The Psychology of Modern Leftism

[Infinite]

This was written by 'The Unabomber' Ted Kaczynski! And in my opinion is brilliant:

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM

6. (fr) Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply
troubled society. One of the most widespread manifestations
of the craziness of our world is leftism, so a discussion
of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction
to the discussion of the problems of modern society
in general.
7. (fr) But what is leftism? During the first half of the
20th century leftism could have been practically identified
with socialism. Today the movement is fragmented and it
is not clear who can properly be called a leftist. When we
speak of leftists in this article we have in mind mainly socialists,
collectivists, “politically correct” types, feminists,
gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the
like. But not everyone who is associated with one of these
movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing
leftism is not so much movement or an ideology
as a psychological type, or rather a collection of related
types. Thus, what we mean by “leftism” will emerge more
clearly in the course of our discussion of leftist psychology.
(Also, see paragraphs 227-230.)
8. (fr) Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a
good deal less clear than we would wish, but there doesn’t
seem to be any remedy for this. All we are trying to do
here is indicate in a rough and approximate way the two
psychological tendencies that we believe are the main driving
force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to
be telling the WHOLE truth about leftist psychology. Also,
our discussion is meant to apply to modern leftism only.
We leave open the question of the extent to which our
discussion could be applied to the leftists of the 19th and
early 20th centuries.
9. (fr) The two psychological tendencies that underlie
modern leftism we call “feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialization”.
Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of
modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic
only of a certain segment of modern leftism;
but this segment is highly influential.
FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY
10. (fr) By “feelings of inferiority” we mean not only inferiority
feelings in the strict sense but a whole spectrum
of related traits; low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness,
depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-hatred,
etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have some suchfeelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these
feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern
leftism.
11. (fr) When someone interprets as derogatory almost
anything that is said about him (or about groups with
whom he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority
feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced
among minority rights activists, whether or not they belong
to the minority groups whose rights they defend.
They are hypersensitive about the words used to designate
minorities and about anything that is said concerning minorities.
The terms “negro”, “oriental”, “handicapped” or
“chick” for an African, an Asian, a disabled person or a
woman originally had no derogatory connotation. “Broad”
and “chick” were merely the feminine equivalents of
“guy”, “dude” or “fellow”. The negative connotations have
been attached to these terms by the activists themselves.
Some animal rights activists have gone so far as to reject
the word “pet” and insist on its replacement by “animal
companion”. Leftish anthropologists go to great lengths to
avoid saying anything about primitive peoples that could
conceivably be interpreted as negative. They want to replace
the word “primitive” by “nonliterate”. They may
seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest
that any primitive culture is inferior to ours. (We do not
mean to imply that primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours.
We merely point out the hyper sensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)
12. (fr) Those who are most sensitive about “politically
incorrect” terminology are not the average black ghettodweller,
Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person,
but a minority of activists, many of whom do not
even belong to any “oppressed” group but come from
privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its
stronghold among university professors, who have secure
employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority
of whom are heterosexual white males from middle- to
upper-middle-class families.
13. (fr) Many leftists have an intense identification with
the problems of groups that have an image of being weak
(women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homosexuals)
or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel
that these groups are inferior. They would never admit to
themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely
because they do see these groups as inferior that they
identify with their problems. (We do not mean to suggest
that women, Indians, etc. ARE inferior; we are only making
a point about leftist psychology.)
14. (fr) Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that
women are as strong and as capable as men. Clearly they
are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong
and as capable as men.
15. (fr) Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image
of being strong, good and successful. They hate America,
they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they
hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating
the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real
motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike,
imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but
where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them,
or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas
he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly
exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western
civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the
leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He
hates America and the West because they are strong and
