Counter-Currents
2,200 words
There’s a kind of conservative article which is by now very predictable.
Leftists are doing something outrageous. Where before they did it in the shadows, they are now doing it with impunity, which is causing dissatisfaction not only among conservatives, but also among normal, law-abiding, hard-working, and otherwise platitudinal people. This dissatisfaction will soon boil over, resulting in a much-dreaded conservative backlash against the Latest Excess of Librulism™. The liberals had better heed the mild-mannered, moderate conservative’s well-intentioned warning — otherwise, they might awaken Backlash Hitler, which liberals obviously do not want to happen, right?
Now, this sort of article serves several purposes. On its face, it is a friendly warning to Leftists that they’re overstepping their bounds, but these articles are usually found in conservative publications. Their intended audience isn’t the Leftists they’re supposed to warn, but other conservatives, usually more plebeian conservatives. The real message isn’t a warning to liberals, but a reassurance of plebeian conservatives that if the liberals transgress too egregiously, there’s always the scary Hitler Backlash option, in effect convincing the plebeian conservatives that they hold reserve powers that can be accessed at any given time. There’s also the bonus of painting the conservative writer as someone who defends the social compact from Backlash Hitler, therefore making him a good guy who is safe to invite to cocktail parties or even serve as the token conservative at a liberal publication.
Of course, at the bare bones game-theoretical level, this type of conservative article frames political life as an iterative prisoner’s dilemma, where the optimal strategy is mutual cooperation between Left and Right. Now, in the golden beforetimes, there was cooperation, although recently, the Left has begun defecting while the Right still cooperates. The warning is, of course, that further defection from the Left will result in a defection from the Right — and nobody defects quite like the Right (hence, Hitler). So this dilemma is asymmetrical. Defection from the Right results in catastrophic loss for the Left and possibly for the Right as well, given that they summoned Yog-Hitleroth who’ll soon devour their souls.
Reality, however, doesn’t bear out this version of the game.
Let’s first engage in a purely theoretical discussion of the classical prisoner’s dilemma. The standard game is such: two crooks are caught by the police. They’re given the option to testify against the other. If both refuse to testify (cooperate/cooperate), they each get a year in prison. If one testifies against the other, he is set free, but his buddy will get 3 years in prison. If both testify against the other, then each gets 2 years in prison.
On its face, the best outcome is to spill the beans while the other guy chooses to remain silent — the defect/cooperate result for maximum payoff, especially if there’s a stash of stolen money to be claimed once the prisoner is out.
However, adding iteration (more games in the future) allows the chump, the guy who cooperated while the other guy defected, to defect in the next iteration and punish the other guy, even at his own expense, a behavior which in evolutionary psychology is known as altruistic punishment and is disturbingly common among whites, especially Northwestern Europeans and their colonial descendants. So, when the element of iterative games — having to live in a society with the people you fucked over — is added, people choose to cooperate out of their rational self-interest, fearing retribution. Problem solved, right?
Let us now consider the possibility of playing the prisoner’s dilemma with someone who just will not defect, no matter how hard, how often, how egregiously, or how shamelessly you defect on him.
But before we can do that, we must find this elusive person who just will not defect. To that, we will make a foray into personality psychology.
We know from the research of Johnathan Haidt, Anonymous Conservative, and others that disagreements between what we call conservatives and liberals aren’t caused by differing convictions so much as different neurotypes, brain structure, and neurochemistry. I won’t go into the neurological science — suffice to say that the difference between liberals and conservatives can be spotted when comparing their split results on the Big Five personality traits test. Specifically, the dominant conservative trait seems to be conscientiousness, which has the two aspects of industriousness and orderliness, whereas liberals seem to be more defined by their openness to experience. An image emerges of the stalwart, disciplined, hard-working conservative and the freewheeling, head-in-the-clouds liberal. Indeed, the existence of such stereotypes shows us that folk wisdom comports with the scientific findings.
