Tumult

 A very quick ink piece from last night.

sir Was

 

The Academic Respectability of the Totalitarian Left

 Years back I studied history at university in Cork, and I remember being surprised in first year of that three year degree course of a couple of modules on the course, these being, however they were precisely titled, History through the Lens of Marxism, or Marxist History. The USSR was no more and the obvious connection of totalitarian communism  with Marxism was something I don’t think anyone was in doubt about, and the toxic nature of that regime and ideology was a given in the world I had grown up in. But now no one seemed to be batting an eyelid with Marxism playing quite a significant part in the collegiate studying and understanding of history. All of a sudden I was within an environment where Marxism was all very respectable. There were no enforced modules, for example, teaching history through an intellectual lens of Christianity! And just to add, Marxist ideology has a supposed perfect rational understanding of both the logic of past history, but also of future history, where it is progressing. And this includes of course a value judgement on this progress. It is the academics’ role to facilitate its progress. And it is all in short, an intellectual cult in which the intellectuals, through the means of takeover of the State take complete control of society. So it’s not hard to see the ideology’s appeal for thus inclined intellectuals!

Just one other snippet from that time: I remember someone I was friendly with, who was certainly bright and very pleasant to ever deal with, and who was studying Philosophy along with, I think, English. I remember being surprised not long after college when he had seemingly become an ardent convert to socialist ideology - he himself very much middle-class in his background. But he - and was espousing standard doctrine - was hoping the working-classes lives would become much worse, because until then there was no hope of the Revolution coming which would open up the glorious future, i.e. the triumph of the intellectual Marxist cult of which he was now one of the guardians. This can be achieved through the existing political system or, more excitingly, violently. (Then of course, of course, the plight of the working-classes, though it had seemed to be the entire point of the Left, was simply abandoned as an unproductive cause, and focus shifted entirely to issues like gender and racism as more useful to the cause.)

So that was always the essence of any cause in the hands of the Left, once we are in the Marxist realms. The superficial cause, such as the proletariat, is the weight used by the cult and its elites to gain power. I remember being amazed that this pleasant, well-meaning guy was hoping less well-off people’s lives would get worse! The stupid naivety from an intelligent person in this already exposed toxic belief system was almost incomprehensible to me. And one other thing I remember being aware of here: maybe that same night when he talked of his leanings, he and another friend had been watching some inane Hollywood comedy such as I at this stage in my life wouldn’t even think of sitting down to. But here, simultaneous to his utopian Marxist hopes, he’s intentionally dwelling within this inane level of consciousness, and one which of course was coming from the corporate entertainment world that is surely inimical to any grand hopes for humanity!

“A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8).