They mostly don't though. He acts different in front of mainstream liberals, and like he's just a slightly more left wing version of them, in the same way Nick Fuentes tones down his anti-semitic and anti-black points substantially when he's a guest on a more mainstream show, because he knows it's not going to play well. But it's still pathetic how ignorant they are and how much work they do to try and convince themselves he's just a regular liberal but who wants a bit more redistribution instead of a vile authoritarian antisemite.
If there's one point I always try to make about modern Left politics it's that no one is in charge—no leaders or leadership, no reigning institutions, no thinkers or public intellectuals. What's in charge is THE DOCTRINE.
The Doctrine is installed in the seminaries we call universities (and now even primary and secondary schools) and everyone from bureaucrats to activists to professors, politicians and even CEOs (down to buffoonish streamers and influencers) are all first and foremost loyal to the Doctrine and know that their careers and social lives exist only at its permission and one wrong word against it might bring a social and career death penalty.
But the Doctrine is also crowd-sourced, rigid yet amorphous enough to change if the urgencies of the moment and its news cycle demand it, and is easily hijacked by various opportunists and entrepreneurs. Thus the herd keeps one leery eye on the Doctrine at all times, knows not to get too close or rouse it, and can only oppose it once a critical mass forms and there's safety in numbers. (Maybe the best example here is "Defund the Police": the idea/slogan has never been completely jettisoned or renounced, it was just moved from front row to back row and surrounded by a protective guard of media allies who work to either bury it or "contextualize" it. Thus the Doctrine remains intact, no one needed to risk their neck opposing it, it's just taken a vacation for now.)
Piker and his ilk of Jew-hating con artists controls the Doctrine now because their issue has become paramount (Free Palestine!) and so highly weaponized and moralized that for any liberal to critique this group, he/she might need a full suit of armor and maybe a trip to Witness Protection. The Free Palestine! cult has seized the current most powerful weapon in liberal discourse (the instrumentalization of Palestinian pain and misery into a moral and political credential) and one blasphemous word against them and the Doctrine (which now has a busy and flourishing Anti-Zionist wing) could mean: professional and social ostracism, mobs of angry kids outside your house scaring your family and spray-painting Baby Killer! on your garage, and maybe even not being able to go out to dinner without being mobbed like that sad clown Scott Weiner.
This is what happens both when Doctrine reigns and also can be fashioned into a weapon to destroy your enemies and make you a famous leader of a supposedly righteous radical cause—these tools will always be seized by the most unscrupulous people and will also strike terror into the hearts of the average person who has more to lose and prefers to go along to get along. Piker has simply captured Left morality and has the Dems by the balls for now.
They will not oppose him until they can do so while not directly challenging the Doctrine and when they can get a coordinated group of political and media allies to stand together.
This is such helpful analysis. And a primary tenet of THE DOCTRINE is the “hidden mind.” Which means that the ever-revolving cast of gurus—at all levels of influence—are those who proclaim they have full access to their mind and are imbued with a special gift for seeing into the hidden mind of others. And of course, those who deny the existence of the hidden mind, or deny the gurus special gift, or deny what the guru sees, are either uninitiated or malevolent.
What you describe seems both like the essential elements of ancient gnosticism yet also Marxist "critical consciousness" (as opposed to the "false consciousness" of everyone not in their cult).
The Gnostic is "dominated by a desperate nostalgia for a totally different world, which he has never seen, but from which he feels unjustly exiled." (I got these quotes somewhere I can't remember).
"Gnostic pathos is characterized by the radical refusal of the world in all its perverse and intolerable manifestations and the conviction that there is a solution for escaping from the present situation and regaining paradise lost. This conviction derives from the gnosis, which is a total complete knowledge (descriptive and normative) and contains a diagnosis-therapy of human alienation. Thanks to the gnosis, the gnostic knows the matrix of the (temporary) unhappiness of man—the catastrophe that overturned and degraded the world, filling it with horrors of all kinds—and the way to the Promised Land. In other words, those in possession of the gnosis know what humanity has been and has become because of the fall, as well as when and how redemption will take place."
I don't want to belabor the point but our Social Justice professoriate really are the priesthood of a modern post-Christian post-Marxist faith, with the Doctrine being their creation and sacred dogma brought down from the mountaintop. Their gnostic "critical consciousness" provides a key to open the world's mysteries, but in their case the revelation is almost always someone's Power is causing someone else's Oppression. And it's a very short step for something both this simplistic and moralistic to become a metaphysical belief system that supposedly explains everything.
Sometimes the form of a belief system is just as important as the content and I think that's the case here in how the Social Justice doctrine has become the official ideology of our global-corporate state and its managers and true believers: the Doctrine works as litmus test, moat, shibboleth, status marker, social signal and (maybe most importantly) provides a moral sheen to its holder and the divine right to rule that priesthoods have always used as a way to justify their power.
The Doctrine can be a cruel god and its priesthood shows no mercy to enemies, apostates and heretics, but it's now the price of admission to any position in our liberal classes, from teacher to writer to curator etc. In a way it's just a reversion to ancient forms of rule, where priest is as important as ruler and one supports the other and provides each other's legitimacy.
I just watched the Twin Flames documentary, and it is so relevant to this thread.
It also made me see how a lot of the “liberation academia” I experienced in grad school, was actually high control manipulation tactics. Like a cult or MLM, there was fear inducement and promises of relief of said fear through love-bombing, forced intimacy, over-confident guarantees of attaining the "highest level", jargon-control, and group-think.
And I think this cultishness arises from underlying loss of quality and rigor. Sadly, lots of mainstream academia is essentially just a pay-to-play MLM funded by the self-replenishing feed trough of education loans. So of course, it needs THE DOCTRINE to self-anoint and maintain captives, accepting, welcoming, replicating, and selling a crappy product under “willing” coercion.
And once it was in academia, it was only a matter of time before it’s everywhere. Because eventually, THE DOCTRINE MLM cult will slide into all the places where low-quality and low-rigor have become elevated.
