He Can't Keep Getting Away with It!
Yarvin did it again! Our proverbial enemy has been up to his Moldbuggery again and penned this beauty. As I predicted on June 24th, cope from the commentariat would soon flood the internet telling all who would listen that the overturning of Roe v Wade was not really a victory. While most of my readers will not blink twice at the idea that allowing states to protect children from murder is a victory, in fact the victory that the right has been craving for decades, the point here is much larger. There exists a large number of “influencers” who have beating the same drum from years: electoral, if not political, victory is impossible for the right. So, first the claim. From observing political commentary alongside my undergraduate and graduate career, seeing a vast difference in both substance and clarity between the two, I now hold, almost as strongly as an article of faith, that people like Yarvin beat the drum to make people dance. Beating the same point in different ways, that the right cannot have electoral victories (the softer claim), or any political or cultural victories (the stronger claim), makes readers and listeners dance with joy, following Yarvin (or any other of his type) in a Congo Line all the way to monthly subscriptions or even (in the case of Academic Agent) paying per substack post. On the one hand, readers of Yarvin can feel intellectually superior to both their republican and democrat neighbors who still believe, the barbarians that they are, in the electoral process, in America’s founding, or any of the ideas that came out of “Enlightenment.” On the other hand, the “redpilled” reader, who is now intellectually superior to the sheeple, is not obliged to do anything, because all possible action is barred from the get-go. Yarvin sells the double satisfaction of intellectual superiority and a convenient out to shirk any obligation.
For those who read Unqualified Reservations, you will remember how Yarvin talked a great deal about memetics. Memes, as defined by Richard Dawkins, are the basic unit of cultural information and can be plugged into the equation of Natural Selection just as a gene (the basic unit of genetic information) can. When I said “equation”, I mean it quite literally: there are mathematical equations which can measure how fast and how far a meme will spread. So, it is safe to say that given Yarvin’s interest in how ideas spread and why they catch on, it is no surprise that he tailored his message to catch on like wildfire. Telling people that they are intellectually superior to their peers and that they are not required to do anything with this knowledge, or that they cannot even if they wanted to, is like crack to pseudo-philosophers. Yarvin, nor his imitators, will ever tell you that action is possible nor how to go about doing something worthwhile…that would break the formula! If electoral victories are possible, then you have to operate in the same sphere as your republican and democrat neighbor, and they have probably done more to affect political change than you.
Now second, the backing for the claim. If it can be shown that Yarvin, and everyone else who claims electoral victory is impossible, are making demonstrably false claims, then either we have to say Yarvin and co are dumb, or that there are ulterior motives involved. Either Yarvin is dumb, I am right and that he planned his entire message to catch fire and grift, or there is some more nefarious reason for Yarvin and co’s shenanigans. Let us then examine Yarvin’s most poignant argument against political action and then look at how culture wars have been won in the past. For readers of The American Sun, this will be old hat for you, but will be in a more comprehensive context. For those who do not read The Sun, you are in for two of my most viral articles. Before we begin, I should explain why I am puting two Sun articles of mine into a Substack post. Long time readers will know that I am no fan of Yarvin, although he did influence me pretty heavily early on, so when he dropped his messiest post yet, I cannot help but giving him a proper kicking. And yet, I have a more beneficent reason. Many on the right have been told that victory is impossible, and as a Christian I believe despondency is a sin and that hope is a virtue. If I can give people a bit of hope, then I can rest happy. It is my firm conviction that we can win, and that we know how to win. This is what I will attempt to prove.
Against Gray Mirror and in Favor of Political Action1
Albeit expressed in earlier writings, namely in Unqualified Reservations, Yarvin makes his most serious criticism of any political action in Gray Mirror of the Nihilist Prince. At the core of his argument is the contention that any and all political action only strengthens the very regime a dissident would aim to oppose. Yarvin summarizes his argument as follows:
“Our general theory of collaboration boils down to: under the modern regime, all voluntary collective action promotes power. Anyone whose subjective intent is to act collectively, with power or against it, is objectively reinforcing power. Whichever side you’re on: it’s a trap.”[1]
At the same time Yarvin tells us,
“The theory cannot be exactly right, and it isn’t. As anyone would expect from any generalization so broad, there are exceptions. There are no easy exceptions—so there is no obvious way to avoid the theory. The message is not that the traps cannot be avoided—but that if you lack some strategy to avoid them, you are in one.”[2]
What is the argument? That all political action is collaboration with the regime. All action? Not quite, there are some exceptions that Yarvin hints at, but these are not “easy”.
