A map of the Online Right

& the Future of the Right Wing

I like maps, I always have, and as well as being interesting, maps are useful! A map can mean the difference between becoming lost and knowing your way. This is not only true for forests, but for all sorts of scenarios where it is easy to lose perspective, like for example, politics.

So, in this essay we will be making a map to navigate the online right wing, its many factions and the way that they interact with each other. In this essay I will not try to be neutral, I will give my opinion of each faction and maybe will offend a few of you, but my criticism will be purely on the grounds of pragmatism.

At the end of the essay, I will place myself on the map, explain my sympathies and use the map to argue who I think should be considered a friend, who should be ignored, and who should be relentlessly attacked.

Structure of the map

But immediately we have a problem; a geographical map has clearly defined cardinal points and latitudes to put the map into perspective, but in politics there are not any objective metrics that you can use to ground each ideology.

To solve this problem, I will put the different factions of the right in a grid with an X and a Y axis that give us 4 quadrants, similar to the political compass. But instad of right and left in the X axis we will have “Mainstream” and “Radical”, while in the Y axis we will have “populist“ and “elitist“.

Before we start, I want to clarify what I mean by these labels. So, someone “Mainstream” is someone who does not go against the moral status quo (liberalism) and therefore cannot cause offence by rejecting these values. (Human rights, pacifism, egalitarianism, etc.) The opposite is “Radical”, the more radical, the more this person disagrees with the core values of western democracy and is able to cause offense.

This can go in many directions and there can be great disagreements between the people who are “Radicals“. Therefore, it is important that we do not assume that the people on the radical side agree with wach other, only that they disagree with the status quo. People on the Mainstream see Radicals as crazy and dangerous while the radicals see them as weak, cowardly, and boring.

In the Y axis we have “Populist“ which means that this faction that bases their political power on mass movements, therefore they will make content that appeals to the average person. To be specific, their content is meant to be entertaining and not to discuss boring stuff like political theory, literature and philosophy, as a result it is of a lower quality but has a wider reach.

On the other hand, we have “Elitism“, which means that a faction has their power base within the intellectual class. As a result, their content is more arcane, but also of a much higher quality than that of the populists, but is also less entertaining, which leads to smaller, but more dedicated audiences.

The elitists look down on the populists with their lower quality peasant content, while the populists resent the arrogant nerds reading their boring books. In power, they also behave differently; the elitists rule through technocratic institutions, while the populists rule through popular and charismatic leaders.

Finally, I will define a faction as a group with a common friend-enemy distinction, since all politics is based on the fundamental distinction of “us vs them”. So, let’s finally get into the factions.

1. Libertarians

The libertarians! Ideologically, they are populist and mostly mainstream. They are populist because their base of support is the common person that desires freedom and independence, they are almost universally against government intervention since they hold individual freedom as sacred. However, they are not a moralizing faction, they will not tell you what is right and wrong, they just do not care. Therefore, their ethics are not far from the status quo, instead, their radicalism comes from their unconventional, often anarchist, methods.

In this section we have John Stossel (former crush), Reason TV, and Liberty Hangout. Libertarians do have a lot of intersections with their surrounding factions such as with the Conservative Liberals, The Populist conservatives and with even some factions of the left itself (ewww). However, it must be said that Ayn Rand types are elitist and also fairly radical, therefore being far from most other libertarians.

Their friend-enemy distinction is “the productive people“ against the “statists“ who want to infringe on their liberty. It is also important to mention that they do not fundamentally disagree with the liberal status quo; they just think that they have a better way to achieve the promises of liberalism through the free market.

2. Jonesists

This faction gets its name from the most famous among them; Alex Jones. They are very populist because they appeal to the average person. As a result, they put great emphasis on entertainment at the cost of being taken intellectually seriously.

This faction has a great love for things that draw attention like rants, heated debates, and conspiracy theories. However, they are not very radical because their core values remain liberal, their radicalism comes from their more schizo ways of seeing the world. Their friend-enemy distinction is that of “the people” against the “elites“ despite the fact that they rarely elaborate who these elites are.

