Substack cometh, and lo it is good. (Pricing)

Open Thread – 07/28/2020

The “Open Thread” posts for Brown Pundits are going racking up hundreds of comments in a few days. What gives? Something about community. That’s what the blogosphere as a whole has lost. When was the last post that I wrote in response to another blog? It’s been so long.

One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger is not the normal type of book I read. Since the author is a journalist, not an academic, it’s punchy, to the point, and aggressive, in a way that a lot of the passive voice monographs I read are not. One Billion Americans is at its best when it’s on its “keep American great” theme. Basically, a muscular argument for Left-liberal nationalism. When the author, a liberal, makes an argument aimed at other liberals where they may shy away at first blush from the thesis, he brings his “A-game.” It’s less persuasive to someone like me, on the Right, in many areas where I am skeptical. But in the end, I don’t think this is a book aimed at the center-Right, as opposed to the center-Left.

Coronavirus Is Back With a Vengeance in Places Where It Had All but Vanished:
Hong Kong, Japan and Australia are seeing new waves of infections after relaxing Covid-19 restrictions
. What else is there to say? It’s not an apocalypse. But neither is “back to normal.”

Olivia de Havilland, Golden Age Star Who Challenged Hollywood’s Studio Powers, Has Died at 104. If you look at the list of “Golden Age” movie stars, it’s June Lockhart and Angela Lansbury. And neither of them has the same star power. An era is done and buried. Literally.

These Monkeys Were Once Revered. Now They Are Taking Over. The weirdest part of the story seems to be that monkeys suffer from the same physical consequences as humans from eating junk food.

Adaptive divergence of meiotic recombination rate in ecological speciation. Always fascinated by molecular genetic influences on macroscale phenomena.

China Is Harvesting the DNA of Its People. Is This the Future of Policing?

Fine-scale genomic analyses of admixed individuals reveal unrecognized genetic ancestry components in Argentina. It’s been a bit since I looked into genetic ancestry in Latin America. One reason is that due to finances Latin American researchers often used AIMs. But now that they are moving to denser SNP-arrays it looks like they are revealing the fact that indigenous ancestry is pretty ubiquitous in Argentina, which views itself as a white settler nation.

Evaluation of model fit of inferred admixture proportions.

The genetic architecture of the sexually selected sword ornament and its evolution in hybrid populations.

China Will Answer ‘Heavenly Question’: Can It Land on Mars? Some Chinese science concerns me. Some does not. This is in the latter camp.

Planned Parenthood in N.Y. Disavows Margaret Sanger Over Eugenics.

White men’s privilege in emerging economies isn’t measured. It should be. “If you bring a Western guy … then they really feel important, so if I come in there I almost feel like a God.”

Washington Post settles $250M suit with Covington teen Nick Sandmann.

Growing Up Indojin. This is about Indians who grew up in Japan.

Generalized Hidden Markov Models for Phylogenetic Comparative Datasets.

Sex-specific responses to cold in a very cold-tolerant, northern Drosophila species.

So a quick comment: academia, like the media is getting way more self-consciously “Left”. This makes a lot of academics very happy, though less happy are the moderate liberals who in their bones wonder if this is not right. But, because of the intense “bubble-thought” many academics are not willing to entertain the reality that ideological polarization and “taking sides” by a mostly public-funded institution is not going to end well when 50% of the public is alienated. Additionally, academics want to have some influence, but being politically biased means that half the public is going to automatically ignore your advice. Why wouldn’t they? They feel you have total contempt for them, and that’s actually true.

The generation of graduate students and faculty who have come up in the “Great Awokening” after 2015 are much more radical and intolerant of Right Deviationism. But, they haven’t changed the structure of how they get funded, which still depends on the public purse. This is not sustainable.

43 thoughts on “Open Thread – 07/28/2020

  1. I rarely blog these days, but I still blogged in reaction to other bloggers (who were themselves reacting to an open letter) earlier this month.

    Left-liberal nationalism sounds a bit like “national greatness” conservatism.

    The most prestigious universities tend to have large endowments, insulating them from some of the need for public funding. So they might be able to maintain their norms even if/when the political winds shift against them. And since they produce a lot of the faculty for lower ranked schools, their reach will extend past their numbers.

  2. academic research labs run on NIH/NSF/USDA grants. also private foundations and other things. very few labs run on ‘internal money’ and endowments are limited in what they can spend on…

    also, very few large R1 universities have massive endowments. harvard and yale perhaps. but they aren’t THAT big.

  3. I don’t get why it is weird that junk food induces similar consequences in monkeys as in man.
    Lots of pet dogs and cats get diabetic too in the West, for exactly the same reason.

  4. There might be some environmental challenges in going to 1 billion Americans, especially since we’d probably take the Sprawl-burg approach to housing. The western US is already a pretty dry place (with only one decently long navigable river, the Columbia), and it’s probably going to get drier and hotter unless climate change super-charges the North American Monsoon.

    It seems like those places are getting sloppy on quarantining foreign travelers and workers. You gotta commit to the Full New Zealand!

    Wikipedia actually has a list of Golden Age of Hollywood actors/actresses who are still alive.

    I’m hoping for the best for any Chinese robotic landers, including on Mars. Mars is a tough customer when it comes to landers in particular and missions in general.

  5. As a person who was born in the Soviet Union and whose parents lived in the USSR, I know that flirting with communism will not lead to anything good. It is a pity that the West does not understand this. Communism = Nazism.

  6. One Billion Americans?

    I doubt it. I cite below a new article from Lancet projecting low population growth on a global scale. The article projects the US population in 2100 to be 336 million, just barely larger than it is today (331 M) and that the peak US population will be 364 M in 2062.

    Also: “Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline” by Bricker and Ibbitson (2019) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1984823213/geneexpressio-20

    Good analysis of what it all means by Walter Russell Mead: “Snooze the Climate Alarms” | July 27, 2020 | https://www.wsj.com/articles/snooze-the-climate-alarms-11595889568

    “Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study” | Vollset, Goren, et al. | July 14, 2020 | DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30677-2

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext

    * * *

    Methods: We modelled future population in reference and alternative scenarios as a function of fertility, migration, and mortality rates. We developed statistical models for completed cohort fertility at age 50 years (CCF50). Completed cohort fertility is much more stable over time than the period measure of the total fertility rate (TFR). …

    Findings: The global TFR in the reference scenario was forecasted to be 1·66 (95% UI 1·33–2·08) in 2100. In the reference scenario, the global population was projected to peak in 2064 at 9·73 billion (8·84–10·9) people and decline to 8·79 billion (6·83–11·8) in 2100. The reference projections for the five largest countries in 2100 were India (1·09 billion [0·72–1·71], Nigeria (791 million [594–1056]), China (732 million [456–1499]), the USA (336 million [248–456]), and Pakistan (248 million [151–427]). … 23 countries in the reference scenario, including Japan, Thailand, and Spain, were forecasted to have population declines greater than 50% from 2017 to 2100; China’s population was forecasted to decline by 48·0% (−6·1 to 68·4). China was forecasted to become the largest economy by 2035 but in the reference scenario, the USA was forecasted to once again become the largest economy in 2098. Our alternative scenarios suggest that meeting the Sustainable Development Goals targets for education and contraceptive met need would result in a global population of 6·29 billion (4·82–8·73) in 2100 and a population of 6·88 billion (5·27–9·51) when assuming 99th percentile rates of change in these drivers.

    Interpretation: Our findings suggest that continued trends in female educational attainment and access to contraception will hasten declines in fertility and slow population growth. …

  7. The generation of graduate students and faculty who have come up in the “Great Awokening” after 2015 are much more radical and intolerant of Right Deviationism. But, they haven’t changed the structure of how they get funded, which still depends on the public purse. This is not sustainable.

    I’m all for defunding the police and defunding universities. Let’s see what happens. As an American rightist, I see this as a win-win.

  8. Will an American Pol Pot arise? 50% of the population already hates the intellectual class.

  9. 50% of the population already hates the intellectual class.

    Not as much as “the intellectual class” despises the former.

  10. Sometime ago posted a #DefundAcademia hashtag.

    In all seriousness, a real solution would be to tie student loan performance to the student’s financial performance. This can be done in a simple manner.

    If colleges have to worry about loan repayment, we will see a reduction of tuition, fuzzy (including grievance studies) majors and the overall size of the purported elite entering the workforce.

    Not sure if there enough interest in this until the proles start burning down the student union…

  11. Am I crazy but doesn’t China’s collection of every males dna seem not a population surveillance tool rather a springboard to ten thousand gwas efforts? It is massive overkill to find criminals.

  12. @Brett

    One of the major problems I see with arguments like Yglesias’ (or Bryan Caplan’s, or other various left-liberal proposals aimed at massive development) is that so many people come to America because they see a chance to increase their standard of living, or at least their children’s. They see the McMansions, the ample parking, the 8 lane highways that people cruise down, the spacious suburbs, the restrictions on density. Nobody is going to leave their flat in a 50 story complex in Guangzhou so that they can have the same experience in America. Many proposals coming from those left of center lately will have the effect of making the country much less desirable to immigrants: see how badly immigrant petit bourgeois businesses have been hurt due to the protest events over the past 2 months.

  13. Razib, any thoughts on the masks vs face shields debate? I have some friends who have significant psychological issues with masks (claustrophobic panic, gagging, etc) and are more comfortable with face shields, but they are not sure if face shields are a viable alternative in terms of blocking the coronavirus.

  14. I’m sympathetic to Yglesias’ project, but the last thing we need in a society that’s fraying at the edges and turning towards racialism is a huge increase in diversity and the labor supply.

  15. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.31.126912v2.full.pdf+html – new preprint paper by Ringbauer, Novembre, on reconstructing RoH from low coverage ancient DNA.

    Step forward in doing exactly what I’ve hoped we can do and test the Henrich thesis that consanguinity changed meaningfully with the Western Church. Although testing at the low bounds Henrich seems to think are decisive – going from 1% to 0.1% – going to be hard (and this is crucial as his impressive correlations are all about log consang, and his models at face value detects relatively little change in going from 5% to 50%).

    General trend of higher RoH in insular populations, reduction over time as population sizes increase (more scope to find unrelated partners), very little high RoH in ancient DNA for some regions subsequently Islamicized and with pretty high fractions today (Pakistan, Levant). (Suggests that ideas of very long periods of genetic adaptation to high levels of cousin marriage, over a millennium, probably wrong, at least). The rise of Islam and the rise of large populations may have done way more to change consang (in different directions) than anything the Western Church ever did… Would be good to compare Turko-Mongolic pops in Central Asia who also have high RoH, also.

  16. Mekal: Many proposals coming from those left of center lately will have the effect of making the country much less desirable to immigrants: see how badly immigrant petit bourgeois businesses have been hurt due to the protest events over the past 2 months.

    Some are, some aren’t. Seen some more noise on proposals to make the US openly a racial spoils system with racial minimums for “PoC”.

    These arguments that essentially state that “If an enterprise is all PoC its OK; if they’re overrepresented its OK; but if you’re below population representative minumum, for either the higher of local or national levels, you need to get up to minumum”.

    That would be attractive even if most people are living in Guangzhou style mega tenaments – who doesn’t want a leg up?

    Whether that actually translates to policy any time soon or not seems unclear – it tends to be the case that this is all rhetoric that is accepted until the point at which performatively geeky, performatively ethnically self-deprecating White activist hipsters have to *actually* give up the opportunity to give the “hookup” to each other.

    But at some point it seems like if the rhetoric continues then it’ll have to convert into action once the demographics become inevitable.

    Of course, at that demographic point you’ve probably got ethnic minorities having to argue the case for the spoils between each other, and pretty slim pickings, and the least preferred groups migrating out to whichever convergently productive country offers the most credible claim to be a meritocracy (I’m betting on France as a bastion for old fashioned liberalism, with no modern bs). Which seems kind of unstable.

  17. Came across a new site, Phylogeographer, about genetics. My family background is Kerala St. Thomas/syrian christian so this posting caught my eye. The claim is that a few kerala syrian christian male y-dna samples had derived from a population similar to Lebanese maronite christians, which was also related y-dna prescence in Albania and France:

    https://phylogeographer.com/some-syrian-christians-of-india-descend-from-roman-era-levantine-fgc64029/

    When you get a chance Razib, would you check this site out and see if you think their information is legit, just would like a geneticist opinion and it would be another interesting story added in kerala syrian christian origins.

  18. The mass media and the academics incite each other and at the end of the day both get the money and stimuli from the same group of people and their organisations. I follow economic policy long enough to know how American Neoliberal theories, think tanks and organisations infiltrated the European political, societal and economic field step by step, until no other but the “orthodox theories” were left over.
    The same applies to everything else, including “diversity management”, the latest generations of radical feminism and every other Liberal and Cultural Marxist crap Euroepans had to swallow in the recent decades.
    Its not like these things come out of the blue, people saying that just don’t get it or are lying. A lot of money and power was running into this.

