The Educated Elite’s Trojan Horse.
Fixing the West’s problems ends up mixed in with solutions that benefit rival powers instead.
America’s liberal hegemony over most of the world has been taken for granted at best or seen as the number one problem at worst by a new crop of well-educated and contrarian young people that don’t fall into the corporate friendly woke sphere.
Being well versed in the actual problems with America and other Western countries is great. It's a breath of fresh air compared to the “pacifier and bib” intellectual narrowness of Critical Race or Gender Theory, but still possesses a level of egotism that narrows their focus to the West and its crimes without giving competing world powers the same courtesy.
This blindness to the agency of other nations beyond the control of the CIA and MI6 has been well noted by the USSR’s KGB and its modern day successor since before the Cold War.
For example, an entire generation of intellectuals criticizing Western inequality turned a blind eye to the gulags and mass murder of Joseph Stalin’s regime back in the 1930s when Communism was in peak fashion.
Likewise, 60s - 70s radicals and peaceniks lauded the totalitarian USSR, Maoist China, and other such hellscapes, though still preferring to live in the safety of their horrible Western nations.
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For those “intellectuals”, the Communist Nation was a romantic idea instead of a real place with problems they couldn’t begin to comprehend, but they judged their own imperfect nations by the standards of their fantasy ideal.
That the real USSR had enough agency to influence them into certain actions was an inconvenient truth as it would mean agreeing with the “bad guys” of the CIA and Pentagon.
For the Communist leadership, there was never a realistic goal of these radical intellectuals turning the west Communist (at least not initially) but to create enough destabilization within these nations so they could not interfere with the USSR’s imperialistic ambitions.
These ambitions have been rekindled as of late with Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine and along with this come bad actors making use of this Western self-absorption in order to sow chaos through the useful idiots on both the far left and far right.
While there’s a good amount of divisive propaganda for the masses on both extremes, this is usually too blunt and simple minded to be of any interest to the well-read from good families and promising careers who want to get to the deeper truths. These people are more important to influence as they will become the decision makers who shape the world views of the aforementioned masses.
Unlike the masses whose information diet consists of political pundits, or the activistic identity obsessed left that turned education into a Maoist Struggle Session, the individuals I’m talking about have a sense of curiosity mixed with a desire to embody the qualities they see in the great leaders and philosophers of the past.
The problem, however, lies in their limited perspective on the motivation of the non Western nations like Russia leaving well-educated elites vulnerable to bad actors seeking to exploit their desire for an intellectual and cultural rebirth.
These bad actors may present themselves as allies in the fight against the perceived problems within mainstream institutions, but in reality, their agenda includes the destruction of the “Atlanticist” liberal system altogether.
As the fascist “Putin’s Rasputin” Alexander Dugin said of who he targets to embrace the 3rd Position:
“Это проект национал-большевизма, объединения правых и левых против либералов любых, вообще против всех неолибералов.”
”This is the project of National Bolshevism, the unification of the right and the left against any liberals, in general, more-so against all neo-liberals.
It makes logical sense that when many of our mainline institutions ignore the system’s problems, then there are fewer sources of patronage to turn to. If I was in charge of a competing world power desiring a multipolar world, it would be stupid of me NOT to make use of this golden opportunity.
While I am avoiding naming specific people and media organizations I strongly suspect being bad actors here, it should ultimately not matter who it is when you can separate the good ideas from the bad.
Many of the conversations within the dissident elite sphere are rightful criticisms of the establishment’s many shortcomings. There is also the pleasant feeling of finally discovering a like-minded community of non-woke people that share an admiration for the finer things in life.
But at the same time, you have certain preconceived views about America’s role in Ukraine, for example, that dominate within these circles.
These views are held not by intellectual infants like the overmedicated pink haired conformists who would associate the aforementioned finer things in life with “deal old white men”, but many within this group who have also fallen for the silver tongues of the bad actors may be considered intellectual teenagers.
They’ve progressed beyond the safe space diapers (were they to have even needed them in the first place), but have grown so confident in learning the truth about reality that to question what they assume is the truth is to side with the cringe establishment, and even worse, to risk losing the sense of community they built up online and off.
In this “as above, so below” way, the motivations of the young elite are not so different from the social justice warriors or MAGA boomers. Why ruin the harmony of your social circle by looking into contradictory information? Better to just assume that your tribe is always right..
And it is this sense of wanting to preserve social cohesion that the bad actors use to reinforce their vision within the social circles they’ve been assigned to infiltrate.
This is a tricky situation indeed, but it would be a perfect world with nothing to strive towards if there was already a neatly constructed popular side with the right answers to all the questions.
In striving towards this goal, however, I believe that real power is able to manifest when it is neither subservient to the current political correctness in the majority of Western leadership, nor the Kremlin.
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This sense of true intellectual freedom is what I am building with my substack and with the livestream show Break The Rules. I bring on people who see things differently, and it’s especially good if they’re from different social circles. This is not in order for some limp wristed centrist position to eventually be agreed upon, but so that when we make decisions in life, there’s a higher goal in mind than just agreeing with the group for the sake of safety.
Unless you want to keep being a conformist, you should see the importance in giving up this sense of safety as well. It may also mean giving up a quick easy way to gain an audience and earn money if you’re an intellectual political pundit of sorts, but if the audience is just there for your politics then what will you do when your personal views change over time?
Going against the grain of the bandwagon approach in pursuit of the truth will itself be a new bandwagon for the people who are also starting to notice that their social groups have been led to particular conclusions by those seeking to exploit their frustration and demand for change.
As I strive towards true intellectual freedom, I invite you to support my substack and its mission by sharing this article and engaging in critical thinking and analysis.
Let us work towards a higher goal than just agreeing with our group for the sake of safety.
What might "the need to support Ukraine" look like? Is it *not* wanting to bring the war to an end firstly, which until fairly recently I and many others saw as the obviously - and very generically, far from promoting fascism - humane position?
Would someone who sees the duplicity at work in the ratcheting up of involvement with Ukraine - from intel-only to tanks and special forces - but who is also sympathetic to Ukrainians be wrong in distrusting the American military and statecraft apparatus such that they can't abide being on its side?
Take Robert Wright for example. He's certainly no Angela Davis cheerleader for that which is just not America. Would it be fair to characterize him as part of these pathologically disillusioned haters of the Western Way of life?