Further below– “Some things that Michael Schellenberger, Matt Taibbi, Mike Benz, Jimmy Dore, and many others have exposed regarding elite manipulation of our liberal democracies over past decades…”
The outline of “common elements” below helps to understand what has happened in varied liberal democracies across the West- i.e. the elements that have facilitated a leftward shift, as in Canada under Justin Trudeau. Is this due to new generations of young people emerging from universities indoctrinated by Woke Progressive leftism of an extremist variety? Hence, the 50% of young people today who affirm that socialism/communism should be embraced to organize our societies. What role does the psychopathology of “left-wing compassion” play in this shift? As in the narcissistic impulse to virtue-signal unconcerned for the actual outcomes of the ideology and policies that you promote? These new graduates then populate all the main institutions/agencies of our societies- business, government, media, even intelligence agencies.
Note: Evolutionary Behavioral Scientist Gad Saad states that destructive socialist, and other ideas, were breeding over the last century to finally come to fruition on university campuses. We have all watched these ideas pushed across our societies in the lunacy of the Woke Progressivism of the last 10 years. Host Brian Kilmeade responds that the current surge of populism pushback against Woke is not a Republican resurgence but more the resurgence of common sense across Western democracies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI1_pvSQb9M
Coming soon– How the Jewish Christian priest Waraqa mentored Muhammad over 45 years to embrace the fundamentals of Ebionism. Waraqa was the Ebionite priest in Mecca, cousin to Muhammad’s first wife Khadija.
Muhammad embraced the basic themes of Waraqa’s gospel to the Hebrews (an earlier version of the gospel of Matthew) and Waraqa’s God. But while acknowledging his debt to the earlier “book”, he failed to embrace the moderating message of Historical Jesus that was a critical element of early Jewish Christianity.
This is my response to the Piers Morgan interview of Jordan Peterson, and others, where panel members argued points for which religion was better- Christianity or Islam, among other topics related to the British ‘mass rape of children scandal’ recently publicized by Elon Musk. The discussants missed the fundamental point that all three Western religions share the same fundamental themes of their inheritance from Zoroastrianism. They are all much more alike than different from one another.
All three fail most egregiously on the cohering center of their belief systems- the nature/character of deity. The most profound breakthrough insight in all history- on deity- was presented in the first decades of the new CE era and all three either missed it, refused to embrace it, or even purposefully denied and buried it. And that was the denial of the ultimate liberation movement for humanity, liberation from millennia of enslavement to threat theology.
The comment below- “Understanding the common elements in collectivist approaches”– is sparked by the discussion of Pierre Poilievre and Jordan Peterson on how the far-left socialism of Trudeau and his ministers has ruined Canadian society, Wendell Krossa
Note, for example, around the 55-minute mark as they discuss what went wrong with Justin Trudeau, his fundamental socialism, assisted by his energy minister Steven Guilbeault who states openly that he is socialist. Trudeau has implemented his policies with the assistance of the socialist NDP. However, Trudeau has taken the Liberal party ever further into “far-left liberalism, far-left socialism”, guided by others like Chrysta Freeland, the WEF socialist.
The Trudeau ideal is, as Hegel and Marx argued, that the state becomes the embodiment of the “will of the people”, the collective that is governed by elites who imagine and claim that they know best what the will of the people is and feel obligated to coerce citizens to embrace that “common or greater good”. The collectivist vision of governing elites requires an expanded state and state powers to assist their project of controlling populations with oppressive detail on how to live, what to say and think, to ensure that the people become the pure and noble communalist citizens that elites demand they become, according to the collectivist utopian vision.
This collectivist vision has been implemented by Trudeau through the expansion of central government, by some 40% over the past decade. And the inevitable consequence of all such socialist experiments has again been replicated in Canada- i.e. commoner citizens are worse off than ever before. The common good as common immiseration.
Listen to both Peterson and Poilievre detail the statistics on how far we have fallen from previous standards of prosperity that we enjoyed, to the mess that we are in today. The always and inevitable outcome of socialist experiments is widespread impoverishment and misery, as detailed by Kristian Niemietz in his “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”, and in other histories of socialism.
To paraphrase Barack Obama’s comment re Joe Biden, “Marx and crew really know how to fuck things up.”
There is good comment below by Poilievre on how Trudeau has implemented the utopia that Jagmeet Singh and other socialists want, and hence the mess today of a destroyed Canada. They discuss how Trudeau has taken the Liberals further left into extremist socialism than even the former NDP. Older, former NDP leaders state this is true of Trudeau’s far leftism.
What we have today is the socialist “utopia” and it is a “hellscape” as Poilievre says.
Note that Robert Owen’s “communalism”, Marx’s communism, and socialism in all its subsequent varieties (i.e. democratic socialism, social democracy) are all forms of “collectivism”- where the ruling elite dictate and control the lives of commoners, for their good of course, for some utopian “greater good” of the collective. The achievement of some greater or common good requires the subjection of individual rights and individual property ownership to the collective.
