Highlights from just the first few pages
"There is a new climate of intellectual opinion in France—a spirit of anti-Marxism and anti-Sovietism that will make it difficult for anyone to mobilize significant intellectual opposition to US policies."
"Many New Left intellectuals have rejected Marxism and developed a deep-rooted antipathy toward the Soviet Union. Anti-Sovietism, in fact, has become the touchstone of legitimacy in leftist circles, weakening the traditional anti-Americanism of the leftist intellectuals and allowing American culture—and even political and economic policies—to find new vogue."
"New Left activism is likely to increase bickering between the two leftist parties... it will probably increase voter defection from both Socialist and Communist camps".
Chomsky definitely slipped through the cracks tho, the old social fascist lol
Chomsky described anti-communism as a tool used by the elites to manipulate the masses. It's literally one of the five pillars of the propaganda model.
I was being a little hyperbolic lol, he's definitely not all bad but:
"My response to the end of Soviet tyranny was similar to my reaction to the defeat of Hitler and Mussolini. In all cases, it is a victory for the human spirit. It should have been particularly welcome to socialists, since a great enemy of socialism had at last collapsed. Like you, I was intrigued to see how people—including people who had considered themselves anti-Stalinist and anti-Leninist—were demoralized by the collapse of the tyranny. What it reveals is that they were more deeply committed to Leninism than they believed."
Yuck
Yeah I don't disagree that that is a pretty dumb and reductive viewpoint on the collapse of the USSR. It just frustrates me when people take a couple sentences he said and try to make him out to be some Pentagon shill. Especially considering "the Soviet Union wasn't really socialism" is not a US government endorsed point of view. A couple statements don't undo an entire body of work, and furthermore they're often poorly represented out of context.
While I'm sure your correct with regard to the New Philosophers specifically; in my experiences with academia Foucault is probably the most used philosopher in History and the Social Sciences. While Foucault is a pretty smart guy, he definitely represents left intellectual opposition to (or at least distrust of) communism/AES.
are they by any chance in this list?
Louis Aragon, Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Simone de Beauvoir, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Michel Leiris, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Philippe Sollers, Jacques Rancière, Jean-François Lyotard, Francis Ponge, Bernard Besret
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of_consent_laws
Actually the problem with the scary New Left is that they were too French for American integration, by which I mean too foreign: an easily demonized artful, clever, hypersexual and bourgeois Other. The Maoists among them of course, acted in the interests of socialism.
The bourgeois revolution in France had a fundamentally different and socialist character in comparison to the American bourgeois revolution, and this lead to France retaining (and also ossifying) language, national cuisine and peasant artisanry, while the American masses continue to be colonized by fascism and now have now wound up in a generational debate over fucking mayonnaise. On the other hand, now the French have to go to California to do acid.
The cultural and superstructural translations of High Maoism were never made accessible, synthesized or universalized.
As always, simply do what the CIA tells you - the New Left is great for America. By the way? It’s a little early for you all to declare yourselves free of CIA influence.
This post brought to you by fuck voting gang
No but guys don't you get it, sometimes the US is right just by chance it's not all or nothing believe me chinazi is the biggest threat to civilized society
Anti-Sovietism, currently a fixture in the mentality and writing of intellectuals, continues to have great potential for stirring ferment.
Thanks literally the CIA, very cool!