Sometimes to laugh to keep from crying, I watch snippets of Spaceballs. Because underneath the priestly-ness of The Doctrine, it's almost comically vacuous, though nonetheless violent. Which means, do we have it backward? Does the vacuousness of it necessitate the violence and the Gnosticism?
Islamo-leftism knows no bounds. What's really curious is the Muslims stealthily coming in from the right as a religionist movement and using the useful idiots of the atheocratic left as their militia, so to speak. Of course, the Muslims will annihilate them if they are successful. Shaking my head on a daily basis.
GTFOOH with your "the left is more violent than the right" BS. Not only is it well documented (at least in the US) that terrorism related violence is sourced 78%+ from the right, 3/4 of Trumps "assassins" (huh) were documented Republicans/hard right/MAGA. Serious political violence is almost 100% from right wing sources. Attacks are almost 100% on Democrats, unless they are on Republican "RINOs" or Republicans that MAGA views as having betrayed Trump (such as MTG, who received almost no threats until she went against Trump--after which, she had to hire more security and death threats against her increased by more than 100%).
I agree Piker sounds like an asshole who desperately needs to be marginalized, but I assure you, he is. I, a lifelong Democrat who is thoroughly familiar with AOC. The crazy right wing radicals you mention in your article, like Fuentes, who you claim aren't being "platformed" are certainly being listened to pretty closely by this administration and being taken seriously, and I've certainly heard of ALL of them. After all, Miller is a serious fucking part of the cabinet. How about you try and figure out what the hell is wrong with you?
You’re using ADL data, misquoting it, and misunderstanding it. Right-wing political violence is more acute, left-wing political violence is more chronic.
Also, you claim Piker is marginalized. Clearly, mainstream media never got the memo. The list of examples I give in the essay is only a tiny fraction of his recent appearances.
Bullshit. From the ADL page on extremist related terrorism: "The long-term trends resemble those of the short term, in that far-right extremists have committed the bulk of extremist-related murders: 328 of the 429 killings (76%) over the past decade. Domestic Islamist extremists were responsible for 79 killings (18%) over that same span, while murders from other sources made up the small remainder. Over the past 10 years, right-wing extremists have committed the majority of extremist-related murders in all years but one: 2016, the year of the shooting spree at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, conducted by a person motivated by Islamist extremism.[6] "
I consider Islamist extremists equal to right wing extremists because their views are very similar--believe exactly what we believe or die.
Furthermore, the fact that I have heard of Fuentes, Kirk, et. al. over and over and over again when I never ever really to wanted to know they even existed but as a Democrat have never heard of Piker before today? He's nobody. You are holding up a fringe character as an example of what Democrats want. You are the classic boy crying wolf.
An obvious flaw in your reasoning is that you're comparing right-wing American violence to 'domestic' Islamist violence in a country where Muslims are a very small minority for now, and jihadists a small subset of those Muslims.
If you had as many jihadists as Europe or Africa does, let alone the Middle East, you'd see a very different picture.
Explain the flaw? Both the OP and I have always only been talking about violence in the US. Also, please explain how Jihadist violence equals "left wing" violence.
Because it’s the left wing who endorses the fucking terrorists, regularly. It’s them who refuses to acknowledge antifa violence no matter how much evidence is shoved in your face, it’s you who doesn’t even know about groups like BAMN, it’s you who endorses CHAZ/CHOP zones and then has the audacity to lie about your opponents who have never once taken over an entire CITY FOR WEEKS, but you will take a Democrat paid for source like the ADL UNIRONICALLY and claim you know what you’re talking about.
Gullible and hateful is certainly a choice, dear god.
No Democrat has ever endorsed a right wing terrorist, sorry. And here you are babbling on about Antifa, repeating BS Russian propaganda like a good commie soldier. Are you really pro fascist? Have you signed up to be a Nazi brown shirt yet? What city has ever been TAKEN OVER FOR WEEKS? Are you that afraid to leave your fucking room and even look outside for once, or do you just listen to what Putin tells you to listen to?
I notice that you don't want to answer my question, though? Doesn't look like I'm the one with massive blinders. I think it's rather obvious, but you do whatever it takes for you to fool yourself to be able to look at yourself in the mirror.
David’s skepticism always seems to be skeptical in one direction only, doesn’t it? Sure would nice to see that same level of skepticism pointed at the right. I’d imagine we’d actually get somewhere.
"3/4 of Trumps (sic) 'assassins' ... were documented Republicans ..." Incorrect. One had reportedly voted for Trump, but had been registered as a Democrat previously. The others are reported as leftwing or not identified politically.
"Serious political violence is almost 100% from right wing sources. Attacks are almost 100% on Democrats ..." Incorrect again. You must have a non-standard definition of "serious political violence", or extremely poor sources for your statistics. This sounds to me like the news reporter in Minneapolis who stood in front of burning buildings and called what was happening "mostly peaceful". From the BLM riots that took many lives and destroyed parts of cities, to Antifa violence in the Northwest (such as attempting to set fire to a Federal Courthouse in Portland after blocking the doors so those inside would be trapped and burned to death, and personal attacks such as the one that left Andy Ngo with brain damage), to several high profile public murders (a healthcare executive shot and killed in New York City, a young couple gunned down in Washington, DC, and Charlie Kirk assassinated in front of his family, come readily to mind), to recent shootings at ICE facilities that nearly killed a local deputy, there are plenty of examples of leftists committing acts of violence. I believe the aftermath of the killings help illustrate David's point as much as the violence itself. In every example I have cited, people on the left, sometimes including Democrat leaders, have "contextualized", excused, or even celebrated the violence and killings. When, about a year ago, two Minnesota State Senators and their spouses were shot in their homes (and one of the couples tragically died), I did not see Republicans attempt to excuse or celebrate the brutal murders and attempted murders. I have seen the Republicans condemn people who commit politically motivated violence against anyone (R or D). On the left I have seen a culture and permission structure that tends to excuse or even encourage violence.