successful.
16. (fr) Words like “self-confidence”, “self-reliance”,
“initiative”, “enterprise”, “optimism”, etc., play little role
in the liberal and leftist vocabulary. The leftist is antiindividualistic,
pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve
every one’s problems for them, satisfy everyone’s needs
for them, take care of them. He is not the sort of person
who has an inner sense of confidence in his ability to solve
his own problems and satisfy his own needs. The leftist is
antagohistic to the concept of competition because, deep
inside, he feels like a loser.
17. (fr) Art forms that appeal to modern leftish intellectuals
tend to focus on sordidness, defeat and despair,
or else they take an orgiastic tone, throwing off rational
control as if there were no hope of accomplishing anything
through rational calculation and all that was left was to
immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment.
18. (fr) Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss reason,
science, objective reality and to insist that everything
is culturally relative. It is true that one can ask serious
questions about the foundations of scientific knowledge
and about how, if at all, the concept of objective reality
can be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftish philosophers
are not simply cool-headed logicians systematically
analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are
deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and
reality. They attack these concepts because of their own
psychological needs. For one thing, their attack is an outlet
for hostility, and, to the extent that it is successful, it
satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the leftist
hates science and rationality because they classify certain
beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs
as false (i.e., failed, inferior). The leftist’s feelings of inferiority
run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification
of some things as successful or superior and other
things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection
by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and
of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to genetic
explanations of human abilities or behavior because such
explanations tend to make some persons appear superior
or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit
or blame for an individual’s ability or lack of it. Thus
if a person is “inferior” it is not his fault, but society’s,
because he has not been brought up properly.
19. (fr) The leftist is not typically the kind of person
whose feelings of inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist,
a bully, a self-promoter, a ruthless competitor. This
kind of person has not wholly lost faith in himself. He
has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he
can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be
strong, and his efforts to make himself strong produce his
unpleasant behavior. [1] But the leftist is too far gone for
that. His feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable.
Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel
strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass
movement with which he identifies himself.
20. (fr) Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics.
Leftists protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they
intentionally provoke police or racists to abuse them, etc.
These tactics may often be effective, but many leftists use
them not as a means to an end but because they PREFER
masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist trait.
21. (fr) Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated
by compassion or by moral principles, and moral
principle does play a role for the leftist of the oversocialized
type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be
the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent
a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for
power. Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally
calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists
claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that
affirmative action is good for black people, does it make
sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic
terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a
diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at
least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who
think that affirmative action discriminates against them.
But leftist activists do not take such an approach because
it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black
people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve
as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and
frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm
black people, because the activists’ hostile attitude toward
the white majority tends to intensify race hatred.
22. (fr) If our society had no social problems at all, the
leftists would have to INVENT problems in order to provide
themselves with an excuse for making a fuss.
23. (fr) We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend
to be an accurate description of everyone who might
be considered a leftist. It is only a rough indication of a
general tendency of leftism. to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations
for feelings and actions that in reality have a
nonmoral origin. We use the term “oversocialized” to describe
such people. [2]
26. (fr) Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem,
a sense of powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of
the most important means by which our society socializes
children is by making them feel ashamed of behavior or
speech that is contrary to society’s expectations. If this is
overdone, or if a particular child is especially susceptible
to such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of HIMSELF.
Moreover the thought and the behavior of the oversocialized
person are more restricted by society’s expectations
than are those of the lightly socialized person. The majority
of people engage in a significant amount of naughty
behavior. They lie, they commit petty thefts, they break
traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate someone, they
