My last piece looked at the shortcomings of populism and anti-elite sentiment as the basis for right wing politics. As I wrote there, the problem with today’s Western elite is not that they are “out of touch” with everyday people, but that they despise their own nations and civilisation. In other words, the problem is not just that they are an elite, who are of course never “in-touch” with the common man, but that they are not how an elite ought to be. When you boil it down, populists are essentially saying:
Who better to be at the helm of the United Kingdom than a representative of its very lowest tendencies?
While they’d object to this framing, the populist-nationalist crowd seems determined to do just this; the sacred public and their infallible will seen as the only way to “save Western Civilisation™”. The movement is invariably vague in ideology and aims, never fundamentally challenging the liberal assumptions of its enemy; they never seem to offer an alternative vision of how to run society or how an elite ought to be (like seen on
), but instead insist that the failure of our present elite and its projects warrants the negarchic destruction of the very idea of elites. This is what calls “the populist delusion”. There will always be ruler and ruled - this is unavoidable and not a bad thing, either.An angle I didn’t really look at last time is how this attitude to politics can lead us to endorse and make heroes of really shit-tier people in lieu of a truly noble elite. An example was served up to me the other day when Tommy Robinson skipped once again back into the spotlight after having once again been arrested, this time in Canada. The boomer-right across the whole Anglosphere are fanatical Robinson devotees and throw their undying support behind Are Tommy: free-speech desperado and streetwise everyday bloke, who knows firsthand the dangers of Islam and represents the suffering white working class.
I want to be careful how I word this and be sure not to seem to dismiss the importance of the issues that motivate completely legitimate backlash and the sentiments that feed into populism. My gripe is never with the absolutely righteously outraged public, but with the shucksters who divert this outrage in dead-end directions and even into outright scams.
The suffering of the people Tommy represents was systematically ignored by plutocratic elitists, this much is undeniably true, and a pernicious metropolitan snobbery was absolutely part of it. This is epitomised in the UK’s grooming-gang scandals. The unbelievable betrayal and cowardice shown by the British establishment to the public and to vulnerable young white girls in the face of the obscene predation that went on is a pretty solid reason to despise the elite. The ridiculing of those who spoke up against “Muslamic ray guns”1 as low status, racist morons, was motivated by the smug sense of superiority that it gave.
The “EDL-Thug” stereotype was Britain’s go-to trope to villify any rejection of liberal internationalism for years, succeeded by “gammon” in the wake of Brexit. For British people, accusations of racism imply yobbery, loutishness and low status. The right then overzealously reacts to this, seeing itself as the protector of defamed decent, ordinary folk, by valorising the accused in contrast with the “out of touch”, liberal elites. In denouncing the snob, they inadvertently embrace the yob.
Enter Bethan Nodwell, a Canadian activist who was involved in organising an interview with Tommy while he was on tour in Canada. She had some pretty serious allegations to fling at everyone’s favourite Fatwa-dodging freedom fighter.
TL;DR: Tommy got coked up and went to a brothel. It transpired they only made about $3k from ticket sales when they’d aimed for $80k. Tommy reportedly said “I’m going to Calgary. I’m going to get nicked”. He proceeded to go to Calgary and get nicked.
Tommy’s handler Ezra Levant sprang into action right away, soliciting donations and selling T-Shirts and wasting no time at all in exploiting the good faith of disgruntled right wing grannies signed up to his mailing list after signing some sham petition or other. Hilariously, they had the savetommy.com domain name already set up from the last time they pulled the same kind of stunt2 - Tommy has frequently been in trouble with the law for a slew of dipshit reasons - travelling under other people’s passports etc - always framed as persecution.
From
:It’s especially frustrating since he’s become such a figurehead that to be seen denouncing him puts you at odds with a huge swathe of conservatives across the West.
Robinson is the biggest Zionist you’ll ever meet and exclusively goes after Islam. Levant, his partner in the Yobbish-Yiddish axis, wheels him out for cash grabs and to garner support for Israel; his compromising legal history makes him the perfect asset for these ends. At the same time, the associations he carries make nationalism unpalatable and toxic, driving away anyone with anything to lose - that is, with any degree of status. The disorganised and discontented mob, exploited by figures like Levant (did someone say Mossad?), can be pointed towards all sorts of dead ends, their rage channelled into support for Israel or just yammering on about Muslims, but away from what an authentic and properly based elite leadership would advocate and lead them to fight for. In a sick twist, the outrage generated from real issues is fed into a scam. Anti-Elitist Populism, which lionises figures like Tommy, enables this scam and more importantly, stands in the way of any positive change. There are vested interests now in having Tommy be a constantly persecuted freedom fighter in need of financial aid; the grift needs the outrage to keep flowing!
Now, anyone who’s had any degree of insider info from these circles (the UK “Free Speech Movement” of circa 2019 in particular) has known about Tommy’s drug abuse and untoward behaviour for years, but even without the rumours and tips I heard from people, I could’ve told you that. We get so caught up in calling out left wing hypocrisy that we hoodwink ourselves into forgetting our own instincts. At the same time physiognomy is in vogue and I know that my readership has no problem with ideas of hierarchy. Look, everyone knows what men of Tommy’s background are like. The objections I’m immediately hearing and the accusations of middle-class snobbery on my part are all, guess what - left wing objections. Once again, in playing the losing battle of pointing out left wing hypocrisy, the right ends up absorbing its adversary’s ideas and constantly being the left of 20 years ago. You can’t just start your inegalitarianism at the border; if you are right wing, or frankly if you have any sane view of the world, then you recognise that hierarchy is everywhere; in everything.
The populist sentiment sees any condemnation of yobbishness as classist dismissal of real concerns. This then blinds people to the antisocial tendencies of those they’re defending. Nationalism is then left the exclusive domain of the antisocial; we are conned into defending indefensible people. You should not idealise the working class, just because their rulers have failed them. They should be held to just as rigid a standard as we do the middle class - as they once were, in which conditions they were far more pro-social.
As I said in the last article:
Democracy is fundamentally a lie. The people are never in power. Like with anything, if you equalise the access to something, its potency gets watered down. The thing in itself changes. The power any individual has in a democracy is meaningless, at least through the direct means of the vote. As is seen in the “elite theory” that everyone is fond of quoting now, the people are always ruled. At the end of the day, people have better things to do with their lives than constantly engage in politics. Suggesting that every plumber, traffic warden and shop assistant should be thoroughly versed in politics is nonsense, people just want a reliable elite in charge that will rule in the interests of the nation.
The people naturally furthest from power have been left the responsibility of standing up for themselves, as no one will act to protect the nation at large. The traditional working class are completely dispensible to neoliberal order, which mocks them for their stumbling efforts to make up for the duty that the ruling class has completely neglected.
This is not to say that we should delude ourselves about them, though. As IQ and genetic health generally declines, we’ve got to the point where people with the equivalent intelligence and pro-sociality of yesterday’s working class now occupy a middle class role. Today’s criminal underclass simply didn’t exist before the collapse in harsh conditions of the last two centuries, as
has brought to light (I’d recommend his documentary on Clacton-on-Sea, soon to be Nigel Farage’s parliamentary seat, for a look into a lot of this). Every single level of society is degraded and degenerated from what it used to be. We are more than ready to point this out when it comes to the middle and upper classes, but even in right-wing “hierarchicalist” circles, we are reticent to call out the dysfunction and rampant degeneracy of the lower social orders, instead seeking to seem virtuous by embracing them when the liberal elite has left them behind. What we need is for an elite to lead by example; to hold the lower orders to account and to a high standard. Spare me your pseudo-Marxist appeals to the virtue of the working class.I think this is a very age-dependent thing. The young right is more middle-class, more intellectual and more ideologically robust than the instinctually patriotic Brexit base, who are significantly older, less urban and generally more working class. They are hesitant to embrace Tommyism and see working class nationalism in a fundamentally different way. The Norf FC meme is a half-ironic but actually very honest appreciation of the British working class and their good instincts, which equally ridicules and lampoons them.
The Norfpranos (skit from my documentary The Linguistics of the Sopranos).
They’re extremely funny, because underneath the mockery of the relentless football watching and antisocial behaviour of the underclass, is a genuine and non mealy-mouthed appreciation of the salt-of-the-earth, instinctual virtue that you do find in common people. Weirdly, it isn’t patronising, despite the grotesque caricatures it paints of its subject. There’s a potent “this but unironically” energy about it; an embracement of the ugly truth of who they are. The meme doesn’t pretend that the British working class are somehow virtuous, but nonetheless praises their common sense and reminds us that you don’t need to be a Nobel laureate to understand that mass immigration is bad for you and yours.
Some classics:
Crucially, it doesn’t turn them into leaders; which they never can be. It appreciates the instinctual reactionary energy that they display for what it is and doesn’t expect anything too great from it. This energy alone can never win, it must be channeled, directed and led by a new elite. The thing is, they know this themselves - why else do they support Farage and Boris before him? Men of completely different backgrounds who nonetheless are seen to love the country - not to condescend to them or pretend to relate, but men who are seen to be devoted to the nation, as one.
I’m not saying anyone who didn’t go to Harrow can’t lead anything, but in the past, the high-bar and classist standards that were in place meant that if you did overcome class prejudice, you really deserved to. We can’t afford to maintain these populist delusions any longer. They leave us vulnerable to grifters and, worse, they make nationalism a permanently low phenomenon - impotent and manageable.
Trust your instincts, friends.
A misheard quote from an EDL supporter at a rally, he actually said “Muslamic rape gangs”, which are entirely real. He became a meme and people had a jolly old laugh at the expense of someone who dared to not be especially bright - needless to say, you don’t need a degree to oppose this. Not being especially articulate apparently invalidates concerns about foreigners preying on young girls in your community.
In fact, according to the host of the podcast where Nodwell spilled the beans, Rebel Media actually repurchased the domain name in April. Fishy…
People - you and me too - will revert to type unless outside forces prevents them from doing so.
If one is a yob, then be the best yob you can be.
Doesn't mean being stupid or ignorant - anyone can educate themselves in how to educate themselves. Same with earning a living or going career - do it, but do it as you.
Same for the fops, toffs and chinless wonders of the world.
Good
End the valorising of the Procrustean
Against proletarianisation and the race to the bottom
For elitism, unabashed snobbery, paternalism of the most rigid and uncompromising kind