WEBVTT NOTE Bolshevism and Democratic Socialism 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.880 Leave it in my jacket, but in any case, I sound louder, my voice resonates more with 2 00:00:07.880 --> 00:00:12.880 whatever I've now installed, so I'll just leave it in place. 3 00:00:12.880 --> 00:00:19.880 The topic which I am supposed to discuss this morning is Bolshevism and the Democratic Left. 4 00:00:19.880 --> 00:00:27.320 And I suspect the reason that this topic was assigned to me by Lew Rockwell goes back to 5 00:00:27.320 --> 00:00:32.600 a heated discussion, or actually it was an enthusiastic discussion that I had at one time 6 00:00:32.600 --> 00:00:33.600 with Murray Rothbard. 7 00:00:33.600 --> 00:00:40.200 In fact, it turned into a correspondence of several years, and it was a point about which 8 00:00:40.200 --> 00:00:49.720 we did not disagree essentially, but for which we did try to provide documentation in order 9 00:00:49.720 --> 00:00:55.520 to explain our own perhaps prejudices in one direction or another. 10 00:00:55.520 --> 00:01:02.580 But it was a question of which is more dangerous, the Bolsheviks, or I suppose we called inaccurately 11 00:01:02.580 --> 00:01:07.840 the Menshviks, since the Menshviks in Russia before the revolution were in fact revolutionary 12 00:01:07.840 --> 00:01:09.080 socialists. 13 00:01:09.080 --> 00:01:16.800 But I think the term was generally used by Murray and myself to refer to those members 14 00:01:16.800 --> 00:01:24.680 of the Left, who opposed the Bolshevik in the name of some democratic principle. 15 00:01:24.680 --> 00:01:33.400 And we're searching for a leftist alternative to the democratic centralism and the revolutionary 16 00:01:33.400 --> 00:01:42.480 violence that had characterized the Bolshevik takeover of Russia in the October 1917 revolution. 17 00:01:42.480 --> 00:01:50.880 And one might say that there is both a reality and a myth of the left, which developed because 18 00:01:50.880 --> 00:01:53.280 of the Bolshevik Revolution. 19 00:01:53.280 --> 00:02:02.240 And I think perhaps it would be useful to discuss both the reality and the myth, and 20 00:02:02.240 --> 00:02:04.280 to try to understand the implications. 21 00:02:04.280 --> 00:02:09.840 One might say less of the reality than of the myth, which lives among us. 22 00:02:09.840 --> 00:02:15.940 What exactly is the reality of the Bolshevik revolution in terms of the European left? 23 00:02:15.940 --> 00:02:22.080 Well, we know that a split will take place, in some cases a fragmentation will occur because 24 00:02:22.080 --> 00:02:32.900 of the October 1917 revolution, and there will be a proliferation of non-Soviet or non-Leninist 25 00:02:32.900 --> 00:02:39.500 Most Lefts, some of which are successful and others of which are not. 26 00:02:39.500 --> 00:02:46.980 One unsuccessful example, of course, are the Spartacists, who in 1919 in Germany, following 27 00:02:46.980 --> 00:02:53.860 the defeat of World War I and the food shortages and the demobilization of German troops which 28 00:02:53.860 --> 00:03:01.080 followed the war, decide to carry out a spontaneous workers' revolution in Berlin, which will 29 00:03:01.080 --> 00:03:02.440 be crushed. 30 00:03:02.440 --> 00:03:09.440 not only by elements of the German military that are present, but also with the support 31 00:03:09.440 --> 00:03:14.640 of social democrats who are then in the post-war German government. 32 00:03:14.640 --> 00:03:23.160 And a split will take place between the parliamentary social democrats represented by people like 33 00:03:23.160 --> 00:03:32.960 Gustav Norske, Friedrich Ebert, and the leaders of the Spartacist uprising, Karl Liebknecht 34 00:03:32.960 --> 00:03:44.840 and Rosa Luxemburg, both of whom will be killed in the unsuccessful struggle that takes place. 35 00:03:44.840 --> 00:03:51.800 And there are also other examples, of course, that one can cite of Marxist or even revolutionary 36 00:03:51.800 --> 00:03:57.360 Marxists, not just people who say, you know, Marx had an interesting analysis of historical 37 00:03:57.360 --> 00:04:04.620 dynamics, but people who believe that Marxism must lead to revolution, but who fail in creating 38 00:04:04.620 --> 00:04:10.940 their own alternative to the Soviet model of democratic centralism achieved by Lenin 39 00:04:10.940 --> 00:04:19.820 and Trotsky, and which is very much in place once the Russian Civil War is over by 1921. 40 00:04:19.820 --> 00:04:25.600 The most important one might say, well, I really don't want to confuse the picture too much 41 00:04:25.600 --> 00:04:34.580 by saying that there's going to be a kind of Marxist-Leninist alternatives to Stalinism, 42 00:04:34.580 --> 00:04:37.980 which will also develop in time. 43 00:04:37.980 --> 00:04:48.060 The Trotskyists, in America there's sort of almost a hothouse varieties of Marxist esoterica. 44 00:04:48.060 --> 00:04:55.160 The Love Stoneites and others who come along who claim Lenin was right or Trotsky was right, but somebody else is wrong. 45 00:04:55.160 --> 00:05:05.960 One really has to look for ecclesiological parallels to this, like people who thought that Luther was right, but this was wrong, 46 00:05:05.960 --> 00:05:09.960 the medieval church was good, but the Tridentine Council was wrong. 47 00:05:09.960 --> 00:05:17.960 I mean, it's almost like breakaway groups or people who hold revisionist views about 48 00:05:17.960 --> 00:05:24.960 what really in many ways sees itself as a kind of post ecclesiastical establishment, 49 00:05:24.960 --> 00:05:30.040 which is world communism led from Moscow. 50 00:05:30.040 --> 00:05:36.040 But perhaps the most important of all the groups on the left that turn their back against 51 00:05:36.040 --> 00:05:43.640 The Leninists and are able to establish themselves as a credible alternative are the social democrats 52 00:05:43.640 --> 00:05:44.640 in one form or another. 53 00:05:44.640 --> 00:05:54.300 These are people who will say that they favor socialist economics and, in some cases, some 54 00:05:54.300 --> 00:06:01.560 aspects of the Marxist view of history, but reject the violence and the dictatorship known 55 00:06:01.560 --> 00:06:03.560 Democratic Centralism 56 00:06:31.560 --> 00:06:39.560 Partito Comunista d'Italia, Partito Socialista d'Italia 57 00:07:01.560 --> 00:07:04.560 Communist Parties Dividing from Socialist Parties 58 00:07:31.560 --> 00:07:39.520 do not accept the Soviet paradigm as the one they are to follow, and they claim to be pursuing 59 00:07:39.520 --> 00:07:42.560 a democratic path to socialism. 60 00:07:42.560 --> 00:07:50.320 Now, some of them, as I said, in fact, will use Marxist rhetoric very often, and the Socialist 61 00:07:50.320 --> 00:07:55.960 Party of Germany remains theoretically a Marxist party down till 1959. 