Matt Taibbi: Congratulations, Elitists: Liberals and Conservatives Do Have Common Interests Now

June 4, 2021 Hunter Wallace Alt-Center, Conservatism, History, PC, Politics, Populists, Progressives, Woke Supremacy 34

Editor’s Note: OD will be quieter than usual over the next two days due to my son’s birthday. I’ve been deluging you anyway with a firehose of posts.

What is the Left?

Is it going to be woke progressivism or what is called the “successor ideology”? If so, can it continue to coexist with traditional liberalism? Is it devouring liberal institutions?

Matt Taibbi:

“The hilarious headline in the Daily Beast yesterday read like a cross of Clickhole and Izvestia circa 1937: “Is Glenn Greenwald the New Master of Right-Wing Media? FROM HIS MOUTH TO FOX’S EARS!” …

For years now, this has been the go-to conversation-ender for prestige media pundits and Twitter trolls alike, directed at any progressive critic of the political mainstream: you’re a Republican! A MAGA-sympathizer! Or (lately), an “insurrectionist”! The Beast in its Greenwald piece used the most common of the Twitter epithets: “Trump-defender.” Treachery and secret devotion to right-wing politics are also the default explanation for the growing list of progressives making their way onto Fox of late, from Greenwald to Kyle Kulinski to Aaron Mate to Jimmy Dore to Cornel West.

The truth is, Trump conservatives and ACLU-raised liberals like myself, Greenwald, and millions of others do have real common cause, against an epistemic revolution taking hold in America’s political and media elite. The traditional liberal approach to the search for truth, which stresses skepticism and free-flowing debate, is giving way to a reactionary movement that Plato himself would have loved, one that believes knowledge is too dangerous for the rabble and must be tightly regulated by a priesthood of “experts.” It’s anti-democratic, un-American, and naturally unites the residents of even the most extreme opposite ends of our national political spectrum.”

The answer is no.

As people like Andrew Sullivan are correctly pointing out, this new governing ideology of the Democratic Party is leftwing, but it is not rooted in liberalism. It is rooted in critical theory and postmodernism and parts ways with liberalism at the level of epistemology and ethics.

There is a long story to be told here about how American liberalism poisoned itself and destroyed the social fabric of the country before collapsing from within. It starts with modernism which was imported from Europe in the 1910s and became a fashionable new aesthetic among the trendy liberal intelligentsia in the 1920s. It created a new sensibility which led to what we call social liberalism or cultural liberalism. Liberals became hostile to everything traditional and bent on destroying it. Previously, liberalism had not been focused on liberating the individual from their culture or proclaiming the equality of all cultures and the massive rift which been widening since the 1920s into the political divide of our own times did not exist. The Union and Confederacy only fought over a small difference in republicanism.

In 1930s, it was liberals who implanted the Frankfurt School in New York City. The Rockefeller Foundation at this time was eager to recruit European academics. It was also liberals who took up the cause of antiracism in the 1930s. There was a critical exchange of ideas in these crucial years between mainstream liberals and the leftwing fringe. Boasian anthropology triumphed in the 1930s. Critical theory and modernism could be used against the Nazis and the Soviets and against the Right at the home. By the time of the post-World War II era, “mainstream” liberalism was still liberalism, but also modernism, antiracism (in the colorblindness phase) and cosmopolitanism. The change happened between the 1920s and the 1950s and gradually the focus of liberalism shifted from protecting individual rights and fostering social democracy in economics to cultural liberation which accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s.

Liberalism was the dominant ideology in America. The mainstream in the late 20th century was dominated by progressive liberalism, which defined the Left, and conservative liberalism, which defined the Right. Crucially though, non-liberal leftwing ideologies were given the space to flourish inside liberal institutions like the media and the universities. The far left was not repressed like the “far right.” The critical theorists, for example, have been operating inside American institutions since as far back as the Great Depression and World War II. Herbert Marcuse was the “father of the New Left” in the 1960s.

