Pinchbeck responds passage by passage to a video by Nick Freitas, the former Green Beret and Virginia Republican congressional candidate turned right-wing media host, in which Freitas argues that coexistence with leftism is no longer possible following the murder of Charlie Kirk. Pinchbeck's objections are mainly to the framing: that "the left" is treated as a single entity, that no glorification of political violence is evident among the figures he takes as mainstream, and that the accused killer's ideology has not been established. He notes that Freitas casts domestic politics in counterinsurgency terms drawn from his military background. Pinchbeck states his own position as a leftism bound up with mysticism, esotericism, analytic idealism and an esoteric Christianity influenced by Rudolf Steiner.
In brief
- Pinchbeck argues that right-wing influencers have devoted serious attention to defining and countering what they take leftist ideology to be, while people on the left have largely ignored right-wing media.
- He rejects Freitas's use of "the left" as a monolith, pointing out that the figures he regards as mainstream, including Bernie Sanders and AOC, condemned Kirk's killing.
- Pinchbeck notes that the accused's ideology remains unestablished and that he was raised in a Trump-supporting Mormon family, which undercuts the claim that the murder expressed leftist politics.
- He objects that isolated ugly remarks on social media cannot be taken as characterizing an entire political tendency, any more than extremist statements characterize everyone on the right.
- Pinchbeck says he does not expect either the left or the right to be permanently defeated, since both are long-standing orientations that shift over time, and treats Freitas's question of how to defeat the left for good as aggressive on its face.
- He observes that Freitas frames the situation as a war between diametrically opposed worldviews, drawing explicitly on his Green Beret experience of destabilizing and stabilizing nations.
Full text
Hey folks. Uh, today I thought I would attempt to make a reaction video to uh a video from Nick Fredus from a few weeks ago. Uh, Nick Fredus or Fritus. Uh, he uh ran for Republican Congress as a Republican for Congress in Virginia. Uh, he lost. He's a major right-wing media influencer with millions of subscribers and um, he's very much a Trumper. he's uh was against the affordable care act and so on. He's very against uh you know trans rights in certain respects and um he recently he made this video which is called um why coexistence with leftism is no longer possible in the wake of Charlie Kirk's uh murder.
And yeah, I thought in a way I feel like the right-wingers, as we'll see in in this video, have put a lot more focus and attention on understanding or at least, you know, having their own ideas around what leftist ideology is, whereas leftists have often just ignored right-wing influencers and and you know, um, yeah, I mean, I I have a particular leftism perspective because it also involves, you know, kind of mysticism, esotericism, M uh what I often talk about as idealism, analytic idealism, organistic idealism and also through my interest in somebody like Rudolfph Steiner and Geraf and so on, I have a bit of a um esoteric Christian perspective. So I want to bring all those ideas into into play as we as we look at what Freighus has to say. Um and yeah, I found found how do we defeat the left for good? Is that even possible? on what do we mean when so just to begin with he says how do we defeat the left for good and um yeah that's already very you know aggressive I mean I don't expect as somebody more on the left that we'll ever be able to defeat you quote unquote defeat the right for good I mean these ideologies or perspectives you know are things that have been around for a long time and you know change over time and and people have different views on them and so on But anyway, so even there I could, you know, I understand he's trying to be, you know, a lot of a lot of right-wingers were using Charlie Kirk's death as an opportunity to be extremely aggressive about, you know, their their their hostility towards leftism, you know, and of course, I mean, we'll probably get into this a little bit more later, but we still don't even know the ideology of Charlie Kirk's killer if it is the person that they caught.
um because yeah, as far as we know, he grew up in a you know, right-wing Trumploving family and um Mormon and so on, but they, you know, the the right-wing influencers all globbombed onto this idea that this represented a a leftist killing. So, let's go on. We say the left. Last episode, we talked about why Charlie Kirk's death has in fact changed everything, but we were very specific. It wasn't just his murder. it was the left's response to his murder. We talked about the various criteria that that we see going on. Okay. So, here again, you know, as I'm sure some of you watching already understand this, there there was no I mean, I don't, you know, first of all, when he's talking about the left, it sounds like this very monolithic thing.
I mean, I guess into into it later what he thinks the left is, but what actually uh was the response? I mean, you know, mainstream Democrats, you know, Bernie Sanders, uh, you know, as far as I could see, almost everybody on the left said they were really, you know, they felt they felt terrible that this had happened. And obviously, we live in a universe where anybody has access to social media. So, of course, there were a bunch of, you know, people, you know, marginal people on the edge who might have said, "Haha, you know, Charlie Kirk deserved it or whatever." But you can't use that as something that characterizes quote unquote the left. You know, I mean, just as, you know, somebody on the far right says that, you know, so and so should be put in a gas chamber.
I you can't use that to characterize everybody on the right, you know. So, so already it's a very, you know, it's a very didactic uh argument and really opens up a lot of questions over over whether what he what he's saying within political discourse. We talked about things like the different sides of the political spectrum having diametrically opposed worldviews. We talked about the glorification of political violence. And we talked about what happens when a political movement has a critical mass which believes these things and is willing to openly celebrate it. And we came to the conclusion that's where the left is at in this country. I mean, I have to go back, I guess, and watch that last video.
