“Foto als Waffe.” Regula Stämpfli in der Weltwoche zur Inszenierung von Frauen und Kindern zwecks Propaganda. 
“Politics of Fiction.” Selfie Copyright laStaempfli vor Siebdruck Damien Hirst im Künstlerhaus für die Nächte der Philosophie.
1979 Reloaded: How the Left Lost the Enlightenment (Again)
By Regula Staempfli — laStaempfli
“Totalitarianism begins the moment belief replaces thought.”
— laStaempfli
Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York is being celebrated as a triumph of diversity, justice, and “a new progressive era.”
Let’s tell the truth:
This election marks the moment when the Western Left abandons the Enlightenment once more — and embraces a moral-coded tribalism that looks suspiciously like theocratic politics in identity packaging.
We have seen this film before.
Tehran, 1979.
Western intellectuals cheered the “moderate cleric” Khomeini.
They mistook fanaticism for liberation.
They called submission “authenticity.”
They betrayed women, dissidents, secular thinkers — and reality itself.
Today, the same reflex returns — algorithmically refined.
The new authoritarianism doesn’t wear uniforms.
It wears hashtags.
It censors not through prisons but through “safety guidelines.”
It praises women in theory and erases them in practice.
It calls censorship “care.”
It calls submission “solidarity.”
This is not progress.
It is Algorithmic Theocracy — the soft totalitarianism of the digital age.
Hannah Arendt warned us:
Totalitarianism is not just violence.
It is worldlessness — the destruction of a shared reality through moral code and emotional absolutism.
Why Mamdani echoes 1979
Today’s Left does not argue.
It declares.
It does not debate.
It denounces.
It does not think.
It believes.
And belief is the oldest enemy of freedom.
- Morality replaces truth.
- Victimhood replaces citizenship.
- Language replaces reality.
- Religion hides inside identity.
- Women vanish again.
- Dissent equals heresy.
- Media worship instead of question.
- Violence is romanticized — as long as it’s “resistance.”
- History is rewritten to suit the narrative.
- Democracy becomes performance, not power.
“Democracy is not a Safe Space — it is a space for argument.”
— laStaempfli
Progressives once argued for universal rights.
Now they defend sectarian identities.
They once defended reason.
Now they enforce emotion.
They once fought for women.
Now they tell women that sex does not exist.
And they imagine themselves radical — while serving the oldest reactionary dream:
replace thinking with belief, individuals with tribes, and politics with obedience.
This is not liberation.
It is the algorithmic return of the clerical mind.
1979 again — only smoother, curated, Instagram-polished.
“When truth becomes a moral posture, politics dies.”
— laStaempfli
What happens next?
Either we reclaim reason — or we surrender to the new cults.
Either we defend Enlightenment — or we relive its destruction.
History is back.
And it has a login screen.