When I suggested earlier that the National Review soup kitchen putsch sounded like something communists would do, several of you pointed out that I must only mean Maoists and Soviets, since many of today’s commies eat well (the Slow Food movement and Gambero Rosso were both started by Italian commnists), and that under the Soviets, obtaining edible food was was sufficiently difficult that it left little energy for worrying about what kind of mustard your comrades were using. In other words, in United States, you make fun of soup kitchen, in Soviet Union, soup kitchen make fun of you.
But this got me to thinking that there really are some remarkable similarities between today’s conservatives and communism in the style of the Mao or the Soviets. I went to a talk a few years ago about Chinese math under Mao; Chinese mathematicians were allowed to study nonstandard analysis (but not many other kinds of math) because it dealt with a formal notion of infinitesimals, and Marx once said he liked the Leibniz infinitesimal approach to calculus. Similarly, Stalin favored Lamarck over Darwin (and forced it on Soviet scientists), because his theory seemed more in keeping with the tenets of Marx-Leninism.
Is this not exactly like intelligent design, the desire to find Burkean solutions to social problems, and so on? And to take this a step further, isn’t the idea of conservative songs and movies very much like the notion of good Soviet art? And of course, conservatives now engage in regular ritualized party purges.
Am I taking this all too far?
robertdsc
You’re hitting the nail on the head every time Doug. No need to apologize.
Jay B.
No.
But you have to ease up on Burke. It’s not really his fault. He may have been conservative in temperament — but he was still a man of the Enlightenment. Which is more than you can say for the vast majority of modern conservatives.
DougJ
I think the same is true of Marx to some extent.
Old Gringo
If only Billmon hadn’t thrown his archives in the trash. He used to illustrate this similarity between wingnuttia and the cultural revolution, with his wonderful photoshop work, and fantastic writing. You are not taking it too far.
beltane
Fanatics and ideologues are always at war with reality, and will do everything in their power to make the external world conform to their emotion-based beliefs. The Republicans’ love of kitsch and hatred of everything intellectual puts them in a class with all those other cultural revolutionaries.
Brandon T
I think, if you want to avoid the Jonah Goldberg-esque “OMG, conservative communism!” realm, you need to replace communist with “authoritarian” or “totalitarian”.
jwb
It’s because they are all ideologues.
calipygian
Sly Talking Heads ref in the title (More Songs about Buildings and Food)
I can’t wait for the Steele themed post titled “Burning Down the Hizzous”
omen
there is also the fact that torture techniques, conservatives are so enamored with, were borrowed from the soviets and communist chinese.
DougJ
I think that might be taking it too far. This is more about a turn of mind than about actual governing practices.
DougJ
I like it.
Brachiator
No. It’s just another example of the Irony Curtain which has descended upon Wingnuttia.
djork
Norquist keeps a bust of Lenin in his house. Seriously. You are not taking it too far.
Fencedude
Hey, I like that. If they can have “Liberal Fascism”, why don’t we just complete the circle with “Conservative Communism”?
And then all the history professor’s heads explode.
evinfuilt
Nothing too surprising that what they fought so hard against is what they became. This too we must fear of Democrats, as they fight and eventually become their own wingnut movement.
omen
@evinfuilt:
what’s the extreme on the left? kucinich? i’ll take that over cheney.
Grumpy Code Monkey
I’ve long claimed that the Intelligent Design movement was less about religion and more about destroying the whole idea of public education. Which kind of fits in with the other stuff you mention.
What I wonder about is whether these people honestly believe they can reshape reality to fit their beliefs, or if they’re just trying to sucker enough people to put them in charge.
Brandon T
@omen:
Cindy Sheehan and the 9/11 truthers ::shudder::
Jess
It’s not about one political philosophy compared to another, but rather the triumph of ideology over empiricism/pragmatism. The Catholic church is yet another good example.
The same strategies get used again and again to try to keep reality at bay.
Bas-O-Matic
And to take this a step further, isn’t the idea of conservative songs and movies very much like the notion of good Soviet art? And of course, conservatives now engage in regular ritualized party purges.
Am I taking this all too far?
Nah. See e.g. Roy Edroso.
# Brandon T Says:
May 22nd, 2009 at 7:13 pm
I think, if you want to avoid the Jonah Goldberg-esque “OMG, conservative communism!” realm, you need to replace communist with “authoritarian” or “totalitarian”.
