INTRODUCING 21st CENTURY
DIVIDE AND RULE
('Woke' vs. Anti-'Woke')
and how it relies on the Left to work
by John Spritzler
November 2, 2018
The URL of this article is https://www.pdrboston.org/21st-century-divide-and-rule
[Also see "WHY IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO JUST FOCUS ON BEING AGAINST THE CORPORATIONS/RICH"]
[Also see "HERE'S HOW THE BILLIONAIRES STOP US FROM REMOVING THEM FROM POWER" ]
[Also see "Misandry: An Obstacle to Solidarity Between Men and Women" about how a form of 'political correctness' is designed to pit women and men against each other with lies]
[Also see "Woke Absurdities"]
[Also see "RIGHT WING'S ANTI-WOKE: HALF RIGHT AND HALF WRONG"]
[Also see "What "New Math," Transgender "Bathroom" Laws, and Affirmative Action All Have in Common"]
Back in the 19th and much of the 20th century, it was fairly easy for the ruling class to divide and rule the American public. The trick was straightforward: single one group of people out (such as blacks, obviously, but also others when convenient), treat them much worse than the others, tell lies about how they are less than human (less intelligent, more criminal, lazy freeloaders, smelly, whatever) and Presto! Divide and rule keeps the have-nots turned against each other with mutual mis-trust and resentment and fear so they can't unite against the upper class rulers.
Yes, those were (for the ruling class) the "good old days" (when America was Great?) But now, alas (for the ruling class), the old trick doesn't always work so well. Most people are too savvy about the old trick. They can spot it, and when they do they condemn it instead of falling for it. What's a ruling class to do?
The answer is 21st century new and improved divide and rule. It works like this. It's a three-step procedure:
Step #1. Politicians beholden to the ruling class write a law that is designed to be perceived by about half the population as very bad for some reason: absurd or noxious or unfair (even racist or wrongly discriminatory in some other way.)
Step #2. The liberal politicians and liberal media (who are beholden to the ruling class, of course) declare that the law's purpose is to do something very good (for example prevent unjust discrimination.) And they condemn anybody who objects to the law as a very bad person (a racist or bigot, for example.) And they never acknowledge that the law is actually absurd or noxious or unfair.
Step #3. The conservative politicians and conservative media (who are also beholden to the ruling class, of course) condemn the law as being absurd or noxious or unfair.
Presto! About half the population views the half who support the law as being bad people: utterly idiotic or hostile to those who are harmed by the noxious or discriminatory aspect of the law. And the other half of the population views the half who oppose the law as being bad people: racist or bigoted, for example.
That's 21st century divide and rule. Unfortunately it works very well, because it appeals to everybody's desire to be AGAINST something bad such as racial discrimination. (Note that the roles of liberal and conservative politicians/media can be reversed too, and it works just as well.)
Some examples of how to use the new and improved divide and rule trick:
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Write a law called Affirmative Action* that entails making the minimum test score that is required for somebody to get hired for a job or admitted to a school higher for whites than non-whites and accuse anybody who objects to this of being a racist. Go here to read about this. And go here to see the latest way woke 'anti-racism' is being used to help white nationalist leaders recruit to their organizations.
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Write a law that makes it a crime for a woman in a public-access shower or locker room to tell a naked adult person there with male genitalia to leave, and accuse anybody who objects to this woke law of being a transphobic bigot. Go here to read about these laws.
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Keep it secret that Israel's government commits immoral violent ethnic cleansing of non-Jews (Palestinians) in Palestine for the purpose of controlling and oppressing working class Jews, and then write a law making it illegal to boycott Israel and accuse anybody who objects to this law of being an antisemite. Go here and here and here to read about this.
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After SECRETLY (this is key!) forcing Hispanic people south of the U.S. border to illegally immigrate in order to survive, write laws aimed at preventing them from immigrating and deporting those who already have, and then accuse anybody who objects to these laws of being a person who denies Americans the right of Freedom of Association (in particular the right to determine which foreigners can immigrate to their country) and who wishes to inflict the harms caused by massive immigration onto Americans. Go here to read about this.
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Write a law that purports to be for equality and against homophobic bigotry but that actually gives social approval to the practice of doing something that many reasonable people think is harmful to children. Then accuse the people who object to this law of being homophobic bigots. Can you guess what law I'm referring to? Go here to read all about it.
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Read here how the ruling class also uses the abortion issue to divide and rule us in a way very similar to the above examples.
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In the name of "anti-racism" promote in public elementary and secondary schools the teaching of the FACT of systemic racial discrimination throughout U.S. history (a.k.a "critical race theory") but CENSOR the PURPOSE of that racial discrimination--to destroy solidarity between white and non-white working class people in order to enable the upper class to dominate and oppress working class people of ALL races. That way the implicit (false!) message is that the racial discrimination against non-whites benefited working class whites ("white privilege" etc.) when in fact it HARMED them. Then when white working class parents get angry at being falsely accused of being racist oppressors, have the Left accuse them of being racists for not wanting the truth about racial discrimination to be taught. Read about this here.
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In the name of reparations for the descendants of slaves in the United States--which should be done in the good egalitarian manner discussed here--propose instead a deliberately divisive way of doing it: using tax dollars to give black people enough money--$5 million per person in one proposal!--to make them much richer than non-black working class people; an example of such a proposal is described by NPR here.
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Promote Drag Queen Story Hours for Children in public libraries and elementary schools, and accuse any who oppose this of being bigots. Read about this here.
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Declare that a man who says he is a woman really IS a woman [as a judge recently did.]
