The Populist Ethos
How The New Right Sees The World
There is a broad ethos, largely associated with right-wing populism, that is common to most of the various alt-right or new right ideologies. This populist ethos is very much contrary to both liberalism and libertarianism, despite producing some superficial similarities. I think a lack of understanding of this ethos, and how its various parts hang together, is causing a lot of confusion for liberals trying to make sense of what they are currently seeing in places like the American libertarian movement and MAGA.
My goal with this piece is to provide a big picture overview of this ethos and its picture of the world. This will not be an accurate description of every viewpoint of every person in the “new right”; rather it’s a description of the general zeitgeist of that world and an explanation for why various disparate ideas seem to frequently occur in tandem among those right-wing groups.
I also want to make it clear that I’m not arguing every single aspect of this ethos is necessarily wrong. Much of it is, certainly, and the big picture definitely is, but lies are often built on top of grains of truth. Bear this in mind.
Before we dive into it, I want to clearly outline what groups I consider to be part of the alt-right/new right to avoid confusion:
Right-Wing Conspiracy Theorists (Alex Jones and the like).
There is of course a lot of overlap between these groups, and they are largely unified by this ethos.
The Elites
There is a group of powerful and sinister people attempting to control the world. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to them as the Elites (capitalization mine), but they are referred to by various names; the New World Order, the Illuminati, the Globalists, the Regime, the Zionists, etc.
The specific individuals and organizations that are part of the Elites will vary somewhat; a common theme here will be that everything tends to be vague so that the populist can make it fit whatever they emotionally need. That said, the Elites usually consist of people and organizations with political power, wealth, and social influence whose politics are left of center (or at least perceived to be).
Some common individuals and groups include:
Bill Gates.
George Soros.
The Clintons.
The Rothschilds.
The Zionists/Jews.
Big Pharma.
Big Tech.
Elite Private Universities, especially in the United States.
The World Economic Forum.
Free Trade Organizations.
The Military-Industrial Complex / NATO
Virtually any elected Western politician from a leftist political party with any influence.
This is far from a complete list, but that should give you the general idea.
The Plan
The Elites are all conspiring to complete the Plan (capitalization mine). The exact nature of the Plan is not completely known, which again allows the populist to morph it to fit their needs while also making it uniquely terrifying to them. That said, there are broad themes that tend to repeat.
The Plan involves bringing everyone under the authoritarian control of the Elites, who have a desire to carefully plan and direct society more generally by controlling almost every aspect of our lives. Bringing about the Plan generally involves destabilizing various traditional norms and institutions in order to replace them with ones that serve the Elites.
The motives of the Elites are almost never explicitly laid out (that theme of keeping it vague), but it’s generally assumed that they have some kind of selfish motive. This can be anything from the mundane goal of wealth and power to more exotic goals like immortality.
Institutions Under Threat
As mentioned above, there are various political and social institutions that the populist believes are necessary for the kind of society they consider good to flourish, and the Elites are working tirelessly to destroy these institutions and replace them with new ones.
Christianity
The Elites are almost always either painted as atheists or Satanists with plans to destroy Christianity. Christianity is seen as the foundational ideology of Western civilization. The decline of Christianity and the trend toward secularism is the result of intentional machinations by the Elites.
Christianity is an institution that provides an alternative to other powerful institutions, and thus the populist sees it as a necessary check on power. If Christianity is destroyed, the people will simply worship the Elites or some idol representing them and be put completely under their thumb.
Christianity is seen as the foundation of both moral truth and truth more generally. It is assumed that the destruction of Christianity would necessarily result in a culture unmoored from morality and with no way to differentiate right from wrong. In this weakened state, everyone would be primed for the Elites to fill the void.
The Family
Often tied to Christianity in the mind of the populist, the Elites are out to destroy the nuclear family. Similar to religion, the family is seen as an institution that enables societies to function from the bottom up; destabilizing it would be a necessary step for the Elites to impose their will from the top down.
Their frequent opposition to queer and trans people of various sorts often stems from the perception that non-traditional lifestyles destroy the family as a cultural concept. As a consequence, the increasing acceptance of non-heterosexuals and transgender individuals is being cultivated and managed intentionally by the Elites for this purpose.