Just as liberals rushed to embrace the modernist aesthetic in the 1920s and cosmopolitanism and antiracism in the 1930s, they embraced postmodernism which became a fashionable intellectual trend in the 1970s and 1980s. Political correctness began to germinate in American universities in the late 1980s. Progressive liberals have always been drawn from the professional and educated classes and these fashionable trends infected the institutions in which they are immersed. By the 1990s and 2000s, the stage was set to indoctrinate the Millennials in political correctness and social justice ideology in K-12 public schools and the universities in the most progressive parts of the country like Portland.

If we were able to retrieve a pristine specimen of a typical American liberal from 1912 which was the year the Titanic sank, we would be hard pressed to find any evidence of these changes. Gradually, American liberalism was so influenced by these other leftwing ideologies all of which were imported from Europe and introduced into this country that it became utterly diseased and incoherent. It is ate up with cancer and the people who identify as “conservatives” are generally reacting to the cancer.

In the Joe Biden era, it has reached the point where traditional liberals like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi are being pushed out. They haven’t changed. It is the Left that has changed. It has evolved into this. They are becoming reactionaries. “Journalists” no longer care about the truth. We saw that in the Atlanta Spa Shooting when Joe Biden came to Georgia and said it had become a “Jim Eagle” state where “Jim Crow on steroids” is practiced. Joe said that we are all “complicit.” The cause of the shooting was “white supremacy.” It was a descent into pure narrative. It was woke storytelling.

These people are broken at the level of metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. If you are on the Left these days, you better watch your six. They will come after you and try to get you. They will comb through every statement you have ever made in your entire life to find a reason to destroy you. All it takes is “liking” the wrong tweet or post or “associating” with the wrong person or better yet not going along with the sacred narrative and the party line. These people don’t even understand “truth” the way that the rest of us in this country do. They have their own “truths” which are based on experiences.

About Hunter Wallace 12390 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

34 Comments

      • I have been a long time fan of Huey Long, although mostly just on a surface sort of level. I remember reading about him I think in the 90’s or early 2000’s. I found it quite interesting that he was considered such a threat to FDR and that he was murdered by an “immigrant doctor” or whatever the euphemism they use.

        The “NRx” types like Curtis Yarvin give a sort of praise to FDR for being, essentially, a dictator or a king. The Unitary Executive theory of power.

        Well, that was clearly Long. You had to be loyal to Long, but Long’s popularity was based on just good old fashioned economic populism, call it “graft.” Sharing the wealth.

        In any case, I totally approve of your Long-centered gimmick. You’re the only one on the “whatever-right” that looks to our own history for inspiration, as opposed to all of these foreign LARPers that I hate so much.

        I also like Andrew Jackson of course.

        • Funny and Oswald was silenced by another member of the tribe Jack Rubenstein. Both Kennedys were most likely taken out by members of the same tribe. Almost like the assassination of potential political adversaries is part of their game plan. We never would have destroyed Germany if Long had become President. Europe would still be a wonderful place to live instead of a muslim infested shithole where raping 12 year old white girls is completely tolerated.

  2. Worth reading about the Perlo Group. The Judas Iscariots were operating at the highest levels of our government during WW2. They even thwarted a $200 million loan to the Chinese nationalists to help Mao.

    • The supported both Mao and Stalin until 1948 when they dumped the USSR for Israel. $200 million is probably a very low estimate.

  3. It’s what y’all who worship the Jerusalem Temple of Usury “messianic” monarchy want!! They gone give it to you now … totalitarian communism, ie. You will own nothing and you will love it!

  4. I quit calling them liberals a few years ago. Why not use a better and more accurate descriptive term? I call it non white naziism. Or just call them anti white racists. These arguments aren’t really meaningful of helpful anymore.

    In my opinion we ought to focus on the specific actions and policies and attach either criminal or gangster connotations to them. Using the term liberal doesn’t really mean anything, and it dilutes the sinister nature of what’s going on.

  5. “Woke progressivism” is just anti-white. There is no other larger ideology. There are various reasons, but the primary driver of anti-whiteness is Jewish hatred for “fly-over country.” There were always arrogant elites and there have always been elites that despise the “lower orders.”

    But Judaism, as an ideology, preaches hatred and loathing for one’s neighbors. In the American context, it is “whites” that the Jewish elite hate the most.

