Jeder für sich: das ist englisch; alle für alle: das ist preußisch.

Every man for himself: that is an English idea. Every man for every other man: that is the Prussian way.

– Oswald Spengler, Preußentum und Sozialismus (Prussianism and Socialism)

Right Is Left: A Most Absurd Postulation

A recurring theme of mainstream conservatism in the United States and to a lesser extent Europe as well is to denounce various right-wing, reactionary, and other illiberal movements as somehow “left wing.” This peculiar view has been advocated by the likes of Elon Musk, Alice Weidel, and Dinesh D’Souza. Jonah Goldberg and Dennis Prager (both Jewish, obviously) have also taken this position. This rhetorical sleight of hand is applied with equal fervor to historical movements of the past, such as National Socialism in Germany, Italian Fascism, and other movements of the past as well as burgeoning schools of thought in the modern age. The notion that either Adolf Hitler or National Socialism (to name the classic target of this rhetoric) is somehow left-wing should strike any thinking person as beyond absurd. The proposition is so mind-jarringly stupid as to defy all credulity. And yet this rhetoric remains persuasive to a critical mass of persons beholden to mainstream conservative talking points. Indeed, a brief perusal and glance of many spaces online indicates these views have somehow become ever more convincing to a large contingent of mainstream American conservatives.

Since this essay was originally published on The Raven’s Call: A Reactionary Perspective, this silly sort of rhetoric seems to have only grown more pervasive and, somehow, even more convincing to more people.

A successful repudiation of this absurdist thought, to the extent one can call it thought at all, requires an exacting prognosis of the underlying logical and historical errors on which such assertions are founded. At the most abstract, philosophical level, this absurd error is grounded in the false equivalence fallacy. These errors also demonstrate how large swathes of American conservatism have been unable to accept that maligned figures, including especially Hitler and Mussolini, were and remain part of what, for lack of a better term, could be described as far-right, as reactionary movements that opposed the excesses of liberal democracy on one hand and the evils of Soviet Bolshevism on the other.

Right and left are of course somewhat nebulous. But whereas this strain of American conservatism tends to ground such a schematic in increased or decreased state power and intrusion, the right more classically—and especially outside of American politics—emphasizes and defends values such as tradition, hierarchy, and particularly in the European political schematic—that inalienable right to blood, race, and soil. Some postulations include things like property rights, free speech, and free association, but more radical forms of reactionary populism do not prioritize these considerations, understanding the need for more extraordinary times while embracing a revolutionary spirit.1

These and other errors are further compounded by a dogged, persistent fixation on means, losing sight of the ends for which any givens means seeks to achieve, most particularly the seizure and application of state power to further and advance important policy positions. This last error most directly relates to an irrational fixation on the words “socialism” and “socialist,” and indeed this categorical aversion to anything that could be decried as either socialist in nature or more particularly socializes particular segments of the economy or society. Indeed, this latter fixation is the key to understanding and dismantling this error that is as persistent as it is perplexing and comical. Accordingly, this analysis will dismantle this error at its very foundation, and then expound to larger abstract principles emanating from it in conclusion.

A Concise Synopsis of Prussianism and Socialism

For well over a century, the words “socialism” and “socialist” have taken on an expansive range of meanings and connotations. Socialism pertains with equal validity to international socialism and Soviet Bolshevism as it does to the sort of “socialism” embraced in certain high trust and, at the time, homogeneous countries such as Japan and the Scandinavian countries. Although the Scandinavian countries were generally left-of-center during this period, this form of socialism, unlike the Soviet model, embraced a blend of socialization of key commodities considered a public good and modified, restrained capitalism. This blend of socialist and capitalist features achieves a greater balance between free market capitalism on one hand and the public good on the other through sensible and indeed necessary regulations conducive to the public good.

Spengler identifies this very phenomenon in the very introduction to Prussianism and Socialism:

The word “socialism” designates the noisiest, if not the most profound, topic of current debate. Everyone is using it. Everyone thinks it means something different. Into this universal catchword everyone injects whatever he loves or hates, fears or desires. Yet no one is aware of the scope and limitations of the word’s historical function. Is socialism an instinct, or a planned system? Is it a goal of mankind, or just a temporary condition? Or does the word perhaps refer simply to the demands made by a certain class of society? Is it the same thing as Marxism?

