Category Archives: Politics

The Authoritarian Power Base

As I’ve written, political power is, in essence, the capacity for violence and the will to use it. The power of a leader comes from his authority over, his ability to command, those with the capacity for violence because they believe he legitimately has authority to command them.

American politics, democratic politics, is a battle over who has authority and legitimacy to command violence of the democratic state and to what ends it may be commanded. These battles do not result in civil war because Americans accept that the democratic state, regardless of who holds the reins, is the legitimate authority over violence as long as the democratic process of transitioning this authority occurs in a mostly legitimate manner.

This legitimacy is crumbling.

Trust in American institutions is declining across the board. Trust in democracy is falling. The legitimacy of the process of authority transition is declining, with many thinking the process is rigged by, depending on the partisan side, illegal voting, foreign interference, gerrymandering, the electoral college itself, voter demographic changes, etc. A significant minority would theoretically support a military coup, while a significant minority currently support a legal coup by the deep state. (And this is only what people are willing to say, if a coup happened, far more would go along with it than would willingly say they’d theoretically support it).

The legitimacy of the democratic process is collapsing. If the legitimacy of the process collapses, so to does the legitimacy of the entire system who’s entire legitimacy and authority rests on the will of the people.

It is possible legitimacy could be earned back by the current system, but given the increasing diversity of America and the bifurcation of America between the Amerikaners and the urban cosmopolitans and their clients, it is unlikely, barring a Trumpian miracle.

Once legitimacy has faded, so to will authority. Power will be up for grabs.

With power struggles becoming viscerally real in a way democratic power papers over, legitimacy and authority will have to be reestablished.

The neoreactionary project is to establish legitimacy and authority in a peaceful way, to transfer legitimacy, authority, and power to an authoritarian autocrat with minimal bloodshed and without a descent into chaos.

Of course, the peaceful transfer of legitimacy, authority, and power itself requires a certain level of legitimacy, authority, and power.

Back to the beginning, power comes from the capacity and will for violence, it is essentially, ‘how many men with guns with how much morale and support equipment can I bring to bear should I call upon it?’

The capacity for violence doesn’t have to be used to exercise power but it has to exist and the will and authority to command it must be there.

This means that any person or group who wishes to reestablish legitimacy and authority after the terminal decay of current legitimacy and authority will require a base of power, a group of men willing to obey and, if necessary, commit violence on its behalf.

This includes the great man trying to establish the neoreactionary bargain or any other group trying to establish some form of right-wing authoritarianism.

The good news for for right-wing authoritarians is that there is a large, well-armed, pre-built power base waiting to be led: the middle-American radicals. As I wrote in my last post, the MARs are the largest single political group in the US but are also also one the politically least powerful.

The MARs are ineffective because they are leaderless. Trump is not of them and isn’t really leading them, but he’s sympathetic to them and appealling directly to them, which is the the most pro-MARS any political player has been since Buchanan last ran. The MARs propelled him to victory when his play to them was essentially: I don’t hate you, I think your concerns are legitimate, and I will work to address them. Given the vicious reaction from the current establishment that even this relatively minor level of play to the MARs base had, it is clear that in our current system the MARs are considered an illegitimate outgroup by the powers that be.

The MARs are effectively an occupied people ruled by an essentially foreign establishment. The Cathedral is run by people with different values who hate them, or at best condescend to them (“why don’t those rubes vote for their own best interests?”). Given the vicious reaction to Trump’s appeals to the MARs (and to the Tea Party and NRA), it is clear that the current American ruling structure will attempt to destroy any attempts by the MARs for democratic redress of their concerns. Their lot is to ground down for the system.

A large, alienated, armed, directionless, occupied group is sitting there waiting to be led. All that’s needed is to supply them with a leader, a will, a direction, and there will be a power base to reshape America.

The MARs are the obvious target group for any right-wing authoritarian action. They are patriotic and they are armed. They are increasingly desparate and not particularly ideological, meaning that someone willing and able to provide them the good governance they need will be able to create loyalty, legitimacy, and authority among them. Their attachment to democracy and the system that is destroying them, is not particularly strong and is weakening, leaving them open to more authoritarian froms of government.

Any populist right-wing movement, should be working to organize, radicalize, and mobilize the MARs, that’s where they will find fertile soil for any potential right-wing mass movement.

But, right-wing populism will likely not succeed. Every populist MARs uprising within the democratic framework, from McCarthy to Nixon’s silent majority to the Tea Party, has been either crushed or subverted. Hopefully, Trump will succeed, but the likelihood is he will at most buy a few more years until collapse, a few judges to protect MARs from leftist vengeance, and have prevented war with Syria, Iran, and Russia (which are certainly  valuable in themselves, but are not going to change the tide we currently ride).

It also seems questionable whether a populist MARs movement outside a democratic framework will spontaneously arise. Despite the rhetoric, the MARs have proven to be overly long-suffering and law-abiding for us to expect 2nd amendment solutions in time for them to be effective. The current South African situation suggests that this long-suffering may last well beyond the point of no return.

Aside from concerns of feasibility, 2nd amendment solutions are something to be avoided if at all possible. Peaceful restoration is the goal, violent restoration, even if ultimately successful, is itself a partial failure, and there is a high probability of terminal failure should violent restoration be attempted.

Instead of populism, a better strategy is passivism. Build an elite class among the MARs, tap into existing MARs elites, and find allies with MARs-friendly elites, and build a network to create a leadership class the MARs will follow. Once this class has been built and has created the necessary legitimacy, a leader can be taken from it (or may arise spontaneously, as Trump did) and power can be peacefully transferred and restoration enacted.

Imagine what Trump could have done, could be doing, if, instead of having to rely on the deep state and eGOP to staff his administration and Twitter to spread his message, he had a ready built, legitimized set of loyal elites with a loyal power base to drop into any necessary role and have it spread their message. If, instead of having to spend most of his efforts on court politics and maintaining poll numbers, he could work at solving the US’ problems knowing his people were loyal to him and would support him.

He would be in a position to accept power and take upon himself the responsibility for restoration.

