In light of the total meltdown on the left about Twitter’s take-over by Musk, we hear all kinds of ‘reasons’ why this signals ‘the end of democracy’, and even the end of the world and civilization itself!
Or when Musk states that he strives for political neutrality, we see reactions like this:
That phrase always baffled me, as it makes no sense, and because it is a very dangerous step towards totalitarian control. There is such thing as the ‘slippery slope fallacy’ (defined as “Slippery Slope: making an unsupported or inadequately supported claim that “One thing inevitably leads to another”), but there is also a REAL slippery slope (the one that can be adequately be supported).
Here, the first stage is “words are violence”, (justifying me punching you after you say something). We have all seen or heard this, and this statement has been used to harm, silence, ostracize or otherwise punish those with a different opinion. The above tweet shows that in a simple variation: misgendering is violence. So if you unwittingly make that mistake (which the person hearing or reading cannot know for certain, in many cases), that is now ‘violence’? Even if done on purpose, is that really violence?
Next, “thoughts are violence” (if I know you think a certain way, then I can punch you the moment I see you). ‘Bash a fash’, we heard Antifa screech often in the recent Summer of Riots. It is enough to have a Trump hat on, to be targeted with ACTUAL violence. Sometimes people got shot, even. Not for anything they actually DID, or even SAID, but merely for what they THOUGHT, as evidenced by outward signs.
Now it is “silence is violence” (where if you don’t march with me, I get to punch you because you are silent, not speaking in support of me). This takes the herd mentality and group pressure to a next level. This is how so many companies are bullied into compliance with the most egregious woke programs and policies, implementing CRT or LGBTQ+ training or such things, even if it hurts their bottom line (we keep forgetting this, but we are the majority! Those woke ideas are absolute fringe, with no more than 5% who actually understand and support it, and perhaps another 10-15% who support it out of sheep mentality. Take Disney, as a recent example.
The only logical next step, is “existence is violence” (the only thing the left can do to those who are not on their side, is preventing they exist…). Horrifyingly enough, this is not fallacious, either. People have actually made such statements, for example about white people, and how they should be made extinct. Or ask Rep. Scalise how some people on the left take the rethoric on how evil Republicans are very literal, so literal that they take it upon themselves to save the world from said evils. And they believe they are doing a good work, too! With the media happily stoking those fires, and covering when something happens.
Those are shocking trends, and we might have seen at least the early stages of that last step happen in these crazy past few years.
It made me think of something I wrote about years ago, when I still lived in Flanders.
I reflected on the ‘Bastille Day’, the 14th of July, the French National Feast Day.
_______________________________________________________________
Every year, the French celebrate their ‘Quatorze Juillet’, their ‘Bastille Day’, and wherever you are, you will more likely than not hear about it, or you will see posters for commemorative events or French flags appear.
Being of Flemish decent, I indeed have a certain reservation against the French (mainly historical), but the disgust I feel in regards with these commemorations are completely unrelated to these Flemish concerns and lamentations.
Disgust, you read it correctly. Allow me a detour before I explain this a bit more.
On September 25, 1993 Alexander Solzhenitsyn made a speech in the French town of Les Lucs-sur-Boulogne, at the occasion of the inauguration of the ‘Memorial de la Vendée’.
It certainly is worth the effort of reading this speech in its entirety, but I would like to highlight the following paragraph.
“It would be vain to hope that revolution can improve human nature, yet your revolution, and especially our Russian Revolution, hoped for this very effect. The French Revolution unfolded under the banner of a self-contradictory and unrealizable slogan, "liberty, equality, fraternity."
But in the life of society, liberty and equality are mutually exclusive, even hostile concepts.
Liberty, by its very nature, undermines social equality, and equality suppresses liberty--for how else could it be attained?
Fraternity, meanwhile, is of entirely different stock; in this instance it is merely a catchy addition to the slogan. True fraternity is achieved by means not social but spiritual.
Furthermore, the ominous words "or death!" were added to the threefold slogan, effectively destroying its meaning.
I would not wish a "great revolution" upon any nation.”
In those fateful days in July 1789 a revolution started, with repercussions still felt today. It ate her own children, and still raises new offspring, as perfidious as the original. The above slogan is the guideline.
They preached equality, liberty and fraternity. Everyone knows this slogan, and who could be against it? But most people forget the second part of it: “or death!”.
As Solzhenitsyn remarked in his speech, this second part effectively destroys the meaning of the preceding 3 words.
He also made the astute observation that the first part, even if looked at by itself, is undermined by an inherent contradiction: freedom and liberty can never be obtained at the same time.
In the past century, we see how ‘liberty’ got free reign, in political matters but also in personal issues and matters of morality.
We must be free. Free to do whatever we wish, free of oppressors, free of the institution church, free of any and all absolutes, free in our experience of our sexuality, etc.
However, we now see how the second part is being implemented: ‘equality’.
Once the hierarchy has been abolished, the support and the light the church offers has been cut off, and man is turned back on itself in a individualistic freedom run wild, and one no longer has any defense against the next step, which devours the ‘liberty’, gained at such great cost.
Now we see it replaced with a coercion that is being imposed: ‘equality’.
These steps can be seen simultaneous, but show in my opinion a clear internal progression.
In our recent history, equality between man and woman was a first shot, antiracism a second volley, equality for gays a third. All this under the common denominator of ‘equality’. The arrest by the American Supreme Court in the case Obergefell v. Hodges forms a recent climax.
