Update: Due to some sort of file error, the last portion of MC’s essay was missing from the source document I used. The complete text has now been restored below.
Rounding off a series that included Human Sacrifice and Blasphemy, our Israeli correspondent MC tackles the notion of Heresy as it is understood in a West dominated by uniform Leftist politics.
Heresy
by MC
‘Left’ and ‘right’ are not good terms for the description of political flavor. The right essentially no longer exists; it is almost always referred to as ‘far right’ a term which was originally coined to describe the National Socialist (Nazi) party by the left. The left won the ‘culture battle’ and positioned themselves at the peak of the moral high ground (as defined by themselves) and thus destroyed the right.
So we have a situation where socialism = ‘good’ and conservatism = ‘far right’ = bad.
Thus there is no right. Collectivism, either in the form of Socialism or National Socialism, is the only choice allowed, and this has been the case since World War Two (with notable exceptions).
With the advent of the universal franchise (one person one vote), government became a matter of fashion rather than informed choice. Given the universal appeal of television, leftist virtual signaling became a necessary feature in programming aimed at the TV-watching classes. To be credible, one had to keep the PC rules — heresy was (and still is) simply not acceptable.
Heresy is deviation from dogma, usually religious dogma. In the past it often carried a death sentence, specifically burning at the stake or some other equally cruel and barbaric ritual slaughter. This is particularly true of Islam, and now we see videos of religious executions for the crime of heresy every bit as barbaric as those of history.
But heresy can also be a deviation from political doctrine, and the execution of Trotsky by an ice axe in the brain was a particularly brutal example of the premeditated act of extreme cruelty as a punishment for political heresy. And yes, whilst Stalin was probably afflicted with an extreme form of paranoia, few of his worldwide sycophants stopped to think through the implications of this act, and of how a nut case such as Stalin was able to gain absolute power….
Or was it Mao, or Hitler, or Pol Pot or Ho Chi Minh?
Heresy can only exist in a particular vacuum of ideas. In a zone where free speech exists, heresy is of no consequence, but for heresy to be a punishable crime the heretic must have rejected a doctrine that has been forced upon him/her by some ‘superior’ entity.
This essay is heresy, and there are those who would happily take away my credibility and livelihood (if I had one) in order to punish me and to shut up others who might follow my example.
To have to punish a victim for heresy means that one’s own case is weak and has no credible standing, so we resort to physical and emotional bullying to defend that standing. When we build our house on sand, we have to build sea walls and wind breaks to protect it.
The force of truth is irresistible in the long run, but can be staved off in the short term using a bastion of lies. However, the lie must always be defended, whilst truth needs no defense. It just is.
To defend Political Correctness is to also define a heresy, and the political left has built a huge castle of lies which must be defended against the inevitable at great cost in time and energy. Enormous resources are put into defending PC, but truth still seeps through, enough truth to fill a blog page or two.
The problem of defining a heresy is that each lie promulgated that has to be thus defended, and is corrosive to society. A society built on lies, is, by definition, a flimsy society full of inconsistencies, and in which trade and the consequential generation of wealth can no longer prosper.
It is the increase in prosperity due to honest trade upon which Western culture and civilization are built, and the foundation of that is a search for truth. If truth becomes heresy, the overall prosperity declines because the bad guys can syphon off any surplus and the trickle-down effect is lost. So society polarizes into feudalism.
The search for truth can only happen in a society in which heresy is tolerated. Heresy can mean criticism and change, and to those for whom change is threatening, heresy is thus a fearsome thing.
At the root of all PC is a fear, a phobia of change, where deviation from the PC norm must be crushed, or drowned at birth by howls of disapprobation, and solid platform denial.
Traditional socialism sought to place the means of production in the hands of the ‘worker’ (State). Neo-socialism seeks always to control the dialogue — the means of production having been offshored to slave-wage countries, rendering it irrelevant.
PC is the name we give to a controlled dialogue, and to contravene the rule of PC is to commit heresy.
The Oren dialogue in these pages has been very interesting. Here we see the evolution of a dialogue of ‘moderation’ slogging it out with a dialogue of ‘extremism’. Moderation means that a dialogue is PC-compliant, in the sense that there is an elasticity about PC, so that any concept which does not threaten the core assumptions can be accommodated. Oren argues that to be acceptable, The Counterjihad movement must self-censor in order to comply with the mandates of PC, so that it is no longer heresy.
The politically correct dialogue is that ‘moderate’ Islam is a separate ring-fenced sect of Islam. Unfortunately, the ‘fence’ is a chimera — it is about two feet high and does not impede any passage at all. It is only taqiyya that makes it appear foolproof.
