A fanatic is a person who does crazy shit which is counterproductive to the cause he or she espouses. The original meaning was of a person possessed by some God whose behaviour is excused by the devout for that reason. But it is not good behaviour. It must not be emulated even if it is a 'wonder and a sign'.
Paul Katsafanas disagrees. He thinks fanaticism is a vice- i.e. something which can be controlled. He says 'Like other vices, it can be present in a person who is directed at good ends.'
No vice is directed at good ends. Consider the vice of drunkenness. A person may be 'directed at a good end'- viz. driving the School bus- but, if he is drunk, what he is doing is very bad indeed. He should be sent to jail.
Fanaticism is not necessarily a vice. Consider a fanatical vegan who makes a nuisance of himself at the dinner table by banging on about how meat is murder. But being a boring shit head is like being very flatulent. You commit a nuisance which falls below the threshold of vice or immorality.
'And it can even be connected to individual or social flourishing:
No. In that case it would be merely a vociferous sort of 'enlightened self-interest'. We may say 'Churchill was fanatically opposed to Indian independence' in that his own colleagues in the Conservative party felt his speeches and other interventions were counter-productive. It was better for the country to proceed down the path to self-run in a manner which was beneficial to the British economy and Imperial defence. By contrast, nobody says 'Churchill was fanatically opposed to Hitler' . After all, it was common knowledge that he could say nice things about Hitler when Germany posed no threat to the UK. Indeed, more even than Mussolini, there was a possibility that Hitler could serve British interests by gaining territory to his East in a manner which made Eastern Europe more secure, stable, and economically integrated. (Indeed, when Poland and Hungary took a bite out of Czechoslovakia, there was a possibility that a German 'corridor' would be ceded in return for a collective security pact). Thus, since Churchill's policies with respect to Hitler were highly productive, it follows that he was no fanatic in that connection. Later, it turned out he also wasn't a fanatic on the topic of India. He apologized to Nehru and made friends with him with the result that India remained within the Sterling Zone and retained a British Admiral after Churchill returned to Downing Street.
there can be conditions under which it’s all things considered better, either individually or socially, to be a fanatic.'
No. If a thing succeeds then it was not a case of fanaticism. It was a case of foresight.
Katsafanas contradicts his previous assertion that fanaticism is a vice. He says it is a type of devotion.
We should reserve fanaticism for a pathological form of devotion,
just say it is obviously counterproductive and be done with it. There is no need to speak of pathology. It is not as though the thing can be cured.
which couples devotion with a problematic stance.
Everything is 'problematic' to some shithead or the other. 'Counterproductive' is objective. Look at the outcome. Consider the Circumcellions. They were a Christian sect with left wing views. But zeal for martyrdom caused them to attack soldiers with wooden swords in the hope that they would be killed for the the greater glory of God. But this gave their sect a bad name. It caused 'scandal'- i.e. it created a stumbling block to faith in the new Religion.
Insofar as devotion to some end is good, fanatical devotion to the end will also be in certain respects good.
No. If you attack a soldier hoping to achieve martyrdom, you aren't a 'witness' to a great Truth. You are crazier than a shithouse rat.
But it will still be a pathology, involving a problem with the person’s psychology.
Not necessarily. There really are people with nothing to lose. Why not die doing crazy shit if the alternative is cholera or leprosy or just remaining a half starved prole?
Distinguishing fanaticism and devotion, while treating fanaticism as a vicious form of devotion, clarifies what is at stake in the debates about whether fanaticism is bad.
No. The devout get to say what is or is devotion and what is crazy shit. The Catholic Church condemned the Circumcellions along with other Donatists (who believed the Church must be a community of Saints, not flawed human beings.).
There are three important points.
If by 'important', you mean 'stupid'- sure.
First, in ordinary discourse we typically treat fanaticism as bad. There should be at least a minor presumption in favor of accounts that match customary usage. Treating fanaticism as a vicious form of devotion enables us to do so.
No. Farting at the dinner table is bad. It isn't 'vicious'.
Moreover, it enables us to do so while still recognizing that many praiseworthy forms of devotion resemble (but are not identical to) fanaticism.
The word comes from 'fanum'- a temple or sanctuary. Such places might have a 'fool for God'- i.e. a crazy, drooling, naked dude shrieking obscenities. The congregation says 'he is touched' or possessed by the tutelary deity of the shrine.
Second, one underlying disagreement in these disputes about the badness of fanaticism is whether every case of resolute, doubt-free dedication to costly ends constitutes fanaticism.
If it is counter-productive, it is fanaticism. Otherwise, it is foresight. Some years ago, I'd have said the Taliban was fanatical. But, they are now in power and appear better able to do deals with other powers- e.g. Russia, China, India etc.
Many forms of political and social activism involve the three core features of fanaticism (high degree of commitment,
Nonsense! A fanatic who shuts the fuck up if beaten sufficiently, is still a fanatic just as a crazy person who behaves while the eye of the muscular orderly upon his remains crazy.
high degree of certainty,
This is not required at all. Self-confidence is one thing. Vociferousness is another. But degrees of certainty have to do with some sort of epistemological calculus. True, there may be highly educated fanatics but what is more common is ignorant nutters doing stupid, counterproductive, shite.
high degree of willingness to sacrifice
Some fanatics are the first to turn tail and run away. Sacrifice requires self-control. Impulsive shitheads may lack it entirely.
Consider someone like Nelson Mandela,
sentenced at the Rivionia trial in 1962. Significantly, only Xhosa, Sotho, White & Indians were involved. There were no Zulus. The big question was whether South Africa would be dominated by Boers or by Zulus. The Xhosa needed to play their cards cleverly.
who devoted himself in a wholehearted, unbending manner to his cause and was willing to endure extreme costs to sustain it.
After McMillan's 'winds of change' speech and increasing Soviet and Chinese aid to African leaders, a rapid transition to majority rule was expected. The Apartheid regime lasted longer than expected at least partly because African leaders turned out be utterly shit. Still, by 1985, the writing was on the wall. Mandela's genius was to stay in jail while Govan Mbeki went free in 1987. What really mattered was the attitude of Buthelezi, leader of the Zulus.
It was obvious that after Buthelezi became critical of the ANC in the Eighties, that some sort of deal would have to be done once the Soviets and the Americans came to an understanding and the Cubans were withdrawn. No fanatics featured is the politics of the period. After the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, Ian Smith had to commence negotiation. In South Africa, a corruption scandal (Muldergate) had a big fallout at the end of the Seventies. The incentive matrix for White politicians had changed. But African politicians too understood that what really mattered was money. Majority rule was the only safe way to loot the country without, like Eschel Rhoodie, being extradited and sent to jail.
More generally, the champion of civil rights, the environmental activist, the person struggling against oppression might all display these three features.
That display may be a pretence. What matters is whether they actually achieve anything.
Katsafanas does not see that fanaticism may be strategic. Indeed, the ability to delude yourself that you are fanatically devoted to a particular cause may have survival value.
A person counts as fanatical to the extent that:
1. Sacred values: she adopts one or more sacred values.
One may go to the 'fanum'- e.g. Church- without adopting any sacred value. Indeed, one may 'speak in tongues' or handle snakes or experience conversion hysteria one day and be back to your usual self the very next day. A lot has to do with suggestibility and vulnerability to 'engulfment'.
Katsafanas clarified what he means by a 'sacred value'. Strangely, it isn't what religions have meant by it.
1. Inviolable: if V2 is an ordinary value, then it is prohibited to sacrifice V1 for V2, regardless of the quantities of V1 and V2.
Not in any religion known to us. Everybody sacrifices VI for V2 and then expiates their sin by saying a couple of Hail Marys or whatever. As the Greek Orthodox Church teaches, Economia is better than Akreibia.
2. Incontestable: It is prohibited to contemplate trading or sacrificing V1 for most or all other values.
There's always a workaround.
3. Dialectically Invulnerable: The agent insulates her commitment to V1 from the effects of justificatory reasoning. That is, while the agent may think about V1’s justification, consider objections to V1, consider alternatives to V1, engage in thought experiments with respect to V1, and so on, the agent does not stake her commitment to V1 on the outcome of this justificatory reasoning. There is no dialectical move that would disrupt the agent’s commitment to V1.
Because it is meaningless. Philosophers don't seem to get that 'commitment' doesn't mean shit.
2. Fragility of the self: she needs to treat the value as sacred in order to preserve her identity.
No. This 'engulfment'. Her identity has been compromised by the bat in her belfry.
3. Fragility of the value: she takes the value’s status as sacred to be threatened when it is not widely accepted.
That's just cognitive dissonance. But if the thing relates to God- i.e. what is genuinely sacred- there's always a workaround.
4. Group identity: she identifies herself with a group, where this group is defined by shared commitment to the sacred value.
Groups split up all the time. So do couples- including married ones. Many commit. Few stay the distance.
Both the fragile and nonfragile agent can see a core commitment as an essential component of their identity;
Anybody can see anything as an essential component of their identity. They are always wrong. There is no component of identity which is true in all possible worlds.
both can attempt to secure that commitment against certain kinds of threats.
but 'securing' a commitment doesn't do shit.
But the fragile agent has an exaggerated sense of threat, seeing threats where there are none, and seeing mere disagreement as threat.
A robust agent may do so. A fragile agent might simply run away or take a lot of drugs.
Empirical research supports this point:
Sadly, empirical research in this field is crap.
fanatics tend to display a heightened sense of threat,
Guys who work as bodyguards do so. OMG! The US Secret Service is staffed entirely by fanatics. By contrast, a religious fanatic may handle poisonous snakes oblivious to the threat they present.
seeing themselves and their communities as facing “intense trouble, difficulty, or danger” (Jensen et al 2018: 7).
Or they may fanatically believe that their community is invulnerable. Why is Churchill making such a fuss about Hitler and the so called 'Battle of Britain'? It is well known that Krauts are stooooopid. They can't fly planes. All they can do is eat sausages and drink beer.
Importantly, these individuals typically take mere disagreement or mere non-acceptance of their sacred values as constituting a threat.
Do they shit themselves? If so, they genuinely think there is a threat. If they aren't shitting themselves, chances are they don't feel threatened. They are merely jelly or grumpy or angry coz they feel their dick isn't getting the acclaim it deserves.
For one example, consider Anders Breivik.
Nazi nutter. He didn't really feel threatened by the guys he shot. But he probably did feel his dick was tiny. Apparently, his mother had been an utter loony toons who 'feminised' him. His best friend was Pakistani and thus he was not forced to pay jizya to the Muslims gangs who ruled much of Oslo.
Breivik carried out a bombing and mass shooting in Norway in 2011 and was widely characterized as a fanatic.
He was a loser with delusions of grandeur. We might compare him to Herostratus who burnt down the Temple at Ephesus so as to gain immortal notoriety.
Shortly before carrying out his attacks, which left 77 people dead, Breivik distributed a 1518- page manifesto that described the various ways in which he saw traditional nationalist values, which he regards as sacred, as threatened by Islam, political correctness, feminism, multiculturalism, and a host of other putative enemies.
In other words he was a MAGA fan avant la lettre.
