Against Paganism, Part 5: There is No Return

Author’s Note: This is the fifth part in a multi-part series in which I critique the rise of paganism within certain Dissident Right circles, listing the major reasons why I think paganism is a dead end for the Right and that it will only end in disaster.

As a thought experiment, I often grant my opponents’ their premises and see if that would change my attitude toward their arguments. Having done this with the “Pagan Right” – that paganism is the true religion of Whites and Christianity is a foreign (i.e., Jewish) interloper – I still see no reason to adopt paganism because nothing can change the fact that there is no return to paganism. As a religion, it died out centuries ago and cannot come back.

Other than simply hating Christianity for being “Jewish,” a line of thinking with multiple historical, linguistic, and theological flaws, the “Pagan Right’s” arguments against Christianity comes down to this: whatever historical value Christianity may have once had, it did introduce the crippling concepts of universalism and the “World to Come.” In turn, these notions would eventually lead to liberalism, communism, and a whole bunch of other ideologies that would, in time, destroy the West. Therefore, as the argument goes, Christianity must be uprooted from the Western spirit so that the downstream consequences of Christianity (universalism, liberalism, etc.) cannot take hold.

Superficially, it would appear as if this “Pagan Right” theory would have some support. Both ideas, universalism and utopianism, are exclusive to the West. Some Westerners will gleefully talk about how proud they are that they will soon become a minority in their own countries. It is likely leftists that do this (as they hate themselves). However, outside of the West, even the Left does not engage in this type of racial self-flagellation. The rest of the world is explicitly kin-based and nationalistic. Hence, why even the Chinese government is taking severe steps, including removing non-Han Chinese, to assure that the ethnic Han remain the majority in China. There is also a reason why communism, as a vehicle to usher in a perfect society as envisioned by Karl Marx, only really holds sway in the West and to a lesser extent Western-educated elites in non-Western societies. Additionally, this is why non-Western communism often winds up only using communist rhetoric to gain support from the Western Left (and during the Cold War, the USSR). In practice, non-Western communism is more focused on removing foreign influence from one’s country and is, in reality, nationalistic. There are many explanations for the American failure of the Vietnam War, but a big one is this: the United States did not understand that the average Vietnamese person did not really care about communism, they were nationalists who wanted to remove a foreign influence from their land, and many considered “communism” as a way to achieve that goal.

Christianity is a religion for all peoples. Conversely, most religions throughout history have been ethnically based and cannot be spread due to their ethnic ties. A non-Indian can never really become a Hindu. Because Christians are promised the “World to Come,” a perfect world ushered in by the Second Coming, utopian ideologies promising this will hold sway in the modern Western mind. There is an entire school of scholars, one I agree with, that view Marxism as a heresy – with Christians becoming the proletarian-class, Satan as the capitalists, Hell is the Revolution, and Heaven is the communist utopia. This is why Jews are drawn to communism, they have this same longing for the World to Come, their promised messiah. But just like at Calvary, they are looking for a political Messiah.

The problem that the “Pagan Right” has, in so far as it pertains to universalism, is that it is based on a misunderstanding of Christian doctrine. Christianity is universalist in the sense that it is for everyone, all nations should be baptized, and no one will be saved or damned because of their DNA. It is not universalist in the sense that it calls for the abolishment of any and all national distinctions, and one would be hard pressed to find a mainstream Christian thinker (before 1945) who argued this position. Even in heaven, national distinctions remain. As Fr. Denis Fahey commented, “God wants one religion and many nations, Satan wants one nation and many religions.” Now, as far as utopianism goes, it is important to remember that this cannot be ushered in through human effort. No one but the Father, not even the Son, knows when the Second Coming will happen. We are told it can occur at any time and we must prepare. The Christian virtue of humility is important here, as it is humility that reminds humans of their limitations and that they cannot, by their own efforts, establish a perfect world. 

And here is the central issue the “Pagan Right” has, even if we grant them their central premises that universalism and utopianism are the byproducts of Christianity. Both ideas are not going anywhere. Instead, Christianity can retrain these ideas, put them into proper context, and point them in the right direction. Universalism, in a traditional Christian context, recognizes that Christianity is for everyone, but that national distinctions must remain. Additionally, utopianism, in historic Christianity, knows that there will be a perfect world one day, but this cannot come by human efforts.

Like it or not, paganism is not returning. The last pagans of Europe were the Balts, and they converted around 700 years go. For the Anglo-Celts, that conversion goes back to around 1,500 years ago. There is very little hope to bring back traditions that have been dormant for this long. Reforming a post-Christian West back to Christianity simply does not compare. Virtually every Western nation could still be accurately called Christian when my father was born. We are talking about undoing a process that is only decades old versus one that is typically over 1,000 of years’ old. There is no return. Even if we do grant the basic argument that Christianity is responsible for universalism and utopianism, it can also curb and control the modern excesses of both impulses. Paganism cannot restrain these indulgences, it is simply too distant to do so.