🧵 Reactionaries evaluate moral choices through identities rather than principles.
What others may see as hypocrisy is actually consistent commitment to the power dynamic they obsessively follow.
The rightfulness of an act is not determined by moral principles but by identity of the person or group committing it. #philosophy
Reactionary morality flows downward in a hierarchy. The higher one is, the more rightful their actions are.
With some variations it is as follows:
1) The maximum leader (Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, etc)
2) Political party
3) Wealth
4) Religion
5) Race
6) Sex
7) Locality
In this framework, it is not wrong for Donald Trump to engage in actions that violate Christian teachings. Nor is it wrong for wealthy people to do so.
Being in a less favored identity group means your actions are more likely to be immoral. But you can accrue greater regard by belonging to other identities.
Normally, a Black woman of low income would be viewed as inherently immoral, but if she identifies as a Republican Trump supporter, her actions automatically are imbued with rightfulness.
So long as she refrains from criticizing Republican elites, she will have greater moral authority than a White Democratic man.
Reactionaries are inherently anti-intellectual so they never will explicitly state or even implicitly acknowledge their moral frameworks, but it's observable in all of the decisions they make.
Example: Most reactionaries call themselves "pro-life," but they also uniformly oppose social welfare spending or regulations to protect parents and children...
This seems like hypocrisy to a non-reactionary, but it isn't. Social welfare policies for families are wrong because they will benefit poor people or people from racial minority groups. These people are inherently immoral in reactionary thinking, so they must not receive any benefits.
The only thing poor people should receive is religious instruction to make them virtuous.
Donald Trump was shocked when he first encountered reactionary morality. It was almost unbelievable to him, and he expressed that publicly in his infamous remark that "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters."
He was 100% correct in this. Shooting someone would be immoral based on Christian teaching, but because he is the tribal leader, this action would either be of no moral consequence or actually be a positive action.
This moral viewpoint should not be called "fascist" since fascism is actually a manifestation of it. What I'm describing goes back much further in history to two primary concepts that have been believed across many cultures and times:
1) Divine command theory
2) The great chain of being
The second idea flows from the first.
Divine command theory is the idea that all morality is determined by God alone. Anything God says is moral. Anything opposed to it is immoral.
This moral concept is repeatedly taught in the Hebrew and Christian sacred texts, most prominently in the story of Abraham being willing to kill his son Isaac in obedience to God as related in Genesis 22.
At the very end, God intervenes and stops Abraham from murdering his child, but this is pure happenstance. If Abraham had killed Isaac, it would have been the righteous action.
We see this taught in the later story of Jephthah told in Judges 11.
The tale of Jephthah is much less famous, but it involves an Israelite warrior chief who covenants with God that if he is given victory in an upcoming battle, he will kill the first being he sees upon his return home.
God keeps his end of the bargain and upon his return, Jephthah's daughter rushes to greet him, thus becoming destined to be murdered.
God does not intervene, however, and after a brief time, Jephthah murders his daughter as he promised. And is righteous for doing so.
The idea of Divine Command Theory was explicitly articulated by Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism when he was trying to convince a teenage girl to become his "spiritual wife" against the wishes of her parents and herself.
“Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire,” he wrote to her in a private letter.
Of course, claiming that morality flows from God is a bit of a problem when it is blatantly obvious that there are no gods telling people what to do.
This is why the concept of the following the leader is so important. Since gods are not actually telling us what to do, we must follow the person/people who are God's chosen instruments.
The leader is God's direct, personal servant. His actions are always correct, because of who he is. To be moral, the only thing we can do is obey w/o question.
The identity of the leader is what makes his actions moral, not whether his actions correspond to prior religious teachings.
Unquestioning obedience is the first and only real commandment in this moral viewpoint. Everything else is secondary.
Giving your money to Trump or the scammy televangelist is not an act of stupidity, it is an act of submission to God. It is laudatory rather than foolish.
I prefer calling the moral system described here as "authoritarian thinking" rather than fascism or conservatism, but some people call it that.
Whatever you want to label it as though, it's critical to also understand that besides being a moral perspective, it is also a metaphysics as well.
This is what the "Great Chain of Being" refers to. God exists as the highest moral being, but also the highest physical being. All higher beings have the right to control lesser ones.
The Great Chain of Being was a concept developed as a merger of Aristotle's deistic naturalism with Christian Neoplatonism and used as the primary justification for both monarchy and the idea that the pope had the right to tell royalty what to do as well.
This moral and metaphysical framework is the "order" that authoritarian people are hearkening back to, even if they have never heard of the Great Chain of Being.
