Walk Towards the Fire
Andrew Breitbart is a man at war with the institutional left or as he describes it the “Democrat Media Complex.” Breitbart is a soldier in a media war that the right, until recently, never realized was being waged. For Breitbart the twilight struggle of the Cold War didn’t end, it merely shifted to an electronic battleground where the ideological fight between liberty and statism never ended. And on that battleground the left was better prepared to control the narrative. “Schools. Newspapers. Network News. Art. Music. Film. Television. For decades the left understood the importance of education, art and messaging.”
In his new book, Righteous Indignation, Excuse Me While I Save the World!, Breitbart explains the Democrat Media Complex and how the right can use new media to mount a counter attack.
Righteous Indignation is part biography, part primer for conservatives and those who value liberty to fight against the march of collectivism. Breitbart describes his youth in the liberal enclave of the tony Brentwood suburb of Los Angeles, his college years in the wilderness, and his evolution from a default liberal to conservative culture warrior. Breitbart’s personal journey is a compelling read. After partying through his days as a C-student at Tulane and “seeing the world through the prism of moral relativism and grays,” and the reality of being cut off financially by his parents Breitbart had an “Emersonian” epiphany at having to obtain the basic necessities of life on his own, a self actualization that living off his parents—as so many of his Brentwood and college friends did—could never provide. Waiting tables and seeing his self worth in the application of hard work toward productive pursuits restored the parental values lost in his college years.
Still a default liberal, Breitbart explains how his turn to the right came through listening to talk radio and witnessing the travesty perpetrated on Clarence Thomas by the Democrats and what he labels the Democrat Media Complex. Angered by the grunge rock invasion his radio station, ousting his favorite British New Wave bands like Depeche Mode and The Cure, Breitbart flipped to the AM dial and found Rush Limbaugh. Thank You Kurt Cobain!
Breitbart’s explication of the origins of the Democrat Media Complex in the pernicious cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School, which embedded itself in American higher education like a parasitic host, provides a layman’s guide to the infection of the critical theory, multiculturalism, and political correctness in the body politic.
However, Breitbart shows us that it wasn’t Herbert Marcuse or Theodore Adorno, who exacerbated the metastasis of cultural Marxism rather it was Saul Alinksy’s his Rules for Radicals, which spread the cancer into our cultural DNA.
Where Marcuse and Adorno sought to tear down Western culture from the outside, it was Alinsky who took their intellectual masturbation and made it practical politics by playing the inside game. Alinsky an avowed Marxist wrapped Frankfurt School theories in the dressings of American constitutionalism, then used Marcuse’s notion of repressive tolerance (political correctness) to target, freeze, and polarize his opponents. Frankfurt School cultural Marxism implemented with Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. It’s the playbook of the left.
I experienced, first-hand, the results of Democrat Media Complex in two instances. In graduate school I witnessed the denial of respected academics and journal editors of the truth that American communists did indeed spy for the Soviet Union. Not only did they deny the incontrovertible truths of the Venona decrypts and the Soviet documents, but also they schemed to keep that new scholarship out of the academic journals.
I saw it again when the education association I worked for elected unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers as the head of its curriculum studies division. That is the “the most prominent international professional organization, with the primary goal of advancing educational research and its practical application,” chose a leader of the Weather Underground to set the agenda for how our teachers are taught.
As Breitbart wrote, “Thank God for Internet!” No longer can the complex lock out conservative ideas and messages. During the Clinton scandals, he witnessed the democratizing power of the Internet (with Matt Drudge and Arianna Huffington before she flipped) to combat the complex. Now, Breitbart has forged a new media army and put the complex on notice.
With Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, Big Peace, and the soon to be launched Big Education he’s put together a group of citizen journalists tackling the stories and angles—ACORN and Pigford—the Democrat Media Complex ignores or doesn’t want you to know about. And, as Charlie Sheen would say, Breitbart is winning. The proof of his success: the complex has sent Soros’ digital Cheka, Media Matters and Think Progress after him.
Righteous Indignation offers many instructive lessons for Maryland conservatives to fight the Democratic oligarchy turning our state into the California of the East. The brave folks organizing the referendum petition to put instate tuition for illegal immigrants on the 2012 ballot (sign it at http://www.mdpetition.com/) are heeding Breitbart’s call to “walk towards the fire.” They know the slings and arrows, the baseless accusations the oligarchy will throw at them, yet they still walk towards the fire.
Andrew Breitbart is the William F. Buckley Jr. of Generation X. He is standing athwart history yelling stop. More importantly, he is empowering us to stand and fight with him.
Trending: Thank You
