The Psychology of Radical Egalitarianism (created April 20, 2003; last updated May 25, 2003) A culture of dependence has been created in many countries by allowing America to provide for their military security. This has led to the adoption of radical egalitarian ideologies in Western Europe and elsewhere. The psychological origins of these socialist and morally relativist ideologies are discussed.

At first glance, the ever-increasing shrillness of the criticism of all things American by environmentalists, human rights activists, continental Western Europeans, animal rights activists, anti-globalists, and others appears to flow from a variety of unrelated causes, ranging from disagreements over the role of supranational organizations, the threat of "global warming", genetically modified foods, militarism, the future of the nation-state, pollution, and a variety of other causes that have been taken up by special interest groups.

It is tempting for Americans to debate each of these issues on their merits, because individually, the issues are often based more on emotion than actual facts and thus are easy to refute. However, it is more important to understand the real motivations that inspire these seemingly disparate voices. Although each special interest group specializes in a different aspect of modern culture to criticize, often their criticisms are expressions of an underlying conviction that America is the source of whatever is wrong with the world. The implication, both flattering and annoying to Americans, is that America is all-powerful and all-knowing, and therefore anything unfortunate that happens must be part of some American conspiracy.

The incessant criticism is, of course, an appeal for America to do what the activists want, and their laundry list of changes is therefore, not surprisingly, endless. But the motivating factor for the rage of these anti-Westerners is deeper than the issues they espouse. For example, it has been argued that even if the environmentalists could be somehow convinced, for example, that global warming is not a problem, they would simply switch to another criticism in order to maintain the same level of pressure against America. Whether they are conscious of it or not, the motivation is more of a rebellion against modern capitalist society and American culture; the cause they have undertaken is in most cases merely a means of expressing this anticapitalist and anti-American ideology.

This ideology is called "radical egalitarianism". It is an ideology that branched off from Western-style Liberalism in the 18th century and reached the height of its influence in the revolutions of 1848 and the Communist era of the 20th century. This ideology takes different forms on each side of the Atlantic. In Europe, it takes the form of an indiscriminate and often spiteful and hypocritical anti-Americanism. In America, it takes the form of what is often called by its detractors as "political correctness".

This ideology is based on two fundamental suppositions: (1) that an unequal distribution of wealth and other benefits of society is inherently harmful, and that the purpose of government is to ensure that wealth is evenly distributed, regardless of the relative contributions or merits of the parties involved; and (2) that modern capitalist society is in some way spiritually corrupting, and that mankind should return to an earlier, more natural state. These two ideas are present to varying degrees in the environmentalist, anti-globalist, and "human rights" movements currently in vogue among leftists and endemic in Western Europe. Both ideas have an intrinsic intellectual appeal in some circles, and debating them is an important task. However, in this article I will discuss an equally important question, namely the psychological factors that lead to their adoption.

Many commentators have pointed out the prevalence of postmodernist slogans (it strains credibility to call it "thought") among members of the anti-globalization and environmentalist movements, and have traced their ideological roots to the ideas of Rousseau and Marx. Indeed, many of the movements' leaders and goals today are openly or covertly Marxist. It has even been argued that the Cold War is far from over, and that Marxism has now resurfaced in a European-style socialism. The goals of "political correctness" activists (which includes many feminists, homosexual rights activists, and similar groups) are also socialist in nature, if only for the practical reason that Big Government would be required to implement the policies of distribution of wealth proposed by the anti-globalists and the repression of dissent necessary to enforce the currently acceptable form of social obedience that they insist upon.

But this explanation, important as it may be, does not consider the underlying psychological appeal that such ideologies have in Western societies. While Communist countries like Cuba and North Korea, and even post-Communist countries like Russia and Mainland China, are anything but deficient in anti-Western propaganda, their unsophisticated Cold War rhetoric has little appeal to all but the most committed Marxist radicals.

Many of the anti-globalization protesters moreover seem ill-equipped to understand ideological concepts such as Marxism and postmodernism, which are abstract and far removed from the daily grind of eating, sleeping, carrying signs, and breaking windows. Yet whatever beliefs they do follow obviously exert a strong enough appeal to motivate them to express their dissatisfaction by rioting, defecating in the street, and agitating for more appeasement of dictators. No less inexpertly reasoned statements have come from leaders of various governments in Western Europe and Canada, whose comments are often less disagreements about specific foreign policies than expressions of a visceral hatred of America and a refutation of their own Western values.

