I recently wrote a piece on paleoconservatism which, owing to a communication mix-up, I didn’t need to write after all. It is just as well because the article was not really coming together, but it had some interesting sections which I will post here.
This is excellent but I really wish the DR would come up with better language around the word “liberalism”.
If you accept that historical (or classical) liberalism has been infiltrated and twisted by Marxist progressives, then it’s sort of doing their work for them to continue using the word without qualification. I would suggest calling it “progressive liberalism” to distinguish from classical “actual liberalism” but I’m hardly a world class wordsmith.
This is further important because a project to replace liberalism in the West will not likely succeed… so therefore liberalism must be purified instead. The post-liberal right commentators seem to always think they will be in the new aristocracy come the revolution, which is a bit like the tankies who think that -their- post revolution job is going to be poet. It’s a little delusional and it’s not a compelling pitch to the public.
But something between 1920s and 1950s US liberalism is a workable starting point. Surely.
I’ve nearly finished reading The Populist Delusion. My only criticism at this point is that the book should probably be twice as big. Well done. I hope you continue to publish.
Well done AA. Although I think our current dire straits are due to a natural cycle of corruption rather than any particular system. We are in a period of senescence, and it is time for us to rebuild our leadership, and rekindle our civilization. Will you be our Hari Seldon?
1. Progressivism, is the belief that we evolve towards the good. I would actually agree, and I will place our collective and accelerating turn towards Tradition, classical philosophy and spirituality as proof of that. The hegelian dialectical process, or whiteheads process and reality.
The irony here. Is that "Progressives " in reality aim to stop history here, while engaging in ever more cringe "advances", which doesn't so much prove that they are evil as point towards their fruit having passed it's prime. Thus the engage in activities which force a reaction which will provide the next opening of an horizon
2. Since theybare not evil, only misguided there is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We can be reactionary without being reactive. Gains provided by liberalism, such as the concept of rule of law, enshrined indivual rights and also the very concept of the individual can be safeguarded.
3. What is called progress today is nothing more than decay, yes. But to point towards ideology as the cause of that decline is stupid. Ideologies are nothing but a cover over material realities. Degeneration is a result of material conditions. In this case, mostly overcrowded cities progressing towards dystopian hellscapes.
Our love affair with mechanical technology and urbanisation are root causes here. In real terms we tend to define progress as "mechanical advances", and the secondary definition as "increased human rights" is an effect of the first.
4, 5, 6, 7.
Our institutions allow for a steady replacement of our current elites with new people who will be able to slowly turn the ship of state towards more stable waters. A revolution is a leftist dream and should never be advocated.
Or put more bluntly, we are winning a lot of terrain here. The upcoming American midterms will probably see several representatives reach the congress who share our values. The presidency itself is very likely in a few electoral cycles, say 8-12 years.
This slow and steady change of leadership and direction is provided thanks to "Liberal institutions, democracy and the party system ".
Your only real critique here is one of impatience. Do I need to remind you that patience is a virtue?
The rest of your points are irrelevant, but your reading list is excellent.
Social media is great at distinguishing those that are something, and those that are trying to be something. This comments section is rife with those who are trying ever so hard to be
Your point about the need for a renewed spirituality stuck out to me.
I suppose the turn to Catholicism and Christian Identity proves your point.
But no real interest in the actual study of religion or applied spiritual has occurred to my knowledge. I wish that we could have that conversation, but I just don't see it on Gab, Twitter or 4chan. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places though.
It seems like there's a contradiction between point 5 ("There is no meaningful difference between the establishment parties") and point 8 ("No progressive successes in history are permanent").
Parties aren't set in stone. Like all institutions, they are what you make of them. It's silly for Americans to pin all their hopes on the magic Donald J. Trump, but it'd be an order of magnitude dumber to suggest that there's no difference between him and Jeb! or - as certain take-havers do - to argue that *ackshually*, Jeb Bush would've been better for some incomprehensible theoretical reason.
There's very big gains to be made in hijacking mainstream movements, and by just rejecting party politics as "compromised", you isolate yourself away from society.