The examples of fanaticism offered at the beginning of this paper— the insurrectionist, the jihadist, the white nationalist—are analogous: there, too, we often find apocalyptic theories and a sense of widespread threat to their sacred values.
Trump or Musk or Thiel may have such theories. But they are very successful in propagating their beliefs- probably because they are as rich as fuck.
Katsafanas has a well written essay in Aeon titled-
Incandescent anger
Politics today is driven by grievances that can never be assuaged.
Sure they can. Trump's grievance was that he wasn't POTUS. His grievance has been assuaged. Now his grievance is that he isn't immortal. Maybe Musk can freeze his head.
For democracy’s survival, we must grapple with this dynamic
Democracy will survive in places which have never been ruled any other way. It won't endure long in places where it has never existed.
‘I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.’
– from Notes of a Native Son (1955) by James Baldwin
Baldwin knew about pain. Many of the guys who hated him didn't. That's why they had no empathy.
Some people seem driven more by what they oppose, reject and hate than by what they promote, affirm and revere.
Some people are 'antagonomic'. They are against anything and everything. But they tend not to be fanatics precisely because they are also against fanaticism.
Their political commitments, personal identities and emotional lives appear to be structured more by opposition, resentment and hostility than by a positive set of ideals or aspirations.
Women are fanatical. That's why they don't want to sleep with me. It isn't the case that they find me ugly, smelly and as poor as fuck.
Tucker Carlson, a prominent Right-wing television host and former Fox News anchor, has no shortage of enemies. On his shows, he has condemned gender-neutral pronouns, immigrants, the removal of Confederate statues, mainstream media, the FBI and CIA, globalism, paper straws, big tech, foreign aid, school curricula, feminism, gingerbread people, modern art – and the list goes on. Each item is presented as an existential threat or a sign of cultural decay. Even when conservatives controlled the White House and the US Senate, he presented those like him as under siege. Victories never brought relief, only more enemies, more outrage, more reasons to stay aggrieved.
One could say the same thing about Noam Chomsky. The difference is that Tucker makes way more money.
In April 2025, Donald Trump took the stage to mark the 100th day of his second term as US president. You might have expected a moment of triumph. He had reclaimed the presidency, consolidated power within the Republican Party, and issued a vast range of executive orders. But the mood wasn’t celebratory. It was combative. Trump spent most of his time attacking his predecessor Joe Biden, repeating false claims about the 2020 election, denouncing the press, and warning of threats posed by immigrants, ‘radical Left lunatics’ and corrupt elites. The tone was familiar: angry, aggrieved, unrelenting. Even in victory, the focus was on enemies and retribution.
In other words, he recycled his old material. If it aint broke, don't fix it.
This dynamic isn’t unique to the United States. Leaders like Narendra Modi in India,
who has to keep pivoting because the country is growing rapidly and expectations have changed. In particular, it is now poorer women who are the swing voters. Look at Modi & Nitish's campaign pitch in the recent Bihar elections. It came down to bribing women while reminding younger voters of 'Jungle Raj' under the Yadav dynasty.
Viktor Orbán in Hungary
he pivoted big time on the advise of Finklestein. He started off as a Soros-funded Liberal before moving further and further to the right. Again, this comes down to buying votes and ensuring his allies get rich.
and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil
Who wouldn't have been elected if Lula hadn't been in jail. Now it is his turn to do porridge.
have built movements that thrive on perpetual grievance.
The Left has its own Grievance Studies industry. Why do heterosexual men have dicks? Dicks cause RAPE! Chop them off immediately.
Even after consolidating power, they continue to cast their nations as under siege – from
Neo-liberalism, Patriarchy, Normative Heterosexuality, Misogyny, Homophobia, Racism, and the fact that heterosexual dicks haven't been chopped off.
immigrants, intellectuals, journalists or cultural elites. The rhetoric remains combative, the mood aggrieved.
People get aggrieved about not being allowed to compete in Women's Athletics just because they have a long beard and a big dick. J.K Rowling is very evil for not supporting them.
Figures like Carlson and Trump
and Kamala. Biden's job was to make her look good. He was very evil. Did you know he has a white dick?
don’t pivot from grievance to resolution. Victory doesn’t bring peace, grace or reconciliation. Instead, they remain locked in opposition. Their energy, their meaning, even their identity, seem to depend on having an endless list of enemies to fight.
Trump & Sanders rose relative to Hilary because they opposed TPP. Trump went the extra mile. He promised to protect American jobs from low wage foreign competition as well as from immigrants. Carlson is a successful TV personality who knows about 'focus groups' and what's trending on Social Media.
So there’s an interesting dynamic: certain individuals and movements seem geared toward perpetual opposition.
Why do Political parties oppose each other. Democrats ought to campaign for Republican candidates. Also, how come the guys at Ford don't praise the cars made by G.M.
When one grievance is corrected, another is found. When one enemy is defeated, another is sought. What explains this perpetual need for enemies?
Competition doesn't entail enmity.
Some people adopt this stance tactically: they recognise that opposition and condemnation can attract a large following, so they produce outrage or encourage grievance as a way of generating attention.
Why don't they just talk about their cat, Mitzi?
Perhaps it’s all an act: what they really want, what they really care about, is maximising the number of social media followers, building brands or getting elected. But this can’t be a full explanation.
Yes it can. People are motivated by money and fame and power and influence.
Even if certain people adopt this tactical stance, their followers don’t: they appear genuinely gripped by anger and condemnation.
We call them Feminists. Bitches be kray kray.
And not all leaders appear to be calculating and strategic: Trump’s outrage is genuine.
It is tactical. He made nice with Mamdani because he could see the young man was popular with voters. Lots of Jews voted for him. Trump needed to pivot to 'affordability' though he now seems to be turning away from it because he realizes that inflation won't go away in time for mid-terms.