    Take the interviews of Hollywood stars on various issues and the movies made, that’s like one big cloning effort and its going for generations now. The Western societies just harvest what they have seed decades ago, but everything being accelerated because of the WWW and the fact that we enter a new stage of Financial Capitalism and surveillance. The Oligarchy needs test cases, precedents for interferring with the private and opinion control in an unprecedentent manner, “political correctness” is just the way it goes.

    Everything being pulled away from Capitalism and the Oligarchy to “white middle class man”, which is ridiculous, consdering how the real power in the United states being both distributed and exercised. That way the Oligarchy can both distract from what they are doing and put down the fundamental group of people of the USA. They practically silenced them, while things happen in the background which are unbearable or should be unbearable for all citizens anyway.

    Just follow the interviews of the political and media class, what they are saying. The same mantras over and over again. This is a big scam and the next thing which will come will be a financial reform like nobody has ever seen it before, because the system approaches a crash and its overdue all numbers considered.

    Most of the academic world plays in this bigger scheme just the role of the extras, whether they know or it not. If they go to far they will be silenced too in a matter of seconds. And guess what, they Oligarchy already had their test case with right wingers and conservatives before, which they helped to silence. Just look very careful at how Google and Facebook get blackmailed by the “classic media” and “big corporations” into following the rules of the agenda. Watch that very carefully, just do it. The twitter mob and some students are just extras, they have no power and they will get none unless some people want them too.

    The media coverage of some incidents could be completely different from what it was, and once the precedent is there, and other opinions got no space online any more, the same institutions can do the same with everyone. Don’t get tricked, this is not “Communism”, this is an authoritarian societal experiment from the Oligarchy and like in the 60’s, the other are ought to be just the extras. They might want more, but to get something really revolutionary from a Marxist point of view, they would have first to let go most of the last decades of “postmodern” and Frankfurt School indoctrination. But in the end, that’s what they are about now, that’s their basic substance. They being reduced to an instrument of societal engineering without a real alternative in their mind. Its so pathetic.

    What happened and will happen with Google and Facebook, that’s much bigger than any debate about the academic world. That’s the stranglehold on free opinion and choice the Oligarchy wants to have.

  19. “It’s all a big conspiracy” stories are tiresome, childish, and unhelpful when they come from the left. Similarly, when they come from the right.

    The right seems to be filling up with hand-me-down lefty theories. Sam Cooke said it was easy to make the transition from singing gospel to singing pop. You just change “Jesus” to “baby”. In the same way, much of today’s right just changes something like “patriarchy” to, say, “Cultural Marxism”. While, of course, continuing to include rich capitalists among the conspirators.

  20. Follow the money and what the big spenders say themselves in the rare cases they do in public.
    This is no conspiracy theory any more but just facts and reality. You are in denial.
    The “conspiracy theory” might start if talking about the long term goals and plans of the Oligarchy, but basically you can skip this if you want and just look carefully at what they are doing.
    She is not part of the old Plutocracy, but don’t you think this money makes a difference?
    https://fortune.com/2020/07/28/mackenzie-bezos-scott-jeff-bezos-ex-wife-donation-charity-racial-equalit/
    And check for others from the Plutocracy what kind of “charity” they are supporting.
    Both the state and the big money put billions every year in Cultural Marxist propaganda, like radical Feminism, gender and identity politics, “anti-human” environmental propaganda (I am for environmental protection, but they demonise and devaluate humans), “family planning” (Feminist and Anti-European) and so on, including of course
    unrestrained mass immigration.
    At the same time they support privatisation of public goods, cutting corporate taxes and Neoliberal economic rules being taught in business schools. With zero learning from 2008.
    And of course they support media control, censorship of the Www to stop “hate” and deine themselves what “hate” is.

    The small student activist are more like “sympathisers” for their cause as long as they don’t say something the establishment doesnt like. Same as with Greta Thunberg.

    Nothing of this is a strange conspiracy theory at all, just follow the money!

  21. I highly recommend to watch the movie “The Red Pill”, a rare gem among all the CM propaganda people got so used to in the recent years:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Pill

    To me one of the central moments of the movie was with an old Leftist woman which did treat both men and women to avoid domestic violence. She said that all people were talking about the Capitalist problem and violence in general at first, but suddenly it was all about “bad men” and “good women” and nothing else was acceptable any more.
    And what really made the difference even then was FUNDING. Because only those Feminist/Cultural Marxist groups and women’s activists got the full support from the state and big spenders which said what was wanted: Play out males vs. females, ignore other aspects, ignore objectivity, make it a battle of the sexes and don’t talk about other societal issues any more.
    Like suddenly, rather than talking about social issues and violence in general in the USA, everything is “Black Lives Matters” and suddenly, rather than talking about all kind of environmental and social issues we have, the main mantra is “climate catastrophy” (not even climate change any more). Its not even that I’m saying we shouldn’t talk about that or there might be “something about it” or whatever, but suddenly thats the focus, that “became big” and practically always, in every single case, you see a shift of money and mass media attention preceding the “wanted shift”. Call that whatever you want, but if you think some small Twitter activist ruins your society on its own or some mad professor making the difference, you are mistaken. Those are just foot soldiers which, more often than not, don’t even know what they are actually doing and what damage they cause.
    I read interviews with some of these guys, man they have no idea. They are not even ideological in an elaborate way or have a big plan, they just got incited themselves. Most of them. The puppet players are others and the mass media voice they get is just borrowed. They can take it back whenever they want, especially once the free speech base on the internet is no more.

  22. At the risk of running afoul of Godwin’s Law, the strange bedfellowness makes me think of 1920s and ’30s Germany. Supposedly, Communists, Jews, and rich Jewish capitalists were all working together to destroy the German people and the German nation. Now, there were indeed connections between the various groups and money moving around. But denying that they formed a vast conspiracy was not “denial” in the psychological sense. It was denial in the “a two pound brick doesn’t fall any faster than a one pound brick” sense.

    But then I don’t believe “rape is a conspiracy of all men against all women” or a lot of other silliness that a lot of smart people believe.

    I don’t believe some cabal makes people suddenly care about “black lives matter” or “climate catastrophe” any more than I believe some cabal says, “people will stop listening to blues; people will start listening to hip-hop”. (It is, of course, a common leftist belief that hip-hop began as “the authentic voice of the streets” but then “the corporations” turned it into mindless entertainment.)

