NFTL is a very good principle. However, to work, it must have teeth. It needs to accompanied by consequences - cancellers get cancelled. Those who feed the left through doxxing, appeals to leftist icons ("he's a racist!") and so on, rather than engage in debates in good faith, need to be ostracized.
Yes, we should, and we should encourage the agon. I think what NETTR really boils down to is simply that not being sufficiently leftist should not be a disqualifier. Pointing and shrieking is not an argument.
I could easily imagine variations on this kind of thing that would have nothing to do with leftism, eg Christians trying to disqualify on the basis of not being Christian, or racists disqualifying because you talked to a black person or dated a Latin girl. I say "imagine" because I haven't really seen much evidence of this. In practice, the right is remarkably level-headed.
It’s nice when, as Right-wingers, we can get real intellectual stimulation like this- somebody coins a concept (Mr. Haywood), it gets fleshed out (Kruptos), and it gets argued about (Johann). Patiently waiting for another counterargument.
I like "Never Feed The Left." Don't let internal squabbles ("internal" to the voting block which would vote against the left) use up the passion that should be kept for the big battle. You prefer Trump, or DeSantis, or Ramaswamy? Terrific. But unless you're so devoted to Your Guy that you would rather sit out the election if he's not the nominee (which is petulant and juvenile), don't treat the non-Your Guys as gutter slime.
As for "defeating the left," it's not only not feasible, it's by definition nonsensical. You're dead-on when you identify the main focus of the Left as "destruction"; they are entropy personified. And entropy simply can never be defeated by anything and anyone less than the One who will put all enemies under His feet.
But let's start with one which should be obvious: NETTL has not been a universal rule on the Left. Woodrow Wilson gave us the income tax and the federal reserve -- while jailing communists and socialists and fighting an undeclared war against the Bolsheviks. Lyndon Johnson was a vigorous Cold Warrior, getting us ever deeper into the Vietnam War. It was Nixon who ended the draft and opened relations to Communist China.
The Left has a long tradition of keeping its rabid radicals at arm's length. Notice how many different words there are for those left of center: liberals, social democrats, socialists, progressives, communists... It is only when the Left lacks adequate competition that the Left goes insane and adopts NETTL.
The other problem is that the definitions of Left and Right are breaking down. The Democrats are now the party of billionaires and big corporations. The ideology of the hippie left of not that long ago was closer to Distributism than the ideology of today's Democratic [sic] Party or the World Economic Forum.
Ditch the linear thinking. Break out some two and three dimensional political maps.
Some who have pushed the civil disobedience have been put away for it. And definitely many on the pro drug legalization factions on the left.
But more to my point is that even into the first term of the Obama Administration, even most left leaning mainstream Demcrats kept their distance from the outright commies and the like. The young Al Gore was more socially conservative than todays Maga Republicans. Barney Frank and Bernie Sanders were outliers.
Do recall that Barack Obama's response to getting a bogus Peace Prize was downright Reaganesque.
McGovern embraced the Left fringe and got clobbered. Thanks to a combination of factors, the Democrats are getting away with it this time around.
I'd like to force the Democrats back into disavowing their whackdoodles. But to do so does require stealing some near the center votes that Team D has been taking for granted.
Fortunately, it is possible to be to the "left" of Team D on wages simply by enforcing the national picket line. And trashing cities and burning forests for fuel is not exactly good for the planet. It's possible to out green the Democrats as well.
Indeed, there's a long and sordid history of vicious internecine conflict on the left, especially including within its radical fringe. Monty Python poked fun at it in Life of Brian (the People's Front of Judea vs the Judean People's Front), so it's been going on for a long time.
However, such conflicts tend to be along the lines of critiques that the other is not left-wing enough. Even in cases of centre-left persecution of the radical left, I think this is usually more due to outright criminal or terrorist action on the part of the latter - it's rare for the center-left to make a moral critique. Usually the line is that the radicals are misguided idealists whose heart is the right place, and whose passionate commitment to justice or whatever has led them to adopt regrettable methods.
