Red Pilled?

Right-wing Suspicion as a Nascent Critical Impulse

“It is because bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intellectuals have a bourgeois (or petty-bourgeois) ‘class instinct’, whereas proletarians have a proletarian class instinct. The former, blinded by bourgeois ideology, which does everything it can to cover up class exploitation, cannot see capitalist exploitation. The latter, on the contrary, despite the terrible weight of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology they carry, cannot fail to see this exploitation, since it constitutes their daily life. [—] As ‘by nature’ they have a ‘class instinct’ formed by the harsh school of daily exploitation, all they need is a supplementary political and theoretical education in order to understand objectively what they feel subjectively, instinctively.”

—Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and other essays

“The bourgeoisie was obliged to liquidate its purely intellectual exertions in a period when the pleasures of thinking were likely to involve immediate risks for its economic interests. Where thought was not completely turned off, it became ever more culinary.”

—Bertolt Brecht

“Myths carry great weight in the cultures that craft them, shaping collective perception and understanding. Many of these stories are fascinating and symbolically rich, insightful or of educational value; some - especially those spun by colonised peoples, by women, for example - contain coded truths that the master classes would otherwise have expunged from history. Yet whatever uses myths may serve, they are nonetheless stories, which is to say: they are fictions, by definition. Myths are human artifice, their function to mediate between human consciousness and material reality.”

—aurora linnea, Man Against Being: Body Horror and the Death of Life

The lived experience of the working class is such that they have awareness of their class level. They cannot believe the lie that class no longer matters or has ceased to exist. Even if they lack theoretical knowledge to define the system which is exploiting them, they understand that they are low on the social pecking order. The pseudo-leftist notion that the working class aren’t intelligent enough to know their own interests is insulting and fails to lucidly explain the appeal of the far right to the working class. It is exactly this holier-than-thou attitude which has alienated the working class, facilitating their drift to the right. The rightward shift of the working class shows that they do understand enough about their position to question the mainstream ideology. Woke identity politics, for example, contradict the life experience of the working class by its focus on identity as the locus of privilege. The constant wars paid by our tax dollars become offensive to those with low incomes. The media blitzkrieg about a deadly virus that everyone must hide from made the essential workers realise that the system views them as expendable people.

As I’ve written about before, the working class have been abandoned by the academicised left. In many ways, the C.I.A. succeeded in their goal of creating a “compatible” left which ignores the working class. Where else do people of lower-class levels have to go except to the right? The left that are given media visibility today do not speak to the lived experience of the working class. In the West, the left is infected with a strain of elitism, perhaps due to its position in academia, which can result in the “popular classes” being viewed with condescension. This failure of the western left has facilitated the migration of the working class to right wing politics. They are unable to assume the odious political positions of liberals and the liberal adjacent left because it directly contradicts what they see with their own eyes.

Within the false consciousness that is the “two party paradigm” the right has been the side to critique the deep state and the D.E.I. policies that were alienating “privileged” white working-class males. More recently, under Covid policies, the right has also seen a trend towards critiquing corporate power (once a subject that was only tackled by the left). In a word, the far right was appealing because of the more critical stance they took towards authority, especially during the covid era. During this time, more people than ever began to question the mainstream media because of how it directly contradicted what they saw with their own eyes. This void left by the obviously false mainstream narrative is where conspiracy theories can gain a foothold. Strange alternative explanations of events become appealing as people’s belief in reality as it has been presented to them is shaken. The appeal of conspiracy theories is that they present a microwaveable alternative to the mainstream narrative, one with explanations that are almost cinematic in their grandiosity.

What many leftists dismiss as far right conspiracy theories often contain a grain of truth. Without a small degree of truth, they would not be able to hold the sway that they do. The factual base of a conspiracy theory is inverted or blown out of proportion, which acts as an ideological safeguard against reaching conclusions which would prove threatening to the system itself. Conspiracy theories can serve as a limited hangout, keeping the truth obscured by not following anything to its logical conclusion. The factual kernel located within the conspiracy theory “chaff”, so to speak, can also be utilised as a way to discredit the fact that was the springboard for the conspiracy theory distortion. The factual statement is intermixed with untrue statements which then causes people to dismiss the entirety of the argument, the facts along with the fiction. One can then discredit an argument, even one coming from a committed leftist, on the ground that it “sounds like a right-wing conspiracy theory”.

