Author: Andrew Austin

On April 7, Slate published this piece by Naomi Kanakia, “Wait Until You’re Older.” Kanakia, a trans activist, tells his audience, “I write books for trans teens and their parents. It’s becoming harder and harder to imagine a future for them that’s not riven with strife.” Perhaps not now that an entire industry is devoted to grooming children into falsely believing they’re not the gender they are and seeks to make them permanent medical patients (see Making Patients for the Medical-Industrial Complex; The Body as Primary Commodity: The Techno-Religious Cult of Transgenderism).

But you don’t have to imagine a past in which the lives of gender nonconforming children were not riven with strife. If they haven’t forgotten the world of only yesterday, they know that nobody from our generation (I was born in 1962) or the generations before ours, would remember one of every five of us identifying as LGBTQ. That’s not because they were hiding their identities from us. It’s because the queer contagion hadn’t yet swept up impressionable youth into the fad. There were other fads. What Kanakia and his ilk want is for us to forget this and to assume that what is novel is eternal.

“Last year, a staggering 22 states across the U.S. banned gender-affirming care for minors,” writes Kanakia. “The conservative politicians behind this wave of legislation didn’t care that it went against the near-unanimous medical consensus that parents and doctors ought to be able to decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether puberty blockers, hormones, or other interventions are what’s needed for a given teen to flourish and live their life authentically. These lawmakers felt the consensus was wrong, that the government should take medical transition entirely off the table, at least until the kids grow up and can make ’informed,’ adult decisions. And in their eyes, there was a bonus: Removing the option of affirming care would surely lower the temperature in afflicted homes; it might well preserve the parent/child relationship until the threat hopefully passed—trans teens could no longer blame parents for not “allowing” them to transition. Parents were now free to say ’There’s nothing I can do. You’ll simply have to wait until you’re older.’”

Articles like Kanakia’s function to cause anybody conditioned by the eternal present to forget the world as it was only a few years ago and feel as if the travails of the trans child has always been an issue, that children have always enjoyed access to “gender affirming care,” only to suffer the oppression of fascists who, suddenly and for arbitrary political and religious reasons, are passing laws forbidding it. The motive to restrict this to those who can consent to it couldn’t possibly be from the rise of GAC and growing awareness of its horrors (see Fear and Loathing in the Village of Chamounix: Monstrosity and the Deceits of Trans Joy; Thomas Szasz, Medical Freedom, and the Tyranny of Gender Ideology; Simulated Sexual Identities: Trans as Bad Copy). It must be because they’re bigots.

Kanakia would never consider whether suicide rates were through the roof back then. In fact, for the general population, after falling in the mid-90s for males and the mid-70s for females, suicide rates for both genders rose steadily during the period of the proliferation of gender clinics and gender ideology—as well as SEL programming and the proliferation of wellness centers in educational institutions. When the data are disaggregated, among youth aged 10-24 years, suicide surpasses homicide in 2008 and soars, while homicide remains relatively stable at less than one percent per 100,000 (and, as readers of Freedom and Reason know, is concentrated in black-majority inner city neighborhoods). As Business Insider reported in 2019, at that time, suicide among Gen Z is the second leading cause of death, and “a worse epidemic than anything millennials faced at that age.”

It is necessary to believe instead that those denied their authentic selves always preferred death to living as the gender they were born as—to believe that there were millions whose authentic selves were being denied. It is a lie.

George Orwell warned us about organized forgetting in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the story, the Ministry of Truth is a government institution responsible for historical revisionism and the dissemination of propaganda. The Ministry of Truth manipulates information to align with the ruling Party’s ideology. Its workers constantly rewrite history to support the Party’s agenda. The memory hole is a mechanism used by the Party to eliminate inconvenient information. Documents, records, and even people are thrown into incinerators, erasing any evidence of their existence. This ensured the Party’s control over the historical narrative and suppresses dissent by eliminating opposing viewpoints.

Likewise, Guy Debord, a French Marxist theorist and filmmaker, wrote about the concept of the “society of the spectacle” and the notion of the “eternal present.” In The Society of the Spectacle (1967), Debord explores the idea that modern society has become dominated by images and representations. The spectacle is a system of alienation and social control, where authentic human experiences are replaced by mediated representations. The eternal present refers to the way in which the spectacle perpetuates a state of constant distraction and superficiality, preventing individuals from engaging with the past or the future.

We are close but not yet submerged in Orwell’s world, and while Debord spectacular society feels ubiquitous, the truth is still available—if you seek and speak it; and the truth is that there is no historical record of centuries of families torn apart because states prevented the administration of puberty blockers, opposite sex hormones, and surgeries to minors. The “need” for health care and compelling everybody to accept gender ideology is recent invention, manufactured by the medical-industrial complex and the crackpots of sexology and queer theory.