It has nothing to do with where on the political spectrum anyone is. It’s more about an approach to culture that recognizes the power of art, but fundamentally misunderstands it and is capable of viewing art only in the rawest political terms.
aimai
I haven’t seen this anywhere but it bears blogging and I might as well put it here. Doug’s point is a good one, when ideology trumps experience we are always going to be in trouble. Whether authorities/ideologues privilige a type of food experience, or clothing, over taste or comfort or a type of reasoning over scientific proof the end result is disaster. That’s basically the issue–compounded, of course, with the fact that obviously the right wing elites don’t really despise spicy brown mustard or refuse to order arugula in restaurants. They just pretend to for the sake of the rubes.
But beyond that does anyone remember the interesting fact that Columbus was so determined to believe that he had landed in the spice islands and not on a continent that he actually tortured the native population, and a few of his sailors, to get them to agree that he had, indeed, found the indies and not a new continent? And he went so far as to demand that his sailors *sign a document* stating that they they had found an island and not a continent.
Not stating that they “believed” that they had found an island and not a continent, but that they did find an island.
Somehow this reminds me very much of our torturing of various people to demonstrate an Iraq Al Quaeda link. For some people ideology trumps reality every damn time.
aimai
Old Gringo
I’m not sure what a “Burkean solution to social problems” would be.
It’s important to remember that Peter Viereck was the first American to protest that he was “a conservative” long before William F. Buckley ever did. Then he was promptly purged from the movement for being sane.
robuzo
The neocons are Bolsheviks, and Leo Strauss is their (perhaps unwitting) Lenin.
Tom
@Brachiator: “It’s just another example of the Irony Curtain which has descended upon Wingnuttia.”
Hahahaahah. Even funnier if you imagine Churchill saying it.
cosanostradamus
.
Let’s just put them all in a bunch of rockets and shoot up up to Uranus.
Check out these small & personal blogs Da Bes’ Part Deux. They’re all offering to cook you free hotdogs, hamburgers, and some vegan sh*t. Plus FREE BEER!!! And diet soda for the killjoys. All weekend. No, really…
.
Old Gringo
Plotting Privatization?
Title: ACHIEVING A “LENINIST” STRATEGY
Cato Journal, vol. 3, no.2 (Fall 1983) (700kB PDF). copyright © Cato Institute.
It began in 1982 at the “Rebuilding Social Security” Conference at the radical-right Heritage Foundation, but the plot against Social Security was fleshed out by Butler (a Cato director) and Germanis (an analyst at Heritage) in the Fall 1983 issue of Cato’s journal, summarized through quotes here:
“Lenin recognized that fundamental change is contingent upon … its success in isolating and weakening its opponents. … we would do well to draw a few lessons from the Leninist strategy. (p. 547)
“we must recognize that we need more than a manifesto … we must … construct … a coalition that will … reap benefits from the IRA-based private system Ferrara has proposed but also the banks, insurance companies, and other institutions that will gain from providing such plans to the public.” (p. 548)
“By approaching the problem in this way, we may be ready for the next crisis in Social Security.” (p. 548)
“From a purely political standpoint, it should be remembered that the elderly represent a very powerful and vocal interest group.” (p. 549)
A Plan of Action
“The first element consists of a campaign to achieve small legislative changes that embellish the present IRA system, making it in practice a small-scale private Social Security system. … the natural constituency for an enlarged IRA system must be … welded into a coalition for political change.” (p. 551)
“The second main element … involves what one might crudely call guerrilla warfare against both the current Social Security system and the coalition that supports it.” (p. 552)
Creating a Private Model
“The reason for designing a “super IRA” law with these restrictions is purely political.” (p. 552)
“Social Security reform requires mobilizing the various coalitions that stand to benefit from the change, … the business community, and financial institutions in particular … “(p. 553)
“The banking industry and other business groups that can benefit from expanded IRAs …”
“… the strategy must be to propose moving to a private Social Security system in such a way as to … neutralize … the coalition that supports the existing system.” (p. 555)
“The next Social Security crisis may be further away than many people believe. … it could be many years before the conditions are such that a radical reform of Social Security is possible. But then, as Lenin well knew, to be a successful revolutionary, one must also be patient and consistently plan for real reform.” (Concluding paragraph, p. 556)
chrismealy
Love the Talking Heads reference.
There was a Stalinist aesthetics / aesthetic Stalinism flare-up a while ago:
slate.com/id/3132/
More:
lefarkins.blogspot.com/search/label/aesthetic%20stalinism
RandyH
What they all have in common is that they are all Authoritarian.
Do follow the link and read the FREE online book if you haven’t seen it yet.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
God bless or damn you, Doug, but this will be stuck in my head all night.
I see the states, across this big nation
I see the laws made in Washington, D.C.
