Gain-Of-Function Marxism Shouted Out on Human Events Daily
Watch my full interview with Unhumans Co-Author Joshua Lisec
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Last week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Joshua Lisec, the co-author of a new book Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (And How to Crush Them). You can learn more and pre-order his book here.
I love talking to smart people who understand the left. Joshua and I had a fascinating exchange of ideas that combined his historical knowledge of communist revolutions with my ideas about their real-world activist tactics today.
One of the ideas we discussed was Gain-Of-Function Marxism, a term I coined earlier this year while examining the impact of anarcho-communist subculture on today’s activists.
The concept is this: Yes, historical figures like Marx and Mao provided the foundation for today’s revolutionaries, but the boots-on-the-ground activists today are more heavily influenced by queer anarcho-communist subculture that started to blossom in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s. The language they use in their trainings and protests echos the language from communiques and zines and were published during that time period.
In other words, we’re not dealing with pure Marxism or Maoism. We’re dealing with a mutated strain. So, if you only look at the pure philosophy without understanding anarcho-communist subculture, you are missing a large chunk of the picture. We must understand this if we are to understand our enemy.
I was thrilled to hear Joshua shout out this concept in an interview he did today with his co-author, Jack Posobiec, on Human Events Daily:
ICYMI, learn more about Gain of Function Marxism here:
And watch my full interview with Joshua here:
Questions?
Let me know in the comments!
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Would like your take on this from the Free Press:
A blow against DEI at Harvard: Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS)—the largest school within the university, comprising half of all Harvard students—will no longer require “diversity, inclusion, and belonging” statements for faculty hiring. The news, first reported by The Boston Globe, is the latest indicator that elite universities are moving away from the ideological litmus tests that have come to dominate campus.
This follows the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s decision to end the controversial policy entirely, which I first reported on last month. It also comes after Harvard reinstated standardized testing in admissions in April.
“In external searches for faculty appointments, we have changed our process to request a broad statement of service instead of requiring a Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DIB) statement,” Nina Zipser, FAS Dean for Faculty Affairs and Planning, said in an email to faculty on Monday seen by The Free Press.
These revisions mark an incremental but real move away from a policy that represents the worst excesses of the DEI bureaucracy. In a statement, a Harvard spokesperson told me that the update means that the school will request “broader and more robust service statements as part of the hiring process.” These statements can include, but are not limited to, “efforts to increase diversity, inclusion, and belonging.”
At the time of MIT’s decision, several prominent Harvard faculty members praised the move. Harvard’s former president Larry Summers described diversity statements as “morally bankrupt” and “an affront to almost every academic freedom value,” and called on the college to follow MIT’s lead.
Now, prominent faculty members are calling on the entire university to follow FAS’s lead. “It’s a cause for celebration that FAS has replaced the requirement for DEI statements with a requirement for ‘service statements,’ i.e., how candidates will contribute to their department, their university, and their professional community,” Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School, told me in an email. “The next step should be for this to be extended across all schools of the university.”
Members of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard—led in part by Flier, and Steven Pinker—have now proposed a resolution urging the university as a whole to stop using diversity statements. These overdue changes have arrived because professors simply do not like the idea of being tested for their commitment to a cause unrelated to their academic work. The FAS’s decision gives them all the more permission to say that out loud. Expect others to follow Harvard’s lead. —John Sailer