Tuesday , March 19 2024

The political divide is postmodernism vs conservatism

In the past few years there has been a great deal of coverage of the “culture wars”.  This is nonsense because all the participants share a broadly similar culture.  There is no culture war but there is a new, gaping, political divide.

The political divide is due to the fall of communism and Marxism as credible political ideals.  Even the most fanatical left-winger must be aware that from Stalin to Mao and Mengistu to Pol Pot the Marxist ideal has been a calamity in practice.  The fall of the Soviet Empire and the rise of Capitalism in China have shown that ordinary people do not like Marxism.  It is dead.  But its child, Postmarxism, is alive and all too well. A definition of Postmarxism is given in Note 1.

Postmarxism is infiltrating the Labour Party and has captured much of the mass media.  This means that we are in a curious position where Journalists can honestly say that they do not support, or write in favour of any political party whilst being raging political fanatics.

The link between Postmarxism and Postmodernism/Poststructuralism means that educational establishments are now teaching Postmarxist ideals to children and students without alerting them or their parents to the political nature of their indoctrination.  What must be remembered about Postmodernism and Poststructuralism is that they both hold that there is no truth.  They pose as righteous rebellion when they are actually carefully crafted techniques for destabilising society.  The destabilisation is not being done in the interests of truth and justice but for the power of the Postmarxist movement through eventual revolution.

Postmodernism has its roots in Dadaism, which was a movement to undermine the established order immediately after WWI.  Postmodern art and video production is surprisingly popular with advertisers.  Its objective is to create disorder in any society by exaggerating differences.  Victims are entirely innocent and drawn in opposition to evil oppressors.  All that matters is the narrative and “facts”  external to the narrative can be ignored and no-platformed.  It is hoped that this technique will create revolutionary tension with eventual social change to a Postmarxist State.  The Postmarxist State is about power and – like the Marxist State – those who win the revolution will have totalitarian control.

The primary route for proselytising Postmarxism is the mass media and universities. Postmodernists hire other postmodernists and exclude all others.  Their defence for such behaviour being that the discrimination being practiced is not political but artistic or professional.  This is reminiscent of Futurism and Socialist Realism which attempted to purify art in the name of Fascism or Communism but postmodernism has been far more successful.  The success of postmodernism is probably due to its separation from other political movements, it was not part of the manifesto of any established party and so was not resisted by those who supply funding to universities and the media.

The natural enemy of postmodernism is conservatism. The political battle today (described by postmodernists as a “culture war”) is between these two forces.  The slow demise of the Marxists muddied the water so that conservatives still believed that Marxism was the enemy but now it should be clear that Postmarxism is the enemy and postmodernists are the enemy’s foot soldiers.

The first and most effective step to stop Postmarxism is to amend the Equality Act 2010 so that employers do not have vicarious liability for the views of their staff and to slowly phase out the whole Act.  Protections against harassment etc. should be garnered from the law dealing with harassment. Harriet Harman left a booby trap for the whole of society in 2010, providing the platform from which Postmarxism could grow.

Also see Postmodernism-poststructuralism-postmarxism

and see Equality Act 2010 – read it and be afraid.

Note 1: Definition of Postmarxism

“The development of radical reworkings of Marxism from the late 1970s, arising in reaction to classical Marxist materialism, economism, historical determinism, anti-humanism, and class reductionism and influenced by poststructuralism and postmodernism, notably in the rejection of grand narratives (including classical Marxism itself). These emerged in the late 1970s, associated with theorists such as Lyotard, Baudrillard, Foucault, the Argentine political theorist Ernesto Laclau (b.1935), the Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe (b.1943), and Stuart Hall. From the 1980s, post-Marxism was increasingly inflected by such cross-currents as feminism and postcolonialism. It is an anti-essentialist approach in which class, society, and history are no longer treated as unitary, universal, pre-discursive categories. Multiple subject positions are constituted dynamically in discourse in relation to class, gender, race, and nationality. Consequently, there is no uniform class consciousness. Post-Marxist theory has also been influenced by the Gramscian concept of hegemony. Ideology and culture are seen as relatively autonomous of the economic base.” Source: Oxford Reference

About John Sydenham

Dr John Sydenham has worked in International Pharmaceuticals and for one of the "big four" International Consultancies. He ran a successful company for 15 years and after selling the company devotes his time to travel, science, black labradors and freedom.

Check Also

The Peace Proposal: Shadows of Versailles

A change of seasons brings a change of perspective. With St Martin appearing on a …