Many on the left have embraced these terms, namely “socialism” and “socialist,” as readily exemplified by the rise of so-called “Democrat Socialists,” attended by the rise first of Bernie Sanders and, far worse, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. For this and other reasons besides, many of those opposed to the left retain deeply negative associations with socialism, socialist, and the like. This is part of the legacy of Reagan conservatism and beyond, which traces its origins back to the (legitimate) red scare of the 50s and before that. Even though Oswald Spengler argues that Prussian statism is the true form of socialism as it is properly understood, many readers of Prussianism and Socialism will conclude that, in the modern age, these terms are only correctly associated with particular forms of what could now be called socialism. At the time of its writing, Marxism and international socialism were the prominent manifestations of this. Since the rise and export of the Frankfurt School in the 20s and 30s, this rubric of what could fairly be described as international socialism includes first and foremost Cultural Marxism, which has supplanted class struggle for the supposed plight of third world Black and brown people at the hands of Eurocentrism, colonialism, so on and so forth, ad nauseam ad infinitum.

In this seminal tract, Spengler identifies a split between the two principal Germanic peoples, what he calls the English (actually British, which will be used hereinafter) and Prussians, ostensibly distinct from other iterations of the German people. He attributes this split to a fundamental distinction between these peoples, with one enjoying the “insular security” of an island nation and the other enjoying no such splendid isolation at all. The British of course retain the British Isles as their home, an island nation that has not been successfully invaded in almost a millennium—although, depending on how one defines the terms “invasion” or “to invade,” hordes of racial imposters, principally from the Indian sub-continent and Africa, are currently invading both the British Isles and the sacred continent of Europe, and have been for decades.

In stark contrast to the British experience, the Prussians in particular had to expand frontiers with no natural borders, a history which Spengler traces back to The Teutonic knights that “settled and colonized the eastern borderlands of Germany in the Middle Ages.” This history of Prussia most particularly and Germany more broadly is the very opposite of the “insular security” that had defined the British—as an island people and later empire ruling the waves with the Royal Navy that would allow the British Empire to span the globe. Germany does of course have the Rhine to the West and the Alps to the south. These natural borders did not, however, save Germany from centuries of foreign invasion, most particularly The Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, as well as the three wars2 Prussia was forced to prosecute in order to secure German unification in 1871. It is this key, fundamental distinction that explains why the British tradition attacks and limits the state, whereas the Prussian tradition embraced the role of the state before this tradition was largely eradicated with the surrender, capitulation, and partition of Germany in 1945. As Spengler articulates, the fault line between these two distinct, antithetical approaches lies “between a people whose soul has developed out of an awareness of insular security, and one that has been forced to maintain a frontier without natural borders to protect it from its enemies.” It is from this fundamental distinction between “insular security” on one hand and the frontier on the other that “splendid isolation” diminished the need for the organized state in the British Isles in ways it never could in Prussia in particular, but Germany more broadly and indeed much of Europe to some limited extent. This fundamental distinction is expressed in the competing traditions of John Locke and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

This fundamental distinction between “the spirit of the Vikings” and the “spirit of medieval knights” further accounts for how the Anglosphere has been defined by a vision of capitalism remarkably unrestrained by oversight and regulation by state power. The Viking ethos which characterizes the Briton and later the American “implies extreme independence of mind, the right to gain happiness at the expense of all others.” With the “English instinct” giving power to the individual first and foremost, such liberalism is nothing more than a “free-for-all, [with] every man for himself, the stronger man wins.” Spengler even argues that in this model, “The state was to exist no longer;” an overstatement to be sure. And yet he is fundamentally correct in his observation that “everyone was to fight his own battles, for in the end it would [somehow] benefit all.”

As related above, Spengler further describes this as a sort of social Darwinism, a “free for all.” This Anglo style of business is nothing short of a “refined form of piracy.” Spengler further articulates that in this English model, defined by the spirit of the Vikings, the “aim is not to work steadily to raise the entire nation’s standard of living.” Rather, “it is. . .to produce private fortunes by the use of private capital, to overcome private competition, and to exploit the public through the use of advertising, price wars, artificial stimulation of the consumer, and strict control of the ratio of supply and demand.” In this view of the world and with the triumph of the Anglosphere over Germany, “the world” is not seen in terms of “the state” or “church, but as booty for pirates.”

