Washington Post: The Dark Enlightenment Has Dethroned Ayn Rand

The Washington Post has a new article on how liberals will come to miss Ayn Rand whose influence over the American Right has been dethroned by the Dark Enlightenment:

“Now Rand is on the shelf, gathering dust with F.A. Hayek, Edmund Burke and other once-prominent conservative luminaries. It’s no longer possible to provoke the elders by going on about John Galt. Indeed, many of the elders have by now used Randian references to name their yachts, investment companies and foundations.

Instead, young insurgent conservatives talk about “race realism ,” argue that manipulated crime statistics mask growing social disorder and cast feminism as a plot against men. Instead of reading Rand, they take the “red pill”, indulging in an emergent internet counter-culture that reveals the principles of liberalism — rights, equality, tolerance — to be dangerous myths. Beyond Breitbart.com, ideological energy on the right now courses through tiny blogs and websites of the Dark Enlightenment, the latter-day equivalent of Rand’s Objectivist Newsletter and the many libertarian ’zines she inspired.

Indeed, the new ideas on the right have moved away from classical liberalism altogether. American conservatives have always had a mixed reaction to the Western philosophical tradition that emphasizes the sanctity of the individual. Religious conservatives, in particular, often struggle with Rand because her extreme embrace of individualism leaves little room for God, country, duty or faith. But Trump represents a victory for a form of conservatism that is openly illiberal and willing to junk entirely the traditional rhetoric of individualism and free markets for nationalism inflected with racism, misogyny and xenophobia. …”

This article reminded me of something that John Morgan had said in his recent speech that was published on Counter-Currents:

“The Alt Right is a much trickier animal to pin down. The New Right has produced literally hundreds of books outlining its beliefs and positions over the past half-century. The Alt Right, on the other hand, is a culture primarily of blogs, memes, podcasts, and videos. It has yet to produce a single book or other statement of principles that everyone involved would agree is the quintessence of the Alt Right’s worldview. This is a natural outgrowth of the anti-intellectualism inherent in Anglo-American political and cultural discourse, as opposed to the more innovative and livelier – dare I say superior – Rightist political tradition that you have here on the Continent. In attempting to think of a book that could in any way lay claim to being the Alt Right manifesto, the only thing I could come up with is Greg Johnson’s New Right versus Old Right, which has fortunately been translated into Swedish as well. Otherwise, the shelves of the Alt Right library remain pretty bare, although hopefully that will soon be changing. …”

What should we make of this?

The European New Right has produced hundreds of books outlining its beliefs and positions. The Alt-Right has produced almost nothing. And yet, The Washington Post is accusing the Alt-Right of triumphing over the Ayn Rand canon and the conservative tradition of classical liberalism.

I would say that a book is a vehicle for a type of discourse. Ayn Rand’s various books were vehicles for “Objectivism.” A highly trafficked blog, a meme, a podcast, a video, a forum, a song or a viral tweet are similarly vehicles for a discourse. In fact, I would argue that memes, podcasts, videos and songs are more expressive and powerful mediums than text. They are less abstract and more accessible to the average person. They are easier to share, reach a wider circulation and have a greater impact on culture.

Politico has a new story on World War Meme:

“NEW YORK—Parked in front of a seductive portrait of Ann Coulter and an array of computer screens inside a home office in Harlem, Matt Braynard, former director of technology for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, welled up with emotion as he recounted his experience attending Trump’s inauguration a week earlier.

It was not the ceremony itself, but what happened afterward, when Braynard spotted a pale teenager in a red hat and a gray hoodie standing on a street corner near the Capitol holding a sign with a picture of a cartoon frog and the message “LOVE NOT HATE.” Struck by the display, Braynard made a beeline for the kid, shook his hand and enlisted his wife to take a photograph of them together.

“I felt like I had found a friend that I hadn’t spoken to in a long time,” recalled Trump’s misty-eyed onetime data guru, who had never met the teenager before in his life. “It was, like, immediate connection.”

The chance encounter was a rare in-real-life meeting of veterans of the Great Meme War. …”

In hindsight, the forum archipelago we had in the 2000s were hatcheries of Alt-Right discourse. 4chan and the impact it has had on internet culture is another example of this.

The Alt-Right’s online counterculture grew organically out of messageboards, blogs, podcasts and social media. It spread through comment sections and colonized the internet in thousands of conversations. It skipped the think tank stage because thousands of people were already online, sharing their ideas, interacting with and being influenced by each other. Instead of being spread in the form of a book, the Alt-Right has reached the stage online where it is a neverending stream of content.

I do think we should have more books though. I’m guessing the pull to write a book is offset by the push to put out new content on a daily basis. I know that is true in my case.

About Hunter Wallace 12380 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

96 Comments

  1. Another lazy article from a “mainstream meteor” Reporter. The Dark Enlightenment and Neoreactionary blogs have next to no influence on the Alt Right. WaPo is afraid to just come out and state that the Alt Right, a Huwhyte Advocates’ movement, has replaced Paultard Libertarianism as the shock troops of the right.

    But it is good to see race realism acknowledged, and Ayn Rand confined to the dust bin of history. Libertarians may have a place in the Alt Right, but not those adhering to the weird Randian cult.

    • The dustbin? Hundreds of years from now, the 20th century will be remembered for three savage dictatorships in the first half, and the names Albert Einstein, Neil Armstrong, and Ayn Rand.

        • For a purely-materialistic Kike like Rand, the worst punishment would be to utterly erase her from history until she is totally forgotten.

      • I fail to see any actual contradiction between race-realism and objectivism. What could be more objective than the fact that humans differ racially in socially significant ways (many of which, we now know, can be objectively measured)?

        • Her thinking was pretty much pre-racial, at least in the way I understand it. Rand’s objectivist philosophy denied the existence/significance of things like God, country and tradition, duty and esp. faith. It also condemned the idea of “altruism”, which many on the AltRight interpret as loyalty to their own race/ethnicity as well as a willingness to make sacrifices on behalf of their own people. She was a radical individualist and more than willing to let unfettered capitalism wreak havoc and destroy national and racial identity.

          • Still, in terms of her philosophical commitment, the moment objective facts about race came to light she ought to have been eager to embrace them.

          • That’s true. She probably didn’t want to pay the price it would have cost her to go down that road, like a sharp decline in book sales, for example.

  2. I am going to write the Great American Alt-Right Novel. I shall be the Tom Wolfe, the Hunter S.Thompson, of the movement.

  3. A well overdue replacement. Economics are something you can debate and quibble over when your country isn’t turning into a “diversity enriched” cesspool.

    Does it really matter if the tax rate is 15% or 50% when you’re going to end the day killed by an imported low iq’d savage?

    At the same time, Morgan’s article does prove the folly of being too focused on race. You have to have an economic message if you want to be relevant, and I see no problem with stealing the economic thunder from the leftists. Socialism works just fine for whites, we should run with it and an environmental/non-interventionist message.

    I like to think that there are very few racially aware white people who wouldn’t vote for an ‘alt-right’ or nationalist party based on disgust for capitalism/socialism, and it could poach votes from leftist whites as well. When you already have a core base you’ll get no matter what, it’s time to expand it – so long as you don’t forget why you formed in the first place like so many right wing parties seem to.

  4. Good piece, I am glad to see that the nasty Jewess Ayn Rand/Rosenbaum is losing her fan club.
    “As tot he end statement that: “I do think we should have more books though. I’m guessing the pull to write a book is offset by the push to put out new content on a daily basis. I know that is true in my case.” I would totally agree. I do not put up contnet on my blog daily, but to research and write a single themed book while blogging can be taxing. To bundle you “best of” blog essays occasionally -with a few all new never pubed online ones- as an indie paperback from places like CreatSpace is not too hard. That is what my last little indie book, “Bloggings Of An Amerikaner” was.
    I am sure that the Mr. Wallace and the boys at OD are busy, but it would be interesting to see a small book giving the Southern Nationalist take on the rise of the Alt-Right and the future of Dixie.
    https://putnamlibertynotes.wordpress.com/2017/03/06/the-three-principles/

      • My experiences with CreateSpace have went rather well. (I have used them four times). No censorship; they do not even read all the stuff they publish (not enough time for the volume, most of which never sell big anyway). As to tech issues, the publishing platform seems to be pretty east to use, though sometimes I need to upload via Google instead of Google Chrome.
        What are you in the process of publishing? Not prying as to the title if it is hush-hush before release, but interested in the subject matter.

        • Thanks for the reply, Joe. I’ll be brief because it appears we’re all being monitored by the spook community (huge surprise).

          Re: subject matter. Short fiction (with a blurb on the book’s back cover restricting it to an alt-right/normal audience).

  5. This is funny. As if any normal white American ever gave a damn about what this batshit crazy old Russian Jew wrote. As for infivifualism, we are all for it – among our own kind and not as a ploy to atomize the white world.

  6. Re books. We could use short smart populist books/e-books – roughly the length of the Communist Manifesto. Free and easy to distribute. Basically the Vox/Roosh approach.

