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Progressivism itself is a Western idea, therefore it is impossible to be anti-Western while remaining progressive.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism
Progressivism is the support for or advocacy of improvement of society by reform.[1] It is today largely synonymous with left-of-centre political ideology.
This is what we are here to change.
As a philosophy, it is based on the idea of progress, which asserts that advancements in science, technology, economic development and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition.
Literally everything about this statement is opposed to True Left thinking.
Firstly, concern merely for "the human condition" would make us moral humanists, which we are not. We are moral universalists, which implies that we do not consider non-humans an exploitable out-group for the sake of the human in-group. And immediately we have an example of how moral universalism clashes with progressivism: scientific/technological research, most notably in Western medicine, requiring experimentation on animals whose participatory consent was never sought. Progressives, even if they can be made to agree that animals should not be needlessly subjected to violence, will however argue that progress is a valid "need" justifying violence whenever such violence is the only way to achieve progress. Only by courageously rejecting the value of progress altogether are we on firm ground to stand unequivocally against violence. Thus not only do we oppose all further research involving violence, but also we wish to eliminate all technology founded on such research already done, such as Western medicine itself, not least as a token of respect for the victims of the past. (For this reason, the True Left is proud to own the label "Regressive Left" applied to us by rightists originally intended as an insult, even if we do not agree with all its ascribed characteristics according to rightists.)
Secondly, what is "advancement"? According to progressivists, advancement is to be equated with accumulation: MORE science/technology is better, a LARGER and/or MORE COMPLEX economy/society is better, and so on. In such a perspective, there is no completion point. No matter how much advancement occurs, further advancement is always imaginable and thereupon worthy to strive for. This is what progressivism really means: absence of a definable mission (which demands a fixed completion point as part of the definition), and in its place an open-ended journey which (conveniently) permits unlimited self-congratulation along the way - a Western attitude to the core. In short, to progressives, "advancement" means indefinite movement away from the starting point. We, in contrast, recognize that advancement is only meaningful as definite movement towards the completion point, which is necessarily a process of simplification, as the nearer we get to our destination, the more knowledge/technqiues/equipment/plans/etc. (that we previously needed to get us to where we are now) can be DISCARDED, and only that which necessary for making the remainder of the journey need be retained. In this understanding, progressivism (which is trivially identifiable as a form of accumulationism) is actually moving the world away from the completion point, and thus is an outright enemy of our mission.
Progressivism became highly significant during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, out of the belief that Europe was demonstrating that societies could progress in civility from uncivilized conditions to civilization through strengthening the basis of empirical knowledge as the foundation of society.[2] Figures of the Enlightenment believed that progress had universal application to all societies and that these ideas would spread across the world from Europe.[2]
In other words, the original progressivists were at least Eurocentrists and in some cases neocons. This is why it is absurd for leftists to associate with progressivism.
The meanings of progressivism have varied over time and from different perspectives. The contemporary common political conception of progressivism in the culture of the Western world emerged from the vast social changes brought about by industrialization in the Western world in the late 19th century, particularly out of the view that progress was being stifled by vast economic inequality between the rich and the poor; minimally regulated laissez-faire capitalism with monopolistic corporations; and intense and often violent conflict between workers and capitalists, thus claiming that measures were needed to address these problems.[3] Early progressivism was also tied to eugenics[4][5][6] and the temperance movement.[7][8]
You see how much of a sick joke progressivism is. Industrialization itself would be classified as "advancement" by progressivists, yet industrialization has created massive new problems which never existed before, while solving none of the old problems but only exacerbating them by increasing (via population explosion, territorial spread, etc.) the scale of size on which the same problems (plus the new ones!) now have to be solved. But instead of hence realizing that industrialization should never have happened, and laying the blame for it on Western civilization, progressivists merely complain that social "advancement" has failed to keep pace with economic "advancement", and thus make it their new aim to bring on the necessary social "advancement"! In other words, instead of realizing that the "advancement" that has already happened is harmful and must be reversed ASAP, progressivists double-down, believing that another round of "advancement" is the answer to problems created by the previous round of "advancement"! It is the equivalent of taking one drug to offset the side-effects of another drug, instead of immediately quitting as a sensible person would do. But the point is that progressivists are not sensible people; they are long-term addicts to Western civilization, who should be viewed the way we view other long-term drug addicts. (The irony of progressivism supporting the temperance movement.....)