If the Dissident Right believed in the positions of the Dissident Right, they wouldn't be members of the Dissident Right.
The DR convinces people to view Conservatives as tools of the Progressives, but tells people to contain that belief to the domain of political parties. But why wouldn't you extend it to the political philosophies themselves? Why wouldn't you conclude that Conservative ideology is itself a tool serving Progressive ideology? Why wouldn't you conclude that anything Right serves anything Left?
This list of 10 theses is just a list of nags. There's nothing constructive. The Progressives can just take on board all your complaints and then keep on trucking. Want a dictator instead of democracy? The Progressives will pick the dictator. There's no compromising with evil? OK, the Progressives define you as evil so stamp out any opposition. Liberalism is bad? Progressives will be more than happy to enact Communism! Progressivism is evil? Well, Progressives use antiracism to enact racism, equality to enact inequality, and much more; so I'm pretty sure they'll be more than happy to enact Progressivism under the banner of anti-Progressivism! And so on and so forth.
If your 10 theses are correct and the DR is just organised nagging, that implies there's a fundamental structure beneath the Right and the Left which both agree on. If the DR is just nagging then there's a fundamental structure beneath the DR and Progressivism agreed to by both. If that weren't true you'd be trying to push something constructive, but instead you believe that as long as these 10 points are carried out that anything which happens is good! Yet Progressive ideology is compatible with all of them, hence the DR is just a tool of the Progressives.... just as the DR says it is!
The DR is a worldview which, if taken to its logical conclusion, should eat itself alive. The fact that it doesn't should tell you it's just a containment ideology for the Progressives. The DR, and everyone in it, is a Rear Guard Progressive.
The DR is a form of containment. And that's just a fact!
AA: *everyone in the DR mostly agrees on these positions*
The comments: "Well actually..."
This is excellent but I really wish the DR would come up with better language around the word “liberalism”.
If you accept that historical (or classical) liberalism has been infiltrated and twisted by Marxist progressives, then it’s sort of doing their work for them to continue using the word without qualification. I would suggest calling it “progressive liberalism” to distinguish from classical “actual liberalism” but I’m hardly a world class wordsmith.
This is further important because a project to replace liberalism in the West will not likely succeed… so therefore liberalism must be purified instead. The post-liberal right commentators seem to always think they will be in the new aristocracy come the revolution, which is a bit like the tankies who think that -their- post revolution job is going to be poet. It’s a little delusional and it’s not a compelling pitch to the public.
But something between 1920s and 1950s US liberalism is a workable starting point. Surely.
Very based, I hope to get really buff and have a bar fight with AA one day.
I’ve nearly finished reading The Populist Delusion. My only criticism at this point is that the book should probably be twice as big. Well done. I hope you continue to publish.
pretty cozy list AA
I don't agree about democracy though. The people's will is righteous and anti-elite. It's the manifestation of Clear Them Out.
We simply need a pure enough, great people to put democracy in practice, that is all.
Democracy can be explicitly illiberal. Liberal democracy is simply a manifestation of Westernoid idealism and elite driven.
Well done AA. Although I think our current dire straits are due to a natural cycle of corruption rather than any particular system. We are in a period of senescence, and it is time for us to rebuild our leadership, and rekindle our civilization. Will you be our Hari Seldon?
“Yes, he [AA] vigorously chops off what is rotten. He chops off what is slated for destruction. If he didn’t do this, he would not be a Leninist.”
Based. American Caesar when? When can I stand rank and file in his legion of autistic nazi bodybuilder schizophrenics?
I, personally, cannot improve upon your top ten.
Excellent! You nailed it.
I would actually argue against several of these.
1. Progressivism, is the belief that we evolve towards the good. I would actually agree, and I will place our collective and accelerating turn towards Tradition, classical philosophy and spirituality as proof of that. The hegelian dialectical process, or whiteheads process and reality.
The irony here. Is that "Progressives " in reality aim to stop history here, while engaging in ever more cringe "advances", which doesn't so much prove that they are evil as point towards their fruit having passed it's prime. Thus the engage in activities which force a reaction which will provide the next opening of an horizon
2. Since theybare not evil, only misguided there is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We can be reactionary without being reactive. Gains provided by liberalism, such as the concept of rule of law, enshrined indivual rights and also the very concept of the individual can be safeguarded.
