The Belief in Socialism is Evil: When Moderation Leads to Radicalism.
22 July 2019 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
lately I've been reading four different
books at the same time which is not a humble brag the result is you don't really make that much progress in any one of those four books one of them is this tome from Bernie Sanders the book he wrote to help get himself elected oh there's the dust jacket our revolution and you know I've been talking to a lot of people who describe themselves as socialists I've been talking to a lot of people who describe themselves as communists and have had to reflect a great deal on the profound evil influence that is in their lives I've had a lot of videos here talking about socialism what it means in principle what it means the theory what it means in practice but psychologically and ethically the belief in socialism these people have I will I would not hesitate to say that it's influence in their life is evil give you an example real quick I had this same conversation repeatedly past couple of weeks talked to someone who admits that yes communist dictatorships killed millions of people yes communist dictatorships you know were economic failures not just in the sense of underperforming but also of having you know mass starvation at various times this kind of thing to say they were underperforming would be an understatement but then they basically say to me don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and when one guy said that to me literally those the actual words he used he said you know what that reminds me of I said to him you reminded me of an incident decades ago at a Green Party event this is the ecological party in Canada which is a farce Green Party of Canada and this woman walks up to me and starts talking to me and she's not like wearing a swastika or anything but as this conversation goes on it becomes clear that she is literally a Nazi I mean I was a lot younger but also I just do not go to a Green Party event I have expect to run into a real living breathing Nazi face to face but they're out there they're not just trolls on the Internet okay all right this woman is telling me with absolutely no irony and no punchline how she has a really high opinion of the forestry policy and the farming policies of Adolf Hitler this conversation now but you know what I don't care what you tell me about farming and forestry under the Third Reich I'm gonna go ahead and throw the baby out with the bathwater on that one like you know what I've never read anything about it I have never read anything good or bad about like timber production and what Adolf Hitler said I just don't know but there is absolutely no chance that what you're gonna tell me is so positive on that isolated topic that I'm gonna take a step back and like reevaluate the significance of Adolf Hitler the Nazis no I'm not gonna say anything positive about that period of history in Germany because of this anecdote you're presented with but you know there's something else going on here it's also possible it's even likely that what you're telling me about forestry and farming is propaganda produced by neo-nazis right you know the guy was talking he got it immediately the particular guy in this particular conversation and a couple days ago it's like you know there's nothing you can say to me about communism in this anecdotal way that's gonna make me think it was good or excusable that Lenin massacred that the opposition party the that actually won the elections in 1917 that he hunted down and killed the winners of the election did carry out his terrible could a death there's nothing you can't say to me well you know the USSR they had this space program and they put a man in space therefore it doesn't matter that nobody had the right to vote therefore doesn't matter that nobody had the freedom to criticize the government in the press these basic basic things nothing is ever gonna compensate for that this is not a situation where you can say you know don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and what I see happening on the internet again and again is that socialism you know and socialism need not be able for example as Bernie Sanders defined it need not necessarily be evil but in practice it is evil because what what the commies do what the far-left does right now in 2019 is they present socialism as one step one stage on the development towards communism and they tell people well if you approve of socialism then therefore you must inexorably and inevitably approve of communism as the end goal of that development now that is not the position Bernie Sanders takes Bernie Sanders says you look at the United States you look at Denmark or Scotland and the United States should make a transition to being more like Denmark or Scotland his view of the world is that socialism is the destination and by socialism he means a mixed system of liberal capitalist economy like they have in Denmark with a stock market and freedom of the press and elections but where there's a high tax rate and those taxes are used to take care of the poor to provide health care or to provide university education these are the benefits that's that's what Bernie Sanders has day now it deserves to be asked why is the term Sabine used with that at all maybe it home maybe by the year 2021 maybe just a few years from now these terms will have become mutually disambiguated I don't know but the far left including the Communists they are really out there trying to recruit and they're trying to use socialism as the hook or socialism as the slippery slope you know to take people in and I've got to tell you reading Bernie Sanders book I respect him less than I did before reading the book the the economic wisdom of Bernie Sanders boils down to him saying make America great again it boils down to Bernie Sanders literally pointing at Detroit and saying look at how what what a great industrial powerhouse Detroit used to be and how great that manufacturing base was for the poor and the middle class and talk talks of one of the woes and if you want to revive the car industry in Detroit you're not going to have to invent a more efficient battery for electric vehicles you're gonna have to invent a time machine okay you're gonna have to travel back in time to the post-world War two period when Japan was devastated by aerial bombardment and when Europe was devastated by aerial bombardment and therefore those two places could not compete with the United States of America in manufacturing cars and washing machines