“It is curious how the reactionary conservatist and fascistoid obsession with tradition and culture never really focuses on the actual, living and near traditions, never on the ambitions and hopes of those living two, three, four generations back, who worked hard at making society better, often living under very harsh and oppressive circumstances, making great sacrifices in the process.
Instead the focus is on timewise quite distant cultures and traditions millennias or at least several centuries back, predating the French Revolution and “modern society”, completely rejecting democracy and strive for equal opportunity. In that it literally is against the dreams, traditions and culture of our closer ancestors of the last 150 years or so, and against their hardwon legacy, rejecting them as not part of tradition, while in reality it is very much a consequence of our history, our culture and our traditions, and something which has been constantly debated and fought over for millennias in our societies, not least in the past times these people choose to look to, even in the Talmud, the Bible and the Koran, and certainly in Greek, Roman, medieval and Renaissance philosophy.
It is a pure fantasy of a time with no connection to anyone alive, outside of theory and book reading, and often quite ill-informed, built on romanticized stereotypes and cherry-picking of pretty and cool pieces of times which for the majority were very far from what most of us would want or desire. It is more a reflection of a very human and here quite modern desire for an ideal world different from the now, than a true ambition to celebrate and continue our actual tradition and culture. And it is at its core quite false, but still deeply dangerous to society, seeking to tear it apart and rebuild it according to that fantasy. It is ideological extremism, pure and simple, only masquerading as love of culture and tradition, but in reality seeking to break with it. And something which would have been fiercely fought against by our closer ancestors.”
