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James Lindsay of the grievance studies fame has been targeting the right for the past few months. The grievance studies was fairly popular when it came out and he even went on JRE and podcasts run by IDW and adjacent people but is now punching right.
His article summarizes his points about getting parts of the communist manifesto published with a healthy bit of editing in a Christian journal but unlike the last time it is not being taken as seriously as of now.
James has termed the actual right "woke right" and routinely gets hammered in his own comments by everyone to the right of trump, including Auron Macintyre who is not even a strict ethno-nationalist. James like the rest of the IDW is in a wierd spot as the temporary thermidor and rollback of censorship on X (formerly twitter) has allowed people to explicitly talk culture war without being de-platformed which for him is "woke". The IDW ran out of ideas a while back, Auron who i mentioned beforehand was anonymous for a while back when he strictly made NRx videos and is now working with the Blaze without any fears of being cancelled. Joe Rogan has slowly aligned with the Trump VC camp and others have just become plain irrelevant.
The criticisms have already started pouring in with one of our own in tracingwoodgrains chiming in too. I don't expect excessive amounts of rigor from the publication involved here and am neither well-versed in Christianity nor Marxism or any philosophy for that matter but this seems kinda worn out at this point. James yearns for this unstable equilibrium of 90s liberalism without realising that political systems are dynamic. The 90s which he misses were always going to be just temporary and were 2020s for plenty of people, not as much as today. Those who are true believers of christ will rightfully call him out for being a bad-faith actor trying to pull stunts on a publication whilst being too afraid to discuss taboo topics.
Members of babylon bee, the satire website agree with James whilst most like Cernovich are trying to point out that Lindsay is conceding ground and the edits he made render the headline "Christian journal publishes the communist manifesto false". Sargon of Akkad aka Carl Benjamin also found this [unappealing] (https://x.com/Sargon_of_Akkad/status/1864247964442538324), Carl is a noted atheist who routinely wanted ethnonationalists and rabid Christians to be taken less seriously so not far off from Lindsay if we start from 2019.
I would be happy to read what he wrote and learn his claims' accuracy. I have little idea about formal logic or epistemology of any kind. Also I'm pleasantly happy to see sargon improve as a political figure, he did streams with nrx people and didn't repeat cuck right talking points about Marx, genuinely nice improvement from his days losing debates to Richard Spencer on warskis show.
I don't know what to feel about Lindsay because his position is insane, but it is insane in a way that is both directionally correct and understandable from my background.
Contrasting him with Carl Benjamin is interesting because they both come out of the same ideological substrate of classical liberalism, but ended up at radically different places through their handling of recent history.
Lindsay is a debate addict twitter shitposter extraordinaire who has read too much deconstructionist litterature and it has fried his brain to such a degree that he can now recognize mythological patterns accurately, but describes them in a way that sounds clinically insane.
Consider his claim that Macintyre and the rest of the ex-NRX right are in a cabal to manifest Archangel Michael into reality.
On the face of it this is fanciful nonsense, but if you understand the mythological implications of it and are ready to look past the evident lies he is telling about the actual people involved, there is a clear degree of truth to this. One that People like Macintyre are equipped to understand and would accept: the Right is slowly constructing a version of Christianity that is ready for violence, and isn't bound and shamed by Liberal memes like a good submissive Anglicanism.
This is unacceptable to Lindsay because he is committed dogmatically to Liberal ideals. He can't contenance that people would truly prefer "illiberal democracy" (as Orban would put it) if Liberalism can only offer the dissolution of one's nation and morals into a grey globalist sludge. And he can't face up to the fact that Liberalism is now a dead doctrine that nobody but him still believes in, because it has failed to retain legitimacy.
Contrast this with Carl, who to this day I believe genuinely attached to the sort of freedoms dear to classical liberals (seen clear in his enthusiastic support for Milei on one side and Bukele on the other). He instead has endeavoured to understand why Liberalism has failed to contain Wokism, and arrived at a set of lengthy post-liberal conclusions: that Liberalism though a fruitful doctrine, is founded on clear lies, and his series of posts on those myths is enlightening to who wants to contruct a new kind of freedom ideology that doesn't have the flaws of Liberalism but doesn't have to fall to, say, Fascism.
Lindsay would characterize this as Carl being brainwashed by the "woke right", and to a degree the claim has teeth: Carl has been moving rightward through his exposure to NRX ideas by way of his friend Parvini and his circle of reactionary analysts.
But what is really the more spirited and righteous approach: to stand on the ground of dogma and refuse any change to Liberalism in a time of strife and infiltration by enemies on all sides, or to accept that it got some things wrong and must turn into something different if its ideals are to survive?
Time will tell, but I think Lindsey is fighting a losing battle because Carl and his friends understand politics as it is, whilst he is only able to understand ideology.
It’s all le based ‘Christ is King’ memes, how many of these angry young men actually believe in Christianity? Most are no less atheist than Richard Dawkins fans in 2010, or the average /pol/ack. It’s not a genuine religious revival.
My wife and I have been having some very deep and thoughtful conversations about becoming practicing Christians, even though we weren't raised with it, and really don't believe in it. Funnily enough, both our sets of parents actively kept us away from religion due to their bonkers Baptist upbringing, which seemed to revolve around what a piece of shit they were and that every single thought they have will send them to hell.
So why would we turn to Christianity in our 40's, after a lifetime of atheism? We are desperately seeking some sort of cultural and institutional protection from liberalism run amok. Or wokeness, or neoliberalism, or whatever you call it. We're willing to traumatize our daughter with stories of burning in hell over her being taught that she can mutilate and sterilize herself to solve all her problems in Kindergarten. It's not a choice we particularly relish, but it feels like a choice forced on us and it's an easy one to make.
