The left weaponizes everything — and it’s rotting – Latest News
SETH BARRON is the The Post’s Associate Editorial Page Editor, and the writer of “The Last Days of New York” and the new e book “Weaponized: The Left’s Capture and Destruction of America’s Sacred Institutions” (Humanix Books, out now). In the tailored excerpt beneath, he writes about weaponization and the present political panorama.
We have heard a lot about “weaponization” over the previous couple of years. On social media, it has turn into a sort of shorthand, just like the phrase “gaslighting,” for something that somebody finds annoying or unscrupulous.
For occasion, it’s common amongst relationship counselors or observers of the dynamics between women and men to speak about “weaponized incompetence.”
This phrase normally refers to males pretending to not perceive how to deal with younger youngsters or the complexities of meal prep to get out of doing housekeeping. Men have used their alleged incapacity to do issues as a defensive weapon of their warfare with ladies.
Or you would possibly hear about “weaponized intimacy,” which happens when somebody withholds love or intercourse to get their accomplice to do what they need — resembling, I assume, meal prep or taking care of the youngsters.
Policing has been systematically tied to the legacy of slavery and a narrative of international oppression by leftists. Stefano Giovannini for NY Post
My intention is much less to speak about weaponization within the sense of interpersonal relations and more concerning the core which means of the time period because it pertains to the modern political scene. In America at present, weaponization refers back to the use of ostensibly impartial establishments or ideas for political or ideological ends that will be troublesome to realize with out leveraging the nice fame of these establishments.
It is common, as an example, to listen to about “the politics of cruelty,” the title of a 1994 e book by feminist Kate Millet. Millet’s e book was concerning the use of torture by authoritarian regimes, however the time period has been repurposed to characterize conservative insurance policies as merciless.
Work necessities for food stamps or making public benches troublesome to sleep on are examples of the politics of cruelty.
But contemplate, as an example, the ways in which immigration — a course of that Americans typically look kindly on — has been made a device for the disruption of American political life, the suppression of wages, and the eradication of American cultural reminiscence.
Citizenship has been devalued, weaponized, and turned towards the residents of the nation, who’re advised in so many phrases that their time on the helm is over.
“Weaponized” by Seth Barron is out now.
Policing, which traditionally has maintained a high fame among the many public, has been systematically and tendentiously tied to the legacy of slavery and a narrative of international oppression to be able to disrupt public order, allocate tax {dollars} to “community based” radical social-service nonprofit organizations, and in the end additional an agenda of destruction of Western values and society.
Owning a home is central to American id, and people dream of possessing space — further rooms, vast lawns, capacious garages — as tiny symbols of the American frontier. But personal homeownership is on the root of everything improper with trendy society to the Left, which needs to verticalize housing within the type of dense, forcibly built-in complexes proximate to mass transit. Local zoning legal guidelines are being systematically dismantled in state legislatures to be able to impose densification upon the American people.
Education is the great cultural equalizer, binding Americans with a shared course of of socialization that, good or unhealthy, provides a common register of expertise. But public schooling has been captured by lecturers unions, “educrats,” and leftist activists who’ve turned colleges into indoctrination camps for progressive nostrums.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson selected to discontinue his predecessor Lori Lightfoots’ “accountability Mondays,” when her workers would collect to research weekend violence. AP
This just isn’t a new phenomenon, actually. The historical past of warfare is the historical past of exploiting sentiments to persuade the population to sacrifice its youngsters to a better trigger. Governments play on love of nation, or faith, or xenophobia to get the people to behave collectively.
That’s why common mottos like, “Think globally, act locally” are so insidious. “Acting locally” is wise, as a result of people can go searching themselves and their communities and arrive at a cheap dedication of what to do. But “thinking globally” calls for that you simply place your native motion in a wider context, rooted in an overriding ideology that was helpfully thought by means of for you.
So, as an example, it turns into a matter of urgency for Americans to stop utilizing fossil fuels, as a result of their combustion results in climate change, although developing economies will proceed to burn oil and coal in portions that dwarf our costly efforts to transition to wind and photo voltaic power. Well, that’s simply a matter of us setting a good instance in “global thinking” for our benighted brothers in Asia and Africa. Kind of like, “We’ll commit suicide today, and you can join us tomorrow!”
Loads of Leftist argumentation is structured like this. During her 2016 presidential marketing campaign Hillary Clinton declared in Harlem, “We face a complex set of economic, social, and political challenges. They are intersectional, they are reinforcing, and we have got to take them all on.” No half measures; all or nothing.
