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The following is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone.
In a recent op-ed published in the Daily Princetonian, Dylan Galt disapproves of current comparisons to communist regimes. He has valid reasons: he was raised in communist China. My story is similar.
I don’t want to employ identity politics to justify my opinions and values. However, since modern political discourse seems to evaluate one’s identity experience as the true measure of worthiness, I feel prompted to disclose my heritage. My mother’s grandaunt died in Babi Yar. My paternal great grandmother was dragged away by Nazis (or collaborators) to a forest near her shtetl, Shpykiv, Ukraine. They executed her. As these relatives fell victim to the horrendous Third Reich, two of my great grandfathers perished under the oppressive Soviet regime. My paternal one was executed by firing squad for trying to start an underground private bakery to support his starving family, and a maternal one just disappeared one day. Another paternal great grandfather died to Luftwaffe machine gun fire while manning an anti-aircraft gun in the siege of Leningrad. My family has experienced enough deadly ideology that we cannot simply ignore central questions.
I am sure many will attack me for asking the wrong questions. In Galt’s words: “heard, unheeded”. Apparently, I’m trying to discredit a movement. Perhaps a proper public consciousness is just another manifestation of a developing radical ideology.
When does the Right go too far?
We have immediate answers for this question: when the Right ideologically accepts and employs racial superiority. If such philosophies were to enter mainstream politics, we foretell its bloody conclusion. We all grow anxious when we even hear whispers of bell-curves alluding to racial disparities. In popular culture, Hitler and Nazism are the “archetypal evil.” Our immune system is so strong against such pathogenic ideas that it arguably became unsophisticated, and thus autoimmune. As the Harper letter has pointed out, many are attacking the healthily patriotic cells of our country. Nonetheless, we have a very powerful and effective cultural image of the evils of the extremes of the ideological Right.
Now, when does the Left go too far?
We cannot easily answer this important question. Some say that it’s communism in the 20th century, when the deaths surpassed a hundred million. But do we all really believe that? Stalin and Lenin became memes, the Soviet anthem has tens of millions of views on YouTube with an insensitive comment section, and 1 in 5 social scientists identify as Marxists. This ideology even pervades Princeton: students take pictures of themselves holding up a hammer and sickle flag above Nassau Hall, social media accounts have that bright flag as their profile picture, our professors claim that the USSR “wasn’t real communism,” and that Stalin perverted Lenin’s true Marxist dream.
Do we actually believe communism is when the Left goes too far? Imagine if a student raised the Swastika flag above Nassau Hall. Imagine if 1 in 5 social scientists were Nazis. Imagine if as a society we joked about Auschwitz. Imagine if our professors proudly said that Hitler wasn’t a real Nazi and he perverted Anton Drexler’s true Nazi dream.
Some say that a radical Left doesn’t exist, or even argue the USSR was merely “an inept execution.” Despite Western apologetics, Lenin administered and advocated for an organized system of concentration camps, show trials, purges, and secret police. There was nothing inept about it, ultimately becoming hundreds of camps separated by thousands of miles of taiga. They covertly abducted, tortured, and enslaved millions of innocents for decades. The GULAG Archipelago lays out clearly that history, and its genocidal eventuality from first principles.
Others just don’t take the radical Left seriously. Apparently, Dylan Galt doesn’t either. Galt claims that “the removal of Wilson’s name…was not about erasing the history of his achievements… It was about remembering all of his history.” Supplementing our historical memory is one thing, like the “double sights” monument. However, many are trying to remove the Witherspoon statue, the name “Princeton”, and of course, the name “Wilson.” But it’s not only in our University. Many want to remove George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, among countless others. Galt calls this “recording.” I call it “erasure.”
Galt argues that an opinion opposed to such removal is “…anti-intellectual because it seeks to conceal history, prevent an expanded curriculum, and preserve a dominant, convenient, but revisionist narrative.” Galt is misguided. As the Faculty Letter proves, the goal is to compel us to take ideologically premised courses, not just create “an expanded curriculum.” This movement is explicitly trying to mandate “training,” not education. From the beginning of the POCC letter, which Galt opposes, it clearly states “we have no problem with new courses drawn from diverse intellectual traditions; indeed, we welcome them.” Rather, the POCC opposes mandatory thought, education, and beliefs.
Indeed, it is anti-intellectual to reduce history to good and bad. I perfectly agree with Galt on “the importance of preserving an academy that studies history in its entirety.” Yet Galt condones “removal,” and simultaneously “denounces” Mao’s “cult of creative destruction.” “Removing” and “preserving” are antonyms, and yet Galt utilizes both words to describe one scenario. This argumentative form embodies doublethink.
Finally, Galt claims that these comparisons to communist regimes are “false equivalencies.” Let’s characterize both sides of the proposed equation.
All of the major tyrannies of the 20th century begin with elements of history destruction, social restriction on acceptable ideas, manipulation of academia, fundamental attacks on core principles of the respective culture, and future plans by the corresponding social constructionists to “reimagine” and recreate humanity in their own image. We are observing the statues and monuments being toppled, the people fired and socially punished for non-aligned positions in the name of “Anti-fascist action”, “silence is violence”, discrimination by politics, #ShutDownSTEM, and the attacks on cross-cultural principles like individual sovereignty and the nuclear family. Hasn’t the checklist of societal symptoms for totalitarianism been met?
But there are even more fundamental predictors of tyranny. How about a people’s state of mind? Fanaticism, intolerance, the mentality of “if you are not with us then you are against us,” bullying, animosity to free speech, and the will to suppress dissenting opinions all indicate a nation’s psychological readiness for totalitarianism.
Maybe it’s too prophetic, but it is time to hear and heed these warnings. Every movement is threatened by extremist forces. And, just like a leader, any movement that is unwilling to humbly take a non-selfie look in the mirror is irresponsible.
Of course, there are important discussions to be had addressing inequality where it exists. Of course, there are important discussions to be had addressing race. But in both, I fear a parasitic ideology. There are many other important questions that we refuse to ask: When does the Left go too far?
David Weisberg is a rising junior from the Bronx, New York.
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