Perusing this humanist blogger’s semi-apt comparisons of various dissident Right figures to characters from the Godfather saga, one comes across this howler:
Also, because of excessive pride, Fuentes is too often and too easily dismissive of views and ideas that doesn’t jibe with his paradigm, and this is especially true when it comes to Catholic vs Pagan debate. His sadistic side just can’t resist putting on the robe of the grand inquisitor and insulting neo-pagans on the right and stretching them on the rack.
There’s a reason why secular humanists white knight for neo-pagans. The latter are simply atheists who crave the ritual and fellowship of real religion without the morality or discipline. Similarly, atheists on the Right all too often turn out to be indistinguishable from Leftists who hate Christians and Jews instead of just hating Christians.
…Perhaps, Fuentes is drawn to Catholicism because he senses that his immense ego, if un-anchored to faith in God, can easily fly off the handle like that of fellow Latin Mussolini. It’s like a willful dog needs an especially powerful leash to prevent it from running wild and crazy. But for Fuentes, his Catholic leash has become more than a check on his emotions. It has become a check on his intellect and imagination, even to the point of dismissing evolution and entertaining the notion of geocentrism.
It has also become an easy whip of moral indignation. In this, Fuentes has something in common with the young Pat Buchanan who, as a young conservative, was an odd-man-out in Columbia Journalism school filled with Liberals(as recounted in his delightful autobiography RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING). Buchanan always had brains and passion, but his overt Catholicism limited his imagination and scope as a thinker, culture critic, and politician. It’s interesting that Fuentes is most like Buchanan but really admires Donald Trump who, being free of religious dogma, has been able to forge a new kind of politics.
If Catholicism is a limiting principle on political thought and imagination, then Matteo Salvini, Jair Bolsonaro, and Andrzej Duda, to name a few, seem oddly unaffected.
Exhibit A: Contra the OP’s association of Trumpism with “being free of religious dogma”, Trump had more support from Catholics, Protestants, and Jews than from atheists.
Exhibit B: a telling exchange between the Audacious Epigone and the decidedly less-antichrist Dissident Right atheist the Z Man:
Heritage Americans are devoid of purpose because, like the American Indians, our culture and religion have been stolen from us. Christianity is the rock on which Western civilization was founded. It cannot be replaced with appeals to materialism or racial idolatry. It most certainly cannot be replaced with false graven images.
Self-styled Right wing commenters like Andrea have drunk deep of the Boomer Kool-Aid. They’ve been conditioned by enemy propaganda to abandon the religion of their fathers, never noticing that the enemy hates and fears the Christ more than any political movement. Perhaps the anti-Christian atheists and pagans on the Right don’t serve the enemy’s designs knowingly, but they serve them all the same.
Decision time is rapidly approaching. The Left will not allow anyone to pursue the drug high, sexual thrill, or consumerist indulgence of their preference while maintaining neutrality on Christ. Atheists on the Right have four choices:
- Join the Left–most will.
- Repent and convert to Christ.
- Failing 2, LARP in their church of choice for an hour on Sundays.
- Shut up.