Nope, everything I said was 100% accurate. 3 out of the 4 "assassins" (if you believe they were actual assassins) were from Republican families and if not registered Republicans, had voted Republican recently. Kirk's assassin was a Groyper, a follower of Fuentes, which was even farther right than Kirk. Republicans made fun of the deaths of the Minnesota Senators *on the floor of the Senate*, so don't give me your bullshit. Stop watching right wing propaganda bullshit and come back later when you have actually accessed real news.
You know what, let’s play your game, all assassins are all right wing now. In that case, why not go after the left’s political figures, if they’re all going to be right wing, might as well have it be to the right’s advantage.
Or you know, they could go after AOC, Mamdani, etc. Seems like much easier targets to go after to get the right’s agenda done than trying to make a martyr out of Trump.
AOC and Mamdani have already gotten death threats and have already dodged assassination attempts. They just don't whine about it all the time like Trump does.
None was made. I am a registered Democrat from a family that is deep in the party (including appointees in the Obama administration), but I am still worried about the creepy violent turn of many in the further left parts of the camp. The last time this happened (late 1960's) is was bad for both the Party and the country.
The US has had two outsiders join the political game and win (Obama and Trump). The system actually works. The creeps seeking to "punch a fascist" could easily work to get their people elected, but they do not care about politics. They care about punching people (none of whom are ever fascists).
There’s an asymmetry in political violence but I dont think it’s because right is less violent. Rather, where a part of the left has embraced what are basically terrorist tactics (worth noting though that Trump’s would-be assassins have most been Republicans) the right utilizes state violence to intimidate and sometimes kill its opponents. The right sends masked, heavily armed, completely unaccountable and untrained paramilitaries into blue cities and then when liberals protest they tear gas, beat, and occasionally kill them. All to loud acclaim from MAGA. I agree with you that Piker is awful and there is a problem with increased support for political violence on the left which we must recognize and denounce, but I do not think the difference in the kind of violence the right supports should obscure the fact that they do support it. I also think your description of MAGA as not a fascist movement is simply wrong. It checks all the boxes, as I’ve written about. Doesn’t make them Nazis, they’re not, but MAGA hews very closely to the ideology and policies of 20th century fascist movements as in Italy and Spain.
It' not just right wing State sponsored violence--it's actually right wing violence that happens by followers of this administration, and it's been happening since before the first time he was elected. White Supremacists make up the majority of the terroristic threats and actions, followed by other right wing groups, then extremist islamic terror, then left wing violence, then other.
It seems you're not including riot and arson in your definition of terrorism in order to support a narrative about the Left being less violent. And who are the 'MAGA Jews'?
"MAGAJews" was LastBlueDog, my guess is there was some sort of typo. I'm familiar with him. He's the kind of Democrat who talks wistfully about working with "moderate Republicans".
Are you sure you want to include those? Since much of the evidence points to both riots and arson being started by right wing agitators in many cases to drive a narrative, at least recently. The last time there was serious violence from the left in the form of riots was the 1960s and 70s.
Also--you explain "MAGA Jews", because I never brought up the term.
Watching actual news, not the entertainment propaganda that tells the right that all their problems are the fault of some nebulous "other" that they can hate.
You obviously know absolutely nothing about anything. I never thought Platner was an appropriate candidate for anything and was horrified that he won the nomination. Nobody in the Democratic Party calls the harassment or murder of Jews "free speech", stop watching bullshit right wing propaganda, you idiot.
I thought Romney had absolutely not a clue what regular people went through and was a shill for the rich, and probably the religious extremists, but in retrospect, at least he respected the Constitution and Rule of Law. I thought he was to the right of Bush but probably wouldn't have been as easily controlled. As a Democrat, you know it's bad when you remember Romney wistfully.
This level of stupid and misinformed is psychotic narcissism levels of stupid. But the issue is, you’re actually just enjoying the team sports so much, you’ll sport propaganda without caring if it’s true.
Sometimes a photograph captures an image that cannot be ignored. The bath photo is quite disturbing. The confidence with which he addresses the lens while in a posture most people would consider vulnerable and inappropriate to share with the world is an image of foreboding.
He was a very overweight kid too, so he had to have enough personal discipline to get past that. He's talked about how it affects his psychology, and not in a "look how awesome I am" way.
So he deems his self-proclaimed overweight childhood is something to share with us. In the photo, there is a little rubber duckie floating in the tub with his adult self. Interesting.
He was talking about how it affected him in the context of dealing with an addictive behavior. It worked. There was a picture going around of him sitting on a polo pony, so it may have mitigated the "look at the rich fat kid on his horse" talk. The Mao jacket distracted from the content of the DSA speech unless you were someone who already wouldn't care. For example someone to young and broke to care about Mao.
Thank you for sharing this information. I should probably be fair and search out these interviews, but I find his statements that I have seen enough to draw conclusions about where he stands. If he had a polo pony as a child — really, seriously? — I would find his “workers of the world unite” cosplay even more distasteful.
There’s the Billionaire Singham couple, safely ensconced in China who created & fund a lot of the protest groups. There are Alex & Jonathon Soros, George’s sons, who’ve picked up the mantle and are funding DSA candidates. Fergie Cox, who cashed out his Cox Cable stocks to fund the Communist revolution from a bunker/gym in the Berkshires, then found Islam & left with his GF Stella Schnabel, Julien’s daughter, for Tunisia to fund the Islamists and Communists — but he crossed some line & is now being extradited to the U.S. on multiple charges from Spain. And the there’s the NYC nightmare, Mamdani, the child of multi millionaires who has a mansion in Uganda behind very big walls & his Mom was buddy buddy with the Epstein crowd (there are pics of him, his Mom & Epstein on holiday). And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Cosplaying as ‘man of the people’ seems to be endemic with DSA’s Islamo-Socialist leadership.
Interestingly enough, for all their money & ‘education’ they never think to look at what happened to the wealthy backers of other socialist &/or Islamist revolutions. A quick study of the Princes and Nobility from Russia (who had far more power & money than these Billionaires), the Chinese intellectuals, or the Iranian Leftists, should give them pause about who & what they’re attempting to usher in, because when these revolutions start, no matter what they’ve done or given, they are just being used by someone (or a group) lurking in the shadows waiting for the dust to settle & are then treated as “the enemy”.