“All struggles are interconnected” is the essence of Critical Race Theory (CRT), stemming from its core insight about “intersectionality.” CRT is constructed round the concept that a black girl suffers not simply from sexism and racism individually, however from each directly, which makes it exponentially more difficult.
During her 2016 presidential marketing campaign Hillary Clinton made lots of traditional leftist arguments, together with that of the pet idea of intersectionality. Getty Images
This results in a hierarchy of oppression and fostered the entire Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) industry during the Biden presidency. Though some of the structure of CRT/DEI is being dismantled, it persists underneath the floor, like one of these coal seam fires that may burn underground for many years.
The logic of intersectionality is pernicious, as a result of it compels settlement and negates reasoning. Vladimir Lenin, a grasp of totalitarian witticisms, mentioned, “Who says A must say B,” which means that when you can persuade people to simply accept sure premises, it’s a weak chief who can’t power them to simply accept the following step, and the following, till they’ve arrived on the pre-arranged consensus that was ready for all of them alongside.
“Queer liberation means defund the police,” tweets Zohran Mamdani. “Free Palestine is a climate justice issue,” explains the Climate Justice Initiative. Prism Reports explains that “prison abolition is environmental justice.”
Gun violence, in line with the American Medical Association, is a “public health issue,” and so is “structural racism.” The ACLU tells us that “trans rights are women’s rights,” and the League of Conservation Voters reminds us that “climate justice must include LGBTQ+ justice.”
“Queer liberation means defund the police,” Zohran Mamdani tweeted — in a good instance of leftist “X=Y” logic. Matthew McDermott for NY Post
The Transgender Law Center is even more expansive, letting us know that “Trans justice is migrant justice, disability justice, racial justice, environmental justice, reproductive justice, economic justice, and gender justice. An agenda for trans liberation is a blueprint for liberation for all.”
Democrat Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, channeling a Maoist wrestle session, advised the Senate Budget Committee, “Reproductive justice is economic justice. Restricting one restricts the other.”
We may do that all day, taking part in “Six Degrees of Exhortation.” Every trigger is each different trigger, and being a single-issue voter is a type of false consciousness. What is needed is an awakening to the fact that each one struggles are one wrestle.
Zohran Mamdani has all the time drawn a straight line between Zionism and the American capitalist police state. At a 2023 Democratic Socialists of America panel dialogue, Mamdani defined to the viewers, “We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF . . . We have so many opportunities to make clear the ways in which that struggle over there is tied to capitalist interests over here.”
It is important to the laborious Left anti-police Defund narrative that colonialist brutality be a backdrop to on a regular basis policing in a liberal democracy. Casting the police as violently occupying enemy territory — like Israeli occupation of the West Bank or the US Army patrolling “strategic hamlets” in Vietnam — allows the Left to overlay Third World liberation struggles on American racial politics.
It’s not enough to hunt reform of troubled police departments or self-discipline for unhealthy officers, as a result of the complete system is as rotten and disgusting as British rule in India or French domination of Algeria. So, gentrification actually turns into settler-colonialism, with black or Latino residents of a poor neighborhood within the position of exploited and displaced indigenous people if white people transfer in.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson selected to discontinue his predecessor Lori Lightfoot’s “accountability Mondays,” when her workers would collect to research weekend violence. “I’ve been clear about this from the very beginning,” Johnson defined in June of 2024. “If we truly want to address the root causes of violence in our communities, we must make lasting, long-term investments in our people.”
The phrase “investment” is usually utilized by progressive politicians to keep away from the phrase “spending,” which is more apt.
But Johnson’s actual level is that “accountability” is the improper method to have a look at Chicago violence. No one, least of all Mayor Johnson, needs to be held accountable for the handfuls of shootings that usually occur on a busy Chicago weekend. Blaming him, and even blaming the shooters, is one other type of blaming the sufferer. As he says, the “root cause” of violence is the dearth of “lasting, long-term investments in our people.”
When somebody is shot, it’s a downside of gun violence. When somebody is stabbed, shoved in entrance of a subway car, or overwhelmed to death, it’s normally a failure of mental health and housing coverage. In both case, the reply is rarely, “We need to have more money for policing.” It’s all the time, “Look at all the money we waste on the police.”
Copyright © 2026 by Seth Barron. From the forthcoming e book Weaponized: The Left’s Capture and Destruction of America’s Sacred Institutions by Seth Barron to be printed by Humanix Books. Printed by permission.
