Mike’s recent post on the Frankfurt School ignited a discussion which I haven’t commented on yet because the idea the Frankfurt School caused modern progressivism seems nigh undeniable; I thought his post was simply a restatement of the basics rather than anything controversial. That being said it also undeniable that progressivism preceded the Frankfurt School. It wasn’t Frankfurters who beheaded King Charles.
The puritan hypothesis seems like a good explanation for the general current of English progressivism that has slowly been leading to liberalism and “enlightenment”, while the Frankfurt School created a particularly virulent strain of the progressive mind virus that increased the viciousness and destructiveness of the ideological meme. I don’t really see how these are in contradiction.
On a similar note, when discussing the general trend of puritan-derived progressivism around here we tend to use the terms ultracalvinism, hyperprotestantism, puritanism, non-theistic Christians, etc. This brings up objections from many Christians who object to the use of these terms as nonsensical verbal games or simply wrong because there is no Christianity without Christ.
I’ve written before. the identification of ‘non-theistic Christians’ is not a verbal game but I have also written before of how the essence of Christianity is Christ, so I can identify with the objections to talking of a Christianity apart from Christ. As I wrote before, the concept of the ‘non-theistic Christian’ is useful as it illustrates the fundamentally religious nature of progressivism as well the mental confusion of self-proclaimed ‘rationalists’ and ‘atheists’ engaging in such religious absolutism.
So instead, of ultracalvinists, hyperprotestants, non-theistic Christians, etc. I propose we start using the terms post-Christians or post-Puritans. This illustrates progressivism’s cladistic lineage while also avoiding the objections that progressivism isn’t Christian in essence.
Progressivism traces from the masonic Enlightenment, to the East India Company and (bankster) Templarism, to various gnostic and goddess sects, and ultimately to ancient Egypt and Babylon, whose cultural and legal precepts are conserved especially in America. The assumed Equality of men and women was fundamental to ancient Babylonian society.
Certainly the Frankfurt School was a one of the many modern launching pads for these old cults — chiefly developing modern political and mass-psychological tactics.
Changing the terms used also costs us the useful reminder that Progressivism did arise from Christianity. It may raise some objections, but the warning is worth the discomfort. It is easy to blame Progressive ideology on an Other, like the Jews, the Frankfurt School, or the Puritans. The hard part is examining our own culpability.
Change the language to obscure the truth and avoid giving offense when the truth is plainly spoken? Where have I heard that before?
The terms also serve a purpose as a rebuke of those who would take their faith too far. No one especially enjoys being corrected, but discipline and truth are worth it.
The Shadowed Knight
Paulianity , rejection of the Biblical Law of the OT, was always a pre-Christian pagan belief system, which is made more explicit in later medieval antinominian writings. Protestantism , Marcionism, is consistent with this tradition, progressive-ism then being essentially a demonic heretical sect birthed in the Ottoman diaspora:
…
In the medieval period, prior to the rise of Shabbetai Zevi in the seventeenth century, the seeds of antinomianism were being sown in Jewish mystical works. According to Isaiah Tishby in Mishnat Ha-Zohar, the anonymous author of the later strata of the Zohar, the Ra’ya Mehemna and the Tikkunei ha-Zohar, expressed antinomian ideas, although they were neither overtly negative nor inchoate. Even in terms of the changes in the law in the messianic era, the antinomian elements in these works were a little ambiguous and not fully developed. It is Tishby’s view, however, that the author of the Ra’ya Mehemna had an anti-Talmudic disposition that ultimately signified an antagonism towards rabbinic religious authority of his day.3
These works emphasized through various typologies, a superiority of a supernal or more spiritual Torah called Torah de-Atziluth, over an earthly Torah of Halakhah, termed Torah de-Beriah. The former Torah is pre-existent, without limitations, and is superior to the latter. The theology maintains that, because of the sin of man, the supernal Torah could not appear in this world without a covering. The mystical writings view the earthly Torah as a necessary protective garment for the supernal Torah within the historical world, and only in the messianic era will the latter’s essence be revealed in full. Because of the implied hierarchy between the two Torot, a danger arose in diminishing the importance of the Torah of creation. Tishby confirms that other mystical works of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such as the Sefer ha-Peliah and the Sefer ha-Kanah, also have an antinomian bent.
