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Twentieth century totalitarianism was a highly structured phenomenon with an official quasi-religious ideology, a top-down decision-making process, a disciplined party apparatus which permeated all areas of state administration and society at large. Unquestioning obedience was required from the masses whilst the supreme leadership, whether it be the Fuhrer, Il Duce, the Paramount Leader or the General Secretary, would claim to be expressing, and acting on behalf of, the true will of the masses, whether they be styled the Volk or the proletariat. Adherence to the totalitarian party was analogous to compulsory church attendance. Strict observance of sacred texts and doctrine was required.
Traditional totalitarians, the rulers of China, North Korea, Cuba and others, have always felt an abiding sense of insecurity. Constantly they feel under threat from within and externally. Deep down, they have never trusted their own peoples. Hence, the secret police, the concentration camps, the gulags — all instruments of coercion and fear, necessary for regime survival.
So, whilst we might view China and North Korea for example as legacies of the twentieth century, the current century has brought forth a strange new cultural and political phenomenon. In Black Lives Matter and Antifa we don’t see an obvious structure or hierarchy, yet we discern the ability to organise and mobilise. Indeed, there seems no need for any separate radical power structure when cultural Marxists have mastered the parasitic arts in the media, higher education, the new technology, big business generally, plus even traditional social institutions. Thus the private business sector, which was somewhat more resistant to the class warriors of yesterday, has largely surrendered to the new wokeness.
Why this wholesale surrender in the absence of the jackboot and the secret police? How is it that the peoples of Eastern Europe proved so largely resistant to Marxist-Leninist ideology, whereas so many of the Western European and Anglosphere elites mindlessly mouth cultural Marxist claptrap under the woke banner?
I suggest the answer lies in the loss of civilizational and cultural confidence, closely associated with the decline of traditional religious belief. Among so many of our elite, this decline of traditional certitude is combined with a desire to be or, at least, appear to be moral. Virtue signalling and wokeness may be cynical to some but to others are the road to moral approbation and social salvation.
It seems an age ago when Pope John Paul II played such a pivotal role in the defeat of Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism in Eastern Europe. But then, the Catholic Church was central to millions, still anchored in traditional religion and culture. Today, I would suggest that so many of our educational, media and business elites are totally unmoored from traditional belief and culture. The loss of civilisational confidence obviates any need for the jackboot to enforce conformity with the new ethos.
At least, the old style totalitarians sought the nominal acclamation of the masses. Back in the Sixties, the New Left sought to conjure up the fantasy of a worker/student alliance. Now it would appear that outfits such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa do not even bother to try cultivating the broad mass of the white electorate. The hatred of Trump is a thin façade for a loathing and contempt encompassing at least half the United States electorate. Hillary Clinton’s reference to those “deplorables” in 2016 was emblematic of the radicalised elite’s contempt for ordinary Americans.
This alienation of the elites from the masses will have outcomes of which we can only speculate. Who will resuscitate our sense of civilisational self-confidence and defeat the parasitic invasion without destroying the best our higher culture?
“the answer lies in the loss of civilizational and cultural confidence, closely associated with the decline of traditional religious belief.”
There is no doubt in my mind that the rise of “secular humanism” as opposed to adherence to traditional religious values, regardless of the religion considered, play an inordinate role in the deterioration of society.
Good article Christopher and it so easily resonates as true that only an intellectual will not hear it. Common sense and reason and a little conviction and faith is all it needs and apparently too many of our intellectuals, or is it our intelligentsia, just don’t have it. These same types have been noted, and written about for probably a hundred years or more now, with George Orwell and Kenneth Minogue two authors that come to my mind. The big mystery is…why in heavens name haven’t our so called elected representatives, the supposed servants of the electorate i.e. us i.e. our servants, still not pulling their teeth ? The answer seems to be, at least in part, that as Kenneth Minogue described beautifully in his book ‘The Servile Mind’….we’ve awaked out of years of apathy to find that WE are now their servants….we have acquired a Master and it’s our own Government supported by the press. We have been ‘levelled’ as Kierkegaard predicted back in the 19th century, levelled by that great phantom that has been raised, our own government and people, supported by the press. It’s part of the problem I think and sadly huge sections of the public don’t at all seem to mind being ‘levelled’ ?
Once people become immersed in particular lifestyles they lose the ability to discern right from wrong. For example, a person who is sexually promiscuous, and regularly seduces other people’s partners, cannot understand that there might be something wrong with this. Yet someone who lives chastely with one husband or wife, will naturally view adultery with horror. I once wrote to The Lancet complaining about a medical article that sought to promote prostitution as a healthy vocation. I received in response a personal letter from a prostitute who assured me that her professional life was most enjoyable and that she was widely regarded as performing a valuable community service. So my contention is that once society becomes immersed in immorality it loses its moral compass. That was the challenge faced by the earliest Christians, as they sought to convert people for whom immoral lifestyles were simply the normal standard of behaviour. These days, those of us who think Christianity sets the right moral standards are beginning to understand the daunting task faced by the early church. Many generations were needed to accomplish the task, and much suffering.
