PROPAGANDA, “BRAIN ROT”, THE BETRAYAL OF MIND, AND THE DEMOCRATIC “MARXISTS” OF AMERICA

David Barnhizer

America is engaged in a war of propaganda, corrupting anti-intellectualism, and destruction of the ability to interact productively or to think critically and deeply. In that strange and intense war of destructive identity groupings, of hate, division and fragmentation, the Orwellian control of language, and the ostracizing of anyone who does not agree with the agenda or interfere with their path to power are enemies who must be silenced, neutered, or eliminated.

The “War of Attrition”

A Woke Critical Legal Studies and Critical Race Theory professional friend who taught at Harvard University admitted to me in a 1992 discussion that the Left was engaging in a “war of attrition” rather than a frontal assault. This was required, he said, because throughout the 1970s and into the later 1980s, the numbers and power imbalance between more long-standing university faculty and administrators and the Woke academics and critical political theorists heavily favored the traditionalists.

The “Woke/Crit” strategy infiltrated the educational system, populated the ranks of administrators and faculty with Left-leaning academics who shared the Woke/Crit vision, and gradually seized power. This was all accomplished while eliminating opposition through hiring policies aimed at seemingly benign and virtuous values of diversity and inclusion coupled with a significant degree of intimidation aimed at anyone who opposed the Woke/CRT agenda. And unfortunately, what worked in academia is now working all over America.

In short, we are being victimized and exploited by an aggressive and intolerant “War of Attrition” of the kind Sun Tzu described three thousand years ago in his strategic classic The Art of War. In such a struggle, the excellent general never allows the enemy to see his true strategy until after victory has been achieved. Sun Tzu emphasized the need for misdirection, deception, and stealth in overcoming opponents. A key element was the stealthy placing of your forces at an unaware enemy’s points of vulnerability so that when you acted you were victorious while leaving the bewildered opponent wondering “how could this have happened?” This is what took place in American educational institutions, throughout its print and on-line, as well its media systems, significant elements of its economy, and the extreme “Progressive” wing that bears no relationship to the political party whose name it still operates beneath.

Eric Hoffer in his classic book, The True Believer, reveals how “mass movements gain traction … because “men of words” (intellectuals and propagandists) work to discredit the existing system. They highlight dissatisfaction to make people “ripe” for a new, unifying cause.” Hoffer goes on to explain:

“The preliminary work of undermining existing institutions, of familiarizing the masses with the idea of change, and of creating a receptivity to a new faith, can be done only by men who are, first and foremost, talkers or writers and are recognized as such by all. As long as the existing order functions in a more or less orderly fashion, the masses remain basically conservative.… The division between men of words, fanatics and practical men of action...is not meant to be categorical. …. A fanatic like Lenin is a master of the spoken word, and unequaled as a man of action. What the classification attempts to suggest is that the readying of the ground for a mass movement is done best by men whose chief claim to excellence is their skill in the use of the spoken or written word; that the hatching of an actual movement requires the temperament and the talents of the fanatic; and that the final consolidation of the movement is largely the work of practical men of action…

This passage from The True Believer argues that the roles of “men of words,” “fanatics”, and “practical men of action” in mass movements are not rigid categories but can overlap, with individuals transitioning between them. The text suggests that these roles represent different phases of a movement’s development. The operational dynamics are that intellectuals (”men of words”) initiate, fanatics intensify, and practical leaders (”men of action”) consolidate and direct.

Power and control are the end game of those who have strategically leveraged permissible language to seize control of America’s educational, political and economic systems and institutions. Since fully rational and interactive discourse blocks monolithic authoritarian control, propaganda and the tools of intimidation, sanctioning are critical elements in gaining control. They were utilized in our ongoing social “revolution’s” earlier phases to gain access to power and when that strategy proved successful the newly dominant identity groups aggressively expanded, maintained and consolidated their power.

Brainwashing, Propaganda and Silencing Are “Brain Rot” Designed To “Fascinate Fools and Muzzle the Intelligent”

Ask the great thinker and analyst Bertrand Russell “How do you know when fascism starts?” His answer? “First, they fascinate the fools. Then, they muzzle the intelligent.” Posted by quoteresearch, February 28, 2024. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2024/02/28/fools-muzzle/.

In 1967 “The Great Quotations” compiled by George Seldes included an entry for Russell’s quotation.

“The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.” See. Bertrand Russell, 1940, Freedom: Its Meaning, Edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen, Chapter: “Freedom and Government” (William James Lecturer, Harvard University) p. 253, Harcourt, Brace, New York. [Emphasis in original]

Language is Not Simply a Tool: Humans “Become” the Language They Use

“In her 1957 book, Language: An Enquiry into Its Meaning and Function, Ruth Anshen argues that by virtue of the “procreative power of language,” which “grasps, shakes, and transforms, that man is man”. She continued with the critical insight that: “Language is Not Just a Tool: Anshen believed that language is the manifestation of the human spirit.”

In a fascinating, powerful and accurate insight Anshen explained: “Man is that being on earth who does not have language. Man is language.” When this occurs, particularly with activist collectives, “their” language becomes “their” personal reality, one they zealously seek to impose on the “unenlightened masses.” This fact is at the core of the following analysis.