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Promote--in the name of woke 'gender affirmation,' the policy of giving young pre-pubescent children, who say their gender is the opposite of the sex of their body, puberty blocking hormones without prior psychiatric counseling that potentially could help the child see that they are not really in the wrong kind of body (as for example a little tomboy girl who prefers to play with boys and announces she is a boy too) and declare those who call for proper prior psychiatric counseling to be child abusers. Read about this here.
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Have corporations do things--such as Nike using a male person with zero female anatomical characteristics, not even ones surgically produced--to advertise its sports bra--that most people will say is absurd but that 'woke' people, to stay in the good graces of the liberal media, will say is wonderful and will say it is bigotry to think it is absurd.
Why Does the New and Improved 21st Century Divide and Rule Work So Well?
It works for two reasons. First, it's new and people haven't had time to get wise to how it works yet. Second, virtually nobody is exposing this new and improved method of divide and rule.
Organizations on the Left and the Right, instead of exposing the divide and rule trick, just take one side or another and condemn the people on the other side--exactly what the trick is designed to make them do.
Why doesn't the Left expose the new divide and rule?
The reason the Left accepts, rather than exposing and rejecting, the new divide and rule framework, is this. The new divide and rule appeals to the desire of people to be good, to be opposed to bad things such as racial discrimination or bigotry. The ruling class trick depends on making people believe that lots of other ordinary people are actually for something bad such as racial discrimination or bigotry. Here's the problem. The Left already does believe that.
The Left has so much contempt for ordinary people (it views them as "sheeple" and complicit and racist and homophobic and transphobic, etc., because they (ordinary people) are supposedly "dehumanized by capitalism") that it (the Left) is eager to agree with the new and improved divide and rule that purports to aim to stop the bad half of the population from doing the bad thing that it supposedly wants to do. Read about the origin of this problem with Marxism here.
LET'S OVERTHROW THE NEW DIVIDE AND RULE TRICK
There's only one way to overthrow the new and improved divide and rule trick:
1. Expose it for what it is instead of simply taking one side in the phony debates it generates;
2. Tell the public the key facts that the ruling class censors, the facts on the basis of which--if known--most people would come to the same common sense conclusion;
3. Develop proposals on the "hot button" issues that really do express the common sense, good and decent values of the vast majority of people.
The most unifying theme is egalitarian revolution to remove the rich from power and have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor, as discussed here.
Why Aren't Good People Exposing and Persuasively Refuting the Divisive Frameworks?
Many good people wrongly dismiss the divisive frameworks as mere diversions and say we should therefore just ignore them rather than exposing and persuasively refuting them. Here is why that is wrong.
No! Divisive 'Social Issues' Are NOT 'Just a Diversion'
The great majority of ordinary people, IF LEFT TO THEMSELVES, would make a much better, more equal and democratic world. Read the evidence for this in "Most people are egalitarians."
This is why the billionaire upper class dares not leave people to themselves; instead it proactively does all it can to ensure that the have-nots are so divided against each other that they remain unable to seriously challenge the power of the upper class and thereby make a better world, and unable to think it is even realistic to try such a thing.
The task for those of us who want a better world and who work to build an egalitarian revolutionary movement is not only to organize explicitly for this goal but, just as importantly, to identify EXACTLY how the ruling class divides the have-nots, to identify exactly what lies it uses for that purpose and what truths it censors, and then to refute the lies SPECIFICALLY AND PERSUASIVELY and express the censored truths clearly and widely. This task is NOT accomplished by ignoring the actual reasons people are not--on a large enough scale-- uniting to fight for a better world and simply telling people that they ought to do so.
Why are so few good people doing this task?
I think it is because they perceive the problem wrongly; they wrongly perceive the obstacle to a better world as being a lack of desire for such a world on the part of the have-nots. As a result, they dismiss as mere "diversions" the specific divisive frameworks on issues, such as illegal immigration, abortion, race, Israel, same-sex marriage, etc., that the ruling class uses to divide the have-nots, on the grounds that the important task is to persuade the have-nots that they should want a better more equal and democratic world, as if the have-nots did not already want this. As a result, the people who think the have-nots do not already want a better world think it is a diversion to devote the time and energy required to PERSUASIVELY refute the new 21st century divisive frameworks.
This is why I am virtually the only one who writes persuasive refutations of the divisive frameworks, such as these three articles:
1. "What CRT Censors"
2. "Israel's Government Attacks Ordinary Jews As Well As Palestinians"
3. "INTRODUCING 21st CENTURY DIVIDE AND RULE AND HOW IT RELIES ON THE LEFT TO WORK"
Other good people don't do this because they don't understand that these divisive frameworks, not ordinary people's supposed lack of desire for a more equal and democratic world, are the main obstacles to the better world we all want.
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1. https://www.pdrboston.org/dear-bacc-founders-steering-c-membe
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* While Affirmative Action has suffered some defeats in the Supreme Court, the divisive idea it is based on is still very much alive in upper class policy-making circles. For example, the new shining star of "anti-racism" is a professor named Ibram X. Kendi. Kendi writes:
"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." [from Kendi's book, How to be an Antiracist, pg 19.]
Kendi is one of the leading intellectuals on race and he has of late been warmly embraced by the liberal wing of the ruling class. "In September 2017, Kendi founded the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, serving as its executive director. In June 2020, it was announced that Kendi would join Boston University as a professor of history. Upon accepting the position, Kendi agreed to move the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University to Boston University, where he will serve as the founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research."
The ultra liberal Boston Globe newspaper (owned by the billionaire John Henry) conducted a special zoom event featuring the paper's editorial editor praisingly interviewing Kendi. If one does a Google search for "Kendi New York Times" one will see lots and lots of examples of the New York Times featuring and praising Kendi, who is a prominent contributor to a new book titled, The 1619 Project, edited by the main author of original New York Times Magazine edition that was The 1619 Project itself.