It's Not Censorship, Exactly, But...

It is intended to limit Free Speech, and keep NLD opinions out of public reach.

Rather than work through legal action to try to put together a case for the Supreme Court, it might be better to use administrative/executive action to put through a RICO case - the various services, which are clearly all-but-complete monopolies, are acting in concert to promote speech benefiting only one POV, and suppressing NLD activities.

The trail of involvement by the FAANGs is overt, obvious, and - likely - actionable. After the election, Trump's DOJ needs to fire a warning shot over the bow. There are a LOT of people who would turn on them - a woman would do it in a heartbeat (NEVER trust a woman with confidential information that could destroy you - she will thrust the dagger in herself, with a cool smile on her face as she watches the lifeblood drain from your twitching body).

Let's pray for a peaceful passing for RBG (She is suffering liver cancer - it is a painful death, and usually, thankfully, quick. The way the Left has propped her up, like Weekend at Bernies, is a disgrace.)

All of this is dependent on Trump's re-election. I think it's getting more likely every day. That's why the panicked assistance to the activists, the continuation of the shutdowns, the refusal to cooperate in Congress, even though it causes the voters to enter complete indebtedness for life (both those receiving aid, and those paying for it, are the losers).

This is the Final Showdown. The Leftists cannot survive this battle, and they are determined to throw everything they can into the fight. (At least, that's what the Left are telling their supporters. The leadership will be fine - they always are. Their money is safely tucked away, their escape route already secured. But the followers? They're toast.)

It's not about 'the people' - the Leadership care nothing for them.

The Left was always about promotion of their change in power. It was never about improving the lives of the people.

One positive thing about this open warfare is that it has made the goal clear. In their desperation to win, they have openly sided with the International Left, and are no longer pretending that they are just "Good Americans" looking to make their "wonderful country" even BETTER.

Please open the link immediately above. It describes, better than I can, the background of the Left, and the influences upon their descendants' thinking. From Rousseau to Gramsci to the Institute for Social Research/Frankfort School to Marcuse/Repressive Tolerance to Alinsky & his Rules for Radicals to today's BLM/AntiFa/Even Newer Left.

To using kids in the streets (again) to further their grab for power. It wasn't enough to destroy many of the youth of my generation, through 'revolutionary activity' (AMAZING how the leadership never has to serve a day in jail, isn't it?), drugs, mis-education that results in inability to get/hold a job, suspicion of normal family life (leading to the truly sad and lonely lives they are currently enduring), and soured outlook on life. They had to use their fading powers to ensnare another cohort of young bodies into giving up all hope of a normal life for their 'revolutionary process'.

Today's Woke shock troops have been fed this bilge since before pre-school, and they are operating on the ingrained belief that THEY are the ones that will make America better - MUCH better than the Fascist-controlled Hellhole they have been told she is.

Some will escape. Some will - eventually - be able to re-construct a life that approaches normal again.

Most will not. From our understanding of the past, we can see that it is vital to keep them from jobs in government and education, lest they burrow in and infect yet another generation with this vile disease.

Self-Study During Lockdown

The extra time available during this time of limited outside activities could be productive. I suggest that you educate yourself - no, not in that pretentious and condescending "Woke" way.

This could be a great opportunity to acquire information about how mobs form, and are used, by the Left. A good place to start is with a documentary on the Chinese Cultural Revolution, in which students were used to identify dissidents, publicly shame, torture, and humiliate them, and - ultimately - turn them over to the 'authorities' for jail, confiscation of their assets, and even death.

Over the next few weeks, as I have time, I'll add other suggestions to the list. I'll add the tag 'Conservative Self-Education' to each post, to make it easier to find them in a search of this site. Consider sending the links to young people of your acquaintance - they really do need to learn The History That Schools Will Not Teach.

Better Days

I'm doing better today - less stress, more time getting all of those little, nagging things done. I also decided to just commit to taking a few days off from subbing, as I have way too much on my plate.

This graphic actually cheered me up. It's from Raconteur Report. You might think it perverse to be given a lift from its truth, but there is something about hearing the God's Own Honest Truth, Without Apology, that makes me feel better.

I guess it's because I can sense people are starting to get it. Little indications like positive comments on these memes, give me hope.

Who Was Gramsci? - Part 1

From Wikipedia:

     The man pictured above is Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist, who died at age 46, in 1937. His influence on current Leftist thought cannot be underestimated. His central concepts, however important to the Left that they are, are a complex and mind-boggling twisted mass that resists untangling.

     OK, this next part will seem baffling and obtuse (Seem? Hell, it IS), so don’t bog down in it. FWIW, I’ve asked every Leftist I’ve ever met (and, that is a LOT) to explain Gramsci. NONE of them were able to - the central tenets of their Leftist Prophet were a Hot Mess, even to them.

