What is Moral Inversion?

Why all the vices are now virtues

Recently we have seen the re-emergence of the idea that ‘freedom’ is somehow dangerous. Thanks to the Canadian Regime Media, we know that ‘freedom’ is a dangerous far right idea. Freedom of speech is now dangerously extremist too, with beloved figures such as Sadiq Khan warning about the dangers of hate which this kind of freedom entails.

The appeal of this kind of distortion is to a sense of complete moral nihilism. It is addressed to a self which answers its own emptiness in a momentary explosion of intense emotion. This fanatical hollowness, the howl of the vacant, is a symptom of what Michael Polanyi called moral inversion.

Moral inversion also means what you think it means. That all the vices are indeed virtues now is a cliché. Consider the following meme:

There are service industries built around each vice, because vice is much more marketable than virtue. What could be the reason to make such a sweeping remark? Polanyi himself offers the idea that moral inversion is not only real,…