The Death-Wish Psychosis of the New Left

Malcolm Muggeridge, in his review of Robert Conquest’s volume The Great Terror that appeared in the February Esquire, has highlighted an issue that deserves more attention than it has received. The question he raises is one that has given concern to many of us, namely, that of the difference in attitude of the leftist-oriented intelligentsia toward the atrocities of the Nazis and those of the Lenin-Stalin era.

In his book Conquest brings together data that seem coercive in support of the view that the terrorism in the U. S. S. R. is “at least as well-attested and documented as Hitler’s directed against the Jews.” And, suggests Muggeridge, “the apparatus of terror which Stalin used was inherited from Lenin. He didn’t invent or institute it.”

In light of this, the reviewer suggests: “Yet whereas Hitler’s terrorism met with the more or less unanimous disapproval of the intelligentsia of the West, Stalin’s was almost as unanimously approved or justified by them.” Muggeridge finds it hard to understand why distinguished intellectuals of both America and Europe “fell over themselves explaining away his [Stalin’s] crimes and barbarities.” He concludes that within the processes of leftist-oriented liberals there was operating a kind of death wish.

He notes, further, that while this segment of our society no longer seeks, at least on any wide scale, to paint “Stalin and his Soviet Union” as good simply because it was pitted against our part of the world (which by definition was regarded as evil), the general tendency is still operative among us. Thus, many in today’s New Left “continue to insist that whoever is against us, whether Castro or Ho Chi Minh or anyone else, must for that very reason be estimable, and all his works praiseworthy.” It is highly instructive to note the roster of New Left “heroes.”

Many people are asking today why members of the New Left, who have enjoyed more freedom than any other group in recent history, entertain such fervent wishes for the destruction of the order from which they came. Why are many leaders of our intelligentsia eager to depict the United States as monstrous—and why do so many Americans (not to speak of nationals of other lands) accept their calumny? Can it be that the adherents of the New Left, as well as its leaders, are fostering strong death wishes against their “relatives”?

Perhaps Freud was at least partly correct in suggesting that the human unconscious is full of death wishes, against the self and those whom the individual loves. There seems at times to be a suicidal trend among adherents of today’s Left, by which frustrated persons who formerly showed a desire to kill something with which they have identified themselves now seem actually to court danger, and thus to turn upon themselves the death wish formerly directed against others. In other words, as Herman Feifel suggests in an article in the Encyclopedia of Mental Health, the death wish may be turned either inward or outward, the former leading to suicide, the latter to murder.

Perhaps Muggeridge is suggesting that further exploration is needed at the point of human nature’s feeling of need for self-punishment, and of the urgent impulse to expiate one’s own unrecognized and unacknowledged sins by projecting the death wish against others. From the experience of the individual, we may hypothesize that the death wish may appear in any society or group that cannot accept itself. Thus, the alienated project their own self-animus against the society that nourished them by a mood of “sock-it-to-’em.”

Some of the intelligentsia separate themselves academically from the affluent society (many of the New Left are well-heeled and could not survive without their credit cards) and in so doing hope to redirect their own self-death psychosis. In the process, they acquire an almost uncanny ability to see their environing society in ridiculously simplistic terms, as “The Establishment” or in terms of the “military-industrial-political complex.” They respond easily, almost mindlessly, to the theories and clichés of such analysts as C. Wright Mills and Herbert Marcuse, probably because the over-simplifications of these writers help them pinpoint that which they themselves hate—often as a reflex to the deepseated guilt that ensues from their having derived too much from it.

It is this frame of mind that breeds the “Samson mentality,” the desire to pull down the pillars of society, with perhaps a subconscious wish to perish in the rubble. Such persons serve to document the thesis that the dictator is the product of his environment—and at the same time, they show sublime unconcern for what would necessarily follow if they were to succeed in pulling down the whole present order.

The question haunts us all: Why do leftists feel such guilt over their sharing of the results of affluence? Can it be that they confirm the thesis that living structures who have known too little of external struggle and too little of exertion for survival lack the ability to hold out against internal destroyers?

Muggeridge is perplexed by the way in which the intelligentsia who stand on the periphery of the New Left accept with such eagerness both its theses and its rationalizations. On all hands we hear the militants, on and off campuses, commended for their “youthful idealism and their commitment to good works.” As the New Leftists paint the United States as monstrous, all too many Americans accept their calumny and use their weapons to beat the American soul. Thus even well-meaning persons depict enemies as friends, and contribute to the alienation of those who ought really to be our nation’s friends.

