Lewis lived and wrote during a time of dramatic ideological competition, with the rise of totalizing ideologies in the Soviet Union (Marxist-Leninist communism), Italy (Mussolini’s fascism), and Germany (National Socialism-Nazism), not to mention forms of nationalized racial supremacy that informed Nazism (Aryan supremacy) and the violent ideology of Imperial Japan. This presentation will focus on some of the things that Lewis wrote regarding revolutionary ideologies and violence, imperialism, and totalitarianism during a critical period, primarily from about 1933-1945. At the time, Lewis was a relatively young scholar (he turned thirty in 1928) and yet, by as early as 1933 he described in his fiction the Nietzschean ethos of struggle and conquest of both communism and fascism, labeling them in his The Pilgrim’s Regress as violent dwarves known as the Marxomanni, Swastici, and Fascisti.
Lewis was famously apolitical, even respectfully dodging a knighthood lest it suggest that he was a partisan of the party then in power in Westminster. Moreover, he did not write at any length, from the vantage point of a scholar, about the deep theoretical or philosophical underpinnings of these ideologies, despite the fact that they were the great ideational and security challenges to Western civilization.
Yet he thoughtfully exposed their evils, both in terms of ideas and tactics, in his fiction. We will see that Lewis recognized in these ideologies a false and anti-Christian view of human nature—a view which therefore had no regard for the worth and dignity of the individual human being. We will also see that Lewis recognized that the accretion of power and the willingness to use every tool of the state, including misinformation, propaganda, torture, and war, was a sin inherent to ideologies emanating from Moscow and Berlin. Finally, we will see how Lewis levels a Christian and liberal (democratic, human rights-oriented) critique at revolutionary violence and totalitarianism, particularly in the novels of his Space Trilogy.
Eric Patterson, Ph.D. serves as President and CEO of the Victims of Communism Museum in Washington, DC and is Past President of the Religious Freedom Institute. As a scholar, his focus has been on the intersection of ideas (culture, religion, ideology) and national security affairs. Patterson is the author or editor of over twenty books, dozens of academic articles, and op-eds and interviews in many popular publications. Among his current projects is a book on C.S. Lewis’ writings on war, peace, and security, from Lewis’s early poetry to his academic work on Arthur and chivalry to Lewis’ fiction and apologetic works.
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