Emmanuel Todd (tisti francoski zgodovinar in antropolog, ki je v 1970-ih letih na podlagi statističnih podatkov napovedal propad Sovjetske zveze, leta 2001 pa objavil odmevno knjigo o propadu ameriškega imperija (After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order) oziroma ameriške vladavine kot edine supersile) je v zadnjih dveh tednih dvignil precej prahu z novo knjigo “La Défaite de l’Occident” (Propad Zahoda) in številnimi intervjuji. Todd temelje za propad Zahoda vidi v izgubi moralnega kompasa zaradi zatona protestantizma v ZDA, kar je slednje vodilo od neoliberalizma do nihilizma. Neoliberalizem vidi v razrastu masovenga pohlepa, kot glavni problem pa vidi razrast nihilizma. Razkroj vrednot.

V Toddovem opisu se propad Zahoda bere kot propad Rima. Moralni razkroj, ki je privedel do propada imperija.

Spodaj je nekaj povzetkov Toddove knjige:

In “The Defeat of the West” he proposes a dispassionate analysis of the world’s geopolitical scene, laying out facts without taking moral stances.

In Todd’s assessment, the disappearance of American Protestantism is the key factor in the fall of the West. This fall of the Protestant religion in America has given rise to this new American ideology reigning over the whole Western space: Nihilism. This is the central concept of the book. This Nihilism is both the trigger of the West’s final downfall and the driving force behind the West’s renewed violent imperialism.

Here are some of his quotes from interviews he has given over the last couple days:

“My book is basically a sequel to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. On the eve of the 1914 war, he rightly believed that the rise of the West was at its heart the rise of the Protestant world – England, the United States, Germany unified by Prussia, Scandinavia. France’s luck was to be geographically glued to the leading pack. Protestantism had produced a high level of education, unprecedented in human history, universal literacy, because it required that every believer should be able to read the Holy Scriptures for himself. In addition, the fear of damnation and the need to feel chosen by God induced a work ethic, a strong individual and collective morality. On the negative side, there were some of the worst forms of racism that ever existed – anti-black in the United States or anti-Jewish in Germany – since, with its conceptual dichotomy of “Chosen by God” and “Damned by God”, Protestantism renounced the Catholic principle of equality between all people.”

“Today, symmetrically, the recent collapse of Protestantism in the U.S. has set in motion an intellectual decline, a disappearance of work ethic, and its substitution by mass greed (official name: neoliberalism). After the rise of the West comes its downfall. This analysis of the religious element does not denote any nostalgia or moralizing lamentation in me: it is a historical observation.”

“I emphasize the industrial deficiency of the United States with the revelation of the fictitious nature of the American GDP. I deflate this GDP and show the root causes of industrial decline: the inadequacy of engineering training and more generally the decline in educational levels. The US GDP is a bubble.”

“The fixation of the Western middle classes on transgenderism raises a sociological and historical question. To constitute in the social horizon the idea that a man can really become a woman and a woman a man is to affirm something biologically impossible, it is to deny the reality of the world, it is to affirm the false.”

“Trans ideology is, therefore, in my opinion, one of the flags of this nihilism that now defines the West, this drive to destroy, not just things and humans but reality.”

“The collapse of Protestantism in the United States has caused a decline in the level of education.”

“The disappearance of religion: Americans don’t go to church anymore, they don’t believe in God anymore.”

“There is a powerful nihilistic impulse in the US: the search for war and violence. This is a lost society without meaning, that provokes or fans conflicts everywhere in the world.”

“Something important has happened in the West : the transition from liberal democracy to liberal oligarchy.”

“The American ruling class is devoid of morality, it has no more religion, all that remains with it is an obsession with money and war and a kind of enjoyment at creating a mess all over the world.”

“France does not exist because it is now aligned with the United States.”

“The Americans’ obsession is to prevent the cooperation between Germany and Russia. This is American leaders’ terror. But it’s going to fail because the West is going to lose. It’s reality that’s going to win.”

“The best thing that could happen to Europe is the retreat of the US.”

Vir: Emmanuel Hemmerlé, X