Section topics:
(1) Probing the roots, the bad behavior and buttressing ideas
(2) Endangerment finding? Huh? WTF? The food of all life, in historically short supply (“our current CO2 starvation era”), is now demonized as the ultimate evil- “pollutant, poison, threatening the end of life”.
(3) Celebrating the benefits of melting ice.
(4) Richard Landes’ quotes on the patterns and outcomes of apocalyptic millennial movements, notably in Marxism, Nazism, environmental alarmism… For example, Disappointment with failure in an apocalyptic/millennial movement, leads the movement’s prophets to turn to the “coercive purification” of totalitarian mega-death crusades. Interesting on the psychopathology of such movements- How claims and proclamations of compassion for the oppressed turn cruel and descend into mass death (the narcissism of authoritarianism).
(5) The military guy’s advice- To solve endless eruptions of violence like ISIS, go to the “ideology” behind such groups. Ideology? No- It’s the “bad religious ideas”, stupid, as in the narrative (a play on Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid”)
(6) That “most profound insight” again, and Paul’s rejection of that, his burying of Jesus under his Christ myth. In our Western tradition we inherited the religion of Paul, the entirely opposite Christ-ianity that buried Jesus-ianity.
(7) The Jesus discovery radically reframes Ultimate Reality and presents the potential to transform narratives and life. A new cohering center for human narratives. It offers the potential for a powerful new liberation movement in the depths of human consciousness/subconscious.
(10) Don’t look down your schnauzer (yes, “snout” in German) on those pre-WW2 Germans. We have all been conditioned to fall for the same “banality of evil”. Its those commonly embraced “bad religious ideas” like apocalyptic millennialism that repeatedly produce mega-death outcomes. And, like many “good people” before us, we stand by and watch the destructive outcomes unfold just as many today are doing with decarbonization ruining societies and lives.
And much more…
As we all observe the varied narratives and movements competing for space and attention in public today- whether DEI, ESG, Woke Progressivism, WEF Great Reset, Woke Racism, and more…. Try to get some sense of the overall bigger background narrative themes, what really lies behind all the varied fronts of contemporary movements. They all point to the core themes of a meta-narrative.
I trace things back from, for example, the climate alarmism movement, to its parent mythology in 19th Century Declinism, and from there to the main Western religions like Christianity that shaped the ideology of apocalyptic Declinism, and further back to the daddy of all Western apocalyptic in Zoroastrian mythology, and then to the earliest versions of the same themes in Sumerian/Egyptian mythologies. Its always the same old, same old descending down through history in an unbroken chain of continuation. Primitivism at its worst. And shame on us that we keep falling for this apocalyptic millennial nonsense… We have the better alternatives. We have had them for millennia. There is no excuse.
Landes again… Wendell Krossa
I will soon post quotes from Landes’ chapter on the Nazi mass-death movement. Historian Richard Landes presents the evidence that Hitler’s Nazism was just another apocalyptic millennial movement like Marxism. Western intellectuals have refused to acknowledge the profoundly religious nature of such movements. Is that a defensive response to avoid the embarrassing recognition that Christianity “has shed more blood than any other movement in history”? Western defenders of Christianity cannot bring themselves to admit that Christian themes like apocalyptic millennialism have shaped these historically more recent “secular ideological” mega-death movements.
This is why I spend so much effort clarifying the striking contradiction between Historical Jesus and Paul’s Christ myth. Jefferson and Tolstoy were on to something critically important in their comments on “diamonds/pearls buried in dung”. So yes, they recognized there is something profoundly valuable in the Christian tradition (the insights of Jesus), but that “stunning new theology” of Jesus has been defiled and distorted by the larger context of the New Testament Christ myth. Christianity has never fully clarified and honored the central theme/insight of Historical Jesus. We should have received “Jesus-ianity” not “Christ-ianity”.
We continue to experience the horrific outcomes of bad religious ideas today…. Notably in the latest apocalyptic millennial crusade of climate alarmism and its salvation crusade of decarbonization (“to save the world”).
And as for the role of Islamic extremism in the mix- Joseph Azzi in “The Priest and the Prophet” has outlined the historical descent of Islam from Ebionism, a branch of early Jewish Christianity. Yes, Mohammad’s spiritual mentor was an Ebionite priest- Waraqa, the cousin of Mohammad’s first wife. Again, the same basic complex of themes- apocalyptic millennialism- has influenced and shaped both these religious and “secular/ideological” movements.
I would summarize the themes of apocalyptic millennialism in the fuller complex of “lost paradise, decline toward apocalypse, and redemption in promised millennial paradise”. I will post again the full complex of these primitive myths that have so powerfully shaped human consciousness, emotions, motivations, and behavior across the millennia, often to horrifically destructive outcomes. That is the inevitable result of alarming people, arousing the survival impulse in people that then incites and intensifies those inherited impulses to tribalism, domination, and destruction of differing others.
Add that critical to Christian redemption is the demand to coercively purge the evil thing that threatens life (“coercive purification”). The New Testament book of Revelation graphically illustrates what coercive purification looks like. No wonder that Hitler framed himself in terms of the violent savior Christ of Revelation. Totalitarians find divine validation in such religious themes.
Richard Landes on the apocalyptic millennialism that shaped and motivated Nazism (another profoundly religious movement) to totalitarian mega-death outcomes, from his chapter 12, “Genocidal Millennialism: Nazi Paranoia”. The research of Landes and his colleagues Arthur Mendel (Vision and Violence) and David Redles (Hitler’s Millennial Reich) show clearly the profoundly religious nature of Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism, movements all shaped by the same old “lost paradise, apocalyptic decline, violent redemption” complex of themes. Add also the good research of Arthur Herman (The Idea of Decline in Western History) who shows what primitive ideas are still shaping our modern narratives and consciousness to destructive outcomes like decarbonization as salvation (destroying the world to save the world).
Scattered quotes from Landes’ book:
“Millennial studies focus on how beliefs travel from the disreputable margins of a culture to the center… the sudden movement from the margins to the center generally lies in the advent of apocalyptic time (he notes Hitler had to convince the German people that the apocalyptic battle had begun, they needed a ruthless leader to lead them into battle, and victory would bring the millennial kingdom)…
“Wilhelmine Germany engaged in extensive use of apocalyptic and millennial imagery… Hitler emerged in the midst of a millennial stew…
“The (WW1) failure brought on deep depression and despair in Germany… one solution found particularly strong purchase among Germans: They had been betrayed, stabbed in the back, robbed of rightful victory by evil forces… the Weimar Republic represented a powerful incitement to apocalyptic feelings… the staggering inflation of the early 1920s… worldwide depression of the early 1930s, the argument that this was all part of a worldwide plan to destroy Germany became increasingly credible…
“(Among the returning WW1 soldiers) there was a ‘messianic-revolutionary’ outlook… a synthesis of ‘nationalist ideology and an apocalyptic Christian mythology. The warrior dictator can lead Germany to the Promised Land only once he has destroyed evil, sin, and death in their earthly embodiment as the potent, satanic Jew…
“(You) have to convince people that you know the apocalyptic scenario whereby they will come out triumphant…
“For Hitler and the Nazis… the Will to Power was the key to unlock every lock: the strongest ruled and the Germans (Aryans) were the strongest race…
“Nietzsche… understood the situation which Hitler exploited. In response to this situation, Hitler’s messianic image came into being, embodying the religiosity Nietzsche despised… This hierarchical and authoritarian vision centered on the charismatic leader, a man of iron will who could demand complete obedience…
“By eliminating the forces holding back the German race- the Jews in particular- the Fuhrer would thereby allow the German Volk to return to their rightful place ‘over all’… Without a single figure of towering will, one capable of arousing implacable hatreds and making ruthless decisions that contemplated the sacrifice of vast numbers of human lives for the sake of the goal of national and racial collective salvation, this argument could not work…
“Hitler believed he had a divine mission, he was the German savior… he had received a divine mission to save his people…
“Both he and his audiences were literally transformed by the experience of one of his speeches…. Charismatic figures articulate the hidden transcript that others have repressed and make them public… proclaiming the most secret desires, the least admissible instincts…
“(His emotional speeches) arose out of a profound millennial discourse that gave cosmic promise to the emotions Hitler aroused… he worked up these emotions by using the reactions to economic and spiritual distress that pervade the psychology of the German people… fused with dreams of a better day to come…
Landes notes that Nazi ideology was crude and revolting but it appealed “to some of the most advanced and brilliant minds of the age: Heidigger, Schmitt, Jung… one can appreciate the power of millennialism to turn even highly developed and sophisticated minds…
Hitler begins by presenting himself as a John the Baptist forerunner to a messiah then after his imprisonment in the 1920s he “becomes openly messianic.. he was thinking of himself as the Messiah and it was he himself who was destined to lead Germany to glory. He used quotations form the Bible more frequently…
“All these signs indicate that Hitler now understood that he was the chosen one… We have the record of that transformation chronicled in his ‘autobiography’ Mein Kampf… ‘It (writing Mein Kampf in prison) also reinforced his unbounded narcissistic self-belief. It gave him absolute conviction in his own near-messianic qualities and mission… countless others strengthened in Hitler the belief that he was in league with Providence…
“The word Reich carries a host of rich associations in German. It means at once kingdom, realm, empire, and also something sacred, something that transcends material categories… about salvation… holy empire… Reich also has a fully religious meaning… Thy kingdom come… the Lord’s kingdom…
“In the German language, Tausendjahriges Reich means literally ‘millennial kingdom’ and all earlier uses of the term referred to Christian millennial movements… such imagery fired the imaginations of a nation…
“The Nazia millennial vision actually combined all four elements of the millennial dream… the Aryan apocalyptic scenario is cataclysmic and active: we fight as the agents of history…
“Hitler’s religiosity continues to constitute a major problem for historians. Most tend to view Hitler through a secular prism… More broadly the Nazis are seen as anti-religious… Such approaches, while they may ignore profound aspects of Hitler- and Germany’s- religiosity, have deep conceptual roots… the empirical or materialist school sees in Nazism a secular phenomenon, and does not even entertain that it has a religious dimension… Then there are the rare few who go the distance and acknowledge Nazism as a millennial religion….
