By Hunter Wallace for Occidental Dissent
1.) Neoliberalism – Neoliberalism is the dominant economic paradigm that has existed since the late 1970s and early 1980s. It celebrates the “spontaneous order” that emerges from total economic deregulation and can be traced back to the Austrian and Chicago schools of economics.
Neoliberalism celebrates the expansion of free trade, deregulation of industry and finance, lowering corporate and individual tax rates, cuts in government spending, globalization, monetarism, mass immigration and the demise of labor unions. It is opposed to the embedded liberalism which stems from Keynesianism that dominated the West from the Great Depression through the mid-1970s and which flattened class divisions and promoted social stability. Generally speaking, the effect of neoliberal policies has been a return to the Gilded Age – a dominant oligarchy of billionaires that has captured nearly all the benefits of economic growth and increases in productivity, the reemergence of monopolies in tech and other sectors, the growth of concentrated corporate power, a bloated upper middle class, immiseration of the working class, the decline of the middle class and the financialization of the economy.
Neoliberalism is the reason we have an economy that only works for the wealthy. It has massive political and cultural compounding effects like the corruption of our political system in which elections are meaningless because policies are auctioned to wealthy donors and the growth of radical ideologies like anarchism and socialism which similarly flourished during the Gilded Age.
2.) Critical Theory – Critical Theory is the cultural counterpart to neoliberalism in that it has culturally empowered a tiny minority of strong wealthy liberals who lord it over the rest of American society. The overwhelming majority of Americans are now accustomed to walking on eggshells, policing their own thoughts and speech and no longer feel like they can candidly speak their minds in public in their own voice. They live in fear of the sin sniffing elites who control our cultural institutions cracking the whip and summoning their institutions and outrage mobs to get them cancelled.
The origins of Critical Theory trace back to the Frankfurt School in Weimar Germany in the 1920s. A group of Jewish intellectuals combined the conflict theory of classical Marxism with the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud and translated this new cocktail into a cultural virus to delegitimize Western culture which was perceived to be an obstacle to a Marxist revolution. This is the origin of the laundry list of -isms and -phobias which have proliferated since World War II which are both critiques that set groups against each other and therapies designed to weaken the perceived dominant group in the Western social order. This laundry list of -isms and -phobias has increasingly become synonymous with morality.
As it has evolved since the 1920s, Critical Theory has developed many layers since its origins in the Frankfurt School in the ideas of Marx and Freud. Herbert Marcuse and the New Left added the layer of “repressive tolerance” which gave birth to political correctness which began to proliferating in our universities in the 1980s and 1990s. The postmodernists added deconstruction and their peculiar obsessions with language, knowledge and power. The critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw added Intersectionality which fused political correctness with postmodernism in the 1990s. This new beefed up version of political correctness which began spreading in the 1990s and 2000s has given us the Woke who subscribe to all these ideas and beliefs which comprise Critical Social Justice Theory.
These two noxious streams of thought alone are crushing 75% of the American population which deeply resents the hostile politically correct neoliberal overclass which is concentrated in their metropolitan enclaves and segregated from the rest of the public, but our concerns are narrower. We are interested in the entirety of their toxic belief system which is specifically eroding White America.
3.) Cosmopolitanism – Cosmopolitanism is the myth that America is a “Nation of Immigrants” based on nothing but liberal values, capitalism and civic nationalism and that it has no ethnocultural core. Therefore, White Americans have no legitimate ethnic claim to America even though our ancestors built this country and it was explicitly our country in law and custom until the post-World War II era.
This cosmopolitan vision of America can be traced back to the Young Intellectuals of the 1910s and the New York avant-garde of the 1920s. It was further developed by a Jewish group called the New York Intellectuals and was institutionalized in the 1940s and 1950s. This new cosmopolitan vision of the American nation stripped of everything but liberal ideology became the intellectual basis for liberalizing our immigration laws in the 1950s and 1960s and civil rights reform in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
In all ages, the core of cosmopolitanism which is an elite pathology is the denigration of the in-group and the celebration of out-groups. In the United States, it began with a progressive writer named Randolph Bourne in the 1910s who rejected his English heritage while celebrating the enrichment of of America by other European ethnic groups. The elite in-group was later broadened from Anglo-Saxons to Whites in general. Cosmopolitanism is why our elites have developed the strange reflexive habit of talking about and celebrating every group in American society but White Americans while patronizing non-Whites. The deracination of the American elite was followed by the deracination of the White masses.
