There is always a danger in taking politics far too seriously. OK of course politics is a serious business but taking politics too seriously, especially when you are not prepared to engage in the sort of give and take necessary to keep things civil, can lead a person to treat politics as a sort of quasi-religion. There’s plenty of examples of this and they can be from either the Right, such as those who believe to some extent in the ridiculous ‘Q’ narrative that claims that ex President Trump was sent by the Almighty to fight ‘satanic paedophiles’ or from the Left whose more deranged adherents consider themselves, without sufficient evidence I should add, as always being ‘on the right side of history’.
The ‘Q-tards’ as I call them can be quite rightly mocked for their ability to be hooked by what looks like some form of internet hoax and although I believe that President Trump was a good President, I’m certainly not deranged enough to believe that the Almighty sent Trump to fight ‘satanic paedophiles’, this is mostly because I don’t believe that the Almighty works like that and also because I don’t believe that a personified ‘Satan’ exists. The difference between the deluded Q-tards and the Left is that a) the Q tards have no real political power, unlike the Left and b) the Left is much more willing to engage in violence to push their views. Both the Q tards and the extreme Left as personified by Antifa are very similar in the way they have come to treat their politics as a form of religion. Neither of them will budge their positions when engaged by opponents and they are both equally unwilling to accept evidence that challenges their world view. For example if you approached someone from the Q adjacent Right and explained to them the theological and linguistic history of the idea that the Almighty has an ‘opponent’ and use evidence to back up your view, it’s unlikely that that person would listen to you. For them, the idea that the world is controlled by ‘satanic paedophiles’ along with the idea that there really is a ‘Satan’ is so deeply embedded.
A very good example of a leftist counterpart to the deranged Q types has been uncovered by the excellent conservative You Tuber Liberal Hivemind. In this video he shows a confrontation between a quite mild mannered conservative questioner and an Antifa type outside the Wi Spa women’s spa in California. This spa was where there was a recent furore when a man who claimed to be transgender undressed in front of a little girl in the spa and when the mother of the little girl complained she was told by the spa management that there was nothing they could do as local law prevented them from doing so for ‘transgender reasons’. Conservatives demonstrated in support of the mother and in support of single sex spaces and were counter demonstrated by Antifa.
What is interesting about the video put out by Liberal Hivemind is the attitude of the Antifa women who was engaged in conversation with the conservative. The Antifa woman refused to believe that there was anything good to be found on the other side of the argument, called conservatives ‘White supremacists’ (which must be news to the millions of Black conservatives in the USA and elsewhere), treated leftist views and only leftist views as being on the right side of history and approved of Leftist violence by saying ‘ I don’t have to be peaceful right now’.
This is not the language of someone who wants intelligent, responsible or respectable politics, this is the language of the violent mob. It’s no different from the world-view of those who ran around London in the 18th century rioting over increased rights for Roman Catholics or the Jihadists who believe the entire world should submit to Islam or those who believed that burning down synagogues would somehow set post World War One Germany free from its various political and economic ailments.
You can view Liberal Hivemind’s video via the link below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTrV7wS9OWg
The sort of leftism that this Antifa clown woman represents is not the sort of politics that should be seen as the ‘right side of history’. If it has anything to do with history at all then it represents the violent mobs that very much ended up on the wrong side of history. The interlocutor in the video was right to point out that the Antifa was speaking exactly as a religious fundamentalist would, by demanding that others think and speak exactly as she did.
When politics becomes a quasi religion we get not only the Q phenomenon but also its opposite counterpart which are the violent thugs of Antifa, who believe erroneously that history will absolve them for their violence. Both of these phenomena show us why although politics is important it needs to be kept in perspective.
My suspicion is that the decline of religious belief is largely responsible for this phenomena, most people have a strong need for something to believe in and give them a sense of purpose. This also explains the environmental movement, and to a lesser extent obsessive fandoms.
There’s a strong chance that you might be correct. The desire to believe in something is very strong in humans. The rise of political cults like environmentalism and obsessive fandoms does seem to have risen at the same time as organised religion has declined. I’ve always had an interest in politics since I was about just about pre teenage and although there were individuals who were very committed to their trade union, their political party or their political current, the sort of quasi religious and extreme politics was rare. Yes there were people who thought that either the Communist Party or the National Front offered national salvation but these were a tiny minority of the people I encountered. Now screaming extremist positions seem to be the norm.