freedom and reason

Have you seen this meme before? It’s making the rounds again.

I’m not going to correct everything that’s wrong with the associated lists, but there are a few big things that need correcting. For example, the depiction of the historical Jesus (and I will come to the problem of historicity in a moment) as “Middle-Eastern brown skinned,” as if this makes Jesus nonwhite. We’ve seen this before with the terrorism paint chip meme (see Everything Progressives Say About Mass Shootings is Wrong).

But MENA (Middle Eastern and North African), which includes many Jews, are white (See Jews are White. So Are Arabs; Almost Everybody in the Bible is White; Race, Ethnicity, Religion, and the Problem of Conceptual Conflation and Inflation). White people (Caucasians) have historically dwelled across North Africa and much of Eurasia for thousands of years. Progressives have in common with Nazis the desire to narrow the white race to a small exclusive group in Northern Europe, albeit the motivation of the respective projects lies in opposite directions.

In fact, there’s an attempt by Democrats to significantly revise the 2030 census and federal surveys, introducing a new checkbox for MENA. Advocates for MENA groups (i.e., Islamists) applaud the checkbox because MENA are white and they don’t want to be. Rashida Tlaib said to bureau director, Steven Dillingham, “So Director, are you aware that people like me who are Arab, Middle Eastern, North African have to indicate that they are white on the US Census?”

The Census Bureau says the addition of a MENA box (and a combined question about race and ethnicity) could decrease the number of people who identify as white for the national head count. How big a decrease? We know that more than three-and-a-half million people listed a MENA origin in the 2020 decennial census included those who first identified as white.

So, although Jesus is probably not a historical figure (in his 2014 On the Historicity of Jesus, Richard Carrier has it at best 3:1 against existing), it’s almost certain that if he were then he’d be a white man.

It’s important to point out that the picture on the right hand side of the meme is as much the product of the imagination as the picture on the left hand side. Both are inventions. But if the man on the right were real and attending a high school in the US South in the 1970s, while some of his peers might wonder about his ethnicity, they wouldn’t see him as nonwhite. Because he’s not. He’d be down at the rock quarry around a bonfire drinking PGA punch out of a red Solo Cup wisecracking with all the other white boys who look more like the picture on the left. They’d be leaning against their muscle cars passing the joint without any thought of DEI.

Here’s another important correction to make, this characterization of Jesus as a man seeking justice through restoration and so forth. Somebody must have missed the memo, but those who do not accept Jesus as lord and savior are destined to burn for eternity in a lake of fire. That doesn’t sound like liberation from oppression but it’s opposite.

The Jewish Gehenna, the common concept of Hell, is mentioned several times in Revelations. Some might object to that book—to be sure, it’s a bit mad. But Mark has Jesus saying this (9:43): “And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched.” Even those who call Jesus Lord are not guaranteed salvation (see Matthew 7); a man has to fulfill the will of Yahweh, which is to believe in Jesus as Lord. To put it in terms a woke progressive can relate to: affirm the delusion or be canceled.

Which brings me to… Nonviolent? Jesus was nonviolent? I wonder how the money changers in the temple felt about brown skinned Jesus meek and mild on that day he rampaged through the courts, overturning tables, referring to the scene as a “den of thieves”? They probably weren’t saying, “Damn, is that man ever nonviolent,” as they were being chased from the premises with a whip Jesus had fashioned from cords.

I understand the intent of the meme. It’s designed to stick it to the southern white conservative Christians progressives loathe with such undying passion. But I wonder if the meme-spreaders are like I am, struggling to imagine a southern white conservative Christian man looking at this meme in despair. Said no southern white conservative Christian ever to a fellow Christian of the rainbow sect: “Oh my, you really got me with this one. What will I ever do now that I know Jesus isn’t white?”

Why do you want to support populists? They are duping their supporters into believing what they say without understanding it.

And how can you be a big supporter of nationalists, and then claim to be not right wing.

— Bungle says (@JayDubskis) February 28, 2024

Populism is a political standpoint emphasizing community, participatory democracy, and individual liberty. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the populists were farmers, workers, and small entrepreneurs (craftsmen, etc.), who resisted the rise of corporate state power, the latter which emerged from the slavocracy represented by the Democratic Party. The populists were pro-labor, abolitionists, etc., represented by the Republicans, who saved the union from dissolution and protected freed slaves in the South.

In contrast to populism, progressivism was the political movement advancing the interests of corporate state power. Progressives embedded themselves in the administrative state and technocratic apparatus and governed, not by democracy, but by administrative rule and regulation. Progressivism was the philosophy and practice of the Democratic Party.

The same is true today. The populists are the working people who live in small cities and towns and in the countryside. They’re the vast red color that makes up most of the map of the United States. They support free speech, free conscience, free association, etc. There, liberal values and democratic-republic practices still prevail. 

The progressives are in the scattered blue parts, representing elite urban sensibilities, managing marginalized minority populations in the inner cities. These are the areas fraught by social disorganization and violent crime, governed by the social logic of the management of people.

When the British colonists rebelled against the United Kingdom, they were freeing themselves from monarchy and empire. They established in its place a secular nation-state based on individual liberty, unalienable rights, and democratic republican norms. 

Nationalism is the political philosophy of the nation-state, which emerges from the Enlightenment (France is another good example). Nationalism is what allows for the integral state representing the interests of the people and necessary for establishing a rule of law responsive to the people, which is the demand of populism. 

This is contrast to a corporate state (transnational in the current epoch) or a theocracy, in which people are governed by unaccountable private tyranny or religious clerics respectively. 

I am a nationalist because I’m a liberal and a democrat and understand the importance of the rule of law and personal sovereignty. This is also why I am a populist. They go together in this way.

The worldview of the X account posted above has been set on its head. The account claims that the populists are duping their supporters into believing what they say without understanding it, yet the user doesn’t even understand what populism and nationalism mean. This individual is not alone. Ignorance about is widespread because it’s the media’s job to invert perception of reality. It’s a hi-tech camera obscura. Tens of millions are falling for it. They live in a simulation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. The Declaration of Independence, IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to this. The present train of abuses and usurpations is indeed long, and despotism is approaching the threshold of popular tolerance. To be sure, it is preferable that we should work to set right our long established republic rather than overthrow it.

