if only the czar knew!

25 Oct 2023 - 13 Dec 2023

A common thought-bug, fallacy, bad pattern. The idea that whatever injustice you might be suffering is just a local phenomenon of some particular unjust individuals, and if only the higher authority could be told he would intervene and correct things.

The whole social justice movement is kind of a magical attempt to deny this rather grim nihilist truth. Make enough eloquent denunciations of injustice, and if the czar (god) doesn't fix it, the combined will of the people will.

That sounds more anti-SJ than I mean to be. I admire people with a passion for justice, especially if they put it into practice. It's like vegetarianism or pacifism, a form of goodness that I admire but from afar.

Kafka's Castle as based on this dynamic, the surveyor constantly seeking contact with authority and being thwarted.

Then there are the various and sundry factors derived from the unique history of the Jews. In Old Europe, Jews were often a special class who looked to the throne for protection from the anti-Semitic rabble and the pogroms (“If only the Czar knew!”). This gives Jews a long heritage of viewing statism as a survival strategy. The big wave of Jews who came to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century brought the thriving fad of socialism with them and they saw an America that seemed to confirm the need for leftwing reform.

That is a good point, Jews in that situation had a special affinity for this pattern of thought (justified or not).

Elsewhere