A Video and an Interview with Hans-Georg Moeller

An excerpt from the above video:

Wokeism is the only of these terms, unlike "identity politics" or unlike "political correctness" or unlike "virtue signaling", it has very strong religious connotations, right? It connotes "awakening" and this shows what I think is really at the heart of wokeism. That it's basically a sort of civil religious movement. It's a kind of a secular awakening, somehow in the tradition of earlier great awakenings in American culture. And thereby actually the term wokeism, against the intentions of the people on the right you use it, implies a critique of religion, and again, that's why I do like the term.

Now my central argument is that today's wokeism is the civil religion of the West, and it combines two elements. Traditional US American civil religion and German guilt pride. I'm gonna discuss American civil religion first and then German guilt pride second.

There's an excellent essay on what American civil religion is. It's written by Robert Bellah in 1967 and is called "Civil Religion in America". Bellah takes the term civil religion from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and like Rousseau, conceives of it as a shared spiritual, political, moral vision, and ideology that has kind of a national foundational impact. He rightly says that American civil religion is grounded in Christianity, but then also in the largely secular ideas that we find in such crucial foundational texts as the Declaration of Independence of the United States. Bella, at the beginning of the article, quotes someone else, SM Lipset to make an important point so I quote this quote, here it says, "at least since the early 19th century, a civil religion has been predominantly activist, moralistic, and social rather than contemplative, theological, or innerly spiritual."

So, a civil religion basically represents a shift from strictly theological, let's say transcendent values, to activist moralistic and social movement. Now, what does American civil religion consist in? Well, it has strong elements of individualism, a focus on liberty and private property as well. A sense of equality, pursuit of happiness, individual happiness, and also collective happiness progress, prosperity, a sort of pragmatic optimism. Obama's famous slogan, "Yes we can!" also embodies it. And it combines it with a sense of national destiny, some sort of missionary zeal that is supposed to guide the whole world, or the idea of the United States is some form of beacon of liberty, whose role it is to liberate everyone basically.

Bellah pointed out that this American civil religion comes in different forms, and he saw one as positive and one as a negative. So it can, and it did, equally inform something like the US civil rights movements of the 1960s and seventies, as well as it did inform the Vietnam war, which also supposed, you know, to liberate the Vietnamese people. So, there are clearly different denominations of American civil religion, one that is more Republic, one that is more Democratic, one that's more progressive, one that's more conservative, one that's more left, one that's more right, and Bellah was strongly sympathizing with the more progressive, more leftist denomination, and was actually strongly arguing against the Vietnam war. And he tried to use civil religion to argue against the Vietnam war.

And equally today we can say generally, that the American civil religion as a whole equally informs the Black Lives Matter movement and the War on Terror. However, there are two different denominations within this civil religion, and the one is more strongly behind Black Lives Matter, and the other one, the more conservative one, is more behind the War on Terror. I think it's pretty obvious that this activist, individualistic, post-leftist American civil religion, as represented by the civil rights movement and by feminism, is what gave rise to identity politics in the usa in the 1970s, which in turn then later on gave rise to Wokeism. So, American civil religion, and particularly its' progressive post-leftist denomination, are one decisive element that later on constituted Wokeism.

U.S. American Civil Religion + German Guilt-Pride = Wokeism

Now, let's move to the second element, a German guilt-pride. Of course the situation in Germany was very different from the situation in the United States after the Second World War, right? Germany lost the war, it was exposed for having committed genocide, and the country ended up divided. And the two different Germanies after the war reacted very differently to their fascist past. Communist Germany defined itself as anti-fascist, the government said, "we had nothing to do with the fascists, we were victims, our leaders were themselves persecuted by the Nazis, and we actually liberated Germany from fascism. So we are by no means continuing the fascist regime, we are anti-fascists."

Now in West Germany, this was different. Western Germany somehow acknowledged that it was a successor state of Nazi Germany, but it also, of course, acknowledged that Nazi Germany was basically just an enormous crime. And so Western Germany adopted the following strategy. The aim was to basically admit a guilt, but, at the same time, trying to pay off the debt. And so there was the idea that Germany can somehow work towards "sluschtis", a final line when all the debt has been paid off.

Now, after 1989 after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, after German reunification and the end of the cold war, Germany got reunited, and then, obviously, those two strategies didn't really work anymore. And then a new strategy was developed. And this strategy, I think, is perfectly represented by what now became basically the symbol of the New Germany in the center of Berlin, the new capital of the reunified Germany, namely, the Holocaust Memorial. And the Holocaust Memorial represents this new idea, that "Yes we accept our guilt, but it is a guilt that can never be paid off, it will never go away. It's a guilt that we inherited from the previous generation, and that we also internalize. So we define ourselves by admitting this immense guilt and we take on basically everlasting responsibility for it."

And this is what the Holocaust Memorial at the center of Berlin symbolizes. Yet at the same time, comes a miraculous transformation, namely, by admitting the most serious guilt that, to such an extent no one has ever yet admitted, by accepting that one is guilty of such an enormous crime that no one ever accepted guilt for, Germany somehow becomes, in a paradoxical way, morally superior. Again, because our guilt is greater than everyone else, and our admission of guilt is greater than everyone else's, we become also somehow, more morally elevated than anyone else, and we can be proud of being capable of accepting such an enormous guilt. So a guilt-pride is this paradoxical redemption, and moral self-elevation through guilt admission.

Now, let's address the question what wokeism really is. It is neither cultural Marxism, nor is it a Post-modernist Leftism. At heart, it represents the incorporation of a German-style guilt-pride into the identity politics that took place after 1989, after the breakdown of communism, after the fall of the Soviet Union, after the end of the cold war. And thereby, by the way ironically,despite being against such things as white supremacy, it is actually deeply white, right? It's rooted in Christianity, it's rooted in Western individualism, it's rooted very much in the western historical experience regarding slavery, colonialism, the holocaust, and so forth. And that's why, by the way, the Chinese call it Baizuo, white-left. So from the Chinese perspective, it is clearly seen and identified as a Western, and thereby white phenomenon. And it consists, basically, in some form of taking the moral high ground through intense guilt admission with respect to such things as the holocaust, or in the American case, slavery.