I think of the ones I consider my favorites
I think of the people that are working for me
ppcli
If only Lenin had lived long enough to write an essay on the NRO titled:
“Right-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder”
Speaking as a History Prof
That would be “history professors’ heads,” please. 5 points off for improper punctuation.
Anyway, most of us will tell you that movement names, especially the names of ideological movements, are among the most fluid and indeterminate words out there — and are often coined by a movement’s enemies anyway.
El Cid
I think there are two lines along which rightists often remind me of disciplined Leninist revolutionaries (or counter-revolutionaries, since they’re seeking to overturn even the Magna Charta).
Yes, there is the old strain of faux proletarian culture mongering, in which they’re actively promoting their version of the culture not that their imaginary commoners have but that they should have. But that’s an old pattern that simply acquired a new and modernized industrial twist with certain socialist and communist movements. Fascists did their versions too, as did country populists, anti-Civil Rights segregationists, and so forth.
But I was always more struck by their conscious notion of being a (counter) revolutionary vanguard whose long-term purpose was to gain control over the institutions of power in order to impose upon a perhaps unwilling society their (counter) revolutionary mission, and if this work and the changes they promoted ended up hurting people and throwing society into chaos, too bad, they’re on a mission.
This is like the cold-blooded calculation of Leninist capitalists I used to read recommending IMF and WB programs for Africa.
Their knowledge of Marxian arguments about the process of society — peasantry to become proletariat then either (given your preferences) to become socialist members of society or middle class workers was transformed into a cold equation:
If you believed that you could not have a modern industrial working class while so many were maintaining a peasant lifestyle, and you believed it would be insanely difficult if not simply impossible to bring paid work to such peasants, why, just make the peasants into paid workers by throwing them off their lands or otherwise making survival via peasant farming impossible.
Of course such insane schemes ended in disaster, but the revolutionary vanguard thinkers and development specialists were convinced enough of their notions that they’d contemplate any amount of pain imposed upon those brute peasants, given their calculations of future societal benefits.
Also, there’s the whole Chuck Norris thing.
El Cid
You know what’s really funny? A blog post on Maoists and Stalinists and communists where the word “soci alism” will be captured by the software. If only RedState used the same spam filter the volume of comments would be reduced by 50%.
Mike G
I’ve long claimed that the Intelligent Design movement was less about religion and more about destroying the whole idea of public education.
ID, along with other psuedo-science like Stalinist Lysenkoism, is about bullying control-freak scum who refuse to defer to anything, even well-established scientific evidence. It’s about an authoritarian mindset where “Reality is what I tell you it is” and independently-verifiable evidence is not a valid counter-argument; challenging pseudo-truth is a challenge to the positional authority of the person who proclaimed it, which is not tolerated.
As you can imagine, such an environment is not very conducive to finding truth.
Leisureguy
I think you may be onto something. Like conservative art—think of Thomas Kincaid, for example: very representational and sentimental. Not exactly Soviet Realism (too sentimental and pseudo-religious), but in that general ballpark. And I can’t see conservatives (in general) being very sympathetic to Modern Art.
DougJ
I hadn’t heard that. Do you have a link? Very apropos horrifying story.
Anne Laurie
All cults devolve along the same lines. Or, more specifically, all cultists forever seek the same “purity of thought”, aka ‘authoritarianism’, to protect them from their personal terrors. Stalinism, Neoconservatism, PETA — it’s the same pathology, just wearing different uniforms.
omen
@Anne Laurie:
why stop at peta? why not include the aclu? or the afl-cio?
Uloborus
I have been thinking about exactly this issue lately, actually. The correlation is *particularly* strong between the Bush-era movement and Maoism, and personally, I think it’s hilarious. It’s very closely tied to the accusation that they are ‘idealogues’, but, if anything, takes it a step further.
Both groups bluntly state that ‘science’ – empirical evidence, indeed, *facts* and *reality* – are inferior tools for making decisions compared to political dogma. Scientists are therefore distrusted as morally inferior people. That whole ‘elites’ accusation Repubs love to throw around at educated people? Could be straight out of the Cultural Revolution.
Seriously, Mao would go on and on about this stuff. More than a hundred million people starved to death when China used this to dictate agricultural policy. And that’s only the *beginning* of the madness.
Nor is this just Maoist doctrine, although the anti-intellectual part is particularly Mao. One of the central founding principles of Soviet Communism was that man’s will and taking action could change reality. Note comments by Bush officials on same tack.
