Could Cthulhu swim right?
Both shame and status affiliation are the result of a dominant social narrative or national mythos, interweaving deception and truth, controlled (and largely believed) by the top of society.
The right has a saying. “Cthulhu always swims left.” It indicates a predominantly leftward political and social drift in the West. By Cthulhu, what is meant is the state and quasi-state organisations and the culture that they impose. It is disdained by some on the right as a cliché (one with overtones of resignation). However, it is a handy summation. For the average right-wing non-authoritarian, big government is a behemoth, hence the imagery.
If the Whig premise of history being linear, continuous and irreversible is a fallacy, surely constant movement and consistent direction should also be fallacies. What if Cthulhu swam in the other direction? Could Cthulhu swim right?
Why the move leftward? It is not driven by popular sentiment. Poll people and you’ll find widespread support for the death penalty and closed borders, positions no mainstream British political party or newspaper has supported for over half a century. Movement is directed from above, by ruling elites and their subordinates. The primary drivers enforcing the will of elites are a) the political class (all of it), b) mass media and social media, c) state education, d) law enforcement, e) the civil service and f) established churches. There is also a flank of progressivism that operates through large companies, NGOs, charities and the super-wealthy, which is outside the scope of this article. However, such nominally private parties are effectively client-partners of the state and could be influenced by a government.
Enforcement is done not only through regulation by primary drivers; it is done through top-down negative social pressure (shame) and positive social incentives (status affiliation). On the face of it, shame culture seems antiquated (a matter of defeated Romans falling on their swords) or foreign (dishonoured samurai committing hara-kiri), yet the force of shame persists. Most middle-class British people would rather risk the emergence of ‘grooming gangs’ or beheadings in the high street than face the shame of being called racist for demanding immigration restrictions or supporting police stop-and-search.
What of status affiliation? To discover the nature of that, look at what professors are teaching the future elite. Currently, the high-status (and high-status-aspirant) position is that Western nations are perpetrators of historical crimes, therefore European-heritage people should be denigrated and European traditions must be subverted or dismantled. Anyone seeking to assert membership of – or expressing willingness to join – the ruling elite must express such views. Regardless of what they actually think, individuals act as if they believe these elite tenets are true.
Both shame and status affiliation are the result of a dominant social narrative or national mythos, interweaving deception and truth, controlled (and largely believed) by the top of society. It is then inculcated through education and reaffirmed by the mass media, speaking most essentially to non-ruling elites. So long as the populace does not refuse to pay taxes, withhold labour or decline to serve in the army and police, what it believes is not pertinent.
The leftward direction of society is not inevitable. Look at how the population submitted to COVID regulations. Note how compliant the population was when the credo of freedom of movement and personal choice became (overnight) curtailing movement and restricting choice. The mantra “My body, my choice” was ditched by progressives. The cruel but realistic depiction of a section of the population as NPCs (non-player characters, i.e., acting as if following programmes and incapable of independent thought) seems to explain swathes of populations giving up supposedly deeply-held standards when leaders flip the high-status position.
What if the high-status position was not progressivist technocracy but traditionalist nationalism? What if the high-status position was to reject multiculturalism and shame compatriots who do not embrace domestic customs? (Let’s set aside the well-known phenomenon of elite xenophilia…) For this to occur, there would need to be a formation of a traditionalist elite, a group of committed ambitious individuals, who set aside personal rivalry, ready to act when weakness, crisis or popular civil disturbance threatens to unseat the incumbent elite. If there were to be such a change of leadership, the population (including many of the newly deposed non-governing elites) would follow. They would be motivated by the need to secure income and social status; they would be driven by the subconscious urge to socially conform. Consider those German civil servants who (in the space of fourteen years) showed undeviating loyalty to (in turn) the Weimar Republic, National Socialism, the occupying Allied forces and the Communist GDR, without their ethics or patriotism being impugned.
How to make Cthulhu swim right is straightforward, although getting to that point would not be easy. It would require the formation of an elite with traditionalist principles, which consist of beliefs, not attachment to any institutions such as the monarchy, Church, Parliament and so forth. It would require that elite to take power and enforce principles, not only by establishing laws and appointing personnel but being prepared to abolish institutions that have become progressivist. It would require bold leadership and restated easy-to-follow principles. Shame and status affiliation would cause people to make choices that conformed to a new traditionalist elite outlook.
Cthulhu swims left partly because millions of people daily err on the side of progressivism to “do their bit” for social justice. For Cthulhu to swim right, the new elite must change the definition of social justice. Left alone, once social stigma is removed from social conservativism, most people lean rightwards. Should narrative formation come into the hands of a new elite and should their narrative be plausible, easy to understand and reinforced at multiple levels of society, yes, Cthulhu could swim right.