There is, at the same time, a very strong focus on identity, right? Today, identity is very much curated through the creation of profiles, and I talk about length at this in the "You and your profile" book, which just recently came out. So it serves the function of creating an identity, both for individuals as well as for organizations, CIA for instance, an organization. So it is an identity politics that creates identity in the form of profiles. Now, what are profiles? Profiles are publicly projected images that once you get positive feedback on them, you can identify with and you can internalize. And we did some other videos on this as well, with regard to the philosophy channel, "Philosophy Tube."

So, this brings us now to an updated and more complex definition of what wokeism is. Wokism is a civil religion combining American individualistic liberalism with guilt-pride. It is based on, and comes from identity politics, and focuses on the creation of identity profiles. It is now penetrating all sectors of society in the West, politics, media, advertising, sports, arts, education, military, and so forth.

Now, what is religious about wokeism? First, a strong emphasis on guilt and redemption. Similar to Christianity, there's an emphasis on on confessing guilt and the hope of redemption through this confession. Secondly, very strong dogmatism. Of certain taboos of public speech and thought. Humor, for instance, becomes more and more suspicious. And there are punitive tendencies, as I pointed out with respect to the Derek Chauvin trial. So basically, all these phenomena that we can nowadays call, or associate with, so-called "cancel culture". Thirdly there is a divisive moralism to it, right? Jesus Christ famously says in the bible, "Who's not for me is against me". They're somewhat similar to wokeism, right? There is not much room for neutral ground, there is no fence sitting, right? You're either for it or against it. And that creates a very binary good-bad distinction with not much middle ground between us and them.

So it's basically manifesting itself, in this increasingly hostile schism between traditional American civil religion (Trumpism) without guilt-pride and wokism with guilt-pride. We see a very strong symbolic struggle about this as well, like there was this conflict about statues and monuments in the U.S where the woke people wanted to take down the monuments, and Trump was saying this cannot be done. So the wokists wanted to admit and ascribe guilt, whereas Trumpism wanted to basically not allow any form of guilt into american civil religion

Then, fourthly, there is a strong ritualistic conformity pressure, and that's what the notion of virtue signaling points to. But that's also what we see when I gave this example at the beginning of the video when it comes to diversity statements. When you apply for a job in academia, right? You have to demonstrate that you are willing to conform. So there is some form of systemic hypocrisy here, right? We have all the woke celebrities famously, and also the CIA video, which are basically regarded, easily regarded as forced statements. And therefore, their credibility is questioned because they seem just to be a sort of, as I said, ritualistic conformity.

Fifth, there is woke-washing of Capitalism and Imperialism. Again, very much represented through the CIA ad. And that's the very same function that Christianity had in the 19th century, for instance, and earlier during imperialism, right? The ships that brought soldiers and took the wealth of the colonies, also brought bibles with them, right? And similarly today, CIA doesn't embrace Christianity anymore, but it embraces wokeism. So it serves a moralistic profile creation of Capitalist and still imperialist institutions.

And number five, there's a strong personal internalization that becomes possible through wokeism, just like in religions. It enables a certain fundamentalism, it enables zealotry. So for instance, one friend once told me, and this was a remarkable statement, he said that one of his family members had become a reborn Christian, and this somehow destroyed the family, because the person developed such a strong zealotry. And, in a similar way, I think, we see this phenomenon, that wokeism also, of course not in everyone but in some, breeds fundamentalism, breeds zealotry, and leads to what we could probably call a personal over-internalization.

And then, sixth, of course it helps the creation of a public identity, some form of civil religious affiliation becomes possible. And that's, on the one hand, similar to traditional religions, where you could also define your identity through publicly adopting a faith, or publicly professing a faith. However, this now happens of course, in a very different environment. And as I like to say, it happens on the basis of profilicity, profile based identity. So instead of, whatever, having monks and nuns who, you know, create an identity by going to a monastery and reading text from the bible, now you demonstrate your affiliation with wokeness, for instance, by being a youtuber and by producing social media communication.

 
Now, still we may ask, isn't wokism about all the right things? Isn't it all great? I mean, people like Bellah and Rousseau also thought that civil religion is basically a very good thing if it's done right. So we could say, "Yeah wokeism is perfect, it creates public enthusiasm for justice, equality, human rights." But well I mean Christianity also could be considered as having been all great, after all you know, it created enthusiasm for love and peace. However with Christianity in hindsight, we also know that it created a lot of problems. Wars, even genocide, fundamentalism, and so forth. I think it's important to see that, just as Christianity did not invent love and peace, wokeism also did not invent justice and equality. I think it can be said that Christianity somehow appropriated, and to a certain extent even monopolized, love and peace, and thereby imposed a sort of dogmatic belief system onto it which led not only, but also, to war and fanaticism. And these problems with Christianity have been pointed out by many people, just to mention few, Nietzsche, in the 19th century, and very recently Sam Harris. And to point out these problems, of course, of Christianity, for instance, is not to argue against love and peace, but against what could be called the corruption of love and peace through some form of religious appropriation. And similarly, I guess, to point out problems with wokeism as a civil religion, is of course not to argue against justice and equality, but against their civil religious appropriation and even monopolization.

So to conclude, I think maybe in these times of a new awakening in form of wokeism, we might again be in need of a second Enlightenment, as I pointed out in an earlier video, right? And we might remember Kant's Critique of Philosophy as the "maidservant of theology" and ask of philosophy that it doesn't become the maidservant of wokeism. Its' job is not to abolish wokeism, but to critically shed light on it. To question it, so that it does not turn into a fundamentalist frenzy

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The following is an interview with Hans-Georg Moeller, author of The Moral Fool: A Case for Amorality.