As for eugenics, progressivists fantasize about "advancement" on the biological level, namely breeding a human type genetically optimized for endless scientific, technological, economic and every other type of "advancement" at maximum speed, basically a race of super-Westerners, who would no doubt soon expand human habitation beyond Earth. This, a definitive milestone of "advancement" set by Western civilization, is however one of the worst nightmares of the True Left. We are, if anything, thankful that a significant number (albeit proportionately far too few) of genetic anti-Westerners (such as ourselves) exist to hold back the world from progressivism. If not for us, the progressivist fantasy might already have become reality.
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I think one major attitude which causes False Leftists to latch on to progressivism is their "temporal tribalism" and belief in the myth that the passage of time always brings about social 'progress'. Somehow, the irony that it is [current year], and yet racism social ills are increasing, is lost. (But perhaps the technological advancement which tends to come with time is more important to them than social justice, afterall?)
It was not long ago that prominent leftists rejected the myth of time and did not believe the curing of social ills was inevitable.
"I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth of time. I received a letter this morning from a white brother in Texas which said, "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but is it possible that you are in too great of a religious hurry? It has taken Christianity almost 2000 years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation."
-Martin Luther King, Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963).
Although he uses the vocabulary of 'progress', it seems the underlying sentiment goes against progressivism. The "white moderates" cite the endless movement of time away from the life of Jesus as the "progress" of his teachings. Meanwhile, King makes it clear that the mission of ending racism is still far from being completed, and hence that we are not moving towards a world where Jesus's teachings have been successfully implemented.
And immediately we have an example of how moral universalism clashes with progressivism: scientific/technological research, most notably in Western medicine, requiring experimentation on animals whose participatory consent was never sought. Progressives, even if they can be made to agree that animals should not be needlessly subjected to violence, will however argue that progress is a valid "need" justifying violence whenever such violence is the only way to achieve progress.
This is one of the things that disgusts me most about so-called "bleeding heart" liberals. Progressives, via technological advancement, have turned our world into a place where these bone-chilling torture facilities are not only common place, but considered "absolutely necessary" to sustain the status quo of Western civilization:
www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a26038/the-blood-of-the-crab/If a synthetic manufacturing process becomes widespread and renders it unnecessary to keep torturing the crabs (read: if synthetic processing becomes more profitable than capturing the dwindling-supply of crabs), Western civilization junkies will pat themselves on the back for achieving a world where people are "too kind and advanced" to exploit crabs. In reality, in such a scenario the world would merely be reverting to the torture-free state which existed prior to the completely unnecessary "advancement" of crab torture in the first place.
but only exacerbating them by increasing (via population explosion, territorial spread, etc.) the scale of size on which the same problems (plus the new ones!) now have to be solved.
With these increases in size, so too has their hubris increased. There are more slaves today than at any point in history (30 million individuals). But I have seen many progressives, who desire at all costs to maintain the narrative that social justice is "progressing" with time, assert that because the proportion of slaves out of the total population is decreasing, the issue of slavery has actually made great social progress over the past few centuries. Slavery is, per capita, less prevalent in the West than it was hundreds of years ago, and therefore out of sight and out of mind.
This is a disgusting trivialization of the fact that the victims of slavery are individuals. One individual being enslaved and tortured in 1800 is the same as one individual being enslaved and tortured in 2018. One life is forever changed. The individual scale does not change as the population increases--one individual remains one individual; one life; one set of experiences. Imagine if all the enslaved individuals from 1800 were standing together in a large crowd. As the centuries go by, the crowd only expands--not shrinks... More individuals have been enslaved and added to the crowd (and this visualization does not even consider that the individuals from 1800 are all dead in 2018--i.e. the population of slaves has not merely been at a neutral "replacement rate" of growth, but has always been growing). With the number of slaves that exist today, all of the 1800s colonial plantations could not only be completely repopulated and recreated, but expanded. Yet that is considered "progress" to many who do not deserve to call themselves leftists.
There are, shockingly, more people in slavery today than at any time in human history - but campaigners think the world is close to a tipping point and that slavery may be eradicated in the next 30 years.
The estimated number of people in slavery - 27 million - is more than double the total number believed to have been taken from Africa during the transatlantic slave trade.
