.

And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again? Archilochus

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Fundamentalist Perverts

Slavoj Žižek, "How to defeat the perverts now ruling in the Kremlin?"
Like Islamic extremists, Russian President Vladimir Putin wraps himself in the garb of religious orthodoxy in order to present himself as an authentic exponent of traditional values. Yet one need only consider the lives of genuine spiritual fundamentalists to see this ruse for what it really is.
The standard interpretation of the Russia-Ukraine war is that it is a “clash of cultures” pitting Western liberalism against traditional Russian authoritarianism. But this is deeply misleading. Far from being a traditionalist, Vladimir Putin is merely the latest in a series of murderous modernizers stretching from Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great to Catherine the Great and Stalin. 
When Stalin was asked to define Bolshevism in the late 1920s, he described it as a combination of Russian dedication to a Cause and American pragmatism. Once in power, he sought to imitate the American industrialist Henry Ford’s achievements throughout the Soviet Union, brutally erasing all traces of Russian tradition through, most prominently, the violent collectivization of agriculture.

Stalin was also a great admirer of Peter the Great, who built a new capital for Russia on the Baltic Sea (St. Petersburg) to establish a direct link with Western Europe. Peter’s reforms faced resistance from so-called Old Believers, Eastern Orthodox Christians whose liturgical and ritual practices predated the reforms carried out by Patriarch Nikon of Moscow in 1652-66. Many Old Believers ultimately chose death over compromising their faith. Between the seventeenth and nineteenth century, thousands died by self-immolation.

Things only really changed in Russia with the October Revolution; and even then, the first Soviet government included several prominent figures with Old Believer backgrounds. The Bolsheviks correctly saw such sectarians as representatives of a long-running social protest against the czarist regime. The Old Believers had always distrusted the unity of church and state (which really meant the former’s subordination to the latter), insisting that the religious community remain a self-organization of common people.

Not surprisingly, state persecution of religious believers intensified under Stalin, and the Orthodox Church’s subordination to the state continues to this day. Putin, indeed, has mobilized the Church for his own political ends.

According to Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, Russians need not fear nuclear war, because Christians should welcome the end of the world. “We await the Lord Jesus Christ who will come in great glory, destroy Evil, and judge all nations,” he said late last year. Thus, what appears as a reactionary move – a return to the old orthodoxy – may in fact be a perverted expression of the rejection of the domination and exploitation that passes under the guise of “modernization” in the temporal world.

A very different, but illustrative, example of such resistance is Canudos, the nineteenth-century outlaw community deep in the Brazilian backlands of Bahia, which became a home to prostitutes, beggars, bandits, outcasts, and the poor under the leadership of the apocalyptic prophet Antônio Conselheiro. According to Eduardo Matarazzo Suplicy of the Workers’ Party of Brazil:
“This community developed a ‘mutual, cooperative and solidary concept of work’ … a kind of socio-mystical, religious, assisting, community power inspired by the ‘equalitarian fraternity of the primitive Christian communism,’ in which there was no hunger. ‘They all worked together. Nobody had anything. Everybody worked the soil, everybody labored. Harvested… Here’s yours… Here’s yours. Nobody got more nor less.’ Conselheiro had read Thomas More, and his experiences were similar to those of utopian socialists Charles Fourier and Robert Owen. Canudos was razed by the Brazilian army, and Conselheiro was beheaded in 1897.” (He had already died of illness.)
This refuge from money, property, taxes, and marriage did not disintegrate because of its internal tensions; it was destroyed by the armed forces of Brazil’s “progressive” and secular government. Canudos was a place where the victims of historical progress had acquired a space of their own. Utopia actually existed for a brief moment, and that was too much for the modernizers. How else can one account for the slaughter of all inhabitants of Canudos, including women and children? The very memory of freedom had to be erased.

The obvious counterargument to the defense of Canudos is that religious fundamentalist projects like the Islamic State are no different. But a clear line separates the two. While Canudos openly welcomed the Other, the Islamic State – like all religious fundamentalists – does not.

If today’s “fundamentalists” sincerely believe that they have found their way to Truth, why do they feel so threatened by non-believers? After all, when a Buddhist encounters Western hedonists, he does not get worked up or feel the need to condemn them; he just shakes his head at their self-defeating search for happiness.

