Daily Archives: June 19, 2020

For car lovers, nostalgia is a key part of the enthusiast experience. After all, how can one appreciate the automotive creations of the present without the context of the past?

And if you're craving a journey back in time, there is perhaps no better way to traverse the decades than via the audiovisual treasure trove that is vintage car commercials.

While today's car ads are typically elaborate, high-concept affairs dominated by sleek slogans, celebrity cameos and cinematic camera angles, the 1980s and 90s were a far simpler time.

Marrying the decades trademark excesses with the limited technical capabilities available retro car ads from this era were simultaneously cheesy and brilliant, with a healthy dose of hyperbole for good measure.

So cast your mind back to when motor shows dominated the calendar, sedans ruled the streets and Tesla was just the name of a Serbian-American inventor. Here then, are the 10 best TV car ads of the 80s and 90s, in no particular order.

"Designed to stir the soul and not much else," was the catchphrase for this brilliant commercial showcasing how smooth Lexus' flagship sedan was capable of hitting 145mph (233km/h) without so much as rattling a tower of champagne glasses.

The clever clip cemented the Japanese luxury brand's arrival in the US market and, to celebrate 30 years since its anniversary, Toyota president Akio Toyoda recreated the champagne clip in 2020 (you can watch the new version here).

You're unlikely to ever find something as quintessentially 80s as Datsun's 'Black Gold' tribute to its 10th anniversary edition 280ZX.

A moustache to rival Tom Selleck's, a woman who looks suspiciously like a young Debbie Harry, a synth-laden soundtrack and lashings of gold lighting were the perfect way to celebrate this extremely extra limited-edition sports car.

This ad is regularly touted as the greatest car commercial of all time. We're don't disagree.

Remember how we mentioned hyperbole? Well this is perhaps the best example of it: Land Rover showcasing its off-roading prowess by having a Defender scale the vertical wall of a dam.

"Next time you're late for work, it's worth remembering that nothing nothing gets in the way of a Land Rover," a movie-level voiceover declares over the commercial's epic soundtrack.

Back in the 80s and 90s, competition between car brands was less of an unspoken understanding and more of an overt challenge.

Take, for example, this 1987 American Volvo ad for the Swedish marque's turbo-powered 740 wagon, which literally pits it against a Porsche 944 in a drag race.

The kicker? The not-so-humble tagline: "To you they're completely different cars but to a radar gun, they look exactly alike."

These two ads for the BMW 325i Convertible look more like scenes from blockbuster Hollywood romance movies than car commercials, given how much attention is given to the antics of the good-looking lead actors.

Still, our personal favourite is the second clip, in which an unidentified woman covers herself in suntan lotion while sitting in the drop-top car, as a man's voice declares that the 325i is "the ultimate tanning machine". Because, priorities.

Towards the ends of the 90s, car commercials started becoming more elaborate, high-concept affairs.

Take, for example, this 1996 Nissan advertisement, which saw the Japanese carmaker win over a generation of American kids with its play on the classic Barbie and Ken romance.

Spoiler alert: Barbie ditches Ken in favour of GI Joe and his kick-ass red 300ZX. Can you blame her?

Talk about a big build-up. For "the most advanced production car on the planet", Chevrolet had to go big or go home.

Hence this Tron-inspired epic about the Corvette that came with its own custom theme song, plus one-and-a-half minutes of an extremely 80s voiceover listing off its many, many attributes.

Four speakers?! We're sold.

Because this list was sorely missing a local entrant, and because "must be stuck in third" remains eminently quotable to this day.

Simple, powerful and incredibly sassy, this Porsche entrant is a masterclass in advertising.

The ad opens on the title, "What to feed a Porsche 944 Turbo".

The answer? "For lunch, a Porsche 944 Turbo generally prefers Ferraris, although it has been known, occasionally, to snack on Corvettes." Boom.

It's teeters on being politically incorrect at points, but this ad was a hilarious way to communicate Volkswagen's reliability message.

