Read on Twitter
I have been thinking about this a lot over the last few days in reference to Slezkine's THE HOUSE OF GOVERNMENT, which may honestly be one of the very best books I have ever read https://twitter.com/erin_nerung/status/1339651369867874304
It is not about alt righters or internet subcultures. It is about the Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution, and it frames the Bolshevik movement as a millennial movement, comparable to early Christianity, early Islam, the anabaptists, Purtians, Mormons, and so forth.
He has a 120 page digression where he discusses the logic of the millennarian movement. The origin of the millennarian impulse is the central insight of the axial age: the world is not as the world ought to be.
The is/ought distinction leads to a radical critique of the world as it is in favor of an ethics of 'ought,' something that pre-Axial societies weren't much good at.
Fervent belief in the 'ought' leads to radical attempts to change the 'is' -- or at least apocalyptic visions of the end of 'is' and a future paradise where the world becomes what it ought to be.
The Bolsheviks tried to create that world; many Christian groups gathered together in anticipation of it. In places like China the same impulse led a lot of poets and sages to just abandon society all together and go live virtuously out in the mountains.
Every fringe ideology starts with the same thought that animates the old axial age prophets and philosophers: *something is wrong with the world.* This is why you will see people circle between socialism, libertarianism, alt-rightism, etc
They all share a rejection of what *is* as hopelessly misguided and corrupt; the difference is just in their explanation for what must be changed for the Real Day to finally arrive.
While I think it is important to have a code of ethics and not bend your life entirely to the logic of the world, increasingly I see this sort of knee-jerk opposition to everything that *is* as unhealthy and psychologically destructive.
The interesting thing about the cleverest people in the alt-right world is that they seemingly agree to this notion: that's the whole point of describing something as "based" -- e.g., it is *based* in reality (instead of unhinged moralisms and signalling).
But there is the contradiction. An ideology that defines itself as a defense of the *is* as superior to *ought* finds itself in performing contortions to justify itself when the actual world of *is* bears no resemblance to the *is* they defend.
That sentence is a bit contorted itself--I might restate it in simpler language: alt-righters defend social hierarchies, the need for unity and conformity, etc. all while categorically rejecting the hierarchies, etc. that they live under.
They wouldn't be any happier if they live in their imagined social order. "Is" never matches "ought." That is the sad reality: the regret of revolutionaries who live to see the Last Days in the flesh, and the foolishness of reactionaries who pine for a forgotten past.
Zip them a century back in time and they would be just as aware of the fact that *something is wrong with the world,* and consequently, they would be just as discontent.
The challenge is not to imagine heaven realized, nor even to realize it yourself. It cannot be done. Human life is different task: living admirably in a world that will always fall short of paradise.