I wish I was good at recording references so I could show you this stuff. But yes, the comparison is ABSOLUTELY apt, and I think it’s really funny. Alas, I see no way to tease current Republicans with this, because not accepting facts as important basically means they don’t have to listen.
Tom
Look at that kitchen and all of that food.
Look at them eat it guess it tastes real good!
Xanthippas
I think that probably, this is not that unusual. As jwb points out above, they are all after all ideologues and being fanatics, have little tolerance for any activity that appears to dissent from their ideology. The Bolsheviks and our modern conservatives share a peculiar pre-occupation with their own society’s elite; naturally, anything that smacks of the elite-including certainly food-becomes a target for their ideological rantings. Hence the similarities.
I’m sure there’s a deeper and more thoughtful explanation, but I think we’re off to a good start.
Wile E. Quixote
A few months back in another thread someone linked to this article written by libertarian economist Murray Rothbard on the Sociology of the Ayn Rand cult. The article describes much of what you talk about in the original post including the objectivist position on tobacco (Ayn smokes, therefore it is good for you. You are being anti-life if you don’t smoke.) or the objectivist position on Bach v. Rachmaninoff (If you like Bach you believe in a “malevolent universe”.).
Reading this made me shudder and thank the FSM that my father nipped by Randroid tendencies in the bud by introducing me to Hunter S. Thompson. By the time I was a senior in high school I had read everything that Thompson had written and decided that spending my days doing lots of drugs, driving through bat country with my best friend and mocking authority sounded a lot more appealing than fucking off to a secret community of humorless exiles in the Rockies and inventing new metal alloys all day long. By the time I was 18 I had read The Illuminatus Trilogy, with its gut-bustingly hilarous parody of Atlas Shrugged, Telemachus Sneezed and any tendencies I had towards Randroidism had been safely neutralized.
Notorious P.A.T.
Yes, it is.
JK
My only remark would be that Lamarckism is making a comeback of sort in the form of epigenetics so maybe not the best example. Lamarck may have been “right” although for reasons other than those he thought. Natural Selection can act on not just the genome but the regulation of the genome aka the epigenome.
Dave
Citing Mao/Lenin et al. is a little too specific for my taste. My sense about how conservatives operate is to use Debord’s Society of the Spectacle as a how-to manual.
miwome
Yes, you are.
Das Internetkommissariat
@DougJ:
Why do think Native Americans were called Indians?
morewin
The smililarty of consertivies and communists is not just about eating well.
IndieTarheel
@DougJ:
Me too.
aimai
DougJ,
I apologize for putting up that comment without a cite–it comes from my pre-internet anthropology days and came out of a book in my library. I searched for linkable information all morning since I can’t remember which book it was or where it is in my still chaotic book strewn office but I haven’t found it. I’m thinking it might have been in something like a book focused on exploration and new cultures rather than merely Columbus specific but I have to admit its probably fifteen years since I read it. I’ll keep looking.
aimai
ksmiami
no, SATSQ – but I would say the current right (with their brownshirting and eliminationist rhetoric are more like fascists than socialists because at least the commies pretended to care for the people…
anthony
Yes. There’s a humanist stream in Marxism about alienation, work and creativity. Work is how we become human and by doing work we can express our humanity. So you if you can imagine food as a creative act and part of being productive, you can imagine how passively relying the industrial food system can alienate people from their humanity in their gaining of sustenance. Similarly the industrial production of food can go from serving us to controlling us.
Slow Food is largely a way of reengaging us with food and the communities that produce it.
And as Soviet leaders and wingnuts know, when people start creating and enjoying themselves freely and of their own accord, there can only be trouble.
JoJo
Interesting theory. I wonder if that’s the reason behind some of the bitter, angry, hysterical response to fanfiction and fanvids from writer Lee Goldberg and others. God forbid the fans get in on the action and create their own fun in a fictional universe they enjoy.
anthony
I think if Lee were you and I JoJo, we’d enjoy the interaction. But Lee’s ownership issues of his art end up owning him. There’s a reason conservatives always imagine themselves in a leather chair in a room full of their books in a manor with a moat.
I hear Marx used to hang out at the library.
Raenelle
Stalin had it up on the right-wing fanatics in three ways: first, he persecuted capitalists in favor of the proletariat, while the righties swim the other way; second, Stalin really did have a couple of genuine reasons to be paranoid; third, Stalin was an actual battle-hardened vet.
I don’t like Stalin, but if I had to choose between being governed by Stalin or Cheney, I think I’d choose Stalin.
John T
@Dave:
More likely, 1984 as a how-to manual. Society of the Spectacle has way too many big words and philosomisizing and stuff.
omen
alls i know is how insecure and pathetic do you have to be to hold a grudge against arugula?
