The Redpill at the Bottom of the Bottle

Retracing Our Steps Down the Rabbit Hole

In 2016, a burst of dissident, far-right energy suddenly exploded out of an obscure anime imageboard and into real life. The fallout of this event would last for over a decade.

Most of the “Alt Right” were previously edgy libertarians and politically incorrect trolls who simply wanted to “trigger the libs” for “the lulz” by ironically (or meta-ironically) using shock humor and promulgating taboo political positions that were considered racist, sexist, homophobic, or anti-Semitic.

After Charlottesville, the movement became less ironic and less funny, so the trolls lost interest. Many became bored or disillusioned with politics, and moved on to other things.

However, others continued to be interested in politics. “Why is it that these ideas are so taboo? Why do they trigger people? Why are they so shocking?” they began to wonder. “Are the assumptions that our culture adheres to concerning race, gender, and other topics actually correct, or is it possible that the politically incorrect trolls actually have some valid critiques?” These questions led me, and many others, down a rabbit hole that was deep, winding, and dark. With each subsequent redpill, with each twist of the rabbit hole, life began to become more strange, as reality diverged more and more from what we had all been taught to believe.

One might begin by critiquing inconsistencies or hypocrisies in leftist ideology (ex: these two groups are supposed to be treated equally, but liberals are engaging in reverse discrimination). Then, one proceeds one step further, by not merely offering critique, but proposing a set of alternative assumptions (ex: perhaps these two groups are not actually equal). As one digs deeper into the assumptions of leftism, they inevitably run into the idea of “progress.” The leftist assumption is that society “progresses” closer and closer to some sort of ideal society. What is this ideal society? Well, that’s another assumption to ponder. Presumably one that is more “equal,” more “liberal” — more in line with Leftist dogma.

The triumph of “progress” is assumed to be an inevitable part of history. Naturally, one begins to question this too, and wonder if any alternative assumptions exist. If the latest forms of leftist “progress” — such as transgenderism— are actually a step in the wrong direction, then could the same be true of earlier forms of “progress” — such as feminism? What the leftist assumes to be progress, the rightist begins to see as degeneration. But if society is regressing rather than progressing, then it must have degenerated from some society that was closer to a more perfect ideal. So what was this ideal? At what point was society not “degenerate”?

One naturally starts with the 1950s. Usually there is some awareness of the 1960s “counter culture” and how these ideas changed society from a more “conservative” society into one that is more progressive. However, when one learns more, they begin to see the ideas of the 1960s counter culture already present in 1950s academia. Indeed, before World War 2 was even over, philosophers such as Karl Popper were already advocating for a liberal “Open Society.”

While World War II still raged, Karl Popper, a philosopher of science, worked to complete “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” a two-volume diagnosis of the civilizational madness that led to the global conflict. By Popper’s reckoning, civilization faces a choice. We can live in a tribal or “closed society,” characterized by deference to authority and the subordination of the interests of the individual to those of society, or we can break free from this “collectivist” impulse and build an “open society,” one that “sets free the critical powers of man.” The future of the West depends upon choosing the latter, Popper argues.

The enormous influence of “The Open Society and Its Enemies” in the decade following World War II seems, at first glance, improbable. The first volume is dominated by a detailed and highly critical, even abusive, interpretation of Plato, while the second volume treats Hegel and Marx with equal severity. Popper digresses into philosophy of science, metaphysics, and other abstract topics. His prose is full of “isms” and reads like a technical work of academic philosophy. But Popper structures his treatise to serve a clear political imperative, giving urgency to the twists and turns of his analysis.

The imperative is bracingly simple: Never again. Never again shall we allow totalitarian governments to emerge. Never again shall societies reach a fever pitch of ideological fanaticism. Never again shall the furnaces of Auschwitz consume their victims. This imperative—never again—places stringent demands upon us. It requires Western civilization to attain self-critical maturity with courage and determination, which Popper hoped to exemplify with his full-throated attack on Plato, the founder of our philosophical tradition. We must banish the strong gods of the closed society and create a truly open one.

