Exploring (mostly Cultural) Marxism in today's Left

Seen the video now Faith. It was well produced.It is true that there are things that it touches on that leave me a bit disquieted. Certainly what is called "no-platforming" here in the UK, and I assume in the US too, leaves me a bit concerned. I don't think exposure to dangerous ideas is necessarily a bad thing, and who gets to decide what a dangerous idea is anyway?But there are things in the video that also seem weak. For instance, is it really being argued that racial discrimination against minorities is not a problem now? That women being sexist is as big a problem as men? That prejudice against minority religions isn't a problem? At best these ideas seem naive, and at worst they just seem plain nasty.Out of interest, do you think implicit bias is a problem, or is it just mumbo jumbo?And although just a minor point, suggesting that one's opponents are sheep, afraid to stray from orthodoxy, while asserting what is an even more established orthodoxy, seems pretty self-defeating. Even putting the paradoxical element of that bit of silly sniping to one side, it is such a gross generalisation. Sure there are people who are afraid to stray from the party line in any group, but there are others who aren't. So what?

This comes from an ad for a two-CD discussion of the influence of Jesuitism on Marxism, by one of my favorite Christian teachers, Chris Pinto of Adullam Films. I'm sure a Leftist can't possibly make any sense out of this. If they took it seriously, at least recognized that some people do take it very seriously, it might make them rethink some of their assumptions about Marxism. Or not. But I can't help wanting them to know that a lot of people think of Marxism this way. But this teaching is about the Jesuits' influence: I'm looking forward to hearing this presentation. Marxism is evil enough without Jesuit influence though. But here are some of the topics this CD set is to cover: Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

If I say that all fundies are crackpots and a danger to society and someone else interprets that as a justification for murder, that's on them. You seem to want to make a speech crime out of what the left say because of what might happen as a result. Ironically, crying persecution for that very thing in the same breath.You are attacking political correctness because you perceive it to be a danger to society. The left assign all those labels to the right because they perceive their rhetoric to be a danger to society.Racist rhetoric can cause unstable people to commit murder based on race. Under the exact same logic you are using to attack the left, they are justified in attacking the right. So round and round we go..

What I appreciate about you is your straightforward and polite attitude. SO rare at EvC.But I don't recognize the video from your discussion. Is this the one in Message 185 you're talking about? I'll go listen again to see where your comments apply to it. I'm not familiar with that term and don't know what it means but it sounds like something I'd like to understand. Please explain.ABE: I looked it up. Not giving a platform to a person or position considered ...dangerous? That could of course censor all kinds of views that people need to hear. But where is this in the video? /abe ABE: OK, after seeing what no-platforming means I get what you're saying better. Yes, I agree. /abeAs for who decides, I would hope there's enough objective evidence of such a danger for people to decide for themselves.I've never understood the appeal of Marxism myself though, it seems to have a powerful appeal to some people, so if in fact it is dangerous how does one get through that effect to get anyone's attention? Nobody's saying there's no racial discrimination any more, but Marxism exploits it in a way that magnifies it, exacerbates it, and fingers a group of people as responsible for it when it's endemic to the human race. Their idea that it's not possible to be racist against white people is sheer evil. In fact with their emphasis on the color of a person's skin it is THEY who are the racists and all they are doing is stirring up unnecessary hatred. America has come a long way in my opinion in putting institutional racism behind us. And institutional racism should be the focus, not individual attitudes, although I've felt there's a lot more human contact between the races too, more sympathy, more welcoming and sharing. But Marxism could undo all that. Marxism has to create enemies, that's the whole problem with their Oppressor-Oppressed formula. It's focused on people rather than ideas, ideologies, institutions etc. Making any group of people into the bad guys versus the good guys really is dangerous and unfair, and that IS how all the murders of Communism, and other ideologies like Nazism, were possible. If you are dealing with ideas you work to argue against those ideas, but dealing with people causes wars and murders. Racism should be treated as a matter of policies, not people, and dealt with on that level. Again I object to the focus on people rather than on social policies and institutions. The only religion discussed is Islam, right? Whatq you are calling a "prejudice" is really the opinions of people who are knowledgeable about Islam, no mere prejudice. I have characterized it as a totalitarian ideology, which it is. It aims to take the world for Allah, and killing "infidels" ("jihad") is actual written Islamic policy, and to ignore this, as so many do, is suicidal. Marxist/Leftist thinking treats it as a mere religion and its believers as one of those Victim classes, welcoming them into countries they hate and will never assimilate to. SOME DO, don't get me wrong, but they are renegades; true believers will not. And even those who assimilate often identify enough with Islam to be vulnerable to feeling they have to support the jihadis when pressed, because it IS a tenet of the religion. But in general, in this case too I object to focusing on the people, the Muslims themselves, because they have every shade of adherence to Islam, every shade of understanding and nonunderstanding, and a variety of different ways of interpreting it. But Islam itself, the doctrine itself, is a totalitarian ideology aimed at subjugating all nonMuslims, and that's what makes it dangerous, as dangerous as Marxism. Marxism too is a totalitarian ideology. It's important to realize that's what's dangerous, and its followers are its victims. And that is how Marxism succeeds, because its focus is on personal attitudes which everybody abhors; but the problem, again, to my mind is pitting one group of people against another. Social policy is one thing, but making it a matter of personal conflict is diabolically evil. It is a dangerous IDEOLOGY, its followers are its victims. Not sure what you mean. Don't recall this from the video. [qs]Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The 'free' world are already debt slaves. Capitalism is just feudalism without the strict bloodline inheritance requirement, anyone can get rich just not everyone. The idea that socialism forces everyone to the lowest common denominator isn't true at all. The realisation that we are only limited by our ability to collect resources and create things plus the implementation of a socialist monetary system has the potential to really lift all boats. Whether or not there are forces in the world with malevolent agendas does not change this Faith, no matter how paranoid you are about 'Cultural Marxists'.ABE: anyone who says that there's no such thing as racism against white people or sexism against men is delusional. I agree that there are people who say such things but they are not thinking rationally about what those words mean. Your whole rant is a strawman.Edited by Riggamortis, : No reason given.