To believe articles like Kanakia’s have any validity is to pretend as if we haven’t been alive for decades to know that this is novel phenomenon—and for those who know a bit more to know that this is a social contagion, only this one invented and sustained by power and profit. We were the freaks in high school. We were the clique who would have known before any body about the boys and girls who thought they were the other gender but were oppressed by parents and government. Our generation and the generation before us protested a lot of things, but we never protested sexed reality because there was nothing to protest. Quite the contrary. We were busy trying to get into each other’s pants.

Imagine Christian nationalists didn’t just exist but were aggressively demanding that you affirm their doctrines and practices. Imagining being told that you had to obey the rules of their ideology. Imagine, moreover, that they had the state at their backs to make sure that you did. You would be disciplined and even terminated from employment for refusing to so do. Imagine a DEI program set up along the lines of Christian nationalist thinking. When you complain, they’d tell you that is merely a matter of being kind to Christian nationalists. What’s so hard about that? Respecting Christian nationalists takes nothing from you. What are you, a bigot?

I could have used Islam as my example. Imagine being punished at your work place for failing to obey sharia and its rules against blasphemy. I could have used Scientology, as well. Imagine being required to believe in the existence of thetans and to refrain from criticizing dianetics and the practice of auditing. There are a myriad of other ideologies that make useful examples, but I trust you get the point: A free society depends on individuals being able to believe what they will and others not being compelled to share in those beliefs. I cannot be free if I cannot choose my beliefs. The institutions of a free society must not compel belief any more than they forbid it. Censoring and compelling belief are the signs of a totalitarian society.

What many woke progressives don’t seem to understand, in addition to failing to understand why it’s wrong to compel others to obey the rules of their ideology (a thickness that results from their position in the structure of authority), is that they are, by conditioning people to accept the beliefs of others through the use of coercive tactics, making a whip for their own backs. Put another way, when—and I argue that it is a matter of when not if if this keeps up—another authoritarian ideology replaces the current one as the hegemonic system in American society, progressives are sure to squeal when their speech is censored and compelled.

This is what’s so frustrating about the very long moment of the present time. When right wing activists stand on public grounds or enter public buildings or speak at city council and school board meetings, they are condemned for their presence and speech and the police quickly mobilize to remove them from the premises. The media sparks and spreads panic about their presence and warns of the end of democracy if their presence is tolerated. Right wing voices aren’t allowed to demand election integrity; their actions are portrayed as efforts to undermine free elections. There are many other examples. Whatever the subject, the right wing activist cannot convey his point on his own terms because he doesn’t control the media frame. Progressives do. He is a priori bad and wrong and therefore his speech illegitimate.

When left wing activists do all the same things that the right activist does, indeed, much worse things, they are celebrated as standing up for the democratic values of a free society. Their violent protests are described “mostly peaceful.” Their occupation of public spaces and buildings is portrayed as an exercise of free speech, not as an insurrection. The double standard signals the character of hegemonic power. Progressives have captured our institutions—the academy, the culture, the government, the mass media, the university. People ask how we can know this. The conditions confirm it. Because they are the hegemonic power, progressives are able to frame their politics as normality and cast those who dissent as a dangerous mob.

We don’t need to flip all that by putting the right wing parallel in power. We need to instead push progressivism out of our institutions and establish the principle that our institutions are for everybody and should govern themselves in the neutral fashion that a free and open society demands.

* * *

In a recent conversation, I was accused of articulating heterodox ideas. But my ideas are heterodox only in relation to the orthodoxy of the university, captured by progressive ideology. In the light of the population at large, the same ideas become orthodox. It may be heterodox in the academy to deny that men can be women, but, if we take everybody’s beliefs into account, that assertion is exposed as campus orthodoxy. Most people don’t believe men can be women. Part of the reason they don’t is because they intuitively know that can’t be true. In the absence of a corrupting ideology, their experience with the actual world tells them that. Anybody who had spent any time on a farm knows this is true. The other part of this is that they look at the crackpot ideas of the left and call bullshit because their own bullshit beliefs inoculate them against other bullshit beliefs. We might mock this, but not all bullshit is of the same quality.

People in the academy, many of whom came straight out of high school to pursue their undergraduate college and advanced degrees, live in a bubble where they come to believe that what are bullshit ideas constitute the orthodoxy. This happens to people when they exist in a cloistered environment. This is especially true in the humanities and social sciences. It probably didn’t escape readers that, in the natural and physical sciences, the crackpot “theories” of CRT and queer theory are much less pronounced. Some of these ideas aren’t even tolerated. It’s in the humanities, where imaginations run wild, and in the social sciences, disciplines that risk corruption by ideology because their finding are less sure than their hard science counterparts, that we see smart people believing stupid things.

