No longer a nation . . . and more than an idea . . . America must become a religion. Its martyred savior is MLK. Its sacrament is “Holocaust Remembrance.” Its crusade is to save, convert, and redeem the powerless, colored masses yearning to be brought into the Light.

The profit . . . er, prophet . . . who will lead us on this sacred quest is none other than the avatar of the Third Great Awakening, the chosen one indwelt by the Holy Founders, Glenn Beck.
 

Beck’s self-image as an Incarnation of the American Creed was spectacularly revealed when he recently endorsed Ted Cruz. As part of his speech, he asked Cruz, “What is the oath of office you have to take?” For once, the sociopathic, calculating Cruz looked utterly nonplussed and remained silent, eliciting a “What, what?” from Beck.

But when Beck asked again, Cruz, one hand stuffed in his jeans, another raised as a pledge of his sacred trust, dutifully responded, “I pledge to honor and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.”

The crowd cheered.

Beck beamed.

But it wasn’t the Oath of Office . . .

No matter. The incident is a perfect example of Beck’s approach. His entire career has been to create a fantasy version of U.S. history and identity, which has proven powerfully resonant among confused White Americans. As every traditional institution and moral authority turns against the White people who created them, Beck assures them that this is simply a kind of test. He styles himself as a legitimate American authority in exile, even to the extent of creating a full Oval Office set and giving mock State of the Union addresses from his television studio.

Beck provides a comforting alternative to the hard realities of demographic dispossession, arguing that it is not American ideals that have failed but simply our collective adherence to them. Like a preacher who tells us a plague or military defeat has been caused by our lack of faith, Beck is calling us to repent and believe, not just in God, but in an idiosyncratic political creed that seems to exist only in his ever shifting imagination.

It wasn’t long ago that Beck was being denounced by the American Left not just as crazy but positively dangerous. One could even see glimpses of Beck playing footsie with the the emerging Alt Right and Liberty movement, by investigating certain premises of the Establishment consensus, including Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts to get America into World War II, the role of the Federal Reserve, and the legality of secession. Beck’s habit of educating his audience via his famous chalkboard gave the impression that he was operating as a political autodidact in real time and his ideological evolution could take him in any direction.

But Beck proceeded to reinvent himself, not so much as a political commentator as a spiritual leader. More accurately, he reinterpreted politics in spiritual terms. One could argue this was done out of necessity. Beck is, after all, a Mormon, a faith the overwhelming majority of American Protestants do not consider part of Christianity. Instead of urging American evangelicals to get on their knees and discover the wonders of the Pearl of Great Price, Beck reinterpreted American history in religious terms, with the Founding Fathers serving as the original apostles who spread the true faith.

Thus, at Beck’s “Restoring Honor” event in 2010, hundreds of thousands of White people gathered to seek political salvation through a vague plan of spiritual renewal mixed with patriotic nostalgia. Portraits of Samuel Adams, George Washington, and Ben Franklin (exemplifying, apparently, Faith, Hope, and Charity) beamed upon the proceedings. The late Christopher Hitchens recognized the gathering as the first faint stirrings of White racial populism . . . though accurately summarized the message as “a call to sink to the knees rather than rise from them.”

Though Hitchens (unlike many alarmist liberal commentators) saw Beck’s limp-wristed rally for what it was, he still argued a European-style nationalist movement was inevitable in the United States. As he put it in words that now seem prophetic:

It will be astonishing if the United States is not faced, in the very near future, with a similar phenomenon [to European nationalism]. Quite a lot will depend on what kind of politicians emerge to put themselves at the head of it. Saturday’s rally was quite largely confined to expressions of pathos and insecurity, voiced in a sickly and pious tone. The emotions that underlay it, however, may not be uttered that way indefinitely.

I’ll say.

Also observing the rally, Samuel Phillips at The Occidental Quarterly speculated that the Tea Party/Beck strategy of a faux populist strategy limited to goals like “cutting spending” is dangerous to its organizers. Such an approach can’t help but tread on “dangerous territory,” taking only a spark to move towards nationalism, and eventually, explicit identitarian politics. That moment has arrived.

But Beck’s entire ideological and spiritual program depends on steering people away from such impulses. The natural and inevitable conflict of interests between different peoples is incompatible with an American Creed that supposedly holds all problems will be solved if we adhere to “limited government” and the Constitution. Thus, Beck has always been focused on the element of conspiracy to explain what he sees as the heretical deviations from the American faith.

Beck once investigated George Soros, an act which he claimed cost him his job on FOX News. Needless to say, his investigation of the “puppet master” did not focus on Soros’s Jewish heritage, except to allege Soros was an “anti-Semite” and a self-hating Jew who was acting out of disgust for “tribalism.” Beck’s own critique of Karl Popper and the “Open Society” was shallow and unconvincing. It couldn’t be otherwise, as Beck thinks of himself as a classical liberal, and is thus just as wedded to “human rights” as any member of the global elite. All Beck can manage is to draw up maps with SPLC-style “links” to various progressives who don’t scare anyone except true believers.

Becks’ book The Overton Window was similarly incoherent. A monstrous conspiracy (conveniently stored on PowerPoint) is discovered to destroy America by promoting fear and “collectivism.” The book inadvertently reveals the ultimate danger of interpreting politics through the lens of “What” instead of “Who.” Various historical figures and ideologies are lumped together with only a vague coherence. The heroic and appropriately ethnically diverse opposition to this scheme fights a shadowy elite following a plan encompassing the nefarious ideological visions of people from Woodrow Wilson to Saul Alinsky.

And in the years that have followed, Beck has resembled some crank at some Bolshevik newsletter, printing out obscure tracts on a mimeograph. Even as the actual constituency that supports American conservatism grows increasingly angry and dispossessed, Beck’s definition of the “true” American identity has grown more arbitrary and abstruse.

Since starting The Blaze, perhaps gun-shy after investigating Soros and being accused of racism and anti-Semitism, Beck has focused a great deal of his fire on the Right, especially any perceived ideological challenge to classical liberalism. Beck was especially excitable about the “truly terrifying” Alexander Dugin, sharing National Review’s weird Warhammer 40K fantasies that Dugin is the Ever-Chosen of the Chaos Gods.  Beck has sounded the alarm about the “far Right” rising in Europe, because it supposedly has an interest in “instability” and undermining capitalism. And most spectacularly, Beck insulted those in his own audience who support Donald Trump as “racists” and suggested Trump may follow the program of Adolf Hitler. 

Beck combines this policing of the Right with acts of virtue signaling towards the Left. One of the most outlandish was his recent declaration he would smuggle (supposedly Christian) Syrians into the United States. Conscious this is a crime, Beck boasts that he is willing to go to jail for his beliefs, though one can hardly picture Barack Obama serving in his designated role as Diocletian. After all, Beck’s crime of importing Third Worlders who will vote Democratic until the actual Second Coming is already official policy. But in Beck’s mind, he is a new Bonhoeffer, indeed someone who will save more people than Oscar Schindler (Peace Be Upon Him).

Bewildered conservatives told Beck Muslims are already faking conversions to Christianity in order to claim asylum and such a plan would almost certainly lead to Muslim terrorists being admitted into the United States. In response, Beck claimed, “We have former CIA people who are going over and they’re vetting everybody right now,” an assertion that raises more questions than it answers. . .  

But Beck is not a modern liberal who believes religion simply doesn’t matter. His new book is It IS About Islam, a phrase that is all but illegal in the birthplace of Anglo-Saxon liberty. As with many conservatives, Beck regards Islam is unacceptable because it has proven so resilient to assimilation by the gods of the marketplace. What Beck is trying to do is convert the entire world to a rival religion of “Americanism,” a universally applicable creed of limited government, anti-racism, and the Constitution. A non-ecumenical form of Christianity (which includes Beck’s Mormons) serving as a sacral glue holding all of this together.

Naturally, this requires reimagining the Founding Fathers as indistinguishable from modern conservatives. Beck has championed controversial “historian” David Barton and his attempts to rehabilitate Jefferson for the Religious Right as an anti-racist champion of Christianity. Not surprisingly, Barton also heads up a Ted Cruz Super PAC. And Beck has gone so far to compare Ted Cruz to George Washington.

In a recent interview with Beck, Ted’s father, Rafael Cruz, waxed theologically:

The Constitution of the United States is a divinely inspired document. It is the greatest document that has ever been written, outside of the Bible.

Beck’s response: “It is. It is.”

The heretic to Americanism Beck targets today is, of course, Donald Trump. Beck is leading the charge against the Republican frontrunner because of Trump’s supposed lack of support for “the Constitution.” But Beck’s “Constitution” isn’t merely the Constitution. Beck isn’t talking about a document that lays out how the state is supposed to function. It’s a kind of holy text, an American Scripture, which, properly interpreted, gives us guidance on every aspect of life.

We see this in the specific accusations he’s made against Trump for not being a true “constitutional conservative.”

For example, Trump is alleged to be a “dangerous man” who will abuse his power. But this charge is made in tandem with the accusation Trump has been too open to cutting “deals” with Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. This makes no sense; if Trump was actually going to govern as the fascist dictator we all wish he would be, he wouldn’t be negotiating with Congress at all, let alone with leaders of the other party.

Trump is supposedly not a “real conservative” because he supports eminent domain. But eminent domain is one of the few things the government does that is clearly spelled out in the Constitution. It is also required to accomplish projects “real conservatives” like Ted Cruz support, such as the Keystone Pipeline.

Trump is not a “real conservative” because he supports ethanol subsidies. But Cruz doesn’t want to scrap it, merely to phase it out over five years. (This is the same kind of trick Barack Obama did with his healthcare plan, making sure the costs are delayed until they can no longer politically harm him.) And Cruz supports subsidies to oil companies, perhaps because they are more important to his political base in Texas. Indeed, if you actually cared about eliminating such subsidies to local interests, the only way to do it would be to support a powerful national leader who would ignore checks and balances and eliminate such inefficiencies at the stroke of a pen.

The weakness of the arguments suggests there’s something deeper at work, something even beyond Beck’s fear of White identity politics. One’s tempted to say it’s because the point of conservatism is to lose gracefully, to honor the form while losing the substance. And Trump is actually a fairly typical “movement conservative” when it comes to issues like taxes, gun control, Common Core, and the like. Beck’s problem is not with Trump himself. It is with what Trump represents.

Beck’s strange faith (and business model) requires a political and cultural environment that allows White Americans to believe their world is coming to an end without such a cultural collapse actually occurring. It’s LARPing America, as we rally to the defense of the Republic in a consequence-free environment where we don’t have to risk anything.

But the stakes are now too high for that. Beck is appealing to symbols that have been stripped of meaning for many Americans. Absent a sizable White majority that can take the core culture and religion for granted, Beck’s entire frame of reference collapses. The fanaticism of Beck’s war on Trump suggests this deeply unstable man is attacking him as a form of denial, a way to somehow prove that rules haven’t changed and that the old slogans and the old symbols are still relevant in the Identitarian Age that is emerging.

Trump heralds a new age of identity politics that has no place for “movement conservatives,” their goofy rhetoric about the Constitution, and their hypocritical exploitation of White resentment. The reason Trump is rising is because once accepted universally White symbols like the Founding Fathers and the Constitution are being deconstructed. There is a palpable sense of an existential confrontation. A war of peoples, is imminent. Trump is only the beginning.

Of course, our time has not yet come. Perhaps Trump’s hasn’t either. Despite the polls, Trump should not be considered the favorite in Iowa. The caucus process favors Ted Cruz’s ground game and the well-organized “movement conservatives” who live for this. Nostalgia for the “old Reagan coalition” may allow Cruz to win this first contest and allow Beck to claim a victory.

But it will be a final victory, not Beck’s oft-prophesized revival. Beck’s professional collapse has already begun, as his website and television network are bleeding viewers and his staff is defecting. Trump’s candidacy has shown immigration is the defining issue for the grassroots American Right, and it has reduced the value of Becks’ moral shaming tactics. And cracks have even formed in the evangelical coalition itself, as Trump’s appeal to evangelicals shows at least some White Christians are open to an identity-based approach on the basis of opposing Islam. Beck is even warning “they” are going to shut his network down, and has floated the idea of fleeing to . . . you guessed it . . . Jerusalem.

The irony is that to survive, in the United States anyway, Beck may actually need Trump. After all, Donald Trump isn’t really a huge threat to the old American order. He’s The Last American, a “strong leader” still willing to work within the old constitutional framework. Instead of stubbornly cutting entitlements and ignoring infrastructure, and so provoking a crisis, Trump seems motivated by a genuine desire to borrow both from the Old Left and the American Right to keep the System going.

For now, Trump is fueling the rise of the Alt Right. But if he somehow makes it to the real Oval Office (as opposed to Glenn’s fantasy set), there’s even a case he’ll serve as a safety valve by reassuring White Americans they are still tied to the regime.

But if Trump fails to become President, the next manifestation of American nationalism won’t be a promise to “Make America Great Again.” It will be about establishing a radical alternative to what has been proven a failed experiment deeply hostile to the founding population.

