The Roots or Western Self-Destruction

Or, Who is Antonio Gramsci?

Today's political climate is more poisonous than ever. People say and do things and are then criticized by their opponents. Those on the receiving end of the criticism point out that their opponents say and do things which are far worse. Accusations of self-interest and bias and dishonesty are exchanged. And round and round we go.

But really the disagreements are not about whether a particular action is good or bad, or honest or dishonest, but rather we are seeing a clash of conflicting presuppositions. Opposing worldviews are fighting for supremacy, but largely without acknowledging their fundamental differences about the meaning of goodness and truth.

The following two articles explain the fundamental assumptions which have crept into the American and Western society over the last century, as will as their origin and purpose. 

• Gramscian damage - Eric Raymond
• Suicidalism - Eric Raymond

Here is the short-list of what Eric Raymond calls "memetic weapons":

1. There is no truth, only competing agendas.
2. All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.
3. There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.
4. The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.
5. Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.
6. The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)
7. For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.
8. When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

Each of these propositions is demonstrably false, meaningless or self-contradictory. However they still operate as very powerful forces in our culture for the following reasons.

The Partial Truth

Each of these propositions may have some partial truth in particular circumstances. For example, the West truly does have a history of racism and colonialism. But that is different than saying the West is largely characterised by, or built upon, or identical to racism and colonialism.

Thus a specific fact in certain circumstances is exaggerated to the extent that it becomes a falsehood. And the fact that there is some kernel of truth in there somewhere gives the exaggeration great power in the minds of some. The additional fact that there are millions of counter-examples to demonstrate that the generalization is false is only considered a rationalization, or an attempt to gloss over the hard truth.

Societal Acceptance

Everyone craves societal acceptance, and these propositions are largely embraced by society's famous and powerful people. Most entertainers, media personalities, prominent athletes, college professors, government bureaucrats, and business tycoons either promote or cooperatively accept these propositions. And anyone who wants to get along, must go along or face ostracism.

Cold War Fallout

The Cold War’s Most Dangerous Legacy - Jonah Goldberg

To me, the most obvious dangerous legacy of the Cold War would have to be the damage the Soviets did to the world. I don’t mean the millions they murdered; those dead do not threaten us now, even if they should haunt us.

I mean the relentless distortion of the truth, the psychological violence they visited on the West and the World via their useful idiots and their agents. I’m thinking not merely of the intellectual corruption of the American Left (which even folks like Richard Rorty had to concede), but the corruption of reformers and their movements around the globe. Soviet propaganda still contaminates, while nuclear fallout does not. Lies about America, the West, and the nature of democratic capitalism live on throughout the third world and in radioactive pockets on American campuses.

The Soviet effort to foster wars of national liberation, to poison the minds of the “Bandung Generation,” to deracinate cultures from their own indigenous building blocks of democracy, to destroy non-Marxist competitors interested in reform, to create evil and despotic regimes that are seen as “authentic” because they represent the “true will” of their subjugated and beaten down peoples: these seem to me to amount to the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. Not least because it was those sorts of efforts that gave birth to North Korea in the first place.