Montesquieu famously explained that each system of government has a principle that animates the people within that system. In a democratic republic, the citizens, and presumably the office holders, are driven by the willingness to put the interests of the community ahead of private interests. While every society of sufficient size has factions, the interests of those factions come after the interests of the republic. This is the framework of what dissidents call civic nationalism.
Since the middle of the last century or so, this view of politics has been the exclusive domain of the Right. The Left slowly embraced the partisanship of interest group politics during the cultural revolution of the 1960’s. First it was the array of interest groups in the old New Deal coalition that dominated politics into the 1970’s. That has given way to what we call identity politics today. Meanwhile the Right has stubbornly held to the abstract concepts of republican virtue and civic duty.
One result is that a standard item in the toolkit of Official Conservatism has been the argument against identity politics. Initially, as the Left embraced race politics, this was mostly an argument against pandering to blacks. As the array of identity groups in the radical coalition has expanded, it is now a generalized argument against appealing to the self-interest of groups based on their professed identity. The claim is identity politics is bad for the country, as it pits one group against another.
Tucker Carlson is probably the most vocal opponent of identity politics. He does a bit against it as part of his standard act. The other night, according to this Breitbart piece, he warned people about what will happen when the military is fully woke on identity politics. He asked, “what if the current lunacy turns out to be more than a passing phase? What if woke race obsession is not a fad, but instead an incurable brain virus that’s infected our country’s entire leadership class?”
He then showed a clip of some television performers talking about what Joe Biden should to do to have a diverse administration. Carlson then went on to explain that the people being given spots in the administration are not qualified for the posts, in the sense they have the skills to perform the stated duties. Instead, they are being given jobs to tick boxes on the ideological tick list. He then asks what would happen if the woke warriors take over the military.
It is never fully explained, but the viewer is supposed to come away thinking that this would be very bad. Instead of transgender fighter pilots being selected based on their skill, they would be selected based on their choice of sundress. Instead of based black guy getting promoted for his ability, woke black guy will be promoted because he is really into his blackness. Girls will be installed into special forces units to satisfy the desires of Nth wave feminist, rather than on their ability to fight.
Carlson does not put it that way, but he carefully avoids the implications of what he is saying, as he likes living in a mansion. The truth is, a military composed of the sorts of people the Left says are the future will be a disaster. The promotion of female officers is already showing up in incident reports. The military brass is well to the Left of the American public and they are fully committed to diversity. It is just a matter of time before that institution looks like the rest.
The fact is, Carlson is peddling the same civic nationalist fantasy that conservatives have been peddling for generations. In the face of identity politics, they preach a weird combination of individualism and a sacrifice to principles the other side rejects. His “what if” question is about thirty years too late, as it has been happening since the 1990’s and is accelerating. The real question that needs to be discussed openly is how does one live in a world defined by identity politics?
So far, the stock response from conservative like Carlson is the same answer they have been giving for generations now. That is, white people in general, but conservative whites in particular, have to pretend this is not happening. If they just carry on as if that old republican virtue is the best, eventually the other side will tire of their fads, see the results and return to the civic nationalist fold. In response to the radical advances on every front, civic nationalism has become a cargo cult.
Worse yet, it is a call to docility. The civic nationalist argues that eventually, the truth of radialism will catch up to them and all the good citizens really needs to do is wait for reality to slit the throat of radicalism. Instead of matching the Left’s anti-white rhetoric with pro-white rhetoric, which would be really bad according the civic nationalists, white people just need to embrace their individualism and soon enough things will go their way. UFO cults have greater self-awareness.
At some point, the dumb idea stops being dumb and becomes dangerous. We live in an age where public figures, elected officials, brag about withholding the Covid vaccine from whites in the name of racial vengeance. Not long ago this sort of rhetoric was considered a white nationalist conspiracy theory. How long before some unthinkable racial assault on whites is the new fad among the ruling class? Refusing to accept this reality, as is common with civic nationalist, is suicide.
This would be fine if it was a private form of suicide. If civic nationalists, like Tucker Carlson, simply focused on the work product of the Left, leaving the rest to the imagination of his viewers, that would be fine. Living within the constraints placed upon him by his employer, but seeding the minds of his viewers with the reality of their situation, would be a great service to his people. That’s not what he is doing. He is explicitly telling his viewers to lie back and take it, promising it will be over soon.
