Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Cleaning out the Closet: I

I think 2015 will be seen as a watershed year for the Right. As mentioned in my previous posts, it was a year of mixed blessing and I thought I would try to take stock of the situation as now it stands now in what I would call the Dissident Right. I think it is important to distinguish between the Alt-Right and NRx since the two are different yet people seem to use the terminology interchangeably at times. The Dissident Right (DR) can be thought of as comprising of both NRx and the Alt-Right who are united, at least, in a rejection of what constitutes the post war Institutional Right(IR) . 

Now, by DR, I mean the Right that has abandoned the post war conservative institutional consensus, in other words, what counts for "mainstream Conservatism" which is currently in its death throes iacross the Western World. The recent National Review edition against Trump is an example of the conservative consensus flailing about to keep the traditional constituency in tow. There seems to be global revolt of the rank and file against the institutional conservative establishment which increasingly fails to meaningfully distinguish itself from the Left. Furthermore, I think we've reached a sociological tipping point, in that extent of foreign migration (and its media coverage) has finally started to fuel a nativist backlash and, more importantly, the economic forces of globalisation have finally started to seriously impact upon the middle class.  Globalisation, whilst it was putting out blue collar workers was not a really issue for the Right but now that its pernicious effects are being felt in Middle Class--(politically the class that matters most)--a serious revolt has begun to brew.

It is these rebels from institutional conservatism which I call the Dissident Right. Now, the DR needs to be understood as comprising of two main streams;

1) The "feeling" Right and,
2) The "thinking" Right.

The "feeling Right" is pretty much owned by the Alt-Right, by which I mean the Radix like crowd.  This group "intuits" its political position and its rejection of the IR is more a case of the "feels" rather than the "thinks". It's essentially a romantic movement. In Richard Spencer's Political Theology, myth is more important than fact. The reason this is because any factual analysis of the "White" situation leads to uncomfortable truths. Truths which stymie the "racial awareness" renewal.  In brief, the White goyim are bringing the misery down, on themselves by themselves. It needs to be pointed out that the SJW's who are currently pushing for more "diversity" are nearly all white white. Attribution of decline to external groups such as the Jews, whilst having some plausibility, are unfounded so in the end, any sustaining principle must be rooted in an intuitive myth rather than a cold hard fact.

This however is a political winner, at least in a democracy. As Sam Francis in his brilliant, From Household to Nation, observed, the average middle class person was nothing more than an affluent proletarian and therefore far more likely to be motivated by the "feels" rather than the facts. His essay is basically a statement on the importance, in a Democracy, of personal circumstances over ideology and he attributes the failure of the IR to the neglect of this fact.  What has driven the shift to the DR, in particular the Alt-Right is, that over the past decade, the circmstances of the middle class have started to decline with a subsequent rise in middle class anxiety. The Alt-Right caters for this anxiety in a way that the sheeple can grasp. It doesn't argue rationally it persuades emotively.

Years ago, the mainstream media control of information would pretty much shut down any legitimate access to the Alt-right, but given the internet, that control has been lost and groups such as Radix have been able to package themselves--somewhat--as identitarians and not as Nazi's who are able to slickly articulate the problems of the middle class. Furthermore, by providing "low brow" intuitive solutions to problems, their appeal is slowly growing and it is this segment, because of its socio-intellectual nature, has provided for the most explosive growth in the Dissident Right.

The other area where it owns the field is in the ideology of identity. Make no mistake, there is a crisis of national identity going on throughout the Western World, bough about by multiculturalism, which is being suppressed by political correctness yet which yearns to find expression and is yet another reason for the growth of the DR.  Other conservative movements simply do not come even come close to providing for coherent solutions to the problem, however its mistake is in placing the foundation of identity in biological race--with all of its Darwinian baggage and repulsive evolutionary "solutions"--instead of grounding identity in the natural biases of human nature. 

But make no mistake, the Alt-Right is still a "mass-man" movement and therefore is a spiritual heir of the French Revolution. It is anti-NRx. It's a democracy/socialism/authoritarian system where the franchise is based on color. And therefore, it brings with it all the problems to culture and society that democratic Mass-man society brings. Many forget that it was "white" democracy that bought us this current civilisational mess. Furthermore, no matter how you cut it, given its nationalist, identitarian and racial emphasis, it's intellectual underpinnings are shared with the Fascist movement. Now contrary to popular belief, Fascism was a broad "Church" ranging from the mildness of the Action Francaise to the murderous Nazi and Ustashe regimes. I'm not at all suggesting that Alt-Right are Nazi's but it needs to be remembered that even though all not all  fascists are Nazi's all Nazi's are fascists. All variants of Fascism share the same metaphyisics and what distinguishes them is in their different approaches to real world "solutions" to problems. Given this common metaphysic, the Alt-Right is a home where Identitarians and National Socialists can find common cause. As I see it, there is no corrective mechanism in the Alt-Right movement to prevent a virulent natsoc capture of it. Should this happen the movement would self destruct and drag any other associated movements down with it.

I'll deal with the "thinking" Right in my next post.