— Reno, R. R. (2019). Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West. Regnery Gateway, p. 12

So it was not after the 1960s that the degeneration occurred, but after World War 2. (Note also the attacks on Plato and traditional Western philosophy which we shall return to later).

However, when one learns more, they begin to see that even before this the seeds of leftism had already been planted. In the book Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, James H. Billington explores how the revolutionary leftist ideas of the 20th and 21st centuries were all already present all the way back in the 18th and 19th.

According to Billington, the ideas of the modern Left — from feminism to communism— can be traced back to the Enlightenment.

Of the Paris political clubs the Cercle Social was the first to advocate feminism. It called for circles of women to accompany those of "free brothers," and formed on February 15, I791, in the Cirque of the Palais-Royal a feminine Society of the Friends of Truth with the Dutch Etta Palm (nee D'Aelders) as president.

The Social Circle was also relatively sympathetic to the cause of the blacks. Among the many engravings and medallions that Bonneville's artistic brother Francois designed for the Social Circle, two of the best depicted in classical style a black man and a black woman bearing respectively the legends:

“I am thy equal. Color is nothing, the heart is all, is it not, my brother?

In freedom as thou art: The French Republic in accord with nature has willed it: am I not thy sister?”

— Billington, James H. (1980). Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith. Basic Books, p. 42. (https://files.libcom.org/files/Fire%20in%20the%20Minds%20of%20Men.pdf)

The proto-communist idea that "common happiness" might be realized at the expense of private property ownership began to appear relatively early in the cosmopolitan Parisian circles that ultimately proved anathema to the nationalistic Jacobin leaders. A petition on "the agrarian laws" by an Anglo-Irishman James Rutledge, who called himself a "citizen of the universe," urged in 1790 the establishment of a social order ( etat social) with "no ownership of property." This idea of a lex agraria, a modified land distribution in the manner of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus during the Roman Republic, was systematically propagated at the same time by Bonneville's principal collaborator in the Social Circle, the Abbe Fauchet. The idea became a special favorite of the provincial clergy who identified with their rural parishes. The Abbe Cournand went even further, declaring that "in the state of nature, the domain of man is the entire earth" and arguing that all landowners should have plots equal in size, non-hereditary, and non-transferrable. Other "red curates" found an almost religious exaltation in identifying with the masses and articulating a social ideal that went beyond Parisian politics to suggest secular salvation.

— Billington, James H. (1980). Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith. Basic Books, pp. 71-72. (https://files.libcom.org/files/Fire%20in%20the%20Minds%20of%20Men.pdf)

During the revolution, the revolutionaries even attempted to replace Catholicism with a “Cult of Reason.” Something that sounds like it was conceived of on r/atheism.

The official nationwide Fête de la Raison, supervised by Hébert and Momoro on 20 Brumaire, Year II (10 November 1793) came to epitomize the new republican way of religion. In ceremonies devised and organized by Chaumette, churches across France were transformed into modern Temples of Reason. The largest ceremony of all was at the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. The Christian altar was dismantled and an altar to Liberty was installed and the inscription "To Philosophy" was carved in stone over the cathedral's doors. Festive girls in white Roman dress and tricolor sashes milled around a costumed Goddess of Reason who "impersonated Liberty". A flame burned on the altar which was symbolic of truth. To avoid statuary and idolatry, the Goddess figures were portrayed by living women, and in Paris the role was played by Momoro's wife, Sophie, who is said to have dressed "provocatively" and, according to Thomas Carlyle, "made one of the best Goddesses of Reason; though her teeth were a little defective."

—Wikipedia, Cult of Reason. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason)

Cited from Wikipedia since the citation is concise, and this event is more or less common knowledge.

So it was not after World War 2 when the degeneration occurred, but rather during the Enlightenment of the 18th and 19th centuries. Here, finally, we encounter a true definition of “Right Wing” and “Left Wing.” Their definitions come directly from the French Revolution.

We began to recognize each other: those who were loyal to religion and the king took up positions to the right of the chair so as to avoid the shouts, oaths, and indecencies that enjoyed free rein in the opposing camp.

