Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

On Postmodern Neo-Marxism (Patreon)

Published:
2023-09-04 22:29:31
Edited:
2024-02-16 19:14:51
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

45 minute monologue about the meaning of Postmodern Neo-Marxism, because I had to cut this entire section from my video. 

Because it takes a 45 minute monologue to communicate it.

This was a live but i didn't include the chat stream just so you know i'm not literally screaming at a wall

Files

On Postmodern Neo-Marxism

Comments

Thomas Baxter

That was one heck of a Slavoj Zizek impression

Sugar³Glider

"Ban the motherfuck" XD edit: BTW watching you try to force yourself to provide their argument in best faith around the 18min mark was a glorious view of what I assume is good praxis.

Sugar³Glider

Cass Eris is doing a nice delving into Jordan Peterson's writings as a Cognitive Psychologist.

margaret (formerly Samson)

I hate that your favorite glass broke :( but also I love that you kept that bit in there. Very comedic ending, somehow. I wasn't able to truly engage with this live, but I so loved listening to it. I totally followed it too - it's clear to me that this wasn't entirely off the cuff and you'd prepped some of those thoughts together before. If you'd have presented all that and claimed it was completely improv, it would have been suspicious. It seems this is a case where you're trapped by being unable to, academically, say "you just think that because you had a bad day in 2016". You can't fight with someone's feelings because our society and academics don't recognize those as valid, and something rooted in invalidness is too gaseous. You can't beat it with a stick, you can't drown it, you just have to add some other kind of gaseous chemical and hope that they neutralize each other or explode and get it over with. Also, this brings new depth to Postman Part 2, in which we are doing philosophy via memes and ending up with sludge, void of context, void of coherence. How can we have a conversation if all we're doing is looking to Gotcha each other on the surface level, and never looking at the deep root of What the Other is Saying? 🍓🍄🦇🌪️

Rowan Tompkins

this was honestly a fantastic watch and I think it would do well if it were fully released as a companion piece to the Peterson video when it comes out

Kylie

✨🫰✨ excellent!! I’ve always wondered who those shady “French Intellectuals” were what what they were up to, thank you for breaking it down. I knew that always rubbed me as a little wonky P.S. so glad you posted this, I hopped on the livestream in the last seconds just in time you to pin a comment then end the stream

Josh Foreman

Currently having a conversation with my dad about this. He came of age in the 60s and is a conservative evangelical. (As I used to be) He'd be happy to be quoted, so here's our convo for anyone interested: Dad: The link below was an interesting podcast. Antonio Gramsci, Cultural Marxism, Wokeness, and Leninism 4.0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdsSIWh_VkQ ____ Me: Thanks, that was interesting. Helped me understand the conservative assertion that the left wants to "tear down culture". I didn't know where that idea came from. Personally I don't find compelling the assertion that the modern leftist project has this as an objective. I've done a lot of reading and listening to modern leftists and never come across this sub-goal. I suspect that like all ideology, leftism evolved and branched and the idea became vestigial. It's possible that I haven't come across it because it's a well-kept secret known and disseminated by only the higher-ups, but you know how I feel about conspiracies, and there's no way to disprove the idea due to its inherently conspiratorial components anyway. It's funny, I'm re-reading Amusing Ourselves To Death for a book club and just came across this passage that seems like a better explanation for the current trend in growth of leftism. "But the Founding Fathers did not foresee that tyranny by government might be superseded by another sort of problem altogether, namely, the corporate state, which through television now controls the flow of public discourse in America. I raise no strong objection to this fact (at least not here) and have no intention of launching into a standard-brand complaint against the corporate state. I merely note the fact with apprehension, as did George Gerbner, Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication, when he wrote: 'Television is the new state religion run by a private Ministry of Culture (the three networks), offering a universal curriculum for all people, financed by a form of hidden taxation without representation. You pay when you wash, not when you watch, and whether or not you care to watch....' Earlier In The Same Essay ,Gerbner said: 'Liberation cannot be accomplished by turning [television] off. Television is for most people the most attractive thing going any time of the day or night. We live in a world in which the vast majority will not turn off. If we don’t get the message from the tube, we get it through other people.' I do not think Professor Gerbner meant to imply in these sentences that there is a conspiracy to take charge of our symbolic world by the men who run the “Ministry of Culture.” I even suspect he would agree with me that if the faculty of the Annenberg School of Communication were to take over the three networks, viewers would hardly notice the difference." This New Discourses guy (and presumably you) is positing a lineage of current leftist ideas through Gramsci back to Marx in a just-so-story, which may or may not be an accurate story. The part that I'm not following is the framing of things like intersectionality and critical race theory AS tools DESIGNED to destroy culture. They may HAVE that effect. Many ideas may have that effect. I just can't understand the model being presented here as plausible: A secret semi-religious leftist elite cabal is planning to 'tear down culture' so that they can rebuild it with their designs (which are apparently a rehash of all the leftists projects in the past that ended in disaster) and to accomplish this they have concocted a suite of ideologies, legal concepts, cultural movements and educational theories which they disseminate through the organs of education. (Also, who DOESN'T try to influence the future generation through education?) Ok, now that I'm typing it out loud, I get it. This model does work in the framework of a That Hideous Strength narrative. So I think you would say that this kind of conspiracy is plausible because it is being orchestrated by supernatural satanic forces. Correct me if I'm wrong. If that's the case I guess our core disagreement is NOT that this can't be accurate. Sure, it could be. I think our disagreement is the latitude I to give to cultural change as natural, sometimes healthy, and over the sweep of history, pushing the Church's interpretation of God and scripture in unpredictable ways. I don't think that process is out of God's hands. I think it's unreasonable to say that out of all versions of Christian understandings, (specifically the cultural changes of more and more liberal (lower case L) acceptance and empowerment of formerly marginalized voices) the Christian understanding that we were born into was just the right balance, and all further movement is inherently evil. It could be. But I think that's unlikely. I read Dominion, so I'm familiar with the claim that the influence went the other way, and find the arguments lacking. I don't think it's an insult to God to postulate that He uses broader cultural trends to modify and moderate His Church. But again, I'm just as likely to be a useful idiot because my Openness To Ideas rating is off the charts. ____ Dad: I’ve chewed on your reactions to the podcast and re-listened to it to try to figure out your understanding of it. My intellectual pursuit has always been a search for how certain bazaar ideas came to such prominence in human history. As a young Christian I read much on evolutionism and creationism and the origin of scientific thought. After we adopted in the 80’s I read a bunch of books on slavery and racism. Then when communism collapsed and the Berlin wall fell in 1989 I read a bunch on the evolution of revolutionary thought from the philosophes to Communists and Fascists. I remember in the 1990’s the running conservative joke was that the only “true believer” communists left in the world were in Western academia. It was true enough at the time. But it was no joke. It’s come back to bite us and seems on the verge of taking down the Judea-Christian cultural hegemony in America. My formative years were in the heat of the cultural revolution of the 60’s and 70’s when the left’s loud assertion of their desire to tear down the “system” was shouted in the hallways of my dorm. It seems so obvious to me that the leftist goal has always been to take down Christian culture. The left’s utopian desire to replace the culture of Judeo-Christian values with a culture of radically individualistic relativism combined with radically statist power seems undeniable to me. Gransci’s quote that “Socialism is the religion that must overwhelm Christianity” could be mouthed by almost any communist of any era. I certainly read it in “Rules for Radicals” from the 60’s and it seems to me that it was purposely implemented in the long march through academia in the succeeding decades. So I’m not sure what you are looking for in more recent leftist thoughts that would deny their baseline determination to tear down and then to rebuild their utopian culture. I seem to see it in the original BLM website statement that it’s as much against the nuclear family as the Soviet communists were. Or the LBGQ shouting that “We’re coming after your children”. Last year I read about Gramsci for the first time. This podcast really confirmed the connecting of the dots from old Marxism to this new form. Of course I believe in the dark “principalities and powers” orchestrating the rampant evil that is engulfing western culture with a moral insanity. I preached on it in Africa and was perfectly believable to them. But I’ve never believed in inter-generational human global conspiracies. It is a historical fact that revolutionary conspiracies profoundly influenced politics since before the French revolution. But secret society conspiracies have a very short half-life and are only very rarely successful. Last year I read about Gramsci for the first time. This podcast really confirmed the connecting of the dots from the old Marxism to this new form. But I didn’t hear in the podcast Lindsay make any assertion of the influence of such human conspiracies. A major conservative mantra is that “Ideas have Consequences”. I believe that this was the driving force for my fascination with the history of ideas. The evolution of the Left from the French Revolution through Marx to Lenin to Moa to today’s “Victimhood” Marxism require no global extended conspiracies. It just requires the cross-pollenization of ideas spread through the elite and academics by books, journals, and conferences. So the overall leftist worldview evolves but it’s pillars remain little changed. Its continuing unified amanous toward traditional Christian culture was as focused and destructive in Robespierre, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Moa, Castro, and Ho as it is in Olansky, and BLM. To me, Lindsay’s argument connecting modern Marxism to Gramsci is anything but a “just so” story. The journals and conferences of the New Left footnote and reference his writings. But for a long-time anti-communists like me, it’s revealing to see how this transition from economic class struggle to racial/sexual victimhood struggle came to be. I liked his labeling Lenin as “Marx 2.0”, Moa as “Marx 3.0” and Woke as “Marx 4.0”. This podcast clarified these transitions for me. It seems to me that Gramsci’s understanding that “politics is downstream for culture and education” was embraced by the academic left and led to the “long march through the institutions”. That Gramsci was translated into English in the 1970 by Mayor Pete’s father was very revealing to me. Although I believe that many of his concepts were already present in the American left by way of the French post-modern philosophers. Gramsci’s support for Lenin’s revisions of Marx to embrace the need for academic elites to lead the revolution, but rejection of the totalitarian excesses of Stalin was reflected in Western academia. I just finished reading a book “The Whisperers” by Orlando Figes. It documents the letters, diaries, and post-Soviet memories of those who lived through Stalin’s Soviet Union. It documents first hand how totalitarian Marxism effected the private lives of family and faith as they tried to live through the pressure of an anti-reality ideology. The fear and whispered dissent has entering into our culture of open debate. Of course, 21st century America is far far different from 20th century Russia. So how the thrust into unreality by our social elites is being forced upon the people that must live in reality will work itself out far differently. I’m not expecting gulags and torture. But marginalization to point job and benefits loss is quite possible. The future closing of churches and Christian non-profits is not unimaginable. Lindsay’s referencing some points of Gramsci’s that are in lockstep with past and present permutations of Marxism clarified things for me. After rereading Solzhenitsyn and Whisperers, the continuing need to indoctrinate to overcome the proletariat’s common sense is loud and clear today. The tactic of criticizing existing institutions for not living up to the envisioned socialist utopia is consistent with all past utopian leftism. Lindsay’s assertion that what we are experiencing now is the Left’s effort to “ supplant the cultural hegemony of West with Woke critical consciousness” is a continuation of all past leftists movements. I liked his emphasis that this is a bogus utopia, a pseudo-reality that is not compatible with the reality of human life or common sense. So the susceptible must be continuously indoctrinated into this pseudo-reality of systemic racism and gender fluidity. It must be forced on all dissenting folk with common sense. They must be deplatformed and shouted down. I believe that they are hoping for a soft coup achieved over decades. Nevertheless, I agree with Lindsay that its final result will be the same as in the past - many innocents “walking into the blender.” And this is where I weep and grieve. I hurt when I see kids in my chair affirmed about their gender confusion and pushed to a lifestyle that can only help separate them from God’s reality. When I see the kid with “two mothers” and look at the pretty young butch woman watching her son I mourn. “It’s not good for man to be alone”. Or women. God intended her to be fulfilled with a man that would cleave to her and make her a mother and raise their “one flesh” together. So many are walking into or being pushed into the blender. It breaks my heart. As with many of the “fellow travelers” with good hearts and soft heads that enabled communism to maintain a good image in the West far beyond what was warranted, so today. I’m sure that your reading of leftist thought reflects people with good intentions. But as in the past, these fellow travelers focus on all the injustice and evil of the present culture with an assumption that whatever they hope to replace it with must be an improvement. Lindsay’s statement that “liberalism is most susceptible to the left’s assertions because it takes the best view of arguments and doubts assertions of cultural destruction”, may be applicable to you. Of course my “old man curmudgeon” attitude may be applicable to me. Love you, Dad _____ Me: " But I didn’t hear in the podcast Lindsay make any assertion of the influence of such human conspiracies." I'm positing a conspiracy as an explanation for how there could be a plan to destroy everything held by elites, but in my deep reading of the modern american/british leftist movement I've never seen anyone push that agenda. No one I read is promoting totalitarianism. I see a lot of calls for radical communitarian thinking and action, which is counter radical individualism. I see a lot more radical individualism coming from conservative Christians. But this is obviously a lot of nuanced shades subject to interpretation. What my soft head sees in history is thousands of years of a constantly changing social/cultural landscape, sometimes more in harmony with Christlike values and sometimes less. I see the institutional Chrisitian church (which I do not equate with Christians, though most Christians became Christians through it) generally tagging along in the wake of these social/cultural shifts. I do not think it is a Christian's role to enact state power to further their cultural norms, and when the state is in the thrawl of the institutional church it doesn't have a great track record of being very Christ Like. Ever since I was a kid I was kind of upset about the vague Christian ambience in the culture that allowed 80% of Americans to call themselves Christians while simultaneously not giving two thoughts about what that actually means to them, functionally inoculating them from ever confronting Christ in any of His glory. So I don't see the erosion of 'Christian' influence on our laws and cultures as intrinsically pro-Christ. But like I said, I'm aware that my personality profile plants me on the tail of a couple bell curves, so I'm always going to be out of sync with common thinking, leading me to resonate with fringes. Well I've got to get to work, but as always I'm glad you care enough about me to engage at length, as frustrating as it must be for you. ____ Dad: I am not frustrated at all. I enjoy the interaction and value your viewpoint. It’s a relief to still be able to “agree to disagree” with someone. Blessing upon your “soft head” and my mine too, Dad

Tom Burke

I take it you've read Nathan J. Robinson's review of Maps of Meaning in Current Affairs? Not academic per se, but he is an academic, or at least a phd holder.

Matthew

I think you touched on this and some of the live chat people pointed this out too, but both your analysis and the takedowns are necessary. Short term, the takedowns are necessary to disrupt the pipeline to right wing extremism, but your analysis could be a way to grow into a more productive political discourse. Short term vs long term. We can't live in this perpetual state of teetering on the edge of violence but we also can't just let the loudest voices assert unchallenged that their extremist views are backed up by reason while vaguely waving in the direction of Peterson et al.

Walker Nickel

Really enjoyed this as much as it hurts to engage with, especially as someone who has had sympathies for JP in the past. I think I’ve been taken in too deeply by the online-leftist YouTube takedown crew which you stopped yourself from critiquing at some point in the video. I think there needs to be some really insightful work done that criticizes how impotent our engagement with leftist propaganda on the internet is. I find myself rushing into this hole very often lately where I want to denounce whatever online reactionary conservative discourse is happening from Ben Shapiro or JP or whoever (though there’s a lot of daylight between those two imho), and there’s a booming economy of video essayists and podcasters and theory-gram pages that feed off of this kind of poisonous discourse. There’s utility in denouncing these type of right-wing figureheads because I do think they promote dangerous and often silly bullshit, but my understanding of that also comes from the same circle of discourse that uses memes and logic trappjng takedown YouTube videos to get our points across. Your Bo Burnham video was really useful on this point: the conditions of our politics and discourse have degraded so thoroughly that we are almost incapable of engaging thoroughly and thoughtfully with the material presented to us, regardless of our side. I don’t want to live on a diet of Some more news, contrapoints, folding ideas, FD signifier, etc. to get my bearings in the world, but I, like many socially minded, college educated, left-leaning people working minimum wage hardly have the energy to expend reading pages and pages of nonsense from people I have to assume are arguing in bad faith or are simply for arguing for the continuation of a deeply inhumane system. It hurts on so many levels to feel so degraded by the world, so degraded by the conditions of discourse, so powerless to do anything to stop it, while having a cadre of smart well intentioned leftist YouTubers informing you on all the ways the world is systemically structurally broken and there’s nothing you can do about it besides continually suffering or miraculously bootstrapping your way to negate success. I think JP was attractive to me at some point because he spoke to that desire to get your life together and maximize yourself. But as I continued to learn more about him and hear about the stupidity of postmodern neomarxism, I think I just started to avoid any and all self-help stuff because of the associations it brought to mind with people like JP who I think are some dangerous blend of ignorant, cynical, or tacitly supportive of all kinds of egregious bullshit (eugenics and white genocide being the big ones, especially with Sam Harris and Charles Murray and Douglas Murray)