But Islam is just a symptom of another more significant malady; a malignant hatred of creation as we see it around us. Sufferers wish to change creation, change the very climate; they hope to bring it under human control. It is obvious to most people that that mankind did not create the universe in which we live, something else did. This is ultra-spooky to those who want humanity to be god, because it means that there is something else out there, another force, mysterious and beyond current human definition. “Immortal, Invisible God only wise”.
Oops, another heresy!
Who hates Yahovah’s Creation? The father of lies perhaps….
We were taught that King Canute had to demonstrate to his acolytes that he did not control the tide, and we giggled at the tale. Yet the united leaders of the nations of this planet seem to believe that they too can “bid the mighty oceans deep their own appointed limits keep” and their Lord High executioner, Ban Ki Nanki Poo, has his little list of heretics ready for the gulag.
I hope I joke.
References on heresy and related topics:
| 1. | en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Father,_Strong_to_Save www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDjwUzUnNpU |
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| 2. | en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mikado
Although Ko-Ko is actually the lord high executioner Nanki Poo/Ban Ki-moon supplies the parody — call it poetic license. |
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| 3. | Father of Lies — John 8:44:
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MC lives in the southern Israeli city of Sderot. For his previous essays, see the MC Archives.
Very true. Great observations MC.
“With the advent of the universal franchise…government became a matter of fashion rather than informed choice”.
A bit glib, if I may say so, MC. And I’d really like to see any evidence that the uninformed, or merely dull, are less capable of making moral judgements, or that an elite such as Plato’s “philosopher kings” would remain selfless and incorruptible if we couldn’t throw them out periodically.
“Glib”? I wish.
One has only to look at the “choices” of who shall lead us in the soi-disant democracies of the West to see the proof of what he describes.
Even better, look at the head of the E.U. Not even a pretense of voting there.
So true and this is the root cause of Europe’s problems.
The people do not want to head in the direction our “no choice / difference” political aristocracy have decided and our forms of democracy exist only to placate us with the fantasy of choice.
Try voting for a party like Front National in France and you see immediate collusion from the mainstream party’s to stitch up what little democratic validity there is in our democratic process. Or in the UK where UKIP gained massive support but almost no representation.
The founding fathers of the USA in hindsight at least really created a land of the free with a strong constitution based upon personal responsibility and accountability of government. The right to firearms for example really is vital to ensure a people cannot be dictated to by a ruling anti-democratic elite.
Mark H,
You are old enough to know that JFK was elected POTUS on the basis of his TV appearance in a debate with Nixon, ie he looked more appealing. Tanned, handsome, full head of hair, gleaming teeth, etc. Nixon won the same radio broadcast debate in the run-up to the election because his ideas sounded and were better. So JFK won the visual competition on TV because Nixon refused to wear make-up and thus looked pale with a five o’clock shadow. And he wasn’t as handsome as JFK.
In 1981 a (bald) university lecturer of mine predicted that there would be no future POTUS who didn’t have a full head of hair. I thought this an outlandish notion at the time. Take a look at those who have won the US presidency since 1983.
Fashion is all in politics. How on earth could a zilch like Barack Obama have attained such high office otherwise?
Actually, JFK won the election because of electoral fraud. As I recall, it was in Chicago. Mayor Daley’s machine provided the extra ballots (or dead people; I’m not sure which time-honored method was used) necessary to put Kennedy over the top in the E#lectoral College.
Nixon met with Kennedy after the election, and told him that he was aware of the fraudulent ballots, but that he was not going to contest the result because it would be bad for the country.
Whoever reviles Richard Nixon would do well to remember this little footnote from history.
A few county cemeteries in Texas helped as well. LBJ had designs on the Presidency from Day One, or so my research indicates.
Yes, Democrat voter-fraud in Cook County Illinois and in some Texas counties got JFK over the line by obtaining the Electoral College numbers for those two states. And in an act of exceptional nobility, Nixon declined to contest the results because he believed it would cheapen or degrade, I forget the actual word he used, the presidency.
You say that as if the crease of a man’s trousers counts for naught.
This is the type of leaders that we need. Had we noble and alert people like this mayor, the soldiers of allah and the Pirate wouldn’t thrive and torture us in our midst.
‘Fire-starters extinguishing flames’: French mayor blasts Muslims protecting churches at Christmas
https://www.rt.com/news/327276-france-mayor-muslims-guard-christmas/
If our leaders had brains just more than a spider they would not let Turkey be their NATO master.
