Collectivist ideas are always megalomaniac ideas. They feed on an exaggerated urge for recognition, which on closer inspection turns out to be a profane need for new heights of self-admiration. As narcissism of people who have ‘progressively’ detached and ‘emancipated’ themselves from all that has been tried and tested and are now searching for meaning and a home in an illusion of collective power that humans never had and fortunately never will have. The power to change or save the ‘climate’, the power to establish ‘justice’, the power to organize happiness and salvation.

But the moment in which this power reveals itself for what it is – an impotent delusion – is also the moment in which the real nature of such saviors and friends of humanity becomes apparent behind the noble slogans. The essence of immature, unstable, selfish, unstable, puerile people who, completely unencumbered by the effort of active empathy, knowledge and competence, in truth have only one argument and one weapon: themselves and their own insignificance.

That is why they are only strong collectively, and why they are deaf to ideas and arguments. Such a ‘movement’ is never positive, never an optimistic departure into the new, the unknown, never a pushing and testing of boundaries – it is a celebration of the weariness of life, the fear of life, the complexes and the resentment against everyone for whom the burden of life means a challenge, joy and love. If such people are given political power, they will cast their manias into laws. And every child knows: Where there are laws, there is also the corresponding crime and the appropriate guilty party. And culprits are executed.

Collectivist ideas, when implemented, always end in terror and blood and call themselves ‘virtue’ and ‘morality’.

Translated from eigentümlich frei, where the original article was published on October 26th 2019.