Over the past two years, tens of millions of Americans have awakened to the fact that the “Dialectical Left,” which includes Communism, achieves its agendas most effectively by strategically changing the meanings of words. This is a tactic that is very effective until it is recognized, at which point it rapidly becomes counterproductive because it is so obviously manipulative and so easily resisted by demanding clear definitions, especially in policy documents. The challenge is that there are a lot of words that our society depends upon, which allows Communist activists to move on from one word to another, then to another, as their language games get exposed.
Some of these strategic equivocations about the meanings of words are more impactful than others. Currently, there are just three terms that have been profoundly subverted and are being used to transform our society by Communists for Communist ends. These are inclusion, democracy, and citizenship. All three are being redefined together. Understanding how this manipulation is taking place is key to neutralizing it, and that starts with understanding how these three words are being strategically misused. First, let’s discuss the general principle of how the Communist or Dialectical Left redefines terms to achieve its ends.
The Essence of “Critique”
The method of the Communist or Dialectical Left is “critique,” which is the specific kind of “criticism” that characterizes Critical Theory. Critical Theory, if you don’t know, is the operative tool of the dominant strain of twentieth century Marxist Theory, which is sometimes called “Critical Marxism” and is associated with the Frankfurt School (Institute for Social Research). What it refers to is identifying and reframing concepts in terms of Marxist structural analysis.
In general, when Critical Marxists, including the Woke Marxists of today, say they are applying “criticism” to something, or considering it in a “critical” way, what they mean is that they are strategically redefining the key terms involved so that they are understood in terms of Marxist sociopolitical analysis. In other words, they’re reframing the meanings of words so that they are to be understood in terms of alleged exclusionary “power dynamics” that benefit one class of people and oppress another class of people. These, Critical Marxists believe structure every aspect of society, including how things are talked and thought about, and critique is meant to subtly reframe that.
For example, consider the term “justice,” which we often hear from Critical Marxists who claim to be in pursuit of “Social Justice.” The notion of justice has to be shifted from a perspective of individuals finding fair treatment under the law in an impartial way to a new perspective where “fairness” takes into account a belief that the law is not and cannot be impartial and thus favors certain groups over others in its very construction. As a result, the law and its application has to be tilted in favor of those groups who are theorized to be structurally disadvantaged by the existing system, so justice follows from an underlying but hidden assumption of a need for partiality to “level the playing field.” The concept of meting out justice remains intact, but impartiality under the law is replaced by intentional partiality under the law so that those Marxist Theory claims are “structurally disadvantaged” are given additional privileges relative to everyone else.
For another example, consider the term “education.” The concept of education has to be understood and then redesigned according to this paradigm also—as does everything in society. Critical Marxism, you see, believes that the very terms of society itself are corrupt and structurally unjust and thus must be retooled to move the marginalized to the center and vice versa. Thus, “education” is criticized for being an unjust credentialing mechanism that allows those who accept the (unjust, corrupt) terms of the existing society to move into positions of power and authority from which they can ensure it reproduces itself. A genuine “education,” or a “critical” education, then, is a political education that teaches people to understand society this way and to reject it. At present, we have been miseducating our children on these terms for at least thirty years.
In both cases, you can see that there has been a subtle shifting of the meaning of the term in question by “criticizing” it in a way that redefines it to the Communist Left’s advantage. This process is how they subvert words, institutions, and even society itself. Now that we have a sense of how it works, let’s turn to three key terms the Communist Left is using to subvert and transform society itself into something wholly under their control. These terms again are inclusion, democracy, and citizenship, and they build upon one another.
1. Inclusion
Of all the words the Woke Marxists strategically misuse today, few are more important than “inclusion.” Many people have awakened to the sense that something is badly wrong with that term and that it somehow indicates selective exclusion, and they’re right. Now that you know the trick, it’s easy to understand how it works.
To Woke Marxists, inclusion expresses the idea that nobody is excluded by virtue of the unjust power dynamics Woke Marxist Theory describes. For them, free societies with impartial laws don’t address the underlying structural power dynamics that create de facto exclusion or a sense of not being fully welcome. For example, racial and sexual minorities (and especially Woke activists within those groups) might be made to feel excluded, they insist, by virtue of a belief that straight, white men are the “defaults” in many positions of authority. Or, women might be excluded as a matter of circumstantial fact by the demands of motherhood, which quickly and neatly explains many of their views about abortion “rights” and the recently published notion in the New York Times that the maternal instinct is a myth created by men—that is, in Marxian terms, an oppressive ideological narrative that supports structural patriarchy.