How does Yarvin support his theory? What foundation does it rest upon? The answer is: sovereignty. If a regime is sovereign, then all political action, by definition, must be collaborative. As explained by Yarvin:
“Voluntary individual collaboration in collective action always involves supporting, subjectively and/or objectively, some cause. Such a cause must plan to either influence the regime, or work around it. By definition, every sovereign regime holds a monopoly of collective action. A regime that tolerates or encourages unofficial collective action—action neither with power, nor against it—is just taking ownership of it. Therefore, all unofficial collective action is with power. Or at least, a healthy regime disrupts all collective action against it.”[3]
If I am working for cause, let us say that I want to shift the center of the United Sates’ economy from multi-national corporations to locally owned businesses, I will, presumably, want this cause to succeed. Obvious enough, right? Well, what would success look like for my cause? There would need to be the utilization of state power. Wait. “The utilization of state power”? Who is it that determines how state power is utilized? The current regime. In advancing my cause I am collaborating with the regime. This is not an exaggeration, because if the regime is truly sovereign, and if the regime wants to preserve itself, which of course it does, then it will only allow state power to be used to empower the regime. If my cause threatens the regime, and if the regime is sovereign, then my cause will never be allowed to succeed. If my cause succeeds, then it does not threaten the regime and, since all sovereign regimes only allow causes to succeed if they further empower the regime, then I am actively helping the regime I am attempting to oppose. What this means is that political action will either, a) never succeed, or b) will strengthen the current regime. Either we get more of the same or…we get more of the same.
How is this not a damning critique? Yarvin has set up a seemingly airtight argument that renders any and all collective action either null and void, or collaborative with the regime. If an action succeeds, then it benefits the regime. If an action does not succeed…well, it failed, and really does not deserve our attention. This airtight logic is rather odd when you think about it, because surely there ought to be some mention of a regime’s goals? Right? People run a government because they wish to achieve some set of goals, even if those goals are simply to profit from the office. What does the American regime, and, by extension, the global regime, want? To figure this out we will need to dive into a regime classic, Tragedy and Hope. Carrol Quigley, in his tome, gives an overview of what the Atlanticists (this is the old self-descriptive label of the global elites) want to achieve and why. First off, they want to “save Western Civilization.” Yes, really.
“Can our way of life survive? Is our civilization doomed to vanish, as did that of the Incas, the Sumerians, and the Romans? From Giovanni Battista Vico in the early eighteenth century to Oswald Spengler in the early twentieth century and Arnold J. Toynbee in our own day, men have been puzzling over the problem whether civilizations have a life cycle and follow a similar pattern of change.”[4]
Why would our way of life not survive? What is threatening Western Civilization? All civilizations have lived out the same cyclical history, according to Quigley, a cycle that consists of:
“Each civilization is born in some inexplicable fashion and, after a slow start, enters a period of vigorous expansion, increasing its size and power, both internally and at the expense of its neighbors, until gradually a crisis of organization appears. When this crisis has passed and the civilization has been reorganized, it seems somewhat different. Its vigor and morale have weakened. It becomes stabilized and eventually stagnant. After a Golden Age of peace and prosperity, internal crises again arise. At this point there appears, for the first time, a moral and physical weakness which raises, also for the first time, questions about the civilization’s ability to defend itself against external enemies. Racked by internal struggles of a social and constitutional character, weakened by loss of faith in its older ideologies and by the challenge of newer ideas incompatible with its past nature, the civilization grows steadily weaker until it is submerged by outside enemies, and eventually disappears.”[5]
At the center of a civilization’s life, the “period of vigorous expansion”, there is a common pattern:
“The Age of Expansion is generally marked by four kinds of expansion: (1) of population, (2) of geographic area, (3) of production, and (4) of knowledge. The expansion of production and the expansion of knowledge give rise to the expansion of population, and the three of these together give rise to the expansion of geographic extent. This geographic expansion is of some importance because it gives the civilization a kind of nuclear structure made up of an older core area (which had existed as part of the civilization even before the period of expansion) and a newer peripheral area (which became part of the civilization only in the period of expansion and later). If we wish, we can make, as an additional refinement, a third, semi-peripheral area between the core area and the fully peripheral area.”[6]
Following the Age of Expansion is the Age of Conflict, which consolidates the civilization in question into a singular entity,
