It’s All About the Revolution: Ten Techniques Marxists Have Deployed to Gain Influence
For an ideology born in a library to an loathsome scholar, Marxism has never shied from world conquest. Its earliest proponents, Marx and Engels included, were committed to inciting revolution in all countries. And Lenin, a man of praxis and internationalism, believed that besides revolution and warfare, the way to defeat capitalism was through propaganda.
To that end, the Left in America has engaged in cultural warfare – a “whole of society” revolution to destroy Western civilization. Critical Theory, wokeism, DEI, and ideas about gender fluidity – these are all distortions of reality deployed to change our system of values, beliefs, attitudes, and preferences. Leftists believe that by doing so, they will cause existing social structures to crumble. They think anarchic socialism will then become viable, emerging from the chaos of a society without order and values.
The following ten are among the techniques of influence the Left uses regularly. The list is by no means exhaustive, nor without a degree of overlap. Some methods are as old as time, but some are unique to Marxists. Awareness of them could help thwart the Left’s malign intentions.
Manipulation of language: In his essay ‘Politics and the English Language,’ as well as in the novel 1984, George Orwell described how communist dictatorships have used language for controlling people by manipulating perception.
Examples abound in America today. Abortion supporters are described as “pro-choice,” sanitizing the extinguishing of a life. Illegal border-crossers are called “undocumented migrants,” absolving them of criminal intent. New sets of pronouns, laughable concepts such as “sex assigned at birth,” and dangerous euphemisms like “gender affirming care” disrupt reality while pretending to preserve human dignity.
Convenient labelling is also used against those who question the Left. “Hate speech,” “white supremacist,” “right wing extremist,” “Islamophobe,” and similar terms are freely used to condemn skeptics and cancel them.
Rewriting history: “The first battlefield is to rewrite history. Take away the heritage of a people and they are easily persuaded,” Marx wrote. It’s a chillingly true observation, and explains why Leftists lay so much stress on presenting history so that it molds public opinion in their favor.
The Left wants Americans to believe that this great country and its heritage are defined by two great evils – racism and slavery. That is why they proclaim that America was founded when the first slaves arrived in 1619, not when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. The Biden administration backs this blasphemy, aimed at destroying a traditionally sanguine, forward-looking culture by inducing guilt and self-loathing.
Gaslighting: This psychological maneuver uses cognitive dissonance to sow doubt and guilt, and makes people question their memories, perceptions, judgment, and reality. When President Biden was repeatedly described a few months earlier as “sharp as a tack,” and “on top of his game,” those who suspected his fitness for office were bound to feel they had been cruel and judgmental. His dementia became obvious, however, during the presidential debate in June.
Gaslighting was also used to hide the truth about Hunter Biden and the evidence of corruption that turned up on his laptop. The whole affair was described as “Russian disinformation.”
DARVO (or, Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender): This is a technique typical of cultural Marxists. When parents objected to drag queen story hours in schools, Leftists responded by saying drag queen hour only “engages” children in meaningful activity (denial). They described protesters as bigots perpetrating LGBTQ hatred (attack). They also claimed they felt threatened by the transphobia, which could turn violent (reversing victim and offender). Similarly, parents who opposed pornography in school libraries were accused of censorship and LGBTQ-phobia.
Identity politics: This involves claiming power or entitlement based on race, ethnicity, sex, or sexual identification, and is usually accompanied by loud assertions of victimhood. Merit, effort, innovation, grit, individualism – virtues that transform lives and cultures – are negated as undesirable bourgeoisie, “white,” or capitalist traits. Intersectionality, a posited cousin of identity, has invaded the evaluation process for public and private institutions, job candidates, academic performance, and so on. Based on the notion that a person may be marginalized or victimized by any aspect of his or her identity or experience, intersectionality demands compensation through relaxed standards.
Identity politics is also used to coerce support. In the last election, black supporters of Trump were told they “ain’t black” if they aren’t voting for Biden.
Disinformation and obfuscation: This may take the form of outright institutional lying, a norm in the erstwhile U.S.S.R. It has become a prominent feature of American institutions. After the assassination attempt on Trump, missteps in planning, communication, staffing, and reconnaissance were covered up with lies. Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle claimed that the building used by the shooter wasn’t secured because it had a dangerous “sloped roof,” which the shooter could nevertheless scale and repeatedly fire from. Witnesses saw the shooter and asked law enforcers to act, but agents later claimed they weren’t able to eliminate the threat in time.
Oppressor vs. Oppressed: This technique is used to seek revenge by inducing guilt for an alleged privileged status. It’s commonly used against whites and Western capitalist countries, but not limited to them, as the propaganda against Israel shows. The Jewish nation is maligned as a genocidal “oppressor” indiscriminately killing innocents in Gaza – never mind that the Islamic terrorist group Hamas massacred more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and took more than 200 people hostage.
Entryism: This is a classic Leninist strategy of gaining control over organizations, especially centrist or non-hardline leftist political groups, by gradually infiltrating them and lying low until the crucial takeover. Such a takeover, of the Labor Party in Britain, is well-described in Frederick Forsyth’s The Fourth Protocol, a meticulously researched thriller praised for verisimilitude. An example closer to home is the Leftist takeover of humanities departments at American universities, once famous for their classical liberal education.
Entryism is also deployed by pressuring or shaming organizations and businesses for not employing people of certain groups – say blacks, or Hispanics, or transgenders. The aim is to eventually transform these organizations to foster Leftist policies.
Degrowth: By pushing goals such as “sustainability,” “ESG,” net-zero emissions, and so on under the guise of “saving the planet,” Marxists aim to contract Western economies. Meanwhile, China continues to pollute and grow. Eventually, standards of living will deteriorate in the West, populations will decline, and the potential for communism to take root will accelerate.
Playing the victim: To garner support, the Left has always created victim groups it claims to fight for. It demeans individuals by making them believe that they are not responsible for their actions or lack of action. For example, low math scores of black students are blamed on systemic racism, not on lack of parental involvement, bad teaching, or lack of motivation.
In summing up, it might be worth pointing out that if cultural Marxist ideology seems muddled with contradictions, it is by design – to sow confusion and division, making it easier to gain influence and control. An example of such a contradiction is the putative ideal of feminism: advancing equality for women in all spheres of society. But if Marxists care about women, why would they put them in harm’s way by forcing them to share bathrooms with biological men posing (or “identifying”) as women? Why would they revile women who object to the intrusion as “transphobic”?
The truth is that the endgame is not about the issue – women’s rights, saving the planet, protecting transgenders/people of color, or whatever. It’s about fundamentally transforming American society and preparing the soil for communism. It’s all about the revolution.
Image: Darkcloud2222, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed
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