When huge entities like the World Economic Forum (WEF) and United Nations (UN) say that their agenda is to transform the world to achieve a more sustainable and inclusive future, this is the subversion they’re relying upon. People who Marxist Theory says have been or are being excluded—i.e., for them, Leftists—must be actively included, which requires excluding everyone else, either by limits to occupancy or by deliberate censorship and purges.
2. Democracy
Democracy is supposed to be “rule by the people,” something America’s Founding Fathers had the good sense to realize was a bad idea (not least because they were watching the Democratic French Revolution descend into murderous terror as they wrote the Constitution). Rule by the people means all of the people, and Communists have seized upon this idea to redefine “democracy” and stoke resentment about supposed structural disenfranchisement for over a century.
In The State and Revolution, written in 1917, Vladimir Lenin explained that what we think of as “democracy” in capitalist societies is, in fact, “bourgeois” democracy—rule by the empowered minority in the bourgeoisie. “Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich – that is the democracy of capitalist society,” he wrote.
[I]n capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority. Communism alone is capable of providing really complete democracy, and the more complete it is, the sooner it will become unnecessary and wither away of its own accord. (Lenin, The State and Revolution, chapter 5)
Lenin explained, using critique, that democratic voting in a capitalist society isn’t truly democratic because it only serves the bourgeois minority. Democracy will only be genuine when everyone is equal, which only occurs under Communism. In the meantime, under Socialist rule in the USSR, a dictatorship of the proletariat will simulate true democracy by elevating the masses and suppressing the “exploiters.”
In modern parlance, what Lenin is describing would be—in fact, is—called “inclusive democracy,” and it utilizes the exact same trick on the definition of “inclusion” to achieve its aims. The underlying belief is that society is exploitative of certain groups (who are in the majority), and thus those people aren’t equal participants in the democratic process. They have to be made equal (the contemporary term for this adjustment of enfranchisement, opportunity, and privilege is equity; the term in Lenin’s day, which still has major purchase was Democratic Socialism).
When we hear players in politics or the media say that open discussion threatens to create “misinformation” that threatens “our democracy,” this is very likely to be what they are talking about. (Never mind that we live in a republic, not a democracy.) They view their democracy—the only legitimate democracy—as “inclusive democracy” and thus one that must adjust shares, i.e., discriminate and suppress, in order to achieve its aims. As Lenin pointed out, it’s not that they want to be unfair; it’s that they have to be in order to get their way so that their evils can “wither away of their own accord” when they’re no longer needed anymore (when Communism arrives). (Spoiler: Communism never arrives; it’s fake.)
3. Citizenship
It will at this point surprise you none at all to find out that they have done the exact same critique to “citizenship,” which usually denotes the relationship persons recognized as citizens have with the State. In republics like the United States, this relationship is that the State borrows political authority from the people, and in exchange for that authority, the State is to use it only to secure the inalienable rights of a free people, among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which Thomas Jefferson believed followed naturally from the right to one’s property. Communists do not like the right to private property. In fact, Karl Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto that Communism can be summarized in a single sentence: “abolition of private property.”
For Woke Marxists, citizenship is the other side of the coin of democracy—citizens are the people enfranchised and empowered to participate in a democracy. Therefore, one is only a full citizen to the degree structural power doesn’t disenfranchise that person, whether through exclusion or as a matter of fact. Inclusive citizenship is a Marxist model of citizenship that seeks to address this issue and thus to reframe what it means to be a citizen outside of any belief in an impartial State (which it believes is impossible and is always organized to maintain the privilege, power, and advantage of the already-advantaged).
A key example of this issue has already been raised. Motherhood detracts from full citizenship by placing demands (to the family, not direct civic participation) on women who become mothers. The impositions of motherhood exclude women from full citizenship, especially if they aren’t given complete authority and autonomy to decide if they will become (or remain?) mothers. Inclusive citizenship would demand a reprioritization to increase the enfranchisement of women as a class in order to correct for this imposition, not to mention their beliefs about structural patriarchy, exclusion from power due to sexism, and having to cope with misogyny. Similar impediments to full inclusive citizenship are believed to be imposed upon racial minorities, sexual minorities, and all other forms of “minoritized” groups by the structural power dynamics Woke Marxism exists to “critique.” Inclusive citizenship answers this alleged challenge by offering privileges to “historically marginalized” groups, particularly Leftist activists among them, and suppressing others, especially conservatives.