…
I believe with perfect faith that this Torah (of Moses) cannot be exchanged and that there will be no other Torah; only the commandments have been abolished, but the Torah remains binding forever and to all eternities.39
The paradox is explicable by understanding the two kinds of Torah that existed for them. Like other Sabbateans, they believed in two aspects of Torah-Torah de-Beriah plus Torah de-Atziluth, which would only be revealed at the time of redemption. Because redemption was not yet complete, the Torah of Creation still reigned until the second coming of the messiah. The Doenmeh’s belief in the supremacy of the supernal Torah led to exploring many freedoms, with particular emphasis on sexual license. They married only among themselves, avoiding both Jews and Muslims. They were known for their freedom of exchanging wives during sexual intimacy and in this regard many opponents arose, including Abraham Cardoso, who accused the Doenmeh of being “foolish victims of demons.”40 The Beth Din of Thessaloniki, which did not consider them Jews, caused them to leave the city for Constantinople, where the majority continued to live.
http://www.kesherjournal.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=57:tracing-the-antinomian-trajectory-within-sabbatean-messianism&catid=21:issue-18&Itemid=422
Well, you see, many just see religion as a nice pre-existing worldly structure to infiltrate and redefine according to their needs.
So, put succinctly, Progressivism is a Christian heresy?
Yes, which is fitting because Protestantism is a Christian heresy, and the fruit of a poisoned tree is itself poison.
By their fruits you shall know them.
Well said, theasdgamer and Doc.
More Generally, all organized religions are moral heresy. Im probably on a slightly different page from most of you here, but all humans should be concerned about he sabbatean psychos and their death cult.
Thanks for posting on this FN, obviously it’s a pet peeve of mine. It’s ultimately a simple problem of equivocation. It confuses “cultural Christianity”, e.g. the social customs, mores, habits, etc. of societies where Christianity was widely practiced, with the actual content of Christianity the religion, which I cannot emphasize enough absolutely requires belief in the divinity and resurrection of Christ. In this second sense you could have a social club that meets every week in a cathedral, wears elaborate robes, sings old songs in Latin, and believes people should love one another and repent of their wrongdoing, but if they don’t believe in salvation through Christ they are no more Christian than ISIS. If we want to talk about ideas this is the way we have to understand it.
Incidentally, this concept of “cladistic analysis” of ideas comes up a lot. I don’t put much stock in it. People aren’t motivated primarily by ideas (Haidt has some good research on this), and in fact often tweak their ideas after the fact to justify their behaviors. It can be cute to comment on how this or that ideological group drifted in its beliefs over time, frequently winding up very far from where they started (even “progressivism” means something very different today than 100 years ago), but this only underlines how intellectual fads tend to follow, rather than drive, social and economic changes.
Speaking of which, here’s a good example of why this “cladistics” stuff is nonsense: I used to believe that an all-volunteer military was best. I later read some things that persuaded me that a draft was actually better. Now, my new belief shares many superficial trappings with the old one: the idea that we should have an army, that it should be made up of citizens, etc. Of course, it also dropped the central thesis of the old belief for its exact opposite, but clearly that just means it *evolved* from the old belief. Obviously draft-ism is just a genetic offshoot of volunteer-ism. And really, let’s cut to the chase: draft-ism IS volunteer-ism! See what I mean? It’s intellectual 3-card monte.
I gather you use “non-theistic Christian” as a pejorative to highlight the logical incoherence of progressivism. I guess I see what you’re saying but the language already has a perfectly good word for Christians who abandon belief in God: “atheist”. It’s especially good because it could not possibly be confused with a variation, sect, or “offshoot” of actual Christianity. I’m honestly not a huge fan of “post-Christian” either, insofar as it connotes that we have gloriously transcended Christianity to a bold new moral paradigm (just as Silicon Valley crows about our new “post-industrial” economy), but I don’t mean to nitpick the word choice you use on your own blog.
I’ll quit ranting now, but for further reading here’s a great thread from MPC that says it all much better than I could:
http://mpcdot.com/forums/topic/7699-revenge-of-the-dark-enlightenment/
Excellent post sir. Your post dovetails nicely into this article in Firs Things: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/02/christian-and-countercultural
You are better off looking at the sources for modernity then blaming any ideological reasoning. Frankfurt intent, for what it is, in itself has no legs. Blaming ideology itself is what the higher ups want you to believe, because they want you to believe that their ideas have power, of which they actually don’t. These Moldbug-isms are on par with conspiracy theories (you know, that heathen that makes no sense), they take a lot of brains and links to connect in your head, but they are overdone and they have little hold when looking at history as a whole or modern reality which has more to do with the impact of mediums and post-industrialisation. Charles the first and the history of that era flows just like any other history, placing emphasis on one event is delusional. Blaming the puritans, one group for progressive problems is very American and very stupid, post-Puritan patterns have been seen around the world, how do you account for them? How do you account for major historical movements SINCE the puritans? How do you account for the fact that the Puritans (or rather, their sons and daughters) themselves changed massively in their ideals?
The Puritan hypothesis is not a good explanation because it is downright stupid, it explains NOTHING. Not only does it not make sense historically, since you know, much of the time Puritans had none of these ideals. For all you know, the beheading of the King and his son’s return could have empowered the monarchy! You don’t know because stupid theories are stupid. “oh but look! The descendants of the Puritans did that civil war thing?!” You mean after it was a Southern man who split the USA from their homeland? And yes, as far as I know, that southern man was a descendant of Royalists. See, this is why your theories are stupid; a man of royalist blood leads the charge on becoming a nation without royalty. The exact same thing can be said of the Puritans. You know why? Because the Puritans were people, they weren’t an ideological movement. People change, movements come and go. And by taking up that thought, that there is this ‘idea curse’ somewhere, your basis for thought is as bad as Marx thought that also sees a warped version of history. Added note: Saul to Paul. Saul was talented before his conversion, he was talented after, God changed his focus, the same can be said about any one person or group.
As long as some continue to use these idiotic and naive theories (and unbalanced), any reactionary that has them in mind is doomed to fail, whether you blame Puritans, Frankfurt, William the Conqueror the sacking of Constantinople. How about you start looking to our relation to mediums, and whether it was actually beneficially for the upper classes to suddenly switch from aristocracy to liberalism in the early 20th century? How we view the world by our immediate reality has far more to do with liberal movements than some small group of overzealous yeomen.
Oddly there is nary a word about Judaist influence on any of the earlier movements, nor their success in the “ingroup v. Outgroup” competition in Europe and eventually all of the “West.” Note that is was but short years after Luther nailed the Thesis to the door of the Cathedral that he, being the odd man out in European Christendom, found himself being heavily courted and befriended by the Jews. It was even a shorter period between the advent of their efforts with him and the publication of his piece, “The Jews and Their Lies.”
It would behoove the readership to become familiar with Prof. Kevin MacDonald’s works, particularly “Separation and It’s Discontents” and even more so with “The Culture of Critique.” As he notes and quite correctly so, since its inception the Catholic Church erected barriers of many sorts to protect Christians from Jewish predation and influence, and later in defense from both the Judaists and the Muslims as well. With the “success” of the Reformation, the walls fell down in Christendom because it was now a “House Divided.” Broken pieces are always more easily splintered.
I find the terms Modernist, Leftist, and cultural degenerate to be fine descriptions of these people myself.
Indeed it is fair to point out the idiocy of people like Dawkins who insult Christianity from Christianity’s own couch, the worldview that created not only the civilization that allowed them to even live as well as the foundation for the very science they practice. And still they reject it. Why? Because Christianity is a religion of absolutes. Absolutes will never satisfy the Modernist, for they are inflexible and ‘mean’. They entail that some people are right and others are wrong.
De Maistre once said of the sweeping tide of ‘rationalism’ that it was the most dangerous thing to ever introduce to the public at large, for a world based on pure rationality is a world of chaos, not order. It is a world where what is true today is proved false tomorrow. It is a world with a revolution every 5 minutes at the cost of incalculable damage and upheaval. Rationalism is the gun pointed at society’s head for in it man may find an excuse to overthrow ANY authority that is over him, even his own!
@John
True, the Protestant-Jew alliance against Christendom goes back to the beginnings of the so called ‘reformation’.