I’ve always liked to push-the-envelope, border on inappropriate, and to rustle the jimmies of the self-righteous. I reserved this for the idols that I found contemptible, or at least not beyond reproach – I never thought there was much that was funny about mom, baby or Jesus jokes. But the morally-hygienic SWPL, the uptight snob or boorish jock was fair game for a bit of rabble rousing when conversation lulled or I’d over-indulged in the wrong company.
Being a Millenial, the focus of our cultural environment has been to tear down, rather than build up. Since the 60’s the left has taken aim at the cultural symbols that they believed were ‘holding us down’ – traditional marriage, gender roles, Christianity, Capitalism, Colonial history inter-alia. Having decisively won the ‘culture wars’, the left, through film, TV and music gave us the ‘itss the corrporrationss maaannn!’ spaced out hippie degenerate, and its modern incarnation, the SJW/tumblrkin special snowflake who demands you evil fascists alight your Panzer tanks and ‘listen’ to their ‘conversation’, ‘check your privilege’ and self-flagellate for your ‘micro-aggressions’.
The liberal media employs techniques of snark and mockery to undermine who they consider their inferiors, (in nerdy neoreactionary parlance, the Vaisyas), usually what they call the blue-collar, red state ‘hicks’ and ‘white trash’. The hysterical screeching over Sarah Palin is a case in point (conservative womyn, don’t lean in – kill yourselves). Programs like The Daily Show and Rachel Maddow use the point-and-sputter, and the rehearsed self-righteous moral indignation, with a bit of snark thrown in for good measure.
But there is little left for them to ridicule. The mainstream media is liberal, and has the support of both government and major corporations. As much as these ‘journalists’ wish they were Woodward and Bernsteins, their role has been reduced to selling products, harvesting clicks and promoting the progressive agenda. ‘Useful idiot’ caricatures like Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson, come along every now and then for them to resurrect the spectre of the dangerous, crazy self-reliant redneck Christian man, but for the most part, the role of the dissident is now firmly in the hands of the Right.
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In a recent article, Andy Nowicki at Alternative-Right posited that dissidents will be dissidents, and will change their stripes to become new dissidents as time requires, because it fulfills a fundamental need:
Yet how much of the coalescing counter-culture is an authentic challenge to the repugnancy of the predominantly-enforced mindset, and how much is but a mirror image of its essentially identical proclivity to sacrifice authenticity for conformity in a rigidly proscribed and witlessly contrived manner? Put another way, will anything essential have changed when today’s radical egalitarians are replaced by tomorrow’s ethno-nationalists, or will we merely see the flip side of the same phenomenon, the future “tails” to match the present-day “heads”?
This a question that deserves an answer. Are we just as bad as the wannabe Bernsteins? I think that there are large elements of the ‘Dissident Right’ that fringe for fringe’s sake, and enjoy getting into infantile games of ‘I’m more right-wing than you’ until they reach complete and unutter Skyrim LARP irrelevance. In a recent episode of The Daily Shoa 14.88: Right-Wing Pokemon, The Death Panel discussed some of the more absurd libertarian-induced strains of edgy-autistic reactionary thought. Read the transcript of Ghoul’s great analysis here. But I don’t buy into Nowicki’s nihilism that we are all just depraved puppets, searching for a master to pull our strings. I acknowledge there is a real undercurrent of malcontent that is based upon a dispossession, that is a product of the institutional machinations of a hostile, leftist zeitgeist.
What I’ve come to realise, the more I have read and immersed myself in ‘the edge’ of the dissident right, is that all of the thoughts and feelings that you have and things you experience have been shared by so many others. In your personal life and social circle, you might be frothing extremist for not believing in equality, or risk becoming a pariah for expressing doubts about the fruits of ‘womens’ liberation’, but online, you’re a milquetoast sellout conservative beta male who enables the matrix and promotes the feminine imperative because you have a job, vote and want to get married at some point. The initial ‘rush’ of the red pill is intoxicating and feels great, and a bit of ranting and vicarious travel through the similar experiences of others is warranted. But there is only so much that can be gleaned from this, and it’s easy to be seduced by your own ‘rationalisation-hamster’. If you listen too closely to the likes of Roosh and Captain Capitalism, you could be misled into thinking that all western women are useless sluts, and forget about achieving anything in your professional life because ‘the economy is stuffed’ and ‘the lefties are out to get you’. By being extreme, right-wing reactionaries polarise their audience and draw more loyal support, as well as those who just enjoy audacity and snark for its own sake. They need this to stay relevant, create twitter wars and make themselves heard.