The desire of trans activists to compel others to affirm their imagined identities is the same desire of progressive academics to demand ideological conformity in the humanities and the social sciences. They only way the junk beliefs can appear to have any truth value is if everyone suspends their disbelief and for whatever reason upholds the validity the doctrine. It’s the same logic of affirmation that trans identifying people depend on to ease their self-doubts.

I’m old school. I’m a scientific materialist. I don’t accept crackpot ideas. And I never will.

Part of the elite project known to observers as the managed decline of the American Republic—and of the West generally—is Islamization. Because of the Muslim’s faithful adherence to his irrational beliefs, Muslims are a desirable constituency for the New World Order based on the corporate state model (global neo-feudalism).

This is a long haul project. For example, France, in the 1970s, used Muslims and the prayer room as weapons to break industrial unions. I write in a November 2019 essay, Culture Matters: Western Exceptionalism and Socialist Possibility, “By the 1970s, for example, the government of France, under … president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, sought in Islam ‘a stabilizing force which would turn the faithful from deviance, delinquency or membership of unions or revolutionary parties,’ here quoting Paul Dijoud, minister for immigrant workers. ‘When a series of strikes hit car factories in the late 1970s,’ [Kenan] Malik writes [in Multiculturalism and its Discontents], ‘the government encouraged employers to build prayer rooms in an effort to wean immigrant workers, who formed a large proportion of the workforce, away from militant activity.’”

I conclude, “Keeping newcomers away from native-born workers is an effective strategy to disorganize the national proletariat. How effective? In the 1950s, roughly one-third of French workers belonged to a trade union. Today, less than one in ten,” noting that “[t]his mirrors the decline in organized labor in the United States during the same period.”

I have been writing about this problem for years, so I recommend you search my blog for more stories (one of my summer projects is to index my essays by topic to make it easier for visitors to search content). Others have written about this in much greater detail and for much longer than I have. I urge you to read work by Bruce Bauer, Chris Caldwell, and Douglas Murray, and, as always, speeches and talks on this subject by Christopher Hitchens. Sam Harris also has useful things to say about this matter.

In the United States, we’re now seeing students at Ivy League universities across the nation participating in Islamic prayer. Not a few of them are converting to the religion, which, as many of you know, is also a political ideology, indeed, a totalitarian one. Islam offers its followers a complete plan for life. We already have cities in the United States that are effectively Muslim enclaves governed by representatives of that religion. They’ve even sent their ideologues to Congress.

Because the West is free and open, there is always a risk that enemies of human reason and freedom will establish a fifth column in the countries they’re colonizing. Make no mistake about it, the West is being colonized by culture bearers who are bringing norms and values antithetical to the those of the enlightened West. It is vital for you to know what is at stake here. We need to speak frankly about this. You do not want you children and grandchildren to live under Islamic theocracy.

In the United States, our rights are unalienable and derive from the laws of nature or nature’s god (the creator of deism)—that means that these rights are inherent in each of us whether or not we are religious. In Islam, matters of law and governance are handed down from a particular construct of god known to the world as Allah. Allah’s rules were dictated to an ancient people by an illiterate merchant/warlord who claimed he received them from an angel in a cave. In Islam, there are no rights intrinsic to the individual—what you may or may not do is determined not by your will but by the will of Allah, determined by clerics who interpret the law, a system called sharia.

Islam literally means “submission” or “surrender.” The demand is that you submit to the authority of Allah’s earthly clerics, that you surrender your liberties and rights to their interpretation of the judgment of Allah. There is no more totalitarian ideology than Islam; it is the paradigm of clerical fascism. You should be deeply concerned about the proliferation of Muslims in your communities in light of the rejection of assimilation and the embrace of multiculturalism by the administrative state. Things have already gone badly off the rails in France, Germany, Sweden, and the UK.

There’s more to come. The war package that recently passed Congress comes with moneys designated for establishing centers in Gaza to prepare Muslims for relocation to the United States. We have to resist this. However, rather than restricting immigration from Islamic societies, which any sane and rational government would do, the Democrat Party is ramping up the importation of Muslims into your communities. This is in addition to the millions of illegal immigrants that have already crossed the border, with large numbers of Muslims among them.

We have a lot of work to do to repair the damage Democrats have wrought. That work begins at the ballot box this November, when we remove these traitors from office.

The time is late. Lawrence Fox knows what time it is. Read his tweet posted above, but for your convenience, here it is in an easily digestible form:

“The Mayor of London is a Muslim. The mayor of Birmingham is a Muslim. The Mayor of Leeds is Muslim. Mayor of Blackburn—Muslim. The mayor of Sheffield is a Muslim. The mayor of Oxford is a Muslim. The mayor of Luton is a Muslim. The mayor of Oldham is Muslim. The mayor of Rochdale is Muslim.

“All this was achieved by only 4 million Muslims out of 66 million people in England: Today there are over 3,000 mosques in England. There are over 130 sharia courts. There are more than 50 Sharia Councils. 78 percent of Muslim women do not work, receive state support + free accommodation. 63 percent of Muslims do not work, receive state support + free housing. State-supported Muslim families with an average of 6 to 8 children receive free accommodation. Now every school in the UK is required to teach lessons about Islam.

