Politics and Aesthetics

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The Democrats are about to kick-off their fashion show for picking their next presidential candidate, so the experts are trying to set the tone for the season. The fashion show is a good analogy at this stage. Designers don’t always come up with new styles that work with the public, so they try different things, hoping for one or two that work. They hope to come up with something that catches the attention of a taste-maker, like a Hollywood starlet, then all of a sudden they have a hit with the public.

Steve Jobs figured this out the second time around with Apple. It was not about cutting edge technology or making a better product. That was a field with too many big money smart players. His game was going to be as trend setter and taste-maker. He tailored the company to be the symbol of the smart set, the people who fashion themselves a cut above the masses. These are the people who determine the latest styles. The lowly music player soon became a fashion and cultural statement.

Politics often works the same way. In 1992, Bill Clinton won the presidency largely on the cool factor. He was young, as far as Baby Boomers were concerned. He was also hip and cool. He played the sax on TV wearing sunglasses! Voting for Clinton became a fashion statement for the Left. Tony Blair played the same game in Britain with the “Cool Britannica” stuff. He was young and new and the future of Britain, despite being the man, who would usher in the end of Britain as an English country.

Politics and aesthetics are tightly wound together in any form of democracy, as selecting people for elected office is a popularity contest. The winner of the beauty pageant is not objectively better in some way than the others. She just has some way of appealing to the voters in the moment. The iPod was not some great innovation or invention. It just looked cool to the right people at the right time and became the standard for music players. Barak Obama was not a great statesman. He was just the right style at the time.

It’s not just left-wing politics in America that relies on an aesthetic to carry it forward with its supporters. In 1976 Ronald Reagan lost to the dour Gerald Ford in the Republican primary. The same Reagan won in 1980 and ushered in a great cultural revival called the Reagan Revolution. In 1976 men had sideburns and wore garish leisure suits. In 1986, men wore traditional men’s suits, bathed every day and kept themselves properly groomed. The political revolution had an aesthetic.

This has always been true in the era of liberal democracy. The two great movements of the early 20th century, fascism and Bolshevism, had distinct aesthetics. The quintessential communist a century ago was a shabby looking cosmopolitan, with round spectacles and a few too many phobias. In contrast, the quintessential fascist was the beer drinking bourgeoisie hooligan, who disdained books in favor of the Faustian existence. Both sides were fighting over an aesthetic, as much as for power.

This is an important thing to understand about politics in any age, but especially in this highly democratic age. It’s about flattery, as much as anything. The people flocking to your banner do so because it validates an opinion of themselves. This piece in the Atlantic, celebrating Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg is a good example. The intended audience for that article are the sort of people, who want to belief their politics are controlled by facts and reason, rather than superstition and emotion.

The fact that both Warren and Buttigieg are pseudo-intellectual posers is not only not a liability, but it is an asset. The people they seek to attract are themselves supercilious dilettantes and poseurs. They get their opinions from the MSNBC and NPR, while claiming to be avid readers of the New York Times. These are the people who decorate their apartments with books they never read. Around a real intellectual, they are made to feel inferior, but around Warren or Buttigieg they are validated.

The argument that the democrats are heavily reliant on the super educated is what’s called flattering the reader. Democrats rely on blacks, foreigners and white people too dumb to realize they are being destroyed. That is the base of the party now. Warren and Buttigieg know they have no shot at those voters, so they hope to win the beautiful people in the party. They may not connect with the rank and file, but they can appeal to the trend setters, who have the tools to convert that into popular appeal.

Another way to see the entanglement of politics and aesthetics is look at the street battles between the alt-right and Antifa. One side kitted themselves out as preppy suburban fascists. The other side was a comical mélange of Italian Black Shirts and skateboard park anarchists. Neither side had a coherent, positive identity, so they cherry-picked styles and symbols from past movements. They could just as easily have faced off with one side in leisure suits and the other side wearing spats.

In fact, what characterizes this period is the lack of a political aesthetic that is authentic and original. This is an interregnum, where the old order is slowly giving way, but a new order has yet to form. More precisely, the battles lines between the contestants for a new order have yet to form. Instead, it is one side protecting the status quo and one side dissatisfied with it. The former has no reason to defend the old order, other than habit, while the latter has no conception of what should come next.

If there is to be a coherent political and social movement rise out of the dissident right, it will have to be more than narrow political arguments and meta-political commentary on social media. It will need a look that signals to the curious that it is a movement with a future for itself and its adherents. Just as men in traditional suits signaled a break from the 1970’s and the radical chic of the New Left, the new aesthetic will have to signal a break from the old political paradigm and the old Progressive morality.

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176 thoughts on “Politics and Aesthetics”

  1. Trump and Biden don’t appeal to the same people at all. JB can call himself whatever he wants, but people know he’s a rich guy who got rich off being in government and is now doing the same thing for his kids. They know he’s a go-along-to-get-along guy rather than an original thinker and that he will bow down to whatever the prevailing wisdom of the day is, rather than fighting it.