say spiteful things or they use some underhanded trick to
get ahead of the other guy. The oversocialized person cannot
do these things, or if he does do them he generates
in himself a sense of shame and self-hatred. The oversocialized
person cannot even experience, without guilt,
thoughts or feelings that are contrary to the accepted morality;
he cannot think “unclean” thoughts. And socialization
is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to
conform to many norms of behavior that do not fall under
the heading of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is
kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running
on rails that society has laid down for him. In many oversocialized
people this results in a sense of constraint and
powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We suggest
that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties
that human being inflict on one another.
27. (fr) We argue that a very important and influential
segment of the modern left is oversocialized and that
their oversocialization is of great importance in determining
the direction of modern leftism. Leftists of the oversocialized
type tend to be intellectuals or members of the
upper-middle class. Notice that university intellectuals [3]
constitute the most highly socialized segment of our society
and also the most leftwing segment.
28. (fr) The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to
get off his psychological leash and assert his autonomy
by rebelling. But usually he is not strong enough to rebel
against the most basic values of society. Generally speaking,
the goals of today’s leftists are NOT in conflict with
the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an
accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then
accuses mainstream society of violating that principle.
Examples: racial equality, equality of the sexes, helping
poor people, peace as opposed to war, nonviolence generally,
freedom of expression, kindness to animals. More
fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve society
and the duty of society to take care of the individual. All
these have been deeply rooted values of our society (or
at least of its middle and upper classes [4] for a long
time. These values are explicitly or implicitly expressed
or presupposed in most of the material presented to us by
the mainstream communications media and the educatio-nal system. Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized
type, usually do not rebel against these principles but justify
their hostility to society by claiming (with some degree
of truth) that society is not living up to these principles.
29. (fr) Here is an illustration of the way in which
the oversocialized leftist shows his real attachment to the
conventional attitudes of our society while pretending to
be in rebellion aginst it. Many leftists push for affirmative
action, for moving black people into high-prestige jobs,
for improved education in black schools and more money
for such schools; the way of life of the black “underclass”
they regard as a social disgrace. They want to integrate
the black man into the system,make hima business executive,
a lawyer, a scientist just like upper-middle-class white
people. The leftists will reply that the last thing they want
is to make the black man into a copy of the white man; instead,
they want to preserve African American culture. But
in what does this preservation of African American culture
consist? It can hardly consist in anything more than eating
black-style food, listening to black-style music, wearing
black-style clothing and going to a black-style church
or mosque. In other words, it can express itself only in superficial
matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects most leftists
of the oversocialized type want to make the black man
conform to white, middle-class ideals. They want to make
him study technical subjects, become an executive or a
scientist, spend his life climbing the status ladder to prove
that black people are as good as white. They want to make
black fathers “responsible,” they want black gangs to become
nonviolent, etc. But these are exactly the values of
the industrial- technological system. The system couldn’t
care less what kind of music a man listens to, what kind
of clothes he wears or what religion he believes in as long
as he studies in school, holds a respectable job, climbs the
status ladder, is a “responsible” parent, is nonviolent and
so forth. In effect, however much he may deny it, the oversocialized
leftist wants to integrate the black man into the
system and make him adopt its values.
30. (fr) We certainly do not claim that leftists, even of
the oversocialized type, NEVER rebel against the fundamental
values of our society. Clearly they sometimes do.
Some oversocialized leftists have gone so far as to rebel
against one of modern society’s most important principles
by engaging in physical violence. By their own account,
violence is for them a form of “liberation.” In other words,
by committing violence they break through the psychological
restraints that have been trained into them. Because
they are oversocialized these restraints have been more
confining for them than for others; hence their need to
break free of them. But they usually justify their rebellion
in terms of mainstream values. If they engage in violence
they claim to be fighting against racism or the like.
31. (fr) We realize that many objections could be raised
to the foregoing thumbnail sketch of leftist psychology.
The real situation is complex, and anything like a complete
description of it would take several volumes even if
the necessary data were available. We claim only to have
indicated very roughly the two most important tendencies
in the psychology of modern leftism. 32. (fr) The problems of the leftist are indicative of the
problems of our society as a whole. Low self-esteem, depressive
tendencies and defeatism are not restricted to the
left. Though they are especially noticeable in the left, they
are widespread in our society. And today’s society tries to
socialize us to a greater extent than any previous society.
We are even told by experts how to eat, how to exercise,
how to make love, how to raise our kids and so forth.

