The Woke Right? Identity Politics on the Right.

There is a lot of talk right now about the "woke right." Its a stupid term, but its deployment is strategic and designed to subvert a properly understood right-wing identity politics.

The Woke Right? Identity Politics on the Right.

Identity politics. A mainstay of the left, rising in importance as the idea of “class interest” was largely abandoned in the 20th century for this thing we know as “cultural Marxism.” It is woven through with post-modernist “critical theory,” which, simply put, argues that there are no great universal truths. All truth claims can be subjected to formal “criticism” that exposes their historical, social, political, and economic biases. This thing that we think of as “truth” is merely the imposition of the powerful over the weak. The weak are then identified as “victims” of the powerful. They are the “marginalized” and their “truth” is denied to them and society. They are “negated.” They cannot stand against the power of the powerful who determine the nature of truth itself.

This is a very brief synopsis of what is happening with post-modernist critical theory. Its stated purpose is to give a proper hearing to marginalized voices. Some will have intersections of marginalization. If you are woman, black, and a lesbian with autism, you have four intersections of marginalization, the interplay of which is itself a whole field of academic study and political action. In a mirror fashion, the white, Christian, straight male is considered definitionally an oppressor, someone who is in a privileged position, regardless of how much actual power, wealth or privilege he might have or how much actual influence he wields in shaping society. This frame of victimization is then applied both in propaganda and within the mechanism of the administrative state to gain and keep power by means of patronage networks built around the purpose of righting wrongs and creating equity. Additionally, those who are unable to count themselves among the victims or the marginalized, gain social currency by being allies with them in their struggle, usually by generating and managing the systems which distribute favors and largess. These positions created for the allies of the oppressed are also a form of political patronage.

Those that rail against the “woke right” generally accuse its members of seeking to claim for themselves the status of victim. Critics make the accusation that claiming the white Christian male is the true victim in today’s society is merely the adoption of the frame of the regime. There is truth, though, to both the claim and the criticisms of its use. Those who decry the “woke right,” generally operate out of a framework in which the primary contrast is between individualism and collectivism. The individual is seen as the principle unit of social organization. The notion of individual rights is presented as central to the essence of the American system of government and society. The idea of the strong, independent, self-sufficient individual who maintains a fierce defense of his personal liberties is seen as foundational. The exercise of one’s free will is a cornerstone. The antidote to collectivism, as we saw it in the old Soviet system, the great Cold War enemy, and now in identity politics, is to treat people as individuals, based on their own merits, without prejudice. Many of us resonate with this as this is how we try to live our lives. Treat each person as they are without prejudice on their own merits.

The problem comes when you elevate the idea of assessing each person based on their own merits without pre-judgement to the level of a political philosophy. On the surface, individualism and individual rights seems like the perfect antidote to the collectivism of Marxism, both in its classical and cultural forms. The only problem with this is that this sort of collectivism does not form organically. It is created out of the breakdown of more traditional, organic and natural collectivities. While a theoretical argument can be made that the foundation of society is the individual and his rights, in practice no society ever has been formed based on the individual. The real question that the individualist must answer is this: how does a collection of individuals living within the same space become a society? Can they become a society at all? Can their be a true natural collective life among a collection of individuals? People will make the argument that this collective space is negotiated through a social contract. But if every relationship is purely voluntary and subject to negotiation and exists only as long as both parties agree to participate in the arrangement, can you really make the case that you have a society at all? Are all relationships transactional? Do all relationships only exist as long as there is mutual benefit for both parties? These fundamental problems are a big part of why individualism is pejoratively labeled an “anti-society.”

Individualism may have seemed like a good idea in the stable pre-industrial society which existed prior to the rise of the technological society in that it was not subjected to the pressures of mass markets and mass communication. Both of these undermine the natural bonds that occur within society — marriage, family, community, church, guilds, etc. — isolating and atomizing the individual, turning the theory of individualism into a lived reality. When persons are isolated individuals without the strong unchosen bonds of organic living communities, they become vulnerable to propaganda. The “mass” of mass society is not a true organic community with real natural horizontal bonds with other real human beings. Rather, they interact with the propagandist and the propaganda. Even though they may identify with a collective based on politics or even something simple as fashion, music or media, their relationship with it is always vertical, through the propaganda and not directly with other people. The “bond” that they think they have is more of an abstraction than it is something real.

This is compounded by the reality that in a real organic community, most social frictions are negotiated intuitively, by a set of beliefs and conventions which are held in the community’s collective memory. Everyone knows that “this is not how you behave.” They also know that crossing those boundaries brings social sanctions including shaming and ostracization. When the community is broken down, these social frictions must still be navigated. But, without the community playing that role, the state is called upon to step in and negotiate these conflicts, making ever more rulings, involving itself more and more in people’s lives. This becomes compounded in the technological society, especially with the application of surveillance technology, big data and sophisticated algorithms. You can manage these conflicts in real time to overcome the frictions which result from the breakdown of real community in order to simulate something which resembles a high trust society. The end result is that once you set in motion the individualist society, it must end in totalitarianism or in the chaos of complete social breakdown. Individualism means that the individual person is at the mercy of the propagandist, the technocrat, the marketer, all who want to manipulate him for power and profit. It is profoundly difficult to defend oneself as an individual against the systematic accumulation and implementation of power on the scale of the global technological society. Individualism is the necessary precursor to your being integrated into the machine.

Notions such as “class” or the “proletariat” are themselves abstractions and not actual natural forming bonds or identities. Integration into such conceptions is part of the process of the social breakdown which comes from industrialization. As Peter Laslett notes in “The World We Have Lost,” we often confuse the idea of “status group” with “class.” He defines “class” as “a number of people banded together in the exercise of collective power, political and economic.” There is a key difference between people who bring themselves together for political action, who have natural shared political interests and then work collectively to realize them, and those who are organized by others through propaganda and other means as a weapon for their political interests. There is a real question as to whether any of the victim groups organized by means of critical theory are an actual political class as per Laslett or whether they are merely pawns employed in someone else’s real battle for political power? This understanding of “class” is also at the heart of what is known as “elite theory.” It questions whether organic political action can originate from the bottom up at all.

This is why the regime is genuinely worried about the Christian community developing a political consciousness. The churches and the Christian community have a fairly strong identity and self conception and have issues upon which they can act collectively. If they can expand that into a fully formed political self-interest, there may be genuine reason for concern from the regime perspective. Even though it seems not to garner a lot of attention — yet — from the regime and its propagandists, this is also why genuine parallelism movements also represent a threat to long term regime stability: the formation of organic political interests which are able to exercise collective power.

Here we get to the point where we can now meaningfully discuss right wing collective political action in regards to the “woke right” accusation. The first question that we should address is this: is the white, Christian male part of a victim group? It is hard to deny these days that there have been real efforts to bring this into existence. At the same time, it seems to me that allowing one’s self to be manipulated by grievance, means allowing yourself to be turned into a weapon for someone else’s political interests. But the danger of mirroring left politics is that you would be mirroring the social atomization and propagandization that formed the other classes for political purposes from “on high.” Alongside of this is the danger that we would try to retreat into individualism and individual rights as the antidote to collectivization upon which so called “centrist” politics is built. Individualization renders you politically vulnerable to the actions of those who would collectivize you to their ends. The true opposing force to the radical left wing is not individualism, but rather real meaningful communities with a political consciousness, intent on exercising political power for their own ends, for their own interests. Is the “white Christian male” acting for his own interests, or is he allowing himself to be manipulated by others for their interests, using his resentments as the wedge?

Carl Schmitt, in the final chapter of “The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy” goes into an extended discussion of the French Marxist thinker Georges Sorel. Schmitt agrees with Sorel that participation in “the system” saps your will and ability to resist the regime.

“For the proletariat, the only danger is that it might lose its weapons through parliamentary democracy and allow itself to be paralyzed.”

Schmitt makes the argument that the liberal bourgeoisie system of government, of managing society, leads to a general cowardice among the people. Their ideal is the peaceful agreement, the prosperous business arrangement that benefits all. In the end, it becomes a monstrosity, he says. He argues that the bourgeoisie lack a true cultural spirit. They are too worried about making money and holding on to their property. They are ruined by skeptical criticism, relativism and the general inaction of parliamentary forms of government. In response to this, both Sorel and Schmitt assert that it will ultimately be violence that breaks the power of the bourgeoisie.

“Rather in the place of the mechanically concentrated power of the bourgeois state there appears a creative proletarian force — ‘violence appears in place of power.’”

These are unsettling thoughts for those of us raised on the bourgeois conception of political and social life. Both Sorel and Schmitt make the argument that it is genuine living culture, what Schmitt calls “myth,” is where the capacity for heroic action resides. In contrast to this kind of heroic action there is the danger of the system. For the “class struggle” the threat is that professional politics and participation in parliamentary business will wear down the enthusiasm and the genuine instincts that produce the “moral decision” discussed by Denoso-Cortes.

What is the point of mentioning this? Schmitt’s point is that ultimately, the abstract idea of “class” is not strong enough to compel the kinds of meaningful actions that allow you to assert a genuine political instinct, the true “friend-enemy” distinction. Class does not generate the feeling of a true existential threat that expresses itself powerfully in the political. For Schmitt, he saw that energy as existing in something real and grounded, in real communities where people have deep ties to each other, to place, to history, and who have a shared faith.

“The more naturalistic conceptions of race and descent, the apparently more typical terresme of the Celtic and Romance peoples, the speech, tradition, and consciousness of a shared culture and education, the awareness of belonging to a community with a common fate or destiny, a sensibility of being different from other nations all that trends towards a national rather than a class consciousness today.”

The argument that Schmitt makes is that on the balance, the real bonds of place, ethnicity, race, culture, history, religion and language will prevail over the more abstract bonds of class formed around economic interests.

This brings us to our situation today and the question of the “woke right.” I know people are going to bristle at hearing this, but there is some justification to the charges that the right is being manipulated into mirroring the left’s grievance politics for political gain. One of the dangers of the “white” identity is the open question of how much genuine organic substance is there to the label. In many ways, the label “black” emerges as a product of the deracination which occurred during the process of being taken as slaves from their home in Africa, among their tribal people, brought to the new world where they were given an identity. Has the black community ever fully recovered from this? Has it become something uniquely its own tied to the American context, something organic and self-emergent? Or has it remained a political abstraction to be wielded for political power?

Mass immigration in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries created a problem of how to integrate all of the pan-European immigrants into American society, one largely solved through propaganda, facilitated by the two Word Wars and the Cold War. The process of industrialization and commercialization of society, combined with the use of mass media, and the general mobility of society has in many ways undermined real local bonds, real organic communities in favor of “mass man” bonded together more abstractly at a national level. People are quite deracinated. In many ways, the thing that happened to the black community, has been done to whites. What is a “white man?” On one level the answer is obvious. But is this merely an abstract category forged from on high so as to manipulate people for political and economic gain? In this regard, white politics would not be all that different from black politics on a number of levels.

Just because “white” is a problematic category, does not mean that group politics is necessarily Marxist, rooted in critical theory, or the product of the manipulations of propaganda. The fall back to the individual, individualism and libertarian type thinking is that in practice it renders people politically weak and vulnerable to those who are organized into groups, even if those groups are the product of critical theory and propaganda. Those are not the only kinds of groups, though. There are groups whose foundations are more real. They are built around those deeper ties that Schmitt was talking about above: place, geography, family, blood ties, tribe, community, history and religion. He lumps these all into an umbrella category called “myth.” This does not mean “made up” like a fictional story, but rather, it is something deeper, archetypal, metaphysical, a spiritual bond among a people.

This does not mean that they have to all be identical. Here is the interesting thing. When people live in community with strong bonds and every one shares in the same metaphysical space, you can more easily tell whether someone is one of yours or not. Someone might have different colour skin, and yet still be recognized as “one of us.” The old guy down at the end of the lane might have some strange ideas and maybe he doesn’t go to church anymore, but it is still understood that he is “one of us.” It is possible to have a strong identity, a strong sense of being a unified people without necessarily needing to all be exactly the same. But at some level there is an intuitive recognition that this group of people are a unified whole, a unitary people.

The deracination which occurs in the modern world through industrialization, immigration, secularization, commercialism, mass media, easy mobility and so forth has the effect of breaking those spiritual bonds. Our relationships become abstract and rationalized. Ideology and ideological correctness becomes the defining characteristics of what bonds us. We engage in purity spirals. When all that truly bonds you together is your ideological doctrines, the pull is towards the rigid imposition of a single true way of thinking, expelling all others with different thoughts. The other thing that bonds us in the context of mass is the institution or the “party.” Thus we find ourselves devoted to and working towards the success of institutions and organizations, finding our identity in their success. And when the success of the institution or the party is all, its material success often ends up mattering much more than truth or integrity.

In contrast to this, Schmitt draws our attention to the power of “myth.” I am not crazy about the word because of its associations with something made up, but what he is getting at is these real bonds that emerge from real communities. It is hard these days, because even in the churches we have in many ways materialized the faith, turning it into either an ideology, focusing on theological purity, or we have focused on institutional growth without a deep emphasis on union with God. In contrast, the broader mystical tradition focuses on revealing in our lives the overcoming of the alienation between God and man. A genuine spiritual connection with our Creator and Redeemer that bonds us together as a people in living communion with the Lord of lords. I keep coming back to this because ultimately it is this religious core that is at the heart of a real community. And Christianity has always had at its heart the process of repentance, faith and discipleship. Why not some other religion? I am a Christian and believe it is the only true faith. Beyond this, the Christian faith is deeply bound up in my history, in our history and heritage, as part of the broader West with its roots in European history and cultural development.

A real group, though, is neither populist — an expression of the will of the people — nor is it a thing of elites — who manipulate the people through propaganda or the exercise of soft or hard power — but rather out of an organic partnership between the leaders and the people, the people and their leaders. The very notion of “the state,” that is, the formal offices, structures and institutions of governance gain their meaning from the people for whose interests they are designed to serve and protect. Schmitt, in the “The Concept of the Political,” argues that this sense of identity never emerges in the abstract. There is no universal humanity that is then governed by abstract principles of universal governance. Universal best practices is not a thing when it comes to governance. It is always about the specific interests of a specific people. These specific people come into conflict or competition with other people. It is the role of the leaders to protect those interests. In response to this protection, the people then give loyalty to their leaders. This partnership is at the core of every properly constituted body politic. It is this relationship that the modern technological society has largely severed. Society and the people who make it up are now seen largely as a problem that has to be managed through social engineering. The consent of the people to be governed is no longer formed organically, but through propaganda and the exercise of state power. Groups are formed and manipulated to maintain power.

This is why the group with an authentic organic relationship is so powerful and dangerous to the regime. But for such a group to be properly constituted it must have properly formed leadership. In “Legality and Legitimacy,” Schmitt argues that a legitimate ruling elite needs to have a number of characteristics. They must be incorruptible, separated from the world of striving, money and profit. They must be educated and have a strong sense of duty and loyalty towards the people they rule. They cannot allow themselves to be co-opted by interest groups. The elite must also be a stable group within society composed of quality people. This group must not be closed, but yet it must be self-selecting of those who will be elevated into its ranks. This group is at once removed from and bound to the people.

Populism as we know it today is a function of mass society, mass politics, propaganda and manipulation. The needs, interests and passions of the people are merely seen as a tool to be wielded or a force to be feared and exterminated. The idea of a truly organic bond between people and their leaders, forming naturally, out of what Schmitt calls the power of “myth,” and based on this understanding that the leaders embody the interests of the people as whole and thus earn their loyalty, this sense of “the group” is a real threat to the bourgeoisie managerial order. This kind of group, if intentional, can create a locus of power capable of resisting the rewards and punishments of the administrative state.

When I think of group politics on the right, this is the kind of thing I have in mind. This is the essence of parallelism. It is the purposeful creation or cultivation and strengthening of communities which are capable of developing their own leadership status group. Together, the people and their leaders would be able to engage in meaningful political action as they would be organized as a “people banded together in the exercise of collective power, political and economic.” This is the heart of what Schmitt is getting at in “The Concept of the Political.” This is group politics as it is supposed to be practiced. It is the kind of politics that are undermined at every turn because they represent a real challenge to the hegemonic control of the regime.

Can this be practiced within the construct known as “America?” In theory, yes. But you can’t do so while maintaining a globe spanning empire. Nor can you do it while sustaining the idea of a single unified “America” that spans a continent and includes 350 million people or more. A loose federation of independent states who work together on some matters of shared interest but fiercely maintain their own unique sense of being a people might be able to manage it. This is the tension. This was the idea of federalism. The realities of the modern managerial state that allows governance at the scale with which it currently operates really requires deracinated people who can be integrated into a collective reality by propaganda. In this sense, groups formed within this deracinated society by propaganda, that is, “white identity politics” actually work for the system because they work within the rules set by the system. Its like developing a new strategy for playing 40k, a different list, a new combo that for a time “breaks the meta.” But, in the end, you are still playing within the defined rule set, you are still playing 40k.

In this sense there are no quick solutions, nothing that will do the trick for the next election cycle. All of those so-called “solutions” work within the current system. Likely, real right wing identity politics, baring some shock that forces people to adapt quickly to a new situation, perhaps an economic shock, or a genuine military defeat, or the use of hard power totalitarianism and persecution, this will be a multi-generational project by people committed to living together in community, in place, over time. But to rule out right wing politics of group identity all together is to be doing the work of the regime. Only the strength of real organic communities organized around shared cultural, religious, economic and political goals will be able to self-generate the necessary conditions for acting in their own interests as a people. This is not a thing for individuals, nor for “mass man.”