This pattern of endless denunciation and grievance has been noticed by many scholars.
Grievance Studies was a Leftist innovation. It is only with the Tea Party that you saw an organized back-lash. But it was Protectionism and Migration which gave them the edge. But for COVID, Trump would have got his second term.
As a recent study puts it, ‘grievance politics revolves around the fuelling, funnelling, and flaming of negative emotions such as fear or anger.’
& using the right pronouns and saying 'Latinx' and not hiring straight White males.
But what makes this oppositional stance appealing?
Competition works that way. We like to see athletes trash-talking each other. It lends drama to the proceedings.
If it’s not just strategic posturing, what explains it?
Entertainment value. We pay more for what is more engrossing.
We can begin answering that question by distinguishing two ways that movements or orientations can be oppositional.
Either the opposition involves something which actually matters or it is just 'trash talk'.
Sometimes, movements face a vast set of obstacles and opponents. Take the protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and ’70s.
Young people genuinely didn't want to get killed by 'gooks'. Tax-payers too were unhappy.
This movement had a clear goal: ending US involvement in Vietnam. It lasted for more than a decade and unfolded across multiple fronts, which ranged from marches to acts of civil disobedience to teach-ins to draft resistance. Participants faced real costs: jail time, government surveillance, public backlash, even violence. The targets of opposition shifted over time – from the Lyndon B Johnson administration, to Richard Nixon, to Gerald Ford. The tactics evolved: from letter-writing campaigns to draft-card burnings, mass marches, lobbying from wounded veterans, and testimony from grieving families. Nonetheless, this was a movement that aimed at a concrete goal. Opposition was necessary, but it was a means to an end. The focus remained on the goal, rather than on sustaining conflict for its own sake.
In other words, 'rational self interest' was involved. That's why Carter granted unconditional pardons to draft dodgers.
The anti-apartheid movement offers another example. For decades, activists fought to dismantle a specific political system in South Africa. The struggle demanded great sacrifice and long-term opposition, but these efforts were tethered to a definite goal. Once that goal was achieved, the movement largely dissolved. Its antagonism had a purpose and, when that purpose was fulfilled, the opposition faded.
There will still be people who want White farmers to fuck off. Actually, all Europeans and Asians and dudes from the other tribe should fuck the fuck off.
The Vietnam War protests and the anti-apartheid movements both involved forms of opposition and grievance, but their antagonism was in the service of positive goals.
Just as those who were getting rich of the Vietnam War or the Apartheid system were pursuing a 'positive goal'. They called it keeping Communism at bay.
The movements discussed above – those led by Carlson, Trump, Orbán and so on – are very different.
Nope. Trump & Orban wanted and got power. Trump is hinting that he might change the Constitution to get a third term.
Their energy, coherence and sense of identity seem to depend on opposition itself.
You can say this about anything. My sense of identity seems to depend on my spirited opposition to turning into a cat.
Grievance animates their followers; hostility to enemies becomes central to how they think, feel and see themselves. Without enemies, the movement would unravel.
This dude's essay would unravel if he didn't hate Carlson, Trump & Orban so much.
These examples indicate that hostility, anger and opposition don’t necessarily make a movement problematic.
Problematic is just a polite way of saying 'shitty'.
On the contrary, they can be signs of moral concern, legitimate reactions to the fact that something precious is being threatened.
e.g. my personhood is threatened by the danger that I might turn into a cat.
As Martha Nussbaum has argued, anger can play an essential role in democratic life
as can peeing and shitting
by expressing moral concern and galvanising collective action.
I wanted to piss upon Amartya Sen to express moral concern. Sadly, I was too drunk and ended up pissing on a cat. I think it put a hex on me. That is why I have to struggle so hard to keep from turning into a cat.
Iris Marion Young has made similar points, showing how opposition can affirm shared values.
As can pissing and shitting.
And in 1968 Martin Luther King Jr claimed that ‘the supreme task is to organise and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.’
He got shot by an angry dude.
But there’s a difference between opposition that aims to realise a shared good, and opposition that is pursued for its own sake.
Shooting uppity niggers wasn't done for its own sake. It was done to benefit White males.
Some movements use opposition as a means to build something they value. Others make opposition itself the point.
In which case there is no movement. There's just a group of antagonomic nutters. Exile them to some shitty University Department.
That’s the distinction I want to highlight: between what I call contingently negative and constitutively negative orientations.
Neither term has a well defined extension.
Contingently negative movements treat opposition as a means to a positive end, a way of building something better.
Trump wants to change America. Kamala merely wanted to replace White heterosexual Males with African-American women. Homos were welcome to fuck themselves.
Constitutively negative movements are different: what’s essential is the continuous expression of hostility, rather than the attainment of any particular goal.
That's Kamala. She even expresses hostility to African-American women in Biden's White House. Why can't everybody just dedicate themselves to praising Kamala?
Grievance politics involves a constitutively negative orientation.
Why are White peeps so goddam White? Can't they at least have black stripes, like Zebras? Also how come some peeps don't have to sit down to pee? How is that fair?
That’s what sets it apart from liberatory movements,
which are against the interests of the 'oppressors'. They may want to defend the status quo.
struggles to realise ideals,
Ideals can clash with each other.
or efforts to defend cherished values.
see above.
If you value something, you’ll be disturbed by threats to it. You’ll be sensitive to people who might undermine it, and you may be moved to defend it. That’s normal. That’s part of what it is to value anything at all. But constitutively negative orientations are different.
Only if they amount to pathological 'antagonomia'. This may be treatable with medication.
Values are just pretexts for expressing hostility.
