Ideological Archeology: The Counter-Enlightenment (I)

The idea of the creation of a personalised universe, or rather a personal version of the universe originates with Protagoras (Greek: Πρωtaγόρaς, ca. 490-420 BC), who said "man is the measure of all things", he meant individual man, rather than mankind.

The sophists of the rough, second generation, notably Trasymachus, a character in Plato's Republic, put that notion of subjectivism to good use. In classical Greece the sophists used language, not in the service of truth or the transfer of information, but as a strategy for political point-scoring. The sophists held that justice is in the interest of the stronger: might makes right.

Objectivist philosopher Stephen Hicks in "Explaining Postmodernism" claims that "postmoderns - coming after two millennia of Christianity and two centuries of social theory - simply reverse that claim: Subjectivism and relativism are true, except that the postmodernists are on the side of the weaker and historically-oppressed groups. Justice, contrary to Trasymachus, is the interest of the weaker."

Contemporary postmoderns have harnessed this form of political correctness to today's version of the class struggle, the dialectic, a tool to perpetuate into eternity the struggle of the 'oppressed' minorities against the 'fake tolerance' of the 'power structure'. The latter should not be understood as 'whoever is in power', but rather 'whoever is in power, other than us'.

Althought we have not always seen it for what it was, during the last two and a half centuries or so the fruits of reason have been pitted in an existential dog fight with the reactionary forces of anti-realism. The movement in generally termed 'the Counter-Enlightenment', to underscore the culture's fundamental rejection of the Enlightenment.

In his ground-breaking book Hicks posits two theses: that the failure of epistemology (philosophy's study of human knowledge) made postmodernism possible; and that the failure of Socialism made postmodernism necessary. As Rousseau, Kant and Hegel were for church authority, the postmoderns are for collectivism: their raison d'être is a desperate 'rationalization' for holding on to a rejected system.

The emergence of the Counter-Enlightenment represents the turning point of the age of reason. The era between 1780 and 1815 was a defining period in modernism, as Anglo-American and German culture split into respectively the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment.

The former began in England, and was picked up by the French. But Roussseau's followers wrested the Enlightenment inspired revolution away from John Locke's (1632 -1704) followers. This quote is from Locke's 2nd Treatise §3:

"In order to preserve the public good, the central function of government must be the protection of private property ..."

... compare that to Rousseau:

"For the creation of a society of 'common will', the people need only accept the dictates of the state" ...

The French Revolution turned it into the Jacobin Reign of Terror, the particularly bloody, third and last episode. The Germans thereafter, already suspicious of the culture of reason, began a counter movement in an effort to rescue religion from what they saw as the onslaught of reason. When the Enlightened French despot, Napoleon Bonaparte jumped into the vacuum left by the Reign of Terror and conquered Europe, the still largely feudal German states knew for sure what the age of reason had wrought.

The reaction was a counter movement by a brand of collectivist philosophers and intellectuals - politically on the Left as well as on the Right, some religious, later on also atheists - with a number of themes in common: Jean-Jacques Rousseau inspired "anti-individualism, the need for strong government, the view that religion is a state matter (whether to promote or suppress it), the view that education is a process of socialisation, ambivalence about science and technology, and strong themes of group conflict, violence and war.

Hicks: "Left and Right have often divided bitterly over which themes have priority and over how they should be applied. Yet, for all of their differences, both have consistently recognised a common enemy: Liberal capitalism, with its individualism, its limited government, its separation of church and state, its fairly constant view that education is not primarily a matter of political socialisation, and its persistent Whiggish optimism about prospects for peaceful trade and cooperation between members of all nations and groups. (...) the collectivist Right and Left are united in their major goals and in identifying the opposition."

"By the early twentieth century (...) the dominant issues for most continental political thinkers were not whether liberal capitalism was a viable option - but rather exactly when it would collapse - and whether Left or Right collectivism had the best claim to being the Socialism of the future. The defeat of the collectivist Right in World War II then meant that the Left was on its own to carry the Socialist mantle forward."

"Accordingly, when the Left ran into its major disasters as the twentieth century progressed, understanding its fundamental commonality with the collectivist Right helps to explain why in its desperation the Left has often adopted ''Fascistic'' tactics."

Another fateful innovation was set in by the counter movement. As had been the logic during the long period of Church authority over arts and science, all modern mainstream Enlightenment thinkers had accomodated the new advances in science and mathematics into Christian belief. Defying Aristotlean wisdom, human nature, as well as Hume's Law - the confusion of 'is' with 'ought' - the Counter-Enlightenment philosophers following Rousseau, Kant and Hegel - even the atheists - reversed this orthodoxy.

Instead - perhaps even subconsciously or by implication - they developed political models, which reflected religious ideals, the re-creation of paradises on earth, perhaps in an effort to fill the void left by Ancients Regimes. These political models sought to mirror the heavens, on the basis of 'as above, so below', macrocosm - microcosm: the ideal society. The tenets of the Enlightenment were abandoned and replaced by opposing principles: realism made way for Idea-lism, and individualism for collectivism; emotions, intuition and Revelation were adopted as sources of knowledge rather than reason and experience, social theories replaced liberal capitalist theory.

Universal Enlightenment values were applied, but were limited to specific themes. In these themes God was replaced by whatever fitted the theme: nationalists replaced God with the nation, state adolators deified the state, Socialists society, etcetera. We'll return to that after having a look up close at the main, early protagonists of the Counter-Enlightement drama.

Up next: ... Swiss-French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's (1712-1778) personal life is marked by traits sounding akwardly contemporary ...

The Marxist Revival (8): Hysterically Moving the Goal Posts

First a reminder that the Petition to the Mayor of Brussels to allow the 9/11 rally "Stop Islamization of Europe" can be signed HERE.

