A Call for the Broadening of Perspective in the Dissident Right

1. The Many Sides of the Decline of the West

Walking through the streets of any Western society with open eyes in the present day, one cannot deny an inner feeling that something is not quite right, that things are not developing in a way that can be described as improvement.

The following inseparably intertwined points come to mind:

1. Declining birthrates, the complete social acceptance of abortion;
2. The migration of non-white, non-European migrant into Europe;
3. The expansion of (Sunni) Islam and the implosion of traditional churches in spirit and in numbers (in Western Europe);
4. The loss of social capital, trust and cohesion;
5. Hyper-individualism;
6. The metapolitical victory of the neo-liberal school of thought in the economical sphere;
7. Increasing social inequality;
8. The victory of materialism in almost every worldview;
9. The decline of the educational system and its ability to prepare young people (flat-earth conspiracy, genderism, anti-vaccination, the cessation of great natural scientific explanations of the world after the rise of quantum theory, and much more);
10. Increasing environmental problems (climate change, deforestation, plastic waste in the seas);
11. Increasing surveillance by governments and social media; and
12. The rise of non-European powers (e.g. China and India) and possible domination by them.

Simply to complete this list in a thorough way would take more than a week, and perhaps even then it would not be completed.

As a consequence of this process of awakening within a world that might not be in ruins yet, but which shows every day new and growing cracks in and on its foundations, one cannot escape the question of what has brought about the development of this situation.

Although this perspective is not new in the slightest, it is worth recalling those authors who described it already decades ago. Two names which immediately leap to mind are of course Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West) and Julius Evola (Revolt Against the Modern World). However, reading their works has a very sobering effect for those seeking a cure to the aforementioned points and developments.

Very briefly, Spengler can be summarized as proposing that our European culture is succumbing to the fate of all previous cultures and civilizations, following a life-cycle equivalent to that of a plant, with inescapable death in the end, against which nothing can be done.

Evola on the other hand places his hope in his cyclical worldview of the four ages, according to which our present age, the iron age of materialism (or Kali Yoga in Vedic/spiritual terms) will be followed by a new golden age. But Evola, following his dissatisfaction with the end of the second world war, came to the conclusion that there is no possible successful ‘revolt against the modern world’ but only the way of ‘riding the tiger’, meaning that the best we can hope for is to prevent our souls from falling into corruption as we wait for better days to come. Nevertheless, reading his smaller late works it has to be mentioned that a glimpse of hope always shines through the letters.

2. Against Pessimism

So should the dissident right just lie down and accept the fate of Western civilization, hoping for better days, or choose the way of Yukio Mishima in the face of his defeat, when he could no longer bear the pain of present reality in Japan?¹

None of these paths can be an option to any member of the dissident right.

There are some, of course, who will fight against the decline no matter what, be it out out of moral courage or spiritual conviction. These aristocrats of the soul however are far too few to stop the ongoing development, let alone revert it, considering all the forces standing against them (liberal/left-leaning thought in all educational institutions, capitalist morality and its lobbyists, 95% of all politicians, intelligence services and so on).

In this situation nothing is more important than to hope for those who want to bring a change to all of this. So again the question arises of how to attain a new positive perspective in theory and in practice. From where can we derive our hope?

2.1 The Growing Consciousness of Crisis

2.1.1 The Unconscious Awareness of Crisis and the Existing Ideals in the World of Pop-Culture

The dissident right (in all its variations) is the only group that is fighting the ongoing replacement of the indigenous European peoples. What this movement in its exhausting struggle against the inner and external enemies of Europe often happens to miss is the multidimensionality of the decline of those very peoples.