“The Nazi episode represents one of the most powerful connections between religious leader and following of the faithful in recorded history…
“Nazism is a religious phenomenon in its own right: a political religion that, whatever its content, appealed to the same critical issues and emotions that religion does: faith, ultimate meaning, redemption. And among those links are some of the most powerful forms any religious movement can take- the apocalyptic and messianic traditions that date back to the earliest centuries of Christian-German relations…
“The religious world out of which Hitler’s particular millennialism arose was that of the theosophical trends… In Germany it took a peculiar turn toward a racist mythology known as Ariosophy…. The ‘Great War’ (WW1) was only the opening act of the final drama… racist Ariosophists saw it as the onset of the final apocalyptic battle…
“The interwar period was rife with apocalyptic publications… Another theme picked up elements of some of the more disturbing Christian heresies of the Middle Ages, in which the human becomes divinized… consider that Hitler was profoundly committed to religious paradigms that escape even our normative notions of religiosity of Christianity…
“Hitler was suffused with a sense of destiny and mission. Hitler’s ‘one dominant and dominating characteristic was that he felt himself appointed by Providence to do great things for the German people’. This was his historic ‘mission’ in which be believed completely…
“This profound continuity in Hitler’s self-perception had a distinctly ‘Christian’ formulation… he took his Christianity seriously…
“We can understand the difference between the more familiar forms of Christianity based on the gospels… and Hitler’s Christianity by grasping which Christ Hitler held in veneration… It was not Jesus Christ the crucified but Jesus Christ the furious… not the Jesus of the first coming of ‘turn the other cheek’ who allowed himself to be crucified but the Christ of the Parousia, the warrior on horseback with a sword issuing from his mouth, slaughtering the enemies of the Lord (Revelation 19)…. Hitler believed that ‘my Lord and Savior’ was a warrior… who, by God, was not his greatest as a sufferer but rather as a warrior… the warrior of Armageddon…
“This is triumphant Christianity. It represents the same active cataclysmic apocalyptic urge that we find in the First Crusade, with its exterminationist anti-Semitism and its lust to avenge the crucifixion of the Lord in rivers of blood…
“Having identified himself with the warrior Jesus sent to save the world from the evil chaos of the Jews, Hitler ended his speech with a declaration about the spiritual basis of his movement… he offered redemption… he speaks of faith and destiny and miracles, of regeneration and martyrdom, and of his struggle for the souls of men. Often in this mood he uses purely religious terms: shame, sin and expiation. He is a redeemer calling upon the people to lay their sins and suffering on his shoulders…
“One of the more underdeveloped themes in the history of Nazi Christianity is its millennial dimension… How does it move from the margins to the center of society?…
“(A German farmer listening to Hitler’s speech) ‘His words went straight to the heart. From now on my life and efforts were dedicated to the Fuhrer. I wanted to be a true follower. The Fuhrer spoke of the threatened ruin of the nation and the resurrection under the Third Reich’…
“Hitler’s spirituality therefore belongs in the subset of millennialism we call messianic: He was a man with a calling who would help his own people achieve their great destiny… In millennial matters the relative sanity of the messiah… matters less than the audience they gather. The same person may end up in an insane asylum or at the head of armies of millions, depending on his or her cultural matrix…
“One key to Hitler’s success lay in the reception he received from Germany’s Protestant community… the German Christians. Here we find many of the major elements of the Ariosophist millennial brew- a Thrasymachan political ideology, a racist historiography, a Jewish conspiratorial enemy, and the worship of hardness, violence, and sacrifice- articulated in a Christian key by members of some of the evangelical churches. Deutsche Christen systematically reread the gospels as a justification for warfare against the enemies of God, above all the Jews… throughout his speeches, Hitler, with his biblical intonations, uses the Christian texts to claim authority… He would have been deeply committed to both the Christian texts and (his own notion) of the God that stood behind them…
“The path that Hitler took to move from the margins of German society…. To the center was not by converting post-Christians but disappointed Christians, people who felt that the world had betrayed their religion and sought a savior to set it right… the workers ‘most immune’ to the Nazi appeal… also tended to be the most secularized…
“Hitler’s anti-semitism… This issue brings us deep into Hitler’s- and Germany’s- millennial imagination. The Jews were not a ‘realistic’ threat, in the sense of either reality or Realpolitic, they were an apocalyptic threat, in the sense of modernity- their conspiracy- threatened the very existence of the German people… Modernity threatened the traditional German Gemeinschaft, the rural community and its pious continuities with a past that reached back to the mists of time… The rules of modernity… meant the end of a romanticized rural life…
“Many of the apocalyptic elements of Nazi ideology- the sense of urgency at the nearly complete conspiracy, the ferocious hatred of a cosmic enemy, the profoundly paranoid sense of being suffocated by Jewish success, the assumption that all the major developments of modernity (marriage of capital and technology, urbanization, constitutional governments, public media, and public atheism) stemmed from the Jews and threatened chaos and enslavement… the Nazis articulated a vision in which the very existence of a rival chosen people, the Jews, meant the certain death of the German people… They could only live… by the paranoid imperative, ‘exterminate or be exterminated’… (Hitler) gave them a sense of their messianic identity and identified the Jews as their apocalyptic enemy… it was part of an apocalyptic or eschatological worldview… the Jewish people represented the collective identity of Antichrist…
“Historians would rather view Hitler as mad, than as messianic pretender…. By failing to recognize well-known… patterns of active cataclysmic apocalyptic and hierarchical millennialism, observers can miss subsequent avatars… The study of Nazism’s appeal, of Hitler’s charisma, belong to the field of millennial studies… He is not so much the measure of the unthinkably, the impossibly evil, as he is the measure of how, with modern technology and an only partially developed civil polity, a nation, a people, seized by, ridden by a millennial passion, can become one of the great dealers of death in human history”.
End of Landes’ quotes.
Podcaster Jimmy Dore: “(We) are the most propagandized people on earth and we don’t know it”– Climate alarmism as profoundly religious apocalyptic narrative. Note the collectivist element in this Billionaire propaganda crusade- think WEF’s “Great Reset” of world economies into destructive socialist approaches. It was the WEF elites who promoted, “You will own nothing and you will be happy… and you will eat insects while we eat the best cuts of imported beef”.
“Green Billionaires Press Hollywood to Promote Armageddon Climate Messages in Movies”, Charles Rotter posting from Chris Morrison of Daily Skeptic, Feb. 28, 2024
Quotes from article at link above:
“Green billionaires are pouring money into discreet campaigns to persuade Hollywood writers to catastrophise the climate in future film and television scripts. One of their main vehicles is Good Energy, which tells writers that showing anger, depression, grief or other emotion in relation to the climate crisis, “can only make characters more relatable”….
“Good Energy aims to weave climate alarm into all types of film-making, “especially” if it is not about climate…. It claims the Playbook is “now the industry’s go-to guide to incorporating climate into any storyline or genre”…. These operations seek a supra-national collectivist Net Zero solution to a claimed climate emergency….
“Billionaire foundations are grooming populations around the world by funding a variety of press, political and academic operations…. Few green campaigns arise from ‘grass roots’ these days. Put to the vote, for instance, the Green Party in the U.K. loses most of its election seat deposits.
“Let’s reimagine what it looks like for a character to eat a plant-rich diet (Michelin Green Star restaurant, yes!), attend a protest or upcycle vintage clothes. And if your story requires a yacht, why not make it solar powered.” That last idea might appeal to super-yacht lover Leonardo DiCaprio, but private planes, the preferred method of transportation for many high-end Hollywood stars, might be a problem. Hypocrisy a problem with all this? Not according to the Playbook, which quotes climate activist Bill McKibben that “hypocrisy is the price of admission in this battle”. For plebs, gammons, fly-overs and deplorables, this of course translates as “you do what you are told and radically change your lives – we don’t give a flying flamingo”.
“For scripted entertainment, observes Good Energy, “the emotional truth is as important as the literal truth”.
“Good Energy was started in 2019… Rolling Stone reports that the operation is “dedicated” to ensuring that within three years, 50% of contemporary TV and film acknowledges climate change.
“It is unsurprising that the power of film and TV to influence large audiences is being captured to promote a political message….
“Elite billionaires are pulling out all the stops to insert climate Armageddon messaging into all forms of media.”
“Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.”
Now some climate news…
Atmospheric physicists Richard Lindzen and William Happer were also involved in this case against the EPA endangerment ruling…
“A Climate Science Team Report on the Scientific Validity of EPA’S 2009 GHG Endangerment Finding”
“By ICECAP Climate Science Team Feb. 20, 2024
“On December 11, 2023, the Supreme Court refused to examine the numerous science-based arguments contained in a Petition for Reconsideration of EPA’s 2009 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Endangerment Finding…. This court ignored the eight quite specific, but easy to understand scientific arguments contained in the Petition and simply denied the Petition claiming the petitioners did not have Standing – a well-known tactic to avoid decisions in a highly politically-charged situation.
