The Great Reset, then, is not merely a conspiracy theory; it is an open, avowed, and planned project, and it is well underway. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. November 3, 2021).
A specter is haunting the world: the increasing prospect of a new totalitarianism. Unlike the specter of communism, this specter originates from those in power and not from underground revolutionaries—although communism may always be an undertaking of elites. Rather than haunting only Europe, this specter casts its long shadow across the future of all humanity, such that one wonders how one might plan, if at all, for this future. Delivered at the LP Mises Caucus Take Human Action Tour. Fairfax, VA. October 2, 2021. (Click here or on title.)
It is dusk in the sleepy town of Zelienople, PA. I’m sitting in a chair beside my mother’s bed. I gaze at her, and then out the window. Clouds barely mask a sinking sun, setting over the quietude of quaint country houses, fields of grass, woods, and the church she used to attend. Mom is in a deep sleep and can no longer open her eyes. Her breaths are shallow. She occasionally emits a very slight and tremulous murmur. It seems as if she teeters on a great ledge, unevenly balanced between two worlds.
A specter is haunting the world: the increasing prospect of a new totalitarianism. Unlike the specter of communism, this specter originates from those in power and not from underground revolutionaries—although communism may always be an undertaking of elites. Rather than haunting only Europe, this specter casts its long shadow across the future of all humanity, such that one wonders how one might plan, if at all, for this future. (Delivered at the LP Mises Caucus Take Human Action Tour. Fairfax, VA. October 2, 2021.)
The covid regime has extended and deepened the epistemic crisis inaugurated by postmodernism and practical postmodernism. Science has devolved into a series of non sequiturs backed by force. Science has become postmodern. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. September 16, 2021.)
The West's rush to embrace the Chinese regime's bizarre lockdown method of disease control exposed just how little Western regimes actually care about human rights or the rule of law. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. September 10, 2021.)
A specter is haunting the world: the increasing prospect of a new totalitarianism under the extended covid response. Unlike the specter of communism, or the specter of “dissent” to communist dictatorship that Václav Havel ironically identified in his groundbreaking essay “The Power of the Powerless,”[1] this specter originates from those in power and not from the revolutionary or the powerless.[2] And rather than haunting only Europe or Eastern Europe, this specter casts its long shadow across the future of all humanity, such that one wonders how one might plan, if at all, for this future. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. August 18, 2021.)
In the fall of 2016, I was a left communist. As any Marxist can tell you, ideology can blind one to the insights that might disrupt one’s political adhesions. Only it was Marxist ideology itself that blinded me. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. June 6, 2021.)
We should be quite skeptical when states impose the opinion of minority groups on the majority through special programs in schools and elsewhere. Such programs likely involve “positive discrimination” against particular groups, consistent with state objectives. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. June 30, 2021.)
The story of my postmodern education begins with a successful escape – from the “prison house” (Frederic Jameson) of corporate America – where I had been consigned for nine years – and into what I took for the last remaining haven of intellectual independence – academia. I would learn much later that academia demands as much if not more conformity than any other corporate field. In fact, the conformity penetrates much more deeply. You not only have to buy into the ideology, you must rehearse and recapitulate it without fail. Otherwise, you are deemed politically regressive. You might even be a “Nazi.”
I went ahead, leaving a relatively high-income position to undertake what some told me was not only impossible but possibly insane. I had a few friends in the know. They repeated the well-worn truisms. “There are no jobs in academia.” “As a white male, your chances of getting a job in the humanities are quite remote.” “You can’t raise three children, do full-time graduate work, teach at least one class per semester (required for the tuition remission and stipend), and hold down yet another job, all at the same time.” These warnings did not dissuade me. In fact, remarkably, they strengthened my resolve. Gretchen went along with it and picked up some of the slack money-wise by eventually returning to her career in property management.
However, the career path I’d chosen involved transformations of a wholly different kind than these. The sharp reduction in income, the many nights of curtailed sleep, the sacrifice of almost all other forms of “entertainment,” the stress and strain on family and marriage, and the certain prospect of uncertain prospects: these were only the preconditions of the story, not the story itself.
There is little evidence that Mill advocated an unhampered marketplace of ideas. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary—that he preferred a kind of “affirmative action for unconventional opinions.” (Originally published on the Mises Wire. June 22, 2021.)
As I stated in Chapter Two, as a result of the fallout from my outing as the “‘Deplorable’ NYU Prof,” I found myself besieged and attacked by leftists of all stripes. Likewise, I inevitably questioned my political commitments. Could a political isolato such as I had become be a committed communist? The communists that I had known now resembled tyrants more than anything else. I now saw the authoritarianism and embryonic totalitarianism that had been hidden beneath a thin veneer of egalitarian rhetoric. Could I be numbered among a tribe whose members were so monstrous? No, I could not call myself a communist. Besides, to be a communist, one necessarily belonged to a community of some sort. No island is a communist.
The overall tendency, then, has been toward the corporate-state monopolization over all aspects of life, with increasing control by approved principals over information and opinion, economic production, and the political sphere….Nevertheless, and lest I be the bearer of only bad news, we are beginning to see chinks in the armor of woke-covid, corporate socialist totalitarianism. (Delivered at the Libertarian Party Mises Caucus Take Human Action Bash. May 15, 2021.)
Autoethnographies place the self within a social, historical context. In this one, Michael Rectenwald approaches the free market from the standpoint of his own experience. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. May 8, 2021.)
The ideas of critical race theory and critical whiteness studies shield a ruling elite from vengeance by attempting to make the mass of white people the scapegoat for their own crimes. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. April 29, 2021. Audio version.)
The current political trend is toward corporate-state monopolization over all aspects of life, with increasing control by approved "private" principals over information and opinion, economic production, and the political sphere. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. April 22, 2021.)
The reality of corporate socialism makes no sense to you because you cannot think outside of your Marxist ideological box. You draw on textbook (Marxist) definitions of socialism and capitalism. You believe the pabulum that socialism is the takeover and control of the means of production by the working class. That’s ludicrous and never has and never will be the case.
Postmodernism lends itself to totalitarianism. Once beliefs aren't constrained by the object world, an idea can't be wrong, and the intellectual battleground becomes a political one, a struggle to impose particular ideas on others. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. April 5, 2021.)
The Great Reset would bring about what I’m calling “corporate socialism” or “‘capitalism’ with Chinese characteristics.” I’ll explain. (Originally published in the CLG News. March 10, 2021.)
I have been quite explicit that what we are now dealing with under the covid response, woke ideology, cancel culture, Big Tech censorship, nonstop media propaganda and gaslighting, an armed and barricaded capitol, a Democratic-controlled government set on giving away money and allowing unfettered immigration, the abrogation of religious expression and association, the forcing of perverse values down our throats, the demand that we deny the reality of our senses and avow utter absurdities—the list could go on—is totalitarianism. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. March 4, 2021.)