Walker Nickel

At the same time I’m deeply interested in a lot of Marxist, deconstructionist, poststructuralist philosophy and it’s annoying and distressing to argue with people who seem to have such a poor understanding of it or who seem to dismiss it out of hand. However they likely feel similar about the way that many people in that tradition, including with Frankfurt school, have dismissed liberalism or positivism without thoroughly reading through it. Makes me wonder about if it’s even possible or humane to be so fully thoroughly balanced in our dialogue or if this just a feature of classist educational standards/practices and an economic system that functionally prohibits anyone from getting deeply involved in ideas and history. Most of my friends who aren’t into philosophy just treat a lot of these theoretical conversations as pure navel gazing and useless for an emancipatory political movement. I don’t want to use philosophy as an overly abstract tool that takes attention away from the practical affairs to helping the most vulnerable people, but I also don’t want to OVERWOKE the discourse by arguing from a perspective of pure moralism and saying that all these IDW dudes (for lack of a better term) are all shameless grifters who are poisoning the discourse and muddying the waters. All of this while the situation feels so dire for so many of us that either route seems fruitless and tiresome when you got bills to pay and a job that doesn’t pay enough and prices keep getting higher while the rich get obscenely richer. It’s suffocating and depressing and at my worst it makes me want to never read philosophy or take philosophy or academia seriously ever again. It seems like a luxury in those moments and I’d rather just read a novel or write poetry then deal with how fucked the world is and how fucked every side of every discourse is. I appreciate what you’re doing and I think it’s VERY necessary. I think I’m just venting on a point that I wanted you to expand on more that isnt addressed often enough: that for many, politics and philosophy are just a game, a fun distraction, or an unthinking support for our personal worldviews. I think I’m just sick of arguing with my dad or other people who take JBP’s Pomo-neomarxism schtick seriously when they seem to use it as a depressive tool against any and all social change or mobility. It’s cynical and frustrating to say that basically nothing can or should change in our political order. And it makes me wonder how many of them are even arguing in good faith, ESPECIALLY those in academia.

Walker Nickel

Like am I doing any better if I’m just reading Naomi Klein and bell hooks or Gramsci or whoever, and don’t engage with right wind voices at all? Because the shortcut in my mind that ties James Lindsay and Douglas Murray to “close enough to fascist sympathies” is a lot less stressful and more productive than engaging with people who have such a puerile and noxious view on social progress in general. Not to mention that many of them are propped up by gas companies and billionaires who knowingly benefit from environmental destruction, wealth inequality and racist scapegoating.

Walker Nickel

or maybe even im just stuck handwringing over my individual position within overlapping structural failings denounced by individual people who discount the notion of systemic social injustice.

zaid amer

Can’t wait to regurgitate the terms you’ve expressed these ideas in. very followable explanation

lloyd1807

I think you nailed it with peterson having this as a reaction rather than an academic idea. Maybe the core of PMNM is that it is a feeling above all? Like it requires a feeling to back it or even more so, faith in it. I think a lot of people align with it because its a feeling presented as not a feeling. Because the whole thing sounds like something someone who was afraid would say.

Teageen

This furious energy is the only way to engage with nonsensical ideas imo love to see it