I posit that - apart from considerations, such as public safety - the same Postmodern mechanism, at work in the redistribution of free speech, is also applied in the indefinite suspension of the civil rights of Europe's indigenous peoples: so-called 'levelling the playing field' by lumbering the supposedly stronger party with 'handicaps', viz. no demos directed towards minorities!

~ Continued from Part 7: Of Reversed Sophistry & Mythical Creatures ~

But back to the present series on the peculiarities of Postmodernism (or crypto cultural Marxism) as we are looking at the use of language, speech in particular. Two other aspects of speech tactic left to analyse, are the use of generalizations and the apparent shifting of the rules in mid-play.

Thus when a Postmodern's opponent commits a generalization, for example in categorizing the behaviour of one small group of deranged terrorists together with all the other well-meaning, peace loving Muslims in naming urban Jihad, Islamic terrorism, this is considered "unfairly lumping all Muslims together".

If however, the boot is on the other foot and it is Postmoderns (Pomos, in Pomo lingo) that are categorizing all white males as rapists, this is perfectly acceptable.

It is the widely used tactic of moving the goalposts in mid-play, at least, so it would seem to objective people. This however is a mistake: it is erroneously assumed that both parties use the same rule book, but nothing could be further from the truth, as we shall see on the next instalment. It all has to do with the redistribution of free speech and the levelling of the playing field by lumbering the supposedly stronger party with handicaps, moving from equality of opportunity, to equality of outcome: a time honoured Leftist pastime!

All that surprising stuff is apart from the fourteen ordinary, day-to-day fallacies (PMFs) already identified - the result of Postmodern or Subjectivist thinking, of which innocent bystanders by force of habit, or pressure of fashion, might have become a victim. Conscious adherents are beyond such a simple aide. They are strongly advised to seek professional medical assistance which might entail years of analysis as the entire cerebral edifice of orthologics is rebuild from scratch.

Dr Sanity recently discovered a typical problem of a psychological nature, that is the result of the philosophical basic lie of Subjectivism. Consider her post "It's Official, the Left is Completely Hysterical":

"Hysteria is a concept characterized by a wide variety of physical and mental symptoms that result from dissociating one's cognitive functioning from one's emotion and/or behavior. The psychological defense that makes this happen is known as dissociation ... (unmanageable and excessive) emotions are primary and are not subject to an objective reality ..."

"This is a world where there is no objective reality or truth ... if you believe something is true, then it is ... something can be "fake but accurate" or ... captured enemy combatants in the middle of a war are ... in a "gulag" or ... a "religion of peace" beheads people ..."

"Mass hysteria occurs when large groups of people engage in psychological dissociation; and political mass hysteria ... when all the emotional excitability and excess happen to serve a political function or ideological agenda."

It's all mighty interesting, and a personal as well as a political tragedy. But the philosophical problem for Postmoderns is, that the charges of delusion cannot be reversed, as they are so fond to do. The good doctor:

"Probably the first prerequisite for accusing someone of engaging in self-delusion is that one must accept that there is an objective reality, external and independent to one's self; one's beliefs or one's emotions or feelings. Without such a fundamental epistemological foundation, it is completely meaningless to accuse anyone of self-delusion, although postmodern intellectuals do it all the time".

"As they wallow in their preferred form of social subjectivism, it is perfectly "reasonable" (if that is the word) from their perspective to impute delusion to others--even if every time they do so, they effectively demonstrate the invalidity of their own philosophy. That is why it is so amusing to observe their appropriation of the term "reality-based community" -- when they don't believe in any reality except for their own emotions!"

She's spot on, as usual! Serves you right, Pomo! It's not entirely all roses when you flush reality down the water works! Or is this just another mythical manifestation that comes with the Pomo territory? After the paradoxymoron now perhaps a realivorus, or an objectiraptor, who's to say?

As far as the tactics in the language and attitude department are concerned we have identified: fibs and lies (technically don't exist for Subjectivists: no truth, no lie - very practical), gross exaggeration and hyperbole, genuine or functional hatred and hysterics (rage, rage, rage), emotional blackmail, incitement to violence, sentimental whining, false analogy, (reversed) sophistry, manipulation, incivility and ad hominem attacks, deliberate para-exegese (angry is being unreasonable, doubt is denial, aversion is hatred, etc.), another fallacy as a result of massive imprecision - the lack of orthologics - and the unremitting (and sometimes deliberate) confusion of terms: very often the tactical mixing of facts with opinion.

One such curious example I found in my Inbox yesterday, in an unsolicited acquisition letter from Amazon.com, proudly announcing the establishment of yet another virtual paradise of subjectivity: the virtual community, "a fun place to meet other people with similar interests, share your knowledge, or learn new things in topics you love!"

"To get a taste of Askville, one of our more popular topic communities: The History Topic Community. Below are some actual questions asked by real people (my emphasis) in the History topic:

- "Where can I find a good book about Henry IV of France?"
- "Who were the five greatest American presidents since Lincoln?"
- "Does the presence of US troops in Iraq fuel terrorism?"

That last question shot me seething, straight into a virtual realm of fun, play and knowledge sharing. It proved to be almost entirely inhibited by autonomous Pomos. I'll spare you the details, but it was a surreal experience. The person responsible for the text of that mail is of course a Head Marketing Communication, a live person hiding behind a customer repellent defense system, made up of a barricade of technology - bots and automatons - combined with the corporate policy, known in jargon as the "customer peeping system": the motte and bailey of the new media.

I don't want to waste more time and energy on the matter than it warrants: from this particular soap box I'll have Amazon.com's Head Marcom know that "the opinion of a vast number of Americans" is not to be confused with fact. Fact is something for objective people, who know the sun will rise tomorrow, even if they're not watching it in person!

The next instalment will take us to the Postmodern tactic of moving the goal posts in mid-play, and as discovered by Stephen Hicks as early as 2002, Pomo's war on free speech.

~ To be continued in Part 9: Why the Mayor of Brussels Gags Free Speech, "The Leftist policy now comes back to haunt us, as Pomo is using the principle to suppress free speech, and turn the Western world in an intellectual graveyard as the individual freedom to pursue knowledge throught debate, critique and free enquiry, is being suppressed". ~

The Marxist Revival (7): Of Reversed Sophistry & Mythical Creatures

~ Continued from Part 6: The Queen of Rage & Ludicrous Equation ~

In the forthcoming instalments on the peculiarities of the Postmodern (Pomo) attitude towards language - speech in particular - we shall have a further look at a special technique, best described as reversed sophistry, and the pseudo philosophy's most unfortunate infestation with a mythical creature called the paradoxymoron [2].

In Part 1 of this series on the reawakening of Marxism in little Pomo - "The Lie at the Bottom" - we saw that at the basis of the covert strategy for spreading Relativist thought, lurks the lie of the Primacy of Consciousness, Subjectivism, or Relativism [1]. Make no mistake: it is the very basis of all Counter-Enlightenment thought, from Rousseau to Nazism and Communism to contemporary Pomo (see Chart I - The Straight Red Line): the aversity to reason. Which is why rational 'scientists' like Richard Dawkins, actually have no place being Leftists.

On a tactical level we find language, which to Pomos signifies something entirely different than it does traditionally to objective people: it could be best described as rhetoric, characterised by gross generalisation (of which more in a subsequent post), ludicrous equation, and an almost embarrassing level of exaggeration. Pomo lingo lives and breaths emotional outpour, uninhibited by the constraints of fact and reason.

To Pomo, language is not about the transfer of information flowing from one person to another; to Subjectivists language communicates nothing more than perhaps the speaker's personal version of 'reality': all that is written ought to be in quotes and inverted commas, signifying the irony with which any 'meaning' should be taken.

The spoken word is the bringing forth of sound waves, beating against the audience's ear drums, this being the reason why 'speech' in general is seen as just another form of 'violence' and a unique exertion of Western power that needs to be broken, 'redistributed' among powerless minorities. The equation of sound waves with violence makes somehow comprehensible Pomo's conclusion that "the whole is Western society is saturated with violence".

Symbol to Western power stands the Oppressor, or the White Patriarch, embodying everything related to white supremacy, Christian hegemony and male dominance. The powerless minorities are everybody else, though preferably incorporating as many minority qualities as possible. Somebody has actually taken the trouble to work out how this extraordinary hierarchy of victimhood works - Hat tip Dr Sanity (brilliant stuff!).

But back to language which, as said, is a mere weapon in an epic battle in which everything is allowed ... by Pomo, that is! The adversary - by the soft power of political correctness - is lumbered with as many 'handicaps' as possible: rules, that are taken to be universal, but in practice are far from 'cricket', rendering the interlocutor somewhat dazed over the exact location of the goal posts. We'll shortly come back about the rule book in another post. For now let's have a look at the interesting technique of reversed sophistry.

Stephen Hicks in his book "Explaining Postmodernism" worded it as follows: "The Sophists taught rhetoric not as a means of advancing truth and knowledge but as a means of winning debates in the rough-and-tumble world of day-to-day politics ... which ... requires ... not being concerned with truth or consistency in argument ... [which] can and often has been seen as part of a strategy for achieving political success." The reversal lies in the intent: while sophists used their rhetoric in the service of the powerful, Pomo hopes to advance the position of the various Oppressed.

"Here it is useful to recall Lentricchia: Postmodernism "seeks not to find the foundation and the conditions of truth, but to exercise power for the purpose of social change", reminding us that Pomo is nothing other than cultural Marxism restored, when Yuri Bezmenov's KGB ideologically demoralised usefuls were ruthlessly awakened from their catatonic dreams of collectivism by the shock waves of 9/11. The anti reason, anti capitalism, the socially constructed identities, and the politically justified violence as exhibited by the Radical Islamic brotherhood, presents a feast of recognition (see Chart I - The Straight Red Line).

Synonymous with Pomo are the contradiction, the paradox and the oxymoron, which I - in a fit of creativity have forged together in the neologism paradoxymoron [2], as it illustrates so poignantly that we find ourselves here in a realm, far removed from the banalities of the real world.

In fact, the whole (pseudo) philosophy is so filled with contradictions that I personally have lost count and am beyond caring, principally because Pomo doesn't care either, aware as he is that the entire philosophical construct is based on fantasy, an intellectual cosmetic device to lend some intelligible weight to the real goal: universal egalitarianism and global collectivism.

~ To be continued in Part 8, Hysterically Moving the Goal Posts: "Mass hysteria occurs when large groups of people engage in psychological dissociation; and political mass hysteria ... when all the emotional excitability and excess happen to serve a political function or ideological agenda." ~

The Marxist Revival (4): the Assault on Free Speech

~Continued from Part 3: The Marxist Revival: The All Purpose Invective~

Reading through the next instalments on the special relationship between language and Neo Marxism - also known as Postmodernism (Pomo) - we have to keep in mind the recent revelation: an article adapted from a lecture address given by Stephen Hicks at The Objectivist Center during the 2002 (!) Summer Seminar: Pomo's Declaration of War on free speech.

It is beyond me why Hicks' discovery, done within the walls of American universities, wasn't picked up by the professionals in our societies, those whom we are paying to keep the general public abreast of such developments. The subject has become a particularly hot topic as laws governing so-called 'hate speech' are proliferating. As it turns out, this is Pomo's attempt at 'redistributing' free speech among unequal groups, at the expense of The Oppressor, through the soft power of political correctness. Hate speech laws are having kittens around the Western world, potentially turning it into an intellectual desert as debate and free enquiry are stifled. More about this all important subject in later instalments of this series.

Herbert Marcuse in 1974 made good on his threat, uttered after the failed Marxist revolutions of 1967 and 1968: "It will be resurrected in the universities". It is now filling the corridors of power, criminalizing opposing views, poisoning younger generations, and perverting Liberalism even further, as Leftist politics is by now fully usurped by Pomo.

