Benedict Cryptofash

Contemporary "leftism" is not based on Marx and Lenin, Hegel, Rousseau, etc. Its theoretical basis is Heidegger, whose philosophy renounces the modern conception of freedom in favor of embracing "authentic" finitude, rejecting the infinite power of reason to retreat into the abyss of death. He claimed this was the concealed truth of Kant's philosophy, and of the entire philosophical tradition going back to ancient Greece. When Ernst Cassirer, in their famous debate, contested his interpretation of Kant as completely baseless, Heidegger replied that “In order to wring from what the words say, what it is they want to say, every interpretation must necessarily use violence”, announcing his own philosophical program as the “destruction of the former foundation of Western metaphysics (spirit, logos, reason).” Sound familiar? Its practical basis is the political philosophy, or really, "political theology" of Carl Schmitt, who like Heidegger was a member of the Nazi Party. Schmitt rejected liberal democracy in favor of a politics based upon the mythological power of the state as beyond law, that is, beyond the power of society to regulate and restrain it. He regarded the emergency powers of dictatorship as the paradigm of political power, and the opposition of "friend" and "enemy" as the fundamental political concept. Its "theological" basis, unifying this theory and practice, is the doctrine of social justice, which was the Catholic Church's reactionary alternative to both classical liberalism and proletarian socialism. The social justice doctrine, put very simply, was that the relations between capital and labor needed to be mediated to prevent the excesses of capitalism leading to socialism. To this end, trade unions and other civil society organizations should work to broker compromises, with the moral guidance and spiritual leadership of the church. Liberal equality before the law would be replaced by reactionary corporatism, in which relations between people and between individuals and the state would be mediated by their membership in various collective bodies, held together through an integralist conception of state power as bound by Christian moral principles, as opposed to a secular state power controlled by civil authorities. French Catholic reactionary Charles Maurras would develop this notion into the doctrine of "integral nationalism", fusing the corporatist doctrine of social justice with a reactionary royalist nationalism, in which the monarchy was embraced as the foundation of the "state religion" necessary for maintaining social order. This foundation had been undermined since the French revolution due to the foreign influences of Freemasons, Protestants, and Jews promoting radical republicanism, atheism, liberal cosmopolitanism, etc, and needed to be reforged. He also opposed German idealism for the same reason, turning instead to the positivism of Auguste Comte. To this end, he participated in the Cercle Proudhon, which sought to unite reactionary monarchism with the national syndicalism of Georges Sorel. Sorel was a revisionist social democrat who, around the turn of the 20th century, was led to reject reformism as well as orthodox Marxism by following Bernstein's reasoning further than Bernstein himself. Bernstein had argued the social democratic parties should relinquish the doctrine of revolution as no longer corresponding to the practice of the socialist movement, which was inducing a gradual evolution of capitalism into socialism, and moreover as a liability to that practice in inviting state repression and creating a counter-productive oppositional attitude among the party's ranks. "The movement is everything, the goal nothing." Sorel, however, saw the pathos of "class war" and the "heroic" revolutionary destiny of the proletariat, as the essence of Marxism, a modern apocalyptic mythos, the irrational, spontaneous, "traditional" source of the values on which the movement's solidarity depended. By this view, the political socialists, Marxists and reformists alike, were too prosaic, rationalistic, deterministic, failing to see revolutionary change not as something that could be imposed upon society from above but something that emerges from below, from the irrational and spontaneous action of people bound in solidarity. He turned toward Proudhon, and to syndicalism, the revised Proudhonism that embraced trade unionism and class struggle (which Proudhon rejected), but he rejected Bakunin, despite sharing his critique of political socialism, out of opposition to his attachment to Blanquist methods of revolutionary conspiracy, in favor of revolution through mass action (the revolutionary general strike) motivated through the moral transformation of the masses into a solidary body organized through adherence to a common mythological worldview. The failure of the general strike of 1909 led Sorel to question the notion that the proletariat could serve as such a revolutionary force, and to look beyond the Marxist mythos of class struggle. To that end, he became interested in the romantic nationalist monarchism of Maurras. Maurras and his Action Française were simultaneously becoming interested in Sorel, and claimed "a socialism liberated from the democratic and cosmopolitan element" would fit "nationalism as a well-made glove fits a beautiful hand". Thus, the Cercle Proudhon was formed to bring together the integral nationalism of Maurras and the revolutionary syndicalism of Sorel, with trade unions as well as capitalist firms forming the corporate basis of a romantic nationalist collectivism. This synthesis of nationalism and syndicalism would influence the Italian nationalist Enrico Corradini, who developed the concept of "proletarian nationalism". the notion that just as there are "proletarian classes", there are "proletarian nations" that are oppressed and exploited by other nations. This concept of proletarian nationalism would influence Benito Mussolini, a leading left-wing member of the Italian Socialist Party with heterodox influences, admiring Marx and Engels but also influenced by Nietzsche to oppose egalitarianism, describing himself as an "authoritarian communist". When WWI began, he was expelled from the party after voicing support for Italy in the war effort, and adopted Corrandini's proletarian nationalism, forming the fascist movement by uniting pro-war syndicalists and nationalists. Corrandini's idea would likewise influence the formation of the National Socialist movement in Germany, by way of the Strasser brothers. Mussolini claimed his doctrine of fascism was "not reactionary by revolutionary", inspired by the "illberalism" of Louis Bonaparte and Bismarck, as well as Mazzini and Garibaldi, "who were not liberals". It replaced liberal individualism with the dedication to the nation, and insisted upon the "absolute primacy of the State" which embodied "all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation". While Mussolini expressed admiration for Roman Catholicism, the "special, positive religion of Italians", he claimed the fascist state was based not on theology but a moral code: it "educates the citizens", "makes them aware of their mission, urges them to unity", and "its justice harmonizes their divergent interests". Contemporary leftism may not descend directly from fascism, but it shares the same premises, and it follows them to uncannily similar conclusions. Their common basis is not Marxism, but the rejection of Marxism as a failure, and the opportunistic appropriation of tropes and elements from Marx and the broader socialist and revolutionary traditions of which he was part, in the service of directly antithetical ends: not universal emancipation, but a narrow, desperate, cowering attachment to barbarism, to the war of tribe against tribe, as the only freedom that is possible.

Let's face it: Joe Biden's dog should probably be dead slate.trib.al/16LSkPb

I miss the old Benedict.

eh idk Trump did more or less take over the GOP