When Angela Davis, a domestic terrorist, wrote, “Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition”, she began by extensively citing an ex-Marxist French philosopher. “Michel Foucault’s ‘Discipline and Punish’ is arguably the most influential text in contemporary studies of the prison system,” she argued while crediting herself with an analysis of the “racial implications” of his ideas.
There is a straight line that runs from Foucault and Davis to the “prison abolition” movement that in its mildest form encompasses police defunding and reducing penalties for offenses and diverting criminals away from prison, and to proposals like Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s BREATHE Act that would create a “roadmap for prison abolition,” with the “full decarceration of federal detention facilities within 10 years”.
Terms like “carceral” or “decarceration”, now commonly used by leftists agitating for the elimination of prisons, police and the criminal justice system, owe much to Foucault.
Foucault’s Prison Information Group had originally been set up to aid Communist terrorists behind bars in Europe, but quickly linked together the idea that criminals were revolutionaries and criminal justice needed to be abolished. Angela Davis, who faced her own criminal charges over Marxist terrorism, took Foucault’s ideas and racialized them. And now they’re broken out.
While black nationalists are more likely to cite Davis and other black nationalists, she and leftist intellectuals very clearly credited Foucault and his Marxist analyses of criminal justice. Neither group tends to mention that aside from leftist extremism, Foucault was also a pedophile.
Many political activists have hidden or not so hidden private lives, but Foucault’s pedophilia was a fundamental element of his opposition to prisons and the criminal justice system.
Two years after Foucault wrote ‘Discipline and Punish’, the book described by many defunders as the founding text for the prison abolition movement, he signed a petition calling for legalizing sex with 13-year-olds. This was not a one-time event. Foucault had signed another petition “calling for the freedom of three men accused of sex with boys and girls between age twelve and fifteen” as part of his vocal activism on behalf of legalizing the act of molesting children.
Foucault’s interest in prison abolition for pedophiles was not strictly objective. A decade earlier, he had been sexually abusing eight-year-olds in Tunisia.
“They were eight, nine, ten years old, he was throwing money at them and would say ‘let’s meet at 10pm at the usual place’” a former comrade related. “He would make love there on the gravestones with young boys. The question of consent wasn’t even raised.”
All sorts of writers and thinkers were privately guilty of assorted offenses, but it’s impossible to distinguish Foucault’s pedophilia, his sympathy for pedophiles and his opposition to locking them up from his more popular views on prisons and the criminal justice system.
In “The History of Sexuality”, he wrote censoriously of a 19th century village for persecuting a farm laborer who had groomed little girls to sexually pleasure him.
“The pettiness of it all,” he bemoaned. “This everyday occurrence in the life of village sexuality, these inconsequential bucolic pleasures, could become from a certain time the object not only of collective intolerance, but of a judicial action.” Foucault wrote sympathetically of “these timeless gestures, these barely furtive pleasures between simple-minded adults and alert children.”
An understandable position for a man who had paid starving little boys to do even worse. So was Fouculat’s insistence that believing “a child is incapable of explaining what happened and was incapable of giving his consent are two abuses that are intolerable, quite unacceptable.”
The Marxist influenced philosopher who later died of AIDS was certainly not the only 70s European intellectual to justify child abuse, but he did so in the same analytical terms that are at the core of police defunding and prison abolition arguments, and although long dead his sticky intellectual fingerprints are all over its modern rebirth in the western world.
A CBC softball interview with Ruth Wilson Gilmore, a black nationalist leftist activist calling for eliminating prisons, has her saying, “We in the contemporary abolition movement are fond of citing Foucault”. Gilmore often mentions the ex-Marxist child rapist as an inspiration.
A New England Journal of Medicine paper promoting “restorative justice” or having criminals apologize to their victims instead of being locked up, quotes Foucault. An Indiana Public Media story promoting prison abolition includes Foucault’s ‘Discipline and Punish’ as one of the top items on its reading list. Foucault runs through the abolition and defunding movement. And there is no escaping the fact that his seemingly dispassionate analyses of the prison system, grounded in pseudo-Marxism, were really expressions of sympathy for leftist terrorists.
And for pedophiles like him.
Despite widespread knowledge about Foucault’s crimes against children, no one in the movement influenced by his ideas has ever bothered to disavow them or even answer whether they believe that child rapists should be an exception to their proposed “prison abolition”.
