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Samizdata quote of the day – unsurprisingly totalitarians support totalitarianism “The kinds of people who are willing to justify, minimize, or deny the slaughter of millions by the likes of Stalin and Mao are unlikely to blanch at Hamas’ much smaller-scale atrocities. If you are willing to embrace the Great Leap Forward, Stalin’s purges, or Lenin’s Red Terror, there is probably no limit to what you will accept, so long as you think it is moving the world in the right direction.”
– Ilya Somin, in an article that goes into the details of why so many on the Left have adopted a version of the oldest hatred.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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It’s a pathology. And, it really ought to be under the DSM-IV as something like “Leftist Cognitive Disorder”, because the common trait there is that the majority of the people who’re attracted to the left all have the same behavioral and mental tics.
One, they look at the world around them and then they have to have someone to blame for it all… It can’t just be that the conditions obtaining are the conditions obtaining for environmental reasons, it’s got to be that someone specifically has to be responsible for it all. Jews are good scapegoats, being traditional, and all. That this has a lot of contiguity with Islam ain’t exactly accidental, either… Islam’s adherents have a great many points of consistency with their Leftist peers. And, very similar pathologies.
That factor alone is why anti-Semitism is so popular among both groups: Gotta have someone to blame, someone to hate. You can’t just be a failure because you didn’t do your job, or you couldn’t find a good one, you’ve got to be a failure because “the Jooooos…” are out to get you. It wasn’t that you left the camels untended last night, it’s because “the Jooooooos…” came and let them go… Same mental disorder, same lack of comprehension of cause and effect. Same need to blame someone…
Second, the Left has a childish understanding of the world. Someone is successful? Why, they must be cheating! I couldn’t get ahead without cheating, so they must have…
My cheating, however, is noble and justified. Theirs? Evil personified, unjustified by anything. They’re bad people; I’m good, so my cheating is not only good, but completely A-OK.
If you start looking at the average Leftist as being a mentally-ill child, a lot of things start to make sense. Their obsessiveness, their inability to connect their actions with effects in the outside world, and their utter inability to grasp that what goes on in their minds has no effect on the outside world, that reality still exists and gets a deciding vote.
You wonder why you see so many of them stamping their little feet and insisting on the rightness of their cause and their actions? Little kids throwing temper-tantrums. Same with their leaders; they meet resistance? Kill the messenger and the people resisting; someone says “This isn’t working…”? Then, that person is a “wrecker”, and needs to be eliminated. If we literally kill every bit of realistic feedback, then we can’t possibly be wrong, and our fevered dreams of the imagination will come true.
They’re all mentally ill, to some degree or another. Not that the rightwards types that are “politically active” are any better, but they’re at least a bit more amenable to acknowledging reality.
Frankly, I think that anyone who espouses a particular ideology is likely somewhere on the spectrum of mental illness and dysfunction. If you try to substitute a set of hard and fast rules about anything? If you insist that your theories of life are utterly correct, and that the world is wrong?
Yeah. You’re the problem. You. Doesn’t matter what you’re sure of, really, it’s that certainty in the face of an ever-shifting and entirely dynamic world that’s the issue. Life is a dance with chaos; what works today may not work tomorrow, and you have to constantly be paying attention, observing, adjusting your fire. There are some circumstances where ideas like socialism work, and a lot more where they don’t work at all, over the medium- and long-term of human interaction. Families can be socialist; past that point? No, the state ain’t going to substitute for Mommy and Daddy, and if you try to make it do that, then you’re going to regret the end-game. The state that can give everything to you in ever-increasing quantity is also the state that can take everything from you, in ever-increasing quantities. The idea that you’re going to get security from that sort of situation is an excellent example of infantilism: “Mommy, give me my bottle!!!”
Doesn’t work, when you’re 35 and Mommy and Daddy want to retire.
Ilya Somin writes, “Far-leftists, though, are especially prominent on college campuses and other intellectual institutions, where they are hugely overrepresented relative to their proportion of the general population.”
