Ideology and Fanaticism

Dogmatism and Scepticism

Freedom is obedience to leaders
Virtue is violence
Manhood is domination

— A Woman's Liberation, 1995.


Love of god and country is like fire:

• a wonderful friend,
• a terrible enemy.

Only children play with fire.

— Ursula Le Guin (1929 – 2018), Forgiveness Day, Asimov's Science Fiction, 1994.


Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.

— William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), Timon of Athens, Act 3, Scene 5, 1605-6.


[One] cannot accomplish a great work without doing some evil.

— Leopold Victor (1835 – 1909), King of the Belgians (1865 – 1909)


War … proves

• some to be gods, and
• others to be mere men,

by turning

• the latter into slaves, and
• the former into masters …

— Heraclitus (c535 – c475 BCE)


The power of Marxist-Leninist theory lies in the fact that it enables the Party

• to find the right orientation in any situation,
• to understand the inner connection of current events,
• to foresee their course, and
• to perceive not only
  • how and in what direction they are developing in the present, but
  • how and in what direction they are bound to develop in the future.

— History of the Communist Party, Moscow, 1945.

Fanaticism:
From Latin fānāticus (“of a temple, divinely inspired, frenzied”), from fānum (“temple”).
(Wiktionary, 22 December 2012)

Nation:
A community of people of mainly common descent, language, history, or political institutions and usually sharing one territory and government.
[From Latin nasci be born]
(The Oxford Reference Dictionary, Joyce Hawkins, Editor, 1986)

Eric Hoffer (1902 – 83):
The fanatics of various hues … are ready to fly at each other’s throat.
But they are neighbors and almost of one family.
They hate each other with the hatred of brothers. …
And [so] it is easier for a fanatic Communist to be converted to fascism, chauvinism or Catholicism than to become a sober liberal.
(The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, §62, 1951)

Vladimir Ulyanov | Lenin (1870 – 1924):
The kulak … is prepared to strangle and massacre hundreds of thousands of workers …
Ruthless war must be waged on the kulaks!
Death to them!
(Ian McEwan, The End of the World Blues, Stanford University, 2007)

Ioseb Jughashvili | Stalin (1878 – 1953) [20th Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, 1937]:
We will mercilessly destroy anyone who, by his deeds or his thoughts — yes, his thoughts! — threatens the unity of the socialist state.
[Let us drink to] the complete destruction of all enemies, themselves and their kin!
(Margaret MacMillan, History's People, Text, 2015)

The inalienable quality of every Bolshevik under present conditions should be the ability to recognize an enemy of the Party no matter how well he may be masked.
(29 July 1936)

Hannah Arendt (1906 – 75):
The best documented resuit of dekulakization, collectivization, and the Great Purge [1936–8] was neither progress nor rapid industrialization but famine, chaotic conditions in the production of food, and depopulation. …
The truth is that the price of totalitarian rule was so high that in neither Germany nor Russia has it yet been paid in full.
(The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951 / 1967)

Cleon (died 422 BCE):
Punish [enemies] as they deserve, and teach your other allies — by a striking example — that the penalty of rebellion is death.
(Thucydides, The History of Peloponnesian War, Book III, 40)

Thucydides (c460 – c400 BCE):
The Helots were invited by a proclamation to pick out those of their number who claimed to have most distinguished themselves against the enemy, in order that they might receive their freedom; the object being to test them, as it was thought that the first to claim their freedom would be the most high-spirited and the most apt to rebel.
As many as two thousand were selected accordingly, who crowned themselves and went round the temples, rejoicing in their new freedom.
The Spartans, however, soon afterwards did away with them, and no one ever knew how each of them perished.
(The History of Peloponnesian War, Book IV, 80)

Kwame Appiah (1954):
Everybody in the world agrees, that most people in the world have incorrect religious beliefs.
(Creed, Mistaken Identities, Part 1, 18 October 2016)

[It is] caring about what your country’s doing in the world and feeling

• bad when it does bad things, and
• good when it does good things,

that’s at the heart of the kind of morally appropriate patriotism …
(Country, Mistaken Identities, Part 2, BBC Reith Lectures, 25 October 2016)

Michel Eyquem (1533 – 92) [Lord of Montaigne]:
[All] polities have a god at their head, truly so in the case of the one drawn up by Moses for the people of Judaea on leaving Egypt; the rest, falsely so.
(On glory, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, 1580, M A Screech, Translator, Penguin, 1991, p 716)

Robert Putnam (1941):
[Dozens] of studies have linked religious participation to political intolerance …
(Bowling Alone, Simon & Schuster, 2000, Note 9, p 496)

