‘Chinggisid’ sovereignty is what I Tweet about in describing the perennial love of Kings. Trump-type populist…
‘Chinggisid’ sovereignty is what I Tweet about in describing the perennial love of Kings. Trump-type populist leaders are this sovereign form, in modern clothing. This extract has so much to teach us. /1
https://t.co/HzabNd0V4Y https://t.co/3eiDodkG85
Societies run on status. This is clearly visible in Chinggisid societies, like Genghis Khan’s, with Khan the head of a status hierarchy that cascades down to every person.
Our modern politics is exactly the same. We just rename the process, which disguises it. /2 https://t.co/NschEklKmL
Elections simply select status hierarchies. Using popularity as the sorting tool. The same tool and mechanism we use in high school. Democracy is fully Chinggisid if you realise that ‘the people’ is never an agency that acts, except to designate the hierarchy it will serve. /3
As the excerpt points out, the only true rival to Chinggisid sovereignty has not been what we call democracy. Democracy is Chinggisid sovereignty, with disguising labels. The only rival is monotheist religion.
That’s our history in the West. Driven mostly by Catholicism. /4
The Catholic Church mostly built Western society, it’s a symptom of how impoverished scholarship is today that this is even disputed.
They were always the only rival to the Kings. They replaced Chinggisid sovereignty, with a transcendent God. Another status hierarchy. /5
One where ‘transcendental belief systems…checked the earthly power of political rulers’. Girard saw that shift as also the one that short-circuited the intrinsic violence of the imitative rivalry of the battle for status, the Chinggisid model shared by our democracies. /6 https://t.co/tAArO78cgo
Democracy is not ‘power to the people’. That’s just spin. Our democracies are sovereignties where the status is granted using popularity, that’s all. And that doesn’t make them less violent in the longer term, populism is always fascism in its endgame. /7
All the tyrants of our era were populists. Immensely popular leaders in their beginning, sweeping to power using populism to bypass existing checks and balances.
Exactly the same model being used by populists today. Chinggisid sovereignty, just with new labels. /8
The return of the kings. That’s history’s engine still firing on exactly the same cylinders it always has.
Church v State IS history. That battle still hasn’t ended. It’s not actually clear which is better either. /9 https://t.co/mbYI1CkDjp
The Western church led a society for many centuries more than our current secular State societies have managed. More than 100 million people died in secular wars in the 20th century alone.
And we’re in denial about status. It’s the engine room of both models. /10
Not information. Not power. Not capitalism or any other -ism. Status is what drives societies, whether Chinggisid or religious.
Until we recognise that, we’re living an illusion. Our democracies are status games, not people magically running societies as individuals. /11
Social media is status games. Influencers, trends. Likes and follows. We need to choose what sort of status game is best for us.
As Girard said, there’s a lot to be said for placing the tip of our hierarchies outside human rivalries.
/end