“In most civilizations the long-drawn agony of the Age of Conflict finally ends in a new period, the Age of the Universal Empire. As a result of the imperialist wars of the Age of Conflict, the number of political units in the civilization are reduced by conquest. Eventually one emerges triumphant. When this occurs we have one political unit for the whole civilization. Just at the core area passes from the Age of Expansion to the Age of Conflict earlier than the peripheral areas, sometimes the core area is conquered by a single state before the whole civilization is conquered by the Universal Empire. When this occurs the core empire is generally a semi-peripheral state, while the Universal Empire is generally a peripheral state.”[7]
Because the civilization is now a singular political entity, if that entity falls then the entirety of that civilization falls. America is the obvious candidate for a Universal Empire, and it being geographically located on the periphery of Western Civilization is no small indicator of this fact. What threatens Western Civilization, then, is America becoming the next Universal Empire. To prevent this means to temper the four areas of expansion mentioned earlier by Quigley: “(1) of population, (2) of geographic area, (3) of production, and (4) of knowledge.” If we take Quigley at his word, then this is the goal of the regime. Before we can return to Yarvin, we need to look at specifically how these areas of expansion can be tempered. Note that the following methods are not the only means to temper expansion, but only seem to be the means deployed today:
Population: Introduce contraceptives, legalize abortion, divert a portion of the population who would otherwise produce offspring towards non-reproductive sexual activities (pornography, homosexual relationships, casual sex), and de-normalize the heterosexual marriage as the place of sexuality.
Geographic Area: Decolonialize, engage in wars with the aim of turning the American population’s support away from foreign intervention and turn the international community against American intervention, and maintain a steady decline of military capacity.
Production: Outsource manufacturing, shift the economy away from production and towards service, close domestic energy sites and import foreign energy.
Knowledge: Utilize integration, “wokeness”, and “political correctness” to a) shift the goal of universities away from research and towards providing opportunities for the historically disenfranchised, and b) place an ideological limit on what can, and cannot, be published in research.
Seem familiar? If Quigley was not being honest about the goals of the regime, the global elite, then it would be quite the coincidence that the policies being pushed by the regime all just so happen to collaborate with Quigley’s desire to “save” the West. Yes, abortion, outsourcing jobs, catastrophic wars in the Middle East, and the dumbing down the universities are how we “save” the West.
Simply put, the current regime is not in power just because they thought it would be fun, they are in power because they have a stated goal, and they want to accomplish it. When Yarvin says that a sovereign regime has a monopoly on collaborative action, that a sovereign regime only allows collaborative action to succeed that benefits the regime, we have to take him to mean the following:
Although it is the stated goal of the regime to push abortion, outsource jobs, get involved in catastrophic wars, and dumb down universities, when it looks like Roe v Wade will be overturned, when jobs are brought back home, when America stays out of war with Iran, when universities are unshackled from ideology…this all benefits the regime.
Do you see how sovereign the regime is? Even when its goals are squashed, its goals are achieved! Sovereignty is the monopoly of collaborative action, yes, and we now see that sovereignty is capable of stopping the regime. How then, do we understand this fact? How does a sovereign regime act simultaneously as the sovereign, and the regime? The former acts against that later, or so it seems. Do we not have an analogue to the Trinity? Is not the sovereign regime both one and two at the same time? Only this time, there is not a will common to the ousia, but only the hypostases have wills, and it is only on occasion that these wills coincide. If we insist on Yarvin’s definition of sovereignty, then we have to ascribe to an atheist Jew a weirdly (heretical) Trinitarian view of the regime. Unless we simply say that Yarvin is wrong, that there are times where the goals of the regime can be obstructed via political action, we have to assert that the sovereign regime can fight itself, the sovereign obstructing the regime. We have to assert that neither part of the heretical Yarvinite Trinity is sovereign, under is definition, and that this regime is, in practice, actually two.
Interlude
Looking at just one elite document, we can see that the elites are not a faceless ameba that has no goals or beliefs. Since the elites are real people with real goals, then it is possible to interrupt these goals. When these goals are interrupted, this is a victory for the right. Just like the most recent post, Yarvin, and his fellow travelers (the historically context is implied), use the most abstract of logic to describe the most specific of situations. Even if Yarvin’s logic was sound, and we see that it is not, logic is not universal. A triangle is, defined according to Euclidian logic, a shape that has internal angles adding up to 180 degrees. A=A. Yet, A/=A all the time. Since Euclidian geometry is the geometry of two-dimensions, if you were to blow up a balloon, draw a triangle on it with a marker, and then measure the internal angles, you will see that the angles measure more than 180 degrees. Yarvin is trying to force the Euclidan definition of a triangle (or sovereignty to be more precise) onto the balloon, and this leads to wrongheaded ideas about politics and a weirdly heretical trinitarian analogue.