As I already told you in Message 177, because of the frontal vowel "i" it's the palatal "ch" instead of the velar. That is very close to the English "sh" sound, but not quite. Unfortunately, the reader appeared to have gotten closer the the English "sh" than he should have, but then just how good was his German?As my first Russian professor, who was from the linguistics department, explained it to us, you have a double-whammy at work there. Some monoglots (speakers of only one single language, and usually rather poorly at that) believe that there is something about the vocal apparatus of foreigners that allows them to make sounds that they, native English speakers, are biologically incapable of uttering. Complete and utter Bolshoi! ("bolshoi" means "big", but it sounds close enough to the English "bullshit". I even heard it used in a French movie, "Z" (the first week of its release in the USA it was still in French and subtitled)) .There is no biological difference between the vocal apparati of speakers of different languages. The difference is almost entirely in how the speakers of different languages use their vocal apparatus. Different sounds are produced differently. As we learn to speak a language, we learn to position and use our vocal apparatus differently according to that language. For example as I had explained, the "sh" ("sch" in German) sounds are basically the same, but their are formed differently and they sound a bit differently.The second whammy is in how we hear and process those sounds -- that was my Russian prof's main point in that lecture. For example, in a Southeast Asian language, you have a "p" that is a plosive and a "p" that is not. In English, compare the "p" in "pop" and in "stop". In "pop", the initial "p" is accompanied by an explosion of air, but in "stop" there is no such explosion. Now is time for a short digression.In linguistics, you have phonology which studies how particular sounds are made. And you have phonemics in which you study the sounds that make a difference in meaning within a particular language. In our exercises in phonemics, we worked with minimal pairs, word pairs with different meanings but differing by only one sound, like "mat" and "bat", both starting with a bilabial. In that Southeast Asian language, a plosive and an non-plosive "p" are phonemic while in English that phonological difference is only due to where that consonant is positioned within the word. In English if you used a non-plosive "p" instead of a plosive, you just sound funny, whereas in that Southeast Asian language nobody could understand what you were trying to say.So to put that second whammy differently, because of your knowledge of the language, you expect to hear certain sounds. When you are trying to listen to another language, you will hear sounds that you don't know, so you automatically try to associate them with sounds that you do already know.One of the problems that this creates for the foreign language learners is that they must not only learn how to produce all those new sounds, but they must also learn to hear those same new sounds.

Hijacking that thought to springboard a thought of my own. My apologies.This harks back to Phat's message, Message 115, where he expressed his personal concerns about his retirement and what very little hope the GOP can offer him. I replied with Message 144 in which I considered various economic factors. Basically, what it boiled down to was that in pure capitalistic terms what happens to the workers is not important. But the management levels of capitalism is staffed by humans with compassion, yet that compassion has to constantly work against pure capitalistic ideals.An idea I was wanting to work with was the idea of slavery versus pure capitalism.Capitalism. You run a factory. You hire workers. What investment in those workers do you have? No worker is an asset, because he can be replaced almost instantaneously. Somebody gets injured on the production line and there are dozens waiting outside your gates to replace him. What happens to an injured worker is that his co-workers deliver him to his front porch and the family has to figure out how to survive from that point on. Somebody reaches retirement age, so you replace him from the line waiting outside your gates; you owe nothing whatsoever to that worker loyal to you for several decades.How does that differ from slavery? With slavery, you literally own that person. That person is an asset. If that person is injured or gets sick, you need to see to it that he be healed. When he gets too old to work, you need to find some way to take care of him.Therefore, pure capitalism is worse than slavery.

