Clown World Chronicles: What Is A ‘Gutmensch’?

For Clown World to be possible, the people building it have to have popular support. It has plenty of support, of course, among the ruling elites and the great capital interests that profit from the alienation, despair and fragmentation of the people. But how does it get support from the common person, who doesn’t benefit from Clown World? This essay explains.

‘Gutmensch’ is a German term that literally means ‘good human’. It’s a pejorative term that means something akin to “do-gooder” or “goody two-shoes”.

The gutmensch is someone who tries very hard to be seen to be doing the right thing, but who lacks the intellect to actually discern what the right thing is. They are not intelligent enough for philosophy, and they are not intelligent enough to understand the material world and to extrapolate from that, and they do not have a natural moral sense. So they have to take cues from the social world.

The process of determining right from wrong by way of observing the social world is an error-strewn one that takes decades to become any good – and is inaccurate at the best of times. As such, the gutmensch learns right from wrong from learning what the authorities say it is. Their parents, the government, their church, the boss, doesn’t matter – the authorities are always right.

The great weakness of this approach, of course, is that the social world can easily be manipulated by malicious actors. Most people older than children understand that there are many malicious people out there, and that it’s common for these malicious people to seek power in institutions that give the authority over others.

By the time intelligent people are 15 years old, they have figured out that hierarchies of power attract evil people and therefore it’s unwise to ever trust police officers, politicians, psychiatrists or priests. These intelligent people naturally distrust anyone who appears motivated to exult themselves or to assert control over other people.

The gutmensch never figures this out. He will go on blindly parroting what these authority figures say as if it were the word of God. For him, social dominance hierarchies can only be climbed by competence, and people can only become authorities if they were better than others. This child-like naivety makes it possible for all kinds of malicious actors to get support from gutmenschen.

These malicious actors prey on the sheep-like nature of the gutmensch to induce him to support policies which are in the interests of those malicious actors, but not in the interests of the gutmensch. Mass immigration is the foremost example. As such, the gutmensch can be herded to his doom, like a deer driven over a cliff.

The big problem with that is that the gutmenschen take the rest of us down with them. Their overwhelming mass support for the status quo and for the established rulers of society means that, in order to effect positive change, one has to fight against society itself. The gutmensch serves as a mindless drone guarding the elites, something that has to be overcome if Clown World is to be overcome.

Another way that the gutmensch weakens society is from his fear of taboos. There are so many things that the gutmensch forbids themselves from speaking about that, sometimes, talking to them feels like talking to a religious fundamentalist. Topics of race, religion, sex and gender differences cannot be discussed, and if they can be, only the most blue-pilled, Government-approved opinions can be offered.

All these taboos have the final effect of destroying conversation and making communication more difficult. In the final analysis, the gutmensch is, despite his intentions, a destroyer.

Although the gutmensch thinks himself an upstanding citizen who wouldn’t harm anyone, he was on the front lines of the Nazi and Communist battles against their own people, comprising a large proportion of those who ratted out their neighbours. The gutmensch is capable of committing any atrocity while thinking that, because the Government approved of them, they were doing a good thing.

Fundamental to gutmensch psychology is a terror of being judged, especially of being found unworthy. This is because the gutmensch has no real self esteem, and must find it elsewhere. Because his social equals are also pathetic, the gutmensch must seek approval from authority figures. This is why he is so eager to please them.

Underneath it all, gutmenschen are massively egotistical losers, so incredibly precious that they’ll happily go along with any mob, no matter how destructive, rather than risk disapproval. In their hearts, they know they are pathetic, which is why they resent those who are not. Fundamentally, then, gutmensch mentality is a slave morality.

In most cases, gutmenschen turn out the way they do because they have lived extremely sheltered lives. The typical gutmensch will never have travelled outside of their comfort zone, much less backpacked through the third world or lived in countries where they speak another language. They have never been challenged, and as such remain men of clay.

These gutmenschen evoke plenty of hate on account of that their self-righteous moralising makes people want to punch them. These sentiments are well warranted, because it is the gutmensch who normalises every government abuse, from those of the Nazis and Communists to the War and Drugs and alcohol prohibition.

The difference between a gutmensch and a baizuo is subtle, and mostly a matter of age and education. Perhaps the best way to explain the difference is by analogy to the animal kingdom. The baizuo is like a peacock: it preens, it appears vain, and its elaborate virtue signalling does more harm than good. The gutmensch, by contrast, is a simple herd animal. It doesn’t care about anything other than fitting in.

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This article is an excerpt from Clown World Chronicles, a book about the insanity of life in the post-Industrial West. This is being compiled by Vince McLeod for an expected release in the middle of 2020.

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If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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