Indeed, it may be overestimating the anti-globalists and Western Europeans to suppose that their opinions have any basis in ideology at all. Like the French leaders who complain about America's "arrogance", then arrogantly tell the Eastern European countries that they "missed a good opportunity to shut up", their supposed concerns about America's "arrogance", "unilateralism" and so forth are are mostly smokescreens for their real problem, which is a projection of their own insecurities onto America.

The example of South Korea is a case in point. A recent poll showed that 44% of South Korean people have an "unfavorable" opinion of America. This negativity is most prevalent among younger people, and is largely the result of America having assumed responsibility for South Korea's security. They cannot identify with the troops that are there to protect them and, because they are not participating in their own defense, have no vested interest in maintaining a strong military. The South Korean people accordingly have no sense that they, not America, are responsible for country's survival, so there is little cost in blaming America for all their problems. If American troops at the DMZ were replaced by Koreans, the South Korean people would have an interest in supporting their deployment and their ideology would rapidly transform itself into a more realistic one.

The corruption of ideology born of dependency is more advanced in Western Europe. America still has thousands of troops scattered throughout Western Europe, a remnant of America's role in ensuring the survival of democracy in the Cold War. A side effect of military presence and America's commitment to the NATO alliance was that Western Europe could indulge itself in the fantasy that it was a "moral superpower", since it had been absolved of the responsibility for defending itself and therefore felt no commitment to doing so. Like a human body which in the absence of constant threats loses its immunity to disease, Europeans are now toying with ideologies that in the end, can have no other effect but to ensure Europe's social and economic impoverishment. However, European carping is not motivated only by ideology, socialist, pacifist or otherwise; rather, the ideology they have adopted was chosen for precisely the purpose of maximizing their ability to carp, as a way to give vent to their feelings of powerlessness and frustration. Many non-government organizations (NGOs) that promote this ideology, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Greenpeace, were formed expressly for the purpose of carping. Radical egalitarianism is also the ideology most easily adopted by groups that have become dependent on the largesse of others; hence its popularity with tenured liberal arts faculty at the universities.

Without a vested interest in maintaining their own defense, the Germans, South Koreans and others will continue to exteriorize the role of national defense, and as they desperately try to maintain their pride in spite of an increasingly conspicuous lack of military achievements, will eventually come to see the necessity for military defense, and consequently the desirability of maintaining the nation-state, as beneath them. They will accordingly adopt the ideology that most closely matches their situation, and reinforce it by elaborating on their anti-American mythology, eventually coming to accept much of it as factually if not self-evidently true.

Just as Great Britain supports its large investment in science R&D in part because of a justifiable pride in their own history of scientific achievement, countries that endure the pain of having to provide for their own defense and consequently reap its rewards will naturally adopt a more pro-defense posture. The United States would be doing not just itself, but South Korea and Europe a favor by withdrawing all our troops from their territories. This would strenghthen nationalism in those countries, and serve to immunize their countries against the corrosive viruses of pacifism and dependence. An improved nationalistic spirit could also help undermine democratically deficient -- some would say antidemocratic -- organizations like the EU, which recent experience has shown to be less of an engine of economic growth than an albatross of Belgian-style legalistic self-righteousness that could eventually drown Europe in a morass of stifling bureaucratic regulations.

Numerous other examples abound. The Swedes, for example, frequently take the USA to task for its past mistreatment of the American Indians. Most Americans, however, including the Indians themselves, would agree that our shared history is not a simplistic tale of conflict and cultural domination, but a complex history with both positive and negative aspects. The claim often made by Europeans and revisionist academics that American settlers committed "genocide" against the Indians is, of course, preposterous. But as with all mythologies based on emotion instead of logic, there is a little truth and a lot of exaggeration. This exaggeration is caused by the desire to see the capitalist system, and in particular its flagship state America, as evil, and in desperate need of radical change. How else could European environmentalists argue, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that America is the "world's biggest polluter"? The desire to portray America as evil (and themselves, by implication, as morally superior) is paramount in their minds. The ideology and mythology, in this case the redefinition of carbon dioxide as a "pollutant", was invented to buttress what would otherwise be empty, meaningless invective.

