Most Americans have an outdated view of individual freedom prompted by the illusion that, in the absence of governmental tyranny, we can live a fruitful lifestyle which simply consists of consumption. It’s a Lockean view that’s dragging modernist 18th century ideals into the 21st century. However, tyranny can be exhibited by different powers, disjoint from the government. The fear of some Orwellian, power-hungry agency fails to account for the new-age corporate authoritarianism. These new entities exert tyranny in ways that require new terms in and of themselves. 

For Americans, “freedom” has been packaged with an illusion of democracy, a not-so-free free market and facetious individual liberty. While these ideals served as a monumental shift in values at a certain period, new entities, such as corporations, make it imperative that we update our political schemas. The semantic fixation on freedom to mean “whatever I want to buy and whatever I want to sell” is shortsighted. There is a darker reality enchaining the disregarded worker. What I find particularly interesting is the American obsession with “democracy” in terms of government, but not companies. If democratization is the goal, why are corporations not forced to adhere to it?

So, where is the working class in society’s corporate hierarchy? 

Well, right-wing media has grasped the working class in an effective and sensational way. It’s not the leftist thinkers like Nathan Robinson or Noam Chomsky that gain any serious spotlight in the general American media. In fact, a worrying phenomenon of hypercapitalism is the rise of reactionary literature: It reaffirms, in an articulate and seemingly profound manner, the bases of capitalism without ever seriously surveying larger leftist or progressive literature. This, in turn, commodifies intellectualism.

To really peer into the modern-day conservative American psyche, we can observe the events of January 6. There was an American frustration with politics and its associated bureaucracy, but it manifested in a misguided, racist and violent way. Former President Donald Trump was the working-class savior in a lot of the same ways that any energetic fascist leader is a savior: He blamed external illusions but never the system that was harming its people. From sabotaging the Affordable Care Act to giving the rich unprecedented tax breaks, the Trump administration failed to challenge the structural problems that the nation faces and instead turned to outside false threats to fire up the people. Yet reality was so obscured for some people that they weren’t able to define their ills, leading to an ideological suicide (which entails people leaping from their reality to landing on some falsehood that they deem is the source of their anguish). 

In a country where everyone is either too exhausted or too distracted to critically think and change the conditions of their lives, it’s easy to see why conservatives and libertarians — which are merely conservatives disguised in a supposed fight for freedom — can gain such potent control of a population that can be satisfied with trivial things. Leftists, and especially academics, have failed to offer accessible and sensational material to be digested by the masses. But is this due to the incompatibility of leftist social change to be communicated in a commercial and sensational way? 

What I mean is this: What’s more fun, watching some dumb liberal get destroyed by basic facts and logic, or an economic breakdown of labor theory? Sure, there were some trendy shows, like the “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah, but they only worked to villainize the conservatives instead of uniting the working class. They did not communicate leftist ideas effectively to those that need to hear them most. 

As the political fabric stretches more and more and economic disparities continue to eat away at the working class, leftist figures have a chance to take hold of this cultural tear and convince the masses that we are united under similar struggles. And, outside of ideological disagreements, there are truths that do not require a lot of empirical investigation, such as the absurd cost of insulin compared to every other Western country. Therefore, one can only hope that the working class will stop gravedigging and find unity against the oppressive realities of capitalism. 

On an even more cynical note, even revolutionary thought is often ignited in a capitalist society, which promotes anti-capitalist art, movies (which date back to the Charlie Chaplin era) and culture in a consumptive manner, none of which actually threaten any capitalist fundamentals. Thus, the onus is on leftist thinkers to cater to their audience in an authentic way that’s realistic about this new-age of corporate totalitarianism, all without sacrificing the left’s ideology.

How can this be done? I’m not really too sure given that when you look around your room, for instance, the assembly of all the items in it required elaborately orchestrated and organized mass-production and outsourcing processes that would overwhelm the consumer. In other words, our entire material reality is constructed upon the very premises of convoluted capitalism. And so, in the words of Frederic Jameson, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” That’s why we need post-ideological leftists to offer alternatives to the working class that’s engrossed in consistent exploitation and media manipulation.

Consider the railroad strike that took place last December. Instead of supporting their fellow workers, Americans resented the strike and mass media blamed the workers for putting the American economy on hold. Neoliberal capitalism is an unconscious presupposition for American society that understands the class struggle and constructs powerful narratives to maintain itself. So President Joe Biden signed a bill to block the strike. The working class learns to demonize protesters (who are also a part of the working class) instead of the ruling class that has created the intolerable conditions to which protests are a response. When the working class adopts self-deprecation, progress is impossible. 

The conservative base has an ideological inertia that’s difficult to deconstruct because the indoctrination is embedded in the American fiber and then sublimated into American culture. The right has successfully delivered its agenda in a commercial and entertaining way. It’s a reaction that sacrifices critical thought for underdeveloped arguments, bigotry and traditionalism. It appeals to a common denominator of people that have a lazy (and suppressed) obsession with reaffirming their ideology that’s supposed to be meritocratic and individual-focused (don’t strike, work).

The reality, however, consists of a Darwinist dogma that only perpetuates meaningless competition that’s spectated over, and profited from, by a small fraction of the population. But this “common denominator” is the fabric of the “American spirit.” The grand mediator of Christian values that have been perverted by consumerism and, by virtue of some socio-economic mess, turned into a kind of Trumpism is the byproduct of rural poverty, systemic racism and a culture that lacks (and sometimes despises) critical thought.

Ammar Ahmad is an Opinion Columnist from Damascus, Syria, and he writes about international politics and American culture. You can reach him at ammarz@umich.edu.

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On March 6, 2023, China hosted a delegation of Saudi and Iranian representatives, in an effort to normalize diplomatic relations between the Middle Eastern powers. The ensuing agreement entailed the reestablishment of diplomatic relations along with the reopening of embassies within two months of the resolution. 

This is a significant step forward for peace in the Middle East. Iran and Saudi Arabia, in part because of their religious differences, have funded opposing factions in several neighboring conflicts. In Syria, Iran supports the government and Saudi Arabia supports rebel groups, thereby exacerbating the ongoing civil war. However, in light of the recent large-magnitude earthquake in Syria and the reinstitution of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Saudi regime is actively discussing reopening its Syrian embassy.

Other prominent Arab countries, such as Yemen and Lebanon, have also been caught in proxy wars between Iran and Saudi Arabia. In Yemen, Saudi Arabia backed the government while Iran backed the Shiite Houthi rebels; in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia backed Sunni politicians while Iran backed the Shiite militia group, Hezbollah. The divide between the two nations is multiplex, marked by a religious and geopolitical divide. 

The religious divide is based on a long-standing sectarian conflict between the Shiite (the most prominent Muslim subgroup in Iran) and Sunni (the most prominent Muslim subgroup in Saudi Arabia) populations. On the other hand, the geopolitical divide is based on an economic contest between the United States and Russia. The U.S. has long supported the Saudi regime because of Saudi Arabia’s high oil production, although that’s beginning to change in the context of the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Iran and Russia’s partnership is also based largely on economic cooperation, as both countries are under American sanctions.

Saudi Arabia’s recent decision to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — an economic and international defense organization based in China — is a major step toward strengthening ties between powerful countries to promote global economic growth and establish peace. The SCO, known for its economic aid to developing countries, primarily in Central Asia, is troubling for the United States. This is because of its potential impact on American interests in Central and East Asia, furthering the antagonism between the United States and countries in the SCO. The Saudi decision to join the SCO further underscores the evolving dynamics between Iran, Saudi Arabia and the U.S.