    These books could be backed up by campaigns with podcasts, video, blog posts and social media. ‘The Red Pill’, ‘The JQ’ etc. Interlocking content.

    Less academic and more *populist*. But still well written. Something that could be given to a smart normie. And then discussed as part of the red-pilled process.

  7. The best definition of the Alt-Right was by Hunter: radical realism, iconoclasm and identity.

    The benefit of this definition is that is broad enough of an umbrella to cover disparate groups. It captures how the Alt-Right is a demolishing critique of movement conservatism and neo-liberalism.

      • I think he means SJW Iconoclasm. Might add the SJW to make it clear. He’s certainly not anti-religious or into burning crosses or that sort.

        • Hunter obviously meant a kind of ‘philosophy with a hammer’ not a slight against Orthodoxy. Can’t think of a better word though.

    • I hope American Stick Man is going to be ok. They are using the State to attack anyone who fights back while letting the AntiFa go. I worry about him just like I worry about the two parents that got a combined 35 years for fighting back when attacked by Blacks.

  8. The alt-right has actually a few dudes who will actually kick the the rotted remains of Liberalism instead of begging for a debate with a libtard

    And I ask are white liberals really soon to be an endangered species?

  9. Hmm. From the ninth paragraph at that Counter-Currents link …

    “[T]here are certainly elements associated with the Alt Right who have an unfortunate tendency to glorify colonialism and its attendant exploitations, such as slavery, and in some cases call for a return to those times. … I believe that both the New Right and the Alt Right must resolutely reject this sort of colonialist nostalgia.”

    Obviously, John Morgan hasn’t been reading his George Fitzhugh http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2016/08/28/george-fitzhugh-the-failure-of-free-society-and-the-philosophy-of-the-isms/

    Pretty soon, he’ll be squinting at the Confederate flag.

  10. Certainly the Alt-Right has books — most prominently of all, The Culture of Critique, which has to be regarded as the central text in the Alt-Right. It by no means covers everything, but it is the kernel, the nucleus, from which all else extrapolates — in that it is the leukocyte that attacks the central cancer from which all other Leftist malignancies have grown.

  11. The last thing we want is Teutonic rigidity, with a “manifesto” everyone pledges to. That is the best way to have a movement still born. The Anglo-American anarchic, decentralized political tradition is simply superior (just like German consumer-oriented cars are superior to British ones). The Alt Right would not have been possible in any other country except the US. Mr. Morgan is wrong on this topic.

  12. The Alt Right=unalterable unbreakable bond with CHRISTIAN RUSSIAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    A declaration of war against OUR FRIEND ISRAEL!!!!!!!!!!

    0 nonwhite LEGAL IMMIGRANTS FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!

    Expulsion of the Asian Fifth Column off of Native Born White American LIVING AND BREEDING SPACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Economic Populism……think Knights of Labor….

    Stripping Mega-Corporations of any legal standing as a human being in a Court of Law…

    Bring all US Troops back home….

    Close all US Military bases overseas…

    • This is what Richard Spencer should be saying on his college tour..

      If Richard launches into …. IQ test sore jibber jabber…it will sidetrack away from ALT RIGHT POLICY…We can only embolden our People to Revolt by the policies we advocate…………Stir the spirit of NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICAN RACAL TRIBALISM…..F….K dull boring IQ psychometric jibber jabber…Charles Murray hates our PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

  13. “We don’t have books.”
    That is false. We have more books and intellectual background than the “New Right” ever had. The only difference is most of our literature stems from the Old Right, past the vast barrier that is WW2. We have Evola, The Bell Curve, The Culture of Critique, Carl Schmitt, Heidegger, Mosley, the monarchs, the Counter Reformation, various theologians of the Middle Ages, etc. If you only take the last 50-70 years, yeah, sure, we don’t have as many cucky books on the free market and “muh Democracy/muh Constitution” but we certainly have a greater literary tradition than any neocon or leftist.

  14. Please, alt-right champions: I get that many do not want Ayn Rand at the root. But your sashaying to find your “Marx” is pretty lame, if a book, a film, a meme, or a rock song. Whatever. Not that the Progressives have one, either.

    What exactly is the problem with Ayn Rand? Hit it hard, but please be civil.

    • Marx understood the human condition far better than Rand, for one. Marx’s solutions weren’t feasible, but he did understand that exploitative greed had its limits. Unlike Rand, who seemed to exalt selfishness and callous cruelty, even to her own husband.

      There are Libertarian philosophers out there who are far better than Rand: Mises, Hayek, Rothbard for example.

