3 Beliefs that Truly Beggar Belief

There are few things dafter than a political philosophy that one doesn’t subscribe to, but some really do go that extra mile. Here are three political outlooks that make some of the others look quite rational.

5 min readMay 12, 2021

1) Posadism

In 1961, Homero Rómulo Cristalli Frasnelli, better known as J Posadas, brought about a second split in the Trotskyist Fourth International.

A red flag with a radiation warning sign containing an alien.

Posadas’ fell out with the rest of the International over an argument about nuclear weapons. That, in itself, is hardly surprising. Extremists love a good spat, and nukes were a hot topic in 1961. What might raise a few eyebrows, however, is the nature of his views on the subject.

Posadas worked on the following lines:

· Nuclear war is inevitable

· Nuclear war is the only way to rid the world of capitalism

· Why wait for it?

· Let’s nuke capitalist countries and get it over and done with.

· We’ll rebuild the scorched earth into a communist utopia.

· It’ll be fun.

One man’s red flag is another man’s unique selling point, of course. Before too long, our hero was at the forefront of a movement that bore his name. Posadism had been born.

Along its way, Posadism gathered a new belief. This one takes the following thought train to the outer limits:

· Man cannot get to other planets

· Alien life-forms that can reach us must be more advanced than we are.

· Because they are so advanced, they can only be communists.

· Because they are communists, they will be only too happy to cure our radiation sickness and help us rebuild into a communist utopia.

Tempted as someone might be by that Utopian carrot, it has to be conceded that there are a couple of truly gigantic leaps of faith in there. It’s a pretty standard apocalyptic cult mindset — heads down, charge for the Pearly Gates, and bugger the consequences. As with many idealistic beliefs, it takes optimism to an almost transcendent level of naivete.

Posadism largely seemed to fade away with the passing of its leader in 1981. It is, however, still with us. Forty years on, there is a Posadists Today website. Like many a bad piece of ’60s sci-fi, this might just stick around forever.

1) Anarcho-primitivism

Radical philosophies don’t come too much more radical than Anarcho-primitivism. It holds, at its root, one very simply maxim — civilisation was a mistake. Everything, we are told, started to go wrong with the advent of agriculture. We enslaved animals; we developed notions of property; hierarchies were formed. The solution? A simple one. We all go back to being hunter-gatherers.

A green and black flag with diagonal divide.

The idea is that we start out again, but this time, we don’t make the mistake of allowing technology to get involved. And that, to my mind, is a sticking point. It treats technology as something that can be shooed away. Assuming that we can initially identify our desired pre-agricultural tech level, how do we maintain it in a suitably anarchic spirit?

ALICE: I wish we could get to that island.

BOB: We could get there if we built a sailing boat.

ALICE: Don’t be heretical.

BOB: You’re not the boss of me, Alice. I’m building a sailing boat.

We’re pretty much at the same fundamental flaw as that of Luddism. You can break a machine but you can’t take away the ability to make a new one.

Rather like the Posadists, the anarcho-primitivists are clearly prepared to sacrifice an awful lot for their political paradise. Should we feel ashamed of our fondness for running water and sewage systems? I’m inclined to think that we should hang on to them until somebody comes up with a marginally more practical solution to life’s problems.

It is interesting to note that John Zerzan, the main proponent of the philosophy, was great friends with Ted Kaczynski, the man more widely known as The Unabomber.

2) Theozoology

Book titles don’t come much snappier than “Theozoology: or the Science of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron. An introduction to the most ancient and most modern philosophy and a justification of the monarchy and the nobility. With 45 illustrations” but somehow former monk Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels managed to get it past his publisher.

Like many of the proto-Nazis, Liebenfels was an Ariosophic thinker, obsessed with Aryan myths and folk-lore, and probably not immune to adding a few of his own embellishments. His work presents a bizarre theory that we are descended from hermaphrodite supermen with electrical superpowers. Their beautiful blood — surprise, surprise — was diluted by beast-men and thus inferior races were formed.

The whole thing contains an awful lot of begetting along with an awful lot of sodomy. There is enough talk of semen, buttocks and dragons to bring the works of G R R Martin to mind. It’s a veritable game of genocide.

The Divine Electron, itself? Who knows? It’s in there somewhere.

The bizarre mishmash of The Bible, Greek legends and European myths is peppered with a healthy pinch of pseudo-science and ancient astronaut theory, and the resulting stew is nigh-on indigestible. What starts as a mythical pot-pourri, needless to say, soon becomes a discourse on racial purity and the usual esoteric-Nazi obsessions.

It is quite possible that Hitler and some of his cohorts would have read Theozoology but there is no record of it having much of a direct influence on them. More generally, though, the Ariosophists certainly were significant in shaping mainstream Nazi ideology. Ironically, many of the more occult orientated nazis were purged during the SS’s purge on esoteric thought in 1941.

It would seem that however pure you are, there is always somebody purer than you.