Sage Advice

 

 

 

Jordan Peterson is wise and cautionary In many ways. When he was asked how people should react to being threatened with a loss of job at work for speaking out, he recommends that they speak out, for that is their moral duty, even if it could hurt them and their family.

 

He added that one can do the hard thing now, or face it later when the world is a much more corrupt and tyrannical disaster grows out of lesser evil that we failed to prevent from stopping its spread earlier when it was weaker and less pervasive.

 

When reality pushes evil into our presence, we are to fight it immediately and resolutely.

Fostering Hatred

 

Eric Hoffer, on Pages 97 to 99, of his book The True Believer, describes how unit and self-sacrifice encourage people to hate. I quote him and then respond to his content.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “                             77

 

Unity and self-sacrifice, of themselves, even when fostered by the most noble means, produce a facility for hating. Even when men league themselves mightily together to promote tolerance and peace on earth, they are likely to be violently intolerant towards those not of a like mind.”

 

My response: This paragraph cinches it for me; Hoffer is a rational egoist that does not think people are born good, that being good is individualistic and that being bad is collectivistic; that noble efforts to aid the public increase group-living; the accompanying decline in self-love experienced by the other-centered participants, increases hatred and injustice in the world: Hoffer is warning that even the well-intentioned, desire by do-gooders to impel the young to spend their lives in self-sacrificing for the common good is fraught with risk. To challenge the young to live their lives as idealistic social justice warriors is actually an invitation for these children to grow altruist evil in the world.

 

This is why idealists and ideologies make the world worse. Their vaunted idealism and their celebrated cause must be kept individually implemented and unholy (not a holy cause worshiped and spread by true believers), or the unleashed mass movement smashes up worse an already hurting world.

 

Note that Hoffer worries that united, self-sacrificing idealists increase their internal private level of hatred and their assembled level of hatred; to mix that with true believer participation in a mass movement, then fanaticism, violence, tyranny, and warring all inevitably follow.

 

H: “The estrangement from the self, without which there can be neither selflessness or a full assimilation of the individual into a compact whole, produces, as already mentioned, a proclivity towards passionate attitudes, including passionate hatred.”

 

My response: Hoffer never invented my peculiar kind of rational egoism or Mavellonialism, but he anticipated it. I have inferred from his writings that he believed that people were not basically good and that if goodness is defined as sensible, sublime self-interest, and evil is defined as selflessness especially a selfish, destructive kind that tarnishes the self and others. He would promote a moral theory that would be egoist-altruist, rather than altruist-egoist which most American Jews and Christians espouse.

 

Above Hoffer notes that the estrangement from the self is the price paid for the individual to become consciously selfless in behavior and lifestyle; the self is annihilated by the self and by the welcoming mass movement handlers, so that the self can be fully assimilated into the compact whole. Hoffer is an ethical moderate too: because the regards the true believer as an evil, defective, morally handicapped, and passionate, that means the fanatic’s will is ruled by the collective will, and that his personal will is dominated by his emotions, especially his extreme, excessive emotions, his passions. Notice that the passionate state of mind of the true believer, in all of its unleashed selfless tendency is a creature throbbing with passionate hatred of the self, of God, of others and Being itself. Hatred is evil and love is good.

 

This tragic, unhappy creature is a wicked hull of a human being now, reduced to dying, if called for, for a cause most certainly not worth dying for.

 

Here, in this sentence, is enumerated by Hoffer, all the essential characteristics of Mavellonialist morality.

 

H: “There are also other factors which favor the growth of hatred in an atmosphere of unity and selflessness. The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others.”

 

My response: Note that the true believer, selfless and the living, pure avatar of altruist-collectivist ethics taken to its logical conclusion, is a person that feels justified in being harsh and ruthless towards others, under the justification of enforcing the ideological purity of his chosen holy cause upon unbelievers at the point of the sword, the club the whip. Rarely can a selfish, self-interested individualist so mistreat others, and feel justified with his behavior.

 

H: “The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual is a humble person. The truth is that the surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance. The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a prince disguised in meekness, who is destined to inherit the earth and the kingdom of heaven too. He who is not of his faith is evil; he who will not listen will perish.”

 

My response: I urge that a great soul, thought very self-confident, be modest and measured in speech, writing, communication, and behavior. Since he is with God, and loves the self, good deities, and others, he must treat everyone, including himself with courtesy, truth and diplomacy, dignity and respect. Good manners are obligatory. Boorish, unpleasant public displays—things like strutting, confrontation, arrogance, and bragging are condemned, but the selfless with their holy cause will theatrically demonstrate these rude, in-your-face behaviors in public.

 

H: “There is also this: when we renounce the self and become part of a compact whole, we not only renounce personal advantage but are also rid of personal responsibility. There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgment. When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom—freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame or remorse.”

 

My response: The concept of the individual as the sovereign idea of the West, which seems right, is a concept promoted by Jordan Peterson. Implicit within this view of the individual is that the individual qua individual is the person with a soul, a free will, and conscience; his groups cannot be sent to heaven or hell for their collective actions, but the individual can go to hell for his sins, or to heaven for his virtues, and through having accepted the gift of grace to be saved from Jesus and other good deities.

 

I believe in and accept this moral characterization of the individual, but take it one step farther, that since the individual and his freely selected choices make him the locus of moral obligation, why should we then assume that altruist-collective morality, rather than adopting egoist-individual-collective morality, is the way for him to be good?

 

If there can only be moral choice and moral improvement achievable on the individual level, and group morality, group-living, group identity and group rights are irrelevant to moral growth why are we pushing altruist-collective ethics? It seems to be that collective moral decisions are either amoral at best or are downright immoral if designated as the primary way of acting decently in the world.

 

How else can we explain what Hoffer reports just above? If joining a mass movement, at least in the mind of the individual true believer—if not, according to God, for we never lose or are released by God from our personal responsibility for every choice we make—that we are absolved of any responsibility for how we behave or what crimes we commit for the cause, then it is immoral to join a mass movement. It is immoral to be primarily or solely motivated by self-sacrifice. It is immoral to live only or primarily in accordance with an altruist-collective morality.