Another example besides Jones is the “Valuetainment” channel with 5 million subs. A friend sent me one of their videos, where they talk about how Obama, Netflix, and “the elites“ are warning us that they are going to attack the US power grid to cause civil war and total collapse. I think that this video illustrates this faction perfectly, they are very popular, they are funny, but they are totally retarded¹.

This is one of the woes of being a right winger, all the amazing content creators that I know together barely scrape a tenth of the audience that this faction has and this gets even worse when you realize that Andrew Tate is also in this category. So, in a very real sense, they do represent an important part of the right wing, and this thought makes me suicidal.

3. Populist conservatives (PopCons)

The populist conservatives are a large part of the current right wing, among their ranks you can find most avid trump supporters and the like. Some high-profile names are Steven Crowder and Tucker Carlson. They are somewhat radical, but they still do not break with the liberal values of the status quo. Their radicalism comes from their opposition to the political establishment, some intersect with the Traditionalists and others with the Conservative Liberals. For all intents and purposes, they are the center of the online right.

They like debate and in general are focused on contentious issues, this has led them to a lot of internet attention. In a general sense, they are some of the best orators that the right has. Their style is not too serious and they clearly have fun while debating, but they are not totally deranged and can connect with the average person. Their Friend-enemy distinction is based on the idea of “the people“ vs the “deep state”.

Logically, they are populist and all of their political power comes from mass mobilization which is intended to elect a leader that will look out for the interests of the common person. They are generally charismatic and well informed on the usual debate topics, but do not expect something beyond that.

4. Conservative Liberals (ConLibs)

The conservative Liberal can be best described as 90s liberals who, in the words of Ronald Raegan, did not leave the left, instead the left, left them. They are on the right wing because they are nowadays opposed to the progressives on the ground that they are the TRUE liberals, the defenders of freedom, democracy, and equality.

They are some of the least radical people on the right wing because at any other point in history they would be on the left. They are neither populist nor are they elitist, this means that they make good quality but do not appeal to the lowest common denominator. In fact, they are overrepresented in right-wing news outlets and as political candidates because they are a safe bet; they are generally decent and do not have any dangerous opinions.

In the internet this faction can be best embodied by people like Candace Owens, “centrists“ like SFO, and in the “socially liberal and fiscally conservative“ types like Dave Rubin. Most friendly neighborhood Christians are also in this faction. Their friend-enemy distinction is the “sensible rational people” vs “the crazy woke left”.

The real irony is that they are the only conservatives that vividly remember the times that they would like to go back to: the 90s where everything seemed to be getting better and there was none of this crazy “woke“ stuff. Except that they live in a lie, every single facet and problem brought about by modern liberalism was already present in the 90s; Low fertility rates, offshoring of industry, radicalism in universities, etc. In fact, they themselves are essentially leftists who agree with the fundamental values of the left, but think that modern progressivism is just going too far.

But this is nothing new, all generations have their ConLibs that look back with nostalgia at what they consider normal, therefore, they are unable to fundamentally disagree with the left and can only preach restraint. They are the reincarnation of the eternal Menshevik, who believes in revolution, but thinks that the Bolsheviks are going too far, not realizing that bolshevism is nothing other than their own beliefs being taken to their logical end.

5. Ethnonationalists

The ethnonationalists, although they call themselves nationalists, are one of the most varied and most radical groups on the right. They are to be differentiated primarily from the civic nationalists (everyone on the mainstream right), who believe that anyone can become part of a nation because a nation is an idea. Instead, ethnonationalists tie their nationalism to ethnicity and therefore is exclusive to them.

It is precisely this idea that clashes with the foundations of liberalism’s inclusive concept of the nation, and approaches the more historically common idea of blood and soil nationalism; that the world is made up of distinct peoples and each of them have a homeland. Although ethnonationalism is nothing new, in the online right almost all prominent ones are white ethnonationalists who promote their own local nationalism or in some cases pan-Europeanism. (Pan-Arabists and pan-Africans are also ethnonationalists, but they have stronger connections to the left.)