In deeper truth, this frame gets the matter backwards; it’s not those who would defend their country who desire to cast off its government (that would be a contradiction), but those who manufacture the illusion that they are not working to this end by dismantling the republic and installing themselves as rulers, to administer a world of high-tech estates managing the affairs of billions of serfs. The power elite understand who the enemy is: those who would resist such a development.

The corporate media is telling you that gun violence occurs mostly in red states. What they are not telling you is that gun violence in America occurs mostly in blue cities. And not everywhere in blue cities—in inner-city black-majority neighborhoods. These neighborhoods were build by progressive Democrats and the big corporate interests they represent. Progressive rule-makers manage the population in the inner cities of America. In what amounts to a custodial arrangements, the city government maintains an idle population and inferior public infrastructure, including schools. Those who run the custodial state continue the longstanding practice of racially-selective underprotection, maintaining the criminogenic conditions that endanger black likes and failing to devote attention to the quality of public safety required to protect them.

There is more government and media deception beyond the fact of obscuring the fact that most gun violence is perpetrated by black men. The propagandists also omit these facts: the weapon of choice is handguns, including in black neighborhoods, and the most violent cities in America already have the strictest gun laws in the nation. In 2020, the most recent year for which authorities have provided statistics, handguns were involved in 60 percent of gun murders and non-negligent manslaughters for which data is available. Rifles, on the other hand, were involved in only 3 percent of firearm murders.

Why are the government and media lying about this?

First, suggested earlier, they want to effectively disarm the population by targeting those weapons most effective in warfare—the AR15, AK47, etc. They know the civilian population can’t defend itself from state security forces armed with handguns and hunting rifles. Progressives snark at the possibility of armed resistance against the government in light of the latter’s awesome military power. Then why the push to disarm?

Those who have studied war know the threat a well-armed and organized army of irregulars represents to even the most powerful armies in the world. The government and the media know history very well (they have to in order to engineer the most effective propaganda). And they know that the people know that the nation is lurching towards totalitarianism in America, and that, in an instant, the demographic, economic, information, legal-judicial, and political war the government is waging against its people can turn kinetic.

Second, the government and media are lying about gun violence because they need to distract the public from its actual causes, because the actual causes undermine the narrative that white men are the true threat to democracy and public safety in America. False perception advances the gun control narrative. So we must at every turn debunk the narrative.

White people are three-quarters of the US population. They are responsible for a minority of murders in the United States. That’s in gross numbers. In terms of rates, whites are also underrepresented in gun violence. In fact, taking adult males below age 65, white men (around 34 percent of total US population) commit 12.8 times fewer homicides than black men (the latter comprising only around 4 percent of the population).

The government and media know this, so they divert the public attention away from the mass shootings occurring in inner-city black-majority neighborhoods towards the long-standing hegemonic narrative that white men are armed and dangerous—and racist. This narrative is design to to two things: (1) delegitimize the community and culture of white Americans—the majority of the population; (2) sow racial animosity in order to morally divide the proletariat and disorganize working class politics.

The democracy the elite talking about is not the democracy you’re thinking about; it’s the specter of totalitarianism to which the facts attest. See what you see. The administrative and national security states, the censorship-industrial complex, the propagandistic and technocratic apparatuses—are all indicators of the totalitarian future. So is gun grabbing.

Atheists and humanists are in a panic because conservatives, liberals, patriots, and populists on the whole grasp the foundational argument that the fundamental liberties and rights of men are natural in origin, referenced in the Declaration of Independence as the “Laws of Nature,” “their Creator,” and “Nature’s God,” and therefore not manmade.

In this view, which is objectively demonstrable (see Abraham Maslow), man, through reason and evidence, determines and recognizes the liberties and rights inherent in our species.

For example, women were not “given the right to vote.” That language obscures the principle on which that right was determined and recognized. Women, like men, have a natural right to participate in political society and social life on the principle that freedom requires that any decision made that affects women and men demands from society the recognition of their right to participate in the formation of that decision. A free society recognizes that right. An unfree society doesn’t.

The argument living and breathing in the establishment of the American Republic is reduced in the progressive worldview to “Christian nationalism.” Prepare to hear this term ad nauseam this election season.

At the same time, these same progressives seek comradeship with the paradigm of clerical fascism in our age, namely Islam, which has no capacity to consider or tolerate the separation of church and state intrinsic to the rational Christian worldview. Islam has no workable model of human rights.

Indeed, while the West circulated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Islamic world rejected it an instead produced the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, adopted in 1990 by the member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which attempts to reconcile the universality of human rights with Sharia. Predictably, it begins with “All human beings from one family whose members are united by their subordination to Allah….” That’s (a) from Article I. (b) is “All human beings are Allah’s subjects….”

Article 10: “Islam is the religion of true unspoiled nature. It is prohibited to exercise any form of pressure on man or to exploit his poverty or ignorance in order to force him to change his religion to another religion or to atheism.” Read that again if you need to. It means that you are prohibited from attempting to persuade Muslims to leave their religion or religion altogether.

Contradiction and double standard reflect the authoritarian and illiberal personality of progressive ideology. They mean to deny the natural law and put liberties and rights under the control of the administrative apparatus and experts who run the technocracy.

You see this clearly in speech codes. Progressives force you to speak in way that manufactures a false consciousness about gender, race, and a myriad of other things. Speech codes are features of unfree societies. The value of inclusivity reflects the spirit of Article 10 of the Cairo Declaration. There is a deeply felt need to prohibit criticism of any ideology progressives favor: Islam, gender ideology, critical race theory, etc.

Understand that while governments cannot give you your rights—only recognize those rights determined by reason and facts—the government can suppress your rights. This is what lies behind the argument denying that our rights are natural and prior to the state. Reducing liberties and rights to the state misconceives the point of rights, which is what states are obliged to respect. You cannot be free if your freedom exists at the pleasure of the state—because this means that you exist at the pleasure of the state.

Progressivism projects the totalitarian desire of corporate statism, i.e., the material interests progressives represent. The most important thing you can do this election season is reject the illiberalism of the modern left and vote for the candidates that approximate democratic-republicanism. The most important thing we can do long term is push progressive ideology to the margins and restore the Enlightenment values of classical liberalism and secular humanism.

