Right Action and the Right's Reaction

Finding our way out of the Reactionary Right's identity crisis

In the wake of the attempted assassination against President Trump, the political right wing has seen a resurgence of energy, but there is one particular expression of that energy that has exposed many self-proclaimed right wingers to be disenfranchised leftists— that is, people who, in their hearts and character, are no different from the type of person found on the left and the only difference between them is surface level political beliefs. Beyond simple differences of opinion about their preferred economic and social policies, they both embody the same destructive force that leads to further dissolution and decay. When they have power, they tend to use it in identical ways. 

As I’ve watched playing out on social media the various arguments for and against “giving the left a taste of their medicine”, there is a recurring sentiment that emerges. It is the feeling that while the right’s aims are good and noble, its tools are too weak to get the job done, that its hands are tied by its own principles. This belief has tended to result in the desperate but erroneous conclusion that the right must adopt the left’s tactics if they are ever to go on the offence and stop retreating. Saul Alinksy wrote in his Rules for Radicals to “make the enemy live up to its own book of rules” and this is a tactic that has undeniably been quite successful for the left. The temptation for the right to use it at the first grasping of political capital is understandably tempting. 

Some on the right would like to adopt the left’s tactics for the simple reason that they would like to win and they are sick of feeling like their lot in life is to be perpetually on the losing team. Furthermore, they are angry and thirsty for revenge. This is not a new phenomenon and one that, over time, has resulted in a confusion of ideas and values among the political right, which is now a “big tent” that is not really much of a home for genuine right wingers, but provides shelter to all manner of pseudo-right wingers and counter-leftists. As this attitude has proliferated, the right has become more and more like the left, becoming overrun with leftist ideas and values that merely have the window dressing of the right, but none of the substance. This has allowed the subversion of the left to encroach deeper and deeper into right wing territory, and is largely ignored or denied by those who participate in it, entranced as they are by the political theatre.

Many on the right, especially within American politics, believe that the purpose of the right is meant to confront and counter the ideas of the left. And here we find the crux of the matter. The right wing nowadays is almost solely a reactionary movement. It is entirely oppositional and has no independent vision of its own. It is “the left, but slower” or “the status quo” or “Enlightenment liberalism”, and it has little to no ability to establish for itself an independent initiative or framing that isn’t defined by its fight against the left. What primarily defines the modern political right is being “against the left”. It still maintains a love affair with all things modern: democracy, equality, rationalism, and so forth. This is due to centuries of subversion which has resulted in very few people having any clear idea of what the right could and should be independently, so thoroughly have traditional paradigms been memory-holed. And so for these people, these disenfranchised leftists, these pseudo-right wingers, these counter-leftists, politics is just a confusing maze of various flavours of leftism, which they often don’t even recognise as such. So complete is the “reign of quantity” in this age that most people cannot even fathom any other paradigm than that of modernity, which is what leftism actually represents at its core. Certainly they cannot conceive of anything resembling metapolitics.

One reason I believe Julius Evola is such an important thinker for today is that he clearly illuminates, across all his writings, what it means to stand in opposition to what the left represents. He offers a crisp and inspiring vision of traditional values in stark contrast to the values of modernity. Part of the problem of the right is that they simply do not know what it really looks like to be opposed to the left. We are raised from birth in a liberal modern worldview and never shown any alternative, so it is hardly surprising that the right has “forgotten” what it is supposed to be. If all one ever knew were twilight and night, he might think twilight and night are opposites, since he has never seen the full light of day. But once he has seen the day, he recognises that twilight is just an earlier phase of the night. It is only when one steps out of a modern worldview that one can recognise the political right as a less developed form of the political left.

This is why the political right tends to be “the left but slower”. Both the left and the right are on the same downward trajectory, the only difference is that what we call the left got on the slide first. But the right will necessarily reach the bottom, too, by virtue of having gotten on the same slide. The political right will continue to corrode and “conservatism” will continue to adopt the same policy positions that the left had only a generation prior. In most western countries, there is hardly anything at all resembling a truly right-wing party. At best, they are “centre right”. And this is inevitable for an ideology that is purely based around reacting and cannot set its own agenda.

