The Neo-Marxist, this Creature of Myth
There are those who would have it that Western Civilisation perish, if their selfish desires were to go unfulfilled. Their personal failures make them hate the system they operate within, the fairest and most rational one the human mind and human hand could create. They are a paradoxical creature of high ambition and low, animal cunning; of high learning and lecherous, base desires. They are an amalgam of different forces, but led by common resentments: they are the Neo-Marxists (and its now-extinct ancestor, the SJWs), these creatures of myth, that are nevertheless nowhere to be found in reality, appearing only to exist in reactionaries' fantasies and projections.
Like the figure of the Jew in Nazi Germany, the Neo-Marxist’s hands are everywhere: from “communist” insurgencies in Western states such as BLM and Antifa, to the forces behind the diversity initiatives and dystopian panopticism of big companies like Facebook/Meta and Google.
He coordinates the downfall of Western Civilisation by having Facebook and Reddit arguments and supporting the introduction of sex education in schools, as well as having the audacity to state that perhaps women can choose over their bodies and souls. Of course, at the same time, he also polices social media, infringing on free speech by banning law-abiding, God-fearing “normal” citizens with alternative historical interpretations such as Holocaust denial, preventing them from participating in healthy debate just because of their rhetorical devices (such as hate speech and race realism).
He is of course both a hyper-intellectual, physically degenerate ivory tower elite university gender studies professor alienated from the world of “real” people, one who has had the privilege of never having worked a day in his life (a privilege afforded by the system he hates!!!) [1], as well as a brutal Antifa street thug lashing out at the police out of resentment, hate, confusion, moral degeneracy and perhaps even mental illness, possibly with gang/mob connections.
Both big corporations led by Gates, Soros, Zuckerberg etc., and big governments are hand in hand with them, pushing a nefarious agenda of the dissolution of values. Instead of “Western Judeo-Christian” values such as Capitalism, competition, hierarchy, Social Darwinism, consumerism and individualism, he proposes perverse and immoral alien alternatives such as freedom, justice, tolerance, equity, brotherhood, peace, empathy and the full development of the individual.
The image used for the “Triggered SJW” meme, often captioned and circulated in the late 2010s in anti-SJW internet memes [2]. This discourse was given some (apparent) intellectual heft by Jordan Peterson’s irresponsible dissemination of the concept of “post-modern neo-Marxism”, a conflation of everything the Professor thinks he doesn’t like in 20th century philosophy
He hates God because he is unfit to keep God’s law, his sin is too great.
He hates the family because his is dysfunctional, and he is unable to create another one for himself due to his sexual, moral and physical degeneracy.
He hates the “natural” organic community because he detests links of shared linguistic, cultural and kinship relations because he himself has none, or has severed them long ago out of spite for not being recognised or accepted due to his rebellious/unconventional ways. He wants to replace the natural communal hierarchy with artificial, impersonal links of control to impose conformity and increase his own status or bring down others to his own level.
He craves power but hates hierarchy because he cannot climb to its top. He wants to replace the natural hierarchy which now exists with an artificial hierarchy which would place him at the top, where he feels he rightfully belongs, or flatten it altogether, to drag all to the ground.
He hates Capitalism because he has no useful skills to sell in the market for a “fair price” and thus unable to participate in capitalist exchange and capital accumulation. Like in other areas, he is unable to compete here and blames the game instead of himself.
He hates science because science establishes facts about human nature and the social and economic systems we have created that go against his feelings. Science establishes objective truth, but the Neo-Marxist must become an epistemic anti-realist and moral relativist led by emotions in order to justify his beliefs, which are empirically proven to have led to the criminal regimes of the 20th century and are thus scientifically discredited.
He engages in climate alarmism to attract attention to his cause, and mask his real intentions under ecological rhetoric.
He hates the realities of sex and sexuality because his own confused sense of sex, ultimately because he is soft and weak.
I feel the need to stop at this point. To remark that this straw man caricature is a simple rhetorical device is besides the point. For anyone with a passing familiarity with the history of the 20th century, they will immediately recognise that this is nothing else but a continuation of the traditions of Cultural Bolshevism, of Red Scare rhetoric, Cultural Marxism and so on. It is, in essence, the reactionary’s definition of the immanent Enemy: at the same time pitifully weak as well as all-powerful, and at the same time within and without. The newest iteration of this image, the Neo-Marxist, this creature of myth, is indicative rather of a larger problem in our society – namely, our caricatural depictions of our opponents – and the negative social outcomes arising from this, especially a total lack of understanding for the other side.
Do not misunderstand me. I am not proposing to make a priority of empathizing with the reactionaries and racists peddling this idiotic narrative of a Neo-Marxist movement controlling events from the shadows, conflating the crushing power of monopoly capital and the neoliberal state with the meagre movements contesting it in whatever ineffective or misguided ways they might. This is a materially false claim, we know as much. And while they would obviously not argue with us on the ‘net posting article-length comments if they were not alienated, distraught and suffering at some level, I would argue they suffer not as much because of what is happening to them, but rather because they fear for what they might lose. They are prepared to fight and go to any bloody lengths to preserve what meagre privileges they still have, not understanding that they will be stripped away all the same as soon as the system has made use of them to crush its opponents. As such, I feel they have made their choice and they are quite low on the objective suffering scale.
But simply insulting them and calling them names won’t work either. To understand them, we must first see how they see us. And this would be a good moment to truly take a deep, piercing look into the mirror and be critical of what looks back.
Footnotes
- It is telling that this is what many people unfamiliar with postgraduate degrees and research work believe about academia in general. As a graduate student myself, I can but respond with a joke a colleague used to tell: “It is said slavery was abolished in the West. This is untrue; it’s just that it is now called getting a PhD”. Such programs usually afford a minuscule payment while having a great opportunity cost (3-6 years); they usually entail quite a bit of lab work (in my experience, either unpaid or criminally underpaid) and teaching (usually unpaid), both of which are huge time-sinks, and neither of which is usually closely related to your own research. In my country at least, you usually need to get a day job to survive – this usually means you are working 60+ hour weeks if you also do your own research work in a sustained manner (and if you don’t, you will not be able to finish in time and you will run out of funding altogether). I know in other countries getting a day job is even prohibited. I have no idea how, without family or community support, those people survive. In any case, far from the comfy fantasy of the ivory tower, life in academia is much like the state of nature: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and (possibly) short, depending on how ambitious or crazy you are.
- Know your meme, https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/triggered-feminist--2