The Authoritarian Moment
How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent
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The Authoritarian Moment
Buy Now for £11.49
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Narrated by:
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Ben Shapiro
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By:
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Ben Shapiro
About this listen
New York Times Bestseller
How far are Americans willing to go to force each other to fall in line?
According to the establishment media, the intelligentsia, and our political chattering class, the greatest threat to American freedom lies in right-wing authoritarianism. We’ve heard that some 75 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump represent the rise of American fascism; that conservatives have allowed authoritarianism to bloom in their midst, creating a grave danger for the republic.
But what if the true authoritarian threat to America doesn’t come from the political right, but from the supposedly anti-fascist left?
There are certainly totalitarians on the political right. But statistically, they represent a fringe movement with little institutional clout. The authoritarian left, meanwhile, is ascendant in nearly every area of American life. A small number of leftists—college-educated, coastal, and uncompromising—have not just taken over the Democratic Party but our corporations, our universities, our scientific establishment, our cultural institutions. And they have used their newfound power to silence their opposition.
The authoritarian Left is aggressively insistent that everyone must conform to its values, demanding submission and conformity. The dogmatic Left is obsessed with putting people in categories and changing human nature. Everyone who opposes it must be destroyed.
Ben Shapiro looks at everything from pop culture to the Frankfurt school, social media to the Founding Fathers, to explain the origins of our turn to tyranny, and why so many seem blind to it.
More than a catalog of bad actors and intemperate acts,The Authoritarian Moment lays bare the intolerance and rigidity creeping into all American ideology – and prescribes the solution to ending the authoritarianism that threatens our future.
Read it while it's still legal to do so
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fantastic!
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Nothing but respect.
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The main thesis of the book is as follows:
1. Most people are not virtue signalling, pronoun using woke lefties. However, the majority of people are being silenced through a vocal minority who uses twitter and other mediums to either get you fired, your business reputation destroyed and person’s life ruined. The bar of what is okay today is ever shifting and so Ben argues, keeping quiet will not spare you from this but only shift the time scales of when it will occur to you. Ben says, its not an if, but a when, because the bar moves so often it will eventually land on you and the outrage mob will come calling for your blood – eventually.
2. The left have over taken public life. Ben explains, this started in the universities which are now dominated by lefties who are indoctrinating others. He says, there are so few conversative teachers in education, according to poll data, that this fact is undeniable. Corporate companies have also been captured with many manager’s shifting attention from shareholder obligations and focusing instead on equity (equal outcomes), diversity pledges, and other woke badges of nothingness rather than focusing on building good core products, that people want to buy.
3. Ben simply argues that, Conversative people are being denied any voice in public life. They are being de-platformed and as such this is leaving the left as the only voices. People then naturally think they are the voice of the people, which they aren’t.
4. Ben argues that science is great because it is based on reasonable fact. However, the appeal to science these days has become a form of political narrative shaping in itself, being less about science rather than about trying to serve the political aims of ideology. Given the current state of the world, I think few of us dispute this. Science Ben argues is no longer Science, but is now ‘S.C.I.E.N.C.E’. An example Ben gives is, its okay to march in a protest for BLM and COVID wont get you, but if you march against lockdowns it will. This is not science – its politics.
5. Ben argues that left wing ideology has taken hold of large corporates. These companies now employ the large majority of people and don’t favour freedom nor market choice, being rather favour dominance instead. Ben argues that as these companies deploy a large number of individuals in large HR departments to push a narrative internally and force compliance with the narrative. Anyone who has worked in a large corporate has had this experience already. Ben argues that these large corporates are trying to kill small business who favour freedom and market choice and traditional conversative values.
6. Ben argues that Hollywood is obsessed with politics and is not focusing on telling a good story. All Conversative values have been taken out of Hollywood and entertainment is now being used as a propaganda machine, rather than an entertainment machine. Ben gives examples of trashy politically focused films, which virtue score rather than entertain, which the audience thoroughly dislikes. However, because you dislike them you are labelled racist and other words just because didn’t enjoy the film and because the film doesn’t share your values. Ben says, entertainment used to cater for both sides of the political divide but these days it doesn’t. The left have captured it completely and now it only focuses on their message.
7. A chapter on fake news.
8. Ben talks about how conversative people are being banned from public life, such as the bans seen on Twitter, Facebook, Parlor etc. this year. Ben argues that the reason for this is so that Conversative individuals can be driven completely from corporates and public life, leaving nothing more than the left in its wake to dictate to the rest of us how to live our lives.
9. Ben concludes, the left don’t need a justification to cancel you – they need nothing more than an excuse. Ben therefore argues, they can’t cancel you if you don’t consent to it. Ben says, leave the system and create alternatives. Ben suggests to start with education and then move onto practical elements. Ben argues, many of these leftie policies are flat out illegal. He says, most people don’t want to take their employers to court for breaches of law, but he argues that is exactly what people are going to have to do in future. He argues, the other means of redress are to withhold your money from companies you disagree with and ultimately create our own alternative institutions.
A good way to end this review is to highlight the final words of Ben’s book. He says, he worries that his kids will grow up thinking that its normal to be silenced, to be cancelled and to be hounded by the mob. He worries about them growing up and taking it for granted this their lack of freedom and their need to follow the party line is just the norm. There is no need to review the book but rather simply stop and think about these final thoughts of Ben’s. Ben explains, if you’re silent on all this then you consent to it. I can’t say I disagree with him.
Worth your time to read it
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great insight
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