“The law of Allah is superior to your laws, you cannot oppose and contradict what Allah says,” says the man in the video clip below. He is the man who will interpret for you what Allah says.

"The law of Allah is superior to your laws, you cannot oppose and contradict what Allah says. We don't like your democracy”, says Muslim cultural enrichers in UK. What do you think? pic.twitter.com/2cbgVo2v4t

— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) February 23, 2024

The man is a Muslim in the United Kingdom. He is not the only Muslim who believes this. This is what Muslims believe as a group. This is what drives the Islamization of Western society. If we do not stop it now, and that means stop the bearers of this culture-ideology from entering our countries, deport those who are here illegally, and make religious life difficult for those who are not, then Islam will win and you will be a slave to Allah—a totalitarian imaginary.

If you are a woman or homosexual, then this situation should terrify you. If are not terrified, then ask yourself why. You may on account of your own experiences as a member of a marginalized group have an extra degree of empathy for what you perceive as a marginalized people, but your empathy is misplaced. Islam is the paradigm instantiation of clerical fascism in the world today. Muslims are not a marginalized people. They are today’s aggressive colonizers. They meant to destroy Western civilization and make its territories and peoples part of a world Islamic empire.

A lot of progressives and social democrats want this, too, even if they don’t see the end of their politics; their striving to be good allies to Muslims reflects an authoritarian desire that lies at the core of their emotional and personality systems (this is what draws them to their chosen political ideology). They are useful idiots for the sharia supremacist project. Our struggle is therefore not only with the aggressive colonizer, but with his collaborator, the progressive and social democrat of Western societies who have invited the barbarians into our cities.

The assumption behind the cleric’s preachments is that Allah is an a priori and actually-existing thing. But Allah is a social construction. He is a man-made thing. And not an original invention. Allah is a plagiarism of the god that appears in Jewish mythology. Thousands of years ago, the Jews created an entity called Yahweh and put him above everything and used him to mystify the fact that laws either come from nature or from man. Hallucinating encounters with the archangel Gabriel, Muhammad copied and modified Jewish mythology and practice and manufactured a history for a people who did not exist.

Of course, Yahweh is just as imaginary as Allah. There is no god. Angels, devils, and all the rest of it are all imaginary. Man created the supernatural realm. In many cases, he gave god the honey and kept for himself the blues. Man put god in the sky and forget he created god. Now man is ruled over by his own alienated creation, a creation that projects man’s self-loathing (hence prostration before the imaginary), assuages the angst of uncertainty (hence magical thinking), and sublimates his desire to dominate women and children and persecute those who make him feel insecure (hence the patriarchy and misogyny).

The only obstacle to becoming a free thinker is understanding the truth that man created god in this way and that he suffers these consequences because he fails to recognize and acknowledge this truth. As the sociologist W. I. Thomas famously told us, “If men define things as real, then they are real in their consequences.” God is defined into an existence whose only domain is mental, albeit institutions created in the name of god are very real. Belief in god and the desire to be ruled by him is the father form of false consciousness upon which many other forms depend. Overcoming this alienation is the paradigm for overcoming other forms of alienation.

As I have argued, not all religions are bad in the same way. My last essay on Freedom and Reason strived to make this clear with respect to the role rational Christianity played in the Enlightenment and the establishment of the liberal order—the secular republic (see Manufacturing Moral Panic over Christianity). It is neither statements of faith in a creator nor appeals providence that constitute the central problem with belief in a god. Nor is it finding community in religious exercise or conceding to transcendent entities and forces the troubles that escape human agency. It is faith in a god that actively interferes with the history men make and the rules they establish for all to live by. Such a faith in practice is a cover for the tyranny of man over man.

The opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, include these words: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.”Jefferson’s word choice reflects the deism inherent in his worldview. Deism is a philosophical position that asserts the existence of a creator or god but emphasizes reason and natural law rather than religious revelation. Deists believe in a distant, non-interventionist deity who established the laws of nature but then left the world to operate according to those laws. This deity is the personification of scientific understanding.

Man is a result of those natural laws. By invoking these concepts, Jefferson is emphasizing a higher, natural order that transcends human laws. Man must of course write the laws, but he must write them in accord with his understanding of the material world and human nature, not the preachments of an illiterate mad man in a cave near Mecca. Jefferson is arguing that certain rights are inherent to human beings by virtue of their existence, and these rights are not granted by governments or rulers—or gods. The appeal to natural rights is the work of a scientific mind that admits that individuals have fundamental rights that preexist and supersede the establishment of government.

The Declaration of Independence goes on to declare that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Jefferson’s use of the term “Creator” is intentionally broad; crucially, the term lies outside of any specific religious doctrine. It reflects the deistic belief in a divine being responsible for the creation of the universe and the rational mind of man who determines the logic and substance of laws based on objective understanding of the nature and needs of man. This philosophical foundation underpins the argument for the justification of the American colonies’ separation from British rule—but, more than that, it stands up a model republic for the world to emulate.

As readers should know by now, I’m a life-long atheist. My lack of faith in a god or other supernatural things is not a hinderance to my ability to see what I see. Indeed, I’m convinced that my lack of faith helps me to see the truth of matters more clearly. I don’t have a dog in the hunt, so to speak; my bullshit detector is unencumbered by belief in mythologies. At any rate, I strive to detect mythologies and expose them.

This orientation towards material and objective truths of the world allows me to see very clearly what’s at the play today, where the same people who promote gender ideology, multiculturalism, and sharia supremacy are telling the public that the greatest threat to the American Republic is the patriotic Christian family. You can already see the game plan for the crazy season. In addition to the disinformation about Russian influencing the 2024 election, the lawfare being waged the leading presidential candidate, Donald Trump, the continuing suppression of speech and oppression of patriots by the national security apparatus, a new front has open in the war against the people: the specter of Christian Nationalism.

Although I have disagreements with Christian doctrine, I am not so blinded by fear and loathing of that faith to see that its head and shoulders better than the various ideologies that challenge it. This is true in several ways, but I want to emphasize here the single greatest thing recommending Christianity over other ideologies, namely its secularism. Before I get to that, I want to remind readers that at the end of last year, on December 23, 2023, I blew up the claims of the Christian extremist in my essay Rise of the Domestic Clerical Fascist and the Specter of Christian Nationalism. I’m not walking back any of that argument. The problem I am addressing today is the reduction of Christianity to its extremist variants and the failure to see that it was in major part the Christian worldview that moved men to found a free republic to safeguard citizens from the imposition of religious doctrine.