and all those things around the world because guess what the conditions under which you know Detroit became this manufacturing hub that dominated the whole world those conditions were created by the devastation of World War two they were not sustainable they could not possibly be recreated today and you know there were a few other places that also manufactured cars you might have heard of like China it's not just Europe and Japan that you'd have to compete with now there are so many reasons let's not even get into Mexico and so on there are so many reasons why the economic miracle of the post-war 1950s economy cannot possibly happen in America again today but that seems to be the only promise the only hope for the future Bernie Sanders has to offer is this wistful memory you know looking back so this experience you know in the last few months of both reading about contemporary socialism reading the perspective of Bernie Sanders and speaking directly to socialists and communists it's not that it's changed my understanding of socialism kind of on a chalkboard in principle it's changed my understanding of psychologically the way the belief in socialism interacts with the human ego in the 21st century when so many people get involved in this process of sharpening the knives of their ideology in little echo chambers on the Internet and that's you know that's kind of what I've where I've been challenging people you know I've been talking to people by voice chat on discord in these groups where it's a whole group of left-wing people just repeating things that are factually false and in almost all cases they can be disproven with a quick google search you know whether it's claims about the American economy and poverty and unemployment in the United States we will wait when was the last time you actually looked at a chart of what unemployment looks like in the United States in like the last 20 years of what what are you talking about whether it's I mean I've heard so many kind of false facts invoked in passing to justify kind of you know left-wing articles of faith but I mean I think I think the most the most fundamental absurdity of all is this idea of moderation being used to justify radicalism so the point is their claim is you shouldn't be disillusioned with communism you shouldn't be disillusioned with socialism just because of the disaster the past you should be moderate you should quote unquote not throw the baby out with the bathwater but what they really mean when they say be moderate is you should make excuses for mass murder you should make excuses for starvation and economic failure you should make excuses for radicalism and revolution and call that moderate because when you're living within a left-wing echo chamber where everyone's telling each other that the revolution is coming and that capitalism is unsustainable and that conditions in the United States with only three percent unemployment people that it's teetering on the edge of a collapse and the poor are about to rise up with pitchforks so day after tomorrow they're telling each other these things again and again and again without any interest in the facts they pass a point where extremism becomes the norm and we're making excuses for revolution even excuses for direct violence and purges in the name of that revolution starts to seem to them to be the very soul of moderation
books at the same time which is not a humble brag the result is you don't really make that much progress in any one of those four books one of them is this tome from Bernie Sanders the book he wrote to help get himself elected oh there's the dust jacket our revolution and you know I've been talking to a lot of people who describe themselves as socialists I've been talking to a lot of people who describe themselves as communists and have had to reflect a great deal on the profound evil influence that is in their lives I've had a lot of videos here talking about socialism what it means in principle what it means the theory what it means in practice but psychologically and ethically the belief in socialism these people have I will I would not hesitate to say that it's influence in their life is evil give you an example real quick I had this same conversation repeatedly past couple of weeks talked to someone who admits that yes communist dictatorships killed millions of people yes communist dictatorships you know were economic failures not just in the sense of underperforming but also of having you know mass starvation at various times this kind of thing to say they were underperforming would be an understatement but then they basically say to me don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and when one guy said that to me literally those the actual words he used he said you know what that reminds me of I said to him you reminded me of an incident decades ago at a Green Party event this is the ecological party in Canada which is a farce Green Party of Canada and this woman walks up to me and starts talking to me and she's not like wearing a swastika or anything but as this conversation goes on it becomes clear that she is literally a Nazi I mean I was a lot younger but also I just do not go to a Green Party event I have expect to run into a real living breathing Nazi face to face but they're out there they're not just trolls on the Internet okay all right this woman is telling me with absolutely no irony and no punchline how she has a really high opinion of the forestry policy and the farming policies of Adolf Hitler this conversation now but you know what I don't care what you tell me about farming and forestry under the Third Reich I'm gonna go ahead and throw the baby out with the bathwater on that one like you know what I've never read anything about it I have never read anything good or bad about like timber production and what Adolf Hitler said I just don't know but there is absolutely no chance that what you're gonna tell me is so positive on that isolated topic that I'm gonna take a step back and like reevaluate the significance of Adolf Hitler the Nazis no I'm not gonna say anything positive about that period of history in Germany because of this anecdote you're presented with but you know there's something else going on here it's also possible it's even likely that what you're telling me about forestry and farming is propaganda produced by neo-nazis right you know the guy was talking he got it immediately the particular guy in this particular conversation and a couple days ago it's like you know there's nothing you can say to me about communism