Ship records make it possible to estimate the number of slaves transported from Africa to the Americas and the Caribbean, from the 16th Century until the trade was banned in 1807 - and the figure is about 12.5 million people.
The figure of 27 million slaves today comes from researcher Kevin Bales, of Free the Slaves - who blames the huge figure on rapid population growth, poverty and government corruption.
www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19831913Individuals are not individuals to 'progressives', but statistics so Westerners can pat themselves on the back for accumulating different 'achievements'...
ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Two-centuries-World-as-100-people.png
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"perhaps the technological advancement which tends to come with time is more important to them than social justice, afterall?"
This is likely. And this is why "False Leftist" is an accurate term for them.
Here is an initial attempt at breaking it down:
Technophobe Right (Amish etc.) - wants neither more machines nor social justice
Archeofuturist Right (traditionalist Westerners) - wants more machines but not social justice
False Left (progressive Westerners) - wants more machines as well as social justice
True Left - wants social justice but not more machines
What do you think?
Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively.
Actually, time is adulteration. Yes, how we use time is up to us, but it takes flawlessly optimal use of time to barely prevent our own adulteration, or to re-purify ourselves if we have already been adulterated. The completion point is actually the starting point; successful completion is getting back to it.
"we are not moving towards a world where Jesus's teachings have been successfully implemented"
Not least the following teaching (that is the same as what I just said above):
“A person old in days will not hesitate to ask a child of seven days about the Place of Life, and he will live! For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same.” - Jesuswww.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a26038/the-blood-of-the-crab/
Western medicine must die. All these vampires Western medics need to be tortured the exact same way for eternity in hell.
you can divide the bacteria of the world into two groups based on a test developed by Christian Gram, a Danish physician of the late 1800s
Imagine if Charles Martel had lost at Poitiers. There would have been no Gram, and hence countless crabs would have been spared exploitation. And Gram is only one Westerner. How many more Westerners could have been prevented from ever existing (and hence how many more (trillions of) victims of their discoveries spared violence) if only that one battle had turned out differently?
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Some rightists have
**** the sentimental divergence between False Left and True Left better than many leftists currently have:
www.takimag.com/article/bernie-vs-ta-nehisi/The Democratic 2020 race is shaping up into a battle between Bernie Sanders’ new Old Left and those candidates, such as Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Julian Castro, who pay respectful lip service to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new Woke Left
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As progressives become more demographically diverse, the ideas that appeal to them become more regressive. Coates, who went from receiving the MacArthur genius grant for his denunciations of escalator racism to writing the Black Panther comic book for Marvel, epitomizes the essential childishness of the woke.
Yes! We are regresssive, and childhood is our inspiration!
The war between Bernie and TNC pits the old Marx-influenced left, with its hardheaded obsession with class, power, and money, against the new Coatesian left, which cares more about whether Marvel’s next movie features a black, female, or nonbinary superhero.
Yes! We are emphatically not Marxists, as I have been saying all along!
Coates cares deeply about that little boy’s question: Who would win in a fight? Your hero or my hero?
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Unlike Bernie, Coates is concerned with the old-fashioned comic-book virtues that appeal to 9-year-old boys: honor, status, representation, heredity, antiquity, and vengeance.
Hold my beer:
Inigo is enormously popular with audiences because he heroically exemplifies unsophisticated premodern values.
Likewise, Coates’ Inigo Montoya Progressivism isn’t based on any highbrow theory of class or liberty or even of minoritarianism.
Instead, Coatesism is the reactionary idea that the Bad Guys are the people who impugned the honor of the Good Guys, and we know who the Good Guys are and who the Bad Guys are, and they will be Good or Bad forever.
This is moral dualism, which is essential to a Gnostic worldview.
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To accompany the previous post, here is a good example of regressive leftist rhetoric:
worldisraelnews.com/senior-hamas-official-calls-for-slaughter-of-jews-throughout-world/
“There are Jews everywhere,” Hammad shouted. “We must attack every Jew on planet Earth! We must slaughter and kill them, with Allah’s help,”
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“We will lacerate them and tear them to pieces,” he added.
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Hammad claimed Palestinians would “die cutting off [Jews’] heads” and “killing them with explosive belts,”
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Hammad also incited Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, telling them to purchase “five-shekel knives” and “cut the necks of Jews.”
We are here to make rhetoric like this become normal leftist rhetoric all around the world.