On the Uniparty: A Reply to Paul Gottfried

Earlier this year, I called for the Conservative Party to get Zero Seats in the general election. This provoked responses from two men I deeply respect, not least because they have been formative, foundational even, in my own political ideas:[i] Peter Hitchens and Paul Gottfried. Their books remain essential reading to anyone even remotely on our side of things. Hitchens decided to feud with many of my friends over it, and the scenes on Twitter were ugly and saddened me, not least because Zero Seats was essentially his idea updated from 2010 to 2024 with a modern lick of paint. Suffice it to say, Zero Seats failed (which I discussed on a relatively high-profile appearance on The Duran) and Hitchens has been roundly rebuked already by many of his younger fans, including by scores of people who looked up to him for years; I can add little to what Morgoth said here. Much less discussed was the intervention by Paul Gottfried entitled ‘Worse Is Worse: Why We Shouldn’t Root for the Demise of the Establishment Right’. Gottfried has now followed up on this with a critique of my last article in which I said there would be an attempt to dial-down the heat in American politics for the sake of regime stability. Watching the Democrats go from calling Trump a threat to democracy to ‘just plain weird’ has been one of the more awkward and bizarre transitions I can remember, but judging by chatter on MSNBC, in however ham-fisted and crushingly awful a way, they are nonetheless trying to tone it down. Perhaps they are taking a leaf out of the Tony Blair playbook to ‘lower the emotional register’. In his autobiography, the Dark Lord writes:

So I defined Major as weak; Hague as better at jokes than judgement; Howard as an opportunist; Cameron as a flip-flop, not knowing where he wanted to go. … Expressed like that, these attacks seem flat, mundane almost and not exactly inspiring – but that’s their appeal. Any one of those charges, if it comes to be believed, is actually fatal. Yes, it’s not like calling your opponent a liar, or a fraud, or a hypocrite, but the middle-ground floating voter kind of shrugs their shoulders at those claims. They don’t chime. They’re too over the top, too heavy, and they represent an insult, not an argument. Whereas the lesser charge, because it’s more accurate and precisely because it is more low-key, can stick. And if it does, that’s that. Because in each case, it means they are not a good leader. So game over. (A Journey, p. 485)

It has certainly borne out Blair’s point that calling Trump the second coming of Hitler for eight years has dismally failed as a strategy, so it is wise to try something else, especially since such heightened rhetoric is now leading to political violence. Whether calling the world’s most famous eccentric billionaire-come-President ‘weird’ is the right move remains to be seen (one suspects not), but strangely the Democrats have never treated Trump as a more ‘normal’ candidate than they are right now.

            Gottfried deserves an answer, and I will do my best to provide one. First, let me summarise his argument. Gottfried rejects the basic premise of ‘the uniparty’.  For him, the two parties are not, to borrow a phrase from Peter Hitchens, two zombies propping each other up, but genuinely distinct, the ‘differences are real and perceptible.’ Let me quote Gottfried at greater length:

It seems to me that it really matters whether J.D. Vance or whomever Kamala Harris picks to replace her in the number two spot is next our vice-president and it certainly matters whether Trump or Harris wins the presidential race. …

Parvini may be roughly placed in neoreactionary school of political thought that emphasizes the importance of the power of elites (over the power of ideas or populist movements, for example). He and others of this viewpoint assess the current moment as one in which the enemies of the genuine right are everywhere in power, only under slightly different guises. From what I can see, there are varying levels of badness in our decadent West, and not all of them are identical. Claiming that all established political parties are essentially a ‘uniparty’ and that all apparent differences are fake makes it impossible to take advantage of opportunities to slow down the left, that is, to prevent us from becoming the woke cesspools into which Germany, France, Britain, Canada, and other ‘liberal democracies’ have sunk—or are still sinking.

The remaining difference between us and them is not that we have a more brilliant or more courageous right than the Germans, French, British, or Canadians. We don’t, from what I can tell. I am at least as impressed by the European right as I am by our own (and here I’m not including the American Conservatism, Inc. blah-blah artists). What makes us different from these other places is the MAGA constituency, which is far greater in size and effect than any populist movement elsewhere in the Western world. Trump may not be the most principled or articulate leader of such a considerable force, but he does command a much larger resistance than one finds in France, Germany, Spain or anywhere in the leftist-occupied Anglosphere. And that ain’t nothing!

