The Classicist: The Roots of Left Ideology and Its Detritus

Victor Davis Hanson // Art19 and Just the News

Join Victor Davis Hanson and cohost Jack Fowler, and find out how racist are the anti-racists, how citizenship should replace the Left’s racial tribalism, how Marx and Freud developed the two most destructive ideas of the 19th century, and how the new bureaucratic power is producing a cynicism not unlike that in Eastern Europe about 1955.

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7 thoughts on “The Classicist: The Roots of Left Ideology and Its Detritus

  1. Unique analysis of modern US society. VDH’s insights are a comprehensive appraisal of all that has gone awry since the Left completed its march through the institutions. A national treasure. The reach of his understanding seems almost limitless. This man could devise a programme to run a hemisphere. A single jarring note must be mentioned- the contention that Biden “won the election” is surely untrue. Nobody, least of all a senile cipher, ever fairly won an election from their basement. Fix that, and you are all that anyone needs to listen to.

  2. Forgive the length of this Chesterton quote about “this absurd deity of race” from Heretics (Chapter XIII) from 1905:

    And of all the forms in which science, or pseudo-science, has come to the rescue of the rich and stupid, there is none so singular as the singular invention of the theory of races.

    How much of the blood of the Angles and Saxons (whoever they were) there remains in our mixed British, Roman, German, Dane, Norman, and Picard stock is a matter only interesting to wild antiquaries. And how much of that diluted blood can possibly remain in that roaring whirlpool of America into which a cataract of Swedes, Jews, Germans, Irishmen, and Italians is perpetually pouring, is a matter only interesting to lunatics. It would have been wiser for the English governing class to have called upon some other god. …

    And England and the English governing class never did call on this absurd deity of race until it seemed, for an instant, that they had no other god to call on. All the most genuine Englishmen in history would have yawned or laughed in your face if you had begun to talk about Anglo-Saxons. If you had attempted to substitute the ideal of race for the ideal of nationality, I really do not like to think what they would have said…. The truth of the whole matter is very simple. Nationality exists, and has nothing in the world to do with race. Nationality is a thing like a church or a secret society; it is a product of the human soul and will; it is a spiritual product. And there are men in the modern world who would think anything and do anything rather than admit that anything could be a spiritual product.

  3. I really enjoy these chats with Hanson & Fowler. Victor has a way of opining on the most horrific events of our time that leaves me feeling oddly comforted. It’s the comfort of knowing other rational beings see it too. For me the shock of what is happening to our country has worn off & been replaced with a determined anger. I spend half my days dealing with the frivolous details of life and the rest scouring various publications for the latest assaults on the Constitution and our way of life. The former I find comfort in and the later a necessary evil. In the middle of this when available I listen to this podcast. I enjoy it immensely.

  4. Fighting the new social Gulag of intersectional identarian Marxists is hard to do considering the corporate elements that monopolize the venues and media but you and others are doing a Herculean job and I thank you for your leadership in this regard. I count on your insights on how best to counter the insidious infiltration of these deadly ideologies and tactics into our daily lives. We must never relent never drop our guard and remain diligent in our fight against the Communist Insurgency injecting itself into our society, culture, academia, politics, ideology, and theology.

  5. I love to listen to the “Classicist.” Just wondering, is there a legal reason that you didn’t say the phrase, “batshit crazy” or is there some other reason, such as a concern for your readers’ sensibilities? Because, if it’s the latter, I don’t think you have to protect us from such purportedly “disgusting” language. To me, your avoidance of the term sounded silly.

  6. I always enjoy enormously your conversations. Just one little thing: Gramsci in Italian is pronounced: Gram-she, she just like the pronoun

  7. Dear Prof. Hanson
    Please accept my correction of your pronunciation of Gramsci (I live in Italy).
    In italian the string of letters “sci” is NOT pronounced like ski, but more like “she” in she.
    Check http://www.PronounceNames.com

    p.s. hope to see you soon in Italy.

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