“Has anyone ever been given an opportunity to vote for this?”

The answer to Fox’s presumably rhetorical question is no, peoples of the West were never asked whether they wanted this. Muslims colonized the West over time, establishing themselves in our communities, and using the democratic machinery to rise to power—like Adolf Hitler did before abolishing democracy.

The West has to act now and decisively if our children are to inherit the Enlightenment. Otherwise, they will toil as slaves in a New Dark Ages where women will be bagged like garbage and homosexuals hanged from cranes and thrown from towers.

I have written quite a lot about matters of immigration, multiculturalism, and nationalism. Here are only a few of my contributions to understanding our situation: An Architect of Transnationalism: Horace Kallen and the Fetish for Diversity and Inclusion; Secularism, Nationalism, and Nativism; The Work of Bourgeois Hegemony in the Immigration Debate; Multiracialism Versus Multiculturalism.

Christopher Hitchens writes in his memoir Hitch 22, “[T]he very multiculturalism and multiethnicity that brought Salman to the West, and that also made us richer by Hanif Kureishi, Nadeem Aslam, Vikram Seth, Monica Ali, and many others, is now one of the disguises for a uniculturalism, based on moral relativism and moral blackmail (in addition to some more obvious blackmail of the less moral sort) whereby the Enlightenment has been redefined as ‘white’ and ‘oppressive,’ mass illegal immigration threatens to spoil everything for everybody, and the figure of the free-floating transnational migrant has been deposed by the contorted face of the psychopathically religious international nihilist, praying for the day when his messianic demands will coincide with possession of an apocalyptic weapon. (These people are not called nihilists for nothing.) Of all of this we were warned, and Salman was the messenger. Mutato nomine et de te fabula narrator: Change only the name and this story is about you.” 

Multiculturalism is not a well meaning practice of cultural tolerance. It’s a strategy to lower our defenses so the colonization of the West can proceed unabated. The Democratic Party is the party enabling the colonization (see The Mass Immigration Swindle; “It’s Not Going to Stop.” The Managed Decline of the American Republic; Democrats, Immigration, and Neoliberalism; The Democratic Party and the Doctrine of Multiculturalism; The Progressive Politics of Mass Immigration). If you love freedom, vote against those who betray your nation.

I know how I will be voting, but I’m not optimistic about the outcome either way, though. Christopher Hitchens warned us many years ago in the bluntest of language, as you can see below. That would have been the time to head off the coming crisis at the pass. But we didn’t heed his warning. So Lawrence Fox can write a terrifying tweet that feels more like a postmortem than a plan of action.

It’s ironic to see gender ideologues swimming at the bottom of the postmodernist morass at the same time appealing to ideological and industry captured experts and science, the ruse of peer review (i.e., gate keeping), etc.—along with their circle jerk professional associations—to justify the greatest medical scandal in world history, namely so-called “gender affirming care.” (See The Body as Primary Commodity: The Techno-Religious Cult of Transgenderism; Fear and Loathing in the Village of Chamounix: Monstrosity and the Deceits of Trans Joy; Thomas Szasz, Medical Freedom, and the Tyranny of Gender Ideology; Simulated Sexual Identities: Trans as Bad Copy.)

It’s ironic, as well, given that the only useful thing about postmodernism—to be sure, noting the problem of discursive formation as power projection is not original to the claptrap—is that it warns “folx” about taking as truth knowledge production by government institutions and business firms. (See Making Patients for the Medical-Industrial Complex; The Corporate Character of Scientism; Eugenics 2.0; COVID-19 and the Corporate State; Science Versus Scientism: How to Spot the Difference.)

It’s as if none on the self-declared left have read postmodernist philosopher Sandra Harding’s landmark 1992 essay “After the Neutrality Ideal: Science, Politics, and ‘Strong Objectivity’” (published in Social Research), where, after quoting historian Robert Proctor, who writes—

“It is certainly true that, in one important sense, the Nazis sought to politicize the sciences…. Yet in an important sense the Nazis might indeed be said to have ‘depoliticized’ science (and many other areas of culture). The Nazis depoliticized science by de- stroying the possibility of political debate and controversy. Authoritarian science based on the ‘Führer principle’ replaced what had been, in the Weimar period, a vigorous spirit of politicized debate in and around the sciences. The Nazis ‘depoliticized’ problems of vital human interest by reducing these to scientific or medical problems, conceived in the narrow, reductionist sense of these terms. The Nazis depoliticized questions of crime, poverty, and sexual or political deviance by casting them in surgical or otherwise medical (and seemingly apolitical) terms…. Politics pursued in the name of science or health provided a powerful weapon in the Nazi ideological arsenal.” 

