The Worthy House, and Charles Haywood in particular, published an excellent article about a month ago that I have been meaning to share. It is about the “No Enemies on the Right [NEOTR]” principle.
Find it here. Here are the 10 key points of the principle:
1) The only present real-life goal of the Right which matters is total, permanent defeat of the Left. All else, including any possibility of the future flourishing of mankind, depends on this defeat and is downstream from it.
2) The Left are those individuals, entities, organizations, and systems animated by Left ideology.
3) Left ideology is the ideology that is the essence of the so-called Enlightenment. This consists of demands for total emancipation from all bonds not continuously chosen, combined with forced egalitarianism, all in the belief these principles will lead to an actual utopia, a heaven on earth.
4) The Left is the enemy of mankind. An enemy is, as Carl Schmitt said, an “adversary [who] intends to negate his opponent’s way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one’s own form of existence.” An enemy is not someone with whom you merely disagree on strategy, tactics, or aesthetics.
5) At this present moment, the Right is properly defined as anyone and anything not Left. The Right is extremely diverse in belief, relative to the Left. This is irrelevant, at least today.
6) Disagreement and animus, and therefore conflict, among those on the Right will always exist; this is the nature of man and politics. What to do with respect to such conflicts should be evaluated solely with the criterion whether any given action serves to defeat the Left. This does not mean one cannot say “I don’t like your tactics,” “I don’t like your policy proposals,” or, for that matter, “I don’t like you.” It does mean that no person on the Right needs to “be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one’s own form of existence,” because only the Left threatens our existence, and that most imminently. Therefore no action towards anyone on the Right should ever seek to, or threaten to, stop that person from earning a living or from being a full member of society (what is sometimes, though the term is not very helpful, called “cancellation”).
7) Some disagreement on the Right is helpful to achieve our common goal; some is not helpful but not destructive. Either way, disagreement on the Right should always be conducted in a way that does not benefit the Left, but rather advances the goal of the Right to permanently end all Left power. Usually, this means necessary disagreement should be done as privately as feasible. However, the default position with respect to someone with whom one disagrees on important matters should be ignoring that person, if he brings nothing to the political table, or cooperating with him where it serves to defeat the Left.
8) Occasionally, as with the so-called Intellectual Dark Web or “classical liberals,” some on the Left may espouse some principles or policies of benefit to the Right—not to help us, ever, to be sure, but to help themselves. Cooperation with such people to achieve limited present political ends should not be rejected. But because the primary loyalty of such people is to the Left, we should always realize they are, and always will be, eager to destroy us at the first opportunity. They are our enemies, and always will be, unless they change themselves and reject the premises of the Left.
9) NEOTR is not a permanent principle. When the Right gains power, and the Left is utterly defeated, there will be enemies on the Right, because disputes will arise about how to exercise that power. This is simply the nature of human political action.
10) NEOTR could be phrased in different, longer, more complex ways, making subtle distinctions. These have philosophical value, but they undercut a first principle of politics, which is that winning must take precedence over intellectual hair-splitting. We should stick with the clear, simple formulation of NEOTR.
Haywood starts the article with the reasoning behind why we need a principle like this and then goes into common objections.
Before you object, check to make sure he has not already answered your objection.
Go read the full thing. It’s a good piece. I’ve commented on most of these bullet points at one point or another myself (including some just recently, like #3 for the Enlightenment, #5 for defining the Right, and #7 with my dissident critique of secular materialism, of which Haywood himself would be included – but note I am still sharing his articles and praising his work here because NEOTR).
#8 is especially important, because this covers the “questionable” people like Elon Musk, Rubin, Ben Shapiro, Prager, and the rest of the classical crew. They are not our allies. Use them for their worth but remember that they are not “on the Right,” so they do not apply to the principle. Trust your actual right-wing brothers, not some gay guy, dual citizens, or billionaire centrists. These guys will never allow #1 to come to pass.
It would be tremendously helpful for our cause if everyone genuinely on the Right (see point 5) would adopt this mindset.
The modern Right is a lot like post-1800s Christians: we spend more time fighting each other than fighting the true enemy.
Let’s collectively decide to face the true enemy first and with most of our might, and maybe dedicate 5-20% of our energy rebuking one another. I’m not against edifying, disagreeing, and discussion, but that should never be our primary focus when our situation is becoming so dire. We either work together and win or bicker and die alone.
We are in a fight for our very existence. Let’s perhaps secure our existence first and then hammer out trivial policy differences later.
A Christian, husband, father, and American dissident. Join him in seeking truth and sipping sweet tea during the collapse of the American Empire. You can find more of his work at hiddendominion.com. Eph. 5:11.
I believe I understand your meaning when you speak of left and right, but I’m struck by the fact there are some (professing dissidents) who don’t. I’ve tried to argue with not a few who would characterize National Socialism as being on the left of the political spectrum. This has probably been an exercise in futility as they themselves are leftists. Such, along with many ‘Christian’ Zionists, have been duped. For purposes of clarification, I offer the following:
“If the Christian point of view were strictly international, it would perforce deny and forbid the family as being a barrier to universal human contacts. … In reality, the sanctity of marriage and family life has always been preached in Christian religion, and it is precisely the Christian Message that has in this very point had an extraordinarily powerful influence on the moral education of the nations. National Socialism follows the same path in its message. p. 45. National Socialism, for its part, does not think for one moment of denying the existence of mankind in general for the sake of its own nation, or to accord to other nations a lesser right to exist than itself possesses.” p. 46.
Prof. D. Cajus Fabricius, ‘Positive Christianity in the Third Reich’, Third Reich Originals
“I believe I understand your meaning when you speak of left and right, but I’m struck by the fact there are some (professing dissidents) who don’t.”
This is true; not everyone will agree with our definition. But we have to hold to a correct definition even when others do not.
The actual battle is between the 1) Enlightenment followers and 2) sane people. But each group has many different backgrounds, theories, and beliefs. Many Enlightenment followers even think they are right-leaning, so it is no surprise that some categorize specific groups incorrectly based on their own biases.
Whether or not anyone recognizes this is irrelevant, because it is reality. We’re in a fight against the modern day.
But as many of us already are intimately familiar with, it is hard to convince others of the truth.
Hear, hear! Prof. Smith has done some very good work of late on the importance of correctly making this distinction as well, pointing to Schmitt’s distinction between a Hostis (public enemy) and an Inimicus (private enemy) – enemies bent on destroying my people and our way of life on the one hand (hostis), and persons with whom we have differences (often even sharp differences), but who are not actively trying to destroy us (inimicus). Here are a few lines from his latest on the subject:
Mr. Morris,
Until you weighed in, I was going to forbear commenting further. Clearly, Dr. Wilson is intractable on this question. I’m shocked actually that one of his stature would subscribe to the official Yankee propaganda narrative on WW2. It was the All-Lies British, American, and Russian empires who made Total War against civilians. I also don’t see how my position is damaging to the Southern Heritage movement. I’ll even add that, in my view, Southern Heritage will go the way of the Romanov family unless the true common enemy on the Left is recognized by all of us who call ourselves dissidents.
“The total contrast to Jewish-Marxist Bolshevism is exclusively represented by German National Socialism. It is the mighty antithesis and opponent of the Communist Internationale in every fiber of its being, opposed to it in the sharpest contrast, in ponderabilities and imponderabilities of its purpose. … May other nations and states have sufficient insight and good will to recognize this and follow the German example. The destruction of the Communist Internationale is a task for the nations of the whole of the Christian and civilized world.” pp. 178-179.
Adolf Ehrt, ‘Communism in Germany’, published by the General League of German Anti-Communist Associations, 1933
Herr Ehrt sounds absolutely right wing to me. Patton came to understand this after the war, and ‘they’ killed him for it. As he wrote to his wife:
“Everything I say is not only misquoted, but also put out of context. … I can’t see what future I have, but I am certainly getting a great education in SOB’s. … I had never heard that we fought to de-Nazify Germany – live and learn. What we are doing is to utterly destroy the only semi-Modern state in Europe so that Russia can swallow the whole.” p. 746.
George S. Patton, ‘The Patton Papers’, letter to Beatrice, September 2, 1945
National Socialism is entirely leftist. Nothing can be more unSouthern than that.
Soviet and Chinese Communism are further to the left and more unSouthern but I admit that National Socialism does not sound good either. Perhaps we should just call ourselves Nationalists.
Dr. Wilson:
I’m in absolute agreement with you when you say that nothing could be more “unSouthern” than leftism. Where I think you & I might (probably would) part ways, is in describing German National Socialism as “entirely leftist.” It might be helpful from my seat were you to provide at least a few examples. I feel like I’m not asking too much since “entirely leftist” provides such a broad scope of German leftism to articulate.
P.S. I read Hitler’s Magnum Opus for the first time several years back. Whatever “takeaways” from the book I personally got, that German National Socialism was “entirely leftist” was definitely not one of them. I of course could be way wrong on point, and eagerly await your instruction to the contrary, sir. Maybe I should just read the book again, I don’t know. …
Can you imagine Lee or Davis sympathising with a bullying, goose-stepping, mass movement police state? One that invaded other countries and made war on civilians, just like Yankees? Hitler made war entirely against white people, in collaboration with Asians. It is a grave mistake to connect the cause of Southern independence with evil events in Europe most of a century ago, although it seems a temptation for some. It is to adopt Yankee theorising in the place of Southern heritage. Connection with Yankee rightists harms our cause
This is entirely an emotional argument. “Oh my gosh they are such bullies and made war and sided with Asians!”. You sound more like a leftist than anyone else here.
National Socialists, for all their faults which are numerous, are not leftists. Did you even read the article? NatSocs are completely opposite of the egalitarian Enlightenment spectrum.
And nothing can be more “unSouthern” than NatSocs? Not even things far worse like communism or Jewish Zionism? Give me a break.
You are literally the target audience of these types of articles. We are talking about working together to fight the left, and you come in and immediately start bashing some on the Right. “No one on the Right is valid except for me”. No wonder we cannot get anywhere.
Mr. Egal,
Dr. Wilson’s is a formidable voice in the Southern Heritage movement, but for the good of historical truth (which should be of primary concern to every dissident), I hope that not all the readers will be cowed into silence in the free expression of uncomfortable truths that sometimes go against the grain of ingrained sensibilities. There were Germans, and not a few Northerners, who fought and died for the Southern Heritage that was the Confederacy.
German Confederates
http://www.revisionist.net/hysteria/heros.html
Thanks for your support.
Mr. Egal, I have been in this fight for over 60 years with efforts and sacrifices that you cannot even imagine with your scribbling. Attempting to put me down as emotional and leftist shows you are entirely ignorant of our history and have no qualification to an opinion on this matter.
The basic idea of National Socialism is to destroy society and rebuild it by totalitarian government force to fit an imaginary abstract theory. Nothing can be more unSouthern. Our cause has been hurt by being taken over by a Yankee theory of “white nationalism.” We do not need theories and bad examples from ancient European history to celebrate the South as a wonderful and noble thing and to rally our people..