Ethnonationalists find themselves in between populism and elitism. They, like all nationalist movements, are inherently democratic because their legitimacy comes from the people. Indeed, most of their content is made to appeal to a mass audience of their ethnic group. Out of populism comes one of its worst traits; its tendence towards jingoism, political violence and ethnic grudges. However, one should not underestimate the power of nationalism, in times of crisis and hardship people find stability based on their ethnic identity, as we saw in Yugoslavia during the 90s.

Some Ethnonationalists are just basic bitch nationalists who want to preserve their identity and others are your average unironic fascists. So, this faction’s policy could include all from anti-immigration policy up to outright ethnic cleansing. Unlike older white nationalists, they focus on statistical differences between groups which leads to what we could call “IQ nationalism“.

The more moderate wing of ethnonationalism intersects with traditionalism to create Christian nationalism, while the more populist side intersects with the Groypers. A few prominent ethnonationalists are Keith Woods, Richard Spencer, and Steve Sailer. Their friend-enemy distinction is simple; my ethnic group vs the enemies of my ethnicity, in the case of white nationalists these enemies are often “the Jews” and members of their own ethnic group who they see as traitors.

5.5 Groypers

The Groypers are a sub-faction of ethnonationalism and are characterized by Nick Fuentes. They certainly are not stern and disciplined Heydrich-type nationalist, instead, they are ironic and irreverent people who have fun posting racial slurs. Within this faction I will put /pol/ and the parts of twitter that are fascist out of edginess.

They could be characterized as very radical, but the radicalism of the Fuentes crowd lies in their desire to cause offense. Their whole reason for existing is to trigger libtards, so, this faction will try to be as insulting as possible which often results in cancelations. Although many of these opinions are also ironic and it becomes difficult to tell what they actually believe, (for example; Is Fuentes truly Christian or is it a larp?) so, I will not attempt to make this distinction here since I really, really do not know.

In that sense this faction has fully embraced the irony and post-irony of gen Z. Indeed, their main demographics are disillusioned Zoomers and millennials. Since their focus is on their rants and “go off moments“, their strong suit is not theory or anything tangible, but in having fun while messing with people.

6. IDW

The Intelectual Dark Web is the elitist section of the mainstream right, they embrace the same policies as the Conservative Liberals and generally also have the same faults. What truly differentiates them is that their content is of a much higher quality and that this faction is mostly made up of professors and academics that have been thrown out of university due to their opposition to progressivism. It is common to see this faction discussing philosophy, psychology and research papers, and this gives them a slight technocratic aftertaste.

On the intersection with Conservative Liberals (and perhaps even populist conservatives) is Peterson, on the more mainstream side we can also find figures like Stephen Pinker and Bill Maher and on the center are the Weinsteins. Their friend-enemy distinction is based on “decent thinking people“ vs “fanatical ideologues“.

An important thing to mention about this faction is that they are very commonly against the mainstream, not because they disagree with liberalism, but because of the resulting antagonism of their expulsion and cancelation. But fundamentally, this faction is the best that liberalism has to offer in the way of theory and debate. But despite their credentials and the quality of their content, they still are chained to the status quo (of either 2012 or 1990) and do not venture to think beyond it.

7. Traditionalists

The traditionalists are another one of the main factions of the modern right, so much so that they can be used as a prefix. In the compass they are on the radical side because they are actually willing to break with liberalism in favour of traditional values. They are also in the middle of the populists and elitists since they are still a people’s movement, but it also makes large moral demands of its members. Some of the important members of this faction are John Doyle, Pax Tube, and Matt Walsh. Their friend-enemy distinction is simply “Good“ vs “evil“, these concepts are rooted in traditional morality and religion.

The main characteristic of this faction is that they reject modernity in favor of tradition, this can apply to religion (Tradcaths), to relationships (Tradwife) and fundamentally this faction adopts an aesthetic worldview that venerates the past as a rebellion against the present. This gives the trads a great advantage in the way that they can adapt to the problems of the modern world and overcome nihilism. In my personal experience, the Trads that I have met are the most morally upright and most generous people that I know.

