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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   34054 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025

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Woke right is not a thing: it never was a thing, because actual Nazis, fascists, and white nationalists don't use or accept critical theory. Any resemblance (da joos vs da whitey) is coincidental: the true similarity is that both wokism and fascism are illiberal, but for completely different reasons.

Neil Shenvi has a few examples, surely? He cites Stephen Wolfe recommending using CRT's premises, and taking his opponents' weapons and growing stronger by them, and he explicitly refuses to abjure a critical theory approach. Shenvi also cites Abrahamsen to the effect of there being a 'Gramscian right', and credibly cites people like Sam Francis or John Fonte acknowledging Gramsci's influence on their own work.

That seems like a pretty reasonable prima facie case that at least some far-right or white-nationalist-adjacent people are genuinely influenced by critical theory.

I would make the argument that Gramsci's tactics are, by their nature, apolitical: and they are successful enough that even his most hated ideological enemies have adopted them because they are effective and they work. It is impossible to describe what the woke right is without describing it as a reaction to the woke left: its shadow and anima. Perhaps it was inevitable that the right absorb the insights of the left, and not stay static forever. It is an active dialectic, after all.

Note that rightists who know who Gramsci is a vanishingly small clique in any case.

But nevertheless, I wouldn't oversell the impact for 'A Case For White Nationalism' and other works like it. They are very clever works, throwing the prevailing orthodoxy's own logic against it. They have the benefit that woke structures do, in fact, exist to disenfranchise white men, and all they have to do is Observe while their opponents try to explain why their racially discriminatory policies are actually Equitable to a increasingly cynical audience. The woke right only exists in the imaginations of vanguardist liberals, kicked out of the progressive sphere but eager to gatekeep the populist right back to liberalism.

It won't work. But why it won't work is a whole essay in of itself.

I would make the argument that Gramsci's tactics are, by their nature, apolitical: and they are successful enough that even his most hated ideological enemies have adopted them because they are effective and they work.

If the best methods for advancing your values are completely content-agnostic, then I think theres something wrong with your values. More commonly, people think its must be the best because theyre swimming in modernism, where everyone thinks this because to claim otherwise would be like the naturalistic fallacy. But if, like a christian nationalist presumably does, you actually believe youre in alignment with the natural order, shouldnt this manifest itself in some useable way in real social effects?

Kulturkampf is in of itself a reactionary idea: Gramsci merely applied it to socialism as a tactic to make the masses want socialism organically rather than have it imposed top-down from a vanguardist party. It's a dialectic all the way down.

But as a thought experiment, let's pretend I'm a Christian nationalist: my ideas are so far from the mainstream that sticking to principles is pointless. By default, any tactic or strategy that gets me closer to realizing my ideology is better than nothing. Even if I have to lie and pretend that I'm not a CN: that I'm a secularist or whatever, or pretending to respect democracy when I want to enact a theocratic form of government.

"We'll win, and then decide what our program looks like" is a perfectly reasonable response to extremely hostile enviroments. It worked for Franco, for instance. Acquiring power is the important part. Having principles while not having any power is useless. Compromising on your principles to get it is worth it because having part of your program enacted is better than none. The only people who think otherwise are idealistic intellectuals.

Now the reasons why your original tactics don't work in defiance of your ideology in the first place..? Well, every ideology has some way of papering over that. Marxism has false conciousness and wreckerism, WN has da joos... etc. Hypocrisy and unworkability has never gotten in the way of ideologues anywhere.

Im not talking about "principles", per se. "Burn it all down so that my ideology can inevitably emerge from the ashes" is an asymmetric method as far as Im concerned (though usually not a very good one). Content-agnostic methods are those that, definitionally, everyone can use. If youre ideology is in any way related to how society works, you should have more options available to you.

Another way of looking at it: Yes, christian nationalism is in a very weak position. That means if you only use methods that everyone can use, you should expect to get crushed, since theres a winner-takes-all effect to this, and youre not really any better at it. Why do you think you can win?

Now the reasons why your original tactics don't work in defiance of your ideology in the first place..?

I think if your tactics dont work, its generally in your interest to have a think about why.

Let me talk about Gramsci for a moment.

Gramsci came to the (right) conclusion that Italy was not ready for socialism. Socialism in Italy was about as popular as Christian Nationalism is now. Any creation of a socialist regime in Italy would inevitably have to come top-down from a Leninist vanguard party. He was intellectually honest and realized that taking power for the people against the people's wishes was so contradictory as to be unjustifiable.

For similar reasons, America is not amiable to being a Christian nationalist homeland. But nevertheless, he believed it was possible: because he bought into, at some level, Marxist dialectical materialism. Christian nationalists believe they will succeed because God is on their side. You may not accept these reasons as being valid, but they are very real and compelling reasons to them.

By definition, they seek to transform and revolutionize society, but from such a marginal position, all they can do is encourage the development of a civil society that wants to be socialism/christian, etc. The strategy is sound. The reason that it's not done by everyone is that it's hard and requires patience. Only people on the margins of society without any other recourse to more potent levers would try this because success isn't certain in the least.

You're asking for novel and unique tactics from fringe ideologies: but the truth is that there really isn't any. Hitler sums it up in Mein Kampf better than anyone else, in my opinion: parasitizing off an existing movement and repurposing its infrastructure for your own ends. Street violence as self promotion: shows of strength in enemy strongholds. Attract the convincible and use them as leverage to force the establishment to make concessions. Then, when the time is right, seize power. This is virtually identical to Leninist vanguardism in every respect. Culture war is just to shape the intellectual landscape to prime the masses to accept the process of overthrow of bourgoise democracy as natural and necessary.

Christian nationalists believe they will succeed because God is on their side. You may not accept these reasons as being valid, but they are very real and compelling reasons to them.

I suppose if you think that gods commands are entirely unrelated to how he chose to create the world, and will win out purely through some kind of direct intervention (but still you do have to fight with maximum effectiveness for it to happen, any moral scruples and you lose), it would lead to this strategy. But I dont think this specific version just is christian belief, and that its appealing to some ideologues precisely because theyve internalised not believing in a natural order.

all they can do is encourage the development of a civil society that wants to be socialism/christian, etc. The strategy is sound. The reason that it's not done by everyone is that it's hard and requires patience.

You dont think the establishment tries to maintain a civil society that wants them?

Hitler sums it up in Mein Kampf

Im not saying those tactics cant work - someone is always gonna win. And a brief look at his neighbors and historical context suggests it wasnt just random either. There are propably some ideosyncratic positions of the Nazi party that that won only with them, because Hitler was a great speaker, but the general direction seems to derive from broader factors.

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