Time flies. I can’t believe it’s been five years already since I left the organisation, and over four years since this blog was set up. I no longer post here regularly. What more can be said about these monsters? Going on the IMT website makes me sick. As time has gone on, other things have come to occupy my head space. I simply do not have the time to think about the IMT.
I was eighteen when I first joined the organisation, and twenty when I left. I am grateful that they didn’t steal too much of my adolescence, but two and a half years of cult membership is still two and a half years too many. I can see that in my absence, the sect had become even more cult-like and totalitarian, its positions ever more unhinged and idiotic. No sooner did Kamala Harris go down to defeat in the November elections in the U.S. than Woods was crowing about how much this was a blow for the U.S. ruling class – and therefore a good thing from the perspective of advancing communism. When Trump and his goons successfully transform America into a fascist dictatorship, and begin rounding up IMT members in America and installing them in camps, perhaps he will change his mind. The German Communists learned the same lesson in the 1930s. There is certainly far more chance of that happening than of America ever having a communist revolution.
In the time I have left, I have read more than ever, sung more than ever, written more than ever, learned more than ever. I feel so much more confident in the future than I did when I was a member of that hidebound groupuscule. With time to dedicate to my own interests, life seems so much brighter.
Those who know me know that I am an aficionado of the music of the 60s. A new favourite of mine is Ed Ames – a silky-voiced baritone who sang in a quartet with his brothers, then launched a solo recording career that enjoyed modest success into the ’70s. He also had a leading role in the TV show ‘Daniel Boone’ as the Indian Mingo – something that would be horrifying to today’s woke sensibilities. He had a long retirement and only passed away in 2023 at the age of 95. This is his version of the great Anthony Newley’s ‘Feeling Good’, a song which encapsulates my feelings about freedom from the IMT:
And just to show I’m not partial to male singers, here is another song by one of my favourite country singers, the late, great Loretta Lynn. It’s a song about a woman recovering from a failed relationship, which accurately describes my feelings when towards the IMT:
‘I release my heart, my soul and my mind/And I’m feeling fine/I broke the ring, the chain of gold/Before it broke my mind/Well look who’s crying and it ain’t me/And I can hardly hear and I can’t half see/And I wanna be free’. How good it is to escape cultism!
In the meantime, I have decided to start a new blog dedicated to my interests outside of Trot-watching. Readers of this blog should feel free to start reading what I post on there. Happy reading!