- Sep 28, 2008
- 41,216
- 246,524
- 4,281
- MBTI
- INFJ
- Enneagram
- 954 so/sx
Left or Liberal?
- Thread starter kinglear
- Start date
Posting a video from a biased PragerU source is not a very good conversation starter. Furthermore I don't understand why you only included Left vs Liberal in the poll. For example I consider myself right leaning AND don't like Trump's presidency. I also detest liberal's invasion into both sides of political spectrum: in some countries they ally with the right, in others with left. And more often than not with disastrous results.
the conversation is on what the 'left' as presented by the corporate media really represents these days
Some commentators are saying that in their lifetime the position of 'the left' has switched from liberal to full blown communist
In the 1970's an academic called Anthony Sutton wrote a trilogy of books looking at how a group of what he called 'corporate socialists' had funded the bolsheviks into power in russia, the nazis into power in germany and FDR into power in the US
The aim he said was to instal versions of socialism into different countries:
-bolshevism in Russia
-national socialism in germany
-new deal socialism in the USA
What we are seeing presented in the corporate media as 'the left' these days is really just the vehicle of those elite corporate socialists who want to impose a global collectivist society on humanity which will be enforced through a technocracy
The very same people funded the eugenics movement and the journalist james corbett has covered this in his work. So what the corporate socialists want to do is get everyone dependent on the state so that they become helpless. Once they are helpless they can be phased out of existence and replaced with automation and AI. Because they will be helplessly dependent on the state they will not be able to resist their own destruction
In fact the scientist Stephen Hawking wrote about this very same scenario where he says augmented elites will form a master race while AI turns the rest of humanity into a slave class that becomes irrelevent
Rowan Tree
Community Member
Keynesian Liberalism, Nazism and Bolshevism are not different versions of socialism. The Nazis persecuted and mass murdered socialists—they used the term as a bait and switch, but never attempted to abolish private ownership of the means of production and, indeed, even introduced a wave of privatizations, anti-unionism and, as needs to be stressed over and over, mass murdered socialists. Only one of those things is a version of socialism. Your lack of historical and political knowledge is embarrassing.
they are all COLLECTIVIST modes of society
nazism was 'national socialism' where they had a strong central government
bolshevism also had a strong centralised government and bolshevism managed to kill tens of millions more people in peacetime than nazism did in war time. The bolsheviks mass murdered anyone who disagreed with them
Anthony suttons book 'wall street and the bolshevik revolution' is dedicated as follows:
'to those unknown russian libertarians, also known as greens who in 1919 fought both the reds and the whites in their attempt to gain a free and voluntary russia'
'to those unknown russian libertarians, also known as greens who in 1919 fought both the reds and the whites in their attempt to gain a free and voluntary russia'
Rowan Tree
Community Member
Collectivist is a buzzword. It has no meaning, irrespective of whether you block capitalise it. You waste your intellect reading conspiracy garbage and conservative punditry. I meet people like you on the left too; people who think reading endless socialist platitudes is a substitute for theory. Read some Keynes, read Marx, read serious academic histories, read anything that will challenge your myopic worldview and make you rethink describing one of the most horrendous, anti-socialist, hyper-nationalist regimes in the world as a version of socialism. Your ignorance is morally culpable.
keynsian economics has failed. There is no more money in the pot
colllectivism is a very real thing and is opposed to individual freedoms
just because you want to try and hide these things from people doesn't mean they don't exist
Rowan Tree
Community Member
I agree; I'm not a Keynesian.
You clearly don't understand Keynesianism.
All ideologies I don't like are the same because I don't like them!
yeah that sounds like the black and white thinking of the 'left' these days
no nuance at all
either you agree with everything they say or you are a 'nazi' that needs to be 'put in the ground'
the looney left! they've gone postal. They can't even have a rational conversation anymore without resorting to abuse and threats
Rowan Tree
Community Member
You: Everything I don't like is collectivism!
Me: You're using buzz words and generalising across different ideologies, none of which anyone here has defended.
You: The loony left has no nuance!
