The Nature of Power

As with many in the Dissident Right, I came into the movement via libertarianism. For many years, I was a hardcore, and I do mean hardcore, libertarian. I read Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard religiously and frequently spoke on the merits of issues such as the gold standard and non-interventionism. One core element of the libertarian creed, especially in the more socially conservative faction, is that we should avoid using the State to achieve our ends because the Left could do the same to us. Take for example something like homosexual rights, the prevailing reasoning within libertarian circles was (and still is), “We may not like what they do, but if we utilize the State to proscribe their behavior, they could turn around and use the same State against us, should they ever obtain power. The only real solution is to crush the State down to its bare essentials, so that it can never be empowered against us.“

As with much of what I considered accurate in my libertarian days, I now reject this view as utterly naïve and one that fails to understand the reality of power. In short, power exists and if you aren’t using it, someone will use it against you. Looking back on it now, I am not so sure why I so easily fell for that inexperienced line of thinking, other than it sounded right and it did appeal to my “live and let live” sensibilities. But history does not bear this out. In the 1950s, the police would frequently raid homosexual bars, but Christians were protected. Now, Christians are harassed for trying to attend church during a pandemic, while public health officials won’t stop homosexual orgies during the monkeypox outbreak. Keep in mind that we did try a “live and let live” compromise. By and large, anti-sodomy laws stopped being enforced in the late 1960s. However, as soon as they obtained power, the alphabet peoples used that power against Christians. Power exists, there is no such thing as a power-neutral society. And, if you are not willing to use power, someone will inevitably use it against you.

Thankfully, with the exception of a few remaining holdouts, the Right is waking up to the utter insanity of this libertarian position. If it is too late, that remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: the Left does not care about the short-sighted “they could use it against us” libertarian attitude. To their credit, the Left understands the nature of raw power far better than the vast majority of the mainstream Right, until bitter reality is finally shaking the Right awake. Leftists will use power against us, and if we push back, they will simply lie and act like they were just minding their own business when those mean rightwingers viciously attacked them.

A great example of this was during the so-called “Second Red Scare” – a point in the late 1940s and 1950s when Americans became acutely aware of the dangers of communism. The Left framed this period as time when innocent Americans were hunted down for no good reason, as if out of the blue, by rabid anti-communists such as Joseph McCarthy. Now, those on the Right will know there is more to this story. For one, communism really did make rapid gains in the years between 1945-1950. In 1944, communism was restricted to the Soviet Union. By 1950, communists had taken over not only half of Europe (and were knocking on the door of both France and Italy) but had also conquered China. Even more importantly, the extent of Soviet spying became public knowledge. Right before the Soviets detonated their own nuclear weapon, the majority opinion of the U.S. intelligence community was that the Soviets were far behind the Americans in the development of the bomb, and it could take the Reds a decade to catch up. When that turned out not to be the case, it was quickly revealed that communist spies had leaked secrets to the Soviets, allowing them to advance so quickly. By taking more facts into account, anther view of the early Cold War anti-communists appears, one where, instead of being a senseless witch hunt, it was a natural defensive action to protect the nation against a challenging uptick in communist aggression and espionage.

But what many, even on the Right, do not realize is that all of the tools used to hunt communists in the late 1940s and early 1950s were first developed by the Left in the 1930s and early 1940s to target fascists. From the Smith Act to HUAC, many of the instruments used to target early Cold War communists are, in fact, connected to the early antifascists. Leftists who like to fret about the loss of free speech for communists would do well to remember what happened to Father Coughlin. But, all of this was (and still is) ignored to tell the simple story of communist victimhood. The Left used the State against the Right, and not just actual fascists either, but also more mainstream rightwingers such as the America First Committee, and when it was used against the Left, they ignored what they had done and started crying foul. This is how the Left operates.

Even more telling about the antifascist roots of early Cold War anti-communists is that fascism and communism were never equivalent threats to the United States. Remember, fascism is national, that meant it was concerned with its own nation and was not effective at spreading beyond its own borders. Hitler understood that National Socialism was meant for Germans and other nations would have to develop their own movements based on their own unique cultures. This is why fascism is better considered as an umbrella term to describe wildly different rightwing movements that arose during the interwar period. For example, review how different the National Socialists of Germany were to the Iron Guard of Romania. There is a reason why something like the German-American Bund had no influence outside of German-Americans, and even then, its appeal was restricted to recent immigrants rather than the vast population of Germans born in the United States and dominating the Midwest. It was a German ideology for Germans. Even something more homegrown like the Silver Shirts found very little appeal in the United States; despite the fervent imagination of the Left, it was simply too foreign, especially in its own embrace of dictatorship, to have any real consideration.

By contrast, communism is international in its orientation and openly seeks to spread its ideology to all the world. To a communist, this is the very promise of history. This means that, rather than being content with conquering one nation, communism must expand. The basic premise of The Man in the High Castle is bunk. Hitler’s dreams were in the east, and he had no desire to take over the United States. He even wanted Britain and France to keep their African empires, as he thought Africa was unhealthy for Germans. Conversely, the communists (and Soviets) desired massive growth and were far more active with their subversion and espionage. Though the Left enjoys portraying communists as blameless victims during the early Cold War and ignores that it was their own methods used against them, a careful examination of the facts reveals something very different – the antifascist crusade before and during WWII was centered on baseless paranoia and overestimating a threat. The methods used against communists in the early Cold War were targeting a far more serious danger.

Give credit where credit is due, the Left understands that power will be used by someone, the only question is by whom. They gleefully used the Smith Act and HUAC against the phantom of American fascism but then started crying over “civil liberties” when those same tools were used against them. As soon as they gained full control of American society by 2015, the alphabet peoples wasted no time targeting Christians. They did not fret about this being used against them at a later date. The Right must learn this same lesson.