 

H: “Herein undoubtedly lies part of the attractiveness of mass movements. We find there the ‘right to dishonour,’ which according to Dostoevsky has an irresistible fascination. Hitler had a contemptuous opinion of the brutality of the autonomous individual. ‘Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook.”

 

My response: Here we have it from two experts (the moral Hoffer and the demonic Hitler) on collective morality: Hoffer condemns pure collective morality unleashed from all private moral restraint, as practiced, and exhibited by true believers pushing their ideology (their holy cause); there are no limits on their cruelty and savagery. There is something demonic about a mass movement raging across a society like what Mao’s young people unleashed upon society during the Cultural Revolution.

 

Hitler, a living devil, knew that individual cruelty could not compete with collective cruelty with its firm, spiritual (ideological base). Hitler approved of collectivist morality which he knew was evil, and he sneered at individual morality because it could not compete at being evil enough to suit the purposes of his Nazi mass movement.

 

Ironically, Hitler recognized that egoism is mostly good, and that altruism is mostly evil, and his evil morality praises rational egoism, in a strictly negative, hostile way, for he promoted altruism-collectivism to build and spread his Third Reich.

 

H: “Thus hatred is not only a means of unification but also its product. Renan says we have never, since the world began, heard of a merciful nation. Nor, one may add, have we heard of a merciful church or a merciful revolutionary party. The hatred and cruelty which have their source in selfishness are ineffectual things compared with the venom and ruthlessness born of selflessness.”

 

My response: So unifying or joining a collective is not only fostered by hatred but hatred is also the product of unification. If evil (self-hatred or other-hatred, both included) is hatred, and love is good, and unifying individuals together grows hatred or evil, is it not recommendable that be true, logical, sensible and ethically desirable is to be very careful about how much we unify people, or how it is structured. We are social creatures and we need to belong and join to some degree to be happy, healthy, sane, good, normal and to stave off loneliness, and to survive as a species, but altruist ethics and group-living have dominated human societies for too long, with much evil being tolerated and produced out of a wicked morality, which is lied about and referred to as moral and desirable.

 

If we did not have altruist ethics and group-living as our moral norms, in “good, quiet times” in functioning social orders around the world, the precondition, for allowing mass movements to arise and inflict terrible harm and damage upon humanity, would be eliminated and not exist. A society of anarchist-individuator supercitizens, living and running a laissez-faire, constitutional republic, would not be an evil people ruled by destructive altruist-collective morality in quiet, stable times, or during times of chaos, lawlessness, revolution, and mass movements coming to the fore.

 

H; “When we see the bloodshed, terror and destruction born of such generous enthusiasms as the love of God, love of Christ, love of a nation, compassion for the oppressed and so on, we usually blame this shameful perversion on a cynical, power-hungry leadership. Actually, it is the unification set in motion by these enthusiasms, rather than the manipulations of a scheming leadership, that transmutes noble impulses into a reality of hatred and violence. The deindividualization which is a prerequisite for thorough integration and selfless dedication is also, to a considerable extent, a process of dehumanization. The torture chamber is a corporate institution.”

 

My response: No one that writes that the torture chamber is a corporate institution could, if pressed, proclaim that unqualified altruist morality is the moral ideal.

 

Hoffer blames mass movements for dehumanizing the individual, and en masse true believers are capable of great deeds and great atrocities.

 

Notice that the holy causes, isms, and ideologies that are spreading hell across the earth can be done in the name of God and Jesus; there are passages in the Bible and all sacred texts that do or seem to promote drastic, extreme behaviors as ethically proper for believes to engage, but there are Biblical passages urging prudence and caution too.

 

 

Feeling Lowest

 

Eric Hoffer, on Pages 96 and 97 of his book, The True Believer, writes the social impact of our feeling we are the lowest of humanity. I quote him and then comment of his content.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “                                74

 

It seems that when we are oppressed by the knowledge of our worthlessness we do not see ourselves as lower than some and higher than others, but as lower than the lowest of mankind. We hate then the whole world, and we pour out our wrath upon the whole of creation.”

 

My response: Again, Hoffer never referred to himself as an egoist, but he sure sounds like one here. Where people, especially groups of frustrated individuals seeking or finding a refuge in a mass movement, naturally corrupt, naturally selfless and self-loathing, sense their own worthlessness, their resentment, bitterness, and utter self-hatred and bankrupt sense of self-esteem paradoxically expressed by them in view and behavior as self-indulgent willingness to destroy the world, feel worthless, that rage will be vented on wiping out all humans and being itself. These are some quite dangerous, nihilistic people on the march.

 

Without self-esteem, self-realization and a moral compass guiding the individual, any nightmare is conceivable when humanity is thrashing about in agony and vented frustration.

 

H: “There is a deep reassurance for the frustrated in witnessing the downfall of the fortunate and the disgrace of the righteous. They see in a general downfall an approach to the brotherhood of all. Chaos, like the grave, is a haven of equality. Their burning conviction that there must be a new life and a new order is fueled by the realization that the old one will have to be razed to the ground before the new one can be built. Their clamor for a millennium is shot through with a hatred for all that exists, and a craving for the end of the world.”

 

My response: If the Evil Spirits can arrange things to their advantage—and they often succeed at getting the social upper hand—if they are able to so frustrate the citizens so they become true believers, these altruist mob-dwellers of no self-esteem and maximum, concentrated self-hatred, will hate all of existence, and they will fight to the death so the holy cause they serve wholeheartedly, is the hammer that smashes Being and Cosmos into a pummeled set of shards smacked to smithereens.

 

H: “                                                            75

 

Passionate hatred can give hatred and meaning to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.”

 

My response: People, even atheists or especially atheist as it were, will not tolerate a meaning vacuum (no God, no love, no sensible metanarrative to live for and by) in their lives for very long. Realizing and gaining healthy self-esteem, happiness, contentment, fulfillment and a sense purpose and self-realizing in dedicating oneself to serving the Good Spirits is an ideal means of bringing meaning and love into one’s life, helping oneself and everyone else in the process, hurting none.

