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A topic that John Derbyshire and Peter Brimelow have discussed over the years is the cultural interregnum that existed in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. This was a topic raised in their talks at the inaugural VDare conference in Berkeley Springs. For a little more than a decade, starting toward the end of the Cold War and running through the Clinton years, certain taboo topics could be discussed in public. You could also take the rational position on these topics without being killed.
For example, Peter Brimelow published his book in immigration titled, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster. The book was an expansion of an exceptionally long essay he published in National Review. His essay criticizing immigration policy and warning about the cultural damage being done by it took up the majority of the space for that issue. National Review published an anti-immigration special edition and felt no need to grovel about it.
Around the same time, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray published the The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. Not only did they publish the book, but lots of people bought, read and discussed it. Those alive during this period probably recall that it was a popular topic of conversation. Murray was actually allowed on television to frankly discuss the findings. Again, mainstream conservatives did not ritually denounce the book.
These are two examples of where now taboo subjects were acceptable. During this interregnum, a wide range of topics and people were allowed to operate. Jared Taylor, the founder and leader of American Renaissance, was allowed on television to talk about his views. His conference was shown on C-SPAN. Here is an old clip of Sam Francis speaking at the conference. Notice the lack of fainting and hysterical demands for violence against the people in the clip.
Today it is hard to imagine what it must have been like to live in a country where people could openly debate the topics of the day. One of the only benefits of the communications revolution is that we now have easy access to archival video from the time before the crazies took over the public square. We know there was once a place where adults could speak freely about difficult topics. The past is a counter to the claims of the present and operates as a hope for the future.
That is the context in which Brimelow and Derbyshire usually discuss this. The 1990’s was a peak time for them and the older dissidents. It was not just the peak years of their personals careers, but a peak for honest inquiry. The end of the Cold War and the apparent transition back to normalcy was a hopeful time. Instead of everything organized around a twilight struggle against communism, the focus of public life could return to the practical and productive.
There are two questions at the heart of this. Why did this period of relative tolerance occur and is it possible to return to such a state? For two decades now the lights have been going out in America and the West. The former Soviet Union offers more political freedom, because they have clear rules. The public square in the West is now controlled by a feckless, emotionally unstable mob that flits from panic to panic, destroying whatever happens to be in its way.
The answer to the first question is rooted in the past. What appears to have been an interregnum was actually a continuation of the Cold War consensus. Maintaining a broad public debate was an essential part of opposing communism. The West was where people could question the state. The Soviet Union did not permit public debate or questioning the state. This consensus carried forward after the end of the Cold War but shifted to more relevant topics.
Note that the closing of the American mind started with the 2000 election. During the Clinton years both sides of the consensus had to search around for a reason to exist now that the communists were gone. One side settled on post-Marx culturalism and the other embraced neoconservatism. For the former side, white people and heritage America would be the enemy around which the ruling class would organize, while the other side wanted Islam to be the new enemy.
You will note that the neoconservatives have produced a new enemy now that post-Marx culturalism seems to be burning out. The Russia-China axis will be the new forever enemy around which America must be organized. The other side seems to be open to this new arrangement, perhaps sensing that their war on white people is becoming dangerous for themselves. On the other hand, nostalgia plays an enormous role in ruling class thinking.
The second question is more difficult to know. The Judeo-Puritan ruling class that still prevails is a product of the 20th century. Unlike in Russia, where the old Cold War ruling class was eventually replaced by a modern one, America and the West remains saddled with a ruling elite built for a prior age. The American ruling class is sure that it can only exist if America is organized around some great struggle. It is why for thirty years they have lurched from one crusade to the next.
On the other hand, reality eventually does prevail. America is now suffering a shortage of qualified people for high skilled jobs. It turns out that airplane pilots and engineers are not floating across the Rio Grande. It also turns out that the cost of racial vengeance is not only borne by the bad whites. Managerial class whites are now experiencing the consequences of their reckless misbehavior. This is no way to organize a society for a new cold war with old foes.
