Orientations
New right, dissident right, deep right, post-right, international right, and on, and on. In this past month and a half there have been numerous articles and streams discussing what is to the right of mainstream conservatism. Vanity Fair ran a piece entitled Inside the New Right, Where Peter Theil is Placing His Biggest Bets, Curtis Yarvin wrote Principles of the Deep Right for his substack, and NRx personality Charlemagne appeared on The Pete Quiones Show to discuss the growing dissident right, all within a month (and a few days). I am reminded back to that infamous piece by Milo Yiannopolous entitled An Establishment Conservative's Guide to the Alt-Right. After a couple years of the Alt-Right bubbling under the surface, the mainstream began to take notice and what was a loose collection of ideas, polices, and memes congealed into “a thing.” As it was then, there are now a number of high-profile influencers with fandoms, occasionally getting into drama bouts, a new lingo for the initiated, big to-do conferences, philosophical systems that are mostly borrowed from New Left (adjacent) thinkers, be it Alain de Benoist for the Alt-Right or Paleo-Conservatives for NRx, and electoral campaigns whose success, or failure, will be seen as a judgement on “the movement”, regardless how close the link between these candidates and the respective movement they supposedly represent really is.
None of this is a disparagement, but just an observation of similarity. I am in no real position to disparage even if I wanted to; this blog is microscopic compared to all of the names I dropped, and while my telegram channel is nothing to sneeze at, and the articles I write for The American Sun gain traction, I am a small fish in this whole scene and will disappear like a tear in the rain. Furthermore, I am inadequate to put myself up as a chronicler of the Alt-Right. While I was around it, listened to the podcasts, fooled around on 4chan in 2015, and read the meme-tier books, I only got engaged in it after 2017, which is like looking at the Thanksgiving Turkey but only taking a bite after it has been reheated the next day and when all the relatives have gone home. My final disclaimer is that I will not talk about the New Left connections to both the Alt-Right and the Dissident Right. Not because I cannot, but because that is a talking point of my friend Christopher Sandbatch (whose substack you can subscribe to over at Esoterica Americana) and I have already stolen enough of his talking points.
With the caveats out of the way, I would like to offer a few orientations to whatever [adjective] right wins out. I will not here put forward a vision of my own, I have done that, laid out a concrete plan for counterrevolution, and continually put forward policy proposals. For those interested, look at the about tab in this substack to see the directory of my posts or tune into The American Sun to catch my occasional policy posts. The orientations I will provide are not my own vision for the right but are guidelines applicable to any faction of the right (or the left even) and will not stop you from being a [enter your self-descriptor] should you heed them.
I) Apriori vs Posteriori
Since I took notice in non-mainstream politics, I have noticed that Kantian language is in vogue. Further, there is this strange belief that apriori truths are better than posteriori. “Strange”, because I honestly cannot understand what would lead one to this conclusion let alone what would make one “better” than the other. Sure, people do not say this explicitly, most of the time, but there appears to be the assumption that posteriori truths are the same as “empiricism” and, since empiricism is bad, we must steer our analysis to apriori truths. Now, I am not an “empiricist”, so you can put that worry aside. I do recognize that apriori truths are more certain than posteriori truths, but we need to make sure that we are not looking for the posteriori in the apriori.
Apriori truths are truths that deal with logical necessity and modal possibility. Logical necessity refers to statements that have to be true and could not be otherwise. If all men are mortal, and if Socrates is a man, then Socrates has to be mortal. It is logically necessary for Socrates to be mortal, there is no other possibility. This famous syllogism establishes an A is A relationship, and it is upon A is A that the whole of logic is founded. Modal possibility is the way something might logically be. We can imagine that this post was released a month later than when it was actually released. There is no logical contradiction in this statement, we are not saying that A is B, and we can know this without any reflection upon the physical reality of the situation. We could go a step further and imagine, with Max Black, that there exists a possible world where the only two objects that exist are two metal spheres. Physically possible? No, but logically so. Nothing in this statement denies that A is A and is thus logically possible. Both logically necessity and modal possibility are knowable apriori, that is, we can know them independent of any physical observation.
We cannot make the mistake of fitting anything other than logically necessity or modal possibility into the category of apriori. You might believe that there exist eternal economic laws or that history is cyclical, and you might be right, but neither of these statements are statements of identity (A is A), and if you think they are then you are tasked with demonstrating this syllogistically. Note that when I say “A=A” I mean that in the same sense that “2+2=4” is a statement of “A=A”, as formal logic is the scientific field that mathematics is beholden to. A claim of identity has to have the same rigor as 2+2=4. Statements about physical reality, unless they are statements of identity, to repeat, are not apriori by definition.
If historical or economic truths, or any political truths for that matter, are not apriori then they must be (if we insist on Kant’s framework) posteriori and thus subject to revision should we encounter evidence contrary to our theory. Should we ignore contrary evidence and assert our theory in the face of such contrary evidence then we limit our ability to recognize error and thus change for the better. Should any of you worry that this is empiricism, then ask yourself if Saint Paul was an empiricist when he changed his belief about Christ during that famous journey to Damascus. Revelation is not apriori, nor is it the rigid scientistic attitude you might be worried about.