Glenn Beck, priest of a dead god, has nothing to say to such a movement. He has nothing relevant to say on the issues that matter, and he’s slowly transforming from a media personality into the leader of a cult. If we’re lucky, he won’t just be the leader but the only member. Sadly, one suspects he’ll take plenty of White Americans along with him on his journey into oblivion.

We here at Radix are happy to bring you an interview with that noted social media scourge the Duck (or @jokeocracy as he was known on Twitter). His tweets have triggered leftists from the Washington Post to USA Today. In addition to this, he has contributed posts at dissident websites such as Chateau Heartiste. He and Radix’s Hannibal Bateman discuss his recent “Twitter martyrdom,” his thoughts on the platform, the media as well as some of his intellectual influences.

Hannibal Bateman: Could you talk a little about your latest Twitter ban and what you are looking to expose with it?

Duck: I’ve seen a lot of signs that Twitter is planning to purge a wide swath of the alt-right and other pro-Trump populist nationalists. The hashtags that fail to autocomplete were the beginning of it, and there have quietly been suspensions and shadow bannings. I’ve heard rumors from people I believe that Twitter is internally assembling lists of undesirable accounts for future action against.

Twitter is in a lot of trouble for a lot of reasons (see here), but management is ready to blame “harrassment” and “targeted abuse” and “hate speech” which are actually the only things keeping the platform exciting and relevant.

I suspect that Twitter is going to drop the hammer on thousands of pro-Trump accounts at the same time it banishes the alt-right so they can brand it as “cleaning up hate speech” but it may be timed to disrupt Trump’s support before a crucial primary date.

I saw this coming and I didn’t want my account to just be disappeared silently in the night. I decided I would go out in style and have fun getting myself suspended. I decided to go for it on a Sunday so I’d have the maximum chance of not being suspended right away, and Twitter firing a group of executives at the same time was an opportune coincidence.

I started tweeting at journalists describing the execution they’ll receive at the hands of President Trump, and I asked my followers to nominate journalists for roasting. It went on all day Sunday and into the night, there are a few I missed but I managed to cover most of the journalism-industrial complex with amusing execution fantasies. Technically I didn’t actually threaten anyone, I just described their future legal execution at the hands of the Trumperor once the Thousand-Year Trumpenreich commences, but Twitter isn’t much for nuance.

They didn’t actually suspend me until Twitter support got to the office at 8:40 am Monday. They’ve since communicated to me in an email that my original 12-hour suspension is permanent and my account will not be restored.

HB: Where do you see the future of online organization for those of us with rather “outre” right opinions? (Or/and is there a future for it at all?)

D: The current social networks are based on advertising revenues and the climate that advertisers want will never be compatible with transgressive opinions. Reddit has the same issue, and so does Facebook.

It’s questionable whether a social network can be run under another business model, but I expect advertising revenues will crash even further. I think the future of open discourse is probably a platform that hasn’t been invented yet, ideally something distributed and un-censorable could be built.

HB: Do you think the anonymity these platforms lend themselves to is ultimately a boon or a crutch for a movement looking to make actual dents in the media/information complex?

D: It’s certainly helpful to be pseudonymous in an age of regular economic defenestration, I’m sure the establishment would prefer if we used real names so it could exact vengeance on us.

The chan culture has adopted norms of complete anonymity which are arguably even better at eliminating the morality signaling that left wing behavior is based on, I wonder if Facebook is so disgustingly full of signaling because of its real name policies? It seems that anonymity is inherently anti-establishment, whatever that establishment may be.

I also think there’s a major misconception around anonymity. Many people seem to go by the assumption that anyone anonymous or pseudonymous is just some loser tweeting from his parents basement but in my experience most of the people who zealously guard their true identity do it because they’re accomplished people with a lot to lose.

That said, there is certainly a need for some people to be willing to shed their anonymity and assume leadership roles under their own names, and I hope we do see that happen more and more as time passes and people feel like they aren’t alone and can find ways to withstand the heat.

HB: How important do you think trolling will continue to be as a way to disrupt the sort of liberal narrative hegemony we’ve been seeing for so long?

D: Trolling is and has always been a way of speak truth to power and tweaking the establishment. Back in the 60’s trolling was a tool for hippies to attack The Man, and very little has changed since then except the identities of the hippies and of The Man have mostly swapped.

HB: Back in the 60’s there was a radical group of Marxists known as “situationists” who essentially sought to carve out spaces for radical leftist politics in everyday interactions that would send a sort of ideological jolt through spaces. In a way, I think our trolling is doing something similar only from the right. Outside of Twitter, what sort of actions can shitlords take to interrupt these narratives on a day to day basis?

D: I think comedy is an essential aspect of persuasion that is often overlooked by the right, but the times have never been more fertile for right-wing comedy. Comedy is essentially about transgression, and the left has become unable to engage in real transgression anymore given their position as the arbiters of establishment taste.

This leftist abandonment of the field of comedy is a huge opportunity for the right to establish a major front in the culture wars, and right now I think this opportunity is being squandered. The resistance against the Left spends millions of dollars on electing useless candidates and political signaling but those things are downstream from culture. An edgy hard right wing comedy show that pulled zero punches and was done professionally with a real budget would probably have more effect on the national political climate than all the policy papers by all the right-wing think tanks in the world put together.

HB: If going offline is what is needed, what sort of organization do you think is most important?

D: I don’t think people should go offline as a replacement for Twitter, I just recommended reaching out in real life and other venues because I think Twitter will soon purge a lot of accounts and I’d hate to see people lose touch with their Twitter friends entirely because of Twitter’s cowardice.

HB: Do you think the sort of SJW mob mentality has seen its zenith or will it only get worse from here?

D: It’s going to get much worse, we’re in an 1859 type situation here, the polarization of America has rarely been more entrenched. War is coming.

HB: 2015 was a big year for growth in both “alt-right” and “NRx” circles throughout the internet. Do you think we should expect the same in 2016, or will there be a retrenchment?

D: 2016 is going to be the Year of the Shitlord. More and more people are fed up with the current state of our nation’s discourse, and I think this year many of the right wing anonymous voices will emerge from the shadows, to put their names behind their words.

I’m personally working on some projects to help make 2016 our finest year, but it’s too soon to give any details. In a few months I should have something amazing to announce, so stay tuned to this and other alt-right news sources. I’ll make sure it gets covered widely.

HB: How do you see the role of the sort of petty media mandarins we see on social media, from the journalists to various other functionaries? As mere “Outer Party” members disseminating the Cathedral (or Synagogue if you prefer) line or do you think they actually have a more central role to the hegemonic narrative they support?

D: The Cathedral is frightening because it’s just a set of blind incentives to signal leftist holiness without anyone actually being in charge of it. It would be a lot more comforting to believe conspiracy theories about a shadowy cabal running the world for their own interests, but the awful truth is that no one is in charge and even the people we view as being on top are mostly unable to materially affect the direction of the leviathan.

Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better, we live in what are possibly the most interesting times in history.

HB: Which journalists or outlets would you love to lose the most legitimacy, and why?

D: Gawker is, of course, the worst, and they seemed to be on the verge of death until this recent investment from a Russian mobster, I mean, oligarch. We call them oligarchs when they have a billion dollars. We’ll see what happens there but I guess Nick Denton must be pretty desperate to take that kind of money.

The Buzzfeeds and Voxes of the world are probably the next tier down, but America will never be totally free until the New York Times building is a funeral pyre. It would probably help to drive a few tanks into Harvard Yard while we’re at it.

HB: In your opinion, how has the rise of Donald Trump galvanized what has come to be known as the “alt-right” on Twitter?

D: Trump recognized that the white working class had no voice in today’s American politics, and he’s become a rallying point for everyone who feels that the establishment needs to be torn down. His specific beliefs and policies are for the most part unimportant, he serves as a Schelling point for a deep anti-establishment feeling that has grown strong in the absence of any other permitted outlets to vent that emotion.

I generally support Trump but I don’t think he will win the election, I believe the establishment will do anything in its power to prevent his victory. I think the establishment will massively overreach and the blatant theft of the 2016 election could be the trigger for Civil War 2.

HB: What are your thoughts on Trump’s retweeting of various “controversial” accounts and how it has affected the media narrative of his campaign and how his supporters see online see him?

D: Trump is playing the media like a master, I’ve never seen anyone this skilled at trolling. He skillfully manipulates the media into bringing ideas into the Overton Window from the right. Without Trump, no one in this election would be talking about immigration, and he even caused the memes of “alt-right” and “white genocide” to be repeated by major news organizations.

HB: How irrelevant do you see the current crop of media elites on the Right? (I’m thinking NR, the Weekly Standard, and others).

D: They’re still somewhat relevant but they’re not actually on the Right, they’re just another part of the establishment that helps redirect dissatisfaction into harmless political activity.

HB: If you could exercise the same sort of narrative power over liberal and “cuckservative” journalists as they do over “alt-right” or “NRx” views now, would you? And why if you would?

D: I am a very militant supporter of free speech, but not for communists. I think any sensible society would have communists executed as a clear and present danger to civilization itself. Feminists and other types of cultural marxists are just another kind of communist.

Our nation is a progressive theocracy and I don’t believe a nation can exist without a shared myth, so when we tear this one down we’ll need something to replace it with, probably some kind of nationalism.

HB: Why did you decide to start an anonymous Twitter?

D: I saw things that happened to various people like Brendan Eich and Justine Sacco and I wanted to comment on these and other situations from an anonymous vantage point. I was also a follower of the terrific @ALLCAPSBRO and wanted to try my hand at anonymous twitter comedy, so I made an account with a duck avatar to try my hand. I never expected to gain so many followers (I had over 9000 when my account was finally suspended forever) and become so popular, but it was a hell of a ride and I enjoyed going out in a blaze of glory like that. It was quite a rush and I feel like I understand the psychology of suicide bombers a little better after that experience.

HB: What have been some of your main intellectual influences? and how did those lead you outside of the mainstream?

D: I was a standard-issue Mises & Rothbard reading anarcho-capitalist libertarian when I first discovered people like Steve Sailer and the late Larry Auster. They led me to the paleocons and via Auster I stumbled on Mencius Moldbug and all of his old books. These days I generally label myself as a neoreactionary but I try to follow a philosophy of “no enemies to the right”. We can disagree on a lot but if you’re an enemy of the establishment left I want to count you as an ally, right-wing infighting has never served our side well. We can fight after the Left is safely buried.

HB: What has been your biggest surprise since getting into all of this?

D: The number of people who secretly hold non-PC ideas is tremendous, the left presents itself as having a monopoly on ideas but the cracks are showing.

HB: Finally, do you have any advice for aspiring Twitter/internet shitlords out there?

D: We live in a society and a culture that opposes truth, so once you acquire the truth you can’t live your life in the same way anymore. What we say matters but what’s more important is the example that we set as we ‘Live Not By Lies‘. A shitlord is a modern dissident and the truth is our greatest weapon.

It’s probably the last time we’ll be talking about National Review. The attack on Donald Trump by Rich Lowry and the other giggling minicons at Mr. Buckley’s vanity project have revealed that Conservatism, Inc. is not just politically but intellectually bankrupt. It’s been reduced to offering slogans none of the writers actually believe or can even define.

We are told true conservatism is opposed to “populism” and that Trump is simply a salesman. Yet the first contributor to the Beltway Right’s supposed intellectual case #AgainstTrump is none other than Glenn Beck, rendering it laughable before it even begins. Beck has fleeced well-meaning rubes for years by posing as a champion of the “real America” standing against shadowy Machiavellian elites. These elites, we are told, are inspired by some monstrous conspiracy uniting figures as diverse as Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, and Saul Alinsky. As the late Andrew Breitbart noted, the huckster Beck personally profits by warning Middle Americans about some imminent disaster that never quite arrives, pushing buckets of “survival food” on evangelicals fearful about the end of the world.

The collection of other mediocrities offered to us as “leading intellectual conservatives” would be indistinguishable from a list any Radix reader would create as part of a parody.

Ben Domenech, a man whose entire life can be summarized as a combination of plagiarism and anti-White signaling.

Russell Moore, a Soros-backed evangelical, who claims that God is giving Southern Baptists a “second chance” to redeem their errant ancestors and embrace African-Americans and immigrants.

Katie Pavlich, a Fox News talking head of uncertain accomplishments lecturing us about unnamed conservative “principles.”

Michael Mukasey, a national security advisor to the failed Guaca Bowl Merchant Jeb Bush.

And Erick Erickson, whose mere appearance suffices to define The Cuckservative Mind.

Thomas Sowell’s inclusion surprised some people, as he has provided some work worth reading. Yet none of it is especially remarkable. As with Ben Carson, he is an accomplished man in his field, but none of us would find him particularly noteworthy if he was not Black. He’s simply another example of Dr. Johnson’s woman preacher. And it’s not surprising Sowell’s most often cited work (usually the only one they’ve read) among your typical “movement conservative” is the shockingly shallow Black Rednecks and White Liberals, which suggests White Southerners are to blame for pathologies of urban Blacks and that the only reason people ever oppose Jewish influence is “jealousy.”

And speaking of the ostensible Chosen, if one were to activate the Coincidence Detector before reading this, your computer might explode.