    • She was a lousy writer; her books are strident and prolix. She extolled the importance of the individiual exercising his own will, and yet created a personality cult around herself peopled by slavish toadies. She was vulgar and crass, and believed in nothing but money and power.

      I know a lot of people think she’s peachy. But I find her to as tedious and uninteresting – about like L. Ron Hubbard (although not nearly as sinister as him). Yeah, socialism is bad – I don’t need Ayn Rand to tell me that.

    • The Nation Wrecking KIKE pushed the Every Man is an Island POISON, concocted to destroy White racial solidarity. WHY do you need kike POISON?

        • Since you asked . . .

          Wile E. Hibernigger / jewk “lyin’ Ryan” bitches about that wild woman Denise all the time but the rest of us like her just fine. It is so very nice to see that White girls can haet jews, niggers, beaners, chinks, faggots and all them lesser breeds fit for only extermination like us heavy hitters of White Supremacism/Nationalism.

          You must be just another ZOGling whigger hibernigger ass-clown who just wandered in. Don’t croak off because of all the “haet;”; — Pull up a chair, sit down, shut up, and if you do suck please don’t swaller until you get your bearings and are able to wield a piss-elm pallet slat with the rest of us racist maniacs.

          Maybe you should do some binge-watching of “Gangs of New York.” Denise is like the cat-heifer who liked to collect ears, fight, and drink alcoholic slop from direct from the barrel for a dried-up ear.

          I’ll let you figure out who Bill the Butcher is.

          Hail Victory!!!

          Pastor Martin Luther Dzerzhinsky Lindstedt
          Church of Jesus Christ Christian/Aryan Nations of Missouri
          http://whitenationalist.org/forum/

          • LOL! Thank you! I am truly honored! I actually drink Veuve Clicquot, and have very good jewelry, and truly horrifying, in it’s depth and scope collections of shoes – but the rest – yup! I leave the good jewely at home when I’m collecting ears!
            And I’m positively tame compared to my sister!
            How are you, my dear?

    • “…What exactly is the problem with Ayn Rand…”

      Ayn Rand’s books are stupid nonsense. Let’s see guy invents free energy. Gets mad at people who use free energy to get free stuff, hypocrite maybe. Bunch of nuts move to magic valley with magic cloaking clouds. Magically find gold and produce things all by themselves with no community at all. At the risk of being showered with abuse just the big Man is not enough. Sorta like what Obama said but not. If you’re the big Man and it’s everyone for themselves then it’s really the strongest, most violent that wins. Not the smartest, most kind or the one that helps the community the most. Africa is Ayn’s society in a lot of places. Boys with AK’s eating little girls livers before they go to battle stoned on Khat.

      Not to mention blowing up the highways, the railroads and shipping because…well because he can’t make as much money as he wants in Ayn’s world. He could always just do his own thing, which I respect, but typically he does the Jew thing and destroys everything around him because he can’t have what his sick little, very little, heart desires.

      Really the whole philosophy is that of a child in the terrible two’s stage where every want of theirs is of the absolute importance and no one else’s wants are of any use at all.

      Jew behavior 101. Psychopathy 100.

        • Occidental Dissent is much moar than it seems . . .

          Only on Tuesdays and Thursdays is OD especially against the jews. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays this blog is mostly anti-nigger with the weak-ends devoted to just haeting everyone but especially cuck ZOGling whigger ass-clowns.

          So which one of above objects of depreciation are you?.

          Hail Victory!!!

          Pastor Martin Luther Dzerzhinsky Lindstedt
          Church of Jesus Christ Christian/Aryan Nations of Missouri
          http://whitenationalist.org/forum

        • No, Mr. Donahue – while some hate Jews here, this blog is about shining a light of criticism on all those forces and folks who are, and have been, trying to destroy The South.

          As Jews have figured heavily in that, they do receive unbridled criticism; yet, if you regularly read, the site host is very careful to spread credit around for the usurpation, where it is fairly due.

  15. Alisia Rosenbaum was never a “conservative”. It was a Nation Wrecking KIKE, set loose to wreck the USA, as per jusual.

  16. Okay folks, enough with the hysteria and paranoid attacks. Ayn Rand deserves better than that. She was a radical American patriot who rejected her own ethnicity and deeply loved Anglos and Anglo civilization. That’s just a fact. She may not have had all the answers, but she had a lot, and she was for Americans, not against us. That’s why Trump loves her. Ayn Rand is not going away, just going dormant until the alt-right wins. Then the kind of political freedom she envisioned for white people – ’cause she sure as hell didn’t envision blacks and browns in any of her literature – will prevail.