—Harding adds: “The institutionalized, normalized politics of male supremacy, class exploitation, racism, and imperialism, while only occasionally initiated through the kind of violent politics practiced by the Nazis, similarly ‘depoliticize’ Western scientific institutions and practices, thereby shaping our images of the natural and social worlds and legitimating past and future exploitative public policies.” 

On the other side from postmodernism, Immanuel Wallerstein, in his 1997 American Journal of Sociology paper, “Social Science and the Quest for a Just Society,” mocked the early hopes of positivists who thought “they could be modern philosopher-kings,” the same ilk pushing the technocracy woke progressives adore so much (another irony in the light of their attempt at revolutionary posturing, in full and embarrassing display on today’s college campuses). In the light of history, Wallerstein tells us, their self-aggrandizement proved “totally vain” and they became the “handmaidens of governmental reformism” (not to mention corporate profit).

“When they did this openly, they called it ‘applied social science,’” Wallerstein writes. “But for the most part they did this abashedly, asserting that their role was merely to do the research, and that it was up to others—the political persons—to draw from this research the conclusions that seemed to derive from this research. In short, the neutrality of the scholar became the fig leaf of their shame in having eaten the apple of knowledge.” 

Indeed. Neutrality is ideology. Objectivity is what we strive for in science. Tragically, in the epoch of the corporate state, with its administrative rule and technocratic control, the enterprise has become thoroughly corrupted. Of the sciences that feign objectivity, medical science is the worst. Even the captured FDA has to recall thousands of pharmaceuticals, devices, and procedures annually to make the appearance of legitimacy.

Sometimes I think that if the views of flat earthers generated mega-profits, or there was no therapeutic competitor to Scientology, the corporatists would find a way to shoehorn those species of hokum into the academic literature, too.

If you change the environment and make it harder for capitalists to (super)exploit foreign labor, native-born working class families will enjoy a rising standard of living because their wages will increase. Supply and demand. But there’s more to it than that.

As I explained back in the last decade, restricting immigration in the 1920s allowed for the integration of foreigners into a unified working class that strengthened worker solidarity and led to the rise of unions. The restricted labor pool, combined with union power raised, the standards of living for American families by raising wages and benefits. It moreover improved working conditions.

It was the opening of the borders in the mid-1960s that played a major role in decoupling wages and benefits from productivity, which was associated with a relative decline in real wages, the destruction of private sector unions, and the rise in public employee unions representing functionaries of the permanent administrative class.

This was a purposeful strategy by the corporate state: to disorganize the civil society of native born workers and drive down their wages by introducing foreign workers into the national economy, as well as offshoring work to the third world, further decimating the American working class. Globalization is the problem. Immigration is integral to globalization.

The only way to restore the economic golden years of the mid-20th century is to sharply restrict immigration and re-shore manufacturing. We have to rebuild the private sector union to recouple productivity with wages and compensation, and the only way to do that is rebuild a unified working class.

We can’t do what we need to do with millions of culture bearers pouring into our country who do not share the values that created the broad and well compensated working class of previous generations. We need time to assimilate all these foreigners. And this time it will be even more difficult; the last time they were mostly Europeans who had experienced the Enlightenment and had a grasp of the classical liberal values and principles of democratic-republicanism. Today’s newcomers in contrast are anti-West. We need closed borders and mass deportations to put the country back on the path to peace and prosperity.

Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, a large and sparsely populated frontier state with frontier values, is being criticized for confessing to having once killed a dog. The dog, Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, was a female with an aggressive personality. The behavior that prompted Noem to euthanize the dog was an attack the dog made on her neighbor’s chickens. When Noem went to restrain the dog, the dog bit her. Noem determined that the dog was untrainable. So, she put the animal down.

For this action, Noem is being branded a “murderer.” One cannot of course murder a dog; but resort to that word, besides resulting from ignorance of the law, also conveys the outrage felt by those with more cosmopolitan sensibilities, as well as the partisan nature of the present moment. We would be in denial if we claimed that a lot of reaction was driven by politics.

To the extent that the same people who condemn Noem for her action would condemn a Democrat who did this (and I assure you that there are Democrats who have), part of the explanation for the reaction is the cultural divide between town and country. In rural areas, the relationship of people to dogs can be complex. While many rural residents care for their dogs on an emotional level and consider them valuable companion and working animals, there are circumstances that prompt euthanizing them. A bullet is one of the most humane way to accomplish that end.

It’s not unheard of for rural residents to resort to such measures when they perceive a dog as a threat to their livelihood, property, or safety. Factors such as inadequate fencing, the roaming habits of dogs, or the presence of packs of feral dogs can exacerbate conflicts between dogs and livestock in rural areas. There are dogs that are diseased, injured, or old and a choice is made to humanely end their suffering. In many communities, dogs may be used for specific functions such as hunting or herding livestock. In cases where a dog fails to perform its intended function or exhibits behavior detrimental to its role, individuals may euthanize the dog. Cricket ticked several of these boxes.