By redefining citizenship, though, Leftist activists can successfully subvert society entirely by rewriting its so-called social contract: the agreement between the State and its citizens that holds society together. Citizenship, as a concept, writes the terms of the social contract. By replacing citizenship with “inclusive citizenship,” Leftists create a social contract that inherently advantages Leftism while intentionally disadvantaging everyone that opposes Leftism. This, in turn, creates the Socialist Democracy Lenin insisted would pave the way to Communism, at which point true inclusion will finally arrive—and we will finally have Social Justice.
In closing, it’s worth noting that Klaus Schwab, executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, wrote in his 2022 book The Great Narrative for a Better Future: The Great Reset, Book 2, that his explicit goal is to rewrite the social contracts of societies around the globe. What they should change to, he writes, would favor sustainability and inclusivity as primary values, and the purpose of the “Great Narrative” is to foster this fundamental change in values at all levels of society in every society at once so that they can better cooperate on solving what he calls existential global challenges. Inclusive citizenship, in other words, will give way to global citizenship, which will have to be inclusive and redistributive by definition. Never mind, I suppose, that this has always been the stated aim of Marxist Communism from Karl Marx’s earliest writings. Never mind, indeed.
35 comments
I would add the term ‘Community,’ or the perversion of its meaning by the liberal-fascist progressive-socialist evil woke left I should say.
Like all their terms it is intentionally nebulous in order to mean or to not mean exactly what they want it to mean or not to mean in any given circumstances, (what the liberal critics would describe as sitz im leben, and I probably spelled that wrong. See columes I & II of ‘Evidence That Demands A Verdict’ by Josh McDowell on the liberal, so called ‘Higher’ critics.)
The Islamo-Fascists as well have their Ooma, which is the world-wide Islamo-fascist body politic or otherwise conveniently defined, but the concept of the perversion of what they dictate shall be accepted as the “Community” remains the same.
There needs to be a discussion and exploration of the campaign to implement Rank Choice Voting across america. We are battling this effort in my community where Open Society Foundation via Fairvote.org has already subverted our election process with this method claiming that is more “democratic” and that plurality voting is racist. Lots of dark money has been spent in our community to achieve their goal.
This is a great website -the articles and podcasts are fascinating and very educational
Great article
You have no idea how difficult it is to rearrange an argument with your family when they start using Marxist terminology. I try to readjust the definitions or make them clear and we end up going in circles.
Just had my FB account locked for a wholly bogus reason for about the seventh time in two years (my seventh, at least, nom de plume).
Very tired of playing their games, so I can’t respond anymore to anything James or his other followers post there. Well, here we are.
Could you please write with black fonts on a white backdrop ? It’s difficult to read as it is now.
You can set your website color preference on desktop by clicking the sun icon in the top right corner of the site. Your theme choice may be toggled anytime, and will be preserved when you return to the website in the future. This also works on mobile.
Here are described some of the “DNA segments” of one of the latest ‘mutations’ of the “Marxist Mind Virus”
We now need to be looking for a “vaccine” antidote, ideally administered – taught-at an early age, that will save future generations from being infected, by this particularly virulent mental virus.
Disagree. As someone who reads at night in bed, this setup is an absolute boon.
Here’s a new Bruce Gilley article on DEI.
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2022/09/measuring-the-spread-of-dei/
Further resources of interest to anti-Woke dissidents of all persuasions:
“Fake Hate Crimes: A Database of Hate Crime Hoaxes in the USA
The purpose of this site is to compile a comprehensive database of the false reports of ‘hate crimes’ committed (mostly) in the USA.”
https://fakehatecrimes.org/media
“Hoax Hate Crimes.com
When the Demand for Hate Crimes Outweighs the Supply…”
https://www.hoaxhatecrimes.com/
“Campus Cancel Culture Database
This interactive database chronicles and quantifies cancel culture’s influence on higher education, tracking its targets and noting its successes and failures. It will also serve as a vetted, crowdsourced repository that continues to track the problem of cancel culture in higher education. Each database entry lists the item protested or canceled, the college or university involved, the date, and a link to an article with additional information. ”
https://www.thecollegefix.com/cancel-culture-database/
“Libs of Tiktok Substack archive”
https://www.libsoftiktok.com/
Here is an interesting Bruce Gilley podcast on Frantz Fanon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV5QWjkZ4gI&list=WL&index=9
Technical issue:
I posted a series of titles with URLs, with spaces between them, to separate them from each other, but they appear as one solid block of uninterrupted text without any spacing in between those titles and links.
The second time I added a dot in the line spaces between them, but to no avail.
The way it looks it is useless.
Already in 2010 the Rockefeller Foundation published the plan to introduce the Great Economic Reset via a world wide pandemic:
.
John Slegers: The 4th industrial revolution, the Great Reset and Covid-19 2010 : the year of a fake pandemic and a strangely familiar fictional scenario
https://johnslegers.medium.com/the-4th-industrial-revolution-the-great-reset-and-covid-19-2b38d3d66d9e.
WEF: “it’s now time for the Internet of Bodies. This means collecting our physical data via devices that can be implanted, swallowed or simply worn, generating huge amounts of health-related information.”
“Tracking how our bodies work could change our lives”
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/internet-of-bodies-covid19-recovery-governance-health-data/.
“The ‘great reset’ meets the Internet of Bodies: manipulating human behavior with authoritarian surveillance”
https://sociable.co/technology/great-reset-meets-internet-of-bodies-manipulating-human-behavior-authoritarian-surveillance/.
“Nanobots Will Be Flowing Through Your Body by 2030”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx-hM3NDgbY.
“Toxic, Metallic Compounds Found in All COVID Vaccine Samples Analyzed by German Scientists”
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/toxic-metallic-compounds-covid-vaccines-german-scientists/.
“Report from Working Group of Vaccine Analysis in Germany””
~Summary of Prelliminary Findings
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22140176-report-from-working-group-of-vaccine-analysis-in-germany
“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
–George Orwell
They live in a fantasy realm of contrived mental pictures that are distortions of the dynamic thing we know as life and reality. They abide in their subjective thoughts which are never here but are forms of dreaming and imagining the future they hope to create. Hey man wake up for a few minutes from the sleep walking daze you are in. The present is too painful to bear so they escape into an imaginary dream state.
You just described every female in the Western world.
Jack Cashill coined a term for these Western females: ELFs (Educated Liberal Females). A commenter to Cashill’s article wrote: [ELFs] “emphasize social approval and seek to gain a reputation for ‘compassion’.” Cashill: “Devoid of ethical self-awareness, it was the ELFs that emerged as our ‘Karens.’ What made them truly annoying was their belief, given their education, that they knew more than the people they were hectoring. They didn’t.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/09/why_educated_liberal_women_are_the_real_threat_to_our_republic.html
“Women Worldwide Know Less About Politics Than Men
by Economic & Social Research Council, July 2013
A survey of 10,000 individuals across ten nations by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) offers a more sobering analysis. What most surprised researcher James Curran of the University of London was that ‘gaps in political knowledge are wider in countries that have done the most to promote gender equality.’ Curran noted that women’s scores in the U.K., the U.S., and Canada were more than 30 percent lower on average than men’s, a significantly greater gender gap than in Greece, Italy, and Korea. The ESRC data suggest that formal education may actually increase the knowledge gap between men and women.”
https://phys.org/news/2013-07-women-worldwide-politics-men.html
This study was from 2013! That is when Woke began. Nine years of creating society-destroying ELFs and their Trans child-substitutes. As Dr. Frankenstein said of his monster’s bride: “It’s alive!”
Not all females are in a dream state. For instance, while people are focused on grooming, why is no one talking about the DARPA equipment that was under Boulder Mountain beaming out transgender frequencies, which coincides with Trump warning that algorithms and frequencies have been created to control children’s minds?
“…beaming out transgender frequencies…”
Madame, they’re doing wonders with Thorazine these days.
(As well, pre-Bedlam trepanning has proven effective for advanced TDS.)
“Not all females are in a dream state.”
Your comment suggests otherwise.
Earth to Madame. Come in. Over.
So much pressure is increasingly applied to our souls -souls being that in us which has the faculties of reason, memory, and will- that also increasingly more souls will realize that giving your power to a relatively small group of those who play the role of extremely privileged dictators disguised as the world do-gooders forcing the rest of us to make sacrifices they themselves don’t make -quite the contrary- is a crucial mistake.
Economic Reset via a world wide pandemic:
John Slegers: The 4th industrial revolution, the Great Reset and Covid-19 2010 : the year of a fake pandemic and a strangely familiar fictional scenario
https://johnslegers.medium.com/the-4th-industrial-revolution-the-great-reset-and-covid-19-2b38d3d66d9e
WEF: “it’s now time for the Internet of Bodies. This means collecting our physical data via devices that can be implanted, swallowed or simply worn, generating huge amounts of health-related information.”
