http://attackthesystem.com/the-ideology-of-totalitarian-humanism/
The Ideology of Totalitarian Humanism
Many on the alternative Right are inclined to refer to PC as “cultural Marxism.” In some ways, this is an apt metaphor, as the PC ideology bears a resemblance to the reductionist concept of class antagonism that orthodox Marxism advances. If the dualistic class dichotomy of “proletarians and bourgeoisie” is replaced with a newer dichotomy pitting feminist women, minorities, gays, immigrants, the transgendered and others having been or believed to be oppressed against the “hegemony” of “straight, white, Christian, males,” then similarities between PC and Marxism do indeed emerge. However, PC could in some ways be compared with totalitarianism from the other end of the political spectrum. If the duality of “Aryans” believed to be oppressed by and in mortal struggle with “the Jews” is replaced with the aforementioned dichotomy advanced by PC, a reductionism of comparable crudity likewise becomes apparent. Yet it would seem to me that such metaphors as “cultural Marxism” or “liberal Nazism” are not really the best characterizations of PC.
The best label for PC I ever encountered was “totalitarian humanism.” I can’t take credit for this term. I lifted it from an anonymous underground writer some years ago. Read the original essay here. Here’s a particularly enlightened part:
When one looks up the word ‘Humanism’ in an encyclopedia it states that Humanism is an ideology which focuses on the importance of every single human being. That it is an “ideology which emphasizes the value of the individual human being and its ability to develop into a harmonic and culturally aware personality”. This sounds fair enough, right? Indeed it does, but it is my firm belief that the explanation here does not match the humanism of our time.
The so-called Humanists I have met have been putting a strong emphasis on humanity as a gigantic community rather than on the individual. Often one will even find alleged humanists who insist that the views, aspirations and basic happiness of indigenous Europeans is of no importance. Instead, these Humanists say, indigenous Europeans should bow down and forget about their own wants and desires for the greater good of humanity. The greater good of Humanity usually seems to be to take no interest in Europe’s cultural heritage and integrate into a grey, world-wide, uniform “globalization” with the Coca-Cola-culture as loadstar.
Totalitarian humanism is a derivative of the classical Jacobin ideology that loves an abstract and universal “humanity” so much that its proponents don’t care what has to be done to individual human beings or particular human cultures in order to advance their ideals. Perhaps the best summary of the political outlook of totalitarian humanism was provided by the maverick psychiatrist and critic of the “therapeutic state,” Thomas Szasz:
In the nineteenth century, a liberal was a person who championed individual liberty in a context of laissez-faire economics, who defined liberty as the absence of coercion, and who regarded the state as an ever-present threat to personal freedom and responsibility. Today, a liberal is a person who champions social justice in a context of socialist economics, who defines liberty as access to the means for a good life, and who regards the state as a benevolent provider whose duty is to protect people from poverty, racism, sexism, illness, and drugs.
Dr. Szasz wrote this passage nearly twenty years ago. Nowadays, the laundry list of “poverty, racism, sexism, illness, and drugs” might be lengthened to include classism, ageism, homophobia, xenophobia, ableism, looksism, fatphobia, thinism, beautyism, transphobia, producerism, “appearance discrimination,” speciesism, adultcentrism, pedophobia, chronocentrism, and other creative efforts at dictionary expansion. Likewise, the therapeutic component of totalitarian humanism has expanded so as to include the supposed necessity of state action to save us all from fatty foods, salt, smoking, and soda vending machines in public schools. Like all totalitarian ideologies, totalitarian humanism has its contradictions, hypocrisies, and absurdities. For instance, public acts of anal intercourse are regarded as virtuous and courageous manifestations of human liberation and personal fulfillment, while smoking in bars or even in strip clubs is a grave menace to public health. Suggestive music videos and violent video games are symptomatic of an oppressively patriarchal and testosterone-fueled society, while surgically altering one’s “gender identity” is just routine day-to-day business, like getting a tattoo.
As one with something of a taste for the bizarre and eccentric, I might find the PC circus to be little more than a philistine but amusing bit of outrageous entertainment, akin to professional wrestling or the old freak shows of carnivals past, if it weren’t for the fact that these folks are hell-bent on imposing their “ideals” on the rest of us by force of the state. Totalitarian humanism is a war on sovereignty. It is a war on the sovereignty of individuals against arbitrary and coercive authority, the sovereignty of non-state institutions against political authority, the sovereignty of organic communities against a centralized leviathan, the sovereignty of nations against global entities, the sovereignty of history, tradition, and culture against prescriptive and prohibitive ideology. Totalitarian humanism is an effort to reduce all of us to the level of dependent serfs on a plantation ruled by an army of overly zealous concerned mommies and busy-body social workers backed up by the S.W.A.T. team and paramilitary police. Give me beautyism or give me death.
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I think this is a great article and potentially very useful if somebody wanted to try and turn the tables on those it describes in the article. Thanks for sharing.
It is not a “metaphor” to describe P.C. as “cultural Marxism” – it is what it is (and I am astonished that Mr Preston does not know this – as it is hardly a secret).
“Political Correctness” was developed by the Frankfurt School of cultural Marxism – and brought to the United States by individuals of this school who went to Columbia university in New York (some also went to California).
The point of it is that the Marxists (or this faction of them) felt that “the workers” in Germany had failed the revolution by not supporting full Marxism in Germany after the First World War (the “Majority Socialists”, the SPD, being seen as “traitors” by the hardcore Marxists – even though a form of Marxism was the official doctrine of the SPD right till 1959).
Therefore other “victim” groups had to be found (ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals…..) and convinced (slowly and cleverly) that their problems (real or supposed) were due to “capitalist society”. That the hostility of the world against X group was due to (or a side effect of) the culture of “capitalism” (the interests of “the rich” and “big business”). Of course only the truly “enlightened” would be told the full story (that “capitalism” was to blame for everything) – the mass of the “victim” group would just be (cleverly) led along. Ditto wider society where people would be made to feel sympathy for the “persecution” of X group and (the more “enlightened” of them at least) led to the conclusion that “capitalism” (“big business” and so on) were to blame – at least indirectly.
Hence the “Political Correctness” tactic – later developed into the “Critical Theory” tactic.
None of this is secret information – and, again, I am astonished that Mr Preston does not appear to know this.
By the way – if I understand what Mr Preston means by “alternative right”…..
They did not coin the idea of “cultural Marxism” (the Frankfurt School Marxists did – they are the inventors of P.C. – just as they are the inventors of the “Critical Theory” tactic, of “unmasking” the “fact” that traditional history, law, economics…… serve “the interests of the rich capitalists” of “big business”).
Also the “alternative right” (if by this term Mr Preston means the Black Shirt types) often also blame everything on “transnational big business” and “the rich capitalists” – just as the Marxists do.
Thus the supposed arch enemies of the Marxists – are actually (whether they know it or not) pushing forward the Marxist agenda. Even if in the cartoons (and so on) of the “alternative right” the “capitalists” tend to have big noses for some reason………..
Anti Semitism is indeed the “socialism of fools” – but that does not mean that orthodox socialism is any better.
Indeed as Paul Johnson points out in his “A History of the Jews” – Karl Marx took the rantings of Martin Luther against the Jews (the old Martin Luther when he was in dreadful pain from his terminal illness) and applied them, sometimes word-for-word against “the capitalists” – although Karl Marx appears to have invented the line that businessmen were “inwardly circumcised Jews” himself (yes I do not know how he kept forgetting his own ethnic origins either).