Coming to this realisation is important. The fact that I want to live in a stable economy with low crime, not be displaced demographically, and be able to go about life without dildos being shoved in my face is actually pretty normal. It is to play into the progressive narrative to think that these are extremities, relics of a bygone era that belong in the dustbin of history. We are the normal ones. It is all-too-tempting to get carried away with becoming the truest Scotsman, so that you becoming a LARPing child, posting medieval images of knights and dames on your twitter feed, who belongs in the sand-pit.
That is not to say that the internet is not an extremely valuable, decentralised mechanism for spreading dissenting thought and generating followers and new content. We need writers, artists, publishers and authors to continue their great work, and publishing online does not in any way diminish what they do. As a subscriber, reader or just as ‘one of us’ you have found a community-of-sorts, which can be a rabbit-hole of its own. Navigating Vantardism, and just the generally antisocial-freakshow that is social media can be difficult for us ‘big-tent’ special-snowflakes.
So for the millenarian, hard-right reactionary reader, take heart. Yes, your university is leftist and your corporate diversity training fires up the ovens buried deep in your Schutzstaffel heart. Yes, the media and culture-at-large has lied to you and is actively subverting our own proud history, tradition and culture of the West. Instead of churning out Magic card Gravatars of yourself as a Neo-Monarchist-Papist riding a silver stallion, summoning thunderbolts, engage with your (real, physical) friends and colleagues. Read real books, find others open to your ideas and become a better man (or woman) by actually living out the values you have chosen. Ask questions about the narrative collisions that are becoming more and more pronounced, and accept some of the realities of the time and place that we live in.
Treason and Treachery 
Well said. This needs to be in a sticky post at the top of /pol/ and other places that generate new recruits for the alt right.
Great points, but if I could just say something?
I come from a different version of the Alternative Right. And I get the strange feeling that… I’m not in the same Right as the one I was born into.
This Right Wing is very different from the one I was born into with my skinhead father and Byrd mother.
I’ve actually started referring to the Alternative Right and the Neo-Reactionaries as the “Cyber Right” or the “Internet Right”.
Because that’s where I honestly think they come from.
I think that a lot of the people on the so called edgisphere were radicalized on the internet.
I wasn’t, I was born radical pretty much.
I actually think that in some ways that might be good, see, our “Real World” White Nationalists have gotten stale, there’s very little going into intellectual discourse on there (for an example of what I mean visit http://www.downwithjugears.blogspot.com that guy is from the real world of the edgisphere) I think if the Cyber Right could unplug, they could honestly revitalize the real world white Nationalists.
Btw, you have my email I think, shoot me a line sometime.
You are probably right – there is a disconnect between the ‘older’ more visible hard right and the ‘cyber-right’ for whom it is only an intellectual exercise. I don’t know anyone who could be classified in the ‘punk’ spin-offs of NS or the ‘This is England’ clique. What is Byrd?
Re: the link you posted, the ‘NorthWest American Republic’, there does seem to be a lack of ideas, beyond some ‘constitution’ and ‘Christianity’. ‘Whiteness’ alone is not enough. I think identifying positive values, themes and concepts could galvanize more people into an identity.
Hmm…. maybe.
I take a Via Negativa philosophy to politics.
I ask myself what I don’t want, and let that point me towards what I want.
Byrd… my mother was a byrd.
It’s a Skinhead with a vagina.
And hair.
The recent riots (Ferguson 2014, France 2005 et cetera) are examples of the ‘other’ unveiling themselves to have a distinct identity and not one of ‘us’, which has made it easy for ordinary people to know what they don’t want.
