FOR TRUTH

The Leader paced backwards and forwards in front of us, deeply immersed in reflection, and I thought for a moment that he would take the seat offered him by one of our comrades. But, to my surprise, he turned away and, raising his eyes to survey us all, recommenced speaking, his voice clear and firm, the channel of fresh inspiration from above. What puzzled him, he said, was how people had come to equate Fascism and its Social Transcendentalist successor with the Extreme Right. For, in reality, theocratic Centrism (his use of the latter word, which he pronounced Centerism, implied a markedly radical implication which contrasted sharply with the conventional use of the term as applying to moderate democratic positions) was no more extreme right than autocratic royalism had been extreme left or, for that matter, extreme right.

As expected, there were plenty of smiles in the room with this utterance, and even one or two muffled laughs or would-be guffaws. Even I was tickled by it.

No, it was difficult to see, he proceeded, how an extreme movement, one pertaining to the theocratic spectrum, could have anything to do with either left- or right-wing designations, since they applied, after all, to the democratic spectrum. Probably, he went on, the application of the term 'extreme right' to Fascism was simply in order to distinguish it from Communism as an extreme left-wing ideology, which, incidentally, it was, rather than as a product of logical reasoning.

Here more amusement broke loose, but he quickly calmed it down by continuing with words to the effect that, objectively considered, the Extreme Right began with the Cromwellian revolt against autocratic royalism, resulting in a form of democratic dictatorship which in turn led to a parliamentary system of government the essence of which was division between the Right and the Left, Tories and Whigs, the one in part stemming from the victorious roundheads, the other in part stemming from the defeated cavaliers, additional bourgeois factors increasingly coming forward to shift the balance of power from a kind of artisanal/feudal opposition to a monopoly capitalist/liberal capitalist opposition, and from that to a small-time capitalist/democratic socialist opposition, with successive evolutionary transmutations from Whigs and Liberals to Fabians in more radically left-wing alignments against a progressively less-extreme right-wing opposition. The culmination of this gradual shift from an extreme right in Cromwellian dictatorship to an extreme left within a two-party system was, the Leader assured us, the emergence in certain countries of a communist system of one-party rule by the Extreme Left, more extreme by far than the democratic socialists of countries like Britain and France, and necessarily hostile to all such compromises between the Right and the Left. So if the democratic spectrum began with the extreme right-wing dictatorship of Cromwell, its culmination could only be with the extreme left-wing dictatorship of Lenin, each dictatorship leading, in due course, to democracy, the first to relative, or bourgeois, democracy; the second to absolute, or proletarian, democracy - a progression from liberal to social democracy along a spectrum which, coming in-between autocratic and theocratic extremes, is the only one to which the distinctions of left and right can reasonably be applied.

So any reference to Social Transcendentalists as extreme right wing could only be subjective and contingent, an expedience, the Leader assured us, on the part of democrats and Marxists alike. In truth, we were neither right nor left but above any such distinction, just as, prior to the emergence of bourgeois parliamentarianism, the monarchy was beneath it, ruling in an authoritarian manner on the principle, expressed or unexpressed, of 'divine right', a strictly non-sectarian rightness.

However, such 'divine right' was founded on the galactic-world-order of central star (monarch), peripheral stars (peers), and planets (populace); though the Galaxy, as the Leader had on occasion pointed out to us, was far from being literally divine, that is to say, divine in the sense of pure spirit, as germane to electron-electron attractions. On the contrary, it signified the proton-proton reactions of pure soul, the central star no less than peripheral ones, such theological abstractions as were subsequently made distinguishing central from peripheral stars in terms of the Creator and the Devil, the latter most especially relevant, so the Leader maintained, to an abstraction from the sun, which is (or was) literally the root of all evil in the world, since the closest star to it. Not that he made the mistake of confounding theology with science, the abstracted Father with the literal First Cause, the abstracted Satan with the Sun. Hell and Heaven remained, for him, theological postulates, corresponding to cosmic realities - the nearest thing to hell on earth being a raging fire, the nearest thing to heaven on earth being a profoundly peaceful meditation experience. But if proton-proton reactions already existed in space in the guise of stars, then it was the business of evolving humanity to ensure that the cultivation of spirit went ahead on earth so that, one day in the distant post-millennial future, electron-electron attractions would arise from the ultimate life form, the new-brain collectivizations of the Superbeings, and proceed towards other such transcendences in space, some of which may well have been there for centuries or longer, presuming upon the existence, elsewhere in the Universe, of more advanced planets than the earth - planets, I mean, where the post-human millennium had been established long before its eventual establishment here.

But, of course, such transcendences, our Leader had informed us, would no more constitute the culmination of all evolution than planets or small stars constituted its inception. They would simply amount to contributions of pure spirit - spiritual globes - on route, as it were, to the distant culmination of heavenly evolution in the ultimate spiritual globe ... of the Omega Point, the sum-product of all convergence. The establishment of God as the Holy Spirit, the ultimate globe of pure spirit, was seemingly too far into the future for us on earth to have any knowledge about or intimation of when it would literally come about. All we can do as progressive theocrats ... is work towards our own fulfilment in ever-increasing expansions of spirit, of greater awareness, bringing ourselves nearer, by degrees, to the envisaged future goal of all evolution, the quality of which would be ineffable from our point of view, the quantity of which ... an unknown factor because beyond and above all quantification, not really quantitative at all but ... absolutely qualitative in its noumenal perfection.

Ah yes, I came back from these divine reflections with a near-beatific smile on my face for the man or, rather, divinity who had taught us all this, who was the soul of our party, the guiding spirit of our movement! There he stood before us, nodding his head at the amused response which his latest wisdom had engendered among his faithful followers, my comrades in arms, despisers of democracy in all its phases. He was the arch-despiser of democracy, for whom the concept of mass political sovereignty was but a passing phenomenon which would soon be entirely redundant, like, for that matter, public ownership of the means of production, its economic concomitant. He represented political sovereignty for us, his followers, and we were pledged to obey him, this embodiment of the Holy Spirit, this manifestation of the Second Coming, whose word was Truth. Superior in wisdom and insight to both Hitler and Mussolini, his crudely theocratic predecessors, his word was Law and we, drawn to the Truth, could not but be eager to implement it, to carry out such instructions as he gave us. Not for us to impose our will upon him, as if he were merely a representative of our democratic rights and we alone, as people, were politically sovereign! He led us and we were only too willing to follow, knowing ourselves to be honoured in this way, to work for the ultimate victory of theocracy over democracy, in order that real progress towards a post-human millennium could be achieved, thanks to our efforts.

Yes, no less than the other comrades gathered round the Leader today, I was eager to serve evolutionary progress by carrying out such instructions or tasks as were received from 'On High'. Our conviction of absolute rightness gave a certain exuberance and even ruthlessness to our dealings with enemies of theocratic enlightenment, be they bourgeois or proletarian, moderate left or extreme left, moderate right or extreme right. Political salvation resided in the Leader, and the Way to ultimate salvation from the flesh resided in our following his instructions to the letter. We were proud of what we had already achieved in this respect and were convinced that, no matter how many obstacles lay in the way of Truth and Progress, we would be capable of overcoming them. And the Leader, sensing as much, imparted to us his confidence in us as servants of the Truth. Such Truth, as he had just reminded us, had nothing to do with left or right, but solely with God. Soon even people's democracy would be consigned to the rubbish bin of history, and extreme left-wingers along with it. Salvation!

All Hail the Saviour,

May His Will be Done,

In Kingdom Come,

This day and evermore.

Amen!