 

The nonindividuating, selfless, altruistic joiners cannot bring self-esteem and love into their barren lives because they have come to believe that such blessings and comforts can never be had or recovered by them. This nearly unforgivable sin of concluding things are irretrievably hopeless for their self-identities—something Jesus and the Holy Spirits and Good Spirits never suggested—is not so, but they have come to believe that their situation is hopeless.

 

From this juncture forward, passionate hatred and a fanatical grievance gained by joining a mass movement and serving a holy cause, will give them purpose and focus—let the world beware of these true believers cut loose upon society.

 

H: “                                                                  76

 

Whether it is true or not as Pascal says that ‘all men by nature hate each other,’ and that love and charity are only ‘a feint and false image for at bottom they are but hate,’ one cannot escape the impression that hatred is an all-pervading ingredient in the compounds and combinations of our inner life. All our enthusiasms, devotions, passions and hopes, when they decompose, release hatred. On the other hand it is possible to synthesize an enthusiasm, a devotion and a hope by activating hatred. Said Martin Luther: ‘When my heart is cold and I cannot pray as I should I scourge myself with the thought of the impiety and ingratitude of my enemies, the Pope and his accomplices and vermin, and Zwingli, so that my heart swells with righteous indignation and hatred and I can say with warmth and vehement: ‘Holy be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done!’ And the hotter I grow the more ardent do my prayers become.”

 

My response: Both Pascal and Hoffer did not believe people were basic good and that motive of hatred played a huge even major role in motivating human thoughts, feelings, talk and actions. Hate is a more primal force in us that dominates love.

 

Only as individualists and loners can we develop healthy character and good will sufficient enough to love ourselves and others, and thereby channel our self-loathing into constructive canals of boating.

Worth Admiring

 

From Page 94 through Page 96 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer writes of how we hae more deeply those we admire than those we admire less, or not at all and this is another one of his paradoxes unfolding. We should love more those that we admire, one would think, but we do not naturally feel good about ourselves so we hate more those we should not hate than those we more legitimately hate. Wow! Here is Hoffer whom I quote and then respond to.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “                              73

 

It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise. The Japanese had an advantage over us in that they admired us more than we admired them. They could hate us more fervently than we could hate them. The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners. An American hatred for a fellow American (for Hoover or Roosevelt) is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners. It is of interest that the backward South shows more xenophobia than the rest of the country. Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.”

 

My response: I could seek woke Leftists having a meltdown over this paragraph. First, it seems that we hate more the enemy with much good in him than one that is more bad, so the more superior someone is to us or is perceived to be to us by us (We are all naturally made equal by God, so if there is superiority or inferiority in intelligence, talent, or character it is based on hard work and effort, not much attributable to genetic gift.), the we target for pain and hurt that  someone. That superior someone is somewhat that we hate more than someone that is inferior to us or whom we categorize as inferior to us.

 

This is an altruistic, unexpected, warped, twisted thinking pattern. If we loved ourselves, and were self-realizing, we would not need to hate ourselves or anyone else, and we would be improving ourselves, and not much concerned with worrying about what others are doing, whether their merited status is superior or inferior to our own. Where we are group-oriented, that is where hatred comes in and all these weird, conflicted views about others and ourselves get all bound up, and this is what Hoffer seems to be saying.

 

 Hoffer is not claiming that Americans naturally are superior to foreigners or the Japanese (or not much); what he is laying out is that the democratic, individualistic culture of America makes this country superior, and that people from any other nation could compete just fine if they come to America or adopt at home its political framework, constitution, economic theory and practice, making its culture and way of life, their own. It not that Americans are inherently superior to the Japanese or the foreigners, but the American individualistic and capitalist culture is very superior, and that is why Americans feel superior and should, but it is a bit better behavior on average based on culture not racial or ethnic natural superiority.

 

If everywhere people were maverizers, then they would not have to feel inferior anyone, so their attitude towards others domestically or foreign, would be more impartial, less wound up, more objective, more fair, less hateful, and less biased for or against anyone, than what is their behavior and character as it is, as we can judge with color-blind detachment. I think Hoffer would agree that contented individuators would not make frustrated true believers, and that the world would be a better place for the transition and transformation.

 

Hoffer’s way of writing could be construed as racist, sexist, Islamophobic or chauvinistic, and there may be a trace of that in his thinking, but I am convinced that he believes that people are fundamentally equal, but they need to express themselves mostly as individuals not joiners. All the strange lies and jealous destructive behaviors that he is describing and cataloguing in The True Believer are consistent with a race of intelligent beings that are born sick and groupist, and live group-oriented lives, and their pathologies and wasted games stem from their not knowing how to live, in accordance with their altruistic-collectivist morality that , ironically, makes them unenviable, sub-performing,  crowd-hugging, fantasy-embracing, selfish, conformist narcissists.

 

 

H: “The undercurrent of admiration in hatred manifests itself in the inclination to imitate those we hate. Thus every mass movement shapes itself after its specific devil. Christianity at its height realized the image of the antichrist. The Jacobins practiced all of the evils of the tyranny they had risen against. Soviet Russia is realizing the purest and most colossal example of monopolistic capitalism. Hitler took the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion for his guide and textbook; he followed them ‘down to the veriest detail.’”

 

My response: Here is another paradox and it is bone-chilling in its ramifications. It seems that Hoffer is pointing out that those that the mass movement or group of haters most admire are the ones it will grudgingly imitate and be obsessed with, but the mob will also identify that superior (superior by merit not nature, no natural elitism at work here) element is the hated devil, and they will destroy their target, this target, while grudgingly imitating them.

 

An individuators, unlike the mediocre joiner, is able to learn from someone smarter, kinder and more talented without needing to justify mistreating that person emulated—as is customarily engaged in by the mean, jealous joiners-- by socially gaining revenge by accentuating that this superior someone’s objective excellence is proportional to her subjective, social inferiority to the mediocre joiner. The joiners get revenge on the superior person by scapegoating onto her in the social arena, where she lacks standing commensurate to the socially superior nonindiviuator. And the joiner is right: the individual can be superior in intelligence, wisdom work performance, artistic creativity, and moral integrity, but that very superiority has a reverse downside in the world of social interplay and existing: there, in that arena, the superior individual will not fit in and there the superior person is locally inferior in terms of social rank and popularity. These two metrics are the only ones that matter for nonindividuating joiners, for social rank is all they live for and is all they think matters. Socially they are superior to successful individuators, individuals and other ethnic groups that achieve more than one own ethnic group.