Noem’s critics should consider the circumstances. They should also remind themselves that, while euthanasia rates for dogs in shelters have been declining due to increased efforts to promote adoption, spaying and neutering, and responsible pet ownership, hundreds of thousands of dogs are euthanized in shelters each year due to factors like behavior problems, health issues, lack of resources to care for them, and overcrowding. That doesn’t make what Noem did right (I am not saying what she did was wrong, either), but it highlights the complex and culturally variable relationship between humans and dogs, as well raises questions about the selective outrage.

The relationship between humans and nonhuman animals generally is complex. Most of us feed on the flesh of animals. According to the CDC, approximately 95 percent of American report consuming meat, poultry, or fish. This requires killing them. Most Americans would never eat dogs, however, putting on our anthropology hats, in cultures around the world, particularly in parts of Africa, Asia, and some regions of South America, we recognize that dogs are consumed as food. Immigrants from these parts of the world continue the practice here. The practice is rooted in various cultural, economic, historical, and social factors. It is the unique relationship between people and dogs cultivated in urban and suburban American communities that contributes the shock value of this case—which is not to say that many rural folks disagree with what Noem did.

My point in making these observations is to note that the outrage on social media is driven in part by class and regional-based ethnocentrisms—ironic coming from people who on the daily push the ethic of cultural pluralism—as well as political opposition to the populist character of rugged individualism. The point is punctuated by Michael Daly’s Daily Beast op-ed “R.I.P. Cricket. Now It’s Time to Talk About Kristi Noem’s Goat.”

I’m not denying that some of those who criticize Noem are not genuinely horrified by the story, especially given that the corporate media puts the inadequacies of the dog for its intended purpose as the central motive guiding her actions. But the story is more complex that the media is telling it, and it might behoove people in their oral understanding to understand Noem’s actions in the context of culture and consider whether their own reaction is motivated by political bias.

“Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.” — Frederick Engels, Highgate Cemetery, London. March 17, 1883

A recent controversy has introduced me to a wider audience (see The Snitchy Dolls Return). Many of those who have just found me have noted that I identify as a Marxist, an identification wherein they see not an inconsiderable degree of irony given the nature of the controversy. Since many of them are on the political right, this identification may be off-putting; they found me in the context of a debate over my right to freely express my opinion about gender ideology, and thus may have initially thought of me as an ally.

I do not desire that any of them find this identification off-putting, so it seems to me useful to explain what I mean when I say that I identify as a Marxist. It’s not because I advocate for the socialist transformation of society (see my essays Marxist but not Socialist and Why I am not a Socialist). Indeed, I am a libertarian, a classical liberal who is critical of the political economy of corporate statism. It is rather because the work of Karl Marx, his materialist conception of history, is, or at least should be, the paradigm of the discipline to which I have devoted my professional life, namely sociology. To be sure, Marx was driven to his critique of capitalism in part because of his commitments to a socialist politics; at the same time, he believed these commitments required the development of science of history and of society.

When I identify as a Marxist, I mean it in the same way as when I identify as a Darwinist. In the annals of intellectual history, Marx and Darwin left an indelible mark on their respective fields: Marx in social history; Darwin in natural history. While their names often evoke distinct realms of inquiry, a closer examination reveals a common project: to explain why things change over time—and why the take the forms they do.

To be sure, both Marx and Darwin are viewed with disdain by conservative observers, but Marx receives the most vitriol for his communist politics. Both were atheists, but the challenge Darwin poses to the Christian faith is moderated by the justification his naturalism provides for the competitive nature of capitalist relations (indeed, Darwin’s theory was inspired by Adam Smith’s invisible hand metaphor coined in The Wealth of Nations). However, putting politics aside (to the extent this is possible), it is worth considering Marx in the same way we consider Darwin, as having made a major contribution to our understanding of a domain of reality. Both were scientific materialists, which remains the superior way to understand the world around us.

At the heart of Marx’s analysis is his materialist conception of history, a framework that theorizes the interplay between economic forces, historical development, and social relations. Just as Darwin meticulously observed the natural world to unveil the mechanisms of evolution, Marx meticulously dissected the fabric of society to reveal the dynamics of class struggle and historical change. His seminal work, Capital, akin to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, published less that a decade earlier, revolutionized our understanding of the social order by revealing the underlying laws governing capitalist production, the theory of surplus value, as Engels described it: “the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production, and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark.”

Much like Darwin’s natural history challenged prevailing notions of divine creation, of intelligent design, Marx’s critique of capitalism tore away the ideological veneer of bourgeois society, of which religion was a part, exposing its exploitative nature and inherent contradictions that make it both a powerhouse of material development and a source of perpetual crises. Just as Darwin demonstrated the interconnectedness of all living organisms through the principle of natural selection, Marx elucidated the ever changing arrangements of social classes and political power through the dialectic of revolutionary transformation. Both thinkers transcended the confines of their respective disciplines, offering comprehensive frameworks that continue to shape scholarly discourse and political debates to this day.