We have William Kristol, lecturing us “as conservatives,” even though the only principle we can discern from his blood-soaked career is the need for Americans to die in wars actively harmful to our national interest (though not to his). He says we need to listen to Leo Strauss, who tells us conservatism is defined by despising “vulgarity.”

We have Yuval Levin, born in Israel, who has openly discussed co-opting the Tea Party in order to push his agenda, which includes favoring Marco Rubio-style proposals for Amnesty.

We have Mona Charen, perhaps the most insipid commentator in a movement defined by Protective Stupidity, whining that Trump will “insult and belittle others including, or perhaps especially, women.” (Only Rosie O’Donnell, Mona).

We have Michael Medved telling us Trump must be opposed because he’ll “associate conservatives with all the negative stereotypes that liberals have attached for decades.” Medved then fulfills a stereotype attached to his own people by moaning about Trump’s “racism,” support for deporting illegals, and his appeal to White voters. “Imagine the parade of negative ads the Democrats are already preparing for radio stations with mainly black audiences and for Spanish-language television,” says Medved. After all, what is conservatism if not worrying about the feelings of the hosts on Hot 97 and Telemundo?

Finally, there’s John Podhoertz, whose crudity, shallowness, and stupidity is too much even for the shtetls of New York City neoconservatism. Podhoertz solemnly informs us Trump would be the worst thing to happen to “the American common culture in my lifetime,” a claim which only be called bizarre coming from someone whose entire professional output consists of squabbling on Twitter and endless kvetching about whatever sitcom he saw on television the night before.

To an outside observer, National Review’s attack on Trump seems absurd. Trump may not be a “true conservative,” by whatever amorphous definition can be cobbled together. Yet Trump is far more conservative by Beltway standards than many other candidates in the Republican primary.

His tax plan is hardly “populist” and is instead a product of supply-side economics, endorsed by figures such as Larry Kudlow. Trump was once pro-choice but is now pro-life, an ideological journey no different than that undertaken by Ronald Reagan. Trump opposes Common Core. He has perhaps the strongest position on the Second Amendment of any candidate, as the importance of national concealed carry cannot be overestimated. And unlike Pat Buchanan, whom NR crusaded against in the 1990s, Trump is a strong supporter of Israel, wants a military buildup, and opposed the nuclear deal with Iran. He’s only a “non-interventionist” in the sense that he favors a realistic approach to Russia.

If Jeb or Kaisch were the frontrunner, there would be no criticism from from National Review. If it were Rubio, there would be celebration.

What’s more, the issue confirms what we already knew, that the conservative movement does not see immigration as an important issue. While some of the contributors praise Trump’s stance on immigration (or at least his drawing attention to it), others outright condemn him. David Boaz, who calls himself a libertarian, identifies “nativism” as Trump’s biggest offense, along with Trump’s supposed promise of “one-man rule,” which seems to exist only in Boaz’s imagination.

One’s tempted to say they are attacking Trump precisely because of his opposition to immigration. But it’s not quite as simple as that. And while the conservative movement doesn’t consider stopping immigration important, opposing it (so long as you don’t express it too forcefully) isn’t enough to get you kicked off the island. Though I don’t believe this, there is a case to be made that Cruz, who is now the choice of most movement conservatives, has a stronger position than Trump on immigration. After all, Jeff Sessions, Steve King, and Tom Tancredo have all defended Cruz’s immigration record, with the latter two endorsing him. The conservative movement’s opposition to Trump goes beyond his position on immigration or even Trump’s putting it at the center of his campaign.

Some would say it is about “limited government.” But this ritualistic phrase means nothing. Indeed, much of the current Alternative Right is composed of red-pilled former libertarians well aware of the conservative movement’s empty sloganeering when it comes to their supposed “principles.”

When Ron Paul ran as the “champion of the Constitution” and practically created the modern “Liberty Movement,” it was National Review and the Beltway Right that led the pushback against him. After the invasion of Iraq, the movement bequeathed “Defender of the Constitution” awards on people like Donald Rumsfeld, and the years of conservative silence on Barack Obama’s massive social engineering efforts, how can anyone take these people seriously when it comes to “limited government?” Especially when you have the likes of William Kristol telling you that it’s Donald Trump who is the threat to the Constitution? The lowest shitposter on the chans has a more sophisticated understanding of politics and philosophy than any “movement conservative,” with his gibberish about “limited government” and “constitutionalism.”

So what is really at the heart of the “movement’s” hysterical opposition? This lame attempt to “Stump the Trump” was reportedly organized by NR’s editor, Rich Lowry. One can actually imagine Rich Lowry as a champion of Middle America . . . but only because he looks eerily similar that preacher kid from Children of the Corn. He could have saved the trouble as he and H1-B conservative Ramesh Ponnuru already told us the real case against Trump in October.

[Trump] basically never says ‘freedom’ or liberty.

That’s it. Trump simply doesn’t mouth the required pieties.

They hate Trump because he’s unveiled the scam. They hate him not because he is a vulgar “populist” devoid of substance, but because he is a candidate with more substance in one of his rambling speeches than they have in their entire faux “movement.”

After all, populism is a tactic, not an ideology. Trump’s populism comes from substance, not style. He appeals to the masses with his policies and by attacking their (and his) enemies, not by clumsily pandering to them. Trump doesn’t make a show of himself eating corn dogs at the Iowa state fair. He doesn’t try to fake being a “real person” with a leather jacket he changed into three seconds before his speech. Nor does he give us a lame story about how hard life was for him.

He usually arrives in a suit and tie; on more casual occasions, he’ll wear one of his trademark rope hats. He insists on sleeping in his own bed each night. He flies in on a plane or helicopter with his name on it. He eats his pizza with knife and fork, and defends it when people laugh. Trump campaigns as himself, not as some cornpone imitation of William Jennings Bryan. Insofar as he’s made one concession to being a conventional politician, it’s by overcoming his fear of germs and shaking hands with supporters. (Incidentally, it’s when he started doing that I knew he was serious about winning.)

It’s really “movement conservatism” that is purely a product of style. Though “principles” are constantly invoked, they are rarely defined. There’s almost nothing uniting even the elected group of contributors to #AgainstTrump but their devotion to slogans. All conservatism requires today is certain invocations and rhetorical prostrations before key phrases such as “limited government” and “the Constitution.” But these words are empty. And they certainly have no connection to advancing an agenda that can actually make life better for the GOP’s supporters.

What we are left with is simply a scam, a movement generating an endless series of complicated explanations about why White people are not allowed to pursue, attain, and exercise power to defend their collective interests.

As Richard Spencer observed, the insult cuckervative isn’t directed at those who aren’t “true conservatives.” Before National Review’s attack, an artificial Narrative that had been gaining traction was that Donald Trump was actually the real choice of the “Establishment,” in contrast to Ted Cruz. There are problems with this theory, notably that “establishment” figures were saying the exact opposite thing to reporters only a few weeks earlier.

But more importantly, people like Bob Dole weren’t endorsing Trump, merely pointing out the obvious reality Trump has a better chance of winning a general election than Ted Cruz. Furthermore, it’s clear this Narrative was artificially created and coordinated as part of an attempt by the Beltway Right to seize control over the primaries, now that Trump has largely destroyed candidates such as Jeb Bush.

After all, what is the “Establishment?” As Ann Coulter said in a speech at CPAC which cost her future speaking slots, there is a “fake Republican establishment” which is “scapegoated” on marginal issues, thus allowing the “true conservatives” to avoid doing anything about immigration. The “true conservatives” never deliver or even mobilize on anything important. Instead, we get frantic editorials and appeals to Middle Americans to get really worried about things like the Export-Import Bank.

It’s just a scam. And Trump has revealed it as a scam. The arguments raised against him now are openly dependent on ignorance. Conservatives who champion the Keystone Pipeline tell us “eminent domain” is the worst thing imaginable, even though it’s required to build that pipeline. And people who want a large military built by politically connected defense contractors scream and shout that “ethanol subsidies” are the worst injustice in the Republic.

The conservative rhetoric about “limited government” and all the rest accomplishes two purposes. First, it justifies support for unpopular and self-defeating programs that are beneficial to certain donors and ideologues, but not for voters. Thus, the only tangible accomplishments movement conservatives can point to are economic benefits for those who profit from globalization, cheap labor, and capital gains. Americans are confronted by a hostile elite dedicated to destroying them—and the GOP wants to cut its taxes.

Second, conservatism provides arguments why the grassroots is ideologically forbidden from pursuing its interests. Whenever you hear someone say “as a conservative” or “as a Christian,” you know he’s about to cuck. And what is most dishonest about this is it is designed to defend those already in power, even as it cloaks itself in the rhetoric of individual rights or egalitarianism.

Thus, we can’t defend our interests as Whites because “as conservatives” our ideology forbids it—except when we have a non-White we can run for president. We can’t oppose immigration “as Christians” because we have to be altruistic—except towards working-class voters. We can’t support programs that benefit our voters because “limited government” means the only purpose of gaining political power is to lecture your people why you aren’t allowed to help them. “I know you think it’s bad when we cut your Medicare and sent your job overseas, but it’s what the Founding Fathers would have wanted.”

The problem for National Review is that the smarter people keep seeing through this. And not just the masses, their own writers. Mark Steyn, late of NR and who had a “not terribly pleasant” parting with the magazine, wrote in response to the #Against Trump issue,

“I don’t think Trump supporters care that he’s not a fully paid-up member in good standing of ‘the conservative movement’—in part because, as they see it, the conservative movement barely moves anything.”

He dismissed the issue as a trolling attempt and mocked the continuous references to Reagan, saying:

“You have to be over 50 to have voted for Reagan, and a supposed ‘movement’ can’t dine out on one guy forever, can it? What else you got?”

Not much. L. Brent Bozell III says Trump must be condemned because he doesn’t “walk with” the conservative movement or read Human Events or National Review enough. But people who walk with the movement, at least the more interesting characters, tend to walk away eventually. His own father, L. Brent Bozell Jr., who ghostwrote Goldwater’s The Conscience of a Conservative, eventually found a society more to his liking in Francisco Franco’s Spain.

Another fierce Catholic, Joe Sobran, was perhaps the finest stylist the magazine ever produced. And he saw clearly how power is exercised in contemporary America. As he put it, “The Constitution poses no serious threat to our form of government.” He was eventually purged for what Bill Buckley called “contextually anti-Semitic” writings.

Three of the most prominent people purged from the magazine are Peter Brimelow, John Derbyshire, and Ann Coulter. All have defined themselves as opponents of mass immigration and political correctness. All have essentially supported Trump. All have proven to be right about what is driving conservative voters—the questions of immigration, identity, and nationalism that are defining world politics. And none now write for National Review. But don’t worry, you still have the scintillating prose of Kathryn Jean Lopez.

But the scam hasn’t quite run its course yet. Though it’s dying, it’s may be able to cost Trump Iowa in its death throes, as there are a lot of useful idiots out there who think Trump is a dictator because he supports ethanol subsidies.

Talk radio hosts such as Mark Levin, smoothly pivoting away from last week’s line that Trump exemplifies #NewYorkValues, now condemns Trump because he is offering “agrarian national populism.” Such Talmudic reasoning is absurd on its face, but it will win over some people. Whatever his later sins, Jack Hunter was right when he said the movement is defending “conservatism” as a word, and breaking away from that label will be hard for many people.

But the breakaway will happen. The problem National Review faces is bigger than Trump. It can’t engage on the questions of identity, immigration, and race that will define this century. More than that, its own infantile sloganeering ensures “conservatives” are incapable of even understanding let alone driving the debate.

The postwar conservative movement dies not with a whimper or a bang, but with one last news cycle of relevance. For all the talk of “principles” and the “conservative intellectual tradition,” the Beltway Right has been left with nothing to say.

A Response to Aaron Wolf

Aaron Wolf, Managing Editor of Chronicles, has written a critique of identitarianism for the February issue of the magazine. He alludes to the National Policy Institute’s 2015 conference “Become Who We Are” as representative of this current of thought. Chronicles, as many readers probably know, describes itself as a conservative or paleoconservative publication. Mr. Wolf’s article seems to be an attempt at line-drawing between the conservatism represented by Chronicles and identitarianism (or whatever one wishes to call the current of thought on display at NPI’s conference).

Mr. Wolf is to be commended, first of all, for explicitly refusing to identify the position he is criticizing with biological determinism, something advocated by no person I have ever met. Race informs culture, as our mutual friend Sam Francis put it, but virtually no one has ever claimed it determines culture in every detail. The findings of modern science are that behavioral traits correlate to some extent with genetic relatedness, but none correlate perfectly.

Mr. Wolf associates identitarianism with the view that:

the white American must begin to see himself as white, to elevate his own “white racial consciousness,” which practically speaking means to identify with the achievements of every white European who has ever existed, to favor white people over otherly colored people, and to promote the interests of white people and European culture.  For identitarians, these interests include the eventual disintegration of the United States and the formation of a separate and separatist white state.

Let us begin with the first assertion: identitarians want white Americans to “identify with the achievements of every white European who has ever existed,” in other words, to “see all of these men and their achievements as belonging to him.” Mr. Wolf offers the example of Bach, saying it would be as absurd for white people to love Bach because he is white as it is for the anti-white left to hate Bach for the same reason.

