I believe your readers should give some consideration to the probability that "liberal democracy" was merely a "front" for the radical Jewish takeover of the world as spelled out in the Protocols. Helping to fund this takeover, at least in the US, has been the Jewish Mafia in control of usury, alcohol, drugs, gambling, high fashion, trafficking ,etc. The revolutionary Jewish movement also produced the current genocidal state of Israel which helped carry out the 9/11 false-flag attacks leading to a generation of wars in the Middle East, the latest being the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran.
After listening to Henry Ford's book on the issue, I want to reject what you suggest, but I cannot. This comes from a man who studied the Seven Laws of Noah with the school master of Jared Kuchner co-incidentally.
So much hidden is now made public. and the cause of these people violates GOD's WORD that HE is no respecter of persons, and is tone deaf to the fact that the Hebrew GOD is still the Unwanted GOD, especially by HIS people.
I was greatly impacted by the Val Kilmer presentation of that man. Wish he could be my friend, only because he could tell the truth of his ignoble character.
Excellent, hopeful essay. That which collapsed before will collapse again, despite the efforts of all the bureaucrats' horses and the the bureaucrats' men.
The brainwashing that has taken hold in the minds of many has been a wonder to behold. For proof I enter Sodomy Month as Exhibit A. That which was universally found to be revolting is now openly celebrated by right-thinking individuals.
The spell, thank God, seems to be breaking. Now is the time to press our advantage and keep speaking out against the propaganda.
Great article, thanks Frank. I think Adam Curtis is great, i always remember his use of David Graeber's quote (in Can't get you out of my head if i remember correctly, bizarrely available on the ultra-liberal platform BBC iPlayer):
'The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently'.
I've previously been critical of the lack of specifics in your interview with McCormack, and I've asked questions under earlier articles.
This piece again paints with very broad brushstrokes, and I notice that when readers ask "who did this?", the answers seem to become increasingly vague until eventually somebody reaches for some very old and very dark explanations.
In this case, a comment invoking the Protocols and a worldwide Jewish conspiracy was not merely left standing, but liked.
So perhaps some actual questions again.
You argue that liberal democracy failed around a century ago. Fine.
But why reduce the collapse of those states to liberalism itself? Were hyperinflation, war, revolutionary movements, ethnic tensions and economic crises irrelevant?
Likewise, why assume that the origins of liberalism were principally a management-class project, rather than a response to genuine grievances and injustices?
More fundamentally, if human beings require metaphysical order, can you provide evidence that the ordinary people you champion actually lived better lives before liberalism? Not the kings, theologians and philosophers. The people.
And finally, a question I am increasingly curious about.
Would it be possible to receive an answer to any of these questions that does not eventually end with "the Jews"?
Because I have now spent several weeks listening, reading and asking questions, and I am beginning to notice a pattern.
The diagnosis starts with bureaucracy, alienation, propaganda and elite failure, all of which are worth discussing.
But when one asks "who exactly?", some people seem remarkably eager to arrive at the same destination that Europe has visited before.
I genuinely hope that isn't where your argument ultimately leads.
If it isn't, then perhaps some specificity would help.
“Why reduce the collapse of those states to liberalism itself?”
The more relevant question is, was liberalism able to address the crises of hyperinflation, war, revolutionary movements, ethnic tensions and economic crises? Liberalism was stress tested in the early 20th century and did not hold. It similarly does not hold today, hence the need for our system today to invest so heavily in narrative control and perception management.
“Why assume the origins of liberalism were principally a management-class project?”
The origins of liberalism are not relevant to Frank’s point. Whatever its origins, the management class uses liberalism as its legitimating narrative about itself. See the quote from Walter Lippmann above. See Edward Bernaise’s work in the Adam Curtis documentary “Century of the Self”. The management class uses liberalism the primary means to advertise their system. It serves as their foundational ideological justification.
“Can you provide evidence that ordinary people lived better lives before liberalism?”
“Better” is a hard thing to measure as it carries an implied value judgment. I and many here feel strongly that liberalism sapped our societies of the things that made them stable and meaningful. Whatever benefits a genuinely liberal system may have yields diminishing returns as society drifts further from its foundations.
I feel no need to talk about Jews. My worldview does not depend on Jews.
“Who exactly?”
There are competing and overlapping factions converging on a similar point. Broadly speaking the system is run by international elites who have deemed it mutually beneficial to impoverish and dispossess Western people. They do not all share the same ideas or end goals. Tony Blair and his followers like Starmer are primarily concerned with the accumulation of power through technocratic management of every facet of our lives. This is why Blair is so keen on digital IDs, which Starmer will dutifully deliver. Western academics and philanthropists are primarily concerned with transferring wealth and power away from Western populations into non-Western ones. On the right they are often called Third-Worldists. Strip away the philanthropic language and intellectual justifications, and what you get is basically race communism.
Your curiosity is commendable, but if you’re coming from a liberal perspective, Frank’s material is pretty deep in the weeds. Many of the questions you have are considered settled here. It’s agreed amongst most of his audience that liberalism has failed because of flawed first principles. All the system can do is massage the public into accepting a managed decline rather than allow them to entertain genuine (aka non-liberal) solutions. Sorry for lengthy comment.
Promises, you write: It's agreed amongst most of [Frank's] audience that liberalism has failed because of flawed first principles."
Can you elaborate?
As I indicated in my previous response to Charlie, I hold that (neo)-liberalism failed because of its insufficiently clear application, not because it is categorically flawed.
Care for an admittedly silly analogy from my day job (carpentry): if you cut your rafters too short, they will not hold up your roof. But that obviously doesn't mean that the idea of having rafters hold up your roof is categorically wrong. All it does mean is that you will have to review how you work out your rafters length (and trust me,I have been there!)
Silly though this analogy might look, it does illustrate my sense of exasperation with the likes of Frank - and I do encounter them here in Australia, as well as in my native Germany: you correctly identify and diagnose many of the incidental issues that have been allowed to grow into huge problems over the last 50+ years in western democracies.
But solutions? None that I can recognise. What's holding up your outlook? If not a commitment to liberty, what are the "rafters" that hold up Frank's preferred political structure?
Sorry for taking some time to get back to this, I still wanted to have a crack at answering your questions.
There are many critical perspectives on liberalism in this space, but these are two of the most common criticisms.
1- The individual as above the collective. No collective can hold for long without a sense of group belonging. Without a collective, there is no culture, no shared belief, language or customs. These things bind individuals together and make them more. It makes them into a people. In Western thought, the importance of the individual has metastasized into “individualism” wherein the highest good a person can achieve is the fullest realization of a theoretical authentic self. This manifests eventually as liberating the self from all unchosen categories. Race, sex, culture, everything. The search for the authentic self collides with reality as group cohesion weakens and can no longer maintain itself. Everyone embraces more niche and meaningless identity categories that can’t bind individuals into a people. These niche categories act like consumer brand identities. Just as shallow, just as fluid, just as liable to change at a moment’s notice. One moment you like Nikes, the next Adidas. A man today, a woman tomorrow. And on it goes. The primacy of the individual is one of the more significant category errors in Western thinking of the last few centuries.
2- The blank slate. Liberalism as a philosophy assumes that the differences between individuals and groups are mostly cosmetic. All against all. There is the assumption that we can educate people and groups out of any behavioral differences and anti-social tendencies. Whether it’s culture or genetic is irrelevant. These group’s behaviors are so deeply ingrained it may as well be biologically driven. A limited number of individuals can change and assimilate. Most won’t. They seek out their own and push for their interests. As Thomas Sowell said, “human beings are not random events”.
Your analogy makes sense and captures the point I’m making. Liberty, sovereignty, the individual. All have a place. It’s in the character of Western people to behave more individually. But it only works provided it has guard rails that allow it to benefit a people. The idea of the individual is ours. Developed uniquely in our tradition. It cannot scale universally. Other cultures are obsessed with tribal interests and group cohesion. Demographic realities are changing and Western people who want a future need a strategic pivot. The individual cannot remain the most important thing in Western political thought.
The assumed universal dignity of people is also a quirk of our tradition that the rest of the world does not share. These ideas have a place, but they shouldn’t be the central pillars of our lives. We become too open, too trusting and too willing to hand important responsibilities to people who don’t have our interests at heart.
More in depth intellectual critiques can be found at the Imperium Press Substack.
Solutions? Far from comprehensive, but we can start here, and start small:
1. Stop assuming we can infinitely extend our complete honesty and openness to out-groups. This level of trust is reserved for close friends in the in-group and family. Your tribe. That’s it.
2. Take complete ownership over ourselves and loved ones. The cavalry isn’t coming. We must come to accept our profound alone-ness and internalize that no one can look after our interests like us. The rest of the world already understands this. Have an opinion about what your children are doing and guide them accordingly. This also means grater involvement in local political life. City and school councils, for example. Life changing decisions are being made by others in mundane council meetings with low attendance. Everyone there is looking after the interests of their coalition. Sounds trite and boring, but it is true. Your people’s well being is your responsibility and no one else will do it for you. Do not offload your responsibilities to institutions as most are aligned against us.
On the macro scale it’s even more difficult. A coordinated counter-elite must permanently unseat the entrenched corrupted elite we live under now. The closest thing we have to this today is Elon and Rupert Lowe. Elon is not politically on the right, but he has created a venue for right wing people to pierce the media narratives. This has been devastating for establishment credibility and it’s why Blair and company are so keen to get a lid on widespread internet access. Rupert Lowe is possibly the only politician in the Western world today actually representing his people’s interest. He is extremely valuable as he knows the ins and outs of politics and can get things moving organizationally.
Many disparate pro-Western groups are quietly organizing but have yet to consolidate into something that can move the needle. They’re not hard to find. If you want to help people with similar concerns you can probably find a place to put your skills to use.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. There is far too much here for a comprehensive reply, but a few thoughts.
One thing that continually troubles me is what appears to be a category error between liberalism and progressivism. I repeatedly encounter the claim that the pathologies of contemporary progressivism are simply the inevitable culmination of liberalism itself, yet I rarely see this argued so much as asserted.
Suppose individualism has become excessive. Fine. But why assume that the corrective which gave rise to liberalism was itself mistaken? Why assume that progressive ideology is identical with liberalism rather than one contingent development within it?
The sequence might just as easily look like this:
- pre-liberal orders generated certain pathologies;
- liberalism emerged as a correction to those pathologies;
- liberalism generated pathologies of its own;
- progressivism emerged as one particular metastasis of liberal modernity;
- future corrections may emerge from within liberalism itself.
If that possibility is admitted, then the point of departure changes completely.
And this brings me to another issue. I find the origins of liberalism highly relevant. If we are at point A and ought really to be at point B, then surely we need to understand how we travelled from B to A in the first place.
When I hear "liberalism has failed", my instinct is to ask for the map. Where exactly did we take the wrong turn? Locke? The Enlightenment? Industrialisation? Universal suffrage? The welfare state? Sexual liberation? Globalisation? The internet?
Instead, I often get the impression that we are being asked either to teleport back to the day before we set off, or simply turn around and walk in a straight line towards some previous destination regardless of whether the old road still exists.
That strikes me as deeply problematic.
Because if progressive ideology is not liberalism itself, but merely one possible development within liberalism, then we are no longer asking how to restore a pre-liberal order. We are asking where, how and why particular developments occurred within liberal modernity itself.
That seems to me a profoundly different question.
Similarly, I struggle with reducing academics, philanthropists, politicians and technocrats into a single actor with a common purpose. History usually appears more fragmented and contingent than that. Competing interests, unintended consequences and trade-offs seem more plausible to me than unified conspiracies.
I also find appeals to "stable and meaningful things" difficult because they raise more questions than they answer. Stable and meaningful for whom? By persuasion or by coercion? Universally accepted by everyone, or only by those who happened to be dominant at the time? Historical societies were rarely harmonious. They contained dissenters, heretics, outsiders and internal conflicts. Nostalgia often compresses a messy reality into an idealised memory.
On responsibility, I agree with much of what you say. People should take responsibility for themselves, their families and their communities. I have no objection to that.
Where I hesitate is the suggestion that honesty and trustworthiness should largely terminate at the boundaries of tribe. Historically, our failures to extend trust beyond narrow circles have often produced precisely the cycles of conflict we now lament. Every tribe today was itself yesterday's coalition.
This is one reason I remain deeply sceptical of Catholic revivalism. Not because I have any hostility towards Catholicism itself, but because I struggle to see how it solves the underlying problem.
Suppose such a revival succeeded. What happens when people disagree? What happens when they cease believing? What happens when Protestants, atheists, Muslims or dissenting Catholics refuse to conform?
Historically, Christendom never enjoyed universal consensus. It contained schism, persecution, violence and endless disputes. The notion that there once existed a coherent and harmonious Christian order waiting to be restored strikes me less as history and more as retrospective mythology.
More fundamentally, I am not convinced that our problem is the abandonment of one sacred framework so much as the recurring tendency to turn contingent arrangements into sacred certainties.
People are imperfect. Institutions are imperfect. Traditions are imperfect. Liberalism is imperfect. Christianity is imperfect. Nationalism is imperfect.
I suspect there is no political or metaphysical architecture capable of abolishing trade-offs. Every solution generates new tensions. Every order eventually produces pathologies of its own.
Perhaps the challenge is not to rediscover the one true arrangement we abandoned, but to cultivate enough humility to recognise that we never possessed one in the first place.
And perhaps the reason I keep returning to genealogy is because I wonder whether following the story all the way through leads to a different starting point from that preferred by revivalists. If progressivism is not simply liberalism, but one contingent development within it, then understanding may not point us backwards at all. It may point us somewhere else entirely.
Promises, thanks for that reply and explanation. We're getting into the weeds now! A comprehensive reply is beyond the scope of a threat like this. It'd take about 100,000 words (50,000 of which I've written and might put up on substack. After I've re-written them).
One problem is terminology itself. In my experience I begin by making statements about justice, fairness, equality etc. that are so bland and generalistic that few people could disagree! But any subsequent follow-up to explore actual implications immediately alarms people and makes further exchange impossible. The word "communism" has virtually everyone drop into a deep and well-worn "Lenin/Stalin/GULAG/Mao/PRK" groove from which they seem unable ever to emerge. That's not the"communism" that I'm talking about!! The communism that I advocate is about the radical extension of individual liberty and agency from the political realm into the economic and commercial realm also.
Likewise, "Anarchism" is taken to mean lawlessness, public disorder, rioting and the emergence of gang leaders and warlords exercising despotic command over their sphere of influence - when in fact it means the exact opposite, and nihilistic chaos is properly termed "Anomie".
Frank seems to have some sympathies towards the doctrines of the catholic church - does he, and do you, recognise that catholic thinkers have made important contributions to anarchist debate, and that the concept of "Subsidiarity" is of catholic origin! It is, incidentally, the very concept which enables a better understanding of the systemic shortcomings of our "representative democracy", the amelioration of which does require systemic change, and not just more honest and more capable politicians - a new "counter-elite" to replace the current entrenched and corrupted "established elite", will, if working within the same power structures as exist now, inevitably become as corrupted as the presently existing one. (The donkey Benjamin from Animal Farm sends his regards!)
There's dozens and potentially even hundreds of such individual definitions which need to be tidied up before any serious discussion could even begin.
I'll pick up on a few of your points. Coming at this debate from a communist direction, which is inherently collective, I believe that I have to go all out to safeguard the individual from being subsumed and overwhelmed by the collective and the hivemind. Hence my insistence that we must not wind back our understanding and practice of liberalism, but expand it!
You (and numerous others) remonstrate that Liberalism is a blank slate, a very troubling nihilistic lack of definition at both individual and communal level. My response: it leaves you with the responsibility to find your own definitions, and live by them. Liberty, properly understood, does not mean unlimited entitlement and license, but above all individual responsibility.
I do believe that we can educate ourselves out of anti-social tendencies. I believe that we can learn to live together and share this puny blue planet in constructive ways. As far as I can see, to assume that we can't amounts to giving up on humanity altogether and admit existential defeat. I've decided not to do that.
I disagree about extending trust and honesty only to those closest to us. Yes, we must be guarded - but our dealings with EVERYONE must be honest and trustworthy at the same time. HISTORICALLY, THEY HAVEN'T BEEN! And that has repercussions which even in a hypothetical best-case scenario will reverberate for some time to come. We are to deal with those repercussions honestly and patiently, and not use them as excuse for further manipulative shortcuts of our own.