62 00:07:55.960 --> 00:07:58.120 Others do too. 63 00:07:58.120 --> 00:08:04.480 But their argument is that Marx is really a progressive humanist, and what he is telling 64 00:08:04.480 --> 00:08:12.400 us to do is to create a more just society, a more equitable distribution of goods and 65 00:08:12.400 --> 00:08:18.300 so forth, and nationalization of the means of production will help us to become a more 66 00:08:18.300 --> 00:08:20.540 fair society and so forth. 67 00:08:20.540 --> 00:08:27.840 So what these other, should we say, less violent socialists will do is typically turn Marx 68 00:08:27.840 --> 00:08:35.000 into a kind of humanistic model for economic reform. 69 00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:40.540 His view of inevitable revolution or violent revolution, which is there, will typically 70 00:08:40.540 --> 00:08:43.520 be paid down by socialist parties. 71 00:08:43.520 --> 00:08:50.640 One of the most important figures for this so-called revisionist Marxism is a German 72 00:09:20.640 --> 00:09:26.160 but you don't you don't want to push this too far and there's some good 73 00:09:26.160 --> 00:09:29.800 things there there's some bad things you have to you know make a prudential 74 00:09:29.800 --> 00:09:34.560 choice about these matters so that this is this is the Bernsteinian view that 75 00:09:34.560 --> 00:09:39.680 if it's very famous that you cannot treat Marx like a predestinarian history is 76 00:09:39.680 --> 00:09:47.120 open-ended this is a typical Bernsteinian view and social democrats you know 77 00:09:47.120 --> 00:10:00.120 Resonate to lines like that, and they also, which is very important, will run to join political coalitions, including the so-called bourgeois parties. 78 00:10:00.120 --> 00:10:11.120 And what you typically get thereafter is this distinction between the bourgeois parties and the workers' parties. 79 00:10:11.120 --> 00:10:17.520 There may not be, to use the late George Wallace's phrase, a dime's worth of difference between them, 80 00:10:17.520 --> 00:10:24.800 but the myth persists that one coalition or one party is the bourgeois party, 81 00:10:24.800 --> 00:10:30.480 even though they're both socialist parties, do the same things, 82 00:10:30.480 --> 00:10:37.440 but they represent the middle class, whereas the others represent the workers' movement and the unions. 83 00:10:37.440 --> 00:10:39.580 Now, the unions very often are divided. 84 00:10:39.580 --> 00:10:43.880 The unions in some countries will have socialist components 85 00:10:43.880 --> 00:10:45.280 or be predominantly socialist. 86 00:10:45.280 --> 00:10:48.080 In other places, they'll be Marxist. 87 00:10:48.080 --> 00:10:53.800 Typically in France, the Confédération Générale du Travail, 88 00:10:53.800 --> 00:10:55.600 the Force Ouvrière, which comes out, 89 00:10:55.600 --> 00:11:00.240 these are going to be thoroughly Marxist. 90 00:11:00.240 --> 00:11:02.840 For a long time in England, the large unions, 91 00:11:02.840 --> 00:11:09.800 Because the large trade unions, mass employment unions, tend to have a very strong communist 92 00:11:09.800 --> 00:11:15.040 component, although they continue to support the Labour Party. 93 00:11:15.040 --> 00:11:19.960 Sometimes they will vote communist, but they tend to have this very strong communist component. 94 00:11:19.960 --> 00:11:23.100 And I think in the Thatcher administration, there's a real attempt made by the government 95 00:11:23.100 --> 00:11:28.320 to smash them, because they're seen, I think, properly as a force that is trying to incite 96 00:11:28.320 --> 00:11:30.900 violent revolution. 97 00:11:30.900 --> 00:11:55.900 The Socialist Party becomes viewed generally as the moderates, trying to bring the trade unions into alliance with bourgeois parliamentary parties, being part of general coalitions, being committed to constitutional processes, to democratic rules. 98 00:12:00.900 --> 00:12:06.500 You know, go too far in sort of pushing the self-image of the socialists and the social 99 00:12:06.500 --> 00:12:13.500 democrats on you, but, you know, generally they're seen as the good guys who are standing 100 00:12:13.500 --> 00:12:18.960 up to the revolutionary violence of the communists and who, in a sense, are the first line of 101 00:12:18.960 --> 00:12:24.540 defense against the communists, because they had broken with the communists in 1919. 102 00:12:24.540 --> 00:12:29.960 They had turned their back on totalitarianism, as they would later, you know, describe themselves 103 00:12:59.960 --> 00:13:04.960 The Union Sacrée, the Great Coalition, the Socialists 104 00:13:29.960 --> 00:13:44.560 in the 1930s, the era of the Popular Front, where the great danger is seen as fascism. 105 00:13:44.560 --> 00:13:48.040 Not Nazism, Fascism. 106 00:13:48.040 --> 00:13:52.640 And what you get in the Popular Front are people screaming about Mussolini, but favoring 107 00:13:52.640 --> 00:13:56.440 a policy of non-resistance to Hitler. 108 00:13:56.440 --> 00:14:04.460 And the most traumatic event for the anti-Fascist Popular Front coalition is the takeover of 109 00:14:04.460 --> 00:14:07.320 Spain by the Falange, which of course never occurred. 110 00:14:07.320 --> 00:14:13.760 They were wiped out by Franco, who was a military dictator who took the place over. 111 00:14:13.760 --> 00:14:21.680 But Spain is seen as a country in which the fascists have won, and in fact the Germans 112 00:14:21.680 --> 00:14:26.360 are treated like a kind of secondary problem within the popular front, because the strongest 113 00:14:26.360 --> 00:14:32.920 passions are really directed against Mussolini and Franco within the popular front. 114 00:14:32.920 --> 00:14:38.040 But there is a successful attempt to rally social democrats, communists, to this front 115 00:14:38.040 --> 00:14:45.040 that is going to be directed against the danger, the ascending danger of fascism. 116 00:14:45.040 --> 00:14:53.520 In France, in the late 30s, you have a coalition under Léon Boehm, who was a socialist or 117 00:14:53.520 --> 00:14:56.480 a social democrat, with the communists. 118 00:14:56.480 --> 00:15:01.060 You know, it's a whole sort of left-center, leftist coalition that is going to be directed 119 00:15:01.060 --> 00:15:03.200 against the fascists. 120 00:15:03.200 --> 00:15:07.900 And the reality is that Boehm did absolutely nothing. 121 00:15:07.900 --> 00:15:11.180 He didn't really arm against the Germans. 122 00:15:11.180 --> 00:15:19.380 He gave some rhetorical support to the communists and the socialists in Spain, but didn't do 123 00:15:19.380 --> 00:15:21.220 much for them either. 124 00:15:21.220 --> 00:15:27.860 But the most important thing about the Popular Front is you see the social democrats making 125 00:15:27.860 --> 00:15:33.380 common cause with the communists, ceasing to criticize the communists. 