The unholy alliance between capital, postmodernism, and left authoritarianism
The unholy alliance between capital, postmodernism, and left authoritarianism
Capital has weaponized the ideology of its critics to support its aims
I. Introduction
I’m completely fascinated by the unholy alliance between capital, postmodernism, and left authoritarianism. I have not seen others describe this phenomenon yet so I will report what I am seeing.
Capital, stored wealth, money itself — and all of the power that flows from that — seeks to expand itself. That’s what it has always done. As many have pointed out, capital follows the logic of a cancer cell — endless expansion, no matter the results for the system as a whole. (I’m not criticizing capitalism per se but rather the sort of predatory monopoly capitalism that always makes a mess of things.)
For most of human history the way that capital expanded is through the exploitation of nature (taming & breeding animals, farming, and mining). Exploiting nature on a large scale requires a lot of labor so the ruling class developed slavery, serfdom, castes, indentured servitude, addiction, etc. Warfare enables one group to take resources from another so the lower classes were also turned into soldiers. By designing societies to exploit nature, people, and others over the last 500 years the members of the ruling class have obtained so much wealth that they are now able to direct the course of human events throughout the developed world.
Now capital has figured out a new gold mine — the exploitation of the body itself. The organs, cells, and genetic material of the body can be enclosed, captured, enslaved, “legally” stolen, harnessed, and otherwise made to serve capital. As I have observed previously, mRNA shots turn every cell in the body into a miniature concentration camp engaged in forced labor for capital. This biological capture extends to the natural world too as the genetic material in our food is patented, manipulated, and tortured to produce more wealth for the ruling class. And then all of the human health harms caused by the genetic and chemical manipulation of nature can be further monetized by treating them, ineffectively, with more pharmaceuticals. It’s a perfect business model — until the entire system collapses.
The era that we live in now can best be described as the Iatrogenocene — where all relationships on earth are mediated by the harmful involvement of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.
Total wealth on earth is estimated to be just north of $400 trillion dollars. The ruling class already owns half of it. Via the iatrogenocide — creating and “treating” chronic illness — the ruling class will be able to strip the remaining $200 trillion from the poor and working class and turn us into permanent slaves once again.
II. Ideology as a tool for covering up crimes against humanity
All of the above is rather odious. At some point the poor and working classes might get tired of being exploited and rise up to kill the ruling class (not as often as one might think, but it happens occasionally throughout history). So the ruling class requires elaborate systems of obfuscation in order to cover their tracks and continue their exploitation.
In the earliest times, this was accomplished through religions that were constitutive of the state. The ruling class — from the Pharaohs to various kings — declared that they were closer to God than the peasants. Anyone who opposed the ruling class thus hated God (not a good look in a theocracy). Human sacrifice (from Aztec & Mayan temple ceremonies to drawing & quartering heretics in medieval Europe) reinforced the point that the ruling class, much like God, really did decide matters of life and death. This hierarchy was considered the normal way to order human societies.
Over the last five centuries, the obfuscation of the crimes of the ruling class was partly accomplished through high art. Who can complain about slavery and colonialism when the “centre” (England, continental Europe, and then America) uses some of that ill-gotten wealth to create beautiful paintings, symphonies, museums, philosophy, and then later, science. It creates the impression, sometimes even spoken aloud, that ‘the exploiters really are the best people so even if there is some pain (well, genocide) along the way, it’s okay because the exploiters are creating civilization itself!’ I really like the arts (and indeed they are often a tool of liberation) but if you follow the money, the history of high art and empire are often intertwined.
In our current era, as the exploitation has grown even more despicable (global biological fascism), the ruling class has needed to come up with even more clever tactics. Enter postmodernism and left authoritarianism. The ruling class literally figured out how to take their fiercest critics and weaponize them to serve capital. It’s really their most extraordinary achievement — a level of mind control beyond anything the Pharaohs could have dreamed of.
