Christopher Lasch Describes Right Path Civic Populism

ILLUSTRATION: The Wall Street Journal

In our recent post, “The Neoliberal Political Economy of the Organized Crime Syndicate,” and podcast Robert Phoenix and Russ Winter Discuss the Neoliberal Political Grift Economy we discussed the important work of Professor Susan Strange (1923-1998), who was a professor at the London School of Economics and one of the founders of the field of international political economy. We recommend that Strange’s work be considered in tandem with that of Christopher Lasch (1932-1994) and combined with the work of Dr. Andrew Łobaczewski (1921–2008) [“Political Ponerology: A Psychological Anatomy of Evil, Politics and Public Trauma“].

Then, collectively, you will have a good, foundational, real-world view from more conventional academics. The idea is to get off the Hegelian dialectic merry-go-round/switch and bait and embark on a third path. And, of course, there’s always Winter Watch to guide you much further down the rabbit holes.

Hegelian Dialectic as a Strategy for Modern Globalization: A Deep Dive with Antony Sutton

Christopher Lasch was an historian and penetrating social critic. He was first to promote the idea that the values and attitudes of the elites and the working classes dramatically diverged. The elites have become a natural “fifth column” within the state, and they’re generally hostile to the nation-state’s well being and especially to the well being of the lower-strata of the population. The result is a loss of civic virtue.

Note: Lasch, like many others, uses the term “elite,” which we feel is a poor word choice. We favor kleptocracy, kakistocracy and Crime Syndicate instead. Nevertheless, Lasch is one of those rare souls who does not care about ideology. He tries, quite valiantly, to see the world as it is.

Civic virtue involves making judgments and demands on one another. Lasch opposes relativism.

If Lasch were observing today, he would see civic virtue completely swamped by mass migrations and foreign workers, who have little concept of American or European civics. Lasch would argue that this development makes democracy impossible in the United States.

In his groundbreaking book “The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy” (1996), Lasch pointed out: “The new elites, the professional classes in particular, regard the masses with mingled scorn and apprehension.”

In 1994, Lasch had come to believe that the economic and cultural elite of the United States were not a mass revolt as envisioned by the pro-communist New Left of the 1960s but rather a rejection of its liberal and pluralistic values by the educated elite.

“In our time, the chief threat seems to come from those at the top of the social hierarchy, not the masses,” Lasch wrote.

He held that the elites — by which he meant not just the super-wealthy but also their managerial coat holders and professional apologists — were undermining the country’s promise as a constitutional republic with their prehensile greed, their asocial cultural values and their absence of civic responsibility.

Lasch wrote these views in 1993. Now, almost two and a half decades later, the super rich have achieved escape velocity from the gravitational pull of the very society over which they rule. They have seceded from America. The salons of Versailles on the Potomac have a “new normal.”

His books — even the more strictly historical ones — include sharp criticism of the priorities of alleged “radicals” who represent merely extreme formations of a rapacious capitalist ethos. Winter Watch suggests that Lasch, as a former neoMarxist sensed our view that both Leftists and Neoliberals were hijacked by the same Trotskyite forces. Lasch understood this false left-right dialectic.

Lasch’s most famous work, “The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations” (1979), sought to relate the hegemony of modern-day capitalism to an encroachment of a “therapeutic” mindset into social and family life similar to that already theorized by Philip Rieff.

He posited that social developments in the 20th century, such as World War II and the rise of consumer culture in the years following, gave rise to a narcissistic personality structure in which individuals’ fragile self-concepts had led, among other things, to a fear of commitment and lasting relationships (including religion), a dread of aging (e.g. the 1960s and 1970s “youth culture“) and a boundless admiration for fame and celebrity, nurtured initially by the motion picture industry and furthered principally by television.

Lasch advances arguments showing how culture had lost faith in the traditional values and replaced them with unrestrained greed.

WInter Watch Takeaway: Lasch nails the symptoms but doesn’t fully grasp the organized Tavistockian Crime Syndicate and 5th Columnist hidden hand behind Eros and civilization narcissism. That’s what we’re here for.


Read “Flower Power Sowed Seeds of 50 Years of Weaponized Degeneracy”

However, he saw a threat as a new stage of political development in America where the elite have become increasingly detached from the concerns of the common man. Lasch demonstrates how an increasing division between rich and poor, in which the working class becomes alienated from the intellectual class of “symbolic analysts,” leads to an utter sense of apathy among the American people.

Lasch seemed to sympathize with the populists of old, who sought a sort of third way between the horrors of monopoly capitalism and the welfare state. Populists promoted the values of the common man, thus maintaining a cultural conservatism, while at the same time demonstrating an innate fear of bigness and far-off bureaucracy.

Additionally, Lasch saw new hope for the working class through communitarianism, as opposition to neoliberal globalism. This is not the hijacked version of communitarianism we see today. Lasch’s grassroots communitarianism seeks to emphasize the role of community, neighborhoods and organic connectedness. This is contrary to libertarianism, which emphasizes the individual at the whim of market forces and cultural pluralism.

Lasch argues for restraint in order to facilitate family and community growth. Individuality threatens democracy. Community connection and traditional rules and obligations with neighbors and a community is paramount, he believed, as well as reciprocity and responsibilities.

Winter Watch Takeaway: We couldn’t agree more; however, because the kakistocracy operates from malice, they cut off at the pass Lasch’s populist approach.

Lasch warned what was coming and showed how the left uses the issue of race — extended arbitrarily to include all minorities and underprivileged, as defined by them — to create further difficulties for the common man, who is utterly alienated by political correctness.

Next, Lasch makes his most memorable points and contributions. He explains the changes in America that led to morality becoming a code word for judgmentalism, standards becoming a code word for racism, multiculturalism becoming a code word for denigrating a so-called “evil European culture,” the loss of family and neighborhood hailed as necessary for individual freedom, and the death of social cohesiveness, which never was mourned.

“Most of our spiritual energy is devoted precisely to a campaign against shame and guilt, the object of which is to make people ‘feel good about themselves.’ The churches themselves have enlisted in this therapeutic exercise,” he notes.

He further states that self-esteem is overrated for societal health. Winter Watch in our examination of serial killers such as Jimmy Savile, George Hodel, Ted Bundy, Dylan Klebold/Eric Harris and Israel Keyes (just search archives by name) shows how inflated unrestrained self-esteem and self-importance are a key drivers of such individual’s behaviors.

Lasch also shows how respect and shame have been misunderstood by the modern age. A culture of narcissism developed in America, in which individuals became excessively self-interested. They rely heavily on psychotherapies that promote self-esteem and “happiness” as the highest good. He argues for a return to traditional religious values as a means for achieving hope and providing an inoculation against otherwise difficult times.


Read “For Shame: Why Americans Should Be Wary of Self-Esteem” (New Republic, 10 August 1992)

While economically Lasch is opposed to unfettered capitalism, he nevertheless finds room to criticize the welfare state and government bureaucracy that promotes dependency and a culture of victimization.

In “The True and Only Heaven,” Lasch developed a critique for social change among the middle classes in the U.S. that involves rehabilitating the populist or producerist alternative tradition.

“The tradition I am talking about,” Lasch wrote, “tends to be skeptical of programs for the wholesale redemption of society … It is very radically democratic and in that sense it clearly belongs on the Left. But on the other hand it has a good deal more respect for tradition than is common on the Left, and for religion too.”

“A Feminist Movement that respected the achievements of women in the past would not disparage housework, motherhood or unpaid civic and neighborly services. It would not make a paycheck the only symbol of accomplishment,” He wrote. “It would insist that people need self-respecting honorable callings, not glamorous careers that carry high salaries but take them away from their families.”

In “Women and the Common Life,” Lasch clarified that urging women to abandon the household and forcing them into a position of economic dependence, in the workplace, pointing out the importance of professional careers does not entail liberation, as long as these careers are governed by the requirements of corporate economy.

Lasch was not generally sympathetic to the cause of what was then known as the Reagan New Right, particularly those elements of libertarianism most evident in its platform. We addressed that as well in the Neoliberal post, and of course agree again with Lasch.

Only populism satisfied Lasch’s criteria of economic justice — not necessarily equality, but minimizing class-based difference — participatory democracy, strong social cohesion and moral rigor.

In his last months, he worked closely with his daughter Elisabeth to complete “The Revolt of the Elites: And the Betrayal of Democracy,” in which he “excoriated the new meritocratic class, a group that had achieved success through the upward-mobility of education and career and that increasingly came to be defined by rootlessness, cosmopolitanism, a thin sense of obligation, and diminishing reservoirs of patriotism,” Patrick Deneen wrote in The American Conservative magazine.

I depart from Lasch here and suggest the success is not organic and has been manipulated and those men and women are made through criminal conspiracy and are negatively selected sub-zeros- and by design. I would highly recommend RFK Jr book on Fauci and his interview with Jimmy Dore (removed this morning from You Tube- link is to Rumble) to get a sense of how this sistema operates.

He “argued that this new class ‘retained many of the vices of aristocracy without its virtues,’ lacking the sense of ‘reciprocal obligation’ that had been a feature of the old order.”

Globalization, according to the historian, has turned elites into tourists in their own countries. The de-nationalization of society tends to produce a class who see themselves as “world citizens, but without accepting … any of the obligations that citizenship in a polity normally implies.” Their ties to an international culture of work, leisure, information, make many of them deeply indifferent to the prospect of national decline. Instead of financing public services and the public treasury, new elites are investing their money in improving their voluntary ghettos.

Winter Watch: What does transnational Bill Gates pour his money into? – Global vaccinations.  Warren Buffet? to the Gates Foundation. How about transnational George Soros? Neoliberal shitstorms and bought politicians. Per Forbes 35% of American billionaires are Jewish. Almost all are generous benefactors to Israel and Jewish charity or to sub-zero neocon politicians they control.

“Composed of those who control the international flows of capital and information, who preside over philanthropic foundations and institutions of higher education, manage the instruments of cultural production and thus fix the terms of public debate,” he wrote. “So, the political debate is limited mainly to the dominant classes and political ideologies lose all contact with the concerns of the ordinary citizen.”  

Image result for christopher lasch

Winter Watch Takeaway: The only route to regime change is to attack the kleptocracy hard where it counts: in the pocket book, and cut off all rat lines of escape. RFK Jr in his interview called for economic boycotts and guerrilla tactics against enterprise supporting or implementing Covid-tyranny. Tax benefits to fund voluntary ghettos should be choked off just for starters. If the pendulum swings back to populism I would bring in 10,000 untouchables like Col. Roberto Nascimento in The Enemy Within.

A Crime Syndicate Primer: Brazil’s ‘O Inimigo Dentro’ (‘The Enemy Within’)

13 Comments on Christopher Lasch Describes Right Path Civic Populism

  1. Another great book of this era was “The Impossible Dream” by Maureen Heaton. Maureen takes us through the process of the conversion from local governance to that of governance by committee, the basic model for Communism, where all decisions flow from un-elected bureaucrats(oligarch controlled politicians)at the federal level. She shows how Ronald Reagan was an important figure in getting it all done. I highly recommend her book.

    “Another perception which has been encouraged; as a revolutionary tactic has to do with the GOAL of this revolution .

    Hairs have been split over patriotic resistance to ‘socialism’ and/or ‘communism’, both which have been perceived as an apparent goal of this worldwide revolution . More real than
    apparent is the true goal – evidenced in every revolutionary move, implicit in every program promoted, actualized in every conquered land, and explicitly stated in early documents directly attributable to the mattoids who dreamed this “impossible dream” .

    That true goal is a return to feudalism, with the revolutionaries in total control- of all the resources of the world – including what they have identified as “human resources” .

    • The best book to learn how it works in America today is The Real Anthony Fauci.

      Note carefully Fauci’s 21 straight years in Jesuit schools and colleges, from kindergarten to med school.

      He is enormously capable. He managed a huge empire ruthlessly. Anyone that didn’t go along 100% was ruthlessly destroyed. That was his Jesuit training.

      Fauci was for decades widely regarded as the most powerful man in Washington. He certainly led Trump around by the nose, treating him as a stupid servant, which he was.

      Inside this sistema there is a meritocracy at work. The most evil, violent, dishonest, ruthless and clever rise to the top. They regard all the politicians as seasonal workers. That is what they actually call them.

  2. Christopher Lasch also wrote a good book called “Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged”, defending the family as the “moral and social cornerstone of society.”

  3. My life didn’t start improving one iota until I…#1-got some faith, and #2- used logical deduction and dropped the cultural programming they’ve been immersing us all in since birth. Of course #2 is a long process of self paced personal discovery of literally millennia of horrific criminal skullduggery generationally perpetrated by the crime syndicate aka the Pharisees and their trauma based mind controlled posterity, and it leaves one a bit cynical, but that’s what #1 is for. I’m referring the following that Russ wrote: “Lasch also shows how respect and shame have been misunderstood by the modern age. A culture of narcissism developed in America, in which individuals became excessively self-interested. They rely heavily on psychotherapies that promote self-esteem and “happiness” as the highest good. He argues for a return to traditional religious values as a means for achieving hope and providing an inoculation against otherwise difficult times.” It’s about standards or morals or whatever you want to call it, but at some point one must ask oneself “are these standards really mine or have I just accepted some alien shit that I’ve been told all along so I could get on easier in life/fit in/get the girl/whatever?” I mean to the psychos that run the place, adopting a repulsive belief to advance their interests is standard practice and no biggie. But the same practice will destroy the person with a soul and a conscience or at least neutralize them for years, maybe decades while they slowly sift through the sea of malevolently placed Crowleyesque ideas, suggestions, etc that have literally mentally handicapped them. If only the normie pajama people could read, comprehend and understand the content on this site or others like it, this world would be getting better by the hour. Good job Russ.

    P.S.- I agree with Sarah

  4. Easttexas, I’m in east Arizona, don’t get me started on the unbelievable traitor McCain, from almost sinking an aircraft carrier because he was a bad pilot and a show off, to the nepotism he advantaged to not be punished for the deaths he caused of the seamen who died that day, to him being a political errand boy for his daddy in-law Jim Hensley, who ran liquor monopoly United Liquor for one Kemper Marley, (political boss in Arizona from the 50’s to the 90’s, actually a frontman for Meyer Lansky’s Bronfman Arizona bootlegging/liquor distribution monopoly- see the Arizona Republic reporter’s 1976 car bombing death- His name was Don Bolles, and he exposed the Marley-Hensley-Mob connections before he died) who took the fall for Marley when United Liquor was busted (Marley later gifted Hensley’s Budweiser distribution business to Hensley for taking the fall), to McCain closing the door on quite possibly hundreds if not thousands of Vietnam POWs, claiming none were left when hard evidence proved at least hundreds were still there, (see operation pave spike- these devices were transmitting hundreds of soldier specific sos messages with the personal id numbers of said soldiers/airmen out of Vietnam throughout the 1970’s and possibly much later) eventually shutting down the hearing on POWs by acting the hot head and berating a missing POW’s sister by taking (faux) offense to her disbelief that no POWs were left. McCain is a world class traitor, liar, murderer and war criminal.
    https://hiddentaxonhumanity.com/guilt-by-association/chapter-2-organized-crime-in-arizona/

  5. RFK Jr is a pretty fearless fellow, in light of what happened to his relatives that ran afoul of the NUO. Fauci’s facade is more obvious than ever to me and I scratch my head trying to understand why ANYONE listens to this bozo and his “science.”

    • WW – and his followers – should be very wary of RFK Jr.; as even though his stance on Fauci and mRNA vaccinations appears to make him a renegade for all and sundry to follow in fact he’s more akin to a chameleon/charlatan; who, via manifesting this facade of ‘freedom’ and fomentation, is simply deflecting and diverting the masses from the larger – and much more sinister – machinations being implemented concurrently by the kakistocracy [i.e., in general, see agendas s/a: ‘The 4th Industrial Revolution’; ‘The Great Reset’; ‘Agenda 2030’; The Moonshot R & D Project for 2050; and, more specifically, see: CBDC; digital ID; blockchain; digital wallets/tokens; SIB; HIB; ‘pathways-for-success’; ‘cradle-to-career learning’; Internet of Things/Bodies/Bio-Nano Things; smart gadgets/homes/neighborhoods/clothes; etc.. For more info on said topics refer to: Alison McDowell (YT/Odysee; ‘wrenchinthegears.com’); ‘Stephers’ at ‘pieceofmindful.com’; and Elana Freeland (YT; ‘Geoengineered Transhumanism’)].

      PS – RFK Jr. has also heavily invested in the company, ‘VantagePoint Capital Partners – a global venture investor supporting companies from start-up to scale-up with a special focus on energy innovation and efficiency; viz. a company which will be a part of – and profiteer from – the ‘green economy’ that’s currently being ushered in by said Kakistocracy (for a good run-down of this fake-green movement one should peruse the works of Cory Morningstar; and her site, ‘thewrongkindofgreen.org.’) RGB-Y1 out!!

  6. Amazed I missed this which was previously posted here. Lasch was one of my fave writers on culture having read Culture of Narcissism back in the early 90s….another work that helped inspire my The Prodigal Band Trilogy (https://omegabooksnet.com) about the emptiness of celebrity personas for fame and fortune, until the awakening (spiritual and otherwise). I thank God everyday, in different ways, that I never sought fame and fortune, but a life worth living. Thanks for reposting this, Russ!

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