Once upon a time, far-left professors responded to those who called them “Marxists” with the dread charge of McCarthyism; a buzzword whose encoded meaning was that the charges against said professors were baseless. Meanwhile, these same academics openly advocated for the very collectivism they were accused of promoting.
But that was then. Today, leftist academics are up front about their Marxism, a frank admission almost exclusive to the age of Trump.
A case in point is the upcoming conference entitled “Socialism 2017,” which will be held on July 6-9 in Chicago. The advertisement for this conference, which is organized and will be attended by tenured radicals, is clearly to ground non-academic and un-indoctrinated audiences in socialist theory and tactics, in essence, to “build the left” and “fight the right.”
Politically correct terms designed to shut down arguments will no doubt be cited as evidence of the conference’s advertised goal of attacking “racism, misogyny, Islamophobia,” among other “isms” and “ists.” This prediction is based on the case history of tenured speakers such as Princeton professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, who will kick off the conference with a speech that will in all probability repeat her previous charge that Trump is “a racist, sexist, megalomaniac.”
Taylor claimed that the characterizations she made about the president at a college commencement speech resulted in her receiving some boos and hate mail. But undoubtedly that won’t be the case for her before the more-than-friendly audience at the conference. She will be preaching to the choir.
The real goal of the “Socialism 2017″ conference is more than just providing a space in which these doctrinaire academics can speak freely. Conference organizers are feverishly courting college students to attend by providing a 50 percent discount on ticket prices.
Despite the usual blanket support by the mainstream media and left coast Hollywood for tenured radicals, the organizers and speakers clearly feel the doomsday clock is ticking for them (a cherished slogan for the American Communist Party during the Cold War to show the peril posed to them by the “fascists” was “Five Minutes To Midnight”) because of the alleged fascism that Trump represents. For the first time in awhile, they are on the defense.
Given such a so-called Fourth Reich situation, there is the uncomfortable perception that something more sinister than learning about the works of Marx is being peddled and justified at the conference. With classes like “Shut it Down? How to Fight the Right,” one fears that when a student emerges from this conference, they won’t be quoting a peacenik like Eugene V. Debs, but will instead emulate Leninist street tactics.
Based on the previous violent behavior of anti-Trump college students–who firebombed cars and beat up bystanders in order to shut down conservative firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking at UC Berkeley–one fears that the conference will not only advocate these tactics but hone and enhance them.
Such indoctrination efforts recall the propaganda toward the impressionable youth in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but what is even more chilling is that many of those in attendance at “Socialism 2017” are actually paying for their own indoctrination.