It is obvious that Bach is admired as a composer rather than as an instance of the class “white man,” a class containing many individuals of no special achievement. But is it wrong for whites to feel that Bach is a significant part of our European heritage in particular? Germans used to put his image on their banknotes, and this must have had something to do with his having been a German; foreign composers, however great, were never depicted on the national currency. Was it wrong for Germans to feel a special affinity with Bach because of their shared nationality? Or is such identification acceptable at the national level but not at the racial level? Or is it rather musicians, or Lutherans, or those who share some other trait with Bach, who have the right to identify with him and claim him as their own? Most importantly, is there a “correct” paleoconservative position on such matters which Mr. Wolf would care to make explicit and contrast with the allegedly illicit racial identification he claims is especially characteristic of identitarians? Until he tells us, it is impossible to assess the validity of his criticism.

Secondly, Mr. Wolf claims that identitarians want to “favor white people over otherly colored people.” But there are countless senses in which one might “prefer” one group over another. Identitarians may well believe white people should, as a general rule, be preferred over non-whites for immigration to the United States or for purposes of marriage by other whites. Outside of those cases, the matter is not so clear. Hiring preferences for whites? Siding with a white man in the wrong against a non-white in the right? Affirming that white poets or thinkers or men of science must be better than their non-white counterparts for no other reason than that they are white? Mr. Wolf will have to provide examples of identitarians saying such things if he wishes to ascribe such views to them. And, once again, how exactly is the position of Mr. Wolf and his colleagues different from NPI’s “identitarian” position? Do the editors of Chronicles believe Mexican mestizos are as prudent a choice for immigration to the United States as white Europeans? I do not think so. Nor do paleoconservatives commonly join forces with liberals in their endless crusades against “discrimination.” So precisely what forms of racial preference favored by identitarians does Mr. Wolf reject? He has yet to tell us.

Mr. Wolf also attributes to identitarians a wish to “promote the interests of white people and European culture.” I doubt he objects to the promotion of European culture, but he may feel different about the promotion of white interests as such. Many whites continue to find this notion distasteful, despite their recognition that every other racial group engages enthusiastically in such behavior. Whites want to be fair to everyone, and the single-minded pursuit of our group interests may seem to be inconsistent with such fairness (although, once again, this does not seem to be a matter for concern to any other ethnic group). Yet anyone can see the probable fate of a group that refuses to promote its own interests in the face of other groups ruthlessly promoting theirs: first, to be taken advantage of; in the long run, probably, to be entirely destroyed. Even a disinterested concern for fairness would suggest that whites ought to begin considering the interests of their own group, and the sooner the better.

Finally, Mr. Wolf attributes to identitarians the view that white interests “include the eventual disintegration of the United States and the formation of a separate and separatist white state.” Some persons associated with identitarianism have indeed advocated this while others reject it. What identitarians mainly think is in the interest of whites is to avoid being ruled by elites hostile to us or cherishing historical grudges against us. Secondarily, it would also be in whites’ interest not to have to support armies of parasites, whether in the form of the black and brown underclasses or of useless bureaucrats. Would Mr. Wolf disagree? If he knows any way of achieving these goals without breaking up the United States, I’m sure many identitarians would be interested in hearing it. No white American considers the breakup of the US a good per se; those who advocate it consider it a lesser evil than being ruled by vengeful enemies. Conservative horror at the thought of breaking up the United States can probably be attributed to their identification of the nation with its earlier history; identitarians are more concerned about the future, specifically with preventing Eric Holder’s America from emerging in full fury once whites lose the last remnants of their influence.

In the remainder of his article, Mr. Wolf tries to explain why “white nationalism is a very specific form of rootlessness, an ideology of alienation.” He believes that:

the average temptee of identitarianism… is in search of a form of therapy, a kind of topical salve for the muscle aches and sore joints that result from running in the rat race that is modern America.  He is seeking a kind of comfort, a sense of belonging and a place to belong, and he finds it, thinly, ephemerally, fleetingly in the lists of black crime statistics, the praise of past European accomplishment, the bare scientific facts about the comparative sizes of brains and genitals among the races, and the ability to post controversial, career-ending comments pseudonymously.

Mr. Wolf holds that such a “modern search for identity is really an attempt to purge the mind of what already is there, in the imagination.”

I confess to finding the author’s line of reasoning difficult to follow. I attended NPI’s “Become Who We Are” conference, and am at a loss to understand how I and the other attendees might have been trying to purge our imaginations. What I do know is that modern egalitarian liberalism has evolved into a regime of lies maintained in power through intimidation, analogous in many ways to the late Soviet Union. Mindful of Solzhenitsyn’s injunction to “live not by lies,” some of us are determined to stand up and challenge the regime and its hollow ideology. Black crime statistics and comparative brain size data are not therapy but bits of truth thrown out to defy the regime of lies. The crime statistics may even save the lives of certain naive young people left vulnerable by the egalitarian ideology in which they have been marinated since birth, lives to which the regime is clearly indifferent.

Eventually, we would like to replace today’s corrupt and mendacious elites with something more honest and humane. It’s called the circulation of elites; I refer you to the writings of our late mutual colleague Sam Francis. We honor our history, but we want to make a little history ourselves rather than merely gathering to meditate upon “living a full life in a dying age,” as the editors of Chronicles did some years back. Now that was therapy (not that there was anything wrong with your holding such a gathering).

Mr. Wolf also plays fast and loose with the term ideology. I have referred to egalitarian liberalism as an ideology because it is spun from the abstract idea of human equality rather than grounded in observation of real people. The crime and brain size data Mr. Wolf believes we collect to make ourselves feel better is, in fact, an attempt to base our ideas on observable reality, i.e., precisely to avoid descending into ideology as I have used the term. If Mr. Wolf can tell us what he means by ideology, we might be able to decide whether he is correct in applying the term to identitarianism (and not applying it, presumably, to his favored form of conservatism).

Altogether, Mr. Wolf’s treatment of identitarians resembles an old-fashioned Marxist’s accusation that his opponents have succumbed to false consciousness, whereas the Marxist himself is in possession of unsurpassable scientific truth, understands his opponents and their motivations better than they understand themselves, and sees everything just as it is in reality. Would it not be more realistic, as well as more modest, for Mr. Wolf to acknowledge that identitarians, like the editors of Chronicles themselves, are attempting, within the limitations of human frailty, to understand the world around them and respond effectively to its challenges? Many identitarians find Chronicles’ cultural conservatism congenial and are doing their best to combat the same evils (e.g., alienation) and the same set of enemies. Why, then, when Mr. Wolf turns his attention to us, does he seem principally concerned with boundary-drawing and excommunication? Are there not dozens of more fitting subjects for this sort of analysis?

If there was any major difference between the presidential campaign of Pat Buchanan in 1995 and his first run at the Republican nomination in 1992, it was the relative calm with which his enemies greeted the announcement of his second candidacy and his rapid move last year to the forefront of the Republican field. Rabbi Avi Weiss and his goon platoons still found time and someone else’s money to dog Buchanan’s steps from New Hampshire to California, and occasionally some other hired thug, usually a failed neoconservative politician, would emerge from the political graveyard to moan about Buchanan’s “fascism,” his “nativism,” or his “racism.” But in general, even Buchanan’s most left-wing critics found the man himself likable and many of his ideas compelling. Tom Carson of the Village Voice traveled with the Buchanan Brigades in Iowa last spring, and despite the agony of enduring a couple of weeks slumming in the Heartland, he could not help but be drawn to the popular insurgency the candidate was mounting, “I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone running for president to talk about the Fortune 500 as the enemy,” Mr. Carson told Buchanan, “and when I finally get my wish, it turns out to be you.”

Of course, there was criticism. In the early stages, its main thrust—from conservatives—was that Buchanan could not possibly win the nomination, let alone the election, and that his image as a fringe candidate, the notorious organizational weaknesses persisting from the 1992 campaign, and the lack of adequate money this time would stop him from becoming any more than a divisive vote-taker from real winners like Phil Gramm. By the end of the year, the Texas Republican had largely faded from the discussion, though his bottomless pit of contributions kept him in the race. The more recent polls show Buchanan leading or matching Gramm in key early states like New Hampshire and Iowa, and by last summer Pat’s fund-raising was outstripping that of the Texan’s opulent money machine. It was beginning to look as though the boys who put their dollar on Mr. Gramm had backed the wrong pony.

But despite Buchanan’s emergence as a major candidate, most serious observers believed he could not win the nomination, let alone the election, and that belief itself, widespread among conservatives preoccupied with getting rid of Bill Clinton, threatened to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. For those on the right who want only to oust the incumbent resident of the White House or impress their friends with invitations to the court soirees of the next Republican successor to the presidential purple, winning the election is all that matters, and Buchanan’s supposed unelectability was enough to make them lose interest. But the courtiers and professional partisans miss the larger victory the Buchanan campaign is on the eve of winning. If Buchanan loses the nomination, it will be because his time has not yet come, but the social and political forces on which both his campaigns have been based will not disappear, and even if he does lose, he will have won a place in history as an architect of the victory those forces will eventually build.

The importance of the Buchanan campaign lies not in its capacity to win the nomination or the national election but in its organization of those forces into a coherent political coalition. That coalition includes the remnants of the “Old Right,” as well as various single-issue constituencies (pro-lifers, anti-immigration activists, protectionists) to which Buchanan is one of the few voices to speak. But it would be a serious error to squeeze Buchanan into an orthodox conservative pigeonhole from which he is merely trying to lead a replay of the Goldwater campaign, the candidacies of John Ashbrook or Phil Crane, or the Reagan movement, and especially in the last year he has expressed and developed ideas with which most adherents of the conventional American right — mainstream conservative, paleoconservative, or libertarian — are not comfortable. But conventional conservative doctrines today are virtually extinct politically, for the simple reason that the social groups that found them expressive of their interests and values no longer exist or no longer are able to command a significant political following, and as a result, conservative ideological candidates like Alan Keyes or Robert Dornan who insist on campaigning on those doctrines rise no higher than two to three percent in the polls. One major reason for the underestimation of Buchanan’s prospects and for the surprise with which most analysts have greeted his unexpected success lay in their mistaken assumption that Buchanan was simply yet another right-wing protestor, calling the party and those parts of the nation that would listen to him to pick up the torch of doctrine and wave it until the waters of political and cultural darkness extinguished it. The reason Buchanan has not been submerged is that the torch he carries illuminates new social forces that only now are forming a common political consciousness. What is important about these forces is not that a campaign centered on them does not now win major elections (indeed, it would be a fatal error if they succeeded in winning prematurely) but that the Buchanan campaign for the first time in recent history offers them an organized mode of expression that will allow them to develop and mature their consciousness and their power.

Those forces consist, of course, of the broad social and cultural spectrum of Middle America. Middle American groups are more and more coming to perceive their exploitation at the hands of the dominant elites. The exploitation works on several fronts — economically, by hypertaxation and the design of a globalized economy dependent on exports and services in place of manufacturing; culturally, by the managed destruction of Middle American norms and institutions; and politically, by the regimentation of Middle Americans under the federal leviathan.
The significant polarization within American society is between the elites, increasingly unified as a ruling class that relies on the national state as its principal instrument of power, and Middle America itself, which lacks the technocratic and managerial skills that yield control of the machinery of power. Other polarities and conflicts within American society—between religious and secular, white and black, national and global, worker and management — are beginning to fit into this larger polarity of Middle American and Ruling Class. The Ruling Class uses and is used by secularist, globalist, antiwhite, and anti-Western forces for its and their advantage.

The interests that drive Middle American social and political forces are considerably different from those that drove the groups that generally supported one or another version of “conservatism” in the era during and after the New Deal. Old Right conservatism was a body of ideas that appealed mainly to businessmen of the haute bourgeoisie and their localized, middle-class adherents, a social base that 20th-century social and economic transformations effectively wiped out. Old Right conservatism defended a limited, decentralized, and largely neutral national government and the ethic of small-town, small-business, Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. As the social base of the Old Right withered in the post-Depression and post-World War II eras, the political and intellectual right essentially divorced itself from these declining interests and forces and evolved new and far less socially rooted ideologies that represented almost no one outside the narrow academic and journalistic circles that formulated them.

By the 1950’s and 60’s, “movement” conservatives habitually quibbled with each other over the subtler points of their doctrines like late medieval Scholastic theologians, and the doctrines themselves — a bastardized libertarianism that only vaguely resembled its classical liberal and Old Whig ancestors, globalist anticommunism that slowly garbed itself in the costumes of Wilsonian democratism, and increasingly abstruse metaphysical and theological ponderosities — attracted none but dissident intellectuals and proved useless as vehicles for transporting a mass following to electoral victory.

Neoconservatism, emerging in the late 1960’s and early 70’s, was even worse. Far less cerebral than the abstractions churned out by 1950’s conservative intellectualism, but quicker on the draw when it came to political showdowns, neoconservatism gained the adherence of no one but still other eggheads alienated from the establishment left and contemptuous of their newfound allies on the right.