    They are not shy about expressing their hatred at all. The entire point of pushing mass immigration was to make whites a minority, under the theory that whites are “nazis.”

    The job of conservatives and the Republican party is to shift the focus away from their Jewish donors to talk about “liberals” or some nonsense like “Islamofascism.” Conservatives tell us that the Arabs and the Chinese “own the media” or that the New York Times is “anti-semitic.”

    Jews are the richest group in America and the majority of money to politicians comes from Jewish donors.

    Few will admit this, for obvious reasons, but if you don’t tell the truth what is the point?

    • There is really nothing more poignant, pathetic and maddening than going to a boomer con site like Instapundit (full disclosure, I followed it avidly in the first decade of this century) and watch ’em fall over each other pledging undying fealty and loyalty to Israel, love for Jews and so on. “If only the Jews could see the antisemitism of the Dems and how much we love ’em!” It’s a variant of the D3 nonsense (and also pushed by the chubby soiboi Prager) but even more of an eyeroll. There is literally no help for those people. You can’t question one little piece of it without accusations of being a storm front shill.

      • I live in a very “red” county. I have seen an Israeli flag flying underneath an American one, and one flag that is half American, half Israeli. I’m pretty sure these people aren’t jews. I don’t think much hope exists for people who worship foreign gods, and people who hate them.

        • Try discussing the attack on the USS Liberty with these patriotards. You will see their “support the troops” mantra is bullshit The upcoming 54 anniversary is a good time.

      • Speaking of “DR3 nonsense” from “boomer cons”, I find it equally disgusting when people who are pro-White seek some sort of solidarity with Palestinians as an inept own on the Jews, or mouth inanities such as Blacks are being used by Jews — which is true enough — but then lament that the poor dark dears just don’t realize it. They DO. And they are greatly enriched by it; if by nothing else than that they are given absolute power over Whitey.
        Oh, and “reparations” coming soon.

    • @Banned Hipster…

      Yes, Sir, you are telling the truth, as you always do.

      Yet, as one who has known an incredibly large amount of people in both parties, and in the interest of making sure that truth of yours is extremely accurate, I will say this :

      Yes, plenty of Jews do loath and look down upon Gentiles.

      However, many, the majority, do not.

      However, this reality is made complex by the fact that the spirits haunting both White Gentile and Jewish peoples do, at the least, look askance at, or, at worst, detest one another.

      This reality is made further complex by the fact that life, for all individuals and groups is a brutal competition, one which, as Jews have so painfully learned throughout history, rarely provides for a tie, but, almost always insists on there being a winner and a loser.

      Jews, having spent many many centuries in exile as a tiny minority amongst Gentiles, learned that losing is often a fate worse than death.

      For that reason, Jews long ago became obssesst with winning.

      Nothing exemplifies this more than the extreme stress Jews put on their children to outachieve, not just in grades, but, in all other intellectual extra-curricular activities, their classmates.

      Thus, ion this country, which is a country that, from the first, was dedicated to no-holds barred competitiveness, more than any other group Jews are ready to run that race and win, and, once they win, they seen absolutely no reason why they ought not focus a large degree of the fruit of those wins to Tikkun Olam – or bettering the world.

      With many Jews that means giving to their local synagogue, for others it means funding a new hospital wing, and, yes, for others (like Georgi Svarc – George Soros) it means trying to fund an overturning of the world the try to establish some earthly panacea.

      All of these things contribute to the rub that a growing number of White Gentiles feel about Jews.

      Unfortunately, Jews, as a group, are unwilling to look at this issue in any other light than attempting to forcefully tamp down upon the expression of that resentment, as opposed to actually doing things that would ameliorate the resentment itself.

      One of my Hungarian Jewish uncles, in a western state that shall remain unnamed, is a case in point for the kind of Jewish behavior American Jews need to grow and grow quickly – he funds practically any legal effort that White Militias and ultra-Conservative groups need to either hire lawyers to launch suits against their foes, or defend themselves against the endless suits coming against them, and, thereby, expresses my daddy’s family’s gratitude for the kind of opportunity White Gentile Americans have incessantly afforded us here.