There's much more to be said.
I still can't shake the feeling that we might agree more than we disagree, but that, especially in the current hyper-polarising political climate we might find ourselves entrenched in opposing camps and having at each other with increasingly blunt philosophical tools - whisks definitively not my preferred outlook.
Yeah, building and construction can be philosophically edifying.
Having spent a few years working as truck driver, I can also offer useful transport analogies - about the foolishness of trying to put the trailer before the tractor, for example.
Motorbike riding also is instructive, about the need to keep moving (forward) so as to maintain balance, amongst others.
Without wanting to be overly romantic about it, because it can be a hard job (ask my back),there is something different about manual labour, the relationships it builds and how respect is earned and returned. I suspect we will be returning to Frank's turf here, talking about work, meaning, pride basic respect for the people around you who can do the job. Sites are one of the few places left where I people don't really have to watch what they say, or at least if you do drop a bombshell the consequence is immediate and direct.
I wonder whether rather than DEI training people would better served doing a week in site following a broom, having the piss taken out of them, learning how to get your digs back in then finished with early doors beers on Friday (maybe this is less Frank)
I grew up in a solid middle class academic background, and my carpentry apprenticeship was meant to be no more than a three year excursion into the strange and wondrous world of the working man, in preparation for subsequent study of architecture. Except I never got around to it!
Jean-Jaques Rousseau - he of the contrat social -recommended that boys start out learning a manual trade before going on to bigger and better things. I wouldn't necessarily want to be doctrinaire about that - but I think he got a point!
Thank you for this response, please do not apologise for the length, I'm not here wage a tik tok slogan war
I am here because much Frank's diagnosis resonates, but some of the BTL commentary troubles me. I am not ideologically committed to liberalism and am broadly ideologically opposed to progressivism, so this my comments are honest enquiry not an attempt to set up a fight.
Thank you for the substantive reply, I need time to reflect, but would you accept further questions?
Mark, may I ask how it is possible to be "broadly ideologically opposed to progressivism"? As far as I can see, progress is inevitable. Always has been, since before there was a bunch of hairless apes decide to climb down off the trees and learn how to walk on their hind legs only.
I am reminded of 30 years ago, when I, foolishly having joined the Australian Labor Party, attended a "rank-and-file consultation meeting" in the wake of the devastating election loss of the Keating government. One of the speakers summed up the feeling of being tired of change and unrelenting progress in the electorate with "stop the planet, I want to get off".
My objection then was the same it is now: we can't stop progress. All we can do is try to steer progress in our preferred direction - and in order to do that, we need to decide which direction we would like to progress.
I certainly do not believe that it is possible to go back in time, and to "restore" some previous state of politics or national affairs. Even if we could identify a previous time which appears preferable to our own - which endeavour is itself a wild goose chase. As you seem to understand very well.
Progress and progressivism are not the same. You appear to be saying that things change and you can't turn the clock back. I agree with that.
Time progresses. Progressivism is a political ideology that appears to get used interchangeably with Liberalism, conflation that I am uncomfortable with. Progressivism is the ideological parent of the woke movement including, but not confined to, the trans movement, third wave femenism, critical race theory, anti colonialism. The reason that I object to it's conflation with Liberalism us that I understand it to have a very different philosophical geneology to liberalism.
Thanks for your reply, Mark. I thought you might say something like that. I might have...
As for the ill-considered conflation of progressivism with liberalism, I invoke the idea that "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it ends towards justice!" As someone who has convinced himself that whilst justice and liberty are not one and the same thing, they are inextricably bound up with each other, and therefore progress towards one means progress towards the other. Next question: do I presume teleological purpose to unfolding historical progress. Answer: Yes. But others might disagree.
As for the conflation of wokism with progress/progressivism: Yes, that's very annoying!!
I blame the failed '68ers would-be student revoluzzers, and Rudi Dutschke's idea about The Long March Through The Institutions. Aware that their idea of a proletarian revolution was not going to eventuate, the 68ers entered the existing institutions of the nation state with the aim of subverting them from within. But they got terribly waylaid; many of them made lucrative careers predicated on loudly remonstrating and administrating all manner of individual grievances; and fearing for their pension entitlements, simply preferred to forget about the revolution altogether.
"More fundamentally, if human beings require metaphysical order, can you provide evidence that the ordinary people you champion actually lived better lives before liberalism? Not the kings, theologians and philosophers. The people."
I can answer this very easily as it's a common conflation by people:
- People confuse:
A) Economic, technological, and scientific progress
with:
B) Governmental, political, moral, ethical, cultural, philosophical and psychological progress.
We can have the former category, without enduring absolute degradation in the latter. Liberalism is not a requirement for the former.
The UK and the US has improved on the former (in many dimensions, worse in some), but absolutely rotted in the latter.
Charlie, you say: "Liberalism is not a requirement for [economic, technological and scientific progress]."
I think that, in the medium to long term, it actually is. In fact, I think that in the long term we will have to complement "political, moral, ethical, cultural, philosophical and psychological" liberalism with true economic and commercial liberalism (as distinct from Marge and Ronnie's fraudulent 'neo-liberalism'). And we will have to augment our present timid, indecisive and more often than not manipulative "liberalism" to a far more comprehensive, radical and uncompromising, fully-fledged libertarianism.
But that's just my view.
What's your's? If you say political and philosophical liberalism is the problem, and it needs to go, what political and philosophical outlook would you want to replace it with? And how far would you go to impose your outlook on dissenters like myself?
I'll be clear. I'm here because Frank went viral. People I know have sent clips around presenting him as a voice of common sense and as a thought leader for Restore UK. He gets interviews and endorsements from other commentators, so I thought it prudent to actually explore his ideas rather than simply dismiss them.
That exploration has unearthed more questions than answers, but every time I ask questions I get presented with more abstract theory, which is exactly what you've done here.
So I'll ask again.
Your response appears to conflate liberalism and progressivism. Is that deliberate? Is it simply a function of American usage, or do you genuinely see no meaningful distinction between the two?
Your categorisation of types of progress also confused me. You listed about a dozen different forms of progress, compressed them into two groups, then declared one desirable and the other something to be endured. Even if I grant your categories, what exactly do you find so burdensome about philosophical or psychological progress?
By what metric are you measuring the "rot" supposedly caused in the UK and US?
Compared to whom?
Compared to when?
And who gets to decide?
Finally, this whole argument seems to swing on the existence of some pre-liberal point at which ordinary people's lives were better.
So show me.
Which people?
Better in what sense?
By what measure?
Because I keep asking questions about people and receiving theories about civilisation.
I ask about ordinary lives and I get abstractions.
And I have a genuine concern in asking this.
Frank has either been positioned, or is positioning himself, as a voice for an increasingly popular political movement in the UK. Ultimately politics stops being about essays and starts being about actions, and both he and many of his supporters seem remarkably coy about specifics, beyond one or two people who eventually say, "Well, it's the Jews, innit."
As such, Frank can be read in two very different ways.
Either he is a talented thinker correctly diagnosing some of the pathologies of modern life.
Or he is an articulate grifter, relying on his audience not understanding the philosophy he deploys, whilst providing intellectual cover for very old and very ugly ideas.
I genuinely don't know which of those two readings is correct.
Who exactly is a good question. The best answer is no-one.
It's all a monumental cockup, which might align with some groups interests, maybe they even claim or gloat some responsibility. But fundamentally it is a mathematical relationship coupled with over specialisation coupled with retardedness.
Liberal Democracy promises two things. That you will be richer and freer. It's politicians therefore promise such even whilst banning everything that they can.
Their most fundamental promise, since Thatcher at least, is that the economy will grow. Only very recently are there politicians who don't promise a continuation of GDP fetishism.
Hence if you are a politician the economy must grow. It's the economy stupid. They know they will be booted out if recession hits.
Meanwhile the female part of the population hears unaccountable rather than merely freer. They vote to be maximally unaccountable which result sin the birthrate plummeting. Charting a massively multi variant index such a GIWPS versus TFR gives a simple and clear relationship across billions of data points. The more feminist a country, the lower the total fertility rate.
This is not a problem for a politician as their terms are only generally 4-5 years in the West. The can can be kicked down the road however 18 years after the TFR drops, the population also begins to.