For those of us with Aspergers, we don’t give a damn about what is pc and what is not pc, as long as it’s the truth. There is NO gray area with us. None whatsoever. It either is, or it is not. As a woman in my 50’s, this has been both a curse and a blessing.
It matters not what they think of me, or what they do to me. As long as I’ve told the truth.
Sounds crazy, but I wish more Americans had Aspergers. We’d have been finished with this mess a long time ago if they did. They don’t seem to be able to tell the truth to save their own necks.
Damn near perfect analysis. Succinct too! And I don’t even like MC personally.
Whenever anybody proudly announces they are ‘Left Wing’, as they do, I often respond: “So you endorse Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot do you? That’s just wonderful!” Sometimes I add “You’re an ignorant fool and a waste of oxygen” or “You’re the result of one full term pregnancy that shouldn’t have gone full term. Nature failed.”
I can’t speak for Pol Pot, but it is a waste of time trying to raise the specters of Mao and Stalin. The plain fact is that unlike Hitler and co., Mao and Stalin are widely respected by the people who had to live with them, or by their families. It is arrogant and ignorant to accuse them of being brainwashed. (In fact, the people of the ex- or quasi-communist states are the least brainwashed of all in the developed world today). You can buy good-luck trinkets with Mao’s and Stalin’s faces not just in China and Russia, but all over the world. Try selling anything with Hitler’s face on it, and see how long it takes to run into serious trouble. Mao and Stalin are widely seen by Chinese and Russians as necessary strongmen for their time, however much their crimes have upset self-righteous westerners who have never set foot in either country (that’s not aimed at you, Julius, just a general comment). It’s true too that many Chinese and Russians revile Mao and Stalin, but in travelling in both lands I found it’s a pretty even split.
Deep down, people admire strong leaders, whatever they do. I think this is the real reason why the obsessive demonization of Hitler continues unabated to this day. If an inch were given, there is indeed a risk of a mile being taken, especially given the quality of Europe’s current crop of ‘leaders.’ The publication of Mein Kampf in Germany is a risky step.
MC,
I had always thought that heresy was false doctrine in the guise of true doctrine. That is why heresy was so heinous a crime. Heresy involved Fraud and Prevarication with the intent to lead believers away from the Truth.
In the case you present, the ‘heretics’ are speaking the truth in their attempt to lead people to the truth. Are you saying that reality has become a Kafka-esque inversion in which we are now living through the looking glass?
Well, what was the crime of John Rogers, a protestant burned at the stake for heresy in 1555 by the Catholic authorities under Queen Mary?
The history of heresy is complex.
You are correct Baron, that was another Kafka-esque judgment as Roman Catholic doctrine (Dogma in their lingo) is heretical. The 101 Damnations (Anathemas) pronounced by the Council of Trent directly contradict what is written in the Bible. The ‘church’ itself began as a syncretise of Roman paganism and the New Testament with all vestiges of the Tanakh and anything Jewish removed. You were not allowed to have a complete Bible, only a compilation of what the Cardinals and Popes wanted you to know. It was called the “Diatesseron” and was what Mahomet worked from when he started Islam.
The Council of Trent was held in the mid-1500s. That was hardly the “beginning”.
The Church began as two strands: the Jerusalem faction was first and considered its authority as primal since its leaders had all known Christ during his lifetime. These adherents to Christ’s ‘way’ had to step carefully in the roiling waters of splintering Judaism as it suffered under the yoke of Roman rule. Here, at the center, converts entered via conversion to Judaism, including circumcision and dietary laws. It was Paul’s Hellenic Jewish world view that roiled the waters even more, and began to prevail only after the Fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
The strength of the Church lay precisely in its syncretism of Jewish morality, Roman law, and Greek philosophy. “Pagan” is an anachronism none would have recognized. If you look at each of the “books” that eventually made up the codified “New” Testament, all of them relied on Jewish scripture to ‘prove’ the legitimacy of these Christ-followers. Paul’s letters were written first, probably about 25 years after Christ’s death.
The three synoptic gospels all relied on earlier source materials, much of which has been lost. Each of them was written to meet the needs and exigencies of a particular community. John’s differs sharply from the other three; it was written on the island of Patmos and is deeply influenced by Greek philosophy – e.g., the first chapter.
The split into East-West factions had a number of fracture lines, including language and geography. The two important differences driving them apart were, at least superficially, issues of doctrine. They parted company over the settlement of the date on which Easter was to be observed. For what would become the Roman Church, Easter fell on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. For the Eastern Church, it was/is to be celebrated on the first Sunday following Passover.
