Five Extreme Ideologies Threatening Democracy

The world is at a crossroads. Events unthinkable just ten years ago are now commonplace. The post-WW2 and Cold War order, that brought unprecedented peace and prosperity at a time of massive global threats, is being rudely challenged by multiple external and internal crises simultaneously. Liberal globalized democratic model of governance is being excoriated by its very beneficiaries. New multinational and multi-ethnic conflicts are flaring up almost daily. Wealth inequality, long a staple of the system, is now reaching unmanageable proportions at the speed of Amazon’s “buy now” button.

And then there are the leaders of the free world. With decades of personal experience to draw on, a plethora of think tanks and research institutes at their disposal, one might reasonably expect a swift, logical and effective response from that leadership. Yet day after day, the only area where they truly excel is coming up with endless excuses and platitudes for yet another heavy blow to our collective sense of normalcy.

That is why I feel obligated to write this post and go over five distinct ideological phenomena that I believe are some of the main causes of the current state of affairs. While originating from completely unrelated and uncomparable motivations, in their current evolution they share baffling similarities.

I will start with an introspection.

The seedling of an idea for this piece was planted in my mind many years ago, when I was a young teenager, via an unexpected kick to my knee. It was a summer day when me and my best friend were walking along my medium-sized Ukrainian home city’s equivalent of 5th Avenue. As we passed by a group of six other teenagers, there was a weird vibe about them. After a few seconds I heard a seemingly random shout coming from behind us. When I turned around, one of those kids was quickly walking in our direction, with the rest of the group just behind, cheering him on. Not fully realizing what was about to happen, me and my friend just kept walking. Next, I felt a kick to the side of my knee, and the situation became apparent. The flight instinct took over and we bolted, while passersby all around us seemingly paid no attention.

However, what struck me the most about the encounter happened much later. It came with realization of the intended meaning of what the kid shouted at me in that brief moment, which was a variation of “How could you have done this to me?”. It was the classic bullying tactic of “you’re making me punching you for your own good”, taken a step further. He fabricated a righteous retribution status out of thin air. He inverted the perception of the victim and the aggressor labels to make the conflict be interpreted in his favor by the poorly informed passersby. He projected his own actions on to me, and also claimed my position for himself. That gave him cover and, to a large degree, motivation.

In this post I will examine how that so-called “inversion” trick had been industrialized on a staggering scale by the five ideologies. It is being used to gaslight the formerly strong Western democracies to the point of apparent impotence. It made commonplace the formerly taboo geopolitical and diplomatic behaviors by nation-states. It created huge perceived rifts between previously harmonious and largely content social groups in the West and elsewhere.

1. Putin’s Russia.

While I have not been living in Ukraine for a long time now, I still have a strong interest in the historical and current events surrounding the region. This, in turn, highlighted Putin’s imperialistic ambitions as obvious to me to be leaning heavy on the use of inversion tactics. Let’s examine what they are.

• Claiming victimhood while being the aggressor (bullying classic!). Currently Russia is gathering unprecedented military forces at Ukraine’s borders. Alleged reason — NATO’s aggressive expansion of its military presence near Russia’s borders. True motivation — to extract diplomatic and strategic concessions from the West by creating an artificial crisis through its own aggressive troop movements.
• Painting all Ukrainians as nazis and fascists in its internal propaganda. While remixing hitler’s playbook of allegedly coming to defense of the greater Russian peoples in neighboring countries, Putin initiated unprovoked expansionist wars against Ukraine and Georgia, and has done his utmost to destabilize and control the rest of the post-Soviet block. At the same time Russian state-controlled TV propaganda channels (the only ones allowed to be nationally broadcast) are brimming with imagined similarities of Ukraine to nazi Germany (I’m looking at you, President Zelenskyy’s (who is Jewish nonetheless) nose’s shadow’s “mustache”, which was prominently featured on the Russian NTV network next to hitler, seen here). https://youtu.be/kQGvrA58UXk?t=206
• Lastly but by no means finally, Claiming to be suffering from Russophobia, akin to Antisemitism. While waging “hybrid” warfare against the West and their allies through cyberattacks, aggressive military posturing and RT-channel type external propaganda, Putin screams Russophobia at any and all criticism of these actions.

Additionally, Putin’s fascination with Judo (the martial art that prizes using your opponent’s strengths against themselves) serves as a curious piece of anecdotal evidence in favor of his sympathy towards the inversion tactics.

2. Trump and the Far Right.

Where to begin. It feels like I don’t even need to provide any arguments here for the fear of being too obvious, but let’s get this over with.

• 1/6 Insurrection Attempt. The aspect of this gut-wrenching anomaly that I want to highlight here is its stated motivation. Trying to overturn the results of a fair election on the basis of the insurrectionists’ own deliberately faked claims of voter fraud is pure inversion.
• Trump’s demands of loyalty from everyone in his social circle while being textbook-disloyal to them at the earliest selfish opportunity. Enough said.
• White Supremacists’ claims of victimhood at Charlottesville. In another example of the “bullying classic” in action, the acts of displaying nazi and Confederate flags, waving tiki-torches, anti-Semitic chants and driving into and killing innocent people were “justified” with the ever present claim of alleged victimhood. This is best explored in Daniel Radcliffe’s movie “Imperium”, were a reformed neo-Nazi confesses to victimhood being his core justification for violence. Coincidentally, the movie came out just one year before Charlottesville.

3. Trickle-Down Economics.

Perhaps Bush’s and Trump’s tax cuts can serve as good anchoring points for an examination of this theory’s false promises. Betting that the rich, after receiving preferential tax treatment, would then go and “waste” the resulting savings to provide better wages for the poor seems carelessly irresponsible on its face. But did it work? Short answer: no.

• Long answer: let’s start by examining (and please bear with me here) the cumulative year-over-year percentage changes in average household income for the lower 20% (blue line) and the top 5% (red line) of US households by income (whew! warned you :) .

• There is an observable increase in relative income inequality in 2003–06, following the Bush tax cuts, with the lower 20% much more adversely affected by the 2008 housing bubble bust. That lead to 2020 having the highest accumulated income difference of 23% in favor of the top 5% since 1997. That is, 23% of trickling in the inverse direction. However, that pales in comparison with the average real income disparity:

• The $431,441 void separating the lowest 20% and the top 5% is stunning. In 2020, the 5% earned over 30 times more than the 20%, up from “merely” 24 times more in 1997. There is also a sizeable jump for the 5% in 2017–19, after the Trump tax cuts, following the 2016–2017 pause, with no noticeable change for the 20%. Trickle down fails, again.

The economical and power imbalances exacerbated by this theory then provide fertile soil for fanning discontent and fostering extremist views all over the world.

4. Israel and the Middle East Crises.

Yes, I went there. Figuratively, and also literally, to Israel. Full disclosure — I’m partially Jewish. I hope that learning about the despicable historical persecution of Jews throughout the ages made me more sensitive to the plights of all peoples. I also feel that familiarity with Jewish culture helps me discover extra context about Israel and its conflict with Palestine. So let’s begin.

• New Jewish settlements in the West Bank The settler mentality is pretty simple: take the land now and get more leverage in any future peace negotiations as an added bonus. This is done in full view of the Israeli government. How could the same government then declare that it wants peace in the Middle East? It is also swift to label even legitimate criticism of itself as anti-Semitic, and hence lacking legitimacy — an inversion of truth, in order to claim victim status. Meanwhile, this happens: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/settlers-attack-activists-in-west-bank-set-their-car-ablaze-1.10555798
• Radical Islamic Terrorism Any references to factual terror acts are being increasingly sanitized from view in the legacy US media, as was the case with the recent hostage takeover at a synagogue in Texas. Many attempts to rationally address the problem are dismissed as Islamophobic with the by now all-too-familiar arrogance. Find out more here. https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/being-jewish-in-an-unraveling-america

5. Wokeness.

At last, The Crown Jewel of Misdirection (© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED :)

• Equality vs Equity. This previously marginalized but newly dominant one-dimensional approach to judging everything, from history and social justice all the way to calculus. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-05-20/california-controversial-math-overhaul-focuses-on-equity No impartial public debates on this regression of common sense are ever held. Yet we are forced to believe these axiomatic delusions. Add to that the prejudiced low-expectation attitudes towards the very social groups that really need to be offered true equity while consistently being presented with equal opportunity, and we have another case of inversion.
• Ideological Inquisition of the Cancel Culture. Never before had there been a more effectively intolerant yet linguistically liberal regime. Decisions concerning education, politics, policing, comedy, employment, fiscal policy, journalism, Hollywood, foreign policy and countless other spheres “need” to be radically reconsidered, with the old ways deemed heretical. Effecting these sweeping changes necessitates ruthless dismissal of all internal opposition, because the proponents of these ideas would never be able to defend their positions with rational arguments. Hence any public demonstrations of difference of opinion are demonized and eventually cancelled. Because “War is Peace”, and being on the right side of history apparently necessitates purging everyone else’s ability to define what that “right” is. Check out Tara Henley and Batya Ungar-Sargon on this. https://tarahenley.substack.com/p/bad-news

There you have it: five ideological constructs that share a strong apparent affinity for inversion arguments.

I do feel an urge to end on a positive note, so let me leave you with this: if knowledge is power, then let’s actively use that power to cut through all of the nonsense plaguing our society, together.

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