Zombie Reaganauts Strike Back!
And: The Preppy Ignatius Reilly; Spenglerizing The Quiet Revival
Let me start by pointing out that even though I find it unpleasant to watch the Right tearing itself up over this anti-Semitism fight, it is an important and necessary one — and one that the Left pointedly is not having among itself. There are some voices on the Right who believe that we conservatives should simply shut up about our internal differences, and focus on the Left. I strongly disagree. If “fighting the Left” means that we have to absorb Jew hatred and race hatred more generally into our team, then. it won’t have been worth it.
What I see developing is an inability on both sides of this argument to make distinctions. For example, some defenders of pro-Groypers among Gen Z assume that to oppose them is to put oneself on the side of the GOP Old Guard, of whom Mike Pence is a classic figure. This is straw-manning of the first degree.
It is certainly true that some of these older right-wing figures really do want to go back to the Days Of St. Ronaldus Magnus, but even if it were desirable (it’s not), it is not possible. The Boomercons (and Gen Xers like Ted Cruz, who is ideologically aligned with them, simply must come to terms with this. Attacking the nascent antisemites among us is necessary, but to do so by invoking a president who was out of office, and maybe even dead, before most of these people were born is not going to get the job done.
Postliberal conservatives — people like Patrick Deneen, Johnny Burtka, me, and others — recognized a while back that the old order is dead, and we are trying to hammer out a meaningful successor. We don’t always agree with each other, but so what? There are no clear answers for the future; this has to be worked out as we go along, in debate and conversation. At ISI, Johnny has been doing that, and doing it well.
As I’ve been writing here, the sudden rise of Jew hatred among the younger generations on the Right is alarming and disgusting — but the strategy to fight it will be impotent if the only answer is RETVRN TO 1988. Reminds me of Germans in 1928 who thought that all the turmoil and instability of the Weimar Republic would be solved if we would just put the Kaiser back on the throne.
I say that as a prelude to answering this “Open Letter to the Conservative Movement” authored by two former presidents of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), which is now led by Johnny Burtka. The whole thing is too long to reproduce here; follow the link to read it all. Excerpts:
The battle for the heart and soul of the American Conservative Movement is being fought on many fronts, with the latest trench warfare occurring in the boardrooms of its long-standing and most influential foundations and think tanks. The recent controversy @Heritage points to how Conservatism’s venerable institutions have been infiltrated and quietly taken over by a tight-knit, fringe group of post-liberal thinkers who believe America has been “off the rails” since the Founding.
In their minds, the Declaration and Constitution must take a backseat to usher in a new, post-democratic, post-capitalist economic system that advocates isolationism, an immigration ban, and a domestic policy that blurs distinctions between church and state. While often described as MAGA or populist, this group is more tightly aligned to the philosophy of media crank @TuckerCarlson than President Trump’s agenda.
As longtime board members and leaders of @ISI, the oldest conservative campus organization in America, founded in 1953 by William F. Buckley Jr., we have fought to preserve ISI’s longstanding mission from falling victim to a post-liberal hijacking. That battle was lost at a board meeting held last Friday, at the conclusion of which we tendered our resignations.
We hope our experience will serve as a wake-up call that the integrity and longstanding values of conservative institutions are being systematically and intentionally undermined by post-liberals who promote a “no enemies to the right” mindset.
We urged our fellow trustees to terminate ISI’s current President, @johnnyburtka, who formerly served as executive director of the post-liberal journal @amconmag, and return ISI to its core academic work of “Educating for Liberty” by helping American college students to learn and appreciate the perennial ideas and timeless values that have made America great.
ISI has largely abandoned its on-campus philosophical programming, which equipped future leaders to better uphold American ideals. Instead, it focuses on ideological and political podcasts that introduce audiences to alt-right online personalities, such as Tucker Carlson and others who seek to undermine the liberal ideas of the American Founding.
This fundamental shift in ISI’s focus was done behind the board’s back. It’s new signal program, the podcast Project Cosmos, was dropped on X (formerly Twitter) on August 19, featuring postliberal icon @PatrickDeneen and neo-reactionary @curtis_yarvin. Despite two board meetings taking place between the podcast’s release and the start of the costly production in February, the board was never informed of the existence of Project Cosmos.
More:
Yarvin is a self-described neo-reactionary, unapologetic monarchist, and a leader of the Dark Enlightenment movement who advocates for “rebooting” and replacing liberal democracy. He writes, “If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia.” He has also said, “Although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff.”