Trudeau’s transformation of Canada illustrates how socialists now approach Western liberal democracies to shift them toward collectivism, through increasing the size of the state/government and the associated necessary increases in taxation and regulation. This is based on their belief that the all-controlling state, governed by noble and enlightened elites, expresses the will of the people. This belief descends from Plato’s vision of the nanny state governed by Philosopher Kings dictating what is best for citizens (the myth of “benevolent rulers”), as noted by Arthur Herman in “The Cave and The Light: Plato versus Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization” (more detail below).
Exhibiting the creative impulse, innovation… Presenting the old in ever-new dress… No one likes a naked emperor…
Note also that socialists today are pushing the shift to collectivism via the Woke Progressivism ideology that is the front of the new (neo-) collectivism, with its DEI tribal dualism of “victim/victimizer” as the new take on the older Marxist tribal dualism of “oppressed/oppressor” categories (capitalist property owners versus property-less workers and peasants). The new marker of which category or class that you belong to, is based on your skin color, as in the new “Woke Racism”.
This latest program to install collectivism across our societies also involves, just as in bare bones Marxist communism, removing private property from citizens to be redistributed by the enlightened elites and their bureaucrats who believe that they know best how to spend citizen’s income and property. And then to further control the citizenry and push them toward the elite’s utopian vision of all becoming true “communal people”, elites and their bureaucrats increase the regulatory burden to control all areas of commoner’s lives. Elites do not trust commoner citizens, the ignorant “deplorables”, to know what is best for them and the greater society.
As Arthur Herman states below re Plato’s totalitarian collectivist vision- “Rulers who are also the city’s philosophers, the moral and administrative keepers of the state, the people who make sure everything else in society works… the class of Rulers are above all a class of legislators and lawmakers. Through good laws, even the lowest and least-educated citizens will learn to be just and virtuous… In this way, an ideal society and even an ideal people will result”, (“The Cave and The Light: Plato Versus Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization”).
The corrective response to this collectivist totalitarianism will require, most critically, diminishing the size of the state, decreasing taxation, and decreasing regulations. Massively so, reducing in proportion to the massive growth of governments in liberal democracies over past decades. Getting government out of citizen’s lives. Note also here that Magna Carta was very much a protest against taxation by elites without citizen approval.
(See discussion of Milton Freidman’s estimate of the optimal size of government for the best results that deliver “the most good to the most people”- I believe William Bernstein covers this in “The Birth of Plenty”.)
The best response to collectivism is to implement the Classic Liberal approach as illustrated by Javier Milei in Argentina, a liberating approach that is transforming the economy and the entire Argentinian nation back to a healthy state that protects and promotes the rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally. (See his interview by Lex Fridman- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NLzc9kobDk&t=12s )
State elites and bureaucrats, through the above totalitarian approach used by Trudeau, enrich themselves while impoverishing citizens. As Peterson and Poilievre note, there has been a massive shift of wealth under Trudeau’s socialism, a transfer of citizen’s wealth to elites. And this exposes the great lie of socialists that they operate the collectives “for the people, to express the will of the people”.
Here is the link where Jordan Peterson interviews our next PM, Pierre Poilievre, on the details of what is coming for Canada when he becomes leader, and what has gone wrong. Good, detailed discussion…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dck8eZCpglc
Here is some more on the guiding ideas, principles, ideals behind what is happening in our societies today….
First, some definitions of collectivism…
This general one from Google:
“The practice or principle of giving a group priority over each individual in it.”
Another:
“A political or economic theory advocating collective control especially over production and distribution.”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collectivism
Another:
“A theory or political system based on the principle that all of the farms, factories, and other places of work in a country should be owned by or for all the people in that country.”
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/collectivism#google_vignette
This last one refers to the Marxist rejection of private property and state confiscation of all property (“nationalizing” the economy, the state taking ownership of the “means of production”), and that is done with the validating claim that the ruling elites will operate the economy “for the people”. Something that has never been accomplished by socialist systems, as Kristian Niemietz explains.
“Socialism in the sense which self-identified democratic socialists define it… a democratized economic planned collectively by ‘the people’, has never been achieved anywhere and could not be achieved. Economic planning can only ever be done in a technocratic, elitist fashion, and it requires an extreme concentration of power in the hands of the state. It cannot ‘empower’ ordinary workers. It can only ever empower bureaucratic elites.”
A few intro notes:
Even within societies structured according to the supremacy of individual rights and freedoms there is much common concern of individuals for community and larger society, and voluntary contributions to such.
The Classic liberal approach best prevents tyranny and totalitarianism by redistributing power back to the people through protecting the rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally. Hayek said that dispersing power among competing individuals was the best preventative against totalitarianism.
