Sohrab Ahmari is a excellent writer. I ran across his essay “The Rise of the Barbarian Right”  in Liberties Journal. The reader is immediately struck by his sparkling prose and feels a sense of anticipation that this keen observer will deal a heavy argumentative blow to the bombastic loose-cannons of the new right.

It doesn’t happen.

Like all mainstream profiles of new right movements, he fails to persuade. He begins in measured tone, revealing biographic details of Jonathan Keeperman’s father. Mr. Keeperman runs Passage Press, a right-wing publishing house that can be said to be central to the New Right (or “Barbarian Right”, as Ahmari would have it). One assumes that this exposé is leading up to something, but the climax just fizzles. The big reveal is that Mr Keeperman is half Jewish. And since his father lived in Brooklyn before Jonathan was born, this surely means that he really shouldn’t be right-wing. Or something.

We are then treated to a summary of some short stories recently published by a collection of right wing anonymous authors (the “right-wing anons”) in the volume After the War by Keeperman’s Passage imprint. This is a cohort of right-wing writers.  They’re an extremely online crowd, forming a loosely connected chain whose ideas tend to share certain themes.  The review is included, allegedly, to furnish a glimpse at the kind of world the right-wing anons want to manifest. Or… was that the “New Right”? Turns out, there are a number of labels describing various strains of resurgent thought on the right or far-right. It’s often unclear who or what these refer to exactly. We cannot turn to Ahmari for help on this score, as he never quite spells out what he is opposing.

That’s not to say his article is short on detail. He presents verbatim quotes from After the War which he clearly wishes to disparage. The discussion is seasoned generously with jarring pejoratives: “grotesque”, “hateful”, “chilling”, “foul”, “nihilistic”, “disturbing”, “repellent” and “sickening” to name a few. He also elaborates meticulously on the the local color of Keeperman’s online milieu; Ahmari can be quite funny in this. Their cultural fingerprints are registered in the most minute detail, from their shared idioms to their aesthetic sensibilities to their in-group argot (“zogslop!”).

But what of the presuppositions, premises and worldview of these right-wing anons? Early on in the article, we are told that “Keeperman and Co. are a distinct group, in the business of articulating a distinct worldview”, and further they are capable of “entertaining sophisticated visions of the political order that might replace the current one”. Ahmari remarks that the literature he reviews “arise[s] from within a coherent and fairly well-developed ideological movement”. Well, I’m on the edge of my seat! Can’t wait to get into the substance. So what is this worldview?

As regards political philosophy, we are given little more than labels. At times he will elaborate, but only from narrow angles (e.g. who they oppose, but not why) and mostly this is piecemeal. Scarcely more than descriptors are given, e.g. “eugenics”, “aristocratic spirit”, or “blood lines”. It’s always just enough to scare off a reader with a preexisting catalog of political do’s and don’ts. A solid counter-argument is not put forth. It’s not that Ahmari fails to settle the issue, he fails to even name it. Underneath the shining sentences, the real message is: ‘you know that bad thing that’s associated with, like, Nazis and the Klan and medieval feudalism and stuff? This is that, man.’

Ahmari is not alone in this. The podcast Give them an Argument by Ben Burgis takes on the right-wing anons in an episode with guest Matt McManus. The two of them discuss Bronze Age Pervert, only far enough to provide us with scare-labels and dismiss him as unserious. They seem unsure of themselves, and BAP is held to be too absurd to even mention – so they don’t talk about his ideas – but they want to talk about him – but he is just so absurd… and round and round we go. They sneer and laugh, and offer half-hearted analogies (“Hitler failed at art shool – just like BAP left academia!”). Apparently, the audience should be satisfied that anyone unserious about his CV is basically Hitler. The giggling continues and they seem grateful for each other’s company; mutually assuring the other that nervous laughter is an appropriate response. This treatment is then extended to Curtis Yarvin, another heavyweight of the right-wing arena. We’re left with a clear sense of how they feel, but not what they think of Yarvin’s ideas. The two rather unaesthetic men assure you Curtis has bad taste. Very bad taste. How funny! Ben’s body jiggles as he chuckles, and the podcast titled Give them an Argument concludes having given us nothing but gossip.

Returning to Ahmari, he ends the aforementioned piece with what he clearly thinks is a clever insight. Looking past the right-wing anons, Ahmari claims to see the deeper truth: this resurgent right merely reflects the very forces that “market societies” unleash. He calls this the “dark transubstantiation of market society.” It’s like the evil twin of consumerism, man. Ahmari is here to pull back the curtain for you.

So, when BAP deplores the old smothering the young, Ahmari connects it - absurdly - to the rise of suicide pods. Since these devices are appearing in Canada, he suggests, this must be market society discarding the weak like trash. Likewise, when new right literature explores themes of aristocratic longings and legacy, Ahmari insists it’s just the same as wealthy DINKs marrying in elite ZIP codes. Right-wing anon thinking “ratifies the deeper logic of the very society against which its adherents purport to rebel”. Wow! Ratifies!

This is empty analysis. I want to like Ahmari given his talent as a writer, but I am forced to the conclusion that he just needs to have a ‘take’ to keep the meal ticket punched and here we are. In truth, newer strains of the right wing despise what today passes for “the elite,” often mocking them as the “occupational class.” Right-wing anons have no desire to imitate the occupational class. If Ahmari means such imitation is unconscious, he’s falling into the same weirdness as the “systemic racism” proponents - whom he professes to disagree with.

The philosopher John Gray, a thinker of higher caliber, has joined in the criticism.  He published an appraisal of Bronze Age Mindset in the New Statesman, attempting a similar maneuver which he seems to think is a masterstroke. He claims to see past Bronze Age Pervert himself: “if decadence is anomie—a lack of purpose and normative order—BAP is the unwitting embodiment of the disease for which he imagines he knows the cure.”

This is not the brilliant take that Gray thinks it is. No one who self-styles as "Bronze Age Pervert" is claiming to be an exemplar of normative order.  And regardless, this was a setup for his larger idea that genuine understanding comes through intuition, not through the sterile logic of words and symbols. The notion that language and abstraction can obscure deeper truths is a recurring theme for BAP, as it was for Heidegger and Mishima. It may be a lesson our society needs to re-learn. The point of the aphorism isn’t that BAP is a big drinker, and John Gray should know that.  BAP tends to dramatize the revolt against the over-intellectualized, post-heroic modern soul.  It's part of why BAP's work is so much fun.

It’s not Personal

In addition to vibes-level treatment and giddy dismissal, mainstream response to the right-wing anons has another salient feature. All critiques eventually converge on the same portrait: socially stunted outcasts motivated by resentment, even sexual frustration. There is often insinuation that these people are just weirdos. BAM itself is frequently described as a “self-help” book. Stating explicit links to Nietzsche and his oft-cited difficulties with women is staple in such critiques.

I used to tease my college girlfriend by promising that her Christmas gift would be a Barnes & Noble gift card “good in the self-help section only” – and we’d both laugh. Everyone knows this is a gentle barb if not outright insult. Ahmari’s article drops the phrase three times in all. At one point he uses the label “creepy right” to identify the right-wing anons and post-liberal podcasters around them. Ahmari insinuates that their weird ideal amounts to an “online Übermencsh”. And with all their affinity for SciFi? I bet they’re logging on from their parents’ basements! They’re made to sound like wayward miscreants, seared by social rejection, huddled together with their fellow online losers nursing bruised egos. I guess they’re not having a normal one, man.

But this implied portrait collapses immediately when you look at online right individuals that Ahmari names. Are we really supposed to believe that Anna Khachiyan is some kind of friendless outcast? Her father was a mathematician of some note and the recipient of the prestigious Fulkerson Prize in mathematical programming. But it is not only brains she has inherited but beauty as well. Adoring fans have dedicated X accounts (“Anna Hourly”) featuring a stream of photos that celebrate her good looks, which she has head to toe. As for Dasha Nekrosova, her careless laughter could undo any man on earth. Like Anna, a quick Google search will attest to Dasha’s physical beauty. One link to click might be her IMDb entry. Perhaps she’ll pose some time with the Screen Actor’s Guild Award she took home for her role in HBO’s Succession. But I’m sure they both cry themselves to sleep each night after World of Warcraft rounds when the loneliness sets in.

And what of the men? Unless BAP/Costin Alamariu is pretty handy with photoshop, he boasts the physique of the Greek gods that he writes about. To say that he is funny is understatement. And with his Byronic streak, I doubt BAP was short of friends while earning his degree from MIT, or his degree from Columbia, or his doctorate at Yale. Mr. Keeperman recently gave an interview to Ross Douthat. During this he more resembled a male model than a basement-dwelling troll. Keeperman is married with children, and received nothing but praise from his days as a lecturer at UC Irvine. His Coronation Ball, hosted earlier this year, attracted a lively crowd of men with their hot wives and girlfriends in tow. It was hardly a gathering of embittered incels.