Given the collapse of the social base of the right and the addiction of right-wing intellectuals to ideological navel-gazing, the political right could no longer develop serious political strategies. All it could do was pick up odd clusters of voters who were fearful of crime, resentful of racial integration, worried about communist takeovers, eager to remove federal fingers from their pockets, or passionate about the defense of business interests, the last subject never straying far from what remained of the right-wing mind. One way or another, the right managed to keep congressional seats and occasionally win the odd presidential election, but its victories were flukish, depending on the foibles of the opposition, and it was unable either to penetrate or dislodge the dominant culture created by the left or to win the firm allegiance of Middle Americans. There was enough in the rhetoric of Richard Nixon’s “New Majority” and Ronald Reagan’s appeal to Southern and blue-collar Democrats to stitch together momentary triumphs, but the persistent residues of pro-business conservative ideology and the failure to deliver on social and cultural commitments to Middle American constituencies prevented the consolidation of an enduring coalition with real roots in existing social forces and the culture those forces supported.

Middle Americans, emerging from the ruins of the old independent middle and working classes, found conservative, libertarian, and pro-business Republican ideology and rhetoric irrelevant, distasteful, and even threatening to their own socioeconomic interests. The post-World War II middle class was in reality an affluent proletariat, economically dependent on the federal government through labor codes, housing loans, educational programs, defense contracts, and health and unemployment benefits. All variations of conservative doctrine rejected these as illegitimate extensions of the state and boasted of plans to abolish most of them, and Middle American allegiance to political parties and candidates espousing such doctrine could never become firm. Yet, at the same time, the Ruling Class proved unable to uproot the social, cultural, and national identities and loyalties of the Middle American proletariat, and Middle Americans found themselves increasingly alienated from the political left and its embrace of anti-national policies and countercultural manners and morals.

Thus, there emerged a chronic Middle American political dilemma; while the left could win Middle Americans through its economic measures, it lost them through its social and cultural radicalism, and while the right could attract Middle Americans through appeals to law and order and defense of sexual normality, conventional morals and religion, traditional Social institutions, and invocations of nationalism and patriotism, it lost Middle Americans when it rehearsed its old bourgeois economic formulas. Middle American votes could be won by whichever side of the political spectrum was better at feeding anxieties over cultural rot or economic catastrophe, but neither an increasingly antinational and countercultural left nor an increasingly pro-business right could expect to stabilize Middle American political loyalties sufficiently to sustain a national coalition.

The persistence of the division of the political spectrum into “right” and “left” has therefore served to prevent the formation of a distinct Middle American political consciousness and the emergence of a new identity synthesizing both the economic interests and cultural-national loyalties of the proletarianized middle class in a separate and unified political movement. But today and in the future this division will no longer obtain. Middle American political loyalties are ceasing to be torn between a left and a right that are increasingly convergent and indistinguishable. Aside from the ideological castration of the spokesmen of both sides in recent years, the main cause of the evanescence of right and left lies in the triumph of economic globalization.

The globalization of the American economy (and culture and population) not only presents a more immediate threat to Middle American economic interests than the prospect of the libertarian and pro-business let-’em-eat-cake policies of the right but also strips the right of its capacity to appeal to Middle Americans at all. As champions of the globalist right like Jack Kemp, Phil Gramm, Steve Forbes, Newt Gingrich, Ben Wattenberg, George Gilder, Robert Bartley, Julian Simon, and George Will never tire of explaining, globalization means the disappearance of nationality, of cultures closely linked to national identity, probably of national sovereignty itself, and even of the distinctive populations of which nations are composed. By signing on to globalization, then, the right has effectively metamorphosed itself into the left and forfeited the sole grounds of its appeal to the nationalism and social and cultural conservatism that continue to animate Middle Americans. The right may still thump its chest about crime and abortion, and its leaders may still thunder about sex and violence in movies they have never seen, but even on these issues the right’s obsession with economic uplift as a panacea for crime, welfare, and moral decline emasculates its older defense of national interests and cultural order. The only reason the Republican Party has not already jettisoned its anti-abortion positions, and the only reason Bob Dole continues to complain about movies and television programs, is the influence of the large, militant, and well-organized “religious right,” itself a Middle American movement though one that can never exert more than a limited appeal.

Having denuded itself of any reason for Middle Americans to support it, the right can no longer expect the Reagan Democrats to return to the Republican column. Given a choice between only the globalist right and the equally globalist and countercultural left, Middle Americans may well support the latter (they did so in 1992 by voting for Clinton over Bush), because at least the left can be expected not to gut the entitlement programs with which Middle American economic inter. ests are linked. The 1994 Republican congressional sweep was less a mandate for the GOP than a frenetic quest by alienated voters to attach themselves to some political entity that just might resist the Ruling Class and its regime and embrace the agenda of Middle Americans. There was little danger of that from “revolutionaries” like Mr. Gingrich, and in the past year or so the sprouting of militia groups, the land war in the Western states, the religious right itself, and the popularization of conspiracy theories that at least symbolically convey the hostility and hatred with which the popular mind regards the federal leviathan and the elites attached to it testify to the political and cultural alienation that now stalks through the nation.

While Buchanan rightly distances himself from the more bizarre and pathological expressions of Middle American unrest, no candidate in the fields of either party has so clearly adopted the central message of the Middle American revolt. His columns and commentary in the months prior to his announcement of his candidacy began developing an economic doctrine that radically departed from conventional free-market and free-trade ideology, the main source of Middle American distaste for Republicans of the mainstream right. Buchanan continues to support economic deregulation, a flat tax, and the abolition of taxes on inheritances, family farms and businesses of less than $2 million, but in his last months as a commentator he devoted a series of columns to attacking the “myth of Economic Man” and formulating what he called “a conservatism of the heart” and “economic nationalism,” pegged on his active opposition to NAFTA, GATT, the World Trade Organization, and the $50-billion Mexican bailout.

The core of his message consists of a rejection of the thinly masked economic determinism espoused by Kemp, Gramm, and Gingrich and an affirmation of the primacy of cultural identity, national sovereignty, and national interests over economic goals. Increasingly, his economic nationalism seems to define and drive his whole candidacy, informing even his cultural conservatism, though the concept of “economic” implicit in his writing and speeches is considerably broader than conventional concepts of either the left or the right. “Economics,” it should be recalled, derives from Greek words meaning “household management,” and the purpose of economic iife in Buchanan’s worldview is not simply to gain material satisfaction but to support families and the social institutions and identities that evolve from families as the fundamental units of human society and human action.

Thus, his “America First” foreign policy is more than the isolationism preached by the old America First Committee and considerably more than the neo-isolationism supported today by most paleoconservatives. For Buchanan, “America First” implies not only putting national interests over those of other nations and abstractions like “world leadership,” “global harmony,” and the “New World Order,” but also giving priority to the nation over the gratification of individual and subnational interests. Protectionism, to replace the federal taxes Buchanan would abolish and to “insulate the wages of U.S. workers from foreign laborers who must work for $1 an hour or less,” follows from his economic nationalism, reflecting the economic interests and identity of the nation, just as a defense and foreign policy follows from his political nationalism, reflecting the political interests and identity of the nation. So, for that matter, does his support for curtailing through a five-year moratorium, all immigration, legal as well as illegal.

Buchanan’s nationalism appears to break with the specter of individualism that has haunted American conservative ideology since the 1930’s. It is based on the premise that the individual outside social and cultural institutions is an abstraction, and it probably shows Buchanan’s debt to Catholic social theory rather than the atomistic and acquisitive egoism that descends to the libertarian right from John Locke. In one column, Buchanan supported the “humane economy” espoused by the Catholic Austrian School economist Wilhelm Röpke in contrast (not quite accurately, as I am told) to the acquisitive economic individualism of Ludwig von Mises. More recently, the New York Times quotes him as remarking,

We have to ask ourselves as conservatives what it is we want to conserve in America. I believe in the market system, but I don’t worship the market system. I don’t worship at the altar of economic efficiency as I believe some so-called conservatives do. To prefer a 100,000-hog confinement to hundreds of family farms, it seems to me, is not conservatism. I mean, that’s to worship as a supermarket civilization.

Yet, while Buchanan’s nationalism may tweak the noses of right-wing individualists, it also breaks significantly with the large-state nationalist tradition of Europe and American Hamiltonians, for whom the centralized state defines and even creates the nation. Unlike liberal protectionists like Richard Gephardt, Buchanan seeks to use tariffs as substitutes for federal taxes, not as additional taxes. His statement of principles endorses “restoration of the 10th Amendment,” holding that “many functions of the federal government are, de facto, unconstitutional” (he might have added de jure as well) and encompassing abolition of major cabinet-level departments. He also calls for stripping federal judges of power through judicial term limits, “voter recall of renegade federal jurists,” and eight-year reconfirmations of Supreme Court justices. For Buchanan, in contrast to large-state nationalists, the nation is fundamentally a social and cultural unit, not the creation of the state and its policies, but a continuing, organic body that transcends individuals and gives identity to itself through a common way of life and a common people. It is the national culture, embodied in the way of life and the people themselves, rather than the national state, that defines the nation, and hence cultural traditionalism is as central to Buchanan’s nationalism as swollen statism is to European and Hamiltonian nationalists. The “cultural war” for Buchanan is not Republican Swaggering about family values and dirty movies but a battle over whether the nation itself can continue to exist under the onslaught of the militant secularism, acquisitive egoism, economic and political globalism, demographic inundation, and unchecked state centralism supported by the Ruling Class.

Also unlike the conventional right, Buchanan does not confine his criticism of the Ruling Class to federal bureaucrats, Though he denies that he considers “big business an enemy,” he told Tom Carson of the Village Voice, in a line he has repeated elsewhere, “I just think a lot of modern corporate capitalists — the managerial class basically — has no loyalty to any country anymore, or any particular values other than the bottom line.” The remark points to a conception of the Ruling Cass as fundamentally disengaged from the nation and culture it dominates, and resembles similar views of 20th-century ruling elites voiced by Joseph Schumpeter, the late Christopher Lasch, and James Burnham, among others.

Buchanan thus seems to share the perception that the fundamental polarity in American politics and culture today is between a deracinated and self-serving Ruling Class centered on but not confined to the central state, on the one hand, and Middle American groups, on the other, with the latter constituting both the economic core of the nation through their labor and productive skills as weli as the culturally defining core that sustains the identity of the nation itself. The economic interests as well as the cultural habits and ideologies of the Ruling Class drive it toward globalization — the managed destruction of the nation, its sovereignty, its culture, and its people — while those of Middle Americans drive them toward support for and re-enforcement of the nation and its organic way of life. The implicit recognition of this polarity by the Buchanan campaign places him firmly on the side of Middle Americans more clearly than any other political figure in the country today.

The only figure who could rival him for that role is Ross Perot, but Perot’s ideas, despite their focus on Middle Americans, are far less Sophisticated, far less visionary, and far less radical than those of the former columnist and presidential speechwriter. Perot appears to have little grasp of the nature of the Ruling Class as a systemic entity, and his tirades against the central state never seem to rise above the level of grousing about corruption, incompetence, waste, and fraud. Perot seems to lack any perception of the structure of the state as problematic and confines his criticism merely to the abuse of the state structure. Buchanan’s critique of the central state, at least implicitly, is shaped by his comprehension that the flaws of the state as it is presently structured derive from its control and exploitation by the Ruling Class, that the elites themselves are the real enemy and that the state, while far too large and intrusive, is simply their instrument. Control of the state by a social force or elite different from the forces that now control it could shape the state to support Middle American interests and values rather than crush them.

Hence, Buchanan has rattled free-market antistatist conservatives by his support for higher unemployment benefits for displaced workers, and last fall he tossed a brick at congressional Republicans who were insisting on cutting the growth of Medicare. “Instead of going after Medicare,” Buchanan told New Hampshire factory workers, “we ought to start dealing with foreign aid, end those $50 billion bailouts, start dealing with the World Bank loan guarantees.” He explained to Tom Carson that “I think government can fairly be used” to restructure tax incentives and penalties to discourage businesses from moving their operations overseas. Buchanan’s antistatism is genuine, but it rightly focuses on dismantling the present state as the present Ruling Class has constructed it; he does not purport to be an anarchist who imagines the state is an unnecessary and unmitigated evil, and “anarcho-libertarians” drawn to his America First foreign policy need to understand that Richard Nixon’s former speechwriter would have no hesitation in making full use of the constitutionally legitimate powers of the federal government. They also need to understand that reducing the leviathan to its constitutionally legitimate powers would not excite any but their most eccentric phobias of statism.
Neither the antistatist right nor cultural conservatives have any good reason to be uncomfortable with the new identity Buchanan is building, though Economic Men like Kemp and Gramm and neoconservative apologists for the federal leviathan have plenty of reason to resist him and the new political horse he is saddling. If the antistatists bridle at his protectionism, they will at least get the satisfaction of replacing much of the current tax structure of the state with tariffs, and the Old Right has long recognized that cultural and moral destruction is in large part driven by the swollen state and the powers of social management it has usurped in education, the arts, and the imperial federal judiciary. Buchanan explicitly vows to dismantle these parts of the leviathan, and given the Middle American social structure that today must underlie any serious political resistance to the federal megastate and the Ruling Class it supports, the Old Right has no practical alternative anyway.