Good, but making the mistake doing that fake moral equivalency thing with the right and left.
It is our own human flaw to seek harmony and equality that causes us to diminish the elephant in the room by pointing out the mouse.
With the right, there are few real extremists and the basis is moderate center-right. Frankly, the core MAGA movement is nothing but normal center politics going back 20 years.
With the left, the basis is radical extremist ideas and politics, and the are few real center-left moderates (at least few vocal center-left moderates).
We are not equal. Nowhere close. So nothing written about the extremes of the Democrats need to soften the blow by pointing out the extremes in the Republicans.
There are people who need to hate. Who they hate is not an essential point. The hate is the tie that binds. It was with the Nazis, the KKK and today, with the DSA.
In my observations, people still on the Left are simply oblivious. Take the friend who gushed over Mamdani. When I asked if she knew X or Y or anything about Communism and its bloody history, she said no.
Speaking of communism and how it gains traction, I have to point something out here:
"If there’s a genuine right-wing equivalent of Piker, someone this openly bigoted, this enthusiastic about political violence, this recently rewarded with a major party’s own youth convention stage, then I’d genuinely like readers to send me the example. But there is no democratic fascist movement. And if there were, no Republican mayor or representative would embrace it. The closest example we have might be former Iowa Representative Steve King, who in 2019 questioned the negative connotations around “white supremacy” and “white nationalist.” But he’s not a good example because Republican leaders stripped him of committee assignments for those remarks. And sure, being a democratic socialist is not comparable to being a full-on fascist."
The "white supremacy" issue IS COMMUNISM. You can equate the assertions of "white supremacy" with "kill the landlords." It is a way of demonizing the dominant population into submission. When Joe Biden pranced across the stage declaring "white supremacy is our nation's greatest threat" he was essentially NOT talking about the KKK, but about WHITE PEOPLE in general being in charge of institutions. He was declaring that white people should be replaced with non-whites. Isn't that what the race hysteria that began in earnest in the late teens was designed to do? During the race hysteria decent white people were being pulled from their jobs over conveniently distorted perceptions of things they said that three years earlier would have been normal things to say.
I had to endure a struggle session at my university because any time a brown person declared you a "racist" (JUST FOR DOING MY JOB) that was grounds for a trial. And Obama removed due process from those trials -- like a communist. Fortunately, my struggle session occurred after Trump restored due process.
The reign of racial terror and hurling the word "white supremacy" around was clearly parallel to the communist purges. That this representative questioned it actually made him smarter than most. I do not know the context of what he said or what happened to him, but suffice to say this rush to deem people 'racist' IS a communist tactic, it divided the country, and it DELIBERATELY caused chaos and mayhem.
Piker says stupid & wrong things and the fact that Dems platform him just reveals how the Left desperately needs a modern progressive worldview (there are many solid ideas out there, let us hope they are revealed and championed). But please don't rehabilitate the GOP at all in your comparison. As someone who has worked in and out of government institutions for decades, the GOP has leaned into fascism quite clearly. They are anti democracy. They have ruined America & our standing in the world with this regime. PIker is a one-off miscreant. The GOP is a comprehensive, ruinous kleptocracy and protection racket. They have harmed the Constitution and Rule of Law, perhaps forever. They don't deserve to be a party anymore. Your article stands without them as somehow being the "good guys."
your comments are both boring and predictable. I've actually worked for both D's and for R's. The GOP should not even be allowed to exist anymore after what they have done to the Constitution.
For the same reason most high school and college students lean left - they have no responsibilities, commitments, or real-world experience, but plenty of ideals. Socialist ideas, whatever the truth, SOUND good and humane, and their inevitable negative impact only appears with a delay.
Mamdani's budget magic is a prime example of this - on the one hand, he delivers on his promises(some, at least), but at the cost of relying on state bailout and delayed pension payments, which will only have consequences in a few years, but now he can pose as a savior (and then later blame someone else for it when shit hits the fan).
Stalin was a democratic socialist, according to Stalin. So, no, being a democratic socialist is not better than being a fascist.
Two Central European ideologies, one birthed by the other, are not part of the Western schema. They were created in a part of Europe without a democratic tradition.
Both are authoritarian, top-down systems. Both need to be kept out of the West, period.
This guy - Piker- is an absolute hypocrite and menace to USA. He is an Islamist for a start! But his views are so wrong and go against all the best intentions of political expression . Do not give him breathing space to spread his hate.
"Hasan Piker is more extreme than Nick Fuentes. So why does the left embrace him?"
Because they agree with him.
They mostly don't though. He acts different in front of mainstream liberals, and like he's just a slightly more left wing version of them, in the same way Nick Fuentes tones down his anti-semitic and anti-black points substantially when he's a guest on a more mainstream show, because he knows it's not going to play well. But it's still pathetic how ignorant they are and how much work they do to try and convince themselves he's just a regular liberal but who wants a bit more redistribution instead of a vile authoritarian antisemite.
You might be about half right.
But none of them save John Fetterman is willing to “punch left” and criticize him, or anyone on the radical left.
If there's one point I always try to make about modern Left politics it's that no one is in charge—no leaders or leadership, no reigning institutions, no thinkers or public intellectuals. What's in charge is THE DOCTRINE.
The Doctrine is installed in the seminaries we call universities (and now even primary and secondary schools) and everyone from bureaucrats to activists to professors, politicians and even CEOs (down to buffoonish streamers and influencers) are all first and foremost loyal to the Doctrine and know that their careers and social lives exist only at its permission and one wrong word against it might bring a social and career death penalty.
