In authoritarian collectivism (socialism), power and paranoia live together like fraternal twins.  Each one reinforces the other.  As the revolutionary party gains strength, its paranoia about the threat from "the enemy" grows.  This ruling psychological principle is based on a monstrous and maximalist perversion of Woody Allen's bon mot: "Even paranoiacs have enemies."

The 20th century offers familiar examples of the phenomenon: the greater the relative power of the authoritarian regime and the weaker the opposition, the greater is the regime's paranoia about losing political power it has just seized.

On October 24, 1917, Lenin seized power from Kerensky's Provisional Government in a military coup he called "the Bolshevik Revolution."  There had been no general uprising in Russia.  Lenin demanded the utter destruction of the Bolsheviks' political enemies.

Lenin fashioned the ensuing Red Terror after the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution.  Martin Latsis, head of the Ukrainian Cheka, stated in the newspaper Red Terror:

We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. Do not look in the file for incriminating evidence to see if the accused rose up against the Soviets. Determine ... to which class he belongs, his background, his education, and his profession to decide the fate of the accused. This is the essence of Red Terror.

In Putin's Russia today, authoritarian repression is the norm, though murder or torture by the FSB (successor to the KGB) is rare.  In response to the January 2021 street protests in support of Alexei Navalny, the Putin regime initiated over 90 criminal cases.

As of June 2021, the DOJ has charged more than 450 people with taking part in the 01/06/21 Capitol riot.  In D.C., 1,500 inmates have been confined to prison cells 22 hours a day for months.  Most have been placed in maximum security conditions.  Many have not been tried in court.

Biden's repression of the political opposition is unprecedented (with one exception) in American history, as is the Biden regime's systematic contravention of due process and constitutional rights.  The exceptional precedent is the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798, which criminalized making "false statements" critical of the federal government.

The Acts were a weapon of the Adams administration used to harass and destroy the Jeffersonian political opposition.  The Sedition Act resulted in the conviction and imprisonment of many Jeffersonian newspaper-owners who disagreed with the government.

Neo-Marxist American political culture has used media and social media to neutralize and destroy political opposition in a more effective, flexible manner than could have been achieved solely by the "legal power" of the Deep State and now the federal government.

Police state tactics like FBI home invasions have been widely reported.  The DOJ and FBI publicize these grotesque constitutional violations for the desired effect: general fear and political intimidation.

If a conservative opposition figure can be discredited and deplatformed through coordinated FBI leaks, a campaign of big media vilification, and rumors of DOJ interest, then Biden can avoid the legal risk of using bogus indictments (criminalization as a last resort).

Prominent conservative figures with a wide following like Rep. Matt Gaetz, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and now Governor Ron DeSantis are prime objects of systematic attack by the WaPo and NYT, which together set the party line for American neo-Marxists.

Biden inherited a huge advantage that Adams's Federalists lacked: an entrenched neo-Marxist, anti-American culture that controls the commanding heights of American (political) culture: media, social media, academia, entertainment, and now big business.

The neo-Marxist ethos initially secured a foothold in our political culture through academia (1965).  Like any longstanding cultural malignancy, this modern political instance of collectivist tyranny follows the pattern laid down by Lenin: "the worse, the better" — destroy the host from within by chaos, violence, and anarchy; then consolidate power into a totalitarian dictatorship of the proletariat (the woke).

Like the Kerensky regime in Russia (February–October 1917), the current Biden regime of crony Democrat-socialism is an obvious transitional stage in "fundamentally transforming the United States of America" (Obama 10/30/2008).  Since political power, especially totalitarian control, is downstream of culture, American neo-Marxism has cleverly focused on gaining dominating control of all aspects of culture.

Using class warfare alone as the ideological first principle of the Marxist revolutionary program failed repeatedly in America from 1919 to the early 1960s.  Since the Obama ascendancy, the neo-Marxist left — having rediscovered the Bolshevik dictum of exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class — has focused on race, class, and sex as tools to bludgeon into terrified submission the natural supporters and stakeholders in American exceptionalism.

Frontmen like Biden, Harris, military leaders, and "moderate Democrats" may play their assigned roles in the consolidation of power by the regime's most extreme elements in this mixed coalition of unrepentant Marxists, Islamists, transgender activists, climate fanatics, anti-Semites, corporate crony socialists, "friends of China," Deep State operatives in the DOJ and the security services, financial and political opportunists of all stripes, and their cultural groupies.

Biden and Harris were inspired choices to lead the transitional regime.  By June 2020, Biden was obviously in cognitive decline and likely suffering from senile dementia.  Harris is an unserious politician with no political constituency — two ideal placeholders, who will take orders without demur from their ideological puppet masters.

A 2020 essay by Columbia professor Tim Wu (former Obama administration official) cites what has become the urtext for American neo-Marxist understanding of conservatives: Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964).

Wu approvingly quotes Hofstadter's analysis of the conservative mindset.  Hofstadter sees the conservative as a paranoid who thinks "the enemy is 'a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman: sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving.'  To fight such an enemy, 'what is needed is not the usual methods of political give-and-take, but an all-out crusade.'"

Like much neo-Marxist political analysis, Hofstadter's is driven by paranoid projection, a psychological defense mechanism in which the ego defends itself against unconscious impulses by denying their existence and attributing these impulses to others, in this case to the political opposition.  To Professor Wu's credit, he updates Hofstadter: "the ranks of the paranoid have broadened.  If in 1964 they were an angry minority (extreme radical right), today they form a much larger group with left-wing battalions as well."

To the neo-Marxists in control of the Biden regime, "direct action" is necessary to pre-empt political opposition.  That is the role of the street fighters, Antifa and BLM.  Both will be sent back onto the streets when and if necessary.  Therefore, BLM founder Patrisse Cullors (along with the Obamas) remains a powerful factor in the Biden regime.

Cullors has described herself and fellow BLM founders as "trained Marxists."  They have demonstrated solid knowledge of Lenin's implementation of the Red Terror.  In January 1918, Lenin stated that plunder of bourgeois property was to be encouraged as a form of social justice by revenge — "looting the looters."

Political paranoia is primarily a psychological phenomenon.  As the power of the tyranny grows, the need for ever-increasing repression diminishes.  Nevertheless, political paranoia and oppression still grow to monstrous size — conjuring up enemies out of thin air and fueling a bonfire of political repression — until finally even the main supporters of the regime, fearing for their lives and livelihoods, at last desert the Jacobins.

Image via Pixnio.

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