The dispersal of power in society is accomplished through common law systems and representative institutions that truly serve the people by protecting their individual rights and freedoms, equally. By not centralizing power and control via increased government, taxation, and regulation.
Socialists have never understood that centralizing power and control in the hands of “enlightened vanguards, benevolent leaders, noble rulers, etc.” has never produced good outcomes. Plato tried to implement his collectivist approach when his friend took power over a Greek state and the citizens concluded that it was a worse tyranny than the previous dictator.
A notable difference between the collective and individual systems is the role of the voluntary free choice of individuals to contribute to larger communities. This freedom for self-determination over private property was central to Magna Carta. That document was pivotal to the subsequent historical trend of protecting the rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally, with no taxation without the consent of the citizens.
How elites gain and hold power over commoners, Wendell Krossa
Understanding the common elements in collectivist approaches that enable elites to gain and maintain their control over populations, notably using the totalitarian’s formula- “fear=control”.
What we are seeing across varied Western liberal democracies, in a shift leftward, is a sort of “soft socialism” approach being implemented by increasing the size of the government with the necessarily associated increases in taxation and regulations. While some of the national leaders of such an approach may deny any straightforward commitment to socialist ideology they do hold the belief that government is responsible to create wealth and jobs, a belief hardly different from the straightforward belief of socialists/collectivists that the governing elite must nationalize the economy and operate it “for the people”.
This is as old as humanity- i.e. the impulse and actions of “special” people to establish the elite/commoner divide, where they, elites, rule and control the commoners. It’s a history of how elites validate their powerholding over others, how they deny the fundamental obligation of love to serve, to respect and protect the rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally.
Elements/stages in the elite endeavor to establish control over others in societies. Advice to wannabe elites…
(1) Irresponsibly incite fear in populations– The more extreme the alarm, exaggerated even to apocalyptic-scale, the more effective in inciting the survival impulse in people and thereby rendering people susceptible to irrational “salvationist” solutions. Create hysteria, “madness of crowds” eruptions, panic.
H. L. Mencken,
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary”, In Defense of Women
Push the narrative of something good that has been lost, ruined, destroyed, and now a huge injustice exists and must be righted, the lost thing must be restored, or we all die.
(2) Blame humanity– Create guilt and shame in people, play on the myth of original sinfulness, that you commoners all know that you are bad to the bone, greedy, selfish pigs. And frame even the impulse to improve one’s life and one’s family, frame this most basic form of love as something evil. Frame the fundamental human desire for a better life as part of what is wrong with the individualism of capitalism. Affirm with Marx that property ownership from individual effort is the world’s number one evil, especially when successful people accumulate too much property, in your estimation.
And contrast societies oriented to free individuals with the falsely imagined utopia of collectivism, and the subjection of individuals to collectivist elites as commitment to “greater good, common good”. Who can argue against the terminology “greater/common good” as so obviously pointing to things “right, true, just, good, and noble”. The collectivist vision stirs the virtue-signaling impulse in many people- i.e. the embrace of socialist-like goals- to overcome one’s sense of guilt and shame for being a greedy, selfish individual.
Blame humanity- the “intruder, virus, cancer” on the natural world. Use anecdotal evidence of human destruction. Ignore or dismiss the full big picture and long-term trajectory of indicators that show life improving. Anecdotes help to distort the true state of things.
Sources on how to get to the true state of things…e.g. Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”, Bjorn Lomborg’s “Skeptical Environmentalist”, and many more that reveal humans as “more creators than destroyers”.
Further on blame humanity- Richard Landes presents the four main dividers that elites use to construct and validate their domination:
(a) Legalize elite privilege with laws. (b) Stigmatize the manual labor of commoners. (c) Control information and technology, especially weapons. (d) Maintain the sense of elite honor, and their domination of society as critical to their honor, and consequently their right to defend their honor with force and violence. Hence, war as the sport of kings. (p. 216-17, “Heaven On Earth”).
(3) Push the narrative of increasing human evil in civilization (Arthur Herman on human “degeneration theory” as part of general theory of the Declinism of life in “The Idea of Decline In Western History”). According to this mythology, humanity is degenerating in civilization because of abandoning the noble savage state of a simple, low-consumption lifestyle in hunter-gatherer communalism. That primitive existence made for “strong and pure” humans more “connected to nature”, versus the modern era’s soft and degenerate humans in comfortable civilization. Human progress is framed as degeneration- in the topsy-turvy world where white is now black, and all is upside down lunacy.
Further, push the fallacy that people using natural resources are thereby ruining nature (i.e. the “limited good” fallacy of primitive tribal societies, now embraced by limited resources ideologies like “Ecological Footprint”). In such mythology, the original wilderness world was the original paradise. All has been declining since more people in the world (“population bomb”) began using more natural resources to enjoy the good life.
(4) Following the above- Humanity is threatened with the decline of life toward apocalypse– a great final punishment is coming for sin, a great destruction of all- i.e. the ultimate threat of “return to chaos”- the primal early fear of primitive peoples (see Mircea Eliade on “The Eternal Return”, etc.).