It's best if you just watch it yourself and let the toffy British voiceover do the talking...

Which 80s and 90s car ads are we missing? Tell us in the comments!

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The 10 best TV car ads of the 1980s and '90s - CarAdvice

Protesters in Brooklyn, June 12(Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)A look at woke religiosity

Cary, N.C., June 7. Amidst nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, a black man and woman are seated on a park bench while a white woman wearing a sweatshirt that reads LOVE takes to her megaphone. We repent on behalf of, uh, Caucasian people, she says. A small crowd of white people comes to kneel before the two seated black folks, who are co-pastors of a local church. Some of the kneelers wash the feet of the black people. A white man with an English accent solemnly intones, Its our honor to stand here on behalf of all white people, . . . repenting, Lord, for our aggression, Lord, repenting for our pride, for thinking that we are better, that we are above. Police officers join the ritual. Several people start audibly weeping, or keening, as the speaker continues. Roughly a rozen people join in the gesture and kneel before the black couple. We have put our necks, put our hands, our knees, upon the necks of our African-American brothers and sisters, people of color, indigenous people, says the English man. Lord, where we as a church, a white church, have used you as a persecution towards black people, Lord, as weve burnt crosses, as weve burnt churches, . . . weve used it as a weapon against people of color.

Its been coming for some time, this transmutation of white guilt into a cult, a religion that borrows from and intersects with Christianity but substitutes its own liturgy. In the Nineties, liberal white Hollywood filmmakers began to nourish a fantasy that black people were imbued with magical powers, and they built stories around angelic or Christlike black redeemers who stood apart from and above this fallen race we call humanity. Will Smith in The Legend of Bagger Vance, Cuba Gooding Jr. in What Dreams May Come, and Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile served as spiritual and/or actual caddies to troubled white men, guiding them toward salvation.

Today those magical negro films, as Spike Lee dubbed them, get ridiculed by the critical intelligentsia, but the same impulse is visible in different form. White people continue to have difficulty perceiving blacks as individual human beings, instead conferring on blackness a holy quality. Fallen white people can get closer to the divine by showing due deference in any way they can. Books that promise to assist white people with the project of metaphorically scourging themselves White Fragility, How to Be an Antiracist bounded up the best-seller lists. Black Americans report, with more annoyance than appreciation, that white friends are calling them nervously, seeking absolution.

The original sin in the White Guilt Cult, the New Church of Anti-Racism, is to be, uh, Caucasian people. Parker Gillian, a young black college graduate in Chicago who is in no need of financial support (she grew up in affluence, she told the Washington Post), says that someone from work texted out of nowhere to ask, Whats your cash app? and then pinged $20 into her account, unasked. It is so exhausting being everybodys one black friend right now, tweeted a comedian named Sarah Cooper. Black people observing such displays by their white acquaintances can be forgiven for wondering: Is it really a friendship if one party is groveling, throwing money, and begging to wash the other partys feet? If anything, the Great Awokenings response to the George Floyd killing seems to be bolstering racial barriers rather than eradicating them. By making a religion of anti-racism, white people carry on with the longstanding project of othering black folks.

Anti-racism is the most critical element of a broader new Woke Orthodoxy whose other elements include environmental apocalypticism, feminism, and a severing of sexual identity from genetic indicators. Settling on a term for the new religion will take some time. Wesley Yangs suggestion (seconded by Ross Douthat) of the Successor Ideology is clunky, anodyne, and a bit euphemistic given the righteous, roiling fervor and unnerving credulousness that define the cult. As Dmitri Solzhenitsyn writes in National Review Online, a YouTube prankster named Smooth Sanchez who walks the streets of New York demanding that white people kneel before him and declare their privilege receives surprising compliance, even as he signals his charlatanry by referring to George Floyd as George Foreman.