But hostility can be expressed even if values are shared. Also, it may be dangerous to express hostility.
If one value is secured, we just need a new outlet and a new justification for hostility.
If you get paid to be hostile- that's what you do. Soldiers are meant to be hostile to the enemy. They shouldn't be blowing kisses to them.
The driving need is not to protect or preserve, but to oppose.
In the UK, there is a person who gets paid to be the Leader of the Opposition.
But why would anyone be drawn to a constitutively negative orientation?
If they get paid to do it, the answer is 'money'. But it may also be 'public esteem' or 'power & influence'.
Why are these orientations so gripping? The answer is simple: they deliver powerful psychological and existential rewards.
Money has a very positive psychological effect.
Psychologically, they transform inward pain to outward hostility,
Nonsense! You can't cure a migraine by shouting 'boo to Trump!'
offer a feeling of elevated worth, and transform powerlessness into righteousness. Existentially, they provide a sense of identity, community and purpose.
Money does that. Being as poor as fuck while screaming your tits off at Neo-Liberalism doesn't provide shit.
To see how this works, we need to distinguish between emotions and emotional mechanisms.
Emotions are 'Darwinian algorithms of the mind'. They are mechanisms which have been selected for because they have survival value. But suppressing emotions or running the fuck away may be preferable.
Emotions like anger, hatred, sadness, love and fear are familiar. But emotional mechanisms are subtler and often go unnoticed.
More particularly if they don't exist.
They are not individual emotions; they’re psychological processes that transform one emotional state into another. They take one set of emotions as input and produce a different set of emotions as output.
Charlatans might make some money by helping you 'repurpose' your feelings of inadequacy brought on by having a tiny dick into a feeling of superiority because 'small is beautiful'.
Here’s a familiar example: it’s hard to keep wanting something that you know you can’t have.
e.g. immortality.
If you desperately want something and can’t get it, you will experience frustration, unease, perhaps envy; you may even feel like a failure.
Religion exists for this reason. It has high income elasticity of demand because even rich peeps die.
In light of this, there’s psychological pressure to transform frustration and envy into dismissal and rejection. The teenager who can’t make it onto the soccer team convinces himself that athletes are just dumb jocks.
This tends to be true. There's an opportunity cost to a young person's time. The nerd may be on track to becoming a billionaire.
Or, you’re filled with envy when you scroll through photos of exotic vacations and gleaming houses, but you reassure yourself that only superficial people want these things – your humble home is all that you really want.
If you are as stupid as shit- sure. Otherwise you try to find out about crypto or day trading or becoming a distributor for Chinese electric cars.
There’s a similar mechanism that transforms humiliation and low self-worth into a form of spiteful hatred. Philosophers call this ressentiment – a French word for resentment, but with a twist. It names not just a passing feeling, but a deeper emotional mechanism, one that transmutes pain, powerlessness and humiliation into condemnation.
Not in Germany. They went in for Science & Technology and building up industrial capacity and a kick-ass army.
In the late 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche argued that ressentiment is the emotional mechanism behind many of our values.
He taught worthless shit. Also he had syphilis and went mad. Smart Germans were doing STEM subjects.
Modern ‘morality begins’, Nietzsche wrote in On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), ‘when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values.’
In other words, Christianity sucks ass big time. Nietzsche's daddy was a Minister of Religion.
Since then, a range of thinkers
shitheads who studied and then taught worthless shite
have traced the way that ressentiment shapes social and political life. As Wendy Brown describes it, ressentiment is a ‘triple achievement: it produces an affect (rage, righteousness) that overwhelms the hurt, it produces a culprit responsible for the hurt, and it produces a site of revenge to displace the hurt …
In other words, bitches be kray kray coz they have to sit down to pee.
’ Put simply, ressentiment is an emotional mechanism that transforms feelings of worthlessness or humiliation into vindictive feelings of superiority, rancour and blame.
People who teach non-STEM subjects know they are worthless. This makes them very vindictive and rancorous.
We can see how this plays out in individual lives. Imagine someone who grows up in a declining rural town.
or who teaches imbeciles in a declining University department.
She dreams of escape, fantasising about the vibrant lives she sees portrayed in cities, lives full of culture, opportunity, wealth and success. As the years go on, the dream seems unattainable. Jobs are scarce, advancement elusive, and nothing in her life resembles what she once imagined. Frustrated and unhappy, she feels like a failure in life.
No. The stupid cunt telling this story thinks the woman is a failure just because she doesn't teach worthless shite to imbeciles.
But then she encounters grievance-filled populist rhetoric.
As opposed to Professors of 'Grievance Studies'.
The people she once admired and envied – the people she now identifies as the urban elite – are cast as the cause of her suffering.
Only if they keep putting up immigrants in hotels while she can't make rent on her mobile home.
They are selfish, out of touch, morally corrupt, and hostile to her way of life.
True enough.
What once seemed like an image of the good life now appears as injustice.
Demographic replacement appears unjust. White peeps don't want to go the way of the First Nations.
And, rather than focusing on specific policy proposals for correcting structural economic injustices,
e.g keeping out migrants and getting protection from low-wage competition.
she becomes energised by condemnation and hostility.
Just as these guys are energised by hating on this trailer trash woman from a fly-over state. I bet she is morbidly obese and smokes Marlborough Lights.
Or picture another person, a lonely man who watches others form friendships, build relationships, and move easily through social spaces, while he remains on the margins.
Coz he is poor. Money is honey my dear sonny & a rich man's joke is always funny.
He feels isolated, sad, alone. One day he stumbles into a corner of the internet that offers an explanation: the problem isn’t him, it’s the world.
He becomes a Marxist?
Reading incel websites, he comes to believe that feminism, social norms and cultural hypocrisy have made genuine connection impossible for someone like him.
