TruthArchive.ai - Tweets Saved By @ConceptualJames

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

A note on the death of President George Washington and what it can teach us about solutions for our problems today. President George Washington died at his home on December 14, 1799, at the age of 67. He died, as it turns out, of a particularly bad and sudden upper respiratory infection, most likely strep throat, that the doctors of his day (the best available) did not know how to treat. (Penicillin as a treatment wasn't discovered until 1928.) After going out on a cold and wet evening on December 12 to inspect his fields, President Washington returned to Mount Vernon to rest with a tickle in his throat. On December 13, he continued to work outside in the cold, wet conditions, and by evening realized he had a problem. By morning on December 14, he had a full-blown, emergency infection and got Martha to summon help. Doctors were on the scene and went to work that morning. Not knowing how to treat President Washington's sudden illness, his doctors made his predicament worse by using the best of 18th century "medicine" on him, starting with extensive blood-letting. In fact, they drained nearly half of the great man's blood from his body hoping to cure him. It made things worse. They also had him drink and gargle a number of potions that would have blistered his throat and increased the inflammation while doing nothing to combat the infection. Some of these included Spanish fly, potions made out of infusions of beetles, and a solution of butter, molasses, and vinegar. They also gave him a completely unhelpful enema. Washington, certainly partially as a result of his "medical care," succumbed to this now-trivial disease in under 24 hours, said goodbye to his family as the end drew undeniably near, closed his eyes one last time, and died, allegedly with the word "Tis well" as the last words from his lips before he went. Now imagine for a moment that among his doctors one had a stroke of divine inspiration (or connecting the dots between other observations he had made in similar circumstances) that led him to conclude before any treatment began that, in fact, The President was suffering from a simple bacterial infection of the upper airways and trachea and was able to convince his fellows of this stroke of accurate and correct insight. Would acquiring this accurate diagnosis have cured President Washington? No. Would President Washington still have succumbed and died of this simple but aggressive infection? Probably, but that cannot be known. Even if he would have still died, would that diminish the value of the accurate diagnosis? Not at all, and that's the point. The accurate diagnosis alone could not have saved President Washington's life, but one thing we might guess is that understanding that his illness was caused by an invading pathogen growing in his throat that had nothing to do with "bad blood" or "humours," he may well have avoided the blood-letting in his treatment, saving much of his strength for fighting the severe but routine infection. The potions and concoctions he was given to gargle and drink might have been better purposed to deal with a direct infection, per long experience with animals or other people, and perhaps would have been chosen in a way that was more beneficial or benign, especially if some understanding of the role of inflammation was part of the blessed miraculous insight of our hypothesis. Maybe they would have been chosen only for his comfort and to keep his airways clearer. It's very unlikely that his doctors would have realized that a certain strain of mold properly prepared and administered would have surely cured him, but they might have realized their primary focus should have been on keeping him breathing as well as possible while his body fought the infection rather than on any of the other things they did. One young doctor did propose such a solution, recommending a radical new surgical technique at the time called a tracheotomy, which was not performed. Whether or not he understood the situation (likely not), he did understand that the emphasis was to keep Washington breathing until he could recover under his own power (which would have been increased had he not been drained of half his blood and given to drink various potions, some of which were surely unhealthy). Had it been performed correctly, many today think, Washington likely would have survived. In other words, a correct diagnosis might or might not have saved President Washington, but it would have certainly achieved at least three effects: 1) It would have ruled out clearly wrong false "solutions" like blood-letting and perhaps some of the concoctions he was given; 2) It would have focused energy and attention on doing more productive, even if insufficient, things than were done, which combined may actually have saved The President's life; and 3) It would have been correct and therefore a robust foundation for pursuing and achieving real, reliable solutions to the same problem in future circumstances, independent of Washington's fate in his own. That is, getting an accurate diagnosis matters even when the diagnosis itself is not sufficient to solve the problem at hand. The likelihood of finding a viable solution to the problem goes up dramatically with an accurate diagnosis, and the likelihood of avoiding bad false "solutions" in the process also goes up dramatically in this case. Woke, which is ultimately a group-based victimhood complex channeled through social philosophy, is always an incorrect understanding of the phenomena of society. It cannot lead to correct solutions, only to ridiculous things like blood-letting (criticism, in metaphor). It does not matter if we are talking about left-wing Woke, right-wing Woke, postmodern Woke, modern Woke, or premodern Woke. Woke is a petulant misunderstanding of the circumstances, therefore cannot provide a correct diagnosis, therefore cannot, except by a combination of luck and failure, produce a meaningful solution. Marx did not have good criticisms of society, capitalism, free markets, free trade, liberalism, feudalism, slavery, or anything else he criticized because all of his criticisms relied upon his own modern-era Woke theory of social alienation and conflict that is fundamentally not correct. (It is sociognostic and just as heretical as any other Gnostic heresy, as such.) The solutions he applied are wrong because his diagnostic framework is wrong. Keeping the diagnostic framework while recommending different solutions (right-wing Woke, or Woke Right) will not fix the fundamental problem that the diagnostic framework is wrong, so the prescribed solutions will be wrong. Getting accurate diagnoses without bad social theory is not on its own a solution any more than one of President Washington's doctors realizing he has a strep infection would have been a cure. It is, however, the foundation for finding a cure, or at least favoring minimal and palliative care dedicated toward the right objectives (keeping him breathing and full of his own blood while his body fought the infection) rather than taking detrimental wrong turns. Similarly, Woke theory and obsession with power, victimhood, and group identity, but for "right-wing" causes, is an easily avoidable wrong turn that can be avoided by understanding that Woke theory and its obsession with power, victimhood, and group identity are the disease itself. Or, more deeply, that both are aspects of the same dialectic that is making our society sick. I hope Western Civilization can survive, even if we are unware of the cure. Like the body of President Washington in December 1799, it has many of the resources needed to fight the Woke infection it is currently suffering as long as we keep it breathing and don't unnecessarily weaken it with false "solutions" like more Woke, more criticism, more victimhood, more identity politics, and more obsession with power.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Common sense, in the philosophical sense, does not refer to the kinds of decisions people make. It refers to their capacity to apprehend reality for themselves, which will frequently but not always result in them discovering that reality is the same for everyone (common).

@JohnHunterSofer - I_am_ John

@ConceptualJames Try this https://t.co/r2JR8GDaeG

@ClassicLibera12 - Classic__Liberal 🌲🇺🇸

@JohnHunterSofer @ConceptualJames @grok contrast the layman or superficial notion of common sense with philosophical common sense as understood by Scottish and American moral philosophy and common sense realism that underpins Classic American Liberalism and why they should not be conflated

@grok - Grok

Layman's "common sense" often means practical, everyday wisdom or intuition, like avoiding obvious dangers—superficial and variable by culture or experience. Philosophical common sense, from Scottish thinkers like Thomas Reid, is an innate human faculty for directly perceiving self-evident truths (e.g., existence of the external world), countering skepticism. It influenced American moral philosophy via figures like Witherspoon, underpinning Classic Liberalism's emphasis on natural rights as "self-evident" in the Declaration of Independence. Don't conflate them: The lay version is subjective and fallible; the philosophical is epistemological bedrock for objective truths and individual liberty.

@ClassicLibera12 - Classic__Liberal 🌲🇺🇸

@grok @JohnHunterSofer @ConceptualJames Thanks Grok! Oh also can you extrapolate as to why someone would straw man by equivocating these two notions of common sense?

@grok - Grok

Equivocating the two notions of common sense could serve as a straw man to weaken arguments rooted in philosophical common sense, like those in classical liberalism. By reducing it to subjective, fallible everyday intuition, one might dismiss claims of self-evident truths (e.g., natural rights) as mere opinion, making them easier to refute without engaging the deeper epistemological foundation. This tactic appears in debates challenging objective reality or universal principles.

@ClassicLibera12 - Classic__Liberal 🌲🇺🇸

@grok @JohnHunterSofer @ConceptualJames 🤔 Hmmm you don’t say

@grok - Grok

@ClassicLibera12 @JohnHunterSofer @ConceptualJames Indeed, it's a common rhetorical move in ideological debates to undermine foundational ideas without direct confrontation. Seen it in discussions on rights and reality?