In the end though, the answer to the larger question that looms over all of this is that for America to become a normal society, it must acquire a normal elite. Again, Russia provides a useful example. The old communist elites were able to transition into a new system of rule by oligarch. The 1990’s was also an interregnum of sorts for America’s old Cold War foe. The end of that period brought about a return to normalcy with the rise of a new elite reflective of the new Russia.
This did not happen in America. The cost of winning the Cold War was the belief among the ruling class that they had no need to change. They were on the right side of history so the only rational answer was to push down on the accelerator. For thirty years America has been rocketing toward the glorious future with a generation at the wheel, high on Cold War success and cultural narcissism. Unlike Russia, America’s elite has never had to confront their limitations.
In the long run, the last twenty years may be seen as the slow painful death of the Cold War ruling elite’s legitimacy. This dark age in America and the West will be understood as the slow death of an old power structure. These spasms of illiberal authoritarianism are the death throes of an old system. From the rubble of elite legitimacy will rise a new elite and new cultural framework to support them. There will be a new elite for a new America and a new West.
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“ It turns out that airplane pilots and engineers are not floating across the Rio Grande.”
You haven’t seen this week the push for more diversity in the cockpit? That’s their answer. Then there is this:
https://time.com/5753435/amazon-atlas-air-cargo-crash/
In training when he didn’t know what to do he would just push buttons.
Hell we have political leaders and administrators that do essentially the same thing. Have a nice flight, careful crossing the bridge.
This interregnum thing, how long is it going to last?
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i believe it ended already?
“Oh, lord have mercy myself,” Aska said as the dive began
Jesus.
The NTSB reports and findings are always fascinating, but as usual, will be coated in the official smear of not-blaming a single person – and maybe pulling some politically incorrect punches.
There used to be a show here in the UK, Air Crash Investigation, which featured mostly NTSB guys and their investigations. Indeed, it was testament to some of the older pilots exceptional courage and skill (former Navy and USAF), that many crashes in the 70s, 80s and 90s were nowhere near as bad as they could have been.
I don’t fly anymore (unless an ’emergency’) for various reasons – but having an Aska in the cockpit ain’t gonna be getting me keen to get back in the air. Just imagine: fondled by Somali airport security for bombs, treated like prisoner because China Flu, only to find an Aska clone at the helm…
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I was a Private Pilot for a while in the 1990s (quit as it’s really only useful if you own an airplane which makes owning a boat look reasonable ). Here’s the FAA view on any airplane accident/crash:
Pilot error. Even if the wing falls off because the maintenance crew didn’t tighten some bolts. Pilot should’ve caught it on pre-flight inspection.
The Atlas Air crash definitely WAS pilot error. Hell, it was management error hiring that idiot. And now three men are dead and an airplane is destroyed.
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Never forget that the billion dollar F-35 that bounced off a carrier deck in broad daylight and calm waters in the Mediterranean Sea and then fell into the drink was piloted by the “best” female aviator that the Navy has ever produced! Will we never learn?
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Not to mention the naval incidents. We had one ourselves here in Scandinavia, where a Norwegian crew crashed into a bulk carrier who was lit up like a Christmas tree, sinking a spanking new frigate.
Some months earlier, they had been celebrated in some magazine for featuring the first all-girl navigation team in the Norwegian navy.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/17/europe/norway-navy-sunken-frigate-scli-intl/index.html
It sounds like this panic-stricken copilot fired up the engines to full blast and then put the plane into a nosedive before the crash. In the end it sounds like the pilot was struggling to pull the controls against the copilot, but how many seconds did the pilot hesitate to act because of an subconscious ingrained fear of being labeled a racist? And did those seconds end up mattering?
nothing to add to this post, really. we are fortunate the progs are so keen to tear down their own system, speeding up the renewal process greatly. and with far less bloodshed. the more virulent the virus, the quicker it burns out. i would expect large numbers of whites in the military to leave as their current time reaches an end. that will put paid to military adventurism. the military will be just another affirmative action jobs program, like in europe.