This is not the end; however, we can show how, in spite of Yarvin, how culture wars are won and how we can win this one.
Brooks Adams and A Positive Vision for the Right2
First, let me define the problem as this: heritage Americans are being replaced demographically; the traditionally Christian morality of America is buckling under the advances of LGBT+, and right-of-center voices, should they begin to make an impact, are targeted by a weaponized legal and financial system. There are peripheral issues here, but these three seem to encapsulate the American right’s biggest complaints. A solution to this problem would necessarily include, at least, the cessation of demographic replacement, a restoration of America’s traditionally Christian morality, and making the right impervious to legal and financial warfare.
Now that we have an idea what a solution would look like, we are now tasked with answering how we get there. The right has looked far and wide for this answer, turning to thinkers as diverse as Julius Evola, Vilfredo Pareto, Curtis Yarvin, Frederich Nietzsche, and Thomas Carlyle. A thinker rarely touched is Brooks Adams. Brooks was one of the great grandsons of John Adams and was the most academically successful of his brothers. Why Adams has been more or less forgotten is uncertain, but his dry writing style and relatively moderate language does not help spread his popularity. Caryle and Evola are much sexier!
What is sexy, however, is winning, and Brooks Adams gives us a historical treatment of social revolutions. If the right desires to gain political power, if the right desires a social revolution, then it would be wise to look at how successful social revolutions have happened in the past. Let us then turn to Brooks Adams’ The Theory of Social Revolutions and see how social revolutions happen, and then use this understanding to build a strategy for launching a social revolution of our own. Once the social revolution has occurred, then the right will be in a position to address the problems outlined above.
In the second paragraph of The Theory of Social Revolutions, Adams says, “About a century ago, after, the American and French Revolutions and the Napoleonic wars, the present industrial era opened, and brought with it a new governing class, as every considerable change in human environment must bring with it a governing class to give it expression.” With this one sentence the whole of Adams’ thesis can be gleamed: social revolutions are the results of one economic center replacing the old center. “Those who, at any given moment, are the strongest in any civilization, will be those who are at once the ruling class, those who own most property, and those who have most influence on legislation”, meaning that economic power is synonymous with political power. Do we not see this today? George Soros can bankroll left-wing attorney generals because he is a billionaire, and Hollywood can influence culture as much as it does because it has the money to be the premier cinema scene. More than this, what many call “Globo-Homo” is, through the eyes of Adams, the observation that those with money have the power to disproportionately influence politics and culture.
“For example”, Adams tells us, “the modern English landlords replaced the military feudal aristocracy during the sixteenth century, because the landlords had more economic capacity and less credulity. The men who supplanted the mediaeval soldiers in Great Britain had no scruple about robbing the clergy of their land, and because of this quality they prospered greatly. Ultimately the landlords reached high fortune by controlling the boroughs which had, in the Middle Ages, acquired the right to return members to the House of Commons. Their domination lasted long; nevertheless, about 1760, the rising tide of the Industrial Revolution brought forward another type of mind. Flushed by success in the Napoleonic wars the Tories failed to appreciate that the social equilibrium, by the year 1830, had shifted, and that they no longer commanded enough physical force to maintain their parliamentary ascendancy.” Each of these three social revolutions occurred through an economic revolution. Landlords replaced the aristocracy as the political center of England because they had more economic might and had no qualms with using that might to take the land of the clergy (specifically the monasteries), who were the natural allies of the aristocracy, thus empowering themselves and weakening their rivals. Until the Industrial Revolution, the Landlords maintained dominance, but then were replaced by the bourgeoise, who, as the center of the new industrialized economy, replaced the Landlords as the economic (and thus social and political) center.
Taking this analysis to the French Revolution, Adams describes how the presence of feudalism alongside that of an emerging bourgeois sparked what would become the revolution of 1789: “The essence of feudalism was a gradation of rank, in the nature of caste, based upon fear. The clergy were privileged because the laity believed that they could work miracles, and could dispense something more vital even than life and death. The nobility were privileged because they were resistless in war. Therefore, the nobility could impose all sorts of burdens upon those who were unarmed.