@VBaker111 - 𝕍𝕚𝕔𝕥𝕠𝕣 𝔹𝕒𝕜𝕖𝕣³ ♂🃏

@grok @ClassicLibera12 @JohnHunterSofer @ConceptualJames Exactly what I am John is trying to do.

@grok - Grok

@VBaker111 @ClassicLibera12 @JohnHunterSofer @ConceptualJames It seems like a classic case of miscommunication in debates. If that's the intent, clarifying the distinction between lay and philosophical common sense could help—it's key to avoiding such pitfalls in discussions on epistemology and rights. What specific part stands out to you?

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Woke Right Lie of the Day "Karl Marx gave a good analysis of liberalism and capitalism, but his solutions were just bad." To be clear up front, no, Karl Marx did not give a "good analysis" of anything because his "analysis" is all dependent on a worldview (Communism) he was already committed to. All of his analysis works backwards from his commitment on all philosophical and practical levels to Communism as not just a worldview but a Man (collectivist) centered eschatological religion (end-times cult). Believe it or not, many conservatives and reactionaries (right-wingers) have for a very long time embraced Marx's "analysis" because it is expedient for them to do so. Marx criticized the same capitalism and liberalism that they hate as well, though for different reasons, and they were content to pick up the framing and "analysis" of their deepest ideological enemy out of a burning desire to conquer liberty and free enterprise. Interestingly, Marx didn't actually say a lot about liberalism so much as about capitalism (its economic system), which is worth a brief mention. This error (and lie) is being repeated today by Woke Right figures both of intellectual heft, e.g., Notre Dame anti-liberty philosopher Patrick Deneen, commentators, e.g., whatever Sohrab Ahmari is, not to mention weirdly malicious and sus af right-wing loser-object Mike Cernovich and British video-game commentator Carl Benjamin, and of hardly more than Anon Troll status, and widely. In fact, this humiliating error (and lie) is enjoying a huge resurgence today, not only but particularly since I hoaxed American Reformer in November by getting them to publish six pages or so of the Communist Manifesto dressed up as their ideology, which they claim to this day is a "reasonable aggregation of some New Right thought." To explain this lie properly, I need to give you an analogy. Imagine a plane flying in a straight line. It currently has a location but it also has something called a heading, which describes which way it is going. It is possible to see the plane accurately where it is but to misjudge its heading, as one possible error. That is, you can know facts about the current location of the plane while being wrong about how the plane got to that place and wrong about where it is going (even though it's going in a straight line). To the degree Marx was right about anything, it is of this kind of error. He was able to make some commentary about various aspects of the current state of industrial capitalism (seeing the plane for where it was, sort of), but he had a complete misreading of its heading. His "analysis" assumes a purposed (teleological) trajectory of history from primitive communism to eventual global (transcendent) Communism engaged as the movement of history itself through a long conflict-driven, Manichean struggle based on reconfigurations of private property rights. As a result, while he was sometimes right (and sometimes just made stuff up) about the society he critiqued (not "analyzed"), his model for why it is that way, what will happen next, and what should happen are all completely wrong. It is therefore more accurate to say that Marx observed (and fabricated) and critiqued, though he didn't "analyze" at all. Everything passing as Marxist analysis is in fact the adoption of some variation of the Marxist worldview and applying it to various aspects of the society as the Marxist sees it today, cherry picked for the purposes of their overarching mission of seizing power and installing Communism through totalitarian Socialism. This explains, for example, why Neo-Marxism, both early and late ("Woke"), was able to engage in a wholesale critique of Marxism while retaining all of its essential architecture. In our metaphor about the plane, later theorists (including Gramsci, Lukacs, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, etc. etc. etc., DiAngelo, Kendi, etc. etc. etc.) noticed the plane wasn't where Marx predicted it would be by his "analysis." The plane is in a different location, but they didn't conclude Marx got the heading wrong and abandon his "analysis" (critique). Instead, they assumed he had the heading (essential worldview) right but must have misjudged the position (specific relevant facts about how that worldview applies to reality). They then assert facts (and fabrications and novel misinterpretations) of the current position of the plane and give the same wrong diagnosis for how it got there, where it's going, and where it should be going. The Woke Right is making a similar mistake, with a twist. So Marx's "analysis" (critique) is actually just a self-serving ideological framing of events about his day he sometimes got right. His diagnosis is completely wrong, therefore his prognoses are completely wrong, therefore his prescriptions are completely wrong. The only thing he gets right are some of the features, often fabricated or misinterpreted, of some of the unpleasant facts of the socioeconomic and political situation he found his society in (and hated rather than engaging with it). Much more could be said, but it's a digression. So, no, Marx did not get a lot of things right, and even if he did get some things right, his interpretation for them was wrong, leading him not just to "wrong solutions" but wrong solutions based on wrong method (ideology first), wrong diagnosis (got the problems themselves wrong at their causes), wrong prognosis (got predictions about how society would evolve wrong), and wrong prescription ("solutions"). The Cultural Marxists, neo-Marxists, postmodernists, and Woke Left as his successors all committed to the error of "heading" while recognizing the predicted position (or future charted heading, "solutions") were all wrong. The "heading" (Marxian "analysis," aka "critique") must be right. Thus we get all that crap making the same mistakes and pretending they uniquely have it right this time. For them, "Real Communism (the correct destination) hasn't been tried" not because the assessment of heading is wrong (bad analysis) but because there must be social, economic, political, and cultural crosswinds blowing us off course (to continue the metaphor). The heading is right, but outside forces were not correctly assessed and aspects of the initial position were misread. What about the Woke Right? Well, first, we just know they're wrong, and since they should know they're wrong here, they're lying. As I said, they're picking up Marxian "analysis" (thus worldview) and "tactics" (thus worldview because in Marxism, theory and praxis are wedded), including Critical Theory and Postmodernism, and claiming those guys "got a lot right." Thus, this is a common Woke Right lie. There is a twist, though. The Woke Right readily admits as part of the lie that Marx's "analysis" was right, or at least partly right and very useful, but that his "solutions" were wrong. They, having different solutions, are therefore at liberty to pick and choose from Marx as they need. There are many errors in this thinking, but I'll stick to the lie at hand. What the Woke Right is essentially arguing, by metaphor, is that Marx not only identified the position of the plane, and better than his critics insist, but he also understood at least something of the heading. They seem to be insisting that Marx's prescriptive solutions called for a change of heading toward Communism, thus failing to understand that Marx's whole "analysis" is a comprehensive and totalizing worldview that sees history itself as a heading from primitive tribal communism to global transcendent Communism. That is, they think Marx got some of his diagnosis right but then called for a divergent solution (new heading) that bends hard to the Left. Since they agree with at least some of the diagnosis (again, out of political expedience, desperation, and a complete failure to understand Marx's thought), they also agree that the current straight-line heading from the point of his analysis is also a disaster. Their solution is therefore to bend the trajectory Right rather than allow it to continue straight. What I just said is also slightly wrong, unfortunately for them. One of their typical arguments from thinkers across the board, including shit trolls, is that classical liberalism always devolves into Communism (or "the Total State," if you're "Auron MacIntyre"). Therefore, they must agree with part of what they believe is Marx's analysis of heading, not understanding Marx again. Marx believed history is moving inexorably toward final Communism (which isn't even final, final humanity), so the heading points that way, just through ugly aspects of history. He also believed its future course (heading) not only should be but will be seized as history itself develops. He encourages this and seeks to awaken people to the need to undertake that seizure, but he also thinks it's inevitable. He, agreeing with Hegel before him, sees himself as an instrument of history. He's merely playing his role to awaken the next stage of consciousness to move history forward. Thus, while it appears he's calling for a Leftward change of heading, he is in fact not doing that. The Woke Right (including the Fascists and National Socialists in the 20th century) misunderstand this completely. What they think is Marx's course change to the Left is in fact the reading of a straight-line heading in his "analysis." Their response is to pull to the Right not because the true heading of the plane (which none of them have) is bad but because they think the wheel has been jerked Left. In fact, they're adopting Marx's framing (heading "analysis") by not knowing what it is and suggesting a correction that's only needed if you believe his incorrect framing (analysis of "heading"). Do you see how lost they are? Unfortunately, by adopting Marx's "analysis," even in part, they misunderstand the world around them and offer incorrect diagnoses, incorrect prognoses, and incorrect prescriptions ("solutions"). Most of these involve seizing power to direct the course of history after coming to see themselves as historically contingent objects who are marginalized from the power they rightfully deserve, in one way or another. Their weird cope for all of this is to say that I don't understand Marxism, which is projection from their own failure to understand Marxism. While it may be possible to "draw from Marxist analysis without reaching Marxist conclusions," it is not possible to "draw from Marxist analysis" meaningfully without adopting the underlying worldview that defines Marxist analysis. It isn't just a set of "analytical tools" you can pick up and subordinate to some higher set of principles and have it work out. You have to adopt a lot of the broken worldview too, and they do, thinking it's just "analysis."

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Three cult dynamics of Woke, Left and Right, a long post/🧵: In his book analyzing the cult of Maoism, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Robert Jay Lifton identified two cult dynamics in what we might call "Woke" political cults: the "cult of confession" and "cult of enthusiasm." To these, I'm adding a third, the "cult of transgression," which is also generally present. In this thread, I want to briefly explain these three and how both Woke Right and Woke Left do them. Cult of Confession Lifton's analysis is really valuable on the "confession" dynamic, by which people are made increasingly vulnerable and punished and love-bombed into cult adherence through a process of confession to crimes defined on cult terms. The process is that people are accused or struggled for having committed some crime against the cult's framework and led into a process of struggle, criticism, and self-criticism through cycles of confession and abuse. The cult of confession creates a dynamic in which people confess to "crimes" in the accusations (criticism), experience moral contrition and abuse (struggle), and eventually begin to spontaneously confess to further crimes (self-criticism) to achieve moral standing in the cult. It's all about generating and exploiting guilt and shame to drive people into deep social and emotional adherence to the cult. Part of the dynamic Lifton points out is the tendency to project the guilt and shame onto others through an accusation dynamic that comes along with the cult of confession. In a "misery loves company" kind of way, or in the "cycle of abuse," criticism and struggle are extended outward to others for moral absolution of the guilty, shame-filled self, spreading the cult and its dynamic. On the Woke Left: The cult of confession is abundantly obvious on the Woke Left, where people are accused of complicity in "systemic" hate and harms like "racism," "misogyny," and "transphobia" on terms defined by Woke Left identity politics. It requires basically no explanation now as we've all seen it and as this is more or less what DEI meetings/trainings are. Robin DiAngelo's entire "whiteness training" shtick is this in the name of "antiracism," and we're all familiar now. On the Woke Right: The cult of confession on the Woke Right involves confessing to having failed to see through the conspiracy theories and psyops and to having been "cucked" by both Woke Left social repression and the "liberal" social norms often falsely associated with that repression, be that "political correctness" or just actually restraining one's speech to be dignified and polite (which isn't quite the same). It involves feeling as though one might have been "controlled opposition" and owning up to that, often with outwardly changed behavior. Both of these manifestations lead into the cult of transgression in that the criticism, struggle, self-criticism, thus also guilt and shame, programs of the cult lead to transgressing existing (good) social norms and boundaries. Cult of Transgression The cult of transgression dynamic is characterized by transgression of the established social norms of society in the name of going against a perceived moral enemy on "the other side" that the mainstream society is complicit in producing and sustaining. It is a dynamic where transgressing normal boundaries leads to a sense of camaraderie and elevated outsider status, i.e., people who "get it" and know when and why they can break "the rules." Lifton, who wrote before the Cultural Revolution, doesn't document a cult of transgression in the early People's Republic of China (PRC), but it was present in the Red Guard in particular during the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guard was a youth movement strongly encouraged by Mao to break social taboos, sometimes violently and destructively. "To rebel is justified" (a plainly Luciferian concept) was the call Mao made to transgress. The Red Guard were sent out to "Smash the Four Olds," meaning anything reminiscent of "Old" China, so that socialism could be unleashed to advance. This involved destroying temples, schools, artwork, homes, books, and people, anything that held to the "old ways." It was purely a cult of transgression led by youth, and it also transgressed the most sacred value of China: familial piety. Youth were encouraged to turn on their parents, grandparents, teachers, and even police, not to mention party officials Mao wanted ruined. All of this was deeply transgressive. The "Woke" neo-Marxist movements in the West adopted this, not insignificantly following the instruction of characters like the "liberationists" Herbert Marcuse and Paulo Freire, both of whom encouraged it and derived it from Mao. Marcuse called his project the "Great Refusal," in fact. Books based on Freire's methods and Marcuse's influence include bell hooks's Teaching to Transgress. Transgression, particularly in the youth, is a key element of being "Woke." "Liberation" refers to breaking free of the existing society in party by transgressing against its norms and boundaries. On the Woke Left: The cult of transgression appears in a few ways. The most obvious of these is the pure transgression of the Queer movement, including the increasingly lewd and grotesque performances associated with it. Adding genders and sexualities, pronouns, ugly dress, exotic hair colors, etc., and bringing these to children also qualifies. So does expanding the definition of "racism" until it encompasses everything and everyone (for cult of confession purposes), as does violating the expectation that no racism from dominant races (whites, Asians, Jews) also extends an expectation of no racism to dominant races (whites, Asians, Jews). The cult of confession is therefore empowered by the cult of transgression. As the list of things that qualifies as both permissible and taboo expands (each a transgression), so does the demand for confession and the capacity to accuse others. Consider the transgression against the boundary of calling things racist. At first, only hostile racial animus counts, but then the boundary of this definition is transgressed by calling more benign expressions "racist." This expands further by calling virtually everything "racist." The cult of transgression traps people through the cult of confession dynamic eventually because you cannot back out without having to confess to it being "racist" to do so, even if the transgression has already gone too far. The same is true of leaning into "reverse" racism. To try to stop is to be accused of "upholding racism." The result is a purity (death) spiral. On the Woke Right: The cult of transgression on the Woke Right is reactionary, mainly, and therefore embodies the idea of "same energy, opposite direction." Being increasingly edgy ("based") against first Leftist expectations and then good civilizational norms ("liberalism") is part of this ritual. This usually takes the form of saying increasingly racist things, for example, in an attempt to be defiant and funny, though hostile intent not only can cloak itself here but may eventually develop. Like with the Woke Left situation, there's simply no way back without invoking the cult of confession dynamic that traps you. If you try to stop or back out, you're part of the problem the transgressions are allegedly meant to resolve, and you'll be cast out. Woke Right transgressions can be crude (racism, sexism, misogyny, antisemitism, etc.) or more sophisticated, say targeting the ideals of Western liberalism itself and transgressing against the Constitution and its limitations. Of course, the Woke Left also does this more sophisticated type. The cult of transgression gives way to the cult of enthusiasm Lifton also describes. Cult of Enthusiasm Lifton describes a cult of enthusiasm in the totalist circumstance, where participants as a result of the above dynamics gain an almost maniacal enthusiasm for working toward the goals of the cult. In the PRC, these goals were set by Mao and the CCP, but they generalize easily. The main goal Mao pushed was "building socialism," and he worked up his people into a frenzy to attempt to do it, often with the Communists under him rabidly competing to be the most Communist and to deliver for the PRC the most. This was particularly evident during the Socialist High Tide and Great Leap Forward disasters Mao executed in the middle then late 1950s. In both cases, the cult of enthusiasm led people to competitively set higher and higher impossible production targets and other quotas, which ended up starving maybe close to 100 million people total and ruining the Chinese economy twice. Everyone wanted to prove they were the most enthusiastic socialists who would get it done, even if most individuals hated what was happening. The cult environment, driven mad by the cult of confession and totalist conditions, demanded it, and people became lunatic zealots in pursuit of the goals. On the Woke Left: The Woke Left's cult of enthusiasm obviously spilled over in 2020 into the streets, but it includes ridiculous ideas like "Critical Joy," "Critical Hope," and "Trans Joy." The feverish "Joy" branding of the Harris-Waltz Campaign is an example. The idea of achieving liberation, including by browbeating everyone and everything ("Smash the Four Olds"), spills over into a kind of brutal mania. Blogging endlessly about features of self, particularly sexuality, characterizes part of the project. Since this project is mostly critical in orientation, unlike Mao's, it is mostly destructive. The difference for Mao was that he had already taken power and therefore could work on "building socialism," whereas the Woke Left never fully achieved operational power of that sort. We also see this cult of enthusiasm (or saw it) during Covid-19, what with all the fun dance numbers our unbelievably overburdened health professionals were producing, for example. It also included the rampant enthusiasm many of our neighbors expressed in trying to force people to wear masks, socially distance, and take experimental gene therapy shots, combined with a lot of cult of confession (and accusation) and cult of transgression (you have to violate your bodily autonomy and livelihood for the greater good) activity. On the Woke Right: The term for the cult of enthusiasm on the Woke Right used by the Woke Right, which they partly derived from misinterpreting President Donald Trump, is "winning." They are enthusiastic about "going on offense" because they "know what time it is" and are "tired of losing," so everything begins to revolve maniacally (worse than mindlessly) around winning at all costs and by any means. Like the Maoists with "building socialism" and the Woke Left with "reimagining society" and chasing "liberation," it is a cult of mania that mostly results in destruction and ends-justify-means idiotic behaviors. Here, as in the other places, the cult of enthusiasm offers a significant suite of rewards for the sufficiently enthusiastic. The cocktail parties, galas, and entry and welcome into the elite layers of the movement ("inclusion and belonging," btw) all depend on being sufficiently confessed, transgressive, and enthusiastic in the goals of the political cult. Everyone in the cult at least intuits, if not knows, they will be cast out of the elite circles, or have no hope ever of being invited to them ("irrelevant") if they don't participate in the rituals of these three cult dynamics. That loss of status or potential for status is often psychosocially catastrophic and helps maintain both the cult and the entire dynamic (these three cult dynamics) that drive it. These three cult dynamics appear in virtually all cults in various ways, but particularly in ones that are large-scale political cults taking the form of mass movements. They are sociological and psychological poison, so it helps for us to be aware of them and on guard for them, including our own participation in them. Have you noticed these dynamics anywhere, Left, Right, or elsewhere?