Stephen Due I find myself in agreement with nearly all you say here. However the last two sentences suggest that old solutions are available for reuse and this is not really so.
The modern church is nothing like the New Testament church. The vigor has mostly gone. Recall how the church voice was so mute in the marriage law redefinition. Admittedly head offices did issue statements in support of traditional marriage but local pulpits avoided the issue even though their Lord Jesus had been explicit that marriage was between one man and one woman.
The church has also failed to adjust the New Testament’s principles for individual relations with the autocratic [Roman] state. That autocracy offered few of the opportunities offered by the western democracies where every voting citizen is asked to show which values they want in their society. In a democracy the numbers are decisive. Little else counts apart from lobbying.
Much of the ‘modern’ church has been infiltrated by Cultural Marxism masquerading as Christianity. This manifests as social justice issues and is a subtle false teaching beguiling many in the church. To put it simply, churchgoing thesedays equates to everyone at their post but no Ghost.
Well said SJOG. I could never understand why in NSW the Christian Call to Australia Party lead by MLC Rev Fred Nile did not get more support. It failed to get enough support to elect the superb June Dally Watkins who sadly is recently deceased. In Victoria there was insufficient support to elect the truly wonderful Babette Francis whose brief but direct letters appear occasionally in The Australian.
Of course most clergy are inclined to the left narrowly thinking that alms giving is the way to help the poor. So easy for the clergy to identify with the ideology of the Left: open borders, welfare without strings, pacifism, socialism, etc.
It could be wiser for the clergy to identify with the average family who might well be that of the tradie with his twincab truck.
brandee you describe the false charity of the church, and many churches are now subscribed to a false mission. There is much talk of our ‘missionary mandate’ these dates, piously ‘reaching out’ to those who are less fortunate in faith and circumstances than ourselves. In the meantime the church’s own parishioners are treated as second class citizens and something of a nuisance (particularly their wallets, which are never open sufficiently).
Brilliant. I am currently engaged in a culture war with my employer so I must not say too much. He/she is trying to ban a piece I have made for publication on the grounds that it is likely to be seen as offensive to women. None of the females in my family and among my friends find it in the least offensive.
I am not generally in favour of rights based law because proliferating rights conflict and therefore lead to division rather than harmony. Nevertheless, in the last round of negotiations I pointed out that our organisation has considerable protection from Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is in force in Australian law:
“1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
“2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
“3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:
“(a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;
“(b) For the protection of national security or of public order, or of public health or morals.”
The Attorney General’s office publishes helpful guidance here: https://www.ag.gov.au/rights-and-protections/human-rights-and-anti-discrimination/human-rights-scrutiny/public-sector-guidance-sheets/right-freedom-opinion-and-expression.
In essence it says everyone has a right to offend unless the law provides specific circumstances in which the right may be constrained in and only if necessary. The corollary is that nobody has the right for their taking offence being actionable against the offender unless specifically provided for in law.
Unfortunately we cannot trust the courts to uphold the law, nor to refrain from making it up to suit their own political agenda.
Thus Boris Johnson fell foul of the Supreme Court in UK after proroguing parliament. It was perfectly legal so the first thing the Court did was to use common law to remove the Queen from parliament where she and her predecessors had sat happily and by parliamentary statute for three and a half centuries so that they could argue that her ministers had done this to parliament rather than in parliament. ‘In parliament’ would have meant that the prorogation was a matter for parliament and not justiciable in law.
The situation was even worse than the unreliability of the courts. Parliament itself was hiding from the electorate behind the Fixed term Parliaments Act 2011 in order to overturn the result of the referendum on membership of the EU, the result of which they had promised to implement when framing the enabling legislation and again in the two subsequent general elections.
To whom or to what does a people turn when opposed by both parliament and the courts?
There is a lot to do in UK to restore democratic self-government should it ever break free of the anti-democratic monster of the EU.
One thing we can be sure of: the EU will side with China. UK has little capability because for decades foreign policy has been the responsibility of the EU and more recently the influence of the EU and politically correct governments on UK’s national defence capability has been cancerous to say the least.
The reality is that postmodern, woke, leftist followers are not interested in truth or facts. Indeed, postmodernism abhors truth. The predictably French progenitor of the idea of postmodernism, Jean-Francois Lyotard, said so himself. So, leftist sycophants eschew the truth or anything that closely resembles it. What is ironic is that Lyotard claimed that the postmodern zeitgeist was a ‘distrust of grand narratives’ or ‘meta-narratives‘, especially the Judeo-Christian one, whose claims they hate, and yet all the left has done is to try replace one grand narrative with their own. The great dilemma for the postmodern push is that “the truth will out” and sooner than they thought, ordinary people – Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ – are awake up to the stupidity of their Marxist claims. The good news is that as far as defeating the evil of far left fascism is concerned, the West has ‘been there, done that’ and, if push comes to shove, make no mistake, we’ll do it again.
Speaking hopefully is good Simon but this time the the revolutionaries already have immense control. Control of most print and radio/TV as well as social media, and institutions including universities and public schools along with woke businesses. The Pope goes along and Christian churches are mute and Mohammedanism being anti-western seems more favored by the revolutionaries.
So where is the good news again?