Gatekeepers and Keyholders

Which one are you?

There are few things that demonstrate someone’s charactre and true loyalties more than when they are suddenly put on the spot and have to make a quick decision about something. Certainly, for left-wingers this was put on display six weeks ago when Charlie Kirk was assassinated and we saw a flood of commies showing their true colours. More recently, we saw it again - except for people supposedly on the Right - with the leak of several group chats involving Young Republicans, via the response to these chats by various prominent voices on the Right. Granted, the participants in these chats were (admittedly) being pretty edgy in some of the things they were joking about, so one can understand why there might be controversy over these things, even if you personally believe (as I do) that jokes are just that - jokes. Now, you might be thinking that I’m writing this to criticise these YRs. I am not. Instead, my purpose here is to call out the type of ConInc retard who consistently runs interference for the Left while throwing their own side under the bus and who jumped all over this as a chance to gatekeep.

This was a test of both loyalty and intelligence - and there are a great number of so-called right-wing “thought leaders” who failed it on both counts. The opportunity was there for people to take a stand against the Left and they failed to do so. The fact that they can’t admit to understanding the distinction between sophomoric jokes on the one hand and established politicians in major states literally saying they want to kill their political opponents and their kids on the other hand, well, this speaks volumes.

These fools believe they are “acting on principle.” They are not. Often, these politicians and influences are bought and paid for, so their principles would revolve around whoever is cutting them a check. Even in those cases where they are countersignaling those further to the Right than themselves out of some genuine though misguided sense of moral propriety, these people are not truly “principled” in any sort of way that matters. Simply put, being a “principled loser” is not principled. If you purposefully seek to undercut your own side to try to conform to the ideals of or for the benefit of the other side, you are not principled, you are merely insipid and untrustworthy. Truly being principled means at least trying to put yourself into a position where you can act on those things that you believe to be right and necessary in the political and social spheres. Failing this, your “principles” are simply gas escaping from your mouth.

But - and this is something that many on the Right need to grasp quickly even if they don’t want to - “conservatives” and liberals are similar in many ways. This shouldn’t be surprising, since “classical” liberalism is still liberalism, after all. But because of this, many prominent “conservatives” have a vested ideological interest in only conserving the gains that progressivism has made over the past several decades - they don’t really want to go back to a more rational and traditional society. This impulse may be masked as “principled bipartisanism.” It may seek to present a moderate, reasonable public-facing image. But ultimately, it simply boils down to trying to maintain the post-WWII status quo that has, over the long-term, weakened the USA (and the rest of the West) because of its failure to present any truly credible challenge to even the most insane of progressive Left excesses. Instead, you have a bunch of Boomer politicians trying to drum edgy Zoomer up-and-comers out of the movement because they rock the boat.

Ladies and gentlemen, your principled conservatism

Let me put it this way - if you’re more interested in policing the Right than you are fighting the Left, you are part of the problem in this country.

The dirty little not-so-secret is that “conservativism,” in the sense of modern American neo-con, Mike Pence and Mitt Romney style classical liberalism, has been a spectacular failure. It has largely failed to “conserve” anything except libertarian-style corporatism (which is, itself, also an offshoot of liberalism). This shouldn’t be a surprise since, as noted above, “classical” liberalism is still liberalism and carries within it many of the same basic assumptions that are found in its subsequent progressive-socialist offshoots. The few cultural and social victories prior to Trump’s second term, such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade, often occurred over and against the opposition of “respectable conservative” types.

That it all happens this way is not accidental by any means. The neo-con/neo-lib post-war consensus staffed by neutered “conservative” Republicans expends a great deal of time and effort to prevent discourse on the Right from escaping out of the relatively narrow confines of what is defined as “acceptable.” And what is “acceptable” is nearly always that which is amenable, or at least not terribly troubling, to the structural Left. Decades ago, William F. Buckley was drumming Pat Buchanan out of polite conservative society and later his magazine, National Review, was doing the same with John Derbyshire. Many well-known “conservative” organisations, such as Young Americans for Freedom (founded by Buckley), serve as checkpoints to screen potential entrants into larger roles in “conservative” activism and politics. In most ways, “conservatism” was specifically intended to fail, while yet giving those drawn into it enough of a hope spot that they thought they might succeed if they just voted harder. Gatekeeping is meant to keep you fenced in to that sweet spot (from their perspective) where you stay engaged (and thus remain manageable) while not really being able to substantially change much.

Online social media provides a potential way around this due to its more decentralised nature, but is not without its own gatekeepers trying to corral discussion into admissible directions. Folks like Joel Berry, James Lindsay, NN Taleb - that’s why these guys exist. They’re not there to actually advance Rightist principles or resist the Left - they’re there to keep you and me from effectively doing so. For instance, that’s what Lindsay’s “Woke Right” moniker is all about. In and of itself, it’s just a dumb little epithet that doesn’t really convey actual meaning. Its purpose is to try to use “shame” to dissuade people on the Right from actually doing anything effective because doing so is “imitating the Left” which “MaKeS yOu WoKe!!1!” It literally seeks to connive people into remaining ineffective lest James Lindsay call them “woke.”

