The Ideology Of Ressentiment
17th March 2025
ZMan channels Nietsche.
Over the weekend there was a poll released that said only seven percent of Americans have a high opinion of the Democratic Party. It also said that the party is enjoying its lowest approval rating ever recorded. The events of last week suggest that the party is a disorganized mess at the moment. This is due in large part to the fact that what we call the left has collapsed into chaos. They no longer can explain what they oppose, much less what they claim to offer.
This is due to the transformation of the left over the last thirty years into a grab bag of conspiracy theories and grievances. The American left has always been a conspiracy theory, of sorts, owing to its roots in American Protestantism, but it had a positive agenda through most of the twentieth century. The long list of things it opposed stood in the way of the things it desired. Over the last thirty years, those desires have largely faded, leaving just a list of enemies.
The most obvious example is the antifascist conspiracy theory that was dominant with self-identified leftists for the last decade. The fact that there are no fascists in this age has been used as an opportunity to create them. The same thing happened with conspiracy theories around race. Instead of Hitler hiding behind every bush, it is men in white hoods ready to pounce. The dominant subcultures of the left over the last few decades are all conspiracy theories of some sort.