To identify as a Marxist, then, is to embrace a scientific approach to understanding the complexities of social phenomena, just as identifying as a Darwinist entails a commitment to the scientific exploration of the natural world. It is not an adherence to a set of dogmatic beliefs, but rather a recognition of the critical role of scientific materialism in elucidating the historical dynamics of human civilization. Just as Darwinism serves as a guiding principle in biological research, Marxism serves as a guiding principle in social analysis, providing invaluable insights into the historical processes and structural inequalities that shape our world. Both men faced vehement opposition from entrenched interests unwilling to relinquish their grip on power and privilege. Yet, their ideas have proved resilient, transcending ideological barriers and inspiring generations of scholars and activists to challenge the status quo and, in Marx’s case, strive for a more just society.

Marx saw Darwin’s theory as complementary to his own ideas about historical development, emphasizing the importance of material conditions and conflict in shaping human societies. Indeed, Darwin’s theory was the natural historical foundation for Marx’s base-superstructure model. Both Marx and Darwin approached their respective fields with a commitment to empirical evidence and a rejection of teleological explanations, seeking to uncover the underlying processes driving change and development—the laws of nature and of history. To embrace the legacies of both is to embrace a commitment to the relentless pursuit of knowledge in the service of understanding their respective domains.

Marx is often fingered as the cause of communist atrocities, but Marx did not lay out detailed plans for a communist society or advocate for the atrocities that marked man’s attempt to make such a society. Marx’s writings focused on analyzing the dynamics of capitalism and critiquing the social and economic structures that underpinned it. He envisioned communism as a society where class distinctions would be abolished, and the means of production would be collectively owned and managed by the workers, but he did not theorize such a condition, as such an order would need to first be established and defined through human labor. An opponent of utopia thinking, there is no blueprint for such a society in Marx’s work. (See Communism: The Real and the Theoretical, and Why Nomenclature Matters.)

It is therefore essential to distinguish between Marx’s ideas and the actions of individuals and regimes that claimed to be inspired by Marxism. While Marx’s theories provided the intellectual foundation for communist movements, including those governing societies that claimed to have at least reached the socialist stage of development, which were never communists by any definition Marx himself used, Marx himself did not advocate for the oppressive tactics or human rights abuses associated with those regimes. Critics often conflate Marx’s ideas with the actions of authoritarian regimes that claimed to be Marxist, such as the Soviet Union under Stalin and Maoist China. However, it’s crucial to recognize that these regime diverged significantly from Marx’s political goals and engaged in practices that Marx himself, a lover of liberty, would have condemned.

Had Marx the vision of future hindsight, he likely would have agreed with me about the socialist problematic. Famously, Marx is supposed to have said, “I am not a Marxist.” This was an expression of Marx’s frustration with the various interpretations and adaptations of his ideas by others, particularly some of his self-proclaimed followers. Marx lived during a time of intense intellectual and political ferment, and his ideas were often co-opted, distorted, or simplified by different political factions for their own purposes. Marx was critical of those who turned his ideas into dogma or rigid ideology, rather than engaging critically with the social context and material conditions of their own time. By disavowing the label, Marx signaled his reluctance to be associated with these simplistic or dogmatic interpretations of his work. So why do I identify as such? Again, for the same reason I identify as a Darwinist.

One last thing. I have been listening to Steve Bannon and his guests discussing the anti-Western agitators on American campuses and the larger context that drives the phenomenon. I will likely publish on this matter soon. Bannon’s analysis is sound in its facts save one: the motive behind the chaos. This is not Marxist. The frame is woke progressivism. It’s not a revolution from below. It’s a revolution from above. The anti-Western tendency among the American youth and their mentors in the universities they attend constitute a fifth column organized by the enemy of democratic republics, namely corporate statism. It is the globalists who are weakening the West to prepare its populations for incorporation into a new world order, a global neo-feudalist order. There is nothing Marxist about that.

“The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.”
—Sigmund Freud

In the Dave Huber article I shared in a recent blog post (The Snitchy Dolls Return), there is reference made to University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s social media policy. What counts as use of social media associated with the university, are “blogs, wikis, forums, videos and social networks that are hosted or sponsored by UW-Green Bay; personally-managed [but university-hosted], but includes content about UW-Green Bay’s programs, constituent groups (e.g. students, employees, alumni, donors, etc.), customers, partners or competitors; externally-hosted or sponsored, but includes content about UW-Green Bay’s programs, constituent groups, customers, partners or competitors.”