By contrast, on the right, the critiques of conservatives towards the radical fringe tend to take a moral form - "they're racist!" - rather than complaints about means. Further, the moralizing tends to be from a leftist frame.
Sep 16, 2023·edited Sep 16, 2023Liked by Johann Kurtz
"the Left as those willing to embrace disorder in the pursuit of equality"
It is important for conservatives of whatever kind to always keep in mind that the Left does not truly want equality. Leftism is at bottom not so much an ideology as a narcissistic PSYCHOLOGY. Its roots - all the way from the 19th c. - have always been in a middle class intelligentsia and it's driving force has always been a vain desire to FEEL holier than thou. Casting it as solidarity with a bottom-up revolt of the 'oppressed' has always been a self-serving lefty vanity - one that conservatives have (unwittingly) tended to indulge.
Yes "fundamentally spiteful" is a good epithet for the leftist mentality. (Although we are talking about human beings, of course, whose motivations are usually a multi-faceted combination of generous and mean impulses.) Conservatism has - as its intellectuals are finally facing up to - made so many fundamental strategic errors over recent decades (most obviously failing to notice the 'long march' through the institutions) but perhaps the greatest error has been the failure to blast back loud and clear that being left wing is not a sign of being 'caring' or 'generous'; it is sign of being resentful and smug.
I think we tend to overanalyze this too much. NETTR will certainly mean intra-right conflict, but thats the point. We need to be constantly driving discourse to the Right. In the same way Dave Rubin has to be excluded, as we shift our own Overton window rightward, more and more Rightists will find themselves outside the Right - being left behind.
We might find ourselves in the crosshairs of the NETTR idea if our own ideas are too far to the Left, is what I mean to say. But we should encourage that, and be willing to adapt and push further right ourselves.
And so, the cycle repeats. You want to fight multiculturalism without fighting multiculturalism.
You know the funny thing about mid century Germans and the Jewish polity? They're more similar than dissimilar, really. Both ethnocentric, politically ethnonationalist, existed as persecuted diasporas in different times and places across history.
You don't have to like (or endorse) neo nazis and segregationists (as if they were a political sect of any substance in the US, which they arent), but you're gonna have to look into that abyss eventually.
Thank you for your critique on NETTR, and i concur.
I think the "win condition" is something more like getting the Left out of Right spaces. Not "feeding the Left" as you mention is a huge part of this. For example, the forces of disorder have been largely fed by Central Banking and we see how that's turned out. The forces of Disorder will ALWAYS be present, the trick is corralling them enough so they don't disturb those seeking Order.
The problem we face in any of these scenarios is something like this: the majority in the middle are so easily influenced by appeals to emotion and comfort-seeking without maintaining the boundaries necessitated by those seeking Order. Traditions and hierarchies help to stabilize people in large groups. Those on the Left despise traditional boundaries on the whole while adhering to the Utopian ideals they promote. Also, people have such short memories, as evidenced by news cycles and this problem is exacerbated by our technology. Attention spans are dwindling as well. Disorder works just fine with little or no attention span at all, in fact it thrives in such an environment. A prime example being the trope of NPC's taking up offense at whatever the "new thing" is relayed in the social media. Most folks want satisfaction in the "here and now" rather than thinking long-term and generationally. This is how traditions allow large groups to maintain stability. The Left might claim such, but it's ultimately a ruse to claim powers and control while allowing adherents to virtue-signal false achievement in the present. All the while, actual facts, reality, history and tradition are memory-holed in pursuit of "now" and imagined utopia. Tradition roadblocks the lies. Of course, as many will be eager to point out, lies can be set into tradition, and it's true. But the deleterious effects are less pronounced than the social chaos promoted by the Left.
“No feeding the left” is absolutely key. I’m on the fence about NETTR, and I think it means different things to different people, but for me personally I tend to view it through that lens, where in no way should the right help the left in cancellation.
I understand that it works better for the left as their goal, as you stated, is total destruction of all that is good, but aggressively policing the right, which moves the Overton window, isn’t helpful to the cause.
Nice post, Johann. The right is a mishmash of a lot of different beliefs with a lot of different goals, but there is no reason to debate either NPCs or liberals caught in the death-cult of egalitarianism, because their very framing of the world prevents consensus from ever being reached with them. Back in the day a (then) liberal friend and I could not reach consensus of the meaning of a 5 second stop-motion video, which at the time was shocking to me. I go into the details here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/navigating-schmitts-friend-enemy
Sep 16, 2023·edited Sep 16, 2023Liked by Johann Kurtz
Hello again, Johann.
This was a lovely piece. Above all, I think it's vitally important that you make the point of 'not feeding the left' -the autonomous entity which makes 'not punching right' a principle to bear in mind whatsoever as a survival strategy.
Fundamentally, the soft Left Capitalism we have ended up with is much less reputable -even as an enemy- than the Communism of old, some of whose proponents fought and died as political agents (beautifully wasted enemies of God). And this is because the New Left's gambit is that their weakness SHALT rule over our greater weakness. Such is the thinking of a gerontocracy, emblematised by a shrimp-like American president in a limousine surrounded by emergency blood bags [not a joke]. Resultantly, I agreed with you on a former occasion, the drawing forth of the Old Right by the New -and the Vitalist Right especially- is promising exactly because it enables strength to become the binding asset of our opposition. And in the long run, strength defeats weakness and defeats it always.
I suppose the hazard is that the Left is organised around a softness amenable to Capitalism and money, more broadly, which simultaneously permits them to draw on all the hard ideology they need to maintain their dominion. But when the Right wins next, this perhaps will be -or has to be- the other way around. The demonic hardness of the thing will come first, the hatred of the enemy and love of philia (not punching right), before agape -loving the enemy- starts to make sense.
In this regard, I think it's save to say that the Book of Revelation is right on the money. If there is an upcoming Conservative Revolution, it will be Pagan first -and then Christian- if it is to mean anything or be at all successful.
An enigma: is this something we can at all resolve now, or must we practice agape among our friends as well as philia?
If we understand as the Left as those willing to embrace disorder in the pursuit of equality, and the Right as those that embrace hierarchy and inequality in the pursuit of order...
This is an interesting definition. I do agree that the Left's ideal is total equality (i.e. socialism), but I'm not sure about order being the Summum Bonum of the Right. Does the Right even have a Summum Bonum? This is the problem. The Left has a positive vision. The Right just plays defense.
I think parts of the right have a positive vision. Too many conservatives have a 'progressivism but not too quickly' mindset, and some of the more pathalogical elements of the 'far right', like wignats - are fundamentally lashing about destructively
As a Catholic, the question of the 'rightwing' Summum Bonum is simple to answer, a hereditary monarchy/Catholic confessional state/under common law. That answer obviously won't appeal to everyone on the right (or non-left)...yet. But this formula isn't a pie in the sky ideology, it has resulted in some of the most stable and longest lasting states in Western Civilization. A ready example is France, Charlemagne to Louis XVI and the French Revolution, that's about a 1000 years. I don't see any reason why a modern state couldn't be formed under this framework. The intellectual heavy lifting has been done, we just need some learned men to fit and apply it to our current time.
Great substack by the way, I'm happy to subscribe.
NFTL is a very good principle. However, to work, it must have teeth. It needs to accompanied by consequences - cancellers get cancelled. Those who feed the left through doxxing, appeals to leftist icons ("he's a racist!") and so on, rather than engage in debates in good faith, need to be ostracized.
Sorry, Rod Dreher.
Haha, it took me a second to recognise and parse my own acronym in your comment.
Yes, quite so. The Left have teeth. We need them too.
In that regard, NFTL and NETTR are mutually exclusive. If feeding the left must be punished, we must be okay with some intra-wing conflict.
Yes, we should, and we should encourage the agon. I think what NETTR really boils down to is simply that not being sufficiently leftist should not be a disqualifier. Pointing and shrieking is not an argument.
