Secularization and Political Polarization – Part 2

An earlier article reviewed a discussion regarding political polarization as a consequence of secularization by Tim Padget of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview at the annual L’Abri Conference in Rochester, Minnesota on February 14. After discussing the polarization caused by a leap toward Marxism, despite its manifest cruelty and failure to deliver on promises, Padget then moved to a second kind of irrational leap, toward neo-fascism.

Neo-Fascism

Padget said that this second leap into irrationality, the sympathetic reading of fascism, relative to Marxism, is “harder to fathom.” Nazi or fascist uniforms make them look like the “bad guys,” and in contrast to the communist appeal to liberation, fascists make a straightforward appeal to power. Thus, neo-fascist groups hold appeal for young men, especially.

Yet neo-fascists feel a need to deny the evil perpetrated by fascists in World War II. They do this by using skepticism. Some, incredibly, see Winston Churchill “as the primary villain of World War II.” The Axis powers were encircled, and atrocities exaggerated. But would appeasement have worked, and “a Hitler-centered Europe be better,” Padget asked. After the annihilation of the Jews and the millions of other deaths caused by fascists in World War II, the appeal of these groups seems incomprehensible. The annihilation of the Jews is one of the most well documented events in history, with witnesses, pictures of corpses piled up, and confessions by the perpetrators. In response, there are “only questions,” questions which are answerable, but not allowed to be answered by these groups.

This leads to another leap into irrationality, “the great moral inversion.” There are the “increasingly common claims that we backed the wrong team” in World War II. It’s claimed that the Nazis “only wanted to preserve European Christian civilization from the decadence of Western democracy and Jewish (they always add that modifier, Jewish) Bolshevism.” A reading of Mein Kampf and other Nazi literature should disabuse anyone of the idea that the Nazis wanted to preserve Christianity. Mercy and grace had no place in their ideology. They wanted above all to be good through the “domination of the lesser.” In short, communism can well be viewed as a Christian heresy, Padget believes, whereas “Nazism was anti-Christ.”

Padget maintains that part of the reason for the fascination with fascism is “the allure of the taboo.” Some of the irrationality is a desire to “call no man master.” And “some of it is an unwarranted if abstractly understandable reaction to the dominance of a progressivism that is increasingly anti-Western and anti-male.” Many men who have bought into neo-fascist rhetoric “feel they have been duped, and they’re determined not to be duped again.”

Padget referred to the last novel in C.S. Lewis Narnia Chronicles, The Last Battle. In it, the dwarfs of Narnia were fooled into thinking that Puzzle, a donkey, was in fact Aslan, the figure of Christ in the series. Having been disabused of this error near the end of the story “they became determined not to be taken in again,” and opposed the true Aslan. In their “desire to reject what is false, they’ve gone over to rejecting what’s true.” Similarly, many rightists reacting against leftist narratives have taken up false counternarratives. Many such people, Padget feels, are not believers in their cause at all, but have simply “taken up the costume of a grand cause.”

Activism as Personal Performance

On both the Right and the Left, activism often amounts to personal performance rather than considered beliefs. One example of this is the fervent support of the radical left for the Gazans. Young people chanted “from the river to the sea,” but upon questioning had no idea what river or sea were being referred to. He said that the further one moves to the left, the more likely one is to find support for Islam and political Islamism. This is “bizarre,” because people who are essentially rebels against traditional morality are being supportive of a religion whose very name means “submission.” This is astonishing, because political Islamism, as distinct from Islam, is openly theocratic, favors strong patriarchy, and is fiercely anti-LGBT (to the point of making the behavior of at least some of these identities a capital crime), the very opposite of the egalitarian, antiauthoritarian, anarchic, pro-LGBTQ+ ideologies of the Western left.

In explanation, Padget sees “the performative element” of such radicalism as crucial. Expressed attitude is more important than meaning. Additionally, he pointed out that both the radical left and Islamism do have a common hatred of the West, and a focus on power. There is “hatred of a rival that’s outpaced them.”

