A spectre of the Left’s Stockholm Syndrome and the case for radical post-Y2K Millenarian Madness

Something strange has been happening – The radical imaginary of the Left is being eaten by something. I’m sure it still exists, in small pockets – its spirit resides in what’s left of Anonymous and Julian Assange.

But it doesn’t exist in academia or the universities anymore, perhaps the last time it existed in any meaningful way was during May 68’ in France and through Guy Debord and The Situationists, before Jean Baudrillard declared consciousness-raising obsolete.

Today it is more or less nowhere to be found.

There are radical perspectives on gender, the body, sexuality and the family everywhere of course and these perspectives run counter to traditionalism and patriarchy – there is Xenofeminism and Unconditional Accelerationism (U/Acc)- which manage to challenge the reactionary turn and Dark Intellectualism which has over-boiled in the collective imagination via NRx and Steve Bannon; largely by the suggestion that the process of acceleration itself will inevitably deterritorialize all forms of hierarchy and tradition imaginable – which is probably true.

But after this happens, what comes next?

This leads us to micro ideologies like #SlimeMoldTwitter; which is a collective proto-manifesto that aims to do something like develop a version of communism through the collectivised consciousness of networked intelligence – this version of communism appears to desire the obsolescence of individuality and undo the differentiated autonomous motives and desires that separate human entities – or at least allow us to be free individuals; only within intelligenic slime.

This is certainly radical – as it sounds like something an extraterrestrial species or artificial intelligence might want to do with humans – as we have seen in countless sci-fi scenarios; we may get the chance to be liquified biosynthetic goop! Living for eternity inside a biovat controlled by a neuromorphic computer interface – as had occurred on the planet Terra in the Netflix show ‘Alien Worlds’.

If something along the lines of Terra can be thought of as the unconditionally accelerated singularity or endgame of the radical imaginary of the left and a desired state for humanity to end up in – and assuming at least some of us don’t want that OR some kind of fascist Elysium NRx world either – what can we do?

I’ll get there but first, let me say that I believe that the left is currently suffering from a kind of Stockholm Syndrome; this was exemplified through the sentiments of blogger Xenogothic, who expressed their enjoyment at going along with the system, wearing a mask, confirming to government restrictions and I assume also being quite happy about vaccine passports, social credit systems, behavioural controls and China-style AI surveillance in a blog post on “Covid libertarianism”. I believe that Xenogothic’s perspective is shared by the majority of the contemporary left, this seems to be the standard viewpoint and it’s a very strange one to have – since it is a viewpoint which is also shared by The World Economic Forum, Joe Biden, the CCP, Bill Gate’s and the majority of world elites.

Luckily the left does have people such as Chris Hedges who can offer us a much more critical perspective, but as John Zerzan says of him; he’s still a globalist, he’s not a radical, he doesn’t really want to radically transform society.

Since I would rather be slime than go along with anything like what the majority of the modern left is advocating I want to offer a radically different perspective. I do not really believe this will be adopted in any meaningful way by the normie left, the academic / Goldsmiths left or anything of that sort as it shares much more with post-civ, post-left anarchism than anything that desires state control -

I am proposing a radical idea that the left confront a series of subjects it has never confronted before – to do that, it must break with the academic systems and the media systems which have come to define it in its modern form – in order to create a transformative new society.

This is the idea that the left must confront a world it knows little about – God, spirituality, mysticism, esotericism, the occult and embrace alternative narratives and perspectives on the world we inhabit.

These are very difficult things for the left to confront, the left not only persistently and outrightly ignores and denies those things, it hardly assumes they even exist in the first place – and if they do exist, much of the left treats them as a mere annoyance or novelty – not something to be taken seriously or, God forbid – actually believed in!

The right has a monopoly on such things – the right knows what they are about, the right isn’t afraid of the spiritual and the esoteric – and in turn, it has often used this to its advantage and the left is terrified of this. As much as re-education camps exist in China to indoctrinate people away from God and spirituality, in the modern west we have a covertly manipulative education system that makes sure these ideas cannot propagate in any meaningful way in intellectual circles.

But should the right own God, spirituality, mysticism and the occult? – It doesn’t have to and this is why I am advocating for a radical Neo-millenarianism geared towards eschatological transformation – and a coming Great Change. I propose that this happens through a kind of Mystical Anarchism akin to what Terrance Meckenna called The Archaic Revival, this could reignite the radical imaginary of the left. Simon Critchley did a great talk on the subject which was uploaded to YouTube last year (here) and Norman Chron’s The Pursuit of The Millennium is a must-read.

Let’s get at why radical transformation? Well, where to begin!? – not only was a great transformation prophesied in many of the world religions and ancient pantheons; The Christian Apocalypses, the New Jerusalem, the Mayan Cosmogenesis, the Zoroastrian frashokereti and the Book Of Mormon -

Now we all know that a monolithic transformation is underway – we have a world extinction event not seen since the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, that alone should be enough, yet it is only the beginning. There is much more; we have a coming technological singularity that will enable machines to develop new kinds of intelligence which operate well beyond what we are capable of – this will likely be an alien intelligence that is very different from our own, and at this point, we can only guess how it will develop.

And then we have revolutions happening in genetics and biotechnology which will radically transform what it means to be human. Most of us know this by now, it’s mainstream. But we are acting as if it isn’t the apocalypse, it really is the apocalypse, we all need to confront that… If you are more comfortable using the more scientific term The Great Filter, this is also fitting.

What’s more, we are now finding evidence of exoplanets all over the Galaxy, we are in the beginnings of a UFO disclosure and likely to find out a great deal about extraterrestrial visitation which will amount to a hyper-Copernican shift in our understanding of ourselves and our place in The Universe within the next few decades.

We are all going to have to begin to confront things we have never confronted before – when we get over the cognitive dissonance, a new world will be born.

The question then regards the human spirit, the Spirit of Gaia and biological life systems that she supports – I am proposing that the spirit which resides in us and all living systems is being suppressed and crushed by what Nick Land has called The Human Security System, I am proposing that as much as the right may want to exploit and take advantage of that, the left is letting it happen and at the same time perversely enjoying it, I am proposing that this spiritless totalitarianism is being desired and perpetuated out of a system which promotes fear and control over the radical imagination of the free spirit and the holy ghost.

And I am proposing that the new millennium is a giant psychedelic party, that in order to make the New Age something amazing and desirable the left needs to let go of fear and control, look away from figures such as Mark Fisher and Slavjov Žižek for a moment and first look inwards. Then perhaps look instead towards the radical millenarian anarchists of the European Middle Ages who danced naked in the streets, The Heresy of The Free Spirit, The Sufi Mystics, reignite the dormant magical power of the soul, and then, even confront God.