Civic nationalism, like libertarianism, is now a form of escapism. It allows the believer to stand on the sideline, not only believing it is the moral high ground, but certain that what is happening on the field will go his way. The principles of a republic, not only have no place in a majority-minority society, they are a dangerous narcotic that prevents the user from accepting reality. Civic nationalism and its traveling partner libertarianism are more dangerous than the identity politics they claim to oppose.
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And yet, he’d be a better president than Biden or Harris.
That’s a very low bar.
True enough. I would wager that, at this point, a half eaten hot dog bun left in the Oval Office for a month or so may be able to out perform all comers.
At least the most harm it might do is attract a few mice as opposed to the den of rats that’s been occupying that space for decades.
Well, the good news is, as you allude to, how many large scale enterprises just won’t function efficiently when wokism is the main hiring criteria. I have just been doing a survey of some of the UK’s main publicly funded bodies, and they are going the way of wokism. It’ll be interesting to see how it unfolds. Most large scale corporations are already phenomenally inefficient, and that’s before ‘the wokisms’; so I see a silver lining to that cloud that identifies as a continent. So we have two main things: the lack of ability that comes about because of diverse… Read more »
“The civic nationalist argues that eventually, the truth of radicalism will catch up to them and all the good citizens really needs to do is wait for reality to slit the throat of radicalism.” I was an Ivy Leaguer during ’84-’88 on a campus that took pride on being on the leading edge of PC radical left identity politics. It was first time I was ever exposed to these people. Skipping over the gory details, I eventually came to take great comfort and solace in the fact that the second these freaks left their leftist fantasy bubble the real world… Read more »
Amazing, isn’t it? They won and we let it happen…this will ultimately unravel for them but how many of us are going to be ground to dust as it happens…?
I eventually came to take great comfort and solace in the fact that the second these freaks left their leftist fantasy bubble the real world would kick them right in the teeth, good and hard. Boy, was I ever wrong. They have remade society and even the corporate oligarchs in their own image.
sometimes i think leftists are actual rational people but different compared to white nationalists, they’re supporting leftism cause globalism has been winning since forever, right wingers are losers, always have, always will be. If white nationalists would actually win some battles many white leftists would change sides.
Difficult to win when playing the game by the opposition’s rules. Or conversely, when the opposition does not play by your rules. As has been said, we need to “turn the board over”.
You’re not wrong …….. not yet anyway. Me thinks that the “real world” just hasn’t caught up with us yet. The slowly dissipating military power of the US is still strong enough to hold off major powers like Russia and China from making overt moves. The US empire’s juju on other forms of power *has been* reasonably strong as well – and the dollar has had a hammerlock on everybody else’s economy so that we’ve been able to dictate terms for many decades. All of that is slowly but surely slipping away – and it’s the “woke” idiots who are… Read more »
Yup, I think everyone is waking up to this. Makes me think the End Of Men ideas of (((Hannah Rosan))) were right. Competence has many forms, it seems.
People need to understand that woke mob will be perfectly fine with any devastation they cause – economic or human – as long as it means that they are still winning. They have the same mentality as blacks in Zimbabwe or South Africa.
This is a great point. This is already happening in SAfrica. So what is it like there?
Animals—even Black or White—respond to pain. To assume Zimbabwe or SA is some how different, does not reflect reality. Zimbabwe is a basket case and has begun to attempt to bring back the white farmer. SA is still teetering and has a bit of a way to descend. But eventually, they will suffer a similar fate to Zimbabwe. Point is that the mob may indeed prevail in destruction, but it can’t live upon that. Eventually, they must come to terms with the folk who make/made their very existence possible. Destruction, I admit, is a quicker process than building, but eventually… Read more »
And how far did Zimbabwe have to fall before they got desperate and tried to get whitey back? Those two countries prove my point.
