A regular topic around here is the emerging new religion of the cultural elites. This new faith is based on the “Four News” (new customs, new culture, new habits, new ideas), which are rooted in egalitarianism, multiculturalism and anti-racism. These are axioms from which our rulers build policy.
Throughout the West, the people commanding the political, cultural and financial high ground demand obedience to the new thinking with regards to human society. “New thinking” is the way they phrase it, as in not the “old thinking,” which is all bad. Naturally, anyone, who rejects the Four News, is dismissed as a bad thinker.
In some countries, you can be thrown in jail for being rude to members of a protected class. Every day we see news stories from Europe about someone being hauled in front of a judge for the crime of hate speech. In France, they are hauling the leader of a major political party into court under suspicion of bad-think.
In America, your career is at risk if you violate any of the sacred taboos. If you fail to show proper enthusiasm for the one true faith, you run the risk of being expelled from polite society. The term of art is “Watsoned.” Now, the social media giants are “disappearing” people for violating the new religion, by banning their accounts. Robert Stacy McCain is the most recent example.
This new religion is not a reaction to or even a response to the traditional Christianity it seeks to replace. Instead, it is just a collection of aspirations cobbled together in order to fill the void where Christianity once existed in the culture. It’s often completely irrational. The NBA is hailed for its diversity, while the Oscars are pilloried for their lack of diversity.
It is, however, all about the piety display. Instead of obeying dogma in order to gain the grace of God, the people of the New Religion obey the rules in order to gain the grace of one another. They are locked into a perpetual pose down, advertising their piety to one another, like peacocks fighting for a mate.
You see this most clearly with race. Our betters are always trying to show they are more opposed to racism than everyone else. So much so that trivial nonsense is treated like serious crime, blown up into scandal just so some people have an excuse to tell us they oppose racism. Because this is about signaling piety, it means posing in the media, like animals on display at the zoo. This from Jim Geraghty the other day is a good example
If we're not on this earth to stand up to the David Dukes of the world, to declare that his hate is un-American, why are we here?
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) February 28, 2016
Jim Geraghty is a small bore chattering skull hanging on to the lower rungs of the commentariat. His ability to remain indoors and eat regularly depends on him winning the favor of those above him on the ladder. The way to do that is to be the most enthusiastic for the one true faith. Exactly no one is paying him to think about the events of the day. His job is to repeat what others say. He hopes to gain attention by impressing his superiors with his enthusiasm.
Now, until this weekend I was pretty sure that David Duke was dead, but it turns out he is still on the sunny side of the grass. Putting that aside, look at the language here. We’re put on earth to oppose David Duke? Of course, he means racism, not David Duke the person, but that’s no less trivial. That’s what he thinks man is on earth to do, oppose racism? That’s it? That’s why we’re here?
The smallness of the New Religion is, I suspect, its great weakness. Religions have always served to fill in the gaps between what man knows about the world and what he observes. As Lucretius put it, “it was fear that made the gods.” The fear of the unknown, the fear of uncertainty, the fear of death, that’s what a proper religions address. Fear of being a racist falls somewhere around fear of clowns.
The pettiness of this religion does not make it less vicious in the hands of the believer. In fact, it is the petty religions that are the bloodiest. Nazism led Germany to the precipice of the abyss just to be rid of the Jews. Bolshevism murdered tens of millions just to meet the monthly quotas of the concrete factories. The new religion ruins lives on a daily basis for nothing more than a few moments of smug satisfaction by the adherents.
What was made plain with the materialist cults of the previous era is they offered nothing, other than a reason for the strong to exploit the weak. The cultural weirdness of Russia allowed such a system to stagger on for 70 years, but most everywhere else these cults collapse under the weight of their pettiness and pointlessness. They answer no questions and they promise nothing worth having.
Eventually they run out of weak to exploit.
It’s especially funny because America is DE-facto the least racist country on the planet, not racist to a fault, and that Trump is the only racist people can even name is a proof of this. Whitey is afraid to tell his black neighbor to turn the music down, let alone anything else, blacks are treated like holy cows in India, when one wanders into the street, you don’t dare to honk, honky doesn’t honk, let that sink it. The evil White racist is more of an urban myth, similar to big foot, at this point, we believe he is out there, but we have yet to capture him on film. And don’t get me started on the KKK, when it rode the last time into town to save the day, the world was still in black and white!
