Jacobin: Far Right Intellectuals Are Offering Workers a Rotten Deal

Editor’s Note: I don’t know what “Far Right” even means. I think it means being White and being with fine with that and White solidarity over individualism.

Donald Trump is done.

Steve Bannon was done years ago and had been reduced to hosting a now defunct YouTube show while serving as Miles Guo’s butler. The Alt-Right splintered almost four years ago and even some of the people who were most heavily involved in it like this website have recognized its flaws, continued to evolve and moved on from it over the course of the Trump presidency. Far from being a “white supremacist” riot, the Capitol Siege was a conspiratard goon march by Donald Trump’s most dead end and delusional followers. It was the apocalyptic fulfillment of Q’s prophecy that “The Storm Is Coming.”

Jacobin Mag:

“In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, Steve Bannon was widely credited as the “mastermind” behind Donald Trump’s win. Glowing profiles in mainstream outlets followed  —  a fact that was apparently on Trump’s mind when he removed the Breitbart propagandist from his White House perch as chief strategist. It was perhaps not surprising that a man as fundamentally driven by vainglory and lucre as Trump would eventually come to cross-purposes with Bannon, who, for all his credentials as a showbiz pundit, often aspired to be something like the intellectual (indeed, spiritual) sage of right-wing populism.

This remarkable tension between hyperreal sensationalism and spiritualist sensationalism are brought to the fore in Benjamin Teitelbaum’s excellent new book War for Eternity: Inside Bannon’s Far-Right Circle of Global Power Brokers. Part ethnography, part biography of Bannon, and part political analysis, War for Eternity draws on extensive interviews with Bannon and other intellectual scions on the far right to unpack the “ultraconservative ideology” of traditionalism that animates their transnational efforts. …

What makes the clowns all part of the same circus is less their shared commitments than their mutual bêtes noires — namely, modernity. All believe that with the advent of modern liberalism — and its permissiveness, pluralism, and materialism — something fundamental was lost. More secular variants of traditionalism tend to emphasize a sense of community, belonging, and national purpose. More New Agey and mystical brands insist on abandoning materialism and returning to a more spiritually disciplined existence. As Teitelbaum puts it …

The right-wing populism of figures like Steve Bannon, for instance, excludes huge swaths of workers, despite his claims of championing a working-class politics. Compare that to democratic socialism, which offers all workers not just better material conditions, but empowerment — extending basic economic and political rights that neoliberalism has allowed to wither away.

Unfortunately, the allure of traditionalism remains relatively strong, as people grope for a sense of meaning and community beyond the atomization and one-dimensionality of contemporary capitalism. But Medicare for All and democracy on the job are much more meaningful than mystical rhetoric about a transcendent source of insight only a few reactionary intellectuals are allowed to possess.”

It was a bizarre experience for us to watch on television.

I never signed up for or had anything to do with that version of rightwing populism. I had supported Donald Trump in 2016 because the MAGA agenda was an improvement over mainstream conservatism, not to join a personality cult and live through a reality television presidency.

In spite of all these huge flaws, it is worth remembering that Trump won the 2016 election. He also won over 10 million more votes in the 2020 election. He only lost the election to Joe Biden by a thousand votes in a handful of swing states and that is because Right Indies and Moderates who are populist voters didn’t show up for him because he neglected his mandate. What if Trump hadn’t bungled his response to COVID-19? What if he had sent in the military to crush the Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots? What if Jared Kushner hadn’t been in charge of alienating his base and running his campaign into the ground?

Contrast Donald Trump who won more votes in 2020 with Bernie Sanders. Bernie ran in 2016 and lost to Hillary Clinton. He ran again in 2020 only to get smoked by Joe Biden and lost more states than he did in 2016. It appears that much of Bernie Sanders’ support in 2016 wasn’t a vote for “democratic socialism” so much as it was a vote by White men against Hillary Clinton. Bernie went from winning 23 states to winning only 9 states. Woke Bernie’s campaign was more of a disaster than Trump’s campaign. Jared Kushner did a better job than whoever was running Bernie’s 2020 campaign.