Corporate state operatives, represented by progressive Democrats, are engineering a moral panic over Christianity by informing the public that the imposition of a Christian worldview on the country would end democracy with a theocracy where everybody is forced to observe conservative Christian doctrine. But the reality is that the Christian worldview was in operation when the country was founded and those men did not create a theocracy but a secular republic that protected religious liberty—including the right to be an atheist. As I noted in that December essay, “most of the Founders were not only Christian, but that they went along with the establishment of a secular republic. There is an important lesson in all of this (and it would behoove the gender ideologues to pay attention here): one can enjoy his faith while leaving others out of it.”

What would be the story had the American Republic been founded by men with a Muslim worldview? Islamic doctrine does not observe separation of church and state. Islamic preachments insist on a close connection between religious and political aspects of life—not for the believer, but for everybody under the law, or sharia. Sharia is integral to Islamic governance. In an Islamic state, the legal and political systems are expected to be guided by Islamic principles as derived from the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad. Islamic law covers a wide range of aspects of life, including criminal justice, familial relations, and personal morality. Islamic societies thus combine and integrate political with religious authority. Leadership is represented by a caliph and clerics responsible for the spiritual and temporal well-being of the community. It is a totalitarian system.

These arrangements should terrify free-minded persons. Yet progressives in North America and social democrats in Europe have opened the gates for Islamists and other foreign culture bearers to flood in, changing the culture and law across the trans-Atlantic space. The West is being Islamized. Those who object are smeared as “bigots,” “Islamophobes,” “racists,” and “xenophobes.” The same people behind mass immigration are warning that Christians aim to establish in reality the fictional dystopia of Canadian author Margaret Atwood depicted in The Handmaid’s Tale. Under Trump, the public is told, Christian Nationalists will stand up something like the Republic of Gilead, a theocratic society operating on a strict interpretation of Christian theology, used to justify a totalitarian regime. The Gilead Republic is highly stratified and women subjected to severe restrictions on their liberties and rights. That will be our world if Trump is re-elected.

But the world Atwood built in her imagination—and that Rob Reiner imagines in his documentary God and Country, which hit US theaters on February 16 to corporate state media acclaim—is not any Christian society that has existed in the West for several centuries, but rather reflects the realities of the Islamic state that exists across the planet where that system prevails—the very system progressives defend and normalize with banners declaring “Queers for Palestinian.” Indeed, it was developments in Christendom in the Age of Reason that produced the Enlightenment, developments intrinsic to Christian doctrine unfolding in maturation. To be sure, there are Christian extremists (perhaps one in ten Christians in America identifies as a theocrat), but Christianity is not an extremist political ideology in the way Islam is. Not even close.

Or the way gender ideology is. Last summer, Newsweek reported that, according to the survey by Redfield and Wilton Strategies, 44 percent of those aged 25-34 think “referring to someone by the wrong gender pronoun (he/him, she/her) should be a criminal offense.” Only 31 percent of that cohort disagreed with the statement. This view remains popular for those aged 35-44, as well, with whom 38 percent reporting that they believe misgendering should be illegal, whilst 35 percent disagree and 26 percent either don’t know or didn’t express an opinion. In other words, referring in the third person to a man who says or thinks he is a woman by male pronouns, a part of speech used to convey reality—that is, correctly gendering the man—is “misgendering,” an offense for which the perpetrator should be adjudicated a criminal and punished. The public is being told that those who produced the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—Christians—represent a threat to the nation, that those who observe fundamental truths rooted in verifiable natural historical facts should be branded criminals for merely recognizing and stating those facts.

Today, in Spain, in 2024, a woman has been sentenced to a six-month term of imprisonment (suspended in exchange for attending a “re-education” course) and to pay a fine of €3850 (around 4,000 USD) for denying that a trans woman is female. Such developments correlate with the rise of Islamophilia in Europe. All this is antithetical to human freedom and dignity.

Spain in 2024
A woman has been sentenced to a 6-month term of imprisonment (suspended in exchange for attending a "re-education" course) and to pay a fine of €3850 for denying that a transwoman is female.#ThisIsNotADrill https://t.co/k9Jug7W9y3

— Bev Jackson (@BevJacksonAuth) February 21, 2024

Who is the real threat to our liberty? The First Amendment to the United States Constitution ensures the right to freedom of speech, allowing individuals to express their thoughts and ideas without government interference. It safeguards the freedom of the press, enabling not just media organizations to report independently without censorship but everybody who publishes and disseminates their ideas to an interested public. The First Amendment protects the freedom of religion, allowing individuals to practice any religion or none at all, and prohibits the establishment of an official state religion. More broadly, religious liberty is rooted in freedom of conscience, which allows individuals to hold or reject any ideology. It guarantees the right of peaceful assembly, allowing people to gather for various purposes, including protests and public meetings. It grants the right to petition the government, enabling individuals to bring their concerns to the attention of the government. Embedded in these rights is the freedom of association.

Who is the real threat to our democracy? Those who uphold the principles articulated in the founding documents or those who oppose them? Those who uphold the principles are the men and women who defend the American Republic. Those are the patriots. Those who oppose those principles threaten the Republic. You’d have to be ignorant or ideological blind to not see the truth of the situation. It is not the populist-nationalists reclaiming classical liberal ethics and democratic republican governance—for the most part Christians—who threat the Republic. It’s those who have been working for generations to unravel the nation Christians and Deists founded. The real threat is progressivism, the ideas and practices that advance transnational corporate power and totalitarian state control. The threat is those who have thrown open the gates and invited the barbarians in explicitly to outnumber the citizens who would preserve the principles of individual freedom and limited government.

To be sure, we must criticize the Christian zealot. But we also must recognize that Christianity is not the enemy of America. Progressivism is.