     It’s as though a Lutheran tried to explain Sola Scriptura to you, but fumbled around with the idea, before simply repeating the initial jargon. That’s what Leftists do with Cultural and Political Hegemony. So, don’t expect this to make sense in the Real World.

     Ready?

     From Wikipedia:

     Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how the state and ruling capitalist class – the bourgeoisie – use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies. The bourgeoisie, in Gramsci's view, develops a hegemonic culture using ideology rather than violence, economic force, or coercion. Hegemonic culture propagates its own values and norms so that they become the "common sense" values of all and thus maintain the status quo. Hegemonic power is therefore used to maintain consent to the capitalist order, rather than coercive power using force to maintain order. This cultural hegemony is produced and reproduced by the dominant class through the institutions that form the superstructure.

     I’ve been around those who toss off that term - hegemony - for decades, and it still seems a lot like mumbo-jumbo to me. However, here’s MY understanding - hegemony encompasses the various mechanisms by which a social class is said to make other classes conform to their norms; the point of their doing so is to keep themselves in power. It is because of that belief that the Leftists are so over-the-top about assimilation. They think accommodation to a standard is horrible, because it will naturally keep other classes from gaining power.

     Because those other classes will have to give up an essential piece of their soul (well, they don’t believe in souls, but…) to gain power. The idea that someone can work with the standard, and yet retain facets of their original culture/class is impossible, according to the Leftists.

     I guess they haven’t known many actual immigrants or class-changers. Which I have. It can be done, and, no, you are still you. You can even keep using the “Old Language”, if you want. You just have to agree that the standard for communication with any NOT of your language group will be the New Language.

     The same with customs, foods, and family structure. Life being what it is, over time, the unique features begin to blend with other cultures/classes, and we eventually arrive at what one of those old Sci-Fi guys called the Galactic Standard language and culture.

     I have to wonder whether Gramsci resisted that blending, in part, as he was Italian-born to an ethnically Albanian father. His mother was Sardinian.

     He was sickly, with a deformed spine from TB (Potts Disease) - it afflicts those who have it with something that looks like a hunchback. His studies were in linguistics, a field that, for some unknown reason, later attracted other Leftists, such as Noam Chomsky. During those years, the Trade Union movement was active, as were Socialists. He joined the Italian Socialist Party.

     He left school at 24, for lack of money. He wrote for Socialist newspapers, and eventually, after the Italian government cracked down on Socialists in August 1917, held leadership positions when other leaders were arrested. Keep in mind that ALL international Socialist societies/parties were following the same script.

     By 1919, the Italian Socialists had affiliated with the Bolsheviks Third Internationale, headed by Lenin. In other words, Moscow and the Soviets controlled them. Gramsci advocated for workers councils, which he’d had experience with in the Turin workers strikes. However, he was in the minority in that support, and in 1921, he worked with his rival for power, Bordiga, to move to Lenin-style Communism in the Communist Party of Italy (Partito Comunista d'Italia – PCI).

     Hang in there. This is background, and it will later be important for understanding the development of Gramsci’s philosophy.

     Gramsci traveled to Russia as a representative of the PCI, where he met his wife, Julia Schucht, a violinist. He had two sons with her. He left before seeing his 2nd child, when the Soviet government sent him back to Italy with instructions to form an alliance of Leftists against Fascism. From 1922 through 1923, Mussolini fought against the Communists, and eventually, most of the leadership of the PCI was arrested. But not Gramsci - not at that point.

     Gramsci traveled back and forth to Moscow. When in Italy, he worked to get the PCI growing, and its newspaper stabilized. By 1926, he was arrested, despite being a member of the government; there may have been an attempt on Mussolini’s life, and that was used to justify jailing rival parties.

     He was in jail for 11 years, and, as he was crippled and sick, became desperately ill. He died just 6 days after he was to have been released, on April 27, 1937.

     His Prison Notebooks extensively laid out his philosophy, and form the basis for much of modern Leftist thought. I’ve been in MANY college classes where they STILL refer to Cultural Hegemony, with that rapt look that Muslims get when they refer to The Prophet (PBUH, as they say). His writings are treated in nearly that same way as is Holy Writ.

     Some of the concepts below were developed from his study of Marxist philosophy. Some of them were based on his own conceptual thinking. All of them form the basis for understanding Gramsci. This part comes from The Sources for Gramsci’s Concept of Hegemony Derek Boothman, in Rethinking Marxism, and I will use short quotes from it to explain hegemony.

     Major Concepts, with Brief Descriptions

     Cultural Hegemony:

     Hegemony was a term quite popular in Turin Socialist circles. It referred, at that time, to the linguistic differences in Venice, compared to nearby kingdoms with which they traded. Venice was a hotly sought property, and the many nearby cultures vied to gain some control over nearby islands. At that time, Italian dialects were highly regional, and Italians from one part of Italy could barely understand another.

