I first learned that lesson on July 25, 1981 at Rugby Park in Hamilton, as I’ve written about before.

But even then I felt it was a bit of a one-off and I continued to support some Lefty causes and found myself alongside people I increasingly disagreed with on other issues. Still, it seemed of no matter: we all have disagreements.

But over time it’s become clear that the things I read of in the history books about various communist revolutions, the French Revolution, and even the modern-day splits inside Left-wing parties – less the fate of their enemies but that such enemies were so easily found in their own ranks – are a product of a deeply buried mindset with Leftists, in which tolerance does not actually extend to disagreement if it means political failure. When that prospect hoves into view the hammer comes down. I can only put this consistent feature down to the encoded need for the collective to prevail over the individual. Many Leftists have made the same observation, although usually not until they came under the hammer.

Danusha V. Goska is one of those people. Although a believing Catholic she was a Leftist for a long time (and in my opinion she still is in some respects), especially since she’s never known wealth (despite being a published author) and has lived in a pretty poor, heavily multi-racial area of the USA all her life, plus teaching in Africa. As a result she is still surprised by the Leftist intolerance she encounters:

What I’m trying to say, over and over, is this: “My leftist friend. You say you value tolerance and compassion. Please see why it is tolerant and compassionate to consider these facts you have not considered. Please consider how some of your arguments and your philosophies can hurt innocent and relatively powerless victims, sometimes the very people you claim to be tolerant of and to feel compassion for, for example, poor people, black people, Muslim women, in fact all women, and so-called ‘trans kids.’”

I post these essays on social media. And then I wait, and I hope. I hope that the leftists I know might read them, and, if not actually change their minds, they might actually publicly acknowledge that there is a point of view, based in facts, not in ignorance or prejudice, sadism or superstition, that is not their own point of view, but that is equally worthy as their own. I want them to consider that perhaps persons with whom they disagree are worthy of simple human respect, and not knee-jerk contempt, and misrepresentation in hateful straw-man stereotypes. This has not happened.

I’m tempted to say, “well duh”, but although it’s a lengthy essay it’s worth the read, if only to shake your head at her constant surprise at what she encounters from her Leftist friends, in areas from the trivial to the important:

The other day, my Facebook friend Merlin insisted that only racism, hypocrisy, and stupidity would cause anyone not to embrace The Little Mermaid 2023. I had just posted an essay addressing the multiple reasons why Mermaid 23 has been irritating to many people; none of those reasons had anything to do with white supremacy, stupidity or hypocrisy. I asked Merlin if he had read the essay. He said no, it did not interest him. Is it fair, is it really “liberal,” to denounce those you disagree with as stupid, hypocritical racists and then to refuse even to listen to what those you disagree with have to say?

I’d say it’s standard practice on the Left and that Goska’s wasting her time with reasoned appeal. But I think she comes close to identifying at least the psychological reason for this attitude:

My leftist friends’ posts conjure into a being an imaginary enemy. They are convinced that they know this enemy. Leftists’ posts describing their imaginary enemy remind me of the Scandinavian folklore I studied in grad school. Every Norwegian or Swede knew exactly what trolls looked like, how they behaved, and what magical powers they possessed. A good percentage of contemporary Scandinavians still believe in elves and trolls. If you can form a tight enough group that tells enough authoritative accounts of a shared, imaginary enemy, eventually group members believe in that imaginary enemy even more than they credit objective facts.

Trolls! That’s the ticket.

We, the enemy, are white supremacists. We are transphobic, Islamophobic … gosh, have I covered all the words they’ve invented to insult us? We are just plain “phobic.” We are heartless and mean. We are “fearful of difference.” We are “intolerant.” We lack “compassion.” Yeah, that’s us in a nutshell. In contrast, of course, the leftists using these terms in a ritual so predictable they could recite the litany in their sleep, are intelligent, enlightened, tolerant, and, above all, compassionate.

A couple of great examples of this mindset from The Daily Blog and one “Millsy” who has been around the blogosphere for years and has never changed his pitch or tone:

Let them poison our river and pay their workers less, while making them work 12 days with out a break. It won’t be 2024, it will be 1924… Says someone who wants to torture young offenders to death and recriminalise homosexuality… You people are basically mean, horrible nasty people are OK with poverty, homelessness and people getting sicker because they cannot afford healthcare. You people are OK with racism, lynching and police brutality, and are OK with teachers bullying and harassing LGBTQ students,

One is tempted to laugh at him and the few Righties over there do so, while among the other Lefty commentators on TDB, Bowalley Road, and The Standard such claims are not expressed in such hair-curling language (I liked one who thought Millsy a Right wing troll). But whether the language is academic and opaque or OTT, the same mindset that Gorska identifies is present.

In her case the kicker is that all these Lefty interlocutors appear (from their FB life photos) to be wealthy, White and living in very White areas. As she notes of one who regularly hammers away at her about White Supremacy and the rest:

They always tell me how “fearful” I am and how “tolerant of difference” they are. I have never seen a black friend in any of their online photos. Never. Not a single one. In twenty years.