During the interval in which society centralized and acquired more and more a modern economic form, the discrepancies in status remained, while commensurately the physical or imaginative force which had once sustained inequality declined, until the social equilibrium grew to be extremely unstable.” As the economic disparity between bourgeois and nobility was quickly vanishing, as the belief in the nobility’s superstructure faded, but while the nobility still retained vast legal privileges (such as their sons being exempt from wars), the new economic center decided to use its new strength to force out the outmoded ruling class.
Brooks Adams develops all of this in much more detail, but to continue would risk making this article too long. To reiterate, the economic center is the social center is the political center, and all other planets revolve around this sun. Addressing replacement, the collapse of traditional American morality, and a weaponized legal system will require, and/or constitute a social revolution. For this social revolution to occur, if Adams is right, then the right needs to become the economic center. In practice, this would look like white Christians becoming a bigger economic force than Amazon, Walmart, and Blackrock. It is, admittedly, an uphill battle.
There are some arrows in our quiver, however. I do not claim to know which arrows will do the job, or what all the arrows in our quiver even are, but I can propose a couple. For those more economically savvy than I, you are being given the torch. Those who take up this torch, keep in mind that specific policies and specific tactics should not be spoken about too publicly, as this would telegraph our plan of attack. As with my past policy posts, I will keep these relatively general.
Tax Raises: Levy a 1% income tax on companies like Amazon and use the tax revenue to subside local businesses. Amazon made close to 200 billion dollars in 2021, yielding two billion dollars on a 1% tax. Why local businesses? By and large this is where white Christian America still has power. Tradesmen, hardware stores, small consulting firms, etc. these are our areas. Spread the two billion around to them. Will it make them rich overnight? No, but it is a step in the right direction. If this cannot be done at the federal level, states could use their means of taxation to accomplish the same end. Requirements for receiving these tax dollars can be set so they are spigoted, so they are directed, towards our people.
Tax Exemption: In the wake of Covid-19, many small businesses closed for good. Giving small businesses tax exemption status, maybe on condition that the businesses that accept tax exemption show, within one tax year, that they raised their employees’ wages or hired new employees, could garner support from both Republican and Democratic voters.
Subsidize CNC Companies: CNC machines present the possibility of decentralized manufacturing. Margins in this industry, so I am told, are quite good. Subsidizing new CNC shops would foster a manufacturing sector that is independent from globohomo. This might be the closest analogue to the economic revolutions mentioned by Adams.
These three policies are just the beginnings of a much larger platform to flip the American economy in favor of small and local businesses, those segments of the economy that represent the right’s interests more than companies like Amazon, Walmart and Blackrock. Will these three policies do the job? No, and I am under no illusion they will. What I am trying to start is a conversation of how the state can be used to economically empower the right. Will the powers that be like that? No, so any concrete effort in this direction cannot use the language of the radical right and will likely have to find a way to appeal to both Republican and Democratic voters. Democratic voters? Yes, they really like local businesses.
When elections can be stolen, as the Democrats claimed in 2016 and the Republicans claimed in 2020, when companies like Amazon and Blackrock have billions of dollars to spend on buying elections, a simple majority can be sidestepped and tampered with. To combat the powers that be a 60% to 70% vote will likely be needed, for a vote that large has little room for electoral wiggle room. To reiterate, Brooks Adams gives us an explanation for why, and how, social revolutions happen, and reading Adams gives the right a road map for how to launch a successful social revolution. It will take time to workshop the specifics, but if this path is what led to past social revolutions, or, if we take Adams seriously, all past social revolutions, then this appears to be the path forward for the right.
He Can’t Keep Getting Away with It!
But he will, because he offers crack to pseudo-intellectuals. Very few people want to hear what I just told you. If winning is possible, given the high stakes, you have to contribute to winning. This takes effort, however. You cannot remain anonymous on telegram or substack and larp as the intellectual elite and shirk all responsibility. Getting involved in local politics, your community, and starting businesses becomes a moral injunction. This takes more than effort, it takes skill…skill that most right-wingers do not have. Having interacted with a large sample of Yarvinites and those in Academic Agent’s sphere, I can safely say that a large portion of these people are incapable of community involvement. Not all of course, I know some great people, but they are the exception. I can tell you that victory is possible, and I can tell you how to win, but that is not attractive to most people and rears the ugly head of responsibility. Those that stick around and listen, you will not be the intelletual elites, but you will be, if you want it, community leaders.