Orthodox Reflections

By Nicholas – member of the Western Rite Vicariate, a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in America

The modern Western world is absolutely bonkers. Supposedly representative governments are at war with their own cultural traditions, traditional religious confessions, and even their own legal structures (often for the benefit of migrants over their own native born citizens). Putatively democratic regimes void elections and ban candidates as in Romania, actively ban unapproved opposition parties as in Germany, and wage ‘lawfare’ on unapproved candidates such as in France (among many other places). The message is that voting is all well and good, but there are limits which popular sovereignty is not allowed to transgress. Even mild forms of traditional patriotism are rapidly branded as ‘nationalism’, which the elites assure us must be suppressed with extreme vigor in favor of a Globalist ethos. Opposing open borders, because a citizen wishes to bequeath to his own children a nation much like the one he inherited, is decried as the most despicable form of racism. Anything that smacks of tradition is immediately treated as suspicious. Family structure, gender roles, even the concept of biological sex itself – all seem to be in the crosshairs of the modern liberal state.

Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, Political Correctness, Woke, Transgenderism, Transhumanism, Progressivism, Environmentalism, open borders, unorthodox religions, suppression of antisemitism, antiracism, and various forms of Marxism – are not disconnected movements. These are weapons wielded by Western Ruling Elites in a war on their own societies.

How did the situation come to exist? Not by accident, but not as the result of any kind of conspiracy either. As author R.R. Reno observed, our present predicament is worse than a conspiracy. Our current version of clown world is actually the product of an elite Post-WWII consensus known as The Open Society. After the defeat of Hitler, which ironically delivered half of Europe to the Soviet Union’s tender mercies, the organizing principle of Western Society became, “Never again!” A justification, for all manner of deleterious policies, we still hear over 80 years after the WWII guns fell silent.

So how did this come about? Allow substacker N.S. Lyons, with heavy borrowing from R.R. Reno author of Return of the Strong Gods, to explain:

The spirit of the Long Twentieth could not be more different from that which preceded it. In the wake of the horrors inflicted by WWII, the leadership classes of America and Europe understandably made “never again” the core of their ideational universe. They collectively resolved that fascism, war, and genocide must never again be allowed to threaten humanity. But this resolution, as reasonable and well-meaning as it seemed at the time, soon became an all-consuming obsession with negation.

Hugely influential liberal thinkers like Karl Popper and Theodor Adorno helped convince an ideologically amenable post-war establishment that the fundamental source of authoritarianism and conflict in the world was the “closed society.” Such a society is marked by what Reno dubs “strong gods”: strong beliefs and strong truth claims, strong moral codes, strong relational bonds, strong communal identities and connections to place and past – ultimately, all those “objects of men’s love and devotion, the sources of the passions and loyalties that unite societies.”

The anti-fascism of the twentieth century morphed into a great crusade – characterized, ironically, by a fiery zeal and fierce intolerance. By making “never again” its ultimate priority, the ideology of the open society put a summum malum (greatest evil) at its core rather than any summum bonum (highest good). The singular figure of Hitler didn’t just lurk in the back of the 20th century mind; he dominated its subconscious, becoming a sort of secular Satan, forever threatening to tempt mankind into new wickedness. This “second career of Adolf Hitler,” as Renaud Camus jokingly calls it, provided the parareligious raison d’etre for the open society consensus and the whole post-war liberal order: to prevent the resurrection of the undead Führer.

This doctrine of prevention grants enormous moral weight to ensuring that open society values triumph over those of the closed society in every circumstance. If it’s assumed that the only options are “the open society or Auschwitz” then maintaining zero tolerance for the perceived values of the closed society is functionally a moral commandment. To stand in the way of any possible aspect of societal opening and individual liberation – from secularization, to the sexual revolution and LGBTQ rights, to the free movement of migrants – was to do Hitler’s work and risk facilitating fascism’s return (no matter how far removed the subject concerned from actual fascism). It was established as the open society’s only inviolable rule that, as Reno puts it, it is “forbidden to forbid.” Thus a strict new cultural orthodoxy was consolidated, in which to utter any opinion contrary to the continuous project of further opening up societies became verboten as a moral evil. Complete inclusion required rigorous exclusion. We are familiar with this dogma today as political correctness.

It is not an accident that George Soros, himself heavily influenced by Karl Popper through such works as The Open Society and Its Enemies, named his flagship institution for social influence The Open Society Foundations. Soros’ den of evil describes itself as: “The Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, are the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for rights, equity, and justice.” How many political or religions conservatives know the name of Soros’ foundation, but had no idea where that name came from?