What happened at Heritage and ISI in recent weeks underscores how a cadre of post-liberals has worked together, behind the scenes, to wrest control of conservative institutions from actual conservatives. They have quietly filled boardrooms with post-liberals, integralists, and other fellow travelers who disdain traditional conservatism’s central tenets of free markets, limited government, individual liberty, and personal responsibility. These usurpers of conservatism, as Yarvin puts it, find America’s core principles to be “historically leftist” and prevent the right from defeating the left both philosophically and at the ballot box.
The leaders of the postliberal project continue to be close friends with Carlson, Yarvin, and their ilk, to be open to discussion with the likes of Fuentes and other racists and antisemites, and to praise autocrats like Hungary’s Viktor Orban—and Carlson even lauds the “social values” of Venezuela’s dictator Nicolas Maduro. They echo Yarvin’s call to overcome the fear of dictatorship and relinquish respect for representative government and the checks and balances the Founders established.
Traditional conservatives who believe in America’s Founding principles and look back at the Reagan Revolution as a step in the right direction need to wake up and understand the battle currently underway.
Christopher Long, former President, Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Thomas Lynch, former Chairman, Intercollegiate Studies Institute
OK. So. I am not privy to the inner workings of ISI, though I am good friends with Johnny Burtka, and I trust him. It is a filthy smear to try to tar Johnny with Nick Fuentes! What this looks like to me, from Messrs. Long and Lynch — both financiers, according to their biographies — is an attempt to silence important and needed conservations with figures of the New Right who must be engaged if conservatism is to be relevant. Conservatism is not a church, with fixed dogmas and an authoritative hierarchy, but a way of thinking about politics and their relation to life and tradition.
Patrick Deneen, in his must-read book Why Liberalism Failed, explains why the kind of right-liberalism (= Reaganism) espoused by the traditional conservative institutions is dead now. You don’t have to like that conclusion, but almost 40 years after Reagan left office, the world has changed dramatically — and conservatism, if it is to be viable, has to change to account for the real world. You can’t refute Deneen by canceling him. Eppur si muove.
Yarvin is absolutely not a conservative, and doesn’t pretend to be; he is a self-described neoreactionary. I know him a bit, and strongly disagree with many of his views. On the other hand, he is an influential political figure, and to refuse to engage with him is foolishness. One reason Yarvin has gained so much traction is because of the failures of the right-liberal Reagan script. It would be intellectually irresponsible for Burtka to limit ISI’s dialogue partners only to those who swear allegiance to Reaganism. Reaganism was the future once; it no longer is. That is no insult to Reagan and his philosophy, but only a realistic recognition that it no longer speaks persuasively to the experiences of young people today.
About Tucker Carlson, you readers well know how appalled I am over his platforming of Nick Fuentes with that softball interview. It is also true that Tucker, in the last year and a half, has leaned into crankery on his programming. But ISI’s relationship with Tucker goes much further back — back to a time, just the day before yesterday, when Tucker was one of the most visionary and exciting media figures on the Right. I have no idea why Tucker has chosen to go down this dark path, and as I have been shouting from the rooftops these past two weeks, I think it would be suicide for the Right to follow him. If ISI continued its close relationship with TC post-Fuentes, then I would have a problem with it. But it is unfair to judge ISI and Burtka for the work they’ve done with TC prior to this.
A tip-off as to how out of touch Lynch and Long are from the real world is their condemnation of Viktor Orban. As you all know, I live in Hungary, and one reason I relocated here was because I am fascinated to observe how a postliberal conservative government works. When I first came here in 2022, a Washington friend in a position to know — and who understands what Orban really stands for — told me that all the old-school GOP sorts truly do believe Orban — elected four times in a free and fair vote — is a fascist. This is, to put it mildly, batshit crazy, as any right-winger who actually visits Budapest with a critical eye can see. How many “autocrats,” as Lynch and Long have it, win free elections? Anyone in Washington who takes their analysis of what’s going on in Hungary from the US media, or old-school think tanks, will be seriously misled.
I spent about 90 intellectually thrilling minutes with Vice President Vance and PM Viktor Orban in Vance’s study last Friday, talking geopolitics. It would be indiscreet of me to repeat what was said, but I can say confidently that the idea that Orban represents a betrayal of “Trump’s agenda” is bonkers.