Which would result in GDP reducing. So they import people. First entrepreneurs, then highly skilled, then skilled until eventually even Somali goat herders are not just welcome but incentivised.
This whole process is what I call helicodemos. And is happening right across the West.
Note that no-one is to blame. No-one is responsible. Economists just study GDP and fetishise propelling pencils. Politicians want to be elected so court the female vote with promises of more housing, protection and resources. Blue haired mastodons demand ever more bizarre rights from politicians. No-one is intrinsically forcing lasses not to copulate in order to start families.
And people talk about all of these things individually, but never the overall effect. Never helicodemos, just it's component parts.
The long, slow death spiral advertises itself as progress.
Empires, societies and civilizations collapse not because of outside pressure, but from inside.
Western civilization has stopped believing in itself and lost its self respect. It's like a human organism which develops an auto-immune disease and begins to die because it no longer creates antibodies or its immune system turns against its own body.
People like Frank Wright are unfortunately the exception and not the rule.
We must all brace for impact. The West is gonna collapse. And - like the Western Roman Empire - our world will not gonna recover our standards of living for 500 years or maybe even 1000.
The Mask Wearing Female Meme was great. It reminded me of COVID when I was wearing a full NBC Hooded Millennium Gas Mask with a battery powered enunciator on the face.
I got only one comment at my car, asking if I was "for real".
I said of course not, because everyone else other than me would be dead.
I got only one reaction in check out at the food store from a woman struggling with her face diaper who kept looking at me in horror and frustration at the same time. She gave up and said she was done with this feces and left the store.
You can still fool most of the people most of the time. Most people are fools, while the Educated and Rational are the most spectacular Rubes of all!
If you liked that you should have seen the little 4 year old child wearing the mask with his grand parents seeing me coming.
The shock and fear in their eyes, the child completely spellbound in his eyes.
I was concerned that I was terrifying them.
So I made breathing sounds and looked down at the little boy, reached out my black nitrile gloved hand and said:
"Luke! I am your Father."
The Child did not understand, but he heard his grand parents uncontrollable laughter, that they then understood that it was all a preposterous sick joke.
Excellent Work Mr. Wright. I zeroed in on the W. Wilson meme on making the world safe for Democracy. It reminded me of C.S. Lewis' wife stating that she was a Communist because WW2 on the other hand was about making the World Safe for Communism.
I recall the 1990's NATO destruction of the Churches of Revelations in the Balkans as Making Europe Safe for Islam, finally after 2 failed sieges of Vienna and the Battle of Tours.
Apparently, from your thesis, Empires as opposed to Democracies last about 250 years, while Democracies only last about 100 years as of late.
I almost would comment as R.C. Cook below that "liberal democracy" was merely a "front" for Marxism, as they were all constructed on most if not all of the Planks of the Communist Manifesto being immediately in operation or eventually incepted into their operation. I believe that Orthodox Rabbi Marvin Antleman's "To Eliminate the Opiate" does concur, but of course that is something that someone as limited in my reading and narrow in my cosmopolitan labeled bigotry would say.
So.
Thus.
Is the persistent failure of Liberal Democracy a Bug, or a Feature?
If it all has been tried before, just as Communism,
and
both being almost indistinguishable from the other,
and
both failing in mass death,
does not trying this again equal insanity for we as mankind will be trying for about the 50th time and expect a significantly different result?
I cannot help but see this as a GOD finally flooding out mankind moment, because for it to have continued on for another second was finally more suffering than to wipe out all but 8 of mankind at once. The image in my minds eye of my KING coming with an Iron Scepter where Faith and the Government are on HIS Shoulders is coming into sharper focus, that Mankind is utterly incapable of self-governance not just due to malice and corruption of those who seek power, but the continued ignorance of Eve.
Brilliant sir- however: the Catholics were in charge for 1000 years and they concentrated wealth and power in the very few, ripped off the poor shamelessly and to top it off burned people at the stake while some monasteries practiced buggery like it was San Francisco. That’s one reason why the world went liberal. The other reason is that A DECENT LIBERALISM was hijacked by the Gnostic oc-cults that run intelligence, banking and entertainment. We need a total tear down of MI5/6-CIA, a pragmatic populism, freedom of speech BUT ALSO a return to some sort of decency standards (tough one?) and money out of political campaigns. Thanks
As an American, I must apologize for the ahole Rockefeller family. They are no damn good. Hopefully Hell has them all. Add Gloria no bra Steinem to that too. Someone should have shoved a sock in her mouth and sewed her mouth shut. Our CIA/deep state demons have to be gutted. Their nefarious deeds like MK Ultra and Operation Paperclip are disgraceful and evil most foul. May that group all go to Hell.
Tony Blair can bend over and I will be happy to insert digital ID up his arse. That way we can always identify him for the anus he is.
Bottom Line: Liberals and Liberalism are a waste of space, time and energy. Losers extraordinaire. Is there a very remote island somewhere we can dump all the libtards and commies?
American? I don't think so. Finnish father, Scots mother, born and bred in the caves of Malta. You sea faring peoples, Sure Babylon was corrupt, but did you really need to burn it to the ground?
I have spent the last thirty years sloughing off, one by one, all of the political and cultural illusions that I was taught to take for granted in my youth. I can see the stage set; I can see the man (or the many men) behind the curtain; I can see that everything is fake and gay. What I cannot see is a way either backward or forward out of the mess.
There is a long game being played for sure, its rhythm is unmistakeable and its goal is clear but its not very good at what it does is it?
The drive towards Techno feudalism and the digital sensory over drive we experience every day pretty much drowns out reality already. Perhaps that is the last gasp of control, the only mechanism left for liberal democracy to 'enshrine' our freedoms?
Sorry Frank, sarcasm, its a thing.
I take in a lot of Chase Hughes points on psyops and after all he should know, he wrote a big book for the US administration on them!
Using his 'test' I cant see anything but government pysops, and of course when you have government departments like the RUCI (who mysteriously do not have a head of department, apparently something to do with an appropriate level of secrecy given the work they do, unlike MI5 MI6 CIA FBI Mossad etc) which I fancy is a trade craft PPP - subcontractors all over the place influencing media to promote 'the message'. Whichever message is necessary that week.
It would be interesting to see which unelected person runs that department under Home Office 'guidance' and who they are 'aligned' with wouldn't it?
But that would require democratic transparency of operation.
The point is you cant believe what you read, you cant be sure who has provided the information for what you are reading anyway, you have to go with whatever you can find in alternative sources.
And make your own mind up.
In which case all very 'liberal democratic' in form and an indicator of a failed state.
Unpacking the Key Indicators of a State on the Brink of Failure half way down - odd how it resonates
Hope you are enjoying the North, Frank, Wigan at this time of year can be a little changeable take a jacket even when its sunny and steer clear of the Wigan kebab - a delicacy to be greatly considered before purchase for those of a milder disposition!
It all boils down to the thieving, lying, degenerate lunatics, Satan’s tools the murdering Jews and their anus licking Masonic sodomite helpers who gain rank and privilege serving their Sanhedrin masters who co-sign their dystopian vision of total slavery for us goy cattle. Liberalism is a masquerade for selfish envy to redistribute to themselves what we all work for.
I believe your readers should give some consideration to the probability that "liberal democracy" was merely a "front" for the radical Jewish takeover of the world as spelled out in the Protocols. Helping to fund this takeover, at least in the US, has been the Jewish Mafia in control of usury, alcohol, drugs, gambling, high fashion, trafficking ,etc. The revolutionary Jewish movement also produced the current genocidal state of Israel which helped carry out the 9/11 false-flag attacks leading to a generation of wars in the Middle East, the latest being the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran.
Is this an explanation or a complaint?
After listening to Henry Ford's book on the issue, I want to reject what you suggest, but I cannot. This comes from a man who studied the Seven Laws of Noah with the school master of Jared Kuchner co-incidentally.
So much hidden is now made public. and the cause of these people violates GOD's WORD that HE is no respecter of persons, and is tone deaf to the fact that the Hebrew GOD is still the Unwanted GOD, especially by HIS people.
I saw Doc Holiday liked this.
I was greatly impacted by the Val Kilmer presentation of that man. Wish he could be my friend, only because he could tell the truth of his ignoble character.
Better a truthful snake than a false friend.
I can so relate to him.
