The Open Society

In his new book, Rusty Reno continues to take us on a tour of the intellectual landscape of the triumphant liberalism that emerged in wake of World War II and which set us on course to the present unfolding crisis of the West.

So far, he has brought up Karl Popper, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer and the effort to prevent another Auschwitz by redefining social norms and eliminating metaphysics in order to discourage The Authoritarian Personality. Guess what this trio has in common.

The following excerpts come from Rusty Reno’s new book Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism and the Future of the West.

“This trajectory is evident in The Open Society and Its Enemies, which is full of passion. Popper’s slashing and unmeasured criticisms of the metaphysical tradition of the West were a sign of what was to come. As the postwar consensus gained strength, it cultivated a purely critical faith, a negative piety. The “never-again” imperative imposes an overriding and neverending duty to bash the traditionalists, who are loyal to the strong gods that are thought to have caused so much suffering and death. As the students rioting in Paris in 1968 insisted, “It is forbidden to forbid.” Those who forbid must be censured and silenced – for the sake of an open society.

In retrospect, we see political correctness at work already in the 1950s. Postwar liberals understood, however tentatively, that an open society is not self-inaugurating. It requires driving the strong gods out of public life and remaining on watch against their return. …

The outlines of Popper’s anti-totalitarian analysis were found not only in mainstream liberalism; progressives and socialists took it up as well, not because they read him themselves but because of the larger shifts in sentiment caused by the catastrophic events between 1914 and 1945.. In 1943, two psychologists at the University of California launched a project to study the roots of anti-Semitism. They, too, wished to prevent the return of totalitarianism, racial animus, and nationalist aggressions. In short order, they enlisted two refugees from Nazi persecution, Else Frenkel-Brunswik and Theodor W. Adorno, the latter a leading figure in the Frankfurt School, a Marxist group of anti-fascists intellectuals who fled to the United States during the war. Max Horkheimer, another member of the Frankfurt School, joined as head of the growing research team. They did not use Popper’s closed-versus-open terminology, favoring instead the distinction between the “prejudiced” mentality, which makes on hostile to those of different races and religions, and the “unprejudiced,” liberal mentality, which fosters a more welcoming attitude. The resulting volume, published in 1950, proclaims in its title their diagnosis of the great evil that World War II was fought to overcome: The Authoritarian Personality. …

What is striking is how familiar the analysis sounds. When the authors synthesize their results, they hit the notes of the emerging postwar consensus. The potential fascist is an American who was raised in a hierarchical family with black-and-white rules. His outlook on life is characterized by “conventionality” and “rigidity.” He engages in right-versus-wrong thinking that supports “the dichotomous conception of sex roles and moral values.” The potential fascist has a “prejudiced outlook,” which conforms to the “ethnocentrist” mentality of the closed society. But the fascist mentality need not predominate. We have a different personality type in our midst, the authors observe. “There is a pattern characterized chiefly by affectionate, basically egalitarian, and permissive interpersonal relationships.” This personality type exhibits “greater flexibility” and adopts a more accepting disposition toward others. It embodies the virtues of an open society.” …

Like Popper, the researchers who contributed to The Authoritarian Personality seek to cultivate what can be called a negative piety, which gives priority to critique and self-questioning over conviction. The negative piety guards against resurgent authoritarianism by renouncing metaphysical claims. There can be no substantive end or purpose to life. After all, someone who defines an end or purpose for man becomes a black-and-white thinker, a potential fascist. …”

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
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15 Comments

  1. Totalitarianism and technology are the future.
    Peoples that refuse to be more totalitarian will only get weaker, at the expense of more highly organized, rigid societies.
    Then the machines… will lead to a new feudal order, with a handful (and their children) given access to enormous computing power, and virtual immortality.
    For the rest of us, it will be a new Dark Ages, with the few necessary to run the machines treated well, and the rest left to starve and/or freezing to death in the dark.
    Drastic depopulation of useless human eaters, but animals will be almost worshipped

  2. It appears the das juden fear the rise of another White authoritarian leader forming a counterweight to their Open Society doctrine, so they have been using legal, political, psychological, and economical roadblocks to prevent their well deserved and inevitable comeuppance.

    Like the childhood story of “The little Dutch boy and the dam,” there are too many holes for them to plug before this whole wretched monster that they’ve built blows up in their rodent faces.