Given their premises, we can, in some measure understand the gleefully apocalyptic tone of the New Leftists as they hail, for example, Ronald Segal’s work, America’s Receding Future. After all, Segal places the diadem upon the brow of the Left as the only source for our national hope. But why do so many others disdain their own land—the land that has yielded them such advantages?

Perhaps we can find a helpful illustration among anthropologists. Many of them, it seems, compass sea and land to find cultures they can contrast with their own. Too frequently, these men and women of science apply a relativistic yardstick and a genial measure to other, especially primitive, societies. In their comparisons of these exotic culture-forms with our society, they find all manner of evil in the latter precisely because they approach it with an absolute yardstick. Thus, it is not only the leftists in politics and economics who fall victim to the mood of disdain for one’s own.

The distaste with which the New Leftists view their own land is thrown into relief by their blind spots as they look abroad. They have shown a remarkable silence concerning the invasion of Czechoslovakia last August. They have demonstrated a sublime capacity for minimizing or glossing over the atrocities of the North Koreans or the Viet Cong. Not only do the New Leftists select their heroes and their foes abroad, but they show a remarkable selectivity at home. They demand police protection when they break the law, but despise and malign the police when they defend the rights of others. They protest the IBM card only when it records their grades, not when it is used to compute their federal education benefits.

One wonders whether there is not a profound ambivalence within the psyche of many who adhere to today’s leftist movements. On the one hand there seems to be an operation in the realm of the unconscious, perhaps well expressed in terms of the death wish. This may account for some of the erratic and violent forms of behavior that have brought the more sober segments of our population near the point of desperation. But within the attitude-patterns of many of our radicals and militants there seems also to be a cynical self-seeking, a desire to have the best of both worlds. It seems clear that both elements are needed to account for the more malignant forms of the “Down with us!” philosophy.

Malcolm Muggeridge has done us a service in pointing up substantive issues with such clarity. And if he is correct in locating part of our problem in the death-wish psychosis, he has by that much helped us to assess the crisis in our land.

The Hand That Rocks The Cradle

Women, the commercial says, have come a long way, presumably toward equality with men. Women smoke, vote, and race horses along with—or ahead of—men. Women may one day break into those traditionally for-men-only jobs and even, ultimately, into those exclusive men’s clubs, and if fashions are any barometer, that end may be nearer than we think. But no matter what they wear or where, women will always be the mothers.

Mothers, of course, are the people who chauffeur children and campaign for Congress, buy the bacon and bring home part of it, struggle for whiter wash and strike for peace. Most mothers also change diapers and bandages, clear away spilled milk and school-day cares, anticipate the first tooth and the first date. Some mothers even take nature hikes and visit art galleries and go camping with their children, pointing out along the way the glory of God.

But all mothers influence their children—and always have. Modern Rebekahs encourage their children’s deceptions, and modern Athaliahs become their children’s “counselor in doing wickedly.” But there are also mothers like Hannah who pray for their children and relinquish them willingly for God’s service and mothers who instruct their children in the Scriptures, as Lois taught Eunice, who taught Timothy. Those mothers merit the honor and obedience ordered for both parents in “the first commandment with a promise.” That is equality worth working for.

The Downfall Of Dubcek

Alexander Dubcek lasted for fifteen months as party chief of post-Stalinist Czechoslovakia. During half of his time of office, Soviet troops occupied the country to make sure that liberalization would not get out of hand. Dubcek’s ouster is sad; he represented a glimmer of hope in what otherwise seemed a hopeless situation.

Perhaps the new chief, Gustav Husak, will succeed in evacuating the troops. But we shudder to think of the price of that achievement. In the meantime, the Soviet military establishment seemed to have the Czechoslovak situation well in hand.

The Soul Of Beauty

If Ponce de Leon had lived 450 years later, his search for the fountain of youth would never have made history. Today nearly everyone past the trustworthy twenties tries to hide his age under wrinkle-removing creams, melt it away with sit-ups, yogurt, and sugar substitutes, or lift it off all or part of a sagging face with a $500–$2,500 rhytidectomy.

Meanwhile, the youngest teeny-boppers beg not only for lipstick but also for eye liner and shadow, while their brothers search for the most alluring after-shave lotions—long before they begin shaving.