However, we must also recognize two realities about modern traditionalism; first, that it is a post-modern movement, almost all Traditionalists are people who were not born in a traditional religious setting, instead they lived in modernity and then chose to reject it in favour of tradition and faith. The second important reality is that western society is rapidly becoming less and less religious, almost all young people are either agnostic, “spiritual, but not religious“, or outright atheists. All projections of the future of religion look very bleak and I have my doubts that the Trads will be able to reverse this trend. But what do I know? I’m just some godless atheist.

RW Historians

The Right-wing historians are not a faction per se, but they have a significant presence in YouTube despite not being directly political. A very true fact is that the right wing has almost no presence in the world of entertainment, but the right does have some presence in the channels about history and geopolitics. The importance of this is clear; the way that we interpret history determines how we interpret the present and therefore, how we think about politics and that is something that the left is very aware of, the right, less so.

These channels make history content and also geopolitical analysis from a non-leftist point of view, some examples are Whatifalthist, Monsieur Z, CallMeEzekiel, and Kaiserbauch who specializes in demographics. They represent a counterbalance to the mainstream and progressive narratives of most current and historical events. Although the style of each one of them is different what they have in common is that they make high-quality content that is itself not political, but its implications are.

8. Neo-Reactionaries (NRx)

The reactionaries are one of the youngest factions on the right. They are on the radical side because they reject some of the most fundamental values of liberalism such as democracy, the separation of powers and the marketplace of ideas. They mostly favor technocratic monarchism and are very theory heavy which makes them very elitist. Although there are many different channels in this faction, they are all different branches of the same school of thought; Italian Elite Theory.

The Italian Elite theorists are in many ways the decedents of Machiavelli because their goal was to describe how modern politics work in an amoral manner. The main writers are Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, and Robert Michels. They believe that all societies and organizations will develop a hierarchy (Michel’s iron law of oligarchy).

Due to this, there will form a political class and a non-political class, the ideas that the political class accepts will determine the politics and culture of a nation. Thus what the common people think is irrelevant, this is why they think that democracy is impossible. For the reactionaries, there are only two possible forms of government; monarchy and oligarchy.

The most influential modern reactionary is Curtis Yarvin. He argues that almost all of the problems that western democracies have come from the fact that they are oligarchies that select ideas that benefit the bureaucracy at the expense of the nation and then nobody takes responsibility for the results. Instead, reactionaries think that a working system needs somebody in charge that takes full responsibility. In the case of a restaurant this would be a chef. In the case of a business, a CEO. In the case of a nation, it would be a king, therefore most monarchism is popular in this faction.

Other figures of the reactionary faction are “The distributist“ who stands in the intersection with the traditionalists, “Academic Agent“, and Auron MacIntyre, who applies Elite theory to current events. The friend-enemy distinction of the NRx crowd is basically “Intellectuals who lost their trust in the system“ vs “Naive people who think that the system is great“.

The final thing to mention is that this faction is made up mostly of ex liberals and libertarians that ended up losing faith in their system and started looking into old books for a solution. So, despite being reactionaries, most of them are culturally liberal and keep their liberal (or perhaps bourgeois) values and aesthetics, such as non-violence and their ethics do not go beyond “do whatever as long as it does not harm others“. Therefore, reactionaries do not provide an ethical framework and their ideology focuses on perfecting liberalism through better organization, not rejecting it.

9. Nietzscheans

The final faction of this map are the Nietzscheans, they are all the way in the elitist-radical corner. As the name says they are primarily influenced by Nietzsche’s anti-egalitarian and aristocratic weltanschauung although in this category there are also other currents of philosophy that fundamentally disagree with liberalism.

Nietzsche’s philosophy cannot be put in a couple of paragraphs. But the most important concept to understand the Nietzscheans is that of slave and master morality. Nietzsche separated all morality into these two categories, master morality is much older; it is the morality to be found in Homeric poetry and was the standard for most ancient civilizations. It is the morality of the conqueror, of Caesar, Alexander and Achilles; it sees strength and beauty as inherently good while seeing weakness and ugliness as innately bad. Therefore, the friend-enemy distinction is very simple; the “strong and virtuous” against the “weak and decadent”.

However, in a society like the Roman Empire where the strong Romans oppressed and enslaved the weak, Christianity became popular with the oppressed because it inverted the master morality of the Romans. It proclaimed that the strong are evil because they use violence to oppress the weak and preach inequality, while the weak are good and will go to heaven because they are humble, nonviolent and preach equality. The Nietzscheans believe that that liberal morality is just Christianity without God and so, they see it as slave morality and reject it completely.

They are a faction that is primarily concerned with philosophy and aesthetics and their politics are only an extension of this. They primarily wish to return to pre-Christian, pagan morality and aesthetics; they admire strength, talent, and beauty and conversely despise weakness and ugliness in all of its many modern forms. This leads to a great interest in ancient history; Greek literature, Roman sculpture, and Scythian independence. Fundamentally, the reason why people become Nietzscheans is a feeling of disgust with the modern world which comes from the sterility of modern life.

This is the reason why they are so radical and why the mainstream and the left see them as dangerous. Their elitism can be explained by the fact that the Nietzscheans look down upon mass man and therefore their content is made exclusively for intellectuals, is generally of excellent quality, and also commonly references other writers such as Schopenhauer, Houellebecq, Kaszynski, Mishima, Evola, etc.

Today the most important Nietzschean is Costin Alamariu, better known as Bronze Age Pervert, an excentric writer and prolific poaster who brings Nietzsche into the 21st century and combines it with bodybuilding. Nietzscheans have some intersection with both the elitist ethnonationalists and the neo-reactionaries. Prominent members of this faction are Survive the Jive, Russell Walter (favorite), and Uberboyo.

Outliers

However most right-wing personalities do not fit neatly into categories and some are almost impossible to categorize at all. This is especially the case when they have syncretic ideas that typically would be held by opposing factions.

The first one is Ben Shapiro who goes in the center. Politically he is with the ConLibs (with a dash of libertarianism) but personally with the Traditionalists, which puts him in the middle of the two.

Another outlier that has become influential recently is Elon Musk, he is somewhere in the middle of the map, between the IDW, the ConLibs, and the PopCons.

Carl Benjamin, used to go by “Sargon“ is also in the middle of no man’s land between the Traditionalist, the neo-Reactionary and the PopCons. He used to be a “classical liberal“ firmly in the ConLib faction, but has since drifted out of that faction.

Another outlier in the middle of two factions is Paul Joseph “Imagine my shock“ Watson, who would be in the middle of the PopCons and the Ethnonationalists

Edward Dutton focuses on genetics to explain many social issues and he is on the radical side for his advocacy of eugenics and physiognomy. However, he does not often go into actual politics and focuses on his field of expertise.

Perhaps the strangest outlier of them all is Richard Hanania, he is an ex-Ethnonationalist turned free market and pro-immigration liberal that opposes progressivism and leftism at the same time that he also opposes conservatism. Furthermore, he is also a self-described Nietzschean and is optimistic about the future due to the fact that he is very technophilic. He is on the elitist side, but he is still very liberal. So, I think that his ideology is best described as the IDW on steroids.

Another outlier that is difficult to place would be the followers of good ol’ Uncle Ted. His form of writing puts him distinctly on the side of the elitists, he recognized that the average person would not like his ideas. Due to his radical rejection of technology and modern life as a whole we can say that he is definitively on the radical side.

Our final outlier is Camille Paglia, who has the same academic background as the IDW but is far more radical in her conclusions and in her analysis on the topic of gender and social norms. I would place her between the Nietzscheans and the IDW.

Inter-faction Interaction

Of course, none of these factions exist in a vacuum. They have their different opinions of each other; their friends and their enemies. So, let’s see what each faction thinks of each other and what the main rivalries are.

Right now, the strong factions of the right are; the ConLib alliance who control the establishment of the “conservative“ parties (UK cons, Republicans, CDU) and the Populists who can move large amounts of people against the status quo without achieving anything (Meloni, Trump, Bolsonaro). The other factions really only have an online presence, but nothing influential in the real world, thus they have little power.

