It’s time to take back our society from the left

By David Truman

Western society, including Australian, is severely infected by collectivism.  There has been relentless growth in laws and regulations, pushing of the belief that government is the solution to all problems, and propaganda that our rights come from government (including the United Nations) rather than being intrinsic in ourselves. 

Way back in 2007, Chris Berg of the Institute of Public Affairs wrote –

The broad population is appallingly apathetic.  It is distracted by day to day economic challenges, popular culture which destroys thinking and awareness, mass media which manufacture fake news as in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.  Arrogant controlling elites believe they know what’s best for us while abandoning common sense, refusing to listen to ordinary people.  They perpetuate their power by running much the same agendas in both the major parties and telling us “there is no alternative.”  They are contemptuous of the popular will on the rare occasions when this can be expressed democratically – as in the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom.  “We know what’s best for you – you got it wrong.”

There is widespread misgiving about major policy decisions of the past, for example on the rate and nature of immigration into Western countries.  The elites never consulted the people on these decisions, and refuse to do so now.  Instead, they brand people who raise these issues as “populist” or, worse, “racist.”  Perhaps people sick of having this term of abuse lobbed at them unjustly should reciprocate by calling the name-callers pedophiles! – which some of them certainly are.

Our societies are like a cruise ship which has been taken over by pirates. 

Antonio Gramsci, Italian Marxist ideologue from the 1930s, talked about how the left must undertake a long march through the institutions of Western society.  The game plan is now virtually complete.  

The education system – universities, secondary, even primary, and the teachers’ unions – has been taken over by leftist propaganda merchants.  The public media – ABC/SBS, BBC and others – are leftist echo chambers which suppress any conservative voices.  The products of our universities now running major businesses are pushing “woke” agendas that are pure Cultural Marxism.  Recent examples:  the Gillette “toxic masculinity” ad;  calls for gender and minority quotas in boards and elected positions, to the disregard of the criterion of merit – all in the name of removing “discrimination;”  and the Safe Schools gender-fluidity nonsense whose agenda is nothing less than an attack on the nuclear family, the bedrock of traditional society.

 When left-leaning ideologues are hired by an institution, they hire other left leaning ideologues.  Once they are in control, the institution is captured by the left, forever – unless and until a superior power (which would have to be a determined genuinely Conservative government) resolves and acts to take the left on.

Many of the churches have been captured by the left too.  They get sucked into the socialist concept of “social justice”, meaning redistributive “justice” disconnected from personal responsibility (Paul said “The one who will not work, shall not eat”:  this is part of genuine social justice too).  And some of them include “Diversity” in their statement of values, which goes a long way further than “inclusiveness”.   Diversity is a Cultural Marxist buzzword that means “We have no confidence in our own culture, and won’t affirm or defend it, unless it is diluted by people who may have quite incompatible values and cultural practices.”  This is the reality of Multiculturalism – which is an ideology for ignorant, unreflective, cultural pessimists. 

Moral, religious and cultural relativism – the belief that nothing has any absolute or permanent value, and there is no such thing as objective Truth – is pushed by the left.  It has destroyed previously solid foundations and has generated nihilism.  Jordan Peterson’s book 12 Rules for Life: an antidote to Chaos is one attempt to provide an antidote to the spiritual and moral void created by this poison.

In Canada, Justin Trudeau is a parody of social liberalism, heavily into political correctness (which is the strategy of Cultural Marxism) in language and diversity politics, and cultural appropriation (dressing according to whatever cultural context he lobs into).  He deliberately imports into Canada people who reject what have been traditional Canadian values of tolerance. 

In Australia the appalling Greens and some in the Labor Party are into this on steroids.

Meanwhile, governments at all levels continue to impose more and more taxes, jack up traffic fines and motor registration and licence costs, subject economic activities to more and more red tape, green tape and “paralysis by analysis” – as with the disgraceful Adani case in Queensland.  Governments at all levels are taking on functions that simply DO NOT NEED TO BE DONE.  We are massively over-regulated, and this is chipping away relentlessly at Australia’s competitiveness as a place to invest, to build businesses, and even maintain existing export industries.   The Global Warmism brigade’s religious cultism about renewables and inevitably rising energy costs, plus loss of reliability of supply, is worsening problems and hurting people least able to cope with them.  Industries are going offshore, both because of the rising costs of energy and because of the globalist pursuit of open borders for investment and trade. 

