etc. is that it is too disturbing to think that the “health professionals” could actually be aiming to kill you or at least would be complicit in such a plan.
As to why the Left fell for it, I am now certain that EVERY major official organisation – “Left” or “Right” – has been infiltrated, co-opted or even manufactured from the start as a tool of the “Deep State” (for want of a better expression). As you say, the dialectical angle is essential here i.e. to make a “phony” organisation convincing, you have to enlist people who REALLY believe the “cover story”. But this means that, to a certain extent, these “phony” organisations are actually “what they pretend to be”. So there’s always an instability to them.
But covid marked a major turn in mainstream rhetoric where, to put it vulgarly, it was implied that there had been a “Leftist revolution” thundering through the entire establishment. The ridiculousness of this vision explains why it was never explicitly stated. But the “Big Guns” in the Leftist organisations were right behind this new fable. And they drew the little boats along with them.
The WSWS alone is a most excellent demonstration of this thesis. This is a “Trotskyite” group. They are “Far Left”. But look at their output over the last four years. It has never once wavered from its viral porn. Indeed, it has gone much further than the mainstream, claiming that the covid death rate is vastly greater than what has been claimed.
I myself was drawn into an argument with the WSWS where, for the first time ever, I found myself being confronted by an administrator anxious to convince me that the bug was real. After I made a few short attempts at facetious humour (knowing I would never get a major piece through) they banned me.
Back in the dark days that marked the start of The Book of Covid, I found the following video amusing. The guy behind this is the by now compulsive anti-communist "Freedom Champion" (which is presumably why you can still see it) but it is nevertheless a pretty accurate summation of the fear porn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0y6M-N8wOE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DvOTjDmrUw
To many, Fauci is considered a hero. Yikes!
Nice one but I don't suppose most Americans will understand the "wanker" reference considering that it seems to be a genuine surname in the states!
Oh I think people in the U.S. get wanker.
I like that guy's videos..but it is a fact he is now a rabid anti Marxist, communist etc.
I would go further than he does in the video you just shared and say that NONE of the deaths were caused by Sars coV2, because that particular genome sequence, which was created in silico and exists only in a computer program and has nothing whatsoever to do with anything in nature, does not exist.
COVID was a complete scam. It was planned and orchestrated. Just like 9/11 was planned and orchestrated with the Patriot Act already written and waiting in the wings, the pandemic was planned and practiced before the op went live.
But this claim goes way too far for many to want to contemplate. People want to believe the experts, especially if they have such experts in their close circles and family.
But this is not to say that ALL doctors would have to be “in on the lie,” because, as I discovered, most doctors are far too busy to actually read the studies. And, during COVID, they became afraid to buck the system, because those who did lost their licenses.
Some brave people quit the allopathic medical cartel when they found out what was happening, but that is the exception.
No one can say what caused/causes the deaths of all those that are blamed on COVID-19, except I can say with certainty that it wasn’t a novel virus from China or a lab-leak.
Every death must always be investigated individually. But once viruses and bacteria are blamed for EVERY illness of which there is a corresponding Big Pharma drug available and diagnosed by use of a completely unreliable test, then the investigation into what is making people sick never gets off the ground.
There have been no investigations, for instance, into EMFs or the effect of the blue light from our TVs and computer screens and wi-fi, because there is no funding for these studies. That would not be in the best interest of their makers. No investigations into how many people died from ventilation and from treatment with Remdesivir and Decadron, another deadly steroidal drug given to many who tested positive for covid. There are no real studies into the effects of 5G even though it has been rolled out everywhere, starting right before the scamdemic and continued during.
There HAVE been enough studies into the substantiated theory that fear, and especially fear of illness, can make people sick, while every experiment to spread illness through contagion routes hve failed.
And the fact that people in the Western world are more unhealthy today after tons of vaccines and medicines should be a huge red flag.
I also agree with you about the websites, media outlets, celebrities, artists and musicians. Only Van Morrison had the huevos and pelotas to stand up and speak out. I know I have shared this before. It's simplistic but catchy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z42pqeCicIY
BTW, a new piece by C.J. Hopkins came across my feed today. Not sure if you have seen it. It touches on much of what we have been talking about. I don't agree with everything, but some for sure.
https://cjhopkins.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-two-psyops
CJH is a strange case. I was originally impressed but I became tired of his compulsive ultra sarcasm. And then after Oct 7 he came up with a bizarre line of rhetoric that echoed Zionist propaganda. But by that time I'd given up trying to follow his smartarse prose. (Indeed perhaps his seemingly pro-Zionist pose was quadruple sarcasm? Who knows? Who cares?)
yeah, his zionist apologetics were shocking, honestly. I always suspected a lurking reactionary edge, but that one article jumped the shark --- inexplicable. Also a lurking narcissism of some sort in there, too. And its too bad because he can be rather insightful at times and was on covid often.