There’s no doubt cultural-Marxist-inspired Woke ideology is destroying the best parts of Western Civilisation. Rationality, truth, and a spiritual or even transcendent sense of life have been critiqued and undermined as a result of the long march through the institutions.

As to why this cultural amnesia has occurred look, no further than Augusto Del Noce’s The Crisis Of Modernity, in particular, the chapter titled, Toward a New Totalitarianism.

Del Noce is one of Europe’s most prescient and insightful philosophers and cultural critics who argues that after the end of the second world war it was no longer valid to define totalitarianism in terms of communism and fascism or left and right.

In their place, Del Noce refers to a ‘new, more dangerous, and more radical form of totalitarianism’ involving ‘an unbreakable unity of scientism, eroticism, and secularisation theology’. Del Noce sees this as a new totalitarianism that negates the past in favour of revolutionary change.

Whereas science is based on rationality and reason remains open to disputation, scientism is rigid and doctrinaire. Del Noce argues that scientism represents a totalitarian view of science; one that sees itself as the ‘only true form of knowledge’ where ‘every other type of knowledge – metaphysical or religious – expresses only subjective reactions’.

Illustrated by the way pharmaceutical companies, health experts, and public officials like America’s Anthony Fauci responded to the Covid pandemic by enforcing draconian and illiberal policies, scientism is all pervasive.

In addition to experimental and untrialled vaccines being forced on citizens with dire results, citizens’ freedoms and liberties were curtailed, unwarranted lockdowns enforced and, in Victoria, police acted more like East Germany’s Stasi instead of upholding individual rights and protecting the common good.

In Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews (aka Dictator Dan) justified trashing Westminster parliamentary customs and traditions by referring to ‘the science’ that supposedly sits beyond criticism.

Illustrated by Wilhelm Reich’s The Sexual Revolution, where capitalist society, the church, and the monogamous family are condemned as enforcing a repressive morality that denies sexual freedom, Del Noce argues eroticism also represents a totalitarian threat.

Reich argues classical Marxism’s emphasis on the modes and means of production failed to recognise that equally as necessary for the revolution to succeed was to sexually liberate citizens. Del Noce argues Reich ‘replaced the categories of bourgeoisie and proletariat with those of the advocates of repressive morality’.

Such is the pervasive influence of eroticism Del Noce writes: ‘Today the average man, i.e., the normal man (meaning neither nostalgic nor neurotic) accepts without any moral reaction displays of sexuality that a few years ago were inconceivable’.

Modesty and restraint based on agreed morality and virtues have given way to a libertine culture where sexual freedom and liberation are paramount. In addition to Reich, Del Noce argues the cultural revolution of the late 60s and early 70s also contributed to the West’s descent into a Dionysian world of physical self-fulfilment and narcissistic pleasure.

Graphic pornography is available on the internet 24/7, marriage no longer is defined as involving a man and a women, and school students are taught gender and sexuality – instead of being God-given and a biological reality – are fluid and dynamic social constructs imposed by a heteronormative, capitalist society.

Along with scientism and eroticism, Del Noce identifies secularisation theology as another factor contributing to the West’s decline. Unlike what Cardinal Ratzinger terms ‘aggressive secularism’ (where advocates argue religion is a private affair and Christians are banished from the public square), secularisation theology sublimates traditional aspects of religious teaching.

In his preface to The Age of Secularization Del Noce refers to ‘people in progressive circles (who) were talking about adopting to mankind that has ‘come of ‘age’’. An example of what Del Noce describes as secularisation theology is compromising the concept of original sin and the fall of man, leading to a ‘theology without God’.

By attempting to become more worldly and failing to acknowledge what the American academic David Lyon describes as ‘the transcendent God of traditional religion’, secularisation theology compromises essential elements of Christianity in an attempt to accommodate itself to modernity.

Del Noce warns, ‘By going down this road, religious thought can only absorb the ideas that used to be the secularised version of itself and, ultimately, its own negation.’ While not mentioned by Del Noce, examples of secularisation theology include ordaining women as priests and blessing same-sex unions.

While much of Del Noce’s writings were published over 50 years ago, what he warned about has come to pass. The impact of scientism and the rise of the technological society has resulted in a world bereft of a transcendent and spiritual sense of the world.

Society is characterised by the incessant search for material fulfilment and wellness that, while offering temporary release, fails to assuage the primal need for a deeper and more lasting sense of meaning.

Del Noce, years before others announced the death of Europe, also foretold Europe’s demise given the impact of a technocratic, soulless totalitarinism where instead of family, community and religion, people’s allegiance would be to a new world order.

Long before the rise of the cultural-Marxist-inspired LGBTQ+ movement infected schools and universities, Del Noce also warned about a world where eroticism, pornography and radical gender and sexuality ideology prevail.

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Dr Kevin Donnelly is a senior fellow at the ACU’s PM Glynn Institute and recently organised a forum on Del Noce held at the university’s Sydney campus. Kevin is the editor of Cancel Culture and the Left’s Long March.

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