Responding to The Sargon, Styx, Spencer Debate

I was rather disappointed by this debate as what I really wished for was a thinking man’s evil from Richard Spencer, not the usual thoughtless variety. I was rather more looking forward to hearing a modern Mephistopheles rather than a petulant and poorly integrated individual with a massive chip on his shoulder. Nevertheless, I think Sargon got a thing wrong, and as someone on the periphery of the alt-right myself, I think a better argument can be made, for some level of communalism, collectivism and right-leaning socialism generally, not that I think the goal of anything should be socialism. I’m a Nietzschean, first and foremost, and as a result I think the goal of society ought to be the creation of strong individuals, men specifically, who are comfortable in their social identity and willingly courageous, in other words, a society that encourages the existence of the Ubermensch, as opposed to the pacified and easygoing society of Locke and Hobbes. I would argue therefore that social belonging and social obligations, far from being merely something that arrests the clear thinking nihilism of anti-social children, it is in fact a great liberating force since men are animated more often by what they defend and identify with rather than the drudgery of the work that it puts them through.

It reminds me of General James Mattis, who always says that he feels sorry for those who don’t experience the ebullient passion and camaraderie of military service. It seems strange at first to hear the prospect of cramped barracks and violent death talked about in such sunny terms, and you might feel you have ample reason to disagree with Gen. Mattis on this point, but at least one can understand where he and other servicemen like him are coming from as people who see themselves as willing fighters for the ideals of freedom and democracy. Military service to Mattis and his ilk is thus an integrating existential experience. One might characterize Mattis as a collectivist and authoritarian if one really wanted to, but to do so would miss the point and spin off into Marxist hyperbole. You can see in such a character as Mattis that his integrity as an individual stems from the collective, but there is a clear distinction between the individual and that of which he forms a part.

This is something Sargon and Spencer missed completely in their discussion, mainly because of the false dichotomy between what could be described uncharitably as hedonistic atomized individualism not the one hand and authoritarian political worship on the other, which sprung to the fore and dominated the conversation. Undoubtedly this was by design, since both have politicized the conversation beyond philosophical redemption leaving as little room for nuance as possible, since Richard Spencer has decided to take his one-horse hack down the road of further extremism, whereas Sargon is happy to continue to peddle establishment memes in a Skeptic(TM) wrapper even though those thinkers are silent on individual identity, personal responsibility and the relationship between society and the individual in anything more than the abstract terms of political theorists. This is because Locke and Hobbes along with the whole cast of enlightenment thinkers assumed that people want freedom of association naturally, they never bother to describe the existential geography of why this should be, something which is far more important to a society which has lost its way.

So what can be drawn from the debate politically speaking? Perhaps the most important thing is to realize that Richard Spencer’s concise appraisal of the alt-right as being at it’s base, identity-first conservatism is correct and worthwhile, but the more mainstream elements of the alt-right, unlike Spencer’s rather narrow sect of extremists, would be wise to remember that the purpose of group allegiance is the individual.