I see that “The trade union for the second largest university in the UK, University College London, has tonight voted for “Intifada until victory” and a “mass uprising” against Israeli civilians.”
Note that this is not referring to the students’ union. The University and College Union is a trade union for academics.
Isn’t this kind of thinking behind the idea that you can force car manufacturers to sell a majority of EVs when only a minority want to buy them?
Progressives lust for Utopia. Utopia is such an attractive end that *any* means are justified in their eyes. Curiously none of the progressives realise that should Utopia ever be realised (rather unlikely) they would be out of a job and not running the place.
@Stonyground, who said:
It’s all on the continuum. You don’t deal with the world as it is, you deal with it as you imagine it, and if anyone resists your ideation thereof, they’re “wreckers”. Also, if the things in your head don’t work out in the real world, then it’s the world that is wrong, not your thinking.
The common trait of all these mentally-deranged assholes is that they’re unable to observe failure in their ideas and then adapt. It’s never “Yeah, I was wrong about the number of bras we’d need in Tashkent this year, sorry… We’ll forget about this whole “command economy” thing in the future…”, it’s always “Comrade Baganov is a wrecker! He deliberately sabotaged our bra program!! Send him and his entire staff, no, not only them, their families, too… Straight to Siberia! Let them mine diamonds in the wilderness for their crimes!!!”
Expect to see the various worthies behind the EV scam to start blaming the car manufacturers, along with everyone else but themselves. It’ll be a vast right-wing conspiracy of oil companies behind it all, deliberately acting to keep their energy monopoly going!!!
You can, if you like, already hear the denunciations. Also, expect trials and lawsuits over it all, saying that the car companies are responsible for “sabotage”. See, it’d all work out if everyone just went with the program that’s in the heads of the environmentalists and the politicians… Just like everything else they’ve f*cked up.
DiscoveredJoys said:
The “lust for Utopia” types almost always define Utopia as them being in charge. That this is based on entirely false self-assessments of virtue and value…? Yeah; they don’t get that bit. At all.
So, while the rest of us might look at “Utopia” and say “Yeah, that’s good enough for me…”, the fantasist Prog types will see that they’re not the ones running the place (into the ground, most likely…) and then say “This isn’t the Utopia I wanted!!!”
Like I said, this crap is a psychological pathology. If it weren’t for the fact that most psychologists and psychiatrists were themselves of a leftwards bent, they’d probably have already recognized it as such.
I think Terry Pratchett was on to something with his idea of “Knurd”, a state of un-drunken non-inebriation that disallowed anything other than coldly rational thought. The majority of the left is incapable of ever reaching this state, and if they did, they’d probably suicide. You really have to be delusional to believe or act on most of the leftish cant, because any rational person would observe that the first stages weren’t working and then adjust what they were doing. Few leftoids have managed that, over the years… They just keep right on doubling-down on the unworkable stupid, because that’s the idea in their heads.
Surely that make The University and College Union a proscribed terrorist organisation.
@DiscoveredJoys
Curiously none of the progressives realise that should Utopia ever be realised (rather unlikely) they would be out of a job and not running the place.
I’m not sure that is true at all. I think a lot of the top leaders in these organizations are quite cynical knowing that their livelihoods depend on the continuation of grievance, so, for them, the worst thing that they could find is a solution. Sometimes what they do is transition from one cause to another, but ultimately they do not want Utopia, they want controversy, pain and flames. Otherwise how will they pay their kids’ private school fees. FWIW, I think this is also true of most politicians, though they tend to like their controversies a little bit different.
I don’t think that is true of most grass roots protesters. Many of them are sincere (even if they are very wrong), it is the leaders who are using the dupes to further their own fame and fortune.
The alliance between Marxist atheists and devout followers of Islam (whether they are supporters of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, or the many other groups is, basically irrelevant) is bizarre.
Already people who try and square the circle between Frankfurt School “Critical Theory” Marxism (being “Woke”, supporting DEI or EDI – or whatever you want call it) and Islam, are being asked difficult questions in their Mosques – to which their answer seems to be that their support for Feminism, Homosexuality, Trans-for-children, and all the rest of it, is just lying-to-the-infidels-for-the-sake-of-Islam (which is acceptable).