“Unfortunately, this Supreme Court decision denied scrutiny to the one regulation in the U.S. that is not only the single most economically significant, but also the single most scientifically flawed, of all of the regulations on the Federal books. The ramifications of this Supreme Court Denial will be enormous if an EPA GHG Endangerment Finding Reconsideration is not initiated very quickly. This fact should have been clear to the Court by the arguments quoted verbatim below:
“In short, based on the sum total of the eight validated arguments {contained in the Petition}, the currently contemplated Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) estimates are not only worthless; they are extremely dangerous to put forward to current U.S. energy, economic and national security-related policymakers as credible input to their analyses.
“As clearly demonstrated by this body of research findings, climate alarmism has no basis in science…. climate science now finds that there is no mathematically valid proof that past increases in atmospheric GHG (Green House Gas) concentrations have caused the officially reported global warming over the last 50 years or so. Therefore, there is no proof of any social costs related to such GHG emissions. In fact, these GHG emissions are beneficial to society no matter what processes by which they might occur….
“Finally, on-going fact checks of the 13 most common climate alarmist claims have consistently validated that absolutely nothing unusual is going on with the Earth’s climate system. Moreover, in the considerable research cited, changes in the Earth’s temperature have been shown to be readily explained by natural factors involving changes in solar, volcanic and oceanic/atmospheric activity.
“These findings strongly suggest that America and its allies have already made extremely severe climate policy errors, the negative impacts of which will only grow exponentially. By taking these erroneous climate and energy policy actions, America is rapidly destroying its energy security to the detriment of its economic and national security but to the great benefit of all three of its major enemies: China, Russia and Iran.
“This must stop immediately and America must now reverse course quickly – taking the following actions…:
* All current state and federal as well as private (e.g., financial) sector efforts to inhibit the finding, production and use of all fossil fuels must be immediately terminated.
* All U.S. government action and funding at all levels to take steps to regulate the emissions of all GHGs must be immediately terminated – since they are all beneficial gases….
“The utter lunacy of America’s Federal Government leadership continuing to take the unsuspecting American people on this ride over a cliff would certainly seem to be outrageous behavior on the part of those who know, or should know, the facts….”
A report referred to in the above article…
“OUR CORE CLIMATE SCIENCE TEAM BOTTOM-LINE ON THE SCIENTIFIC VALIDITY OF EPA’S 2009 GHG ENDANGERMENT FINDING FEBRUARY, 2024 Dr. James P. Wallace III Joseph D’Aleo Ph.D.,
“Climate Alarmist Claim Fact Checks – May 21, 2021 (See Suppl. #7, Page14.) “Below are a series of fact checks of the 13 most common climate claims such as those made in the recently released Fourth National Climate Assessment Report. The authors of these reviews are all recognized experts in the relevant fields. For each claim, a summary of the relevant rebuttal is provided below along with a link to the full text of the rebuttal, which includes the names and the credentials of the authors of each rebuttal, all of which is incorporated herein by reference.
“Claims the globe has experienced the warmest ever month or year are totally unsupported by any credible analysis of raw global surface temperature data and its availability…. Thus, all such climate alarmist claims are in reality just politically driven fictions.
“Heat Waves – have been decreasing since the 1930s in the U.S. and globally.
“Tornadoes – the number of strong tornadoes has declined over the last half century….
“Hurricanes – the decade just ended as the second quietest for landfalling hurricanes and landfalling major hurricanes in the U.S since the 1850s….
“Droughts and Floods – there have been no statistically significant trends.
“Wildfires – decreasing since the very active 1800s….
“Snowfall – has been increasing in the fall and winter in the Northern Hemisphere and North America with many records being set.
“Sea level – the rate of global sea level rise on average has fallen by 40% the last century….
“Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland Ice – the polar ice varies with multidecadal cycles in ocean temperatures. Current levels are comparable to or above historical low levels…
“Ocean Acidification- when life is considered, ocean acidification (really slightly reduced alkalinity) is a non-problem, or even a benefit.
“Carbon Pollution as a health hazard – carbon dioxide (CO2) is an odorless invisible trace gas that is plant food and it is essential to life on the planet. CO2 is not a pollutant….
“Climate change is endangering food supply – the vitality of global vegetation in both managed and unmanaged ecosystems is better off now than it was a hundred years ago, 50 years ago, or even a mere two-to-three decades ago thanks in part to CO2.
“There is a 97% consensus that climate change is man-made – a 97% consensus is a convenient fiction meant to bypass the scientific method and sway public opinion and drive societal changes and policies that support political agendas.’”
And this from co2coalition.org- Celebrate melting ice on Earth. It is beneficial to all life.
https://co2coalition.org/facts/rising-sea-levels-confirm-modern-warming-predated-increases-of-co2/
https://co2coalition.org/facts/melting-glaciers-confirm-modern-warming-predated-increases-of-co2/
https://co2coalition.org/?s=Glaciers%27+Retreat+Not+From+CO2
Now more from Richard Landes on Marxist apocalyptic millennialism… Wendell Krossa
Landes’ research affirms the fact that so-called contemporary “secular” ideologies and revolutions (i.e. Marxist, Nazi, environmental decarbonization) are shaped by profoundly religious ideas. They are not as secular or scientific as they like to claim. Here below is more on the “secularization” of primitive mythology, from “Heaven On Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience”. My extensive quotes of Landes’ research are to encourage readers to read for themselves this important material from these apocalyptic millennial historians- i.e. Landes, also Arthur Herman (“The Idea of Decline in Western History”), David Redles (“Hitler’s Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic Belief and the Search for Salvation”), Arthur Mendel (“Vision and Violence”).
As one Amazon blurb states regarding Mendel’s “Vision and Violence”- “the Apocalypse has changed nothing but its guise–from God to Reason (Enlightenment), to History (Marxism), and then to Nature”. “Nature” as in environmental/climate alarmism. These historians all note that primitive mythical themes have been brought right into contemporary narratives to dominate modern consciousness with the same old psychopathologies, transformed for the modern era under the guise of now being “ideology and science”. Joseph Campbell again- People have believed the same primitive myths all across history and across all the cultures of the world. When will we ever learn?
Insert note on the collectivist dualism in these apocalyptic millennial movements: “… then to Nature.”- With the historically latest embodiment of apocalyptic millennialism in the environmental movement, we also find the same old elements of tribal dualism. The tribal dualism in the environmental movement is expressed in the opposition where humanity is the oppressor and nature is the oppressed victim. As in all general Marxist collectivism narratives, one side is fundamentally evil and the other side fundamentally good. These oversimplified generalizations distort reality because nature across history has dominantly been a “wicked old witch red in tooth and claw” that needs taming and domesticating (humanizing, if you will). While the human interaction with nature evidences ever-growing compassion and concern (human goodness in caring for nature).
But as ever before, in all tribal dualisms and the more recent collectivist versions of tribal dualism, there is the claimed opposition between evil and good as per Zoroaster’s archetype of cosmic good versus evil (truth vs falsehood). That ultimate model validates endless earthly versions of the same. In the environmental versions, humanity is demonized as a virus, cancer, intruder on earth that is the oppressor and nature the oppressed victim that is pure, good, innocent.
Continuing…
The research of Landes offers critical insight on the dangerous shift of these apocalyptic millennial crusades toward totalitarian coercion and mass-death as necessary to bring on the millennial paradise of equality, goodness, and love. Landes shows how original claims to be acting out of compassion, then turn to mega-death cruelty, justified as necessary to achieve the greater or common good. Mass murder to achieve love? Destroy the world to “save it”?
Landes’ chapters on the emergence and development of Marxism are good on the psychology of totalitarianism- i.e. the feverish dreams of perfecting human society into a millennial paradise freed of the evil of this present world order, the failure of the dream to materialize, and the disillusion and bitterness with failure (cognitive dissonance). Disappointment, says Landes, then trips a switch and the apocalyptic millennial zealots shift to “coercive purification”- to force the arrival of the millennium. This is the “active apocalyptic” stage of such revolutions- i.e. to purge the old world in order to prepare the way for the new world. Today’s movements exhibit beliefs and actions that are no different from Zoroaster’s apocalyptic vision (circa 1500 BCE) that molten metal would wash across the earth to burn away the evil and through that purging, thereby open the way to restore the lost paradise or new kingdom.
“When the believer awaits no God or supernatural force to intervene, apocalyptic transformations must take place as a result of human action, and both the destruction of the old world and the building of the new become key events. Even using the term secular in a religious sense, ‘secular’ apocalyptic is virtually synonymous with active, indeed hyperactive apocalyptic: humans replace God as the active agent in the creation of the millennium… This peculiar… aspect of secular millennialism- the complete shift of responsibility, of agency, from divine to human forces- sets many of these movements on the road to totalitarianism.”
Out of disillusionment with the failure of their socialist revolutions, Landes notes the common response of apocalyptic millennialists to double down on the dream (“upping the ante”) and then abandon gradual democratic transformation to, instead, embrace coercive purification as in purging the evil that prevents the onset of the millennial dream, exterminating those who block the onset of the millennium (i.e. whether opponents, or fellow socialists who differ, or those who lack similar zeal for the millennial crusade).
Leaders of apocalyptic millennial movements such as Marx, Lenin, Mao, and others, embrace violent coercive purification, justified by their proclaimed conviction that they are doing so out of compassion, out of love and concern to free people from their enslavement to the old world order. And where the oppressed don’t cooperate, then they must be forced to be “free”. And if many must die to achieve the dream of greater collective good, so be it. Sacrifice is believed necessary to achieve the greater good of the new world order- “brutal violence that must inevitably pave the way to the kingdom of love and brotherhood.”
