Progress appropriation is a form of ethnophagic violence used by monist religions (christianity, islam and their derivations) against native cultures, consisting in misattributing the credit of a social, moral, scientifical, civilizational, political or technical progress to a monist religion, when in fact the progress in question has been achieved by the native people. Progress appropriation mainly manifests itself through the diffusion of false historical narratives appropriating the genius of a native people to make a monist religion look better and often to hide the obscurantist crimes of said religion.
Functions of progress appropriation
- Hide the fact that post progress in human history has been achieved despite monist religions, not because of them
- Push a salvationist narrative mispresenting native people as inferior creatures in need of being “saved”, “civilized”, “moralized”
- Gaslight the public to complicate the work of the citizens trying to confront
- Diversion by making the most extravagant claims. “The bigger, the better” : the more lies one spreads, the more effort it takes to restore the truth
- Omnipresence on the political spectrum. To maintain their grip on the societies they parasite, monist ideologies claim to be the epitome of conservatism in some circumstances, and the epitome of progressivism in other circumstances.
Examples
- Islamic propagandists and their christian allies portray Averroes as an example of “Islamic enlightenment”, when in reality islamic authorities persecuted him, exiled and accused him of heresy. Averroes produced his philosophical work despite islam, making the most of every breach, every loosening of the islamic tyranny.
- Islamic propagandists and their christian allies portraying Mughals as the creators of indian architecture.
- Christian propagandists appropriating the Enlightment by placing emphasis on the traces of christianity present in the works of the Enlightment philosophers (in a time where christianity was still strongly enforced) to undermine the anti-christian nature of the Enlightment, and the role of the development of intellectual emulation outside of the influence of the Church.