And there’s this, from the Long/Lynch letter:
The leaders of the postliberal project continue to be close friends with Carlson, Yarvin, and their ilk, to be open to discussion with the likes of Fuentes and other racists and antisemites, and to praise autocrats like Hungary’s Viktor Orban—and Carlson even lauds the “social values” of Venezuela’s dictator Nicolas Maduro. They echo Yarvin’s call to overcome the fear of dictatorship and relinquish respect for representative government and the checks and balances the Founders established.
This is grotesque smearing by association, and, frankly, hysterical. I don’t know Yarvin well, but we’re friends. I strongly disagree with most of what he stands for, but am certainly willing to talk to him about it. Why not? More normal conservatives like me had better be willing and able to engage, because Yarvin has a following, and he’s very smart. If his ideas are to be countered, that requires engagement.
About Carlson, Lynch and Long refer to Carlson’s very recent defense of Maduro, on his October 29 podcast. I think Carlson was very wrong to do so. I’ve been friends with Carlson since around 2017, though almost entirely online, but I probably wrecked that friendship by publicly criticizing Carlson for platforming Fuentes and softballing the interview. In a private text, Carlson bitterly denounced me for it. While I think public figures engaged in public controversies should have thicker skin, and not consider disagreement, even strong disagreement, as evidence of disloyalty, that was his choice. Damon Linker and I sometimes disagree in our writing, and criticize each other, but we do so out of genuine respect for the other. I often disagree in this space with David Brooks’s column, but truly respect his integrity, and consider him a friend. I am guessing that he is grown-up enough to understand that my not sharing all his political views is a personal attack. I don’t take it that way when friends of mine dissent in print or podcast from things I have written or said. Come on, man, we’re journalists here! Back in 2002, when one of my National Review colleagues tried (and failed) to get my Crunchy Cons cover story cancelled because he judged it would somehow give aid and comfort to the Left, I resolved never to be that kind of boundaries-policer.
In any event, TC’s Fuentes interview aired on October 27 — only two weeks before the Lynch/Long letter. How do they know that “leaders of the postliberal project” are “open to discussion with the likes of Fuentes and other racists and antisemites”? Hell, man, I put my friendship with Carlson on the line precisely because of this! Anyway, who are these postliberal leaders open to discussion with “Fuentes and other racists and antisemites”? I’m not aware of anything other postliberal leaders have said about this (not that they haven’t, it’s just that I’ve been traveling and haven’t followed closely), but I know of no prominent thinker identified as a postliberal who thinks it’s a good idea to platform Fuentes and other racists and antisemites.
And note for the record, the two podcasts that have TC in so much trouble on the Right — the Fuentes interview and the praise for Maduro’s social policies — happened only two weeks ago. ISI’s association with TC goes way back. These guys are trying to hold Johnny Burtka responsible for something that just happened.
A side note. Maduro is a wicked dictator, though I don’t think the US should invade Venezuela to topple him for national security reasons (if we do, then let us hear no more criticism from Washington of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for same). But I think it is at least worth talking about, Maduro’s social conservatism. I think it justifies NONE of his oppressive policies; it sounds like the leftist defense of Fidel Castro: that at least he taught Cubans to read, and gave them health care. That said, I had a very interesting conversation in Poland in 2019, with my young Catholic interpreter helping me on research for Live Not By Lies. He told me that his family had always been anti-communist, but that his grandparents did appreciate how, after the communists took power, the government finally took an interest in providing better health care for their village. My friend’s point was not to defend communism, but to say that there were reasons why the communists were not the simplistic enemies of the Western imagination.
Second point: back in 1999, I was at a dinner party in Manhattan with some Catholics, one of whom was Venezuelan, and who spent half her time living there. She had money, you could tell. She spoke about how the chasm between rich and poor was what had brought Hugo Chavez to power in the recent election — and that this worried her greatly. Not only was she worried about what Chavez would do to her country — worries that proved prescient, to put it mildly — but also over how blind her social class was to the suffering of the poor. I bring both these issues up here simply to say that it is insufficient to villainize the Left. Ordinary people may choose candidates who offer bad solutions to their real problems, over those who seem to have no solutions at all, or who seem not to see the problems in the first place.
I bring this issue up in the broader “Whither The Right?” discussion to argue why we conservatives who are genuinely intellectually curious should not be afraid to ask questions about the Left with open minds. Obviously — obviously! — lines should be drawn to keep out Jew-hatred, white supremacy, and that poison. But if you don’t care to know why voters sometimes go for ideas you think are bad, you will keep losing. Look at the Democrats and their media allies, who rarely if ever wanted to understand why a clownish pop culture figure like Donald Trump made sense to millions — and are still paying the price for it, politically.
