re: #143 iceweasel

I was thinking the other day about how they relate— (this will probably be garbled as I’m hallucinating from cold medicine at the moment)— on the right extremist side you get fascism, and it’s a right ideology because it’s the extremist extension of ‘conservatism’, in the sense that you get the ideology of tradition for tradition’s sake and a consequent hatred of modernity and diversity. A fake and extremist kind of nationalism, because the cult of tradition is partly an invented one.

On the leftward extremist side in totalitarian regimes, (Mao, Stalin) you get not a reverence for ‘tradition’ for tradition’s sake but one of change for change’s sake: Sweeping away even the concept of the family, total revolution, etc.

This is hazy and I’m just kind of gesturing towards an idea here. I’ll just blame the cold meds. :)

I’ve always viewed totalitarianism as more or less a sort of Political Gnosticism, to rip off from Voegelin. These are largely spiritual disorders with political aspects.