Concerning Identities and Identitarians

"Identity politics" has become such a dirty phrase that it is almost impossible to use it without hearing some righteous neocon vomit an embarrassing apology for equality and 'Western values' - whatever those are of course, it has become so hard to tell in the past fifty to a hundred years over which we appear to have misplaced them. According to mainstream conservatism, identity is not something with which we ought to be concerned. Special treatment of identity-based groups is certainly not something which the average conservative particularly considers expedient. It is precisely because modern 'centre-right' conservatism has abandoned its own identity, however, that it has failed, and morphed into what is now often called 'cuckservatism' in the contemporary ortho/reactosphere.

The contemporary centre-right goes part of the way towards a meaningful critique of the left, but stops jarringly short. Skeptics and classical libs love to bash what they call psuedo- or neo-progressivism, whilst at the same time peddling the idea that it is because we all deserve to be treated equally that the left has it wrong. What they don't seem to realise is that by constructing this argument, they have failed to refute the groundwork upon which leftist identity politics is built - their own beloved doctrine of equality. The right traditionally had its own identity politics, and indeed, some form of identitarianism is natural. We all have an identity, even those who refuse to admit that personal identities are crucial. The author here identifies first as a Catholic, a Traditionalist Catholic at that, and afterwards, a husband, an intellectual by turns and conservative revolutionary. It is because of personal identity that civilisational groups, and the subgroups which are divided into race, nation, culture et cetera, arise fairly organically. It is a natural human instinct to seek identity. When skeptics attack identity therefore, they attack the values of their own civilisation, the very thing they claim to love. What they fail to realise is that the problem with the left is not that they embrace identity politics, but that the identities which they do adopt are fanciful, contrived, empty at heart and generally harmful towards stable society. 

Stable identities are those which the right used to preserve. Religious identity was arguably the most important, and this is why most religious traditionalists put their faith first - without a spiritual path, there is realistically very little willpower beyond one's own egoistic desires to inspire one's actions. If one identifies with the people of their nation, specifically, those with whom one shares blood, homeland, history and ancestors, then we can tap into something which moves beyond ourselves. We find increasingly that the success of past civilisations and individual nations rested upon a kind of transcendental attitude towards teleology. Religion helped with this, but an alliance with tradition itself was seen as essential for the survival of a prosperous and healthy community of co-dwellers. Even the socialists of the 1960s did not usually disagree with this. If you had told a socialist of that era that in 2018 much of Europe would be subject to a multicultural crisis (which of course is a major threat to tradition), they would have called you misguided or even insane. Even after Powell first criticised what he rightly perceived as the pernicious effects of extra-civilisational migration, some of the most prominent figures of the 'moderate right' and left regretted his treatment at the hands of his detractors. One historian of the British Conservative Party writes:

“...years later he was defended, by both Edward Heath and the Labour leader Michael Foot, the former remarking that the “economic burden of immigration [had been] not without prescience”, and the latter calling it "tragic" that Powell had been misunderstood, when he had used the Virgil quote to emphasise his own personal sense of foreboding.”

But such is the way that the dissenter is treated, and today it is even worse than in Powell's. Identifying with tradition, religion and eternal connexion with that divine sense of continuity is no laughing matter. It is easy to hear the croaking chorus of amusement coming from the left when identity is described in such terms, but such laughter comes more likely from jealousy than from genuine scorn. What identity does the left offer? A strange, a priori thesis, a factless set of identities, grounded in nothing but lewd imagination. Do you feel troubled by your genitalia? Well, that's fine, because you can claim to be of the other gender, or indeed, of neither. Allow this poor young child (Deus, miserere illi) to explain the mindset to you at 0:53:

If you were able to watch that without feeling sick in the pit of your stomach, you will have seen that leftist identity is rooted not in the soul, or the eternal, but in the self. "I think that anyone can do what they want in life, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks." Hang morality, hang anyone else but me, for if I am an eight-year-old drag queen, here I stand. It is hardly the noblest of sights, is it? Sadly, in the above video, we think that it is this poor boy's parents who need replacing. 

If it isn't quite this bad, then identity is revolved by the left towards the self in other ways. Modern feminism turns female identity away from traditional feminine values, and characteristic strengths of female virtue, and encourages more quasi-manliness, more delusions of control, and subversion of the organic state of nature. Men are expected to be cowed into accepting this, because male identity might as well be defined as loosely and psychotically as the poor child's identity in the video above. Joseph de Maistre II has met several women who claim to be 'genderfluid', but nevertheless still seek to retain their feminist identity. When challenged over the fact that they no longer identified as women at all, they tended to resort to feigning upset, and abandoned rational debate. The left offers no identity for its acolytes at all, and instead keeps them in a state of overgrown childhood, defined by imagination and fantasy rather than legitimate identity. If such children, metaphorical or literal, grow into the next generation of adults without waking up from this existential nightmare, there will be only a weak and withered skeleton of a civilisation left in the West, having forgotten everything from both its history and character that set it apart from other civilisational traditions.

Attempts have been made in the New Right to revive interest in right-wing identity. The identitarian movements in Europe and America often identify many respectable traits from traditional European stock which every caring European conservationist ought to care about. The problem with identitarianism is that its solutions are often weak. One major concern that many traditionalists have with the high-profile, "capital letter" Alt-Right and its allies/spin-offs in Identitarianism peddled by the likes of Richard Spencer and his disciples is that these movements fail to identify the wider traditions, both spiritual and civilisational, that define our peoples both at home and abroad. If we are to find a solution, it must define its identity in terms far more meaningful than merely political ends.

This is where fears about the Alt-Right often manifest. Spencer may have read Julius Evola, but does he really realise the consequences of subscribing to the spiritual value of civilisational tradition? What happens if civil war was to come tomorrow? What happens if the left wins? Where do we go, where is our home? Some of us can't even turn to God anymore, and that, friends, is the real tragedy of our time.