Since WII, our entire society has been organized on the precept that Hitler represents pure evil. Further, Hitlerian Fascism and genocide are always about to takeover, should the guardians of freedom and democracy fail to confront every possible threat. To keep Hitler in his grave requires the enlightened ones to suppress the things normal people actually love – their families, their ethnic groups, their countries, their religions, and their cultures. Paraphrasing R.R. Reno, the goal of The Open Society is to vanquish love and passion and replace them with a sterile kind of managed society.

The Open Society, ideally, will be much like the world sung about by the Beatles in Strawberry Fields Forever:

… ‘Cause I’m going to strawberry fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry fields forever…

The Open Society consensus seeks to build a managerially run society in which individual liberation from family, from tradition, from tribe, from nation, from sexual mores, even from your own sex (as in male and female) is the highest goal. It is a Globalist Ideal in which everywhere, and everyone, is equally interchangeable.

The Open Society as a project, obviously, is far too important to allow mere voters to have any real power over. The common people often hold very strong allegiances to anti-Open Society norms, the so-called “strong gods”.  Therefore, democratic elections must be controlled, manipulated, and even cancelled as necessary to prevent the next Hitlerian genocide. In case you forget, the Ruling Elite will happily remind you that Hitler took power (originally) quite legally as a result of democratic processes.

Democracy is too important to trust voters to get it right. 

“Never Again!” is sufficient reason for the Ruling Elite to break laws, to censor, to oppress, to even support mass murder as in Gaza. Killing a Palestinian child is merely depriving a future Islamic Hitler of a future Islamofascist soldier. Their lives are of no consequence. Neither is yours. Your rights and freedom are equally of no consequence. Everything possible must be done to stop the next Hitler. It would be immoral not to.

This may look like an innocent child with an Israeli rifle in his face, but in reality, he is a future Islamofascist soldier of an Arab Hitler who will genocide the Jews and destroy the West unless the Israelis, our greatest allies, stop him! So if you don’t want to live under a Muslim Caliphate, better arm the Zionists to get them before they get you!

Which is why you can never reason with, or morally shame, the “Never Again!” consensus. They are engaged in a metaphysical war to stop pure evil. What are a few children’s lives, or any other sacrifices for that matter, compared to the great service to mankind they are providing by stopping Hitler?

The Open Society consensus is sometimes criticized for its double standards. True believers are incapable of seeing their own hypocrisy, so such criticism is entirely pointless. An action such as discrimination, mass bombing, or murder is only evil if done by the wrong people for the wrong reasons. To stop Hitler, everything is allowed. 

The results of The Open Society consensus are broken societies full of broken people. The common people in the West see that clearly enough. Unfortunately, the common people have absolutely no power over anything. The West is no longer in danger of centralizing under an all-powerful, genocidal leader. Western Societies collapsing into chaos is a more likely threat. But for the Western Ruling Elite, it is always the 1930’s and the answer to all our problems is to keep applying the precepts of the The Open Society harder than ever. Certain aspects of The Open Society consensus may have had some value in the immediate aftermath of WWII. 80 years later, the Ruling Elite is trying to cure a disease that no longer exists. As author R.R. Reno said in an interview, it is like continuing to give a patient cancer drugs, even though his cancer is gone and he is now actually dying of pneumonia.

What common people see as problems, The Open Society consensus sees as policies (depopulation of the white race, mass migration, suppression of patriotism / nationalism, economic decline of the middle and working classes, concentration of wealth, constant foreign war, suppression of religion) that are absolutely necessary to stop Hitler.

How does The Open Society, despite the manifest horrors it has created, continue to reign supreme among our Western Ruling Elites? For decades, The Open Society has been taught, almost unquestioningly, to every educated Westerner. Many don’t even realize that what they learned was a post-WWII consensus. Rather, you will find supposedly educated thinkers and writers, even on the so-called ‘Right-wing’, who believe that The Open Society is traditional Western Civilization.

In addition to mental and educational inertia, The Open Society persists because the consensus is extremely useful for so many different groups in society:

• Religious Minorities – Rabbinic Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and many others face much less pressure to assimilate in the fractured, free for all religious landscape of The Open Society. Further, increased secularization has pushed Christianity, the dominant Western religion, out of the public square and out of the educational system. Religion has been privatized, making everyone’s choice of god a matter of personal preference.
• The Military Industrial Complex – The Open Society needs a steady supply of Hitlers to justify wrecking Western Society by suppressing all the things average people love. Hitler was Hitler, but then the Soviets stood in for Hitler, followed by Serbs, Afghans, Arabs, Iranians, Russians, Palestinians… Do you know who benefits the most from a steady stream of external threats? The Defense Industry and all those Defense / Intelligence agencies. They dearly love the rise of each new Hitler because budgets really pop.
• Law Enforcement and Regulatory Agencies – R.R. Reno refers to the “strong gods” as “objects of men’s love and devotion, the sources of the passions and loyalties that unite societies.” Obviously, fighting everything natural to mankind is going to be a full time job with massive budgets attached. More money, more power, to wage an endless crusade to stamp out love of country (as opposed to love of government, which is totally encouraged), love of family, love of tradition, and love of God. Imagine how busy, and well-funded, the Feds will be with all the new antisemitism laws to enforce. Shiny new AI-driven tools will be particularly useful in tracking and finding all those Hitlers hiding out there in the general population. Plus (bonus) after the law enforcement / regulatory agencies have wrecked societal cohesion, turning everything into a complete hellscape, they can get even higher budgets to “clean up” the mess they made in the first place.
• Progressives / Millennialists – The Open Society is at war with tradition. Progressives, who look forward to a post-scarcity Utopia (see any Star Trek series or movie), are deathly afraid of any resurgence of tradition, especially of the religious kind. Tradition making a comeback would mean the possibility of a return to a previous societal state, thereby implying that modern societal Evolution could have taken a wrong turn. For Progressives, this thought is simply impossible to entertain. Evolution, social or biological, doesn’t make mistakes. History moves in only one direction – towards the perfectibility of man, which increasingly looks to require widespread transhumanism. Religious traditionalists tend to object to chip implants and the like, so obviously they are the next Hitler. See how well this works?
• Zionists (Christian and Jewish) – Saving the best for last in this list. Without the continuing cultural power of Hitler and the Holocaust, Israel could not exist. The “Never Again!” mantra absolves Israeli Jews of all moral culpability for apartheid, mass murder, land confiscation, acts of war against neighbors, cultural vandalism, Christian persecution, spying, assassination, intentional starvation, and censorship. It also entitles Israel to unlimited U.S. tax payer support, regardless of how abusively Israel behaves towards us as a patron. Also regardless of how much our own population is suffering under crushing debt and a downward spiraling economy. No sacrifice is too great to stop Hitler! Add the floating specter of Hitler to a steaming pile of mangled Biblical prophecies, and you get the Christian Dispensationalists who are also in on the grift. Should the modern state of Israel disappear, or morph into a legitimate country with rights for Palestinians, before Jesus ‘raptures’ his ‘saints’ – thousands and thousands of Evangelical preachers will have to get real jobs. 

Across the board, the Western Ruling Elite and its allied groups are desperate to keep alive the Post WWII consensus at the heart of their power. Unfortunately for them, the “strong gods” are making a massive comeback. The real Hitler died 80 years ago. For most people alive today, Hitler is nothing more than a cartoonish character out of movies and TV programs. We have also gone from Boomer affluence to Gen Z poverty. (Many Gen Xers and Millennials aren’t doing so well financially either.) The younger generation doesn’t want to go on an expensive, dangerous crusade to stop a global super villain that doesn’t really exist. They want jobs, healthy paychecks, families, a sense of purpose, and happy, peaceful lives. The younger generation is also increasingly aware of the nature of the game. The Ruling Elites of their countries wreck their economies, under the justification of stopping Putin / XI / Trump (fill in the Hitler). The folks at the top keep getting richer and more powerful, while everyone else falls into debt slavery trying to pay the bills.

Scroll Down to Continue

There is another reason, however, for the return of the “strong gods”. That is the revival of interest, particularly among the young, in having a relationship with the One, True, Eternal God who is the source of all reality and all truth. The quest to find God is leading an increasing number of people to the most traditional Christians faiths – Orthodox Catholicism and Roman Catholicism. The Ruling Elite, having penetrated deeply into the RC since WWII, is not particularly concerned over converts to Roman Catholicism. But the growth of Orthodoxy absolutely terrifies them.

Why? Orthodox Christianity is the polar opposite of The Open Society. Many Orthodox Christians take their religion extremely seriously. That level of passion makes Open Society cultists uncontrollably nervous. They can’t understand or control it, so they naturally want to destroy it. Orthodoxy teaches the sanctity of marriage, opposes abortion, reinforces traditional Christian morality (including giving alms), puts the family at the heart of human life, considers man made in the Image of God (leading to resistance to censorship, transhumanism, and various social engineering schemes), and questions many of the underlying assumptions of the modern financialized economy. Such teachings get in the way of self expression, and make people feel bad for their personal choices. That is clearly intolerable to The Open Society which enforces mandatory tolerance.

Orthodoxy practices closed communion. You are either in the Church, or you are out. Barriers between groups, any kind of exclusivity at all really that includes majority white people, restrict the openness of society. Orthodox parishes are self-contained communities with their own official hierarchies that are taken very seriously. The Ruling Elite has no problem seeing such a structure as a potential source of resistance to the ongoing need to remake society to stop Hitler.

