Leftists are always exceptionally prone to 'project' their own attitudes and motivations onto others. For example, the outrageously and explicitly hate-sputtering media-political elite Remain campaigners in the EU Referendum have been unrestrainedly and repeatedly attacking the pro-Brexit mass majority for running a hate-campaign.
(The fact is that the Remain faction had near-exclusive use of the public megaphone - so there was hardly anything of a 'campaign' - hate-driven or otherwise - of any type for the Leave faction.)
But why are the Left such blatant and unaware projectors?
Essentially because the psychological mechanism of 'projection' is that we use our-selves, our own minds, as a 'model' to understand and predict others.
To a significant extent, and spontaneously (although it can be overcome by recognition and effort): we cannot imagine others behaving in a way of which we ourselves are incapable; and, conversely, we cannot help but suppose that what drives us, drives everybody else.
The paranoid accuse everybody else of their own plotting and scheming; those without motives of altruism assume that everybody else is as selfish as themselves but hiding it; the constitutionally irreligious assume that the faith of others is a hypocritical fake.
But why Leftists especially? Leftists did not always project as much as they do now - the problem is mostly one of the past 50 years and the New 'cultural' Left of 'identity politics'. Nowadays the only knuckle-dragging sexists are Feminists, the only really serious racists are the professional Antiracists; the only significant class warriors are privately schooled and Oxbridge-educated scions of the upper classes.
The reason that Leftists are so prone to projection and can never perceive the fact is quite simply that modern Leftism JUST IS projection. If you subtract the projection from Leftism, there is nothing left over - or, at least, nothing from which you could build a political movement.
So there is no point in pointing-out Leftist projection - no point in pointing-out that the Leftist hate-accusers are the ones who are hate-fuelled - because that is simply how they see the world; that is how things look to them, from inside their minds, given the way their minds work; and Leftists will not stop seeing the world that way until they stop being Leftists.
This is why I still believe that modern leftism is really a fundamentalist religious cult. As leftists are heavily into projection, and it is a familiar leftist talking point to vastly exaggerate the alleged influence of the so-called 'religious right' over mainstream conservative politics in most western democracies, is it not likely that the left themselves are really the religious fundamentalists?
ReplyDeleteLeftism and PC functions as a kind of religion inasmuch as it doesn't seem to matter how selfish and immoral a person's behaviour and personal life is, simply believing in the correct PC views serves as a kind of moral redemption and absolution for one's sins. Dangerous climate change serves as the lake of fire that will engulf us all if we don't repent our sins and make the appropriate supplications to the correct deity. While there has long been a tradition of 'separation of church and state', alas there is no such thing as 'separation of eco doomsday cult and state'.
The key to understanding much of politics is that the mainstream centre-right are really the secular progressives while the left are really a bunch of religious fundamentalists. This largely explains why the mainstream centre-right is so ineffective at holding back the left's control of institutions and the narrative. A bunch of secular progressives are no match for a bunch of militant religious fundamentalists. And it is likely for this reason that, as you say, rolling back leftism is impossible without a large scale religious revival. That is, only a Christian revival can most likely effectively confront and negate a fringe religious cult.
@M - But religious fundamentalists are trying to make something - while (Modern, 'New') Leftism is not constructive: it is aiming to (incrementally, and by rotation) destroy The Good by redefinitions and inversions.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, sincere religious fundamentalists are unworldly - their objectives lie beyond materialism; whereas Leftism is intrinsically worldly and materialist.
Of course there are similarities between Leftism and religion but it is the difference which make Leftism so dangerous and evil.
I have written two books and many blog posts arging this distinction.