How offensive that petty minds like Jordan Petersen and Mike Adams are compared to heroic figures like Vaclav Havel who put their lives on the line against the murderous totalitarian regimes!
We all should learn the true histories of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pot Pol, and Kim, but not as a distorted tool to trash all that the current Florida Department of Education and the bizarre Ron DeSantis are promoting. Thanks Judd for ferreting out this material.
Part of why they do what they do is self-hatred (very low self-esteem). One of them committed suicide. Believe it or not, Trump fits in this category...and DeSantis.
Wonder why this indoctrination...I mean "training" on totalitarian leaders of communist and socialist governments failed to include the German Nazi regime? Too close to home for DeSantis and cronies?
Also have to wonder how well informed FL citizens are about this trend in their schools. Judd is a treasure for finding and revealing this stuff!
What gawdawful drivel DeSantis sells. Kids coming out of Florida schools won't know shit from Shinola. That's always been the plan though. If kids don't know how to think, Fascism wins.
Give an example of a totalitarian government in the 21st Century: A child educated and living in the state of Florida during the DeSantis regime. (Could insert Texas, Missouri, Louisiana, Tennessee, etc)
If Trump is re-elected this will be the way of the world in the USA. The dismantling of public education by the far right is real.
And not just here. The maga morons have no idea of the actual reach of the US.
They've conviniced themselves that the world sees us as a joke and we will only be taken seriously with that nasty nasty twmp thing, whereas the rest of the world see tfg quite clearly and are right to be afraid of him again taking office.
There will be no turning back should that take place.
The christofascist oligarchy which supports clown puppets like Desantis seeks to create a poorly educated under paid drone workforce that labors in an unregulated economy.
I've thought that socialism (not communism) is the proper companion of democratic government. These idiots pretty much make my case for me, because it's clear that ideas taken from the structure of the Roman republic to form the structure of the U.S. government kept all the hazards and none of the benefits, i.e. the trend towards fascism and empire, while not giving the common people enough power to resist legally.
It is deliciously hypocritical of DeSantis to criticize the regulation of speech. A degree of irony his pitifully tiny brain is incapable of comprehending. .
What concerns me is the inability of pundits to distinguish between economic communism and political communism. Political Communism is always Totalitarian/Authoritarian. Economic Communism is not.
They are quite able to make this distinction, but making it doesn’t serve the purposes of their narrative. Mass murder, suppression of speech and show trials are all characteristics of authoritarian rule, regardless of the label, not the economic system. Consider the slaughters in Rawanda and Armenia or repeated pogroms against Jews every century. Nazi Germany goes without saying.
Florida had a required high school course of “Americanism vs Communism” back in the 60’s. As students, we thought the course was laughable and that was before the internet and social media.
Interesting. Well, the hs course was probably inspired by the era of the Joseph McCarthy hearings before everyone understood that he was worse than what he railed against.
I hoped I was amplifying it. I mainly wanted to question the word “inability”. Most of the pundits aren’t ignorant of the distinction - it’s a deliberate choice.
It would’ve been revealing and informative for the readers and myself If you mentioned this point in the opening paragraph. Perhaps if you had not been so eager to publish you would have become aware of this after a day or two’s pause and reflection ?
I do not think the economic and the political policies of Marxist/Leninist Communism can be compartmentalized. Abolishment of private property and said property being owned and controlled by the state is enforced from the barrel of a gun or the credible threat of violence.
If people cannot comfortably live as they choose and control what they own at the granular level (their living space) then they will reject, like the first Matrix, the political and economic system. Sure a liberal democratic system uses the threat of loss of freedom and violence against their citizens. Though it is when a citizen decides to play power games against their fellow citizens or they strike the nose of their neighbor as they wheel their arms in an anarchic dance. Under economic communism there is just one dance and the government calls the tunes.
You need to educate yourself. Marxist/Leninist Communism is not Communism as envisioned by Marx. Nor as envisioned by Robert Owen in the Town of New Harmony, Indiana. It failed precisely because force wasn't used to enforce the tenets of the settlement. I'm pretty sure if a similar communist style settlement were attempted again today, without the use of force to compel behavior, it too would fail. Which is why a communist economic system is really a non-starter.
Lenin and Stalin and the rest of the lot, understood this and simply carried on with the the authoritarianism endemic to the Russian Empire. e.g. they imposed a system of authoritarian /Totalitarian government over their communist economic system which we now conflate with the economic system. Actually the Soviet system was just a State controlled authoritarian government which they/we conveniently labeled Communism. But its actually a bastardized socialist system backed up with the same institutions the Czars employed for centuries. Putin of course wants the Empire back and is simply employing the old Czarist tools to make it happen.