Good grief
dilate
Excellent, hopeful essay. That which collapsed before will collapse again, despite the efforts of all the bureaucrats' horses and the the bureaucrats' men.
The brainwashing that has taken hold in the minds of many has been a wonder to behold. For proof I enter Sodomy Month as Exhibit A. That which was universally found to be revolting is now openly celebrated by right-thinking individuals.
The spell, thank God, seems to be breaking. Now is the time to press our advantage and keep speaking out against the propaganda.
Humpty Dumpty for PM. Now there's a thought...
No True Dentist would propose this. What is your opinion of surgery?
Brilliant
Great article, thanks Frank. I think Adam Curtis is great, i always remember his use of David Graeber's quote (in Can't get you out of my head if i remember correctly, bizarrely available on the ultra-liberal platform BBC iPlayer):
'The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently'.
A note of optimism in these dark ages.
I've previously been critical of the lack of specifics in your interview with McCormack, and I've asked questions under earlier articles.
This piece again paints with very broad brushstrokes, and I notice that when readers ask "who did this?", the answers seem to become increasingly vague until eventually somebody reaches for some very old and very dark explanations.
In this case, a comment invoking the Protocols and a worldwide Jewish conspiracy was not merely left standing, but liked.
So perhaps some actual questions again.
You argue that liberal democracy failed around a century ago. Fine.
But why reduce the collapse of those states to liberalism itself? Were hyperinflation, war, revolutionary movements, ethnic tensions and economic crises irrelevant?
Likewise, why assume that the origins of liberalism were principally a management-class project, rather than a response to genuine grievances and injustices?
More fundamentally, if human beings require metaphysical order, can you provide evidence that the ordinary people you champion actually lived better lives before liberalism? Not the kings, theologians and philosophers. The people.
And finally, a question I am increasingly curious about.
Would it be possible to receive an answer to any of these questions that does not eventually end with "the Jews"?
Because I have now spent several weeks listening, reading and asking questions, and I am beginning to notice a pattern.
The diagnosis starts with bureaucracy, alienation, propaganda and elite failure, all of which are worth discussing.
But when one asks "who exactly?", some people seem remarkably eager to arrive at the same destination that Europe has visited before.
I genuinely hope that isn't where your argument ultimately leads.
If it isn't, then perhaps some specificity would help.
“Why reduce the collapse of those states to liberalism itself?”
The more relevant question is, was liberalism able to address the crises of hyperinflation, war, revolutionary movements, ethnic tensions and economic crises? Liberalism was stress tested in the early 20th century and did not hold. It similarly does not hold today, hence the need for our system today to invest so heavily in narrative control and perception management.
“Why assume the origins of liberalism were principally a management-class project?”
The origins of liberalism are not relevant to Frank’s point. Whatever its origins, the management class uses liberalism as its legitimating narrative about itself. See the quote from Walter Lippmann above. See Edward Bernaise’s work in the Adam Curtis documentary “Century of the Self”. The management class uses liberalism the primary means to advertise their system. It serves as their foundational ideological justification.
“Can you provide evidence that ordinary people lived better lives before liberalism?”
“Better” is a hard thing to measure as it carries an implied value judgment. I and many here feel strongly that liberalism sapped our societies of the things that made them stable and meaningful. Whatever benefits a genuinely liberal system may have yields diminishing returns as society drifts further from its foundations.
I feel no need to talk about Jews. My worldview does not depend on Jews.
“Who exactly?”
There are competing and overlapping factions converging on a similar point. Broadly speaking the system is run by international elites who have deemed it mutually beneficial to impoverish and dispossess Western people. They do not all share the same ideas or end goals. Tony Blair and his followers like Starmer are primarily concerned with the accumulation of power through technocratic management of every facet of our lives. This is why Blair is so keen on digital IDs, which Starmer will dutifully deliver. Western academics and philanthropists are primarily concerned with transferring wealth and power away from Western populations into non-Western ones. On the right they are often called Third-Worldists. Strip away the philanthropic language and intellectual justifications, and what you get is basically race communism.
Your curiosity is commendable, but if you’re coming from a liberal perspective, Frank’s material is pretty deep in the weeds. Many of the questions you have are considered settled here. It’s agreed amongst most of his audience that liberalism has failed because of flawed first principles. All the system can do is massage the public into accepting a managed decline rather than allow them to entertain genuine (aka non-liberal) solutions. Sorry for lengthy comment.
Cheers
You
Promises, you write: It's agreed amongst most of [Frank's] audience that liberalism has failed because of flawed first principles."
Can you elaborate?
As I indicated in my previous response to Charlie, I hold that (neo)-liberalism failed because of its insufficiently clear application, not because it is categorically flawed.
Care for an admittedly silly analogy from my day job (carpentry): if you cut your rafters too short, they will not hold up your roof. But that obviously doesn't mean that the idea of having rafters hold up your roof is categorically wrong. All it does mean is that you will have to review how you work out your rafters length (and trust me,I have been there!)
Silly though this analogy might look, it does illustrate my sense of exasperation with the likes of Frank - and I do encounter them here in Australia, as well as in my native Germany: you correctly identify and diagnose many of the incidental issues that have been allowed to grow into huge problems over the last 50+ years in western democracies.
But solutions? None that I can recognise. What's holding up your outlook? If not a commitment to liberty, what are the "rafters" that hold up Frank's preferred political structure?
Hi Arnd,
Sorry for taking some time to get back to this, I still wanted to have a crack at answering your questions.
There are many critical perspectives on liberalism in this space, but these are two of the most common criticisms.
1- The individual as above the collective. No collective can hold for long without a sense of group belonging. Without a collective, there is no culture, no shared belief, language or customs. These things bind individuals together and make them more. It makes them into a people. In Western thought, the importance of the individual has metastasized into “individualism” wherein the highest good a person can achieve is the fullest realization of a theoretical authentic self. This manifests eventually as liberating the self from all unchosen categories. Race, sex, culture, everything. The search for the authentic self collides with reality as group cohesion weakens and can no longer maintain itself. Everyone embraces more niche and meaningless identity categories that can’t bind individuals into a people. These niche categories act like consumer brand identities. Just as shallow, just as fluid, just as liable to change at a moment’s notice. One moment you like Nikes, the next Adidas. A man today, a woman tomorrow. And on it goes. The primacy of the individual is one of the more significant category errors in Western thinking of the last few centuries.
2- The blank slate. Liberalism as a philosophy assumes that the differences between individuals and groups are mostly cosmetic. All against all. There is the assumption that we can educate people and groups out of any behavioral differences and anti-social tendencies. Whether it’s culture or genetic is irrelevant. These group’s behaviors are so deeply ingrained it may as well be biologically driven. A limited number of individuals can change and assimilate. Most won’t. They seek out their own and push for their interests. As Thomas Sowell said, “human beings are not random events”.
Your analogy makes sense and captures the point I’m making. Liberty, sovereignty, the individual. All have a place. It’s in the character of Western people to behave more individually. But it only works provided it has guard rails that allow it to benefit a people. The idea of the individual is ours. Developed uniquely in our tradition. It cannot scale universally. Other cultures are obsessed with tribal interests and group cohesion. Demographic realities are changing and Western people who want a future need a strategic pivot. The individual cannot remain the most important thing in Western political thought.
The assumed universal dignity of people is also a quirk of our tradition that the rest of the world does not share. These ideas have a place, but they shouldn’t be the central pillars of our lives. We become too open, too trusting and too willing to hand important responsibilities to people who don’t have our interests at heart.
More in depth intellectual critiques can be found at the Imperium Press Substack.
Solutions? Far from comprehensive, but we can start here, and start small:
1. Stop assuming we can infinitely extend our complete honesty and openness to out-groups. This level of trust is reserved for close friends in the in-group and family. Your tribe. That’s it.
2. Take complete ownership over ourselves and loved ones. The cavalry isn’t coming. We must come to accept our profound alone-ness and internalize that no one can look after our interests like us. The rest of the world already understands this. Have an opinion about what your children are doing and guide them accordingly. This also means grater involvement in local political life. City and school councils, for example. Life changing decisions are being made by others in mundane council meetings with low attendance. Everyone there is looking after the interests of their coalition. Sounds trite and boring, but it is true. Your people’s well being is your responsibility and no one else will do it for you. Do not offload your responsibilities to institutions as most are aligned against us.
On the macro scale it’s even more difficult. A coordinated counter-elite must permanently unseat the entrenched corrupted elite we live under now. The closest thing we have to this today is Elon and Rupert Lowe. Elon is not politically on the right, but he has created a venue for right wing people to pierce the media narratives. This has been devastating for establishment credibility and it’s why Blair and company are so keen to get a lid on widespread internet access. Rupert Lowe is possibly the only politician in the Western world today actually representing his people’s interest. He is extremely valuable as he knows the ins and outs of politics and can get things moving organizationally.
Many disparate pro-Western groups are quietly organizing but have yet to consolidate into something that can move the needle. They’re not hard to find. If you want to help people with similar concerns you can probably find a place to put your skills to use.
Cheers
I know this reply wasn't to me, but it makes for interesting reading. I am still considering your response to me and the day job took over.
In response to this and your earlier reply to me.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. There is far too much here for a comprehensive reply, but a few thoughts.
One thing that continually troubles me is what appears to be a category error between liberalism and progressivism. I repeatedly encounter the claim that the pathologies of contemporary progressivism are simply the inevitable culmination of liberalism itself, yet I rarely see this argued so much as asserted.
Suppose individualism has become excessive. Fine. But why assume that the corrective which gave rise to liberalism was itself mistaken? Why assume that progressive ideology is identical with liberalism rather than one contingent development within it?
The sequence might just as easily look like this:
- pre-liberal orders generated certain pathologies;
- liberalism emerged as a correction to those pathologies;
- liberalism generated pathologies of its own;
- progressivism emerged as one particular metastasis of liberal modernity;
- future corrections may emerge from within liberalism itself.
If that possibility is admitted, then the point of departure changes completely.
And this brings me to another issue. I find the origins of liberalism highly relevant. If we are at point A and ought really to be at point B, then surely we need to understand how we travelled from B to A in the first place.
When I hear "liberalism has failed", my instinct is to ask for the map. Where exactly did we take the wrong turn? Locke? The Enlightenment? Industrialisation? Universal suffrage? The welfare state? Sexual liberation? Globalisation? The internet?
Instead, I often get the impression that we are being asked either to teleport back to the day before we set off, or simply turn around and walk in a straight line towards some previous destination regardless of whether the old road still exists.
That strikes me as deeply problematic.
Because if progressive ideology is not liberalism itself, but merely one possible development within liberalism, then we are no longer asking how to restore a pre-liberal order. We are asking where, how and why particular developments occurred within liberal modernity itself.
That seems to me a profoundly different question.
Similarly, I struggle with reducing academics, philanthropists, politicians and technocrats into a single actor with a common purpose. History usually appears more fragmented and contingent than that. Competing interests, unintended consequences and trade-offs seem more plausible to me than unified conspiracies.
I also find appeals to "stable and meaningful things" difficult because they raise more questions than they answer. Stable and meaningful for whom? By persuasion or by coercion? Universally accepted by everyone, or only by those who happened to be dominant at the time? Historical societies were rarely harmonious. They contained dissenters, heretics, outsiders and internal conflicts. Nostalgia often compresses a messy reality into an idealised memory.
On responsibility, I agree with much of what you say. People should take responsibility for themselves, their families and their communities. I have no objection to that.
Where I hesitate is the suggestion that honesty and trustworthiness should largely terminate at the boundaries of tribe. Historically, our failures to extend trust beyond narrow circles have often produced precisely the cycles of conflict we now lament. Every tribe today was itself yesterday's coalition.
This is one reason I remain deeply sceptical of Catholic revivalism. Not because I have any hostility towards Catholicism itself, but because I struggle to see how it solves the underlying problem.
Suppose such a revival succeeded. What happens when people disagree? What happens when they cease believing? What happens when Protestants, atheists, Muslims or dissenting Catholics refuse to conform?
Historically, Christendom never enjoyed universal consensus. It contained schism, persecution, violence and endless disputes. The notion that there once existed a coherent and harmonious Christian order waiting to be restored strikes me less as history and more as retrospective mythology.
More fundamentally, I am not convinced that our problem is the abandonment of one sacred framework so much as the recurring tendency to turn contingent arrangements into sacred certainties.
People are imperfect. Institutions are imperfect. Traditions are imperfect. Liberalism is imperfect. Christianity is imperfect. Nationalism is imperfect.
I suspect there is no political or metaphysical architecture capable of abolishing trade-offs. Every solution generates new tensions. Every order eventually produces pathologies of its own.
Perhaps the challenge is not to rediscover the one true arrangement we abandoned, but to cultivate enough humility to recognise that we never possessed one in the first place.
And perhaps the reason I keep returning to genealogy is because I wonder whether following the story all the way through leads to a different starting point from that preferred by revivalists. If progressivism is not simply liberalism, but one contingent development within it, then understanding may not point us backwards at all. It may point us somewhere else entirely.
Promises, thanks for that reply and explanation. We're getting into the weeds now! A comprehensive reply is beyond the scope of a threat like this. It'd take about 100,000 words (50,000 of which I've written and might put up on substack. After I've re-written them).
One problem is terminology itself. In my experience I begin by making statements about justice, fairness, equality etc. that are so bland and generalistic that few people could disagree! But any subsequent follow-up to explore actual implications immediately alarms people and makes further exchange impossible. The word "communism" has virtually everyone drop into a deep and well-worn "Lenin/Stalin/GULAG/Mao/PRK" groove from which they seem unable ever to emerge. That's not the"communism" that I'm talking about!! The communism that I advocate is about the radical extension of individual liberty and agency from the political realm into the economic and commercial realm also.
Likewise, "Anarchism" is taken to mean lawlessness, public disorder, rioting and the emergence of gang leaders and warlords exercising despotic command over their sphere of influence - when in fact it means the exact opposite, and nihilistic chaos is properly termed "Anomie".
Frank seems to have some sympathies towards the doctrines of the catholic church - does he, and do you, recognise that catholic thinkers have made important contributions to anarchist debate, and that the concept of "Subsidiarity" is of catholic origin! It is, incidentally, the very concept which enables a better understanding of the systemic shortcomings of our "representative democracy", the amelioration of which does require systemic change, and not just more honest and more capable politicians - a new "counter-elite" to replace the current entrenched and corrupted "established elite", will, if working within the same power structures as exist now, inevitably become as corrupted as the presently existing one. (The donkey Benjamin from Animal Farm sends his regards!)
There's dozens and potentially even hundreds of such individual definitions which need to be tidied up before any serious discussion could even begin.
I'll pick up on a few of your points. Coming at this debate from a communist direction, which is inherently collective, I believe that I have to go all out to safeguard the individual from being subsumed and overwhelmed by the collective and the hivemind. Hence my insistence that we must not wind back our understanding and practice of liberalism, but expand it!
You (and numerous others) remonstrate that Liberalism is a blank slate, a very troubling nihilistic lack of definition at both individual and communal level. My response: it leaves you with the responsibility to find your own definitions, and live by them. Liberty, properly understood, does not mean unlimited entitlement and license, but above all individual responsibility.
I do believe that we can educate ourselves out of anti-social tendencies. I believe that we can learn to live together and share this puny blue planet in constructive ways. As far as I can see, to assume that we can't amounts to giving up on humanity altogether and admit existential defeat. I've decided not to do that.
I disagree about extending trust and honesty only to those closest to us. Yes, we must be guarded - but our dealings with EVERYONE must be honest and trustworthy at the same time. HISTORICALLY, THEY HAVEN'T BEEN! And that has repercussions which even in a hypothetical best-case scenario will reverberate for some time to come. We are to deal with those repercussions honestly and patiently, and not use them as excuse for further manipulative shortcuts of our own.
There's much more to be said.
I still can't shake the feeling that we might agree more than we disagree, but that, especially in the current hyper-polarising political climate we might find ourselves entrenched in opposing camps and having at each other with increasingly blunt philosophical tools - whisks definitively not my preferred outlook.
Give me a heads up if you do post to here
Hi Mark, I'm new to substack. These are my first comments here ever. I'm still figuring out how all this is supposed to work.
How do I notify you?
Ha, I'm a carpenter and electrician. I too have many building analogies.
Yeah, building and construction can be philosophically edifying.
Having spent a few years working as truck driver, I can also offer useful transport analogies - about the foolishness of trying to put the trailer before the tractor, for example.
