Esoteric Trumpism

Book review.

See this.

Amazon description:

Esoteric Trumpism delves into the profound and often unexplored dimensions of Donald Trump’s political journey, presenting it as a pivotal moment in the grand narrative of Western civilization. Through the lens of Oswald Spengler’s cyclical theory of history, the book explores Trump as a Faustian figure, striving against the tide of decline, embodying the spirit of American exceptionalism and the fierce battle for national identity.

Infused with a blend of Lovecraftian mystery and the barbaric glory of Robert E. Howard, Esoteric Trumpism offers a unique, philosophically rich perspective on Trump’s era, blending biblical motifs, apocalyptic imagery, and historical parallels to frame his presidency as a critical turning point in the saga of the West. A scholarly and artistic analysis, styled in a poetic manner, it offers an intriguing exploration of Trump’s unconventional approach to leadership.

So let us see what this book is about and how its arguments could be consistent with some of the ideas propagated here at my blog.  Executive Summary – it is a good book, you should buy it and read it, there are sections of the book that are thought-provoking, as is the “Kirkpatrick” Introduction.

The first Introduction is by “Raw Egg Nationalist” and is less consistent with my views than is the second (“Kirkpatrick”) one, being somewhat too positive toward and forgiving of Trump. Yes, Trump the “magician,” Trump the “grandmaster of 6000-dimensional chess” (Hey!  I thought that was Putin?). The following comment from an American Renaissance reader is I believe closer to reality:

uncuckwhitemen

Just like he promised to lock Hillary up and give us a border wall. Instead he pardoned black criminals, sucked up to the you-know-whos (like his son-in-law), kept DACA, supported bump stock bans and even red flag laws. Then he pardoned Jonathan Pollard. He did nothing during the 2020 riots and he did NOTHING to save either the Charlottesville guys in 2017 or the Jan 6th people who are still behind bars.

And of course there was the ASAP Rocky fiasco, the Platinum Plan, and all the rest.

The second Introduction, and one more in tune with my own views, is by “James Kirkpatrick” – I believe that is “Gregory Hood” who has admitted on a podcast with “Paul Kersey” to being Kevin DeAnna, which we all knew already thanks to Katie McHugh. My readers know that I am no fan of this individual.  However, every work has to be judged based on its own merits, and so I have to admit this this second Introduction is partially consistent with my view of Trump and even more consistent with how I view the arguments of Esoteric Trumpism.

“Kirkpatrick” is more honest than is Mr. Raw Egg about Trump’s failures and his culpability for them, and is less convinced (similar to my views) than the book’s author that Trump has substantially changed. But this Introduction realizes, as I do, that Trumpism transcends Trump, that there is a symbolic irrational aspect to the Trump phenomenon, and that Fat Don is an avatar representing other people and other forces.

Indeed, there is a place for the irrational in our High Politics, as I have noted before:

…a call to “preserve our distinctive genetic information” is unlikely to motivate most Western individuals to defend their genetic interests against the titanic forces arrayed against them. It almost certainly will not motivate the masses, who, as Michael O’Meara rightfully points out, are always induced to act by “myths” that encompass a cohesive worldview. Even rational activists can often become more motivated by these “myths” (which may of course constitute objective facts to a considerable degree) than to a pure empiricism.

So, let us evaluate the Esoteric Trumpism book itself. I’ll briefly comment on some selected individual chapters and then evaluate the book as a whole.

With respect to “chthonic realms” and “The Swamp” not only did Trump do absolutely nothing (as usual) to “drain the swamp” (apart from talking or tweeting about it), but he actually reinforced that “swamp.” It was Trump who placed creatures like Pence, Haley, Barr, and Bolton in his administration. There was no “cosmic struggle” there unless it was the struggle of Trump trying to digest a late night Big Mac. Thus, the later description, in another chapter, of Trump as “a chieftain of unparalleled vigor” (or “Faustian vigor”) seems to me to be a bit off. “A lazy incompetent” would seem more accurate. However, I can see where the myth of Trump as a vigorous warlord could be a motivating factor for his followers, but to be the least bit believable Trump is going to need to actually do things, and not just post social media comments in lieu of action.