The Prussian model envisages an entirely different view of the economy, commerce, and the role the state plays in these and other affairs. In the Prussian model, property is “not [seen] as private booty but as part of the common weal; not as a means or expression of personal power but as goods placed in trust, for the administration of which he, as a property owner, is responsible to the state.” In this model, “national wealth” is not “the sum of individual private fortunes; instead, he considers private fortunes as functions of the total economic potential of his nation.”

This is also accompanied by an entirely different conception of what merit means and indeed the role of the individual in society and the opportunities afforded him by society. In Great Britain, “[N]ext to noble parentage, wealth is the major condition for acceptance in the group; it is also the criterion for rank within the group’s social structure.” This is in polar opposition to the structure of Prussian society, “whereby the individual receives his place according to his ability, not according to the demands of tradition.” Implicit in Spengler’s formulation of the Prussian model and knightly ethos of “all for all” is the fundamental concept of Volksgemeinschaft, which posited a unity of the German people across classes, bound by shared blood, language, history, and tradition. Precisely because the British model, in the spirit of the Viking, allows powerful, moneyed interests to exert inordinate influence and profit off commerce as a “refined form of piracy,” those subject to the Anglo model—which, after World War II and more particularly the Fall of the Iron Curtain is all of Europe and the Western world—are deluded by a false sense of freedom, defined by the loss of a much more important “kind of freedom.” That in turn renders most individuals “inwardly a slave.”

Spengler concludes this formulation by asserting that Marx and socialism as it has come to be understood does not transcend the capitalist free-for-all which is the signature feature of the English model, but rather represents capitalism of sorts for the proletariat. He describes this sort of socialism, and the sort that has become largely synonymous with the word in modern times as a “a revised edition of capitalism.”

Whereas the Prussian model seeks to regulate, temper, and subordinate commercial activity for the public good, placing it in a trust for the betterment of all, Marxism particularly and socialism as it has come to be understood under its long, oppressive shadow seeks to expropriate wealth and capital not for the betterment of the nation or people, but the oppressed classes. With the unfortunate advent of Cultural Marxism, this has mutated only further, as modern leftism seeks to expropriate wealth not for the working class. Indeed, modern incarnations of the Democrat party and its European counterparts harbor pronounced malice and contempt for White working-class people. Rather, Cultural Marxism expropriates wealth for the benefit of black and brown hordes that are but racial imposters in and enemies of the Occident.

A Critique and Application of Spengler’s Formulation in Modern Times

Significantly, Spengler characterizes The Great War as a war of annihilation between these two forms of the Faustian Spirit:

Neither can accept a restriction of its will, and neither can be satisfied until the whole world has succumbed to its particular idea. This being the case, war will be waged until one side gains final victory.

As Germany lost the Second World War, a civilizational catastrophe that more likely than not will herald the death of Mother Europa and her posterity, that struggle seems to have been resolved and determined: the most negative resolution of history that has likely intractably doomed Germany and above all Europe to a bitter decline, fall, and eventual extinction. There are, however, several considerations and critiques of Spengler’s dichotomy between “refined piracy” on one hand and the Prussian statism on the other that reveal some errors or oversights in this formulation. As dire as the prognosis is for Europe and its peoples, this critique and application of Spengler’s formulation at least suggests a theoretical strategy by which Europe could potentially save herself before the last embers of her racial soul—once an indomitable inferno—are extinguished for all eternity.

One error Spengler makes is that he formulates this dichotomy as binary, as either pirate capitalism on one hand or “Prussian socialism” on the other. This dichotomy however exists on a spectrum. Indeed, his characterization of Marxism and international socialism can be conceptualized as existing on this spectrum. Soviet Bolshevism in particular and international socialism more broadly use the power of the state far more extensively than envisioned by the Prussian model, and, more importantly, for entirely different ends. Soviet Bolshevism in particular sought to abolish private enterprise and capitalism writ large, and did so, ostensibly at least, in the name of class revolution. The expressed aim of communism was to become the sole form of government throughout the world. While raw, naked megalomania lies beneath any rhetorical flourish, the very framework of this ideology concerns the international proletariat, with abject hostility to the notion of the nation state and those hallowed institutions which comprise the fabric of European tradition and culture. Despite pervasive insistence to the contrary by many of the mainstream, normy-tier conservative set, National Socialist Germany never sought to abolish either private enterprise, nor did it seek to nationalize various manufacturing concerns that were the titans of German industry: Krupp Stahlwerke, IG Farben, M.A.N., Mercedes, Messerschmitt, Rheinmetall, and so many others remained private corporations; they were simply subordinate to the oversight of the state, particularly and most especially during the exigencies of war.3

