You’re not crazy, Communism is.

Dear cousin, I hope you’re keeping well in these crazy times.  Thanks for sharing this video, there’s lots of food for thought in it.

I was tempted to stop watching it in the early part when there were umpteen clips of people saying “33 cases” like that was evidence of something. But I’m glad I stuck with it because Jeremy Elliott does actually make a case for a communist subversion plot that’s more cogent than the usual New World Order conspiracy theories I hear (which often focus on “Jewish bankers” as the ones pulling the strings, and which I ignore as anti-Semitic propaganda).

Yuri Bezmenov‘s account of coordinated efforts by the Soviets to destabilize and subvert other nations through a 4 phase process seems credible to me. I don’t doubt that while they were still around, the Soviets implemented the first phase of the plan in North America, with a large degree of success, mainly in converting academics in the social sciences and humanities to Marxism. When I was in university 20 years ago studying politics, economics, history, cultural studies etc, the dominant ideas we were taught were Marxist in origin; liberal and free-market ideas got a quick treatment, and conservative ideas were never discussed except to ridicule them. The school I went to was very left-wing at the time, but now it seems that that dominance of Marxist ideas has spread to all Canada’s universities, and surpassed it in many.

The graduates of these communications, cultural studies, and other “studies” programs (that teach young people what to think, not how to think) now staff the editorial boards of newspapers, the HR departments of large corporations, public schools, and of course all levels and departments of government and the public sector.

The video argues that there’s a cabal created by Cecil Rhodes’ will that’s a ring within a ring, etc, and that they’re the ones dictating policy through international institutions, and shadowy organizations behind them. This may be true, however, to find proof of it would be a massive undertaking, especially given that these organizations prefer to remain secret. Perhaps one day I’ll have 30 or 40 hours to spend to see if I can verify the claims made in this video, but until then I’ll continue to stick with a simpler explanation for the likes of a New World Order, Great Reset, and other apparent technocratic / socialist agendas.

That explanation is that the ideas of socialism were heavily seeded by Communist groups in academia and other institutions over the course of a century, and now those ideas are bearing fruit. In the video, Elliott discusses the brand of socialism called Fabianism, and I think he’s really hit on something there–the idea of a slow slide towards authoritarianism that takes decades but doesn’t require a revolution to be successful. It’s the classic frog being boiled alive scenario, and it’s shocking to see how few of us these days are prepared to jump out of the water, even when the evidence of authoritarianism is so obvious (when cops are Tasering people for not wearing masks, what other evidence do you need that a police state has arrived?).

So to me, there doesn’t need to be any central group coordinating the moves by governments across the world to implement greater controls on their citizens. This is simply the nature of governments, and the usual state of affairs for most of human history has been tyranny. The question that as a society we really need to ask ourselves is, “why have we had relative freedom and prosperity in this part of the world for the past couple hundred years?” The answer of course is that countries like Britain and the US embraced the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment, and built institutions that embodied ideals such as limited government, individual rights, and private property. What I see as the current decay of our society is due to the fact that the ideas of socialism are replacing those of liberalism (and conservatism, if you prefer–North American conservatives have mainly been trying to conserve classical liberal ideas like free markets and small government). No conspiracy needed to explain this, just one ideology shoving another out of the dominant position.

The socialists and cultural Marxists have of course been far more active and organized, and the defenders of freedom too few and too passive. We (the conservatives and authentic liberals) also have the disadvantage in this fight in that we value the inherent dignity of other individuals, even those we disagree with. Marxists, however, see individuals as expendable members of a collective, and will stoop to using the most vile and violent tactics against anyone who stands in their way. And then you have the great mass of people in the middle who don’t care about politics and just go along to get along, and won’t see the jackboots coming until they’re already on their necks.

Unfortunately, the future doesn’t look very bright at this point in time, but unlike the Marxists, I don’t believe that history has an inevitable trajectory. There’s a chance that after covid-19 becomes a non-issue, people will look back at 2020 with disgust and horror at how citizens were stripped of freedoms and livelihoods, how governments took on mountains of debt that will take decades to pay off, and how the unintended consequences of lockdowns caused far more harm to people’s health than the lives they may have saved. Maybe as a culture we’ll have a wake-up moment and re-embrace the ideas of freedom that made our society so happy, prosperous and tolerant. They are very good ideas that have served us very well for the past couple centuries, so there’s a decent chance they’ll catch hold of our imaginations again. But with Marxists in control of the mainstream media, most social media, schools, and other institutions where ideas are exchanged, I have a hard time envisioning how this resurgence of classical liberal ideas could happen; but where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Curious to hear what you think, and what your level of pessimism/optimism is.