Marxism

Saturday

Marc Oestreich

Are we losing the American dad?

Over the past weeks, a cadre of young men has spent their days marching across the quad, demanding an end to a justifiable, nay honorable, Israeli war on amoral terrorists. An overlapping segment has donned their rainbow buttons and profile-art propaganda to honor the sexual proclivities of their fellow man. They scream borrowed sentiments in all caps, tapped self-righteously into the iPhones their parents have surely furnished. They take over streets and public spaces, inconveniencing the world around them. Their posters, wearing whatever slogan trends on social media, may as well say, “Look at me, world… but let me put the right filter on first.” These are the men of their generation. These are the next generation of American fathers.

father dad

Wednesday

Roger Kimball

The looming Lenin comeback

The year 2024 marks the centenary of Vladimir Lenin’s death. In April of that year, the consummate communist, having blighted as many lives as he could, finally shuffled off his mortal coil, aged fifty-three.“That was young,” you may say. But I reply, “Not nearly young enough.” As we embark on what is sure to be an eventful year, it is worth pausing to remember the hideous legacy of that ice-cold totalitarian. What I have in mind is not so much Lenin’s butcher’s bill as his more general modus operandi. Estimates of the number of people Lenin had tortured, maimed and murdered vary, but are always well into the millions. But what is somehow even creepier is his model of government.

lenin

Friday

Cosmo Landesman

Should I join a free-love Marxist commune?

Last week I got an interesting offer: would I like to leave London and go live in “Marxist free-love commune” in France? The offer came from the woke woman in mylife— I call her WW— the one I wrote about when I suggested we could end the culture war if we just poke the woke. Well, believe it or not, we’re still poking. And she wasn’t joking about the free-love Marxist commune. She’d recently been there for two weeks and had seen the future: our future. “It’s the most amazing place. You’ve got to come with me. We can pick olives, dance under the stars, write poetry do yoga — and have lots of sex!” “What? With other people?” “If you want,” she said. “They don’t believe sex should be exclusive or full of fear and repression.

commune

Friday

Peter Wood

Why legacy students aren’t a civil rights issue

I just caught the news that four pages in a notebook dated 2014 and stuffed into a couch cushion have been accepted as a valid will for the late singer Aretha Franklin. The jury that decided this enriched two of her sons and disappointed a third son, who was favored in an earlier will. This is what I call a legacy. But America is all worked up about another kind of legacy. I refer, of course, to the endearing habit of colleges and universities to give a leg up to the kinder of their alumni. Why do they do this? And why are so many people worked up over it?  These aren’t hard questions. Colleges have two reasons for their legacy programs.

legacy

Wednesday

Ben Kew

Nicaragua’s campaign of persecution against the Catholic Church

From Stalin’s Russia to Castro’s Cuba, socialism and religious persecution have nearly always gone hand in hand. Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, a seventy-seven-year-old former Sandinista terrorist turned twenty-first-century dictator, is no exception to that rule.  The Havana Times reported last week that at least twenty Nicaraguans were kidnapped by Ortega’s dictatorship during the first ten days of April, most during Holy Week, a period in which the regime prohibited processions and religious celebrations in the streets. “In 2023, the policy of terror imposed by the Ortega government has mostly focused on the Catholic Church, and proof of this is that most of those imprisoned have some relation with the religious institution,” the report notes.

Monday

Casey Chalk

Ron DeSantis is right to reject the new AP racial grievance course

Check the liberal reaction to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s January decision to block a new Advanced Placement course on African-American studies in the state’s high schools and you would think the Sunshine State was reinstituting Jim Crow. The Washington Post’s Karen Attiah — always one to jump at the chance to spew rhetorical fireworks when it comes to all things race — accused DeSantis of normalizing “anti-blackness” and “making institutional anti-blackness lawful again.” CNN’s John Blake asserted that DeSantis's move “echoes similar decisions made by fascist dictators,” including Vladimir Putin.

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Remembering Jean-Luc Godard, one of the great film directors of our time

The death of French director Jean-Luc Godard, at the age of 91, is probably doomed to not get its due because of the saturation media coverage of Elizabeth II. That said, it should be noted that admirers of Godard and ardent royalists probably occupy a relatively small space on a Venn diagram, and, once the funeral obsequies for the Queen have passed, the legacy of one of France’s most innovative and influential — if also infuriating — filmmakers might be taken as seriously as it deserves.

Friday

Cockburn

Catholics and Marxists mingle at the Compact launch party

Small literary and political journals are having a moment. The latest to enter the fray, Compact, aspires to be a sort of post-liberal melding of big-government conservatism with left-wing economics. An invite for the launch party arrived via email last week and, as you know, Cockburn tries to never miss a party, especially in our shattered post-Covid social milieu. Getting out of his Uber, your correspondent was reminded of the new world we live in, as his Ukrainian driver asked why he was being dropped off at a place called KGB Bar. Cockburn mumbled some answer that made no sense about socialists in New York finding it clever and sheepishly slunk out of the car. The selection of KGB Bar certainly wasn't a mistake.

Monday

Chadwick Moore

Antifa made me Christian

It’s a putrid August night in Brooklyn, with hazy orbs floating around the orange light from streetlamps lining a block of bars and restaurants. A dull murmur drifts up the avenue from young drunks limping along toward last call. For S. and me, chain-smoking over pints at our favorite pub, it’s a night like any other we’ve spent together over the past five years or so. S. is a Black Lives Matter stalwart and budding antifa sympathizer. He’s also burdened with severe angst and around this time of night the gloom really sets in. He becomes angry and only wants to talk about love, or, more accurately, heartache. It’s only in hindsight I realize that, back when I traveled in progressive circles, all my friends were as miserable as S.

antifa