Also, Landes notes how commoners, under apocalyptic millennial Marxist systems, must subject their individual wills to the will of the party, the collective. The lead zealots for the millennium of a purified earth eventually believe that their will is the general will of all. They conflate the two and eventually replace the individual wills of the proletariat with the will of the enlightened vanguard that then become the unquestioned authoritarians- “the dictatorship of the proletariat”. Under that dictatorship, no divided opinions are allowed, no questioning is permitted, no dissent from the party.
(Insert) This reminds me of the authoritarian status of religious priesthoods and popes that claim sole authority to speak for God and the final truth of God. Arthur Herman (The Cave and the Light) also noted that Georg Hegel (a major influence on Marx) had argued for the state as embodying “one single being… General Will… our Better and Higher Self… the Spirit of the People…” which is to say ultimate authority replacing and representing something godlike. And inevitably, totalitarian elites would take control of the state collective (centralized power), for “the greater good of all”.
The varied ideas, arguments, projects, and horrific outcomes (mega-death) of Marxism were framed by the leaders as necessary to achieve an ultimate good, to attain freedom from oppressive forces and structures. The violent destruction of the old order, along with the people upholding the old order, was a necessary “destruction of the world to save it”.
Landes then details the stunning naivete of Lenin, Trotsky, and others that if they just removed the evil of capitalist society, and particularly the ultimate evil of the private ownership of property, then natural collectivist goodness would emerge in the people. The proletariat would become willing to serve the collective with happiness, all taking just what they needed and happy to share. And then the state would just wither away, unneeded.
In these revelations of the beliefs and practises of Marxist communism, Landes shows the “deep connection between religious and secular apocalyptic thought”. The Marxists believed and claimed that they had “rejected all forms of religious superstition, especially the raving fantasies… of millennial prophets… (but) rather than having abandoned millennial beliefs, ‘modern’ industrial society invented a new secular variant.”
Landes notes especially the case of Mikhael Bakunin, a leading early socialist thinker- “Few other thinkers reveal so clearly the deep connection between religious and secular apocalyptic thought- in particular the adoption of an active cataclysmic scenario in response to disappointment”.
“In the abandonment of formal, charismatic religion and the zealous adoption of a new revolutionary creed we find the roots of secular apocalypse… the dream of a vengeful apocalypse.”
Landes repeatedly notes the refusal of many historians and Western intellectuals to acknowledge the fundamentally religious nature of the beliefs of Marxist Communism. The refusal of Westerners to acknowledge that their leftist heroes were just religious nutcases.
Other Landes quotes:
“Marx’s millennial ideology operated as he hoped: it triggered repeated attempts at violent active cataclysmic apocalyptic movements (revolutions)… (but) like to many apocalyptic hopefuls, European radicals faced terrible disappointments with all the cognitive dissonance such experiences inflicted… How did the most determined of the modern (apocalyptic prophets) handle that dissonance? By clinging to the millennial promise; by redating the apocalyptic moment into the near future (postponing the event horizon) and by reframing the apocalyptic scenario and insisting that, to bring redemption closer, one needed to force things by a worst case scenario. If the millennium had not arrived yet, it was because things were not yet bad enough.… (Landes notes the resentment and anger produced by disappointment)…
“Like so many disappointed apocalypse hopefuls, the revolutionaries opted for coercive purity… apocalyptic scapegoats were targeted… Marxism increasingly, indeed with every disappointment, grew more violent and authoritarian…
“In the same way that the Xhosa chose (i.e. the 1856-57 apocalyptic movement in South Africa), with every disappointment to pursue coercive and scapegoating responses to failure, to seek still more self-mutilation in order to earn the millennium, so did some Marxists in pursuit of theirs. The worse it got, the better…”.
Further insights from Landes that relate to what is happening today with resurging Marxism and climate alarmism:
“The internecine conflicts within the left- classic expressions of the narcissism of small differences already so visible in Marx’s career, reflect the predilection for coercive purity in the face of failure… sympathizers in the West- including great thinkers like Shaw and Sartre, despite the massive betrayal of all the millennial values espoused- supported, justified, and concealed the madness of that coercive apocalyptic strategy.”
And this comment on Communist and Nazi behavior in regard to the inevitable emergence of totalitarianism in apocalyptic movements. I thought here of the World Economic Forum project- “The Great Reset”- to overturn the present world economy and to replace it with their socialist version as part of the plan to “save the world from climate apocalypse”: “A small group of true believers, with a megalomanic sense of cosmic purpose, driven to seize power with the intention of decisively reshaping history and humankind, responds to frustration with paranoid violence..”
(This on the ruthlessness of Marxist and Nazi totalitarians)… “obsessed by the apocalyptic phantasy and filled with the conviction of its own infallibility, set itself above the rest of humanity and recognized no claims save those of its own supposed mission…
“Totalitarianism… is not so much inherent in ideology, as it is in certain millennial ideologies that, following the ‘logic’ of an active and violent apocalyptic scenario… attempt to perfect the world. The ‘logic’ of coercive purity ultimately attempts to destroy… human freedom… totalitarian societies want ‘salvation’ and demand the people’s ‘soul’… their obsession with ‘redeeming’ their chosen people at any cost to private life… their terrifying willingness to engage in ‘coercive purification’ as a means to accomplish their visionary goals with the stunning number of lives lost as a result.”
And this on the expression- “the fallacy of the superior virtue of the oppressed”. Elon Musk recently stated something similar in arguing that we must get rid of the principle that if you claim status as “oppressed or victimized” then you are automatically considered good, virtuous. Look at Hamas claiming oppressed status, he said. There is no goodness there.
Landes adds some further comment on the “transmutation of love into hatred, of the desire for peace and harmony into the embrace of war and mega-death.”
He ends his sections on Marxism, commenting on the refusal of Western intellectuals (i.e. those supporting the last century communist revolutions in Europe) to acknowledge that Marxist revolutionary collectivism was active, violent, apocalyptic millennialism. Those intellectuals preferred to view communism as an expression of the modern ideals ascribed to the French Revolution which they believe had brought progress to the world- “Any attempt to put this totalitarian system in the category of a closed and barbarian theocracy is very often vehemently refused…
“Everybody who dares take the Bolshevik world as a religious community is considered a traitor betraying the humanitarian ideals of the modernity of the French Revolution… If you see it in this sense, says the proponents of the project of modernity, the distance between the old and new modern world would shrink too much and the debts to the Christian tradition would become too heavy. Thus, when you treat the Bolsheviks as a millennial sect you are going to betray the project of modernity and treat the Bolsheviks, despite their very modern efforts to industrialize backward Russia, as a medieval sect of obscure believers.”
He concludes that Marxism and Nazism were both active cataclysmic, apocalyptic millennial movements.
Here’s an illustration of contemporary climate apocalypse prophets doubling down on their renewables crusade in denial of the growing evidence of disastrous outcomes:
“The Great Texas Blackout of 2021: Triumph of the Unreliables” Robert Bradley Jr., Feb. 20, 2024
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/02/20/the-great-texas-blackout-of-2021-triumph-of-the-unreliables/
And this from Wattsupwiththat.com- “Wyoming Climate Report”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/02/19/weekly-climate-and-energy-news-roundup-588/
“Wyoming Climate Report: The CO2 Coalition has prepared three state and regional (US) reports on the effect of changing climate: 1) Pennsylvania; 2) Virginia; and 3) American Midwest….
“‘Much of the world already knows this. India, over a billion people, they are not really making a single effort to cut back on CO2,’ [William] Happer said…. they know perfectly well this isn’t going to damage the planet.’…”
“The data tell us the following:
• Current levels of carbon dioxide are at or near historically low concentrations.
• Adjustments to historic temperature records have artificially amplified modern warming.
• Wyoming temperatures have increased a modest 1.2°F (0.7°C) since 1895.
• Heat waves peaked in the 1930s and have been in slight decline since that period.
• Nighttime low temperatures have increased, lengthening growing seasons.
• Precipitation data, while varying greatly from year-to-year, show no increasing or decreasing trend.
• Droughts are not increasing in Wyoming.
• Severe weather and natural disasters are declining.
• Agricultural production, globally and in Wyoming, is thriving due to modest warming and more CO2.
• Vegetation in Wyoming and around the world is increasing.
• Greenhouse-induced warming that would be averted (< 0.003°F) by eliminating Wyoming’s CO2 emissions would be too small to measure and achieved, if at all, at enormous cost. • Models used to project future temperatures significantly overpredict the amount of warming incoming decades.” “The second appendix to the report is titled “Temperature Adjustments and Fabrication of Data,” It begins with…. "There are three issues intrinsic to the data that have served to artificially exaggerate warming for over 100-plus years. • Urban heat island effect that raises temperatures • Adjustments to measured historic temperatures • Fabricated data for stations that no longer exist or are no longer reporting.” And this from Bjorn Lomborg– “’Weather porn’ obscures the fact that weather deaths are way down”, Financial Post, Feb. 21, 2024
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/bjorn-lomborg-weather-porn-obscures-110019410.html?
“Watching the news, you get the sense that climate change is making the planet unlivable. We are bombarded with images of floods, droughts, storms and wildfires. We see deadly events nearby but also far-flung disasters when the pictures are scary enough.