Oil supply is a critical element of national security.  But Australian governments have allowed the closure of a large part of our oil refining capacity, and stocks held in Australia are at dangerously low levels which could not cope with any significant disruption to supplies.  And the globalists have– astonishingly – allowed China to buy the port of Darwin.  There is even talk of the Chinese buying Australian airports.  Whatever are our political and administrative elites thinking?  

So – we have experienced continuing destruction of the traditional values and common sense which made us a decent, prosperous and free society.  What do we do about the ruinous course that the collectivist pirates have imposed upon us?

Traditional “nice” ways of protesting against these collectivist outrages do not work.  Letters, petitions, taking cases to court, or just putting up with more of the same, cannot deal with a system which is controlled comprehensively by the elites through the party preselection system, stacking of the courts with judicial activists, and government quangos that only purport to give redress (Administrative Appeals Tribunals, Human Rights Commission and so on).  The Australian Human Rights Commission has been a standout disgrace, in not protecting human rights but suppressing free speech (which is our most fundamental freedom).

What is needed is for conservatives to organize, cooperate (no more competing personal agendas and egos), work with international partners facing similar problems of national sovereignty in their own countries, and form an organizational structure that is independent of individuals – not providing heads that can be knocked off to the destruction of the movement.  Knowledge needs to be widely shared so that the “DNA” of the movement to counter the existing power structures can be endlessly replicated.

Conservatives need to know what they stand FOR.  They need a clear set of values (which are not personal agendas).  They also need to understand comprehensively the collectivist enemy they are AGAINST, and its complex of arrangements and power structures.  As Sun Tzu says in The Art of War, If a man knows himself and his opponent, he need not fear a hundred battles.  If he knows himself but not his opponent, then for every victory he will suffer a defeat.  And if he knows neither himself nor his opponent, then he will suffer defeat in every battle.

So what are the foundational values that Conservatives should take as a template against which to evaluate all issues that arise?  Here are the essential components of the Creed of Freedom:

• Only individuals have rights, not the collective group.  These rights are intrinsic to the individual, not granted by the state or subject to being taken away by the state.

• No group, however large, should be allowed to deny the rights of the minority.

• Desirable social and economic objectives are better achieved by voluntary action and tolerance, persuasion, and the power of good example, rather than by coercion of laws.  Personal charity – the voluntary giving of one’s own money, is preferable to welfare – the giving of other people’s money trough government confiscation.

• All citizens should be equal before the law, regardless of origin, race, religion, gender, education, socio-economic status, life style or political opinion.  And no class should be elevated over another.

• The role of government should be to protect the lives, liberty and property of citizens, not to provide them with their needs.  Government is best when it governs least.

Over the past half century and more, conservatives have been suffering defeat in virtually every battle.  We do not know ourselves, and we certainly do not know our opponents.

All modern totalitarian systems (including both leftism and Islam) are variants of collectivism.  They are all based on big government, the beliefs that the end justifies the means, and that the group is more important than the individual.

Both the leftist collectivists and Islam share a common strategy for coming to power.  Islam’s strategy is detailed in THE PROJECT of the Muslim Brotherhood – a blueprint for whiteanting Western civilization from within.  This is spelt out in a document written in 1982 but captured by Western intelligence agencies in a security raid in 2001.

Both the collectivists and Islam capture the power centres of society, including voluntary organizations such as labour unions, farm organizations, media organizations, teachers’ associations, individual political causes, and government agencies – all power centres. 

To combat this strategy on must do the same.   We have been losing each battle because we’ve never engaged in battle.  We must TAKE BACK THE POWER CENTRES, ONE BY ONE, exactly as we lost them.   We must be willing to reach for power.  Those without power cannot defend freedom.

Lenin made these insightful contributions to the strategy of the left:

1.  It makes no difference what you think (your ideology or belief system, whether Marxism or whatever), if others hold the power. 

2.  Power does not seek those who are virtuous;  it belongs to those who reach for it. 

3.  Once power is acquired, it must be used to defend itself against those who would take it from us.