Tuesday, January 12, 2016

2015: Raisins and Turds.

Another year has passed and I think it is worthwhile, from this vantage point, to take stock of the From from the perspective of this blog it's been a mixed year.

Firstly, the positives. As much as I deplore the rabble, any change in the zietgiest is only going to come about when a lot of people come on board. The "penetration" of Right memes has always been hampered by Cathedral control of public "idea space", and until recently, the Cathedral, through it's technological monopoly, has been able to keep control of the Overton Window. While its control over it has been gradually weakening, over the past year it seems to have taken a serious hit.  Conservative bloggers have always been since the inception of the internet,  but it appears that in the last year or so, the Alt-Right has achieved critical mass, especially in the U.S.,  as to be able to influence the tone of public debate. The emergence of the "cuckservative" meme an example in point. This is good.

Secondly, the amount of perversity, like morality, a society can abide with is limited by human nature. The extreme leftward push by the Cathedral and its operatives is finally starting to initiate some homeostatic mechanisms which are favourable to the Right wing ideas.  People like to live according to their natures, and one aspect of their nature is homophily.  Having a natural disposition toward homogeneous societies, no matter what they say to the contrary, the illegal immigration debacle in Europe--with its impotent response--has done more for the furtherance of Right wing ideas by activating some primordial response than any polemic or appeal to rationality by any Right-wing intellectual.  This is good.

Furthermore, most people have an intuitive dislike towards homosexuality and an intuitive sense of protection for children. Whilst the gay agenda was orientated toward securing sexual rights I don't think many cared to push back, on the other hand, the push for the legitimisation of marriage and access to children seems to have triggered the beginnings of an "intuitive"  counter-homosexual pushback in the community, particularly in France. This is good.

Furthermore, over the last few months I've also noticed comments popping up in unexpected places which seem to be negative with regard to the sexual revolution. People seem to be sick of the sexual degeneracy about them and there is a weariness about matters sexual. This is not to say that people want to turn the sexual revolution back, but there seems to be a growing awareness of the bigger picture of sex, especially with regard to relationship stability. This is good.

2015 Seems to be the year that mainstream "Conservatism" has died. Everywhere across the Western World there seems to be a fissuring and polarisation amongst the ranks in the Right. Merkel has effectively killed the CDU and what emerges is likely not to be very unpredictable.  This is good, as the current custodians of the mainstream Right have destroyed it.

The other great development is Victor Orban.

The other development is the rise of Trump.

From a meta level, it appears that 2015 has been a year which has resulted in rightward shift in the Overton window.  Especially in Europe. 

Now the turds.

It's been great to see the explosion of the Alt-Right presence on the social media and in the blogosphere and I think 2015 has been the year of Alt-Right achieved Critical mass. But, on the other hand, a significant portion of the is growth has come about from entryism of "naturalist " Right groups. I'm using naturalism in the sense the Michel Houellebecq has used it and I think the aptness of the french terminology is particularly important given the cultural position of the Right at the moment. These entryists  who are very active, seem to be pushing a racially aware form of progressivism. This is not good.

Following up of my reading of Houellebecq, I've spent the last couple of weeks chasing a rabbit warren of ideas by early 20th Century French authors, particularly Peguy and Blondel. What's quite eerie to note is just how much contemporary right wing thought resembles that of right wing thought in France prior to WW1. And if history is a guide, serves as a warning for what is to come.

At the end of the 19th Century, French Right wing thought was broadly divided into two main streams. There was the naturalist/Integralist steam which centered around the personality of Charles Maurras and there was a rabble of Christian humanists typified by men such as Peguy, Blondel and Claudel. Group one was a curious fusion of HBD positivism and Throne and Altar Traditionalism and called itself Action Francaise.  To be fair, it had some good ideas but in the end, the organisation betrayed France by bending over and enthusiastically supporting the German occupation of it. They were active in the  persecution of the French resistance, despite calling themselves the avowed patriots of France. When all is said an done, despite their religiosity and French patriotism they were simply racially conscious progressives. This version of the right shot itself in the head.

Group 2 on the other hand, fought the Germans, and inspired men like De Gaulle. They saw that setting the clock back wasn't going to work, neither were the mass-man ideologies of the time. They saw that Western Civilisation was in deep crisis, seeing the mass de-Christianisation that was occurring in Europe prior to Vatican Two. They diagnosed the problem as being that mainly of a crisis of faith, and a failure of traditional Western civilisation to recognise that modernity had changed the operating paradigms of society. To them the fundamental task was to respond to modernity in a Christian fashion and it was a question of how to deal with modernity successfully, not adapting it uncritically. This however was too much for Church leaders at the time who tacitly supported Group 1 and mildly persecuted Group 2. These guys were the spiritual fathers of John Paul II, Benedict and Francis.  The guys who persecuted them were the Traditionalists.

Why the French situation is important is because it is being mirrored today in contemporary Right wing "idea space" and what has really depressed me is the Naturalist bent the Alt-Right has taken. The history of the times should be studied simply to show that the Naturalist trajectory is bound to end in failure. I don't want to repeat the same mistake yet it seems to be the way we're going. This is bad.

The other tragedy of 2015 has been the Catholic Church. It's this blogs primary contention that the Crisis in Western Civilisation at the moment is primarily religious in origin and nothing gets fixed until this issue is sorted out. Europe will die if Christianity is not revived and hence the Church's current "impotence" at dealing with the spiritual failure is the pressing issue of the moment. ( I know a lot of you Positivists think I'm nuts. It would be so much easier to implement a policy solution than a cultural transformation, yet it is the latter that needs to be done.) Protestantism is dying and Orthodoxy is static, incapable of change. That leaves the Church.

Vatican Two was supposed to sort this mess out, but it hasn't, primarily because the Hierarchy reformed ineptly and inappropriately. I think Francis recognises this and his hoping for some Divine solution. I think he is aware of the problem though doesn't have any solutions of his own. I think he was hoping something would come out of the Family Synod but nothing appears to have happened. The Church's spinning of the wheels is regrettable. This is bad.


For me, the overall strategic picture looks remarkably similar to late 1920's early 30's.

2016 is going to be interesting.