Most Extreme Pre-Modern Ideology?

[PsyloSurgeon]

I want to create a very extreme idea for my timeline.
This is my idea:
This ideology believes that life of any kinds doesn't exist, and is an illusion. Then the idea is that life must eradicated to return the world back to the inert, non-living initial condition.
These extremists hijack an empire, and launch a complete war against nature and life of all kinds. They destroy forests, they kill wildlife, encourage unlimited poaching. They encourage overfishing, overgrazing, and very destructive agricultural practices. They brainwash peasants into very destructive sprees of ecocide.
Soon ecological collapse ensues, and the empire collapses. But the ecocidal ideology continues to ensue and morphs into population decline due to anti-natalism and complete destruction of soil. Soon the society undegoes complete collapse, and devolves back to Iron Age conditions.
Is this possible?

 

[Quanten]

One that comes to mind would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramontanism the complete control of state duties by the catholic church.

 

[Comte de Dordogne]

One that comes to mind would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramontanism the complete control of state duties by the catholic church.

But what does Catholic ultramontanism have to do with the destruction of all life forms?

 

[X_X]

I want to create a very extreme idea for my timeline.
This is my idea:
This ideology believes that life of any kinds doesn't exist, and is an illusion. Then the idea is that life must eradicated to return the world back to the inert, non-living initial condition.
These extremists hijack an empire, and launch a complete war against nature and life of all kinds. They destroy forests, they kill wildlife, encourage unlimited poaching. They encourage overfishing, overgrazing, and very destructive agricultural practices. They brainwash peasants into very destructive sprees of ecocide.
Soon ecological collapse ensues, and the empire collapses. But the ecocidal ideology continues to ensue and morphs into population decline due to anti-natalism and complete destruction of soil. Soon the society undegoes complete collapse, and devolves back to Iron Age conditions.
Is this possible?

This is just anarcho-capitalism...

But on a non joking note, because humans rely on plants and animals to exist there has never been a society that would believe this.

 

[CountPeter]

In short? No.

To go a little bit further, I would actually say you are talking about a religion rather than an ideology. There are OTL groups which have had similar ideologies (misanthropic satanism for example) but they are naturally very small.

Religions generally have to appeal to people whilst fostering both laymen and adept circles strong enough for an idea to be robust. This doesn't really appeal to either in a way that's sustainable.

For the laymen, the idea is super contradictory on face value and doesn't have much appeal. Why follow the annihilation cult when just not believing has more tangible benefits?

For the adept... Well an idea like this isn't going to get any solid ground here because it doesn't make sense on a level that any academic could reasonably work with given the level of knowledge required in the first place to be an academic.

In short, the best case scenario is a small compound.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

One that comes to mind would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramontanism the complete control of state duties by the catholic church.

I don't think that even the most hard-core ultramontanists wanted that.

 

[sampleswift]

I want to create a very extreme idea for my timeline.
This is my idea:
This ideology believes that life of any kinds doesn't exist, and is an illusion. Then the idea is that life must eradicated to return the world back to the inert, non-living initial condition.
These extremists hijack an empire, and launch a complete war against nature and life of all kinds. They destroy forests, they kill wildlife, encourage unlimited poaching. They encourage overfishing, overgrazing, and very destructive agricultural practices. They brainwash peasants into very destructive sprees of ecocide.
Soon ecological collapse ensues, and the empire collapses. But the ecocidal ideology continues to ensue and morphs into population decline due to anti-natalism and complete destruction of soil. Soon the society undegoes complete collapse, and devolves back to Iron Age conditions.
Is this possible?

That feels really grimdark, like something out of Judge Dredd (sounds awfully like Judge Death!) rather than something that could gain any real traction.
Omnicidal mania isn't likely to happen at all pre-modern. Likely to be just a few insane people (like the Dark Judges) rather than any large movement.

If you're talking about the most extreme pre-modern ideology to actually happen? Maybe the Spartans? "There is only war + ultramilitarism?" Aztecs (Widespread human sacrifice to appease the gods).
Does Taiping Rebellion count as modern for this?

 

[EnvarKadri]

This sounds like a lazily designed enemy faction for an RPG, "The chaotic (and stupid) evil church of antiecologism edge".

 

[SunKing105]

Does it make sense to talk about ideology in the pre-modern period?

 

[sampleswift]

This sounds like a lazily designed enemy faction for an RPG, "The chaotic (and stupid) evil church of antiecologism edge".

You're right. Or a comic book.

Does it make sense to talk about ideology in the pre-modern period?

I think ideologies existed in the pre-modern period. There were developing ones such as in the American and French revolutions.
If you go back, there were also ideologies in classical Greece (Athens) with the first democracy?
But the OP's isn't an ideology; it's an overglorified death cult.