Why did Joe Biden win the Democratic nomination? Why did Trump win over 10 million more voters than last time? Why Bernie Sanders support actually drop over the 2016 election? Why did Elizabeth Warren’s campaign go down in flames? Why aren’t folks buying what they are selling? Florida voters approved a $15 minimum wage. 63% of voters support universal health care. 45% of voters last fall supported Universal Basic Income. 65% of Americans now support monthly $2,000 checks. 2/3rds of Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy. 60% of voters support cancelling $50,000 of student loan debt. And yet, the popularity of the product doesn’t translate into political support for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. There is something fatally flawed about socialism and progressivism.

What is that flaw? Why does a super majority of the public say in polls that they support ending overseas wars, support taxing the wealthy, support a massive investment in our infrastructure, support $2,000 checks, support student loan debt forgiveness, support universal health care, but nowhere even close to a majority supports Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren? The answer is that the American public and even Democrats refuse to support the radical Modernism that defines the Far Left.

What is Modernism? It is cultural liberation and cultural egalitarianism. It is anti-traditionalism. The most extreme and resented form of it is Social Justice ideology, political correctness or now wokeness. This is what repulses the Right and alienates moderates in the Center. The most extreme form of it was on display in the George Floyd riots over the summer when mobs of Left-Modernists burned down businesses and tore down historic monuments. These people were so extreme that they drove Hispanics all over the country to vote for Donald Trump. They are why Joe Biden defeated Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic primary because even Democrats don’t want to empower those people.

As Jacobin often likes to point out, rightwing populists have a knack for using the culture war rhetoric to win over White working class voters and Trump showed that he could even make inroads among non-White working class voters. They can also strategically adopt progressive issues like $2,000 checks or how Trump in 2016 against NAFTA and globalism. In the end though, this doesn’t amount to much for working class voters because it is largely optical. Trump railed against China, but relented and agreed to sell them more soybeans. Trump railed against NAFTA to replace it with USMCA. He railed against Wall Street in the 2016 campaign only to transform into a Wall Street cheerleader in office. It is very easy for the populist Right to steal these issues because moderate voters like the product, but not the Democratic brand which is associated with extreme Modernism and political correctness.

Currently, the debate in the mainstream Right is about whether there is a future for “Trumpism without Trump” in the Republican Party. This website is pushing for a revival of Longism in the “Far Right.” From Trumpism, we should salvage immigration restriction, protectionism/developmental capitalism, isolationism, social conservatism and opposition to political correctness. From Longism, we should take the stillborn “Share Our Wealth” program. We should embrace wealth redistribution. In such a way, we could create a more potent populist movement that divides the Democrats between the Democratic Independent Liberal Elite (DILEs) wing and the Democratic Leaning Working Class (DLWCs) wing. We know that the extreme Modernism of the Far Left is unpopular even within the Democratic Party and the solution to it is to isolate those people by giving the redistributionist wing what it wants.

The obvious compromise that would depolarize our politics is give the vast majority of voters on both sides what they want more than anything else: wealth redistribution for ending the culture war. The Republican elite will scream “SOCIALISM” in terror. The Democratic elite will scream “RACISM” in terror. Neither wing of our neoliberal ruling class is really opposed to each other on what matters most to them. They would have rather put up with Trump for another four years than something like this. Far from being a terrifying “fascist,” Trump cut their taxes and normalized LGBTQ rights.

What do you think? Is this a rotten deal for workers or one that the overwhelming majority of working class people would support? The thought of all the wealth of the oligarchs who have been buying our elections for my entire lifetime slipping away while being slowly crushed to death by a wealth cap that lowers each year brings a smile to my face. Having to live off only $15 million is like reducing these people to poverty. They hated Huey Long so much that he was killed for suggesting it.

Can we find a candidate in time for 2024 who can run against political correctness/wokeness and extreme income inequality? Not another fake Bannonite populist like Trump? Someone with the demagogue skills of Trump and the ideology and work ethic of Huey Long who can BTFO all the enemies of ordinary people to build political support? Huey Long 2.0 would win in a landslide.

About Hunter Wallace 12378 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

25 Comments

  1. “Is this a rotten deal for workers or one that the overwhelming majority of working class people would support?”

    Both.

