Conservatism and its enemies

The right must see the futility of culture warring, of pointing out the hypocrisy of the Cultural Regime, of protesting for conservative values. This is not how a beast is slain. A hungry beast must be starved, not attacked.

Cartoon by Crid.

This article features in Bournbrook’s 17th print issue.

Political society is made up of three types of people; those who want to incrementally move on from our way of life, those who want to burn it to the ground, and those who want to preserve it. This is the cultural and spiritual fight that conservatives find themselves in.

However, this can no longer be considered a culture war, as the war has been lost, but a cultural regime. One which domineers every facet of society; punishing the heretic while venerating the iconoclast. As John Lydon, better known as Jonnie Rotten of the Sex Pistols, said; the paradigm has flipped on its head. The 'left' has become the stiff authoritarian figure wagging its index finger in disapproval, while the 'right' has become the rebel, with its middle finger solemnly raised in defiance.

It is for this reason, alongside the definition of the term, that conservatism has become a counter culture. That being an alternative to the mainstream.

This is the conclusion of my three-part exploration into the future of conservative thought, and conservative action. In my first piece, I outlined what I refer to as the 'trichotomy', that being a refraining of the proverbial battlefield into three camps, with two in symbiosis. The trichotomy is made up of the conservative, the progressive, and the utopian. Each term can be defined, loosely, on two metrics; its societal virtue, and its attitude towards change.

The progressive is the most potent, it is what we'd call the establishment, or the elite, depending on ones disposition. As I pointed out in the first article, they are the inhabitants of the post-war political order. It's cultural victory came in the 1960s, and the subsequent wave of technocracy, supranationalism and metropolitan elitism. The Progressive views change as inevitable and desirable, yet its approach is incremental coming over decades. Abundance is the Progressive virtue; abundance of money, power, consumer goods, and grandiose social schemes.

The utopian is the more aggressive and antagonistic of the three. Utopianism has taken many forms since the Enlightenment, and today manifests itself in black masks and red flags. The summer of 2020 was a major victory for utopian sensibilities, as its language of abolition and 'liberation' entered the public consciousness at an unprecedented speed. Perfection is the credo of utopianism, and revolution is its preferred method of reorganising society.

Lastly, we have us, the conservative. Prudent and careful in nature, the conservative recognises the inheritance we receive, and our obligation to pass it on relatively unscathed. The term is something of a misnomer, as conservatism is born from the realisation that something has gone horribly wrong, and a reverting of principles is needed. Conservatives value order in society, and hold a sceptical view of change.

At first glance, it may seem to be a fight of 'us against them', that the establishment has become infected with utopianism, and the two have thus melted into one. Yet, if you dig deeper, this assumption unravels.

In my first article I pointed out a common mistake in the perception of the battlefield espoused by the right, that those in positions of significant power are of the radical left. Individuals like Biden, Zuckerberg, Clinton, and Obama, and the CEO's of Twitter, Google, and Amazon are not raving leftists. In reality, they are whores, who see their personal growth in the proliferation of utopian rhetoric. The gulf between Antifa and Democrats does not need to be pointed out, less so after significant protests against the Biden administration in the utopian territories of Portland and Seattle.

Ask yourself if you really believe that Apple, Nike, and Starbucks are telling the truth when they declare their passion for social justice.

The coalition between progressive and utopian carried Biden to victory in 2020. It was a potent mix of big tech manipulation, a politicised mass media, a lopsided press and aggressive street activism, a Cultural Regime. Though the victory was narrow, almost too close for comfort.

To better understand the nature of this symbiosis, we must start with defining its levels. So far, I have identified three; the enemy class, the minion class, and the demolition class.

Firstly, we have the enemy, the few and far between who inflict a level of top- down change vastly disproportionate of their size within the wider population. These are your tech CEO's, your world leaders and heads of supranational institutions. They are followed closely by the minion class, who ruthlessly and unscrupulously enact whatever the set agenda is. In this grouping you may find journalists, prolific activists and cultural figures. Lastly, you have the demolition class, the faceless street activists who push the limits of progressive acceptability. The demolition class is the most volatile, and unlike the minion class, cannot be contained. It is in this that the seeds of unravelling are sewn.

As the demolition class pushes into new extremes, opinion is split among the minion class; made up of half elitist progressives, and half white-collar utopians.

Regardless of the DNA of the Cultural Regime, and its destined demise, the situation remains the same. Conservatives find themselves outside of the Overton Window. Even mildly conservative sentiments are aggressively chased out of public discourse. If you advocate for the nuclear family, you're a sexist. If you honour the flag, you're a jingoistic racist who fetishes the British Empire. If you object to the feminisation of men or the masculisation of women, you're a transphobe of the most contemptible variety. This is the sharpened blade of the Cultural Regime, yet also a weakness.

The right must see the futility of culture warring, of pointing out the hypocrisy of the Cultural Regime, of protesting for conservative values. This is simply not how a beast is slain. A hungry beast must be starved, not attacked.

In order to defeat the Cultural Regime, one must first reject it, in it's entirely. Reject the paradigm, ignore the jargon, give it no power. Starve the beast.

The progressive edifice is collapsing around us, and its economic and social philosophies come undone in the brutal light of the twenty-first century. It will either be conservatives or utopians who will occupy the remains. This is how we win:

We must adapt the conservative disposition from a method of top-down social change to a vehicle of self and communal betterment. The naturally desirable traits conservatism will provide — communitarianism, patriotism, and restraint — are clearly a better alternative to the toxic environment caused by the Utopian emphasis on required speech and purity testing.

Do not behave like the enemy; love and be kind, forgive mistakes, treat man like the flawed but virtuous being he is. To reject the Cultural Regime is to not behave like it. To not engage in cancel culture, or campaigns of fear and intimidation, despite the urge.

And lastly, the most potent word in the English language for those in our shoes, is 'no'. Just say no. No to cancel culture, no to historical censorship, no to radicalised narratives, and no to the blatantly contrived narratives of the Cultural Regime.