The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 455. The Devil and Karl Marx ｜ Dr. Paul Kengor

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00:00:57.420 Hi everybody. I have the privilege of speaking with Paul Kengor today.

00:01:12.860 He's written a book, many books. One of them is, for example, The Crusader, Ronald Reagan, and the Fall of Communism.

00:01:20.540 This is going to be made into a movie. I just interviewed the lead actor for that movie a couple of weeks ago, Dennis Quaid.

00:01:28.880 And so that'll be releasing, a movie will be releasing at the end of August.

00:01:32.620 Paul is also the editor of the American Spectator, and this month's version has a list of the best conservative colleges in the United States.

00:01:43.300 And so that could be a very helpful list for those of you who are thinking about going to college or who have children who are thinking about going to college.

00:01:49.860 So that's the American Spectator.

00:01:52.400 And so, but what we're concentrating on today is actually a different book, The Devil and Karl Marx.

00:01:58.780 And I really like this book, not least because it delves into Karl Marx's work as a poet and a playwright.

00:02:05.740 And it sheds light, I think, on the underlying structure of his motivation for the so-called economic theories that he developed later.

00:02:15.300 And so we discuss the Mephistophelian nature of the fantasies, the poetic fantasies that Karl Marx developed as a young man,

00:02:26.020 and how that ethos, that Faustian ethos, what would you say, shaped and crafted the murderous doctrine that he developed as a polemicist and a so-called economist.

00:02:39.600 So join us for that.

00:02:41.900 So welcome, Paul.

00:02:43.240 I just read your book, The Devil and Karl Marx, recently.

00:02:47.640 And there is, a lot of it was striking to me for a couple of reasons.

00:02:53.540 I suppose reasons that are more idiosyncratic to me.

00:02:57.200 There are many reasons that it's of general interest.

00:02:59.440 But, so the first one was, one of the things I noticed about my students, especially the ones that were really searching,

00:03:09.180 is that if I gave them free reign to write an essay, they'd often either, they'd include or want to show me a poem that was relevant to that pursuit.

00:03:21.380 And then my first book, Maps of Meaning, actually started as about a 40-page poem.

00:03:27.840 Wow.

00:03:28.480 Well, and so...

00:03:29.100 Okay, so I know where you're going with this.

00:03:30.200 Okay, okay, okay.

00:03:31.180 So, well, so I studied Jung's analysis of creative thought a lot.

00:03:36.860 And Jung had this notion, which I think is right, that when we first investigate something that we don't understand, we fantasize about it, right?

00:03:48.960 Which, in some ways, seems so obvious that it hardly needs to be said.

00:03:53.940 But it does need to be said, because you fantasize about it, or you dream about it, or you daydream about it.

00:04:00.360 And what you're doing is you're using what you already have a grip on to get a new grip on this indeterminate object.

00:04:07.460 And that's fantasy.

00:04:08.840 And so you have, it's like you have the dream, and then you have the drama.

00:04:15.120 No, you have the drama, and then you have the dream, and then you have something like the poem.

00:04:20.420 Because a poem is where the dream meets the verbal.

00:04:24.660 And then you can differentiate that further, so it becomes more and more semantic and more explicit.

00:04:33.000 Now, this is a long way of asking you this question.

00:04:35.940 One of the things you took pains to do in this book was to concentrate on some of Marx's work before he was an economist, because he wrote drama and he wrote poetry.

00:04:46.220 And so, and your claim in the book is that, well, we should really be paying attention to some of that early work, because it does something like set the frame.

00:04:55.300 It sheds light on his motivation, and it also sheds light on the story that he was imagining or acting out.

00:05:02.220 So can you make some comments about that?

00:05:04.160 Yeah, so this is quite fascinating.

00:05:06.440 I think you should write the next forward.

00:05:09.560 The forward for this one was written by Michael Knowles, a colleague of yours at Daily Wire.

00:05:15.540 Yeah, yeah.

00:05:16.580 So Marx fancied himself a poet.

00:05:19.800 I mean, Marx's secret love was poetry.

00:05:23.300 In fact, one of his, I think his most important biographer, and this guy has been, he's kind of fallen, people just don't know about him today.

00:05:31.200 And no one had anything against him, really, but his name was Robert, Robert Payne.

00:05:35.100 So he was a British academic, man of letters, the arts, a translator, drama.

00:05:41.260 I mean, he was no right winger.

00:05:42.640 He was probably, probably slightly left of center.

00:05:46.160 He did a couple, did several works on Marx.

00:05:49.480 Late 60s.

00:05:50.180 Late 60s.

00:05:51.100 Early 1970s.

00:05:52.880 Published by New York University Press, Simon & Schuster.

00:05:56.500 So, you know, very credible.

00:05:58.280 And he was really the first one to mine Marx's poetry, to go through and figure it out.

00:06:05.860 How much of it is there?

00:06:06.900 How much poetry?

00:06:07.380 Well, there's quite a bit.

00:06:08.980 And it's deeply disturbing stuff, all right?

00:06:12.820 A lot of it is about the devil, you know, quite literally about the devil.

00:06:17.680 It's chilling, right?

00:06:18.900 You know, thus heaven I forfeited, I know it full well.

00:06:23.760 My heart, once true to God, is chosen for hell.

00:06:27.180 Right, right.

00:06:27.540 1837.

00:06:28.100 Straight Lucifer from Milton.

00:06:30.640 Yeah.

00:06:31.280 1837, that one was.

00:06:33.000 It was one of his first published writings.

00:06:35.100 He would have only been 19 years old at that time.

00:06:38.320 Another one.

00:06:39.280 So it's called The Player.

00:06:40.640 And it was 1841.

00:06:42.800 And here, he puts himself, it appears, in the form of this kind of mad violinist who's

00:06:50.440 like frenetically, maniacally sawing away at the violin.

00:06:54.840 And he's summoning up the powers of darkness.

00:06:57.260 And he's doing this in front of his love interest.

00:07:00.300 And the love interest.

00:07:00.520 As one does.

00:07:01.560 Yeah, right.

00:07:02.040 And the love interest, Robert Payne says, appears to be his girl at the time, Jenny,

00:07:07.960 the girl that he would end up marrying.

00:07:10.240 And he's summoning up the powers of darkness.

00:07:12.840 And she's saying, why are you doing this to him?

00:07:15.180 It's like a Faustian bargain.

00:07:16.920 More on Faust and Gerita and Mephistopheles in a moment.

00:07:19.640 But just to sort of set the table for people who are shocked by what I said about him writing

00:07:23.900 about the devil.

00:07:24.960 So here's what he says in The Player.

00:07:26.340 Here's just one stanza.

00:07:27.220 He tells the girl, look now, my blood-dark sword shall stab unerringly within thy soul.

00:07:35.900 The hellish vapors rise and fill the brain till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed.

00:07:42.620 See the sword, the prince of darkness, sold it to me.

00:07:46.440 For he beats the time and gives the signs.

00:07:49.320 Ever more boldly I play the dance of death.

00:07:52.220 And then he plays this sort of Faustian bargain.

00:07:58.120 But to back up a little bit, that's his poetry from an early age.

00:08:03.880 And Robert Payne, who wrote the book, the Simon & Schuster book,

00:08:08.000 the New York University Press said,

00:08:10.200 Marx's first love was poetry.

00:08:12.040 And he fancied himself as aspiring to be nothing less than the Goethe of his age,

00:08:18.900 to write the Faust of his age.

00:08:21.420 And Goethe's Faust, of course, the famous character is the Mephistopheles character,

00:08:26.060 the devil, demon character.

00:08:28.200 And as you saw in the book many times.

00:08:30.740 And Mephistopheles in Faust, that's a character I've done a fair bit of study about.

00:08:34.900 Because, well, there's a motif that's repeated both in Faust 1 and Faust 2.

00:08:41.700 So Mephistopheles in Faust is a variant of the heavenly adversary, right?

00:08:47.920 So he opposes being itself.

00:08:50.820 And his ethos, which Goethe has him state twice,

00:08:55.800 is that the suffering that's a necessary consequence of existence

00:09:03.200 in its finite and limited manifestation,

00:09:06.820 so our mortal frames, let's say,

00:09:08.680 that suffering is so unbearable and so unconscionable

00:09:11.900 that it would be better if existence itself did not exist.

00:09:16.340 Yeah, that's nice.

00:09:17.100 So what Satan does in Goethe's conceptualization

00:09:23.340 is make the case that life is so unfair in its fundament.

00:09:27.880 He's like the antinatalists, the modern antinatalists, 0.62

00:09:30.060 that anyone ethical would act in order to bring being itself to a cessation.

00:09:36.620 Right now, the problem with that seems to be, as far as I can tell,

00:09:40.220 and this is the problem with antinatalism,

00:09:42.140 one of many problems,

00:09:43.100 is that the reason that Mephistopheles is anti-being,

00:09:48.320 hypothetically, is because of the suffering.

00:09:50.980 But the problem is, is if you turn that into a political doctrine,

00:09:54.460 all you do is multiply the suffering.

00:09:56.680 Yes.

00:09:57.200 Right, because you become anti-life.

00:09:59.020 And so you might say,

00:10:00.280 well, I'm working for the cessation of suffering

00:10:02.220 because I'm working for the extinction of consciousness.

00:10:04.580 But if the price you pay for that is the endless multiplication of suffering,

00:10:09.260 then...

00:10:09.560 Marxism.

00:10:10.060 Well, that's partly why I found your book so horrifying,

00:10:14.620 is that, because all that's, in principle, lurking beneath the surface.

00:10:18.480 Okay, so what do you make of this conceptually?

00:10:24.100 Now, Marx proclaimed himself an atheist.

00:10:27.740 Okay, so the first question you might ask is,

00:10:30.340 well, what the hell does an atheist have to do with Satan?

00:10:33.280 Right. 0.88

00:10:33.880 Right, right.

00:10:34.260 Well, so what do you think about that?

00:10:35.800 And by the way, he had a favorite line from Mephistopheles,

00:10:40.680 which was, in fact, they said this was Marx's favorite quote.

00:10:44.160 Everything that exists deserves to perish.

00:10:45.640 Yes, that's the line.

00:10:46.680 Exactly.

00:10:47.180 That's exactly the line. 0.96

00:10:48.120 Everything that exists deserves to perish.

00:10:49.400 Right, and that's repeated.

00:10:50.620 It's in Faust 2, too.

00:10:52.560 Yeah.

00:10:53.140 That's his favorite line.

00:10:54.300 So if someone were to ask me,

00:10:55.580 do you have a favorite quote, do you have a favorite line?

00:10:57.300 I might give a scripture verse.

00:10:58.600 I might be not afraid, something like that.

00:11:00.760 But Marx said, ah, yes, yes, Mephistopheles, you know,

00:11:04.180 Geirtha's Faust, everything that exists deserves to perish.

00:11:07.380 That's terrifying.

00:11:08.460 To perish.

00:11:08.900 Well, it's terrifying because it truly is the case that

00:11:12.120 as the character of Mephistopheles is revealed in Faust,

00:11:16.480 in Faust 1 and 2, that's the apotheosis of his philosophy, right?

00:11:20.800 When you really start to understand who Mephistopheles is,

00:11:24.560 that's the final revelation.

00:11:26.420 He's the foe of everything that exists.

00:11:28.600 Now, the rationalization is because of the suffering.

00:11:31.700 Or it isn't just the suffering, eh?

00:11:33.840 Because there's a Luciferian pride element.

00:11:37.880 Mephistopheles is opposed to the structure of being

00:11:40.260 also because it doesn't meet his standard.

00:11:42.860 Right.

00:11:43.280 Right.

00:11:43.680 In one of the poems, Marx shouts in the form of Satan, right?

00:11:48.540 I shall howl gigantic curses at mankind.

00:11:52.460 And Robert Payne says, picture Marx standing there

00:11:56.740 in the middle of like a burned down village.

00:11:59.080 Yeah.

00:11:59.460 A burnt down house, right?

00:12:01.200 The raised R-E-Z-E-D building.

00:12:03.240 Yeah.

00:12:03.680 And flames all around him. 0.92

00:12:05.760 You know, everything that exists deserves to perish. 0.90

00:12:07.960 And as if to say, now we can begin, right?

00:12:10.880 He wants to take everything down.

00:12:12.480 He wants to completely level it.

00:12:14.300 And yet all of this, going back to your original point,

00:12:17.580 this is what he was writing before he was doing anything on economics.

00:12:21.420 Right, right.

00:12:22.040 Before he was doing, and also yet at the same time,

00:12:26.020 because I know there might be some Marx biographers who've ignored this.

00:12:30.820 I know that they've ignored it.

00:12:32.120 And they might say, well, it's so early.

00:12:34.780 He did this as one of his first published writings, 1837.

00:12:38.500 He was 19 years old.

00:12:40.260 That's not the real Marx.

00:12:41.700 Well, the one I just read to you, the player, that's 1841.

00:12:44.760 That was the same year that he started with Bruno Bauer,

00:12:47.720 at the University of Bonn as a professor of the Archives of Atheism,

00:12:51.520 the Annals of Atheism journal that he started.

00:12:53.900 His peak of writing was really in the 1840s.

00:12:57.100 I mean, they were writing the Communist Manifesto, 1846, 1847,

00:13:00.900 released February 1848.

00:13:03.200 So he's-

00:13:03.560 It's not that long.

00:13:04.520 It's not that long.

00:13:05.180 Well, the other thing too is that if the hypothesis that we described

00:13:10.100 at the beginning of this discussion is true,

00:13:11.960 and I truly believe it is, the, like, a complex set of ideas

00:13:17.180 comes out of a dreamlike matrix.

00:13:19.500 And you could make the case that someone radically shifts their view

00:13:23.700 away from that initial revelation.

00:13:25.920 But that isn't generally how things work.

00:13:28.100 And I think you need very strong evidence of discontinuity

00:13:30.900 not to accept the default proposition that continuity

00:13:35.000 is the much more likely occurrence.

00:13:37.140 I mean, one of the things I do in my interviews

00:13:39.940 with the people that I'm fortunate enough to interview,

00:13:43.300 all of whom are accomplished people,

00:13:45.420 is an autobiographical analysis.

00:13:48.300 And it's invariably the case that you can trace the seeds of,

00:13:54.780 you can trace who they are to seeds

00:13:57.420 that made themselves manifest very early.

00:13:59.660 Now, you might say, well, that's all retrospective memory.

00:14:02.100 But I don't believe that because one of the things I've noticed

00:14:05.320 in doing that kind of interviewing is that

00:14:07.260 the people who tell the story are shocked themselves

00:14:11.500 at how much of what they still do was there in a nascent form.

00:14:15.620 Right.

00:14:15.880 Like, even when they were children.

00:14:17.520 And so, no, my sense...

00:14:19.460 Marx's father saw that.

00:14:20.900 Yeah, right.

00:14:21.500 You make that case.

00:14:22.180 Marx's father, Heinrich Marx,

00:14:23.380 in the letter that he wrote to him in 1837.

00:14:26.100 And that was not long, probably...

00:14:30.120 Well, in that letter,

00:14:31.260 he talks about the disorder in Marx's life.

00:14:33.840 Yeah, right.

00:14:34.140 And I know you write a lot about order,

00:14:36.480 including in your most recent book.

00:14:38.800 And Marx was all about tearing down the traditional order.

00:14:42.860 Yeah.

00:14:43.300 In fact, he said,

00:14:46.080 he and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto,

00:14:48.580 communism represents the most radical rupture

00:14:51.560 in traditional relations.

00:14:53.600 Right.

00:14:53.860 The most radical conceivable disruption.

00:14:56.220 Right.

00:14:56.700 Hence the assault on the family.

00:14:58.760 The most radical.

00:14:59.620 Right, right, right.

00:15:00.460 And the one word...

00:15:01.340 That was the goal.

00:15:02.340 Yeah, that was the goal.

00:15:03.080 And the one word...

00:15:04.120 Well, two words that jump out of

00:15:05.700 the Communist Manifesto,

00:15:07.460 all of Marx and Engels' writings,

00:15:09.260 two, criticism.

00:15:10.440 And Marx wrote to Arnold Rouge in 1843,

00:15:13.640 called for the ruthless criticism

00:15:15.040 of everything that exists.

00:15:16.180 Right, right.

00:15:16.840 Same thing.

00:15:17.740 By the way, not just...

00:15:19.140 People thinking about this,

00:15:20.660 not just for the ruthless criticism

00:15:22.320 of the bad things in society,

00:15:25.360 right, of that malady or this ill,

00:15:28.480 the ruthless criticism of everything that exists.

00:15:32.880 Yep.

00:15:33.420 And the other word that they use all the time

00:15:35.840 is abolition abolish.

00:15:37.700 They want to abolish everything, right?

00:15:40.480 Yep.

00:15:41.900 Communism calls for the abolition

00:15:45.260 of the present state of things,

00:15:48.060 they said in the manifesto.

00:15:49.720 So after they talk about the entire theory

00:15:52.440 of the communists may be summed up

00:15:53.760 in the single sentence,

00:15:54.840 abolition of private property.

00:15:56.540 All right, so that's gone.

00:15:58.260 Abolition of capital.

00:15:59.600 Yep.

00:16:00.360 In the manifesto, they write,

00:16:02.100 abolition of the family, exclamation mark.

00:16:04.400 Right, right.

00:16:04.920 Even the most radical flare up

00:16:06.400 of this infamous proposal of the communists.

00:16:08.660 So we've got capital, property, family,

00:16:11.300 present state of things, entire societies.

00:16:14.560 I mean, just, it's complete...

00:16:17.440 One person said to me, it's nihilism, right?

00:16:19.880 But in a sense, he has kind of a goal.

00:16:22.780 It's worship of destruction.

00:16:24.140 Exactly, yeah.

00:16:25.060 That's different.

00:16:25.380 There's actually a purpose.

00:16:25.960 Nihilism is you don't care.

00:16:27.540 Right, right, right, right.

00:16:29.000 No, no, this is way different.

00:16:30.560 No, no, that...

00:16:31.440 If he's an avid devotee of Mephistopheles,

00:16:34.720 it's active destruction.

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00:18:11.980 And you don't want to underestimate

00:18:16.340 the fact that a poetic line

00:18:19.880 takes root in someone's soul,

00:18:22.280 especially when it's produced

00:18:23.800 by someone as profound as Faust.

00:18:26.320 Like, that's not nothing.

00:18:28.660 That really means that Marx identified

00:18:31.700 the central spirit of Mephistopheles.

00:18:34.020 He pulled out the central message

00:18:36.380 and that's stuck in his memory, right?

00:18:39.040 And then, okay, so let's-

00:18:40.440 Stuck in his memory

00:18:41.060 and integrated into his worldview.

00:18:42.780 Right, right.

00:18:43.480 Into what he loved doing the most,

00:18:45.800 writing poetry.

00:18:47.060 So it's really fully, deeply a part of him.

00:18:50.860 And yeah, it's-

00:18:53.360 Well, you also talk in the book

00:18:55.760 a fair bit about the sordid details

00:18:58.520 of his private life.

00:18:59.940 I mean, Marx was also, by all accounts,

00:19:03.440 a person who was filthy

00:19:04.780 in every way, essentially,

00:19:07.160 that you could be filthy.

00:19:08.520 Like, literally,

00:19:09.740 because his personal hygiene habits

00:19:11.480 were detestable, to say the least.

00:19:13.080 Sure.

00:19:13.320 But he also lived in a-

00:19:14.960 Well, you're better at explaining this than me,

00:19:17.400 so do you want to walk people through that?

00:19:19.020 And I would circle this back

00:19:20.400 to the point of disorder.

00:19:21.540 Right, exactly.

00:19:22.380 So it is a totally disordered personal lifestyle.

00:19:26.200 His father noticed it

00:19:27.580 when Marx was in college.

00:19:29.160 And then when Marx got married,

00:19:30.580 his life was a wreck.

00:19:32.460 And both his mother and his wife

00:19:34.620 both expressed the wish

00:19:35.800 that Karl would start earning some capital,

00:19:38.440 right, rather than just writing about it.

00:19:40.720 The family had to beg for money all the time,

00:19:43.780 everywhere that they went.

00:19:45.300 So first they got the money

00:19:46.660 from Karl's father, all right?

00:19:49.140 And then when he died,

00:19:50.540 and by the way,

00:19:51.000 Marx didn't attend the funeral of his father.

00:19:53.580 Some biographers have said

00:19:54.980 that's because it was out of spite

00:19:56.840 against his father.

00:19:57.900 Another biographer says

00:20:00.000 he just couldn't make it there,

00:20:02.280 maybe because of the weather,

00:20:03.580 I don't know.

00:20:04.460 But he didn't go to the funeral of his father.

00:20:06.620 He was interested in his father's money.

00:20:08.680 And the one letter that I quote from his father,

00:20:10.780 the father's like,

00:20:11.480 okay, here's what you really want.

00:20:13.140 I will give you the money

00:20:14.280 for whatever, whatever, whatever.

00:20:15.600 So he clearly knows that the son wants money.

00:20:18.380 After the father died,

00:20:20.020 he went to visit his mother,

00:20:22.020 who he wasn't close to at all.

00:20:23.520 He was at least a little close to the father.

00:20:25.260 And the goal was to get money

00:20:26.840 from the old lady.

00:20:28.160 And he writes a letter back to Jenny,

00:20:30.200 his wife, ahead of time,

00:20:31.900 basically reporting that,

00:20:33.540 well, I really didn't get much money

00:20:35.360 out of the old lady, 0.92

00:20:36.560 but she did agree to burn up the IOUs. 0.83

00:20:40.000 So in other words, success, right?