But the Doctrine is also crowd-sourced, rigid yet amorphous enough to change if the urgencies of the moment and its news cycle demand it, and is easily hijacked by various opportunists and entrepreneurs. Thus the herd keeps one leery eye on the Doctrine at all times, knows not to get too close or rouse it, and can only oppose it once a critical mass forms and there's safety in numbers. (Maybe the best example here is "Defund the Police": the idea/slogan has never been completely jettisoned or renounced, it was just moved from front row to back row and surrounded by a protective guard of media allies who work to either bury it or "contextualize" it. Thus the Doctrine remains intact, no one needed to risk their neck opposing it, it's just taken a vacation for now.)
Piker and his ilk of Jew-hating con artists controls the Doctrine now because their issue has become paramount (Free Palestine!) and so highly weaponized and moralized that for any liberal to critique this group, he/she might need a full suit of armor and maybe a trip to Witness Protection. The Free Palestine! cult has seized the current most powerful weapon in liberal discourse (the instrumentalization of Palestinian pain and misery into a moral and political credential) and one blasphemous word against them and the Doctrine (which now has a busy and flourishing Anti-Zionist wing) could mean: professional and social ostracism, mobs of angry kids outside your house scaring your family and spray-painting Baby Killer! on your garage, and maybe even not being able to go out to dinner without being mobbed like that sad clown Scott Weiner.
This is what happens both when Doctrine reigns and also can be fashioned into a weapon to destroy your enemies and make you a famous leader of a supposedly righteous radical cause—these tools will always be seized by the most unscrupulous people and will also strike terror into the hearts of the average person who has more to lose and prefers to go along to get along. Piker has simply captured Left morality and has the Dems by the balls for now.
They will not oppose him until they can do so while not directly challenging the Doctrine and when they can get a coordinated group of political and media allies to stand together.
Hope that makes sense! Thanks
This is such helpful analysis. And a primary tenet of THE DOCTRINE is the “hidden mind.” Which means that the ever-revolving cast of gurus—at all levels of influence—are those who proclaim they have full access to their mind and are imbued with a special gift for seeing into the hidden mind of others. And of course, those who deny the existence of the hidden mind, or deny the gurus special gift, or deny what the guru sees, are either uninitiated or malevolent.
What you describe seems both like the essential elements of ancient gnosticism yet also Marxist "critical consciousness" (as opposed to the "false consciousness" of everyone not in their cult).
The Gnostic is "dominated by a desperate nostalgia for a totally different world, which he has never seen, but from which he feels unjustly exiled." (I got these quotes somewhere I can't remember).
"Gnostic pathos is characterized by the radical refusal of the world in all its perverse and intolerable manifestations and the conviction that there is a solution for escaping from the present situation and regaining paradise lost. This conviction derives from the gnosis, which is a total complete knowledge (descriptive and normative) and contains a diagnosis-therapy of human alienation. Thanks to the gnosis, the gnostic knows the matrix of the (temporary) unhappiness of man—the catastrophe that overturned and degraded the world, filling it with horrors of all kinds—and the way to the Promised Land. In other words, those in possession of the gnosis know what humanity has been and has become because of the fall, as well as when and how redemption will take place."
I don't want to belabor the point but our Social Justice professoriate really are the priesthood of a modern post-Christian post-Marxist faith, with the Doctrine being their creation and sacred dogma brought down from the mountaintop. Their gnostic "critical consciousness" provides a key to open the world's mysteries, but in their case the revelation is almost always someone's Power is causing someone else's Oppression. And it's a very short step for something both this simplistic and moralistic to become a metaphysical belief system that supposedly explains everything.
Sometimes the form of a belief system is just as important as the content and I think that's the case here in how the Social Justice doctrine has become the official ideology of our global-corporate state and its managers and true believers: the Doctrine works as litmus test, moat, shibboleth, status marker, social signal and (maybe most importantly) provides a moral sheen to its holder and the divine right to rule that priesthoods have always used as a way to justify their power.
The Doctrine can be a cruel god and its priesthood shows no mercy to enemies, apostates and heretics, but it's now the price of admission to any position in our liberal classes, from teacher to writer to curator etc. In a way it's just a reversion to ancient forms of rule, where priest is as important as ruler and one supports the other and provides each other's legitimacy.
Thanks!
I just watched the Twin Flames documentary, and it is so relevant to this thread.
It also made me see how a lot of the “liberation academia” I experienced in grad school, was actually high control manipulation tactics. Like a cult or MLM, there was fear inducement and promises of relief of said fear through love-bombing, forced intimacy, over-confident guarantees of attaining the "highest level", jargon-control, and group-think.
And I think this cultishness arises from underlying loss of quality and rigor. Sadly, lots of mainstream academia is essentially just a pay-to-play MLM funded by the self-replenishing feed trough of education loans. So of course, it needs THE DOCTRINE to self-anoint and maintain captives, accepting, welcoming, replicating, and selling a crappy product under “willing” coercion.
And once it was in academia, it was only a matter of time before it’s everywhere. Because eventually, THE DOCTRINE MLM cult will slide into all the places where low-quality and low-rigor have become elevated.
Sometimes to laugh to keep from crying, I watch snippets of Spaceballs. Because underneath the priestly-ness of The Doctrine, it's almost comically vacuous, though nonetheless violent. Which means, do we have it backward? Does the vacuousness of it necessitate the violence and the Gnosticism?
Spot on. As usual.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRe8J4scGtU
thanks!
Islamo-leftism knows no bounds. What's really curious is the Muslims stealthily coming in from the right as a religionist movement and using the useful idiots of the atheocratic left as their militia, so to speak. Of course, the Muslims will annihilate them if they are successful. Shaking my head on a daily basis.
You need to have a head first. Most of us normals couldn't care less about these social media creations.
Piker graduated Cum Laude with a double major in Political Science and Communications.
So two worthless degrees…got it.
I'm not saying Piker is admirable.
makes sense. he totally represents what colleges are pushing.
GTFOOH with your "the left is more violent than the right" BS. Not only is it well documented (at least in the US) that terrorism related violence is sourced 78%+ from the right, 3/4 of Trumps "assassins" (huh) were documented Republicans/hard right/MAGA. Serious political violence is almost 100% from right wing sources. Attacks are almost 100% on Democrats, unless they are on Republican "RINOs" or Republicans that MAGA views as having betrayed Trump (such as MTG, who received almost no threats until she went against Trump--after which, she had to hire more security and death threats against her increased by more than 100%).
