You Can’t Fix Stupid – or Evil
Decades ago, when I began my serious study of the Marxist-Leninist historical worldview of scientific socialism, tutored by some of the foremost experts at the time, I recall being somewhat intimidated.
The formative writings of the 1800s were dense and plodding, hardly seeming to be the ideas that would rearrange the human landscape – or tear the world apart by reframing post-World War II realities. Reading Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’s works was like eating broken glass: painful and dangerous on the first bite. Far from intimidated by the time I finished, I remember thinking, “This stuff is gibberish.”
Following the convoluted arc of Marxist-Leninist thought through the early 20th century was like trekking along a dry arroyo. Most of the time, it, too, contained lifeless and parched expositions of “scientific socialism” and “dialectical materialism” disconnected from the general revelations of life in the real world.
Then, infrequently, these theories were punctuated with historical thunderstorms and raging waters of terrifying violence and viciousness. Stupidity turned into evil.
What brings this to mind is the meltdown of the corrupt, obsequious national media complex and what remains of the Democrat Party after Donald J. Trump escaped their well-laid plans to either murder or imprison him.
Modern History
No description of the plight of the now completely radicalized Democrats could be more revealing of their true character than the “outrage” over Elon Musk and the violence that has broken out against privately owned Tesla vehicles and dealerships. Wild-eyed, radicalized lunatics attacking the property of someone they don’t even know, as though that might change the course of politics in Washington, also reflects the transformation of stupidity to evil. The fact that the party leaders refuse to denounce it for what it is suggests the rot runs deep.
Of course, the George Floyd riots of the summer of 2020 – an actual insurrection – caused billions of dollars in damage to countless private businesses and government buildings and resulted in the deaths of at least 19 people; meanwhile hundreds of police officers across 68 cities and counties were injured as Antifa, BLM, and other assorted Marxist-communist groups rampaged against innocents. Leftist district attorneys funded by globalist George Soros refused to bring charges against the perpetrators; state-compliant media on the scene dismissed the burning buildings behind them as the result of “mostly peaceful demonstrations,” and Democrats high in the federal government urged their minions to continue doing what they were doing.
How did we get here? And how did the Democrat Party collapse entirely into a radical socialist paradigm of glorifying death and destruction while rejecting human freedom? Look no further than the punctuated history of violence and its infatuation with compulsion and death that attends these ideologies.
European History
In Germany and Italy, especially, communist theorists sprouted like spring gardens after the 1917 Russian Revolution led by Vladimir Lenin, who put meat on the bones of Marx’s arcane theories. The revolution’s monstrous violence spilled over into competing communist groups in the West, and soon enough, they were even killing each other.
A little more than a decade later, the Spanish Civil War became a “cause” for Western intellectuals, as the Communist International Brigades supplied money and fighters from dozens of countries in a civil war that took perhaps half a million lives, including mass executions.
Meanwhile, in Germany, the National Socialist Party of Adolf Hitler was busy killing or locking up communist party activists or driving them out of public life – not so much because their ultimate demonic goals were much different, but because the “will to power” was so strong. There, we find the infamous Frankfurt Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt, a group aiming to develop a Marxist interdisciplinary social theory for the world. As Hitler’s grip became tighter, many of the Frankfurt scholars fled Germany in fear for their lives – and regrettably, some landed at Columbia University in the US, picking up right where they had left off.
The key principle of developing the “new theory,” or critical theory as it has come to be known, marries Marxist theory to the entire inventory of human social sciences and interactions to establish the intellectual foundation for a “scientific” government and society. In other words, this isn’t just about capitalism: It’s now about total control of the rhythm of life.
Critical Theory in the West
Since the late 1960s and 1970s, Marxist critical theory has been a significant and growing force in the study of law, literature, history, journalism, and the social sciences. It was, and remains, a complex and multifaceted mix of disparate purposes and ideas that divides even the minds of Marxist-Leninists. And, like Marx’s writing, its voluminous written reasoning and rationales, even by some of its most acclaimed luminaries, are ponderous and lumbering — sometimes unintelligible — explanations, descriptions, and prescriptions that amount to words without a destination.
The only connecting tissue in the Marxist worldview is that Christianity and its foundational moral ethos must be destroyed, and the sovereignty of the individual and classical reason must yield to scientific socialism — and its core theory that the institutions of Western culture psychologically oppress everyone. No longer is communism only for the “workers of the world.” Now, everyone is a victim (unless they are white, male, or Christian).
The Fathers of Cultural Marxism
Two crucial voices (among many) from the early twentieth century were instrumental in shaping what we now know as “cultural Marxism” and “critical theory” and the horrendous violence and social destruction loosed on Western civilization. They were heralds to what we are seeing now.
One was György Lukács (also known as Georg), a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, politician, literary historian, and author who championed “cultural terrorism” (some credit him with the phrase).
“I saw the revolutionary destruction of society as the one and only solution to the cultural contradictions,” he would write. He identified Christianity as the “primary obstacle to revolution and the primary oppressor in the master-slave regime.” Also, while serving as an official in the Hungarian government, he introduced the early sexualization of children in schools, which he wrote would “crumble the pillars of society.” (He was forced to leave Hungary and fled to Germany, where he met Felix Weil, who became a wealthy patron helping to found the Frankfurt School.)
The other important link in “new Marxism” was Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist whose abiding contribution was that the “revolution” of communism would never succeed in Western societies as it had in Russia. Instead, the institutions of Western culture – especially religion and education – must be suborned from within (an echo of Lenin’s “vanguard” of revolutionaries within societies), giving the communists a “position of power” (a process that would become known as the long march through the institutions).
After all these decades, I remain a student. However, my judgment hasn’t changed. Marxism, at its foundation, is anti-intellectual, not intellectual. The old saying “You can’t fix stupid” fits here. Undoubtedly, intelligent and educated men and women conjured up Marxist critical theory and still attend to its upkeep.
But being clever doesn’t mean you aren’t stupid or willfully ignorant. Or evil.
Two critical constants emerge when examining the long view of Marxist theory across its various iterations over the past 150 years, culminating in its current pervasive influence on Western governments, academia, education, and the behavioral sciences. One is that regardless of the packaging, the radical left is at war with God. The other constant is that by rejecting logic, reason, and the universal moral order, the radicals continually leave the door open for evil to prevail over stupidity.
In the meantime, garage your Tesla.
Michael Giere writes award-winning commentary and essays on the intersection of politics, culture and faith. He is a critically acclaimed novelist (The White River Series) and short-story writer. A former candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas, he was a senior executive in both the Reagan and the Bush (41) administrations, and in 2016 served on the Trump Transition Team.