(5) Then establish the cohering center to this mythical complex of themes- i.e. There is an angry deity/force behind life that is threatening punishment and destruction, even violence to extremes. The creating Reality is pissed and threatens the total annihilation of all life. The Mother of all Daddies is really mad.
(6) This arouses in people the desperation for salvation/survival. Threat theology has long been beaten into human consciousness, and responded to with the demand to appease the angry gods. Hence, the sacrifice and offering industry over the millennia, conjoined with the early myth of “people created to serve the gods, to feed the gods, pacify the gods”.
Today’s myths of gods needing pacification with sacrifice continues in new “secular” versions with new gods like “vengeful Gaia, punitive universe, angry Planet/Mother Earth”, payback karma” etc.
I trace the roots of these themes back to their origins in ancient societies to emphasize how old and primitive all this is. It is not the new enlightened, modern insights and ideals that true believers of today wish to frame it as. Marx and his “scientific history” was primitive irrational mythology.
Add here the element of the early emergence of “special people” in societies, the shaman/priests who claimed to know the secrets of how to pacify the angry gods. They claimed special insider knowledge with which to control scared others.
The “fear=control” formula of totalitarian elites comes to the fore in the demand of shaman/priests that others submit to their claims to know the mysteries/secrets of the invisible realm of gods, and how to appease the gods and get benefits/blessings from them. But all must submit to the authority of the priests, to Plato’s “Philosopher Kings, Noble Rulers”, who will tell the commoners how to live and find their way to truth, right, good, and justice.
Those special people are to be revered as obviously divine, appointed by the gods, to be the elite Rulers of lesser others, the commoners (see Helmut Koester on Hellenism and Plato below).
Present yourself as the savior figure with the plan of salvation for all, a scheme that establishes you in power, in control.
This is all archetypal stuff, subconscious, and most people just respond intuitively to these themes. They respond emotionally when they hear these themes in new narratives like climate alarmism, Woke Progressivism, etc. People respond and embrace new movements shaped by these themes because they resonate as true, right, good, and just.
Kristian Niemietz: “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.”
The salvation schemes of totalitarians consist of two main parts:
(6a) Make a sacrifice, an offering– i.e. give up the good life in modern capitalist civilization, and return to the primitivism, the communalism of early noble savages. Add here the myth that suffering is necessary for redemption, like those monks denying themselves and living in isolated monasteries to achieve salvation. This is derived from the Christ myth that suffering is how we pay for sins.
(6b) Part two of elite salvations schemes- You are obligated to then violently purge some evil threat, the enemy other who differs, the unbelievers/deniers of your apocalyptic narrative, the selfish individuals and their private property in the free market.
Violent purging is the “coercive purity” of socialist revolutions (i.e. the French and Marxist revolutions where elites believed they had to “force people to be free” in collectivist society, for their own good of course. And notably, collectivist elites (e.g. Babeuf, Marx) sought to free people from the evil of private property- “Abolish private property and evil will vanish from the Earth”, (p.291, Heaven On Earth).
Landes offers extensive detail on the “romanticism of violence” by Marx and his followers, their delusional belief in their noble cause to purge evil and liberate humanity to collectivist utopia.
Violence is willingly embraced by socialist revolutionaries most especially when they sense the possible collapse of one of their crusades to dominate a society. Disillusioned with failure and rejecting the possibility of loss of power, they then shift to the phase of “exterminate or be exterminated”, the fanatical commitment to desperate measures to avoid the loss of power.
Insert note: After recognizing the general Western public would not embrace their collectivist revolution via public democratic processes because capitalism had actually improved the lives of workers, 60s Marxists had to find another means to bring down Western industrial civilization.
Their creative solution? What fuels capitalist civilization? Ah- fossil fuels. At the time they realized this, reports had been made public that CO2 had a warming influence. So there was the key element for a new alarmist narrative re capitalist civilization. A new threatening evil to center a new apocalyptic narrative. CO2 was made the new marker of the evil human consumption of resources and enjoyment of the good life in capitalist civilization. Red joined green to become the “watermelon” cooperation of leftists and environmentalists seeking to destroy Western industrial civilization.
The climate warming apocalypse borrowed from the much earlier shift of the Sumerian apocalypse by Flood to Zoroaster’s apocalypse by fire. The modern climate apocalypse narrative actually embraced both elements of primitive apocalypse- i.e. imminent flood apocalypse by rising seas and apocalypse by Earth on fire from rising CO2. The “same old” framed in new versions.
Zoroaster’s fiery purging of the world with molten metal was also continued in Paul’s fiery apocalyptic return of his Christ (Thessalonians- “Lord Jesus will return in flaming fire to destroy…”). See also the apocalypse in Revelation.