But we want to find a sect of Christianity that isn't pussies. We don't want a sect of Christianity that will start inviting drag queens to teach Sunday school because they don't want anyone to feel bad, or they feel like they need to appeal to "modern audiences". This has slowly lead us to maybe trying to find an Orthodox church of some sort? Everything more Western European just feels totally pozzed these days, and we don't trust it.
And I'll be perfectly honest, something about the way Trump survived that assassination attempt just, I can't get over it. It's literally enough to make me wonder if there is a god and he saved him. Turning his head at exactly the right moment, exactly the right way, to get away with nothing but a minor flesh wound is nothing short of miraculous. Has there ever been a failed assassination that failed by such a narrow margin before? I know politicians have been shot and survived before, but not like that.
I guess my point is, what is a genuine religious revival supposed to look like?
Some thoughts.
Over the past year, I've trained my brain to be Christian after two decades of hard materialism since age 14 or so. Miracles didn't play a role. Rather, I decided there was at least a plausible chance personal theism was true — this came from meditating on why I'm not a p-zombie, and why I have powerful aesthetic preferences which seem unmoored from selection pressures. Suspending my materialist assumptions, with great effort, I moved through life with the constant idea that (a) something was actively providing my existence, and (b) it was actively observing me.
Have I brainwashed myself? Possibly. But it feels increasingly obvious that that something is there, and it has been speaking to me for a long time.
After this 'religious revival' came the task of seeking the most plausible source of divine revelation. IMO the evidence for the legitimizing claim of Christianity is an order of magnitude above any other candidate, and its actual theology (try Mere Christianity and Problem of Pain by CS Lewis) matches what "something" was steering me towards as an atheist.
Perhaps these online anons larping "Christ is king" and parents pursuing churches for their kids will brainwash themselves to real religion, too.
I had good luck with my local Catholic parish. From what I can tell, female ordination, accepting divorce, and gay marriage initiates the pozzing death spiral in any Christian denomination, so watch out for those. Or perhaps it's that only pozzed churches can reconcile those with the scriptural evidence.
Unregulated thoughts do indeed lead to hell. "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Hateful, lustful, or prideful thoughts reinforce themselves in a vicious cycle towards a mind consumed by hate, lust, and/or pride — this is the death of the psuche (psyche, 'soul-life') against which God mercifully cuts short bios life to prevent a descent into infinite depravity.
Yes, it is a hard teaching, and not one for four-year-olds. No, you will not find a "non pussy" church that doesn't take the wide gate leading to hell extremely seriously.
Are you able to expand on how you achieved that? Particularly how you got from suspending materialism to (a) and (b)?
Asking as someone curious who took two months out this year for a walking pilgrimage meditating on similar themes. I didn't have much struggle suspending my materialistic worldview (after all it's a model of reality, not reality itself, and as you say there are salient aspects of experience that it doesn't currently explain), and I'm about as sure as I can be that I was genuinely open to a religious or spiritual experience. While it was extremely beneficial and enriching, if anything I felt the absence of the something you describe.
Sure!
I didn't know the word at the time, but the technique is something Catholics call "active recollection". Periodically throughout the day, I would perform a kind of rapid partial body scan, thinking 'Where does this there-ness in my hand come from?' or similar. And then I would close my eyes and ignore everything external, and "push" my mind's watchfulness inward, looking for someone looking back.
According to a prayer manual I read later, this is one method of 'putting yourself in the presence of God', which is precondition to mental prayer. Unfortunately, according to prayer theory, God initiates contact and you merely respond, so I can't promise this technique will work for anyone reading this.
I performed this mental ritual especially in the morning when waking up. The awareness, or perhaps the fear, of God continued for ten, twenty minutes, an hour afterward, and eventually started riding with me as a constant companion, like a depersonalized super-superego perched on my shoulder.
What does God feel like? It is changing as my prayer life develops, and it changes within prayer as I go deeper. God (the Father) feels like an ocean: he does not seemingly come to greet you, but you descend into Him, where it is cold and dark and you fear for your safety. And then there is what Christians call the holy spirit, which is like rain, and it washes you towards the ocean. Depending on what it wants from your prayer, it can fall on you as tears, reconciliation, and immense catharsis (this is what most people want from religion); other times it is intellectual, and ideas will arrive fully formed in your mind, accompanied with a "gentle breath" of overpowering peacefulness, often at odds with the content of its ideas. (A few months ago, the holy spirit pacifically informed me that heaven is somewhat like being tortured to death.)
Come to think of it, here's something else.
When I was age 12, I learned to masturbate. I started creating a "wall" around my mind. I would imagine a small point in the center of my mind and "push" everything out, to a 5 foot radius around me. I would put my force field up whenever I was doing the deed or having sexual thoughts. To anyone observing me, I would say they weren't allowed, they weren't allowed.
I forgot I even used to do this until a few months ago. The universe felt dead and my thoughts "alone" for twenty-odd years between then and now.
In retrospect, my early meditations were unconsciously about breaking "the wall", and allowing for things "beneath", "between", or at any rate very intimate with my thoughts. (Psalm 139 relevant: "If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down in Sheol, there you are.") Before, I had unconsciously felt there was some "private room" I could withdraw to and consider the world freely, from an spectator's remove. Ironically, I even assumed this when meta-contemplating my own thoughts and desires from a materialist perspective. Of course, whether one accepts the framework of materialism or theism, no such room can exist.
Thanks for the detailed response, I appreciate it. I'll have a look into active recollection.
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