Eventually, when the “Capitalist West” is exterminated – the two groups, the followers of Islam and the “Woke” Marxists will turn on each other, as they most certainly do NOT believe in the same things.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” only lasts whilst that enemy is still alive – as soon as we are dead, the “Woke” Marxists and the sincere and devout followers of Islam will turn on each other, as (I repeat) they do not believe in the same things.
“They both believe in imposing their rule by force, and eliminating dissent” – yes, if force is necessary. But that does not mean that their, very strange, alliance can last after we are destroyed.
By the way…..
The largest Communist Party in the world, that of the People’s Republic of China, is NOT “Woke”, not Frankfurt School. It does not approve of radical feminism or “Trans Rights” (sexual mutilation) for young children, or all the rest of it (although it laughs to see the “Critical Theory” insanity destroying the West).
The truth is that “Woke” or “Critical Theory” Marxism (the sort of thing the Guardian newspaper crowd believe in – or at least pretend to believe in) is not really a social system at all – it is more like acid, meant to dissolve Western societies, destroy them, and replace them with… well with NOTHING.
Look at a typical university in America and compare such a place with a typical university in China – the “Woke” (Frankfurt School interpretation) Marxist antics we see in America and other Western countries, are not tolerated in the People’s Republic of China.
@jgh
Surely that make The University and College Union a proscribed terrorist organisation.
I continue to be troubled by the knee jerk reaction on the right to try to use the same tactics on the crazy left as they do on us. I believe in free speech, even speech as disgusting as this.
I am deeply troubled by what I see on the news — streets packed to overflowing with protests. Not protests against the horrifying actions of Hamas, but supporting them. It is so shocking it literally takes my breath away. I don’t understand the logical processing of these people.
[Trigger warning, the next paragraph has some horrific descriptions, so feel free to skip… I wish I hadn’t heard some of this stuff]
For example, the incident of Hamas bursting into a home, shooting the unarmed father, gang raping (of course) the mother, than holding her down and forcing her to watch and listen as they put her baby in the oven and roasted it to death. How can you hear that story and say “I’m with Hamas”. Or the story of the victims at the music festival where the women were gang raped so violently that the coroner often found their pelvises were broken. How can you hear that and put a picture of a paraglider on your logo?
As far as I can see, the actions of Hamas on that terrible day count among the very worst things one human has done to another in the whole history of the world. Aside from some events being on a larger scale and for longer, I really can’t think of a single incident in history where people were more cruel to other people than here. Yes, in 2023.
However, I think there is a tiny light in all this darkness. Normal decent people don’t think like this, and the unwillingness of the left to unequivocally denounce these protests and these terrible events shows people what the crazy left are really like. Let them protest. Let them tell us what horrific people they really are. Then laugh derisively when they have to audacity to call you a Nazi. Scoff scornfully at their complains of micro agressions.
It may be that the crazy left has pushed too far in their bloodlust and hatred. Perhaps too far that their true character will be manifest, and their faux good intentions will be sullied beyond repair. We can only hope.
As for NON socialist hatred of Jews….
When someone like Colonel Douglas MacGregor says that the Jews have “bought” Congress (and Neil Oliver sits there without challenging what the Colonel has said), he may think he is inventing a new lie – but he is really just repeating tired old lies, dating back to the radical “liberal” Hobson (who pretended that the British Empire was controlled by “Jewish capitalists” who pushed wars for their financial interests) and all the other liars down the centuries.
Natalie,
The Tories are probably going to lose the next election anyway, so why not go all in and sack every signatory of that pledge? In the case of those who aren’t U.K. citizens, deport them immediately. No excuses or exceptions.
Drop the hammer on them. They choose the path of cancel culture when it suits. It’s too late for bleating about free speech now. To hell with them and the horse they rode on.
