Good or Bad for the Jews

"Good or Bad for the Jews"

Many years ago, and for many years, I would travel to Morocco to visit uncles, cousins, and my paternal grandmother. Some lived in Tangiers;...

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Marxism Mutates

An earlier version of this was posted on March 21, 2011, at the now quasi-defunct BonfireJournal.Com

With the demise of the Soviet Union, international Marxism died--or, so many thought. Unfortunately, the emotions that nurture Marxism did not die with the Soviet empire: envy, resentment, and fear of competition and failure remained and remain alive and well.

The envious, resentful, and fearful of the world found in Marxism’s pseudo-scientific analysis and language an “explanation” for any event. Marxism “explained” why nothing was the fault of the envious, resentful, and fearful: the rich were rich, because they made the poor, poor; the successful succeeded because they made the failed, fail. Old Marxism also fed the egos and provided a way for otherwise frustrated “intellectuals” to pursue Napoleonic dreams. Vast conspiratorial forces oppressed mankind; these forces could be exposed and defeated only by and with the leadership of an enlightened Marxist vanguard elite who would lead the wretched of the earth to the socialist promised land.

The USSR’s end forced the envious, resentful, and fearful and their leaders to adapt a belief system that had “explained” everything into less-satisfying sub-sets, each focused on a particular topic, e.g., feminism, environmentalism–especially the global warming hoax–and “international human rights law,” especially rights of the indigenous. Despite their seemingly different concerns, all these sub-sets shared much in common. At their core lay anti-capitalist, anti-American and increasingly anti-Semitic emotions disguised as analytical constructs. Over the past twenty or so years, these different strands rewove themselves into an umbrella movement we can call the Anti-Globalization Movement (AGM).

While the AGM doesn’t have the military force behind it of the old Marxism, nor yet have a clear vision of the world with which it seeks to replace the current one, it shares with old-time Marxism a reliance on pseudo-science and a vanguard elite. Also from old Marxism come much of its language and tactics, as well as the goals of disrupting capitalist economic development and liberal democracy and bringing down the United States.

Today, I want refer to “movements” for the “rights of the indigenous.” Having served and visited extensively in Central and South American countries with large “indigenous” populations, I can freely state that the region’s “indigenous” cultures largely ceased to exist hundreds of years ago thanks largely to European brutality and diseases. “Indigenous” culture now means rural poverty. Calling to protect “indigenous culture” really means seeking to preserve rural poverty; to keep people poor, sick, illiterate, and isolated from the great and small wonders of our age. It means helping condemn them to half lives consumed with superstition, disease, and watching their puny children struggle to live past the age of five. It’s a call to keep certain people as either an ethnic curio on the shelf for the enjoyment of European and North American anthropologists or, equally vile, as exploitable pawns for the use of political activists, such as the reprehensible pseudo-indigenous President of Bolivia, the old drug trafficker, and Chavez toady, Evo Morales.

When I hear these calls, I think, “We don’t protect rural poverty in the USA. Western man no longer lives in caves or trees, terrorized by solar eclipses and at the mercy of an unforgiving environment. Why should these people? Why should humans live little better than animals in disease-infested jungles, or exposed on wind-swept plains?” I am struck, for example, by how much effort “pro-indigenous activists,” often themselves urban upper-class types or foreigners, expend on “land reform.” Instead of working to develop an economy where land ownership does not determine whether one lives or dies, the activists seek to chain the “indigenous” to, at best, a brutal life of scratching out a living on postage stamp-size lots of land. Often land reform involves “giving” the rural poor these plots but without the right to sell or to use them to secure loans from banks. The poverty and hopelessness increase.

This segues to one of the great evil myths promulgated by activists, i.e., the Native Americans’ love for the land. As one activist told me in Central America, “They would rather die than give up their contact with Mother Earth.” Really? You can believe that if you want to, but everywhere I went in Latin America, rural people head for the city, or, even better, Canada, Spain, or top prize, the USA. They want medicine, Coca-Cola, TVs, cars, motorcycles, corn flakes, and indoor plumbing — they want to live like the activists do in Vancouver, San Francisco, and Madrid. Those who stay on the land, in particular the men, do not radiate any particular love for the land, the flora, the fauna, or for each other. They fish with dynamite and mercury; burn or cut huge tracts of forest; treat their “sacred lakes” as sewers; drink themselves stupid; and engage in often lethal fights with each other and commit horrendous acts of cruelty on women, children, and animals. In other words, they behave as uneducated, oppressed, poor people have throughout all history and in all cultures. Note to activists: the “indigenous” are human. A shocking revelation for many.

