(114) Arian

I noted that religion and masculinity centre on mystery—if you put a label on it, you kill it; only silence respects the mystery. You can see this played out in the way people adopt labels in politics. At the moment there is a movement by people who call themselves “post-liberals”—yet they are not what they think at all. Why? Because they want to label themselves: the same thing happened with neoconservatism—actually another endless split among leftist Trotskyite Jews, not a move towards reality at all.

The need to label yourself or others is leftist—it is feminine; it is the idea that appearance trumps reality, narcissism is the priority—name > reality. “Me and my chums are in our post-liberal gang.” “And what if reality contradicts your post-liberal shibboleths?” “Oh, then that’s a bad person we don’t talk to—a neo-Gnostic.” “So…just like the left excludes ‘racists’ from the conversation?”. You get the point—the left works like gangsters, there’s “our thing” and if you break the rules sssshhlish, right across your neck. Yet there’s just reality. If I say, “We shouldn’t accept any more Muslim immigrants because they carry out terror attacks,” the leftist snaps backs, “Ah, a racist.” “I don’t know about that—I just observe most terror attacks…” “Racist!”. If you ask them to define “racist” it turns out to be contradictory—it’s just rhetoric to demonise people who disagree.

I made this mistake myself when I labelled myself “deep right”—nothing could be more shallow. If the neoconservatives converted to Christianity it would be different—instead, they formed another leftist faction nestled within the political right and militated for “wars for human rights”. Notably, you cannot really be “a MAGAist”—though you could refer to yourself as a “MAGAtard” or “deplorable” in a self-deprecatory way. There is a leader, Trump, you like and he says some common-sense things. “What is Trumpism?” writes an intellectual—just reality, not some post-brunch preening session fuelled by mini-pain au chocolat.