A partisan dogma in which the commitment to a definite ideal and the condemnation of all others are equally necessary. Collectivism is, in fact, a bastardization of a more useful human condition; namely community. Inherent in all people is the need for meaningful connection with others, and thus, the world around them, without being forced to sacrifice their own identities and their own souls in the process. The best representation of this model is the idea of “voluntary community”, where individuals seek out each other and facilitate their own connections. However, if they can’t find meaningful connection, many people will settle for whatever they can get.
Collectivist structures thrive by shutting down free cultural avenues, manipulating public media, encouraging fear, repression, and bias, and destroying our ability to relate to others in a natural and voluntary way. Collectivism’s first goal is to distract and ISOLATE individuals from one another, so that honest community is difficult to build. Its second goal is to then offer a false community; a cardboard cutout or proxy that entices the public with fabricated and superficial connections that barely satiate our inner hunger for relationship with our fellow man (Facebook, anyone?). It uses our thirst for understanding against us, and lures us into a system of psychological enslavement where no understanding will ever be found.
Collectivism always presents itself with the flair and sexiness of the “new”, or the progressive, while individualism tends to wear the unpleasant battle scars of hard earned principles and heritage. Collectivism is the hot looking but mentally unstable bombshell blonde making promises of excitement and long term comfort she has no intention of keeping. She is so seductive not because she has any profound inner qualities, but because she has a knack for letting you believe she is exactly what you fantasize her to be. Only when it’s too late do you realize she’s a psychopathic pill popping man-eater…
Karl Marx is famous for stating that “religion is the opium of the people”, a belief that communists like Mao Zedong adopted. But, Mao was not opposed to “opiates for the masses” per se, only citizen organizations that could not be control. Mao simply replaced the various deities of the Chinese people with the religion of the collectivist state. Like any opiate, collectivism instills addiction.
The feeling of belonging to something bigger than oneself (even if it ends up being false) creates ecstatic euphoria, a euphoria that weakens as time passes unless the addict commits himself even deeper into the hive mind. Soon, every original aspect of the person’s character is forgotten and replaced entirely by his hyper-obsession with the collective. The whole of his identity becomes a shallow product of the state and he may even defend that state, no matter how corrupt, to the death. He now treats any criticism of the system as a personal attack on himself, because everything he is has been given to him by the collective. If the collective is a sham, then so is he.
Collectivism as a philosophy is a perfect tool for oligarchy. The men who dominate such systems rarely if ever actually believe in the tenets they espouse. They sell the idea of single-minded society as a nurturing light that will create group supremacy, prosperity, and perfect safety. But the truth is, they couldn’t care less about accomplishing any of these things for the masses. They are only interested in exploiting the promise to galvanize the population into a fraudulent community, a dystopia in which the citizens police each other in the name of the state, giving the elites total dominance.
The most vital aspect of the collectivist process is convincing the public that the individual citizen is not sovereign, but is actually the property of the group. Many readers have already witnessed this argument first hand in the statements of MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, who believes your children are not yours to raise, but products of the collective to be molded.
G. Edward Griffin explains Collectivism below (video follows):
There are many words commonly used today to describe political attitudes. We are told that there are Conservatives, Liberals, Libertarians, Progressives, Left-wingers, Right-wingers, Socialists, Communists, Maoists, Trotskyites, Fascists, Nazis; and if that isn’t confusing enough, now we have Neo-Conservatives, Neo-Nazis, and Neo-everything else. When we are asked what our political views are, we are expected to choose from one of these words. If we don’t have a political opinion or if we’re afraid of making a bad choice, then we play it safe and say we are Moderates – adding yet one more word to the list.
Social mores and religious beliefs sometimes divide along the Left-Right political axis. In the United States, the Democrat Party is home for the Left, while the Republican Party is home for the Right. Those on the Left are more likely to embrace life styles that those on the Right would consider improper or even sinful. Those on the Right are more likely to be church-going members of an organized religion. But these are not definitive values, because many Republicans smoke pot, and Democrats go to church. Social, religious, or life-style values cannot be included in any meaningful definition of these groups.
Not one person in a thousand can clearly define the ideology that any of these words represent. They are used, primarily, as labels to impart an aura of either goodness or badness, depending on who uses the words and what emotions they trigger in their minds.
To become clear on this thing called ideology, our first order of business is to throw out the garbage. If we are to make sense of the political agendas that dominate our planet today, we must not allow our thinking to be contaminated by the emotional load of the old vocabulary.
It may surprise you to learn that most of the great political debates of our time – at least in the Western world – can be divided into just two viewpoints. One viewpoint is that political actions should be judged on the merits of their expected benefit to society or to a special class within society. The other viewpoint is that actions should be judged by an ethical standard that justifies or forbids that action, regardless of the benefit.
This is a contest between the ethics of collectivism on the one hand and individualism on the other. These words have clearly defined meaning, and they represent a ideological chasm that divides the entire Western world.
