Hobsbawm, like all leftists, knows that it isn’t capitalism that is bankrupting California and Illinois. Capitalism didn’t turn the water off to California’s Central Valley converting prime farmland into a “dust bowl” and the bourgeoisie didn’t force banks to lend money to sub-prime borrowers. It is Hobsbawm’s fellow travelers who are responsible for most of our economic woes and even with our economy in chaos America is a literal heaven on earth compared to his much-mourned Soviet Union. Hobsbawm knows all of this and simply doesn’t care.
The best critique in media of people like Hobsbawm and their hold over the youth comes from John Milius’ epic “Conan the Barbarian” in which the villain, cult leader Thulsa Doom, gathers his hundreds of followers together and attempts to send them out in a rampage clearly meant to draw parallels to the Manson murders in viewers’ minds. His speech to the crowd would stir the heart of an old Stalinist like Hobsbawm:
Purging is at last at hand. Day of Doom is here. All that is evil, all their allies; your parents, your leaders, those who would call themselves your judges; those who have lied and corrupted the Earth, they shall all be cleansed.
You, my children, are the water that will wash away all that has gone before. In your hand, you hold my light, the gleam in the eye of Set. This flame will burn away the darkness, burn you the way to paradise!
Infidel Defilers. They shall all drown in lakes of blood.
Why did he plan this massacre? No reason really. Doom was a rich and powerful intellectual who lured the young to his cult with promises of creating a paradise on earth where the old order was overthrown. His plan to create a Hyperborian kristalnacht was a spur of the moment reaction to being bested by the movie’s heroes, a fit of pique really. He is a cinematic representation of every armchair revolutionary who seduces the disaffected and disturbed for his own personal pleasure.
The bloody cult of Marxism, for all the millions it has killed, is still just a cult. The people that do the work are suckers and the people at the top are usually running a scam. For all his bluster about the evils of capitalism, the near perfection of the Soviet union and how comfortable he feels in Latin America it should not be unnoticed that Hobsbawm benefits greatly from capitalism, did not defect to the Soviet Union and does not live in Venezuela, Cuba or Brazil. He has always been glad to preach his communism from the comfort of the British state, which while leftist enough for most people, one would think would be an unbearable hell for a man who thought the fall of the Soviet Union was a disaster for the world.
The “crisis of capitalism” is a myth spread by the ascended masters of materialism. But this crisis hasn’t kept Hobsbawm from making a pretty penny, and as the 90-something looks back on his life with increasing bitterness at his irrelevance to history, the idea of encouraging a bloody revolution probably appeals to his misanthropy. The real crisis here is the willingness of people to pick up his pseudo-religious writings and distribute them to the peons that fill the ranks of their cult, with the hope that mayhem will ensue.
Marxists ARE deluded, but no more so than capitalists; both groups,like Christians and Satanists are different faces of the same tarnished coin. Neither should be given much credence, particularly today when there’s literally hundreds of years of demonstrated failure in both camps.
That said, I find it interesting that you felt the need to define as fully as you did your godfather. It unecessarily reveals something about your prejudices–which seem to darkly color your viewpoint. If your goal is to convert Marxist cultists to your faith (though it appears you’re more interested in preaching to the choir), you might want to tone that down in the future–honey versus vinegar, etc. etc.
What prejudice? I said many are fine people personally, as was my godfather. We disagreed politically but he was a great guy – who was a typical New Yorker who looked down on lots of people. It’s not prejudice to criticize world views, quite the opposite I included that section to show that I’m not “prejudiced” against Marxists, just against their goals.
My “faith” by the way is Pagan. I’m not seeking to convert anyone.
In the future, you may one to lay off the Christian/Satanist analogy. While Marxism implies an actual ideology that reacts to Capitalism the capitalist views markets as naturally occurring organic entities and aside from the belief in free markets encompasses dozens of ideologies, from Libertarianism to Republicanism to some forms of Monarchy. Marxism may be anti-capitalism ut capitalism has no unified anti-stance on anything.