“Canceling” is a powerful method of social control through defining what language and concepts are allowable, and fear go the consequences if you violate the “language code”. We are caught inside an emotive whirlwind with one group hurling emotion-laden missiles while the other is expecting reasoned discussions. The brilliant American philosopher and linguistic analyst Ruth Anshen has explained the perils of language control and propaganda. The tragedy is that as the corrupted new language pervades a society at deeper emotive depths—bypassing the rational mind and locking onto us at emotional levels—it becomes not only what you say but who you are.

Consider, for example, the inevitable psychological, moral and emotional effects on people, and the overall culture, of continual usage of incredibly powerful terms such as represented in the following listing both on the users and those targeted. As Ruth Anshen warns, they warp and twist our human psyches and collectively alter and define us. The effects are inescapable.

Resentment, Rage, Revenge, Revulsion, Reward, Retribution, Reciprocity, Reparations, Reconstruction, Remorse.

Over the past intensely compressed and activist decades since the beginning of the 1970’s, we have progressively injected extremely condemnatory and socially poisonous language into our discourse. This has been a central strategic element created and implemented by dedicated activists choosing their narratives as part of strategies to shame, humiliate, control and intimidate their targets. This is being done to seize and manipulate power. In doing so those reveling in their new ability to shock and manipulate others suffer from a mirroring effect that alters their own nature. They themselves “become” personally and collectively redefined by their own narratives through the combination of rage, hate, and perception of others as enemies This has in fact warped themselves, the users of hate, and fundamentally distorted our society and culture.

When this occurs, particularly with the most aggressive activist collectives, “their” language becomes “their” personal reality, one they zealously seek to impose on the “unenlightened masses.” This may seem subtle, but it represents why the Woke/CRT movement has been continually inventing new language and defining what they consider “correct” and acceptable contexts for the use of existing language. This also applies to language we are required to abandon lest we be shunned.

The point is multi-faceted. Once you allow an interest group to have great control over language, you have granted subjective power to that group. As Lord Acton warned, however, “All power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” While the Progressives and radical Left have amassed steadily increasing shares of power, they prove Acton correct through a level of intellectual and moral corruption far beyond what is safe for any enlightened system.

The Radical Left’s seizure of power through shaming and linguistic and intellectual control endows the most radical and corrupted individual actor and political collective with the power to define the terms of social interaction, policy and engagement. When that happens, the rest of us are “walking on eggshells” about what we express lest we suffer the “wrath of the Woke” and be condemned as bigoted, phobic, haters, racist, sexist, “privileged” and the like.

“Thank goodness it’s not me.” The Silencing Psychology of Fear and Trembling in the University

What is happening in our main educational systems is not a fake “conspiracy theory”. It is real. Philip Carl Salzman, no stranger to being a target of the Woke, describes the intolerant Identity culture that has emerged in American and Canadian universities.

“Almost every university in North America has committed to what is called “social justice,” which is the implementation of identity politics through the mechanisms of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Identity politics divides everyone into one of two categories: evil oppressor or innocent victim. Through official mandatory policies, universities have transformed academic culture from a quest to discover truth about the world and its beings, to the indoctrination of identity politics and enforcement of “social justice” policies.” https://www.theepochtimes.com/hate-and-fear-are-now-major-motivators-on-campus_4785439.html, “Hate and Fear Are Now Major Motivators on Campus”, Philip Carl Salzman, 10/11/22.

It is all being done through narrative, framing, guilting, and shaming along with the adoption of concepts of “collective guilt” and “original sin”. These concepts are particularly important attack weapons designed to ensure the chosen “enemy” could never escape accountability for actions performed by long dead people with whom they never dealt. This is why as Andrew McCarthy’s analysis of why students fear saying or doing anything that might come back to “haunt” them through student peer’s recording of what they say is a strong mechanism for shutting off or framing discussions in ways that represent a false reality.

Woke Culture Is Creating “Gulags” and “Re-Education” Camps

Probably the only point on which I disagree with Bari Weiss is her statement below asserting there is no gulag in America. There are “American gulags” but they are taking a slightly more subtle form. I guess the process could be described as “Gulaging in place”. Compelled “sensitivity training” sessions in which people are required to “confront their privilege” and “admit their white guilt” are pretty close to “re-education” camps and even gulags.

The rapid spread of “privilege” and “confession of your guilt” sessions throughout elementary, high school and university curricula, where education has become an intensely politicized ideological process, are new forms of re-education and forced propaganda activities. These are “America’s gulags” and “re-education camps”. So are compelled “sensitivity” sessions in government agencies and businesses. This issue is further discussed in Chapter 19 of “Un-Canceling” America, “Guilt by Association, Re-Education, and Gulags”.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/woke-culture-ways-to-fight-back-bari-weiss. “Woke culture is dominating our lives -- here are 10 ways to fight back: It’s time to stand up and fight back. That means you”, Bari Weiss, 2/1/21.

“America is imperfect. … But there is no gulag in America. … By any measure, we have achieved incredible progress and enjoy extraordinary freedoms. And yet people aren’t acting that way. They are acting, increasingly, like subjects in a totalitarian country. … [P]eople write to me daily. They admit to regularly censoring themselves at work and with friends; succumbing to social pressure to tweet the right hashtag; to parroting slogans they do not believe to protect their livelihoods, like the greengrocer in Václav Havel’s famous essay “The Power of the Powerless.” These people aren’t crazy. They are scared for good reason.