These foreign activists invent and distort history, introducing distinctly 20th and 21st century concepts into the study of pre-Colombian cultures and their remnants. Worse, these activists seek to manipulate poor people for their own political agenda, and often get them killed in pursuit of “liberation theology” or some other fashionable cliche. They overwhelm and corrupt legitimate “indigenous” activists with money, trips, attention, and promises of fame. In exchange, the once-legitimate local activist becomes a servant of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, etc, required to produce ever more dire stories and accusations. Or they merely make up a leader for the “indigenous” as well as a bogus history, including the fantasy of the noble savage, and then the kicker: opposition to foreign investment, free trade, and modern agriculture; and the call to support well-known “indigenous” rights champions, such as the late Hugo Chavez and the execrable Fidel Castro.

A prime example of an “indigenous leader,” one whom I met several times, is Guatemala’s Rigoberta Menchu virtually unknown inside Guatemala (having lived most of her life abroad); a creation of European Marxists; a tool of Guatemala’s old Communist URNG insurgency; a pro-Castro hater of the USA; an author of a major autobiographical hoax; and, as you would expect, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. The foreign activists appear like a modern version of the ancient Jewish legend of the Golem called up to save the people, and who ends up creating havoc. When it all comes crashing down, they run to their Embassies flashing US or European passports, gaining safety and fame leaving the “indigenous” to take the hit. As a friend and fellow skeptical diplomat once told me, the call of rights for the indigenous, “all comes down to the right to wear funny clothes.”


35 comments:

  1. No sir..
    there is no mutation on it.

    http://forums.mymotherlode.com/showthread.php?t=4331

    I spoke about it how many years ago?
    it's like a nightmare.

    leaperman

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  2. Dip you could have been writing about the activist approach to our Aboriginal population in the remote areas.

    To even suggest that they, the Aboriginals, made two thirds of three fifths of bugger all advance in their condition in forty thousand years you are immediately branded racist.

    In the remote communities drunkenness, violence towards women and children, young girls being "given" to old men is common.

    The urban activists want to maintain some sort of mind bending fantasy of what tribal life was like. A lot of these activists claim to be "aboriginal" but are as white as Paddy O'Leary from County Cork with some sort of "remembered" aboriginality.

    "Traditional hunting" in an outboard powered aluminium boat using a high powered rifle is seen as OK. Suggesting that if they want to keep to traditional ways would require a dugout and spear and you are laughed at.

    There is a whole aboriginal industry here which does nothing to advance these people. I served with an indigenous person who stepped out of the mould to embrace modernity. He was of the opinion that unless his people moved into the then 20th Century without the activist do-gooders they were doomed to perpetual misery.

    I fear that unless white Australia and I assume America abandons its guilt complex then we will be complicit in their fate.

    Unpopular as it may be with the "progressive racially sensitive" it is time to bring these people into the modern world.

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    1. Thanks Dave. You said exacltly wht I wanted t say about the Australian situation

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    2. Thanks, David, another great comment. The Australian situation sounds almost identical to what we have here in the States, except we have an added twist, to wit, casinos. One of the great scams of all time. Suddenly people find treaties and agreements that make some piece of land, at times in the middle of a city, as under Native American control, so of course, it needs a casino. One of the few things I liked about ex-Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger was his willingness to call foul on the casinos in California and to try to expose them for the corrupt things they are. In the end, he didn't succeed.

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    3. Menai -

      my pleasure mate.

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    4. Time for us productive and educated people to "Go Galt" and let both Australian and American Marxism take matters to their logical conclusion of barbarianism.

      Then when the dust settles come out of our "Galt's Gulch" and reestablish civilization with important constitutional changes like, "Government shall be separated from the economy."

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  3. This is how I feel every time I hear about how people in some third world country eeking out a poverty-line existence are actually happier than I am.
    "Uhh.. no.. you are just making up excuses, you just like being able to live like a king abroad when you aren't asking people at home whether they want fries with that order."

    - reader #1482

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  4. Norman Borlaug also expressed these sentiments. Funny, how the Nobel committee got it right with his prize.

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  5. Another great post.

    I've been teaching high school the past few years, including ESOL, and I know exactly what you're talking about when you mention how those indigenous peoples want civilization. One back to school night, I actually heard a kid's mother translate my translator's Spanish remarks into Nahua for the benefit of the kid's grandmother.

    I taught English in Taiwan on several occasions, including in the early 2000's. Some of my students, a clergyman I knew, and one of the immigration officers with whom I had to deal in renewing my residence card (no problems: all perfectly legal) where Yuanzhumin (原住民), or folks whose native languages were things like Tayal, Bunun, Paiwan, Amis, or Rukai (Austronesian) rather than Minnan, Kejia, or Mandarin (Sinitic). They were actually rather decent folks, considering that a century ago, some of their ancestors were still hunting heads.

    Still, I couldn't help but notice that back in the Old Days when the Chinese Nationalist government used the term Shandiren ("Mountaineers"--山地人), the term had currency only in Mandarin. In Minnan or the Kejia/Hakka of my kinfolk, the term was the cognate of fanzi (番子), or "savages". I always remember that whenever I hear someone expiating on Taiwanese Independence and the "suffering" of the pre-1945 population after retrocession.

    But, BTW, I am what would've been called a "Mischling" back around 1933-45, and among the Jewish ancestors was one Yehuda Loew ben Bezalel of Prague. But I have no desire to create a Golem and send it out to rescue the likes of Rigoberta Menchu, that creation of the Euroleftist imagination. Still, in my fantasies, I wouldn't mind having one to sic on a few Leftist judges, politicians, and innaleckchools.

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  6. And, frankly, a propos your own Central American experience, I can't see a culture whose pre-Christian forbears practiced widespread human sacrifice as especially noble. Granted, there are some pretty ugly practices in the histories of the peoples from whom my family descends, but the pre-conquest Mesoamericans are folks whom I find pretty unsympathetic.

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    1. We were talking about that at dinner yesterday of all things! I pointed out that the Conquest exterminated a culture where normal people in the street cheerfully walked past naked men wearing the freshly skinned leather of young girls as their vestments, with no comment or instinct that it was in any way abnormal.

      That a cult of murderous cannibalism for the elite and general bloodshed and self torture for religious reason was put down by a similar European culture in no way fits the deep seated need of the simple minded to always have a good side and a bad side in a neat narrative.

      I mean really, Stalin vs Hitler- best outcome was mutual destruction and no winner at all.

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  7. Further, here in the states, I know one radical woman who's all gushy about helping poor Hmong immigrants by selling their embroidered handigrafts, even though back in the days of the Viet Nam War, she was out there decrying the Hmong as "stone age killers"--the radicals' term, not mine. This is one other reason why I take a pretty jaundiced view of the Left's cries for "Indigenous rights". Something also tells me that if the indigenous Europeans started rising up against the newcomers who have made Malmo, Sweden one of the world's rape capitals, the Left wouldn't be so keen on either indigenous or women's rights.

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  8. Oooh this was a very good post Mr. Mad. It gave me strength in my daily battle to aggravate liberals and silly people in every way possible. One of my favorites you mentioned is the variation on the "Noble Savage" theme (paging Iron Eyes Cody) which has a long and glorious history in the US and apparently Australia. If listened to, Amerinds will always tell a story different than the accepted liberal orthodoxy. Casinos seem to be the only hunting ground they are allowed. God forbid they live and act like us, much less want the same in life.

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    1. Ha! Iron Eyes Cody indeed! He was an Italian actor.

