The Tall Task Of Turning Conservatives Into Revolutionaries
The Right’s instincts prefer a different option
Many right-wing commentators think their followers should no longer call themselves “conservative.” They insist the prevailing order is hostile to the Right and that there is nothing left to conserve. They prefer a revolutionary attitude from their audience. They envision rebels who want to topple the system and establish a radically new order.
But there’s a problem: nobody outside of the internet actually wants that. Right-wing commentators greatly misunderstand what motivates conservative Americans. The base are not downtrodden outcasts with utopian dreams. They’re middle class people who value order and have a lot to lose. They recognize American decline, but they aren’t eager for revolution. They will only turn to radicalism if their material prosperity is directly threatened by the far-left.
What is the conservative base? The best gauge is to look at Donald Trump’s voters. The common assumption is that Trump’s biggest supporters were working-class whites. This depends on one’s definition of the working-class. If it’s based on income level, then that’s not the case. In the 2016 primary, only a third of Trump’s voters had an income below $50,000 a year. The vast majority made more, with a third making over $100,000 a year. Those figures were roughly the same in the general election. Trump boasted a high-number of non-college educated whites. Nearly 70 percent of Trump’s 2016 general election voters didn’t have a college degree. Many of these people are blue-collar culturally, but not so economically.
The boat parades of 2020 were a perfect symbol of the Trump base. The loud country music and guys in wife beaters proudly waving Trump flags evinced a working-class vibe, but they also had enough income to afford a boat. This is far from the revolutionary proletariat Karl Marx prophesied. The best way to describe Trump’s core support is “blue collar culture, white collar incomes.”
Or take the J6ers, Trump’s most hardcore supporters. Despite all appearances to the contrary, the vast majority were middle-class. More than half of the demonstrators arrested boasted a college education. Twenty-eight percent held a white collar profession, while 26 percent were business owners. Only 22 percent worked a blue collar job.
Many J6ers gave up a nice life for entering the Capitol without permission. They lost their freedom, their jobs, their savings, their homes, their families, and probably their boats. The stiff penalties against these regular Americans convinced other Trump supporters to abstain from public protests. They don’t want to risk everything for political activism. It’s a rational decision that demonstrates our people are not ready to man the barricades.
Marxists declared: “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.”
Right-wing influencers can only echo: “Chuds of America, unite! You have nothing to lose but your home, your family, your job, and your 401k!”
Even though the witch hunts against Trump and his supporters greatly disturb conservatives, they’re still loyal to the prevailing order. That doesn’t mean they pledge allegiance to the present administration or even the federal government. The prevailing order in their mind represents America and the institutions they cherish. In spite of the military’s woke scandals, over two-thirds of Republicans still express confidence in the armed forces. That’s much higher than the confidence level among liberals and independents. Republicans are also far more likely to respect the police. Nearly 80 percent of Republicans think police do an excellent job. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans also view the Supreme Court favorably.
The police, the military, and the high court all represent authority in America. If conservatives were ready to overthrow the present order, you would see far more hostility towards these institutions. Instead, Republicans highly respect them.
This is the conservative nature. Multiple studies show that conservatives are far more likely to defer to authority than people of other political persuasions. People may tweet wild fantasies of taking on federal troops, but, in real life, they will pay their taxes, politely address the officer who pulls them over, and thank a uniformed soldier for his service.
However, the American Right will not accept the status quo, no matter what happens, until the end of time. They will need to feel that there’s a direct threat to the order that provides their way of life. And no, that threat is not drag queen story hour. It has to be something that would threaten their material prosperity, separate from the institutions conservatives cherish.
That threat will probably be a far-left populism that mixes socialism with anti-white hate. This is the American Chavism I’ve described in a previous article. That threat is not so distant. When it emerges, expect right-wing radicalism to grow in popularity.
This is how right-wing radicalism has always come to power in the past. The American Right has a new fondness for Francisco Franco. Some mainstream conservatives such as Jesse Kelly beg for a Franco to save our country. But they rarely account for what brought the Spanish general to power. According to them, Franco’s rise (and that of other insurgent movements of that time period) occurred once normal people had enough of their era’s wokeness—and so they turned to dictatorship. But that’s not what really happened.
Spain was ruled by a radical left-wing government that threatened the things ordinary Spaniards cherished. The government attacked the Catholic Church, infringed on property rights, and considered proposals for massive wealth redistribution. The final straw broke when the government arrested and murdered a prominent conservative leader. The specter of Bolshevism haunted the entire West in the interwar era, and the horror of the Soviet Union was on the verge of manifesting in Iberia. The military, the Church, landowners, and other prominent interests decided the Republican government was implacably hostile to their way of life. They then turned to a general to save them.
Franco didn’t have a broader ideology besides being anti-Leftism. He had to unite a wild array of factions in his coalition. The one thing they all agreed on was hostility to the far left. The fear of Bolshevism inspired other Europeans to turn to the radical right as well.
The fear of communism also explains America’s nativist backlash following World War I. Left-wing terrorism and agitation worried many Americans. They saw the stories coming out of Russia and were afraid that the same Red Terror could make it to our shores. Tough immigration restrictions were embraced to keep out “red” demographics.
Our people are practical and down-to-earth in their concerns. Many of them live the American Dream. They recognize the major problems around them, but they don’t want to risk what they have. They would be more interested in radical solutions if they faced an existential threat to their way of life. Their innate utilitarianism makes them unenthused for far-fetched ideals like an ethnostate or a theocratic monarchy. They just want practical problems–whether it's mass immigration or anti-white discrimination–resolved.
This may dispirit those among us who are profoundly disillusioned with bourgeois standards. This kind of conservatism doesn’t appeal to dreamer-types who want to fashion a more exciting world. But that’s just the way things are. It would be better for the anti-bourgeois dreamers to channel their energy into culture than into mundane politics. Impractical ideas can still produce great works of art.
Politics is the art of the possible. We need to realize what our base is, what they believe, what motivates them, and what they are capable of. We can dream up fantasy demographics and scenarios all we want to on the internet, but change in the real-world requires pragmatism. Our people are not revolutionaries. They just want to live in a world where good old America is preserved and their kids aren’t hated for being white. It’s that simple.
Assuming 2/3 of GOP voters truly support the military that's because they have friends and family members that are still serving. As more stories surface of the rampant anti-white initiatives within the military and as anti-white radicals get appointed to leadership positions I expect that support to plummet much like it has for the FBI and other institutions.
GOP voters support the local & state police because for the most part they do their jobs in a politically neutral manner unlike the hyperpartisan FBI whose support has dropped to a mere 17% among GOP voters. At one time GOP support for the FBI was much higher than Democrats but no longer:
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/americans-sour-fbi-doj-trump-investigations-rcna91814
The conditions that led to a Francisco Franco could still arise in America and we seem to be moving in that direction. I don't know why Scott thinks it's unlikely to ever happen especially when radical left wing Democrats are hellbent on criminalizing political opposition and want to transfer the wealth, jobs and property from white voters to their non-white base. The Spanish left also began demonizing the political opposition with plans to outlaw all conservative and right wing opposition as "fascism".
The fact that a substantial number of Republican voters support secession (despite its near term impracticality) and believe anti-white racism is a problem is evidence that despite outward appearances and boat rallies Republican voters are moving right and "radicalizing".
"Or take the J6ers, Trump’s most hardcore supporters. Despite all appearances to the contrary, the vast majority were middle-class. More than half of the demonstrators arrested boasted a college education. Twenty-eight percent held a white collar profession, while 26 percent were business owners. Only 22 percent worked a blue collar job. "
Yet, the Dems-MSM-Uniparty want you to think that these people launched a riot. That's clearly bunk. And I bet the average age was probably around 40. Riots, revolutions, violent crime and war are young men's games. If you don''t grok the common sense of millennia, read Robert Ardrey's African Genesis. Plus there's the absurdity of the idea that Trump supporters would suffer years of Antifa attacks while offering little or no resistance only to go apeshit on the cops at the Capitol Bldg on J6. We need a genuine, non-fake and full investigation and release of all the video footage to determine what really happened on J6. What we know *didn't* happen was that there was a spontaneous (or directed by Trump) riot on Jan 6.