III. Postmodernism
Postmodernism, led by the French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, declared that it is impossible to determine objective truth. The only “truth” is the relative perspective of each individual person. Since its introduction in the 1960s, postmodernism has metastasized throughout the social sciences, art, and culture and now is the predominant ideology of the left.
Postmodernism makes things disappear on a society-wide scale. If there is no objective truth that can be known, voilà, no structural problems to be solved other than our own psyches that can be treated with drugs or psychotherapy. This strange ideology is incredibly valuable to capital. The ruling class wants to do horrible things to our bodies. And postmodernism has become a Magic Eraser of these crimes.
So the autism epidemic becomes, through the magic transmogrification of postmodernism, the Neurodiversity Movement!™️ It’s no longer the largest chemical poisoning event in history, it’s simply A Different (Maybe Better!?) Way of Being!™️ This is not a problem to be solved, this is a civil rights movement to be celebrated!™️
Capital also figured out that they can make $1.3 million per person they “transition” to a “different gender” via chemicals and surgery. Increasingly the business plan targets queer, autistic, and mentally ill kids, many of whom may not be able to give informed consent. This is troubling to people with common sense. Enter postmodernism that re-brands this violent assault on the body as “gender-affirming care”. It’s striking that every word in that phrase is incorrect — they are referring to sex not gender, there is nothing affirming about telling people they are born in the wrong body, and chemical poisons and radical surgeries that often cause pain and complications for a lifetime are the opposite of “care”. But since there can be no objective truth, all that matters is the perspective of those with sex dysphoria (regardless of the fact that those views may change later, but cannot actually be reversed). Under the guiding hand of postmodernism, the wide-scale poisoning, mutilation, and castration of sexual minorities becomes something to be celebrated, the highest form of civilization (while any regret is hidden from view).
Under postmodernism, any form of toxic injury is made to disappear, never to be investigated, and the injured are celebrated but not actually supported in the weirdest display of internal mental colonization in history.
However, the reliance on postmodernism as the point of the spear for capital creates its own set of problems. If there can be no objective truth, then it’s really hard to force people to do things. And capital really really wants to force people to do things. Enter left authoritarianism.
IV. Left authoritarianism
Over the last 50 years, the political left in the United States has been a loose coalition of classical liberals, postmodernists, left authoritarians (the remnants of the Marxist left), and various interests groups — women, Blacks, Latinos, environmentalists, and LGBT persons. Democrats got tired of losing elections so in the 1992 presidential race, Bill Clinton brought capital (Pharma and Silicon Valley) into the coalition. But when the ruling class wants to institute global biological fascism, they really need the ideological muscle of left authoritarianism.
We saw this during Covid. The CIA injected a bit of fear into society in January 2020 and suddenly the left authoritarians in public health and the media were barking that there is The Science™️, it is known only by corporations and the state, everyone must mask up, isolate in their homes, and drive themselves to their poisoning appointments in stadium parking lots, convention centers, and pharmacies.
Because both postmodernism and left authoritarianism are just ideological props to cover up the underlying crimes, no one bothered to point out that left authoritarianism is the exact opposite of postmodernism. They are just deployed to suit the particular occasion and the paid talking heads in the media will read whatever script is handed to them that day.
What’s so incredibly sad about this, is the number of useful idiots in the legacy media and academia who unironically go along with all of this. One day they are postmodern, the next day they are authoritarian, the next day they are fascist. They just want to be part of the in-crowd, they do not care about the content of the programming. This is the case throughout the bourgeoisie — the earnest little squirrels at the NY Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, New Yorker, CNN, MSNBC, and throughout academia, furiously typing away every day to participate in the narrative, never once realizing that they are actually viewed with contempt by the ruling class they faithfully serve.
V. Where is the political right in all of this?
Over the last 50 years, the political right has been an odd coalition of the ruling class (Wall Street bankers, Fortune 500 companies), the rural poor, evangelical Christians, and libertarians. The tacit agreement that held the coalition together was that the rich would get low taxes and no regulations in return for the base getting token rhetoric on cultural issues (support for religion in public life, opposition to homosexuality, support for the Second Amendment, and opposition to abortion). Usually what happened is that the rich got everything they wanted and the base got platitudes with no action. With Trump naming three justices to the Supreme Court, the Republican base is suddenly having all of their wishes granted.