As a rule of thumb each faction is friendly to the neighboring factions and dismissive or even hostile to those who are far from them on the map. One of the main rivalries between neighboring factions is the one between the Populist Conservatives and the Conservative Liberals who have a complicated love-hate relationship where they constantly try to outmaneuver each other.

Another famous rivalry is between the groypers and almost all the other factions. Nick Fuentes has a thing for starting drama with other personalities such as BAP, John Doyle, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh and the list goes on. There are also minor conflicts between the Traditionalists and the Nietzscheans since the Trads really like Christianity and the Nietzscheans see it as just another form of slave morality.

But let´s zoom out to see some of the trends that we can observe from the different factions; when we talk about economics, we can see that the mainstream right is far more capitalistic than the radical right where technocracy, primitivism, and even socialism is far more popular on the radical right.

On the question of militarism, we can see more variation on the scale; the libertarians, Jonesists, Neo-reactionaries, and IDW are generally pacifist. The ConLibs and the PopCons are somewhat more militaristic, the former in foreign interventions and the latter in matters of homeland defense. The factions that are militaristic are the Traditionalists, Nietzscheans, and the Ethnonationalists.

On abortion; the ConLibs, the IDW, and the libertarians are in favor legalization, the factions that are against abortion for demographic reasons are the neo-Reactionaries, the Nietzscheans, and the Ethnonationalists. Finally, the factions ethically opposed to it are the PopCons and the traditionalists.

On sexual morality we see something similar; the ConLibs and the libertarians think that the sexual revolution was cool. The IDW and NRx are more skeptical, but do not advocate for repression. The PopCons, Ethnonationalists, and Trads are for a retvrn to traditional sexual norms while the Nietzscheans have a wild mix of different opinions; some advocate Nofap and others support sexual indulgence in the name of virility.

Finally, the most important issue; how to take power. The libertarians, the Jonesists, the ConLibs, the PopCons, and the IDW believe that the right wing will win in the marketplace of ideas and through democratic means. The Ethnonationalists are betting on a democratically elected strongman, but are not averse to a coup. The neo-reactionaries are betting on Caesarism and a few in each faction are betting on accelerationism. However, there are some factions that are undecided such as the Trads and the Nietzscheans.

My location

I would say that I stand at the intersection between the Neo-reactionaties and the Nietzscheans. As I have mentioned in other essays, I used to be a conservative, but what led me out of that faction was reading Curtis Yarvin and today my personal ideology is still influenced by the parts of his ideology that I like, as well as others in that faction such as Dave “the Distributist“ Greene.

On the other side Philosophy always held a larger role for me than political theory ever had; most of my political ideas are merely extrapolations of my fundamental philosophical beliefs. That is the problem, in my opinion, with the NRx crowd. They have very good political theory but very poor philosophical insight.

There I think lies the strength of the Nietzschean faction, they might not be very skilled in politics beyond shitposting, but they have an aesthetic vision that even the best theorists do not have. Any attempt to critique the modern world without a philosophical angle is futile because it will not be able to address the ethical foundations of our liberal status quo and as a result, even a successful critique it can only be a better way to achieve the ethical values of the status quo.

Strategy for the future

Before we start talking about strategy, we must know what our objective is. The objective of any political movement is, of course, victory. Here we find our problem; the right wing has been doing nothing but losing for the last 200 years; even when the right manages to win elections, the culture keeps moving left and with it, society.

I think that it is uncontroversial to say that the right wing is extremely ineffective. But why is this? Of course, there are many theories, but I believe that the main reason for the right’s failures is that the intellectual class has rejected their ideas and, instead, embraced the ideas of the left; with few exceptions, most of the best directors, writers, journalists, poets, and professors are unequivocally on the left.

The fact is that most intellectuals are repulsed by the present state of the right wing and their importance is not to be underestimated. The intelligentsia is the only real force in politics because they determine the culture. The only political issue that matters is the fight over the young and ambitious intelligentsia.