Motorbike riding also is instructive, about the need to keep moving (forward) so as to maintain balance, amongst others.
Without wanting to be overly romantic about it, because it can be a hard job (ask my back),there is something different about manual labour, the relationships it builds and how respect is earned and returned. I suspect we will be returning to Frank's turf here, talking about work, meaning, pride basic respect for the people around you who can do the job. Sites are one of the few places left where I people don't really have to watch what they say, or at least if you do drop a bombshell the consequence is immediate and direct.
I wonder whether rather than DEI training people would better served doing a week in site following a broom, having the piss taken out of them, learning how to get your digs back in then finished with early doors beers on Friday (maybe this is less Frank)
I grew up in a solid middle class academic background, and my carpentry apprenticeship was meant to be no more than a three year excursion into the strange and wondrous world of the working man, in preparation for subsequent study of architecture. Except I never got around to it!
Jean-Jaques Rousseau - he of the contrat social -recommended that boys start out learning a manual trade before going on to bigger and better things. I wouldn't necessarily want to be doctrinaire about that - but I think he got a point!
Thank you for this response, please do not apologise for the length, I'm not here wage a tik tok slogan war
I am here because much Frank's diagnosis resonates, but some of the BTL commentary troubles me. I am not ideologically committed to liberalism and am broadly ideologically opposed to progressivism, so this my comments are honest enquiry not an attempt to set up a fight.
Thank you for the substantive reply, I need time to reflect, but would you accept further questions?
Mark, may I ask how it is possible to be "broadly ideologically opposed to progressivism"? As far as I can see, progress is inevitable. Always has been, since before there was a bunch of hairless apes decide to climb down off the trees and learn how to walk on their hind legs only.
I am reminded of 30 years ago, when I, foolishly having joined the Australian Labor Party, attended a "rank-and-file consultation meeting" in the wake of the devastating election loss of the Keating government. One of the speakers summed up the feeling of being tired of change and unrelenting progress in the electorate with "stop the planet, I want to get off".
My objection then was the same it is now: we can't stop progress. All we can do is try to steer progress in our preferred direction - and in order to do that, we need to decide which direction we would like to progress.
I certainly do not believe that it is possible to go back in time, and to "restore" some previous state of politics or national affairs. Even if we could identify a previous time which appears preferable to our own - which endeavour is itself a wild goose chase. As you seem to understand very well.
Progress and progressivism are not the same. You appear to be saying that things change and you can't turn the clock back. I agree with that.
Time progresses. Progressivism is a political ideology that appears to get used interchangeably with Liberalism, conflation that I am uncomfortable with. Progressivism is the ideological parent of the woke movement including, but not confined to, the trans movement, third wave femenism, critical race theory, anti colonialism. The reason that I object to it's conflation with Liberalism us that I understand it to have a very different philosophical geneology to liberalism.
Thanks for your reply, Mark. I thought you might say something like that. I might have...
As for the ill-considered conflation of progressivism with liberalism, I invoke the idea that "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it ends towards justice!" As someone who has convinced himself that whilst justice and liberty are not one and the same thing, they are inextricably bound up with each other, and therefore progress towards one means progress towards the other. Next question: do I presume teleological purpose to unfolding historical progress. Answer: Yes. But others might disagree.
As for the conflation of wokism with progress/progressivism: Yes, that's very annoying!!
I blame the failed '68ers would-be student revoluzzers, and Rudi Dutschke's idea about The Long March Through The Institutions. Aware that their idea of a proletarian revolution was not going to eventuate, the 68ers entered the existing institutions of the nation state with the aim of subverting them from within. But they got terribly waylaid; many of them made lucrative careers predicated on loudly remonstrating and administrating all manner of individual grievances; and fearing for their pension entitlements, simply preferred to forget about the revolution altogether.
And here we are.
We should never end up in a site together, we would bore the shite out of everyone.
Glad to help. I’ll try to answer what questions I can.
"More fundamentally, if human beings require metaphysical order, can you provide evidence that the ordinary people you champion actually lived better lives before liberalism? Not the kings, theologians and philosophers. The people."
I can answer this very easily as it's a common conflation by people:
- People confuse:
A) Economic, technological, and scientific progress
with:
B) Governmental, political, moral, ethical, cultural, philosophical and psychological progress.
We can have the former category, without enduring absolute degradation in the latter. Liberalism is not a requirement for the former.
The UK and the US has improved on the former (in many dimensions, worse in some), but absolutely rotted in the latter.
Charlie, you say: "Liberalism is not a requirement for [economic, technological and scientific progress]."
I think that, in the medium to long term, it actually is. In fact, I think that in the long term we will have to complement "political, moral, ethical, cultural, philosophical and psychological" liberalism with true economic and commercial liberalism (as distinct from Marge and Ronnie's fraudulent 'neo-liberalism'). And we will have to augment our present timid, indecisive and more often than not manipulative "liberalism" to a far more comprehensive, radical and uncompromising, fully-fledged libertarianism.
But that's just my view.
What's your's? If you say political and philosophical liberalism is the problem, and it needs to go, what political and philosophical outlook would you want to replace it with? And how far would you go to impose your outlook on dissenters like myself?
LOL. Nothing good comes from liberal. Know it. Live it. Love it.
Thanks for your reply.
I'll be clear. I'm here because Frank went viral. People I know have sent clips around presenting him as a voice of common sense and as a thought leader for Restore UK. He gets interviews and endorsements from other commentators, so I thought it prudent to actually explore his ideas rather than simply dismiss them.
That exploration has unearthed more questions than answers, but every time I ask questions I get presented with more abstract theory, which is exactly what you've done here.
So I'll ask again.
Your response appears to conflate liberalism and progressivism. Is that deliberate? Is it simply a function of American usage, or do you genuinely see no meaningful distinction between the two?
Your categorisation of types of progress also confused me. You listed about a dozen different forms of progress, compressed them into two groups, then declared one desirable and the other something to be endured. Even if I grant your categories, what exactly do you find so burdensome about philosophical or psychological progress?
By what metric are you measuring the "rot" supposedly caused in the UK and US?
Compared to whom?
Compared to when?
And who gets to decide?
Finally, this whole argument seems to swing on the existence of some pre-liberal point at which ordinary people's lives were better.
So show me.
Which people?
Better in what sense?
By what measure?
Because I keep asking questions about people and receiving theories about civilisation.
I ask about ordinary lives and I get abstractions.
And I have a genuine concern in asking this.
Frank has either been positioned, or is positioning himself, as a voice for an increasingly popular political movement in the UK. Ultimately politics stops being about essays and starts being about actions, and both he and many of his supporters seem remarkably coy about specifics, beyond one or two people who eventually say, "Well, it's the Jews, innit."
As such, Frank can be read in two very different ways.
Either he is a talented thinker correctly diagnosing some of the pathologies of modern life.
Or he is an articulate grifter, relying on his audience not understanding the philosophy he deploys, whilst providing intellectual cover for very old and very ugly ideas.
I genuinely don't know which of those two readings is correct.
Which is precisely why I keep asking questions.
Are you a libtard?
Why do you treat me so badly? All I said was This Meal was so Fine Jehovah Himself tipped the waiter.
human beings require metaphysical order. I dis agree. Or maybe its Boolean Algebra all the way down.
Not sure what you are talking about?
That makes two of us.
Good!
Who exactly is a good question. The best answer is no-one.
It's all a monumental cockup, which might align with some groups interests, maybe they even claim or gloat some responsibility. But fundamentally it is a mathematical relationship coupled with over specialisation coupled with retardedness.
Liberal Democracy promises two things. That you will be richer and freer. It's politicians therefore promise such even whilst banning everything that they can.
Their most fundamental promise, since Thatcher at least, is that the economy will grow. Only very recently are there politicians who don't promise a continuation of GDP fetishism.
Hence if you are a politician the economy must grow. It's the economy stupid. They know they will be booted out if recession hits.
Meanwhile the female part of the population hears unaccountable rather than merely freer. They vote to be maximally unaccountable which result sin the birthrate plummeting. Charting a massively multi variant index such a GIWPS versus TFR gives a simple and clear relationship across billions of data points. The more feminist a country, the lower the total fertility rate.
This is not a problem for a politician as their terms are only generally 4-5 years in the West. The can can be kicked down the road however 18 years after the TFR drops, the population also begins to.
Which would result in GDP reducing. So they import people. First entrepreneurs, then highly skilled, then skilled until eventually even Somali goat herders are not just welcome but incentivised.
This whole process is what I call helicodemos. And is happening right across the West.
Note that no-one is to blame. No-one is responsible. Economists just study GDP and fetishise propelling pencils. Politicians want to be elected so court the female vote with promises of more housing, protection and resources. Blue haired mastodons demand ever more bizarre rights from politicians. No-one is intrinsically forcing lasses not to copulate in order to start families.
And people talk about all of these things individually, but never the overall effect. Never helicodemos, just it's component parts.
The long, slow death spiral advertises itself as progress.
Highly pertinent questions there, Mark. Thanks for trying to hold Frank's feet to the fire.
LOL. Libtards running wild in the UK. No wonder it has gone to shite.
As the old trope goes :
Empires, societies and civilizations collapse not because of outside pressure, but from inside.
Western civilization has stopped believing in itself and lost its self respect. It's like a human organism which develops an auto-immune disease and begins to die because it no longer creates antibodies or its immune system turns against its own body.
People like Frank Wright are unfortunately the exception and not the rule.
We must all brace for impact. The West is gonna collapse. And - like the Western Roman Empire - our world will not gonna recover our standards of living for 500 years or maybe even 1000.
Great article Frank. I for one am very glad you left the shire.
The Mask Wearing Female Meme was great. It reminded me of COVID when I was wearing a full NBC Hooded Millennium Gas Mask with a battery powered enunciator on the face.
I got only one comment at my car, asking if I was "for real".
I said of course not, because everyone else other than me would be dead.
I got only one reaction in check out at the food store from a woman struggling with her face diaper who kept looking at me in horror and frustration at the same time. She gave up and said she was done with this feces and left the store.
You can still fool most of the people most of the time. Most people are fools, while the Educated and Rational are the most spectacular Rubes of all!
The disarming effects of humour. Totalitarians hate it
Amen
If you liked that you should have seen the little 4 year old child wearing the mask with his grand parents seeing me coming.
The shock and fear in their eyes, the child completely spellbound in his eyes.
I was concerned that I was terrifying them.
So I made breathing sounds and looked down at the little boy, reached out my black nitrile gloved hand and said:
"Luke! I am your Father."
The Child did not understand, but he heard his grand parents uncontrollable laughter, that they then understood that it was all a preposterous sick joke.
Excellent Work Mr. Wright. I zeroed in on the W. Wilson meme on making the world safe for Democracy. It reminded me of C.S. Lewis' wife stating that she was a Communist because WW2 on the other hand was about making the World Safe for Communism.
I recall the 1990's NATO destruction of the Churches of Revelations in the Balkans as Making Europe Safe for Islam, finally after 2 failed sieges of Vienna and the Battle of Tours.
Apparently, from your thesis, Empires as opposed to Democracies last about 250 years, while Democracies only last about 100 years as of late.
I almost would comment as R.C. Cook below that "liberal democracy" was merely a "front" for Marxism, as they were all constructed on most if not all of the Planks of the Communist Manifesto being immediately in operation or eventually incepted into their operation. I believe that Orthodox Rabbi Marvin Antleman's "To Eliminate the Opiate" does concur, but of course that is something that someone as limited in my reading and narrow in my cosmopolitan labeled bigotry would say.
So.
Thus.
Is the persistent failure of Liberal Democracy a Bug, or a Feature?
If it all has been tried before, just as Communism,
and
both being almost indistinguishable from the other,
and
both failing in mass death,
does not trying this again equal insanity for we as mankind will be trying for about the 50th time and expect a significantly different result?
I cannot help but see this as a GOD finally flooding out mankind moment, because for it to have continued on for another second was finally more suffering than to wipe out all but 8 of mankind at once. The image in my minds eye of my KING coming with an Iron Scepter where Faith and the Government are on HIS Shoulders is coming into sharper focus, that Mankind is utterly incapable of self-governance not just due to malice and corruption of those who seek power, but the continued ignorance of Eve.
Brilliant sir- however: the Catholics were in charge for 1000 years and they concentrated wealth and power in the very few, ripped off the poor shamelessly and to top it off burned people at the stake while some monasteries practiced buggery like it was San Francisco. That’s one reason why the world went liberal. The other reason is that A DECENT LIBERALISM was hijacked by the Gnostic oc-cults that run intelligence, banking and entertainment. We need a total tear down of MI5/6-CIA, a pragmatic populism, freedom of speech BUT ALSO a return to some sort of decency standards (tough one?) and money out of political campaigns. Thanks
The Gnostic part is spot on!
The famous Sydney Harbour Bridge ( perhaps now infamous) had a temporary toll….🤣
and you guessed it decades later the toll remains. Not to mention the incredible road tolls we pay !
Funny how we buy a car and then we are forced by law to register it . This effectively means that the State can now continue the extortion ++++++
If not car owners, who should pay for roads? I mean, roads don't build themselves! (I've worked on road projects, and I sure wanted to be paid!)
Excellent synopsis.
As an American, I must apologize for the ahole Rockefeller family. They are no damn good. Hopefully Hell has them all. Add Gloria no bra Steinem to that too. Someone should have shoved a sock in her mouth and sewed her mouth shut. Our CIA/deep state demons have to be gutted. Their nefarious deeds like MK Ultra and Operation Paperclip are disgraceful and evil most foul. May that group all go to Hell.
Tony Blair can bend over and I will be happy to insert digital ID up his arse. That way we can always identify him for the anus he is.
Bottom Line: Liberals and Liberalism are a waste of space, time and energy. Losers extraordinaire. Is there a very remote island somewhere we can dump all the libtards and commies?
American? I don't think so. Finnish father, Scots mother, born and bred in the caves of Malta. You sea faring peoples, Sure Babylon was corrupt, but did you really need to burn it to the ground?
Read & enact "The Benedict Option A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation" by Rod Dreher
Greetings from Canada.
I have spent the last thirty years sloughing off, one by one, all of the political and cultural illusions that I was taught to take for granted in my youth. I can see the stage set; I can see the man (or the many men) behind the curtain; I can see that everything is fake and gay. What I cannot see is a way either backward or forward out of the mess.
Was the CIA’s US propaganda campaign designed to counter the active measures of the USSR as described by Yuri Bezmenov?
Another interesting read.
There is a long game being played for sure, its rhythm is unmistakeable and its goal is clear but its not very good at what it does is it?
The drive towards Techno feudalism and the digital sensory over drive we experience every day pretty much drowns out reality already. Perhaps that is the last gasp of control, the only mechanism left for liberal democracy to 'enshrine' our freedoms?
Sorry Frank, sarcasm, its a thing.
I take in a lot of Chase Hughes points on psyops and after all he should know, he wrote a big book for the US administration on them!
Using his 'test' I cant see anything but government pysops, and of course when you have government departments like the RUCI (who mysteriously do not have a head of department, apparently something to do with an appropriate level of secrecy given the work they do, unlike MI5 MI6 CIA FBI Mossad etc) which I fancy is a trade craft PPP - subcontractors all over the place influencing media to promote 'the message'. Whichever message is necessary that week.
It would be interesting to see which unelected person runs that department under Home Office 'guidance' and who they are 'aligned' with wouldn't it?
But that would require democratic transparency of operation.
The point is you cant believe what you read, you cant be sure who has provided the information for what you are reading anyway, you have to go with whatever you can find in alternative sources.
And make your own mind up.
In which case all very 'liberal democratic' in form and an indicator of a failed state.
Unpacking the Key Indicators of a State on the Brink of Failure half way down - odd how it resonates
https://scientifically.blog/what-is-a-failed-state
Hope you are enjoying the North, Frank, Wigan at this time of year can be a little changeable take a jacket even when its sunny and steer clear of the Wigan kebab - a delicacy to be greatly considered before purchase for those of a milder disposition!
It all boils down to the thieving, lying, degenerate lunatics, Satan’s tools the murdering Jews and their anus licking Masonic sodomite helpers who gain rank and privilege serving their Sanhedrin masters who co-sign their dystopian vision of total slavery for us goy cattle. Liberalism is a masquerade for selfish envy to redistribute to themselves what we all work for.
Michael, wow what description.