Ben Shapiro notes astutely that the new woke religion rushes in to fill a God-shaped hole in secular hearts. Devotees immerse themselves in the sacred texts of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi (n Ibram Henry Rogers of Queens), books designed to make white wokesters writhe with a kind of ecstatic anguish. Indoctrination in early childhood is taken up as a parental duty (Kendis new board book for toddlers, Antiracist Baby, is a hot seller), parishioners engage in ritualistic incantation of sacred phrases (Hands up, dont shoot, I cant breathe), and there are mass displays of penitential self-abasement. All over the country, guilty white crowds have gathered to reenact the circumstances of George Floyds horrifying death. Scores, even hundreds, of parishioners in the new faith prostrate themselves on the ground, hands behind their back, repeating Mama and I cant breathe. Sometimes police officers joined these displays, kneeling or prostrating themselves for the sanctified period of time: eight minutes, 46 seconds. Floyds death is a kind of new Crucifixion, his final words the new My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

The new clergy consists of black thought leaders (Coates, Kendi, Stacey Abrams) and those white people who loudly proclaim themselves allies and proselytize for the organizing dogma, which is that everything is racist. Those who question orthodoxy are kept at bay, derided as conservatives who are arguing in bad faith if not actual racists. For example, one is not to ask Why are black people so upset about one white cop killing a black man when black men are at much more danger of being killed by one another? wrote John McWhorter in his 2015 essay Antiracism, Our Flawed New Religion. The answers are flabby but further questions are unwelcome, McWhorter added. The much-promised conversation on race consists of repeating points in the catechism to enhance their power phrases such as I must do better, white privilege, systemic racism, white supremacy, allyship.

There is more dogmatism in this ideology than in most of contemporary American Catholicism, writes the Catholic columnist Andrew Sullivan. And more intolerance. Question any significant part of this, and your moral integrity as a human being is called into question. As the fierceness of old religions fades, a corresponding desire for a new righteous fury rises. The fervor sweeping through the South (but not just the South) to pull down statues seen as blasphemous to the new faith loudly echoes the 16th-century rampage through the monasteries that burned icons and laid waste to stained glass. Each successive wave of iconoclasm will take more and more historical monuments until either the new Reformation ends or all blasphemous iconography has been destroyed, with the logical endpoint being Mount Rushmore, with its quintuple heresy: Washington and Jefferson held slaves, Teddy Roosevelt is damned as a racist, the land the monument sits on was seized from indigenous peoples, and the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, was friendly with the Ku Klux Klan.

My friend Kevin D. Williamson writes that cancel culture is a game, the point of which is to impose unemployment on people as a form of recreation. The line is amusing but, I think, not quite right: The impulse is more religious than recreational. How satisfying it must be to understand that one can send out a tweet and within hours destroy someones life for losing her temper for a minute while walking a dog in Central Park (former New York financial analyst Amy Cooper), for having posed as a Puerto Rican for a Halloween party 16 years ago (ousted Bon Apptit editor Adam Rapoport), or for having tweeted Working out is so gay more than a decade ago (Cond Nasts no-longer head of lifestyle-video programming Matt Duckor). That last example recalls Sullivans remark that politically incorrect language has become the equivalent of old swear words, referring to formerly shocking words such as goddamn that have long since lost all potency. Take the principles of Woke in vain and you invite instantaneous ritual chastisement the most thrilling, ecstatic element of the woke religion. The techno-narcissistic innovation of the Wokesters is that they have made themselves, as a collective, their own godhead, equipped with the authority to wield and unleash the thunderbolt of righteousness on blasphemers here and now, on their own authority. There is no need to be anxious about whether the right decisions will be made by the Deity in the hereafter; the new Social-Justice God is merciless and swift. Every day ending in day is now Judgment Day.

