FFF#13—IDIOTS OF IDEALS: IDEOLOGUES WHO VALUE IDEAS OVER INDIVIDUALS
Where ID of Self Sacrifice Was, There Autonomous Ego Shall Voluntarily Be
“Our blight is ideologies – they are the long-awaited Antichrist.” Carl Jung
--NOTE: SEE BELOW FOR CCP USEFUL IDIOT IDEOLOGUE, JEFF J. BROWN
USEFUL IDIOTS - PART 2 Baudolino Aulari, Aug 14, 2010. YouTube 11:05
The journalist and historian Jonathan Mirsky, who has written extensively on China, describes former leader Chairman Mao as: "He had an enormous impact on China -- but he was a monster... and...responsible for the deaths of 40 million people." But the veteran British politician Tony Benn argues that Mao played a significant role in building China's global importance and economic power - and that his actions - both good and bad - must be seen in historical context. From Mao's China, General Pinochet's Chile, Apartheid-controlled South Africa, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, to President Ahmadinejad's Iran, why -- and how -- have so many supposedly intelligent people been manipulated by dictators into saying good things about bad regimes?
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BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU BELIEVE: CARL JUNG QUOTE QuotesCosmos, Aug 10, 2021
In this short quote, Carl Jung reminds us that being an ideologue is tantamount to condemning ourselves to a kind of intellectual hell. When we adopt ideologies, it infects us with related ideas and constraints to our thinking which ultimately becomes intellectual baggage weighing us down. To be as intellectually free as possible and maintain a more neutral stance of objectivity, avoid ideological stances like a disease of the mind. That way, you’ll enjoy intellectual freedom and be able to pursue and discover more nuances of truth in this complex world we inhabit. Happy learning!
https://medium.com/@QuotesCosmos/carl-jung-quote-avoid-ideology-like-the-devil-b4505cdafcdf
IDEOLOGUE
An ideologue is someone who has very strong beliefs or opinions and stubbornly sticks to them no matter what. An ideologue will insist they're right even when evidence suggests they might be wrong. If you call someone an ideologue, it's an insult. You're not just saying they believe in something, but that their belief is unreasonable and unbending. An ideologue can't have a thoughtful discussion about a topic, and they aren’t able to consider other perspectives. Ideologue derives from the Greek idea, "form," and logos, "word or speech."
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/ideologue
HISTORY IN ONE MINUTE: THE CHINESE CULTURAL REVOLUTION YouTube Short
THE HORRIBLE HYGIENE OF MAO ZEDONG YouTube Short
THE DARK PARALLELS OF CHINA'S CULTURAL REVOLUTION & TODAY'S AMERICA: SURVIVOR XI VAN FLEET The Epoch Times, Oct 29, 2023 YouTube 0:57
"From a very early age—kindergarten—we were taught that our parents are just biological parents. The real parents is 'the Party,' and Chairman Mao. And so, if there's a conflict between choosing [between] your own parents or the Party, you should always, always choose the Party. And that's basically what the Red Guards did." In this episode I sit down with Xi Van Fleet, who grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. She’s the author of the new book, “Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning.” "Communism is about abolition of private property. But I would say, more important than that, is the abolition of independent thinking. It's really, really about control of peoples' minds. And also, it's about dividing people. They don't want to rule over a united population," says Ms. Van Fleet.
THE "USEFUL IDIOT" -ROAD TO A "MAO'S AMERICA"-- THE WARNING OF XI VAN FLEET. Randall Bock, Feb 3, 2024 YouTube 1:01:08
Xi Van Fleet's journey from experiencing the Chinese Cultural Revolution to witnessing alarming parallels in the United States serves as a potent caution against the resurgence of Cultural Marxism. Her firsthand account sheds light on the chilling tactics of Mao Zedong, particularly the exploitation and ultimate betrayal of the Red Guards, a youth movement manipulated into enforcing Mao's vision of purging "capitalist roaders" and "revisionists."
3 WAYS TO SPOT AN IDEOLOGUE Intellectual Takeout, March 28, 2017
Finally, ideologues often display what former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan called ‘irrational exuberance.’ They start to believe their own hype, symbols and slogans. They become enraptured with speculative fervor about the spread of their ideas.