When everything is recorded for eternity, when making mistakes and taking risks are transformed into capital offenses, when things that were common sense until two seconds ago become unsayable, people make the understandable decision to simply shut up. Do not nod along when you hear the following: That Abraham Lincoln’s name on a public school or his likeness on a statue is white supremacy. (It is not; he is a hero.) That separating people into racial affinity groups is progressive. (It is a form of segregation.) That looting has no victims (untrue) and that small-business owners can cope anyway because they have insurance (nonsense). That any disparity of outcome is evidence of systemic oppression (false). That America is evil. (It is the last hope on Earth.). This list could go on for a thousand pages. These may have become conventional wisdom in certain circles, but they are lies.

“Academic Freedom Is Dead!” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the US National Institutes of Health and Stanford University Professor

An example of the intolerance that is taking place in America’s universities is provided by the experience of Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya. This provides proves that no one is safe from the wrath of the Woke. Bhattacharya is a tenured professor at Stanford and an experienced, respected and extremely professional scientist who is currently Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

His sin? He dared to challenge the “official” controlling narrative of the COVID-19 Pandemic’s insistence on lockdowns and shuttering schools. The fact that he and his colleagues were correct even now doesn’t seem to matter. They didn’t go along with the dominant and severely flawed narrative being pushed by the federal government, by mainstream media, Big Pharma, the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, and politically powerful segments of the “scientific” medical profession. A report describes Dr. Bhattacharya’s experience at Stanford.

“A Stanford University professor of medicine says “academic freedom is dead” after his life became a “living hell” for challenging coronavirus lockdown orders and the “scientific clerisy” during the pandemic. “The basic premise is that if you don’t have protection and academic freedom in the hard cases, when a faculty member has an idea that’s unpopular among some of the other faculty – powerful faculty, or even the administration … If they don’t protect it in that case, then you don’t have academic freedom at all.” … Bhattacharya is a tenured professor of medicine at Stanford University and also an economist who serves as director of Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging.

He came under fire during the pandemic after co-authoring the Great Barrington Declaration, which was an open letter signed by thousands of doctors and scientists in 2020 denouncing lockdowns as harmful. Bhattacharya was joined by Harvard professor of medicine Dr. Martin Kulldorff and Oxford professor Dr. Sunetra Gupta in co-authoring the document. The declaration was quickly denounced by other health leaders, including National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci, who slammed the call for herd immunity in the document as “nonsense and very dangerous.” “Stanford professor who challenged lockdowns and ‘scientific clerisy’ declares academic freedom ‘dead’: Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya says his life became a ‘living hell’ when he challenged Dr. Fauci over 2020 COVID lockdowns”, Emma Colton, 11/21/22.

University of Alabama Professor Leaves the Institution: “Universities Are No Longer Places that Embrace the Freedom of Exchanging Ideas.”

“A University of Alabama professor left a teaching position due to the “obsession” over the university’s push for equity in science and the “rise of illiberalism.” Dr. Matthew M. Wielicki, a Polish immigrant and Earth Science professor, …[stated] “over the last decade or so, but especially the last few years, the obsession with universities and grant-funding institutions on immutable characteristics of faculty and students and the push for equity in science above all else has dramatically changed the profession of an academic professor,” Wielicki said. Wielicki added that the “rise of illiberalism in the name of DEI is the antithesis of the principles that universities were founded on.” “University of Alabama professor leaves due to ‘obsession’ to push equity in science: ‘Rise of illiberalism’: ‘These are no longer places that embrace the freedom of exchanging ideas,’ the professor said”, Joshua Q. Nelson, 1/24/23.

“A new silent generation: Why America’s students are choosing self-censorship”

“A new silent generation: Why America’s students are choosing self-censorship”, Daniel McCarthy, May 4, 2026. https://nypost.com/2026/05/04/opinion/why-americas-students-are-choosing-self-censorship/.

“American teenagers may be doing to themselves what the Chinese Communist state does to its citizens. An Ivy League professor — an old-fashioned liberal who actually cares about free speech — recently warned me about what’s happening in classrooms like his. He encourages class discussion of the great books he teaches in class — but students are reluctant to speak. Not because they’re afraid of the professor, but because they fear each other.

Communist regimes have tried to stamp out dissent for more than a century; tyrants and totalitarians have always tried to sow suspicion among their subjects, turning friends, neighbors and even family members into informers against anyone who won’t conform to the party line. That’s the scenario in George Orwell’s dystopian classic “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” and it’s the intention behind China’s insidious “social credit” system today. What Orwell never imagined, though, was that young men and women in a free society would one day willingly impose “political correctness” on their peers — and use the 21st century’s decentralized social media to do it.

Students, the professor told me, are afraid to be recorded on their classmates’ cellphones talking about politics and political philosophy — the subjects he teaches — and don’t want to disagree with their fellow students about anything because the person they’re arguing with might belong to a “disadvantaged” group. It’s not only what you say that’s dangerous, but who you say it to. ….

That might be said about today’s liberalism as an ideology, too — it may sound agreeable and nice, but adopting it leads to harm, including the psychological damage that politically left-wing people report experiencing at much higher levels than conservatives. Fragility, bitterness, timidity — these are the fruits of the orthodoxy America’s elite has embraced, and which its children enforce against outliers with vigilante zeal. The victim mentality has become an excuse for bullying.”