Interesting commentary. We will do well to learn more about the details that are important to understanding the histories of the most gruesome terrorizing tyrants--if we want to be more knowledgable than those being trained by the DeSantis Florida Board of Education.
Yes. A communist economic system is a non-starter and a communist political system is or becomes fascistic no matter who envisions it. The point of Judd's article is that DeSantis is calling the kettle black. In other words, he is a fascist calling everyone else a fascist in order to acquire totalitarian wealth and power for faux white Christian oligarchs. The only non-fascism is democratic socialism, or democratic capitalism, which leads to the same thing. It's idealism, whether Marx, Lenin, Chomsky, or Ayn Rand, that poisons the well. Private property on the personal micro-level. Public ownership on the national macro-level. Every dollar one spends contibutes profits which are then taxed to return the people's money to the people . . . if we have the common sense to understand the dual nature of national wealth.
Please don't you do it too. Fascism is a political philosophy. It is not socialism nor is it Communism. Fascism as implemented by Hitler and Mussolini is autocratic. Both used a form of 'Blood and Soil' as rallying cries. Russia isn't Fascist....yet. The State Dept falls all over themselves with descriptors but leaves that one out.
Do what? Fascism is not a philosophical theory. It is pure un-democratic power. What exactly do you mean by "don't you do it too"? What is the relevance of the attachment? Nothing new there.
Fascism is a political ideology as developed by Mussolini and then Hitler. My comment had to do with confusing and using interchangeably your 'isms'. Each has their own distinct meaning so when you use an 'ism' don't confuse it with a different ism.
The disconnect is that authoritarian leaders oppress and suppress opposition using the levers of state, secret police, and a corrupted judiciary, where “cancel culture” is often peer pressure or non-state entities like employers. Florida does not appear interested in making that distinction...for obvious reasons.
The manufacturing of "issues" to promote a twisted "patriotism" has become such staple of postmodern, radical Republicanism that it is easy to overlook the insidious maliciousness at its foundation. In Florida, DeSantis is its carny-prankster, albeit a fumbler, in service of an apocalyptic-corporate strain of conservatism that is both hateful of Enlightenment educational principles and determined to undermine the teaching of the well-documented, evidence-based, racist history of the United States- particularly in the South. For all of his privileged educational upbringing, which he wishes America would ignore, he prefers to play the common man Christian Crusader role granted him by the the Fathers Koch, Heritage, and Duke, looking to vanquish the non-existent Woke Hordes lurking near the lockers in school hallways. So fake. So nasty. So weak. So Ron DeSantis.
So, now we see they are creating paranoia among kiddies in school so they are indoctrinated against Democrats as if anything we want to do to help the poor, or parents, the homeless, or students is Communism. But no it isn’t Communism or socialism to give subsidies to oil companies or forgive millions in PPP loans to those millionaires in Congress who are filthy rich. They are already legislating against words that can be said to students as well as forcing them to hear right wing “Christian” nationalism by giving bribes to teachers. Are they going to legislate against Mormons, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims being able to have their children excluded from these religious classes?
This is Fascism, people. They are attempting to control your children’s education, beliefs, and even how many children they have to have and then allow the Republicans indoctrinate them into being obedient to their control or else they are breaking their laws.
They are conspiring to control, by law, what your children are to be taught and think.
You will no longer be free to raise your children as you wish. And you’ll be so strapped raising multiple children by forced birthing you will be unable to send them to private school nor even home school them.
Jesus even gave people free will to believe or not to believe. This not only forced religion it is a fraud to control your children’s ability to make their own decisions on what to believe.
Thank you PI! Today's and yesterday's articles should be required reading.
Germany requires Nazi history be taught such that it never gets repeated. American Republicans whitewash such that they can retain power. Ignorance is strength.
Wow! This bilge is an exact analogy of the garbage that was pushed on me as a grade school kid in the 1950s. The Right should be careful -- when young people realized they've been lied to (and they are mighty saavy), you raise protesters and hippies.
Yes, Yes, Yes! I’m more of a 1960’s flower child and lifelong protester, born into a hugely conservative, hardcore Southern Baptist home! I realized early on that I was being fed a steady diet of propaganda and misinformation! I’ve been protesting ever since!
How offensive that petty minds like Jordan Petersen and Mike Adams are compared to heroic figures like Vaclav Havel who put their lives on the line against the murderous totalitarian regimes!
We all should learn the true histories of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pot Pol, and Kim, but not as a distorted tool to trash all that the current Florida Department of Education and the bizarre Ron DeSantis are promoting. Thanks Judd for ferreting out this material.
All they can do is attempt to elevate themselves by denigrating the real heroes. I swear! I don't understand these quasi-human folk at all.
Part of why they do what they do is self-hatred (very low self-esteem). One of them committed suicide. Believe it or not, Trump fits in this category...and DeSantis.
