Mike from Imperium Press is one person whose articles I read without fail: he’s always interesting, seldom wrong, and more often than not I agree with him.
I don't find it strange that Yarvin doesn't think "the merchants" are in charge, he's a member of the ethnicity that are "the merchants' par excellence
In fairness to Yarvin, he is pretty clear that his goal is to "burn the letters" as he puts it, and he therefore does not want to encourage a vindictive political movement vs. the existing power structure. By necessity he then has to be evasive about exactly how one might most precisely describe existing power structures and actors.
I have thought about going to one of his office hours and arguing with him on this point, but as of yet have not... I still am pretty sure that this is his position though.
First of all, great points. I have a contention on the topic of the mechanism of historical cycles:
According to Guenon and Evola, the logic of entropy gives rise to a two-step process: first comes "deviation" from tradition to anti-tradition, which is the progressive dissolution of quality into pure quantity. In terms of the metaphysical outlook of society, this is represented by scientific materialism. Socially, laissez fare and individualism, the transformation of "moral imperatives" into mere social conventions". In historical terms, I would argue that the culmination of this process roughly corresponds to the post WW2 period, perhaps even earlier.
All of these features are very clearly things of the past: there is very little scientific substance in contemporary scientism, nor is it very materialistic when superstitions such as "the patriarchy" and "systemic racism" are taken seriously (in terms of informing policy decisions). The modern atheist is deeply superstitious, I would argue that Yarvin undersold the problem (although likely because his analysis is a product of less insane times). Nor is modern society actually individualist or liberal (i agree that ideology is just post-hoc rationalization for power, but it's important to analyze the substance behind these labels), it just replaced adaptive hierarchies with maladaptive ones.
I think this de-liberalization, de-materialization and de-individualization (in an direction that goes counter to tradition) correspond perfectly to what G&E dubbed "subversion". The latter follows "deviation" and is characterized by an imposition of "inverse quality" and introduction of "counter-tradition". The reign of quantity is interrupted by a formative influence, but instead of a "traditional one" we get a "counter-traditional" one. Looking specifically at the troon problem, i would argue that we are past the point of pure quantity in the realm of sex. Pure quantity is embodied by the desexualized man and woman, by the convergence of gender roles, the ideology of 50/50 splits etc. as well as morbidly obese androgynes that converge into amorphous shapes. While we certainly have a fair share of that, contemporary society is more characteristically defined by the imposition of inverse quality: kids must be transed, husband and wife must swap roles etc. A true reign of quantity is permissive and disinterested, our society is anything but.
This is why I would disagree with the prescription that the victory of the fourth estate is imminent, I think we're past the point of pure quantity, in the era of inverse quality. Any populist victory is then a reactionary phenomenon, transition from the fifth estate back to the fourth estate. As such, it doesn't seem like a given that the course of history will inevitably result in a populist victory in the following decades.
Democracy does have an incentive structure that rewards moves toward entropy. Politicians are rewarded by offering increasing enfranchisement to more and more people.
At the end of the day, Trump is a boomer who believes in Democracy. Desantis, Musk, and Tucker seem to be in an alliance of people who have a significantly better understanding of whats going on than Donald Trump, but keep Desantis in Florida!
Any evidence that finance capitalists are still in power? Weren’t they more powerful in the first half of the 20th century than they are now? Domhoff has empirically showed that the ruling class is “corporate rich”, not financiers per se. I do not see dissident rightists discussing his findings a lot.
Why is it that people never associate decline in birth rates with debt? “Standards of living” in many ways has a correlation with the expansion of debt. Debt expansion has allowed everyone to be leveraged on more and more crap. The expansion of “financial” markets and expansion of debt in the 80-90’s, in America at least, allowed the youth to take on more and more debt before even thinking about a family, and usually without any income to justify it.
"4. The current elites in the West, who are totally committed to progressivism, are beyond redemption and must be replaced or else the entire system must collapse."
I am curious where the distinction is between Progressivism and rule by the merchants (liberalism). We accept that woke is simply an ideological tool that is a plaything of power, but what would that mean for how we define progressivism. Does this require a revision, or is Progressivism just a byword for entropy? Is it the particular entropy of the merchant caste or more universal? If it is universal and the plebs do represent further entropy on a historical scale, would it better be said that they are simply totally committed to power, and we must depose them because that can never be commensurate with us being in power?
Sorry if this is overly semantic but it has personally cause me confusion in reconciling the two positions
"One way of understanding Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, general Franco and other such mid-century figures was as a revolt against this rentier class in alliance with manufacturing capitalists and other older disaffected elites from the aristocratic and priestly castes."
But this implies that what the fascists et al were doing was returning to an earlier iteration of liberalism. This is Marxist dogma. I don't think you've thought this through.
If they were further along, then they should be more egalitarian and post-racial according to you. But obviously they weren't. Again I think you're confused. Confused as to whether they were Caesars or not.
They venerated the peasantry, but weren't post racial. It's odd that they were a further regression but we're allied with previous merchants, a weird quirk of history, I wonder if that's happened before?
Evola mentions Fascism as actually a modern conception, he detested it in some ways for being too modern. It had technocratic features and did use a "low vs high'' mechanism of egalitarian slave morality. Hitler is said to have detested much of the German Monarchy. Hitler wasn't an elitist and Spengler found him low brow and a populist feeding into the hands of a desperate class. We have to remember Fascism used many Marxist tactics as that's where its born from, again making it a modern conception. The right should steer away from this I feel and adopt a more elitist view and stay away from the slave morality politics we see mostly peddled on the Left. It's not who we are.
He says it was a step in the right direction, a reversal of the regression. That's the gist from what I can tell (I've read Fascism Viewed From the Right). More good than bad. Doesn't seem to say that about Nazism (more bad than good).
So I ask again: do you prefer Blair-ism to Benito-ism? Alarming if so.
I don't find it strange that Yarvin doesn't think "the merchants" are in charge, he's a member of the ethnicity that are "the merchants' par excellence
In fairness to Yarvin, he is pretty clear that his goal is to "burn the letters" as he puts it, and he therefore does not want to encourage a vindictive political movement vs. the existing power structure. By necessity he then has to be evasive about exactly how one might most precisely describe existing power structures and actors.
I have thought about going to one of his office hours and arguing with him on this point, but as of yet have not... I still am pretty sure that this is his position though.
First of all, great points. I have a contention on the topic of the mechanism of historical cycles:
According to Guenon and Evola, the logic of entropy gives rise to a two-step process: first comes "deviation" from tradition to anti-tradition, which is the progressive dissolution of quality into pure quantity. In terms of the metaphysical outlook of society, this is represented by scientific materialism. Socially, laissez fare and individualism, the transformation of "moral imperatives" into mere social conventions". In historical terms, I would argue that the culmination of this process roughly corresponds to the post WW2 period, perhaps even earlier.
All of these features are very clearly things of the past: there is very little scientific substance in contemporary scientism, nor is it very materialistic when superstitions such as "the patriarchy" and "systemic racism" are taken seriously (in terms of informing policy decisions). The modern atheist is deeply superstitious, I would argue that Yarvin undersold the problem (although likely because his analysis is a product of less insane times). Nor is modern society actually individualist or liberal (i agree that ideology is just post-hoc rationalization for power, but it's important to analyze the substance behind these labels), it just replaced adaptive hierarchies with maladaptive ones.
I think this de-liberalization, de-materialization and de-individualization (in an direction that goes counter to tradition) correspond perfectly to what G&E dubbed "subversion". The latter follows "deviation" and is characterized by an imposition of "inverse quality" and introduction of "counter-tradition". The reign of quantity is interrupted by a formative influence, but instead of a "traditional one" we get a "counter-traditional" one. Looking specifically at the troon problem, i would argue that we are past the point of pure quantity in the realm of sex. Pure quantity is embodied by the desexualized man and woman, by the convergence of gender roles, the ideology of 50/50 splits etc. as well as morbidly obese androgynes that converge into amorphous shapes. While we certainly have a fair share of that, contemporary society is more characteristically defined by the imposition of inverse quality: kids must be transed, husband and wife must swap roles etc. A true reign of quantity is permissive and disinterested, our society is anything but.
This is why I would disagree with the prescription that the victory of the fourth estate is imminent, I think we're past the point of pure quantity, in the era of inverse quality. Any populist victory is then a reactionary phenomenon, transition from the fifth estate back to the fourth estate. As such, it doesn't seem like a given that the course of history will inevitably result in a populist victory in the following decades.
My only thought on the priests vs merchants - Yarvin is American. And in America I think the question is who has more power - black rock or Hollywood?
Democracy does have an incentive structure that rewards moves toward entropy. Politicians are rewarded by offering increasing enfranchisement to more and more people.
At the end of the day, Trump is a boomer who believes in Democracy. Desantis, Musk, and Tucker seem to be in an alliance of people who have a significantly better understanding of whats going on than Donald Trump, but keep Desantis in Florida!
Though Desantis has had a sudden IQ drop in the last couple months.
Fuck me, that was a downer. Hope you're wrong, but you made some good points.
Any evidence that finance capitalists are still in power? Weren’t they more powerful in the first half of the 20th century than they are now? Domhoff has empirically showed that the ruling class is “corporate rich”, not financiers per se. I do not see dissident rightists discussing his findings a lot.
Do you want a revolution against the nature of history? Do you want anything?
Why is it that people never associate decline in birth rates with debt? “Standards of living” in many ways has a correlation with the expansion of debt. Debt expansion has allowed everyone to be leveraged on more and more crap. The expansion of “financial” markets and expansion of debt in the 80-90’s, in America at least, allowed the youth to take on more and more debt before even thinking about a family, and usually without any income to justify it.
From Ten thesis For The Dissident Right:
"4. The current elites in the West, who are totally committed to progressivism, are beyond redemption and must be replaced or else the entire system must collapse."
I am curious where the distinction is between Progressivism and rule by the merchants (liberalism). We accept that woke is simply an ideological tool that is a plaything of power, but what would that mean for how we define progressivism. Does this require a revision, or is Progressivism just a byword for entropy? Is it the particular entropy of the merchant caste or more universal? If it is universal and the plebs do represent further entropy on a historical scale, would it better be said that they are simply totally committed to power, and we must depose them because that can never be commensurate with us being in power?
Sorry if this is overly semantic but it has personally cause me confusion in reconciling the two positions
"One way of understanding Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, general Franco and other such mid-century figures was as a revolt against this rentier class in alliance with manufacturing capitalists and other older disaffected elites from the aristocratic and priestly castes."
But this implies that what the fascists et al were doing was returning to an earlier iteration of liberalism. This is Marxist dogma. I don't think you've thought this through.
No they were a further regression as per article
However it is undeniable they had support from older vanquished elites
If they were further along, then they should be more egalitarian and post-racial according to you. But obviously they weren't. Again I think you're confused. Confused as to whether they were Caesars or not.
They were more egalitarian in many ways
Evola didn't think Italian Fascism was a regression. The opposite. Yet apparently you disagree. Does this mean you prefer Blair-ism to Benito-ism?
They venerated the peasantry, but weren't post racial. It's odd that they were a further regression but we're allied with previous merchants, a weird quirk of history, I wonder if that's happened before?
Evola mentions Fascism as actually a modern conception, he detested it in some ways for being too modern. It had technocratic features and did use a "low vs high'' mechanism of egalitarian slave morality. Hitler is said to have detested much of the German Monarchy. Hitler wasn't an elitist and Spengler found him low brow and a populist feeding into the hands of a desperate class. We have to remember Fascism used many Marxist tactics as that's where its born from, again making it a modern conception. The right should steer away from this I feel and adopt a more elitist view and stay away from the slave morality politics we see mostly peddled on the Left. It's not who we are.
He criticises it for being a mass movement etc in Fascism Viewed from the Right
https://reesthomas.substack.com/p/a-response-to-academic-agent-and/comments?justPublished=true&embeddedPostPublications=&autoSharedOnTwitter=false if you have spare min AA. I feel your theory is kind of right but I feel the essence of the mediums is what now perpetuates the democratic urge for populist and plebeian revival. The spirit of "universality and democracy'' is built into these communication technologies. The medium itself and the content. It's in some ways though ''more liberal than liberal''.
He says it was a step in the right direction, a reversal of the regression. That's the gist from what I can tell (I've read Fascism Viewed From the Right). More good than bad. Doesn't seem to say that about Nazism (more bad than good).
So I ask again: do you prefer Blair-ism to Benito-ism? Alarming if so.
always a pleasure to read your insightful analysis.