DAVID MARCUS: Democrats' Munich meltdown exposes Left's intellectual void

When I was increasing up successful the 1980s determination was a postulation of left-wing, adjacent socialist, intelligence stars specified arsenic Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault and Gore Vidal, whose works were similar an inkwell that politicians and commentators could gully from. Judging from the Munich Security Conference this weekend, that inkwell has tally dry.

Take this gem of a remark connected planetary bid from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, queen of the Democratic Socialists: "What we are seeking is simply a instrumentality to a rules-based bid that eliminates the hypocrisies astir erstwhile excessively often successful the westbound we look the different mode for inconvenient populations, to enactment retired these paradoxes."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, takes portion successful the Munich Security Conference connected Feb. 13, 2026. (Sven Hoppe/picture confederation via Getty Images)

Allow maine to construe this into English: "The West is atrocious and mistreats the marginalized remainder of the world."

The usage of 25-cent words and highfalutin condemnation operation cannot fell the banality of what AOC is saying. Not adjacent the assuring allure of assonance would help, fixed the asinine simplicity of her connection salad.

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Not to beryllium outdone, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, aft apologizing for being little well-versed successful overseas argumentation than AOC, offered this instrumentality connected the warfare successful Ukraine: "Ukraine’s independence, keeping their onshore mass, I mean, um, the enactment of each the allies, I deliberation is the goal, from my vantage point."

There is conscionable thing present but bare words that overgarment a representation of the facile progressive worldview, wholly divorced, not lone from world connected the ground, but from immoderate dependable intelligence model whatsoever.

The American Right has a halfway of intellectuals, from Christopher Rufo, to Victor Davis Hanson, to Mark Dubowitz, and connected and on, who tin beryllium referred to oregon drawn connected successful argumentation debates some overseas and domestic.

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In fact, astir a decennary agone we had the Intellectual Dark Web phenomenon, with figures similar Jordan Peterson and Bari Weiss, who are broadly seen, if not arsenic conservative, arsenic right-leaning.  Who are their counterparts connected the acold Left?

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani reads a paper connected the subway connected his mode to City Hall successful New York, Friday, Jan. 2, 2026. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP Photo)

Who is the modern socialist intelligence who AOC could person referenced to enactment her assertion that what is needed is monolithic planetary redistribution of wealth? 

I would posit that extracurricular of the precise constrictive corridors of contention and gender, specified far-left nationalist intellectuals nary longer exist, and for 2 precise important reasons.

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The astir evident origin for the existent dearth of fashionable far-left, socialist intellectuals is the illness of the Soviet Union successful the precocious 1980s. At slightest for the adjacent 2 decades, the crippled was up, the experimentation had failed, and cipher wanted to beryllium called a socialist.

The 2nd crushed is what took the spot of outright socialism, which was taste Marxism, specifically successful the signifier of captious contention theory. 

In their superb 2013 Harvard Education Review study, "McIntosh arsenic Synecdoche: How Teacher Education's Focus connected White Privilege Undermines Antiracism," the Midwestern Whiteness Collective, a left-wing radical of teachers, argued that centering contention and individuality successful everything was stifling intelligence discourse.

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This was intelligibly existent due to the fact that the shibboleths of contention and identity, what was allowed and not allowed to beryllium expressed, went wholly unchallenged, successful fact, challenging them was punished.

So erstwhile contention and individuality became a portion of everything, past thing could beryllium legitimately questioned. It was equity, not equality, implicit everything else.

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We saw this successful signifier this period astatine Sarah Lawrence College, wherever non-socialist wide intelligence Ezra Klein was shouted down during a treatment astir Israel. The presumption of the protesters was not that Klein should beryllium disagreed with, but that helium should beryllium silenced, that his ideas are excessively unsafe to utter.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks astatine the Munich Security Conference astatine the Bayerischer Hof league edifice successful Munich, Germany, connected Feb. 13. (Matthias Balk/picture confederation via Getty Images)

Why bash AOC and Whitmer dependable similar babbling idiots erstwhile they question to support their positions against adjacent the slightest criticism? Because they person ne'er had to. In each the rooms and meetings they’ve experienced, their nonsense is greeted with grins and fingersnaps of approval.

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The information present is of the highest order, due to the fact that we whitethorn beryllium electing socialists who virtually bash not cognize however to marque things work. Zany Zohran Mamdani has been politician of New York City for conscionable implicit a month, helium couldn’t grip the snow, helium can’t region the trash and radical are freezing to decease connected the streets.

The bittersweet bottommost enactment is that the American Left, which has taken implicit the Democratic Party, has nary existent intelligence underpinnings. Like Seinfeld, it is yet a governmental ideology astir nothing, and the clearest information to American values that exists today.

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