[yeti]

Sorry Infinite, but I have to disagree with you completely. In my opinion, this is not brilliant, it's utter bullshit. The guy was obviously insane.

Quote:The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call “feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialization”. Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.

The whole left/right paradigm is bullshit anyway, so why waste time making asinine comments like the above? This guy obviously spent so much time navel gazing that he lost touch with reality.

The reality is that "left" or "right" have no place in discussions of how we should govern ourselves. They exist only in the minds of people of weak or untrained mind who need to have a prepackaged set of ideologies to identify with. The reality is that life is far more complicated than that.

The reality is that the controllers care not one whit for "left" or "right". They do, however, care very much that people might wise up to that fact, and then decide to cast off their bonds of slavery and throw the corrupt off their backs. So they will continue to use the tried and true tactic of divide and conquer to keep us down...

[Infinite]

Whatever, this is why it's hard to about things like this with many conspiracy research people because everything is simplified to these overgeneralized talking points such as 'left and right are a false paradigm'. The paradigm that the mainstream media presents of corporatist liberalism vs. neoconservativism is a false one but there are more grassroots forms of both and most if not all people who are involved in politics or activism identify with one whether they realize it or not. Most people who say that there's no left and right are actually right-libertarians and paleoconservatives as I pointed out, and are just ideological as anyone else. They just think that their ideology is the right one that people will automatically come to when they 'awaken'. Because people in the 'patriot movement' like Alex Jones present every issue from the position of 'this is what The New World Order is doing so this is what we need to do to counter it'. Such as voting for Ron Paul, a right-libertarian.

Anyway I participated in left-anarchist forums for a while and I know from experience that this description fits many people on the left accurately. These people weren't a figment of my imagination, this is what they were like for the most part and why I came to the realization that their stuff was a waste of time on not on target, as I similarly did with the ideology of Ron Paul and the like earlier. BTW I used to believe 'there's no such thing as left and right' years ago as well until I started looking into these things more closely.

[yeti]

(02-28-2011 01:44 AM)Infinite Wrote:  Whatever, this is why it's hard to about things like this with many conspiracy research people because everything is simplified to these overgeneralized talking points such as 'left and right are a false paradigm'.
...
BTW I used to believe 'there's no such thing as left and right' years ago as well until I started looking into these things more closely.

Wow, I wish I was as complicated as you. I guess I'll have to forget everything I've experienced and pick a side then, huh?

Tell you what, can you send me one of your brochures?

[concenfla]

(02-27-2011 06:06 PM)yeti Wrote:  Sorry Infinite, but I have to disagree with you completely. In my opinion, this is not brilliant, it's utter bullshit. The guy was obviously insane.

Quote:The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call “feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialization”. Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.

The whole left/right paradigm is bullshit anyway, so why waste time making asinine comments like the above? This guy obviously spent so much time navel gazing that he lost touch with reality.

The reality is that "left" or "right" have no place in discussions of how we should govern ourselves. They exist only in the minds of people of weak or untrained mind who need to have a prepackaged set of ideologies to identify with. The reality is that life is far more complicated than that.

The reality is that the controllers care not one whit for "left" or "right". They do, however, care very much that people might wise up to that fact, and then decide to cast off their bonds of slavery and throw the corrupt off their backs. So they will continue to use the tried and true tactic of divide and conquer to keep us down...

Yeah, you're right, but the point is that "left" and "right" DO have an existence within people's minds, and what is being examined here is the specifics of the mental condition. An examination of a particular delusion does not mean that the examiner himself believes in the premises of that delusion. Certain people identify themselves with the "left", and even though strident leftist ideologies do not really apprehend the pragmatic workings of our managed reality, still these people who are attracted to the "left" have certain commonalities and psychological traits. (They also have a few great unacknowledged commonalities with those who identify with the "right", but that's another issue.) I find that what Ted K (supposedly) wrote about the psychology of the modern left to be quite true. He obviously had an ax to grind and he lets his own prejudices show in many of his writings, which lean toward some genuine paranoia, in my opinion. But he does a very good job in explaining the delusion of those who believe in the leftist side of the false paradigm.

[yeti]

(03-06-2011 05:11 PM)concenfla Wrote:  

(02-27-2011 06:06 PM)yeti Wrote:  

Quote:The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call “feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialization”. Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.

I find that what Ted K (supposedly) wrote about the psychology of the modern left to be quite true.

To each is own, I guess. IMO he's a lunatic with no idea how people actually think. It's obvious to me he thinks he's far more intelligent and wise than the common man.