So rigorous is the new religion that the unrighteous can be vaporized simply for not chanting the liturgy, or for not sounding off loudly enough. White silence equals violence is one new precept gaining currency. The president and the chairman of the Poetry Foundation were forced to resign for no other reason than that the nonprofit had published a disavowal of racism considered insufficiently robust. The two executives were denounced in an angry open letter as having been responsible for nothing but watery vagaries that added up to ultimately, a violence. How exciting it must be to upend the meanings of words in service of the greater cause of smiting ones perceived enemies, or even whatever suspected counterrevolutionaries there may be among ones sworn allies. No one dared to be the first to stop applauding a Stalin speech.

Sullivan holds that it is, in fact, impossible not to have a religion if you are a human being. Its in our genes and has expressed itself in every culture, in every age, including our own secularized husk of a society. The old liberal consensus built around prosaic proceduralism fairness, equal treatment, dependence on the slow and imperfect operation of the machinery of justice made for a frustratingly dull religion. All that stuff amounts to so many watery vagaries in the era of the Great Awokening. Declaiming, denouncing, and destroying that is where transcendence lies.

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The White-Guilt Cult - National Review

So reports WBRZ. Columbus is too politically incorrect for the current crop of softheaded activists roaming our streets, you know

The Christopher Columbus statue on the corner where Government Street meets the river was donated by the Greater Baton Rouge American Italian Association in 1992 to then-Mayor Tom Ed McHugh.

Its stood there for nearly three decades, but it could soon come down.

The fate of the statue will be a topic of discussion for the mayor-presidents commission on race equity and inclusion, set to meet this month.

The commission will look into renaming or removing potentially offensive or oppressive government entities like street and building names or statues.

He introduced sickness to the land, genocide to the land, slavery, and he even raped and mutilated a lot of the people that were already here. And this statue here makes it seem as if we are complacent with slavery and racist antics that happened in the south, and we are not complacent with it at all, Breyonna Grant said.

In the meantime, Breyonna Grant and Camren Linson started a petition addressed to the city council and governor calling for the removal of the statue as soon as possible. It now has more than 1,200 signatures.

Were asking for 10,000 or 5,000, and after that, we will march to the state capitol to demand justice, Linson said.

Though the city-parish doesnt own the statue, the fountain it sits in is city property. So the statue could at least be moved elsewhere with a vote.

Grant and Linson say they are not interested in destroying the statue and would be happy if the city removed it from public view.

It is imperative that as the state of Louisiana we set an example and remove all monuments that represent racial inequality, injustice in America and also white supremacy, Linson said.

So who are Breyonna Grant and Camren Linson?

Heres Breyonna Grant, from her Facebook

And heres Camren Linson, also from her Facebook

If theres any significance to blue lipstick we dont know what it is.

Both of these ladies apparently graduated from Texas Southern. Grant lives in Atlanta now, while Linson lives in Baton Rouge.

The petition barely has more than 1,000 signatures so far, so its a long way from being particularly relevant. But with the local TV stations now giving it play its a matter of time before that number grows.

And with Baton Rouges mayor Sharon Weston Broome having set up that commission on equality and justice, it should be little surprise if someone takes this ball and runs with it.

We have a suggestion, which is that the folks in St. George ought to get with the Baton Rouge American Italian Association and pick a site at which to feature the Columbus statue. It needs to be on private land and a historical preservation foundation set up and funded for the upkeep of the monument so that if the protest mobsters want to attack the statue theyll be trespassing on private property and therefore subject to arrest.

Christopher Columbus isnt recognized because he enslaved or raped or mutilated people he came in contact with in the New World. Hes recognized because he did what previous explorers could not cross the Atlantic and spread Western civilization beyond Europe. Because of Columbus exploits the world became a far richer place.

The people denying this mans achievements are doing so for a very simple reason they hate America. They hate everything about our history, because theyve been poisoned into believing that this is a country founded on racism and violence.

And their arguments are so horrifically bad that anyone who disagrees with them is, in their view, then in turn branded as racist or violent.

All of human history is replete with racism and violence. Racism and violence are endemic to every society which has ever existed on Earth. No other country could measure up to the standards these people want to impose on America.