The Age of Turmoil chapter makes good points about present-day America (but is likely too positive about what America ever was) and makes the excellent point that – “Trump is liked because he is hated… like his supporters.” Indeed, as I stated in my Trump Avatar podcast, the Left’s hatred of Trump is to a large extent representing the hatred the Left has for Trump’s White American base of support, all those White Americans who do not want to “go gently into that good night.” Focusing on Trump as an avatar for all of those people makes him a convenient bogeyman for the Left, and for the System which is essentially equivalent, for all practical purposes, to the Left. The other insight by the author is that Trump is akin to a “bomb” used by those White Americans against the anti-White forces ascendant in today’s America.

The chapter on America’s Race Question is interesting in that it combines an excellent first half with a second half that contains points I question.  The first half discusses the need for White America to assert its demographic interests, including an immigration moratorium and a mass deportation of “undesirable elements.”  Very good.  But the second half of the chapter contains implicit praise for Trump’s color-blind civic nationalism, which is not consistent with the full-throated racialist perspective, including deportation of (presumably non-White) undesirables that is required in order to safeguard White American demographic preeminence.  

The latter part of the chapter also contains a quote from Nordicist horror author H.P. Lovecraft – “Do Americans desire to remain a vigorous, clean moraled Teutonic-Celtic people; or do they desire to transform their country into a sordid, amorphous chaos of degradation and hybridism like imperial Rome?”  The author says that the question “cannot be easily answered” even though the first part of the chapter suggests the author’s opinion that Trump’s 2016 election is evidence that White America (and not just the “Teutonic-Celtic” elements) definitely do want to save their nation. 

The Lovecraft quote itself is doubly ludicrous. First, it were precisely those selfsame “vigorous, clean moraled Teutonic-Celtic people” whose fecklessness (and love of Color) contributed to America’s present racial decline; second, Imperial Rome, with all of its sordid chaotic hybridism, was at the height of its power, and it was with the increasing presence and power of Lovecraft’s favorite groups in the Western Roman Empire of Late Antiquity that we see the Decline and Fall. A later chapter talks about Romans banding together against “barbaric adversity.”  Who were those barbarians? So, it would seem that Ancient Rome may not be the best model for today’s racial crisis, despite the fervor of the “movement” to make it so. The later claim that Rome before its Fall was (like America) hurtling towards a civil war is historically inaccurate. Civil war-like conflicts were present even in the days of the (later) Republic (e.g., Marius vs. Sulla,) and certainly during the transition to Empire (from the days of Julius Caesar to Augustus). The Fall of the Western Empire was due to many reasons, but civil war was not prominent among them.

Von Hoffmesiter later makes interesting comparisons and contrasts of Trump’s (ostensible) vision (such as it is) and those of Washington, Stoddard, Orban, Faye, and Mussolini. Here again we need to distinguish Trump the symbol and Trump’s rhetoric from Trump the man and Trump the political reality. The author also tries to place Trump within the Spenglerian paradigm as a representative of Caesarism (that reminds me of some breathless “movement” commentary about Trump from several years ago); once again, this makes sense if one perceives Trump in symbolic terms and not his reality (one of the introducers of this book, writing under a different name at American Renaissance, rightly stated that Trump as President was so weak that he “makes Jimmy Carter look like Alexander the Great”).  In looking at Trump the man, the comparison in the book to Andrew Jackson fails; Trump the myth, on the other hand, makes the comparison more viable (putting aside that at some point we’ll need a Man and not only a Myth). In this sense the idea that Trump’s populism is a reawakening of the (White) American spirit makes sense, but this reawakening will have utility only to the extent that young and more (truly) vigorous people join the fight and actually get things done with respect to the facts on the ground – myth and spirit can only get us so far.

