CHRISTIANITY AND TOTALITARIANISM
‘Forty Acres Mistery’ (C) Geoff Hall, 2021.
"A mass movement readily exploits the discontent and frustration of large segments of the population which for some reason or other cannot face the responsibility of being persons and standing on their own feet. But give these persons a movement to join, a cause to defend, and they will go to any extreme, stop at no crime, intoxicated as they are by the slogans that give them a pseudo-religious sense of transcending their own limitations.
The member of a mass movement, afraid of [their] own isolation, and [their] own weakness as an individual, cannot face the task of discovering within [themselves] the spiritual power and integrity which can be called forth only by love. Instead of this, [they] seek a movement that will protect [their] weakness with a wall of anonymity and justify [their] acts by the sanction of collective glory and power. All the better if this is done out of hatred, for hatred is always easier and less subtle than love. It does not have to respect reality as love does.
It does not have to take account of individual cases. Its solutions are simple and easy. It makes its decisions by a simple glance at a face, a coloured skin, a uniform. It identifies an enemy by an accent, an unfamiliar turn of speech, an appeal to concepts that are difficult to understand. [They are] something unfamiliar. This is not "ours." This must be brought into line - or destroyed."*
“Here is the great temptation of the modern age, this universal infection of fanaticism, this plague of intolerance, prejudice and hate which flows from the crippled nature of [humanity] that is afraid of love and does not dare to be a 'person'.“ Source - Thomas Merton, “Christianity and Totalitarianism”, 1960.
Thomas Merton was a Contemplative, a monk, mystic and activist, who is said to have been killed (electrocuted) by the CIA in Thailand on 10th December 1968, because of his stand against the Vietnam War.
Mysticism is not an escape from the world, but a deeper way of embracing and interacting with it. Call it a more profound commitment to it; of showing compassion and mercy, but also of working to resist totalitarianism in both its religious and political ideological forms. (Nor am I suggesting that it’s only Christianity that has shown its Imperialist credentials). Merton wasn’t happy staying in his hermitage and certainly had more than just a ‘religious attitude’ to life. His authorship of more than 70 books on a vast range of topics, reveals that.
Even the things we hold dear, such as Republican nations, can disappoint. Republics begin by destroying what they are against, or what is in their way. Just look at the First Nation, indigenous peoples of America, or the victims of the French revolution and you begin to see a pattern. Nation-States are incredibly destructive to both the planet and the tellurian inhabitants; whatever the political ideology, it is just another form of Statism and all the talk of personal freedom is just candy; the means of our seduction.
Geoff Hall
* the quote has been updated be more inclusive in its language.
