Millenarian Mobs

Claremont Review of Books ^ | 08/12/20 | Angelo Codevilla

[PoliticallyShort]

The Americans who confess other people’s racism absolve themselves inexpensively by a moral mechanism common to humanity: the more I profess to hate evil, the more I showcase my own goodness. Such confessions, however, have a particular history of tragedy in Christian civilization. Again and again over the centuries, persons who have imagined themselves cleansed by ritual confessions have believed themselves elevated above the rest of humanity and, hence, entitled to oppress or even annihilate those around them. Today’s self-purifiers, arms outstretched in supine submission, who then countenance violence against persons, property, and cultural symbols, are mostly unwitting protagonists in yet another chapter of a hoary history.

Although Judeo-Christianity teaches that perfection is not of this world, nevertheless the Old Testament (see the Book of Daniel) and the New (Revelation, chapter 20) refer tangentially to a final state in human affairs in which all evil will have been defeated and the virtuous will have triumphed over their enemies. In the Book of Revelation, this final stage is to last for a thousand years. Jesus Christ’s warnings notwithstanding, people have hearkened periodically to “false prophets” who brandish the prospect of ultimate vengeance over evil. Between the 11th and 16th centuries, any number of movements of this sort used ritual confessions to cleanse themselves, and energized the mobs that waged Europe’s bloodiest wars of that age. Thereafter, though such movements secularized their terms, they fit into the same moral and intellectual categories. Now as ever, they are about destroying civilization in the name of altering the human condition.

[cdcdawg]

“The Americans who confess other people’s racism absolve themselves inexpensively by a moral mechanism common to humanity: the more I profess to hate evil, the more I showcase my own goodness.”

In modern terminology, this is called “virtue signaling”.

[PoliticallyShort]

Codevilla is not one for modern terminology ;)

[Boogieman]

As much as the left hates Christianity, they sure do like to mimic some of Chritianity’s more embarrassing episodes.

Millenarianism = ‘Woke’ mobs
Children’s Crusade = Using kids as political props (Greta, high school students for gun control)
Inquisition = Cancel Culture
Witch Hunts = #MeToo

[MrBambaLaMamba]

If you expect a pat on the back for doing the right thing, you’re not doing the right thing.

[pluvmantelo]

Thanks, good read. This line sums it up, chillingly; “civilization itself is the only real target”