“Yet the impression this barrage of catastrophe gives us is wildly misleading and makes it harder to get climate change policy right. Data show climate-related events like floods, droughts, storms and wildfires aren’t killing more people. In fact, deaths have dropped precipitously. Over the past decade, climate-related disasters have killed 98 per cent fewer people than a century ago….
“(Deaths) they are falling dramatically because richer, more resilient societies are much better at protecting citizens than poorer, vulnerable ones. More resources and innovation mean more lives saved. Research shows this consistently across almost all catastrophes, including storms, cold waves and floods….
“Linking every disaster to climate change and wrongly suggesting things are getting much worse makes us ignore practical, cost-effective solutions while the media focus our attention on costly climate policies that help but little….
“…. when we are inundated with “weather porn” and miss the fact that deaths have dropped precipitously, we end up focusing on the least effective policies first.”
“Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus, is a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His new book is “Best Things First,” which The Economist named one of the best books of 2023”.
Intro: Remember the military guy who commented, after the 2014 eruption of ISIS violence in the Mid-East (year of the proclamation of the spread of the caliphate), that if you want to end these eruptions of violence then then go after the ideas that incite and validate such violence, go after the “ideology” of such groups. Wendell Krossa
Others have made similar comment regarding groups like ISIS, that “its ideology is still rampant”. Example: https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/mass-violence-and-genocide-islamic-statedaesh
Labelling the inciting and validating ideas behind such eruptions as “ideology” seems to me to be an overly-cautious avoiding of the responsibility to confront “what really lies beneath” as in, not “ideology” but the “theology” of such groups, the monster God and related religious beliefs that incite, guide, and validate such violence against others.
Why do we avoid confronting the true nature of the foundational ideas behind such eruptions of violence, carefully distancing ourselves from direct acknowledgement of the real root of the problem, preferring and choosing to use terms like “ideology” instead of the actual “theology/religious beliefs” that are at the root of the problem? Is it our fear of being accused of offenses like “Islamophobia” or being charged with some form of “hate speech” for trashing the belief systems of prominent religious traditions?
The ”bad ideology” issue goes much deeper than what expresses itself in public in our contemporary world. I argue here that behind the “ideology/ideas” level of the narratives of groups like ISIS are the more fundamental religious beliefs that are the very same myths that have descended from the earliest human mythology (e.g. Sumerian, Egyptian) to subsequently infect Zoroaster’s formalization of these beliefs in his religion that then shaped all three of the Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Those very same beliefs were then “secularized” (transformed into secular versions) to infect the so-called ideologies of our contemporary era- notably the ideology of 19th Century Declinism that has subsequently shaped Marxism, Nazism, and general environmental alarmism/climate alarmism.
In Declinism and its offspring the primitive became modern and continues to infect, cloud, distort, and damage contemporary consciousness and life.
It is an unbroken chain of historical descent. With each new movement in subsequent generations, terms were changed but core themes have always remained the same. Notably, with 19th Century Declinism, primitive mythology was given new “secular ideological” expression for the modern era, and even given “scientific” expression.
The primitive mythology of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” still dominates human narratives and consciousness today, both in religious and secular versions. And this complex of bad religious ideas still incites, guides, and validates our worst impulses to tribalism, domination of others, and punitive destruction of differing others. Bad religious ideas still shape human thinking, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior. Hence, my advocating as a proper and thorough response- go to the actual root of the problem and resolve it there. We have the better alternatives (better ideas/themes) to completely reshape human narratives and consequently produce more humane outcomes.
Probing the roots of “the human problem”– as in the primitive drives to tribalism, domination, retaliatory punishment, and consequent totalitarianism and violence, and the bad ideas that incite and validate such destructive drives. Wendell Krossa
There are ongoing problems in our societies and the world at large, crises that need addressing, notably the endless eruptions of violence between differing groups. Dominating the mix of current problems are damaging apocalyptic crusades like climate alarmism that promote salvation schemes that destroy societies over longer time frames (decarbonization, de-development, deindustrialization). I am repeatedly drawn to something fundamental to all these problems.
I try to understand the root causal or main contributing factors of such problems, what really lies behind the surface layers of any notable issue/problem, what lies beneath, what is at the root, what are the fundamental issues to resolve. I look at a problem like climate alarmism and I see mantra-like themes that exhibit the basic features of an undeniable “profoundly religious narrative and crusade” very much the same as all apocalyptic millennial crusades across history.
The fundamental influence of religious ideas has been outlined well by historians like Richard Landes and his research on the guiding/motivating/validating themes behind Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism. That acknowledgment of the religious influence on those ideologies, and the revolutions they promoted, then points to resolutions that tackle the real roots of that problem. If the problem is religious at heart, then we should at least consider also responding to that element in the mix with “religious/spiritual” alternatives. This has to do with the primal human impulse to meaning and the irreplaceable metaphysical element that has always been part of the understanding and explaining impulse.
Read Landes (“Heaven On Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience”) and you will get some sense of how widespread and consistently the primitive religious themes of apocalyptic millennialism have been secularized in contemporary ideologies and have consequently incited and validated revolutions that have devastated the lives of billions of people. Naturally of course, the religious nature of the ideas is denied by the proponents of the ideologies (the defensive/protective/deflecting impulse). But the religious themes are undeniably there, just reframed in “secular, ideological, scientific” terms. Hence, Marxism, Nazism, and Environmentalism all exhibit characteristics of profoundly religious extremist movements based on primitive mythologies that have endlessly incited tribalism (dividing and opposing differing others/enemies), hatred of enemy others, totalitarian domination, and vengeful destruction of enemies (unbelievers, deniers, dissenters).
I repeatedly list these three basic inherited animal impulses- The “evil triad” of tribalism, domination, and the urge to punitive destruction because the outcomes have wreaked such horrific damage across history, incalculable harm, mass-death. Across human history, these dark passions have been validated by equally brutal ideas, notably validated by the single most influential reality in human narratives, humanity’s highest authority- i.e. deity that embodies these very same features of tribalism, domination, punitive destruction. Gods as tribal, dominating, punitively destructive- “monster Gods”- still dominate the world religions today. And yes, deity theory is a mixed and merged phenomenon- good features included with pathological ones.
Insert note:
When you project a feature like tribalism onto God, as our ancestors did, you give that base animal impulse the status of ultimate ideal and authority. You elevate the worst of our inherited animal nature to status among the highest good. Add the Zoroastrian myth of a great cosmic battle of good against evil that further intensifies divine tribalism. That cosmic scale tribalism then endlessly validates people replicating on Earth all sorts of tribal dualisms and divisions based on race/ethnicity, nationality, ideology, religion, gender, etc. And the outcome is endless battles of “true religions/ideologies/movements” against “false or evil religions/ideologies/revolutions”. (Again, we become just like the God we believe in.)
Tribalism in God then orients us, if we believe in such a divinized ideal, to viewing and validating ourselves as favored insiders (chosen ones, on the side of good) standing in opposition to the excluded outsiders (rejected by God, on the side of some “evil enemy”, satanic). Tribalism in Deity is the ultimate “us vs them”. When you add the element of cosmic dualism, now you have framed your tribalism in terms of ultimate good vs ultimate evil, God vs Satan. And that incites and validates endless wars of good versus evil.
Projecting tribalism onto God sacralizes/divinizes an evil feature, making a base animal impulse and reality into something considered “holy”. People then find themselves more open to tolerate varied forms of discrimination and exclusion among human groups as something backed with divine approval. No wonder you then also get people excluding, separating from, demonizing, and dehumanizing differing others- the unbelievers, deniers, sinners and consequently the all-too-common descent to full-on extermination and destruction of differing others (“behavior based on similar validating belief”). Because the differing others are viewed as less than human and destined for Hell anyway (ultimate and divinely approved rejection, torture, extermination), it is natural then for true believers to even feel righteous when embracing the active “coercive purging” that has been common to apocalyptic movements, true believers helping God, in righteous battles, actually doing good by sending their enemies on their way to hell.
One critical response to counter the destructive impulse to tribalism is to embrace the evidence on the fundamental oneness of humanity, as in the common origin of all humans on Earth today from an East African Eve (“mitochondrial Eve”). Add the discovery of ultimate oneness of all with deity as commonly expressed in the Near-Death Experience movement. Also, the quantum insight on the fundamental oneness of all reality, to further buttress the evidence for fundamental oneness.
The fact of fundamental human oneness is what Joseph Campbell was referring to in his statement arguing for inclusive love of enemy:
“For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By). (end of insert note)
Continuing… Wendell Krossa
Many still refuse to fully confront the fact of “monster deity” ideas, given status among humanity’s highest ideals and authorities, and their destructive impacts on human minds and life. Monster God ideas have incited and validated endless eruptions of violence and war. Billions still honor the tribal-like features in the Gods of the major world religions, making receptive populations for those who abuse those religious narratives.
And, of course, in the effort to be balanced we also distinguish the good from the bad in these religious traditions and acknowledge the positive influence and outcomes of the better ideas/insights in the mix of religious systems. But while affirming the many good people and good outcomes from our religious traditions, I would still urge caution regarding the cognitive dissonance, and harmful outcomes, that result from mixing and merging bad and good themes in any system, as in religious traditions and their holy books.
Bad ideas in a belief system tend to operate in a dominant manner to cloud, weaken, and even nullify the better ideas in the mix. Bad ideas distort and hinder the better themes from exerting the full impact that they could have if they were not subjected to the distorting influence of the bad ideas in the same context. Again, this was the argument of Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy- i.e. that the “diamonds/pearls of Jesus were buried in the dung/garbage” of the larger New Testament context that gave prominence to Paul’s Christ myth. How else do we explain the horrific conflict and violence across Christian history, validated by Paul’s retaliatory, punitive theology?