I believe it. They've spent a lifetime projecting and will continue to do so until the day they die!
Adams, in particular, is far less sympathetic than even the critical reading given here. He directly targeted a Muslim student of his for harassment.
https://www.starnewsonline.com/story/special/2020/06/29/under-fire-for-racist-tweets-mike-adams-to-retire-from-uncw/113356488/
I don't celebrate his death but I sure as fuck don't mourn it either.
Wonder why this indoctrination...I mean "training" on totalitarian leaders of communist and socialist governments failed to include the German Nazi regime? Too close to home for DeSantis and cronies?
Also have to wonder how well informed FL citizens are about this trend in their schools. Judd is a treasure for finding and revealing this stuff!
Good question.
Many of this wing of the Republican party honor the White Nationalist Nazi tradition, sometimes vociferously.
Exactly! It just astounds me and makes it hard to not lose faith sometimes...
What gawdawful drivel DeSantis sells. Kids coming out of Florida schools won't know shit from Shinola. That's always been the plan though. If kids don't know how to think, Fascism wins.
Give an example of a totalitarian government in the 21st Century: A child educated and living in the state of Florida during the DeSantis regime. (Could insert Texas, Missouri, Louisiana, Tennessee, etc)
If Trump is re-elected this will be the way of the world in the USA. The dismantling of public education by the far right is real.
And not just here. The maga morons have no idea of the actual reach of the US.
They've conviniced themselves that the world sees us as a joke and we will only be taken seriously with that nasty nasty twmp thing, whereas the rest of the world see tfg quite clearly and are right to be afraid of him again taking office.
There will be no turning back should that take place.
The christofascist oligarchy which supports clown puppets like Desantis seeks to create a poorly educated under paid drone workforce that labors in an unregulated economy.
I've thought that socialism (not communism) is the proper companion of democratic government. These idiots pretty much make my case for me, because it's clear that ideas taken from the structure of the Roman republic to form the structure of the U.S. government kept all the hazards and none of the benefits, i.e. the trend towards fascism and empire, while not giving the common people enough power to resist legally.
Well said, well stated.
It is deliciously hypocritical of DeSantis to criticize the regulation of speech. A degree of irony his pitifully tiny brain is incapable of comprehending. .
What concerns me is the inability of pundits to distinguish between economic communism and political communism. Political Communism is always Totalitarian/Authoritarian. Economic Communism is not.
They are quite able to make this distinction, but making it doesn’t serve the purposes of their narrative. Mass murder, suppression of speech and show trials are all characteristics of authoritarian rule, regardless of the label, not the economic system. Consider the slaughters in Rawanda and Armenia or repeated pogroms against Jews every century. Nazi Germany goes without saying.
Florida had a required high school course of “Americanism vs Communism” back in the 60’s. As students, we thought the course was laughable and that was before the internet and social media.
Interesting. Well, the hs course was probably inspired by the era of the Joseph McCarthy hearings before everyone understood that he was worse than what he railed against.
You miss my point.
I hoped I was amplifying it. I mainly wanted to question the word “inability”. Most of the pundits aren’t ignorant of the distinction - it’s a deliberate choice.
I would say they are mostly ignorant......or too lazy. And of course for some, it suits their purpose.
It would’ve been revealing and informative for the readers and myself If you mentioned this point in the opening paragraph. Perhaps if you had not been so eager to publish you would have become aware of this after a day or two’s pause and reflection ?
I do not think the economic and the political policies of Marxist/Leninist Communism can be compartmentalized. Abolishment of private property and said property being owned and controlled by the state is enforced from the barrel of a gun or the credible threat of violence.
If people cannot comfortably live as they choose and control what they own at the granular level (their living space) then they will reject, like the first Matrix, the political and economic system. Sure a liberal democratic system uses the threat of loss of freedom and violence against their citizens. Though it is when a citizen decides to play power games against their fellow citizens or they strike the nose of their neighbor as they wheel their arms in an anarchic dance. Under economic communism there is just one dance and the government calls the tunes.
You need to educate yourself. Marxist/Leninist Communism is not Communism as envisioned by Marx. Nor as envisioned by Robert Owen in the Town of New Harmony, Indiana. It failed precisely because force wasn't used to enforce the tenets of the settlement. I'm pretty sure if a similar communist style settlement were attempted again today, without the use of force to compel behavior, it too would fail. Which is why a communist economic system is really a non-starter.
Lenin and Stalin and the rest of the lot, understood this and simply carried on with the the authoritarianism endemic to the Russian Empire. e.g. they imposed a system of authoritarian /Totalitarian government over their communist economic system which we now conflate with the economic system. Actually the Soviet system was just a State controlled authoritarian government which they/we conveniently labeled Communism. But its actually a bastardized socialist system backed up with the same institutions the Czars employed for centuries. Putin of course wants the Empire back and is simply employing the old Czarist tools to make it happen.
