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Over the past century, socialism and/or communism has been attempted in more than two dozen places…
None of them has succeeded.
OK, some might have failed more spectacularly than other, but none of them has triumphed, at least not for more than a few months in the early stages. Why? Because, for all of capitalism’s flaws, radical socialism and communism—which are essentially two cheeks of the same arse—do not work in practice. They sound good and worthy, but they cannot withstand the ultimate stress-test of life.

We woke up on October 8 to the clamor of street protests in cities across the West condemning Israel even before any major Israeli response to the attacks. We watched celebratory crowds brandish swastikas and chant “gas the Jews” at events purporting to be about the loss of Palestinian lives. We saw Black Lives Matter chapters lionize terrorists.

This is why so few Russians are rarely, if ever, progressive liberals. They are too busy dealing with the harsh realities of life, such as having to pay the rent or feed their children on a shoestring budget, to partake in self-righteousness and identity politics.

The reality of life under the USSR is not something most people can accurately comprehend now, because it happened before most millennials were born and thus preceded the advent of social media, which means to most of my peers it might as well never have happened at all.

She then adds that the primary motivation for contemporary censorship isn’t shielding people from ‘mean’ words but exercising power. ‘It feels good to tell people what to do. These people think they’re motivated by virtue, but the thrill isn’t doing good; it’s authoritarian: pushing people around and punishing them when they step out of line. It’s a predatory sport, and getting people sacked is one of the things you do on social media…and now in the mainstream media.’

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If the right loses the ability to say what it wishes, then that’s a loss for the left as well, because sooner or later that restriction is going to hit them. That’s a mistake that the millennial left tend to make. They think they’re always going to be in a position of calling the shots and making the rules, because they’re so right-on and woke. They think a climate of fear isn’t going to affect them, because they always have the correct opinions, but this is a huge mistake. It’s like young people thinking that they’re always going to be young.

In his best-selling book Love for Imperfect Things, Zen Buddhist teacher Haemin Sunim proves that things don’t need to be faultless in order for them to be good or adored. They can be cherished and retain their inherent value in spite of their failings, much like human beings themselves.

As American philosopher Eric Hoffer famously wrote, ‘Every great cause starts as a movement, becomes a business and eventually degenerates into a racket.’
Diversity has long ceased being a noble cause. It’s been a business for some time and is now rapidly becoming a government-funded, media-supported, propaganda-driven, shameless racket. So many people are now aware of this that even the diversity hustlers have had to change the word—they call it ‘representation’ now. This is why any conversation about immigration immediately becomes a toxic, fact-free zone of hyperventilation—their livelihoods are at stake.

I'm a non-believer, but I can't help but think that what we've created as a society when we killed God is a vacuum that inevitably has to be filled. And when it gets filled, it gets filled by a new religion which is what social justice and intersectionality and all of that now is. They have priests. They have inquisitions. The only thing they don't have in that religion is redemption and forgiveness. [...] If we don't have forgiveness, I don't understand how this world is gonna work. I honestly don't.

Perhaps most importantly of all, comedy is a by-product of the West and its virtues. Think about it: do you really think there’s much cutting-edge comedy going on in Afghanistan, China or Crimea? How about Venezuela, Libya or Kazakhstan? The answer is no. This is because comedy stems from freedom; it is representative of unfettered expression and open dialogue. To try and clip comedy’s wings is profoundly anti-Western—but then again, maybe that’s the whole point.

Pavlik Morozov was murdered by his own family in retribution. But, eerily, I still catch glimpses of him in modern Western society, especially at this point in time, when we are routinely encouraged to put politics before the person, snitch on each other via government hotlines and prove our devotion to idealistic agendas.

Hand in hand with this new linguistic spin on diversity comes ‘inclusion’, which is another word that has been bastardised in recent years. Spaces, we are told, must now be made more inclusive in order for them to be healthy. However, on entering such a space, you’ll soon discover that some people are more included than others.

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