Leftist-Populist Misunderstanding

By Leo Gura - January 18, 2025

I much respect Chris Hedges, but his explanation for the rise of Trump is off:

This is a prime example of leftist/progressive projection. Populist leftists and Marxists have a habit of projecting their own concerns and needs about capitalism onto others, which is ironically elitist of them, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation.

Trump did not win because the desperate little guys — the populist mob — were upset over excess capitalism or neoliberalism. This is what Chris Hedges is upset over, not the average voter. This explanation overlooks that the populist mob is too ignorant and underdeveloped to know or care about such things. Trump voters don’t want less capitalism, they want more of it! A meth addict doesn’t want less meth, he wants triple meth. Trump voters do not think like Marxists, they hate Marxists. Trump voters feel that a capitalist rampage is just want America needs! Does it make any logical sense? Of course not. But it doesn’t have to. Trump voters are driven by vibes, cultural issues, ideology, and personality — because that’s all they understand about politics. That’s all they have the attention span and maturity for.

Chris Hedges and other populist leftists like TYT love to blame the neoliberal elite for this downfall of democracy and rise of fascism, without placing any blame on the grass-roots masses. Their view of the populist mass gets the psychology wrong. They overlook the elephant in the room: that the vast majority of humans live in a state of profound ignorance about history, politics, government, economics, science, and philosophy. The non-elites are NOT smart, they are NOT wise, they are NOT even thinking! They just follow like a herd of zombies and they are easily manipulated precisely because they do not care or know about the substance of governance. So they are manipulated by cult of personality, charisma, bluster, bombast, vibes, celebrity podcasters, comedians, con-artists, brain-dead campaign ads, Facebook deepfake posts, ideology, propaganda, rage-bait, conspiracy theories, anti-vax hysteria, etc. The ignorant masses do not want to hear truth or anything of substance about governance. They don’t care about solving any systemic issue. They only care about feeling good and having their beliefs echoed back to them. The ignorant masses love all their prejudices pandered to. They love to be made to feel smart. They hate to be shown to be stupid, precisely because the truth is that they are stupid. The masses have no capacity for handling truth because they never cared about truth ever in their lives. They have zero epistemic standards. So they are the perfect marks for demagogues like Trump and social media influencers.

How do you know this is true? Just look at the quality of the media they consume!

If the populist masses actually cared about what Chris Hedges cares about — excess capitalism, income equality, free healthcare, unions, environment, child care — they would have never voted for Trump. They voted for Trump because Trump represents the ethos of peak capitalism, which they think is a beautiful thing because that is their level of psychological maturity and development. They want to own fast cars, rape beautiful women, strike it rich with crypto scams, light cigars with $100 bills, live in gaudy mansions, wear American flag underwear, eat elk meat, watch gladiator games (MMA & WWE), drink cheap disgusting beer, flex their muscles, win a dick measuring contest against their neighbor, binge conspiracy theories on TikTok, shoot a raccoon with a fully-auto AR-15, salute Jesus on the 4th of July while singing Yankee Doodle Dandy, demonize anyone who disagrees with them as pedophiles. This IS America! This IS populism! But leftists have their heads stuck so far up their own over-educated elitist Marxists asses that it does not compute. Mankind cannot be this shallow. But it is.

THE AVERAGE PERSON DOES NOT CARE ABOUT THE SUBSTANCE OF GOVERNANCE.

Drill that into your political mind.

Let this be a lesson to you about the dangers of leftist projection and leftist populism. Leftist populists deceive themselves into believing that the masses are smarter than the elites. No! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! To believe that is a grave error in sense-making. Marxists need to believe that the masses — the proletariat — are smarter and wiser than the bourgeoisie elite, in order to justify staging a leftist populist overturning of the social order. But this is a grave misunderstanding of why society is structured as it is. The elites are in charge not because they are some evil guys but because they are smarter and more capable than the non-elites. This is why all Marxist revolutions ultimately fail, because the non-elites are just not intelligent, responsible, motivated, capable, nor strong enough to run society. And so what you see in every Marxist revolution is that the old class of elites is replaced with a new class of elites, not the ordinary masses, because the ordinary masses cannot do the job.

When Lenin’s cohort of Bolshevik Communist elites first took over the Russian state in their Soviet revolution, they fired something like 10,000 bankers because according to Marxist dogma the bankers are the bad guys. But within days the Bolsheviks learned that society could not function without well-run banks, and the people from the masses who they used to replace the bankers simply weren’t qualified to run the banks. So Lenin had to back-peddle to get the old bankers back, otherwise his own scheme would collapse. This is the stupidity of Marxism in a nutshell. Who’s gonna run your fucking banks! Joe Rogan and his conspiracy-brained comedian friends?! Who’s gonna run the hospitals? Some anti-vax Flat Earther? Who’s gonna run the military? Some Fox News host dip-shit? This is a fucking joke.

There is absolutely no way to get rid of elites. This is the Marxist/leftist-populist delusion. What they never understood is that every society on the planet since the dawn of time has been run by elites because elites are superior to the masses. Elites are physically stronger, more physically attractive, more ambitious, more intelligent, more talented, healthier, better educated, more responsible, harder working, and even genetically superior to non-elites. That’s why they managed to rise to the top. They are not at the top by luck or accident, they are at the top because they were strong, ambitious, and egotistical enough to push their way to the top like bulls in a stampede. Critically, they were the most egotistical. Critically! Because ego isn’t a mere illusion, ego is the engine that runs civilization! The ego’s lies, fictions, and depravities are the stuff of which civilization is built!

This does not mean the elites are good people. The elites are corrupt and egoistical motherfuckers. But the masses are corrupt too. If the masses were not corrupt they would not vote for corrupt leaders. Americans did not elect the most corrupt president of all time by accident nor out of rage over unactualized Marxist ideals. They elected him because he is a perfect reflection of their own corruption. Only a corrupt mind can vote for Trump. That is the bottom line. There is absolutely no escape from this reality. But this is a very inconvenient truth for populists on the right and left, because populists have fooled themselves into the believing that only the elites are corrupt while the average person is good. No! This is wrong. None of you comprehend what corruption is and how deep it goes. Which is why these intellectual mistakes keep being made on the left.

The leftist populism is corrupt. Corrupt in its sense-making.

The reason Trump won is because the intellectual and epistemic bankruptcy of the average American has finally caught up to us, matching that of Trump himself, largely thanks to the epistemic rot and corruption of social media. This is the truth that no one wants to hear.

YOU ELECT WHAT YOU ARE.

There can be no proper sense-making within politics without acknowledging the profound ignorance, corruption, and immaturity of the masses. Any account that avoids this point will be wrong.

Welcome to real politics. Unconscious politics.

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