The Monthly Review — August 2024
All of New Outlook's topics, stories, and opinions you missed this past month, in one place.
For the readers who love short, snappy reads. Those who are short on time or in commute. And those who want a quick entry point into exploring bigger ideas.
The Monthly Review is your sneak peek into many of the topics, stories, and opinions I’m typically publishing on New Outlook, from the short notes to the long-form articles. Let’s have a quick dive!
➊ AN UNDETECTABLE COUP
Why has it suddenly become difficult for people to confidently define what a woman is? Why have people become so preoccupied with how many identities, genders, and pronouns there are? How come there are several meanings, in theory and in practice, to the words/initiative Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion? The calculated manipulation of language is at the root of all the unnecessary confusion, and we can look to the “Long March through the Institutions” as a primary source.
In short, the “Long March through the Institutions” defined the incremental intellectual takeover of a society. “The strategy focuses on slowly winning over the chief institutions that determine the direction of a culture and thereby creating a soft revolution from within those institutions,” summarizes Renew’s Bobby Harrington.
In this month’s New Outlook Recommends segment, we look at part 2 of a three-part video series by Christopher Rufo on America’s Cultural Revolution. This part focuses on the “Long March Through the Institutions” and the critical role it plays in understanding the modern Left: how they dominate the institutions, how they shape the narrative, and how they influence what you think about the world around you.
★★★★★ New Outlook Recommends:
Educational Series: The Long March Through the Institutions
➋ THE PURSUIT OF UTOPIA
Communists have one playbook and it is to cast out whatever or whoever does not bend to their ideology. It’s about total power. They seek to ease the transition from the current culture to their preferred culture. Their thinking: “The dissidents are the reason we can’t have the communist utopia we seek. If we can cast all the dissidents out and replace them with people who are committed to our goals, we can quickly bring about a more utopian, communist world.” Historically, dissidents or those who posed a challenge to the ideology were shot and killed, excommunicated, or sent off to the gulag to labor endlessly. Today, it’s cancelation, it’s deplatforming you so you can’t exist anywhere online or receive payments for your work, it’s calling you names that you can’t recover from. It’s making your life a living hell because you do not conform to their nonsensical worldviews.
➌ DO I NEED TO SAY IT?…
➍ IDEOLOGICAL PILLARS OF THE LEFT
When people hear Leftists like Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors say she’s a “trained Marxists” and that she’s proud that her work has been compared to Mao’s Little Red Book, what exactly do people think she means? That she’s not a Communist?
Whenever you bring up the fact that a good amount of Leftist movements are largely bent toward Communism, everyone huffs and puffs like you’re just pulling that it out of thin air. But it’s really all there, front and center. All it takes is the curiosity to look closely and listen to the adherents of each particular movement.
➎ DARE TO DISSENT
The Left expects you to follow them, lockstep, into their delusional view of the world. They expect you to ask no questions.
They expect you to silence your inner thoughts; to see something and say NOTHING, lest they come for you.
They expect you to embrace collectivist ideological thought over independent critical thought.
They expect your total obedience and tolerate zero dissent.
They expect your servitude, your knees bents, your head bowed, your mouth kissing at their feet.
They expect your submission to their campaign for absolute power and control, camouflaged as a benevolent act.
Whether within your circle of friends or in society, reject all of it.
➏ YOU MUST NEVER CENSOR YOURSELF
The bravest thing you can do is choose not to self-censor. You want a better society?Start there! Speak up! Many atrocities have happened throughout history because people chose not to speak their mind, make their voices heard, make their presence felt.
People often talk about the potential risks that come with speaking your mind. I think no one has done a better job than Jordan Peterson to communicate the potential risks that come with choosing NOT to speak your mind.
“Do you want to pay the price for being who you are and stating your mode of being in the world, or do you want to pay the price for being a bloody serf, one that's enslaved him or herself? Well that's a major price, and that thing unfolds over decades.”
— JORDAN PETERSON
➐ BEHOLD: THE LEFT
If you haven’t seen this video from Peter Boghossian, I highly recommend it.
The video is one of the best illustrations of the Left’s inability to be accountable, to debate, to act in good faith, to openly discuss their ideas at length and welcome oppositional feedback.
It’s a great illustration of how the Left is tactical, deceitful, elite at moving goalposts, mob-like, manipulative to get their way, ideological to the bone, and of the belief that only their worldview matters.
This video is the perfect illustration of how the Left has figured out how to mask their hunger for a totalizing power by feigning “compassion” for others. They seek control; of language, of spaces, of narratives, and of people. They are intolerant, and tyrannical by default. As soon as you stand in opposition to their ideology, you become Enemy #1. Off to the gulags!
To watch the actual thoughtful conversation that was disrupted in the video below, you can check that out here: Street Epistemology: On Gender
➑ BEWARE: SLIPPERY SLOPES
In the name of religion, any heinous act can be justified.
In the name of “saving democracy,” any draconian, anti-democratic, inhumane, and authoritarian policies can be justified.
➒ HOODWINKED. BAMBOOZLED. AND LED ASTRAY.
The average American is simultaneously being squeezed BOTH from the top-down, by the elite establishment that promise a “Great Reset,” and from the bottom-up (or better yet, middle-out, as a commenter pointed out to me), by grassroots activists and Marxists that promise to “dismantle the organizing principle of society.” Both sides essentially aimed toward the same goal (unbeknownst to the activists and Marxists).
On one side, the reset is bent toward an unabashed total usurpation of power. While the other side believes itself to be restoring society to its most ideal state where there is freedom from tyranny. The means, however, in their own words, screams tyranny: “the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
➓ THE MANY FACES OF PROPAGANDA
The greatest form of propaganda is to frame that which is common sense or factually true as a “conservative,” “extremist,” or “right wing” idea.
The tactic brilliantly deters people from wanting to engage with information that is objectively true so as not to incur the false label.
That’s a wrap! Hope you enjoyed this installment of The Monthly Review. If something resonated, leave a like, leave a comment, open the floor up for discourse. Or share this with a friend. Thank you for reading, subscribing, and supporting this project. Until next month.
Hopefully I will remember all of this if/when I get in a situation like this. Thank you.
Well done. Thank you for this. The Beghossian video was hard to watch. Can you imagine when these people actually get to the gulag they are inadvertently advocating for?! Talk about an unsafe space!