If this petition isn’t at odds with term of employment I’d be very surprised. What Jewish or non-fanatic would want to study there? And what employer would hire them? I’m a manager and I’d certainly want to grill anyone graduate from there about this.
If you are an evil crazy person who wants to do evil crazy things, then you will gravitate towards organisations that will encourage such behaviour. 20% of a Hamas troop will initiate such evil actions, then another large portion of the group will participate, because it’s ‘just’ joos innit, and the Palestinians have been cultured to be very very angry with joos, then the rest turn a blind eye to the worst excesses and busy themselves with more vanilla killing.
Leftists of the type we are discussing here are almost universally narcissist. In the realm of politics they need a big idea, or at least an idea that will attract enough people to give them a pool from which they can receive validation. It’s hard to justify believing in an idea unless you think it is ‘good’. The narcissist may not be clever enough to come up with Marxism, but if you are a disaffected young middle or upper class Russian man, you have here an idea that could allow you to become important and liked. Similarly, if supporting ‘social justice’ requires supporting Hamas, then plenty of people will do so.
Fraser Orr – sadly such behaviour has happened often down the centuries.
Does an evil system of ideas make people evil, or does it appeal to the evil already in the human soul?
I think “it is a bit of both” – evil teachings (doing this for the cause is O.K. – indeed it is good and right to do these things, those who your right hand takes are for your use anyway-you-like) – and evil example (he did it – and he is the model of human perfection – so I will do it as well) do lead people into evil, but it also appeals to a darkness that is already there in the human heart.
And I am most certainly NOT claiming to be free of this shadow.
We all need to guard against evil – in our enemies, and in ourselves.
Paul Marks said:
Pointed it out earlier, but the sad fact is that the left and Islam have all too many shared psychological dysfunctions. Not the least of which is the inability to recognize reality and respond accordingly… Both Islam and the Left require capital-letter Belief, above all. Never mind the evidence, just believe real hard and it will come true.
That that has never worked out for either the Leftards or the Islamics makes no difference; they just double-down and go onwards with the delusion.
That’s why they feel affinity for each other; they recognize similar mental dysfunctions when they look at the other party, and I don’t doubt but that the Muslims will eventually see the Left as “people of the Book”, if only because they’ll enshrine Marx as another prophet in their deranged religion. Likewise, the Left will come to see Islam as another facet of their belief system, just with an acknowledgement of Allah as a substitute for Marx.
It’s all irrational faith, all the way down. They’re at war with rationalism and reality; fellow fantasists are fellow travelers, allies against the forces of reason.
Paul Marks said:
MacGregor is a bit of a nutter; there are reasons he didn’t get promoted, and they consist mostly of his being recognized as such. I think he’s developed a bit of a persecution complex, and likely centered it on Jews because… I dunno. He’s a guy who did great things in Desert Storm, performed really well at the NTC during the post-Desert Storm era, and then didn’t get selected for higher positions.
From my perspective down at the worms-eye level, the guy just didn’t seem to be “one of them”, the officers who “succeeded” and went on to higher command. He may have been a potential iconoclast like Patton, or he may have been a complete and utter loon. It’s often hard to separate the two, because it’s a sad fact that really great military leaders are usually more than slightly crazy-looking, to the rest of us. I’ve no idea why, but the number of prosaic, work-a-day “normal” guys who are effective charismatic leaders you’d want to follow into combat? They’re super, super low. You don’t often see them; Field Marshal Slim was one of that sort, but the Montgomery/Patton egotist types are far more common. I suspect it’s because they’ve got the mentality for wanting command, and then are better able to deal with the deaths they have to cause along the way. Anyone with normal empathy is doomed to be an emotional casualty after any sort of heavy combat. Sociopathy is almost a job requirement.
Johnathan Pearce.
What you suggest – dismiss them all, all the taxpayer dependent vile creatures (sorry “Central Office” – I am going to use this language) who want Jews exterminated. Is something that Donald John Trump would do – or try to do it, British Conservatives would not dream of doing it (even if politicians had this power – which they do not) – indeed even to be too critical of people who wish to bathe in the blood of murdered Jews, risks a charge of “bullying” and if a politician is charged with “bullying” they are have to resign.
This is why people support Donald John Trump – he may not have the power to do much as President (with the growth of the Civil Service and the rest of the bureaucracy), but at least he has the courage to speak out – which most politicians lack.
As for University College London – it was set up to honour Jeremy Bentham, who wanted 13 Departments of State to control every aspect of human life. It appears it has not changed much.
Paul, you say they don’t have the power to expel. Well, what then is the solution? Re-education camps, like the Uyghurs are in?
The sad fact is, your politicians let these people in. They’re not “home-grown”; they’re alien transplants that aren’t “taking” to the soil.
So, why allow them to stay? There’s a simple solution: Send them home, to the lands where they can rape and kill the unbeliever to their heart’s content. They don’t want to go, because of the mess they made there? Too bad; you let them stay, and England will be Pakistan, in very short order.
Kirk – yes I have no doubt that Colonel McGregor is a good soldier, brave and clever.
But I would not like to be in a position to have put my trust in him. Someone can be brave and clever – and betray you. As you know.
As for General Slim (“Uncle Bill”) an incident from his memoirs sums him up…..
We had reached a fiver and I said, I am not sure why, “things could be worse” – another officer broke out in response “we have lost most of our supplies and equipment, many of our men are killed or captured, and the Japanese are hunting us down, how could things be worse?” – well, I replied, it could be raining. Then it started to rain.
Yes Uncle Bill was the man – honest, loyal and never flustered.
Agreed, given I can’t take the media’s word for what other folk think, only way I can know for certain who the very vilest people are is if they’re free to publicly express themselves.
Of course that will change when the 1642 moment actually arrives, and people start making Molotov cocktails & learning how to turn gardening chemicals into IEDs. Can’t say I’m looking forward to that but I’m starting to think it’s growing a lot more likely.
@Paul Marks,
Don’t mistake me for defending MacGregor. I don’t know the guy personally, never served directly under him. Observed him, a couple of times when he was around and pointed out to me, but that’s about it. He might have been a great guy, back around Desert Storm, but… Things change.
I would not be a bit surprised to hear he developed his ideas about “the Joooos…” during the years he had his promotions blocked under Clinton. There was a coterie of Jewish folks at the top of the Defense Department, and it wasn’t uncommon to hear commentary about that. Was there actually a “Jooooish…” conspiracy? No idea; I can see how he’d develop the pathology, though.
Which pretty much tells you all you need to know about the man. When you start blaming things like “the Jooooos…” for your own problems and inadequacies, well… Yeah. That’s a telling thing.
MacGregor and a bunch of his peers from that time frame all proved to be people I don’t find too damn attractive, these days. They’ve all come out in favor of things I can’t countenance.
Kirk – most of those people at University College London are NOT Muslims, they are the leftist part of the alliance.
And like Karl Marx, some of the kill-the-money-Jews types are from Jewish families. Their leftism is far more important to them than ancestry.
Even if you carefully explained to the leftists that Islam is not fond of atheists, or homosexuals, or people who want to turn boys into girls, or girls into boys, or abortionists….. (and on and on – all the “sacred” stuff of the left) they would NOT listen to you Kirk – they would shout you down, and solder though you are, the leftists have the numbers to tear you to pieces.
The masterminds of the left may be calm chess players – but the foot soldier leftist activists in the universities (and elsewhere) are more like rabid dogs. You can not warn them, you can not reason with them, they just want to rip out your throat with their teeth. And they have the numbers to do that.
By the way, as Mark Steyn has pointed out about himself, as a social conservative – I have far more in common with Muslims than the leftists who chant in support of Muslims have in common with them.
I support stable traditional families, I am not fond of abortion, I am not fond of “Trans Rights” for young children, and-so-on.
Yes, but you’re no more an “ally” of Islam than the Left should be, if they were at all rational. Shared beliefs about things do not make for good allies, especially when you look at the rest of the package.