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

VIDEO: Historian Frank Dikötter reveals the secret of how the CCP took advantage of Bill Clinton to get into the WTO and force the West to destroy our manufacturing capabilities and hand it over to the CCP and its People's Republic. Absolutely mind-blowing video. https://t.co/7f6O6qLQtD

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The fun thing about having lots of rumors swirling around about you is having to take treks into "None Of Your Business" zones publicly sometimes. There's a rumor @SovMichael is my "weird benefactor" (as Chris Rufo put it to me recently, which brings us here). That's not true.🧵

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Normally, I don't think it's anyone's business but ours to talk about our finances and business relationship, but since Rufo seems to have believed the propaganda about my relationship with Michael, as have many others, I'm going to address it. Again. Ughh.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Michael O'Fallon discovered my work while doing his own thing in Ireland in fall 2018, stumbling across a talk I gave that autoplayed on his YouTube after finishing a Jordan Peterson lecture while he was indisposed and couldn't grab his phone. He thought I've "got it."

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

He spent the rest of the fall and early winter 2018 trying to vet me a little, and my associate Peter Boghossian, who appeared with me in that video, and by the end of the year reached out to try to get me to speak at or near (probably not AT) the 2019 G3 conference.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

He managed to get an email address for Peter, who was working at Portland State still at the time and thus had a public-facing email address, and Peter was more inclined to work with Michael and go to the conference than I was. It ended up that we didn't go.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Had we gone, we would have been talking about CRT and intersectionality, which were being brought into the Southern Baptist Convention full speed by double-dealing faith leaders, some of whom have been exposed by Megan Basham, some of whom weren't.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

For our part, we had just come out with the Grievance Studies Affair (October 2, 2018) and were trying to be careful about with whom we associated because, we thought, being identified as "right wing" would injure the capacity of the project to make a difference in academia.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The conference came and went without us, but Michael wasn't to be deterred. He invited me out to dinner near the end of February in Knoxville with his team as they passed north on their way to CPAC (in DC). I agreed to meet them for dinner and conversation, and we got along well.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Michael invited me and the rest of us to Vegas for further meetings a few weeks later, just to talk about the possibilities of building a platform around the work I was (and we were) doing, a platform that became New Discourses by the end of 2019, launching in February 2020.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Michael is a businessman, not a "weird benefactor" (Chris...). What he proposed was a joint business venture where we built the platform on his capital investment, which was to be paid back in full by the company, while making him a partner in the business.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Michael was motivated to do this because he has been trying to kill the Woke mind virus actively longer than most, particularly at the level of depth he brings to the issue, which he obtained from many of its architects being his former clients in his travel/conference business.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

For those who don't know, Michael ran Sovereign Alliance, which is a small suite of successful conference organizing, travel, and tourism businesses, and from 2006-2013 had many of the scary globalists we recognize today as his clients for various reasons (so, they hired him).

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Michael realized they were up to absolutely no good in 2013 and stopped working with them, then dedicating his life to exposing the plans they had made in order to stop the now-ongoing transformation of our world into their tyranny. He thought my work contributed to this goal.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The original model for New Discourses was, in fact, to do a lot of conferences and educational tours, like he does for many other clients, with the website being a web-facing face and informational depot, but we launched in February 2020, which was bad for travel and tours.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

We therefore made the primary purpose of New Discourses be the web-facing portion, and I've run it as such for five years. Contrary to popular rumor (Chris...), Michael does not own the company and employ me. We are joint owners, and I have 2:1 his share.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Some in the rumor-mongering shit department out there (Chris...) believe that because Michael's name is on the LLC paperwork filed with the state that Michael owns the business and props me up. You got us, detectives! Michael filed the paperwork. It's true. Oooooo!

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Back to story, 2019 was a pretty interesting year for me in the wake of the Grievance Studies Affair and my meetings with Michael. After Vegas in early March, I didn't see Michael again until July, when we met in NYC for the iconic Manhattan "Trojan Horse" video shoot we did.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

I didn't see him again after that until the also iconic conference he put together in London in October, initially conceived of as the launch point for New Discourses. I didn't see him again after that until the 2020 G3 conference, where we did a one-night unaffiliated side talk.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

In the meantime, I got a number of calls from actual "weird benefactors," including the Morris-Singers (Paul Singer's son and his husband), which I think is a significant financial backer of the Manhattan Institute and Mr. Rufo. I talked with them but didn't work with them.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

I also had a few calls from "weird benefactor" types who wanted me to try this or do that, none of which I was too interested in doing. This accelerated considerably in 2020, of course, after New Discourses launched, including once being offered $2M to change course completely.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

After a while, the "weird benefactor" calls more or less stopped happening, I assume partly because I said no to all of them ("If I do that, who will do what I do?" was my go-to question.) Thus, I never acquired any "weird benefactors," not least because Michael O doesn't count.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

So what about the seriously None Of Your Business parts? All told, Michael invested about $104,000 in building New Discourses, most of which being the costs associated with the Vegas, Manhattan, and London trips and productions. The company paid him back for this investment.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

I don't care how you want to parse it out, none of that comes to "weird benefactor" in any way, nor does any of it suggest that he's paying me to do what I do now. We both have a stake in the company we built together. Stop being ridiculous.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

It's also not the case, as rumors allege, that Michael or I are somehow getting money from CCP or Israeli sources. Michael's former relationships with former clients including Ronny Chan, James Riady, and George Soros aren't exactly secrets. In fact, they're his credibility.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The fact that Michael organizes and runs tours in Israel, overwhelmingly for Christian ministries, and does what he can within reason to make those tours extra good and special, thus leading to him knowing some Israeli officials, doesn't mean they're paying him. Come on!

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

For my part, I think it's interesting and sometimes amusing to see what stories are swirling around about me out there, especially given how ridiculously far from reality and salacious a lot of them are, but it's extremely irritating when "good" people are believing them.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

This thread, in fact, is brought to you by the fact that Chris Rufo texted me the other day to tell me that my relationship with my "weird benefactor" Michael O'Fallon is doing me no favors. How abominable that he'd believe these trash rumors and, I presume, convey them.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Spirit Aerosystems is the company that provided Boeing the door plugs, one of which failed. Boeing prioritizes DEI and ESG in its supply chain (bc of ESG requirements), and Spirit Aero delivers. DEI and Sustainability are at the top of their careers page. https://careers.spiritaero.com

Spirit Aerosystems Apply Spirit Aerosystems Apply careers.spiritaero.com

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

"Diversity and inclusiveness will ensure that Spirit continues to remain at the forefront of our industry." Maybe work on the door plugs, tho. https://careers.spiritaero.com/dei

Spirit DE&I Spirit DE&I careers.spiritaero.com

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Environment, People, Governance. Environment, Social, Governance (ESG). It's their top priority. Too bad about those door plugs, tho. https://www.spiritaero.com/company/sustainability/overview/

Sustainability Overview | Spirit AeroSystems A responsible global citizen prioritizes sustainability. Spirit's initiatives are an integral part of the company and how we conduct business. Read more here. spiritaero.com

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

How about that! https://t.co/6NmTwfv3Mi

@ApostateProphet - Ridvan Aydemir | Apostate Prophet 🇺🇸🇮🇱

Always remember: Hitler loved Islam and hated Christianity. https://t.co/5LOLzSXz5m

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

I didn't want to do this today, but, let's because it's a thing. Vance: “One of the things you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.” 🧵

@anukasan1977 - ┴┬┴ 𝕋𝕒𝕪𝕝𝕠𝕣 𝕆𝕨𝕖𝕟𝕤 ┴┬┴

Like most post-WW2 Leftists, you get “nationalism” entirely wrong, & compound your errors from there. At its most basic, nationalism is merely the transfer of natural tribal loyalties to the higher level of the nation-state: philia for a larger ethnos. https://t.co/5qy2DSgTWK

@anukasan1977 - ┴┬┴ 𝕋𝕒𝕪𝕝𝕠𝕣 𝕆𝕨𝕖𝕟𝕤 ┴┬┴

@ConceptualJames My definition isn’t idiosyncratic—it would have been understood & assented to by most educated classical liberals from the early Enlightenment right up to the World Wars. Your definition is postmodern-Left. https://t.co/6cH2tGRGY1

@anukasan1977 - ┴┬┴ 𝕋𝕒𝕪𝕝𝕠𝕣 𝕆𝕨𝕖𝕟𝕤 ┴┬┴

Stalin wasn’t innovating views of nationalism, & no one's being Marxist for discussing what are essentially philia & ethnos—much-discussed (& praised as necessary for democracy) 2000 years before. In the US our ethnos has always been multiracial—but we ended immigration in 1924

@anukasan1977 - ┴┬┴ 𝕋𝕒𝕪𝕝𝕠𝕣 𝕆𝕨𝕖𝕟𝕤 ┴┬┴

(except for small numbers of special exceptions) through 1965 because of increasing ethnic strife, tribalism, organized crime, communist/anarchist sedition, & economic concerns. This low-immigration period created modern America, reforging one ethnos: e pluribus, unum.

@anukasan1977 - ┴┬┴ 𝕋𝕒𝕪𝕝𝕠𝕣 𝕆𝕨𝕖𝕟𝕤 ┴┬┴

Almost none of those calling for immigration restrictions today are the “ethnonationalist” or “Christian nationalist” scapegoats you’re strawmanning. Sure, they exist as statistically insignificant fringes. And so? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Nearly all are just patriots who want to reforge the sort of united ethnos they know we had & can easily have again, while raising wages & living standards for citizens—and their desire to strictly limit immigration has broad democratic support.

@Manservant_H - Augusto's Air-Taxi Service

@anukasan1977 @ConceptualJames The definition you give is the one I've always had, which made grievances against "nationalism" somewhat puzzling to me. With the def James is using, the grievances begin to make sense. I will point out for consideration - Marxists redefine words all the time, on purpose. /1

@Manservant_H - Augusto's Air-Taxi Service

@anukasan1977 @ConceptualJames Not to go full Kant, but those shifting definitions dictate what can or cannot be thought and discussed. In this case, "nationalism" was redefined to achieve the end-goal of sowing division. Right or wrong def aside, James uses that def to expose how it was used.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

I didn't want to do this today, but, let's because it's a thing. Vance: “One of the things you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.” 🧵

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The Woke Right and its adjacencies are pushing what we might refer to as "the national question" pretty hard now, so we had better look into it. They're uprooting American patriotism and replacing it with nationalism, which is tactically a serious error, as I've discussed.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Let's talk about Vance's definition of nation. Vance: [America] is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.” Put differently, "A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." Is that an accurate summary?

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Another far vaguer variant on this same definition might be this one: "nation, properly understood, is a particular people with ties of affection that bind them to each other and their place of dwelling," which is from Stephen Wolfe's book The Case for Christian Nationalism.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

I think this definition "A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." is obviously the most comprehensive, the others derivative

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

So nationalism proceeds from this particular starting place answer to "the national question," i.e., what is a nation? We are being asked to believe that a nation is a particular group of historically constituted people who share language, territory, economics, and culture.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Nationalism proceeds from this basic beginning by asking us to advocate for this view of a nation, not a country, not a state, these being explicitly different sociopolitical objects, but for a nation with defined, particular "national" characteristics that must be defended.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

This answer to what has historically been called "the national question" has been tried repeatedly, always to disastrous results, whether in Europe, Russia/USSR, China under the Guomindang, India under its nationalists, Franco's Spain, or wherever. The "nation" becomes all.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

People who do not support the prevailing and decided upon vision of the nation (again, not state, not country, but nation, as defined above, treated as false synonym for country or state) are hounded and destroyed not with the fury of Communism but with that of Fascism.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The ethnonationalist character that Fascist movements always evince flows from accepting this view of the nation together with the idea that the nation and country are meaningfully the same thing and that the state is the ideal representation of the will of the nation as such.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Here's Mussolini outlining it for Italian Fascism from the beginning of his tract The Doctrine of Fascism: "Thus many of the practical expressions of Fascism such as party organization, system of education, and discipline can only be understood when considered in relation to its general attitude toward life. A spiritual attitude. Fascism sees in the world not only those superficial, material aspects in which man appears as an individual, standing by himself, self-centered, subject to natural law, which instinctively urges him toward a life of selfish momentary pleasure; it sees not only the individual but the nation and the country; individuals and generations bound together by a moral law, with common traditions and a mission which suppressing the instinct for life closed in a brief circle of pleasure, builds up a higher life, founded on duty, a life free from the limitations of time and space, in which the individual, by self-sacrifice, the renunciation of self-interest, by death itself, can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists"

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

There are dozens of examples in The Doctrine of Fascism that make this point. Here's another: "In the Fascist conception of history, man is man only by virtue of the spiritual process to which he contributes as a member of the family, the social group, the nation, and in function of history to which all nations bring their contribution. Hence the great value of tradition in records, in language, in customs, in the rules of social life. Outside history man is a nonentity."

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Of course, Mao Zedong agreed with this idea in his Communism, which allegedly rejected the tendencies of the nationalist Guomindang. "Not to have a correct political orientation is like not having a soul," he said in a critically important speech in early 1957.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

We're standing at the edge of this precipice again, thinking of ourselves in "nationalistic" terms that the Left is extremely good at exploiting (see thread below). But where does this conception of the nation actually come from? It's in the thread too. https://t.co/IDKdb8Lx6f

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

This definition of the nation: "A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." comes from Joseph Stalin.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Stalin wrote that definition of nation in 1913 in Marxism and the National Question, where he set out on Lenin's orders to make sense of how ethnic differences can be made use of for the intended Soviet federation, and the program he came up with became called Korenizatsiya.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The Bolsheviks were concocting a plan to define nations as such and then to promise them "self-determination" in order to use them as wedges against Russian hegemony, thus creating the world's first at-scale Affirmative Action and DEI empire, to be suddenly reversed a bit later.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The Bolsheviks knew exactly how to stoke up this ethnic division, make use of it to hand-pick useful tools who couldn't be criticized, and to use it to tear apart existing national sentiment on lines of "yeah, the nation, but not for people like you."

