Retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army Allen West (Screenshot)

This past week has been all about one narrative for the progressive, socialist left. It was not about the corrections in the market due to the rising of interest rates. There are those on Wall Street that preferred the days of Barack Obama’s artificial economy manipulated by monetary policies, such as quantitative easing, to mask the failures of his economic policies. No, that was not the focus of the left and their complicit media allies. Instead, it was all about Kanye West.

We saw the real ugliness of the liberal progressive media, via CNN, when Don Lemon and his guest mocked Kanye West. As a proud, conservative black man, to hear references such as “Kanye West is what happens when negroes don’t read” was disgusting, appalling, and utterly offensive. To hear another of Lemon’s guests assert that there must be a mental condition for taking a position opposite of the dogma of the left was horrific. However, this is something that has been happening for quite some time in the black community, but this past week, it took a very public, open, stage. Even Saturday Night Live could not resist in making the Kanye West Oval Office visit the brunt of its jokes.

But there is something far more serious going on that we can no longer dismiss. Last academic year, the Young America’s Foundation invited me to speak at Northwestern University about the Iranian Nuclear Agreement, and foreign policy. The very first question posed to me was from a very obtuse, belligerent, young black female: “Do you identify as black?” Yes, there is a video of the exchange, and you will see my perplexed look. The question she posed and the ugliness towards Kanye West are all examples of the tyranny of collectivism.

The progressive, socialist left does not engage with Americans as individuals. They confront them as groups, collectives, and when someone, especially in the black community, escapes “the Borg,” the anger is palpable, clearly visible. Justice Clarence Thomas articulated this during his “high-tech lynching” for being, as he stated, as one of the “uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.”

For far too long, the belief, the mandate, has been that if you are black, you must vote for and be Democrat. This blind allegiance is being challenged by those of us who do indeed read and know very well of the history of the Democratic Party and their history the American Black community: slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, Ku Klux Klan, lynchings, destruction and decimation of the black community. The policies of the Democratic [Socialist] Party has fundamentally transformed the black community from economic empowerment to economic enslavement. The punishment for exiting their new economic plantation is to be hunted down, denigrated, disparaged, and destroyed – some things never change.

However, the tyranny of the collective is not just a phenomenon within the black community. It is how the progressive, socialist left operates.

The #walkaway movement was started by a former left-leaning, gay white man who got tired of being told he had to think and feel a certain way. He has started a movement that has exposed the tyranny of groupthink within what has become the Mobocrat Party. If you dare to reject, or think in opposition to their ideological agenda, their prescribed way of thinking, you are to be attacked, assaulted, and have your character assassinated. See, according to the left, your sexuality should dictate how you think. Therefore, if you “identify” as gay or lesbian, that comes with the mandate of accepting the left’s dogma, or else, and we all know what or else ends up being.

But the tyranny of the collective does not just apply to blacks or gays and lesbians. It is not just about the color of one’s skin or their sexual behavioral choices, it is about anything the left can leverage as a means of division.

Here in Texas, just as I saw in Florida, if you are Hispanic, you are supposed to think only one way. You are supposed to agree that open borders, abolishing ICE, and supporting sanctuary states and cities for criminal illegal immigrants is just great. If you are Jewish, you will be isolated, condemned, and attacked vehemently if you are not part of the J-Street, pro-Palestinian groupthink, daring to openly admit to being a conservative Jew.

If you are a woman, well, you had better be on the side of murdering unborn babies as a means of birth control. You had best be donating and advocating for that organization founded by a white supremacist and racist, Planned Parenthood. Remember, as Madeline Albright stated, “there is a special place in hell” for women who don’t support other women, meaning, women who vote for progressive, socialist women – Hillary Clinton. How dare you, as a woman, decide to think for yourself, or as Hillary Clinton said, women who voted for Trump did so because their men told them to. How blatantly disrespectful.

Yes, that is the tyranny of the collective.

And men, especially white men, if you are not a skinny jean, emotional snowflake, then you represent a “toxic masculinity” that the progressive, socialist left abhors. Heck, for the most part, the left has decided that unless you are in the Anderson Cooper, Chris Hayes model, they are not wasting their efforts.

The tyranny of the collective means that your gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality dictate how you should think. If you dare to think outside of the left’s dictate, then you will be labelled a racist, sexist, homophobe, Islamophobe, dumb, or mentally ill. Their objective is to shame you into submission, subjugation, and surrender, and they have a very powerful platform called the liberal progressive media an enabler. You are not cool, hip, or part of the cultural “in” crowd if you do not accept the leftist ideological agenda. Sorry, women who supported Justice Brett Kavanaugh are not really women. Black, Hispanic, Jewish, and Asian conservatives are not really Black, Hispanic, Jewish, or Asian.

And as Hillary Clinton stated, there will be no quarter, no civility, unless the progressive, socialist left is in control. That is the pure definition of tyranny. So, prepare yourselves; be strong and courageous, but decide for yourselves if you prefer the tyranny of the collective, or the blessings of individual liberty, meaning the ability to think for yourself.

The latter is what our Founding Fathers fought to create for us. The former is the brainchild of Karl Marx.

Allen West is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army. Mr. West is a Senior Fellow at the Media Research Center to support its mission to expose and neutralize liberal media bias and is author of the forthcoming book from Brown Books Publishing Group coming this fall, “Hold Texas, Hold the Nation: Victory or Death.”

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