The Other Steve
You know, as similar as Mao or Stalin may be to the Republican party, one must not forget the influence of Pol Pot of Cambodia.
Pot felt that urban elitists were a bad thing and instituted a forced repopulation of the inhabitants out to the rural parts of the country, believing that only farmers were the only true working class proletariat. This is similar in concept to Sarah Palin’s declaration of Real Americans in Virginia.
someguy
@ Raenelle
You really think a guy who makes Hitler look like a bush leaguer when it comes to murdering people is better than Cheney?
Oh well. I guess a hundred million people, give or take a few tens of millions, can’t be wrong.
henqiguai
@omen: (#38)
The ACLU ? And a labor union ? When did vigorously defending 1st Amendment rights (of everybody) and labor equity become cult activities (and truth be told, I don’t particularly like unions) ?
But if you’re going to go down that path, surely you really, really, meant to include the NRA. They truly are striving for cult-like purity. That’s one of the reasons, years ago, I let my own membership lapse.
JackieBinAZ
Human nature hasn’t changed, so it’s fair to assume a percentage of the population has always reveled in being this kind of totalitarian asshole.
Raenelle
Someguy, Here’s my thinking on that. First, I’m a prole–Stalin was on my side; Cheney is not. Second, and this is by FAR the most important point–I’m not justifying anything that Stalin did, though 100 million might be a tad exaggerated. My point is what do you think Cheney would be like with the whole world as an adversary, 3million Nazis with tanks on his border, unlimited power, and unlimited power for 30 years–no checks, everyone agreeing with him, just him and the ability to make the world in his own image limited only by the laws of physics? Cheney–power multiplied; add decades of time; add lots of real reasons for very high paranoia. I don’t know what he’d do. But I have zero (black hole none) confidence in his humanity or his humility, in his ability to curb his own zealotry. I think he’s a sociopath. I’d take Stalin.
jshubbub
@ Raenelle, #62
You’re being quite outrageous. It is an interesting distraction to hypothesize about what Cheney might have done given the same conditions Stalin faced, but it’s just that–a distraction. The fact is that Stalin actually committed those atrocities while Cheney is nothing more than a common war criminal. The world is full of them, and there’s an order of magnitude separating them from Stalin.
If Cheney and the wingnuts were actually equivalent to Lenin, Stalin, and the Bolsheviks then we would have an armed uprising going on now against the hated elites. But that didn’t happen. We had an orderly election and a peaceful transfer of power. Given a choice between that and Stalinism, I would choose what we have every time, and, if you’re honest, so would you.
The question we face now is whether, with the shutting down of Gitmo, we are going to have our own gulag archipelago or are we going to return to our proven institutions and rule of law. Obama’s national security speech didn’t offer much hope on that subject. It appears that the wingnut strain has contaminated our whole system, and it’s going to take some time to eradicate it.
calipygian
Raenelle is a fucking troll. No one in their right mind would take Stalin over Cheney.
Cheney was in charge for the last eight years and I’m still here.
If Stalin were in charge, I’d be mining gold in Kolyma or fucking dead.
Fuck you, Raenelle. Go learn some fucking history. Cheney is a twat – Stalin is a fucking demonic monster.
Wile E. Quixote
@Raenelle
Fixed. And no honey, Stalin wasn’t on your side, Stalin claimed to be on the side of the proles all the while having millions of them killed or enslaved in gulags. If you think that Stalin was on the side of the proletariat you’re every bit as stupid as those Republicans who think that Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin are looking out for them and if you think that Dick Cheney was just as bad as he was, every bit as repulsive and worthy of contempt as fat pieces of shit like Rush Limbaugh who think that waterboarding is just like a fraternity prank.
I’d suggest that you stop fantasizing about having old Uncle Joe come over to your modest proletarian dwelling, be your daddy and fuck you tenderly and instead find out about what the man was like and what he did by reading Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror or Harvest of Sorrow or Simon Sebag Montefiore’s At the Court of the Red Tsar. If those are too long for you, because let’s face it, you are obviously intellectually challenged, you could pick up Martin Amis’s Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million, or read his novel about two brothers in a Soviet Gulag, House of Meetings. Or if that’s too much for you and you just want to look at pictures check out David King’s The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia which documents the disappearance of Soviet officials who fell out of favor with Stalin by their removal from official state photographs.
grendelkhan
The trope referenced here, at least in reference to conservative books and movies is True Art Sticks It To the Man, or possibly an inversion thereof.