Given how much Trump has gained (or, perhaps more accurately, forestalled) with an isolated, hastily organized campaign filled with internal strife, working off little more than a single, fallible man’s charisma and ideas and a minor mobilization of MARs, think of how much could be accomplished if post-Trump, (2024, 2028, 2032), a true restorationist candidate ran an organized campaign centred around a well-led MARs power base fully organized and mobilized by a loyal, coordinated elite class with the purposeful intent of enacting restoration.

This would have a real chance of it being the true election that brings restoration. He would need to do little more than accept power.

Trump made the initial attempt at the Sailer strategy, he showed the way, now it needs to be fully adopted and implemented with the true election in mind.

The seed is there, among the MARs, who will grow it and pluck the fruit?

The Trump Realignment

You often see the lament from conservatives and the accusation from the left, of how the GOP has abandoned it principles by electing Trump. This is wrong, the Trump realignment is not a shift of principles, but a shift of power between groups with differing principles within the GOP.

The GOP is largely made up of 4 general groups.

The establishment (eGOP), also known as country-club Republicans or Chamber of Commerce conservatives is numerically one of the two smallest factions, primarily made up of the rich and upper-middle class. It’s the Buckleyian alliance of neocons and smallish-government “principled” conservatives who hold gate-keeping power over conservatism and the GOP. While numerically small, due to their riches, connections, and institutional power they hold tremendously outsized power within the GOP. Most major conservative institutions are controlled by them. eGOP principles are low taxes, somewhat limited government, business-friendliness, American Empire, playing by the rules (set by the Democrats), and being respectable. The eGOP is the right wing of the Washington uniparty and they set what “conservative principles” are.

The right-wing libertarians are the other small faction. Best exemplified by Ron Paul, they believe in small government, governmental non-interference, and are generally against foreign interventionism. They were numerically very small and had no real power in the GOP, but they controlled a few academic/think tank institutions, and their strict adherence to their ideology and their strong dedication to government policy solutions often had influence on GOP policies beyond what their lack of numbers and power would suggest.

The religious right (RR), also called the Moral Majority or evangelicals (although much broader than just evangelicals) were numerically a much larger faction. Made up of religious conservatives, it is where the bulk of solid Republican voters came from. This faction cares deeply about and votes on family values and anti-abortion. The RR has created a whole set of parallel institutions, none of which have much real impact on federal politics. Despite it’s numerical superiority and large institutional capacity, it wielded only moderate influence on GOP policies. Hated with a passion by the left and as basically single-issue voters, they were a reliable voting bloc for the GOP, needing only the occasional anti-abortion speech or small regulation here or there, to get keep them coming out to vote. Ultimately nothing concrete or lasting on the national level was ever implemented for the RR bloc, despite their loyalty and numbers.

The final and numerically largest faction, is the Middle-American Radicals (MARs). The MARs are not, strictly speaking, a GOP faction; they lean GOP, but are, as a group, not particularly partisan or ideological; they’ll vote for blue dog or union Democrats and probably think fondly of JFK. This group is by far the largest faction in US politics, comprising most all non-urban, working-class to middle-class, white Americans.

The MARs overlap the RR almost completely, the primary difference between the MARs and RR is that while the MARs may be sympathetic to the RRs on family values issues, they don’t particularly care and do not generally vote based on moral wedge issues. The RR are basically a subgroup of the MARs that attend church regularly and vote on their faith.

This difference though, is huge in political terms as it makes RR a reliable, loyal voting bloc for GOP as long as the GOP pay lip-service to family values and anti-abortion, but at the same time, the non-RR MARs are not particularly reliable. They’re not particularly partisan in voting and may not vote much at all. Unlike the other groups I’ve mentioned, who anybody can recognize, they are not a particularly well-defined or well-recognized faction.

The MARs do not have a particularly coherent ideology and their general political sentiments are “politicians are corrupt liars in the pockets of corporations stealing from little guy, except maybe this one guy from my hometown/state I like.” This is why there was a seemingly odd fluidity between Trump and Bernie, both tapped into this general sentiment.

They are strongly patriotic, pro-America, and pro-military and while not particularly in favour of international intervention, can be easily led to support war against America’s enemies if they are convinced there’s a threat. They are generally socially conservative-libertarianish (“I don’t like homos, but it’s not business”). They are wary of free trade as it tends to result in the factories they work for shutting down. On economic issues, they are generally for “fairness” for the average Joe. They hate socialism, big government, high taxes, handouts, and freeloaders, but they’ll also support government intervention they see as looking out for the little guy, supporting Medicare, Social Security, and such things. They’ll hate regulations that interfere with their farm or plumbing small business, but think somebody should rein in those corporate fat cats and bankers.

The MARs political beliefs are defined not by a coherent ideology, but by a general sentiment that government should work to make sure the working man gets his fair share and can live well without giving their hard-earned money to freeloaders. The Tea Party was the quintessential MARs political movement.

Illegal immigration is the one major issue the MARs stake out a clear policy stance: opposition. Illegal immigration hits every MARs button: it’s unfair that some get to jump the line, it’s wrong that criminal freeloading illegals get to take advantage of American tax dollars, they take jobs, and they lower wages.

The interesting thing about the MARs, is that despite being by far the largest constitutency in the US, they have minimal political power. They vote inconsistently, have no coherent ideology, and have no real political organizing (before the Tea Party) which makes it difficult for them to influence policy. MARs control only one notable institution, the NRA. This is why the NRA is so outsizedly powerful, because they are the only real interaction node between the MARs, the largest bloc of votes in the US, and the federal government.

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Following the Bush administration’s many failures, the right was in chaos.

The libertarian faction had generally worked well together with the eGOP and the MARs. The non-ideological love of freedom of the MARs and lower taxes and less regulations of the eGOP gave the libertarians a home on the edges of the GOP.

But right-wing libertarianism is dead. It had it’s high water mark in 2008/2012 Ron Paul campaigns. With Ron Paul’s retirement, the “pot and sex” and bleeding heart libertarians took over libertarianism, while most right-wing libertarians moved on as they began to realize that mass immigration and libertarianism were incompatible and many began to think as Peter Thiel said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible”.

The religious right reached the high point of their power electing “compassionate conservative” George W. Bush. After 8 years, nothing was done about abortion or family values, meanwhile demographics shifted strongly against the religious right and its power has since faded. It is now a marginalized GOP voting bloc, rather than a major GOP power player; just a enough power to get a token VP, but not much more. They RR was betrayed and has permanently lost, and they know it.

The eGOP spent a lot of political capital on the Iraq War and other foreign interventions which turned out poorly. The 2007-2008 financial crisis and great recession was a powerful hit to their legitimacy on economic issues. After 8 years of Bush, the eGOP had burned through most of their legitimacy.

At the same time, libertarianism and the religious right were dying, and the eGOP was delegitimized, the Tea Party took off. The Tea Party was a MARs movement: lots of flags, lots of patriotism, libertarianish, less taxes, and less government, except where it helps the little guy. The Tea Party organized and began to throw out politicians of the other factions. It was then somewhat coopted by the eGOP during the Obama years.

This is where Trump’s realignment kicked in.

Trump decided to bypass the eGOP and in fact played on the anti-eGOP sentiment that had always been part the MARs and RR. Trump became the political avatar of the MARs. He attacked eGOP principles which had dominated the party for so long. He pushed a non-ideological Americanism for the little guy. He hit on illegal immigration. He brought the RR into the MARs: he’s not going to try to enforce family values, but he will at least try to be anti-abortion and will protect the defeated religious right from the left’s vengeance, while appealing to the RR’s sympathy to the more broadly-appealing MARs issues they support.

The Trump realignment is not an abandonment of conservative principles by conservatives, it is a fundamental realignment of ownership of the GOP from conservatives (the eGOP) to the middle-American radicals, who have fundamentally different values.

The RR’s embrace of Trump is not an abandonment of their religious values, but a recognition that they lost, that they will no longer hold even the moderate influence it once did in the GOP, and that they have to ally with the MARs to not be entirely crushed by the left.

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Finally, beyond Trump: any authoritarian right-wing regime in America will have to make the MARs the base of their power. The MARs like (small-r) republicanism, because it is American, but they are also not particularly ideologically opposed toauthoritarianism. An American anti-democratic authoritarianism would be embraced by the MARs if it was American and patriotic enough.

While neoreaction is strongly in favour of converting elites, elites’ power comes from authority over and legitimacy from people. Any reactionary elite who pulls restoration off will have to have a power base to do so, and the natural reactionary power base is found in the MARs.

Power, Rights, and Illiberal Freedom

As I’ve noted before, power is the ability to enact one’s will.

Negative freedom is the ability to act according to one’s will without external constraint.

Positive freedom is the ability to act according to one’s will.

A right is a license granted by a higher (not necessarily divine) power to either act according to one’s will or enact ones will within a particular domain.

Notice how similar these definitions are, differing primarily in emphasis.

Freedom is a form of power, and power a form of freedom. Rights are a form of power granted from above.

Any right or freedom is necessarily an exertion of power.

Any right is conditional, and can be taken away by the granter of said right. The assignment of rights is an act of power of the superior upon the inferior.

Granted freedom, whether by court, law, or constitution, is not truly freedom, but a right. It is conditional.

All positive freedoms are necessarily granted, the provision of the ability to act is implied within the definition. Some negative freedoms may be granted, in which case they are not true freedom, merely another right, power bequeathed by the superior. Granted freedoms, freedoms as rights, liberal freedoms, are conditional upon the higher power granting them. They are constrained by that higher power and are therefore not true freedom.

As noted, power comes from, at base, the capacity for violence.

Rights are granted by a higher power with the greater capacity for violence; the superior grants his capacity for violence and his authority to his inferior.

True freedom is a form of power, and, therefore, comes from, at base, a capacity for violence.

True freedom is a reality, not a right.

The reality of whether a person or people has the capacity and will for violence to stay free.

True freedom dies well before any actual impositions on the people. It dies when reality becomes a right, and therefore conditional on a higher power.

Illiberal freedom is the freedom of fact, true freedom.

Gunn, Roseanne, and Power

You’ve probably seen that James Gunn (director of Guardians of the Galaxy) was fired by Disney for pedophilic jokes he made on Twitter years back after a campaign by Cernovish and the alt-light. You probably also remember Roseanne getting dumped from her show for a “racist” joke tweet after a campaign by leftists.

You’ve also probably seen many of the same people who supported the Roseanne firing opposing the Gunn firing, including cuckservatives who are nominally on Roseanne’s team and on the other side of Gunn and love to preach decorum when it comes to Trump and his supporters. You’ve also probably notice a surprising amount of people who normally take offense at the slightest slight against women or the tiniest implication that rape is treated in anything less than a grimly serious manner, suddenly leap to the defense of people writing jokes about raping children.

This might seem mysterious given that raping children is generally seen as worse than committing racism, but it’s only mysterious if you think this is about either pedophilia or racism. It is not, those are only incidental issues, the real issue is deeper.

Nobody is truly offended by Roseanne’s joke insult and channers didn’t have a sudden change of heart and conclude that pedo jokes are now out-of-bounds. These are not what’s driving this debate over whose mob gets to have whom fired. The firings of Roseanne (and Dickinson and Derbyshire and Eich and etc.) were never truly about what they actually said or did. The firing of Gunn was not truly about offensive jokes.

The racism, the pedophilia are simply weapons, tools in a power struggle.

Power, nothing more*, is driving these conflicts. Both sides are in a struggle to build legitimacy for themselves and tear down the legitimacy of their enemies.**

Being able to have a mob destroy someone’s career over a few tweets is a display of power, a strong one. It is a display and building of moral legitimacy, which grants power.

Pedo jokes are leftist-affiliated, for the left is the tribe of sexual license, subversive sexual humour, and perversion, which maps somewhere near pedophilia in most people’s minds. Racist jokes are rightest-affiliated for the right are the tribe of patriotism, tribalism, and (white) ethnic interests, which maps somewhere to racism in most people’s minds.

Being able to say “this is off-limits at risk of firing” is not only a display of power, it also a strong strong form of delegimization. By having racist jokes leading to mobs and firing, by making racist jokes taboo, even if the right would say they oppose racism, it by proxy delegitimizes patriotism, white ethnic interests, and everything else that maps near racism in most people’s minds.

Likewise, making pedo jokes taboo delegitimizes the left, even if the left would say they oppose pedophilia. Delegitimizing pedo jokes, by proxy, delegitimizes sexual perversion, sexual subversion, sexual license, and everything else that maps near pedophilia in most people’s minds.

