The Left: Masters of Extortion

 

Make me, make me your victim,

Re.sis.tance is only a symptom…

       Of bigotry

       I am so guil.ty, so                                                      

Make me your victim.

Make me, make me your victim

Elect Hillary Clinton…

            She knows the score

            Reparations and more, so                                                        

Make me your victim.

(Parody of Barbara Lewis, “Make Me your Baby”, 1965)

Extortion = by definition: the practice of obtaining (something, such as money) from a person by the use of force or threats

Let’s begin with extortion in its crudest, most elemental form: a physical threat to get something you want – money or some other object of material value.  “Give me your wallet or I’ll knock your teeth out” – direct, easy to understand, transactional.  I get your wallet with your money and credit cards: you keep only part of what you started out with, your teeth. Obviously a better deal for me.

Now, let’s move up a slight notch in criminal sophistication to what I would call a “reputational” threat against someone.  “Give me five thousand dollars or I’ll show your wife and daughter the photos I have of you in the sack with your secretary last year.”  No physical threat but I get five thousand dollars I didn’t have to work very hard for: you hang on (at least for a while) to what you already had, your good reputation and the affection of your wife and daughter.

These examples are of individuals at work, but “give me or else…” also works well as a group exercise – protection rackets, for example.  You make regular monthly payments to some churlish local gangster who in exchange does not let any of his associates burn down your family store. Again, a nice, easy deal for him; for you, one more business expense, one you cannot even write off.

Some political regimes are extortion machines.   The Castro brothers are a splendid example. In 1959 they chased Fulgencio Batista out of the Presidential palace in Havana and off the island and proceeded to murder, imprison and exile anyone whose Leninist bona fides were suspect, some of whom had fought with them, helped to bring Batista down and naïve enough to believe Fidel’s deceitful promise of democracy and free elections.  Firmly in power, here was the extortionist deal they offered the Cuban people: “pretend you love the Maximum Lider and the socialist paradise he is building for you.  Don’t even think about criticizing the regime or mounting political opposition or openly practice your religious beliefs and ideals, and be ready to squeal on your friends and neighbors if they seem less than enthusiastic. In exchange: for you, no firing squad, forced labor camps, re-education centers or social ostracism. You may get to keep your crappy, low paying job with no future, can go to the local clinic for free when you get sick, oh, and eat rice and beans every day, sold to you cheap by the Party that loves you.  Viva la Revolución!”

Let’s, however, continue with a very sophisticated extortionist system that is currently in vogue and has been for some time, identity politics, the staple, now it seems, of the Democrat party assisted by the organs of the mainstream media.

Identity politics, no matter what the particular version you’re currently saddled with, rests on a single fundamental premise: the historical domination and exploitation of one group by another group explains every aspect of today’s disparities in social positioning, economic achievement and individual success. This gift came from Karl Marx stated in a more turgid form at the beginning of the Communist Manifesto, written in 1848. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” 

For the romantics at heart there is something wildly exciting and extremely appealing with this formulation. It is simple, rich with drama and the promise of violence, and the potential for sweeping change, for revolution. Just like Fidel and Che, you grow a beard, pick up a gun, and take on the old, corrupt power structure. It is particularly appealing to young people perpetually out of sorts because the world does not seem to be the perfectly fair, peaceful and harmonious place they think it should be. Not surprising then that Marx’s theoretical ghost continues to haunt us all in ways we may not even realize.

For today’s Marxists “class struggle” (the workers versus the capitalists) does not begin to capture the range of the struggles and the multiplicity of domination and oppression that is the real picture of our predatory, have/have-nots world. The aggressions of the ruling class must now be measured in “micro” units “micro-aggressions” as we have come to know them, detected by “diversity” specialists professionally trained to decode the daily slights experienced by the historically underrepresented have-nots. Blacks oppressed by whites, women by men, gays and transgendered by heterosexuals, indigenous peoples by European colonialists, animals by humans, etc., each group with their own unique set of grievances and demands for redress.  And so the “history of all hitherto society”, yes, Mr. Marx, is still all about “struggle”, but it is far more complicated, persistent and extensive than you ever imagined. Your followers, though, have risen to meet the challenge. You would be proud.

Within this complex picture of domination and oppression “identity politics” was born. This world is made up exclusively of victims and victimizers and one’s search for identity becomes the task of discovering which particular victim group has a history that best captures the narrative of one’s personal grievances. Once the awful picture of the victims and their oppressors becomes clear, then the next and most important step is to know where the ongoing “struggle”, envisioned by the German prophet and the mental dwarfs who still carry on his message, is going.  The struggle has a conclusion and the good guys win.  As Marx puts it technically, “The expropriators are expropriated.”    

We are now fully immersed in the “expropriation” phase of identity politics which is where the professional expropriators (extortionists) step in and turn up the heat. First they have to sell the scam, the bogus, collectivist fable that everyone belongs to a victim community or an oppressor group. Many if not most individuals may not even realize that they are victims or oppressors.  They need to be tutored in this regard and made to understand their position in this equation of domination and exploitation.