Reviews

I authored several books on these issues in the past several years. They include: “Conformity Colleges: The Destruction of Intellectual Creativity and Dissent in America’s Universities (2024), “Un-Canceling” America (2021), “Defending K-12 Education Against the New Racism” (2021), “No More Excuses!”: Parents Defending K-12 Education “ (2022), and “The Artificial Intelligence Contagion: Can Democracy Withstand the Imminent Transformation of Work, Wealth and the Social Order?” (With Daniel Barnhizer 2019).

I don’t actually expect anyone to run out and read the books listed above but am offering a few comments below made by people deeply engaged in understanding what has been taking place as America undergoes one of the most intense social, political and educational transformations in its history. I at a minimum want to make it clear that I am not new to “this game” or to the repression and institutional sabotage it represents. Following that brief introductory review offered by people for whom I have great respect, the remainder of my analysis seeks to offer some additional detail, context and depth on what I consider fundamental and vital issues.

Alan Dershowitz on “Un-Canceling” America: “The systemic “rot” of Cancel Culture” is spreading rapidly. Our fundamental institutions are endangered by the intolerance being practiced by the extremist cults of “Wokeness”. This movement is a power grab, not a legitimate effort to heal the nation. The goal is to replace those who are claimed to be oppressors with new oppressors, themselves. The analysis and many examples of canceled individuals from academia, the press, and general society offered in “Un-Canceling” America must sound an alarm to all of us, whether on the right, middle, or the legitimate left.” Alan Dershowitz, Author, The Case Against the New Censorship: Protecting Free Speech from Big Tech, Progressives, and Universities (2021). Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus Harvard Law School.

Harald Uhlig in discussing “Un-Canceling” America. “If you are skeptical that there is such a thing as cancel culture or if you believe that there is not much to worry about, then read this excellent book. David Barnhizer has done an amazing job of putting together a long list of “canceling” cases. He expertly draws the parallels between cancel culture and disturbing restrictions of intellectual freedom at other times in history: the similarities are eerie. The book is a much-needed wake up call for all who value free speech and the debate of ideas, and shows what is at stake. Disagree if you will! This is what a free society should be all about.” Harald Uhlig, Bruce Allen and Barbara Ritzenthaler Professor of Economics University of Chicago.

Jeffrey A. Tucker on “Conformity Colleges: The Destruction of Intellectual Creativity and Dissent in America’s Universities.“COVID feels like a turning point, a time when universities fully embraced the ideology of control, censorship, and compulsion, represented by universal quarantines, masking, and vaccine compliance, all rooted in symbolism rather than scientific realities. Freedom is the last thing you will find at elite institutions today. The ESG and DEI bureaucracies are deeply entrenched, and an anti-Western, anti-Enlightenment, anti-reason curricula pervades the whole of the elite establishment. It is reinforced at every level, including publishing, promotion, and tenure demands. Already by 2019, anyone in this realm who identified as a conservative was in the extreme minority. And yet this period might be more correctly seen, as it is in this brilliant book by David Barnhizer, as a codification of deep problems that already existed.

We have certainly lived through the decline and fall of the older idea of the university. Now we may yet live to see the end of the university itself and its replacement by something else entirely. Reforms can work but the reform will not likely come from within the institutions. They must be imposed by alumni and perhaps legislatures. Or perhaps the rule of ‘Go woke, go broke’ will eventually force a change. Regardless, the idea of learning itself will surely return. We are in the transition, and David Barnhizer … gives us an outstanding tour of the wreckage left behind and perhaps even a path out of the darkness.”—JeffreyA.Tucker, founder and president of the Brownstone Institute, and author of thousands of articles and ten books, including Liberty or Lockdown.

Jon Zubieta, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Syracuse University, on “Defending K-12 Education Against the New Racism”. “You have really produced a stunner with this one. There is a passage early in the first chapter on Martin Luther King’s vision of the purposes of education contrasted with what is happening with Critical Race Theory in K-12 education and university level education that should be inscribed on every door post. You write:

“[CRT] is all about grabbing power through creating division and strife founded on a false narrative of continuing and total systemic racism that can only be resolved if power is transferred to them as an act of atonement by an extremely diverse set of ethnic groups conveniently painted “White” for all the historical evils done since 1619. It is a false, short-term, power-driven, and socially and economically destructive strategy.”

Barbara Kay and “Conformity Colleges: The Destruction of Intellectual Creativity and Dissent in America’s Universities.” “As someone who writes frequently in the mainstream press about the ruinous effects of woke ideology on society, I truly appreciate David Barnhizer’s unique contribution to the literature on this subject. Conformity Colleges: The Destruction of Intellectual Creativity and Dissent in America’s Universities is ‘a one-stop shop’ for journalists, often working under time constraints, who seek well-organized, intelligently triaged evidence that is essential ballast in the creation of persuasive columns.”—Barbara Kay, opinion columnist for Canada’s National Post and the Epoch Times

Mark Bauerlein, senior editor, First Things magazine, and professor emeritus, Emory University, writes of Conformity Colleges. “It is grimly satisfying to read the words of an observer who understands the value of the university in American life and the extent of contemporary threats to it. David Barnhizer has produced an exhaustive roster of decay, a source book that contains little good news and lots of depredation. The ideals of academic life—disinterested judgment, peer review, Ivory Tower seclusion—have fallen again and again to identity politics, resentment, and cowardice. This book is a sobering compilation of events on the road downward, valuable because people who wish to defend the traditional conception must understand exactly how far we’ve fallen and how ruthless are the vandals still at work.”