This whole idea of conspiracy theories, whether as a way of dismissing views which are harmful to the dominant narrative or as a new kind of esotericism where every event is caused by some hidden manipulation, are all part of the ideological superstructure which maintains the stability of the capitalist imperialist system. The reductive mainstream narrative or the ahistorical “alternative” narrative can both obscure the reality of class conflict and ultimately the system itself. Belief in conspiratorial narratives can become a flimsy lid of false consciousness that covers the boiling pot of the growing immiseration of the working masses. As the capitalist system struggles to confront the inevitability of one of its biggest crises in history and U.S. hegemony struggles desperately to continue its stranglehold on the whole of the planet, the narratives become more diversified so as to confuse us at every turn. “Alternative” narratives reveal hidden facts yet befog the totality of the situation, presenting an undialectical version of reality which is fixed and entirely controlled by omnipotent puppeteers.

I postulate that conspiracy theories today have a quasi-mythic function. The disseminators are the modern myth makers, re-embellishing drab reality with secret truths. At a time when science has proven to be a weapon in the service of capital, a return to medieval superstition is practically inevitable. Instead of a dry scientific explanation, conspiracy theories weave strange tales which fulfil the human need for narrative. Yet there is a problem with simplistic explanations of complex and ever-changing reality. Myths distort reality, they reinvigorate superstition, and they present the world in an ossified way. Myths transfer material problems onto fictitious causes. Ultimately, myths present the current circumstances as fixed and unchangeable, closing history and making it a preconceived plan of the Gods, God, or (in the case of some conspiracy theories) the cabal of blood drinking Jewish bankers. Conspiracy theories are just another T.I.N.A.; by that I mean another narrative which presents us with the bleak statement there is no alternative. Supernatural beings are too big to fight against. With their ahistorical pessimism, conspiracy theories put the functioning of society out of our reach, we cannot change anything. Yet they also represent a transference of legitimate animosity towards an economic system or class onto a quasi-fictional villain/scapegoat. This is, of course, convenient for the ruling class.

Before we continue, I use the term conspiracy theory in a non-derogatory way. The term has been weaponised to dismiss anything which goes against the mainstream narrative, no matter how much scientific evidence one has to back oneself up. What I mean by conspiracy theories in this case are ahistorical narratives which obscure the root causes. I will now embark on a radical examination of three seemingly silly conspiracy theories. After all, Marx said that “to be radical is to grasp things by the root.”

Reptiles Hiding in Meat Suits

Let us start with one of the more entertaining conspiracy theories out there: the theory of the lizard people promoted by the notorious David Icke. According to followers of this theory, the political, financial, and tech elite are not human. Not even mammalian. They are lizard-like creatures from outer space who don human flesh suits. They manipulate the entire system with the aim of world domination, which will result in the enslavement of the entire human race. On the face of it, reptilian aliens wearing people suits to conquer the world sounds outlandish. Yet I propose that it is a science-fictionalised version of the Marxist conception of the bourgeoisie as personifications of capital.

Look at it this way, the bourgeoisie are a class of people operating in the service of an alien power that is outside their individual control which reaches across the globe. The ruling class are flesh suits piloted by an alien force, just not in a literal sense. They are driven by capital, ever expanding exchange value hell-bent on subsuming the cosmos under its quantifying power. Marx characterised the bourgeoisie as personifications of capital, meaning that their individual selves are subordinate to the drive of capital to accumulate. They are subordinate to a power, a system which is larger than themselves. Not that the ruling class doesn’t steer the ship, they do. Rather, it is that they all have to play by the rules of the game to keep the entire system, which is built around their interests, operative. The rules of the capitalist “game” are competition, exploitation, and accumulation. So we can say that metaphorically the ruling class are just a bunch of empty suits.