This is nice and informative and tells us that the conservatives like order and work hard, while liberals like new experiences and are more intellectually inclined (though not necessarily more intelligent). It tells us what people like to do, but personality psychology also tells us what deeply wounds and psychologically destroys people. As I painfully learned during the coronavirus lockdowns, denying a highly extroverted person the opportunity to mingle with people and frolic in the sun causes severe depression, sometimes leading to indulgence in the few hedonic pleasures left with devastating consequences. If you want to see what highly agreeable people act like when they have nobody and nothing to care for, look no further than your nearest refugee-welcoming, pitbull-keeping white woman. Leave open people without new experiences, and they wither on the vine, going slowly insane out of boredom. And if you really want to drive a conscientious person crazy, disrupt the order of their surroundings and deny them the opportunity to contribute to their societies. The opioid crisis in America is fueled by a sense of purposelessness in the highly conscientious white Americans who’ve lost their jobs to globalization and diversity.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s White Identity Politics here.
Now, I mentioned that the conservative is highly conscientious and conscientiousness fragments into the aspects of orderliness, which describes a preference and propensity for following rules and imposing order on one’s environment; and industriousness, which describes a preference for working (or at least a lessened disutility of labor factor, in economic terms). Denial of order and labor to these people is torturous.
So, let’s go back to our game-theoretical discussion. The conservatives, who wither on the vine if they live in disorder or stop working, are supposed to defect on the ruling class.
I want to advance the idea that they physically cannot do it.
What does defection entail in political relations? It entails breaking with the way things have been. It means primarily a shift in the way in which the world is perceived, of a sudden realization that the old order is not your friend and that the sooner it is dismantled, the better for you. Defection also entails no longer feeding the beast, which means at the very least looking for ways to sever oneself from the beast’s economic system, shifting the focus of economic activity more on independence from the system rather than being the best you can be (which is often only possible within the system).
So, basically, it’s asking people who are very orderly and very hard-working to become achievement-avoiding anarchists. Ours is not a cause that seeks to eliminate order, but to replace the existing, bad order with a good one, so we aren’t anarchists. But to someone who cannot exist outside an orderly society, we might as well be. Compounding the problem is that no serious overhaul of any system can be accomplished without a little bit of chaos — and whether we like it or not, until globohomo falls, we are on team chaos. The conscientious conservative cannot brook chaos. He is disgusted and disturbed by the very idea of chaos. Conscientious people also tend to be risk-averse, and our thing is nothing if not risky.
“It can’t be like that,” you say. Who could keep on trucking after being as thoroughly and utterly betrayed as the people of the Right? You’d have to be a blind fool or a masochist not to have enough and just stop indulging the Left. Well, it’s not as simple as that. We do see conservatives flung into uncharted territory after the Left commits another hitherto unthinkable transgression, but there’s always a coterie of quasi-preachers ministering to them in order to nudge them in the direction their neurobiology already favors.
I’ve observed and will advance as examples three such philosophies of life which appeal to conservatives and serve to provide for them a narrative of heroic cooperation while the Left and the ruling class defect on them.
The first is the philosophy of Jordan Peterson, whose response to iniquities against white young men is to have them take upon themselves the burden of finding a need in society and filling it, to “sort themselves out” so that they may be useful to the system which humiliates and seeks to eliminate them.
The second is a nasty outgrowth of American-style social conservatism that blames young white men for the recent decrease in marriage rates, advising them to “man up” and marry that 37-year-old single mother with the triple-digit body count. Really, this is nothing more than the old Cosmopolitan magazine tripe about “commitment-phobic men” that mainstream social conservatism has seen fit to accept.
The third exhibit in our sad procession is none other than our old friend QAnon, a narrative which convinced Trump supporters to heroically cooperate (“trust the plan”) even in the face of multiple and egregious defections from Donald Trump. And sure enough, these philosophies and screeds have millions of supporters, whereas the Dissident Right screed of defection from the system carries no coin with them. To them, we are losers, Nazis, and other fine epithets.
The neurology of the conservative will choose order and labor, even self-destructive order and labor (there’s that altruism characteristic of whites again) over dissent and defection. The marketplace of ideas will always provide a narrative on why cooperation in the face of repeated and blatant defection is heroic, as well. Remember, the marketplace of ideas doesn’t produce the best or truest ideas, because value is subjective. Rather, in this marketplace, those ideas that are the most subjectively valued by people will receive the most traction, and so comforting lies — and few things are as comforting as the notion that following your neurological biases is heroic — will soundly outcompete uncomfortable truths.
