Recent times produce much that is, if you can foresee the implications, inordinately dangerous. Some of the occurrences in the public sphere are the symptoms of the death-wish of a society that lets a marching mob to holler that it represents decency. Beyond that, the pretentious comportment is also contemptible and ridiculous.
We have “non-violent” folks that “fight for peace” and “justice” by committing violent crimes. Looting and arson strikes anything that stands in the way of the “outrage” that is legitimized by a craze. As so often, the new global fad originates in America. That gives rise to a suspicion. It is that discovering the relevance of BML -as long as “B” does not stand for “Blue”- is not really a reaction to the allegedly systemic racist slaughter of persons with above average melanin.
As we proceed, we need to entertain delicate and dangerous matters. These are decidedly non-PC because they anger those that feel incriminated by inquiries. A number of the actions of the global protesters do not fit their claim. Some allegations are contradicted by the behavior of those that march and disrupt, others, albeit being good propaganda, just do not add up. Regarding the latter category, often not a factually and logically valid point is made, but deep-seated hate, fueled by ignorance, boils over. When added up, it seems that the correct diagnosis might be that we are confronted by a sybaritic ailment spreading within Western civilization.
We are suffering (again!) of a “lonely crowd” that is disoriented. Its mind is honed by the intellectual challenge needed to follow soaps. Superficially educated, in schools that issue diplomas as a right to those that show up intermittently, and trained to regard welfare as a worthy career, this crowd is in search of a purpose. The cause strived for should ennoble those espousing it, while its tenets are to be effortlessly comprehensible to the mindless. Its pursuit is to offer an adventure that comprises no sacrifice and hardly any risk. As in the case of home-delivered pizza, the cooking is to involve little heat and kitchen-time. Above all, the satisfaction is to be immediate and the price right, meaning that others shall be coerced pick up the tab.
It is part of this posture by which the cool insiders of the movement promote themselves by proclaiming theirs to be a moral position. The ones that are caught as doubters -not to mention being opposed- are relegated to a role that expresses the moral turpitude proven by their skepticism. This way, claimed “goodness” gains in definition by the wickedness of the “enemy”. Thereby, resisting the forces of malevolence becomes an ennobling struggle. Since this clash is against vice, all means and methods that aim to crush the vile become morally legitimized.
In time, the cause to save mankind from the morass in which the forces of evil and moral neutrality have imprisoned it, will find an organization. Moralizing its agenda unleashes an inexhaustible energy for action. It is unlimited by ethics, the precondition that is responsible for crimes meant to cleanse mankind from inferior elements as have “Auschwitz” and the GULAG. In this context, bringing heaven to earth by resorting to violence becomes not a forgivable transgression but a just act that redeems man, whereby the perpetrator is elevated to exalted moral heights.
This commitment to rescue a mass that wallows pig-like in its materialistic dirt meets resistance. To save those that are too deprived to wish to be saved, a purge of the recalcitrant is required by the cognoscenti who are in the possession of purifying knowledge. Holding an ideology is meant that reduces the past, the present, and the inevitable future, into a simple system. In the possession of this ultimate truth, those yielding it are a party. This party is a vanguard whose legitimacy is the future, and so “the Party is never wrong”. The attraction of such an association is obvious.
Another feature of our culture’s momentary prejudice comes into play here. Industrialization has freed us of material want. However, standardized mass production also deprives us of the appearance of uniqueness. We wear what others wear, use cars that look like the neighbor’s, and live in houses that are “ticky-tacky”. Yet, we are told that we need to stand out and surpass our equals. Even though, by definition, most of us are ordinary, we can feel pressured to create the impression of excelling. This explains useless majors offered by universities, trying to be “artists” of some sort by spraying paint or forming weird shapes, and much of the opinions posted on the internet. Attention can be gained by filming oneself and grasping for being noticed through cameo appearances in what passes as “news”. Knocking down old women on their rollator will do.
By submergence into a group espousing a worthy cause, an insecure individual can gain stature and the illusion that he steers mankind toward its destiny. An added benefit is that saving mankind includes the excuse of immunity for what would be plain thuggery without “belonging”, as a proud individualist, to the ennobled crowd. As the totalitarians of the last century knew, promising that “the streets are free for the brown battalions” or that “the days of victory are coming” the insecure get assured of being significant.
The upshot is the mindless service of senseless causes justified by claiming a right to be loud and violent. An exhaust emanates that ranges from the intimidatingly criminal to the deranged activism of the otherwise idle. Some cannot create much that deserves attention: Running berserk outraged is within everyone’s reach.
It is such an incident, picked out of a large bouquet of abuses, that has provoked this piece of writing. Statue toppling is becoming a recreational activity. The intention is to re-write the past that is to be -again quoting a marching song- “abolished”. Someone who pulls the strings understands that in control of the past -or its illusion- the present can be molded. Once the traditions and inhibitions of customs are toppled like a statue, the vacuum can be filled with a new and foul, self-serving concoction.
Not being British I feel especially free to react to the attacks on Churchill statues. Naturally, the campaign should not be a surprise. America has contributed to the mutiny of the ignorant by destructing a Washington bronze while at about the same time a Lenin sculpture could be erected. US. Grant of Appomattox fame received retroactive censure. This can only be topped once Lincoln is removed for having “malice toward none”. Will he be replaced by Stalin who set a commendable example of how to deal with the “enemies of the people”?
Why am I especially provoked by calling Churchill a “Nazi”? When a small kid during the war in Hungary, I liked to sit with the old man who managed the local beach. He had a great interest in what my elders have to say about Churchill and Roosevelt. Obviously, he wished to be oriented about what the local VIPs, who even had a radio, think of the enemy. Indeed, my family listened to the BBC which was an offence and, once direct Nazi rule came, treason. One day, I got asked at dinner what we are conversing about. My response created much excitement. So, I got instructed never to mention Churchill or Roosevelt. If asked, I was to say that father and grandfather say that they are baaad goons.
This first confrontation with survival tactics has taught me how to lie. A useful skill in view of what came my way later under socialism. Anyhow, the man has not reported us even though our friendship cooled. (Later on, the Gestapo asked my grandfather to commit suicide -but that is another story.) This excursion into my personal past sheds light on why I feel connected to Churchill’s memory. My professional training firms and confirms the respect and elicits gratitude on another level.
If Churchill, whose tenacity projected on an entire people has saved our civilization from going under in irreversible defeat, is a Nazi, then everybody can be one. Calling the conservative PM, a National Socialist is more than the libelous use of bad history. Perhaps not much more should be expected from a movement that could make out of a convicted criminal its icon. Nevertheless, Churchill as a Nazi, everyone like Washington with a statue an enemy, and America a racist prison of peoples - it warred against Japan- contains, besides being ridiculous, a serious message.
A survey of the record of totalitarians in power has a common feature. One finds that many of their leaders, including those that brought it to power, are liquidated as the dictatorship consolidates. Hitler had his “Röhm-Putsch”, a blood-bath that eliminated, among numerous VIPs, a founder of the Party. Stalin purged everybody including family members as “spies” and “foreign agents”. Entire classes and nationalities were liquidated. Ergo, the question arises, how could the Reds take power if most of their members were either German, Japanese, British, and French spies or Tsarist agents. China, and all the “Peoples Democracies”, followed the example. The repetition of the pattern suggests that the correlation is not accidental. This means that, if Churchill can be retroactively a Nazi, then so can you become one in the future. The charge might be fiction, the resulting treatment real.
The phenomenon presented has a sub-category. Normally, guilt relates to an action that violates existing law. To totalitarians guilt -its drastic punishment filled the cemeteries- includes the earlier violation of the present’s norms when the deed was accepted as proper. This retroactive culpability is not limited to the past of living persons. An association with the perpetrator by a remote relationship or even membership in his social class can have dire consequences.
By this standard, the rioters in America and abroad belong to a greatly dangerous species of modern politics. Their violence and destructiveness -for which they claim immunity- allows them to pursue the creation of a new order that hinges upon the destruction of the current system. In this mob we identify a commitment to an ideal that only the leaders can interpret and which struggles to create a new society and a “New Man”. The claimed morality of the goal endows the virtuous leaders with immunity because, the pursuit of virtue -by the infallible- makes the means used by definition upright and worthy. This conviction removes the innate decency that might limit and humanize the application of power. For the sake of the cause, every normally criminal deed is not only permissible but a compelling command.
At the moment, the movement, because it still lacks unlimited power over public and private life, performs less ruthlessly than did Stalin’s purges. Then a post-fact criminalized act got the accused before a firing squad. Today, having been wrong long ago by today’s PC standards, only gets one fired.
Before the claimed autonomy of rowdies becomes a take-over, it is time to read the signals and to recognize the danger. In doing so ponder this. If they are so violent as they reach for power, how destructive, in possession of a state security police will today’s rowdies be, once full domination to transform the country is achieved? The seditious project of a new country, a novel past and heroes, a fresh new anthem, and a matching constitution, will create many new “reactionary” enemies to fight. We should be warned that the will to act is already in place.
