It seems to me that the right analogy to draw is between Arnold Kling, Jacob Hornberger, and company—claiming that 1880s America's political-economic order was preferable to the present—and people like the English Marxist E.P. Thompson, maintaining in 1973 that the Soviet Union was still the Hope of Humanity and the Wave of the Future...
Kling, Hornberger, et. al., neglect the 1880s existence of segregration, few rights for women, and the wars against America's native people, just as Thompson neglected the gulags and forced famines of the Soviet Union.
I think it is fair to say that E.P. Thompson, in 1973, did not really care about the victims of GULAGs and terror-famines. He did not really see them. They were not really real to him--the actual people were much less really real to him than the ideological vision. The victims of the GULAGs and the terror-famines were hidden, for him, behind the shining blaze of cultish ideology.
And so I think that it is fair, today, to say that Kling, Hornberger, and company do not really care about women and African-Americans. They do not really see them. They are not really real to them—the actual people are much less real to them than the ideological vision. Women and African-Americans are hidden, for them, behind the shining blaze of cultish ideology.
Same disease. Same judgment.