Most critical- The continued modern embrace of the darker themes of religious traditions, operates to condition populations to be receptive to any new presentation of the “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” ideas, such as in climate alarmism. Remember that German Christians responded affirmatively to Hitler’s use of religious themes because they resonated naturally with their own belief systems (i.e. the issue/problem of why so many Catholics and Evangelicals in Germany supported Hitler). Consider Landes’ point that if we just dismiss totalitarians like Hitler as one-off mad men, then we have learned nothing and will repeat the same error. We have not acknowledged how the embrace of apocalyptic millennialism narratives can carry societies toward mass-death.
Further on going to the roots of a problem… Wendell Krossa
From the beginning of our human history, our predecessors were enslaved to the psychopathology of bad religious ideas that motivated and validated them to embrace endless eruptions and downward spirals of vengeful hatred and retaliatory violence. All in the name of righteous and deserved ”retributive justice” that was validated by deities that epitomized such justice.
Bad religious ideas have long disrupted human development and progress in life. Current Illustrations: The physical devastation in the Israel/Gaza conflict, as well as other areas. Add here the destructiveness of the Net Zero decarbonization crusade, another “secular” apocalyptic millennial movement (again, remember the recent devastation to Sri Lankan agriculture). Further add the dangerous fatalism voiced today as many now prophesy the potential for WW3 erupting among the nuclear powers (impulse to self-fulfilling prophesy?).
Locked into the life-distorting “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” complex of myths, many give way to fatalism and resignation, believing and accepting that life is irreversibly heading toward disastrous collapse and ending. As Landes notes, such beliefs have often pushed people into violent action to bring on the final stages of apocalyptic purging in order to cleanse life of the “corrupt old order” and to thereby open the way for the installment of the millennial paradise. The resort to violent purging, as necessary for salvation, has historically resulted in repeated eruptions of totalitarianism and mass death. Landes details these ideas and outcomes in Marxism and Nazism.
We have potent solutions to the critical problem of violence and war, ways and means to counter the apocalyptic millennialism themes behind the ideologies and revolutions that have led humanity into repeated outbreaks of violence and war.
That “most profound insight” (inciting, guiding, validating ideas):
For two millennia now, we have had the singular most critical alternative to counter and overturn the monster god themes in our narratives that validate our worst impulses. The alternative is an insight that goes right to the core of human narratives and understanding to deal thoroughly with the central reality that has long supported entire complexes of bad religious ideas- i.e. the monster God that is the defining and cohering center of many human belief systems.
The “stunning new theological insight” of historical Jesus went to the heart of monster God theology to overturn that psychopathology entirely and transform human understanding of Ultimate Reality. It was a single-blow death strike to the old theology. Jesus stated that the Ultimate Reality was nothing like the old theologies/mythologies that had always been defined by the dominant features of divine tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction.
Historical Jesus stated that, contrary to all previous mythical/religious speculation on deity, the Ultimate Reality that is deity was a stunningly inexpressible unconditional love. And that historically unprecedented and unique new definition of ultimate reality presented us with an entirely new centering theme to shape our understanding, emotions, motivations, and response/behavior.
Unconditional projected onto the core of reality and life then functions to redefine and reshape everything else in human narratives. It functions as the new defining center of human ideals, ethical systems, justice systems, and from there it can work to reshape our overall treatment of differing others/enemies.
Based on his new theology of a non-retaliatory, unconditional God, Jesus affirmed, more potently than ever before, the ethic of non-retaliation toward offenders/enemies. Where the Accadian father of roughly 2000 BCE had also advocated non-retaliation toward offenders, he did not buttress that ethic with a similar theology. That divine affirmation had to wait 2000 more years.
Jesus argued that because God was unconditional love toward all, so we also were to forgive, embrace, and love even enemies, unconditionally. In stating that, Jesus presented his own unique take on the age-old “behavior based on similar belief” relationship that all humans had previously used to inform and validate their lives.
And the Jesus project to overturn past human understanding went further. As a non-retaliatory reality, God was obviously then non-apocalyptic. The myth of apocalypse expresses the single greatest imagined act of a retaliatory deity- to punish sinful humanity in a great final act of total world destruction. Jesus’ argument against retaliation, based on a similarly non-retaliatory God, then overturned the psychopathology of “apocalyptic millennialism” that has been the most violent and destructive mythical complex in history, inciting endless terror. That psychopathology has rendered populations susceptible to irrational and destructive salvation schemes, dangerous utopian millennial hopes. Jesus’ stunning new insight exploded and deflated the delusional bubble of apocalyptic millennial mythology.
Conclusion: Get a grip on this insight- Love is the core of all reality. Love is the nature of our Creating Source. And not just love, but stunningly “no conditions love” that treats everyone the same. That is the single greatest “go right to the core of the problem” insight. Let that overturn all the primitive subhuman, inhuman themes in our narratives and then entirely redefine everything. To get some sense of the form of love that is being presented, read those better NDE accounts where people cannot find words to express the inexpressibly wondrous nature of what they have experienced.
Further, take the Jesus insight to humanity to work some radical rethinking here also. That same divine love also redefines the core nature of human beings. We have long been indoctrinated with the primitive religious myth that we are “fallen, sinful” beings- that our core nature is corrupted and evil, that we are defined essentially by a sinfulness that was inherited from our original ancestors. But we now know that the dark inheritance inside each of us is the residual inheritance of animal impulses to small band tribalism, domination of weaker others, and punitive destruction of differing others. And that inherited animal triad at the core of our brains is not the real us. As Jeffrey Schwartz titled his book- “You are not Your Brain”. You are something higher and better.
We can now recognize that, based on our oneness with deity (again, a common reveal in the Near-Death Experience movement), that our essential self, spirit, or nature is the same Love that is God. The Jesus insight then redefines what it means to be human. The oneness with deity (God equally incarnated in all humanity as inseparable from the human spirit) also gives us a new metaphysical basis for the equality of all people. It also provides a new basis for human identity and self-worth.
That Love is what we really are at core. And the great adventure of human story is to bring that love forth into our personal hero’s quest in our own unique way, making our personal contribution to a better world.
Continuing… Wendell Krossa
The Jesus insight “Love your enemy because God does”, more than any other insight/discovery, presents us with a potent response to break the endless cycles of eye for eye retaliation that have so repeatedly devastated human relationships and societies at large. It orients our consciousness away from retributive justice to consider alternatives like restorative justice. It pushes us to reconsider and reject the primitive tribalism that is a denial of human oneness, a denial of the fact that we are all family, and there are no ultimate “enemies”. “Love your enemies” thereby inspires us to solve some of the worst issues of human existence.
But Paul…. Yes, history’s biggest “But”
Paul rejected outright the breakthrough new theology of Jesus that could have done more to liberate humanity than any previous insight. Paul contradicted and buried that insight under his Christ myth (“diamonds buried in dung”). He retreated to the primitive theology of retaliatory, punitive deity (e.g. Romans 12:17-20) and that then shaped his ethical system with just another version of tribal love (love ultimately limited to true believers and excluding unbelievers).
His retreat to monster God theology re-enforced features like domination- i.e. his dominating Lord Christ would serve as the ultimate model for human forms of domination, as in divinely appointed Kings, rulers, popes and priesthoods, as well as government rulers (see, for example, Romans 13). Paul’s punitive deity also influenced the Western shaping of justice systems as retributive with elements of punitive destruction (punitive destruction was a repeated point in his letters- i.e. Romans, Thessalonians, etc.).
Paul’s deliberate burial of Jesus’ insight was a great crime against humanity in that he denied us the profoundly liberating insight that could have immensely enhanced our struggle to overcome our inherited animal impulses. Paul’s denial gets my pick for “the crime of the millennia” because it has denied humanity the full impact of the liberation that Jesus’ theology would have brought. Paul’s Christ re-affirmed the mind virus of “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” mythologies in human narratives and consciousness, themes that have endlessly incited our worst impulses.
True, Paul’s Christ did not entirely bury the central message of Jesus. But, because the Christ of Paul dominated the larger New Testament context, it did cloud the revolutionary meaning and impact of Jesus’ insights. The Christ myth deformed the clear meaning of Jesus’ new theology, hindering its fullest profoundly radical expression.
While growing numbers of people have now abandoned their affiliation with a major religious tradition, believing that they have rejected religion, they continue to embrace the old narrative themes that are endlessly reframed in secular ideological, and even scientific versions.
Other points….
My point in these repeated posts on the secularization of primitive mythology, such as apocalyptic millennialism, is to uncover something of the “banality of evil” that so easily deceives us. Wendell Krossa
I see banality in how Germans fell for Hitler’s apocalyptic millennialism. There was the zealous embrace by many of Hitler’s mythology, or the more common banality of “stand by and observe”. The banality did not begin with Hitler. Germans were subjected to previous centuries of conditioning/brainwashing with the fundamental themes of lost paradise (and guilt over having ruined paradise preparing them to make some sacrifice, embrace suffering for salvation), threat of decline toward apocalyptic disaster (aroused survival impulse rendering people susceptible to irrational salvation schemes), demand for violent purging of the threatening evil, and promise of a restored paradise, or a new millennium. Those were all central themes in the Christian body of beliefs that Hitler then played on and hence that resonated with many Germans as true and right.