 

Individuators can learn from someone superior without needing to exact any revenge on that neighboring person, who by their mere existence by propinquity, make the nearby joiner feel inferior because he is. He needs to up his game and catch up with his superior neighbor. The inferior joiner can catch up, but it takes will, confidence and a lot of hard work, so it is just easier to deny the whole thing (the requirement that the joiner adjust and grow), and afterward resort to a return to what the joiner does excel at, social ranking and scapegoating games.

 

By contrast, the excelling loner, is under no compulsion to inflict upon the superior person that he has met and will emulate, the need not pay for being identified as and actually being superior in some way to the individuator that recognizes this actuality in the superior person, for making the individuator feel inferior. The individuators recognizes that he is inferior to the superior person in some way, but is not overly bothered by this accurate comparison, because he is confident enough to know this and learn from it without exacting revenge on her that is superior to him.

 

We do not want to send the message that becoming superior by merit is an action that will be punished by the mob that admires but resent one that stands out and betters herself. We want to reward and encourage excellence and sensible risk-taking.

 

In other words, those that dare to leave the group, and become successful individuals in some way to some degree, are the most unpopular and hated, marginalized element of society, and they are given special negative attention, ostracized, attacked, ghettoized socially but also sometimes geographically, and them sometimes liquidated as an individual or class. Some reward for becoming exceptional.

 

We will not be civilized until we tolerate and approve of superior individual effort, uniqueness, and separate values. We become more civilized when we are rewarding liberty over enforced equality, and we do not worry about what neighbors are doing. We must treat everyone largely the same, not where and when some groups are put on a pedestal and some groups are outcasted, marginalizes or assigned lower caste, untouchable status.

 

H: “It is startling to see how the oppressed almost invariably shape themselves in the image of their hated oppressors. That the evil men do lives after them is partly due to the fact that those that have reason to hate the evil most shape themselves after it and thus perpetuate it. It is obvious, therefore, that the influence of the fanatic is bound to be out of all proportion to his abilities. Both by converging and antagonizing, he shapes the world in his image. Fanatic Christianity put its imprint upon the ancient world both by gaining adherents and by evoking in its pagan opponents a strange fervor and a new ruthlessness. Hitler imposed himself upon the world by promoting Nazism and by forcing the democracies to become zealous, intolerant and ruthless. Communist Russia shapes both its adherents and its opponents in its image.”

 

My response: It is almost impossible to comprehend, without updated Mavellonialist perspective, how rich and multifaced, on many layers, was what Hoffer wrote in the True Believer in just a single sentence like this one from Page 95: It is startling to see how the oppressed almost invariably shape themselves in the image of their hated oppressors.

 

The act of oppressing, especially if the abuser or oppressor is a class of haves oppressing, abusing, degrading, tyrannizing, and exploiting as class of have-nots, perhaps of a different race, ethnic background, or denomination, is often a group effort with group identity more than the abuser being an isolated individual, though that occurs too.

 

The oppressed are genuinely suffering, and they hate their masters and mistresses but imitate them. Their attitude is: I will not learn anything positive from you, but will just incorporate into our group-identity your worst practices: I will revolt, overthrow you oppressors, and then I will be the new oppressor, and inflict the corruption, mistreatment, injusctice and malevolent hurt upon you, the new and now vanquished, lower class, and now you shall pay for your centuries of abuse.

 

We see this with the proponents of CRT: the post-1965 legal status of national color-blindness and fair, equal treatment of each individual American, regardless of race, gender, gender-orientation, color or creed or class, is not enough. The woke racialists aspire to take over; they want to rule as an elite group going forward: they want to do unto whitey what was done onto them in America until the 1960s. Social justice is not about gaining equality: it is about pure revenge, minority supremacy in America and reverse discrimination, and they might well eventually put whites into concentration camps and gas chambers. They are totalitarian haters with the worst, vile Nazi instincts imaginable.

 

The oppressed can only not imitate their oppressors if they refuse to imitate them, saying I will not do unto you as you did unto me or my ancestors. I will be an anarchist-individuator supercitizen so that the caste system rule by elites with oppression, exploitation, tyranny, power struggle, conflicts, and violent competition between rival tribes’ ceases.

 

It needs to be replaced by peace, cooperation in a political and social atmosphere of much individual liberty, commerce and free-trading, with tolerance and coexistence guaranteed and desired between all gently competing individuals in that community or society, where none oppress anyone, and none accept being oppressed by anyone. I think this was all implicit in this sentence from Hoffer, which I quoted above.

 

It is groups of the oppressed that that perpetuate evil by imitating it rather than learning from it, and fanatics are wicked oppressors and aggressors, so the whole world reacts to them and  is lowered and become more zealous, intolerant and ruthless as a result. We are affected by what our mass-movementized neighbors do and pull.

 

H: “Thus, though hatred is a convenient instrument for mobilizing a community for defense, it does not, in the long run, come cheap. We pay for it by losing all or many of the values we have set out to defend.

 

Hitler, who sensed the undercurrent of admiration in hatred, drew a remarkable conclusion. It is of utmost importance, he said, that the National Socialist should seek and deserve the violent hatred of his enemies. Such hatred would be proof of the superiority of the National Socialist faith. ‘The best yardstick for the value of his (the National Socialist’s) attitude, for the sincerity of his conviction, and the force of his will is the hostility he receives from the . . . enemy.’”

 

Guilty Conscience

 

On Pages 93 and 94 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer has some short sections on how hatred is a cementing agent fostering heightened unity among fanatics inside a mass movement. I quote him and then will comment of what he writes there.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “                             69

 

The hatred that springs more from self-contempt than from a legitimate grievance is seen in the intimate connection between hatred and a guilty conscience.