Interesting commentary. We will do well to learn more about the details that are important to understanding the histories of the most gruesome terrorizing tyrants--if we want to be more knowledgable than those being trained by the DeSantis Florida Board of Education.
Yes. A communist economic system is a non-starter and a communist political system is or becomes fascistic no matter who envisions it. The point of Judd's article is that DeSantis is calling the kettle black. In other words, he is a fascist calling everyone else a fascist in order to acquire totalitarian wealth and power for faux white Christian oligarchs. The only non-fascism is democratic socialism, or democratic capitalism, which leads to the same thing. It's idealism, whether Marx, Lenin, Chomsky, or Ayn Rand, that poisons the well. Private property on the personal micro-level. Public ownership on the national macro-level. Every dollar one spends contibutes profits which are then taxed to return the people's money to the people . . . if we have the common sense to understand the dual nature of national wealth.
Please don't you do it too. Fascism is a political philosophy. It is not socialism nor is it Communism. Fascism as implemented by Hitler and Mussolini is autocratic. Both used a form of 'Blood and Soil' as rallying cries. Russia isn't Fascist....yet. The State Dept falls all over themselves with descriptors but leaves that one out.
https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/160474.pdf
Do what? Fascism is not a philosophical theory. It is pure un-democratic power. What exactly do you mean by "don't you do it too"? What is the relevance of the attachment? Nothing new there.
Fascism is a political ideology as developed by Mussolini and then Hitler. My comment had to do with confusing and using interchangeably your 'isms'. Each has their own distinct meaning so when you use an 'ism' don't confuse it with a different ism.
The disconnect is that authoritarian leaders oppress and suppress opposition using the levers of state, secret police, and a corrupted judiciary, where “cancel culture” is often peer pressure or non-state entities like employers. Florida does not appear interested in making that distinction...for obvious reasons.
The manufacturing of "issues" to promote a twisted "patriotism" has become such staple of postmodern, radical Republicanism that it is easy to overlook the insidious maliciousness at its foundation. In Florida, DeSantis is its carny-prankster, albeit a fumbler, in service of an apocalyptic-corporate strain of conservatism that is both hateful of Enlightenment educational principles and determined to undermine the teaching of the well-documented, evidence-based, racist history of the United States- particularly in the South. For all of his privileged educational upbringing, which he wishes America would ignore, he prefers to play the common man Christian Crusader role granted him by the the Fathers Koch, Heritage, and Duke, looking to vanquish the non-existent Woke Hordes lurking near the lockers in school hallways. So fake. So nasty. So weak. So Ron DeSantis.
So, now we see they are creating paranoia among kiddies in school so they are indoctrinated against Democrats as if anything we want to do to help the poor, or parents, the homeless, or students is Communism. But no it isn’t Communism or socialism to give subsidies to oil companies or forgive millions in PPP loans to those millionaires in Congress who are filthy rich. They are already legislating against words that can be said to students as well as forcing them to hear right wing “Christian” nationalism by giving bribes to teachers. Are they going to legislate against Mormons, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims being able to have their children excluded from these religious classes?
This is Fascism, people. They are attempting to control your children’s education, beliefs, and even how many children they have to have and then allow the Republicans indoctrinate them into being obedient to their control or else they are breaking their laws.
They are conspiring to control, by law, what your children are to be taught and think.
You will no longer be free to raise your children as you wish. And you’ll be so strapped raising multiple children by forced birthing you will be unable to send them to private school nor even home school them.
Jesus even gave people free will to believe or not to believe. This not only forced religion it is a fraud to control your children’s ability to make their own decisions on what to believe.
This
Their stuff reads like the definition of false equivalence.
Hahaha! And there is a GOOD reason for that!
Jordan Peterson has a probable net worth in the $8 - $10 mil. range. Boo-freaking-hoo.
Yes, Jordan Peterson leaned into his world view and engages in reasonable discussions with those who think he is wrong.
Thank you PI! Today's and yesterday's articles should be required reading.
Germany requires Nazi history be taught such that it never gets repeated. American Republicans whitewash such that they can retain power. Ignorance is strength.
Wow! This bilge is an exact analogy of the garbage that was pushed on me as a grade school kid in the 1950s. The Right should be careful -- when young people realized they've been lied to (and they are mighty saavy), you raise protesters and hippies.
Yes, Yes, Yes! I’m more of a 1960’s flower child and lifelong protester, born into a hugely conservative, hardcore Southern Baptist home! I realized early on that I was being fed a steady diet of propaganda and misinformation! I’ve been protesting ever since!
The REAL communist agenda sits in the governors office!
In the list of purges, I notice that Hitler is missing.