Yet, if Buchanan has one major flaw as a spokesman for and an architect of the new Middle American political identity that transcends and synthesizes both left and right, it is that he exhibits a proclivity to draw back from the implications of his own radicalism. This became evident in 1992, when he insisted on endorsing George Bush and even on campaigning for him, and last year he also vowed to support the Republican ticket even if he was not the nominee. Any such commitment on Buchanan’s part should be contingent on other candidates’ commitment to support him if he is nominated, but so far none has bothered to do so. Buchanan, for all the radicalism of his ideas and campaign, remains deeply wedded to the Republican Party and to a conservative political label, and he tends to greet criticism of his deviations from conservative orthodoxy with affirmations of doctrine. Last year, as conservative criticism of him increased, his response was that “the only area of disagreement I have [with traditional conservatives] is trade, and that’s crucial to bringing back the Perot voters” to the Republican Party.

Buchanan’s loyalty to the GOP is touching, especially since almost no Republican leader or conservative pundit has much good to say about him, and the loudest mouths for the “Big Tent” are always the first to try to push him out of it. Even today, many Republicans try to blame the 1992 defeat of George Bush’s inept and lackluster bid for reelection on Buchanan’s now-famous speech at the Houston convention, a speech that was the only memorable event of the whole proceeding and which Buchanan himself continues to defend and even to distribute as literature for his present campaign. But, touching or not, Buchanan’s refusal to break even more definitely with a conventional conservative identity and with a Republican Party whose leadership fears and despises him, his beliefs, and his followers is a serious error. I recall in late 1991, in the aftermath of a wall-to-wall gathering at his home to discuss his coming campaign, I told him privately that he would be better off without all the hangers-on, direct-mail artists, fund-raising whiz kids, marketing and PR czars, and the rest of the crew that today constitutes the backbone of all that remains of the famous “Conservative Movement” and who never fail to show up on the campaign doorstep to guzzle someone else’s liquor and pocket other people’s money. “These people are defunct,” I told him. “You don’t need them, and you’re better off without them.  Go to New Hampshire and call yourself a patriot, a nationalist, an America Firster, but don’t even use the word ‘conservative.’ It doesn’t mean anything any more.”

Pat listened, but I can’t say he took my advice. By making his bed with the Republicans, then and today, he opens himself to charges that he’s not a “true” party man or a “true” conservative, constrains his chances for victory by the need to massage trunk-waving Republicans whose highest goal is to win elections, and only dilutes and deflects the radicalism of the message he and his Middle American Revolution have to offer. The sooner we hear that message loudly and clearly, without distractions from Conservatism, Inc., the Stupid Party, and their managerial elite, the sooner Middle America will be able to speak with an authentic and united voice, and the sooner we can get on with conserving the nation from the powers that are destroying it.

Note: Aleksandr Prokhanov, aged 77, is a well-known Russian writer, frequent television commentator, and the editor-in-chief of Tomorrow (Zavtra) newspaper, which combines far-left and far-right views.

Europe is in a panic. Europe is groaning. Europe is horrified. Refugees and migrants from North Africa—who only recently crossed the seas on fragile boats and drowned off the coast, got out to the shore and begged Europeans for a piece of bread and a roof over their head—are now storming the border, tearing up barbed wire, and throwing flares at police. Most recently, they carried out real pogroms in Germany during the New Year celebrations: hunting for young women and girls. They were being seized, stripped, and raped.

“What is happening?”—ask the moralists of Europe. “What is going on? How can these people, whom we, Europeans, gave so much, how can they forget the warmth of our embrace, how can they not value our compassion and our tolerance?”

What is to be done? The Left and Liberals, which include Angela Merkel, demand greater tolerance, increases in quotas, which would allow Europe and Germany to accept even more foreigners. They believe that Europe will humanize them and appease their hearts. It seems that Europe and Great Germany had forgotten their past. European countries have lost the will to survive and resist, forgotten their great statehood, their great European culture. Germany has forgotten the Cologne Cathedral, Dürer, forgotten Gothic cathedrals, surging vertically into the sky. It has forgotten its great composers: Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner. It has forgotten its great philosophers: Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kant, and Nietzsche. It was transformed into something amorphous, castrated, and is still ready to open its gates to this enormous mass of those people, who hate Europe and Germany. If that is the case, then Europe’s fate—and the fate of Germany, in particular—is sad. Their spaces will be flooded with the red-hot clay of North African hatred.

Against the backdrop of these ongoing atrocities, nationalists awaken. Tomorrow they will have political leaders, and the next day, they will have their spiritual luminaries, who will remind these crowds about the greatness of Germany, the great German statesmen; they will curse Versailles and all that has occurred since 1945. The possibility of terminating this Liberal, “tolerant” European Union no longer seems so far fetched.

Europe sheds it skin. The European Union is in motion. Its borders begin to stir. Layers and tectonic plates that were frozen in the European Union are on the move. Here is Poland suddenly demonstrating a striking example of how she, Poland, begins to take care of her downtrodden statehood. In Poland, the Sejm was taken over by the conservatives, and they immediately began talking about the fact that the state needs to be protected, that it is an integral tool, in which people recognize their historic place, historic work, and historic future. The new Polish authorities seek to control public opinion and to channel this public opinion in the interests of the nation-state. This always happens in a crisis: the state inevitably grows stronger, as does centralism.

What will happen to Europe? How will European history develop in the next few decades? Is it really true that Europe is a sickly, helpless maiden put on the scruff of a ferocious and dumb bull that takes her into the azure waves of the ocean toward uncertainty? Is this the end of old Europe? Goodbye, Europe?

Or is this not the case? Will this maiden awaken, jump off the fat, dumb back of the bull, and be resurrected in azure waters out of foam like the beautiful Aphrodite?

Russia is observing contemporary Europe intently and vigilantly.

We here at Radix are happy to present an interview with notorious alt-right Twitter personality Ricky Vaughn. His exploits with the medium have been featured everywhere from the New York Times to the Daily Beast and even the print cover of the Scottish Sun. Here, the man behind the handle speaks with Radix’s Hannibal Bateman about how he got into the alt-right, Donald Trump, that Rick Wilson interview, the nature of Twitter and more.

Hannibal Bateman: How did you come to what has come to be known as the “alt-right” intellectually?

Ricky Vaughn: Great question. First of all, thanks for having me. I’ve enjoyed reading what Radix has to offer over the last year or so.

HB: Thanks. We’re glad you’ve enjoyed it.

RV: I began as sort of a deracinated libertarian before the start of the first Ron Paul for president campaign. From there, I started consuming the anti-feminist blogs of the manosphere. I never really bought into feminism. From there, around the time of the Trayvon incident, I was linked to My Posting Career from Chateau Heartiste. At that time I realized what a con job the media was playing on all of us, and how the mainstream race propaganda was all bullshit. So from there I began to explore the different facets of cultural Marxism. The Jewish role in subversion, homosexuality, et cetera.

HB: Were you engaging on these forums and comment sections then? And was the use of Twitter a sort of natural outgrowth of that?

RV: In the beginning I was engaging in Disqus comment sections, and then I joined Twitter to follow some of the interesting people on it. I didn’t post much. I also lurked My Posting Career for a long time and didn’t post. But I was also consuming a lot of blogs. Steve Sailer’s blog, for one, was very influential.

HB: Do you find the anonymity it offers freeing for discussions it wouldn’t be possible to have otherwise?

RV: Oh, absolutely. The anonymity is very freeing because now everyone wants to get everyone else fired for espousing their views. But I feel that Donald Trump has sort of broken a spell, the spell of political correctness that was hanging over everyone’s heads, and I’ve been much more frank with my views in meatspace in the last three months, and it’s very liberating. And people agree more often than not, except for the extremely cucked liberals who are really operating with their amygdala on a hair trigger.

HB: Oh yes. How would you say alt-right Twitter, in particular, has helped bring attention to news that the more “mainstream” outlets have not covered, or have taken a certain spin on? (I’m thinking of the rape of Cologne in particular.)

RV: Well, first of all, we are setting the tone ideologically and forcing mainstream conservatism to respond. So many in mainstream conservatism see the alt-right as a serious force and they are consuming the material and it is affecting their coverage. Now, of course, there is also the “neocohenservative” faction who are having a bit of a meltdown.

They are the ones screaming about Nazis, about mapping the topology of the alt-right, about how horrible this nativism is, and how they are going to take their ball and go home. But there are stirrings in conservatism, where they are waking up to the fact that they are going to have to fight political correctness or be left behind ideologically. And still others are seeing this growing divide between globalism and nationalism, and the good people are siding with nationalism and the Shabbos goyim shills and the neocohens are siding with the globalists.

HB: What do you think of the sort of GOP party apparatchiks and consultant class that have recently gotten in an uproar over twitter “trolls” and the alt-right? (I’m thinking of people like Rick Wilson.)

RV: One of the problems of mainline conservatism is undoubtedly their consultants. These include mostly lesbians or closeted homosexuals who signed up for Vine and thus are able to fool aging hedge fund billionaires into thinking they are social media magicians. For example, Liz Mair and Rick Wilson, who are working with the Rubio campaign, have never helped a candidate win an election in their respective political lives if I’m not mistaken. Imagine a fat, low testosterone boomer grinning and rubbing his hands together at the thought of making a video “do the viral.” These idiots are the sea lampreys of the political biosphere, attaching themselves parasitically to large SuperPACs. Even if their candidate fails, they will likely escape blame and live another day to leech off the next candidate’s SuperPAC.

HB: I’m sure that the alt-right functions as a sort of intellectual pornography for some of the Beltway right as well. But it seems some just can’t get over the idea of “Democrats being the real racists” or the alt-right being Democrat plants. Do you think this type of conservatism will have to be overstepped completely?

RV: Yes, I think it will have to be. At first, we will just see the politicians and pundits drop the “demonrats are the real racists!” rhetoric completely, and they aren’t going to be totally explicit about race, they’re going to treat it like Donald Trump has. As for electoral politics, the alt-right is going to have an influence starting at the local levels, they’re going to run for office and win, sort of like we saw the Tea Party do post-2008, where they had some success in electoral politics.

So there is going to be this groundswell, and White people and White politicians are going to be more assertive and refuse to bow down to the other racial lobbies, and we are going to see White people act more coherently politically. Now, the question is, how is the establishment, which is committed to an anti-White ideology, going to handle this? They will likely continue trying to split Whites into two factions by portraying the White working classes and its intellectual allies as terrible, gun-loving Nazi KKK members.

HB: So do you see Donald Trump as a beginning of a White identity politics rather than the end of the sort of patriotic American conservatism of the past?

RV: Sure, so what I think is going to happen is a weird merger of White identity politics and patriotic American conservatism. So it is going to be a White-dominated coalition but there are going to be blue-collar minorities, and other minorities who identify with historic America and its ideals and its symbols who want in on that coalition, and we’ll see how that plays out.

I would like to introduce ideas of racial consciousness into the mix so that patriotic American conservatives don’t feel bad about creating all-White communities and shunning mixed-marriages and that sort of thing, because we need racial separatism in order to maintain our unique culture and racial heritage, which I believe contains within it the light of civilization, art, beauty, truth, justice, et cetera.

HB: To move back to electoral politics, do you favor anyone as Trump’s vice presidential pick?

RV: Truthfully, I have no idea, because I haven’t looked into it at all. I don’t know who would help him the most politically. Some people are excited about General Mattis but I don’t know anything about General Mattis. I would completely rule out Ted Cruz, because a vice president has to be likable, and nobody likes Ted Cruz.

HB: Switching gears, you’ve been quoted in both the New York Times and the Daily Beast. How do you treat the monolithic media mavens of our time?

RV: Well, good question. I like to tease them. I like to call them out when they are dishonest like Donald Trump does. I like to screenshot their particularly bad writing or asinine “hot takes” and mock them with it on Twitter. But to be honest, these people are mostly just scum who are willing to prostitute themselves for one agenda or another. But the journalists or reporters who I think have integrity, I treat with the utmost respect. There are a few who are very good, so you have to give credit where it is due.

HB: Speaking of Twitter again, do you have a particular tweeting schedule you stick to? Knowing we have a lot of aspiring Twitter shitlords out there.

RV: No, not particularly, but I think I can sometimes get trapped within Twitter when at times the most effective thing to do is to go outside of Twitter and bring content to your followers, whether it is articles, memes, or whatever. So I’m always reading blogs and books in order to gain perspective and that is really crucial. Don’t just get sucked into constant shitposting.

HB: In that respect, what are some of the downsides you see in anonymity through our usual mediums?

RV: The downsides of anonymity were discussed in length by Michael Anissimov, and I thought his critique was very interesting. One downside is that staying anonymous means that we are more likely to not take risks in real life, we are likely to remain atomized, we are likely to not take action in the real world. I think that these problems will correct themselves as time goes on.

HB: So outside of Radix, what are some of your other favorite alt-right sites?

