Unlike orthodox Marxism, wokeness is primarily a “morality” based on an abstract notion of social justice, which takes its inspiration and methods from Mao’s Cultural Revolution. (Originally published in Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.)
A Wayne State University English Professor, Steven Shaviro, was suspended (with pay) for writing a Facebook post stating that it would be better to kill “bigots” rather than “to shout them down”… Leaving aside, for the moment, the question of whether Shaviro’s statement itself should be protected under the First Amendment, it must be noted that such attitudes as his follow directly from a monumental piece of Leftist “theory,” namely Herbert Marcuse’s 1965 essay, “Repressive Tolerance”—as well as from postmodern notions about speech as equivalent to action. (Originally published by The Resistance Press. March 31, 2023.)
Calls for reparations to black people are based on the notion of collective white guilt. But collective guilt is a false notion, and reparations based on it would violate the property rights of those whose ancestors gained nothing from slavery, even if such parties benefited from so-called discrimination. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. March 16, 2023.)
It is tempting, as Naomi Wolf has done recently, to ascribe the breakdown of Western civilization to the debasing of “Judeo-Christian” ethics and the reemergence of malignant supernatural forces. Witnessing the many assaults on the infrastructure and social order of the United States of late, I wouldn’t rule out metaphysical causality either. But to blame the pagan gods, or, in specifically Christian terms, to blame Satan, and not his legions, is to take comfort in an obscured perspective on the current global arrangement. To lay culpability strictly on gaseous, unknowable forces is to let the global elite off the hook. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. March 1, 2023.)
The fifty-third annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) brought together fifty-two world leaders, seventeen hundred corporate executives, sundry artists, and other personalities to address “Cooperation in a Fragmented World.” Fragmentation is the nemesis of the World Economic Forum and its United Nations (UN) and corporate partners. “Fragmentation” means that segments of the world population are not adhering to the agenda of climate change catastrophism and the precepts of the Great Reset. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. January 24, 2023.)
Before grappling with the main components of the Great Reset, a history of the idea and its development is in order. The history intersects with “conspiracy theory,” which the Great Reset project seems to generate, as if spontaneously. It is as though the architects of the Great Reset intentionally sprinkle breadcrumbs that lead potential detractors into conspiratorial thinking, thereby discrediting and deflecting legitimate criticism and concerns. To avoid such pitfalls, here I merely present a timeline of this history and leave conjecture to the reader. It’s not as if I am concerned about being labeled a “conspiracy theorist.” As I will discuss in a chapter devoted to the question of conspiracy theory per se, the blithe dismissal and/or routine denigration of conspiracy theories is epistemologically unsound. My aim is to show just why the Great Reset has generated such speculation. (Click here or on title.)
More than 60 years ago, Mao launched the disastrous Great Leap Forward. Progressive elites today are trying to force a Great Leap II in the form of the Great Reset. If implemented, it will be even more disastrous than Mao's original folly. (Excerpt fromThe Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty. Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. December 27, 2022.)
By now it should be perfectly clear that the most prominent Big Digital companies are not strictly private, for-profit companies. As I argued in Google Archipelago, they are also state apparatuses, or governmentalities, undertaking state functions, including censorship, propaganda, and surveillance. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. November 30, 2022.)
We are told that stakeholder capitalism will benefit all stakeholders. But in interfering with the market economy, stakeholder capitalism represents a grave injustice to the real stakeholders of businesses--not only to their owners, employees, and customers but also to society at large. Today, I mean to show you just how stakeholder or woke capitalism poses a threat, not only to the free enterprise system, but also to individual liberty and a free society. (Video. Presented at Hillsdale College, Parallel Economies. November 13, 2022.)
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and his immediate firing of top brass represents a potential weakening of the Big Digital woke cartel that controls information, censors content, censures and bans users, and serves as a propaganda arm of leftist totalitarian statists. Given their cooperation with and promotion of leftist statism, it is more than evident that Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others have served as state apparatuses, as what I have called “governmentalities.” Musk’s takeover not only represents a potential blow to the woke cartel but also to the globalist statists whom it so assiduously serves. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. October 31, 2022.)
I’ll begin with a provocative thesis: socialism is ideological and free market thinking, while involving myth, is nonideological. I will show why socialism is ideological and why free market thinking involves myth but is nonideological by defining the terms myth and ideology and distinguishing them from each other. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. October 21, 2022.)
The future may be determined by competition between two distinct authoritarian leftist regimes producing AI systems capable of world domination: the Chinese version and the U.S version—although, as discussed below, their differentiation may be difficult to maintain. Nevertheless, to point to distinctions that are still possible and clearly useful, I call the Chinese version “AI with Chinese Characteristics,” an irreverent play on the Chinese Communist Party’s description of its economic system. (Chapter 7 from Google Archipelago. Click here or on title.)
Now, the field [of experimental psychology] is also being wielded to discredit “climate change deniers.” By pathologizing the thinking processes of these stubbornly mistaken subjects, the views of said subjects can be safely dismissed. After all, the theory of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) is obviously true, or so says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the planetary authority on the matter. Likewise, those who doubt or deny ACC must be crazy. The point of psychological studies is to discover just what is wrong with these people and how, if possible, to change their minds. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. October 10, 2022.)
We can take as our inspiration for this Grand Refusal the iconic character of Howard Beale, from the classic Paddy Chayefsky movie, Network. Although he delivered his message through television, this newscaster gone rogue encouraged his viewers to turn off their televisions, to thrust open their windows, and to scream, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” (Originally posted by the American Freedom Alliance. October 9, 2022. Delivered at the American Freedom Alliance Global Puppet Masters conference on October 1, 2022. Click here or on title.)
Democrats on Capitol Hill are pressuring the Biden administration to declare a climate emergency, voicing their doomsday predictions that without immediate action to curb and ultimately end our dependence on fossil fuels, “the planet” and, by implication, every living creature that inhabits it, will die. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. August 8, 2022.)
The crisis of conservatism stems from the failure of classical liberalism and the resultant politicization of the economy. Big State meets Big Capital to create our present-day arrangement: woke capitalism. (Originally published by Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. July 1, 2022.)
Others have written at great lengths about the racist implications of such CRT texts and their corrosive effects on race relations. I will point instead to the intellectual damage CRT does the academy and society at large. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. July 18, 2022.)
It is ironic to compare “America’s” biting criticism of the American obsession with Russia during the Cold War to the American establishment’s current obsession with Russia. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. July 14, 2022.)
The metaverse poses philosophical problems, as social ontologies become unhinged from their substrata and identity and the object world are transmuted via avatars and the digital representation of objects. The line between “the real” and the simulacrum is blurred, at best…The philosophical problems posed by the metaverse are perhaps best illustrated by referencing the 1999 sci-fi cyber-thriller, eXistenZ, written and directed by David Cronenberg. (Click here or on title.)