Capitalism doesn't have to be that insensitive, and with the right employers it's not. With the wrong employers you still have the legal system for the sake of the workers. But there have been some famous capitalists like the Guinness people, who go out of their way to take care of their workers. Capitalism is the best system for creating wealth and benefiting society in general, the more wealth created the more everybody benefits. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

People and companies vary. Some capitalists are "good", some are "bad".Note that the Trump administration is dismantling worker protections. Does not follow. The real world indicates that managed capitalism is the best. We tried unconstrained capitalism in the Gilded Age.{Inserted by Adminnemooseus - It think the following portion of this message is off-topic, and should be covered at another recently active topic (probably "The Totalitarian Leftist Tactics against the Right").}Hey, howzabout those quotes? Are you ready to admit that nobody has said there is no evidence of collusion? Do you really think that someone would say something so stupid when they could always be known as "the moron who said there was no evidence a week before the smoking gun showed up"? And what about the developments of the past couple of days? The Time I Got Recruited to Collude with the Russians
GOP Activist Who Sought Clinton Emails Cited Trump Campaign Officials (Bannon & Conway? There is evidence. It may turn out to be unreliable although I personally think it's just the tip of the iceberg. But it exists, and it's enough for an investigation to let Americans know what really went on.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Inserted.

I'm no longer sure if this is true, Faith. My Father came out west after the war. (WW II) As a homebuilder, he worked hard and earned a decent living. Capitalism helped him.Once Capitalism involves a global labor force, however, competition rules....and without the aberration that my Father benefited from after the war, life becomes rather tough unless you are young and strong. Competition is ruthless out there.What is your opinion regarding the future of Social Security?

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Capitalism doesn't have to be that insensitive, and with the right employers it's not. With the wrong employers you still have the legal system for the sake of the workers

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Then you should give thanks to the Left for those legal protections. Which are part of the way that the system avoids the dangers of unrestricted capitalism(ABE but read THIS )And it's not just employees who have to fear. Shkreli’s plans to fleece patients is what hooked big investorstestimony Whether you consider massive price increases with no justification other than that the patients - or their insurers - have no good alternative to paying up - "fleecing" or not, it's still nasty. But that's capitalism for you.Edited by PaulK, : Added material (marked ABE)

Feudalism is great when you have good kings and lords too. Employers don't have to treat their employees poorly but it is a lot easier to accumulate capital if you keep costs down and treating employees well generally comes at a cost. Did you steal that line from the propaganda video I posted? Capitalism in its current form is concentrating the wealth into fewer and fewer hands at an alarming rate. Your assertion is refuted by this fact alone. Edited by Riggamortis, : No reason given.

Another point about this. The Marxist emphasis isn't on defending the victim, it's on creating an enemy class. So anyone who objects to illegal immigration is called a racist because most of the immigrants are "brown skinned" even though the person's motive is entirely an objection to the illegality and not about race at all. Or anyone who objects to bringing in Muslim refugees without careful vetting is called a racist and "Islamophobic" although there are real dangers to the security of the nation from bringing them in.This victim-class thing isn't about any real victims at all, it's about undermining a nation's law and security by inventing an enemy class, the "oppressors" and calling them racists to shut them up.Or you're a "homophobe" if you abide by the Bible by insisting that homosexual acts are sin and by refusing to recognize "gay marriage," the point being to discredit and destroy the Bible. Undermining the culture in general. It's not about any kind of real harm done to homosexuals, the focus is really on the Bible believers, to deprive them of any role in the culture.

Faith writes:

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Another point about this. The Marxist emphasis isn't on defending the victim, it's on creating an enemy class. So anyone who objects to illegal immigration is called a racist because most of the immigrants are "brown skinned" even though the person's motive is entirely an objection to the illegality and not about race at all.

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This, of course, is completely belied by the targets of the attempts to curtail "illegal" immigration: It's always against the brown-skinned people rather than the more common light-skinned ones. Remember, the most common method of becoming an undocumented immigrant is to come to this country legally (tourist, student, worker, etc.) and then overstay one's visa.Please explain how a wall between the US and Mexico is going to stop this problem. Especially since there is a net negative immigration between the US and Mexico.As soon as you start complaining about the white illegals, we'll believe you that it's about them being illegal.As soon as you start complaining about the people who take advantage of those who are in this country illegally, we'll believe you that it's about them being illegal.But so long as you focus only on policies that only affect brown-skinned immigrants, we'll know that it isn't about them being "illegal" but rather because they aren't white.And are typically Catholic, in your case.Edited by Rrhain, : "Affect"...(*grumble*)

What exactly is the percentage of whites who stay here illegally as compared to the "brown" illegals who have crashed the country through our southern border? What is their rate of criminal activity too?