When capitalists undermine capitalism

The capitalists, Lenin said, will sell us the rope with which we will hang them. He was wrong: capitalists are donating the ropes to Leftwing thugs who promise to hang them. Coca Cola, Pepsico, Apple, IBM, Amazon, Google, YouTube, Nike, Twitter, Target, General Motors, JPMorgan Chase, Walmart—the biggest brands are supporting the Black Lives Matter movement which is spearheaded by the radical Left. And the support is not lip service; many of them are generously donating money to the thugs who are carrying out violent protests, vandalism, and arson not just in the US but also in other Western countries.

Facebook contributed $10 million to BLM-type bodies. Apple CEO Tim Cook pledged unknown donations to such organizations. Intel has pledged $1 million to the social justice outfits including BLM.

Home Depot, America’s biggest home improvement retailer, gave $1 million to the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Gaming company EA contributed $1 million to BLM-type groups. Another such firm Square Enix gave $250,000, along with a matching employee donation, to BLM.

Beauty companies, fitness firms, jeans makers—long is the list corporate donors to BLM.

Some of the corporate bosses may be paying BLM to ward off looting, damage, and arson—the same reason many Indian companies pay to the Maoists wherever the latter powerful. It is kind of protection money that mafia and local thugs extort from businesses for smooth functioning.

Then there are, what Ayn Rand called, second-handers who unquestioningly borrow the ideas, morals, and norms from others. She wrote: “A [second-hander] is one who regards the consciousness of other men as superior to his own and to the facts of reality. It is to a [second-hander] that the moral appraisal of himself by others is a primary concern which supersedes truth, facts, reason, logic. The disapproval of others is so shatteringly terrifying to him that nothing can withstand its impact within his consciousness; thus he would deny the evidence of his own eyes and invalidate his own consciousness for the sake of any stray charlatan’s moral sanction.”

Today, there’s an army of charlatans—academics and public intellectuals who have embraced all postmodern dogmas, mainstream journalists who just regurgitate Leftist lies, sundry activists and opinion makers. They have a great influence on second-handers—film and sports stars, a smorgasbord of celebrities, beautiful people. And on, most ironically, the capitalists and captains of industry who have gained the most from capitalism, the only system that is humane, just, and fair.

The irony, and the tragedy, is that the biggest beneficiaries of the system are assisting BLM and other Marxist bodies that doctrinally committed to destroy it. Seldom was folly more conspicuous.