Of circular firing squads

The Left Chose Islam Over Gays. Now 100 People Are Dead Or Maimed In Orlando – Breitbart.

The undeniable failure of the USSR, the introduction of free markets in the PRC and their "betrayal" by the workers who flocked to Thatcher for cheap houses and BT shares in the UK put the authoritarians of the Left in a tough position in the closing years of the 20th Century.

They could of course have abandoned their Leftism and accepted that free markets work. This would involve them acknowledging the death, oppression and poverty they had inflicted during that century's long experiment during which more than half of mankind lived at some point under their rule. Worse, it would involve them getting proper jobs and accepting the verdict of the market on their economic value. This was not appealing to people whose ideology had in truth arisen from varying combinations of laziness, stupidity and envy.

It was slightly more attractive for them to stick to their ideological guns. One Russian communist told me, when guiding me around the Kremlin when I lived in Moscow, that the Left had to accept that history had not been allowed to run the inevitable course predicted by Karl Marx. As she said

Russia and China were still feudal societies and their revolutions came too soon. We will now have to wait for them to go through their capitalist and monopoly capitalist stages before we can have a socialist revolution followed by true communism. Next time, we will get it right.

This is admirably consistent, but still involves all living socialists going back to proper jobs for the foreseeable future. It's no more attractive for them than the first option, except that they can dream of a "better future" for their grandchildren as they work as Moscow tourist guides or whatever.

So they went with their third choice instead. They abandoned (at least for now) the idea of "class war"; though they do still like a nostalgic rant when confronted with non-socialist Etonians. Instead they focussed on generating social conflict by identifying "oppressed groups" and setting them against their "oppressors". Wimmin vs The Patriarchy. Black and Minority ethnics vs Racists. Muslims vs Islamophobes. LGBT people vs Homophobes and cis supremacists. Greens vs anyone who doesn't want to live in the Stone Age. Even, despite the historical internationalism of the Left (and the unfortunate outcomes of National Socialism when it was tried in Germany) Scots and Welsh Nationalists – all leftists – against the English.

Identity politics had arrived and a game of victimhood poker began. Soon it became apparent that there were some real contradictions among the artificial ones they were fomenting to justify a powerful State – headed by them – to do "social justice". The Left in Britain had long depended upon the Scots to prop up their minority position in England, for example, and yet lost control of their votes by pandering to their nationalism. Being Scottish (and Socialist) trumped just being Socialist. Feminists like Germaine Greer took understandable exception to arrivistes in the trans community who tried to join her victim group rather than running their own. Most insanely of all, as Milo Yiannopolous points out in the linked article;

Liberals: the problem with putting Muslims at the top of your victimhood hierarchy is that THEY WANT TO KILL EVERYONE ELSE ON THE LIST

Nothing could be more ridiculous than a leftist campaign group called "LGBT against Islamophobia". And yet the group was formed. If we capitalists wanted to (and why should we play their stupid game?) it would be hard to be vile enough to persuade forces so divided to unite in the face of our "threat"!

The old Left, with which I grew up in the one-party North and at my redbrick university, was famous for its splittism, as beautifully satirised in Monty Python's "Life of Brian". The People's Front of Judea was far more likely to fight the Judean People's Front than any actual Romans. The Left hated each other so intensely that they sometimes forgot to hate the wealth generators upon whom they all plotted to live as parasites. This characteristic seems to have re-emerged in cultural Marxism as the victim groups proliferated.

The Orlando killer drew a terrible hand in victimhood poker. It seems he was a homosexual raised in a Muslim family. They would have thought him fit only for death had they known. Had he killed himself in his sexual and religious torment, I would have felt very sorry for him. Had he become a happy gay atheist, Christian or Hindu, I would have smiled for him. But he chose to redeem himself by killing others and must now go down in history as one of the worst of us. Not to be vindictive, at this moment I rather wish there was an Allah or Jehovah to give him the justice he escaped. Now that we know he was a regular patron of the gay club where he went amok and a user of Grindr and similar apps, it seems even more disgusting that Snowflake Owen Jones is still more concerned with ranking the relevant victim categories correctly than with the actual horror of innocent lives lost.

I was serious in what I wrote yesterday. It's really not enough to say "Aha! I told you so!" when discussing this awful story. The Left must address Milo's point. The NRA, as the representatives of responsible gun owners, must come forward with licensing schemes that ensure crazies can't get or keep guns or ammunition. The US Government must actually enforce the licensing regime they have. It seems bizarre that the Orlando killer could have been twice investigated by the FBI and yet retain his "G Licence" as an approved security worker, contracted to the government. G4S, the British multinational that employed him (as it once employed the late Mrs Paine's father – a former military and civilian policeman) must review its HR procedures for armed employees.

There are lots of practical lessons to be learned that can save lives in future. They will involve listening to each other calmly as adults, rather than just yelling the usual abuse. In the case of the Left's factions, they will involve listening to each other and realising just how crazy they all sound.

3 responses to “Of circular firing squads”

Antisthenes

June 15, 2016

“There are lots of practical lessons to be learned that can save lives in future”
I am not sure Milo Yiannopolous would agree with you whilst so many politicians and bureaucrats have so much of a say in what we can or cannot do and at the same time incompetently enact and enforce legislation.

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Tom

June 15, 2016

There is a practical lesson to be learned right there!

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Antisthenes

June 15, 2016

Agreed. However few recognise that fact. Coupled with those that are causing the problems are the same ones in charge of solving them and they are not going to. It would be tantamount to turkeys voting for Christmas.

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