     Due, in large part, to Venice’s dominance in trade, a kind of pan-Italian language and culture had spread through the Adriatic. The Venetian dialect functioned as a lingua franca for the region. Naturally, this caused competing dialects to become furiously angry at the Venetians, and vow to find a way to put their language dialect on top.

     From the paper cited above:

     “This concept, stemming from ancient Greece, of hegemony as the system of power relations between competing*/or between dominant and vassal*/states is found in the Notebooks in sections, for example, on how U.S. power was created (Q2§16; Gramsci 1992, 260!/5) and on the history of subaltern states explained by that of hegemonic ones (Q15§5; Gramsci 1995, 222!/3).”

     This concept was not unique to Gramsci - it had been floating around for a while. Again, another quote makes that clear:

     “ Lenin who, as a theoretician, had on ‘‘the terrain of political organization and struggle, and with political terminology ... reappraised the front of cultural struggle and constructed the doctrine of hegemony as a complement to the theory of the State-as-force and as a contemporary form of the 1848 doctrine of ‘permanent revolution’’ (Q10I§12; Gramsci 1995, 357). In other words, the leadership of the proletarian forces had to be developed independently on all fronts ‘‘in opposition to the various tendencies of ‘economism.’’

     Bold-face is mine. In other words, it is not enough to rule over you (State-as-force), nor to impose Permanent Revolution. According to the doctrine of hegemony, the Leftists have to stamp out every trace of you that is NOT revolutionary, or revolution-approved. You are being formed into New Man, if necessary, against your will.

     And, lastly, hegemony must be understood as a deliberate elimination of a culture - in effect, cultural genocide. The children of that culture must be forcibly educated to look upon the mores and values of their parents and family as, not just old-fashioned, but actually abhorrent and disgusting.

     “ The peasantry was therefore simultaneously both the object of struggle and an essential ally; the two aspects*/dominance and leadership, involving force and consent, respectively*/that for Gramsci were to characterize hegemony are thus present.”

     Civil Society:

     This is the society that operates on a consensus model. Here is a further analysis of it - actually explained fairly well, although with the usual murky handwavium (That’s when you fudge the details, blithely waving your hands and saying, “Well, this will all be explained in detail later.”).

     It does help if you think of this as neighborhoods/communities, where emphasis is placed on ‘getting along’. I’ll discuss the seamy underside of the Consensus Model later - and how it is being put into practice in schools and community organizations.

     Structure/Superstructure Complex:

     Marx wrote about the Superstructure, what we would call the entertwined aspects of properties, communities, businesses, and political framework that form Western Capitalism. That physical and legal structure, along with the culture that supported it, form the Superstructure.

     The State:

     The part of the structure that uses coercion to get their way. This is bad, if they are Pre-Revolutionary. This is good if they are Post-Revolutionary.

     Intellectuals:

     These are the people, properly trained to reflect the “right” ideology, who will, with the proletariat, rule over this New Society.

     That’s the major part of the background of Gramscian Thinking. It’s foundational to all Leftist thought - they can all parrot the right phrases, echo the right concepts, based on this. I leave you with one last quote, from Marxist.org:

     According to Gramsci, hegemony (“predominance by consent”) is a condition in which a fundamental class exercises a political, intellectual, and moral role of leadership within a hegemonic system cemented by a common world-view or “organic ideology.” The exercise of this role on the ethico-political as well as on the economic plane involves the execution of a process of intellectual and moral reform through which there is a “transformation” of the previous ideological terrain and a “redefinition” of hegemonic structures and institutions into a new form. This transformation and redefinition is achieved through a rearticulation of ideological elements into a new world-view which then serves as the unifying principle for a new “collective will.” Indeed, it is this new world view, which unifies classes into a new hegemonic bloc, which constitutes the new organic ideology of the new hegemonic class and system. Yet it is not a world-view imposed, as a class ideology (in the reductionist sense,) by the new hegemonic class upon the subaltern group. Moreover, in the transformation of the ideological terrain there is no complete replacement of the previously dominant world view. Rather, the “new” world view is “created” or “moulded” by the aspiring hegemonic class and its consensual subalterns out of the existing ideological elements held by the latter in their discourses.

     Translation: We are GOING TO indoctrinate your children, and they WILL view the world through our distorted lenses.

     This is by no means a complete examination of Gramsci. I am posting it merely to get the initial document out there, and - through revisions - improve and refine it. There will be a Part 2, although that may have to wait another couple of weeks.

Turning the Tables on the Left

They're gearing up their organizing efforts. They are quite proud of their work, putting links to various organizing manuals/documents on their website. I've downloaded some of the more pertinent docs/pdfs, and plan to use them:

• To show how the 'organic street protests' are nothing like what they are said to be, but a deliberate, programmed effort to destroy the administration and put themselves back in power.
• To learn more about Leftist tactics and strategies - you have to Know Your Enemy, as a famous military leader once said. Patton would agree:
• "What he said during a battle in North Africa may be legend, but it typifies the man. Patton’s troops and tanks were engaged in a successful counterattack of German forces under General Erwin Rommel. Patton is reported to have shouted in the thick of the battle, “I read your book, Rommel! I read your book!” And that he did. In Rommel’s book Infantry Attacks, the famed “Desert Fox” carefully detailed his military strategy. And Patton, having read it and knowing what to expect, planned his moves accordingly."

Savonarola and His Offspring

Girolamo Savonarola was a Dominican friar during the Renaissance. He preached against church corruption, the Medicis, and secular art, among other things. His commission of secular books and art to flames became known as the "Bonfire of the Vanities".

Eventually, he ended where many reformers who take on powerful forces end - in death. He was excommunicated and hung, along with several of his friars. The purification movement petered out.

Periodically, similar manias flare up again. They are generally focused on purification of a society of worldly influences, sins, and corruption. They aim to bring about changes that will help the poor. The leaders take on those who they judge to be despots, and work to encourage the people to revolt against their rule.

There have been many manias since:

• The Salem Witch Trials - used quasi-legal means to attack those in power, who were accused of working with the Devil
• The French Revolution - different from the American Revolution, which aimed to establish independence from their colonial rulers, but a true frenzied tearing down of all "corrupt" elements in that society. All of the royal family and most of the nobility were accused of crimes against the people. A rumor could spark the mania to flare up again, and entangle yet another person or family in accusations, which would end in confiscation of property and eventual death by guillotine.
• The Civil War - I contend that the post-Transcendentalists who lead the Abolition movement were motivated largely by their desire to "purify" America of sin. On the other side, the frenzy was based in Charleston, SC, where the most fervent and rabid secessionists had their base. On both sides, largely a war that pitted those that wanted a country free from slavery (sin), and those that wanted a country free of unconstitutional modifications (sin). [NOTE: both the Carolinas gave a disproportionate number of their citizens to the War for Independence - their children and grandchildren would have grown up hearing stories of how they had fought against tyranny (sin)]

The 60's were yet another example of mania that was based around the idea that America could be purified of its sins. The Weathermen and other radical groups just took this a mini-step further.

Since the Clinton Era, we've seen a permanent cadre of grant-subsidized fanatics who will stop at nothing to purify the USA, and rid it of perceived racism and sexism. To that end, they have initiated a war on individual freedom to start a business, to vote freely, to worship freely, to speak freely, to own a gun, to make decisions for their minor children, to publish anything that is contrary to Progressive Thought - in short, to act as free citizens in a society that they have some control over.

Who are the People Behind the Censorship of Non-Leftist Organizations?

The WWP, for one.

That's the Workers World Party - and, if that sounds vaguely Old-Style Communist, well - BINGO! They are.

Here is one of them: Heather Cottin - a retired professor at La Guardia Community College. To see what her students thought of her, go here. Some liked her, others thought her terrible - but, virtually all of them agreed that she was VERY opinionated. Her Linkedin page - see how bland it was? No mention of her membership in the leadership of the local WWP, support of terrorists and NK.

Here are some of the WWP posing in that Great Wonderful Peoples' Paradise, North Korea!

What the guy in the middle (Larry Holmes) had to say about his trip:

A high point for me was walking on the Pueblo [a captured U.S. spy ship]. You saw all the confessions of the spies.

The purpose of our trip was simple — it was an important occasion for the DPRK and an opportune time to reaffirm our unwavering solidarity with them. We were not the only ones from the U.S. There was a delegation from the Socialist Workers Party. Progressive attorneys Ramsey Clark and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard were there, as was the ANSWER Coalition.

This was my first time in the DPRK. They make a big impression. That military parade on July 27th, wow. And we thousands of guests weren’t the only ones from outside looking at it. There probably was a satellite up above from the Pentagon looking down at it. And the message from the Koreans was: Don’t mess with us. We want to be able to develop in peace. We want a peace treaty. We want unity. But if you think you’re going to push us around, it’s not going to go down that way.

The level of society, the cultural level, what they put into making sure that everyone is healthy, that everybody is fed, that the children have schools, that every generation is taken care of, whether in Pyongyang or outside the city, is just incredible.

BTW, here's a link to Larry's information on KeyWiki - he's a BUSY boy!

What's my purpose in posting all of this information? I want people to know what nut-jobs are behind this push to silence opposition. The amazing thing, to me, is the willingness of these people to put their aims, motivations, and - frankly - twisted viewpoints right out there.

So, I'm going to be taking advantage of it. Get more background on WWP here.