[RoosterRedux]

This author provides a good framework within which to ponder the Radical Left, but I am much more pessimistic than he is about being able to reach them.

I have some friends and family who are under the influence of the far Left and I think they each would experience a nervous breakdown if they came to see the truth.

The only hope for them is a religious catharsis (a "come to Jesus moment").

[mylife]

Pied Pipers are all around.

[alloysteel]

People forget, or willfully obfuscate, the reality that both Fascism, as practiced in Spain and Italy in the 1930’s, and the National Socialism of Adolf Hitler, commonly known by its German acronym, Nazism, were both LEFTIST regimes, that took the logical development of their socialist ideology to its extremes.

In a similar way, Islam is also a crude form of socialism (Ba’athist), as was practiced under the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, not far removed from the rather stern sort of paternalism that is exercised in just about every Muslim-majority country in the world and a very real threat wherever Islamic colonialism is taking place, as it is here on the North American continent, and to perhaps an even greater degree, in South America.

At this point, incidentally, the Islamic brand of socialistic organization is beginning to butt heads with the more conventional kind as practiced by the Red Chinese People’s Republic, an expansionist regime that is being organized into the ranks of world superpowers.

That is precisely the kind of contentious behavior that led to the death match between National Socialism/Fascism and International Socialism in the period 1941-1945. Nobody won that one.

[ronnie raygun]

The last paragraph “the foot soldiers” is spot on

[rlmorel]

Thanks for posting this. I find this Interesting because I have long posted on Free Republic a version of this tiered view of the Left, which I believe is a fair and reasonable way to view it. This is how I have characterized them for many years. I use the rule of thirds, though it is categories of thirds, not into quantities:

1. Good-Hearted Liberals. They don’t think about issues much further than the emotional part. Not all of them are bad or crazy, many are just ill-informed and/or slaves to their emotions. They trust the news. You can often talk to these people, they may live next door to you or are in the next office over. They may believe in diversity, homosexuality, and things like Black Lives Matter, and they may go to churches that support those same things. They buy into these things even though they may otherwise be intelligent, because they largely accept what has been spoon fed to them. Some may change their minds and stop being a Leftist due to current outrageous leftist handling of an issue, or they may have life circumstances that make them change. Sometimes it is simply going out into the working world and having to buy your own food and toilet paper. I have some casual acquaintances and people I work with, I have been able to talk politics with them on occasion, and they know where I am coming from even if they don’t agree. These people are often incidental useful idiots.

   
   
   

2. Leftist Foot Soldiers. These are the true believers, the foot soldiers of Marxism, the Marxist Cannon Fodder. These are people you cannot talk to. I just avoid them. I don’t bother to engage them or debate issues with them. These are almost always the people on the other side of the protest barrier. I have had some exposure since 2004 with these people from demonstrating with the DC Chapter outside Walter Reed for all those years, and I despise and detest them. These are the Code Pink, Move On, LGBTQRXZ, SJW, Black Lives Matter people. These people actually believe that Marxist crap. They are the people with fevered faces, spittle on their lips, chanting the stupid slogans “Hey, hey, ho, ho, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah” as if they are too stupid to make up any new chants from the Sixties. Their cars have 12 bumper stickers on the back, and sometimes the sides and the front, with “Question Authority”, “Impeach Trump” “Diversity” (with all the symbols) No Blood For Oil, and so on. These people suck. I have never met a single one in my entire life I thought had more value than a warm cup of spit, and even then. I avoid them. These are the REAL useful idiots.

   
   
   

3. The Evil Ones. These people are enemies. They know what they are all about, and they know you know it (if you are one of us) They aren’t about equality or any other fashionable SJW issue, but play along as if they care about those things...which they don’t. They are all about being grifters of other people’s money, having their hands directly on the levers of power, and exercising it with prejudice. These people are the ones who DO make it to the privileged power set when they take power, and they have no qualms about putting those people in any other category but them up against a wall...particularly the 2nd group listed above, who could become dangerous to them.

One final note: I have long since entered the camp of labeling the people who are "Leftist Foot Soldiers" and "The Evil Ones" as "Leftists". I still often refer to people who are in the "Good-Hearted Liberal" category as "Liberals" but I no longer use "Leftist" and "Liberal" interchangeably. I do think there is a distinction.

I find this three-tiered categorization valuable, since I don't have to refer to all on the Left as "Leftists" which has a very negative connotation. I know some "Good-Hearted Liberals" who are good people who can be talked to, and I cannot call them independents, they have elements of their outlook that are indisputably Leftist, and they often believe fervently in those, but I can easily see it is simply because they have not thought things through.

As a result, I am not willing to lump those people in with the other categories, and I believe many conservatives transition through that "Good-Hearted Liberal" stage as part of a life journey.

[Migraine]

people who cannot psychologically afford to accept that they might be serving an untrue belief system

In a larger sense, they don't even traffic in truth/untruth; they don't acknowledge either. Only expediency counts to them, and there are no rules except theirs. Their ultimate twin objectives in their continual perfidious pursuits? Shredding the Constitution and the Bible. They see those as the dual obstacles to their glorious aspirations. It's real Tower of Babel stuff.

[Karliner]

If a Brownshirt and a Bolshevik had sex you’d get the antifa(rt) slugs of today. Dangerously unhinged.