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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28013 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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If that were the definition, why would conservative populists want to attract them?

I’m pretty sure that I’m using it as the OP did, which is much closer to the first sense.

Because they're Elite Human Capital, duh. They think they're all that, and populists not seeing their worth is evidence of how incapable they are.

The term was popularized by Walt Bismarck, an Alt-Right guy who, in the wake of the Charlottesville crashout, went to some all-white small town, and later wrote a substack seething about the normies there not being interested in his brand of politics. I think one of our posters even found the article, and was indirectly responsible for it going viral. Later it was picked up by people like Richard Hanania, and Alexander Turok.

https://www.waltbismarck.com/p/why-im-no-longer-a-white-nationalist

Under "Reason #3"

In 2018 I moved from a racially diverse swing state in the Sun Belt to a homogenous red state up in corn country. This decision was largely motivated by politics—I was looking to retreat to an imagined Hyperborea free of crime and degeneracy where my volk had political autonomy.

The next two years were the most miserable of my life. But they were also among the most instructive, and ultimately were what made me leave WN on an emotional level.

To put it bluntly, most of my white neighbors and coworkers basically resembled hobbits. They had no ambition to them, nor any aspirations of greatness. Nor did they think about the world in a dynamic way—the more educated among them certainly stayed informed about the wider world, but they largely took it for granted that their immediate universe was a static place where nothing would ever happen.

And the horrifying thing is that’s how they liked it.

Normal white Midwesterners don't get his will to power ideology.

Also their women do not like him and he doesn't seem to actually like white women. Really hampering his aspirations to make white children. So he pivots to rationalizing how having kids with Hispanics is okay.

Normal white Midwesterners don't get his will to power ideology.

Also their women do not like him and he doesn't seem to actually like white women. Really hampering his aspirations to make white children. So he pivots to rationalizing how having kids with Hispanics is okay.

More power to him on that front, but this part:

Compared to my early 20s self, I am a lot less prone to ingrouping with the kind of white people who deliberately shut themselves off from the world by retreating to the ‘burbs—people who just want to be comfortable and don’t have a burning desire to change the world. I’ve also lost any protective instinct toward people who stay in a shitty area with no opportunities just because they have a sentimental attachment to their podunk hometown. My experiences taught me that these people want nothing to do with my vision for the world and aren’t my volk in any meaningful sense.
They have no destiny except under the caligae.

...Is kind of indicative of why this guy and people like him are not the future of Red Tribe.

He's a Blue. His values are Blue to the core. It doesn't matter if he were Von Neumann reborn; he doesn't want what we want, he isn't interested in our values and so he's never going to be on our side in any meaningful way. If he were supremely competent, then he'd be dangerous; as is, he appears mainly to be an instructive, cautionary example.

Originally, "Elite Human Capital" meant, well, elite human capital. For example, the sort of people who became Communists in first half of the last century.

Any movement who wants to move somewhere should attract such people.

Yes. This is the steelman / nugget of truth in the EHC idea, but in practice "populists can't attract EHC" is a personal complaint at not being wined and dined by the plebs.

nugget of truth in the EHC idea

More than nugget. Whether you love or hate communism, you must admit that the old guard early 20th century communist veterans were among the most capable people in history (comparable perhaps only to 16th century Jesuits).

If it was year 1926, Communist agitator of the time would in open, no holds barred debate demolish whole Motte with ease.

personal complaint at not being wined and dined by the plebs.

More like: these people are my White brothers, but they care only about sportsball and fentanyl and struggle for Whiteness leaves them cold.

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