Given this new development in Iranian-Saudi relations, the unipolar power that the U.S. held is beginning to fall apart, and this is most evident in Israel, the country to which the U.S. has given unconditional military and financial support. When President Joe Biden was asked about the recent developments between Iran and Saudi Arabia, he responded by saying “the better the relations between Israel and their Arab neighbors, the better for everybody,” echoing the sentiment of the close American-Israeli ties. 

Further, Ned Price, spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, commented on the peace pact during a press briefing, stating, “I have a difficult time wrapping my head around (the idea that) our role could be supplanted when no country on Earth has done more to help build a more stable, a more integrated region.” In reality, China has done more for stability and peace in the Middle East than the U.S. has in the last 30 years; the only major difference is that the U.S. cannot thrive off of the division in the Middle East as easily as before. Given that Saudi Arabia blocked a visit from Eli Cohen, the Israeli foreign minister, after the resolution between Saudi Arabia and Iran, it is evident that the wishes of the U.S. are not being met. 

The peace resolution also poses a threat to Israel’s Abraham Accords, cooperative statements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Morocco and Bahrain. These agreements were facilitated by the U.S. and have been in effect since September 15, 2020. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long pushed for integrating Saudi Arabia into these agreements, arguing that it would bring the “effective end of the Israeli-Arab conflict.”

Despite this, Netanyahu has also been vocal about his fears of Syria’s nuclear program and has repeatedly used this rhetoric to justify his actions against the country, including the blockade of humanitarian aid to Syria. Israel used this fallacious rhetoric to obstruct emergency relief assistance in Syria after deadly earthquakes in February. Netanyahu cites fears about a threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. But Iran wouldn’t deploy nuclear weapons on Israel, because if it did, then it would be waging war against Israel and the entire Western world.

In an interview with the Times of Israel, Jonathan Leslie, adjunct professor at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, said, “This apocalyptic scenario doesn’t fit with their behavior (thus far) as a government and as a state.”

By continuing to vilify Iran, even going so far as to compare it to Nazi Germany, Netanyahu has undermined any possibility of international relations with the country.

In light of these significant foreign policy developments, it is worth noting that Israel is also facing domestic turmoil. The aggressive Israeli government has worked to oppress, displace and murder innocent Palestinian civilians (including children). It has also worked to oppress its own people, as seen through the mass protests that broke out against Netanyahu’s attempts to limit the powers that the Israeli Supreme Courts have on the executive branch. In this way, Israel is now experiencing its own version of an Arab Spring, and its democracy is actively being undermined.

Of course, it is important to remember that in a country that actively practices apartheid and colonialism against the indigenous people of the land, the word democracy is void of any serious meaning, only serving as Western propaganda.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Rackham student Ibrahim Haydar said that his recent trip to Palestine confirmed the impact of Israel’s policies on Palestinians. 

“It is odd that Israel is so often put forward as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ when the country so actively disenfranchises such large portions of its population,” Haydar said. “Israel’s manufactured spectacle as the democratic vanguard of the region is merely an instance of the rhetoric used to subjugate Palestinians as if Israel’s crushing policies are in the best interest of Palestinians. Peering past the image put forward reveals how ‘democratic’ the state really is.”

Biden has criticized Netanyahu’s decision to try to undermine the courts, advising that Israel “walk away” from these judicial reforms. Further, various American businesses have vouched to boycott Israel completely if Netanyahu succeeds in his plans to reform the government. As a result of this international pressure, business strikes and large-scale protests, the Israeli Prime Minister has agreed to pause these plans to reach a consensus first. 

Overall, current developments in the Middle East will profoundly impact Israel’s standing, both in the region and the world. The Iranian-Saudi delegation challenges Israel’s influence in the Middle East, and internal civil unrest has contributed to its vulnerability on the global stage. The Abraham Accords, which were seen as a major achievement for Israel, now face an uncertain future because of Saudi Arabia’s indecision. Most importantly, the United States, which has been a staunch ally of Israel, is losing its imperial power in the Middle East as other countries such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia are taking steps to strengthen their ties and promote global economic growth and peace.

Ammar Ahmad is an Opinion Columnist from Damascus, Syria, and he writes about international politics and American culture. You can follow him here or you can reach him at ammarz@umich.edu.

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If you’ve been on social media in the last year or so, you’ve probably had the opportunity to see Andrew Tate, an angry, bald kickboxer who has gained considerable attention due to his careless, misogynistic, sensational personality. He’s a self-help guru for a lot of insecure young males — almost like a watered-down Jordan Peterson, except he’s less pretentious. Fancying himself a messiah, Tate offers an alternative to the “Matrix,” a term he uses to describe mundane day-to-day existence. The man has come to represent a new era of toxic masculinity, ego-centrism and misguided traditionalism.

How did he rise to fame? The material visionary has an online “educational” program creatively called “Hustler’s University” (such a millennial and unfortunate name, but whatever). For the cheap price of $49.99 a month, you can get in on “an addicting formula” and “learn from our professionally trained millionaire professors.” Who would turn down such an offer? Logical people. Most of the stuff you ‘learn’ on this website consists of copywriting, digital marketing, eCommerce, investments and crypto — the most useless, petty and meaningless jobs on the face of the planet. 

So, why write about Tate? Well, I was really intrigued after a crowd of men gathered in Athens, Greece to protest Andrew Tate’s detainment for human trafficking and rape allegations. What do they think will happen? Will the Greek government issue an international plea for the release of Tate? An instance like this shows that he’s moved from being some social media character to the focus of a full-fledged personality cult, complete with its own ideology. Grown men took time out of their night to walk in the streets of Greece chanting “free Top G” (cringe), and their stunt went viral.

After his arrest, Tate became somewhat removed from the public eye, though he is still active on Twitter. The circumstances of his arrest, like his entire brand, were bizarre. First, Tate made fun of Greta Thunberg, a Swedish climate change activist. He asked her to provide him with her contact information so that he can send her “a complete list of (his) car collection and their respective enormous emissions,” to which she responded by saying “yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.” Tate then responded by posting a video of himself mocking her even more, but in the video, he had a box of pizza from a Romanian-based chain. This allowed local authorities to track him down and arrest him for human trafficking. A best-selling fiction writer couldn’t have come up with a more satisfying chain of events. Nonetheless, Tate retaliated and said that “the Matrix is trying to frame (him)” — the Matrix being government officials cracking down on human trafficking and rape. 

Tate offers his followers a vision of society that diagnoses real social ills, but prescribes a perverted cure — bear with me here. Tate acknowledges that capitalism is unfair and brutal: that working a nine-to-five job sucks, and people want to have more leisure time. I agree with that. But, instead of pushing for some change in economic policies or having any meaningful discussions, Tate encourages them to get in on this exploitative system. It’s the run-of-the-mill reactionary take: recognize a problem, but adopt a narrow-minded solution that requires accepting your lot in life and climbing over your fellow man. Structural, external change to the hand you’ve been dealt is out of the question. 

Moreover, it’s ironic that many young men want to reinstate masculine values that predate them. Whenever someone says, “we need to bring back XYZ,” they’re probably wrong. Why? Because any nostalgic vision of the past is based on a denial of the present. It relies on a version of history that’s been stripped of proper context and seeks to reinstate something that has deteriorated for, more often than not, good reasons. Think of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan: When was America great? Should we go back to the Reagan era, marked by the war on drugs, systemic racism and a plethora of other social problems?

