Saul-to-Paul and political conversion

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Saul-to-Paul and political conversion Anonymous 05-07-25 21:34:51 No.24598

What would be a deconstruction of the Saul-to-Paul conversion trope?

I'm asking this, because I'm planning on making my grad school thesis the political use of political conversion memoirs and how the Saul-to-Paul trope is utilized in this context. The four political memoirs I'm using (all of them featuring the subject going from leftist to right-winger) are:

>Witness by Whittaker Chambers
>School of Darkness by Bella Dodd
>Radical Son by David Horowitz
>Unplanned by Abby Johnson

All of these memoirs conspicuously follow the exact same story arch: individual (usually presented as naive) gets involved with an "evil" organization (usually a left-wing political group), they rise up to the group's higher ranks due to the group manipulating them insecurities, they engage in unspeakable acts of evil as a high-ranking member of the group, they have a sudden break with said group, either leave voluntarily or are thrown out, then go on to have a right-wing religious conversion, feel incredibly guilt about what their "naive" self had done, and only ends up being redeemed through exposing or snitching on their former comrades. This trope, when used in a political context, is almost always used by the converts to show their superior authority in understanding politics. Many times they present their political conversions from far-left to far-right as a "good vs. evil" type thing.

My question is, how would this political conversion "Saul-to-Paul" narrative be deconstructed or subverted?

Anonymous 07-07-25 04:42:07 No.24606

QRD on all the books:

"Witness" – Chambers was a fucked up guy, joined Communist Party USA and was part of its underground network, wife refused to abort their child which lead him down the path of religious conversion, claimed he understood the godlessness of communism so he quit, became a Christian, and then snitched on CPUSA during the 2nd Red Scare ("McCarthyism"). Book is highly melodramatic and presents a highly good-vs-evil Manichaean worldview. Chambers also blames intellectuals for propagating communism in America, heavily promotes Christianity as the only way to save the world from the communist menace, and is overall a sensationalist asshole.

"School of Darkness" – Bella Dodd was an Italian immigrant who longed to fit in with American society and culture, joined CPUSA in the mid 1930s, recruited a bunch of CPUSA-affiliated teachers into the Teachers Union in New York, worked her way up to become very successful in the Party, fell out with the Party soon after Earl Browder got purged, ended up leaving CPUSA and became a born-again Catholic after meeting with Fulton Sheen, Sheen then convinced her to snitch on the Party during McCarthyism as a form of "repentance". Basically, Dodd was desperately searching for validation her entire life. When communists didn't want her anyone she became Catholic and anti-communist and got validation from that crowd.

"Radical Son" – Horowitz grew up being raised by CPUSA-affiliated parents, was raised to believe in communism, became a big name activist in the 60s New Left, worked with the Black Panthers, then had a falling out with the Panthers, accused them of murdering a friend of his, had a complete falling out with leftist politics and embraced Reaganite conservatism in the 80s. Most of his memoir is about "growing up" and realizing the leftist beliefs his parents raised him with were "wrong". He also hates intellectuals and is highly self-righteous.

"Unplanned" – Abby Johnson worked at Planned Parenthood and became very successful at it. She became a clinic director. Then, one day she allegedly witnessed a fetus being aborted on an ultrasound and this destroyed her mentally. She became a staunch anti-abortion activist afterwards. A lot of details in her memoir have been scrutinized by her former coworkers. Her book doesn't have some great metaphysical discussion on the "evils of leftism" as the other three but it's a more contemporary conversion memoir, so.