But pseudo-fundamentalists are obsessed with non-believers’ sinful lives because the sins reflect their own temptations. Unlike the truly faithful, they envy, rather than pity, those who satisfy their appetites.

Whereas Tibetan monks regard Tibet as “the center of the world, the heart of civilization,” European civilization is decidedly ex-centered. Our central longing is to recover some ultimate pillar of Wisdom, secret agalma, or spiritual treasure that we lost long ago. Colonization was never only about imposing Western values on others; it was also a quest for lost spiritual purity. This story is as old as Western civilization itself: For the ancient Greeks, Egypt was the mythical storehouse of ancient wisdom.

In our own societies, the difference between authentic fundamentalists and perverted fundamentalists is that the first (like the American Amish) get along with their neighbors, because they are concerned with their own world, not with what others are doing. Perverted fundamentalists, by contrast, are haunted by ambivalence, motivated by a simultaneous horror and envy of sinners – an unholy brew that pushes them toward acts of violence, be it terrorist bombings or brutal invasions.

Putin’s regime has nothing in common with an authentic Russian spirituality that rejects European modernization. His fantasized “Eurasia” is merely a term to legitimize his own misbegotten modernization project. That is why we must not dismiss Russia as a deeply conservative and traditionalist country that is forever lost to modernity. After all, the Russian spirituality embodied by the Old Believers rejects authoritarian state power. To defeat the perverts now ruling in the Kremlin, it will have to be reawakened.

60 comments:

zwaremetalen-239 said...

The uprising in Canudos is also the subject of possibly my favourite book, La Guerra del fin del Mundo by Mario Vargas LLosa. I literally wept when the Counsillor died. And when I finished the book, I ran to the shop to buy all of Llosa's books!

I warmly recommend The War of the End of the World, as it is called in English...

zwaremetalen-239 said...

The uprising in Canudos is also the subject of possibly my favourite book, La Guerra del fin del Mundo by Mario Vargas LLosa. I literally wept when the Counsillor died. And when I finished the book, I ran to the shop to buy all of Llosa's books!

I warmly recommend The War of the End of the World, as it is called in English...

Anonymous said...

//Like Islamic extremists, Russian President Vladimir Putin wraps himself in the garb of religious orthodoxy

Yawn.

BS.

From people who dunno that...

current "religious orthodoxy", was (re)created by Stalin.

And was pawns of KGB all ways down.

So, equating it with Islam -- is utter BS.

Anonymous said...

//Putin is merely the latest in a series of murderous modernizers stretching from Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great to Catherine the Great and Stalin.

Modernizer???

And what he did "modernize" ???

Little dumbass conviniently forgot that liliPut came to power AFTER RFia was successfully modernised. By western standards. And what he doing now --- completely in vanes of how West works. Not East.

Yawn.

Anonymous said...

He mimicing Western Menace Hitler.

NOT mullas.

And that is only willfull blindness, makes Westerners unable to admit it.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

I've heard of Llosa, but can't remember the context... I'll have to do some research before I commit to reading him.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

I should probably read it in Spanish... I need to brush up. It's been too long.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

I thought that Putin was all buddy-buddy with the Russian Orthodox now. That's wrong? Why are the Ukrainians kicking around the ROC in Ukraine then?

Besides, as Rene Girard said, "Religion is the mother of culture". If Russia has any culture, the ROC is at its' fount.

btw - My sister in Kodiak just finished restoring a ROC icon. It took her 2 years...

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Modernizer... like the '68 hippies with Capitalism, now known as "Cultural Capitalism" or Khomeini did in Iran to Shi'a Islam with his Veleyaat al Fiqh (Guardianship of the Jurists) heresy.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Sure, if you deny that Putin has helped introduced modified religious "doctrines" into the Russian orthodox Church to get Russian women to have more kids and sign them up for the Army, then I suppose he's no "modernizer"....

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

@@

zwaremetalen-239 said...

MVL is definitely not a revolutionary, he stood as a conservative in some Pres election, in Peru IIRW.

La Ciudad y los Peros is also brilliant.

Anonymous said...

//Sure, if you deny

You mentioning "modernization" and "orthodoxy" in one sentence and as equal in meaning.

Just a remark. Yawn.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

The orthodox have no modernizers? Where do new sects come from, then? Luther didn't "modernize" the Catholics? Calvin? Adam Smith didn't modernize the Calvinists?

Do you know what "evolution" means?

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

How orthodoxy becomes heterodoxy?

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Did you watch the Dostoevsky "Demons" video... how ideologies are like demons that "possess" people, fly into pigs, and make them drown themselves in the sea?

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Ah, against Fujimori... now I remember. And Llosa went from Far Left to Far Right... so he's definitely gotten around.

Anonymous said...

I.

Already commented on it -- it all happens -- because people themself want it.

Yawn.

En mass, of course.

Mere individual. Especially one who will appear just before carriage of that Jaggernaut -- of silent preferences of masses.
Can be against it till they heart contents(and far beyond)

But their opinion -- does not matter.

Because -- Inertia.

Because -- Reality.

Because...

cest... la vi.

Anonymous said...

//Do you know what "evolution" means?

Well enough for my purposes.

And what important -- struggle to know MORE... not less. Not drown in self-deception and ignorance.

Yawn.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Why do people become 'priests' and 'politicians'? To break the "10 commandments". To break the 'laws". To be thought of as "the good people" and not the "dumb/ dupable Normies".

Of course the people want it. They just don't want to "acknowledge" that they want it like the priests and politicians do.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

So they cling to "normalcy" and "orthodoxy" while the pols and "reformist" priests normalize perversions.

Did you read Zizek's latest obit for David Lynch? THAT is what I'm talking about. ala- David Lynch's "The Straight Story".

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

THIS is what 'evolution' is.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Ever newer and more powerful "Assembly Structures".

Anonymous said...

I. Doubt it. Yawn.

And where's their operational success?

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Wait 1,000 years and see.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

The "Pauline inversion" of morality.

"that along with Socrates and Plato, Nietzsche above all identified St Paul as the genius of reversal needs no further elucidating, neither does the fact that from the numerous consequences of the Pauline intervention, Nietzsche derives the criterion by which to define his "Amendment to the Good News" as the axis for a history of the future", end quote. So Nietzsche's "Amendment to the Good News", his Amendment to the Gospel, and that is "Thus Spake Zarathustra", which Nietzsche referred to as his Fifth Gospel. And we'll discuss that aspect of Sloterdijk's argument in a bit, I just sort of wanted to make it clear what he was talking about there.

But the key point is that Paul is a genius of reversal. Christianity, in Nietzsche's view, is a development that proceeds from the theoretical worldview helped into being by Socrates and Plato. And what does Nietzsche just say about all three of these figures? They're among the rare individuals in history who had the power to legislate new values. So the really fascinating implication to me, that I find in Sloterdijk's text here, is the suggestion that the legislation of new values is an act that occurs primarily in language. Which means that language would not be considered as a mere symptom, from that point of view. It can't be considered as a mere superficial gloss. That's the way Nietzsche often speaks about language. But Sloterdijk sort of is implying that there's something a bit, maybe, beneath the surface, or a greater nuance to his engagement with language. The change that is made, the linguistic change, is not merely a swapping out of terminology. It's not one word concept superseding another. It's a transformation in the very operation and the very structure of language. That is the form that legislating values takes in Practical terms. It's a revision, or in this case a full reversal, of the way that language operates. The very goals of language are altered. Language in the previous era was this act of mutual recognition and jubilation in oneself, and one's own goodness, and in the goodness of everyone in the group. The Pauline intervention reverses every one of those aspects.

Anonymous said...

Pft! ))))))))

You even dunno that it counts in generations... not years. ;-p

Anonymous said...

// Christianity, in Nietzsche's view, is a development that proceeds from the theoretical worldview helped into being by Socrates and Plato.

Oh, yes. Ancient hebriew goat herders... was very knowledgible about Socrates and Plato. %))))))

And that is not just own Niet-kun ignorance. Well, ignorance to which he have perfect excuse -- they, in that times, knew nothing about ancient hebriews..

Yawn.

He have that excuse -+ you, not.

Yawn.

Anonymous said...

You just building your Babylon Basht of Knowladge...

on a sand.

Quicksands even.

No surprise that you are drowning in it.