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (formerly Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE), currently flags UW-Green Bay for its questionable policies with respect to the protection of free thought and expression. I cannot tell if the yellow flag designation applies specifically to that institution’s social media policy, but it should—and maybe more than this. Perhaps red would be a better color.

My blog is externally-hosted and I do not speak for the university on my blog in any official capacity. I can’t think of any reason why I would do so. My views on Freedom and Reason are my own. While from time-to-time my blog includes content about happenings at the university, it does so obviously from the standpoint of an American citizen with all the rights and immunities that accrue to that privilege—rights and immunities that cannot be abrogated by policies and rules of a public institution. UW-Green Bay social media policy, however construed, cannot substitute the institution’s authority for the authority of the Constitution of the United States, which is the supreme law of the land.

In light of the incorporation doctrine established by the Supreme Court in the wake of the Civil War, federally recognized rights applied to the states include those enumerated in the First Amendment: liberty in religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition explicitly, and implicitly association. Suggestions that I may not comment on any given matter, or may comment on any matter except those that are publicly known occurring at my place of employment, are on their face a violation of my First Amendment rights to express and share opinions on social media or in any other media. I moreover have a right to defend myself against accusations and smears.

As for whether I can identify as an employee of that institution, that I am an employee at this institution is a matter of public record. If somebody asks me where I work, I am entirely within my rights to speak the same facts that others can concerning the matter. Moreover, if I identify my affiliation on my blog, I am well within my rights to do so. Professors across the United States identify their affiliations on social media. Indeed, the chair of my unit states his affiliation on his X (Twitter) feed and shares political opinions which, hailing from the standpoint of union politics, some no doubt find objectionable. It is only when somebody objects that this will become a problem? But it is no problem at all. Like me, my chair is a public figure and a US citizen with an inalienable right to state facts.

I did remove my university affiliation from my Twitter profile a while ago (not because of the current controversy), not because I was asked to do so, but because, frankly, it’s a liability. People assume—with good reason—that you’re a woke ideologue if you’re a humanities or social science professor (I am a sociologist, a discipline that blends social science with humanistic concern). I even went with only one of my two designated areas of specialization—criminology—because that one at least conveys nonpartisan intellectual heft.

Consider articles and essays I have published in academic journals. There are those who disagree with my conclusions concerning child sexual abuse, environmental matters, race relations, and many other things. My university affiliation is identified in those publications. Books, journals, and other academic presses are, like social media blogs, wikis, forums, and videos, protected by the Constitution’s recognition of my right to press my opinions. As a public institution, my employer cannot discipline or terminate me for those opinions because my affiliation with that institution is explicitly identified.

When I was hired and tenured at a public institution, I did not relinquish my civil, political, and human rights to make arguments and express opinions, nor could such a demand be made upon me, as these are inalienable rights. I direct you not only to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (1791), but to Articles 18 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), as well as articles of the same number and content in the International Convenient on Civil and Political Liberties (1966).

I will conclude with this. Sometimes the obvious isn’t so obvious. My blog Freedom and Reason was established in 2006, first on Blogger and now on WordPress, both externally-hosted sites. Except for brief downtimes for maintenance, and a lengthy hiatus (explained in my welcome message), it has always been public. The administration and faculty of my institution have known about my blog and its contents for nearly two decades. I announce my blog essays on my social media accounts, which many administrators and faculty follow.

I have never been told that my writings are inappropriate or objectionable or violate any policy or rule of the institution. Not that I need my institution’s permission to have and express opinions, but if I did, the public should know that I have enjoyed my institution’s tacit permission to do so since I have been employed by that institution going all the way back to 2000. If students have complaints that resonate with the illiberal tendency in our academic institutions, it’s not my problem; I have never acceded to the rules and values of DEI (DEI Has Got to Go). It is only a problem for those authorities and offices that have.

There is a correction that can be taken, however, the same action the administration and faculty took when rightwing forces tried to cancel me back in 2003-2004: publicly announcing that the university stands for free thought and expression and defends the principles of academic freedom. Viewpoint diversity is essential for the full realization of a liberal education. In an era when left authoritarian tendencies threaten the foundations of human freedom, it is more important today than it was two decades ago to reassert the values of the university in a free society.

For more of my writings about free thought and expression, see The State of Cognitive Liberty at Today’s Universities; Science Politics at the University of Wisconsin—Deliberate Ignorance About the State of Cognitive Liberty and Viewpoint Diversity on College Campuses; Cognitive Autonomy and Our Freedom from Institutionalized Reflex; Death of the Traditional Intellectual: The Progressive Corruption of US Colleges and Universities; Losing Control over the Narrative: The Rise of Social Media and the New Radical. For some of my writings on the left authoritarian threat to the institutions of a free society, see Woke Progressivism and the Party of God; The Peril of Left-Wing Identitarianism; Frantz Fanon and the Regressive Ethics of the Wretched: Rationalizing Envy and Resentment—and Violent Praxis.