Yet the Left, despite its manifestation of the most extreme forms of sadism since the French Revolution of 1789-92, has largely escaped critical psychological analyses of its leaders and ideologues. The Left is now doctrinally acceptable as normative, and the adherents of its most extreme variation – communism – can maintain respectable positions in academia, and have their books published by the large publishers, while those of the Right are marginalized.
Rather, Karl Marx for example, continues to be feted among respectable quarters as a seminal and still valuable contributor to sociology. While Jim Jones is generally perceived as deranged, he is considered within the context of any other cult leader such as David Koresh, rather than as an apostle of the Left whose actions were consistent with the Left doctrinally and historically, and whose psychological profile is analogous to that of other Leftists still regarded as paragons of democratic and liberal values.
Few of you will likely look this over in any depth, its scholarly, which means hard on the eyes, but you should !
Making arguments like this got me in so much hot water when I was in college but I personally love every minute of it. One of my undergrad SOC professors was a grad of Columbia University in addition to being African American (see where I’m going with this?). The man was so blinded by ideology their was literally nothing beyond the purview of his twisted criticism about social justice. He would have made Holder weep in joy.
Derber is a public intellectual who believes that serious ideas should be written in an accessible and entertaining style. His most recent book is Sociopathic Society: A People’s Sociology of the United States. He is also a life-long activist who participates in peace, environmental, labor and other social justice movements.
Hypocrisy was the order of the day. Most of our class discussions on and around social inequality, war (read hate bush time), capitalism, how brilliant the likes of Karl Marx, Max Weber, Stalin, and I think there was one or discussion about Hitler too IIRC. I mean if this wasn’t a the epitome liberal indoctrination I don’t know what would be. All that was missing was some Russian sounding guy coming in at the end of class soliciting for recruitment into the communist party. We complained to our academic department chair on more than one occasion because the objectivity of the class was anything but straight and objective but nothing really came of it. I didn’t my final project on the fallacy that is gun control and he fought me every step of the way.
I find such people often fail to understand one can be both brilliant and a sociopath. History is full of them. Ever read some of the writing of the Ted Kaczynski? He was quite brilliant. Also bat shit crazy.
I concur, to note by brilliance I was reflecting on the absolutely retarded Utopian beliefs some of these folks espoused, not so much their intellectual prowess. I meant it to be condescending lol
Ever read mein kampf? Boringly dry but intellectually interesting nonetheless.