This fails Hanlon's Razor ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity") in a big way.
Yes, it would be great if the strange fact that other people sometimes disagree with our opinions could be explained away by a plot by Stalin to poison people's minds with false and dangerous ideas. But because it would be so fun to believe that, we should be extra suspicious and make especially sure we have good evidence before believing it.
The original ESR post doesn't give a lot of evidence. It mentions that the Soviets tried to blame AIDS on the US, which is true - but check what the actual link in the ESR article says!
The evidence for everything else is even flimsier. ESR seems to draw mostly from the works of W. Cleon Skousen, whom Wikipedia describes as "a notable anti-communist and supporter of the John Birch Society whose works involved a wide range of subjects including the Six-Day War, Mormon eschatology, and New World Order conspiracies." His particular book that ESR is drawing from is about the sorts of things he posits the communist conspiracy must be doing, which doesn't include any evidence they've actually done them.
As such, its resemblance to modern liberal thought isn't a coincidence: Skousen assumed all liberal things he didn't like, from post-modernism to abstract art, were communist plots, assumed the communists were responsible, wrote a book saying so, and ESR apparently just copied most of it into a blog post.
The one piece of decent evidence he cites is the Munzenburg book; Munzenberg's work on the Sacco and Vanetti case was impressively evil but more of a push and a prod in certain directions than creating an entirely new cultural system ex nihilo. This seems to be where ESR goes a little off the deep end. It's reasonable to believe that the Soviets did what they could to support anti-American US citizens and foster an anti-American sentiment around the world (including in the US). It's less reasonable to believe that they completely invented large chunks of modern philosophy as memetic weapons, then spent eighty years subtly injecting it bit by bit into the American intellectual class. That would require godlike levels of planning that make the Bavarian Illuminati and the Elders of Zion look like amateurs.
Really, this whole thesis is transparently wrong, simply on these grounds:
Trace any of these back far enough (e.g. to the period between 1930 and 1950 when Department V was at its most effective) and you’ll find a Stalinist at the bottom.
Really? Trace the idea that "For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself" back far enough, and you get to Jesus, who said "but I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also" and the Buddha, who said that "Even if bandits were to carve you up savagely, limb by limb, with a two-handed saw, he among you who let his heart get angered at that would not be doing my bidding."
Trace the idea that "there is no truth, only competing narratives", back far enough, and you get Protagoras, the Sophists, and "Man is the measure of all things".
Same for pretty much every other meme you term "suicidalist". In fact, your complaints about them could be straight out of Nietzsche's works about master vs. slave moralities from the late 1800s.
What ESR or Skousen or whoever is doing is taking ideas that have existed forever but which they personally disagree with and trying to attribute them to Stalin in order to make them look "contaminated" - as if we need to share their taste in art because all other forms of art are plots by Stalin.
This is, ironically, exactly the same strategy as the post-modern leftist intellectuals themselves, who would take any idea they disagreed with and say it was created by the patriarchy in order to keep blacks/women/the poor/whoever down. It's just as annoying when the other side does it.
PS: My explanation for what the heck post-modernists are thinking is that the whole thing is a complicated signaling game - see this essay for more
I saw an interview where a former higher up in the Communist party was studying meditation because it was useful for deteriorating the West because they felt navel gazing was insipid.
Yes, it would be great if the strange fact that other people sometimes disagree with our opinions could be explained away by a plot by Stalin to poison people's minds with false and dangerous ideas. But because it would be so fun to believe that, we should be extra suspicious and make especially sure we have good evidence before believing it.
The original ESR post doesn't give a lot of evidence. It mentions that the Soviets tried to blame AIDS on the US, which is true - but check what the actual link in the ESR article says!
The evidence for everything else is even flimsier. ESR seems to draw mostly from the works of W. Cleon Skousen, whom Wikipedia describes as "a notable anti-communist and supporter of the John Birch Society whose works involved a wide range of subjects including the Six-Day War, Mormon eschatology, and New World Order conspiracies." His particular book that ESR is drawing from is about the sorts of things he posits the communist conspiracy must be doing, which doesn't include any evidence they've actually done them.
As such, its resemblance to modern liberal thought isn't a coincidence: Skousen assumed all liberal things he didn't like, from post-modernism to abstract art, were communist plots, assumed the communists were responsible, wrote a book saying so, and ESR apparently just copied most of it into a blog post.
The one piece of decent evidence he cites is the Munzenburg book; Munzenberg's work on the Sacco and Vanetti case was impressively evil but more of a push and a prod in certain directions than creating an entirely new cultural system ex nihilo. This seems to be where ESR goes a little off the deep end. It's reasonable to believe that the Soviets did what they could to support anti-American US citizens and foster an anti-American sentiment around the world (including in the US). It's less reasonable to believe that they completely invented large chunks of modern philosophy as memetic weapons, then spent eighty years subtly injecting it bit by bit into the American intellectual class. That would require godlike levels of planning that make the Bavarian Illuminati and the Elders of Zion look like amateurs.
Really, this whole thesis is transparently wrong, simply on these grounds:
Trace any of these back far enough (e.g. to the period between 1930
and 1950 when Department V was at its most effective) and you’ll find
a Stalinist at the bottom.
Really? Trace the idea that "For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself" back far enough, and you get to Jesus, who said "but I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also" and the Buddha, who said that "Even if bandits were to carve you up savagely, limb by limb, with a two-handed saw, he among you who let his heart get angered at that would not be doing my bidding."
Trace the idea that "there is no truth, only competing narratives", back far enough, and you get Protagoras, the Sophists, and "Man is the measure of all things".
Same for pretty much every other meme you term "suicidalist". In fact, your complaints about them could be straight out of Nietzsche's works about master vs. slave moralities from the late 1800s.
What ESR or Skousen or whoever is doing is taking ideas that have existed forever but which they personally disagree with and trying to attribute them to Stalin in order to make them look "contaminated" - as if we need to share their taste in art because all other forms of art are plots by Stalin.
This is, ironically, exactly the same strategy as the post-modern leftist intellectuals themselves, who would take any idea they disagreed with and say it was created by the patriarchy in order to keep blacks/women/the poor/whoever down. It's just as annoying when the other side does it.
PS: My explanation for what the heck post-modernists are thinking is that the whole thing is a complicated signaling game - see this essay for more
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