Eric Voegelin and the conservadorism ideology.

We use ideology to justify ourselves. It drives us into wishful thinking. It preemptively distorts our ability to listen to different and opposite opinions.

The rhetoric of fascism and Nazism being a left wing ideology just as Socialism and communism, with some people arguing about them being all the same, became more popular among many conservatives influenced by Think Tank popular in social medias such as Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, Stefan Molyeux, among others. They heavily rely on Policy Institutions' researchers such as The Heritage Foundation, which promotes conservative principles, and the Center for American Progress, who are more partisan in purpose [1].

The supporters of this new rhetoric popularised through social medias are all conservatives, mostly supporting Anarcho Capitalism and Neoliberalism. Although most of such conservatives reject the historical narrative of libertarianism originally being a left wing ideology as well as the term Neoliberalism that is differentiated from Liberalism; the later being considered as left wing, if not Socialism which are often used as synonymous of left-wing, by many of the libertarians.

Among so many absurd contradictions one of the core contradictions lies in their own references used to support their ideology  and rhetoric. Ludwig von Mises is one of the most respected economists among conservatives and libertarians who not only saw Fascism as distinct from Communism but thought it to have good intentions and merits, for saving Europe from Communism [2]. (See page 51: https://books.google.de/books?id=TMkSpFYc_SEC&printsec=frontcover&hl=de&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false )

"It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error."

The insistence and popularised opinion about Fascism/Nazism and Socialism/Communism being the same ideology, or in the same political spectrum, seems to have roots in another conservative thinker, this time a philosopher, called Eric Voegelin. I learned about him in a debate about Marxism where it was suggested that Marxism, and so all ideologies, works just as religion which, through the search for an idealised utopian society, people expect stabling a permanent paradise in earth, to archive the order of a socio-economic stability past societies once had but it was lost, according to him, in the positivism thinking tradition of modern and postmodern society [3]. Voegelin connects epistemological foundationalism and ideologies believing that Marxism had formal similarities with Christian theologies (such as the figure of the believer/proletarian, the final judgment/revolution, the creation of a paradise on earth/the creation of communism, etc.). In other words, He thought ideologies to be "securalized religions" attempting to create a paradise on earth. Voegelin accused marxism to have the dangerous aspect that ideologie have: the irrefutable epistemological foundation on top of which they could ground their politics, which in turn makes them intolerant of any different opinion. But at the same time he believed it was the corruption of morality, caused by a positivist thinking tradition, which is inherent in modern and postmodern ideologies, to be the problem. And such morality, according to him, can only be restored with the elimination of the positivism thinking influence, including empiricism. Such aversion to empiricism is also the foundation of Mises' Praxeology, which Mises believed economy to be a subdiscipline of [4].

Voegelin's philosophical theory coincides with Jordan Peterson rhetoric against ideologies. Peterson as Voegelin often talked about ideologies as if they were synonymous with the left-wing political spectrum. Jordan Peterson often claimed to have no ideology, which is often a claim reminded by his followers in social media. But another contradiction rises in moder Think Tank debates: their belief in having the empiricism support of their political and economic analysis, against what they believe to be the irrational and emotional utopian imagination of the left, despite the fact most their rhetoric against the left is based in a philosophical tenet that are against empiricism.

Before Voegelin it was Otto Rank and Oswald Spengler, among others, who traced the relation between religion, epistemology, and Marxism. Voegelin's contemporaries such as Derrida, Laclau, Badiou, or Jameson (the postmodernists that Jordan Peterson ironically called as the new wave of marxists) also explored such relationships and took it seriously. For this reason Voegelin's philosophy doesn't part from an original thinking as many conservatives who know and read him like to believe. Voegelin, just as Jordan Peterson, only attempted to find a new explanation to what was already fully thought and elaborated by past thinkers, an explanation which fits their pessimism about the future, so they offer an alternative interpretation, a conservative reinterpretation which support their wishes of a return to a past idealism of stability and order that societies once had. For that, their new interpretation has to be thought in a manner that can not accommodate the empirical, progressive and left-wing narratives which they are against. Conservatives believe the religion, the family and traditions are what  today's ideologies (the so-called left) try to replace with their utopias and authoritarianism.

