Watch Neil Cavuto of the Fox Business Channel interview one of the student leaders, Keeley Mullen, of the Million Student March in November of 2015. Pay attention to her list of demands and her reasoning … for what there was of it.
There’s the familiar clamor for money: $15/hr. student minimum wage, free college education, and vanquishing all student loan debt. When asked who’s going to pay for the largesse, Keeley’s train of logic goes off the tracks. She clearly sets her sites on the usual suspects of the “1%” and the “corporate model” of education. The rich and an abstraction are either at fault or to be looted. The incoherency is astounding.
Next, look at the furor faced by Yale’s Prof. Nicholas Christakis in November 2015 for asking students to lighten up and accept some semblance of free speech on campus (see Sources for a full account). Look for the crowd’s regimented mannerisms of finger clicking and turning one’s back with arms elevated and crossed above the head. And, of course, listen for the self-anointed victim’s insistence of an apology for ethereal hurts and accommodations to recover from the hard-to-pin-down harms.
The screams and assertions-without-proof come from an assumption that the power to control lies with the self-identified victim. The fingered and generalized “perp” is to have no defense. Those who disagree with the mob enter into discourse at great peril.
Speaking of mobs, view this scene at UC Berkeley in October of 2016 as student activists blocked white students from entering Sather Gate. Prominent on the barricades were LGBTQ firebrands.
The chant “Go Around” was aimed at white students for their purported “privilege”. Again, the stench of victimhood surrounds the event.
Or, rocket forward to January 2017 and the Women’s March. Here Ashley Judd strays into the Hitler cliché in a Trump diatribe along with the laundry list of bogeymen including a variety of “isms” and misogyny.
This is not one of Ashley’s finer moments.
Alicia Keys stepped to the mike with a syncopated chant of “We’re on fire”. By now, the March’s bellicosity has become quite trite (to borrow the phonetic rhythm of the Keys’ style of speechifying).
Scarlett Johanssen took her turn on stage to carry on with the misogyny angle and elevate Planned Parenthood (PP) to the Godhead. Did it occur to her that the debate about PP in public policy revolves around the question of making others pay for it? She could donate her annual salary – all tax deductible – for the next number of years to keep the thing afloat, so long as PP avoids the Auschwitz model of body parts marketing.
What do the above clips have in common, besides the fact that they’re all examples of Lefty activism? They project the alluring facade of group persecution. No single individual is responsible for anything. Groups carry a ready-made pardon for any and all conduct, if you’re so lucky as to land in the right cluster of fashionable victims. Their absolution can be reduced to the refrain, “It’s not my fault”.
Lately, the Right hasn’t been immune to the intoxicant. The manic-Right steps in it as they bemoan anything foreign, differently pigmented, and the wispy “establishment”. Railing against affirmative action has become an easy crutch to explain away a lack of industriousness by some – even though, in the case of affirmative action, it must be admitted that we have a program to benefit victims that creates victims. The effort is a walking contradiction.
Our modern fixation with blaming others has a pedigree going back to Genesis, if you’re a fundamentalist – if not, then figuratively speaking. Blaming others is first on the checklist to escape responsibility reaching back to Eve’s appetite for fruit.
We’ve become very ingenious in inventing schemes to dodge personal guilt. Our imaginations run wild in dreaming of social and political systems, and the philosophies to go with them, to circumvent individual accountability by subsuming difficulties in mysterious evildoers. Today’s campus snowflake has the same train of thought as yesterday’s Parisian mob parading around the streets with the heads of the Bastille’s guards on pikes.
Surely there were many in the Paris crowd who found the behavior revolting, just as there probably were “safe space” activists who objected to the recent muscling of Charles Murray as goons also set about inflicting a concussion on his professorial escort at Middlebury College. Still, group guiltlessness, no matter the moment in history, provides cover for barbarity. Indeed, it’s the lubricant.
Denouncing others for your problems has been the principle incubator of government’s ruination of their own people. Take 2 examples from the 20th century: Argentina’s slide into Peronism and Weimar Germany’s inter-war dance with hyperinflation.
You could say that Germany’s affliction with hyper-inflation in the 1920’s was baked in the cake. Many Germans at the time liked to blame the Versailles Treaty and its reparations burden for its problems. More correctly, Germany’s government flooded the country with Treasury bills that were translated into money in order to finance the war. A money glut already existed by the time the guns fell silent on 11-11-11-1918.