Fucking around with ChatGPT just now, in a conversation about Michel Foucault, I elicited from the bot this wonderful sentence: “This Foucauldian exploration challenges conventional notions of authority, unraveling the intricate tapestry of power woven into the fabric of modernity.” I complimented the bot and asked it to write a creative essay on that theme using the three books we had been discussing. Impressive, overblown, and a bit cheesy. Everything after the logo is ChatGPT:

In the labyrinthine corridors of modernity, where the threads of power and knowledge entwine, Michel Foucault’s trilogy of works—Madness and Civilization, Discipline and Punish, and The Birth of the Clinic—beckons us to traverse the intricate tapestry of authority. As we navigate these intellectual landscapes, we unravel the paradoxes and complexities that define our relationship with power in its multifaceted manifestations.

Madness and Civilization serves as our initial portal, inviting us to contemplate the elusive contours of sanity and madness. Foucault’s exploration of the episteme of the Classical Age takes us on a journey through the asylums and the Great Confinement, where societal norms intertwine with the institutionalization of madness. Here, the threads of authority tighten, weaving a pattern that defines who is sane and who is cast into the shadows of social marginalization. The Panopticon, with its all-seeing eye, foretells the surveillance that will permeate the very fabric of modern existence.

Our passage through the corridors of the carceral archipelago unfolds in Discipline and Punish, where the tendrils of power extend into prisons, schools, and hospitals. The metaphorical network of disciplinary institutions becomes a crucible of societal norms, molding individuals into docile bodies subject to surveillance and normalization. The intricate dance of disciplinary power reveals the fragility of autonomy in the face of an omnipresent gaze. Bio-power and bio-politics emerge as the loom, intertwining the strands of life processes with the regulation of behavior, weaving a narrative of control.

Transitioning to The Birth of the Clinic, our exploration enters the realm of medical knowledge, where the medical gaze becomes the warp and weft of a canvas painted with the hues of observation and diagnosis. The clinic, a locus of power, shapes the perception of health and illness, categorizing bodies and subjecting them to medical scrutiny. The authoritative voices of clinicians, wielding the stethoscope as a scepter, pronounce judgments on the state of bodies, further embedding the connection between knowledge and power within the fabric of our existence.

As we step back to behold the panorama, we discern the emergence of a Foucauldian tapestry. It challenges conventional notions of authority, inviting us to question the legitimacy of the threads that bind us. The tapestry is not a singular narrative but a collage of intersecting stories—of the mad and the disciplined, the healthy and the diagnosed—woven into the very fabric of modernity. The warp of power intersects with the weft of knowledge, creating a dynamic tension that shapes our understanding of authority in the complex tapestry of existence.

In this Foucauldian exploration, the threads of power are not neatly woven but tangled, knotted, and overlapping. The tapestry, far from being static, is a living entity that breathes with the complexities of our society. Foucault’s trilogy becomes a guide through the shifting patterns, inviting us to unravel the threads and question the authority that dictates the design. As we navigate this intricate tapestry, we are compelled to confront the paradoxes, disruptions, and potential for liberation embedded within the very fabric of our modern existence.

 “I asked criminologists about immigration and crime in the US. Their answers may surprise you.” That’s the headline from CNN a couple of days ago. The reporter is Catherine Shoichet. The criminologists are Charis Kubrin and Graham Ousey who “literally wrote the book on immigration and crime.” The book is Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock, published by Springer.

Kubrin and Ousey report that “in general, on average, we do not find a connection between immigration and crime, as is so often claimed. The most common finding across all these different kinds of studies is that immigration to an area is either not associated with crime in that area, or is negatively associated with crime in that area. Meaning more immigration equals less crime. It’s rare to find studies that show crime following increases in immigration or with larger percentage of the population that are immigrants.”

I don’t know. Last year we saw the single largest increasing in the US population in history, almost all of it illegal immigration, and I find it impossible to ignore that major crime wave associated with that fact.

But we reads on, Hobbitses… Here, towards the end…

“The problem is—and this is definitely like a blue state, red state issue—for a lot of the blue states, we don’t even record immigration status. We don’t really care about that. If you’re committing a crime, we’re going to arrest you. We’re going to put you in jail. If it comes up that you’re not a citizen, and we’re kind of mad at you, then we’re going to maybe turn you over to ICE. But the reality is, a lot of times, we’ll just put you through our system and treat you like every other criminal.”

So you have to read all the way down to the end to learn that in blue states—and make that blue cities, too—immigrant status isn’t recorded in statics on crime reported to the police, arrests, and clearance. In other words: they don’t know.

Wouldn’t it have been nice (as in honest) had Shoichet began the article that way?

However, this is not because they couldn’t know. They don’t look later in the process where immigration status is usually determined.

And this right here: “[M]any people that will respond to those public opinion polls [I will show you the poll in a minute in a moment] and will recognize that immigrants, you know, have contributed greatly in beneficial ways to society. So it’s like, what are the driving forces that perpetuate, that you know that association (between immigration and crime)? And why does it have so much power?”

Immigrants are associated with half a trillion dollars annually transferred from the native working class to the capitalist class. So when they say immigrants “have contributed greatly in beneficial ways to society,” what they mean is that immigration greatly benefits the capitalist class and its functionaries. In addition to experiencing lower wages and greater job insecurity, native born workers also pay the taxes that support illegal immigrants. So it doesn’t benefit them at all. Add on top of this the reality that immigration is associated with serious crime and social disorder and all that might tell you why it has so much power.

Moreover, as I argued recently on Freedom and Reason (see Crime, Immigration, and the Economy), the crime problem in inner-city black-majority neighborhoods is largely the result of the effects of two historical events: the ghettoization of blacks during the Great Migration and the radical transformation of immigration laws that occurred under President Johnson. It hardly seems a coincidence that a year after recognizing the civil rights of black people, Democrats opened the border to mass immigration. Thus an indirect effect of mass immigration is higher crime among the demographic progressives idled.

This move also devastated labor unions, I hasten to add. It worked the same destruction in France. Mass immigration is a capitalist strategy to screw labor and disorganize their political organizations.

About that poll. Crime wasn’t the focus of Pew’s recent survey, which found that Americans overwhelmingly fault the government for how it’s handled the situation at the border, but when those surveyed were asked specifically about the impact of the migrant influx on crime, the pollsters found that while 85 percent of Republicans linked the migrant influx to crime, only 31 percent of Democrats did.

That the juxtaposition of that poll and the findings of two criminologists who “literally wrote the book on immigration and crime” is designed to make Republicans who believe there is an immigration and crime problem appear to be imagining things. I mean that is literally the point of the exercise.

CNN updates an article less than an hour ago mystifying the facts of the mass shooting that left one dead (Lisa Lopez-Galvan) and twenty more wounded at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory rally yesterday. “Three people were detained and an unspecified number of guns recovered as officers converged, said Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves. No charges had been announced by Wednesday night and no suspects had been named.”

If the shooter or shooters had been white the story’s frame would be entirely different. We can know this from the pattern induced from a universe of mass shooting stories. The lengthy article excludes crucial known details, chief among them, that the shooters were black. It’s not as if there are no images of the shooters, yet CNN omits them from the story.

Note the places CNN identifies where mass shootings occur—churches, grocery stores, outlet malls, and schools. These rare sites of mass shootings conjure images of the lone white shooter. The objective is to cast the threat of white men against the backdrop of normality, to make people feel unsafe in daily lives lives in familiar surroundings.

CNN reports that Kansas City “was at least the 48th mass shooting in the United States so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which like CNN counts those in which four or more are shot, not including a perpetrator.”

By that definition, and using the Gun Violence Archive, there were 656 mass shootings in 2023. What CNN won’t tell you is where most of those shootings occurred. Nor will they tell you the race of the majority of perpetrators. But I will. Most mass shootings occur in inner-city black-majority neighborhoods and are perpetrated by black men.

Most Americans don’t know this. When you tell them the truth most will disbelieve you. The mass media has done a number on the people’s heads, systematically hiding the truth from the public in order to create a false perception that white men are the chief perpetrators of violence in America.

One would reasonably expect that in a country that is three-quarters white, whites would be responsible for most murders. But, in fact, black men, who comprise only 6 percent of the US population, commit more than half of all murders in the country. In reality, white people are drastically underrepresented in the most violent crimes perpetrated in this nation.

That those who mind control you obscure these facts by framing and through omission gives the game away. That is, it tells you there is an agenda at work. And the character of the lie tells you the character of that agenda. This is why I am compelled to share these facts with you.

I have nothing against black Americans. In fact, more than half of all murder victims are black (Kansas City is hardly unique) and I condemn progressives for the urban policies that create the criminogenic environments that yield this result. It is for the sake of blacks and the agenda to depict white people as racist oppressors that I am moved to tell you the truth.

When people talk about communism, they’re typically referring to the Soviet Union or some country they believe operates on the Soviet model (whatever they think that is). The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), guided by the ideology Marxism-Leninism, did not consider its union to be communist, but rather a socialist state building towards communism, hence the name the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). In past writings and debates, I have referred to the Soviet Union as “state socialism,” and sometimes “siege socialism” (following Michael Parenti’s explanation of the deformations), but never “communism,” because, in fact, the Soviet Union was never communism. Communism is a stateless and classless social formation, and is the original human societal type, as I will explain in this essay.

In casual conversation, I find attempts to clarify the matter rather futile and always tedious, so I generally abandon any attempt to do so. Instead, I simply note that the Soviet Union did not represent Marx’s idea of communism, nor did it follow from the logic of his argument. I suspect that I haven’t changed any minds. I have acknowledged the notable achievements of the socialist project in my previous writings (see, e.g., The Soviet Union: State Capitalist or Siege Socialist?), and I stand by those, but I agree with those who criticize the Soviet Union for its totalitarianism and oppressive nature. Indeed, my stance on state socialist projects has hardened in recent years. In recent talks and discussions, I’ve expressed admiration for the positions taken by such figures like Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, as well as appreciated the nuanced understanding demonstrated by Richard Nixon concerning Red China. Nixon’s efforts to disrupt the Sino-Soviet alliance through diplomatic engagement with China were properly motivated.

However, the opening of China, while initially a diplomatic success, was manipulated by corporate power to integrate the People’s Republic (PRC) into the capitalist framework—and adopt authoritarian features of that regime. This strategic move tapped into the vast Chinese population as a source of cheap labor, facilitating the offshoring of production (the spread of the export processing zone or EPZ) and leading to significant profits at the expense of labor unions, often financed with the pensions of Western workers. This development plays a central role in the transnational project, championed by successive administrations from both major political parties, including the Bushes, the Clintons, Obama, and now Biden. Thus, Nixon’s approach, perhaps unwittingly, more likely manipulated, contributed to strengthening the totalitarian regime in China at the expense of the Chinese people.

Although the Soviet Union is no longer in existence, its historical legacy serves as a poignant warning to the world about the perils of totalitarianism as popularly understood. The rise and fall of the Soviet Union, marked by oppressive regimes and human rights abuses, provide a cautionary tale for societies contemplating similar paths. George Orwell’s writings, particularly Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, play a significant role in keeping the lessons from Soviet history alive in popular memory. Orwell’s works vividly depict the dangers of unchecked power and the erosion of individual freedoms, serving as a timeless reminder of the potential consequences when ideologies veer towards authoritarianism. In recognizing the enduring relevance of the Soviet experience and Orwell’s literary contributions, we are reminded to remain vigilant against threats to democracy and human rights in the pursuit of societal progress.

Indeed, despite the ongoing existence of communist China, the Soviet Union persists as the paradigm of communism in the collective global consciousness, a phenomenon that obscures the threat China represents to humanity and its direct oppression of eighteen percent of the global population; the historical imprint of the Soviet Union continues to overshadow the narrative of contemporary China’s communist regime; the iconic imagery and narratives associated with the Soviet era, from the Cold War tensions to the Iron Curtain, dominate discussions on communism, eclipsing awareness of China’s current political landscape. The enduring perception of the Soviet Union as the archetypal communist state reflects the historical significance of its role in shaping the geopolitical landscape and reinforces the tendency to view contemporary communist entities through the lens of the Soviet experience.

This essay’s objectives are to illuminate and rectify the, perhaps inadvertent (although I don’t really think it is), overshadowing of China’s current political landscape by the historical specter of the Soviet Union and to redirect reader’s focus toward a nuanced examination of terminology, clarifying the intricate relationship between the capitalist West and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). By doing so, I mean to untangle the threads that have relegated China to the shadows of the Soviet narrative. Assuming we accept the CCP’s self-designation as valid, the integration of the capitalist West with communist China poses a contradiction: why would the democratic capitalist countries of the West work so closely with an authoritarian communist nation? The answer is that China is neither a communist nor a socialist social formation. It’s not communist for the reason the Soviet Union wasn’t communist: neither countries was or has ever been stateless or classless. It’s not socialist because socialism is a social formation in which those who produce the social surplus own and control the means of production, either through direct democratic procedures (preferred) or through a bureaucracy that administers the nation’s affairs for the good of the nation.