I really don't know this guy very well, but I mean I haven't really seen glorification of political violence uh on anybody that I that I viewed across the left. I mean there definitely are, you know, marginal weird leftist people just as there are marginal weird rightist people and some of them might have little groups and they they share marginal weird ideas. But as as a whole, I mean, if I if I take somebody like, you know, Bernie Sanders or AOC as kind of like representing the mainstream left, I mean, there's there there's nothing about about violence and what they're what they're talking about. We also came to the conclusion that this is not something where the right woke up one day and declared the left our enemies. Rather, what we recognize is that for well over a decade now, perhaps even longer, the left has considered us their enemy.
And we just stopped disagreeing with that definition. So, what do we do about it? Well, that's what we're going to discuss on today's episode. And we're going to get specific. And this isn't going to be, well, just vote harder. No, we're going to talk about what we do as individuals, what we do as part of a movement, and what we should expect out of the Trump administration over the next four years, out of Congress in order to actually achieve our objectives. And I'm going to talk about this a little bit from military terms because when I went on the Shawn Ryan show, he asked me a question.
He goes, "Nick, you were a Green Beret." And the Green Berets were the guys that we kind of send in to either con conduct unconventional warfare or conduct counterinsurgency. In short, we're the guys that are either destabilizing a nation or trying to bring stability to it. And he said, "How do you do that?" And I gave him an explanation. And if you want to see that, go check out that episode on Shan Ryan. But today, I'm going to go a little bit more into what has happened in our own country and how we reverse the various trends that have taken place and get to a place where we can have civil disagreements with one another.
But that sort of society requires some sort of shared commitment to fundamental principles which doesn't currently exist. All of that coming up on this episode of Making the Argument. I am your host Nick Freighus with me in the studio. My beautiful bride, Tina, Queen of the Bees. Hello everyone, sporting her cowgirl boots. Right. And then of course we have our resident historian, our political prognosticator, the oracle of Virginia, Christian Hines. How are you doing, Christian? Sporting my plan. He's always freezing. We're going to make we're going to make everyone get cowboy boots at some point. We're going to uh we're moving past the idea of you can just choose what footwear you want and we're going to mandate it through central planning.
No, we we So, so we're going that type of rightwing. No more no more, hey dudes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, first things first, um let's frame this up. So, when we say the left, we do not mean we do not mean like your neighbor who tends to vote Democrat who wants a slightly higher marginal tax rate, right? That person may be on on the left when it comes to their political philosophy, but they're not a leftist, right? to to give you a more kind of maybe a more open definition of this. Bill Maher is definitely on the left, but I wouldn't consider him a leftist in the sense of what we're talking about here.
Um, when we talk about the left, we mean something or or leftist, we mean something pretty specific. And when I talk about this from a military perspective of what is our mission, my mission is to destroy leftist ideology. that I consider that my mission. I want to destroy leftist ideology. And what I mean by that is I mean I don't I want it to be thought of like Nazism is thought of. I want it to be thought of as so morally and socially unacceptable that to call oneself a leftist is to voluntarily accept being ostracized by the rest of the country. because I believe it is a very very corrosive, degrading and at its heart evil ideology.
But what do we mean by that? So Christian, let's talk a little bit about this because again it's not just free healthcare, right? That's not that's not what we mean when we talk about leftism. Um although he is against apparently the Affordable Care Act. I don't know what his what his health care plan would be. Um, but I mean there is a sense like listening to him, you know, I I don't I don't sense, you know, kind of that he's disingenuous. I think that he and his wife um, you know, essentially have a set of core beliefs, you know, that are very that that that are meaningful to them.
And um yeah, I mean like uh you know, in theory, you know, I feel like he's somebody I I I could talk to if we if we met, you know, although as we'll get into it, there's a very big problem where you know, kind of like belief leads to fanaticism. I mean, he he completely believes that, you know, Christianity is an objective truth. Um, and the left's kind of what what he calls the left. I mean, oh, okay, that guess that's another problem I wanted to bring up like you know um from my perspective like um you know my mother was a book editor in the 60s. She actually edited like Abby Hoffman's first book Revolution for the Hell of It and so on and uh books by different you know feminists and even like black you know power kind of figures and so on.
I mean yeah I mean you know a lot of societies in Europe have an organic left and organic right and um they have parliaments and they have to form kind of like you know you know kind of governments based on these kind of affiliations or make alliances and so on. I mean the US has always been sort of hampered by this two-party system and also as the empire that was sort of dominating and controlling a lot of the world you know particularly after the second world war um you know we um had a very kind of yeah there was a you know I mean he talks about destroying them but actually the left was kind of destroyed I would say in the 60s and 70s there was an organic left that wanted to emerge at that point but um you know they you know let's say people in the military industrial intelligence complex really were not going to not having it, you know. So, you had the the sort of, you know, murder, shooting down of unarmed protesters at Kent State. Uh, you had the assassination of, you know, figures like Freddy Hampton who was like a Black Panther leader in Chicago or, you know, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., JFK.
