The non-Christians who are insightful enough to see the fake and lies of the mainstream System (the 'secular Right') are tying themselves in knots trying to describe and characterize the nature of the ideology that oppresses the world.
They have nothing positive and motivating to suggest - but they routinely denigrate Christianity... and other religions too - but the focus is naturally on Christianity as the only potentially viable Western religion.
They persist in describing the Global Establishment ideology of atheist, materialist Leftism as a New Religion - and persistently use religious analogies as a slur against Leftism - on the assumption that because faith, rituals, observances, prayer etc. are religious, that means they are dumb, irrational and/or manipulative.
So they are calling totalitarian Leftism a New Religion because Religion means bad. Yet this is a supposed religion that has - in the past year - closed down, taken-over and thereby utterly discredited not just the Christian churches, but all plausible pretense to spiritual authority of all the large and organized churches. So this 'New Religion' has destroyed spiritual authority... What kind of 'religion' destroys spiritual authority?
Secular Leftism is also a supposed religion that does not believe in God: it is atheist in its avowed beliefs, and God is excluded as a significant factor from all areas of public discourse. What kind of a 'religion' does not believe in God, any gods, and any abstract deity?
This supposed 'religion' also disbelieves in any positive purpose or meaning to human life; and instead insists that reality is merely a combination of random and rigidly-determined 'physics'; just processes, grinding-on and with no point for humans.
It insists that there is no soul, no life after death - that all human behaviour is reducible to 'psychology' and that the only kind of morality is based on 'feelings'.
In what sense is this New Religion actually any kind of 'religion'? Well, only by superficial analogies and not by any deep beliefs or assumptions.
This idea of Leftism as a New Religion is thus an analysis which makes worse the problem it tries to cure: it exacerbates the belief and harm of Leftism by tarring all religion with the same brush - and implicitly arguing from a standpoint of such total disbelief that religions go down in flames with Leftism because even the feeble negative and oppositional beliefs of Leftism are regarded as of the same nature as the powerful positive motivations of real religion.
The problem is that the atheist "right" can't help themselves - so long as they remain atheist, for so long they must believe (by assumption) that all religions are false, and therefore all the beliefs, rites, rituals and other 'religious practices can only be made-up for the purpose of population manipulation. And are now being used by the 'New Religion' for the same purposes as they were used by 'old' religions.
Yet the reality which explains the 'New Religion' is very simple - it is an anti-religion to Christianity; it is in essence the opposite of a real religion (Christianity, specifically) and the rites and rituals of Leftism have the same nature as those of explicit Satanism - they are a subversion or inversion of the Christian truth and reality.
History teaches us that Real Religion is capable of motivating man more strongly than anything else - nothing else is able to sustain courage and social cohesion like a real religion.
By contrast, modern Leftism is demotivating; it presides over a society of unprincipled cowards who cannot even oppose the secular authorities in the privacy of their own thoughts and are intimidated into craven obedience by the mere threat of stern looks and harsh words so that actual oppression is not needed.
Against this, the secular Right have nothing positive to offer.
Negatively; they are perfectly correct that our civilization is being actively-destroyed; and that all social functionality is being actively-destroyed - and that we are headed for the collapse of modern living and cooperative society; for severe mass human suffering from famine, violence and (real) disease. But negatively not-wanting this to happen is grossly inadequate - it is not a positive motivation.
No civilization was ever built or sustained by the fear of losing a comfortable and convenient life. To grow and defend a civilization needs that courage and cohesion that only religion can give.
We are the first and only thoroughly post-religious society, ever.
By continually pretending we have a 'New Religion' and using religious language as a slur; by sniping at even the possibility of a real religion, by equating the literally Satanic anti-religion of Leftism with real Christianity - the secular Right are de facto fighting on the same side as the Leftism they so much despise.
19 comments:
"Against this, the secular Right have nothing positive to offer. "
Agreed.
At the end of the day, "religion" is only a word. It is true that Leftism is not a true religion in the sense that it is only an excuse and rationalization for evil (selfishness).
It is a religion in the sense that it has blasphemy laws and we live in a theocracy of the Leftist religion. There is no separation between Leftist religion and State, but the main goal of the State is to enforce and evangelize the Leftist religion. The laws are based on Leftism, the same way the laws are based on [the other monotheist religion] in an [other monotheism] theocracy.
Saying that Leftism is a religion is the first step to awaken people that have been lied every day since the time they were born. Because, otherwise, Leftism (freedom, equality, non-discrimination, democracy) is presented as a neutral: as the obvious truth and decency. All the other worldviews are labelled as "religions" and hence, partial, private and debatable. But Leftism is not debatable: it is only the basic truth and decency that can be seen by anyone whose brain has not been washed with religions.
It is a useful weapon with my students, who have been brainwashed with school teachers that are fanatic zealots of political correctness. After telling them that Leftism is a religion, I add "and the goal of life is to find out which religion is true and follow it". Of course, I spend the rest of the course attacking Leftism in one thousand ways.
I cannot go further because I would be accused of violating the neutrality of the University. The professor of Philosophy teaches Leftism every day, because it is seen as neutral. I cannot teach Christianity because it is seen as partial. Do you notice a pattern? Saying Leftism is not a religion makes it entitled to special treatment.
I understand that you write for people like me, who are outside the official discourse. If you say that Leftism is not even a religion but a pseudo-religion, like you do, this means a step forward in the discovery of truth for people like us. Of course, you are right, but saying that Leftism is a religion can be a useful weapon in the first stages of deprogramming.
@Chent - I disagree, for the reasons stated.
You say it is rhetorically effective - if later walked-back... I say, usually, the opposite.
Because 'A Religion' means Christianity, to nearly all Leftists, nearly all the time. (Other religions come under different mental categories such as diversity and antiracism.)
And the secular 'Right' (being ignorant of the history both of Leftism and of Christianity) seem to believe that Christianity *caused* Leftism.
(Much as most people people that Christianity *caused* the fall of the Roman Empire; conflating the Empire with the city of Rome...)
To say 'Leftism is a religion' is either a grossly undeserved compliment or a slur against Christianity, and I am sure it would delight Satan to hear it said so often.
Bruce,
It isn’t just the secular right who see leftism as a religion. There are serious Christians who do as well. Examples: Jim Kalb, the paleoconservatives at the Rockford Institute (mostly American Catholics and Lutherans).
Perhaps a better way to state things is that leftism is a new/alternative MORALITY that is an evil parody of Christian morality. Note: religions have morality but are not morality. I’m inclined to agree with you that contemporary leftism isn’t a religion in the traditional sense and is something quite unique. I don’t know that it IS nihilism but there are nihilistic elements in it – the type of nihilism that says you must burn everything to the ground to make things right – this is not religion.
How about this – not a religion but a form of morality?
When people say "Lefism is a religion", by "religion" they mean "strongly held system of beliefs, which are impervious to empirical refutation"; so in this sense it is indeed a slur against relgion, or at minimum a slur against a dogmatic, bullheaded type of relgion.
@BB - I know Jim Kalb a little (as a penfriend), and esteem his work, and he endorsed my Thought Prison and Addicted to Distraction books with blurbs... but I believe he is wrong to do this, and I believe the wrongness has become evident over the years since he did so in the 13 years since the tyranny of liberalism.
Practical politics is extremely simple, with no nuance about it - so you should not use praise words (like religion and morality) about that which you regard as evil.
Anti-religion and anti-morality are the accurate terms - because post-sixties leftism is oppositional.
(There is no longer a posited leftist utopia to 'justify' leftist destructiveness, as there was once an old-left, Marxist utopia (or the environmentalist agrarian socialist utopia of William Morris's News from Nowhere) - admittedly absurd as it was... The withering away of the state... Ha!).
Some people on the right hate Christianity because as you say they see it as resulting in leftism and also to them it has become very limp wristed (unlike Islam) and has also been absorbed into leftism so from that perspective they do have a point.
"Anti-religion / anti-morality" - that sounds accurate to me, Bruce!
@Mike - "from that perspective they do have a point."
Well, not really - because they have the causality reversed.
Christianity became Leftist after it became apostate, after it ceased to be strongly religious - because it was subverted *by* already-existing socialism.
Not the other way around.
It requires accurate historical knowledge of both Leftism and Christianity to know the timing and causality. Also - this happened in *Britain*, not in the USA - but the peddlers of the 'Christianity caused Leftism' meme are Americans who don't know much about Britain.
Maybe the difference in opinion has to be with nationality? If you're American, pointing out that Leftism is a religion, and a Established one at that, can be rhetorically effective, as Americans have been taught from an early age that the separation of Church and State, with the prohibition of establishing religions, is a cornerstone of their polity. Likewise with those other countries in the American continent that followed America's lead in that regard.
@Ranger - " pointing out that Leftism is a religion, and a Established one at that, can be rhetorically effective"
Effective at what? Separation of church and state is another example of something that is basically false and evil - and only true in the kind of nuanced way that just washes straight out in real life politics.
I think its easier to say Christianity is not responsible for Leftism when your Christianity is not all about justification and penal atonement (scape goating), because leftism is all about forcing everyone else to have to justify themselves constantly and about scape goating. Mystical Christianity about higher consciousness and spiritual freedom and so on is so different from the mainstream Christianity that of course its not respinsible for leftism. But the average faith alonist message of "Jesus took your whoopin so you can live like the devil and still go to heaven," well its hard to make an argument that such doctrine doesn't lead to leftism or aspects of it, or even its core, i.e. the sexual revolution.
@capt - That doesn't sound like a compelling argument to me. I much doubt whether theories of the atonement were critical. Also, the most striking aspect is how *little* the Christian denominations have varied in terms of the rate of leftist convergence - i.e. resistance to leftism.
One needs to look for the origins of leftism elsewhere. I follow Steiner and Barfield in arguing that leftism happened when it did as a false response to the change in human consciousness from the middle 18th century that we call Romanticism. The relationship of Man to the world changed - Man reached spiritual adolescence.
Mankind, overall, took the wrong path at this point - against Christianity and into materialism/ positivism/ reductionism - and atheism-leftism has been the (changing) manifestation of this.
Mainstream Christianity also took the wrong path; which is why it became so feeble - both organizationally and individually, and has collapsed like a house of cards.
Only individuals can choose the right, intended, destined path - Romantic Christianity.
(We need to keep reminding ourselves that the problem of leftism is not its worldly effects but its spiritual effects. The answer to leftism is Not to fix the world while remaining spiritually corrupt materialists - that is neither desirable nor possible.)
Leftism is a cult. There are some religious aspects, but there is nothing positive in it.
It was an important step for secular rightists to recognize that there is no way to argue a leftism out of her position, that there is dogma. Whenever possible, help those secular rightists by giving them a better word for leftism. When we say that leftism is a cult, they understand us right away.
@Karl - Well. Saying leftism is a cult does not have much traction when almost everybody who in the world has power, status, fame and wealth is leftist; and most of the masses too. How can the vast majority meaningfully be 'a cult'?
It is the anti-leftist Christians who appear much more like a cult - as indeed we are being portrayed.
And to accuse somebody of dogma is again implicitly to say that dogma is wrong; whereas a Christian would probably say that only false dogma is wrong, not dogma as such.
I am very surprised that Christians should seem so wedded to the impulse to call leftists religious and to use Christian terminology to criticize the left! This is doing the devils work for him!
The really deep reality of leftism is at the level of fundamental assumptions about reality (i.e. metaphysics). Unless or until they are prepared to examine their fundamental assumptions and change them appropriately; most people will continue to remain leftists - including many self-identified Christians.
I believe whether you use "Leftism is a metaphysical belief" or "Leftism is a (pseudo) religion" would depend on the level of education of whom you are speaking to; most people's eyes glaze over if you say "metaphysics", but they can understand "religion". Maybe the point you are making is that, for Westerners, "religion" means "christianity', and so this rhetoric backfires. You may be right about that, I agree.
I also agree that "separation of Church and State" is a spell, and a Leftist spell at that. So, again, maybe using it to dispel the most extremes forms of leftism, while maybe effective in the short term, is counterproductive in the long-term.
@Ranger - Yes, that's it - that was the point I was making.
@Ranger - You are thinking of this in the wrong spirit. If you try to say things that will appeal to the average modern person, then you will only make matters worse. These are the End Times.
The odd thing is the sheer spiritual power of Leftism, that it has somehow discombobulated everyone who might otherwise dispute it. Of all the millions of white people, almost none have displayed the ability to withstand their own vilification. Why does it feel so shameful and disgraceful to defend one's own existence and one's ancestors?
@Epi - One thing is sure: the problem is far deeper and more pervasive than generally acknowledged. For instance - the secular Right are themselves a part of the Left, and doing the work of the Left (as described in the post) - but cannot see it.
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