Given these definitions, the current state of China aligns more closely with the designation totalitarian state monopoly capitalism (TSMC). Today, China officially describes its system as “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” the designation introduced by Deng Xiaoping, the late-twentieth century leader, to acknowledge the country’s departure from Marxist-Leninist principles. At an earlier state of its development, it would not have been inaccurate to categorize China as an instantiation of bureaucratic collectivism, a term developed by some Trotskyist thinkers to describe the socioeconomic system that emerged in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, i.e., a distinct social formation characterized by a dominant bureaucracy controlling the means of production (what I have commonly referred to as state socialism); however, China’s market reforms and promotion of private enterprise suggests state monopoly capitalism, with the CCP maintaining strict political control over the population (the totalitarian piece).

A problem arises when TSMC regimes are incorrectly designated as “communist states,” in that the misrepresentation obscures the reality that Western states in their late capitalist phase are themselves instantiations of state monopoly capitalism and are not generally thought of as communist or even socialist social formations, except of course by rank-and-file right-wing observers, as well as progressives attempting to cover up their corporate loyalties. Moreover, many Western states exhibit tendencies towards evolving into more authoritarian structures. These developments are ominous. Here’s why: The term TSMC was coined by Franz Neumann in Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933-1944, to describe fascist regimes, particularly the Nazi regime in Germany from 1933 to 1945. Neumann’s work highlights the corporatist nature of totalitarian capitalism. It’s crucial to clarify in debate and discussion that the economic and social policies implemented by the Nazi regime were not based on socialist principles advocating for worker ownership of the means of production. In practice, the Nazi regime pursued corporatist economic structure overlayed with authoritarian politics. Private property continued to exist, with the state exercising substantial control over the economy through central planning in collaboration with large corporations and financial institutions.

Corporatist political arrangements have become inherent in the organization of Western states. Some may object that, while corporatism is obvious in European countries, it is not so in the United States; however this objection ignores the role of administrative state in reproducing the corporate structure and the entrenched power of public employees unions, which protect a permanent political elite guided by progressive values and technocratic norms. Thus the mislabeling of social formations creates confusion in political discourse, as seen in the aforementioned tendency of conservatives to categorize progressive Democratic policies as “communist” or “socialist” when, in fact, they are are variations on the corporatist model and function to reproduce corporate power. To advance the populist-nationalist project, especially in raising consciousness about the problem of corporate personhood for those on the political right who are rightly suspicious and critical of concentration of power, in other words, in uniting individuals across the political spectrum, it is imperative to employ a common language with valid terms and draw well-founded conclusions.

Given the goal of this essay to provide conceptual clarity, I want to elaborate my previous points concerning the character of communism. When Karl Marx discusses communism, he refers to something distinct from the really-existing socialism of the Soviet Union (I do not deny that the Soviet Union at points represented some form of socialism, just that it wasn’t communist). Marx is referring to a theoretical construct, a future state of existence or possibility. The concrete instantiation of communism from which Marx abstracts the future state (the abstraction is never elaborated but described in terms of justice principles) is a past state of human existence, what Marx terms “primitive communism.” The American sociologist, Gerhard Lenski, following the nomenclature of anthropology, called this “gatherer-hunter” (actually “hunter-gatherer,” but this gives hunting too big a role in food production) in his work Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification. Lenski’s depoliticized categories are the more commonly used. I will use both terms interchangeably.

Primitive communism, or gatherer-hunter, is a classless and stateless social formation. The existence of primitive communist societies substantially confirms John Locke’s speculations concerning the state of nature, i.e., the original human society, presented in his Two Treatises of Government. Locke supposes a “state of equality” in the beginning, “wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection.” On the matter the natural right to the fruits of one’s labor, Locke asks his audience to “consider natural reason, which tells us, that men, being once born, have a right to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink, and such other things as nature affords for their subsistence.” “But this being supposed,” he observes, “it seems to some a very great difficulty, how any one should ever come to have a property in any thing.” It is here that he sets out his labor theory of value and insists that it could not have been God’s desire to leave the world undeveloped by the creative force of human agency. Let’s explore Locke’s point by briefly reviewing the cultural and social evolution of man.

Due to the low level of development in the technological means, there is no social surplus in gatherer-hunter arrangements. Primitive communism is a subsistence-level society where people work to fulfill their needs, their work distributed based on individual ability, with the results of that work distributed to tribal members as they have need. The tribe works together to secure a life-way and protect its members from the elements, including other tribes. There is a natural sexual division of labor rooted in the differences between men and women, but primitive communism was marked by democratic-egalitarian social arrangements, arrangements which, according to Frederich Engels, power-sharing between the genders and a concern for the family. It is from such arrangements that Marx developed the communist principle—“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”—that should mark the ethic of future communist society.

Initially, humans didn’t have much work to do because they were few in numbers and nature provided for them, thus the pace of technological development was in the beginning slow. We can identify a formula here for explaining the variability in the development and elaboration of the forces of production, i.e., organization and technology: the extent of technological development depends upon the nature of the environment conditions; the greater the technical problems to be solved, the more robust the technological development. As humans migrated from South and Central Africa to Northern Africa and then out into Eurasia, the technological means developed more rapidly, explaining why large-scale agrarian society and civilization appear first in those areas referred to as the Fertile Crescent (Nile River Valley, up through and across the Levant to Mesopotamia, then down into the Indus River Valley). The appearance of social class in history signifies a level of technological sophistication where society has the capacity to produce a social surplus, allowing some to live without working, sustained by value produced by others.

To maintain the unequal arrangement that result from this dynamic, the state, law, patriarchy, and religion come into existence. These form the superstructure upon which arises mass consciousness and ideational culture which function to reproduce normative structures surrounding the new property arrangements; successive generations are born and socialized into the worldview provided by the ideological apparatus and develop a collective consciousness—crucially, a false consciousness—that reproduces the legitimacy of class relations over time and space. As German sociologist Max Weber observed, this is how power becomes authority, namely through legitimization of domination of the whole of the population by a groups within it. Marx characterizes this situation as alienation, i.e., the estrangement of humans from their fellow humans, from their productive capacity, and from their role in world-building. Marx contends that alienation, rooted in exploitation and inequality, along with the distortions in consciousness it produces, is unjust. This is why he becomes a communist.