00:20:42.560 I at least got her to do that. 0.99

00:20:44.180 And then Jenny would go begging to her relatives.

00:20:47.180 And in one case-

00:20:48.040 Well, she was from a rich family, correct?

00:20:49.660 Yeah, fairly well-off family.

00:20:51.260 And that family eventually got to the point

00:20:53.640 of tough love.

00:20:54.580 They had to cut her off as well.

00:20:56.100 And both her family

00:20:58.600 and also Marx's wider family

00:21:00.320 all knew that when Jenny or Marx

00:21:01.860 came knocking on the door,

00:21:03.200 it was because they wanted money.

00:21:04.920 Right, so they lived in economic disarray.

00:21:07.260 Economic disarray.

00:21:08.080 And to the point where Jenny's family

00:21:10.140 got to the point where they said,

00:21:12.480 okay, look,

00:21:13.180 we know that you and Carl have all these kids.

00:21:16.140 We know that you need money.

00:21:17.720 These are our grandchildren.

00:21:18.900 We feel bad for you.

00:21:20.420 Jenny, we can't give you any more money.

00:21:22.260 We just, we just, we can't do it.

00:21:23.980 So the family lends to the Marx family, 0.68

00:21:27.240 the family nursemaid.

00:21:29.000 Now, this is a woman named Helen DeMuth,

00:21:31.340 who was called Lentgen.

00:21:32.660 So the nickname was Lentgen.

00:21:33.960 She grew up with Jenny.

00:21:35.540 So Jenny's parents say,

00:21:37.180 okay, we will lend you Lentgen

00:21:40.140 to help the family out

00:21:41.660 rather than giving you more money.

00:21:43.600 So Lentgen basically,

00:21:44.980 here's Karl Marx,

00:21:45.940 champion of the proletariat,

00:21:47.360 the working class, right?

00:21:48.680 Doesn't pay her a dime.

00:21:50.240 Never gives her any money.

00:21:51.760 Yeah, well, that sets the stage

00:21:53.320 for the later communist revolutions.

00:21:56.560 That's right.

00:21:57.260 In fact, really what he's developing

00:21:58.720 is kind of the ideal world

00:22:00.120 that he wants for himself,

00:22:01.540 which is that other people

00:22:02.400 will pay for him to do

00:22:03.600 whatever he does

00:22:04.680 in the library,

00:22:05.560 the writing, the research.

00:22:06.980 So at one point, 0.92

00:22:08.560 Marx has sex with Lentgen 0.97

00:22:11.420 behind Jenny's back 0.99

00:22:12.760 and she got pregnant.

00:22:14.840 Now, Robert Payne says

00:22:16.520 that he thinks that the sex

00:22:17.800 might've been non-consensual,

00:22:19.960 that it could've been rape,

00:22:20.740 but I don't know how he would know that.

00:22:22.360 But either way,

00:22:23.960 Lentgen got pregnant.

00:22:25.580 Marx refused to admit

00:22:26.600 that the child was his.

00:22:27.980 Everybody knew the child was his.

00:22:29.460 Jenny knew it.

00:22:30.000 In fact, Jenny was crushed.

00:22:31.540 I mean, her heart was broken.

00:22:32.680 She never really forgave

00:22:33.700 her husband for this.

00:22:35.280 The child, Friedrich Engels,

00:22:38.160 steps up.

00:22:38.980 Now, the Marx family

00:22:40.100 gets most of their money

00:22:41.100 at this point from Engels.

00:22:42.920 Engels becomes

00:22:43.640 the Marx family's sugar daddy.

00:22:45.700 I mean, he's not just

00:22:46.480 a partner with Marx.

00:22:48.320 Engels inherited all this money

00:22:49.600 from his wealthy industrialist

00:22:51.600 father's inheritance.

00:22:52.940 And so, he subsidizes

00:22:54.280 not just Karl,

00:22:55.520 but the Marx family.

00:22:56.940 So, Engels,

00:22:57.760 who doesn't believe in marriage,

00:22:59.320 all right,

00:22:59.560 these guys were against marriage

00:23:01.480 long before anybody else was.

00:23:03.820 Engels has various women

00:23:05.040 that he shacks up with, 0.75

00:23:06.440 which in that day

00:23:07.060 is really unusual.

00:23:08.220 I mean, that was scandalous.

00:23:09.340 You didn't live with a woman 1.00

00:23:10.260 that you weren't married to.

00:23:11.260 And a lot of these women 1.00

00:23:12.300 wanted Engels, 0.85

00:23:13.660 Friedrich,

00:23:14.220 to marry them,

00:23:14.900 make honest women out of them. 0.54

00:23:16.480 One of them died

00:23:19.120 and Engels was really crushed by it,

00:23:22.540 really brokenhearted.

00:23:23.940 Marx writes him a letter

00:23:25.120 and he kind of acknowledges

00:23:26.800 Engels' loss

00:23:27.560 in the first couple sentences

00:23:28.720 and then he gets straight

00:23:29.460 to the point of asking

00:23:30.320 for more money.

00:23:31.900 Engels just raged back

00:23:33.580 in a letter,

00:23:34.700 even my bourgeois friends

00:23:37.320 showed more compassion

00:23:38.400 and interest than you did.

00:23:40.400 But the point of Lentgen,

00:23:42.120 so Engels doesn't care

00:23:43.860 about his reputation.

00:23:44.760 Everyone knows

00:23:45.740 he doesn't believe in marriage.

00:23:47.360 So he steps forward.

00:23:49.180 Helen DeMuth,

00:23:49.900 Lentgen gives birth

00:23:50.720 to this baby boy

00:23:51.580 and Engels says,

00:23:52.680 I'll accept paternity. 0.94

00:23:55.220 Let's give him

00:23:56.660 the name Friedrich.

00:23:58.460 So the son is known

00:23:59.760 as Freddy.

00:24:01.200 Marx never acknowledges

00:24:02.620 his existence,

00:24:03.660 never acknowledges

00:24:04.640 that it's his kid.

00:24:05.840 Of course,

00:24:06.660 never gives him a penny,

00:24:07.980 just like he never gave

00:24:09.040 a penny to Lentgen.

00:24:10.480 And by the way,

00:24:11.400 that poor kid,

00:24:12.180 Freddy,

00:24:12.420 ended up surviving

00:24:13.360 all the Marx family.

00:24:15.740 Marx,

00:24:16.780 of the six kids

00:24:17.960 he and Jenny had,

00:24:19.460 four of them died

00:24:20.460 before they did,

00:24:21.700 he and Jenny.

00:24:22.660 And then the two girls

00:24:23.900 that survived

00:24:24.740 both committed suicide

00:24:26.980 in suicide packs

00:24:28.880 with their husbands

00:24:30.240 and by drinking poison.

00:24:32.860 And as you noticed

00:24:33.520 in the Marx poetry,

00:24:35.000 a recurring theme

00:24:36.140 in all of his poetry

00:24:37.320 is about the couples

00:24:38.700 coming together,

00:24:39.960 the one,

00:24:40.440 the Pale Maiden,

00:24:41.200 which sounds like

00:24:41.980 a late night

00:24:43.060 B-movie horror flick,

00:24:44.680 this Pale Maiden.

00:24:46.180 You know,

00:24:46.360 she drinks hemlock,

00:24:47.500 she commits suicide,

00:24:48.680 lovers committing suicide

00:24:50.100 and suicide packs.

00:24:51.180 That's how Marx's

00:24:51.980 two daughters died.

00:24:53.520 But the family,

00:24:55.740 it was a complete wreck.

00:24:56.980 The household,

00:24:57.880 the house was

00:24:58.400 in complete disarray.

00:24:59.720 There are German police reports

00:25:01.180 from 1848, 1849

00:25:03.800 on how one of them says,

00:25:05.780 trying to take a seat

00:25:08.160 in the Marx household

00:25:09.780 is a dangerous enterprise

00:25:11.920 or something like that

00:25:12.760 because the chair

00:25:13.480 could break from under you.

00:25:15.420 It was dirty.

00:25:17.080 The landlords

00:25:17.620 would kick them out.

00:25:18.580 The landlords

00:25:18.980 would cut off the heat.

00:25:21.480 Marx suffered

00:25:22.680 from boils,

00:25:24.100 carbuncles,

00:25:25.500 which Paul Johnson,

00:25:27.240 the late British historian,

00:25:28.480 said,

00:25:28.980 you know,

00:25:29.140 people don't consider this,

00:25:30.340 but Das Kapital

00:25:31.380 is kind of this long,

00:25:32.700 agonizing,

00:25:33.440 painful-to-read work.

00:25:34.880 Marx's carbuncles,

00:25:35.760 on his bottom

00:25:36.780 were at their worst

00:25:37.560 when he was writing

00:25:38.220 Das Kapital.

00:25:39.760 He had them

00:25:40.620 on his private parts, 1.00

00:25:42.760 on his penis, 1.00

00:25:43.700 to the point 1.00

00:25:44.260 where they would

00:25:44.880 sometimes set him

00:25:46.480 into these

00:25:47.520 outbursts of rage.

00:25:51.040 He wrote one letter

00:25:51.840 to Ingalls.

00:25:52.380 He said,

00:25:53.180 I have this boil

00:25:54.120 between my upper lip

00:25:55.440 and my nose.

00:25:56.340 It's like the devil

00:25:57.280 has been hurling 0.99

00:25:58.320 excrement at me. 0.99

00:26:00.160 Use the word S-H-I-T. 1.00

00:26:02.160 But he suffered

00:26:03.440 and the doctors

00:26:04.040 tried to figure out,

00:26:05.500 boy,

00:26:05.760 why does Marx

00:26:07.280 have all these

00:26:07.920 boils and carbuncles?

00:26:09.080 No one else

00:26:09.500 in that home

00:26:10.240 seems to have them.

00:26:11.240 Well,

00:26:11.440 the answer is

00:26:11.940 he wouldn't bathe.

00:26:13.200 The guy refused

00:26:14.060 to bathe.

00:26:14.920 Mao Zedong refused

00:26:15.880 to bathe.

00:26:17.280 Some of these

00:26:17.900 communists were like this.

00:26:19.100 But he was a 0.83

00:26:19.860 very disordered

00:26:21.060 individual

00:26:21.720 at so many

00:26:22.640 different areas

00:26:23.520 of his life.

00:26:24.900 Even his research,

00:26:26.140 and we can probably

00:26:26.460 talk about this later,

00:26:27.320 you and I are both PhDs,

00:26:28.360 we've done academic

00:26:29.020 social science research.

00:26:30.940 Marx never went

00:26:31.860 into the field

00:26:32.460 or the factory.

00:26:33.080 I mean,

00:26:33.760 he wrote about

00:26:34.980 the proletariat

00:26:36.100 from, you know,

00:26:37.640 from the vantage,

00:26:38.820 from the library,

00:26:41.160 from a desk,

00:26:42.480 from a desk in the library

00:26:43.940 in London

00:26:44.460 or at his home.

00:26:45.680 He never actually

00:26:46.640 did real field research.

00:26:48.540 And if you read

00:26:49.280 the Communist Manifesto,

00:26:51.440 it is not the work

00:26:52.400 of an economist.

00:26:53.520 It is more like

00:26:54.760 a polemic.

00:26:56.060 It's more like

00:26:56.900 a philosophical statement.

00:26:58.380 He said once,

00:27:01.800 the revolution

00:27:02.960 that began

00:27:03.680 in the brain

00:27:04.300 of the monk,

00:27:05.560 that would be

00:27:06.160 Martin Luther,

00:27:06.860 he says this

00:27:07.340 in his opium

00:27:07.920 of the masses,

00:27:08.620 will now begin

00:27:11.200 in the brain

00:27:11.760 of the philosopher.

00:27:13.260 So he really

00:27:13.900 fancies himself

00:27:14.900 a philosopher

00:27:15.780 and a poet.

00:27:17.180 A poet above all.

00:27:18.240 He's really not

00:27:18.920 an economist. 0.94

00:27:20.180 If he is a crappy one. 0.93

00:27:21.780 Well, that was probably 0.94

00:27:22.580 an accurate

00:27:23.100 self-characterization

00:27:24.320 because his work

00:27:25.980 really,

00:27:27.720 I know there are

00:27:28.340 economists who've

00:27:29.180 fallen under his sway,

00:27:30.380 let's say,

00:27:30.900 but his work

00:27:31.900 really served

00:27:32.960 the purpose

00:27:33.820 of motivational

00:27:35.100 doctrine, right?

00:27:36.880 So the typical

00:27:38.500 writings of an economist

00:27:40.180 aren't taken up

00:27:42.420 by the masses

00:27:43.380 as a rallying point,

00:27:45.840 right?

00:27:46.560 But poetry

00:27:48.580 and philosophy

00:27:49.740 can be taken up

00:27:51.660 as a rallying point.

00:27:53.340 And so...

00:27:54.120 And that's what

00:27:54.520 this book does, right?

00:27:55.340 I mean, if you actually

00:27:56.700 read The Communist Manifesto,

00:27:58.080 which most young people

00:27:59.180 who say,

00:28:00.120 well, if you read

00:28:00.700 The Communist Manifesto,

00:28:01.980 it's a pretty good book.

00:28:02.940 It talks about sharing.

00:28:04.000 They haven't read it.

00:28:04.780 They haven't read it.

00:28:05.540 It's about that thick,

00:28:07.180 okay?

00:28:07.620 The one I have in mind,

00:28:08.840 the 1998 Penguin

00:28:10.860 and the Penguin

00:28:10.880 Classics edition

00:28:12.020 edited by Martin Malia

00:28:13.800 is 56 pages.

00:28:15.620 In my Marxism course

00:28:17.040 at Grove City College

00:28:18.200 every spring semester,

00:28:20.400 we read it.

00:28:21.020 It's only 56 pages.

00:28:22.580 It's not long.

00:28:23.380 But it is a...

00:28:25.320 You're right.

00:28:25.740 If it was an economics

00:28:26.840 work or tract,

00:28:28.660 I mean,

00:28:29.140 it would have data.

00:28:30.120 It had information.

00:28:31.520 It wouldn't be anything

00:28:32.260 that could rally anybody,

00:28:33.640 right?

00:28:34.180 But this is more like

00:28:36.000 a Jefferson Declaration

00:28:39.220 of Independence, right?

00:28:40.720 Except it's aimed

00:28:41.480 at the Mephistophelian aim,

00:28:45.620 right?

00:28:46.140 Yes, yeah.

00:28:46.780 It's actually

00:28:47.460 the polar opposite,

00:28:48.440 but in the sense of

00:28:50.340 Adams and Franklin

00:28:51.240 saying,

00:28:51.640 you know,

00:28:52.220 we need a kind of

00:28:53.000 statement here

00:28:53.700 to rally everybody

00:28:54.700 for this.

00:28:55.740 Who can write?

00:28:56.440 That Jefferson's

00:28:57.160 a great writer, right?

00:28:58.500 33 years old,

00:28:59.620 fantastic writer.

00:29:00.960 You know,

00:29:01.100 one of the course

00:29:01.620 of human events

00:29:02.220 just puts it out.

00:29:03.760 And of course,

00:29:04.240 in his case,

00:29:04.840 it's truth

00:29:05.320 and it's inspiring.

00:29:06.500 But what Marx

00:29:07.180 sits down to write

00:29:08.120 is just kind of

00:29:08.840 this polemic...

00:29:10.240 The Communist Manifesto

00:29:11.700 is kind of a diatribe.

00:29:13.680 It's really...

00:29:14.980 There's a lot

00:29:15.480 of anger in there.

00:29:16.160 There's a lot

00:29:16.720 of catchphrases,

00:29:18.660 kind of revolutionary

00:29:19.400 catchphrases.

00:29:20.220 A guy who could

00:29:21.020 really turn a phrase?

00:29:22.220 Yeah.

00:29:22.660 I mean,

00:29:23.000 that was Marx.

00:29:23.460 Radical leftists

00:29:24.380 are very good

00:29:25.140 at turning phrases.

00:29:25.980 They really are.

00:29:26.560 Yeah.

00:29:26.740 Gender affirming care.

00:29:28.400 Right, right.

00:29:28.860 That's a stroke of genius.

00:29:29.920 Yeah, yeah.

00:29:30.360 Diversity, equity,

00:29:31.380 and inclusivity.

00:29:32.060 Right, right.

00:29:33.080 Seriously.

00:29:34.080 Totally.

00:29:34.940 Like, once those slogans...

00:29:36.960 Slogan...

00:29:37.360 You know what the derivation

00:29:38.080 of the word slogan is?

00:29:39.340 Right.

00:29:40.040 This is so funny.

00:29:41.000 What's that?

00:29:41.540 It comes from the Welsh.

00:29:43.320 Two words,

00:29:44.080 sluag and garim.

00:29:45.600 Sluag is S-L-U-A-G-H 1.00

00:29:47.760 and garim is G-H-A-I-R-M. 0.71

00:29:50.740 Sluag garim. 0.72

00:29:51.900 Battle cry of the dead.

00:29:53.600 Oh.

00:29:54.020 That's what a slogan is.

00:29:55.060 Yeah.

00:29:55.340 Oh, it's so perfect, right?

00:29:56.720 Wow.

00:29:56.800 Because it conjures up

00:29:58.880 images of armies of the dead

00:30:01.420 fighting against the living.

00:30:03.020 Yeah.

00:30:03.360 Yeah, well,

00:30:03.660 that's what a slogan is.

00:30:04.760 Oh, yes.

00:30:05.280 Right, right.

00:30:05.640 No kidding.

00:30:06.360 Yeah, yeah.

00:30:06.740 He was really good

00:30:07.440 at sloganeering.

00:30:08.060 Yeah, yeah.

00:30:08.560 In fact,

00:30:08.980 to the point where

00:30:09.820 the only part of the end

00:30:11.720 of the Communist Manifesto

00:30:12.920 anybody remembers

00:30:13.820 is workers of the world unite.

00:30:15.920 Yeah.

00:30:16.240 We have nothing to lose

00:30:17.160 but our chains.

00:30:17.740 Yeah, yeah.

00:30:18.520 But, you know,

00:30:19.420 people just back up.

00:30:20.520 To each according to their need

00:30:21.500 is pretty damn good too.

00:30:22.540 That's a good one too.

00:30:23.240 That's a good one.

00:30:23.920 But if you just go back

00:30:25.540 one paragraph at the end,

00:30:27.520 right,

00:30:28.160 the communists

00:30:28.880 support every revolutionary movement,

00:30:33.600 the forcible overthrow

00:30:36.220 of all existing conditions.

00:30:37.820 I mean,

00:30:38.060 those lines are in the next

00:30:39.680 two final paragraphs.

00:30:41.080 Yeah.

00:30:41.220 And that's what really

00:30:43.060 the Manifesto is all about.

00:30:44.780 Okay, so let's,

00:30:46.440 I want to go get back

00:30:47.480 to a question

00:30:48.060 that we touched on

00:30:48.880 but didn't fully address.

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00:31:57.000 What in the world

00:32:00.940 is an atheist?

00:32:01.320 Atheism.

00:32:01.780 Absolutely.

00:32:02.460 Why is an atheist 1.00

00:32:03.480 toying with,

00:32:04.680 not toying with,

00:32:06.160 centered on,

00:32:08.220 what would you say,

00:32:08.880 analysis of

00:32:10.200 and identification

00:32:10.980 with religious tropes?

00:32:13.100 Yeah.

00:32:13.360 Right now,

00:32:13.680 he claims atheism,

00:32:14.620 but you don't write

00:32:15.760 a Faust-like poem.

00:32:18.500 Being in league

00:32:19.380 with Mephistopheles

00:32:20.340 is not technically atheism.

00:32:23.180 Right, right, right.

00:32:23.360 Now, you might ask

00:32:24.300 about the relationship

00:32:25.180 between the two,

00:32:25.920 but that's a different question.

00:32:27.180 So, what do you make

00:32:28.320 of the fact

00:32:28.860 that he was obsessed

00:32:30.280 with these Faustian notions

00:32:32.360 and with ideas

00:32:33.700 of conjuring up

00:32:34.600 the underworld

00:32:35.200 despite his professed atheism?

00:32:37.360 Yeah, by the way,

00:32:37.860 even the phrase

00:32:38.440 from each according

00:32:39.020 to his ability

00:32:39.500 to do each according

00:32:40.080 to his needs,

00:32:40.600 that's a twisting

00:32:41.440 of the scripture

00:32:42.060 of the New Testament.

00:32:43.300 Right, right.

00:32:43.940 Right, but in his case,

00:32:45.760 so, yeah,

00:32:47.000 and people have asked me this.

00:32:48.040 They say,

00:32:48.260 well, if he had this fascination

00:32:49.720 with the devil,

00:32:51.060 it must have only been

00:32:52.560 in a kind of rebellious

00:32:53.820 sort of way,

00:32:54.600 like McAleby.

00:32:55.420 Yeah, right.

00:32:56.580 Like Mikhail Bakunin.

00:32:58.920 Saul Alinsky

00:32:59.800 in the intro

00:33:00.720 to Rules for Radicals,

00:33:02.520 right?

00:33:03.200 Lest we forget

00:33:04.020 at least an over-the-shoulder

00:33:05.400 acknowledgement

00:33:06.200 to that first of all rebels

00:33:08.280 who won himself

00:33:09.180 his own kingdom.

00:33:10.220 Yeah,

00:33:10.560 lest we forget.

00:33:11.880 Yeah, no kidding.

00:33:12.880 Yeah, you don't walk

00:33:14.060 by that sort of statement

00:33:15.240 accidentally.