    We’d never see a movement drawing from dissatisfied customers in both parties with rock-sta-type rallies for Joe Biden, nor would we see the kind of Beatlemania-height excitement that we see all over social media with Trump backers, who are almost like a huge underground — for every one that says who he is, another 99 stay anonymous. He’s never built anything, not a brand or a business, let alone skyscrapers, and he has no connection to the working class. No one would imagine he could speak for two hours and keep people enthralled — even if it was all someone else’s words, let alone ad lib and riffing.

    Wish he’d be the candidate. He’d be fun to mess around with, as would those voting for him. But he won’t. He’s a placeholder. Watch for Mooch O to step up at the last minute, making a dramatic rescue of the dim party, and grabbing ahold of those powerful feelz the left uses in place of thinking. The WH is already preparing for that eventuality.

  2. The left is evil. That is where you start. Forget this reasoning about fashion etc. If you are a democrat, if you are a commie, you are evil. And you are disgusting. And most people hate you and laugh at you, because you are evil. Inflame their amygdala. Bring the pain.

  3. I have heard before it suggested that women of the right should be encouraged to have long braided hair as a sort of banner of belonging. Men, likewise could go with “regulation” cuts perhaps, and both otherwise dress modestly. Time and agin while Im out in the public I find I’ll take note of a fellow or a couple whom I perceive to be like-minded and wish we had more of a tribal like identity.

  6. I enjoy your blog but what’s up with the shaming guilt tripping your readers maybe trolling not sure into sending you $$$. You never used to do that? People living off other people sweat lmao I’m an electrician that’s life bro. You’re asking for $$ for your own opinion. You take care.

  7. Yesterday I happened to watch some newsreels on YouTube showing Germany before and during WWII. While I don’t buy into the propaganda that sees the Nazi regime as uniquely, absolutely evil, it included plenty that was objectionable. Yet it’s hard to avoid a pained admiration for the way the Nazis used aesthetics to give their movement a visual signature. (Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmBZGT32moo)

    As everyone knows, Hitler painted watercolors in his youth. From what I’ve seen of them, they showed some talent — they were no better but no worse than those displayed by the hundreds in tourist-town art galleries. It seems clear that a certain artistic sensibility was one of the Führer’s most valuable qualities in promoting himself and his party. You can see it in his selecting an age-old symbol with perhaps archetypal resonance, the swastika, and in the flags and lighting of the famous stadium rallies.

    I’d sure like to see this kind of stylish savvy used for better ends by the d-right. Not through copying the Nazis (in fact avoiding any such references), but with a romantic flair.

  8. I’ve been seeing a lot more guys in the gym than usual lately, and it’s not the first week of January. Maybe it’s a sign of a masculine aesthetic forming – perhaps in response to the overt, overbearing feminization.

    • Swimsuit season/summer shorts. That is the feminine aesthetic. Now the poor dudes have to work on their figures just like the wahmans. It’s okay to have dadbod.

    • @Karl:love how she’s suing not only Halper,but WSJ,NYT,WaPo,& NBCUniversal.
      The discovery phase should be most interesting.
      Been following her story since she came forward,and she has more credibility than the lump sum of defendants.

  10. I think the style has already arrived. Younger man: Jim Cavaziel in Person of Interest or Ryan Gosling or Keanu Reeves. Suit no tie.

    Older man Jeremy Clarkson in Top Gear or Grand Tour jeans, dress shirt sport coat.

  11. As far as clothes go, I prefer Carhart, Dickies, Levi’s, and Roundhouse. FoxRiver socks and RedWing boots. Almost all made by our countrymen and worn by real workers; Of course, that is not the whole of the target population. Brooks Brothers when I need to wear a suit. When I lived another life, my Almy’s and Whipple’a were all black or Charcoal gray.

    I’ve never been a bumper sticker type, but maybe I’ll put a St. George’s Cross or a Bonnie Blue decal on the back of the truck or car.
    The Bonnie Blue is to me a sure signal in the South.

      • True that. Still, the old styles are very functional. Okay, I’ll ownup to buying Levi’s at Goodwill. The rest I get at the workboot store or the farm supply.

        As for “our” music . . . others mentioned Classical and even the NPR connection– I still chuckle a bit that I still listen to the same station as 35 years ago, but now can’t stand ME and ATC. I think that Country, Americana, Roots and even Sinatra, Como et al. are “ours” too. The Church’s music is ours, but God forbid we use it as a prop

        • Americana and roots exactly what I mean when saying “classic country.” Schools too often teach that our musical traditions come from black roots, completely ignoring folkish ballads, highland tunes, the mandolin from Italy and fiddle from Ireland.

      • At this point, are there any corporations that aren’t? Chick-fil-A, I suppose. They’ll go the way of the Boy Scouts eventually, I’m sure. And the Washington Redskins, if they could count as a corporation.

    • I’m pretty sure Red Wing shoes are made in China now. That was the situation last time I had to buy some safety shoes … maybe four years ago.