The frequent insinuation there these people are, as a whole, driven by resentment is ridiculous. Each time a ‘far-right’ personality is doxxed, they turn out to be just another solid guy, well-spoken and socially integrated. These aren’t the Ted Kaczyski's that their critics are trying to paint.

It seems the critics have no living comprehension that others may harbor concern for truth and beauty which is strictly ontological. They instead locate the motive in some form of resentment. But resentment is not the motor of the online right – disgust is. Disgust at lies, at cultural rot, at the inversion of beauty and truth. These are not personal grievances but ontological ones: a sense that something deep in the order of being has gone wrong. Suppose I find myself visiting a distant city in another country. I have no personal stake in it’s welfare, yet could still very easily feel a desire the set things right were I to witness, say, street trash or crumbling sidewalks. I see a troubled city, and wish it weren’t so - purely out of ontological interest. Online right polemics arise from that impulse, not from wounded pride.

The anonymity behind most of personalities is a tell-tale sign that their activities are not about personal recognition. That nearly all of them are on sound social footing is a sign that their authenticity may be trusted. These are not men and women gnawed by envy; they are people who could thrive within the system, and do (or create their own systems).

What’s Actually Emanated from the Online Right

If Ahmari and others want to get serious, they’ll have to drop that act of treating right-wing anon thought as some supposed object of derision. They will, instead, have to confront their ideas intellectually. So what are these ideas?

From where I sit, five ideas seem to be moving from right-wing anon circles into the mainstream:

1. Envy drives the Left.

All Leftist projects, however clothed in moral rhetoric, spring from envy. This insight is not new. Erudite readers know it traces back at least to Nietzsche. But two critical elements must be made absolutely clear. Firstly, this “envy” is, as BAP precisely laid out, "the lower orders of the human soul rebellious."  This is a rebellion against excellence wherever it is found. The obvious case is envy directed against others who are more physically fit, wealthy, charismatic, and what not. But it also rebels against the excellence within. This is why your typical antifia fruitcake jams a bolt through her nose, or deliberately cultivates a disheveled appearance with green hair and an ill-fitting t-shirt. It’s why they (nowadays) become obese and pretend to be proud thereof. This condition is not simply a matter of the jealously of particular individuals but a hatred of excellence as such. Second – and this follows from the first – fixing these people’s economic problems, real or imagined, will not remedy their Leftism. This is not a material problem, it is a spiritual one. This is why I wince when “conservatives”, stuck in Cold War discourse, gibber on about Marxism and the like. No one told Ben Shapiro, but the Left didn’t melt down over a Sydney Sweeney ad because she controls the means of production.

2. Only power displaces power.

The new right generally rejects the liberal illusion that laws or constitutions enforce themselves. Institutions are not self-acting mechanisms but expressions of will and efficacy. The American constitution worked because the people who inherited it were capable of sustaining it, owing to culture, heredity or both. Words on parchment didn’t build a civilization; men did. Text in the Kellogg pact, however enthusiastic its signatories, manifestly failed to prevent World War II.

3. Human biodiversity is real.

This is not really much of a distinguishing characteristic, as any level-headed person beyond teen age can attest to it’s obvious truth. What makes the online right distinct is their willingness to acknowledge it. Differences between groups are not social constructs. These manifest in culture, achievement and behavior. A society that refuses to acknowledge this reality condemns itself to fruitless and interminable debates around the conditions of the inner city, math test scores, health, the fraction of non-white engineer employment, and many others. Realism in this respect needn’t entail hatred; there is no necessity of race projects to punish or extirpate any race whatsoever. There is no call for a government department of eugenic policy or such. It’s just that we have lived in the land of race make-believe for more than 50 years. And it’s not working.

4. Disintegration of patriarchy is not progress.

Patriarchy’s disintegration is not progress, it’s a reversion to a primitive – perhaps default – mode of human organization. There are masculine ways of ordering institutions – and there are feminine ways. We’ve been involved in a massive experiment of a reversion to feminine organization since the 1990s. How well is the experiment going?

5. Current-year GDP is not the central metric of a nation’s health.

A nation can glow with economic numbers while its families dissolve, its youth drift, its public order erodes and its population become obese and sick. Importing new populations to fix demographic problems is a bookkeeping trick, not a cure. GDP growth over long periods is indispensable, but is subject to many important qualifications.

The right-wing anons exhibit other tendencies: irreverent humor, erudition, romanticism (of a sort), skepticism of claimed expertise, and others. But these do not a rightist make, and I am focused here on political essentials.

These five tenets clearly differ from, and are antagonistic towards, leftism. But they also depart from the Reaganism and neo-conservatism of, say, Mitt Romney.

Understanding nationalism on the new right requires some nuance, not least because nationalism itself is an elastic concept. One can be a forceful champion of one’s nation while still endorsing international blocs and collective security arrangements - Giorgia Meloni is an obvious example. Critics such as Ahmari, as I’ve noted, grasp the sociological profile of the right-wing anons quite well, and he’s right that their base is found in coastal cities rather than the red-state heartland. Mother Jones has recently chimed in with yet another tag—“the thinking man’s far-right.” Both seem to recognize that the online right is not made up of characters from a Swamp People episode. Its adherents are typically urban, ambitious and internationalist in outlook.

It’s important to understand nationalism here in explicitly political terms: the online right converges on support for nation-state sovereignty. But this does not extend to cultural nationalism. They are not calling for white ethnostates or for enclaves where they can be among ‘their own.’ There is nothing communitarian about the online right.

We Will not Go to Canossa

The mainstream considers these positions to be outrageous. But these cries are only heard in Western states where society has been clinging tooth and nail to a received ethical framework which has its root in a post-WWII foundational narrative. Such narratives are stories we tell ourselves about our collective beginnings to legitimate nations and institutions. The United States was founded on a story about the divinely endowed equality of all human beings. This story has been re-cast twice, and its second revision served as the basis for the entire post-WW2 liberal order. This is the (true) story of our collective resistance to and conquest of fascism. In this tale, racism is the ultimate evil and Hitler the devil incarnate. To this very day any debate, when carried far enough, undoubtedly results in one group calling the other Hitler.

After 1945, the Western liberal order grounded its moral authority in a grand, civilizational narrative: we defeated fascism, and therefore the institutions that emerged - international bodies, security alliances, democratic norms, and elite bureaucratic stewardship - were not merely pragmatic arrangements but morally anointed ones. This story was not fabricated; in its original moment it reflected a genuine historical victory and offered a compelling moral foundation for rebuilding the world.

The narrative held appeal for both left and right; there was something for everyone. David French et al. could deliver a sermon, something like ‘the moment we forget our constitution, we slip into fascism’. Rachel Maddow could link her grandfathers WW2 sacrifice to liberating oppressed minorities. It has hardened into a ritualized, cargo-cult invocation of 1945. Even Vladimir Putin, when attacking Ukraine, invoked – what else – Nazis! So alluring is recursion to this frame that just last month Hollywood released “Nuremberg” (and the papers are warbling about Hitler’s penis in the headlines). In the West, it is the only enthusiasm still shared by the whole Establishment, left to right.

But the establishment has at last become ridiculous. It now stares you in the face in total earnest and claims that no difference exists between men and women, and that a child may simply opt to be one or the other. When ethnic groups fail to perform equally after 60 years of equality under the law, it searches for systemic racist spirits haunting the nation. It routinely uses the power of state to outright halt processes of democracy in the name of “saving our democracy”. It has been preaching endlessly about the centrality of family life while making it nearly impossible for a young family to own a home. It believed that Afghanistan could be turned into Sweden with but a few pieces of paper. It shut down nuclear power over environmental concerns. The result was Germany turning not only to coal - but to importing gas from Russia and consequently financing its Ukraine war.

The liberal world order has abolished itself.

Newer political actors and pundits omit to worship these aspects of the civic religion. This is seen from from Washington to Warsaw, where the narrative itself is either left to fade into obscurity, or it’s relevance to current year issues is contested. Many, especially the young activists shaped by the online right, have taken their cues from elsewhere. As a result, a whole class of political operators and media personalities now treats the vaunted post-WWII narrative as something to be ignored or left behind.