Why can't hot girls just suck me off already?
In time, he internalises this story. His disappointment becomes a source of pride, a mark of insight. His sadness transforms into anger. He has enemies to rail against and grievances to voice.
I suppose these nutters will get Chairs in 'Loser Studies'. There is no shite too stupid not to be taught at Uni. What is interesting is that many younger White heterosexual men who have been squeezed out of tenure track positions by DEI have already take this road. It turns out Church going young men, can get attractive wives who don't beat them.
These cases differ in an interesting way: the economic case involves a real form of structural injustice, whereas the incel case involves an ideology that invents a grievance.
If you punch me, I have a genuine grievance. If I punch you, your grievance is imaginary.
But notice that beyond this difference, there’s a similar emotional arc. A person starts out with a positive vision of the good. But their life is full of hardship, disappointment and despair.
No it isn't. If you keep your faith in God, you are a winner.
Initially, they might blame themselves. And that’s painful. It’s hard to sit in one’s own pain, feeling responsible for it, feeling like a failure. It’s especially hard when you see other people enjoying the life that you wish you had.
Just accept Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Lord God and Saviour and you are ahead of the game.
In time, these people encounter a narrative that redirects the blame.
Socialism. Feminism. Atheism.
Their unhappiness isn’t their own fault, it’s the fault of someone else. They are being treated unfairly, unjustly; they are being attacked, oppressed or undermined. This kind of story is seductive.
Communists ruled half the world not so long ago.
It offers release from feelings of diminished self-worth.
As does getting a pay hike.
It offers a way to deflect pain, assign blame and recast oneself as a victim.
Fuck that! Recast yourself as a winner. Victims tend to get fucked in the ass.
It also offers a community of like-minded peers who reinforce this story. What emerges is a kind of negative solidarity: bound together through animosity, they attack or disparage an outgroup.
Just as this cunt is doing.
The individual now belongs to a group of people who share outrage and recognise the same enemies.
His enemies are Trump, Orban- even Modi in distant India.
The chaos and turmoil of life is organised into a clear narrative of righteousness: in opposing the enemy, we become good.
This cunt thinks he is fighting for the good by bad-mouthing Trump & Carlson. But his efforts are counter-productive. We feel he is shit at the subject he teaches.
As the 20th-century thinkers René Girard and Mircea Eliade remind us,
you can leverage a PhD in Proust or Samkhya into any kind of charlatanry
opposition can do more than divide – it can bind. Girard saw how communities forge unity through a common enemy, channelling their fears and frustrations onto scapegoats.
Girard was wrong. Scapegoats don't achieve shit though they may be part of some hoary ritual. What forged unity was good military training and capable generals. Otherwise, the people were conquered, enslaved, and shipped off to different parts of the Empire.
This shared act of condemnation offers not just relief, but belonging.
It really doesn't. The thing was a spectacle- like watching criminals being hanged at Tyburn.
Eliade, approaching these points from a different angle, examined our yearning to fold personal suffering into a larger, morally charged drama.
He too was wrong. Still, he did fuck the 13 year old daughter of his Sanskrit Professor.
Grievance politics draws on both patterns. It doesn’t just vent rage; it weaves pain into a story. It offers a script in which hardship becomes injustice, and outrage becomes identity.
Like what Mamdani did in New York? The suffering of Gazans helped him immensely.
These patterns aren’t just speculative. Scholars have traced how pain, disappointment and a sense of failure can be transfigured into grievance – how personal frustration becomes political identity.
This has never happened. There are economic and political issues which people have good reason to believe can be resolved in a manner favourable to themselves.
In her work on rural Wisconsin,
Wisconsin was more reformist and Socialist because of the high number of Scandinavian and German migrants.
Katherine Cramer shows how economic stagnation can give rise to resentment toward urban elites.
But Wisconsin flipped for Biden in 2020. Maybe they just didn't like female candidates.
Arlie Russell Hochschild, drawing on interviews in Louisiana, describes a ‘deep story’ in which people feel passed over, displaced, left behind.
They keep voting for Trump.
Kate Manne and Amia Srinivasan examine how narratives in incel communities convert rejection and loneliness into a sense of moral entitlement.
They make a mountain out of a molehill. There does seem to be a cult of the mass shooter. But there are also people who go in for 'suicide by cop'.
And a wide range of research in psychology, sociology and philosophy explores how diminished self-worth can be redirected outward: into anger, blame and opposition.
I suppose Professors of non-STEM subjects have diminished self-worth. That's why Grievance Studies flourishes on campus.
When movements are formed and sustained in this way, they are no longer organised around a shared vision of the good.
There never has been a 'shared vision of the good'. What people agreed about was that getting conquered and enslaved sucks ass big time.
Instead, they are structured by shared animosity. Opposition isn’t incidental. It becomes the structure through which meaning, coherence and solidarity are generated.
Nonsense! There may be a political party or looser type of organization which offers individuals a method of self-advancement while pushing for a particular socio-economic agenda.
Often, these narratives begin with real problems and legitimate grievances – the economic case certainly does.
That's the one that matters. Trump now has to persuade voters that the economy has gotten better under him. It's a tough sell.
The most effective narratives are superficially plausible. But they tend to be exaggerated and simplistic.
Like this essay. Trump is bad. But who is good? Kamala?
It may be true that economic opportunities are scarce and financial security is precarious. But the ressentiment narrative turns this into a story of blame and hostility,
like Mamdani banging on about billionaires?
painting a simple picture of who is responsible and what can be done about it.
That's what got Mamdani elected. Trump was very sweet to him because he saw the lad was a 'winner', not a 'whiner'.