    • Except that she denigrated Shakespeare and she wanted to alienate her Anglo-American fans from their own literary tradition so that she could substitute a phony alternative tradition which made her novels look better in comparison. She hints around at this project in her collection of essays on art and literature, The Romantic Manifesto. This shows “culture of critique” thinking.

      • Not an even-handed analysis. Pooh-poohing Shakespeare is hardly a moral crime, and there is no need to invent a conspiracy theory about her intentions. Let’s face it, his works did not exactly promote the highest Anglo values. He is famous because he ushered in a new type of literature by disposing of the abstract (morality plays featuring reified virtues) to featuring ordinary (if often wealthy or powerful) flawed people and their problems. Ayn Rand promoted a lot of writers in the Western tradition. Her dismissal of Shakespeare is very mild compared to the trashing she gave anti-Western and anti-American writers. I mean absolutely trashed them over their intentions.

      • Enough. Malice and paranoia are Jewish traits. Let’s not act like them. Ayn Rand defended Anglos and Anglo civilization and culture specifically and wholeheartedly, and she deserves respect for that.

        • Why won’t you use Rosenbaum’s REAL name? The JEW pretended to “defend” Anglos – yet created a nonsensical “philosophy” DESIGNED to DESTROY Anglos. Are you really as thick as you seem?

          • You obviously have not read her works or did not comprehend them, and you are engaging in monumental injustice and slander. There was no pretense about her. She genuinely loved, defended, and promoted Anglos and Anglo civilization with greater emotion and in clearer terms than anyone. ANYONE. Her philosophy was designed to preserve our civilization, not destroy it. It is not “nonsensical,” it is very rational and well-thought out and in accord with America’s founding principles. (That remains true even if she was soft, deficient, or just plain wrong regarding immigration, certain political realities, and international politics. You can call that a fatal weakness, and you would be right, but EVERY philosophy has them. It’s our job as readers to think through and determine what is valid and useful and what is not).

            Her movement followers – different story. Almost to a man/woman, they are rotten, malignant Jewish supremacists.

    • I always noticed how totally devoid she was of a sense of humor. Humorless people take themselves way too seriously or they are psychotic.

  17. Rand promoted nearly the whole agenda of feminist degeneracy which has the effect of causing white sterility: Women’s education and careers; women’s sexual freedom, contraception and abortion; premarital sexual relationships, open marriages, adultery, affairs and divorce. Fortunately she stopped short of endorsing homosexuality and transgenderism.

    And women’s natural functions of pregnancy, birth and childrearing apparently grossed her out. Somehow she managed to transmit her disgust and phobias on to her weakminded fangirls so that they, too, would turn into aging sterile cat ladies.

    Ironically her Kool-Aid drinkers now can’t figure out why their cult movement has failed to thrive, and they have to keep trying to recruit teenagers and college students into their cult from normal people’s families to replenish their ranks as the older cultists die off, without seeing how creepy that looks. They wouldn’t have had this problem if Rand had emphasized family formation and fighting the war of the cradle as the long-term strategy to keep her philosophy in business as an effective social movement.

    • Why would a kike try to impart information to anything that is healthy, positive, or sane?

  18. Objectivism preached unrealistic individialism for whites while practicing incestuous nepotism for Jews.

  19. the Western philosophical tradition that emphasizes the sanctity of the individual.

    Until I went to university, never once did it occur to me anyone might take the “sanctity of the individual” to extend to individuals no matter where on earth they hailed from, no matter how unlike yourself they were. Boy, how wrong I was! Still, I’m not ready to give up the liberal tradition entirely; imo, liberalism can every easily co-exist with unrepentant racism, just as it did for two hundred years in America.

  20. (((Ayn Rand’s))) Objectivism was nothing new. It was simply a restatement of Egoism–which holds that the individual is primary and which can be traced to Aristotle. What traditional Egoism (and Objectivism) misses is that the “individual” –the person we see in the mirror–is more than that. He or she is also his or her racial genome and is linked to others of the same racial genome such that what is good for the race is good for the individual of that race,either in the short run or the long run. Ask of everything: Is this good for White people?–and you as a White person will usually be served well.

  21. ‘Ayn Rand’s various books were vehicles for “Objectivism.”’

    Which, I think, are better titled, ‘Disconnectionism’, or ‘Individual Estrangicism’.

  22. Why do you think the European right relies so heavily on books and the US right relies so little on them?

    Do we really even need books? Would be interested in hearing your thoughts.

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