    What’s that quote about “the result of human action but not of human design”?

  23. Actually its more like a general direction the Western societies are moving for long and its wrong. Yet some people clearly profit from this big time and think they can gain even more power and wealth if proceeding, even accelerating things.
    Those in charge don’t need to invent things, they don’t need to invent small movements or incidents, but they decide, with their money, media channels and organisations, even their connections and networks, which topic being picked up which way.
    If there is an outbreak of violence, plunder and lootings, to give a concrete example, you can portray the people doing it, their motives and actions from completely different perspectives. You can pick up individuals in interviews or individual actions, like you want. For the general audience, what they see is what the major channels and on- and offline tell them, the so called “experts”, often from private organisations, paid by “charity millions” from the Plutocracy which again being hand picked with their opinion. You don’t have to invent them, but you decide which groups gets money and attention, being legitimised by your political allies, your organisations and the mass media. And you decide which groups being silenced, which should have no voice, being cornered and shunned.
    Its an easy game and I only question your motive to deny the context.

    “But then I don’t believe “rape is a conspiracy of all men against all women” or a lot of other silliness that a lot of smart people believe.”

    Smart people don’t believe crap like that, but they use such phrases to motivate their partisans and incite hate against males and the occidental culture, priamrily, which is just another “coincidence”, isn’t it – the Western culture was much less patriarchal than most around the world in 1900, but still “white males” have to be at the pillary first and foremost even 2020. Of course, naive people just “believe that”…

    A true conspiracy theory you might ridicule or demonise should contain something which is unproven and not real, but what I’m talking about has zero to do with inventions, its all well documented facts. People just refuse to look at it the way it is, because they couldn’t proceed like usual afterwards and have to face the fact that they being tricked. People don’t like that, that’s why they are in denial.
    Even more funny is, that many of those opposing it prefer to believe really absurd conspirational theories rather than the facts, because the facts are too boring and not explanation enough. Its like: “Why is it so easy to trick average good people? There must be more to it.” Its just easy to spend some money, control some networks and have your hand on the mainstream media. You don’t need the total phasing. Its just enough to give what you prefer the prevalence.
    But the Oligarchy realised that on the world wide web things are not always that easy to control for them, because small money can, with good arguments, challenge all their money based power. That’s why they will introduce a total censorship and castrate Google and Facebook. Not that Google and Facebook are that good or the people running it are angels at all, but they tried to satisfy all customers and give some freedom to them to get their monopoly. That’s a business model, you need to be credible.
    All the major print and TV channels are not to any educated audience, I could you many examples of proven lies and they lied for a purpose, if that’s a conspiracy, so be it. But on the internet a counter movement and information could take place, with all the crap, I know, but still, more freedom.
    And they want to end it now. So even something like “climate change” and “black lives matter” are just useful incidents and problems which will lead primarily to more suppression of dissent and censorship, a widening of what’s “hate” and a “conspiracy”, which of course no independent experts, but menials of the establishment will define. Most people, unfortunately, believe the paid mercenaries in NGO’s, the academic field and the mass media. Still.
    I would like to have a good quality counter-initiative, but guess what, they don’t pay people for telling the truth or question the dogmas, they only pay them for keeping them up and changing as the Oligarchy wants it.

  24. If people could just spend money and make people believe, all the campaigns for milk would have worked, would have reversed the slide in consumption of milk, kept it number one when people thought of what they wanted to drink. But they didn’t. They have been consistent failures (though perhaps they have “slowed the decline”). Spending money on media doesn’t guarantee an idea will be accepted, any more than it will guarantee a product will sell, or a candidate will get votes.

    I believe that everyone has a model of how the world works, and according to that model who are the bad guys and who are the good guys. Within that model are “narratives”, continuing stories, and media people will report news within those narratives–because they really believe “that’s the way it is”. I also believe that media people want to be good citizens, of the USA and of the world. Right now, they think the best way to do that is to push environmentalism and black lives matter, and to show people how rotten Donald Trump is so he will be defeated and take down Republicans with him.

    Why they believe what they do and why some things seem more imperative to push at different times are complicated questions. I don’t think anyone has final answers. To say, “the Oligarchy told them to do it” is to my mind childish. It’s like saying, “living things can’t be the way they are by evolution; an intelligent Creator must have made them that way.”

  25. @Roger:
    “Why they believe what they do and why some things seem more imperative to push at different times are complicated questions. I don’t think anyone has final answers. To say, “the Oligarchy told them to do it” is to my mind childish. It’s like saying, “living things can’t be the way they are by evolution; an intelligent Creator must have made them that way.””

    That’s not what I said. What I said is the pick and choose people and groups, which they prefer, and push them by spending money, using their influence and networks.
    To give an example: For many newspapers it suffices to choose the general manager and chief editor, as people of trust, and make clear with them and possibly other important members of the staff what the editorial policy is. Obviously they won’t hire people with opposing views anyway, but if they missed one which might write something “different”, they will fire him either before or after the publication, to make him an example.
    As you can see, its not about “making people believe”, but choosing those which already go in the right direction or are opportunistic enough to pretend it, for their job, the money and career. Others won’t get in the position, won’t get the job or the chance to write their viewpoint in this paper.

    The same applies to everything else. And if you own the paper or are a major investor, buy a lot of the ads and support it, you have your fair share of the say.

    Once the train really started to move, you don’t have to do as much any more, because only people with the ideology you want to promote, or at least ready to pretend sell themselves that way, are in charge. Others won’t.

    With money and influence you don’t have to invent those people, or their ideas, but you can promote those you want and put down those you don’t like.

    That’s also a major reason why the Plutocracy and the castrated Cultural Marxists work so well together. The Cultural Marxists/Frankfurt School offspring on campus produces the preachers and menials they want to hire. The deal is they get their distorted society, but the Oligarchy stays untouched and isn’t in the focus of “the revolution”, but even on the contrary, being protected from criticism and attacks to a large degree. Works good enough latest from the 1960’s on.

    The Oligarch doesn’t tell the average journalist what to write, but he might tell the chief editor or his managers and business partners what he doesn’t want to see again, promoted again, or what he wants to see more of. And if you know how the media world runs, you know “your guys” for the “right job”. Once you have shifted the whole media spectrum in the direction you want, its even easier to keep it that way with minimal intervention.

