The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 104
One of the most famous and most evil techniques of Maoist Marxism is the “struggle session” (dòuzhēng, 鬥爭; or pīpàn dòuzhēng, 批判鬥爭, “critical struggle”; or sometimes just pīdòu, 批鬥; also called “denunciation” sessions). They were made famous during Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), but they were utilized in the Chinese thought-reform (xǐnǎo, 洗脑, lit. “wash brain” or brainwashing) prisons starting in the early 1950s under the CCP. The nature of struggle sessions must be understood clearly in 2022 because Western nations are going through a “Woke” Maoist insurgency now, and the struggle session is all the way back in fashion (and has been for some time). Since being banned and returning to Twitter following Elon Musk’s acquisition, host of the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay, has been subjected to a rather brutal online struggle session (a “twitter storm” as a harassment campaign) in the attempt to punish him back off the site and to discredit his highly effective popularization of the term “groomer” for Maoist ideological groomers, especially those using Queer Marxism. In this groundbreaking episode of the podcast, James goes through the struggle session he’s currently experiencing while tying it to the psychological analysis of that phenomenon as presented in Robert Jay Lifton’s book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China. Join him to learn about this destructive form of bullying activism and to learn how you can resist it.
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14 comments
You might want to review your understanding of Mao’s personal history. The statement about him being deposed is not correct. A good but highly antagonistic source on Mao is Jung Chang’s Mao The Unknown Story. Jung Chang, I want to say ‘of course,’ is the author of Wild Swans, her story of 3 generations of Chinese women, herself, her mother and her grand-mother. Her mother and father were early members of the CCP and people of high integrity who simply and genuinely wanted to build a better China. They ran afoul of the Cultural Revolution and lost positions of prominent local importance. In her own part of the story, Jung Chang tells of her disillusionment with Mao. Wild Swans, in my view, is one of the great books of the 20th century.
Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago has a lot to say on similar themes, but another beautiful book (I doubt you could call Gulag beautiful) on ‘struggle,’ or at least containing some elements on struggle is In God’s Underground by Richard Wurmbrand, which describes brainwashing and struggle in Romania.
Thanks for your work! To me it seems like struggle sessions are not only focused on one person and situation, complete societies are in struggle session.
The cultural Marxist war pushed through by government, ngo’s and big funding businesses like Black Rock. We are flooded with woke and Big Green commercials on radio, television and social media.
Bombarded with woke culture 24/7. So people start to get used to it and start to think it is normal. Brainwashed by the constant bombardement people start to incorporate the woke way of thinking.
Without knowing it they become soldiers for the woke struggle sessions. So friends, co-workers, family and acquaintances will put you in a struggle session without knowing it themselves. What are your thoughts?
Something worth mentioning is that for lots of people, the consequences of saying the wrong thing (or being the wrong person) go far beyond exclusion or defamation on social media. We can lose our livelihoods and lose our homes. We can also be denied future housing and definitely rejected for possible future jobs. Not to mention being excluded from dating, social circles (irl) and social events.
This does not take place solely on social media – far from it. And the consequences can easily impact our actual ability to support ourselves and/or our families.
the struggle itself was horrible, the investigation by my job was terrifying but worst of all was the fact that NO ONE stood up for me.
Privately they might say, “I cant believe your family member is doing that,” or “thats crazy we know you’re not racist.” A couple of them said even though I didnt do anything wrong I should consider their feelings and apologize. Walking away from my family and NOT apologizing might have been the best and most painful thing Ive ever done.
When my own sister said and did NOTHING to support me and stayed “neutral,” i knew there was no going back.
It’s been 3 years. I can forgive but i can never forget and the trust is gone forever.
As the song goes, “None of us is free, Until we’re all in chains, That’s their pathology.”
You’re one of the most important investigators of this vile neurosis, it’s hard to be the target of these shrieking zealots for any length of time. I’ve learned the hard way these social cliques target people and lie regularly so thank you for your insights to remind us we’re not crazy.
