“Not fond of communism and state control in any way!"
This website and, pointedly, this writer, have been forced to fall on their swords following the outing of supposed “commie”, the world’s most loved commentator and surfing world champion Barton Lynch.
Lynch, who is fifty-eight and lives at Sunset Beach on Oahu’s North Shore, had taken to Instagram during a traffic jam to talk about disparity of wealth being the great driver of inequality and that if the world’s economies are gonna reset after the pandemic then a little wealth re-distribution will be necessary.
In a two-part missive Lynch had said,
“I love the idea of equality, I’m all about it, and I’ve often said there has to be a redistribution of wealth to create a base of equality so that things can move on from that place and if you think about this current moment that we’re in, there’s a lot of talk about equality and there’s equality in some language and in some other areas but when we talk about financial equality or opportunity it would seem that in the pandemic the money has gone up! The money hasn’t come down!
“And in any redistribution of wealth for the future of the planet the money’s gotta come down from where it is already, up. And with those that have it, corporations, individuals, families. Where that wealth is concentrated, they’re the ones that have to let go, and give some of that wealth back to the others to create a base of equality that the world can move on from.
“Because it’s not the average person on the street who’s harbouring and holding onto the cash, you know what I mean? And that’s where the inequality is, between the rich and the poor.”
A classic socialist sentiment, I thought, and given the previous day’s reveal of a silver beard reminiscent of the German philosopher and political theorist Karl Marx, well, were these not a modernising of the themes of a man who wrote Das Kapital and co-wrote The Communist Manifesto.
Not according to Lynch, who delivered a stinging rebuke to BeachGrit via Instagram’s direct message service.
When I replied that his theories were straight out of the ol’ red play book, Lynch clarified his position,
“Not fond of communism and state control in any way so I feel it paints my perspective incorrectly but that could be my fault in the detail because it’s on a Instagram span.”