| A Brave New World? first published at the VBR site |  |  |  |
| Written by Wowbanger |
| November 2011 |
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All serious political thought must consider the likely environment our societies will be in over the next lifetime or so at the very least. For example if Bavarian political thinkers of the first two thirds of the nineteenth century failed to foresee the unification of Germany, then anything else they planned on was irrelevant. Likewise even great plans such as Jefferson’s and Ghandi’s ideas on agrarian democracies were fatally flawed in their inability to account for the consequences of industrialisation. We are therefore obliged to consider what the future might hold if we wish to formulate a course of action which is to stand any chance of success. Broadly speaking there are two schools of thought on the probable nature of the future of the West at least. Option One; the triumph of Progressivism. In this scenario the elites succeed in holding together our societies eventually arriving in the sunlight uplands of the Progressive utopia. That looks a bit like this. Globalisation reaches its logical conclusion. The entire planet is under the direction of a “meritocratic” (or self selecting) “englightened” elite operating the mechanism of a global state. This state might or might not be federated to some extent. However given its scale it is in no way democratic and any individual within it, unless they be one of a tiny few, can't expect to have any meaningful influence on the political, economic or social conditions in which they must live. The economy is fully globalised with free movement of goods and labour. The consequence of this is that organic communities are entirely destroyed. Every individual is just that and has no other nexus of community than what they have with the state and whoever happens to be living within striking distance of them. Wages are low, but then again so is the price of goods and services. A tolerable life is therefore within the reach of most, however the possibility of generating enough surplus capital to allow freedom from wage slavery is remote. Indeed even the dream of owning your own dwelling is beyond the reach of the vast majority. Through the apparatus of the state, now augmented by awesome techniques of information gathering and analysis, the elite is able to “persuade” most people to adopt their values. The power of the mass media and the ability of state institutions to indoctrinate through the education system is now irresistible. As a result there is an almost universal consensus in favour of Progressive values in favour of the new status quo. People are materialistic, conformist and bourgeoisie in their moral structures. How you want to describe this scenario is up you. Some might call it egalitarian, just, virtuous and free. I would be likely to use words like totalitarian, fascist, elitist and stagnant. If it had a historical precedent it would be Aztec civilisation less the more obvious brutality. Option Two. In this scenario the elite fail to outrun the entropy generated by their own actions and consequently their utopia does not transpire. This might happen as the result of a spectacular system failure resulting in something indistinguishable from an Apocalypse or a more gradual disintegration. Both models of societal collapse have been seen before in the historical record however the later is more common for large scale civilisations. It’s not hard to distinguish the terrible forces currently bearing down on our civilisation. Mere population growth threatens to overwhelm the resource base of the planet after which nothing good can happen. Alternatively resource depletion such as the early Peak Oil theory offers the thrilling prospect of a freight train coming the other way towards the derailing overpopulation express. Then we have the potential chaos generated by climate change. Perhaps most subtly of all we have the prospect of structural systematic collapse. The technological and economic development of our societies is not in the hands of people planning for the Benthamite principle of “the greatest good for the greatest number”. Rather our system is self organising to be efficient and “profitable” (often erroneously thought to be the same thing), we call this capitalism. It is entirely conceivable that the system could evolve in such a way as to fail to offer our society what it needs to survive. Else evolve itself into a corner from which it cannot escape. It seems highly probably that this has already happened. And of course whilst each of these four horsemen are themselves a show stopper, there is no reason why two, or all, of them might to materialise simultaneously. This is the idea referred to by James Howard Kunstler in his prescient book The Long Emergency: Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century. Indeed, it’s not very difficult to imagine in the event of a societal collapse historians would have no problem in tracing the roots of that collapse back at least decades, if not centuries, before the present day. In other words if the elite don’t pull their fantasy society off looking backwards it will appear to future generations not that we are at the start of civilisation level disintegration, but that we are right in the middle of it. Everywhere you look on every front the elite’s dream is crumbling, the level of “civility” of our society is in retreat, our economic power wanes, our armies are broke and defeated and our societies are increasingly polarised on multiple axis’s. Nor is this a recent development. So on the face of it, either option one or option two or any intermediate position does not look particularly enticing. A Fascist Utopia or a New Dark Age. The difference being that the second option offers at least dynamism rather than a dead future on an inescapable prison planet. Indeed the Old Dark Age is increasingly seen by philosophers and historians to have been rather underestimated. After all the Roman Empire, which saw itself exactly as our Progressive elites see our society, didn’t fall because of its wild popularity or because of the goodwill it generated among its citizens and enemies. The advent of such a Dark Age would most likely be uncomfortable for most of us in all sorts of ways. It stands an excellent chance of being fatal for significant numbers of us. However it is possible to foresee a world stabilising out of the chaos which is far from unattractive. Sure, Hi Def 3D TV and 50mg broadband might be considerably less available than in the Fascist Utopia of the elite. Maybe a long retirement might be a little less of a realistic possibility than it is now. However there could be compensations in quality of life which might mean than shorter simpler lives are not to be judged inferior to those we currently “enjoy”. Perhaps we would be happier, as social creatures, in fully reintegrated communities even if hot water was a little less easy to come by. The role of the radical right in the 21st century is therefore not to futilely battle the elite for control of doomed state apparatuses but to push against the open door the future which is already upon us. Instead of hopelessly fighting rigged elections for control of the apparent levers of nation state power we should be beginning the work of building the social, political and economic infrastructure of our own communities which they will need to survive and prosper in the future. The elite can have their ball, we’re going home. And here is the real beauty and elegance of anarcho-nationalism. It argues for a state which is more or less certain to come about. And this is no accident, it is the product of a deep reflection on our nature and that of the world around us, from a fearless assessment of our past and future, it is not the product of hubris and arrogance like progressive ideologies rather it is the justification for what must and will be. It offers a solution which works with nature rather than against it. And here is the real kicker, even if this were not the case and the elite were likely to achieve their demented utopia? Well then the obvious way to resist would be through exactly the kind of secessionist localism anarcho-nationalism promotes. Symmetry like that can not be ignored. Welcome to 21st century nationalism companeroes. |
I was provoked to write this riff in response to a discussion held in the British Resistance chat room. In response to my assertion that it was impossible to wrest control of the state from the elite, they themselves being a integral part of it rather than some directing force, my esteemed colleague Mr Anglo-Australian offered the opinion that this was a council of despair. Clearly I have failed to explain the elegant analysis of anarcho-nationalism. So I here offer some thoughts on it.