“It is absurd and deplorable for those who pretend to represent the political ‘Right’ to fail to leave the dark and small circle that is determined by the demonic power of the economy. . . . We must . . . uphold that beyond the economic sphere an order of higher political, spiritual, and heroic values has to emerge . . . an order [of] the things worth living and dying for.”
Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins: Postwar Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist (1953)*
The Z-man’s latest post discusses the rise of a Romantic Right. He wrote this post in response to an on-line kerfuffle over some video celebrating the mundane joys of contemporary Babbittry, or what might be called the Griller Dream. Apparently some Griller posted a video of himself living the Griller Dream, and the new Romantic Right sent up a digital howl of derision.
“There’s more to life than Work and Grilling! Or at least there ought to be!”
The Z-man sort of gets it and sort of does not, since the American “Right” almost always sees Romantics as men of the Left. This is both a consequence and a cause of the profound philistinism of the American Right, and I would say one large reason for its failure. If an American Griller would only set down his hamburger flipper and think for a moment, he would realize that materialism has always been the rock and foundation of the Left. If he unfuddled his head by cutting back on the brewskies, this Griller might even begin to suspect that there is something distinctly Lefty about his beloved Capitalism
“Nothing is more evident than that modern capitalism is just as subversive as Marxism. The materialistic view of life on which both systems are based is identical; both of their ideals are qualitatively identical, including the premises connected to a world the center of which is constituted of technology, science, production, ‘productivity,’ and ‘consumption.’”*
These lines are again from Julius Evola, than whom very few men can claim to be farther Right. And he is correct. Capitalists and Marxists disagree over details of administration, but they answer with one voice when asked what life is all about.
It is about going to work and grilling!
In other words, Capitalism and Marxism are the two schools of what Thomas Carlyle called “Pig Philosophy.”
“The Universe . . . is an immeasurable Swine’s-trough . . . . Moral evil is unattainability of Pig’s wash; moral good, attainability ditto . . . . Paradise [is] unlimited attainability of Pig’s-wash . . . . and the duty of all Pigs, at all times, [is] to diminish the quantity of unattainable and increase that of attainable. All knowledge and device and effort ought to be directed thither only; Pig Science, Pig Enthusiasm and Devotion have this one aim. It is the Whole Duty of Pigs.”**
The boast of Capitalism is that it fulfills the Whole Duty of Pigs efficiently. The boast of Marxism is that it fulfills the Whole Duty of Pigs equitably. Beyond that, there is not a speck of difference.
The real Right has always rejected Pig Philosophy with profound disgust, protesting that Pig’s-wash is nothing but a means to higher ends. To say otherwise is as upside-down and backwards as putting businessmen—or even worse, workers—at the head of Church and State. The real Right has never touted “bourgeois values”—safety, respectability, a careful calculation of profit and loss. The real Right has instead championed “aristocratic values.” It has taught that some things are worth dying for, honor is more important than respectability, and that all bean-counting economists and statisticians should go to hell.
Or as Evola put is,
“We must declare in an uncompromising way that in a normal civilization the economy and economic interests—understood as the satisfaction of material needs and their more or less artificial appendices—have always played, and always will play, a subordinate function . . . . that beyond the economic sphere an order of higher political, spiritual, and heroic values has to emerge . . . an order solely in terms of which are to be defined the things worth living and dying for.”*
We are so far sunk in bourgeois values and Pig Philosophy that even supposed men of the Right find it hard to say just what “higher political, spiritual, and heroic values” might be. Our politics is nothing but a wrangle between Capitalists and Marxists over the correct way to manufacture and distribute Pig’s-wash. Our Churches are little more than soup kitchens with stained glass windows. And when it comes to “heroic values,” one’s choice is limited to giving one’s life to the spread Pig Philosophy on either Capitalist or Marxist lines.
Stripping away all on-line drama, the Alternative Right was always, at heart, a rejection of Pig Philosophy (i.e. materialism) in both its bourgeois and proletariat forms. It was almost entirely a movement of romantic young men who felt in their souls that,
There’s more to life than Work and Grilling! Or at least there ought to be!
* * * * *
“But it is not the danger of the noble man to turn a good man, but lest he should become a blusterer, a scoffer, or a destroyer.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-1885)
What Nietzsche called a “good man,” I have called a Griller. Nietzsche’s “good man” is respectable, he plays it safe, he makes careful calculations of profit and loss. Nietzsche’s “noble man,” on the other hand, lives by aristocratic values—values that transcend Pig’s-wash and are not universal in the herd. Death is not for him the greatest evil. He places his sense of personal honor before the demand for social respectability. And he says to hell with all bean-counting economists and statisticians.
A “noble man” is higher than a “good man,” but as Nietzsche says, he can all too easily become something far worse. A noble man falls into ignobility through disillusionment.
“Ah! I have known noble ones who lost their highest hope. And then they disparaged all high hopes.”***
They become that most pathetic of all pests, the cynic who has lost his faith and now insists that others must lose their faith as well.