In the Covid crisis, the Wall Street faction of the Republican Party was horrible. Massive corporations including Amazon, Home Depot, and Target used the lockdowns to increase their market share. Every company except Pharma loses money when workers are injured by vaccines, but the big corporations pushed them on their workers anyway. We know that these large corporations are amoral but during Covid they were immoral.
But there were two bright spots in the Republican coalition.
The latest survey from the Pew Research Center shows that evangelical Christians have changed their minds about vaccines in greater numbers than just about any other large group. In the space of just the last four years their support for mandatory vaccinations has dropped by 39 points. This suggests that evangelicals are better at putting real world evidence ahead of ideology than many of those who pride themselves on their scientific objectivity.
About 20 Republicans in Congress have been good but the rest are as useless as the bougiecrats. The Libertarian Party and most long-established conservative non-profit organizations completely forgot all of their values in the face of fear.
But the “small l” libertarian think tank, the Brownstone Institute, has done some of the best work in the world to stop the rise of global Pharma fascism. Several times per week the Brownstone Institute publishes the best writing from dissident academics to help us understand the crisis and develop solutions. The Brownstone Institute also publishes books, hosts an annual conference, and organizes regular in-person gatherings to build a counter-hegemonic movement for freedom.
VI. Conclusion
Ideas matter. Postmodernism, authoritarianism, and Pharma fascism are destined for the slag heap of history. But in the meantime they will continue to cause a lot of carnage.
If we survive the current crisis, it will be because of this new coalition of disaffected Democrats together with evangelical Christians and “small l” libertarians who reject postmodernism, authoritarianism, and fascism and fight with everything we’ve got for freedom, rationality, and common sense.
Blessings to the warriors. 🙌
Prayers for everyone fighting to stop the iatrogenocide. 🙌
Huzzah for everyone building the alternative society our hearts know is possible. ✊
If you are able, please support the Brownstone Institute.
In the comments, please let me know what’s on your mind.
As always, I welcome any corrections.
Sinclair Lewis once told us that when fascism eventually comes to America it will be promoted in the name of freedom and justified via appeals to the dominant tribalistic/cultic "god"
That having been said if this project obtains the necessary political power to enforce its all-inclusive agendas then, in my opinion such a scenario will have finally manifested.
http://www.project2025.org
It has the deep-pocket backing of at least 72 right-wing think tanks etc.
I was reminded of the critique of capitalism in this article while I recently watched this documentary:
https://youtu.be/mhOOziH7QAo?si=M-Mr905RhbyztxXf
There hasn't been true, free-market capitalism in the US for more than a hundred years. Demonizing it through the lens of what we've seen and lived in our lifetimes is absurd.
A better understanding of capitalism might be what can be gleaned from the diary of the pilgrim William Bradford, which may not describe capitalism specifically, but does draw powerful conclusions about the psychological underpinnings that support it.
The above documentary illustrates just how far capitalism has been distorted by the government from the fundamental human nature of Bradford's observations:
Exactly 400 years ago, 102 Pilgrims were staring down what promised to be a brutal winter, after first coming to shore, and setting up a tiny village in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The industrious, God-fearing Pilgrims decided to pull together and pool their resources and efforts to better survive winter. They created a commune, and elected a Governor to call the shots.
By the spring of 1621, half of the Pilgrims had died from starvation, disease, and exposure.
One of the Pilgrims, William Bradford, explained in his journal that communal living “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.”
Young single men found it unjust that they had to do all the hard work, but received no more reward for it. And wives “deemed it a kind of slavery” to be forced to do chores for men besides their husbands.
Clearly, this little experiment in collectivizing society had failed. So they reversed course, and tried something new; every man for himself.
This might sound harsh, or even counterproductive. But on the contrary, Bradford explained:
This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use... The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.