Back to the main point: In my writing in this space recently, I have vehemently argued that we on the Right have to draw a bright line around antisemitism and racism, and keep it out of our movement and movement spaces. On the other hand, I have been equally vehement in saying that we have to address seriously the root causes of what has driven so many intelligent young conservative men (and some women) into the arms of Fuentes, Candace Owens, and other bad actors. As much as it must pain the old-school GOP establishment class to face it, they can stand on a pillar and recite the Reaganite catechism at top volume until their voice turns hoarse … and nobody under the age of 40 will listen.
Somebody needs to get through the heads of these people that NOT EVERYBODY WHO DISAGREES WITH YOU IS NICK FUENTES!
Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945. Imagine how bizarre it would be for disgruntled Democratic think-tank trustees, in 1985, to demand that their institutions turn back to the tried and true principles of the New Deal, and stop talking to these younger liberals who reject the New Deal as Gospel. That’s where we are with this open letter against Johnny Burtka.
Meanwhile, in the UK, the embattled and widely disliked Tories have apparently launched a smear campaign against James Orr, a disaffected ex-Tory who is now a senior adviser to Reform’s Nigel Farage. I wrote about it here, in The Critic. The Old Tory Right cannot cope with the changes happening now, partly as a result of their failures in governance, any more than the old-guard GOP in America can. Younger men and women of the Right who are trying to find a way to salvage conservatism won’t always get it right, but at least they are trying something different, instead of attempting the same damn thing, hoping this time, it will work.
Last point: this incredible post by the must-follow antiwoke Twitter account Wokal Distance:
I despise the Groyper movement, but if you want to understand where Fuentes gets purchase with young men I will tell you how it happened by telling you about my experience at the orientation night when my son joined elementary school band:
My 11 year old son son joined the elementary school band, and so I went to the parents orientation night which was held at a local high-school. As the night went on it became obvious to me why young men rage against the larger social system.
The classrooms were inundated with DEI messages and trans pride flags. On the walls there were posters, stickers and various decorations that all invoked the various totems if diversity. Black lives matter messaging, decolonization messaging, LGBTQ+ messaging, and basically ever sort of race and gender social justice messaging you can imagine was present. The advertisements for post secondary opportunities featured social justice education prominently, including advertising a course on indigenous ways of knowing” as something grade 12 students should pursue upon graduation. Many of the teachers has “this is a safe space” sticker son their doors, and others had variations of “in this house” messaging on their doors or on the walls of the classroom.
The entire aesthetic which dominated the decoration of classrooms was the progressive leftist coded “in this house” and “be kind” aesthetic. As soon as you walked into a classroom there was no doubt as the the political leanings of whichever teacher occupied that classroom. The only way I can describe it is to say that progressive social justice activists have colonized the school and marked their territory.
A woman in a mask (who was in charge) got up and read a number of land acknowledgements before acknowledging the contribution of indigenous people to ways of knowing. Standard leftist land acknowledgement boilerplate. Additionally, every interaction was done in the style of HR style professionalism mixed with progressive leftist coded gentle parenting.
When it comes to how the teachers behaved I am going to draw on both that night and the other times I have been at my sons school in order to explain it. To begin, the boys are treated almost as though they are defective girls. The feminine modes of interaction and socialization are treated as though they are the only legitimate modes of interaction and serve as the taken for granted way to properly interact and navigate the world. Almost all the authority figures at my sons school are women with almost no exceptions. One day my son found out that the school had hired a single male education Assistant, and my son came home and told me, in wondrous amazement, that he saw a “boy teacher” at school. The level of wonderment and surprise he expressed was on par with what I would expect if he had walked into school and seen a triceratops walking the hallways.
My son often comes home from school and expresses utter frustration at the fact that his preferred way of communicating, as well as the things that are aligned with his temperament are treated as though they were somehow inferior. As he is 11 (and being assessed for autism) he lacks the correct technical language to describe this, so it generally shows up as him getting in trouble for being insufficiently “gentle” and “kind” in response to various passive aggressive power plays and instances of bullying carries out by his more socially developed (often) female peers.
To say that band night was feminine coded would be an understatement. It would be more accurate to say that feminized modes of behavior and communication were embedded in every single interaction. It was a totally alien environment for anyone who isn’t well versed in navigating the social codes of progressive leftist institutional spaces. It was like the slogan “the future is female” was taken to be a command delivered from God Himself turned into an education program.
