Centroids: The charged word "Socialism" has become topical again for the first time since
the end of the Cold War. Most -by far- of this effect is the work of one man, Bernie Sanders. About which there are some obvious lessons. Of course, some people may wonder about my reporting; where does this observation come from? Not from Centroids, obviously. Oddly for "Radical Centrists" most of our discussion derives from basically mainstream sources. But the mainstream of the Right has caught on to what is happening and Socialism is newsworthy in ways we have not seen since ca. 1987 or 1988. In addition to private 'newsletter' sources I receive in my inbox let me note two other more important references, both from C-Span, first a lecture by Ben Shapiro to a conservative conclave, and second, a lecture by Frank Luntz, the polster (who has become rather obese lately), at a conference of mayors held recently in DC. The gist of things is that among the young, essentially people from 18 to 35, Socialism is more popular than Capitalism. We have not seen figures like those of today since the end of the 1960s. Depending on which polls to trust, the young are either somewhat more pro-Socialist, roughly 55%, which is news itself since "normal" for the past 30 years has been in the 25% range, or much more pro-Socialist, approximately 2: 1. Hence conservatives soaking up Ben Shapiro's comments about Socialism, or, and this is not news, Jonah Goldberg's various comments on the subject, someone who has been pontificating on the matter for a decade or more, carrying forward his thesis in Liberal Fascism. About Goldberg, while it is refreshing to hear someone on the Right who has at least a modicum of knowledge about Socialist history, that is as far as it gets, viz, a modicum. Sorry to all those Goldberg fans out there, but the equation, Nazism = Socialism is false on the face of it no matter what contortions one goes through to make a case that absolves Capitalism of all of its sins and paints a picture of Socialism as a font of evil and economic ineptitude. All of that is part of a blame game which is also chamber of commerce politics writ large. The night of the long knives, early in the Nazi era in Germany seems to be overlooked by people like Shapiro, a time when the Munich cabal, under Hitler, prevailed within the Nazi party and threw out the leadership of the Berlin cabal under the Strasser brothers, one brother murdered and the other fleeing to Canada (where a small Strasserist cult persists to this day). The Socialist rhetoric of the early days of the Nazi Party, a party Hitler joined but was not the founder, still remained in place in some Nazi circles but Hitler's takeover of the party meant the end of any kind of Marxist influence. From the mid 1930s until the end of WWII the Nazis were creatures of the Right and any attempt to shift the blame for what they did to the Left is preposterous. True, there is plenty that was wrong with the Left of that era and with the Left of the 21st century, but that is another story. And it does not help when conservatives fail to make basic distinctions and choose to think that all their problems will go away by resurrecting anti-Socialist rhetoric of the Reagan era. Toiday's "Marxist" socialists are NOT classic Marxist-Leninists, they (mostly) are Cultural Marxists whom regard cultural values as key to success, not class conflict. Part of all of ,this includes -and was initially inspired by- pro-homosexual sentiments, dating back to Harry Hay and the Mattachines of the 1950s. Hay started life as a Communist in LA and today's homosexual rights movement was stamped indelibly by him . But how can conservatives make this connection? They have bought into the crock of sh-t that homosexual rights are human rights and above reproach, which, of course, was Harry Hay's strategy at the outset in ca. 1951 or 1952. But it is so much simpler to blame the Left for every evil and not take responsibility for anything at all, especially the near collapse of American values in the years since Clinton, and more recently Obama. But why study history? You can't make money from it, can you? Which is the mantra of the Right, and so conservatives continue to heed the voices of 'experts' who don't really know what they are talking about, well meaning as people like Jonah Goldberg or Ben Shapiro may be. The point of everything is that to understand the drastic shift in the politics of the young you need to understand some basics of Socialism. But if your sources of information are Goldberg or Shapiro you can only get a distorted picture. The trouble is that there just about isn't anyone else to turn to, with only a qualified carve out for David Horowitz. The problem with Horowitz, who does know a good deal of the story of Socialism, is that he once was a Communist (an actual Communist) and he still interprets the Left through that prism, which distorts Leftism in a different way, but distorts it nonetheless. Today's young are not slaves to Marx and Lenin, however, they are -as is Bernie Sanders- slaves to Marx and Herbert Marcuse, that is, they are sexual nihilists as well as quas-Marxists. Which is ironic because Marx (and Engels) hated homosexuality and sexual libertinism generally, and regarded class struggle as basic to everything else. OK, here is some information to think about. What will anyone actually do with the information? Let me guess: Nothing at all. Well, I tried. Billy -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
