The therapeutic police state.
By Christian Britschgi, Reason
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said on a press call today that he would not allow indoor dining to return in New York City unless local politicians devoted significant police resources to enforcing social distancing and other reopening conditions.
By Antony Sammeroff
The following is a list of 8 things I am more worried about than Covid-19. Strap in.
Carlson is in his better form in this although he’s still trying to score some partisan points along the way. Now, if he would only criticize Trump’s law and order police state the same way he criticizes medical martial law.
Now, if these sheriffs would start rebelling against a whole lot more laws, we might have something.
By Jason Wilson
The Guardian
Sheriffs around the country are refusing to enforce or are even actively resisting Covid-19 mask laws and lockdowns, while others have permitted or encouraged armed vigilantism in response to Black Lives Matter anti-racism protests.
Critics say both phenomena are related to a far-right “constitutional sheriffs” movement, which believes that sheriffs are the highest constitutional authority in the country, with the power – and duty – to resist state and federal governments.
James Lindsay outlines the intellectual trajectory of totalitarian humanism, political correctness, wokeness, cultural Marxism, whatever one wants to call it, pretty thoroughly in this, although I would add more emphasis on 19th century Progressive Christianity and Maoism during the Cultural Revolution period than what he mentions. He focuses on most of the high points: Frankfurt School/critical theory, Herbert Marcuse/repressive tolerance, terrorists like the Weather Underground, and postmodernism/deconstructionism and their antecedents like critical race theory, radical feminism, queer theory, etc. although he doesn’t mention certain strands within the trajectory of privilege theory (e.g. Ted Allen, Peggy McIntosh). More emphasis needs to be placed on the relationship between totalitarian humanism, therapeutism, and scientism as well. One very important point that Lindsay raises in this is that the Marxists are correct when they say totalitarian humanism is a tool being used by the bourgeoisie in order to take the left away from the working class. I’m glad to see him pointing that out.
James Lindsay on the theology of the new theocracy. The two most important things that are happening in the developed world at the present time are the re-feudalization of class relations and the growth of totalitarian humanism as the self-legitimating ideology of the rising ruling class. Just as neo-feudalism is reinstating the kinds of class societies that existed in the premodern world, totalitarian humanism is resurrecting premodern caste systems based on ascribed status, but within the technocratic framework of modern totalitarianism. The principal differences between totalitarian humanism and the 20th-century models of totalitarianism are two things: 1) the commercial values of capitalism require a certain degree of cultural openness that is not possible in a Stalinist type of system (hence, “soft totalitarianism” rather than “hard totalitarianism”) and 2) contemporary methods of propaganda and ideological control are far more sophisticated than those of 20th-century totalitarians, more Edward Bernays than Joseph Goebbels.
By Rory Taylor
Vox
The US has signed hundreds of treaties with Indigenous peoples. Here’s what would happen if the government actually honored them.
“‘We the people’ has never meant ‘all the people.’”
These were words of independent presidential candidate and Navajo Nation member Mark Charles as he spoke, to great excitement, at the first presidential forum dedicated to Native American issues in over a decade.
A somewhat interesting interview with a leading black conservative.
I would be inclined to argue that, at present, substantial sectors of the capitalist class (including some major capitalist entities) along with their allies in the new clerisy/new class that dominates the “ideas industries” are fueling anti-racism hysteria in order to deflect attention away from the class-based nature of the insurrection. They do this because a race war is less antithetical to their interests than a class war. However, contra the Marxists and left-anarchists, it doesn’t stop at class either. Even a class war is more co-optable than a direct war against the state itself.
All of this follows an easily identifiable pattern in US history.
I first started developing the ideas that I would later come to call “pan-secessionism in the mid-1990s after notice the emergence of the “right-wing” antigovernment movement associated with the militias, sovereign citizens, tax protestors, and other similar groups. Of course, much of the left and certainly liberal opinion dismissed these as racist reworkings of the KKK. But what I found in my interaction with these people is that most of them were motivated by gun rights, economics, and general antigovernmentism, with a minority being motivated by religion, and an even smaller minority being motivated by race.
Some of the more radical ones were interested in forming alliances with black nationalists, American Indian tribes, or foreign revolutionaries like the Zapatistas, Shining Path, or Middle Eastern groups. The Rodney King riots, as well as the killings at Waco and Ruby Ridge, had happened a short time earlier, and the “Battle of Seattle” happened a few years later. I started to realize the potential for a tripartite alliance between the urban lumpenproletariat (mostly minority department store looters), rural lumpenproletariat (mostly white gun nuts), and what I called the suburban lumpenproletariat (middle-class kids who adopt a lumpen lifestyle by choice). Then, as now, that seems to be a pretty good plan. Here it is.
Previously, I was a Noam Chomsky-like left-anarchist, heavily influenced by the Spanish Revolution, who favored overthrowing the state through the use of anarcho-syndicalist unions, worker militias, guerrilla armies. I had never given much consideration to the idea of territorial or other forms of secessionism, although I knew (mostly from Proudhon) that secession was a historic anarchist principle, along with things like dual power (which I largely learned from Murray Bookchin). I was already an “anarchist without adjectives” as well (influenced by Voltairine de Cleyre and Errico Malatesta).
I never abandoned any of that as much as I expanded it to include the concepts of pan-anarchism and pan-secessionism as an umbrella framework for attacking the state, recognizing that it would be a means of bringing sectors of the far-right and radical-center as well as leftists and minorities into a wider anti-state front. At the time, a lot of these militia/sovereign people were pushing the idea of “county supremacy,” “mini-republics,” or micronations that struck me as basically a right-wing version of Murray Bookchin’s “libertarian municipalist” idea or a gun-toting version of Gandhi’s satyagraha philosophy. Then, as now, this seems to be a fairly on-target idea as well.
What puts me at odds with the mainstream anarchist movement is that most of them are Blue Tribe fundamentalists first and anarchists second, which means that hating on social conservatives is more important to them than overthrowing the ruling class. Regrettably, the Blue Tribe Khomeinists have replaced the Marxist-Leninists as the most immediately visible enemy of anarchism on the far-left, and many anarchists have fallen for it just as they were taken in by Marxism in the past.
Just like the traditional white collar priesthood, the newer white coat priesthood doesn’t mind “bearing false witness” when it’s convenient.
Krystal and Saagar react to Dr. Fauci’s interview where he admits health officials downplayed the importance of masks to save PPE for healthcare workers.
It’s rather ironic that the supposed social democratic utopia of Sweden has adopted the anti-lockdowners’ preferred laissez-faire approach to COVID-19.
I always said the “new fascism” would not be under the guise of national or racial chauvinism but would be wrapped in the banner of “progressive” causes like “safety,” “health,” or “equality.” Where have you been, Antifa?
I originally introduced the concept of totalitarian humanism in this article for Lew Rockwell back in 2007. I discussed the class component, materialist base, and ideological superstructure elements of totalitarian humanism in this lecture to the HL Mencken Club in 2018. Critics of “political correctness” often focus on its pathological fixation on race, gender, and sexuality, but the therapeutic state (a concept originally developed by Thomas Szasz) is also an essential element of totalitarian humanism (there is also a foreign policy component as well).
Tom Woods interviews Thaddeus Russell on left-wing support for scientistic therapeutic totalitarianism.
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It’s been quite remarkable to me the extent to which the lockdowns have divided people along ideological lines. A left-wing case against lockdown seems so easy to make and so obvious, and yet a vanishingly small number of people are making it. Thaddeus Russell, an eclectic and always interesting thinker who grew up on the left, joins me to try to get to the bottom of it.
Read the original article at TomWoods.com. http://tomwoods.com/ep-1655-why-does-the-left-favor-lockdowns/
It seems like it would be best to just forget about the whole school thing for now.
The problem with David’s analysis in this is that he seems fairly subjective and one-dimensional in his criticisms of “conspiracy theories.” The fact that the last three years of cable news (excluding FOX) was devoted to Russiagate hysteria shows that liberals and the Left are just as prone to hysterical conspiracy theories as anyone from the far-Right.
The big question about COVID-19 is what do we actually know about it based on demonstrable medical and scientific facts, discovered through legitimate empirical processes and subject to revision upon the receipt of new information, as opposed to mere speculation, abstract theorizing, inferences based on incomplete information, correlation/causation arguments, or ideologically-driven assumptions?
As usual, the Right is better at criticizing the government and the media (see the Tucker Carlson video I just posted) while the Left (like these Jacobin boys) are better are criticizing the corporations/capitalist class. Fortunately, it’s not a question of either/or. We should be attacking ridiculous government overreach in response to COVID-19 while simultaneously demanding reparations for the harm that has already been done (and then some).
If only it were true. Localized quarantines are what we should have been doing all along. It’s ridiculous to expect rural counties to abide by the same rules as New York and Los Angeles.
Some states are using science to guide their decisions and cautiously beginning to relax their lockdowns. But power-drunk politicians in the other half of the country are tightening their lockdowns even now.
Whether it’s a “mistake” or not is beside the point. We need reparations from the state now. Total moratorium on rent, mortgages, utility bills, credit cards, student loans, medical bills, and car payments. If you take away peoples’ livelihoods, then you owe them. Period. It’s no different than if an individual breaks a person’s leg. They owe the injured party crutches and the cost of their doctor bills. Period. The state has essentially bankrupted the working class while engineering a looting spree for the ruling class. Once again, we need reparations from the state now. The supposed “extremism” of the anti-lockdown protests should be made to look like a church social in comparison.
Another Jeffrey Tucker article questioning the sanctity of lockdown orthodoxy.
By Jeffrey Tucker
The year was 1957.
I’ve seen some of the circles around C4SS and other supposed “left-libertarians” bashing Jeffrey Tucker (whose orthodox libertarianism I don’t personally share, although I am in favor of all forms of voluntary libertarianism and anarchism) for questioning the sanctity of the lockdowns.
By Jeffrey Tucker
World War II had ended four years earlier and the U.S. was trying to return to peace and prosperity. Price controls and rationing was ended. Trade was opening. People were returning to normal life. The economy started humming again. Optimism for the future was growing. Harry Truman became the symbol of a new normacy. From Depression and war, society was on the mend.
As if to serve as a reminder that there were still threats to life and liberty present, an old enemy made its appearance: polio. It’s a disease with ancient origins, with its most terrifying effect, the paralysis of the lower extremities. It maimed children, killed adults, and struck enormous fear into everyone.
Polio is also a paradigmatic case that targeted and localized policy mitigations have worked in the past, but society-wide lockdowns have never been used before. They weren’t even considered as an option.