Paul Marks,
I am aware of the analysis of intellectual history that traces the roots of PC to the Frankfurt School. I’ve actually discussed that in some of my other writings on this topic. Case in point: http://libertarianalliance.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/keith-preston-on-the-new-totalitarianism/
This is also the perspective advanced by some American paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan and William S. Lind. I’m aware of the arguments for this perspective and I think they carry much weight. But I think PC is best understood as a convergence of forces. One of these is the “cultural Marxism” of the Frankfurt School, and along with it Herbert Marcuse’s concept of “repressive tolerance.” Another is left-wing “progressive” Christianity of the kind that Paul Gottfried, Murray Rothbard,some European New Right and some Objectivist writers have discussed. Another influence on the development of PC appears to be Maoist ideology of the kind that arose during the Cultural Revolution and was imported into the West via the fringe of the New Left. David Heleniak has argued that PC can be traced to the thought of Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Counter-Enlightenment. The “therapeutic state” analysis advanced by Szasz also carries much weight, and the idea of the state as the guardian of one’s health just as the church is the guardian of one’s soul is another stream of thought that has helped to make PC what it is.
Mr Preston I am glad that you understand that P.C. is a Marxist tactic, and that you understand that Karl Marx did not invent collectivist thinking – as well Rousseau (who Karl Marx repeatedly seems to have taken concepts from) there are also the German philosophical and economic thinkers before Karl Marx.
Maoism is also a variety of Marxism – with the same false doctrine that poverty is caused by the rich (that employers AS A SYSTEM “exploit” employees). Although in an odd way “the rich” may have been to blame for the tens of millions of deaths by starvation under Mao – as private donors funded the Teacher Training College where Mao was taught Marxism (I suspect that the local businessmen who gave money to the college were unaware of what it taught).
Mao was the eldest son of a farmer – but he refused to do any farm work, His father asked him once – but Mao threatened to throw himself down the well (rather than work), if only his father had said “go on then – do it”.
Even by the standards of Marxism Mao was a nightmare – even Stalin (monster though he was) had some common sense, Mao had none at all (as his campaign to exterminate birds, which led to plague of insects, and his campaign to get local communities to make steel in their back yards, the product was totally usable, shows).
As for “Progressive Christians” – the basic question is as follows…….
Do they add Marxist economics (blaming everything on “the rich”, on “big business”) to a sincere belief in God and individual survival after death?
Or is their “Christianity” FAKE – with no real faith in an individual being called God, and no real belief in individual survival after death?
I tend to believe the later about many “Progressive Christians” (“Social Gospel” types, “Liberation Theology” types and so on), but then I tend to judge people harshly.
When I am in doubt, I tend to assume guilt.
Not the way of the Common Law.
As we’ve often discussed before, I see PC as a syncresis of things, including the one we call “cultural marxism”, but not just cultural marxism. In the same way that, say, Christianity has strong roots in Judaism, but it would be wrong to say that Christianity is Judaism. So I agree with Keith Preston in that sense.
One example is something I’ve discussed a lot, which is the way PC addresses sexuality. Although the New Left boomers cleaved in the 60s/70s to something hedonistic, the movement has long since (primarily under Feminist influence) developed a moralistic and puritanical approach to sex which is the very opposite of Marcuse’s replacement of “repression” with “polymorphous perversity”. In topical terms, it’s going to be interesting watching the PC police digging up the cadavers of old closeted pooves as they open Parliament’s dusty closets looking for skeletons in the coming months.
The Marxists try to use the P.C. tactic to undermine belief in “capitalist society” – to turn people against “the rich” and “big business”. This is not surprising as the Marxists invented the P.C. tactic – just as they invented the “Critical Theory” tactic.
For example, the late Andrew Breitbart was taught “Critical Theory” stuff in college – and was also taught to sneer “McCarthyite” at anyone who suggested it had a socialist agenda. The he looked into the background of the leading developers of “Critical Theory” – and lo and behold….. they were indeed Marxists.
Of course one can find other influences – even really strange ones.
For example, those few nutters in Bavaria back in the 1700s wrote letters to each other (basically “our-evil-plan-is-as-follows” Republic films bad guy stuff) about how to undermine the family (via convincing women to be hostile to it) and so on, as a way of undermining private property (especially large scale private property in the means of production, distribution and exchange).
But how much influence did the Bavarian “Illuminated Ones” have in 20th century (and 21st century) universities?
Not much – about as much as Christians I would guess.