II) Specific Goals
In addition to the recent talk about this new right emerging, there has been some drama relating to Nick Fuentes. I try not to keep up with drama, let alone e-drama, and I have not watched Nick in a number of years, but I think the blow up can be illustrative. From what I have heard and seen from the debacle it looks like the issue is one of personality…shocker. There have been more personality powder kegs on the right than I can keep up with, and I am told that this has been the case for some time. Whether it is Nick, Richard Spencer, Academic Agent, Vox Day, etc. there comes a point in every influencer’s career that drama has the potential to rear its ugly head. Unless you can use this to gain new followers, as Academic Agent has learned to do from Professional Wrestling, it is something that will make you look petty, drain your energy, and get in the way of productive efforts.
Tabling drama for a second (and we should table it for good), I would like to draw your attention to how often the right spends countless hours mulling over inconsequential questions. Philosophy is a very good thing. I went to school for philosophy, even did some graduate classes in it. Right now, I am looking at my bookcase and I see numerous shelves full of philosophy books. Yet, philosophy is only good so long as it obtains its purpose: the acquisition of virtue, and knowledge of God. If you are not becoming a better person or not getting any closer to God (and this means praying, it means action, not just thinking thoughts about God and making your profile picture something vaguely religious), then you should probably spend your energy doing something else. Translated politically, if what you are reading and discussing is not helping you achieve your ends, then you should move on. Yes, we need to know what our ends are, but those ends are, I will venture, are relatively simple and fairly universal. Although there are some twists to it, the right wants an end to mass immigration, healthy social-sexual relations, for fathers to act like fathers, economic security, the end of anti-white propaganda, and an international order that does not entail US intervention abroad. What that looks like exactly might differ, but if you wake up anyone on the right, no matter how they self-describe, at two in the morning, shake them around a bit, and ask if they want the above, they will say “no shit, now let me go to back bed.”
How do these two strands come together? Both drama and endless discussion about things that will not help us achieve our ends are, I will wager, the product of one thing: the absence of clearly defined and realizable goals. If you do not have a clearly defined goal, and if this goal is not realizable (at least in theory), then you are only left with a) personality and b) talk. Drama with Nick, and those that came before, arose when he was a number of years into his show, three AFPACs (his version of CPAC), a whole internship program for young “groypers”, and yet no serious progress was made (by him) for the America First agenda. Since there was no product, the sell became about the salesman. Maybe the situation with Nick was unavoidable, but it might have been prevented if America First was about passing specific bills, getting specific candidates elected, and setting up specific institutions, if these were clearly defined, and if these were achieved. Progress will be slow, yes, but it will provide the movement with fuel that it can run on for a while and will not either explode (drama) or be empty fluid that looks like fuel but gets you nowhere (idle chatter).
III) Opposition Research
Political movements include both a positive and a negative vision (to steal Academic Agent’s language), and part of the negative vision is sketching an opposition. How the new right frames its opposition is not necessarily important, as I am trying to give general guidelines that could help any faction of the right (or even the left) and not impose my own vision. What matters is that the new right does opposition research. It is very tempting (because it is very easy) to impose our own beliefs upon the opposition and explain their behavior and psychology from our own standpoint. We on the right hate it when leftists do it to us, and we know that their characterizations of us (hateful, ignorant, anti-social, incel, etc.) are untrue as a whole. It would be special pleading for us to think that we have the ability to perfectly describe our opposition. So, whoever you take as your principal opposition, be it the left, a certain religious tribe, the elites, etc., you must look into what they themselves have written.
Keep in mind that they (whoever they are) think they are the good guys, otherwise they would not be doing what they are doing. All action is performed for some good, even if we are mistaken about how to achieve that good. I might pay for a prostitute this evening, and that would be a sin, but I am seeking after the good of sexual companionship. Yes, I am going about achieving that good in a wrong way, but I am still acting for a real good. Our political opposition are acting for some good as well, even if they are mistaken about how to achieve that good. This is to say that there is no need for leftists, members of the tribe, or the elites to hide their intentions, and, as is evidenced by the volumes of literature put out by all of them, they are more than happy to tell you what they are doing, why they are doing it, and what they are planning next. If your movement has a chance of succeeding, it needs to take seriously its opposition in the same way a football team needs to study the playbook of its opposition.
Onwards New Right!
Nothing said here is revolutionary, nor will it change your outlook on politics. This was intentional. Later I will restate my alternative to the various new rights out there, but here I simply wanted to provide some orientations to guide whatever vision wins out. If the victorious vision can learn from observation, rather than superimposing what it thinks to be apriori truths onto physical reality, if it can focus on clearly defined and realizable goals, rather than on personality or idle chatter, and if it can rigorously study its opposition, rather than just conjecture about it, then I believe that the victorious vision will (even if I may be opposed to it) have a fighting chance in becoming the ruling paradigm.