kanethenotorious
Phoron
"The Case Against Populism
Yes, a Vanguard is necessary.
Capitalism creates false elites. Through a combination of luck, brown nosing and nepotism, people who are undeserving of leadership make it to the top. However, it is a mistake to organize resistance to this without seeking to create an elite of intellectuals to challenge this false elite. Populism is an ideological framework that is obsessed with the majority resisting the false elite without a counter-elite. It is a heavily flawed ideology with too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.
The revolutionaries who created the Soviet Union openly attacked the majority religion of their time (Orthodox Christianity). In Germany, Hitler privately despised Christianity. It was religious dissidents who largely formed the founders of America too. It was religious outsiders in Europe who formed Israel. The sheep of society are attracted to organized religion. Sheep do not make revolutions. Sheep follow the herd. Attempts to find out opportunistically what the majority religion is and then infiltrate it are attempts to make leaders out of sheep. Yes, the tendency of the elites is to reject organized religion. Arguments about organized religion saving the people through paleoconservatism are arguments of sheep.
Take an analysis Intelligence Quotient (IQ). IQ is just one measure of intelligence and there are other personality traits that matter and multiple types of intelligence, but to simplify things I am just calling it “IQ.” People of high IQ need to lead philosophically. People of medium IQ need to manage. People of low IQ need to follow. This does not mean that a class system should develop, but that people should do what they are good at. Our class system inverts this system of merit and instead creates an inverted pyramid (the false elite) of brown nosers, lucky people and as written before, those who benefit from nepotism.
I frequently hear arguments from right wingers about the Overton Window shifting or the majority of people waking up. What does this actually accomplish? Some of these right wingers are open pro-White advocates, but there are anti-populists in that movement too. Whites are suddenly going to wake up? It is notable that to explain their flawed populist ideology, they need Jews to be holding Whites down otherwise Whites would naturally wake up on their own. I have a better explanation - populism is a sham.
On the left we had Occupy Wall Street, a left populist movement. Again, what was accomplished? Occupy Wall Street even tried to implement in some cases a “progressive stack” where minorities and women spoke before men. This sort of reverse discrimination is a left populism that leads nowhere. Occupy Wall Street was a flash in the pan, it came up, made noise and accomplished nothing.
Intellectuals need to debate their ideas against each other so that they both become stronger debaters and the good ideas rise to the top. You do not have debates by following populism. You have debates by intentionally challenging status quos and then arriving where the debate takes you. Debate and experimentation are necessary steps to take when ideologically solving problems. Populism does not lead to this experimentation. Organizing true free speech communities where people debate is not a populist thing to do, because it is a “no pain, no gain” type of mentality that disregards sentimentalism to have people go at it.
The politicians who try to capitalize on populists themselves are elitists, like Donald Trump. He is a Billionaire. He laughs as he switches his positions on issues and can “stand in the middle of fifth avenue and shoot someone” and not lose any support. My previous article detailed how he did this on foreign policy, posing as anti-interventionist while not being that.
This is not to say that populists are bad people. They are just misguided. I am friendly with many of them and post on the same websites and in the same conversations as them. They are arriving at false solutions though. What has populism ever accomplished, on the left or on the right? They seek the comfort of the majority. They seek to be popular, but change is made by going against the grain and is never at first popular."