So yeah, it it sort of feels like um you know there has been a lot of you militarization on the part of the right and um you know whatever Charlie Kirk's killing actually you know means for the country um it certainly was very advantageous and opportunistic for those people who kind of you know are seeking to you know further advance their their right-wing ideology and agenda and their kind of Christian nationalist agenda right now. It's not really just a set of policies. James Lindseay, your your favorite person on the planet. You and James get along so well. Uh but James Lindseay has probably done some of the best work actually articulating that no, leftism, this kind of wokeism, this woke ideology or woke consciousness as he describes it is actually a secular religion.
It's not just a a moral phil. It's a secular religion. How would you would you agree with that statement? Yeah, he's he's not the only one that's come to that conclusion. I know you don't want to give James credit. Um, well, I'm not going to because he didn't he didn't come up with the term, but he he has articulated this. Yes, he is one of many people that has articulated this, but no, I mean, the the left, as we think about it, is a secular religion. It it has all the hallmarks of it. It's I would argue that it's it's what happens when you take Christianity and you actually strip Christ out of Christianity.
I don't think it's I want to give it that much credit, but I Okay. I mean, I don't know James Lindseay. I'm just looking at him on Wikipedia. I mean, obviously, you know, there's I mean, what we've seen over the last 15 years, and in retrospect, I'm very sorry that I wasn't like paying closer attention, is a sort of growth of the right-wing media ecosystem to the point where it's now larger than, you know, the sort of I would say neutral, but they would say left or say liberal progressive media ecosystem. And there are figures like this guy James Lindseay or known as conceptual James. Um, let's see.
He submitted hoax articles to academic journals um to test scholarship and quote unquote rigor and academic fields. Uh, he's written cynical theories and he promotes right-wing conspiracy theories such as cultural Marxism and LGBT grooming conspiracy theories. All right, I haven't really checked it out yet, but I'll add him to the list. Um, you know, I'm still trying to deal with this guy and then with Matt Welsh, also very problematic guy who openly describes himself as a theocratic fascist and like Fritus has millions of followers. Get what you're saying? Like the idea of of wokeism being I mean that there's there's subsegments of this theory. I mean there's one theory that wokeism is a form of secular Protestantism.
I've made that argument before. I know that some people would disagree. Um, but the the point is is that it does function like a religion. It has all the hallmarks of it. It has its own rituals. It has its own dogmas. It has it has its own priestly cast, right? Um we've had other people who argue with Lindsay. Um Yarvin came up with this concept of the cathedral. He used religious, you know, iconic um he used uh religious connotations when he was describing the institutions that they've colonized. So there's plenty of people that have kind of all come to this conclusion. And the reason for it is because of what you said earlier that it's it's not like you're dealing with, oh well, I want government run healthcare or I want free college.
You're dealing with a specific worldview that approaches history as it's it's moving towards an end goal, right? It's this view of, you know, they call themselves progressives, right? It's this idea that we're progressing towards something. And what's that that we're progressing towards? Endless liberation, right? Total liberation of the individual. And they don't mean it in just like the libertarian sense. What they mean it by is you should be free from all unchosen obligations. Now somebody this is the distinction that John RS has between political liberalism and comprehensive liberalism. A liberal or a libertarian or a classical liberal. I don't really understand what the hell he's talking about to be honest.
To be free of an all all unchosen obligations. I mean that seems to be much more in alignment with like you know Peter Teal and um the sort of techno libertarian oligarchs who don't want to pay taxes. I mean I my understanding of leftism maybe I'm crazy but I think the idea is that um you know everybody owes more of a debt to society as a whole and um yeah it also feels like uh yeah progressivism is is is different than you know Marxism. I mean you know Marxism came out of Hegelian philosophy ideology and there was an idea in Hegel that there was a dialectic leading to some kind of absolute consciousness uh in in a positive sense. Um, Hegel maybe saw himself as prefiguring that uh, absolute consciousness.
And Markx kind of took that and transposed it into the dialectic into the political realm, arguing that there were this dialectic between classes that ultimately there would be uh, liberation as the workers would take over control of the society from the uh, the aristocrats or nobility or oligarchs or bourgeoa and so on. uh which obviously hasn't really happened yet, but um yeah, I don't know. I question a lot of what he's how he's saying this here. Would look at this and say, well, I support eliminating some unchosen obligations. They would say the tyranny of the king, right? Or an oppressive tyrant um or a, you know, tyrannical authoritarian government.
But there's a lot of unchosen obligations that are out there that are actually essential to maintaining civilization, like the family. Yeah. like the nation like you are not when you were born it's not as if your consciousness was this free floating thing that chose a soul to inhabit. You are the product of generations of history that came before you. Even the very language that you're using to articulate your thoughts and your speech, you didn't come up with that. That came from thousands of years of the evolution of in our case the English language. And the same thing of your nation is the product of hundreds of years of history.