William A. Jacobson on Conformity Colleges. ”David Barnhizer’s book on intellectual conformity in higher education exposes the personal and systemic tragedies of what we call ‘cancel culture.’ Behind every story described in his 2021 work “Un-Canceling” America, and further developed in the analysis in Conformity Colleges, are people whose lives have been upended and careers damaged by Identity Groups pushing political agendas by punishing innocent victims seeking nothing more than an understanding of the vital significance of the hard-fought vision of Western society and the Rule of Law. Prof. Barnhizer has gathered their stories in Conformity Colleges: The Destruction of Intellectual Creativity and Dissent in America’s Universities, as historical evidence of the damage groupthink and enforced conformity have inflicted on the integrity of academia and on an American society whose moral, intellectual, and economic integrity is dependent on the honesty and quality of education.” —William A. Jacobson, clinical professor of Law and director of the Securities Law Clinic, Cornell Law School; founder and president of the Legal Insurrection Foundation

James Gorrie, Epoch Times writer and author of The China Crisis, reviews Conformity Colleges. ”I haven’t read a more comprehensive taxonomy about the Woke Left’s toxicity on the intellectual integrity of our education system. If Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind was the warning signal of the Left’s danger to our culture, Conformity Colleges is the post-mortem. Exceptionally detailed, Barnhizer articulates the intellectual and practical applications of ‘Wokery’ and its far-reaching consequences to Americas’ ability to think clearly and freely. This book should be required reading for every freshman university humanities major.”—

Cancel Culture Is a Tool to Break Down America

“Identity Politics Is a Tool to Break Down America”, Ella Kietlinska and Joshua Philipp, 2/19/21. https://www.theepochtimes.com/identity-politics-is-a-tool-to-break-down-america-expert_3700658.html.

“Identity politics is the reimagining of America as not a united country or a united nation but as a confederation of identity groups, according to Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow on E Pluribus Unum at Heritage Foundation. “Some of these groups are considered to be oppressed and then one of these groups is the oppressor,” Gonzalez said. These groups have been created synthetically by activists on the left for the purpose of instilling the members of the oppressed groups with a sense of victimhood and grievances so they would act as a catalyst to change the society and to change America. This is consistent with the archetypal Marxist conflicts between “the oppressor” and “the oppressed.”

Herbert Marcuse, a prominent Marxist scholar of the Frankfurt School, wrote: “All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude.” People need to be conscious of their servitude first, of being oppressed before they can react through revolution, explained Gonzalez. According to Marcuse, the American worker was never going to overthrow the system because the American worker was too content and too happy with capitalism, Gonzalez said. Marcuse posited that there would be people of different races and colors who would be the revolutionary base that would rise up and overthrow the so-called oppressive system, but they must be instructed first about their oppression and servitude. … In order to dismantle the system, according to Marxist thought, “you need to be upset,” he said, to feel victimized by the system, and only then will people act collectively.”

It Is About Power and Control, Not Pretend Outrage and Fake Sensitivity

Cancel Culture isn’t about truth, or even about taking real offense at what is being said or done by those unfortunate enough to be “canceled”. Virtually all that faux “outrage” is tactical. Its purpose is to put others on the defensive, uncertain what they said or did was wrong and subject to feeling shamed. It is all about power. Roger Kimball describes what is happening in terms of the “Purity Spiral” and “virtue signaling”, equating the behavior we are experiencing in America with that of China during the Cultural Revolution and the savagery of the Red Guards.

“The Purity Spiral Turns, as Courage Goes Missing”, Roger Kimball, 6/28/20. https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-purity-spiral-turns-as-courage-goes-missing_3404905.html.

The journalist Gavin Haynes has a great phrase for a familiar and disturbing phenomenon: the purity spiral. “A purity spiral occurs,” he writes, “when a community becomes fixated on implementing a single value that has no upper limit, and no single agreed interpretation. The result is a moral feeding frenzy.” In the late 1960s, the Red Guards took to the street to identify and destroy anyone and anything involved with traditional Chinese culture. The result was an orgy of destruction and murder on an industrial scale. Haynes points out that the phenomenon is not confined to the Left. The Nazi obsession with race involved a purity spiral as thoroughgoing and murderous as any in history. The point is that the logic of the process transcends ideology. .… Writing in the magazine New York, the commentator Andrew Sullivan notes the prominent role that language—that is, the effort to police language—plays in the economy of coercion. “Revolutionaries,” he writes, “create new forms of language to dismantle the existing order.”

Kimball goes on to provide several examples of how the “dismantling” of the “existing order” and its institutions proceeds.

“The use of the term ‘white supremacy’ to mean not the KKK or the antebellum South but American society as a whole in the 21st century has become routine on the left, as if it were now beyond dispute. The word ‘women,’ J.K. Rowling had the temerity to point out, is now being replaced by’“people who menstruate.’ The word’“oppression’ now includes not only being herded into Uighur reeducation camps but also feeling awkward as a sophomore in an Ivy League school. The word ‘racist,’ which was widely understood quite recently to be prejudicial treatment of an individual based on the color of their skin, now requires no intent to be racist in the former sense, just acquiescence in something called ‘structural racism’ which can mean any difference in outcomes among racial groupings. Being color-blind is therefore now being racist. “[T]here is no escaping this. The woke shift their language all the time, so that words that were one day fine are now utterly reprehensible. You can’t keep up — which is the point. . . . The result is an exercise of cultural power through linguistic distortion.”