The author also makes the point that Donald Trump is an avatar for the heartland, for the land power, while Joe Biden represents the sea power; in essence, blood and soil vs. rootless globalist cosmopolitanism, akin to the ideas of Mackinder and Dugin (Tellurocracies [land] versus the Thalassocracies [sea]).  Later on we read about Trump’s dream of Freedom Cities, flying cars, and space exploration. Those are all things I support, but I doubt that they can be achieved in Trump’s multiracial civic nationalist America, and even if Trump is re-elected, what progress can be made along any of those lines in four years?  Who is there to take over from Trump once he departs from the stage? And as regards talk of Trump’s focus on law and order, when America was burning during the dark year of 2020, all Trump did was tweet LAW AND ORDER! – followed by complete inaction. And as regards his pardoning of people he thinks were treated unfairly, well, besides Negro celebrities, who else?  Did he pardon Matt Hale and Richard Scutari?  Why didn’t he pardon the Jan. 6 people before he left office? Trump the man is a pale shadow of Trump the myth. And the ending, where we observe Spengler’s assertion that “the turning point has come” when people regard having children merely as a consideration of pros and cons – well, we’ve passed that point long ago. Where do we go from here? We can only hope that “Esoteric Trumpism” – Trump the myth – helps inspire men of action to step forward in defense of nation, race, and civilization. I am not sanguine.

The book as a whole is easy to read, with short chapters, and the style is akin to a prose poem. What about its content, its arguments? Given that I described Trump as a vulgar ignorant buffoon, a fraud, and a Negrophilic race cuck as far back as before the 2016 Presidential election, and I still stand by those comments, how do I view the premises of this book?

Similar to the second Introduction mentioned above, I believe that we must separate Trump the man, Trump the politician, and Trump the President from Trump as the avatar of his White American base, Trump the symbol of the death of the Old America, and Trump the representative of White American rage against the System bent on their destruction. Trump the man and his direct work (or lack thereof) can be justifiably criticized, even ridiculed, but Trump the representative symbol and avatar of deeper racial, civilizational, and historical undercurrents cannot be so easily dismissed.  Thus, the way to bridge my negative view of Trump and von Hoffmeister’s positive view is to transcend a mundane view of Trump as Trump and instead place the phenomenon of Trumpism (that can be in a very real sense separated from Trump the man) in its historical context. Remember the title of the book is Esoteric Trumpism and not Esoteric Trump. There’s something here that does indeed transcend the pitifully flawed person that is Donald Trump.

In the essay The World in Flames, Francis Parker Yockey and H. Keith Thompson wrote of Charles de Gaulle:

An idiot may save Europe. History has seen things as strange.

I believe that one day, in retrospect, someone may write the same about Donald Trump and White America. In any case, the toothpaste is out of the tube, and try as they may, the System Globalists will not be able to put in back in.

Of course it is up to all of us on the Far Right to leverage Trumpism to our advantage. That the Far Right has so far squandered this world historical opportunity confirms the validity of all of my criticisms of the American “movement.” One of the quotes in the book is:

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised brilliantly disguised as impossible situations. – Charles R. Swindoll

And that’s the point, isn’t it?  Criticizing Trump (as many of us, including me, do) for not getting things done is easy; it is low-hanging fruit. But most people on the Far Right (unlike me) don’t want to admit that the American Far Right squandered endless opportunities that Trumpism created, either by doing destructive stupidities or by complaining how the proper actions (*) are too difficult or impossible. So, ultimately, who is to blame?

In summary, I recommend this book.  Even if you disagree with some, most, or even all of its arguments, it is worth reading, to understand what many on the Right see in Donald Trump.

Notes:

* After Trump’s election, I outlined a plan of action, which included the American Far Right using the Trump interregnum to quietly build up infrastructure behind the scenes, while having the public face of the “movement” mostly being right-wing electoral politics, plus the usual metapolitical work.  But, no – instead we got Unite the Right and other examples of dimwit Alt-Right “acting out.” Another quote reproduced in this book is:

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity. – Andre Gide

I wonder if the “leaders” of the “movement” have reached that point yet. Regardless, their failures are plain for all to see. Another quote (from a more, in my opinion, negative individual):

Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced – James Baldwin, As Much Truth as One Can Bear

Indeed, until the “movement” can face the truth about itself, its failures, and its inept “leaders,” nothing can be changed.