    Looking at the budget of modern mass media, they are more dependent from their sponsors than ever and don’t even have the time and resources to do “something different” or becoming investigative in a way which would be inconvient for leading figures of the Oligarchy. I experienced that first hand in small scale papers. You don’t piss off your main financier that easily, even if the whole branch knows what he’s doing and that this is wrong! That’s just how it is! And if the money and power being concentrated in ever fewer hands, so are the choices for a free press and media. That’s one of the most basic weaknesses of democracy – the lack of free information in a Capitalist system. There is none if people don’t finance their own newspapers and people don’t do that any more on a big enough scale. So it all depends on just a few big spenders.

    Of course there were prominent cases of rather small men from the Oligarchy in recent years, but even those were only presented once it became impossible to hide their crimes and it only hit people which were not at the top anyway.

    The media industry is so dependent from the Oligarchy’s money and became so inflexible, its a shame. Most just reproduce what the well paid agencies of the major firms from Oligarchy send out anyway. The best example being the Rating Agencies. They should have been dead by now, dead 2008. Yes, the media did cover the scandal with the CDS, but in which way? Seriously, they should have teared them to tatters and didn’t stop until they were gone or seriously reformed. But what did this “social awake media ninjas” do? They did first nothing, for many years, when the bells were already ringing, still, not that much. Then they uncovered what was out anyway, made some reports and now everything is gone again, but the problems remain!
    The social ninjas just prefer to do their hits with something which is less dangerous and even if they report, its usually “no call to action”, unlike with the “climate threat”, “rampant hate and racism” or “war crimes” by states and statespeople the US Oligarchy doesn’t like. There are so many cases when the media failed so completely, where it was NO coincidence at all. And afterwards they all just say “we didn’t saw it right, but now…”
    But they don’t change their position, they just confess what was unbearable to keep up. The whole system is so corrupted and rotten by now, its a true shame. There is not that much of a “free press” left to save, nothing objective at all. Its still better than in some totalitarian regime, but not that much any more.
    And when the Oligarchy tries to strangle the last resorts of internet freedom, it gets really, really dim.

  26. So Oligarchs are constantly giving orders. But we never see them giving orders. You don’t see names named or occasions detailed. Which is, of course, because They want it that way. So convenient.

    One thing I hate about lefty conspiracy theories is that they are verbs without human subjects. No actually existing people. Just faceless “they must be there” entities moving the chess pieces. “The patriarch” or whatever.

    It saddens me when people “on the right” adopt some of the worst habits of so many people on the left.

  27. Of course there are names and there are clear connections. To name just one person I can point to George Soros and his “Open Society Foundations”. And they are damned close to me too, financing various other regional organisations which spread propaganda about privatisation, social and state downgrading and mass immigration. Related organisations provide some of the “main experts” used in the mainstream mass media. This is a fact, no fiction or conspiracy. And I could observe how his ideas and the influence of his organisations was growing over the years.

    Another example reaching back far longer is the Rockefeller Foundation. They don’t just do bad things, I’m not saying that. I know people which studied in the USA and worked on good programs with the help of the Rockefeller organisations. But still their influence is tremendous and the budget they are using huge.

    The recent example I already provided, with MacKenzie Bezos providing literally billions to spread radical Feminist, gender and identity propaganda.

    In the big media corporations I could draw you lines of who owns whom and what kind of content they produce, on a regular basis.

    I could also point you to all the incidences and people which got fired, shunned and ruined, in some cases and countries even imprisoned, for writing something which wasn’t “ok” with the mainstream and the Oligarchy. You might say that in some cases the pressure came from the “leftist activists”, but even those get directed and supported directly by organisations which Plutocrats pay for.

    As for who makes the standards, which students use in their arguments, for what’s allowed and what’s not, its again private organisations which try to “observe and influence” society, not even those of the official state more often than not. the “Southern Poverty Law Center” is private organisations financed largely by “charity”.

    Looking at the financial situation of the organisation, you get this:
    “The Los Angeles Times reported that by 2017, the SPLC’s financial resources “nearly totaled half a billion dollars in assets”.[46] For 2018, its endowment was approximately $471 million per its annual report and SPLC spent 49% of its revenue on programs.[1] According to the Montgomery Advertiser, the SPLC had received “significant financial support” with revenues almost “$122 million and total assets of $492.3 million”, as of September 30, 2018, it reported”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Poverty_Law_Center#Charity_ratings

    So we’re talking about billions and billions of dollars flowing directly from well known Oligarchs to organisations which influence the state, the media and its people, additionally to the direct ownership, sponsoring, investment and business relations to the big media.
    Yet you try to ridicule me pointing out that they “don’t give direct orders, personally”.

    No leftist professor can ever excel that much influence, unless he becomes a revolutionary political leader. I couldn’t see one so far.

    Also, yes, they do give direct orders, unfortunately its a rare case this can be proven, but it happened often enough in various national and international organisations. Its a proven fact. Like for the NYT:

    “The Ochs-Sulzberger family trust controls roughly 88 percent of the company’s class B shares. Any alteration to the dual-class structure must be ratified by six of eight directors who sit on the board of the Ochs-Sulzberger family trust. The Trust board members are Daniel H. Cohen, James M. Cohen, Lynn G. Dolnick, Susan W. Dryfoos, Michael Golden, Eric M. A. Lax, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., and Cathy J. Sulzberger.[116]

    Turner Catledge, the top editor at The New York Times from 1952 to 1968, wanted to hide the ownership influence. Arthur Sulzberger routinely wrote memos to his editor, each containing suggestions, instructions, complaints, and orders. When Catledge would receive these memos, he would erase the publisher’s identity before passing them to his subordinates. Catledge thought that if he removed the publisher’s name from the memos, it would protect reporters from feeling pressured by the owner”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times

    So not even the reporters should have known who REALLY WANTED THEM TO DO WHAT THE OWNER WANTED! And I tell you, this happens in simlar scenarios everywhere and all the time. This has zero to do with “fantasies of a conspiracy”, its about networks, ownership and dependencies. And they reach far and wide, especially for those few which have a real fortune and excel disproportional influence on society and the economy.
    The simple students and professors on campus are just pawns, which would prefer to be kings, but they are not and they don’t even realise how they being instrumentalised against their parents, their relatives, their very own people and interests, even against freedom and democracy in the end.
    Some will just realise when the lights turned out for them too.

  28. You seem to be working backwards.

    1) This is what the Oligarchy believes.

    2) These people were pressured to push these beliefs.

    3) Therefore, they were controlled by the Oligarchy.

