It's quite amazing, I had a similar experience when playing Cyber Nations. There you created a "nation" not geographically, but on a page with stats for industry, tech, land, etc. Every day you could collect taxes once, and spend it on growing the economy and the military. You had to join an alliance for protection, or other players would attack you to steal from you. There were many thousands of players.
The NPO, the New Pacific Order, became the center of a group of alliances who held down independent alliances, preventing them from growing too large. They invented excuses for attacking, so that it all seemed to be within the accepted rules for war. Their go-to excuse was that a nation had "spied" on them by having a member in their forums. They didn't have to prove this, they just said it and then the lemmings repeated it. They would also accuse other nations of racism as a reason for attacking.
There were players who were seriously fanatic about the NPO, believing everything the leaders said was right, every accusation against other nations was true. They loved being on the winning side and laugh at those who had their nations destroyed.
There was a personal understanding between many of the prominent leaders in the NPO circle. One of them said he had a "Jewfro." Others were also Jewish. Totally accidental and not relevant, I'm sure.
How do you fight an establishment like this, which always monitors opponents? Only by slowly building up, playing along, waiting for the establishment to grow lax, and then striking in a popular uprising. This is what happened.
The NPO had a rift with a main ally, the ODN. A group of independent alliances, who had slowly created bonds between themselves, attacked the NPO and the ODN and one or two other alliances refused to come to their aid immediately.
This encouraged others to rise up and attack the NPO circle. When the ODN finally joined to defend the NPO, it was too late. Practically all of Cyber Nations was attacking. People finally realized that if they didn't strike now, without waiting for the usual processes, they would be forever held down.
The game still goes on today, but it is long past its heyday: The original struggle was the one above, and it was a valuable lesson.
It reminds me of, for example, the uprising in Romania. The pastor Laszlo Tokes had stayed within the system - revolutions are rarely led by people who didn't play along at first. (Look at the U.S. Revolution, the clubs in the French revolution, the parties in Russia and Germany who first took part in parliamental elections, the Chinese communists who first worked with the Kuomintang.) When Tokes was fired, he was to be thrown out of his home. In earlier times this would have passed by unnoticed. But the time was right for Tokes to gather those loyal to him, who held a mass protest by his home. This spread across Romania.
To fight a vigilant establishment you need several factors, aside from luck: Popular leaders who play along with the system and gather followers thereby, times that allow for a massive change, a cause to rally around that doesn't first sound like an all-out revolution.
It's a slow, bitter process, and many who try it will be arrested or impoverished, until some succeed.
Not participating at all in politics and society's other important parts, however, means you will fail. The lemmings don't have the courage to follow you. They have their eyes forever fixed on society's stage.
"I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movement exerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is neither morally nor mentally equal to such attacks; at a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down and, just to have peace again, they sacrifice the hated individual.
"Since the Social Democrats best know the value of force from their own experience, they most violently attack those in whose nature they detect any of this substance which is so rare. Conversely, they praise every weakling on the opposing side, sometimes cautiously, sometimes loudly, depending on the real or supposed quality of his intelligence.
"They know how to create the illusion that this is the only way of preserving the peace, and at the same time, stealthily but steadily, they conquer one position after another, sometimes by silent blackmail, sometimes by actual theft, at moments when the general attention is directed toward other matters, and either does not want to be disturbed or considers the matter too small to raise a stir about, thus again irritating the vicious antagonist.
"This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty unless the opposing side learns to combat poison gas with poison gas.
"It is our duty to inform all weaklings that this is a question of to be or not to be.
"Terror at the place of employment, in the factory, in the meeting hall, and on the occasion of mass demonstrations will always be successful unless opposed by equal terror."
Well, well, Tell, you are cut from the same cloth as me; I love to write down wee ditties from the past and trot them out when I judge they will cause the greatest upset.
Here’s an oldie, but Goldie : “ words had to change their ordinary meaning to that which was given them so that fractional party caprice of the moment became the only standard”
Thucydides, 460-400 BC, ancient Greek historian and general.
This appears to be an old phenomenon . Maybe we aren’t so different than the people who came before us.
Here’s a chestnut from the Canadian Marshall McLuhan: “ World War III will be a guerrilla information war with no division between civilian and military participation”. 1964. This has become apparent for all to see.
People believe in what benefits them; We really are just overclocked chimps.
Great article. Will the Trump era be an interregnum or a change in direction that will end the Marxist movement?
Here is the truly bad news. It is much much worse than most people care to believe: your own family has been infiltrated by the left. You don’t believe me go speak to your children. Have them read this article. Be prepared to be disowned.