Then, after the war, the monetary fire hose was yanked wide open by Germany’s elected government because it suited popular interests. Public debt shot up as spending expanded on things like generous public employee compensation while tax revenues stagnated from massive tax evasion. Inflation was welcomed by German exporters – it made German products cheaper in overseas markets – and government officials and their supporters as a way to injure the Allies and their reparations’ bill with worthless script.
The witches’ brew culminated in 4.97 x 1020 marks circulating about the country. The annual inflation rate reached its zenith at 182 billion percent by the end of 1923. Those on inflexible incomes as in salaried workers, pensioners, and depositors were wrecked.
In all of it, lurking deep in the German pscyhe, was an unwillingness to accept their defeat. As ex-Harvard and Stanford professor Niall Ferguson concludes in his The Ascent of Money (p. 105),
“… a combination of internal gridlock and external defiance – rooted in the refusal of many Germans to accept that their empire had been fairly beaten – led to the worst of all possible outcomes: a complete collapse of the currency and of the economy itself.”
Germany’s cavalier treatment of fiscal and monetary matters has its tentacles in a widespread psychological predisposition to reject the war’s outcome, and in a reflex to blame others. The skids were greased for the rise of the then nascent NSDAP (Nazi Party). More about that later.
It just so happens that travelling around Italy well into the rule of il Duce (Mussolini) was an Argentinian military officer, Juan Peron. On assignment by the War Ministry in 1939 to study mountain warfare in the Alps, attend the University of Turin, and perform as military observer in Europe, he became acquainted with Italian Fascism. The experience would leave an impression.
His valuable assistance in a couple of military coups, and a deepening partnership with powerful labor unions, would ensure his rise to power. The political marriage of Peron and Argentina’s mega-unions was made possible by his championing of their power, benefits, and perks in his his role as Labor Minister and later as Vice-President. The well-traveled route to ruination is programmed in the GPS: sympathies turned into extravagant giveaways to powerful special interests.
The distinction in popular American conversation between fascism and the Left is more of a naked prejudice than a reality. It shows in the career of Juan Peron. In 1945, Peron is running for president as the Labor Party’s candidate, having previously established himself as the champion of their cause for years. The unions, and his wife’s (Evita) demagoguery, rescued him from jail so he could run as president. He ran as the unions’ protector and bulwark against Yanqui (U.S.) interference, a familiar leftist trope. His fascist sympathies were apparent to American officials during the war, raising concerns about Argentina’s intentions in the latter stages of the war.
His fascist connections would bear fruit in a kind of underground railroad to Argentina for Nazi war criminals. Such is the ideological mish-mash of Peronism.
So, what is Peronism? It’s a disparate collection of ideas and beliefs that can be boiled down to “It’s not my fault”. The first gambit of professed guiltlessness is to throw aspersions at the Left’s favorite foil, the rich. In 1948, Peron spelled it out in a speech.
“… economic policy which maintained that this was a permanent and perfect school of capitalist exploitation should be replaced by a doctrine of social economy under which the distribution of our wealth, which we force the earth to yield up to us and which furthermore we are elaborating, may be shared out fairly among all those who have contributed by their efforts to amass it.” [my emphasis]
This kind of thing might just as easily come out of the mouths of today’s social justice warriors. In fact, it did. I refer you to Keeley Mullen at the beginning.
Peron put a label on his gambit, “Justicialism”. Anyway, it’s the same old victim/victimizer dualism at work in a set of different geographical coordinates. Peron condensed the oppressed down to the “workers”. Point #4 of his “Twenty Truths” says, “There is only one class of men for the Perónist cause: the workers”.
Practically speaking, what did this secular sermonizing mean for the fortunes of the country? The economy was politicized and the nation became a basket case of bailouts, national defaults, and international financial interventions. Per capita (per person) GDP was the same in 1988 as it was 1959. The economy didn’t grow – a complete reversal of the situation from around the turn of the century (1870-1913). Argentina would be overtaken by the “Asian tigers” (Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea).
Inflation, that ‘ol government-engineered bugaboo, would flair up in double digits between 1945-1952, 1956-1968, 1970-1974; and reach new heights of ferocity by trebling and quadrupling in 1975-1990. The crescendo was 5,000% in 1989.