The Nation
Populists are often fixated on Western civilization and depending on how far to the right they are, they may believe in a national identity grounded explicitly in whiteness and Christianity. Their opposition to immigration and what they call globalism (their smear for the emergence of a global professional culture and heavy international trade) is grounded in the belief that the Elites use these to change demographics (reduce the portion of the population that is white or American) in order to enact part of the Plan.
Liberalism
The Elites are out to destroy the basic liberal institutions of our current government. This is so it can be replaced with an authoritarian technocracy managed by the Elites. This is often believed even when the populist themselves opposes liberalism, as is the case with Hoppeans and neoreactionaries.
Philosophic Objectivity
The Elites want to destroy any sense of objective truth or morality among the masses. This is to render the masses helpless so that the Elites can provide a new worldview for them to hold. The Frankfurt School, post-modernism, and critical theory are often cited as the institutional source of destructive nihilist ideas whose purpose is to achieve this.
Health & Well-being
The Elites, through their control of governments, use subsidies, intentionally rigged studies, and government-issued diet recommendations to destroy the health of the masses. Soy in particular is seen as an intentional introduction to the Western diet for the purposes of feminizing men, with simple carbohydrates being cited more broadly.
(Note: Studies have failed to show any impact on sexual hormones from consuming soy.)
Through their control of Big Pharma, the Elites are also trying to deteriorate our health and make us more compliant. Opioids are pushed to patients in pain in order to create addiction. Vaccines contain microchips or modify your DNA. Psychiatry is a bogus discipline intended to make people compliant. Plastics (and sometimes vaccines) are being used to reduce fertility.
Popular Movements
A number of popular social movements are very popular with populists because of the way they neatly integrate with the above. Note that not everyone involved in these movements is someone bought into this ethos, but among people consumed by the populist ethos, you will often find sympathy for and association with several of these.
Red Pill / Men’s Rights / MGTOW
A number of movements focused on men’s issues have arisen in recent years, and they are often very popular with populists. Most populists are men, and the destruction of masculinity is something they often believe is part of the Plan.
These movements vary in nature and degree, with the most extreme ones being openly misogynistic and anti-woman, and the more benign ones being focused on issues like the homelessness and suicide rates among men. Populists are usually more attracted to the extreme ones.
Traditional Diet / Medicine
Since populists see modern diets (and modernity more generally) as part of the Plan, they often gravitate to movements focused on more traditional diet and homeopathic medicine. Skepticism about drugs and vaccines, in particular, is very common, with the belief that natural alternatives are almost always better. Keto and paleo diets are very popular and are seen as more natural and more manly.
Prepping
Preppers are people who believe they might experience The End Of The World As We Know It in their lifetimes, and focus a lot of time and energy on preparing (or prepping) for it. These are the people that stereotypically would keep dried food, water, and weapons in their bunker for when the Soviets finally drop the bomb, but the populist ones of the 21st century generally believe it’s the Elites that will do something to end the world as we know it and bring it under their control.
Homeschooling
Government education is a tool of indoctrination for the Elites, so populists often prefer to homeschool. You will often find them in groups focused on homeschooling, unschooling, and other alternative forms of education. A common desire is to ensure that all education a child receives is filtered through a Christian and an American nationalist lens.
(Note: The author himself is an advocate of unschooling. I want to emphasize that “popular with populists” doesn’t inherently mean wrong or bad.)
Contrasted with (Classical) Liberalism
I think at this juncture it may be helpful to contrast this ethos with the liberal one. The current rift in the American libertarian movement is largely explained by this; while sharing some superficial philosophy, liberals and populists have a fundamentally different view of the world.
The liberal has many critiques of the current state of affairs, but does not attribute these to a conspiracy among elites. Rather, they are seen as the organic product of competing incentive structures, emerging as naturally as something like the price signal does in the free market. To be sure, people of similar interest often cooperate, sometimes not openly, but there is no broad group of such people acting in secret, and the world is made up of various competing interests and goals.