      • The steel toe hiking boots, about $160 the pair, are made in the USA. I’m pretty sure Carolina makes some here, too. You pay a premium

  12. Did the New Con conference provide any future aesthetic hope? /rhetorical…

    A movement with genuine, positive race/kin/collective based values that can draw from the pre-Enlightenment heritage of the West has boundless aesthetic & cultural potential. Given that our only IQ/heritage competition comes from uber-bourgeois Han & Hebrews, the net advantages are even greater (sorry, Latinos, you still count as aesthetic Spaniards, though that’s a good tradition to inherit).

    That said, we’re hopelessly mired aesthetically at this point, romanticized medievalism or fascism on the Right, soulless futurism or abstraction on the Left.

    Who are the artists & musicians I’m overlooking in making this sweeping judgment? Open to suggestions.

    • That is a long long way off. Its vaguely plausible as carrying weapons is fine in many places but public display of weapons is frowned on as the US isn’t a frontier anymore, its fully developed.

      A society made by literal cop killers, traitors and tax cheats than populated with descendants refuse of Europe than of humanity all here to practice religions they weren’t at home (aka be cranks) and because they couldn’t make it at home is going to have a hard time living in a fully developed nation . Too many nutters and grifters

      This inability to adapt being a developed nation to is part of our social dissonance

      The Left won’t give up its stupid utopian ideas (they come from a stock of Puritan morons and those religious cranks ) and the Right won’t move to a higher cooperation model which we need to buffer the effects of technology

      Unfortunately the burst of artificial community post WW2 proved to be far too elusive which suggests we’ll need to reduce social complexity largely by killing a lot of people and breaking a lot of stuff .

      After all the famine, plague and laughter is over and enough people die, we will slump to our natural place in the world. about as developed as Russia or so.

      This is fine since the people in however many new nations are formed will be happier than we ever were as they will be able to be rid of people they don’t like for good

      Empires are always, no matter what the bad guys are we are no different

      Back on topic, any clean fit for your social class, ready to work clothes will be fine . A dress is a great social signal for women too

      Dress modestly

      The general rules for “the look”

      short hair, absolutely no piercings , no earrings for men , no dyed hair except back to your natural color clean shaven or short beard, mustache is fine for men, longer hair for women

      Absolutely no tats except for military unit tats as dictated by tradition,

      There are exceptions, if you are a legitimate professional smith and wear a big beard , a single earring in the left ear only and kilt fine but largely do not do what the left does

      You want to look outside the look, you have to earn it.

      If you are a smith, a biker, an actual lumberjack , soldier in the stan or the like, its fine to dress that way

      FWIW studying the 60’s long hair vs short and of course the clothes might give some recent history. This is not the first time this has happened

  14. It’ll be interesting to see if any of the Dem female candidates go with Hillary’s pantsuit look. I would advise a more feminine look, but it’s the Dems, so who knows?

  15. Pfft, the right already has a style: women in American-flag bikinis holding gigantic guns.

    • I’m no prude, but man o’ man I hate that. Show me a woman holding an iron or making a sandwich.

    • The chick in a tight skimpy outfight with a gun is just the mainstream right being 30 years behind feminists.

      I much prefer a lady wearing a dirndl or anything traditionally European. Leaves more to the imagination while still looking feminine and classy.

      • The dirndl is rather too slutty for my liking. You can’t have your wife wear one outside the bedroom, not unless you’re actually at the Oktoberfest in Münich.

        I envy cultures who’ve kept their folk costumes alive, because you can’t revive them without it being phony. The Norwegians go full archaeo-con on their Independence Day.

        https://www.information.dk/sites/information.dk/files/styles/open_graph/public/media/2008/05/16/20080516-194837-pic-907751244.jpg

        A dress like that, with all the bells and whistles, easily sets you back $5-10,000, depending on quality and the amount of embroidery and silverware. Each district has its own particular pattern.

        On the Faroe Islands, they dress up at weddings, at king Olav’s birthday and when they dance the traditional folk dance – an endless and monotonous but strangely mesmerizing affair, where they recount Faroese sagas in archaic verse for hours and hours on end. Probably the closest you come to living, Viking culture. Here’s a short one, the story of the defeat and death of Norwegian king Olav (another king Olav) and his ship, The Long Serpent.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bts_v9mqv3g

        (Lyrics in English – 87 verses.)

        In Denmark, only a remote island, Fanø, still has a living tradition of folk costumes, and it’s pretty much a girls-only affair.

        https://files.guidedanmark.org/files/418/153246_Snderhodag.jpg

        • Some dirndls certainly have way too little fabric on the top and the bottom. I have seen a few though that did not have that shortcoming (heh).

          At the risk of sounding like the nationalist counterpart of those liberal sycophants 20-15 years ago who admired Europeans for their attitudes on gays and government welfare, seeing those national dresses makes me a little sad that the closest thing America has is lingerie with a flag pattern on it.

          We need time and space to let our own cultural dress develop naturally. As of now, I guess a good starting point would be a generically European style (consistent with our mixed European ancestry) with a long skirt and high neckline in our national colors. Perhaps add a state symbol too.

          • the closest thing America has is lingerie with a flag pattern on it.