In the midst of what could be rightly decried as “Dinesh D’Souza Cope,” i.e., Hitler was left-wing and a socialist, the most absurd political schematics abound. These schematics typically define left versus right merely as the consolidation and use of state power on one hand and the absence of or abstention from state power on the other. This of course is so mind-bogglingly stupid as to defy comprehension. By this twisted logic, state power used to prevent parents, teachers, and others from “transing the kids” is—somehow—just as left-wing as various laws compelling acquiescence to transgenderism and radical gender theory. State power used to carry out remigration and expulsions of racial imposters is also, somehow, left-wing. Similarly, the censorship and banning of pornography, a policy position advocated by the late Robert Bork among others, is just as “left-wing” as European style hate speech laws which prohibit even the most sensible—but controversial—utterances about race, identity, and other matters.

Absurd as such schematics are, they do show that the consolidation and application of state power as well as the abstention from using state power runs along a continuum. Particularly outside of American conservatism which adopts almost all precepts of modern liberalism, any schematic describing this continuum offers little or meaning as to what is left or right, as the above examples indicate. Any schematic that designates Slouching Towards Gomorrah and Bork’s call for censorship of pornography and other materials as somehow “left-wing” is a mockery and a farce, deserving only the sharpest, most savage ridicule.

Beyond that, with radical libertarian sorts excepted, very few oppose socialism—or rather the socialization of certain segments of society and economy—in an absolute, categorical sense. Indeed, so very few of these libertarian sorts perceive what real anarchy and the absence of state power actually entails. Absence of the state is, as Thomas Hobbes so famously described, “war among all against all.” True absence of the state would lead to unimaginable horrors, including widespread rape and abduction, human trafficking and slavery, wholesale murder and banditry at nearly every roadside, and a seemingly unending list of terrors, crimes, and atrocities intimated in the expansive range of post-apocalyptic story-telling. The illegal trade for any number of harmful and even unconscionable matters already exists, and would only explode in the absence of the state, from trade of illicit and harmful drugs to the international black market for human organs. Silly blather about the “non-aggression principle” and other libertarian talking points are non-sensical in any other context outside of tedious parlor games, cushioned and protected by the safety and security made possible by the dormant violence of state power which makes social order possible. That which these simpletons decry as “left-wing socialist state overreach” is very often nothing less than the imposition of law and order.

A deep-seated revulsion for terms like “the state,” “the government,” and most especially “socialism” and “socialist” is, however, a powerful if also foolish and misguided strain in American mainstream conservatism. Any effort to abolish the obscene health insurance racket in this country is decried as socialism, with so few understanding that healthcare as a commodity is to a large degree both a need and a public good. For that reason, it ought to be socialized to ensure it is available to all rightful citizens4 to ensure their healthcare needs are met regardless of socioeconomic status or financial hardship. So few conservatives understand or recognize such principles, just as so few realize that their resentment of paying into a system that benefits all currently in this rootless, fractured society stems from existing in an increasingly fractured, balkanized society where no one really belongs and everyone is an alien to one another to some greater or lesser degree. The same rationale applies to the student loan crisis. “I do not want my tax dollars being spent to help other people who have these problems” and “I ‘got mine,’ screw everybody else” are just two examples of the sort of shorthand that epitomizes this deracinated, hyper-selfish mindset.