In 1989, the country couldn’t even turn on the lights with daily blackouts averaging 5 hours. The government ran out of money – not because it spent it, but because it ran out of paper and the printers went on strike. A riot erupted in a Buenos Aires supermarket when a 30% on-the-spot price increase was announced over the store’s loudspeaker. Pandering to self-anointed victims with the usual blame in tow has very unpleasant side-effects.
Where inflation leads, default follows. It happened in 1982, 1989, 2002, and 2004. If victim/victimizer blame-game mythology was a drug awaiting FDA approval, it would not only be proven to be not efficacious (the legal approval standard), but found poisonous. There’d be a run on law firm ads on cable tv if it got past the regulators.
Peron certainly wasn’t running the show during the whole period of Argentina’s slide into insolvency. His main contribution was showing the country how to do it. Thanks Juan and Evita.
Entire political groups are wallowing in a blame-game belief system. These ideological movements are nothing but outsized masquerade balls for “It’s not my fault”. Many would turn out to be e quite lethal. Reaching down into history’s nightmares we find Mussolini’s Fascist Party, the inspiration for Peronism.
If one didn’t know better, Mussolini could be easily confused with Lenin if a stranger was limited to listening to him on the radio. His political dogma was a grab bag of international socialism’s platitudes with “international” replaced by “national”. We’d hear the same worn out pronouncements of “exploitation” and sympathy for the “oppressed”. Naturally, the victim requires a victimizer, or some such sort. It’s a necessary ingredient for the “exploitation” gambit. Often, cast for the role are the “privileged” or, better yet, the “rich”.
It’s too easy to prove the point. Take a look at these samples, in chronological order:
- In 1910, still in his old incarnation as an “international” socialist, he said, “There are only two fatherlands in the world: that of the exploited and that of the exploiters”.
- Jump forward to 1919, now as full-fledged socialist of the “national” variety – a Fascist – he blathers, “This is what we propose now to the Treasury: either the property owners expropriate themselves, or we summon the masses of war veterans to march against these obstacles and overthrow them”. The list of “victims” is expanded to war veterans.
- In 1921, he announced, “When the war is over, in the world’s social revolution that will be followed by a more equitable distribution of the earth’s riches, due account must be kept of the sacrifices and of the discipline maintained by the Italian workers. The Fascist revolution will make another decisive step to shorten social distances.”
- In 1933 he declares war on “laissez-faire” and “capitalism”: “To-day we can affirm that the capitalistic method of production is out of date. So is the doctrine of laissez-faire, the theoretical basis of capitalism… To-day we are taking a new and decisive step in the path of revolution. A revolution, in order to be great, must be a social revolution.”
- As an aside, in the 1930’s, after FDR’s ascendancy in the U.S., Mussolini recognized his affinity with the New Deal and its intellectual godfather, John Maynard Keynes: “You want to know what fascism is like? It is like your New Deal!”
- Further, “Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter’s prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes’ excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire (l926) might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics. There is scarcely anything to object to in it and there is much to applaud.”
I could go on, if one was convinced that the quotes were out of context. They aren’t. They were typical and commonplace for him. Our social justice warriors of today should be careful when they throw about the charge of “fascist”. They unknowingly have a more intense fondness for Mussolini’s beliefs than the Federalist Society.
And while I’m at it, what about that frothy, toxic brew fermenting in Germany at the time of Mussolini’s heyday? Once again, those old stalking horses of “exploitation” and “oppression” appear under the guise of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) doctrines. For these folks, the Allies, their degenerate and corrupting civilization (in their words), the Jews, Jewry’s capitalist lapdogs (in their words), and opposing street-gang socialists of the “international” variety fulfill the role of victimizer or oppressor.
Sometimes a catchy slogan can encapsulate all of the purported horribles. For many Germans at the time, it was the “stab-in-the-back” myth. Germany’s war effort, it was said, was undermined by traitorous acts at home. The zeal to blame others will be injected with too much caffeine.
The origin of the fable could be traced to a 1919 conversation between German Gen. Erich Ludendorff and British Gen. sir Neill Malcom.
Malcolm asked Ludendorff for his opinion of the major reason for Germany’s defeat. Ludendorff responded with the lack of home front support for the war. Malcolm clarified with the question: “Do you mean, General, that you were stabbed in the back?” Ludendorff jumped at the suggestion, “Stabbed in the back? Yes, that’s it, exactly; we were stabbed in the back”. Thus was born a rationale to blame others rather than Germany’s reckless prosecution of the war … authored by people like Ludendorff.