Another aspect of the lizard people conspiracy theory that is figuratively true is the representation of the ruling class as inhuman/subhuman. Because the capitalist system rests on the exploitation of man by man, those who ascend to the top have to be willing to vampirically extract the surplus value from those below them and ruthlessly compete with those on the same tier as themselves. The whole modus operandi of capitalism itself, with its irrational poles of generalised scarcity and obscene excess, does not encourage the development of the human person. The exploiters, predators, and top of the food chain, the bourgeoisie, are especially in a lower stage of human development. To be a member of that class one must have no qualms about exploiting other human beings, denying one’s very nature of “man as a social animal”. Besides, the nature of being a personification of capital makes one driven by a constant need to expand one’s wealth. To a capitalist, stagnation means death. The bourgeoisie, even though materially sated, live in a mindset of scarcity. In all honesty, the psychopathology of the ruling class makes their mental state not much different than a lizard or a snake. After all, the only emotions reptiles are capable of feeling are hunger and fear. The ruling class only knows hunger for more wealth and fear at loss of said wealth. Perhaps they are lizards after all.

The Spider King

There is a tendency on the left to dismiss any critique of George Soros as being a part of the “right wing conspiracy theory” against him. George Soros is a wealthy investor and hedge fund manager. He is a billionaire, and he could have been wealthier if he had not “sacrificed” so much of his wealth for philanthropic work. What Soros may have lost in wealth he makes up for in global influence. It is true that Soros funds a lot of different organisations through his Open Society Foundation and Tides Foundation. Open Society Foundation is the main arm in a Soros funded network comprising over twenty national and regional foundations. O.S.F., with branches in 37 different countries, is one of the largest political philanthropies in the world, topped only by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The right is not wrong that Soros is a powerful and influential figure who is unelected and unaccountable to the public. However, the conspiracy theory around him is a bit less nuanced. According to the theory, Soros is an evil puppet master who controls many of the left-wing groups that are actively working to ‘destroy the United States from the inside’. Because O.S.F. spouts many woke talking points and Soros has funded Black Lives Matter as well as other left-leaning organisations, the right has come to associate him with “cultural Marxism”. He has also been given heat for his investments in China, (proving he is a commie?) which have been very opportunistic to grow his own wealth.

Does Soros have communist sympathies? George Soros studied under Karl Popper, a man who greatly contributed to the conflation of fascism and communism under the umbrella term “totalitarianism”. Popper was very influential for young Soros, whose main foundation (Open Society) is named for a term coined by Popper. Even though Soros’ wealth came from financial markets, he states that laissez-faire capitalism is an enemy of an open society. He purports to support wealth redistribution and the reduction of inequality. To the right, this is what makes him a “communist”. Yet Soros hated the U.S.S.R. and has consistently criticised communism. He funded dissidents in Eastern Europe and profited massively from the breakup of the Soviet Union. I certainly do not think he supports a revolution of the proletariat. What Soros does is disguise his business ventures in the florid terms of an ideal “open” society. Similar to the bourgeois socialists criticised by Marx and Engels, he talks big about a more equitable world but has no intention of losing any of his wealth. With all this in mind, one can see that Soros is a far cry from a communist. He is a liberal, perhaps even a social democrat, but not a communist. He is a wealthy investor who wants other countries to be open to the penetration of his (foreign) capital so he can expand his worldwide influence.

“Hence, by setting up NGOs such as the OSFs in the name of advocating ‘social openness’, Soros was able to interfere in the political agendas of other countries and make a career for himself.”

—Sun Piesong, Why Soros is Obsessed with Defeating Xi Jinping’s China

Soros’s “ties” to China are another example of his economic predation. He only cosies up to the Chinese government when he thinks it will serve his financial interests. During China’s periods of market-oriented reforms Soros attempted to insert himself close to the leadership so as to influence policy in his favour. Yet the Minister of State Security from 1985-1998 became very suspicious of Soros’ activities and it was declared that Soros was not welcome in China anymore. He and his foundations were banned from the country for 12 years. Recently, as China has attempted to get more control over the market, Soros has ceased to feel so diplomatic. In fact, Soros has repeatedly criticised Xi Jinping’s leadership, practically advocating his replacement. Soros’s antipathy towards Xi is perhaps the only thing he has in common with his right-wing adversaries. The advocate of “open” societies, who influences policy across the world, criticised Xi Jinping “who is not accountable to any international authority”. This is a sickening irony, coming from a man who is an unelected billionaire who meddles in the affairs of practically every continent. In one speech Soros said “It is to be hoped that Xi Jinping may be replaced by someone less repressive at home and more peaceful abroad. This would remove the greatest threat that open societies face today and they should do everything within their power to encourage China to move in the desired direction.” [my italics]

