Third Positionism and Topologies of History

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Today I will talk a bit about theories of history (broadly) as it is a major thing people associate with meta-politics and the far-right. I will be going over what I perceive as the primary “topologies” of history across religions and political ideologies. Theories of history often become fixated on agents of history, like class or race or geography. Not talking about that. Topology as I am using it refers more to the eschatology and cosmology ingrained in history — what it starts out as, and what state it will finish in (if it does finish).

First I will talk about historical utopianism, which serves as the groundwork for the liberal-progressive world we live in today. It is probably the most simple as we are intuitively familiar with it. Historical Utopianism envisions history as an upward trajectory towards some special serene state of completeness and reason, and focuses primarily on a fixing of the earth (often in something of a utilitarian lens). Religiously I have discussed Utopianism before, particularly in relation to the Jewish idea of heaven-on-earth and how that influences modern political philosophies. It has some position on Christianity too, but I’ll talk about that later. Hegel often takes the blame for Utopianism, but it was already an element of Liberal thought well before Hegel came to prominence. This Liberal utopianism a la Francis Fukuyama can be best considered a sort of “soft utopianism” since it mainly deals with considering ideologies which already exist to be final states. Societies which we don’t really consider utopias, they’re just better than others.

The second kind of utopianism, which seems to have diluted Liberal utopianism over the Cold War, is Marxist utopianism. Yes, in a processual sense it is Hegelian, but it’s really its own organism and frankly more like its own religion. While the intelligentsia is not openly Marxist, Marxian historiology and anthropology and cultural critiques have become accepted as normal in academia. Dialectical materialism is promoted regardless of whether or not the mind behind it is a self-identified Marxist. Through decolonization movements within and outside of our country, Marxist attitudes have strongly influenced the “low culture” of the Western left as well. Where the Liberal believes that the world culminates into the Western Liberal tradition, the Nu-Marxist believes that the West is the great evil of the world, and the world will be restored by an expulsion of the magical substance called “Whiteness”. I don’t think Marx would agree with this, but Marx wouldn’t have predicted where we are and where the communists are. Whether or not Marx’s personal beliefs were influenced by his Jewish origin, I’m not sure, but it helps explain the Jewish tendency towards Liberalism and Communism in a more general sense, especially since many Western Jews became extremely attached to Liberalism as a means of assimilation. Marx’s grandfather was a Rabbi, but his father and mother converted to Protestantism (how serious this conversion was, I don’t know).

The quest for utopianism results, ironically, in a great deal of violence because everything becomes a potential means to an ultimate end, and everything wrong in society can be blamed on elements which are hindering the march of progress towards some special end, elements which should be removed. Be it the Liberals in France or the Bolsheviks in Russia.

Abrahamism (really near eastern religions in general) show a strand of Utopianism, but it varies to what degree it is meant to be pursued by humans, and to what degree it is initiated only by divine intervention. Jews and Muslims seem to be more utopian than Christians for example. I’m not super keen on Islamic eschatology so I’ll avoid making any accusations, but Christian eschatology is more of a pessimism or fatalism than a utopian vision.

Which gets me to my next mode of history, that of historical pessimism — that history is a downward spiral. Provisionally this describes most Dharmic types as well as many Traditionalists. In totality you could say it describes Primitivists. Christians somewhat belong to this category because while proselytism is encouraged, universal salvation is predicted never to happen. There really aren’t really much total historical pessimists other than luddites and primitivists, because Traditionalists tend to believe in cycles of history and Christians have a mixed position on modernity. Yes, the world becomes something more depraved in some vague sense, but at the same time you progress closer to the end of history — which is not a utopia on earth, but is a good thing.

I think an issue with Christians today is that they fall into a desire to save a world which is unsavable. Like, if you’re Christian, yes you should be against Abortion. Yes, you should seek to protect human life when the opportunity arises. But, you don’t have to sacrifice everything else politically to stop it. You aren’t going to go to hell on behalf of some crack-whore who had her baby killed. But, the abortion issue is for another day.

Now, cyclical history is really what I want to talk about, because it is an extremely varied set of beliefs on history, and I think it is important to distinguish between actual historical third-position and this vague platitude of third-positionism as just being very Traditionalist (for example, I wouldn’t consider Francisco Franco a “third positionist”). The Traditionalist views history pessimistically but generally not totally pessimistically. We are simply in a decadent age… Or something. To Spengler it is a petty low period. It’s just our civilization which is in decline. To the Traditionalists (upper case T) and the so-called Trad-Caths, we are in a spiritually bankrupt period (this is probably true in my opinion, just to clarify). But, the idea of a revival relies on a return to the past, a return to *the* tradition — whatever that may be interpreted as.

Fascism, on the other hand, adopts a novel understanding of history and eschatology. To the fascist, history only very loosely exists. Progress is constant and unending, as is struggle and strife. Progress can only be achieved in an environment of struggle. Fascist historiology in some sense was formed when Sorel sheds the envy and utopianism off of Syndicalism, and replaces it with a sort of Nietzschean element. The proletarian revolution becomes an eternal competition between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat, which strengthens and refines them both. Likewise, the proto-fascists seek war and revolution as an end rather than a means. Fascism developed into something concrete under the Futurists in Italy, who were ultra-progressive and glorifying of war. Violence becomes an end-in-itself.

Fascists outwardly appear as wanting to revive Tradition, but to themselves they were not reviving tradition just as Heraclitus did not step in the same river twice. Tradition serves as the inspiration for progress, but the progress is something new. In fact, this to the Fascists is the true revolutionary (cyclical) nature of history as the act of creating something novel ties us back to the authentic creations of the distant past.

The third position is essentially what I can most simply describe as Right-Progressivism. You are progressing, but there’s no convergence. People mistake it with radical conservatism but they’re not the same for this reason. If it is radical conservatism, it’s just second-positionism.

The notion of the “right” itself is worth talking about. It annoys me when people say “rightist” because such a thing does not exist. Leftism is an actual constructed thing which is real and fairly defined, it isn’t just “being arbitrarily left wing”. Right-wing beliefs are united by not being ideological in nature. People will incorporate them into ideologies, hence making those ideologies right-wing, but they didn’t have to be invented.