I agree Piker sounds like an asshole who desperately needs to be marginalized, but I assure you, he is. I, a lifelong Democrat who is thoroughly familiar with AOC. The crazy right wing radicals you mention in your article, like Fuentes, who you claim aren't being "platformed" are certainly being listened to pretty closely by this administration and being taken seriously, and I've certainly heard of ALL of them. After all, Miller is a serious fucking part of the cabinet. How about you try and figure out what the hell is wrong with you?
You’re using ADL data, misquoting it, and misunderstanding it. Right-wing political violence is more acute, left-wing political violence is more chronic.
Also, you claim Piker is marginalized. Clearly, mainstream media never got the memo. The list of examples I give in the essay is only a tiny fraction of his recent appearances.
Bullshit. From the ADL page on extremist related terrorism: "The long-term trends resemble those of the short term, in that far-right extremists have committed the bulk of extremist-related murders: 328 of the 429 killings (76%) over the past decade. Domestic Islamist extremists were responsible for 79 killings (18%) over that same span, while murders from other sources made up the small remainder. Over the past 10 years, right-wing extremists have committed the majority of extremist-related murders in all years but one: 2016, the year of the shooting spree at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, conducted by a person motivated by Islamist extremism.[6] "
I consider Islamist extremists equal to right wing extremists because their views are very similar--believe exactly what we believe or die.
Furthermore, the fact that I have heard of Fuentes, Kirk, et. al. over and over and over again when I never ever really to wanted to know they even existed but as a Democrat have never heard of Piker before today? He's nobody. You are holding up a fringe character as an example of what Democrats want. You are the classic boy crying wolf.
An obvious flaw in your reasoning is that you're comparing right-wing American violence to 'domestic' Islamist violence in a country where Muslims are a very small minority for now, and jihadists a small subset of those Muslims.
If you had as many jihadists as Europe or Africa does, let alone the Middle East, you'd see a very different picture.
Explain the flaw? Both the OP and I have always only been talking about violence in the US. Also, please explain how Jihadist violence equals "left wing" violence.
Because it’s the left wing who endorses the fucking terrorists, regularly. It’s them who refuses to acknowledge antifa violence no matter how much evidence is shoved in your face, it’s you who doesn’t even know about groups like BAMN, it’s you who endorses CHAZ/CHOP zones and then has the audacity to lie about your opponents who have never once taken over an entire CITY FOR WEEKS, but you will take a Democrat paid for source like the ADL UNIRONICALLY and claim you know what you’re talking about.
Gullible and hateful is certainly a choice, dear god.
No Democrat has ever endorsed a right wing terrorist, sorry. And here you are babbling on about Antifa, repeating BS Russian propaganda like a good commie soldier. Are you really pro fascist? Have you signed up to be a Nazi brown shirt yet? What city has ever been TAKEN OVER FOR WEEKS? Are you that afraid to leave your fucking room and even look outside for once, or do you just listen to what Putin tells you to listen to?
Your classification of islamist violence as "right wing" speaks to the massive blinders you have on.
I'm sorry? How would you classify it? Religious based violence is by definition right wing.
Umm. No, it's not. Like i said, your categorization reveals your massive blinders. You are not a reliable source of information.
I notice that you don't want to answer my question, though? Doesn't look like I'm the one with massive blinders. I think it's rather obvious, but you do whatever it takes for you to fool yourself to be able to look at yourself in the mirror.
David’s skepticism always seems to be skeptical in one direction only, doesn’t it? Sure would nice to see that same level of skepticism pointed at the right. I’d imagine we’d actually get somewhere.
Like when Biden pardoned the BLM protestors that burnt down cities, this was a clear woke presidential endorsement of violence.
Ah sorry I fucked up, this was Epstein Don on the J6 traitors.
"3/4 of Trumps (sic) 'assassins' ... were documented Republicans ..." Incorrect. One had reportedly voted for Trump, but had been registered as a Democrat previously. The others are reported as leftwing or not identified politically.
"Serious political violence is almost 100% from right wing sources. Attacks are almost 100% on Democrats ..." Incorrect again. You must have a non-standard definition of "serious political violence", or extremely poor sources for your statistics. This sounds to me like the news reporter in Minneapolis who stood in front of burning buildings and called what was happening "mostly peaceful". From the BLM riots that took many lives and destroyed parts of cities, to Antifa violence in the Northwest (such as attempting to set fire to a Federal Courthouse in Portland after blocking the doors so those inside would be trapped and burned to death, and personal attacks such as the one that left Andy Ngo with brain damage), to several high profile public murders (a healthcare executive shot and killed in New York City, a young couple gunned down in Washington, DC, and Charlie Kirk assassinated in front of his family, come readily to mind), to recent shootings at ICE facilities that nearly killed a local deputy, there are plenty of examples of leftists committing acts of violence. I believe the aftermath of the killings help illustrate David's point as much as the violence itself. In every example I have cited, people on the left, sometimes including Democrat leaders, have "contextualized", excused, or even celebrated the violence and killings. When, about a year ago, two Minnesota State Senators and their spouses were shot in their homes (and one of the couples tragically died), I did not see Republicans attempt to excuse or celebrate the brutal murders and attempted murders. I have seen the Republicans condemn people who commit politically motivated violence against anyone (R or D). On the left I have seen a culture and permission structure that tends to excuse or even encourage violence.
Nope, everything I said was 100% accurate. 3 out of the 4 "assassins" (if you believe they were actual assassins) were from Republican families and if not registered Republicans, had voted Republican recently. Kirk's assassin was a Groyper, a follower of Fuentes, which was even farther right than Kirk. Republicans made fun of the deaths of the Minnesota Senators *on the floor of the Senate*, so don't give me your bullshit. Stop watching right wing propaganda bullshit and come back later when you have actually accessed real news.
You know what, let’s play your game, all assassins are all right wing now. In that case, why not go after the left’s political figures, if they’re all going to be right wing, might as well have it be to the right’s advantage.
