Oswald Spengler’s “The Decline of the West,” Could have been Written Today By Chris Knight (Florida)
Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), published The Decline of the West in 1918, but the work seems especially relevant to the world of today. Spengler saw societies as organic wholes, which had a birth, life, and death, and he could see signs of he senility of the West back in 1918. What would he conclude from today’s perfect storm of destructive forces, celebrated by the Left as “progressive”? Professor Kevin MacDonald gives a brief list of some of these issues, impacting upon America, as a leading example of Western decline: “rampant inflation and a weak economy that may well slide into a deep recession; crime, especially by Blacks, in the big cities with radical, Soros-backed District Attorneys (conservative media was full of videos depicting horrible crimes, almost all by Black men, and they emphasized the weak or non-existent punishment); a completely open southern border (also prominently featured in conservative media, along with some discussion of the Great Replacement; resulting in ~5 million additional illegals since Mayorkas got in and untold numbers of fentanyl deaths), a war in far off Ukraine (intensively pursued by the administration and resulting in pressure on energy and food prices); gender indoctrination in the schools; repeated examples of anti-White hate and statements of overt anti-White discrimination by prominent leftist activists and in the liberal-left media (often highlighted on conservative media, so this was not a secret); and a doddering, senile president whose personal popularity is in the tank and would presumably be a drag on the rest of the Democrat candidates.”
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2022/11/12/a-depressing-election/
A parallel list of cultural and political decadence could be written for every Western country, with varying detail, such as the child rapes and grooming of the UK. At a minimum this shows the level of existential threat that is faced, but as MacDonald notes in his article, the US elections showed that whites, conservatives in particular, are not aware of the extreme danger that is faced, or simply do not care:
“But why should I be depressed given that the Republican Party is hopeless—at best a palliative that makes the patient more comfortable as he awaits certain death from an incurable disease? I think the reason I was depressed is because I was expecting some signs of a White awakening. If Whites ever needed cover for voting for a party that is repeatedly accused of being racist, misogynist, and generally evil, this would be a golden opportunity given all the negatives of the Biden administration. What White person in their right mind could possibly vote Democrat? Isn’t it obvious to even the most casual observer that we need a change of direction?
But it didn’t happen. The narrative held. The media in general is still all-in for the Democrats, so a great many people likely never heard about the southern border, or the many examples of anti-White discrimination and hate, or the huge spike in Black criminality, and they never heard about Biden’s senility. They heard a lot about abortion and the GOP’s “war on women,” and pro-abortion ballot measures won in several states and probably helped Democrats overall, as in Michigan where it probably helped … Gretchen Whitmer.
I should also mention that, even assuming there was no fraud, the Democrats obviously know how to game the current system, often with the help of laws they put in place making it super easy to vote. And they even engaged in dirty tricks like funding Republicans they thought, correctly as it turns out, who would be weak candidates.
And they heard a lot about endangered democracy, supposedly threatened if Republicans win elections (!). But this was likely an effective message because it’s a moral message (as are so many other messages during this cycle—Trumpian evil [fascist! insurrectionist!] being an obvious favorite). And if it’s one thing White people, especially White women, resonate to, it’s the feeling that they are an upstanding part of a moral community (I try to explain it here, Ch. 8). It’s so comforting to know you are on-page with the NYTimes, NPR, and the college professors the liberal media trots out to give their talking points. White people won’t act unless they think it’s the morally right thing to do, and as always in the media age, the people who control the media create the moral communities. … Another factor was that Trump endorsed some marginal candidates as long as they went along with the 2020 election fraud narrative—as emphasized by Ann Coulter. I agree the Democrats cheated (with a lot of help from the likes of Google biasing the news that people see). But let’s face it, it’s a losing issue now. Every news article in the liberal media and much of the conservative media that I have read for the last two years has claimed that election fraud is an outright lie, often repeated several times in the same article. I’m not talking about op-eds, but about “news” articles. It’s never phrased tentatively but as an absolute, undeniable fact.
So the general consensus seems to be that Trump-endorsed candidates went down in winnable seats, but this is likely because of the success of the media in promoting the idea that only crazy people think the election was stolen. And the liberal media continued to spew hatred toward Trump as evil incarnate, the president fomented an “insurrection” to avoid his much deserved electoral defeat.
I certainly supported Trump in 2016 and 2020 even though he was far from ideal, and I would vote for him again if he gets the nomination. But his massive ego is now completely out of control, as seen in his recent comments on Ron DeSantis.”
No consideration here of the Covid vax issue, and that the Trump Republican candidates were generally as gung ho on this as their Democrat friends. Still, back in my former home state of Victoria, there is still some hope of justice, for a hung parliament to at least diminish Dan Andrews’ power.
