The Monthly Review — April 2025
All of New Outlook's topics, stories, and opinions you missed this past month.
For readers who crave short, snappy reads—whether you’re pressed for time, commuting, or just looking for a quick gateway into bigger ideas.
The Monthly Review is a curated preview of the topics, stories, and opinions I explore on New Outlook—from bite-sized insights to deep dives. Let’s jump in!
➊ PRESCRIPTIONS FOR THE LEFT
★★★★★
New Outlook Recommends
Podcast: Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning
Episode: “The Democrats Should Embrace Their Inner Fascist”
Published: March 20, 2025
Written & Produced by: Sasha Stone
A few months ago, former Democrat and Substack writer Sasha Stone, released a podcast episode that played like an open letter to the Democratic party (in fact, the text from that episode is available for reading here). The primary message is no attempt at hyperbole — she suggests, with ample sarcasm, that the Democrats should finally embrace their inner fascist and be once and for all done with their decades long pretense of claiming to care about civil liberties, freedom of speech, and tolerance for alternative viewpoints. The excerpts from the podcast alone say all there is to say (but the podcast, in its entirety, is worth an attentive listen):
What you see on the modern Left is failure everywhere you look. A failed legacy media, a failing Hollywood, and an empire in collapse propped up a failed political party full of failed candidates.
Lies over truth: You lie all of the time, to yourselves and to other people—the legacy media lies. Hollywood lies. Women are men, and men are women, but gender is not binary.
Solution: As fascists, there is no argument. You take complete control of the press (oh, wait, you already did) and force everyone to accept your version of the truth (oh wait, you already did!) and then mandate it so all must obey (yeah, you tried that, didn’t work out so well).
Division over unity: Admit it. You would prefer to be living in a segregated society with Trump supporters banned from your restaurants, your movie theaters, your schools, and your social media. You don’t even hide it anymore.
Solution: As fascists, you can simply beat them up, spit on them, knock the hats off their heads, kick them out of restaurants, and harass them on airplanes. Oh wait, you already did!
I always thought we were the good guys, that we knew the difference between right and wrong, that we wouldn’t dehumanize whole groups of people because we didn’t agree on everything, and tell them they were no longer welcome in their own country.
➋ THE LEFT’S HYPOCRISY
What fascinates me about people who viscerally hate Trump is how consistently duplicitous their arguments are. There are countless valid criticisms to make about this Trump administration, yet these people often bypass them in favor of the most baseless, ideological attacks—revealing their own blatant hypocrisy in the process.
”We care about women’s rights so we would never support a misogynist as a president.” Yeah, but you did. You supported a misogynist for president—and you did it gleefully. He was just in office for four years while you looked the other way, even as women like Tara Reade were thrown under the bus for coming forward with their stories of sexual assault at the hands of Joe Biden. It was “Believe all women” until it threatened your favorite Democratic politician. So the real question is: do you actually care about women’s rights, or do you just need something—anything—to screech about when the oppositional party is in power?
“Women’s safety will be under attack under a Trump administration.”Once again, it’s dishonest to suddenly claim concern for women’s safety if it was never an issue for you during Biden’s presidency. Under that administration, you were perfectly fine with granting access to men cosplaying as women in women’s sports, spaces, and sacred grounds. If you weren’t advocating for women’s safety then, you have no credibility being up in arms about it now.
I always come across these kinds of arguments from political ideologues on the Left, and it’s always so disingenuous. It’s clear they never truly cared about the issues they claim to protest. If they did, they would have been advocating for them consistently, regardless of who was president. There are very real and serious criticisms to be made about this early Trump administration. What I’d like to see more of is people on the Left offering honest, principled critiques instead of reaching for straw man arguments. If women’s rights and safety genuinely matter to you, then you should have been sounding the alarm during the Biden administration too. Otherwise, you come off like every other ideologue—lacking principles and always willing to excuse heinous acts when it’s politically convenient for “your side.”
➌ THE FALSE MORALITY OF IDEOLOGUES
From the onset of Rogan’s podcast with Douglas Murray and Dave Smith, you can get a good sense of how propagandists and ideological thinkers operate as soon as Murray begins speaking and probing into why Rogan hasn’t been taking careful inventory of how his guests have skewed on the Israel-Palestine issue. He also leans into why Rogan has been having non-experts on the show, as if he is some “expert” we’re supposed to revere for whatever reason.
It’s quite interesting because this is how they subtly browbeat people into submission. Make you feel guilty for having done nothing wrong.
When I hosted a podcast years ago, I got a taste of this when my former activist friends asked, in a similar way to Murray’s pestering of Rogan, why I’d been “centering white voices on the podcast” during the height of the George Floyd protests when I was “supposed to be platforming black and brown voices.”
