Introduction
During a Democratic fundraiser at the New York Historical Society Library on September 9th, 2016, then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton made disparaging remarks about half the country. Half of Trump’s voting base, she believes, are a “basket of deplorables,” with the other half needing compassion because they believe the government has let them down. By doing this, Hillary Clinton had effectively alienated herself as an out-of-touch elite, a member of the swamp, and someone who needed to be drained from the system. But there is something Hillary was correct on: many felt that the system in which they lived actively worked against them. The financial crash in 2008, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the spying on U.S. citizens by the NSA-to the average American, all were actions of a hateful elite, and so Donald Trump was elected, a slap in the face to the system. Then there is another aspect in which Hillary is correct, those “deplorables” who would crusade for Trump would defend this new revolution not from the halls of Congress, but in studios and street corners, far away from the centers of power. They were deplorable for this very reason, a revolution cannot be stopped outside of power, meaning the system would have to contain it. Oswald Spengler, in his essay “Prussian Socialism,” had predicted the disastrous consequence of the German revolution of 1914 and 1918, events that European academics scoffed at, saying that such actions could not even be considered “revolutionary.” Spengler writes in 1919:
“Make no mistake, the revolution is not yet ended. No matter how you interpret it, as senseless or significant, as a failure or as an auspicious beginning, as the prelude to a world revolution or merely as a mob uprising in a single country. The fact that we are in the midst of a crisis. And like everything organic, like every disease, this crisis will follow a typical course that cannot be influenced by artificial means.”
Frenchmen may be disgusted at such a notion that the 2016 election of Donald Trump could even be considered a revolution, but the events since that election have proved to be unstoppable; although there were no guillotines, it was a revolution nonetheless. The populist movements of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street had no basis of power, not even in the media. Trump, being a member of the elite, started an America First revolution, and like a living organism, will eventually end. To understand why this revolution will continue to fail, we must first understand who the leaders were, the men and women at the forefront of the movement, who were merely members of the fourth estate. They failed to truly grasp the concept of Power, and had also failed to understand the mass mind and human nature of the modern American. Finally, confronting the truth that America, much like the Soviet Union, is in a state of collapse. What happened in the Soviet revolution of 1985 had culminated in a fifteen year revolution that ended with Putin, America is already on the same path.
The Fourth Estate
The warriors of this aimless revolution were members of the journalist class, the fourth estate. In the early days of 2016, the pantheon consisted of people like Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Charlie Kirk, and many other conservative podcasters. During this time, these independent podcasters and public speakers had attacked the mainstream news outlets, who they claimed merely spread fake news and liberal propaganda; they attacked Antifa and BLM, along with blue-haired feminists on college campuses. But they failed to realize that all these groups and institutions were merely instruments of power. The elite theorist, Gaetano Mosca, understood that the media, whether it be newspapers or on the radio, were ultimately instruments for the ruling class to both promote its political formula and to engineer perception against the masses-an instrument for the organized minority against the disorganized majority. Putin understood this when, in the summer of 2000, he gathered 21 of the richest oligarchs in the country, the men who hollowed out Russia in the 1990s and created a situation where four out of ten Russians lived below the poverty line. He gave them an option: cooperate, or lose everything. Since then, Putin has remained in power, unchallenged in politics and in the media; he understood the nature of power.
But in America, these independent media outlets, who were the loudest voices for Trump, believed themselves to be in a civil war with the mainstream media, a fruitless endeavor that can be well seen today. Spengler highlights this class’s weakness when establishing socialism in Germany, writing:
“Instead of initiating action, they bellowed the slogans “soviet,” “dictatorship,” and “republic” so often that within two years time they will have become a laughing stock. The only “action” that occurred was the overthrow of the monarchy. And yet a republican form of government has nothing at all to do with socialism. All this proves, as opposed to the rest of the people, the fourth estate, which is actually a negative concept, is incapable of constructive action.”
The American conservatives were too mesmerized with the opportunity to debate college liberals on street corners, make fun of crying SJWs, and fall for the cultural war rage bait of BLM. They had helped Trump get elected twice, their energy spent on promises of a golden age; now that Trump is in office, he has nearly dragged America into war with Iran on behalf of Israel, rejected any notion of the Epstein files, and failed in his promises to end the war in Ukraine. The old guard of 2016, like Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk, conduct damage control for Trump still, showing their unrelenting support for Israel and splitting the base into multiple disorganized factions, still within the confines of the fourth estate. They lacked the basic understanding of power, putting ideology and dogma over realism, but they also lacked the basic understanding of the American masses.