The one thing that is common to both collectivists and individualists is that the majority of them are well intentioned. They want the best life possible for their families, for their countrymen, and for mankind. They want prosperity and justice for their fellow man. Where they disagree is how to bring those things about.
A study of collectivist literature from leading Fascists, Communists, and Socialists reveals certain recurring themes that may be considered as the eight pillars of collectivism. If the values they represent are reversed, they become the eight pillars of individualism. In other words, there are eight concepts of social and political relationships and, with each of them, collectivists and individualists have opposite viewpoints. This can be shown as follows:
| Pillars | Collectivist | Individualist |
| Source of rights | The state | The people |
| Supremacy | The group | The individual |
| Desirable action | Coerced | Voluntary |
| Property owned | By state | Privately |
| Choice of money | No | Yes |
| Laws | Favor some | Equal for all |
| Leadership | By coercion | By persuasion |
| State power | Aggressive | Defensive |
Left vs. Right?
We are told that Communists and Socialists are at the extreme Left of the political spectrum, and the Nazis and Fascists are at the extreme Right; two adversaries pitted against each other because, supposedly, they are opposites. Upon analysis, however, we find that they are not opposites at all. They both rest upon the eight pillars of collectivism.
In the United States and most Western countries there is a mirage of two political parties opposing each other, one on the Right and the other on the Left. Yet, when we get past the party rhetoric and slogans, we find that the leaders of both parties support all eight principles of collectivism.
They do represent a Right wing and a Left wing, but they merely are two wings of the same ugly bird.
There’s only one thing that makes sense when constructing a political spectrum and that is to put zero state power at one end of the line and 100% at the other. Those who believe in zero power are anarchists, and those who believe in total power are totalitarians. Communism and Nazism are both at that end.
Communism, Nazism, Fascism and socialism all gravitate toward bigger and bigger government, because that is the logic of their ideology. Under collectivism, all problems must be solved by the state. The more problems there are, the more powerful the state must become. Once we get on that slippery slope, there is no place to stop until we reach the end of the scale, which is total government. Regardless of what name you give it, regardless of how we re-label it to make it seem new or different, collectivism is totalitarianism.
This leads to the stunning realization that Communism, Fascism, Nazism, Socialism, Neo-Conservatism, Liberalism, The New Deal, Progressivism, The Great Society, Technocracy, the New World Order, and most of the other political nostrums of our century merely are variants of the same thing. Its name is collectivism.
From G. Edward Griffin’s website, FreedomForceInternational.org
Additional Reading:
Related Books:
Manipulism and the Weapon of Guilt: Collectivism Exposed is the utmost controversial exposé and carefully detailed description of the awful emotional mind game that facilitates communism, socialism, fascism, and social-liberalism, known as collectivism. The book exposes Denmark, the supposed happiest nation on earth, for what it truly is: collectivism’s biggest propaganda hoax. Danish author Mikkel Clair Nissen tells the hidden facts and realities of life in Denmark’s democratic socialism that they never want you to know.
Why has lying become a way of life in America? How are amorality and corruption raging not only in politics but also seeping into every strand of the overall cultural fabric of a country founded on principles of individualism and integrity?Highlighting early collectivist intellectuals who outlined scenarios to “transform” America such as H. G. Wells and Herbert Croly, York’s narrative moves on through the direct cultural damages inflicted by The Frankfurt School group and the Father of Community Organizing, Saul Alinsky, to the 1960s Hippies Movement and present-day tribal primitivism. Her cast of characters includes minor players involved in major events that have accelerated America’s interior demise and features Alinsky’s well-known heirs Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who together are taking his playbook for community control to the national level. Beyond that, the current behind-the-scenes director, Hungarian-born George Soros, is introduced as extending Alinsky’s programming into a global setting that, if successful, will terminate America’s great experiment in individualism, capitalism, and freedom for all.
Recalling Mr. Obama’s campaign statement at the University of Missouri campus in Columbia, Missouri on October 30, 2008–“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America”–York demonstrates that what began as intellectual proposals for “transformation” are now concrete plans. Nevertheless, although many players today strut on the political stage, she maintains that America’s malaise is essentially cultural, politics being only one of many symptoms.
Despite urgent warnings, her essay ends optimistically by offering a practical list of can-do activities that individuals, neighbors, and communities may initiate to thwart the alarming processes now gaining momentum to complete the total cultural collapse of Western values. Encouraging fellow Americans to remember that times of crisis are also times of opportunity, she declares that “if we are informed, wise, and act prudently but decisively, we can redirect America’s path from destruction and darkness toward rebirth and light. Then like the phoenix—that mythical bird of great beauty and self-renewing powers rising up from the ashes of its own funeral pyre—we can fly to the future on unfettered wings.”
Chronological History of Events Related to Collectivism