Now, I want you to imagine what it is like for an 11 year old boy to be saturated in that environment day after day. he is an alien in his own school who is treated essentially like a ticking time bomb who needs to be effectively managed rather than engaged with an taught, and he knows this is happening. It is hard to overstate the level of hostility towards boys that is floating around in the ambient culture of the school system. It isn’t so much that there is an explicit form of anti-male bigotry (although examples of that exist) it is more that there is an overall attitude of distaste for anything masculine and an utter indifference towards the interests, fortunes, and inner lives of young boys. The expectations, norms, rules, and standards of behavior cater to the sensibilities of girls and women.
This is the entire social system that a young boy goes through from when he is 6 years old all the way until he is graduated from university.
It’s an old trope on the right to say “imagine if the roles were reversed,” but that would be to miss the point. I know that many on the left will say that all of this is perfectly acceptable because of historical injustices and the pursuit of Social Justice. What I want to point out to you is how absurd the world must appear through the eyes of the average 11 year-old boy. He is basically told he has a host of social advantages (white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, etc) that he has never experienced and will never benefit from, and this justifies the system which he is immersed in. And the worst part is, if young men point any of this out, the very people who are doing it will look them in the eye with a straight face and deny that any of this ever happened. Making matters worse these men begin to figure out that the institutions have been used to advance a leftist political agenda that scapegoated their group (young white men), and when they point this out everyone in authority calls them evil bigots.
And all this happens during their formative years.
Now, Imagine you are a young white male.
You graduate from the school system and are released into the world only to find that the feminine modes of socialization pushed on you are entirely unfit for purpose. That the social skills you were taught fail utterly in both the job markets young men tend towards (construction, engineering, building, landscaping, etc) and have no purchase in the dating market where highly agentic, masculine, wealthy men have a huge advantage over the passive, docile “nice boy.” On top of that, imagine that a great deal of the job listings that you peruse make it clear that preference will be given to women and “diverse” candidates, and that the job interview itself is full of shibboleths, coded statements, and trap questions meant to elicit responses that allow the hiring party to exclude anyone who isn’t sufficiently versed in and aligned with the priorities of the DEI/Woke/Social Justice paradigm.
On top of that, that if a you do get a job you will exposed to various sensitivity trainings, DEI trainings, and intersectionality workshops in which your group (straight white men) are repeatedly scapegoated as the source of all the worlds pathologies. Laid at your feet are patriarchy, colonialism, racism, sexism and a great number of other social evils for which you are taken to be complicit in and have a responsibility for fixing in virtue of being a white male.
While all this is going on a series of scandals (COVID, Men in womens’ sports, trans kids, etc) reveal to you the degree to which the institutions that make up the society you live in have adopted an ideology that is actively hostile to you because you are a straight white male, and have been denying you opportunity while scapegoating you for all societies problems and treating you like you are a defective girl.
Once you understand this, the real question is not “why are some young men radicalizing?” the real question is “why are there any young men at all who have not been radicalized?” [Emphasis mine — RD]
None of this is to excuse any of the extremist radicals who are attempting to harness the resentment and anger of young men for their evil purposes. The point is to get you to understand why young men will attach themselves to any voice who is willing to stridently call for the obliteration of the social system and ideology which lied to them during their formative years and is currently doing things which rob them of opportunities for advancement and success.
The institutions have totally blown their credibility with young men, and have completely destroyed young men’s trust in institutions. Young men view the current set of social institutions as ideologically corrupt and totally illegitimate, and they view the narratives that emerge from those institutions as being expressions of as nothing more then a story told to legitimize an ideology which seeks to hold them back. As such, the institutions and their narratives have absolutely no normative pull on young Gen Z men.
I am not saying the situation is hopeless, but unless you acknowledge what I have laid out here, and engage in a good faith attempt to understand what the school system, Universities, non-profits, HR departments, and other civic institutions have done to young men, you will never be able to gain their trust enough to lead them away from guys like Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tate, Andrew Torba, and other pathological influences.
Call me crazy, but I don’t see that the Long/Lynchers and their types have the slightest clue how to confront this crisis. I trust the Johnny Burtkas of the Right, and his allies, to find a way. The Zombie Reaganauts did nothing to stop the ideological radicalization and enshittification of our culture. You can’t just pound the kids over the head with a rolled-up copy of the Declaration Of Independence, until they stop noticing.
The rest of today’s newsletter is below the paywall. There’s preppy Ignatius Reilly, and the pagan sage who Spengerlizes the Quiet Revival. C’mon, subscribe! It’s only $6/mo. for at least five newsletters each week.
