Enthusiasm¶
This is a reliable guide to approved thinking within China’s Communist Party:
Blindly copying Western-style democracy can only bring
disaster, an influential Chinese Communist Party journal wrote
in its latest edition following more than a week of
pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
Citing enduring violence and turmoil in countries like
Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq and Libya, which have tried to adopt
such a system of government, the fortnightly magazine Qiushi
said that Western democracy did not suit all countries.
“The West always brags that its own democracy is a ‘universal
value’, and denies there is any other form of democracy,” said
Qiushi, which means “seeking truth”, in the issue distributed
over the weekend.
“Western democracy has innate internal flaws and certainly is
not a ‘universal value’; its blind copying can only lead to
disaster,” Qiushi added.
It shouldn’t be disappointing to hear such pious invocations of an “other form of democracy”, but only coldly confirming of the worst. It’s all clearly stated.
In the present global order, the Cathedral has no serious external enemies, but only awkward students, who refuse to learn the one and only imaginable lesson in exactly the way, and at exactly the speed, expected of them. The idea that democracy as such, and intrinsically, is fundamentally inconsistent with sustainable social order (as explained by Hoppe, acknowledged by Thiel, and thematized by Moldbug), finds no official representation, anywhere in the world. Even the North Koreans think they’re democrats. At the ideological level, the calamity has already happened, universally.
NRx bores itself by repeating this. It’s a simple and — to ‘us’ — apparently obvious thing. Doubtless it’s correct that mechanical repetition adds vanishingly little at this point, although there’s probably still the need for a succinct statement of the proposition, tightly encapsulated and incandescently lucid, for incessant future reference.
What cannot be long-buried beneath the ennui is the extreme dissident radicality of the counter-revolutionary thesis. To depart from the democratic or evangelical-egalitarian (i.e. Jacobin) faith remains the ultimate heresy against teleo-political modernity. To suggest, even, that there is a question of democracy is countenanced by effectively no one, anywhere. In China, as the narrative goes, the populace is still to be convinced the country is ‘ready yet’ for accelerated democratization (on the Cathedral model — the only one). Look at this, then this, and synthesize. Religious ‘hold outs’ are all that remain. Once the faith moves people, the direction has already been decided — everyone is agreed on that. (OK, not these guys, yet.)
If this topic becomes tedious, it’s all over. Democratization isn’t boring to them. It’s the most exciting thing in the world, and they’re not going to stop doing it.
Our work here has scarcely begun.
Hail Hydra!
