DIVERSITY OR HEGEMONY? THE PROGRESSIVE’S CONUNDRUM

Progressive liberals have developed hypocritical duplicity into a fine art, and this is one of the reasons why traditionalists and conservatives will so often lose in the arena when faced with liberal methodology. One of their preferred tactics is to accuse their opponents of the things that they themselves are guilty of (in spades) before even guns are drawn. They have institutionalised this double-speak with the invention of concepts whose purpose is to hide what is really going on. Here I would like to concentrate on just one. The cause of “diversity” is one much championed by the radical left which now controls almost every channel of communication in the West. But what is meant by such a concept and what is it supposed to promote? As any vaguely thinking person now knows, the concept has nothing at all to do with real diversity but instead means (in the words of Rod Dreher) “not objecting to imposed cultural uniformity”. How did we get here?

Far from being libertarian, the roots of western liberalism were, and still are hegemonic, dogmatic, intolerant, and violent. The idea that “certain inalienable rights” are “self-evident” pitches these western dogmas directly into the teeth of other cultures and religions who oppose them. From the time of the so-called “Enlightenment” (in fact the beginning of the new Dark Ages through which we are still living), this hubristic new religion set out to conquer the globe. So-called “western values” were to replace indigenous or pre-existing traditions through soft-power (education and technology) and hard-power (regime-change, sanctions and so on). Most important in all of this was the rise of feminism. Pitching women against the culture of their ancestors meant that traditions and hierarchies would be dismantled and de-gutted. This is most clearly obvious with the collapse of European Protestantism with its lesbian “bishops” and empty churches. This implacable drive for dogmatic uniformity has tried to maintain a façade of “difference” by allowing some (but not all) cultural and religious practices to continue. But the problem is that when a culture is forced into the one-size-fits-all straight-jacket of “universal western values” then there nothing left except the façade. What remains is Islam without its warlike concept of jihad, Hinduism without the caste system, Christianity without sin and repentance. Even real Buddhists today are fighting against the demeaning of their religion into a lifestyle pick-me-up by western vegans.

Very soon the churches are empty of believers (because there is nothing to believe in) but filled with tourists in jeans and hot-pants. The culture has become a museum, tedious and lifeless (as all museums are). All are invited, but no one wants to participate anymore. The surface of this society can appear diverse, but real difference is gone and will never return. You cannot unite modern western liberal humanism and traditional Christianity without killing one or the other. They are diametrically opposed. The same is true for all the world’s ancient cultures and civilisations.

This new world may be one which is fairer and with less cruelty (although I am yet to be convinced that the overall mass of suffering is any less), but it is a world astonishing in its banality. Traditional culture has been replaced by an ersatz veneer of difference and this is making the world into a very boring place. Not so long ago, travellers set out to foreign lands without hegemonic intent. They reported back on strange practices such as sati and foot-binding, but not as ambassadors for Amnesty International. As late as 1940, Freya Stark reported a conversation in the Yemen in her book, A Winter in Arabia:

“Are you one of those foreigners," said [a bedu of Ba Qutmi tribe], "who are coming to make us free our slaves, and pay taxes, and to make our women do as they please?"

"I do not know," said I, "about the first two, but I know that your women do as they please already, because I am a woman myself."

But the writing is on the wall for such cultures, the long-arm today’s bien-pensants reaches into the remotest corners of the world, homogenising and destroying all in its wake. Will future progressives mourn when there is no Bible Belt in the USA, when churches in Russia are museums like those in old Europe, when even the mosques are empty except for a few virtue-signalling imams? I think overall they will not mourn. We need to remember just how ignorant most progressives are. They have no understanding of even the most basic religious concepts (such as the liturgical calendar) which are the names of their own national holidays and academic term-times. They cannot even tell you what the Feast of the Epiphany celebrates or when the Council of Nicea took place. On the other hand, there will be a small group who will mourn. Those sophisticated western comedians like Louis Theroux and Sacha Baron Cohen, who make their money out of ridiculing people they consider to be backward and retarded, will have no fodder for their films. Who will they sneer at then?