‘Abolitionists’ go through every logical fallacy in the book. They redirect, argue that the question is a distraction, that child abusers are a minority of criminals, that most of them never get caught and that the phenomenon will disappear once the root causes are addressed. They claim, as The Intercept does, that imprisoning pedophiles is racist because, “while whites constitute the majority arrested for child pornography possession, black people get longer federal sentences.”
Mostly they act as if their movement hasn’t addressed the question and doesn’t need to.
But Foucault, the godfather of prison abolition, had already addressed the question. The movement, which quotes him so often, refuses to admit to his answers because it would destroy whatever support it has even among those who favor releasing most criminals.
Prison abolition was the brainchild of a child rapist who wanted to legalize pedophilia. He opposed prison because he belonged there and because the inmates would have never let him live if they knew what he was. Had Foucalt ever been imprisoned for his crimes, he would have been beaten to death by even the most hardened criminals: as imprisoned pedophiles often are.
The Left has much to say about America’s original sins and how they define the present, it has far less to say about its own original sins and how they define its movement. Prison abolition, police defunding and similar criticisms of the justice system are built on a child rapist’s conviction that raping children should not be a crime and that no one should be locked up for it.
Thanks very much Daniel, for covering Foucault. One of the biggest shocks I remember from the 1980s was reading one of Foucault’s books that I came across in a UC Berkeley library. Another was reading a long newspaper article by Alinsky about his plan to destroy USA.
The authors of our destruction.
Foucault was enormously influential and yet overlooked by many conservatives
“overlooked by many conservatives”
Many believed that this movement had nothing to do with Marxism. And this is the trap into which we must not fall. To put it simply, there is an attempt to rehabilitate Marxism with a deconstructivist sauce. There is no break between postmodernism and Marxism, reading Derrida on this subject, it is clear that he is trying to deconstruct Marxism without completely separating. His deconstruction of Marx’s text is in fact a rehabilitation with a deconstructivist sauce.
— “…since it was then a matter of not criticizing Marx’s revolutionary project alongside anti-Marxists, anti-communists or other counter-revolutionaries. Thus, beyond the deconstruction of the revolution which reduces it to the expression of a metaphysical concept, Derrida envisioned a revolution of deconstruction, that is to say a deconstruction keeping as its heritage the event of the revolution in a deconstructive gesture inspired by the advance of Marx.
…” / The advances of thought: Marx read by Derrida – Vincent Houillon
They did not make the great separation, while Marxism is indeed a meta-narrative, and they would have been treated as reactionary by the left. So they dragged the “specter” of Marx with them. And they are indeed in a revolutionary logic. Foucault clearly supported the Iranian left during the Islamic revolution. He is the “patient-zero” of Islamo-leftism. They have not been at the end of their logic, which would have been to break completely with the left. In a deconstructivist logic… That’s all the hypocrisy. Deconstructing ? Ok, but why not deconstruct everything… It was to condemn oneself to total marginalization.
The tools of Marxism are everywhere and those tools matter more than the chain of ideological fidelity.
“The tools of Marxism are everywhere and those tools matter more than the chain of ideological fidelity.”
And there is a will to power, which cannot pass through a total break with the left, which they have understood very well by infiltrating the world of ideas and thought, already invested by the left.
And I would add that the Marx of postmodernism is much more dangerous than the Marx of leftism. Because the Marx of leftism is the Marx of propaganda, which can easily be dismantled. But the Marx of postmodernism, becomes conceptual, much more difficult to grasp, he is present, but quasi as a mythological image. We don’t need to quote him, describe him concretely as a human being, he’s just present, like a ghost, we don’t really know what he is anymore, what is precisely his thought, there isn’t even any propaganda as a reference anymore, that we could counter, we can no longer reflect the image of a being of resentment, of prejudice, the anti-Semitic Marx, we are faced with something vague but nevertheless present. I find this Marx much more frightening in the end, because it is impossible to destroy.
postmodernism is embedded into everything in a way that Marx’s old ideas never could be
Evil is at the heart of leftism and all leftist politics.
Yes, purely Satanic in every way! Read Professor Paul Kengor’s book……”The Devil and Karl Marx”………truly horrifying in scope!
Revolutionaries and criminals often need to live in parts of their countries where they cannot be apprehended. Then they collaborate due to common interests. Often, one starts as one and becomes the other. A nation that permits them to live among the population anywhere is on the way out.
France has a long history of providing shelter to monsters from Pol Pot to the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Yet they beheaded Marie
And gave shelter to Roman Polanski.
with the support of most of France’s cultural elite (and a nice chunk of Hollywood)
Poor, kindly Queen Marie Antoinette. She is still popularly maligned in history, yet the people regarded her as a saint — until they went mad and turned on her.
Yes, and we are now allowing it to happen here, by exposing little innocent ones to ‘drag queen story hour’……………a gateway to pedophilia…….mark my words…..sadly!
“He would make love there on the gravestones with young boys. The question of consent wasn’t even raised.”
Love or rape?
“ the phenomenon will disappear once the root causes are addressed.”
The above statement points to the root cause, anyone who considers raping a little boy or girl, love making or grooming, is the root cause.
Sadly the homosexual community is, and always has been, obsessed with youth.
The root cause, according to leftists, is bourgeous morality and the nuclear family. Get rid of those, usher in their pedo utopia and everything will be fine.
Yes, i caught that statement, as well……..’lovemaking’? With a child, there is no such thing……the child has no understanding of consent, nor should they……hence, always resulting in forcible rape and abuse of a child!!!!
So who founded NAMBLA?
Foucault and European movements to legalize pedophilia came earlier and were far more effective and came much closer to becoming mainstream.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/past-pedophile-links-haunt-german-green-party-a-899544.html
The 1986 image was printed in the newsletter of the Green Party’s national working group on “Gays, Pederasts and Transsexuals,” abbreviated as “BAG SchwuP.” It wasn’t just sent to a few scattered party members, but was addressed to Green Party members of the German parliament, as well as the party’s headquarters in Bonn.
No political group in Germany promoted the interests of men with pedophile tendencies as staunchly as the environmental party. For a period of time in the mid-1980s, it practically served as the parliamentary arm of the pedophile movement.
When the Green Party was founded in 1980, pedophiles were part of the movement from the start — not at the center of its activities, but always hovering along the periphery. At the first party convention in the southwestern German city of Karlsruhe, pacifists, feminists and opponents of nuclear energy were joined by the so-called “Urban Indians,” who advocated the “legalization of all affectionate sexual relations between adults and children.” From then on, pedophiles, noisy and wearing colorful body paint, were often a visible part of Green Party gatherings.
“In terms of national politics , the Greens were the only hope for pedophiles,” says Kurt Hartmann, a member of BAG SchwuP in the 1980s who now heads an association that promotes pedophile literature. “They were the only party that put their necks on the line for sexual minorities in the long term.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-experiment-that-placed-foster-children-with-pedophiles
He was surprised to read that the professor, Helmut Kentler, had been one of the most influential sexologists in Germany. The article described a new research report that had investigated what was called the “Kentler experiment.” Beginning in the late sixties, Kentler had placed neglected children in foster homes run by pedophiles. The experiment was authorized and financially supported by the Berlin Senate. In a report submitted to the Senate, in 1988, Kentler had described it as a “complete success.”
I believe Foucault was also into sado-masochism. The Overton Window has moved so far that this is no longer considered remarkable and only his pedophilia is.
It all intersects. Modern identity politics pretends that it’s all separate categories when it’s all one.
Perfectly summed up! Thank you Daniel !
That would be Harry Haye……a so-called gay rights activist. icon…………….who was an unapologetic pedophile!
All advocates for the LGBT community when pushed to the ideological wall Are in favor of abolishing laws prohibiting sex minors
Your laying out the blasphemous facts left me brain blocked and mute. But not for long.
Here we have a textbook example of evil and evil worship 101.
Like other people-predators, they want a degenerate “you”topia and yearn for a return to the ante-diluvian world.
Good luck with that.
There’s so much of this at the intellectual roots of the Left.
Dive into it and it’s an endless horror show that explains so much about what’s going on today.
And that is exactly what it feels like – a horror show.
One side effect of living in a horror show nightmare that one cannot wake from is thats it is not only stressful but disheartening.
Yet, one needs to keep focus on their own goodness and look to the light so the left doesn’t break our resolve and spirit.
It helps to remind us that we’re fighting evil and to be careful of compromises and of letting the Left inside ourselves.
Wise words of advice, Cat.