I could easily imagine variations on this kind of thing that would have nothing to do with leftism, eg Christians trying to disqualify on the basis of not being Christian, or racists disqualifying because you talked to a black person or dated a Latin girl. I say "imagine" because I haven't really seen much evidence of this. In practice, the right is remarkably level-headed.
It’s nice when, as Right-wingers, we can get real intellectual stimulation like this- somebody coins a concept (Mr. Haywood), it gets fleshed out (Kruptos), and it gets argued about (Johann). Patiently waiting for another counterargument.
Great work on this one, Johann
Definitely - and thank you!
I like "Never Feed The Left." Don't let internal squabbles ("internal" to the voting block which would vote against the left) use up the passion that should be kept for the big battle. You prefer Trump, or DeSantis, or Ramaswamy? Terrific. But unless you're so devoted to Your Guy that you would rather sit out the election if he's not the nominee (which is petulant and juvenile), don't treat the non-Your Guys as gutter slime.
As for "defeating the left," it's not only not feasible, it's by definition nonsensical. You're dead-on when you identify the main focus of the Left as "destruction"; they are entropy personified. And entropy simply can never be defeated by anything and anyone less than the One who will put all enemies under His feet.
Yes, quite so. There's so much need for constructive activities, than indulging in the thrill of mutual destruction is a great waste
There are several problems with NETTR.
But let's start with one which should be obvious: NETTL has not been a universal rule on the Left. Woodrow Wilson gave us the income tax and the federal reserve -- while jailing communists and socialists and fighting an undeclared war against the Bolsheviks. Lyndon Johnson was a vigorous Cold Warrior, getting us ever deeper into the Vietnam War. It was Nixon who ended the draft and opened relations to Communist China.
The Left has a long tradition of keeping its rabid radicals at arm's length. Notice how many different words there are for those left of center: liberals, social democrats, socialists, progressives, communists... It is only when the Left lacks adequate competition that the Left goes insane and adopts NETTL.
The other problem is that the definitions of Left and Right are breaking down. The Democrats are now the party of billionaires and big corporations. The ideology of the hippie left of not that long ago was closer to Distributism than the ideology of today's Democratic [sic] Party or the World Economic Forum.
Ditch the linear thinking. Break out some two and three dimensional political maps.
https://rulesforreactionaries.substack.com/p/an-introduction-to-4d-political-chess
I would agree with the important note that it has been a very long time since any leftwing radicals have been truly persecuted in America
Some who have pushed the civil disobedience have been put away for it. And definitely many on the pro drug legalization factions on the left.
But more to my point is that even into the first term of the Obama Administration, even most left leaning mainstream Demcrats kept their distance from the outright commies and the like. The young Al Gore was more socially conservative than todays Maga Republicans. Barney Frank and Bernie Sanders were outliers.
Do recall that Barack Obama's response to getting a bogus Peace Prize was downright Reaganesque.
McGovern embraced the Left fringe and got clobbered. Thanks to a combination of factors, the Democrats are getting away with it this time around.
I'd like to force the Democrats back into disavowing their whackdoodles. But to do so does require stealing some near the center votes that Team D has been taking for granted.
Fortunately, it is possible to be to the "left" of Team D on wages simply by enforcing the national picket line. And trashing cities and burning forests for fuel is not exactly good for the planet. It's possible to out green the Democrats as well.
Indeed, there's a long and sordid history of vicious internecine conflict on the left, especially including within its radical fringe. Monty Python poked fun at it in Life of Brian (the People's Front of Judea vs the Judean People's Front), so it's been going on for a long time.
However, such conflicts tend to be along the lines of critiques that the other is not left-wing enough. Even in cases of centre-left persecution of the radical left, I think this is usually more due to outright criminal or terrorist action on the part of the latter - it's rare for the center-left to make a moral critique. Usually the line is that the radicals are misguided idealists whose heart is the right place, and whose passionate commitment to justice or whatever has led them to adopt regrettable methods.