The “New Woke Americanism” Is a Form of Maoism and Marxism

Mao Tse Tung wrote in a 1937 tract that open-minded, thoughtful, and critical Liberalism of the traditional kind was a threat to his “revolution.” Mao condemned Liberalism in its true and original form because he understood it empowered people to question authority in ways that would cause them to deviate from the dictates of his leadership. To Mao, school’s function was to create people who accepted the principles and strategies of “the revolution.”

As with Mao, and Karl Marx for that matter, the underlying thesis of the Woke/CRT strategy is to “get our youth” while they are young. This is because the young are only partially formed in terms of their core worldviews and values, and are particularly susceptible to the power flowing from “wise” authority figures in the form of teachers. The intended result is the creation of cadres of true believers. This is a vital part of the Woke/CRT Movement’s quest for transformative power.

In contrast, consider the wonderful principles offered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Nelson Mandela. MLK described a primary purpose of education as “to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.” Malcolm X stated the purpose of education as follows: “Education is our passport to the future, tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”

The incredibly courageous South African civil rights and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela offered another powerful insight into the vital importance of teaching critical thinking, wide-ranging knowledge, personal empowerment, and vital skills. Mandela states: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. Education is the first step for people to gain the knowledge, critical thinking, empowerment and skills they need to make this world a better place.”

Propaganda, Stereotypes, and the Inability to Think Critically

In The Technological Society (1964) and in his classic Propaganda, Jacques Ellul warned that in such societies: “The conflict of propaganda takes the place of the debate of ideas.” Ellul, in Propaganda, explains the nature and effects of stereotypes. Once such a system takes hold, it is almost impossible to change the stereotypical and propagandistic mindset. In saying that members of groups attach themselves passionately to the language and values represented by their group while rejecting those of other groups, Ellul provides an important insight into why the rise of impassioned and often fanatical Identity Groups is so dangerous.

“A stereotype is a seeming value judgment, acquired by belonging to a group, without any intellectual labor…. The stereotype arises from feelings one has for one’s own group, or against the “out-group.” Man attaches himself passionately to the values represented by his group and rejects the cliches of the out-groups…. The stereotype … helps man to avoid thinking, to take a personal position, to form his own opinion.”

The aim of the propagandist is to create “in-group” and “out-group” stereotypes that determine how we perceive, think and act. The continuous use of stereotypes and slogans, combined with the power of identity group allegiances, are central elements of the process. Done well, and repeated as an almost primitive litany of inescapable drumbeats, the narratives and slogans become the primary modes of expression and perception. The propagandist is then able to shape the identity of those under the “spell” of the “puppet masters”.

Robert Wolff warned us what happens when a monolithic orthodoxy—what I am calling the “Progressive Theocracy”—is allowed to gain control.

“The received doctrine is taught in the schools, its expounders are awarded positions, fellowships, honors, and public acclaim….” [O]nce such controls are in place, “dissenting doctrines [and their language] … are excluded from places of instruction, denied easy access to media of communication, officially ridiculed...” Robert Paul Wolff, The Poverty of Liberalism 16 (Beacon Press, Boston 1968).

The controls Wolff warned about are now firmly entrenched in America’s universities and our general educational system. The result is “Menticide”. It is not being overly dramatic to argue this represents the murder of our minds by eliminating the ability to engage in honest discourse and to think for ourselves. Menticide has been described by Oxford as:

“The undermining or destruction of a person’s mind or will, especially by systematic means (regarded as a characteristic activity of totalitarian regimes).” The Catholic definition is: “The systematic effort to break down the beliefs and allegiances of a person by physical or psychological means, in order to substitute one’s own. Also called brainwashing, it has been made possible mainly because of modern discoveries in psychology and the use of the mass media.”

The Powerful Strategy of Narrative “Framing”

The traditional news media and our systems of education at all levels, are operating through a combination of social media, Identity Group-think, and sophisticated linguistic strategies such as those represented by George Lakoff’s system of narrative “framing”. This has multiplied the power of speech suppression to levels of intensity far beyond anything previously available. Part of framing’s power is the invention of all-encompassing narratives. These narratives are made up stories that nonetheless come to define all acceptable portrayals of a desired political reality. Once such narratives take hold, they control and eviscerate competing narratives and become the only permissible way to describe social, political and even personal reality. For an overview, see, Matt Bai, “The Framing Wars”, New York Times, July 17, 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17DEMOCRATS.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

This strategy of “forcing the narrative” has penetrated every level of our societies, whether purportedly democratic or authoritarian. These tools have increasingly been focused on Western societies in the form of Cancel Culture in which the “cancelations” are aimed at those deviating from or challenging the activist narrative. Equally tragic is that authoritarian societies such as China have been provided with extremely powerful tools for controlling their people and maintaining power.

As can be seen with the examples of Chinese canceling actions offered in the text, under Xi Jinping—China’s new Mao Zedong—China has not hesitated to create an overarching Cancel Culture. Xi and the CCP have turned China into one of history’s most pervasively repressive and intolerant regimes. The tragedy is that while America and China will never be identical, our nation is adopting many of the same rules and systems of speech and thought repression as is China. Ironically, China received many of the powerful technological tools from American companies and universities.