RV: I enjoy The Right Stuff, Anonymous Conservative’s blog, the Occidental Observer, Steve Sailer’s blog, Dusk in Autumn, the Anti-Gnostic blog, Kakistocracy, 28 Sherman, and Vdare, among others.

HB: I suppose finally. Why Major League?

RV: Well, when I joined up on Twitter, I needed a brand or a persona. I thought that this avatar and this persona was fun. I didn’t put a lot of thought into it. However, I never planned on tweeting a lot or having a following, but it worked out pretty well.

HB: Thanks. It’s been really enjoyable. I really appreciate your time.

Editor’s Note: This Essay first appeared on January 23, 2015

At a certain bar in Antwerp, an old man walked in and sat next to me. Wordlessly, the bartender handed him a beer, which the elderly gentleman grasped with some difficulty as he was missing several fingers. Oddly intimidated and intrigued, I asked the student I had been drinking with if he knew the man and his story. The young nationalist held up his hand, wiggled his fingers, and simply replied, “The East.” The awe I felt could not have been exceeded if a member of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard had picked that moment to walk out of the restroom.

And then the student returned to talking about the local elections.

It’s not just that we live at the End of History. The technics of the age infuse the temporal with an undeserved intensity of meaning. We use words like “epic” to describe something on YouTube and “legendary” is associated with a homosexual celebrity on a sitcom.

But because the utterly inconsequential is surrounded by such a frenzy, we lack all context or sense of larger importance. We live at a time when a group of insurgents has proclaimed the restoration of the Caliphate in Mesopotamia and there’s a shooting war in Europe, yet it seems like nothing is happening. Each day is much the same as the one before, only with a different viral video to watch. After all, the news cycle never ends.

And yet there are still myths, gods, and blasphemy. When we encounter someone who actually lived those events we aren’t sure even happened, we feel a sudden shock of the real—an electricity which tells us our own experiences are cheap and of no importance. But our descendants will be taught a history of our own time that will give weight to people and events that seem utterly mundane and approachable to us. And those who have some personal connection with our myths simply regard them as part of their own lives. As unthinkable as it sounds, some bumbling embarrassment we deal with every day will become the great hero or villain our children will be taught to revere or despise.

There’s always that hard to define moment when a celebrity or politician becomes a Great Man, usually (but not always) when he dies. Somewhere in Argentina there’s probably a guy who remembers being tossed out of a bar by a bouncer named Jorge and has to think of it every time he sees a picture of Pope Francis. The Republicans are doing their best to mythologize Ronald Reagan and have succeeded in some ways, with the man who fired the air traffic controllers having a DC airport named after him. We can expect the Democrats to try to do the same with Barack Obama as the first black President.

But the real trick is the transition from the mundane to the mythical, when a figure becomes not just heroic but achieves the modern equivalent of apotheosis and is part of the official culture. Not long ago, we’d include the Founding Fathers in this category, but taking shots at Washington and Jefferson is practically cliché. They haven’t been taken off the currency or written out of the approved history yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

We are in that awkward period when the new ideology of the state is still unsuccessfully digesting the symbols and history of the country. The American flag is still largely perceived as a “White” symbol, and each day brings new headlines that make no ideological sense but still illustrate a gnostic racial truth.

Blacks enjoying government benefits burn the government flag in Ferguson. A government school bans the flag to prevent attacks by Mexicans on Whites. Tea Party protests feature crowds waving the federal banner and the flags of the armed services to show opposition to the actions of the federal government. Americans protesting the immigration policies of their own government wave the American flag; Mexican immigrants who are the direct beneficiaries of the American government’s actions burn it. A movie about a military hero–which is to say, about a man who enforces the foreign policy of his government–is met with scorn and outrage from the very same people who demand the government do more to enforce their version of social change.

You can say this is incoherent nonsense and congratulate yourself for being an edgelord but the fact remains that even now to be perceived as a generic “American” is to be White. Therefore, the Regime needs a figure and a new founding myth as America transitions into a non-White country.

That figure is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (So called.) There he is, his malevolent visage staring down at me from the crude statue they built of him in the capital of our Hollow Empire. As the late Sam Francis (who, unlike King, earned his doctorate) wrote, the Martin Luther King holiday legitimized King and his agenda. And as Richard Spencer pointed out, MLK Day is the one national holiday that has a precise and deep sense of meaning and underlies what passes for American identity.

It’s easy, necessary, and of course fun to point out the willful ignorance of conservatives regarding their “Republican” MLK. However, there is something to their belief that has to be considered. The key to King’s political triumph was to frame the aspirations of his movement into the American mythology, reinterpreting the revolutionary heritage of the Founders into a preparation for his fulfillment of American mission.

For many of us, the egalitarian poison inherent in the American Founding makes this process inevitable. But conservatives are just happy that they have a way to call King a patriot and a proud American. Conservatives can seize on King’s “pro-American” rhetoric to create a kind of artificial character who looks and sounds like King, but doesn’t have anything to do with the actual person or his beliefs. They can modify this creation to fit their own preferences in the same way contemporary post-Christians will say that “their God” wouldn’t send people to hell.

Therefore, the “King” of the holiday isn’t quite a symbol of White dispossession but a kind of personal Jesus surrounded by a protective cocoon of Wal-Mart style American patriotism. For God’s sake, they even managed to stick King in Hulk Hogan’s old “Real American” entrance video. In order to have a coherent version of American patriotism, you have to believe in King or else the entire Narrative of a gradual extension of freedom and liberty that justifies American existence and history breaks down. To deny King is to deny the ability of the American identity to transcend race. And for the normal White American, to deny that premise is to deny his very identity.

Thus, when contemporary Americans learn that some politicians still in office voted against the King holiday, it strikes them as a blasphemy akin waving a swastika at a celebration of D-Day. It’s the shock of the real, as their consciousness scrambles to process the reality that the mythical King they believe in was once just another “community activist.” Steve Scalise, who is dealing with his own problems right now, is one of those politicians on the “wrong side of history.” He has since bent the knee before the King, claiming that King’s writings “empower and inspire those who seek liberty, equality, and justice.” This is what total political defeat looks like.

Of course, another opponent of the King holiday was John McCain, whom it is hard to imagine as a right-wing culture warrior. The explanation is simple–for those who remember him, King was simply the Al Sharpton of his time. It was only a few decades ago when one could express agreement or disagreement with King without being called a segregationist or a racist. Today, even mild opposition is unthinkable and grounds for expulsion from public life.

In a greatly accelerated way, we’ve seen the same kind of process occur with issues like gay marriage, where championing “civil unions” has progressed from insanely leftist to disgustingly homophobic in a decade. Get ready for Hillary Clinton having to explain away her apparently arch-conservative husband signing the Defense of Marriage Act. And if present trends continue, get ready for people talking about the George W. Bush campaign of 2004 the same way they talk about George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door.

There comes a point when issues and political figures slide off the Overton window altogether and become part of what we can call the civic religion. Criticizing or even objectively analyzing King as a normal political figure is to most people not just “unthinkable,” but an evil heresy to be actively stamped out. The same kind of reaction greets someone who tries to objectively analyze someone like Adolf Hitler. Figures like Hitler and King aren’t people or politicians, but avatars and symbols. We can’t humanize them and it’s dangerous to analyze them, at least publicly.

We aren’t dealing with a problem of knowledge, we are dealing with a question of faith. And people of faith don’t need to read the fine print. Too much is it stake if the dogmatic opinion of something, positive or negative, is shaken.

This impulse isn’t necessarily bad. Critical thought is overrated, freedom failed, and the self-described independent or contrarian thinkers have the most predictable opinions of all. “New Atheism” notwithstanding, society requires faith in something and the big questions need to be already settled. The vast majority of people require a structure and deliberate limitations on what they permit themselves to think.

The American civic religion is a secular theocracy built around the ideology of equality. It’s not that most Whites are too stupid to understand what’s happening to them, it’s that they have no language in which they can express or comprehend opposition to egalitarianism. It is the old debater’s question of explaining water to a fish. With few exceptions, those people who turn against egalitarianism are already predisposed against it. In most cases, belief generates the arguments, not the other way around.

The end of the King cult and the egalitarian age will come quickly, but not all at once. As with the slow retreat from Christendom in Europe, it will progress through a series of stages. Just as esoteric debates about the nature of salvation or the exact authority of the Magisterium led to consequences no participant could have foreseen, the changing ways that King is interpreted will lead to ideological possibilities that few can imagine today.

One of the foremost charges against King is that as a man, he is simply not able to bear the hagiographic burden. The content of Martin Luther King Jr.’s character was irredeemably corrupt. His private behavior is both inexcusable and relevant because he cloaked his politics in spiritualism and claimed righteousness as a man of the cloth.

But these days, ideological correctness transcends personal behavior. Bill Clinton has about as many rape and sexual accusations as Bill Cosby, including an ongoing scandal about possible involvement with a sex slave that reads like something out of Eyes Wide Shut. Nonetheless, as a nation, we assume that he’ll be the country’s first “First Gentleman” with the 2016 election being something of a formality. King’s moral failings are irrelevant–the movie Selma mentions his philandering as a kind of afterthought.

Nor will King be brought down by the likes of us. No matter how eloquent, rational, or even widely distributed a critique from the Right is against King, it is discredited merely by its source. It’s equivalent to trying to convert someone from Catholicism to Orthodoxy by using arguments from Christopher Hitchens. It’s too much of a leap.

King will be discredited by his friends. It will be a radical heresy, rather than a new faith. Martin Luther King Day has become for the New Left what May Day was for the old–a day of protests, agitation, and thinly veiled contempt for the established order and the historic American nation. The most prominent campaign this past MLK Day was #ReclaimMLK, an attempt to reframe King as a radical leftist, a supporter of racial preferences, an opponent of American imperialism, and a man who would have been marching alongside the Reverend Al in Ferguson and helping Jesse Jackson shake down businesses. In short, it has become safe to promote the real King.

Leftists no longer need the pro-American composite character of “King” that was required to sneak him into the American pantheon. They no longer have to deny his Communist affiliations. They no longer bother pretending that King was about equality.

King was, just like the late stage Malcolm X, interested in Racial Socialism, the government sponsored redistribution of wealth and status from Whites to blacks, with an intermediary Parasitic Class of “organizers” and “activists” who can profit from the process. In this sense, King’s truest political heirs are his biological heirs, who spend their days suing each other and everyone else in order to make sure no one displays an icon of the new saint without them getting a cut.

And this is our opportunity. The Martin Luther King of the “Dream” who tells conservatives that skin color doesn’t matter and promises racial reconciliation is fading away. Instead, we are getting the real King and the real meaning of the Civil Rights Movement, an overt attack on European-Americans as such with the objective of dispossessing them from the country that they–and they alone–built. America is transitioning away from a nonracial state to an overtly anti-White state. And just as in South Africa, this change will have an ever larger impact on the symbols of the state, slowly giving European-Americans the message that this country no longer belongs to them.

But it goes beyond that. One of King’s most quoted phrases is that all Americans of whatever race are “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Yet this is no longer true, if it ever was. Racial politics in America is a zero sum game. Even in Selma, the White President Lyndon Johnson who handed King his media managed victories is portrayed practically as an enemy, so the film can award black protesters an undeserved agency.

As the Left defines itself totally and explicitly in terms of identity politics, we can no longer even speak of the “national interest” as something that exists even as an abstract concept. After all, what does it mean to “improve health care,” “grow the economy,” or “protect the country” when all of these policies seems to involve imposing costs on the European-American population for the benefit of others?

The small heresy that has been introduced is that King is not an American hero but a non-White hero of the new America–the non-White, non-European America presaged by the election of Barack Obama. All the American Right wants is to live with its illusions and die off quietly. The Left won’t let it. Just as “not seeing color” has transformed from being the very definition of anti-racism to proof of racism, so will King become a tribal figure in the manner of a Cesar Chavez. The pantheon itself will split.

This is an opportunity, but not a guarantee. Whites may well choose submission rather than break with the old faith. Racial dhimmitude may be more appealing–and certainly safer–than separatism.

But we should rejoice in the increasing racial aggressiveness of the Left. A White tribe is being constructed by our enemies through their explicitly racialist and identity driven politics. King will be less perceived as an “all-American” deity than an avenging angel warring for a foreign people. And when the Left has “reclaimed” King and Whites are cast out of the new American Eden and its foundational myths, perhaps our lost European tribe can finally realize that America itself is the god that failed.

1.

David Bowie is known as a musician and actor. Few people know that he is a member of an initiatory organization professing the principles of the Left Hand Path and Thelema. It is therefore not surprising that his songs, music, and aesthetic projects have an occult dimension.

His song “Absolute Beginners” is a typical example of such a multi-level message, in which outward emotional and psychological aesthetics conceal a secret esoteric core.

2. Forgery

An “absolute beginner” is a phrase that contains within itself a complete logical contradiction. That which is absolute does not “begin,” since an authentic absolute has no beginning or end, does not emerge or disappear. And vice versa: that which has a beginning is not absolute in principle, but, instead, relative. This is a philosophical aspect.