Although part of the source of anti-American mythology is the infusion of inflammatory rhetoric from ideologues in the European press and ex-Communists and leftists among the intelligentsia, these ex-committed ex-Marxists are not powerful enough to drive large social movements. The general population, because of the relative weakness of the individual in any society, cannot afford to follow any coherent ideology other than self-interest, and adopts the ideology that best suits that self-interest. In their attitude toward America, that self-interest is dominated by the need to compensate for their psychological dependence, which is endemic among citizens of countries in which people are powerless to influence events that affect their lives and who can only carp and complain to make their powerlessness seem less painful. This acts as the fuel for the spread of shared myths, ideologies, and demonization of America among the population.

In other words, it is the psychology of the masses that determines the ideology they choose to support. And the ideology that best supports a culture of dependence and weakness is radical egalitarianism -- the philosophy that the state should take away from the rich and give to the poor, that `good' and `evil' are meaningless, relative concepts, that capitalism and Communism, or democracy and tyranny are morally equivalent. Its strong component of moral relativism or antinomianism leads its adherents to believe that tyrannical regimes in third-world countries that commit mass slaughter are doing nothing more than expressing cultural uniqueness or reacting to real or imaginary past wrongs committed by outsiders, and that interfering in such cultures would be wrong. Relativism also provides psychological and practical benefits to persons who feel powerless. If democracy and tyranny are just equivalent choices, with no inherent superiority of one over the other, then there is no moral stigma attached to trading with a tyrant and allowing him (or her) to remain in power. This is convenient and comforting for citizens of a weak nation which would be unable to remove the tyrant even if it wanted to.

Socialism is a natural choice for societies that have become accustomed to having someone else take care of their basic needs. The socialist component of radical egalitarianism also encourages its adherents to believe that economic profits and wealth are inherently immoral, because someone somewhere else is still living in poverty, and that therefore poor countries should be able to tax rich ones in order to remedy this `injustice'. It is no coincidence, however, that this has the side benefit of giving them a chance to carp at richer nations to pressure them into providing more direct benefits to poorer ones.

Anti-Americanism and socialism are harder to sell in America, which has a long tradition of self-reliance, and have only been adopted by the professionally alienated class that haunts our universities. And it is at the universities too where radical egalitarianism has reached its height. It takes the form of political correctness, which is radical egalitarianism implemented at the social level instead of the national level. Like its European variant, American political correctness preaches moral relativism, which assumes that any act, even including murder, is justifiable as a reaction to "oppression", and that there are no moral or ethical standards, only lifestyle choices. An integral part of this ideology is that no criticism, no matter how indirect, of any of these lifestyle choices, is to be tolerated. The result of this Orwellian coerced non-judgmentalism is to create the very paralysis and weakness that encouraged a group of religious fanatics a few years back to think they could slaughter 3000 Americans in cold blood with no adverse consequences.

Many people, especially in Western Europe, are unenthusiastic about moral absolutism because they associate it with extremism, and because they are accustomed to thinking that it requires an external authority such as a deity in order to provide consistency. But if moral absolutism is hard to justify intellectually, its alternative, moral relativism, in which moral values are considered to be nothing more than reflections of the self-interests of society, is even harder to justify. As the groups rights movements continually slice and dice society and social norms into smaller and smaller mutually incompatible units, relativism, useful as it may be as a conceptual tool, in practice asymptotically approaches an anarchic free-for-all.

The substitution of lifestyle preference for philosophical thinking is exactly the sort of change that relativism is intended to create. A world in which communism and fascism are merely lifestyle choices, and vegetarianism and cannibalism are merely equivalent gastronomic alternatives, would be the ultimate expression of relativism. If it is not already obvious that this would create insurmountable social problems, it can be easily seen by imagining what would happen if relativism, as is currently applied to international politics, were applied to crime. It is not difficult to imagine a future in which we are told that it's wrong to be judgmental about those who have made the "choice" to commit heinous criminal acts. In fact, we don't need to imagine such a world -- it is practically here. Just look at the "free Mumia" movement, and the excuses made for the murders committed by the Black Panthers and the Palestinian terrorists.

It might be asked whether any of this is important. The answer is clear: today, Europeans, living in a continent hurtling uncontrollably toward further economic, demographic, and military decline, are adopting an ideology that allows them to demonize the residents of a particular country as a consolation for feelings of powerlessness. The last time this happened, the demonization was directed against one of their own ethnic minorities, and it turned out very badly indeed.

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