2003, Treason : Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (2003)
Context: The portrayal of Senator Joe McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism. Liberals weren't cowering in fear during the McCarthy era. They were systematically undermining the nation's ability to defend itself while waging a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken McCarthy's name. Everything you think you know about McCarthy is a hegemonic lie. Liberals denounced McCarthy because they were afraid of getting caught, so they fought back like animals to hide their own collaboration with a regime as evil as the Nazis.
“One may become a demagogue out of sheer political innocence.”
Source: What is to be Done? (1902), Chapter Four
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Vladimir Lenin 336
Russian politician, led the October Revolution 1870–1924Related quotes
Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 9 : Social Identity
“I start out here from the principle of his innocence.
That innocence is to be feared.”
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Absurd Man
Context: There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules. There is but one moral code that the absurd man can accept, the one that is not separated from God: the one that is dictated. But it so happens that he lives outside that God. As for the others (I mean also immoralism), the absurd man sees nothing in them but justifications and he has nothing to justify. I start out here from the principle of his innocence.
That innocence is to be feared. "Everything is permitted," exclaims Ivan Karamazov. That, too, smacks of the absurd. But on condition that it not be taken in a vulgar sense. I don't know whether or not it has been sufficiently pointed out that it is not an outburst of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment of a fact.
Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), pp. 55-56