In the past decade, he has given many speeches against China. One might counter that Soros is a genuine philanthropist concerned with authoritarianism abroad. However, I would rebut that he is a member of the capitalist class, and his only concern is with the expansion of his capital abroad along with his power and influence. I don’t think George Soros gives two rats’ asses for the Chinese people, or any people for that matter. Rather, in my view, he doesn’t want any policies which could harm his investment portfolio. Under Xi’s leadership many bankers and corrupt officials who had embezzled money have faced capital punishment, speculation on the housing market has been prohibited, and the private sector has been brought under tighter control. Perhaps these developments are unappealing to Soros. Maybe Soros doesn’t like Xi Jinping’s China because he worries Xi’s policies will cause a market crash and push out foreign investors like himself. I do not have the answers as to his motivations, but from what Soros has said it seems that he would like to see regime change in China. The less reform oriented Chinese leadership is, the less Soros seems to like it.

Soros claims to want an open society. Yet how open is a society which allows unelected investors such influence on policy? Is what Soros means by an open “society”, a society open to his investments? I think so. Right wing conspiracy theorists are correct to be suspicious of Soros, but not because of his politics or his Jewishness. They are correct to be suspicious because of his class position and unprecedented global influence. However, it is foolish to think of Soros as an evil “Chinese communist spy”. Really, nothing could be further from the truth. The new populist right should think of Soros as an enemy of the people because he is. Yet Elon Musk should not receive any less harsh a judgement. They are two members of the same class, both are odious, and neither have the general public’s best interest in mind, only the interests of their capital.

Satanic Rainbow-Soaked Bolsheviks

Pioneered by Trotskyist-turned-conservative Lyndon LaRouche the term “cultural Marxism” has come to be associated with woke ideology. James Lindsay continues LaRouche’s legacy in the present day, pushing the conspiracy theories of cultural Marxism and white genocide. In the mind of your average “right wing conspiracy theorist”, Herbert Marcuse is the King of Wokeness. The right neo-LaRouchites accuse Marcuse of infecting U.S. universities with Marxism. In their minds he is responsible for much of the societal degeneration that we see today. For example, the woman (Cathy O’Brien) who claims to have been a victim of Project Monarch (allegedly an offshoot of the C.I.A.’s MK Ultra project) points to Marcuse and his state department work as proof of an infiltration of the U.S. government by Marxism. James Lindsay, whose social media grifting is a pet peeve of mine, once laid out how wokeness is really just “Bolshevism 3.0”. (According to him, Bolshevism itself was actually Bolshevism 2.0….) From this one would begin to think that Marcuse was literally a Bolshevik, or at least somehow affiliated with the U.S.S.R. Maybe he was a Russian spy!! By now my readers are probably wondering why any serious Marxist would engage such absurd ideas. However, these preposterous arguments contain an inverted grain of truth.

What the anti-woke movement fails to take into account is that many Marxists, myself included, do not consider Marcuse to be legitimately Marxist. Marcuse and the Frankfurt School did take Marxist analysis, which had been focused on the economic and political sphere and apply it to culture. This led to some groundbreaking theories, such as Adorno’s critique of what he termed the “culture industry”. Yet it also was a retreat into what Luckacs dubbed the “grand hotel abyss”. Instead of Marxism creeping into the academy, Marxism became deradicalised so as to enmesh it in the university structure. It was a way to amputate the revolutionary element and turn it into a theory that was digestible for petite bourgeois professors. What had been revolutionary that required revolutionary praxis was cut down to fit into the ivory tower. I do not think this was some grand scheme, although the C.I.A. was pleased to see it occur. Rather, I believe it was an inevitable result of divorcing Marxist theory from praxis and the “engine of history”, the proletariat. It must be noted that Marcuse did work for the state department, but he was certainly not working for the Bolsheviks. In fact, he was engaged in anti-Soviet data analysis, helping the U.S. during the Cold War. (I discussed this whole topic in more detail with Max Parry on Captive Minds, “The C.I.A. and the New Left”.) Thus, we can see that the neo-LaRouchite argument is not conjured out of thin air.

