Men and the City 51 - The Hobbesian Moment Part 1

Men, Vanguards and the new Leviathan.

Men in the city are fragmented.

The landscape of the wobbly 21st century West is fragmented. Men are divided and subdivided into different imagined communities. Many are clustered in online spaces (Manosphere, Crypto, wallstreetbets etc.), others are enmeshed in trendy social milieus (Tech Bros, digital nomads, Passport Bros), and the amorphous mass of normies swim inside the glass encased fishbowl of mind numbing mainstream culture. The schizophrenia of modern, compartmentalized life has left masses of men socially siloed, financially imprisoned, sexually starved, and spiritually adrift.

The alienation and isolation of modern Western man leaves the bulk of dissident thinkers today equally demoralized and nostalgic, though the malaise has spawned some interesting counter-culture movements to be sure. Most are familiar with the Red and Black Pills, the anarcho-capitalists, and the Groypers of the Alt-Right, less well known are the Neoreactionaries of the Dark Enlightenment. These intellectual urges tend to range from the strict revanchism of Christian Monarchism to the street level activism of Identitarians. The common thread that binds these disparate groups together is that they are all trying to fill a void in the hearts of modern men.

What binds these disparate groups together is that they are all trying to fill a void in the hearts of modern men.

Truly, men in the city feel two deeply tormenting impulses priming the masco-nationalist detonation underway - the emptiness of spirit and the claustrophobia of compression. Both are suffocating the average man to the breaking point. The emptiness deprives him of a belonging to household, community or nation that orients men toward the collective action of a higher purpose. At the same time, compression under the weight of bureaucracy, feminization, and denationalization neuters his libidinous drive for adventure, rebelliousness, and dynamism. There is something missing, a hole so deep only a mass catharsis or spiritual renaissance can fill it.

A universal diagnosis of despair and the blackpilling it has wrought has crippled the masculine imagination. Today’s thinkers are so immersed in it they cannot envision the endgame, the denouement, the coming liberation fast approaching as modernity manifestly crumbles around us. Compression and emptiness are free radicals firing a new awakening, a call to action, a new mission statement that lies just beneath the surface of the barren landscape of materialism. The Hobbesian moment, a time of interregnum, of uncertain authority, and succession has finally arrived, and the Leviathan in men is emergent.

A State of Nature

What is the state of nature? Philosophers disagree on this question, some believing men are “noble savages,” others just savages, and primordial depictions vary accordingly. One thing is painfully obvious in the modern West, without authority, the authority of fathers, of community, of culture, of law, of heroes and God, anarchy and self-destruction trail not far behind. Thomas Hobbes lived through a similar experience when King Charles I was violently removed during the English Civil War and brutal instability followed until a new, Parliamentary authority finally emerged. Like many who came before him (Hobbes translated Thucydides - perhaps the Father of Realism - into English) he concluded that life without authority is “nasty, brutish, and short,” and the state of nature is a “war of all against all.” The world we live in today is positively Hobbesian.

We are witnessing the breakdown of authority in virtually every sector of human consciousness. Skepticism of science, religion, markets, democracy, even sports is careening into nihilism. Faith in institutions and the virtues of governance: rule of law, meritocracy, marriage, industriousness and patriotism are sardonic punch lines people publicly applaud but privately no one really believes in anymore. As faith dims authority sinks and so the specter of uncontrollable civil unrest is intensifying by the month.

“The West is becoming ungovernable because the State has been so completely captured and hollowed out.”

Rebellion against the legacy regime is centered in young men and a revolutionary fever is spreading. The political landscape is disintegrating before us as more and more men defect from an increasingly unstable system that terrorizes its detractors. MAGA’s election of Donald Trump and the surge of nationalist parties across Europe are contained, ensuring no endogenous reform can disrupt the merry-go-round of interchangeable bureaucrats, “mainstream” parties, Zionist warmongers, and the Globalist Gerontocrats who back them. However, contrary to the mass Gulags many dissidents fear is coming, the reality is that the West is becoming ungovernable because the State has been so completely hollowed out.

Disorder is beginning to inflame the public consciousness. Street clashes between natives and migrants in England and Ireland are combusting, as are racial frictions across the European continent, and censoring truth tellers is no longer working. Equally, despite MAGA’s supposed America First counter-thrust, mass deportations are nowhere to be found, nor is the construction of a border wall to protect US sovereignty. Demographic projections in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands are apocalyptic, and almost assuredly understated by authorities keen on concealing the disastrous effects of Third Worldization.

“the sheer scale of demographic change over the last twenty years or so has been so great that the State is now simply unable to perform its most basic functions.”

Matt Goodwin

As besieged as the masses are from demographic invasion it is economic instability that is the gamechanger. Average households are being squeezed by generationally unsustainable debt, young men are condemned to alienation and joblessness, and the standard of living is no longer First World. According to UK commentator Matt Goodwin, “the sheer scale of demographic change over the last twenty years or so has been so great that the State is now simply unable to perform its most basic functions.” Every corner of the West is scarred by rising poverty, criminality, demographic replacement, indebtedness, and the incapacity of the State to deal with the crisis they have created. What comes next?

