A recent discussion among our editorial board focused on how we can navigate the vital center between two unacceptable positions on what now passes for the American right. Those two unacceptable positions are, on the one hand, the ideological perch occupied by the conservative establishment and, on the other, the views of Nick Fuentes and his disciples. One is the position of a conservative establishment that has never conserved anything, except perhaps the lucrative careers of their loquacious media celebrities; the other is the position of verbally unrestrained podcasters who try to shock us with their racial epithets and anti-Semitic effusions.
Allow me to say that while the latter group says foolish things, it is hard for me to feel the same repugnance for them as I do for the better-financed conservative establishment, one that has worked tirelessly to vilify and marginalize paleoconservatives. Of course, I shall readily admit that listening to Nick Fuentes and his allies go off on "the Jewish question" shows how unprepared they are to lead an intellectually credible right. …
When in doubt, the conservative establishment will always choose to make up with the left (save for the anti-Israeli left) and make war against anyone on the American right, save for members of its own club.
For all their silliness, Fuentes and his Groypers are in no position to do much harm to the right. The left is attacking them, but the conservative establishment does so even more obsessively. Nor do these loudmouths control the massive media apparatus that Conservative Inc. has at its disposal and which it happily shares with those on the left who will dialogue with it.
Neither of these sides can address effectively the critical moment that may soon be upon us, to which Auron MacIntyre recently alluded on his podcast. What do we do as a country if the media continues to manipulate the American population into siding with illegal immigrants, even criminal ones, against the federal government's attempt to round up and deport them? What happens if the Trump administration becomes so unpopular by doing its duty that it's forced by media-manipulated public opinion to stop?
Furthermore, where would we be as a country if the Democrats win the coming November elections, and then the presidency, and proceed to do the inevitable: that is, open the door to tens of millions of illegals from Third World countries, many of them vicious criminals, and then turn those client populations into voting citizens? Let's remember that when Biden's handlers bestowed on us 10 million or more "future Americans," it caused no problems for the Democrats in the 2022 midterms.
The Trump administration, by trying to deal with the effects of this disaster, is losing popularity. Thanks to the media reinventing what ICE is doing, even one-time conservative friends are now telling me that they're hiding in their houses because the immigration authority may come after them next. According to an extensive poll carried out by The Economist on Jan. 13, 52 percent of Americans disapprove of ICE's actions in apprehending illegals, and 42 percent favor its abolition. Much of this disapproval can be traced back to how cleverly and persistently the mainstream has gotten behind the illegals, including the violent criminals among them. The media have also worked to hide the accomplishments of this administration, which include dramatically reducing crime, achieving impressive economic growth, and lowering the rate of inflation. Clearly, the aim here is to bring the Democrats to power behind a woke leftist agenda. Keeping every illegal in the country, including murderers, rapists, and drug-dealers, is vital to the left, because all those undesirables represent an expanded voter base, and the path to a one-party leftist dictatorship.
I wouldn't expect the chattering class on GOP TV to even consider such a grim possibility, however likely it appears to be. They're too busy fighting Groyper misconduct, serving neoconservative donors, going on tours for ghost-written books, and urging cooperation with "moderate" Democrats. Meanwhile, the Fuentes crowd is too isolated and manic to be of any use in this critical situation. We need a more serious, reflective right to address the latest crisis in our country, a right that fully grasps the existential crisis now confronting us and the entire West.
Given the long historic process that brought this crisis into being, creative solutions are required to deal with it. But it's ridiculous and irresponsible to believe that everything will soon resolve itself, particularly if we find ourselves in a country in which the present form of government in Minnesota and California will be imposed on the rest of us by the federal administration.
No, this is not a call for a military dictatorship, which is highly unlikely to succeed in this country for two reasons.
One, there is nothing that would cause me to believe that our military would support the authoritarian right, even if one came into existence. In fact, even our secret service agencies, as we've lately learned, have been infiltrated and largely taken over by the left.
Two, military dictatorships rarely shift public opinion toward the right. They are more likely to result in the left gaining power once military rule is suspended and civilian power is restored. Please look at the direction Spain and Latin America took after the end of their right-wing dictatorships.