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Fascists studied this play and created the various Fascist regimes of Europe on the same model in reverse a few years later, claiming and asserting national identity and self-determination in a way that turned out to be a catastrophe only rivaled by that of Communism itself.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

In the intervening years, particularly the last quarter of the twentieth century and first quarter of this one, Communists have incorporated this model again, particularly in the People's Republic of China, hybridizing Communism and Fascism into one new model for the world.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

As we lurch into Stalin's nationalist conception for ourselves in reaction, we also lurch into a kind of global reverse-Korenizatsiya play that's going to achieve the aims of this globalist nightmare, which is aiming to globalize the entire world on the current China Model.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Patriotism, love of country, is not the same thing as nationalism, which is, in essence, a darker force that's love of our people, as we define them. I hope we can choose more wisely than this because so far we're, as I said, lurching ourselves into exactly the losing position.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Some reflections on academic hoaxes. 🧵 It's been about seven and a half years since "The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct" was published by Cogent Social Sciences, officially making @peterboghossian and me "academic hoaxers." I've thought a lot about the genre since.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Just by way of storytelling, after the "Conceptual Penis" was published, we were vigorously denounced by the Left, by friends and colleagues, including many surprises, not least for claiming we had showed more than we actually had. Much of that criticism was fair, but not all.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The OG "academic hoax" writer, Alan Sokal himself, eventually weighed in, determining that we had showed something but much less than we hoped to have showed. Our aim was to show severe ideological corruption in the domain of academic feminism and gender studies, fwiw.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Sokal, who is a brilliantly thoughtful man, came down on whether we had demonstrated our claim of ideological corruption (which we now know Peter and I were absolutely right about) with a crushing, "Yes and no, but mostly no." He was thoughtful, clear, and fair throughout.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The internet, ofc, went wild, and many people were perfectly content to believe we had showed at least as much as we claimed if not more, but Sokal and at least one other Leftist lunatic criticized us with instructions for what it would take to put real legs under our claims.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Sokal (and, for far less good reasons, the other guy) were right, though. Our hoax had not succeeded in showing what we had hoped or what Sokal's 1995/6 hoax had showed, and the reason was that the journal was simply too questionable in quality to make such a determination.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The instructions we were provided indicated that more hoaxes in higher quality journals would be necessary to prove the point, and thus was born the Grievance Studies Affair (FTR: the only funded endeavor I've ever undertaken). We'd do it again, bigger, better, and more certain.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

About a year and a half later, on October 2, 2018, we announced to the world by way of the Wall Street Journal and our own write-ups and videos, that we had penetrated Leftist academia with no fewer than seven publications, some noteworthy, with more under the review process.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The very online world was set ablaze, and the shot was heard throughout academe, if not further. We were front page of the NYT on 10/5, on Joe Rogan's show talking about it within about a month, and rapidly claimed to notoriety for having exposed Leftist academic corruption.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The Leftist academics didn't agree. They merely said we took advantage of their high-trust system and had bad motivations. They scrambled to say we may have said a little about a few journals in a few fields but nothing more about peer review, activist disciplines, etc.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

This raises the question at the heart of this thread, which I've been chewing on for at least seven and a half years now. What does an academic hoax actually show? And how does it show it? That's the question at the heart of the disparate responses to both hoaxes.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The fact is, I've never really had a good answer to this question until recently, and I got that answer from @SovMichael, as we discussed the subject just a few days ago, for whatever pertinent reasons I won't bring up just now. He said what I (and @peterboghossian) always knew.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Peter, Helen, and I didn't hoax those journals. Alan Sokal didn't hoax Social Text. I mean, we did, but we didn't. Those journals are producing fraudulent materials. They're the ones perpetrating a hoax, and that hoax is on their audience, which is misled to believe it's research

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The academic journals we "hoaxed" are hoaxing their audience. The papers we submitted (and that Alan submitted previously) are hardly more than a mirror submitted to their process so that it might be made to reflect what's really going on inside, behind the hoaxer's curtain.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

What the academic hoax shows is the true ideological leaning of those who fall for the bait and who publish the mirror. How it does it is by reflecting the ideological fraud (and commitment) already actively underway in an unmistakable way.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

So, did we hoax those journals? Did Alan Sokal hoax Social Text? Yes and no, but mostly no. We certainly fed them an ideological mirror, but they alone chose to certify, endorse, and publish it. The academic hoax reveals a bigger hoax more than it hoaxes anything in itself.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Some COLD, HARD FACTS: Many Bolsheviks (Lenin's violent and revolutionary Communist Party) were of Jewish ancestry but had abandoned Judaism for Communism, according to Marx's instructions on abolishing faith to become Communist. Jewish peasants in Russia disproportionately joined the Bolshevik movement between 1912 and 1917 because they were persecuted under the Tsar, while most Russian Jews didn't. Bolshevism was a particular invention of Lenin and his comrades, including the known British agent Leon Trotsky, for seizing power from the Tsar and destroying other socialist factions like the Mensheviks, which also has many Jewish members who didn't agree with Bolshevism even though they were socialists. Lenin takes power in 1917 and quickly begins crushing all non-Communist religious beliefs, including Judaism, not just Christianity, because he's a Communist who took Marx's vile criticisms of religion (especially Judaism and Christianity) very seriously: atheism clears the ground for Communist conversion while religion is an "opium" that prevents it. Hitler comes along next decade and decides all of the Social-Democrats in Germany are Jewish, incorrectly and hastily generalizes to all the Jews in Germany against the evidence that the overwhelming number of German Jews were not socialist or Bolshevik, and renames Bolshevism "Judeo-Bolshevism" and has that fallacious scapegoating message pushed through his propaganda department while banning all alternative press, especially Jewish press, that might counter him. Fast forward to today, where the Woke Right is JUST NOTICING THINGS (but not most things) and JUST ASKING QUESTIONS (but always leading and loaded questions), and you get this image every time anything anywhere happens. History is rhyming. Wake up and say "no," no matter how much you like the people helping play that evil melody.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

I feel like this makes me need to talk about Mao's Hundred Flowers Campaign, although I don't claim to know what motivates Tucker Carlson on his strange turn lately (no accusation, judging by fruits). "Let 100 flowers bloom. Let 100 schools contend." 🧵 https://t.co/LI7flu6m0R

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

In 1956, Mao Zedong, believing he had brainwashed the population of China into deep socialist belief, and to make a liberalizing show in the wake of Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin, launched the Hundred Flowers Campaign, which encouraged free speech and criticism of the CCP.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

It was one of Mao's greatest political miscalculations, as it turns out. Following a disastrous collectivization program called the Socialist High Tide. Over the course of several months, criticism grew and increased to where a real threat to CCP control arose.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

There's an important lesson here: just a few months of halfway free speech almost dismantled a totalitarian regime. It didn't, though. In February 1957, Mao still encouraged the Hundred Flowers Campaign, but it was getting out of control, especially at the end of a bad winter.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Criticism got so heavy and people got so encouraged by it that across the countryside peasants were taking back their land and driving out the Communist cadres, often humiliating them in the process. Mao was in trouble, but he's a very cunning snake.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Mao revised the declarations of the Hundred Flowers Campaign to indicate that its real purpose was to smoke the snakes and opportunists out of their holes, and now he had caught them. In 1957, he announced his greatest purge yet: the Anti-Rightist Campaign.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Everyone who had spoken up was destroyed, one way or another, and quotas were set for "Rightists" so that many innocent people were also found and destroyed. After that, no one would dare criticize Mao or CCP, paving the way for the unchecked destruction of the Great Leap Forward

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The Great Leap Forward killed at least 30 million people, maybe 50 million, and much of that could have been blunted if not for the silencing power of the Anti-Rightist Campaign, but Mao had turned one of his biggest blunders into one of his greatest consolidations of power.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

What I'm seeing lately on the American/Western Right is a push to criticize our governments and our history counched in something like free speech: saying things we're "not allowed" to say, despite no state or corporate censorship at all, "just asking questions."

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Let a hundred challenges to the taboos bloom. Let a hundred versions of history contend. Except, like with Mao after the fact, that's not quite right. The only interesting and "valid" things being said have to challenge the existing narrative and question the goodness of the US.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

It's difficult to see this apart from being some kind of trap. Under the guise of freedom of speech, thought, and inquiry, large swaths of conservatives appear to be being led to question their countries, push revitalized counter-hegemonic war propaganda, and break taboos.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Will there be consequences for this speech? Almost undoubtedly, and not necessarily just from a potentially oppressive state apparatus. There are nullification campaigns afoot, and there's an election coming that's ours to lose. There's also the chance of losing by "winning."