Overthrowing Incumbents

How is change accomplished? Many Westerners believe social-political change comes from the grassroots, from democratic movements that gradually acquire momentum through organic fundraising, community organization, and mass marketing. Others believe that change comes from free markets; once the State is removed from the equation, unfettered incentive structures impel economic dynamism. Still others favor a combination, a nexus of public-private interests that cooperate to spur social change. While these factors play a role, the most decisive factor behind social transformation comes from concentrated power at the top; or the breakdown of that power.

Vocal opponents of this view often site soft power or rights advocacy movements as instrumental to social progress. Much of this thinking is Anglo-centric, focusing on movements like abolitionism, labor reform, and the hallowed Civil Rights movement. However, reforms such as these are rarely realized without State power to enforce them. Abolitionism was imposed at gunpoint by the Union army, as was the end of racial-segregation in the South (Executive Order 10730). By and large, the State commands the overwhelming force necessary to resolve disputes that threaten national cohesion as reformists movements often do.

Political, economic or social power tends to consolidate overtime. Empires built on roads, waterways, banking, or mainframes eventually streamline and centralize under the control of a singular entity or oligopoly, a corporation (East India Company), monopoly (Standard Oil), or an imperium (Rome). It is as close to a natural law as there is in human affairs that first movers, innovators, and blitzscalers like Bell Labs, Walmart, McDonalds, or Amazon push their advantage until they dominate the full spectrum: supply chains, manufacturing processes, real-estate, financing, and human capital (talent). Unseating monopolies becomes virtually impossible until upper management atrophies or invention (usually a technology) renders the incumbent totally obsolete.

Successful revolutionary movements follow the same pattern. Challenging State power directly is almost always a fools errand; rather, the State must falter through a combination of incompetent leadership, unmanageable complexity, systemic corruption, or imperial overstretch. Inflection points are rare and almost always happen at unexpected moments long after neglected decline becomes chronic and unfixable. When that happens, revolutionary movements tend to proliferate to fill the power vacuum and strike when central power is brittle, like an aging Alpha Chimp fending off a mutiny of younger beta males.

Vandals and Technocrats

When the Vandals sacked Rome in the 5th century the Romans were a shadow of themselves. The vaunted legions whose rank and file was once ethnically Roman and unified by an esprit de corp of honor, courage, and sacrifice had long since wasted away. By 455 AD, there was no garrison army to stop foreign invaders and Emperor Petronius Maximus was stoned to death by an angry mob as he fled the approaching barbarians, leaving Rome completely defenseless. While many believe the West to be on the verge of a similar downfall it is the cadre of degenerate technocrats who will be overthrown, and this time from within.

The Gerontocracy has become dangerously mediocre.

The Gerontocracy has become dangerously mediocre. The Epstein extortion rings, Congressional insider trading grift, or the rampant fraud inside USAID reveal just the tip of the ice berg of an entire governmental system racked by anachronism, corruption, and a total lack of oversight. Wherever one looks across the government, the CIA, Medicare, Social Security or top figures heading the military-industrial complex, the stench of mediocrity is pungent, and the Eurocrats may be even worse.

The recent Signal leak highlighted just how ill equipped Trump’s national security dilettantes are to serve their posts. Both the recently appointed National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and defense chief Pete Hegseth showed themselves to lack strategic understanding (desired end-state), calibrated decision-making (achievable end-state), or appreciate the gravity of the military power in their hands (collateral damage). The amateurish breach was just another peak behind the curtains of a completely unprofessional and superficial technocracy. Indeed, a deep rooted “competence crisis” pervades the c-suites of Fortune 500 companies, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley, and the flag ranks of the armed services.

Where is the Vanguard?

For the moment, it is difficult to imagine an implosion and virtually impossible to picture robust, organized resistance. Dissidents are fragmented in online communities, ill led, and lack a broader vision for combined action. The uninitiated masses of men are feminized betas, many are morbidly obese and a tragic number are overdosing on fentanyl. Nationalist opposition has either been completely sterilized like the National Rally, Zionized like Trump 2.0, or quarantined like AfD. There is no substantive opposition poised to challenge the decrepit power structure let alone stage organized push back, and yet that is precisely why the emergence of a new vanguard is so probable.

When the system goes it will topple completely.

When the system goes it will topple completely because the globalist cancer in the head has already rotted the body - the non-governmental sectors. Western societies are so economically hollowed out, psychologically disoriented, and culturally emaciated that beyond public services, non-profits, and government employment there simply is not much left. However, since the body is worn to the bone the dependence on a brittle head is priming a “mass mobilization” event, a kind of globalist withdrawal that will catch fire and quickly spread out-of-control. The convergence of drug addiction, financial stress, sexless men, racial clash, and Zionist warmongering is leading to some kind of sudden, exogenous shock that will sting the masses out of their benumbed stupor. For the Gerontocracy it will be a Hobbesian moment.

However, populism, or change from below, is limited and usually fails. By contrast, what some call vanguardism, or a movement led by an “organized minority” is the key. Remember, transformative change rarely comes from the masses but from concentrated power, from what Hobbes called the Leviathan. Vanguardism, or the emergence of a clearly defined and hierarchical counter-elite, is the mechanism that can concentrate mass discontent into revolutionary change. In a sense, the Neo-Leviathan is the political realization of the Vanguard project.

Can such a counter-elite be built? Is the specter of one already there? What exactly is the Neo-Leviathan? What is its goal? These questions and more will be addressed in Part 2.