The world is living through times of extraordinary transformation. Whatever one might think of China’s paramount leader Xi Jinping, his New Year message about ‘changes unseen in a century accelerating across the world’ seems purely descriptive. In many ways, the post-Cold War world we were accustomed to is already solidly in the past. Liberal ideological hegemony—defined by ever more absolute forms of atomisation and extreme individualism, the primacy of globalist institutions over those of the national states, the superseding of nation and civilisation as self-sufficient, relevant cultural systems, as well as the world-wide imposition of privatisation, denationalisation, free trade, and free market economics—is shattered. Wokery is losing ground.
Both the rapid disappearance of the old international order and the acceleration of political transformation in the West—personified by Trumpism in America and the rise of the Right in Europe—make plain that, in the years ahead, there’s little that can be taken for certain. It is not that the West has entered a post-Liberal—or, even less, an illiberal—era yet; but liberalism is no longer taken for granted. And it can no longer take us for granted.
The future of the West is being decided in America. Trumpism in its original, 2016 form was almost entirely about what it was not: it was adamant in its rejection of the ‘liberal consensus’ that had put an end to its age of ‘hyper-power’ by destroying America’s industrial muscle and social fabric—yet it lacked a clear counter-programme. It sensed, correctly, that liberalism is not democracy; that America’s formal, constitutional institutions of governance had been emptied of real power by an alliance between progressive big capital and the bureaucracy; and that, whatever its name—be it Yarvin’s ‘the Cathedral’, ‘the regime’, or the ‘deep state’—practical control over the country no longer belonged to ‘we the people’ but to a shady, decidedly not well-intentioned ‘they’.
Yet, this incipient revolt still lacked the intellectual and human resources to fight effectively. In his solitude, Trump made the mistake of trying to placate his enemies by offering them a seat at the table of his administration. Instead of thanking him for his magnanimity, these apparatchiki—Bolton, Haley, Pompeo, and countless lesser-known officials—devoted all their energy to the enactment of a counter-revolution, striving to protect the threatened oligarchy from the Jacquerie outside. They saw themselves as a Maquis against the people, sabotaging the public’s demands—that is, Trump’s popularly-elected platform—at every turn. Their sabotage seemed entirely successful after Trump lost the 2020 election. Indeed, it would have ended in complete triumph had it not been for Biden’s superlatively inept performance as commander-in-chief—and Kamala Harris’ dismal attempt to succeed him.
Trumpism 2.0. is a wholly different machine. It learned from its tribulations. It recruited men of ability. It gained maturity and ideological consistency. In 2016, Trumpism was anti-liberal; now, it is increasingly becoming illiberal. Not because it is anti-democratic, as liberalism is today; but because it is genuinely, deeply, properly democratic. Trumpism 2.0. goes beyond the boisterous critique of the deep state. It now wishes to understand, fight, and replace it. Trumpism 2.0. no longer merely intends to enjoy the nominal dignity of command; it wishes to govern. And, to do so, it must do away with the current anti-popular, globalist bureaucracy—and rebuild it with men who truly intend to implement the political priorities of the electorate, as decided democratically.
No one should underestimate the vigour with which the ‘deep state’ will try to resist this. As JD Vance—clearly Trump’s ideal champion for the mission at hand—tries to reclaim control over the apparatus of state, its current owners will fight with all their might. Their efforts during Trump’s first term will pale in comparison to what is to come—as the Trumpian threat is now much greater, mature, and effective, so will their determination to conserve the almost limitless power they have long enjoyed. America’s coming years will be bitter and unstable, dominated by intrigue and relentless power struggles. Conservatives must be ready for what is to come.
Trump’s victory in November was a crushing blow to the ruling liberal-globalist clique. But just as they will not give up their long-held power over the United States easily, so will ‘the Cathedral’ fight to conserve its remaining fortress: Europe. This will not be an easy task: as the undisputed cultural leader of the West, the rightward shift of the United States now acts as a powerful magnet for a continent that was already in open insurrection against its political establishment.
Still, the Eurocrats have not yet run out of options. In Poland, the globalist-reactionary government of Donald Tusk has been hard at work: Brussels is using the country as a political laboratory in its quest to develop an effective—and easily exportable—algorithm of counter-revolution. Since Tusk’s return to power, in late 2023, his regime has enforced the fiercest, most overtly authoritarian program yet developed by the beleaguered globalists. In the name of liberty and pluralism, the Prime Minister had TV stations invaded by police and taken off the air; he has refused to pay the main opposition party the electoral subvention to which it is entitled by law; he has even used the powers of the State to force opposition leaders into exile for the first time since the fall of Polish communism, in 1989. He even took over the General Prosecutor’s Office in open defiance of the law and had the police, under his command, invade the palace of the President—the sole remaining check on his power. Should the vaccine pass its Polish test, it will no doubt be administered to other patients throughout the Union.
Or so Brussels wishes. The liberal repressions were clearly engineered under the presumption that Kamala Harris would win the US Presidency. Had this happened, the Eurocrats would have not only had the medication, but the prescription to use it. The attempts to jail Italy’s Matteo Salvini—the first step towards an anti-Meloni coup—and to bar France’s Marine Le Pen from running in the 2027 Presidential elections were obviously launched with that expectation. It will now be harder for the Brussels bureaucracy—although not impossible. Indeed, they now have nothing to lose. Shocked by the recent victory of nationalist candidate Georgescu in Romania, the European Union simply had the whole election canceled. Not only did former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton admit responsibility, he threatened Germany. Outrageous? Indeed. When a dog is cornered, however…
Those on the dissident Right have long hoped that something—or someone—might come to rescue the world from the gloomy boredom of liberal hegemony. We needed a surprise that would restart the engine of History. If there was to be more to the future than Woke techno-totalitarianism and the nightmares it would entail, it could only be with an icebreaker: an unexpected turn of events that shattered the present order of things and allowed for an alternative timeline to emerge. This has now occurred; the water has been stirred. The world of tomorrow is again a tabula rasa. It might be a good place—if we make it so.
But lest we ignore the scope, size, and fear in the mighty transformations ahead. Liberalism has not been defeated; the Right is not victorious. The future of Western civilization is anything but assured. International law is dead—so is democratic convention. Politically and geopolitically, inside and outside the West, the only certainty now is that nothing is certain anymore.
The Only Certainty Is that Nothing Is Certain Anymore
Pixabay
The world is living through times of extraordinary transformation. Whatever one might think of China’s paramount leader Xi Jinping, his New Year message about ‘changes unseen in a century accelerating across the world’ seems purely descriptive. In many ways, the post-Cold War world we were accustomed to is already solidly in the past. Liberal ideological hegemony—defined by ever more absolute forms of atomisation and extreme individualism, the primacy of globalist institutions over those of the national states, the superseding of nation and civilisation as self-sufficient, relevant cultural systems, as well as the world-wide imposition of privatisation, denationalisation, free trade, and free market economics—is shattered. Wokery is losing ground.
Both the rapid disappearance of the old international order and the acceleration of political transformation in the West—personified by Trumpism in America and the rise of the Right in Europe—make plain that, in the years ahead, there’s little that can be taken for certain. It is not that the West has entered a post-Liberal—or, even less, an illiberal—era yet; but liberalism is no longer taken for granted. And it can no longer take us for granted.
The future of the West is being decided in America. Trumpism in its original, 2016 form was almost entirely about what it was not: it was adamant in its rejection of the ‘liberal consensus’ that had put an end to its age of ‘hyper-power’ by destroying America’s industrial muscle and social fabric—yet it lacked a clear counter-programme. It sensed, correctly, that liberalism is not democracy; that America’s formal, constitutional institutions of governance had been emptied of real power by an alliance between progressive big capital and the bureaucracy; and that, whatever its name—be it Yarvin’s ‘the Cathedral’, ‘the regime’, or the ‘deep state’—practical control over the country no longer belonged to ‘we the people’ but to a shady, decidedly not well-intentioned ‘they’.
Yet, this incipient revolt still lacked the intellectual and human resources to fight effectively. In his solitude, Trump made the mistake of trying to placate his enemies by offering them a seat at the table of his administration. Instead of thanking him for his magnanimity, these apparatchiki—Bolton, Haley, Pompeo, and countless lesser-known officials—devoted all their energy to the enactment of a counter-revolution, striving to protect the threatened oligarchy from the Jacquerie outside. They saw themselves as a Maquis against the people, sabotaging the public’s demands—that is, Trump’s popularly-elected platform—at every turn. Their sabotage seemed entirely successful after Trump lost the 2020 election. Indeed, it would have ended in complete triumph had it not been for Biden’s superlatively inept performance as commander-in-chief—and Kamala Harris’ dismal attempt to succeed him.