The dissident right can be compared to the Inuit, with their existence solely revolving around the living conditions in the ice of the North Pole, and thereby becoming over-specialized in their physiology² and techniques to survive in these living conditions and therefore losing the ability to adapt to any form of change or to develop their culture further. Likewise, the dissident right in its ongoing and indispensable struggle against migration and for European identity, is in the same danger of losing its perspective on the broader picture and its adaptability to other challenges and possibilities within it.³

To understand this, it is necessary to take a moment to imagine the future in a world in which the great replacement has been stopped or even been reverted but all the other developments have continued. For those people who might not have the time for this, a short excursion can be made into the world of pop culture and its different dystopias:

1. Children of Men (demographic decline)
2. Soylent green (overpopulation)
3. Idiocracy (dysgenic development by the conditions of modernity)
4. Dredd (overpopulation, massification, drugs, the the upholding of order at the cost of the rule of law)
5. Black Mirror (technology killing the human soul)
6. Fight Club (not a dystopia but still worth mentioning consumerism and the de-masculation of men by modern society)

These films or TV-series would not have been produced if there were no money in them. And there would not have been any money in them if the broader public did not relate or identify with the topics they treat. The neutralization of the critique in these works which is effected by their commercialization is just a nice by-product. On the other hand there is a need for traditional values, heroism and also futurism, which in many people can be considered a yearning or at least a distraction from modern living conditions, that is used by the media-industrial complex for financial gain.

Examples for this are:

1. The Lord of the Rings
2. Game of Thrones
3. Star Wars (the author feels compelled to mention here that he is more on the side of the Imperium, but only because of their great uniforms)
4. Star Trek
5. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy
6. The cult surrounding the persona of Elon Musk

Whether it is sublime confrontation with the fears of its consumers, especially in sci-fi dystopias and the horror genre, or the attempt to escape from them to a sci-fi utopia or fantasy world, the impression of a growing discontent with modernity beyond the dissident right in those consuming these works cannot be ignored in this perspective.

If we accept the reality of the aforementioned fears, their connection to existing challenges within the real world and to ideals in the minds of the people represented, then this insight into pop-culture offers two positive perspectives against pessimism and possible stagnation for the dissident right. These perspectives include a tactical one for dealing with the outside world in terms of communication, and a theoretical one for the theory within the dissident right.

2.1.2 The Tactical Perspective

If the dissident right were able to tackle or trigger these different sorts of unrest or yearnings for alternatives in a relatable way within the subconsciousness of their fellow citizens, especially those who are not interested or involved in politics in any way, then this would be a huge step in breaking out of the often (self-)imposed exile of the (meta-)political discourse and the discrimination by which the dissident right is now confined.

One positive example for utilization of pop-culture can be seen in the use of the lamba symbol by the identitarian movement in Europe. Its adaption was brilliant, as it connected to the ancient roots of European civilization in Greek history and symbolized the patriotic heroic struggle of the people who wore it on their shields. It is also fairly recognizable thanks to the the film 300, and most importantly it did not alienate people, as it carried no historical ballast.

But pop-culture does not limit itself to offering us new symbols and new archetypes to relate to and to identify with. It also shows a way of explaining things to people who are not interested in politics. Let us take Game of Thrones,⁴ for example, with its never-ending battles between various royal families and fractions (leaving aside here its nudity and questionable sexual morals, which is one the the show’s reasons for success).

The interesting thing here is that in comparison to almost every other fictitious universe there is no real good or evil side, but only characters who are relatable and obnoxious in varying degrees, and a completely open ending for most of the show for any of those characters.

It should not be too hard to teach people about Carl Schmitt’s ‘concept of the political’,⁵ his theory of the enemy or the idea of global multipolarity starting from Westeros (the continent where most of the plot of Game of Thrones takes place) by drawing parallels to the plot, without boring people or even using his name.

If the dissident right can uncover the underlying themes and the issues existing in the real world, it would not only be performing an intellectual exercise, but also a new way of communicating; it could thereby also become more relatable and more successful in getting ideas onto the field of the metapolitical struggle, at the same time offering new recruitment tools without having to revert to old symbols and slogans.