But since Baton Rouge is quickly devolving into a dead city the Grants and Linsons will have all to themselves if they want it, maybe theyre right. Maybe Christopher Columbus ought to be moved out of downtown. Lets find him a neighborhood in the suburbs where people proud of their national heritage will appreciate him more.

More:
Now They Want To Take Christopher Columbus Away From Downtown BR - The Hayride

MDC headquarters in Harare.

The recall was instituted by one of the warring Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) factions, which is arguing that both the appointment as vice president and the subsequent rise of Nelson Chamisa as president of the MDC-T party was illegal and unconstitutional.

CLOSE

Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) Commissioner Qubani Moyo told Daily Maverick:

It is not true that our recent review suspending any electoral activities is designed to aid one of the MDC formations. During this phase of national lockdown, all electoral activities that require any outreach programmes for our staff remain suspended indefinitely.

For the avoidance of doubt, ZEC has no side in their internal fights or any other political parties. Only those who try to find fault will create noise out of a purely administrative process, said Moyo.

The MDC-As newly appointed spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere told Daily Maverick:

We are concerned by ZECs unconstitutional decision to indefinitely suspend electoral activities because of Covid-19 without regard for the constitution and electoral laws.

ZEC acted unilaterally in deciding to issue an indefinite suspension of electoral activities without consulting political parties, civic society organisations and voters through public hearings, said Mahere.

The MDC formations are fighting it out in the courts, arguing that Nelson Chamisa, who represented a coalition of eight political parties under the banner of MDC-A during the 2018 harmonised elections to which the MDC-T was party to, is not a legitimate leader. The harmonised ballot was, however, characterised by post-election violence.

The MDC formation led by former deputy president Thokozani Khupe won a legal battle in which the Supreme Court ordered her reinstatement as acting president of the MDC-T, leading the partys secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora to recall four MDC-A members of parliament on the grounds that they had ceased representing the opposition MDC-T partys interests.

Mwonzora said: Honourable (Charlton) Hwende tweeted that he was no longer a member of the MDC-T. This is a statement we can never allow because it is both politically and factually incorrect.

In a show of short-lived solidarity, the remaining MPs loyal to Chamisa vowed to boycott parliament only to return in a few days to attend parliamentary business.

Independent election watchdog, Zimbabwe Electoral Supervisory Network (ZESN), issued a statement saying:

No consultations were done, so ZEC could have at least considered postponing, rather than suspending electoral activities. Engagement on whether or not to suspend electoral activities could have been done through virtual means, because the Covid-19 pandemic may be here to stay for much longer than we anticipate.

Zimbabwe is currently under an indefinite Level 2 lockdown only to be reviewed subject to circumstances. Parliament has, however, been allowed to conduct public hearings in the coming week on Constitutional Amendment bill No2

ZEC Chief Elections Officer Utoile Silaigwana said:

Our current position on the suspension of electoral activities was guided by his excellency President Emmerson Mnangagwas measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 and as such we will conduct activities that do not violate lockdown measures.

We will be looking at policy changes to accommodate post-filling just like what is done on proportional representations and senatorial positions, said Silaigwana.

The four legislators who were recalled include Charlton Hwende Kuwadzana (East Constituency), Prosper Mutseyami (Dangamvura Chikanga), Thabitha Khumalo (Proportional representative Bulawayo) and Senator Lillian Timveous (Midlands).

One of the recalled MPs, Charlton Hwende, told Daily Maverick:

I am the secretary-general of the MDC Alliance and never contested as MDC-T. I and others stand by President Nelson Chamisa. We will not be deterred by these antics by ZANU-PF to try and destroy the peoples party.

Sections 158 (3) and 121 (a) of the constitution of Zimbabwe provide that the ZEC should conduct polling in by-elections to fill vacancies in Parliament and local authorities, including fixing the polling dates for local authority by-elections within nine days after the vacancies occur. Further to that, Section 132 allows the ZEC to change without giving notice of its decision in the gazette and in the media beyond 90 days.