Trumpism 2.0. is a wholly different machine. It learned from its tribulations. It recruited men of ability. It gained maturity and ideological consistency. In 2016, Trumpism was anti-liberal; now, it is increasingly becoming illiberal. Not because it is anti-democratic, as liberalism is today; but because it is genuinely, deeply, properly democratic. Trumpism 2.0. goes beyond the boisterous critique of the deep state. It now wishes to understand, fight, and replace it. Trumpism 2.0. no longer merely intends to enjoy the nominal dignity of command; it wishes to govern. And, to do so, it must do away with the current anti-popular, globalist bureaucracy—and rebuild it with men who truly intend to implement the political priorities of the electorate, as decided democratically.
No one should underestimate the vigour with which the ‘deep state’ will try to resist this. As JD Vance—clearly Trump’s ideal champion for the mission at hand—tries to reclaim control over the apparatus of state, its current owners will fight with all their might. Their efforts during Trump’s first term will pale in comparison to what is to come—as the Trumpian threat is now much greater, mature, and effective, so will their determination to conserve the almost limitless power they have long enjoyed. America’s coming years will be bitter and unstable, dominated by intrigue and relentless power struggles. Conservatives must be ready for what is to come.
Trump’s victory in November was a crushing blow to the ruling liberal-globalist clique. But just as they will not give up their long-held power over the United States easily, so will ‘the Cathedral’ fight to conserve its remaining fortress: Europe. This will not be an easy task: as the undisputed cultural leader of the West, the rightward shift of the United States now acts as a powerful magnet for a continent that was already in open insurrection against its political establishment.
Still, the Eurocrats have not yet run out of options. In Poland, the globalist-reactionary government of Donald Tusk has been hard at work: Brussels is using the country as a political laboratory in its quest to develop an effective—and easily exportable—algorithm of counter-revolution. Since Tusk’s return to power, in late 2023, his regime has enforced the fiercest, most overtly authoritarian program yet developed by the beleaguered globalists. In the name of liberty and pluralism, the Prime Minister had TV stations invaded by police and taken off the air; he has refused to pay the main opposition party the electoral subvention to which it is entitled by law; he has even used the powers of the State to force opposition leaders into exile for the first time since the fall of Polish communism, in 1989. He even took over the General Prosecutor’s Office in open defiance of the law and had the police, under his command, invade the palace of the President—the sole remaining check on his power. Should the vaccine pass its Polish test, it will no doubt be administered to other patients throughout the Union.
Or so Brussels wishes. The liberal repressions were clearly engineered under the presumption that Kamala Harris would win the US Presidency. Had this happened, the Eurocrats would have not only had the medication, but the prescription to use it. The attempts to jail Italy’s Matteo Salvini—the first step towards an anti-Meloni coup—and to bar France’s Marine Le Pen from running in the 2027 Presidential elections were obviously launched with that expectation. It will now be harder for the Brussels bureaucracy—although not impossible. Indeed, they now have nothing to lose. Shocked by the recent victory of nationalist candidate Georgescu in Romania, the European Union simply had the whole election canceled. Not only did former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton admit responsibility, he threatened Germany. Outrageous? Indeed. When a dog is cornered, however…
Those on the dissident Right have long hoped that something—or someone—might come to rescue the world from the gloomy boredom of liberal hegemony. We needed a surprise that would restart the engine of History. If there was to be more to the future than Woke techno-totalitarianism and the nightmares it would entail, it could only be with an icebreaker: an unexpected turn of events that shattered the present order of things and allowed for an alternative timeline to emerge. This has now occurred; the water has been stirred. The world of tomorrow is again a tabula rasa. It might be a good place—if we make it so.
But lest we ignore the scope, size, and fear in the mighty transformations ahead. Liberalism has not been defeated; the Right is not victorious. The future of Western civilization is anything but assured. International law is dead—so is democratic convention. Politically and geopolitically, inside and outside the West, the only certainty now is that nothing is certain anymore.
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