I think what Jim Geraghty means is that a purposeful life on earth is to reject the ideas that hold us back as a society. I understand your agenda in the article, but I think your interpretation is a little narrow. Is our society becoming a little too sensitive? Sure, maybe. Are the issues we’re ramping up our sensitivity to worthy of the attention that they’re getting? Definitely. Old solutions don’t solve old problems. If you want to refer to a wave of anti-racism as a cult, let’s talk about real cults (pick one), not a movement that realizes how little we’ve done to support the oppressed.
I’m a little confused by your tactics to be honest. You classify multiculturalism and anti-racism as a religion, then started attacking the ideas for being a religion…after you presented the opinion that they’re a New Religion. I’m new to your blog but my overall impression is that you use a great knowledge of historical context and understanding of movements/civilizations to blow one small point out of the water and leave it dying on a beach of your choosing without really exploring it in its native environment.
The common venn diagram is correct: Twitter is the absolute distillation of narcissism, stalking, etc.
I wonder how the blowback is going to play out. I promise you that by year 3 of Trump’s presidency, Jim Geraghty will be a loud and proud member of the David Duke fan club – True Believers always shift with the wind. But this is the internet age. What happens when black knights start shooting his Tweets back at him? It’s going to be a hoot watching the chattering classes try to issue themselves a plenary indulgence.
My joke is that in a short time, they will be chastising me for my lack of enthusiasm for Trump.
No doubt. Zeitgeist shifts are fascinating. My joke is that pretty soon we’ll need a new word, to describe that brief interval of time between when the “Coexist” bumper sticker comes off the Prius and the Confederate flag sticker goes on. I know I can’t wait to start taunting hipsters — “hey, I knew about HBD before it was cool!”
In my youth, flaunting sexual norms, dress codes and so forth was what the coll kids were doing. Now you see that flaunting PC is becoming the thing cool kids do. It’s a good thing to a point.
The people over at NR, like Geraghty and some others, have talked themselves into believing that they are putting up the good fight against an emerging American fascism, in the form of Trump. This is absurd, of course, but it makes them feel better about themselves. In the past, this silly sort of political psycho-drama is the kind of thing progressives specialized in. That this mindset has been so enthusiastically adopted by the better sort of beltway “conservative” is a reflection, not on Trump and his supporters, but of the real affinities of the pajama boys of the conservateriat. Oh, and of the utter worthlessness of their political insights.
Anti-racism, in all it’s forms, is a condition which is peculiar exclusively to Caucasians, brewed to a toxic mass by the professional intellectual. Ironically, it is that very person who is most convinced, and horrified, in the inferiority of his pets. They aim to correct the mistakes of God, but never their own.
EverythingIsRacism.com says it all.
“…which are rooted in egalitarianism, multiculturalism and anti-racism”
BS! they are rooted in “free passes”, “select” consequences, and revised-racism.
Re-re-re-“retro-new”? Maybe. Chronic Dunning- Krueger? Most certainly.
Pajama boy and Julia.
It is a curious fact of this cult of anti-racism in that the people most championed and protected would be the first to get rid of the anti-racists. Just as the left supports Islam, which would eliminate all lefties in a heartbeat in order to gain power, the people ‘oppressed’ because of their race and in the hearts of the ‘kind and loving’ are the most deserving of support, wouldn’t seek out friends among the whites if they wanted control.
“Wait, don’t do that to me, I was on your side all the time!” would be effective for about as long as it takes to get the words out. But then perhaps it is better, in the left’s view, to be trampled into the ground with a look of puzzlement on one’s face than stand tall.
In America, the cult of anti-racism is one group of whites harassing another group of whites. It’s the old Civil War all over again. When the issue was human bondage and Christian charity, they had something useful, at least. Now that it is counting heads at sporting events, it’s a religion of temper tantrums.
Whoa! Mr. Geraghty has divined the purpose of our existence? Did he receive this revelation in a blinding flash of light at Ben and Jerry’s?
“In fact, it is the petty religions that are the most bloody. Nazism led Germany to the precipice of the abyss just to be rid of the Jews.”
Please. Can we at some point in time get past this reference? One does not need to constantly refer to the Nazi regime for genocidal numbers. If you’re going to touch on genocide by the ruling class over the oppressed masses, please at least be fair and include Mao’s China and Stalin’s Russia. Both these countries under the control of the Communist parties, eliminated far more people than the Nazis. And let’s not forget Rwanda, Dafur, Cambodia and Armenia. It gets a bit old being held up as “the” example of genocide. I’m not excusing the Nazi party for what they did or Germany’s role in history. You may not know it, but to openly deny the Holocaust ever happened is punishable by by prison time here in Germany. But can we please move on?
Did the American “petty religion” of expansionism justify the slaughter of it’s native indigenous people? To say of Germany “you killed the Jews, you killed the Jews.” Yes. The Nazi part was responsible. We have acknowledged our role and responsibility and we have moved on. America had slaves and butchered native American men, women and children under the direct orders of the US Army. And? Has America or Germany been rounding up people recently?
Let’s at least be fair and acknowledge you don’t need a concentration camp to eliminate thoughts and ideas that go against the party line. Now you can just shut down a website or someones Facebook or Twitter account.
I don’t disagree, but the ridiculousness of the Nazis is easy for most readers to grasp. Ditto the Soviets. As far as moving on, I’ve written about that! http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=1052
Seems like genocide is a feature, not a bug; i.e. it is hard coded. So is it really a “bad” thing? Certainly to those on the receiving end, but in the grand scheme of things? Is it not like the fire that rejuvenates a forest? The maker is harsh and unyielding in his designs; who are we to question them?
Pretty much everyone except Khengis are pikers, compared to Tamerlane.
Don’t be so sensitive, Horst, we’re all on the losing side together. Patton thought the wrong side won. The next few years may prove him right.
“he slaughter of it’s native indigenous people”
Arguably the native indigenous people slaughtered just as many of the European immigrants. It was a series of small battles and disagreements and hardly genocide or some “master plan” I’m sure that as a European immigrant lay under his conestoga trying to fend off an Indian raiding party he had no clue that he was committing genocide. It was only long after the nice native indigenous people stopped raping and torturing European immigrants that history was rewritten to make it appear that it in any way resembled genocide
Well there were those forced relocations and long marches, and a few broken treaties. But not full scale genocide. I bet there are more Indioans here than there were before the first colonists arrived.
True enough. As I understand the process the two parties would make a treaty and then one or more groups from either party would intentionally break the treaty resulting in bloodshed that had to be dealt with. The results were not always fair. I get that and don’t disagree. The problem is that you had a culture that was a millennium behind the culture in power. The conflict was inevitable. I am simply saying that both sides held equal fault and both sides managed to kill roughly equal numbers of their enemies.
As most people know when the Europeans came to the new lands they brought their diseases with them. By the time the Pilgrims landed large numbers of Indians had died from those diseases. What isn’t often told is large numbers of Europeans died from those diseases during those same times. Even in the late 1800’s it was common that half the children born to Europeans in the new land and in Europe would die before age 5 from these illnesses. I am old enough to have lived through a time when there were few vaccines for these “childhood” illnesses and even in the 40’s kids died from measles and whooping cough. It is likely that from 1492 to 1900 perhaps 5-10 million Indians died from some of these diseases. It is also likely that during that same time span 5-10 million of the immigrants and their children died as well. The Indians lacked a constant influx of immigrants to help them survive AND more importantly since none of the adult Indians had ever been exposed to these childhood diseases it hit all ages. Most immigrants had been exposed and survived these disease. So the impact was far greater on the Indians. All of this is sad and regrettable but I honestly don’t know how it could have played out differently.
Did you stop reading after you saw the word Nazi? Or are you unaware of the meaning of Bolshevism, which would include both Stalin and Mao.