  2. The sole mission of the SWPP will be to improve the lives of working and middle-class Southern Whites, HW.

  3. Everything you said is correct, but I see no hope for the future.

    You are not the only one who has been taking notes and sees things clearly: So too the media and the billionaires who own social media companies.

    The MAGA movement caught them with their pants down and for most of the 4 years they were helpless in creating the “correct narrative” and dominating news distribution. For every “Trump is Hitler” story on CNN, there were 100 “Trump is the Savior” stories on Twitter, Facebook, etc. They wanted to act to gag free speech and stop Trump and MAGA from influencing the minds of the public, but they were largely helpless and afraid of blowback.

    So they started slow, by cooking the frog in warm water: the first to go mute were the “low hanging fruit” like American Renaissance and other “white supremacists.” But Trump and his followers and many mainstream conservatives and Christians were (due to their popularity and respected positions) still off-limits for the Woke censors. But then Trump and his followers began to lose position and respect (largely due to the delusional and moronic Covid response) and Woke Social Media inc. turned up the heat on the frog in the pot and started boiling him. (i.e., de-platforming more conservatives and MAGA people.)

    Then the “storming of the Capitol” happened and it was like manna from Heaven falling into the lap of Silicon Valley billionaires. Now they had the excuse they wanted: mass gagging and de-platforming began and….. this is very important….. it is ONLY the beginning. They are still taking notes.

    What did they learn?

    1. There is NO push-back from Washington on mass censorship and liberal, Woke billionaires controlling the means of information dissemination. If you are an elected official, and you object to censoring “hate” and “calls to violence” then you have chosen professional suicide. Objecting to five companies controlling the narrative and censoring the President and his followers is placing yourself firmly on the side of “white supremacy.”

    2. The American public, according to polls, agree with what they did in censoring speech and gagging elected officials and their followers who have never been convicted of a crime, but uttered “wrong-think.” The public approves, and that approval will grow as they control and frame the narrative.

    3. They learned to NEVER again allow ANYONE to oppose them or their Woke philosophy. They got away with gagging an elected President of the United States. They can now do this to anyone they choose. If some Senator objects, they gag and de-platform him too, citing their oft changing “terms of service” which is made up as they go along.

    No, I see no hope for the future.

    In 2024 if a “new Huey Long” runs for POTUS, he had better get the approval of Comrade Zuck and Comrade Dorsey. Otherwise, they will de-platform him and gag him from every social media outlet. CNN will refuse to carry his speeches, citing, “the potential for unrest.”

    A “Rubicon” has been crossed my friend: I see no hope for the future.

    • The public doesn’t support social media censorship. THE POLLS support it. There is a lot of hysteria among the politicians right now, we’ll see how they plan to deal with their fundamental lack of legitimacy that is obscured with bogus polls, stolen elections and social media censorship soon enough.

  4. The original sin wasn’t sex or murder. It was setting oneself up as God. The Masters of the Universe like Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg and to a degree Dorsey have set themselves up as gods. The idea that a parliament is sacred or a temple is also a telltale sign the class of politicians setting themselves up as gods are sinning. I don’t mean to say these things as a holy roller but the arrogance of Trump is small in comparison to the self worshipping political class.

    • I think you should just go kill yourself already. For a creature as worthless and pathetic as yourself, it’s the humane thing to do.

  5. The obvious answer to your rhetorical question is JRC for President, running on my USA Sovereign Wealth Fund based UBI, and Brad Griffin running as my Vice Presidential nominee with an explicit portfolio to end all current wars, closing all overseas bases, reducing the Pentagon budget to $50 Billion, and rooting out all anti-white policies such as Critical Race Theory from the Federal Government. Deal?.

      • Enough with the Marxist B. S. dude. No one cares about ideological crusades anymore. A SWF UBI will work. It does in Alaska. It will work as described nationwide. Go join your hero Kim in North Korea if you love those workers paradises so much. Leave the thought and action to people who can think and act.

        • “A SWF UBI will work. It does in Alaska”:

          Oil wealth sharing in the very small population of Alaska, like tolerance of the Amish, is a minor aberration, exception that proves the rule. However billionaires would not be considering and proposing “UBI” now if they didn’t also think it will work – for them.