They also encountered an impasse on Trinitarian beliefs. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, decreed that the Holy Spirit was ‘equal’ to the Father and the Son. The Eastern church rejected the West’s filioque “Trinity”.
By then, Islam was beginning to make its repeated and bloody assaults on Constantinople, weakening the Eastern Church.
In other words, to begin the history of the church with the Council of Trent is misleading in the extreme. Trent was the Roman Church’s bureaucratic attempt at a counter-Reformation, but it was too little, too late. On the other hand, the excesses of the Reformation itself led to the eventual destruction of Christianity in Europe.
The center of gravity of the northern European Protestant Church moved to the North American continent, the Spanish/Roman Catholic church established itself in South America. The deficiencies of both are obvious…and now the center of gravity is moving south and east – to Africa and China.
It is interesting indeed that Planet X, global in reach, forced the shockingly unprecedented “retirement” of Benedict (the last such case was in the 11th century), a German theologian, and replaced him with an Argentinian Jesuit who is deeply ensconced in all that is wrong with South American Catholicism. I believe it was Benedict’s strong stand against Islam that triggered his downfall. Francis is much easier to manipulate.
BTW, Augustine laid the groundwork for assimilating Aristotelian philosophy in his school in Rome. When he moved back to Hippo to assume the episcopacy there, he brought with him many of the eminent scholars of his time.
Dymphna, a most excellent summary. A question: what is your allusion to Planet X about ? Is that code for Islam or something else ?
“heresy was (and still is) simply not acceptable”
The usurpers who rule work hard to suppress free speech and independent thought. They are very successful among the middle class e.g. so-called intelligentsia and IT workers who consider themselves logical. They are not so successful among the angry underclass exemplified by football hooligans.
When push comes to shove we will be thankful for the hooligans for they are the modern day Tommies:
“for its Tommy this and Tommy that and throw him out the brute
but it’s saviour of ‘is country when the guns begin to shoot”
They key to belief control is to convince the people who think they’re intelligent that X is the only possible intelligent thing to believe. Believe anything else and you’re a backward idiot. X also has to be the only possible open minded thing to believe. Anything not X is only believed by the close minded. And we all know that being unintelligent and close minded are both attributes of the lower class.
Want to make a bunch of college kids believe anything you want? That’s pretty much all you have to do. Rather than being frightened to death of being labeled kuffar, they’re frightened to death of being labeled uneducated lower class. They want to be high class and they want to be lazy about establishing their membership in the social elite. Why do any thinking when the answers needed to make you one of the social and moral elite are just handed to you? All you have to do is never question, sort of like Islam.
“Ho Che Minh”. Hmmm, an interesting concept. And one that suggests an illustration by combining
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=ho%20chi%20minh
with
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=che
MC,
I realize I’m diverging from topic a little…
Your essay travels on some mighty deep waters. I’m currently in a mode to reduce and where possible eliminate conversation with… the other. I’m very much talked out. A thought flitters about my tangled mind, a recognition, that the other is In Fact, just that. That the idea that somehow I can share [in ordinary life] a common view or principle or value with another person has become to me almost unattainable. I might as well be a brick layer in Babble. Virtually everywhere, and virtually everything [here in the Western Province of the People’s Republic of Massachusetts] I experience as a foreign thing and as in a foreign land. Unless I’m alone. Then, the dialogue is much less controlled. the distraction is in the conversation itself… Recently I came across a quote from Juan Donosco Cortes: “Discussion is the visiting card, with which death travels, when he wants to be unrecognized and remain incognito”. I don’t believe I’m mad. Others may at times think so. I think its more like the blue pill/red pill thing. It’s an awakening. A perception thing. Going forward is risky, going back is death. Gomorrah is the setting. The closer one gets to the reality of the thing the more ‘real’ it gets. Running into another who has similarly perceived is a rare thing. There are settings and circumstances, histories and biographies all collaborating to prevent this. Indeed, there are Principalities and Powers at work in the world that most ignore or do not perceive. And, as much as the hordes flood the plains, the heavenly castle is well fortified and fiercely defended, not just from the likes of the lefties, the modernists, the islamists, the PC, the hordes… but from the likes of me and my primordial defiance!
I’m reminded of another biblical passage, the one in which Moses lays a choice before the people [Deuteronomy 30:15] “Consider that I have set before thee this day life and good, and on the other hand death and evil”. Or in Luke, “No one who sets his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom”.
We’ve been through the renaissance, the machine age, the atomic age. For most of us, I think, more so perhaps than ever before, we are in the Age of Decision.
Please see my website at http://www.mike93c.com