Coming to a city near you, The Purge 3, ridding ourselves of the white people problem. Well, not all of them just the middle and lower classes. They won’t see it coming. It was not suddenly bred. It will not swiftly abate. Through the chilled years ahead, When Time shall count from the date That the Saxon began to hate. When will this come? Now the Saxon’s hate has to be against his own kind and maybe some of the other (((ones))). Never forget the use of the diverse orcs is directed by our very own kind with some help… Read more »
I doubt any purge is coming. The world needs white people. Until light breaks through the clouds, just resist it. Become a surly bastard. Be funny about it though…no one likes a humorless prick. Embrace your role as the oddly racially-conscious white guy with weird ideas. It will attract some people your way. That’s what’ll make you cool and others lame. Don’t ignore the power of being cool and irreverent.
Did you spell irreverent right? Or, irrelevant?
I meant irreverent. And when I wrote “humorless prick” I was thinking of the archetypal Fox News Uncle who ruins dinners with his caustic takes. That’s impotent rage. Irreverence can be a beautiful thing if wielded properly.
I’m doing what I can… My ancestors survived in the frigid woods of canada long before civilization and we can do it again. The collapse will eventually happen, it’s a question of how much damage it does on the way down.
I’m preparing, prepping,learning, lifting, investing, spreading my message to normiecons, connecting – and hopefully finding a nice woman to have a large white family with. Not much else you can do.
Become a surly bastard…. Done and done!
I’ve wondered if some Anglos are simply not genetically capable of being racist/tribal. The South is settled by Royalists and Ulster Scots. However Canadian-style and Yankee anglos just don’t seem capable of it. We are literally flooded with aliens and they still display out-group preferences (whereas some other whites like myself incline towards increased in-group preference).
However americans are heavily armed and have the largest bad-white reservoir in the world. We shall see – from what I see and hear, many white guys are waking up since November.
We have to make loving to hate cool, because right now, loving blacks and browns is the really cool thing….
If there’s a plus anywhere it’s in the demographics of the people who are killing each other off in the Dem strongholds. I think we need to redefine those killings as “retroactive abortions”.
Glad I’m not the only one who gets tired of Tucker’s act. He can be spot on with some of his analysis but never takes that next step.
I don’t own a TV, and have never seen a Tucker Carlson show, but I get the impression that he is a huckster trying to capitalize on the desperation of the anti-woke cohort of our citizenry. Now that the coup has succeeded, and a hard tyranny is on the march, these people need some glimmer of hope in order to stave off anxiety about losing their comfort zone. Rather than face reality, and do the hard work of rebellion, they prefer the illusion of false hope as their Soma. Only the return of real hardship will get these couch potatoes… Read more »
Tucker Carlson believes what he is saying, at least most of it. Mainstream advertisers have completely abandoned the show and most of the commercials that run during it are from the My Pillow guy and the people who sell upright walkers and things like that. He has relocated his family to rural Maine and does the show from there after antifa loons started banging on his door in D.C. one night harassing his wife and kids.
My only issue is that America was (IS) a really nice place to live. I LIKE fresh food, running water, reliable electricity and roads where I can safely drive 80mph.
“Mad Max” and “12 Monkeys” was fun to watch: I don’t want my children to live it.
Heh. I must watch 12 Monkeys again in light of, ahem, current events. Of course, in the film they actually had a real crisis on their hands…
We have to share that all with the whole world now! White America stole all that stuff, we are told, and now the rest of the world wants it back!
At least, thats how I understand the story!
I’ve watched a few Tucker rants on YouTube. Since he states nothing that is not first discussed here—often long prior—he’s not my go to person for news and direction. However, I disagree with Z-man. I see nowhere a voice that says “sit back and take it”. Tucker simply has a line in the sand he does not cross wrt our current struggle. This is understandable for *any* commentator in the MSM today, and will continue to be so in the future. That’s the nature of things in an opposition controlled media—you must walk a tight line to remain viable to… Read more »
What’s that old Victorian wedding night saying?
To paraphrase:
”Lie back, and think of true conservatism “?
Because that’s the best the GOP has had to offer for decades.
He’s Swanson family fortune rich and related by marriage to a US Senator. Plus he’s already reinvented his act once when he was shellacked on the old Buckley “Firing Line” show by John Stewart, if all people.
Not that I don’t trust him…I just understand what he does is performance art, just live the rest of the Fox lineup. O Riley, Hannity…they’re just circus clowns, and the joke is on us.
