In 1976, Emmanuel Todd examined the Soviet Union’s growing infant mortality and was the first to predict that socialist nation’s fall. In 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed. In 2024, after examining the West’s ideology and leadership, he now predicts the fall of the West!
“Acceptance of the LGBTQ revolution signaled an end to Christianity as the West’s dominant moral force. Between 2005 and 2015, virtually every nation under American influence legalized gay marriage, and most went further with the normalization and acceleration of transgenderism.” He notes the “American ruling class is devoid of morality, it has no more religion, all that remains with it is an obsession with money and war and a kind of enjoyment at creating a mess all over the world.”— Emmanuel Todd (Translated by A. Devecchio Le Figaro, 1/12/24)
Todd’s 2024 book (in French), The Defeat of the West, argues that the “vaporization of Protestantism in the United States, in England, and throughout the Protestant world has caused the disappearance of what constituted the strength and specificity of the West.” Todd holds that the West “was at its heart the rise of the Protestant world: England, the United States, Germany, Scandinavia….[This Protestant world] produced a high level of education, unprecedented in human history, universal literacy because it required that every believer should be able to read the Holy Scriptures for himself. In addition, the fear of damnation and the need to feel chosen by God introduced a work ethic, a strong individual and collective morality” which “modeled, by accident, a superior efficient workforce.” The “recent collapse of Protestantism in the U.S. has set in motion an intellectual decline, a disappearance of work ethic….”
But non-Protestant churches also attend to Paul’s admonitions that Christians must “engage in honest employment…; they must not be unproductive” (Tit 3:14) and “who will not work, should not eat” (2 Thes. 3:10), etc. These kinds of ideals temper inordinate individualism and help society. Irreligious capitalism is not having the same kind of success in motivating workers.
Todd sees none of the traditional WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant traditions} in the Biden administration:
In “Joe Biden’s circle, we see a group of leaders who are no longer bound by any common belief system of a religious nature. And they certainly do not share any beliefs of Protestant origin.” Todd charges that from President Roosevelt to Eisenhower, American Protestantism “entered the stage of ‘zombie religion,’ external religiosity without faith” and is “now approaching ‘stage zero’ whereby religious belief loses all influence within the Western world.” Todd warns that “In the zombie state, people no longer go to [church], but they still have their children baptized; the disappearance of baptism is obvious today, stage zero has been reached. In the zombie state, we still bury the dead, thus obeying the Church’s rejection of cremation; today, [there is a] massive spread of cremation …stage zero reached.” “Finally, the civil marriage of the zombie period had all the characteristics of the old religious marriage – one man, one woman, children to be brought up. With same-sex marriage, which makes no sense from a religious point of view, we’re out of the zombie state, and thanks to the laws on marriage for all, we can date religion’s new state zero.”
The West’s creation story – ‘over billions of years, random matter stuck together and eventually here we are’ – gives life no meaning. Todd skewers the wokeness attempting to fill this void: “Now that we are free, en masse, from metaphysical beliefs, foundational and derived, Communist, socialist or nationalist, we live the experience of the void.” We have become “a multitude of mimetic midgets who do not dare to think by themselves – but reveal themselves as capable of intolerance as the believers of ancient times.” Indeed, statue-toppling and speech-denying dominate our universities and media.
Todd is personally liberal on homosexuality (his family accepted all sexual tastes). Yet, in agreement with Moses and the church, he argues acceptance of homosexuality has led to Western nihilism and toward social collapse:
“There is a powerful nihilistic impulse in the US; the search for war and violence. This is a lost society without meaning, that provokes or fans conflicts everywhere in the world.”
Trans is at the heart of Todd’s critique:
“The fixation of the Western middle classes on transgenderism raises a sociological and historical question. …the idea that a man can really become a woman and a woman a man is to affirm something biologically impossible, it is to deny the reality of the world.” “Trans ideology is therefore …, one of the flags of this nihilism that now defines the West, this drive to destroy, not just things and humans but reality.” The US government is trying to export acceptance of the LGBTs, Russia to stop it. Todd says the West “has not understood that it has become suspect to the larger part of the world which is patrilineal, homophobic, and …opposed to the Western moral revolution.” “Russia knows that its homophobic and anti-trans policies, far from alienating the rest of mankind, confer on it a considerable soft power.”