Q: What’s wrong with morality?

Hans-Georg Moeller: People usually assume that morality is a good thing. It is generally believed that a moral person is somehow better than a person who is not moral and that a society which holds moral values in high esteem is better of than one which does not. I do not think that this is the case—and this is what the whole book is about. It is about pointing out the “sick” aspects of morality, about the “pathology of morality,” so to speak. I think that morality does not deserve to be valued as much as it is today.

Q: What is morality?

HGM: I think it is a way of thinking and talking about people, groups of people, actions, and events in terms of good or bad. Once we talk or think morally, we create a distinction between “us” and “them,” our values will seem good to us and others who do not share them will seem “bad” or even “evil.” This can create a lot of problems, both socially and individually. In wartime, for instance, moral talk and moral thought flourish. Likewise, thinking of the people around us in a very moral way is rather stressful and will create a lot of tensions. Imagine a family in which moral values dominate everything else, including the affection the family members feel for each other: life in such a family will probably be quite miserable and thus somewhat “sick.” In short, I argue that a high degree of moral language and a highly moral mindset is not an indicator of the “health” of a person or a society, but, to the contrary, a worrisome symptom of tension and uneasiness.

Q: What is a “Moral Fool”?

HGM: The “Moral Fool” is a figure that I take from Asian philosophy, from Daoism and Zen Buddhism in particular. As opposed to the moral heroes from Greek antiquity up to today’s Hollywood films, the Moral Fool is an entirely average person. He or she, like most of us most of the time, simply does not immediately conceive of the people he or she meets or the situation he or she encounters in moral terms. Even though morality has such prestige in our society today, in most of our dealings we function quite well and are able to more or less enjoy our lives without the necessity to make moral judgments. Rather than seeing anything wrong with this, I think it is a paradoxical amoral virtue. I do not argue for immorality, but, as much as possible, for moral abstinence, I argue for amorality, not for immorality. In many situations, amoral approaches may work more effectively and less pathologically than morality, for example, law in a courtroom and the aforementioned affection in a family. These are two important antidotes against morality that we already make frequent use of. In fact, I think, people do already act as moral fools most of the time. And I think there’s nothing wrong with this and that society—and philosophy—should embrace it.

Q: Can you give some concrete examples for how morality can be “sick”?

HGM: Yes. I think that moral “sickness” is different in different societies. In my book I focus on moral pathologies in today’s “Western” countries like the USA, Canada, or Europe. The most obvious example, which I alluded to already, is war rhetoric. How could mass support for the “war on terror” and obedience to the government—against actual facts and reason—be produced? Mainly through an intense use of moral language and the creation of moral outrage against an “evil” foe. It is a very common strategy to stir up moral mass hysteria in war times. Another example is how death penalty trials are performed in the U.S.. Why have there been so many wrongful convictions? I argue that this is mainly due to the intensity of moral argumentation in these cases. The jurors are overpowered by moral language so that they themselves will feel morally guilty if they do not vote for the extinction of a supposedly evil person. When it comes to deciding about the death penalty in an American court, the scene changes from an attempt to establish the facts of a case to a moral drama pitching the “innocent” against the “perpetrator”—and who would then dare to vote against the innocent?

Q: Didn’t a lot of things in society get better because of moral engagement, the civil rights movements for instance?

HGM: I discuss this issue in detail in my book, and my view is this: Yes, moral awareness and moral activism has played a historical role in improving the situation of oppressed groups such as African Americans or women. However, civil rights movements are called civil rights movements for a reason. What is much more important for these groups than being morally emancipated is to get certain rights that they lack. Just look at the current debate about gay rights in the USA. In every single state where there was a popular referendum on gay marriage it was defeated by the “moral majority.” But most of the American courts faced with this issue decided on a legal basis in favor of gay rights. Minorities will always have a hard time achieving moral esteem, but in a society where there is not only a separation between religion and the state but also a separation between morality and the law minorities might win some important legal victories.

Q: What about the efforts of so many philosophical and religious thinkers to find out what is good and to distinguish it from what is evil?

HGM: Interestingly enough, there have always been a number of philosophers who were highly suspicious of ethics; Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, for example. I follow these thinkers rather than the likes of Kant or contemporary ethical theorists who believe that they are able to identify what is “really” good. The attempt to define criteria for moral goodness has often ended in grotesque failures. I cite a number of examples of “shocking” or ridiculous ethical demands by some of the great heroes of today’s academic ethics, such as Kant’s moral defense of murdering “illegitimate” children or Bentham’s “scientific” suggestion of measuring weightlifting abilities in order to establish people’s strength for tolerating pain so that the moral quality of certain policies that might inflict pain on them could be objectively assessed. I argue that the history of “philosophical” ethics accounts for not much more than a series of unwarranted academic presumptions.

So What is it about the "Woke" Epistemology that Isn't True? To that you must also answer the "Why do it" question. And no, it isn't ever simply to "hold on to power" or to "reveal the truth".

Counter hegemonic narratives aren't more likely to be true simply because they run counter to the dominant narrative.  They're simply likely to contain some aspect of the truth that the hegemonic view has omitted, either deliberately or as a function of narrative simplification.  Counter-narratives force the holders of dominant hegemonic narratives to explain the discrepancy in opinion about facts (or facts omitted) and prove that the omission wasn't deliberate.  That doesn't make the counter-narratives true.  They simply expose complexity concealed by the narrative's omissions or help make the narrative "more true" through inclusion of the omitted perspective and making it therefore more universally applicable.