One of the quotes in the book:

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night –Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora

That is similar to the T.E. Lawrence quote form The Seven Pillars of Wisdom:

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.

I think that many people in the American Far Right – the defectives, the freaks, the useless incompetents, the perverts, and the grifters – dream too little, or not at all, or about the wrong things.

Another quote:

History is a vast early warning system – Norman Cousins

Indeed it is.  And apparently the American Far Right has learned nothing and, worse, seems congenitally incapable of learning anything.

IMPORTANT 1/2/24

IMPORTANT.

What about the Eloi Question?

The 2010s, for example, witnessed the emergence of what might be termed an ironic anti-Semitism that focused heavily on flamboyant dark comedy. Many individuals, drawn heavily from the gaming community, who otherwise had little knowledge or direct experience of the Jewish Question, encountered anti-Semitism as little more than a genre of trolling. Blending with the incel sub-culture, and other corners of grievance within our decaying culture, these “anti-Semites for fun” interacted with anti-Semitism with their own ulterior motives…

OK.  But who was it who openly embraced the Alt Right?  Taylor, Johnson, MacDonald, Liddell, and of course Spencer.

See this.

And this.

And this.

And this.

Who was it who critiqued the Alt Right, from early days?

See this, me from Feb. 2017, already attacking the Alt Right.

Johnson attacked me for that, calling me a crank.

Me from Dec 2016.

And earlier –

See this.

And this.

Important warning from September 2016.

Also see this.

Who was right?  Who was wrong?  It is IMPORTANT not to let all of this fall into the “memory hole.”  The Quota Queens have a proven track record of bad judgment.  Others have a similar record of good judgment.

After it became apparent that the Trump presidency was going to be an anti-climax for both trolls and political dissidents…

Yes, and I called Trump a buffoon and a fraud even before the 2016 election while the Quota Queens were calling him “the last chance for White America” and were lauding him well after the election.

Affirmative action has consequences.  Banning and blacklisting the few people on the Far Right who have any sense and any good judgment, while embracing morons, will give you more endless failure.

Odds and Ends, 2/21/23

In der news.

DeSantis may very well represent mainstream conservatism attempting to co-opt right-wing populism and I in no way endorse him at this time. The point remains however – in what way is Trump objectively any better? The remnants of the Alt Right have essentially admitted that their continued support for Trump centers on his German-Scottish ancestry. Sorry, that doesn’t cut it for those of us who are not crazed fetishists..

The real “third rail of American politics” is the explicit promotion of White interests. Any (White) political candidate who does this and then can win some significant election, breaking barriers and setting a precedent, will have done more good than all of the decades of “movement” retarded stupidity that we’ve been suffering with (and paying through the nose for).

Contrary to what some of my critics may claim, I am not anti-German. Instead, I say that Germany has to become a normal nation. On the one hand, they need to get over their WWII guilt complex and start asserting their legitimate ethnic interests. On the other hand, the need to stop trying to dominate Europe; they need to stop causing trouble as they lurch from one fanaticism to another (hegemonic militaristic racist hyper-ethnocentric nationalism to hegemonic xenophilic globalist hyper-liberalism). They need to get over their arrogant “Master Race” complex, which they manifest even with today’s ultra-liberalism, which is why they force that ultra-liberalism on people who don’t want it (e.g., Hungary). Germany needs to become a normal nation within the European milieu, and Germans need to become, first, sane Germans, and, second, good Europeans.

Read this. Excerpts, emphasis added:

But one thing that MacDonald was happy to divulge: the group’s racist precepts. “From the beginning,” he said, “we stressed you had to be on board about race and you have to be on board about Jewish influence.” Taylor, he said, is an outlier at the Society meetings because he believes Jews are white and should be accepted…

…Soon, Regnery met a young man named Richard Spencer, who then worked at the American Conservative magazine. Other than coming from a privileged background, Spencer seemed everything Regnery wasn’t: academically successful, publicity-hungry, and youthful. The two men hit it off. At that time, Regnery together with his friend Gottfried, the right-wing author, helped set up a group called the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. Spencer, too, was an early member. But their obsession with race soon put them at odds with the organization they had helped build. Spurned by the academy, Spencer, Regnery, and Gottfried established a new group called The Mencken Club.