    Which is very neat. But it elides so many important questions. Why does the Oligarchy believe that? Why does the Oligarchy change their beliefs over time and change what they think is important to “push” over short periods of time? The idea that the Oligarchy has a conscious plan to atomize society to make it easier to sell people things just seems crazy to me.

    One problem I have is that there are lots of other beliefs around and lots of money pushing them. E.g., scads of money passes through churches but no respectable person is against “abortion rights”. Libertarians have big money foundations and register just about zero when it comes to what is cool and what politicians listen to.

    Again, I see backwards reasoning. Because all these other ideas aren’t successful, they must be against what the Oligarchy wants and/or the Oligarchy stopped them from being successful.

  29. Perhaps a parable will help get across what I’m trying to say.

    3 Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow:

    4 And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up.

    5 And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth:

    6 But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.

    7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.

    8 And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred. (Matthew 4:3-8 KJV)

    What I’m hearing you say is that the Oligarchy can sow any seeds they want anywhere they want and the seeds will come up and yield a big crop. Because, hey, they’re the Oligarchy and they’re rich and powerful.

    The Oligarchy commands, their minions obey, and the millions (billions?) of sheep one level down just go along.

    But ideas, like seeds, must fall on fertile ground with a climate they can thrive in.

  30. You misinterpret what I’m saying. To begin with, the Oligarchy doesn’t need to believe in the crap they promote, but they might deem it useful or at least less detrimental than the other, currently available alternatives. And especially in the USA politics and money is so closely intertwined, Left and Right, that you can’t tell them apart.

    Even in Medieval times or Antiquity very rich people actually spent money, instead of making it, for positions of high prestige and power. Even if they had little chances of getting the wealth back in their lifetime. Why? Because Power beats Wealth all the time. If politics would turn on some Plutocrats, what they ought to do? They can be stripped by the people, a movement or the state, of their fortune any time. That’s also a lesson they learned in the 20th century both in National Socialism and Communism, but also other, even democratic regimes, including the USA, which shattered trusts and nationalised private wealth. So its an experience made, in the 20th century, that the wealth and power accumulated can be lost, if you lose the control over politics.

    Especially in the USA that lesson was learned very, very early on in comparison, also because in this country people were always more indinvidualised and less about social cohesion and true ideals anyway. The whole moral and law system now revolves around the protection of “private property” in all its ways and almost regardless of how it was accumulated. This is the exact opposite not just to more radical movements, but even to the situation as it was in many Western states just some decades ago. Private property of the wealthy is now like a holy cow, not touchable by any politicians, even worldwide, in the Western system, even if backed up by the majority of people of his or her country. That was the American policy since decades. Just read up on Rockefeller, which supported leftist movements big time, as long as they were useful, and what they did in Latin America.

    This means a true Plutocrat will first and foremost care for stabilising and extending his influence and power, because the wealth can be created in this rigged system by the privileged anyway.

    Now looking at some basic principles you can say:
    – Cultural Marxism with its “social oppression” and “anti-white-heterosexual male” focus is better than real Marxism or Socialism. It actually helps with the next “problems”:
    – Families and especially extended families and close knit ethnicities are harder to control than atomised individuals, people without a higher structure or order
    – Homogeneous, conservative people are harder to play out against each other and might use their social cohesion to fight social-economic-state changes which only profit the Oligarchy more successful

    Therefore you reduce:
    – Real social movements which might pose a threat to the Oligarchy
    – Reduce family bonds, naturally grown units, communities and identities, try to substitute it with consumer profile and identity politics, individualised morals and outlooks

    Everything Cultural Marxists say is, with some exceptions, which were largely annihilated by promoting only those proponents which “said the right things” is actually useful from the perspective of the Oligarchy.
    They even sell products with propaganda messages for the consumer – with Cultural Marxist propaganda! Not just since yesterday, since there is “pressure from the streets”, but for decades! They support and promote “political correctness” of the Cultural Marxist kind for many, many years. That’s not short time, but a long term project.

    That way they can erradicate or at least weaken all kinds of movements which are not favoured. Communism was only a threat in its classic form to their power, and even then only in their very own US country, not in the Soviet Union as much. But with the Leftism of the Frankfurt School, with Cultural Marxism, they got something which is only mildly dangerous to their power and wealth, but extremely useful in keeping other potential foes down.

    The plural and multicultural society concept too as two sides, one is the production of an even more individualised and atomised, actually deeply split society, the 2nd is a role model for the global expansion of the very same power structures which were first established in the USA to the whole world. By selling a truly global societal experiment. If you tell people that’s all about corporate power, its much less appealing and it lacks the “I want to do good” touch, so they allow and promote all kinds of things which both help their goal and make people feel “politically active and good” at the same time. Its a win win situation for them and those Cultural Marxist which hate occidental-male culture more than anything else.

    That’s why you hear more about “white racism” than “black poverty”. Its absurd, but that’s how it is. Especially in effect its always more about inciting hate and conflict, putting the majority white people down rather than truly helping those Afro-Americans which need help in a reasonable way. And a middle class white male which struggles already becomes “white privileged”, while the big Plutocrats in their towers watch the mob fighting it out without looking up. If you say that’s not running well for the Plutocracy, what else should they get? That’s the best world they ever lived in. Money is everything and it became a virtual, easy to control commodity. Other values being reduced to phrases and what their think tanks spread, not just, but for a large part. Really, couldn’t be much better.

  31. As an example of the Oligarchy’s “hidden hand”, you present the story of the NYT’s publisher sending memos to the editor, which are relayed to the rank and file with his name removed. I’m not sure how many people were fooled, but let’s assume they were.

    I offer as counter-anecdote the Tom Cotton op-ed. The editor okayed it and printed it. Then the lower levels complained mightily, and the editor wound up resigning. Similarly, at the Wall Street Journal, lots of employees were willing to put their names on a letter saying the editorial page was disgustingly anti-woke. I gather that such “bottom up” rather than “top down” pressure is not at all uncommon.

    I suppose you could say that the Oligarchy is bypassing the chain of command and using the lower levels to frighten and purge the upper levels. Like Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

    At the least, it complicates your narrative.

  32. Perhaps … over the last 50 years the Oligarchy has successfully engineered a plan to make Americans ugly and unhealthy. Developing cheap, high calorie “superpalatable” foods, putting cup holders in cars, making just about every place accessible to cars (and many inaccessible without them).

    Thus an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, etc., etc. By now, so many people rely on pills that a potential invader could bring the country to its knees simply by stopping the supply of medication.

  33. This is a long term project of indoctrination which was so successful that it infiltrated most levels of society, especially those from social environments with long term (re-) education. So sometimes the higher level discipline the lower ones and the next time its vice versa.
    However, if the dispute being not settled down in the way the Oligarchy prefers, they will use their money, influence and networks and being the game changer from the back.
    Like a University discussing what kind of opinions are still allowed and welcomed on their campus.
    The decisIon making and discussion are not over, some local Cultural Marxist groups ring the bell.
    But they are just a handful and can’t make the difference at first. So they call the mainstream media and those large, Plutocratic funded organisations for help and those “raise public awareness”.
    Now imagine the rare, the currently almost unimagimable case that the University wouldnt give in to the mob, the hate, the trouble makers, the diffamation and dirt campaign they would have to endure, what would be next?
    They would have to fear for the money, for the private and Business sponsors, most from the Oligarchy, and even the foundations and half-state organisations to stop the money flow.

    So even fairly tolerant, open minded and non-Marxist deans and staff might just think: Is it worth it to ruin my career and threaten even the well-being of the institution, its staff and students? And most will simply come to the conclusion it is not. Totally understandable.
    Now some might say the small Cultural Marxist group was at the trigger, but in fact they just rang the bell. They could have been silenced the same way as their opponents,some years ago even easier with very low public support, than those,no problem. The problem is they being backed up, if they do something useful for the Oligarchy, by mainstream media, organisations and foundations clearly in the hand of the Plutocracy.
    Remember “Occupy Wallstreet”?
    That was unwanted, so even the best arguments where torn into pieces. No help, no friendly support and coverage, even on the contrary, until it was dead.
    But if there is a stupid person saying something stupid, which helps with Oligarchy’s goals and seems to be harmless for their position, you can be sure you have your next “hero”, “person of x”, “role model”, “conscience of the youth” or what kind of other crap they can come up to declared this person a saint and spread the message.
    And if a Journalist begins to question the narrative he first gets the message from the owner and editor in chief, if not being fired and declared a mind criminal instantly.

    So its not like the Universities using public money in a way which they should not, but rather they being paid exactly for what they deliver.
    The moment the Campus would turn on the Plutocracy, defunding would be an instant reality, as would be police squads catching “Communist” (or whatever) terrorists.
    There is a reason for the Frankfurt School Cultural Marxism becoming big in the United States. Its actually quite useful for the Oligarchy and much more harmless than any other alternative to express angerufen with the US Capitalist system. It allies well.

  34. The more I read you, the more your theories sound like hand-me-down leftism. They might even be called Right-Wing Cultural Marxism. The same structure: a shadowy conspiracy imbuing people with false consciousness and screwing them to maintain power.

  35. Calling it names won’t make it go away and I try to be truthful rather than anything else. Cultural Marxism in the Frankfurt School way means, among other things changing the focus from the top 1 percent and structural Capitalist power to cultural and identity issues, to eliminate European people as nations, to eliminate occidental culture, to eliminate patriarchal traditions, to eliminate traditional families, to eliminate traditional religion, to eliminate heterosexual norms and sexual moral, to eliminate traditional authority, to eliminate biologistic concepts, to eliminate technological and scientific understanding of society and so on.
    The end result should be a society freed from “old identities and authorities”, “male centered logic”, individualised, yet collective, because people got rid of their old constraints. A matriarchal paradise which will no longer have wars and conflict, “no discrimination”, but equal wealth distribution. Of course that’s bullocks, but the “eliminate” part is welcomed by the Oligarchy for its plans for global social engineering, as it doesn’t touch themselves.

    Again, calling someting names doesn’t make it go away. I brought you plenty of concrete examples and proofs, like the big foundations funded by Plutocratic money which excel a huge influence on society and our “expert world”, or the media control excelled by the owners and investors, the networking aspect etc. Its not like its hidden or a fantasy, it probably was some decades ago, but now they don’t know any shame any more, because they can present themselves as morally superiour while tricking average Joe.
    You can search for some really nice interviews from major Oligarchs, they tell you themselves how much they love “political correctness” and the new societal standards. In most cases their families work on the same project for decades already. Now its, instead of brainwashing and indoctrinating people, part of their “philanthropic activities” and “charity”. So they can now punch people in their faces and call it “love for humanity”, isn’t that great?
    Twitter and the internet as a whole is just another tool, like so many others, and the only problem it might cause is that messages they don’t like might spread too, unlinke in the filtered mainstream media, whether from the Left or Right, doesn’t matter. And by blackmailing Google and Facebook, by using their power and allies to install even bigger scale surveillance and censorship, they try to fix that problem too.

    People need to know how things work, otherwise talking about the pawns instead of the kings might seem easier to do, but its completely meaningless and actually no more but a distraction from the real issue. Its not coincidence “the wrong people” get so much funding and money for their activities, because they are just “the right people” for those in charge.

  36. Yet the flow of the money from the Plutocracy and their personal agendas, even interviews, prove on which side they are staying in debates with Cultural Marxists and which they support. The reason is obvious: It makes their potential threats smaller and is the best controllable movement expressing social dissatisfaction. They win on the whole line with these kinds of corrupted or easily controllable “revolutionaries”, which are even “nice enough” to do the dirty campaigning and work for them, so the establishment can sneak on everyone and censor the internet.
    Its not that they were forced to, they did support it from the start, when it was still so small in the Western world, they could have easily stamped it out. They didn’t wanted to, because they are more afraid of other things and saw the potential of Cultural Marxism for social engineering in their interest. Even the earliest Marxist emigrants from the Frankfurt School got a huge support. It went on that way, just that they decided later which branch should be supported or shunned.
    You are right insofar as that they can’t invent things or predict everything, but social control and media manipulation go now so far, that its far easier to plant messages into people’s heads than some decades ago. If there wouldn’t be that annoying World Wide Web in which people express opinions they can’t control that easily with money alone. Good you have those CM “social activists” which demand from the left more control and censorship. Now they can say, “if even they want it, we must do it, they are the Liberals…”
    How funny.

  37. Yet the flow of the money from the Plutocracy and their personal agendas, even interviews, prove on which side they are staying in debates with Cultural Marxists and which they support.

    It is wonderful that you have the bank records of the Plutocracy, LLC. Here I thought there was no actual entity, the Plutocracy, which can be thought of as having desires and plans, and of acting on those plans.