Many have wondered: what's with the gross hyperbole, the unreasonable generalizations, from the downright insulting to the quasi sentimental baby-talk? "All hetero-sexual males are rapists", "Zionists are Nazis", "History is one wave of ethnic cleansing after another", alternated with dramatic, sentimental tugging of the heart strings.

Surreal equations abound, like: Hitler had a mustache, Stalin had a mustache, Hitler is the same as Stalin; a fundamental fallacy only forgivable if perpetrated by very young children. An exaggeration? Try this one. Speech is a weapon, because the sound-waves are beating against the eardrums. Heterosexuality, ditto an act of violence. Ayaan Hirsi Ali's polemics against Radical Islam have rendered her a 'warrior', an equation potentially endangering her life. Heck, I am even doing it myself as my fingers touch the keyboard, turning them into an entire arsenal of pyrotechnic weaponry with the purpose of vaporising Pomo.

This German cartoon "American Way" is equating a death cult suicide Jihadi with an the Americans' right to bear arms, a good illustration of Pomo's infantile inability to distinguish one essential difference from another: here, intent, legal status and ... hey, let's make this a "find the differences"! The winner, detecting the most, gets a copy of Hicks' "Explaining Pomo".

Another live example was Keith Ellison's recent irresponsible remarks involving 9/11 and the Reichstag. Where Pomo comes crawling in, reason takes flight by the backdoor!

And here it is again - that gross piece of Pomo 'art' - a measure of the perpetual scatological phase they cannot seem to outgrow; flea size, so the viewer can make his own choice whether the stomach is up to it.

To sane people this imagery has no relation with the real world whatsoever, but they just might persuade a few psychologically immature specimens of alternate reality in which pigs may fly. When just reading an introduction written by someone with the oxymoronic pen-name Badchristian, it occurred to me that the whole Emergent Church thing is probably hippy grandfathers' way of repenting before swapping the temporary with the permanence of the strawberry fields in heaven - as usual misguided, as they have been during the whole of their sad lives.

As seen in part 3 on the extraordinary Postmodern attitude towards language it is in keeping with the crypto Marxist principles in general - the lofty cause justifying any means - the rejection of morality by way of the denial of objective reality and truth [1], coating deliberate lies with an ineffective layer of intellectual justification. I cannot think why they bother.

As language is used as a weapon to convert or vanquish, no tactic is left untried. We will in due course have a look at a number of them, some methods and a few authors as well.

~ To be continued in Part 5: "Political Justification to Violence"... incitement to violence, or political justification to violence, hate speech ... we enter a world of infinite bile - of rancor, hatred, and contempt ... the hecatombs his followers piled up are - to the last million victims - implicit in the Manifesto ..." ~

The Marxist Revival (3): All Purpose Invective

~ Continued from Part 2: The Marxist Revival: The Epic Narrative ~

In Part 1 "The Lie at the Bottom" we saw that at the base of the covert strategy for spreading neo Marxist thought lurks the basic fallacy of the Primacy of Consciousness, or Subjectivism, or Relativism [1].

On a tactical level we find language, which to Postmoderns, signifies something entirely different than it does traditionally: it could be best described as rhetoric, characterised by gross generalisation, ludicrous equation and massive exaggeration, often giving quite another meaning to the word chutzpah: anything goes really, however aggressive and unreasonable. This approach can eventually be alternated with infantile, sentimental whining, or emotional manipulation and blackmail. As we have seen, given the Universal All Importance and the Nobility of The Cause, anything goes.

To Postmoderns language is not about the transfer of information related to reality, objective data flowing from one person to another. To Subjectivists language at best perhaps communicates the speaker's personal version of 'reality'.

All that is written ought to be in quotes and inverted commas, signifying the 'irony' with which any 'meaning' should be taken.

The spoken word is just personal bla-bla. You could set yourself the task of discovering what the speaker means to convey by his choice of words (deconstruction), but underneath that layer of bla-bla we would only find more personal, subjective yada-yada, a sheer endless process of deconstruction would have to take place.

Hicks in "Explaining Postmodernism": "There is no non-linguistic standard by which to distinguish between the literal and the metaphorical, the true and the false. Deconstruction is therefore in principle an unending process ... accordingly, Postmodernism recasts the nature of rhetoric: rhetoric is persuasion in the absence of cognition ... not to prove or disprove anything."

In other words: in the absence of objective reality, orators by any means possible try to persuade an audience of their personal version of reality. In yet another way: speech is rhetoric, is propaganda, is populism, is sophistry, is demagoguery in which reality and truth are subjective, and lies and fallacies are just another personal opinion.

Although Rorty was a notable exception, most Postmoderns see conflicts between groups as unavoidable (see above) and - after Rousseau, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer - in the absence of God as the Prime Mover, it is that which generates change and growth.

It does makes you wonder about the sincerety of all that talk of peace, non-violence and anti war: would that perhaps be the same logic by which Islam makes the distinction between the Dar-al-Harb and the Dar-al-Islam? War is absence of hegemony?

Given that fateful conflict, Postmoderns see and use language primarily as a weapon, which - apart from Koukl's Passive-Aggressive Tolerance Trick acting out on innocents and on misguided bystanders alike - explains the often unreasonable and intolerant nature of the debate with Postmoderns: from expletives to ad hominem attacks, rhetorical catch-as-catch-can wrestling - the catchwords being effect and proselytizing by any possible means - not by arguments or through persuasion, but by intellectual parlour tricks, sophistry and personal intimidation. No rules as practiced by the Debating Society, and certainly no quest for truth.

As crypto Marxist thought and Postmoderm abuse of language covertly insert itself in the various walks of life - from television talk shows to new approaches to 'intractable' problems in academia: from meta-psychology to forensic ethics and the judiciary - we'll devote a number of posts to this interesting subject.