Even better are forced apologies, for they display a power to compel at the personal level, not just the institutional. Having your enemy deny his own words mapping near his own side’s values, delegitimizes the enemy’s side even more than then reinforcing a taboo against them.

The fight over who can legitimately mob and fire whom over what issues, is a fight over power, between two opposing tribes, which is why where most people line up on it it makes no sense in any strictly rational way.

Leftists defend pedophilia and pedophilic jokes, not because they support pedophilia per se, but because even in their own minds it maps closely to other sexual proclivities they support, and too strong a taboo around pedophilia will carry over to those proclivities.**

Knowing this though, makes the cuckservative response even more confusing, as they are turning against the tribe they nominally support, while supporting the tribe they nominally oppose (how often does NRO pretend to rage against Hollywood values and crudity in our culture?) in favour of values, sexual subversion, they’d normally oppose.

The answer once again comes down to power. Since they purged the Birchers from the movement, the NRO have been the gatekeepers of the right. Some, like Rush, Coulter, and O’Rielly, have challenged them with a more Middle America conservatism, but they’ve retained gatekeeping power.

But, the alt-light asserting their power by having leftists fired over mobs, without the blessing of True Conservatism delegitimizes them. It shows that they no longer have power over the right or the legitimacy to dictate to the right. Trump’s victories has delegitimized the True Conservatism from above, but the mob taking action against the left delegitimizes them from below. Seeing the right win fights like this, destroys their power.

Before Trump and the alt-right, True Conservatism may have been the permanent opposition, but they had cultural and ideological power over the opposition. Now, even though their side is taking power, True Conservatism are not the wielders and guides of the permanent opposition power. They have less power than they had when they were the leftist’s patsies. Condemning Roseanne, while defending Gunn, is a desperate power play to maintain a semblance of the power they once had.

All these mob firings have little to do with the nominal reasons given for the mobs, the outrage, and the firings and are almost entirely power plays by the various actors against their enemies.

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One aside, are those making pedophilic jokes actually pedophiles? Probably not, for the most part. Just like most channers making oven jokes don’t want a second holocaust and Roseanne doesn’t hate black people.

But if you read the pedophilic jokes themselves, there is practically no comedic value in any of them. The jokes are often not even recognizable as jokes and none are anywhere near as funny as you’d expect from professionals paid to make jokes and nowhere near the value necessary to make violating such a firm taboo worthwhile from a strictly comedic standpoint.

The jokes are signalling. The most likely reason, as Hadley noted on Twitter, is that it is signalling to the pedophiles and pedarasts in charge of Hollywood (and that pedophiles and pedarasts hold power in Hollywood is an open secret, just as Weinstein’s perversion was before the dam broke) that although they might not be a pedos or pedarasts themselves, they align with the preferences of the perverts in charge and will not cause trouble.

It is also tribal signalling. “Look, I support sexual subversion too. Even more than you. Give me status.”

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* There are probably people, likely not many, on each side who genuinely care about pedo or racist jokes in and of themselves (yet somehow not the jokes the other side condemns). They’re being used.

** I should make note here: most of this process is not fully conscious. Almost nobody involved started thinking about how they should respond to pedophilia jokes and racist jokes from first principles; and few made their position based on thinking about how it would effect the power struggle for their tribe. Like most tribal conflict in a democratic society, people are mostly just vaguely aware that, for some reason, certain values need to be defended and certain other values, those held by others, should be attacked, so certain jokes are taboo and certain jokes are not and they need to defend the ones that aren’t from attack, while attacking the ones are. Rarely is ideological tribalism explicitly thought through and fought on tribal grounds, it is generally fought through symbols and ideas from tribalism itself but mapping near the tribes involved and their values.

The Neoliberal-Socialist Synthesis

I’ve mentioned the neoliberal-socialist synthesis a few times on Twitter and have received flack for them being incompatible, but it is the best way to describe the current economic system.

Neoliberalism promotes laissez-faire capitalism, privatization and trade without regulation, while socialism promotes state control of the market,* two things that, on the surfacem seem to be at odds.

Yet we see it everywhere. The state continually expands, with greater power over people’s lives and ever-increasing spending on a variety of state programs: health care, education, welfare, old age security, etc. Yet at the same time, free trade and the global capitalist marketplace increasingly dominate, with off-shoring, free trade agreements, and worker importation to continually destroying the ability of workers to have gainful employment at good wages.

The same people who argue for ever greater social programs argue for the free movement of workers and free trade of goods. The two-party consensus marches on, with the only difference being whether socialism or neoliberalism is emphasized more. Each potential threat to the system, whether mild like Bernie-style socialism or Trumpian nationalism, or more radical is attacked with ruthless vehemence.

To see how these commingle, we, surprisingly, look to Marx, who was often not wrong on analysis, even if his solutions were lacking:

The rule of capital and its rapid accumulation is to be further counteracted, partly by a curtailment of the right of inheritance, and partly by the transference of as much employment as possible to the state. However, the democratic petty bourgeois want better wages and security for the workers, and hope to achieve this by an extension of state employment and by welfare measures; in short, they hope to bribe the workers with a more or less disguised form of alms and to break their revolutionary strength by temporarily rendering their situation tolerable.

In this analysis,** the petit bourgeousie would win against the set up a democratic system, and provide the workers with just enough state handouts to make their lowly state tolerable.

This is from where the NLS sythesis flows.

As the Last Psychatrist, wrote (then later deleted [copied here] after he mysteriously disappeared),

Do you want riots in the streets? How much does it cost to prevent LA (your choice) from catching fire? Answer: $600/month, plus Medicaid. Medicalizing social problems has the additional benefit of rendering society not responsible for those social ills. If it’s a disease, it’s nobody’s fault. Yay empiricism.

He was talking primarily about black urban neighbourhoods, who were the first to be eaten by the synthesis, but the synthesis is rapidly eating through white America.

As Nick land loves to point out, the global capitalist system, unrestrained, ruthlessly selects for efficiency. Efficiency means prioritizing lowest cost inputs, which in the case of workers means minimum possible wages, which, in a global market place means hiring borderline slave labour in the third world and replacing labour with machines.

Of course, the byproduct of this efficiency is unemployment and low wages, yet this creates two problems: If the worker’s wages are low and they can’t afford goods, who buys them? And won’t the workers rebel?

The socialist state solves both these two problems. It gives workers a tolerable standard of living and provdes them resources to fatten themselves to complacency on sugar, soy, heroin, TV, and porn, the modern bread and circuses,.

For those not sated by such, the socialist state also provides the status of being middle-class and higher qualities of sugar, soy, heroin, TV, and porn to those who work in the socialist state or in one of its many dependencies (and don’t kid yourself, an indeterminately large portion of “private” corporations subsist on the leavings of the socialist state). The “private” dependencies of the state allow those who aren’t quite comfortable with being dependent on the state a way to gain middle-class status while still being arm’s length from the state.

This is the economic cycle of our modern society. Ruthless global neoliberal capitalism churns out consumer goods efficiently while eating up and vomiting out the working and middle classes. The socialist state provides the refuse of the neoliberal system with a material standard of living just tolerable enough to prevent revolt at the alienation and soullessness of the system while having only minimal drag on efficiency (the state takes it’s ~40% tax and puts a few less arduous regulations, while leaving the system intact).

Globalist neoliberalism could not exist without the socialist state, (at least not until the Landian technofuture where we’re all economically efficient biomachines), for we’d revolt against its heartless machinations. Yet, the socialist state can not exist without globalist neoliberalism churning out untold quantities of goods and services as efficiently possible to take their cut to dish out bribes and placate those who may rebel against their economic slavery to the socialist state. The symbiosis of Moloch.

We do not have the worst of each system, for if we did, we would notice, perhaps resist. Instead we have reached a symbiotic equilibrium of minimal tolerance. We eat our sugar and watch our TV, discontent, alienated, isolated, yet ignorably so.

As I’ve said repeatedly, likely the only reason the US isn’t a charnel house due to the rebellion of listless young men who’re unemployed, drugged up, sexually frustrated, and socially isolated, is likely due to porn and video games which keep them barely sated.

The neoliberal-socialist synthesis provides.

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* Yes, I know, some socialists, diehard marxists, and anarcho-socialists theorize that socialism will end up with the withering of the state, but socialist theory aside, in practice every attempt at socialism, communism, and social democracy increases the power of the state, and every socialist and communist I’ve seen in the wild promotes measures to increase the state’s power over the economy.

Stateless socialism is an impossibility, as the political redistribution of resources requires a state apparatus.

** Interestingly, reading that speech, does it not seem vaguely prophetic. Don’t the petit bourgousie and their interests seem vaguely reminiscent of the current ruling cultural elites who espouse the neoliberal-socialist viewpoint? Doesn’t the system and working Marx described seem to be similar to the system we have currently?

The Political is Personal

One of the features of the evolution to political liberalism was the replacement of ties of personal loyalty with ties of loyalty to abstract institutions and principles. Where once men swore personal oaths to lords, kings, and gods, men now swear oaths to flags, laws, and countries. The major exception being Canada, with the UK having an oath to both the Queen and to law and democracy.
The development of sovereign states following the Peace of Westphalia transferred loyalty from people, kings and lords, to the state. The development of ideology, the replacement of loyalty to people with loyalty to ideas, was another feature of liberalism. While political discussion and ideas existed prior to the French Revolution, it was only in the Age of Ideologies that loyalty to all-encompassing ideals become common-place.
At one point, the political was personal, based on ties of blood and fealty. Today non-local politics is impersonal, based on ideology and parties.
Abstract loyalty has become so commonplace, that it is hard to comprehend a political order without it, but is it necessarily good for man?
Personal loyalty gives man a sense of place, to know where he exists in hierarchy, while abstract loyalty is necessarily faceless and depersonalized. A man with personal loyalty always knows whom he serves, a man with abstract loyalty knows what he serves, but who is ever-changing.
Abstract loyalty is necessarily divisive. Once loyalty is placed upon ideology, then minor deviations of ideology lead to schism, hence, practically all ideologies being plagued by near endless infighting. If loyalty to an idea is paramount, there can be minimal toleration of those whose ideas differ, even mildly. On the other hand, personal loyalty requires only that one agrees who decides.
Abstract loyalty is a necessary precondition for liberalism and it may not be possible for liberalism to be undone without replacing abstract loyalty with personal loyalty.
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Interestingly, in contemporary politics, personal loyalty seems to be making a modest comeback in the US in the form of Trump and, to a lesser degree, Bernie Sanders.
Trump is not particularly ideological: his ideology, such as it is, is very loose, pragmatic, and undefined. We call it Trumpism because he cuts across traditional political ideologies so most labels don’t apply particularly well to him. His “conservative” critics make him out to be unprincipled, confusing ideological adherence with principles. He aligned himself against both major political parties, building his political success solely upon his own name and reputation.
Trump has built and continues to build a base of personal loyalty to himself outside the traditional abstract loyalties. He has identified himself with an Americanism set apart from traditional abstract loyalties.
I think encouraging this sort of personal political identification would help encourage restoration. American politics, being liberal politics, has always been heavily abstract with American political loyalty dedicated primarily to the Constitution and, post-bellum, the USG.
To bring about restoration, we need to develop personal loyalty in a restorer, to a king, that trumps loyalty to abstracts such as the Constitution and the USG.

Lessons from Charlottesville

By now, you have heard of the Unite the Right rally in Charlotteville. You’ve probably also heard it turned into a gong show. We can lay blame on the police, politicians, antifa, the organizers, or whoever, but blame is not what this post is about. Also, I was not there, so my impression of events is formed by the first-hand accounts from Twitter, particularly Pax’s as he has gone in-depth on what exactly happened.

As my readers know, I’m an advocate of passivism. Lately, and somewhat hypocritically, under the heady rush of success the alt-right has been experiencing lately, I’ve found myself supporting activist activities. I overestimated how much legitimacy we actually had. I supported Unite the Right, particularly because of Pax’s involvement. As it turns out, things went exactly as passivism would’ve predict.

First, Trump and Sessions both denounced white supremacy, neo-nazis, hate, violence, bigotry, and racism and Sessions has sworn to crack down “to protect the right of people like Heather Heyer, to protest against racism and bigotry.”

This is bad for us, but not as bad as it seems on first glance. Neither specifically denounced the alt-right, its ideas, its constituent groups, or the actual people making up Unite the Right. No one seemed to notice this, which is one of the good things of the left’s inability to distinguish nazis and white supremacists from anybody else on the hard right.

Some are calling this a betrayal, but it is not. Trump and Session were never us, they were our allies with some common goals, but they were never a part of the hard, dissident, or alt-right. They’ve always been conservative civic nationalists. Anybody thinking they were us was fooling themselves. But they’ve treated us with benign neglect so far, which, all things considered, is good for us.

Unfortunately, the actions of James Field has given the media and left enough power to push their hands. So, we may no longer have benign neglect. We’ll see.

After the writing of the rest of this post, things took an awesome turn. Trump held a conference where he attacked antifa and supported the alt-right. Nazis are in for it, but we’re probably good for now. But we’ll continue on.

Second, it looked bad. The death and injuries gave the media ammunition against us; it will not play well among middle America.

Third, a rally is a display of power. A rally is not for building power, it is for showing power to widen legitimacy. Friday night with the tiki torches was great. We showed power, the left was truly afraid, we claimed the area, and we built legitimacy; it went perfectly. Saturday destroyed what was built on Friday. The police undercut us and delivered us to antifa, showing their power and undermining ours. It was bad.

Fourth, antifa displayed power. Antifa won and won hard on Saturday and they know it. This will embolden them.

Thankfully, this will be buried under the media cycle in a couple weeks. Things may get a little bit harder due to Trump and Session’s shift (if it’s truly a shift) and the emboldment of antifa, but as long as we don’t repeat our mistakes, it shouldn’t be permanently damaging.

So what lessons can we learn?

1) Most importantly, we should not pretend to power and legitimacy we do not hold. Having a rally go badly is far more damaging than any possible gain from a successful rally, as we just saw. Never hold a rally unless there is minimal chance of things going wrong.

2) The police, as a group, are not on our side. They will obey their masters. The police drove rallygoers into antifa. They purposefully (or through gross incompetence) set up violence. One twitter user, I don’t remember who, remarked that no cop even tipped off the rally about the betrayal the police were to visit on the rally. As well, Pax and a few others tried to get “civil disobedience” arrested, but the police didn’t accept the arrests and drove them into antifa. Do not trust the cops to protect our rallies or meetings. Do not trust them to protect the peace.

3) Planned and advertised rallies give the left and their supporters in the government time to plan. So, only make open, planned rallies where you are sure that either the police will act to protect the peace or where antifa will not have a free hand to destroy. So never make plans for future rallies in Democratic cities or states.

4) No swastikas, no sieg heils, no roman salutes, no red armbands, no public gassing/ovening jokes, whether its serious or meming for the lulz. This is not punching right, this is not virtue signalling, this is basic optics. Real life is not the internet, it is not 4chan. 90% of the population will react very negatively to nazi signalling IRL. This is not going to change in the foreseeable future. The media will pull the two people doing nazi stuff from hundreds and go “look they’re all nazis” and it will work to turn normal people against us. There is nothing to be gained from nazi signalling and a lot to be lost (same for any KKK stuff, but nobody seems to be doing that). The nazi well is poisoned.

5) Keep your cool. I don’t know whether Field’s attack was planned or if he just ended up trapped and panicked, but whatever happened, it hurt the cause a lot. Rally-goers need to keep their cool and not react disproportionately. Pax and others noticed that there was a blank shot fired during the rally. His hypothesis is that the police were trying to set it up so the right would fire on and massacre antifa. Thankfully, the right kept their calm. Keep your cool and don’t overreact. The left doesn’t care if their lumpenprol cannon fodder gets butchered; they will gladly sacrifice them if it gives them a weapon against us.

6) Stick together. My best guess is that Field was isolated, set upon, then panicked. It could have been avoided had Field not been isolated; he may never have been put in that situation or someone could have talked him down or prevented his panic. Don’t let people get isolated. Isolated people will be in danger and will either be hurt or hurt others in disproportionate way. Beforehand, set up a small squad structure. Make sure everybody has a couple of buddies who will stay with him throughout the rally. For those who come alone, set them up with a few people. However it’s done, make sure everybody is part of a small group looking out for each other and make it known to never abandon someone during the riot (unless he has been safely arrested; don’t start a fight with the cops). At the very worst, if you can’t plan anything better, have a box with numbers on paper and pass the numbers out as attendees enter, then tell everyone to stick together with those sharing their numbers for the rally.

7) Have a bug out plan. Nobody predicted this would happen, but now we know it can. So, any rally should have planned, safe escape routes (have at least one back-up in case your main route gets closed) should something like this happen again. Rallygoers should all be briefed on it (but not too far advance so it doesn’t get leaked). If a rally goes down like this again, use the route. Have a person (and some backups) ready to take control and lead the escape. Train a squad or two beforehand on how to make a spearhead to break through a antifa/police line if it comes to that.

8) Relatedly, have a transport plan. Set up beforehand a general area people will park, bus to, walk to, etc. to walk to the rally, or coordinate a bus or two or something. If everybody parks wherever, the chances of someone becoming isolated like Field did increases. If people all enter and exit from the same general area, then this provides some level of safety and order. Of course, if antifa finds out this area, this increases the likelihood of vandalism or violence leading up to extraction, but at least nobody will be trapped alone. If necessary, you can have a parking area far form the rally and organize a shuttle service/evac point to and from the rally.

9) Quality control. This will probably be hard to do in practice, it may be impractical, but we should try to find a way to control the quality of people at the rallies. To get to the point where ramming people with a car seemed like a good idea, Field had to have made a series of bad decisions, including isolating himself, entering his car into antifa territory, and punching the gas. Try to keep people who make poor decisions, who panic, or who lose their cool out of rallies, or at least position them so they can’t get into a situation where they can make bad decisions. I don’t know if this is possible, but it should be attempted. 100 calm, disciplined marchers is far more effective than 1000 people milling about in chaos.

10) The Friday march worked, and worked tremendously. The left was panicking in fear, the pictures and press turned out amazing, it looked cool, it projected power and self-control; it was a major win (promptly undercut by Saturday). This is what we should model future rallies on: minimal prior public notice, control and self-discipline, and a display of power. We asserted our control, everybody knew, on a very primal level, that the right was successfully asserting political dominance and building legitimacy.