Gottfield is certainly correct that there is no equivalent to MAGA in Britain or Canada. And in percentage terms, MAGA is now probably proportionally bigger than either Le Pen’s movement in France or the AFD in Germany. One key concept in elite theory, derived from Robert Michels, is the Iron Law of Oligarchy. Before he wrote his seminal Political Parties, Michels started as a member of the German Social Democratic Party and was appalled by how totally they abandoned all their previous positions – including opposition to war – as they came closer to power. You do not change the system: the system changes you. Thus, the once promising liberal prospect, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also known as The AOC, has been relentlessly disciplined by her superiors such as Nancy Pelosi since 2019, and it has been remarkable to watch her moderate her views to become just another regime-stooge Democrat, just another cog in the machinery, the light of her now doe-eyes faded as she has been tamed and made docile. She is not the radical once promised now, but just another two-a-penny Democrat dutifully apologising to Israel to appease lobbyists. One wonders if Pelosi sees her younger self in a figure like the AOC, but of course, twisted by years of corruption and evil, she elects to continue the cycle of abuse.

MAGA, on the face of it, has been a much tougher nut to crack for the regime. The usual tactics have not worked. Independently wealthy, and aware of every dirty trick in the game, Trump has remained uncowed as they have thrown practically everything at him. However, MAGA still suffers from great internal subversion precisely because it is populist, because it does not sufficiently gatekeep, and because its overriding concern is the popularity and electoral prospects of Trump rather than any policy program. Whenever a leftist has finally had enough of the Democrats, gets cancelled, or whatever else, they can count on MAGA to welcome them, huge smiles on faces, open armed, thrilled to welcome another convert to the broadest church of all, probably with a spot at the next conference and a Fox News Show to boot. Thus we have had every iteration: blacks for Trump, LBGT for Trump, weird Sikh prayers for Trump, multi-coloured hair rapper Sexxy Red declaring she ‘wants to have sex with Trump’, and so on. When these former Democrats migrate from ‘the plantation’ to MAGA, much like when Democrats move from California to Texas, they tend to take most of their politics with them. MAGA has no defence mechanism against this and so in eight years is now a true rainbow coalition which is mainly united by its desire to be part of something that ‘feels good’. So fully internalised are all these aspects now that Trump is literally running to Kamala Harris’s left on the issue of law and order in the black community, as one slogan goes, ‘vote Kamala Harris if you want black men in prison.’ Not even the Tory Party at their most servile and abject under Rishi Sunak ever tried such lines, because if the Tory Party do a single thing well, it is to gatekeep and protect its centralised command-and-control structure. The values of MAGA are the values of the Civil Rights Regime, or if you prefer, Boomer Truth. In the current environment, all this makes MAGA de facto ‘woke’ as opposed to the Democrats who are de jure ‘woke’. It is a distinction without a difference. For every ‘diverse’ person the Republicans put on the stage, a right-wing white guy was not selected, and his boomer uncle will still feel smug about it and show off to his friends that he is part of something ‘not racist’. MAGA will justify it as ‘merit’, Democrats as ‘justice’, but the result is the same. The only difference is emphasis, the difference between aggressive and in-your-face social justice talk and Back to Fresh Prince, MAGA is already at the latter and has been for a long time now.

