Unhumans: a book review
Delusions, lies, and blind hate
First off: I read it all. Hard to believe. I am posting this review to help you avoid reading trash and spending money on hate-mongering. I had not heard of Jack Posobiec before coming across Unhumans.
To summarize what Jack’s philosophy of life is: hate anyone who does not agree with Jack. In Orwell’s 1984, nothing is real, and everything is a lie. Get inside this book to experience the same thing. Being in military intelligence, it seems, is not an indicator of one’s actual personal intelligence.
To say that Unhumans is the equivalent of poisonous snake oil would be an understatement. The tome promises to reveal the “secret history of communist revolutions.” That promise is a juvenile tease that ultimately goes nowhere. This guy is not as smart as he thinks he is.
The US is not up against Communism but corporate fascism, which has historically been used when corporations take over control of the government to protect their monopolies and capital flows during periods of large economic contractions. Fascism is not primarily an ideology but a way to micromanage the economy to the benefit of financial elites and to the detriment of the working class and small business sectors. For example, the Great Depression of the 1930’s was a cover for fascist takeover of family farms and obsolescence of small towns mainly in the Midwest creating migration to the big cities (Raymond C. Schmidt, From the Farm to Fast Food: Adventures During the Great Depression and Beyond, 2012). What is driving corporations today to take over the government and the economy is the lack of a full industrial economic base and the futute anticipated shrinkage of the consumer economy. A contraction of capital markets is expected due to eventual devaluation of monopoly currency issued by the US Federal Reserve used as the reserve currency globally - see Clara Mattei, The Capital Order: How Austerity Paved the Way to Fascism, 2022).1
Communism and socialism have long been dirty words in America. That is because the oligarchs want to keep their wealth hoards. That is why they have programmed people like Jack to do their dirty work for them.
America isn’t split down the middle by accident. America has been reprogrammed by rich people’s lies in the interest of sowing enough dissent that no one pays any attention to the obscene resource hoarding going on. "This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge is, without knowing and willing it, completely subject the rules of lies. With such a people you can do whatever you want."
I would describe Unhumans as poorly written and infused with evil. I would also call it a fascist’s wet dream. If you want American to revert back to a time and place when the dominant group of humans enslaves and exploits everyone else, this is the book for you. Fear, othering, and conspiracy thinking about.
Mostly though, Jack creates a fantasy world in which everything is Jack against the left. Whatever the left means. Think about Russia versus Ukraine. The former lied and lied about its intentions and then went ahead and invaded its much smaller neighbor as anyone with critical thinking skills knew it was going to. Look at how Russia treats the denizens of territory it occupies and soldiers it captures. Torture and abuse are the de facto standard.
That is what Posobeic is peddling. Unhumans is a lie projected onto everything good about the human species in order to ensure it cannot stand. There is nothing redeeming about the prose or the ideas being peddled.
JD Vance approves of Jack’s book and the ideas within. Vance endorsed a book whose entire purpose is to sell the idea that killing anyone who isn’t a neo-Nazi is wholly justified.2 At least Jack admits capitalism and empire go together.
If you have about two hours to listen to disgusting fascist ideology, please click the link below.
https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/1648210856
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/08/08/jd-vance-endorsed-left-unhumans-the-excerpt/74718248007/
There have always been fascists. It's not a lot different than the social hierarchy of Europe for centuries. Or China. Or almost any other human society. The norm was to have a few powerful people at the top of the ruling pyramid. And the slaves built it.
This experiment in democracy is a huge threat to that tradition and the facists will use whatever tools they need to in order to retain dominance.
The people you describe here must be squashed and stomped into oblivion. They are the antithesis of the enlightment and democracy. They are the maggots on a wound. They are the gangsters and mobsters who have always preyed on the "small folk".
Let our dragons roast them into cinders.
Humanity's susceptibility to propaganda is our Achilles heel.
It seems that no society can escape it, however educated or developed it may be.
I spent years trying to understand how an entire country could be hypnotized by Hitler and the Nazi movement. I understood the mechanics at an intellectual level, but seeing propaganda take root and infect millions of Americans has been chilling.
If it were just the economically disadvantaged or the angry young men, it would be somewhat understandable, but there is a large contingent of economically comfortable and wealthy Americans who have neutered their beliefs, values, and critical thinking in support of MAGA.
The billionaires are playing a different game, but doctors, lawyers, millions of women support a dystopian future, with few freedoms, economic collapse, and widespread chaos.
Propaganda is everywhere...Posobiec is a master at creating and spreading lies, but look at Russia, where much of the population believes that Ukrainians suddenly turned into Nazis overnight. Or Israelis, who now believe that every Palestinian, even newborns, are inherently guilty of the crimes of Hamas.
I've no idea how humans have survived for so long when it's so remarkably easy to convince so many that 2+2=5.