126 00:15:33.380 --> 00:15:37.540 And of course, in Germany, something really important, you know, had occurred, which is 127 00:15:37.540 --> 00:15:47.540 It was very often ignored in this period that the German social democrats had stood up against the communists and the nazis who together destroyed the Weimar Republic. 128 00:15:47.540 --> 00:15:56.540 They worked hand in hand to destroy it, and the two parties which stand up against them just about to the end are the catholic center party and the social democrats. 129 00:15:56.540 --> 00:16:04.540 You know, and it was very much of a confrontation between the social democrats and the communists. 130 00:16:04.540 --> 00:16:10.540 And the social democrats were denounced by the communists as fascists. 131 00:16:10.540 --> 00:16:14.540 This was a common term used by Moscow. 132 00:16:14.540 --> 00:16:19.540 But curiously, at the same time, once the German government falls to Hitler, 133 00:16:19.540 --> 00:16:24.540 the Soviets are going to change the party line entirely, at least outwardly. 134 00:16:24.540 --> 00:16:54.540 And what you get in the thirties is the so-called popular front strategy of the Soviets, where they seek, at least in foreign affairs, a general alliance with all the parties in the left center against fascism, which is sort of very vaguely defined, so that at least in France and other places, in Italy, it doesn't mean Nazi Germany, it means Mussolini or it means Franco or some other secondary or tertiary political figure. 135 00:16:54.540 --> 00:17:00.980 But for a while, I say in terms of foreign policy, because there's reason to suspect 136 00:17:00.980 --> 00:17:06.220 that Stalin knew what he was doing in bringing Hitler to power, which he certainly cooperated 137 00:17:06.220 --> 00:17:10.480 in doing, and did everything he could to smash the other political parties and to get the 138 00:17:10.480 --> 00:17:15.780 communists in Germany, who were total instruments of the Soviet Union, to cooperate with the 139 00:17:15.780 --> 00:17:17.860 Nazis. 140 00:17:17.860 --> 00:17:23.220 And he may well have been looking for an alliance with a Nazified Germany, but at least in terms 141 00:17:23.220 --> 00:17:53.220 In terms of foreign affairs, the Stalinist position is the popular front, from 1934 all the way down until the Soviet-Nazi pact occurs in 1939, so it's like a five-year period, and the Social Democrats will cease to attack the communists outside of Germany, of course, where they're just rounded up and put in concentration camps, but they'll seek an alliance with the communists against the fascist danger. Well, after the Second World War, 142 00:17:53.220 --> 00:18:10.580 In England, the labor government after the war starts off by being almost sort of neutralists, 143 00:18:10.580 --> 00:18:14.020 but it becomes extremely opposed to the Soviets. 144 00:18:14.020 --> 00:18:19.500 Ernest Bevin, who was the Foreign Minister under the Labor Party, was much more strongly 145 00:18:19.500 --> 00:18:22.420 anti-Soviet than the American government. 146 00:18:52.420 --> 00:19:07.420 The Social Democrats have run to embrace the communists as coalition partners all over Europe. 147 00:19:07.420 --> 00:19:09.420 They will never speak against them. 148 00:19:09.420 --> 00:19:16.420 The Premier of France made a speech about a year and a half ago 149 00:19:16.420 --> 00:19:45.780 The French have a sort of strange system of, we have to sort of, it's called apparencement, 150 00:19:45.780 --> 00:20:15.780 the National Front on the right saying they're not really fascists, they're nice guys, that person would probably be torn limb from limb by the media, the journalists, as you try to leave, by members of the Communist Party, but talking about the most despicable and continuing denial of the holocaust, I mean, they're not really fascists, they're nice guys, that person would probably be torn limb from limb by the media, the journalists, as you try to leave, by members of the Communist Party, 151 00:20:15.780 --> 00:20:21.940 The socialist government of France denies Soviet crimes, you know, openly, because it needs 152 00:20:21.940 --> 00:20:24.340 the communists in its coalition. 153 00:20:24.340 --> 00:20:29.100 And if you take a look at the German social democrats, or whatever they are, which have 154 00:20:29.100 --> 00:20:32.900 pretty much destroyed German democracy now and put people in jail for disagreeing with 155 00:20:32.900 --> 00:20:38.660 the government and so forth, what you see is an alliance with the East German Communist 156 00:20:38.660 --> 00:20:44.780 Party, no problem, against the so-called bourgeois parties, which are on economic matters usually 157 00:20:44.780 --> 00:20:56.780 The Ulevar Coalition has the socialists, the communists, they all cooperate. 158 00:20:56.780 --> 00:21:07.780 Now, looking at this, can one speak about a consistent social democratic opposition to the communists? 159 00:21:07.780 --> 00:21:19.780 I think what you can speak of is not a consistent opposition, but rather an opposition that goes on for long periods of time before it gets reversed. 160 00:21:19.780 --> 00:21:32.780 What I would argue is that there is always a family resemblance between the social democrats and the communists, which it is not nice to talk about, but is obviously there. 161 00:21:32.780 --> 00:21:37.780 And the question is, exactly what is it based on? 162 00:21:37.780 --> 00:21:48.780 Well, first, I'm going to use a term I think, an expression which was originally presented, I think, by the late James Burnham. 163 00:21:48.780 --> 00:21:53.780 There is the Gestalt of the left. There's a leftist pattern of thought. 164 00:21:53.780 --> 00:22:07.780 And it is natural that the social democrats support the communists, just as it is natural that the Iron Guard in Romania lands up on the side of Adolf Hitler in the Second World War. 165 00:22:07.780 --> 00:22:12.780 You don't have to be... Mussolini made it a little problematic, but the Iron Guard you're not surprised about. 166 00:22:12.780 --> 00:22:19.780 Or some of these tougher, more militant right-wing nationalist groups and so forth. 167 00:22:19.780 --> 00:22:26.780 So one should not be surprised that social democrats land up fawning on communists from time to time. 168 00:22:26.780 --> 00:22:34.780 Or that they generally perceive the right as being more of their enemy than other people who are associated with the left. 169 00:22:34.780 --> 00:22:40.780 I think everything being equal, this is a predictable situation. 170 00:22:40.780 --> 00:22:48.780 Now I have a former student of mine, with whom his PhD I once directed, who is a violently anti-communist social democrat, 171 00:22:48.780 --> 00:22:52.780 who would probably be by now sputtering with rage. 172 00:22:52.780 --> 00:22:56.780 He'd probably take his bottle of water and smash my head with it or something, 173 00:22:56.780 --> 00:23:00.780 because he thinks the real heroes against the commies are the social democrats. 174 00:23:00.780 --> 00:23:06.780 They're the good guys. They're the ones like Bevin and others who fought against the communists. 175 00:23:06.780 --> 00:23:10.780 And, you know, in a certain case it's true. 176 00:23:10.780 --> 00:23:14.780 I mean, at various times it was the social democrats, the Truman democrats, 177 00:23:14.780 --> 00:23:34.780 and sort of looking at their American equivalents today, the neoconservatives, who, you know, have been the strong anti-communists, who have borne the brunt of the fighting against at least the propagandistic front, although they have volunteered to fight in the army, but they make a lot of noise against the communists, and they denounce the communists. 178 00:23:34.780 --> 00:23:50.780 But there is this leftist gestalt which I think remains there and has to be looked at, and part of it is a belief that the human race can be amalgamated, reconstructed, and re-socialized by public administration. 179 00:23:50.780 --> 00:24:02.780 And if you believe all those things, you're going to simply look at the communist, or you may look at the communist at the end, as people who share your goals, or your teleology, but are a bit in a hurry. 180 00:24:02.780 --> 00:24:26.780 Number two, I think since the 1930s, the ideology of the left, or at least the enemy of the left, has been fascism. What unites them is anti-fascism. 181 00:24:26.780 --> 00:24:28.940 Now, the question is, what is fascism? 182 00:24:28.940 --> 00:24:34.260 That's a very good question, because by now I don't have no idea what they mean by it, 183 00:24:34.260 --> 00:24:37.860 except people who disagree with them, right? 184 00:24:37.860 --> 00:24:42.620 But there's something called fascism, which is the demonic force in the universe, 185 00:24:42.620 --> 00:24:46.860 because it's a Manichean view, which not the right, the left has. 186 00:24:46.860 --> 00:24:53.380 Fascism is their enemy, and fascism is that which does not correspond to their view 187 00:24:53.380 --> 00:24:58.740 of where we should be historically, or what we are marching toward. 188 00:24:58.740 --> 00:25:05.580 And I think that the hatred of this generic fascism, which is less and less, or becomes 189 00:25:05.580 --> 00:25:08.180 more and more uncoupled from what happened in the 1930s. 190 00:25:08.180 --> 00:25:15.740 It has nothing to do with corporatism or Italian nationalism or German racial theory. 191 00:25:15.740 --> 00:25:20.580 It just means not being in sync with where these people want to go. 192 00:25:20.580 --> 00:25:21.580 This makes you a fascist. 193 00:25:21.580 --> 00:25:29.420 But anti-fascism since the 1930s has been, one might say, an integral component of the 194 00:25:29.420 --> 00:25:33.180 leftist ideology, whether communist or social democratic. 195 00:25:33.180 --> 00:25:42.900 Finally, as I said before, there is a commitment, a shared commitment on the left to the reconstruction 196 00:25:42.900 --> 00:25:50.340 of society by public administration and the identification of public administration with 197 00:25:50.340 --> 00:25:55.300 with Popular Government. 198 00:25:55.300 --> 00:26:01.540 One might say that part of this is an objection to the free market, a desire to restrict the 199 00:26:01.540 --> 00:26:02.540 free market. 200 00:26:02.540 --> 00:26:12.860 I think by now, however, I would argue that is simply a necessary result, but not an intention. 201 00:26:12.860 --> 00:26:18.580 Because I don't think the left anymore really is interested in destroying what remains of 202 00:26:18.580 --> 00:26:20.580 of Market Capitalism 203 00:26:48.580 --> 00:26:55.020 But it is social reconstruction of a different kind. 204 00:26:55.020 --> 00:26:59.860 But this has basically been what the left has been about, you know, since the early 205 00:26:59.860 --> 00:27:00.860 twentieth century. 206 00:27:00.860 --> 00:27:03.440 It's over a hundred years by now. 207 00:27:03.440 --> 00:27:10.460 So that the social democrats become, I think, an extremely questionable, provide a kind 208 00:27:10.460 --> 00:27:16.260 of extremely questionable leadership in a crusade against the totalitarian left. 209 00:27:16.260 --> 00:27:24.260 It's like making the leader of a struggle against world Nazism some dissenting Nazis, right? 210 00:27:24.260 --> 00:27:29.260 And saying that they... I mean, you might want to let them into your coalition, but you don't want them to take it over. 211 00:27:29.260 --> 00:27:33.260 Because otherwise, you're going to get Goebbels running it rather than Hitler or somebody like that. 212 00:27:33.260 --> 00:27:39.260 I mean, you basically don't want the left to be running a struggle against communism. 213 00:27:39.260 --> 00:27:41.260 I mean, it's a very bad idea. 214 00:27:41.260 --> 00:27:45.260 But this, I think, is what has happened in the... this was what happened in the Western world. 215 00:27:45.260 --> 00:27:55.260 I think that as the Cold War went on, it became increasingly associated with that part of the left which had not sold out entirely to the communists. 216 00:27:55.260 --> 00:28:00.260 There's part of the left that did, you know, people running around, excusing the communists. 217 00:28:00.260 --> 00:28:14.260 Even now, I think there was this, I was a little bit shocked actually when Ralph mentioned that Jerry Hoff at Princeton had said there were fewer than 10,000 people killed by Stalin. 218 00:28:14.260 --> 00:28:22.260 I have a colleague who was a minister of the Church of the Brethren, a kind of social 219 00:28:22.260 --> 00:28:26.780 gospel Christian who was once very upset with the remark that I made if he came in to see 220 00:28:26.780 --> 00:28:33.500 me that I suggested that Stalin killed millions of people and he pointed out to me that President 221 00:28:33.500 --> 00:28:38.500 Reagan killed far more people as a result of our policy in Nicaragua. 222 00:28:38.500 --> 00:28:41.620 And I was trying to figure out, demographically, that didn't work. 223 00:28:41.620 --> 00:28:47.620 I mean, to kill everybody, you know, in Central America, you don't even get any of the figures, you know, of people killed by Stalin. 224 00:28:47.620 --> 00:28:53.620 So, I mean, this Holocaust denial is simply part of this sort of anti-anti-communist mentality, 225 00:28:53.620 --> 00:28:58.620 that the communists don't really kill people, that there, you know, there may be a few suspensions of civil liberties, 226 00:28:58.620 --> 00:29:04.620 but they don't mind that either, since the anti-anti-communist left is very happy to suspend civil liberties here, too. 227 00:29:04.620 --> 00:29:33.620 But the point that I'm driving at is that a split is going to occur within the left between those, it would be a continuing split in a sense, I mean those who support the communists for one reason or another, those who excuse them, those who like them, those who see them as an immediate model for us, and those who oppose the communists but still carry on the leftist gestalt. 