(7) Frame this mess of irrational mythology in terms of a battle of good against evil as per Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism. Portray your side as exhibiting inculpable righteous heroism, you fighting the monster/evil of the differing others, the deniers/unbelievers that must be slain, conquered, exterminated because they are irredeemably evil. Demonize your opponents as satanic, deceived by Satan, more than just ordinary evil- as “demonic” enemies.
Some researcher of Islam had noted (I can’t recall his name or book), for example, that in Islam Jews were viewed as a worse evil than the average unbelieving “infidel”. Jews were layered with the additional feature of “demonic/satanic”, hence deserved special hatred.
Insert note: The hero’s battle against some evil monster/enemy is easily deformed by further layering it with the element of tribal dualism, Zoroaster’s myth of a cosmic dualism of good against evil that ignored the fundamental oneness of humanity, a oneness based on “Mitochondrial Eve”, quantum entanglement, or the “spiritual insight” of the ultimate Oneness of divine unconditional love.
Push this tribal dualism to extremes of contrast by framing yourself as noble and pure in contrast to your chosen enemy as irredeemable evil and “existential threat” that must be exterminated to save some world.
Collectivists have adopted this tribalism as expressed in their dualism of oppressors/oppressed defined as those with private property and those without or lacking enough property to matter. They ignore/deny their own elitism that oppresses and ruins societies as nothing before in history- i.e. the 100 million murdered by collectivism in the last century.
Note the common smear by leftists today of the populism movements that are pushing back against left-wing totalitarianism- i.e. “right wing extremism” as dog whistle for “white supremacists, racists”. Populist movements tend to be a mixed bunch of conservatives, centrists, independents, and moderate left/liberals.
(8) Then, finally to complete the complex of common elements/themes, offer the carrot promise of the restoration of the lost paradise, with fewer people in a more wilderness world, with a return to the pristine communalism of noble savages, and the “moral superiority” of their shared low-consumption lifestyles.
Present people with your vision of a utopian future of shared goods, and no defiling private ownership. This comes today through neo-collectivism/neo-Marxism, the neo-communalism of Woke Progressivism where enlightened elites rule the collective, using the State (Hegel’s state as embodying the will of the people) and state coercion to force populations toward the elite goal of an imagined common or greater good that can only be attained through more collectivism.
The principle of commoners submitting to ruling elites (the elite/commoner divide of societies) descends down from the ancient pre-state world to Plato and the Hellenism that shaped Christianity and Paul’s Lord Christ myth. The grand themes, that validate the elite/commoner divide of societies, have always been in the background (i.e. archetypal, subconscious) undermining and countering the impulse of commoners for freedom and self-determination.
Arthur Herman on Plato (“The Cave and Light”)
Herman outlines Plato’s vision of the perfect society as a collective- “the Republic is all about raising the collective order to the highest-pitched perfection… (where Aristotle’s politics point toward Western individualism and democracy) Plato’s communitarian vision points very much in the other direction with ugly consequences… Plato (insists) that the perfect political community must have no private property: the Republic is in effect the first Communist state (run by “Philosopher Rulers”)…”
Plato divides the perfect society into classes of common workers, soldiers, and Rulers who are the administrative elites of the state and control all. The Rulers “who are also the city’s philosophers, the moral and administrative keepers of the state, the people who make sure everything else in society works… the class of Rulers are above all a class of legislators and lawmakers. Through good laws, even the lowest and least-educated citizens will learn to be just and virtuous… In this way, an ideal society and even an ideal people will result.”
That is the utopian vision of Greek totalitarians like Plato.
Herman details how this collectivist vision of Plato continued down through history “From New Harmony, Indiana, to Pol Pot’s Cambodia, they are all efforts to create a brand-new society according to Plato’s basic premise, that through laws based on the highest and most certain knowledge, we can create… perfect society.”
His collectivist vision “abolishes private property” and tries to impose harmony and order through elite legislation, (p. 66-67).
The link from Plato to contemporary collectivist totalitarianism?
Plato’s vision of collectivist utopia descended to philosopher Georg Hegel who exerted a major influence on Marx.
Hegel argued for “someone” to ensure equity among the people.
“That someone… is the state. Its development as an autonomous actor in history is in fact the next and final stage of freedom beyond commercial society. It smooths out all the problems of capitalism… What Rousseau and Romantic nationalists had seen in the idea of the Nation, a community shaped by laws, customs, and traditions into ‘one single being’ or General Will, they can now achieve concretely through the actions of the State. Under its aegis, teams of bureaucrats become a virtual cadre of Philosopher Rulers who bring order and justice to a needy world. As in Plato’s Republic, justice is the source of freedom not the other way around.
“Hegel is the true godfather of the nanny state, or welfare state- with Plato standing beside him… (all state programs) become justified as the State acting to protect us from ourselves because the State is our Better and Higher Self. As Hegel wrote, ‘The Government, regarded as an organic totality is the concrete embodiment of the indwelling Spirit of the People itself’…… ‘Society and State are the very conditions in which Freedom is realized’. Indeed, in time humanity will discover that obeying the laws of the State is the only true freedom”, (416-17).