They mostly do. I guess Kirk pissed off Fuentes somehow, and Trump is always pissing off someone on the right by not being far right enough...
Or you know, they could go after AOC, Mamdani, etc. Seems like much easier targets to go after to get the right’s agenda done than trying to make a martyr out of Trump.
AOC and Mamdani have already gotten death threats and have already dodged assassination attempts. They just don't whine about it all the time like Trump does.
Glad I’m not the only one groaning about that. Absolutely no connection between trump’s assassins and the DSA or the “Left” but here we go again
None was made. I am a registered Democrat from a family that is deep in the party (including appointees in the Obama administration), but I am still worried about the creepy violent turn of many in the further left parts of the camp. The last time this happened (late 1960's) is was bad for both the Party and the country.
The US has had two outsiders join the political game and win (Obama and Trump). The system actually works. The creeps seeking to "punch a fascist" could easily work to get their people elected, but they do not care about politics. They care about punching people (none of whom are ever fascists).
There’s an asymmetry in political violence but I dont think it’s because right is less violent. Rather, where a part of the left has embraced what are basically terrorist tactics (worth noting though that Trump’s would-be assassins have most been Republicans) the right utilizes state violence to intimidate and sometimes kill its opponents. The right sends masked, heavily armed, completely unaccountable and untrained paramilitaries into blue cities and then when liberals protest they tear gas, beat, and occasionally kill them. All to loud acclaim from MAGA. I agree with you that Piker is awful and there is a problem with increased support for political violence on the left which we must recognize and denounce, but I do not think the difference in the kind of violence the right supports should obscure the fact that they do support it. I also think your description of MAGA as not a fascist movement is simply wrong. It checks all the boxes, as I’ve written about. Doesn’t make them Nazis, they’re not, but MAGA hews very closely to the ideology and policies of 20th century fascist movements as in Italy and Spain.
It' not just right wing State sponsored violence--it's actually right wing violence that happens by followers of this administration, and it's been happening since before the first time he was elected. White Supremacists make up the majority of the terroristic threats and actions, followed by other right wing groups, then extremist islamic terror, then left wing violence, then other.
It seems you're not including riot and arson in your definition of terrorism in order to support a narrative about the Left being less violent. And who are the 'MAGA Jews'?
"MAGAJews" was LastBlueDog, my guess is there was some sort of typo. I'm familiar with him. He's the kind of Democrat who talks wistfully about working with "moderate Republicans".
Thank you for noting that, it was supposed to say ‘MAGA hews’ (to an ideology) which my phone still tried to spell check to ‘Jews’ twice.
Yeah, well I may be MAGA but I didn't think you needed to be accused of being an antisemite over a typo.
Are you sure you want to include those? Since much of the evidence points to both riots and arson being started by right wing agitators in many cases to drive a narrative, at least recently. The last time there was serious violence from the left in the form of riots was the 1960s and 70s.
Also--you explain "MAGA Jews", because I never brought up the term.
If you don't think the left has rioted since the 1970s, where have you been since then?
Watching actual news, not the entertainment propaganda that tells the right that all their problems are the fault of some nebulous "other" that they can hate.
Plus, according to you people, when Muslims or progressives attack, assault, harass and murder Jews, that’s what’s known as “free speech.”
Sorry about Platner. You’re obviously a supporter.
You obviously know absolutely nothing about anything. I never thought Platner was an appropriate candidate for anything and was horrified that he won the nomination. Nobody in the Democratic Party calls the harassment or murder of Jews "free speech", stop watching bullshit right wing propaganda, you idiot.
How do you feel about pre-Trump Republicans like Mitt Romney?
I thought Romney had absolutely not a clue what regular people went through and was a shill for the rich, and probably the religious extremists, but in retrospect, at least he respected the Constitution and Rule of Law. I thought he was to the right of Bush but probably wouldn't have been as easily controlled. As a Democrat, you know it's bad when you remember Romney wistfully.
I don't want to ask your exact age, but can I ask broadly what generation you're from?
I'm right on the edge of Boomer/Gen X. I'm an old Gen X. Why?
Hmm.
If I thought these facts were true, then I would believe as you believe.
You’re a good person.
This level of stupid and misinformed is psychotic narcissism levels of stupid. But the issue is, you’re actually just enjoying the team sports so much, you’ll sport propaganda without caring if it’s true.
You really shouldn't talk about yourself like that. Have you tried therapy?
🤣🤣🤣
Sometimes a photograph captures an image that cannot be ignored. The bath photo is quite disturbing. The confidence with which he addresses the lens while in a posture most people would consider vulnerable and inappropriate to share with the world is an image of foreboding.
He was a very overweight kid too, so he had to have enough personal discipline to get past that. He's talked about how it affects his psychology, and not in a "look how awesome I am" way.
So he deems his self-proclaimed overweight childhood is something to share with us. In the photo, there is a little rubber duckie floating in the tub with his adult self. Interesting.
He was talking about how it affected him in the context of dealing with an addictive behavior. It worked. There was a picture going around of him sitting on a polo pony, so it may have mitigated the "look at the rich fat kid on his horse" talk. The Mao jacket distracted from the content of the DSA speech unless you were someone who already wouldn't care. For example someone to young and broke to care about Mao.
Thank you for sharing this information. I should probably be fair and search out these interviews, but I find his statements that I have seen enough to draw conclusions about where he stands. If he had a polo pony as a child — really, seriously? — I would find his “workers of the world unite” cosplay even more distasteful.
A lot of prominent Marxists came from relative privilege or even extreme wealth, so this really is nothing new.
