On Saviour Complexes

The right has a saviour complex, and it’s a big problem. Unlike the left’s saviour complex, where the leftist believes him – or her – or they/themself to be the saviour, an anointed agent of deliverance from injustice, oppression, capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and so on, too many on the right externalise their saviour complex. They believe a saviour is waiting in the wings to arrive on the scene just in time to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. All the humiliations, all the indignities, all the reversals will be reversed, and Based World will, at last, be at hand.

Phew! That was close!

This saviour can take many forms. He can be a person, like Trump. “Trust the plan. Patriots are in control. Tom Hanks arrested and executed at Guantanamo Bay (click here for the video)…”

The saviour can also be an institution or even a document. How many times have you heard or seen a rightoid say that the armed forces, police, or the 2nd Amendment would never let X, Y, or Z happen? “The police would never confiscate our guns! The army would never let our country be invaded by millions of illegal immigrants across the southern border! The Constitution guarantees our right to freedom of speech and the pursuit of…” you know the rest.

The reality is that none of this is true. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be the case. The individuals – and especially the institutions – we’re told will protect us from the onslaught of liberalism, “globohomo,” or whatever you want to call it, are more likely to deliver us to it, wrapped up in a bow.

They’re doing it right now. 

Take the Catholic Church, for example. Could there be an institution with a more conservative mandate? To represent the truth of God’s eternal kingdom, in opposition to all earthly trends and ephemera: that is the mandate of St Peter, its mission from now until the End of Days. Seems pretty open and shut, if you ask me. And yet, the Catholic Church has been captured, at the very highest level, by the spirit of the age.

According to reporting by La Verita, an Italian newspaper, several Italian dioceses have been directly funding Mediterranea, an NGO responsible for bringing large numbers of migrants into Europe by boat. The dioceses in question have contributed over two million euros to the NGO, with some payments ending up directly in the personal accounts of pro-immigration activists. Tens of thousands of migrants now enter Italy illegally each year, mainly across the sea from North Africa. Over 20,000 migrants landed on Italy’s shores in the first three months of this year alone, with large numbers coming via the small island of Lampedusa, conveniently situated near the North African coast.

These revelations have emerged from an official investigation into Mediterranea’s activities after an incident involving the ship Mare Jonio, which landed in Sicily in 2020 and disembarked 27 migrants received from a Danish supply ship at sea. Mediterranea was given 135,000 euros by Maersk, the supply ship's owner, which the company claims was an unrelated donation. The authorities, however, believe it was a direct payoff for taking the migrants and therefore in violation of Italian law. Intercepted messages revealed that prominent figures in the Italian Catholic Church were giving money to the NGO. These figures included Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna and Archbishop Corrado Lorefice of Palermo. Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg also donated 25,000 euros.

In one of these messages, activist leader Luca Casarini openly bragged that he no longer had to work because of the Church’s generosity. Casarini’s direct links to the current Pope have led many to wonder whether the payments made to Mediterranea were made with the Pontiff’s approval, although few are likely to assert this outright. Given time, and further evidence, they may yet. Casarini has been close to the Pope since at least 2019, when, to the astonishment of many, he was invited to speak at the Vatican’s synod despite having publicly stated his disdain for the Church. He voiced that disdain again in the messages intercepted by the authorities.

So, the Catholic Church is not only sympathetic to the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of migrants flooding Europe and forever changing its demographics, which would be bad enough. No, the Church is actively helping the people bringing the migrants here and, in doing so, helping to bring about the collapse of European civilisation – the civilisation the Catholic Church helped to create and once considered itself the sole guardian of. Similar things are also happening in the US, where many migrants are given vital aid and documentation by Catholic NGOs, probably supported by the Church hierarchy itself.

If you think the Church is coming to save you, I’m afraid you’re dead wrong. The Church wants to replace you. It is replacing you.

I’m not saying that there aren’t good people in the Catholic Church. There’s Archbishop Vigano, for example, and many less exalted churchmen – and women – who take their divine duties seriously enough to resist the capture of the Church by secular liberal morality, either openly or in more subtle ways. But the institution itself is captured nonetheless, and that constrains and limits the effectiveness of anybody who has to work from within it. This is true also, I think, of just about any institution you could care to think of: the military, police, universities, schools, national government, local government. All still contain good, honourable people who believe in the core values and traditions of the institution they are a part of. These values and traditions are why they joined in the first place and, indeed, why they stay, despite the rising tide of corruption. We must be grateful to these men and women for their courage and steadfastness.

This isn’t a council of despair. It is a call to realism, to work within the limitations of our situation. That situation is dire, but it isn’t hopeless. Oswald Spengler, in Man and Technics, famously wrote that “optimism is cowardice.” As far as I’m concerned, it is naivety, not optimism, that is the real cowardice. We must continue to believe in the possibility of real change while abandoning belief in all fairy tales. Nobody is coming to save us but ourselves.