11) Tactical leadership. Related to the squad idea above, every rally should have a set tactical chain of command, and all rally-goers should know to follow it. The police betrayal was unexpected, but had a command structure been set-up beforehand, rally leadership could have provided some order to react properly, punch through antifa lines and extract everyone with minimal harm and no deaths. If somebody refuses to follow a chain of command, boot him. We are the right, we value authority. At the bare minimum, announce to all rallygoers at the beginning, “these are Tom, Dick, and Harry, if things go badly they will lead us out. Obey them,” or pass out a few distinctive hats to leaders and announce to obey people with those hats if chaos erupts.

12) Start smaller. The rally made it clear we do not yet have the organizational capacity/skills to run a large, pre-planned rally given the obstacles presented to us. This is not a knock against any of the organizers or the job they did, but these capacities do not just spring from nowhere, they are built. So, instead of one large rally, we should focus on smaller, more particular rallies and get some people building experience in organizing, before the next large rally.

To summarize, for now we should focus on smaller, better planned, more disciplined suprise rallies (with torches). We should seek to emulate Friday’s march. The goal of the rally proper should be to march through and dominate an area, demonstrating that we have power over said area. Rallies should be a form of guerrilla political war.

However, the overarching goal and main focus of the rallies should be on building planning, organizational, and leadership capacities within the right. We should also be working on forming natural groups of men, so we don’t have to resort to the paper numbers method. The passivist building of bonds and capacities are far more important at this stage than the political benefits of a rally.

Once we have these built, then a few years from now, we can hold the Return of Unite the Right and display the legitimacy and power we have actually built.

On Political Rallies

Here’s a quick post on political rallies, as a short theoretical introduction to my coming post which will examine lessons to be learned from Charlottesville.

Here are basics I’ve stated before:

Politics is the use of power to distribute status and resources. Politics is power and all power is, at base, the capacity for violence. Capacity for violence comes from authority, the ability to command men to commit violence.  , men’s belief in your right to command them.

To succeed at politics you first need legitimacy. Then you turn that to authority, which you then turn to power. The accumulation of authority and power, in turn, further increases legitimacy and authority.

All political actions are either displays of legitimacy, authority, or power, or exercises of power.

Government is the exercise of power.

Voting is a display of legitimacy. Voting is the statement: ‘I believe the person I vote for has legitimate authority over me.” This is why naked dictators have hold elections where they win with 120% of the vote. It reinforces their legitimacy.

It is also a display of power. It is a ritualistic counting of heads; who would outnumber whom if political disputes needed to be resolved by violence. ‘I have 65 million people who believe I have legitimate authority and who would fight for me if violence began. You have fewer and would lose. Surrender peacefully’

Letter and phone campaigns, and petitions are the same. They are either displays of and appeals to authority (‘You have authority over me, please exercise it in a way I desire’) or displays of power (‘as you can tell from these letters/calls/signatures we outnumber you. Obey our demands’).

We hide these displays of power behind prettied-up democratic language, because politeness allows us to peacefully coexist. It is easier to accept others having power over you without responding with unlawful violence if you think of it as ‘the people decided’ rather than ‘my opponents displayed greater capacities for violence, so I submitted to them’, even though the latter is the unvarnished truth of democratic decision-making.

Onto rallies and protests specifically. Rallies are displays of power. To peel away painted-up democratic language, they are displays of tribal war, agnostic behaviour, two wolves sizing each other up before fighting.

We often hear the terms ‘people power’ or ‘direct action’, but we never realize the full depths of how primal and literal this phrase is. A rally is a naked show of force, a threat, a taunt. It states to your political opponent, ‘this is how many men we have who would commit to violence, do you dare fight or do you submit?’ On a primal level, all understand this, but, for politeness’ sake and in our muddled democratic thinking, we downplay how serious a rally is.

Knowing this, we can know the reasons for rallies; to assert power and control. To hold a rally is to say, ‘this area belongs to us.’ To hold a counter-protest is declare, ‘you do not control this area, we are willing to fight!’. If the rally continues, those holding the rally show they have the power over that area. If the rally is ended, the counter-protesters have shown the area truly belongs to them. Government agents stand in the middle, keeping the displays as just displays, knowing that whichever side wins the area truly belongs to the government.

You should never hold a rally unless you know you can conclude it. To fail at a rally is to show a lack of power, it shows your opponents are in control.

Trumpenkrieg Strategies

In the past I have offered strategies to conservatives which they have decided not to adopt. On the occasion of President Trump’s inauguration, I not only bring these strategies to the fore once more, but offer him a few more strategies he could use to solidify his power and advance his political interests until the day of his coronation. All should be within the bounds of the law.

Selective Presidential Pardon

The president has the power to pardon federal criminals, as Obama has recently demonstrated by his pardons of traitor Bradley Manning and terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera. Through these pardons, the left has shown us that these can be used not just for the sake of justice but for political goals. I suggest the President make use of this power.

Let us imagine a mentally disturbed person who had forgotten to take his medication just happened to kill a particularly vile bureaucrat or a traitorous politician pushing for the continued displacement of Americans by Mexicans or even, perhaps, a federal judge with a penchant for a viewing the Constitution as a living document that always seems to say exactly what would be convenient for the progressive cause du jour. It would obviously be unjust for Trump to allow a mentally ill individual to suffer in federal prison. Would it not be merciful for Trump to pardon this obviously ill person? Would it no be even more generous for Trump to use his personal wealth to pay for this ill individual to be treated in a very comfortable mental health facility until he was cured in only a few short years?

Or what if a southerner opposed to the continued imperialist occupation of his homeland and cultural genocide of his people by the colnialist US government carried out some non-violent protests by peacefully bombing uninhabited federal offices by mail. Would Trump not show his absolute commitment to social justice by pardoning this non-violent political prisoner?

Or what if a group concerned about the racist violence of FBI officers against peaceful gun owners were pushed so far to the brink by unjust police violence that they had a peaceful demonstration and non-violently burned down half a college town (happening to peacfully destroy and loot an ATM from a local bank at the same time) and peacefully injured violent pro-police activists. Would it not show Trump’s commitment to ending police brutality if he pardoned those individuals?