      It’s an unlikely thing to behold my great uncle and his militia friends, because he does look so very very Jewish, and they so very not, yet, there is such a great love and respect between them.

      • @Ivan Turgenev

        Well of course I don’t buy your “poor oppressed Jews” bullshit.

        If someone gets kicked out of a bar, maybe the bartender was an asshole. If someone gets kicked out of 109 bars – it’s them. They are the problem.

        So, you know, spare me.

        • Besides their negro worship stemming from their zeal for college football and basketball, southerners suffer from terminal philosemitism. This was somewhat in remission in the 1960s when their jewish friends came down to teach the southern white man about civil rights. But it has since recovered.

          I like them otherwise.

          • @Banned – Yes; and now they are not only back in all 109 of those “bars”, then now either manage, or own outright, ALL of them.

      • @Ivan – You have given an interesting, informative and nuanced perspective.

  6. As a Christian, Southern Nationalist, and son of Confederate veterans I have to say that I am, for the first time in decades, optimistic about the political circumstances in this country, and how they will affeckt The South.

    Yep, those who are, and, indeed, have long been, trying to strangle Dixie remind me of those who had invaded Russia, around the time of November 1942, this being that they still hold the initiative and overall advantages, yet, every day, you feel our side growing while their side more and more thrashes about ineffectually and is beginning to wane.

    To be sure – there is a long road ahead of us – but we are going to win it and take back most, if not all, of what’s been lost.

    • I agree with you, Mr Turgenev (interesting moniker; I’m a Dostoevskian myself). But it can’t be as part of the “united states” governed by Lincolnism..

      • @Buzz…

        I totally agree – to hell with any and all forms of ‘Lincolnism’.

        By the way, I love Dostoevsky, tool, and it now strikes me as eerie that the first novel of his with which I fell in love, as an adolescent, is the one entited,’ The Devils’.

        The main character in that novel – the arch-Leftist/Nihilist anti-hero, Stepan Verkhovensky, is a cardboard cutout for most of The Progressives today.

        Be well!

  7. The populist left and the populist right are two-sides of the same civnat reactionary coin.

  8. The family that lives across the street recently made white lives matter T shirts.

    I told them it was really bad ass! However be careful where you go wearing that.

    Really cool people to live next to, I talked some politics with them, told them about your site HW.

    Their big Trump fans, hope you’re articles like this one can wake them up.

    Thanks

    • @Sunburn…

      Excellent news.

      I wear Confederate insignia and we fly flags of the same from our house – all clear & unequivocal traditional White Southern Lives Matter!

    • Your report above, about your neighbor’s T-shirts, made my day; thank you!

  10. Conservatism and liberalism are the same, they go by different names. Both will call you racist, Nazi, antisemitic, etc if they disagree with you. They re opposite side of the same shekel.

    • True, Dear john.

      To me, any political philosophy that has been shorn of a reference to the very people it is supposed to serve is worse than worthless – it’s dangerous1

  11. I believe it is important to recognize that the incoherent and convulsive behavior of the far-left for the last 5 years, (which is reaching a crescendo even AFTER Trump), is extremely reactionary, and deeply imbedded in their darkest thoughts is the very realization that their entire worldview is based on lies. Deeply, they know that there are irreconcilable differences between white people and black. Deeply, they realize that science has been corrupted and twisted to conform to narratives that don’t play out in reality. They are as the child in adolescence who still believes in childish things and isn’t quite ready to become an adult, yet their body and hormones are making it quite clear that they have no choice. They are lashing out, turning up the rebellion to its highest levels like a 7th grader who can’t handle the rush of hormones.

    Yet inevitably, everyone grows up and grows into their adult bodies. The future that lay before us is one where the contradictions and absurdities can no longer be sustained and there simply is no credibility left.

    The Covid/Fauci email situation will prove to be another example of this. More people like Greenwald will wake up from their fever and realize that they’ve prostituted themselves for lies.