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  9. We don't have to go much further than our tv remote to hear what a home grown Marxist/Communist sounds like. Here is Krystal Ball (yes that's her name) from MSNBC, presenting her plan to end poverty. Her name should be Krystal Meth.

    http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013...he-government/

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  10. Good gosh almighty! Dip, this piece hits every geo political hot button I have and have had since the "end" of the Cold War! It didn't end...it morphed and changed tactics. I am too excited/validated/po'ed/gratified etc to even write more about it. Even the same geographical locals to boot! Got to get it together for some responses pretty soon. This piece I will print and keep. Thanks!

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  11. This applies very well to the Native Alaskan population, living in the middle of nowhere, in the beautiful wilds of Alaska, in nice government-subsidized housing, on welfare payments, roaring around on snow machines, drinking themselves silly, and abusing the women and children. Sorry but I couldn't resist. Too many similarities. And developing tourism, which would bring a real economy to these areas, is anathema to most of the people. Can't allow in any outsiders....

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  12. Okay, this is the only place I know to ask this question:

    What happened to relations with India?

    Sounds like the state department bought in to arrested this woman who at least claims to have diplomatic immunity? I thought when such conflicts arrive, diplomats are expelled and/or expected to be held accountable in their home countries?
    What am I missing in the narrative here, or are we just tearing up relations willy nilly with India?

    The only thing that has been in the news recently (as far as I can tell) is India explicitly outlawing homosexuality. I can't imagine this would get the state department to toss out relations?

    I feel like I'm missing a lot of information here... any thoughts?

    - reader #1482

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    1. It was handled stupidly and is an example of political correctness gone amok. The NYPD apparently got a complaint from a maid working for this Indian consular (not diplomatic) officer that she was not getting paid the minimum wage required by the conditions of the visa on which the maid was brought to the US by the Indian consular officer. They went and arrested her, which is unusual unless there is something more involved. The State Dept has said that the Indian had immunity only in terms of her work, but not in terms of other activities. Unless this Indian was involved in something really big and nasty, however, in the past this would have been handled by having the Indian depart or pay up the back wages. Like I said, maybe she was involved in something really big or this is just an example of stupidity in action. The Indians, too, are being stupid, and if one of our people get killed because of the idiot things they are doing re security of the Embassy . . .

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    2. Your brother in blogs "Skeptical Bureaucrat" has an excellent account here:
      http://skepticalbureaucrat.blogspot.com/2013/12/indian-vice-consuls-arrest-controversy.html

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    3. Forgot to mention, that to me the interesting part was that State's Diplomatic Security Service is cited as the arresting agency.

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    4. India criminalizes homosexuality? JAI HIND!

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  13. Ah, yes - the history of American indigenous people ... like the Comanche of the Southwest. Yes, by way of doing some basic research for writing my books, I got a metaphorical earful of the pleasant ways of the Comanche. Who took to the horse with gusto (horses which probably came from the Spanish in Mexico and in the lower Southwest) and came roaring down from the Rocky mountains to become the scourge of the lower Plains ... and Texas, which basically was at war with the various Comanche tribal divisions for more than fifty years.

    Yes - according to those historians un-blinded by PC - the Comanche were a piece of work. They waged war in particularly energetic and horrific fashion, and pushed the local Texas tribes like the Karankawa, the eastern (Lipan) Apache and the Tonkawa off their traditional territory. They also had a nice thing going, with capturing horses, goods and people, all along the fringes of their claimed territory, and selling them at a profit in various places.
    Another unfortunate aspect - their life on the Plains as hunters and warriors was such a harsh existence that the female fertility rates were particularly low. Which is why they depended on adoption of captives to keep the tribe going. Some of this low fertility rate in the 1800s may have come about because of the charming warrior party custom of gang-raping female captives as a way of breaking down the captive women. So now and again a Comanche raiding party captured a woman with syphilis ... and brought it home to their wives. (Consult TR Fehrenbach's histo history of the Comanche for the particulars.)

    One of my alpha readers for my series of books about the German settlers in the Hill Country of Texas about freaked over this. Sadly, she was teacher at a junior college - taught creative writing, and was wholly into this poor, poor helpless hapless indigene syndrome. I fear that I disillusioned her brutally, but I am not the least bit sorry.

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    1. I highly recommend The Boy Captives, by Clint Smith and his brother, Jeff. The way that they depict Comanche life sounds remarkably like modern urban gang life.