While Spengler notes the sense of duty that characterizes the Prussian model as he intimates at least implicitly the very concept of Volksgemeinschaft, this same duty to others is remarkably absent in the Anglo-American tradition. That pathology is characterized and augmented by the tradition of rugged individualism that traces its origins to the founding of the original colonies and later the various phases of westward expansion beyond the Appalachian mountains, eventually reaching the west coast: a phenomenon that lies partly in history and partly in myth.5

Consider however that, even in the United States, a number of public goods are socialized, including law enforcement, the fire department, schools, libraries, roads, and other public goods. Some libertarian sorts will cite the state of education in this country as an argument against socializing this public good, all while overlooking that so many of the undesirable traits6 of our education system stem from severe deficiencies and faults in American culture and society as well as an increasing number of undesirable races in the demographic makeup of this country. Such deficiencies include a pathologically egalitarian mindset that eschews stratification in education according to natural ability, a pernicious sociological and cultural phenomenon deeply embedded in the American tradition for democracy and which precludes the possibility of the academy in the most abstract sense. This same tradition renders anything akin to Germany’s gymnasium unthinkable, as it also explains how America’s literary tradition, to the extent it could be called literary at all, has persistently veered heavily to the crass commercial concerns and perverse egalitarianism of journalism rather than the belles-lettres that epitomize notions of the aristocracy and the elite, whether by supposed noble lineage or more preferably by native abilities and natural aptitude. Whereas the German and British literary traditions wield the likes of Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Theodor Storm and Thomas Hardy and George Eliot as respective figureheads, the United States not only afflicts the world with the drab gray prose of Ernest Hemingway, but champions sparse, minimalist prose that almost approaches the level of writing for children’s books—and does so as a supposed literary ideal.

Mainstream conservatives also fail to consider that the aversion to state power does not rightly impugn state power in the abstract. Rather, such aversion to state power is strictly an indictment of this government in particular and more particularly this form of government. The mainstream, normie-tier conservative who cites how awful the United States postal service is never thinks to consider how excellent the Deutsche Post is (or at least was prior to fall of Berlin), just as he cites how appalling Amtrak is, replete with surly, mostly black train crews while never imagining how excellent the Reichsbahn was; even the Deutsche Bahn was excellent in West Germany and after reunification until recently. Various attempts at regulatory oversight by the United States government have been at times counterproductive, but this, as with practically everything, simply implores the need for such measures to be implemented and administered with some degree of competency.

In relations to Spengler’s thesis envisioning a binary dichotomy between “refined piracy” on one hand and Prussian statism on the other, consider that the Progressive era spearheaded by Teddy Roosevelt which promulgated important and, indeed, vital controls over labor standards and the production and sale of food and drug products in this country. Spengler’s extreme characterization of the English model as the utter absence of the state is also contradicted by the legal history of the corporation, or rather the corporate charter. As set forth in “Corporate Rights and the Most Absurd Legal Fiction: A Reactionary History and Analysis of Corporate Personhood,” the early legal history of the corporation and more particularly its predecessor, the corporate charter, is in stark contrast to the sort of free for all afforded modern corporations in the modern world. Indeed, before the American revolution, a corporate charter could only be granted by the Crown if, in addition fulfilling a private objective of making a profit, it also served a public interest.

Before the reforms of Teddy Roosevelt, a variety of food and drug products contained adulterants, including brick dust in cinnamon, plaster of Paris, chalk, and other adulterants in watered down milk, as well as lead, arsenic, and a litany of other poisons in a wide range of everyday food stuffs. Notably, as America is in many ways an extension of this English model with even worse pathologies than its successor, the Food and Drug Act of 1906 finally put in place the sort of minimal regulation of food and drug products that had existed in Europe for at least 50 years before. Working conditions for the White proletariat were just as exploitative and abysmal, until state regulation rightly banned such abhorrent practices. Although such sensible and necessary regulation of commerce does not pertain to the socialization (or nationalization) of public goods, it is in concert with the “Prussian view” that “assigns to trade a subordinate rather than a dominant role within the complex of economic activity.” As Spengler further articulates, this view correctly discerns that “government officials must have the same effect on tradesmen as policemen on burglars and naval cruisers on the crews of pirate ships.”

Indeed, Spengler proclaims that “Socialism is power, power, and more power.” In this way, even though the vital reforms of Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive era of the early 20^th Century did not result in the socialization of those segments in the economy that are rightly seen as a public good, they do demonstrate how these seemingly antithetical opposites are part of a continuum. Beyond that, Spengler’s assertion that socialism—or really the seizure and application of state power to achieve vital ends—is simply characterized as “power” further evinces that mainstream conservatism is defined by a pathological aversion to the very suggestion of taking power and using such power to advance vital policy considerations. This of course creates a vacuum whereby such power will invariably be seized and used by political adversaries or, for that matter, corporate entities given carte blanche license to do as they will.