Thus, the right suffers from a tactical lag. The right isn’t failing to achieve victory because they won’t adopt leftist strategies, but because they are in a position where their very existence is defined by reacting to whatever agenda the left has set. This results in a certain frenzied fanaticism and disorganised activity in the lower sense. The tactical lag is often felt as a sense of “running out of time” and that good character is a luxury that can no longer be afforded. This is strange, because the right frequently indulges in lamenting the moral decadence of modernity, while simultaneously finding every excuse as to why they cannot or even must not bother to cultivate moral character within themselves. 

Julius Evola wrote in A Handbook for Right-Wing Youth:

“Those who harbour illusions about the possibility of a purely political struggle and the power of this or that formula or system, with no new human quality as its exact counterpart, have learned no lessons from the past” 

And also: 

“People who delude themselves today about the possibility of a purely political struggle and about the power of one or another formula or system, who do not possess a new human quality as a precise opposing vision, have learned none of the lessons of the recent past.”

Evola apparently considered this point so important that he makes it twice in the same chapter. The human quality he refers to is a type of inner being that is diametrically opposed to that quality which is embodied by the modern mass man— and the quality of the mass man is the fundamental character of the leftist. This means that in order to achieve any true victory, one cannot ever sink to that level, because to sink to that level is a loss in and of itself, and it is a loss so profound and complete that no meaningful victory can be had even on a more shallow plane. 

The lessons of the past to which he refers is that any political structure will always descend to the level of its people, there are none that are immune to degradation. That even the most perfect political system would fall if the quality of people became too low to sustain it is a lesson that has been found in history with monotonous repetition. This is why it is essential to safeguard our integrity and why it is crucial to avoid allowing the poison of modernity to tempt us with the promise of short-lived results. A diluted poison is still a poison, not its antidote.

One will not find much disagreement among the modern political right that most of society’s problems stem from moral failings. And yet, in the same breath, the pseudo-right winger will scapegoat degenerates for everything he finds wrong with the while always finding a justification for why he personally cannot be expected to raise his own standards.

In another passage in A Handbook for Right-Wing Youth, he wrote

“Before a world of mush, whose principles are, ‘You have no choice’, or else, ‘We’ll have time for morals after we take care of our stomach and our skin.’ (I mean ‘skin’ in the sense of Curzio Malaparte’s novel, The Skin!) There is also, ‘These are not times in which we can permit ourselves the luxury of having character.’ Or last and least, ‘I have a family.’ When we hear these slogans, we know how to give a clear and firm response: ‘As for us, we cannot act in any other way. This is our life, this is our essence.’”

Evola says none of these excuses matter to the man of principle, who follows his principles no matter what because to do otherwise would be contrary to his own nature. He is guided by something other than merely material concerns.

He reiterates this sentiment again: 

“Not letting oneself go is what is crucial today. In this society gone astray, one must be capable of the luxury of having a character. One ought to be such that, even before being recognised as a champion of a political idea, one will display a certain conduct of life, an inner coherence, and a style consisting of uprightness and intellectual courage in every human relationship. All this, in a straightforward manner, with no exhibitionism, big words, or puritanical attitudes. To the impudent ‘why bother?’ of others, let us clearly and staunchly reply: ‘We cannot act otherwise— this is our life.’”

This is the core of what it means to be right wing. Not ideological positions or bourgeois values from 75 years ago, but having an inner character that is fundamentally and qualitatively different than that of the modern mass man. This is why, when one behaves like the left, one becomes the left. In acting like an undifferentiated mass man, one proves himself to be exactly that in all the ways that truly matter. In this subversive and sly way, one becomes recruited into the service of the forces of dissolution, participating in one’s own demise while foolishly thinking he is fighting for his survival. 

This attachment to an outcome, a seeking of desire, is a significant part of what characterises the mass man for whom leftism in all its forms is so appealing. Those who seek to adopt the tactics of the left because they are expedient reveal themselves to have an attachment to an outcome, the same enslavement to desire. They show themselves to be spiritually left wing in their basic nature.