I give up. Enjoy your life.
no i have made a claim which is that both bolshevism and nazism were funded into being by the same wallstreet elites which prof anthony sutton calls 'corporate socialists'
now you can either agree or disagree with that claim in which case we have a debate which gives us each the opportunity to present evidence to prove our argument
But lets say hypothetically that we have had that debate and i have provided ample evidence to show that both those collectivist forces that sprung up within a few years of each other were both funded by the same corporate socialist cabal
now you could say they are 'capitalist' but lets bare in mind that the very same people were behind the bail out of the banks after the 2008 credit crunch so they are clearly not capitalists at heart
then the next issue to face and deal with would have to be the WHY of why they would fund those two forces and we can clearly see in our own time the same corporate socialist forces behind certain moves like the building of a 5G SMART grid technocracy so we can then see what their end game was all along which can then help us make sense of the things they have done in the past
The original mission of the left was reducing inequality. It tried to achieve that by uplifting the poor via various welfare programs, creating safety nets, giving free education etc. It was a very noble and respectable cause. It has helped BILLIONS of people to emerge out of poverty. The ideal of this train of thought indeed is communism. However in post WW2 the left got sidetracked somewhat and embraced liberalism in America. It's current form is quite far from the origins and is very much focused on bringing the rich and the successful down instead of caring for the poor. That incidentally what happened to the Soviet Union's implementation of communism too. In the end people had nothing to live for and the system collapsed.
As for the conspiracy theory you're trying to weave here - I think you give those corporate socialists way too much credit. No one, not even a group, are that smart. The decline of the entire civilization is such a complex process that it's true causes can only be understood from a distance of thousand years.
what is presented as 'the left' by the corporate media is a vehicle for elite managed social engineering
what they want is masses of people dependent on the state
they want you deskilled and without property or any self sufficiency
once they have you in that state you are their plaything
that process has been going on for centuries
the conspiracy is of a group of people seeking supremacy over everyone else
its really not that unusual in history
Oh my goodness
Like the people haven't been subjugated by various means for thousands of years. The socialist utopia is really just one of many. It's main problem is that it stifles creativity and critical thinking. And without them, the system cannot survive long.
Even if there were a centuries spanning corporate conspiracy all they are really building is a doomed ship.
Besides wouldn't it be easier to achieve their goal the old fashioned way of forceful coercion (aka North Corean way)?
Your definition of a word is off. A conspiracy must be secret and it must have a concrete goal. In practice they work best for short term goals (like overthrowing someone from power). General supremacy is too abstract goal to work with. And there has never been a succesful centuries long (or even decades long) conspiracy of such kind.
Rowan Tree
Community Member
I'd take a small issue with that. Egalitarianism isn't really the original goal of the left. The earliest socialists, as well as Marx and many of the anarchists, would have said the main mission is eliminating alienation, often specifically with regard to labouring and exploitation. Equality is the much more platitudinal focus of liberalism, and it's often poorly defined, which is why Marx explicitly opposed it. In a meeting of the International Workingmen's Association in 1865, he said, 'I must seize upon this occasion to state that, as the costs of producing labouring powers of different quality differ, so must differ the values of the labouring powers employed in different trades. The cry for an equality of wages rests therefore on a mistake. is an insane wish never to be fulfilled. It is an offspring of that false and superficial radicalism that accepts premises and tries to evade conclusions.' Now, I think Marx would have grasped the problems with specific kinds of inequality, such as huge income and wealth inequalities, but even then he would argue that these ultimately need to be changed by altering the political economy.
This is a really important point. Conspiracies do indeed exist, but in nothing like the popularly imagined form. An X-Files style conspiracy would be impossible to sustain, coordinate or implement. The idea of a multi-generational political conspiracy is absurd.
Last edited:
Oh my goodness
Like the people haven't been subjugated by various means for thousands of years. The socialist utopia is really just one of many. It's main problem is that it stifles creativity and critical thinking. And without them, the system cannot survive long.
Even if there were a centuries spanning corporate conspiracy all they are really building is a doomed ship.
Besides wouldn't it be easier to achieve their goal the old fashioned way of forceful coercion (aka North Corean way)?
well there hasn't been the technology in the past that there is now
when orwell wrote '1984' in 1948 people didn't actually have telescreens in their homes that watched them 24/7 but now they have a smart phone in their pocket which listens to them 24/7 and can spy on them through the camera as well as giving their location away at every moment of the day not to mention that all of their communications are being recorded and stored both meta data and content
most people didn;t know about that until recently because of snowdens whistleblowing however so called 'conspiracy theorists' did already know about it because of the whistleblowing of NSA operative william binney which had been ignored by the mainstream corporate media
People smart meters send data to the corporations about what devices they are using and how and people have alexa and siri etc listening to them in their homes; their smart tv's also contain cameras as do their Xboxes and the 'smart' grid is being built for example in the form of smart cities that will create technological gulags
This is only the beginning. Once 5G is up and running they can really push out the 'internet of things'
why don't they use force you ask? they don't need to. You are embracing your prison
did you know that 2000 years ago the romans knew that asbestos caused lung problems?
did you know that asbestos kills twice as many people a year as road traffic accidents?
do you know how many tonnes of asbestos were imported into the US every year and put into all kinds of construction materials including mortar?
if people knew it was harmful then how could that have gone on for centuries?
I do agree that technology enchances what a totalitarian police state could do to it's people. But the means alone do not prove the intent. And if you read the 1984 you might have also noticed that it's distopian society is in fact degenerative. It's science and culture had been failing. Such system could last for some time but eventually it would be crushed by outside forces. Even in case of global conspiracy (the world of 1984) there are outside forces. Nature does not adhere to ideology: resources run out, disasters happen, chaos and entropy prevails. 2nd law of thermodynamics is much more dangerous to totalitarism than any heroics we can come up with
Actually korean people are very much embracing their leader and believe all the shit he says. Cognitive disonance + emotional reasoning + tribalism => absolute power. Some of those are on the rise in the west now too btw.
And these principles had been known and used for centuries, they don't need all the fancy technology to work.
two words: human ignorance
the same kind that now denies global warming
I do agree that technology enchances what a totalitarian police state could do to it's people. But the means alone do not prove the intent. And if you read the 1984 you might have also noticed that it's distopian society is in fact degenerative. It's science and culture had been failing. Such system could last for some time but eventually it would be crushed by outside forces. Even in case of global conspiracy (the world of 1984) there are outside forces. Nature does not adhere to ideology: resources run out, disasters happen, chaos and entropy prevails. 2nd law of thermodynamics is much more dangerous to totalitarism than any heroics we can come up with
two words: human ignorance
the same kind that now denies global warming
they don't call it global warming anymore after they failed to find any. they call it 'climate change' now...
but anyway back to the technology....the ex CIA chief told us that they are building an internet of things to surveil the public
CIA Chief: We'll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher
- Author: Spencer Ackerman
- 03.15.12
- 05:35 pm
Earlier this month, Petraeus mused about the emergence of an "Internet of Things" – that is, wired devices – at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital firm. "'Transformational' is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies," Petraeus enthused, "particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft."
All those new online devices are a treasure trove of data if you're a "person of interest" to the spy community. Once upon a time, spies had to place a bug in your chandelier to hear your conversation. With the rise of the "smart home," you'd be sending tagged, geolocated data that a spy agency can intercept in real time when you use the lighting app on your phone to adjust your living room's ambiance.
"Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters – all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing," Petraeus said, "the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing."
Petraeus allowed that these household spy devices "change our notions of secrecy" and prompt a rethink of "our notions of identity and secrecy." All of which is true – if convenient for a CIA director.
The CIA has a lot of legal restrictions against spying on American citizens. But collecting ambient geolocation data from devices is a grayer area, especially after the 2008 carve-outs to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Hardware manufacturers, it turns out, store a trove of geolocation data; and some legislators have grown alarmed at how easy it is for the government to track you through your phone or PlayStation.
That's not the only data exploit intriguing Petraeus. He's interested in creating new online identities for his undercover spies – and sweeping away the "digital footprints" of agents who suddenly need to vanish.
"Proud parents document the arrival and growth of their future CIA officer in all forms of social media that the world can access for decades to come," Petraeus observed. "Moreover, we have to figure out how to create the digital footprint for new identities for some officers."
It's hard to argue with that. Online cache is not a spy's friend. But Petraeus has an inadvertent pal in Facebook.
Why? With the arrival of Timeline, Facebook made it super-easy to backdate your online history. Barack Obama, for instance, hasn't been on Facebook since his birth in 1961. Creating new identities for CIA non-official cover operatives has arguably never been easier. Thank Zuck, spies. Thank Zuck.
https://www.wired.com/2012/03/petraeus-tv-remote/