Another net effect of Trump has been to drag Republicans into a new paradigm in which a figure such as Peter Brimelow, who used to regularly make mainstream television appearances, is now considered beyond the pale and has had to shut-down VDARE. Does anyone even remotely expect MAGA to fight on that front? Excuses will always be made: ‘it is not Trump, it is the people around him’, but one should consider whether there is a reason Trump has always selected for female deputies, and the sorts of liberal advisors he has always held close. One suspects it is because his core values, to the extent he has any, are fundamentally liberal ones. This brings me to a core truth that many American friends on the right refuse to accept, despite my pointing it out for at least a year: MAGA is simply where the country is, the values of MAGA-as-clown show circus, the values of Trump the New York liberal, simply put, are the values of the nation written large. Social conservatism is unpopular, which is why Trump has always been so cagey around social issues, including abortion. MAGA was never about social issues, or ‘opposing woke’, it was about opposing immigration and opposing the Neocon forever wars. Over the past eight years, the GOP has successfully subverted that original movement to smuggle in their long-standing pet social issues, hijack the political space with ‘culture wars’ woke vs. anti-woke content (Matt Walsh has probably done over a hundred shows on transgender bathrooms), tone down the sharper edges of the immigration debate (any talk of race or demographics now entirely jettisoned in favour focus on illegal immigration, which is oddly reminiscent of Sunak), and largely to get MAGA back on board with the forever wars, at least as they pertain to the Middle East and support for Israel’s ongoing conflict there, give or take a Ukraine. This is what has happened, not what any one of us particularly wanted to see.

My long-standing claim has been that the regime has largely realised that continued polarisation threatens long-term stability and therefore it will make efforts to ‘put the woke away’, not least because its ostensible aims have already been achieved. I still believe that Trump will come as a unifier, ultimately, and that, following a sound defeat under Kamala Harris, the Democrats will, like Keir Starmer here, moderate the party, ‘come to the centre’, and start to signal that they have changed. They need to do this, at least in the short term, because – for all the talk of black voting intentions – white people still win and lose elections for either party. For the regime, as opposed to the Democrats, the drivers to stabilise the situation remain the same. I will reiterate them once more for clarity:

1.      Military recruitment is down at a critical juncture in the geopolitical struggle against Russia, China and Iran (aka ‘they need white boys to die in their wars’)

2.      The regime faces a legitimacy crisis (and a competency crisis) and record numbers of people do not trust their institutions and are ‘checking out’ from the system.

3.      Elites in Davos such as Tony Blair and others have recognised the essential problems leading to the rise of populism and will move to contain the issue, essentially by being seen to respond to current challenges.

4.      ‘Jews Don’t Count’

We have already seen an extraordinary effort to dismantle the DEI architecture that was erected following the George Floyd riots of 2020, explicit non-woke military adverts targeting white men, billions of dollars of funding pulled from universities who were seen to support the Palestinians, famous billionaires endorsing and pledging money to Trump and, here, the remarkable transformation of the Labour Party from its Jeremy Corbyn form to its Keir Starmer form. People invested in either of the two political parties and their campaigns, and the entire kayfabe of the political process, will do their best to deny any of this is happening, or has happened, but facts are facts. It is thought that Barack Obama seeks to do the same to the Democrats as Blair and Starmer have done to Labour after Corbyn, after the disastrous Biden-Harris era. I believe these efforts are currently being thwarted by rogue, essentially criminal, elements in and around the Biden-Harris administration, but their resistance will be temporary because they will not be able to defy the will of their donors for long. Of course, there are much crazier timelines available for America, one might say the Charles Haywood future which imagines the Democrats as committed French Revolutionaries who will take to the streets or start a civil war; I remain convinced there is every sign that this will be the road not taken, that Trump will govern-as-Reagan, and that there will be marked efforts on both sides to prevent further polarisation as the USA’s civilisational enemies show they are not playing games any more. Remarkably, this would be the most democratic outcome also because it is what most Americans, now tired of politics, want. Thus, the uniparty and the illusion of its Punch and Judy show will live to fight another day, ironically, saved by Trump. To the extent that the election matters, it is on this level: for the legitimacy of the regime and its liberal democratic myths. Should Harris win, fairly or otherwise, the USA as we know it likely will not survive. Not because the Democrats are ‘woke’, not because the Democrats are fundamentally different from the Republicans, but rather because a huge raft of the country would finally come to the conclusion that they have been disenfranchised by a corrupt system whose lies they will no longer believe. For all these reasons Trump must win, but do not expect Trump’s America to be any less diverse or any more conservative. It will be a win, not for his voters, but for the power structure itself. Perhaps in the long run America cannot be saved, but in the short-run the empire certainly can be.

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[i] For this article, against my instincts, I’ve gone back to providing hyperlinks. People in comments can let me know if they prefer these articles with or without them. Personally, I detest links, it reminds me of the sort of California tech-bro culture from which Curtis Yarvin came but let me know.