By contrast, on the right, the critiques of conservatives towards the radical fringe tend to take a moral form - "they're racist!" - rather than complaints about means. Further, the moralizing tends to be from a leftist frame.
Perfectly stated, J.C.
"the Left as those willing to embrace disorder in the pursuit of equality"
It is important for conservatives of whatever kind to always keep in mind that the Left does not truly want equality. Leftism is at bottom not so much an ideology as a narcissistic PSYCHOLOGY. Its roots - all the way from the 19th c. - have always been in a middle class intelligentsia and it's driving force has always been a vain desire to FEEL holier than thou. Casting it as solidarity with a bottom-up revolt of the 'oppressed' has always been a self-serving lefty vanity - one that conservatives have (unwittingly) tended to indulge.
Yes - the fundamentally spiteful foundation of many 'progressives' must be understood
Yes "fundamentally spiteful" is a good epithet for the leftist mentality. (Although we are talking about human beings, of course, whose motivations are usually a multi-faceted combination of generous and mean impulses.) Conservatism has - as its intellectuals are finally facing up to - made so many fundamental strategic errors over recent decades (most obviously failing to notice the 'long march' through the institutions) but perhaps the greatest error has been the failure to blast back loud and clear that being left wing is not a sign of being 'caring' or 'generous'; it is sign of being resentful and smug.
I think we tend to overanalyze this too much. NETTR will certainly mean intra-right conflict, but thats the point. We need to be constantly driving discourse to the Right. In the same way Dave Rubin has to be excluded, as we shift our own Overton window rightward, more and more Rightists will find themselves outside the Right - being left behind.
This is a good thing; "Join, or Die."
We might find ourselves in the crosshairs of the NETTR idea if our own ideas are too far to the Left, is what I mean to say. But we should encourage that, and be willing to adapt and push further right ourselves.
And so, the cycle repeats. You want to fight multiculturalism without fighting multiculturalism.
You know the funny thing about mid century Germans and the Jewish polity? They're more similar than dissimilar, really. Both ethnocentric, politically ethnonationalist, existed as persecuted diasporas in different times and places across history.
You don't have to like (or endorse) neo nazis and segregationists (as if they were a political sect of any substance in the US, which they arent), but you're gonna have to look into that abyss eventually.
Thank you for your critique on NETTR, and i concur.
I think the "win condition" is something more like getting the Left out of Right spaces. Not "feeding the Left" as you mention is a huge part of this. For example, the forces of disorder have been largely fed by Central Banking and we see how that's turned out. The forces of Disorder will ALWAYS be present, the trick is corralling them enough so they don't disturb those seeking Order.
The problem we face in any of these scenarios is something like this: the majority in the middle are so easily influenced by appeals to emotion and comfort-seeking without maintaining the boundaries necessitated by those seeking Order. Traditions and hierarchies help to stabilize people in large groups. Those on the Left despise traditional boundaries on the whole while adhering to the Utopian ideals they promote. Also, people have such short memories, as evidenced by news cycles and this problem is exacerbated by our technology. Attention spans are dwindling as well. Disorder works just fine with little or no attention span at all, in fact it thrives in such an environment. A prime example being the trope of NPC's taking up offense at whatever the "new thing" is relayed in the social media. Most folks want satisfaction in the "here and now" rather than thinking long-term and generationally. This is how traditions allow large groups to maintain stability. The Left might claim such, but it's ultimately a ruse to claim powers and control while allowing adherents to virtue-signal false achievement in the present. All the while, actual facts, reality, history and tradition are memory-holed in pursuit of "now" and imagined utopia. Tradition roadblocks the lies. Of course, as many will be eager to point out, lies can be set into tradition, and it's true. But the deleterious effects are less pronounced than the social chaos promoted by the Left.
“No feeding the left” is absolutely key. I’m on the fence about NETTR, and I think it means different things to different people, but for me personally I tend to view it through that lens, where in no way should the right help the left in cancellation.
