Comments on: Cathedral History

By: drunkenrabbit

drunkenrabbit — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 03:06:28 +0000

There’s a tendency to overestimate the influence of Jews in the propagation of progressive ideologies. As a historically vulnerable minority, European Jews tended to heavily favor the left because that was where they could have a home. A Jew couldn’t truly be secure in the Hapsburg empire because he wasn’t Catholic, a Jew couldn’t be truly secure in imperial Germany because he wasn’t an ethnic German. But anyone in the world can be a good socialist or liberal democrat, because with those ideologies faith and ethnicity are irrelevant. The heavy Jewish involvement in neoconservativism makes perfect sense, because in the post-war America that fully accepted Judaism as part of Eisenhower’s “Judeo-Christian civilization” and fully accepted the Ellis Island generation of immigrants, it was possible to be fully Jewish and fully American.

But these ideologies needed to preexist and have strong indigenous support in order for Jews to join them. Jewish participation in Bolshevism wasn’t because it was a Jewish creation, it was because it finally offered a way for Russian Jews to be on the same side as the peasants that had previously subjected them to pogroms.

By: drunkenrabbit

drunkenrabbit — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 02:56:27 +0000

Islam is just as universalist and traditionalist, but it hasn’t exhibited the same effects.

By: drunkenrabbit

drunkenrabbit — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 02:55:05 +0000

That’s the legacy of the Enlightenment. Kant just exemplified its tendencies (within nominal Christianity). The attempt to find truly pure “first principles” and slavishly adhere to them is the cornerstone of every modern ideology from communism to libertarianism. Even the classical “racism”/imperialism of the late 19th century was based on the same ideas — the attempt to divide humanity into a few distinct groups, and the exultation of a particular national character as an ideology (“mission civilatrice” etc.) Pre-Enlightenment thought was just an amalgam of Christianity, local traditions, and transactional politics, without any attempt to find a grand unified ideology that swept away all the dross.

By: Lord Auch

Lord Auch — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 23:47:01 +0000

In re jewish jokes: one of the (several) endearing traits of Zizek’s work is his ability to incorporate jewish and communist jokes to make salient points.

By: vxxc2014

vxxc2014 — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 23:19:23 +0000

The problem is with Human Nature being fallen.

Instead of perfect.

Still.

By: an inanimate aluminum tube

an inanimate aluminum tube — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 17:43:43 +0000

“Demotic tendencies can show-up anywhere.”

Is demotism really the right word for what we’re talking about in this post?

By: pseudo-chrysostom

pseudo-chrysostom — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 16:41:40 +0000

the problem is thinking in terms of categorical imperatives, a tendency that has afflicted a great press of humanity far before kant ever came around (though he greatly exacerbated the consequences of the defect once he reified it).

By: strelkov

strelkov — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 16:00:49 +0000

I’d also add the mohists just for kicks.

Demotic tendencies can show-up anywhere. I think the difference is that with these other schools, they were one strand of thought among many; whereas, once Christianity shows-up, it kind of takes-over and traps all moral language in a universalist-altruist snare, so that particularist or anti-demotist statements are much harder to articulate.

By: Hurlock

Hurlock — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 15:39:36 +0000

On the Gracchi – you are oversimplifying. The older brother, Tiberius, was simply trying to stabilize the situation in Rome after the Nobles had been able to acquire large chunks of land who before that belonged to the plebeians. This happened during the many wars which Rome wages, when the plebeian soldiers were away of their land and couldn’t properly care for it. It started losing value and soon the patricians started buying it off en masse, thus the plebeians started to lose a lot of property. This of course widened the inequality and the plebeians started feeling resentment towards the patricians, who on their part looked down on the plebeians. The internal tension was threatening the unity of the Republic and Tiberius realized that and tried to pass a reform which would helf redistribute some of the land previously held by the plebeians back to them, thus easing the tension. He was assassinated.

It was his younger brother who proposed some much more radical reforms which could be termed ‘demotic’.

Otherwise yes, I agree with the overall point.

By: Lesser Bull

Lesser Bull — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 15:27:12 +0000

You see signs of the same thing among the Gracchi and the Stoics. Universal brotherhood, wanting to widen the franchise, equality, etc.

the problem is with humanity itself