Eric Voegelin was strongly influenced by his religious background, like Jordan Peterson, while seldom admitting it. What differs Voegelin and Peterson from pessimists like Oswald Spengler is that the latter recognised that past societies stability was only possible because of lack of social competition, which was responsible for the small and slow changes in society. Thinkers who are admitted Fascists are more realists than the right wing libertarians and Neoliberalists, who reject the fact that free competition is what promote fast changes insecurities and so the lack of stability, and, without such most basic understanding they can't have any rational comprehension of the different between Fascism, which supports capitalism with restrictions in competition for the establishment of social-economic order - and which can not be understood by the people who support capitalism today, the Neoliberalists, for thinking capitalism is simply the synonymous of free competition and not a mode of socio-economic organisation. Just as they can not grasp the difference between Fascism and Socialism assuming they are the same for being authoritarian regimes against what they believe to be the "capitalism freedom and competition".

Despite many contradictions among them, what such pessimists conservative thinkers have in common is the attempt to create the alternative interpretation of reality that can accommodate and justify their negative view of fast and unpredictable changes in society, accusing today's social and psychological problems to the corruption of a moral and tradition caused left wing progressivists.

Spinoza, Otto Rank, Winnicott, Hannah Arendt, among many others (who their thoughts are today confirmed by Neuro-biology of Antonio Damasio, for example), also believed modern and postmodern society crisis are created by positivist thinking tradition and they have touched the very same point as Eric Voegelin, who was certainly influenced by his past and contemporary thinkers. What differs them from Voegelin is the belief that the positivist thinking tradition is just part of a long and natural process of human development. So they don't believe the return to an ideal past is the answer or even possible. 


Otto Rank in "Psychology and The Soul" as well as "Beyond Psychology" supports that everything is religion, not just ideologies, and he explains it by tracing the development of human perception of reality, and the perception of our own existence, through anthropological studies. Otto Rank's theory can be full supported by Antonio Damasio's neuro-biology studios about the formation of cultures (see "The Strange Order Of Things"), and which also supports Spinoza Philosophy (see Antonio Damasio's book "Looking for Spinoza) in regard human perception of its reality. Winnicott, who was Voegelin contemporary, have a very clear theory about the human inner conflict formation and the search for a "divine" order in the world (see "Human Nature), which also can be correlated to works of the previous thinkers mentioned, supporting each other unintentionally - but indirectly influenced by each other it seems.

Voegelin appears to use the very same concept behind all these thinkers. About humans seeking the permanent and eternal, but with the difference of using such concepts to rationalise a blame towards a specific group and think tradition, including science itself. I can't help see some similarity with Jordan Peterson's attempt to find an alternative explanation away from the academic/scientific ground for blaming the universities of being Marxist indoctrination, as well as blaming society's decay on the supposed "postmodernism marxism". And both, together with Oswald Spengler, blame the corruption of some moral principles since the advent of modern thinking tradition. (Mind that I am not suggesting that Jordan Peterson is anywhere near up to the academic knowledge and philosophy of Voegelin and Spengler, but just suggesting that the three have in common the blaming of a groups and thinking tradition - corruption of a certain morality - which they try to find explanation away from, which seems to have something to do with their negative views and hopes for today's society).

The thinkers I mentioned at the beginning don't blame corruption of any morality or thinking tradition as being the start point of the problem, because for such blame one has to believe in an universal or eternal morality, which drains themselves in this search of eternal and universal moral or thinking tradition (religiosity). Instead, they believe that it is a natural process of human society development [trap], for alienating people from nature first, then from their tribes and today from each other, all that used to give the security of self perpetuation on a permanent thing. Without such connection people feel alienated and isolated. Alienation causes people to feel hostile, have nothing which they can feel belonging to and nothing which they can feel perpetuated through. For this reason they create religions, institutions, clubs, etc - as well as the supposed enemies of their "religion" morality, thinking and traditional which they can  blame the corruption of their moral and institutional principles (for not lasting, not being permanent and not being eternal), instead of recognise the natural and constant changes inherent in society and human development. For this reason both Jordan Peterson and Voegelin accidentally fall in the trap they blame against. What differs them from the no conservatives and no pessimistic thinkers I mentioned is that they try to go forwards in what they believe to be an ever changing society and human perception of reality, and in this natural reality movement trying to accommodate their solutions (those who present any solution). It happens that Voegelin did notice that he was becoming one of the ideologists he was fighting against. An ideologist in favor of religion, institutions, and all that. He addresses this in the introduction of the 3rd volume of Order and History.

[1] Weisberg, Jacob. Happy Birthday, Heritage Foundation 2010-03-23 at the Wayback Machine, Slate, January 9, 1998.
[2] MISES L. V. "Liberalismus". Germany: Gustav Fischer Verlag,1927.
[3] Macintyre, A. Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. University of Notre Dame Press, 1990
[4] Mises, Ludwig von. "Psychology and Thymology". Theory and History. New Haven : Yale University Press, 1957 (pp. 272)