228 00:29:33.620 --> 00:29:40.620 And my argument is the people who carry around the leftist Kristall, but oppose the communists, are the ones who win the Cold War. 229 00:29:40.620 --> 00:29:44.620 These are the neoconservatives, the Cold War liberals. 230 00:29:44.620 --> 00:29:53.620 The person I remember that Murray used to mention most often as the embodiment of Cold War liberal leftism was Sidney Hook. 231 00:29:53.620 --> 00:30:00.620 And I think you're sort of placing too much of an historical burden on Hook, but the illustration was perfectly good. 232 00:30:00.620 --> 00:30:03.620 You know, I mean, Hooke, to his dying day, thought Marx was fine. 233 00:30:03.620 --> 00:30:06.620 He had been misunderstood in the Soviet Union. 234 00:30:06.620 --> 00:30:12.620 He was a great atheist humanist, you know, whose example we should follow in the United States. 235 00:30:12.620 --> 00:30:15.620 And Hooke thought of himself as a socialist. 236 00:30:15.620 --> 00:30:20.620 But the communists were bad because they were really on the right. 237 00:30:20.620 --> 00:30:24.620 I mean, this is part of the anti-communist left mentality, 238 00:30:24.620 --> 00:30:27.620 that the communists aren't true social democrats, 239 00:30:27.620 --> 00:30:30.940 or the communists really aren't good to the labor unions 240 00:30:30.940 --> 00:30:33.540 or they do some of the things which the right does 241 00:30:33.540 --> 00:30:35.860 or they're really Russian autocrats. 242 00:30:35.860 --> 00:30:37.660 You've got a Scoop Jackson sort of argument. 243 00:30:37.660 --> 00:30:39.500 This is Russian autocracy. 244 00:30:39.500 --> 00:30:43.460 So what you're basically getting are leftist reasons 245 00:30:43.460 --> 00:30:45.620 to oppose the Soviet Union. 246 00:30:45.620 --> 00:30:47.500 It's not that these people are moving to the right. 247 00:30:47.500 --> 00:30:51.700 It is just that they are able to recast the Soviets 248 00:30:51.700 --> 00:30:55.340 in terms of a leftist demonology, 249 00:30:55.340 --> 00:31:04.340 You know, that they are really, there's this famous red fascist kind of image that Truman came up with, that, you know, the fascists are now the reds. 250 00:31:04.340 --> 00:31:15.340 So, I think what you basically have is a struggle against communism that is going to be recast as a war between right and left, in which we are the left and the communists are on the right. 251 00:31:15.340 --> 00:31:28.340 And I think if you look at things like the National Endowment for Democracy, various Scoop Jackson satellite organizations and so forth, 252 00:31:28.340 --> 00:31:38.340 this was pretty much the arguments that were made, that the Soviets were anti-Semitic, like the Nazis, the Soviets were Russian nationalists, this sort of stuff. 253 00:31:38.340 --> 00:31:42.340 But there were, all of which may have been perfectly true, by the way. 254 00:31:42.340 --> 00:31:45.340 There may have been all these things and worse. 255 00:31:45.340 --> 00:31:53.340 But the argument that was presented was an essentially leftist argument for opposing the Soviet Union. 256 00:31:53.340 --> 00:31:59.340 Now, one could say that the reason that this is being done is that these social democrats 257 00:31:59.340 --> 00:32:07.340 and leftist ideologues who are anti-Soviet are really having to argue with other people who are pro-Soviet and on the left. 258 00:32:07.340 --> 00:32:14.340 Now, that's partly true. It's an argument on the left, because there is not much of a right that's left by the end of the Cold War. 259 00:32:14.340 --> 00:32:25.340 There's a very small sort of free market right, which a few localists like the League of Nord, but there isn't very much left on the right. 260 00:32:25.340 --> 00:32:35.340 The left is all over. And even by the 70s and 80s, what you basically get is the anti-communist left having to argue with the pro-communist left. 261 00:32:35.340 --> 00:32:43.340 Supporting the Soviets is not a good idea, because they really are right-wingers, they do all the things the fascists did, and so forth. 262 00:32:43.340 --> 00:32:51.340 This is true. I mean, this, one might say, is determined by the logic of the situation. 263 00:32:51.340 --> 00:32:58.340 But I would say, going beyond that, it's also what the people who are anti-communists believe. 264 00:32:58.340 --> 00:33:04.840 That the reason, you know, we oppose the Soviets. You read Norman Padoretz's early articles. Why am I against the Soviets? 265 00:33:04.840 --> 00:33:12.340 They don't support Israel. They behave like the Black 100 under the Tsar. They're terrible right-wing reactionaries. 266 00:33:12.340 --> 00:33:18.840 This is the reason why I'm an anti-communist. But it is not the reasons that Joe McCarthy would have given, right? 267 00:33:18.840 --> 00:33:21.840 It's certainly not the reasons that Francisco Franco would have given. 268 00:33:21.840 --> 00:33:26.840 Sorry, to name at least two of the heroes, I think of Pat Buchanan's father. 269 00:33:26.840 --> 00:33:37.840 This was, I think, the example given by Charles Krauthammer, the most telling example that 270 00:33:37.840 --> 00:33:46.840 Buchanan was a Nazi, aside from the fact that he didn't favor NAFTA, was that his father 271 00:33:46.840 --> 00:33:51.840 admired MacArthur, Franco and McCarthy. 272 00:33:51.840 --> 00:34:19.840 I think that this is an important point to keep in mind that the people who sort of lead the rhetorical propagandistic war against the communists by the end of the Cold War are simply variants on the other side that has then softened on the communists. 273 00:34:19.840 --> 00:34:26.840 and they both, you know, find leftist reasons for taking the positions that they do. 274 00:34:26.840 --> 00:34:33.320 All of this sort of brings me to my final point, which is, you know, how is the sort 275 00:34:33.320 --> 00:34:39.500 of split between the social democrats and communists played out and I would say that 276 00:34:39.500 --> 00:34:43.400 in my own judgment, you know, I'm very happy to see the communists, or at least the Soviet 277 00:34:43.400 --> 00:34:49.760 Communists Lose, I don't think we won very much on our side. 278 00:34:49.760 --> 00:34:54.160 And this is because of the way the struggle turned out. 279 00:34:54.160 --> 00:35:01.800 And the struggle turned out that the people who broke from the communists and their descendants 280 00:35:01.800 --> 00:35:08.920 and their recognizable progeny are the ones who in the end land up defeating the communists 281 00:35:08.920 --> 00:35:14.160 in circumstances that could only help the left, and help the leftist project. 282 00:35:14.160 --> 00:35:17.600 For which one might say the Soviet communists, which the Soviet communists becomes more and 283 00:35:17.600 --> 00:35:22.120 more extraneous in terms of the Western world. 284 00:35:22.120 --> 00:35:26.960 And that we are still left, one might say, with the legacy of the social democratic split, 285 00:35:26.960 --> 00:35:31.960 the successful social democratic split from the communist, because the social democrats 286 00:35:31.960 --> 00:35:39.640 in splitting from the communist become the paradigm or the model of democratic resistance 287 00:35:39.640 --> 00:35:41.600 to the communist. 288 00:35:41.600 --> 00:35:46.700 And it is this model of democratic resistance to the communist that we land up sort of taking 289 00:35:46.700 --> 00:35:54.520 over as the only acceptable model of resistance to the communist, which at the same time points 290 00:35:54.520 --> 00:35:59.180 toward the direction of our own political future. 291 00:35:59.180 --> 00:36:06.300 And, you know, we should not be too surprised, as I would finally observe, that the victors 292 00:36:06.300 --> 00:36:11.600 in the struggle, you know, the victors of the struggle against communism in the Cold 293 00:36:11.600 --> 00:36:16.820 War have been almost entirely on the left, and the left has done very well. 294 00:36:16.820 --> 00:36:22.540 A point that I'll come back to in one of my later lectures is, you know, is, or at 295 00:36:22.540 --> 00:36:26.860 least an observation, is that the end of the Cold War looks like the end of the Second 296 00:36:26.860 --> 00:36:28.740 World War. 297 00:36:28.740 --> 00:36:33.180 Even though we have defeated the communists, we have anti-fascist purges going on all over 298 00:36:33.180 --> 00:36:34.180 the place. 299 00:36:34.180 --> 00:36:37.060 I mean, you know, we have anti-communist purges. 300 00:36:37.060 --> 00:36:43.540 Why are communist mass murderers in Germany not only not persecuted, but given state pensions? 301 00:36:43.540 --> 00:36:44.540 You know, I mean, this is interesting. 302 00:36:44.540 --> 00:36:49.620 I mean, can you imagine people who served in Hitler's government not being tried, 303 00:36:49.620 --> 00:36:55.300 but being given state jobs, you know, and sent away with bouquets of flowers? 304 00:36:55.300 --> 00:36:58.140 But this is exactly what we're seeing at the end of the Cold War. 305 00:36:58.140 --> 00:37:02.980 And I think in order to understand this, one has to understand that the left won the Cold 306 00:37:02.980 --> 00:37:03.980 War. 307 00:37:03.980 --> 00:37:09.580 Part of the left, one might say the more archaic, Asiatic part of the left, is defeated. 308 00:37:09.580 --> 00:37:17.220 But the side of the left that is most relevant for our fates, that side which is most relevant, 309 00:37:17.220 --> 00:37:19.740 turns out to win the war. 310 00:37:19.740 --> 00:37:25.140 And we are still living with the consequences, one might say, of the social democratic split 311 00:37:25.140 --> 00:37:45.140 Yes, sir. Where does Gramsci figure it in all this, and why does Sandil as a Gramsci society still exist? 312 00:37:55.140 --> 00:38:02.140 He's a Marxist about his theory. It's Hegelian. He believes in the reality of consciousness, 313 00:38:02.140 --> 00:38:08.140 that you turn around political economic conditions by changing people's consciousness. 314 00:38:08.140 --> 00:38:14.140 And he actually is a Italian Hegelian who joins the Communist Party 315 00:38:14.140 --> 00:38:17.140 and spends a good deal of his life actually in prison. 316 00:38:17.140 --> 00:38:23.140 He's imprisoned by the Italian fascists. They don't treat him too badly. 317 00:38:23.140 --> 00:38:33.140 But his ideas seem to be perfectly correct, that in order to change socioeconomic political institutions, 318 00:38:33.140 --> 00:38:39.140 one must be able to control the culture, the intellectual life of a society. 319 00:38:39.140 --> 00:38:49.140 And there has been a Gramscian, one might say, march or sprint through Western institutions that we see, 320 00:38:49.140 --> 00:38:55.540 So that, you know, all these forms of political correctness have now been absorbed by people and so forth. 321 00:38:55.540 --> 00:39:06.340 This never happened under communism, which is interesting that, you know, most people living under Soviet occupation did not believe this stuff. 322 00:39:06.340 --> 00:39:10.440 They were just being occupied. You know, they're being occupied by the Russians. 323 00:39:10.440 --> 00:39:17.940 Many of these people hated the Russians, even those who didn't hate the Russians, like the Serbs or the Czechs, ended up hating them in the end. 324 00:39:17.940 --> 00:39:23.260 But there was no mistaking this for democracy. 325 00:39:23.260 --> 00:39:32.260 But what is so successful about this Gramscian transformation of Western institutions 326 00:39:32.260 --> 00:39:38.980 is that people allow themselves to be controlled by the political class, by the media and so forth, 327 00:39:38.980 --> 00:39:41.780 and assume this is freedom. 328 00:39:41.780 --> 00:39:46.300 But again, it is not a Marxist scenario we're looking at, 329 00:39:46.300 --> 00:39:56.300 Is it correct to say that the Mensheviks were social democrats by your definition? 330 00:40:16.300 --> 00:40:21.580 They fall back once the revolution takes place on what becomes a social democratic position 331 00:40:21.580 --> 00:40:30.220 and they become social democrats once they lose to the Leninist in the Soviet Union. 332 00:40:30.220 --> 00:40:38.900 I think we're sort of using them as a kind of shorthand for all of these non-Leninist 333 00:40:38.900 --> 00:40:39.900 socialists. 334 00:40:39.900 --> 00:40:49.900 You know, I just want to ask you sort of what became of the right, probably, as the left, the two sides of the left fighting out the Cold War. What did happen to the right? Where did it go? 335 00:41:09.900 --> 00:41:18.900 The Christian Democrats in Germany, who are fairly conservative, and then you have Erhard, who's kind of a classical liberal, becoming the German Chancellor. 336 00:41:18.900 --> 00:41:25.900 In France, you have a president in the 50s who's a man of the right, then you have the Gaullist taking over. 337 00:41:25.900 --> 00:41:32.900 In Italy, the left has pretty much spent its forces by the late 40s. 338 00:41:32.900 --> 00:41:37.900 By the early 50s, there's a kind of swing back toward the Social Democrats. 339 00:41:37.900 --> 00:41:42.900 Christian Democrats, who were fairly conservative in the Italian by then. 340 00:41:42.900 --> 00:41:51.900 And as late as the 1960s, the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale d'Italia gets lots and lots of votes. 341 00:41:51.900 --> 00:41:55.900 It gets like, you know, 17, 18 percent of the vote. 342 00:41:55.900 --> 00:42:00.900 There are parties on the German right that were well to the right of the Republicaner in Germany. 343 00:42:00.900 --> 00:42:04.900 Now they were doing very well in the 50s and 60s. 344 00:42:04.900 --> 00:42:11.300 So, there is a movement, one might say, rightward, that occurs after the Second World War, 345 00:42:11.300 --> 00:42:18.340 though I think it has been pretty much downhill through the last quarter of the 20th century, 346 00:42:18.340 --> 00:42:26.900 despite this apparent restoration of conservative values under Thatcher and Reagan, which really went nowhere. 347 00:42:26.900 --> 00:42:33.140 Although I think Thatcher did smash these communist unions, which were dinosaurs at the time she smashed them. 348 00:42:33.140 --> 00:42:40.140 But the most important thing that I think, as Peter Hitchens points out in his book on the abolition of Britain, 349 00:42:40.140 --> 00:42:46.140 is that the cultural institutions stay entirely in the hands of the lunatic left. 350 00:42:46.140 --> 00:42:50.140 And not just the communist left, the lunatic left. 351 00:42:50.140 --> 00:42:53.140 You know, I mean the communists at least believe in bourgeois morality. 352 00:42:53.140 --> 00:42:59.140 The part of the left that takes over are entirely whacked out, but they're very successful. 353 00:42:59.140 --> 00:43:05.420 They push feminism, gay rights, multiculturalism and so forth, all of which succeed for reasons 354 00:43:05.420 --> 00:43:13.940 that I go into in my sequel to After Liberalism on the politics of guilt. 355 00:43:13.940 --> 00:43:20.300 But I think the destruction of the right is pretty much achieved by the 1980s. 356 00:43:20.300 --> 00:43:22.980 The Reagan Revolution was no revolution of any kind. 357 00:43:22.980 --> 00:43:29.540 It's a continuation of the Carter administration under a new name. 358 00:43:29.540 --> 00:43:32.580 The taxes did not fall very much in this period. 359 00:43:32.580 --> 00:43:38.900 Social Security payments went up to make up for the slight reduction in the amount of 360 00:43:38.900 --> 00:43:42.540 taxes that were granted by the government. 361 00:43:42.540 --> 00:43:48.380 And much of the rhetoric of the Reagan administration, as I've pointed out ad nauseam, is this Cold 362 00:43:48.380 --> 00:43:49.380 War liberal stuff. 363 00:43:49.380 --> 00:43:51.980 The Cold War liberals take over the government. 364 00:43:51.980 --> 00:44:09.980 I think the cultural institutions are so entirely taken over by the left, that no matter what happens economically, the left is going to win and the right just keeps moving leftward. 365 00:44:09.980 --> 00:44:20.980 What I did not know when I wrote my book on the conservative movement in which I lambasted the neocons, is that things like this were occurring all over the Western world. 366 00:44:20.980 --> 00:44:46.980 What about the role of the CIA and other U.S. government institutions in promoting the funding of neocons here, in Europe, in these beautiful projects in the Cold War, everywhere? 367 00:44:50.980 --> 00:45:02.820 I mean, this is the CIA and things like the Congress for Cultural Freedom were recipients of American anti-communist money that are almost always on the left. 368 00:45:02.820 --> 00:45:14.060 I mean, there are very few examples of conservative anti-communist organizations being subsidized by the CIA and other agencies that are set up to fight communism. 369 00:45:14.060 --> 00:45:18.740 And of course, the perfect ally is always a social democratic ally. 370 00:45:18.740 --> 00:45:28.340 Now originally this may not have been the ideology of the CIA, it may have been, you know, the pursuit of strategy, of Cold War or geopolitical strategy or whatever else, 371 00:45:28.340 --> 00:45:34.380 but I think in time, if you actually read statements by leaders of the CIA, they also move to the left. 372 00:45:34.380 --> 00:45:40.540 So what becomes the institution associated with fascism, Francoism, counter-re... 373 00:45:40.540 --> 00:45:48.540 It's basically a leftist institution, the CIA, or, you know, it is like one of the major sponsors of the non-communist left throughout the Western world. 374 00:45:57.540 --> 00:46:05.540 Well, yeah, I actually wanted to speak about this in one of my later talks. I don't think he's going to make much of a difference. 375 00:46:10.540 --> 00:46:16.540 and all this other stuff surrounds him and I've just been curious if he's just more of the same than Italy's almost the same. 376 00:46:40.540 --> 00:47:07.540 The problem is that the price of his victory has been to destroy what there is of an Italian right, either, you know, a nationalist right, a localist right, in the case of the Lega Nord. I mean, they've been reduced to insignificance. 377 00:47:07.540 --> 00:47:15.020 Well, I mean, there's various reasons which I think Luigi Marco Bassani can probably go 378 00:47:15.020 --> 00:47:19.820 into because he knows more about this since he was one of the legisti, but who has now 379 00:47:19.820 --> 00:47:21.380 resigned from the lega. 380 00:47:21.380 --> 00:47:28.380 But a lot of this has to do with the dynamics of these right-wing political formations and 381 00:47:28.380 --> 00:47:35.020 the fact that some of them have given up on positions they took, have sort of thrown away 382 00:47:35.020 --> 00:48:02.820 The Wall Street Journal was delighted with the outcome because you have a neoconservative 383 00:48:02.820 --> 00:48:09.420 of Government in Italy, you know, I mean, the kind of welfare state centrist kind of 384 00:48:09.420 --> 00:48:14.660 government that they like, which is not going to rock the boat very much, and those parties 385 00:48:14.660 --> 00:48:19.220 that were farther to the right have now been marginalized. So I think that has been the 386 00:48:19.220 --> 00:48:20.220 price of the British-Scone victory. 387 00:48:20.220 --> 00:48:40.220 What do you think of the development of left or center parties that call themselves centralists, like Bill Clinton and Connie Blair, and their schism or at least the schism of the liberal democrats. It seems like the schism of the farther left here, do you think that's going to go anywhere? 388 00:48:50.220 --> 00:48:55.220 are the leaders. They get up there, the anti-fascists are criminalizing speech. 389 00:48:55.220 --> 00:48:58.220 The communists control the socialists in Europe. 390 00:48:58.220 --> 00:49:05.220 There are two books that have appeared in French in the last two years, one by Maurice Durand, 391 00:49:05.220 --> 00:49:09.220 who was actually at one time a kind of left-of-center French politician, 392 00:49:09.220 --> 00:49:13.220 but it's on the Communist Party, showing how they dominate France. 