— Hodgson, G. M. (2018). Wrong Turnings: How the Left Got Lost, p.32 (https://books.google.com/books?id=4Lc-DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA32)

In modern times, it is the Left Wing — particularly their dogma of “progress” — that dictates society, and it is the Right Wing that reacts against it. However, when we go back to the origins of these terms in the French Revolution, we see that this was not always so. Leftism is actually a perverter and disintegrator of an earlier, rightest ideal — the ideology of “religion and the king.” Leftism is itself the ultimate reactionary ideology, as its origin lies in reacting to and negating this earlier ideology.

So finally we arrive at a pure Right Wing ideology that can be positively affirmed. “Positively affirmed” meaning that this ideology asserts its own claims, rather than simply negating or reacting to another ideology’s claims. This ideology is the monarchical, Catholic ideology that was the basis of “Western Civilization.” Or, as it was once known, “Christendom.” So, it seems that, when we follow the rabbit hole all the way from memes and trolling down to its logical endpoint, that this is the final redpill at the bottom of the bottle: God. God lies at the end of the rabbit hole.

If we wish to positively affirm a Right Wing ideology, it would seem that we must affirm Catholicism, the source of our civilization. After all, what is the source of any civilization if not religion? Religion is at the center of a civilization in the same way that the soul is at the center of a human being. When the soul leaves a human being, slowly the human being begins to rot from the inside out — first the mind, then the heart and the guts, until it finally reaches the outermost skin (as actualized by the trash, feces, condoms, drug paraphernalia, boarded up windows, and homeless encampments lining the streets of modern Western cities). Likewise, it was when religion began to leave Western Civilization that it began to degenerate. A process in which we are now in the final stages.

In hindsight, this is painfully obvious. Islamic civilization is inseparable from Islam. Classical civilization is inseparable from Greek and Roman paganism, expressed in myths such as The Odyssey. Chinese civilization is inseparable from its syncretic combination of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. Nazi Germany is inseparable from Nazism, and the USSR from Leninism. Ideology is what provided the energy and zeal for revolutionary France or fascist Germany to expand and conquer their neighbors, for the Muslims to build their empire, and for the Christians to launch the crusades or to explore the New World. These religions and ideologies gave their respective societies not only this explosive inertia, but also their unique character — dictating their distinctive values, thoughts, and behaviors. It is the “why.” The final cause, the telos, which all of a civilization’s will is both derived from and directed towards. Without which — in absence of this “why” — this restless activity grinds to halt and people simply stop doing things. Civilization can be conceived of as a self-organizing system based around a particular religion or ideology.

With this assumption in mind, one can begin to sketch out a rough Right Wing narrative of Western history which is rooted in Christianity, as an alternative to the Left’s notions of inevitable “progress” towards Leftism.

The Timeline

The Years 1-499

Late Classical Civilization: the Seeds of the West

The first year of the calendar of Western civilization naturally begins with the birth of Christ and the religion of the West, Christianity.

The religion began during the early Imperial period of Rome. During this time, Classical Civilization had already developed for centuries, achieving much in the realm of the arts and sciences. It was intellectually sophisticated and politically dominant. Rome was the universal hegemon of the West, and thus of the known world, as far as it existed to the Western mind. However, it had degenerated into moral decadence. The soul of Classical Civilization, Paganism, was rotting away.

In the body of Classical Civilization was planted the seed of Christendom, which would bloom into the civilization we know today. At first a minor and persecuted religion, as Classical Civilization decreased, Christendom increased. Eventually, the entire Classical world became Christian. A united World Religion, for the united World Empire known as Rome. The capital of this religion, where its prime minister the Pope was enthroned, became the very same capital city of the very same empire that had once fed its disciples to the lions. From here, the World Religion began to spread across the globe over the next 2000 years until it had reached every corner of it, just as its King, Christ, had prophesized.

The Years 500-999

The Dark Ages: the West Militant

500 years after Christ, the World Empire of Rome had split into two parts.