Furthermore, by understanding what people care about without having to waste money on expensive surveys, more fields open for the (meta-)political struggle against the decline of the West by looking to the entertainment/media landscape. An example of this is the drug issue, which is not only one of the great crises the USA faces today, but is also an issue that people fear will not be solved in the future (consider e.g. DREDD). Admittedly this insight could also come without the study of pop-culture, but nevertheless pop-culture can be used to gain a deeper psychological understanding for it.

More harm has been done by the US pharmaceutical industry to rural America by the uncontrolled distribution of opioids⁶ (e.g. Oxycodone) and ephedrine⁷ (the main component for methamphetamine production) than any Mexican drug cartel could have ever done – not to mention that any Mexican drug cartel would have been punished for even a fragment of the damage. So why has there not been any activist action from the right against these companies (e.g. a sit-in blockade on one of their headquarters or a person on its roof calling them out) or against the politicians who receive donations from them (taking into account the failed war on drugs, which is not a war on drugs so much as a war on drug consumers)?

Another aspect largely neglected by the dissident right is that of the environment, oversight which relegates the people whose main concern is its preservation to left-leaning, and more precisely to the green parties⁸ in Europe or the Democratic Party int the US,⁹ therefore channelling the fear for land, earth and sea into the support of open-borders and uncontrolled migration which these very parties push for.

It should be one of the main issues of the dissident right to preserve the lands, forests, shores and mountains that formed the European peoples far more than any religion ever could.

Furthermore, an interruption to the continued flow of money to Saudi-Arabia by switching from fossil fuels to renewable energies should not only by done for the environment’s sake, but for geopolitical reasons as well, since this indirect withdrawal of financial support for Islamism would be a bigger blow to the spread of Islam(-ism) than any drone strike.

If the dissident right is not able to diversify its portfolio in a variety of solutions to the urgent problems that most people care about, beyond migration and its various aspects (culture, public safety, jobs), people will naturally look to the problems that are the most urgent in their minds, and therefore will choose other groups or parties to support. There is no reason not to target the issues these people care about, and there are many good reasons to do so.

2.2 Theory Against Pessimism

The second aspect we might bring against pessimism within the dissident right is a theoretical one. We cannot accept the future that Spengler and Evola predict for Western civilization. It is unacceptable to allow that nothing can be done from a theoretical perspective. The present theoretical weakness of the left might be a chance for the right to offer a better alternative, especially in academics, where on the one hand the success of a figure like Jordan Peterson and on the other hand the increasing repression of dissident ideas show an increasing softening of the left-liberal cultural hegemony. Especially in the natural sciences as well as in engineering there is large hidden treasure of possibly recruitable people, particularly if the left persists in its present course.

To understand this, a hypothetical could be entertained, which is obviously only an exaggeration of the ways of thinking current in gender studies.¹⁰ It is not unrealistic to imagine a demand raised by future activists that everybody has to accept everybody’s personal (felt) ideas about numbers, not unlike the ending of Orwell’s 1984,¹¹ in which Winston is made to believe the Party’s claim that 2 + 2 = 5. The difference would be that here not one authority (i.e. the Party in 1984) forces its reality on everyone, but that in the future a sort of subjectivist-gender mathematics might rise in which everybody has to accept everybody else’s calculations if he does not not want to risk punishment for hurting other people’s personal feelings/felt numbers. It is clear that many intellectuals would, in such a scenario, feel the same amazed frustration that the intellectuals of the dissident right now feel with regard to essentially identical trends in the social field.

But counting on the frustration of intellectuals with ongoing trends is not enough.

We have to work toward a new theoretical perspective for our civilization and its cultures that goes hand-in-hand with a vision of the future for the broader public to relate to and to put its hope in. The task here is basically to mirror the successes of the Frankfurt School¹² of thought in 1968, as well as the decades following, with thought from the right. The first step is to accept that history is not inevitable. Ironically, it suffices to look to Karl Marx¹³ for demonstration of this. His understanding of capitalist dynamics is even today one of the foundations of every economic theory. Nevertheless his prophecy of the workers’ paradise was never fulfilled. In fact his prognosis for the future has been disproved in reality over and over again.

