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Title : "Authoritarians found God. They used religious symbols as nationalist identity markers and rallying cries...."
link : "Authoritarians found God. They used religious symbols as nationalist identity markers and rallying cries...."
"Authoritarians found God. They used religious symbols as nationalist identity markers and rallying cries...."
"Xi Jinping is one of the architects of this spiritually coated authoritarianism. Mao Zedong regarded prerevolutionary China with contempt. But Xi’s regime has gone out of its way to embrace old customs and traditional values. China scholar Max Oidtmann says it is restricting independent religious entities while creating a 'Socialist core value view,' a creed that includes a mixture of Confucianism, Daoism, Marxism and Maoism.... The Chinese internet is apparently now rife with attacks on the decadent 'white left' — educated American and European progressives who champion feminism, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and such. Vladimir Putin... has long associated himself with religious philosophers like Ivan Ilyin and Nikolai Berdyaev. In an essay for the Berkley Center at Georgetown University, Dmitry Uzlaner reports that the regime is casting itself as 'the last bastion of Christian values' that keeps the world from descending into liberal moral chaos.... [M]any of the so-called Christian nationalists who populate far-right movements on both sides of the Atlantic are actually not that religious. They are motivated by nativist and anti-immigrant attitudes and then latch onto Christian symbols to separate 'them' from 'us.'... The pseudo-religious authoritarians... act as if individualism, human rights, diversity, gender equality, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and religious liberty are just the latest forms of Western moral imperialism and the harbingers of social and moral chaos. Those of us on the side of Western liberalism have no choice but to fight this on the spiritual and cultural plane as well, to show that pluralism is the opposite of decadence, but is a spiritual-rich, practically effective way to lift human dignity and run a coherent society."Writes David Brooks in "When Dictators Find God" (NYT).
He criticizes what he detects to be pseudo religion then urges us to use pseudo religion spirituality against that pseudo religion. Who can draw the line between real and fake religion? There are, I think, many religious people who question within their own mind whether their own religion is truly sincere. I tend to think these would be the most sincere ones.
One way to try to draw the line between real and fake is to look at whether religion is being used to manipulate and control people, whether it's a matter of worldly power. Then you can criticize everyone who uses religion in politics, but then what can you say about Brook's idea of fighting "their" religion with the "religion" of the West, full of individualism, diversity, gender equality, and L.G.B.T.Q. rights? You're making religion out of the things you like in this world, and that's exactly what makes you look insincere.
But Brooks isn't claiming his liberal wish list is religion. It's a religion substitute — something that gets into the place in the human mind where religion resides in people who are religious. It's what's "practically effective," tarted up as "spiritual-rich." (Yes, he wrote "spiritual rich," not "spiritually rich." I have no idea why. It sounds like a description of music! Take my hand, precious Brooks.)
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"Xi Jinping is one of the architects of this spiritually coated authoritarianism. Mao Zedong regarded prerevolutionary China with contempt. But Xi’s regime has gone out of its way to embrace old customs and traditional values. China scholar Max Oidtmann says it is restricting independent religious entities while creating a 'Socialist core value view,' a creed that includes a mixture of Confucianism, Daoism, Marxism and Maoism.... The Chinese internet is apparently now rife with attacks on the decadent 'white left' — educated American and European progressives who champion feminism, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and such. Vladimir Putin... has long associated himself with religious philosophers like Ivan Ilyin and Nikolai Berdyaev. In an essay for the Berkley Center at Georgetown University, Dmitry Uzlaner reports that the regime is casting itself as 'the last bastion of Christian values' that keeps the world from descending into liberal moral chaos.... [M]any of the so-called Christian nationalists who populate far-right movements on both sides of the Atlantic are actually not that religious. They are motivated by nativist and anti-immigrant attitudes and then latch onto Christian symbols to separate 'them' from 'us.'... The pseudo-religious authoritarians... act as if individualism, human rights, diversity, gender equality, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and religious liberty are just the latest forms of Western moral imperialism and the harbingers of social and moral chaos. Those of us on the side of Western liberalism have no choice but to fight this on the spiritual and cultural plane as well, to show that pluralism is the opposite of decadence, but is a spiritual-rich, practically effective way to lift human dignity and run a coherent society."
Writes David Brooks in "When Dictators Find God" (NYT).
He criticizes what he detects to be pseudo religion then urges us to use pseudo religion spirituality against that pseudo religion. Who can draw the line between real and fake religion? There are, I think, many religious people who question within their own mind whether their own religion is truly sincere. I tend to think these would be the most sincere ones.
One way to try to draw the line between real and fake is to look at whether religion is being used to manipulate and control people, whether it's a matter of worldly power. Then you can criticize everyone who uses religion in politics, but then what can you say about Brook's idea of fighting "their" religion with the "religion" of the West, full of individualism, diversity, gender equality, and L.G.B.T.Q. rights? You're making religion out of the things you like in this world, and that's exactly what makes you look insincere.
But Brooks isn't claiming his liberal wish list is religion. It's a religion substitute — something that gets into the place in the human mind where religion resides in people who are religious. It's what's "practically effective," tarted up as "spiritual-rich." (Yes, he wrote "spiritual rich," not "spiritually rich." I have no idea why. It sounds like a description of music! Take my hand, precious Brooks.)
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