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Many good people are being led, it seems, to say things that are damaging to their belief in their country and its history, which is at minimum divisive and demoralizing. It will fracture communities and coalitions, maybe more. It may radicalize large groups to bad action.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

I've hesitated to draw comparisons between the opening up of Twitter under Musk and the Hundred Flowers Campaign, but I can't avoid the parallelism here with this odd Critical America Theory campaign I see from many prominent voices on the American Right, including Tucker.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

I'm very suspicious of the softball interviews of wingnut characters with these kinds of views, which fail journalistic integrity, and that have been steadily marching over the last few years, not just from that platform but into other conservative institutions, as you know.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

So weird that it's happening all over the world (not China!) all at once!

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

https://t.co/bMp4yiyFB8

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Maybe it's all the dead bodies.

@RebeccaYChan - Rebecca Chan

https://t.co/0uIP8tugEj

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

See Solzhenitsyn. It's Communism. https://t.co/lCjgGUpufy

@HazelAppleyard_ - Hazel Appleyard

I hate it here. https://t.co/jdZ5x9bmzW

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

ESG is a scam. None of this was ever supposed to work. It's just a way to undercut the productive capacity and standards of living of Western nations and to achieve strategic geopolitical advantages over them. https://t.co/KcyxLu7Vxs

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

https://t.co/WRmwRCLxZ7

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

https://t.co/ACnfKsLp4G

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Beneath Sheeps Clothing is out, available, and knocking people's socks off. Hearing things like "everyone needs to see this" and "this film will save the republic!" You don't want to miss it. If you've seen it, let me know in the replies. Link one tweet below 👇 Trailer:

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Here's the link to Beneath Sheep's Clothing! http://BeneathSheepsClothing.movie Check it out and tell a friend!

Beneath Sheep's Clothing In present-day America, there is a growing concern about the influence of Communist forces, which are purportedly indoctrinating millions of school children and infiltrating churches. This is presented as a tangible threat, not merely a fictional scenario. beneathsheepsclothing.movie

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Starmer is a Fabian Socialist. Fabian Socialism is English Socialism. English Socialism is what Orwell warned about under the name "Ingsoc."

@JimFergusonUK - Jim Ferguson

Here comes the free speech CRACKDOWN --which we must RESIST “One of the most dangerous trends of our times”, said American writer Thomas Sowell, “is making the truth socially unacceptable, or even illegal, with ‘hate speech’ laws”. And this is exactly what is taking place in Britain. Ever since the riots and protests erupted on Britain’s streets, I’ve argued consistently, much like Labour and liberals argued during the Black Lives Matter protests, in 2020, that we need to address the root cause. But this is not what Keir Starmer and the Labour government are saying. Instead, much like we saw when a radical Islamist murdered Sir David Amess, when what should have been a national debate about how to squash radical Islamism turned into an utterly bizarre debate about “online safety”, Labour and the elite class are using the unrest to launch a further crackdown on free speech and, ultimately, democracy. Instead of acknowledging what this is really all about, like the fact British people no longer feel safe in their own country, Starmer’s Labour, who have long mistrusted free speech, clearly see this is an opportunity to launch further restrictions, to crackdown on all those awkward people who do not support the elite consensus on the extreme policy of mass immigration, broken borders, and a failing policy of multiculturalism. #Freespeech #Censorship https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/here-comes-the-free-speech-crackdown

Here comes the free speech CRACKDOWN --which we must RESIST How Labour and the left plan to undermine our hard-won freedoms mattgoodwin.org

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

They dream of the ability for AI to rewrite the past as quickly as their narrative changes. This is of course an ambition unmasked by Orwell: whoever controls the past controls the future. They endeavor to force us to live in an eternal present in which they're always right.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

VIDEO: Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, says, "we are going to have to force behaviors." That's what ESG is about. https://t.co/PEgfEQhkxp

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Canada is in a lot of trouble, but few of us realize how far back the trouble really began. In 1968, “Trudeaumania,” swept Pierre Trudeau ("father" of Justin Trudeau) into office. Trudeau quickly worked with the Club of Rome to start dismantling Canada. https://newdiscourses.com/2024/07/club-of-rome-and-degrowth-of-canada/

Pierre Trudeau, the Club of Rome, and the Degrowth of Canada James Lindsay exposes that Pierre Trudeau worked with the Club of Rome to set Canada's environmental policy to their wicked ambitions. newdiscourses.com

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The story is a little more interesting than the first tweet makes it out. Trudeau actually made the deals with the Club of Rome that got it off the ground before it officially launched. He also baked their approach into his new Department of the Environment.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

Trudeau's Department of the Environment, among others, started to dismantle Canada—especially Alberta, which is roughly the economic and resource base of Canada—along lines we'd now recognize from the WEF and other Neo-Communist globalist outfits, to the benefit of China.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

The Liberal Party ever since has been in at least moderate, if not strong, alignment with the vision of the Club of Rome and its partnership with the WEF. This it's no surprise that WEF cutouts like Freeland and Trudeau the Younger are so strongly empowered in Canada today.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

George Bernard Shaw, a founding member of the Fabian (Socialist) Society, explaining how he thinks all useless people should be killed, as determined by a government agency. The agendas of the UN and WEF, as expressed by Harari, are hardly different today. https://t.co/YunKFtKEmQ

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

"The Netherlands will have to get rid of the idea that electricity is available to everyone at all times." Do you understand what these Communists are doing to our countries?

@levelsio - @levelsio

Degrowth propaganda is everywhere you look now From Dutch news today: "The Netherlands will have to get rid of the idea that electricity is available to everyone at all times" They want us to go back to 1890? https://t.co/ZvPmA5s9VO

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

You might think they just want to lower our standard of living, which is bad, but that's because you aren't evil and don't comprehend evil. They want intermittent electricity, which means CONTROL. They want to be able to control who gets access to it and be able to turn it off.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, anti-Communist

A totalitarian kill-switch economy will inevitably follow a fully intermittent electrical grid. That's because the objective is no longer maximizing uptime but maximizing control of distribution by turning things off involuntarily, which is a totalitarian tool like no other.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

There's a right name for the "Woke" ideology, and it's critical constructivism. Critical constructivist ideology is what you "wake up" to when you go Woke. Reading this book, which originally codified it in 2005, is like reading a confession of Woke ideology. Let's talk about it.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

The guy whose name is on the cover of that book is credited with codifying critical constructivism, or as it would be better to call it, critical constructivist ideology (or ideologies). His name is Joe Kincheloe, he was at Magill University, and he was a critical pedagogue.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Just to remind you, critical pedagogy is a form of brainwashing posing as education that is the application of critical theory to educational theory and praxis as well as teaching and practice of critical theories in schools. It comes from Paulo Freire. https://newdiscourses.com/2023/12/critical-education-is-brainwashing/

Critical Education is Brainwashing In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay takes you through three such people to make an irrefutable case that Critical Pedagogy really is nothing other than Woke brainwashing. newdiscourses.com

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

It's not the right thread to outline Paulo Freire or critical pedagogy, but the short summary is that critical pedagogy was developed from Freire's method of "education," which is to use educational materials as a "mediator to political knowledge," i.e., excuse to brainwash.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

The point of critical pedagogy is to use education as a means not to educated but to raise a critical consciousness in students instead. That is, its purpose is to make them "Woke." What does that entail, though? It means becoming a critical constructivist, as Kincheloe details.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Note what we've already said, though. Yes, Marcuse. Yes, intersectionality. Yes, CRT and Queer Theory et cetera. Yes, yes, yes. That's Woke, BUT Woke was born and bred in education schools. I first recognized this right after we published Cynical Theories in 2020.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Critical pedagogy, following people like Henry Giroux and Joe Kincheloe, forged together the religious liberationist Marxism of Freire, literally a Liberation Theologian, with the "European theorists," including both Critical Marxists like Marcuse and postmodernists like Foucault

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

In other words, when @jordanbpeterson identified what we now call "Woke" as "postmodern neo-Marxism," he was exactly right. It was neo-Marxist critique that had taken a postmodern turn away from realism and reality. The right name for that is "critical constructivism."

