By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 25 Mar 25
Imagine a sociopolitical movement that divides the population roughly into two essential classes: the oppressive “great power” class and the marginalized minority classes, who are said to be oppressed by the powerful. Now imagine that movement tells the population—and especially those minority classes—the following story. You are oppressed by the great power and its chauvinistic beneficiaries. Our movement sees this and thinks it’s a great injustice. We believe your people should be free from this oppression and should be able to self-determine. Your communities, your political meetings, and your schools, we believe, should be in your own languages. Your history
Imagine a sociopolitical movement that divides the population roughly into two essential classes: the oppressive “great power” class and the marginalized minority classes, who are said to be oppressed by the powerful. Now imagine that movement tells the population—and especially those minority classes—the following story. You are oppressed by the great power and its chauvinistic beneficiaries. Our movement sees this
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 24 Feb 25
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 159 By virtue of the technological world we inhabit, we live in a propaganda-saturated environment. In fact, whether we like it or not, we all live in a psychological warfare battlespace, which requires us all to prepare ourselves for that environment. As ever, preparation begins with understanding. In this deep-diving episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay pulls back the curtain on “agitprop,” the combination of agitation and propaganda to wage psychological and political warfare, ranging from Communists like Lenin to Nazis like Hitler. You won’t want to miss this
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 159 By virtue of the technological world we inhabit, we live in a propaganda-saturated environment. In fact, whether we like it or not, we all live in a psychological warfare battlespace, which requires us all to prepare ourselves for that environment. As ever, preparation begins with understanding. In this deep-diving episode of
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 26 Dec 24
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 105 We all know Communism is perhaps the world’s deadliest ideology, but what makes it that way? As it turns out, there’s a simple reason Communism leads to mass murder, starvation, and death, and it’s this: Communists believe Communism can never be wrong. What this amounts to in practice is that when Communist programs start to fail, it cannot be that they were bad ideas in the first place. It can only be that someone failed to do them right, and, as it always happens, that hidden enemies are causing the problems. The result of this self-aggrandizing and paranoid belief is always
New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 105 We all know Communism is perhaps the world’s deadliest ideology, but what makes it that way? As it turns out, there’s a simple reason Communism leads to mass murder, starvation, and death, and it’s this: Communists believe Communism can never be wrong. What this amounts to in practice is that when Communist programs start to fail, it cannot be that they
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 25 Oct 24
The EVILution of Communism Workshop, Session 1 Communism is a religious view that has evolved and adapted over the last two centuries, including right up to the present day. Understanding the developments and threats in our present world requires understanding what Communism really is, especially in its Marxist variants, and how it has developed and changed over the years. In response to this need, James Lindsay of New Discourses held a four-lecture workshop series on the EVILution of Communism in Dallas, Texas, at the start of August 2024. In the first of these lectures, Lindsay outlines the basics and origins
The EVILution of Communism Workshop, Session 1 Communism is a religious view that has evolved and adapted over the last two centuries, including right up to the present day. Understanding the developments and threats in our present world requires understanding what Communism really is, especially in its Marxist variants, and how it has developed and changed over the years. In
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 17 Sep 24
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 148 Karl Marx characterized Communism as “the negation of the negation,” which is a peculiar turn of phrase he borrowed from his theoretical predecessor G.W.F. Hegel. What that means is that propertied societies, whether slave, feudal, or capitalist, negate our innate Communist (“social”) nature, and then Communism in turn negates capitalism as the highest form of development of the productive organizational modes of society. Well, the negation of the negation experiment was run in various parts of the world through the 20th century and failed everywhere, and what we learned is that the negation of the negation is actually
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 148 Karl Marx characterized Communism as “the negation of the negation,” which is a peculiar turn of phrase he borrowed from his theoretical predecessor G.W.F. Hegel. What that means is that propertied societies, whether slave, feudal, or capitalist, negate our innate Communist (“social”) nature, and then Communism in turn negates capitalism as the highest form of development of the
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 16 Aug 24
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 146 One of the great paradoxes of Communism is that in the end, the state is supposed to “wither away,” leaving a stateless, classless society in which there is high functioning and little or no want. This circumstance is presented as different to the other stages of history, which are said to proceed through revolutionary overthrow of the existing system. In particular, socialism is meant to be born out of capitalism through a violent proletarian revolution that seizes the means of production and establishes itself as an all-powerful “dictatorship of the proletariat.” But this
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 146 One of the great paradoxes of Communism is that in the end, the state is supposed to “wither away,” leaving a stateless, classless society in which there is high functioning and little or no want. This circumstance is presented as different to the other stages of history, which are said to proceed through
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 10 Jun 24
I recently read a document released by the CIA in 2005 that describes the New Left and Herbert Marcuse’s influence on college campuses. What it reveals is extremely relevant to what’s happening on college campuses today. “Marx, the god; Marcuse, his prophet; Mao, his sword.” In June of 1968, the Current Digest of the Soviet Press released a scathing article, calling University of California San Diego professor Herbert Marcuse a “false prophet.” As a Soviet entity, the Current Digest set out to annihilate Marcuse’s “decommunized Marxism,” for obvious reasons. Marcuse had abandoned “vulgar” Marxism and the USSR’s bureaucratic and administrative
I recently read a document released by the CIA in 2005 that describes the New Left and Herbert Marcuse’s influence on college campuses. What it reveals is extremely relevant to what’s happening on college campuses today. “Marx, the god; Marcuse, his prophet; Mao, his sword.” In June of 1968, the Current Digest of the Soviet Press released a scathing article,