Kristian Niemietz exposes the socialist/collectivist elite’s claim that their enlightened rule of collectives is “on behalf of the people, for the people”, using state coercion and laws to enact the “will of the people, express the will of the people”. It never works out to that end, says Niemietz.
Here, once again, is his good summary of the inevitable outcome of the elite approach to controlling collectives “for the people”:
“Socialism in the sense which self-identified democratic socialists define it… a democratized economic planned collectively by ‘the people’, has never been achieved anywhere and could not be achieved. Economic planning can only ever be done in a technocratic, elitist fashion, and it requires an extreme concentration of power in the hands of the state. It cannot ‘empower’ ordinary workers. It can only ever empower bureaucratic elites,” (“Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”).
Now… Moving onto the Christian embrace of the common elements of collectivist approaches, elites dominating collectives to control commoners..
Paul modelled his Christ myth according to Greek views of special people as divine beings. His shaped his Christ as a Lord deserving honor and obeisance from all, an ultimate model for elite domination over others. With his Christ he validated ruling elites deserving honor as divinely appointed rulers, with threats of severe punishment to dissenters (see, for example, Romans 13).
Here below is Helmut Koester on the Hellenism that shaped Paul’s Christ-ianity (“History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”). Paul embraced the varied strains of Plato’s Hellenism that would further impel the ongoing historical descent of this elitist collectivism down into future generations. Historical Jesus, a Palestinian wisdom sage, was subjected to the Hellenistic process of viewing special people as divine.
“(in Hellenism) Divinity was associated the powerful deeds, great acts, and extraordinary human gifts of some people. Notably in Greek biography, divinity was manifest in kings/emperors and through their military and political achievements, also in the special abilities of great poets, philosophers, and artists. Their special skills were believed to be divine manifestations that made them better than others. Special abilities and accomplishments were believed to be “miraculous”.
““Hellenistic biographies incorporate miracle stories in a strikingly uncritical manner”.
“Koester says the early Christians later adopted this Hellenistic approach in creating the biographical account of their founding hero (Jesus), hence the many miracle stories in the gospels.”
Paul buttressed his Christ myth further with the other common elements of totalitarian collectivism (see full detail in books like Romans). He embraced the mythology of an angry God who incites fear by threatening people. A God pissed at sinful people for ruining his perfect creation, Eden, thereby sending life into decline toward the final punishment of humanity in the apocalyptic destruction of the world. That threat was followed by the demand for salvation via violent sacrifice and violent purging of evil from the world. Then came the promise of salvation in utopian communalism.
Paul’s protégé Luke, in his “biographical” account of Paul’s life in Acts, set forth the ideal of collectivism as the divinely approved model for human society. Luke’s account demonized private individual property for inciting divine wrath. In Acts 2 and 4, he illustrates “true love” as the communal sharing of all property. Meaning, God is obviously a collectivist and, as the Ananias and Sapphira incident reveals, God hates and violently destroys individualism and individual private property. There, Marx had his Christian model and validation.
Historical Jesus had previously rejected elite privilege and domination of others.
His message stated there was no angry God seeking to retaliate against sinful humans with threats of apocalypse. There was only the non-retaliatory love that non-tribally includes all, forgives all, and generously grants the gifts of life- i.e. sun and rain- freely to both good and bad people.
Further rejecting the divine basis of elitism, there was no dominating Lord to function as an ultimate model/ideal for humans, but to the contrary, Jesus reframed divine greatness as serving others. And in the Jesus message (i.e. “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel), there was no demand for blood sacrifice as appeasement, or demand to engage a righteous war to purge evil. Meaning, there was no tribalism of true believers versus unbelievers.
To get the Jesus insights clear as new archetypes to shape a new narrative- Pull his central teaching out of the distorting Christological context of the New Testament, just as Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy argued. And like Jesus, go directly to the ultimate ideal at the core of the old religious narratives- deity- and transform that.
As this site repeatedly notes- Understand something of the contrast between Historical Jesus and Paul’s Christ myth as detailed in the general “Search for Historical Jesus”, notably, in the latest stage of this search in the “Jesus Seminar” books, and also the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel research.
Build yourself an entirely new narrative. Don’t fear to engage the shaman’s experience of dying to something old, and experiencing rebirth to something entirely new, to experience disintegration of the old, and re-integration around the new, as in a new understanding and approach to life.
A starter kit for new narrative construction: “Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives” (Old story themes, new story alternatives).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
A repost of Lex Fridman on special people– What Plato noted as people who were considered divine and hence to be specially honored as such.
From “Hating that some people are better than others”, Wendell Krossa (revised, updated)
“The earliest elites emerged as shaman/priests. Those early “better than others” associated themselves with deity as validation of their being more special than others. They were anointed by deity to lecture and dominate others for their good.