It is a (philosophically) idealist postulation to blame the permissive society we see today on the ideas of one man. Rather, we must look at the changes in the economic base of the society to see why his ideas gained such traction. Marcuse criticised the repressive nature of capitalist society. A repressive society had been the norm, but that all began to change around the time of Marcuse’s writing. The sixties were ringing in a new era of free love, lifestyle politics, and ubiquitous drug use. In a word, a permissive society.

Yet this was due to changes in the economic base, not the theories of Marcuse the MasterMind of Evil Woke Bolshevism. New markets had to be opened to prevent a crisis of over production. The working class had to be distracted from their shared position of exploitation. The repressed anger of the exploited classes had to be let out in desired channels so they would not turn on their overlords, so they would not have a revolution. It was a systematic necessity to unleash appetites in order to stimulate consumption. It helped to prevent revolution and suppress class struggle. The expansionary drive of capital itself caused the societal decay. The books of Herbert Marcuse have played a negligible role. Perhaps Marcuse did not realise how a non-repressive society fit the needs of late-stage capitalism.

Woke ideology, however, does owe a bit of its legacy to him. Marcuse posited that the working class was no longer an agent of revolutionary change. Rather, he put his hope in students and the socially marginalised. We see the effects of this attitude on much of the left today. The new agents of societal change are trans people, the unhoused sympathisers and the neurodivergent. People that do not necessarily have the ability to materially change the economic relations of society. A changeover from a productive society to a (mostly) consumptive society required a change in the dominant ideology. The population was pacified by “recreation” and the narrative that class was secondary to identity gained in strength. The era of neoliberal globalisation required the ideology of the supreme and liberated individual. The identity of the individual mattered most. No longer something assigned by society, but an identity assigned to oneself. Perhaps postmodernism is neoliberalism in theory. According to this new ideology, which is in lockstep with neoliberalism, one is liberated to create one’s identity however one sees fit. Even the confines of the body must be transcended so as to truly free the penultimate Self. Just like the relentless tide of capital accumulation and circulation, all boundaries must be questioned and broken down. Self expression is the order of the day, a postmodern narcissism which destroys class solidarity and any sense of belonging. The expansion of the market into every sphere of human life activity requires the language of inclusion to make its invasion.

The Democratic National Convention of Communists

The common thread that draws many right-wing conspiracy theories together is the fear of communism and communist infiltration. The covid lockdowns and the ensuing economic problems were a result of communists taking over the U.S. The W.E.F. exists to implement world communism with its pat phrase, “you will own nothing and be happy”. Biden was a communist, Harris was a communist. A reddit user even realised that their exploitive boss was a communist. I could go on…

