Eastern sighs at the woke West

by Niall McCrae

There are still parts of the world where it is okay to be conservative, Christian or ethnically homogenous. Citizens of countries of the former Soviet bloc, having experienced decades of stifling communist rule, have unashamedly revived the traditions of faith, flag and family. This contrasts starkly with how these bulwarks of social stability are systematically undermined in western Europe and North America, where multiculturalism and identity politics prevail. 

Hungary is such a place. Its leader, Viktor Orban, is persistently targeted by progressive politicians, institutions and media as an ethnonationalist ideologue. His policies are portrayed by critics as ‘far right’, but that is not because Hungarian culture has changed. Instead, it is because the West has abandoned social conservatism and Judaeo-Christian heritage to the extent that a common-sense opinion of two decades ago would now be regarded as extreme or hateful. Controlling borders, for example, is an affront to ‘one world’ idealism. 

A new scholarly journal, Hungarian Conservative, presents illuminating analyses of the ideological afflictions and cultural demise of the West.  In the second edition, Rod Dreher, senior editor of American Conservative, observed that his many eastern European contacts are a good reference point. In his article ‘Mickey Mouse: social justice warrior’, lamenting on how an icon of the free world is now a propagandist for critical race theory, Dreher remarked: – 

‘Strange as it may seem, it is possible that people who grew up under communism can better understand what is happening in America today than many Americans can.’

Dreher realises that the decadent West is succumbing to an authoritarian wolf in liberal sheep’s clothing, but the people don’t see stormtroopers in the streets or dissidents carted off to the gulag. This is partly because society has learned to associate totalitarianism with Nazi Germany or with the brutal regimes of Stalin and Mao.  Paradoxically, while Hitler and the Third Reich are cast as uniquely evil, progressive commentators often warn of a regression to 1930s fascism, which they perceived in Brexit and Trump. 

Yet self-declared liberals are revealing their underbelly as the real authoritarians. These enforcers of ‘cancel culture’ incite online lynch mobs and shrill denunciations to destroy the careers of authors, scholars and politicians who step out of line from politically-correct group-think. The covid-19 pandemic has exposed progressives as collectivist zealots who exploit a crisis to build a rigidly controlled society: it is largely the ‘liberal-left’ that has supported draconian lockdowns, vaccine coercion and pseudo-medical apartheid. 

The covid-19 regime has flourished partly because for the woke younger generations, truth is superseded by narrative. ‘Doing the right thing’ is more important than evidence-based practice: masks, for example, are worn more for virtue-signalling than virus control. In the same edition of Hungarian Conservative is a photograph depicts a young white woman at a Black Lives Matter demonstration, bearing a placard ‘Freedom is essential’. She wears a cloth guard over mouth but not nostrils. The new puritans want to be seen with their raised fist and shrill slogans, while muzzling themselves. 

Indeed, face covering has become a visible division in society between the good (compliant) and bad (critical thinkers, otherwise known as ‘conspiracy theorists’ who spread ‘dangerous disinformation’).  Robert Oulds and I described this phenomenon in Moralitis: a Cultural Virus, and the response to the covid-19 outbreak confirms our argument that morality is everything. Younger cohorts have been indoctrinated into railing against traditional rearguards, whether conservative politicians or priests, or statues commemorating national heroes. It seems that the weaker the reaction, the greater the outrage. This is similar to the witch hunts of the past, with the intense fervour and irrational blaming for present ills and future threats. 

Such morality is twisted by the ideology of cultural subversion, a movement that began with the Frankfurt School, evolved through Parisian post-modernism, and became a strange bedfellow of the global capitalists of the World Economic Forum. The wont of the ordinary people is ignored by the political establishment. As Dreher stated, ‘all the cultural and institutional high ground in America is held by the social and cultural left – as is state power’. Brexit and Trump happened against the odds, but the powers-that-be will not make the same mistakes again. The 2020 US presidential election was (according to Time magazine) ‘fortified’, which cynics believe was a manipulated result through postal vote harvesting and corrupted counting machines.     

An important difference between the current West and the eastern European states before the Berlin Wall fell is that a high proportion of western citizens are openly opposed to the woke coup d’etat. Their institutions have been marched through, but they continue to eschew divisive identity politics and race-baiting ideology. Potentially their ranks will swell as others wake up to the perils of progressivism, which is not really for equality and liberty but actually the means to create an elite-run technocracy. As freedom and fairness are denied, will the masses revolt? 

Civil war, at this stage, appears unlikely. History has taught us that most people are inclined to follow the powerful, instead of standing out for punishment. The majority, sadly, will ignore or support discrimination against the minority. The unvaccinated, many of them Christian and conservatively-minded, will be scapegoated as germ-spreaders and interned in camps until they relent.   

Yet a line must be drawn somewhere. Zero-carbon and zero-covid are absurdly unrealistic and destructive strategies that cannot lead to a harmonious and comfortable society. Eventually people will lose faith in the promised land, as did the Hungarians, Poles and East Germans under communism. As in countries behind the Iron Curtain there will be a time lag between such realisation and the regaining of liberty, because the authorities will clamp down, desperately holding on to their power and privilege. 

Westerners today should give George Orwell a fresh reading. Because Animal Farm and 1984 were not written about the Soviet Union; they were warnings of what supposedly liberal societies, run by a self-serving intelligentsia, would become.