Against 'Vibes', Against Cope, Against Captive Dreams

Power is top-down. Democracy is an illusion. At best, one can say that this or that group of elites gets their friends elected. Power is never bottom-up, never comes as the result of a government-sanctioned street protest, a ratio, the fact you got 20,000 likes on Twitter, or because you ‘redpilled the normies’. When I wrote The Populist Delusion a couple of years ago, it was to teach these fundamentals of power. Many thousands of people read this book, but alas its lessons were not, in the end, internalised. Over the past year, we have seen the extent to which that has been the case as the majority of the ‘online right’, essentially at this point a club of borderline cheerleaders in miniskirts with pom poms, revealed themselves to be little more but emotional children branding those who pointed out that Trump was likely not going to give them what they wanted as ‘doomers’ and ‘blackpillers’ who need to ‘get into the crystal’. The discourse is surely poorer now than it was three or four years ago. It is more crowded and less clear in its convictions. Intelligent and independent voices with a long history of accurate assessments on the political landscape were gradually marginalised by more shrill and emotional voices who wished to utilise ‘vibes’ and for us to buy into largely fictionalised and mythologised fantasies about what MAGA represents. As long-time readers of mine will know, I have never been under any such illusions: MAGA is the most liberal, most pro-black, pro-gay, and therefore most authentically ‘American’ movement in history, and once you understood this it would have been pretty easy to see that Elon Musk and friends would be pushing for the true Return to Fresh Prince, the restoration of the Civil Rights Regime, under the Rufo Reich monitored by Mecha Bentham. This is what is, not what ought to be. All else is cope.

Against the above analysis, let me introduce you to one of the best examples of this new worst of trends, Captive Dreamer, or to his supposed friends, ‘Martin’. Against elite theory (read: the accumulated wisdom of how power works derived from over five centuries of observation) Martin posits an entirely different theory of power. Let us call this theory of power, ‘The Twitter Anon Cope Theory of Power’. Under this theory, people in power – let us say Elon Musk, JD Vance and even Donald Trump himself – genuinely respond to concerns, hopes and dreams of nameless people and deviate from what they really want to do because said people counter-signalled them on the internet. But, also under this theory, such corrective counter-signalling is unnecessary most of the time because, you see, you should have faith that you have backed the right guys, ‘our guys’, when you voted for them. When ‘our guys’ win, so we win. That’s how it works. And we should all like winning. Martin majors in this second part of the equation, viewing himself not so much as a political analyst but as a kind of morale officer rallying and cajoling the faceless horde. What is important, for Martin, are not tangible results in this or that policy area, real results in the real world, but rather how people feel and how they express those feelings on social media. Martin, you see, is a kind of wizard, a transmuter to be specific, whose one magic spell is to take any situation no matter how dire, and how obvious a loss, and to try to spin it into a win. In Martin’s world, what happened this past week was not that the world’s richest man told most of the MAGA base to ‘go and F themselves’ because they disagreed with his preference for using H-1B Visas for foreign tech workers or that he started banning and deboosting his critics or that Donald Trump promptly came out and supported him. No, this story (read: what actually happened) is only believed by ‘losers’ and ‘blackpillers’. In Martin’s world, the story was that Elon Musk in the face of mass resistance from brave Twitter anons backed down, that the widely reported story about Trump backing him is fake news, and that those people who are now saying ‘look, we told you this six months ago, we told you this was coming’ are, in fact, enemies because they lack faith and resolve in the face of adversity. So to recap in plain English and without the cope: the MAGA base is going to get the exact opposite of what it wanted, but if you point this out, you’re the enemy, because reasons. This sort of magical thinking has become endemic on the online and especially American right over the past year.

This is only the latest and most visible in a long line of such episodes featuring Martin and those in his circle. For example, he has stated repeatedly words to the effect of ‘with Zionists you win’. Despite claiming to be an anti-Zionist, Martin has seen it as his job to persuade people that Trump and his team going all-out in support of Israel (note: in reality, a loss, the Ben Shapiro-ification of MAGA) is an unalloyed ‘win’. On what basis did our modern Machiavelli make this calculation? Presumably, it is a trade-off. If money from the lobby and APAIC and supporting Israel is what you must do to get into power in the USA, so be it, the reasoning goes. Give them their piece of the pie, the Israel bit, which does not really affect normal Americans anyway, and, in exchange, you can get everything you want on the domestic front. Only, of course, it never ever – and I mean ever – works like that. As I’ve pointed out countless times, there is no trade off. How it works is as follows: a big donor, whether Zionist, Tech Bro, or any other stripe, gives resources and in exchange they get what they want. You, dear voter, like the kids in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, GET NOTHING, YOU LOSE, GOOD DAY SIR. The costs to Trump of not going along with H-1B Visas or uncritical and blind Israel support is billions of dollars and institutional support. The cost to Trump of betraying the voters? None. ‘This time it will be different, get in the crystal’, they will cry. To which I can only say, ‘do not be silly, no it won’t be.’

Will this episode have drained energy and enthusiasm from populism in America or in Europe? I would not count on it. People will forget about it when the next news cycle comes along, and delude themselves again – and then they’ll do it again and again and again. The populist delusion is one of the most thoroughgoing of all delusions. Trump could be mashing Martin’s face in a pile of horse manure and Martin would be tasting the little strains of hay and corn and tweeting about what great taste in manure Trump has and what a win this is for the American people and how his followers too should wish to have their faces mashed in a pile of hot dung. This is ‘winning’ in Martin’s world, because everything about Martin’s world is virtual: he’s entirely consumed by Baudrillard’s simulation and engages almost totally in surrogate activities in lieu of real politics. Even now I see people who should know better, people who basically never learn, busily double-thinking themselves into enthusiasm about a confirmed charlatan, and snake oil salesman, Nigel Farage. His recent social media run-ins with Kemi Badenoch are tired, fake, boring, and should have all the fanfare of one of those Netflix series that are pulled mid-season. Yet there they are seal-clapping in delight like seven-year olds watching pro-wrestling. It is hard to tell if the excitement is genuine or feigned, but this past year I’ve moved rapidly to the conclusion that, yes, people are that stupid, and, no, they will never learn. I have seen enough news cycles come and go to know that ultimately people cannot ‘come good’. The same people who fell for it last time and this time, will fall for it next time too.

As I’ve said for at least two years now, ‘the dissident right’ does not exist, and I prefer not to be associated with the wider ‘online right’, especially as it has dwindled into its current moronic form. The only labels I’ve ever been comfortable with are ‘sensible centre’ and ‘postmodern traditionalist’, but even these can be co-opted by people who do not understand them. In a time of universal idiocy, it is perhaps better to walk alone. This has long been the way of the Truth Teller.