“White privilege” is a good example of how this brainwashing works, a recent invention of racial-extortion agitprop that is now making its way into the schools, universities and workplaces.

 “White skin privilege is not something that white people necessarily do, create or enjoy on purpose. Unlike the more overt individual and institutional manifestations of racism described above, white skin privilege is a transparent preference for whiteness that saturates our society. White skin privilege serves several functions. First, it provides white people with “perks” that we do not earn and that people of color do not enjoy. Second, it creates real advantages for us. White people are immune to a lot of challenges. Finally, white privilege shapes the world in which we live — the way that we navigate and interact with one another and with the world.” (http://www.tolerance.org/article/racism-and-white-privilege)

Convinced? Ready to relinquish those “perks” and “advantages” you don’t deserve and didn’t earn and once mistakenly believed had nothing to do with that “whiteness” you’ve been flaunting around since Mom pushed you out into the hands of the nurses?  The point is, once I believe that the all the folks in my tribe have been permanently injured and you are convinced that your tribe has done it, then the “squeeze” is set up and the “marks” are primed for the plucking.  Into the room strolls Al or Barack – it is payback time. The leverage they use to extract (extort) what they want from white America is guilt. And the guilt is of what? Racism. “Please, really, I am not a racist. I swear! What can I do to convince you? Something tells me that this is not a strong bargaining position.  Here then is the deal they offer: “do what we want and someday you may be forgiven for the sin of racism.”  It sounds like extortion to me.  Please understand that “someday” is a very long way away and only they get to say when.  What do they want? Here is how it works: 

“There is an old saying that the victors of war get to write the history of the world. White privilege works this way, too. Since white folks have been in control for so long, we have determined what is valuable or interesting or useful in terms of education. Greek and Roman mythology, Chaucer, and other canonized works have been selected and revered through the ages as critical components of any “solid liberal arts education.” (http://www.tolerance.org/article/racism-and-white-privilege) 

Nothing subtle here. It’s all about power – “white folks have been in control for so long…”  There is no win-win, only winners and losers. The expropriators are about to be expropriated.

This, obviously, was written by a lobotomized white person who has surrendered himself to the extortionists.  In his pathetic world there are only victims and victimizers. Chocking on his guilt as a victimizer, he must now become a victim.  “I plead guilty: as the oppressor, my mind and heart and the my power of whiteness now belong to you, you who have been my victims. Please … make me your victim!”

Slavery, Jim Crow and segregation are all dark stains on America’s past.  Slavery has been dead for 150 years.  Jim Crow and forced segregation are fifty years past.  But for extortionists like Al Sharpton they are timeless, permanent levers of guilt.  Here is how President Obama, Mr. Eloquence, himself, recently formulated this feature of permanence.  “What is also true is that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination is in almost every institution of our lives — you know, that casts a long shadow. And that's still part of our DNA that's passed on. We're not cured of it.” (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/06/22/416476377/we-are-not-cured-obama-discusses-racism-in-america-with-marc-maron) 

Not much eloquence in this. Yes, “you know”, the “cure” will be someday, but not for a very long time.

Obama did not talk like this when he was running for President.  Remember this gem from the speech that launched his national career at the Democratic Convention in 2004? “There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America—there's the United States of America.” I guess he didn't learn about DNA until later.

What happened? The community organizer was plotting to be President. He needed white votes.  Many if not most white voters would not be thrilled with a President preoccupied with racial grievances, a President who wanted to keep them on the hook for what some or even none of their ancestors had done one hundred and fifty years ago, a President who talked like every white police officer was another Bull Connor. Openly extortionist campaigners don’t make good Presidential candidates. Once in office the fake “make nice” routine dropped away and the “we’re all in it together” shtick turned into the racism “that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on.” Ok, the guy we thought was supposed to be our Nelson Mandela instead turned out to be Robert Mugabe. The candidate who was going to help us “transcend” the racial divide became the President who is close to and consults regularly with Al Sharpton, one of the most scurrilous, lying, bottom-feeding, shakedown artists to be found anywhere under a rock. This President sent three White House representatives to the funeral of a black criminal (Michael Brown) but cannot even bring himself to mention the tragic, violent death of the highly decorated U.S. Navy SEAL Christopher Kyle (two Silver Star Medals and Five Bronze Star Medals) who, you guessed it, just happened to be white.

Identity politics and its extortionist methods work because the ideological snake oil of collective victimhood and guilt has been ceaselessly peddled for so long by the cultural Marxists and has now penetrated deeply into American metapolitics and makes resistance to it nearly impossible. The hysterical, mass-slander carried out by the mainstream media against Trump and his supporters and Hillary Clinton’s recent reduction of Trump supporters to “Untermenschen” (that “basket of deplorables” who are “unredeemable”) signals perhaps some sort of endgame for traditional American politics.