Tate’s message to his audience is to reinforce your inner toxic masculinity, although he wouldn’t call it that. In an interview with British media pundit Piers Morgan, Tate said “as soon as a woman or a man is in trouble … you look for masculine men.” An easy follow-up to such a claim is, “Andrew, why would a woman be in trouble? Is it maybe because of people like you, considering that you’re facing literal rape charges?” His message is reminiscent of the argument that we need more guns to prevent mass shootings. 

Tate tries to moralize what he’s saying by essentially masking his ideas with a weird and outdated savior complex: “Masculine men have a duty to provide and protect those they care about.” This allows anyone on the fence about Tate to rationalize their support for him. He’s just looking out for everybody! But this is delusional. People have a general duty to care for and protect each other, regardless of gender identity. We’re not living in the Middle Ages anymore. It’s not like (sane) men carry swords. We need to cultivate a humane society that doesn’t feel threatened by the idea of being vulnerable and moving past idealized versions of traditional values.

But in the minds of Tate’s followers, vulnerability must be extinguished (or, more fittingly, repressed). Take one of Tate’s tweets as an example of his fan base’s almost erotic desire to be humiliated: “You are poor. You are unimportant. Men do not fear you. Your woman disagrees with you. Your lives are shit. If I was forced to endure a year of your life it would be the worst level of depression imaginable.” This has 15,000 retweets. Is that healthy? He’s simply capitalizing on the insecurities of his fan base. One response that I appreciated was, “I am poor. But I work with special needs students who love me and live a fulfilling life. I don’t need anyone to fear me, I am content being appreciated. I am spending Christmas with the woman I love and our three gorgeous daughters. We don’t agree on everything, and that’s okay.” Anthony here has the right idea. We should all be more like Anthony.

How do we combat this Tate-ified emergence of toxic masculinity? I mean, the guy posts videos of himself driving expensive cars and walking around mansions, so to his audience’s eyes, he’s the pinnacle of success. More importantly, he’s cool in their eyes: Women want him, he has expensive stuff and he’s confident. 

We face a difficult, serious problem. How do we make social justice cool and digestible for the men who embrace Tate’s hyper-individualistic, dog-eat-dog worldview? In his brilliant essay titled, “Sociopathy as a lifestyle brand”, Nathan J. Robinson, Editor in Chief of Current Affairs, argues that we need to expose sociopaths like Andrew Tate as “living lives of depressing emptiness and insecurity,” and show that there’s “fulfillment and pleasure” that come “from taking part in collective action.” 

Without a substantial pushback against the “attention economy” that allows ruinous, socially-degrading ideas to spread, figures like Andrew Tate will gain more and more prominence. Gen-Z prays to a large pantheon of celebrities (more accurately, influencers), and Tate, unfortunately, has found his place among them. 

Ammar Ahmad is an Opinion Columnist from Damascus, Syria, and he writes about whatever he sees on Twitter. You can follow him here. If you’re a self-respecting individual who maintains a wide berth from Twitter, you can reach him at ammarz@umich.edu.

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On March 1, 2023, Hershey’s relaunched its SHE bars campaign to celebrate Women’s History Month. It ran an ad featuring Fae Johnstone, a trans activist and transgender individual. This, of course, enraged the American right. In response to this Hershey’s ad, the “War Room” Twitter account for Kari Lake, the former Arizona gubernatorial candidate and American television news anchor, tweeted the following: “Republicans cannot afford to sit out the culture war … and if we can’t defend the reality of basic biology … we might as well take our ball & go home.” As you can imagine, this transphobic sentiment echoed loud and clear in the conservative community.

But Republicans have completely misunderstood the performative activism of this company. This ad is simply an example of how capitalism works. These companies have a profit incentive to appeal to the widest market in the United States, which today is the liberal community that supports the LGBTQ+ cause. Yet conservatives cannot seem to reckon with the fact that this company’s social positions are just examples of virtue signaling based on particular demographics. 

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, LSA junior Aubrey Kim said, “The right’s frustration with corporate ‘woke-ism’ is based on misguided motivation; the messages these corporations promote are important. The problem is when there are evident social-justice inconsistencies in the company’s infrastructure.”

Let’s look at another example. Take BMW, a luxury vehicle manufacturer. This company changed its profile picture on social media to celebrate pride in June of 2022. All BMW social media accounts, including its Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts, displayed a pride emblem. This was the case for its regional Twitter profiles as well, including South Africa, the United Kingdom, Mexico and several other countries. However, BMW didn’t change its emblem for its Middle East account. Why? Because BMW’s Middle East office is based in the United Arab Emirates, where homosexuality is punishable by lengthy jail time and hefty fines. 

Asaad Sam Hanna, an Arab journalist, took to Twitter to ask: “Why @BMW is (in) solidarity with all #LGBTQ around the world but not in the Middle East?” Well, because BMW is an ally of the LGBTQ+ community, but only in regions where it’s profitable to be an ally.

These companies’ lazy activism is even more appalling when we look at how they treat their own workers. For instance, one Hershey’s worker at its Stuarts Draft, Va. plant was forced to work more than 70 days straight. The company has forced overtime on its workers and punished those taking time off. Workers have spoken out about the company’s two-tier system, which underpays newer workers and allows them significantly fewer benefits. 

Similar (and even more grotesque) examples can be found in BMW’s business model, which has relied on child labor in India. Workers as young as 10 years old have been linked to extensive labor shifts in mica mines, which produce the mineral found in the paint that makes extravagant BMW cars shine. The company has launched a reactionary investigation into this after the Guardian publicly accused BMW of using child labor. 

These two companies are just a few examples of how Western commercialism has corrupted social justice. Companies comprise a private sector of investors and stakeholders who hire consultants to increase the company’s profits. That’s why it’s unbelievably unproductive to pay any attention to these companies’ appeals to social justice missions. Republicans view social justice ads as some woke cultural takeover while Democrats cheer these companies on, completely missing the fact that these companies are simply exploiting various social identities to increase their sales.

By allying themselves with various social movements via advertising campaigns, corporations cultivate a form of aesthetic consciousness that allows for the abstraction and consumption of social identities. In the economic sense of the term, capitalism values things as commodities to be exchanged for money. But in the cultural sense of the term, capitalism views subjects only in terms of their utility, as a means to an end. In the case of race, for instance, identities are only a stepping-stone for neoliberal rhetoric and, as a result, they are deracialized, packaged and sold as a part of a cultural pseudo-revolutionary accompaniment for the material product. 

The American consumer buys this product and feels as though they participated in some meaningful change while, in reality, they’ve only consumed the identity they’re “fighting” for. But identity cannot be salvaged when material desire debases the cause, resulting in the alienation of individuals from their own cultural heritage. This commodification of cultural practices and social identities ultimately leads to the objectification and exoticization of social identities.

Instead of meaningfully implementing change, brands carefully cherry-pick individual identities and flaunt them all within the scope of the grand white-liberal complex. This cultural mediator decontextualizes social identities, reducing them to commercial stereotypes. For instance, when a company hires a Black employee, the employee has to assimilate into the culture of the predominately white institution. This results in general loneliness and a sense of self-commodification in the Black employees; they are pressured to play into the “Black character” manufactured by the plastic altruism of the neoliberal dogma. Thus, companies’ diversity efforts focus more on collecting quotas to prize themselves on theatrical multiculturalism than actually making their workers feel included. People of various social identities are tasked with compromising their true selves in order to gain social acceptance.

