It’s harder to ruin people these days than it used to be.

That’s a good thing in some ways, of course. We don’t want to go back to the days when rumors of homosexuality were enough to destroy a public figure, to the point where those actually tempted to that sin contracted marriages of convenience. Especially since the women involved didn’t always know what they were getting in for.

Nor was it exactly fair to persecute Hollywood stars who’d joined some “progressive” organization during the Depression or opposed racial segregation—not knowing they’d signed on to a Communist front group. (I’m not talking here of hardcore Stalinists like the Hollywood Ten, of course. They deserved what they got, and more.)

We’re Running Out of Taboos

We’re long decades past the time when real hatred of homosexuals, or overheated anti-Communism, operates in our culture. In fact, we’ve blown through a long series of realer, more legitimate taboos, too. Politicians can cheat on their wives. Macho actors can shrug and admit that their “polyamorous” spouses habitually cuckold them. Sports figures can surgically mutilate their genitals, and the Supreme Court insist that the Civil Rights Act demands that we call them “Caitlyn.” You can mock Christianity, patriotism, and the institution of marriage, and everybody just shrugs.

We’ve come a long way, baby. The West is running short of behaviors that everyone can agree are really disgraceful. I think we’re down to just two: pedophilia and racism. And it’s interesting that widespread, cult-like movements are weaponizing each of them. I observed this on Twitter today:

QAnon’s theory of systemic pedophilia is exactly parallel to BLM’s claim of systemic racism. Each movement takes one of the LAST remaining taboos, and weaponizes it, using cherry-picked evidence.

— John Zmirak (@JZmirak) July 22, 2020

It is no more or less vicious and un-Christian to carelessly smear someone as a “racist,” echoing BLM, than to smear him as a pedophile, echoing QAnon. Only one of those cults is getting buckets of money from Bank of America, though.

— John Zmirak (@JZmirak) July 22, 2020

Some Conspiracy Theorists Are More Equal Than Others

Of course it’s darkly ironic that Black Lives Matter has seized control of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile QAnon lives around the fringes of the Right, is now banned from Twitter, and widely dismissed as a group of paranoid crazies. Two groups of conspiracy theorists, enjoying very different treatment by our culture.

Let me make clear right now: I think the claims made by each group are equally unhinged.

I don’t think a high-profile, elite conspiracy of pedophiles dominates American culture. (More on this below.)

Nor does systemic racism prevail in America. Quite the contrary, our institutions are obsessed with trying to overcorrect for past discrimination. But many on the left are eager to claim otherwise, and use the “racist” brush to try to tar and destroy their opponents. Meanwhile, they’ll cut endless slack to those they regard as allies, like Governor Northam of Virginia. Or comedian Jimmy Kimmel. Or, until yesterday, Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger.

Systemic Gibberish

The only way leftists can maintain the fiction of “systemic racism,” and the political power it gives them, is to redefine their terms. Following Marxist logic, “racism” no longer means hatred, prejudice, or any intentional act of bias. Nor is racism a sin that just any human being can commit. Instead, “racism” describes any disparity of outcome or advantage between white people and others, regardless of its origin. Only whites are uniquely both powerful and pure, and so they’re the only people who should be held to absolute standards of self-crucifying virtue. They’re white saviors, you see.

So today on Twitter I saw a complaint that the Queen of England is … white.
 

UK’s head of state is first-born descendant of each generation of all-white senior royals. Black & Asian people are therefore excluded from being head of state for foreseeable future. This is institutional racism https://t.co/TaDCNxqSmE #BlackLivesMatter #blmuk @GreenJennyJones pic.twitter.com/IGxRNT0KaN

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) July 22, 2020

 

I offered what I thought was an obvious rejoinder: 

Why no black head of Chinese Communist Party? Why no Irish Catholic kings of Saudi Arabia? No Latinos running Ethiopia? Racism is EVERYWHERE, man. It’s amazing…. https://t.co/wF7D32DbCz

— John Zmirak (@JZmirak) July 22, 2020

Aspiring White Saviors 

But of course I’d missed the point. Only white people are auditioning for the role of Suffering Savior. Only white Woke culture seeks to displace and replace Christianity as the dominant worldview. So only whites are expected to walk on water. Whites in Sweden and Hungary must be infinitely welcoming to countless Muslims, while mere Chinese in China can … run concentration camps for Uighurs. Nigerian Muslims can kidnap all the Christian girls they wish. Why expect more of savages, of “lesser breeds without the law“?

The Diabolical Hatred of Children

There is far less evidence of systemic racism than there is of widespread neglect, abuse, and exploitation of children. Planned Parenthood cuts them up and sells them, with Congress’ tacit approval. Human traffickers smuggle them, enabled by Democrats and cheap labor Republicans, who refuse to enforce our borders. 

You needn’t obsess about the mysterious “suicide” of Jeffrey Epstein to wonder about his close ties to the Clintons. Or his secret, private office at Harvard University. Or Hollywood’s stolid refusal to ostracize Roman Polanski. 

I don’t see an organized conspiracy here, but principalities and powers. In a culture that’s degenerating, you frequently see two phenomena: 

• New, shrill, hysterical religions, like the Woke anti-racism cult. And
• A vicious cruelty to children, for their very innocence. 

G.K. Chesterton, writing of Carthage and its cult of child sacrifice, diagnosed the dark impulse operating here. In The Everlasting Man, he opined:

[C]ertain anti-human antagonisms seem to recur in [the] tradition of black magic. There may be suspected as running through it everywhere, for instance, a mystical hatred of the idea of childhood.

That’s the best explanation I’ve seen of this literal baby-bashing video, which the Cartoon Network seems to have aired in 2018. Or of pro-choice protesters last year chanting, “Throw the fetus in the bin!”
 

 
I wonder at this point: How long will the taboo against pedophilia hold?

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream, and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism.