Among mainstream conservatism it would seem that the biggest worry about leftist institutional capture is that it will enact communism. A residual cold war paranoia stemming from most conservatives being older. This is not in touch with the real threats currently posed by the left. Conservative obliviousness compromises their strategy on this front. The problem with leftism is not that it is marxist, it is that it is radically individualistic. It can resemble communism because it discusses resource distribution, is resentful towards the rich, is highly egalitarian, and its less thoughtful advocates may identify with marxism. But the modern left's idea of redistribution is not relating to the material status of the proletariat, it is more focused on identifying those who are "marginalized" or have their individuality restricted, to offer social and material opportunity to them as a form of justice. The modern left's concerns are social more than they are material. In a world of decadence and material abundance, controlling the means of production is less important to them than their ability to maximally self-indulge without consequence. Their worship of the individual is their foundation and it is that which must be addressed more than any concerns about communism. If anything, their obsession with the self distances them from marxism, which places class as a more significant unit. They have made very little progress in enacting marxism, but they have made huge advances in their social activism.
Understanding and criticizing the left's deepest philosophical foundation is key to effective counter strategy and is helpful to advance right wing thought beyond stale conservatism.
It is necessary to understand why the left is obsessed with talking points like "power dynamics" and "social constructs" to get at the core of their problems. Post-structuralism is a philosophy critical towards fixed meanings socially, linguistically, teleologically, etc. Emphasizing that meaning is unstable and unreliable by nature of being socially constructed and subject to power structures. It would rightfully suggest that the individual is shaped by social and power dynamics.
Epistemic skepticism is a related branch of thought critical of human knowledge, saying that certain things cannot be known or at least their knowledge cannot be accurately shared through unreliable language. As we will see, this is a toxicity that can doom a person to endless overthought and skepticism towards themselves and others in a way that is usually net unproductive. With this belief you can't easily trust any perspective but your own, tending towards being antisocial and individualistic. Thought such as this may be behind mental health difficulties which are becoming a stereotype among those who study the social sciences and philosophy academically.
Epistemic distrust can be used to delegitimize hard sciences, knowledge, and rational thought in the mind of its practitioner, making it a tool to combat anyone who would interfere with "their truth" or selfish ideological leaning.
To counter on this front it is necessary to replace the individual as the fundamental epistemic unit and elevate some other units such as the culture or the language itself. If language has epistemic validity beyond the one speaking it, if words and phrases have meanings which can't be meaningfully debated on the basis of subjectivity or context, then it is possible for people to share knowledge reliably through language and it is possible for truths to precede those expressing them. We will elaborate on this as an ontological case later, noting that various preconditions such as language are actually necessary for the emergence of the individual unit. Meaning that the individual cannot be prioritized or granted firstness over them.
Leftist hostility towards power originates from the fact that sociality and power do declare meanings generally, and meanings inherently limit the possible expressions of the self. Any imposition of meaning, linguistically or teleologically is said to marginialize the individual by hindering the optimization of their subjective experience. In other words, iterfering with "their truth". It is not only a political or moral imperative but an existential one to liberate the self from all forms of power and influence to achieve maximum "authenticity" of the self. In biblical terms this resembles "every man did what was right in his own eyes", the worst stage of societal decline described before God punished the earth with a flood. By nature this belief system is highly victimary, attributing social injustice and victimization to every imposition of social meaning. The endpoint of this logic is a near infinite amount of victimization and injustice coming from almost every social phenomenon. I'm sure you've heard about microaggressions and other such ideas originating from the victimary left which exhibit this very logic. We call this pattern "victimary thinking".
Absolute inclusion and tolerance is the goal in such a system. Even the tolerance of contradictory elements because being inclusive towards all subjectivity is always prioritized over logical coherence. Logic is reduced to a social construct that is secondary to the individual in this way, or at the very least is contextualized in relation to the individual. Inclusivity ensures that everything is valued and included maximally and nothing can be defined and categorized by what it is or isn't, which would suggest that the exclusion of what is not meant cannot take place. Abolishing the exclusive property of meaning itself and becoming anti-meaning, or simply nihilistic at its extremes.