            That’s not true at all. There are many traditional styles of dress in America in actual use, although more subtly expressed. Next time I go to America, I’ll visit New Mexico, just so I can legitimately wear rattlesnake boots, a Stetson and a turquoise bolo tie. The dresses in the photos above, are only used on special occasions.

            And you might not see it since half the world dress like Americans, but the humble baseball cap is authentic American folkwear, not to mention the blue jeans. I know that’s not what you’re looking for, because dressing up in jeans and ballcap isn’t exactly the same, but there you have it.

            I agree that Americans would benefit from re-connecting with their European heritage, but replacing American traditions with Euro ones, is not the way to do it.

            If you want to create a modern, traditional style, take inspiration from Revolution couture, lots of cool outfits there. (But hold the pony tail, okay?)

          • Been done by the Tea Party, ridiculed all around, too Boomer round here. Coonskin caps might be an option, though.

      • If she is dressing up and primping up a bit, and it’s for me, that’s as good as it gets. I will do the same for her. The rest of it follows from there.

  17. Aesthetics are not just what you wear. Lately when I drive around my liberal town, I open the windows and blast Wagner over the sound system. It’s a little retaliation against all the monkey music I’ve been subjected to over the years. But more importantly, it just feels epic to me. I’m aware of being immersed in the pinnacle of beauty, while simultaneously shouting a hearty F.U. at all the ugliness of our present culture.

    • Classical music is the ultimate Vibrant-repellent. Wagner works great, I’m sure, but any classical genius will do the trick. I’m parshul to Bruckner, Prokofiev and Berlioz, among others. In due course, however, playing classical music in public will be classed a so-called “hate” crime. And I mean that.

      • I get what you’re saying, Ostei. At the same time, my local classical radio station is four-square on the “pride” agenda this month, and unquestionably the same could be said for many figures in today’s classical music scene. So if I could improve on your prediction: Classical music will EITHER become another stronghold of the perverse, OR it will become a “hate crime” because our side refused to relinquish it, and we willfully chose to identify with it.

        I feel the latter is its—and our—best destiny. But the former will happen if we let it, and the artistry of some of our greatest geniuses will be yet another homeland from which we are exiled.

        • True. How ironic that some of the people working to destroy the civilization that gave us Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and the rest, are working to annihilate that very civilization. Do they know not what they do? Can they not understand that submerging white civilization in black sea will mean the end of the music–among other cultural forms–they apparently love?

        • Good God! What is your station doing? Featuring the music of Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Britten, Barber (gay) in heavy rotation? Banning Verdi and Puccini for operas about hetero love?

          We are truly in the realm of madness when even our musical heritage must be sliced and diced according to sexual politics. The end is near. Or the new beginning.

        • An alternative to classical music that has the same effect might be contemporary Christian music. That’s even more subversive.

          • Catchy tunes. Sing along loudly to be really subversive and annoying, but not very Christian.

          • And really heretical. Designed for women to touch their feels in just the right places.

          • Ralph – most “contemporary Christian music” is either 7/11 or Jesus is my boyfriend crap. All about the feels. I’ll stick with Sabaton, thank you.

          • “Sometimes all you can do is play some country gospel.” Gram Parsons

            (Bluegrass, too. Told the inner city kids they were bein’ racist when they denigrated the bluegrass we had on.)

      • Interesting point,Ostei. Over the past 20 yrs,my favorite firearms store has gone from piping in rock,to country,and now classical. It’s definitely a change for the better;inobtrusive and quite pleasant. Bonus points for getting to play “guess the composer”.
        And yes,it will be classed a”hate” crime. Can’t have amazing music composed by old white dudes in the marketplace.

        • Classical music in a gun store–signs and wonders. Do you know the owners’ motive for switching to classical? Could be, of course, that they simply developed a taste for the stuff, but it could be something else altogether. Hence, it is possible that classical music is becoming an emblem of white identitarianism, and much more powerfully so than C&W, which, pace Garth Brooks, is increasingly compromised by AWR. Your gun store owners could be posting here at Zman! (-:

          • @Ostei:yes,he said he was tired of the cacophony the other genres brought to the store. Some customers hated the rock,some the country. Now it’s just a quietly pleasant background.
            Thinking I should call the station he tunes into and request Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Those cannons seem appropriate for a gun store,don’t you think??
            🤠

          • Definitely classical. But if you’re going country, it has to be classic. Remember Hillary’s freak-out about “Stand By Your Man”? (The Lyle Lovett version is pure.)

      • I noticed my local Hobby Lobby was playing classical today, probably to decrease thefts from the local dopers and vibrants .

        That said we will need to be willing to go to arms long before anyone tries to make playing classical music a hate crime.

        Right now the establishment is destroying itself and allowing us a last ditch effort to avoid “war to the knife, knife to the hilt.” and to get ready for said fight. If we harden our minds and get skilled enough to do this and it never happens, we still win.

        A more Sparta like America would be a good thing in every way.

