“The goal of abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists... Keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as 'the white race' is destroyed - not 'deconstructed' but destroyed.” – Noel Ignatiev
James, you’re in a cult.
I couldn’t help but take notice of the ravings of James Lindsay over the past couple of weeks. He seems to be fixated on the idea that ‘the Woke’ are in a cult, specifically that they’re in a gnostic cult. Mind you, the mere mention of ‘soul’ by Mao is enough for James to infer that he’s a gnostic:
“Mao says that the cult should treat the uninitiated very harshly, in fact as non-people and ‘without a soul.’ That's to make them want to join the cult where things are better… His remedy to this is to adopt [the inner circle’s] correct political orientation and thus find their soul (or, Nous). That's because it's Gnostic (cultic) in disposition” (James Lindsay, italics added).
No one tell him there’s such a thing as soul food or soul music, he might think that’s Gnostic, too.
The aforementioned quote come from James’ Twitter thread about how the ‘Woke’ are actually a cult, and you can tell they’re in a cult because they behave in the particular way he describes. Well, let’s explore his description for a second.
There are four parts to the system James describes: the hoi palloi, the outer school, the inner school, and the inner circle. The inner circle is ‘conspiring’ to change and rule the society they came from. The inner circle directs the inner school (like a graduate school) to indoctrinate members of the outer school (like an undergraduate program), made up of the hoi palloi or uninitiated.
The outer school or hoi palloi are punished for not adopting the right worldview. This is an incentive mechanism for the people to adopt the inner circle’s and inner school’s worldview. The people in the inner circle have power, opportunity, wealth, or status, which they use to punish those in the outer school and the hoi palloi, which directs both towards the teachings of the inner circle and inner school.
The outer school then studies the doctrines; they get an understanding of the inner circle’s teachings, and they are doing this to acquire status and opportunity, at least. For example, the inner school’s reward for learning the teachings of the inner circle is to gain the ability to direct the outer school and initiate the hoi palloi.
Interestingly, this is precisely the system James and Michael Young (Wokal Distance) are running on, at least.
Let’s examine this structure in form:
The inner circle directs the inner school, which directs the outer school and initiates the hoi palloi, who are suffering or in pain – punished for not adopting the worldview of the inner circle. The inner circle thrives on the suffering and pain of the hoi palloi, which they use to draw them into the ‘conspiracy’ or system, which relieves their pain and suffering, offering them status, opportunity, success, or wealth. The goal of this entire system is societal or structural change.
But then how are James and Michael in a cult? What do James and Michael do? They interpret the doctrines of the inner circle so you don’t have to, so you can become dependent on them – because in the battle of ideas, it’s always best to use your enemy’s language when dialoguing with them, right? Maybe you should even teach your kids about Communism instead of America’s history while you’re at it! You also want to know the ‘words’ that the inner circle have a deep gnosis of and you don’t, which apparently James and Michael, at least, have grasped, because you don’t have the time to study all that nonsense, right? Just pay James and Michael, give them views, listen to their podcasts (and be sure to leave a good review – to spread the good word), and you too can learn all the secrets that the inner circle keeps from you!
And when you disagree with them, like Darren J. Beattie did,
Then you can be told by them that you’ve “left the reservation.”
Concerned that Critical Race Theory is explicitly Anti-White? You can be told that you’re just a sucker;
You're just accepting the Left's framing, Michael will say scoldingly. Don’t accept the Left’s framing, Michael will tell you; don’t assert that you feel accosted because of your identity, culture, and heritage – just smash their frame by denying that you have a heritage, culture, and identity! In fact, you should mock, dismantle, and subvert that identity. Surely that will work; surely that will keep them from attacking you on the basis of your identity, culture, and heritage – just tell them you don’t have any – you’re an individual, man. Nothing bad ever happens to isolated, identity-less individuals, right?
And do you know what you can do once you pay the likes of James and Michael? You can use the knowledge you’ve acquired to, get this, change the society for the better by defeating the ‘woke cultists’! Don’t you see, you too can change the society if you have a deep understanding of the magic words and philosophies of the cult by using their magic words and philosophies against them! You too are a wizard, Harry!
It’s odd that neither James nor Michael are capable of self-reflecting for more than a moment to see the cult they’re describing is how they’re behaving. They have (are) an inner circle, whose goal is to better society and to regain control of it. They have an inner school, who buy into their teachings, who go to their conferences, so they too can get an understanding of fancy words like ‘Postmodernism’ and exotic names like ‘Hagel.’ And that inner school, it initiates members of the outer school, it pulls in the hoi palloi; it gives reason to the suffering of a people who are at the hands of a bloated administrative state – but first, you have to buy James’ books and listen to his four-hour lectures.
What’s worst of all: this serves as a kind of containment – not for the Right, mind you – for the Left. By simply applying the term ‘cult’ or the idea James has put forward as ‘cult’ to everything,
They’re giving ammunition to the Left; when everything becomes a cult, nothing is a cult. Keep it up, Liz Wheler and Tim Pool, you too can be labeled by the left as irrelevant conspiracy theorists! They’ll call you cooks, it will make you look ridiculous, and it will allow the Left to mock you and discredit you without mercy, which if you decide to go down this route, they surely will and should.
Oh, but you think they’re a religious group because they’re just so irrational? Well, yes, humans are irrational, and we clearly have a religious instinct. But that doesn’t make the Woke or ESG or the environmental groups a religious organization or group. They have no deity; they have no God. And as far as the SCOTUS is concerned (see United States v. MacIntosh and United States v. Seeger), that is one of the essential features of religion. If we can claim they have a god, then their god is void, formless, and reflective, yet it lacks any genuine sense of identity, for it is nothing but anything. So, keep going on about how the State and Federal government needs to be ‘neutral’; meanwhile, because it’s not a religion (because it’s atheistic and has no god), the Left will just continue to proliferate and propagate their ideology throughout the very institutions Lindsay wants to save (because it’s apparently impossible not to have the private sector – homeschooling even – affected by the Woke; nowhere is safe, which is why you need the likes of James and Michael).
So, what can be done about this, how do you actually deal with the problem? You acknowledge it for what it is: a variation on a Battle of the Sexes game, a topic I just wrote quite extensively on. This is a battle of standards, and for whatever reason, the Left feels they’re being shortchanged. They want to earn more, they want more opportunities, more status, more power and control over the society – and do you know who’s in their way: White people, their Western standards, and their culture; the latter of which is a constant reminder that they are constrained by a cultural aesthetic and milieu that is not inherent to their people’s (see Boyd and Richerson’s Not by Genes Alone for a fantastic example comparing the Innuit and Maasai). Regardless, that is no reason to ethnically target another group of people, as if we’re living in Rwanda.
By betraying the society to which they belong, free-riding, not cooperating with the standards of the society, or subverting those standards, the Left is trying to assert itself by coordinating and challenging the powers that be (which Richard H. McAdams has written quite a bit about). By doing this, they stand a chance of getting the power, status, and opportunities they want. Unfortunately, their goals explicitly require the erasure of White(ness), which we all know is obviously a motte-and-bailey tactic for White people. In other words, their strategy isn’t just control of the society or a conspiracy to dominate the society –as if it’s a conspiracy, they’re doing it openly; it’s the annihilation of an entire people, their culture, standards, and heritage.
It would help to simply acknowledge this. Ideas can’t be destroyed; people can.
Instead, you trot out the likes of Vivek Ramaswamy or Larry Elder, whom I have nothing against, to show how Western standards aren’t just about White people, despite the fact that by doing this you’re tacitly acknowledging that Vivek is not like other people of Indian descent – by doing this, you are implicitly acknowledging that Vivek isn’t like those people of Indian descent in India; no! he’s Westernized. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it doesn’t help your case: he’s still tacitly admitting that these standards aren’t the same standards one would find in India generally, or China, Mongolia, Tibet, Nigeria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Haiti, Venezuela, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. By trotting out these people, you are admitting that – see – if you work hard (do you have to work as hard in a tropical climate as you do in a cold climate like North-West Germany; does it require the same mindset, culture?), you too can be a member of a Western society and do well for yourself! There’s nothing wrong with this statement, but it does presuppose that Western society is for a kind of people who did/do work hard, were/are required to work hard, and developed (maintain) a culture and system predicated on the need for hard work and industriousness. Any people who immigrate into that culture, unless they seek to change it or parasitize off it, must adopt those standards, which imply they are not their native standards.
Really, what’s at the core of this problem, and I will write more about this in the future, is that people like James – these centrist Liberals – cannot acknowledge what they are, what they really want, and instead project all the things they want on the Left as pathologies of the Left because they can’t have them. You see, the centrist Liberals don’t care about power or control; they care about liberty, equality, truth, and the American way, but to what end? Ultimately, you can claim James is in a cult because the mode by which James operates is analogous in form – though clearly not in substance – to how the Left operates.
James, you’re not just in a cult, you are the cult.