Inclusion and validation are acts of the highest often-signalled virtue in this system since they are the only moral actions which can be considered reliable by their alignment with ideas of individual rights. They suit the individualistic notion of rights as compelled inaction [1] because most of these acts boil down to the expression that you will not interfere with someone's individuality. It must be an express commitment to inaction, not implicit inaction, or else it falls into the category of "silence is violence" by failing to properly disavow anyone who would interfere with the self's full realization. This shallow and often disingenuous virtue signal is sadly the only reliable moral good that can take place between people in this system because every other action is so easily condemned as a horrible wrongdoing simply because it may involve exclusivity. Most subjective viewpoints inherently have some amount of exclusionary properties by nature of being subjective or utilizing social meaning. Attributing victimization and immorality to exclusion delegitimizes intersubjectivity and therefore most social behaviors. This severely limits their capacity for productive moral action, most of their output now is only deconstructive as a result.
The distrust of all forms of power, hierarchy, and social meaning as threats to the optimization of the self causes all political action to focus on deconstructing power and meaning on principle. To further the aims of a self falsely understood to be the ultimate moral and social unit, to be defined prior to all other categories which are said to be social constructs or otherwise "arbitrary". Ultimately the core of leftism is profoundly egocentric, it does not tend to see reliable social, epistemic, or moral activity beyond the interests of individual subjectivity. Not only to the detriment of civilization but also of the leftists themselves, who struggle to participate in healthy social behaviors without bringing victimhood and resentment.
Individual transcendence of linguistic and social meaning is how we arrive at stereotypical images of brightly dyed hair, ridiculous outfits, and androgynous presentation or gender nonconformity. All shockingly outside of what is normal to signal supposed authenticity of the self, transcendent of oppressive power structures that are arbiters of what is normal. The unusual similarity between these presentations would suggest they are not necessarily a sign of an awakened state of mind or a true authenticity, but a learned narcissism and antisocial way of thinking which is deeply unhealthy.
Much of this thought comes with the idea that there can be no absolute objective meaning to language, no true interoperability between subjective human perspectives, and no purpose to relationships outside of subjective appeal. This is hardly functional at a collective organizational level, non hierarchical organization has proven to be anarchistic and destructive quite often and appears unsustainable given that it usually succumbs to hierarchy at some point anyway. In practice the absolute denial of hierarchy, power, and meaning on principle delegitimizes all possible intersubjective human relationships and interactions, causing chaos and incoherence among leftism. Recall the infamous footage of a leftist event being constantly interrupted by "points of personal privilege" due to an open mic which could not be muted without betraying the principle of inclusion. If it wasn't for this nonfunctionality the leftist capture of institutions such as academia and NGOs would perhaps be much more effective to our detriment.
With all of this in mind we can observe that the left's output is primarily victimary thinking and resentment. In a system focused on categorizing and identifying social injustices the supposed perpetrators are naturally resented. Leftism tends to lack optimism about anything other than the individual, everything outside of the individual which can act upon it inevitably receives resentment. This resentment is rationalized and given moral weight as a supposedly just reaction to injustice, making it vehement and difficult to engage in good faith debate with. Outside onlookers can usually discern that the left's victimary thinking is unwarranted and their resentment unhealthy, but it is helpful to inquire further into the very fundamental reasoning for it. Conservatives fail to contradict victimary thinking properly, reducing it to a mere psychological issue instead of a logic to be counterargued. Understanding these issues in formal philosophical terms makes our case clear to the types that we need to persuade in order to accomplish anything an institutional level.
As a side note we can use these observations to debunk fringe ideas about the left being gnostic or crypto-gnostic. It is easy to mistake leftist victimary thinking and overdiagnosis of injustice as adjacent to gnostic beliefs about all creation and material being evil. As well the gnostic narrative of the individual truth seeker being a divine unit is similar. However it is easy to see that leftist victimary conclusions derive from the core principal of individual empowerment in social and material ways which would contradict core beliefs of gnosticism. While there is some overlap it is a stretch to accuse the left of gnosticism.
Ontology is a branch of philosophy focused on the study of being an existence broadly. In our case it will study the categorization of existing things in proper relation to each other to explain reality. It will operate hierarchically in the upcoming cases, arranging existing things in order of which things bring forth the next.
Ontological liberalism is a philosophy term which refers to the autonomous individual being considered the primary or first unit of humanity. The individual is thought to be the first step towards the emergence of sociality and later civilization. The moral interests of the individual are prioritized, creating moral systems of rights or negative obligations, being compelled inaction against individual interests. [1] [2]The economic interests of the individual, taken into account with all other individuals, are said to be the optimal approach to management of resources. [3] Sociologically, the agreement of individuals to participate with the terms of society through a "social contract" is said to be the basis for civilization, resulting in society arranging itself around ritualized individual participation and preference for the largest quanitity of individuals, such as democracy. [4][5] This ontological liberalism is what defines leftism at its core and should be challenged fundamentally. Although the classical liberals had a limited amount of logocentrism from their ideas of religion and natural law, as the philosophy succumbs to secularism over time the void left is filled by the individual to the end of becoming egocentric as is the case in the modern day.
This way of thinking is also the underlying logic or founding myth of the US and the democratic west itself. Giving some insight as to why those who think this way are more apt to navigate and capture institutions given that they embody the founding logic and its trajectory more closely than others. Conservatives associate themselves only with an earlier iteration of the core classical liberal logic, making them less suitable to wield it. This explains some of their inability to navigate and capture institutions compared to their opponents. Conservatives by nature of associating with an effectively obsolete logic are doomed to slowly lose ground politically and culturally. "Cthulu may swim slowly but he always swims left." The post-conservative right must intellectually break away from liberalism to accomplish much against the left, or else they will continue to disadvantage themselves by playing a game where their opponents make the rules. This is why conservatives fail to meaningfully contradict victimary thinking, they struggle to refute the ontological liberalism that underlies it. Without a logically coherent counter-argument they resort to pathologizing their opposition as simply insane, while not necessarily incorrect it is an insufficient diagnosis.
Post-Structuralism in a pure form would not tend to grant the individual firstness, rightfully saying that it is shaped by social forces beyond it. This is perhaps its greatest intellectual contribution. However, when most Post-Structural thought is taking place in liberal institutions it is forced to integrate with an ontology which does prioritize the individual. Then the narrative of social forces shaping the individual becomes victimary, and the ideology starts to become confused. Such a narrative inevitably arrives at examples such as Judith Butler's highly influential Gender Trouble which suggests that individual agency should resist socially constructed gender norms and express experimentally to act out individual empowerment. Beginning the gender ideology trend which exhibits narcissism and victimary thinking. Post-Structuralism is extremely useful in many of its core observations, but its contextualization within liberalism is inappropriate. The right wing would benefit greatly from adopting Post-Structural ideas in a way that is not victimary or resentful.
To oppose ontological liberalism requires that something be established as prior to the individual, which might sound very difficult, but when the history of the autonomous individual is studied critically its narrative falls apart. Autonomy as a primary behavior in humans is relatively recent, beginning in western culture during the enlightenment period of the 16th century. Very few ancient societies practiced anything resembling our idea of it. Most operated heteronomously, meaning that behavior is governed more by outside forces than by internal will, the opposite of autonomy. Individuals acted as components of a much larger unit that is the primary unit of society, and that primary unit steered individual behaviors. The individual did exist but acted in proper relation to prior things. Whether that prior unit is the nation, religion, race, family, or whatever else. There is debate among right-wing thinkers about which unit is actually the most fundamental, but it is more important at this stage to use these arguments to undermine leftism than it is to arrive at specific consensus within the right. If the right is to exercise a vague consensus it would be that heteronomy is more fundamental, knowing that human social behaviors are learned, derivative, and imitative, making autonomy a secondary phenomenon. Individuality as understood by liberalism then is a learned behavior, and the social conditions which teach it must be ontologically prior.
A historical example of heteronomy could be feudal europe, with its strict social hierarchies, roles, and duties. Religion and social structures dictated moral and political norms, rather than individual wills as is the supposition of democracy. The legal system emphasized communal social interests over individual rights. Imperial China and Japan exhibited extreme heteronomy in their loyalties to the emperor, social orders were defined by descending hierarchies such as father to son, husband to wife, with clear duties involved. The highly successful education system worked to enable the execution of roles in service to the empire, not to enable individual expression. One final example being ancient Sparta, where the goals of the polis were prioritized to such an extreme that military training was mandatory at an early age and all individual desires were subordinated to broader interests of military and conquest.
Further demonstrations of heteronomy include traditions such as guilds and apprenticeships where excellence of craft passing down hierarchically is a process curated as a virtue. Autonomy naturally disrupts such a system, resulting in the current state of the jobs market in modern economies where workers feel relatively purposeless.
Even in cases you could consider exceptions such as ancient Athens, autonomy did not emerge organically among the general population, it starts among the elite. When the elite issue an imperative of autonomy, such as by instituting democratic voting processes, then individualism can take root in the culture. Even then, the privileges of democratic individualism were limited only to males of good social standing in this case. Philosophical debate popularly took place which questioned authority but rather than being individualistic were more concerned with debate and rationality themselves as prior principles.
Consider also the french revolution where one force behind it was a middle aristocracy undermining the ruling class by spreading liberal and democratic ideology resulting in the needless and horrific deaths of many honorable people. And notably resulting in the French people being no less subject to tyranny under democracy today. Such a history points to a top-down anthropological dynamic taking place to issue autonomy as an imperative in the interests of some agent.
This is not to say that all individuality, entrepreneurship, autonomy, creativity, etc. are inherently bad, only that they can't be placed in the context of individual firstness, but in proper relation to much more important things.
If the right is to successfully combat liberalism it should observe that the history of liberal democracy is one of power dynamics and agents pursuing their interests. Far from being a decentralization of power to the benefit of individual rights, liberal democracy has only further centralized power into procedures and bureaucracies surrounding the enforcement and interpretation of legal rights as well it empowers media agents to wield persuasive capital to ensure that the majority of individuals don't act or think out of line. In democracy power claims to function by the will of the people, but in reality powerful agents still rule in obscurity. Liberalism then is illusory, power is a prior force that issues it rather than it being a force to decentralize and redefine power. The right should exercise a Jouvenelian model of power where conflicting interests of powerful agents define history. Therefore, rulership should be more explicit, sovereigns are better incentivized and more accountable if they are identifiable, not obscured by procedure and bureaucracy. An accurate and ideologically unbiased study of sovereign agents then is a realm of much importance. [6] [7]
To the Post-Structuralist, meaning of words and signs is always deferred, calling upon prior signs which call upon even earlier ones endlessly. Which puts into question the validity of language as an expression of underlying reality. This is one of the most core positions of Jacques Derrida, a key Post-Structural thinker. However, this chain of deffered meaning or "différance" can only be so long before a point of origin is necessary. Consider the "unmoved mover" argument of Aquinas' five ways, where God is a necessary first mover to initiate all observed motion. Utilizing that logic, an originary event must have taken place for différance to begin. Instead of disproving logocentrism, Derrida provides the framework to discover the ontologically prior unit or "center" through linguistics in this way. A center or point of origin is a practical necessity in order for meaning and its observed deferral to exist. The study of this center can be an insight into Jouvenelian power dynamics, right wing philosophy, and even theology. [8] Humans must have operated hierarchically for most of their history. Hierarchical leadership forms through those who assume power by being most capable of acting in line with the center. It is this leadership which can issue autonomy, should that issuance be coherent with the center in that context.
There is much debate about what this center is, if you're religious it is divine in origin. If you insist on secularism then it may be a complex underlying logic (Logos) behind everything from linguistics to anthropology. Whether you consider the center just a vaguely defined social focal point or simply God, the study of the center would effectively be a theological endeavor covering meaning itself and the authorities that govern it. The answer to ontological liberalism therefore is ontological absolutism or logocentrism, the belief that there is a fixed and authoritative reality underlying the observed unstable one, it is that central reality from which all perceived variance originates. Variances are not arbitrary social constructs as much as they are expressions of the same center differentiated by other factors such as environment. The study of this center is the realm of the right-wing thinker who transcends classically liberal conservatism.
Language, Power, social meaning, and a center actually precede the individual as necessary preconditions for its issuance which means narratives about such phenomena victimizing the individual are unfounded. Leftists are misplaced ontologically, resulting in their output being highly victimary. Instead, the individual owes its existence to the very things that leftists resent.
The liberal "State of Nature" theory crumbles under this approach. Total disorder caused by conflicting and uncoordinated wills, to then be solved by the agreement of those wills to honor each other's interests, this has never been observed in reality and only exists in the abstract imaginations of philosophers who have ideological reasons to presume that individual autonomy is the primary force behind civilization. With this new approach we can see that the state of nature likely never happened and there are good reasons why we haven't observed it. Instead, the center is the antidote to chaos by being a common point of relation which issues meanings that coordinate human behavior.
Where the leftist observes emergent patterns and impersonal systemic phenomena underlying societal issues, the right wing thinker sees will and sovereingty, a divine agentic center from which everything else proceeds. The right studies agency, how and why sovereign actors enact their wills, sometimes to a conspiratiorial extent. [9] The right effectively views all sociality and political activity as monarchic or absolutist. In the democratic political systems of today we can still see the will of sovereign agents guiding things along more than "the will of the people" ever could. The "great man" theory rings true. Something is in control, in spite of our rebellion against it. We can categorize victimary thinking as the most advanced step in that rebellion. We delude ourselves through illusory and manufactured consent rituals such as voting to believe that individual wills are valued [10], but we are always subjects by our nature as beings shaped by sovereign will. [6] [7] The left rebels against this supposed "systemic" issue of manufactured consent not realizing that it is a reality of sovereign will that cannot be changed. It is better for us to operate harmoniously with the sovereign than to rebel against it or pretend it doesn't exist. [11]
The left's mechanistic viewpoint is one more weakness which makes them less effective. They are immobile, not prone to decicive action without consulting procedure. Mechanistic systems are unapproachable and impersonal, they struggle to command loyalty and they stifle ambition. Systems rely on quantification, data, and metrics to make decisions and produce outputs, making them inherently incapable of pursuing qualitative ends. These weaknesses and various others make the leftist viewpoint extremely unlikely to deliver on fantasies of communism or any sort of drastic change. Leftism will only encourage established systems to further their own decline into stagnant bureaucracy and procedure, endlessly iterating on the basic concepts of liberalism into absurdity. [12]
To return to Judith Butler's Gender Trouble as a demonstration. We can observe that gender norms are issued from the center and carried out by its representatives based on various contextual factors. The variance of those factors over time explains why Post-Structuralists would observe instability. The gender ideologue argues that instability of gender expressions indicates that they are socially constructed or arbitrary. Anything socially constructed is second to the self, therefore individual agency should subvert gender norms as an act of empowerment to rectify the victimization caused by imposed norms. However, with a different ontology we can see that the output of the social center varies depending on contextual factors but the output is still sensible and authoritative all things considered. While certain cultures allow men to wear skirts, a scottish man in a kilt was not typically expected to take on a feminine role in the social order. Variance in the center's output regarding gender norms will not extend so far as to contradict biological realities, such as men not being optimized for nurtering roles or certain anatomical features being masculine or feminine. (Recall the infamous "feminine penis" concept) Traditions form around ideas of gender and they do vary but within their respective contexts they are largely valid, outside of obvious cases of rebellion or deviancy. Expressing traditions faithfully could be considered performative to some extent, but through alignment with the will of the center these traditions are not arbitrary and their performance is not purposeless. The gender ideologue's conclusions are massively out of line because they apply ontological liberalism and victimary thinking to what is otherwise a sensible observation of gender. In a more right-wing ontology, gender expression would be derived from the imperatives of the center to fill needed social roles appropriately. While variance occurs in this system, by its grounding to biological reality, social needs, and sovereign interests, it is never going to arrive at the current LGBT+ condition. It is only through individualistic hubris, rebellion, and indulgent perversion that we get to such a point.
Given everything we have observed we can conclude that one fundamental dichotomy underlying the victimary left against the intellectual right is egocentrism vs logocentrism. Utilizing certain Post-Structural ideas and theology we observe that logocentrism is a practical necessity, a center of some sort must exist for meaning and sociality to exist. Leftism is defined by egocentrism which inherently denies the sovereignty or existence of the center, causing incoherence given that the center must exist and have some authority. Because leftists are doing battle against an ontological force that precedes them their victimary narratives ever expand but can never find resolution. Hence the often mocked pattern of leftism seeking and defining victimary categories to no end, unable to ever address all supposed victimization.
The leftist view is not functional and must be replaced by something that does honor hierarchy and perceives more functional language. We must understand the place of absolutism and sovereignty prior to personal autonomy. As of late this has been the place of religion. The evident need for these things explains the beginning of a trend towards religiosity and logocentrism among those who are privy to these issues and their historic solutions.
Conservatism has been ineffective at combating leftism in part because it is also unwilling to reject ontological liberalism, a misguided patriotism associates it with ideas of liberty. However, as we have seen liberty and autonomy are issued from a social center as an imperative and do not tend to form naturally at scale. Ideas of freedom and liberty can still be admirable and patriotic through their alignment with the will of the center, but not strictly by their empowerment of the individual. Considering the liberation of the individual a first moral principle is backwards, effectively saying that an end achieved its own means. Conservative emphasis on liberty does not meaningfully contradict the left's belief system. Attacking on the front of individualism by asserting the priority of the sovereign center is much more effective and would not inherently disavow most patriotic ideals.
Conservatives, being largely Christian, have a tendency towards individualistic leanings due to Christian ideas such as human dignity, equality before God, and if you're protestant, ideas of personal scripture interpretation and relationship with God. Because of this it is necessary to re-evaluate these ideas as being ontologically absolutist, by nature of their descending from God's will, and not by any ontological precedence of the individual. Without understanding these ideas in relation to God's will they inevitably become secularized and achieve ontological delusion. As happened when these ideas were put down in secular wording in the US founding documents, despite having a sound religious motive they succumbed to secularism, without God or any sort of center to regulate these ideas they arrive at ontological liberalism. We must acknowledge that the individual is not the source of its own dignity, God is. In this recontextualization it is very possible to reject ontological liberalism while maintaining Christian ideas like human dignity, you don't have to become a villainous tyrant to reject liberalism. Although self indulgent leftists will certainly accuse you of it.
Rather than a transcendent self, we need a transcendence of the self. Prioritizing humility and a rejection of narcissism likely through religiosity. Contrary to overdone conservative talking points we are not subject to a marxist tyranny but a tyranny of individualism. This should be undone through religious and philosophical activism within institutions the left has captured. The points made here are weapons to undermine leftist institutional capture and achieve right wing interests if only they can through our boldness find their way to the right ears.
References.