Add that Hitler began by portraying himself as the forerunner to a messiah, then claimed to be the messiah himself, and then finally moving on to claim that he was the violent destroying Christ of Revelation. I believe this was presented in David Redles’ “Hitler’s Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic belief and the search for salvation”. Hitler played with common themes that resonated with the deeply embedded beliefs of ordinary Germans. That helps to answer the question of the young Jewish lady who asked- “How could so many good people have become caught up in Hitler’s madness?”
So also today, profoundly religious crusades, like climate alarmism, play with the same complex of themes and those themes now, once again, are resonating widely with long-conditioned populations (conditioned across Western history by the dominant themes of Christianity). Themes of a better past ruined by sinful humans who are enjoying life too much, life declining toward existential collapse and even apocalyptic ending, demand for sacrifice and purging of some threatening evil (i.e. CO2 as the marker for “sinful” consumptive excess in industrial civilization), and then promise of restored paradise or new millennial order. Always the same old, same old as ever before. And the same old mega-death outcomes as are now appearing all over with decarbonization/de-development as salvation (“destroy the world to save the world”).
And a reposting: Ira Glasser on Joe Rogan’s podcast– the important issue re free speech, Wendell Krossa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kypokn111hU
The above link contains a brief explanation from Ira Glasser, former ACLU director, on the critical need to protect free speech, even hate speech, repugnant speech. The main issue, he says, is- “Who gets to decide what hate speech is?”. If your side bans the other side’s speech today as hate speech, then when the other side gains power in the future they will in turn ban your speech as hate speech. Everyone then suffers loss of freedom.
The only safe solution is to “duke things out in the public free speech arena”, countering other’s speech with your arguments and ideas. Protecting all speech, even repugnant speech, is the safest way to protect our own freedom of speech.
“Power is the antagonist”, says Glasser, and the great threat to civil liberties, and power must be restrained. No matter who has power. Both sides are equally dangerous with unrestrained power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kypokn111hU
Glasser offers one of the best explanations and defenses of free speech anywhere. As Glasser says, freedom of speech is not intuitive but is a learned taste. He presents helpful illustrations of the issues involved. The same can be applied to “disinformation, misinformation, mal-information”. Who gets to decide such things?
And Glen Greenwald again: “Your defense of free speech only matters if you’re defending the free speech rights of people who not just disagree with you, but who expressed views you find repugnant”.
Similarly, physicist Lawrence Krause warns regarding the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the concern to teach AI “universal human values” so it will not pose a danger to humanity. Krause says, “This sounds good, in principle, until one tries to define universal human values, because it is difficult “to find consistent examples of logical, ethical, or moral behavior running across time and geography”. The problem, he says, “is the question of who gets to provide the guidance, and what their values are”. It is very much, says Krause, the coding problem of “junk in, junk out”.
https://quillette.com/2023/02/21/artificially-intelligent-offense/
I would suggest to Krause that the principles of Classic Liberalism/Libertarianism would do well to keep AI within safer boundaries. Add the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.
Added note: Who said that the most dangerous people in society are those who assume that they know what is best for all others and will coerce others to embrace their view of things, “for their own good” of course, or “for the greater or common good” as they see it, “to save the world, save democracy”.
Added notes…
Arthur Herman (The Idea of Decline in Western History) also covered the “secularization” of primitive mythology, the transformation of mythical themes in Declinism ideology (i.e. the central apocalyptic myth of life declining toward something worse, toward collapse and apocalyptic ending). Wendell Krossa
Declinism is entirely distorting of the true state of life, a distortion of the amassed evidence on the rising, improving trajectory of life. This narrative of despair denies and buries the good evidence that life over the long-term has been improving. This evidence affirms hope and energizes people to continue the hard work of improving life further. (Sources- “Humanprogress.org”, Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource” and the many follow-up studies similarly presenting evidence on the main indicators of the true state of the world.)
The abundant evidence of the progress researchers contradicts the endless media obsession that things are getting worse, the alarmist lie that life is declining toward some great collapse and apocalyptic ending. That endlessly hysterical panic-mongering renders populations susceptible to the irrational salvation schemes of alarmists, unmasked now as totalitarians who are using fear to gain control of others and even resorting to violence to purge the unbelievers in their narrative, deniers and dissenters to their alarmism crusades. Again, the totalitarian’s formula: Fear=control.
How many fell for the new McCarthyism?
https://public.substack.com/p/nihilism-and-mccarthyism-behind-medias
And…. No one can even define what a species is, let alone clarify how many there might be and how many might be going extinct.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/02/22/specious-species/
Other points- Wendell Krossa
The Historical Jesus insight, repeatedly highlighted on this site, is a stunningly unique insight re the nature of ultimate reality. Jesus presented an entirely new understanding of deity unlike anything ever voiced before. His description of God was strikingly different from all previous theologies.
Yes, there were historically previous intimations of humaneness in deity, notably millennia earlier in statements that the Egyptian Pharaohs had begun to exhibit kindness and mercy. The Old Testament prophets had also suggested, in scattered accounts, that God despised sacrifices and desired mercy instead. But those BCE deities were then qualified with the same old deformities and psychopathologies of all primitive deities- defined by prominent features of tribalism (favoring chosen peoples), domination (lords, kings), and punitive destruction (ultimate judges, destroyers) that limited the liberating potential from the gentler and kinder features.
What then was Jesus’ argument for his stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory, non-retributive, unconditional God? When asked what the authority was for his message, what he appealed to, Jesus did not refer to a heavenly revelation or an authoritative holy book/scripture/bible. He simply stated his personal view on things as an ordinary human person, referring to himself commonly as the “son of man” or “son of the human ones”. Meaning- just ordinarily human like everyone else. And further, he directly contradicted the reigning authority of his time- the Old Testament scriptures, saying, “You have heard that it was said- ‘eye for eye’ (OT). But I say- love your enemy because God does…”
He stated what to him was just obvious common sense. Look- Sun and rain are given to all alike, to both good and bad people. Nature itself illustrated his new theology. And that generous treatment of all as equal meant that God was obviously non-retaliatory, non-tribal, unconditional love. His statement in the same context that “we should no longer engage eye for eye response to enemies but instead love enemies because God did” further affirmed the unconditional nature of God.
The conclusions to buttress the stunning new theology follow naturally- With an unconditionally loving God there is no discrimination, no exclusion of anyone, no punitive retaliation, unlimited free forgiveness, acceptance and treatment of all as equals, and unbounded scandalously generous love.
Today we can also affirm the insight of Jesus based on the self-validating nature of unconditional love as the ultimate good, the highest understanding of love. Love has always been our most important ideal and the defining feature of what it means to be truly human. And most of us get that the feature of “unconditional” is the logical reach for the best of love. We understand this from our experience with imperfect family, friends, and neighbors. We understand that our unconditional response to their failure is the best of being human, the highest form of love. And knowing that, we then logically project such love out to deity as the Ultimate Good, the Ultimate Love.
And whatever we project onto deity, we understand is to be taken to the utmost reach of that thing, to transcendent nature and status in deity- as in infinitely above and beyond the human, infinitely better than the best that we can imagine. The God beyond God.
And similar to Jesus, most of us understand that human speculation on the metaphysical has always been central to the human impulse for meaning across history, to the human quest to understand and explain reality and life.
I won’t rehash the argument that speculation on the metaphysical also dominates so much of materialist philosophy/science today, where people driven by their impulse to meaning also “cross the science/philosophy boundary”, according to Sabine Hossenfelder (“Lost In Math”). Some form of speculation on the metaphysical is always necessary to understand and explain what exists. Hence the unproven speculations on “multi-verse theory, Self-Organizing Principle”, and so on.
Notes on “Eye for eye” retaliatory responses, Wendell Krossa
Retaliation renders us all petty, small-spirited when we should be great human spirits like Nelson Mandela. Unfortunately, we have this deforming impulse to retaliate that renders us petty and small, like kids in a sandbox throwing sand at one another, crying “He/she started it”. Retaliation renders us even animal-like. We saw this petty retaliation demonstrated publicly and unashamedly by Donald Trump over past years, who unapologetically boasted of hitting back at enemies 10 times as hard as they hit him. Most of us have learned to be more subtle in our expressions of retaliation.
But then we saw even worse forms of obsessive retaliation from media who lived daily to vilify and humiliate the Orange Monster that they had manufactured to alarm the public. Media retaliated and vilified Trump nonstop in the pettiest of ways over years with pulled-out-of-context exaggerations of his comments, and outright distortions and lies. The late-night comedians joined the retaliatory mobs with mockery and slander that no longer resembled any form of comedy that all could enjoy.
We are all susceptible to the pettifying(?) impact of retaliation. As a friend illustrates with regard to marriage- If one spouse feels that the other has cooled in expressing affection, then the miffed spouse will retaliate by cooling expression of affection also, doing so almost subconsciously (passive aggressively). Its all so subhuman. But we all struggle with this petty, dehumanizing impulse.
Posts to discussion group: Wendell Krossa
Comment on Google AI not showing white people:
“This (see link below) is beyond unbelievable parody (deliberate exaggeration for comic effect), beyond lunacy… Commentators fail for words to describe this stuff… commonly terming stuff like this as “insanity, lunacy, craziness, madness…” etc. As Shellenberger and others warn- this is all part of the new totalitarianism that will be worse than any before. It’s about mind control through all sorts of public media forums, not just body control. Just ask yourself- are you afraid to say varied things in public now?? Do you self-censor?
“The new Google AI has built-in, by its creators, the extremist lunacy of DEI racism. From the world’s largest search engine company now taken over by this insanity… Just note the first minute or so of this “Timcast IRL” podcast…. Gutfeld and others have also covered this.
