Why is the Dissident Right growing and why will it continue to grow? One answer is that it has ideas appropriate to its time. Another is that it found new ways to counteract the clampdown on ideas that the Left had managed to impose on society and culture in the 20th century. In short, it has its own ideas but it also empowers the “marketplace of ideas" generally.
This is an intellectual argument, but there are other reasons that explain the rise of the Dissident Right. One of the most important is that it removes or at least challenges emotional control.
This is especially apparent in the wake of Meryl Streep’s recent Golden Globes speech, which is a “golden” example of the Leftist mindset at work—pure emotional manipulation based on lies.
The speech itself is a tissue of lies. Its effective essence (i.e. the way it is designed to be received) contains the following:
All four of these points, which make up the essence of Streep’s speech, are blatant lies, and to those of us in the Dissident Right, self-evident lies. The fourth one in particular is a complete inversion of the truth, as the media as been working Stakhanovite shifts for over a year to shut Trump down. But the most interesting point, I think is the first one, the notion that Trump mocked a reporter.
The Left only ever mention something because they think it will have a pre-programmed emotional response that will strengthen their control over us. This is what Streep, whether consciously or unconsciously, was doing here with almost every line of her speech. Just like when it was used during the election, the line about mocking a disabled reporter was supposed to jerk our emotions in a specific way.
Almost every story that appears today seems to come with its own prepackaged emotional response, carefully crafted by its purveyors. A couple of days ago there was a terrorist truck attack in Israel. Yes, we in the Dissident Right know that being run over by a truck sucks and that there are several human tragedies at the heart of the incident. But why should we empathise? We shouldn’t.
The news has been in overdrive since cable started running 24-7 back in the 1980s and the blunt fact is that empathy is simply not an option. Most normies, however, haven’t even begun to realise this. They still dutifully try to emote in the correct pre-programmed ways, which might explain why so many of them are instead just tuning out of the news cycle altogether.
But we in the Dissident Right are emotional realists. We recognise that we have a finite supply of the various emotions to expend on the internet and the universe and that we—not they—should be the determiners of what emotions we choose to express.
With regard to the Israeli truck attack, we are no doubt meant to be horrified and sympathetic to the victims, and to then channel these emotions towards softly glowing "after-sentiments" like generalised support for the state of Israel (how convenient that they are now suffering the same sort of attacks that Europeans are suffering) or a nebulous sentiment of universal humanism “resolving our tragic differences.”
With Meryl Streep’s speech we are supposed to feel aghast at the "evil bully" Trump and then get a little moral high as we congratulate ourselves that we have the "right thoughts and feelings" about the mocking of disabled people. But, like I said, empathy is no longer an option in a globalized world that is forever shoving its emotional cues in our faces.
The Dissident Right instinctively understands this, and so our response is emotional freedom. which in these cases consists of saying “fuck disabled people” or mocking the terrorist incident by ludicrously calling it a “THOT patrol” or something equally trollish.
This does not mean we hate actual disabled people and sneer at actual terrorist victims, Jewish or otherwise. It means instead that we shit on “disabled people” and “terorist victims” as emotional simulacrums tied into the over-extended thought-control matrix of our corrupt society and culture.
We refuse them because of their essential fakeness, as deeds simply flagged up to evoke the pre-programmed emotional response and thus reinforce a moral hierarchy. It's not as if our emotions are ever going to have any impact. Quite the reverse—our emotions are being evoked to control us, not solve these issue or problems to which they supposedly refer.
In our often "tasteless" rejection of this emotional and moral code, the Dissident Right in a sense is improving on Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulacrum. Baudrillard saw four levels of representation, between reality and thought, stretching from the directly representational to the entirely false.
The driver in Baudillard’s scheme was economic overproduction and the increasing jadedness that modernity creates through this process. The simulacrum was a cultural or social reference that had become alienated or distanced from its referent to the point of absurdity.
This is exactly the situation we are in today, with regard to emotional manipulation by the media. We are constantly invited or coerced to emote at every event everywhere, but only in the prescribed and "correct" way. This may even be the operational reason that political correctness was first created—to limit and thus direct the vector of emotional response (an idea for another essay).
While our ancestors were overworked on farms and plantations, and in mines and factories to control them, it is our emotions that are now overworked in order to control us. It is against this that the Dissident Right instinctively rebels with its crass humour, troll-like sensibility, and often surreal commentary—although nowadays, so insane is the world created by the Left, that even common sense will sometimes do. As Orwell said, “In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
By choosing to feel or not to feel in our own way, by selecting—or more commonly deselecting—the "official" objects of prescribed emotions, we not only break free from this emotional programming, but we also revivify the emotional cosmos itself, because ultimately emotional control deadens the emotions.