      Also, Celia did not mention (At least not, this time) that our ancestors from further east were invited into Texas by the Spanish and later, the Mexican government, to serve as a buffer between Mexico, proper, and "Comancheria", or nowadays, Texas. They liked the Scotch-Irish woodsmen because they were some seriously bad-ass fighters, as ol' Santa Ana discovered. Celia has mentioned before that there were rebellions in several Mexican states against Santa Ana, but only the Texicans won. Yes, the Comanche wars lasted for five decades. Austin got telephones before we got entirely rid of the Comanches.Imagine, "Hello, Central, there is what looks like a war party between my garden and my barn."

      A German-Texan friend reminds me that there is a monument to his great grandpapa in, I think, Fredericksburg, who was "murdered by the Indians." This is a quote from the English translation, so I may have it not precisely correct. At any rate, those Germans proved to be as stalwart as their more Celtic fellow citizens.

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    2. Only the Texicans won--and I've also heard that a fair number of Hispanic Tejanos fought right alongside the Anglos against Santa Ana.

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  14. I know this is off topic but it was sent to me by a friend in the US - obviously not a fan of Obama.

    “Nelson Mandela is a leader who Barack Obama should try to emulate.
    He could start by spending 27 years in prison.” -- Don Imus

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    Replies
    1. Ohh, that's good! Maybe the prison term can begin today. Take along Queen Seeb and Eric Holder.

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  15. The great thing about Marxism is that no matter how many people try and fail with it, it will always remain 'not truly tried'.
    It's not actually a political system or philosophy at all, it's straight pseudo-science.

    -reader #1482

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    1. Speaking as a believer in Biblical eschatology, I've always known where Marx got his belief in history progressing to a predetermined goal.

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  16. "It's not actually a political system or philosophy at all, it's straight pseudo-science" If I do it gracefully, may I steal this?

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    1. absolutely gratis... anything I write here.. not that an anonymous account can insist upon anything anyways.
      btw.. I appreciate the insights of all the commenters here, as well as Mr. Lomad himself. Invaluable to see real insight from people who've actually been in real foreign relations situations.

      - reader #1482

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  17. paul_vincent_zecchinoDecember 19, 2013 at 8:52 PM

    Ah yes, those 'indigenous people'. Rigatoni Munch-yoo came to momentary prominence coincident with the ascension and anointing of the bubbas and their lovely '92 victory. There she was, nasty goods in ample quantity, lumbering around on the world stage, gassing off about her 'anger'.

    Oh please. Spare us. She came to prominence when the bubbas dragged their entire Fellini casting call of cranks, malcontents, geeks, wrench-throwers, and other assorted commie pinko subversives and gangsters onto the world stage.

    She was shortly revealed as a fake, gassing off about she and her family being victims of evil white rich capitalistic overweight men who were hunters from Pennsylvania angry about the Affordable Genocide Care Act.

    Then it was revealed she was a rich brat whose idea of oppression was doing without her hourly snacks.


    Then we have Chief Seattle, who wrote of the wonderful, gentle, peaceful, indigenous people of North America who lopped off their victims' skulls, strung them together in clusters of three, and gave them to their chillens as play-toys.

    Their 'deep and abiding respect for the land' was nicely described as well: when the tent settlement's urine puddles grew too deep, it was time to move to another place, until that place became suitable befouled.

    I know, hate speech here. Mea culpa. Shall I turn myself in or will someone kindly call the PC Detectives of the Twelfth Directorate for Speech Enforcement?

    Patiently await your counsel.

    Meanwhile, what this all comes down to is the Elites and the wowsers and uprisers as Mencken called them like 'indigenous peoples' because it gives them something to look down upon from their trendy lofty aeries.


    As goes the old joke about one of the Elite 'journalists' looking out the window of their trendy, multi-million dollar NYC high-rise, "Oh, look, dear! All those people below, we're so high up and in this bright sunlight they look like ants. Quick! Bring me my magnifying glass!"



    As Madame Chiang, wife of the Great Generalissimo said, "Cliques are the last repose of the mediocre'.

    And the savers of the indigenous are one of the finest cliques going.

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