EXALTED HIERARCHY

by John Maelstrom

SOME HIERARCHIES ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

One of the challenges of being a monarchist in America is this terrible obstacle known as King George III. Don’t get me wrong, at this point in the demise of the United States it’s not as if the majority of Americans know the first thing about this historical figure, but nailed deep somewhere in their Kardashian-addled craniums is this notion that we had a king once, shook off his yoke, and on that day we became the greatest country the world has ever seen.

Most conventional right-wingers agree we’re on the fast track to someplace unpleasant. This is perhaps why I continue to find them at least worth talking to, despite my uncountable frustrations with them. To them, a simple return to the U.S. Constitution, "as the Founding Fathers envisioned it," would fix everything. I point out to them that in just a few years after that happened we’d be right back here in a world the Founders would never recognize.

"Monarchy is the way," I challenge. "It is the most common, natural, stable form of government known to the people of Europe. It is superior if for no other reason than knowing whose head needs to come off in case things go bad."

"Wait a minute, Mr. Radical Traditionalist. If returning to the original U.S. Constitution is doomed to eventual failure then why isn’t returning to monarchy also doomed to eventual failure? After all, the monarchies eventually fell to liberal democracies, with only the lucky ones continuing a sort of celebrity existence, but without the Botox, power, or commercial success of a Brad Pitt."

Yes, I am hoist on my own petard!

The flag-waver has a point, and it is one that needs addressing in no uncertain terms, despite the fact that his preferred form of government, even with rebooted Founding Fathers and extensive tinkering with the words on the sacred piece of parchment, still leaves his country open to instant manipulation by unseen oligarchs.

Mass democracy is, by default, the stomping ground of marketeers, the largest of whom are those oligarchs. By contrast, the virtue of monarchy is that it represents the form of government where those powerful wealthy few are made to bow before one man. This must be done openly, where the lowest caste of society can see and appreciate the display of fealty. So long as this display is deemed authentic there is harmony in the system. Once it appears contrived revolution is around the corner.

Not interested in repeating history, should we mystically find ourselves back in the Traditional world, I’m forced to examine why the Traditional world collapsed; identify the fault, and suggest an alternative. This leads me to make a distinction between two forms of hierarchy. For the sake of discussion I call these degenerative hierarchy and exalted hierarchy.

The former represents the brand of hierarchy we are most familiar with. It is the form that became almost instantly corrupt and grew more corrupt in the years preceding Modernity. Importantly for radical traditionalists, it is also the type that is most likely to manifest itself on the small scale in the leadership of any movement, like ours, opposing Modernity.

If we are to create a vision of a promising future rather than a replay of a system that failed, we need to take special care to avoid the trap our ancestors fell into as we build our own alternatives to Modernity.

The trap works like this. Anyone involved in this movement for any length of time spends a fair amount of that time pondering how we are to escape this mess that has been left to us. Like all dissident communities, we have our crackpots and our geniuses. Navigating this minefield of personalities is frustrating but eventually a clique forms of reasonably like minds. This is where temptation strikes. That clique elects itself to leadership. They then proceed to cherry-pick their lieutenants, sergeants, and so forth, in the formation of a new cadre of Radical Traditionalists. In doing this they hope to cement themselves – founders after all – into the top leadership positions and form a solid foundation for something bigger.

Resentment, though, forms a crack in that foundation, because the leadership role did not materialize in a way harmonious to Nature. It was simply willed into being as if there weren’t other Nietzschean allies ready to will something else.

This has been the underlying corrosive element present in all of our efforts. Each was fragile in its foundation and easily knocked into the failure column because of the resources of our enemies and our individualist nature. If, for some reason, such an organization doesn’t fracture it’s because a Stalin managed to eliminate the Bukharins, Trotskys, Zinovievs and Kamenevs of the organization. Personally, I think we’ve had enough fratricide, so let’s pass on the Stalin option.

Leadership has to be based on so much more than who was first atop the mountain. For decades now, generation after generation of newsletter publishers, and now website owners, have been regarded as default leaders by virtue of being one of the rare few to stand up and voice our concerns. I am not belittling this, believe me. At this point it is difficult to engage in anything more meritorious than courageously speaking, and that should be recognized. But making this the be-all and end-all of leadership foundation introduces a vulnerability we cannot afford to fall for again.

THE MOUNTAIN

When an organization emerges around this core group of elites, all who follow and fill in the lower rungs will develop a dependence on these personalities. They will owe their positions within the new hierarchy to these men. How can it be otherwise? But this is a weakness. What should have been a social and political framework of solid steel principle, honor, and even ritual, is instead a fragile house of cards. Without the framework only the whims and limitations of these courageous, but possibly flawed men and women, matter.

They have not been tested, but they carry the illusion of having been tested to those below them. When the enemy removes these leaders, or they expire on their own, the entire organization is adrift and eventually vaporizes. They were leaders based only on their outspokenness and now their followers have become dependent on this voice while the enemy has been given a juicy target. The project is not a person, or a group of people, the project is the structure. The structure must be built solid, like a mountain, and in accord with the laws of Nature. It is upon the framework of this structure that the personalities can then ascend or descend, depending on their virtues.