The cosplay in leadership runs deep …
There’s the Billionaire Singham couple, safely ensconced in China who created & fund a lot of the protest groups. There are Alex & Jonathon Soros, George’s sons, who’ve picked up the mantle and are funding DSA candidates. Fergie Cox, who cashed out his Cox Cable stocks to fund the Communist revolution from a bunker/gym in the Berkshires, then found Islam & left with his GF Stella Schnabel, Julien’s daughter, for Tunisia to fund the Islamists and Communists — but he crossed some line & is now being extradited to the U.S. on multiple charges from Spain. And the there’s the NYC nightmare, Mamdani, the child of multi millionaires who has a mansion in Uganda behind very big walls & his Mom was buddy buddy with the Epstein crowd (there are pics of him, his Mom & Epstein on holiday). And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Cosplaying as ‘man of the people’ seems to be endemic with DSA’s Islamo-Socialist leadership.
Interestingly enough, for all their money & ‘education’ they never think to look at what happened to the wealthy backers of other socialist &/or Islamist revolutions. A quick study of the Princes and Nobility from Russia (who had far more power & money than these Billionaires), the Chinese intellectuals, or the Iranian Leftists, should give them pause about who & what they’re attempting to usher in, because when these revolutions start, no matter what they’ve done or given, they are just being used by someone (or a group) lurking in the shadows waiting for the dust to settle & are then treated as “the enemy”.
Very well put. I predict it will fall on deaf ears, or more likely, elicit the hatred the essay describes.
Good, but making the mistake doing that fake moral equivalency thing with the right and left.
It is our own human flaw to seek harmony and equality that causes us to diminish the elephant in the room by pointing out the mouse.
With the right, there are few real extremists and the basis is moderate center-right. Frankly, the core MAGA movement is nothing but normal center politics going back 20 years.
With the left, the basis is radical extremist ideas and politics, and the are few real center-left moderates (at least few vocal center-left moderates).
We are not equal. Nowhere close. So nothing written about the extremes of the Democrats need to soften the blow by pointing out the extremes in the Republicans.
There are people who need to hate. Who they hate is not an essential point. The hate is the tie that binds. It was with the Nazis, the KKK and today, with the DSA.
In my observations, people still on the Left are simply oblivious. Take the friend who gushed over Mamdani. When I asked if she knew X or Y or anything about Communism and its bloody history, she said no.
Speaking of communism and how it gains traction, I have to point something out here:
"If there’s a genuine right-wing equivalent of Piker, someone this openly bigoted, this enthusiastic about political violence, this recently rewarded with a major party’s own youth convention stage, then I’d genuinely like readers to send me the example. But there is no democratic fascist movement. And if there were, no Republican mayor or representative would embrace it. The closest example we have might be former Iowa Representative Steve King, who in 2019 questioned the negative connotations around “white supremacy” and “white nationalist.” But he’s not a good example because Republican leaders stripped him of committee assignments for those remarks. And sure, being a democratic socialist is not comparable to being a full-on fascist."
The "white supremacy" issue IS COMMUNISM. You can equate the assertions of "white supremacy" with "kill the landlords." It is a way of demonizing the dominant population into submission. When Joe Biden pranced across the stage declaring "white supremacy is our nation's greatest threat" he was essentially NOT talking about the KKK, but about WHITE PEOPLE in general being in charge of institutions. He was declaring that white people should be replaced with non-whites. Isn't that what the race hysteria that began in earnest in the late teens was designed to do? During the race hysteria decent white people were being pulled from their jobs over conveniently distorted perceptions of things they said that three years earlier would have been normal things to say.
I had to endure a struggle session at my university because any time a brown person declared you a "racist" (JUST FOR DOING MY JOB) that was grounds for a trial. And Obama removed due process from those trials -- like a communist. Fortunately, my struggle session occurred after Trump restored due process.
The reign of racial terror and hurling the word "white supremacy" around was clearly parallel to the communist purges. That this representative questioned it actually made him smarter than most. I do not know the context of what he said or what happened to him, but suffice to say this rush to deem people 'racist' IS a communist tactic, it divided the country, and it DELIBERATELY caused chaos and mayhem.
Hasan sexy AF
Piker says stupid & wrong things and the fact that Dems platform him just reveals how the Left desperately needs a modern progressive worldview (there are many solid ideas out there, let us hope they are revealed and championed). But please don't rehabilitate the GOP at all in your comparison. As someone who has worked in and out of government institutions for decades, the GOP has leaned into fascism quite clearly. They are anti democracy. They have ruined America & our standing in the world with this regime. PIker is a one-off miscreant. The GOP is a comprehensive, ruinous kleptocracy and protection racket. They have harmed the Constitution and Rule of Law, perhaps forever. They don't deserve to be a party anymore. Your article stands without them as somehow being the "good guys."
Democrats don't believe in the rule of law or the constitution.
whatever. insert eyeroll emoji here.
Sorry the truth offends you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
your comments are both boring and predictable. I've actually worked for both D's and for R's. The GOP should not even be allowed to exist anymore after what they have done to the Constitution.
Luckily for us, your opinions mean fuck all
As the entire false political spectrum of collectivism they are anti-Americans.
Why are the most vitriolic communists almost invariably children of great privilege and wealth? This is a pattern that is impossible not to notice.
For the same reason most high school and college students lean left - they have no responsibilities, commitments, or real-world experience, but plenty of ideals. Socialist ideas, whatever the truth, SOUND good and humane, and their inevitable negative impact only appears with a delay.
Mamdani's budget magic is a prime example of this - on the one hand, he delivers on his promises(some, at least), but at the cost of relying on state bailout and delayed pension payments, which will only have consequences in a few years, but now he can pose as a savior (and then later blame someone else for it when shit hits the fan).
Selma envy. The first resort of the unexceptional who nevertheless want to feel virtuous without any of the annoying personal sacrifices.
Stalin was a democratic socialist, according to Stalin. So, no, being a democratic socialist is not better than being a fascist.
Two Central European ideologies, one birthed by the other, are not part of the Western schema. They were created in a part of Europe without a democratic tradition.
Both are authoritarian, top-down systems. Both need to be kept out of the West, period.
Because “moderate Democrats” are co-dependent enablers of this nonsense.
This guy - Piker- is an absolute hypocrite and menace to USA. He is an Islamist for a start! But his views are so wrong and go against all the best intentions of political expression . Do not give him breathing space to spread his hate.