  3. They are so blind. They never once see the fault in themselves, the faults in their striving, wants and desires. They never once look in the mirror see the truth within themselves and take responsibility for their conduct and change their ways, too stubborn and too too blind. Eternally damned to live in darkness?? I’d say so.

    • Jews are genetically incapable of even considering examining their own evil behavior, let alone examining the FACT that Humans invariably loathe them BECAUSE of what they DO. They blank out, literally blank out, if they are questioned about their behavior at all. Then they “restart” and go MENTAL.

      Stop being negative. We are not doomed unless you accept doom. Don’t accept doom. Be creative.

    • Adolf has been proven correct. Again and again and again. Sigh. I wish he had entered Russia as a liberator, not an invader, and I wish he had everything he’s been accused of.

  4. Yeah and postwar nationalists and the cuckservatives they have always cucked too helped create this because instead of fighting to preserve their culture against this, they were in this Gladio induced stupor of fighting Communism instead.

    They didn’t stand up to all the Jews and homos and pedos, they were busy trying to overthrow the White ethnostates of Eastern Europe and replace them with globohomo (((capitalism))).

    Boomer libs, boomer cons and boomer Nazis are all to blame here.

  5. You have all been conned… they are global despotic authoritarian-totalitarians … the Sodality of the Yahwist Jerusalem Temple and epicene “messianic man-god” Avatar is leveling usury communism for thee but not for the elite transvestite and apron wearing “priests/männerbund” of the Epicene “Messianic” man-god Avatar of Yahwism (it has four branches), “a would be ruling and despotic “breakaway civilzation” (see the movie “Elysium” as example), i.e. the globalist New World Order crowd of the West, the ones who want to abolish natural nations for propositional ideological “legal” “states” as frameworks for private (oligarchical) control of supra-national usury, and tax farming and rent seeking from the soon to be propertyless, who seek to rid the inalienable right to private property and inalienable right of association (i.e. kin ethno-nations?!), at least for us but not for themselves, and create a subservient ideological race-less, root-less, ethnos-less, homogenous humaton non-identity (i.e. borg’s of the “ “Godbody” of the Epicene Messianic Avatar https://nobeliefs.com/heaven.htm ) for the usury oligarchy’s exploitation, which will need thought police to enforce the “ ideological identity/religion”… the why of the coming high tech draconian surveillance “capitalism” police states within the coming three borg empires (unless the true nations of the earth in the traditional sense confederate against them! …

    Remember what the definiton of communism is, the “state” will own all property including you, and with a global messianic monarchy, the state is totally invested in the monarchy and he alone will own everything including you!!

    So are y’all for global messianic monarchy (which is ideological!!) and becoming borg slaves for that monarchical despotic globally unified authoritarian-totalitarianism or are you truly kinists and for racial kin-nation sovereignty?

  6. Are you a global messianic monarchists or are you kinist with kin sovereignty? One is communism the other is not!! Keep in mind what the definition of communism is, and when the global messianic monarchist is installed he becomes the global state invested in himself in totality therefor he alone owns all property globally with his oligarchical minion’s including you. The Sodality of the epicene “messianic man-god” of Yahwism (and it’s has four branches) is leveling usury communism for thee but not for the oligarchy/priests/mannerbund of the Epicene “messianic” Avatar who will retain right to property for themselves, “a would be ruling and despotic “breakaway civilzation”, i.e. the globalist New World Order crowd, the ones who want to abolish natural nations for propositional ideological “legal” “states” as frameworks for private (oligarchical) control of the supra- neo-ideological “nation-states’ usury-political economy, and for tax farming and rent seeking from the soon to be propertyless, who seek to rid the inalienable right to private property and inalienable right of kin association (i.e. racial kin ethno-nations!!), at least for us but not for themselves, and create a subservient ideological (religion) race-less, root-less, ethnos-less, homogenous humaton non-identity (i.e. borg’s of the “ “Godbody” of the Epicene Messianic Avatar … see https://nobeliefs.com/heaven.htm ) for the Jerusalem Temple of Usury Communism oligarchy’s exploitation, which will need thought police to enforce the “ ideological identity and religion”… the why of the coming high tech draconian surveillance “capitalism” (really international socialism which is communism (welfarism is not socialism, socialism is political economy: https://www.cobdencentre.org/2011/10/the-second-crisis-of-socialism/ ) police state within the coming three borg empires (unless the true, in the traditional sense, nations of the earth confederate against them! …

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