        • I read somewhere awhile back in normie news that store owners strategically play classical music to keep blacks away. The article said blacks have a negative visceral reaction to classical music and will not shop at stores that play it. Symphony Hall on Sirius XM is commercial-free and not pozzed. Same with the Met Opera channel one station over. Whenever I am at a stoplight and hear the African tribal music or that Mexica stuff the Mestizos are always listening to, I blast my Verdi or Mozart and give ’em a wink and a smile.

      • While teaching, was in a school where the ‘hood would hang out at the foot of the stairs right by my class for an hour after school let out. For awhile, successfully used blasting classical to chase them out. Then I found out Hank Williams worked even better.

  18. Dickies, grey t-shirt, big hat pulled low over my eyes, hiking boots, sunglasses, an older white full size pickup truck, no stickers or logos of any sort on anything. No tats, no piercings. You do the talking, and I’ll listen, for a little while. Is there something needs doing? I’ll pitch in. I’m an NPC.

    • With that haircut, Spencer should have worn a giant target on his shirt as well.

      Fit and clean.
      Buck Owens: “Show up on time, in clean clothes, ready to work.”

  19. Slightly off topic, but it is about style: I’m begging you to visually set off your begging-for-money paragraph. Otherwise people will start reading it thinking it’s part of the main content. Put it in italics, or set if off with three asterisks–something. I work in publishing deep inside enemy territory, and your blog is my “forbidden fruit”–but this is triggering me so hard.

  20. What, I wonder, would a Diss-Con flag or banner look like? Colors? Shapes? Symbols? Stars? Stripes? Archaizing or futuristic?

    I haven’t really thought about it until this moment. The only thing I can say for sure is that it would have to be redolent of the West in some meaningful and fairly clear way.

  21. Maybe the copycat aesthetics follows the formlessness of current political thinking. I’ve noticed for some time that everyone seems to be trying to repurpose the 1930s to our present era. The Left is happy to coat its enemies with a sloppily-applied layer of “Nazi” paint, but the Right won’t stop rummaging around in that empty trunk, either. I don’t know how many times I’ve read about this or that incident being styled as a “Reichstag fire” or “Kristallnacht” or “Night of the Long Knives”, as if there’s a set formula for history that will inevitably reproduce itself.

    I always wonder “What did Germans in 1933 call the actual Reichstag fire? What incident from 1847 did they see it as an echo of?” Because that’s how far back in history you’d have had to go to reach for a parallel incident. This obsession with cramming everything into an 86-year old template makes us blind to the fact that whatever comes will probably have a unique character all its own. While busily preparing ourselves to fight a reproduction of the 1930s, both Left and Right are going to be blindsided by something unforeseen and unplanned-for.

    • “…something unforeseen and unplanned-for.”

      Doubtless something to do with The Great Replacement.

    • Hmm… Not melting like a snowflake over it, but am in agreement that ______ this type of break line or something similar would be useful. It needs a clear delineation, but something simple and clean.

      • Grr, wrong topic this was regarding the offset of final paragraph. Where did all these “Wandas” suddenly appear from? That is what threw me off too many Wanda clones, can one of you become Shirley or Marlene or… Steve? 😉

    • We are entering a new era of mass migration. The Sea Peoples, the Bantu expansions, the Germans invading Rome, the rise of Islam and the Arabs, the Mongols and Magyars, the colonization of the Americas and Oceania. There is plenty of history to draw on. None of it ends well for the stationary and thus passive civilizations.

      Personally, I lean towards an ersatz St Augustine’s City of God approach. Let America the country burn, so long as my nation ideologically awakens and manages to survive.

  22. I’m a bit confused. On the one hand I’ve heard that we should be an amorphous, unidentifiable cloud of vapor seeping in and out of political interstices so as to avoid detection by the Spiteful Mutants on the Left. Now I understand that we are to create our own signaling aesthetic, perhaps putting ourselves squarely in the gun sights. Dear, oh dear, oh dear…

    • I should have clarified. Avoiding overt symbols while creating a contrast to the Leftist style is intended to weaponize the white liberal mindset against itself.

      Whites, both liberal and conservative are the only demographic that really subscribe to the crap about not judging a book by the cover. So do not give them anything that overtly screams “white supremacist” and you have some breathing room.

      At the same time, spread disinformation about what the latest sign of white supremacy is. We have seen liberals panicking over the okay sign, milk, cartoon frogs, and red hats. Feed their paranoia so that they see their nightmares everywhere and nowhere. I move we steal the rainbow flag from the LGTB movement next.

      • A mishmash 80s of skinhead doc Martin’s and wife-beater (A frame tshirt for you septagenarians) but with the rainbow suspenders of Mork from Ork?

        Mind blown.

      • TLS: I like the spirit of your last sentence here. The rainbow itself is an awesome spectacle, whose very existence depends not only in the natural properties of refracted light, but on the power of visual perception and the human imagination. It strikes all kinds of mystic chords, from God’s promise to Noah to the bridge to Valhalla.

        Yet everywhere I look this month, it’s exclusively associated with sodomy and the deadly sin of “pride.” That’s a scandal for our culture; but more, it’s an embarrassment to all of us who let it happen, and who tolerate its continued use in this way.