    But I have a lot of questions. Are the Plutocracy and the Oligarchy the same thing? Does the Plutocracy do business as the Oligarchy (or vice versa)? Are they separate entities but with interlocking directorates? Perhaps they are both controlled by some uber-entity?

  38. I know what kind of “charity” and “philanthropy”, as well as which investments they undertake, its no secret that “big money” is flowing into reeducation and indoctrination. Like its “interesting” to say the least, how many of those Plutocrats support big time Cultural Marxist think tanks and organisations, which do radical identity politics, which in turn undermine the very fundaments of Western Civilisation and the European people, destroy the free exchange of ideas and progress, even any non purely Capitalist-materialist culture and the well-being of all of mankind. They pretend to be concerned about “minorities” and “suppressed” people, yet they are the biggest suppressors and profiteurs of all.
    Why don’t they spend their money, instead of directing it against occidental culture, average males and traditional families, in public affordable housing programs? Support for mothers and families? Into social and educational projects more than they actually do?
    They support “black lives matters”, founded by Marxists, but they don’t help those thousands and thousands of Afro-American single mothers and homeless people with THEIR money?!
    They just exert influence and power by keeping their hands on politics, they care s*it for the people on the ground, regardless of which color they have, that’s the truth!
    “Occupy Wall Street” wasn’t right about everything, I know that, they were naive, but it was the best leftist leaning movement in the last decades we had, with at least an important, an highly important issue for the future of Western civilisation and mankind. And what did the press do? They teared them apart, for no good reason, for fraud stories and false allegations! Those were the same “leftist” and “Liberal” journalists (sure, they are honest people, let me laugh!), which constantly write for radical feminism, the deconstruction of occidental culture and reasonng, the replacement of Europeans, as well as the omnipresent enemy of mankind, the so called “white privilege” and “patriarhal suppression”. There is something so fundamentally wrong in this system, that you must be blind to not see it.

    As for the terms, a Plutocrat is someone with extraordinary wealth which can, and does, exert political and societal power with his fortune and economic influence for his very own and his/her social group and class interests. They work against the participation of other groups and promote a system in which money = power. So they creating their own power base in a society in which money controls everything, effectively mammonism.
    So what’s specific is:
    – Their socio-economic position, at best close to the financial sector and money creation itself
    – The way they exerting power
    – Not a must, but what is still usually meant: The goals they have
    Basically its a super-rich person doing politics, usually, but not necessarily (like Bloomberg), from the back with his money and connections.
    This says nothing about his/her political stance and not everybody super-rich is a Plutocrat.
    If you are just super-rich, but don’t intervene politically, you are just rich. Even if you are not that rich, but are very good in using the excess money you have to exert political influence, you are more a Plutocrat, especially if you do the political intervention in favour of your class, in favour of other people in your social position and for a money-controlled society.

    To sume it up: A prototypical plutocrat is a super-rich person which exerts disproportional political influence on a given society primarily in favour of his very own social group or class.

    The Plutocracy in the United states shifted from entrepreneurs and engineers, from practical people and those which “build things”, to bankers, financial business and managerial people, which need much of a legitimation and even change morals to get a better standing in society, as well as the mass media, including entertainment industry, which provides the legitimation. This happened when the value of the American industrial production plummeted. The change took place largely from the 1960’s to the 1980’s and the process was largely finalised in the 1990’s. The movie “Wallstreet” exemplified it, the shift which ruined America. This was part of the reason for the rise of support for “Liberal ideas” and it helped to make Cultural Marxism the new religion of society during the Cold War, where it was used to castrate “real Marxism” and Eastern Communism, but also to devaluate traditional European moral ideas. Usury and speculation were not, not even in the USA, that highly valued before. It mattered HOW YOU MADE YOUR FORTUNE too, not just whether you are rich!

    In a way its a similar thing as with Salafi/Wahhabi Islam in Saudi Arabia: In theory the royal family should become the first target of its own ideology, if the Islamists take the ideology seriously, but since they support the spread of the ideology worldwide, and the Salafists would just fail when losing the state and the Saudis Oligarchy money as a base, they formed this perverted alliance which even legitimises the rule of the Saud dynasty, regardless of what they do as people.
    Largely the same principle can be applied to the USA. The Oligarchy is extremely hypocritical and arrogant, but even the honest Cultural Marxists know, if thinking twice, that without the US state and business support, Cultural Marxism would have never ever spread as far and wide and would be dead by now. Its an unnatural ideology going against human instincts and logic, so it must be kept alive with huge propaganda efforts.

    Its a state and business sponsored legitimation for world power today, the “new idea of man”, not directly from, but largely derived from Horkheimer et al. Horkheimer invented the ideology almost on his own, since he not just started the project for real, but he influenced, directed, helped to finance and motivate most other ideologists of the movement directly and indirectly with his “critical theory”. He is the single most influential person for the “modern Left” in the last 100 years. Without him, many ideas would have never spread as they did. Unfortunately Grünberg (which was not just a regular Marxist, but even a more decent one, which was rare at that time in German speaking lands already) died and got the position in Frankfurt. This was a tragedy for our world, because this gave way to Horkheimers poison to be spilled.

    But of course, the American Oligarchy just took what it could use and devaluated the rest of his writings (which were directed against hollow consumerism and careerism among other things).

    Now Capitalist Oligarchs can use the United States to invade and bomb countries, put down their own people’s interest or distract them, surveil, push and imprison them, by using originally radical Marxist arguments! Its like a parallel universe to anything before the 1960’s.

    The new tech industry, the new economy and the internet was an exception for the shift I described from production to the economies of moeny and ideas, this were again more young and new, technical affine people, often with a clear business model and not as deeply rooted in the established American Plutocracy and political system. They are, however, oftentimes dependent from the support from these in the financial sector. An example would be the Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Not part of the Oligarchy yet.

    The Oligarchy is different from the Plutocracy, as its about the really influential people, Plutocrats, politicians, media, educational and science people, with everything in between and belonging to the networks in the establishment which connect them. The classic example for a family in this group of the old money aristocracy with a huge spider net are the Rockefellers.

    Contrary to those, like if a single rich person has “funny ideas”, even if he owns billions, he lacks connections, networks and support by peers, as well as organisations founded probably even generations ago, he will not be able to exert as much influence at all. Some well connected families, with much less money, might be able to do much more. To name an example for this type, the current prototype is Elon Musk. He is therefore just super-rich, might be ready to be politically influential, but he is not yet, therefore no Plutocrat and no Oligarch, just rich and somewhat influential, but actually rather dependent from the system like the other 99,9 percent.

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