Devouring Civilization

Swarm clouds are descending on the West.

To build a conceptual framework around a notion of Us-versus-Them is, in effect, to pretend that the principal consideration is epistemological and natural—our civilization is known and accepted, theirs is different and strange—whereas, in fact, the framework separating us from them is belligerent, constructed, and situational.
—Edward Said

We must take care when we otherize, for that can be a means to dehumanize. So take care, we will. But that doesn’t mean we should never otherize, even though you might have been taught in college that othering is bad. (So sayeth St. Said.)

Yet to otherize is human.

Said believes that what is presented as a neutral observation about cultural differences is actually a sophisticated form of ideological warfare designed to maintain hierarchies of power. It certainly can be. But it can also be a neutral observation. Without such observations, we would be dead Bayesians.

The term othering is commonly used in sociology, psychology, and critical theory to analyze how societies or the powerful create and maintain divisions based on race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, class, gender, sexuality, or other characteristics. Never otherize. Be inclusive. That’s good advice when the factors of discrimination are irrelevant to any cooperative project.

Enter intersectionality—the “interlocking oppressions” of critical theory.

The background theme here is mutant Marxism, a la Crenshaw. Intersectionality is a strategy—a numbers game that unites different groups in narratives of unending victimhood. It’s designed to create a big revolutionary bloc out of those who share little apart from their victimhood.

If we can’t stitch together a massive group bound together by grievance, they reason, we’ll never achieve the dictatorship of the proletariat.

They’re right.

Trust-Fund Intersectionality

Rich kids have always turned to salon socialism to assuage their guilt. Even Marx did. Papa Marx was horrified by the slovenly antics of his trust-fund boy.

He writes:

Frankly speaking, my dear Karl, I do not like this modern word [embitterment], which all weaklings use to cloak their feelings when they quarrel with the world because they do not possess, without labour or trouble, well-furnished palaces with vast sums of money and elegant carriages. This embitterment disgusts me and you are the last person from whom I would expect it. What grounds can you have for it? Has not everything smiled on you ever since your cradle? Has not nature endowed you with magnificent talents? Have not your parents lavished affection on you? Have you ever up to now been unable to satisfy your reasonable wishes? And have you not carried away in the most incomprehensible fashion the heart of a girl whom thousands envy you? Yet the first untoward event, the first disappointed wish, evokes embitterment! Is that strength? Is that a manly character?

Today’s rich kids are similarly embittered. Ressentiment is fashionable again.

Since trust-fund socialists cannot, by definition, be among the poor, they usually find something else to cling to in the matrix of intersectionality. Otherwise, they are consigned to the lowly status of *ally,* whereupon they are expected to grovel, pander, pay, and exude self-loathing to belong.

But intersectionality works.

Is it any wonder that trans activists merged with antifa? More absurdly, Queer Jews for a Free Palestine march on American streets, even though the “resistance fighters” for which they cheer would happily separate their kuffar heads from their fasiq bodies. Such unlikely cultural concatenations are luxury beliefs par excellence, because Heavyset Hebrew Homos for Hamas may safely agitate on the streets of Raleigh. Rafah, you see, is a different story.

You Are the Other

Now, if you’re not part of the revolutionary bloc, the intersectional hordes are busy othering you. Their criteria?

• Are you proud of your country and Western values, despite a checkered past?

• Are you for private property, enterprise, and entrepreneurial value creation?

• Are you white, white-adjacent, or worse, white and male?

• Are you concerned about those whose worldviews seem hostile to you?

• Are you keen to preserve, restore, or create institutions rooted in respect for the original Lockean trifecta (life, liberty, and property)?

If you satisfy any of the above conditions, you are their enemy. Here’s what they’ll call you with respect to the answers you ticked.

• Colonizer

• Capitalist pig

• Racist

• Xenophobe

• Reactionary

So you better believe they are othering you. If you want to ensure a thriving civilization exists for our children and grandchildren, you must otherize them right back. Otherwise, it’s just unilateral disarmament in the Egregore War.

We must never forget that we are bound together as a species. But our shared biological heritage doesn’t mean the intersectional socialists would never come for you and yours if they got the chance. As with Islamism, their entire worldview depends on that prospect. Revolution and expropriation bind them. Who knows if the newly minted apparatchiks will spare the Queers for (insert cause). Che Quevera didn’t. He was a racist, homophobe, and a mass murderer with a t-shirt more popular with salon socialists than a Free Luigi tit tattoo.

Whatever the future holds for the intersectional hordes, be warned. They are human locusts.

Intersectional socialists, with their panoply of grievances and insatiable appetite for control, swarm once-free Western capitals. They don’t want to create their socialist (or Sharia) experiments on their land with their own effort. They are parasitic. They infest institutions, gnaw at the roots of private property, and buzz with sanctimonious fervor for redistribution schemes that punish productivity and choke market entrepreneurship as they consume the plenty that others have created. If they are weak, they will scream one of the epithets listed above. If they grow strong, all that intersectionality will dissolve, and their factions will struggle for control like the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and Anarchists of Russia.

What About *Capitalism*?

The locusts blame *capitalism* and make no distinction between crony capitalism (what we have), state capitalism (what we’re approaching), and competitive market entrepreneurship (what we need). If you ask them to point to exemplars of the systems they prefer, they will sometimes tell you they just want America to be more like Scandinavian countries (though I suspect this is a ruse).

The trouble is, the Scandinavian countries are capitalist, arguably more so today than the United States. Witness the Index of Economic Freedom, which tracks degrees of economic freedom (i.e., *capitalism*):

Notice how there are four Scandinavian countries listed, but the U.S. no longer appears in the capitalist Top 20, while Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark do. So much for *democratic socialism,* which is more likely to be found in moribund economies like the UK—still a bit capitalist, but falling fast. Virtually no one is scrambling to Cuba, Laos, Venezuela, or North Korea.

Now, consider the Argentine tiger, formerly mired in decades of Peronism, whose radical market reforms have vindicated the uplifting power of free markets in less than two years:

• GDP Growth. After a steep contraction in 2023 and early 2024, Argentina’s economy rebounded sharply, posting growth not seen in nearly two decades.

• Fiscal Policy. Achieving a primary fiscal surplus marks a significant turnaround from the chronic deficits of Peronism’s prior years.

• Currency Controls. Partial removal of controls narrowed the black market premium and increased investor confidence.

• Unemployment. The unemployment rate has even dropped by a percentage point despite aggressive layoffs of thousands of government functionaries.

• Inflation. The single most striking improvement is the sharp decrease in inflation, both annual and monthly, benefiting wages and consumer spending.

These shifts reflect the profound impact of liberalization and fiscal austerity initiated after Javier Milei’s inauguration in December 2023.

Return of the Plague

The locusts speak of fairness in sanctimony, but refuse to see how unfair it is to make successful people tax, debt, and inflation slaves to their promises of free shit. They welcome dependency because incentives make people into pliant followers. Their vision of justice—pieced together as a victimhood mosaic —scorns voluntary charity and mutual aid implicitly, free enterprise explicitly.

Instead of self-organization, they demand a state-enforced egalitarianism that cannot be sustained, despite the irony that those powerful enough to make such demands form a hierarchy. In their relentless march, they will leave behind a barren field where freedom, innovation, and abundance once flowered. Their gospel of collective guilt is neither liberating nor ennobling, but remains effective.

That’s why a new generation of human locusts is waiting to swarm the good earth again.