A Future to Believe In

The return of the Right, and the importance of the human element…

It’s easy to get distracted by the shiny baubles and exciting new gewgaws when thinking about the future.

I guess that has to do with the child that lives in all of us, and which was first attracted to the exhilarating novelty of things to come, and the endless promise of strange new wonders to behold.

But that’s where the problem lies, as well; after all, the mistake made by all those pulp science fiction authors of the thirties, forties, fifties and even later was that they imagined a future that was essentially populated by people and a society they were familiar with—plus spaceships, flying cars, towering “conapts,” and the occasional “vidphone” or two.

In other words, they took it for granted that people in the future would be much the same as them, with identical motivations, customs, and ways of thinking. And that was their error, for they neglected the human element of their future in favor of the whiz-bang technology and the strange new worlds…and so almost every one of their futuristic visions totally missed the plot.

And small wonder—how could they have envisioned a future in which the single most pressing issue is whether or not children ought to be castrated and mutilated in service of an outré, thoroughly bizarre and almost gnostic left-wing metaphysics? Or whether a free, white male who acquitted himself honorably in the military—just the sort of type who often formed the omni-competent protagonist of many a pulp tale—should even have the right to defend himself and others against the threats and intimidation of the mentally insane…the violent underclass which the Regime, in its infinite benevolence, permits to terrorize its cowed subjects?

No, there’s no fun in that sort of future, so what was the use in imagining it? Some of the darker minds, perhaps, imagined just this outcome; but no one really wanted to read that sort of depressing fare, let alone write it.¹

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a fat tranny’s feet crammed into stiletto heels and stamping on a human face—forever…”

Anyway, it’s ironic that, just as the generation that envisioned all those optimistic futures was on the cusp of realizing its dream with the first Moon landing in 1969, it had at the same moment lost that future, perhaps forever, in the most comprehensive way possible…by overlooking the human element. Because by the late sixties, as I think everyone ought to know by now, the Left—skulking in the shadows and seducing children (how little things have changed) while the hard and competent men of the war generation had their heads in the clouds—won a total victory through conquest of the youth.

The Left, in other words, paid attention to the human element, and so we are living in the future that they envisioned.

Well, what of it? That’s ancient history, and no one needs to hear that story again…it’s all so painfully and depressingly obvious.

But there’s a lesson to be drawn here from the successes of the Left, and I think many on the Right already know it very well—even if only on an instinctual level. Listen: the Regime totters, and it lashes out viciously as a wounded animal might against its greatest enemies…and these are not Russia nor China, nor any other foreign power or political bloc.

Liberal-democracy has promised much but delivered little; what it did deliver, seemingly, in the past now seems much more likely to have been the simple but nourishing fruit of hard-working men and women—just the sort of human element that liberal-democracy squanders and casts away. Democracy, which we hear so much about these days, seems like a bad joke; elections are obviously rigged, and if the will of the people ever manages to break through and make itself heard…well, it gets promptly vetoed anyhow.

And this is where the Right has been presented with a gilded opportunity to mold the future. The future isn’t first and foremost about building colonies on the Moon and Mars, or creating fusion-powered cities of mile-high skyscrapers, and spreading the human seed to the stars and beyond…it’s about building the sort of society that can make such a dream possible.

Somewhere along the way, we wandered off the path, got turned about, and ended up in this mephitic swamp that some are pleased to call modernity. It’s a nasty, filthy mire, malodorous and full of disease-causing insects; but there’s always a way out, and you can just make out the sun, still shining brightly up above the miasma.

All it takes is a little hard work on our part, and we can find our way out and get back onto the true and proper path. It’s simply a matter of pulling oneself out of the muck, and this is where the Right has the chance to turn its attention to the too-long-neglected human material that really shapes the future.

There are hopeful signs already.

For one thing, anyone who’s paying attention can’t help but notice that the most insightful and incisive critiques of the Regime are fielded by the Right; from analyses of elite theory, to the pseudo-esoteric musings of BAPists, to the resurrection and modern application of Spenglerian and Evolian historiography…well, let’s just say there’s a lot going on, and it’s a heartening thing to see.

Then there’s the matter of envisioning alternatives to the liberal-democratic Regime, which is crucial to achieving the sort of future one wants to live in. It’s not enough to merely reject and impugn the current dispensation; the time will come when it’s necessary to proffer another way, and this is where ideas like Guillaume Faye’s Archeofuturism or Charles Haywood’s Foundationalism, among many others, enter the picture.

They may not be completely realized or fully fleshed out, but they’re like signposts on the way, pointing us in the direction we want to go.

Then there are more practical matters. For one thing, there’s the emphasis in right-wing circles on self-improvement, on proper diet, on bettering one’s physical and intellectual condition—this is where such types as Robert Rundo, or the pseudonymous Bronze Age Pervert and Raw Egg Nationalist have made their mark. And this is no little thing; as the ancients observed, mens sana in corpore sano, “a healthy mind in a healthy body,” and these men have correctly identified the correspondence between modern dysgenics and physical weakness and the cancerous spread of leftist ideology.

Education is of paramount importance, and this is something the Left has always recognized. The Right has been lacking in this sphere, but appropriate strides are being made. As I’ve written about before, the proliferation of right-wing publishing organs—Arktos Media, Imperium Press, Antelope Hill, among many others—allows new or forgotten ideas to be disseminated to those in our circle.

It’s been a tremendous pleasure to learn that those on the Right are prodigious readers.

Recently,

Esotericist

published a very instructive and edifying list of “10 Tendencies to Combat on the Right;” it’s an honest, reflective, and critical look at some of our severest foibles, and it’s the sort of thing we need more of. The advice Esotericist proffers, well-meant and well-taken, covers everything from the need to eschew personalities in favor of systems; avoiding excessive fatalism, theorizing, and conspiratorial thinking (although, admittedly, I do have a weakness for well-crafted conspiracy theories); and semantic and conceptual errors.

He also cautions the Right not to be hostile toward modern technology—and that’s an important point, since there’s a strong tendency, especially among those of a more Traditionalist bent, to reject it altogether. Contrary to popular opinion, I think a solid case can be made that the longstanding Traditionalist society of Medieval Christendom was actually more technologically advanced than the more “modern” Classical civilization that preceded it, so technology is not per se anathema to a right-wing society. Besides, the technical advances of recent centuries are a product of Western, not liberal, civilization; liberalism, while falsely taking credit for these advances, has merely enjoyed and perverted the fruits of those earlier achievements.

Anyhow, I think I’ll discuss this more fully in a future article; but my point is this—technology is here to stay, and there is a pressing need for the Right not to reject it but to recognize what among modern technological advances is important, and can be developed in a healthier way, and what is simply dross and can be discarded as actively unhealthy and harmful (of which there is plenty). Because despite what the apostles of progress tell us, not every technological “innovation” must be accepted unconditionally.

This is just my very imperfect summary of Esotericist’s excellent points; I encourage you to read the essay for yourself. There’s much food for thought in it, and I’m sure we’ve all reflected at one time or another on the issues he raises.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that—in accordance with the sixth item on his list—we need to take a page out of our enemy’s book, and concede that the Left was correct to focus on the human material in order to achieve the future it wanted. This time around, the intellectual heft and physical vitality is with the Right; that’s no great surprise, since the wages of Leftism are always intellectual and moral ruin, but it’s immensely gratifying nonetheless.

This is why I think the presidency of Joe Biden is so apposite in these latter days of the left-liberal dystopia; his physical and mental decay is so perfectly emblematic of the rot in the liberal-democratic Regime that battens on the fading vitality of the West. The other Leftist “leaders” of Western nations are alike in that way, so archetypal and revelatory—the horse-faced girlboss Jacinda Adern, and little Justin Trudeau, the pajama boy who never grew up.

Contrast that with the Rightist leaders: robust and vigorous Viktor Orbán and Jair Bolsonaro, the quick-witted Giorgia Meloni, and even good old, outrageous Donald Trump, pushing eighty but still as full of piss and vinegar as ever. Would-be fascists and authoritarians to a man (and woman), or so we’re told; but they’ve got just the sort of energy, panache, and impish sense of humor that one needs to face an uncertain future…

So, as I said, we made a mistake, and lost our way; but now, with the benefit of experience, we know where we went astray, and we can set things aright. And once we’ve molded the human material of the future…well, the stars will follow soon enough.

1. Incidentally, the picture for this article is John Berkey’s cover art for Hal Stryker’s obscure sci-fi actioner NYPD 2025 (1985), which is—improbably—one of those rare books that seemed to get things right. It’s really quite good, in a pulpy, trashy, thoroughly grindhouse sort of way (as one reviewer on Goodreads summarizes it: “Rampant misogyny, sexism, and blood.” What’s not to like?).

The book’s futuristic New York of flying cars, androids, and laser weapons was wide of the mark, of course, but its depiction of the social situation is about as prescient as it gets. The president of the United States is a mentally-deficient, left-wing loon; law enforcement serves only to protect thugs and criminals; government-sanctioned drug lords have their own federal agency; anarcho-tyranny has been completely codified and institutionalized; and illegal immigration has been eradicated through the simple expedient of declaring all illegals…well, legal. There’s much more, but there’s no need to enumerate it all—we’re pretty much living through it.