The "secret knowledge" being whatever they think they know that the "sheeple/npcs/bots/libs/conservatives/commies" don't.
It's a hell of a trick: society-wide Main Character Syndrome.
In the interest of fighting this sentiment within the left, I often try to step back and see how my ideology and my efforts fit within a world historical movement, the totality of all of the oppressed people united in their struggle for liberation. I think that there's something very important about understanding what we have in common, all throughout the world, and that we fundamentally believe in the same thing. I also think that liberalism and fascism are allergic to this unity, that they revile unity of purpose; they portray us as mindless drones, the gullible masses who don't know what's truly good for them.
It's also worth bringing up that we ought to combat the very common Masses, Elites, and Rebels view of the world that is particularly frequent among Western leftists. We are not special people among ignorant masses. We are not in They Live with the glasses that make us see through the propaganda. We are not mommy's little special children that are Very Smart
and have a unique predisposition for seeing the Truth. We are just workers among workers.It's also worth bringing up that we ought to combat the very common Masses, Elites, and Rebels view of the world that is particularly frequent among Western leftists. We are not special people among ignorant masses. We are not in They Live with the glasses that make us see through the propaganda. We are not mommy's little special children that are Very Smart and have a unique predisposition for seeing the Truth. We are just workers among workers.
Damn right.
I've seen it pop up on Hexbear sometimes: the idea that someone should "know better" and therefore if they get fucked over by capitalism, it's their fault for being ignorant and wrong. This usually comes up in treat defense struggle sessions, like the one about international corporate sports gambling. "Well, I don't have a problem with gambling, so if other people get addicted, even if their lives are getting ruined and they're taking their families down with them, fuck them. Let people enjoy things."
fuck. that's just one small step away from standard reddit brained "you need to take personal responsibility, FAFO" bullshit
Yes, and leftist thought isn't pushing for a complete lack of that personal responsibility either.
"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" is a pro-work, pro-responsibility slogan.
A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink.
"I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up," the CIA agent says.
"Thank you," the KGB says. "We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them."
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. "Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America!”
This goes for libs and chuds (scratched) libs alike. Whether it's "Adults In The Room" clinking glasses in the wine cave congratulating themselves for the "Hard Decisions" that "Get Shit Done" by war profiteers, or chuds reading the tea leaves of "Q" drops to fantasize about mass purges that will also cure their gout and grant jubilee for their medical debts, it's everywhere.
I haven't paid attention to Q-Heads really since Trump lost. They still at it?
Yes, unfortunately.
If you have chud biological family, disowned or otherwise, they're probably still at it.
Similarly if you have lib biological family they're probably still at the trump trial shit
They still at it?
They're really, really deep into it, yeah
I agree. There's so many people that think they're oppresed free thinkers when they literally believe what the establishment politicians and corpos want. But it's dressed up in so many layers of bullshit that no amount of questioning them makes then admit that they believe the mainstream thing™.
It is possible for leftists to fall into a Main Character Syndrome trap too. That said, at the least there's a strong subtext to leftist theory that individuals matter, but they are not for any reason above the community no matter their pretenses of exceptionalism.
Also, like how a lot of fundies claim they are "not religious" and "just have a personal relationship with God," lots of libs and chuds have pretenses of being "neutral" or for that matter "nonpolitical" which generally isn't an illusion most leftists believe in.
Why do the"free thinkers " collectivelydefault to bigotry, chauvinism, xenophobia etc. I mean at least try to be different if you're a real free thinker. They almost hive mind💞d on this issue
It's the predictable outcome of "anything goes free speech" pretenses anywhere on the internet: mysteriously, nazi slogans, snuff/gore, and kiddie creeping shit pop up instantly, often all from the same free speech enjoyers.
Or jailbait shit. They pretend to be special, freeminded, unique snowflakes when the fact of the matter is their thoughts or opinions are guided by the next 4kl@n trend.
They want whatever they crave to be legal and socially accepted, and that's the beginning and end of their motivation.
Every single redditor and lemmitor: "Heh, haven't these communists heard about Venezuela?"
*Human nature. Checkmate, commies. It's logical and rational to support and maintain a system that rewards the worst ostensibly natural tendencies of human beings at the expense of any other natural tendencies and to incentivize making them even worse over time."
I just thought of a fresh comeback: "Haven't you heard about The United States?"
Hardly a US specific thing. Individualism will do that, and individualism has been a cornerstone of liberal ideology since its inception out of the material conditions of transition from feudal relations to capitalist private property, with its particular personal profiteering phenomenon in Europe in general. The advent of socialized labor yet individual appropriation, as a natural continuation from small-scale personal artisanal craft and trade where the one exchanging was the one making, evolving into its next stages; with the new productive forces unleashed being owned in these same private hands which could afford them and were established in the markets and trade, alongside the flocking of dispossessed peasants to cities, which began the socialization of labor with machines; but while continuing the same process of personal exchange of the products at market by the owner, who could then afford more machines from the surplus, and employ more socialized labor, etc. And so liberal individualism is a natural the superstructural outcropping of there being an inherent logical assumption of the capitalist "earning" that, even though they did not provide the value, this wasn't really known or even thought about, people were just continuing relations as they had been, in the new form with the new productive forces, in the new mode of production.
Hardly a US specific thing
The United States does culturally stand out as especially stubborn when it comes to individualistic ideology. For example, pretty much no other industrialized country in the world has such a sloppy and dismal privatized medical system that's choked up with false and deceptive consumer choices and decision paralysis, and attempts to change that get shouted down as turbo communism by the individualism enjoyers from the ruling class down to the poor.I can also go on and on about the individualistic "thoughts and prayers" responses to mass shootings (also distinctly concentrated in the United States) and the clownishly feeble and temporary response to covid-19.
"Coal rolling" and other acts of spiteful individualistic assholery are also nearly exclusive to the United States.
Any superstructure and expression of it is going to have unique characteristics of the conditions and history of that specific country and its ruling class, I wouldn't argue the US individualism isn't unique in its ways, just as it is unique in other places in different ways. I don't think profiteering healthcare and the hoodwinking of poor people about "but muh wait times" or what have you is an expression of individualism though. That is a straightforward capitalist interest in maximizing profits, particularly with having some elite hospitals being worth-travel for big bourgeois elsewhere, meaning you get the (probably racistly-named) "Arab Sheik problem" where they charge for the highest payers that will pay, and that is more profitable than charging normal prices, even when accounting for all those who never pay. And this dictates the general healthcare "market." But then people are miseducated and kept from political education about healthcare and are told straight wrong information by their corporate bourgeois media and so believe it. They're not saying "it's my god given right to die not being able to afford an ambulance." The majority of the US is in favor of single payer. And even those who aren't it's not individualism, there was that thing where people were cheering for Trump to dismantle Obamacare but then were pissed when they found out that ACA is Obamacare and they actually relied on it (as garbage as ACA is). Bad education and being propagandized is not an aspect of US individualism. And it's not only the US that has privatized or partial private healthcare.
'Thoughts and prayers' is a Christian thing in general. Maybe a western Christian thing idk about Orthodox if they do that kind of thing. Christianity is a deeply individualist religion with a long history in Europe through Feudalism of the church ensuring its subjects develop in a way where they individualize all of their problems and internalize them, kept meek and modest and passive and accepting of bad things, kept separated, and made to idealize keeping their thoughts and wants and needs between them and god and repressing themselves and never making trouble in society (and paying their tithe!) in order to be granted freedom when they die. It's not unique to the US. The more modern prosperity gospel trend of it is certainly a particularly individualist trend, but rooted in the same thing I mentioned, a superstructural expression as the typical bourgeois individualism of "I have this which means I earned it which means I'm good and should have this."