Orthodoxy preserves not only Holy Tradition, but also sinks deep roots in local places and (over time) becomes the preserver and transmitter of local traditions and a strong sense of communal identity. This process has been slowed in the West by many local Churches (Greek, Serbian, Romanian, etc.) having been fixated on preserving ethnic traditions from the old countries. But this is already changing as more converts flood in and more second and third generation cradle Orthodox grow into adulthood.

The Orthodox Church, being local, also teaches authentic Christian patriotism, which The Open Society is quick to label ‘nationalism’, even though it is nothing of the kind. Orthodox writer Ben Dixon explained the difference:

But this Christian patriotism is different from secular Nationalism and the supposed patriotism of super-patriots. While nationalists and super-patriots seek to exalt everything native and justify the errors and missteps of their people, the Christian patriot is not blind to the errors and missteps of his people. Some will take issue with this characterization of nationalism over and against patriotism. I would point them to St. Justin Popovich15 and the renowned Emigre philosopher Ivan Ilyin16 among others.

A Christian patriot, knowing himself to be a member of the body of the nation, takes the sins of the nation on himself, so to speak, repenting on behalf of his nation. “A true patriot,” says Metropolitan Philaret, “does not close his eyes to the sins and ills of his people; he sees them, grieves over them, struggles with them, and repents before God and other people for himself and his nation.”17

“My country right or wrong!” is not a sentiment compatible with Orthodoxy. Orthodox Christians answer to an authority higher than the State and believe in objective moral standards. For Orthodox Christians, deliberately murdering innocent people is wrong no matter who you are or how you try to justify it. For an Open Society consensus based very much on contextual morality, Orthodoxy’s unflinching standards are pure poison.

Orthodoxy is also absolutely incompatible with Zionism. The Orthodox Church is Israel, not the modern apartheid state in the Middle East. The Western Ruling Elite obviously gets very upset by that.

Finally, Orthodoxy doesn’t need external enemies. All Orthodox Christians are already at war with their own sinful natures. That is quite enough without marching off to go destroy an endless stream of foreign monsters. Peace within Orthodoxy is normative, whereas The Open Society considers perpetual war to be. An Orthodox West would no longer be addicted to endless military actions around the globe.

Which is why, along with all the other reasons above, The Open Society is determined to prevent an Orthodox West from happening. To combat Orthodoxy, the Ruling Elites are using all the same strategies employed to bring the Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, and other “mainline” churches to heel. Though with a twist, since Orthodoxy is associated with a current Hitler named President Vladimir Putin. That gives the Western Media and Western Governments (sorry for the repetition) the golden opportunity to try and paint Orthodox Christians as political subversives in foreign employ.

The Government-Media cabal is assisted in this drive, to label certain Orthodox jurisdictions as political extremist organizations, by academics. Academics, some of them nominally Orthodox themselves, write papers and hold conferences discussing how dangerous ‘Christian Nationalism’, ‘Religious Nationalism’, and ‘White Christian Nationalism’ are for ‘democracy’.  Well, dangerous for democracy as defined by The Open Society consensus, of course. But let’s not get bogged down in such mere details.

These same academics are also working with bought and paid for Orthodox hierarchs to promote Church disunity, along with changes to key Orthodox moral teachings on sexuality, the family, the exclusive nature of the Church, and the local nature of the Church. This campaign constantly compares the “good Church” of the Greeks, whose upper hierarchy has proven very amenable to trying to change Church teaching in exchange for dollars, with the “bad Church” of the Russians, who are evil Traditionalists pushing archaic moral standards and putting up ‘barriers’ around their Church to keep others out. That there are millions of Orthodox Christians worldwide with no affiliation to Greeks or Russians just seems to be lost in the ongoing, Western-funded propaganda campaign.

Also lost is the fact that Orthodox Christians are under no obligation to follow bad hierarchs into heresy. Our decentralized nature is a firewall against forcing heresy down our throats. So expect the standard Open Society anti-religious playbook to fail against the Orthodox Church as a whole, even if some local Churches or jurisdictions do succumb to Western bribes and influence.

The Open Society consensus, the reigning Western political religion since WWII (better known in the past few years as WOKE), is finally breaking down. Many believe Trump has been a catalyst for its decline. The truth is that Trump did not really cause the ongoing “return of the strong gods,” but he did learn to rhetorically exploit the trend during his campaigns. Overall, Trump might even be responsible for prolonging The Open Society with the way he governs (Zionism, continuing wars, massive military expenditures, ginning up conflict with major powers, etc.), and the people he appoints to office (Zionists, hawks, Neocons, homosexual activists, Christian Dispensationalists, transhumanists). Regardless of what Trump or his successor in office does or does not do, The Open Society consensus will not survive this decade. Between the generational shift and the return to God, it is already on borrowed time as it is.