4.) Antiracism – Antiracism is the dominant ideology of the post-World War II era and has become almost the religion of our cosmopolitan ruling class. It originated in Far Left circles in the 1920s and 1930s and quickly emerged as the most powerful idea among the new critiques and therapies. It was gradually institutionalized in its liberal and leftist forms in the United States in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
In its liberal form, antiracism lectures and browbeats White Americans into conforming to its ideal of “colorblindness.” Every White American is expected to become a deracinated colorblind individualist but because of the dominance of cosmopolitanism as an elite ideology this expectation does not apply to other racial groups. Meanwhile in its leftist form, antiracism lectures and browbeats White Americans about their oppression of non-Whites and instills racial guilt and self-abnegation as a therapy. Contrary to what some people believe, these two forms of antiracism have also always traveled together on the Left with the liberal version creating the cultural space for the more radical leftist version to flourish.
Strangely enough, 80 years of antiracism whether in its liberal or leftist forms has led to neither racial equality or an end to racial discord. Racial inequality, division and strife have persisted to the present day and now appear to be growing. Perhaps that is the whole point of systemic antiracism which unlike “systemic racism” is actually an industry embedded within our institutions?
5.) Modernism – Modernism is dominant in mainstream culture. It rejects authority and tradition in favor of novelty, transgression and stimulation. It rejects the past in favor of the future. It celebrates youth. It is recognizable as the ethos of the Me Generation that celebrates self-interest, self-expression, self-achievement, self-realization, self-fulfillment and self-advancement. It is always trying to be new, edgy and shocking. It celebrates expressive individualism over collective duties and attachments. Such things are felt to be a burden to the modernist who wants to shrug off the past in favor of fashionable trends and fads. The modernist or the deracinated bugman is a consumer of material things, hip trends and fads.
The origins of modernism can be traced back through the counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s when it was mainstreamed and popularized at the mass level by the beatniks and hippies during the Baby Boomer generation to bohemian enclaves like Greenwich Village in the New York City of the 1910s and 1920s. It can be traced even further back than that in the United States to the utopian anarchist and socialist movements of the 19th century as well as to the European avant-garde of the early 20th century.
6.) Anti-fascism/Anti-totalitarianism – Unfortunately for those of us who began our adult lives in America in the 21st century, World War II never really ended. The war against fascism carried over in the postwar era into the war against the “proto-fascism” of the “Authoritarian Personality.” The result of this war against fascism has produced totalitarian liberalism which tolerates no dissent from consensus liberalism (opposition is branded “hate” and is policed as heretical) and which has been pushed deep into every institution in our society including marriage, family and the church.
We live in the neverending post-World War II era and the signs of it are everywhere in our culture whether it is the movie Inglorious Basterds or the show “Hunters” on Amazon Prime. As we move further away in time from World War II, the Holocaust only seems to loom larger and increase in size as the most important and meaningful event in human history. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis have replaced the Devil and his demons in popular culture. It is almost like 1945 has become Year Zero in which good triumphed over evil and everything that happened before that date like the American Revolution or the Civil War which used to be central to American identity is comparatively of less significance.
In the post-World War II era, the “Far Right” is uniquely illegitimate in Western politics. Nationalism is illegitimate and must be repressed by the “mainstream.” Any type of articulation of White or European ethnic identity and interests is treated as racist, fascist and illegitimate. In contrast, the Far Left is not repressed or treated as illegitimate by the liberal mainstream. White Western children are browbeaten by the -isms and -phobias – the ever expanding list of critiques and therapies derived from Critical Theory – all of which are designed to weaken their identity and will to crush “proto-fascism.”
The world must never be allowed to move on from the dead weight of World War II which has to be eternally and uniquely meaningful to the present. It can’t simply be left in the past like the Crusades, Thirty Years War or the French Revolution. This narrative must inform everything about our society.
7.) Multiculturalism – Multiculturalism is the idea that White, Western culture is illegitimate and is enriched by non-White, non-Western cultures. It emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s out of its roots in liberalism, antiracism and cosmopolitanism which were busily deracinating the West in the early postwar era. It became increasingly institutionalized in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and is now deplored as “identity politics” by conservatives who also practice it and treat it as normative.
