jslavuter's review against another edition
challenging
sad
medium-paced
1.0
Many points of internally inconsistent logic.
lenzen's review
2.0
Although I agree with the author that Marxists are exerting an increasing influence over American politics this book does not make as strong as case as it could and should that this is happening. It does, however, provide some good leads for further study and the final chapter provides some concrete plans on how to fight back.
The main problem with the book is the nebulous nature of what it is attacking. The author never bothers to define what Marxism is. This is partly because he wants to go with the right's favorite and admittedly effective tactic of labelling terrible regimes like Mao, Stalin, and Lenin as Marxist. Certainly these people called themselves Marxists but are "American Marxists" really advocating we set up regimes like that here in the United States? Certainly the average leftist "peacefully protesting" is not openly advocating such a thing. If you ask them they are likely to tell you that they want more direct democracy or more socialism in the country but certainly not anything resembling the Soviet Union or Maoist China. If Levin were to present what he is attacking fairly he would have to argue that such political aspirations inevitably get hijacked and turned into authoritarian dictatorships. But do they always? Europe and especially Scandinavia which many American leftists admire cannot reasonably be said to resemble Stalinist Russia or Maoist China. What prevented these European nations from going that far? How do we know that similar "brakes" would not apply in the United States? By attacking the strawmen, which probably 99.9% of everyone on the left would agree are terrible, Levin avoids ever addressing what leftists are more likely to believe in reality.
Similarly, also along the lines of attacking strawmen, Levin does not really provide a credible guide to understanding why folks on the left think as they do. His explanation is that they are people resentful because of their own personal failures due to their own faults that have lead them to be unsuccessful and hence feel unfulfilled in the country and they are, thus, looking for political movements to fill the void. He fails to even discuss the possibility that failures in American history have lead to legitimate grievance with the system. As an example, by failing to do this he fails to address the idea hat the war on drugs disproportionately affected black people and they continue to suffer as a consequence. Many black people, thus, feel they are part of a permanent undercast. Whether this is ultimately true or not Levin cannot simply dodge the entire issue that the left may believe what they do because there are examples in American history that show failures that resonant with many. That is he cannot do this if he wants to do more than preach to the choir.
Another example of Levin not seriously addressing leftist critiques of America is his summary dismissal that America has acted imperialistically in the past. Counter examples that could be proposed are the annexations of Texas and Hawaii and American interference in South and Central America and in Iran in the 20th century. Whether ultimately imperialistic or not Levin needs to spend at least some time arguing against actual examples which lead many to believe what they do.
On the plus side the book does provide some good leads for further study: for example he highlights the writings of Marcuse. He also provides some interesting statistics: for example students' opinions regarding the first amendment and historical trends showing Americans feeling less comfortable "speaking their minds" regarding politics since the 1950. The book is quite short as it is so there is plenty of room to beef up the statistics in this regard and better make its case.
The best part of the book is definitely the last chapter in which Levin calls on the American right to become as activist as the left if it wants to avoid losing the country. He provides links to specific groups fighting back, calls for boycotts, and provides links to specifics such as filing as FOIA requests to find out what is really go on in education. On the more amusing side, he rightfully calls out media like CNN for their bias in reporting the news. His predictable remedy, unfortunately, is to watch Fox, OANN, and Newsmax instead which, of course, have their own bias problems.
The main problem with the book is the nebulous nature of what it is attacking. The author never bothers to define what Marxism is. This is partly because he wants to go with the right's favorite and admittedly effective tactic of labelling terrible regimes like Mao, Stalin, and Lenin as Marxist. Certainly these people called themselves Marxists but are "American Marxists" really advocating we set up regimes like that here in the United States? Certainly the average leftist "peacefully protesting" is not openly advocating such a thing. If you ask them they are likely to tell you that they want more direct democracy or more socialism in the country but certainly not anything resembling the Soviet Union or Maoist China. If Levin were to present what he is attacking fairly he would have to argue that such political aspirations inevitably get hijacked and turned into authoritarian dictatorships. But do they always? Europe and especially Scandinavia which many American leftists admire cannot reasonably be said to resemble Stalinist Russia or Maoist China. What prevented these European nations from going that far? How do we know that similar "brakes" would not apply in the United States? By attacking the strawmen, which probably 99.9% of everyone on the left would agree are terrible, Levin avoids ever addressing what leftists are more likely to believe in reality.
Similarly, also along the lines of attacking strawmen, Levin does not really provide a credible guide to understanding why folks on the left think as they do. His explanation is that they are people resentful because of their own personal failures due to their own faults that have lead them to be unsuccessful and hence feel unfulfilled in the country and they are, thus, looking for political movements to fill the void. He fails to even discuss the possibility that failures in American history have lead to legitimate grievance with the system. As an example, by failing to do this he fails to address the idea hat the war on drugs disproportionately affected black people and they continue to suffer as a consequence. Many black people, thus, feel they are part of a permanent undercast. Whether this is ultimately true or not Levin cannot simply dodge the entire issue that the left may believe what they do because there are examples in American history that show failures that resonant with many. That is he cannot do this if he wants to do more than preach to the choir.
Another example of Levin not seriously addressing leftist critiques of America is his summary dismissal that America has acted imperialistically in the past. Counter examples that could be proposed are the annexations of Texas and Hawaii and American interference in South and Central America and in Iran in the 20th century. Whether ultimately imperialistic or not Levin needs to spend at least some time arguing against actual examples which lead many to believe what they do.
On the plus side the book does provide some good leads for further study: for example he highlights the writings of Marcuse. He also provides some interesting statistics: for example students' opinions regarding the first amendment and historical trends showing Americans feeling less comfortable "speaking their minds" regarding politics since the 1950. The book is quite short as it is so there is plenty of room to beef up the statistics in this regard and better make its case.
The best part of the book is definitely the last chapter in which Levin calls on the American right to become as activist as the left if it wants to avoid losing the country. He provides links to specific groups fighting back, calls for boycotts, and provides links to specifics such as filing as FOIA requests to find out what is really go on in education. On the more amusing side, he rightfully calls out media like CNN for their bias in reporting the news. His predictable remedy, unfortunately, is to watch Fox, OANN, and Newsmax instead which, of course, have their own bias problems.
guinevere_s1994's review
informative
slow-paced
0.25
My god, what happened to a fair and balanced argument? I see other reviews calling this propaganda and I'm inclined to agree. 😳
lpm100's review
slow-paced
2.0
Book Review
2/5 stars
American Marxism
Mass psychosis is not new and "No, history never repeats itself, but it does rhyme. "
Of the book:
279 pages of prose over 7 chapters.
40 pages per chapter
The reading would be easy, but the content is so distressing/banal (page after page of stupid people involved in frivolity), that I almost don't want to pick it up to resume reading after putting it down.
This book popped up because I needed something short enough to complete after a very long book.
Frankly, I would not have purchased this book again and the reasons are that:
Primo: Even though it's only 280 pages, it reads like it's 560 (and if therefore defeats my purpose of having a short palate cleanser);
Secundo: Even though the events it describes are absolutely appalling, they're really not that unpredictable, nor unknown.
1. All empires have some type of natural lifetime, and even though the Roman Empire was once at the height of its power.....Through the sheer power of entropy: it is with us no longer.
And the Moguls. And The Ottomans. And the Habsburgs.
Eventually, in the process of a government's making some number of decisions..... statistically some of them will be wrong: en toto, those wrong decisions culminate in a fatal collapse.
How many times has China collapsed?
How many times has Israel been conquered/collapsed?
The US is not a unique case in this regard.
So, it will not pass defamation laws. Nor eliminate the tenure system.
And, they will reap the benefits of these stupid decisions / lack of decisions.
2. When human beings get too comfortable, they become fat and sleek (both individually, and as entire generations of people).
Ditto for businesses
Ditto for nations.
So, if a nation that becomes Number 1.... Then that's how you know that its days are numbered. Winners don't stay winners and losers don't stay losers.
The United States is currently Number 1, and that's the perfect position to be in to perish of frivolity (as opposed to if you were Number 2 and striving to be Number 1).
3. When you have a snowflake cause an avalanche, I don't think it is to say that: if you were able to find that one single causative snowflake, you would have been able to avoid the avalanche.
The point is the initial state of the system.
And so, Marx is a red herring.
It is more like: the initial state is a society that's too comfortable and with more income (to finance idiot academics) than they have brains.
Yes, you might be able to point back to Four Stupid Women in Congress...... But, they are the symptom of a problem and not the problem itself.
And if someone did us the favor of assassinating all four of them tomorrow (tee hee hee!), then there would just be another four to replace them--because the current state of the country is such that those type of people can be produced and have audiences.
4. I don't think it much matters if you have one set of people making the decisions (corrupt and venal Democrats) as opposed to another set (hapless, bumbling Republicans).
The Vietnam War was a very damaging rallying point for Kooky White People and left-wing radicals--through BOTH liberal and conservative administrations. There might not have been a continuing public reaction that is led to the State of affairs today had there not been a Vietnam War.
5. The Western World Is Not The World. The Western trend has been moving away from traditional religion and community to a Secular Humanism (which has morphed into Marxism-plated "social justice" movements).
Predictably enough, a lot of other destructive mass movements have arisen to take their place. (I don't know how anybody could see the first two World Wars as anything but that.)
The family unit has been undermined, and people are not reproducing at population sustaining levels ALL across Europe, Asia, and North America.
The Middle East/Africa are just as religious as they have been (and in some cases they have gone even further in that direction--Wahhabism in Saudi/Pakistan) and nobody has said that they are not able to sustain their population levels or that they have moved from their own religious movements into Western-style type Secular Humanism.
But then, in spite of not having Western type of stupidity, the Middle East and Africa are constantly having other issues of their own making. (When are they NOT fighting and killing each other?)
Is Western stupidity enough to explain Western descent? Or would it just be something else?
In this case, if the Marxists/Social Democrats / Social Justice Warriors have the allegiance of Men of Words (and they do!), and they are able to take the country into some mass psychosis (and they will!)...... Then it will just be what it is, and there will be some amount of misery/collapsed governments / chaos over some amount of time, and then things will get back to normal.
And posterity will do it ALL OVER again--as if their ancestors had never been.
Such with the French Revolution.
And the Reign of Terror.
And the Great Leap Forward.
And the Cultural Revolution.
And Hugo Chavez.
And Robert Mugabe.
6. Hoffer already wrote "The True Believer," and that is a lot of the intellectual scaffolding of this book-and that makes the specific events in this book just so much stamp collecting.
7. If people want to lose a country to frivolity, is this the first time?
And what can we do about it?
Do participants in this idiocy get what they deserve? (32 million people starved to death in the Great leap Forward in China because the government thought that they could set rice growing conditions from Beijing. It was a pretty expensive lesson, but eventually they did get disabused of their belief.)
8. Free speech is not free. The experiment is being tried in the United States, and it's not working out too well.
So, you have some state that was an experiment and it failed.
So now what? This is far from the first example of a failed state.
9. Karl Popper's "Paradox of Tolerance" is not new.
Chapter Synopses:
1. Description of the scope of the problem and the author's intentions to raise people's consciousness in order to create a reaction.
2. The destructive tenure system that no one has reined is slowly creating an army of grievance warriors. Brief synopsis of Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Hoffer. Cloward-Piven Strategy.
3. Education is in indoctrination tool, and it filters from universities to teachers that are licensed by them, who in turn infect K-12. Repurposed Marxism has eschatological elements.
4. US Academia is the number one culprit in this destructive tide. The New York Times and "The 1619 Project"- which, coincidentally, has NO footnotes (kinda like the Christian Bible!). Equity≠Equality because the first is equality of results and the second is equality of opportunities. Mexican/south American infestation of the United States is really internal migration, and white people are the real occupiers because the former have a greater claim to the land than the latter. (By the way, universitys that teach this are all financed, built, and controlled by white people.)
5. Capitalism=Freedom of Choice;
Freedom of Choice=Bad;
THEREFORE, Capitalism=Bad.
Environmentalism/Degrowth is warmed-over Marxism. Intro to Serge Latouche. "Intersectionality is the combination of disparate causes and alleged victimizations under yet another radical / anti-capitalist umbrella United in their hatred for American society." (p.160)
6. Fake news (like we didn't know this?). "The modern press is actually a highly negative force in our society" (p.196- Again... we didn't know this?)
7. Recapitulation. What can we do to save this sinking ship? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Use the same Alinskyite tactics that the Marxists use. Legal form shopping. BDS. Pick the topic, personalize it, freeze it, polarize it. If you can avoid purchasing from big corrupt corporations (I'm looking at you, Amazon), then you should avoid it.
Second order thoughts:
1. Maybe the best way to save the United States is for China/Iran to drop several nuclear bombs on California/ New York/ Seattle. In addition to killing off a pretty high fraction of useless people, it might give the country some focus.
The second best way would be to just get some estimate of how many Destructive Intellectuals (Kimberly Crenshaw / Noam Chomsky, et. al.) there are in the country, and just sue/detain/execute a good enough fraction to make an example to the rest.
Lawsuits are the way that the fabulously wealthy Singapore manages to keep its destructive intellectuals in check; The First Chinese Emperor just executed all of his intellectuals at once and the Chinese Empire is still here, still trudging along, and bigger than it ever has been.
2. I wonder what does this mean to Black people? All of this talk about some mythical "people of color" aside: it doesn't help you snag any of these other non-white ladies. And decreasing order of difficulty: Arab>>Asian>Spanish. If you are interested in non-black women (and most black guys are, no matter how grudgingly they admit it), white ladies are probably still your best choice. (And if you are good enough, you might even be able to get better than a Remnant Baby Elephant.).
3. When you have a government that is totalitarian, people slowly find ways to work around it. (The Chinese are, again, an excellent example of people who are prodigiously talented at circumventing the government. For several thousand years.)
4. Some things are factually wrong here. No, Chinese workers are not bound to a job and they don't have to worship Xi Jinping. (p.68).
5. Again, some society somewhere does not learn something or they forget what they have learned. So what?
In Iran, theocracy was the Big Thing, and it appears to have run its course.
Communism / Bolshevism were the Big Thing in the Soviet Union, and eventually they ran their course. (Everywhere, really, except US academia.)
6. I wonder how much these (Marxist, academic) fools really want to get their wish? If the state withers away, then there is no mechanism to finance academia.
Do I really need to tell you that without these glorified government jobs, professors of environmental justice would be working at Little Caesar's or mowing lawns for a living.
7. Why don't these miserable degrowth types just move to certain parts of Africa?
They've got ALL the good stuff there: Low growth. Unstable governments (it's pretty helpful when you want the state to wither away, à la Karl Marx). Primitive healthcare. Pit latrines. Subsistence agriculture /plenty of contact with "nature." Non-white/black people everywhere! And if you don't want to live around black people, you could just move to much of Latin America. Say, Venezuela. And if that's too much, then you could just move to Cambodia.
8. Might be infection be self-limiting? Universities are closing down all over the place in the United States because people are slowly becoming aware that they have been sold a fake bill of goods.
Verdict: Very weak recommendation.
New Vocabulary:
Cloward-Piven Strategy.
Recommended instead:
1. Hoffer, "The True Believer"
2. Tainter, "The Collapse of Complex Civilizations"
3. Sowell, "The Quest For Cosmic Justice"
2/5 stars
American Marxism
Mass psychosis is not new and "No, history never repeats itself, but it does rhyme. "
Of the book:
279 pages of prose over 7 chapters.
40 pages per chapter
The reading would be easy, but the content is so distressing/banal (page after page of stupid people involved in frivolity), that I almost don't want to pick it up to resume reading after putting it down.
This book popped up because I needed something short enough to complete after a very long book.
Frankly, I would not have purchased this book again and the reasons are that:
Primo: Even though it's only 280 pages, it reads like it's 560 (and if therefore defeats my purpose of having a short palate cleanser);
Secundo: Even though the events it describes are absolutely appalling, they're really not that unpredictable, nor unknown.
1. All empires have some type of natural lifetime, and even though the Roman Empire was once at the height of its power.....Through the sheer power of entropy: it is with us no longer.
And the Moguls. And The Ottomans. And the Habsburgs.
Eventually, in the process of a government's making some number of decisions..... statistically some of them will be wrong: en toto, those wrong decisions culminate in a fatal collapse.
How many times has China collapsed?
How many times has Israel been conquered/collapsed?
The US is not a unique case in this regard.
So, it will not pass defamation laws. Nor eliminate the tenure system.
And, they will reap the benefits of these stupid decisions / lack of decisions.
2. When human beings get too comfortable, they become fat and sleek (both individually, and as entire generations of people).
Ditto for businesses
Ditto for nations.
So, if a nation that becomes Number 1.... Then that's how you know that its days are numbered. Winners don't stay winners and losers don't stay losers.
The United States is currently Number 1, and that's the perfect position to be in to perish of frivolity (as opposed to if you were Number 2 and striving to be Number 1).
3. When you have a snowflake cause an avalanche, I don't think it is to say that: if you were able to find that one single causative snowflake, you would have been able to avoid the avalanche.
The point is the initial state of the system.
And so, Marx is a red herring.
It is more like: the initial state is a society that's too comfortable and with more income (to finance idiot academics) than they have brains.
Yes, you might be able to point back to Four Stupid Women in Congress...... But, they are the symptom of a problem and not the problem itself.
And if someone did us the favor of assassinating all four of them tomorrow (tee hee hee!), then there would just be another four to replace them--because the current state of the country is such that those type of people can be produced and have audiences.
4. I don't think it much matters if you have one set of people making the decisions (corrupt and venal Democrats) as opposed to another set (hapless, bumbling Republicans).
The Vietnam War was a very damaging rallying point for Kooky White People and left-wing radicals--through BOTH liberal and conservative administrations. There might not have been a continuing public reaction that is led to the State of affairs today had there not been a Vietnam War.
5. The Western World Is Not The World. The Western trend has been moving away from traditional religion and community to a Secular Humanism (which has morphed into Marxism-plated "social justice" movements).
Predictably enough, a lot of other destructive mass movements have arisen to take their place. (I don't know how anybody could see the first two World Wars as anything but that.)
The family unit has been undermined, and people are not reproducing at population sustaining levels ALL across Europe, Asia, and North America.
The Middle East/Africa are just as religious as they have been (and in some cases they have gone even further in that direction--Wahhabism in Saudi/Pakistan) and nobody has said that they are not able to sustain their population levels or that they have moved from their own religious movements into Western-style type Secular Humanism.
But then, in spite of not having Western type of stupidity, the Middle East and Africa are constantly having other issues of their own making. (When are they NOT fighting and killing each other?)
Is Western stupidity enough to explain Western descent? Or would it just be something else?
In this case, if the Marxists/Social Democrats / Social Justice Warriors have the allegiance of Men of Words (and they do!), and they are able to take the country into some mass psychosis (and they will!)...... Then it will just be what it is, and there will be some amount of misery/collapsed governments / chaos over some amount of time, and then things will get back to normal.
And posterity will do it ALL OVER again--as if their ancestors had never been.
Such with the French Revolution.
And the Reign of Terror.
And the Great Leap Forward.
And the Cultural Revolution.
And Hugo Chavez.
And Robert Mugabe.
6. Hoffer already wrote "The True Believer," and that is a lot of the intellectual scaffolding of this book-and that makes the specific events in this book just so much stamp collecting.
7. If people want to lose a country to frivolity, is this the first time?
And what can we do about it?
Do participants in this idiocy get what they deserve? (32 million people starved to death in the Great leap Forward in China because the government thought that they could set rice growing conditions from Beijing. It was a pretty expensive lesson, but eventually they did get disabused of their belief.)
8. Free speech is not free. The experiment is being tried in the United States, and it's not working out too well.
So, you have some state that was an experiment and it failed.
So now what? This is far from the first example of a failed state.
9. Karl Popper's "Paradox of Tolerance" is not new.
Chapter Synopses:
1. Description of the scope of the problem and the author's intentions to raise people's consciousness in order to create a reaction.
2. The destructive tenure system that no one has reined is slowly creating an army of grievance warriors. Brief synopsis of Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Hoffer. Cloward-Piven Strategy.
3. Education is in indoctrination tool, and it filters from universities to teachers that are licensed by them, who in turn infect K-12. Repurposed Marxism has eschatological elements.
4. US Academia is the number one culprit in this destructive tide. The New York Times and "The 1619 Project"- which, coincidentally, has NO footnotes (kinda like the Christian Bible!). Equity≠Equality because the first is equality of results and the second is equality of opportunities. Mexican/south American infestation of the United States is really internal migration, and white people are the real occupiers because the former have a greater claim to the land than the latter. (By the way, universitys that teach this are all financed, built, and controlled by white people.)
5. Capitalism=Freedom of Choice;
Freedom of Choice=Bad;
THEREFORE, Capitalism=Bad.
Environmentalism/Degrowth is warmed-over Marxism. Intro to Serge Latouche. "Intersectionality is the combination of disparate causes and alleged victimizations under yet another radical / anti-capitalist umbrella United in their hatred for American society." (p.160)
6. Fake news (like we didn't know this?). "The modern press is actually a highly negative force in our society" (p.196- Again... we didn't know this?)
7. Recapitulation. What can we do to save this sinking ship? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Use the same Alinskyite tactics that the Marxists use. Legal form shopping. BDS. Pick the topic, personalize it, freeze it, polarize it. If you can avoid purchasing from big corrupt corporations (I'm looking at you, Amazon), then you should avoid it.
Second order thoughts:
1. Maybe the best way to save the United States is for China/Iran to drop several nuclear bombs on California/ New York/ Seattle. In addition to killing off a pretty high fraction of useless people, it might give the country some focus.
The second best way would be to just get some estimate of how many Destructive Intellectuals (Kimberly Crenshaw / Noam Chomsky, et. al.) there are in the country, and just sue/detain/execute a good enough fraction to make an example to the rest.
Lawsuits are the way that the fabulously wealthy Singapore manages to keep its destructive intellectuals in check; The First Chinese Emperor just executed all of his intellectuals at once and the Chinese Empire is still here, still trudging along, and bigger than it ever has been.
2. I wonder what does this mean to Black people? All of this talk about some mythical "people of color" aside: it doesn't help you snag any of these other non-white ladies. And decreasing order of difficulty: Arab>>Asian>Spanish. If you are interested in non-black women (and most black guys are, no matter how grudgingly they admit it), white ladies are probably still your best choice. (And if you are good enough, you might even be able to get better than a Remnant Baby Elephant.).
3. When you have a government that is totalitarian, people slowly find ways to work around it. (The Chinese are, again, an excellent example of people who are prodigiously talented at circumventing the government. For several thousand years.)
4. Some things are factually wrong here. No, Chinese workers are not bound to a job and they don't have to worship Xi Jinping. (p.68).
5. Again, some society somewhere does not learn something or they forget what they have learned. So what?
In Iran, theocracy was the Big Thing, and it appears to have run its course.
Communism / Bolshevism were the Big Thing in the Soviet Union, and eventually they ran their course. (Everywhere, really, except US academia.)
6. I wonder how much these (Marxist, academic) fools really want to get their wish? If the state withers away, then there is no mechanism to finance academia.
Do I really need to tell you that without these glorified government jobs, professors of environmental justice would be working at Little Caesar's or mowing lawns for a living.
7. Why don't these miserable degrowth types just move to certain parts of Africa?
They've got ALL the good stuff there: Low growth. Unstable governments (it's pretty helpful when you want the state to wither away, à la Karl Marx). Primitive healthcare. Pit latrines. Subsistence agriculture /plenty of contact with "nature." Non-white/black people everywhere! And if you don't want to live around black people, you could just move to much of Latin America. Say, Venezuela. And if that's too much, then you could just move to Cambodia.
8. Might be infection be self-limiting? Universities are closing down all over the place in the United States because people are slowly becoming aware that they have been sold a fake bill of goods.
Verdict: Very weak recommendation.
New Vocabulary:
Cloward-Piven Strategy.
Recommended instead:
1. Hoffer, "The True Believer"
2. Tainter, "The Collapse of Complex Civilizations"
3. Sowell, "The Quest For Cosmic Justice"
ryno23's review
4.0
This is an EXTREMELY thorough book about Marxism, the history of Marxism, and how it is enveloping American culture day by day. The book includes enough of 2021 to be as close to current as possible.
But while the book isn't very long, the thoroughness and attention to detail is overhelming at times. It was almost too much. I *think* it could have been pared down and the author would have gotten his point across.
And at this point I need to mention my usual Bill O'Reilly-type of declaration: I can't stand watching Mark Levin's show. O'Reilly gave overblown, flowery presentations of simple topics just to inflame people.
Levin is downright creepy. That is despite his having a great message a lot of the time. (shivers) So creepy. But a good book.
But while the book isn't very long, the thoroughness and attention to detail is overhelming at times. It was almost too much. I *think* it could have been pared down and the author would have gotten his point across.
And at this point I need to mention my usual Bill O'Reilly-type of declaration: I can't stand watching Mark Levin's show. O'Reilly gave overblown, flowery presentations of simple topics just to inflame people.
Levin is downright creepy. That is despite his having a great message a lot of the time. (shivers) So creepy. But a good book.
ncrabb's review
4.0
It’s almost unheard of in our time that a nonfiction book can sell more than a million copies. But Levin accomplished that in just over two months with this book. It’s basic premise is that organizations like Black Lives Matter, social justice activists, and even diversity and inclusion programs are examples of American Marxism. He warns his readers in chapter one that the movement is alive and well. He urges them to abandon their complacency and recognize that American Marxism in all its faces and forms will divide and destroy the nation. He speaks out against those who insist that things like that can’t happen here, assuring his readers that they already are.
Chapter two looks at the dangers of the mob mentality. He posits that unhappy unfulfilled people are a majority in most mass movements rather than well-adjusted self-reliant individuals. He quotes sources who say mass movements like Antifa and Black Lives Matter depict the present as mean and miserable, and they seek to make it so.
Other chapters decry the lack of scholarship in the 1619 project. Levin speaks out against what he sees as the Marxist indoctrination on college campuses. He quotes heavily in these chapters from not just Carl Marx, but others who share his philosophies—Herbert Croly, John Dewey, and Herbert Marcuse, who was associated with the Frankfort School of Critical Theory. He quotes organizational documents, too, including a mission statement on the Black Lives Matter home page that called for the destruction of the traditional western family. (According to Levin, BLM officials scrubbed those sentences in 2020 after they drew too much negative attention to the group.
Chapter five focuses on climate change and speaks unabashedly in favor of capitalism as a liberating force rather than a force for evil. He points out its advantages and the abundance it has created on a variety of levels from comforts we take for granted to the plethora of choices on grocery store shelves. Levin cite the environmental movement that had its birth in the 1960s and has become the climate change movement of today with seeking to destroy our way of life. He points out areas where American Marxism is infused in the climate change movement. He warns against embracing what he calls a degrowth mentality, pointing out areas in which the degrowth movement is inextricably connected to American Marxism.
Chapter six delves into what Levin calls the deliberate censorship of conservative thought by big tech. He provides examples of conservative censorship by big tech and publishers. Perhaps diplomatically, he doesn’t reference Simon and Schuster’s decision to cancel publication of Missouri Senator Josh Hawley’s book—a book that eventually found another publisher. I suspect, considering the high sales of Levin’s book, that Simon and Schuster is quietly pleased with its decision to publish it.
The final chapter is arguably the most important one to read, especially for those who are uneasy about the current state of things. This is the chapter in which Levin takes to task those who call his radio show and shrilly demand to know “what are we going to do?” Plainly, he points out that the question isn’t “what can we do,” but “what can I as an individual do?” He then proposes numerous solutions.
He insists most of the country has been caught flat-footed and remains unengaged. The various Marxist-oriented movements are constantly agitating and even rioting to accomplish their ends. He asserts at present, there is no effective sustained counterpressure or pushback. His final chapter calls for nonviolent efforts to push back. He calls for boycotts, organize, rally, speak, write, and more. He says conservatives must use Marxist tactics where appropriate. “We must become the new community activist, he says.
Jeremy Lowell does an excellent job as the narrator of the audio edition of this. Since the book reads with the density of a textbook in places, Lowell’s pace is perfect for it.
Chapter two looks at the dangers of the mob mentality. He posits that unhappy unfulfilled people are a majority in most mass movements rather than well-adjusted self-reliant individuals. He quotes sources who say mass movements like Antifa and Black Lives Matter depict the present as mean and miserable, and they seek to make it so.
Other chapters decry the lack of scholarship in the 1619 project. Levin speaks out against what he sees as the Marxist indoctrination on college campuses. He quotes heavily in these chapters from not just Carl Marx, but others who share his philosophies—Herbert Croly, John Dewey, and Herbert Marcuse, who was associated with the Frankfort School of Critical Theory. He quotes organizational documents, too, including a mission statement on the Black Lives Matter home page that called for the destruction of the traditional western family. (According to Levin, BLM officials scrubbed those sentences in 2020 after they drew too much negative attention to the group.
Chapter five focuses on climate change and speaks unabashedly in favor of capitalism as a liberating force rather than a force for evil. He points out its advantages and the abundance it has created on a variety of levels from comforts we take for granted to the plethora of choices on grocery store shelves. Levin cite the environmental movement that had its birth in the 1960s and has become the climate change movement of today with seeking to destroy our way of life. He points out areas where American Marxism is infused in the climate change movement. He warns against embracing what he calls a degrowth mentality, pointing out areas in which the degrowth movement is inextricably connected to American Marxism.
Chapter six delves into what Levin calls the deliberate censorship of conservative thought by big tech. He provides examples of conservative censorship by big tech and publishers. Perhaps diplomatically, he doesn’t reference Simon and Schuster’s decision to cancel publication of Missouri Senator Josh Hawley’s book—a book that eventually found another publisher. I suspect, considering the high sales of Levin’s book, that Simon and Schuster is quietly pleased with its decision to publish it.
The final chapter is arguably the most important one to read, especially for those who are uneasy about the current state of things. This is the chapter in which Levin takes to task those who call his radio show and shrilly demand to know “what are we going to do?” Plainly, he points out that the question isn’t “what can we do,” but “what can I as an individual do?” He then proposes numerous solutions.
He insists most of the country has been caught flat-footed and remains unengaged. The various Marxist-oriented movements are constantly agitating and even rioting to accomplish their ends. He asserts at present, there is no effective sustained counterpressure or pushback. His final chapter calls for nonviolent efforts to push back. He calls for boycotts, organize, rally, speak, write, and more. He says conservatives must use Marxist tactics where appropriate. “We must become the new community activist, he says.
Jeremy Lowell does an excellent job as the narrator of the audio edition of this. Since the book reads with the density of a textbook in places, Lowell’s pace is perfect for it.