Are you going to take the chance and broach the subject with your offspring? Dare you. My advice is don’t.
Spain and Chile had their heroic moments when a quasi-monarchical figure arose from the military and vanquished what seemed to be an unstoppable leftist leviathan. Then came internal peace. Then came prosperity. The aging uncrowned monarch acceded to a return to a republic. Then less than a generation after each’s demise the leftist rot resurrected itself.
If a monarchical revival is going to succeed it seems it must assume not just the substance of monarchical rule but also the forms and set rules so that a true Restoration must be achieved. Julius Caesar pretending to be a constitutional dictator did not succeed. It took an imperial Augustus to create the Peace of Augustus.
"...radical progressives cannot help but act the way they do whenever they have the power and the opportunity to do so. When put into places where they can wield power, they will invariably use it to try to subvert and destroy."
They have confused subversion and destruction with contribution and construction. They truly believe that simply by REMOVING this list of bad things, some kind of better world will just naturally grow up in its place. None of them will build the institutions of course-they have no idea how! Building shit is hard. Interrogating (others') privilege and cancelling folks and shutting down academic departments in order to change the language on a website is easy, and rewarding, and fun.
It's all play-acting. It's a symptom of people so spoiled and detached that they literally believe that things like power grids and legal systems and cultural norms will just ALWAYS be there, and it's merely up to them to make them all better (through criticism and whining mostly).
It would almost be worth it for the system to collapse in order that I could encounter some of these people in the ruins of our civilization and ask them how it was going... but, of course, that's a fantasy. They would all quickly be killed in that scenario. I spent two years in Afghanistan, a long time ago. I like to imagine such people trying to implement their ideas in that country. They should try it.
The thing that I still find remarkable about this trend is how closely these ideas are linked to privilege. The ONLY people who take these concepts seriously are those who grew up (relatively) rich and safe. The fact that they don't notice this (or that status is the real thing they're after-not 'centering marginalized voices') is a testament to how disconnected these folks are. Their reality and their ideas are completely segregated from the lives and conversations and values of basically every person they ostensibly want to help.
Of course, when the choice must be made between cutting taxes (saving small nonwhite-woned businesses)... or keeping their nonprofit employer funded, or between dispensing with ruinously expensive student debt relief for high earners... or contributing to punishing inflation on the lower classes their choices are clear and consistent. Class over solidarity, self-interest over values... power over political norms.
I just wish they were more honest about it-even just with themselves.
It is a fascinating time to be alive. EVENTUALLY the herd will need to change course, or go off of a cliff, but it seems that their class prerogatives and psychological myopia is making the task extremely difficult.
Ones and twos are falling away, of course... but as long as the institutional incentives and status hierarchies stay in place so will the believers. This is a psychological phenomenon expressing itself in politics.
Glad you see the darkness behind the veil of PC-Progressivism.
Highly recommend the 2011 book: Willing Accomplices.
"The book provided careful and professional research and analysis that clearly answered these questions. The origin of hate-America-first was in the historical background of the Comintern covert influence operations designed to destroy Normal America. My work revealed the 6 bullet point belief system of PC-Progressives today, and traced the origin of those hate-filled beliefs to the covert influence genius, Willi Muenzenberg.
"And yet, here we are in 2025, 14 years later, and a new generation of Substack and podcasting Normal Americans continue to ponder and pontificate on the origins of the hatred for Normal America.
"The big difference between 2011 and 2025 is that PC-Progism lashed up with neoconservatism, and launched the new American imperialism—spreading the PC-Prog hatred of whites, heterosexuals, and capitalism across the globe, in the guise of Our Democracy. At the same time, the PC-Prog belief system subsumed American culture, gained control of the transmission belts of American culture, and blossomed, just like its totalitarian progenitor, into a system of control and punishment, manifesting as Cancel Culture, debanking, worship of George Floyd, imprisoning white cops for doing their job, censorship (in the guise of anti-dis/mis/mal-information)."
This is an interesting phrase: "a globohomogayplex communist dictatorship of the proletrannieat".
It's struck me time and time again how intimately tied up radical leftism and politics-as-religion are with sexual deviance. I'm still trying to parse the relationship... Some of it is an alliance of convenience, and a psychological lever ("you don't want to be mean to gay people!"), but there are deeper psychological aspects and, I suspect, spiritual, at play.
It's quite amazing, I had a similar experience when playing Cyber Nations. There you created a "nation" not geographically, but on a page with stats for industry, tech, land, etc. Every day you could collect taxes once, and spend it on growing the economy and the military. You had to join an alliance for protection, or other players would attack you to steal from you. There were many thousands of players.
The NPO, the New Pacific Order, became the center of a group of alliances who held down independent alliances, preventing them from growing too large. They invented excuses for attacking, so that it all seemed to be within the accepted rules for war. Their go-to excuse was that a nation had "spied" on them by having a member in their forums. They didn't have to prove this, they just said it and then the lemmings repeated it. They would also accuse other nations of racism as a reason for attacking.
There were players who were seriously fanatic about the NPO, believing everything the leaders said was right, every accusation against other nations was true. They loved being on the winning side and laugh at those who had their nations destroyed.
There was a personal understanding between many of the prominent leaders in the NPO circle. One of them said he had a "Jewfro." Others were also Jewish. Totally accidental and not relevant, I'm sure.
How do you fight an establishment like this, which always monitors opponents? Only by slowly building up, playing along, waiting for the establishment to grow lax, and then striking in a popular uprising. This is what happened.
The NPO had a rift with a main ally, the ODN. A group of independent alliances, who had slowly created bonds between themselves, attacked the NPO and the ODN and one or two other alliances refused to come to their aid immediately.
This encouraged others to rise up and attack the NPO circle. When the ODN finally joined to defend the NPO, it was too late. Practically all of Cyber Nations was attacking. People finally realized that if they didn't strike now, without waiting for the usual processes, they would be forever held down.
The game still goes on today, but it is long past its heyday: The original struggle was the one above, and it was a valuable lesson.
It reminds me of, for example, the uprising in Romania. The pastor Laszlo Tokes had stayed within the system - revolutions are rarely led by people who didn't play along at first. (Look at the U.S. Revolution, the clubs in the French revolution, the parties in Russia and Germany who first took part in parliamental elections, the Chinese communists who first worked with the Kuomintang.) When Tokes was fired, he was to be thrown out of his home. In earlier times this would have passed by unnoticed. But the time was right for Tokes to gather those loyal to him, who held a mass protest by his home. This spread across Romania.
To fight a vigilant establishment you need several factors, aside from luck: Popular leaders who play along with the system and gather followers thereby, times that allow for a massive change, a cause to rally around that doesn't first sound like an all-out revolution.
It's a slow, bitter process, and many who try it will be arrested or impoverished, until some succeed.
Not participating at all in politics and society's other important parts, however, means you will fail. The lemmings don't have the courage to follow you. They have their eyes forever fixed on society's stage.
Nothing has changed from earlier decades:
"I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movement exerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is neither morally nor mentally equal to such attacks; at a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down and, just to have peace again, they sacrifice the hated individual.
"Since the Social Democrats best know the value of force from their own experience, they most violently attack those in whose nature they detect any of this substance which is so rare. Conversely, they praise every weakling on the opposing side, sometimes cautiously, sometimes loudly, depending on the real or supposed quality of his intelligence.
"They know how to create the illusion that this is the only way of preserving the peace, and at the same time, stealthily but steadily, they conquer one position after another, sometimes by silent blackmail, sometimes by actual theft, at moments when the general attention is directed toward other matters, and either does not want to be disturbed or considers the matter too small to raise a stir about, thus again irritating the vicious antagonist.
"This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty unless the opposing side learns to combat poison gas with poison gas.
"It is our duty to inform all weaklings that this is a question of to be or not to be.
"Terror at the place of employment, in the factory, in the meeting hall, and on the occasion of mass demonstrations will always be successful unless opposed by equal terror."
--German party leader, 1925
Well, well, Tell, you are cut from the same cloth as me; I love to write down wee ditties from the past and trot them out when I judge they will cause the greatest upset.
Here’s an oldie, but Goldie : “ words had to change their ordinary meaning to that which was given them so that fractional party caprice of the moment became the only standard”
Thucydides, 460-400 BC, ancient Greek historian and general.
This appears to be an old phenomenon . Maybe we aren’t so different than the people who came before us.
Here’s a chestnut from the Canadian Marshall McLuhan: “ World War III will be a guerrilla information war with no division between civilian and military participation”. 1964. This has become apparent for all to see.
People believe in what benefits them; We really are just overclocked chimps.
Great article. Will the Trump era be an interregnum or a change in direction that will end the Marxist movement?
Here is the truly bad news. It is much much worse than most people care to believe: your own family has been infiltrated by the left. You don’t believe me go speak to your children. Have them read this article. Be prepared to be disowned.