More pressingly, non-white individuals can often find themselves competing with other non-white individuals for diversity, equity and inclusion positions. In that light, a workplace can instill a sense of internalized racism in its employees, who feel pressured to give into the tokenization of their identity. Employees conform to certain expectations or behaviors in order to be perceived as the “right” kind of representative for their group, even if those expectations are limiting, inaccurate or just outright racist. 

It’s unfortunate how misguided and lost both sides of the American political binary can be when it comes to the topic of corporate multiculturalism and diversity. How do we deal with such a convoluted problem like this? Well, we can begin to focus on intersectionality. It’s pivotal to recognize that individuals have multiple identities and experiences that overlap. DEI efforts should focus on understanding and addressing these intersections, rather than treating individuals as representatives of a single identity group. 

Further, companies should not be rewarded for their empty lip service when there are clear contradictions in their business practices. For example, don’t boycott the Mars candy company because conservative social media personality Ben Shapiro said the M&Ms have gone “woke”; boycott the Mars candy company because it relies on child slavery in West Africa. Consumers can make a difference by researching the supply chains of the products they purchase and supporting companies that prioritize ethical and sustainable practices. 

During this late stage of capitalism, we must be able to discern between pretentious and meaningful social justice efforts. The commodification of social identities is a core element of Western capitalism, and in order to combat its liberal auspices, we must allow diverse individuals to thrive in their workspaces without assimilating to the hegemonic narrative. Moreover, Democrats and liberals must point out unethical corporate practices and push for a substantial change in how diversity looks in the workspace. 

Ammar Ahmad is an Opinion Columnist from Damascus, Syria who writes about international politics and American culture. He can be reached at ammarz@umich.edu. Follow him on Twitter: @ammarzahmad.

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On June 13, 2022, the Victims of Communism museum opened in Washington, D.C. The goal of this institution is to remember and commemorate the supposed 100 million victims that died under brutal communist regimes. 

Authoritarian regimes are responsible for some of the bloodiest parts of the 20th century. Under Stalin, about 20 million Soviet citizens died. The Cambodian genocide, carried out by the Khmer Rouge (the Communist Party of Cambodia), resulted in the murder of up to 30% of Cambodia’s population. That’s why it’s important to commemorate and remember those who suffered under communist regimes.

However, if we’re going to remember the horrors of our past, let’s remember all of them, especially the ones happening today. Capitalism — and its imperialist overreach — has actively worked to enrich a small majority while undermining the needs of both its own working class and those overseas. Whether it’s stealing oil from Syria or exploiting the rich lands of Africa, capitalism is surely not only contained within the bounds of its home country.

That’s why, if we have a museum dedicated to the victims of communism, we must have one dedicated to the victims of capitalism. Are we commemorating those who lost their lives to these authoritarian regimes, or are we using their deaths to unjustly glorify capitalism? It’s also worth noting that, ironically, homeless people — themselves victims of capitalism — have been spotted sleeping outside of the museum. 

Clear ethical paradoxes arise in a country that proudly promotes anti-Che Guevara T-shirts while allowing former President George W. Bush to lead a MasterClass video about landscape painting — despite bearing responsibility for over a million Iraqi deaths. Seriously, this country that has roughly 40 million of its citizens below the poverty line; does it actually care about “victims”?

Critiquing capitalism doesn’t mean that I’m asking for a revival of Stalinism. We can address the problems of this country without backsliding into an authoritarian hell. Although in Marxist theory, socialism serves as the necessary precursor to a communist state, it’s not like we’ll turn into a communist state over the weekend. However, equating dictatorship with socialism and communism is a powerful tactic that suppresses any serious discussion about how to address the United States’ economic inequality. 

Earlier this month, U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., passed a resolution “denouncing the horrors of socialism.” This bill blatantly conflates past authoritarian regimes with socialism. The bill opens with, “Whereas socialist ideology necessitates a concentration of power that has time and time again collapsed into communist regimes, totalitarian rule and brutal dictatorships.” Is that true though? Look at Cuba, which operates under a communist government. Does it have a “brutal dictatorship”? I don’t think so. In fact, despite the United States maintaining a blockade on its economy, Cuba has had a staggeringly low rate of homelessness. 

Another flagrant misrepresentation of socialism in the bill is the following: “Whereas the implementation of socialism in Venezuela has turned a once-prosperous nation into a failed State with the world’s highest rate of inflation.” Well, that totally ignores the role that the United States has played in Venezuela’s economic travesty. The United States ensured that socialism failed in Venezuela by sanctioning Venezuelan imports, freezing the bank accounts of large private companies and deadlocking the socialist democracy.

Moreover, Western capitalist countries have stolen and thrived off of the resources from other countries. Imperialism and neo-colonialism exist today, and the West actively creates victims while cherry-picking which victims to commemorate. How are these ideologies connected to capitalism? Well, imperialism works to expand the profits of the capitalists by helping them manipulate and exploit international markets and their people in order to attain natural resources. An instance of this is Israel, which is heavily supported by the United States and has served as a pivotal pawn in the West’s dominance over the Middle East.

Pointing this out and criticizing these imperialist tentacles stemming from Western capitalism can land you in some hot water. Recently, the GOP ousted U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., from the Foreign Affairs Panel after her criticism of U.S. support for Israel — which, according to Human Rights Watch and several other humanitarian organizations, has been essentially ethnically cleansing the land. Are we commemorating those victims of imperialism and, ultimately, capitalism?

This cultural war against socialism is a powerful and anti-intellectual defense mechanism that doesn’t allow for any productive discussion. But I’m not ready to call it McCarthyism, an ideology named after former Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis. (Coined in the 1950s, McCarthyism accused any left-leaning organization or individual of being a communist infiltrator seeking to undermine the American way.)

Let’s define what’s happening today with a new term: neo-McCarthyism.

It’s “neo” because it professes fundamentalist, nationalist values in a world that has socialists integrated into it. In that way, neo-McCarthyism is a more nuanced ideology. For starters, there isn’t a comprehensive blacklist of communists (to my knowledge); people aren’t afraid that their next-door neighbor is a communist; celebrities who do identify as communists aren’t thrown in prison. 

In fact, left-leaning thinkers are in positions of political influence and socialists have a voice in Congress. On Feb. 10, President Joe Biden openly welcomed Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, an avid critic of capitalism. That’s why it can’t be simply called “McCarthyism.” Socialists are among us! We need a new term that defines the conservative demonization of leftism while also acknowledging the growing influence that leftism has in our society. Thus, neo-McCarthyism captures the desperate, reactionary alarmism found in the 21st century seeking to congressionally shut down leftist ideologies.

On the international frontlines, there seems to be this sinister consensus amongst politicians when it comes to the question of socialism. For American politicians, the vilification of socialism serves as a demagogic geopolitical barb with which to objurgate countries like Russia and China. It’s a nationalist congruency in Congress that manufactures neoliberal power structures on a global scale.

On the domestic end, however, the topic of socialism is a bit more blurred. When Republicans accuse some progressive policy of being socialist, right-leaning and centrist American voters will carefully listen because the legacy of McCarthyism is embedded in the American cultural fiber, and even hearing the word “socialist” triggers a fear that threatens the foundations of their freedom.

