We racist-sexist-homophobes claim to understand our liberal friends in the ruling class.
And in my consequential theory of information, I say that the invention of the printing press by the German Johannes Gutenberg propelled the educated class to political power over the three hundred years from 1440 to the mid-1700s.
a single Renaissance movable-type printing press could produce up to 3,600 pages per workday, compared to forty by hand-printing and a few by hand-copying.
So, about 100 times better than hand-printing and 1,000 times better than monks on parchment.
But I say that once the educated class rose to power in the 18th century revolutions it had to find what Italian Gaetano Mosca called a “political formula,” a justification for its power. It determined that the best political formula would be to pose as the saviors and allies of the oppressed.
First the workers of the Industrial Revolution, then women, then blacks, then gays and lesbians, and now transgenders. After World War II it was the Jews of the Holocaust; now it is the Palestinians of Gaza.
Back in the old days, in the travails of disease or famine, it was not uncommon for the poor to riot for food and loot the grain storage barns of the feudal lords or the city merchants.
In 1830 agricultural manual workers in England responded to the introduction of threshing machines that threatened their livelihood with the Captain Swing riots.
As the Industrial Revolution proceeded industrial workers began to strike in response to layoffs and pay cuts in the deflations after the periodic wars.
At some point the educated class decided to co-opt the riots of the dispossessed, and use them as the means to protect and extend educated-class power. At the same time the approved narrative gradually reduced the association of riots with violence. Riots became marches became rallies became demonstrations became protests became peaceful protests. This is, of course, a lie. The whole point of all mass street action is to create a show of force.
Obviously, it is not enough for the rulers to succor the oppressed victims and pat them on the head when they peacefully protest. Just as important is to educate the next generation to carry on the sacred pilgrimage to succor the helpless and lead them on the arduous journey to the Promised Land.
When did the ruling class seriously start this? Probably some time after World War II. Probably in the massive expansion of higher education in the 1960s. A 1960s activist like Tom Hayden probably came up outside the “system,” through the various socialist organizations that blossomed in the first half of the 20th century. But the Sixties activists were clearly tolerated by the ruling class, even if they made life difficult for the Democratic administration of Lyndon Johnson, and the riots at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 helped elect Richard Nixon.
What is clear is that today lefty activism is a giant enterprise, taught in the schools, pushed in the university, financed by billionaires, believed in by millions. It is the regime ideology. You want to rise in the world? Believe in and practice the ideology, just like rich girl and NPR CEO Katherine Maher, and you will go far.
Is this a pain in the ass and a violation of everything America stands for? Yes, of course. But for me as a student of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt and French noble Bertrand de Jouvenel it all makes sense. It’s just the way politics works.
With Schmitt, the political is the distinction between friend and enemy. This means that the politician instinctively wants to gift his supporters and to destroy his enemies. So the activism culture is all about a band of brothers — and now sisters — who fight together to bring justice to the world, using political power.
With de Jouvenel, politics is about Power, and once you have Power you have to decide what to do with it. You need a project to use your power — for the good of the world, of course.
And if you go back to Nicholas Wade and Before the Dawn it all comes down to chimpanzees appropriating and defending food-growing territory so the females and bear and raise the young. “Land-appropriation” is what Carl Schmitt calls it in The Nomos of the Earth.
And it makes sense. If you are a ruling class you have Power — as Bertrand de Jouvenel capitalizes it in On Power.
But I say that with the modern market economy the enemy problem is much reduced, and the land-appropriation doesn’t make sense because we can grow food in Canada and manufacture EVs in China and tally up at the end of the month.
So I say that One Fine Day the whole activism grift will go away. Of course it will, because every mass movement ends up as a racket. Because activism doesn’t help humans thrive in the modern world.
But the question is: how do we show our amusement and scorn for the little kiddies that think they are saving the world with their peaceful protest to support the victims?
We could say that our activist friends are practicing “luxury beliefs” or “virtue signaling.”
We could say that they are “trust-fund flagellants” engaged in “rich-brat brawling.” All in good fun, of course.
But I think the bigger problem is that using political power to help the helpless doesn’t help. The whole problem with the educated-class regime of the last century is that helping the workers didn’t really help them acquire the culture and the independence of the middle class. Helping women didn’t liberate them from violent men, and whatever the law, abortion means killing babies. Helping blacks didn’t lift them out of poverty into middle class competence. Helping gays and lesbians has ended up forcing transgenders in the women’s restroom and women’s sports.
You won’t lift the oppressed out of oppression with politics at the helm, because political leaders instinctively want their supporters to be dependent on them. That’s what Lyndon Johnson understood when he enacted his Great Society and commented that he would have the [N-word] voting Democrat for the next 200 years.
I believe in an America that is better than that. But I know that it can never happen as long as politicians are dishing out 40 percent of GDP every year to their supporters.