I find that fervent “believers” are to be avoided, no matter what it is they “believe” in. Hare Krishna? Christianity? Islam? You believe what you like, leave me alone with my beliefs, and be polite about it. The problem is that the Islamic types aren’t at all willing to live and let live; they don’t come around proselytizing like the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses do, they come around and burn your house down, kill your dog, rape your daughter, and insist that you join them in their delusional belief system.
Not for me. I’d have had the same disdain for the various “Burn the Witch” types, back in the day. I believe in God; I don’t believe in burning the unbelievers alive. That’s all God’s problem with them, not for me to adjudicate here on Earth.
Isn’t this kind of thinking behind the idea that you can force car manufacturers to sell a majority of EVs when only a minority want to buy them?
I’m not seeing the flaw in this thinking. If 800 people want petrol cars and 200 people want EVs, you simply promulgate a production cap of 100 on petrol cars. Only a minority want to buy EVs but car manufacturers sell a majority of EVs. Seems simple enough.
Lee Moore said:
This has to be satire… Right? Please tell me it’s satire.
On the off chance it isn’t, this is the sort of “thinking” I’ve come to expect from the capital-L Left. They pay no attention to the reality of “EVs don’t work for most people”, and just force everyone to transition. This, by the way, is how the EPA and the idiots in Congress created the SUV market: They used the power of regulation to force the car-buying public out of the big American-style cars and station wagons they wanted to buy, and got the SUV to show for it. It’s stupidity on ice; you think you’re solving a problem, but you’re creating an even bigger one.
Friend of mine was an automotive engineer that worked for GM, Ford, and Toyota. He used to rail about the stupidity of the whole EPA CAFE deal, because it was simultaneously killing the mid- and large-size car market here in the US, and creating the even more inefficient and ghastly big SUV/truck market. All due to regulation… Know why you can’t buy a small truck like the old Toyotas, Datsuns, and Mitsubishis, any more? Talk to the EPA and DOT: They killed, with malice aforethought, the small truck market. Deliberately. So, now you want a truck? You’re buying a damn behemoth, ‘cos that’s what they left legal for good reason.
There’s no telling how much energy got wasted building and hauling around all that excess metal. If they’d have left the market alone, then some rational process might have led to smaller and more efficient passenger cars dominating, but because they meddled…? Yeah; SUV heaven.
No telling what capping gas cars at 100 might lead to, but I bet it’d be an entirely unexpected and totally contrary result.
Don’t try this crap at home, or you’re going to regret it. This is worse than trying to predict what the hell the effect of introducing a new invasive species is going to have on a given biome…
No it’s not satire, it’s a simple statement that there’s no contradiction between a minority of car buyers wanting EVs and EVs being the majority of cars that are sold.
The reconciling item is – you don’t always get what you want.
In this case I am merely illustrating a crude way in which the busibodies could achieve their wishes at the expense of yours. Taxes and regulations would also work as you suggest.
But the general point that you don’t always get what you want is of general application and doesn’t just apply to lefty annoyance about the outcomes generated by free markets.
Who would not like a holiday in Hawaii ? Who’s going to get one ? The two whos are not coextensive.
The masterminds of the left may be calm chess players – but the foot soldier leftist activists in the universities (and elsewhere) are more like rabid dogs.
That’s a bit unfair to dogs, who lack human volition.
Johnathan Pearce – good point Sir.
The “International Community” have an alternative to Hamas – a KGB trained person whose university thesis (at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow) claimed that the Jews were in league with the Nazis.
This “alternative” to Hamas is supported by the American government (including the Secretary of State – who is from a Jewish family) who proudly say that he was elected – in 2005.
The “International Community” still hope that Islam and socialism can be combined – combining the worst elements of both.
I would strongly warn Israelis – that your “friends” the American government are NOT really your friends – see the American backing (for months) of a “protest” movement supporting the power of unelected judges – who follow the agenda of the “International Community”.
The International Community want to wipe Israel off the map – they are just less open about it than groups such as Hamas are.