The liberal sees the growing internationalism of the world as generally a good thing, including free trade and immigration. This enables a wide sharing of ideas and deeper division of labor, which produces more wealth, which in turn enables people to have more of the things they want.
The liberal is not a traditionalist; an idea, institution, or way of life is good or bad based on its merit, not on its age. The populist may value liberal institutions because they are old, but the liberal values them because they offer the best political solution ever devised, and still sees the liberal project as being in its infancy.
Optimistic, the liberal sees flaws with the current state of affairs as mere bumps on the road of progress, with a bright future for humanity more generally. The future is one in which people are more in control, more capable of having the lives they want, and have more fulfilling and complete relationships with others.
The liberal is tolerant of unique and experimental lifestyles and social arrangements. This does not mean the liberal will always withhold judgement, but that the liberal will not interfere and will consciously check his own biases and preconceived notions when encountering something novel. The liberal believes that, if the nuclear family really is superior, people will freely choose it without coercion, and those that don’t aren’t inherently a threat to anyone else.
The liberal greatly values technological and scientific progress. Modern medicine in particular is viewed as a marvel that has stopped an enormous number of preventable deaths. You hear the phrase cancer survivor a whole lot more these days.
The liberal does not see violence and conflict as necessary or desirable. The world is not fundamentally or irreconcilably divided into competing groups. Liberalism takes mankind’s tribal instinct and short-circuits it by extending the boundaries of the tribe to humanity itself. It is by making the collective include everyone that we attain individualism, as people cease to fixate on us vs. them and instead on each other as individuals.
The liberal is secular; he may or may not be deeply faithful, but he recognizes the importance of religious freedom, and will not act to impose his faith (or lack thereof) on others. He values what other religious traditions have to offer even if he does not participate. In particular, he does not believe that society needs to be religiously monolithic in order to flourish; quite the opposite, he sees diversity in the world of ideas as fuel for innovation.
The liberal believes in objectivity but does not believe objectivity hinges on a particular religious worldview. A child of the Enlightenment, the liberal is a champion of reason, and firmly believes that through careful thought and empirical investigation, everything from physics to morality is within the reach of the human mind.
The liberal loves Western civilization but does not believe it is perfect. The liberal acknowledges the evils of colonialism and the slave trade without believing that this makes our civilization fundamentally rotten. The liberal recognizes its origins in Western civilization but believes that Western ideas are ultimately human ideas and belong to the world. The liberal firmly believes that other cultures have much of value to offer, and cultural interchange is a beautiful thing.
The Cause
This is the part where I move more into open speculation, so bear that in mind. This is just my own theory for the popularity of populism, and it could be wrong.
At its heart, the populist ethos is motivated by anxiety when faced with a changing world. The Elites and their Plan are an explanation for why the direction of the world is causing them great anxiety. For example, when they see someone being openly gay or trans, and they feel discomfort, this ethos offers an explanation that doesn’t require any self-reflection. Nothing is wrong with me; it must be that something wrong with the world.
Deep down, the fear is that the world will change and leave them behind in some way that they can’t catch up. The anxiety is grounded in a belief that they may not be capable of adjusting to change.
I think populism is most popular with men because men in particular feel this anxiety about the role of men in the world. We’re a sexually dimorphic species, and as our liberal societies have grown freer and wealthier, one of the primary ways men could offer value that women could not (physical strength and capability) has been mostly rendered moot by technology. This change has occurred fast enough for men to experience some of this diminishment in an observable way within a single lifetime.
I also believe that a lot of the rhetoric from the left since the 90s, but especially in the last 10 years, has contributed. A fixation on things like the patriarchy and white privilege plays right into the populist perception that getting rid of them is part of the Plan. In particular, the more extreme rhetoric that discusses masculinity and whiteness itself as problems is dangerous for this reason. Leftists would do well to focus less on how evil certain groups are and more on helping the groups they are concerned about.
That said, it’s likely that some degree of populism has always and will always be around, and it will wax and wane at various times and places due to historical happenstance. The world has been changing since the beginning of civilization, which means there has always been something for skeptical of change to be anxious about.