“Tracking how our bodies work could change our lives”
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/internet-of-bodies-covid19-recovery-governance-health-data/
“The ‘great reset’ meets the Internet of Bodies: manipulating human behavior with authoritarian surveillance”
https://sociable.co/technology/great-reset-meets-internet-of-bodies-manipulating-human-behavior-authoritarian-surveillance/
“Nanobots Will Be Flowing Through Your Body by 2030”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx-hM3NDgbY
“Toxic, Metallic Compounds Found in All COVID Vaccine Samples Analyzed by German Scientists”
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/toxic-metallic-compounds-covid-vaccines-german-scientists/
“Report from Working Group of Vaccine Analysis in Germany””
~Summary of Prelliminary Findings
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22140176-report-from-working-group-of-vaccine-analysis-in-germany
“A terrifying prediction for 2030 (the Great Reset)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpE5cBgl11U
“Back Stage” works are being done to awaken increasingly more souls to Who we all really are beyond our human appearances (and the devil doesn’t know for Whom he works, for unbeknownst to him he is cooperating in the divine plan to wake up souls to their true Identity and its limitless power.)
“A Gathering of the Tribe | POWERFUL Short Film by Charles Eisenstein w/ Jon Hopkins & Aubrey Marcus”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XinVOpdcbVc
“ET 101”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut3Jn-cANMk
I enjoy your material but prefer reading to the audio and video formats. If you would publish transcripts of all a-v material, I would become a subscriber.
I too enjoy the podcast/video material but would also like a transcript option, certainly of the audio material.
And I AM a subscriber. 🙂
Typo alert: “maternal instinct” is a myth, not “material”
Just because the NYT piece is so egregious.
“Critique” enables everyone to smart-ass rip things to bits but not know how to make anything. And what to do they propose to replace it? Naff all. Turning folks into loud-mouth leftists does not greatly improve the sum total of anything,
For those who like the subtle nods to genocide employed by the woke I refer you to the 12th paragraph of the article on NBC dated 9/1/22 by Noah Berlatsky titled, “A New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Prequel Quietly Confronts an Uncomfortable Legacy”.
That clown Berlatsky is a poster boy for all that is killing us. I wouldnt mind slapping that dbag right upside the head, tbh.
This is an excellent analysis of how radials reinvent language to suit their goals
James seems to be implying that terms such as ‘justice’ or ‘democracy’ have an ‘essence’ which is being subverted by the dialectical Left. I certainly can’t agree with this essentialism. Socrates, in one of the dialogues, takes this idea to task regarding what Justice is, for example.
However, I agree with James about the strategic equivocation that’s a hallmark of the dialectical Left. The purpose seems to be to both win allyship from naive centrists and evade criticism. It’s very easy to spot as James says. Many letters and opinion pieces in the progressive press make use of this definitional looseness. It’s in direct contrast to what I learned at University which was to define my terms. If authors aren’t defining their key terms in this way their texts may as well be tossed in the trash.
This same equivocation can be found in post-modern literature. Foucault uses ‘power’ in all manner of ways according to his needs, for example. It’s less strategically subversive perhaps and more about enabling the rhetoric to dazzle the reader with its ostensive profundity.
I don’t think he’s saying these words have an “essence,” he’s saying they have a commonly agreed upon meaning. The Left changes the meaning, but doesn’t tell the rest of us. Then they get us to agree with them on an issue. Then they act in accordance with their new definition. If we call them out they say, “But you agreed to it.”
This is an insightful commentary. I read New Discourses often. “Translations from the Wokeish” is an excellent resource that provides important tools to combat woke.
New Discourses is sort of “woke-i-pedia.” A treasure trove of information that lifts the woke-induced haze and fog and brings this widespread crisis into crystal clear focus.
There is a minor proofreading error:
In the Inclusion portion of your article, the link to NY Times article contains the word “material” instead of “maternal.”
The work you do to wake people to the lie that is the woke worldview is invaluable.
Thank you.
I thought you may appreciate this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYBYXYXuDUY
Here’s a great example of Leftist revisionism around “inclusive” democracy in practice.
https://www.amazon.com/Second-Unmaking-Politics-Society-America/dp/0691166749
This classic book should be required reading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anatomy_of_Revolution