3. What is called progress today is nothing more than decay, yes. But to point towards ideology as the cause of that decline is stupid. Ideologies are nothing but a cover over material realities. Degeneration is a result of material conditions. In this case, mostly overcrowded cities progressing towards dystopian hellscapes.
Our love affair with mechanical technology and urbanisation are root causes here. In real terms we tend to define progress as "mechanical advances", and the secondary definition as "increased human rights" is an effect of the first.
4, 5, 6, 7.
Our institutions allow for a steady replacement of our current elites with new people who will be able to slowly turn the ship of state towards more stable waters. A revolution is a leftist dream and should never be advocated.
Or put more bluntly, we are winning a lot of terrain here. The upcoming American midterms will probably see several representatives reach the congress who share our values. The presidency itself is very likely in a few electoral cycles, say 8-12 years.
This slow and steady change of leadership and direction is provided thanks to "Liberal institutions, democracy and the party system ".
Your only real critique here is one of impatience. Do I need to remind you that patience is a virtue?
The rest of your points are irrelevant, but your reading list is excellent.
All true.
Now what are we going to do about it?
You have left Edmund Burke off your list of writers who influence the Dissident Right.
Social media is great at distinguishing those that are something, and those that are trying to be something. This comments section is rife with those who are trying ever so hard to be
Your point about the need for a renewed spirituality stuck out to me.
I suppose the turn to Catholicism and Christian Identity proves your point.
But no real interest in the actual study of religion or applied spiritual has occurred to my knowledge. I wish that we could have that conversation, but I just don't see it on Gab, Twitter or 4chan. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places though.
It seems like there's a contradiction between point 5 ("There is no meaningful difference between the establishment parties") and point 8 ("No progressive successes in history are permanent").
Parties aren't set in stone. Like all institutions, they are what you make of them. It's silly for Americans to pin all their hopes on the magic Donald J. Trump, but it'd be an order of magnitude dumber to suggest that there's no difference between him and Jeb! or - as certain take-havers do - to argue that *ackshually*, Jeb Bush would've been better for some incomprehensible theoretical reason.
There's very big gains to be made in hijacking mainstream movements, and by just rejecting party politics as "compromised", you isolate yourself away from society.
If the Dissident Right believed in the positions of the Dissident Right, they wouldn't be members of the Dissident Right.
The DR convinces people to view Conservatives as tools of the Progressives, but tells people to contain that belief to the domain of political parties. But why wouldn't you extend it to the political philosophies themselves? Why wouldn't you conclude that Conservative ideology is itself a tool serving Progressive ideology? Why wouldn't you conclude that anything Right serves anything Left?
This list of 10 theses is just a list of nags. There's nothing constructive. The Progressives can just take on board all your complaints and then keep on trucking. Want a dictator instead of democracy? The Progressives will pick the dictator. There's no compromising with evil? OK, the Progressives define you as evil so stamp out any opposition. Liberalism is bad? Progressives will be more than happy to enact Communism! Progressivism is evil? Well, Progressives use antiracism to enact racism, equality to enact inequality, and much more; so I'm pretty sure they'll be more than happy to enact Progressivism under the banner of anti-Progressivism! And so on and so forth.
If your 10 theses are correct and the DR is just organised nagging, that implies there's a fundamental structure beneath the Right and the Left which both agree on. If the DR is just nagging then there's a fundamental structure beneath the DR and Progressivism agreed to by both. If that weren't true you'd be trying to push something constructive, but instead you believe that as long as these 10 points are carried out that anything which happens is good! Yet Progressive ideology is compatible with all of them, hence the DR is just a tool of the Progressives.... just as the DR says it is!
The DR is a worldview which, if taken to its logical conclusion, should eat itself alive. The fact that it doesn't should tell you it's just a containment ideology for the Progressives. The DR, and everyone in it, is a Rear Guard Progressive.
The DR is a form of containment. And that's just a fact!