That was the place where the phrase “alternative right” was first used, according to Regnery, Spencer, and Gottfried. Spencer used it to title a speech by Gottfried: “The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right.”

In 2010, Regnery asked Spencer to find candidates to lead the organization. Spencer suggested himself.

At the time, leading such an explicitly racist organization carried great risks for someone with political ambitions. “I felt he was too accomplished and had too bright a career in the offing to accept a position that would forever brand him with the mark of Cain,” Regnery said. “I remember spending time gently trying to talk him out of the idea.” But he took the job, and in a speech last year Regnery said that putting Spencer in charge of NPI “secured my place in history.”

It is now 2023 and Regnery is dead. We are in the third year of the catastrophic Biden Presidency, that Spencer voted for because “liberals are more competent.” The Trump Presidency was a pathetic comedy. The Alt Right collapsed, but not before wrecking the lives of some of its young adherents, and not before being infiltrated by a Swedish homosexual man sent by HopeNotHate. Der Right granted us with the Unite the Right fiasco followed by the Jan. 6th “insurrection,” the high point of which was an individual dressed like a bison running around the Capitol Building. American society has lurched far to the Left, the situation for Whites is grimmer than ever, and the response of Der Movement is endless grifting. Based on all of that, Der Movement derives the following major conclusions:

1. We must all be properly appreciative of the Christ-like martyr Kanye West.

2. Trump is a German-Scottish “Chad.”

3. The biggest problem we all face is “Slob Naples.”

Now, I can say, as I have, that there is no way out but through Der Movement. I can repeat that Der Movement must be destroyed. But how to achieve this? Apparently, there is no degree of failure and humiliation that would convince the rank-and-file to abandon the “movement” circus.

Spencer is doing more in several tweets to support the Sallis Groupuscule than all of my blog posts combined. Hey, White ethnics, still think you can get a fair shake in Der Movement? It came originally from Trump. I suppose that the Chad doesn’t understand who voted for him. I suppose it was all of the Blacks and Jews.  It sure didn’t take too long for my prediction that anti-Italian bias would be used against DeSantis to manifest, did it?

Recent events have demonstrated and confirmed:

1. Der Movement’s ethnic affirmative action program.

2. Der Movement’s hatred of Italians.

3. That Meatball Ron’s ethnic ancestry will be a major attack point from the Right (the same Right that deifies Kanye West); the same will not be the case for Madame Nikki.

4. Racial Proximity Theory (MacDonald weeps).

5. That the Alt Right was a WASP-Nord power grab to leverage “youth culture” and “memes” to crush pan-European WN.

6. The Quota Queens can be as inept and comically moronic as possible and will always be forgiven their excesses.

More on Meatballgate:

DeSantis himself is relatively unimportant, but his emergence on the national political stage has been quite enlightening. All of the hidden anti-Italian hostility and resentment festering on the Right is really oozing out now, for all to see.

Further, Racial Proximity Theory is once again being strongly confirmed. The same Trump who spent his Presidency agonizing over the Black unemployment rate, and who made a fool of himself defending ASAP Rocky, blurts out “Meatball Ron” with no hesitation. The same Alt Righters who had priapisms over Princess Tulsi Coconut and Egg Fu Yang are indulging themselves in orgasms of ethnic attacks against the Floridian Meatball.

Also, I wonder if Spencer realized that attacking Italians was the easiest way to win himself back into the good graces of Der Movement. My prediction is that this strategy will be highly successful. While I doubt Counter-Currents will jump on board the Dickie Spinster rehabilitation train, no doubt many other Alt Right types will be quite pleased that The Master of Disaster has finally identified the real enemy. Who knows? Maybe a rapprochement with Amren, VDARE, and TOO will be possible.

Odds and Ends, 11/19/22

In der news.