And none of this makes an argument "woke".  Woke arguments are motivated by the guilt/pride feelings of the holder which seek to transform a bad quality into a good one (as explored in Post-colonialism*). Like a white neoliberal saying, "white conservatives are racists, but I'm not like them because I call them white racists too and do not criticize other racial minorities (even when they're even MORE racist)".   It "pretends" at universalism to make the opinion holder's opinion seem true.  THAT is "woke".  It attempts to transform the woke neoracism of anti-racism and make the speaker seem like a "good" person.  It's really just racism from an opposite racial perspective.  And Tucker Carlson does NOT do this.  He is NOT woke, or a member of the "woke right".  If there is a "woke right" it consists soley of white nationalists, who are openly racist.  That's "honest racism", not neoracism disguised in faux-universalism like in the case of the majority of the woke-progressive left.

The epistemology that James derides  as 'woke' is actually useful, in  the sense that it seeks to overcome fixed and many times over-simplified categories.  Its' deficiency lies in the fact that it only seeks to do this through a racial/ cultural/ ethnic/ sexual based schizo-analytic process, and does not often recognize or include other socially valid non-woke categories and subsystems.

*“Postcolonialism is the invention of rich Indian guys who wanted to make a good career in the west by playing on the guilt of white liberals”

― Slavoj Žižek

Even presenting itself and impersonating Universal Truth isn't the real point of Wokism.  The Point is that Wokism isn't any form of Truth or Epistemological System.  It's a pathological Identity formation that is race-based and a reflection of that Identity formation's Will to Power employing the psychological pathologies of both racial Guilt AND racial Pride in its' narrative's rhetorical service.  And THAT service is to an epistemological confusion. for as Hannah Arendt noticed in her extensive studies post-"Eichmann in Jerusalem" case:

“There is no such thing as collective guilt or collective innocence; guilt and innocence make sense only if applied to individuals.”

Critical Comments upon the Post-Colonial Guilt-Pride Project of Occidentalism

From Google AI:

"Les non-dupes errent" translates to "those who are not duped err" and is a phrase coined by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. It highlights the idea that in a world based on social fiction and symbolic deception, those who believe they are entirely immune to these illusions are the ones most likely to lose their way or be misguided. They err not by being fooled by a necessary semblance, but by being so certain of their own lack of deception that they miss the underlying reality, becoming truly "deceived" by their own perceived enlightenment.

 

Meaning and context 

Symbolic order and Semblance:

Lacan argued that society, language, and the symbolic order are inherently built on fictions or semblances, which are necessary to create social bonds and a sense of reality. 

Being "duped":

To "be duped" is to be caught in this necessary illusion, to accept the social semblance without critical analysis but in a way that allows for meaning and connection. 

The "non-duped":

The "non-duped" are those who believe they have seen through the illusion and are therefore not fooled by it. However, by clinging to their perceived enlightenment, they deny the fundamental truth of this symbolic deception, thus making a greater mistake and "erring".

On 'Woke' and Non-Woke Moral Paradigm Shifts

...from Normal Science to Revolutionary Science:

 

Woke isn't a Scientific Paradigm, it's a Moral One. And the process for maintaining Moral Paradigms is Mimesis and Scapegoating (Rene Girard).  It has nothing to do with "Communism" or "Marxist", except that these are both "secular/ civic religions", and so group excommunication is necessary (ala Mao Cultural Revolution). Good & Bad refers to Science, Good and Evil refers to Religion (morality). Hans-Georg Moeller has the best explanations of Woke and wokeism, as a specific German guilt-pride spirit driven moral system.

The "Woke Right" argument is between those Neocon Conservatives "uncritical" of Israel, and those Paleocon Conservatives who are "critical" of Israel. The Neocons accuse the Paleocons of being "Anti-Semitic". This focus on race is much in sympathy to the Woke Progressive guilt-pride stance on race, and seeks to gatekeep the Conservative movement keeping Israel at its' heart and expelling Paleocons (ala Tucker Carlson) who refuse.  This is necessary from the Neocon perspective to keep their Hegemonic Unipolar American Neoliberal economic project alive as the global standard (Rules-based Order)

Wokeness (Guilt-Pride) is a Mostly Unconscious Moral Foucaultian Episteme that Bends Truth towards Social Justice (The 'Arc of History bends towards Justice')

Wisdom:Justice - Opposed Virtues

For Justice to Gain, Wisdom must Lose (x1)

For 'Social Justice' to Increase, Wisdom must be Diminished (x2)

from Google AI:

Michel Foucault’s episteme is the unconscious, foundational set of rules and "grid" of knowledge that defines the limits of thought, truth, and discourse within a specific historical period. It acts as a "historical a priori" that determines what can be known and accepted as true. These epistemic frameworks shift suddenly rather than gradually, altering the structure of knowledge

Our Problem of "Identity" Politics

We lack a greater Culture to which we all WISH to belong, so we cling to a minor grouping.. enter the post-modern META-narrative.... ala Modularization of the narratives into MULTI-Culturalism.  But do we REALLY WISH to all be the SAME?  Or do we simply WISH that OUR INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCE was more GREATLY VALUED & APPRECIATED in the Greater Culture?  

Instead of crafting a more Universalist Culture, our Elites DE-Represent the Majority Cultural Group, DE-legitimize it, and suppress their members Agency through trauma culture.  They do so by self-imposing white guilt-pride, with those whites who suppress and de-legitimize their own majority culture doing so out of a combination of guilt relating to other historically oppressed races/ cultures that the majority culture has suppressed and their new-found pride in having abandoned and now actively suppressed other members of that former majority culture.  White guilt-pride is the disease of the so-called Professional Managerial Class (PMC) (aka Surplus-Salaried Bourgeoisie).

Afflicted with German Guilt-Pride, Many Establishment Parties Now Deny History of Nazi-Islamic Cooperation

...and accuse the AfD of "fabricating" the connection for the purpose of extending anti-Semitism from Jews to Arabs (all Semites).

"Germany stands for an uncompromising struggle against the Jews. It is self-evident that the struggle against the Jewish national homeland in Palestine forms part of this struggle, since such a national homeland would be nothing other than a political base for the destructive influence of Jewish interests. Germany also knows that the claim that Jewry plays the role of an economic pioneer in Palestine is a lie. Only the Arabs work there, not the Jews. Germany is determined to call on the European nations one by one to solve the Jewish problem and, at the proper moment, to address the same appeal to non-European peoples."