It transforms genuine frustration into wholesale animosity.
Students of non-STEM subjects experience genuine frustration because their Professors are stupider than they are.
And that’s why these movements need enemies.
No. They would prefer it if their rivals sucked them off and pledged allegiance to them.
They define themselves through rejection.
Trump hasn't been rejected.
Unlike contingently negative orientations – which are built around the pursuit of some good, some value worth realising – constitutively negative orientations draw their energy from resistance, antagonism and negation.
in the old days, when you said this, people understood you meant Jews or uppity niggers or peeps who have to sit down to pee.
Their integrity depends on the persistence of something to oppose.
Bitches be kray kray because they have to sit down to pee. That is why they make such a fuss about getting promoted at work. Why can't they understand that they'd be happier sucking off the boss for half the pay of their male colleagues?
The result is a kind of political metabolism that requires enemies to function. If the enemy disappears, the orientation loses its shape.
Very true. That's why the USA collapsed once Mad King George fucked the fuck off.
This is not simply a matter of having enemies, which is common to many political movements. Nor is it a criticism of all forms of opposition; many just causes require resistance and a focus on enemies. The key point is structural:
if I like it, it is good. If I don't like it, is a form of mental illness.
in constitutively negative orientations, opposition is pursued for its own sake. Opposition is no longer a means to an end; it is the end itself.
That's antagonomia.
Resolution becomes a threat rather than a goal, for resolution would rob the movement of the very antagonism that gives it purpose.
After the Revolution you have to kill a lot of antagonomic nutters. Stalin did a great job killing Old Bolsheviks.
Viewed in this light, the Carlson monologues and Trump rallies aren’t simply strategic or performative. They’re sustaining a structure of belonging built around the rhetoric of attack. What the movements share is an inability to rest, to consolidate, to affirm. They live through negation.
Like Sanders & Mamdani & so forth.
With all of that in mind, we can now see the structure of grievance politics more clearly.
We can see this man's bigotry.
In the traditional picture, grievance begins with ideals.
No. It begins with injury.
We have definite ideas about what the world should be like.
No we don't- unless we teach useless shite.
We look around the world and see that it fails to meet these values, that it contains certain injustices.
e.g. women having to sit down to pee.
From there, we identify people responsible for these injustices, and blame them.
Biden forced Kamala to sit down to pee. What a bastard!
But grievance politics operates differently.
It may use class action suits or form coalitions to change political outcomes. Grievance Studies, by contrast, is stupid shite about how it's totes unfair that women have to sit down to pee.
It begins not with ideals, but with unease, with feelings of powerlessness, failure, humiliation or inadequacy.
That's how we all feel as babies. The solution is obvious. Ban babies. Everybody should be 30 years old at birth.
Political and ethical rhetoric is offered that transforms these self-directed negative emotions into hostility, rage and blame.
Guys who get laid off because the bosses have moved the factory to Mexico don't feel angry.
Negative emotions that would otherwise remain internal find a new outlet, latching on to ever-new enemies and grievances.
like this cretin mentioning Modi. Fuck does he know about India?
The vision that redirects these emotions will cite particular values and goals, but the content of those values and goals doesn’t matter all that much.
No. They are crucial. Trump will lose the mid-terms unless he brings down the cost of living. The fear is that he will get sucked into costly wars in Nigeria and Venezuela. True, they have oil but so did Iraq. That didn't end well.
What’s most important is that the values and goals justify the hostility. If the world changes, the values and ideals can shift. But the emotional need remains constant: to find someone or something to oppose.
In a Democracy, it is the rival party. We have competitive markets including a market for votes.
That’s why traditional modes of engagement with grievance politics will backfire.
These guys have no fucking engagement with anything real. That's why they teach useless shite.
People often ask: why not just give them some of what they want?
Why not do your fucking job properly?
Why not compromise, appease or meet them halfway? Surely, if you satisfy the grievance, the hostility will subside?
Redress grievances and then go the extra mile by solving collective action problems in a manner which benefits them. Suddenly, they start voting for you.
But it doesn’t. The moment one demand is met, another appears.
No. People are rational. The question is why Western Governments did stupid shit on issues like migration. The answer was they were afraid of a vocal minority which would label them Racist or Fascist or whatever. That bluff has been called.
The particular goals and demands are not the point. They are just vehicles for expressing opposition. What’s really being sustained is the emotional orientation: the need for enemies.
What sustained Grievance Studies and DEI was the need for jobs as administrators creating work for each other while the Chinese ate our lunch.
Understanding grievance politics as a constitutively negative orientation
is meaningless shite.
– as a stance that draws its energy and coherence from opposition itself – changes how we respond.
It makes your response even stupider and more counter-productive. Just say, half of all American are evil cunts. They voted for Trump. Send them to concentration camps and then deport their sorry asses. Also make gender reassignment surgery free and compulsory for all heterosexual males.
It explains why fact-checking, appeasement and policy concessions fail: they treat symptoms, rather than the cause.
In other words tell the Grievance Studies nutters to shove their Identity Politics up their own arses.
If opposition itself is the source of emotional resolution and identity, then resolution feels like a loss rather than a gain.
Very true. George Washington got so depressed when Mad King George fucked off that he topped himself.
It drains the movement’s animating force. That’s why each appeasement is followed by a new complaint, a new enemy, a new cause for outrage.
Chamberlain appeased Hitler. But then became obvious that Hitler was just getting started. Thus Germany became England's enemy.
The point is not to win; the point is to keep fighting and condemning.
No. The Brits won. Then they focussed on rebuilding their own country.
Seeing the dynamic in this way also clarifies what real resistance would require.
Churchill knew what real resistance required. This useless cunt knows shit.
The aim isn’t just to rebut false claims, to condemn hostility or to attempt appeasement. The solution is to redirect the energies that grievance politics mobilises. To do so, we need alternative forms of meaning, identity and belonging, which satisfy those needs in a way that doesn’t depend on hostile antagonism.
Get angry white folk to turn into dope-smoking zebras.
We need an orientation that is grounded not in grievance, but in affirmation.
i.e. virtue signalling
One that draws strength not from hostility, but from commitment to something worth loving, revering or cherishing.
Mom's apple pie especially if she is actually your Daddy and performed gender reassignment surgery on himself while high on drugs at an 'Occupy Wall Street' encampment.
What we need, then, are narratives that can sustain devotion.
The Bible has such a narrative.
Devotion is a form of attachment that combines love or reverence with commitment and a willingness to endure.
No. A devout Buddhist may reject any form of attachment. A devout Christian may fear, not love, God. As for 'willingness to endure', some devout people have it. Others don't.
It orients a person toward something they regard as intrinsically worthwhile
in which case that orientation pre-existed.
– something that gives shape to a life, even in the face of difficulty or doubt.
No. Devotion may not give shape to this life. It may alter the after-life.
Like constitutively negative orientations, devotion can provide identity,
or it can lead to the dissolution of personal identity
purpose and belonging.
It may involve giving up both.
But it does so without requiring an enemy.
But it can have an enemy. Even Lord Buddha had to face Mara.
Its energy comes not from opposition, but from fidelity to a value that’s seen as worthy of ongoing care.
It may have no fucking energy. An unfaithful person may be devout. Great fidelity may coexist with complete nihilism.
In my own work, I’ve argued that devotion can supply a stable sense of meaning, identity and purpose, without lapsing into antagonism and dogmatism.
Or it can do the reverse. There is no causal connection, or even any strong correlation, between these things.
This picture resonates with Josiah Royce’s claim that loyalty – which he understands as a form of devotion – provides ‘a personal solution of the hardest of human practical problems, the problem: “For what do I live? Why am I here? For what am I good? Why am I needed?”’
Resonating with a useless tosser only means you are a useless tosser.
It aligns with Harry Frankfurt’s claim that a person’s life is meaningful only if it is devoted to goods that the person cares about for their own sake, and with Thomas Aquinas’s observation that ‘the direct and principal effect of devotion is the spiritual joy of the mind …’ Devotion, so understood, is a steadfast responsiveness to what we cherish, capable of bringing deep, serene fulfilment without requiring an enemy.
This is also true of enjoying a crafty wank.
Of course, offering devotion as an alternative to grievance politics does not mean dismissing all grievances.
It doesn't mean anything at all. Wanking is an alternative to grievance politics. Monetize it by buying shares in Pornhub.
Many forms of suffering and injustice – economic inequality, systemic racism, political exclusion – warrant deep frustration and sustained protest.
Sadly, sustained protest may cause smart people to run away. The economy goes off a cliff. China takes a technological lead. They get the whip-hand.
To feel aggrieved in the face of real harm is not pathological; it is often morally appropriate.
Fuck that. If you are facing real harm, run away or call the police or buy a fucking gun.
Anger, complaint and critique are vital political tools.
They are counter-productive is smart peeps run the fuck away.
What makes grievance politics problematic is not the presence of complaint, but the constitutively negative orientation.
That is certainly the problem with Grievance Studies.
Grievance politics is not rooted in a desire to repair or transform, but in a need to oppose.
This was the problem with the librards. Trump & Co. promised to make working people better off. Hilary & Kamala were all like 'vote for me coz I have to sit down to pee- which is totes unfair.'
The problem isn’t the grievance itself – the problem is when perpetual grievance becomes the whole point, and opposition displaces aspiration.
That's why non-STEM subjects turned to shit. They couldn't raise productivity and thus focussed on whining about how it was totes unfair that smart peeps were doing well.
Grievance politics offers coherence, energy and a sense of belonging.
Identity politics does that- but it can be counter-productive.
But it does so by centring life around perpetual opposition.
This dude is perpetually opposed to Trump, Orban and even Modi in distant India.
Its psychological and existential satisfactions are real, but profoundly damaging.
This guys brain was damaged by studying stupid shit.
When identity is built through antagonism, it becomes dependent on conflict. And that means it can’t stop; it can’t rest.
It publishes essays in Aeon while schilling another worthless book.
The deeper challenge, then, isn’t just to rebut its claims or counter its policies. It’s to offer orientations that can sustain identity, meaning and solidarity without requiring an endless sea of enemies.
Orient yourself to wanking. Please yourself without worrying about all the dudes currently ploughing your wife.
That’s a harder task – but it’s the only hope for combatting the politics of grievance.
No. The politics of grievance is combatted by providing better solutions to collective action problems. When the underlying harm is remedied, the grievance disappears. People feel they have a stake in the system. They are willing to make sacrifices to preserve it from external and internal enemies.
Political problems have political, not philosophical, solutions. In an advanced economy, this has to do with fiscal and monetary and trade policy. Trump is a Wharton graduate of the class of '68, back when optimal tariff theory, industrial policy, and closed economy Keynesianism were mainstream. He got elected because Clinton's NAFTA & Obama's TPP had hurt many American workers. Hilary did do a U turn because of pressure from Sanders (who had sponsored a bill revoking China's 'most favoured country' status in 2005) but it was too little too late. Trump's genius was to deliver for Evangelicals with his SCOTUS appointments. Still, we thought the reversal of Roe v Wade would hurt him but he wriggled out of it by saying 'State's Rights'. Kamala failed to capitalize on the issue. The truth, I suppose, is that she was an air-headed Diversity Hire.
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