I was pondering the other day that what BLM has done to black communities around this nation–wreck them, and set them back decades in every way–is more or less what Communist agitators did around the world in the anti-colonial period, from roughly the late 1940’s until the 1970’s or so. In many cases, of course, the Communists won entirely, such as in China, Vietnam, Laos, Zimbabwe and eventually–after a long delay–Venezuela.
Broadly speaking, three cultural strands exist in Western Culture. The first is the one which reaches back into the mists of pre-history, in which military force is used to settle difference, and the victors get the losers stuff. What England did around the world is really no different from what the Mexica Aztecs did to many other tribes in their region, or what the Babylonians did thousands of years ago, or the Incas in their area, or the Malinese or Egyptians in Africa, or the Romans, or Turks or Mongolians, or the list is more or less equal to most of history. The British were vastly less violent than most–no pyramids of heads, for example, as with Timur–but they still came in, took over, and started telling people what to do, and started either appropriating revenue, or protecting their own trade, as in India, or pushing drugs, as in China.
All of this is ubiquitous in history, and anyone who denies it is ipso facto demonstrating deep and really inexcusable ignorance. We were merely the greatest–in terms of territorial extent and technical dominance–and the latest.
Secondly, we have a strand which speaks of human rights, of progress and of freedom. These ideas, articulated the way we articulate them, and deployed concretely in the law the way we deploy them, are unique in human history. The concept that all men (and eventually women) were created equal has no analogue in any human culture of which I am aware. Difference and relative superiority and inferiority is the default condition of the human race, in all times and places. Even, say, in individual tribes in which everyone is equal, none of them view the tribe over the hill the same way.
The Greeks practiced and invented Democracy, but it was only for a slave-owning (white slaves, by the way) elite, and that period lasted perhaps 200 years before they themselves were conquered and subjugated.
The Romans considered all Romans equal before the law, but non-Romans were subject to whatever local vagaries existed in their people and place.
The concept of universal human rights is a Western invention. The concept that people should be free before the law, and that the job of government is to protect their freedom is a Western invention.
We need to remember that we evolved as a tribal species. We are not wired to know or rely on more than perhaps a hundred people. Over time, we learned to form larger groups, I suspect mainly for the purpose of war. One clan raided another clan, and that clan then teamed up with a third to wage a reprisal. Etc. The buildup is not hard to understand. War in fact may be the origin of larger and larger governments, all of which eventually necessarily became larger than any tribe, necessitating ideologies to justify and sustain them, which itself may be the origin of the need for larger organized religions.
If you look at, say, Native American beliefs, they were non-dogmatic, and very organic in a healthy way. They broadly seem to have believed in a Great Spirit, and told many stories about creation and how the Spirit worked, depending on their tribe and its particular history, but they did not fight wars over religion, and most of them had enough space that large scale power structures rarely formed. Places like Cahokia are a bit of the exception. And I would wonder what the religious life of that place looked like. I suppose they must have imposed a theology of sorts, and they appear to have practiced human sacrifice.
The view of human beings as inherently equal is not something encoded in our biology. It is not something which comes naturally to us. Necessarily, we partake in abstraction to consider and implement such views, and necessarily this alienates us somewhat from what would otherwise be binding roots, roots of people and very small place. Religion, I will remind you, literally means “to bind”. No binding is needed when groupings are organic. Only when they become much larger do you need something like religion.
When we accept the idea of all people being equal, we lose some part of ourselves. I think this is necessary, from what I will perhaps invent a neologism in calling the anthropophysiological perspective.
So I think it could be argued that Communism, in important respects, is an end run around our Liberalism, as it has developed–oriented as it is around freedom, self restraint, and abstract morality–BACK to the old ways of conquest and violence, but using a circuitous logic based entirely on lies.
Communism, in other words, is a sort of virus within Western Culture whose main symptom is the habit of lying in the practice of all forms of violence, including sacrifice, conquest, mass theft, ritual humiliation, and the elevation of political elites who answer to no one.
Phrased alternatively. Communism is the Shadow of the West. It represents all of our unprocessed emotional needs, including those for tribe, group violence, and a static social order. Given that is our shadow, its close affiliation with sadistic violence makes a ton of sense.
As I ponder this, I think I have shown these two related sides of our culture in my piece on the Grand Inquisitor.
So seen from this perspective, the REASON socialist ideas continue to recur–and I was just reflecting how Bastiat refuted all the claims being made today some 170 years ago–is that they are an emotional part of our collective psyche. Until we process those emotions qua emotions, on their own level, the needs that this darkness recognizes and meets will continue to exist, and so too will the ideas associated with them.
I am very close to being able to “go operational”, as I like to think of it. I like to think of myself as some sort of cultural or even spiritual warrior. The problem is, parts of me remain moronic and unresponsive and blind. I can see and feel that much.
If Trump wins–and we are really fucked if he doesn’t, absent a coup or other response I have no way at all to anticipate–then that should buy us enough time for me to begin experimenting with ways of reconciling the psychic conflicts global peace necessarily brings in its train. There is considerable good in the abstractions which enable large nations like the United States. There is physical peace and prosperity. But there is also much loss that is unremarked upon. We do not live on bread and freedom alone.