If you blink too fast, you’ll miss the subtlety of their pressure campaign that demands you censor and banish others who do not believe what they believe. The irony is that these people would not even blink once before they revoke your right to think and speak freely, if they ever had the opportunity. And they’ve certainly tried it. It’s sickening.
➍ POLITICS AND CULTURE CULTS
There’s a reason why cults will either crank up the narrative against heretics, to apply a more convincing pressure, or directly make your life a living hell when they catch wind of your efforts to break away.
They know that if you successfully escape their enclosed community, it may eventually become their undoing. You effectively possess confidential knowledge of the inner workings of the entire operation, and you may very well be inclined to tell-all to outsiders upon escaping. Afterall, a propaganda campaign ceases to be effective if the master narrative is constantly disrupted and the mechanisms exposed to the public.
This is precisely how the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, in addition to the activist flanks and movements within, function. Dissidents who so much as signal that they may hold alternative opinions that deviate from the official party narratives are quickly entered into a cycle of pressure campaigns. Their character is entirely subjected to destructive smear tactics. Their fortitude endlessly tested.
If they are tough, they’ll withstand the pressures and come out on the end even bolder, louder (see Candace Owens, who’s become an investigative powerhouse following her ouster from The Daily Wire). If they’re weak, unable to bear the pressure of being perceived as an outcast, they’ll fold and rejoin the cult (see Bernie Sanders, who’s become nothing but a feckless coward whose sole responsibility it is to sheep-herd a disaffected generation back into the anti-democratic Democrat party). Often, they’ll even become the newly appointed enforcer who is tasked with applying the pressure against new defectors.
➎ THE DEVIL IS IN THE ACTIONS. THE SLOGANS MASK IT.
The modern Left longs to disappear dissidents off the map into the digital gulags. They want you forever banished to toil away in silence and poverty, struggling to put your life back together.
Behind every seemingly “well-intentioned” movement of the modern Left is a ruthless grasp for power and control.
The actions, not the slogans, always reveal the real intention.
➏ TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN
The Liberal mindset:
“If you critique my favorite Progressive/Democrat politician, you must be MAGA.” The Conservative mindset:
“If you critique my favorite MAGA/Republican politician, you must be a Leftist.” Zero nuance to be found among them. And we wonder why politicians keep finding new ways to swindle these political sycophants every 2-4 years, why journalism is dying, and why nothing ever gets accomplished.
➐ WHEN KEEPING IT REAL GOES WRONG
If you’ve ever wanted to understand the core of Liberal and Leftist activism, perhaps no other video encapsulates it better than this one.
It is the best illustration of how activism on the Left works today, and why I often say that to be an activist is to be intellectually lazy. It requires no rigorous thought. No nuance. No anchoring principles. It’s all just superficial, emotional, virtue signaling by people who wish to publicize their morality to the world without having done anything morally worthy.
As Jordan Peterson in his heyday once said, “We like the feeling of unearned moral superiority. [The activist ethos] is an abdication of responsibility with a mask of social virtue. It’s superficial, and trendy, and too easy. And it externalizes the blame—the ‘evil’ is always elsewhere. Which is a dreadful mistake to make, because the evil isn’t elsewhere. That’s the thing that you understand when you’re wise, is the evil is not elsewhere. It’s you! Because you’re not everything you could be. And so you should work on that before going and telling someone else that maybe they’re not who they should be.”
Watch the full Jordan Peterson segment on virtue signaling activism below:
➑ NO SAVIORS
When those you once looked up to—in the intellectual space or otherwise—disappoint you by failing to uphold their very own principles, it’s a reminder of the autonomy and power you have as an individual.
So often we relinquish that power to intellectual figures we believe can help steer us toward freedom, peace, knowledge, a better future state.
In reality, each one of us always had what it took. Sometimes it just takes having your heroes disappoint you to wake up and realize it.
➒ A MOVEMENT WITHOUT PRINCIPLES
Women: “Down with the patriarchy!”
Also Women: “Men should be included in women’s sports, you bigot!”
➓ WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, LIKE CLOCKWORK, THEY WILL LABEL YOU
If you refer to this entry — Communist Smear Tactics: Then and Now — you’ll understand the core of the tactic being deployed against you.
That’s a wrap! Hope you enjoyed this edition of The Monthly Review. If something resonated, drop a like, leave a comment, and let’s discuss further. Share this with a friend. Thank you for reading, subscribing, and supporting this project. Until next month!
I really like that Jordan Peterson quote. It’s a shame what he’s become in the last few years though.
I really want this sign!