“Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” — Henry Ford, My Life and Work (1922)
What follows is a bullet-point summary of the ideas presented in a well-known ideological treatise. Before I reveal the name of the text, I want to examine the points made in light of American Progressive thinking, such as it is, to see if we can generate comparisons in historical contexts.
First, the bullet points:
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Racial essentialism — people reduced to biology.
Collective guilt — entire groups blamed for social ills.
Zero-sum struggle — one group must dominate or be destroyed.
Authoritarian salvation — only a unified movement can redeem the nation.
Mythic history — past grievance + future destiny = moral license.
Let’s begin with the first point, racial essentialism. In modern Progressive thought, if we can use the term unironically, is best summarized by the 1619 Project. This ideology says that American history must be rewritten to place African slaves at the center of the continent’s history based solely on racial biology, rather than any substantial contribution to society and culture. Individuals accrue merit based entirely on skin color and no other characteristics.
Collective guilt is clearly seen in the anti-white/anti-male environment expanding across the US and Europe. Again, these biological groups are castigated based only on congenital characteristics — male sex, peach or olive skin color. There is no accounting for merit or contribution by the individual, there is just a blanket assessment of guilt attached to superficial biological features.
The zero-sum struggle is common to all socialist/fascist/Marxist ideologies. The group espousing this outlook see themselves as the only possible members of the new leadership class, much like the pigs in Animal Farm. This applies to any economic, biological, or “gender”-based radicalized philosophy one can name.
Authoritarian salvation is also clearly evident in perhaps all of the ideological movements today. All require strict vertical hierarchy, top-down activation, centralized financial control, and a specially-privileged leadership class. We see this in everything from the BLM to MAGA, spanning political and ethnic boundaries. Every group needs more specialized policing, legal infrastructure, and centralized power to achieve their goals and protect themselves from perceived foes.
Modern society is awash in mythic history. Whether it’s politics, religion, racial/ethnic origins, legal frameworks, or any other ideological classification, they all have a central mythology of “Special Ness,” as David Byrne put it in his film True Stories (1986). Regardless of whether one traces one’s origins to Zeus or George Washington (see US Capitol rotunda), all cohesive movements have a mythology at their cores.
Groups that identify with these theses are almost exclusively empowered by post-modernist thought. The concept of “might makes right” and “the ends justify the means,” primary tenets of Social Darwinism, says that morality belongs to the winner; there are no absolute or objective truths, morals, or ethics. Over the past century and a half, we have seen this mindset repeatedly arise in all parts of the world.
Most of the major movements of the 20th and 21st centuries have had a number of significant similarities, to wit:
Hated liberal laissez-faire capitalism.
Rejected free markets as socially corrosive.
Favoured strong state intervention.
Used moral language about injustice.
Mobilised mass movements against “elites”.
It’s hard to deny that all of these points describe the current and various movements across the US and Europe. Modern liberalism and progressivism are intertwined and inseparable at this juncture. The supremacy of the state, economic inequality, and the Special Ness of some class or another — commonly known today as “communities” — are the raison d’être of nearly all substantial socio-political movements in the headlines.
The first set of bullet points is a summary of the tenets presented by Adolf Hitler, in his seminal work Mein Kampf. The second set of bullet points are the overlap with Karl Marx’ Communist Manifesto. There are superficial differences in the outcomes of the ideologies, but little if none in the execution.
The bullet points are also the central rallying cries of pretty much every major political movement in the West. Left and right are meaningless differences without distinctions. Those who inhabit the privileged and antagonistic classes (communities) run the gamut of arbitrary dividing lines, but they all share identical goals and methods.
What we hear in the public discourse is “diversity” (only us, not you), “equity” (ownership without merit), and “inclusion” (literally to shut in, like a prisoner). What we don’t hear are “talent,” “excellence,” and “virtue”. Instead, words like “entitlement” — in its true meaning of earned ownership — have been relegated to the status of nearly profane.
We need to ask ourselves why it is that none of the “allowed” ideologies include self-reliance, independence, and autonomy. They are never uttered in polite company.
Perhaps the biggest problem in today’s world is that there are no real alternatives. We are spoon-fed ideologies that are essentially identical, differing only in saturation but not in hue. We have been fitted with blinders that prevent us from seeing blinders.
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Our cinematic offering on point for today is Metropolis (1927), Fritz Lang’s masterpiece of dystopian storytelling, complete with authoritarian rule, AI and robots. Most folks have likely heard of this film, but I’ll bet many have not actually watched it. Pair it with the animated Animal Farm (1954), the best rendering so far of the Orwell classic. Note that the CIA changed the ending to be pro-democracy propaganda, making the film itself part of our theme today.
Contact Bernard Grover: bernard (at) radiofarside (dot) com
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I missed the silver rush-too bad JPM and other Feral Reservists banksters short losses are going to bailouts big time! Anyone ready for the great reset-as planned
Dammit, man you did it again. Hapoy New Year!
I missed the silver rush-too bad JPM and other Feral Reservists banksters short losses are going to bailouts big time! Anyone ready for the great reset-as planned