Beyond these and other important considerations—namely that pirate capitalism and Prussian statism do not exist along a binary dichotomy but rather on a continuum—another salient consideration comes to the forefront, one which Spengler also did not address or perceive. The insular security afforded to the British people by way of living on an island nation has largely been eviscerated by a confluence of circumstances defining the modern world. International airplane travel and other conveyances have rendered these barriers almost meaningless, even though these barriers, had, for centuries, provided this “insular security” that make this “Viking model” of “refined piracy” possible. This also pertains to the United States. Although enjoying two oceans for Eastern and Western borders, having weak neighbors to the south and north may not present the United States with the sorts of strategic threats that had always defined Germany’s political and military strategy for centuries, the migrant crisis, coupled with the rise and proliferation of Cultural Marxist claptrap and other exigencies of the modern age demonstrate that the “insular security” which had distinguished the British Isles and the Anglosphere more broadly no longer exists in any meaningful sense. These modern conveyances combined with the civilization destroying madness advocated by significant portions of the populace render borders even for the island nation and the United States far less meaningful than in eras past. Precisely because the Anglosphere no longer enjoys the insular security as it had in centuries past informs the realization that this Viking ethos must be, if not jettisoned outright, reformed as to provide some form of collectivism to protect the polity from a variety of evils.

These considerations are of course compounded in turn by how infinitely more powerful corporate and monied interests are in the modern world, from George and Alex Soros, to Larry Fink and Blackrock, to the greater pantheon of moneyed, corporate interests at large that harbor insidious designs backed by unimaginable, seemingly inexhaustible wealth. The degree to which the overall intensification of how these powerful interests use liberal democracy and free market capitalism as the most reliable conduit for their schemes has only worsened over time. This of course is one of the evils Spengler expressly warns his readers about, stating that “democracy and universal suffrage are reliable tools of capitalism has been proven in all countries that have adopted the English model.”

Although Spengler foresaw this very danger and, if anything, understated this peril, his observation that the English mindset takes it on blind faith that “in the end” this free-for-all “would [somehow] benefit all” is equally enduring. Even as the middle class in America continues to be eviscerated ever further and as wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of ever fewer, a critical mass of Americans continues to buy into the varied myths surrounding America as the land of opportunity. The malignant spirit of Horatio Alger continues to haunt the American consciousness, with far too many remarkably susceptible to these myths. An apocryphal quote famously—and erroneously—attributed to John Steinback quipped “that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” That modern quote pertains to other matters beyond just the appeal of classic international socialism, but any state oversight or regulation of commercial activity more broadly. That false myth that America is the land of opportunity and that anyone can be a millionaire informs libertarian rhetoric against any use of state power as incurring against so-called “free enterprise,” which blithely ignores basic concepts such as leverage, market share, asymmetric information, to say nothing of how moneyed interests without state regulation and oversight tend to corner the market on key goods and services and form de facto if not outright de jure monopolies.

These and other intellectual blind spots afflicting both much of mainstream conservatism and libertarianism most especially have largely rendered such elements in American politics a stooge for corporate interests. This is expressed in the affinity many mainstream conservatives have for such distasteful—and harmful—American corporate entities as McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Walmart, to Conagra, Archer Daniels Midland, to various corporate bodies that comprise the military industrial complex. It is further demonstrated in other instances such as the disastrous Supreme Court decision Citizens United, which further extends constitutional rights rightly limited to individuals to corporate entities, while dictating that unlimited amounts of campaign finance contributions by these corporate interests are (somehow) tantamount to free speech protected by The First Amendment. It has even led far too many mainstream conservatives to rally around the likes of Brian Thompson, the slain CEO of United Healthcare, a psychopath whose “min-maxing” machinations have doubtlessly led to the deaths of Americans who were denied healthcare while imposing unconscionable economic hardship on millions of others. In this way, much of mainstream conservatives is but a grotesque caricature of the very worst American propensities toward crony capitalism and that more refined form of piracy Spengler warns against.