And a thank you so much to Mr. Daniel Greenfield………….one of the greatest intellects of our time, and highly underrated! G-d Bless you sir……..much honor and respect!
Thank you, Wanda.
The cruelty and anti-human values of both Marx and Lenin are foundational, but the real beginning of this “horror show” is the French Revolution. Thank you for your service, Jean-Jacques “Steal the Spoons” Rousseau.
That’s where it all began
Death penalty for convicted pedophiles and human traffickers.
Can’t happen too soon.
That would be bad luck for Ehud Barak.
By an industrial wood chipper, feet first.
Foucault is on the required reading list at universities now. It’s all good, they say.
Camille Paglia once agreed with a reader that Foucalt should be known as “el Sphinctero Grande.” Not bad.
Oh that’s funny.
What a lingual legacy from these words from Ancient Greece: pedophilia, sphincter and, of course, democracy.
Stalin’s first profession was an ordinary bank robber. Marxist propaganda made it the financing of the revolution.
It is therefore normal that pedophiles are stylized as freedom fighters in Marxist propaganda and clearly shows: Marxists are parasites and therefore have the same rights as the insects that the Marxists want to feed us productive people.
Indeed.
Stalin was a bank robber and criminals are seen as vanguard of the revolutionary since they overthrow order.
Abolish Stupidity would go a long way to cure the Liberal Democrats then they would stop being Liberal Democrats
“…inconsequential bucolic pleasures” (Foucault)
Maybe ask the victimized children how inconsequential the predation was.
“A New England Journal of Medicine paper promoting “restorative justice” or having criminals apologize to their victims instead of being locked up, quotes Foucault.”
Great…a so called respected medical journal supporting the BS.
I don’t remember much about Foucault except an impression planted in my mind that he wasn’t very smart.
The New England Journal of Medicine went far leftward a while back and pushes assorted woke causes on a regular basis.
I read “Discipline and Punish” many years ago, and I think one aspect of the book that is very pertinent for us today was Foucault’s depiction of the evolution of the judicial and prison system from that of brick and mortar buildings toward a society that was a prison in and of itself through the implementation of a surveillance state that kept permanent, total, and omnipresent watch over its citizens through cameras and technology that Foucault termed “the Panopticon”. This seems to be the method Big Tech has taken at places like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, along with their coreligionists in governmenti the FBI and the O’Biden regime, when technology has been used to suppress speech and information, push propaganda and a regime narrative, track dissidents, and steal elections while targeting one’s enemies.
I am currently reading a book comprised of short stories about life in the Soviet Gulag by Varlam Shalamov, who survived 15 years in the camps, that parallels current Marxist designs to release criminals onto a law abiding populace in that it depicts how the Soviets used criminals as enforcers against political prisoners by elevating the worst thieves, murderers, and rapists over the vast majority of the population of the camps under the rationalization that criminals weren’t “enemies of the people” as was someone who criticized Stalin.
The Panopticon was an old idea. Bentham’s ideal prison dissolving into a closely monitored surveillance state.
I read “Discipline and Punish” many years ago, and I think one aspect of the book that is very pertinent for us today was Foucault’s depiction of the evolution of the judicial and prison system from that of brick and mortar buildings toward a society that was a prison in and of itself through the implementation of a surveillance state that kept permanent, total, and omnipresent watch over its citizens through cameras and technology that Foucault termed “the Panopticon”. This seems to be the method Big Tech has taken at places like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, along with their coreligionists in government at the FBI and the O’Biden regime, where technology has been used to suppress speech and information, push propaganda and a regime narrative, track dissidents, and steal elections while targeting one’s enemies.
I am currently reading a book comprised of short stories about life in the Soviet Gulag by Varlam Shalamov, who survived 15 years in the camps, that parallels current Marxist designs to release criminals onto a law abiding populace in that it depicts how the Soviets used criminals as enforcers against political prisoners by elevating the worst thieves, murderers, and rapists over the vast majority of the population of the camps under the rationalization that criminals weren’t “enemies of the people” as was someone who criticized Stalin.
Using criminals as shock troops against political opponents has long been a Marxist Revolutionary tactic.
Marcuse and others in the Frankfurt school of Marxism saw using sexual deviancy as a necessary tool toward eroding a society’s moral foundation so that it would be ripe of the implementation of a totalitarian dictatorship.