“He shall think to change times…”

The totalitarian obsession with changing and controlling time

In the cryptic and “alarming” night visions of Daniel, we read this about the little horn:

He shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws… (Daniel 7:25 KJ)

Interpretations differ, but, influenced by the New Testament book of Revelation, I take the little horn to be Antichrist.  Of course that begs questions of who or what is Antichrist, particularly is he a man in the future or an evil spirit through history?  I have no problem saying both.  But, again, interpretations differ, and no way am I going to get bogged down in those here.

What I do want to focus on: Antichrist and antichrists “think to change times.” In a way, this prophesy is already partly fulfilled, or at least we see precursors of its fulfillment in history and today.  For totalitarians make a point to change times.

Really they are obsessed with changing times, both past and present. Totalitarians want to control everything; that includes time and times.  Totalitarians want their power and ideology to be the Lord of society.  And their arrogant overweening desire to “change times” is part of their “speak[ing] great words against the Most High,” of seeking in effect to replace God.

We see this in the French Revolution, which resulted in perhaps the world’s first totalitarian regime.  They actually did seek to replace God with the goddess of Reason in 1793.  And they did away with the Christian calendar.  No B. C., Before Christ, and A. D., Anno Domini, for them!  Year One was now 1792, the first year of the First Republic.  No Lord’s Day either in the new ten day weeks.  Christian holy days were also abolished, of course.

Two centuries later, the French inspired Pol Pot to make the day his Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975 to be the beginning of Year Zero.  He and his fellow genocidal Communists were educated in France.  And all they wanted people to remember about the time before Year Zero was that it was bad. Knowledge of just about anything else pre-Year Zero was prohibited.  So the knowledgable, lawyers, teachers, clergy, Buddhist monks and more, were singled out for execution.

But let’s not think that changing times is just a French thing or a foreign Commie thing.  In our time and place, we have one Nikole Hannah-Jones, who teaches that the United States did not begin with the Declaration of Independence in 1776 but with the first slaves to come to North America in 1619.  (Never mind that Native Americans practiced slavery long before 1619 and that slavery was worldwide or close to it.)  In spite of scholars debunking her 1619 Project, we have numerous schools teaching her propaganda.

We have woke who deface and destroy history and its memorials because of past slavery, racism, etc.  Real knowledge of the past is not prohibited . . . yet.  But it is harder to come by and often suppressed.  Notice how it has become more difficult to find inconvenient history in google searches?  Notice how public schools willfully leave students ignorant about America’s founding?  It’s not just Nikole Hannah-Jones who want us to forget about 1776.

Knowledge of current events and recent history are also constantly attacked by the woke and their allies.  A frequent example is the portrayal of predatory criminals as victims.  Jemar Tisby is a serial offender in this regard, portraying Jordan Neely and Michael Brown as victims.

Another distortion of recent history: the January 6th Committee was not alone in suppressing that President Trump repeatedly called for peaceful protest on that day, including in his speech.

Further examples of both the invention and the suppression of recent history are beyond numbering.  Just while I was writing this,

Christopher F. Rufo

noted how Vox is supposedly debunking his America’s Cultural Revolution by gaslighting us about 2020 and the woke capture of American institutions:

The Debunker, Debunked

Beauchamp’s first criticism is that, contra my argument, left-wing radicalism has not conquered America’s institutions. “The seemingly credible evidence Rufo presents of radical influence—the mainstreaming of once-radical concepts like ‘structural racism,’ for example—thus ends up undermining his case,” he writes. “When radical language goes mainstream without accompanying radical shifts in policy, that’s not actually evidence of a radical takeover.”

This is a spectacular denial of reality. I devote a significant number of pages in the book to documenting the radical shift in policy in American institutions, from general trends to concrete details, including a full chapter on the radicalization of Portland’s public schools and of Seattle’s criminal-justice system. Social-science scholars such as Zach Goldberg, Eric Kaufman, and Jay Greene have demonstrated left-wing racialism’s stunning conquest in media, education, and academia. DEI bureaucracies, racial-preference policies, and other racialist remedies are now found nearly everywhere.

To state there have not been “radical shifts in policy” in recent years is spectacular denial indeed!

By the way, for those that missed it…

I reviewed Rufo’s America’s Cultural Revolution back in August.

Orwell well captured the totalitarian obsession with controlling and suppressing knowledge of history with the Party slogan:

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

And Orwellian memory holes are everywhere.  Totalitarians want us ignorant so that we are easier to conquer and to control.

How we mark time also has been under fire for years.  There is an agenda behind changing Christmas into Winter Holidays.  There is an agenda behind suppressing Columbus Day.

As you can tell, I could go on and on until Christmas.  For now it suffices to say totalitarianisms, particularly woke Neo-Marxism today, are particularly dangerous and deadly forms of idolatry.  Totalitarians want to supplant God and control everything, even our thoughts, our knowledge, and, yes, how we mark and remember time and history.  They, possessed by the spirit of Antichrist, dare to “change times.”

For the sake of future generations and their times, we must not submit. We must not comply.

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photo: a decimal pocket watch from the French Revolution