Yawn.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

So how many generations does it take to declare "fitness" in an ever-changing and evolving environment?

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

...and are you going to continue the "observational" experiment linked to?

Anonymous said...

//So how many generations does it take to declare "fitness" in an ever-changing and evolving environment?

Like Evolution CARES.)))))))))

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Christianity wasn't an ideological fusion (endo-symbiosis) of Hebrew/ Greek/ Romans? And Islam was not a "reaction"?

Judea wasn't a Roman province. I need to stop watching those Ben Hur movies...

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

No. I'm an archeologist of knowledge. I simply remove the dirt/sand from on top of the stone foundations.

Anonymous said...

//Judea wasn't a Roman province

In times of Moses?

;-p

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

and become multi-temporal.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

No, but those who must conduct experiments, do.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

The Greeks saw Egypt as the library of ancient knowledge. So that knowledge was infused into the Greeks seeking the "Atlanteans".

Anonymous said...

As always.

You IGNORE tons of NEW information.

And basing your conclusions on OUTDATED one.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Oh, and who spoke of them? Plato.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

New information. Like from the "Newspapers"? LOL!

Anonymous said...

You are tomb rider... wannabe.

That took piles of trash for a pyramids.;-p

Anonymous said...

From professional archeologists.

Called egyptologs.

Yawn.

Anonymous said...

//Christianity wasn't an ideological fusion (endo-symbiosis) of Hebrew/ Greek/ Romans?

I understand your point.

As a country without history, you took it as a habit -- to apropriate Common Humankind Heritage.

Yawn.

But still. It not how it works. And not how it worked, in times.

Neither Egyptians was escroving thousands of years of their own history -- to give it to Greeks.

Nor Romans was having in mind you as their successors.;-p

Anonymous said...

Experiments -- it's not Evolution.

Yawn.

Hapoenstance that ENCOMPAS and experiment, and experimenters, and me and you, and unseeable multitude of bystanders-- that is Evolutio .

Whole Universe.

And may be well beyond.

Anonymous said...

//I thought that Putin was all buddy-buddy with the Russian Orthodox now. That's wrong?

Yap.

Just like CEO. And a janitor. To show how caring and close with commoners, for posterity sake, that CEO is.

Bur. Neither CEO nor that janitor. Or his colegues. Or inhabitants of that same country -- cannot be fooled by it.

But. Some foreigner -- can. And that is -- you.

PS I think I explained this point VERY comprehensively.

So, I'll treat your responses without arguments/questions more harshly here.

As direct tryes to mislead.

Anonymous said...

//Why are the Ukrainians kicking around the ROC in Ukraine then?

Why USA put Japanese into camps during WW2?

Anonymous said...

//Besides, as Rene Girard said, "Religion is the mother of culture". If Russia has any culture, the ROC is at its' fount.

And who tout your Intelligentia that BS? ;-p

If not refugies from Old World.

Many of which was from Russia. On a leash of KGB. ;-p

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

I've "better things" to do?

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

No, they were preserving their own histories and heritage, aka- Culture. As am I. It's what makes us "cyborg"... we store our memories "outside of ourselves" in tablets, writings, books, and now, computers.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

No, the Universe is trying to put itself back together... from big bang, to big crunch. Life is merely a 'proto' attempt to reconstruct it. ;p

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Culture" (1860)

Can rules or tutors educate The semigod whom we await? He must be musical, Tremulous, impressional, Alive to gentle influence Of landscape and of sky, And tender to the spirit-touch Of man's or maiden's eye: But, to his native centre fast, Shall into Future fuse the Past, And the world's flowing fates in his own mould recast.

Anonymous said...

That's life. There always many more things to do...

Anonymous said...

Do you know who "cybernetic" in Greek? ;-p

Anonymous said...

Yeah-yeah-yeah.

And before it, it was eternal and unchanging.

And before that -- created by gawd. And Sun was circling around flat Earth, that was standing on elephants.

Multi-temporal, my ass.

Yawn.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

Somebody needs to steer the machine/ ship.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

...like dig through pyramid trash... :)

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

They didn't have a JWST...

Anonymous said...

YAP.

So, better acqure digging machine, isn't it?

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

No, I want to have the "aha!" moments... not some AI.