The beautiful-body cult seems to have overlooked the loveliness of truth, purity, justice, honesty, graciousness, and excellence—qualities more valuable and longer lasting than a body worth $3.50.

The New C.O.C.U. ‘Parish’

At its recent meeting in Atlanta the Consultation on Church Union (COCU) sent up a trial balloon that could lead to the most radical restructuring in the history of American Protestantism. COCU, already committed to an episcopal form of government, revealed a tentative plan for an organizational structure built upon multi-congregational parishes at the local level (see News, April 11 issue, p. 47). Membership will be in the parish, and the program of the constituent congregations will be administered by a parish council. Although the parish may use several of the buildings of the congregations composing the parish, there will not necessarily be a complete church program at each of these.

Supporters of the new plan feel that it will help to do away with a selfish individualism on the part of local churches, it will offer a means of drawing black and white together within the Church, that it will provide a broader base from which talent may be recruited, and that it will make for more effective mission within the community.

It is highly questionable that the parish plan will accomplish these goals. The chief problem within the Church is spiritual, not organizational. Restructuring of the institution, however advantageous, will not effectively deal with the Church’s problems. COCU has consistently refused to move to strengthen the most basic weaknesses in the Church—lack of solid biblical theology and confusion about the mission of the Church.

Not only is the plan unlikely to strengthen the Church; concealed within it are many problems and possibilities that could greatly weaken the Church’s witness. There is a much greater opening for control of the local situation by ecclesiastical professionals whose interest is in socio-political involvement at the expense of the proclamation of the Gospel (a fact confirmed by COCU’s fuzzy idea of the mission of the Church). Increased control by professional churchmen will weaken lay involvement within the Church; resources are likely to be stifled rather than exploited. Resources are available now; the problem is lack of spiritual motivation.

In addition, many practical problems beset the plan. Can the eradication of the local church really increase the Church’s effectiveness? Who knows the situation in a community better than the local residents? What safeguards will there be against arbitrary hierarchical action without congregational consent? What will be the advantages when members of a local church learn that their building is no longer being used for worship but for some social-action project? Who will own the property? Who will select the minister? How can charges of favoritism toward one group within the parish be avoided? Will the individual be lost in the necessary bureaucracy associated with such a structure?

In evaluating COCU’s Plan of Union many clergymen are confronted with an especially difficult problem. If they embrace COCU’s form of government, they may be called upon to depart from what they have affirmed to be a biblical view of church polity. Such a move will have serious ethical implications.

Shortly after the Atlanta meeting, the assembly of the National Federation of Priests Councils met in New Orleans. It is ironic that one of the chief topics of discussion there was the need for a more democratic structure in the U.S. Catholic Church; the priests passed a resolution protesting the lack of due process when a priest is in conflict with his bishop. A word to the wise.…

Exit Bishop Pike

One of the originators of the Blake-Pike plan for church union (the forerunner of COCU) has announced his decision to join “the ever-swelling ranks of Church alumni.” In revealing his intention to leave organized religion entirely, the Right Reverend James A. Pike criticized the Church for its “credibility gap” in doctrine, “relevance gap” in concern, and “performance gap” in righting the wrongs of society.

Pike is to be commended for his honesty in leaving. It is good that he will no longer be proclaiming unbelief from within the Church. He is a confused man, and our sympathies are with him in his search for meaning.

On Lawbreaking Congressmen

It’s not what you do—it’s who you are. If you’re a U. S. congressman and run down a Washington policeman, there’s no need to worry. Or so it seems in the light of a recent incident in the capital.

Representative Charles E. Chamberlain (R.-Mich.) found himself in a right-turn-only lane on Independence Avenue when he intended to go straight ahead. He was confronted by traffic officer Frank J. Ward, who indicated that the congressman must turn right. After a hot conversation, Chamberlain, according to witnesses, accelerated and drove toward the officer, who was standing near the front of the car. Ward tried to dodge but was struck by the side of the car, spun around, again hit against the side, and finally went sprawling to the pavement badly shaken. Chamberlain then drove away but was apprehended a few blocks away by two motorists who had witnessed the “accident.”

What happened to Chamberlain? He was allowed to leave the scene; no citation for any offense was issued. Later, after a hearing (which had been rescheduled because Chamberlain didn’t show up at the time originally set), officials announced that “under the circumstances the government feels that it is not in the best interest to bring any charges against Chamberlain.”