We might mention the issue of the rise of post-Soviet Russia¹⁴ after the implosion of the Soviet Union, as well the resilience of the Visegrad states against the degeneracy of Western Europe¹⁵, as just a glimmer of hope for the USA and Western Europe, though this issue is too large to be incorporated into this essay.

That could be a start for tackling Spengler’s pessimism and Evola’s faith in destiny. As right as they are in their description of the problems and processes, we have learned that history can undertake sudden (positive) changes; the response to their pessimism, has to come from the late Dominique Venner:

The world does not yield to a system, but to a will. Do not seek a system, seek the will.¹⁶

Furthermore the dissident right has to broaden its theoretical view of the world and take a deep and critical look at the works of Arnold J. Toynbee¹⁷, to learn how other civilizations managed their challenges or failed at them. These challenges were as various as the issues facing the West today, and the need is to learn from other people’s lessons, their defeats and cultural suicides.

However this initial approach to Toynbee or similar thinkers can only be a first step, as it offers a perspective of countering present challenges, but does not show us what to strive for in the future. A positive vision is needed, since the fall of Communism more than ever, as the present unipolar liberal hegemony is nothing more than the denial of all higher ideals or models for the future – the blind belief that every problem can be solved either by the market or individualism, possibly combined with social democratic pacification.

The field that Alexander Dugin opened in his Fourth Political Theory,¹⁸ his rediscovery of the Heideggerian idea of Dasein (being there in the world), has to be filled with new possibilities with the same inner strength to mobilize people as communism had in the first have of the 20^th century.

A possible example of this is the late Guillaume Faye’s idea of Archeofuturism,¹⁹ that is to say the fusion of traditional values with the affirmation and further development of technology, or in terms of philosophy, so to speak, the reconciliation of Julius Evola with Marinetti.

However the hope that a ‘convergence of crises’²⁰ will lead to a rebirth of European civilization with a two-tier society of agrarian villages on the level of the 13^th century on the one hand and a highly technologically developed upper class on the other, as developed in Faye’s work Archeofuturism, does not hold any potential for the present day, as this vision does not appeal to people, nor is it a vision which could presently be implementable by force.

Nevertheless the basic idea of the the reconciliation of both worlds (Traditionalism and Futurism) holds great potential for the future of Europe – not just in spiritual terms, which I shall write of elsewhere, but also out of necessity.

If European countries and peoples were to unite behind their collective challenges by choosing common projects, following and reaffirming their Faustian nature, then they would achieve a new possibility for a Renaissance or a survival of their very own civilization, or at the very least a postponement of its demise.

These inseparable questions with their obvious spiritual nature are:

• The full understanding of the functionality of the human genome;
• The achievement of the unified field theory;
• An understanding of how the universe came to be (what happened before the so-called “big-bang”); and
• A full understanding of the human brain with the ability to simulate it in IT.

One might argue that technology and natural science has already done enough damage, which is true, but if Europe doesn’t stay ahead in the natural sciences science one might wonder what happens if it falls behind other civilazations on in this field combined with the already demographic catastrophe.

It is the opinion of the author that science and technology have to become the way to solve or at least to attenuate the ongoing crisis, especially as there is no spiritual renewal in the foreseeable future insight.

The following list of challenges with the technological/futurist projects targeting Western civilization forms a starting point for discussion (taking into consideration that not every trend of modernity can be stopped or reverted, but one has to live through the night to see the dawn) :

• Demographic decline => automatization
• Energy and climate change => nuclear fusion and other new and existing green technologies
• Numerical inferiority in military terms => autonomous fighting systems
• Intellectual decline => Artificial Intelligence
• Biological decline => deeper and broader study of (epi-)genetics
• The loss of all transcendental meaning => the exploration and conquest of space/a deeper understand of physics

However these futurist points which with their inner Faustian calling, just as the Manhattan Project in WWII and the conquest of space during the Cold War, could not have been achieved without enthusiastic public support.