in this anecdotal way that's gonna make me think it was good or excusable that Lenin massacred that the opposition party the that actually won the elections in 1917 that he hunted down and killed the winners of the election did carry out his terrible could a death there's nothing you can't say to me well you know the USSR they had this space program and they put a man in space therefore it doesn't matter that nobody had the right to vote therefore doesn't matter that nobody had the freedom to criticize the government in the press these basic basic things nothing is ever gonna compensate for that this is not a situation where you can say you know don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and what I see happening on the internet again and again is that socialism you know and socialism need not be able for example as Bernie Sanders defined it need not necessarily be evil but in practice it is evil because what what the commies do what the far-left does right now in 2019 is they present socialism as one step one stage on the development towards communism and they tell people well if you approve of socialism then therefore you must inexorably and inevitably approve of communism as the end goal of that development now that is not the position Bernie Sanders takes Bernie Sanders says you look at the United States you look at Denmark or Scotland and the United States should make a transition to being more like Denmark or Scotland his view of the world is that socialism is the destination and by socialism he means a mixed system of liberal capitalist economy like they have in Denmark with a stock market and freedom of the press and elections but where there's a high tax rate and those taxes are used to take care of the poor to provide health care or to provide university education these are the benefits that's that's what Bernie Sanders has day now it deserves to be asked why is the term Sabine used with that at all maybe it home maybe by the year 2021 maybe just a few years from now these terms will have become mutually disambiguated I don't know but the far left including the Communists they are really out there trying to recruit and they're trying to use socialism as the hook or socialism as the slippery slope you know to take people in and I've got to tell you reading Bernie Sanders book I respect him less than I did before reading the book the the economic wisdom of Bernie Sanders boils down to him saying make America great again it boils down to Bernie Sanders literally pointing at Detroit and saying look at how what what a great industrial powerhouse Detroit used to be and how great that manufacturing base was for the poor and the middle class and talk talks of one of the woes and if you want to revive the car industry in Detroit you're not going to have to invent a more efficient battery for electric vehicles you're gonna have to invent a time machine okay you're gonna have to travel back in time to the post-world War two period when Japan was devastated by aerial bombardment and when Europe was devastated by aerial bombardment and therefore those two places could not compete with the United States of America in manufacturing cars and washing machines and all those things around the world because guess what the conditions under which you know Detroit became this manufacturing hub that dominated the whole world those conditions were created by the devastation of World War two they were not sustainable they could not possibly be recreated today and you know there were a few other places that also manufactured cars you might have heard of like China it's not just Europe and Japan that you'd have to compete with now there are so many reasons let's not even get into Mexico and so on there are so many reasons why the economic miracle of the post-war 1950s economy cannot possibly happen in America again today but that seems to be the only promise the only hope for the future Bernie Sanders has to offer is this wistful memory you know looking back so this experience you know in the last few months of both reading about contemporary socialism reading the perspective of Bernie Sanders and speaking directly to socialists and communists it's not that it's changed my understanding of socialism kind of on a chalkboard in principle it's changed my understanding of psychologically the way the belief in socialism interacts with the human ego in the 21st century when so many people get involved in this process of sharpening the knives of their ideology in little echo chambers on the Internet and that's you know that's kind of what I've where I've been challenging people you know I've been talking to people by voice chat on discord in these groups where it's a whole group of left-wing people just repeating things that are factually false and in almost all cases they can be disproven with a quick google search you know whether it's claims about the American economy and poverty and unemployment in the United States we will wait when was the last time you actually looked at a chart of what unemployment looks like in the United States in like the last 20 years of what what are you talking about whether it's I mean I've heard so many kind of false facts invoked in passing to justify kind of you know left-wing articles of faith but I mean I think I think the most the most fundamental absurdity of all is this idea of moderation being used to justify radicalism so the point is their claim is you shouldn't be disillusioned with communism you shouldn't be disillusioned with socialism just because of the disaster the past you should be moderate you should quote unquote not throw the baby out with the bathwater but what they really mean when they say be moderate is you should make excuses for mass murder you should make excuses for starvation and economic failure you should make excuses for radicalism and revolution and call that moderate because when you're living within a left-wing echo chamber where everyone's telling each other that the revolution is coming and that capitalism is unsustainable and that conditions in the United States with only three percent unemployment people that it's teetering on the edge of a collapse and the poor are about to rise up with pitchforks so day after tomorrow they're telling each other these things again and again and again without any interest in the facts they pass a point where extremism becomes the norm and we're making excuses for revolution even excuses for direct violence and purges in the name of that revolution starts to seem to them to be the very soul of moderation