Frames and Narratives are “Pavlovian” Incantations

A sophisticated industry of manipulation has arisen that employs strategies anchored in propaganda, “framing”, fanaticism, and sowing discord. The experts in this industry teach us how to “frame” everything into thematic propaganda “missiles” that we launch to “sell” our positions or sabotage those of our opponents. Stereotypes of the kind generated by the propaganda frames do not require thought, only acceptance and allegiance. They are acquired by the act of belonging to a group, and require no intellectual labor, diverse body of knowledge or experience, or critical thinking ability. For most members of such groups, the allegiance and sense of commitment offer a powerful source of attraction because they provide a sense of belonging and human relationship in what for many is a troubling and terrifying world.

Thematic “frames” of the kind described by George Lakoff, now retired from his position at the University of California Berkeley—where he was Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics—are propaganda weapons that exchange content for emotional impact. No one knows what such words actually mean once they are taken beyond a limited set of factual situations to which they were intended to apply and possibly inform. But they evoke strong feelings in the hearts and souls of those subjected to their power just as Ivan Pavlov’s dogs were trained to salivate at the sound of a bell. The continuous recitation of these “incantations” is the “magic” of the manipulators and propagandists. The words and phrases cast spells over us and in doing so transform us into creatures controlled by “puppet masters”.

On either side of the political equation, the puppet strings of stereotypes are pulled together into a set of cultural memes. These prevent agreement and block compromise. They force us further and further apart as powerful groups gain increasing control. The tragedy is that our political parties no longer seek compromise and negotiated solutions. This is because they are intent on manipulating groups of voters who are already “hooked” on slogans and propaganda frames. This is not an accidental process. Our political and social “leaders” are dependent on specific voter blocs and gain leverage and control when they drive their predominant base groups farther and farther apart from their competitors for power.

Language control is a vital part of the strategies of those seeking and maintaining power. Linguistic control strategies have a variety of forms. In their most recent forms they include what is called “cancel culture”. This involves such actions as deplatforming speakers through shout downs and threats of violence, attacks for what is called cultural appropriation, and violation of other forms of political correctness.

One disturbing result of the propaganda and thematic framing with which we are being inundated, and that we ourselves employ against others, is to convert us into angry “golem”. We surrender our individuality and soul when we become inextricably tied to an “in” group. When that happens, we become deeply opposed to anyone our identity group sees as “The Other” and consider others inferior or the “enemy”.

This phenomenon has extended across the full range of social and political movements seeking power and control over the system. It is an absolutely predictable result of creating “identity group” quasi-religious sects whose identity group belief systems see others as enemies and heretics. When that occurs, as is taking place in America, we no longer have a collaborative community with the ability and willingness to negotiate compromises and mutually beneficial outcomes but a fragmented collection of power clusters with intractable competing agendas.

Fragmentation takes place because our own identity group’s language defines not only how we see what we consider reality, but how we are able to see the world in which we are living. Our group’s “socially constructed language” no longer translates into the “socially constructed language” being used by our opponents, our enemies, or even by those who simply do not support our agenda and demands.

One dismaying result is that we now exist in a culture where “you are either with us or against us”. There is no middle ground left for compromise. As we see daily in the behavior of a wide range of our political institutions and social movements, reasoned discourse and compromise are no longer possible. The result is that our vision of reality has become a collection of inauthentic stereotypes rather than fact and evidence-based interpretations. We resemble a bunch of bratty children throwing tantrums and wailing “Mine! Mine! Mine!”

Narrative Framing Works Because We Become The Language We Use

Our very selves and the perceptual structures on which we depend to interpret the world become anchored to the ideological polemics and slogans. Unless this contains a set of values and principles we have accepted as true and credible an internal vacuum is created. Externalization is for ideologues and fanatics. Those who seek truth and substance in their belief systems will never be satisfied with the superficiality of propaganda. For “true believers”, the structures of ethics, principles and morality are not something to be worked out through experience, the richness of thought and interactive debate, but is provided by an externalized system of group-think.

When that occurs we become ideologues, true believers, and fanatics. Lacking our own painstakingly developed internal system of grounding and meaningful content, we have no real moral anchors and must therefore depend on the group for our beliefs and dogma. That is the danger of Cancel Culture because we become members of mobs and gangs rather than individuals who are committed to being the best person we can become through the power of our insight.

Framing blocks the exchange of ideas. It blocks honest exchanges and, to the users’ discredit, that is the purpose of the frames. Free and honest discussion is the enemy of those who seek to control our policies and culture. They seek to destroy true discourse because the truth is inconvenient and a threat to those who hold, or desire to hold, power.

“Framing” and labeling are central to the strategies of propaganda, stereotyping, canceling and thought control that we are now experiencing. Key aspects of their use involve “hate”, “phobic” and bigotry labels because if you are on the “wrong side” of those labels you are “really screwed”.

The highly sophisticated “framing” of disputes is done in ways designed to capture the moral high ground. The other aim involves tainting opponents with emotionally-laden terms that bypass human’s rational thought and go straight to their emotive perceptions. This allows, slogans, stereotypes and non-evidentiary based accusations to preempt the field of what we naively think is discourse but that is actually an advertising and propaganda conflict. These have become commonplace mechanisms for controlling our discourse, so maybe Madison Avenue would have eventually figured it out but otherwise “Thank you George Lakoff for really messing up America”.

Slogans and “Rallying Symbols” Create Our Reality

As our communications and message shaping skills have grown exponentially during what I think of as the “Internet, Framing, and Social Media” Era, so has the ability to engage in propaganda. The ability to manipulate our beliefs, values and awareness has reached a level that allows emotive messages using powerfully “framed” stereotypes to be embedded deeply within our psyches. The emotive power of the propagandistic “frames” never even comes into contact with our rational minds, so we are not forced to confront our delusions and irrationality.