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A Greek philosopher once said that a state would go to ruin once its founding principles had been put into practice in an absurdly extreme fashion. Think of the triumphalism of the 19th centuryu Abolitionists carried to the absurdity of 20 century affirmative action and sexual license.
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“death throes”
Common misspelling.
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Excellent piece, to which I’d just add that “america” has been organized for “crusade” ever since Abe Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation after Antietam — his reason for doing so less “freedom” than mobilize public opinion in Great Britain against recognizing the Confederacy. Lincolnite America is over, and good riddance, and any future polity has to recognize and exorcise the demons that the evil man and his toadies unleashed upon the continent – nay, the entire world.
Imagine being a Yankee soldier looking up from Hell and seeing the consequence of what you fought for. Must hurt.
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The urge to crusade has been “a ghost in the machine” from the very beginning. JQA famous quip about not going abroad in search of monsters to destroy was made in opposition to that urge two hundred years ago.
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The ruling elite of the GAE see themselves as post national. They’re citizens of the world, rulers actually, or so they see themselves.
As such, they can express complete disgust with the United States, which is just one of many provinces within the GAE. And pursue policies that are detrimental to that province and the people who love there.
It’s really quite remarkable. The only historic parallel I can thing of is the Roman Empire from the third century on.
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Merch suggestion: something with “DISSIDENT” across the front, loud and proud. Maybe with a large “Z” in the background behind it, but maybe a different font than the current one. Plenty of young graphic designers who would be happy to make a design for you for a pretty low cost (there’s some sites out there where they contract their services). Or a pithy quote. Also I really think a graphic of the Alaric artwork (public domain) would be super cool. It’s an awesome piece of art. Just my $0.02
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How about
Z2024
“Mourning in America”
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DiZidents Unite!
put “Dissident” on a toothpaste tube
My gut says that the interregnum period in the US largely overlapped with the Bush Senior presidency.
Recall that Bush Sr. and his people were extremely foreign-policy oriented. Their main issues were wrapping up the Cold War and prosecuting Gulf War I against Saddam Hussein.
These were also the more sober folks who tried to assure Russia that NATO would not expand eastward.
Because of this overseas focus Bush Sr. always polled very well on foreign policy.
I can’t remember a single significant domestic initiative from that regime other than Sr getting torched on tax hikes during the ’92 campaign.
So, in the US interregnum, the lack of domestic policy focus from the top left a bit of a vacuum that many groups were permitted to fill.
In Russia, the interregnum lasted much longer, culminating in the specific hand selection of Putin by Yeltsin.
I believe Putin is Yeltsin’s penance for what Yeltsin permitted the West to do to Russia. Yeltsin was a morally and spiritually weak man, but he did not appear to hate his country or his people.
I believe Yeltsin saw strengths in Putin to do what was necessary to save Russia from being split up and devoured by Western plunderers.
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Putin did not want Russia to suffer the fate of the American South nor the vassalage of the European states.
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The War on Whites got its start under Bush I, who promoted mass migration and deindustrialization to the hilt. I lived abroad when it started, and came back to the United States as his reign of terror lite started to wind down. Those of us on what we now call the Dissident Right watched in horror an discussed it hushed tones even then as that unfolded, and, if anything, did not apprehend how horrible it would prove to be. In fact, the Dissident Right really began with the Buchanan Brigade reaction against Bush 1. Some even voted for Clinton, who in the first term sought to undo the mass migration although he ended up fully onboard and presided over NAFTA; those two things are inextricably linked and started under Bush 1.
So I would include the War on Whites as Bush 1’s primary domestic program and it was interwoven with his foreign policy obsessions. In my eyes, the two worst Administrations were Bush 1 and Bush 2, and that includes the current trainwreck.
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*To clarify, the War on Whites stared with the “civil rights” insanity, affirmative action, and Immigration Act of 1965, but those opening salvos were at least disguised as something not punitive and destructive. Bush 1 took it to the overtly destructive stage.