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Critical constructivism contains (or synthesizes) two disparate parts: "critical," which refers to Critical Theory (that is, neo-Marxism or Critical Marxism), and "constructivism," which refers to the constructivist thinking at the heart of postmodernism and poststructuralism.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Critical Theory we all already generally understand at this point. The idea is pretty simple: ruthless criticism of everything that exists; calling everything you want to control "oppression" until you control it; finding a new proletariat in "ghetto populations"; blah blah blah.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

More accurately, Critical Theory means believing the world and the people in it are contoured by systems of social, cultural, and economic power that are effectively inescapable and all serve to reproduce the "existing society" (status quo) and its capitalist engine.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Critical Theory is not concerned with the operation of the world, "epistemic adequacy" (knowing what you're talking about), or anything else. They're interested in how systemic power shapes and contours all things and how they're experienced and gives (neo)-Marxist critique.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Constructivism is a bit less familiar for two reasons: 1) We've done a lot of explaining and criticizing Critical Theory already, so people are catching on, and 2) It's a downright alien intellectual landscape that is almost impossible to believe anyone actually believes.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

You're already very familiar with the language of constructivism: "X is a social construct." Constructivism fundamentally believes that *the world* is socially constructed. That's a profound claim. So are *people* as part of the world. That's another profound claim. So is power.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

I need you to stop thinking you get it and listen now because you're probably already rejecting the idea that anyone can be a constructivist who believes the world is itself socially constructed. That's because you're fundamentally a realist, but they are not realists at all.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Constructivists believe, as Kincheloe says explicitly, that *nothing exists before perception*. That means some objective, shared reality doesn't exist to constructivists. There is no reality except the perception of reality, and the perception of reality is constructed by power.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

I need you to stop again because you probably reject getting it again. They really believe this. There is no reality except perceived reality. Reality is perceived according to one's social and political position with respect to prevailing dominant power. Do you understand?

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Constructivism rejects the idea of an objective shared reality that we can observe and draw consistent conclusions about. Conclusions are the result of perceptions and interpretations, which are colored and shaped by dominant power, mostly in getting people to accept that power.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

In place of an objective shared reality we can draw conclusions about, we all inhabit our own "lived realities" that are shaped by power dynamics that primarily play out on the group level, hence the need for "social justice" to make power equitable among and across groups.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Because (critical) constructivist ideologies believe themselves the only way to truly study the effects of systemic dominant power, they have a monopoly on knowing how it works, who benefits, and who suffers oppression because of it. Their interpretation is the only game in town.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

All interpretations that disagree with critical constructivism do so for one or more bad reasons: not knowing the value of critical constructivism, being motivated to protect one's power on one or more levels, prejudice and hate, having bought the dominant ideology's terms, etc.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Critical constructivism is particularly hostile to "Western" science, favoring what it calls "subjugated knowledges." This should all feel very familiar right now, and it's worth noting that Kincheloe is largely credited with starting the idea of "decolonizing" knowledge.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Kincheloe, in his own words, explains that critical constructivism is a weltanshuuang, that is, a worldview, based on a "critical hermeneutical" understanding of experienced reality. This means it intends to interpret *everything* through critical constructivism.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

In other words, critical constructivism is a hermetically sealed ideological worldview (a cult worldview) that claims a monopoly on interpretation of the world by virtue of its capacity to call anything that challenges it an unjust application of self-serving dominant power.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

When you are "Woke," you are a critical constructivist, or at least suffer ideological contamination by critical constructivism, whether you know it or not. You believe important aspects of the world are socially (politically) constructed, that power is the main variable, etc.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

More importantly, you believe that perception (of unjust power) combined with (that) interpretation of reality is a more faithful description of reality than empirical fact or logical consistency, which are "reductionist" to critical constructivists.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

This wackadoodle (anti-realist) belief is a consequence of the good-ol' Hegelian/Marxist dialectic that critical constructivism imports wholesale. As Kincheloe explains, his worldview is better because it knows knowledge is both subjective and objective at the same time.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

He phrases it that all knowledge requires interpretation, and that means knowledge is constructed from the known (objective) and the knower (subjective) who knows it. It isn't "knowledge" at all until interpretation is added, and critical constructivist interpretation is best.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Why is critical constructivist interpretation best? Here comes another standard Marxist trick: because it's the only one (self)-aware of the fact that "positionality" with respect to power matters, so it's allegedly the only one accounting for dominant power systems at all.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

We could go on and on about this, but you hopefully get the idea. Critical constructivism is the real name for "Woke." It's a cult-ideological view of the world that cannot be challenged from the outside, only concentrated from within, and it's what you "wake up" to when Woked.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Critical constructivism is an insane, self-serving, hermetically sealed cult-ideological worldview and belief system, including a demand to put it into praxis (activism) to recreate the world for the possibility of a "liberation" it cannot describe, by definition. A disaster.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

There is a long, detailed academic history and pedigree to "Woke," though, so don't let people gaslight you into believing it's some right-wing boogeyman no one can even define. It's easily comprehensible despite being almost impossible to grok like an insider.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

People who become "Woke" (critical constructivists) are in a cult that is necessarily destructive. Why is it necessarily destructive? Because it rejects reality and attempts to understand reality that aren't based in the subjective interpretations of power it is built upon.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Furthermore, its objective is to destroy the only thing it regards as being "real," which are the power dynamics it identifies so it can hate them and destroy them. Those are "socially real" because they are imposed by those with dominant power, who must be disempowered. Simple.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

To conclude, Woke is a real thing. It can be explained in great detail as exactly what its critics have been saying about it for years, and those details are all available in straightforward black and white from its creators, if you can just read them and believe them.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

Mao's Cultural Revolution started on college campuses very similar to these.

@ConceptualJames - James Lindsay, full varsity

It's important to understand what's going on at Boeing, which is why I controversially brought it up on Rogan. America and the West are being deindustrialized (Degrowth) to increase our dependency on the CCP-controlled PRofChina. This includes using DEI and ESG requirements to misdirect corporate priorities and resources (see Boeing's latest SEC filing, e.g.) to "suicide" (action verb) corporations while establishing a tyrannical regime over them similar to regulatory capture. In this case, that capture is run through the "Stakeholder Capitalism" or "Inclusive Capitalism" or "Sustainable Development" model coordinated by the UN and WEF and facilitated through financial firms like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, plus proxy advisory firms like ISS and Glass Lewis. These effective create a corporate cartel (Soviet) environment that's playing Hunger Games with Western industries while passing the economic superpower torch to the CCP and BRICS alliance. The point is to actively suicide American and eventually Western industry while enabling their Chinese competitors to move the West into a broken, consumption-only economy that's dependent on PRC and Indian (BRICS) production under their broadly corporate-socialist model. In this case, Boeing is being squeezed. Airbus will be too, eventually. Their Chinese military–owned competitor, COMAC, is being positioned and encouraged to rise as a "dark horse" while the 737, 777, and 787 are targeted with a heavy narrative operation built around a manufactured truth about problems in their production and safety. The COMAC C919 is a direct B737 competitor on the rise, and the COMAC C929 is the B777/787 competitor on its way. Here, former Congressman John Kucinich (D-OH) explains the de-industrialization and thus increasing dependency of American production and manufacturing (Degrowth) and gives as a specific example how Boeing lobbied his office to decrease restrictions on PRC trade so that Boeing could more easily enter into the lucrative Chinese market. The CCP's price of admission was sharing various aircraft prototypes, all of which would have been in advance of the development of their COMAC knockoff C919 aircraft line. This isn't just a "James Lindsay was right" moment. It's very serious on multiple levels, including finding out what defense-contracted information Boeing utilized to buy access to the huge cartel (CCP)–controlled PRofChina market. Serious questions have to be asked by serious people, like Congressional oversight committees, under oath. What prototypes were offered, if any? What role has hitting ESG and DEI targets played in misplacing resources and misdirecting priorities so that Boeing is now in this truly vulnerable position at exactly the moment its PRC knockoff competitor emerges onto the world market? What incentives and disincentives did Boeing face (including corrupt executive compensation packages, as reported in their previous SEC filings) to implement ESG and DEI requirements both in its own company and in its supply chain (Spirit Aerosystems, particularly)? How do these incentive structures appear in other American corporations and industries, and what impacts are they having? These questions must be asked. This is serious. It's not just bad business at a big company. It's the controlled demolition of the West and of America. Where these moves have been intentionally orchestrated or facilitated by American officials, this may well be treason. The fate of our country is directly tied to these questions. I hope we're ready to start taking them seriously. Clip by @MythinformedMKE.