Our vibrant future will be extended the same way the USSR was able to survive past it’s sell-by date: massive monopolies. We have one aircraft manufacturer, Google controls the US Internet and all advertising, Amazon all retail, etc.
What will be different this time is that China is not woke and they have their own monopolies.
I do not look forward to our new masters, but I certainly won’t shed a tear for the crudescent mediocrities who strip mined our country.
its a good point about the USSR. Did the 5 year plans or a massive centralized authority ever make for a good society? Well, at least we were told it didn’t.
It’s the great plea to that neutral arbiter that conservatives seem to think exists.
“Reality” will not bring sanity back. Reality with the woke military will be drone strikes against racist rural rednecks. Bad whites are the new Taliban.
Reality will assert itself on the normiecons and CivNats, when the white death camps start. It will not assert itself on radical leftists and make them change their mind about white people.
As I’ve mentioned before, for generations, conservative Whites, if not all Whites in general, never had to deal with this issue as we were the dominant supermajority in this now former country. There was no reason to act according to our own group self interests as there was no competition. Different regions of the former country might have had their own ways of doing things, but there was still an overall American cohesion. Once the civil rights act was passed, Whites began being inculcated into looking out for others interests before their own. After decades of this indoctrination and refusing… Read more »
Right, I think that discriminating against Whites will be met with, “Hey, thats racist” from the likes of Tucker….
I always enjoyed Lawrence Auster’s writing on the Civil Rights thing: http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/003436.html It remains a pleasure to read. There was no reason to act according to our own group self interests as there was no competition Yes. This is very true. I think that in this regard The United States is farther along than the UK (we’re still 85% white). Your statement is what goes through my mind every time I survey villages as a potential living location. A location to make a last stand. It does seem to me that a sizeable proportion of whites cannot accept what is… Read more »
This post articulates my big awakening the past few years. I guess its a meritocracy, but in a religion of wokeness. If you are really good at wokeness, and talking about wokeness and coming up with new ways to mock and demean Whitey, then you rise to the top!
“That is, white people in general, but conservative whites in particular, have to pretend this is not happening.” I’m an old-fashioned traditional values kind of guy, “well-to-do” as used to be said, pretty much always have been treated as “gentry” where I live and am not the least embarrased by it, quite the contrary: it is fitting. Given that “racism” isn’t a “thing” where I live (rural, central Argentina), my “identity” as a White (here, that means very European-looking) person isn’t paramount; what counts here is social class and formal education, accompanied by the high standards of etiquette expected by… Read more »
My assessment, and I’ll admit to being pretty cynical, is that the damage has been done. I’m so old it can’t hurt me much. You young folks are the one that are going to do the lying back.
This article is amazing. No comments of course. And it’s all older white men because the younger white men are in pretty bad shape
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-jobs-breakingviews/breakingviews-china-inc-will-recycle-used-white-guys-idUSKBN28V23T
They’re trying to shame expats now. Won’t work. I fully support any white guy leaving the West for work. As long as he marries a white woman and reproduces (missionary women?)
Nobody is softer and on more dope than young white guys though, from my experience. They are going to be eaten alive.
The disdain in the headline is amazing! Recycle used white guys. I hate these people so much
Interesting concept. Better than scooping up 2nd tier “Prajeets” like our tech companies. Also, I suspect Chinese companies don’t have the bias against older personnel as exists in American companies. On the other hand, I don’t particularly want any more to do with China on any level. Given our new administration, I suspect however it will be in six months the same situation as before Trump took office.
Let’s not forget that there has never been a ‘white identity’, before. Particularly in Europe. We were all rivals and spent a couple of thousand years scrapping with one another intermittently. There was no need for a white identify. As for non-whites, there were so few in Europe that most people never saw one. It was mainly traders/sailors and those who colonized other countries that did. So there would be zero use for such a thing. Britain only took on migrants en-masse from around 1947 (I wonder who influenced that decision?) The philosophy of the ‘woke’ is really a rejection… Read more »
On the other hand – given the apartheid electoral system in this country – anything that destroys this system is good. If you don’t believe me: https://twitter.com/search?q=%40davidoatkins%20apartheid&src=typed_query&f=live
As to wish fulfillment, what happens to the petrodollar when fossil fuels are “banned”? (As if.)