2+2= Whatever

Somewhere among the wisdoms recalled by your correspondent is a fitting definition of what freedom is. It is the right to assert that 2+2 is four. It means that you enjoy liberty when you cannot be forced to deny the obvious. A recent news item lends substance to the saying. That oddity, in the category of the two-headed calf or the checkered zebra, reported the findings of a professor of mathematics at an American university. That lady discovered that math, being a racist myth, is an instrument of the White oppression of Blacks. Therefore, 2+2’s result depends on the respondent’s pigmentation.

Close to that story came news generated by a professor of English. His revelation is that Black English is not a limiting dialect but a legitimate language. Ergo, Blacks should be judged by their own standards. The practical consequences of racial equality practiced by lowering expectations are bridges that do not cross in a 90-degree angle, tunnels that fail to find the other side of the mountain, and that errors requalified as being correct, will lead to clumsy texts. What at first sounds only weird has serious consequences. Thus, this writer hurries fearing the imposition of Flat Earth by political alchemists who might also abolish gravitation as racist because of its discovery by an old White male.

The operating thesis here is that, on the American and Western European scene, movements thrive that show totalitarian characteristics. These appear to be sufficiently vigorous to trigger symptoms which are defining features of the shackles produced by modern dictatorship. As things stand, the order within which advanced political and economic democracy can flourish is breaking down. Past scenarios are allowed to repeat themselves, and the sane are ignorantly and naively withdrawing in their cocoons to avoid confronting “crazy kids doing dumb things”.

How did we get where we are, and where could the road ahead lead us?

Walking the totalitarian path begins with an ideology. That is a comprehensive set of ideas handled as articles of faith and may therefore not be questioned. Its adherents will be persuaded that their creed explains all aspects of man’s existence. Thus, its truth destines it to be applied, whereby it becomes the blueprint of the future’s perfect order to come. All that is judged to be inadequate in the present expresses the consequence of a simple truth regarding the working of an evil force. (Such as the machinations of the Devil, unbelievers, racial impurity, capitalist exploitation.) The destruction of the forces of evil will save mankind from the devastation that is otherwise imminent.

An ideology being an “ersatz” reality, it is not its objective provability that gives it strength. Its might and power to persuade comes from the total commitment of its adherents once these are organized into a mass movement that forms a marching column. Ideology’s total rejection of the past and the present’s order makes it into the basis of a revolutionary reorganization of the world. No feature of the past, including its morals, assumptions, and values being all “reactionary,” is to survive the reconstruction of civilization. Being useless ballast, to enable the take-off into the heights of the sky, demands that every past truth and its morals be left behind. As Lenin put it, the only valid moral question is “who whom?” Everything that furthers the cause is ethically valid, anything that hinders it is reprehensible. Herein lies the violent activism of ideological movements. It serves to gain power – in the parlance of the Nazi anthem making “The Streets Free for The Brown Battalions” - and then it must expand its scope to retain power. That amounts to a dictatorship which is, in this context, a system ruled by the virtuous elite -as in “The Dictatorship of The Proletariat”.

In responding to the demands a riotous mob, PC creates a fact that 2+2 has a negotiable result. This is a totalitarian development that confirms a suspicion. America specifically, and with it the West, seem to be experiencing a break with their let-to-crumble political tradition that is as troubling as it is devastating. Optimistically, democrats tend to assume that freedom, once attained, is irreversible because it is man’s natural condition. Alas, this is not so. The case made here might misread symptoms that, being only weird, are predestined to wilt. If that be the case, then this writing serves to accelerate that process before harm can sink its roots.

As suggested, from the writer’s physically remote vantage point, developments in the USA send signals of a growing totalitarian tendency that threatens to capture a sedated country. Some generalizations of symptoms follow. It is up to the reader to confirm of reject their applicability.

The totalitarian challenge relies on an ideology’s supposedly logically interlocking concepts that form a dogmatic secular religion. It is said to explain mankind’s past, present, and depict its post-revolutionary destiny.

All being allowed in the battle to end history and its imperfect social order, implies that violence is required to liberate man from his inherited bondage, poverty, and ignorance. The “final struggle” will create an order in which a “New Man” (a Soviet term) of the future can emerge. Opposing to any degree the tactics of the struggle or, after the victory, the application of the “new order” (a Nazi phrase), are morally destructive and reactionary. That is so, because criticism harks back to the past, and functions as break on the speedy realization of mankind’s destiny. Those not convinced of this are not wrong; they are guilty.

Movements of destiny that make their invoked infallibility into a dogma produce further similarities. One will be that, the struggle to steer man into the perfect order that shall set him truly free, demands discipline. In fact, the cadre, those that have a better understanding of the “Idea” than the mass, will consider “unity” as a precondition of the war against the past. The upshot is that such movements are, once the pretentions are pealed away, and pronouncedly after their assumption of power, thoroughly dictatorial. And since all aspects of life must be made to fit the “idea”, they will be totalitarian.

