THE NEW CONSERVATIVE COUNTER-CULTURE

I’d like to give all TTPers – both those who will be attending the Vegas Rendezvous this weekend and those unable to do so – an intro to what I’ll be talking about.

First, though, I need to get something off of my chest. I have become very, very tired of reading standard conservative media. If you’re looking there for hope or change, I recommend Prozac as a mandatory Plan B.  

Plan A will be outlined in my talk, which is an extension of my original Conservative Hope & Change bit from the November 2012  Rendezvous in DC. This article is designed to be a prep phase that gets you going, and it includes some resources that may make you feel better immediately.

As a refresher, let me quickly sketch out my points back in 2012.  Canada is lucky to have a sort of Anti-Obama as its Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.  He led a takeover of a politically defunct and ideological bankrupt Conservative Party – just the sort of thing we’d like to see with our Republican Party.  So it can be done, and there’s a North American model for it.

That was the Hope. The Change was darker. I said that the near future was going to look a lot like our quasi-Soviet universities, but with lots more guns behind it. Our task was not saving America. That was already dead, just not gone yet. Instead, the task was laying the foundation for a Second American Republic.

But you couldn’t even begin to do that without understanding how the Frankfurt School of Cultural Marxism created the Political Correctness at the heart of today’s Left – and of our present troubles.  There’s a marvelous definition of political correctness on the Urban Dictionary by the way.

I would have wished to be more wrong about the change.

Still, there can be no victory that is not grounded in seeing things as they are. I have come to accept it, and part of that reality is a core understanding that America is no longer, in fact, our country. It belongs rather comprehensively to others, at a range of levels that reach way beyond politics. Nor will it be fixed by standard politics.

But that doesn’t mean I gave up.  I had a model to look for, which I will share in Vegas. I also had Strauss & Howe’s Fourth Turning, and Generations; they spoke in a voice of reason and persuasive history long before Game of Thrones, and said: "Winter is Coming." With it will come great change.

If we are ready, we may yet earn a Second American Republic – instead of a First American Reich of Corporatist Racial Socialism.  And no, you are not too damn old to matter.

I’ll throw in a spoiler and say that I think I’m finding our Frankfurt School. It just doesn’t look anything like the Left’s. In the Digital Age, why should it?

Then: Create theory, leverage Soviet support, ensconce in institutions, set things up so people can’t escape those institutions, attack on multiple fronts at once.

Now: Leverage a distributed publishing platform to create theory that’s toxic to The PC Cathedral. Tie it to real-time running experiments, aimed at activities that give participants a personal payoff and get them to Witness back. Target situations in which the Left has created trapped populations, so that this process is their only way out. Attack on many fronts. And there may be a physical institution or three that’s of interest. Not to mention some possible foreign developments.

More to the point, I think I have an answer to the question from my Half-Full Report a year ago, "Yes, We Cannae!":

"Ask yourself: what is the enemy’s center? Jack might say ‘envy,’ but that’s a human trait which can never be eliminated. We need an answer that can be a target. It has to be an identifiable institution or belief set. One that explains both the macro actions and the personal incentives that have led us to this state as a society, and ties them together.

The more I think about it, the more I conclude that conservatives don’t really know the answer. But unless they do, they can only change the speed at which they lose."

We’ll talk about that at the Rendezvous.

The New New Media

We’re going to start here with your diets. Specially, your media diets.

Which brings us back to the question: why am I so very tired of standard conservative media? Frankly, the gelded whining gets to me. Detailed arguments aplenty, explaining why the latest Leftist power-grab or exploitation is wrong. Or why their latest hate speech is unfair.

So. What.

Newsflash: the other side doesn’t care. They’ve made it crystal clear that power is the only goal, that they enjoy using power to enrich themselves and hurt others, and that there are no limits of law or decency that restrain them.

Quite a few Lefties would be happy to see you rendered destitute, gulaged, or dead — and you know this from their non-subtle hints. Most of which involve saying such things outright, in public. Or completing preparatory steps. Or both.

In this environment, there is a very narrow set of circumstances under which I care about why the Left is wrong. Unless it’s fortified with some key ingredients (shows how the gears really work, directly and pointedly erodes legitimacy, useful for fully understanding opponents, tips for action), conservative media is Intellectual Cheetos.

This problem is separate from the loss of quality in right-wing media over the last two decades. It isn’t so much that stalwarts like Commentary and National Review have lowered their standards. Rather, the environment has changed, and they have not adapted.

Economics? Once, this was their spearhead. Now? They’d need a high-power telescope to see even Zero Hedge ahead of them; meanwhile, the global economic order makes ticking sounds.

Popular culture? Never a strength – and now it’s the main front of the Left. External enemies? This, they still get. But not the internal ones, who are statistically much more likely to murder you (yes, Virginia, liberals are more lethal than terrorists).

Like so much of the conservative movement, they keep trying to approach the 21st century with the worldview and infrastructure of 1980. Not. Working. The cold hard truth is that liberty’s future is arising without them – and may not need them.

There are bright spots, to be sure. We’ll talk about a number of bright spots that are moving well beyond theory, but here in TTP’s media section I give you media. Some of them, you may know. Others, you may not.

Good places to start the tour include Slate magazine (yes, them) with "The Most-Read Conservative Media You’ve Never Heard Of"; National Journal’s "Facebook Army to Police GOP Candidates"; and Bloomberg News’ "The Torch Is Being Passed to A New Generation of Right-Wing Media".

Meanwhile, I suspect National Review’s Jonah Goldberg is actually proud that the magazine is being dusted in important ways by his own Mom. Go, Lucianne!

That set will introduce you to IJR – Independent Journal Review – and its viral social media sharing model, Brent  Bozell’s 7 million strong (and 57% female) ForAmerica that’s aimed squarely at Facebook. Plus columnist Michelle Malkin’s Twitter-centric venture Twitchy.

Let me break it down in a practical way:

* IJR stories are ideal for your non-political or opposed friends. Short, culturally conservative, human stories whose political bent may not even be noticed by some recipients. And the titles are carefully engineered to make people read the stories – learn from that.

* ForAmerica is a good fix for your committed friends who like Facebook. It may seem like a time-waster, but Bozells’ goal makes it worthwhile: they intend to whack the traitorously-inclined within the GOP, and need recruits. ForAmerica is their mobilization device.

* Twitchy can sometimes be sent out; they can be pretty funny. What it really shows is people talking back and having very little respect for the nomenklatura’s clueless and evil apparatchiks. Which is what makes it an important everyday reminder, morale-boost… and quiet form of training.

Plus, if you haven’t shaken the electoral delusion yet, The Awl’s "In the Trenches of the Facebook Election" explains that aspect of their importance. Frankly, these sites’ cultural role between elections matters more. On which topic…

* U. Tenn.’s Law Professor Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds. Consistently thinking ahead – first as a blogging pioneer, now in cultural terms, while still covering politics. His "quick hits with benefits" writing style remains unique, and his forensic psychologist wife Dr. Helen Smith has been a big part of the cultural push (q.v. her important marriage-related book "Men on Strike"). Glenn understands where we’re really at, and they’re a mainstream transmission belt for important new ideas.

* "Rollo Tomassi" at The Rational Male. We’ll talk about why he’s a very important figure in the seminar, beyond his seminal books. How does Rollo vote? I have no idea. Religious? Don’t think so. I do know that if his ideas were practiced in just 10-15% of the population, they’d do more to fix the Western family and push the culture in a conservative direction than 100 cloned Pat Robertsons. Good news: more and more guys are putting his ideas into practice. It gets them women, on their terms. And it’s polonium-level toxic to Cultural Marxism’s feminist ideology.

* The Washington Free Beacon is doing real reporting on the Left. Not whining – reporting. Who, what, where, why.

* The Federalist magazine, which makes culture a very explicit part of its coverage. Hits and misses, but the hits can be very good. Filling a key role, and becoming influential. As G-d is my witness, they’ve even written something that forced me to reconsider my position on Bronies. Bronies!!! Kill me now.  (Even the lib Daily Beast has a positive article on Bronies now.)

* Spiked! is run by a self-described "libertarian Marxist." Ignore the theory for a second here. What Spiked! is actually about is how to stick it to The Man – and their biggest target is leftist brownshirts’ war on free speech. They aren’t just writing about it, either, they’re helping people organize against it. Did I mention that they celebrate "Human Footprint Day" instead of Earth Day? You’ll have fun here.

* Breitbart London. OK, put up your hands if you think it’s hilarious that Breitbart media has become a go-to news source for lots of Millennial Lefties. It has. You can thank a Libertarian Democrat named Allum Bokhari and (above all) Milo Yiannopoulos, a defender of men and a lethal bane of Cultural Marxism’s feminist core. When we talk about successful resistance campaigns like GamerGate and The Hugo Wars in my seminar, it isn’t a coincidence that these guys are sitting at Ground Zero. Andrew would love these guys. I love these guys. You should love these guys.

Honorable mentions…

* Manhattan Institute’s City Journal has become what Commentary magazine was: the go-to source for high-end intellectual ammo. Alas, things they don’t get so well include: social media, the depth of the internal war, the need for more than analysis and policy. Great reads, but Social Matter e-Zine’s urbanist masterpiece: "Gentrification as Total War, or ‘Triumph of the Williamsburg’" still eclipses anything City Journal has done. And Henry Dampier’s "About the Corporate Slave Class" is more interesting.

* Remember back when you read National Review, and the way they approached ideas like economics gave you new insights into the core struggle of our times? Try the work of Anthony Esolen, whose cultural and spiritual insights are most readily available at the Catholic-oriented Crisis magazine. I especially recommend "Who Will Rescue the Lost Sheep of the Lonely Revolution?"

* Next to Esolen, Joel Kotkin is invaluable for deconstructing the assault on the Middle Class in America’s Blue States. Political independent. Interesting stuff, but also ammo you can turn around and use – especially his latest book The New Class Conflict, which belongs on your shelf right beside Col. Kurt Schlichter’s Conservative Insurgency and Newt Gingrich’s Breakout.

Well, that’s a fair bit for TTPers to chew on, complete with some links you can follow if you want to get an early start. For TTPers who can’t be there, follow the links, read around, and combine it with some of my Half-Full Reports like "Fight Club" the Israel section of "The Wheelbarrow", and "Yes, We Cannae." It’s the next best thing.

See you at The Platinum Hotel. And what happens in our Vegas seminar… won’t stay in Vegas.
Joe Katzman was the Founding Editor of Defense Industry Daily from 2004 – 2014. He will be a featured speaker at the TTP Vegas Rendezvous.

Discuss this item on the forum. Click Here!