        The enemy spends huge amounts of time and effort seizing our wholesome symbols, perverting them, draining them of their traditional meaning and filling them with something putrid. The Rainbow is the least of the casualties. Family, Marriage, Liberty, Country, Morality, the Cross—all of these have been subjected to cultural transformation, without much of a fight from our side. This is purposeful on the enemy’s part: a key to its demoralization strategy.

        As you suggest, we need to win back these symbols for our own cause. And go on the offense in a predatory way to demoralize them. I can’t say I know how to go about it, but I do feel our morale and self respect depend on it.

        • Stealing the rainbow flag is simple. Just spread the word that white separatists are using it because the colors are beautiful when separate but mix together into an ugly brown.

          Get some overt Nazis to fly it, and some standard MAGA types as well cuz as we all know, Trump is a covert white supremacist. Pretty soon, an obnoxious symbol of sexual perversion no longer creates the sense of belonging, certainty, and self-righteousness. Instead Lefty has to wonder and worry just what is meant by that flag.

          • I would’ve doubted you about stealing the rainbow flag until I saw the Chicago Cubs ownership banning a fan for life for making the Okay sign with his fingers on camera, calling it a sign of white supremacy.

          • And have the first letters of each colour mean something: Erm, to the ‘Right Of Your Government, Business, Intellectuals and Visionaries’ or something like that. I’m sure a chan can come up with something better though.

        • They also stole the word “pride.”

          “The world is rapidly being divided into two camps, the comradeship of anti-Christ and the brotherhood of Christ. The lines between these two are being drawn. How long the battle will be we know not, whether swords will have too be unsheathed we know not, whether blood will have to be shed we know not, whether it will be an armed conflict we know not. But in a conflict between truth and darkness, truth cannot lose.” – Fulton Sheen

    • This is a very confusing post by Z, it’s pretty much above my pay grade. If you like Veblen you might get something out of it.

      That said I can understand why you are confused/ At first Z tells us to be the Grey Man and blend and cease to resist the Left in any way. IOW no more Honkler, putting up posters such as “it’s okay to be white”, etc. Just blend in and do nothing.

      Now he wants us to wear what amounts to a uniform so we can be potted like so many quail.

      • I was thinking something similar. I’d say the ‘uniform’ should simply reflect competence which is what is lacking in politics at the moment. So that could be well groomed, physically fit, and dressing ‘consciously’. So rather than having a style, maybe we just look different but all well dressed, stylish and that we take ourselves seriously.

  23. Great one. I take one issue. “The former has no reason to defend the old order, other than habit, while the latter has no conception of what should come next.” – There are many, many people who have more reasons than habit to support the old order, and nearly all of them have to do with making a living. Look at the useless, grifting consultant class that occupies the counties surrounding D.C.. They make a living interpreting, at hundreds an hour, obscure interpretations of regulations. The tour guides of the old labyrinth have a lot to lose in epochal changes. But once the teets run dry, even those people will have to shrug their shoulders. The next recession will be the catalyst that lines up all the future players on the chessboard.

  24. Maybe the aesthetics are faux because the politics are faux.

    The progressives no longer believe in their utopia. Western Civ can’t be reformed into what they want so it needs to be obliterated.

    The dissident movement occupies a spectrum that runs from homesteaders worshipping Wotan in a forested grove to building colonies on Mars. The only thing unifying them is their desire to obliterate the progressives.

    The ‘other means’ isn’t working out. At some conceptual level, both sides understand what’s coming.

  25. Well, looking at your National Conservatism cutting edge aesthetic, I go with:
    Claire Lehmann for females-ethereal Botticelli beauty, intelligent
    Michael Anton for males-dyspectic, old style GQ, bespectacled, intelligent
    Too cool for school!
    Better than problem glasses and cocktail dresses for women and polo shirts and Dockers for men.
    You can look smart and classy, too!
    Or maybe just dad-looking older white males, like Michael Doran only slobbier. That might be reassuring to voters who feel discombobulated.

  27. This is a universal phenomenon according to traditional Western philosophy, in which the True and the Good are subsumed in the Beautiful.

  28. The aesthetic that’s needed is beauty instead of preciousness, truth instead of slogans, long term instead of short term, dignity instead of comfort, organic instead of engineered, and real instead of fake.

    Fwiw, I’m a sixty year-old who took too damn long to appreciate my heritage. Thanks, Z-Man.

    • I guess cause for some hope is that I am also a 60 year old man who was referred to this site by my 36 year old son. Maybe most of us Boomers have screwed the pooch, but perhaps our offspring will prove up to the task of saving our civilization.

      • Simple Man and Mr. Hughes

        Don’t be put off by some of the anti-boomer haranguing on this and other sites (I’m saying this as a mid X-gen, whatever the heck that is exactly). While it is useful to recognize general patterns and groupings, some take the ridiculous tack of blaming boomers en masse… as if being a micro-cog in a time of social decay carries blame; when most likely you were just trying to put food on the table, find love, raise kids, etc.