The eastern half of the Empire would eventually evolve into another civilization, Orthodox Civilization. Today Orthodox Civilization lives on in Russia and the other Orthodox nations. Orthodox Civilization would forever become the half-brother of the West — Christian but not Catholic, European but also Asiatic. Slavic and Greek rather than Germanic and Latin. Eventually, these eastern Christians would fall under Muslim rule almost everywhere, except for in those lands controlled by Russia. Therefore, aside from Russia, the entire Christian world became synonymous with Western Europe and its colonies.

The western half of the Empire became Western Civilization, which could also be called Catholic Civilization or simply Christendom. The cultural transformation from Classical to Catholic civilization was completed in 381, when Christianity became the official Roman religion. However, the political transformation was a long and gradual process. Around 476, this half of the Empire would become permanently balkanized, leading to the birth of the European nations. The political transformation was definitively completed by the fall of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 by Napoleon, when the last traces of political continuity between Rome and Europe was finally erased by the Enlightenment ideas of the French Revolution.

During the time between the years 500 and 1000, political power in the West waned. The West became politically fragmented and localized, leading to feudalism. The West suffered from attacks on all sides. Pagan barbarians such as the Vikings in the north and Magyars in the east ravaged Western Europe. The formerly Christian possessions of the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, and Spain fell to the Muslims. Christendom declined in wealth and influence relative to other areas of the world, such as the Islamic caliphates.

Nevertheless, the Roman Catholic Church as an institution, and a shared Roman Catholic cultural heritage in general, continued to unite Europe as a single civilizational unit.

It was between the years of 500 to 1000 when a civilization distinct from Classical Civilization began to develop in Europe out of the new religion of Christianity and the ethnogenesis of the European people out of the hybridization of the Latins and Germans.

The Years 1000-1499

The Middle Ages: the West Blossoms

By the year 1000, Europe began to recover politically and became vigorous again. The Catholic Church created the first modern universities such as the University of Bologna and the University of Paris in the early 1000s, and Western intellectual life accelerated. The great Gothic cathedrals, one of the high marks of Western art, were built between the 12th and 16th centuries. The foundations of Western philosophic thought were constructed by Catholic scholastics such as St. Thomas Aquinas (who lived from 1225 to 1274), combining Christian theology with Classical philosophy such as Plato and Aristotle.

For the last 500 years, Christendom had been on the defensive, both against pagan Viking raids from the north and Muslims from the east. From the year 1000 on, the West went on the offensive, attempting to regain some of its lost territory. The Reconquista of 711-1492 slowly regained Spain piece by piece. Meanwhile, the first crusade was launched in 1095 in an attempt to restore the Holy Land of the Eastern Mediterranean to Christendom after its fall to Muslim invaders.

Europe circa 1200 AD. Note the reconquest of northern Spain from the Muslims

From the 10th century onward, Christendom would continue on this trajectory of expansion and growth. In the first millennium, Christianity was born and spread throughout the West. In the second, it would spread throughout every continent of the Earth. Through the lens of Christianity, this is the only true “progress.”

The Years 1500-1999

The Modern Age: the West Triumphant

From around the year 1500 onward, Christendom would dominate the world, surpassing all other civilizations in art, science, political power, philosophy, and virtually all other human endeavors. The Italian Renaissance of the 14th-16th century saw great Western artists such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci create their masterpieces, many of them being commissioned by the Church. Shakespeare created his literary masterpieces between the late 1500s and early 1600s.

In 1642, Isaac Newton was born. Influenced by the Western, Christian society in which he lived, Newton saw his scientific discoveries as evidence of God's design in the universe. His famous quote, “In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God's existence,” illustrates his belief that the natural world revealed divine order and purpose.

In 1440, the Guttenberg press was invented, and by 1500, most of the West had become literate. The doctrine of the newly emerged Protestant Reformation advocated a “priesthood of all believers,” meaning that each person had a personal responsibility to understand and interpret the Bible. This led to an increase in the desire for literacy, as individuals needed to be able to read Scripture for themselves.

By the 18th century, mass literacy, the availability of public education, and the growth of democratic institutions allowed ordinary citizens a large degree of autonomy, liberty, and self-governance. The Christian belief in the dignity of the individual human soul, combined with the political institutions of Westerners that protected this dignity, led to the development of human rights as we know them today. They would soon be spread across the world.