00:33:16.140 Right, right.

00:33:16.340 No, definitely not.

00:33:17.160 And a lot of people

00:33:17.860 on the left do.

00:33:18.580 They're like,

00:33:18.900 well, he's just being

00:33:20.020 so figuratively.

00:33:20.160 Yeah, right.

00:33:20.820 Figuratively.

00:33:21.360 Well, those are the same people

00:33:22.480 who think that Milton's Lucifer

00:33:23.880 is a hero.

00:33:25.040 And lots of people

00:33:26.220 thought that.

00:33:26.900 And who give their magazines

00:33:28.080 names like the Jacobin

00:33:29.580 of all things.

00:33:30.280 Absolutely, absolutely.

00:33:31.160 Why the hell would you

00:33:31.880 name your magazine 0.67

00:33:32.740 after a group

00:33:33.880 that guillotined

00:33:34.580 40,000 people

00:33:35.800 in France

00:33:36.380 in 1793, 1794?

00:33:38.100 Yeah, absolutely.

00:33:38.920 Well, I've also noticed

00:33:39.920 that I've read

00:33:41.540 a lot of comments

00:33:42.900 by online anonymous trolls.

00:33:45.000 A lot.

00:33:45.840 And I've looked

00:33:47.020 at their names.

00:33:48.380 And there's a sizable

00:33:50.820 minority of the really

00:33:52.120 vicious online trolls 0.99

00:33:53.420 who adopt satanic names. 0.99

00:33:55.380 Absolutely.

00:33:56.100 Like far more than

00:33:56.780 you'd expect.

00:33:58.860 And it's not cute

00:34:00.040 or funny.

00:34:00.820 No.

00:34:01.140 Not in the least.

00:34:02.300 And it sums up

00:34:03.240 the manner in which

00:34:04.600 they deal with the world

00:34:05.660 with much more accuracy

00:34:07.540 than they might imagine

00:34:09.420 when they've had that,

00:34:10.800 what would you call it,

00:34:11.520 unmitigated gall

00:34:12.520 to dare such a thing.

00:34:13.820 Right.

00:34:14.140 Right.

00:34:14.440 In fact, one of them,

00:34:16.220 and I won't say who it is

00:34:17.260 because she could end up

00:34:18.020 watching this,

00:34:18.740 but it's somebody,

00:34:20.200 I know the name of the magazine,

00:34:21.760 and her pen name,

00:34:22.980 I won't give the first name,

00:34:24.020 but the last name

00:34:24.640 is Diavolo.

00:34:25.540 Right, right.

00:34:25.980 D-I-A-V-O-L-O, 1.00

00:34:27.220 which is Italian for devil.

00:34:28.360 Yeah.

00:34:28.740 Right?

00:34:29.460 And, I mean,

00:34:30.520 what does that tell you?

00:34:32.020 Well, that's the question.

00:34:32.800 Nom de plume

00:34:33.560 of all things, 0.85

00:34:34.300 Diavolo, the devil.

00:34:35.180 Well, it is the question,

00:34:36.040 what does it tell you?

00:34:37.080 Why would you pick that?

00:34:38.320 Well, all the people

00:34:39.040 who picked that would say,

00:34:40.220 well, Lucifer is misunderstood

00:34:42.460 because he's just a rebel

00:34:43.940 against tyranny.

00:34:44.980 Sure.

00:34:45.360 Right.

00:34:45.820 And so that's their standard.

00:34:48.880 The devil is misunderstood.

00:34:50.640 He's just a rebel

00:34:51.580 against tyranny.

00:34:52.280 That's how Mikhail Bakunin,

00:34:53.580 who was one of Marx's associates,

00:34:55.180 God and the state,

00:34:56.420 he wrote about Lucifer

00:34:57.660 in this heroic way.

00:34:58.860 Yeah.

00:34:59.240 And he was an atheist.

00:35:00.540 Now, in Marx's case,

00:35:01.660 all right.

00:35:02.060 So, he wasn't an atheist

00:35:06.660 in 1837

00:35:07.680 when he wrote that first poem.

00:35:10.260 Okay.

00:35:11.180 Even in 18,

00:35:12.040 by 1841,

00:35:13.140 was he an atheist?

00:35:14.600 Probably.

00:35:15.240 Let me back up.

00:35:15.700 Well, the question is,

00:35:16.820 was he ever an atheist?

00:35:18.300 Yeah.

00:35:18.480 You know what I mean?

00:35:19.160 Because if he's stated

00:35:20.960 his allegiance to Mephistopheles

00:35:22.780 True.

00:35:23.300 when he's 19 or 20,

00:35:24.700 and that's actually

00:35:25.440 the motif of his writings,

00:35:27.060 he's never an atheist.

00:35:28.780 No.

00:35:28.940 He might not be very pleased

00:35:30.760 with the idea of God,

00:35:32.020 but that's not exactly

00:35:32.960 the same thing

00:35:33.600 as being an atheist.

00:35:34.540 And they also end up

00:35:35.760 putting their faith

00:35:36.420 in Marxism-Leninism

00:35:37.560 in an almost religious-like way.

00:35:38.940 Yeah, almost religious-like way.

00:35:38.960 I mean, Ronald Reagan,

00:35:41.340 well, Marxism-Leninism,

00:35:42.760 that religion of theirs.

00:35:44.040 Yeah, yeah.

00:35:44.640 The opium of the intellectuals

00:35:46.260 is what Raymond Aaron

00:35:47.140 called it.

00:35:47.960 Yeah.

00:35:48.360 But in Marx's case,

00:35:49.940 let me back up a little bit.

00:35:50.800 So, he's born May 5, 1818,

00:35:53.280 in Trier, Germany.

00:35:55.020 Trier is spelled like Trier,

00:35:56.380 T-R-I-E-R. 1.00

00:35:57.380 A very religious city.

00:35:59.980 Right, right.

00:36:00.660 I mean, like 90% Roman Catholic.

00:36:03.440 The great cathedral of Trier

00:36:05.100 was founded around the year 320, 330.

00:36:10.000 It was paid for by St. Helena,

00:36:13.480 the mother of Constantine,

00:36:14.940 of all people, right?

00:36:15.960 Oh, really?

00:36:16.540 So, it's that early?

00:36:17.180 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:36:18.100 Oh, wow.

00:36:18.620 And so, and by the way,

00:36:20.580 it is also the birth town

00:36:22.800 of St. Ambrose,

00:36:25.200 who was the bishop of Milan later,

00:36:27.780 who brought Augustine into the faith.

00:36:30.580 So, Ambrose and Marx

00:36:31.820 are both from Trier, Germany,

00:36:33.580 of all things.

00:36:34.320 So, you have this cathedral in Trier.

00:36:36.520 St. Helena is the one

00:36:37.520 that goes to the Holy Land

00:36:39.220 and brings back all kinds of relics,

00:36:42.220 all right?

00:36:42.520 In fact, she believes

00:36:43.460 that she found the Holy Lance,

00:36:45.900 which is pierced the side of Christ,

00:36:48.000 and that is at the Vatican today.

00:36:50.280 She found, she believes,

00:36:51.800 the crown of thorns,

00:36:52.900 which is in Notre Dame.

00:36:54.920 She believed that she found

00:36:56.520 the holy robe

00:36:57.600 that Jesus wore at the crucifixion

00:36:59.680 that the Roman soldiers cast lots for

00:37:01.820 at the foot of the cross.

00:37:03.220 The holy robe is in that cathedral

00:37:05.500 in Trier.

00:37:06.920 By the way, Marx,

00:37:08.400 in his 1841 poem,

00:37:11.840 The Player, right,

00:37:13.100 which is actually a play,

00:37:14.260 because you mentioned drama.

00:37:15.620 A lot of these plays

00:37:16.300 are actually dramas as well.

00:37:18.520 His demonic violinist

00:37:21.580 who's summoning up

00:37:22.480 the powers of darkness,

00:37:24.080 Marx not only wrote

00:37:24.980 the character and the words,

00:37:26.580 he also wrote the stage,

00:37:30.220 the production,

00:37:30.960 the furniture on the stage,

00:37:32.180 the clothes people would wear.

00:37:33.560 The violinist is wearing

00:37:34.920 the holy robe of Christ

00:37:36.480 from the cathedral in Trier

00:37:38.580 while he's summoning up,

00:37:40.440 I mean, chilling,

00:37:41.500 chilling of all things.

00:37:42.640 And there's a letter

00:37:43.440 between Marx and Jenny,

00:37:44.660 whose wife,

00:37:45.180 who's an atheist,

00:37:45.900 and at one point,

00:37:46.780 when everyone's coming to town

00:37:47.920 for like the annual sort of festival

00:37:49.620 where people come in

00:37:50.600 to venerate the robe,

00:37:52.420 Jenny's making fun of them, 0.98

00:37:53.920 like all these silly people, right? 0.98

00:37:56.620 But so in Marx's case, 0.97

00:37:59.000 he's born May 5th, 1818 in Trier.

00:38:01.400 He was baptized in 1824.

00:38:04.460 Now, he's a Jew. 1.00

00:38:06.460 The family,

00:38:07.220 he comes from a very Jewish family,

00:38:09.240 not just in terms of ethnicity,

00:38:10.960 but Judaism,

00:38:11.880 they are religious Jews.

00:38:13.120 They're Orthodox Jews.

00:38:14.600 A bunch of rabbis in the family.

00:38:17.480 His father had converted to Christianity,

00:38:20.960 to Lutheranism specifically,

00:38:22.700 Heinrich Marx.

00:38:23.740 And some say that he did

00:38:25.000 because of social pressures

00:38:26.240 in Germany in the day,

00:38:28.020 like anti-Semitism,

00:38:29.220 and perhaps so, maybe.

00:38:30.900 He had an uncle

00:38:31.900 who converted to Roman Catholicism,

00:38:33.740 which most people there did

00:38:34.780 because it was like 90% Roman Catholic.

00:38:36.640 But Marx's father

00:38:37.560 converted to Lutheranism.

00:38:38.800 And Marx's father died a believer, right?

00:38:42.060 Probably kind of a more liberal Christian,

00:38:44.200 but he was a Christian.

00:38:45.640 So Marx converts,

00:38:47.380 Marx is baptized 1824.

00:38:49.560 He would have been five or six years old.

00:38:51.660 His mother really didn't want him to.

00:38:53.940 The mother really didn't want to convert. 1.00

00:38:55.940 But Marx is a fairly dedicated Christian 0.99

00:38:59.360 through his teenage years.

00:39:01.680 And he really doesn't start to change

00:39:03.860 until college.

00:39:05.180 And he came in particular.

00:39:07.020 Do you have any idea what happened?

00:39:08.120 Well, he came under the influence.

00:39:10.440 I had a hard time pinning this down.

00:39:12.240 And I don't think there's enough good information.

00:39:14.680 And you'll appreciate this

00:39:16.080 as a fellow academic. 0.52

00:39:17.560 So many academics don't give a damn

00:39:19.300 about faith at all.

00:39:21.260 I mean, the first biography

00:39:23.140 that I set out to do on Ronald Reagan,

00:39:26.220 and I've written, I think,

00:39:27.420 eight books on Reagan,

00:39:28.660 was going to be about him

00:39:29.940 and the end of the Cold War.

00:39:31.540 And I ended up writing a book

00:39:33.380 called God and Ronald Reagan

00:39:34.560 because I found all this stuff

00:39:35.920 on Reagan's faith

00:39:36.840 that no one had talked about.

00:39:38.060 Oh, yeah.

00:39:38.580 Oh, yeah.

00:39:38.900 I thought, look at all this.

00:39:39.820 How interesting.

00:39:40.080 Look at all this.

00:39:40.920 Look at all these letters.

00:39:42.120 Well, that's particularly relevant

00:39:43.400 in the context of this conversation.

00:39:45.080 Yeah, yeah.

00:39:45.900 Wow, look, in this letter

00:39:47.060 to this Methodist minister

00:39:48.900 who's having doubts

00:39:49.740 about Christ's divinity,

00:39:51.060 Reagan's blew it using 0.99

00:39:52.160 the liar, lord, or lunatic argument 0.99

00:39:54.160 of C.S. Lewis, right? 0.93

00:39:55.480 So I kind of picked up on that.

00:39:57.380 But so many of these biographers

00:39:58.800 ignore faith.

00:40:00.100 So in Marx's case,

00:40:01.040 I'm one of the only ones

00:40:01.740 that really cared, right?

00:40:02.720 A lot of the Marx biographers

00:40:04.000 are leftists.

00:40:05.720 Yes, of course.

00:40:06.600 So they ignore all of this stuff.

00:40:08.580 I'm getting off track.

00:40:09.580 No, no, that's okay.

00:40:11.040 The first main Marx biographer,

00:40:14.740 Franz Mering,

00:40:16.640 this would have been

00:40:17.200 over 100 years ago,

00:40:18.520 was the first to discover

00:40:19.980 the demonic poetry and plays.

00:40:23.360 And he presented them

00:40:24.440 to Marx's daughter.

00:40:26.020 And he said,

00:40:27.240 you know,

00:40:28.260 we should,

00:40:30.140 this stuff shouldn't see

00:40:31.380 the light of day.

00:40:32.440 I mean,

00:40:32.760 this is bad.

00:40:34.920 I mean,

00:40:35.160 this is really damning.

00:40:36.920 And a communist

00:40:38.100 with some integrity,

00:40:39.800 was it David Risenau?

00:40:40.940 With the Marx-Engels Institute

00:40:42.580 in the 1920s,

00:40:43.960 found all of it

00:40:44.760 and said,

00:40:45.400 no,

00:40:45.560 for the sake of,

00:40:46.480 you know,

00:40:46.660 we need to put this stuff

00:40:48.140 out there

00:40:48.480 so people know

00:40:49.160 what Marx believed.

00:40:50.880 So he actually found it,

00:40:52.420 first published it.

00:40:53.840 It's untouched

00:40:54.780 until Robert Payne

00:40:55.760 mentions it,

00:40:56.340 late 1960s,

00:40:57.220 early 1970s.

00:40:58.160 Paul Johnson

00:40:59.080 wrote about it

00:40:59.800 in Intellectuals.

00:41:01.360 Pastor Richard Wormbron,

00:41:02.860 who was tortured

00:41:03.900 in the Romanian prison

00:41:05.160 of Potessi,

00:41:06.120 wrote a book

00:41:06.560 called Marx and Satan.

00:41:07.820 He wrote about it.

00:41:08.780 But all the other

00:41:09.680 Marx biographers,

00:41:11.000 they just ignore it.

00:41:11.900 They completely ignore it.

00:41:13.200 It's a long way

00:41:13.720 of saying,

00:41:14.660 how and why exactly

00:41:16.700 did he become an atheist?

00:41:18.120 What happened

00:41:18.760 between those teenage years

00:41:20.840 and college years

00:41:21.780 that really flipped him?

00:41:22.560 The best that I can determine,

00:41:24.340 he came under the influence

00:41:25.500 of a professor in college

00:41:26.960 named Dr. Bruno Bauer,

00:41:32.860 University of Bonn.

00:41:34.340 And he was a professor

00:41:35.620 of theology

00:41:36.340 who was an atheist,

00:41:37.540 right?

00:41:37.800 Imagine that,

00:41:38.480 just like the colleges today.

00:41:40.080 He's eventually run out

00:41:41.200 of the university.

00:41:42.160 But he and Marx

00:41:43.140 became very tight,

00:41:45.260 very close.

00:41:46.320 Interestingly too,

00:41:47.120 Bruno Bauer

00:41:47.760 was intensely anti-Semitic.

00:41:50.300 So close

00:41:51.320 that they together,

00:41:53.380 so Bauer influences

00:41:54.380 Marx's atheism.

00:41:55.460 They start a journal together

00:41:57.540 called Annals of Atheism,

00:41:59.640 which never gets

00:42:00.380 off the ground,

00:42:01.080 partly because they don't

00:42:01.760 have money to support it.

00:42:02.840 I guess they couldn't find

00:42:03.540 a wealthy atheist socialist

00:42:05.740 who could help them out.

00:42:07.500 So they start

00:42:08.420 this archives

00:42:09.280 of this Annals of Atheism.

00:42:12.760 And then Bauer's eventually

00:42:14.600 fired from the university.

00:42:16.860 He's pushed out

00:42:17.500 of the university.

00:42:18.120 And he and Marx

00:42:19.740 pulled a couple stunts.

00:42:20.980 In one case,

00:42:21.580 they went to a nearby village

00:42:23.100 for Palm Sunday

00:42:25.320 and rode in on donkeys

00:42:27.280 together,

00:42:28.540 kind of mocking

00:42:29.280 the entrance of Christ

00:42:30.540 into Jerusalem

00:42:31.480 on Palm Sunday.

00:42:33.160 Yeah, mocking

00:42:33.540 or imitating.

00:42:34.520 Yeah.

00:42:34.760 Right?

00:42:34.980 Well, you have the same

00:42:35.940 weird dichotomy there

00:42:37.080 with the character

00:42:37.800 in the play

00:42:38.360 that you described.

00:42:39.460 It's like,

00:42:40.340 you know,

00:42:40.740 are you mocking

00:42:41.980 or usurping?

00:42:43.080 That's a better metaphor.

00:42:45.060 Yeah, that's good.

00:42:45.140 That's right.

00:42:45.460 Absolutely.

00:42:46.220 Well, because Lucifer...

00:42:47.420 I don't like the word

00:42:48.040 channeling that people

00:42:48.980 use today,

00:42:49.540 but that might actually

00:42:50.260 apply in this case.

00:42:50.920 Usurping is good

00:42:51.800 because Lucifer's

00:42:52.960 a usurper, right?

00:42:53.860 True.

00:42:54.020 I mean, he's the spirit

00:42:54.920 that wants to overthrow

00:42:55.820 everything and put himself

00:42:56.900 at the top.

00:42:57.680 And not just himself,

00:42:58.840 but his intellect specifically.

00:43:00.600 Yes.

00:43:00.840 And that's very reminiscent

00:43:02.080 of the way Marx conducted

00:43:03.220 himself in his life, right?

00:43:04.620 Everything around him,

00:43:05.840 including his family,

00:43:06.700 his wife,

00:43:07.460 his friends,

00:43:08.320 everything,

00:43:09.020 was sacrificed

00:43:10.000 to the glorification

00:43:11.540 of his intellect.

00:43:12.500 Right.

00:43:12.780 Right.

00:43:13.120 In this...

00:43:13.440 Right, right, right.

00:43:13.960 And like,

00:43:14.600 well, and this is exactly

00:43:15.960 what happens

00:43:16.380 in the Faustian bargain,

00:43:17.520 right?

00:43:17.700 I mean, Faust essentially

00:43:18.980 sells his soul

00:43:20.240 to, for what?

00:43:22.580 What do you say?

00:43:23.420 Intellectual supremacy.

00:43:24.660 Right.

00:43:25.180 Well, there's a good diagnosis

00:43:26.980 for the universities

00:43:27.860 for today, too.

00:43:28.800 But it is the...

00:43:29.540 It's the fundamental temptation

00:43:31.060 of the intellect, right?

00:43:32.400 Because it's...

00:43:33.500 It is the highest angel

00:43:35.120 in God's heavenly kingdom

00:43:36.360 most capable

00:43:37.140 of going bitterly wrong.

00:43:38.660 Right.

00:43:38.940 And Marx is a great example

00:43:40.280 of that.

00:43:40.680 And finding his own kingdom.

00:43:41.880 Well...

00:43:42.260 Which is what Alinsky

00:43:43.100 liked about him.

00:43:43.900 In today's chaotic world,

00:43:46.840 many of us are searching

00:43:47.740 for a way to aim higher

00:43:48.960 and find spiritual peace.

00:43:50.920 But here's the thing.

00:43:52.120 Prayer,

00:43:52.520 the most common tool we have,

00:43:54.040 isn't just about saying

00:43:54.940 whatever comes to mind.

00:43:56.280 It's a skill

00:43:56.920 that needs to be developed.

00:43:58.620 That's where Hallow comes in.

00:44:00.320 As the number one prayer

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00:44:02.400 Hallow is launching

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00:45:01.040 Think of the arrogance

00:45:07.280 that it requires

00:45:09.180 to be a critic,

00:45:11.820 like a devastating critic

00:45:13.160 of everything.

00:45:13.860 Not in the manner

00:45:16.220 that Descartes questioned.

00:45:18.700 That's not the same thing.

00:45:20.560 Questioning is more

00:45:21.400 an admission of your own inadequacy.

00:45:23.600 But that damning critique

00:45:26.260 of everything,

00:45:27.160 like the question is,

00:45:28.080 who the hell do you think, 0.84

00:45:29.040 you know, 0.77

00:45:29.340 the kids who shot up

00:45:31.480 the Columbine High School,

00:45:32.960 that's the position

00:45:33.740 they put themselves in.

00:45:35.120 Like their writing,

00:45:36.180 which no one pays

00:45:37.020 any attention to,

00:45:37.860 is absolutely bone-chilling.

00:45:39.900 Like there's no difference

00:45:41.760 between the writing

00:45:42.560 of the more literate

00:45:43.460 of the two

00:45:44.000 and something

00:45:44.900 that you would expect

00:45:45.740 from someone

00:45:46.320 who's manifesting signs of,

00:45:48.040 for lack of a better word,

00:45:49.100 possession.

00:45:49.700 It's really chilling stuff.

00:45:51.360 This is independent

00:45:52.300 of your religious belief.

