Sunday, July 21, 2013

Zombie culture, collectivism and joining the herd by "castrating your own thoughts" in order to be eaten last.

"As an ex-communist, I can tell you with certainty that collectivism -- in all its forms and despite all its various lies wrapped in noble-sounding excuses -- is nothing but the appetite of a self-appointed 'elite' for other people's liberty, property and lives. As potential collectivist food, then, you cannot successfully negotiate with an appetite. You can, however, if you wish to remain alive and free, kill or cage the hungry sonsabitches as they appear, before you, your family, your friends and your country are eaten." -- Mike Vanderboegh, email to a Sipsey Street reader, 2009.
"There's a common tendency among this generation to castrate their own thoughts. They automatically don't think about negative or complicated thoughts. They're factory farmed, like chicks in a chicken farm. After birth, their lives are regulated like that, and some boundaries can't be crossed. As long as you don't cross them, you will live very happily." -- 36-year-old Chinese graphic novelist Xie Peng.
On Saturday morning I was driving back to the used tire store for a poor man's alignment on Rosey's Toyota, when I heard the words above in an interview on National Proletariat Radio. Xia Peng, speaking from his own experiences with young Chinese, has identified the principal way that all collectivist dictators in all times and places are able to get away with their tyranny. Whether out of simple moral cowardice or the urge to belong and conform inherent in "Groupthink," tyrants count on on the masses to do nothing to hinder them. Groupthink, for the uninitiated, is defined thusly:
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an incorrect or deviant decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative ideas or viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences.
Loyalty to the group requires individuals to avoid raising controversial issues or alternative solutions, and there is loss of individual creativity, uniqueness and independent thinking. The dysfunctional group dynamics of the "ingroup" produces an "illusion of invulnerability" (an inflated certainty that the right decision has been made). Thus the "ingroup" significantly overrates their own abilities in decision-making, and significantly underrates the abilities of their opponents (the "outgroup"). . .Irving Janis pioneered the initial research on the groupthink theory. He . . . coined the term by analogy with "doublethink" and similar terms that were part of the newspeak vocabulary in George Orwell's novel "1984". -- Wikipedia.
Doing what I do -- what I have done as best I could for the past twenty years -- in resisting collectivism as it has appeared at all levels of government in my own country has caused me to be regarded by the willing members of the herd who are my neighbors and casual acquaintances as everything from endearingly foolish to hopelessly naive to inexplicably insane.
From their point of view, they're right. These are people who, when you distill down their politics, believe that it is only logical that when a monster appears on your street that you should feed it with their friends and neighbors on the theory that they will at best be ignored as harmless and inoffensive and thus be spared or -- at worst -- at least be eaten last. They "castrate their own thoughts" to use Xie Peng's phrase, because they truly believe that "Resistance is futile." They understand that humans can indeed become the worst of monsters -- collectivist zombies if you will -- and the best thing to be done is to join the herd and be assimilated. You have to obey, but at least you get to live for a while. If, of course, you call submission to tyranny "living."
In his book, Why Orwell Matters, Christopher Hitchens commented on this human-monster transmogrification, and its use as allegory in books and film:
"Jean-Paul Sartre . . . once made a telling point about fictional and science-fictional monsters. What we fear, he said, is a creature of great cunning and energy, quite devoid of any moral or mammalian scruple. This, he went on to say, is an exact description of our very own species in time or war or scarcity." -- Page 136.
"A creature of great cunning and energy, quite devoid of any moral or mammalian scruple." I can think of no better description of collectivism and its penchant to stack up bodies on the altars of its lies. I have searched for the original Sartre quote to which Hitchens refers without success, but I did find this:
"Either the USSR was not the country of socialism, in which case socialism didn’t exist anywhere and doubtless, wasn’t possible: or else, socialism was that, this abominable monster, this police state, the power of beasts of prey." -- Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Temps Modernes, 1961, p. 184.
Yes. Exactly. Collectivist states are the worst sort of monsters and they produce acts of uncommon bestiality. Which brings us to the current monsters-as humans-transmogrified allegory: zombies. As John Hayward recently observed:
"George Romero once used the zombie to satirize consumerism, but they work equally well as a metaphor for the appeal of collectivism: no decisions to make, not a care in the world, do what the herd does, and you're always hungry." -- Breitbart, 25 Jun 2013.
Recall my own observation at the top that collectivism is "the appetite of a self-appointed 'elite' for other people's liberty, property and lives." Does this not define what a zombie is? With fictional zombies it is all appetite, and no negotiation. Those who do not wish to be eaten must destroy the zombies or be steak tartare.
The power of collectivism encourages -- indeed, counts upon -- the timidity of the herd who only wish to hide and live and do so by castrating their own thoughts. Yet, in the end, whether they resist or not, all will be eaten if the zombie collectivist state has its way. The only sane strategy for dealing with that unpleasant truth is to risk all and fight back. Unless, of course, you wish to trade your liberty for the privilege of being on the last boxcar of the last train that passes under the sign that says "Arbeit Macht Frei" on your way to the last "shower."
Collectivism's timeless appetites for liberty, property and life -- undeniable, insatiable, non-negotiable -- can only be defeated. Fight or die. Resistance is not futile, despite what the little tyrant behind the curtain would have you believe. It is, in fact, the only survival strategy that works with zombies -- communist or not.

