When Revolution & Religion Die
Connecting the Nicaraguan revolution to our current state of affairs.
“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.”
― Franz Kafka
Whether you’re threatened by socialism or neoliberalism, their mixture is creating a meaningless world. You only need to watch the “debate of the century” between
and Jordan Peterson to know the gutless new enlightenment thinkers have severed their pessimistic spirits.Peterson, a defender of capitalism, and Žižek, a Marxist of sorts, both describe themselves as radical pessimists, laughably believe the ‘victimization-savouring’ academic left is some omnipotent cultural force, and agree capitalism needs some form of regulation.
Any of you who have read or watched Žižek know he’s actually a proponent of dismantling capitalism, but when it comes to concrete ideas, the free-market-loving Peterson and capitalist-hating Žižek both agree capitalism needs regulation. In other words, these self-proclaimed pessimists have nothing more to offer than the optimistic new enlightenment thinkers—those pointing out all our progress so we can happily stay on the capitalist-but-with-social-intervention road—the road that keeps us comfortably numb.
Marx said religion is the opiate of the masses, but that’s no more accurate than saying liberalism is. Religion’s promises of salvation and liberalism’s promises of liberty have proven empty. We cannot trust organizations whose leaders rape kids and justify terror or ideologies that birthed the ivory towers in academia and corporate titans, both full of corruption and self-interest. These ideas that gave us collective meaning are deteriorating, leaving us as the dying god in a terminally ill system.
So, where do we go from here? Can there be a meaningful revolution that ends our planet-killing system rather than just adding regulations to it?
For that, let’s take a historical dive into a place where nuclear superpowers, socialism, neoliberalism, religions, and environmental destruction intersected—Nicaragua.
The revolution in Nicaragua, spanning from 1979 to 1990, ended the Somoza family dictatorship, facilitated widespread literacy among millions of Nicaraguans, enhanced workers' rights, and laid the groundwork for the establishment of an electoral democracy. Then the USA came along and said, “fuck that noise!”
In July 1979, when the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) ousted the unpopular dictator Anastasio Somoza DeBayle and established a revolutionary government, Nicaragua became a significant battleground in the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. It also became an excellent opportunity for American companies like the UFCO to rape the land, uproot indigenous communities, and make money. Of course, the American public was mainly in the dark about habitat destruction and focused on the “threat of socialism.”
U.S. leaders perceived the Nicaraguan revolution as a sign of Soviet and Cuban involvement in Central America. To counteract what was seen as communist influence in the region, Ronald Reagan, upon assuming office in 1981, committed his administration to providing military support to the emerging anti-Sandinista counterrevolutionary movement, famously known as the Contras.
The contras funded their efforts by selling blow, which the CIA let slide since it was anti-communist cocaine. But there’s something even more powerful than cocaine when it comes to ruining social democracy—Christians.
Not only did the Catholic Church provide a major oppositional voice, but so did American Evangelists. In 1980, a small group of conservative pastors who opposed the FSLN and its political aims joined together to form the National Council of Evangelical Pastors of Nicaragua (CNPEN). This organization developed close ties with political conservatives and evangelical groups in the United States, such as the National Association of Evangelicals and the World Evangelical Fellowship.
Why use Christians to support conservative and right-wing ideologies?
Looking at the dual-process approaches of persuasion, one can use religion to better persuade through the central (systemic route). Here, the motivation and ability factors are 1. that the issue is personally relevant and 2. knowledgeable in that domain. The factors that promote attitude change are the quality of the argument.
It’s not just the quality of the argument but the presentation. Instructions or fear alone are not nearly as persuasive as when used together—something Christian rhetoric (and most religious rhetoric) has nailed.
Plus, conservatives are the easiest to control and use. Agreeableness is the most susceptible personality trait to persuasion strategies, and openness is the least susceptible. It just so happens that agreeableness is common among conservatives, and openness is common among liberals—something Jordan Peterson loves to point out when giving his BIG 5 personality traits lectures.
Of course, my last argument is BS because it’s correlational and plays with false dichotomies. However, the point is that political ideology is often intertwined with religion.
So far, it seems like I’m a Christian-hating socialist, which I’m not. I just haven’t shown both sides. First off, I’m not any “-ist,” I vibe with Jesus’s teachings, and I fully understand that the Ortega government put money in their own pockets, withheld passports from Nicaraguan priests, expelled Catholic clergy, forced others into exile and that this anti-catholic rhetoric caused Catholics to receive death threats. None of which I’m down with.
Although I’d love a world where people don’t need to affiliate with any religion, political party, or -ism, I know that’s not realistic for the majority. That’s why it’s essential to see where these groups and ideas intersect and clash during revolutions.
Or maybe, in the end, none of it matters.
Scholars commonly view revolutions as catalysts for change, but there has been limited research on the enduring behavioural and cultural impacts following shifts in state power.
The study by John A. Booth and Patricia Bayer Richard delved into the lasting effects of the Nicaraguan revolution on individuals' electoral participation, civil society involvement, and social capital by comparing post-revolutionary Nicaraguans with their counterparts in Central America. Analyzing survey data from similar groups of urban Central Americans, the research discovered heightened electoral engagement in Nicaragua compared to other nations in the region that underwent major uprisings but not full revolutions. Nicaraguans also exhibited stronger support for civil disobedience, increased activism in schools and unions, and more frequent alignment with leftist political ideologies. While the study acknowledges some lasting effects of the revolution in Nicaragua, it suggests that the more substantial influence appears to have diminished relatively quickly.
In other words, the revolution, like liberalism and religion, didn’t fulfil its promise. I don’t blame the agents, but the mirage of hope.
Hope is a beautiful lie, and maybe that's what breaks you.
- Stephen King
I know I’m not alone in feeling the world is broken. Sure, we can focus on the positive. Fewer men die in war, absolute poverty has declined, and developed nations are becoming more secular, which is accompanied by a greater tolerance of homosexuality, abortion, divorce, and higher life satisfaction. Yet, these facts feel like injections of opioid-like hope that make us compliant and comfortable in social democracies while knowing the neoliberal agenda motors underneath the blanket.
81 billionaires have more wealth than 50% of the world combined, and instead of getting our pitchforks out, we add the occasional regulation to the system they control. The richer they get, the more of ourselves we give. We give them our minds through information and our souls through art; in exchange, we’re turned into brands and consumers.
We’re on the brink of a digital totalitarian dystopia, and like
and Peterson, I can’t offer any solutions. All I know is that the answer probably isn’t in regulations, a political party, a religion, or even a revolution. For lack of a better word, I believe the answer is in a vibe shift—a shift in collective consciousness where we stop finding meaning in what the hegemony designs.Related articles
We've been to Nicaragua, when it was quiet there-for a few days only, in 2014. It so happenned we spent a lot of time talking with the locals. They hated Ortega. They seemed very tired of all the unrest too.
I bet there was a Soviet involvement-judging by the sheer amount of articles we had to read, about Nicaragua, for our "politinformation"-we'd have one a week, during all our school years. 30 minutes. That's besides "Lenin's hour" and whatnot. Was a pretty boring affair too,-they could have make it more interesting, I guess, but it was eighties...cynical time. All my generation is very cynical, including yours truly-I'm a cynical idealist though, there are many of us too:)
Interestingly, we talked about religions and revolutions yesterday, with my husband-he's a die-hard atheist, I'm not; we have backgrounds similar but also different; he has mind-blowing family history, involving yes, Revolution of 1917; we hold many opposite views but we probably speak same language and hold common values so we love to discuss with all the disagreements, actually he's my favorite person to argue with, I'm in general not one for arguing, I also take things close to heart when he can easily play devil's advocate.
Yesterday, our agreement , it was that the new generation that believes t h e y'd be the ones doing the revolution correctly would for sure invent one new thing only-a different type of a guillotine. The rest-I agree with Kafka.
Do I know what to do? No, like you, I don't:) Maybe it's better than to be damn sure one knows. There are too many people who are too sure they do know. They're always right. They tend to give me an uneasy feel.
Thank you for the great post, Nolan-and forgive me my long comment.