Outwardly the fallen noble man may resemble a Griller, but he has none of the redeeming qualities of that amiable buffoon. He is not generous; he is not cheerful; he knows no joy, He is, rather, cold, and bitter, and addicted to pleasure in its crudest (i.e. gourmet) form.
“Then lived they shamelessly in temporary pleasures, and beyond the day had hardly an aim. ‘Spirit is also voluptuousness,’ said they.”***
The fallen noble man carries about him an offensive odor because he is what our old colleague Thomas Bertonneau called “subscendent,” appeasing his frustrated hunger for transcendence with food of the flesh. What is worse, the fallen noble man becomes a destroyer of nobility, and of the longing for nobility, because he hates what he has lost. His cynicism is at bottom a form of jealous spite.
“Then broke the wings of their spirit; and it creepeth about, and defileth where it gnaweth. Once they thought of becoming heroes; but sensualists are they now. A trouble and a terror is the hero to them.”***
We should welcome the rise of a Romantic Right because this is a return of the real Right, and we should damn the phony bourgeois “Right” to hell. But we must never forget that this higher path is the more dangerous path, because a noble man has farther to fall.
“But my love and hope I conjure thee: cast not away the hero in thy soul! Maintain holy thy highest hope! Thus spake Zarathustra.” ***
*) Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins: Postwar Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist, trans. Guido Stucco, ed. Michael Moynihan (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, n.d.), pp. 166-167.
**) Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets (London: Chapman and Hall, 1850), pp. 28-29.
***) Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans. Thomas Commons (New York: The Dial Press, 1928), chap. 8.
The Orthosphere 
Hear! Hear!
This is an interesting para in Z-man’s post:
Note that Woods was not universally denounced for his post. There was another divide in the responses and that was the age divide. His younger fans were right there with him in condemning the traditional definition of success, while the old guys like Matt Walsh were baffled by the response. From his point of view, the old American right’s point of view, the video guy is living the best life. It is impossible for Walsh to grasp why people like Woods reacted negatively to the video.
The way I think about this same phenomenon is that, for most of the US “right,” a statement like “A period of crushing poverty would be good for the US” is very close to being a contradiction in terms, and the only way to understand it, for this segment, is as a statement that long-run wealth would be higher as a result of the short-run poverty.
American political philosophy is retarded because the United States was born as a bourgeois republic. American individuals have certainly tried to live by the aristocratic virtues, but our “aristocracy” has never been anything but a haute bourgeoise. Maybe something like an aristocracy was coming into being in the South, but the Northern bourgeoise knew what to do about them. The American Right is retarded because almost all critique of Capitalism and the bourgeois virtues comes from the Left. I’ll take bourgeois virtues over proletariat and parasite virtues, but the world they create leaves many things to be desired.
I wonder if the generation divide is simply the internet opening up vistas that no American has ever learned in high school. I began my journey into Right-wing though a quarter century ago, and no young person can imagine how bad were the maps, the signposts, and the roads. I was a tenured professor, and yet began with the impression that there was nothing but dragons and quicksand to the Right of George Will. I had of course been forced to read to the lunatic fringe of the Left, but everything on the Right was terra incognita.
I should add that the “longhouse” of feminized managerialism is probably leaving a lot of young men gasping for air. They could be seduced by consumerism, but consumerism with ubiquitous den mothers seems like what the Lefty Arthur Miller called an “air-conditioned nightmare.”
Glen Filthie’s comment https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=31938#comment-402315 was good. I am in sort of the same position. I look back on decades of hard work and loyalty to creed, family and institutions and it was clearly for nought. The Churches hate their own flock and want to replace them. Christians hate each other and apply impossibly recondite doctrinal purity tests. Business, military, medicine, will happily pivot to sexual perversion and regulatory capture. I’ve watched good men work themselves into early graves being good fathers and husbands. This really is no way to live.
“A period of crushing poverty would be good for the US”
In this regard, 2008 should have been allowed to happen and we would be dealing with a lot less nonsense; that which is falling should be pushed. Instead, market economics were inverted: the rich would not be allowed to become poor.
“Soup kitchens with stained glass windows…” I like that line, and will probably steal it. It perfectly sums up what the modern church imagines its mission in the world to be: to fill bellies.
The church that begins with the incarnate word become, at last, a church of the incarnate flesh.
I humbly suggest a minor rewording of one paragraph:
“The boast of Capitalism is that it fulfills the Whole Duty of Pigs efficiently. The boast of Marxism is that it fulfills the Whole Duty of Pigs equitably. Beyond that, there is not an oink of difference.”
That is an improvement. Wish I had though of it.
Unlike Evola, I hold out some hope for Christianity. But it will certainly have to divest itself of its current desire to be cheerleader for the world and the world’s values, if it wants to survive. Spreading its legs for Team World on the fifty-yard line is not a recipe for long-term success.
I have hope but no optimism. My hope is metaphysical, which may mean it is moonshine, whereas my pessimism is grounded in observable facts. All the churches were organized in a time of Christian hegemony, and few if any are prepared to return to the catacombs. The doctrine has also been grievously hacked, as you and I have noted before. The parts that can be twisted into supports of Globohomo are twisted into supports of Globohomo, while everything else is ignored or twisted to oblivion.