Far more important than such online fighting is the question of whether this is just restricted to that world but not present in the “normal” one of non-Social Media people. I’m afraid that it is:

Hate and fear might as well be the GOP’s motto. And while there was a time when a liberal like me saying that would be accurately labeled hyperbolic, that time has passed. Show me what, aside from hate and fear, the modern Republican Party is all about
Columnist Rex Huppke, USA Today, July 16, 2023

“these people are not fit for polite society…. I think it’s absolutely abhorrent that any institution of higher learning, any news organization, or any entertainment organization that has a news outlet would hire these people.” 
– Columnist Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post

I’m quite sure I could find the “Liberals” of the late 1960’s saying exactly that about Nixon’s GOP – or Reagan’s.

Trolls, magical enemies of great power and bottomless evil – complete with weapons-grade projection: we’ll show you how to fight “hate and fear”TM – by showing you who you need to hate and fear. And with the leap made from Social Media commentators to MSM journalists here’s the next level, academia:

A more intellectual approach to sowing hatred and fear of MAGA Republicans is exemplified in the writings of an influential political commentator, Heather Cox Richardson, who earns an estimated $1.0 million per year from her Substack subscribers…In an extensive body of work, Richardson’s consistent theme is that Republicans are dangerous extremists, relying on misinformation to spread hate and fear. While her tone is objective and she carefully avoids the appearance of hyperbole, her message is consistently biased. Richardson is not objective…

Again: same mindset, gentler language.

Unquestioned in Richardson’s narratives is any idea that perhaps most or all of our central institutions are now run by people like her, even with the following staring us (and her) in the face every day:

When it comes to spreading fear, catastrophic floods, rising seas, deadly heat and raging fires are images that tap something primal in humans. All of these threats are now conveyed to the American public, nonstop, by every establishment institution. A normal heatwave is now “historic,” despite evidence to the contrary, and television screens show temperature maps smothered in red, as if the world was on fire. A powerful storm is now called a “bomb cyclone,”
…
With the fear comes hate. Anyone questioning the climate crisis narrative is a right-wing extremist. The use of the word “denier” to describe a climate skeptic is a particularly effective choice, since it triggers associations with the commonly used term “holocaust denier,”

Witness Auckland’s floods earlier this year or the recent Hawaiian wildfires. And it works: ever notice how “denier” has now slipped into the language of some National Party politicians? (BTW – WaPo’s Rubin quoted above is supposedly a Republican). As with “Millsy” above the same fear tactics work into everything else:

The “war on women.” “Systemic racism.” The “genocide against black men by police.” “Turning back the clock” on rights of women and minorities. And, of course the latest, the campaign to “erase” transsexuals.

Of course this all fits with one of the standard claims from the Left about the Right, which is that it is our psychology that drives all our hatred and intolerance, which is why we’re so often apparently Fascists and Nazis – all supported by academic studies and deeply intellectual essays and “studies” over the years, by Leftists naturally. As a result I was vastly amused by the following anecdote found in re-reading Angela Codevilla’s 2020 essay, The Original Fascist, From movement to epithet:

This author first encountered the scam in 1963 as a student at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute. The text assigned us, Herbert McClosky’s “Conservatism and Personality” ( American Political Science Review, 1958 ), consisted of one questionnaire to measure conservatism, as defined by McClosky, and a second designed to measure personality traits, most of which were translations of Adorno’s F-scale. The article touted its scientific bona fides by stating that both sets of definitions had been submitted to, and certified by, experts, including McClosky’s graduate students. Not surprisingly, the project’s results showed a strong correlation between conservatism and repulsive, dangerous personality traits.

Having received permission to do a term paper on that article, I replicated it as “Liberalism and Personality,” using the same “scientific” methods–likeminded friends–to validate the questionnaires as McClosky had for his. What do you know? The results showed that liberals suffer from even worse disorders than conservatives, many unmentionable in a family publication. Only one of my professors cracked a smile.

Heh, heh, heh. A more recent article takes this one step further, with actual research into the largely ignored area of Leftist authoritarian psychology, first noting what Codevilla saw over sixty years ago:

There is a wide range of literature and research in the field of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). However, research on authoritarianism observed in individuals who are supportive of left-wing political ideologies are still rare . . . By many researchers, the notion of left-wing authoritarianism (LWA) has even been met with skepticism.

Amazing considering the figures of Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, plus a host of lessor human droppings. but then of course the Left in democracies long sought to separate themselves from Marxism and Communism, for reasons of political viability as much as anything else, although there have been plenty of Labour and Social Democrat politicians and Unionists in the West who genuinely detested them and fought against their influence – and were smeared in turn by the commies as “capitalist running dogs”, “sellouts” and the rest.