 

[Aghasverov]

I can't come up with anything quite as... autodestructive... as the OP suggests, but historically, the Qarmatians, an extremist to the nth degree Sevener Shia sect who controlled Bahrain and Al Hasa for about a century, were pretty fearsome. Their fanaticism and iconoclasm induced them once to sack Mecca and desecrate the Kaaba... they were known for attacking, enslaving, and slaughtering pilgrims on the Hajj. For a time they were the most powerful state in the Persian Gulf, with an economy built largely on slavery, piracy, and raiding... not the sort of people you want to have for neighbours , which eventually led to their downfall....

 

[Theoretical_TJ]

Get enough elements of the radical anabaptists to gain traction - the Munster Rebellion in particular, and you can get a very scary millenarian Revolution.

The persecution done was absolutely awful but given that Catholics, Reformed, and Lutheran all reacted the same way is telling. Calvin gets a bad rap for Severtus, but Catholic and Lutheran domains would have done the same, especially because he was also a political revolutionary beyond the Arianism.

 

[CountPeter]

Does it make sense to talk about ideology in the pre-modern period?

Definitely. They were rarely as codified or as well branched out, but conscious political ideology is a very old concept (see early Chinese history for example).

 

[Falecius]

I can't come up with anything quite as... autodestructive... as the OP suggests, but historically, the Qarmatians, an extremist to the nth degree Sevener Shia sect who controlled Bahrain and Al Hasa for about a century, were pretty fearsome. Their fanaticism and iconoclasm induced them once to sack Mecca and desecrate the Kaaba... they were known for attacking, enslaving, and slaughtering pilgrims on the Hajj. For a time they were the most powerful state in the Persian Gulf, with an economy built largely on slavery, piracy, and raiding... not the sort of people you want to have for neighbours , which eventually led to their downfall....

Well, they also had (for the in-group) a relatively small-scale consultative system of government, in contrast with the rather despotic mainstream Muslim realms they opposed (militantly so indeed). However, maybe the earlier Khariji sect, the Azraqis in the same general area, are even more extreme in advocating the utter lack of virtue of anyone outside their community (and therefore their right to fight, loot, ransack and enslave those).

 

[PsyloSurgeon]

Well, they also had (for the in-group) a relatively small-scale consultative system of government, in contrast with the rather despotic mainstream Muslim realms they opposed (militantly so indeed). However, maybe the earlier Khariji sect, the Azraqis in the same general area, are even more extreme in advocating the utter lack of virtue of anyone outside their community (and therefore their right to fight, loot, ransack and enslave those).

How did the Azraqi who were in Fars, treat the Zoroastrian people living there?

 

[Falecius]

How did the Azraqi who were in Fars, treat the Zoroastrian people living there?

I do not actually remember any source mentioning that directly, but, I would assume, better than they dealt with non-Khariji Muslims (who were, in their perspective, apostates who knowingly abandoned the right path, as opposed to Zoroastrians who had never taken it to begin with). Which likely means, still horribly in terms of looting and violence, but the average folks there weren't targets as far as I know.

To be fair, our sources may easily be quite biased against the Azraqis anyway, and interested in blackening their name, so there's that (also true for the Qarmatians).

 

[Falecius]

The Mazdakites were also consistently depicted as abhorrently extreme, but there this is clearly source bias - much of what Zoroastrian and Muslim chroniclers alike attributed to them as a sign of abominable , radical extremism (mainly concerning their opposition to marriage and, allegedly, private property) would sound rather closer to reasonable to a modern perspective (if not a downright good idea, depending on which modern views one agrees with, and which parts of their alleged platform one takes).

 

[Alex1guy]

I feel like openly running any sort of regime that has openly embraced the idea of killing a large portion of it's own people through starvation isn't going to last very long in any sort of major society or Empire. At best they'd just be overthrown and it sounds like it would start a civil war at worst. I can see an Empire enacting horrible policies against a specific group maybe within their Empire to de-populate them, but against their own "citizenry"? Probably a good way to end up being killed by rebels or other elite groups seeking power.

 

[PsyloSurgeon]

I feel like openly running any sort of regime that has openly embraced the idea of killing a large portion of it's own people through starvation isn't going to last very long in any sort of major society or Empire. At best they'd just be overthrown and it sounds like it would start a civil war at worst. I can see an Empire enacting horrible policies against a specific group maybe within their Empire to de-populate them, but against their own "citizenry"? Probably a good way to end up being killed by rebels or other elite groups seeking power.

Not against citizenry, I meant against nature, and antinatalism.

 

[Alex1guy]

Not against citizenry, I meant against nature, and antinatalism.

Thing is, this will run against the citizenry if the state/government/ruler is openly advising their people to destroy their livelihoods with the expressed intention of starving them to death. Most people want to, you know, not die.

Maybe a regime could try and embrace some ideology of production that unintentionally ruins everything and kills lots of people, that's happened many times, but I can't really think of any ideologies/religions that nihilistically wanted to ruin everything on purpose, gaining widespread following.

Even the Khmer Rouge's decimation of Cambodia's population, agriculture and industry had some nebulous goal of creating a "better" society be removing "all foreign influence", despite the horrific, nightmarish results. You could take that root, some leadership enacts a bunch of poorly realized policies or reforms that achieves mass crop failure or destruction of resources that results in mass famine etc.