Thus, neo-McCarthyism is hard-wired into any international question, but for the domestic policies that have more immediacy, local support and general Western coverage, the rupture between the Republican and Democratic parties becomes readily apparent. 

In an interview with The Daily, LSA sophomore Oliver Kozler, a member of Young Democratic Socialists of America said, “I genuinely believe that in the heart of every democracy-loving worker lives a socialist, and it’s exceedingly unfortunate that the political Right has successfully weaponized the fear of socialism, deliberately planted into American culture by the rich and powerful, against the working class.” 

By making clumsy and delusional associations between basic welfare programs and America’s most hated foreign dictators, Congress actively undermines the interests of the working class. And as polarization continues to haunt the political spectrum, fear and hatred of socialist ideas will only rise. That’s why it’s integral that leftist thinkers fight the intellectual regression behind neo-McCarthyism and push for the development of leftist ideas.

Ammar Ahmad is an Opinion Columnist and can be reached at ammarz@umich.edu.

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The Ross School of Business is among the most prestigious business schools in the United States. Only those who have proven themselves to be smart and well-rounded individuals get the opportunity to pursue business at the University of Michigan. Some of the most brilliant students at my high school ended up at the Business School, which is undoubtedly a substantial achievement. But why?

Well, it’s obvious! These students have essentially secured a financial safety net. Parents can send them off to business school knowing that after these four years, their kids will always be one job application from a high-paying job. It’s kind of nice to know that your kid won’t starve! 

But what does that tell us about universities? It tells us that they aren’t just a haven for academia. However, they are also no longer a means of “survival” in America, per se. You still find those who pursue topics out of genuine interest and passion at this university, but there’s a “concern” for students that want to obtain a Ph.D. This is a valid concern to have, given that there are examples of highly educated students who become underemployed; however, for a significant majority, higher education is viewed as little more than a stepping stone on the way to a job — a disturbingly myopic perspective on life and ambition.

This is readily apparent at business schools in particular, which can serve as a direct pipeline to some of the vilest institutions in the world. Sure, some business students are interested in starting their own businesses. Others view business school as an avenue for social mobility in a competitive, vicious economy. But then there’s a vulnerable group of business students that are pulled into big firms. Why? Because big companies capitalize on the general angst that students have about their careers at recruiting events. It makes it so that working at a big company can lead to a comfortable life — a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. This cultivates a Darwinian mindset that thrives off greediness and the exploitation of others. In that light, consulting, investment banking, venture capital and most other corporate or finance jobs all sound the same to me: making a buck in the most bureaucratic cesspools of society imaginable.

So, I’ve just laid out some combative accusations against the business majors. I obviously don’t mean all of them! Just the majority. 

What even is consulting? Google says: “the business of giving expert advice to other professionals, typically in financial and business matters.” That’s nice. But what does that entail? Who are these professionals? And what are the financial and business matters?

Take McKinsey and Company, one of the biggest consulting firms in the world. Business students hoping to consult for a living dream of working at McKinsey. And, look at Purdue Pharma, the pharmaceutical company that manufactured oxycodone (branded as OxyContin), a semisynthetic opioid used to treat severe pain that’s highly addictive. Sometime in 2007, Purdue Pharma worked closely with McKinsey to address the declining sales of oxycodone, their most profitable drug. McKinsey advised Purdue to deceptively advertise the pharmaceutical as non-addictive and encourage doctors to promote the drug. Following McKinsey’s advice, Purdue Pharma’s sales did increase, by like, a lot! So, the consulting firm was quite successful at what it did.

How did McKinsey do this? Well, mainly by exploiting language to obfuscate clearly unethical premises. In the presentation they pitched, they suggested the following: “Abuse and Addiction is an attractive market that could be a natural next step for Purdue.” Sounds like something the U-M Business School would tell students, right? Well, it’s the business language, a depraved but effective and mutually agreed-upon way to get your point across. But if you have a sliver of humanity, you’d realize this is morally bankrupt because it perpetuated the opioid epidemic and resulted in millions of deaths. 

Another unfortunate and blatant example is Bachstein Consulting. This “firearm technologies” consulting company has worked with the likes of the U.S. Army and NATO to manufacture the deadliest weapons known to humanity. Although this is a minor player in the technology consulting world, I think it’s interesting because of how ridiculous of an example it is. So, what is consulting in this context? 

Bachstein claims that “the majority of our experience is based on designing and testing products for professional use that exceed the highest performance standards.” I can think of a more cohesive mission statement that employs concrete language: “We focus on designing weapons and we profit when war happens.” Jobs in the weapons consulting industry are especially evil because when you design “innovative” and “reliable” firearm systems, who are you serving? Certainly not humanity. 

Observe the jargon they use. Calculated subtleties in corporate language can mask the atrocious realities of capitalism. It’s a form of symbolic communication that presupposes that people are naïve consumer units (“markets”) and we can obtain something from them (“profit”) by providing them a commodity (“product”). With such a rigid and dehumanizing framework that’s misconstrued to be “professional,” firms can pitch some of the most outlandish ideas in a seemingly ordinary way. We accept it because we’ve repressed in our minds the underlying notion of what capitalism really entails: profit over everything. The very grounds of American society are rooted in this exploitative reality, one in which morality cannot be legislated. The onus is on us to make the right choices.

I started this column by talking about the Business School because a lot of my Business School peers are pursuing careers at these companies, and an ideological rupture is undermining my friendship with them. It’s upsetting to see bright minds sell their souls for such a cheap price. Some of my friends are critically aware of the moral dilemma at play, and they’ll say things like: “Well, it’s just for the money. I don’t morally agree with the company.” But is this moral neutrality productive? I can’t help but think, “well, just how much individualism can our society handle?”

LSA sophomore Sara Lin weighed in on this: “Financial freedom is a critical factor to consider when choosing a career. But students should examine what they’re working for and avoid clear moral paradoxes. Awareness of a company’s unprincipled business (conduct) while choosing to work there is a feeble and self-centered cop-out.”

It’s especially ironic that after pursuing a liberal arts education and learning to think with an open mind, students will go into these big businesses. What’s the point of an education? Although there’s a comfort in having a job, students should strongly consider whether that job aligns with their values. A mild examination reveals that a lot of these companies are not just meaningless, but often utterly evil. 

It’s upsetting to think that we, the young generation, are feeding into this vicious capitalist loop. I’ve seen some of my most liberal friends betray their ideology when a little bit of money was on the table. A close high school friend who has voted for Bernie Sanders in the past is now working at McKinsey. Look, you can maintain a progressive façade, but in the end, your actions speak louder than your words.

Ammar Ahmad is an Opinion Columnist and can be reached at ammarz@umich.edu.

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From a philosophical perspective, understanding the root of one’s desires is a fundamental aspect of self-knowledge and self-awareness. It is important to critically evaluate the underlying motivations and beliefs that drive our actions and decisions. Otherwise, we might sacrifice years of our lives to unresolved (and often repressed) notions of ourselves. In other words, we’re quite spectacular at gaslighting ourselves.

For instance, I wanted to pursue a doctorate in philosophy for a significant part of this year. However, after months of misguided thinking, I realized that my desire to pursue a Ph.D. was based on an idealized vision of what that career path looks like. But why did it take so long for me to realize that? Well, it’s because I habituated a pattern of thought that’s terribly lacking in critical reflection. A pattern that likes the poetic and incomplete notion of academia. It was a dark-academia-like obsession with being a professor — a scholar isolated in his ivory tower, studying up on the most obscure and convoluted subjects.

Maybe the intense focus and dedication required to complete a doctorate appeals to me because my subconscious wishes to avoid or repress unpleasant emotions, and thinks that filling my brain with obscure philosophy would accomplish that goal. Or maybe it’s a desire to prove myself academically.

But then, I dug a layer deeper — why did I fixate on such a rigid (yet incompletely formed) image of myself? What I came to find was that it was an ego problem. I don’t want to be forgotten in this world; I have a sense of uniqueness and ego so inflated that I was able to convince myself that I’ll be the next Kant, the next Marx, the next Chomsky. But, again, why? Why would I care? Well, it’s because I want a sense of immortality. It’s probably not so uncommon for college students who have nothing but potential and angst to want to be seen. 

This self-obsessive behavior is perpetuated by a culture of mysterious idols, the “genius” figures that people just can’t seem to figure out — someone like Alan Turing, whose life was dramatized in the movie “The Imitation Game.” Mystical, unique, creative — whichever label you prefer — this culture feeds on public figures’ personalities instead of the ideas they contribute. An exaggerated and unfortunate symptom of this is “Keeping up with the Kardashians,” a popular reality show that documents the life of an incredibly rich family. They’re not particularly unique or funny or anything. The Kardashian phenomenon is analogous to Coke, which Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek believes to be the symbolic epitome of consumerism. It’s a drink that doesn’t quench your thirst or supply you with nutrients; it appeals to short-term enjoyment, fed by the endless American desire to be stimulated with nonsense like “Keeping up with the Kardashians.” 

How do reality TV and Coke connect to career ambitions? Great question! 

We perceive careers as something to be consumed rather than an act to be performed. They are fetishized for their aesthetics rather than valued for their real-world qualities. In a messy soup of ideology, my love for intellectualism was perverted by a prideful lust to be some sort of immortalized household name. I didn’t truly care about a doctorate; I just wanted to be a figure, like the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who would hang out with artists, writers and all sorts of characters for a sense of importance. 

I said I liked philosophy and capitalism asked: How much? Would you balance three assistant jobs at three community colleges to pay rent and buy groceries? How serious is your love for philosophy?

When I actually explored the world of academia, I was underwhelmed and defeated. Doctoral candidates compete endlessly and often don’t secure tenure-track positions. They’re not just reading whatever they want; they’re reading hyper-specialized research and expected to pump out papers to stay afloat, sacrificing meaningful long-term intellectual development for consistent output. They’re setting up office hours for undergrads to ask them pretentious questions and constantly re-applying for lecturer positions.

They’re not working in some ancient library; they’re overstressed in an apartment that has a loud AC unit and a neighbor that watches TV a bit too loud, considering the paper-like thinness of the walls. That’s the bleak reality of what it means to be a successful academic. A reality so serious and draining that it makes my original conception seem erotically outdated. 

In somewhat of a nihilist dream I recently had, I was a professor in a crowded tiny little office. I had published a book or two that was read by four people, one of whom was my cousin. I didn’t add anything groundbreaking to our envelope of knowledge. My legacy was tainted by a facade. Perhaps it’s not so bleak for those who neurotically enjoy philosophy, but I don’t. I want to have nice things and waste time and sleep in and just live outside the capitalist vacuum for like 10 seconds. If it means reading as a nightstand activity, so be it. I know that that’s a bit cynical, but it’s true. Perhaps what’s a bit more uplifting is the fact that at least I realized my true intentions for pursuing a doctorate in philosophy. But this dream revealed a pivotal truth: In order to pursue a Ph.D., I must thoroughly enjoy the content of the subject, not the unfounded implications. 

Adam Allouch, a sophomore at the University of Michigan who hopes to pursue a doctorate in neuroscience, has the right idea: “In the lab, I enter a micro-world of curiosity and drive. I find a poetic relationship with neuroscience research, erected on the investigation of the most complex yet riveting topics, such as the nervous system, neurodegenerative disease and even consciousness. A career in research would allow me to direct the focus of my work and delve into mechanisms and phenomena that are of fundamental interest to me.” In contrast to my blurry and somewhat misguided reasoning, Allouch has a genuine and developed reason to pursue a Ph.D.

There is a popular sentiment that those who “sell” themselves to Amazon are less virtuous than those who dedicate themselves to research. But this argument looks at the issue from the wrong angle. The motivation for our career goals is a more interesting point to analyze. For instance, I realized that my reasons for pursuing a doctorate weren’t any nobler than those working for Amazon. I wanted attention and fame. They wanted money. Both drives were cultivated by an individualistic and competitive ideology borne from the toxicity of capitalism. 

Ultimately, it’s important to question and explore the underlying reasons behind our desires and to be mindful of the potential impact of societal and cultural influences on our beliefs and motivations. This self-reflection can help to prevent repressed motivations and apparent paradoxes, leading to a more authentic and realized life. 

Ammar Ahmad is an Opinion Columnist and can be reached at ammarz@umich.edu.

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If you’re like me (or not), you’ve probably used TikTok. The addictive social media app is appealing, especially to Gen Z. There are a variety of reasons why — content creation is easier and more accessible than ever before, videos cover all sorts of topics (from politics to nature to music to frogs) and it’s all user friendly. However, there is one fundamental reason that TikTok grasps our attention: the calculated algorithm that picks up on users’ interests.

The algorithm has powerful categorization techniques for the astronomical number of videos that get uploaded every day. By sorting various trends, creators, likes and comments, the algorithm can then look at how much time you spend watching certain kinds of videos. Then, it will simply feed you more and more of these videos. 

This results in some pros and cons. 

The pros are that in America’s consumer-oriented culture, this app provides an infinite amount of fun (just keep scrolling!). It’s hard to get bored of TikTok — well, until you start to get a headache or you have to get up and interact with the real world. You can also find some niche corners of TikTok in which to interact with creators that are doing something relevant to your life. An instance of this is when, for the periods of time I was away from home and missed my cat, I indulged in cat TikTok — the small furballs kept me entertained for hours.

The cons are that the app is detrimental to our attention span and it can drive us into some dangerous rabbit holes. This creates echo chambers and polarization among the masses. In a sense, the more videos you see that reaffirm your beliefs, the more likely you are to perceive these videos as representative of reality (which is often not the case).

So, if an algorithm is so impactful, so fruitful, so targeted, should we be afraid of it?

Well, substantial claims from government officials have been made about TikTok’s threat to national security. Some claims go so far as to say that this Chinese company (and, subsequently, the Chinese government) can collect data from the American masses, posing a threat to American consumer privacy. This data includes (but is not limited to) what pages users spend more time on, browser tracking and history and ad preferences.

However, I don’t really think that the problem lies with security against potential foreign actors. We should expect that TikTok, like other tech giants, collects this information in an impersonal and algorithmic manner. Failing to rid us of this assumption, the U.S. government has been tight-lipped when asked to back up its claims of a conspiracy. TikTok’s data is collected and distributed to private companies; the app then feeds its users these personalized ads based on the content they’ve shown interest in. For example, say you’ve been watching a lot of music beat-making TikTok videos. Soon enough, you might come across online courses that teach users how to use beat-making software.

