Salon.com’s Infantile Leftism

joan-walshJoan Robinson was a famous Keynesian economist and also a not so famous Maoist. Nonetheless she had one shrewd observation about politics. People, she said, can no more see their own ideology than they can smell their own breath. The Internet magazine Salon, a large leftwing website for which I was a much unloved columnist fifteen years ago, provides an interesting case in point.

Joan Walsh was my editor at Salon, and soon became its editor-in-chief. Now she is described as “Editor-at-Large” but is more like its Matriarch-in-Residence. A recent election piece she wrote is titled, “America’s Nightmare Political Reality: Two Electorates Separate and Unequal.” In this, as in other similar articles, she displays the tawdry reality of her magazine’s current journalism. A teaser for the article explains the title: “Why conservatives prefer propaganda to reality.”

According to Walsh, Republicans have run their mid-term election campaigns against President Obama not because his feckless national security policies have left a power vacuum that terrorists have filled, not because his anti-military mania has helped to create 18 million refugees in the Middle East, not because he has run up a debt greater than that of all previous presidents combined, not because he has proudly violated the Constitution stripping congress of its authority and power, not because he has inflicted economic suffering on America’s minorities and poor, not because he has unleashed efforts by his administration to use the taxing power of government to crush his political opposition. Oh no. The Republican campaigns against Obama’s destructive agendas and incompetent performances are driven by hate, and racial hate at that.

According to Walsh,

“The Republican Party is relying on Obama-hate to turn out its 96-percent-white, middle-class-to-wealthy base, while the Democrats, still trying to be a multi-racial party in a multi-racial country, are trying to court voters of every race and class.”

Walsh is amazed at the extent to which the mainstream media clings to a reality that refutes this self-serving false narrative, which ignores how Democrat policies have hurt all economic classes but the wealthy, and in which the Republican Party is not 96 percent white and has a large working class and significant minority base. Here are Walsh’s own words:

“It’s amazing the extent to which the mainstream media accepts that the GOP’s personalized, deeply disparaging campaign against Obama is just politics as usual.”

Because, according to Walsh, Democrats and the media never treated George Bush this way.

“While it’s true that dissatisfaction with President Bush helped Democrats ride back to controlling Congress in 2006, I’m hard-pressed to remember examples of Democrats campaigning against Bush so personally and gleefully.”

Say what?!!! Has Walsh forgotten how Ted Kennedy described Bush’s invasion of Iraq — which was supported by the Democratic majority in the Senate before Democrats turned their backs on the war they had supported three months into the fighting – as a “fraud” concocted in Texas to serve Bush’s oil buddies? Has she forgotten how the Democratic National Committee launched a national television campaign to accuse Bush of lying to get authorization for the war, which became a vicious slogan “Bush lied, people died”? This was matched by another slogan based on the canard spread by Kennedy and Democratic leaders that it was all about Dick Cheney’s company Halliburton: “No blood for oil.” Actually America got no oil, but Bush got no apologies for these and other monstrous Democratic lies.

But how do Walsh and her crew observe her strictures about civility and honesty? Here are some headlines from her non-hatemongering magazine: “Iowa’s Tea Party disaster: Joni Ernst’s shocking ideas about the welfare state. How the wingnut potentially on the verge of joining the Senate uses shoddy history to justify her radical beliefs.” (Her shocking idea: “We have fostereda generation of people that rely on the government to provide absolutely everything.”)

And this: “The Republican Party’s electoral philosophy: Cheating wins”

And this: “Yeah, the GOP is evil and will win — but the midterms are meaningless”

In 2001, I conducted a one-man campaign against reparations for slavery, proposed 137 years after the fact to be paid by people who were never slave owners to people who were never slaves. My efforts created a firestorm, and my editor Joan Walsh defended me against loony leftists who could not handle the truth in an article titled, “Who’s Afraid of David Horowitz?” But that was then. Now she and the staff of Salon have joined them.

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  • Jack A. Napes

    Of course you realize “infantile leftism” is redundant.

    So is “psychotic leftism’, or “schizophrenic leftism”.