There also is a contradiction on a purely everyday level: our contemporaries’ attempt to “start over”—their weak and wishy-washy protest against their own degeneration, aging, and dumbing-down against the backdrop of a rapidly cooling-down civilization, where no one opposes or even tries to oppose entropy—is highly doubtful. Children, according to Hesiod, are born today with gray temples and strive to wash cars and open bank accounts right from the cradle. These are all the signs of the end of the Iron Age. How can there be a “New Beginning,” and even an absolute one, to top that off…?

Bowie himself, despite his ingenuity and talent, is unlikely to make any seriously claim to being an alternative. He fascinates precisely with his decadence, as a pervert submerged into disturbing narcissism, as an aging Anglo-Saxon melancholic deviant, but absolutely not as a hero or a carrier of something “new.” He contains no “absolute” or a “beginning,” but rather an intoxicating exoticism of decomposition, the aroma of decaying flesh wrapped in mondialist gadgets.

The Absolute Beginner is a concept that David Bowie borrowed from the arsenal of very profound gnostic doctrines. It inspired a good song and a strange music video.

3. Doctrine of the Star

The Absolute Beginning—that is not and cannot be—is, however, the axis of forbidden, heroic knowledge transmitted down through a secret network. A special kind of paradoxical will of some initiates—the mutable Relative below and the immutable Absolute above—established a dizzying, exciting prospect, risking both mind and life, through the banal, static image of metaphysics.

There is something that cuts through logical and religious dualism—the Eternal Beginning, a mysterious Ray that is “concealed,” on the one hand, and “open,” on the other. In this ray, all the great proportions and correspondences between the three worlds lose their meaning. What is above and below is reversed, the impossible and incredible Marriage of Heaven and Hell takes place, which the genius William Blake suspected.

This is called the “doctrine of the Star.”

“Thelemites,” the followers of the Frenchman François Rabelais and Englishman Aleister Crowley—it is from them that Bowie borrowed the concept for his song, himself being a member of the OTO Thelemic Order—believe that “a star is every man and every woman.” An embodiment of finiteness and relativity, an obvious loser completing his history with the utter vulgarity of the World Bank and global markets, an outright biological imitation of a proud and pure angelic creature—man carries within a “star”, a blazing ice ray, according to the other (“Thelemic”) side. A strange, impossible, dizzying light breaks through the wretched mess of his frail little soul.

This is the light of the Absolute Beginning—the one that cannot be.

4. Black Rays

Ground is slipping from under feet. Values and traditions have degenerated and become profaned so greatly that they are unable to resist sluggish nihilism any longer. Conservatism and progress are the two faces of the same process—degeneration. All that is left from the once-turbulent history is hunger, lust, and the police. All the signs point to the fact that we are incredibly far from the Beginning. Both the old and the new. Passionate aspirations have been completely exhausted.

What do those “Thelemites” mean—whose disturbing ideas are far from the optimism of the New Age or retired Theosophists—when they say that everyone possesses the paradoxical possibility of a “star”—a “New Beginning”? Of course, they are not talking about a vulgar “transformation,” “enlightenment,” “finding the truth”, etc. Look at these “neophytes” of all religions and cults—frightened eyes, flashes of blissful stupidity, strange gestures on the part of those bodies that are clearly unhealthy within. . . They are departing, twitching and hissing, instead of acquiring or initiating something.

The black ray of the Thelemic star slides along on a different trajectory. It cannot be recorded on the outside and is not graspable by the usual means. It deliberately frightens and repels, dressing itself (provocatively) into the robe of antinomy. It quickly leaves those who want to transform inspiration into a system. It cannot be institutionalized. But it always and absolutely shimmers in its aeonic rhythm against the will of cycles and the thickening masses of the dark ages. It itself chooses its forms and bodies for its manifestations. It is futile and meaningless to strive toward it. Its choice is arbitrary and unprovoked. It does not depend on the merits, virtues, and actions. It is indifferent to the “moral image” and successes in breathing exercises.

The Absolute Beginning has no sex, age, profession, or an office. It is a razor of crystal awakening cutting through the curtain of an insane clutter of atoms.

5. Betrayed Alternative

This, in fact, is a central question. “No future” is not just a catchy thesis on the part of a grotesque youth movement, which has now completely run out of steam. Another thesis about the “End of History” developed by Francis Fukuyama is, indeed, the same thing, only portrayed more euphemistically. Exhaustion is the key discovery of Postmodernity. The triumph of simulation is an unhealthy kind of joy. Cunning predators of electronic lies rape reality so violently that they will finish their social manipulation in the company of machines that have gone insane.

Ultimately, all the sci-fi literature of the 19th century ended up being the technological banality in the 20th. We can expect the same thing from the 21st century. This is especially true if we consider the fact that most of the major sci-fi authors (from Jules Verne to H.P. Lovecraft) were members of powerful esoteric organizations actively involved in giving civilization a preplanned appearance.

None of the sci-fi authors or futurologists predicted a “New Beginning.” Their forecasts are frightening, and the further one goes, the more monstrous it looks. And man rushes into narcissism that rescues him from nothing, beneath a patchwork bedspread of obviously false and uncomforting formulas. Like painted vultures, bankers and television hosts hover over the collapse. Charmers of dead bodies. To believe in television myths is to turn into an idiot; not to believe in them is akin to losing one’s mind from loneliness (because everyone around believes in them). No star in sight.

The Soviet system somehow had a very cool and dull reaction toward the desperate attempt by the “New Left” to develop an alternative ideological vision to the bourgeois order through modernizing (and revising) traditional anti-capitalist doctrines. Cozy apparatchiks kept spitting at the desperate attempts of non-conformists to break through toward a positive project. Having realized the inevitable failure of the Soviet initiative even then, the “New Left” turned toward esotericism, Gnosticism, and other disciplines (unorthodox for the Left).

The “New Right” developed according to a similar trajectory, getting rid of chauvinism, xenophobia, and the “free market” of the “Old Right,” and having discovered for themselves the values of revolution and socialism. Soviet-style “partocrats” (future “democrats” and the new Communist Party of Russia) accused both the New Right and the New Left of being “nihilist.” Soon, the beefy bodies of these “partocrats” themselves collapsed into the lustful rot of “reforms” and national betrayal. Once again, as it happened thousands of times throughout history, the real nihilists accused those who sought to overcome nihilism of being nihilists.

The outcome is sad. Without the help of Moscow, the smart and honest but powerless “New ones” were crushed by the System (Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Guy Debord—suicide, while the rest died naturally or faced oblivion) or degenerated into “thought police” (Henri Bernard Levy, André Glucksmann, Jürgen Habermas, and other scum). Without the sickly spirit of fiery rebellion, Moscow itself fell into the snares of the World Government.

None of this has any Beginning, not even a hint or a chance. In the best case scenario, cultured pessimists are hoping that the upcoming catastrophe will take place smoothly like euthanasia. What do all “democratic” and “patriotic” publications have against the “one-dimensional man” of Herbert Marcuse? Much like the “people” at the beginning of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Zarathustra—seeking the “last men”—all sectors of our society would have gladly stopped at the “one-dimensional man,” who would then lead a “coalition government.”

And former young people (today they’re far past 30) would have been listening to Bowie’s songs while sipping Heineken.

6. The End of an Illusion

There is no alternative, no New Beginning. It is not on the outside (forgeries are everywhere). It is not on the inside (the power of the soul has cooled). And nonetheless, the grapes of wrath are ripening, conspiracy nets are being weaved—a world conspiracy against the loathed present.

This is a conspiracy of the Star. At any age, in any place, in any condition, at any time, in any situation, in any position, “every man and every woman” can begin, may discover the Absolute Beginning, and pierce themselves with the black Ray with no end, passing through cycles and ages against all logic, any external predisposition, and every causal system. Any vital impulse, any passionate urge, any poignant state can suddenly go over the edge if it becomes excessive, unbridled, and exceeding meaning. Greed and generosity, asceticism and debauchery, jealousy and loyalty, anger and tenderness, illness and satiety can become the Absolute Beginning, the terrible thunderous chord of a New Revolution, one and indivisible, Right and Left, external and internal.

What we cannot allow to happen is that a new decline occurs after this peak. The intensity must keep increasing, one culmination should be followed by another, greater one. Overheating of individualism must ignite the entire outside world with the flame of rebellion—the kind of rebellion that is (according to Jean-Paul Sartre) the only power that saves man from loneliness.

The Absolute Beginning does not depend on objectivity; it has no concept of “early” or “late,” here” or “there.” It is even better if it has “nothing much to offer, nothing much to take”. . .

The end of the cycle is, ultimately, the end of an illusion, according to René Guénon.

Bowie’s song accompanying the reading of the Book of Law, the bitterness of absinthe, which Crowley called the only initiatory substance among alcoholic beverages (the “green goddess”), an unexpected reel of Eros-coma, beautiful and sickly fanaticism of an extremist political cell, an accidentally fallen shadow resembling a Celtic cross …

The Absolute Beginning at a (left) arm’s length…

This article (source) was written in 1996, first published in Nezavisimaia Gazeta (1996), reproduced in Elementy (dossier on National Bolshevism), 8, 1997.

A New Year was coming.

It was another chance to set everything right. To celebrate the year’s milestones and mourn its losses. She would go out tonight. She would have a good time. Like she always did.

There was something about the great cathedral in Cologne. She was an atheist of course, but its presence always comforted her. Maybe, it was because she grew up here and called this city home. She and her boyfriend, Georg, always came to the cathedral on the New Year. It was as close to ritual as they got.

She had a lot to be proud of this year. There was that promotion at work, the new dog she and Georg had adopted. They named the little mutt Angela, after the Chancellor. Not that they were political.

But she couldn’t help but swell with pride when the Chancellor opened up Germany to all those poor souls from Syria. Yes, how proud she was. In fact, she and Georg went down to a train station to welcome the refugees to Germany. To their home. In fact, they had even talked of housing a migrant family in their house. It was big enough. In fact, far too large for just one couple and their two dogs.

“The poor wretches,” she remembered. Most of them were young men, which surprised her. How lonely they must be, in a foreign land. There was one young man that stood out to her that day. He was about thirty, and he had the look of hunger in his eyes. She saw that look before, when she volunteered in South America years ago. His eyes were almost as black as his hair, the tattered clothes he wore spoke of a long journey. But there was his face, hunger was on it, but so was something else. Something she had never seen before. Unlike South America though, the hunger she saw wasn’t just desperate it was “ravenous.” Yes, ravenous, as if the face of a starving wolf. Briefly, she was afraid. She was ashamed for it. It was then that she committed to housing one or more of these lost souls, she needed to atone.

This year, they would do it. She remembered when she told her parents. How shocked they were! But they did not want to say anything, after all the pain their own parents brought to the world, they were always sensitive to being seen as “racists” or being against “progress.” In fact, she heard her mother whispering secretly to her father when she thought she was out of earshot, “I know I should be more supportive, but it just seems dangerous and strange.” “Aha,” she thought, it was just like her professors told her, all of the old generation were closet Nazis!

“Not me,” she thought. She was compassionate, broad minded. A good university education and summers spent in South America made her what she liked to think of as a citizen of the world. “After all, we have a duty, as Germans to atone,” she pondered. She couldn’t shake a maternal feeling either, perhaps it was because she and Georg had decided not to have children, that she felt so much for so many. “It would be selfish just to keep that love to just my child,” and her thoughts started to trail. The cathedral loomed large ahead.

As these thoughts and memories bubbled up she and Georg walked closer towards the cathedral. All of these people, and all of these new faces. This will be the year she thought, the year the world starts to love Germany. She’ll be able to travel without foreigners giving her Roman salutes, or boorish Americans expecting her to know every detail of the Third Reich. Yes, this would be the year she could be proud to be German.

They walked past a group of refugees. She was so proud, she was practically beaming. It was a new year, a new Germany! She called out to them and they waved back, and even smiled. There was something sinister about those smiles, at least that’s what Georg thought.

The countdown had begun. They had a prime location very close to the cathedral. Zehn, neuf, acht, sieben, sechts, fünf, und so weiter. It had come and gone in an anti-climax, like every year before. She and Georg embraced, and kissed. They were warm and she was happy and in love. If only everyone could know this happiness she thought. Especially those poor refugees, if anyone deserved it they did. That’s when she knew what she had to do, she had been so selfish.

She would go to those refugees she saw earlier. She would offer their home, she would bring them happiness, the time was now. It was a new year, and she had to do her part to build the new Germany. It would be a Germany of love. A Germany for everyone. She broke away from Georg.

She started to leave. He asked her where she was going? “You’ll see!” she called back. She had to do this alone, otherwise it would never get done. Though supportive in principle, Georg was far too apprehensive about their plans. It was always next month, next month.

Sometimes she thought he wasn’t really committed to their plans. That he let his own irrational fears get the best of him. But he always came to see she was right.

He wouldn’t object if she just took action. Yes, that’s how it always was with men these days. She ran on. Back to where she saw the men earlier. They were still there.

The lights from the cathedral cast a shadow. They flickered on the men in the alleyway. They were smiling, and so was she.

Snow began to fall. Georg did not know where she went. He would never see her again. In fact, no German would…

Addendum

This is posted in memory of the horrific events of Cologne, and other German cities.

The invasion has begun, it’s time to wake up!