I have long made reference to “Marxists” and have used “socialist” and “Marxist” in the same sentence as “university professors” and “NDP” (or what I usually call them, the “you’ve got to be kidding party”) in this blog, to much mocking and even some consternation among some readers. Some have written me off as a kook over the years, just because I so frequently use those words in my constant warnings to readers about how quickly and easily “it” could happen.
I sometimes—humorously, I thought—post what I always simply call “a gratuitous photo of Karl Marx”—without any other explanation—smack dab in the middle of a blog entry about Jack Layton or some leftist “Liberal” who sounds exactly like a communist to me. Here it is on the left.
One time I made an excellent YouTube-type video (pre the YouTube phenomenon, I think), in which I mocked an NDP strategist for sounding like a communist to me, and the video went “viral”. But I immediately got a backlash from know-it-all “CONSERVATIVE” bloggers and readers (mostly the “big tent” types who don’t dare say things like they really are, and choose instead to sound all properly “pragmatic” and “moderate” and such —or as I call them, “Liberal Party Too”), claiming that I reduce “the cause” by making such outlandish claims, and using such “extreme” and “over the top” language as “Marxist” and saying folks sounded like “communists”.
I changed the video and omitted the word “communist”.
(For the record, I’ve also use the word “fascist” a lot to describe actual events occurring today and ideas expressed today from the Left. And I’m pretty sure that also helps drive down my numbers.)
But now we find in even the most mainstream media—Newsweek, Time, and in Canada in the Globe and Mail and many others, talk of “Marxism” and “communism” actually taking hold for real, to one extent or another, what with the government suddenly owning the means of production, like General Motors; and in the U.S., assuming ownership or control of several banks, and otherwise taking control of more and more private enterprise through various, though not-strictly ownership means, but by new overbearing government regulations and policies and laws that are being enacted —the Constitution be damned — such that they might as well be owned directly by the Obama government.
They’re not joking or being “extreme” in their discussions—these are serious discussions and articles in serious publications.
It may or may not be an over-reaction to events as they are unfolding in Barack Obama’s “progressive” push and only time will tell, but the very fact that the terms “Marxist” and “communist” and even just “socialist” are being used so easily these days to describe actual events and government policy plans… well I wish I didn’t change my wording in that video and I wish I didn’t listen to those Red Tories or any others who offered their pithy advise to me. And I will continue to not listen to them much as I go along.
Today’s Globe and Mail article which makes reference to Marxism in America and Canada is called The 18th Brumaire of Barack Obama (so, you see, they use Barack Obama, America, and Marxism in the same breath), and it begins with a quote. From an NDP MP:
The 18th Brumaire of Barack Obama
When I announce that I am a socialist, I guess it is no surprise because we are all socialists now. We just bought General Motors … The fact is that we now have Marxism realized. We own the means of production and we did not have to fire a single shot. It is really quite phenomenal what went on today.
– Pat Martin, NDP MP for Winnipeg Centre, in the House of Commons, Monday, June 1, 2009Leo Panitch knew that Marxism was back, brothers, when he was asked by AM640 (“Home of the Leafs”), a sports-mad radio station in Toronto, to talk about the GM deal. The Canadian people suddenly own a few levers of the means of production, and some of the comrades wanted to know what they’d gotten themselves into.
The financial collapse has been manna for Marxists. Most Canadians don’t realize York University’s Professor Panitch is one of the world’s most prominent Marxist thinkers, a contender for the mantle of E..P. Thompson, the founder of the British New Left and, like Mr. Thompson before him, editor of the Socialist Register. This is a huge deal among Marxists, who wear their sense of history the way the rest of us wear underpants.
But the money meltdown has pushed Prof. Panitch to centre stage. Last month at Ryerson University, he delivered the Phyllis Clarke memorial lecture, in which he explained why Marxism is more relevant today than ever. A version of the speech is the cover story of the latest edition of Foreign Policy magazine, the bible of the Washington political establishment. …
You might want to push back, Canada.
—READER EMAIL—From: “Jason B”
To: proudtobecanadian.ca
Subject: Marxist, socialist, communist,collectivist
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:11:47 -0700The sad thing is too many “conservatives” lack historical reference. As we see Harper attempting to appeal to the centre-left, most Red Tories have no idea of the Heath legacy in the UK, and how badly that ended. They also have no clue that in the Soviet Bloc socialist and communist were used interchangeably – socialist means communist. There is no half way. Many Western minds have deluded themselves to think one can straddle the fence between the free market and collectivism. You can’t. True, some have made the convenient distinction of “socialism” meaning those that advocate legal democratic means to advance the welfare state, while “communists” advocate direct violence. The true names for these “strategies” are social democrats and Bolshevists. Still, what they seek at the end of it all is the same.
Jason B
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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