There were terrible lockdown responses all over Europe, this was absolutely not a US-specific phenomenon. And it all came from the same roots, a base in capitalist interest and the liberal individualist superstructural outgrowths of it came after and was also not unique to the US. The covid response being temporary and feeble all over even in European countries who 'let it rip,' and even half or more of the anti-lockdown protestors too, were economic in nature. It was the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeois wanting profits and not being able or wanting to tighten belts to deal with lockdowns and associated costs, and even workers wanting to work and not being paid enough to survive and support families compared to the gouging of rents and costs of living including price gouges by grocery stores and other companies.
Where there was lockdowns, there was economic lobbying by capitalists to open it back up, which was not out of individualism but out of base material interest. In tourist states and cities in the US for instance there was heavy heavy lobbying by restaurant and hotel capitalists and their cartels (I mean, 'professional associations boards') to ram things back open because of their bottom line. That isn't an expression of individualism but of material interest, a base and not a superstructure. A basal interest, which is furthered socially in superstructural outgrowths, in narratives from that base interest, rooted in what I described before, the bourgeois liberal individualism as a natural consequence of capitalist relations; where they express (and even convince themselves), that their individual freedom to run their business which they 'worked so hard to achieve', and others individual freedom to engage in tourism and dining and commerce 'to spend their hard-earned money (at my restauraunt)', are impeded by the lockdowns. That base creates superstructure, which then reinforces the base. It's not a 'trick' but bourgeois ideology, which is the dominant ideology in bourgeois society; which has its own character in its own conditions and histories, but is itself not unique to the US.
Coal rolling is a specific spiteful individualist asshole exclusive to the US --- an expression of this same root of European bourgeois liberal individualism from the same origins, but its form and character and expressions shaped by how it came out of the US' material conditions and history, such as its particular car culture which grew out of its specific historical powerhouse capitalist monopolies (Ford, GM, Chrysler, Studebaker, Chevrolet, adjacents like agricultural vehicles from International Harvester Company and John Deere etc.) which was at the forefront of global industrial machine production with, and in which, it achieved its dominance in the early automotive and industrial-agriculture markets --- from which also the war industry was built by retooling existing infrastructure, from which the US empire became global hegemon out of the World Wars.
Coal likewise has its own basis in this history, with similar the world's richest people being coal and railroad tycoons; and the "coal towns" and the like; which in the earliest years was basically commodity serfdom, heinously criminal and caused things like the coal wars --- but afterward while still flagrantly criminal and exploitative in many many ways, also became a very high-paying stable trade for workers in which much pride was taken in their work (which happened in the Soviet Union too, Stakhanovites movement and such, but of course a different system under better conditions and without capitalist exploitation, there are still important understandings of peoples connection to their labor) which when that was lost created a lot of alienation and poverty and ravaging of their communities as all post-industrial towns, and anger/resentment with no class consciousness to replace it, as a legacy of bourgeois-initiated red scares white terrors and anti-communist propaganda the pervasiveness of which would make the Nazis swoon. And so environmental/green tech movements and protestors are a point of false-conscious conflict in regards to that legacy which gets emanated into wider culture.
It is a unique expression of spiteful individualist assholery in the US, but only as a form of the general European bourgeois liberal individualism which came from the unique US material conditions, as a natural superstructural outcropping of its bourgeois class interest, which gives rise to bourgeois liberal ideology in its form, which becomes the dominant hegemonic ideology as bourgeois ideology always does, and in a dialectic way then gets taken-and-changed by the working class to their own conditions and perceived interests in whatever level of political consciousness they have. It is, agreed, a spiteful manifestation and expression of liberal individualism which is unique to the US, but it is that just as there are other spiteful manifestations and expressions of liberal individualist assholery in other European countries in other forms from their history and conditions.
I want to emphasize that the examples I gave were about intensified individualist ideology expressed sociopolitically, even economically by extension because of pushback and hostility against even the possibility of change. Not necessarily unique, but more.
I don't think analysis can go very far if the primary point is "this happens everywhere" with the implication that it happens nearly equally everywhere which I disagree with, especially if that's supposed to be the end of discussion.
MUELLER 