“Helmut Koester (“History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”) adds detail on how the belief that some are better than others was developed in Greek biography over the more historically immediate BCE era.
“Divinity was associated the powerful deeds, great acts, and extraordinary human gifts of some people. Notably in Greek biography, divinity was manifest in kings/emperors and through their military and political achievements, also in the special abilities of great poets, philosophers, and artists. Their special skills were believed to be divine manifestations that made them better than others. Special abilities and accomplishments were believed to be “miraculous”.
““Hellenistic biographies incorporate miracle stories in a strikingly uncritical manner”.
“Koester says the early Christians later adopted this Hellenistic approach in creating the biographical account of their founding hero (Jesus), hence the many miracle stories in the gospels. Further, “It is not surprising that subsequent literature, especially the legends of Christian saints is entirely dominated by miracle stories”, p.131-132.
“In those ancient traditions we see the developing pattern of associating dominant figures and their great public deeds as special, making them “better than others.” Note how those “better than others” appealed to deity for validation of their specialness.”
Post to discussion group: Wendell Krossa
“Watch this… Here’s a “holy shitoli” for any still thinking that we are not propagandized and lied to constantly by media. As Drew Pinsky said, “Don’t believe a thing media or government tell you”.
“At the 16-minute mark, listen for just a few seconds to Jimmy Dore reading the time that Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Trevor Noah, and John Oliver, at the same moment, repeated verbatim Nancy Pelosi’s points about the border crisis being caused by Trump, all on same night. Others have noted this strangely immediate coordination of points (usually anti-Trump, anti-Republican) coming out all together in media, using the very same terms.
“In this link, Dore plays the interview of Stephen Colbert interviewing Claire Danes, an actress, as she talks about the CIA intervention in news media and Hollywood. Watch Colbert’s reaction as she blurts this out and he tries to immediately change the topic.
“Then Dore plays a video clip of RFK revealing how the CIA propagandizes Americans through varied media outlets like Rolling Stone, The Smithsonian, National Geographic, Washington Post, Nature, New York Times, and was even exposed for manipulating Twitter against conservatives and for Democrats. This was what Frank Church tried to stop and did for a while till the CIA found a way around his blocks back in the 70s. The Twitter Files showed the CIA and FBI silencing people they did not like, acting for the Democratic party.
“Others have noted that producers of Hollywood movies have to get CIA pre-approval of scripts. RFK notes what happened at the Church hearings where it was revealed that some 400 journalists in American media were cooperating with the CIA (the biggest names in the business). The CIA continued to compromise journalists all over the world.
“Then Dore plays the clip of a CIA agent telling people that the major function of the CIA is propaganda- to influence people’s minds by planting false stories with journalists. Agents buy the journalists confidence by first offering them several true stories followed by a propaganda story. Or they find ways to compromise journalists so there is no need to cultivate them.
“Near the end, Dore replays Colbert’s reaction to Claire Dane exposing the CIA association with news journalists and how Colbert has to immediately react and redirect the conversation as she has revealed too much.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXGGfwimlw4
Some things that Michael Schellenberger, Matt Taibbi, Mike Benz, Jimmy Dore, and many others have exposed regarding elite manipulation of our liberal democracies over past decades… Wendell Krossa
The point of these exposures is to reveal how we are lied to by governments and their propagandizing media, making a mockery of freedom in our liberal democracies. While much of their research applies to the US, it is illustrative of similar elite shenanigans across Western societies.
They note the Frank Church hearings on the CIA meddling in media to control public narratives- i.e. the compromising of some 400 US media personnel back then, including the most well-known journalists.
https://www.levin-center.org/frank-church-and-the-church-committee/
They further note the contemporary intelligence agency meddling in media (last decade) to push Covid lies and validate destructive lockdowns, to cover up stories like the Hunter Biden laptop and thereby influence the outcome of an election, to push the Russiagate lie to discredit a political opponent in an effort to overturn a democratic election, to constantly censor political opponents (i.e. Twitter Files revelations, ongoing Google bias in search results, control of Wikipedia, etc.).
The elites who demanding power and control over our societies, work behind the scenes with intelligence agencies to maintain their control over state bureaucracies, information, and they scheme and manipulate endlessly for control of the resources and wealth of societies.
The above journalists, along with others, note that Western liberal democracies have shifted far left under the influence of Woke Progressivism (i.e. Canada under Trudeau, the US under Biden, etc.). This has provoked many citizens to embrace populist movements to restore the Classic Liberal freedoms and rights of all individuals, equally. As Winston Marshall stated in his Oxford debate with Nancy Pelosi, “Populism is democracy”.
Alarmed elites, fearful of losing their privileged positions of domination and control of liberal democracies, have smeared and demonized populism as “Far-Right, or Rightwing extremism”, dog whistle code for “White supremacism, racism, etc.”
