Mark T. Mitchell - Power and Purity: The Unholy Marriage that Spawned Americas Social Justice Warriors

Praise for

Power and Purity

Those seeking to understand the contemporary Social Justice Warrior phenomenon blighting the public square often turn to Karl Marx. But Mark T. Mitchell points us to another epochal nineteenth-century thinker: Friedrich Nietzsche, whose teachings are far more influential than many grasp. Power and Purity is a vital key unlocking the mysterious forces behind todays revolutionary challenges to a decaying democratic order. This books brevity and its razor-sharp clarity make it accessible to both students and ordinary readers, who desperately need to grapple with the ideas that increasingly dominate our post-Christian peoples.

Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option

Nearly everyone has a theory on the rise of identity politics and illiberalism on the left, but no one has seen further and more deeply than Mark Mitchell. Recognizing its root causes in the caustic wedding of Nietzsches will to power and a Puritanism without Christian grace, Mitchell weaves a compelling and frightening story of a new philosophy informing the intolerant tactics of the woke. More frightening still, these currents arise from within currents of Western civilization itself, meaning that any remedy to this pathology requires a self-cure. Reading Mitchells book is an indispensable first step.

Patrick Deneen, professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and author of Why Liberalism Failed

After several decades in which identity politics has grown ever stronger, we are converging on the true account of its causes and of the immense damage it is doing. Identity politics is the ghost of Christianity, stripped of its capacity to redeem and to renew. In the late nineteenth century, Nietzsche anticipated the rough outlines of this spiritual disease that would befall us. Drawing from Nietzsches life and writings, Mark Mitchells Power and Purity is the twenty-first-century guide we need to understand the spiritual disease of identity politics in full.

Joshua Mitchell, professor of political theory at Georgetown University

Why is it that postmodernists, who believe there are no moral absolutes, are so moralistic? Why have universities replaced rational discourse with silencing and punishing those who hold dissident ideas? Why is identity politics so vicious? Having read Mark Mitchells Power and Purity, now I know. The seminal thinker for our day is Friedrich Nietzsche, who reduces all of culture, ideas, and life itself to the will to power. Mitchell unpacks both Nietzsches influence and his predictions. And yet few peoplefor nowfollow his moral nihilism, with even the hard left upholding values Nietzsche despised, such as equality and compassion. The Christian influence remains, even for those who believe with Nietzsche that God is dead. In fact, the left is employing a mash-up of Nietzsche and a secularized Puritanism, which has rejected God while cultivating self-righteousness and the zeal to censor, control, and punish. This book, which combines scholarly depth and a lively, readable style, will help readers navigate the strange paradoxes of contemporary politics, academia, and culture.

Gene Edward Veith, provost and professor of literature emeritus at Patrick Henry College

Copyright 2020 by Mark T. Mitchell

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, website, or broadcast.

Regnery Gateway is a trademark of Salem Communications Holding Corporation;

Regnery is a registered trademark of Salem Communications Holding Corporation

ISBN 978-1-68451-011-5

ebook ISBN 978-1-68451-021-4

LCCN: 2019955287

Published in the United States by

Regnery Gateway, an imprint of

Regnery Publishing

A Division of Salem Media Group

300 New Jersey Ave NW

Washington, DC 20001

www.Regnery.com

Cover design by John Caruso

Books are available in quantity for promotional or premium use. For information on discounts and terms, please visit our website: www.Regnery.com.

To my students

Books by Nietzsche Referred to in the Text

Unless otherwise indicated, citations to Nietzsche refer to section number rather than page number.

D uring the immigration debate in the summer of 2018, Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California told a crowd:

For these members of [President Trumps] Cabinet who remain and try to defend him, theyre not going to be able to go to a restaurant, theyre not going to be able to stop at a gas station, theyre not going to be able to shop at a department store. The people are going to turn on them, theyre going to protest, theyre going to absolutely harass them. If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them! And you tell them that they are not welcome, anymore, anywhere.

In other words, a member of the U.S. Congress openly advocated the harassment of political opponents. While some tried to distance themselves from this rhetoric, others took up the cudgel. Both elected officials and high-profile staffers who dared to oppose the left were harassed in public places by hostile and threatening activists, who were absolutely convinced of the righteousness of their cause.

The contentious debate over Brett Kavanaughs confirmation as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court provoked similar expressions of fury on the left. Annie Shields of The Nation tweeted, Im starting a National @DemSocialists working group to follow [Senator] Jeff Flake around to every restaurant, Caf, store, etc. he goes to for the rest of his life and yell at him. She followed up with, If they knew they would get yelled at for the rest of their lives maybe they would act right.

Professor Christine Fair of Georgetown Universitys security studies program contributed her own incisive analysis with this tweet: