MAGA as Fulfillment of the Kali Yuga

Let us consider the current political dichotomy. One side has strict hierarchy in which a small, unaccountable elite of technical experts and secular priests rule over numerous client groups whom they keep locked out of their gated communities. The client groups vote for them in numbers that would embarrass even the right-wing dictators of the twentieth century as their social superiors check their shareholdings and make them promises like ‘you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.’ Everyone on this side of things is acutely aware of their social status and exercises a kind of spartan discipline and self-denial to ensure that they fall in line. They openly disdain the ‘democratic will of the people’ and see unregulated free markets as childish and outmoded. Instead, they argue that they know better and must steer the ship in the name of good governance. These people are committed to a view of the world that sees race and that selects for ethnic differences. Counter-intuitively, although most of them are white, they ostensibly say that they are for selecting against whites, even as they openly keep client groups out of their 98% white neighbourhoods while comparing their political enemies to mid-Century Germans.

Over on the other side, we find the great unwashed plebian masses adorned in red caps and gawdy t-shirts, chanting simple slogans, and led around by the nose by a demagogue who does virtually nothing to reward their unwavering loyalty. They talk about such enlightenment themes as ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ and the true spirit of America being reflected in the fact that everyone is equal under the law regardless of race, colour, and creed. In this view, it is not that the American project is doomed to failure because of its inherently entropic egalitarian commitment to democracy, it is that evil elites have betrayed the true spirit of liberal democracy, which their more truly liberal and more truly democratic political movement will restore. USA! USA! USA! USA! These are the true inheritors of Martin Luther King Jr and the gains made by the Civil Rights Movement, not the evil racist elites who have become aristocratic and disconnected from what America is all about. These are the true inheritors of the Allied Powers of WW2 and Abraham Lincoln. Let’s go back to an America where everyone can prosper regardless of their background! Let’s go back to an America which truly judges people on the content of their character and not by the colour of their skin!

While writing The Prophets of Doom, it struck me several times, especially during the chapters on both Thomas Carlyle and Julius Evola, that Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are more truly liberal and truly democratic than their opponents. In other words, there are no truer believers in The Populist Delusion than the populists themselves. When Carlyle talks about the spirit of democracy as a spiral downwards and when Evola talks about involution as the inevitable consequence of American-style liberalism, it is difficult to picture the Davos set or even the decrepit incumbents of the Washington regime because these people do not embody the spirit of plebian energy ‘from below’ described by Carlyle or Evola. MAGA is a low-status ‘working people’s’ populist movement against a powerful, entitled and rich elite. If one considers the classic Anacyclosis as outlined by Polybius (see below), one can spot that the Trumpian figure comes after the oligarchy.

You may quibble with my characterisation here, but it strikes me that the current American Regime are recognisably an ‘oligarchy’, we are living through the ‘reaction of the people’ and the ‘zenith of democracy’ is yet to come. Evola would recognise this coming of democracy as the fulfilment of the final stages of the Kali Yuga, the ‘iron age within the iron age’.

This way of thinking about the current predicament gives rise to some strange thoughts. For example, and I voiced this on my appearance on the Alexandria podcast, what if life under the populists is even more intolerably degenerate than life under the Regime? Afterall, MAGA is probably the most genuinely non-racist, pro-black, pro-LGBT, ‘easy going’ and ‘true 90s liberal’ movement ever to exist (aside from, possibly, the British Tory party since Boris Johnson). ‘We have won our country back!’ cry a right-wing led exclusively by people like Kari Lake and Caitlyn Jenner as the black Zoomer in the MAGA hat posts a video of himself drinking Coca-Cola to a Libs of Tik-Tok video to 100k+ likes on twitter. This is really what MAGA is in its core essence. Jerry Springer passed away recently, but his real legacy was MAGA, in all its gauche, loud American awfulness. Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

Don’t get me wrong, the elites are terrible, and you should hate them to the core. But let’s have a real think about what the other side stands for, who they are, what they want, and most importantly of all which civilisational spirit they represent. It may be that the takeover of sub-90 IQ right-wing populists is a ‘necessary’ stage in the cycle, maybe; it may be that, as the children of the ashes in deep winter, MAGA is the only form our protest can take, because we are incapable of anything else, maybe. I foresee a time in the not-too-distant future when sensible centrists like me, or people on the so-called dissident right more broadly, find the MAGA crowd as tiresome and as insufferable as the woke lot. Open your eyes, it’s already started to happen. In the end we may have to make do hoping for a higher class of manager because the alternative is even worse.