The roots of the shrieking left culture go back to the Frankfurt School but really got momentum from college professors indoctrinated by manifestos such as Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: A liberal rant that is either a blog post or a social-media crusade or a Wikipedia edit meant to humiliate their opponent.
This is so typical of them. By “them” I never mean educated alpha males prepared to give rational arguments. I mean the churlish left’s frustrated beta males, bored girls, and bullied gays hell-bent on revenge.
One thing you’ll notice about ridiculous rants by “them”, the radicals, is that they all look the same.
1. SPELL YOUR ENEMIES’ NAMES WRONG
Oxford’s Writing and Style Guide makes it clear: “Great care should ALWAYS be taken to spell the names of people and companies correctly,” but leftist smears often spell the name wrong.
2. PRETEND THAT LOGICAL FALLACIES CONSTITUTE AN ARGUMENT
In high school we learned about straw-man arguments, ad-hominem attacks, and guilt by association, but today’s leftist bloggers were apparently playing hooky that day. For example, anything remotely non-liberal about race instantly becomes, “Why are you so scared of brown people?” and the argument becomes all about a petrified scarecrow that isn’t even there. Whenever a male says something construed as too macho, we hear ad-hominem attacks about his tiny penis. And the SPLC wrote the book on guilt by association. The “Far Right Embraces Book That Rewrites Matthew Shepard Case,” said a recent headline. If homophobes like his book, then gay author Stephen Jiminez must be a homophobe. If Hitler used toilet paper, we must all be Nazis.
3. MAKE YOUR HEADLINES HYPERBOLIC AND PATENTLY FALSE
It’s easier to argue against a fictional character. What used to be a dirty trick reserved for the National Enquirer is now commonplace among the Gawker types. “Racist,” “Homophobic,” and “Sexist” are tossed into the headline with no qualification whatsoever, and in an era where people rarely make it past the first couple sentences, that’s what sticks.
4. USE FIGHTIN’ WORDS SUCH AS “TAKEDOWN”
The more beta the male, the more they love using boxing terms. It reminds me of the way women in the fashion industry are always using Ebonics ironically with lines such as, “I swear if she doesn’t get me those samples by five, I’m going to bust a cap in her ass.”
5. NEVER DISCUSS THE FACTS
What used to be two sane adults comparing data has become nothing but catty insults. As David Derby says in his book Snark: It’s Mean, It’s Personal, and It’s Ruining Our Conversation, it’s “indolent parasitism as a work ethos.” These people are so used to preaching to the converted, simply repeating what their enemy said while dripping with incredulity is enough. If you were to say, “There are more black neurosurgeons on TV than in real life,” their response would be simply to repeat that quote and scream, “Can you believe this shit!?” Instead of refuting this statement with actual numbers we’d hear about what a racist asshole this person is, and his statement would be twisted into “Bigot Says Blacks are too Stupid to Become Doctors.” The next time you hear about this guy, it will be from the person next to you at a restaurant whispering, “That’s the guy who said he’d rather die than let a black surgeon operate on him.” In a recent critique the author improves her argument with a GIF saying, “Are you fucking kidding me?” As Alinsky points out in Rule #5, “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
6. BE OBSESSED WITH RAPE
The left couldn’t wait to make jokes about white males being raped in prison. It’s ironic because if you include prison, more men get raped than women so if anyone should be telling people they can’t joke about it, it’s men.
7. SAY THE WORD “EVIL” A LOT
“They think we’re evil. We just think they’re wrong” is a quote often misattributed to Dennis Prager, but it actually comes from Charles Krauthammer. It is a great summation of the Smurf cartoon world the liberal arts have imbued in their graduates. In school they were taught an imaginary universe where innocent peasants pleaded for porridge while corrupt kings laughed in their faces. When the real world offered nuance instead, they just fabricated the bad guys and screamed “evil” at every Gargamel who disagreed. This is classic Alinsky as referenced in Rules for Radicals #12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)”
8. DISH IT OUT, BUT DON’T TAKE IT
Politicians have no problem making big decisions unless it starts to affect their own lives. Schwarzenegger was one of the few to stand up to the unions until they started to protest outside of his house, whereby he immediately capitulated. These bloggers are the same. They are so unaware, they will Tweet to their 34 followers how irrelevant Michelle Malkin is. They will accuse an author of cowardice while using a fake name. They will publish gun owners’ home addresses without realizing they left themselves open to retribution. Point them out. Publish their picture. Confront them in public and you’ll never hear from them again.
9. BE COMPLETELY UNAWARE OF NUMBERS
Liberal bloggers have no problem recounting a story about a hard-working immigrant family who risked life and limb to swim to America in the dead of night. I’ve yet to meet one who knows how many illegals we have in this country. They can tell you about the terrible wages teachers make, but when you ask them how much America spends on education per student, they know it’s somewhere between $1 and $1 million. (“Whatever it is, it’s not enough” is a common response.) This is because they don’t truly care or even believe in what they’re saying. If they did, they’d have looked it up.
10. TRY TO MAKE YOUR ENEMIES GO BROKE
If they’re not empowered by an irrelevant blog nobody reads, they will go on a Twitter crusade against your clients and advertisers until you’re broke. This is happening right now with Terry Richardson because some girl in England just decided that unsubstantiated allegations from three years ago have to affect his pocketbook today. This is Rules for Radicals #8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” I understand why someone would passionately disagree with someone else, but why does that lead to wanting that person’s family to go hungry? Why does anybody want to jeopardize their enemy’s employees’ mortgage payments? I think it’s because the new left’s snark culture is ultimately anti-American and anti-capitalism. They’ll spend all day trying to get you fired and then get back to Kickstarter where they encourage strangers to give them free money to fund their documentary about oppression.
I don’t know how many times people have come up to me and said, “I wish I could say what you do but I’d lose my job.” Musicians and artists seem especially desperate to come out of the “not liberal” closet. We live in a culture of fear where a very small number of shrill infants with no idea what they’re talking about are silencing the voices of the majority. It’s hard having strangers attack your reputation, try to get you fired, and even threaten your family, but being a coward is much worse. Whether we “punch down” or ignore them, it’s crucial we never stop speaking freely. If they get the world of censorship and thought control they’re pushing for, we’re all doomed, including the “radicals.”
If hate-crime laws were enforced, even more blacks would be imprisoned.
If sexism was gone, all lesbian porn and “slut walks” would be banned.
Every gay that got an underage rent boy would be imprisoned.
If multiculturalism was enforced, sharia law would rule the land.
Under a truly “radical” regime, the “radicals” would be the first to go.