Alvin Toffler (1928 – 2016):
For those who lack an intelligent, comprehensive programme, who cannot cope with the novelties and complexities of blinding change, terrorism substitutes for thought.
Terrorism may not topple regimes, but it removes doubts.
(Future Shock, Pan, 1971, p 329)

George Santayana (1863 – 1952):
Intuitive ethics has nothing to offer in the presence of discord except an appeal to force and to ultimate physical sanction.
It can instigate, but not resolve, the battle of nations and the battle of religions.
Precisely

• the same zeal,
• the same patriotism, [and]
• the same readiness for martyrdom

fires adherents to rival societies, and fires them especially in view of the fact that the adversary is no less uncompromising and fierce. …
Here are two flagrant instances where pre-rational morality defeats the ends of morality.
Viewed from within, each religious or national fanaticism stands for a good; but in its outward operation it produces and becomes an evil.
(Intuitive Morality, 1903)

Isaiah Berlin (1909 – 97):
Toleration is historically the product of

• the realisation of the irreconcilability of equally dogmatic faiths, and
• the practical improbability of complete victory of one over the other.

Those who wished to survive realised that they had to tolerate error.
They gradually came to see merits in diversity, and so became sceptical about definitive solutions in human affairs.
(The Originality of Machiavelli, Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, 1979)

Emile Durkheim (1858 – 1917):
A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden — beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community … all those who adhere to them.
(The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 1915, K E Fields, Translator, Free Press, 1995)

Jonathan Haidt (1963):
Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible.
(The Righteous Mind, Pantheon, 2012)

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860):
Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. …
The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to achieve the intellectual corruption of a whole generation.
(Works, 2nd Ed, 1888)

The highest civilization and culture, apart from the ancient Hindus and Egyptians, are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest …
All this is due to the fact that … those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to:

• develop all their intellectual powers, and
• invent and perfect all the arts,

in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate.
(Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol 2, Section 92, 1851)

Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970):
To understand Marx psychologically, one should use the following dictionary:

Yahweh	Dialectical Materialism
The Messiah	Marx
The Elect	The Proletariat
The Church	The Communist Party
The Second Coming	The Revolution
Hell	Punishment of the Capitalists
The Millennium	The Communist Commonwealth

(A History of Western Philosophy, 1961, p 361)

Fascism

Plato (c428 – c347 BCE):
The greatest principle of all … is that nobody, whether male or female, should ever be without a leader.
Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative, neither out of zeal, nor even playfully.
But in war and in the midst of peace — to his leader he shall

• direct his eye, and
• follow him faithfully.

And even in the smallest matters he should stand under leadership.
For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals … only if he has been told to do so …
In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit,

• never to dream of acting independently, and
• to become utterly incapable of it.

In this way the life of all will be spent in total community.
(Laws)

Rudolf Hess (1894 – 1987):
The Party is Hitler!
But Hitler is Germany!
As Germany is Hitler!

Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945):
Before us, Germany lies
In us, Germany burns
And behind us, Germany follows …

We cannot be disloyal to what has given us sense and purpose.
Nothing will come from nothing, if it is not grounded on a greater order.
This order was not given to us by an earthly superior.
It was given to us by God — who created our people.

The Party will always be the political leadership of the German people. …
In its entity … it will be like a religious order.
(Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will, 1935)

If the war is lost … then the nation will also perish. …
There is no need to consider the basis of even a most primitive existence [for the German people] any longer.
On the contrary, it is better to destroy even that, and to destroy it ourselves.
The nation has proved itself weak.
(Cornelius Ryan, The Last Battle, 1966, pp 172-3)

He who wants to live, should fight.
And he who does not want to fight, in this world of eternal struggle, does not deserve to live.
(Mein Kampf, 1925)

Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain.
It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook.
(Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks,1940, p 171)

Hermann Goring (1893 – 1946):
We love Adolf Hitler because we believe firmly and profoundly that he was sent to us by God to save Germany.
To those who follow him there is no quality that he does not possess to the greatest perfection.
(1934)

Benito Mussolini (1883 – 1945) & Giovanni Gentile (1875 – 1944):
[Our movement rejects the view of man] as an individual, standing by himself, self-centered, subject to natural law, which instinctively urges him toward a life of selfish momentary pleasure …
[It] sees not only the individual but the nation and the country:
[Individuals] and generations bound together by a moral law, with common traditions and a mission which … builds up a higher life, founded on duty …
[A] life free from the limitations of time and space, in which the individual, by self-sacrifice [and] the renunciation of self-interest … can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists.
(The Doctrine of Fascism, 1932)

Georg Hegel (1770 – 1831)

The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth …
We must therefore worship the State as the manifestation of the Divine on earth …
The State is the march of God through the world …
(p 247)

In the perfect form of the State in which each and every element … has reached its free existence, this will is that of one actual decreeing [Individual: the monarch.]
The monarchical constitution is therefore the constitution of developed reason; and all other constitutions belong to lower grades of the development …
(pp 257-8)

Without its monarch [(Frederick William III) the Prussian people] are just a formless multitude.
(p 268)

The deeds of Great Men, of the Personalities of World History, … must not be brought into collision with irrelevant moral claims.
The Litany of private virtues, of modesty, humility, philanthropy, and forbearance, must not be raised against them.
The History of the World can, in principle, entirely ignore the circle within which morality … lies.
(p 278)

The Nation State is … the Spirit of the People itself.
The actual State is animated by this spirit, in all its particular affairs, its Wars, and its Institutions …
The self-consciousness of one particular Nation is the vehicle for the … development of the collective spirit …
(p 269)

Each particular National Genius is to be treated as only One Individual in the process of Universal History. …
Against this absolute Will the other particular national minds have no rights: that Nation dominates the World …
(p 275)

Out of this [dialectical struggle of the different National Spirits] rises the universal Spirit, the unlimited World-Spirit, pronouncing its judgement — and its judgement is the highest — upon the finite Nations of the World’s History; for the History of the World is the World’s court of justice. …
(p 277)

In civilized nations true bravery consists in the readiness to give oneself wholly to the service of the State so that the individual counts but as one among many. …
Not personal valor is significant; the important aspect lies in self-subordination to the universal. …
(p 280)

[Thus, it is through War that] the ethical health of a nation is preserved …
War protects the people from the corruption which an everlasting peace would bring upon it. …
History shows [how] Nations, torn by internal strife, win peace at home as a result of war abroad.
(p 279)

(Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 5th Ed, 1966, Ch 12)

Karl Popper (1902 – 94)

[The] whole story of Hegel would indeed not be worth relating, were it not for its more sinister consequences, which show how easily a clown may be a ‘maker of history’.
(Ch 12, p 247)

[For Hegel] all personal relations can … be reduced to the fundamental relation

• of master and slave,
• of domination and submission.

Each must strive to assert and prove himself, and he who has not

• the nature,
• the courage, and
• the general capacity for preserving his independence,

must be reduced to servitude.
[Likewise,] Nations must assert themselves on the Stage of History; it is their duty to attempt the domination of the World.
(Ch 11, p 225)

[The] most important principles of humanitarian and equalitarian ethics [are:]

1. Tolerance towards all who are not intolerant and who do not propagate intolerance. …
2. ‘Minimize suffering’ …
3. The fight against tyranny …

(Ch 5, Note 6, pp 548-9)

It is one of the gravest mistakes if a philosophy ever offers self-evidence as an argument in favour of the truth of a sentence; yet this is done by practically all idealist philosophies.
It shows that idealist philosophies are often systems of apologetics for some dogmatic beliefs.
(Ch 11, Note 43, p 651)

Marx showed

• that a social system can, as such, be unjust; [and]
• that if the system is bad, then all the righteousness of the individuals who profit from it is a mere sham righteousness, is mere hypocrisy.

For our responsibility extends to the system, to the institutions which we allow to persist. …

‘Scientific’ Marxism is dead.
[But its] feeling of social responsibility and its love for freedom must survive.
(Ch 22, p 416)

[Reason,] supported by imagination, enables us to understand

• that men who are far away, whom we shall never see, are like ourselves, and
• that their relations to one another are like our relations to those we love. …

[It is thus] by the use of thought and imagination, [that] we may become ready to help all who need our help.
(p 444)

… Western civilization owes

• its rationalism,
• its faith in the rational unity of man … and especially
• its scientific outlook,

to the ancient Socratic and [early] Christian belief in

• the brotherhood of all men
• intellectual honesty and
• [individual] responsibility.

(p 448)

What I have tried to show is that the choice with which we are confronted is between

• a faith in reason and in human individuals and
• a faith in the mystical faculties of man by which he is united to a collective;

and that this choice [corresponds with a further] choice between

• an attitude that recognizes the unity of mankind and
• an attitude that divides men into friends and foes, into masters and slaves.

(p 450)

[The strain of civilization] is a consequence of the breakdown of the closed [concrete tribal] society.
It is still felt even in our day, especially in times of social change.
It is the strain created by the effort which life in an open and partially abstract society continually demands from us — by the endeavour

• to be rational,
• to forgo at least some of our emotional social needs,
• to look after ourselves, and
• to accept responsibilities.

We must, I believe, bear this strain as the price to be paid for every increase

• in knowledge,
• in reasonableness,
• in co-operation and … mutual help, and consequently
• in our chances of survival and … the size of the population.

It is the price we have to pay for being human.
(Ch 10, p 168)

Once we begin to rely upon our reason, and to use our powers of criticism, once we feel the call of personal responsibilities, and with it, the responsibility of helping to advance knowledge, we cannot return to a state of implicit submission to tribal magic.
For those who have eaten of the tree of knowledge, paradise is lost.
The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, the more surely do we arrive

• at the Inquisition,
• at the Secret Police, and
• at a romanticized gangsterism.

Beginning with the suppression of reason and truth, we must end with the most brutal and violent destruction of all that is human.
(Ch 10, p 189)

[The] human situation with respect to knowledge is … exhilarating:
[Here] we are, with the immensely difficult task before us of getting to know the beautiful world we live in, and ourselves; and fallible though we are, we nevertheless find that our powers of understanding, surprisingly, are almost adequate for the task — more so than we ever dreamt in our wildest dreams.
We really do learn from our mistakes, by trial and error.
And at the same time we learn how little we know — as when, in climbing a mountain; every step upwards opens some new vista into the unknown, and new worlds unfold themselves of whose existence we knew nothing when we began our climb.

Thus we can learn [and] we can grow in knowledge …
[And] since we can never know [with absolute certainty,] there are no grounds here for smugness, or for conceit over the [completeness] of our knowledge.
(Addenda to Volume II, p 498)

[In Marxism] the religious element is unmistakable.
In the hour of their deepest misery and degradation, Marx’s prophecy gave the workers an inspiring belief

• in their mission, and
• in the great future which their movement was to prepare for the whole of mankind.

(Ch 21, p 402)

(The Open Society and Its Enemies, 5th Ed, 1966, Routledge 2011)

Ideology
Religious	Economic	Political
Supernaturalism	Capitalism	Nationalism
Church	Market	State
Aristocracy and Theocracy	Plutocracy	Oligarchy
Caste	Class	Party
Kings and Priests	Executives and Economists	Officials
Tradition	Commerce	Creed
The Devil	Socialists and Communists	Other Nations and Races
		Left Wing	Right Wing
Prophets	Adam Smith Friedrich Hayek Milton Friedman	Karl Marx Friedrich Engels	Friedrich Nietzsche Johann Fichte
The Messiah	Ronald Reagan Margaret Thatcher	Vladimir Lenin Josef Stalin Mao Zedong	Adolf Hitler
Holy Spirit	The Invisible Hand	Dialectical Materialism	Will
The Elect	Plutocrats Entrepreneurs Capitalists	Party Members
The Faithful	Consumers Borrowers Private Sector Workers Individualists	Workers	Aryans
The Damned	The Poor Trade Unionists Public Sector Workers Communitarians	Fascists Bourgeois Capitalists Counter-revolutionaries	Communists Race Traitors Inferior Races The Disabled
Crusaders	Captains of Industry	Heroes of the Revolution	Supermen
Missionaries	Advertising Agencies	State Propaganda
The Second Coming	Corporate Control of the State	The Revolution	National Domination
The Millennium	Corporate Control of the World	Communist Commonwealth	Global Domination
Heaven	Gated Communities	Workers' Paradise	The Thousand Year Reich
Purgatory	Unemployment
Hell	Ghettos and Prisons	Concentration, Labor and Extermination Camps
Lost Souls	The Destitute	The Disappeared
Virtues
Chastity Temperance Charity Diligence Patience Kindness Humility	Competition Greed Conspicuous Consumption Status Competition Winning	Loyalty Strength Duty
Vices
Lust Gluttony Greed Sloth Wrath Envy Pride	Cooperation Sharing Prudence Frugality Delayed gratification Poverty Losing	Treachery Weakness Sentiment
Heresy	Environmentalism Redistribution Social Justice Social Insurance (health, injury, disability, unemployment, education, child welfare)
Good
Anthing sanctioned by Scripture or the Priesthood	Profit Subsidies Bail-outs	Anything the Great Leader approves of
Evil
Anything prohibited by Scripture or the Priesthood	Loss Regulation Taxation	Anything the Great Leader disapproves of
Cathedrals	Banks Stock Exchanges Shopping Malls