“But here is the larger point to all these postings from Shellenberger, Taibbi, Greenwald, and so many other independents, moderate liberals, and conservatives…. They are all warning us basically about the resurgence of long-game Marxism now coming to fruition… that was Nial Ferguson’s point (among others), that 60s Marxists saw they could not win public support democratically so they went backdoor into the US education system to takeover by gaining access to teaching positions to then indoctrinate generations of students. Success. Just as the Chinese leaders state they are playing the long-game approaches to weakening the West.
“And this new collectivism comes at us through varied fronts- ESG for business (another backdoor approach because they cannot democratically win public support), climate alarmism demanding world centralized control (under UN) of all economies to coercively install “The Great Reset” (WEF- where Chrystia Freeland is a board member and Mark Carney is Trudeau’s chief economic advisor- just for you Canadians to know)…
“And another front is via the new collectivism now defined more by race than by a capital-owning class but still the same old oppressor/oppressed, victimizer/victim classification of Marxism, and on and on… lots of diverse approaches but all pushing the fundamental collectivism of Marxism which in turn is just primitive tribalism gone extreme.
“I will soon post on my site a collection of quotes from Richard Landes of apocalyptic millennial notes on how these primitive religious ideas shaped Marxism, Nazism, and are now shaping environmentalism.
“Just beware of the big background picture of what is going on in our societies. This is the great threat to our freedom today. The battle for freedom is never over…Read the short history “Socialism: The failed idea that never dies”. Great summary of why collectivists never give up despite endless failures of their system.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCoPUjuVjNY
Another:
“Here is Gutfeld’s commentary on the Google Gemini AI…. Again, this just illustrates one strand of a larger crusade of something that has now permeated all areas of our societies and is directly undermining the Western Classic Liberalism, liberal democracy, Enlightenment values and principles, and the science revolution that have given the world the freedom that all value today. Douglas Murray covered much of this in his “War on the West”, as others are also covering…. Shellenberger, Taibbi, and many more…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWMYzLfvP_w
This below is not my insight alone- i.e. That race/skin color is now the defining marker of which collective you belong to. Other public commentators have made this point. A “brilliant” new move by the collectivists.
A new surge of Marxism, just the same old collectivist tribalism: Wendell Krossa
The new resurging Marxism pushing its way to totalitarian domination in our societies is still the same old collectivism and tribalism, where all citizens are denied unique individuality and subjected to some collective group and reductively defined by that collective. In the old collectivisms of Communism/Socialism the defining categories were “capitalist owners/oppressors” contrasted with “oppressed peasants/proletariat”. People were collectively categorized by property ownership, wealth, and social class. But not so much now. Categorization in a collective is now based more on skin color, race markers.
Its still the same old tribal dualism of oppressor/oppressed, or victim/victimizer, but with new prominent defining features, not so much categorized by capital ownership and wealth but by race. Hence, a new form of discrimination, known as the “reverse racism” that is Woke racism where there is “no form of being white that is good”. This new racist Marxism (Woke Marxism, Woke Progressivism) comes at us through diverse new fronts, notably via DEI and one of its lead theorizers, Robin DiAngelo, who stated in her book “White Fragility” (quoted by Douglas Murray in War on the West) that she rejects the individual and individual characteristics to define people collectively. “I am breaking a cardinal rule of individualism- I am generalizing”. She views whites in total as an oppressor collective- the “white collective”.
No individual “diversity, inclusion, or equity” for whites.
The old tribalism presented as so-called “new” in creative new versions of collectivist dualisms.
So also, the leaders of BLM came out as Marxist.
Its all the same old dualism, tribalism of oppressor/oppressed.
Other comment… Wendell Krossa
Whether Russians imprisoning and murdering dissenters, or the US intelligence agencies and politicians trying to silence dissenting voices of opponents (i.e. exposed in the research and reporting of Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and others)- authoritarians/totalitarians try to eliminate dissent, try to shut down the exposure of their corruption of democratic principles.
There are no more dangerous people in societies than those who believe that they are on the righteous side of a great existential battle of unchallengeable good against an intolerable evil that must be violently purged, even exterminated, in order to “save the world, to save democracy”. These apocalyptic millennialists have so exaggerated the nature of their opponents as threats to all that is good, so demonized and dehumanized the disagreeing others as such a great threat, that all measures are justifiable to save the world, including “coercive, totalitarian purification”. Democracy be damned. It is too messy and slow and the catastrophic end of days is too imminent. There is no more time for debate, discussion, argument…
Just look at the language used daily in media to frame the great battle and the irredeemable nature of the “enemy” that refuses to bow to the dominant Woke Progressivism narrative of today- i.e. the endless smears over past years that disagreeing others, whether conservatives, independents, or fellow liberals lacking similar revolutionary zeal for Woke Progressivism, all such dissenters are “fascists, racists, Right-wingers, white supremacists, Russian disinformation agents, promoters of hate speech….” and on and on. Add the ongoing projects to criminalize all such disagreeing others, to ban them from participation in democracy.
And this interesting comment on anxiety as selfishness- “Emma Stone says anxiety is ‘a very selfish condition’”, Lauryn Overhultz, Feb. 22, 2024
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/emma-stone-says-anxiety-very-selfish-condition
Jordan Peterson said something similar in that over the last 20 years psychology has admitted to ruining this latest generation of young people, immensely harming them by making them view themselves as the center of everything, making their feelings their primary concern- how do I feel, am I upset, and so on… creating an intense focus on themselves and how they feel…. (intensely aware of being triggered, offended, slighted, etc.).
“Anxiety is a “selfish condition,” actress Emma Stone noted while talking about her character in the Oscar-nominated film “Poor Things….”
“And part of the nature of anxiety is that you’re always watching yourself,” she continued. “In some ways – this is horrible to say – it’s a very selfish condition to have. Not to insult other people with anxiety – I still have it – but it’s because you’re thinking about yourself a lot. You’re thinking about, ‘What’s going to happen to me? What have I said? What have I done?'”
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (former physician to the Queen) and Jordan Peterson both hit on something that is a potent “cognitive therapy” response to anxiety/depression- i.e. to learn to focus on others and their needs. Go into all situations thinking of others and how you can help them, benefit them, ask them about themselves and their problems, make some sacrifice to help them. When we focus on our problems and feelings, we just intensify our own issues, making them worse. Counter that by learning to focus on others and how we might help or benefit others.
This is what a “bubble of self-delusion” looks like. “I’m not insane, everyone else is”. And, among other comments by Trudeau, this alarming bit- “There are massive changes that need to take place in our media landscape, and government can create conditions and incentives for it to happen,” Trudeau said. That is what an authoritarian argues when he wants to silence any dissenting opinions. And Trudeau’s comment that “people vote for things not in their best interest”. There are no more dangerous people in society than elites who believe that they alone know what is best for all others and will coerce others to submit to their authoritarian schemes.
This is the guy who characterized and demonized the Trucker’s protest as “Nazis and white supremacist terrorists”, among other smears. And yes, he later weakly walked some of that back. But this below shows that he has learned nothing.
“FIRST READING: Trudeau claims he’s not an ‘eastern bastard,’ Albertans ‘fooled’ into disliking him: The prime minister also said the Canadian media was under attack by ‘conspiracy theorists’”, Tristan Hopper, Feb. 23, 2024
“In a brief trip to Alberta on Wednesday, one of the few scheduled appointments for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was to pop into the studio of Edmonton podcast host Ryan Jespersen….
“The parts of the interview that got the most play on social media was when Trudeau embarked on lengthy explanations of how he is the province’s true economic saviour…
“Trudeau absolutely refuses to acknowledge that voters don’t like him…
“Trudeau is facing poll numbers so catastrophic that there’s been few precedents in his lifetime…
“The host was careful to note that not only are the Liberals facing a “bloodbath” at the next election, but that Trudeau’s personal likeability is in free fall. Against all this, Trudeau did not once concede that the polls might have a point, or that his government should change course.
“The surveys were either wrong (“polls had me behind in 2015,” he said), or they were driven by partisan ignorance. Said Trudeau: “people have realized it is easy to instrumentalize anger and outrage, and get people to vote in ways that are not necessarily in their best interest.”
“He said Albertans are being ‘fooled’ into not supporting him…
“But Trudeau argued at length to Jespersen that he is more attuned to Alberta interests than its own industries or even its own government.
““I don’t think the oil industry has had the back of oilsands workers,” he said. He also accused Premier Smith’s government of “ideological opposition against doing things that are good for workers.”
The gist of Trudeau’s claim is that oil is fast becoming an unprofitable commodity, and that Alberta won’t have a prosperous future unless they sign onto his vision of net-zero….
“The prime minister also implied that Albertans would voluntarily be abandoning oil extraction for alternative energy if not for their provincial government standing in the way. “Governments should get out of the way of Albertans innovating and creating that better future. If you can build a pipeline for oilsands oil, you can build a pipeline for hydrogen,” he said….
“The Canadian media is under attack by conspiracy theorists…
“A running theme in the interview is that Canadians oppose Trudeau or his government largely due to misinformation. “Everyone out there is blaming us for everything that’s going wrong, including Putin deciding to invade Ukraine, or climate change or what have you,” he said at the interview’s outset, before blaming right-wing politicians who are getting people “riled up.”
“In the interview’s final minutes, Trudeau spoke of a “deliberate undermining of mainstream media” by “conspiracy theorists” who are out to “prevent people from agreeing on a common set of facts….”
““There are massive changes that need to take place in our media landscape, and government can create conditions and incentives for it to happen,” he said.”