The recent flurry of celebrity recriminations is a growth
industry that began in earnest after the death of Jimmy Savile. Along with institutionalised child abuse, it
forms a small part of a wider movement antagonistic to moral standards attached
to the West. In its broadest form this
includes accusations of colonialism, imperialism and slavery, the fashion for
colonial iconoclasm, conspiracy theories, and political correctness. The movement employs liberal use of anachronistic
moralising in its calls for apologies and restitution, and encourages
expressions of guilt.
Summing up the cause of these reduces them to ‘Westernism’,
the creation of an imperialist, authoritarian,
oppressive, conservative, capitalist, white male-dominated, sexually-harassing,
nationalist, racist, gender-stereotyping and consequentialist entity. This is now “the secular liberal baby boomer
worldview, for historical reasons to do with empire and post-imperial guilt,
unusually ingrained in the British cultural and political elite— the default
position in much of higher education and significant parts of the media” to
quote David Goodhart in The Road to
Somewhere.
In an era that could be called ‘Die Weltanschauung ohne
Schatten’, the West lost its opportunity to project evil onto the forces of
communism, and has instead turned in on itself in a crisis of legitimacy. In contrast to the political Right, the
extreme Left likes to find fault within its own environment, and finding victims
of Westernism’s failings has turned out to be easy. Concern for ‘the victim’ is the straw man for
neo-Marxism, which, having lost the support of the working class for its
revolutionary zeal, had to create another.
By creating a self-inflating victim class out of the Westernism entity,
neo-Marxism has its new constituency.
Building on the decline of Western nations, its loss of a
meta-narrative, three generations indulging in peace and prosperity, and to
quote Ibn Khaldun “the vigour of group feeling is broken… But many of the old
virtues remain”, neo-Marxism has taken control of public discourse and in doing
so has created its own moral high-ground based on victimhood grievances, in
return for their support. “Liberals are
very sensitive to issues of harm and suffering (appealing to our capacities for
sympathy and nurturing) and also fairness and injustice (related to our innate
instinct for reciprocity)”, again quoting Goodhart. Blame for Westernism is placed on the system,
not on fallen and depraved human nature.
Its redemption comes through societal revolution.
So far, no need for Original Sin.
Earlier applications of Judeo-Christian justice could apply
to rights to the commons, repudiation of slavery, egalitarianism, and
counter-racism. These actions weren’t
retrospective in the way that anti-Westernism sums up the current spiritus
mundi, indicating to me that Original Sin carries little moral weight now or in
the past. Its main emphasis seems to lie
in redemption through Christ’s forgiveness and salvation. Westernism is a recent phenomenon and while
there may be a resonance with Original Sin, I would describe its relationship
as nothing more than coincidental, and not in the least dependent on it. The absence of anti-Westernism elsewhere in the
world is due, I would suggest, to the absence of Westernism. Oriental religions may not encourage
retrospective retribution, but for their own reasons, rather than a want of
Christianity. Other cultures don’t have
this problem because they don’t have a revolutionary neo-Marxist base seeking
political and mass support in an alien environment through an academic will to
power.
Victimhood is the focus of today’s incriminations, and Original
Sin never applied to victims. It applied
to actions which of their time were known to be sinful, with God’s punishment
meted out over generations. With
anachronistic moralising, sins are defined long after the event. Since even pinning down a definition of
Original Sin is fraught with philosophical division, its application today is
irrelevant.