I could continue on with the philosophy and metaphysics but this thread is getting long enough. The reason I'm bringing these concepts up is to explain that this is why trying to use logical persuasion with your Trump-worshiping friend or relative is not likely to work.
It's unlikely to succeed because they have a completely different epistemology than you or almost anyone else.
Most humans transcended authoritarian thinking hundreds of years ago. But not some of us.
The best way to oppose authoritarian thinking is to understand that it cannot be compromised with.
Authoritarians are incapable of compromise with toleration because to do so is to invite spiritual and psychic death.
This is ultimately what attracted Trump, a completely unthinking person, to authoritarians. He does not care or understand their pseudo-intellectualism, but he understands their death drive.
I'm going to write this thread up into an essay at some point soon, but if you would like to see an earlier piece I published on the subject, here is a link: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/02/why-do-republican-elites-keep-talking-about-dying-jesus/
Thanks for letting me explore all this here. I literally cannot get away with this stuff anywhere but the fediverse w/o attracting a lot of irrelevant debate or trolling! /end
@cy I think there are other ways of countering authoritarian thinking, but they do not involve directly arguing against priority beliefs.
It's also important for anti-authoritarians to understand that authoritarianism itself cannot be compromised with. All one can really do is obviate lesser objectives or help people get out of the system as a whole.
I do want to explore what you're saying, but I have other things to do right now 😀
@rvr That's an interesting point. The epistemology of authoritarianism is pretty weak almost everywhere, I would say.
Most people think evolution is real. Most people don't look to political or religious leaders for information about the age of the earth or the whether the planet is flat.
On the other hand, the morality of authoritarianism is much stronger, and as you say, is powerful in the business world where many people seem to think that anything is moral if it makes money.
It misses the details and subtleties you include, but I call this "obedience/submission to hierarchy", and, as a little Jewish kid, it's what screamed out at me in the story of Abraham and Isaac, and made me a hard "no thank you" for the whole thing.
Ehn, the credit probably goes to my parents, who did almost no religious indoctrination, and only sent us kids to temple so we could throw a bar & bat mitzvah.
I'm honestly more impressed by those who were heavily indoctrinated, and yet managed to see clearly, and have to pay the price in family strife that has no prospect of end.
I believe that describes you, and it strikes me as incredibly difficult. I hear the stories, and realize I got "easy mode" in this area.
@mattsheffield That means G-d was already with him. There was no need for him to make the oath. Killing his daughter WENT AGAINST JEWISH LAW. His oath was void because of this.
https://jbq.jewishbible.org/assets/Uploads/371/371_jephthahs
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/638426/jewish/What-happened-to-Jephthahs-daughter.htm
@mattsheffield "Pure happenstance"? No. So very no.
Abraham came from Ur, in Mesopotamia. We know from archaeology that human, sometimes child, sacrifice was a thing they did sometimes. (Most cultures did.)
The Aqedah (Binding of Issac) says no, this is not what G-d wants. Do this instead.
A story vivid enough to remember when people are desperate to stop a calamity is good psychology. It's part of how the practice was ended.
It definitely wasn't happenstance.
For the overt forces pretty much spot on.
Only caveat is I put religion as the base of all of it, because it gives "justification without basis" reasoning a seat at the table. It seems like the base of all of it. "my religion says so, so I can".
Agreed. Just my opinion that religion is the societal gateway drug to allow any and all forms of it. It has conditioned many to be susceptible to the callings.
@preston_scheuneman You're welcome. Having formerly been a fundamentalist Mormon, I feel like I can explain how this type of thinking works to people who haven't ever encountered it in their personal experience.
Authoritarian thinking is a completely different moral and intellectual paradigm, and this strangeness can make it hard for outsiders to understand its immense scope. It's much more dangerous than many people imagine.
Long story short, this is why Fani Willis is being ratfucked: "How DARE she win"
@mattsheffield Here’s a philosophy conundrum for you: 100% of Michigan Palestinians live on land taken by genocide.
What principles should we follow? What is the morality? How can we take such people seriously?
Martin Vermeer FCD (inactive)
Matthew Sheffield
vox popsicle vox dei
GSV Megastructure Enthusiast
Cy
River Brandon
jz.tusk
Andrew
Lot⁴⁹
Elisheva Meira ✡︎ 🌈
Jessica 
🇺🇦 🇵🇸 ✡️
Tan_Hana_Dharma_Mangrwa
𝓡𝓮𝓲𝓷𝓮𝓽𝓽𝓮
Pusher Of Pixels (old account)
You S Blues
Peter Butler
anilmc
Preston Scheuneman
SatelliteOfLove
Rob