~ To be continued: Part 4: The Marxist Revival: The Assault of Free Speech, "Many have wondered: what's with the gross hyperbole, the unreasonable generalizations, from the downright insulting to the quasi baby-talk? "All hetero-sexual males are rapists", "Zionists are Nazis", "History is one wave of ethnic cleansing after another" ~

The Straight Red Line (6): the Collective

~ Continued from Part 5: Love of Islam, Loathing of Self ~

With the Hicks explanation of Postmodernism and the Bezmenov revelation that the KGB has been subverting three generations of Western students from 1968 onwards (if not before), we have a direct line from the tenets held by the Relativist, Subjective philosophies [1] of the Counter-Enlightenment movement, on to Marxism and National Socialism (Nazism); the Middle Eastern varieties: Arab Nationalism and Pan-Arabism, the Baath Parties in Iraq and Syria, and Jihadism; Western style Social Democracy and Left Liberalism, Environmentalism, Multiculturalism and for the future, the post-democratic Transnational Progressivism; all these vicious ideologies sharing the same characteristics (see Chart I).

The straight red line starting with the Counter-Enlightenment, set in motion by Rousseau and picked up by the German pre-Romanticists and Romanticists, eventually led on the one hand to the Collectivist Left as represented by Marx and Engels, and on the other to the Collectivist Right in the philosophies of Kant, Herder, Fichte (the Headmaster from Hell) and Hegel.

We must realise that post World War II the Left have lodged a broad based and very succesful public relations offensive to wipe their own historical slate clean, and drop all that is debased and ugly in Totalitarianism in the Nazi lap. It's a stretch to even see Nazism today as Socialist, but from the outset the discussion between them was, which of the two was more Socialist, the actual historical Right being the faction that kept true to pre-revolutionary feudalism. We have been induced to forget that Nazism literally stood for National Socialism.

Just as the Left, the Right wing Socialists were real statists, often also fiercely nationalistic (not to be confused with patriotism which is merely pride of country). In contemporary terms perhaps the late President Milosevic of former Yugoslavia was most true to this type of politician. Right and Left wing Socialists had more in common than not, the enemy being Classical Liberalism that was seen as decayed, capitalist and its limited government by the people frowned upon as weak and anti government.

Apart from the same enemy, they shared Collectivism (anti individualism), statism (sometimes to the point of worship (Hegel)), education not seen as transfer of knowledge, but as today, as conditioning (socialization), both were pro revolution (justification of violence in the pursuit of centralized power), anti capitalist, and anti-Reason which was viewed - true to the period of Romanticism -as a totally inadequate source of knowledge. As increasingly today, emotion was deemed an infallible guide to morality.

World War I by one interpretation, might be considered a war of Collectivism on Liberalism, the outcome of which should have brought Socialism to Germany, the war industry already being footed on a Socialist basis. The defeat was devastating for the Collectivist Right. Due to the Left's succesful propaganda this might look odd, but in fact it was entirely possible to be a Socialist and a Marxist enemy simultaneously. The difference between Left and Right Socialism boiled down to intensity and method: the Left favouring a transnational point of view (the USSR, and later also the Warsaw Pact) - as they still do, today apparently being the epoch of the 4th International (feast you eyes on this piece of Marxist irrationality by which the hero is fitted out with almost supernatural powers) - and the Right favouring a method along cultural or ethnic fault-lines: to each nation and culture, its own form of Socialism.

Left and Right Collectivism share the same basic dimensions, as by sheer chance does Radical Islamism. Chance, or perhaps not. In the post "Yes my Friends, I Will Call for War" we have seen that Syria/Lebanon and Iraq found themselves as French colonies at the time of World War II, on the side of Vichy and Nazism; only afterwards, with very little adaptations necessary, these countries and Pan-Arab Nationalism as foreseen by Egypt's President Nasser, moved to the Nationalistic Left (Baathism), aligning themselves with the Soviet Union and the East bloc. (More insight here.)

In a separate process in the Middle East radicals adopted Islam as a political project, which is similarly characterized by the familiar dimensions: anti rationalism, Collectivism, Totalitarianism, Subjectivism and an Oppressor versus Oppressed dichotomy. Hence the natural and smooth cooperation in the Unholy Alliance with the Western remnants of the KGB subverts: the Postmodern Left. It is perhaps therefore not entirely by chance that the indispensable scape goat - to off-load the blame on for all that doesn't reflect the respective Utopias - happens to coincide as well ... yes, it's the infernal twins, Big Satan and Little Satan, Libertarian America and Jewish Israel.

The history and development of (urban) terrorism - Rousseau's political justification for irrational violence - runs directly from the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, to the nihilistic agit-props of imperial Russia of 1885 and the Revolution itself; Hitler's 1930's Freicorps and the Italian Fascist groups; the violence after the 'failed revolutions of 1967 and 1968 by the Baader Meinhoff Group and the Red Army Faction; to contemporary Hamas and Hizbollah, and the increasingly violent and always trivialized organized rioting of the Postmodern little fry: Autonomen, anarchists, anti-globalists and animal rights activists. All are battling the state, provoking revolution and war through violence, considering it a justified form of 'resistance' as legitimised by Rousseau, Marx and others (see Chart I).

Today's groups by the way are getting increasingly bolder and more violent as the Western police are tied by hands and feet by civil rights laws; the state of Lebanon is bravely trying to assert itself in the face of Syrian/Iranian pressure, and the Palestinian Authority has de facto ceased to exist.

The West in the meantime is moving towards a Postdemocratic era, its Collectivism becoming increasingly Totalitarian as a perverted form of Liberalism is elevated to the status of Transnational State Ideology (also euphemistically known as political correctness). Egged on by the Postmodern KGB remnants in government institutions, NGOism, education and the mainstream media, in the words of Theodor Dalrymple: "We are willingly adopting the mental habits of people under Totalitarianism". We ain't seen nothing yet.

~ To be continued in Part 7, Plotting against the West ~

The Straight Red Line (4): the Founders

~ Continued from Part III: the Really, Really Usefuls ~

Thanks to the 1984 interview with former KGB agent and Soviet defector Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov and the rather clever person who resurrected it and posted it on YouTube, we now know that this human time bomb was programmed to commit a massive act of treason. That was the whole point of the exercise of which the next stages were supposed to be destabilisation, crisis (revolution) and the consolidation of the Marxist/Leninist state in the West. We will come back to it in the next instalment of the series.

The Bezmenov interview is pertaining to the United States, but we can rest assured that the same program was worked in Western Europe with equal success, if not more so. The Soviet Union having collapsed for good reasons, the psychotic robots now seek to capitulate to the next best thing. Again, it may seem far fetched, but when one looks at the underlying characteristics and the forces at work, it makes perfect ideological sense.

Stephen Hicks in his book "Postmodernism Explained" outlines the philosophical development of subjectivist philosophy [1] since Rousseau, Kant and Hegel. As a reaction to the Enlightenment this school initially sought to accommodate faith, but soon went any other way in developing as a Counter-Enlightenment movement, in opposition to Reason at best, amazingly hostile towards it at worst. Rousseau is in a league of his own in this respect. With Kant we see a tacit approach: still Objective enough to hold that things do exist objectively outside of the mind, but from Hegel and the Irrationalists onwards, the development rapidly moves downhill, reason-ably speaking.

Subjectivist Postmodernism stands for the following characteristics:

- collectivism (as opposed to individualism, the Classical Liberal operative unit);
- reason is limited and constructed (reason being seen as an inferior and poor source of knowledge);
- reality does not exist outside of the mind (Kant's noumenon).

What follows is that Truth/Reality is relative, and that Reason must accept illogical contradictions (antinomies), of which Relativism is simply riddled, in these pages referred to as paradoxymora [2]! This is why we can argue against all the things that are logically wrong with Relativism (and Multiculturalism by extension) until we are blue in the face, the adherents know the antinomies to be part and parcel of the dogma, and a measure of their contempt of Realism and Reason!

Free Will is very much thrown into doubt, and Reality is created by contradictory (dialectic) forces, these being the cause of Growth and Change.

A number of social themes were formulated around the dialectic of the Oppressor versus the Oppressed (see Chart I). Multiculturalists today also speak in terms of a group's 'narrative'.

If Kant was just modestly placing a question mark in favour of Relativism, the later philosophies based on Kant are a hundred percent Subjective and Relativist. In the Counter-Enlightenment movement Hegel was followed by the theists Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard, and the atheists Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

- Schleiermacher: Reason is artificial and limited; Reality is accessible only through faith, emotions and instinct.
- Kierkegaard: choices are made in ignorance.

Atheists Schopenhauer and Nietzsche already show much more signs of our own contemporary Postmoderns: after Reason was rejected they found the return to religion by Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard a cowardly, sad act. Here we truly enter the realm of Totalitarianism and brutality we have come to know so well.

- Schopenhauer: Reality is deeply irrational; it is conflictual Will towards nothing; beyond comprehension. Only by our own Will and Feelings can we grasp Reality. Music - he suggested - could play a role in triggering required instincts.

Nietzsche, a proto Nazi and a Schopenhauer disciple, was completely Reason averse and a great admirer of the stupor brought on by orgiastic Bacchanalia and the frenzy of the Dionysia: consciousness is a weakness; Reason is a tool of weaklings. Meet the madman's platitude: "The yeasayer - the man of the future - will not be tempted to play word-games, but will tap into his deepest drives, his Will to Power and channel all of his instinctual energies in a vital new direction", which the Counter-Enlightenment movement proceeded to do. The rest, is history, partly still in the making: I posit we are yet in for another instalment of Unreason.

Things get even worse with Karl Marx, and Nazi philosopher, Heidegger:

- Reason is a superficial phenomenon;
- getting to the core of Being through Conflict and Contradiction.

Heidegger's Postmodern disciples of our generation are Foucault, Derrida and Rorty (recently deceased), the latter also a fan of Wittgenstein and one of American multiculturalism's founding fathers, Dewey.

I'll come back to these thinkers in some detail, but for now I would like to point out, the direction this irrational Counter-Enlightenment movement and its particular mindset, is taking us. From the Pantheism of the Greek and Roman classics, to the Metaphysics and altruism of Christianity in the Middle Ages, from Reason and Individual Liberty of the Enlightenment, to the Irrationalistic Collectivism - from thereon not backwards to medieval Christian thought where God lays out his Grand Plan for mankind - but to Man as God, to whom conflict is beneficial and the moving force of growth and change, and whose belief in life as a useless exercise in futility results in cynicism and nihilism: the belief that chaos is the natural state of Being and that feelings, emotions, and prime impulses are superior. Is this making any sense to anyone?

The result is a man who believes his ego to be the very centre of the universe, and goes so far as to state that if he isn't watching it, it isn't even there. Not a man who seeks to live according to an ideal that is larger than life, who is nor led by the force of Reason, but who takes primordial impulses and base instincts as his source of knowledge. It has so far led straight to three gigantic blood fests that have cost millions of lives and counting: the French Revolution, Nazism and Communism.

~ To be continued in Part 5, Love of Islam, Loathing of Self: a horror of a riddle: who wrote this? ~

The Straight Red Line (2): a Carnival of Fallacies

Continued from Part I: It's Communism After All

With the Stephen Hicks' explanation of Postmodernism and the Bezmenov revelation that the KGB has been subverting three generations of Western students from 1968 onwards, if not before then, we have a straight red line from the tenets held by the Relativist, Subjective philosophies of the Counter-Enlightenment movement (I'll come back in detail on that), on to Marxism and National Socialism (Nazism); the Middle Eastern varieties: Arab Nationalism and Panarabism, the Baath Parties in Iraq and Syria, and Jihadism; Western style Socialism, Social Democracy and Left Liberalism, Environmentalism, Multiculturalism and for the future, the post-democratic Transnational Progressivism.

All these vicious ideologies have a common philosophical source and have the same vital characteristics: they share collectivism as the operative unit (as opposed to the individual), they are subjective [1] and anti-reason, anti-capital or plain socialist, and the overall commonality: totalitarianism with a overlaying dichotomy of the Oppressor versus an Oppressed class, culture, religion, minority, gender, race, etc. No wonder there's a mutual attraction! Here's Chart I for The Straight Red Line, from Counter-Enlightenment onwards.

The resurrected Bezmenov interview is already being dismissed as an exaggeration, outdated and irrelevant. Part of the viciousness of the KGB subversion is, that the denial is an aspect of it: the general attitude at the time towards caveats issued by people who were on to it, was no different. It eerily underscores Bezmenov's commentary that the brain-washed generations have been rendered incapable of coming to conclusions on the basis of genuine information: the refusal to face reality, the desensitization for factual information, their incapability to pursue a path of logic: the perception of reality having been perverted by the KGB ideological de-moral-ization program.

You need to adopt the Relativist thought pattern to achieve just that, the suspension of natural law: truth does not exist, there's neither good nor bad. In other words: the KGB subversion program and Relativist thought are one and the same!

Regular readers may recognize the above: not only does it conform to what Dr Sanity describes as the psychological pathology that confuses mature adaptation to a changing reality, with myth and self-delusion - these form also the basics of the Relativist, Counter-Enlightenment thought of which Marxism is a subspecies: the absence of truth outside the consciousness (Kant's noumenon), the senses being considered unreliable sources of information, resulting in the absence of morality: right or wrong, good or bad, mentioned by Bezmenov as the prime cause of the success.

- What follows is that any personal act or opinion (in the absence of truth) is as good as any other;
- Then there is the confusion of ideas and concepts: fact with opinion, equal with identical, new with improvement, the person with his ideas;
- What to think of the perplexing problems with the Law of Cause and Effect;
- The polarizing tendency to adopt a manicheistic thought pattern and the inability to see shades and nuances;
- To say nothing of the historical and cultural barbarism of not differentiating one historical or cultural paradigm from another.

One fallacy after another form of twisted thought, topped up by the intellectual and psychological immaturity caused by an overprotective nanny state that is always available to pick up the pieces, should the personal relativist lifestyle of choice have given cause to unhoped trauma.

As the objective reality outside the brain is rejected, this idea results in perceiving oneself literally as the centre of the universe, giving rise to the idea that everybody is entitled to "do their own thing" along the high moral standard that all involved must consent and no one must get hurt: the Mill Paradigm, borrowed from Classical Liberal Enlightenment for once. Of course stripped of what might have led the idea to work: responsibility, caution and the acceptance of consequences.

I have made up a list of some fourteen fallacies in Postmodern thought, the so-called PMF (PostModernFallacies). The relevant posts in which the fallacies, inconsistencies or plain stupidities were discussed, are:

- Post-modernism's Fallacies I - numbers 1-5;
- Post-modernism's Fallacies II - nrs 6, 7, and 8;
- Post-modernism's Fallacies III - numbers 9, and 10;
- The PMF, an Update on the Culture War - number 11;
- Relativism on the Couch with Dr Pat II - number 12;
- Fallacy number 13 is in: The Master of the Universe - number13;
- Postmodern Fallacy #14: Relativism Leads to Historical Barbarism -14.

~ Continued at Part III: The Really, Really Usefuls ~

A Postmodern Coincidence

Last Friday 8th June in the post "Science: Waking Up to the Forces of Darkness" I mentioned the book by Stephen Hicks, "Explaining Postmodernism", to which I'll come back at length considering its importance.

The leading school of Postmodern (Relativist: Subjectivist, Counter-Enlightenment) thought is made up by the philosophers Kant and Hegel and subsequent Irrationalists Schopenhauer, Fichte, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and in the latest generation Marx, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, and the American Pragmatist Richard Rorty.

It so happens that on the day I wrote my piece - the last in that row - Richard Rorty, passed away.

Here is a rather beautiful obituary.

Science: Waking Up to the Forces of Darkness

After the series on transnational progressivism - a futuristic, dystopian, totalitarian, world view that will eliminate wars, pestilence, revolutions, borders, plurality voting, democracy as we know it (we are entering the Post Democratic era!), autonomy and nationalities, a vista that has attracted proponents left, right and centre, among whom, if I am not gravely mistaken, quite a few royals - it is perhaps useful to add a few words on the other enemies of the nation-state, the postmoderns, be it that they hate the status quo for entirely different reasons. But the objectives coincide, perhaps fatally so.

Objectivist philosopher Stephen Hicks has written the book on postmodernism. He uses an insightful classification: not Left, and certainly not Right, but Counter-Enlightenment. In view of the Liberal moral bankruptcy and rampant degeneracy that - at particularly vulnerable times - makes radical Islam seem almost preferable, one can easily see that Liberalism has had its day and is over the hill. But putting 'paid' to all blessings of Reason altogether, is like throwing the baby away with the bath water.

I am working my way at present through the small tome written by Hicks. It is a thin booklet for the good reason there isn't that much to say on the subject, postmodernism being largely hot air produced by immature mad men with a bent for the surreal; still, on account of its deliberately confusing influence on the brain, reading it is also quite a tedious pastime.

Let me start by saying that - although the work I have been doing here for the last half year or so - has been done quite independently and without much reference work by others (there isn't much anyway), my findings are to a large extent borne out by the professional work carried out by Hicks, with the exception of the rather smart classification. Consequently, I will take nothing back of what I've written in these pages on the subject. If anything, the concept of postmodernism is even more politically driven, more intellectually and philosophically vacuous, and anything as pernicious as maintained.

This piece of drivel has been around since Hegel and the German Counter-Enlightenment movement of Schopenhauer, Fichte, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and after them Marx, Derrida, Rorty, Foucault and Lyotard; currently it has taken over the arts, the mainstream media, a number of segments of Leftist political parties, entire university faculties and other places and institutions of (higher) learning: but the first public evidence that science has woken up to the danger it finds itself in, is dated 28th May 2007 - that's right: a week ago!

In evidence is one A4 size article written by one of The Guardian's science commentators, James Randerson titled "Dawkins' Christmas card list". It is all the more a strain on credulity, as this particular newspaper is almost entirely dedicated to all things avant garde in ultra Left and postmodern thinking: a colleague Guardian pet columnist of said Messrs Dawkins and Randerson is multicultural prophet Timothy Garton Ash, one of the Three-fold Kings of the Borg ("... resistance is futile, prepare to be assimilated ..."). Are we to understand the gentlemen never rub shoulders on Christmas parties, having a good tête-a-tête about the finer points of the latest rage in Leftist thought?

"Science, and the rationalist movement in general, face a 'sinister challenge' from leftwing thinkers who promote cultural relativism", evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is quoted to have said during an event organised by the newspaper. Dawkins has quite a few opinions and not always in reference to the subject of evolutionary biology exclusively. He is the author of "The God Delusion" and other virulently Christophobic literature.

Fellow panelist at the same event was geneticist Steve Jones of University College London and "The Guardian Science Experiment". Speaking to the event's tag line "Have we abandoned the enlightenment?", he reserved special venom for the animal rights movement, which he attacked as 'stridently anti-rational'. So much hurt are these radical atheists by the forces of darkness that they'd almost - almost - embrace traditional Christianity as somewhat 'enlightened'! Spare me the amateur operetics!

In the light of what we know about postmodernism, about said learned gentlemen and their relationship to ultra Left leaning Al-Guardian, the above is simply astonishing! I will of course return to Hicks' book on the subject in detail, but let me say that postmodernism is a reaction to and rejects all, the Enlightenment stands for: reason, science, technology, free market capitalism, you name it: if it has been beneficial to mankind, postmodernism rejects it. Ergo, science and the Left are opposing, mutually exclusive entities!

Postmodernism, according to Hicks "the end result of the Counter-Enlightenment attack on reason" offers no alternative philosophy to Liberalism, in which all the postmodern bogies have condensed. Instead it simply embraces all that is Liberalism's opposite: anti-rationalism, anti-knowledge, anti-technology, anti-capitalism, anti-free market economy, anti the empiric method (postmodernism is unfalsifiable and of course, as it doesn't recognize science anyway, it doesn't feel obliged to make any sense as long as the other objectives are met).

If you've ever wondered as I have, where today's leading role for emotions stems from, this might be your answer. Jung's findings that "sentimentality is a superstructure that covers brutality", in this respect sounds particularly apt. Let's say, postmodernism is a form of adolescent anti-intellectualism bordering psychosis.

Alternatively, if you are familiar with Marx' works, with a few minor updates, you get an idea what the boys and girls of postmodernity are up to: just read Power for Capitalism, Minority Group for Class, and Emotion for Reason. Or a short meditation on the works of Salvador Dali or M.C. Escher might also be sufficient for some insight.

Let me put it yet in another way: it is like somebody has concluded that The Enemy is a white, rich, male individual whose strength is the power of reason. The answer therefore is the mobilization against him of all other collective minorities - non-whites, women, the under-privileged - and attack the power base of reason. As the Enlightenment shaped the world, postmoderns strive to re-shape it through the Counter-Enlightenment movement.

While proponents cannot even claim having an answer to any of the big questions, or they'd commit their first oxymoron - the first of many, I might add - of all the adherents around it is apparently only Richard Rorty who has enough professional honour to care about the fact! The rest finds the whole thing of reason, fallacies and oxymora one huge joke in the light of their meaning of life, taking over where Marxism left off: the demolition of the blessings of The Enlightenment and Liberalism.

It explains Fjordman's and my own suspicion that postmoderns aren't remotely interested if their rants make any sense or not, or if their pseudo philosophy contains a hundred or three hundred oxymora. Apart from an apparent obsession with phallic symbols (of which a good many weapons, like missiles and arrows) and other objects with the power of penetration, the symbol i representing the square root of negative one seems a problem as well, as is the making of the speed of light the fastest phenomenon, thereby unfairly privileging it over other speeds! As they don't recognize science, they constantly confuse scientific fact with opinion.

Let me wrap this item up for the time being with a few quotes from postmodern intellectuals. As they themselves hardly believe a word they're saying, please note that the gems of Post-structuralism are using language merely 'ironically'. Enjoy the next quotes and note the chief characteristics: gross generalization coupled with dramatic exaggeration, put together in naive baby talk (mommy, why are people making war?):

"Postmodernism seeks not to find the foundation and the conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change. The task of postmodern professors is to help students spot, confront and work against the political horrors of one's time".
Frank Lentricchia, 1983

"All my analysis are against the idea of universal necessities in human existence. It is meaningless to speak in the name of - or against - Reason, Truth, Knowledge."
Michel Foucault, 1988

"Reason is the ultimate language of madness - there is nothing to guide or constrain our thoughts and feelings. So we can do or say what we feel like".
Michel Foucault, 1965

"Deconstruction relieves me of the obligation to be right ... and demands only that I be interesting."
Stanley Fish, 1982

"Reason and Power are one and the same. Both lead to and are synonymous with prisons, prohibitions, selection process, the public good."
Jean-François Lyotard, 1999

And let's not forget the comic feminist, Miss Dworkin who is unquotable in decent company, but who typifies the effect of male sexuality on women in military terms, with an invasion.