          “No one cares about ideological crusades”:

          To the contrary, there are dozens of ideological crusades going on all over the globe – crusades to stamp out democracy, socialism and national independence.

          “join your hero Kim in North Korea if you love those workers paradises”:

          Independent, unoccupied Korea suffers under cruel sanctions, blockade and threat of invasion for many decades that would have made many other nations capitulate.

        • “Imperialism has now reached a degree of almost scientific perfection. It uses White workers to conquer non-white workers of the colonized nations. Then, it hurls the non-white workers of one colony against those of another non-white colony. Finally, it relies on the colored workers of the colonies to rule the White workers at home….”

          “We have a secret weapon…it is called Nationalism”

          Ho Chi Minh

  6. Socialists do not win because they can’t even run in U.S. “elections.” Sanders and especially Warren are far from being socialist. Furthermore, the American sheeple are still completely sold on “The American Dream” of “getting ahead” of others, climbing to the top of the class heap, and immigrants to the U.S. are mostly just as entrepreneurial (capitalist money-mad) as the citizens.

  7. Brad

    You just don’t get it with your economic analysis. You spend way too much time on the trade issue with China….The overwhelming issue is Chinese Legal Immigrants and their US Born Chinese American Voting Block:They are voting the Historic Native Born White American Majority into a racial majority within the borders of America-permanently. Why is this not considered and act of war? This is what we should have spoken about pre-Charlottesville-post-Charlottesville. Instead we had Richard Spencer effecting James Bond poses.

    The early Alt Right was never ever able to speak to Working Class White People from the ski slopes of Idaho.

    Trump boasted on the campaign trail about increasing Chinese Legal Immigrants…to the joyfull screams of the Boomer-Tard-Qtards in the audience.

    Charlotesville was bound to attrack mentally ill freaks such as James Fields and sexually perverts such as Chris Cantwell.

  8. Brad

    The economic issue between the US and China is not a trade imbalance in Chinese cabbage and American carrots. The economic issue is race-replacement immigration policy.

    The Democratic Party is attempting to murder a pre-existing Historic Nation and replace it with another nation…….

  9. “The overwhelming issue is Chinese Legal Immigrants and their US Born Chinese American Voting Block”:

    It began over two hundred years ago with the brutal enslavement of approximately one million Chinese people, in European overseas colonies and the U.S., followed by even more importation of Chinese “voluntary” labour after the slave trade was declared illegal. Importing cheaper foreign workers/consumers (Immigration) to boost profits is simply what global capitalist empires do.

    • “the Chinese (‘coolies’) worked from dawn to dusk in extreme weather. They were so ‘tireless and unremitting’ (as a newspaper from 1869 described) in their work that the railroad sent recruiters to China to bring back thousands more (…) They worked for less pay than white workers and faced serious economic restrictions (…) Because their exceptionally efficient work ethic and willingness to labor under horrendous conditions made them such valuable workers, California endorsed the Burlingame Treaty of 1868, which granted the Chinese free entry to the United States”: https://www.immigrationtounitedstates.org/449-coolies.html

    • I don’t care about Chinese scab labor past or present…only one question matters:What’s good for White Folks….This question is never asked by Numbersusa…What question does Numbers USA ask:”What’s good for Hindu Americans?…This is what you get from an organization run by a 60 year old childless White Woman with rotting ovaries.

      • “I don’t care about Chinese scab labor (…) only one question matters: What’s good for White Folks”:

        What the Empire does doesn’t matter to you as long as you think you get things cheaper by what the Empire does. That is what White Folks believe they are getting by imperialism, so they are secretly pleased with it.

  10. Psuedo intellectualism agents like Mike the K*ke Enoch are an enemy yet you protect them hunter . Why ?

  11. Ask Numersusa:What’s good for White Folks?

    Numbersusa.com is on the take from the billionaire homosexual Peter Theil.

  12. I’m for anything that breaks the currently all-powerful stranglehold of these smirking billionaires & kikes. The way to cut them back down to size is to rip away most of their ill-gotten mountains of shekels; coupling redistributionism with anti (((Cultural Marxism))) would be a great way to isolate & infuriate the jews’ gutter army of coon thugs & white race traitor fags & freaks.

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