Trump, Taibbi and Repressive Tolerance

“Rules for thee and not for we” became a cultural critique during the pandemic.  A mask-less governor Gavin Newsome was seen eating at an elite restaurant within twenty-four hours of issuing a stay-at-home order under a state-wide mask mandate.  A gubernatorial sibling and CNN celebrity host Chris Cuomo was seen mask-less and belligerent outside his vacation home after sanctimoniously scolding watchers for selfishly not getting vaccinated and reminding them to stay locked-down in their homes.  The former president Barack Obama held a birthday party at his mansion in Martha’s Vineyard where the staff were forced to mask while the celebrity political crowd was not.  This list isn’t even close to exhaustive as much as it is exhausting to realize these high society hypocrites actually exist and wield power over so many of us.

More recently we’ve seen the unspoken and asymmetrical rules of the culture clash in two of the biggest stories of 2023.  The first, former award winning Rolling Stone contributor, turned independent journalist Matt Taibbi, was given access by Elon Musk to report on the collusion between government agencies and Twitter executives.  The Twitter Files revealed the DOJ, members of congress and even the White House issued directives to Twitter for violating American’s first amendment rights, while also obfuscating apparently criminal activity conducted by major pharmaceutical companies who had withheld important data regarding vaccine safety and efficacy.  The ad hoc congressional sub-committee looking into the weaponization of the government called Taibbi to testify regarding his reporting on the Twitter files. In a moment of unparalleled irony Taibbi suddenly got a house call from the I.R.S.  The other irony?  Taibbiis a self-proclaimed progressive who votes Democrat.  Here he was in the cross-hairs of the machine that is willing to eat its own if only to save face by intimidation.  They left doesn’t care if lady justice is blind, they want you to pretend you are instead.

This week we’ve seen perhaps the most egregious instance of lady justice no longer being blind.  Forty-fifth president Donald Trump has been indicted on what even many on the left are seeing as a weak legal case by a Manhattan District Attorney who is famous for not prosecuting actual crimes.  D.A. Alvin Bragg is reportedly dropping 52% of all felony charges to misdemeanors yet is seeking to take a previously failed misdemeanor account and increase it to a felony charge for president Trump.  This lopsided approach to applying the law has many wondering why the favoritism toward even violent criminals but preferential punishment toward, in Trump’s case, an essentially victimless crime if it was a crime at all?

If lady justice can see at all she has a jaundiced left eye scrutinizing every movement of her right eye.  Her scales have been made to lean heavily in favor of the sinister side heralding a punishing disadvantage to its dexterous counterpart.  If her good side was her left side which famously called for tolerance why does it seem to only be offered to all things on the left?  Why are BLM riots that destroy billions called “mostly peaceful protests” yet a mostly peaceful protest at the capitol is called an “insurrection”? Why are libraries opening their doors for drag queen story hour yet refusing Kirk Cameron or Matt Walsh’s innocuous children’s books?  The ghost of Rod Serling wants to know.

Meet 1960s critical theorists and Marxist social philosophers Herbert Marcuse, Barrington Moore Jr. and Robert Paul Wolff. In 1969 the Boston Beacon Press published a book of essays titled “A Critique of Pure Tolerance” featuring musings from each in regard to how their Marxist revolutionaries should view tolerance.

As is typical of Marxist writings each essay takes many thousands of words to say what could easily be said in a few sentences.  This deliberate tactic of these narcissistic sophists is how they essentially hypnotize the reader through linguistic legerdemain using a few key phrases and ideas wrapped in hyper emotional or hyper intellectual word salad to essentially manipulate the reader into feeling oppressed while also feeling called to champion the cause of taking down the oppressors.

Recognizing the need to clarify the boundaries of tolerance and establish favorable rules of engagement the writers set about explaining why tolerance should be granted to the left – even at the level of tolerating criminal activity, like riots, assaults, or theft posing as reparative equity.  Conversely they maintain virtually all political activity from the right should be vehemently opposed with what Marcuse describes as “repressive tolerance”.  Essentially, they want tolerance for we but not for thee.

Consider Marcuse’s opening paragraph:

“THIS essay examines the idea of tolerance in our advanced industrial society. The conclusion reached is that the realization of the objective of tolerance would call for intolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed. In other words, today tolerance appears again as what it was in its origins, at the beginning of the modern period–a partisan goal, a subversive liberating notion and practice. Conversely, what is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression.”

In other words “Blah, blah, blah…tolerance is oppression” when it allows conservatism to continue to have influence over public policy.

Don’t believe me? His friends on Wikipedia clarify:

Marcuse argues that genuine tolerance does not permit support for “repression”, since doing so ensures that marginalized voices will remain unheard. He characterizes tolerance of repressive speech as “inauthentic”. Instead, he advocates a form of tolerance that is intolerant of repressive (namely right-wing) political movements:

“Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left. Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements that promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or that oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc.”

In another word game he refers to it throughout the essay as “liberating tolerance” rather than “repressive tolerance”.  This allows him to put his reader’s focus on what they need to do to be liberated or set free from the repressive policies of conservatism. Which policies exactly?  We have to read his essay “Eros and Civilization” to find it’s those that limit his erotic fantasies:

“He regarded the realization of man’s erotic nature as the true liberation of humanity, which inspired the utopias of Jerry Rubin and others.”

In case you wondered why the big push to assimilate BLM, LGBTQ, DEI and ESG agenda’s into culture, this is why.  Marcuse is referred to as “the father of the new left”.  He also wrote about fomenting revolutionary activity in “the ghetto population”:

“The ghetto population of the United States constitutes such a force. Confined to small areas of living and dying, it can be more easily organized and directed. Moreover, located in the core cities of the country, the ghettos form natural geographical centers from which the struggle can be mounted against targets of vital economic and political importance; in this respect, the ghettos can be compared with the faubourgs of Paris in the eighteenth century, and their location makes for spreading and “contagious” upheavals.”

It’s writings like these that inspired his student Angela Davis from Brandeis to aid and abet the murder of superior court judge Harold Haley.  This too was tolerated because, hey, it’s part of the revolution.

It’s a putative revolution that uses lofty language and calls for social justice to essentially justify its progenitor’s sexual desires and deviancy.