6 comments:

SWIFT said...

This post reminds me of the 60's when the term,"Better Red than Dead", was fashionable among the Left. They were, at that time, a minority across the Republic. Since then, I have witnessed a massive but incremental growth in their numbers and how it was achieved. Schools, many churches, companies and government encouraged group think through the "Team Player" concept. Those individuals, blessed with a different paradigm of thoughts and values, were ostracised, demonized and harassed into leaving. This policy served another purpose also; to keep the herd in line by intimidation. Today, if you are an individual thinker, government starts a file on you. The FBI has been known to visit your employer seeking to have you dismissed, thereby hurting your ability to earn a living. This, in a Republic? Force is always present in trying to solidify group think and promote the Resistance is Futile policy. How far we have fallen. To think I lived to witness this take over, without a shot being fired, is heart rending.

Anonymous said...

Mike, Thank you for this. At least I know now that I am not crazy. At least... not the wrong kind of crazy.

B. Morton

CowboyDan said...

"Without a shot being fired" YET.

Gary Hunt said...

How we manage to achieve an acquiescence to limiting pour thoughts is explained in an article of Freedom of Speech, at:
http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/blog/?p=627

Anonymous said...

Well put Mr. V, well put.

The "zombie culture" is part and parcel to the Big Lie. Both need the cooperation of many facets of our society to exist. Indeed, it has been media cooperation and acquiescence to collectivist governance that has brought them both to such fruition.

What do these "zombies" see in the mirror? Do they recognize themselves as "zombies" or do they simply see themselves as themselves without abberation?

There is no mirror shortage. What's short is the courage to look in the mirror and see what they've become. And by now, they're unable to recognize their own "zombie abberation" because it has been accomplished over generations. Ah, now we can achieve Groupthink!

Smash all the mirrors! Remove all chance for reflection, speak with one voice, think with one mind, one thought. That is the will and power of collectivism. And that goal has been achieved -- as demonstrated on streets in America, in newspapers, on radio and through televised media with the distorted reality portrayed in the demonization of George Zimmerman. The truth is plain and easy to see. It's the lie that takes our breath away. It's the distortion of truth, the mirror being twisted inside out to hide the abberation that one segment of our society cannot stand to see or admit exists.

They've staked their cultural identity and their souls to the Big Lie. And they are not content with reserving if for themselves. They can only be satisfied when they've imposed it upon all others that all others would think as they do and act to redress what ever offense they imagine has taken place.

Well, that offense is their fear. Their fear of confronting the truth concerning what they have become and what they have subjected themselves to and what they have allowed to be perpetrated upon them by a collectivist government that has used their fear and ignorance as tools to control them.

May their collectivist chains wear heavily on their shoulders in their struggles to free themselves. May they recall with astute clarity their own madness, ignorance, fear and subservience to collectivism. And may it free them from their chains and bring them to face their truths, heal the abberant behaviors and be whole. More, may they become cognizant to collectivist damnation and join in resistance.

They are not the mythical Borg. They are not "zombies". They are simply fucked up fallable human beings being led and being used for monetary gain and political power. And they're afraid to admit they've been used. They simply can't believe they could be fooled so completely. That is a strength of the Big Lie ...

Anonymous said...

Careful....aren't we engaging in the same kind of 'dehumanizing' of our enemy that they do to us....all in hopes of making themselves guiltless in our extermination?

Careful not to become the devil we seek to destroy....just a kind word of caution with labels.