The American vs The “Race”
Is there any benefit to listening to your enemies? Or at the very least, those who may be ideologically opposed to your ideas? Julius Evola, the traditionalist philosopher; Envr Hoxah, the communist dictator of Albania; and Ayman Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden’s right-hand man, may seem like a disparate trio; yet all three, despite radically different world views, had come to the same conclusion about America. The liberalism that was built into its people was subversive to their nations and humanity. Julius Evola had argued in his book “The Bow and the Club” that much of the degenerate culture that flooded into Germany and Italy by the 1920s was a result of American eroticism; the jazz that flooded the dance halls had no soul and corrupted the youth into sexualized dancing. He had questioned if the inhabitants of America could even be considered European; he notes:
“Emigrating to America, Men of the most diverse peoples receive the same imprint; after two generations, except in rare cases, they lose almost all of their original characteristics, reproducing a type which is fairly homogeneous in terms of mentality, sensibility, and behavior; the American type.”
By race, thinkers like Evola and Spengler did not mean it in the biological zeitgeist of our era or the racism of the Nazis. It was referring to a spirit belonging to different groups of people: the Chinese spirit, which had produced Confucius; the Latin spirit which had produced the Roman Empire; and the Western spirit which had developed our modern world. The Americans, being a part of a “melting pot,” had seemingly melted the identity of any original culture within a generation. The culture America produced could even stretch over oceans. The communist dictator of Albania railed against this in his 1969 speech against Soviet revisionism, saying:
“Of what fight against bourgeois ideology can the Soviet revisionists speak while revisionism is nothing else by a manifestation of the bourgeois ideology in theory and practice, while egoism and individualism, the running after money and other material benefits are thriving in the Soviet Union, while careerseeking and bureaucratism, technocratism, economism and intellectualism are developing, while villas, motor-cars and beautiful women have become the supreme ideal of men, while literature and art attack socialism, everything revolutionary, and advocate pacifism and bourgeois humanism, the empty and dissolute living of people thinking only of themselves, while hundreds of thousands of western tourists that visit the Soviet Union every year, spread the bourgeois ideology and way of life there, while western films cover the screens of the Soviet cinema halls, while the American orchestras and jazz bands and those of the other capitalist countries have become the favorite orchestras of the youth, and while parades of western fashions are in vogue in the Soviet Union? If until yesterday the various manifestations of bourgeois ideology could be called remnants of the past, today bourgeois ideology has become a component part of the capitalist superstructure which rests on the state capitalist foundation which has now been established in the Soviet Union.”
Even the radical Islamist and number two man of Al-Qaeda, Ayman Zawahiri, wrote in his manifesto “Knights Under the Prophets Banner” that saw American culture as an external threat towards Islam that needed to be met on the battlefield. He said:
“Sayyed Qutb affirmed that the issue of unification in Islam is important and the battle between Islam and its enemies is primarily an ideological one over the issue of unification. It is also a battle over to whom authority and power should belong – to God’s course and Shari’ah, to man-made laws and material principles, or to those who claim to be intermediaries between the creator and mankind”
What should this tell the American conservatives? Many wish to return to a more traditional way of life, with family, marriage, morality, and church at the center. Yet the way each American views these concepts is inherently liberal. From a divorce rate of 0.7% in 1900 to 40% in 2024, modern music and clothes are immodest, but the super freak songs and cross-dressing rock stars of the 1980s were the pinnacle of culture. What the American conservatives want is untenable; if a jihadist, a communist, and a super-fascist all come to the same conclusion, then perhaps there is truth in what they say.
Right Containment
During the 1991 Soviet election, Boris Yeltsin, the leader of the Democratic Russia movement, faced off against four other opponents. His main opponent was Mikael Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Soviet Union and head of the CPSU. But Yeltsin faced an unexpected problem: another candidate, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, also ran on an anti-communist platform with a strident Russian chauvinism. Rumors spread that the KGB purposefully ran Zhirinovsky to split the vote between Yeltsin’s coalition of republic separatists and the Russian nationalists’ disdain for the republics that had relied upon Russian taxes collected by the Center. In Vlaislov Zubok’s book “Collapse,” he notes that Gennady Burbulis, who managed Yeltsin’s campaign, believed that Yeltsin’s rivals had been “carefully chosen” to appeal to every major niche in Soviet society. The revolution that started in 1985 with Perestroika entered a new phase with the election of Boris Yeltsin, but it did not end. Similarly in America, Trump was reelected, but he has by all counts been absorbed by the system. His base that once supported him has split into multiple factions, accommodating every niche aspect of American society, whether it be Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, Judging Freedom, or the Daily Wire.
Yeltsin’s eventual victory and subsequent years in office were met with disarray, corruption, crime, and poverty. In every revolution, no matter the past fanaticism of the ideology, the people will eventually demand security over freedom. When this point is reached, the revolution has ended; the masses would prefer a strong man over an ineffective parliament. This is what happened to Russia when a KGB agent rose to power, and similarly, America will enter into a post-revolutionary era.