Infallibility, a mandate that comes from the future yet to be built, a movement that sees itself as an army in action, and finally the emphasis on a discipline that liberates, require an additional feature to complete the package. It is a Leader, or Führer, Vozhd, Conducator, all terms that mean the same thing. A dictatorship calls for a dictator to complete it. Total power, a mission, and the struggle against any resistance by the immature and politically unschooled masses have to be dealt with. No one can explain “blue” to a blind person. Analogously, the politically illiterate, being blinded by a tradition that is to be destroyed, cannot be sufficiently enlightened to accept unconditionally the ultimate truth that he is incapable to comprehend. The “cause” is compelled to replace this inability by applying violence against the recalcitrant.

Contemporaries that are lucky enough to be outside observes, tend to ignore the full scope of violence that revolutionary movements exert to gain power. After the overthrow, the phase of consolidation will begin. Both democratic and totalitarian revolutions will create institutions of violence. No system that “defunds the police” will survive in case that the slogan is implemented and not only exploited to replace one “police” with another one. Democratic systems will painstakingly limit the power of the instruments of violence they create - the police and the military - and circumscribe when and to what extent these organs may act. Totalitarians have an entirely different relationship to violence.

As stated, totalitarians are committed to create a system that will reeducate its subjects. Without coercion this cannot happen, or it will not happen soon enough. Additionally, totalitarians see themselves surrounded by enemies and do not conceive of a “loyal opposition”. Enemies must be fought. Both the Nazi example’s SS, as well as Lenin’s Cheka, were born while power was grabbed. Neither of these had the purpose of fighting conventional crime - for that there was a police - nor were they set up to fight foreign wars - a task delegated to the regular armed forces. The “police” we are talking about is a state security service; its purpose is to combat everything that is regarded as subversive. To the extent that the totalitarian project pursues irrational ends, the need for a special organization of violence will remain. Why? Reality and ideological postulates will be separated by a hiatus. It can only be bridged by violent means.

Essentially, the political police’ purpose is to re-educate society, to complete its total break with the past, and to speed up the coming of the ideal order that is postulated by the ideology of redemption. Embarrassed leaders that must pretend to “liberalize” will attribute the terror of the war against society to a “derailment”. Foreign sympathizers that have, without compulsion, endorsed terror, will forgivingly nod in agreement. Nevertheless, let us not be fooled. The instrument of institutionalized terror is the defining feature, and its organs are an essential component, of totalitarian systems that subject their captured society to a forced draft.

If our liberal democratic values would be absolutely water-tight, then violence would alienate individuals and deter constituencies - and voters – that are all threatened by nascent totalitarian violence. It might be frightening, but this is not how it works. A lot of people will support authoritarian groups not regardless of their violence but because of it. Going along with the movement protects one from its violence. Disturbingly, violence has also a magnetic attraction. The next person you meet wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt makes the point. It is confirmed by individuals with swastika tattoos and those that swing red flags. Beyond the ignorance regarding the record represented by these symbols, they invoke an imagined heroic myth and convey the impression that those displaying them are “strong”. Additionally, the tested symbols of violence bring attention to those that feel insignificant. Lastly, angering folks that prefer to be spectators feels good. Violence does not alienate; it is a feature that recruits timid bystanders.

As things stand, in the US and in Western Europe, the police are losing the streets. Extraterritorial zones are emerging, the state’s authority is limited by anarchistic claims, and immunity is granted to those that claim to be “convinced”. Parallel societies emerge. The law applies selectively. We witness that looting has become redistribution, felony is social protest, violence is a peaceful march, and theft is redemption and a means of sharing. Murder is justice, destruction a correction of the past, and thuggery self-defense. Bringing up such matters is reactionary violence because free speech is converted into the right of “snowflakes” to hear what they wish. 2+2 may not be safely asserted any more. The right to assembly is limited to those that confirm PC. We are free to voice all opinions that conform to the standards set by the morally pure. Meanwhile, opposing the trend is proscribed because it “upsets” bigots.

The coercive violence and the brutality of the mob armed with moral truncheons is, regardless of the soft-pedaling by the MSN, a daily event. As this element grabs power, the effect will not be greater restraint but increased ruthlessness. Government by riot will have a high price. Reversing it promises to be a bloody process because the mob’s principle is that its blows are a civil right to exercise revolutionary justice, while resisting it manifests far right “wrong thinking” and police brutality.

Pleading, that a danger is unfolding that is obscured by incredulousness and the desire not to be inconvenienced, will not bring laurels. So, one is left with a question: Will the majority catch on in time that they are not dealing with eccentric spoiled selfish kids that are just acting up? What we see is not the temper-tantrum of five-year-olds who smash the toys in the children’s room, but an attempt to apply the wrecking-ball to the house.
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