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2017/03/3-ways-to-spot-an-ideologue/
--THE USEFUL IDIOT IDEOLOGUE FOR THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY, ONE JEFF J. BROWN ON SUBSTACK, HERE AN EXAMPLE:
“CORRUPTION IS CRUSHED IN CHINA, WHICH HELPS EXPLAIN ITS ONGOING SOCIO-ECONOMIC SUCCESS. THE WEST IS A LOST-CAUSE SEWER. PART 2. China Rising Radio Sinoland Jeff J Brown, June 26, 2024
30 headlines show that Baba Beijing is destroying corruption and fraud at every level, even Xi Jinping’s confidantes! THE PEOPLE WERE PISSED. THEY WANTED GOOD, CLEAN GOVERNMENT, AND THEY WANTED ALL OF THEIR EFFORTS TO GO TOWARD MAKING SURE THE COMMUNIST SOCIALIST REVOLUTION WAS A SUCCESS. THAT IS WHY MAO AND THE COMMUNIST PARTY CALLED FOR THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION. Of course, the cultural part is because of the need for the 85% of the people at that time were peasants, rural people, and they were not getting a fair education. All the city people and the elites were getting a good education. And the people out in the countryside were not and hadn’t been for 5000 years. And so that’s why they called it the Cultural Revolution, which of course, during the CULTURAL REVOLUTION, YOU THINK IT WAS BAD IT WAS ACTUALLY VERY GOOD FOR CHINA because tens of thousands of schools, primary schools, middle schools, high schools, and colleges were built and millions and millions of people who had never had a chance to get a decent education before got educated. Other than that, 100-year period, China has always had the biggest, fastest, best economy, and most productive economy in human history. And a lot of that is due to the fact that, YES, THERE WAS CORRUPTION, BUT A LOT LESS THAN IN THE WEST BECAUSE OF THIS IDEAL, THE HUGE WEIGHT OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF PHILOSOPHY AND EXPECTATION BY THE PEOPLE AND EXPECTATION BY THE GOVERNMENT TO NOT BE CORRUPT. This is Jeff J. Brown China Rising Radio Sinoland Seeks Truth From Facts and China writers’ group. Bye-bye.
USEFUL IDIOT quoteresearch August 22, 2019
Dear Quote Investigator: Historically, the term “useful idiot” has referred to a naive or unwitting ally of a ruthless political movement especially a communist movement. Supposedly, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin used this expression contemptuously of non-communists who aligned themselves with their political positions.
Quote Investigator: A significant precursor appeared in an article titled “Yugoslavia’s Tragic Lesson to the World” by Bogdan Raditsa published in “The Reader’s Digest” of October 1946. In the Serbo-Croat language the communists have a phrase for true democrats who consent to collaborate with them for “democracy.” It is Koristne Budale, or Useful Innocents. Raditsa rendered this crucial phrase as “Useful Innocents”, but a more direct translation of “Koristne Budale” into English yields “Useful Fools”.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/08/22/useful-idiot/
--MAX BLUMENTHAL AS CCP USEFUL IDIOT IDEOLOGUE ALONG WITH JEFF J BROWN:
CHINA’S USEFUL IDIOTS Unherd, James Bloodworth, Dec 11, 2020
A new generation of intellectual patsies are lining up to do Beijing's dirty work
For much of the 20th century, a section of the western intelligentsia deluded itself that something worthwhile was taking place in the Soviet Union. There were of course those well-known, even notorious intellectuals such as Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Bernard Shaw and HG Wells, who travelled east to pay obsequious tribute to the “new civilisation” (the Webbs’s words). However, there was a wider array of apologists who filtered through into the Labour Party, the trade unions and academia.
And so a new generation of political “seekers” have turned to China for their ideological sustenance.
Depressingly, a permanent feature of politics seems to be a stubborn rump of ideologues whose criticism of their own government co-exists with a need to develop a corresponding loyalty to another unit. Orwell called this phenomenon “transferred nationalism”. For Orwell, transference has an important political function: “It makes it possible for [the transferer] to be much more nationalistic — more vulgar, more silly, more malignant, more dishonest — than he could ever be on behalf of his native country, or any unit of which he had real knowledge.”
Authoritarian, rapaciously capitalist China is merely the latest “camp” that stands ready to be embraced by those who are temperamentally inclined to transference. “We examined the source data on the claims of millions of Uyghurs in so-called concentration camps,” said Max Blumenthal, the American left-winger and son of a former aide to Bill Clinton, on RT earlier this year. “We haven’t seen the evidence for these massive claims,” he added.
Blumenthal is the founder and editor of the far-Left news site The Grayzone. In the past, The Grayzone has supported grisly dictatorships in Syria and Venezuela for no reason other than the latter’s opposition to western liberal democracy. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokespeople Hua Chunying and Lijian Zhao have both approvingly tweeted a Grayzone article which sought to rubbish claims that China is persecuting its Uighur population.