The right has been on a 200-year losing streak; this means that most of the smartest and most talented people carry the banner of leftism, leaving the right wing outmatched in every respect. You may have noticed that the universities, the entertainment industry, the press, and the government bureaucracy are not really in our side because whoever seduces the intelligentsia will control the future.

If the right wants to win it must win over the intelligentsia, there is no other way which might seem like an impossible task, but I believe that we will have a golden opportunity in the next couple of decades.

Today more and more people are turning away from the status quo because it is increasingly stale. That combined with the incoming hardships of the next decades such as the population crash in Europe and the unavoidable American debt crisis will have a profound impact in the confidence in the status quo which will lead to many young intellectuals abandoning their current ideas and turning to radical alternatives.

If the right wing can offer a convincing ideological alternative, then I believe that a large percentage of the intelligentsia could come to desert the status quo in favour of the right wing and this could result in a wider cultural change down the line. If the right wing cannot seduce them, the Intelligentsia will double down on progressivism.

The only way to seduce the Intelligentsia is to have better quality than the left, so far, this has not been the case, so far, for every insightful writer on the right wing, there are 10 idiots, 5 hypocrites and 7.5 cowards. Predictably, this has failed to entice the intelligentsia, but I believe that this is possible, however, it requires one essential component that the right lacks: Quality control.

Really, the problem of quality control is nothing revolutionary. Every restaurant is familiar with it; if you find a cockroach in your sushi (real case), you will probably not be coming back to that place. At the end of the day, we are also in the service industry, but we don’t sell sushi, we serve our customers ideas and opinions.

We can separate our customers into two categories, the ones that can tell retarded ideas from good ones, that can smell bullshit, and those who cannot. This actually graphs perfectly with the Y-axis; the elitists can taste cockroach while the populists instead think that the sushi is extra crunchy today. There is literally no upper limit to how stupid an idea can be, as long as you sell it to the masses. To quote Nicolás Gómez Dávila:

“The taste of the masses is characterized not by their antipathy to the excellent, but by the passivity with which they enjoy equally the good, the mediocre, and the bad.

The masses do not have bad taste. They simply do not have taste.”

The result of this is that when there is cockroach in the sushi you will only lose the costumers with good taste. When distasteful and stupid ideas circulate around the right you will only lose those with a sharp mind. This is exactly why the right wing attracts very few intellectuals; many of the factions are intellectual repellent.

To be blunter, we have some great content creators, but the majority are either tasteless, retarded or both. In my opinion there are 3 factions that are culprits:

1. The ConLibs (IDW included)

2. The Populists (Jonesists included)

3. The Ethnonationalists (Groypers included)

The ConLibs are uninteresting to intellectuals, not because they are stupid or tasteless, but because they are boring. They have no fresh and exiting ideas, they just want the 90s back they want the status quo to be a little less crazy and that is it. We might criticize communism for its many faults, but it’s crack for intellectuals because revolution and utopia are exciting, thus they attract young and ambitious people.

The populist’s sin is that they are simple, if we want to be nice, stupid, if we don’t. Populism is certainly exciting, but it gets no love from intellectuals because it is an ideology made to get the lowest common denominator out to the polls.

I know that many of my readers will not like this criticism, but I think that it is nevertheless true. Populism has millions of dedicated voters, but virtually no presence in the intelligentsia because it is not intellectually competitive, it has no manifesto, no system of ethics, nothing beyond “giving the people what they want“. As a result, PopCons are very popular in rural Arkansas, but not with the Intelligentsia.

Finally, we get to the ethnonationalists and the rest of the edgy internet. I think that they are the worst type of intellectual repellent. Don´t get me wrong, I am a nationalist for my respective country, I am sympathetic to patriotism everywhere, but nationalism based on ethnicity, by itself, is not enough to be a competitive ideology. It can be really powerful combined with another ideology, but by itself it is not enough.

