Absolutist activism, skeptical relativism — or both?

How can activists so frequently say “There’s no real truth and values are subjective” in one breath but then act physically — and sometimes violently — to impose their agenda absolutely? An explanatory quotation from exactly one hundred years ago:

“Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth … then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity … . From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.”

That was said by Benito Mussolini, in Diuturna [The Lasting] (1921).

The path is from (1) skepticism about objectivity to (2) relativism to (3) epistemological equivalence to (4) subjective fictiveness to (5) physicalist activism.

The image is of a young Mussolini, facing one of his spiritual grandchildren.

Related posts on Mussolini.

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