—Adolf Hitler to Haj Amin Al-Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem, November 28, 1941

More on German Guilt-Pride

For propaganda purposes, the producers of the above video attempt to portray the conflict in Germany between Establishment Political Parties and the AfD as an attempt to shift Nazi Guilt onto Arabs and Islam.  That guilt has historically always been there.  One need only read the Quran to find it.  They also paint the AfD as a resurgent fascism unrelated to German Anti-Globalism and restoration of any form of healthy economic Nationalism.  All Nationalism is a form of fascism, by definition (notice the fasces):  

The producers thereby seek to sew division between the German establishment parties and AfD, and portray Islamic immigrants to Germany not as "cheap labour for economic globalism", but as a wholly "innocent" community of victims of Nazi responsibility transference within Germany requiring special protections and rights.  They also attempt to extend the concept and guilt for racism to all Western colonialism under the special-pleading rubric of post-colonial theories and ignore their own long and storied history of non-Western racism, colonialism, and religious conquest.

Contemplating Existence in the Wake of Guilt...

On James Joyce, "Finnegans Wake"

“There is no such thing as collective guilt or collective innocence; guilt and innocence make sense only if applied to individuals.”

–Hannah Ardent, "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship"

How German (NAZI) Guilt-Pride and American White Guilt-Pride came to be collectively imagined...

Ideological Psychopathology...

from Google AI:

The Dark Tetrad is a, psychological framework describing four, co-occurring, malevolent personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism. Coined in 2013, it expands the Dark Triad by adding everyday sadism, or pleasure derived from inflicting pain. These individuals are typically characterized by a lack of empathy, manipulation, antisocial behavior, and high risk-taking.

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Cluster B personality disorders are a group o n other words, they suffer from the German Guilt-Pride Spirit  f mental health conditions—Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic, and Narcissistic—characterized by dramatic, overly emotional, or erratic behaviors, along with significant challenges in emotional regulation and interpersonal relationships. These chronic conditions often involve impulsivity, manipulation, or a need for attention, and are treated through special therapy such as Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

In other words, they suffer from the American version (Slavery/ Racism) or European version (Colonialism) of German Guilt-Pride Spirit !

The videographer claims that Germany is "over" its' Kollectivschuld now.  Then how do you explain the AfD and refusal of liberal parties to cooperate with it?  How do you explain Antifa and its' obsession with Anti-Fascism? 

–Hannah Arendt, "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship"

“There is no such thing as collective guilt or collective innocence; guilt and innocence make sense only if applied to individuals.”

btw - There's nothing to resolve.  It's a False/ Inapplicable Ethical (not Moral) Guilt for which only Groups, not Individuals, are responsible.  There is no "Collective Responsibility".  All attempts at  Vergangenheitsbewältigung are exercises in social control, not restitution or social justice.   All the perpetrators of these past collective crimes (Nazi's, Confederates, or Colonial Governments) are dead, and the responsible groups, dissolved.  It's long past time to stop looking back and move on.  Cuz we're no angels...

Paul Klee, "Angelus Novus"

Dialectic: Generation FROM Opposites, Not Separation into Polemic Bailey's sans Mottes

Lindsay's Neological Woke Right Doesn't Carry the Woke frame (aka- filled with the Guilt-Pride Group Identity ideological frame).  It's a Strategic Argument to Prevent the Left from Splitting of the Right into 2 Sub-Factions (and it ISN'T True that there's a Woke Right, the necessary Guilt-Pride Ideology ISN'T there).

Lindsay's definition of Woke is to Bi-Polarize arguments (Generating either Reflexive Mania or Depression) into B&W Polar Dialectics (aka- Polemics), NOT actual Socratic nor Hegelian Dialectics that explore the Meden Agan Grey Areas.  Polemics distill arguments  into Thesis OR Antithesis, NEVER producing a Hegelian Synthesis.  Thesis:Antithesis::Synthesis.

James... Polemics aren't Dialectics.  They're the one part of an ever-iterating Dialectical Process to Generate a logical Synthesis.  All you're doing is instilling an artificial Ideological Split within the Right that you think becomes Invulnerable to Leftist Entryism

There is an ACTUAL split in the Right between Commerce (Main Street) and Capitalism (Wall Street).  The Commerce (Main Street) position is a return to Paleo-Conservatism from Neo-Conservatism (Wall St. position).  As we're slipping away from Free Markets into Controlled Technofeudal Search-Directed Markets. we'd be wise to address this ACTUAL split in "The Right", and not get driven into the ditch of Wokeness.

Guilt-Pride Spirit: Feelings of Moral Superiority Made Manifest

Hans-Georg Moeller

A Group Identity Technology that Transforms 'Bad' into 'Good'!

...exploiting a logical, but faulty, moral premise

That individuals can atone for a collective's guilt

“There is no such thing as collective guilt or collective innocence; guilt and innocence make sense only if applied to individuals.”

–Hannah Ardent, "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship"

Antimemetics Division Hub

from Wikidot:

An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.

Antimemes are real. Think of any piece of information which you wouldn't share with anybody, like passwords, taboos and dirty secrets. Or any piece of information which would be difficult to share even if you tried: complex equations, very boring passages of text, large blocks of random numbers, and dreams…

But anomalous antimemes are another matter entirely. How do you contain something you can't record or remember? How do you fight a war against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you're at war?

Welcome to the Antimemetics Division.

No, this is not your first day.

from Wikipedia: 

The mimetic theory of desire, an explanation of human behavior in relation to culture, originated with the French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science René Girard (1923–2015). The name of the theory derives from the philosophical concept mimesis, which carries a wide range of meanings. In mimetic theory, mimesis refers to human desire, which Girard thought was not linear but the product of a mimetic process in which people imitate models who endow objects with value.[1] Girard called this phenomenon "mimetic desire", and described mimetic desire as the foundation of his theory:

"Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires."[2]

Mimetic theory has two main parts – the desire itself, and the resulting scapegoating. Girard's idea proposes that all desire is merely an imitation of another's desire, and the desire only occurs because others have deemed said object as worthwhile. This means that a desirable object is only desired because of societal ideas, and is not based on personal preference like most believe.[3] The mimetic desire is triangular, based on the subject, model, and object. The subject mimics the model, and both desire the object. Subject and model thus form a rivalry which eventually leads to the scapegoat mechanism.

The scapegoat mechanism has one requirement for it to be effective in restoring the peace; all participants in the removal of the scapegoat must genuinely believe that he is guilty. It is also essential that the scapegoat cannot strike back afterwards, so it is common for him to be killed. Once he is gone, peace will quickly be restored, further confirming his "guilt". However, the scapegoat is chosen arbitrarily. The resulting peace is borne from violence, and this form of violence controlling violence has existed since the beginning of civilizations.[4]

Girard believed that we cannot truly escape this mimetic desire, and that any attempts to do so would simply land you playing the game of mimesis on a different level. A new desire for peace must develop in order for the violence of scapegoating to end. However, the model for this desire must somehow rise above the tendency to scapegoat.[5]

In more recent years, mimetic theory was expanded by colleagues and critics of Girard, including Jean-Pierre Dupuy from the angle of economics, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe from the perspective of philosophy, and Nidesh Lawtoo from the angle of mimetic studies. Mimetic studies argues that not only desires, but all affects are mimetic.[6]

Oh wait, Now I Remember...

Why Woke Can Never Be Woke Enough...

Stephen Pinker on "The Euphemism Treadmill"

Connotations are Stereotypical.  You can Bait & Switch escape them temporarily, but like a bad penny, they ALWAYS return.  Euphemism is this futile, often neoracist linguistic tactic to flatter and virtue signal (aka- a relatively cheap transactional attempt to gain "Social Capital") friendship rather then do the hard work needed to actually establish a lasting friendship.  One in which the usefulness of the other person to you in the social relationship obtained temporarily through flattery appears more important than establishing a long lasting friendship through straight talk, mutual honesty, and respect.

You'll know when certain minorities have achieved social equality the day people stop inventing euphemisms out of guilt-pride to describe them, and stop seeking to gain surplus self-pride through using euphemisms to describe them.

Today that Flattery Must be Individualized through Use the Preferred Pronouns.  One wouldn't want to appear Racist/ Sexist using the older well-connotated term on the euphemism escalator (no longer a level treadmill)

The Guilt-Pride Chronicles

Taking Pride in Atonement for Sins You Never Committed!

... like Modern Day German Millennials for the Crimes of Nazism

Hans-Georg Moeller: The Dark Psychology behind the West's Anti-Universalist "Affirmative-Semitism"

Shifting from an "Authentically felt" guilt for the holocaust (by actual Nazi's), to an Inauthentic, Profilic  and "Performative" guilt (by Descendants of Nazis) and transforming Affirmative-Semitism into the new "Civic Religion" of Germany, German sense of pride in "self".

“There is no such thing as collective guilt or collective innocence; guilt and innocence make sense only if applied to individuals.”

–Hannah Arendt, "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship"

Progressive Liberals Weaponized "Shame"...

 ...and Monetized Trauma thru DEI Racial Guilt-Pride and Academic Post-Colonialism, and so now Leftists can complain about the Right's "Shamelessness".  Talk about wanting to have their cake and eat it too...

 "Postcolonialism is the invention of some rich guys from India who saw that they could make a good career in top Western universities by playing on the guilt of white liberals"

-Slavoj Zizek

So "who" do you think Shamed the Right into Shamelessness, Slavoj?

Native Citizens (vice Immigrants): Official Legalism's NEW Homo Sacer?

The Western Liberal Suffers from Post-Colonialism's Guilt-Pride Spirit

"Postcolonialism is the invention of rich Indian guys who wanted to make a good career in the West by playing on the guilt of white liberals,"

- Slavoj Zizek

from Google AI:

Homo sacer (Latin for "the sacred" or "accursed man") is a figure from Roman law defining someone excluded from religious and legal protections, who can be killed by anyone without committing homicide but cannot be ritually sacrificed. This "bare life" exists outside law but is included through exclusion. 

Key details regarding Homo Sacer: 

Origin: The concept originates from ancient Roman law, representing an outlawed person stripped of civil rights. 

"Bare Life". In modern philosophy, particularly in Giorgio Agamben’s "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life", it represents human life reduced to mere existence—excluded from political participation and reduced to basic, biological life.

Sovereign Power: Agamben argues that sovereign power creates homo sacer by declaring a "state of exception," where normal law is suspended. 

Modern Examples: The concept is applied to individuals in zones of indistinction, such as refugees, stateless persons, or detainees in concentration camps, who are excluded from legal rights. 

Significance: It highlights the ability of the state to exclude certain people from legal protections, making them vulnerable to violence.

Gatekeeping the 'Woke' Institutional Narrative (Woke GIN)...

A Kayfabed Moral Identity Performance by an Elite Vanguard Member of an Institutionally Gatekept Ideology for the General Peer Meant to Establish One's Own-Self as a 'Good' Person AND to Prevent the Listener from Considering Contradictory Messages that Might Lead Him to a Different Conclusion by Defaming Contradictory Speakers as Immoral/ "Bad People" (racist/ fascist/ authoritarian) whose views, a priori,  are Unworthy of Consideration.  Welcome to the Distributed Idea Suppression Complex (DISC)

James & Jordan Projecting Nefarious Moral Motives onto Their In-Group Rivals

"I Want to be 'Uniquely' Authentic

... Just Like Everyone Else... but We All Need to be Authentic in the Same Way, MY Way!" @@

"Woke Right" - A Term of Art used by Certain Political Gatekeepers to Scandalize Conservatives Who Disagree with them and Paint them with the Colours of their "Progressive" Political Opponents.

Does German WWII Collective War Guilt (Kollektivschuld) Still Make Any Sense Today?

There aren't many Nazi's left, and those that were are geriatric cases today. On German Guilt-Pride.  I think it's past time to get over it.

Thanks St. Paul (and the Pauline Intervention in Language) for the Slave Morality!

...more on Nietzsche and the Pauline Intervention.

Ariadne and Theseus in the Maze

Nietzsche, "Ariadne's Lament" (A Battle of Super-Ego and Ego between shame, guilt, praise and pride)

Ariadne's Lament

Who will warm me, who loves me still?
Give warm hands!
Give the heart's brazier!
Prone, shuddering
Like one half dead, whose feet are warmed;
Shaken, alas! by unknown fevers,
Trembling at pointed arrows of glacial frost,
Hunted by you, Thought!
Nameless! Cloaked! Horrid!
You hunter behind clouds!
Struck down by your lightning,
Your scornful eye, glaring at me out of the dark!
Thus I lie,
Writhing, twisted, tormented
By all the eternal afflictions,
Struck
By you, cruelest hunter,
You unknown—god ...

Strike deeper!
Strike one more time!
Stab, break this heart!
Why all this affliction
With blunt-toothed arrows?
How can you gaze evermore,
Unweary of human agony,
With the spiteful lightning eyes of gods?
You do not wish to kill,
Only to torment, torment?
Why torment—me,
You spiteful unknown god?

Aha!
You creep closer
Around midnight? ...
What do you want?
Speak!
You push me, press upon me,
Ah, already much too close!
You hear me breathing,
You eavesdrop on my heart,
Most jealous one! —
What are you jealous of anyway?
Away! Away!
What's the ladder for?
Do you want inside,
Would you get into my heart,
And enter
My most secret thoughts?
Shameless one! Unknown! Thief!
What do you wish to steal for yourself?
What do you wish to hear for yourself?
What will you gain by torture,
You torturer!
You—executioner-god!
Or am I, like a dog,
To wallow before you?
Devoted, eager due to my
Love for you—fawning over you?
In vain!
It stabs again!
Cruelest sting!
I am not your dog, only your prey,
Cruelest hunter!
Your proudest prisoner,
You robber behind clouds ...
Speak finally!
You, cloaked by lightning! Unknown! Speak!
What do you want, highwayman, from—me?...

What?
A ransom?
What do you want for ransom?
Demand much—so advises my pride!
And talk little—my pride advises as well!

Aha!
Me?—you want me?
Me—all of me? ...

Aha!
And tormenting me, fool that you are,
You wrack my pride?
Give me love—who warms me still?
Who loves me still?
Give warm hands,
Give the heart's brazier,
Give me, the loneliest one,
Ice, alas! whom ice sevenfold
Has taught to yearn for enemies,
Even for my enemies
Give, yes, surrender to me,
Cruelest enemy —
Yourself! ...

Gone!
He has fled,
My only companion,
My splendid enemy,
My unknown,
My executioner-god! ...

No!
Come back!
With all your afflictions!
All my tears gush forth
To you they stream
And the last flames of my heart
Glow for you.
Oh, come back,
My unknown god! my pain!
My ultimate happiness! ....

A lightening bolt. Dionysus becomes visible in emerald beauty.


Dionysus:

Be clever, Ariadne! ...
You have little ears; you have my ears:
Put a clever word in them! —
Must one not first hate oneself, in order to love oneself? ...
I am your labyrinth ...

The Left is an Interpassive Bag Full of PC Laughter

Slavoj Zizek, "Politically correct white people who practise self-contempt are contributing NOTHING in the fight to end racism"

Smashing up monuments and disowning the past isn’t the way to address racism and show respect to black people. Feeling guilty patronizes the victims and achieves little.
It was widely reported in the media how on June 21, German authorities were shocked by a rampage of an “unprecedented scale” in the centre of Stuttgart: between 400 and 500 partygoers ran riot overnight, smashing shop windows, plundering stores and attacking police.

The police – who needed four and a half hours to quell the violence – ruled out any political motives for the “civil war-like scenes,” describing the perpetrators as people from the “party scene or events scene.” There were, of course, no bars or clubs for them to visit, because of social distancing – hence they were out on the streets.

Such civil disobedience has not been limited to Germany. On June 25, thousands packed out England’s beaches, ignoring social distancing. In Bournemouth, on the south coast, it was reported: “The area was overrun with cars and sunbathers, leading to gridlock. Rubbish crews also suffered abuse and intimidation as they tried to remove mountains of waste from the seafront, and there were a number of incidents involving excessive alcohol and fighting.”

One can blame these violent outbreaks on the immobility imposed by social distancing and quarantine, and it is reasonable to expect that we’ll see similar incidents across the world. You could argue that the recent wave of anti-racist protests follows a similar logic, too: people are relieved to deal with something they believe in to take their focus away from coronavirus.

We are, of course, dealing with very different types of violence here. On the beach, people simply wanted to enjoy their usual summer vacation, and reacted angrily against those who wanted to prevent it.

In Stuttgart, the enjoyment was generated by looting and destruction – by violence itself. But what we saw there was a violent carnival at its worst, an explosion of blind rage (although, as expected, some leftists tried to interpret it as a protest against consumerism and police control). The (largely non-violent) anti-racist protests simply ignored the orders of the authorities in pursuit of a noble cause.

Of course, these types of violence predominate in developed Western societies – we’re ignoring here the more extreme violence which is already happening and will for sure explode in countries like Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia. “This summer will usher in some of the worst catastrophes the world has ever seen if the pandemic is allowed to spread rapidly across countries already convulsed by growing violence, deepening poverty and the spectre of famine,” reported the Guardian earlier this week.

There is a key feature shared by the three types of violence in spite of their differences: none of them expresses a consistent socio-political program. The anti-racist protests might appear to, but they fail in so much as they are dominated by the politically correct passion to erase traces of racism and sexism – a passion which gets all too close to its opposite, neo-conservative thought-control.

The law approved on June 16 by Romanian lawmakers prohibits all educational institutions from “propagating theories and opinion on gender identity according to which gender is a separate concept from biological sex.” Even Vlad Alexandrescu, a centre-right senator and university professor, noted that with this law, “Romania is aligning itself with positions promoted by Hungary and Poland and becoming a regime introducing thought policing.”

Directly prohibiting gender theory is, of course, part of the program of the populist new right, but now it has been given a new push by the pandemic. A typical new right populist reaction to the pandemic is that its outbreak is ultimately the result of our global society, where multicultural mixtures predominate. So the way to fight it is to make our societies more nationalist, rooted in a particular culture with firm, traditional values.

Let’s leave aside the obvious counter-argument that fundamentalist countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar are being ravaged, and focus on the procedure of “thought policing,” whose ultimate expression was the infamous Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books), a collection of publications deemed heretical or contrary to morality by the Sacred Congregation of the Index, so that Catholics were forbidden from reading them without permission.

This list was operative (and regularly updated) from early modernity until 1966, and everybody who counted in European culture was included at some point. As my friend Mladen Dolar noted some years ago, if you imagine European culture without all the books and authors who were at some point on the list, what remains is pure wasteland…

The reason I mention this is that I think the recent urge to cleanse our culture of all traces of racism and sexism courts the danger of falling into the same trap as the Catholic Church’s index. What remains if we discard all authors in whom we find some traces of racism and anti-feminism? Quite literally all the great philosophers and writers disappear.

Let’s take Descartes, who at one point was on the Catholic index, but is also regarded today by many as the philosophical originator of Western hegemony, which is eminently racist and sexist.

We should not forget that the grounding experience of Descartes’ position of universal doubt is precisely a ‘multicultural’ experience of how one’s own tradition is no better than what appears to us as the ‘eccentric’ traditions of others. As he wrote in his ‘Discourse on Method’, he recognized in the course of his travels that traditions and customs that “are very contrary to ours are yet not necessarily barbarians or savages, but may be possessed of reason in as great or even a greater degree than ourselves.”

This is why, for a Cartesian philosopher, ethnic roots and national identity are simply not a category of truth. This is also why Descartes was immediately popular among women: as one of his early readers put it, cogito – the subject of pure thinking – has no sex.

Today’s claims that sexual identities are socially constructed and not biologically determined are only possible against the background of Cartesian tradition; there is no modern feminism and anti-racism without Descartes’ thought.

So, in spite of his occasional lapses into racism and sexism, Descartes deserves to be celebrated, and we should apply the same criterion to all great names from our philosophical past: from Plato and Epicurus to Kant and Hegel, Marx and Kierkegaard… Modern feminism and anti-racism emerged out of this long emancipatory tradition, and it would be sheer madness to leave this noble tradition to obscene populists and conservatives.

And the same goes for many disputed political figures. Yes, Thomas Jefferson had slaves and opposed the Haiti revolution – but he laid the politico-ideological foundations for later black liberation. And yes, in invading the Americas, Western Europe did cause maybe the greatest genocide in world history. But European thought laid the politico-ideological foundation for us today to see the full scope of this horror.

And it’s not just about Europe: yes, while the young Gandhi fought in South Africa for equal rights for Indians, he ignored the predicament of the blacks. But he nonetheless successfully led the biggest anti-colonial movement.

So while we should be ruthlessly critical about our past (and especially the past which continues in our present), we should not succumb to self-contempt – respect for others based on self-contempt is always, and by definition, false.

The paradox is that in our societies, the white people who participate in anti-racist protests are mostly the upper-middle class white people who hypocritically enjoy their guilt. Perhaps these protesters should learn the lesson of Frantz Fanon, who certainly cannot be accused of not being radical enough:

“Every time a man has contributed to the victory of the dignity of the spirit, every time a man has said no to an attempt to subjugate his fellows, I have felt solidarity with his act. In no way does my basic vocation have to be drawn from the past of peoples of color. /…/ My black skin is not a repository for specific values. /…/ I as a man of color do not have the right to hope that in the white man there will be a crystallization of guilt toward the past of my race. I as a man of color do not have the right to seek ways of stamping down the pride of my former master. I have neither the right nor the duty to demand reparations for my subjugated ancestors. There is no black mission; there is no white burden. /.../ Am I going to ask today’s white men to answer for the slave traders of the seventeenth century? Am I going to try by every means available to cause guilt to burgeon in their souls? /…/ I am not a slave to slavery that dehumanized my ancestors."

The opposite of guilt (of the white men) is not tolerance for their continued politically correct racism, most famously demonstrated in the notorious Amy Cooper video that was filmed in New York’s Central Park.
In a conversation with academic Russell Sbriglia, he pointed out to me that “the strangest, most jarring part of the video is that she specifically says – both to the black man himself before she calls 911 and to the police dispatcher once she’s on the phone with them – that ‘an African American man’ is threatening her life. It’s almost as if, having mastered the proper, politically correct jargon (‘African American,’ not ‘black’), what she’s doing couldn’t possibly be racist.”

Instead of perversely enjoying our guilt (and thereby patronizing the true victims), we need active solidarity: guilt and victimhood immobilize us. Only all of us together, treating ourselves and each other as responsible adults, can beat racism and sexism.

Guilt-Pride: Germany's #1 Export (White Wokeism)

Identity Technologies for Achieving Profilic Superiority...

...or Simply Hubris and an Inflated Self-Esteem?

The Identity Tech Underlying the Social Cancellation Phenomena

From The Book of Ecclesiastes:

1 The words of the Preacher,[a] the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

Curtis Yarvin:  "You can only LOSE the Culture War"