This frustration is affected by the democratization of information in the contemporary world. In the past, one had to be a gatekeeper of information to disseminate one’s ideas and proposals. Otherwise, one had to convince a gatekeeper “to do it for you.” Further, most information was stored in libraries and archives, and only a limited number of people could access it. But with “the rise of the online world, both these barriers came crashing down.” While some thought that universal access to information would make “all the world’s problems go away,” the Internet seems to have had something of the opposite effect. “More people who wouldn’t be swayed by extremist ideas because they simply never saw it now have all they want and more.”

Another factor in the polarization of society is the coronavirus pandemic. News of the disease became widely disseminated in February 2020, and the world shut down in March. The race riots and polarizing effect of the Trump presidency resulted in “a perfect storm.” Given the politicization of the pandemic, “it’s amazing we made through it as stable as we did.” He said that the pandemic “didn’t create our world, but it threw gas on the fire.”

Then there are algorithms that filter information. Algorithms can immediately recognize what one is searching for. This is helpful if one is looking for a gift, but “it creates a narrowing world where you see a smaller and smaller slice of what’s out there.”  People “are more likely to pay attention to something that excites us, whether that means a happy excitement or an angry excitement.” There also comes to be a “feedback loop.” People see ever more extreme views of “things that you like,” and “things that you hate.” Thus, extreme views “seem standard.” Also, “only the worst perceptions of your enemies’ or opponents’ ideas appear.”

Antisemitism among Radical Groups

Padget said that antisemitism seems to be a feature of radicalism on both the right and the left. Elements of the far left claim that Jews are behind the free market, exploiting “workers and minorities around the world.” At the same time, the far right blames the Jews for socialist collectivism, which will “destroy cultural distinctives.” Islamists also attack Jews in their literature. In explanation of why this should be, Padget offered several reasons. The first was that the hostility is indeed satanic, as it was from the Jews that Jesus Christ appeared. Secondly, there is envy. “Jewish people always number among the most gifted in society.” The number of Nobel prizes won by Jews is a striking confirmation of this. This means that there are likely to be Jews in positions of leadership in any adversary social group that radicals of the right or left hate. Thirdly, Jews are the source of the religious doctrine of the unity of humanity. He quoted Os Guiness: “without the Jews, you don’t get what makes Western civilization unique.” This is a “fundamental counterweight” to class warfare, sexual politics, or radical nationalism.  

Patterns of Current Polarization

A remarkable feature of current cultural and political conflicts is that the Right and Left have in an important sense “traded places.” In the 1960s, “if someone was antiestablishment” they would be on the left. If one favored “respecting the proper authorities” at that time, one would be on the right. Today the opposite is the case. He said that both “critical and conspiracy theories posit that there is a higher order to life.” This type of thinking undergirds much of our “social imagination.” Yet paradoxically, both the Left and at least the secular Right hold that, except for what we construct, “there is no higher order.”

But, Padget said, “we know in our heart of hearts that there is a higher order to life, that there is a way things ought to be.” Thus, “we cannot be happy, or even sane, unless we find that order.” To do that, “our two choices are to find something to live for or drown that quest.” People invest their lives in causes, which causes may not “make sense, but they don’t have to make sense.” We don’t have to believe that the “causes are true, but by investing in them, we give ourselves the impression that our lives have meaning, have purpose.” But from a Christian worldview, we know that “the reason the world seems unhinged is precisely because it is … we still have what you might call moral energy, the passion and drive to fix the world around us” even though “we’ve along ago abandoned any idea of meaning behind what we ourselves create.” People still have “the desire to see the right prevail, we just don’t know how.” With only the visible world as public knowledge, there is “no way to judging that any one action worse than another.”

Padget said that in Schaeffer’s terms, we now live below the “line of despair.” We live our lives in “the world of facts and figures.” We do in fact get some meaning from the particulars that we deal with every day, but above the line of despair, in which “world there are universals that would give us meaning,” we find blocked by the line of despair, “that we feel we can never cross.” The world we live in “has causes and wishes, but no real hope.” While the world has rejected Christianity, “it is Christianity that offers the hope that the world so desperately and passionately needs.” It offers the hope “that the little gods of extremism can never provide.” More than mere desire, true Biblical hope is “a confident expectation … that there is good in the world.” Hope gives meaning, not on the basis of our desire, but on the basis of the objective, higher order. Even in the present day, God “is making all things new.”