Mad Studies and How Marxists Redefined North And South

Reading the Revolution: A series exposing what the far left reads and believes.

Reading the Revolution is a series breaking down the books that leftists are reading and writing to understand how they think, what they believe, and where they’re headed. These posts live in the Counter-Revolutionary Book Club and are designed to give you a fast, no-fluff hit of key insights—so you don’t have to read 300 pages of Marxist jargon to know what’s inside.

Full credit goes to Mîsâkan on X, a sharp member of my community who actually reads this stuff and shares detailed notes on his account. I’m publishing them here to expand his reach and help more people decode what the far left is saying behind the scenes. Go follow him and share his work—he’s doing real intellectual recon.

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You May Have Seen This on Libs of TikTok…

If so, you probably saw the outrage—but not the explanation.

Libs of TikTok has mastered the art of viral provocation, but rarely digs into the ideology behind the madness. The result? A conservative audience fired up by absurdity, but still flying blind when it comes to why this stuff exists.

Yes, there’s a heavy dose of Queer Marxism in the post. But something else jumped out to those of us paying attention: Mad Studies—a radical academic discipline that redefines mental illness as a political identity and treats psychiatry like state violence.

So what is Mad Studies, and what do leftists really mean when they talk about the “Global North” and “Global South”?

Mîsâkan took us inside The Routledge International Handbook of Mad Studies to explore what MAD studies is and what the left means when they use terms like “Global North” and “Global South.”

Let’s decode the doctrine.

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Welcome to Mad Studies

If you’ve never heard of Mad Studies, don’t worry—you’re not insane. But according to its adherents, you might be too sane.

Mad Studies is the latest academic mutation of critical theory, designed to dismantle what it calls “mental health norms.” In plain English, that means it views psychiatry, psychology, and even basic mental health care as oppressive tools of capitalism, colonialism, and the patriarchy.

“Mental health services coerce people into acceptance of mental health or psychosocial norms and treatments in both explicit and implicit ways.”

What most people see as care or support, Mad theorists see as coercion. What you call medicine, they call violence. Psychiatric institutions aren’t there to help—they’re there to invalidate “Mad” ways of knowing and erase non-normative identities.

“…involves psychiatric institutions and practices operating to invalidate psychiatrized people’s ‘knowledge, and ways of knowing and, consequently, efface their ways of being’.”

This framework discards both psychiatry and the concept of a shared, objective reality.

Mad Studies explicitly aligns itself with Marxist thought by tying mental health to broader systems of oppression. It claims that mental illness only exists as a construct to serve capitalism and colonial power structures.

“These oppressions work with, within and upon racist, heteropatriarchal, colonial and capitalist logics through collusions, which are integral to the Mad Studies project of inquiry, and in relation to which we have different privileged and marginalized social positions.”

The “Global North” as the Source of All Evil

“The ‘North’ is the term used because geographically all colonial systems arose in Europe, and spread outwards to conquer and settle the rest of the world, usually referred to as the ‘South’.”

What begins as a historical observation quickly morphs into a Marxist morality tale. “The North” becomes a code word for Western civilization—capitalism, Enlightenment thinking, science, masculinity, the rule of law, and even straightness. In other words, everything that built the modern world.

“The North refers to an overarching structure of power from which all other more familiar oppressive structures, such as racism, sexism and classism, get their power to designate one group and worldview as superior over others.”

This is classic critical theory: a single, invisible oppressor behind every injustice. “The North” isn’t just a place—it’s the boogeyman, the patriarch, the imperialist, and the CEO rolled into one. Convenient, isn’t it?

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The “Epistemologies of the North” = Thinking Logically

“…dominant ways of knowing are rooted in western enlightenment traditions which privilege whiteness, reason and rationality, order, strength, individualism, science, and the heteropatriarchal worldview [straightness].”

These aren’t just values—they’re sins, according to the doctrine of Mad Studies. Logic, structure, and scientific inquiry are portrayed as colonial weapons. Thinking rationally is framed as participation in a system of epistemic violence.

This ideological inversion defines the postmodern left. The very tools of understanding—reason, measurement, evidence—are rebranded as mechanisms of domination.

Knowledge as Violence: When Science Is Oppression

“Epistemologies of the North underpin the oppressions of capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy and are promulgated by political systems, the academy and the rule of law…”

The Marxist playbook stays consistent: deconstruct, destabilize, destroy. By linking capitalism to knowledge itself—what they call “epistemology”—they set the stage for dismantling the entire foundation of Western society.

Capitalism doesn’t just exploit labor in this worldview. It exploits knowledge, truth, and the basic idea of shared understanding.

Madness becomes resistance. Delusion becomes liberation. Facts are dismissed as ideological imposition.

The New Proletariat: Activists as the New Subhumans

“So, feminists, unionized workers and anti-racist activists are somewhat less human with less access to power, privilege and resources within this hierarchy…”

This goes beyond identity politics and presents grievance as the basis of being. These groups are portrayed as less human, with limited access to power, value, or recognition in the existing hierarchy. Less human. Less valid. The oppression is no longer material, it’s existential.

The Rejection of Truth Itself

“Such lives have no value to the elites and their knowledges are therefore absent or silent because they are not regarded as having any of the features that make knowledge valuable: reason and rationality, systematic, scientific, and masculinist.”

This line admits what the ideology can’t hide. The authors understand that their worldview cannot survive logical scrutiny. So they reject logic itself.

Their model depends on removing the standards of evidence, clarity, and systematic thought. Once those are gone, they can assert anything and call it liberation.

In this framework, delusion becomes evidence. Feelings replace fact. Structure becomes oppression, and chaos becomes freedom.

Strategic Takeaway: They Aren’t Trying to Win the Argument—They’re Burning the Library

These ideas aren’t emerging by accident. This is a coordinated effort to erase the core operating principles of Western thought.

“The North” is redefined as the bourgeoise oppressor. “The South” becomes a sacred victim class. Logic becomes violence. Institutions become weapons. Knowledge becomes propaganda.

By reframing the basic terms of reality, they shift the ground under everyone’s feet—then declare themselves the only ones allowed to stand.

This theory no longer lives on the margins. It shapes how Marxist organizers train activists, rewrite education policy, and penetrate institutions. Terms like “Madness,” “decolonization,” “epistemic violence,” and “alternative ways of knowing” have moved from fringe academia into teacher trainings, corporate DEI programs, and government-funded curricula.

The shift has already happened.

Reject the frame. Reject the map. Hold the line.

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The Counter-Revolutionary Book Club is a defiantly anti-communist series dedicated to dissecting and analyzing the far left's most audacious texts and ideas. Explore a curated collection of documents and podcasts in the Book Club section—where intellectual resistance begins.

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