This Bird Won’t Fly: the Fate of the Left-Winged Phoenix

American Thinker.com ^ | June 2, 2020 | William R. Hawkins

[Kaslin]

When I was a student at the University of Illinois, the various left-wing groups formed an umbrella organization called the Radical Union. They hung posters of Marx, Lenin, and Mao on their office walls. Their emblem was a phoenix rising from the ashes, symbolizing their desire to burn America to the ground and build their utopia upon the ruins. This remains the core of left-wing thought today and goes far beyond cheering on rioters and looters who set parts of cities ablaze in the name of “social justice.” Rampage is not revolution. The larger assault has been on display throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Their hope has been that the self-inflicted policy wounds triggered by media-driven panic would do so much damage to society and economy that they could seize power and impose their ideology on a reeling people. The goal is not to recover or rebuild from the calamity, but to institute the permanent shutdown of advanced civilization to preserve their simplistic values.

The New Republic, once the respected forum for responsible liberalism, is a perfect example of the ascendency of extremist thought across the entire left wing of the spectrum. They have even come to call one of their weekly summaries “Apocalypse Soon.” TNR has featured a variety of articles that play off the pandemic from “The Pandemic Is the Right Time to Defund the Police” to arguing that with major universities closed, small, private liberal arts colleges can now compete online to reach “civically engaged citizens of the world.”

[laplata]

Good piece. Thanks for posting.