These considerations are further buttressed by Spengler’s aversion to liberal democracy, seen principally as a means to consolidate and project the power of the monied classes in the capitalist system. Indeed, Spengler decries liberal democracy as merely “a system of provinces and protectorates whose populations are being exploited by a business oligarchy with the aid of bribed parliaments and purchased laws.” He further insists that the “president, prime minister, or popular represent representative is the pawn of a party, and a party is in turn the pawn of those who pay for it.” It is for these reasons in tandem that he warns of the “frightful danger of an enslavement of the world by big business,” a warning which so far has been heeded by far too few for far too long.

Other Fallacies in a Most Absurd Political Schematic

There are of course other flaws with this absurd rhetoric from the mainstream conservative set. At a more abstract, philosophical level, the arguments proffered suffer from the false equivalency fallacy. The false equivalency fallacy occurs when two or more things are said to be equivalent (or very similar) because they share one or more characteristics, while overlooking other differences that distinguish these things in import and even profound ways. National Socialism and other right-wing authoritarian movements do share a limited number of similarities with Soviet Bolshevism and other left-wing movements in history and in modern times, but this is the case with most if not all polar opposites.

As argued in “Alice Weidel’s Most Absurd Statement,” Christian Crusaders and Muslim Saracens share a remarkable number of similarities. Both were warring factions during the middle to late medieval period, driven by religious zeal and fervor. Both had designs of conquest on Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Both, as warring factions of the time period, were characterized by military and other technologies of their time period. And yet despite these and other similarities, they were nonetheless polar opposites of each other. They were mortal enemies, in fact.

The same could be true of Soviet Communism and National Socialism. Both were ideologies and political movements in the 20^th centuries. Both led to authoritarian regimes. While each “gained a political mandate due to extraordinarily egregious circumstances,” the political leadership of each, namely Hitler and Stalin (and above all their cronies) “betray[ed] that mandate or cause in his own peculiar ways.” Both fought against each other on the Eastern Front in a cataclysmic death struggle—ein Vernichtungskrieg— that was the greatest and most horrific armed conflict in history. In addition to incredible innovations in tank design and manufacture, the militaries of both waged tremendous feats in combined arms although the Germans embraced the principles of Bewegungskrieg, while Soviet doctrine relied on human wave and other doctrines.7

Some may disagree whether Islam or Satanism is the true opposite of Christianity, but there again each of these three religions bear many similarities. Islam and Christianity are Abrahamic religions, as both stem from Zoroastrianism more broadly. Both are religious systems with over a billion followers. Both Christianity and Islam are governed by a religious text—or rather series of religious texts—designated and recognized as the word of God. Satanism too has many similarities with Christianity as well.

Axiomatically, any instance of polar opposition will reveal a number of shared similarities whereby the polar opposites share certain similarities. This is revealed by an illustrative diagram or schematic depicting one entity in opposition to another, joined by the axis which places each entity in opposition to the other. The list is practically endless: hot versus cold, love versus hate, the Union versus the Confederacy, the Hatfields and the McCoys, and on and on. One could even create a parlor game of sorts compiling an expansive list of opposites whereby players name all the shared traits each polar opposite shares with its antithesis. Indeed, this phenomenon was first postulated by the ancient Greek philosopher Heralictus, who described this phenomenon as “the unity of opposites.” One would expect that there would scarcely be much novelty to a concept articulated over two thousand years ago. Then again, experience proves again and again the folly of holding even the lowest standards given how intellectually vapid mainstream conservatism is.

This of course is attended by other sorts of shenanigans, including the bizarre fixation on the word socialism in “national socialism.” This particular tic betrays either ignorance of or inability to comprehend the various distinctions set forth in this tract as well as well as Spengler’s thesis over a century ago. As stated, any categorical aversion to socialism in a pure, absolute sense would require dispensing with any socialized good, such as law enforcement, schools, roads, so on and so forth. Beyond that, and going beyond the false equivalency fallacy more broadly, often times entities will embrace words in ways that are novel if not antithetical to their actual meaning. That the phrase urinal cake features the word “cake” does not mean it is a cake in the classic sense. Both a Sachertorte, a type of layered chocolate cake, and crab cake are perhaps a type of cake, but beyond both being food stuffs, to suggest both are of similar kind is preposterous. North Korea’s official state title is the Korean Democratic Republic, just as East Germany was Die Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), or the German Democrat Republic in English (GDR). And yet neither of these are democratic in any normal sense of the word. By this absurd logic, one could surmise that the Nazi party is of similar kind to any entity that also has the word party in it,8 from various communist parties throughout the world, the democrat or republican party in the USA, or indeed a video game called Super Mario Party Jamboree. Perhaps the next time readers attend an 80s dance party or goth industrial dance party, they can take quiet, smug satisfaction that such a past time is of kind to a mostly intellectually sound but ultimately tragic political and ideological movement that could have saved Europe and the West from the evils of the modern age.