Firstly it is obvious that if large parts of Europe can be convinced of the necessity of these and other projects and their benefits, it will occur to them that these projects can only be accomplished by working together across national lines and therefore burying the danger of the re-emergence of petty nationalistic quarrels, as last seen between Greece and Germany in the Euro-crisis.

And secondly, the insight that these goals can only be achieved by functional societies underpinned by traditional values and strong social cohesion should come naturally from projects like these, as we know that the Manhattan Project and the Moon Landing were achieved by the United states in times of strong social cohesion and cultural homogeneity, combined with the arising of the right people at the right times. That these challenges could not have been faced through gender diversity or multiculturalism is obvious.

This sub-strain of archeofuturist, yet realistic adaption of Guillaume Faye’s idea might be given the name of Fausto-technological-identitarianism – but that is open for discussion, as is indeed the further theoretical development of archeofuturism itself, and and the ways of bringing it to life.

3. Acceptance of Other Groups in Their Struggle Against the Flaws of Modernity

But let’s return for a moment to the present day from these kingdoms of make-believe.

If the dissident right recognizes the fact the the decline of the West is multidimensional one, we have to accept the fact that many other groups are also presently fighting against its consequences, and that some of these groups will oppose the dissident right.

From this point of view, these groups fighting against the decline can be put into two categories: those who are neutral towards the dissident right (the yellow vests, Demo für alle in Germany²¹ [Demonstration for Everyone, basically the only organized group that is fighting degeneracy in family and sexuality], etc.) and those who are hostile towards us (Greenpeace, ATTAC, labour unions and so on).

Many of these hostile groups are even losing sight of their original objectives, and focus on fighting patriotic groups, thus causing great unrest among their ordinary members (who themselves often fear for their jobs and living conditions when they see these things endangered by mass migration from the Third World).

Nevertheless these hostile groups are not the enemy, even if they try to sabotage the dissident right. if we look at every group and activist without assuming they are evil by nature, or even that they are completely blindfolded by their ideology, the question of one’s own animosity towards them on the one hand and potential common ground on the other side arises. For example:

• Is a labour unionist fighting against the transfer of his job, or against the technology exported by his company to China, really our sworn enemy, or he fighting as much for his people as we are, but on another field?
• Is a left-wing activist fighting against the exploitation of natural resources and the peoples of the the less-developed parts of the world really our sworn enemy, or is he just fighting another aspect of modernity, even as the dissident right fights migration?
• Is the struggle against climate change of a Greenpeace activist, who fears the permanent flooding of, say, the Pacific islands (not to mention similarly worrisome changes in Europe itself), really our enemy, or does he, every bit as much as us, want people to stay where they and their ancestors were born?

Naturally, many more examples could be gathered here.

One can not always choose one’s ally in one’s struggles. However one can choose to try to transform enemies into friends, or at least into neutral non-combatants. If the dissident right can convey the message that we are in a common struggle against a common enemy (modernity as a whole in its present state), and no longer foes within the outdated left-right spectrum, the possibilities that arise on the horizon for a genuine change and for a new Renaissance of Europe become unimaginable. An example here could be the export of certain traits of liberalism to Africa as well as into migrant communities in Europe to defuse present demographic threats. Why not export the pill, condoms, feminism and literacy there? What could any genuine feminist-leftist activist or liberal have against it ?

4. Closing Remarks

No call for defeatism, for the spiritual exile, or for a withdrawal into the castle of one’s own ideologies is be acceptable in the present day. The old saying that the world is still turning has never been more apt. By broadening the insight into the many aspects of the decline of the West and its causes, the dissident right can find new strategies, new topics, new visions for the future and new friends in its efforts. The present situation is too urgent to be pettily and arbitrarily narrow-minded.

Because “where danger is, salvation is growing”, as Hölderlin²² once said – and the search for salvation has just begun.

References