Maxine Greene echoed this in explaining the effects of propaganda and stereotypes on a society. She warned that slogans and propaganda have replaced intelligent dialogue. Greene explained in Teacher As Stranger that slogans are “rallying symbols” that “in no sense describe what actually exists, yet they are taken—wishfully or desperately—to be generalizations or statements of fact.” This is where we now find ourselves, and it summarizes the inability of extremists and cancelers to see beyond their impassioned rhetoric.

The tragedy is that, since there is no substance at their core, they must defend their positions by “canceling” others rather than honest debate. They are unable to engage in fully developed discourse because they have little to say that would not blow apart the “houses of straw” on which their assumptions and beliefs are founded. So they “cancel” reality, sneer at others’ views, condemn opponents, and create a false narrative to justify their own system of belief.

In such a context, the language used by each collective movement (and counter-movement) is language of attack, protest, suppression and opposition—not reasoned discourse. It is language used as a weapon to gain or defend power. On such themes, see, Max Lerner, Ideas Are Weapons: The History and Uses of Ideas (Transition, 1991). What is occurring is neither rational or substantive.

Progressive “Wokeness” Is A Marxist Secular Religion

Marx described religion as “‘the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people’.” In doing so, like many others Marx made the error of thinking that if it were only possible to free people from the effects of deistic religious faith, they would ultimately move to create a humanistic and benign secular system. The belief was that this elevated state of being would return us to some Marxian version of the Garden of Eden where we would live perfect, harmonious and content lives.

Marx, like Socrates and the philosophical activists of the French Enlightenment, believed in the essential goodness of the human species, or at least some members of the species. He, and they, failed to understand that many, if not most, people required a source of guiding authority and, if the divine was denied them, they would seek other mechanisms.

Marx also asserted that a main function of religion was preventing people from demanding social change. He argued it did this by reducing the sense of oppression. The idea was that one way it did this was by promising a Heaven so that organized religion gave people something to look forward to even as they endured the darkness of earthly existence. The thought was that you could better put up with misery now if you have a life of ‘eternal bliss’ to look forward to after your earthly death. This can be seen in the devotion to “Spiritual” songs and music among enslaved Blacks, and in Black churches even today. Of course the system worked even better if there was a Hell in which the “bad guys” suffered eternal pain and despair. At least you could look forward to your tormentors “getting their just deserts”.

The flawed Marxist belief was that once humans were provided with knowledge through education and freed from the oppression of their “exploiters”, they would blossom into their compassionate and benign natural state. Individually, and as part of a community based on the altruistic belief of “from each according to his abilities, to each according to their needs”, they would by their very nature act to realize the ultimate qualities of the human race, undeterred by the evils of exploitation and greed.

While we are accustomed to thinking about religion as requiring a dominant deity, the fact is that religion is a system of not only faith but control. We often think that “religion” requires the belief in an all-powerful deity but it does not. We are experiencing the birth of a new religion represented by “Progressive Theocracy” That system of faith may lack a deity figure, but as can be seen in many of its disciples it is a powerful form of belief that for its faithful justifies significant social control. A primary tool by which that theocracy achieves its goals is by the system we are calling Cancel Culture. Just as with earlier versions of Christianity, Marxism, Maoism and the like, and current Islam, those who deviate or refuse to accept the Progressive Theocracy’s legitimacy are either “blasphemers”, “heretics” or “counter-revolutionaries” and are seen and dealt with as threats to the “true beliefs” of the dominant “priesthood”.

One analysis indicates that:

Marx believed that the ‘objective’ truth was that the proletariat (i.e. most people) suffer deprivations because of their exploitation by the Bourgeois (namely the extraction of surplus value empowers the minority Bourgeois class and leaves the majority of the proletariat with insufficient money to lead a decent quality of life), however, people fail to realise this because religion teaches them that all of the misery in life is God’s will. Religion is only necessary under exploitative systems where the majority of men do not control the conditions under which they labour, under systems where men work for someone else rather than for themselves: Under communism, where man controls the conditions of his labour, he is essentially ‘for himself’ and thus will have no need of religion. Under communism, where reality is ‘fair’ religion will not be required, and so will simply wither away. https://revisesociology.com/2018/07/10/marxist-perspective-religion/.

Due to the realities of human nature that contradict Marxian dreams of human goodness, that system never moves beyond centralized authoritarian power and heavy-handed control. The immutable reality is that there is no singular human template. History’s incontrovertible lesson is that humans differ in goodness, in the extent or lack of their altruistic impulses, the extent of egomania, physical and intellectual abilities, resentment and jealousy, and the drive toward creating the wealth, opportunities and goods required to provide for the overall community—or for themselves and their allies.

Differences in talent, merit, good and bad fortune, and the distribution of social goods are inevitable. Wanting human reality and behavior to fit into a false ideal of innate human goodness does not make it so. While excessive extremes in opportunity and outcomes can be destructive to the social order, there is no viable system in which perfect equality is possible. We can and should act decently with an eye toward advancing the overall human good, but we can never achieve a perfect system. Taken too far, the attempt to do so will always produce repressive authoritarian systems, resentment and violence. A more honest reality is that the revolutionary polemic is primarily a key device for creating the rage and resentment necessary for the revolutionaries to seize power.