But that was a long time ago. Increasingly modern, mainstream Leftism resembles the old Communists in their mindsets towards “enemies”, even as they exhibit a far greater desire for money than their forebears:

The study published in Current Psychology suggests that left-wing extremism is associated with toxic, psychopathic tendencies and narcissism [and] found a link between higher levels of left-wing authoritarianism and higher levels of narcissism. The authors coined the term ‘dark-ego-vehicle principle’ to describe the phenomenon where individuals with dark personality traits are attracted to political and social activism as a means to satisfy their ego-focused needs rather than working towards social justice and equality. The study also noted that some activists use social justice as a guise for unhinged behavior and prioritize self-presentation, moral superiority, and social status over genuine social causes.

I’m sure that will get Lefty noses in a knot, even if it is just a mirror-image of the claims they’ve gleefully made against the Right for decades now – even as the authors acknowledge the capacity for the latter. We’ll see how far they get before they get canceled.

But I’m less concerned with such psychology than when it is wedded to political and cultural power, and it’s in that realm where I think our Western societies are increasingly in trouble. After all it’s sixty years since the academic, political revolutionary, and psychological theorist Herbert Marcuse wrote his infamous essay “Repressive Tolerance”, where he railed that Western society was so horrible and broken that…

Marcuse argued that, because of the radical repressiveness of Western society, a tolerance for all viewpoints actually contributed to social oppression. A pervasive network of assumptions and biases implicitly privileges the viewpoint of the powerful, so that seemingly “equal” presentations of opposite opinions actually end up benefiting the viewpoint of the powerful.

That’s now standard thinking in many fields of academia, and increasingly how journalists are “educated” for their profession. Marcuse’s idea matched up perfectly with the whole oppressed/oppressor mindset of Marx (which was only on economic lines) and, along with other Far Left academics pushed the concept into every aspect of life.

This is where you’re getting the whole “Male Privilege”, “White Privilege” bullshit from, uttered by Feminist, Black and White grifters in America and Maori activists in New Zealand, and with the terms easily applied to new oppressor classes like lesbians as required (Lesbian dating platform sends a ‘message to transphobes’: Delete our app). Marcuse made explicit the idea that Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four had almost parodied:

The fact that society is so radically unequal means that we should be intolerant and repressive in the name of tolerance and liberty. He rejected what he termed “indiscriminate tolerance” — a tolerance that accepts all viewpoints — in favor of “liberating tolerance” or “discriminating tolerance.” Unlike many of his disciples, Marcuse was frank about what this intolerance would mean: “Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.”

Tolerance means being intolerant of the tolerant. Marcuse went further in what reads like an instruction manual for the 21st century Left

They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc.

Moreover, the restoration of freedom of thought may necessitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions which, by their very methods and concepts, serve to enclose the mind within the established universe of discourse and behavior..

You know the former by its modern name: de-platforming. The second is just plain old censorship. And here’s a great example of the former from just the other day courtesy Guido Fawkes in Britain:

Some 46 Conservative parliamentarians have called on the Prime Minister to intervene against the ongoing advertiser “boycott” of media outlets. This is a subject dear to Guido’s heart and wallet. There is a concerted campaign by some smart people on the left to defund right-of-centre media. It first of all requires the delegitimisation of right-of-centre publications (and now broadcasters). This is why you hear the like of Owen Jones repeatedly describing the Spectator and Guido as “far right”. They cherry pick a provocative article, or below the line comment, or the late night ramblings of one presenter to paint the overall output as unacceptable and, crucially, dangerous for the brands of advertisers. They also try to frame the content as “disinformation”.

It works; Toby Young’s Daily Sceptic and the Conservative Woman website are defunded of advertising. Google, which dominates automated programmatic advertising, has effectively blacklisted their content – primarily for airing dissident views over Covid measures. Whatever your view of their content, this is unhealthy for democracy. During the pandemic, Guido’s YouTube account was locked by the algorithm when we featured content from Nadhim Zahawi – who was at the time the vaccines minister. Ditto when we featured an interview with Donald Trump by Nigel Farage where Trump disputed the presidential election outcome. Twitter deplatformed the New York Post during that same presidential election for breaking the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. It was alleged – falsely – that it was a Russian intelligence operation. Hunter is now facing related charges evidenced by content found on the laptop. It can’t be good for democracy to have tech platforms censoring content in response to political pressure. 

According to Marcuse it’s good for stopping a repressive society. And with more Orwell-speak, this time aimed at the pro-business Right:

 Conscious Advertising Network (CAN), and to ensure that “its politically motivated activists are kept well away from government policy”. CAN responds, perhaps with their tongue in cheek, with an argument designed to appeal to free marketeers: “The proposal for state intervention in the advertising industry called for in this letter is anti-freedom and anti- choice. Advertisers should be allowed to make commercial decisions that grow their brands, and by extension, the British economy.” 

Guido’s guess is that if advertisers knew they were being hoodwinked, they would shy away from these campaigns. No one wants to go the way of Bud Light…

Think about how much of Marcuse’s ideas you see today across every institution of our society and how many Leftists support them – and then wonder how we can make it through. Perhaps we can’t?:

Your blue-haired liberal sister-in-law needs to understand that, despite her Hillary t-shirt and BLM lawn sign, she isn’t immune to the atrocities that await us.