2025: A Year of Interregnum
by Joakim Andersen
Joakim Andersen presents a sober yet visionary overview of the metapolitical and metacultural shifts of 2025 and the potential for new developments in 2026.
2025 has ended, a year that has once again confirmed that we live under an interregnum. The old order is collapsing and the new can still only be glimpsed, which means that the possibilities to shape the future are greater than during more stable periods. This also means that many conflicts take on an existential character, both domestically and internationally; whoever stands as the victor when the interregnum ends can found an order that endures for a long time.
2025 was chaotic, but it is possible to discern a couple of broader tendencies. One of these has to do with the conflict within the American Empire, the other with metapolitical and metacultural shifts. The boundary between them is obviously fairly arbitrary.
The Conflict in the American Empire
Western Europe and a number of countries in, among others, Asia and Latin America have since at least World War II been regarded as American satrapies, parts of the American Empire. What has happened in the center has also affected these semi‑peripheral and peripheral regions, concerning everything from economic policy to cultural trends like “woke.” Several thinkers and movements in the European satrapies have identified the conflicts of interest with the US and worked for an independent Europe; here may be mentioned Europeans such as Jean Thiriart and Jordis von Lohausen. At the same time, the geopolitical center has for obvious reasons been a formidable opponent, resource‑rich in everything from culture to money.
What we are now witnessing is how latent conflicts in the empire have become manifest. These conflicts can be understood both in a historical‑materialist way, drawing on, for example, Marx, Kotkin, and Samuel Francis, and in a history‑of‑religions way, with a modern heresy as the driving force (compare among others Voegelin, Nietzsche, and Yarvin in their views on liberalism, the ideas of 1968, and woke). The perspectives overlap to a large degree; certain sociopolitical layers are attracted—because of their biotypes and their “social being”—to precisely that heresy that today is called woke (compare Edward Dutton, Tom Wolfe, and D.H. Lawrence). Regardless, an alliance between capital‑strong actors, intellectuals/managers/middle layers/clericals and their allies in various minorities has “hacked” the Western societal form by opening the borders to new voters who have then been sustained with tax money. Future historians will describe this as an astonishingly ugly form of betrayal and fraud, though we are not there yet.
The resistance to this alliance’s politics, especially devastating immigration policy, has gathered growing parts of the people in the empire’s center and periphery (compare Gramsci’s classi subalterni and Francis’s post‑bourgeois proletariat). This has been the classic conflict between the people and the establishment—the populist dimension. Normally it is difficult for the people to win such a conflict without support from some elite groups (though it is not entirely impossible). What has happened in the American empire is that parts of the elites have gravitated toward the popular resistance, both capitalists like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and high‑versionists. This alliance is embodied by Donald Trump, who assumed the post of president for the second time in January this year.
Trump represents a contradictory collection of interests, which means his politics will also be contradictory. 2025 has, in any case, more than hinted that Trump has now realized that the core concept of politics is the friend‑enemy distinction; he has concretely begun to attack his enemies’ resources. This applies to the import of new voters, on which point Trump, through ICE and Stephen Miller, has now initiated what seemed impossible in the first term. It also applies to the opponent’s ideology‑producing and activist‑sustaining institutions. Trump has attacked both USAID and the radicalized universities.
It is of interest to take note of the similarities between today’s conflict within the empire and the situation during the Peloponnesian War, where both sides had sympathizers in almost every Greek city. Trump has political power in the US, but the opposition has many adherents in, among others, the judiciary, the media, and certain states, as well as an armed wing in Antifa. The situation is even more problematic in Europe, where the Eurocracy and several national governments stand on the opposing side.
Trump and his allies have therefore launched a campaign against these as well, among other things by criticizing them for their repression and restrictions on freedom of speech. At the same time, they have moved closer to parts of the popular resistance in Europe. A conflict between Trump and the Eurocracy has begun, which offers both opportunities and challenges for the European right. As regards things like freedom of speech and the exchange of peoples, Trump is a valuable ally against the Eurocracy, which Greenland illustrates—not necessarily geopolitically. The optimal relationship between a future Europe and the US remains to be determined.
The weapons the opposition has used so far have included increasing repression in the EU and the Anglosphere, continued mass immigration, and a radicalized judiciary. The example of Mamdani suggests the demographic conditions for their successes in certain large cities. The murder of Charlie Kirk and the violence against ICE also indicate that, like the 1960s, we may have more terrorism to expect, this time with an Islamo‑leftist characteristics.