In this way, we extend our emotional capacity—and that of humanity in general—far beyond that of the emotionally jaded normie, who stares blankly at his screen as he dutifully tries to dig up the "correct" emotions to fit the cues of his Leftist masters.
This is an intellectual argument, but there are other reasons that explain the rise of the Dissident Right. One of the most important is that it removes or at least challenges emotional control.
This is especially apparent in the wake of Meryl Streep’s recent Golden Globes speech, which is a “golden” example of the Leftist mindset at work—pure emotional manipulation based on lies.
The speech itself is a tissue of lies. Its effective essence (i.e. the way it is designed to be received) contains the following:
- Trump mocked a reporter's disability
- Trump wants to deport foreigners from Hollywood
- Hollywood is a symbol of wider America
- Trump wants to shut down the media
All four of these points, which make up the essence of Streep’s speech, are blatant lies, and to those of us in the Dissident Right, self-evident lies. The fourth one in particular is a complete inversion of the truth, as the media as been working Stakhanovite shifts for over a year to shut Trump down. But the most interesting point, I think is the first one, the notion that Trump mocked a reporter.
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| What freedom looks like. |
Almost every story that appears today seems to come with its own prepackaged emotional response, carefully crafted by its purveyors. A couple of days ago there was a terrorist truck attack in Israel. Yes, we in the Dissident Right know that being run over by a truck sucks and that there are several human tragedies at the heart of the incident. But why should we empathise? We shouldn’t.
The news has been in overdrive since cable started running 24-7 back in the 1980s and the blunt fact is that empathy is simply not an option. Most normies, however, haven’t even begun to realise this. They still dutifully try to emote in the correct pre-programmed ways, which might explain why so many of them are instead just tuning out of the news cycle altogether.
But we in the Dissident Right are emotional realists. We recognise that we have a finite supply of the various emotions to expend on the internet and the universe and that we—not they—should be the determiners of what emotions we choose to express.
 |
| This is how they want you... |
With Meryl Streep’s speech we are supposed to feel aghast at the "evil bully" Trump and then get a little moral high as we congratulate ourselves that we have the "right thoughts and feelings" about the mocking of disabled people. But, like I said, empathy is no longer an option in a globalized world that is forever shoving its emotional cues in our faces.
 |
| ...or like this. |
This does not mean we hate actual disabled people and sneer at actual terrorist victims, Jewish or otherwise. It means instead that we shit on “disabled people” and “terorist victims” as emotional simulacrums tied into the over-extended thought-control matrix of our corrupt society and culture.
We refuse them because of their essential fakeness, as deeds simply flagged up to evoke the pre-programmed emotional response and thus reinforce a moral hierarchy. It's not as if our emotions are ever going to have any impact. Quite the reverse—our emotions are being evoked to control us, not solve these issue or problems to which they supposedly refer.
In our often "tasteless" rejection of this emotional and moral code, the Dissident Right in a sense is improving on Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulacrum. Baudrillard saw four levels of representation, between reality and thought, stretching from the directly representational to the entirely false.
- basic reflection of reality
- perversion of reality
- pretence of reality
- simulacrum, i.e. something that "bears no relation to any reality whatsoever."
 |
| A hot, comforting cup of simulacrum. |
This is exactly the situation we are in today, with regard to emotional manipulation by the media. We are constantly invited or coerced to emote at every event everywhere, but only in the prescribed and "correct" way. This may even be the operational reason that political correctness was first created—to limit and thus direct the vector of emotional response (an idea for another essay).
While our ancestors were overworked on farms and plantations, and in mines and factories to control them, it is our emotions that are now overworked in order to control us. It is against this that the Dissident Right instinctively rebels with its crass humour, troll-like sensibility, and often surreal commentary—although nowadays, so insane is the world created by the Left, that even common sense will sometimes do. As Orwell said, “In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
By choosing to feel or not to feel in our own way, by selecting—or more commonly deselecting—the "official" objects of prescribed emotions, we not only break free from this emotional programming, but we also revivify the emotional cosmos itself, because ultimately emotional control deadens the emotions.
In this way, we extend our emotional capacity—and that of humanity in general—far beyond that of the emotionally jaded normie, who stares blankly at his screen as he dutifully tries to dig up the "correct" emotions to fit the cues of his Leftist masters.