What ties all of these influencers and efforts together is anti-intellectualism - an active effort to dissuade people from discussing, or even thinking about, certain topics or conclusions. That’s because these topics, and the conclusions drawn out from rational discussion about them, challenge the fundamental core of leftist ideology of all stripes (including “classical” liberalism). In point of fact, we on the Real Right are correct about any number of things - rejection of egalitarianism and democracy, race realism, the destructive effects of mass migration and diversity, the need to return to real Tradition, and much more. Our analyses are based upon actual, real knowledge, whether drawn from statistics and empirical observations of the world around us to the repeated testimony of history and the intellectual giants of our shared cultural/intellectual heritage.

On the other hand, most of what the Left believes really is just pseudoknowledge created by deliberate propaganda. It basically serves as a self-reinforcing fact space that, while added to iteratively over time, does so only with carefully curated “information” that meets gatekeeper approval. Anything outside of that is “conspiracy theory,” even when obviously and abundantly substantiated. Liberalism of all types, from the “classical” to the most cutting-edge progressivism, well and truly does act as a stultifying cognitohazard on pretty much any issue of any importance. The examples of this just over the past months alone are abundant. Liberalism of all types exists in a state of Baudrillardian hyperreality in which the line between leftist wishful thinking and outright fiction are seamlessly blended. Just look at how often the typical redditard will appeal to MCU or Star Wars movies to make their points.

We should understand that “cognitive biases” are fine, in and of themselves, if those biases are based on real information. In such cases, they’re actually a good thing - everybody needs some kind of a foundation for what they believe and why. The problem is when these biases are built on pseudoinformation such as is gotten from places like the MSM and other liberal sources. In that case, if the foundation is cracked, then so will everything which is built upon that foundation. I urge you all to check out Jacques Ellul’s book Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes if you haven’t yet.

Coupled with this discussion is the distrust of so-called “experts” by many (most?) on the Real Right. Under normal, neutral circumstances, there’d be little reason to distrust experts. Sometimes there’d be reasons to disagree with them, but if we had a situation where you could be generally sure that experts were being honest or not on the take, they’d be fine. Unfortunately, we’re not experiencing normal circumstances. Many purported experts exist to simply reinforce narratives and commonly use their status to support assertions which are flatly contrary to logic, reason, and empirical experience. A good example would be this guy, tweeting a few months ago. He’s “right” not because he’s actually right or because what he says is supported by the body of evidence, but because what he says reinforces prevailing progressive narratives about human intelligence (buttressed, ultimately, on spurious appeal to genetic egalitarianism) which are within the acceptable window of belief. (In point of fact, he’s actually quite wrong). Such “experts” are not generally people who demonstrate genuine merit, but rather amenableness to prevailing ideology.

The fact of the matter is that the real moral authority does indeed reside with the Real Right - WE are the ones who side with reality and eternal truths. There are two kinds of people - gatekeepers and keymasters. Gatekeepers want to close the door, so to speak, on knowledge and truth. This is exactly what the Left does, and it’s also what the lackies on the “Right” do who want to constrain the range of debate to within a very narrow Overton window. Keymasters, on the other hand, open the doors and release knowledge, over and against the opposition of the Left. Gatekeepers are the librarians who pretend that they’re heroic for stocking “banned books” like To Kill a Mockingbird. Keymasters are the people trying to sneak Camp of the Saints onto the shelves. The one constrains knowledge they can’t deal with, the other has the moral courage to lay it all out there for people to decide for themselves.

The Right needs to deal with its “gatekeeper problem.” The Dissident Right, Real Right, whatever we want to call ourselves, must be ever-vigilant - and ACT on that vigilance - to identify, nullify, and expel the gatekeepers. If we don’t, then the only real chance in the last four decades that we’ve had to stop the Left will go up in smoke. The gatekeepers have already largely succeeded in stultifying the momentum that the Real Right had after the Charlie Kirk assassination. Left-wingers were being served some justice, opportunities to roll back progressive encroachments in several areas were being exploited, the general mood of the nation was against the Left. And then the Mike Pence Republicans decided it would be a great time to run in front of a bunch of MSM TV cameras and piss all over their own Young Republicans for telling some offensive jokes in private group chats. The Mike Pence Republicans need to be made to pay a severe, SEVERE penalty for this. There needs to be an example made out of them.

That’s because elite theory definitely applies to the current “gatekeepers versus keymasters” standoff. Normies will generally follow whoever appears to be “winning.” They might like to think of themselves as “principled conservatives” or whatever, but the truth is that normies generally just go wherever power seems to be flowing. If the establishment “Right” succeeds in gatekeeping the Real Right, then it’s right back to the same kind of “Mike Pence Republicanism” that proved its ineffectiveness for decades. If that happens, then we might as well just gear up, hunker down, and wait for the final collapse to come, and it’ll be much, much worse than it would have needed to be otherwise.

Conversely, if the Real Right can succeed in making an example out of these people and purging them, the momentum can be regained and extended. Let’s not operate under any illusions - despite Trump’s election last November and the many successes that his administration has seen so far, the Left still has a LOT of institutional power. Overcoming that power will require daring, risk-taking, a willingness to “do what needs to be done,” even if such measures and ideas are cast as being unpopular at the time. The gatekeepers exist to make sure this doesn’t happen, they exist to negate positive movement through the most effective means possible - by preventing you from even trying to make that movement yourself. One of our primary goals should be to do everything in our power to prevent them from succeeding.