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https://x.com/RodericDay/status/2041899287265587646

This is basically Jesus's pitch, right? The West is almost defined by Christianity, and Christianity is defined by the idea of a perfect chosen child that wins decisively despite embracing every unjust handicap foisted upon him. By now secularized via Luke, Harry, etc.

Thorne is correct when he writes "[Marx's] critique of political economy began as the philosophical critique of religion." Meanwhile, people whose critique of religion is limited to "pedo corrupt church" still hold on to the promise of a magical underdog deus-ex-machina victory.

I like exploring the concept that religions are best understood in functional and negative terms: Roman religion == anti-slaves (pro-Olympus) Monotheistic religion == anti-Rome/Olympus (pro-mass, heaven on earth) Christian religion == anti-Jewish (no rebellion, afterlife) etc.

Protestant == anti-Catholic (DYI Christianity) Evangelical == anti-frugality (prosperity gospel) Hindu == anti-equality (reincarnation means if you're born rich/poor you earned it in a past life)

So if religions are best understood as ideological coping mechanisms adapted to whatever circumstances a mass of humans is undergoing, and we study political allegiance as a kind of religion, then what of the Western left?

Western leftists largely arrive at radicalism out of disillusionment, after being marginalized. Their core claim to superiority over their right-wing peers is not their exploited industriousness, but rather their more sophisticated morality. Can they risk this?

Western marginals need to first discover they're not particularly puny (especially compared to Western elites), and then find a different better basis for self-conception and pride. Only this way will they drop the weird cowardly-belligerent attachment to atrocity propaganda.

This is gonna require some good leaders, and these leaders will need to essentially be patient but inflexible teachers. First lesson: the enormous difference between self-criticism and self-contempt. https://redsails.org/flight-from-history/…

In 1818, in the middle of the Restoration and just at that time when the collapse of the French Revolution seemed obvious to all, some of those who had initially welcomed the events of 1789 now...

Flight from History? The Communist Movement between Self-Criticism and Self-Contempt

In terms of this dynamic, the worst Western leftists probably aren't American or French. They're German. The Germans are so moralistic in smug self-contempt, the confusion weirdly loops back into colonial arrogance like "Our burden of genocide means we must defend Israel."

🤮

Imagine if Germans spoke like: "Yeah we fucked up demonically and we'll never forget, but you cowards just deny your Anglo-French colonial, slaver criminality. We also have Marx and Engels—what do you have on that end?" Instead they're the most pathetic, abject bootlickers.

Now if that hypothetical self-critical German sounds better than the self-contemptuous German we all know and hate, then transpose those dynamics to micro-scenarios with smug Western leftists spewing atrocity propaganda. I'd say: learn to counter them in like terms.