Are you going to take the chance and broach the subject with your offspring? Dare you. My advice is don’t.
homeschool or die
Spain and Chile had their heroic moments when a quasi-monarchical figure arose from the military and vanquished what seemed to be an unstoppable leftist leviathan. Then came internal peace. Then came prosperity. The aging uncrowned monarch acceded to a return to a republic. Then less than a generation after each’s demise the leftist rot resurrected itself.
If a monarchical revival is going to succeed it seems it must assume not just the substance of monarchical rule but also the forms and set rules so that a true Restoration must be achieved. Julius Caesar pretending to be a constitutional dictator did not succeed. It took an imperial Augustus to create the Peace of Augustus.
Most of them are under 6 ft tall
"...radical progressives cannot help but act the way they do whenever they have the power and the opportunity to do so. When put into places where they can wield power, they will invariably use it to try to subvert and destroy."
They have confused subversion and destruction with contribution and construction. They truly believe that simply by REMOVING this list of bad things, some kind of better world will just naturally grow up in its place. None of them will build the institutions of course-they have no idea how! Building shit is hard. Interrogating (others') privilege and cancelling folks and shutting down academic departments in order to change the language on a website is easy, and rewarding, and fun.
It's all play-acting. It's a symptom of people so spoiled and detached that they literally believe that things like power grids and legal systems and cultural norms will just ALWAYS be there, and it's merely up to them to make them all better (through criticism and whining mostly).
It would almost be worth it for the system to collapse in order that I could encounter some of these people in the ruins of our civilization and ask them how it was going... but, of course, that's a fantasy. They would all quickly be killed in that scenario. I spent two years in Afghanistan, a long time ago. I like to imagine such people trying to implement their ideas in that country. They should try it.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/pretend-revolutionaries
The thing that I still find remarkable about this trend is how closely these ideas are linked to privilege. The ONLY people who take these concepts seriously are those who grew up (relatively) rich and safe. The fact that they don't notice this (or that status is the real thing they're after-not 'centering marginalized voices') is a testament to how disconnected these folks are. Their reality and their ideas are completely segregated from the lives and conversations and values of basically every person they ostensibly want to help.
Of course, when the choice must be made between cutting taxes (saving small nonwhite-woned businesses)... or keeping their nonprofit employer funded, or between dispensing with ruinously expensive student debt relief for high earners... or contributing to punishing inflation on the lower classes their choices are clear and consistent. Class over solidarity, self-interest over values... power over political norms.
I just wish they were more honest about it-even just with themselves.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/oppressors
It is a fascinating time to be alive. EVENTUALLY the herd will need to change course, or go off of a cliff, but it seems that their class prerogatives and psychological myopia is making the task extremely difficult.
Ones and twos are falling away, of course... but as long as the institutional incentives and status hierarchies stay in place so will the believers. This is a psychological phenomenon expressing itself in politics.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/unfalsifiable-belief
Demons
Glad you see the darkness behind the veil of PC-Progressivism.
Highly recommend the 2011 book: Willing Accomplices.
"The book provided careful and professional research and analysis that clearly answered these questions. The origin of hate-America-first was in the historical background of the Comintern covert influence operations designed to destroy Normal America. My work revealed the 6 bullet point belief system of PC-Progressives today, and traced the origin of those hate-filled beliefs to the covert influence genius, Willi Muenzenberg.
"And yet, here we are in 2025, 14 years later, and a new generation of Substack and podcasting Normal Americans continue to ponder and pontificate on the origins of the hatred for Normal America.
"The big difference between 2011 and 2025 is that PC-Progism lashed up with neoconservatism, and launched the new American imperialism—spreading the PC-Prog hatred of whites, heterosexuals, and capitalism across the globe, in the guise of Our Democracy. At the same time, the PC-Prog belief system subsumed American culture, gained control of the transmission belts of American culture, and blossomed, just like its totalitarian progenitor, into a system of control and punishment, manifesting as Cancel Culture, debanking, worship of George Floyd, imprisoning white cops for doing their job, censorship (in the guise of anti-dis/mis/mal-information)."
https://kentclizbe.substack.com/p/origins-of-todays-normal-hating-lying?utm_source=publication-search
Impressive. Great article. I subscribed upon reading it.
This is an interesting phrase: "a globohomogayplex communist dictatorship of the proletrannieat".
It's struck me time and time again how intimately tied up radical leftism and politics-as-religion are with sexual deviance. I'm still trying to parse the relationship... Some of it is an alliance of convenience, and a psychological lever ("you don't want to be mean to gay people!"), but there are deeper psychological aspects and, I suspect, spiritual, at play.