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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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Well, Steve Bannon just threw a Roman salute at CPAC.

I know some people may have reservations in claiming that Elon didn’t mean to do what people thought he did, and many will scream until their hearts give out that he did it emphatically due to some inherent impulse to troll. Bannon doing this (a month no less) after Elon’s own stunt not only means that this was probably in response to that, but also Bannon didn’t even do the same winding motion which was the cover; no, ‘my heart goes out to you’, or, ‘I am reaching out to you’, or any superficial justification, just an unbridled arm stretched out for the purposes of salutation. Accompanying this a proclamation that Trump is a great man of history, no less, someone whose coming is augured only twice in the history of a country, with Bannon proclaiming that only Trump is worthy to be the Republican Party (and therefore President) even in 2028.

The Rubicon seemingly is continually crossed ever-so-slightly, or at least, it is being approached for the purposes of eventually making it to the other side. This comes after the news of the Napoleon quotation posted on the date of Mark Antony offering Ceasar the title of King, and the White House social comms posting Trump as King. Obviously, the former is enigmatic as a function, and the latter humorous. It’s just an interesting start to a new regime seemingly radicalized by its previously downtrodden nature; defeated, the bloodied and uncowed rejects are now reveling in their victory beyond even the limits of their persecutors’ sense of regality.

It’s funny seeing Richard Spencer being a decade early to the seeming new tradition of Trump orbiters, and only if he had bid his time he would potentially have been capable of releasing his true feelings had they not been mellowed in time. Nick Fuentes, on the other hand, is late: stating his sensing of some ulterior goal behind this style of communication being only discomforting. This is basically like the twilight zone at this point in that, although these points don’t seemingly add up to one singular great attractor at the end of whatever this Presidency even is, it’s entailing something completely different.

Ave Trump, Emperor of the Americans.

This is from 1 month ago:

“Bannon calls Musk 'evil' and 'racist' as MAGA civil war boils over”

“Peter Thiel, David Sachs, Elon Musk, are all white South Africans,” Bannon said. “He should go back to South Africa. Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”

Bannon hates Musk. In a wider sense, it’s a conflict between two large groups on the ‘new right’.

  • A largely Christian, largely evangelical, largely middle aged, largely middle-American wing, descended from ‘classic’ Fox, Breitbart, OANN, Newsmax. Pro-Israel, pro-troops, sometimes isolationist, not-necessarily pro-NATO, shades of Buchanan at times minus the historical conspiracies, but also within the mainstream of US conservative opinion. This is where Bannon and his ‘permanent coalition’ of 60% of whites, 40% of Hispanics, 20% of blacks is. Opposed to mass immigration, but especially including H1B immigration. Especially distrustful of big tech. Want to preserve existing US demographics and may stereotype but have no overt or intellectual racial animus towards black Americans.

    _

  • Tech right, ultra online, ambivalent toward H1Bs, pro in Elon’s case, disproportionately non-white, Silicon Valley, e/acc, government waste, very pro free speech, largely parrot’s Musk’s views but also associated closely with Thiel and some other VCs. Like /pol/ often performatively racist, especially toward black people, but actually quite diverse themselves. Blue tribe, lives in big cities, probably works in tech, DOGE staffer, likely not religious except in a possibly tradcath or orthodox aesthetic-only sense, redscarepod listener or subreddit user, new right press involvement in some cases. HBD believer, read Moldbug and Land in 2010 (if they’re older, read their views rephrased in online infographics in 2017 if they’re younger).

    _

    In addition to these you have combinations of more esoteric racists, third-worldists like Fuentes, extreme antisemites, ultra culture war obsessives still cataloguing video game wokery like it’s 2015, people who primarily have contempt for women and the wider Tate-sphere, zoomer Muslims who’ve adopted a hybrid of Islamist and western dissident right ideologies, Russophiles and nazbols like Hinkle, BAP’s gay bodybuilders and so on, and overt feds like Carlson, but they’re relatively less relevant to this current dispute.

Odd that someone in the first group would have such a hate-on for white South Africans.

Musk is African-American, so their hatred of him is stereotypical even ignoring the fact he's wildly successful.