Let us circle back to game theory. With this information in mind, we now understand that we’re playing the prisoner’s dilemma with someone who cannot defect; ergo, they cannot punish us for our previous defections. So, even in the iterative game, the most rational strategy becomes defection, given that we are certain that the other guy will cooperate. Grudgingly, with much grumbling, with many dire warnings of Backlash Hitler, but he will cooperate. And if this is true, it may be possible that we have reached peak redpill — that even if mainstream conservatives receive all the relevant facts, they still won’t effectuate the radical change in Weltanschauung necessary to defect — their neurology won’t allow it. They will be satisfied with merely their theoretical ability to summon Backlash Hitler, make a lot of noise, maybe even take a stroll through the US Capitol, but they won’t really defect on the Left.
This leads me to conclude that the real political battle will be fought over the heads of these permanent cooperators by the political Left on one side and the Dissident Right on the other. Conservatives will not win because they’re not in the game. They’re not just unwilling, but might be neurologically incapable of taking the plunge into the strange world of defection from the system. Someone who just will not defect is always someone’s serf.
The word “elite” is thrown around a lot these days. From the context of what they’re saying, I gather that a lot of people seem to conflate it with positions within government and society. I see things differently. Elite are those who have the option of defection. The normie Right cannot defect. The bioleninist client coalition is so addicted to chaos that they cannot cooperate. The elite are those who can choose and therefore engage in an actual battle of wills. Whoever wins in this battle of wills gets to impose an equilibrium of his own choosing on the so-called normie who cannot defect, who hasn’t got the neurology for it, who watches a TV program because it’s on TV.
With that, I leave you to think. Knowing all we do now, seeing history sprawled behind us, understanding human psychology and game theory, I ask you: can we really redpill the normies? What can we accomplish by redpilling them? Could the impossible have happened?
Have we reached peak redpill?
* * *
Counter-Currents has extended special privileges to those who donate $120 or more per year.
- First, donor comments will appear immediately instead of waiting in a moderation queue. (People who abuse this privilege will lose it.)
- Second, donors will have immediate access to all Counter-Currents posts. Non-donors will find that one post a day, five posts a week will be behind a “paywall” and will be available to the general public after 30 days.
To get full access to all content behind the paywall, sign up here:
18 comments
This reminds me of a number of conversations about solutions to national problems which end with the other person saying “but that would crash the stock market!”
However, I would not characterize the conservatives as incapable of defection, only as HIGHLY averse to it. Every time the left shakes the conservative tree, a few leaves fall off and those become ours; at no point does the whole tree get toppled (“Backlash Hitler”). It is an agonizing, slow process, but it happens. The key seems to be hammering home the dissident message at the right time, usually immediately following some great injustice against conservatives. It is impossible to persuade them on a fair-weather day.
Perhaps the side which is addicted to chaos will simply keep pushing the chaos button until the system collapses of its own weight. They currently seem intent on burning everything to the ground here in America.
Very interesting food for thought article. As someone who cherishes orderliness and despises upset, the information is illuminating.
The side addicted to chaos is intent on burning it down. This coaliton isn’t made up of engineers, electricians, or mechanics. They aren’t capable of maintaing the infrastructure or the electricity. This is another reason we need to become preppers covertly. Look at how democratic run cities handle things when there is a power outage due to a natural disaster.
If they won’t defect from the system, the solution is to create a new system for them to be loyal to. This means a leader rising up to tell us to do what we want to do, thereby giving us moral cover and a group to mediate our risk-averseness.
The Left knows this, which is why Hitler is such a scary meme to the Left, and why they put forth so much effort to compromise any leader that does rise up in even a small way, e.g., Gaetzgate, Steve King. We need to stop looking for a national leader to solve our problems, as they will inevitably be compromised by the system. We need to look for or become local leaders, and build up local networks then state networks.
To quote Johnathan Haidt:
“In 2005 Stenner published a book called The Authoritarian Dynamic, an academic work full of graphs, descriptions of regression analyses, and discussions of scholarly disputes over the nature of authoritarianism. (It therefore has not had a wide readership.) Her core finding is that authoritarianism is not a stable personality trait. It is rather a psychological predisposition to become intolerant when the person perceives a certain kind of threat. It’s as though some people have a button on their foreheads, and when the button is pushed, they suddenly become intensely focused on defending their in-group, kicking out foreigners and non-conformists, and stamping out dissent within the group. At those times they are more attracted to strongmen and the use of force. At other times, when they perceive no such threat, they are not unusually intolerant. So the key is to understand what pushes that button.
The answer, Stenner suggests, is what she calls “normative threat,” which basically means a threat to the integrity of the moral order (as they perceive it). It is the perception that “we” are coming apart:
‘The experience or perception of disobedience to group authorities or authorities unworthy of respect, nonconformity to group norms or norms proving questionable, lack of consensus in group values and beliefs and, in general, diversity and freedom ‘run amok’ should activate the predisposition and increase the manifestation of these characteristic attitudes and behaviors.’
So authoritarians are not being selfish. They are not trying to protect their wallets or even their families. They are trying to protect their group or society. Some authoritarians see their race or bloodline as the thing to be protected, and these people make up the deeply racist subset of right-wing populist movements, including the fringe that is sometimes attracted to neo-Nazism.”
The American Interest
‘When and Why Nationalism Beats Globalism’
JONATHAN HAIDT
July 10th, 2016
The question, of course, is what kind of alternative framework for maintaining order can we present to them? I don’t think most conservatives are warm to the idea of just “tribing up.” They need to feel that there’s some kind of system in place to ensure fairness and reasonableness on the part of the leaders. Maybe that’s something people like us can start working on. A formal but flexible system of rules and procedures that can be applied to small, homogeneous, high trust local groups across the country. Perhaps it can be something that groups of people can “sign onto” on some kind of website to show that they’ve adopted it (not that this would entail some kind of official commitment to the other groups, it would just be for informational purposes).
Has Greg Johnson or anyone else on CC written about such a system?
Fascinating analysis. Much to think about. Ultimately agree, there is no redpilling most normies. As the first commenter notes, an occasional leaf falls from the tree, but I believe that is far too much effort for too little result. It’s why I’m so critical of Tucker Carlson or Steve Sailer or those who praise them as ‘gateways’ when I see them as ‘gatekeepers.’ I honestly don’t recall what my official personality profile is, but while I have those characteristics of industriousness and orderliness, I also have an extremely strong will and sense of independence in thought and action, which is why I was never part of the herd in the first place. Even now, as I increasingly recognize the need for community and rootedness yet with a ‘cover’ of social assent, I cannot force myself to comply with what I loathe. I made a terrific human rights officer and I’m solid on intelligence analysis, but I’d be a failure as a covert agent. Just not part of my ‘intelligent design.’
I semi-agree about Tucker Carlson but strongly disagree about Sailer. He, more than any single writer, is the one who redpilled me. Reading Sailer and, too a lesser extent, Jared Taylor prepared me for the Right Stuff and Counter Currents.
It’s true that Sailer doesn’t advocate white separatism or anything like that, but he doesn’t beat around the bush with regards to the realities of race and of white replacement. As such, I see him as very useful to our cause.
The fact that white people are being genocided out of existence shows that no-where near enough people are being red-pilled. Let’s face that reality.
Sailer is a fence rider and his schtick isn’t going to last for ever..
Yep. Sailer rides it hard. The good parts of his writing don’t make up for it, either.
I agree. Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are gatekeepers inasmuch as they’re allowed to whine every night on TV all they want so long as they persuade their audience that our only course of action is determined by the enemy and is limited to voting in rigged elections, although they do have a better chance of reasoning from patriotic principles with those on the Left than with Jews posing as conservatives like David French. Why would anyone respond to a freak like French whose only interest in The Rock is vicarious joy in besting whites? He probably makes Larry Sinclair’s interest in Barry Soetero seem manly by comparison.
I may have mentioned here that 30 years ago, or so, I stopped by National Review’s office when I was working nearby and was shocked at the collection of bow-tied faggots working there, who I then realized were talking tough but getting paid by the Jew to neutralize native leadership from arising, as are the rest of Conservatism Inc., last seen still chugging stuffed derma and calling it principle.
The white middle class is traditonally use to a certain level of comfort. What they have done over the years is leave (i.e. white flight). When they do this, they are use to respectful treatment from law enforcement, competent politicions in their particular suburb, and a school system that reflects there values. That is rapidly changing from forced intergration, pressure from the left, and sympathetic leftist whites. It would be good if more whites, as a whole, did something to reverse this. I believe if enough whites changed there behaviour, it could effect change. If enough of us changed our spending habits on pop culture, academia, finance, corporations, and social media, we could make a diffrence. This is difficult because pop culture, particualry sports has a hold on us, especially the youth. If you could convince, say 20% more whites to not watch, spend money, or support sports, corporations that support BLM or the left, as well as universities, it would make a diffrence. I know this is difficult because so many corporations control the economy. However, there are alternatives to walmart, small white owned businesses, etc. Stop viewing most of what comes out of Hollywood. If you have children, I know this is difficult. If there was at least a 15 to 20% drop in movie and sport attendance, I believe it would make a diffrence. Oppose critical race theory in K-12 at the local level. If you are an alumni of a university, stop giving money or support for athletics, if they teach critical race theory or whiteness studies. Use other social media such as Gab.
The worm will not turn until die Rote Anarchie hits every one of us directly in the wallet and makes our lives, and those of our families, continually fearful and miserable. As long as there is an option to flee or ‘buy oneself out’ then nothing will be done. Even in South Africa nothing is done because Whites can still, just about, isolate themselves from the Bantus or move abroad.
That is correct. People will do most anything to avoid conflict, but it is only when they are hit in the pocketbook will they finally take action. Unfortunate but borne out by experience.
Consider all the years of misery and humiliation the orderly and principled German people went through after Versailles. It was only when the Depression hit them did they finally take action. And with one voice they rose up…
But they also had, in that decisive moment, a miracle-man to lead them, a factor lacking currently in the West, and sorely needed.
Comforting Lies/uncomfortable Truths
Reminds me of Chateau Heartise’s Header: “Where Pretty Lies Perish”
One can’t really “redpill” the masses because only a small subset of the population is able engage in critical thinking and evaluate positions that run contrary to systemic propaganda on their own merit. These are the people we are currently competing for. The masses only parrot what those in power tell them to believe. It’s almost impossible to win a propaganda competition for the minds of the masses when your opponent controls the television, mainstream journalism, social media, academia, and Hollywood. You would need something like a mass airborne leaflet campaign in every major city to break through. Creating websites and hoping people voluntarily visit is not enough.
I also just want to say that I hate the Right vs. Left binary. It groups people that have no business being together. Which should take more precedence in determining whether one is Right or Left, economic or racial-cultural issues?
Andrew Torba just posted on Gab: “it’s OK to be White”.
Wow!
Over the past five or so years I’ve grown more and more frustrated with a few family/friends irl who seemed to be open to racial realities and the jewish problem. They’d hear me out and agree with facts on the ground but when it came time to draw the proper conclusions they’d inevitably run back to their safe little rabbit burrow and the comfort of pretty conservative lies. I’ve heard it said that conservatives are K selected but I somewhat disagree. They’re ultimately r selected prey animals, no different from libshits. The adage: “the only people who truly know the score are jews and Nazis,” proves correct. The only two apex predators in this game are Us and Them. The scorpion and the eagle, and we’re currently flying in circles because They have clipped one of our wings.
As blackpilling as it is/was, I’ve come to accept that normies/cons are unwilling and unable to climb the mountain. While I don’t respect them much, they’re decent people and I do care for them. They didn’t ask for any of this and don’t deserve it.
The primary concern for many of us is how to pursue our telos without feeding the beast. How can we continue the struggle, isolated and alone, without losing our health, sanity and hope?
I’m selling my house, moving to a milder climate, getting back in the gym, and will discontinue the pursuit of any unnecessary money/material bullshit that doesn’t specifically serve a purpose in my life or the betterment of our cause. By doing so, I will be less dependent on the system, less giving of fucks about the news cycle etc. and I’ll also have more time and resources to devote to what matters.
As I’m sure the author knows, the optimal solution to the Prisoner’s Dillemma, that which minimizes the maximum gain of one’s opponent, is to always snitch. “Snitches get stiches” is a potentially effective group modification of the game. But to some groups, self-indulgent backstabbing comes naturally.
This is a heavy article and an important one. It points to the nagging truth that the cultural speartip of the right must be willing to countenance a degree of behaviors well past the disgust threshold of workdaday natural conservatives.
What conservative wouldn’t wretch at the idea that circumstances demand him to <i>fight like a locked up rigger and think like a Manhattan Jew</i>? But to the game theorist, bad form can only be so if it strays from function.
If you have Paywall access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.