The Left Are Not Hypocrites

'I understand, officer. I'll take the knife back to my car."

Author’s note: This essay, originally titled ‘The Faithful are not hypocritical',’ was written in early May of 2022 as part of a book I’m writing about proper dissident philosophy and strategy under our current 21st century Regime. I had not planned on releasing it separate from the book, but the response I’ve seen from the Right-Wing pundit class to the FBI raid on former President Trump’s home in Mar-A-Lago has prompted me to do so.

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Hitler spoke at length about his political philosophy. I do not recall many quotes that could be summed up more or less as "My goal is to be an evil, genocidal bastard." 

The Faithful are anyone loyal to the ideology which governs The Regime, making them de facto loyal to The Regime. They would not articulate their governing philosophy as such, but as we’ll see, very little about their governing philosophy lines up with actual reality. The ideology they are loyal to is what Thomas Sowell has called ‘The Vision of the Anointed,’ Curtis Yarvin has called ‘The Dream,’ and many of The Faithful call ‘Social Justice.’ For the sake of brevity, we’ll also call it The Dream. (For a full explanation of The Dream, see the essay on The Faithful’s Statement of Faith).

The Faithful are what Eric Hoffer might have called a True Believer, or you might call an SJW, Lefty, Progressive, Bernie Bro, etc. The Faithful are typically Progressive/Left-wingers, but not exclusively. Mitt Romney is one of The Faithful, as is anyone who listens to NPR unironically, generally believes The New York Times, and will immediately become hostile to anything described to them as “A threat to our Democracy.” They do not have to be woke, but they do have to not see it as a threat to anything substantial. The worst are those who claim to disagree with the latest tenant of The Regime, but will simultaneously bend over backwards to be as charitable as possible to that which they claim disagreement, effectively nullifying the criticism.

There's a common misconception among dissidents that needs to be addressed, and that is the idea that The Regime and The Faithful are hypocrites who live by double-standards. "Rules for thee, but not for me" is a common refrain among Conservative commentators, and it's hard to refute how appropriately succinct this observation is from an outsider's perspective. If you’re reading this, there is a pretty good chance you agree with the statement “The Left is massively hypocritical in how they govern, enforce the law, and what they choose to get offended by.” Let’s look at why this isn’t a very helpful or accurate assessment. For starters, the point of this series isn't to help you better understand your own opinions; it’s to help you better understand your ideological opponents. Do you think they see themselves or each other as hypocrites? Of course not. Moreover, the observation of what appears to be massive hypocrisy on the Left and within The Regime (but I repeat myself) does nothing to help you understand them, or more importantly, how to defeat them.

Before we explain why The Regime and their subjects are not hypocritical, let us first use a non-political example that operates along similar philosophical parameters. To celebrate graduation from my master’s program, my wife got us tickets to a concert headlined by my favorite band of all time, Blink 182. We had to park almost a mile away from the venue, and the walk was pretty miserable. When we got to the entrance, we had to go through metal detectors before entering. That’s when I realized I hadn’t left my pocket knife in the car. The police officer at my metal detector looked at me and said “No weapons allowed.” I had to walk all the way back to my car just to drop off my pocket knife. Despite how monumentally frustrating this was, I never took issue with the fact that a police officer possessing a firearm strapped to his hip looked me square in the eyes and said “No weapons allowed.” It didn’t occur to me that he was being hypocritical any more than it would occur to himself to believe he was enforcing some sort of a double-standard. To understand this situation is to understand much of The Faithful’s Dream and The Regime’s philosophy of governance.

The reason the police officer was not acting hypocritical is because of the role they played at this event, namely that of someone who safeguards the process so everyone can enjoy themselves. Not only are most people ok with the fact that they can bring weapons in while we can’t, we actually support this system. I don’t know the police officer, but I also don’t know anyone else attending the concert. Given this situation, I defer to trusting the police officer. The safety risk of only allowing police officers to bring weapons inside as opposed to allowing anyone to bring weapons inside is not a difficult question to ponder. Thus for this particular event, we mentally endorse an exception to the rule, because that exception exists to protect us by enforcing the rule with everyone else.

Perhaps an even more appropriate illustration of this philosophical framework is how a religious Christian views many events in The Old Testament. For example, one condition for entering and inhabiting the promised land was a direct command from God to kill the land’s inhabitants- men, women, and children. On its face, this sounds like God is telling the people to disobey at least one, perhaps even three, of the ten commandments they had been given. Wait, what? Virtually no Christians read these stories and conclude God is a hypocrite. Why not? For the same reason The Faithful will support The Regime and we tend to be ok with armed police officers telling us no weapons are allowed inside a venue filled with police officers carrying weapons: we trust in the entity seemingly committing the double-standard. This shifts the mental frame of these situations from that of a hypocritical double-standard to seeing this merely as “the rules,” and rules are here to keep us safe.

For the Christian, one rule is that God is never wrong nor capable of doing wrong. For The Faithful, The Regime is capable of doing wrong, but that wrongdoing is very narrowly defined as that which most people find it impossible to defend (though there are exceptions to this), or more commonly, the wrong of not doing more to instantiate The Dream in society. Every act can be framed as one of benevolent defense of the system and those within it, like the armed police officer enforcing a weapons ban from the concert venue.

The Faithful are not hypocrites by operating within a flexible and even contradictory set of standards and rules because they see themselves and The Regime as benevolent protectors of ‘Democracy,’ and therefore outside the standards and rules of common people. (Pro Tip: whenever a member of The Regime or The Faithful refers to ‘Democracy,’ you can always translate it as “Our ideological oligarchy” and it will literally never change the meaning of the statement). 

There is a good chance these metaphors do not convince you they aren’t hypocritical, but only helps explain why they do not see themselves as hypocritical. Again, consider how you or I view the police officer at the concert. The difference between seeing him as hypocritical and seeing The Faithful as hypocritical boils down to simply agreeing with the philosophy governing one situation and disagreeing with the philosophy governing another. In a battle against a demonstrably weaker foe, pure strength is typically sufficient for victory. In a battle against a demonstrably stronger foe, strength takes the form of understanding and strategy. As dissidents facing a demonstrably stronger foe, we must learn to understand and engage with the philosophy of our foe. To do so is to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Let’s flush this philosophy out a bit more with some real-world examples.

As I was writing this, I recalled an interview author and journalist Matt Taibbi gave to Bridget Phetasy in August of 2021, where he excellently summed up this aspect of The Dream among The Faithful in journalism. I swear I transcribed this somewhere, but after 45 minutes of trying to find it, I’m going to have to transcribe it again. Here you go:

Taibbi: The censorship issue, when I first started writing about that a few years ago, I expected most of the people in the [media] business would sort of agree with me that this is a bad thing, and that wasn’t true at all. Like, it wasn’t even close to true.

Phetasy: Why do you think that is?

Taibbi: I think they associate the increased surveillance and censorship with censorship of Trump, or Alex Jones, or people like that, and a lot of people sort of ideologically see that as a good thing. I had a lot of arguments with people in the business after the Alex Jones thing happened, because I said ‘Look, the issue isn’t who it is, the issue is the how.’ It used to be if they wanted to punish you for saying the wrong thing or publishing the wrong thing, they had to take you to court, they had to prove that you had said something that was wrong or scandalous or libelous. Now, it’s just like three executives behind a door. You don’t know who they are, they just turn you off, and there’s your career. It’s over. And the consequences of that are mind-boggling for people in the media because we are now, you know, we basically live by the grace of these companies who we know that they’re talking and consulting with groups like The Atlantic Council or Senate Committees. So we’re essentially dependent upon their good will, which is the opposite of how we want to be. The whole idea of the press is that we’re supposed to be telling everybody ‘Fuck you, we don’t have to listen to you,’ and that sort of thing. So it’s weird, I don't really get it. Again, I think it’s part of this new self-image a lot of people in the media have, which is they see themselves as the protectors of a status quo as opposed to a check on something.

After listening to this interview again, I’m probably going to come back to Taibbi’s point about relying on the good graces of bad actors in my revised essay about challenging power. Regardless, you see here Taibbi articulating an example of The Dream in practice within the media industry. Journalists supporting the arbitrary censoring of people under dubious circumstances seems hypocritical on its face. But as Taibbi says, they ‘ideologically see that as a good thing.’ Why? Because their job is to protect a status quo (The Regime and The Dream) rather than serve as a check on it. Therefore, anything that can be sufficiently labeled a threat to The Regime and The Dream can and should be censored. It isn’t hypocrisy; it’s the rules.

Let’s look at a very fresh (as of this writing) example of this philosophy in action in another sphere. On May 2nd, 2022, Politico ran a story explaining that a majority decision draft had been leaked to them revealing the Supreme Court’s intentions to overturn Roe v. Wade in an upcoming ruling. The Regime and The Faithful had basically one reaction to this revelation, which was extreme histrionics revolving around the sacred nature of abortion. The reaction on The Right was to highlight how serious and destabilizing to the court it is to have this unprecedented leak occur. The Faithful’s thoughts on whether or not the leak itself matters is best summed up by a tweet sent by none other than long-time Faithful journalist Dan Rather: “The story is the end of Roe and the radicalism it represents. The leak is a plot point. We can’t lose track of the big picture.”

We can’t lose track of the big picture. I understand, officer. I’ll take the knife back to my car.

I will use a different essay to explain the self-defense imperative used to justify much of The Regime and The Faithful’s actions, but for now let’s focus on the ways this situation highlights The Dream and how it functions.

Access to abortion has long been a tenant of The Faithful. There are many possible explanations for this, none of which are particularly important for our purposes here. This belief was recently explained in an official statement by the then-head of The Democratic National Convention, Tom Perez. Consider abortion as sacred to The Faithful as the ability to take communion is to a Catholic. So this draft is leaked showing what The Faithful view as a threat to one of their core beliefs. Protests begin outside the personal homes of the justices involved with the majority opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade. The leak itself is an unprecedented breach of judicial security. 

The protests are clearly intended to intimidate the offending justices and their families. But according to The Faithful, this is simply a plot point. We can’t lose track of the big picture. Specifically, the big picture includes one where the pagans (anyone who does not support The Dream or any of its components) are threatening a core tenant of our belief system. To The Faithful, these protests are tantamount to shooting a home invader. Again, we’ll explore the self-defense imperative of The Faithful in future discussions. What matters here is that this is indeed how they see the situation, regardless of how deluded that perception happens to be.

CNN has become an amazing proxy for all things related to The Regime and The Dream, serving almost as a means of distributing any new software updates to The Dream to their Faithful readers. As such, they articulate how The Faithful are to view this situation in a May 13th, 2022 piece titled “Republicans claim a 1950 law makes Roe protests at Justices’ homes illegal. Here’s what to know.” I honestly had not really planned on analyzing this article, but it’s just too good of an example to not at least spend a little time on.

First, the article informs The Faithful what their position should be. By using the headline to inform them that it’s the pagan Republicans who oppose the protests, The Faithful literally do not need to read the article to know “Here’s what to know.” ‘What to know’ is already baked into the headline. But the article can’t be blank, and even CNN knows that some subtlety is required in these situations, especially considering they’ve already told their readers the most important piece of information. The author then goes on to explain the 1950 law in question, and how it is very difficult to not see these protests as illegal attempts at intimidating the court into a certain ruling. However, one law professor they interview provides this simply amazing argument for why the protests might not actually be illegal: 

“Still, according to Drexel University School of Law professor Tabatha Abu El-Haj, protesting a pending Supreme Court opinion on a highly partisan issue could be seen as different from intimidating a judge or a jury considering whether to convict a particular person.

"Applying this law to this situation raises that fuzzy line between speech or demonstrations that are really meant to intimidate or subvert a judicial process in a substantive way," she said. "It's true that this could arguably subvert the judicial process if the opinion changed, but it seems really that the point of it is more to express frustration."

I mean, does it get any more amazing than that? Saying the point of protests outside of the justices’ homes is “more to express frustration” as a distinction from subverting the judicial process is akin to saying the reason someone planted a bomb was because they were angry, not to blow something up. The article goes on to explain whether or not the law is constitutional, and seems to genuinely land on the conclusion that a reasonable person would draw: this is illegal. However, it concludes with the fact that law enforcement in the areas where the protests are taking place have made it clear they will not be enforcing the laws which would prohibit and punish the protests. As an aside, the respective governors of the states where the protests are occurring made an appeal to The Regime to enforce the law, another example of supremely bad strategy we’ll discuss in another essay.

Getting back on track, is this situation a good example of hypocrisy? If you do a simple internet search for “Hypocrisy Left SCOTUS protests,” you will find a slew of articles and interviews articulating the belief that it is. Whenever something like this happens, a common reaction by dissidents and pagans is to point out the differences between how The Faithful and The Regime treat similar situations differently based on whether or not the supposed offenders support The Dream. “Imagine if the roles were reversed” is a common refrain among these types of criticisms. The reason this is utterly pointless is because to The Faithful, this is like saying “Imagine if we only arrested people who didn’t commit crime.” It’s a premise so farcical that it’s almost impossible to engage with. Reversing the roles is reversing the actions taken by the protectors of something and the actions of those the protectors are sworn to defend that something from. To The Faithful, this is perhaps the philosophical equivalent of Qualified Immunity. The police get more leniency and understanding in enforcing the law than average civilians do in the same situation. Protests outside of the homes of Supreme Court justices’ homes clearly trying to subvert the judicial process through intimidation and harassment fall into “fuzzy” territory because they are done in service of protecting The Dream.