As Amos Perlmutter documents in Modern Authoritarianism: A Comparative Institutional Analysis, military authoritarian regimes typically delay but rarely keep the left from assuming power. They are characteristic of the kind of ineffectual right that develops in Second World societies, and which is often replaced by a far more repressive left. Moreover, if the mass media, popular culture, the educational establishment, and the managerial state all remain in leftist hands, it is doubtful that a right-wing authoritarian government would change hearts and minds. The left has planned and implemented its takeover for decades; there may be no shortcuts available to end it.
We must therefore recognize the crisis that besets us rather than yapping about "bipartisanship" and "de-escalating our political arguments" or treating Nick Fuentes and right-wing anti-Semitism as "the problem." Following such a course, however, should not put us on a narrow path between two useless alternatives. Rather, it should place us in the middle, as Aristotle depicted in the second book of Nicomachean Ethics.
For Aristotle, the "mean" (mesotes) is not just the position between two numbers or spatial points. It is a disposition and activity that results in excellence (arete) because it completes a work or approaches a task in the proper manner. This middle course also involves expressions of character that lie between excess and deficiency. Thus, courage is the proper mean between rashness and cowardice, and generosity represents the middle path between extravagance and stinginess.
It is in this sense of holding to the middle path that Chronicles views its project and its aim at sound practice (eupragia). For Aristotle, the desirable mean is not just the middle road between two extremes. It is, more importantly, the right course and therefore qualitatively different from what it avoids. In seeking this mesotes, we are not trying to stand midway between two mistaken courses. We seek to be inherently different from both. We are neither a make-believe right nor allied to those noisemakers who oppose the conservative establishment supposedly from the right. We also do not despair about the possibility of resisting the left, which is the only significant enemy to be resisted.
We may learn, from among other sources, the idea put forth by Christopher Rufo that we can remove illegals through financial means, without allowing the left to oppose this action with riotous physical confrontations. As we know, these confrontations have been easily reconstructed by the mendacious media, so that criminal illegals have been transformed into innocent victims and ICE agents into the American version of the Gestapo.
The federal government, for starters, should take away all public financing from NGOs, most of which are vehicles for funnelling money to leftist activists. The Trump administration should also go after any business that employs illegals, and it should immediately prevent Somalis from remitting to their home country what they are paid in Democratic bribes. By pursuing these policies, we may be able to get more illegals to self-deport, without giving the Democrats and the media the opportunity to incite riots against hapless ICE officers.
Everything possible should be undertaken to get illegals to self-deport. Leftist politicians have enthusiastically joined the effort nationwide to prevent ICE from doing their work. Not at all surprisingly, newly elected "moderate Democratic" governors in New Jersey and Virginia have pledged themselves to denying ICE any cooperation in their states.
The right must follow the course taken by the left for decades, which is working at all levels of government to defund their adversaries and remove them from positions of power. Such action should be taken quietly while avoiding any photo opportunities that might benefit what Trump accurately describes as the "fake news." The right must work relentlessly to oust its enemies from every cultural and political space, without fanfare. And it must make sure the left (and there is no "moderate" left) never regains control of Congress or the presidency. Dislodging the left from the managerial state may take decades to accomplish, but means must be devised to do that as well. The 60-year leftist march through our institutions, an achievement that took place in other Western countries simultaneously, needs to be decisively reversed.
We might imitate the example of that fake centrist Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who on her first day in office as Virginia governor took multiple executive actions to please her base — from taking all the necessary steps to obstruct ICE, to filling 27 empty seats on state university boards with hardcore woke leftists. As much as we may deplore Spanberger's politics or that of her newly elected Democratic gubernatorial counterpart in New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill, we should admire the ruthless thoroughness with which they act.
The right must learn from the left how to deal with adversaries. But here, too, we must remember that for Aristotle, disciplined action lies somewhere between self-indulgence and total insensitivity to reality. The real right is working to survive in the face of its own situational extremes: on the one side, the conservative establishment and on the other, podcast shock jocks and social media edgelords. We must move beyond both.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/editorials/the-middle-path/