Elites, working with corrupted intelligence agencies and other state agencies, have over the post-WW2 decades focused on destabilizing and overthrowing foreign governments, governments they had framed as “authoritarian threats to democracy”, namely the Communist and other left-leaning governments, but also just nationalist governments wanting control over their own economies and the US did not like that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1GONgRrdKs
These elites, and their co-opted agencies, have now shifted from their previous focus on foreign states as threats to democracy, to now demonize domestic anti-elite movements like populism as the new “authoritarian threats to democracy”, democracy defined by the elites as “the consensus of state institutions” that they control (Mike Benz on Joe Rogan).
Elites view the populism crusades to restore Classic Liberal protection of the rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally, as the great threat to their domination and control of liberal democracies from behind the scenes.
It appears the elites who have been destabilizing and overthrowing democratically elected governments around the world for decades, had no problem turning on their own democratically elected government to try to destabilize and overthrow it with the Russiagate fraud.
https://www.racket.news/p/why-is-russiagates-origin-story-redacted
To add to the ongoing exposures by the above independent journalists and podcasters…
Note, in this link, Mike Benz’s detailed exposure of the massive infrastructure that elites have constructed behind the scenes (“censorship industrial complex”) to censor any opposition and their continued program to push the agenda of the military industrial complex.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrJhQpvlkLA
This is the continuation of destabilizing and overthrowing democratically elected governments- notably Ukraine in 2014- to enable US access to the resources of such nations and to further the domination of other nations by the “US empire”.
And this from Joe Rogan and guest Matt Walsh…
These comments by Rogan and Walsh on how the leftist bureaucracy in the US will nullify the populist movement of Trump. Walsh is right that state agencies, populated by leftist progressives, will fight any change from Trump policies, just as they did to the previous Trump administration.
Before moving on with Rogan and Walsh’s comments, I would remind readers that the infiltration and control of US government agencies and bureaucracies by majority leftist elites/employees, precedes the collapse of the Soviet Union during the late 80s, early 90s. The public perception/delusion that collectivism had died with that collapse was mistaken.
In recent years we have been informed that decades earlier, 60s Marxists had refocused their assault on Western civilization and had chosen to go through the back door into higher education systems to indoctrinate new generations of young people (e.g. Richard Lindzen, Niall Ferguson, and others have commented on this).
That back-door approach came to fruition in the 90s as a majority of far-left professors were pumping out indoctrinated students to populate all sectors of society- i.e. state agencies, media, and even the intelligence agencies. According to a 2017 poll, a majority of these young people “preferred to live in a ‘socialist, communist, or fascist nation than in a capitalist one’”.
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/commentary/young-americans-support-abstract-and-unworkable-socialism
The collectivism of the younger generation was given creative new expression in DEI and its new tribal dualism of the two classes of “victim/victimizer”, with the assignment to either class now by skin color. This is a revived discrimination and racism, termed “Woke Racism” by John McWhorter.
It’s the same old tribal dualism of Marxism- i.e. “oppressor/oppressed” with assignment to class according to private property ownership or lack thereof. That is still in the mix of today’s collectivism.
It will take some major public education re Classic Liberalism principles, systems of common law, and representative institutions to counter the failed idea of collectivism/socialism and its horrific destruction of human societies.
Back to Rogan and Walsh…
Walsh and Rogan note how leftists accuse Trump of potentially weaponizing the justice system, which is exactly what they have done for years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjEHJpEqsYQ
As Rogan says, how can you be so blind to even say that Trump will weaponize the justice system after what you have done for years, and you refuse admit that you are doing that right now to him. Rogan notes that Trump did not do that in his first term because, according to him, “It would be a bad look”.
Walsh adds that contrary to the leftist charge that Trump is a “dictator”, he does the exact opposite and does not wield power, even when he should. They both conclude that Trump was probably “the least dictatorial person”.
I would add that Trump’s decrease of the size of government, his lowering of taxation rates, and his massive decrease in regulations, were all the exact opposite of what dictators do. In doing those things, he gave up power and control at a scale never done before in US history.
(Note: As with many others I would parse my comments with the qualifier that I do not affirm all that Trump says or does, but generally affirm the populism that he represents that seeks the restoration of Classic liberal principles, common law, and representative institutions that protect the freedoms and rights of all individuals, equally. This populism, is embraced by Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, RFK, Tulsi Gabbard, and many others from all sides- i.e. moderate liberals/leftists, centrists, independents, moderate conservatives, etc.)
The elite totalitarianism/collectivism that is coming at us through far-left Woke Progressivism is the real threat to democracy today. The populist movement across Western societies, that is democracy, is a pushback against this neo-totalitarianism.
Here is another example of leftist denial of the wrong that they are actually doing now, and their projection of that wrong onto others.
https://www.public.news/p/desperate-need-for-censorship-behind