I’m honestly curious to know what exactly makes the PMC (university professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, artists, those types of people) adhere to the belief system they do. Namely, the psychology behind what’s often termed as “petit-bourgeois radicalism.”
I recently read through two of Caleb Maupin’s books (The American Years of Lead and the one on Trotsky and the Neocons). Maupin asserts that intellectual elites (PMC) are heavily into salon culture and edgy things that have aristocratic connotations. For instance, intellectual elites (PMC) are the ones who hold an overly-romantic view of revolution and romanticize terrorism and political violence. They’re the ones that conjure up images of a big apocalyptic revolution similar to the Christian rapture whereby every little aspect of the existing society is destroyed. He also heavily emphasized that the PMC hates the genuine working/class, because they see them as a threat to their power, so they deliberately manipulate working-class movements in order to offset and eventually dissolve them. Plus, they love sexual promiscuity and use “leftism” in order to promote it.
Last night, I watched a video on Sublation Media between Doug Alain and Chris Cutrone. Cutrone made the point that the PMC romanticize terrorism, mass destruction involving killing and raping, and the “noble death” because the PMC are “gangsters.” Not gangsters the way the ultra-rich capitalists are, but gangsters nonetheless.
My understanding is, intellectual elites love these things like violence and terror for the exact same reason they love modern “art” like Jackson Pollock and jazz and rap “music”: it’s all deeply irrational. They reject historical progress, favour the lumpen and those on the margins of society over the genuine proletariat, and promote destruction because they hate rationality. All of the things they promote as “leftism” are actually deeply aristocratic values: it’s the aristocracy that loves violence, sexual indulgence and a rejection of logic and linear time. I see it like this: intellectual elites, being Nietzscheans at heart, hate rationality and linear progress because they see those things as boxes that limit their ability to indulge, but also the fact that they already have their privileged positions and don’t need a proletarian revolution to have their basic needs met. In fact, a proletarian revolution would mean they lose their privileges and end up working in the fields.
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