G.K. Chesterton wrote in ‘The Superstition of Divorce’ that "This triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it."
This uncovers the target: the destruction of our civilization.
When you see some of the reactions after the Obergefell arrest – despite the well-meaning promises and sworn assurances that the only goal was ‘love’ and that none of this was aimed at any religion, definitely not at the Catholic Church in particular – you can clearly see this was no coincidence. A few days after the arrest, Mark Oppenheimer wrote in ‘Time’ that, in the wake of that arrest, it now really was time to simply completely take away the tax free status of organizations who went against the established public discourse (and for instance do not accept gay marriage) or to greatly reduce that status.
For many churches and parishes, this comes down to forced closure.
We see how our living of our faith, down to charity and other expressions thereof, are coming under downright attack, because we do not want to conform to the ruling morality and way of thinking.
You can clearly see how this ‘or death’ is still very much alive, perhaps not as drastic as the guillotine, but in practicality nonetheless the same:
professional expulsion (the CEO of Mozilla, Brendan Eich, lost his job after it came to light that several years prior he had supported a proposal not to legalize gay marriage – at a time this was also the stated opinion of then Senator B. Obama),
forced closure (several bakeries, catholic orphanages/adoption centers that did not accept gay couples as suitable adoptive families, etc.),
ostracism (see how e.g. YouTube reacts!)…
Opposition is not tolerated, not even harboring an opposing opinion.
This brings us to the third segment of that slogan: ‘fraternity’.
As Solzhenitsyn keenly observed, this segment is of a completely different stock, and true fraternity can only be attained on a spiritual level. After abolishing church and hierarchy in name of ‘freedom’, after taking away personal freedom in name of ‘equality’, the next step is ‘fraternity’: it no longer concerns what we do, but what we think, believe, feel…
It no longer suffices to treat gay people with respect, one also needs to agree with them.
Case in point is the story of that jeweler in Mount Pearl, Canada, who agreed to make wedding rings for this lesbian couple. Despite his openness to accept this order, he mercilessly came under fire, because he had in his business a poster with the words “The Sanctity of Marriage IS UNDER ATTACK; Help Keep Marriage Between Man & Woman”.
And much closer home: which Christian hasn’t experienced the instant accusation of ‘bigot’ when just verbally stating not to accept gay marriage, regardless of how they actually treat people?
Still, Solzhenitsyn was wrong to see ‘fraternity’ merely as a catchy addition to the slogan. It fits in the series, and gives expression to a program, the program of the revolution. It is the third part of a strategy that aims to subdue, after our freedom and our identity, our faith and our opinions.
All this creates dangerous precedents. We allow that our cultural movers and shakers undermine power and authority and promote instead of an organic society a form of hyper-individualism, we allow that our governments jumps into this fray and imposes ‘equality’ in law.
And we now also see how our opinion and our faith increasingly becomes subjected to the legislator.
In certain circles, being catholic is already equated to hate, racism, sexism, you know the litany… It becomes less and less unthinkable that this stance will find its way to the legislator. In name of fostering fraternity, of course!
Freedom, equality, fraternity. OR DEATH!
That is the bitter fruit of the revolution, to this day diligently working to destroy all we hold as good and sacred.
The simple farmers from the Vendée have already experienced, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of innocents lives, that the revolutionaries tolerate no opposition, as did the simple farmers from my own Waasland, Kempen and Brabant during the 1798 Peasant’s War.
We have to deal with a new generation of revolutionaries, the children and grandchildren of the ‘sans-culottes’, without swords or guillotines, but all the sharper in their rhetoric. Their goals, however, remains the same.
So July 14th is to me the birthday of a dragon, whose spirit is still raging against Western civilization. Therefore, through this detour, my disgust. That day, we have nothing to celebrate…
___________________________________________________
This is still valid today.
And it seems that what we started exploring at the beginning of this article is not coincidence, but something that has been brewing for quite a while.
An old program of oppression, applied today, for the same reason: oppression.
In name of ‘freedom’, words are violence. Your opposition infringes on the freedom to promulgate the leftist ideology: exposing it would severely hamper their freedom to spread it, after all. (Notice that this is as seen from their warped view on ‘freedom’, which means their freedom, not yours.)
In name of ‘equality’, thoughts are violence. They oppose the unity of thought that is being enforced.
In name of ‘fraternity’, silence is violence. We are not good brothers and sisters, when we don’t offer immediate vocal support!
And indeed, in place of ‘or death’, comes existence is violence. You are irredeemable a danger to the envisioned utopia, and need to be erased to protect the greater good.
And as some have several times suggested, and I agree, the best way to respond is with all-out ridicule.
It is a very serious business, but we cannot and should not give those ideas any further life.
They are mortally dangerous, and ridiculous right from the get-go.
Those who espouse such, need to be laughed away as the backwards maroons they are.
That way, we cede not an inch to such thinking.
Against their slogan, I echo that great American cry by Patrick Henry:
"Give me liberty, or give me death!"
It is their demand to constantly that we react with unending emotion and not respond and thereby showing the complete lack of any foundation to their incestuous fallacies. Their purpose is to enact a lack of deductive reasoning and coherent thinking. The past two years of the assault of the plandemic gave what they in their arrogance, their stance validity. They erroneously perceived they were dealing with a worn out and beaten down populace, and now to their panic and anger, they are finding they mare dead wrong.