00:45:54.120 Like you can't read

00:45:55.060 what he wrote

00:45:55.780 without the hairs

00:45:56.760 on the back of your neck

00:45:57.700 standing up.

00:45:58.340 And he literally

00:46:00.700 positioned himself

00:46:02.720 as the judge

00:46:03.660 of everything.

00:46:04.400 He believed human life

00:46:05.480 was inadequate.

00:46:06.180 He believed everything

00:46:06.980 should be destroyed.

00:46:08.200 Him and his friend 0.99

00:46:08.900 were planning

00:46:09.580 a much more destructive

00:46:11.180 rampage

00:46:11.980 than they managed.

00:46:13.400 And they had fantasies

00:46:15.280 and wrote

00:46:15.800 about destroying

00:46:19.080 entire cities.

00:46:19.920 They wanted to lay

00:46:20.500 everything waste

00:46:21.760 exactly in that

00:46:22.840 Mephistophelian manner.

00:46:24.720 And you see that

00:46:25.240 in Marx's poetry

00:46:25.980 as well.

00:46:26.560 I mean,

00:46:27.040 Marx says,

00:46:27.820 I mean,

00:46:28.080 in one case,

00:46:28.580 he's like jury

00:46:29.200 and executioner,

00:46:30.140 right?

00:46:30.340 Right, right.

00:46:30.680 Again,

00:46:30.940 I shall howl

00:46:31.820 gigantic curses

00:46:33.100 at mankind.

00:46:34.700 And the mockery,

00:46:36.520 it's a good point.

00:46:37.360 I mean,

00:46:37.620 because the devil

00:46:38.940 hates to be mocked,

00:46:39.960 but the devil

00:46:40.420 mocks Christ.

00:46:41.420 The devil mocks God,

00:46:42.620 right?

00:46:43.340 And in Marx's case,

00:46:45.480 so they're imitating

00:46:46.560 or mocking

00:46:47.320 Christ entering Jerusalem.

00:46:50.140 They would go

00:46:50.580 into churches together,

00:46:51.660 he and Bruno Bauer,

00:46:52.640 and laugh

00:46:53.700 and kind of

00:46:54.560 make noise

00:46:55.300 in the pew

00:46:55.860 just to be disrespectful.

00:46:58.220 So he's,

00:46:58.820 you know,

00:46:59.580 he's an angry,

00:47:01.940 and throughout his life,

00:47:03.320 no one liked him.

00:47:04.600 I mean,

00:47:05.180 he...

00:47:05.980 I can't imagine why.

00:47:07.700 He got along

00:47:08.740 with his own family,

00:47:11.360 you know,

00:47:11.660 his wife,

00:47:12.160 I mean,

00:47:12.340 his family tolerated him.

00:47:14.340 Some biographers

00:47:15.000 say that he had

00:47:16.380 a great relationship

00:47:17.240 with his daughters

00:47:18.040 other than he didn't.

00:47:18.960 It's amazing,

00:47:19.540 and two completely

00:47:20.180 diametrically

00:47:20.860 different takes on that.

00:47:22.480 But all the different people

00:47:24.020 who worked with him

00:47:24.780 described him

00:47:25.480 in this dictatorial

00:47:27.000 kind of way,

00:47:27.700 and he eventually

00:47:28.340 split with everybody.

00:47:29.820 Mikhail Bakunin,

00:47:32.200 Forbach,

00:47:33.640 I mean,

00:47:33.900 all these different guys.

00:47:35.080 They would eventually

00:47:35.720 get to the point

00:47:36.760 where Marx is calling him

00:47:38.680 an ape or a baboon,

00:47:40.500 and they're saying,

00:47:40.920 oh,

00:47:41.400 this is Marx's typical

00:47:42.460 filth and vitriol

00:47:44.220 and bile.

00:47:45.440 This is what he does

00:47:46.160 to everybody.

00:47:47.000 So he eventually

00:47:47.480 got to that point

00:47:48.240 with just about everybody.

00:47:49.540 But on your point,

00:47:52.720 right,

00:47:53.080 so when did he

00:47:55.560 become an atheist?

00:47:56.560 So he's there

00:47:58.120 by 1841

00:47:59.800 at that point.

00:48:01.320 And he's 26?

00:48:02.640 At that point,

00:48:03.200 he would have been

00:48:03.540 23 years old.

00:48:04.480 23.

00:48:05.200 And I'd love to really

00:48:07.340 see some sort

00:48:08.180 of documentation

00:48:08.940 of exactly how

00:48:10.440 it began to slip away.

00:48:11.800 Right,

00:48:11.940 although you said

00:48:12.720 that this association

00:48:13.760 he had with the professor.

00:48:15.200 Well,

00:48:15.340 that's in some ways

00:48:17.680 a sufficient explanation.

00:48:19.540 Like,

00:48:20.340 not exactly

00:48:21.080 because it doesn't

00:48:22.000 explain why

00:48:22.780 he would have been

00:48:23.400 attracted to that professor.

00:48:25.220 But you could,

00:48:25.800 it's easy to imagine

00:48:26.780 that,

00:48:27.100 well,

00:48:27.220 maybe that professor

00:48:27.900 paid a lot of attention

00:48:28.740 to him.

00:48:29.240 I think so.

00:48:29.940 And the professor

00:48:30.420 is anti-Semitic,

00:48:31.740 which is odd.

00:48:33.040 And Marx is Jewish. 0.54

00:48:34.640 And Marx ends up

00:48:35.700 with some very

00:48:36.980 anti-Semitic statements.

00:48:38.660 Right.

00:48:38.860 He said,

00:48:39.480 the Israelite faith 0.99

00:48:40.720 is repulsive to me. 0.88

00:48:42.560 And he has this one statement

00:48:43.940 where he talks about,

00:48:45.280 in the end,

00:48:45.960 the final emancipation

00:48:47.360 and the emancipation of the,

00:48:48.640 it sounds like something

00:48:49.600 Hitler could have said. 0.63

00:48:51.340 I mean,

00:48:51.560 some really disturbing

00:48:52.680 statements about Jews.

00:48:54.400 Tell me about

00:48:54.860 the emancipation.

00:48:55.840 Yeah,

00:48:56.200 I should get,

00:48:56.660 I'll get that exact quote.

00:48:57.680 Okay,

00:48:58.000 okay,

00:48:58.320 okay.

00:48:58.640 I'll get that exact quote.

00:49:00.040 Okay,

00:49:00.420 okay,

00:49:00.780 so we don't know,

00:49:02.100 okay,

00:49:02.540 so we have this sense

00:49:03.560 that he identified

00:49:04.380 with Mephistopheles,

00:49:05.600 which is not great,

00:49:07.400 and that he has

00:49:08.400 a Luciferian intellect,

00:49:09.640 which is also

00:49:10.500 not exactly

00:49:11.940 what you'd hope for.

00:49:13.180 By the way,

00:49:13.480 just for the cameras,

00:49:14.380 I did a piece called

00:49:15.380 Marx on Judaism,

00:49:18.760 Christianity,

00:49:19.360 and Evolution Race.

00:49:21.280 If you look that up,

00:49:22.280 it has that quote

00:49:23.400 on the Jewish.

00:49:24.080 Okay,

00:49:24.420 okay,

00:49:24.820 okay,

00:49:25.340 okay,

00:49:25.640 so we don't know,

00:49:26.580 we don't know

00:49:27.740 why he turned to atheism.

00:49:30.040 These poems that he wrote

00:49:31.500 that were pans

00:49:32.420 to Mephistopheles,

00:49:34.400 is that after

00:49:35.280 he becomes an atheist?

00:49:36.700 No,

00:49:37.080 he's writing,

00:49:37.780 so the first one

00:49:38.440 was 1837,

00:49:40.640 wrote another in 1841.

00:49:42.160 He wrote a bunch of them,

00:49:43.120 and he did,

00:49:43.820 he did just a chilling play

00:49:47.300 called Ulanem.

00:49:49.140 Yes.

00:49:49.680 O-U-L-A-N-E-M, 1.00

00:49:52.100 and people that are watching this,

00:49:53.860 if they now type

00:49:54.560 into their computer,

00:49:55.700 Ulanem,

00:49:56.340 even in Google,

00:49:57.540 it'll pop up,

00:49:58.640 play by Karl Marx.

00:49:59.820 It even has

00:50:00.600 a Wikipedia entry,

00:50:02.300 and let me warn people,

00:50:03.920 you might not want

00:50:04.640 to do this,

00:50:05.320 but if you click

00:50:06.560 the images button,

00:50:07.740 you will see,

00:50:08.840 I mean,

00:50:09.140 there's some satanic

00:50:10.780 stuff up there

00:50:12.560 from like,

00:50:13.400 not heavy metal,

00:50:14.400 but like black metal

00:50:15.780 groups.

00:50:16.900 So Ulanem 0.68

00:50:17.620 is an anagram

00:50:18.700 for Emmanuel,

00:50:20.360 or Emanuello.

00:50:21.500 Right, right.

00:50:22.160 So Marx takes

00:50:23.060 Emmanuel,

00:50:23.940 which is the name

00:50:24.640 given to Christ,

00:50:25.860 or Emanuello,

00:50:26.780 and he flips it

00:50:28.120 into this anagram

00:50:29.060 called Ulanem,

00:50:30.600 and it's this

00:50:31.320 chilling play.

00:50:32.820 The main character

00:50:33.540 is Lucindo,

00:50:34.640 Lucindo,

00:50:35.600 L-U-C-I-N-D-O, 1.00

00:50:38.160 and you just can't believe

00:50:40.100 what you're reading

00:50:41.440 with this play.

00:50:43.880 So that was written

00:50:45.220 later in the 1840s,

00:50:46.700 so really the prime

00:50:47.660 of his writing,

00:50:49.000 including the decade

00:50:49.840 when he wrote

00:50:50.340 the Communist Manifesto,

00:50:51.660 is also the same

00:50:53.000 decade when he

00:50:54.520 was writing

00:50:55.020 these poems.

00:50:58.000 And plays.

00:50:58.620 And plays.

00:50:59.240 And plays.

00:51:00.020 And throughout his life,

00:51:01.060 his kids and others

00:51:02.000 would say,

00:51:03.200 yeah, he had a favorite

00:51:04.020 line always from

00:51:04.920 Mephistopheles,

00:51:05.460 everything that exists 1.00

00:51:06.680 deserves to perish.

00:51:07.800 So that remains 0.99

00:51:08.580 a part of him

00:51:09.360 throughout his life.

00:51:11.280 His son,

00:51:12.840 Edgar,

00:51:13.500 has a letter

00:51:14.360 where he addresses

00:51:14.940 his father

00:51:15.620 as my dear devil, 0.72

00:51:17.820 which,

00:51:18.880 I don't know,

00:51:19.500 maybe it's playful,

00:51:20.780 I don't know.

00:51:21.360 Although I would never

00:51:22.720 call my dad

00:51:23.880 my dear devil. 0.94

00:51:25.060 His wife called him 0.99

00:51:26.480 my wicked knave.

00:51:29.540 I quote

00:51:30.380 Henrik Hinesen

00:51:31.780 referring to him

00:51:33.500 as a goblin

00:51:34.400 who tried to

00:51:35.360 take me

00:51:36.140 under his spell.

00:51:38.200 Other cases

00:51:39.200 of where he's using

00:51:40.720 that kind of language.

00:51:43.100 When Ingalls

00:51:44.280 first met him,

00:51:45.380 he describes him

00:51:46.520 as this

00:51:47.520 dark man

00:51:48.880 from Trier

00:51:50.000 who hops

00:51:51.880 and leaps

00:51:52.520 and springs

00:51:53.160 on his heels.

00:51:54.480 The monster 0.99

00:51:56.000 of 10,000 devils,

00:51:57.900 he describes him.

00:51:59.420 And the letter

00:52:00.700 from his father

00:52:01.860 is,

00:52:03.760 which was written

00:52:04.320 in 1837,

00:52:05.760 a year before

00:52:07.020 his father died.

00:52:10.400 So his father

00:52:11.780 writes to him,

00:52:12.700 March 2nd,

00:52:13.580 1837.

00:52:14.560 Carl,

00:52:16.280 at times my heart

00:52:17.340 delights in thinking

00:52:18.340 of you and your fortune

00:52:19.400 and yet at times

00:52:20.300 I cannot rid myself

00:52:21.580 of ideas

00:52:22.860 which arouse in me

00:52:24.040 sad forebodings

00:52:25.260 and fear

00:52:25.820 when I am struck

00:52:26.840 as if by lightning

00:52:28.400 by the thought.

00:52:29.700 Is your heart

00:52:30.620 in accord

00:52:31.200 with your head,

00:52:32.240 your talents?

00:52:33.580 Has it room

00:52:34.260 for the earthly

00:52:34.980 but gentler

00:52:35.780 sediments

00:52:36.400 which in this

00:52:37.440 veil of sorrow,

00:52:38.820 it's a beautiful letter

00:52:39.720 in many ways,

00:52:40.560 are essentially

00:52:41.380 consoling for a man

00:52:42.780 of feeling?

00:52:43.720 And then this question

00:52:44.720 from the father

00:52:45.660 of Karl Marx

00:52:46.660 to his,

00:52:48.420 at this point,

00:52:50.100 18-year-old son.

00:52:52.140 And since that heart,

00:52:53.600 Karl,

00:52:54.180 is obviously animated

00:52:56.160 and governed

00:52:56.920 by a demon

00:52:58.020 not granted

00:53:00.300 to all men,

00:53:01.600 is that demon

00:53:02.820 heavenly

00:53:03.380 or Faustian?

00:53:05.720 Will you ever,

00:53:06.740 and that is not

00:53:07.400 the least painful

00:53:08.240 doubt of my heart,

00:53:09.760 will you ever

00:53:10.440 be capable

00:53:11.060 of truly human

00:53:12.200 domestic happiness?

00:53:14.000 Will,

00:53:14.500 and this doubt

00:53:15.100 has no less

00:53:15.860 tortured me

00:53:16.500 since I have come

00:53:17.200 to love a certain

00:53:17.960 person like my own child,

00:53:19.760 will you ever

00:53:20.360 be capable

00:53:21.080 of imparting happiness

00:53:22.640 to those

00:53:23.660 immediately around you?

00:53:25.080 By the way,

00:53:25.460 the answer was no.

00:53:27.080 Right?

00:53:27.840 But that phrase,

00:53:29.160 obviously the father

00:53:29.400 had intimations of that.

00:53:30.740 Yeah,

00:53:31.140 and since that heart

00:53:32.080 is obviously animated

00:53:33.960 and governed

00:53:34.640 by a demon

00:53:35.640 not granted

00:53:36.800 to all men,

00:53:38.260 is that demon

00:53:39.180 heavenly or Faustian?

00:53:40.840 That's his dad.

00:53:41.780 Yeah.

00:53:42.700 And there's only

00:53:43.480 so many of those things

00:53:44.760 I think that a

00:53:45.900 sympathetic

00:53:46.540 Marxist

00:53:48.160 or Marxist biographer

00:53:49.260 can shrug off.

00:53:50.880 I mean,

00:53:51.160 there's just so many

00:53:51.860 statements like that

00:53:53.080 from him

00:53:54.080 and people about him

00:53:55.080 and people who knew him,

00:53:56.000 loved ones,

00:53:56.720 a wife,

00:53:58.420 a son,

00:53:58.900 a best friend

00:53:59.600 from Ingalls

00:54:00.440 and then the

00:54:01.320 different writings.

00:54:02.340 Okay,

00:54:02.940 so let's attack this.

00:54:05.020 Now was he a Satanist,

00:54:06.200 right?

00:54:06.580 Well,

00:54:06.880 that is a whole

00:54:08.860 different thing

00:54:09.960 that I can't

00:54:11.640 personally answer.

00:54:13.260 Well,

00:54:13.740 it seems

00:54:14.340 not unreasonable

00:54:16.120 to presuppose

00:54:17.340 that he was a devotee

00:54:18.660 of the Mephistophelian ethos.

00:54:20.360 Yeah,

00:54:20.600 I think that's a really good way to put it.

00:54:21.200 Right,

00:54:21.420 so the question is,

00:54:22.400 you know,

00:54:22.660 what constitutes a Satanist?

00:54:24.540 Well,

00:54:24.800 someone who generates

00:54:25.740 a murderous doctrine,

00:54:27.000 that raises questions.

00:54:28.200 I mean,

00:54:28.420 dead serious about that.

00:54:29.860 Right, right.

00:54:30.220 the most murderous doctrine

00:54:31.540 ever promoted

00:54:33.100 in the roughly

00:54:35.180 Judeo-Christian context

00:54:36.560 by a large margin.

00:54:39.020 So,

00:54:39.380 I would say

00:54:40.400 it's incumbent

00:54:40.960 on those who would defend him

00:54:42.260 to describe

00:54:42.860 why we wouldn't

00:54:43.440 just assume that.

00:54:44.680 But,

00:54:45.540 like,

00:54:46.440 part of the reason

00:54:47.520 that I was so interested

00:54:48.500 in talking to you

00:54:49.240 was because

00:54:49.740 I felt that

00:54:50.760 what you documented

00:54:51.660 in your book

00:54:52.280 was extraordinarily telling

00:54:53.740 from the psychological perspective

00:54:55.080 because I know

00:54:55.620 how these things work

00:54:56.620 and it is not

00:54:58.680 something that can be

00:54:59.820 overlooked.

00:55:00.220 that that was

00:55:01.800 his favorite quote.

00:55:02.920 Right, right.

00:55:03.320 I mean,

00:55:03.540 especially not

00:55:04.420 when you understand

00:55:05.340 Goethe's centrality

00:55:07.780 in the German

00:55:09.480 intellectual tradition.

00:55:10.960 That's like having

00:55:11.720 a favorite quote

00:55:12.660 from Shakespeare,

00:55:13.660 right?

00:55:13.880 And it's not

00:55:14.520 any old quote.

00:55:15.900 It's the central credo

00:55:17.140 of Mephistopheles.

00:55:18.260 So,

00:55:18.640 that's extraordinarily telling.

00:55:20.040 Now,

00:55:20.260 okay,

00:55:20.560 now I do have another...

00:55:21.860 Can I give you a...

00:55:22.900 Yes.

00:55:23.580 So,

00:55:23.980 Robert Payne,

00:55:24.840 the very serious academic,

00:55:26.500 no right winger,

00:55:27.360 British man of letters,

00:55:28.800 the guy who really

00:55:29.620 broke this first

00:55:30.740 in his 1968

00:55:31.660 biography of Marx,

00:55:32.920 all right?

00:55:33.420 His chapter

00:55:34.300 where he talks

00:55:34.960 about this stuff

00:55:35.680 is called

00:55:36.260 The Demons

00:55:36.980 in his Marx biography.

00:55:38.620 Now,

00:55:39.120 he wrote this,

00:55:40.160 and I'm not saying

00:55:40.940 that I endorse this.

00:55:41.840 As an academic,

00:55:42.840 I can't say

00:55:43.440 if this is correct.

00:55:45.220 There were times

00:55:46.100 when Marx

00:55:46.880 seemed to be

00:55:47.700 possessed by demons.

00:55:49.680 That's what Payne wrote.

00:55:51.600 And,

00:55:52.140 now this,

00:55:52.960 I would at least

00:55:53.600 more endorse.

00:55:55.960 Marx had

00:55:56.500 the devil's view

00:55:57.420 of the world

00:55:58.080 and the devil's malignity.

00:56:00.240 Sometimes,

00:56:01.080 he seemed to know

00:56:01.980 that he was

00:56:02.460 accomplishing works

00:56:03.560 of evil.

00:56:04.560 I think that gets

00:56:05.460 closer to it.

00:56:06.740 Now,

00:56:07.760 Pastor Richard Wurmbrand,

00:56:09.060 who wrote the famous book

00:56:09.900 Tortured for Christ,

00:56:11.220 and was tortured

00:56:11.720 for Christ

00:56:12.260 in Romanian prisons

00:56:13.220 by communist captors

00:56:15.220 who were shouting, 0.95

00:56:15.960 I am the devil,

00:56:16.560 while they were torturing him.

00:56:17.640 He did a book

00:56:18.400 called Marx and Satan.

00:56:20.140 He's convinced

00:56:20.840 that Marx

00:56:21.500 was a Satanist

00:56:22.920 and did some things

00:56:23.800 ritualistically

00:56:24.540 that it might have

00:56:25.180 even been Satanic.

00:56:26.380 But I can't,

00:56:27.380 I can't say that.

00:56:28.440 I can't endorse that.

00:56:29.260 But you see evidence

00:56:29.700 of that in his play.

00:56:30.820 I've never seen,

00:56:31.580 in terms of at least

00:56:32.320 his fantasies.

00:56:33.360 That's right.

00:56:34.060 That's right.

00:56:34.900 In fact,

00:56:35.400 Payne even goes so far

00:56:36.580 as to say,

00:56:37.580 Vladimir Lenin,

00:56:38.560 right?

00:56:38.840 There's a statement

00:56:39.420 from Lenin

00:56:40.080 which said,

00:56:41.340 when I was a teen,

00:56:42.720 I broke from all religion.

00:56:44.200 I took the cross 0.99

00:56:45.280 from my neck

00:56:46.020 and I threw it 0.93

00:56:46.740 in the rubbish bin.

00:56:48.480 And,

00:56:48.520 and Payne has a quote,

00:56:50.220 not Payne,

00:56:51.280 Richard Wurmbrand,

00:56:52.460 where I think,

00:56:53.320 I think he believes

00:56:54.520 that Lenin even

00:56:55.060 stomped on it.