This doens’t mean they are fascists; but they do not trust those who drape themselves in the symbolism of WW2 founding myth. Joe Biden certainly failed to stir any imaginations when he gave his “Battle for the Soul of the Nation” speech in 2022. Who remembers when he strode out to the podium (with “Doctor” Jill Biden) and gave the most unoriginal and theatrically lame tirade against “MAGA republicans”, cautioning that “history tells us... blind loyalty to a single leader” is fatal to democracy. I wonder which leader he could’ve been referring to, as he hammered on stale tropes while speaking from, as he called it, “sacred ground”.

Recourse to this symbology is always an attempt to legitimate one’s self via association with the good guys, and delegitimize one’s opponents via linking them to the bad. Over the years, many rotten projects have matured behind its cover. Is this why military men who actually served in the struggle now distance themselves from the moral fireworks? Just ask Carl Dekel, the U.S. Marines veteran who told us that his country no longer resembles the one he fought for. Or head to Britain and ask the 100-year-old Alec Penstone, who recently expressed his sorrow that his generation's sacrifice was not worth it for what his “country of today” has turned out to be.

The new right’s break up with this narrative, and the update of its ideological software, are causing a lot of turbulence. The people making the waves are those who sense they can no longer manipulate this story and its symbology for control. No where is this more evident than in Germany, the fabled land itself. AfD completely refuses to bow to the conventional story, which is only used to stifle problem solving. It speaks strictly of affaires d'état and the German national interest. In response, the tired and confused establishment has sprung into action, opposing AfD at every turn in order to protect democracy from… democracy. Reverberations are of course felt in America as well. Lately, this tempest has swept up one Nick Fuentes and his Groypers banner flutters in its wind.  Nick is occasionally entertaining but he, and especially the audience he has garnered, should be thought of more as a symptom of this degradation than anything else.  His popularity must be admitted as more evidence that World War II really was yesterday.  Fuentes is not a right-wing anon; not a single original idea of his has filtered down into mainstream discourse.  By merely repeating arguments from online circles, Fuentes was able to ruin Piers Morgan on his own show.  Nick is not the stuff that insightful thinkers are made of.  Still, it would be unwise to underestimate his future influence or, at least, career.

Onward

We cannot think constructively about our real problems when the only permitted viewpoints are an illusory individualism and sanctimonious anti-racism.

We cannot carry on with the foreign policy thinking that led to Afghanistan. No, people are not all fungible units. The project of creating a democracy and schools for girls and lecturing about human rights in regions where this simply won’t fly is, and was, a total absurdity.

We can’t continue to put a finger on the scale directing undue flows of women into medical science. No, the innovations we need to cure critical diseases of the future are not likely to come from women no matter how many stressed-out girls are dragged through medical school. Women, throughout history, have invented very little. They do many things very well, but not innovation. This is simply the truth, and you are not a good person if you pretend this isn’t the case. You’re rather a bad person for decaying the very institutions on which our only hope depends. This is another galactic mistake.

No, we cannot keep having endless debates about gun violence in America leading to one’s self-defense being confiscated, without acknowledging who is doing most of the shooting. No, the crime rates in America do not differ from Iceland only because we have more firearms.

No, we cannot keep having endless debate about healthcare in America when it’s forbidden to acknowledge disease rate differences among populations.

No, we cannot have the H1B conversation without admitting that there is absolutely nothing in the history of India to suggest that the their human capital adds to our technological capability.

I could go on but I don’t want to bore you – as you already know much of what I’m to say.

And do you know who else knows this? Our friend Ahmari from above. For the real reason he can only give oracular descriptions of his “barbarian right”, followed by a garage-sale pile of scorn, is that he knows damn well that the substantive issues we face can only be solved by stepping on the toes of this sacrosanct myth of ‘who we are’. He cannot do that, as a matter of social milieu. He can question some things (bashing the rich is permitted) but the root causes of our actual issues he cannot touch with a barge pole. In the piece I examined, his embarrassing conclusion is a call for more universalism. Isn’t that nice? More universalism is what we need - another U.S.-style constitution for Liberia or another billion spent on developing robust democracy in Iraq.

Proclaiming undying commitment to fighting “fascism” and “dictatorship”, and other tenets of our shopworn civic religion might earn a pat on a head, but this doesn’t bear on the issues we now confront. Denying human and cultural difference does not make one a good person. It’s just false.  Yes - we owe a debt of gratitude to the right-wing anons for the insights they have furnished, and for the influence they've bestowed.  This is not a passing phase.