Think of how much he could win the hearts and minds of the people with such magmanious acts.

Of course, Trump could only pardon those convicted of federal offenses, so he could only show his magnamanity to those committing federal crimes. Although, he could encourage such magnamanity among ideologically aligned state governors, showing himself to be even more committed to mercy and social justice.

Of course, there would be the obvious downside that right-wing individuals seeing the Trump was such a merciful president would commit even more crimes of a similar type. Why if this occurred early enough in his presidency, say, right after his reelection in 2020, there could an uncounted number of such crimes. This would be sad, but it a slight raise in crime is a small price to pay for the pursuit of social justice and an end to police brutality.

This strategy is borrowed from Kratman’s Caliphate.

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South African Immigration

The dominant political strategy of the American left is to invite hordes of oppressed third world immigrants to America and provide them with government benefits to vote Democrat. Why should President Trump be any less merciful to oppressed foreign nationals?

There are four million Afrikaners suffering persecution, murder, and rape in South Africa. If America offered these poor, oppressed individuals refugee status, a short-term refugee relocation bonus and stipend (or maybe even some federal land to farm), and an immediate path to citizenship, I’m sure many would be be happy to escape oppression and move to the United states. No person with a heart could possibly object if these refugees just happened to be moved to important battleground states and just happened to vote Republican by a large margin.

Trump could also offer (former) Rhodesians the same deal to escape their hardships. With Namibia currently undergoing land reforms and expropriation, Trump could offer the same refugee deal to white Namibians, to preempt a humanitarian disaster similar to the one inflicted upon Zimbabwe.

With these deals, Trump could single-handedly dismantle the last parts of white colonialism and imperialism in South Africa.

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Media as Public Utilities and Anti-Trust

Only 6 corporations control 90% of American media. Information is obviously a public good, but it is controlled by a small cabal of individuals. They also seem to have a shared political lean which they force on the public.

Such a one-sided corporate-controlled political debate is not healthy for American democracy. To remove the power of corporate media to dictate American democracy, President Trump could bring anti-trust suits against these corporations. Of course, he would have limited resources, so he could only bring these suits against those most damaging to American democracy. He could break media corporations up and end their stranglehold on American democracy.

In fact, one could argue that information is a public good and that platforms dedicated to the spread of information are public utilities. Some information platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter have become exceedingly influential in determining the information the American citizenry is exposed to. Nationalization or regulation of these platforms as public utilities could ensure that these platforms are not used in ways that could hamper American democracy.

Also, is it not dangerous to have a public goods in the hands of foreign nationals. For example, the NYT, one of the most influential media organizations is owned by a foreigner who could use it to influence American politics. Perhaps foreign owned media companies such as the NYT could be renationalized for the good of American democracy.

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IRS Audits

As we’ve seen under Obama, there have been many conservative organizations that have not been following tax law fully. Perhaps there are many other NGO’s and charities which have not been following tax laws to their utmost. President Trump could have the IRS institute mass audits of charities and NGO’s to make sure they are following correct procedures and to ensure they are not improperly using funds on disallowed political activities. Of course, the IRS has limited resoures, so they will be forced to only target certain charities.

Legitimacy, Power, and Culture

We’ve heard it said, culture is downstream of power, or is power downstream of culture? Which controls the levers to the other?

As I’ve said before, power (the ability to force your will) comes from authority (the ability to command), which comes from legitimacy (people’s beliefs in your right to command).

The power/culture discussion is always off because it misses the underlying link between the two: legitimacy.

Power can do whatever it wants within its dominion. That’s the inherent nature of power. If you can not do what you want, you, definitionally, do not have power. The limits of power exist where you can no longer accomplish your will.

Someone with power over culture can change the culture to be whatever he desires. If multiple people have power over culture, the culture will be changed to wherever the limits of their power meet. Power creates, destroys, and changes culture.

Note: Culture is always, to at least some degree, organic, so power over culture is always widely distributed. No one ever has absolute power over culture.

But, power creates culture only insofar at it has authority. Culture is organic and of men. If men do not obey, there is no power and culture can not created, destroyed, or changed. Culture is only changed insofar as men allow it to be changed.

Men only allow culture to be changed, in so far as they think the change and the power causing the change are legitimate.

This is where culture influences power. Legitimacy comes from culture. If the culture holds to the Divine Right determines power men will obey power with Divine Right. If culture holds to patriarchy determines power, men will obey fathers. If the culture holds to popular will, they will obey democratically elected politicians.

Power is downstream of legitimacy, which is downstream of culture, which is downstream of power.

By changing culture, power can change what men view as legitimate, changing legitimacy, authority, and, ultimately, where power lays.

This is how power destroys itself. It changes the culture that made itself legitimate, which then changes what legitimizes power, changing the basis of authority, changing the power itself. Power changing culture undermines itself.

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Culture change is slow and difficult, so changing the method of legitimacy is slow and difficult. It is easier to destroy legitimacy than to create. Culture change is also unpredictable. When you destroy culture, what replaces it may not always be what you expected or hoped.

This is why revolutions are so turbulent and unstable and often end in a strong man: one can destroy the legitimacy of the present order, but creating a new order viewed as legitimate is time-consuming and difficult. When you destroy a culture and legitimacy, it is hard to predict what form legitimacy will take, hence revolutions often destroying their instigators.

In a legitimacy vacuum, the simplest form of legitimacy to create is martial: men naturally respect strength and strength is relatively simple to demostrate. A strong-man short-circuits the legitimacy-creation process by focusing the creation of legitimacy among a group of armed men through his strength. Once he obtains enough power through this specific legitimacy, he kills those who oppose him until they obey. He is then free to influence culture until another strong-man overthrows him or until he creates a more sustainable legitimacy.

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Power flows from legitimacy. Culture creates legitimacy. Power influences culture.

In a stable system culture will reinforce legitimacy which will reinforce power, which will in turn reinforce the culture. For example, the church supports supports divine right, which legitimizes the monarch, who in turn supports the church.

In an unstable system, power destroys culture (or its own legitimacy) and/or culture undermines power’s legitimacy. For example, enlightnment ideas and culture undercut divine right, the monarch mismanages power squandering legitimacy, and then revolution occurs.