Speaker of Parliament, advocate Jacob Mudenda, said:

Parliament is obligated to play an oversight role in the circumstances and accordingly the Standing Rules and Orders Committee has exercised its rights regarding the arrangements that would make it possible for Parliament to function with minimum disruption.

The MDC has suffered countless splits since its formation and all splinters have claimed the brand name MDC so much so that voters are confused as to which MDC formation it is they want. Some of the formations include MDC-T, MDC-99, MDC, MDC-A and MDC-N.

Even more confusing to voters is that all the formations use the same symbols, sometimes with very little or no difference. DM

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Zimbabwe election suspended after recall of opposition MPs - Daily Maverick

Black Lives Matter is a Marxist scam. As with all totalitarian ploys, BLM uses your natural fear of social rejection to force conformity and compliance with its goals. If we buy into it, we have a lot to lose, including all individual libertiesfreedom of speech, of thought, and especially the right to a private life and private relationships.

The BLM goal should be obvious by now: conjure up enough blind conformity to create the illusion of unanimous support. Support for what? The uncontroversial slogan that black lives matter is just a tool to draw you in emotionally to its broader and more destructive agenda.

Read the BLM website and youll find lots of Marxist agendas like ending constitutional self-governance (under the guise of sustainable transformation) and taking over law enforcement to abolish the rule of law (defund the police). Its anti-Christian and anti-free markets. Its committed to disrupting the nuclear family and replacing it with collectivist forms of child-rearing. Its endgame is typical of Marxism: a power grab stoked by the illusion of mass approval through street theater.

When we get sucked in to the vortex of BLMs mass delusions, whether out of a sense of guilt or ignorance, the results are predictable. Forced confessions. Struggle sessions. The suppression of speech. Stoking of resentments. Accusations of thought crimes. Toppling historical monuments. Civilizational breakdown. Meddling in private life, especially family.

So, whats the secret of creating enough woke conformity to get to such an anti-thought point? How does a well-organized band of power-craving elitists get people to surrender the right to speak their own minds? To open the door to giving collectivist elites the raw power they crave?

Ill use the terms socialism and Marxism somewhat interchangeably. Marxists tend to refer to themselves as socialists, even if some socialists claim they arent Marxists. All are collectivists, though, with the same patterns and tendencies and agendas, some harder than others, depending on their state of evolution.

The threat of ostracism is a primal and universal human terror, and thus an extremely powerful weapon, especially when mobs enforce it. Tyrants have always been in the business of cultivating the terror of social rejection in order to control people and amass power. Sadly, most people are not consciously aware of these dynamics, and are therefore vulnerable to succumbing.

The terror of abandonment is built into our social DNA because human beings cannot survive in isolation. What we see today is a psychological operation that plays on that fear through identity politics, peer-modelling, and social contagion.

First, the propaganda media conjures up images of unanimity with a false BLM narrative. Then, anyone who doesnt buy in is smeared as a racist, at great risk of losing his or her job, status, livelihood, and now even family. Its designed to induce everyone to cave in to that primal fear of social isolation and submit to the power elites. Once society reaches a tipping point where everyone blindly succumbs, then the power grab begins, and game over.

Emotional blackmail seems to be an inherent tactic of Marxist activists as well as todays cult of wokeness. We can now see how BLM applies that tool to the daily lives of its allies.

The author of a recent New York Times op-ed writes that he fears for his life when he goes out because hes black. Hes irritated with texts of sympathy he receives from white allies because he finds their support for BLM inadequate.

The essay, titled I Dont Need Love Texts From My White Friends, offers a prescription for proving their love: threaten to ostracize any loved ones who dont get with the program. His exact words: Text: to your relatives and loved ones telling them you will not be visiting them or answering phone calls until they take significant action in supporting black lives either through protest or financial contributions.