In The Bow and the Club, Evola writes: 

“Another circumstance, namely the fact that the stage we have reached makes it unlikely for the struggle against the presently dominant political and social movements to achieve any appreciable general results, ultimately has little weight: the norm here should be to do what must be done, while being ready to fight — if necessary, even a losing battle.”

One who has an attachment to a specific outcome as the result of their actions (such as “winning) is indeed unlikely to be willing to fight a losing battle simply because it is the right thing to do. Rather, he is more likely to become demoralised and despairing and to simply give up. For those who are the mass men, there is no point in doing something if there is no chance of achieving the desired payoff. But the truly right wing man, the differentiated man, will fight a righteous battle, even if it is hopeless, because his own sense of integrity demands it. He cannot do any less because this is his fundamental inner nature, it is simply who he is. He is liberated from the burden of “effectiveness” and instead acts from a positive principle. He is now free to act instead of react.

The mass man finds this utterly incomprehensible, however. He cannot fathom a motivation for action outside of his own emotional reactivity. If his passions and appetites are not stirred, he remains inert. He is driven by his desires and has never known anything other mode of being, so the concept of detachment from outcomes is something he has no frame of reference for. For him, detachment has the appearance of not caring about the matter at hand and if one doesn’t care, then one must not have a desire, and if one has nothing to gain by acting, why would one bother to act? 

Or he sees the more dignified and superior man remaining rooted in his principles and mistakes it for naïveté. To him, refusing to adopt the tactics of the left in order to fight them looks like misguided compassion or even cowardice. “They would do it to you!” he cries, as he tries to justify why he is so willing to become what he claims to hate. He is angry at the suffering he has endured under their oppressive cultural regime and he wants vengeance, although he may call it justice. His emotions are highly aroused and he is at their mercy. And yes, it is true that they would do it to us, because that is who they are. It is in their nature and we should expect no less. But it is not who we are. If we become like them, then what remains of any need to oppose them? And so those who eagerly adopt the tactics of the left expose themselves as not truly having a right-wing character, even if they hold nominally right wing policy positions in the political arena. 

Does this mean we should not act at all? Is this just a form of passivity and pacifism? Not at all— it is unequivocally not a withdrawal from the fight. We must still act when it is the honourable and dutiful thing to do (“done is what needed to be done”) but we should do so in a dispassionate way. The Bhagavad Gita says:

“Though the unwise cling to their actions, watching for results, 

the wise are free of attachments, and act for the well-being of the whole world. 

The wise man does not unsettle the minds of the ignorant; 

quietly acting in the spirit of yoga, he inspires them to do the same.”

This means vengeance is out of the question for the spiritually right wing person. Vengeance crosses the line of justice because it is motivated by desire— a desire to inflict harm on another for personal satisfaction. But it does not mean that necessary actions cannot be taken. It is sometimes necessary, in acting for the well-being of the whole world, to undertake unpleasant actions, as Arjuna was instructed to do in the Gita, when God, in the guise of Krishna, tells him that he must fulfil his duty to kill men of evil so that goodness may once again prevail in the world. Sometimes the necessary action is to fight, but the challenge lies in having the proper discernment to know when it is necessary versus when it is motivated by desires. It is even possible that some necessary actions could appear on the surface to be similar to actions the left has taken, but as they are carried out with a different motivation, do not have the same character.

Also in the Gita, we read:

“As fire is obscured by smoke, as a mirror is covered by dust, 

as a foetus is wrapped in its membrane, so wisdom is obscured by desire. 

Wisdom is destroyed, Arjuna, by the constant enemy of the wise, 

which, flaring up as desire, blazes with insatiable flames.”

The reason that detachment to outcomes is so crucial when taking action is that desire obscures wisdom, and it is wisdom that guides us to justice. (Only he who can see past the veil of illusion that is material reality, a veil woven of desires, can see metaphysical reality and know how to align with it. That alignment is the basis of justice in the highest sense.) The mass man, motivated only by his desires, prefers vengeance to justice. He would allow the whole world to suffer in order to satiate his desires. We see this disposition towards cruelty in abundance on the left (which incidentally is intertwined with a disposition towards pity, see Evola’s Eros and the Mysteries of Love, chapter 4) and such a disposition is one of the strongest character indicators of the degree to which someone is spiritually left-wing. 