In 1492, the Reconquista was completed in Spain. The same year, Christopher Columbus set sail, and the discovery and conversion of the New World began. From 1492, the World Religion of Christianity — still seated in the capital of the World Empire in Rome, and speaking the universal language of Latin — began to spread to every continent. Between the year 1492 and the beginning of the World Wars, the various nations of Christian Civilization would colonize and evangelize virtually every other people of the planet. Just one of these nations, the British Empire, controlled about 25% of the world’s total land and population during the height of this period (the years just prior to the World Wars).

From 1760-1840, the Industrial Revolution transformed civilization to a degree not seen since the introduction of agriculture and the advent of civilization itself. Christian Civilization brought to the world huge leaps in agricultural production, steam power, factories, mass production of consumer goods, machine tools, and chemical production. By the 1900s it had invented electrical power, the lightbulb, the telephone, the phonograph, skyscrapers, the automobile, and the airplane.

While the rapid urbanization and industrialization of Christian Civilization led to problems such as overcrowding and poor sanitation, reformers eventually addressed these problems. Cities developed public transportation and infrastructure such as railroads and electric streetcars, sewer systems, and fire departments. A modern policing and crime prevention system developed. Reforms to the prison system eliminated brutal punishments such as public executions and replaced them with prison sentences aimed at reforming criminals. Modern urban planning and sanitation created cities that were safe, clean, and beautiful.

These reforms, like the other artistic and intellectual developments of the West, all were rooted in Christianity. Christian charities such as the Salvation Army and YMCA provided the city’s poor with food, shelter, and moral guidance. Christian figures such as Octavia Hill in England pioneered housing reform. Catholic and Protestant groups founded hospitals to treat the sick, often offering free or low-cost services to those in need. Many of these hospitals were staffed by nuns, priests, or lay volunteers, all motivated by a sense of Christian charity. Sunday schools were established in Britain and America to teach poor children reading, writing, and religious instruction, motivated by the belief that religious education would help lift the poor out of ignorance and provide moral guidance. Reformers such as Lord Shaftesbury in Britain, a devout Anglican, campaigned against child labor, inspired by Christian ideas of protecting the weak. Shaftesbury’s efforts led to significant legislation such as the Factory Acts, which regulated child labor in factories and mines, improving working conditions and reducing hours. Elizabeth Fry, a prominent Quaker and social reformer, believed in the Christian tenet of forgiveness and redemption. She spearheaded reforms in the prison system, particularly focusing on the treatment of women and children in prisons. This is merely scratching the surface of the various Christian reformers who improved Western Civilization through their faith and gave it the unique character that it had at its height.

Those areas under the rule of Christian Civilization through colonization benefited from all of these new technologies and social reforms, becoming civilized, developed nations.

Finally, slavery, an institution as old as humanity itself, became virtually eliminated as a direct result of Christian Civilization and its domination of the world. The Catholic Church had condemned slavery consistently since Roman times, on the basis that all men were equally created in the image of God.

Despite societal acceptance of slavery, the Church made no distinction between slaves and freedmen in its membership. The equality of believers in a highly class-stratified society was one of the attractions that the Church held for the people of Rome.

Once Emperor Constantine legalized the Church in A.D. 313, its teachings influenced Roman laws and policies. Church funds were used by Christians to redeem slaves, especially prisoners of war. One former slave even rose to become pope (Callistus I) in the early third century! Still, slavery continued in Europe even after the collapse of imperial rule in the late fifth century, but as the Church’s influence increased the institution of slavery decreased, until it was completely eradicated in Christendom.

Unfortunately, slavery returned to European society in the fifteenth century, with the conquest of the Canary Islands and the discovery of the New World. But from 1435 to 1890, a succession of popes condemned the slave trade and slavery in no uncertain terms. The first pope to do so was Eugenius IV (r. 1431-1447), who in his 1435 bull Sicut Dudum demanded that Christians free all enslaved natives of the Canary Islands within fifteen days; failure to do so would incur automatic excommunication. Thus, fifty-seven years before Columbus’s first voyage, the Roman pontiff unequivocally prohibited the enslavement of native peoples.

In 1537, Pope Paul III (r. 1534-1549) issued a bull, Sublimus Dei, which taught that natives peoples were not to be enslaved. In 1591, Gregory XIV (r. 1590-1591) promulgated Cum Sicuti, which was addressed to the bishop of Manila in the Philippines and reiterated his predecessors’ prohibitions against enslaving native peoples. In the seventeenth century, Urban VIII (r. 1623-1644) promulgated Commissum Nobis (1639) in support of the Spanish king’s (Philip IV) edict prohibiting enslavement of the Indians in the New World.

The need for cheap and abundant labor in the colonies is what led to the African slave trade. This new form of bondage was also condemned by the popes, beginning with Innocent XI (r. 1676-1689). In 1741, Benedict XIV (r. 1740-1758) issued Immensa Pastorum, which reiterated that the penalty for enslaving Indians was excommunication. In 1839, Gregory XVI (r. 1831-1846) issued In Supremo to condemn the enslavement of Africans. Pope Leo XIII (r. 1878-1903) promulgated two bulls condemning slavery in 1888 and 1890.

— Catholic.com, Sep 18 2017 “Did the Church Ever Support Slavery?” (https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/did-the-church-ever-support-slavery)

In 1834, the British Empire outlawed slavery, freeing hundreds of thousands of slaves across the world. The French, the second largest colonial power, would follow suit, abolishing slavery in 1848.

In the United States, Christian abolitionists such as Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin) and the Quakers played key roles in advocating for the end of slavery. The United States abolished slavery in 1865, after many white Christians died on the battlefield as a result of the abolitionist movement and its desire to free their black brothers.

The British and other Western powers controlled overseas trade, allowing them to forbid virtually every country that was not already under their direct control from participating in the slave trade. For example, the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1880 prohibited the Red Sea slave trade and gave the British the right to search and seize any vessel to Ottoman territories suspected of carrying slaves. Thus, for the first time in human history, the evil of slavery was abolished worldwide thanks to the global dominance of Christian Civilization (with some rare exceptions, mostly in areas not under the control of the West).

The Years 2000 - The Current Year

The Post-Modern Ages: the West in Ruins

However, just as Classical Civilization before it, it was at its greatest heights that the seeds of destruction were planted in Christian Civilization.

Beginning in the 16th century, Protestants began to successfully break away from the Catholic Church. This had a number of consequences that eventually led to the secularization of Christian Civilization. Europe was no longer united under a single Christian church and led by a single Christian leader, the Pope. Rulers of European nations who did not want to be subject to the authority of the Pope and the Church could simply convert to Protestantism, or even found their own Protestant sect, thus strengthening civil authority while weakening religious authority. Additionally, the wars between Catholics and Protestants led to fatigue, and a cultural attitude that religion should be a private affair, completely separated from secular government. Finally, the Enlightenment of the 18th and early 19th centuries promulgated an ideology of secular humanism — and even atheism — which was then spread throughout Europe after the French Revolution.

Nevertheless, the majority of Europe was still highly Christian (of one sort or another) up until the World Wars. In 1900, between 90-99% of all Italians, Austro-Hungarians, Germans, Frenchmen, and Brits were Christian. Today, the number of Christians in these European countries has declined to the following percentages — Italy: 83%, Austria: 72%, Germany: 65%, France: 63%, UK: 46% . This dramatic drop is due to the rise of atheism and foreign religions such as Islam. It began to occur after the World Wars.

The World Wars were the death knell of Western primacy. They devastated Christendom, reversing 500 years of uncontested domination throughout the world.

First, the nations of Europe were physically destroyed. Centuries-old cities such as Warsaw and Dresden were leveled and reduced to rubble.

Dresden before World War 2

Dresden after World War 2

After World War 2, the enervated European powers began to withdraw from their colonial empires until virtually none of their colonies remained. For the first time since the “fall of Rome,” the West’s political power began to recede.

The economies of Europe were ruined. In the year 1900, the Western European countries made up around 33% of the total world economy (63.8% if one includes the United States and Eastern Europe) compared to only 14% from East Asia, 10% from South and South East Asia, and 3% from Latin America. In 1950, Europe had declined to 26% (however this economy was subsidized by the Marshall Plan). In 2022, Western Europe contributed a mere 13% to the world GDP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)) (https://ourworldindata.org/economic-growth#all-charts). According to the IMF, out of the top 5 economies, only one — Germany — is in Western Europe (https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD). Out of the top 5 economies, only the United States and Germany are Western, with China, Japan, and India surpassing the United Kingdom and France. By 2050, the United States is the only Western nation projected to be in the top 5 global economies. By then, the top 10 economies are projected to be 1. China, 2. India, 3. the US, 4. Indonesia, 5. Brazil, 6. Russia, 7. Mexico, 8. Japan, 9. Germany, and 10. the UK. (https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/research-insights/economy/the-world-in-2050.html)

After World War 2, Europe became dependent on NATO militarily. Their cultural influence, once dominant in the world, began to be eclipsed by that of the United States. The most prestigious universities all became located in the United States, with the exceptions of Oxford and Cambridge.

World War 2 also destroyed Western Civilization spiritually. This was felt not only in the realm of religion, but also in the academic world. In the 19th century, the most renowned philosophic schools were either those of German idealists such as Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel or else scientific, empiricist philosophies such as that of John Stuart Mill.

After the World Wars, both the detached empiricism of science (which had given birth to the race science and eugenic practices utilized by the Nazis) as well as dedication to higher ideals (which had given birth to extreme nationalistic fervor) were blamed for the devastating wars and fell out of favor. Instead, postmodernism, liberalism, and relativism were promoted. All of these ideologies are negative — rather than affirming particular truth claims, they deny the existence of truth entirely, or at minimum the right to assert one truth claim over another. Christianity could no longer be more or less affirmed than any other religion. One’s own nation could no longer be affirmed over any other.

The strong gods discredited themselves in the first half of the twentieth century. After 1945, Weber’s notion of disenchantment, which he saw as the spiritual burden that modern men must carry, was adopted as a positive program for cultural renewal. Three decades of mass mobilization left Europe exhausted, and a consensus formed that the West could not endure another round of nationalist zealotry. The way forward would require weakening the powerful loyalties that bound men to their homelands.

…

Accordingly, in the initial years of the postwar era, steps were taken to disenchant and desacralize public life…a large and powerful cultural trend in the postwar era that involved rejecting more than nationalism. It made strong claims of many sorts taboo. The popular influence of French existentialism is a case in point. Albert Camus sought to articulate a humanism that required no authoritative tradition, institution, or form of life. His selection for the Nobel Prize in 1957 was an official endorsement of this effort to defend the human person against the claims of strong gods in any guise, even in the garb of moral truth. Camus’s metaphysical asceticism—he refused all traditional claims about the sources and foundations of reality—was received by the postwar West as exemplary moral heroism.

…

All of this is summed up in his catchphrase the “weakening of Being,” which he sees as a happy unburdening of the West, for weakening promotes tolerance, peace, and freedom. If there are no strong truths, nobody will judge others or limit their freedom. If nothing is worth fighting for, nobody will fight. Vattimo looks forward to a disenchanted world that encourages us to adopt a “moderate and generous” approach to life. The great commandment is not to love our neighbor as we love our self. Instead, it is to go easy on our neighbors as we go easy on ourselves.

— R R Reno, May 2017 “Return of the Strong Gods” (https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/05/return-of-the-strong-gods)

The Catholic scholastics once sought to integrate the wisdom of classical philosophers such as Plato into Christendom. Now postmodernist philosophers, such as Karl Popper (as already mentioned), would attack and discard it, seeing in it the seeds of fascism.

After all, Plato’s Republic promoted a rigid, hierarchical, and idealized state structure through its vision of a perfectly ordered society. Something far too “totalitarian” for the tastes of a generation traumatized by the regimes of Hitler and Stalin. Plato envisioned a society governed by a class of philosopher-kings who possess absolute wisdom and the moral authority to rule over others. The philosopher-kings, being the most rational, are deemed fit to wield this absolute power because they supposedly understand the Forms — abstract truths which govern reality. This is in accordance with the Catholic view as articulated in St. Augustine’s City of God, in which the ideal society is that which serves “the common good” — the ultimate good being God Himself.