Other formulations attempt to equivocate national socialism, fascism, and other far-right, authoritarian movements with their very antithesis under the supposition that all of these things ignore so-called human rights. This of course overlooks how such postulations by Locke and others are indeed not universal, but peculiar to the Western world and, before the rise of American hegemony which installed liberal democracies at gun point across much of Europe, were even more of an aberration limited to the “English model” Spengler identifies in Prussianism and Socialism. Even the United States has committed flagrant violations against human rights. In addition to committing atrocities against the German civilian population in World War II directly as well colluding with ethnic cleansing, rape, and murder at the hands of the Red Army at the close of World War II, readers are reminded of the introduction to Feindflug’s “Neue Sieger” and “Democracy as Pretext for American Hegemony” with begins with these lyrics as its epigraph. With this fallacy, too, there is something absurdly comical about the supposition that Augusto Pinochet was the same as the communists he rightfully eradicated by way of helicopter rides and other stern, drastic measures.

From the Ruins, A Return to That Knightly Ethos

These and other considerations reveal once again how intellectually hollow mainstream conservatism really is. But as the insular security identified by Spengler continues to evaporate in the wake of modern technology and the ‘fifth column” active within White populations that tirelessly work and advocate for the dispossession of White peoples across the Occident and, indeed, racial suicide and civilizational ruin, the Anglosphere has long since arrived at a point where it can no longer indulge such fanciful ideas that recoil at the very notion of state power, regardless of the ends the use of such power serves. Europe and the West must embrace some components of that knightly ethos that rejects the Anglo creed of “each man for himself,” and instead return to what Spengler describes as the Prussian, knightly ethos of “all for all.”

Unfortunately, these and other perverse formulations of the mainstream conservative set are deeply embedded in the American consciousness in particular. In the United States, the legacy of rugged individualism is a powerful element in the shared consciousness of the American public, most particularly those of the mainstream, conservative constituency. Consider also that an intense propaganda campaign has been underway for well over 60 years, which for most began in kindergarten and before, inculcating both the supposed evils of racism and national myths surrounding both world wars. That vital consideration further reveals that much of this nonsense stems from little else other than inability to acknowledge that Hitler, national socialism, and other maligned9 reactionary authoritarian movements are part of the right. This anxiety is so deeply ingrained in the consciousness of mainstream American conservatism that it may be impossible to overcome on any appreciable scale. No one on the left is burdened with such anxiety or reticence. This is in turn compounded by the legitimate red scare and Reagan’s rightful admonitions against the designs of the Soviet Union. The result is a twisted sort of logic that recoils against any use of state power, just as those who espouse these hollow ideas cower from the realization American society lacks the binding agents of common blood, race, and history necessary to unite a polity together. This makes any feeling of duty to others impossible.

Disabusing a critical mass of those opposed to the left of these and other fallacies will be a daunting if not nigh impossible task, but the alternative is unthinkable. Precisely as Spengler has forewarned, so much of what is taught in civics class, including this very blather about unbridled “free-market” capitalism and the sanctimony of liberal democracy has been proven to be racial and national suicide, particularly as it gives free license to those elements that are at once the most sinister and powerful. The only question is whether a sufficient number will disabuse themselves of these lies and fairy tales before it is too late.

Other articles and essays by Richard Parker are available at his publication, The Raven’s Call: A Reactionary Perspective, found at theravenscall.substack.com. Please consider subscribing on a free or paid basis, and to like and share as warranted. Readers can also find him on twitter, under the handle @astheravencalls. Readers of this essay may be particularly interested in reading a resitant viewing and analysis of Do The Right Thing, which is discussed briefly in this essay.