The Max Blumenthals of the world may be base and cynical (Blumenthal’s politics took a 180 turn following a 2015 trip to the Kremlin), but in this postmodern age, it’s apparent that people still yearn to be part of something bigger than the self. Materialism and solipsistic self-betterment are not enough though. They have limited appeal next to the desire — felt in the days when Wells visited the USSR, and even more strongly felt today — to be part of a world historical struggle between good and evil. Whether or not this quasi-religious impulse is transposed onto an atheistic communist tyranny is largely beside the point. The search for a tyrannical fatherland, a steady ideological pole to cling onto in tumultuous times, continues unabated.
https://unherd.com/2020/12/the-useful-idiots-are-back-again/
CHAPTER ONE REFLECTIONS ON A RAVAGED CENTURY By Robert Conquest
History's Battleground 1.
The huge catastrophes of our era have been inflicted by human beings driven by certain thoughts. And so history's essential questions must be:
How do we account for what has been called the "ideological frenzy" of the twentieth century? How did these mental aberrations gain a purchase? What was the sort and condition of people affected? Who were the Typhoid Marys who spread the infection?
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/c/conquest-ravaged.html
ROBERT CONQUEST (1917 – 2015) Dan David Prize
https://dandavidprize.org/laureates/robert-conquest-july-1917-august-2015/
HISTORY AND CULTURE The Man Who Told the Truth
The late Hoover historian Robert Conquest devoted himself to exposing the truth about Soviet communism and its atrocities, and his writings helped end those atrocities. Why he remains relevant today—and is celebrated as a hero in Eastern European nations, including Ukraine. By Elizabeth Conquest
https://www.hoover.org/research/man-who-told-truth
ROBERT CONQUEST AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF WORLD COMMUNISM
July 10, 2018 Robert Service
CHRONICLER OF EVIL Poliitico, Aug 5, 2015
A tribute to Robert Conquest, who first told the truth about Stalin.
ROBERT CONQUEST AND THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORIANS Catholic Herald, Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith, August 5, 2015
The passing of the great Robert Conquest at the age of 98 reminds us all of the important, indeed essential, role that historians play in any healthy society. Conquest was the man who discredited Stalinism, revealing its horrors to the world, at a time when may were heavily committed to defending not just Stalin but also the system of Soviet socialism. Conquest showed, and showed in a way that could not be contradicted, that Soviet socialism was indefensible. There were of course a few hold outs such as Eric Hobsbawm, who clung to the Stalinist faith as a true believer when all, or almost all, others had abandoned it. But the measure of Conquest’s achievement is that people like Hobsbawm looked not simply isolated, but also, in the end, mad.
https://catholicherald.co.uk/robert-conquest-and-the-importance-of-historians/
ROBERT CONQUEST | FREEDOM, TERROR, AND FALSEHOODS: LESSONS FROM THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Independent Institute, Jan 14, 2015 YouTube 1:16:04
REFLECTIONS ON A RAVAGED CENTURY C-SPAN, Nov 8, 1999 Video with transcript 1:56:32
https://www.c-span.org/video/?153487-1/reflections-ravaged-century
PAUL HOLLANDER ON “DICTATORS, INTELLECTUALS AND THE SPIRITUAL PROBLEMS OF MODERNITY.” Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard, Jan 4, 2018 YouTube 1:21:57
A TRIBUTE TO PAUL HOLLANDER, FREEDOM-FIGHTER! Heritage Wealth Planning, April 21, 2019. YouTube. 11:53
PAUL HOLLANDER - CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND ITS LEGITIMATION AUBGTalks, March 20, 2013. YouTube. 1:02:27
POLITICAL PILGRIMS TOP # 8 FACTS Yourtly1, Nov 5, 2015. YouTube, 1:04
ON HOW AND WHY INTELLECTUALS DECEIVE THEMSELVES: A PAUL HOLLANDER RETROSPECTIVE Springer, 18 October 2017
That Paul Hollander is not more widely celebrated by his own discipline is perhaps itself something of a corroboration of the ascendancy of the alienated, adversary intellectual culture that has been the central theme in much of his research.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12115-017-0191-0
POLITICAL PILGRIMAGES: THEIR MEANING, AFTERMATH, AND LINKAGES Paul Hollander