This is because nationalism is inherently regional; all tribal groups think that they are special. But because nationalism is regional, it cannot easily deal with cosmopolitan ideas and philosophies, in the same way that the Aztecs could not deal with smallpox. The issue is that intellectuals are cosmopolitan by nature and thus they are not attracted to purely regional ideologies.

To give a better example; Francoist Spain is the wet dream of most ethnonationalists; they crushed the reds, they were catholic, homogeneous, nationalistic, and they had a strong leader but yet the young intellectuals began wearing jeans and listening to the Beatles. As a result, today Franco’s legacy is nonexistant² and I believe that, in time, this will be the fate of all ethnonationalist regimes.

Furthermore, another thing that repels the intelligentsia is that ethnonationalism, when it is unleashed, is capable of great amounts of violence, most massacres in the 20th century, from Yugoslavia to Nanking, are the doing of ethnonationalism because its friend enemy distinction of “us vs them” leads to whole ethnic groups being considered enemies; Tutsis, Jews, Bosniaks, Chinese, etc.

These two factors combined with the usual (ironic, but often unironic) heated gamer moments of most online ethnonationalists lead most intellectuals into confirming the caricature of the right wing as a bunch of racist, sexist, homophobic, et cetera. I think that it is the main reason why most intellectuals never engage with the right wing.

So, as Lenin said, what is there to be done? If we want to make the right intellectually competent, we must deal with the problems of each of these factions.

We should essentially be ideologically breathing down the necks of the ConLibs, in a similar way to how the communists breathe down the necks of the moderate socialists. This works by not being directly hostile to that faction, but by forcing them to look at the logical consequences of their ideas and sneering at them if they do not dare to do so.

As for the Populists, I think that we should work together with them. The issue is that no matter how successful the elitist right is, it will still be a movement for intellectuals and therefore it cannot be a mass movement. Here I think that we should take another play from the commies by looking at how they were both elitist and populist at the same time.

In the universities, the communists concentrated on theory, but in the factories, they did not talk about historical materialism, but instead about higher wages and better work hours. The populists have the important role of being the popular arm of the right wing, this combined with an intellectual arm could make as a dangerous combination as the communist writer and the union leader.

Finally, when it comes to the ethnonationalists I think that they are a large problem because I predict that they will grow in influence as the economic and social situaltion of their countries deteriorate. I believe that this will be the greatest problem for the intellectual right because it will confirm the prejudices that the intelligentsia has about the right, in a very real sense people like Nick Fuentes (and to a lesser extent Keith Woods) are great gift to the left. The left can just use them as evidence that the right is despicable; that they blame the Jews, that they are racist, sexist, et cetera, et cetera and therefore that all good people should discard all right-wing factions out of hand.

To this problem I feel that I have no solutions to offer, because all things point to the ethnonationalists and the groypers becoming more powerful in the future. I believe that they will unwillingly sabotage any success that the right wing could have wooing the intelligentsia and without the intelligentsia we are totally powerless, the only way out that I see is to have a better alternative than the edgy ethnonationalists.

If the right will succeed it must be attractive to the young intelligentsia and I believe that we must create a new faction that combines the political theory of the neo-reactionaries with the aesthetics of the Nietzscheans and the focus on community of the traditionalists. A movement of people who hit the gym, read old books, and are active in a thriving community, sounds to me, at least, like a vision that could inspire many of the atomized young people looking for a better vision of tomorrow.

I wrote this essay because very often I look at the online right only to despair, every single faction is flawed in their own way; some are poisoned with irony, others do not have a vision, and others are totally delusional . But I try to remain hopeful because I also see a lot of talent and energy.

Right now, the world of online politics is in a state of change, what will come out of this? What factions will have an impact in the future? Only time will tell, but until then, all I can hope for is to make a small impact.

1. Maybe they have better quality stuff than this video, but I frankly cannot be bothered to watch hours of their video to find a good one. Also, the funniest part of the vid is at 16:00 where one of the guys has a big brain moment by namedropping Hegel.

2. One could even argue that Spain would be more socially conservative if the socialist republicans had defeated franco and won the civil war, for the same reasons that ex-communist eastern Europe is far more conservative than liberal western Europe.