When radicalization is ever discussed in the news it is always understood in terms of extremists on the right. But are there radicals on the left and if there are any, where are they? The answer is that they do exist but now they are in full view of everyone and are often placed in positions of great power such as candidates in the Democratic Party running for the office of president of the United States and the current President himself. Instead of being referred to for what they are, these radical leftists are now called “progressives” or “socialists.”
Radicals on the left are not identified for what they are because of the shift of the political mainstream to the extreme left of center. These radicals politically blend in imperceptibly with today’s social mainstream. The ever shifting leftward of society is supported and maintained by a new form of social armor that was instituted by leftists, the morality of political correctness.
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Neither Left Nor Right
The Emotional Plague
Charles Konia, M.D. 
In the 60s there were a lot of radicals on the left and the word radical usually meant leftists, but most of them gave it up after the draft ended and there was no more personal stake in leftism for them. There are still a few long-term leftists around who got into it in those days and never quit, but most of the 60s radicals eventually reconciled with their parents, went back to college and got their degrees, and became lawyers or stockbrokers. Many of them still do not even know how much they have changed since their youth and still think of themselvs as radical, but most of them have ended up as more or less moderate liberals.
Radicalism on the right got started in the 80s, with the rise of Christian Fudamentalism. The most important issues radicalizing people on the right are religious issues like abortion and gay rights.
Neither is really much interested in economics, so the labels of “left” and “right” do not really describe them very well. Social and cultural conservatives and liberals need some other terms to label them.
Really radical leftists today are represented by the relatively small number of Anarchists and the vague and incoherent climate chage movement. Political correctness is essentially the police force of the left, the means of coercion to force people into going along with the arbiters of political correctness. It is just as authoritarian as the police of the State, but the people who employ it cannot see it that way.
Re Tzindaro: This is simply not true and almost grotesque! First of all the political red shift is evident wherever one looks, Germany, Great Britain, etc. And second, the red shift is not only political but a bio-energetic phenomenon, i.e., a general shift away from the Solar plexus (the orgonotic system) to the brain (the energetic orgonome). It also encompasses “wall street” and the highest strata of capitalist society. The general corruption by drugs is central part of this (Zappa’s “cocaine decisions”). The madness of the Fed and of the financial system in general, etc.pp. Or a look at the media in the U.S. controlled by big corporations: all one gets is Soviet style Leftist propaganda. The educational system – it goes on and on.
If one cannot see the radical Left in control of society, it means they are doing a very good job camouflaging themselves as “caring” progressives. Just because someone is now a lawyer or bus driver, does not mean they are still not charactologically a pseudo-liberal. How they feel about natural sexuality and self-determination in work gives an idea of their structure, or better yet, look at their expressions. This is where their rigid (political) structures are, not in other superficial spheres. And without any other conclusion, President Obama is maliciously undermining our core values in order to liberate the anti-social ones for the goal of destroying the foundations of America. This is why his push for “marriage equality” and the welfare state are still one of his top priorities.
On a related note, we see that the Arab peoples who were under right-wing dictatorial rule AND their leaders were also liberal/sectarian, are the ones who revolted and overthrew their repressive order, in order to usher in Sharia law (Tunisia, Libya, Egypt). In other words, their previous Right-wing society was not extreme enough. The Muslims are terrified of spontaneous living—nor do they hide this fact, but the Left-Western societies cover this up, just as Stalin and Mao did in order “to help people.” On the other side, the USA overthrew the shackles of repressive Right authority, becoming captivated with secondary layer freedom.
There is an old French saying, “pas d’ennemi a gauche,” “no enemy to the left.”
For the most part the baby boomer generation and their children do not recognize fascists (i.e.radicals) on the left of the political spectrum because of their fear of the fascist on the right as a result of their parents exposure first or second hand to the horrors of WW2.
The existence of the fascist on the left is inconceivable to most people, even to most conservatives. Without a functional understanding of socio-political characterology, it is very likely that the masses will ever understand how much they have been duped by pseudo-liberal ideology no matter how much destruction it brings about.
For those like myself who have acquired an understanding of functional thinking by reading and studying your books, it is relatively easy to see the destructive effects of pseudo-liberal/communist ideology on our society. This knowledge alone is not sufficient to effect any short term change. Just as it took great planning, effort, strategy and patience (and a good part of the 20th C) to set the stage for the pseudo-liberal/communist ideology to secure its place in the U.S., it will take the same determination on the part of the next generation of functional thinkers to repudiate, isolate and eliminate it from the mainstream of our society.