McCarthyism has left an indelible scar on the American psyche. This is some of the reason for these claims, I think. For around a century, U.S. citizens have been told that communism means the impoverishment and enslavement of the masses to a select few apparatchiks who are insulated from the societal ills they’ve caused. Many of the inverted and distorted criticisms the media levelled, and continues to level, at communism can be read much earlier in the works of committed revolutionaries directed towards imperialist capitalism, the real cause of poverty, monopolisation, and the concentration of power in the hands of a wealthy elite. For a long time, the mainstream media has obfuscated information. It accuses the enemies of capitalism and imperialism of being exactly what it is and committing the crimes it in fact commits. “Communism causes famines”, yet the C.I.A. caused crop failures in Cuba so as to blame them on Castro. “Hamas wants to kill all Jews”, whilst Israel genocides the Palestinians with vociferous support from the U.S. This inversion of reality functions to this day. It is an embedded technique of, to borrow a term from Althusser, the ideological state apparatus. If the ills of capitalism are perceived as the ills of communism in the public mind, have the terms become flip flopped? Thus, when an average workaday person rails about the dire economic situation they’re in, the concentration of wealth, and the biomedically fascistic “green” agenda, saying it’s communism perhaps they are not as “hopeless politically backwards” as one might think. They are criticising very real problems, they’re just not using the correct term. If they’re pointing to societal ills in the United States which have been caused by the Western capitalist empire and calling it communism, then what are they really criticising? Aren’t they criticising the capitalist U.S.? It matters more what someone is criticising than what words they are using to critique it. Of course, this presents a huge obstacle for any communist, since many people balk at the idea of any project called communism/socialism. However, now is a time when the mainstream media is more distrusted than ever. This presents an opportunity to attempt to undo the effects of years and years of anti-communist propaganda. Maybe the inverted truths can be righted and ahistorical myths shattered. Maybe the internalised anti-communism hammered into the brains of people who would otherwise be receptive to it can be overcome. If anything, the material situation many people in the U.S. are faced with will facilitate the arousal of class awareness. If work is undertaken to challenge the hegemonic narrative, we could be faced with a revolutionary situation. Perhaps I’m too optimistic, but I do think it is important to fight the information war by focusing on what is actually happening in the world.

It is time to fill the void left by the impotent pseudo-left, or the right will fill the hole (the monied right, not your average M.A.G.A. hat wearing trucker). Trump’s abysmally begun second term offers an opportunity to appeal to his disillusioned base, who are starting to realise that he doesn’t have their best interests in mind. It is important to actually talk to people and get a sense of how they feel about current events, even if they are on the right or are “conspiracists”. I think it is an unproductive attitude to treat other people as if they are stupid, ignorant, or delusional. I think it is important to be courteous and inquire as to why someone thinks they way they do.

After all, the working class should not be derided, called ignorant, or be chided for their “cultural backwardness”. That will only continue to deter them from genuinely left politics. Rather, we must seize on the nascent critical impulse present in many right wing conspiracists and provide information that speaks to everyday people’s conditions. Education is in a shambles, so it’s no wonder that many people get led down limited hangouts that offer simplistic explanations of the state of the world. Within capitalism, the schools exist to train the correct attitudes of obsequiousness into the exploited classes. If it wasn’t time before, it certainly is now to wrench Marxist analysis out of the exclusive domain of the academy and reunite it with the working class. Understanding the mechanism of capitalism and imperialism helps to protect oneself from whichever way the propaganda wind blows. It helps one understand that being in a low-income bracket is not always the result of personal failure, rather, a result of living under a system of exploitation. Without a concrete analysis of the material situation, it is easy to get swept away in the tide of sensationalism and conspiracy theories.

“The most revolutionary thing one can do always is to proclaim loudly what is happening.”

—Rosa Luxembourg

“As a communist - and not only that, but also as a philosopher and a historian - I am going to fight and continue to fight the dominant ideology. For the dominant ideology is a manipulation of history and an obstacle to the process of emancipation. And we, for our part, have to rethink this process itself.”

—Domenico Losurdo

End note: This was written by an autodidact, the daughter of a service sector employee, who has never attended a day of public (or private) school let alone any university classes. I actually started out my political journey thinking I was right-wing, but the strange combination of reading suggested by my parents, exploring books on my own, Michael Parenti talks, and being on the Aesthetic Resistance podcast developed my views in quite the opposite direction. Thus, I cannot be accused of being a hypocritical and privileged “Marxist” college student who has no understanding of the working class.

Links:

Cited above: https://www.thinkchina.sg/economy/why-george-soros-obsessed-defeating-xi-jinpings-china

https://www.georgesoros.com/2022/01/31/george-soros-on-china-remarks-delivered-at-the-hoover-institution/

I don’t endorse Jacobin, but….: https://jacobin.com/2022/03/james-lindsay-race-marxism-book-review-crt-liberalism

Some important reading: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm

The C.I.A. and the New Left

For fun: