Political Eschatology

1,788 words

Carl Schmitt wrote that “the exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology.” Someone makes a decision, and then usually hands down a new order like a prophet declaring a new religion. In America, this phenomenon is taken to an extreme with the Constitution being revered as a holy document. 1776 is politically a messianic Year Zero. Similarly to religion, most people conveniently ignore or explain away that there has been a succession of political orders established through titanomachies. The current order is the one true political faith, everything else before was either ignorant heathenism or a stepping stone towards fulfilling destiny.

The translation of religious impulses into politics is not limited to beginnings, however. Many also ponder how the current political order will either end or be renewed. Past exceptions were analogous to miracles, future exceptions to eschatology.

“Wignat” political eschatology closely mirrors religious eschatology. Their favored prediction is that there will be a dramatic collapse resulting in a racial holy war, or RAHOWA. William Luther Pierce’s The Turner Diaries all but plays the role of the book of Revelation. “There is no political solution” might as well be a religious mantra, but America probably is so dysfunctional that it isn’t even capable of a proper civil war, as explained by Jim Goad and Christian Secor. In addition to American dysfunction, the current meta is fifth generation warfare which favors non-kinetic means. We’re essentially already in a second, more complex Cold War based on nationalism vs globalism.

Aside from being unlikely, wignat eschatology is undesirable. I do not say this from squeamishness. I’m sure the FBI et al. richly deserve whatever happens to them in The Turner Diaries, but a bloodbath is simply not a good solution when our birth rates are abysmally low. Even most wignats have abandoned wignat eschatology because they realize it is neither feasible nor desirable.

In contrast to wignats, what I will term the “patriot” crowd which encompasses Christians, MAGA, Second Amendment enthusiasts, and to a lesser extent QAnon, envision a renewal of the existing order rather than the establishment of a new order. Basically, we must sit around patiently and passively until a savior figure comes to deliver us and return us to the good ol’ days. We can turn the clock back to the 1990s, maybe even the 50s. We just have to “trust the plan,” do the YMCA like a tribal dance, or pray the commies away. At most, there will come a day when we will have to “get our guns” and stand up together as inclusive civic nationalists. The country will then be renewed by a wave of religiosity, patriotic fervor, and maybe white hats and Trump executing globalists in military tribunals (incidentally allowing us to keep our hands clean). 1776 will recommence! Albeit without any of the violence, sacrifice, or peril of 1776.

Political eschatology isn’t limited to the right. Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” is another messianic, eschatological vision. Except in this vision the great apocalypse has already happened in WWII and the Cold War. Liberal democracy combined with a free market is the final fulfillment by virtue of being the last man standing. As Margaret Thatcher would say of capitalism, “There is no alternative.” There will be no more Schmittian exceptions, just as Mohammed was the final prophet. The only thing left is to expand the “house of world peace” and its rules-based order over those who reject it, “the house of war.” And those who reject it will be few and rare in number, and thus easily mopped up when they go off the reservation. In contrast, Carl Schmitt realized that such an attempt to end politics and the friend-enemy distinction was doomed to fail because there would in fact be many who would not go along with it, and, by their refusal to reject the friend-enemy distinction, renew the friend-enemy distinction.

The ultimate symbol of neoliberal eschatology is that of multicultural children holding hands around the globe, presumably with “It’s a Small World Afterall” or John Lennon’s “Imagine” playing in the background. It is actually quite sinister. Where are all the adults? There are no adults because humanity has been infantilized into a herd of ahistorical fellaheen. As described by Oswald Spengler, “For world peace—which has often existed in fact—involves the private renunciation of war on the part of the immense majority, but along with this it involves an unavowed readiness to submit to being the booty of others who do not renounce it.” The ultimate neoliberal vision is a global kindergarten with their pseudo-elites installed as the teachers.

Communist eschatology adheres to religious eschatology even more than the wignat version, perhaps because Christianity and communism share Jewish roots. There is a succession of prophets in Marx, Lenin, and Mao. And just like scripture, their doctrines are closely studied and intensely debated by their fanatical adherents. There are almost as many flavors of communism as there are protestant denominations.

Capitalism’s contradictions will cause it to collapse in a revolution, probably violent, by the global proletariat. Classical communism has been expanded to include other victim groups, aka the “coalition of the ascendant” with the original factory workers being all but forgotten. But its original essence is still the same: destroy everything! Eat the rich, but not before we hang them with the rope they sell us! After a period of violent revolution, a dictatorship of the proletariat will be established to pass down judgment on the sinner capitalists, white supremacists, and patriarchs, and then wither away into a classless society and totally not devolve into a tyranny by petty bureaucrats.

There is a common theme running throughout each of these political eschatologies: they conveniently predict what their adherents would like to happen. The wignats want a simple problem they can solve through iron sights. The patriots want a sanitized, mostly peaceful revolution they can enjoy on their couch. The neoliberal rank and file want to be ruled, the neoliberal elites want to rule from the shadows, and both want to avoid meaningful conflict. The communists want to watch the world burn or have fallen for something too good to be true. They are all acting like the Bene Gesserit from Herbert’s Dune in creating prophecies to advance their agendas, at least subconsciously.

This is great when it works and translates memes into reality, terrible when it fails and leads to self-delusion. In the old days, the wignats scared many people off with their bad optics who otherwise would have been sympathetic, including myself. Several of them needlessly ended up in jail. There is no political solution because dying for your country is easy, living to serve it is difficult. The election of 2020 was stolen in part because the patriots trusted a plan that didn’t exist and thus failed to resist. The USSR collapsed from its own cringe. And most relevantly, the neoliberals spectacularly fail time and again to interface with factual reality because they have a sense of entitlement. They only know how to double down, and thus had to resort to ever more brazen use of hard power which cost them the 2024 presidential election. Their pursuit of a one-party state may have handed us a one-party state. Magic is powerful, but woe to he who enchants himself.

I confess that I have my own eschatological vision, and yes, it corresponds to what I want. Mine is the coming Caesarism predicted by Oswald Spengler in which the power of blood will triumph over money because no power is left to do so. The will to power will prove stronger than any theory. The Faustian world-feeling may never again produce its great artistic achievements like nineteenth-century novels or oil paintings. We can only preserve and appreciate these things. But aside from ending the farce of liberal representative democracy, Caesarism will usher in a new age of achievement in technology, economics, and politics. At least I hope so.

Is my eschatology any different from the others? Mine is a tad better because Spengler was a realist and dealt with facts, not feelings. And while I consider the end result of Caesarism to be foregone, I am fairly agnostic about how we get there.

I admit, I like how this appears to be coming about. The eschatology of the patriots failed so hard that the old regime ended up radicalizing them, Donald Trump, and others who balked at a pastel Soviet Union. We realize that we must save ourselves. DOGE is now withering the state away through hardcore auditing. It would be delusional to think we are anywhere near the end of the Kali Yuga, but something of a microcosm of “riding the tiger” has transpired in which we managed to hold on atop a raging neoliberal beast until it exhausted itself. Perhaps we will have to pave the road to the stars with liberal skulls Turner Diaries-style if they launch an insurgency. But they seem totally defeated, disorganized, and demoralized. Entitled multicultural kindergarten kids make for poor revolutionaries.

Maybe this is how we win. What did Spengler mean by “blood” in “A power can be overthrown only by another power, not by a principle, and no power that can confront money is left but this one. Money is overthrown and abolished only by blood?” It means loyalty, kinship, duty, honor, and tribalism, which can express itself through anything from total war to the magic of friendship and everything in between.

Already, Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, and others great and small have stood by a DOGE staffer who was doxed for making comments that would have been problematic in Our Democracy. The divide and conquer of cancel culture was rejected at the ballot box. And with USAID ritualistically humiliated, George Soros et al. will have to fund their subversion using their own limited funds. Several woke publications and journalists couldn’t even last a week without USAID astroturfing.

History is a story, and perhaps we had to endure Dark Brandon to earn the good ending of a glorious Conservative Revolution through fifth generation warfare.

This is not over. The old regime must be annihilated completely, and there are undeniably issues with Trump and Elon that need to be addressed. But I am confident that we can prevail on those matters. Even if Trump’s and Elon’s motives are entirely nefarious as some allege, we can and will turn their reforms into revolution whether they like it or not.

Optimism is cowardice. The fight is far from over as we have only begun to fight. That’s good because I like fighting. The triumph of a Conservative Revolution ushering in an age of Caesarism through fifth generation warfare is an eschatological vision that isn’t just beautiful, but believable.