Ideas on maintaining relationships with the less committed in a dark age
Many of us are forced to deal with personal issues because of our political-cultural beliefs. A typical situation might be a wife or girlfriend—the great majority of activists on the dissident right are male—who is terrified of it becoming known that she is associated with someone who is shunned and socially ostracized. But of course, it may also be other family members or friends—a particularly painful experience.
Let’s assume that doxing would only result in social opprobrium, not loss of livelihood—admittedly a much easier case.
And let’s also assume that your significant other is not a committed social justice warrior. Such people are completely intolerant of opinions that conflict with their dogmas and they are fueled by hatred toward people like you. Such people are impossible to reason with. They prefer spewing hatred, typically accompanied with ungrounded assertions of moral and intellectual superiority. They do this within their echo chambers of like-minded people, ignoring data they don’t like and never encountering a dissenting voice. Trust me, you can’t talk to them. Get them out of your life, whatever it takes. You’ll be happier.
Since we still have a functioning First Amendment, the establishment uses informal means of punishing dissenters, and pressure on employers is the first option. While Marxists rail at the evils of capitalism, the fact is that all the major corporations are completely on board with the official ideology on race and gender, and are all too willing to fire those who dissent. It is completely understandable for people threatened by loss of livelihood to maintain a low profile, especially if they have a family to support.
But there are many who risk only social opprobrium—retired people, the self-employed, or the financially secure. Of course, being ostracized from polite society doesn’t bother the activists personally. They may suffer psychologically, but they firmly believe they are right, and they often have like-minded friends, if only in cyberspace. The problem comes from trying to find simpatico mates and friends beyond activist conferences and online communities.
An obvious strategy is to use a pseudonym and this is necessary and desirable for many. Lots of people do, including a clear majority of the writers at TOO. However, pseudonyms don’t completely solve the problem because the people who are terrified of doxing can’t know for sure that it won’t happen some at point in the future. This hangs over them like the sword of Damocles. It’s just a matter of time before it drops, or so the thinking goes. And when it does, she would have to deal with the cold stares, the terminated friendships, and perhaps antifa protesting (or worse) in front of her home.
Perhaps the main point in my recent book Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition is that Western peoples are far more prone to valuing their moral reputation, especially in their face-to-face world. Westerners create societies made up of close family, friends and associates, as well as strangers where moral reputation is critical for fitting in. This contrasts with societies in the rest of the world, where moral status is filtered through kinship connections. The Western culture of moral reputation worked well over long stretches of historical time, but in the contemporary West, a hostile elite has achieved control of the media and educational system, and they have managed to corrupt mainstream Christian religious sects. This hostile elite has used its power to create a moral community in which White identity and interests have been demonized. Standing up to that places one outside this moral community and has major psychological effects.
A famous example is Anne Morrow Lindbergh when her husband, Charles Lindbergh, stated that Jews were one of the forces attempting to get the United States to enter World War II. Shortly after his speech, she wrote:
The storm is beginning to blow up hard. …I sense that this is the beginning of a fight and consequent loneliness and isolation that we have not known before. … For I am really much more attached to the worldly things than he is, mind more giving up friends, popularity, etc., mind much more criticism and coldness and loneliness. … Will I be able to shop in New York at all now? I am always stared at—but now to be stared at with hate, to walk through aisles of hate![1]What is striking and perhaps counterintuitive, is that the guilt and shame remain even when she is completely satisfied at an intellectual (explicit) level that her beliefs are based on good evidence and reasonable inferences and that they are morally justifiable.
I cannot explain my revulsion of feeling by logic. Is it my lack of courage to face the problem? Is it my lack of vision and seeing the thing through? Or is my intuition founded on something profound and valid? I do not know and am only very disturbed, which is upsetting for him. I have the greatest faith in him as a person—in his integrity, his courage, and his essential goodness, fairness, and kindness—his nobility really…How then explain my profound feeling of grief about what he is doing? If what he said is the truth (and I am inclined to think it is), why was it wrong to state it? (From Chapter 8 of Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition.)Her reaction is involuntary and irrational—beyond the reach of logical analysis. Charles Lindbergh was exactly right in what he said, but a rational understanding of the correctness of his analysis cannot lessen the psychological trauma to his wife, who must face the hostile stares of others because her husband’s beliefs place him outside the moral community she values.
Women are more connected to the social world. They care more about having friends and being respected in the community. Men want to feel connected too, but they are also more willing to take risks. And men’s reproductive prospects are far more linked to being part of a dominant group, so men are far more concerned about politics and the distribution of power. Men tend to suffer more when there is an alien takeover: history is replete with men being slaughtered and women taken as wives and concubines by the winners (as happened with the Indo-European invaders of Europe and elsewhere, Genghis Khan and the Mongols, etc.).
And in the contemporary world, any non-brain-dead White male has to be aware that the current hegemony of our new elite has meant that White heterosexual males are the most demonized class in all Western societies. White males are regarded as historical oppressors and the basic reason for the failures of certain (low IQ) non-White groups. Their statues are being removed, their culture ridiculed and hated. Most importantly, their political representation is steadily declining.
So how should one talk to a significant other about the very real dangers of being on the dissident right? I think a good tactic is to point out that many people are being attacked these days, not just people linked to full-blown race realism, opposition to immigration and multiculturalism, and assertions of Jewish power and influence. Individuals associated with the Trump administration have been harassed on the street and barred from or insulted in restaurants. MAGA hat-wearing people have been physically attacked in broad daylight in public places. With impunity. Mainstream conservatives have been greeted with mass protests, riots, and moral panics at college campuses.
Your significant other may relate to the fact that the censorious left is shutting down many ideas that were entirely mainstream and respectable just a few years ago. If we are not to become something like the society imagined in Orwell’s 1984 (we’re already quite close given the wall-to-wall propaganda and ubiquitous surveillance by government and left-leaning big tech), we have to stand up to this.
Again assuming one’s significant other is not a dyed-in-the-wool social justice warrior, she should relate to that as threatening all that she valued in the society she grew up in, including especially her own children. (It’s well known that women get more conservative when married and as they get older.)
This should make her able to buck up and withstand the hostility, so that she’ll join you in firmly believing “We’re the good guys, and they’re evil.”
Having a demonstration outside one’s house is terrifying to many of our weaker brethren. It’s probably number one on their list of fears since it’s very public and it strikes very close to home.
But that’s what happened to Tucker Carlson who was harassed by a mob of antifa outside his house. One can imagine the fear his wife, alone in the house, felt as one of the masked cowards pounded on the front door.
Despite repeated attempts to get Carlson fired and quite successful campaigns to get advertisers to boycott his show, Carlson continues with his edgy views and still draws a huge audience. And as far as I know, his marriage is fine—even though he likely can’t show his face in public in the deep blue urban areas of America.
What are some things that would affect how his wife felt about all this? One thing would be whether she believes that her husband is honest and sincere in his beliefs. Because they are sharing their lives, she has a long experience with him in a wide range of areas besides political opinions. She knows if he is trustworthy or duplicitous, whether he has strong moral convictions or is prone to manipulating others for personal gain. If she thinks of him as basically a good guy who is doing his best to have well-grounded opinions, it would make her stronger, more willing to deal with the haters who are doing their best to make their lives miserable.
Assuming that he has honestly held, morally defensible ideas, this increased willingness to simply reject the haters is likely even if she doesn’t fully agree with his opinions or even understand them completely (e.g., understanding Jewish issues is difficult without doing a lot of reading and all too easily results in oversimplified assertions by those without some background in the area).
And, again assuming that there is trust in the relationship, a greater willingness to put up with the haters is likely even if, like many Americans, politics is not at the center of her world—even if she doesn’t dwell on the future of Whites as a minority in a hostile world but is far more involved with family, church, or hobbies like music, cooking or gardening. Again, in general, women are not as politically focused as men.
As with Anne Morrow Lindbergh, simply believing that her husband is honest and correct in his opinions may not remove the psychological distress. But it likely makes it easier to put up with the “aisles of hate.”
If your significant other is not an enthusiastic believer in the ideas of the dissident right, I would also suggest not being obsessed with politics in day-to-day conversation with her. Again, she may be more interested in family, friends, and hobbies than the latest example of how the Israel Lobby has manipulated U.S. foreign policy. That’s fine. Showing an interest in what she is interested in is always good advice.
So that’s all I can think of for now. This is a really tough area for those on the dissident right. Control by our hostile elite has made it psychologically difficult to have dissident opinions, and we all live under the specter of formal legal punishments—as has already happened in much of Europe—if the left manages to abrogate the First Amendment (as they so ardently desire).
But for many of us, we don’t feel that we have any other choice than to soldier on. And while we are soldiering on, we should do everything we can to make life livable by having good, rewarding relationships. Like Anne Morrow Lindbergh was forced to do, we have to be willing to put up with “aisles of hate” should we be outed, and we should do all we can to keep our relationships intact if that were to occur.
Living well is the best revenge.
[1] Anne Morrow Lindbergh, War Within and Without: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 220–239.
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