Your family, your lineage is the product of hundreds of years of history. So if you want to liberate the individual from all all unchosen obligations, what you end up inevitably what you're going to produce is a fully atomized individual that's divorced from any relations with anybody else. Yeah. Customs, religion, tradition, anything that could be said to be imposed on one just by the very nature of its existence. And I and I think you also see this in the way they the way they talk about rights. It's it's fas. But I mean, you know, hasn't the main force of atomizing and alienating individuals been capitalism, which inexerably takes things that people used to do for themselves and their communities and turns it into into commodities, you know.
So like, you know, people used to hang out around a fire and tell stories, you know. Now they sit at home and they watch Netflix, you know. Um, people used to go to the spring on like in New York City on Spring Street and pick up water and drink it. Now they if they want decent water, they have to bottle, you know, buy Evian or Pererry or something. Um, so yeah, I mean it feels like they're blaming the left for stuff, but you know, isn't it capitalism that really has um done this massive work of alienating everybody um in order to turn everything into into markets and commodities?
Because they will they will make these they will make these false equivalencies between like, you know, human beings are the only ones that have to work to survive. Like no, everything has to work to survive. or or they'll say they're the only ones that need money to survive. No, money is actually a money is a human invention which actually makes surviving and transactions significantly easier. You're right. the the okay so I mean once again there's a lot of preconceptions and ideologies kind of built in almost everything he's talking about but uh yeah I mean if you look at like Marshall Salins wrote a book called stone age economics and you know it has been noted by a number of archaeologists anthropologists that a lot of indigenous cultures in the past you know didn't really work in the same way you know that that people in the sort of modern Protestant you know societies that are invested in the Protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism are forced to work.
And in fact, I mean, Salins in that book writes about how, you know, when the colonialists came to the new world and they saw how happy the native people were and how much time they had for their families, their children, and just for being together, it actually kind of enraged them uh because it felt wrong to them from this, you know, ethos that they they they developed of like everybody has to work all the time to survive. So, um, yeah, I mean, it's it's it's not clear to me that, you know, working all the time to survive is something that humans do need to do. And I think it's, you know, worth thinking through that a bit more. I mean this is one of you know he cited Curtis Yarvin who's such a deeply problematic uh influence and thinker and Yarvin's whole idea is that you know the US should be run like a corporation with a CEO dictator and everybody has to like work you know with everything they've got for that CEO dictator and if they don't make it you know then maybe they get they're they turn into a you know just you know useless you know kind of despised underclass and you know Yarvin is even joked about converting the the underclass to biodeiesel, you know, in a very fascist manner. So, um, yeah, I don't know if this, you know, if I don't personally agree that work is this ultimate signifier of of human dignity or or or human potentiality.
The the cow doesn't need to use currency in order to get the grass. Would you like to go live off of eating grass? Like, would you would you like to join the cow in the state of nature? and the state of nature that Jacqu Rouso is so so you know enamored with but I think that yeah he's obviously just missing the point I mean you know there was a lot of good data you can read uh David Greyber's book the dawn of everything I mentioned Marshall Salin's book the gift by Marshall maus that our way of organizing you know work and money in in modern you know mercantile and industrial civilization yeah it's not necessarily optimal and um people actually um are forced to do a lot of you know degrading things and they you know there were indigenous cultures you know in the jungles in the forest and so on that um you know in some ways they might have had you know superior lifestyles than we do but of course from this perspective and this sort of you know imperial Christian ideology you can't even like think about that when you when you look at it so if you look at we'll say the structure of Christianity the structure of Christianity is this idea um I believe a true idea I'm a Christian that there is a God. Just want to say it's a very funny thing to say I believe a true idea.
I mean um that does really doesn't make any sense. I mean you know if something is true then it's true. If you believe it that doesn't make it more or less true. Um but anyway we'll get more to that later. God created the earth. He created morality. Like he's the source of truth um of love of justice. He Okay. I mean, what's the basis for this belief in this God that created truth and justice and morality? I mean, we're going to have to go into that, right? We create created human beings. Human beings were given the option to not follow God, we engaged in sin. There's consequences for those sins.
Um, in order for God to maintain love and justice, there has to be a way to um reconcile that while maintaining justice. So you can't just forgive everything that was done or else justice isn't satisfied. And if we just all die off as a result, well then the question is is is God allowing is God really loving us? So God maintains love and justice through this process of saying look I'm going to pay the penalty in the form of Jesus Christ in order to provide reconciliation. But you still have to choose that reconciliation. And so when you look at all of these things, there's this there's this Okay.
So I mean I guess that's his view of Christianity. I mean I'm I'm an esoteric Christian. Uh you know I think this whole idea I mean you know my views on it are complicated. I mean um and you know I think everybody needs to develop their own personal relationship with you know the absolute or you know divinity and so on. And there's a range of different options, you know, that we can consider. But um yeah, I mean I I I sort of see um kind of like, you know, it it wasn't like a way of avoiding divine retribution and that we are, you know, saved just by believing in this divinity of this figure.