Nearly three-thousand words later, there is still a good chance that you find this exercise in understanding The Faithful to be entirely redundant and pointless. Just because they do not see themselves as hypocrites does not mean they are not indeed hypocrites. From an outside perspective, they are obviously hypocrites. Their worldview is full of contradictions and ethical pitfalls. How does understanding the semantics of this philosophy help us strategically?

For starters, it gives us a window into the nature of The Dream. The Dream is a purely consequentialist philosophy. That is, the means of any action are almost exclusively judged by the ends it seeks to achieve. Strategically, this serves primarily to help us eliminate pointless strategies from our playbook. You may or may not have noticed that pointing out the hypocrisy of any action or response by The Regime or The Faithful accomplishes next to nothing from the standpoint of shifting the balance of power away from The Regime and towards its dissidents. Despite being so utterly redundant and pointless, why is this refrain not only ridiculously common among dissidents, but account for a large portion of the responses to this hypocrisy? If a boxer noticed that every time his opponent broke a rule the referee did nothing, even when this violation had been pointed out, at what point does it no longer become rational to appeal to the referee, or to remain in the match altogether? Wait, upon further inspection it turns out there is no referee. It looks like the boxer is simply appealing to his opponent to stop kicking him in the nuts, despite the fact that it’s working marvelously at keeping the boxer lying on the mat, and his opponent seems to be having the time of his life. Maybe it’s time for the boxer to rethink his strategy.

Hypocrisy only exists in a game where both sides hold themselves to the same standards and rules. Hypocrisy does not exist in a game where one side has done everything shy of carving in marble the axiom “We have different rules and standards than you.” Strategically, focusing on the apparent hypocrisy of The Faithful and The Regime is to engage in a criticism that is meaningless to your opponents from the standpoint of persuasion. These criticisms will also always be construed as an attack (Recall the article: “Republicans claim…”) and as such further entrench The Faithful in their defensive posture towards the perspective of dissidents and pagans.

Hypocrisy is almost always evident to those who care about rules and standards being applied evenly. The first alternative to labeling the actions of The Faithful and The Regime as hypocritical is to not label the actions of The Faithful and The Regime as hypocritical. Simply explaining those actions in as accurate and dispassionate terms as possible will be sufficient for anyone who cares about rules and standards being applied evenly. Adding your own conclusions and comparisons to other situations muddies the water. You have no idea what emotional and intellectual attachments come with the comparisons used to explain the hypocrisy. Moreover, saying “Imagine if the roles were reversed” is asking non-pagans and non-dissidents to engage in a hypothetical that requires them to be sympathetic to pagans and dissidents, which makes the exercise that much more difficult. Try a mental exercise wherein you ask a Polish Jew to engage in a hypothetical requiring sympathy for a Nazi’s perspective and you’ll understand why this is a scenario to be avoided.

One major strategic flaw for the dissident is to create a scenario where in order to criticize The Regime, you must agree or side with its opponents. This is almost literally the worst possible intellectual framework to employ, if for no other reason than it is obviously the preferred conclusion of The Regime. CNN framed their article not as an issue about whether or not an action was illegal, but first and foremost by describing who held the opinion that the action was illegal. If The Regime wants people to believe that criticizing it is to become aligned with this or that group, why would you ever want to engage in a practice that reinforces this belief? Some of the most effective contemporary pagans and dissidents today are those The Regime and The Faithful have worked tirelessly to label members of the alt-right for just this reason.

A theme we’ll come back to repeatedly is that of working very hard to not occupy the stereotypes of how The Faithful see you, or a framework of opposition The Regime benefits from. The Regime is extremely ossified, but so are its opponents. The ossified nature of supposed opposition allows for the ossified nature of The Regime, further entrenching its control and power. A dynamic opposition is an effective opposition. An effective opposition creates legitimate threats to The Regime. Becoming credible, legitimate, and difficult to lump in with the ossified opposition constitutes one of the most effective threats to The Regime, which has allowed itself to become not credible and very far from legitimate. 

Let’s return to the CNN story about the SCOTUS protests. Most people who still care about the law and evenly-applied standards will still walk away from that propaganda piece with the conclusion that these protests are illegal. What they do with that conclusion is unclear, but the conclusion itself remains, and was relatively easy to come to. Yes, this conclusion has become somewhat radioactive by successfully being tied to The Regime’s preferred opponents, but that was already a given based on the title. Now consider this article from The New York Post about the SCOTUS leak titled “The Left’s Hypocrisy Exposed in Leaked Roe v. Wade decision.” Here are the first two sentences:

“It turns out ‘breaking a norm’ only counts when a Republican does it. Someone on the Supreme Court, almost certainly a liberal clerk, maybe even a liberal justice, has leaked the forthcoming decision about Roe v. Wade.”