        If we want to go down that road, I’ll go ahead and lay infinite scorn on the turn of 19th/20th Century folks for their folly that led to two world wars and millions of deaths for my people. It is silly.

        Point is, you are here now. Welcome.

  29. To quote Ptolemy of Alexandria: “The stars impel but do not compel”. The spirit of the times is a force that affects everyone individually as a function of their life’s experience, but it does not act deterministically: we retain our ability to choose whether or not to participate.

    That our society is becoming increasingly bifurcated on racial lines (white liberals will be extinct, God willing, when you look at their birth rates) tells me new “fashion trends” will be even more race specific then they already are. There is also the high possibility of some epochal event that will define the next world order, and will therefore influence the aesthetics.

  30. Hmmmmm.

    Well done Z. I wonder about your assertion that the name of the game is about appealing to the beautiful cloud people and trend setters though. Just like sideburns and spats – those old players are on the way out.

    I think we have new trend setters… but I’ll be damned if I can identify them. I don’t think they will be all that impressed with this year’s crop of designers and fashionistas in the democrat party at all.

    But whadda I know.

  31. How to win friends and influence people. I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV. Heroes schmeroes. Leaders, we don’t have to show you no stinking leaders. You see him here. You see him there. A dedicated follower of fashion. Dilettantes and poseurs are people who are incapable of getting anything of real import done. We are drowning in a sea of idiots.

  32. Thus far the dissident right aesthetic is a negative one: Not bluehaired freaks and not black-clad antifa goons. Attempts to project an aesthetic have failed, with the media excoriating dissident rightists who make the effort to dress decently and attend to personal hygiene. And that is part of the problem, a particular dissident right aesthetic makes one a target for media ridicule and antifa violence.

    As for a positive aesthetic, I think the dissident right needs to first know its customers: white people. What sort of aesthetics makes white people happy and positive and aspirational beyond current circumstances? What aesthetic caters to them the way the Atlantic caters to Warren/Buttplug supporters? I do not know that answer. The aesthetic also must weather derision from the media.

    • Roo;
      Well there’s the DJ Trump look. Blue suit, white shirt, contrasting tie. Substitute a red tie and you’d have the uniform for doing business in Asia in the late ’80s & early-mid ’90s.

      • DJT, god bless him, has all the style of a pimp.

        The secret of style is that there’s no recipe. Following a recipe provides you with a uniform, not with style. As TLS says below, the important bit is your bearing and your grooming.

        I’m not sure it’s even a good idea to promote a fash style, but if I were to suggest a signal item, it would be a tie. Commies hate ties.

        • How about a cravat or an ascot? Some of our favorite Dane’s look quite dashing wearing one.

          • Hate to take your illusions away, but the dapper gentleman in the profile photo (who doesn’t look like a pimp or a homo in the slightest) is a German actor, the guy who played Felix Krull.

            The good thing about using the tie, is that we might see Leftie (with perhaps a little help from our friends at 4chan) declare it a hate symbol. Getting cravats labelled hateful, doesn’t do us much good if we’re the only ones wearing them.

            Also, many Mohammadans abhor ties as well. They think it looks like a crucifix, which is why Iranian leaders never wear tie.

    • Honestly, something as simple as nice khakis and a polo shirt would be effective. It looks put together without trying too hard.

    • As of now, running around with an overt aesthetic whether that is sunwheels or Fred Perry polo shirts or whatever makes it really easy to label us “Nahtzees”.

      Implicit signals are better. Keep your personal appearance neat and clean. Train your muscles and study some empty hand fighting. (It has a significant effect on your bearing)

      I personally always wear a belt, pants, and working or hiking boots (unless exercising or at a formal occasion). As for haircuts, fades seem to be in style and are reminiscent of a military “high and tight”.

      The overall idea is to look neat without being fastidious and suggests capability​ without​ tripping threat sensors.

      • They would label us Nahtzees even if we all dressed up as Teletubbies.

        My own personal preference is for a look harking back to the period from the late-40s to the early-60s: flattop haircut, a fedora or a Panama–never worn with a tee-shirt, alas–Hawaiian shirts, and when dressing up, always a white dress shirt. Clean-shaven face, or a day’s growth at most. Needless to say, no tatts and/or piercings.

        • Natural but not hippy slovenly, agree. Back to basics for now until we develop a healthy supporting culture where taste can thrive again.

          Blowtorch everything deriving from hip-hop/rap degenerates.

          • Definitely that last.

            Since you mentioned hippies…have we thought about the fact that the two most radical leftist times (change, change, change…faster, faster, faster) in (some of our) lifetimes each began just after the two greatest national tragedies — JFK assassination and 9-11? Never let a tragedy go to waste indeed.

    • Why fuss overly about dress? At present, they are trying to sort out which are the bad-think white men. At the current trajectory it’ll morph into just white man bad. You’ll be wearing your uniform out of the shower.

      White women will be a bit easier to sort. The ones giving you the hairy eyeball or flecking you with spital as they rant will be the “unfriendlies.”

      See how easy that is?

      • Fair enough, but we still need a way to differentiate between white cucks and our people.