It's more like Christ was showing us um a model or template of how to be in the world which you know kind of involved resistance to tyranny uh love uh generosity uh magic you know kind of a healing and so on anyway we'll probably get back more to that later whether you believe it or not there's a very coherent and logical thought process within this idea of Christianity and Christian faith and then God also commands us to do things like we are commanded to see other people as made in the image. Yeah. I mean there's a lot of coherent and logical philosophies out there. I mean Buddhism is quite coherent and logical. I would probably say a lot more coherent and logical but you know he as you know he's a believer that he has the truth which you know I guess in a way as we'll as we'll maybe talk more about later makes him a bit of a fanatic image of God.
And so there's this inherent dignity which um exists as a result of being created in the image of God. Um but not all actions are dignified. Not all actions are moral, right? There's sinful actions and then there's righteous actions. And so, isn't it interesting how how the left's approach to Christianity is always, you know, tolerance and forgive, but but at the same token, they they've also divorced the Christ figure from it. This is why I said that that there there is this argument that that leftism is a replacement of Christianity, stealing certain elements of Christian metaphysics while leaving out the most important component, which is obviously the Christ figure.
So there's no redemption. I I told you this like like a year ago or two years ago that like like leftism is is if you had Christianity, but no uh no redemption, no forgiveness of sins, right? you have to perpetually apologize for your whiteness or your toxic masculinity. There's no Christ figure. And we've taken all of this all all of these moral frameworks, the universal application of it, but we've divorced it from the morality through which you're supposed to be applying it. So what it creates is this like suicidally empathetic. Well, I I think there's Okay. I mean, so I mean, if you know my work, you know that I've written a lot about the mystical experience.
My first book, Breaking Open the Head, was around psychedelic shamanism and I had many kind of transcendent, transpersonal, visionary experiences, supernatural experiences. So, I ended up drifting away from, you know, far away from secular materialism. And uh I do kind of agree with him uh about a few things that he's saying. Like I I like I do believe that I mean I guess you could say leftism, secular religion. I mean the question is what do you do when you're trapped in this materialist belief system? You know, how do you create a a moral framework or kind of an ultimate system of values? And I really don't think I think that that you can't.
And that's one of the crises that's being uh kind of like revealed by our current situation. Um and why kind of this far-right Christian nationalism has risen up. Now, as an idealist, you know, I I my my belief is that the underlying baseline reality is consciousness, primordial awareness, and everything kind of arises out of this this foundation of of this substrate of uh pure consciousness, which is kind of like awareness without a subject or non-duality. And um yeah, I think that as you know, probably we'll get into a bit more as this goes on, that view also allows you to reconstruct a moral and ethical universe that has meaning and purpose, but it isn't stuck in these sort of obsolete ideologies uh that then lead to um yeah, all the stuff that that that that these guys believe around transgenderism being evil or abortion being an absolute wrong and so on, but we'll get into that later. I think there's an important distinction here that needs to be made.
If you if you look if you kind of look at what wokeism is is attempting to achieve or critical theories attempting to achieve, there's a couple of what we might call um doctrinal, you know, presuppositions. One is this idea of oppressor versus oppressed. Um, and it's this idea that to to completely be free from oppression is to be free from any of the limiting aspects that prevents you from being your authentic self. So, it's kind of this like Maslo's hierarchy of needs, right? We all need food. We all need shelter. And then we need, you know, some form of like satisfaction or recreation. But then at the top of Maslo's hierarchy of needs is this idea of self-actualization.
It's this idea of the most authentically version of you possible. Now, what's interesting is that what you really see from a lot of this is this idea of you getting to be your own god. Yes. Yes. Right. That that is that is whether whether it's explicit or not, it's in there. And what's interesting is you go all the way back. Yeah. I don't know. He he I sort of like agree with this guy to a certain point here and there and then I then he makes a leap and I'm like, what is he talking about? I mean, uh, once again, the people who are very fascinated with becoming their own gods are these sort of right-wing tech oligarchs like Peter Teal and Elon Musk who've made a temporary alliance with reactionary Christianity because it benefits their their interests.
I mean, as we know, Teal has been doing this whole series on the Antichrist, uh, where he basically argues that the Antichrist is any effort to limit or restrict the development of artificial intelligence, uh, or other forms of technologies that might allow them to ultimately become immortal by um, you know, being able to rewrite the genetic system or the, you know, you know, bio-engineer, you know, mortal life or merge with silicon ultimately. So those are the people who are really most interested in becoming gods as far as I can see. Uh I mean then he just seems like he's conflating. So there's like traditional leftism which was Marxism which yeah look towards a kind of revolution revolution that would lead to the liberation the emancipation of the working class. There's progressivism or liberalism which more is kind of like capitalism with with a with a with a happy face that wants you know capitalist progress and some level of technology but also some regulation and controls progressive taxation you know environmental regulations to avert climate catastrophe.
Um, and and actually, you know, that I just did an interview with Brett Scott, an economist, and we kind of he's he's been writing about the problems that have now been revealed around that ideology. And then there's, you know, wokeism, identity politics, which I also have a lot of problems with and feel like um, you know, that that, you know, was it created an easy target for this uh, right-wing movement. And, um, yeah, kind of um, and I think there you have a problem with the the scientific materialist, the secular materialist ethos or paradigm where there really isn't any ultimate value. So then they kind of looking for something to make kind of ultimate value. they settled on identity and oppression and victimization and I do think that was a mistake.