Who is this article for? What is the purpose of it? It concludes with the following:

“Will CNN, the Times, the Washington Post, et al. decry the violation? Of course not. They’ll do exactly what they’re expected to do — spend the next month cajoling and threatening the court. Impeachment will be floated. Protests will be encouraged.

They will do the kind of things that, if conservatives did them, would warrant 20,000-word articles about how it was a “threat to democracy.”

Don’t be fooled. The left couldn’t care less about “norms.” They just want to get their way, by any means they can.”

Is there anything in here that the reader didn’t already know? Does it convey anything even remotely close to strength and legitimacy? Can it be described as anything other than an angry rant? This is our next strategic lesson: do not allow your anger at their hypocrisy cause you to do or say things that either makes you appear weak, or assists The Regime in discrediting you. Ideally, train yourself to not become angry at their apparent hypocrisy in the first place. After all, are you truly surprised by the things they do which you deem hypocritical? If so, why? Is it not perfectly consistent with every other thing you’ve observed and concluded about your ideological opponents? Do soldiers in a war zone get angry and surprised every time their opponent shoots at them?

In summary:

-The Faithful and The Regime are not hypocrites by acting within a different set of standards and rules than the rest of us, because this is perfectly consistent with their governing philosophy, The Dream. Those charged with safeguarding society are not breaking the rules by getting away with things that we could not get away with, because our rules are not the same as their rules. Do we ever hear about military personnel being jailed for “accidentally” drone striking civilians? Of course not. Safeguarding Democracy can get messy, and you may have to drone strike a few elementary school-aged eggs to protect the omelet of Democracy, or something.

-Even though their actions appear hypocritical from the outside, pointing this out has almost no strategic utility as it often requires operating within a preferred intellectual framework of The Regime, specifically that criticizing it means alignment with its preferred opponents. This is a very good way to discourage people who are not already critical of The Regime from deciding to become critical of The Regime, as the criticism becomes less important than not appearing to be aligned with The Regime’s stated enemies. Why do you think Jon Stewart waited until after the election to discuss his belief in the lab leak hypothesis?

-Any situation with enough glaring hypocrisy worthy of being pointed out will already be apparent to anyone who holds the types of values which would determine this as hypocrisy in the first place. Good strategy involves allowing this conclusion to be as untainted by your opinions and assessments as humanly possible, creating the clearest possible path of criticism for any potential dissident or pagan to walk down. If you are in a position that requires or compels you to speak on the situation, describe it with as much accuracy and as little opinion as you can. The facts will speak for themselves.

One last point on this issue. There is one instance where specifically pointing out hypocrisy has utility, and that is when who you are speaking with is someone you know for a fact holds your same values and assessments of right and wrong, and simply is ignorant to the hypocrisy of their actions or the actions of those they are supporting. Nathan did this with King David after his mistreatment of Bathsheba and her husband. However, even this confrontation was done indirectly. Nathan first posed a hypothetical that would in no way elicit a defensive posture from David. This hypothetical and David’s reaction to it was then mapped on to the real situation Nathan wanted to discuss, and David was subsequently confronted by his own hypocrisy. However, it wasn’t really Nathan who confronted David, but David himself. David had to reconcile his own conclusion and beliefs about the ‘bad guy’ in Nathan’s hypothetical with the identical evils David had himself committed. Because Nathan understood David’s belief structure and values, he knew this would be effective. If David was a consequentialist, this would not be effective. Jesus used similar metaphors and parables to point out the hypocrisy of the scribes and pharisees. They responded by having Him killed.

Author’s note: My original outline of this essay had the following standalone quote:

“For the Left, the rule of law doesn’t mean crap.”

I couldn’t find where it came from, but I’m pretty sure it was from Ben Shapiro’s video breaking down the SCOUT leak. If Ben really thinks they don’t care about the rule of law, he needs to explain their virulent pursuit of legal actions against Donald Trump and anyone associated with January 6th. The rule of law is extremely important to The Regime when it can be used to make an example of their preferred opponents, which is why obedience to the law is extremely important for any potential dissident. We can either spend our time complaining about how unfair it is that we have to follow the rules and they don’t, or we can stop whining and exuding weakness, and map out strategies that take this asymmetry into account.