Heres a key Twitter thread on it:

Cult experts have a term for this practice of meddling in relationships: predatory alienation. Its a form of relational aggression, straight out of Cults 101. BLM offers us other examples of mass compliance reminiscent of Jonestown.

A creepy Maoist-styled struggle session recently took place in the affluent suburb of Bethesda, Maryland where a large crowd theatrically recited a mass confession of collective white guilt. They also promised to proselytize (i.e., educate) others, leading likely to performing emotional blackmail when deemed necessary.

Weve also seen spectacles of police officers, and even uniformed military personnel, taking the knee in obedience to mobs. Corporate America from Amazon to Zoom has also drunk the Kool-Aid in fear. Even supposed Republicans like Mitt Romney and George W. Bush publicly support BLMs false claim that America is a systemically racist nation. Maybe you now have family and friends who harangue you, threateningovertly or tacitlyto shun you if you dont get with their program.

Americans should have enough sense to know that such shameful acts of submission to mobs are not about race, police brutality, or healing. They are about shifting power from the rule of law to a socialist elite who intend lawless dominion over everyone once in power. Their false narratives exploit George Floyds death as a trigger to stir up fear and loathing (in the name of love) in order to gain and consolidate power.

The emotional manipulation were seeing by Black Lives Matter reflects socialisms long pattern of isolating individuals and controlling their relationships. We can see it in socialisms history, in its policies, and especially in its tactics.

Abolishing family and religion are both old socialist rallying cries. A big part of socialisms history is its war on those primary institutions through which our most intimate relationships and our unique identities are formed. We become isolated and weakened, and more easily controlled, when separated from them. Thats the idea.

Socialist dictators like Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedog, Pol Pot, and Adolf Hitler were dedicated to the destruction of all private life, insisting that loyalty belonged only to them. Thats why the death toll of socialist systems is more than 100 million.

Whatever else socialists say they promoteequality, justice, free stuffthey have one goal: placing too much power in the hands of too few people. To undermine the power of individuals, they undermine their private relationships. Thats exactly what just about every socialist policy has done, including no-fault divorce, welfare dependency, and abortion, which wreak havoc on the family.

The victims of this brokenness naturally feel alienated. Yet they still have a need to belong to something. Socialists feed that appetite with pseudo-communities, such as contrived collectives, mobs, and, yes, its wokeness cult.

The mob mindset is a trap, a form of mental solitary confinement, an ironic form of mind rape. Why? Because mobs of wokeness do not allow for anyone to express an original thought to another human being without the risk of being smeared and isolated.

As people invest in groupthink to remain in the herd, they end up spiraling even deeper into the mental isolation, cutting off normal conversation. They soon become triggered by other points of view. BLM activists have not only taken full advantage of the fear of loneliness already inherent in our culture. They also seem intent in perpetuating the fear by stoking more divisions within private relationships.

Political correctness and identity politics have long been used as tools of agitation designed to instill groupthink and stir up that threat of loneliness. Political correctness works by inducing self-censorship, cutting off conversation and the exchange of ideas, which might lead to friendship.

People with politically incorrect ideas often confide they feel completely alone. Identity politics works by forcing people to focus only on a collective identity and collective guilt while erasing each of us as unique individuals. Both are alienating. Both empower bad actors.

Most of us have never had a chance to learn the history of how blind conformity breeds terror, and vice versa. Abject conformity led to the hellscapes of Stalins reign of terror, of Hitlers Germany. Those who submit to false confessions of white guilt can just as easily submit to such regimes because the psychological mechanism is the same: seeking the social approval they crave and avoiding the social rejection they fear.

In the end, weaponized loneliness is the fuel of socialism, as well as hardcore socialist organizations, including BLM. Recognizing and rejecting this scam is the only way to begin coming together as whole human beings.

Read more:
How Socialists Like Black Lives Matter Weaponize Fears Of Loneliness - The Federalist