I understand that it works better for the left as their goal, as you stated, is total destruction of all that is good, but aggressively policing the right, which moves the Overton window, isn’t helpful to the cause.
Excellent piece!
I really appreciate the upgraded subscription too. Thank you!
I'm happy to support such great work!
Thanks Adam
Nice post, Johann. The right is a mishmash of a lot of different beliefs with a lot of different goals, but there is no reason to debate either NPCs or liberals caught in the death-cult of egalitarianism, because their very framing of the world prevents consensus from ever being reached with them. Back in the day a (then) liberal friend and I could not reach consensus of the meaning of a 5 second stop-motion video, which at the time was shocking to me. I go into the details here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/navigating-schmitts-friend-enemy
My main issue that some newly cancelled leftists showing up on the right and immediately insisting that they're the Only True Right.
Yes, infuriating
Hello again, Johann.
This was a lovely piece. Above all, I think it's vitally important that you make the point of 'not feeding the left' -the autonomous entity which makes 'not punching right' a principle to bear in mind whatsoever as a survival strategy.
Fundamentally, the soft Left Capitalism we have ended up with is much less reputable -even as an enemy- than the Communism of old, some of whose proponents fought and died as political agents (beautifully wasted enemies of God). And this is because the New Left's gambit is that their weakness SHALT rule over our greater weakness. Such is the thinking of a gerontocracy, emblematised by a shrimp-like American president in a limousine surrounded by emergency blood bags [not a joke]. Resultantly, I agreed with you on a former occasion, the drawing forth of the Old Right by the New -and the Vitalist Right especially- is promising exactly because it enables strength to become the binding asset of our opposition. And in the long run, strength defeats weakness and defeats it always.
I suppose the hazard is that the Left is organised around a softness amenable to Capitalism and money, more broadly, which simultaneously permits them to draw on all the hard ideology they need to maintain their dominion. But when the Right wins next, this perhaps will be -or has to be- the other way around. The demonic hardness of the thing will come first, the hatred of the enemy and love of philia (not punching right), before agape -loving the enemy- starts to make sense.
In this regard, I think it's save to say that the Book of Revelation is right on the money. If there is an upcoming Conservative Revolution, it will be Pagan first -and then Christian- if it is to mean anything or be at all successful.
An enigma: is this something we can at all resolve now, or must we practice agape among our friends as well as philia?
It was very nice meeting you in person.
Best wishes,
Elle.
Thank you for the great comment. It was great meeting you!
If we understand as the Left as those willing to embrace disorder in the pursuit of equality, and the Right as those that embrace hierarchy and inequality in the pursuit of order...
This is an interesting definition. I do agree that the Left's ideal is total equality (i.e. socialism), but I'm not sure about order being the Summum Bonum of the Right. Does the Right even have a Summum Bonum? This is the problem. The Left has a positive vision. The Right just plays defense.
I think parts of the right have a positive vision. Too many conservatives have a 'progressivism but not too quickly' mindset, and some of the more pathalogical elements of the 'far right', like wignats - are fundamentally lashing about destructively
What is this positive vision? Order?
As a Catholic, the question of the 'rightwing' Summum Bonum is simple to answer, a hereditary monarchy/Catholic confessional state/under common law. That answer obviously won't appeal to everyone on the right (or non-left)...yet. But this formula isn't a pie in the sky ideology, it has resulted in some of the most stable and longest lasting states in Western Civilization. A ready example is France, Charlemagne to Louis XVI and the French Revolution, that's about a 1000 years. I don't see any reason why a modern state couldn't be formed under this framework. The intellectual heavy lifting has been done, we just need some learned men to fit and apply it to our current time.
Great substack by the way, I'm happy to subscribe.
The Declaration is a pretty positive vision and one worth pursuing.
I recommend we all re-read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers. You all have read them. yes?
Well! I think Clarence Wilhelm Spangle's parody of a rabid, irrational anti-Semite is quite instructive, and I certainly laughed long and hard.
...It was parody, wasn't it?