Historically, primogeniture was the most corrupting of all hierarchical practices and a powerful illustration as to why I call this form of hierarchy "degenerative." In cultures the world over the case was made that a deity divinely selected the first born to become the successor to the reigning king, but this was a lie. If the first born was female we didn’t even pretend to appreciate “God’s will.” We simply changed the rules of the game to exclude daughters and awaited the birth of a son. When that didn’t work we simply said, “Okay, the daughter it is.”

If the child was forced to take the throne at age five, or if the heir was mentally disabled, we changed the rules again so a regent would hold power instead. “What does God know?” all of a sudden! Furthermore, there is every reason to believe the children of elites would never be tested the way those of lower castes were, in whichever category of assessment. Because their father was important they would always be handled with special care, but this also weakened them. Only a very rare few would have what it took to maneuver around the bootlickers and maintain their honor while waging the noble battle against the self.

Finally, if we want to place special weight upon a material factor like genetics, we can only do so by ignoring the historical reality which shows us that kings didn’t always plant their seeds in the garden plots allotted to them. There is no end to the stories involving king, commoner, mead, and mating. Is it possible that the common bar wench in such stories may also have been the product of such a union? And is it possible her illegitimate child may have carried uncataloged noble blood from both parents? It is. Worse, it’s even possible this bastard child rose in rank down in the Third Estate, where merit meant something, and worked to destroy the old order all together.

We can dig ourselves as many graves as we’d like subverting divine will or we can study the blueprint that He (if you’d like) already laid before us.

In the natural world, particularly among the gregarious mammals, there are no artificial kings or chiefs. There is no birthright. The head of the herd earns their position, and they hold it, through their merits. I don’t mean to suggest we perfectly imitate the elk. I am saying spiritual heirs are preferable to blood heirs, and this is what we see play out when the College of Cardinals gather in Rome, as they did recently, to select their next pope.

Their system is not without faults because, as we’ve seen in scandal after scandal, where they adhere to the degenerative model of hierarchy, a few demons in disguise near the top have managed to promote other demons from down below. This has cost the ancient Church almost everything in terms of respect, attendance on Sunday, and ownership of their real estate and treasures. Imagine the outcome if parishioners knew what some corrupt, low-level clergyman was up to, or even suspected it, and not only declined to promote the pedophile but actually acted to excommunicate him. Instead, bishops (similarly corrupted) simply transferred the demonic agent elsewhere in the hierarchy. Degenerative, no?

ALL THE KING'S MEN

Exalted hierarchy is the system that dominates in nature and, strangely, it is the hierarchy we are probably most familiar with in our day-to-day lives (the home, the office). It demands, at whichever level you choose to study it, that a group of limited size, all peers, and all personally known to one another, size each other up and select their own superior based on his or her combination of leadership, charisma, courage, wisdom, virtue, etc. Different situations would call for the honoring of a different combination of traits. This method of building your hierarchy carries with it several important psychological effects that help lend stability to the system.

Because we are dealing with units of small, intimate groups of electors, the participants know that their voice or their vote is counted. They have either actively participated in promoting this leader to his higher role or passively acquiesced in his promotion by, (1) failing to either exhibit the required merits themselves, or (2) failing to properly promote some alternative peer.

A gauge is now plain to see, for all the peers participating, as to what the standard of leadership is. Do you feel the current leader is inadequate? You know him. You know what he is made of. Better yourself and work at building support with your peers, at whichever level you all occupy in the hierarchy. Perhaps in time you will be promoted and rival him as one of his peers at that higher level, and best him when the time comes to gain promotion to an even higher level.

There is a built-in confidence among all those in the hierarchy of lower standing in whoever ascends to leadership. Should the enemy eliminate the present leader, or should he fall on his own, a meritoriously appointed heir, nearly as capable - perhaps more capable within a few years - is ready to take his place.

Finally, in this system voting counts, but only at the level at which it should count; not the meaningless level of mass unrepresentative democracy. Oh, it’s very well and good for we few cyber-crusaders to spit every time we have to utter the word democracy, but let’s not dismiss the reality that every living man and woman, by virtue of them having not committed suicide yet, sees themselves as worth something, and will not be satisfied until that worth is honored. You can convince a man he should not have a voice in matters he is ignorant of, but you cannot get him to appreciate a position that says he has no voice at all. That can only lead to resentment, and from there, rebellion.

The guys in the office mailroom should have a voice in selecting their department leader to represent them at the next staff meeting, but not a voice in selecting the next vice-president of accounting. Similarly, the Board of Directors are of high enough rank to select or hire their CEO but should leave the staff within the mailroom alone to select their leader, so long as the company’s mail delivery system is operating properly.

The difference between these two modes of hierarchy can be summed up as follows: one builds from the top down, with the down-line being only as good as the judgment of the guy at the top allows. If someone at the top is bought off, in a Woodrow Wilsonian way, he can do incalculable damage to the entire organization, with those below having no means of correcting the damage.

The other builds from the bottom and up, with each layer upward being tested for merit by those most qualified to evaluate those merits. Even if the base is composed of mostly degenerates and prostitutes, after repeating this process several times – six, eight, maybe ten times – someone superior emerges. Degenerative hierarchies, because of their structure, still exhibit greater stability than pure democracies and dictatorships. This is why they lasted as long as they did. But as Charles the First and Louis XVI will tell you, they have their limits.