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Given that at this point, we generally agree that our task is awakening other whites, I wonder if politics is the appropriate venue for dissidents?
I’ve often wondered if it would be more effective to organize around a religion. It wouldn’t be too difficult to put together a generic Protestantish dogma, give it a new paint job, and use it as a vehicle for promoting nationalist and pro-white values.
Religions tend to have better legal protections than political groups, and are a more effective tool for building communities. After permeating the culture with the new religion, then you can move to politics.
2
It’s not enough to be new and different from the past. Leadership is supposed to be composed of the best of us (strongest, smartest, wisest etc). And it used to be that ascendancy to the top required running a gauntlet of harsh trials that revealed the top dog. It was earned in tangible accomplishments.
Not any more. Our leadership is now “selected” by a vote of the “average” citizen (aided by overwhelming vote fraud). People with no history in the roots of the community, no skin in the game, no purpose except allegiance to the government gravy train, now vote for conman promising the largest ephemeral bribe. And hence we get what we deserve.
If we do not wake up, Ukraine is our future. That culture and society has devolved into a toxic stew in which a miniature prancing Jew fag leads a cadre of tatted up neo-Nazi skinheads in a rape and pillage of babushkas while protected by a dwindling corp of sane white guys dying out in a war of attrition against other sane white guys. You can’t make this shit up. We are way beyond redemption via the voting booth.
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disagree due to scale differences. we are big enough to prop up ukraine’s charade; who/what is big enough to prop up a US sized performance? Rome split into two parts without any major bloodshed; we will too, probably 3 – 5 pieces.
1
As for immigration in particular, I think the end of rational debate is more sinister. The Left had opposed mass migration due to the financial devastation it would inflict on the White working class, which was its bread and butter. The neoliberals/Establishment Republicans wanted cheap labor. The Left, soured on the lumpen proletariat the working class Whites represented, decided to join hands with neoliberals/Establishment Republicans and proceeded to flood the nation with aliens. Since the Left controlled all forms of communications, this was the presented as a positive development.
Compare and contrast the first and second Clinton Administrations to document this switch in positions. Even films of the era presented mass migration as an evil Establishment Republican project. See DROP DEAD GORGEOUS with the lovely Denise Richards circa 1999. In books, a leftwing journalist wrote in 2003 REEFER MADNESS: SEX, DRUGS AND CHEAP LABOR IN THE BLACK MARKET, which even the Buckleyites applauded.
So until around the end of the first disastrous W Administration, the Left and Paleocons (and some more mainstream traditional Cons) were on the same page about immigration. Then the Neoliberals and Neoconservatives decided to wage a simultaneous jihad against Muslims abroad and Whites at home.
While the Neoliberals and Neoconservatives may want to call off the War on Whites because like all American wars it is starting to blow back and also take them as casualties, it is too late. This will have to continue to burn them, hopefully with an even higher body count of White progressives at the hands of the non-Whites they fetishized. The turning point will be the harvesting of at least one Cloud by their pets probably in the next few years. This has a potential to finish off this corrupt system although we also will have to suffer through it. Certainly the War Machine will end spectacularly as Whites continue to exit its evil clutches and the United States suffers on its own soil after trying to light the world afire for fun and profit.
This is more of an end than an interregnum.
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It’s a piece focused on the nineties, but every point brought up I can only think of intrinsic it all is. The Puritans wanted to cleanse Christianity of all traces of Catholicism. The new world just gave them a place to start over anew and eventually they turned their gaze to their Southern cousins and eventually the world.
If today is bad, it’s because of the sixties. If the sixties are bad it’s becuase of the thirties. If the rot goes back into the mists of time then we cannot be conservatives by definition. If that’s the case, we need to find the nearest bastille.
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I think the organizational foreign policy principle of the elites we are seeing finally dying, literally in the triumvirate of Biden/Pelosi/McConnell, is not the Cold War, but the “arsenal of democracy” of 1933 and the bipartisan drive to realize the failed vision of Woodrow Wilson. Pelosi was born in 1940, Biden and McConnell were born in 1942, and all of them dreamed of becoming the next Franklin Roosevelt, who dragged America kicking and screaming into international entanglements and alliances, based on moral, not practical, arguments.