393 00:49:13.220 --> 00:49:17.220 It's always the Communist Party, and they've been able to control things from behind the scenes for years. 394 00:49:17.220 --> 00:49:32.220 In the last few years, now they're just, you know, out there in front, and they've gotten rid of some of the less workable things like immediate nationalization of the means of production, since so much of French production is already nationalized, like the transportation and so forth. 395 00:49:32.220 --> 00:49:33.220 and such furthermore. 396 00:49:33.220 --> 00:49:38.620 but what they now typically push is anti-fascism, holocaust, sexism, 397 00:49:38.620 --> 00:49:44.820 multiculturalism, but it's a way of controlling society nonetheless, totally controlling it 398 00:49:44.920 --> 00:49:48.520 in the name of sensitivity, fighting prejudice and so forth. 399 00:49:48.520 --> 00:49:51.620 The other book is by a man named Eric Woelner, 400 00:49:51.620 --> 00:49:55.620 who's a French-Swiss writer, called OBJW plane. 401 00:49:55.620 --> 00:49:58.520 I'm a friend of his, is sending me his book, 402 00:49:58.520 --> 00:50:03.520 The socialists are just dummies. They're all dummy parties. It's the communists who are running the place. 403 00:50:03.520 --> 00:50:08.520 And the communists basically have total thought control, throw people in jail for this. 404 00:50:08.520 --> 00:50:13.520 And the socialists are basically, you know, what they would have been if they went along with Lenin. 405 00:50:13.520 --> 00:50:20.520 This is his argument. They're basically back in that position of total subordination to the communists. 406 00:50:20.520 --> 00:50:25.520 Now, in England and the United States, though, I think what you have in the United States, 407 00:50:25.520 --> 00:50:39.520 Now, in England and the United States, though, I think what you have are these sort of yuppie left coalitions led by Clinton, Gore, and in their most distasteful, grotesque and effeminate fashion, Tony Blair. 408 00:50:39.520 --> 00:50:45.520 I must tell you that I would vote for Clinton a hundred times. He's a much more appetizing figure than Blair. 409 00:50:45.520 --> 00:50:55.520 Blair is almost an episcene, a feminist, has married this hideous feminist wife, who by the way was voted the most popular woman in England, Sheri Blair. 410 00:50:55.520 --> 00:50:58.520 She tells you how decadent the English have become. 411 00:50:58.520 --> 00:51:07.520 But there I think you have a problem between the politically correct left, which are the Clintonites and the Blairites and so forth, 412 00:51:07.520 --> 00:51:13.520 and the hard-line socialists, you know, who don't like these people because they've sold out to the capitalists. 413 00:51:13.520 --> 00:51:19.480 Generally, you know, if you read the French newspaper Le Monde, which I don't suggest 414 00:51:19.480 --> 00:51:25.080 you read, it's a disgusting paper, but you always have, you know, usually it's the politically 415 00:51:25.080 --> 00:51:32.600 correct left they represent, multiculturalism, fighting the remnants of Vichy government, 416 00:51:32.600 --> 00:51:35.680 I mean, it's like, it never goes away, the Vichy government, it keeps coming back, you 417 00:51:35.680 --> 00:51:40.240 know, it comes back every week, you know, they're like 98 years old, they've been 418 00:51:40.240 --> 00:52:10.240 The Moon loves this. They get their jollies out of fighting the Vichy government. But then every now and then you have somebody writing, saying, you know, we really have forgotten the working class, and we need, as you know, nationalization, the means of this and this. So they will publish those sorts of things. And obviously, these are the representatives of the Thors of Riel, the labor union movement, who aren't happy with the direction in which the multicultural yuppie direction 419 00:52:10.240 --> 00:52:14.120 in which this has happened. This is true of the Communist Party in Italy has now become 420 00:52:14.120 --> 00:52:18.760 a yuppie, politically correct, multicultural party, but there's like old-line Marxists 421 00:52:18.760 --> 00:52:23.920 who apparently have just crossed over and now vote for the right. A lot of them vote 422 00:52:23.920 --> 00:52:28.600 for the Allianzi Nazionale, which is the right nationalist party, because the communists 423 00:52:28.600 --> 00:52:35.800 have not, do not serve their own, do not serve the working class. They basically serve transgendered 424 00:52:35.800 --> 00:52:39.280 hippies or something like that. So I mean, but there must be a lot of them, you know, 425 00:52:39.280 --> 00:52:46.280 One of the things I always hear, and I've never really pursued this, and maybe you know, and maybe you don't know, is a lot of the Italian economy is underground. And if that's true, then what does that mean for things like this that you're talking about? 426 00:53:09.280 --> 00:53:14.000 you said if it's if it's underground you said 427 00:53:39.280 --> 00:53:45.280 What are those resources because they need the capitalism to sustain their effort? 428 00:54:09.280 --> 00:54:14.960 So, there's a very large number of these sort of liberated women, self-actualizing yuppies, 429 00:54:14.960 --> 00:54:18.800 multi-cultural, who are going to support the communists if they run as that kind of party. 430 00:54:18.800 --> 00:54:24.760 But once they're able to establish control and to pretty much drive out the right, marginalize 431 00:54:24.760 --> 00:54:30.120 disagreement, throw people in jail in the name of sensitivity, which they do, you know, 432 00:54:30.120 --> 00:54:35.600 once they can achieve these things, they have a kind of Stalinist society and then introduce 433 00:54:35.600 --> 00:54:38.000 their economic programs. 434 00:54:38.000 --> 00:54:45.200 And I've heard this argued. I don't know whether it's true. I wouldn't be surprised if it were. 435 00:54:45.200 --> 00:54:49.720 Because obviously this Communist Party doesn't sound like the old Communist Party. I mean, 436 00:54:49.720 --> 00:54:53.980 it sounds like, you know, it sounds like Hillary Clinton going crazy or something, but it doesn't 437 00:54:53.980 --> 00:55:00.240 sound like the old Communist Party. But, you know, the totalitarian methods are the same, 438 00:55:00.240 --> 00:55:01.240 you know. 439 00:55:01.240 --> 00:55:05.240 What is the name of your book on conservative movement? 440 00:55:05.240 --> 00:55:07.240 Do they have it there? 441 00:55:07.240 --> 00:55:09.240 Yeah, he has a copy of it. 442 00:55:09.240 --> 00:55:11.240 The conservative movement. 443 00:55:19.240 --> 00:55:23.240 Okay, is there any, I don't know, have we completed the hour? 444 00:55:23.240 --> 00:55:25.240 Is there time rather for more questions? 445 00:55:27.240 --> 00:55:29.240 Anybody have any other question?