When looking at today’s lunatic Left and its obsession with microaggressions, unwarranted claims of ‘privilege’, its advocacy of naked and disgusting racism and much else, it’s tempting to put the entire blame for the creation of this dangerous and destructive onto Karl Marx. In some cases casting blame on Marx may be justified but Kit Wilson, a writer and musician based in London and writing for CapX, has another theory and one that deserves consideration. He believes that the Left has interpreted some aspects of Freudian psychoanalysis, possibly wrongly, to create an ideology where society rather than flawed individuals are blamed for all and every ill.
Whilst there are both criticisms of Sigmund Freud’s work and some who claim that he got some things correct, the idea that some on the Left have interpreted Freud’s work and incorporated into today’s Leftism is an interesting one.
Here’s a short section of Mr Wilson’s piece. I’d strongly advise readers to go to the CapX site and read the rest.
And it is this blunt form of Freudian leftism we see everywhere today: from the fixation on linguistic minutiae – the idea, for instance, that we should use the words womyn or womxn rather than woman – to the mainstream assumption that those on the right are always driven by greed or sadism. Old-school Marxists at least believed the main problem was economic self-interest: that the elites would always seek to exploit workers for their own economic gain.
Simplistic as this narrative was, it at least placed the blame on a kind of universal human nature: anyone, finding themselves in a position of economic power, would seek to preserve their position by whatever means. The Freudian leftist today, on the other hand, encourages us always to suspect a unique sinfulness about our opponents: that they are driven by impure motives, while we are morally clean.
You can find the complete article via the link below:
https://capx.co/these-days-the-worst-left-wing-ideas-come-from-freud-not-marx/
Intriguing postulation, I hope someone who is knowledgeable on Freudian theories comments
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Meanwhile an OT for Mr FH
Yes, I also would like to see someone with in depth knowledge on Freud comment on this idea. As a non medically qualified observer it does seem to be the case that as the rise of personal liberation and personal growth movements has occurred, the Left has become more apt to incorporate certain ideas, such as identity politics etc.
I saw this article on the Hasidic community of New York and was immediately struck by how the community have stuck together against the onslaught of the NY government and the bent media. Although I’m not connected with the Hasidic community I’ve lived close by them and have followed how they’ve behaved over here and they seem to have been more willing than the NY Hasids to buckle down to the government’s line. Maybe this was because there were some high profile deaths in that community that have been attributed to Covid, for example that of Rabbi Avrohom Pinter ZT”L back in April 2020 which may have frightened some UK Haredim into complaiance. Also the UK Haredi community is much smaller than that of the community in New York and probably also more divided into different sects which would make the community more easy to influence than the community in NY. NY is the centre of the Chabad Lubavitch movement which sends emissaries all around the world to bring Jews back to Judaism and you would expect that this level of travel and arrival, plus the fact that they have large families (ten kids is not uncommon) all living closely would make the covid situation worse than elsewhere but it seems that this is not the case. I do agree that this does need more proper study.