 

There is perhaps no surer way of infecting ourselves with virulent hatred toward a person than by doing him a grave injustice. That others have a just grievance against us is a more potent reason for hating them than that we have a just grievance against them. We do not make people humble and meek when we show them their guilt and cause them to be ashamed of themselves. We are more likely to stir their arrogance and rouse in them a reckless aggressiveness. Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.

 

There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness.”

 

My response: This terrifying Hofferian paradox demonstrates how twisted humans are from birth: we feel the most guilt and self-contempt (which we drowned out and suppress self-righteously, arrogantly and then attack again and worse, the just accuser who never did anything to us in the first place) towards those with a just grievance against us. We hate less and treat more fairly those that we have a just grievance against.

 

Those victimized that are blameless are the ones that will be victimized more and worse with passing time by the abuser and hater, who lies monstrously and increasingly to justify to himself his attacking someone who has done nothing to him.

 

H: “                                                            70

 

To wrong those we hate is only to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.”

 

My response: Here is another paradox: We are most cruel to those we hate after we have hurt them some more; the kinder we are to them, the less we hated them.

 

H: “                                                           71

 

The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wrong, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave open to the door to self-contempt.”

 

My response: When we are group-oriented, especially as a zealot, our state of immorality, cruelty, and acted-out hatred onto our favorite scapegoat, wholly innocent and undeserving of abuse and attack, our guilty conscience and self-contempt (if we accepted it consciously—which we deny and rationalize) would make life unbearable. To compensate, we double down and triple down on our persecution of our victim, convincing ourselves that she is monstrous, and is getting what is her due. The more deserving she is of kindness and reprieve, the less will she receive it from us, for she will receive neither pity nor mercy from us.

 

H: “                                                         72

 

A sublime religion inevitably generates a strong feeling of guilt. There is an unavoidable contrast between loftiness of profession and imperfection of practice. And, as one would expect, the feeling of guilt promotes hate and brazenness. Thus it seems that the more sublime the faith the more virulent the hatred it breeds.”

 

My response: Now Mavellonialism is a sublime faith, urging everyone to self-realize as a living angel in service to the Good Spirits. If this provokes a powerful sense of guilt in sinners failing to maverize, then the cruelty they expend towards victims will be singularly vicious and murderous. Now, just as individualism and individuating are coming into moral prominenc, we could anticipate that the cruelty and malice of the collectivists towards other groups, foreigners, minorities, and individualists will be as bad as has ever been committed.

 

Potential victims should stay armed to the teeth and the young must be taught egoist-individualist ethics, so they practice what is preached, so they do not group-live, feel so guilty and then act out cruelly their hatred of victims.

 

 

 

 

Allied

 

 

On Pages 92 and 93 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer writes of the dark, sinister motives that best and most easily incite people to unite. Here is what he wrote there, and I then respond to it.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “We do not usually look for allies when we love. Indeed, we often look on those who love with us as rivals and trespassers. But we always look for allies when we hate.”

 

My response: If we are individuals when we love and we then do not seek allies, and when we hate, we seek allies, this seem an implicit agreement, by Hoffer, of what Ayn Rand and I believe: that love is self-interest and individualistic, and hatred is other-interest and collectivistic, thereby then we seek and find willing allies.

 

H: “It is understandable that we should look for others to side with us when we have a just grievance and crave to retaliate against those who wronged us. The puzzling thing is when our hatred does not spring from a visible grievance and does not seem justified, the desire for allies becomes more pressing. It is chiefly the unreasonable hatreds that drive us to merge  with those that hate as we do, and it is this kind of hatred that serves as one of the most effective cementing agents.”

 

My response: Here is another Hofferian paradox: we hate the most and seek allies the most when the target of our hatred has not wronged us, so our hatred of them is without cause or justification. The less justified we are in hating our innocent victim—who we identify as our devil—the deeper, crueler, and more vicious will be our hatred, and the more than we seek allies because we need numbers to lie with us to ourselves and each other, because, deep down and inside, we know it is all a cruel fabrication. And, the most unreasonable and vicious hatred is, the more it unites the group, and that is truly scary, sinister, and tough to combat.

 

H: “Whence come these unreasonable hatreds, and why their unifying effect? They are the expression of a desperate effort to suppress an awareness of our inadequacy, worthlessness, guilt and other shortcomings of the self. Self-contempt is here transmuted into hatred of others—and there is a most determined and persistent effort to mask this switch.”

 

My response: Note that self-loathing and a collapse of self-esteem is transmuted into attacking and hating others, and this is what human nature and the altruist-collectivist morality contribute to and cause.

 

H: “Obviously, the most effective way of doing this is to find others, as many as possible, to hate as we do. Here more than anywhere else we need general consent, and much of our proselytizing consists perhaps in infecting others not with our brand of faith but with our particular brand of unreasonable hatred.

 

Even in the case of a just grievance, our hatred comes less from a wrong done to us than from the consciousness of our helplessness, inadequacy and cowardice—in other words from self-contempt. When we feel superior to our tormentors, we are likely to despise them, even pity them, but not hate them. That the relation between grievance and hatred is not simple and direct is also seen from the fact that the released hatred is not always directed against those who wronged us. Often, when we are wronged by one person, we turn our hatred on a wholly unrelated person or group. Russians, bullied by Stalin’s secret police, are easily inflamed against ‘capitalist warmongers’; Germans, aggrieved by the Versailles Treaty, avenged themselves by exterminating Jews; Zulus, oppressed by Boers, butcher Hindus; white trash, exploited by Dixiecrats, lynch Negroes.

 

Self-contempt produces in man ‘the most unjust and criminal passions imaginable, for he conceives a mortal hatred against that truth which blames him and convinces him of his faults.”

 

My response: It is often the historical occurrence, that wrong persons do not latch out against the powerful wrongdoers, but scapegoat, venting their anger and hatred on those less powerful than themselves, and even more socially vulnerable and unpopular.

Ideal

 

Hoffer was an atheist, but he writes a lot about the demagogue, guru or ruler of a mass movement offering the true believers of his movement an ideal devil to hate. Could this be that Hoffer is subconsciously a believer, that an all-powerful foe to hate gets the assembled masses revved up to target the monster and enemy, is actually a demon? Who knows.

 

Hoffer, on Pages 91 and 92 of his book, The True Believer, Hoffer writes about devils, and I respond to what is written.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “                                     67

 

It seems that, like the ideal deity, the ideal devil is one. We have it from Hitler—the foremost authority on devils—that the genius of a great leader consists in concentrating all hatred on a single foe, making even ‘adversaries far removed from one another seem to belong to a single category.’ When Hitler picked the Jew as his devil, he peopled practically the whole world outside of Germany with Jews or those that worked for them. ‘Behind England, stands Israel, and behind France, and behind the United States.’ Stalin, too, adheres to the monotheistic principle when picking a devil. Formerly this devil was a fascist; now he is an American plutocrat.”

 

My response: It matters not if the person or group of people assigned the title “devil’ is guilty or innocent. The result is the same: centralized hatred of one devil unites the true believers better than any other motive.

 

H: “Again, like the ideal deity, the ideal devil is omnipotent and omnipresent. When Hitler was asked if he was not attributing rather too much importance to the Jews, he exclaimed: ‘No, no, no! . . . It is impossible to exaggerate the formidable quality of the Jew as an enemy.’ Every difficulty and failure within the movement is the work of the devil, and every success is a triumph over his evil plotting.”

 

My response: Note how Hitler blamed his “devil” for everything and this sweeping bias and oversimplification gave the cause easy answers and always there was someone to blame.

 

H: “Finally, it seems, the ideal devil is a foreigner. To qualify as a devil, a domestic enemy must be given a foreign ancestry.  Hitler found it easy to brand German Jews as foreigners. The Russian revolutionary agitators emphasized the foreign origin (Varangian, Tartar, Western) of the Russian aristocracy. In the French Revolution the aristocrats were seen as ‘descendants of barbarous Germans, while the French commoners were descendants of civilized Gauls and Romans.’ In the Puritan revolution the royalists ‘were labeled ‘Normans,’ descendants of a group of foreign invaders.”

 

My response: One of the problems with collectivists and their prioritizing group rights is that the group rights of the majority and native are upheld, while those group rights of minorities and foreign, are so downgraded and watered down, that these “devils” make the majority coalesce together as the “devils” are attacked, destroyed.

Coming Together

 

On Pages 90 and 91 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer writes of how hatred facilitates the coming together of the most heterogeneous elements. It is sad that such a wicked emotion is able to bring people together. Here is what he wrote, and I will respond to it:

 

“                                                              66

 

Common hatred unites the most heterogenous elements. To share a common hatred, with an enemy even, is to infect him with a feeling of kinship, and thus sap his powers of resistance. Hitler used anti-Semitism not only to unify his Germans but also to sap the resoluteness of Jew-hating Poland, Romania, Hungary, and finally even France. He made a similar use of anti-communism.”

 

My response: It may be that it is easier to motivate groups of people to unite by appealing to what they rather, rather than inviting them to love something worthy or noble.

Unifying

 

On Pages 89 and 90 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer notes that hatred is a most effective unifying agent for mass movements. If people were basically good, how could hatred unify them? It could not. If collectivism is evil, then it makes sense that hatred is a unifying agent; if that is the case—and it is, then, should we be group-living and pushing group rights over individual rights? Emphatically, no!

 

Here is what Hoffer wrote and I respond to it.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “                            XIV

 

                                                        Unifying Agents

 

                                                            Hatred

 

                                                                 65

 

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious to his weal and future, frees him of jealousies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass. Heine suggest that what Christian love could not do is effected by a common hatred.”

 

My response: Humans are born evil, and this means they are selfless and hate themselves. Evil is hatred, so if you want to unite and inspire the masses, offer them a scapegoat to rally around and intensely loathe. That people are easier to united by hating in support of a destructive cause to express in action their malice.be

 

It is far harder and often impossible to galvanize people to unite in love for a worthy kind cause. This positivity failure is a sign that people are selfless and self-loathing: uniting them is easier for a destructive cause than a noble cause. We have to differentiate between the two ways of uniting and promote uniting for love and betterment of all but not for uniting to hate and causing fighting war and injury.

 

H: “Mass movements can rise and spread without a belief in God, but never without a belief in a devil.”

 

My response: This is another of Hoffer’s most brilliant insights, and that hatred and a love of a devil shows that people are not born good; that collectivism corrupts more than it uplifts and that the mass movement with all these selfless people need a devil to pay for all of their misery, a scapegoat.

 

H: “Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil. When Hitler was whether he thought the Jew must be destroyed he answered: ‘No . . . We should have to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one.’ F. A. Voigt tells of a Japanese mission that arrived in Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist movement. Voigt asked a member of the mission what he thought of the movement. He replied: ‘It is a magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can’t, because we haven’t got any Jews.” It is perhaps true that the insight and shrewdness of the men who know how to set a mass movement in motion, or how to keep one going, manifest themselves as much in knowing how to pick a worthy enemy as in knowing what doctrine to embrace and what program to adopt. The theoreticians of the Kremlin hardly waited for the guns of World War II to cool before they picked the democratic West, and particularly America, as the chosen enemy. It is doubtful whether any gesture of goodwill or any concession from our side will reduce the volume and venom of vilification against us emanating from the Kremlin.

 

One of Chaing Kai-shek’s  most serious shortcomings was his failure to find an appropriate new devil once the Japanese enemy vanished from the scene at the end of the war. The ambitious but simple-minded General was perhaps too self-conceited to realize it was not he but the Japanese devil who generated the enthusiasm, the unity and readiness for self-sacrifice of the Chinese masses."

 

My response: Any group like a mass movement is motivated to unity, enthusiasm, and self-sacrifice more through hatred and competition with a foe as an individual or rival group, nation or tribe, cause, or religion; these foes are useful and sought as the targeted devil or enemy to go after and fight. This need for a devil to scapegoat is an old human weakness and prime fountain of expressing and targeting group malevolence upon external persons or peoples.

 

We cannot morally grow as rational egoists until we, especially as groupists, agree to no longer seek a devil to dump on, and refuse to ever be the devil that a group dumps on; this cruel, inhuman, barbaric pattern must end.

 

                                                           

In Which Army?