1
The red diaper babies and their descendants from the post war period and the sexual revolution and civil rights 60’s have yet to burn themselves out.
We are still suffering from it.
The new elites if they are to take us anywhere or help us establish anything worthwhile will need to be free of this nonsense.
Secular utopianism as brought to our institutions since the 50’s is poison and our Christianity has been toothless in fighting it.
The sane Christians in America should have acted like Muslims would have and the moment the Supreme Court banned public prayer a fatwah should have been called on DC and it’s courts.
Instead Christian’s in America caved
Now we as Christian’s are estranged from our government and increasingly our own culture.
The Russians now seem to have that religion part on track in their culture and it is backing their system of government, which means their system may be a formidable force.
1
Up until the noughties, a man like Christopher Hitchens was able to defend David Irving, praise his biography on Joseph Goebbels as the best book on WWII he’d ever read, and even intimate that the Holocaust-deniers had a point or two worth debating.
I wonder if the Trotskyite old faggot would have the balls today – I often hear people lament his early passing but as a fan myself, I am not altogether confident that he would; rock stars should die young.
2
I suspect Hitch would have followed the same path of people like Andrew Sullivan. He would have gone from eccentric gadfly to ignored outcast without much fanfare. Conservatives would have posted a few laments about his expulsion from polite company, but then back to burying their face in the crotch of their left-wing masters.
This is the nature of post-Marx culturalism. It operates like an increasingly manic murmuration of starlings. Those who fail to keep up are abandoned. Those left behind are left alone as long as they do not cause too much trouble, like you see with Sullivan. Those who cause trouble come under attack, like you see with a Michael Tracy.
Mostly agree with your fine essay but wished to comment on this:
‘America is now suffering a shortage of qualified people for high skilled jobs. It turns out that airplane pilots and engineers are not floating across the Rio Grande.’
One could argue that this has mostly always been the case in the USA. US universities before WW2 were mostly a joke and serious American students would go to Germany to do their doctorates. The influx of European scientists during the ’30s and ’40s — people such as Fermi, Einstein, von Braun, von Neumann, Teller, Ulam, Courant, and a host of others — changed the complexion of the US university system, and the (declining) impact of this influx can be felt even today. The USA has never really been self-reliant in science and engineering, and the career paths on offer to scientists and research engineers are uncertain and relatively poorly-paid. And perhaps this is because the USA has a social and political structure not consonant with a modern society — perhaps more in tune with the early 19th century. Because of the influx of highly skilled immigrants it never had to modernize socially and culturally. My humble opinion.
Religiosity and a return to the spiritual is key. Z alludes to arising from the rubble of elite leadership; almost all of the essay’s in Solzhenitsyn’s should-read anthology, “From Under the Rubble,” speak to the absolute need of this element in order to truly rise Phoenix-like from the ashes to some better state. For Solzhenitsyn’s Russe, the Orthodox faith, though diminished and subverted during the long winter of Communist subjugation, remained key, one of the bedrocks of the Russian folk. Given the heterodoxic nature of America, one wonders if appeals to the spiritual are of any use. Concurrent with that, the diversity that now enriches us seems to augur for a splintering of the body such that even the Great Physician won’t be able to properly set the break.
As has been mentioned here many times, it seems the internet and more specifically, social media has played a large part in the closing of the American mind. One would think that’s counterintuitive as the net opened new worlds, connections and information for billions of people – a new sort of potential enlightenment. And while that is the case to a degree for many, it has also allowed tards, freaks, degenerates, cat ladies and other dross to aggregate and spout their blather and hysteria which in turn ends up exerting influence that in the past never would or could have happened. It’s also allowed the nefarious and government (one and the same) to more easily spread their propaganda and lies to mold opinion. That’s going to be one of the big challenges – what to do about the virtual public square.
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