But the far right’s strategy of negatively defining itself (like the BNP), making itself primarily ‘anti-immigrant’ and ‘anti-semitic’ rather than ‘pro-us’ has allowed the left to paint it as irrational, full of hatred and xenophobic.
This is why l like the Swedish Democratic Youth campaign ‘Europe Belongs to Us’.
Ah, I see what you mean.
I’m always been interested in methods of “evangelizing” the uninitiated, which for some reason has always been met with negativity.
It’s almost as if they don’t want more people to wake up….
They go back to Revilo P. Oliver’s “Can liberals be educated?” And shut you out.
For me I’ve found that if you can read pill someone on even just one issue, it breaks the liberal spell and they become open to other issues.
I’m saving a copy of this. A lot of people on the far right are extremely bright and creative but instead of contributing cerebral online content to mainstream conservative publications or think tanks they squander it on LARPing. Imagine all the smart NRx folks writing for National Review or something. It might actually change how conservatives are viewed. These clowns need to stop being Pokemon and vote conservative or become politicians.
Yes, the ‘rightward synthesis’ NRx analysis seems to be more of an exercise in ego than anything else. There is something however, in a ‘long game’ of promoting rightist-thinking through culture, which can be found at sites like RadixJournal. As much as I am repulsed by conservative politicians I think voting conservative does help.
Legit post.
I believe there is an ideological contest between Right-wing utopians and Right-wing ‘realists’, where the edgysphere consists largely of utopians.
Also, Gustav, your comments on TRS are pretty decent.
Utopians vs realists sums it up succinctly. Cheers. Will let you know if I’m ever out West
Yeah remember to live real life and do “real things”, whatever the fuck that means.
Are you not guilty of exactly the thing you are chasting others for here? How is this, or that absolutely cringeworthy post of Ghoul’s that you praise, anything other than another layer of posturing in an internet community?
This is my first exposure to anything of yours, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt but I am supremely unimpressed.
Tom,
I’m so sorry that you aren’t more impressed.
The internet has been a great way of sharing ideas, critiquing and bringing together the fringe that is the reactionary right. I am indeed, one of the ‘Right-Wing Pokemon’ that TRS lampoons, and have been a part of Rx/NRx through blogs and social media for a while now. I am able to partake in this criticism because it also applies to me, and I have reached a point where reconciling the theoretical and the practical has become necessary.
There may be a ‘long game’ of influencing culture, as well as ‘working out the details’ by articulating a coherent and intelligent alternative to liberal democracy, as Moldbug started and the various NRxers are trying to do now. If this is to translate into affecting the wider culture, then what the right needs is productive and influential citizens who can be in a position to spread ideas, reach out to people, and be a leader in your community/industry/social circle. This means those who live life and ‘do real things’ (I’m quoting you here).
We need critical mass first. The problem is that the media is controlled by leftists, which by extension means the owners of the job market (corporations) will follow the left’s dictates. The idea of firing someone for their private political convictions seems obtuse to us, but a leftist will make up lies and manipulate the laws believing any evil they commit is justified like the rabid fanatics that they are.
Please explain to me: if we are blocked from being self-sufficient, how are we supposed to achieve any sort of victory against a united and hostile political class? I am already building a career and hope for a family, but at this time revealing my politics (and,sickeningly, getting married at all with the legal climate) will at best leave me a matyr and at worse sink my entire family and everyone related to them. You cannot tell me I would be well received in a society that cheers the belief that any violence that comes upon a man was probably deserved and allows the debauchery of gay pride parades in front of children.
Interesting thoughts. I agree on the whole. Will write a longer response this afternoon.
This isn’t really aimed at ‘establishment conservatives’ like yourself, who are dealt a lot of (fair) criticism in what we call the ‘true right’. It is a response to the over-the-top reaction of those who can see the impotence of conservative politics and seek to articulate and plan for a new paradigm. I can point you in this direction if you are interested, but this article is not a ‘starting point’.