The Left's Endgame of Gnostic Activism

Jeffrey Folks

With the left's scorched-earth strategy in response to the Trump administration, we have entered a new stage of politics. Some, including the great German philosopher Eric Voegelin, would point to that strategy as proof that we have entered the end stage of progressive activism.

When progressives would rather see the country fail than admit defeat, we are in serious difficulty.

Voegelin, who fled Nazi Germany in 1938, devoted his life to understanding the rise of modern statist culture, a development he saw as part of a larger tendency toward Gnosticism in Western culture. Derived from the name of an early Christian sect who claimed secret knowledge of divine mysteries, Gnosticism is indeed a dangerously "knowing" attitude toward the world......their efforts involved grandiose schemes designed to remake society and even, as they believed, to "transform" human nature through re-education and indoctrination.  Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, Kim Il-sung, and Pol Pot come to mind, among many others.  A common thread is an arrogant abuse of power and a disdain for the well-being of ordinary people, who were willingly sacrificed on the altar of social engineering......More