What would have happened to a private citizen? He would either have been taken into custody or issued a citation for one or more traffic violations. Probably the consequences would have been especially serious for him if he had been one of Washington’s many lower-income blacks.

The American ideals of equality before the law and justice for all are made a laughing stock when national leaders blatantly disregard the law. There is no conceivable justification for Congress to protect its own from the legal consequences of their acts as private citizens. (One police official stated the problem of congressional pressure in these words: “We get our money and the new laws we need from Congress.”) This is the grossest kind of hypocrisy. Employment of a double standard strikes a blow at the very foundation of American democracy. Is it any wonder that young and old alike are disillusioned with the Establishment?

Fair Harvard

Springtime does something to the blood—and maybe to the brain, too. Instead of trying the old-fashioned remedy of sulphur and molasses, SDS radicals at Harvard forcibly dispossessed a number of deans from their offices and then locked themselves in a key administration building. They proceeded to rifle confidential files and made the contents of certain letters available to an underground publication of dubious distinction.

President Pusey called for the police, who evicted the trespassers (some of whom were not Harvard students), and force was met by counter force. Although there were the expected rantings of “police brutality,” nothing was said about “student brutality”—perhaps because the deans were smart enough to leave their offices without undue physical resistance.

Dr. S. I. Hayakawa, embattled but coolheaded veteran of the San Francisco State College imbroglio, said plainly what many people had begun to suspect: Wooly-headed faculty members whose academic prowess surpasses their courage and practical wisdom rarely have the gumption to back up harried administrators. If in the Harvard situation teachers had acted as promptly and decisively as the administrators, things might have been different. Dissidents are now dealt with more effectively by their fellow students than by authorities.

By this time it should be clear that radical groups on the campuses represent no more than 2 or 3 per cent of the students. But vocal minorities can overthrow constituted authority and substitute their own repressive totalitarianism. Radical students who use coercion and physical force must be met by force. Indeed, the universities might even expel them. They should at least take away their scholarship aid; if these students had to work in order to stay in school, they might in this way find a worthy outlet for surplus energies that they now devote to tearing down school structures.

One interesting result is likely to come from the Harvard debacle: graduate students in history, sociology, political science, law, and theology will be able to write dissertations on the rebellion of ’69.

Good News About Judgment

Robert G. Ingersoll, one of the most colorful agnostics in American history, gave dramatic lectures throughout the country questioning the Bible and the existence of God. One night in a small New York town he eloquently proclaimed his doubt about a future judgment and hell. When he finished, an old drunkard stood up in the rear of the hall and said with a thick tongue, “I sure hope you’re right, Brother Bob. I’m counting on that.”

Like the man who whistles in the dark or the ostrich who buries his head in the sand, there are those who convince themselves that there is no such thing as a final judgment. Some laugh and ridicule the idea; some laughed when Noah said there would be a flood. Even the Church has often softpedaled the concept of judgment if it hasn’t denied the whole idea outright as unacceptable to modern man. Yet the Bible clearly states that “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27).

Although it is true that the Bible emphasizes the love of God throughout its pages, this does not mean that God will overlook the guilt of sinful men. God is also holy and just and by his very nature must pour out his wrath upon sin (Rom. 1:18–32; 2:5; Eph. 2:3).

The Bible does not attempt to set forth a detailed timetable of events surrounding the judgment, but it repeatedly affirms the fact of coming judgment. No one who takes the Bible seriously or who is aware of Jesus’ teaching can deny that. Both God and Christ are spoken of as judge (Heb. 12:23; 2 Tim. 4:8). John states that “whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:15). To those who have not submitted to his authority Jesus will say, “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matt. 7:23).

The certainty of judgment can be a frightening and dreadful prospect, and many deny it because they fear it. But it is possible to face judgment fearlessly (1 John 4:17). The Christian faith is not preoccupied with the horror of judgment, as some have supposed. It is basically a message of good news about judgment. The good news is that judgment has already come. In his death on the cross Jesus endured the wrath that a holy God must pour out upon sinful man. He took our sin upon himself and suffered our judgment.

The man who commits himself to Christ can face judgment confidently—not because of any merit on his part, but because Christ has taken his judgment (John 5:24; Rom. 5:9). For the man who refuses Christ, judgment is a terrifying reality. Deny it he may, but escape it he cannot.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.