How Progressivism Took Over Our Stories - Louise Perry

Overview

Louise Perry (in conversation with Jonathan Pageau) argues that modern “progressivism” has taken over dominant cultural storytelling by borrowing and inverting older moral and symbolic patterns—especially the World War II “allies vs. axis” narrative and the diversity/cooperation narrative—then pushing them to extremes.

She connects this shift to how fairy tales, mythic structures, and popular media teach people what to admire, fear, and ultimately accept.

1) “Unity vs. diversity” and the “carnival” mistake

Perry/Pageau distinguish between:

• Celebration: unity around a shared center (family, holiday, church).
• Party/Carnival: dissolving boundaries, turning things upside down, releasing pressure without forming a stable community.

Central claim: modern culture has confused the public square for permanent carnival—so anything resembling order, sacred space, or hierarchy is treated as oppressive rather than stabilizing.

They cite examples such as the politicization of cultural events (e.g., the Olympics turned into a drag/carnival-style spectacle) as emblematic of this confusion—mixing sacramental/sacred space with subversive performance.

2) How “upside-down” fairy tales psychologically mis-train children

Perry criticizes modern retellings of fairy tales that invert predator/prey morality—e.g., Three Little Pigs retold so that a violent predator pig is “rehabilitated” and the wolves forgive him.

The argument is that these stories undermine basic psychological knowledge—children’s intuitive sense of danger and predation—loosening moral discrimination. Once the foundational premise is inverted, further inversions follow.

More broadly, traditional fairy tales are described as “tuning forks”: symbolic patterns that prepare people to face suffering and danger in an intelligible “middle space”—not “safe space” and not “trauma,” but the lived reality in between.

3) Post–World War II narrative as a cultural origin story for revolutionary thinking

Pageau frames World War II as a “crux” where a simple moral myth hardened: diverse “allies” formed a coalition against evil (“axis”).

Over time—especially as postwar generations in the 1960s adopted revolutionary tropes—order itself became suspect. Centralized authority (patriarchy or any “system”) was treated as inherently oppressive and needing deconstruction.

They note this motif appears in popular fiction (e.g., Star Wars, Lord of the Rings). A key distinction:

• Lord of the Rings ultimately restores a “proper order” and exposes tyranny as false order.
• Many later stories end cynically or leave unresolved the question: “who governs next?”

4) Competing “evils,” institutions, and the rise of revolutionary ideology

A major thread is that WWII didn’t only defeat Nazism; it shaped discourse by tying victory to a specific coalition. This made certain anti-authoritarian/revolutionary intellectual currents easier to mainstream (with references to the Frankfurt School and the moral reshaping of postwar Europe).

They also argue that as the “World War II consensus” decayed, fascination with “forbidden” evil emerged among some young people—risking a satanic or glamorized version of the WWII moral drama.

The conversation suggests that de-centering (loss of moral distance from the “bad guy”) can make violent or extremist imagery more attractive.

5) Why Christianity’s symbolic power allegedly waned

Perry argues that Christianity’s world-transforming story lost cultural dominance over centuries because human “fall” trends toward self-elevation, system-building, and power/control, linked to Enlightenment rationalist or anti-transcendent impulses.

She frames progressivism as a kind of “weaponized compassion”: it keeps the emotional rhetoric of mercy and care while turning it into a tool for dominance.

Gospel parallels (Peter vs. Judas) are used to illustrate how compassion can be corrupted into power-seeking—replacing Christ’s central authority.

6) Conservatives vs. progressives: learning the functions of center and margin

The proposed “fix” is symbolic balance:

• Conservatives (as they define them) should understand the function of the margin: exception, monsters/gargoyles—roles that belong to a fuller sacred order.
• Progressives should understand the function of the center and stability—because uncontrolled change dissolves reality.

They reject the idea that margin should permanently become the center, warning that when exceptions define “normality,” chaos and oppressive counter-reactions follow.

7) Media, authorship, and the role of fairy-tale-like natural selection

They contrast:

• Ancient/collective story evolution (fairy tales as “authorless,” refined by cultural selection) with

• Blockbuster filmmaking (few producers/executives pushing a mass message).

Claim: Hollywood increasingly fails because it can’t sustain the original founding myth without escalating propaganda; eventually audiences recoil.

They suggest a possible “return” to more straightforward mythic endings (order restored, family reunited), implying mass media may shift.

8) Memes as symbol-objects; why right-wing figures use them more

Perry/Pageau treat memes like fairy tales: symbolically rich, evolved through social selection, and reusable “vessels” for meaning.

One explanation offered: when progressives seemed ascendant, conservatives became the de facto rebels—so meme culture became a weapon for right-leaning resistance.

They also suggest progressives may avoid “archetypal” symbolism due to an instinct toward subversion rather than essence or clarity.

Main presenters/contributors

• Louise Perry
• Jonathan Pageau
• Deacon Sarapin (also promoted as the instructor/host for a “universal history master class” segment in the video)