How do we help Normies see Marxists playing this game with them? Even if you show it convincingly they seem to refuse to see it/do anything with it because of what it would mean if true.
They destroy all that’s noble today and it’s apparent that’s what they did in early days of the Red terror.
”Coming out of the Ice” is worth a watch on Utube. If you haven’t seen it. Awesome movie about the Gulag in Stalin’s Russia. You see the NKVD and the camps and the relentless cruelty of the Communists. Today’s Marxism isn’t about economics as we are seeing. They have little gist for the struggle so they go after the mind of mainstream enemy full force. I can only circle the drain so long before I get stuck in a rabbit hole, shit tunnel.
A thousand thanks James, this is brilliant, an absolute life line for us all.
God bless you. This may be the fight of your life but you are prevailing. A thousand more thanks.
The single best descriptor of Marxism I’ve ever run across is that Marxism is a form of Munchausen’s. Call it Munchausen’s-by-politics or Munchausen’s-by-ideology. The goal isn’t to improve anything, or to “help” anyone. Marxism’s goal is to cripple you from being able to conceive of life outside their ideology – their system. Essentially, to the point where you worship them as form of deity.
Everywhere Marxism or “Critical Studies” gains a foothold the measures of individual competence fall. Children in “Critically” infected schools cannot do the mechanical work of putting letters into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into meaning. They can’t do math. They don’t know history. Their only function is to enter broader society and destroy it.
Cities are destroyed. Every major city in America that is run by “critical” policies is in ruins today. SF, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, NYC, LA, KC, SD…every one.
Housing projects in ruin; welfare systems doing more harm that good.
It applies in governments, corporations, universities, hospitals, families.
It is very useful to know not to try to explain (or demand that others do). Sorry you went through this. I’m not on Twitter often, so missed it. Bringing it back, to keeping us informed on the struggle process, makes the most of a bad situation.
Love to hear some kind of actionable solutions to how normal people can deal with these kind of situations spelled out in easy, simple language.
There really is a kind of bubble around people on Twitter who act as though it really is the centre of the Universe. I think it is exceptionally unhealthy and I look to the past (and think of The Lindy Effect) to realise that many great things were accomplished with likeminded people talking, sharing, debating face-to-face in coffee houses.
This fallacy of Twitter or nowhere strikes me as similar in language to what addicts of other stripes talk of.
Bowling Alone and the Pandora’s Vox On Community In Cyberspace By Humdog (1994) could see what this extremely unnatural technology would do to people if coupled with the decline / absence of actual community in real-life which has natural demans and mutual obligations.
‘cyberspace is a mostly a silent place. in its silence it shows itself to be an expression of the mass….i have seen many people spill their guts on-line, and i did so myself until, at last, i began to see that i had commodified myself.
commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a money-value. in the nineteenth century, commodities were made in factories, which karl marx called “the means of production.”
capitalists were people who owned the means of production, and the commodities were made by workers who were mostly exploited. i created my interior thoughts as a means of production for the corporation that owned the board i was posting to, and that commodity was being sold to other commodity/consumer entities as entertainment.
that means that i sold my soul like a tennis shoe and i derived no profit from the sale of my soul.’
Thanks James. I am two thirds of the way through Lifton’s book after you recommended it a talk. Great comparison to today’s Marxism.
James, thanks for all your work.
I think you have many more friends than you know.
Thanks too, for the reminder to order a copy of Lifton’s book on Chinese brainwashing – it’s on the way now.
“DO NOT GIVE IN!”
If you (or anyone else for that matter) ever feel like ‘giving in”, remember the example of Fusilier Derek Kinne (The Royal Northumberland Fusiliers), who was captured by the Chinese Communist forces on the 25th April, 1951, in the Korean War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Kinne
Fusilier Kinne did not fear annihilation; and if he did, he did not permit his captors to see it.
Never give in.
Never.