It was something that I never agreed with. Um and um yeah that that's you know you know but on the other hand if we look at things as a as a dialectical process you know to some extent maybe not as strictly as Hegel or Markx does then perhaps all of this has to follow in a sequence for us to reach like a different type of understanding. There's a reason why Solleinsky, who we're going to talk about later, is a is a very, you know, important figure on the left. There's a reason why he dedicated his his book, Rules for Radicals, to Lucifer. The first edition of he he he dedicated to Lucifer as the first rebel who won himself a kingdom because in Christian theology, um, Satan is cast down from heaven to earth.
But what's interesting is if you look at how sin entered humanity, it all started with a question that Satan asked to Eve. And the question that Satan asked Eve is, "Did God really say?" And then he questions God's truth. He he says, "Well, God gave you one truth claim." And then Satan gives you another truth claim in the garden. That truth claim is, "For on the day you will eat, you will become like God, knowing the difference between good and evil." And so what is Satan? Satan is giving a form of self-actualization. What Satan is doing is Satan is telling Eve, you will be able to be like God once you possess this classification of knowledge.
Which is interesting because if you look at it, there's a similar conversation that takes place between Lucifer and God when Luc when Satan says in scripture, I will become like the most high. And so when we say that this this version of leftism is its own theology, what we mean is it it seeks to replace God and essentially replace it with the idea that you can be your own god. And this idea of the what Markx called like the dictatorship of the proletariat is that we're now going to all get to be our little own gods, but then we work in concert with one another to create this utopia. Yes. Which I just don't still don't really understand where he's getting this idea that leftism has to do with people becoming their own gods.
I mean, I guess there's, you know, like somebody like Flobear, but he wasn't left. He was like a middle-class bourgeoisi who said you know live like a bajgeoisi think like a god. Nichi talked about becoming a Superman or an Uber mench. But in a way Nichi was even though this American translator Walter Calfman tried to kind of re rehabilitate Nichi for you know liberal humanism and the left to some extent you know ultimately his idea construct you know really does toggle more you know right-wing you know fascist even kind of extreme uh kind of ideas but yeah I mean he talked about the uber mench the superman and so on. Um, I I think that most people who are on the left that I know, you know, and I've known a lot in my life, you know, really just want a more equitable situation than, you know, I mean, it's like, you know, just because somebody gets lucky and inherits a trust fund or in business, does that really mean that they should have, you know, so many more, you know, opportunity, so much more pleasure than somebody else who maybe didn't get so lucky?
You know, I mean, um, I don't know. I don't really know what the hell he's talking about to be honest when he keeps talking about leftists want everyone to be a god. It feels like just sort of a mind trip he's on, which is heaven on earth, heaven on earth through the dictatorship of the proletariat. And the reason why it's important to understand it within this this framework is because whereas God is offering an objective truth and an objective morality for which he is the author and and it's not up to us to decide what that truth is. is it's not up for us to decide what the morality is.
We discover it. It is revealed and then God says operate within this framework and operate within this framework and and positive things will happen. Operate outside of this framework and negative things happen. Satan turns that on its head. It's like no no you get to decide the moral. Yeah. I don't know. It's like okay so he grew up in this Christian worldview and this ideology and therefore there's a strong assumption that it's has to be like the truth or something um and that God operates in this way and I mean isn't he being very presumptuous in that sense to think that he can understand you know how God would choose to operate or whatever based on what even what you know a priest has told him or the Bible says.
I mean, you know, yeah, it feels very flimsy to me. I for me, I really struggle to um understand this adherence to these ancient scriptures. I think it's becoming uh deeply problematic. I I guess I had hoped when I wrote my first book, Breaking Open the Head, that psychedelics would help people um break free of these old uh ideologies and belief systems. But in a way now we're seeing the psychedelic experience kind of reintegrated back into Christianity and libertarianism and stuff. Oral framework. Well, in the same token, the left does the same thing. They reject the framework and say no, the framework isn't neutral and the framework is not divinely ordained.
The framework is you have set this up as the oppressor in order to put yourself at the, you know, in order to construct a hierarchy and put yourself at the pinnacle of society. And so yeah, I mean that's you know I have to admit that that is how I see kind of Christianity in a way like I feel that I mean I really like uh John Lash's book not in his image and John Lash in that book argues that um the Gnostics were not a heretical sect of Christianity. Uh they were inheritors of the mystery school wisdom of the ancient world like the Lucidian mysteries that went on for like you know 2,000 years or something. And in the 4th century AD when Christianity started to become a mainstream force uh in you know Rome and and Constantinople and so they tried to raise the alarm that um you know was really problematic that it was actually from their perspective a archic deviation. Uh they talked about the archons as these sort of super sensible beings who are like invisible behind the scenes ruled by a being called the demiurge.
That's why you have all these gnostic gospels that were rediscovered in 1945 and some of them may actually predate the canatical gospels like the gospel of Thomas in which Christ says you know you should open the door for yourself to to see what is. So it was much more the Gnostic idea, the mystery school tradition, you know, maybe in a lucis they had a, you know, kaikon like a potion that might have been something like LSD or LSA or something, but the idea was to, you know, open the door for yourself to see what is, you know, initiate yourself directly in the visionary experience and transcendence. So yeah, you could be an equal with everybody else with your brothers and sisters, you So it wasn't about this hierarchical system of indoctrination and control, which yeah, I would say that that's what Christianity has been and and what it is again today. We are now awakened. This is where the term woke is coming from.
We're now awakened to the fact that that these are not neutral rules and they're not divinely ordained rules. They're rules that the oppressors have set up. They're norms that the oppressors have set up in order to set themselves at the top of the hierarchy. Yeah. Their their argument is you their argument is no, you use God as a moral excuse for doing things. You would if if you if you look um right now there there's I don't know if you guys saw previews for a cartoon coming out to basically say that God is the bad guy. Yeah. And poor Lucifer and kind of follows Lucifer and it's a cartoon for children.
Yeah. So, so if if you it definitely brings that oppressor oppressed thing. Yeah. That dynamic. So, if if you look if you look at all this and obviously this is manifested in different ways. Somebody in the chat asked is is this just like paganism. It actually isn't because even within a lot of your pagan traditions, whether you're talking about Odin or whether you're talking about Zoraster or whatnot, there was still I believe those are false religions, but they still pointed to something that was transcendent and outside themsel. Yeah. He believes those are false religions and yet he is very special because he has the the true religion which he believes to be true and therefore it is objective truth.
Oh, leftism is purely imminent. Yes, it's in the world. It's it it kind of rejects transcendence or it rejects transcendence that's beyond the the desire of the individual. The self-will is the only thing that So, if you look at their sacred dogmas, it's what are they constantly appealing to? Well, they're appealing to this notion of equality or equity. They're appealing to this notion of progress. They're appealing to this notion of, you know, liberation um from anything that is preventing you from being your authentic self, right? These are kind of like these these dogmas that they're they're pushing toward. Yeah. Once again, he always makes these little weird jumps like liberation from your authentic for your authentic.
I don't know. I mean um um I mean I really like Oscar Wild's essay the soul of man under socialism who and you know Wild actually looked forward to a future where we would develop more sophisticated machines and we could alleviate people of drudgery so everybody could cultivate yeah their their unique individuality their unique essence their unique personality which most people don't get the time to do because they have to work all the time in this capitalist you know industrial mega machine and um yeah I would I would love to see everybody given the time and the opportunity and the capital in a sense to uh cultivate themselves and develop their unique essence rather than working more or less as slaves all the time with a very few people at the top you know building you know hundred million dollar yachts and lording it over and giant you know underground complexes in Hawaii in case the world goes to hell and sort of lording it over everybody else. I don't I don't think that makes any sense. I don't think it is anything like the the ethos of Christ in the Bible. So, you know, we're we're just we just seem to be have a difference of opinion here.
And they have their their rituals, right? Your your DEI statements, your land acknowledgements, pride parades, like all of these things are things that you are expected to participate in to demonstrate. Yeah. Once again, it's like it's just so annoying. I mean, I I found DEI irritating. I can find land acknowledgements a little bit irritating but you know they I think they also were you know and as I said I don't feel that these guys are necessarily inauthentic I mean I don't get that sense but you know I think that a lot of that stuff was an authentic heartfelt effort to address you know discriminations destructive things in the past and um I mean we did take the land from indigenous people here we we we consciously committed you know genocide died in some cases, giving them blankets with smallpox, um, you know, chasing them out of their ancestral lands.
You know, we we believe that we had the right to do that for whatever reason because of our Christianity. And these guys are just continuing that that imperial Christianity with really no self-reflection about it and just wanting to project uh out against people who, you know, began to have a a more complex view of history. Strate your loyalty to those dogmas. They even have their own lurggical calendar. Yeah. Right. Pride month. What was it? A couple days ago was another LGBTQ holiday that they've created. Like they've they've constructed not not just rituals. They've also constructed festival days and feast days. And that's why I said it's it's almost like a lurgical calendar.
Well, and and that's because some people will say, "Well, Nick, this is ridiculous. I know people that are woke, but they go to church." Okay, but watch very carefully. Which churches do they go to? Yeah. If they go to, for instance, I I was watching one at a a so-called Episcopal church, and it's obviously not an Episcopalian church in the traditional sense, but they're getting up there and there's very very little mention of the gospel. In fact, you will see these so-called priests or clergy within these churches violate centuries of tradition of Christianity. They will they will violate all of the core doctrines of Christianity. So what they're doing is they're putting on Christianity as a kind of a robe, but Christianity is made subservient to their dogmas and their doctrines.
They're they're they're using it as a means to push their ideology, right? And and well, the the LGBTQ uh groups aren't the first to do that either. There are a lot of other groups in the Yeah, but I mean you guys are also pushing an ideology, correct? You have a idea of what's right and wrong and you're pushing that and you believe it's true. So why wouldn't other people get to have their ideas of what's right and wrong and their festivals for for people that you know they think deserve uh you know compassion or celebration. I don't get it. I don't get it. in the past who basically their main issue is whatever social doctrine they they care about and then they tried to bring in Christian elements to undergard it.