Parallel to the conflict within the empire is the conflict between it and BRICS actors like Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and China, which will alternately be threatened and played off against each other (and potentially against the Eurocracy).
Additionally connected to this is a conflict within MAGA, where Trump’s foreign policy is being criticized by, among others, Nicholas Fuentes. It remains to be seen whether the various interests behind Trump can develop the forms of cooperation and compromises required to be a historical bloc rather than solely a collaboration based on common enemies; it also remains to be seen whether parts of the highly educated precariat can be brought into the bloc/collaboration.
Metapolitics and Metaculture
Metapolitically, the “left” has suffered several setbacks during 2025. Its grip on the public sphere during the woke period was not organic, but rather rested on a fragile foundation in the form of control over the media and debate. When this control loosened, a so‑called preference cascade occurred, meaning that support decreased markedly. Those who had not dared to object gained, so to speak, courage when they realized they were not alone.
On this point, we can mention that the Overton window has shifted when it comes to immigration, as well as that trans ideology and body positivity have been marginalized. The concept of remigration, or return migration, spread over the course of 2025, as has the new population question and the topic of falling birth rates in the West. Together with AI, these two issues have been central during the year. They will continue into 2026 and gradually be translated into politics.
2025 has also been marked by a number of scandals that have damaged the “left’s” privilege in framing problems. Elon Musk has single-handedly contributed to raising the question of grooming gangs in Great Britain; this was followed in Sweden by the rapes in elder care; finally, the massive fraud committed by Somali individuals in the US has been discovered. Common to these scandals is that they are disturbing and, in at least two cases, they involved large parts of certain ethnic diasporas. They have not been individual phenomena, but collective, inter‑ethnic in the proper sense. From a game‑theoryperspective, one is somewhat slow if one treats members of strongly collectivist groups as individuals, and both Britons and Americans are beginning to realize this.
The boundary between the establishment right/bourgeoisie and the more genuine right has continued to break down during 2025. It is not primarily the liberal “right” establishment that influences the internet and publishing right, but normally the opposite. Concepts and perspectives from the genuine right reach the bourgeois right, partly in Sweden and Europe, but especially in the US. Hence, Nick Land has become a celebrity, Curtis Yarvin is interviewed by the New Right’s Éléments, Renaud Camus is participating in conferences, and so on. Guillaume Faye stated years ago that we now have a “monopoly on rebel thought”; the quality of our thinkers today is obviously superior to that of the opposition.
One expression of how the latter are on the defensive is the gaslighting witnessed on social media toward the end of the year, where they have tried to downplay rather than defend the past years’ anti‑white practice (“no one tried to force you to apologize for being white”). Examples of how old ideas from the dissident right have spread quickly into the more liberal or bourgeois right during 2025 are Helen Andrews’s The Great Feminization and Jacob Savage’s The Lost Generation.
READ MORE:
The Great Feminization
Joakim Andersen analyzes how society is increasingly oversaturated with feminized values and feminine managers, replacing merit, the rule of law, and fraternity with a shift which Helen Andrews calls the Great Feminization.
There is, of course, a risk of co‑optation, where more genuine solutions are replaced by liberal rhetoric, but the metapolitical momentum is moving in the opposite direction.
Partially related to this are the metacultural tendencies and currents in the collective unconscious, where we notice, among other things, what is called “n*** fatigue,” or fatigue with the American Afro‑mania. Black violence against whites has been highlighted and the rap genre has been pushed down and off the charts (replaced, among other things, by country). Also noteworthy is the female dimension. Women have played a prominent role in the popular protests against the placement of “asylum‑seeking” men in various British communities; well‑known women like Nicki Minaj and Sydney Sweeney have also positioned themselves closer to Trump and the vibe shift. One can also discern a shift in advertising and film, away from the misceomanic “IKEA norm.”
Looking into 2026, in short, there are good reasons for optimism. Nothing is given, and the process is taking longer than I thought it would a couple of decades ago, but it is going in the right direction. Everyone has a role to play in the unfolding events — exactly how depends on one’s personal equation. Some work within established institutions, others outside them. Some are activists, politicians, mystics, and musicians, others support them with money, votes, and cheerful encouragement.
In any case, heading into 2026, it is worth saying that whatever is built solely on day‑to‑day and party politics is vulnerable; we also need living contexts, culture, and theory.
Read Joakim Andersen’s Rising from the Ruins: The Right of the 21st Century, brought to you by Arktos:
