SocietiesFuture

The Australian 21stJune2017

MASKS SLIP TO REVEAL THE UGLY FACE OF THE FUTURE

MAURICE NEWMAN

Socialist attacks on free speech are the truth revealed
In his 1960s bestseller, The Naked Communist, former FBI agent
W. Cleon Skousen lays bare an ambitious Marxist manifesto. He identifies 46 goals ranging from reordering Western values and institutions to a one-world government under the UN.

A major objective was the capture of one or both of the major US political parties. Marxists would use the courts to weaken US institutions through technical decisions based on human rights. Schools would become transmission belts for socialist propaganda and, by softening the curriculum, teachers’ associations would carry the party line in textbooks on the list of required reading. Loyalty oaths would be abolished

They aimed to infiltrate the media and control editorial writing, book reviews and student newspapers.

Where possible, key positions in radio, television and film would be filled with sympathetic presenters, actors and producers.

“Cultural Marxism” would target all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship”. Lower cultural standards of morality would be encouraged through wider acceptance of pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, movies, radio and TV. Degeneracy and promiscuity were to be presented as “normal, natural and healthy”.

Even churches would be targeted. Traditional religion would be replaced with “social” religion. The aim was to discredit the Bible and mock those who saw a need for a “religious crutch”.

Winston Churchill warned: “Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.”

Maybe, but the manifesto’s authors must be feeling pretty pleased with progress. Today, “cultural Marxism” is pervasive.

In Australia, parliaments have surrendered traditional values with scarcely a sigh.

The curriculums in our schools and universities drill “progressive” ideology into the hearts and minds of students. A recent Institute of Public Affairs survey found almost 80 per cent of Australia’s universities stifle intellectual debate. Moral relativism reigns supreme.

Our courts are thick with politicians in robes. Conceited judges seek unnecessarily to bully critics into silence while, in sentencing, we are accustomed to criminals being treated as victims of an unjust society.

Our public broadcasters drip with fashionable left-wing causes. Cultural institutions foster leftist activists and socialist propaganda. Even our armed forces have been infiltrated. Shouting at subordinates is now outlawed and trainees who find instructors overbearing can hold up red cards. Ensuring that the navy focuses on all aspects of diversity, a strategic adviser on Islamic cultural affairs was appointed at the same time a 102-year-old motto was removed from chaplains’ badges lest it cause offence.

As US commentator Paul Murphy writes, the left seeks “non-violent revolution through their work in the rights and race businesses. Specifically, they defend ‘revolutionary subjects’ such as Islamists, Islamic terrorists, sexual groomers, rapists, criminals, leftist activists and so on. The rights of minorities are fought for and given a superior status vis-avis what they call the ‘dominant culture’.”

Now, with the finish line in sight, the seductive mask of socialism is starting to slip, revealing the brutal authoritarian face behind. We hear of meetings being abandoned because of threats of violence from left-wing activists. Hotel staff receive physical threats should a Christian meeting, opposed to same-sex marriage, proceed. Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali cancels her Australian speaking tour, citing safety fears. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson withdraws from a forum because her security cannot be guaranteed. Conservative Sky News commentator Andrew Bolt is set upon by leftists. The list is endless. Yet we tolerate the intolerant and defend the indefensible, cravenly shouldering the blame.

As the great Karl Popper said: “If we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them.”

No wonder the outrage that followed the treacherous toppling of prime minister Tony Abbott continues.

Brushed aside as the unassuaged anger of delusional conservatives refusing to move on, the mood at the time more likely reflected voter refusal to be deluded into believing that the Turnbull Coalition team would be other than a pale shade of the Labor Party. And so it has come to pass.

In true Labor style, utopian commitments are made in the full knowledge that the ability to pay for them is but a vain hope. Growth-stifling taxes and red tape increase along with bureaucracies to administer them. Ironically, the cumulative effect of these measures renders the prospect of honouring political promises ever more remote.

Meanwhile, Marxist aims for the UN are very much on track, aided and abetted by obsequious Western acolytes such as Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. In a classic case of UN virtue signalling, an unnecessary advisory group has been established “to provide expert advice to support government and business to work together to improve human rights”. Really?

But this is nowhere as irresponsible as the ratification of the Paris emission targets, which effectively cede de facto control of the Australian economy’s commanding heights, critical sectors that dominate economic activity, such as electricity generation, heavy manufacturing, mining and transport, to unelected UN bureaucrats in Geneva and Bonn.

The Prime Minister described this as “a watershed, or turning point”. Indeed it is.

Such meek surrender brings the Marxist dream of one-world government another step closer. Its realisation is assisted by the existence of other supranational groups such as the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund (a Keynesian brainchild), the World Bank and the G20. Each, despite clear evidence to the contrary, haughtily extols the virtues of centralised decision-making. But what should we expect from a political class whose power is amplified through these bureaucracies?

So long as this self-serving mindset prevails, we can expect financial and economic crises to intensify, living standards to fall, confidence in our democratic system to sink further and, like Greece, Venezuela and the rest, the economy to finally collapse.

“Then,” say the Marxists, “shall (we) stride through the wreckage, a creator.”