 

 

From Page 86 through Page 89, in his book The True Believer, Eric Hoffer compares and contrasts, belonging to a mass movement versus serving in an army. I quote him there and respond to his material.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “       Mass Movements And Armies

 

                                                               64

 

It is well at this point, before leaving the subject of self-sacrifice, to have a look at the similarities and differences between mass movements and armies—a problem which has already cropped up in Sections 35 and 47.

 

The similarities are many: both mass movements and armies are collective bodies; both strip the individual of his separateness and distinctness; both demand self-sacrifice, unquestioning obedience and singlehearted allegiance; both make extensive use of make-believe to promote daring and united action (see Section 47); and both can serve as a refuge for the frustrated who cannot endure an autonomous existence. A military body like the Foreign Legion attracts many of the types who usually rush to join a new mass movement. It is also true that the recruiting officer, the Communist agitator and the missionary often fish simultaneously in the cesspools of Skid Row.”

 

My response: One assumes that Hoffer’s 20 years or so as a wandering fruit tramp and migrant worker, with an intimate, penetrating experience of and analysis of the people populating the fields, trains, hobo camps, Skid Row, brothels, and libraries in dozens of California towns, gave him original and personal insightful experience of how the rootless, discontented tramps could easily become frustrated and seek escape in some passing cause.

 

Yet, somehow, he was a self-realizer and great soul. His fanatical nature was sublimated by him into creativity and philosophy. He found and lived a contented existence as a blue collar intellectual and writer.

 

One cannot disagree with the similarities that he points out between mass movements and armies. I am wondering, for the sake of our future nation and its standing army, and for citizens participating in running our constitutional republic, how to balance and juxtapose the coexisting, conflicting pressures of each future citizen to live as an anarchist-individuator supercitizen, on the one hand, and yet as a citizen within our constitutional republic, or when serving in our army, how these people, in these dual roles, can self-sacrifice, give unquestioning obedience, give single-hearted allegiance, and buy into make-believe to heighten united action?

 

I believe the supercitizen could take orders, self-sacrifice, and obey but not unquestioningly, and unite with others to complete the mission (winning a war and running the country).

 

The officers in the army and the politicians and bureaucrats running the country would all have to accept and work creatively with supercitizens, who could be quite self-sacrificing, loyal and willing to work together for the common cause, but never as zombies or fanatics, and with the mutual understanding that each supercitizen will remain autonomous and return to his supercitizen lifestyle once his service in collective organizations were complete and terminated.

 

H: “But the differences are fundamental: an army does not come to fulfill a need for a new way of life; it is not a road to salvation. It can be used as a stick in the hand of a coercer to impose a new way of life and force it down unwilling throats. But the army is mainly an instrument devised for the preservation or expansion of an established order—old or new. It is a temporary instrument that can be assembled and taken apart at will. The mass movement, on the other hand, seems an instrument of eternity, and those who join it do so for life. The ex-soldier is a veteran, even a hero; the ex-true believer is a renegade. The army is an instrument for bolstering, protecting and expanding the present. The mass movement comes to destroy the present. Its preoccupation is with the future, and it derives it vigor and drive from this preoccupation. When a mass movement begins to be preoccupied with the present, it means that it has arrived. It ceases then to be a movement and becomes an institutionalized organization—an established church, a government or an army (of soldiers or workers). The popular army, which is often an end-product of a mass movement, retains many of the trappings of the movement—pious verbiage, slogans, holy symbols; but like any other army it is held together less by faith and enthusiasm than by the unimpassioned mechanism of drill, esprit de corps and coercion. It soon loses the asceticism and unction of a holy congregation and displays the boisterousness and the taste for joys of the present which is characteristic of all armies.”

 

My response: The mass movement, so to speak is a more radical, more extreme, chaotic, unhinged mass collective entity than is the army, out to preserve the system, to find jo and to live in the present. Hoffer does a fine job explaining how mass movements and armies are alike and unalike. Armies are limited and structure mass movements.

 

H: “Being an instrument of the present, an army deals mainly with the possible. Its leaders do not rely on miracles. Even when animated by fervent faith, they are open to compromise. They reckon with the possibility of defeat and know how to surrender. On the other hand, the leader of a mass movement has an overwhelming contempt for the present—for all its stubborn facts and perplexities, even those of geography and the weather. He relies on miracles. His hatred of the present (his nihilism) comes to the fore when the situation becomes desperate. He destroys his country and his people rather than surrender.

 

The spirit of self-sacrifice within an army is fostered by devotion to duty, make-believe, esprit de corps, drill, faith in a leader, sportsmanship, the spirit of adventure and the desire for glory. These factors, unlike those employed by a mass movement, do not spring from a deprecation of the present and a revulsion from an unwanted self. They can unfold therefore in a sober atmosphere. The fanatical soldier is usually a fanatic turned soldier rather than the other way around. An army’s spirit of self-sacrifice is most nobly expressed in the words Sarpedon spoke to Glaucus as they stormed the Grecian wall: ‘O my friend, if we, leaving this war, could escape from age and death, I should not be here fighting in the van; but now, since many are the modes of death impending over us which no man can hope to shun, let us press on and give renown to other men, or win it for ourselves.’

 

The most striking difference between mass movements and armies is in their attitude to the multitude and the rabble. De Tocqueville observes that soldiers are ‘the men who lose their heads most easily, and who generally show themselves weakest on days of revolution.’ To the typical general the mass is something his army would fall into if it were to fall apart. He is more aware of the inconstancy of the mass and its will to anarchy than its readiness to self-sacrifice. He sees it as the poisonous end-product of a crumbling collective body rather than the raw material of a new world. His attitude is a mixture of fear and contempt. He knows how to suppress the mass but not how to win it. On the other hand, the mass movement leader—from Moses to Hitler—draws his inspiration from the sea of upturned faces, and the roar of the mass is as the voice of God in his ears. He sees an irresistible force within his reach –a force he alone can harness. And with this force he will sweep away empires and armies and all of the mighty present. The face of the mass is as ‘the face of the deep, out of which, like God on the day of creation, he will bring forth a new world.”