Modern communism, as envisioned by Marx, anticipates a future state where technological advancement allows everyone to live without working or with only minimal work required. In his day, and in our day, also, this condition doesn’t yet exist, but clearly the trend is in the direction of eliminating necessary labor in production—and the gap between work and its disappearance is disastrous for humanity. Under capitalism, technological development is in fact driven by the imperative to reduce the variable labor component in production, thus raising the organic composition of capital, which in turn displaces labor. There is not getting around this; for capitalism that is not growing is dying, and things don’t act right when they’re dying. History abounds with concrete instantiation of this, the madness of National Socialism being one of them. But the madness is becoming all to normal now.

Marx theorizes that a socialist revolution could accelerate development towards these ends with the goal of liberating people from necessary labor, thus freeing them to engage in creative endeavors of their own choosing. One might suppose that humanity can allow the process to unfold under capitalist relations, and Marx and Engels were impressed by capitalism’s ability to drive social and technological development (late in his life, Christopher Hitchens argues that capitalism had yet more work to do in denying not his Marxism but his socialist credentials); however waiting for technological possibility to establish the basis for a different society poses challenges for the reasons noted above, which I elaborate here. Today, corporation are aggressively replacing human labor with automated systems and AI. The drive to eliminate human labor from production processes represents a contradiction in the system, since capitalism relies on the circuit of workers earning wages, taking them to the market, realizing surplus value as profit. As technology advances, capitalism faces a realization crisis, requiring the state to fix the broken circuit (the money presses are humming). The result is capitalist crisis and ever greater corporate state control.

Central to corporate state control is the social logic known as neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is an economic and political ideology that announced itself in the mid-twentieth century, ostensibly advocating for free-market principles and emphasizing minimal government intervention in the economy; however, in practice, it is the transfer of functions and powers native to governments to corporations, institutions without democratic redress. Neoliberalism rationalizes this move by promoting the idea that markets are efficient allocators of resources, which promises increased economic efficiency. Global economic integration and free trade are encouraged, involving the removal of barriers to international trade. In other words, neoliberalism is the handmaiden to the transnationalization of the corporate state. Neoliberals advocate for privatization of public assets and services, including sectors such as education, healthcare, and infrastructure. It places a strong rhetorical emphasis on individual responsibility and self-reliance, arguing that individuals should take charge of their economic well-being through market participation and competition, even while it makes it more difficult for individuals to do any of this.

David Harvey’s critique of neoliberalism, presented in his A Brief History of Neoliberalism, in part involves an analysis of the geographical and spatial consequences of neoliberal policies. He shows how these policies reshape urban landscapes, exacerbating social and economic inequalities. He argues that the implementation of neoliberal principles often results in distinct spatial arrangements that favor certain groups over others. Rather than being a neutral economic framework, Harvey contends that neoliberalism inherently serves the interests of the capitalist class, concentrating wealth among a select few and reinforcing existing power dynamics. The rise of financialization emerges as a crucial element in Harvey’s analysis, highlighting the growing influence of financial markets and the prioritization of financial interests over productive economic activities. The financialization trend is one more indication of the late capitalism Freedom and Reason is devoted to analyzing.

Helping us understand the governance structure that emerges from this situation, Sheldon Wolin’s Democracy Inc.: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism offers a critical examination of contemporary political and economic structures, emphasizing the impact of neoliberalism on democratic governance. One of the central concerns in Wolin’s critique is the transformation of democracy into what he terms “inverted totalitarianism.” He argues that, under the influence of neoliberalism, traditional democratic ideals are subverted, leading to a system where corporate and economic interests wield significant influence over political institutions. Wolin contends that, to be sure, the formal trappings of democracy remain, but real political power is concentrated in the hands of a managerial elite and powerful corporate entities.

The intertwining of corporate and political power, according to Wolin, poses a threat to the core principles of democratic governance. The political strategy of “managed democracy,” plays a major role in this dynamic marked by the management and manipulation of the electoral process by powerful elites. He discusses how the formalities of elections may persist, but the substance of democracy is hollowed out as economic elites exercise disproportionate influence over political outcomes. Wolin’s analysis delves into the erosion of civic engagement and the decline of active citizen participation. Neoliberalism, he argues, contributes to a form of political apathy and disengagement as citizens feel increasingly marginalized in a system dominated by corporate and economic interests.

There is a story to tell about political developments in late capitalism that I cannot pursue here, but promise to in the near future. I will leave readers with the observation of Jürgen Habermas, a German sociologist and philosopher, who in his 1973 book Legitimation Crisis, explores the challenges faced by modern states in terms of maintaining legitimacy and securing the consent of their citizens amid these developments. The legitimation crisis arises when the traditional institutions and mechanisms that have historically provided legitimacy to a political system come under strain and begin to falter. Habermas argues that modern societies rely on three primary systems of legitimation: the economic system (market and economic institutions), the political system (government and legal institutions), and the sociocultural system (norms, values, and cultural institutions). When these systems experience dysfunction, such as corruption in politics, cultural alienation, and economic inequality, a legitimation crisis may result. Citizens begin to question the authority and legitimacy of the existing institutions, leading to a loss of trust in the system. This crisis can manifest as political protests, social unrest, or a general decline in confidence in the established order.

I hardly need to announce in this essay that we are presently in a legitimation crisis. It remains to be seen if the power elite can reestablish control as they did in the 1970s (which is the political story I promised a moment ago). Habermas suggests that, during a legitimation crisis, societies face the challenge of restructuring the three systems to regain legitimacy and restore the social contract between citizens and institutions. He emphasizes the need for open communication, democratic deliberation, and the active participation of citizens in addressing the underlying issues causing the crisis. Of course, this is not how the previous crisis was resolved. And given that the goal of transnationalism and the development of a world corporate state rooted in neofeudalism is to hinder the transition to a technologically-advanced communist society, where everyone benefits from machines working for us. The current trajectory points towards managing useless eaters on vast custodial estates resembling serfdom rather than emancipation.