In that way, TikTok and other major social media apps can derive a digital copy of you: what you like, what you dislike, who you follow, how you interact, etc. Thus, the user is reduced to a collection of profitable potential and subsequently sold as a product. Identities are blurred and fit into various compartments that are most convenient for advertising corporations. 

Moreover, in this new age of technology, surveillance is not really a means for the government to watch over its people. Unless there’s an investigation taking place, American government agencies can’t legally tap into people’s personal data. But that doesn’t mean users are in good hands with the private sector.

When surveillance is handed off from a (traditionally) governmental authority to a distributed web of corporations, the users’ data is commodified. In that sense, you can go on TikTok and bash the government all you’d like. You have a sort of “free speech” that’s maintained by the private company (which doesn’t necessarily ascribe to some larger political agenda). However, there’s a flip side to it. This data acquisition leads to a lost sense of digital privacy because you’re now a product.

TikTok’s data harvesting is not reminiscent of a centralized “Big Brother” overseer. It’s lines of code embedded in statistical models that slingshot your information to other algorithms owned by other companies. Because of that, the individual’s idiosyncrasy is lost and turned into data points fed into a larger machine. (It’s not like a human being ever personally handles your information and looks at it. However, computer or not, the data is still being collected and sold.).

This distinction between governmental and corporate surveillance is important to point out because many people, especially older generations, have developed alarmism about their digital privacy, but for the wrong reasons. Alarm is the right reaction to have in response to our data being farmed and sold off. However, we shouldn’t point to some obscure governmental or political entity trying to indoctrinate everybody. Instead, we should demand that private companies be transparent about what data is being collected. Also, they must allow the user to have more autonomy over their online identity (something perhaps not too dissimilar to the European Union’s data privacy laws, which do not permit browser tracking and history, for instance).

TikTok has made it so that personalized advertisements cannot be turned off. This is dangerous because no one has a shield against inappropriate data mining. Especially worrisome is that TikTok’s algorithm taps into some unconscious habits from which users suffer. In the Netflix special, The Social Dilemma, app designers and developers extensively speak about the addictive programming that goes into major social media apps. This makes it so that a task as simple as scrolling can be so indulging, stimulating and compulsive. What’s even more worrying is that when a user stays on one video for a long(er) period of time, TikTok derives a new data point from the individual’s online habits. The result is an infringement on consumer privacy.

In essence, the basic premise of major social media applications is to profit off of addicted users. Then, by gaining more data, these companies can then construct more developed algorithms, resulting in a vicious feedback loop of consumerism, addiction and data acquisition. That’s why we must work to develop more consumer privacy laws and ensure that social media companies adhere to these laws. Otherwise, the companies’ main incentive will continue to be data mining, which is only detrimental to our online autonomy. 

Ammar Ahmad is an Opinion Columnist and can be reached at ammarz@umich.edu.

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Jordan Peterson is a popular Canadian personality psychologist who has made quite a name for himself by preaching against the use of pronouns, arguing that they violate freedom of speech. In a CBC interview, he uses his spotlight moment to say “I don’t believe that other people have the right to determine what language I use” and that pronouns are “artificial constructions of people I regard as radical ideologues whose viewpoint I do not share.” These hefty accusations definitely initiated a wider public discourse, and Peterson was at the center of it all. But with a bit of cross-examination, it becomes evident that Peterson hasn’t done his research. 

On June 15, 2017, Bill C-16, which ensures that transgender or gender-diverse Canadians have fundamental human rights, including protection from hate crimes, was passed. Nowhere in the entire bill does it suggest that pronoun misuse is a federal crime or a hate crime. In fact, there are no specific mentions of pronouns in the bill at all. The Canadian Bar Association explicitly stated that the “debate has turned to whether the amendments will force individuals to embrace concepts, even use pronouns, which they find objectionable. This is a misunderstanding of human rights and hate crimes legislation.” Overall, this showcases an important motif in Peterson’s flimsy intellectual career: grand misrepresentations, a conflation of distinct concepts and banal reductionism.

So, how did an individual such as Peterson become an international best-selling author? Arguably, his most famous work, “12 Rules for Life,” is a self-help journey that outlines crude laws that one must abide by. The rules include: “Stand up straight with your shoulders back,” “pet a cat when you encounter one in the street” and my favorite, “set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.” Peterson’s expressive and somewhat playful rules are supposed to envelop subtleties and nuanced observations about the human psyche. Analytically speaking, however, they offer little for those who are seeking some idiosyncratic metamorphosis. These watered-down Nietzschean aphorisms are Peterson’s way of spewing uninspired and underwhelming philosophy.

Slavoj Zizek, a contemporary Slovenian philosopher, has commented on the last rule I presented by asking a common-sense question: What if the disorder in your house is caused by society? Initially, this may seem like somewhat of a naive question. It’s insightful, however, because it hints at Peterson’s grander overtone of sacrificing social change in favor of personal transformation. It’s the “me versus the world” mindset that appeals to so many insecure young males, offering a Darwinist gateway to reaffirming the systemic patriarchy and resenting societal development. In simpler terms, it’s a bunch of intellectual gymnastics that preserve an ideology resembling insightful self-independency and personal freedom. 

Unfortunately, the reality of the matter is that self-transformation does not manifest through these broad, modern-day Shakespearian adages. It’s a complex and intricate process that requires an understanding of the social context one finds themselves in because personal renovation has a lot of comorbidity with societal awareness. Instead of acknowledging that, Peterson exploits the angst, malleability and identity crises of his audience to deliver an ideology that feels like a survivor’s guide when, in reality, it’s a bunch of self-victimizing regurgitated nonsense. Andrew Howard, a sophomore at Michigan State University, weighed in on this: “At first, Peterson appealed to me. But after watching a couple of his videos, I felt that he wasn’t expressing anything comprehensible.”

At the same time, it’s important to consider that Peterson presents the groundbreaking works of Jung, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky in an accessible and intriguing way. He breaks down some of the most enticing yet impenetrable works in philosophy, literature and psychoanalysis on free media, such as YouTube. Peterson does himself a real disservice in the eyes of serious contemporary thinkers, however, by embedding a twisted conspiratory agenda focused on fending off the imminent takeover of postmodern neo-Marxists. This obsessive and paranoid outlook on postmodernism and neo-Marxism is odd when we consider that Peterson prepared for a talk on communism by reading the “Communist Manifesto,” a pamphlet that used to be handed out to workers on their way home. This is a minor part of communist literature, so is it not a tad pretentious to debate a topic as complex as Marxism with such minimal readings of primary material?

Sometimes, the poetic reactionary’s alarmism is not just perpetuated by his lack of mild research, but also by his blatant misconceptions. For instance, he attributes the resurrection of Marxism to the French philosopher, Michel Foucault. However, very early on in his career, Foucault overtly denounced Marxism.

Rather than lecturing on actual oppression around the world, Peterson rambles on about the totalitarian left’s rise. Usually, he expresses a general truism and then overextends it to other concepts. This leads to some pretty misinformed and loosely connected information, which can be seen especially when he’s critiquing Marxism.

Here’s how it goes: Peterson will reaffirm some inevitable tragic quality of the human condition and then go on to postulate a series of naturalistic fallacies that make it impossible for Marxism to ever become a reality. Then, he’ll loosely survey some historical events, usually about the demise and catastrophic effects of communist regimes. He’ll finish with traditionalist, meritocratic alpha-male advice for his audience. 

From a non-Western perspective, however, Peterson’s reductive and disconnected lectures seem to miss comparable tragedies committed by the Western authoritarian control of under-resourced countries. Without ever probing genuine imperialist and colonial structures, Peterson focuses on such a narrow slice of capitalism that it’s genuinely challenging to take him seriously.

Ultimately, Peterson’s appeal showcases a symptom of a more cryptic sickness at hand — the West’s lack of comprehensible critical thought. In a brilliant essay, Nathan Robinson from Current Affairs probes the essence of Peterson’s work. Cleverly, Robinson qualifies a common tactic that Peterson employs whenever he’s speaking or writing: the utilization of abstractions and vague semantics to verbalize seemingly profound concepts. So, instead of just saying that society provides an individual with the ability to gain a sense of self-independence, Peterson will say “the group provides the protective structure—conditional meaning and behavioral pattern—that enables the individual to cast off the dependence of childhood, to make the transition from the maternal to the social, patriarchal world” (taken from his “Maps of Meaning”). By formulating convoluted and non-falsifiable affirmations about life, Peterson can conveniently overcast any serious dissection and instead resort to the that’s-not-what-I-meant scapegoat. 

Moreover, Robinson points out the shoddy net of references that Peterson often relies on in his surface-leveled arguments. Through quite a simple (and hilarious) act, Robinson types out one of Peterson’s lectures just to show how disconnected it is. It emphasizes a larger point, which is that if someone’s talking about a bunch of stuff and connecting them in a general and shallow manner, they’re most likely not talking about anything at all.

Robinson holistically encapsulates Peterson’s work by stating that “the harder people have to work to figure out what you’re saying, the more accomplished they’ll feel when they figure it out, and the more sophisticated you will appear. Everybody wins.” It’s precisely this performative and elitist linguistic roller coaster that gives one the illusion of having come across creative ideas.

Ammar Ahmad is an Opinion Columnist and can be reached at ammarz@umich.edu.

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If you’ve heard of Trevor Noah’s “The Daily Show,” then you may have heard of liberal comedian Jordan Klepper, who has a special segment: “Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse.” In this segment, Klepper goes to conservative events in order to speak with Trump supporters, COVID disbelievers, election deniers and other interesting members of the communities he visits. 

Klepper poses what seem to be basic and easy questions, like if they believe gay couples should have the same rights as straight couples, to these people in order to expose their underlying lack of understanding on a given topic. This is all done in a comedic and somewhat mocking way and is meant to appeal to liberal audiences. However, upon further analysis, it becomes rather evident to viewers that Klepper simply exploits these people’s lack of education. This showcases a sinister elitism that’s both unproductive and harmful to healthy political discourse.

Similar mockery can be found on the right side of the aisle. We’ve seen this a lot with Steven Crowder, a conservative commentator who sets up racist, transphobic and openly outrageous claims on college campuses in order to provoke college students. Prepared and ready to go (usually with a binder of cherry-picked facts and statistics), Crowder desperately seeks to “debate” contentious topics. Shamelessly, the 35-year-old YouTuber usually argues with undergraduate students who are on the way to class, so the “debates” are never on equal playing grounds. He corners these unprepared students with a chain of questions, usually in a manner that’s far too quick and disconnected to derive any argumentative value. From this, we get blatantly misogynistic videos, such as one titled “College Chick GOES NUTS,” which focuses on Crowder’s denial of rape culture on college campuses. 

This twisted obsession with lecturing and talking down to people who have opposing views is harmful, and it only sparks contempt across the political spectrum. Thus, while Crowder and Klepper find themselves in opposite political circles, they both share a clickbait-oriented style of cheap debate that only villainizes and taunts the other side. In that way, polarization is fostered. It’s a vicious, classist cycle.

However, there is a crucial difference between when the left and right employ this taunting tactic and: for the left, it’s not only counterintuitive, it’s exploitative and hypocritical, given that the left cares deeply about socioeconomic equality. It’s targeting people who are, generally speaking, comparatively less privileged and educated. It’s an elaborate elitism contradictory to the core pillars on which the left prides itself.

Most of the time, leftist theories (from Marxism to modern Feminism and Gender theory) are inaccessible to the people who may benefit from them, lower income and disproportionately marginalized groups, because thoroughly understanding them typically requires higher education or careful and time-consuming study. That inaccessibility can be intimidating in itself. Noam Chomsky, an important contemporary figure in philosophy, and a staunch leftist himself, linguistics and politics, has criticized the complex and theory-based nature of leftist political thought because it fails to empower those who are truly oppressed. During a talk at Leiden University, Chomsky harshly criticized the 20th-century French postmodern intellectual circle, stating that these professors would be upset if a plumber was to understand their theory and that many of their convoluted theories could be stated in mere monosyllables.

So, how do we stop this divide? Do we need to close an educational gap of some sort? While some of this can be attributed to an inequitable and classist schooling system that consistently fails American working-class families, it’s not as much about under-resourced education as it is about the cultural divide between urban and rural working-class communities. In rural areas especially, the working class is vulnerable to misinformation that leads to right-wing ideologies. The behavioral inertia of tradition, systemic white supremacy and generational beliefs breed a culture that’s inherently different from the one found in more urban areas, where there is the possibility for more direct exposure to diverse people, societies and institutions.

Overall, this rural susceptibility is quite dangerous and can be perpetuated by the media. A lot of neutral and somewhat fact-based media, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post are viewed as complicated, driving people to more accessible and plain-language news sources such as Fox News. Elitism is not the answer to healing this divide.

The price of this misguided movement can be immensely self-harming. Consider former President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election win. Following former President Barack Obama, who is a precise (to say the least) and sophisticated individual, the right clasped onto a personality as charismatic, foul and uncalculated as Trump’s.

For a significant segment of the working class, they found a fiery American leader that they can identify with in terms of his accessible and even entertaining speeches. That’s why, when confronted with apparent paradoxes and lies during Trump’s presidency, his supporters remained loyal; Trump represented this new revolutionary persona in D.C. that they trusted. They found their ideological haven.

Of course, Trump is not the voice of the working class. He’s a billionaire who works to satisfy corporate needs. But it’s his unorthodox approach to politics that makes him such a sensational persona to the working class. His speeches weren’t tethered with intellectual gymnastics. This goes to show how messy and mystical the object of ideology really is, because a mild examination of Trump’s priorities showcases a moral bankruptcy and a careless demeanor towards the working class, yet he still maintains a great influence because of his plain language approach. Under a leader like Trump, the working class is heading directly toward its demise.

Nevertheless, hope persists. 

It’s important to consider that another substantial segment of the working class supports more leftist candidates, like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Sanders’ appeal isn’t founded in his quirky personality as much as it is in his ongoing fight for the working class. His speeches are not cryptic or subtle (which neoliberals seem to suffer from), but rather clear, repetitive and passionate. In an important sense, Sanders is taking some of that impenetrable leftist theory and presenting it in a more populist and concrete policy-focused way. This is a huge part of his appeal and it should be emulated by other Democrats.

In the end, it’s important to remember that elitism is an egocentric defense mechanism employed by individuals who lack the empathy and understanding needed for human progress; it only perpetuates hate in a country that already has a lot of political tension. The left must focus on how to unite the working class under candidates that actually prioritize their needs while avoiding any form of intellectual hazing or gatekeeping. Only then can they better connect with the conservative bases.

Ammar Ahmad is an Opinion Columnist and can be reached at ammarz@umich.edu.

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