Hitchhiker

 

 

On Pages 85 and 86 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer discusses how, once a discontented person morphs into existing as a full-blown true-believer, it is very difficult to return to living as a discontented—let alone mildly contented individual—private person, ever again. I took notes on what he wrote and then will comment on them. His sense of self likely is too depleted to ever be repaired again.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “It is doubtful whether the fanatic who deserts his holy cause or is suddenly left without one can ever adjust himself to an autonomous individual existence. He remains a homeless hitchhiker on the highways of the world thumbing a ride on any eternal cause that rolls by. An individual existence, even when purposeful, seems to him trivial, futile and sinful. To live without an ardent dedication is to be adrift and abandoned. He sees tolerance as a sign of weakness, frivolity and ignorance. He hungers for the deep assurance which comes with total surrender—with the wholehearted clinging to a creed and a cause. What matter is not the content of the cause but the total dedication and the communion with a congregation. He is even ready to join in a holy crusade against his former holy cause, but it must be a genuine crusade—uncompromising, intolerant, proclaiming the one and only truth.” 

 

My response: If one is contented, then one enjoys one’s individual existence, and is not interested in or willing to surrender the self to any cause, let alone, say one must serve in the army to defend one’s nation in a just war, surrender the self completely to the collective unit for the sake of that cause.

 

The individual can be passionate and strongly idealistic but uncompromising intolerance is likely not of interest for him.

 

H: “Thus the millions of ex-fanatics in defeated Germany and Japan are more responsive to the preaching of communism and militant Catholicism than to the teaching of the democratic way of life. The great success of Communist propaganda in this case is not due its superior technique but due to the peculiar bias of the once fanatical Germans and Japanese. The spokesmen of democracy offer no holy cause to cling to and no corporate whole to lose oneself in. Communist Russia can easily turn Japanese war prisoners into fanatical Communists, while no American propaganda, however subtle and perfect, can turn them into freedom-loving democrats.”

 

My response: Because altruism and excessive self-sacrifice and misdirected self-sacrifice (to serve a holy cause and not sacrifice the present day’s self-gratification, delayed by the integrated self as self-disciplinary measure, so that the self can grow, change, originate, create, gain knowledge, invent and construct as an active, engaged maverizer) are foolish and evil, and we are born depraved, or welcome the chance to be selfless, to be unhappy, to suffer more and to degrade ourselves, were we once true believers, we would respond favorably to proponets from a new, rival holy cause, offering us a new home, a corporate whole in which to lose ourselves.

 

Because self-love, egoism and moderate approach to life is alien to us, and we avoid it like the plague,  Americans and freedom-loving democrats, would not offer us the fanatics anything tempting, ennobling or uplifting enough to force our conversion to a new way of individual living and rational operating.

Hoffer's Moerate Outlook

 

On Pages 8 and 85 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer demonstrates his moderate ethical and ontological philosophy; he describes brilliantly the psychology and behavior of a true believer or fanatic, but he also hints that does not approve of each human allowing himself to become frustrated and not doing anything about it (In fairness to the true believers, if they knew better and were reared up to maverize, most of them would become contented, and would not allow themselves to become passionate, fanatical, selfless and desperate to disappear into any passing holy cause.

 

I quote Hoffer and then respond to what he writes.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “                                62

 

Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate that are poles apart and never meet.”

 

My response: It is group-livers and groupists, the joiners, that are naturally fanatical and emotional, more than moderate, logical, temperate, and reasonable as are individuals and loners.

 

If someone is a pure, rather pronounced loner—but still a decent person—this person is instinctively recognized, attacked, deplatformed, marginalized and excommunicated by groups in his vicinity. The groupist really hate and are hostile to the loner, because he is not a collectivist, and because he is moderate and individual, and these are godly, moral traits that are antithetical to everything the group was formed and kept for. These two natural and acquired traits of his are an actual existential threat to their survival as a cohesive unit, to their group identity, and their neatly arranged social structure of lies and justifications explaining away why they are not leaving the pack and serving the Good Spirits as great souls in the making.

 

The pack’s whole way of life is a lie: they are popular and social, winners in the eyes of the world, but they are dumber, more evil, and for filled with selfishness, hate and anger, on average than is the typical loner.

 

They denounce the superior loner as inferior, dumber, more selfish, and sinful than they are.

 

And he is not naturally any better or smarter than they are; he just dared live alone and maverize on some level.

 

H: “The fanatics of various hues eye each other with suspicion and are ready to fly at each other’s throat. But they are neighbors and almost of one family. They hate each other with the hatred of brothers. They are as far apart and as close together as Saul and Paul. And it is easier for a fanatic Communist to be converted to fascism, chauvinism or Catholicism than become a sober liberal.

 

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatic atheist but the gentle cynic who care not whether there is a God or not. The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion. He is an atheist with devoutness and unction. According to Renan, ‘The day after that on which the world should no longer believe in God, atheists would be the wretchedest of all men.’ So, too, the opposite of the chauvinist is not the traitor but the reasonable citizen who is in love with the present and has no taste for martyrdom and heroic gesture. The traitor is usually a fanatic—radical or reactionary—who goes over to the enemy to hasten the downfall of a world he loathes. Most of the traitors in the Second World War came from the extreme right. ‘There seems to be a thin line between violent, extreme nationalism and treason.’

 

The kinship between the reactionary and the radical has been dealt with in Section 52. All of us that lived through the Hitler decade know that the reactionary and the radical have more in common than either has with the liberal or conservative.”

 

My response: Leftists are a mass movement in America today because they view themselves as noble, democratic, compassionate, and enlightened. They dismiss conservatives and Republicans as fascists and white Christian, patriarchal, oppressive supremacists, and ultra-nationalists. This Big Lie is now believed by liberals too.

 

Dennis Prager is doing an admirable job seeking to wean liberals away from Leftists, and he likely distinguishes clearly between Republicans and conservatives and domestic fascists.

 

We want moderate and individualistic liberals and conservatives and independents: we do not want to pay much attention to the Progressives (Radicals/Marxists) or the Fascists (Alt-Rightists). The latter two groups are fanatical, collectivist, malicious, power-hungry, potentially or actually violent, intolerant, authoritarian and up to no good.