Why is 2020 Such A Crazy Year?

Street Riots. Looting. Student protests. Buildings occupied. Police attacked. A home-grown leftist rebellion shaking the institutes of power. It was a full-blown rebellion, even a cultural revolution. No, this is not about the George Floyd riots of 2020. It’s the key year of 1968. While China was having its own Mao-inspired cultural revolution at that time (1966-1976), the West was rocked by home-grown leftism, which includes communism, socialism, fascism, and Nazism (Note: while some say Nazism was ‘right-wing,’ not only were its methods leftist, but it used the words ‘National Socialism’ in is title).

On April 4th, 1968, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, a crime that spawned riots in over 100 American cities. Protests in Paris became frighteningly close to a leftist takeover. In June, US Presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down in Los Angeles. Two months later the Democratic Party’s Presidential Convention was disrupted by violent protests and riots in Chicago. It was the apotheosis of rebellion, like the overflow of lava from a volcanic eruption.

The 1960s were the age of the contraception (birth control) pill, the sexual revolution, with ‘free love,’ banning of prayer in public schools, the Beatles, eastern religion, hallucinogenic drugs, anti-Vietnam War protests, rise of the New Age Movement, Age of Aquarius, and Woodstock 1969. Leftism was cool and trendy. Despite the potency of the rebellion, anti-communist Richard Nixon was elected President in 1968 and calm eventually returned.

Despite the rhetoric and eftism was exposed in all its horror:

1.        1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union;

2.        Repression in Castro’s Cuba, with a stream of boat people fleeing the island nation and landing on the Florida coast;

3.        Backlash in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975;

4.        Soviet clampdown on Poland in 1981;

5.        Tiananmen Square 1989;

All these events, and more, made people think twice about utopian leftism, where 120 million people died under its banner in the 20th Century. Then the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union disappeared off the map, and it seemed Marxism-Leftism was truly dead and buried.

Not so. Leftism is having a revival and its is manifest by the on-going cultural civil war, as well as the unrest triggered by the death in police custody of George Floyd.

Topic	1960s	2020s
Villain	Bourgeoise	White privilege
Area of Oppression	Economy	Culture
Apostles	Marxism-Leninism	Gramsci & Marcuse
Seminal Writings	Das Kapital - Marx	Repressive Tolerance - Marcuse
Victims	Working class - proletariat	Minorities
The Challenge	Class Structure	Ethnicity
Rights Sought	Worker’s Rights	Transgender Rights
Burning Issue	Imperialism	Racism
Ethnic Focus	Cuba’s paradise	Palestinian victims
Enemies:	Western capitalism	Western capitalism & Soviet totalitarianism
Physical gesture	Black power fist	Taking the knee
Focus of Hate	President Richard Nixon	President Donald Trump
Celebration	Rock and Roll	Pride parades
Status	Left as Counter-culture	Left as Dominant culture via media, academia, Hollywood, & judiciary

Marxism-Leftism: 1960s and 2020s

Introducing Cultural Marxism

Back to our original question: Why is 2020 such a crazy year? The pandemic lockdown caused a bored, frustrated, confined population ready to explode. Yet there is a socio-cultural reason in understanding the crisis in America and the West. There are several streams flowing that support leftism and neo-Marxism: Progressivism, Postmodernism, and Cultural Marxism. The unrests and riots of 2020 are highly dominated by the latter, though they are influenced by the others. In some ways, there is a coalition of all three streams which is causing a volatile cocktail (another reason for the craziness is that there are potent spiritual forces at work - but we will address this issue in a subsequent article).

Cultural Marxism goes beyond the economic theory of classic Marxism in seeking the liberation’ of ‘oppressed groups’ in areas of gender, race, sexuality, and other identities. Notable Cultural Marxist groups include ‘Occupy Wall Street,’ ‘Black Lives Matter,’ ‘Antifa,’ ’Extinction Rebellion,’ ‘Safe Schools,’ ‘School Strike for Climate,’ and ‘Liberation Theology.’

The goal of Cultural Marxism is not reform, but revolution; not change, but chaos; not building up but tearing down. To them, the system is irredeemably broken and must be completely destroyed. The ‘system’ includes democratic government, authority figures like leaders, police and military, capitalism, small business, private property, marriage, family, and the Church.

Cultural Marxists see oppression in heterosexuality, the white race, cisgender (personal identity and gender corresponded to their birth sex), and Christianity. So they want to tear this all down and champion pansexuality, diversity, transgenderism, and Islam.

Social justice, feminism, transgenderism, neo-progressivism, post-colonialism are under the banner of Cultural Marxism. Key terms, like ‘tolerance,’ ‘justice,’ and ‘racism’ are subject to redefinition - you would not recognise the meaning of these terms today.

And there’s more: as individuals, every aspect of our identity like race, family, culture, sexual orientation, and gender is no longer taken as a given; it is questioned and traditional things are to be altered for the sake of liberating oppressed minorities.

A History Lesson

How did Marxism, which killed millions, failed in its mission of a worker’s paradise, and collapsed into a heap at the end of the Cold War, make such a virile and vicious comeback in the West? By a clever and patient strategy.

In the year Karl Marx died in 1883, the Fabian Socialists came into being. Their goal was socialism by evolution rather than revolution. The pathway to the worker’s paradise would be incremental and done ‘inside the system,’ in other words it would be quietly subversive. Of interest, their logo included a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing.’

Following the Fabians was Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), who founded the Italian Communist Party. Imprisoned by Benito Mussolini, he had time to write 1000s of pages on ‘cultural hegemony’ of the bourgeoisie, which they used to control society. He was noted for advocating the undermining of Judaeo-Christian culture from the inside, thus a quiet neo-Marxist revolution.

Around the same time in the 1930s was the Frankfurt School. Their claim to fame was ‘critical thinking’ where every aspect of culture was criticised incessantly. One of the key intellectuals was neo-Marxist Herbert Marcuse, who taught on ‘repressive tolerance.’ The idea of the Frankfurt School was to translate Marxism from an economic theory into a cultural dynamic.

Then came Saul Alinsky (1909-1972), an American Marxist who wrote the playbook which is being used today.

Next time, we will learn how Alinsky's methods have become standard procedure with Cultural Marxists, the role of education, and the best response to this rising phenomena. To be continued.