And where are this “next generation of functional thinkers” going to come from? Do you mean the vanishingly small number of Reichians? How many “functional thinkers” do you think there are? And how do you expéct them tto accomplish the job? Suppose somebody agreed with you, what do you urge him to do towards accimplishing that goal? What do you suggest as a plan of action?
Tzindaro, your comment and question underscore the difficulty of the challenge of “bridging the gap” that Reich, Baker, Konia and others have written about and referred to in many ways over the course of the last 70 years.
As briefly as possible I will try to respond.
Where are this next generation of functional thinkers?
The ACO is trying to develop appropriate strategies to attract qualified people. This task is very difficult. Functional thinking requires sufficient undistorted core contact. In the 1920’s Reich’s “direct” approach to his patient’s character resistance brought people in touch with their underlying problems previously inaccessible to both the patient and the therapist. This one specific idea put into action by Reich lead to all his discoveries and the knowledge that we are privileged to have access to today. Unfortunately, over the last 90 plus years, for the most part people and our social institutions have become less tolerant to the one essential and necessary requirement to functional thinking: the ability to look inside at one’s problems and experience the pain (relief and joy) associated with this process.
It is my hope that the wealth of knowledge that orgonomic functionalism brings to the current social breakdown of western society, particularly in the U.S. can find “its place” in the social arena outside of the ACO. There are many influential people today who sense accurately the destruction that is taking place in western democracies but they lack, to varying degrees, the required knowledge necessary come together in a non-political way to find a solution to the problems at hand. They tend to get bogged down in “us vs them” the right versus the left, etc. There needs to be a place where these thinkers can meet and address the problem from a “neither left nor right” point of view.
I am not sure what you mean by Reichians. I do not “trust” that term. I have spent a good part of the last 20 years reading and interacting at times with many people who are knowledgeable to some degree about Reich and his work and make the claim of “professional Reichian” in one form or another. From my point of view there are very few who have done sufficient work on their own character structures that qualify as professionals. The training program at the ACO provides the best chance for an interested individual to follow in Reich’s and Baker’s path.
As for a plan of action, I and a good friend of mine have been working on this problem for the last decade. It is an ongoing process but we are hoping to develop something of practical substance in the next 5 years and have shared our ideas to date with our contact at the ACO.
If you haven’t already, read and study Dr. Konia’s books (I would suggest several times if possible). Neither left Nor Right is a much easier read. There are many great articles in the Journal of Orgonomy
One of the most important things that I have learned over the last while in my efforts to help “bridge the gap” between the conventional thinker’s rational responses to anti-authoritarian society and the functional point of view is stand back far enough from the current problem to get an accurate historical perspective. This provided me with an understanding that it takes great patience and persistence to deal with difficult tasks in an armored world. This has helped keep my emotions and reactions in the proper perspective so that I avoid total frustration with the problem at hand.
it took over 2000 years from the time that Jesus astutely pointed out the fact that the people around him had ears but could not hear (understand the truth about themselves) and eyes but could not see (the world around them clearly). He was describing their armored character structures. Then one guy comes along in the 1920’s and is attracted to Freud’s ideas of the unconscious (i.e. that there is something going on inside people that they are not aware of that is having a profound effect on the quality of their lives). He then takes the ball and runs with it for several decades and does the work of hundreds if not thousands in his short life time. He is hounded every where he lives as he tries to do his ground breaking work in peace. He touches on practically every area of scientific investigation. He tried to teach, train and spur on others from the hundreds that are attracted to his work. He manages to find but one whom he trusts to continue the work. The one trains and spawns but a few more.
This is where we are at the end of 2015. And on that note “peace on earth and we need more people of good will”
Thank you for your response to Tzindaro. I hope it will be helpful.
You are welcome
The link at the end of this comment will take you to an article that is a good example of a conventional thinker who can see clearly some aspects of the current manifestation of emotional plague activity that is at the root of the social and political problems in the U.S. and the western world. In his own words the author is describing many linchpins of our anti-authoritarian society. These I would describe as the social agreements, both written and unwritten, that we all must comply with or choose not comply with and be willing to deal with the social ramifications (i.e. many of these ramifications are the same ones used quit effectively in the past and somewhat in the present by the KBG in Russia/Soviet Union). Until these “written and unwritten social agreements” can be exposed for what they really are and rescinded accordingly by people of influence (and eventually accepted by the masses as the “new” social norms) , it can easily be predicted with a high degree of probability that the current social degradation will continue unimpeded.
http://www.truthrevolt.org/commentary/ibrahim-islamic-jihad-symptom-western-cause