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Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

Maybe the post is a "Parable of Lightening / Kolmolgorov Complicty" trap, but I would like to say what I think this is being used as source material for, and I won't directly because there isn't an easy way to make a comment on it without being antagonistic, but it's important to recognize that there exists a manual of these organized tactics, produced by an organization that employed Herbert Marcuse, whose work is taught in every humanities undergrad in the western world, where their graduates largely go on to work in organizations appendant to the public sector.

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The Research and Analysis Branch of the OSS employed more than a thousand social scientists (including Marcuse) as information analysts, people who came out of academia for a while to aid the war effort vs. the Nazis. Many later went back to academia.

Implying without further evidence that therefore academic social scientists are secret saboteurs, part of a spy agency conspiracy, is defamatory nonsense. Whatever anyone thinks about Marcuse per se, this kind of cheap anti-intellectualism is deplorable.

This comment is the least bizarre and unhinged accusation on the thread so I will respond to it.

There is nothing anti-intellectual about pointing out the tactics used within organizations today, learned in the universities, resemble this sabotage manual, especially since the tactics I am referring to are nihilistic and totalitarian, and come right out of what Arendt (as it turns out, a contemporary of members said school mentioned downthread) described as the necessary conditions for a totalitarian movement. There is zero controvsery that academia and its appendant institutions, and now big tech, and even finance has been compromised by a totalitarian movement whose members are trained that power is the highest good, that there is no truth, no God, no consequences, and other downstream effluent of what appears to be a strain of Heideggerian Marxism.

One hopes you apply the same standard of intellectualism to your fellow travelers whose best responses reduce to hysterical canards that are so absurd as to be beneath a denial. I encourgage you all to please, do better.

> There is zero controvsery that academia and its appendant institutions, and now big tech, and even finance has been compromised by a totalitarian movement

Even ignoring the rest of your description, yes, there is considerable controversy that any, much less all, of those three things have been compromised by a totalitarian movement, and if you think that that view is uncontroversial you need to at least glance outside of the far-right fever swamp occasionally.

«Everyone agrees that (((Marcuse)))’s secret cabal and those (their “downstream effluent”) they have compromised who control academia, tech, finance, and government are godless totalitarian nihilists» (slightly paraphrased) is not really the kind of response most people were hoping for....

While I am glad to have provoked discussion, especially in the context of the original "Parable of Lightning / Kolmolgorov Complicity" essays which I highly recommend reading, and that this thread was one of its traps appears to be confirmed, but I defer to the moderators in regard to whether we're adding value with this kind of personal slander.

Kolmogorov was, however, not complicit with the very scary idea that one shouldn't spout anti-semitic nonsense, he was complicit in an actual totalitarian system. The systems in which Kolmogorov complicity happens are those in which you can't freely give your opinion. However, anti-semitism isn't an opinion, but an insanity, and besides, you are not Kolmogorov. Stop overselling your harmful nonsense.

Plus you are, as you notice, absolutely allowed to spout anti-semitic rhetoric, and will not be literally burned at the stake or shot for it. This does not free you from professional consequences, even in the academic sphere, because it is hard to take seriously the ideas of someone who seriously believes that the Jews invented Marxism as a weapon to do what-exactly?

It's not anti-intellectualism, it's rampant, straight-faced, rotten anti-semitism. Marcuse was Jewish, and the idea here is that (((they))), who already run the secret deep state, have taken over the universities, erstwhile organizations of pure, rational, white science (as evidenced by logical colonial era head measurements), and turned them into vile spaces intent on destroying the white race.

Nazi dogwhistle bullshit.

True enough (and thanks for being explicit). But “these inferior-race academics are leading our youth astray” is also anti-intellectual.

And it’s not like these fascists are only anti-semitic. They are also happy to whine incoherently about women, gays, blacks, Native Americans, Latin Americans, Chinese, Arabs, Indians, schoolteachers, public health experts, organized labor, ....

And for that matter happy to complain about the straight male WASP academics who have "sold out their people". Etc.

Take for example this 2-day-old twitter post post by a guy affiliated with all sorts of GOP and GOP-adjacent organizations, https://twitter.com/jlippincott_/status/1471584502266880005

The Twitter account you linked is suspended.

What was that about tech not being totalitarian?

Still here for now: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1471584502266880005.html

Interesting, didn't know of that connection between OSS and Marcuse. I can see why one would err.. tiptoe around this.

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