        • Last,

          Touche. For some whites there is no awakening point. Its unfathomable. The guy who prostrated himself in a yoke and chains with a sign expressing his apologies for slavery… probably isnt going to be red-pilled.

          But maybe we’ll eventually have the numbers where they become the odd ducks and well be sussing them from the wheat instead of the other way around.

      • MBlanc46, hadn’t you heard? LL Bean has gotten woke. I seem to recall reading they had begun using blacks in their catalogues. Whenever I visited the store the summer of ’79 when I lived up in Maine, there were no visible non-Whites anywhere in the state that I could see. A friend took me to Lewiston for the working-class White beach experience; now it’s second only to Minneapolis as Somalia (and Congo) central. Beautiful state with what used to be down to earth Whites, lots of hunters and fishermen. I’d happily abandon the rest of the east coast, but Maine does not deserve its subsaharan fate.

  33. I don’t know if this qualifies as an archetypal aesthetic, but the “faceless man” motif would be useful in the event that the Democrats elect the next closet Stalin and he/she proceeds to pick up where Obama left off. The next gen freedom fighter is more likely to be a Walter Mitty that no one sees coming rather than a Rambo.

    • The genesis of this post is the memory of walking into a room and encountering someone like Elizabeth Warren. Straight away, from the clothes, hairstyle, choice of words, who she is, is known in advance. It’s as if there is a style guide for these people. Lesbians are another example. They have uniforms that are readily identifiable.

      • Don’t mean to be cruel, but that uniform is a dumpy, endomorphic physiognomy, a plain, dour visage, a short, butch haircut, and the clothes of a lumberjack or maybe a punk rocker from Manchester, ca. 1981.

      • You can see that style guide reflected more and more in TV adverts, depending on what they’re hawking. Sometimes we can do a pretty good job of judging a book by it’s cover.

        • You can’t judge a book by its cover is one of the stupider cliches in existence. Appearances, although they are not absolutely accurate indicators of a thing’s essence, nevertheless, are pretty good epistemological shorthand, and they usually tell us a great deal.
          And that is why most people put considerable thought into their appearance, for better and worse.

          • Another stupid and almost always untrue intellectual cliche is “never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

            In life, find out where “wise sayings” come from. If a socialist uttered them first, he’s actually saying “hey buddy, what’s that over there” while he’s standing behind your wife.

          • @Sunspot — agree with this observation. Except that, on a deeper philosophical plane, it actually is true, in the sense that all genuine malice is actually caused by stupidity — or by ignorance, rather. Plato, Jesus Christ and Buddha would all agree that someone who is genuinely aware of the Truth becomes incapable of malice, in a sense. In that regard, all malice is a form of stupidity.

            But folks who see this are pretty rare, and in the workaday world, you’re correct. Most people realize that there’s a great deal of stupidity in the world, but they’re also blissfully unaware of the alarmingly high level of malice there is, too. Far more than they’d guess. MIf they knew what was really going on, most Americans would never get a night’s sleep ever again.

      • Warren is the classic finger wagging prohibitionist daughter of a Methodist preacher from first wave 1910 progressive era. Only with all religion stripped away, with only the religion of the secular state left to fill the void.

        • I lived across an alley from the WCTU HQ for three years. Imagine a couple hundred Elizabeth Warrens at once. Only solace was the quarterly beer bottle toss from our dorm fire escape onto their roof.

          • My grandmother was a.WTCU member. She did a lot of child-minding if me when I was young, so I wound up accompanying her to WCTU meetings. I’d take any of those women, and the few men associates, over Fauxcahontas any day of the week.

      • The aesthetic style standard of the next movement is already here, at least for the Left.

        It’s called the hijab. It’s fresh, it’s foreign, it’s righteous, it’s female, and it’s Of Color. Look how eager that stupid tart in charge of New Zealand was, just itching to don it and pose in it. Look how it makes Ilhan Omar politically bulletproof.

        This is going to get funnier and funnier, once the (((monkey trainers))) discover that their new, imported monkeys do not believe in Santa Caust.

        • She could not even wear it properly. The hijab is not just a headscarf. It is supposed to cover all the hair. Virtue-signaling liberal white women in the near future are in for a rude awakening if they find themselves in a Sharia zone.

          • But you know. When you boil it down, the best way to persuade others is to live your principles with consistency and integrity. That gets peoples attention and makes then want to take you seriously. And then if they reject and revile you, then it’s the sledge hammer.

          • When you boil it down, the best way to persuade others is to live your principles with consistency and integrity.

            The best way to persuade people is to kick them in the balls and threaten to kill their family.

    • None of the dems driving that clown car seem “closeted” about anything,Tom. Whatever masks were worn in previous elections have been tossed,and their ugly,insane visage is nakedly revealed.
      This is a very good thing.
      There is no old order to go back to on either side. That’s another very good thing. It’s one hell of an opportunity and we better not blow it.

      • Agreed. Most of them are openly Socialist, if not outright Communist. The closeted part is where they proactively aim to reconstitute the Gulag for us naysayers.

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