#8
From: "Joseph Bayerl" <joe_bayerl@hotmail.com>
Subject: From the recent lit. gazet. on the dangers of the new ideology
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002
Literaturnaia Gazeta
Vol. IX
6-12 March 2002
On Totalitarian Utopianism and Liberal Realism
By Aleksandr Panarin
Our times evoke a compelling analogy with 1939, when brazen force, not resisted in time, crossed over a critical threshold. For the six years that followed, mankind resonated with that force through its collective efforts. The Nuremberg Tribunal took care of the headmen of the Third Reich.
But it remained to deal with the type of personality that made up the massive support for the Fascist movement. The philosophers of the Frankfurt School came up with a term for this type-the authoritarian personality. The defining characteristic of this type is their longing for a blind faith and unreasoning submission to authority. Some never came to doubt, others "tired" of doubting. Thus, the destitute and the decadent formed an unexpected union of "the doubtless," longing for an inspirational myth. The instigators of the Second World War tried to reassert the ascendancy of myth over reality. Those who finally cut them short in 1945 restored the place of reality over myth.
Here we come to the main question. What reality were they talking about? Today a new state ideology, liberalism, is seeking to become the sole bearer of social realism. It offers its victory over communism as evidence of the final victory of social realism over all of those who reject the yoke of reality. But if we look a bit closer at what the new liberals call reality, we will see that that reality takes us not only beyond the bounds of totalitarian myth-making, it takes us beyond the bounds of all the "social standards," commonly known as civilized existence.
Reality here signifies a social Darwinist understanding of "natural selection." Theoreticians of "Reganomics" and "Thatcherism" spoke of social Darwinism. But they were originally thinking not of natural selection among people, but rather among firms, in the context of which the unprofitable and ineffective were destined to die out, while the state was to "wash its hands" of the matter. However, people gradually came to be counted within the process of natural selection. Those individuals not adapted to the market were identified as marginals and the impoverished-the refuse of society. This dehumanization of the socially defenseless is called upon as a defense for the social Darwinist practices of the liberal course, armed with its heartless "Social Realism."
How are human relations evaluated according to the criteria of this sort of realism?
All evidence suggests that they are evaluated according to the principle that might makes right. The new liberals attribute everything that interferes with the dominance of the powerful or condemns it to the vestiges of traditional psychology and values. Meanwhile, do they explain to us just how, if this is so, civilized existence differs from animal existence? Does not the exaltation of market economics with its social Darwinist laws conceal the exaltation of biology?
From this it is clear why, in practically all fields from industrial manufacturing to sexuality, the new liberals came to be apologists for instinct and to indulge it. The instinctive individual does not condition his reactions on complicated intellectual or ethical constructs, he is automatically drawn to the simple and customary, whereas the difficult repels him. At the sight of a more powerful person, he grows timid. In the presence of a weaker person he bullies. If the complexity and refinement of human relations are the measure of progress, one must admit that the victory of the new liberal principle amounts to unmistakable regress.
We also see that regress in civilized conduct in modern international relations, which have been simplified in favor of the naked dictate of power. The body of contemporary liberal analysis, describing the nature of US actions, finds in them one simple but all encompassing explanation and justification. It is because they are stronger. In this evaluative system, there are virtually no criteria in accordance with which they censure the weak. It is characteristic of the social Darwinist principle of unconditional triumph of the strong that gives rise not only to cynicism, but also to a special kind of "simple-mindedness," connected to reflexive capitulation.
It turns out that power is not only to be served, it is also to be believed. In other words, it accounts for the sum total of reality, with no remainder. There are none of the subtexts or paradoxes, like those found in Christian love or classical humanism, which would require that a distinction be drawn between force and truth, between force and justice, or between the laws of selection and the laws of history. This is the source of the pagan faith of the new liberal consciousness in the artless arguments through which force justifies its actions. A strong superpower asserts that it is not simply bombing the capitol of a sovereign country along with the entire civilian population located there, but is actually performing a "humanitarian action." And people believe it, since here it is not a matter of what is said, but rather who says it. Today, the superpower has started its global fight against international terrorism. By some mysterious coincidence, it happens that the terrorists are concentrated in those regions of the world where there are strategic energy reserves. At just that point where the earth brings forth oil, it also brings forth terrorism wed to fundamentalism.
Soon, I am sure, we will come to see equally extraordinary correlation between places with concentrations of other limited resources and places with accumulations of global evil. It will be possible to construct a sort of geostrategic table, similar to the Mendeleev's Table, on which the range of one indicator (resources) would correspond to the range of indicators that "civilized society can no longer tolerate."
Do our liberals actually believe in the noble sensibilities of American democracy, provoked to forceful intervention in all sorts of "evil empires" and "axes of evil?"
From the position of social Darwinist realism one may with confidence say, "Yes, they will believe for as long as America is destined to remain the strongest. In their own time "influential persons," restricting the right to reason in the name of the inspiration provided by myth, raised up fascism and opened the path of revanche to it. Who will open the road to the liberal "realists" who restrict the right to justice and integrity, in the name of the principles of "natural selection?"
It would seem that the social Darwinist truth concerning man and society will be somewhat more frightening than the old myths. "How far can ideologies armed with such truth carry the world?" This is a question, to which we will receive an answer forthwith.
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