Abstract: Many distinguished Western intellectuals visited communist (or state socialist) countries (such as the former Soviet Union, China under Mao and Cuba under Castro) during the past century with a highly favourable predisposition and wrote admiring accounts of their experiences. These political pilgrimages demonstrated the capacity of intellectuals for wishful thinking and bizarre political misjudgements. These misjudgements and the associated illusions compel the revision of widely held conceptions of intellectuals as individuals with highly developed critical faculties capable of distinguishing between appearance and reality. Keywords: political pilgrimages, anti-Americanism, “political Islam”
https://hce.iiccmer.ro/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/HCE1-4.-Paul-Hollander.pdf
PAUL HOLLANDER AND THE ANATOMY OF DISCONTENT October 8, 2014 By Lee Congdon
https://isi.org/modern-age/paul-hollander-and-the-anatomy-of-discontent/
POLITICAL PILGRIMS, Wikipedia
Political Pilgrims, is a book is about 20th-century Western intellectuals who travel to the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and Communist Cuba seeking to find utopian societies enacting their brightest hopes for the human future.[1]
Reviewing the book on publication, Leonard Schapiro wrote that Hollander goal was, "to discover the motivation of the travelers."[2]
Hollander details the "trek of pilgrims" to the Soviet Union, "during the terrible years of forced collectivization, famine, terror, and show trials," of the 1930s, where they discovered utopia in Soviet society. Here were all the desirable things that they believed their own societies lacked—social justice and equality, a sense of purpose and community, a great transformation which had triumphed over the wholly black and deplorable past, and, particularly, a humane and progressive penal system. Observations on this last aspect of Soviet life, incidentally, date mainly from the period when literally millions were rotting to death in the concentration camps on trumped-up charges.[2] The travelers whose journeys and written reports Hollander follows include, Hewlett Johnson, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Harold Laski, Anna Louise Strong, all famous in their day.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Pilgrims
WHAT IS ANARCHISM? WHAT ARE THE PROS AND CONS OF ANARCHISM? ANARCHISM EXPLAINED Illustrate to Educate, Jan 31, 2023 YouTube 4:11
VOLUNTARYISM, Lucas Bessery, April 25, 2013 YouTube 3:27
ED GRIFFIN COLLECTIVISM Jason Pratt, Dec 19, 2008 YouTube 4 :57
THE ALMOST END, BELOW A FEW MORE TO PONDER
IDEOLOGIES OF INDIVIDUALISM AND COLLECTIVISM, 38pages
Individualism VS. Sacrificial Collectivism By Richard Ebeling, October 20, 2015
https://heartland.org/opinion/individualism-vs-sacrificial-collectivism/
Stalin, Mao, Communism, and their 21st-Century Aftermath in Russia and China By Miguel A. Faria, Jr.
https://www.cambridgescholars.com/resources/pdfs/978-1-5275-6437-4-sample.pdf
A CHEERLEADER FOR MAO'S CULTURAL REVOLUTION Wall Street Journal, By Hugo Restall, Nov. 6, 2012
Han Suyin hid the truth about China's regime. She was not the last.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204349404578102792626733034
MAO’S CHEERLEADER, The Peking Duck, Nov 9, 2012
Han Suyin, who died last week, was a successful novelist I never heard of until I read this intriguing article on her role as an evangelist for Mao and the Cultural revolution. She denied the horrors of the Great Leap Forward’s famines and later admitted she “lied through her teeth” about it. Although she later turned against the Cultural Revolution as Jiang Qing fanned the flames that led to mass murder and hysteria, in the early years she never met a Red Guard she didn’t love.
https://www.pekingduck.org/2012/11/maos-cheerleader/
A PSYCHOLOGY OF IDEOLOGY: UNPACKING THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF IDEOLOGICAL THINKING Association for Psychological Science, Leon Zmigrod, March 1, 2022
Abstract
The psychological study of ideology has traditionally emphasized the content of ideological beliefs, guided by questions about what people believe, such as why people believe in omniscient gods or fascist worldviews. This theoretical focus has led to siloed subdisciplines separately dealing with political, religious, moral, and prejudiced attitudes. The fractionation has fostered a neglect of the cognitive structure of ideological worldviews and associated questions about why ideologies—in all their forms—are so compelling to the human mind. Here I argue that it is essential to consider the nature of ideological cognition across a multitude of ideologies. I offer a multidimensional, empirically tractable framework of ideological thinking, suggesting it can be conceptualized as a style of thinking that is rigid in its adherence to a doctrine and resistance to evidence-based belief-updating and favorably oriented toward an in-group and antagonistic to out-groups.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17456916211044140