  • truebearing

    Leftism is infantile in large part because it attracts narcissistic people – narcissism being normal in infants but a form of arrested development in adults. Narcissists want what they want when they want it, ie. total control. Leftism allows them to be self-righteous, self-indulgent, powerful, and all-knowing by simply adopting an ideology that reduces reality to something they can control. Meagher intellectual effort and a native disdain for truth are all that is required. The ideology is magic and they are magical for adopting it. The echo chamber reinforces it and any tether to reality is soon broken. Their psychological tendencies predispose them to be delusional and rapacious for power, so collectivism gives them the expectation of acquiring that power.

    The majority of leftists don’t seem capable of truly objective thought. The ideology so warps their intellectual process that it in effect possesses them.

    The pernicious melding of Leftism with the human mind seems to permanently enthrall most of those so afflicted, yet strong-minded people who genuinely, if errantly, are attracted to Marxism for the good it could provide humanity, as opposed to the power it could give them, seem to be the ones with the immunity to its lies. Like the survivors of Ebola, whose blood is now saving others, David Horowitz saw through the lies, despite being indoctrinated from birth, and has innoculated countless people from the ideological virus of Leftism. An accomplishment that shouldn’t be underestimated or under-appreciated.

    • John Pallyswine

      I just heard a speech by the current psychofreak in office ( they are all lying psychofreaks); i.e., Your President:

      hope is coming, better days are ahead,etc…

      All Americans who vote for this psycholiar should be lobotmized

      • DavieButlinfpup

        my friends sister just got a 2012 Kia Optima Hybrid by work parttime using a laptop. visit site …>> -> START BY CLICKING HERE!!! <-

        • http://www.dilbert.com scook84

          Yes, yes! But has your friend’s sister used her 2012 KIA Optima Hybrid to knock some sense into the left?

          <3 Muah!

          • http://www.dhmo.org/ VenturaCapitalist

            I suggest Davie, his butt, his friend, his sister the rest of these ignorant, inbred, flatulent, disgusting demokrat trailer trash hillbillies go on back to their double-wide meth lab.

      • http://www.stubbornthings.org NAHALKIDES

        Most Americans who voted for Obama were already lobotomized in one way or another.

        • Cara C

          Lobotomized by the lying mainstream media.

          • JamesBenson

            After the lying Dems are voted out of the senate, “We the People” need to deal with the corrupt, lying media.

          • Russell Lissuzzo

            Sorry kid, not any time soon. I figure my Grandson’s (ages 2 and 4) will be old men before this crap is defeated; if even then!!!

    • Nathan Jessup

      From worship of the self, comes worship of the state.

    • ca1

      …shining examples of the leftists with the “warped intellectual process” who seem “possessed” …. pelosi and wasserman-shultz… the other component this mental disorder is their constant use of psychological projection to explain the motivation of their ‘enemy right wingers”…

    • Russell Lissuzzo

      Well stated. The only aspect of the marxist rabble you forgot is they are human debris.

  • johnlac

    It doesn’t matter what the subject is…the response of Dems to opposition for any and all of their nutty proposals is “you’re a racist.” It’s like the record producer who keeps adding more cowbell to a lousy recording in hopes it will improve the recording. But of course, Dems have no legitimate responses to most issues. Yelling racism has almost always worked in the past in place of a reasoned response, why not continue?

    • dwayne roberson

      I think that the racist cowbell is bathed in reverb, giving the listener the impression of complete vacancy. .

    • Sheik Yerbouti

      I’m only a racist because I’m white. THAT is the new America (same as the old America except that now whites are the hated race).

  • cree

    Lie, deceit, cheat and the utopian creep gives misery on every street. Dee-troit, Dee-troit, model city of exploit. Lot of wealth taken and spread around, all who can have all left, leftist town.
    “That’s what change looks like.” No hope in that. We don’t like.
    Planet nation friends saying we a joke. Bary needs a toke, coke; he scary, dreamin on his own, he run up the loan. Go back Kenya, father, dream, home, grow your own homegrown.

    I’ll get off this page, it’s bringing on that rage. Sorry, midterms craze.

  • SoCalMike

    Dems almost invariably project their own feelings, attitudes and bias onto their political opposition so when a brainwashed religious zealot like Joan Walsh leads off with “Conservatives prefer propaganda to reality” she of course is describing herself and her government-worshipping political coreligionists.

  • http://libertyandculture.blogspot.com/ Jason P

    Perhaps that’s why I haven’t read Salon in over a decade.

    • Russell Lissuzzo

      I never even touched the crap knowing that another POS Kennedy was involved!!!

  • I_Am_Me

    Progressivism leads to North Korean Utopia. The psychological and moral underpinnings of both are identical and need to be brought to the forefront. Is this the new hope, Mr. Obama and friends?

    http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/27/opinion/north-korea-prisoner-human-rights/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

  • BlackCoffee07

    Democrats and Republicans both serve the same corporate agenda, with minute differences. What is really going on behind this “Republican vs Democrat” political theater?

  • ping

    Any merits Salon had went kaput once Greenwald left.

  • tompro97


    Another senile demagogue trying to be relevant kinda like Pee-Loosely and Reed – this “person” represents the hollow core of the demagogue, progressive movement. They live among themselves and have no idea of what goes on in flyover country. They are shallow, meaningless people with no souls.

  • http://historyscoper.com/ T.L. Winslow

    Joan’s Saloon is a great read for its daily yellow journalism articles lambasting Republicans, whether they hold water or not. Yes, most Republicans are white, and who knows about their closet racial views, but then, so were the Founding Fathers, and not everyone on the planet is a spy, and not every woman is sleeping with Sodamn Insane. Speaking of the latter, when it comes to Islam Saloon has become Better Call Sauloon, the shyster lawyer for every Muslim on the planet, who they will get off in court no matter how, for a price. They’re SICK. Guess whose side they’re on with the Bill Maher thang. Still, their comments sections are not censored and I recommend to all FP readers to visit daily and give their best shot in hopes that they might reach one or two Saloon readers before it’s too late and ossification sets in.

  • joe kulak

    I never read their shizzl. Calling it “infantile leftism” is being too kind.

  • http://conservativenewsfeed.com/ V Saxena

    Excellent piece, David Horowitz. I do not understand Miss Walsh. I have heard her speak 1000x on “Hardball,” and her rhetoric remains the same time and time again. It always boils down to racism and nothing else. *shrugs* I just do not understand the way she thinks . . .

  • http://www.dhmo.org/ VenturaCapitalist

    There she goes again, banging her spoon on her high-chair.
    (h.t. Jonah Goldberg)

  • Del_Varner

    And this: “The Republican Party’s electoral philosophy: Cheating wins”

    Dems are masters of this and projection.

  • glpage

    Leftists remember only what they want to remember, so, of course she doesn’t remember anyone on the left treating Bush the way she perceives the right treating Obama. She probably doesn’t remember the Bush as chimp cartoons. The more I read about people like this the more I am convinced that the doctor who said liberalism is a mental disease was right.

  • verneoz

    The reason the left hate Christianity? Because socialism is their religion.

    • William Magoffin

      I’ve seen this statement so many times. It is utterly simplistic and showcases the us vs them mentality the Christian right has in this country so that it does everyone a disservice when people keep repeating it. It is not a religion vs religion conflict, religions are simply tools or obstacles in their quest for hegemony: power for them is their religion.

      The actions of anyone on either extreme of the spectrum (far Left or far RIght) are based on their need for socitial control because society will gravitate to a rational medium that will prevent them from having that control. Religion is the oldest method of socitial control there is, anyone seeking to usurp power in that society must destroy that method of control. That is the cornerstone of revolutionary ideologies. Some do it by discrediting the exiting religion while others join with that religion to use it as a springboard to power or wealth.

      In the US there are two relatively balanced measures of socitial control, first is the secular rule of law upheld by the US Constitution, the other is the Christian religious institutions that about three quarters of the population hold at least some loyalty to.

      Leftists seek to destroy these two systems because they impede their quest to establish power. They really don’t care about the systems used to gain power, the only religion they subscribe to is whichever one keeps them in power. You can clearly see that in the alliance between the Left and Islam; countries that went completely over to the left like the Soviet Union and the PRC completely suppressed Islam because it competed for the control of the society. While revolutions that are taking place will ally with such groups to gain support and legitimacy.

      Those who support the revolution and have the capacity to influence the masses are the most dangerous to those who seek power. In the US academia is a strong supporter of leftist ideologies but in any state where there is a completed leftist revolution the academics are the first against the wall.

      Why? Because they have the power to influence and control. In any society on this route you will see the allies of the revolutionaries go from friends to enemies once they are in power- or even before; you can see that in how leftists will attach themselves to moderate groups and try to split them by discrediting those who hold sway in that group to radicalize those in the group to their side. This just happened to the atheist movement where leftists attached themselves to the group, tried to discredit those who are considered leaders of the movement and then split the group by creating a new “better” group called Atheism Plus that would inject leftist ideologies aimed at disorganizing any counter to their control in to what is by definition a moderate rationalist group. Most atheists laughed at their attempts to inject victimhood, social justice, and radical feminism to the movement.

      Christians need to realize that they are not being targeted because of their religious faith, they are being targeted because their religion provides a control over their actions; that control system is the target. Unfortunately there are those on the far right who want to use Christianity as a method of control and encourage people not to subscribe to rationality or critical thinking because if they did they would lose power. You will see those under the hegemony of the far Right use Biblical Literalism to counter challenges to will of those in power while those on the far Left will use Racism for the same reason because it stops dead rationality and critical thinking. If you want to maintain your freedom you have to learn about the sciences (both geo-phystical and social) that discredit the ideological tools (arguments) of those seeking to establish hegemony over you.

      • truebearing

        Wrong. Marxism, communism, etc. are political religions. Instead of a deity, they worship power. They are, in fact, atheocracies, with the same goals as Islam — world domination — but without a deity.

        Marxists have been obsessed with destroying Christianity from the beginning because people of faith who adhere to Judeo-Christian morals are very difficult to convert into Marxists with lies.

        This country was nearly completely Christian at the time of its inception, yet the founders, and those who ratified the constitution took special care not to impose religious beliefs on the population. That contradicts your explanation conclusively.

      • verneoz

        Thanks for affirming my point.

    • EagleJim

      No, not because Marxism is a religion. Some reasons they hate Christianity: because it promotes the idea of the individual over the collective, it promotes freedom, it doesn’t promote government as the cure for humanity’s imperfection, and it provides a dominant source of morals and values (Marxists want gov’t to be the sole source of morals and values and the sole definer of what’s good, true, and beautiful).

  • tagalog

    She is a “Maoist?” I was always struck, when I hung out with those 60s lefties, how the “Trotskyites” didn’t know what Trotsky’s ideology was, and how the “Maoists” claimed to be Maoists in order to flash their coolness and leftier-than-thou credentials to those who were not clued in, without being very clued in themselves.

    I always thought “Maoists” differed principally from Marxists, Leninists, and Trotskyites in the area of identifying the peasant class as the revolutionary class instead of the industrial working class. But virtually none of the people I knew who claimed to be “Maoists” had a clue about that. Most of them hadn’t read Marx either, although they HAD often leafed through a few pages of that series of comic books, “Marx/Kapital/Lenin For Beginners.” Perhaps Ms. Robinson was more knowledgeable than nearly all of her fellow-travelers.

    The “Maoists” claimed to like the Cultural Revolution, though. I think it was because most of them didn’t know about the slaughter, but you could get the Little Red Book at the Eighth Street Bookstore.

    • http://www.stubbornthings.org NAHALKIDES

      The term “Maoist” might also have been used because of the self-criticism sessions adopted by American Leftists such as SDS from the originals under Mao’s communism. David Horowitz might address this question some time.

      • tagalog

        You might be right.

      • EagleJim

        You’re correct. Mao used self-criticism; Lenin and Castro didn’t.

    • EagleJim

      You’re correct. Mao constructed revolution from the bottom up; Lenin did it from the top down. Obama appears to favor the bottom up approach to “transition.”

  • trapper

    Leftism cannot be checked by reality because it is grounded in fantasy and emotion. Thus its positions are determined by an internal dialectic which reduces the position to the absurd: RE the idea that gender is socially constructed, for example. Further, ignorance of reality forces the Left to see other world views only through its own distorted prism: Hence its bizarre claims that conservatives and Christians are guilty of what the Left considers to be positive qualities when they are Leftist.

  • tkondaks

    David writes:
    “…not because (Obama) has run up a debt greater than that of all previous presidents combined…”
    Not quite.
    Obama came into office with an $11 trillion+ debt. He has increased it by about $7 trillion (and counting).
    So, no, Obama hasn’t run up a debt greater than that of all 42 previous presidents. Yes, he has been the worst president when it comes to debt but it’s not accurate the way David wrote it.

    • ca1

      …. oh, ok tk… if you say so….. as a famous lib hillary once said… “at this point, what does it matter?”…

      • MLCBLOG

        It’s good to have our details correct. Increases our credibility. Still, we need to not lose sight of the headlines.

  • herb benty

    Free, capitalist, godly Americans BUILT the USA. Now, we are….evil? Joan Walsh has imbibed deeply, the communist kool-aid. This country needs a good cleaning.

  • Joel Cairo

    The left has no choice but to lie because the truth would destroy their credibility. They claim to be the party of the ordinary man and woman, but are, in fact, the party of the powerful and the financially well off. But they will never admit that they exist to centralize power in their own hands at the expense of everyone else.
    It is amazing how some people seem to think that somehow the leftists really care about them, and will not abuse power once they control it. Lord Acton’s maxim notwithstanding.

    • ca1

      …ah, but they fervently believe they’re the(elitist) benevolent saviors of society whose only desire is to create “fairness” for everyone, whether you want it or not and by whatever means they deem necessary… cheat, steal, lie…

    • Russell Lissuzzo

      So did stalin. mao, adolph, pol and we have bambam!

  • Race_Dissident

    The Democrats are the anti-white party. Plain and simple. And white Democrats are simply anti-white racists just like that party’s black and Hispanic members. Would that the Republican party were to advocate on behalf of whites as nakedly as the Democrats do against whites.

  • Pete

    The viral meme load was too high. It overcame Joan Walsh’s good sense and now she suffers from a severe infection.

    You would not let an infection root around your body at a slow boil. why would you let the viral memes of the Left root around your mind for a long time. Sooner or later there will be a break out and then you will suffer a catastrophe. You reason or grip on reality will be gone.

    Either they are wrong or we’re wrong (Note I am not using or in the XOR sense).

  • Gigi

    To all the good conservative American’s who read this blog: Please, please, please remember to take the time tomorrow, Tuesday, November 4 to vote Republican. Let’s kick MAD King Harry Reid off his Senate Throne! Let’s take our country back!!!!

  • http://www.MARVINFOX.com/ Marvin E. Fox

    If the various leftwing political liberals ever actually support the projects they pretend to be dedicated too, they will have to do away with their own leftish selves and allow others to get them done correctly.
    To prove their increased support for the impoverished, the Left’s policies have forced millions of people below the poverty line.
    To prove their support for the middle class, their policies have reduced the income of the middle class by 8% and reduced the size of the middle class.
    To prove their disdain for the rich, their policies have supplied Wall Street, and banks with a constant flow of taxpayer’s money.
    To make our nation safe, they have allowed Islamic extremism to proliferate. The Islamic terrorists now have a rather shaky Caliphate the left tries to defeat by ignoring its progress.
    The Left has no area of success to claim as its own. The Left’s failure is cataclysmic, but its propaganda is relentless. It claims every failure as success. I believe we Americans are beginning to control the useless flapping of our left wing. Ballot box flea powder may get rid of its problem.
    Marvin Fox

  • ElizabethAlexander

    Ack! Joan Walsh was David Horowitz’s editor? That is just so wrong.