“Timelessness of thought and vision in world politics is a rare mark of grandeur. Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, written a century ago, deserves this distinction as it reads like it was done yesterday.
The German historian-philosopher wrote in 1922 that the centuries old West-European-American civilization was in permanent and irretrievable decline in all manifestations of life including religion, art, politics, social life, economy and science. For him, the political, social and ideological dimensions of this decline were evident in the failings of the Western political class in both sides of the Atlantic. He saw politicians, mostly based in large cities, consumed by ideology and contempt towards silent majorities and described them as “a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, and deeply contemptuous of the countryman.” Nowadays the Brussels-based European Union (EU) leadership, through their recurring disdain for nation sovereignty, fully befits this definition.
Spengler believed that decadence in politics means predominance of ideology over action. “Men of theory commit a huge mistake in believing that their place is at the head and not in the train of great events” he wrote, unaware about how true this is today as we just saw the fall of UK Prime Minister Truss who sacrificed economics in the altar of ideology. Dogma destroying social cohesion and prosperity is also present in the wrecking of Europe’s manufacturing competitiveness as their politicians forcibly deny cheap Russian energy or when Lilliputian Lithuania picks a fight with China in defence of Taiwan’s “sovereignty.” On the face of these events the German thinker would have repeated his assertion that “the political doctrinaire … always knows what should be done, and yet his activity, once it ceases to be limited to paper, is the least successful and therefore the least valuable in history.”
When we listen to the German Minister of Economic Affairs Harbeck or his Foreign Affairs counterpart Baerbock lecturing on the primacy of the green agenda or on how Ukraine military support needs to continue regardless of what voters think, we can’t help remembering the writer’s damning query: “[have they] any idea whatever of the actualities of world-politics, world-city problems, capitalism, the future of the state, the relation of technics to the course of civilization, Russia, Science?.”
The “rules-based international order,” that Western axiom born out of post-Cold War euphoria and used to justify US-led hegemonism, reminds us the writer’s aphorism that “nothing is simpler than to make good poverty of ideas by founding a system”. “Even a good idea has little value when enunciated by a solemn ass” comes to mind when we hear the European Commission President von der Leyen or the EU Foreign Affairs Head Borrell repeat the same mantra. “In politics, only its necessity to life decides the eminence of any doctrine,” something that has been forgotten as Europe blindly follows the US in an economic war that is ruining the continent.
On the East-West confrontation, concerning China, Spengler highlighted Western politicians’ traditional lack of understanding of the main drivers of Chinese thinking which have to do with a 4000-year view of history and of their place in the world, as compared to the Western narrow timeframe absorbed by events that took place since 1500. Western self-contained perception of history negates world’s history, he says, adding that world-history, in the Western eyes, is our world picture and not all mankind’s.
American exceptionalism, the dangerous notion that US values, political system and history destines it to play the world’s leading role, was questioned when he pointed out that there are as many morals as there are Cultures, no more and no fewer, and that each Culture possesses its own standard, the validity of which begins and ends with it, a statement that explains the need for a multipolar world. As much as has become politically correct to criticize Nietzsche’s ideas after his appropriation by Nazi ideology, Spengler affirmed that Nietzsche’s basic concept of will of power is essential to Western civilization, and this is consistent with the Western belief on the superiority of its values and the need to impose them on other cultures. “Western mankind is under the influence of an immense optical illusion. Everyone demands something of the rest. We say “thou shalt” in the conviction that so-and-so in fact will, can and must be changed or fashioned or arranged conformably to the order, and our belief both in the efficacy of, and in our title to give, such orders is unshakable.”
Money, politics and the press play an intimate role in Western civilization, declares Spengler. In politics, money “nurses” the democratic process particularly during elections, as is the recurring US case. The press serves him who owns it and it does not spread “free” opinion – it generates it. “What is truth? For the multitude, that which it continually reads and hears.” On freedom of the press, we are reminded that it is permitted to everyone to say what he or she pleases, but the Press is free to take notice of what he or she says or not. The Press can condemn any “truth” to death simply by not undertaking its communication to the world – “a terrible censorship of silence which is all the more potent in that the masses of newspaper readers are absolutely unaware that it exists.”
Striking parallels exist between today’s poverty in US cities and his observation of Rome at the time of Crassus, who as a real-estate speculator also recalls Donald Trump. Rome people is portrayed as living “in appalling misery in the many-storied lodging-houses of dark suburbs”, a misfortune directly linked to the consequences of Roman military expansionism and which suggests current conditions in Detroit, Cleveland or Newark.
The Decline of the West was first read as the epilogue of World War I, the war that ended all wars. Hopefully it will not be read in today’s world as the introduction of a new calamity.”
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