    I don’t think the other side of this is rainbows and unicorns. I think the shrinking far-left will be increasingly POC and lesbian women who won’t ever budge. What I’m hopeful of is that the white awakening is strong enough that these people simply walk away and separate themselves voluntarily. All it will take is enough people saying “enough is enough”.

  12. Absent the culture war, it would be possible to envision a populist movement bridging Left and Right in the USA that was for things like student loan debt cancellation, a higher minimum wage, monthly family payments, no foreign wars, etc. However, racial and cultural war issues prevent something like this right now. Trump was the closest we have come to it. Not sure we will ever get that close again because the Dems are far more concerned with taking down monuments and shutting down free speech than they are with helping the working poor and lower middle class.

  13. It is interesting. I was in the comments section on Fox News last night and in story after story you see mainstream Republicans denouncing how Democrats are shutting down free speech. The Left has push so far now that Republicans sound likd us calling for Big Tech to be broken up and for free speech to be protected. It is radical. But then agIn it isn’t. The mainstream Left used to call for these things.

  14. IMO, the Usual Suspects are making the biggest mistake of their lives destroying White nations by making them multi-cultural and then, to add insult to injury, pushing Anti-Whiteness. As their arrogance pushes them to more stupidity (like that of Fauci), more and more of their lies and corruption will be exposed to the people that trusted, defended and even went to war for them the most, Whites.

    Now, many can say, what does it matter? When the elites speak “power to truth” to the masses of asses out there they have a tax-payer artillery of weapons to enforce their diktats.

    I say it does matter, because they are creating a new, unified Pan-National White Tribe. The more they feel like strangers in the countries they grew up in, the more every White everywhere is going to feel a common bond with other Whites everywhere.

    Whites are a very creative “think outside the box,” inventive people. Necessity is the mother of invention and the best of whites thrive when the need is strong enough. They will soon develop a seething contempt for “Social Justice and Equity” masquerading as Law and Order and start creating their own ways to destroy a bankrupt system, not relying on the authorities to protect or avenge their loved one who are victimized by crime and forming their own gangs, secret societies and mafias to handle it themselves.

    And Whites won’t be the only ones. The “Latinx,” Hindus, Mongoloid Asians, and the Arabs the Usual Suspects insisted on importing here are going to do the same. With any objections to de-funding the police falling on the authorities’ deaf ears, there isn’t a Non-Black group out there who isn’t going to form their own gangs/vigilante groups.

    Yes, you can point out all these silly Asians who protested “White Supremacy” after many of them were victimized by Blacks, but all that did was alienate Whites who mostly though highly of them as the “Model Minority.” Considering one Asian woman got clocked by a Black thug en route to an Anti-“White Supremacy” protest, the Asian’s knee-jerk reaction may be to play along with the propaganda of the powerful, but they are not stupid; it won’t take many more ass-beatings from Black for them to wake up and drop any Anti-White nonsense.

    California, much as we detest that state, is the trend-setter. The only Whites left are those who either can’t afford to move or have to remain, because their work is there and well-paying. All Non-Blacks there live cheek-to-jowl with Blacks and are all too familiar with TNB. Unfortunately, all the White Liberals who have guzzled the Kool-Aid moved to neighboring states to turn them purple and blue

    However, they are spreading their dysfunctional magic, like homeless and aggressive panhandlers camping out in the business/entertainment district of a downtown near you – and live-and-let-live moderates and conservatives and libertarians are literally being force-fed red pills even as they are being inundated with tribal Non-Whites.

    All this black-blacketty-blackness is only alienating ALL other races and pushing them into the most reactionary White camps. Like “Holocaust Skeptic” Republican Party Animal, Takimag contributor, David Cole wrote, California is White minority and full of Non-Black-Non-Whites who have absolutely no problem saying NO to Black people.

    The best thing boards like this can do is just kick back, break out some cold drinks and hot, buttered popcorn and post the We Told You So’s to all the “GoodWhites” who are going to be viciously disillusioned very soon. We should NEVER stop them when we see our enemies about to make the most calamitous mistake of their lives. Once ALL Non-Blacks are on the same page about Blacks, how much longer will ALL Non-Jews be on the same page about the Jews who have weaponized them?

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