People, are you aware of what is being let loose on our lives and livelihoods? It begins as a thought in the higher status elevations of our society, in influential institutions, quickly gains traction, morphs into an elaborate belief system, ascends to power, and is imposed on us. It’s a familiar historical script.
If you think that you’re immune from its horrors, or deny its existence, prepare to try on the shoes of the average peasant and worker in 1917 Russia. Most had no clue in 1917, till the breadlines, requisition squads, thought-crime camps, disappearances, and evictions hit home. Over the following decades, careers and reputations were falsely ruined, and the population would soon acquire the nervous tick of constantly looking over their shoulder and self-censoring their speech.
What’s worse is that a mind-mold will be pressed upon your kids in their classrooms, as in Khmer Rouge and Soviet schools, and then your dinner-table conversation will be suddenly laced with hints of the new orthodoxy. You’ll be left wondering, “Where did that come from?”
Sound familiar? It’s happening.
The new revolutionary orthodoxy’s presence is signaled by rhetorical tags such as “white supremacy” or “systemic racism” or “social justice”. It’s encapsulated in politically useful academic-sounding labels like “critical race theory”. The recipe: take claptrap and add “theory” at the end. And it’s everywhere.
In a nutshell, it’s something borrowed from Marx’s practitioners: lying beneath the surface of a society is a web of evildoers and their supportive arrangements to oppress the weak and downtrodden. It’s the excuse for a campaign of inquisitions, a culling of the “extremist” – “extremist” being synonymous with the old “counter-revolutionary”.
The stories of these assaults on the conscience are becoming all-too-familiar. Academia has long been a source of thought-suppression. The business world is increasingly infected. But in particular, the gray lady, The New York Times, has been a fount of examples. Add to the list this one: the quasi-show trial and removal of one of its science writers, Donald McNeil, Jr.
What’s his act of treason to “proper” thought? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. A conversation with a group of high school students on a trip to Peru came to light to informers in the newsroom. A student described her encounter with another student to McNeil by mentioning the use of a racial slur in the other student’s video presentation. The student asked McNeil about how to respond to the slur. He repeated the word in his response, not to validate its use but to more directly address the student’s question. And for this he is “canceled” – a nicer word for “eliminated”. No walk down a dark basement corridor that will end with a bullet in the back of the head and an erasure from history, as in Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon. Just the soiling of a reputation and a black mark on the résumé.
What follows is something reminiscent of Stalin’s 1930s show trials: the accuser’s proclamation of the thought crimes and the groveling of the accused. The mass-circulated email from the NYT’s overseers announcing the dismissal contains this fealty to the Party and the crimes of the accused:
“We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent. We are committed to building a news report and company that reflect our core values of integrity and respect, and will work with urgency to create clearer guidelines and enforcement about conduct in the workplace, including red-line issues on racist language.”
Then there is a vow of subservience to the place’s cadre of over-sensitive and over-politicized Party informers:
“Every person in leadership at The Times is dedicated to building a culture where each of our colleagues feels supported and respected. It’s vital that we get this right. To those of you who have reached out to us with your honest and sometimes painful feelings about this incident, we thank you.”
No suggestion to get over it. No suggestion for apologies and a group hug. No, just an occupational lynching. So, as one pundit put it, “What gets rewarded gets repeated.” The downhill-rolling snowball of denunciations grows into a frenzy that sweeps through our culture’s institutions. It’s now everywhere.
The accused, having lived a life of surrender to the zeitgeist, cowers before the whip-hand of the accusatory mob. He’s intellectually disarmed by a previous deep and abiding attachment to the Party’s doctrines. He begs for forgiveness and “rehabilitation”, preferring to slink off into the sunset. Here’s McNeil from his resignation letter:
“Originally, I thought the context in which I used this ugly word could be defended.
I now realize that it cannot. It is deeply offensive and hurtful. The fact that I even thought I could defend it itself showed extraordinarily bad judgement. For that I apologize.
To the students on the trip, I also extend my sincerest apology. But my apology needs to be broader than that.
My lapse of judgment has hurt my colleagues in Science, the hundreds of people who trusted me to work with them closely during this pandemic, the team at ‘The Daily’ that turned to me during this frightening year, and the whole institution, which put its confidence in me and expected better.
So for offending my colleagues — and for anything I’ve done to hurt The Times, which is an institution I love and whose mission I believe in and try to serve — I am sorry. I let you all down.”
I’m reminded of the chief accuser in Stalin’s infamous 1938 show trial of Bukharin and Rykov, leading Bolsheviks from the time of Lenin and the Revolution. Years later, Soviet leaders in the 1980’s made an attempt to make amends for Stalin’s reign of terror by allowing an investigation into the corrupt proceedings. The accuser admitted to lying, and Bukharin and Rykov disappeared – probably the long walk down a basement corridor that ended with a bullet in the back of the head. When asked why he lied, the witness professed a complete fealty to the Party and its doctrines. It was the core of his identity, and therefore something that he would betray all, including morality, to defend. Want to talk about identity politics?
McNeil’s resignation letter has the flavor of the Bukharin accuser’s mea culpa, especially the zealot’s profession of fealty to the ruling orthodoxy.
If you’ve noticed, the McNeil incident closely parallels behavior in totalitarian regimes, regimes who seek to control everyone’s mind and body, thought and action. The 20th century’s escapades in totalitarianism are rich in more examples than just those in the Soviet Union.
The McNeil incident brings to mind Maoist “struggle sessions”. An intense propaganda push – like the BLM stuff that streamed through all our devices and enveloped all cultural institutions, the summer of Red Guard-like riots and protests, Party canonization of Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, and the corruption of history in “The 1619 Project” – followed by “speaking bitterness sessions” to expose ideological malefactors (real or imagined) – such as McNeil – and culminating in the struggle sessions to ritually confront and pressure the accused and allow the “guilty” to debase themselves before the rabble – Sen. Romney’s march with BLM and the episodes of crowds kneeling to confess their “white guilt”. Frankly, it was disgusting.
McNeil quickly bowed before the enforcers of Party “truth”.
Are we in the midst of a purge to eliminate the last vestiges of free thought and pluralism? It seems so. We are in a very dangerous moment that’ll require courage on the part of the public to nip this slide into thought control in the bud. Rather than accept this state of affairs as a new normal, it needs to be challenged across the board in all forms of public pressure, and a march to the polls to punish the Party officialdom for this affront to decency and Constitutional order.
RogerG