In the conception of the ideal state articulated by Plato and St. Augustine, it is the epitome of justice for the individual to sacrifice himself in order to serve the common good — a good which can be known objectively through reason and faith. To know “the good” necessarily gives the “philosopher-kings” the ability to exercise authority over others, because it provides them a moral imperative to do so in order to uphold justice.

But after the World Wars, any sense of the individual sacrificing his liberty for the common good had become taboo. Thus, to completely eliminate the “authoritarianism” of “the good” over the individual, any objective knowledge of “the good” had to be eliminated, so that this pursuit of justice by means of individual sacrifice becomes impossible. According to Popper, authority must only be exercised in order to prevent authoritarianism —“the paradox of tolerance” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance). The only remaining justice is for “the good” itself to be perpetually relativized in order to prevent authoritarianism at all costs, thus leading to postmodernism.

Effectively, 2400 years of philosophy — and its pursuit of truth, as exemplified by Plato’s pursuit of the perfect forms — had been negated. It had been replaced with what had existed before it: sophistry.

After World War 2, the United States and Russia (the USSR) were the sole Western powers left intact. Both represent territories on the periphery of Western Civilization. Russia, as discussed earlier, is something of a half-brother to Western Civilization, and it is arguable whether it is part of the West, rather than its own Orthodox civilization (a position known as “Eurasianism”). The United States is a colony of the West, a frontier nation that lies an ocean away from the core lands of Western Europe. These remnants of the West would only remain strong for about one more generation. The USSR would fall in 1991, leaving behind a broken Russia. The United States began to decline shortly thereafter, as it began to suffer from many of the same spiritual ailments caused by the mortal wounds inflicted upon the Western spirit after the World Wars.

Meanwhile, non-Western states such as China, India, and some Middle Eastern states, began to rapidly develop, closing the gap between Western and non-Western civilizations for the first time in half a millennium.

The Current Year

Map of Western Civilization in 2024. Dark blue countries are Western, whereas light blue countries might be considered either Western or a unique civilization

If Christianity was the source of our civilization, and falling away from it was its downfall, then perhaps returning to the source will reinvigorate it. Just as our civilization rotted from the inside out, perhaps it must heal from the inside out. True, we cannot return to the past. But if all of the other aspects of Western Civilization that made it unique — its art, science, social institutions, philosophy, etc. — were fruits of the tree of Christianity, then so long as it lives it can bear new fruits, just as it did 1000 and 2000 years ago.

The alternative is that it shrivels up and dies, and takes with it all of the fruits it once produced. However, if Christianity goes extinct, and the gates of Hell prevail over the Church, then it was a false religion in the first place, and so there is no point in preserving it. It would mean that our civilization was based on a lie, and so whatever it may have incidentally produced can just as easily be replicated by any other civilization, and is thus not worth saving.

If a revival of Christianity is impossible, then Western Civilization is over. It may give birth at some time, far in the future, to a new civilization (just as Classical Civilization gave birth to Christian Civilization). But its 2000 years of history as we know it today is over and gone for good.

On the other hand, if it can be revitalized, then I believe that the third millennium can soar to even greater heights than the second, just as the second millennium far surpassed the first. Perhaps Christendom can expand into space and the rest of the universe, just as it once expanded to the New World. That is a truly progressive vision. A Right Wing progressive vision. A Right Wing vision that is not stuck perpetually in a past that cannot be recovered, and is not relegated to constantly reacting towards the advances (or regressions) of the Left, but instead leads the way towards the future.

I am not a historian (except perhaps an Internet historian), and creating a history of the last 2000 years is well beyond my capabilities (although I am not so much “creating” it as rediscovering it). This article simply represents the worldview that I have come to understand as a result of these ten years of political disruption. From GamerGate to God. I suppose that all roads inevitably lead back to God, one way or another.