Subsequently, Jews became an easy target to assign blame. Alfred Rosenberg – NSDAP ideologist and later to be hung as a war criminal – spelled it out: “In theory the majority decides, but in reality it is the international Jew that stands behind it [all the evils that befell Germany].”
To give a flavor of this version of the noxious scapegoat, here’s a quote from a pamphlet, “The Jew as World Parasite”:
“In this war for the very existence of the German people, we must daily remind ourselves that Jewry unleashed this war against us. It makes no difference if the Jew conceals himself as a Bolshevist or a plutocrat, a Freemason or uses some other form of concealment, or even appears without any mask at all: he always remains the same. He is the one who so agitated and spiritually influenced the peoples that stand against us today such that they have become more or less spineless tools of International Jewry.”
The comment could be penned by any of the Nazi usual suspects. Regardless, it’s a replay of the same old monotonous blame-game.
Need I go into Marx and Lenin’s overwrought costuming of blame as elaborate political theory? The oppressed/oppressor jig is the heart of the program. Focusing on Lenin for brevity’s sake, he castigates the “bourgeois” (i.e. capitalist) state as “the most powerful, economically dominant class, which, through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class”. Marx’s dull verbosity is of the same vein.
“It’s Not My Fault”, if history is any guide, is a real crowd-pleaser. All-too-often, it’s a scheme to bilk others – usually a select few – and gravitate power to a politically enterprising cadre. The scenario is a zombie that won’t stay down. We are seeing it play before our eyes.
As was stated before, the so-called “alt-right” has fashioned for itself a nice little corner in the who’s who of oppressors. They like to talk of the predations of the “establishment”. Like all such iterations, the more airy and vague the oppressor, the better and more useful. Lenin would be comfortable with the language. The term was a favorite of some rallying to the Trump bandwagon.
Not to be outdone, the modern Left in its post-election incarnation is targeting Republican lawmakers as the corporeal symbol of their laundry list of oppressors. Their recent behavior at townhalls isn’t bi-partisan, directed at both Republicans and Democrats. It targets Republicans. It is not reflective of the general American electorate. It’s a coordinated, well-financed operation … of the Left.
What unites the Left’s partisans is an ideology rooted in a view of the world of those without “privilege” in need of a powerful state to even out the results of an unfair existence. The rationale is tailored to demand the creation and expansion of entitlements, like Obama’s ACA. The environment-as-victim, with its climate change dogma hitched, is ready-made for use on the barricades. Any attempts to roll back the administrative state – except when it comes to restraint on sexual license – is a carte blanche excuse to gin up the hive. Efforts to lower taxes on the upper-income brackets is always and forever seen as an assault on government’s sacred duty to equalize life’s results.
It’s like a video on perpetual rewind. More correctly, it’s like those present-day renditions of Shakespeare’s plays in modern garb. The stage set and costumes may be different, but it is still the play, “It’s Not My Fault!”
RogerG
Sources:
“The moment Yale students encircled and shouted down professor who told them to just ‘look away’ if they were offended by Halloween costumes”, The Daily Mail, Nov. 7, 2015, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3308422/Students-rage-professor-sent-email-telling-students-just-look-away-offended-Halloween-costumes.html#ixzz4fITFzT6l
The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson, 2008. Weimar Germany’s hyper-inflationary crisis is described in pp. 101-107; Argentina’s economic collapse under Peron is described in pp. 109-116.
“Document #24: “What is Peronism?” by Juan Domingo Perón (1948) || “The Twenty Truths of the Perónist Justicialism,” Juan Domingo Perón (1950)”, Brown Univ. Library, https://library.brown.edu/create/modernlatinamerica/chapters/chapter-9-argentina/primary-documents-w-accompanying-discussion-questions/what-is-peronism-by-juan-domingo-peron-1948-the-twenty-truths-of-the-peronist-justicialism-juan-domingo-peron-1950/
A variety of Mussolini quotes are available at “Benito Mussolini”, wikiquote.org, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini
The conversation between Sir Neill Malcolm and Erich Ludendorff can be found in Wheeler-Bennett, John W. (Spring 1938), “Ludendorff: The Soldier and the Politician”, Virginia Quarterly Review. 14 (2): 187–202.
