They didn’t publish the Communist Manifesto. They published a parody with the opposite meaning.
It doesn’t really prove anything.
Marx:
A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies… Two things result from this fact: I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power. II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.
Lindsay:
A rising spirit is haunting America: the spirit of a true Christian Right. Moreover, all the existing powers of the American Regime since the end of the Second World War have aligned themselves against it and its re-emergence from the shadows of American civic life, politics, and religion—the Marxist Left and its neo-Marxist “Woke” descendant, the liberal establishment, the neoconservatives, and their police and intelligence apparatuses. There are two consequences of this unholy alliance. First, the Christian Right itself is recognized by all these forces to be a power and thus a threat. Second, it is time for this arranged order to end and for a New Christian Right to emerge and stake its rightful claim on twenty-first century American politics.
So if you play mad libs you come up with grammatically correct sentences, and if you change all the nouns to their opposites you get something people with the opposite opinions agree with. You’re right, it proves nothing.
First, the Christian Right itself is recognized by all these forces to be a power and thus a threat. Second, it is time for this arranged order to end and for a New Christian Right to emerge and stake its rightful claim on twenty-first century American politics.
Once again the “new christian right” is painting themselves as the oppressed when they themselves are the oppressors.
There’s no law preventing Christianity. There are no jackbooted thugs kicking in your door dragging people out saying “where are the christians?!”. The only opposition politically to christians is when those christians try to force non-christians to follow christian dogma. If you want to be a christian, go for it! We have the freedom to do that. However, your freedom stops when you try to force, by rule of law, others to be christians too.
I don’t think that’s what Marx meant, and by extension that’s not what this piece means either.
Marx’s opening lines roughly amount to “We’re taking over this place, the oldtimers know it and fear us, so it’s time to start making our demands known.” It’s a call to assume power, not a plea for sympathy.
Given any of the credit of Marx to Lindsay’s changes to it I think are misplaced. I don’t agree with Marx, but Marx’s message is coherent. Lindsay is attempting to ride on those coattails of coherence with the antithesis of Marx’s message.
Marx’s opening lines roughly amount to “We’re taking over this place, the oldtimers know it and fear us, so it’s time to start making our demands known.” It’s a call to assume power, not a plea for sympathy.
Marx’s is language also infused with a righteousness of the oppressed, by the oppressed. Modern day christian’s attempting to use the same rhetoric fall flat because christian’s aren’t oppressed.
They didn’t publish the Communist Manifesto. They published a parody with the opposite meaning.
It doesn’t really prove anything.
Marx:
Lindsay:
So if you play mad libs you come up with grammatically correct sentences, and if you change all the nouns to their opposites you get something people with the opposite opinions agree with. You’re right, it proves nothing.
Once again the “new christian right” is painting themselves as the oppressed when they themselves are the oppressors.
There’s no law preventing Christianity. There are no jackbooted thugs kicking in your door dragging people out saying “where are the christians?!”. The only opposition politically to christians is when those christians try to force non-christians to follow christian dogma. If you want to be a christian, go for it! We have the freedom to do that. However, your freedom stops when you try to force, by rule of law, others to be christians too.
I don’t think that’s what Marx meant, and by extension that’s not what this piece means either.
Marx’s opening lines roughly amount to “We’re taking over this place, the oldtimers know it and fear us, so it’s time to start making our demands known.” It’s a call to assume power, not a plea for sympathy.
Given any of the credit of Marx to Lindsay’s changes to it I think are misplaced. I don’t agree with Marx, but Marx’s message is coherent. Lindsay is attempting to ride on those coattails of coherence with the antithesis of Marx’s message.
Marx’s is language also infused with a righteousness of the oppressed, by the oppressed. Modern day christian’s attempting to use the same rhetoric fall flat because christian’s aren’t oppressed.