00:56:55.980 He says,

00:56:56.300 well,

00:56:56.400 that's a Satanic ritual.

00:56:57.580 I don't know.

00:56:57.960 I don't know

00:56:58.220 whether it is or not.

00:56:59.080 But there's another case

00:57:00.160 of Lenin

00:57:00.660 who at least did

00:57:01.240 the work of the devil.

00:57:02.540 I mean,

00:57:02.860 Lenin had,

00:57:04.360 according to Robert Conquest,

00:57:06.540 W.H. Chamberlain,

00:57:07.460 the first historian

00:57:08.100 of the Russian Revolution,

00:57:09.300 500,000 people

00:57:10.360 were killed

00:57:10.960 from 1917 to 1923

00:57:13.240 under Lenin,

00:57:13.900 not even including

00:57:14.500 the Russian Civil War.

00:57:15.440 If that's not

00:57:16.200 the devil's work,

00:57:16.880 I don't know

00:57:17.100 what the hell is,

00:57:17.960 right?

00:57:18.640 But,

00:57:18.920 but I think

00:57:19.620 what Payne said

00:57:20.880 in the latter quote,

00:57:22.100 the devil's view

00:57:22.820 of the world,

00:57:23.360 the devil's malignity,

00:57:24.340 and at the very least,

00:57:25.620 this identification

00:57:26.480 with kind of

00:57:27.680 devilish-like destruction,

00:57:30.060 right?

00:57:30.440 Tearing everything down,

00:57:31.700 rebelling against the world,

00:57:33.280 everything that exists 0.98

00:57:34.200 deserves to perish,

00:57:35.720 that at least. 0.94

00:57:37.240 And then the ideology

00:57:38.080 that he created

00:57:39.040 that just happened

00:57:40.440 to be responsible

00:57:41.880 for the deaths

00:57:42.600 of over 100 million people

00:57:44.080 in the 20th century,

00:57:45.940 you know,

00:57:46.120 more than World War I

00:57:47.320 and World War II combined.

00:57:48.900 So that ideology

00:57:50.920 was pretty hellacious.

00:57:53.360 Yeah,

00:57:54.160 to say the least.

00:57:55.820 Okay,

00:57:56.180 so,

00:57:57.080 and I think

00:57:57.700 it's very naive

00:57:58.380 not to assume

00:57:59.140 that the events

00:58:00.700 that we described

00:58:01.440 in Marx's life

00:58:02.260 are not connected.

00:58:04.380 Right.

00:58:04.540 Yeah,

00:58:04.840 correct.

00:58:05.100 And that his

00:58:06.220 economic polemics

00:58:08.500 were somehow

00:58:09.220 independent

00:58:09.760 of his poetic imagination.

00:58:12.040 It's like,

00:58:12.400 obviously they weren't

00:58:13.300 because they wouldn't

00:58:13.880 have had that

00:58:14.320 motivational force.

00:58:15.300 So they were calling

00:58:17.340 on dark forces,

00:58:19.480 obviously.

00:58:20.700 So,

00:58:21.300 because otherwise

00:58:21.880 they wouldn't have

00:58:22.460 compelled people

00:58:23.200 in that manner,

00:58:23.820 especially not toward

00:58:24.720 that sort of

00:58:25.720 immense sadistic murderousness

00:58:28.380 and utter destructiveness.

00:58:29.800 And of course,

00:58:30.240 get to the hatred of God,

00:58:31.760 which all the communists did.

00:58:33.180 So all the communists

00:58:34.100 thereafter

00:58:34.640 seek to ban religion. 0.78

00:58:35.860 Right,

00:58:36.120 right.

00:58:36.680 Atheists.

00:58:37.240 That's right.

00:58:37.640 They're not exactly atheists

00:58:38.740 because they're trying

00:58:39.420 to stomp something out.

00:58:40.820 That's right.

00:58:41.360 It's not just,

00:58:42.000 it's not just,

00:58:42.760 it's not a neutrality.

00:58:43.940 That's right.

00:58:44.360 It's not a neutrality

00:58:45.220 toward religion.

00:58:46.140 It's not irreligion.

00:58:47.200 It's not separation

00:58:47.880 of church and state.

00:58:49.000 It is militant,

00:58:49.880 aggressive atheism.

00:58:50.940 Trotsky and Lenin

00:58:51.700 create the league

00:58:52.740 of the militant godless.

00:58:54.180 Right.

00:58:54.520 They ban religion. 0.75

00:58:55.580 They have the Moscow 0.70

00:58:56.260 church trials.

00:58:57.180 They blow up churches.

00:58:58.300 They jail priests,

00:58:59.440 right?

00:59:00.400 You know,

00:59:00.780 the Solzhenitsyn writes

00:59:01.820 in the Gulag Archipelago,

00:59:02.880 they put nuns

00:59:03.540 in special sections

00:59:04.480 of the Gulag 0.98

00:59:05.140 with prostitutes. 1.00

00:59:05.920 Yes, 0.99

00:59:06.260 right.

00:59:06.560 Right,

00:59:06.820 deem them hoars 0.99

00:59:07.440 to Christ.

00:59:07.780 Absolutely.

00:59:08.280 Lenin said,

00:59:08.780 all worship of a divinity

00:59:10.440 is a necrophilia.

00:59:12.060 There is nothing more 0.99

00:59:13.240 abominable than religion. 0.98

00:59:14.860 Yeah.

00:59:15.220 So they don't just

00:59:16.680 try to stop religion. 0.93

00:59:18.040 They want Pol Pot,

00:59:21.120 the Buddhist monks

00:59:21.980 in Cambodia,

00:59:23.040 to renounce their vows,

00:59:25.400 to marry.

00:59:26.680 It's not enough

00:59:27.500 for them to be quiet.

00:59:29.180 And so after four years...

00:59:29.920 I don't know how

00:59:30.660 you can separate

00:59:31.780 a militantly

00:59:34.740 anti-religious atheism

00:59:37.080 from,

00:59:38.500 especially,

00:59:39.480 say,

00:59:39.700 within a Christian context,

00:59:41.020 from something

00:59:41.740 approximating

00:59:42.600 satanic

00:59:44.340 ideology,

00:59:46.500 because

00:59:46.760 I don't see how

00:59:49.000 conceptually

00:59:49.620 that separation

00:59:50.280 is possible.

00:59:51.100 It's one thing

00:59:51.780 to be atheist

00:59:52.480 in the manner

00:59:53.240 that leaves people

00:59:55.060 to go to hell 0.99

00:59:56.120 in a handbasket 1.00

00:59:56.840 in their own way,

00:59:57.940 but to be

00:59:58.860 actually

00:59:59.900 an enemy

01:00:01.200 of the religious enterprise,

01:00:02.940 that's a whole

01:00:03.540 different thing.

01:00:04.340 It is.

01:00:04.740 And that obviously

01:00:07.080 Marx and the communists

01:00:08.280 were obviously that.

01:00:09.380 Clearly,

01:00:09.860 obviously.

01:00:10.600 And Satan might say,

01:00:12.940 I don't care if you believe

01:00:13.800 in me or not,

01:00:14.400 you're doing my work,

01:00:15.320 man.

01:00:15.880 You're shutting down

01:00:16.940 churches,

01:00:17.360 blowing up churches.

01:00:18.360 That also touches

01:00:20.200 on the issue

01:00:20.880 of what it means

01:00:21.660 to believe.

01:00:23.100 Right?

01:00:23.400 And I mean,

01:00:24.400 you could imagine

01:00:25.780 someone comparatively

01:00:27.040 harmless

01:00:27.520 who toys with

01:00:29.280 ritualistic,

01:00:30.700 satanic activities

01:00:31.680 in a sort of

01:00:32.360 dramatic manner.

01:00:33.200 And then you could imagine

01:00:34.480 someone who tortures

01:00:35.580 nuns and priests 0.56

01:00:36.660 and burns down churches 0.98

01:00:38.040 but forgoes any

01:00:39.240 technical affiliation

01:00:40.820 with Satan.

01:00:41.640 Right.

01:00:41.800 I would say that

01:00:42.520 the latter is

01:00:43.360 the Satanist

01:00:44.680 in a much deeper sense

01:00:45.780 than the former.

01:00:46.580 That's right.

01:00:46.960 Not that what the former

01:00:47.720 is doing is excusable.

01:00:49.100 Yeah.

01:00:49.360 Or they're satanic.

01:00:50.580 Yes, right.

01:00:51.340 But to do

01:00:54.340 what the communists

01:00:55.200 did

01:00:55.680 to the religious enterprise

01:00:57.320 is evidence

01:00:58.940 of something

01:00:59.500 far more militant

01:01:00.700 than a mere atheism.

01:01:02.460 Yeah.

01:01:02.600 So, okay, okay.

01:01:03.860 Now, here's something

01:01:04.860 that was bothering me too

01:01:05.860 when I was reading your book.

01:01:07.000 So, one of the things

01:01:08.840 that the radical leftists do

01:01:10.720 that especially,

01:01:12.560 and this is sort of

01:01:13.200 in proportion to their,

01:01:14.640 what would you say,

01:01:16.440 their intellectual

01:01:17.400 arrogance

01:01:20.000 is elevate themselves

01:01:22.720 on moral grounds

01:01:23.760 above the great figures

01:01:25.520 of the past.

01:01:26.540 So, I can hardly stand

01:01:28.000 going into art museums anymore

01:01:29.360 because a typical art museum now,

01:01:31.700 and this is true

01:01:32.400 even of the greatest museums

01:01:33.520 in the West,

01:01:34.100 is a great painting

01:01:34.960 with a little polemic

01:01:37.400 off to the side

01:01:38.380 written by some art critic

01:01:40.100 who's basically claiming

01:01:41.980 moral superiority

01:01:42.920 over the artist

01:01:43.820 because of their adherence

01:01:45.280 to whatever the current

01:01:46.120 ideological doctrine is. 0.94

01:01:47.460 It's sickening.

01:01:48.320 Even though that work of art

01:01:49.400 has survived for six centuries.

01:01:52.020 We're still looking at it.

01:01:52.660 Well, but imagine

01:01:53.440 what a great advantage

01:01:55.100 it is to the art critic

01:01:56.720 to be able to claim

01:01:57.880 moral superiority

01:01:58.880 to a truly great man

01:02:00.420 of the past

01:02:01.060 without having to actually

01:02:02.480 have accomplished anything.

01:02:03.620 I mean, what a deal, right?

01:02:04.840 Okay, so, but I would like

01:02:09.160 to be very careful

01:02:10.040 in our conceptualization here

01:02:11.980 because I've thought

01:02:13.240 the same way about Foucault.

01:02:15.700 So, Foucault was a person

01:02:18.660 rather unpleasant,

01:02:20.080 you might say,

01:02:20.960 in his personal habits.

01:02:22.400 Like, seriously unpleasant.

01:02:24.680 And so, but here's our conundrum.

01:02:28.300 So, in the story of Noah,

01:02:32.960 Noah is described as a man

01:02:34.700 who's good in his generation.

01:02:36.680 And it seems to mean something like

01:02:38.720 for his time and place,

01:02:40.880 he was a good man.

01:02:42.420 And there might be men

01:02:44.000 that are so good

01:02:44.720 that their goodness

01:02:45.380 transcends their time and place.

01:02:47.640 And I think we remember

01:02:48.720 men like that.

01:02:49.740 But the typical amount

01:02:51.120 of goodness

01:02:51.560 that you could expect

01:02:52.500 from someone

01:02:53.020 is that for their time

01:02:54.000 and place, they're good.

01:02:55.560 Okay, so now,

01:02:56.560 the temptation would be

01:02:57.720 for us to look back

01:02:58.820 into history

01:02:59.500 to great figures of the past

01:03:01.300 and to say,

01:03:02.000 we understand

01:03:03.540 what wasn't good,

01:03:05.380 even if we misunderstand it,

01:03:06.680 about their time and place.

01:03:07.820 And then to say,

01:03:08.560 well, those people weren't good

01:03:10.320 and we should,

01:03:11.740 we are now morally superior to them

01:03:13.580 and we can remove

01:03:14.880 the detritus from our past.

01:03:16.240 We can tear down

01:03:16.880 the statues, for example.

01:03:18.120 Sure.

01:03:18.320 It's happening in Canada.

01:03:19.400 We're going to tear down

01:03:20.500 the statues of John A. MacDonald,

01:03:22.200 who was the founding

01:03:22.860 prime minister of Canada.

01:03:24.080 And we point to his inadequacies

01:03:26.080 as a person.

01:03:27.180 Okay, so.

01:03:27.620 Sure.

01:03:27.720 Churchill.

01:03:28.580 Sure, absolutely.

01:03:30.120 Churchill's a great example.

01:03:31.400 And that sort of thing

01:03:32.060 is happening all over the U.S.

01:03:33.280 Right.

01:03:33.580 Now,

01:03:34.500 how do you know

01:03:36.540 that

01:03:38.500 the leftist

01:03:40.340 criticism of your critique

01:03:43.620 would be something like,

01:03:44.620 has to be something like,

01:03:46.660 you have to separate

01:03:47.760 the man,

01:03:48.640 the works from the man.

01:03:50.700 Okay.

01:03:51.660 And I have some sympathy

01:03:53.920 for that because

01:03:54.760 because there are,

01:03:56.720 like,

01:03:57.260 Picasso's a good example.

01:03:59.160 And Picasso,

01:04:00.580 by any measure,

01:04:02.500 was a remarkable artist

01:04:03.940 and unbelievably productive.

01:04:05.960 He produced three

01:04:07.140 pieces of art a day

01:04:08.800 for 65 years.

01:04:10.620 Right?

01:04:10.940 I can't remember

01:04:11.560 how many tens of thousands

01:04:12.540 of pieces.

01:04:13.100 It's some insane number.

01:04:14.700 And was revolutionary

01:04:16.040 in that manner.

01:04:16.740 But by the way,

01:04:17.920 the left will not separate

01:04:19.440 the accomplishments

01:04:21.060 of the man

01:04:21.900 from the personal life

01:04:23.120 of the man

01:04:23.480 when it comes to people

01:04:24.500 they don't like.

01:04:25.020 Yes, I know.

01:04:25.780 I know,

01:04:26.420 but how do you...

01:04:26.980 They're very selective.

01:04:28.020 Okay,

01:04:28.300 but how do you,

01:04:30.100 as an academic,

01:04:32.060 you can imagine

01:04:33.260 that there should be

01:04:34.420 some separation

01:04:35.200 between the products

01:04:36.720 of thought

01:04:37.580 and the personality

01:04:38.680 of the person.

01:04:39.540 Right.

01:04:39.680 Okay,

01:04:39.880 so are you concerned

01:04:41.920 about that

01:04:42.560 in relationship

01:04:43.760 to your critique

01:04:44.640 of Marx and Marxism?

01:04:47.060 No,

01:04:47.200 it's a great question.

01:04:48.220 And by the way,

01:04:49.580 in case we don't get to it,

01:04:51.960 people should know

01:04:53.020 Marx's views on race,

01:04:54.460 especially toward black people.

01:04:56.420 I mean, 0.99

01:04:56.900 he had hideous views 0.99

01:04:58.760 toward black people. 0.99

01:05:00.200 All stuff 0.99

01:05:00.800 that should get him canceled.

01:05:02.080 I don't believe

01:05:02.700 in canceling anybody.

01:05:04.320 But the things

01:05:05.080 that the left

01:05:05.600 is willing to cancel

01:05:06.680 this or that

01:05:07.680 American figure on

01:05:08.640 because of maybe

01:05:09.240 a statement about race

01:05:10.300 or somebody who owns slaves.

01:05:11.760 I mean,

01:05:12.220 what Marx said

01:05:12.960 about black people 0.66

01:05:13.740 is unbelievable. 0.98

01:05:14.520 You'll be reading letters

01:05:15.320 in German

01:05:15.880 between Marx and Engels

01:05:17.620 and all of a sudden

01:05:18.340 the N-word pops up.

01:05:20.340 You know,

01:05:20.480 the American English

01:05:22.300 racial epithet,

01:05:23.960 you know,

01:05:24.120 N-I-G-G. 1.00

01:05:25.000 It's not like the German word 0.95

01:05:26.260 for Negro or black.

01:05:27.480 It's like,

01:05:27.800 whoa,

01:05:27.980 look at that.

01:05:29.120 And they were,

01:05:30.660 in fact,

01:05:31.240 his daughter

01:05:32.300 was married

01:05:32.980 to a guy named

01:05:35.180 Paul Lafargue

01:05:36.040 who was,

01:05:37.440 I guess,

01:05:37.820 partly Cuban

01:05:38.580 to some degree.

01:05:39.580 And Marx and Engels

01:05:40.340 are sitting there

01:05:40.880 trying to figure out

01:05:41.640 in a letter

01:05:42.080 deducing with scientific

01:05:43.860 accuracy

01:05:44.580 how much N-word

01:05:46.140 blood

01:05:46.740 is in his veins.

01:05:48.040 Is it one-eighth?

01:05:48.760 Is it one-twelfth?

01:05:50.000 And they called him

01:05:51.420 Negrillo,

01:05:52.360 the gorilla.

01:05:53.440 And they made fun of him 0.93

01:05:54.560 because he was black.

01:05:55.440 And there's a letter

01:05:55.920 from Engels 0.53

01:05:56.400 to Marx's daughter

01:05:57.380 who says something like,

01:05:58.380 oh,

01:05:58.520 here he's running

01:05:59.140 for office

01:05:59.900 in this district

01:06:00.760 in Paris.

01:06:01.600 Well,

01:06:01.860 it contains a zoo

01:06:02.860 as somebody

01:06:04.780 who's,

01:06:06.220 he should be

01:06:06.880 a perfect representative

01:06:07.860 of that district

01:06:08.500 being somebody

01:06:09.360 who's just

01:06:10.140 closer to the apes

01:06:13.100 and the monkeys

01:06:13.660 than we are.

01:06:16.680 Ferdinand LaSalle,

01:06:17.660 who they refer to

01:06:18.280 as the Jewish N-word,

01:06:19.860 they're looking 0.96

01:06:20.280 at his cranial capacity

01:06:22.180 and all kinds of,

01:06:23.260 so,

01:06:23.580 I mean,

01:06:23.880 very,

01:06:24.480 very racist.

01:06:25.420 If Patrice Cullors,

01:06:26.640 one of the founders

01:06:27.260 of Black Lives Matter

01:06:28.380 who calls herself

01:06:29.160 a Marxist,

01:06:30.240 knew what Marx

01:06:30.800 said about race,

01:06:31.760 she'd probably 0.88

01:06:32.200 call herself,

01:06:32.820 I don't know,

01:06:33.100 maybe a communist,

01:06:33.780 but she probably

01:06:34.680 shouldn't call herself

01:06:35.340 a Marxist.

01:06:36.600 But in Marx's case,

01:06:37.920 to get to your question,

01:06:39.500 the personal,

01:06:41.540 what he believed

01:06:43.000 in his writings

01:06:43.640 and his ideas

01:06:44.500 and the world

01:06:45.500 that he wanted

01:06:46.120 is in fact

01:06:47.240 an extension

01:06:48.000 of his personal life.

01:06:50.020 So it's a fascinating

01:06:50.980 example of where

01:06:52.280 what he wanted

01:06:54.100 in public

01:06:54.960 very much

01:06:56.420 is reflective

01:06:56.960 of what he believed

01:06:57.820 in private.

01:06:58.560 Yeah.

01:06:58.940 Because communism,

01:07:00.580 again,

01:07:00.940 people read,

01:07:02.000 actually sit down

01:07:02.960 and read the manifesto,

01:07:04.600 okay?

01:07:05.340 I mean,

01:07:05.800 they actually call

01:07:07.720 for the forcible

01:07:09.340 overthrow

01:07:10.020 of all existing

01:07:11.680 conditions.

01:07:12.240 That's an actual

01:07:12.980 phrase.

01:07:14.240 That's in the

01:07:15.080 next to the last

01:07:17.200 paragraph.

01:07:17.460 Well,

01:07:17.500 the problem is

01:07:18.440 that for many people

01:07:19.660 that wouldn't be shocking.

01:07:21.580 It would actually

01:07:22.160 be admirable.

01:07:23.420 Right?

01:07:23.800 Yes.

01:07:23.900 Well,

01:07:24.200 seriously,

01:07:24.780 because what we tend

01:07:26.880 to think is that

01:07:27.760 if the excesses

01:07:29.640 of the real revolutionaries

01:07:31.840 were revealed,

01:07:32.960 that people would be

01:07:34.160 less attracted to them,

01:07:35.480 and I'm less

01:07:36.320 optimistic about that,

01:07:38.320 because if people

01:07:39.480 can regard Lucifer

01:07:40.660 himself as an

01:07:41.620 admirable rebel,

01:07:42.600 then the overreach

01:07:44.340 of the revolutionaries

01:07:45.400 is actually an

01:07:46.100 attractive part

01:07:46.900 of their fervor.

01:07:47.860 Right?

01:07:48.760 Because you're

01:07:49.480 hypothesizing something

01:07:50.760 like an overarching

01:07:52.000 reason that you

01:07:53.400 could just appeal to

01:07:54.520 by contrast,

01:07:56.220 and that that would

01:07:56.760 do the trick.

01:07:57.400 It's like,

01:07:58.040 it isn't,

01:07:58.640 it isn't,

01:07:59.620 I think that the

01:08:02.260 degree to which,

01:08:03.140 for example,

01:08:03.600 the real radical

01:08:04.460 protesters that are

01:08:05.660 burning down cities

01:08:06.500 aren't aiming at

01:08:07.680 burning down the cities

01:08:08.680 is highly questionable.

01:08:09.820 Yeah,

01:08:10.080 yeah.

01:08:10.320 Right.

01:08:10.600 Yeah,

01:08:10.720 so to actually go down

01:08:11.680 and to go down

01:08:12.820 into the village square

01:08:13.900 and just rip down

01:08:15.640 the statue,

01:08:16.760 right?

01:08:17.040 To go up and down

01:08:18.280 the California coast

01:08:19.560 to all the missions

01:08:20.480 that were founded

01:08:21.220 by St.

01:08:22.360 Junipero Serra,

01:08:23.640 who,

01:08:23.800 by the way,

01:08:23.920 was canonized by

01:08:24.720 Pope Francis,

01:08:25.360 of all people,

01:08:26.080 right?

01:08:26.340 To go to every

01:08:27.140 single mission

01:08:27.980 and tear them down, 0.84

01:08:29.540 right?

01:08:29.880 Every single,

01:08:30.220 so what are you

01:08:30.880 tearing down?

01:08:31.480 Yeah,

01:08:31.780 right.

01:08:32.000 Do you even know

01:08:32.420 who this guy,

01:08:32.900 and what are you

01:08:33.340 trying to put in place?

01:08:34.280 That's right.

01:08:34.940 Certainly you.

01:08:37.420 And in many cases,

01:08:39.040 they seem to be

01:08:40.020 tearing down

01:08:40.660 for the sake

01:08:41.200 of tearing down.

01:08:41.920 Yes,

01:08:41.960 absolutely.

01:08:42.700 And so this quote

01:08:43.540 from Marx

01:08:44.080 would go right into this.

01:08:45.140 This is in the next

01:08:45.820 to the last paragraph

01:08:46.640 of the manifesto.

01:08:48.620 They,

01:08:49.300 the communists,

01:08:50.600 openly declare,

01:08:51.980 this is an amazing

01:08:52.820 statement,

01:08:53.640 that their ends

01:08:54.740 can be attained

01:08:55.700 only by the

01:08:57.580 forcible overthrow

01:08:58.920 of all existing

01:09:00.320 social conditions.

01:09:02.120 So their ends

01:09:02.780 can be attained

01:09:03.680 only,

01:09:04.520 only by the

01:09:05.920 forcible overthrow

01:09:07.400 of all existing

01:09:09.060 social conditions.

01:09:09.900 And by the way,

01:09:10.880 I don't even know,

01:09:12.080 find me a leftist

01:09:13.000 who wants to

01:09:13.780 overthrow

01:09:14.520 absolutely everything.

01:09:16.660 I mean,

01:09:17.080 certainly there,

01:09:17.800 you know,

01:09:17.960 you can name

01:09:18.440 some things

01:09:19.200 you'd like to keep,

01:09:20.340 right?

01:09:21.140 This guy wanted

01:09:22.460 everything

01:09:23.700 to be overthrown.

01:09:24.220 Well,

01:09:24.460 it's worse than that.

01:09:25.580 So this isn't just

01:09:26.320 about spreading

01:09:26.960 the wealth

01:09:27.460 and redistribution.

01:09:28.100 This is about

01:09:28.440 forcibly overthrowing

01:09:29.700 everything.

01:09:30.780 Well,

01:09:31.200 there's two elements

01:09:31.900 of that,

01:09:32.400 three elements

01:09:32.900 of that

01:09:33.220 that are appalling,

01:09:34.540 right?

01:09:34.940 And it's difficult

01:09:35.420 to differentiate

01:09:36.280 the one that's

01:09:37.860 most appalling.

01:09:38.660 First,

01:09:39.060 that it's everything.

01:09:40.020 So it's like

01:09:41.860 a parody

01:09:42.320 of omniscience

01:09:43.220 and omnipresence

01:09:44.660 and omnipotence.

01:09:45.760 It's everything.

01:09:46.660 Okay.

01:09:47.260 Second,

01:09:48.360 it's,

01:09:49.440 so it's everything

01:09:51.660 two.

01:09:53.620 Let's go for two. 0.90

01:09:55.260 It's also not

01:09:56.480 a consequence

01:09:57.240 of a critique,

01:09:58.720 right?

01:09:59.260 And it's not

01:10:00.020 invitational,

01:10:01.120 right?

01:10:01.940 It's forcible.

01:10:02.920 Right,

01:10:03.080 right.

01:10:03.200 That's right.

01:10:03.780 So not only

01:10:04.680 do you have

01:10:05.140 the worship

01:10:05.600 of destruction

01:10:06.280 and utter destruction,

01:10:07.840 you have the worship

01:10:08.880 of power,

01:10:09.880 right?

01:10:10.280 Now,

01:10:10.460 you remember

01:10:10.960 when Christ

01:10:13.040 is out in the desert

01:10:14.020 and tempted

01:10:15.240 by Satan

01:10:15.880 after the 40 days

01:10:17.080 of isolation,

01:10:19.060 after the baptism,

01:10:20.720 that the third

01:10:22.060 temptation of Satan,

01:10:23.860 which is,

01:10:24.380 I would say,

01:10:25.000 the ultimate temptation,

01:10:26.820 is one of power.

01:10:28.340 Right,

01:10:28.920 now,

01:10:29.300 it's very interesting.

01:10:30.120 You're going to have all of this.

01:10:30.820 Right,

01:10:30.980 right.

01:10:31.260 It's straightforward power.

01:10:33.660 And that's the temptation

01:10:35.460 that Moses falls prey to

01:10:37.360 continually in his work

01:10:38.680 as the Exodus leader

01:10:40.740 as well.

01:10:41.380 It's why he doesn't get

01:10:42.160 into the promised land.

01:10:43.080 Like,

01:10:43.620 there's a very strict,

01:10:45.940 and it's something

01:10:46.580 that Christ himself

01:10:47.440 forswears utterly.

01:10:49.220 No force.

01:10:50.300 No force.

01:10:50.900 Right.

01:10:51.080 Regardless of the provocation.

01:10:52.700 Yeah.

01:10:53.080 Now,

01:10:53.400 what you have here

01:10:54.220 in this doctrine

01:10:55.600 that you just described

01:10:56.600 is not only

01:10:57.260 the desire

01:10:58.100 for universal destruction, 0.73

01:11:00.240 which,

01:11:00.720 as you pointed out,

01:11:01.600 is part and parcel

01:11:03.460 of Marx's celebration

01:11:05.180 of Goethe's

01:11:07.080 Mephistophelian doctrine,

01:11:10.900 but also allied

01:11:12.280 with worship of power itself.

01:11:13.860 Right.

01:11:14.080 Because otherwise,

01:11:14.860 why the forcible?

01:11:15.860 Right.

01:11:16.020 Because he could have written

01:11:16.840 the overthrow of everything.

01:11:18.080 That's right.

01:11:18.480 And that could happen

01:11:19.220 at the level of idea.

01:11:20.480 Yeah.

01:11:20.640 And of course...

01:11:21.240 Or even the phrase

01:11:22.020 the end,

01:11:22.800 right?

01:11:23.400 It can only be attained

01:11:24.720 with the end of all...

01:11:27.720 Right.

01:11:28.040 Yeah.

01:11:28.500 But no,

01:11:28.820 they want the forcible overthrow.

01:11:30.640 Right.

01:11:30.980 Which begs the question.

01:11:32.100 That means force.

01:11:32.640 So what is it that you want?

01:11:34.740 Do you want the end state

01:11:36.060 where everything's raised

01:11:37.020 to the ground

01:11:37.500 so that you have

01:11:38.100 a new beginning?

01:11:38.860 Or do you want

01:11:39.660 all the absolutely

01:11:41.360 satanic pleasure

01:11:43.460 of the act

01:11:44.760 of forcible destruction?

01:11:45.900 Right, right.

01:11:46.080 And I would say

01:11:46.860 if you spend any time

01:11:48.760 at all

01:11:49.200 analyzing the history

01:11:50.580 of Stalinist Soviet Union,

01:11:53.560 including the Leninist period

01:11:54.920 for that matter,

01:11:56.860 what you see fundamentally

01:11:58.560 is a celebration

01:12:00.940 of sadistic devastation.

01:12:03.620 Right?

01:12:03.860 That's the fundamental ethos.

01:12:06.060 That's the fundamental goal.

01:12:07.500 Now,

01:12:07.800 the flag-waving about

01:12:08.900 the new utopia

01:12:10.380 that's going to be created

01:12:11.300 in the future,

01:12:11.920 that's all cover story.

01:12:13.380 Right.

01:12:13.560 That's all camouflage.

01:12:14.660 Sure.

01:12:14.920 The actual worship is...

01:12:16.740 Because the things

01:12:17.480 that happened

01:12:18.040 in those communist countries

01:12:20.380 are so appalling 0.84

01:12:21.520 that...

01:12:21.920 Yeah, it's unbelievable.

01:12:22.340 Well,

01:12:22.520 that people won't

01:12:23.160 pay any attention to them

01:12:24.060 because they're too much

01:12:25.600 to even contemplate.

01:12:27.260 Right, right.

01:12:27.760 And so,

01:12:28.420 no one wants to know

01:12:29.380 anything about them.

01:12:30.360 But it seems to me

01:12:31.900 that the point

01:12:34.080 of dancing naked

01:12:36.600 and triumphantly

01:12:38.240 in the smoking runes,

01:12:40.200 that's fundamentally the point.

01:12:42.040 And if you happen

01:12:42.600 to be jumping up

01:12:43.820 and down

01:12:44.160 on the bodies

01:12:44.720 of your enemies

01:12:45.460 and the toppled statues

01:12:47.820 of your culture,

01:12:49.480 so much the better.

01:12:50.980 And wondering

01:12:51.860 how it goes,

01:12:53.080 how the personal matters

01:12:54.420 with like the public, right?

01:12:55.940 Okay,

01:12:56.320 the end of his manifesto

01:12:58.880 calls for the forcible overthrow

01:13:01.000 of everything that exists.

01:13:02.200 So,

01:13:02.440 that's an actual

01:13:03.360 policy prescription

01:13:04.740 at the end, right?

01:13:06.180 We're going to forcibly

01:13:06.960 overthrow everything

01:13:07.820 that exists.

01:13:08.820 And as we saw

01:13:09.400 in the private,

01:13:10.260 that's what he believes

01:13:11.080 in his life,

01:13:11.960 in the poetry.

01:13:13.400 So,

01:13:13.620 you see it in the poetry.

01:13:14.800 So,

01:13:15.000 you see one directly

01:13:16.320 leads to the other.

01:13:17.420 His hatred of religion,

01:13:19.200 right?

01:13:19.460 Communism begins

01:13:20.360 where atheism begins.

01:13:21.940 The famous line,

01:13:23.960 the opiate of the masses,

01:13:25.160 right?

01:13:25.560 That full quote,

01:13:26.760 a lot of people,

01:13:27.440 I've heard people say

01:13:28.140 from time to time,

01:13:29.200 well,

01:13:29.520 I kind of see

01:13:30.160 what he's getting at there.

01:13:31.300 Yeah.

01:13:31.560 Religion can be like 1.00

01:13:32.520 a sort of drug

01:13:33.880 for people,

01:13:34.760 right?

01:13:34.920 Yeah.

01:13:35.200 Maybe like a placebo,

01:13:36.800 maybe like a crutch.

01:13:38.140 But if you read

01:13:38.860 that whole line,

01:13:40.700 religion is the sigh 0.98

01:13:42.640 of the oppressed creature.

01:13:44.540 It is,

01:13:44.920 it is the heart

01:13:46.620 of a heartless world.

01:13:48.360 It is the soul

01:13:49.380 of soulless conditions.

01:13:51.520 It is the opium

01:13:52.660 of the people.

01:13:53.860 And then Lenin

01:13:54.420 picked that up

01:13:55.040 and said,

01:13:55.740 yeah,

01:13:56.060 like Marx said, 0.90

01:13:57.280 religion is the opium 1.00

01:13:58.600 of the masses. 0.56

01:13:59.260 It is a kind

01:14:00.040 of spiritual booze.

01:14:02.340 It is medieval mildew.

01:14:04.620 There is nothing

01:14:05.560 more abominable 0.99

01:14:06.760 than religion. 0.73

01:14:07.960 And so,

01:14:08.360 what does that mean? 0.98

01:14:09.240 Damn it, 0.99

01:14:09.660 that means we're going 1.00

01:14:10.360 to shut down

01:14:11.040 the churches,

01:14:11.880 right?

01:14:12.280 And we're going

01:14:13.040 to put them in jail

01:14:14.120 and we're going

01:14:15.040 to be an officially

01:14:15.800 atheistic country.

01:14:16.900 We're going to create

01:14:17.400 a league of the militant

01:14:18.500 godless.

01:14:19.020 You're not going

01:14:20.000 to be allowed

01:14:20.460 to be a religious person.

01:14:22.480 So,

01:14:22.640 the private thoughts

01:14:24.040 are actually being implemented

01:14:25.640 and acted out.

01:14:27.360 Well,

01:14:27.540 the other thing too

01:14:28.240 about that phrase

01:14:29.240 is it's actually a lie.

01:14:31.460 And it's a lie

01:14:32.520 in two ways.

01:14:33.340 So,

01:14:33.760 there's a Canadian

01:14:34.400 philosopher,

01:14:35.620 Taylor,

01:14:36.560 who wrote about this

01:14:37.720 in a book he wrote

01:14:38.420 on identity.

01:14:39.660 And he pointed out

01:14:40.820 that the medieval

01:14:43.460 fear of hell

01:14:44.720 was at least

01:14:46.420 the equal

01:14:47.020 of the medieval

01:14:47.800 fear of death.

01:14:49.320 Okay,

01:14:49.560 so that begs

01:14:50.340 a question.

01:14:51.340 It's like,

01:14:51.880 if your religion 0.95

01:14:53.040 is an opium,

01:14:55.520 then why isn't

01:14:57.100 it just all

01:14:57.680 smiley faces

01:14:58.420 and fun?

01:14:59.800 Yeah.

01:14:59.980 Right?

01:15:00.260 Well,

01:15:00.900 hell is a really

01:15:01.760 good start.

01:15:02.520 It's like,

01:15:03.240 and you know,

01:15:03.760 the cynics might say,

01:15:04.860 well,

01:15:05.080 hell is a convenient

01:15:05.860 place to put 0.60

01:15:06.580 those you hate.

01:15:07.560 But that's,

01:15:08.340 you have to be

01:15:09.100 cynical and naive 1.00

01:15:10.760 and stupid 1.00

01:15:11.440 to come up 1.00

01:15:12.220 with that theory

01:15:12.820 because you're 1.00

01:15:14.200 a fool 1.00

01:15:14.660 if you think 1.00

01:15:15.440 that the fear

01:15:16.240 of hell

01:15:16.880 was anything

01:15:17.900 but real

01:15:18.640 among the believers

01:15:20.780 in those periods

01:15:22.000 of time

01:15:22.400 where the reality

01:15:23.660 of hell

01:15:24.000 was amplified.

01:15:25.420 They were terrified

01:15:26.160 of that.

01:15:26.940 Right?

01:15:27.260 And so,

01:15:27.800 what are you going

01:15:29.040 to do?

01:15:29.320 You're going to do

01:15:29.720 something convoluted

01:15:30.580 like,

01:15:30.880 well,

01:15:30.980 you have to

01:15:31.600 leave in the opium

01:15:32.760 with a bit of terror

01:15:34.100 so that it becomes

01:15:35.200 believable enough

01:15:36.420 to be a soporific.

01:15:38.400 It's like,

01:15:38.820 hey man,

01:15:39.680 your theory's getting

01:15:40.340 a little convoluted

01:15:41.200 at that point.

01:15:41.940 It's like,

01:15:43.060 why bother with hell?

01:15:44.640 And so,

01:15:45.240 that to me,

01:15:46.240 and it's the same

01:15:46.920 with the Freudian critique,

01:15:48.080 you know,

01:15:48.340 that it's a form

01:15:49.900 of immaturity

01:15:50.620 and over-reliance

01:15:51.900 on a benevolent father.

01:15:53.080 It's like,

01:15:53.460 well,

01:15:53.580 the father isn't

01:15:54.240 all benevolent.

01:15:55.280 There's hell.

01:15:56.100 Right.

01:15:56.260 And so,

01:15:56.580 you better watch

01:15:57.520 your step.

01:15:58.520 Yeah.

01:15:58.820 And part of that

01:15:59.980 is implemented

01:16:00.800 by terror.

01:16:02.000 And then,

01:16:02.560 there's more to it

01:16:03.340 than that too.

01:16:03.480 And Jesus said,

01:16:04.100 you want to follow me?

01:16:04.800 Pick up your cross.

01:16:05.420 Well,

01:16:05.580 that's the next thing.

01:16:06.700 It's like,

01:16:07.260 okay,

01:16:07.900 so,

01:16:08.720 we have Christ,

01:16:09.600 the happy-faced God

01:16:11.040 who asks people only

01:16:13.080 to believe

01:16:13.800 that everything is good

01:16:15.060 and there's no price

01:16:16.380 to be paid for that.

01:16:17.640 No,

01:16:18.060 that's not,

01:16:18.460 that's exactly,

01:16:19.580 that couldn't be

01:16:20.580 a bigger lie

01:16:21.420 because there isn't

01:16:22.600 a larger sacrifice

01:16:23.900 that is possible

01:16:25.120 than the one

01:16:26.180 that the founder

01:16:27.700 of Christianity

01:16:28.400 required of himself

01:16:29.920 and his followers.

01:16:31.060 There's nothing in that,

01:16:32.180 in the least,

01:16:32.920 that's opiate.

01:16:33.880 Now,

01:16:34.120 you might say,

01:16:34.680 well,

01:16:34.780 the happy thought

01:16:35.480 that you go to heaven

01:16:36.240 when you die

01:16:37.000 is the opiate.

01:16:38.600 It's like,

01:16:39.020 well,

01:16:40.220 wait a second.

01:16:41.500 First of all,

01:16:42.240 that only happens

01:16:43.020 if you've actually

01:16:44.140 lived a good life

01:16:45.460 and the cost

01:16:46.740 of not doing that

01:16:47.720 is,

01:16:48.160 well,

01:16:48.380 now we're back

01:16:49.240 to the hell problem. 0.57

01:16:50.220 So,

01:16:50.580 I don't buy

01:16:51.760 the Freudian interpretation

01:16:54.200 that it's all,

01:16:55.720 you know,

01:16:56.040 immature dependence

01:16:56.860 on the heavenly father,

01:16:58.580 so to speak,

01:16:59.140 and I certainly don't buy

01:17:00.480 the Marxist doctrine

01:17:01.320 that there's anything

01:17:02.120 about it that's opiate.

01:17:03.280 Now,

01:17:03.740 you could say

01:17:04.680 any naive person

01:17:07.220 and any person

01:17:08.260 looking for

01:17:09.200 unearned security

01:17:11.220 could take any doctrine

01:17:13.120 and use it

01:17:14.040 as a security blanket.

01:17:15.580 And I think

01:17:16.060 there's some truth in that,

01:17:17.020 but boy,

01:17:17.400 if you don't think

01:17:17.900 that applies

01:17:18.440 to radical leftism

01:17:19.600 as much as it applies

01:17:20.500 to Christianity,

01:17:21.860 far more than it applies

01:17:23.940 to Christianity,

01:17:24.580 you're not thinking

01:17:25.760 in the least.

01:17:27.060 I mean,

01:17:27.340 what you see

01:17:27.880 with the radical leftists

01:17:29.020 on campus now

01:17:29.860 is that they make

01:17:30.980 the presumption

01:17:31.540 that all the leftists

01:17:32.960 theorizing

01:17:33.520 is predicated on

01:17:34.580 an admirable compassion.

01:17:36.540 It's like,

01:17:36.860 well,

01:17:37.100 if you want an opiate,

01:17:38.400 there's one.

01:17:39.120 Right.

01:17:39.740 Hyper simplification,

01:17:41.200 pathological hyper simplification

01:17:42.860 that's morally self-serving

01:17:44.440 and dangerous

01:17:45.660 beyond belief.

01:17:46.680 Right, right.

01:17:47.260 So,

01:17:47.920 and Marx said,

01:17:48.940 I was just looking

01:17:49.360 for the quote right now

01:17:50.200 and I couldn't find it,

01:17:51.380 but one of his criticisms

01:17:53.180 of Christianity later

01:17:54.340 was he said

01:17:55.380 it preaches cowardice,

01:17:58.380 self-contempt,

01:17:59.760 self-abasement,

01:18:00.860 self-sacrifice.

01:18:02.420 It's like,

01:18:02.780 well,

01:18:02.980 yeah.

01:18:03.300 I don't know

01:18:04.680 if it preaches cowardice,

01:18:05.940 but it preaches self-sacrifice.

01:18:07.960 those things don't go

01:18:08.780 in the same category.

01:18:09.600 Right, exactly.

01:18:10.320 No,

01:18:10.480 they certainly don't.

01:18:11.300 I know,

01:18:11.560 but Christ did,

01:18:12.520 didn't lack courage.

01:18:13.960 Right.

01:18:14.260 Right?

01:18:14.960 But for Mark,

01:18:16.240 it was about

01:18:16.900 the self,

01:18:18.140 selfishness.

01:18:19.440 And in fact,

01:18:20.620 that moment

01:18:21.420 where the devil

01:18:23.200 is tempting Christ,

01:18:24.480 right,

01:18:24.900 and Christ says to him,

01:18:26.980 man does not live

01:18:27.820 on bread alone.

01:18:28.380 Yes,

01:18:28.800 yes,

01:18:29.300 yes.

01:18:29.660 The Marxist

01:18:30.680 actually acts

01:18:31.660 as if man

01:18:32.200 does live

01:18:32.700 on bread alone.

01:18:33.320 Precisely.

01:18:33.840 And they believe

01:18:35.400 that if you solve

01:18:36.160 the economic problem,

01:18:37.640 if you solve

01:18:38.240 the class problem,

01:18:39.580 I mean,

01:18:39.840 that's the key

01:18:40.380 to your utopia

01:18:41.120 right there.

01:18:42.220 It's as if,

01:18:42.920 you know,

01:18:43.100 Augustine said,

01:18:44.220 we have a God-shaped

01:18:45.340 vacuum in each of us,

01:18:47.000 right?

01:18:47.460 But he didn't say

01:18:48.120 we have a dollar-shaped

01:18:49.120 vacuum in each of us,

01:18:50.180 but the communists,

01:18:50.960 they act as if

01:18:51.740 we have a dollar-shaped vacuum.

01:18:52.380 Yeah,

01:18:52.600 I know,

01:18:52.940 that's one of the other

01:18:53.860 things that's so perverse

01:18:54.920 about the communists

01:18:55.800 is that although

01:18:56.740 hypothetically

01:18:57.800 they're anti-capitalist,

01:18:59.300 they believe that

01:19:00.180 there's an economic

01:19:01.080 solution to every problem.

01:19:02.500 Exactly.

01:19:02.840 Yeah,

01:19:02.980 it's so perverse.

01:19:04.260 Yeah,

01:19:04.560 so the communists

01:19:05.300 and the leftists

01:19:05.920 will say all the time,

01:19:07.060 oh,

01:19:07.260 you capitalists,

01:19:08.020 all you guys

01:19:08.440 care about money.

01:19:09.400 No,

01:19:09.700 Karl Marx,

01:19:10.500 all you care about

01:19:11.640 is money.

01:19:12.500 I mean,

01:19:12.840 all you care about

01:19:13.780 is the material world.

01:19:15.560 It's like they're

01:19:16.120 fashioning their golden calf

01:19:17.820 out of money and capital.

01:19:19.660 They just think that

01:19:20.380 if you redistribute wealth,

01:19:22.260 if you can level the classes,

01:19:23.740 if everybody has equal income,

01:19:25.860 right,

01:19:26.180 that that's your key

01:19:27.560 to utopia,

01:19:28.400 right?

01:19:28.580 They think man does

01:19:29.520 live by bread alone.

01:19:30.480 Yes,

01:19:30.740 definitely.

01:19:31.400 But we don't,

01:19:32.860 right?

01:19:33.160 So they're alpha

01:19:33.920 and omega

01:19:34.580 is the economic problem.

01:19:36.500 Yeah.

01:19:39.140 Pope Benedict XVI

01:19:40.500 said the,

01:19:41.840 you know,

01:19:42.300 the problem

01:19:43.860 with the communists,

01:19:44.800 it's not the communism

01:19:45.500 failed even so much

01:19:46.880 economically,

01:19:48.100 though it did,

01:19:48.740 philosophically,

01:19:49.600 though it didn't,

01:19:50.460 but anthropologically.

01:19:51.700 They fail to understand

01:19:53.120 human nature.

01:19:53.820 Yeah.

01:19:54.200 They fail to understand

01:19:55.380 people.

01:19:56.460 And to just think that,

01:19:57.940 and they put it

01:19:58.960 this simplistically

01:20:00.520 in the communist manifesto,

01:20:01.880 people say all the time,

01:20:02.740 give me a,

01:20:03.560 give me a one sentence

01:20:04.640 definition of communism.

01:20:06.300 Okay,

01:20:06.620 that's easy

01:20:07.180 because Marx and Engels

01:20:08.100 did it.

01:20:08.800 They said the entire

01:20:09.760 communist theory

01:20:10.940 or program

01:20:11.820 may be summed up

01:20:12.800 in the single sentence.

01:20:14.080 Four words.

01:20:15.160 Abolition of private property.

01:20:17.560 Abolition of private property.

01:20:19.120 They think that

01:20:20.020 if you could abolish

01:20:22.100 private property,

01:20:23.180 this is the beginning

01:20:24.260 of the key

01:20:24.740 to your utopia

01:20:25.440 of all things.

01:20:26.220 And that the utopia

01:20:27.140 is entirely materialistic.

01:20:29.400 Right.

01:20:29.780 That's right.

01:20:30.040 So one of the things

01:20:30.580 that I found

01:20:31.240 particularly striking

01:20:32.400 about Dostoevsky,

01:20:34.100 especially in

01:20:35.160 Notes from Underground,

01:20:36.660 is he...

01:20:37.020 Speaking of devils

01:20:37.540 and demons.

01:20:38.260 Yeah.

01:20:38.580 Yeah.

01:20:38.920 Well, right.

01:20:39.440 Absolutely.

01:20:40.420 He put his finger

01:20:42.160 on the fundamental flaw

01:20:43.220 in the communist doctrine

01:20:44.960 before I think

01:20:46.820 it was probably

01:20:47.680 even expressed

01:20:48.580 by Marx,

01:20:49.240 at least popularly expressed.

01:20:50.520 I don't exactly know

01:20:51.440 when Notes from Underground

01:20:52.340 was written,

01:20:52.880 but I don't believe

01:20:54.180 that Dostoevsky

01:20:56.320 had any direct knowledge

01:20:57.640 of Marx at that point.

01:20:59.100 Now, I'm not certain

01:21:00.080 of that.

01:21:00.380 It doesn't matter

01:21:00.940 because the ideas

01:21:01.580 were in the air anyways.

01:21:02.820 Yeah, they were.

01:21:03.320 But one of the things

01:21:05.960 that Dostoevsky points out

01:21:07.300 in the Notes from Underground,

01:21:09.260 which is so brilliant,

01:21:10.360 is that he has this bitter,

01:21:12.480 resentful,

01:21:13.040 underground character

01:21:13.940 point out that

01:21:15.340 if you did provide

01:21:17.140 human beings

01:21:17.900 with the materialist utopia

01:21:19.540 that Marx promoted,

01:21:22.880 so that,

01:21:24.580 Dostoevsky says,

01:21:25.520 so that they had

01:21:26.120 nothing to do

01:21:26.800 but lie in warm pools

01:21:29.100 of bubbling water

01:21:30.440 and eat cakes

01:21:32.440 and busy themselves

01:21:33.480 with the continuation

01:21:34.320 of the species

01:21:35.360 that the people

01:21:37.280 so benefited

01:21:40.060 would promptly

01:21:42.360 go insane enough 0.97

01:21:43.300 to smash it all to bits 0.97

01:21:44.500 just to have something 0.82

01:21:45.540 interesting to do.

01:21:46.820 Now, he phrases it

01:21:48.020 more bitterly

01:21:48.700 because he phrases it

01:21:50.120 as a form of ingratitude,

01:21:51.440 but there's a point there.

01:21:52.320 And the point is that

01:21:53.340 it is the point

01:21:54.320 that man does not live

01:21:55.480 by bread alone.

01:21:57.520 That Dostoevsky—

01:21:58.540 Put in every word

01:21:58.960 from the mouth of God.

01:22:00.280 Right, right.

01:22:00.740 Well, Dostoevsky understood

01:22:02.120 that we were built

01:22:03.140 for something more

01:22:04.080 than infantile satiation,

01:22:05.740 right?

01:22:06.120 Yes, yes.

01:22:06.560 And for more than

01:22:08.580 hedonistic satiation.

01:22:10.500 And I would say

01:22:11.540 the Marxists

01:22:12.360 ally very nicely

01:22:13.660 with the infantile hedonists

01:22:15.740 because both of them

01:22:17.200 presume that

01:22:17.880 the mere satiation

01:22:19.320 of desire

01:22:20.100 would suffice

01:22:21.320 to bring about

01:22:21.920 the utopia.

01:22:22.560 That's exactly right.

01:22:23.160 Right, right, right.

01:22:23.920 That's exactly right.

01:22:24.740 And maybe this is

01:22:26.880 a kind of sharp departure.

01:22:28.920 Look where the Marxists

01:22:29.880 today are, right?

01:22:31.140 A lot of the Marxists

01:22:32.420 today

01:22:32.880 are not even bothering

01:22:34.320 with class

01:22:35.140 or economics,

01:22:35.780 but they've gone

01:22:37.200 into the area of culture.

01:22:38.460 They've gone into gender.

01:22:40.500 They've gone into race,

01:22:42.120 right?

01:22:42.400 Yeah.

01:22:42.560 And they,

01:22:43.960 a lot of the Marxists

01:22:45.020 today,

01:22:45.340 if you go to the website

01:22:46.460 of People's World,

01:22:48.160 which is the successor

01:22:49.100 to the Daily Worker,

01:22:50.780 and you go to the

01:22:51.800 About section,

01:22:52.860 they have a call there

01:22:54.180 not for factory workers,

01:22:56.040 not for coal miners.

01:22:57.900 I mean,

01:22:58.280 the West Virginia coal miners

01:22:59.840 voting for Trump,

01:23:00.900 right?

01:23:01.520 Not for steel workers.

01:23:03.140 You know,

01:23:03.500 my hometown of Pittsburgh,

01:23:04.820 steel workers

01:23:05.440 are probably large,

01:23:07.100 like MAGA people.

01:23:08.040 A lot of those guys

01:23:08.800 are blue-collar union guys.

01:23:10.260 They have a call

01:23:11.020 for culture workers.

01:23:13.000 So they're looking,

01:23:14.260 they've gone from

01:23:14.980 the factory floor

01:23:16.160 to the classroom.

01:23:17.500 Yep.

01:23:18.000 And so the modern Marxists,

01:23:21.000 knowing that the world

01:23:22.160 of the Communist Manifesto

01:23:23.600 and the Industrial Revolution

01:23:24.760 of the 1840s

01:23:25.700 is just completely gone.

01:23:27.080 Yeah.

01:23:27.180 I mean,

01:23:27.280 that book,

01:23:27.760 by the way,

01:23:28.520 is archaic.

01:23:30.360 I mean,

01:23:30.640 it's written for

01:23:31.960 1840s French Germany

01:23:33.720 and Britain.

01:23:35.800 Yeah.

01:23:36.300 I mean,

01:23:36.420 that world doesn't even

01:23:37.220 exist anymore.

01:23:38.220 So a lot of today's Marxists

01:23:39.800 have taken

01:23:40.440 the Marxist superstructure

01:23:42.520 of oppressed

01:23:43.420 versus oppressor.

01:23:44.380 Yes, yes.

01:23:45.500 And they said,

01:23:45.960 okay,

01:23:46.500 it's no longer

01:23:47.380 the oppressive bourgeoisie

01:23:49.820 and the oppressed proletariat.

01:23:51.640 And the proletariat

01:23:52.560 would be the oppressed group.

01:23:53.960 That would be

01:23:54.480 the victim class

01:23:55.580 and also the redeemer class.

01:23:57.440 Yeah, yeah.

01:23:58.040 By the stripes

01:23:58.720 of the proletariat,

01:23:59.900 you are healed, right?

01:24:01.120 Yeah.

01:24:01.300 They would usher

01:24:01.960 in the revolution.

01:24:03.360 So instead,

01:24:04.700 people don't,

01:24:05.440 I mean,

01:24:06.000 what young people today

01:24:07.220 even know what the word

01:24:07.900 proletariat

01:24:08.540 or bourgeoisie mean?

01:24:10.280 They've taken

01:24:10.860 the oppressed oppressor model

01:24:12.380 and they've applied it

01:24:13.540 to issues like race.

01:24:14.940 Yep,

01:24:15.180 that's exactly right.

01:24:15.980 And so the oppressor,

01:24:18.400 and this is the most

01:24:19.380 simplistic infantile thing

01:24:20.980 anybody could do,

01:24:22.060 the race-based

01:24:22.680 critical race theorists,

01:24:24.340 to take human beings

01:24:26.040 who are,

01:24:27.200 I mean,

01:24:27.600 you know,

01:24:28.000 I've done my DNA,

01:24:29.580 ancestry.com,

01:24:30.980 my family is just,

01:24:32.500 they're all over the place

01:24:33.760 in terms of their DNA,

01:24:35.260 right,

01:24:36.000 to boil people down

01:24:37.860 in America

01:24:38.520 in the 2020s

01:24:40.100 as,

01:24:40.440 okay,

01:24:40.760 two categories,

01:24:41.660 black,

01:24:42.260 white,

01:24:42.780 right?

01:24:43.180 How do you do that?

01:24:44.140 I mean,

01:24:44.340 my youngest son

01:24:45.060 who's adopted

01:24:45.780 is black. 0.59

01:24:47.820 Actually,

01:24:48.440 his mother's white,

01:24:49.640 his father's black,

01:24:50.800 so is Obama.

01:24:51.980 So he'd be considered black,

01:24:53.780 right?

01:24:54.160 But if you do his DNA test,

01:24:55.740 he's all over the place.

01:24:56.900 But the modern critical race theorist

01:24:58.760 is going to say

01:24:59.560 white, 1.00

01:25:01.000 oppressor, 0.98

01:25:02.120 black, 1.00

01:25:02.800 oppressor. 1.00

01:25:03.700 And they're going to hammer you

01:25:04.920 into one of those two categories,

01:25:07.120 which Martin Luther King Jr.

01:25:08.160 said,

01:25:08.680 no,

01:25:08.820 we're to be judged

01:25:09.260 by the content of our character,

01:25:10.420 not the color of our skin.

01:25:12.500 CRT,

01:25:13.040 which I interviewed David Garrow,

01:25:15.120 the King biographer,

01:25:15.860 about this.

01:25:16.920 And he said,

01:25:17.700 CRT predates King.

01:25:19.960 King was shot in April 1968.

01:25:21.480 So he didn't talk about CRT,

01:25:23.220 but he would have been

01:25:23.980 totally against

01:25:24.800 any kind of race-based

01:25:26.200 classification of human beings.

01:25:28.320 So the modern group

01:25:29.220 is hammering you

01:25:30.360 into one of these two categories,

01:25:32.320 oppressed versus oppressor.

01:25:33.600 So the new oppressed group 0.97

01:25:35.300 will be blacks, 0.99

01:25:36.660 and they need to have 0.99

01:25:37.500 their consciousness raised.

01:25:38.980 They need to know

01:25:39.960 that they are the oppressed group.

01:25:41.960 They will usher in the redemption.

01:25:43.840 They're also the redeemer class.

01:25:45.920 And try telling somebody

01:25:47.020 like Oprah Winfrey

01:25:48.140 or Kobe Bryant

01:25:49.160 that they're oppressed 0.84

01:25:50.160 just because they're black. 0.81

01:25:51.800 I mean,

01:25:52.000 how racist is that?

01:25:53.840 Whereas the white homeless guy, 0.93

01:25:55.660 that he's the oppressor 1.00

01:25:56.800 because he's white. 1.00

01:25:58.000 It's an unbelievably ridiculous, 1.00

01:26:00.160 infantile, absurd, 1.00

01:26:02.300 racist separation

01:26:03.300 of human beings

01:26:04.140 into opposing hostile camps.

01:26:05.940 And by the way,

01:26:06.360 it divides people.

01:26:07.720 And back to Marx,

01:26:08.780 this is what Marx and Engels

01:26:10.000 did with class.

01:26:11.360 Well, so you said

01:26:12.280 that that took us-

01:26:12.660 So these people

01:26:12.800 are doing it by race.

01:26:13.620 That took us afield,

01:26:14.760 and I don't think it did

01:26:15.820 because tell me

01:26:17.000 what you think about this

01:26:17.860 because this ties

01:26:18.820 maybe the close

01:26:19.920 of our discussion

01:26:20.620 to the beginning

01:26:21.320 because we talked about

01:26:22.840 essentially theological matters

01:26:24.600 in relationship

01:26:25.480 to Marx's fantasizing.

01:26:27.020 Okay, so imagine

01:26:28.400 that there's a theological element

01:26:31.340 to Marx

01:26:32.300 that can be traced

01:26:35.040 all the way back

01:26:35.660 to the story

01:26:36.140 of Cain and Abel

01:26:36.860 because Cain and Abel

01:26:38.040 is the first

01:26:39.000 victim-victimizer narrative,

01:26:41.660 right?

01:26:42.040 And Cain feels

01:26:43.100 that he's the victim

01:26:43.940 of Abel.

01:26:44.900 And he is driven

01:26:46.440 by a bitter resentment.

01:26:48.200 By the way, envy,

01:26:48.900 which is what Marxism

01:26:49.740 is all about.

01:26:50.300 Absolutely.

01:26:51.060 And he becomes

01:26:51.600 extremely hostile.

01:26:52.800 Okay, so imagine

01:26:53.920 that Marxism

01:26:56.540 is essentially

01:26:57.280 a retelling

01:26:58.020 of the story

01:26:59.360 of Cain and Abel

01:27:00.080 with Cain as the protagonist.

01:27:01.720 Okay, so now,

01:27:02.640 so once you get that,

01:27:03.860 then you can see

01:27:04.540 what's happened

01:27:05.180 with the modern

01:27:06.480 metamarxists

01:27:07.360 because we might think,

01:27:10.420 being slightly older,

01:27:13.000 we might think

01:27:13.620 that the core doctrine

01:27:14.740 of Marxism

01:27:15.560 is economic inequality,

01:27:16.900 but it's not.

01:27:18.100 The core doctrine

01:27:19.300 is victim-victimizer.

01:27:20.760 That's right.

01:27:21.120 Now, what Marx said

01:27:22.540 was the prime dimension

01:27:24.420 of victim-victimizer

01:27:25.800 is economic.

01:27:27.400 Now, I think,

01:27:28.400 and this is partly

01:27:29.000 why Marxism was powerful,

01:27:30.900 if you have to pick

01:27:32.360 a victim-victimizer narrative,

01:27:34.120 the most powerful one

01:27:35.460 is economic.

01:27:37.380 Let's just leave that aside.

01:27:38.880 Now, you said,

01:27:39.740 well, we no longer

01:27:40.480 have the dark satanic mills,

01:27:42.020 so the economic story

01:27:43.080 isn't playing out as well.

01:27:44.120 The child labor.

01:27:45.040 But the victim-victimizer narrative,

01:27:47.120 that's still alive.

01:27:48.080 I think of

01:27:49.680 the new postmodern leftism

01:27:52.760 as a metastasized Marxism

01:27:55.040 because it's

01:27:56.500 the victim-victimizer narrative

01:27:58.180 that's now multidimensional.

01:27:59.780 You can take any way

01:28:01.440 you can possibly

01:28:02.440 categorize human beings

01:28:03.760 that divides them

01:28:04.760 into groups

01:28:05.360 and you can take

01:28:06.880 that dichotomous dimension

01:28:09.040 and you can say

01:28:10.240 victim-victimizer.

01:28:11.500 Right.

01:28:11.740 So now you explain everything,

01:28:13.740 right?

01:28:14.240 Then you can say,

01:28:15.200 so you can explain everything.

01:28:16.520 You've got no more work

01:28:17.260 to do cognitively

01:28:18.140 and you can learn that

01:28:18.960 in 10 minutes, right?

01:28:20.300 But then there's

01:28:21.140 an additional advantage

01:28:22.060 and this is also

01:28:23.240 endemic to Marxism.

01:28:24.620 Imagine that you have

01:28:25.520 two problems to solve

01:28:26.520 in the world.

01:28:27.060 One is to understand it

01:28:28.300 and the other is to figure out

01:28:29.680 how to conduct yourself in it.

01:28:31.360 Okay, well,

01:28:31.800 the victim-victimizer narrative

01:28:33.220 gives you both

01:28:34.040 because not only have you

01:28:36.060 now a complete

01:28:36.860 causal explanation,

01:28:38.560 everything can be understood

01:28:39.560 in terms of power

01:28:40.520 because that's

01:28:41.400 the victim-victimizer story.

01:28:44.020 But goodness

01:28:45.320 merely requires

01:28:47.020 that you identify

01:28:47.840 with the victim.

01:28:48.700 Right.

01:28:49.060 Right, right.

01:28:49.680 So it solves

01:28:50.260 your moral problem, too.

01:28:51.420 Yeah, right on.

01:28:52.740 Exactly.

01:28:53.380 And so what we have

01:28:54.280 is the spectacle

01:28:55.860 of the modern universities,

01:28:58.480 what would you say,

01:28:59.780 promulgating this

01:29:00.720 metamarxism,

01:29:01.980 metastatic Marxism,

01:29:03.240 where they've fragmented

01:29:05.040 the oppressor-oppressor

01:29:06.800 narrative

01:29:07.160 into multiple dimensions.

01:29:08.460 Even if they don't know

01:29:09.100 it's Marxist.

01:29:10.540 Exactly.

01:29:11.780 Well, and it's not.

01:29:12.960 If it's a retelling

01:29:13.740 of the Cain and Abel story,

01:29:14.980 it's deeper than Marxism.

01:29:16.860 Marxism would then

01:29:17.640 become a variant

01:29:18.420 of something even deeper.

01:29:19.880 And I think

01:29:20.920 what is deeper

01:29:21.700 is the victim-victimizer narrative,

01:29:23.340 that way of construing

01:29:24.260 the world.

01:29:24.740 Yeah.

01:29:24.960 And that is a way of,

01:29:26.140 like the postmodernists,

01:29:27.320 especially people like Foucault,

01:29:29.400 it's all about power.

01:29:31.660 And they're always in search,

01:29:34.340 this kind of modern post-market,

01:29:35.780 whatever,

01:29:36.120 they're always in search

01:29:37.040 for the next victim group.

01:29:38.200 Yep.

01:29:38.560 Right?

01:29:39.080 That's the key.

01:29:39.880 Who's the next victim class?

01:29:41.220 And once you're in that group,

01:29:42.680 that group has to be taught

01:29:44.480 to hate the other group.

01:29:46.180 I mean,

01:29:47.020 for them to know

01:29:48.100 that they are a victim

01:29:49.000 because of that group.

01:29:50.060 Yes, that's right.

01:29:50.820 That's right.

01:29:51.080 And if you don't get that,

01:29:52.600 if you don't understand

01:29:53.340 that you need your consciousness,

01:29:54.920 this is where the university comes in. 1.00

01:29:56.140 You're also a traitor. 0.99

01:29:56.720 To teach it. 0.99

01:29:57.140 That's right.

01:29:57.520 And if you're in the oppressor group

01:29:59.440 and you don't realize

01:30:00.420 you're an oppressor, right?

01:30:02.080 You might be in that class,

01:30:03.240 you say,

01:30:03.500 well, you know,

01:30:04.040 I was brought up actually

01:30:05.180 in a multiracial family.

01:30:07.040 We've got adopted kids.

01:30:09.060 And it's like,

01:30:10.340 no, no, no, no, no.

01:30:11.420 You've got to understand

01:30:12.600 your skin color defines you

01:30:14.680 and puts you in that camp, right?

01:30:16.460 Or your sexuality. 0.95

01:30:16.780 You are the oppressor. 0.91

01:30:18.080 Or your sexuality. 0.69

01:30:18.880 Or your gender. 0.58

01:30:19.860 Yeah.

01:30:20.060 I mean,

01:30:20.240 what could be worse than

01:30:21.020 as simple as, you know,

01:30:22.000 male, female, right?

01:30:23.580 Gender Marxists. 0.67

01:30:24.680 Yeah.

01:30:24.860 But that's unfortunately

01:30:26.720 where Marxism is today.

01:30:26.740 Well, that allows you

01:30:27.460 to multiply the dimensions

01:30:28.560 of oppression too.

01:30:29.540 Yes.

01:30:29.920 Which is very convenient

01:30:30.840 if you want to rationalize

01:30:33.100 the power narrative

01:30:33.880 and you also want to claim

01:30:35.000 moral virtue

01:30:35.820 without doing any work.

01:30:36.980 That's right.

01:30:37.340 I'm on the side of the victims.

01:30:38.900 It's like, really?

01:30:39.720 Are you?

01:30:40.560 Really?

01:30:41.040 Now, you're really

01:30:41.760 on the side of the victims.

01:30:42.800 Right, right.

01:30:43.140 And you're sure you've got

01:30:44.040 the victims properly identified.

01:30:45.860 That's right.

01:30:46.160 And they're only victims.

01:30:47.460 And they're in a power position too.

01:30:49.140 They're in the position

01:30:50.640 to define who's the victim

01:30:51.900 and who's not.

01:30:53.060 And those are always people

01:30:54.160 during the revolution

01:30:55.060 that are going to be in charge.

01:30:56.020 This is what Lennon called

01:30:56.640 the vanguard, right?

01:30:58.000 And what is to be done in 1902.

01:31:00.240 He said what's needed here

01:31:01.600 is a cadre of revolutionaries,

01:31:03.960 kind of educated elites

01:31:05.420 who can run this whole thing,

01:31:07.920 who can run the project

01:31:10.020 and tell you

01:31:10.740 when you've gone from feudalism

01:31:12.960 to capitalism

01:31:13.680 to socialism

01:31:14.520 to communism, right?

01:31:15.760 They're the same ones

01:31:16.440 that tell you

01:31:16.920 when it's time

01:31:17.580 for a new pride flag now.

01:31:19.100 That's right.

01:31:19.580 That's right.

01:31:19.980 It seems to be about every week.

01:31:21.440 That's right.

01:31:21.800 They're the managers.

01:31:23.000 And we stop and say,

01:31:24.300 you know, I don't get this.

01:31:25.520 Everybody's supposed

01:31:26.080 to be equal in wealth,

01:31:27.740 but Castro,

01:31:29.220 I mean,

01:31:30.100 doctors, janitors,

01:31:31.480 baseball players,

01:31:32.380 custodians,

01:31:32.860 all get $120 a year in Cuba.

01:31:35.060 Castro's worth a billion dollars, right?

01:31:37.420 Look at the dachas 1.00

01:31:38.320 and the Black Sea

01:31:39.100 that all the communist apparatchiks

01:31:40.680 have in the Soviet Union.

01:31:42.060 Look at the Kims. 1.00

01:31:43.200 Look how much money they have.

01:31:44.620 Well, you have to understand

01:31:45.500 for them,

01:31:47.020 they're the rulers, right?

01:31:48.580 The Marxism,

01:31:49.340 the communism's for the ruled, 0.89

01:31:51.540 not the rulers.

01:31:52.420 It's for the masses,

01:31:53.680 not the masters, right? 1.00

01:31:54.700 It's for all of you idiots. 1.00

01:31:56.500 Well, there's also 1.00

01:31:57.200 no evidence technically

01:31:58.380 from the economic perspective

01:31:59.760 that the communist governments

01:32:02.040 had any impact

01:32:02.880 whatsoever on inequality.

01:32:04.600 Oh, yeah, no.

01:32:05.360 Other than making

01:32:06.160 everybody equally poor.

01:32:07.040 Well, that's the thing

01:32:08.160 is there was less

01:32:08.980 to go around, right?

01:32:10.480 So they were very good

01:32:11.660 at suppressing

01:32:12.480 the benefits of capital,

01:32:14.160 but were able

01:32:15.720 to address inequality.

01:32:17.080 Not at all.

01:32:17.420 Yes, by,

01:32:18.000 well, and by destruction.

01:32:18.900 Right.

01:32:19.280 But they were not able

01:32:20.040 to address inequality at all.

01:32:21.640 No.

01:32:22.040 Right.

01:32:22.600 They nationalized everything 0.51

01:32:24.480 including poverty.

01:32:26.460 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:32:28.420 Okay, so what,

01:32:30.280 let's close with this,

01:32:31.300 a more personal reflection.

01:32:33.720 Your book about Marx

01:32:35.320 is a rather personal analysis

01:32:38.860 of Marx.

01:32:40.260 And that makes it,

01:32:42.180 as you pointed out,

01:32:43.120 somewhat unique,

01:32:43.900 especially in its concentration

01:32:45.060 on his motivations,

01:32:46.900 his motivations,

01:32:47.940 let's say,

01:32:48.360 and his poetic motivations,

01:32:49.600 his revelatory motivations.

01:32:51.920 What has that done

01:32:53.000 to you personally

01:32:54.800 in your understanding

01:32:55.920 of Marx

01:32:56.640 and also your understanding

01:32:58.600 of the world?

01:32:59.360 Because there's a

01:33:00.060 very strange

01:33:01.360 theological dimension

01:33:02.460 to your analysis

01:33:03.240 of Marx.

01:33:03.960 Okay, so

01:33:04.300 was that theological dimension

01:33:06.980 there before you wrote

01:33:08.280 this book?

01:33:08.940 Partly, I suppose.

01:33:09.820 Well, yeah,

01:33:10.280 I think it probably

01:33:11.140 was already there.

01:33:12.100 I mean, I've always thought,

01:33:13.520 Jordan, that

01:33:14.300 when people ask me,

01:33:16.720 how did communism

01:33:18.800 catch on, right?

01:33:20.760 Even, well,

01:33:21.780 first of all,

01:33:22.320 it's never voted into power

01:33:23.620 and if it is,

01:33:24.280 they don't stand

01:33:25.340 for another election, right?

01:33:26.780 I mean, Fidel Castro

01:33:27.720 called for democracy

01:33:29.420 and free and fair elections

01:33:30.540 in 1959, right?

01:33:32.140 And it never actually had them,

01:33:33.880 right?

01:33:34.080 The Kims don't put themselves 0.99

01:33:35.260 up for election.

01:33:37.940 But the,

01:33:39.740 what's the rational reason

01:33:41.120 why anybody,

01:33:42.060 if you just read

01:33:42.680 the Communist Manifesto,

01:33:44.060 it's so clear

01:33:44.880 that this is

01:33:45.600 completely impractical.

01:33:47.940 It can't possibly work.

01:33:50.380 I think there's

01:33:51.580 almost a kind of

01:33:52.380 a diabolical

01:33:53.660 explanation for this.

01:33:56.260 You know,

01:33:56.420 Ronald Reagan said

01:33:57.740 in the grand destiny

01:34:00.840 of humanity,

01:34:02.240 we are not matters

01:34:03.200 of mere material

01:34:04.320 computation, right?

01:34:05.640 When great forces

01:34:06.960 are on the foot

01:34:08.320 in the world,

01:34:09.320 we learn that

01:34:09.980 we are spirits,

01:34:10.780 not animals,

01:34:11.820 right?

01:34:14.420 I think there's

01:34:16.820 almost a spiritual

01:34:17.680 explanation behind this.

01:34:19.320 Right, so you think you...

01:34:20.500 It doesn't make

01:34:21.240 mere rational sense

01:34:22.940 that this idea

01:34:24.960 could have ever

01:34:25.640 been fostered

01:34:26.500 or caught on.

01:34:27.780 I think there's

01:34:28.760 a diabolical

01:34:29.680 explanation

01:34:30.500 of course behind it.

01:34:31.440 Right, right.

01:34:31.740 So you basically,

01:34:32.660 you basically believe

01:34:33.800 that the Marxist

01:34:35.180 phenomena

01:34:35.600 cannot be understood

01:34:36.860 outside

01:34:37.680 an overarching

01:34:38.940 religious

01:34:39.500 interpretive framework.

01:34:40.360 I think so.

01:34:41.040 I think that's right.

01:34:42.220 And we haven't mentioned

01:34:42.940 the very opening words

01:34:44.340 of the manifesto.

01:34:45.700 A specter

01:34:46.440 is haunting you.

01:34:47.140 Yeah.

01:34:47.820 The specter

01:34:48.680 of communism.

01:34:49.500 No kidding.

01:34:50.060 Yeah, and it says

01:34:50.700 all the old allies

01:34:52.220 of Europe,

01:34:53.240 Pope and Tsar,

01:34:54.820 Metternich and Guizot,

01:34:56.000 German and French,

01:34:57.000 French radicals

01:34:58.020 and German spies

01:34:58.820 have entered

01:34:59.720 into a holy alliance

01:35:01.040 to exorcise

01:35:02.420 this specter.

01:35:03.280 Marx and Engels

01:35:04.560 opened the book

01:35:05.840 with a paragraph

01:35:07.400 describing it

01:35:08.260 as a specter,

01:35:09.460 a demonic specter

01:35:10.680 that needs exercise.

01:35:12.260 Now again,

01:35:13.080 well, they're being

01:35:14.040 playful with words.

01:35:15.000 Yeah, right.

01:35:15.620 No, there's too much

01:35:17.080 of this.

01:35:17.960 There's too much

01:35:18.780 of this.

01:35:19.860 There's something

01:35:20.480 deeper and darker

01:35:21.340 going on.

01:35:22.040 Every good joke

01:35:22.060 contains a seed

01:35:23.100 of the truth.

01:35:23.720 That's right.

01:35:24.120 Well, in my experience

01:35:25.380 for what it's worth,

01:35:27.220 it was the horrors

01:35:28.520 of communism

01:35:29.320 that motivated me

01:35:31.560 to think much more

01:35:32.600 deeply about religious 0.71

01:35:33.520 matters.

01:35:34.240 Yeah, yeah.

01:35:34.960 Oh, me too.

01:35:35.860 If you familiarize

01:35:37.060 yourself with the hell 0.84

01:35:38.820 of the communist regimes,

01:35:41.200 you end up

01:35:42.140 at a level of analysis,

01:35:43.280 I think,

01:35:43.920 that you can't avoid

01:35:45.000 at a level of analysis

01:35:46.000 that demands

01:35:47.740 that you account

01:35:48.560 for an evil

01:35:49.240 that profound.

01:35:50.100 Right, yeah.

01:35:50.700 I was in agnostic

01:35:52.620 in college

01:35:53.320 and close to being

01:35:54.920 an atheist

01:35:55.360 and studying this stuff

01:35:57.540 in the end

01:35:58.420 of the Cold War

01:35:59.160 is part of what

01:36:00.160 pulled me out

01:36:00.660 of that pit

01:36:01.240 because you really

01:36:02.940 do look at it

01:36:04.000 and you say,

01:36:05.140 this seems demonic,

01:36:07.580 this seems diabolical.

01:36:09.200 Yeah.

01:36:10.460 Another quote

01:36:11.300 from Reagan,

01:36:12.200 this isn't a matter

01:36:13.160 of rockets

01:36:13.900 and economics,

01:36:14.820 this is something

01:36:15.880 of the spiritual order.

01:36:17.760 Yeah.

01:36:17.880 There's something

01:36:18.680 deeper,

01:36:19.720 darker going on here.

01:36:21.240 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:36:21.460 No, I think,

01:36:22.260 I can't see

01:36:23.720 how you can be,

01:36:24.760 I also think

01:36:25.560 that that's a motif

01:36:26.540 that's reflected.

01:36:27.140 The founder of which

01:36:27.300 is Karl Marx.

01:36:28.440 Yeah, right,

01:36:29.220 right, right.

01:36:29.760 I think that there's

01:36:30.880 a reflection in that

01:36:31.920 of the dragon

01:36:33.580 treasure dichotomy.

01:36:35.320 You know,

01:36:35.540 we know from time

01:36:36.960 immemorial

01:36:37.520 that you go searching

01:36:39.480 for treasure

01:36:40.100 where the dragons are

01:36:41.440 and there isn't

01:36:43.380 a dragon

01:36:43.880 that's more terrifying

01:36:45.640 than the dragon

01:36:46.620 that's the spirit

01:36:48.000 of malevolence itself

01:36:49.240 and you cannot

01:36:50.660 study communism

01:36:52.120 without encountering

01:36:54.000 the spirit

01:36:54.480 of malevolence

01:36:55.300 and then

01:36:56.100 the treasure

01:36:57.000 that lurks there

01:36:57.980 is something

01:36:58.760 like a recognition

01:36:59.660 that the overarching

01:37:01.020 religious framework

01:37:01.900 is actually necessary

01:37:03.260 to conceptualize

01:37:04.920 the problem

01:37:05.400 properly

01:37:06.280 and probably

01:37:07.400 to offer something

01:37:08.380 approximating a solution.

01:37:09.660 That's right.

01:37:09.960 Like a genuine solution.

01:37:10.980 Yeah, I think

01:37:11.920 that's right.

01:37:12.700 I think that's exactly right.

01:37:14.320 Yeah, there's

01:37:14.940 a church encyclical

01:37:16.820 Divinity Redemptorist 0.98

01:37:17.800 from 1937

01:37:19.660 by Pius XI

01:37:20.880 and they described it

01:37:22.520 as a satanic scourge

01:37:24.280 orchestrated 0.92

01:37:26.060 by the sons of darkness.

01:37:27.540 I mean,

01:37:27.800 the church then

01:37:29.300 came to that conclusion

01:37:30.380 that they believed

01:37:31.200 that everything

01:37:32.400 that the communists

01:37:33.520 wanted and said

01:37:34.340 and wrote in their books

01:37:35.400 can only be interpreted

01:37:37.420 in this really dark

01:37:38.680 demonic sense.

01:37:39.900 What do the liberation

01:37:40.660 theologists think of that?

01:37:41.760 Oh yeah, 1.00

01:37:42.060 they're nuts. 1.00

01:37:43.420 I mean, 1.00

01:37:43.800 they're...

01:37:44.380 Yeah, 0.96

01:37:44.920 they're powerful nuts.

01:37:46.100 They are still. 0.91

01:37:47.600 And even someone

01:37:49.080 like Pope Francis

01:37:50.040 said in December 2013,

01:37:52.240 he said,

01:37:52.740 the Marxist ideology

01:37:53.840 is wrong.

01:37:55.660 But that having been said,

01:37:57.820 he's not a very good

01:37:59.500 anti-communist.

01:38:00.460 Yeah, yeah.

01:38:00.980 Right?

01:38:01.480 I mean, he's...

01:38:01.960 Well, it's a very powerfully

01:38:03.440 contaminating force.

01:38:04.740 Yes.

01:38:05.080 And its tendrils

01:38:05.800 are everywhere

01:38:06.420 and they're not necessarily

01:38:07.820 that easy to identify.

01:38:09.460 That's exactly right.

01:38:10.220 Especially if you don't

01:38:10.900 really want to look.

01:38:11.940 Yeah, and if you tell somebody,

01:38:13.480 you know,

01:38:13.700 what you're engaging in there

01:38:14.720 could be a form of Marxism

01:38:16.320 applied to culture.

01:38:17.440 Frankfurt School,

01:38:18.320 Antonio Gramsci,

01:38:19.340 cultural hegemony,

01:38:20.980 founders of the Frankfurt School,

01:38:22.300 Max Horkheimer,

01:38:23.320 Theodore Adorno

01:38:23.960 wrote about the culture industry

01:38:25.280 and the dialectic

01:38:26.140 of enlightenment.

01:38:27.160 You know,

01:38:27.260 this is the kind of Marxism

01:38:28.160 applied to culture.

01:38:29.460 If they look up

01:38:30.220 cultural Marxism,

01:38:31.260 it pops up

01:38:31.760 anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

01:38:33.300 Yeah, right.

01:38:33.700 It's like,

01:38:33.940 well, what's that, right?

01:38:35.120 But, you know,

01:38:36.040 it's to the point

01:38:38.300 where it's infiltrated things

01:38:39.760 where people engaging

01:38:41.160 in the framework

01:38:41.860 or metanarrative

01:38:42.900 or Marxist superstructure

01:38:44.640 on gender, race,

01:38:46.040 culture, whatever,

01:38:46.780 often don't even know

01:38:47.840 that they're guilty of it.

01:38:49.020 Yeah.

01:38:49.280 Which they're, you know,

01:38:50.200 credit to them,

01:38:51.140 they don't know it,

01:38:51.900 but it's so seeped in

01:38:54.100 to the culture at large

01:38:55.600 that, yeah,

01:38:56.140 that's what we're dealing with.

01:38:56.880 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:38:57.980 All right, sir.

01:38:58.860 Hey, this was great.

01:38:59.540 Thanks so much.

01:38:59.940 Thank you very much.

01:39:00.620 Yeah.

01:39:00.920 Well, there were many other things,

01:39:02.160 too, that we could have talked about,

01:39:03.380 too.

01:39:03.560 I would have liked to have talked

01:39:04.520 about your work on Reagan

01:39:05.580 and your other books as well,

01:39:06.960 but we may save that

01:39:08.440 for a further discussion.

01:39:09.820 This was worth the devotion

01:39:11.560 of 90 minutes to,

01:39:12.640 I would say,

01:39:13.120 just this topic.

01:39:14.060 So, I'm very glad

01:39:14.740 that we did it.

01:39:15.620 Me, too.

01:39:16.180 I'm glad, too.

01:39:16.800 And for everybody watching

01:39:18.000 and listening on the YouTube side,

01:39:20.220 we're very happy

01:39:20.960 for your time

01:39:21.640 and attention as well.

01:39:22.660 And to the film crew here,

01:39:23.820 we're at the Museum of the Bible,

01:39:25.460 which is a very appropriate place

01:39:27.120 to be having this discussion

01:39:28.180 in Washington, D.C.

01:39:30.500 That's a museum

01:39:31.580 whose work

01:39:33.220 I did a documentary on

01:39:34.540 for The Daily Wire,

01:39:35.320 which I think is quite

01:39:36.000 a successful documentary

01:39:37.000 and was a great joy

01:39:38.220 to actually produce.

01:39:39.200 And it's a great museum,

01:39:40.400 so if you ever do

01:39:41.220 happen to come to D.C.,

01:39:43.000 go check it out.

01:39:45.140 It's the kind of place

01:39:48.460 that can help you

01:39:49.100 understand a lot more deeply

01:39:50.440 the relationship between,

01:39:51.740 at minimum,

01:39:52.560 the relationship

01:39:53.080 between the fact of the Bible

01:39:54.700 and the fact of literacy itself

01:39:57.340 in its worldwide distribution,

01:39:59.540 because those two things

01:40:00.620 are very integrally associated,

01:40:02.340 and that's an underappreciated

01:40:04.380 contribution of Christianity

01:40:06.580 and Protestantism

01:40:07.860 to the world.

01:40:09.260 So, anyways,

01:40:10.400 thanks to the Museum of the Bible

01:40:11.700 for hosting us today,

01:40:12.680 and I'm going to continue

01:40:14.600 this discussion

01:40:15.300 for another half an hour

01:40:16.240 on The Daily Wire side,

01:40:17.340 and what we'll talk about

01:40:18.880 is what I often talk about

01:40:20.320 on that,

01:40:21.400 in that additional half an hour,

01:40:22.920 which is the development

01:40:24.120 of the interests

01:40:25.020 that underlie this body of work

01:40:29.040 devoted not least

01:40:30.420 to the catastrophe

01:40:31.620 of Marxism and communism.

01:40:34.000 So, join us there.

01:40:42.680 As for talking to us,

01:40:44.200 e.g.

01:40:45.440 You

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - June 13, 2024

455. The Devil and Karl Marx ｜ Dr. Paul Kengor

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