Yes. It's well and this goes back to Grahamshy. We've talked a lot about Antonio Grahamshy and the march to the institutions, but it's this idea that what what Grampsy was talking about was you use the existing structures, you infiltrate the existing culturally shaping structures, whether it be religious, social, political, economic, arts and entertainment, and you you use those to undermine the existing structure and then supplant it with your own. So, yeah. I mean, I don't know. I haven't read enough Gramsi I guess I mean he was an Italian uh I guess communist who died in prison I think and wrote these prison diaries and wrote a lot about hedgeimonyy how um you know kind of economics economic relationships and uh you know political power also have a cultural dimension ideology and a rhetoric surrounding them.
Um and uh sure I mean you know the world I mean these guys are saying that they have this this true whatever they they're slightly fanatic about they're they're having this truth and other people feel that um you know this uh imperial Christianity was was really part of the problem and you know we've seen things like liber liiber liberation theology in South America where um you know and and really when you go back to the the you know the words of Jesus in the Bible, you know, they actually support more this idea of um you know, equity and sharing and and love for the stranger, compassion for the other. Um they don't really support uh whatever these guys are talking about. So those which you can subvert and control, you do that. Those which you can't subvert and control, you destroy or you compete with. So and again to your say they have their own priest class.
Yeah. Once again, this feels like, you know, projection, which is something that right-wingers do all the time, you know, I mean, control of consciousness through the media and now through, you know, Christianity and and these churches and turning point and so on, that's all something that really these guys seem to be like uh obsessed with doing. Um, I think the mistake of of, you know, sometimes the mistake of my own mistake in a way was feeling that that reason was a more powerful instrument than it actually is. And recently I've been reading George Leoff's work don't think of an elephant he he wrote and he really talks about how it's you know control of framing control of rhetoric control of language is something that the right really mastered and the left uh really neglected in a way. That's right.
This is the academics this is your HR. This is your political officers. Right. It it's the u these are the guys that are are instructing you on the proper way to think about these things lest you fall into the heresies which are the heretics are the oppressors right or you know the conservatives the traditionalists the Christians right these guys um these guys are necessarily their enemies um this is why I said before it's this idea that it's it's not as if we woke up one day and said hey you guys are all our enemies we got treated like enemies for so along and we've just kind of stopped pretending that we're not anymore. Yeah.
I really don't know how this guy can can be saying this. I mean, um um it seems like the right-wing has much more done this work. I mean, I guess there's different lefts. I mean, there's some like marginal radical left, and I'm sure there are people there who have done the things that he's talking about. It's a big country and a big world. But I mean, yeah, look what happened when that poor, you know, Minneapolis um politician, Democratic politician, uh was was killed with her husband and the way that even mainstream right-wing figures responded to that. Uh you know, there was no very little condolence. There was like mocking, you know, and that really was an act of right-wing terrorism.
And we know that the majority of, you know, terrorist acts are coming from the right, like the vast majority. In fact, the Trump administration uh removed a report from the Department of Justice 2024 which said that it was something like 75% of acts of stoic terrorism stoastic terrorism were right-wing. So um and that's and the reason that's happening is because of a vast ideological effort through uh you know Reddit forums and 4chan and all this stuff which is radicalizing all these young people who are then joining the Proud Boys you know or becoming incels or whatever. So yeah, I think he's uh being very disingenuous with with his with his rhetoric here. And why is that important?
Because if you recognize this ideology for what it is, that's where you recognize what I was trying to illustrate in that tweet that I did the day Charlie was murdered where I said this is no longer a discussion between this is no longer a civil discussion between fellow countrymen on on trivial matters, right? Or even important matters. This is a war and I was very specific in how I said this. This is a war between diametrically opposed world views. And that's what like Speaker Don Scott, oh, I can't believe this can't be true. Yes, it can. It absolutely can. Why? Because I can point to everything you want within society.
I can point to the roles that you believe that government should play. I can point to the things that you want taught in our schools. I can point to the I can point to all the things that you want in the public space, subsidized by taxes, codified by law, and enforced by the government. And I can say I can't accept that. Okay. I mean, I'm going to probably stop here for now. Uh, pause because I'm about to run out of battery. Uh, but maybe we'll come back uh and and do more on this in a little bit. Um, yeah, man. I mean, um, it's a tough situation, you know.
I mean, from my perspective, um, it is these guys who have gone um, you know, a little bit nuts and very extreme. they seem to think the same of, you know, what they call the left, whatever that means for them, which, as we see, there's like different facets to it. It's not always the same thing that they're that they're they're going after. Um, uh, I mean, I do appreciate when he said that he doesn't believe that, you know, people should be, you know, necessarily killed because they support universal healthcare or whatever. Um, they should just be ideologically beaten down, I guess. Uh, but, um, yeah, I want to come back to this, uh, and keep going.
Uh, hope you enjoyed this. Hope it was helpful and more to come.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.