Another weak, despicable, and superficial “take” by Hood. Yes, yes, we need to “build local networks” and do [some vague pablum to attract supporters]. OK, Then why doesn’t Amren contribute? How about building those local White networks and stop talking about Asian racial superiority?

Further, ceding national political power to the Left is going to be a problem for your mythical “local networks” that federal power can shut down overnight. For godssakes, a relative nonentity like Sallis can’t even have a blog without it being deleted by Woke Capital, what makes you think that your “moots” will be safe from the Government-Corporate Alliance?

Finally, once again to Hood and the mass media – STOP using Fetterman’s win as some sort of barometer for the success of left wing populism in “deep red districts.” “Deep Red” hick areas in flyover country in America – PA especially – are pathologically exclusive in us/them outlooks based on community (not race). Someone – White, Black, Groundhog – who is a native Pennsylvanian (the more generations the better) is “good” and anyone from outside is “bad.” If the GOP had run some native PA High Trust retard instead of a moronic (a “medical doctor” who eats lentils the day before his colonoscopy) cosmopolitan dual citizen socially liberal Turkish Muslim, then left-wing populism would have crashed and burned. For godssakes, can these blue state coastal elites get their heads out of their asses and realize that red state flyover country is primarily composed of extras from the movie Deliverance?

The EGI Notes blogspot site deletion episode reinforces my belief that we are too dependent on the Internet; we have stressed the digital at the expense of the analog. After more than 20 years of online fantasy activism, I’m not sure that many folks would know where to start in the real world – one of the few benefits of the Amren conference is to maintain some face-to-face humanity.

I saw this coming long ago. Besides the ideological differences, one of my (many) tactical differences with Pierce was with his enthusiasm for the Internet. Without getting into details, I can say this difference reared its head even as far back as when I met him during the Clinton years. He was hyper-ventilating about the potential of the Internet even then. I also recognized the potential of the Internet but not at the expense of the “bread and butter” real world work. Essentially, I wanted analog and digital together, in equal measure, and the Fearless Leaders want to go “all in” to digital exclusively. They were painfully naive (as usual) if they thought the “Wild West” open atmosphere of the early Internet would last.

If you want to encourage someone to get involved in an activity – like political activism – that may be difficult, unpleasant, and involving sacrifice, what is the best way to do it? Do you ease them into it, give them manageable projects, let them achieve victories (no matter how small), and build up a tradition of success to build their confidence and give them hope for the future Or do you immediately throw them into the most difficult and impossible work, subject them to one humiliating defeat after another, erode their confidence, construct a tradition of inept failure, and this create an atmosphere of despair – while preaching “worse is better?”

Let’s try again. Do you build esprit de corps, loyalty and comradeship, and a feeling of value? Or do you scorn them as inferior, and outsider and/or (falsely) claim that outgroup members are their superior in every way?

Do we begin to understand the failures of Der Movement? Do we understand why even small scale wins like democratic multiculturalism are important? And why the HBD cult is so stupid and deadly?

It is amusing when people who are allegedly afraid of political violence promote the “solution” of censoring and deplatforming those people they allegedly fear – actions which will of course do more to incite that political violence than anything else. I cannot believe that the “experts” are so stupid that they do not understand that by disenfranchising people from the political process they leave the no choice than acting out. Indeed, I suspect that they do know this and are deliberately inciting their opponents into violence so as to justify even more repression against them.

Statement:

The real purpose of the Alt Right (and the associated ideology of HBD Nordicism) was, and is, to purge Der Movement of White ethnics, especially Italians.

This was implicit in WN 2.0 and is more or less explicit in WN 3.0.

Here Greg Johnson simply lifts all of my arguments against Trump and against “worse is better” and slaps his own name on them. That’s the same guy who was calling Trump a sincere man of genuine greatness when I correctly and presciently labelled Trump a fraud and a buffoon.

I’m calling you out Johnson as a fraud and as an intellectual plagiarist.

Johnson:

Trump, in short, is an unprincipled egomaniac, and it would be very foolish to depend on him for anything.

Gee, what happened to the sincere man of genuine greatness? The quote above sounds like what I was saying six years ago.