Todd’s analyses and predictions will be tested shortly. He points to the apparent ‘fact’ that the US and its allies have 30X the GDP [Gross Domestic Product ] of Russia and its allies. Yet the West is failing to produce sufficient artillery shells for Ukraine while the Russians are producing enough. Todd questions whether the West’s GDP is real. He asserts Ukraine is losing and will ultimately fail. But no “more than Russia, [America] cannot withdraw from the conflict, they cannot let go” “This is why we are now in an endless war, in a confrontation whose outcome must be the collapse of one or the other.”
Clouding Todd’s pessimism, in February 2024, modest-sized US companies landed on the moon and leaped ahead in Artificial Intelligence. A portion of US GDP goes toward innovations, and an inventive spirit is still alive, even if artillery shells don’t lead the US list of achievements.
As Yogi Berra quipped, “Predictions are hard, especially about the future.” Our media is ever saying the Ukrainians only need more weaponry for triumph, Todd says not. While Russia has advanced economically and socially under Putin (from 2000 to 2017, the Russian rate of murder went from 28/100,000 to 6; alcoholism from 25 to 8; from suicide, 39 to 13; and for infant mortality, from 19 per 1000 live births to 4.4 if you can accept their stats at face), the baby bust is affecting both Russia and the West:
“Russia’s anti-LGBT legislation, while probably appealing to the rest of the world, is not leading Russians to have more children than us. Russia has not escaped the general crisis of modernity. There is no Russian counter-model.” The “individualist crisis also exists in Russia.” “Individualism mutating fully into narcissism only develops in countries where the nuclear family reigned, especially in the Anglo-American world.”
While the promotion of homosexuality in Russia has been suppressed over the past 5 years, homosexual activity remains legal. When the Soviet Union fell, one of the first things the American politicians who visited to ‘reconcile’ was to demand the legalization of homosexuality. So, how much effect on the birthrate can be expected from suppression of promotion while the activity remains legal is uncertain. Further, before the promotion bans, several church leaders complained that Moscow’s entertainment venues were as dense with homosexual performers as in most large Western cities.
Todd only recoils at the trans portion of the homosexual movement, which began 72 years ago and has grown to despoil around 2% of US youth. Yet homosexuality also powered the West’s HIV epidemic – which cost hundreds of thousands of lives and considerable treasure. LGBTs were also behind the monetary and intellectual bankruptcy of the Scouts as well as many Christian denominational scandals and divisions. These don’t figure into his analysis.
Todd contends the “collapse of Protestantism in the United States has caused a decline in the level of education.” As well, Americans “don’t go to church anymore, they don’t believe in God anymore.” “Both Europe and the United States are devoid of Christian morality and religion and both have embraced radical secularism.” Todd argues that “the West is going to lose. It’s reality that’s going to win.”
Perhaps a bit of hyperbole?
While church attendance and church memberships have declined significantly, large, often non-denominational, US congregations continue to flourish. Indeed, in 2018 Pew reported 53% of the US, 10% of the UK, 11% of the French, 16% of Russian, and 3% of Chinese adults polled said ‘religion was very important in their lives.’ The US is still religious (or says it is) as compared to other large countries.
Todd is a sensation in France and comes out at about the same place as Moses and Paul – acceptance of homosexuality stresses and threatens society. So far, Todd, while noting the centrality of promoting homosexuality in the West, only condemns homosexuals’ trans offspring, not their cross-dressing ‘drag.’
As seers of old, Todd looks at things that fail to impress many of those considered to be wise. But he was right about the Soviets, so does the West have reason to fear? Whether homosexuals will elaborate on or invent even more deadly mischief is uncertain, but the sanity of our youth and their birthrate are starting to strike up a tune no responsible citizen wants to hear.
Originally published at renewamerica.com.