8.) Diversity – The glorification of “diversity” came out of the Bakke decision which upheld affirmative action from a legal challenge in 1978. It emerged as a rationale for upholding the racial and cultural status quo which discriminates against White males before the promotion of “diversity” as an end in itself became an all consuming obsession in the 2000s and 2010s. The roots of the corporate ideology of “diversity and inclusion” are in cosmopolitanism, antiracism and multiculturalism all of which are discourses that delegitimize the White majority and elevate women and minorities.
9.) Feminism – Feminism is simply the application of liberalism and critical theory to male authority over the family. It emerged in the 1960s and triumphed and became institutionalized in the 1970s.
10.) LGBTQ – The normalization and celebration of homosexuality and eventually transgenderism similarly grew out of liberalism and critical theory and triumphed along with multiculturalism and feminism in the wake of the trailblazing Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s and 1970s.
11.) Civil Rights – An elite liberal project which grew out of liberalism, cosmopolitanism and antiracism in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s which is the dominant ideology of the post-World War II era. The Civil Rights Movement was always cultivated by liberal elites in the media, business and government who paved the way to its triumph as a mass movement through a series of federal court decisions.
12.) Postmodernism – Postmodernism has given us deconstruction and skepticism of metanarratives as well as all the ideas about language, power, knowledge and subjectivity that inform woke supremacy. It emerged in France in the 1960s and 1970s and has become increasingly influential in the English-speaking world since the 1980s. When social justice activists hold up morbidly obese “black trans” women as the modern ideal of beauty, they are engaging in deconstruction which reflects their belief that beauty is a social construct rather than an objective ideal form perceived by the human mind.
13.) Libertarianism – A fundamentalist strain of liberalism based on extreme individualism which advocates total cultural and economic deregulation because it holds individual autonomy and freedom to be the only good. As a philosophy, libertarianism came to heavily influence the American Right during the Cold War due to Frank Meyer’s “fusionism” which incorporated the influence of thinkers like Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.
14.) Free Love – The application of liberalism to sexuality. It has become so mainstream and commonplace since the late 20th century that it is hard to remember a time when sexuality was strictly regulated by religion and custom and involved other authorities like parents and the community which steered it toward collective ends rather than being the province of free and autonomous individuals.*
15.) Conservative liberalism – The ideology of mainstream conservatism which informs the Republican Party. It is useless in the sense that it seeks to conserve liberalism which is 1.) the ideological wellspring of 2.) most of these aforementioned social revolutions. American conservatism is a failure because it seeks to “conserve” rather than contest the status quo which it treats as settled. Generally speaking, conservative liberalism upholds neoliberalism in economics while making populist noises and engaging in culture war theatrics about opposing cultural deregulation while milking the grievances of backlash politics.
16.) Progressive liberalism – When progressive liberalism first emerged in the early 20th century, this do gooder strain of liberalism challenged abuses of classical liberalism like oligarchy, monopolies, filthy working conditions, child labor and the destruction of the environment for individual profit. It was mostly concerned with class and had strong support from both professionals and the working class. In the post-World War II era though, it has become increasingly obsessed with race, sex and gender politics due to the influence of antiracism, modernism, critical theory and cosmopolitanism. Generally speaking, progressive liberalism now upholds neoliberalism in economics while appeasing its base by prosecuting an endless culture war against the White working class and White middle class.
17.) Liberal Democracy – Liberal Democracy is synonymous with the post-World War II era in the West. The Founders of the United States never mentioned their system being “liberal democracy.” The term “liberal democracy” didn’t come into existence until the 20th century. Much of the Left and Right would probably agree that there is little democracy in “liberal democracy” and that we are now ruled by unaccountable neoliberal cultural and economic elites who govern through elite consensus and non-democratic processes like federal court rulings, international treaties and especially through campaign contributions to political candidates from both parties.
18.) The Open Society – We want to abolish the Open Society as it was articulated by Karl Popper and has been championed by George Soros in our times and replace it with the Closed Society in which both the economy and culture is strictly regulated in the national interest as opposed to the class interest of wealthy liberal elites. We are in favor of reestablishing borders, trade barriers and strong cultural norms.**
*I haven’t added practices like abortion, divorce, fornication, pornography, polyamory, gay marriage and the like to this list which are corollaries of Free Love or sexuality which serves no constructive purpose.
**Meritocracy is a practice that falls under the Open Society.
Note: I haven’t referred to the people who are behind most of these ideas. I’ve only discussed the ideas and beliefs which comprise the worldview of our liberal elites all of which have had a negative, weakening and deracinating effect upon White Americans as well as White Western Europeans.