Another reason detachment is important is because it allows one to accept certain truths about reality. First, he must come to terms with the fact that the world is on a rapid downward decline. It may right itself, but it most likely won’t. There are more possible futures that lead to failure than to success. And whatever outcome will occur for the world is fated to occur regardless of his participation. Only broken people waste their energy kicking against circumstances. Those who are inwardly upright make themselves the antidote to the diseased era. 

Furthermore, he must acknowledge that everything that used to be a support for man is now inverted and drags him down. Therefore, we must make ourselves into building blocks for a better future. That is where we must begin when all other foundations have dissolved. Rather than looking to create a society that can give him structure, one must become his own structure. There can be no false supports. There is a certain pain that comes with these realisations, but also a great freedom. When you fully let go of your desires and attachments to outcomes, you have nothing left to lose.

Once these realities have been acknowledged, then the spiritually right wing man has access to a few additional tools for his fight that the merely political pseudo-right wing man will never have with any consistency. Evola writes in A Handbook for Right Wing Youth:

“What is in our possession is the courage of radicalism, the No spoken to political decadence in all its forms, both of the Left and of the supposed Right. And we must be especially aware of this: that there is no negotiating with subversion, and that concessions made today mean condemning ourselves to being completely overwhelmed tomorrow. We therefore insist on intransigence of the idea, and a readiness to advance with pure forces, when the right moment arrives. Naturally this also implies ridding ourselves of ideological distortion, which unfortunately is widespread even in some of our young people. It is because of this that they concede some of the excuses for the destructions that have already taken place, deluding themselves with thinking that, after all, they were necessary and will serve the cause of ‘progress’: that we should be fighting for something ‘new’, awaiting us in a definite future, instead of for truths that we already possess. This is because, always and everywhere, although these truths appear in different forms, they have been the foundation for every correct type of social and political organisation. Young people need to reject these fads and whims.”

He makes several important points here. The first new tool in our kit is being able to say a hard and unequivocal NO whenever either party offers up something not in line with higher values. Evola says there cannot be any negotiation with subversion. None. We who are spiritually right wing cannot compromise who we are, our integrity, our highest values, for the sake of effectiveness in the political sphere. To do so would fundamentally change our nature and only makes it easier for the forces we are fighting against to overwhelm us later on. We would corrupt and degrade ourselves to participate in the tactics of the left even for a moment. As soon as we do that, their silent recruitment of us has begun. The strongest form of “revolt against the modern world” is to refuse to accept its narratives, its values, it beliefs, and its behaviours wholesale.

The second tool, and arguably the most potent, is eternal Truth. In other words, return to the transcendent truths of Tradition. It is these foundational principles that have been the structure for every type of civilisation and social order that resembles what the right claims to want. Abandonment of these truths has allowed modernity to flourish and we will not ever defeat those forces by playing in an arena of lies in some democratic hunger games. In returning to and embracing eternal metaphysical Truths, the right will find a solid footing. We do not need to innovate any new ideas to combat modernity— these Truths are something we have always possessed. It is from here that the right can act from a place that is positive and authentic, providing the basis for its own agenda and finally freeing it from its reactionary paralysis. 

When a civilisation is upheld by an order guided by transcendent and eternal Truth, all the concerns of profane politics remedy themselves. Busying oneself with legislative pageantry before building up a new man is putting the cart before the horse. It is not the masses who move history, but a small elite. Any positive developments will be achieved, not by the agitations of the masses or by the cunning of politicians, but by the type of man who, in his integrity and honour and his total rejection of every compromise, represents what it means to participate in a higher vision and can inspire others to do the same. This transformation of man is paramount. 

And so the right stands at a crossroads. In order to be truly right and not just a lighter shade of left, it needs to overcome its identity crisis and reject the superficial allure of expedient politics and instead cultivate a deeper and more principled resistance. Only by doing so can it ever break its losing streak. This radical reorientation is the only path to true victory because it is the only path that offers coherence in an age of dissolution. This is the essence of what it means to be genuinely right wing: to stand firm in the face of modernity’s decay and build anew from the everlasting Truth that defines our highest aspirations.