The intellectual organization of political hatreds

From The Treason of the Intellectuals by Julien Benda.

I shall now point out a last important perfecting of all political passions to-day, whether of race, class, party or nation. When I observe these passions in the past, I see them consisting in purely passionate impulses, natural explosions of instinct, devoid of all extension of themselves in ideas and systems—at least among the majority. The revolt of the workers in the fifteenth century against the possessing classes was apparently not accompanied by any sort of teaching about the origin of property or the nature of capital. Those who massacred the Ghettos seem to have had no views on the philosophical values of their action. And when the troops of Charles V attacked the defenders of Mezières, it does not appear that the assault was enlivened by a theory about the predestination of the Germanic race and the moral baseness of the Latin world. To-day I notice that every political passion is furnished with a whole network of strongly woven doctrines, the sole object of which is to show the supreme value of its action from every point of view, while the result is a redoubling of its strength as a passion. We must look at the system of ideology of German nationalism known as “Pangermanism” and at the similar ideology of the French Monarchists, if we wish to realize the point of perfection to which our age has carried these systems, with what tenacity each passion has built up in every direction the theories apt to satisfy it, with what precision these theories have been adapted to this satisfaction, with what opulence of research, what labor, what profound investigation they have been carried on in all directions. Our age is indeed the age of the intellectual organization of political hatreds. It will be one of its chief claims to notice in the moral history of humanity.

Ever since these systems have been in existence, they have consisted in establishing for each passion that it is the agent of good in the world and that its enemy is the genius of evil. But to-day these passions desire to establish this not only politically, but morally, intellectually and esthetically. Anti-semitism, Pangermanism, French Monarchism, Socialism are not only political manifestations; they defend a particular form of morality, of intelligence, of sensibility, of literature, of philosophy and of artistic conceptions. Our age has introduced two novelties into the theorizing of political passions, by which they have been remarkably intensified. The first is that every one to-day claims that his movement is in line with “the development of evolution” and “the profound unrolling of history.” All “these passions of to-day, whether they derive from Marx, from M. Maurras or from Houston Chamberlain, have discovered a “historical law,” according to which their movement is merely carrying out the spirit of history and must therefore necessarily triumph, while the opposing party is running counter to this spirit and can enjoy only a transitory triumph. That is merely the old desire to have Fate on one’s side, but it is put forth in a scientific shape. And this brings us to the second novelty: To-day all political ideologies claim to be founded on science, to be the result of a “precise observation of facts.” We all know what self-assurance, what rigidity, what inhumanity (comparatively new traits in the history of political passions, of which modern French monarchism is a good example) are given to these passions to-day by this claim.

To summarize: To-day political passions show a degree of universality, of coherence, of homogeneousness, of precision, of continuity, of preponderance, in relation to other passions, unknown until our times. They have become conscious of themselves to an extent never seen before. Some of them, hitherto scarcely avowed, have awakened to consciousness and have joined the old passions. Others have become more purely passionate than ever, possess men’s hearts in moral regions they never before reached, and have acquired a mystic character which had disappeared for centuries. All are furnished with an apparatus of ideology whereby, in the name of science, they proclaim the supreme value of their action and its historical necessity. On the surface and in the depths, in spatial values and in inner strength, political passions have to-day reached a point of perfection never before known in history. The present age is essentially the age of politics.

I am unfamiliar till today with the writings of Julien Benda.  The Treason of the Intellectuals was published in 1927.  That second paragraph above though, could be a description of the radical progressives of out times, the new authoritarians.  

Second rate pundits bemoan political polarization today, rarely acknowledging that the passions in print are nothing in comparisons to the passionate spilling of blood in decades and centuries past.  Polarization today is neither extreme not unusual when considered with even a modicum of knowledge of history.  The plague of "political polarization" is merely self-gratification of those intellectuals.  

Benda was writing a century ago when the treason of intellectuals was about to tip the world into a global war of genocide, ideological extermination, and a titanic struggle between the forces of authoritarianism and Classical Liberalism.  

If we want to understand the current manifestation of political polarization, Benda's essays suggest that we look towards the faddish and self-serving thought processes of  disconnected "intellectuals" perched in the mainstream media, advocacy think tanks, government agencies and academia.  

The body politic is actually in pretty good condition.  More prosperous, more tolerant, more open, more inclusive, more inquiring and more widespread than at any point in the past.  William F. Buckley's thought is ever more justified.

I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.

The fanatic catastrophism of racism, authoritarianism, division, secular extremism, climate alarmism, gender monomaniacalism, etc. are prevalent only in select hot house environments such as the aforementioned mainstream media, advocacy think tanks, government agencies and academia.  Everyone else goes about being productive and living good lives to the extent that they can shield themselves from the petulance and maliciousness of the clerisy.  

I wonder whether Buckley was familiar with Benda's work?  I would guess so.  From Buckley.

The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservations, on the side of excellence (rather than "newness") and of honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity).